#and I know it's because it's a transliteration of a whole different alphabet but also. agh.)

[eviltothecore13]

I’ve seen a few people in the Addams Family fandom saying that Gomez can’t tell the difference between Yiddish and French as if this is a canon fact and yet...feel free to correct me if there actually is such a moment, but I rewatched all of the 60s show fairly recently and I don’t recall Gomez ever actually saying “that’s French!” in response to Morticia speaking Yiddish? He reacts to it by kissing her hand in a similar way, yes. And the word “Yiddish” is never actually used on the show (but that’s what it is.) But that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s French...just that he finds it attractive...he finds lots of things Morticia does attractive (practically everything, in fact), not JUST French.

Is there actually a single moment in canon where he explicitly calls it French, or have people just assumed for some reason that the only possible reason he could find it attractive is if he’s mistaken it for French?

[kiragecko]

IPA and More Keyboard

When I first got into linguistics, I decided I needed a keyboard that could support IPA¹. But I was studying Sanskrit, and switching to a completely different keyboard every time I wanted to add a dot below a character (the common Sanskrit transcription convention) was really annoying! Also, I hate the IPA character for a palatal nasal (ɲ), so I wanted to be able to use 'ñ' instead. And ... a thousand other tiny things, all requiring different keyboard layouts. Why wasn't there a keyboard that just let me type EVERYTHING?

Eventually, I designed my own. And that was fun enough that I expanded it. Over the last 15 years, I've been adding characters and streamlining it's use.

The current iteration is a monster. For an idea of what it can do:

this keyboard can type over 50 diacritics (accent marks)

it can rotate and flip any character that has a rotated/flipped Unicode counterpart, as well as replace them with smallcaps, superscript, and subscript versions

it can type most medieval ligatures and characters (though my research hasn't always been good enough to provide the most natural ways to do so)

it covers the whole IPA, of course, as well as historical symbols, extIPA, and uppercase forms when available

it can type any modern or historical click character available in Unicode (still waiting for Doke orthography support >:( )

it allows you to type Greek and Cyrillic characters (though it prioritizes IPA variants and isn't really streamlined for writing the language)

it allows you to transliterate Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian, Chinese dialects, etc. that use discipline-specific characters/diacritics

it lets you add bars, tildes, slashes and curls to any character that has a matching Unicode counterpart

it can type most proofing and punctuation marks, modifier characters, as well as

alchemical, astrological, and gender/orientation symbols

and much more

For more detailed documentation on what this keyboard supports, and how to use it, here's the guide (PDF or Word Doc).

Here's the keyboard: IPAKeyboard dot kmp

Because it's designed to work for a LOT of characters, this keyboard is rarely going to be the simplest way to type a specific one. There are definitely IPA-only keyboards that will be more efficient for typing just IPA. And this keyboard isn't a font. There will be characters that don't show up - I've yet to find one that supports the entire range of characters this keyboard allows. Doulos SIL is my suggested font, especially if you use a lot of diacritics, but you might want to look around to find the one that supports you best.

But it's a powerful tool if you want to be able to switch between multiple transliteration and transcription systems in the same document, explore characters to use for non-human sounds, discuss the history of transcribing language, or quickly type special characters without opening 'insert symbols' dialogue boxes.

-

This is a Keyman keyboard. You'll need to install Keyman before being able to use it. Keyman is a free program with some amazing keyboards, and a lot of supports for people designing them for underserved languages. I've been really happy with it for almost 20 years, now.

-

For ideas about what else I could add, or suggestions for better key combos for specific characters, please contact me here, or at kiragecko at gmail dot com.

Things I'd love ideas for:

medieval ligatures (need to match them to logical character strings (words), but these are frequently NOT what unicode suggests)

mathematical, geometric, and/or scientific symbols (huge numbers of symbols, need a logical way of organizing them without too many key strokes)

Teuthonista symbols (very little English documentation, so I don't know what all of them MEAN)

-

¹ The International Phonetic Alphabet, one of the main ways linguists indicate sounds.

[glazeliights]

Danganronpa in toki pona part 1: names

toki!

since Im both a danganronpa fan and a conlang enjoyer, I had the idea a while ago to try and translate parts of it into toki pona (not whole games, god no. just snippets, maybe some ftes). while I assume this is mostly going to interest people who already know about conlangs, I still want it to be readable by people who have never heard of them in their life. so

what is toki pona?

toki pona is a conlang (short for constructed language, a language someone made up, think: esperanto or tolkiens languages. theres a lot I could talk about here but rn thats all you need to know) made by sonja lang. it was created to be as minimalistic as possible with a vocabulary of about 120 - 150 words depending on who you ask. it onls has 9 consonants and 5 vowels, which means theres some restrictions for how you can transliterate names into toki pona (called 'tokiponization').

lets get into how that works

tokiponization

since tokiponization is based on pronounciation rather than spelling, its important to know what sounds were working with. this is where I might lose some folks that dont know any linguistics stuff, but this section is optional. you only need to read it to find out how the names turned out the way they did, and how to say them out loud.

consonants

the nine consonants of toki pona are m, n, p, t, k, s, w, l, j. these are pronounced like their ipa (international phonetic alphabet) counterparts. its not necessary to know what that means, just know that [j] is pronounced like english <y> (as in yes, not as in synth). everything is else is p much how an english speaker would expect it.

the way consonants are tokiponized goes as follows:

voiced stops and fricatives are devoiced (z, d, g, b > s, t, k, p)

labial fricatives (f, ɸ) become p

coronal fricatives (and affricates) (θ, ʃ, ɕ, ts, tʃ, tɕ) become s

the japanese r [r] becomes l (the english r [ɻ] becomes w)

h is dropped word-initially and becomes w or j intervocalically

v can become p or w but Ill use w here

vowels

toki ponas vowels are a, e, i, o, u. this is almost the same as japanese, which has ɯ instead of u, but since its just the same sound with a rounding difference its tokiponized as u. japanese also has a length distinction, which toki pona doesnt, meaning long and short vowels will simply be the same length.

syllables

toki ponas syllable structure is CV(n) meaning that each syllable must have a consonant and a vowel (except word-initially where it can be just a vowel) and can optionally end in n. this is fairly similar to japanese syllable structure, but one thing is that japanese has palatalized consonants. this is pretty easy to solve by just inserting -ij- to mimic the sound. generally with tokiponization its preferable to preserve syllable count rather than add extra sounds but 1) if you say it quickly its barely noticable and 2) its my project and I can do what I want.

the other thing is that while in toki pona, vowels need to be seperated by at least one consonant, japanese allows you to theoretically chain together as many vowels as you want. I tried to find out whether vowel sequences are pronounced as diphthongs or disyllabically and turns out its a little complicated because those terms are defined in terms of syllables and japanese is mora-timed rather than syllable-timed. Ill admit I only have the faintest clue what a mora is but for the purposes of this project I will be treating vowel sequences as seperate syllables when possible. if it isnt, due to the syllables wu, wo, ji, and ti being forbidden in toki pona, Ill treat them like diphthongs in that the second vowel is just dropped entirely.

some smaller notes:

the only phoneme allowed in syllable codas is n, so for example gundham becomes kantan

stress always falls on the first syllable

and the final, rather important thing

the way names work in toki pona is that you have to describe what the thing is before saying the name (for example, canada is called ma Kanata, which literally means canada-place). therefore people are generally called jan [name], however, some tokiponists use a different term before their name (called a head noun) either for fun or to express something about themselves (such as many plural systems using kulupu ("group")).

theres quite a few options for varying what head nouns someone uses for themselves or others to add nuances. for example, I think gundham might refer to himself as a jan wawa ("powerful (in the sense of supernatural powers in this case) person"), or perhaps hiyoko might call mikan a jaki instead of a jan to insult her. theres a lot of fun to be had here.

the actual names

THH:

jan Makoto Najeki

jan Kijoko Kilikili (note: kili is the toki pona word for fruit so her name here literally says fruit-fruit)

jan Pijakuja Tokami

jan Toko Pukawa

jan (moli) So (note: jan moli here would mean killer to translate the spirit of her original title better, but since her talent would include it anyways Im not sure whether to use it?)

