Die Midnighter!

Posted on by scott

Not “die” as in “expire,” of course. “Die” as in “the.”

That’s right, the Midnighters series is now in German! And the new website for the series is far cooler than anything in English.

Like check this out:

Because, you see, German midnighters have entirely different symbols! (It’s a teutonic thing; you wouldn’t understand.)

There are pages and pages of fun to be had, including many screensavers like the one above. But the funkiest thing is the Tridecalogism-Generator, which looks like this.

Okay, if anyone knows what “abschicken” means, do tell. Is that like a dude who’s afraid to take his shirt off in public?

Go here to check out the generator.

These are the German midnighter desktops, like the one above.

And here’s the mighty home page.

Thank you, Kosmos, for a very cool site.

____________________
This just in: Justine also got some cool downloads today, including a Magic or Madness screen saver that rocks out loud. Here’s her post linking to the screensaver.

98 thoughts on “Die Midnighter!”

  1. Oooh I’m jeolous of the German symbols!
    Ha ha ha: ‘If it are exactly born around midnight, could belong to it to us.’
    Oh, and LIES!
    ‘The clock on http://www.5midnighters.de always indicates the current Bixby time to you’. First of all: why did that make sense? I put it through an online translater. Second of all: didn’t touching darkness say that Bixby and Chicago have the same time zone? Because I live in Naperville (Chicago suburb) and it’s exactly two hours behind to the second.
    Is this time zone screwiness or what? Because that doesn’t make any sense, if the point is to show them what time it is in Bixby.

  2. I may not be the first to comment, but I am certainly close! But this sounds awesome! I will now go and see this German site, and then I’ll probably come back here and gush about how awesome it is.

  3. Oooo. That’s extremly cool! Congrats! Oooo(again) I’m the third to leave a comment:P. That’s the closest to #1 I’ve ever been. Lol. Anyways, the midnighters website is definatly cool:).
    xoxo

  5. Thats awesome! Um…today’s the 12th of march where i live. I tried finding out what abschicken meant, i can’t find it anywhere!!!

  6. Uh . . . you peoples should think about context – you know what that is right?

    “abschicken” is being used as a button on a Tridecalogism generator – more specifically the button that generates Tridecalogisms. which means that “abschicken” is most likely another word for “generate” that isn’t too common.

    I said most likely – not absolutely. I’ll ask Thomas later.

  8. I should get my brother to read it for me. He speaks German, luckily. Or unluckily, when he prances around shouting “I am a jelly donut!” But in German.
    Very pretty… mesmerizing.

  9. The symbols are really cool!!
    Soon enough, MIdnighters and all your other books will be in like….a million languages!! (aren’t there like…126+ languages ot something? Lol…)

  10. ‘Schicken’ means ‘to send’, and the prefix ‘ab’ I think is ‘off’… So all together it means ‘send off!’ Yaaaaay Deutschklasse!

    But that’s super cool it’s in German.

  11. There is a quiz! In German! I took it, guessing at the questions, and the answers. I guess it was for what character I am most like? The result, after all, was “Dess(28.8%)” which I take to mean that I am like Dess. Which is a lie, but whatever.

  12. I totally found all 13 pieces of metal, that was so much fun. unfortunately i dont live in Germany or i could win an ipod nano.. oh well. but that site is severely awesome, and thanks to free online translators i could actually read some of it, even though it was very scrambled! that was definitely awesome Scott, thanks!

  14. that is one amazing site. my computer has been westerlestier-ified. mormo on my screensaver, midnighters on my desktop.
    πŸ˜€

  15. yeah, i started translating the quiz, i got as far as A on the first question. what color best describes you? A jet black, and thats when i gave up >.

  16. abschicken is German for “post” as in you should abschicken a new blog every day πŸ˜‰

  17. that is so cool… to bad i cant read it. first i downloaded the magic or madnessness screan save i love it then i went to the website and got the pretty symbol background…in suck a nerd

  18. oooh! kinda related, but look what just came to my inbox from Word-a-Day:

    “This week’s theme: words related to the number 13 to mark the
    thirteenth
    anniversary of Wordsmith.org.

    triskaidekaphobia (tris-ky-dek-uh-FO-bee-uh) noun

    Fear of the number 13.”

    Guess that would be what the darklings have. πŸ˜€

  19. hey hey scott.
    lol you’re just getting way too popular now aren’t you?
    i mean, you probably dont even read our comments any more πŸ™

  20. Thanks! Great that you like the site, and “abschicken” means “to send” your generated tridecalogisms to us so we collect them for the German Specials site. So you all are welcome to join with your English tridecalogism creations.

