#It's not like wikipedia isn't a thing.

[stromuprisahat]

When you start reading a book on Slavic myths, written by Slavic-looking names, who live in another Slavic country, but you find famous names in your language written wrong...

[shalom-iamcominghome]

[iregularlyevadetaxes]

some doctors have got to be cheating medical school because how has this bitch not heard of any medication i'm on 😭 insurance companies should pay ME for the risk of trusting her as my doctor atp

[itwoodbeprefect]

"but how do you watch something accidentally with french subtitles?" you may ask, and i may tell you that it's simple, because i love english, english is fun and versatile and incredibly useful in this world, but listening to some dutch music recently reminded me how much consuming dutch art for a change feels like doing stretches for my brain (i don't really notice what i'm missing out on if i don't do it, but it feels SO good when i do), and that had me pondering once again how to incorporate some german into my diet in a natural way, because if dutch is my language, then german belongs to people i love, german is the one used to tell family stories, german is a language that feels like home but that i use so little it always takes a few days of just listening before i remember how to speak without feeling like an idiot, and so i thought to myself, well, i know bad buddy has a whole list of subtitle options, and perhaps i can pull off a really neat trick here and get my fill of german while also spending some time with thai (with which i am having a torrid love affair this year) through a show i know almost by heart at this point, because i can process the german fast enough to still be able to listen to what i'm hearing (the spoken thai), and then as a bonus, i'd get to sidestep english entirely for a few brief but glorious moments, which is a thing so rare it's almost unheard of, and that would just be a win-win-win. however! it turns out german is not one of the many, many languages offered on youtube as a subtitle option for bad buddy (which is of course fine because in a grand way, truly, why would it). and they do happen to have french, which i then of course had to click just for fun almost as a joke just to see it play for a minute or so and definitely not any longer than that, and as it turns out, on a practical is-this-doable-for-me level french in this context worked out way better than i thought it might, which is why i got sucked in immediately, easily fascinated as i am. but this is also a language that has me reading just slowly enough that it takes all my attention to have any hope at staying caught up with the speed of the dialogue, which amounts to a situation that is, you know, not making me feel much closer to my german grandmother (or making me feel very much at all for that matter, because on the whole i have a deeply impersonal relationship with french), but that IS very unexpectedly making me think fondly of my high school french teacher who once wrote under an assignment that he really hoped i'd choose to do something with languages. and this is probably not what he meant, but i suppose i am doing that, yes. both by choice and because i stumbled and tripped and now i've watched several episodes of a french subtitled thai show in an attempt to find german input because i was listening to dutch music.

[zareleonis]

i wish we knew what Furina Focalors' name was before they ever became archon. it's definitely not Focalors—their demon/archon name—nor is it Furina, the name she chose specifically for her human half. all the named Oceanids—Rhodeia, Endora, Idyia, Lyris, Urania, the fictional Clio—are named after actual Oceanids from Greek myth, so presumably the same is true for her but. what was it!!!! will we ever know

[totheidiot]

russian literature, yellow, byler color theory and you.

this is a really half-baked analysis, it was born and planted in my mind about an hour ago. a lot of them might not make sense at all. so, bear with me.

today, jay (@iamtheoneandonlyever) and i were having a very silly conversation on a random little guy i had made. the little guy happened to be quite literally yellow and it was all just random connections in the yellow. now, recently, i have picked up crime and punishment by the russian author fyodor dostoevsky, and yellow does play a part in the novel. specifically, in the room of the main character, raskolnikov's room.

"It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls."

we have positive meanings for the color yellow: joy, happiness, sunshine, optimism. now, in the context of this quote from crime and punishment, that is not the case. yellow is connected to insanity, madness, mental illness and there is a reason why the color yellow has such meaning. the phase 'желтый дом' (quite literally 'yellow house') is the russian slang term for a psychiatric clinic. this became a term for all mental asylums as the first psychiatric clinic in russia, in the obukhovskaya hospital was painted a yellow. crime and punishment used this connotation of the color yellow to highlight his madness, which is an important theme of the novel.

when blue meets yellow in the west. obviously, yellow eludes to will in the show, but i am thinking it really has that sort of meaning. madness, it won't be uncharacteristic to have this symbolism. idk just found this interesting. not to mention — when blue meets yellow in the west is a russian code.

another thing jay also pointed out is that when henry ended up in the upside down, it was yellow. a statement about his descent to madness, perhaps?

except, stranger thing is a very science-y show, there isn't a lot of grounds for references to literature, history and just color theory when it comes to art. not to mention how niche of a topic it is. 'yellow house' as a slang is no longer used. there is no english wikipedia page for obukhovskaya hospital. i literally needed to manually translate the existing russian wiki page for the information and the confirmation.

some links i stumbled on that i found interesting !

cool analysis on the yellow wallpaper in crime and punishment

an essay on color symbolism and names in the russian language

a forum where the negative connotations of the color yellow in the russian language is talked about

the wikipedia page on the hospital (written entirely in russian though)

[henrysglock]

i need people to stop saying dumb ass uninformed shit about personality disorders. narcissism ≠ aspd-linked grandiosity. they're entirely separate because they're entirely different.

showing your ass in 4k.

