#I cannot read Japanese

[elephantbitterhead]

As if Japanese sewing patterns were not problem enough, now I'm developing an unwelcome interest in Japanese knitting patterns.

[mustardyellowsunshine]

I love their dumb faces so much.

[blueskittlesart]

Could you maybe explain why the Japanese versions of BOTW and TOTK seem so much less subtle about the nature of Link and Zelda's relationship?

Even when regular folk translate it it seems less subtle, it's almost like Nintendo's localization was deliberately to be as vague as possible

to be completely honest I haven't found many instances of localization altering the nature of their relationship, but I also haven't ever sat down and actually looked at the japanese game as a whole because my japanese reading comprehension is. probably on the level of a preschooler. I can think of a few instances where I know the localization altered specific lines, but only in pieces of the game I've specifically looked at in japanese for other reasons. if you could give me specific examples of places where there are changes to look into I could definitely do it, but im not strong enough to play the whole game with a kanji dictionary on hand just to understand what the hell is being said to me lmfao

[pixelkip]

You know what. Why do we as a touhou fandom not talk about the fact the pc98 songs are canon. They exist. In canon. Akyuu has them documented and has probably heard them. Someone within touhou's universe wrote them. Reimu could probably actually listen to her own theme. Were the songs actually written about the events of those games?? Was eternal shrine maiden written about reimu?? Was love colored magic written about marisa?? I'm going insane

[originalaccountname]

do you think these are the artist's cats

[catboy-a-day]

catboy 204.......

[aphantimes]

hey did you know that the sonic adventure perfect guide has a part written from the perspective of researchers who speculate that the surviving members of the knuckles clan after chaos' rampage split into two groups

did you know that one group of these survivors made the decision to create angel island using the master emerald. they willingly isolated themselves from the world to ensure this never happened again. they had the power to control the master emerald and chose a sacrifice to benefit the rest of the world instead of being conquerors like they were under pachacamac.

did you know that the in-universe researchers speculate that the second group stayed on the surface to pass down the knowledge of the disaster to future generations.

meaning it may very well be possible that there are some echidnas still alive out there. and if not then there's definitely room to explore what the heck happened to make both groups eventually disappear. were their numbers just too low to be sustainable? did some other disaster befall them? ghhh how often i think about this.....

[tedlebred]

carl redraw!!!!!

my sibling got me into guchiry every day i stray farther from god

[yo9urt]

Pokémon Fushigi no Motherfucking Dungeon !!!!

(i would put a screenshot here but my deck couldn't upload them for some reason.)

thoughts & comments on pmd in japanese below (VERY LONG)

28 new flashcards!!

uncountable new words that i did not add for various reasons!!

observations:

blessedly, the game is so far not using a lot of formal language. the personality quiz did use formal language but the actual characters themselves are speaking very casually (i’m actually really excited to see how the npcs speak in the future, i want to see how they’re characterized via their speaking styles)

one thing that really interests me in japanese is the 2nd person pronoun system and how people (or characters) choose to refer to each other and this was super fun to watch for in the game. in the first chapter, i counted 1 use of あなた (only in the “what’s your name?” menu input), several uses of きみ (most of which occurred during the personality quiz, but some of which were used by the partner pokemon prior to learning MC’s name; every time, it was written in katakana), 1 or 2 uses of おまえ (used by zubat towards the partner), and i noticed that after learning MC’s name partner exclusively refers to them by their name and does not use any kind of suffix. my guess is that this is either 1. because they are not human / this is standard practice in the pokemon world or 2. hinting at the fact that they end up having a very close relationship and that partner trusts leader immediately. i’m half expecting wigglytuff and/or chatot to be referred to as 先生 or something like that so we’ll see in chapter 2!!

speaking of expectations, i had a couple going in: 1. that there would be a lot of onomatopoeias, because they seem to have a huge amount of use in creative writing, & 2. that i would see a lot of the little stylistic bits & bobs i’m already familiar with in japanese that tell you more about a character. both of these came true! i’ve already added some new onomatos to my flashcards AND i noticed some fun things about the characters:

male partner uses ぼく (sensible - it’s either that or おれ, and he is NOT an おれ character at all) (funnily enough and perhaps somewhat embarrassingly i did name the partner in this game majima and in hindsight i’m thinking wow they are literally not like each other at all but it’s ok i’m just choosing to ignore it i cba to redo the entire save anyway. plus i customized it so he's gastly and i'm clefairy which is already the cutest duo ever and i don't want to change that especially because i also had to give them custom stats and movesets so WHATEVER majima is just going to be different in this universe and he can handle that. also the partner is written very cutely and giving him that name made him even cuter to me so its no big deal really)

speaking of cutely i literally can’t explain this because i don’t remember it being the case in the english version but genuinely there is something REALLY endearing about how the partner talks in the japanese version. i guess thats another reminder that things really do get lost in translation like im sure the TL team did the best they could but english partner and japanese partner already feel different from each other and the latter is so cute, in a way it does feel like he has a fuller range of expression here

i think male MC also uses ぼく? i swear i remember a “ぼくじしん” in there but who knows