    Cheers

    Natalie

  22. Jess, Justine is lying! I never read the comments.
    Well, except HER comments, when she lies,
    because a little ping goes off in my brain!

    And speaking of EXTRAS, it’s at 57,339 words!
    The Uglies books tend to be around 85,000.
    Must. Finish. Soon.

  26. HA! I KNEW IT! I was close with my awesome guessing!

    Well at least I tried to guess anyways . . .

    I noticed that no one else seemed to dare to post their guess before confirming it.

    As soon as I become fluent in German, I am TOTALLY getting the German Midnighters . . .

    –looks at German Uglies–

    Skip you! =P jk – I’m just more into Midnighters.

    –stares at Scott because I KNOW you read all these– Oh and Sam says that Specials SUCKED! It was very depressing in the end – and not because [spoiler removal] the only depressing thing about that was it was near the end and there wasn’t enough bloodshed in it . . .

    But yeah. And she agrees with me that you shouldn’t have TOTALLY KILLED DR. CABLE!

    Sam has no more favorite characters in the Uglies Trilogy anymore because of you killed all her favorite characters – not literally but, you know . . .

  28. Oh god. You did not just say Specials sucked. I’ma come at you and hit you. Multiple times.

    “The depressing thing is that near the end there wasn’t enough bloodshed…” which is like saying there weren’t enough people hurt or there weren’t enough people dead. Whaaaaaat. This depresses you? Well then.

    I thought a nice amount of people died (if there can even be considered a ‘nice amount’). A some on the good side, a some on the bad. Nice balance.

    D: And Zane’s my homeboy, dood.

  29. I have no idea why I put A’s in front of the words ‘some’. Uhhhh. I guess I could cover it up and say that it’s my southern twang.

  30. πŸ™ Poor Zane…I liked him…why does it seem that Scott likes to torture us by also ending his trilogys with sad things? Zane died, Jess got stuck in the blue time (spoiler), and I don’t know what other books you’ve written that are sad…is Extras like a sequel to Uglies, Pretties, and Specials??? Psh, it’s not nice not to read comments…I luff the site, I just used worldlingo.com, although that didn’t work all to well…you should write another Midnighters book…wow, the longest post here…anyways, where was I? Ok, I’m brain dead…CSAP testing messes me up…and now I’m ay off topic o_0

  32. That is totally FAWSOME!!! I love it! I think I get which symbol is for who though, lets see if I can get this right.

    Started from the left, The first one is The Flame Bringer. The second is The Acrobat. The third is The Mindcaster. The fourth is The Seer. And the fifth is The Polymath. Please teel me Im right!

  33. “Rather have Dr. Cable killed than ZaneÒ€¦he was niceÒ€¦”

    NO WAY! Dr. Cable ROX! She was my FAVORITE character!

    I think Tally should have died . . . That would have been awesome ^^

  34. aw thats so sweet scott! you read comments you like out loud to justine? that makes me feel loved, even if you didnt read any posts by me, it still makes me feel loved. Oh and congrats on Midnighters in German. And i never knew that was how you spelled teutonic.

  35. Interesting, I’m Jonathan, according to the test…it took me about half an hour to take it…

    “NO WAY! Dr. Cable ROX! She was my FAVORITE character!

    I think Tally should have died . . . That would have been awesome ^^”

    Zane was my favorite character…and Dr. Cable deserved to die!!! Her fault Zane died πŸ™

    Ok, so, Jonathan is my favorite character from Midnighters, and Zane is my favorite from Uglies…and Hunter from SY, and…well, I haven’t read the other books yet…

  37. wow, this has gotten waaay off topic, awsome! haha. anyways, that site is really really cool Scott, thanks for posting it. and Justine, you are amazing, i love how you totally call Scott out on his lies, very nice. sorry scott, you know we love you, but still, gotta hand it to justine! ^.^

  38. so does scott read them or not. i’m curious. so if i ask a question, will i get a response, or will i wait hopelessly at the computer day and night waiting, waiting, waiting…..for something that will never come!!!

    okay, i have one

    what is your favortie color??

    if someone knows, don’t tell me, i want to see if scott will answer when his readers asks.

    πŸ™‚ haha!!!