[hypermascbishounen]

So, I haven't played Curse of Darkness myself, and I've never enjoyed Netflixvania. But, I feel like I've noticed something particular, that I have not seen mentioned by anyone. And am curious what fans of Curse of Darkness specifically would think about my reading of this.

It seems to me that in game, Hector and Isaac both have names that are meaningful to their characters, but also come with connotations of another implied meaning, as each others foils, that feel just as important.

Game Isaac seems to be named in reference to the biblical Isaac, bc he is effectively a sacrificial son. But he is also out to ruin Hector in retaliation, to the point of needless cruelty, because of his grief and madness. Like Achilles, from the Iliad(or he possibly also has Ajax parrelels, another notable opponent to Hector).

And game Hector seems named for the Illiad's Hector, bc like him, he is at his core a sympathetic and honorable man who was nonetheless on the wrong side of a bloody conflict. But he is also cast out by a patriarchal figure, like bliblical Isaac's brother and counterpart, Ishmael. (There's also possibility for Achilles parallels himself, thanks to his vengeance quest over his own lost love. Which also seem to be part of his narrative comparisons to Dracula)

So I suspect that the reason N!Isaac ends up with a sort of unearned version of game Hector's arc and themes, that is hard to tell if it was even intentional, is because:

Unlike in the bible, in the *Quran*, Isaac and Ishmael have their roles switched. Ishmael is the central focus instead of Isaac, and is the sacrifice, before he is cast out into the desert, and becomes a founding figure in islam. This is probably why Dracula literally finds N!Isaac in the sahara desert(and banishes him there again).

So, N!Isaac, as a muslim, is no longer treated as a reference to the biblical Isaac, but is an Ishmael archetype, which *is what Hector is supposed to be.* But N!Hector's role as being his foil is gone, and instead he's at best there to weakly prop up how much better N!Isaac is by comparison. (And I don't believe him being "sacrificed" to Ellis' fetish writing counts either, bc he's framed more as a pet dog than a lamb, and it's not really connected much to his relationship with N!Isaac.)

Meanwhile, because N!Hector is no longer a proper foil, or respected by the narrative, he's also lost all symbolism behind the name Hector. And in turn, N!Isaac has completely lost all of game Isaac's illiad parallels.

Game Isaac as Achilles' less flattering qualities - of arrogance and need for recognition through glory, his grief and self-hatred over not being there to protect the person who meant the most to him, and his uncalled for ruthlessness and disrespect for his opponent, that ultimately leads to his death -

Or possibly Ajax, who was often considered second best to Achilles, who felt entitled to Achilles armor, and when passed over had violent delusions that lead to him killing himself with Hector's sword

- is just completely missing as an axis in N!Isaac. He doesn't even really get any *positive* Achilles or Ajax symbolism iirc, or any illiad Hector symbolism to complete the reversal either. His character is a one note(and clumsy) Ishmael archetype, who can only really be held up as great by the narrative no matter what he's done, or is doing.

Obviously, N!Isaac's freedom/agency arc is also tied up in him being a former slave. But I do think that him being muslim, and the way he's framed akin to Ishmael, is meant to line up with it. Which decision was made first/whether it was at the same time is debatable. But either way, it leads to him being an almost immediate inversion of game isaac's character from the basic themes. And bc game Isaac was already designed mirroring Hector, N!Isaac would inevitably just become a low-level partial rendition of game Hector.

This all bothers me, if my suspicions are correct. It looks like hugely wasted potential, and worse, the kind of writing decision borne of not paying attention to the source materials themes, bc it wasn't respected, and thought to not have them at all. Trading dual literary references meant to reinforce two characters relationship, for a single one-sided one, is just weaker writing. To the point where it seems unthinkable to do consciously, and has to have been from not even realizing there was something there to leave out. I come away feeling like the nfcv writers think they're smarter than the games writers, but with little evidence to show that. And that these characters deserved better.

