#00m

[consistentsquash]

If you haven't already seen, eldritcher has anonymous asks/questions on their dreamwidth account open through March.  

Thanks! Yeah, @givereadersahug shared it yesterday <3 Super exciting. I was going to make a post for signal boost but just really behind on fandom stuff in general. Anyway!

Link for folks interested. Anon is also allowed. So if you wanted to do anon this is great

[booksandwords]

She laughed, and it ran like liquid fire into his veins. "Do I?" she said, turning to him, her mouth curving and her eyes alight, and in a single devastating look told him that of all the women in the world, she was the most utterly desirable; that she could fulfill hungers he didn't know he had, and if he didn't want her, he was a fool. But more than that—more than any of that, her look said she wanted him, with perfect frankness and no shame at all; that she was already imagining what she would do with him, how she would—

Queen of Spades by @astolat

The pairing is M/007 and we do love a woman in power. Because don't let Bond fool you this is M's show.

My first exposure to this was in The Fanfiction Reader by Francesca Coppa but I feel it needs its own rec. Also, if I can rec a fandom legend I will.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Tallgeese by KimA

[therosecrest]

[kasperl-ruprecht]

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

What if he crept up right behind you and whispered with the huskiest of voices right in your ear:

"Haven't seen you since last year."

[kasperl-ruprecht]

You weren't aware of a Japanese modeling magazine and that it offered a limited run garage kit in November of 1998. Now you can't even find it.

You didn't pre-order that figure that had a pre order window of 2 weeks 6 years ago and how it's $700 on ebay

[therosecrest]

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

"Ha. Serves you well, Wanderer."

"... Hold on."

[therosecrest]

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

"... They say pain shared is half felt." He lets out a quiet sigh of relief to see the dancer's eyes again. Hurting someone on a physical level with his sense of humor was something he wouldn't have easily forgiven himself for.

"Though I'd much rather be the one to bear the sole weight of this curse. Do you... also feel like you need to tell jokes to ease people's minds?" He asks after a pause. "I find it hard to believe that someone with your performance skills has any trouble pleasing the crowd."

"Mm-hm," she hummed affirmatively, remaining still for just a moment longer before she lowered her hands, revealing a small smile. "Oh, no. I'm okay," she assured. Who could have known that the General Mahamatra would be into trading cards, puns, and show gentle concern all at once?

"Honestly, it just caught me off guard." Nilou chuckled at the silliness of it all now. Somehow, she could imagine Tighnari being quite serious when the jokes fell flat. "Maybe it's the timing? Or the pacing? I really couldn't tell you. I'm not that good with jokes, myself."

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

"New House rule: Collei is not to interact with any man rated higher than 3. Boys with the spine of a slime are allowed."

They'll be too indecisive to pull any funny stunt with his daughter.

[ikuzeminna]

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.

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

@mmriesoftvat

"Smile for the Kami-ra~"

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

And down goes one (1) General Mahamatra, struck squarely to the face. He topples backward and hits his head: he's out cold.

This is Maggie's opportunity to break loose and run away or... you know, having her own little revenge won't hurt, either.

Definitely not any more than his jaw hurts already.

That did it - she hated that such an awful pun was the one to make her crack, but crack she did and a peal of unmistakable giggles managed to escape her; the only real relief was the fact he was close enough that headbutting him under the chin was possible...and she absolutely did, connecting the top of her skull with the underside of his jaw with a crack.

She immediately scooched backwards and turned away from him with a huff, cheeks still burning horribly - this was definitely not working out the way she hoped.

[roleplay-abiogenesis2]

Incorrect Tea (Quotes)