  44. gabby im sure scott checks these once in a while but he’s probably not always on waiting for people to ask him questions. but if you happen to be reading this right now scott, would you mind if put qoutes and such from the midnighters on my website? ill make sure to put that its yours and nobody can steal it and all that stuff but i want t omake a page dedicated to the midnighters and i wanted to put some cool quotes on there. thanks if you do respond. if you dont ill be sitting here… waiting… for you to answer me. so please answer soon because im tired.

  45. I checked out the website…very,very cool, even though I couldn’t actually read it. I took the quiz totally randomly and got Melissa, which is what I get whenever I take a real Midnighters personality quiz. Cool. Oh,and Scott, when you posted the Uglies German thing (like, two years ago) you used ‘Die Uglies’. Are you going to do that every time one of your books gets published in German? Cause that will get very old after a while.

  47. I should’ve payed more attention during elementry school when they taught German. Then maybe I could understand the site.
    “Irgendwas an Dir ist so …11:59.”
    Hey, if I can memorize that, then I can tell people they are so 11:59 in German! Or something like that.

    Whoa, I took the quiz and I’m “Dess (48.5%)”. Thats pretty good for not really understanding the questions!

  48. “Jonathan ist Akrobat, und das ist absolut megacool”

    Ha ha. Am I right in thinking that this says “Johnothan is an Acrobat, and that is absolutely megacool” ?

  51. Gabby: Deep blue.

    IILWJ: Yes, you may use all the quotes you want.

    IndigoEeyes: Yes, I will use the “die” joke every time, because it’s a Simpsons bit, when Sideshow Bob claims to the parole board that his “Die Bart Die” tattoo is merely German for “The Bart The.”

    Sorry that took so long!

    Does EVERY thread have to mention Zane dying? Sadness for those who haven’t read Specials yet.

  52. happy to hear your still alive scott ^.^ jk, i think we can all forgive you for having a life while *at least I* dont. haha!

  54. OMG Scott! I love you even more now. You’ll have to come check out my website sometime. It’s still a work in progress right now but I promise it will be amazing when I’m done. If you go on photos there are tons of midnighters pics. Click on my name to see it

  57. well im still reading midnighters… but i can tell the 235 pages that iv read so far are AWESOME!!!! and also i only now how to say one thing in German… and im not sure how to spell it (if u havent already noticed I cant even spell half of the stuff i say but i dont care!! hehe) but any way here it goes… “ish libby dish” i dont now if thats right… but it means “I love you”. and ill deff have to tell Wenni (my GERMAN friend) to read your book!!! all of them!!1
    xoxo alexa

  58. o yea scott someday i hope that i could end up a famous writter like you!! i though that i might and tell you that so if your ever in a book store many days from now and see a book written by Alexa Fowler. then i hope that you will take a look at it!!!
    xoxo alexa

  60. Psh, their fault for reading the spoliers…besides, it is sad…poor, poor, Zane…I don’t know who would be sadder…Zane, although he’s dead, or Tally, since she liked him a lot…

  63. My favorite colour is French blue, which is almost purple, and how I pictured Midnighter-eyes-at-midnight.

  65. How could it not be related to the Uglies Trilogy if it is an extention of it? Wasn’t this metioned in the Extras post?! Isn’t it in the same futuristic time period? Yes, I do think so.

  68. Hmm…I guess that means I better read the Extras post, since I haven’t read that yet…and I was just curious, capt. cocktail…

  70. Rebecca, The Last Days is a sequel to Peeps, because Cal and Lace show up. And it is implied in the Extras post that Tally will show up, so…yeah.(I’ll stop babbling now.)

  72. IndigoEyes: True, but “sequel” implies a continuing story, whereas a companion, in my experience, means a story set in the same world but about different people. So even though the cover of The Last Days says it’s a sequel to Peeps, I consider it to be more of a companion because it’s told from the POV of completely different characters. However, I can see where it might be thought of as a sequel too, since Peeps does kind of end on a cliffhanger (that being the fate of the world as we know it) which is then one of the main focuses (foci?) of The Last Days. I can’t say how similar Extras will be to the Uglies series but since that storyline was resolved in Specials and the new book is told by a completely different character (Aya), it sounds like a companion story. Set in the same universe, but telling a new story about new people. That’s my take on it. I like to ramble on about stuff like this.
    πŸ˜›

  75. Haha, scott and justine. you’re confusing me.
    YOU’RE GIVING ME MIXED SIGNALS.
    glad to hear you’re on track with Extras! πŸ™‚
    xx

  77. Jeez, I don’t check the site for a week or two and there are like three new blogs.

    The german site is so cool. I’ve been using this site to translate it, but everything comes out funny. Like it says:

    “They immerse each night exactly around midnight one hour long into a mysterioese and fantastic world, called Ò€žthe secret hourÒ€œ. ”

    And

    “In addition the Midnight is not completely abandoned. There are gliders, which are so similarly as queues (it is, it fly, also occur) and Darklinge, which accept so rather each shape, which pleases them – so long she large and fear is exciting.”

