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I need your help with a hypothesis!

For context: My linguistics professor and I got into a discussion after a test she did with us, and I was of the opinion that the reason for the results was different from the one she offered, so she encouraged me to test my theory.

What I need

All you need to do is draw a coffee cup (with a handle, not the disposable stuff) and then answer three questions.

I don't need to see the coffee cup. You can draw it wherever you like; on a piece of paper, digitally, in the sand, on a foggy window. Anything works. It does not have to be good. A doodle is fine.

You have to draw the coffee cup before you see the questions. This is very important. If you decide to help me with this, please doodle the coffee cup before you keep reading.

Assuming you have drawn the coffee cup, I now need you to answer these three questions:

On which side did you draw the handle?

Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Do you primarily write using the Latin alphabet or a different one? (please specify which)

More context

Most people will draw the handle on the right side. My professor says it's because most people are right-handed, so they draw the handle in the direction that would be comfortable for them to pick up.

I said drawing it on the right side just felt more comfortable to my hand and argued it's probably because we write a bunch of letters like that. B, b, D, P, p, R all look like a tiny "handle on the right side" and are all a straight line followed by a round one (so "cup first, handle second," like most people draw cups). The Latin alphabet doesn't have letters like that that face the other way, except maybe d, depending on how you write it, so it makes sense to me that people writing mostly Latin letters would go with the handle on the right side.

Which means that I need to know what Asians, Arabs and Greeks do and if the distribution of left and right sides of handles differs from the Latin alphabet group. Cyrillic seems to favor right, too, though it'd be interesting to see if there are differences.

If there are, my theory is right. Doubly so if there is a sizeable increase in a group whose alphabet has letters that benefit the left side choice.

So feel free to spread this to as many people as you like and put the answers in the comments or the tags of a reblog. The more answers I get, the better I can assess whose theory is better.

Thank you for your help!

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Peanuts, June 9, 1952

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Btw - in Spanish you can say por los jajas and it's like "for the lulz" or "for giggles" etc

Thought everyone should know

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You have no idea how right you are, OP. The original made the far better choices as far as symbolism is concerned. The amount of layers is actually crazy when you know what to look for.

Because putting a dragon motif on a red, Chinese-styled shirt is traditional wedding attire in China (though to be fair, the dragon would be gold, but still). See below:

The remake just made Ranma look extra Asian/kung fu fighter since it made his shirt black. The original has him resemble a groom. And what does he yell in front of everyone? That Akane is his fiancée and that he'll kill Mikado if he tries to kiss her again.

How fitting that the one who emphasizes their engagement is the one wearing the outfit resembling wedding attire.

As one can see above, the couple outfit would have been complete if Akane had worn red with a phoenix motif. But then they'd really look like they're about to get hitched and Akane wasn't there yet. Instead, she gets a butterfly motif, on a similarly Chinese-styled shirt.

Butterfly motifs remind Chinese people of the Chinese folktale of Liang Zhu (The Butterfly Lovers), often referred to as the "Chinese Romeo and Juliet" in the West. While it is similarly a tragic tale of two lovers, the connection to Akane and Ranma doesn't come from the tragic part, but from their meeting. Zhu wants to study, but to do so she has to disguise herself as a man, and it's in this disguise she meets fellow scholar Liang, with whom she immediately becomes friends (and then slowly falls in love).

Does this remind anyone of the first episode? Yes? Good.

The remake falls completely flat by comparison. Ranma's shirt is just over the top Asian and Akane's shirt has four butterflies, which destroys the reference to the Butterfly Lovers since those are only two. No hidden references to epic love or marriage going on there. Just a light/dark theme between Ranma and Akane. Not even a proper yin yang theme since Akane is missing the dark part and the genders are flipped. Boo.

Similarly, Ryouga and Ranma are completely mismatched in the original, as they should be. The complementary color to green is red, but Ranma's outfit is predominantly orange which fits better with blue. Zero connection there other than the arm guards. No motifs. Absolutely fitting, given how matched Ranma and Akane were.

Remake Ryouga and Ranma match, as you've already said. They use the same color palette and they even align the collars. The pankou, or Chinese frog closures (the "stitches" you meant), are both straight down, matching each other, just like Akane's and Ranma's vertical ones matched.

And the question is, why are they matching? The first thing they do is hit each other. It's not like they don't establish right away that they don't like each other.

So, yeah. The original is waaaaay better.