jan Sajaka Masono

jan Lejon Kuwata

jan Siwilo Pusisaki (note: yes this means their name is pronounced pussysaki. do with this info what you will)

jan ante/jasima (note: alter ego. lit: "different/reflection person", I feel like jasima fits more but Im also kinda unsura abt using nimi pu ala in the names and talents. I would definitely use at least nimi ku suli in the actual translations but for names and talents its like. hm :/)

jan Monto Owata

jan Kijotaka Isimalu

jan Ipumi Jamata

jan Selesija Lutenbeku/Tajeko Jasuwilo

jan Jasuwilo Akakule

jan Sakula Okami

jan Awi Asawina

jan Mukulo Ikusapa

jan Sunko Enosima

soweli Monokuma

SDR2

jan Asime Inata

jan Isulu Kamukula

jan Sijaki Nanami

jan Nakito Komajeta (note: I think he may also switch to a more self deprecating head noun when hes having a Moment)

jan Sakisi/Pijakuja Tukami (note: since tu means two, the togami/twogami thing works just as much in toki pona as it does in english)

jan Lijota Mitala

jan Telutelu Anamula

jan Mawilu Kowisumi

jan Peko Pekojama

jan Pujuwiko Kusuliju

jan Ipuki Mijota

jan Ijoko Sajonsi

jan Mikan Sumiki

jan Akane Owali

jan Nekomalu Nita

jan Kantan Tanaka (note: probably calls himself jan wawa or perhaps even usawi ("magic/supernatural") if I feel spicy enough to include nimi sin)

jan Sonja Newaman

jan Kasuwisi Sota

soweli Usami/Monomi

NDRV3

jan Kajete Akamasu

jan Suwisi Sajala

jan Kato Momota

jan Maki Alukawa

jan Kokisi Oma

jan Lantalo Amami

jan Lijoma Osi

jan Kilumi Toso

jan Imiko Jumeno

jan Ansi Jonaka

jan Tenko Sapasila

jan Kolekiju Sinkusi

jan Miju Iluma (note: I think she may also call herself jan sona or smth like that for "genius")

jan Konta Kokuwala

jan Kipo (note: possibly he gets called jan ilo (robot, lit: "tool/machine-person") to convey how the others set him apart from humans at times. kokichi probably calls him just ilo when he wants to get a rise out of him)

jan Sumuki Silokane

soweli Monotalo

soweli Monosuke

soweli Monopani

soweli Monotan

soweli Monokito

UDG. I guess

jan Komalu Najeki

jan Monaka Towa

jan Masalu Tamon

jan Satalo Kemuli

jan Kotoko Usuki

jan Nakisa Sinkesu

jan anpa (note: this is servant, anpa means "below, downward, lowly")

jan Asi Towa

jan Iloko Akakule

jan Tasi Pusisaki

jan Juta Asawina

soweli Silokuma

soweli Kulokuma

[mchiti]

hi hala!! I’m curious, what do you study at uni? and what’s your thesis about? (sorry if you’ve talked about this before, feel free to just point me in the right direction haha) also good luck with the thesis writing!!🫶🏻

Hi Mary!! aw you're so sweet for asking! I'm doing my postgraduate in linguistics so I did a lot of exams related to linguistics. My main interest is sociolinguistics which is what I decided to do my thesis in. Sociolinguistics is basically a branch of linguistics studies: if general linguistics studies how any language is structured (from phonetics to morphology to lexicon etc), sociolinguistics focus on linguistics variation. It's a field of study that was born in the 1960s; before that there was a very normative approach to the study of languages (linguistics focused on what was considered normative, not taking variation into accounts, a more traditional approach that didn't take diversity into accounts), then from the 60s lots of studies started to focus on linguistic variation, starting mainly in the US which obviously had, at that time already, a very multicultural society, with mix of languages, sub-cultures etc. I guess it started when the west realised, especially within the whole post-colonialism process, that "their world" wasn't as it used to be, and so languages. So basically you study how a language can vary across multiple factors - the social group you belong, your social class, education, sense of identity etc, ethnicity etc.

My thesis is specifically in language crossing between moroccan darija, french, italian, dutch. Because I have family in france & the netherlands, I asked them to go around and record moroccans born there pronouncing the same single sentence. I did the same with everyone i know here in italy. I'm comparing how this same sentence change phonetically especially in the articulation of wovels, diving people into groups based on the geographical origins of their parents (I chose 3 different moroccan areas), and how italian, french and dutch influence the way moroccans born into diaspora pronounce sounds differently, and how they transliterate arabic differently in latin alphabet. I basically use phonetics softwares where you can see how different wovels and consonants are pronounced and have different patterns etc. [literally how the tongue positions in a certain way in articulating sounds, or lips etc]. Also taking social backgrounds into accounts, too. I don't know if I'm making any sense 😭 But yes that's pretty much it!! SORRY for nerding about it, And THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️

[sheliesshattered]

My window to order was starting to narrow, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Captain Accreditation License prop I'd been eyeing for my Batuu Bound birthday outing coming up. It's such a silly little detail, but the reviews are filled with people talking about getting to use it in Galaxy's Edge when the Stormtroopers stop them to ask to see some identification, which sounds like a fun interaction. And like, I can make a great deal of soft kit, I can even put together my own greebles out of foam -- but laser engraving is way outside my wheelhouse and tool access.

But before I could order it, I had to come up with a bunch of info to go on it, like name, home planet, ship type, that sort of thing. I had a basic idea of what sort of character I wanted to portray with my outfit for Batuu, but filling out the info for the pilot's license really made me lock down a bunch of details, which eventually evolved into full on original character creation.

It also got me started in learning to read Aurebesh, the Star Wars transliteration alphabet, but that's a whole other rabbit hole, lol.

Character wise, I started with my absolute love of piloting the Falcon in Smuggler's Run (my desire to do so again was one of the major reasons for deciding to do this for my birthday) and my fav in the sequel movies, Benicio Del Toro's "D.J." character. (The very brief political commentary about weapons manufacturers profiting off both sides of the war, and his little "live free, don't join" axiom are just so amazing, I still cannot believe we got that in a Star Wars movie.)

I also took into account that the timeframe for Galaxy's Edge is between Ep 8 and Ep 9, in roughly 34 or 35 ABY (years after the Battle of Yavin, at the end of Ep 4), and that I want to do the lightsaber building activity at Savi's Workshop the day we visit. The Etsy listing for the license also had an interesting little note about choosing a homeworld, calling out that 'because of well-known galactic events' Alderaan would only be an option for characters over the age of 40 or so. That comment got my mental gears turning, and sent me down the path of researching the year that Disney's Batuu is set in, etc.

At that same time, I was trying out different potential hairstyles for keeping my waist-length hair controlled during a day at Disneyland while still looking Star Wars-y. I tried a couple of Rey inspired hair styles, but eventually settled on something much more like Leia's looks in Ep 5 and Ep 6, with multiple braids wrapped around the crown to form a full circle. It's easy and comfortable and will keep my hair from tangling and works well with my hooded wrap thing, so I decided that hairstyle would be part of my look, and part of my character building.

So at that point I had: pilot, politically unaffiliated, soon to own a lightsaber, emulating Princess Leia and/or Alderaanian hairstyles, and grew up mostly after the fall of the Empire and probably wouldn't remember (or only just barely remember) the destruction of Alderaan. On that last point I was splitting the difference slightly -- if I translated my real age now into the Star Wars timeline (and Galaxy's Edge being set in ~35 ABY), then I would have been roughly 8 years old when Alderaan was destroyed. But in reality, I was born shortly after Ep 5 came out, and my earliest memories of Star Wars are knowing all about the movies, playing Star Wars make-believe with other kids in the neighborhood, and being excited that Ep 4 was going to be airing on TV.

After a lot of noodling on this, while sewing or driving or trying to fall asleep, the character started to come together in my head. Her mother was born and raised on Alderaan, but around age 20 (in 2 or 3 BBY, roughly) met a dashing young pilot on a freighter passing through, fell in love, and left Alderaan to be with him. They got married and lived mostly in the hyperspace lanes for a couple years, jumping from place to place. When she found out she was pregnant, she temporarily went back to Alderaan to be with her family and have her baby there. In the last year before the Battle of Yavin, she had a baby girl she named Samæni Ray, and after a few weeks she and the baby left Alderaan to meet up with her husband again.

So none of them were on Alderaan when the Death Star targeted and destroyed the planet. In the wake of the tragedy, the Alderaanian diaspora would have pulled together all across the galaxy, trying to get word of anyone who might have survived. And then, a miracle: Princess Leia somehow survived! The princess that Samæni's mother had grown up idolizing from afar, someone similar to her in age and physical appearance (pictures of my real mother from the 1970s bear a striking resemblance to Carrie Fisher in the same time period) -- the princess that Samæni's mother had loved for as long as she could remember, she not only survived but she stepped up to lead the Resistance against the Empire!

You know those people in real life who like, collected merchandise about Princess Diana? Yeah, that's Samæni's mom, but with Princess Leia, lol.

The war to overthrow the Empire only lasted for another 5 years or so, ending with the Battle of Jakuu in 5 ABY. So I figure Samæni might have vague early childhood memories of her parents celebrating the end of the war. They weren't actively members of the Resistance, and Samæni's father was much more politically neutral, preferring to focus on his work as a freighter pilot, but as far as Samæni's mother was concerned, anything Princess Leia did was a blessing on the galaxy, so it would have been a big deal for her, both during the war and in the years after as the New Republic was established.

During those early years of the New Republic, Samæni's father's freight business continued to do well, and she mostly grew up in her family's Gozanti-class cruiser, as they moved things from one planet to the next. She learned to pilot at her father's side, eventually sat for a pilot's license exam as a young adult, and then struck out on her own. Samæni's first job as a pilot was for a company that operated light freighters as party ships, allowing those with modest disposable income to see the galaxy in style but without the expense of a yacht cruiser. (The company probably had a ridiculous tagline like: "From here to thar with an open bar!")

Since those early jobs-for-hire, Samæni saved up enough money to buy her own little light freighter and start an inport/export business in which she (and her partner Jack) go to outer rim worlds to buy antiquities, oddities, and rare objects and bring them back to an upper-middle class clientele in the core worlds and inner rim. Their current ship is a bit of an antique itself, a Kazellis-class light freighter that is flashy enough to fit in in the nicer areas of Coruscant, but hard-working and easily repairable enough to take Samæni and Jack to all those far-flung worlds with treasures to acquire. Their ship has room for some larger pieces, but most of the cargo area has been converted into full-time living quarters, since they rarely stay planet-side for very long.