Is this a fair interpretation or am I reaching too far with CoD's themes? Did I forget anything major about this in regards to nfcv? Has this all been mentioned before, and I'm just re-treading basic analysis? Feel free to lmk, bc I am but some guy with a mythology special interest passing through, who goes slightly insane wnv I see allusions to things I recognize, go unnoticed and neglected by supposedly professional writers, lol.

[protect-namine]

usual disclaimers that I find this meme extremely funny on its own because I understand how one comes to this line of thinking, I'm just gonna be subjectively pedantic. and also I'm ex christian (for various reasons my beliefs are closer to agnostic atheism, but I do find literary value in the bible and also grew up reading it and I live in a country where majority of the people are christian or catholic, culturally if not religiously) so like, take my thoughts with tonnes of salt, this is just my two cents, etc etc

okay onto the pedantry: the thing I find extra funny about this meme is that you could on the surface interpret that god did not particularly care for job because they (god) let satan destroy job's life after satan challenged god that job only loved them because of their protection and blessings. satan's position was basically, "job's not gonna be faithful if you actually let bad things happen to him" and god was like, "bet. okay you can do whatever you want as long you don't kill job." and so satan destroyed job's life, gave him sores and illnesses, etc etc but job's response to all this was like, "my life is SO miserable, what have I done, what grievance have I committed, to deserve this? but either way, praise be to the lord still." obviously I'm paraphrasing a lot, but that's the gist of it.

there's also some parallels here of the story of how satan also talked to god about tempting jesus, but the bible is full of such parallels anyway. I digress. moving on,

I, however, would argue that job was god's "favorite" (god does not play favorites but like, if they did...). job 1:8 has god saying to satan, “have you considered my servant job? there is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears god and shuns evil.” (NIV)

like, again my reading might not be 100% precise, but in context of their conversation, to me god was like, "hey, devil, for all you have walked on earth and claim to be free to have mastery over it, have you set your heart against my most specialest special boy in the world? the guy who is super good and loves me still?"

to close: my personal interpretation of the book of job is that god does not play favorites, but if they did then both job and jesus would be in the running. because being god's favorite is worse for one's human life as god will use you not to test your faith, in particular (because god is omniscient and already knows the strength or weakness of your faith anyway), but rather to use you in his dick measuring contests with the devil

[probablyaparadox]

I FOUND NASIENS (He was in Wales) (This is a 4kota post.)

Frankly, nothing will ever be as haunting to me as the fact that I could not decipher what Nasiens, Chion, Jade, and Donny's names are references to. (Spoilers if you just watch the anime)

Jade doesn't matter too much, he's dead now anyway (RIP DUDE I MISS YOU SO MUCH). He could be a reference to the green Knight. Although I have my own thoughts and opinions about the green knight in relation to the world, I think he could've been a reference to that, and other than that he was a minor character. Chion... Is it a dog reference? Are we calling him an angry little dog? Is that what's happening????? Donny I had nothing. Same With Nasiens. Nasiens was the most annoying to me however because IT SOUNDS WEIRD. IT'S NOT A NORMAL BRITAIN NAME. So here's my theory! My solution if you will! Surprisingly, unsurprisingly, the answer lied in welsh mythology!

Basically every character in this series is a mythological reference. And I despise the idea that any of them aren't. Good news, I found donny! This character has a significant detail that makes him a good match but the bad news is um.

It should be noted Gofannon is different but also the g name is suspicious to me, as is the significance of "Uncle. This is also where I like to put myself in the mind of the author where I know how japanese names work, but I still get mixed up all the time, so I can totally see him thinking of Don as the first name, or wanting don to be the first name. Next Chion.

I kind of see it. For context he also has a comparison between him and tristan on his page. I'm still kind of leaning towards him being a yapping little chiwahua.

NEXT! Nasiens! Or!!!

I think with Myrtel this really sells it with how people have been discussing him being Myrtel's changeling match. It's perfect! This one is the most satisfying honestly as it's been haunting me since I started reading.

[the-physicality]

i do think, aside from mercury bias, if bg had been in all season she would have been all wnba, first or at least second. i think people undervalue her because of the rebounding but she is 1000% the worst officiated player in the league, on both sides of the court. so the fact that she's been able to have the performance that she had is incredible, and that she didn't get the acknowledgment really just underscores how much people take what she does for granted.

[mathmusicreading]

@yummysuika @ospreywhite I really appreciate your translation work; can you explain more about shichen timekeeping to me? Because I know a tiny bit of modern Mandarin Chinese, but I can't recognize the shichens as the zodiac animals:

Zi (I don't know "rat", so I actually can't make any argument here.)

Chou (I don't know "ox", but I reasonably could have expected "niu" for "cow".)