In general, in my opinion. Hah.

today i was existing as usual and realised how the 1989 version of the ice skating arc gets the outfits way better than the new 2024 version (im horrible at analysis so itll probably get very repetitive and wordy but i tried)

first lets look at the 1989 outfit combos

if we look at ranma and akane's outfits, theyre not too different if you remove the butterfly and dragon images. they're both red, with some yellow highlights, and both have the same shade of purple somewhere, like in akanes sleeves or ranma's ribbon thing. they both have the stitch (please tell me what its called sorry) in pretty much the exact same position. yes they're a bit of a mess and aren't perfect, but they still manage to work together pretty well and in the end when the goodbye whirl comes along, they trust each other enough and hold onto each other, showcasing theyre a good pair despite their flaws. compare that to ranma and ryogas outfits. they barely share the same anything really, ryoga being pretty much entirely green and ranma being yellow/orange and red. you could make the argument that the pink bow/charlotte thingy or that the yellow edges/yellow-orange top part or that the black cuffs on both link them together, but in the end if you look at the two outfits they dont mix. theres nothing to link the two together pretty much, showcasing how they absolutely hate working together and want nothing to do with each other and when the goodbye whirl comes along for them, ranma tries desperately to hold on but ryoga lets go, also showing their lack of trust in each other

compare this to the 2024 outfits

while ranma and akane's outfits do share some elements, such as the stitch and the light yellow, theres not really much else of note, and ultimately they dont look that similar, which doesnt really say anything about their partnership on the ice. id argue that somehow ryoga and ranma match better than ranma and akane. both have black as their outfits main colour and yellow and pink highlights sprinkled all around, only made even better by the fact in this version ranma has pink hair and not red. its giving the complete opposite impression than the original and idk i just prefer the original really

says a lot more about their relationships than the newer ones, which i guess you could say are more aesthetically pleasing but just missing that symbolism

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live action XXXG-01H2 Gundam Heavyarms Custom

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Y'all, I'm losing my damn mind. Some random Joan Cusack sitcom was out here in 2001, repping Gundam Wing Gunpla. Deathscythe, my beloved!

On a more serious note, it does kinda tell you where Gundam was in mainstream culture.

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What does a goose have to do with any of it...?

We're all wondering what the heck Tallgeese is supposed to be derived from, so I decided to do some research and the result is either ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ or a Simone Biles level routine of mental gymnastics, which, notably, is not allowed to stick the landing.

But I finally figured out what Epyon is supposed to mean (which is an utter embarrassment that it took me so long, I'm so sorry @tinyozlion), so hooray for small victories, at least.

So first things first, let's get Epyon's etymology out of the way. The mobile suit name Epyon, phonetically /ˈe.pion/, is likely derived from the Ancient Greek word επιόν, phonetically /e.piˈon/, which means "the next one/the future one." Awfully fitting considering the characters treat Epyon and its system as though it can tell the future. I also find it hilarious how the Greek wiki page features a translation, whereas the English version just assumes everyone is fluent in Attic.

As if.

Bonus information for linguists:

Here's the excuse I have for not finding out sooner Epyon is apparently taken from επιόν. Επιόν is the present active participle, neuter nominative/accusative/vocative singular, of the verb ἔπειμι (épeimi), according to Attic inflectional endings, with the verb having various meanings, among them "to exist in the future/to approach/to attack" etc.

This means that επιόν is not a word you can directly look up in a dictionary, like the one I have lying around. You need to know it's derived from ἔπειμι and then know your Attic declension to reach this form. All I wanna know right now is who the Ancient Greek buff at Sunrise was who's to credit for this. Because this was in the era before anyone even thought of uploading translations of Ancient Greek words onto the worldwide web. And how you end up with one suit having a name you need to have studied a dead language for and another named after statuesque waterfowl.

Ikeda, I have questions.

On an additional note, επιών, the masculine singular, sounds the same phonetically, but since Epyon is a mobile suit and thus an object, it makes more sense to go with the neuter. Unlike with humans and animals, things don't usually have a gender in Greek unless it's a loanword.

Okay, so now that Epyon is figured out, let's look at Tallgeese. This one is a wild ride.

For the sake of argument, we'll step away from the goose thing for a second. Tallgeese in Japanese is spelled トールギス (Tōrugisu), which, taking Japanese's limits into account and the translated Amazon.co.jp listings of the mobile suit's various gunpla kits, means we could write Tallgeese as anything ranging from "Tallgis" to "Torgis." I've seen all kinds of spellings for it. (The obscure ones sometimes let you find a kit at a very reasonable price.)