ぼく and ほんとう (spelled ほんと by the partner but ほんとう in MC’s thoughts) were almost entirely in katakana (i think ほんとう might have been hiragana), also for some reason なぞ (“riddle” or “enigma”) was in katakana too???? just for artistic flair, maybe? おまえ was as well but that makes sense

zubat and koffing (zubat in particular) both had a rougher, more masculine speaking style, which is exactly what i expected from them. lots of sentence-ending ぜ and ぞ (male partner uses さ from time to time, but not ぜ/ぞ), and they called partner 弱虫くん which made me so mad on his behalf! so rude!!!!!!!

other thoughts:

i was worried about the lack of kanji but honestly it’s not impeding my reading at all. a lot of the words are words that don’t need kanji, and if they are kanji-based words then they’re either ones i’ve never seen before (and i can just look them up online) OR they’re ones i can recognize by their reading/the context/just generally being familiar with them after seeing them a bunch in other places. i definitely feel like my intuition for like…word boundaries and that kind of thing has already gotten stronger and will probably improve from playing this game lol

HOLY FUCK, READING PRACTICE. you would not believe the amount of reading i did. when i got to beach cave (literal very first dungeon in the game) i sat in the menu for maybe at least half an hour just straight up muddling through the 700000 words the game was putting in front of me. some of them i looked up, some i grasped from context, some i gave up on (but the last category was pretty small)

i was reading the entire menu and i got to the “hints” section and it was so long that i just gave up. a treat for future me

speaking of context, playing a game i know by heart was ABSOLUTELY the right decision. i could largely figure out what moves my boys have without knowing what the names of the moves meant by reading the descriptions and going “hmm…ghost…physical…low power…this is astonish!!!!!” or “normal…no damage…always lands…YAWN!!!” etc.

i also think i’m playing this at the right stage of my learning. just beginner enough to heavily benefit from the mass exposure/immersion aspect of it, but learnéd enough to recognize a great deal of what’s put in front of me, and already knowing the game really well makes it SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (X1000000000) much easier to bridge the gap between what i do and don’t know. i got a tiny bit mentally exhausted from all the reading lol but it was soooooo worth it, most of my studying right now comes in the form of kanji/vocab + grammar/structure + listening to music so i’ve been sorely lacking in the “just straight up reading things normally” department and this game really fixes that up for me :)

keeping it real my speaking is definitely shit because i never practice (unless you count singing…) but i found myself reading out loud as i played to help figure things out and i do feel like i improved a tiny bit by the end. the partner pokemon in particular was really fun to read for because they gave him a fairly emotional/heart-on-his-sleeve speaking style (not dissimilar to the english version, but it feels much stronger here as previously noted) so i got to have fun reading his lines :P i definitely felt like i was hitting the consonants much better and keeping everything flowing well

im trying to upload screenshots but it wont work, so for personal recordkeeping: SENTENCES THAT I READ AND UNDERSTOOD ALL BY MYSELF AND AM REALLY PROUD OF

いちどきめたことはさいごまでやりとおす？ roughly = “once you’ve decided to do something, do you see it through to the end/do you stick with it?” (lit. “one time decided thing TOPIC end until carry through?”)

「はどう」とは　きみのから��がはっするみえないエネルギーのことだ roughly = “[aura] is the energy your body gives off” (lit. “[wave motion] QUOTE TOPIC you POSS body SUBJ emit energy NOM thing is”)

オレンのもをたベると　HPがかいふくするぞ！Xボタンでメニューをひらき　「どうぐ」コマンドからたべてみよう！ roughly = “if you eat an oran berry, your HP will restore! try eating it using the ‘item’ command after opening the menu with the X button!” (lit. “oren NOM/CLASS fruit OBJ eat.NP IF ‘HP’ SBJ restore do EMPHATIC! ‘X’ button MEANS menu OBJ open(NOUN) [tool] command from eat-and-see-VOL!”)

why is the tutorial using ぞ???

is it because i picked boy during the quiz? is it trying to be manly with me??? am i reading too deeply into this? (probably)

i was surprised to see 道具 here because i just recently learned it and i was like “tool? there’s no tools in this game…” but i could tell from its menu position that it was item/inventory so i was like, huh, interesting use of the word…

この　かけらが　はまる　ばしょを　いつか　はっけんしたい！ roughly = “someday, i want to discover the place that this fragment fits into!” (lit. “this fragment SBJ fit place OBJ someday discovery do-want!”)

i did have to look up はまる but i knew all the other words on my own!!!!

it was so fun seeing words i recognized especially higher level (higher relative to where i am, at least, i.e. more recently learned) kanji words like 場所 ＆ 発見。noticing them in kana felt kind of like seeing your friend at a costume party and knowing it’s them without them telling you or something lol and i always get so excited seeing vocab words i know in the wild!! it feels great to recognize them naturally like that :)

[regnigt]

From chapter 472, volume 31 of Haikyuu! in the Viz translation. Now *that* is how to render sound effects well in translation!! Magnificent touch up/lettering work by Erika Terriquez.