Their home-port is the ecumenoplis planet of Denon, an inner-rim world that sits at the intersection of two major hyperspeed trade routes. Denon was the closest thing to a homeworld that Samæni had growing up, and her parents have since retired to the equatorial area of the planet, in a community with a lot of other retired pilots and haulers and ship mechanics. (Her father's favorite local cantina is named for the CEC catalog part number for a replacement hyperdrive lever. He and all his old pilot buddies think it is hilarious.)

Samæni's mother continues to talk about Princess Leia like they are close friends (despite never actually having met her), and keeps informed on the rise of the First Order and the resistance to it mostly because she has set up HoloNet news alerts for General Organa. But Samæni takes more after her father in that regard, doesn't particularly care about politics or taking sides in any civil war, other than how it impacts business. The destruction of the Hosnian system by the First Order's Starkiller Base is enough to push Samæni towards siding against the First Order, but she still isn't about to rush out to join the Resistance, either.

Her pilot's license lists Denon as her homeworld, and it would take some dedicated digging to find that her planet of birth is actually Alderaan. She only lived there for the first few weeks of her life, and her only memory of it is how sad it's always made her mother. The traditional hairstyles and the stories about Princess Leia are really the only parts of the culture that she inherited. Samæni has never wanted to talk about being from Alderaan with anyone, and as the Empire's successor has come to power in the last few years, it's seemed even more dangerous to let anyone outside of close friends and family know that she is technically a survivor of the last time a galactic power was going around destroying planets.

Samæni and Jack are heading to the outer rim world of Batuu to visit Dok Ondar's Den of Antiquities, and follow up on a tip about Savi's crew of 'scrap metal' gatherers, in case there's something there that might sell well on a core world. Arriving to find that both the Resistance and the First Order have a presence in Black Spire Outpost will be less than ideal, but Samæni and Jack have been to enough rough ports across the galaxy that they know how to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

And hey, if First Order troopers stop to ask them for ID, Samæni will have a genuine pilot's license to show them. ;)

[qaraxuanzenith]

Q: Is there a reason so many menorah look like trees? Or is it just a "pretty things with branches so therefor trees" thing? (Also how long do you leave the candles burning for? And any other not explicitly solicited Chanukah facts ((also also SO MANY SPELLINGS?????)))

Thank you for the question, Raeven! (also, note: it was still Chanukah when this question was sent in, I just saved it up for now because I like answering questions on Tuesdays)

So I was GOING to be like “I don’t know anything about menorahs resembling trees???” but then I remembered that MY OWN Chanukiyah which I have been lighting for the past 15 years has a distinctly stylized-tree design so I must recognize that this is a thing that happens.

In light of that, I can offer three possible answers:

(answers below the cut because I am pathologically incapable of brevity)

a) trees = pretty

b) Chanukiyahs are a branched object - they need 9 branches - and what is a lovely AND structurally stable item that typically has many branches? a tree! Basically, I would assume that branched items evoke comparisons to each other anyway, so just roll with it

c) in a memorable and popular line of Tanach, the Torah is described as a “tree of life” and this is often taken as a metaphor for Judaism in general (plus in other memorable lines of Tanach, the Jewish people as a whole and righteous people in the abstract are each compared to trees as well). So maybe it’s to evoke that?

But there is no specific trees-Chanukah connection, other than the two olive branches appearing in Zechariah’s vision that’s read on the Shabbat of Chanukah, and the whole olive harvest thing in general (and that would be an olive trees connection in particular so not relevant to most tree-like Chanukiyas).

On to question two: how long to leave the candles burning for! This one I actually have a definite (if qualified) answer for you! The Chanukah candles have to burn for half an hour of time during which (a) it is dark out and (b) it is still reasonable for people to be out and about. So if you light them as the sun is setting, that half hour of time that they count for begins not when you light but only after the sun has completely gone down and, conversely, if it’s getting late, you have to make sure that they’ll be burning for half an hour of time when people would still normally going to be coming home from work and so on, even if they’ll still be burning past that.

(This is because a major part of the reason for lighting Chanukah candles is “publicizing the miracle” - so they have to be visible, in terms of both showing up as light in the darkness, and in terms of being lit at a time that people might reasonably be outside to see them. This is also why Chanukiyahs are supposed to be lit in front of a window or outdoors.)

Question three-ish: SO MANY SPELLINGS this has a simple and very annoying answer: the only correct spellings for the name of the holiday are   חנכה and חנוכה (multiple spellings even in the Hebrew because that ו is acting as a vowel, and vowels are often left out / implied / replaced with more succinct vowels so it isn’t strictly necessary). It’s a Hebrew word! It’s spelled in Hebrew, which has a completely different alphabet! All English transliterations, of this word and of any Hebrew word, are all equally correct/incorrect. Part of the problem with Chanukah in particular is that first letter ח represents a sound which doesn’t even exist in the English language, so there’s a lot of different opinions on how to represent it in English letters (for the record - it’s pronounced by making a guttural sound at the back of your throat, like the ch in Bach or like the letter jota in Spanish). I typically write it as “Chanukah” and could write out a detailed explanation of exactly why this transliteration feels most correct to me, but at the end of the day, they’re all equally wrong / equally valid because we’re transliterating from one alphabet to another so everything is BASICALLY arbitrary.

Finally: I do have MANY other exciting Chanukah facts but this post is already so long so I will save them for another occasion.

[pocketmouse18]

Thank you so much to @herosofmarvelanddc @cloudypaws and @mtab2260 for the tag! This was so much fun to think about :)

(fair warning, I wrote too much for many of these...)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just 2 :)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

450,577 if I did my math right!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Officially? Just 1 - Agents of Shield (two, I guess, if you count MCU as separate, since I use characters from both...). Off the record, many more than that! I have lots of bits and bobs from other fandoms that I tinkered with when I was younger, still getting the hang of writing, not brave enough to post things, etc. etc. Some of those include X-Men, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, the Fosters, Star Wars, the Hunger Games, the 39 Clues, and a few others I can’t remember. None of those will likely see the light of day, mostly because they’re unfinished, not very good, and just not reflective of who I am as a writer anymore, but they were fun to play around with at the time :)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I just have the two, but The Important Thing is to Try wins, hands down, with 1227. Shoulder to Shoulder has 95, though, which I’m also very proud of! Important Thing has a definite advantage, being as long as it is, so I don’t know if that’s really a fair comparison between them.

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes! Or at least, I always try to! I just can’t believe someone would be kind enough to take the time to tell me what they thought of my story, so I always want to take the time to thank them and return the favor :) Plus, as I’ve learned, it’s a fantastic way to get to know some really lovely people!

6. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Well... I technically only have one story that has an ending, at least on Ao3, and it’s not an especially angsty one, since it ends in Phil and Melinda getting married :) I have some angsty chapter endings in Important Thing, if that counts? I’m not even sure if any of my unpublished fiddlings have angsty endings (most don’t have endings at all lol)... I don’t mind writing angst, but I don’t know if I’m capable of making something without a happy (or at least hopeful) ending.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've ever written?

Not really, unless you count AoS/MCU crossovers (which I guess technically count, but also I would argue it’s not a true crossover since (and I will die on this hill) AoS is a part of MCU canon). When I was younger I was a fan of playing around with crossover AUs more so than the actual characters crossing paths (so like, what if these characters from XYZ were demigods or went to Hogwarts or what have you, and not so much what would happen if the X-Men met Luke, Leia, and Han on one of their space adventures). I started writing a crossover between AoS and the Marvel Rising cartoon once (which again, not sure if that’s a true crossover, since Daisy was in Marvel Rising, but I digress), where Coulson tasks Daisy to work with Kate Bishop and Rayshaun Lucas to collect and train a team of young Inhumans, starting with Kamala Khan, but I ran out of steam pretty quickly when it got too plot heavy.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think so. I’ve had some people not understand some choices that I made, but they asked it in a way that I thought was perfectly nice, and I was happy to talk about it with them. Sometimes people get “mad” at me when I cause pain and suffering, but I know that’s all in good fun :)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope, not for me. I don’t read it or write it, personally. Writing a kiss is hard enough!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge! Important Thing is probably too long and unwieldy to ever steal :P

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone once asked me on FFN if they could translate Important Thing to Russian, which was basically the coolest thing I’ve ever been asked!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A fic, no. I’d love to try sometime! I had a friend in college who I co-wrote with A LOT, though, so I know I enjoy that process, given the right partner. We wrote several short plays together (ranging from ~15-50 minutes in length, including one that we wrote in a single afternoon!), selected scenes from a larger (unfinished) play inspired by historical letters we found in an archive that were sent between a man from Massachusetts serving in the American Civil War, his wife, and his 8-year-old son, and several scripts for TV sitcoms (2 pilots for 2 different shows, plus additional eps for those pilots, and a couple of later eps for a different show that a classmate of ours wrote the pilot for - we were trying to practice what it would be like to be on a staff with a showrunner haha). The sitcom scripts in particular I’m very proud of, and could talk somebody’s ear off about if asked (one’s about ghost hunters and one’s about a DnD party!), but maybe that’s better saved for another post ;)

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

That’s a very hard question for me! Mostly because shipping stuff is usually one of the last things to register for me when I’m thinking about shows/books/movies I like haha... I’m always a sucker for Philinda, and younger me was rather taken with Percabeth, I suppose.