    It gives you a headache after a while.

    By the way, the symbols go left to right: Flamebringer, Polymath, Seer, Acrobat, Mindcaster (I know, totally not what I thought they were)

  80. Hey, Scott. This may sound quite random. But I really need to know how you came up with the symbols. I know, I know. It’s a Teutonic thing. But what kind of Teutonic thing??? This is incredibly ergent!!!!!!

  82. I want to know is Scott is the one who came up with any of the symbols period. Well, except flamebringer, we know he did that one cause Jess described it.

  83. I’m fairly sure that all of the symbols were made by Scott, since there was something in the front of the Midnighters books saying that the symbols were copyright Scott Westerfeld.
    I think.

  84. i can’t read German, but i am trying to read the ancient greek version of harry potter. Maybe they’ll do one for midnighters. That would be cool, sort of.

    Oh and how would they do the tridecalogisms in german. German does have a lot of long words, but i doubt the tridecalogism in German would have 13 letters

    Ich bin ein ‘midnighter-fan’

  85. “abschicken” is German. it means to post, submit, or send.
    P.S.-Midnighters would be a bad trilogy for someone with triskaidekaphobia to read. (That’s fear of the # 13.)

  86. I guess for the tridecalogisms they would just choose different words. For most of them it’s not like they talk about the words, they just say them. There was one word though that had something said about it in the book though, but I guess they would just have to remove it.

    Oh yeah, I’m Dess (24.3%) on the quiz! Yay!

  89. I have no idea if anyone told you :]
    I’m not going to read 88 comments to check!
    Or if you were being sarcastic.

    Abschicken means “send!”

  90. MY THOUGHTS ONLY! I live in Bixby Oklahoma I’m going to tell you alittle about this town. It is one of the fastest growing communities in Oklahoma. People who make 100,000.00 or more reside here. Yuppies!!!! Its a very small town but there is lots of money floating around here. Right off the main street there are lots that are going for half a millon. Just go see how much the Lowes on 121st and Memorial bring in, in one week. You will be surprised at the money that is in this town. I don’t have money but will continue to struggle to live here because my children are going to the best school in Oklahoma. Bixby North Ele. Now down town Bixby is a diffrent story. There are old buildings and houses that when they go up for sale they think because the house is in Bixby it should go for what the other houses go for in new Bixby a hundred thousand or more. To funny. My husband and I have looked into buying a home here so that our kids go to the best school but ifyour not driving a BMW or married to a attorney or doctor its like they shun you for being poor. Well not as rich as they are. As for the book that is wrote about Bixby, Oklahoma people need to know that the town is growing so big and there is so much money moving here that the average person would starve if you try and keep up with the Jones’s. Ha!

  91. … I’m German and I wish I knew what these signs mean. Teutonic heritage doesn’t necessarily make you smart enough to decipher that. But the symbols DO look pretty. Oh, by the way, why the heck is it so difficult to order the ENGLISH versions of the Midnighters books and send them to Germany? I tried four major book stores and they all didn’t have it in store, so now I have to wait AGES until it gets here. D’ugh.

  92. I am now reading the second book to the Midnighters series…now i have a question..which symbol is Dess? the ring with the odd triangle thing in the middle? or what? someone explain plz!

  93. Ok, i looked up “German to English Translation” on google. I clicked on the second link and once i was at the website, i typed abschicken. It means to send off. So it’s like to email.

  95. I think the curve with the star is Melissa (that’s very similar to her sign in English Midnighters), the triangle with the curve going through it is Dess, the curve with the spiky things are Jessica (the spiky things resemble flames), the curlique is Rex (they look sort of like his sign), and the curve with the triangle in it is Jonathan.
    Just because that’s the only one left.

  96. i thought that the star was mellissa, Dess is the triangle one, Jess is the flame, and Jonathon is the boy…yeah, that seems right. thatnks Aly

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