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Finn Longman@finnlongman.bsky.social |
354 followers 303 following 1120 posts
Author (THE BUTTERFLY ASSASSIN trilogy; THE WOLF AND HIS KING) and medievalist specialising in the Ulster Cycle. #1 fan of Láeg mac Ríangabra.
Learning and sometimes posting in Irish; (kind) corrections appreciated!
finnlongman.com
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Today I learned that jazz bodhrán is something one can theoretically play. By playing it. Also blues bodhrán. And rock bodhrán. Really, just give me music and I'll whack a dead goat with a stick to it.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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No sea at home and no hills either so gotta take my fun when I can get it.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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A little cold but I got used to it, though there were some big waves. My first time going naked in the sea, lol. An act of defiance against a transphobic world that doesn't want my body in it.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Sometimes you gotta get naked and then get in the Atlantic. I guess.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I'm not saying skinny dipping in the ocean in Donegal is the best way to process political feelings. Or even a good way. But it slaps, so
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phyphor
@phyphor.one-dash.org
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If your area got a new Labour MP then it is your duty to email them and say that you are happy the Tories are out but that transphobia should have no place in the party. Make Starmer gently walk back his support for Rowling's position!
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Micah
@rincewind.run
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I am excited to see the Tories get obliterated today but I would be significantly more excited if Labour hadn’t made a hard turn into TERFdom the trans people of the UK deserve so much better
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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1) No, this was not the official title of my paper. 2) Yes, this WAS my final slide.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I think conference papers are best when they take one really specific part of an argument and dive into it though, rather than trying to cram an entire topic into 20 minutes, and that's what I tried to do. Seems like it worked :) Have had many good chats with people about it 👍
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I know the concept of "too niche" at a conference on a specific subset of medieval Irish literature is a funny one, and it was about the Táin, so it's basically mainstream. But it's a topic that primarily affects how we read one character in particular, and most people don't care about him much.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I did use the phrase "special little guy" about Láeg in front of everyone at Ulidia earlier too. I've got to stop doing this. My academic vocabulary has been irreparably warped by doing most of my public-facing academia on Tumblr specifically.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Photographic evidence to follow...
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I presented my paper on "popa" in different recensions of Táin Bó Cúailnge at the Ulidia 7 conference today and it went really well! Sparked some lovely conversations. I was worried it was too niche, but it seems I pitched it just right: specific and focused but with many jumping off points :)
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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This is definitely regional; Irish libraries don't have fees, but the English libraries I'm a member of do (I ... may have racked up a few hefty fines by forgetting they don't auto-renew like academic libraries, oops). Best to check your local! Still worth it though and PLR is great as an author.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Go hálainn! Beidh mé i dTír Chonaill an seachtain seo chugainn ach béidh sé ag cúr báistí arís, sílim 😅
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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In my field they rarely include contact details on the article itself, but it can usually be found with cursory googling and I've never had an author say no when I asked for help finding their work! Several have sent me multiple related articles when I asked for one.
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Néide
@seneolas.bsky.social
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obviously take into account tactical voting for your area but if like me you live in an area that doesn't have a clear tactical choice, you might find voteforpolicies.org.uk useful. i did! in particularly i found it VERY illuminating to see what parties' policies actually ARE on different issues...
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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This looks very cool!
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Love to feel unrepresented by any party with a hope of getting in power 👍👍 Just fabulous. I try not to be a single-issue voter and there are a lot of things I care about, but I have to say, "Does this party believe I'm a person and deserving of human rights and healthcare" is a pretty big issue
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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My postal vote ballot arrived today and I need to post it by Monday (because I'll be away) but I still have no idea who to vote for. There isn't a clear tactical vote in my constituency which means I actually have to make a decision and square it with my conscience 😕
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I'm used to having a mixed audience (medievalists who aren't Irish specialists; Irish specialists who aren't medievalists; literature specialists who are neither medievalists nor Irish specialists, etc) where I can't assume any prior knowledge and thus questions are unlikely to be too hard.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I remember it having really good vibes, and nobody I've spoken to about it since then has contradicted that memory, so I hope this one will be much the same. But still, I'm a little twitchy.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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The Ulidia-Finn conference in 2018 was the first academic conference I ever attended, just for fun. I'd just finished finals and was convinced I was leaving academia forever (the fact that I went to a conference for fun was probably a sign that I was wrong about that...)
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Sorting out my powerpoint and script for the Ulidia conference next week and I'm oddly nervous. I think because it's the only conference I've been to where I can fairly safely assume everyone's read Táin Bó Cúailnge, and thus the risk of difficult questions is higher.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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And I think often the process of getting across that final hurdle is so gruelling that you're so relieved to be done, so ready for it to be over, that you aren't mentally *prepared* for the sense of loss that comes once that exhaustion fades, because you thought you were over it. Nope! It's sneaky!