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Hmm, several, really. The aforementioned AoS/Marvel Rising crossover I think could be really cool if I got it to work, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen. I also have a WIP that’s like an angstier version of a Hallmark Christmas movie AU where Daisy has to come home to her small town right before Christmas and figure out what she wants out of life, but I’m a little stalled out on that one, mostly because I’m waffling on who the charming love interest should be and because I don’t have enough of a plot, just lots of feelings about coming back home to a place you thought you had left behind lol.

I’d put Important Thing and it’s (as of yet) untitled sequel on here as things I want to finish, but I’m much more determined to see those through, so I don’t think they qualify for the “never will actually write” part of this question :)

15. What are your writing strengths?

I don’t know if other people agree with this, but I think I write pretty decent dialogue. My “training” (if you can call it that) is in, as you might have figured out by now, script and screenplay writing (those were the only creative writing classes I took in college). So having a sense of the rhythm a conversation needs to have and how to write dialogue that sounds mostly like how people really talk (but shined and tightened up enough so that it’s not actually like verbatim dialogue, which is far less interesting to read!) is something that I feel like comes pretty easily. I also think I do okay with similes and metaphors - my brain tends to work in that way. It’s easier for me to think of stuff (feelings, especially) in terms of comparing it to more familiar things than to just think of the thing directly, if that makes sense?

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

If I was being honest, this would be a very long section, but I know it’s not fun to read a big ol’ paragraph of someone self-criticizing, so I’ll keep it to one or two items ;) A big one for me is pacing, I think. I tend to write more than I need to and to over-explain things, so my chapters get very long and sometimes don’t really go anywhere? Until all of the sudden, they DO, because things need to HAPPEN! I’m a pretty rigorous self-editor, but I do have a really hard time cutting out sections (unless they’re really just not working), so even if it would help the pacing to leave out this conversation between character A and character B, I often can’t make myself cut it. I also think I struggle sometimes with balancing my ‘showing’ and my ‘telling,’ especially in the sense of me over-explaining certain things - like when it comes to feelings/facial expressions/etc, for example. I compensate for that in Important Thing by making it a part of a few people’s POV, but it’s not really a good habit to have in general. Also spelling! I’m really bad at spelling and run my stuff through robust spellchecks and text-to-speech before I post anything to make up for it :)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I do it with some regularity, although I always get nervous about doing it wrong! It’s hard to avoid in AoS, where characters are spies and should (in theory, at least) have a working knowledge of multiple languages (”We’re spies, I thought we all learned languages?!”). Even in an AU, where characters aren’t spies, I like to try and pay homage to that, plus pay homage to certain characters’ native languages or just general multilingualism. I’ve spent a fair amount of time around people who speak more than one language, so I feel like it’s a natural part of groups of people to have more than one language spoken. I have a pretty good handle on written Spanish, a patchy idea of French, plus I know some Russian phrases from my dad and some German words from my grandfather, but I do rely on internet translation a lot. I usually run stuff through google, then run it backwards to see just how far off the initial translation was, then consult some actual, like, language learning sites to see if there’s particular idioms or common phrases that use different words than what google will give me, then run those words through backwards in the place of the original words to see if I can massage the whole thing to sound reasonably competent. Languages like Russian or Mandarin (which have their own alphabets/characters) are the hardest, since I have to also try and do a transliteration. I always try to put an apology/disclaimer in the notes any time I write in a language that isn’t English, because I’m sure I make lots of mistakes.

Also, I tend not to italicize words that are in other languages, because it looks weird on the page to me to set the other language apart like that (and because I italicize mainly for internal thoughts or emphasis, and usually what’s being said in another language isn’t internal or being emphasized). I put a rough translation at the end so we don’t have to pause the story for a parenthetical translation, but because the translation’s not right there, I try to either put in enough context clues that a person can still understand what’s going on, or I make sure that what’s written in another language isn’t critical to the overall understanding of the scene.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Officially, it’s AoS, since that’s the only fandom I’ve published for. I think the first true fandom I wrote fic for was probably either Harry Potter (entirely populated with OCs lol, I just liked using the world/setting), Percy Jackson (a mix of OCs and canon characters), or X-Men (all canon characters). I was a bit of a latecomer to fanfiction, though, like, I wrote a ton as a kid, but mostly original stuff, because I didn’t know that fanfiction in its current form was even allowed until I was in high school lol.

Oh! I almost forgot one! I’m not sure if this really counts as a fandom, but it’s definitely the earliest version of fanfic I wrote haha... I was like 12 and I wrote more than one story of an OC joining Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men, and then also one of that same OC becoming a knight of the Round Table, so like... do what you will with that information haha.

19. What's you're favorite fic you've written?

I can’t choose between my two darlings :( I mean, okay, technically it’s probably Important Thing. That story’s my baby. It’s huge and I’ve been working on it for almost 2 years, and I’ve poured a lot of my heart and soul into it. I’ve fallen in love with the universe I built in it, so much so that I wrote an entire prequel and have very concrete plans for a lengthy sequel. But I can’t not crow about Shoulder to Shoulder (the aforementioned prequel!), too... I’m just really proud of that one - it has a lot of firsts for me. First completed story. First romance-focused story. First foray into expanding the Important Thing universe. But yes, if I have to choose, then Important Thing wins. That’s a story that I started writing exclusively for myself - to give myself characters I could relate to and to explore a style of AoS fic that I loved reading - and that’s a story I will always and forever be proud of.

I think most people have probably answered this tag game at this point, so I don’t want to accidentally retag anyone! If you haven’t yet, and would like to join in, please do! This is your invitation <3

[bigbrotherlouis]

for director’s cut: the raleigh/airport scene in ‘i can’t find nothin’...’ if you would like to!!!!

ANGELA you’re gonna make me talk about sex scenes on main?! let’s DO IT

(director’s cut meme)

andrei understands, on some level, why they have to fly commercial, (i’m always going to make players fly commercial in fic if i can. direct action.)   even with a job like theirs, but in practicality, when he’s wandering around the raleigh airport at six am after their flight out is delayed, he doesn’t.

marty’s laughing at him in the way that means he’s trying to be subtle about it, but andrei’s too grumpy to care. (this was for la.) it’s too fucking early and the line for coffee is too fucking long.

“it’s too early,” he whines. marty flips over the book in his hands to read the back cover.

“boo fuckin’ hoo, bud.”

“i’m tired.” and again, in russian, “я устал.”

“не— не— i don’t care,” (i couldn’t remember how to phrase this properly and i didn’t want to look it up, plus it’s funny) marty snaps back. “it’s your own fault for watching tv until one in the morning.”

“it was gossip girl,” he mutters. “important american culture.” (in one of my transition workshops where we learned to handle moving countries, we watched mean girls as an example of american culture. true story.)

“uh huh, and degrassi is exactly how canadian high school was like.” (didn’t like the flow on this sentence but i couldn’t figure out how else to phrase it. oh well.)

andrei is, like, ninety percent sure marty didn’t finish high school in canada, but he’s not willing to take the chance that he’s wrong and get teased about it. “please, can we go to starbucks now? давай, давай.” [let’s go, let’s go] (translation is always a struggle, and even more so when it’s a different alphabet like russian. i decided to include translations when context isn’t immediately clear for the reader’s comfort. also, this is something my family does-- use a different language when we want to stress something, like svechy stressing that he wants to leave)

“talking in russian won’t get me to go any faster, svechy,” marty says, placid for the early morning, and shoves a book into andrei’s hands. “here. read this and distract yourself.”

“i don’t read until i awake.” (svechy’s syntax was hard for me to write, because i want it to be clear, true to character, and respectful all at once which is hard to balance. it’s why svech’s grammar can sometimes seem a little inconsistent-- sometimes, i chose respect and readability over true to characterization. also, transliteration of accents can make people seem childish or dumb which is absolutely not what i want!)

“sucks to suck.”

andrei grumbles under his breath, a mixture of russian and english and some of sebastian’s favourite swedish (this should be finnish. oops.) curses thrown in there too, absently drumming his fingers on the cover of the book he’s still holding. marty is paying him no attention, which almost bothers him as much as the lack of caffeine does.

he’s cocking his head to read the spines of the books in the airport store when he feels the heat of someone step behind him, too close for politeness, and he’s whirling before he can even really think about it. (there really aren’t a lot of places spies can meet up by accident without getting too repetitive, especially in something that’s supposed to be silly and short, but an airport felt plausible.)

“whoa,” says joel, stepping back out of andrei’s elbows. “easy there.”

“joel?”

“in the flesh,” he says with a grin, and andrei’s thinking about how twice is a coincidence but three times is a pattern when (this is me lampshading their constant meetups because i didn’t feel like expounding on it LOL)— “is that twilight?”

“i— what?”

“the book you’re reading.”

andrei looks down at his hands and then scowls in the general direction of the shelves. fucking marty. (this is the whole reason they’re in the bookstore. for me to make this joke about svech holding twilight.)

joel tips his head to the side and grins wider. “didn’t peg (haha peg) you for a vampire guy, but i can see it. wait, fuck, are you from transylvania?” (apologies to americans but this is a little jab at your general geography abilities)

“no, not in in russia,” he says absently. “siberia, yes. transylvania, no. why you here?”