Yin (I know "tiger" as "hu".)

Mao (I don't know "rabbit", but to me "mao" is "cat".)

Chen (I know "dragon" as "long".)

Si (I don't know "snake", but now I find it interesting that it sounds like death, like snakes could be seen as evil in Chinese culture similar to how they are seen in the Christian world.)

Wu (I know "horse" as "ma".)

Wei (I know "sheep/goat" as "yang".)

Shen (I don't know "monkey", but I would have expected "Sun" or "Wu" or "Kong" because of "Monkey King".)

You (I know "rooster/chicken" as " ji".)

Xu (I know "dog" as "gou".)

Hai (I don't know "pig/boar" unless "pork" and "pig" are the same "siu".)

I tried asking my parents, but they just starting talking about how the Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle with the 12 animals and the 5 elements. So are these shichen names the "Pre-Han dynasty semi-descriptive terms"? Is it kind of like the difference between "midday" and "noon" in English? The former is a "descriptor", the latter is a "name", but they "mean" the same thing?

(I tried checking the etymology for "noon" on dictionary.com, so to be fair "ninth hour" is a descriptor, but in Modern English it's not really recognizable as such and so for the sake of my shichen question, I'm calling "noon" a "name".)

Or is this another language/dialect or due to the evolution of language (changing words and pronunciations)?

I was also looking up the Dragon Boat Festival being on the unluckiest day of the year, and it says, "The Chinese name of the festival is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages. Duanwu (端午) literally means 'starting horse'—i.e., the first "horse day" of the month according to the Chinese zodiac." so I was able to get the exact character for "wu". I think it's interesting that Wikipedia says "literally ... horse" but putting 午 into Google Translate yields "midday, noonday, seventh earthly branch, 11 a.m.-1 p.m." It's unfortunate that Wikipedia only says "different Chinese languages" for "Duanwu" instead of specifying them or time periods, but I appreciate it listing different romanizations by country for Cantonese.

Would you say there's any pattern to Chinese writers or English translators using the above terms vs. using "hour/time/head/body/tail of the (insert zodiac animal here)"? Like if one sounds better for a historical fantasy setting, or choosing to use the pinyin in English instead of translating to not be translating literally? ETA: I should have gotten onto a computer sooner. I asked my parents and then you guys because searching "shichen" in Wikipedia just resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement. But further digging took me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping. I'll probably get answers there (Maybe I'll even be able to explain to my dad why he was thinking of ten stems and not matching mathematically with "60 is from 12 times 5, not 10 times 6" when he was trying to lecture on the 60-year cycle for the Chinese zodiac, lol.), so my apologies for bothering you. I'd still appreciate your thoughts on what was formerly the last paragraph about writing and translation choices!

[maeamian]

About to go insane trying to find sources for this, but starting to develop a theory that the idea that the bottom of the ocean is totally unknown is pretty outdated, but is an extremely compelling factoid and as such has persisted longer than it is true.

[wanderingmind867]

Speaking of useless trivia (something I have an overabundance of): did you know Zach Galifianakis's uncle nearly became a US Senator? It's true. Nick Galifianakis was a congressman from North Carolina in the 60s who ran for Senator of North Carolina in 1972. He lost to infamous rascist and extreme conservative Jesse Helms, a man known for hating gays and black people. Jesse Helms hated the civil rights act, for God's sakes! He was possibly even more conservative than Ronald Reagan! He was awful! But clearly North Carolininians in the 1970s liked him. They reelected him over Nick Galifianakis fairly handily. But that's an interesting story, isn't it? Not something I would have known if not for my current (I think it's still currently ongoing) political hyperfixation. Here's a link to show how I learned all this:

[screambirdscreaming]

I switched to duckduckgo recently when i tried to google the name of a plant and the entire first page of results was adds for a clothing company.

I had tried to switch before, but kept going back to google because it just had better results. that's not true anymore. duckduckgo has gotten notably better in the past few years, but mostly google has gotten astronomically worse.

(the maps function on duckduckgo is pretty unusable, but OpenStreetMap is better than google maps ever was - it shows you wetlands! and tideflats! and the goddamn exit numbers on the highway!!)

anyway, not to shill, but: ditch google.

we gotta scroll so far for the wikipedia article when we google something now it feels so fucking wrong

[sillimancer]

random 5am before bed rambling but I genuinely don't get white people who hesitate to create original characters that aren't also white people. it's literally so fun learning about other cultures? getting to practice drawing new hair textures and face shapes? you have an excuse to go consume non-white media as an entry point into worlds previously unknown to you???? idk man maybe you're just racist