So let's look at what theme OZ suits adhere to. Here's a list of all of them:

OZ-00MS Tallgeese

OZ-02MD Virgo

OZ-06MS Leo

OZ-07AMS Aries

OZ-07MS Tragos (Greek for Capricorn)

OZ-08MMS Cancer

OZ-09MMS Pisces

OZ-12SMS Taurus

OZ-13MS Epyon

OZ-13MSX1 Vayeate

OZ-13MSX2 Mercurius

Bonus: battleship Libra

The grunt suits are all in the 01-12 range, which corresponds to the Zodiac constellations being 12, even if they don't care about the correct order. Tallgeese, Epyon, Vayeate and Mercurius are the only ones outside this Zodiac range, so time to look at what other constellations there are.

Turns out there are 88 of them by now. 48 originally if we go with Ptolemy's version.

Let's look at the suit to find some hints as to what we're looking for.

The red front-to-back plume evokes Roman or Spartan military. The round shield is definitely closer to trademark Spartan than Roman, so coupled with the death wish you need to pilot it, I'd say Spartan is a reasonable pick.

I mean, if it fits, it fits.

The other interesting detail about Tallgeese is the yellow bird emblem on the shield, which it doesn't have in the series because it probably would have been too much of a pain to animate. The gunpla feature it though.

Here's the Tallgeese, and the Tallgeese Flügel version.

The emblem on the shield is tinier, but it's there, and it's added to the giant wings as well. The reasonable assumption is that that's an eagle, which happens to exist as a constellation. Aquila, or rather Aëtos, and more specifically the Aetos Dios, "was a giant, golden eagle which served as Zeus' personal messenger and animal companion."

Tallgeese would be equated to Zeus then, since the suit obviously isn't the golden eagle itself, being all white. If we view Tallgeese as the father of all mobile suits and consider that Zeus fathered... honestly, everyone and his dog in Greek mythology <_<, it fits.

So, do we have a constellation that is something big, white, preferably with wings, that's connected to Zeus? Yup, there is the swan, Cygnus, or Kyknos if you prefer Greek, which has a very interesting story of how it ended up in the night sky.

Turns out it's another one of Zeus' romantic adventures where he transformed into a swan to seduce Leda, the queen of Sparta.

"Leda was a queen of Sparta, the wife of King Tyndareus, who was seduced by Zeus in the guise of the swan. There were several versions of the parentage of her children:- Some say she laid an egg from which were hatched the Dioskouroi (Dioscuri) twins, Kastor and Polydeukes, both sons of Zeus. Others say she laid two eggs each containing a child of Zeus and a child of Tyndareus--Polydeukes and Kastor in one, and Helene and Klytaimnestra (Clytemnestra) in the other. Yet others relate that the second egg, containing just Helene, was delivered to Leda by the goddess Nemesis who had lain it after coupling with Zeus in the guise of a goose."

....We have arrived at the goose.

Fun fact: geese, swans and ducks are grouped into one family (anatidae). This is an important tidbit as things will become very dumb from this point onward.

Because I may have gotten Spartan, golden eagle, giant white bird and predecessor all consolidated under the Cygnus constellation, but etymologically, "Tallgeese" is nowhere near anything I've discussed so far. :(

It doesn't sound like Cygnus, it doesn't sound like Zeus, or any child of his with the Spartan queen. It doesn't even sound Greek, and yes, I checked more carefully this time. The best I can give is στοργής (storgís) which would be the genitive form of the word "affection," which could fit with the swan story if you reach enough to rival Luffy, but doesn't explain where the S went. The other option is οργή (orgí) which means fury, but is missing the T.

So I got the theme of the suit figured out, I think, but the name? Nope.

Is there maybe a star in the Cygnus constellation that sounds like Tallgeese or even just tall or geese?

Nope. I checked the other birds as well, like the eagle or the dove. Nothing. I checked if there was any star at all that sounded anything like tall or geese and the closest I got was Gliese 581, which is a red dwarf in the Libra constellation and not visible to the naked eye.

Fun fact: there is also Vulpecula et Anser, the Fox and Goose, which have been reduced to just the fox in modern constellations, so we did have a goose up there in ancient times.