“well, i just like to lurk around airports for fun. you see interesting people like this.”

“really.”

joel snorts. “no, i have a flight, dumbass. i’m a business bitch.” (my rule of thumb for writing joel’s dialogue is to think of the most ridiculous thing i can imagine a person saying in any given circumstance and then assigning him that line.)

“a business bitch?”

“yeah, dude. makin’ money moves n’shit.”

“you’re not following me?” andrei asks, aiming for teasing, pretending it’s not a real question. (more lampshading. i was lazy.) joel makes his eyes go wide and innocent, and mostly doesn’t succeed.

“andrew,” he says, outraged. “are you accusing me of being a stalker?”

“yes.”

“oh, so you’re definitely team edward. (this joke fell into my lap) i see how it is. can’t a bro say hi to his bro in an airport, especially after getting a decent brojob the last time they saw each other?”

andrei mouths the word brojob (i crack up every time this term is used and joel would absolutely say it) and then shakes his head. “no.”

“tough crowd. what are you doing here, buddy?”

“waiting for marty to finish so we can go to starbucks. too early and he is too slow.”

“yeah?” joel looks over at where marty is now examining the overpriced souvenirs with a very careful air, taking them off the shelves and putting them gently back. (i was very into this image) “wanna go stand in line with me?” (high romance there, bee)

strictly speaking, marty and andrei are supposed to be together when travelling, just in case someone gets snatched. it’s happened before, but andrei really, really wants something to drink before they fly out to fucking vancouver, or wherever they’re going. he can’t even remember. besides, if joel was going to snatch him, he would’ve done it earlier, in the hotel when andrei was fucked out and happy. he shrugs. (listen. i didn’t want to do any worldbuilding because it was a fun au so i did the bare minimum.)

“sure. marty, i go to stand in line,” he yells and marty waves a hand without looking up. the line stretches down the hallway, too many people patiently waiting for a rush. (i’m so familiar with this and it makes me sad just writing about it) andrei can’t fault them; he’s tired too, which is why he doesn’t realise that joel’s pulling him towards the bathrooms instead of the coffee shop, pushing him into the family stall and shoving the door closed. (i’m gonna be honest: i have absolutely no idea why i made this a sex scene. like none. i remember being halfway through and being like “....i’m writing?? airport sex??” but i don’t remember why i decided it was a good idea.)

for a second, andrei thinks this is when he gets kidnapped and killed, a rival taking him out in the crowded airport where no one can see. the bulgarian maneuver would’ve been a lot less conspicuous, but oh well. (this is referring to the bulgarian assassins who killed a journalist in the 80s? i think? with a poison-tipped umbrella and i’m just now realising that’s probably not common knowledge)

instead, joel clicks the lock in place and presses up close, plastered to the front of andrei.

“wha—” says andrei, but it’s swallowed up in joel’s mouth, swallowed up in the kiss that joel gives him. he kisses back, of course he does, because it’s a fucking good kiss. joel hums, coaxing his mouth open for a minute and then biting on his lower lip before pulling away. he doesn’t go far, hands skimming down andrei’s body until he drops to his knees on the dirty bathroom floor.

“we are in a toilet,” andrei hisses. “in an airport.” (svech has the practical response)

joel shrugs, giving him the biggest shit-eating grin as he undoes his belt. (joel is never not going to be smug) “guess you have to be fast, then. besides, i owe you one.”

technically, he still got off last time, even if it was pretty basic, it’s not like andrei’s going to say no, not when joel is looking so eager and mischievous.

“don’t make too much noise,” instructs joel, (i realised after i posted the fic that both blowjobs start with someone giving instructions and i’m gonna say it’s because it’s a literary parallel and not because i don’t know how to transition into sexual acts) and then he’s got his mouth on andrei’s dick and andrei can’t think of anything else to say. he bangs his head against the door and clamps a hand over his mouth, digging his fingers of his other hand into the wood behind him.

joel is good enough that andrei’s not going to last long, not like this, getting off on the secrecy of it all. (read: i just didn’t want to write a lot. but also i think svechy has an exhibitionist streak in him and joel definitely does) it’s a tiny bit shameful in the way that makes him groan into his palm, makes him rock his hips into joel’s hot mouth. joel just hums around andrei’s dick and that’s— okay, that’s a lot. andrei’s gonna get a splinter under his nails from digging so hard, or maybe he’s gonna die on the spot, or like something because joel pulls off to just go right back in again and fuck. (fun fact! i’ve never had sex i don’t know what i’m writing)

“fuck,” he hisses through the meat of his hand. “fuck!”

it’s too loud, probably, and joel’s eyes flick up to his with a warning.

“sorry,” andrei breathes. joel pinches his thigh, sharp enough to sting, and embarrassingly, that’s what makes him come with a noise between a breath and a whine.

“baller,” (joel pick something less sexy to say i dare you) joel says smugly when andrei comes back to earth, enough of a douche move that andrei can’t help but roll his eyes. he flicks joel on the cheek.

“you suck.”

he grins. “well, yeah. obviously.” (low hanging fruit but he’d say it so i wrote it)

“idiot,” andrei mutters and then tugs on joel’s shoulders until he stands up, pulls him in until he can nudge at joel’s jaw with his nose. “i help you?”

joel shakes his head, his hair tickling the side of andrei’s cheek. “nah, i like it when you owe me. hey, does it count as being part of the mile high club if we’re still on the ground?” (i was literally in the middle of posting this fic to ao3 before i realised i had not made a mile high joke which was unacceptable. typed it right into the text box)

“no?”

“damn. it’s on my bucket list.”

“you so weird,” andrei tells him, not managing to keep the fondness out of his voice, and then yawns so hard his jaw cracks. “i’ll pay you back with a drink.”

“oh my god,” says joel and then pinches andrei in the side so he twitches. “i just gave you the best airport blowjob—”

“only airport blowjob.”

“the best fucking airport blowjob of your life, and you’re thinking about drinks? fuckin’ ridiculous, andrew.”

“not andrew, yo-el.” (this is svech getting back at joel as best he can. trying to give it as good as he gets it. establishing banter!!)

“sure, bro,” joel mumbles and andrei shoves at him so he can get his pants back on, fumbling with the door. “next time better be fuckin’ phenomenal. you owe me big time.”

“excuse me, you said it was payback. we equal.”

“maybe i changed my mind,” joel says with a grin, bumping him with his hip.

“maybe i disappear forever,” he replies, halfway between teasing and halfway to serious. joel reaches up to fix his snapback (this is also for la.) and shrugs.

“nah, you’re too sweet to do that.”

“i’m not sweet.”

“uh huh, bro. keep tellin’ yourself that shit.”

the line’s gone down, incredibly, and they’re close enough to the counter that andrei has to start thinking about what to order. he should probably get something for marty, or risk getting whined at all flight.

“yo,” says joel when they’re two people away from the barista. “you got digits?”

andrei hesitates and then holds up his hands, wriggling his fingers. “uh. yes?” (it’s probably more in character for real life joel to ask for instagram instead but this joke made me laugh so much that i couldn’t bear to leave it out. also it’s a little fun second language moment)

joel blinks at him for a long second and then breaks out into a wide smile, shaking his head. “nah, not those. i mean, like, a phone number.”

“i don’t have a phone,” he mutters and then pulls one out of his pocket. (YES this is a tumblr post ripoff but svech wasn’t just going to give it up so easily so in it went) “okay, give.”

he dutifully types out the sequence joel rattles off and then sends a smiley face to the number when joel makes him text.

“cool. now we can text instead of ambushing each other in public.”

“that not me,” andrei tells him. “all you.”

“you’re jumpy and it’s cute.”

“i’ll delete your number. block it.” he warns and joel waves a hand.

“yeah, yeah,” he says cheerfully and then leans over to tell the barista what he wants to drink. it’s the most ridiculous sugary concoction, hardly any coffee, and andrei stares at him in horror. (this is projection for my horror at some of the things i’ve seen in american coffee shops. that’s just. so much sugar. also prime chirping opportunity to show their personalities and dynamic a little)

“you gonna drink that?” he asks and joel frowns a little. “is just sugar. candy.”

“yeah, so? it tastes so good.”

“you not gonna have teeth.” he orders two cold brews and pays. “you gonna die early from sugar.”

“somehow,” joel says with a sparkle in his eye, “i don’t think it’s gonna be the sugar that’ll nerf me in the end.” (minor foreshadowing here! also lmao @ the thought of joel saying nerf) 

he gets his vanilla bean java chip unicorn whatever frappuccino— literally, what the fuck— and takes a satisfied sip.

“disgusting,” says andrei. “no more kissing for you.”

“aw, bud, how am i gonna practice? you said i needed it.” (it’s not stated in the fic but joel learned how to flirt from watching tk and patty and i think it shows) 

“lost cause,” he tells him airily. he’s about to suggest something— he’s not even sure what— when someone appears over joel’s shoulder.

“farabee,” the guy says. he looks stern, but that might be the impressive beard. or the death glare he’s levelling andrei’s way. “where the fuck have you been?”

joel brandishes his drink. “caffeinating it up, g. stayin’ alert and awake.” (real life joel has said this at least once to claude, and i will stand by that statement)

g’s frown gets deeper. “we’re going to miss our flight.”

