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[kittydesade]

Verbal adverbs are just that: adverbs made from verbs. They answer the questions adverbs normally address: "how," "why," and "when." Russian has two kinds of verbal adverbs: present (imperfective/continuous) and past (perfective/simple).

Imperfective verbal adverbs denote action that occurs simultaneously with the main verb of the sentence.

Забыл, а у самого ехидство в глазах, -- подумал Червяков, подозрительно поглядывая на генерала. "He forgot, but he has a nasty look in his eyes," thought Chervyakv, glancing suspiciously at the general.

-- Да вы просто смеётесь, милостисдарь! --сказал он, скрываясь за дверью. "Why, you're just mocking me, my dear sir!" he said, disappearing behind the door.

Я извинялся за то, что, чихая, брызнул-с. I apologized because, while sneezing, I spattered you, sir.

Ничего не видя, ничего не слыша, он попятился к двери. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he backed up toward the door.

Imperfective verbal adverbs come from present tense verbs ( form):

while sneezing: чихают -- чиха + я -- чихая
while hiding: скрываются -- скрыва + я + сь -- скрываясь
while hearing: слышат -- слыш + а -- слыша

Perfective verbal adverbs denote action that occurred before the action indicated by the main verb in the sentence. They are often rendered as "having" done something or after doing something.

Опросив несколько просителей, генерал поднял глаза и на Червякова. Having questioned a few petitioners, the general raised his eyes to Chervyakov as well.

Он подошёл к Бризжалову и, поборовши робость, пробормотал... He went up to Brizzhalov and, fighting off timidity, mumbled...

Войдя в приёмную генерала, он увидел там много просителей. Having entered the general's reception room, he saw many petitioners there.

Forming perfective verbal adverbs:
after learning: узна - л -- узна + в -- узнав
after asking: опроси - л -- опроси + в -- опросив
after meeting: встрети - лся -- встрети + вшись -- встретившись
after arriving: приш - ёл -- прид + я -- придя (all ёл verbs, use future tense они: ут -- я)


Damn, I slept later than I meant to. I know I set the alarm. Weird.

So, I'm walking in the English northern countryside with some people. Someone is... I don't know who he is, he's tall and kind of lean and light brown/dark blond haired and he's played by some actor who kind of wants to be the bastard child of Cillian Murphy and Garrett Hedlund (go on, picture it all you Tron: Legacy fans) and we're talking about the people with us. One of the people with us is Nope. Another is the bastard child of Jason Statham and Ron Perlman, so, clearly, we're in a cheap action movie. Probably with lots of monster effects. We're here to pick up a guy.

The guy turns out to be Christian Bale.

Suddenly I'm a very happy dreamer.

We're also there to do something for The Military. Whose military? I don't know, it looks like the end scene of 28 Days Later. With a chickenwire fence we're walking alongside. I'm talking with Cillian Hedlund about cute guys, I don't know if he's putting up with me or joining in. We're walking, we go through this residential stock shot of a San Francisco neighborhood but we're still in England, I don't know why. Bale gets us all into this fairly large clearly jury rigged industrial equipment type contraption, with huge tires and armor. I organize us before we get in so we can all get in efficiently because there are Bad Things on the way. Of course there are. The only line from this I remember is someone, possibly Bale or Jason Perlman, saying something about these guys shoot, these guys lookout, and "Girlfriends stay quiet." I look at the only other woman in this scene and we both shrug and I say "No girlfriends here." Because a) it's true and b) we can hold our own weight, fuck you very much.

So we start down the hill/countryside/I don't even know anymore, and we're jolting and riding along, and then someone says "Here they come." And I don't see anything at first, but then we're riding down into an army enclave, fortified, and the requisite horde of zombie/shambling evil masses comes shambling down. They're not quite as fast as 28 Days Later/Resident Evil: endofworldnounhere, but close. Faster than shamblers, anyway. We start firing. We take out some soldiers, too, I think Bale did it because he looks very Bruce Wayne but acts very Reign of Fire. We all get into the enclave, and seal the doors shut behind us.

And now it all becomes apparent what this is about because Bale is opening up some kind of serum container and tossing it to me to toss to the authorities while he organizes our defenses. It's a yellow liquid in a Hollywood "safe storage this is toxic/important/dangerous/radioactive" container. It's also kind of glowing. Clearly this is a Paul Verhoeven or someone or other movie. If it were Michael Bay, shit would have blown up already. I pass it along, and the shamblers are at our door, and there's chaos and for some reason instead of being dressed how I was now I'm dressed for post-apocalyptic success, in a rough cotton shirt and cargo pants and some kind of hand-woven big brown poncho thing that's probably only brown because it's covered in post-apocalypse dust. And I go to the back door which is now crawling in shamblers, I don't know why or what happened to our defenses, and they stop. They just stop.

And, and this is the weird part. Behind me, Bale and a bunch of other humans (including, I think, Ron Statham, I don't know where Garrett Murphy went to) are watching me wondering why the hell they stopped when they saw me and if there's a way they can get out of this without being either infected or lunch. And now I know, I didn't learn I just sort of know now, that they picked me up in some sort of between-zone, between our territory and theirs. My mind makes this distinction, but still.

Oh, and the shamblers have turned to roughly human shaped people in fluffy neon-colored stuffed-toy puppetish dog suit things. I shit you not. The one I'm talking to is neon pink. As stuffed toy dogs sometimes are.

And they're all crowding together and asking if the [unintelligible word meaning human] people are going to kill them all, and I say I don't think so, they just want to be left alone, and then they ask me what kinds of weapons they have, and a few more questions besides, and over the course of this conversation it becomes clear that if the human side of this doesn't have enough weapons of mass zombie annihilation they're going to get these weapons taken away from them and then... dominated? Probably killed. And I don't know how I feel about this because I was only half-heartedly trying to convince the Puppy People not to, while Bale is standing behind me looking, oh! Terminator: Salvation, that's what he looked and acted like. And I'm standing there in the finest in post-apocalypse chic negotiating for humanity's right to survive and not be bitten by a stuffed toy.

Hey, Supernatural writers. I found your next episode script. Want it back?