[ladylovesalatte]

Y'ALL I just learned Kagehina's nicknames for each other (Shou and Tobi) mean 'soar' and 'fly' respectfully and I don't know how to cope with this information

[kaus-quietis]

A Circus Library - quick recommendations of short stories, poems, comics and novels I've recently read #1

Hello there! I'm the circus resident poltergeist, Eliott, managing this blog until Lav comes back. Today I offer you a slightly different formula of my super awesome super rare super bookclub post, as Lav would say!

Hello hello hello! Is this a bookclub?! Is this chaotic ramble?! Ding ding! You got it wrong!

Writing full on reviews is tiedous and long, and while I appreciate doing it, I'm myself not always in the mood to read a long post explaining why a book is genius. Do I love that from time to time? Yes! Do I have the attention span to write one now? Nope! However, I still wanted to share some titles I recently (re)discovered, and that I think are marvellous reads for anyone wanting to dive into something new.

Here you'll find a few recommendations with the shortest of words to tell you why they are great, or just scream about it.

short disclaimer before I begin because this is tumblr and while I forgot a lot about this website, I remember how the TW thing works lol, it's at your own discretion to search for the works beforehand if you have any trigger you don't want to encounter.

Jack Spicer - Billy the kid

The master of my fate, captain of my soul as Timothée Chalamet would say idk I barely know the guy. Classic and gold, Spicer is an amazing writer and this poem is phenomenal. It's quite short and perfect if you want to know more about the wonder that was US American poetry during the 20th century. Of course I'd encourage you to read all of his works, but Billy the Kid is perfect to start somewhere.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa - Hell Screen

Classic and iconic, I've recently pushed further than Rashomon and boy oh boy am I never turning back. Hell Screen is a phenomenal short story displaying all the elegance and cruelty Akutagawa can incorporate in his works. It's mesmerizing, it aches, it's everything I love. I read this story in Jay Rubin's translation (Penguin Classics), and even though I do not speak Japanese so I cannot compare, I dare say it's a very good one.

Lucie Bryon, Thieves

I never recommended comic books before but I wanted to for a change! I am a huge comic book lover, but most of the ones I usually read are not available in english language. This one is, though. Thieves is a beautiful comic about growth, falling in love and finding acceptance in others and in yourself. It's light and heartwarming, like eating candy.

Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

Now, this book exploits one of my biggest plot weaknesses ever, and that is fucked up people in medieval settings. Lapvona tells the story of Marek, a sheperd's son, who'll be caught in a series of unfortunate events, political struggles, and secrets, all inside the town of Lapvona. It's dark and unsettling, the characters are scandalous and horrible, yet sickeningly human. Now, I said to check the TW yourselves, but be very careful with this one, if you can think of a TW, then it's certainly in this book.

Osamu Dazai, Early Light

In the Storybook ND series, this book contains three short stories : Early Light, Three Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, and Villon’s Wife. I'd recommend the three of them, as it's a fantastic dive into Dazai's shorter works. I think that reading his short stories is very important to understand his work and the width of the subjects and stories he wrote about. It helps that once again, in my opinion, the translation chosen by this publishing house is so good.

This is it for today! Here you have five of the works I read (or re-read) this summer, and that I'd warmly recommend. There are two short stories (Dazai, Akutagawa), a comic book (Bryon), a novel (Moshfegh) and a poem (Spicer). 'Till next time!

[babyprime]

god that shuro and laios fight seemed. personal? like it felt like maybe kui has Been There... just guessing as an autistic girlie from a high context very socially oppressive culture it seemed so familiar to me the things that laios said

[hua-fei-hua]

at church reading the hymn lyrics like "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and "hey i learned that word from translating song lyrics so that i could write genshin fic!" and "hey i learned that word from genshin!" and finally "omg i learned that word from the king's avatar"

[website-com]

BULLET TRAIN joins GLASS ONION in not great films i watched because an ATLANTA actor is in it

[quirkle2]

i must be a little tumblr baby born in the tumblr cave cuz i am Not understanding how twitter works