All these dead ends lead to three options:

I'm either looking at the wrong language and Tallgeese or Torgis or whatever is close to the word for swan in a different language

Ikeda is trolling and it really is a tall goose or

I'm off my rocker and the Tallgeese was never associated with Cygnus to begin with. Which would call the goose into question again.

So, which one is it?

¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

The final season of Sailor Moon never fails to have me in tears because of the absolute hilarity that are the Sailor Starlights' attacks. Sailor Star Fighter's attack is "Star Serious Laser." Sailor Star Healer's is "Star Sensitive Inferno", which already has me go ???? But it's Sailor Star Maker who breaks me with her "Star Gentle Uterus." I have no idea what that lady is throwing, but I know I don't wanna get hit by it.

What I mean to showcase here is that [random adjective] + [random noun] = perfectly fine attack name for a Japanese manga/anime in the 90s.

It's hard to believe that the crew who had ridiculously specific knowledge of Ancient Greek would just derp with English, but what if they did? Let's say they wanted to name the suit after Cygnus, but in a language different from Latin or Greek to cement it is an outlier, while also pointing out that it is bigger than normal suits, so they got "tall" but landed on goose instead of swan because someone mixed them up. And it's "geese" and not "goose" because it's a nod to there being more than one Tallgeese, especially since Japanese doesn't even differentiate between singular and plural.

....

Look, I tried.

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I'm gonna be that person.

Epyon in Japanese is エピオン. Epione, the minor Greek goddess and Asclepius' wife, is エピオネ. Just because English butchers the latter to sound similar to "Epyon" doesn't mean Japanese does that, too. It's just like Escaflowne, which, in Japanese, is pronounced with a -ne at the end.

To get Tallgeese トールギス out of theurgist テウルギスト you'd have to go "Bologna rhymes with pony" levels of mangled pronunciation. The Japanese wiki says that its origin could be theurgist, or it could really mean tall geese because of the English spelling. Seeing as Tallgeese only has a Flügel (wings) expansion pack, I wouldn't put it past the creators to be trolling and mean the bird. Though "theurgist" would make more sense narratively, seeing as it is a miracle worker MS with how powerful it is.

Back to Epyon, I have no idea what "Epyon" is supposed to mean. What I do know is that it's supposed to be a (two-headed) wyvern. The definition of a wyvern is "a mythical dragon-like creature, having wings, only two legs and a barbed tail."

See the flight mode? Two legs, two wings, a barbed tail. It's a very popular creature in heraldry, so that's absolutely up Treize's alley.

To get an association to anything evil, you'd have to look at G Gundam the suit design pays homage to. This is the Master Gundam, piloted by Master Asia:

Gundam Wing absolutely pulled inspiration from G Gundam suits (and in Wufei's case, even character design). Look at Dragon Gundam and Altron:

So yeah, Epyon is to Wing Zero what Master Gundam is to Shining Gundam. The "angel wings" were a redesign for a movie that came out a year after the series finished. It wasn't the original concept, so there's no good vs. evil theme going on. No need to force "Epyon" into meaning something it simply doesn't.

Huh.

But then...

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I love how ChatGPT completely and utterly fails at math (of all things) when you ask it to age up characters.

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Is it Tsubarov or Tubarov?

So, this one is funny. As you can see above, the wiki has adopted the latter spelling, which originates from the translation of Glory of Losers and Frozen Teardrop by Zeonic Scanslations. It's also where "Bilmon" first popped up as a last name for the guy, by the by. If you look at the katakana, it spells tsu-ba-ro-fu, but as anyone who has learned the Japanese alphabet knows, there is no tu, so tsu is usually used in its place. Just like there is no si, only a shi, which leads to all the "city boy" humor. Meaning, a translator might find themselves pondering if they should go with tu or tsu in a name, especially if it's a made up one. And in this case, the translator decided to go with tu because he probably felt "Tubarov" sounded more correct. This is Gundam Wing though.