“nah, we’ve got time— oh, shit. yeah, we gotta bounce, bruh, but i’ll catch you later? text me.” (inelegant departure but my goal was to not overthink things in this fic, like i’m prone to do, so i left it) he almost literally get pulled away by his elbow, towed by his ginger friend through the airport so he can enthusiastically wave his goodbye.

“well,” marty says out of nowhere, reaching for his cold brew and making andrei jump. “there’s good news and bad news.”

“okay.”

“the good news is that he’s cute and somehow into your stupid face.” he takes a long drink, conscious that andrei is about to hit him for making him wait and enjoying it very much. (he’s dramatic and also i wanted to draw out the surprise a little) andrei needs new teammates.

“the bad news?” he prompts.

“the bad news,” repeats marty, grimacing. “the bad news is that he’s definitely in the same line of work as us.”([john mulaney voice] the other shoe just dropped.)

everything in andrei’s head grinds to a stop. “uh. what?”

“i recognize his handler. giroux, french canadian division.” (i’m gonna work g into fic when i can bc i love him)

“joel’s american,” he says absently and marty takes another drink, shrugging.

“so philly’s an international cooperation team. (this was my way of making the international aspect of the spy teams make sense, and also to not have this be enemies-to-lovers, as much as i love that trope) can’t imagine that ever happening.” he gives svech a look which, yes, andrei knows they work together because of a treaty or whatever, but still. he wants marty to be wrong about joel, for so many reasons.

mainly because he doesn’t like feeling like he’s been conned, not when he’s so good at doing the conning, and this is a big one. (it’s not my fic if there’s not at least a little angst!)

“fuck,” he says glumly. marty pats him on the shoulder.

“well,” he says. “at least he’s cute.” (marty’s trying to show his support for svech here! he just wants good things for his friend :)))

that was so fun to do, thank you so much for asking! ily!! <3 <3 <3

[lordbhreanna]

I adore Nikolai but I'm new to the games. Why does he have two different names? Nikolai Zinoviev and Nicholai Ginovaef? Does using one or the other really matter?

I’m gonna try to explain it as simple as possible, because I’m not even sure I know where all the confusion came from at first, but it’s definitely there. The first problem seems to be that Nicholai Ginovaef is a weird ass transliteration of his name that goes back to the original game - his surname was never addressed in game, but subtitles always showed his name as Nicholai (I can vouch for the Spanish subtitles, haven’t seen any others!). 

I guess it’s because it comes initially from the Japanese katakana (ニコライ・ジノビェフ) into romaji, aka the Latin alphabet (Nikorai Jinobaefu), since katakana usually copies the pronunciation of foreign words. So, when transliterating the surname, they just changed the “Jinobaefu” into “Ginovaef,” because it sounds the same. Using Nicholai instead of Nikolai seems to be because they went for the Nordic spelling instead of Slavic (it was @hereswhatsarasaid who made me aware of this, because I had no idea there was such a difference, I just thought they used “ch” to transcribe that sound, like in words such as “alchemist” 😂.) 

But since it’s a Russian name, apparently the actual transliteration of his name from the Cyrillic script (which, according to my trusty Lexilogos, is николаи зиновиев) should be Nikolai Zinoviev. I have no knowledge of Russian, though, so maybe any native speakers can confirm if this is correct? I’d trust their take on this over anyone.

The thing is, I haven’t seen “Nikolai Zinoviev” used in canon material ever? In Operation Raccoon City, it shows up as Nicholai too. The only places I have seen it transliterated like that are fan-created websites, like the Wiki and such. I might have missed something, of course!

I actually prefer Nikolai Zinoviev’s spelling to Nicholai Ginovaef because it seems to be the accurate one, but Nicholai Ginovaef is the official localisation and I’d rather stick to it to avoid confusion. I was the crazy person who contacted the OTW so they would fix AO3′s tags for him, because I suspected this confusion would go on, and I also understand that each fan prefers to use one version or the other - especially if Russian is their mother tongue, I guess? I know I would write names like Ramón Salazar or Bitores Méndez with the proper accent marks, even if they are not in the original game. Though I also understand that’s very minor compared to completely different spellings.

Capcom is super weird with names, and they don’t always do their research for this kind of stuff (I’m looking at YOU, Resident Evil 4), so I can totally see them butchering the whole Nicholai/Nikolai and just going on with the wrong one for the rest of their lives, instead of fixing it 😂

Anyway, anon, sorry for the long rant. Languages are my business so I find this all strangely fascinating. But tl;dr, this is where the confusion may come from - but the actual transliteration of the name in Capcom approved material is Nicholai Ginovaef, and the remake just doubled down on that.

-

EDIT: Ok, so his actual name in Russian is Николай Зиновьев (thanks for the clarification, @cheshireneechan ❤️)

[valhrafns-nest]

Modern Paganism - Runes

Runes are a focal point of modern paganism, since they portrait a certain mysticism sought after by many, especially by those of the esoteric variety: Ancient symbols of a long gone ancestral culture, imbued with great symbolism and power. But are they really that laden with symbolism, are they really what many today perceive them to be?

The short answer is No. The biggest problem, in my opinion, stems from the often completely nonsensical usage of runes and interpretations that are not backed by our current scientific understanding of Old Norse culture. So, for starters, I’d like to give a brief history of runes and clear up some very common misconceptions.

A Brief History of Runes

The earliest runes finds that we have are from the 2nd century CE and stem from the area around southern Scandinavia and northern Germania. They are not some genious or gods-given invention, but are rather most likely derived from the latin script, although some scholars still think it might have been derived from the estruscan script. In any event, they are probably, as Düwel suggests, the creation of one or few skilled individuals, that sought to recreate writing for their own culture, while forming their sources into something of their own, from their own culture. Why they didn’t just adapt the latin script is unclear, but some suggest that it might have been to create stronger cultural identity to distance themselves from Rome. In the 2nd and 3rd century, these runes spread first throughtout germanic Settlements in Northern Europe and then throughout the whole of Germania, leaving finds even in my home state of Bavaria. This script was used utterly differently from the way the romans wrote. Whereas in Rome, people wrote a lot of things down, literacy was relatively high for the time – still very low to our standards, but still way higher than anywhere else in Europe -,   literature existed not only in oral tradition, but was also recorded; the germanic people on the other hand used their script only in a epigraphic way, meaning small inscriptions with either pragmatic use: Declaration of ownership, memorials, recording of certain events on public stones; or “magical”: invocation of certain gods, invocation of powers (e.g. writing “fly” on a spear to make it fly farther when thrown), etc., with the magical ones being the earliest examples. (see Alu)

As the Northern Germanic dialects of Proto-Germanic began to form a own language, Old Norse, the runes began to change with the language, though not in a way that makes a lot of sense. While normally alphabets tend to get bigger when new sounds get introduced into a language, the set of runes used got a lot smaller in the Scandinavian region, while the Old English futhorc stayed more like Elder Futhark, while adding some new runes to fit the sounds of the language. The Younger Futhark contains 16 instead of the original 24 runes, with some runes like *perthro having had fallen out of use for at least 300 years because of the rarity of certain sounds, some changing into easier forms, like hagall. The new runic futhark was rather hard to read and still only used epigraphically, but in a greater extend than before, upgrading from around 350 finds for Elder Futhark to around 6,000 for Younger Futhark. Runecarving was a profession, as attested by some stones, and not an easy one, judging by the hard writing rules and by some badly made copies of runestones with nonsensical texts that also date back to the timeperiod – 8th/9th .- 12th century. When texts were written, no runes where to be repeated, even between words since word separators where not the norm. Also, runes articuled in the same region of the mouth were very often left out. To see what this means in practice, let’s have a small lesson in rune transliteration and then translation.

(Source: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&pid=50955) We’ll take the Side A of the famous Jelling stone as an example. The runes themselves look like this:

ᚼᛅᚱᛅᛚᛏᚱ ᛬ ᚴᚢᚾᚢᚴᛦ ᛬ ᛒᛅᚦ ᛬ ᚴᛅᚢᚱᚢᛅ ᚴᚢᛒᛚ ᛬ ᚦᛅᚢᛋᛁ ᛬ ᛅᚠᛏ ᛬ ᚴᚢᚱᛘ ᚠᛅᚦᚢᚱ ᛋᛁᚾ ᛅᚢᚴ ᛅᚠᛏ ᛬ ᚦᚭᚢᚱᚢᛁ ᛬ ᛘᚢᚦᚢᚱ ᛬ ᛋᛁᚾᛅ ᛬ ᛋᛅ ᚼᛅᚱᛅᛚᛏᚱ (᛬) ᛁᛅᛋ ᛬ ᛋᚭᛦ ᛫ ᚢᛅᚾ ᛫ ᛏᛅᚾᛘᛅᚢᚱᚴ

When converted to latin characters, they look like this.

haraltr : kunukʀ : baþ : kaurua kubl : þausi : aft : kurm faþur sin auk aft : þąurui : muþur : sina : sa haraltr (:) ias : sąʀ * uan * tanmaurk

This is not Old Norse, or any language at all really. We need to apply our knowledge of the runes and the way they were written to get to Old Norse text. A first step would be, for example, to realize that voiceless and voiced consonants were not differentiated when written, so we need to apply some Old Norse language to these words and see what could be the words meant. After a while, you will get something like this, if you speak Old Norse:

haraldr kunugr bað kaurua kubl þausi aft gurm faður sin auk aft þąurui muður sina sa haraldr ias sąʀ uan danmaurk

This looks quite better, let’s continue! Now we look at names, that we might recognize. We know the stone was set by King Harald Bluetooth, whose parents were names Gorm and Þorvi, so we realize, that ᚢ can be u, but also o, as can ąu. ᚢ can also stand for w/v, (double u). So the text looks like this now:

haraldr kunugr bað kaurua kubl þausi aft gorm faður sin auk aft þorvi muður sina sa haraldr ias sąʀ uan danmaurk

After this, some hard Old Norse is needed: kunugr is konungr (n left out because of the g, which is articulated in the same position), kaurua is gørva, kubl is kumbl (m and b are articulated at the same position, the lips), sin is sinn (masculine form), muður is móðir, ias is es (vowels are rather randomly put in most inscriptions, as there was not uniform writing standard), saR is sér, uan is vann, danmaurk is danmǫrk. Auk is ok, since vowels are often weird in Old East Norse inscriptions. Also aft is aftr Adding lenghts, the full sentence is now:

Haraldr konungr bað gørva kumbl þausi aftr Gorm, faður sinn, ok aftr Þórvi móður sina. Sá Haraldr es sér vann Danmörk.