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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So to answer your original question: I think it's very common. But I think it's hard to talk about, because people feel they're expected to be celebrating the achievement and not mourning the process. I see it discussed in my author group chats but not on public social media. But: you are not alone.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Exactly what Life Event Aftercare involves will probably vary from person to person -- for some it involves a holiday, others an unrelated new project or hobby to give their mind a different outlet, etc -- but I do think company and support is important (therapist, counsellor, friends, etc).
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I think this is where it's super important to have what my friends and I call Life Event Aftercare, which is essentially about giving yourself the time to process and come down from all the feelings of it, rather than expecting yourself to snap immediately back to normal.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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And it's really difficult when something that's a huge massive life event for you, with years of build-up and work, is just...not that for anyone else. You're walking around going, "Hey, I just did this huge thing," and it's not huge to anyone else (even if they've had similar) and that's isolating!
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I feel it's probably similar to the post-publication slump a lot of my author friends have experienced. I have definitely been struggling mentally since publishing the last in a trilogy I started at 18 (I'm now 28) in May: ten years of my life, and it's done, and I'm just meant to move on? ...
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Yeah it's a hard no for me also, mostly because I simply do not want to inhabit that vessel. But I love to spy on a second person character experiencing narrative. I'm very nosy. I want to watch.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I'm a literature specialist, we don't do... graphs and things... whatever...
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Okay actually I realise this is not how Venn diagrams work. The Irish circle is inside the other circle. That's the important part. There are texts written by Christians that are not medieval Irish texts but there are not medieval Irish texts that aren't written by Christians. You get it.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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While there are probably many older elements in these stories, they're not simply transcriptions of older oral tradition: they're works authored within very specific literary and intertextual traditions. "Christian scribes censored the stories" is another common take I hear.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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That they're pre-Christian pagan texts. A lot of people aren't really aware of the relative chronologies (i.e. that Christianity came to Ireland in the fifth century and a lot of these texts are from four to ten CENTURIES after that)
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Been there since 2011, will have to be scraped off a rock like some kind of barnacle to make me leave, probably
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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ALSO some people grasp the "written by" part but use it to mean "transcribed uncritically from the oral tradition by" rather than "authored with reference to a range of sources and influences", and assume there was no intent or intelligence in the creation of those layered works.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Especially for me as someone who works on later medieval lit, sometimes I do have to be like lads. do you need me to draw you a timeline and also explain the concept of a monastery
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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This is the kind of thing that gets me hatemail on Tumblr but for real, I would love more people to grasp this principle. Then you can start actually engaging with the texts on their own terms and understanding their literary and historical layers rather than an imagined concept of them.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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The Venn diagram of medieval Irish texts and texts written by Christian authors is a circle.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Survived my first time going to Pride on purpose! I emerge damp, with more stickers on my wheelchair, and with mud all up both sleeves from wheeling across the swamp that is Jesus Green in the rain.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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THE BOOK IS FINISHED My agent found about it this morning, so it won't be a total surprise, but still, I enjoy the sensation of plonking an accidental book down in her inbox anyway.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I'm definitely the least well-known author on this panel (since Karen McManus is a massive bestseller and Ravena Guron just got shortlisted for the YA Book Prize, among other accolades), so I anticipate having a comparatively short signing queue. But youse have the power to prove me wrong!
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I'm coming to YALC! I'll be there on Sunday participating in the "Heart Rate Critical" panel alongside Karen McManus and Ravena Guron, as well as a book signing. Hope to see some of you there :)
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I flew too close to the sun (posted on my Instagram Story) and got caught 😞 Made it to 84k before she found out, though.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Can't believe we learn this in a footnote about 80% of the way through this book sdflkjsdflkj. It's also news to me that book 1's protag is from Norfolk, frankly. You can tell how much I planned this book (not at all).
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Nope, lol. The narrator of book 1 just never saw fit to mention it, I guess. (He's known her for a few years when we meet her, so it wouldn't be something it would particularly occur to him to bring up unless relevant, I don't think.) Her dad's half Irish and from Waterford, I knew THAT much.
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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I honestly think I'm going to have to go back and revise all her dialogue in the light of this knowledge, though. I can't believe she didn't tell me sooner. I was just there like, "What do you mean you're from Birmingham? Since WHEN?"
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Protagonist is from Birmingham. Love interest is from Bradford and lives in York. Friend is from Norfolk and dating a vampire from Cork. These sentences weren't meant to rhyme but now I need a third place ending in -ork so I can keep going
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Finn Longman
@finnlongman.bsky.social
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Me every time we learn anything about any of the characters' backstories:
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