From the Gundam Wing Perfect Archive Series, p. 189. Tsubarov's name is supposed to be derived from the German word for 12, zwölf. The z in German is always a "ts" sound, so "Tsubarov" is actually the correct spelling. And before anyone thinks to themselves "well, why didn't they just go with the number then?" That's because the very first translators wanted to be phonetically close and anyone trying to pronounce zwölf who doesn't speak flawless German would probably end up saying some form of "ze-wolf" which doesn't even come close. The American dub had troubles pronouncing Hilde, for crying out loud. Like that's a hard name. So Tsubarov it is, just like it is Noin and not Neun. But. And here comes the funny part, which is just a euphemism for me having had to take linguistics, so now you all get to suffer through it with me. "Two" in German is "zwei". Depending on the region or if you watch Star Wars, you'll hear it pronounced "zwo", too, though. R2D2 is the most famous example. It also used to happen a lot on the telephone when people spelled telephone numbers or the number of a bank account etc. so that it doesn't get mixed up with 3, "drei". "Two" and "zwo" have the same root, the Proto-Germanic "twō". The difference is that English stopped pronouncing the w and German had a sound shift known as the High German consonant shift, where a lot of Proto-Germanic "t" sounds changed into "ts" which is how the letter z is pronounced in German. So, tomato, tomahto, or in this case, Tubarov, Tsubarov. It's amusing how a language on the other side of the globe lacking a tu ended up reverse sound shifting a name derived from a German word because a fan thought it'd sound better that way. What are the odds.

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New bot just dropped

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Hey, so, Patreon is lying to you about Apple forcing their hand.

Patreon is getting rid of 1st-of-the-month/per-creation billing, claiming a new decision by Apple has forced their hand. This will hurt a lot of creatives, and their excuse is bullshit. Allow me to explain.

In 2018, Patreon tried to impose a new ill-considered fee structure on everyone that would have cost creators a lot of smaller pledges. They ended up apologizing for this profusely; they have now deleted this apology from their website and unfortunately I was unable to find it on the Internet Archive. This was shameful, but to their credit they backed off quickly when things got ugly.

Back in 2021, Patreon discussed plans to force all creators into a rolling bill structure and get rid of first-of-the-month/pay-up-front billing. The community once again very decisively shouted them down, and they had to walk it back again. This whole fiasco damaged the already shaky trust between Patreon creators and staff.

This week, Patreon announced that, along with extra fees, Apple's policies were supposedly forcing them to move everyone over to the rolling fee structure that they first tried to get us to agree to in 2021. Patreon will tell you they are not happy about this. As a person who spent a long time watching Patreon make terrible decisions, I can tell you-- they are probably very happy about this, because it's exactly the smokescreen they needed to do what they've been trying to do for years, which is pull ALL Patreon creators away from 1st-of-the-month and per-creation billing.

The spin in the news I've seen so far is "Apple bullies Patreon, boo hoo hoo poor Patreon". This is very obviously not what's happening. Mind you: Apple does suck, and they are doing something bad here. Fuck apple. But Patreon and Apple are BOTH the asshole in this situation; Everyone Sucks Here. Patreon has options: they can make the iOS app a reader app and do billing through the browser to avoid the restrictions and the extra fees (Netflix and Amazon, notably, both do this), or they can allow creators to opt-out of iOS billing if they want to use billing models that don't work with it.

It seems most likely to me that the Apple situation is a real fire that Patreon has chosen to use as a convenient smokescreen to do what they've been wanting to do since at least 2021, and maybe since 2018.

What do we do?:

They have a feedback form specifically about this.

They also have a creator discord.

And they have lots of social media pages where they probably really, really hope that this doesn't blow up again, because they never learn. The incidents I've described here aren't the only two other times Patreon has pissed off their creators. They know if they don't contain the noise it'll be harder to get away with it, so make some noise. They've done a lot of work to spin this cleverly so you'll have sympathy for them and they won't get the kind of backlash they know they deserve.

Please don't misuse these links and make threats or spam or something. All you have to do is give well-reasoned feedback. Patreon hates feedback. Make sure they get a nice heaping helping of their least favorite vegetable.

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Apple soon charging 30% on Patreon subscriptions through iOS

This is the email Patreon creators woke up to today. Patreon is asking us to either raise our prices on the iOS app so that Apple can slurp up 30% of the subscription price, or we can keep our prices as they are and have that 30% come out of our own earnings. Either way, this fee is hidden from potential subscribers so they don't know they're paying 30% to Apple when they could be avoiding that by subscribing on Patreon's website as opposed to the app.

I find this to be a disgusting cash grab on the part of Apple because if they felt like their fees were fair then they would simply tack it on themselves at the point of checkout, not baking it into the prices of creators who had no say in this to make it look like we were the ones asking for more. If you find yourself wondering "Why are Patreon creators all raising their prices?" this is why. Please avoid transactions through iOS apps.