This means: King Haraldr bade to construct this memorial after (in honor of) Gorm, his father and Þórvi, his mother. (It was) this Haraldr, that had won Denmark for himself… (the sentencce continues on the other sides of the runestone.)

In conclusion, the runes were never (apart from one attempt in the middle ages to write laws down like that, but it didn’t catch on, see Codex Runicus) used in a traditional, literarical way, but were rather a way for some elite class of runemasters and local rulers to record stuff, mark ownership or use “magic”. Full disclaimer: I don’t go into everything and focus strongly on Scandinavia, since I didn’t want to write a full novel. If you’d like to know more in depth, please refrain from using popular, often wrong sources, especially on the internet, and instead look at books from the likes of Düwel: Web Archive: Rune Bibliography.

Runes today

When you look at runes in the modern age, many people attribute a lot of things besides their names to them, but let me be clear in this:

A whole lot of these interpretation are based on NOTHING but the writers imagination.

There are very few things we know for certain: We know the names of the runes from Old Norse and Old English rune poems from the late middle ages, which were written down in christian times, making these an uncertain source since runes had been out of use for a long while by then. From these names, we can reconstruct the names of the Elder Futhark, but we know nothing for certain in that period. We know that they most likely knew the names of the runes and used them seldom as placeholders for words, e.g. ᛟ as short for *othala, meaning estate, heritage, inheritance. Beyond that, we have no sources as to what runes were associated with. While the edda contains some references to runes, it is hard to attribute certain meanings to specific runes.

What does this mean for modern paganism? It means that most of what is “taught” about runes today is just flat out fantasy with no basis in tradition, with runes being treated like magic, while ignoring their historic background. While I don’t personally believe in magic, I don’t judge those that do. What I do mind is passing of some New Age interpretation of these runes off as some ancient wisdom, while those interpretations aren’t even 200 years old. If you see meaning in these symbols beyond what we know about them, if you feel they represent something bigger, I will not discourage you, I even think so myself, but please keep in mind, that this is your interpretation and not something based in what we know about the ancestors.

There is a lot of misinformation disguised as truth out there, and I highly encourage you to stick to scientific, modern sources when trying to learn about runes. I leave you with the pagan sounds of Sowulo and bid thee farewell, until next we meet. Verið blessuð. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLK0WNnzTY4

[the-caravan-languages]

lesson 3: alphabets

So, we have 5 letters to learn today. They don’t all share the exact same shape, but they are quite similar. So, here they are:

د ذ ر ز ژ

This time, we’ll actually start with the first letter: د. This one is called dâl, and makes the sound “d”. It’s very common, occuring extensively in both native Persian words and loanwords. Now we need to talk about its forms, because it’s a bit unique compared to the letters we’ve covered so far:

د د- ـد- ـد

One of the first things you’ll notice is that it doesn’t really have an initial form. This is because د does not connect to the letter after it like all of the other letters we’ve learned do. It does connect to the letter before it though, but the form doesn’t really noticeably change at all; you just kind of add a line to the bottom of it. Now, I can actually give a real Persian word as an example!

اَدات

In case it’s not clear, the line above the alef there marks “a”, that isn’t an alef madd. So this is read as “adât”, and means “instrument” or “tool”. In all honestly, it’s not very common, so it’s probably best not to try and memorize this one, but be proud that you can read it!

Next up on the list is ذ, called “zâl”. This makes the sound “z”. Like the letters ث and ح which we’ve learned previously, ذ only occurs in Arabic loanwords. Even then, it’s not very common. I can’t really think of any example words you can read yet, so sorry about that.

But don’t worry, now we’re hitting another really common one: ر re! This is pronounced as “r”, but not the English “r”: in fact, it has multiple possible pronunciations. At the beginning of a word, it can either be pronounced as a trill (like in Spanish “perro”) or as a tap (like the “tt” in the American pronunciation of “little”). Elsewhere, it’s basically always a tap. But, like any other letter, it can take a tashdid and be lengthened, in which case it sounds like a trill. So, for all the time I spent explaining pronunciation, there’s not a whole lot to explain regarding the forms. Like د and ذ before it, it doesn’t connect to the letter after it.

ر ر- ـر- ـر

One thing that might be difficult at first, however, is telling the difference between د and ر, especially in small fonts. Remember those pieces of paper that teachers in early elementary school would give you to learn how to write, with lines everywhere so you know where to write the letters? Imagine a bottom line where most letters are supposed to end. While د stays on that line and doesn’t dip below, ر goes way down below that line. In addition, it’s much more curvy and less angular than د. In handwriting, though, one very common thing that happens is that ر is written as just a diagonal line:

While د is just a wedge (see the second letter to the right):

Hopefully with practice you should be able to easily distinguish the two. Now, we have a new letter, ز ze. This one is pronounced “z”, like ذ. You heard me right, both letters have the exact same pronunciation. The difference is, though, ز is by far the more common letter to represent this sound, occurring in tons of native words and loanwords alike. You see, ذ in Arabic is actually pronounced like the “th” in “this”, and as it used to be in very early New Persian. However, it eventually merged pronunciation with “z”. Meanwhile, even in Arabic, ز is just pronounced like a normal z. And seeing as it’s such a common letter, I can give you another example word:

زَرد

This means “yellow”. And now, our last letter for this lesson: ژ zhe. This is pronounced like the “si” in “vision” or the last consonant sound in “beige”. This letter was actually created specifically for use in Persian, and doesn’t occur in Arabic at all. It’s also not super common, so because of that I can’t give an example word that doesn’t also contain letters you don’t know. And, that concludes this week’s letters. Now try out the exercise and make sure you still remember letters from the last 2 lessons.

READING PRACTICE: transliterate these possibly gibberish, possibly real words. (Real words are italicized):

ژُپّ، راز، پَر، جَذّاب، خِرِز، رُخ، تَرِژ

[studytherin]

Hi, i really want to start learning thai but it feels like i don't have time with school or it gets harder to get into it because of the school work i have to do/study/revise. Do you have any tips on how i can start learning thai along with my school work or should i just wait until the summer?

well, i’ve also considered learning languages during the school break. and i already did it during the past autumn break. but it didn’t work. when i go back to school, everything i’ve been learning for the whole month is just like puff. gone. so i think it’s better to learn languages while going to school as normal. but please, do take a break on it if it’s around the exams week.

0) learn thai writing system: i don’t know if you’ve already memorised and understood the alphabet and pronunciation or not. but if you haven’t yet, this is the first step which i recommend you learn them as soon as possible.

our writing system is like korean’s. we have consonants and vowels. and by mixing them together, you can form a word or a phrase. we have 44 consonants, but with just 21 consonant sounds. this means that some consonants produce the same sound, although they are different characters. (for example, ข ฃ ค ฅ ฆ all made k sound) also, we have 21 vowels and 5 tones.

and i highly suggest you learning them, also their pronunciation, and practising by writing them down over and over again in a notebook or a piece of paper. you may try forming or transliterating english into thai. for example, tumblr -> ทัมเบลอ, i am fine -> ไอแอมไฟน์. 

1) immerse yourself into the language: now this is what i always say, but trust me, it’s the easiest and one of the most effective way to learn a language, especially a language like thai. after you get the concept of thai writing system, try some thai songs or news (just read it outloud, there’s no need to understand it completely at this point). 

i personally think that music helps the most since you can always listen to them. like, maybe on your way to school or way to other classes. and you can always search for the translation and learn some interesting vocab from that. now you can practise writing some thai alphabets while listening to thai songs! (just drop by as an anon if you need some songs to be translated or i might just analyse the whole song if i have enough time) or if you’re a bit more advanced, you can try listening to some songs and write down the lyrics then check if you get them right or not.

2) speak thai with your friends at school: i love using the languages i’m learning with my friends. it’s not like i speak the whole sentence in swedish to my friend or type everything in korean to them, but just speaking a word or two with them. for example, i always pick up a call by saying “喂，你好” or “여보세요”. it’s a win-win situation, you know. your friends gain some more knowledge, and you get to practise your thai. by speaking it out loud, it’ll help you to be more confident and to perfect your pronunciation!

3) choose to do a work about thai language/thailand: there’ll always be that time when your teachers allow you to choose your own essay topic or research. and that’s the time when you can increase your knowledge about the language while finishing your homework at the same time. for example, i did a presentation about sweden, a speech about late night study session in south korea, and a magazine column about tourist attractions in switzerland. this will also motivate you to do the work since it’s all about what you’re interested in!

4) memorise the vocab at school: i often write some vocab down on a piece of folded a4 paper and carry them around the school with me. whenever you’re bored or you’re waiting for your friends, just pick that piece of paper up, start memorising the vocab, then tick it off if you can memorise it.

5) find some time to learn the language: not gonna lie, but this is what i’m struggling with, too, since school is being crazy all the time and it’s not enough to just do the steps i’ve listed down above. it’s even harder when there’s no thai duolingo course for english speakers. but i’d suggest you finish your homework the day you are assigned to do. by doing this way, i reckon there might be enough time for about an hour or two during the weekend for you to learn thai. 

and that’s probably it. you don’t have to do all of these, just do what you think you can manage. and if you have any questions, my ask box and my dm are always open. i’m willing to help. good luck learning thai!

[sisterofiris]

Hi, I was wondering if you had any advice for someone considering to learn a dead language? I’m interested in studying one by myself so I won’t be able to do it in school or uni or anything like that, but I think it sounds like a fun thing to do. If you had any beginner guides or resources or experiences that would be great, as well as any of your experiences. For reference I’m somewhat interested in Greek, Latin or Sumerian but preferably one that’s quite easy is good. Sorry to be a bother!

Hey! You’re not a bother, I’m always happy to help :) I’ll give an answer for each of the languages you mentioned since they’re all quite different.

Latin: it’s the most beginner-friendly ancient language, especially if you already know one or more romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese…). It was the first dead language I learnt, and I studied it on my own, so I can tell you from personal experience it’s definitely feasible! Another great thing about Latin is that you’re able to write short texts of your own relatively soon (something that’s a lot harder in, say, Sumerian), which helps you learn in a fun way. All that said, I’m not actually that big on Latin, so I don’t have any beginners guides or resources. Maybe @o-fortunate-adulescens​ could help?

Greek: this language holds my heart unlike any other (except Hittite). It’s a bit more difficult than Latin, particularly because it’s less regular and you also need to learn a new alphabet, but beyond that, it’s completely accessible. I have a number of beginner guides you can find on my Resources & Tags page, as well as tidbits, translations and advice tagged Ancient Greek. Overall, I think Greek is great to learn if you’re interested in ancient languages - it’s approachable while also offering little challenges, there’s a large and diverse corpus of texts to read, and it also comes in handy if ever you want to learn modern Greek.

Sumerian: this one’s… a challenge. I won’t say don’t learn it, because I’ve enjoyed it a lot - it really is fascinating - but it’s far from easy. It’s a language isolate, meaning no other known language on Earth is related to it, and its grammar is obscure enough that scholars still don’t agree on a number of points. That said, it really has a lot to offer, and I can attest that it’s learnable even by beginners - one of the students in my Sumerian class had never learnt any ancient languages before, and she’s still alive and translating hymns with us ;) Learning conversational Sumerian could be a compromise: @sumerianlanguage​ makes it all very approachable through everyday phrases, and normalised writing which makes the language look a lot more human. If you want to be able to translate the texts, however, you’ll have to get comfortable with the transliteration system (Gu₃-de₂-a instead of Gudea, for example) and probably learn a bit of cuneiform.

Other fun dead languages you could consider looking into are Akkadian, Hittite, Old Norse, and Egyptian.

All in all, I’d recommend that you look around a bit, read snippets in each language, and find out the basics of their grammar to get a feel for how well you’d “get on” with them. Once you’ve decided which language you want to stick with, my advice is to find a textbook. It’s a lot easier to stick with one method than to jump from one to another for every new grammar point.

I hope this has helped (and hasn’t put you off)! Learning ancient languages really is rewarding - it opens you up to a whole new culture and way of thinking, and often helps you understand your own, modern language too. Best of luck!

[eirikrjs]

Sooooooo... where to begin here. This is in response to this post where I claim that 4A’s YHVH 2 is not meant to be the Gnostic Demiurge. Frankly, I feel like a bit of an idiot for replying to this again because I know I’m going to be going over the same things as I did before, which I presume have been conveniently ignored.

But anyway, I guess I’ll go by paragraph groupings!

Paragraphs 1 & 2: Multiples of the same demon exist, including multiple Satans, and two Satans square off in the end of SMT2.

I suppose you mean that Satan and Lucifer can have a showdown in the final battles? But Jewish Satan, a part of God, and Christian Satan/Lucifer, the fallen angel, are pretty distinct and not interchangeable. You couldn’t put Lucifer in Judaism because Lucifer requires free will of a type that he wouldn’t get in Judaism because Yahweh is absolute and all angels are just a part of him.

Otherwise, yes, there are multiples of many demons, absolutely. But there are multiples for a reason: they are meant to be distinct concepts that are not necessarily interchangeable, as we see with Lucifer and Satan (unless they are “multiples” that work appropriately within a given religion, like Vishnu’s Avatars). I suppose you made this argument to try and refute what I said in the above linked post about Demiurge and YHVH not being equated in 4A because you can fight the latter with the former in your party, but you’re assuming an absolute equivalency where there isn’t one. Jewish Yahweh and Gnostic Demiurge are not the same being in religion or SMT (though see the paragraph immediately below), even if Gnosticism’s is based off of the Jewish. Gnostic Demiurge does things no Jew or even Christian would accept and is a distinct entity from “God” with a different background and personality.

So, in SMT, a demon has to be primarily the god or being their name implies them to be, else there would be no meaning to anything. By itself, SMT’s Demiurge is just the Demiurge. But sometimes context can change this, as we see with the Demiurge in Strange Journey. But there the context of the Demiurge changes in a logical way because it’s written to acknowledge the place of Yahweh in the Gnostic historical framework. It’s not there because they want to make an independent statement that God is evil or has a bad streak, but to make reference to the Gnostic belief system. So here, YHVH is only being “demonized” because of an explicit reference to a religious precedent. Again, context, something that is sorely lacking in 4A’s take on YHVH.

Paragraphs 3, 5, 6, 7, 8: There aren’t many Gnostic figures in SMT, Persona 5 has Gnostic and Kabbalistic themes, and there is room for Gnostic interpretations and themes in 4A. There are themes of “knowledge” in SMT and this absolutely means Gnosticism reference. These secret Gnostic themes have been there the whole time, but obscured by a Judeo-Christian facade because that would shift the aesthetic too much; the alternate themes that do exist are more subtle as not to interfere with the central themes. God has multiple names in Judaism but also Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the go-to when portraying YHVH as a bad guy and had to be an inspiration.

First: I don’t care what Persona does, it’s irrelevant. Persona is abstract with its various mythological elements by design.

As for the rest...there are just too many assumptions to make me even want to bother engaging with it. It honestly reminds me of the arguments a certain other someone makes. Your entire position is based on subjective interpretations and circumstantial evidence. Yes, it’s possible that the Gnostic Demiurge was part of the inspiration for 4A’s approach to YHVH (and I even admitted as such in the original post!) but there’s none of that all-important direct evidence to support the claim of a equivocal YHVH-Demiurge adaptation. General themes aren’t enough. A laughable hypothesis that the games are secretly Gnostic because Judeo-Christian appearances would be more acceptable is not enough. Gods having multiple names isn’t enough (which important gods don’t have multiple names?). All the direct evidence we have, from the game and Doi’s commentary, points to the fact that 4A’s YHVH is meant to be...YHVH, not the Demiurge.

Paragraphs 3 & 9: The “Smoking Guns”: “Archon” Michael and the lion-headed snake.

Had to save this for last. On the ribbon banner tied around Gaston’s Michael’s Spear...

...there are two visible Greek words. The easiest to see is “Μιχαήλ,” or “Michael,” of course referring to the archangel (though actually, it’s written as “ΜιχαΗλ“, with an upper-case Eta). The second, obscured word is “ο ἄρχων” or, rather, “ ο ἄρχωN” (another mistake, as Doi substituted the upper-case Greek letter Nu when it should have been lower-case), and this (ἄρχων, that is) is usually translated as “ruler,” but transliterated it is “archon.” This is really neat and I’m glad you pointed it out because I didn’t think to look too closely at the letters here.

However, the claim here is that the “archon” on the banner is a reference to Gnosticism and its gang of evil “rulers” headed by the Demiurge/Yaldabaoth. This is an incredible stretch because Michael is not considered an archon in Gnosticism. In fact, there’s an easier and better way to explain the meaning of “ruler Michael”: searching in Greek for “ο αρχων Μιχαηλ“ seems to imply that it’s just a way of expressing Michael’s name or a shortened version of “Archangel Michael” in Greek. Seems to have nothing to do with Gnosticism or its archons! This is akin to “Gungnir” being written in the runic alphabet on Doi’s Odin’s spear. It’s likely that Doi wanted to include some extra flair to the weapons and quickly looked up how to write words relevant to them (and not perfectly, in the case of Michael’s Spear).

Also, think about it from the creator’s perspective. If you were writing a game and wanted an overarching theme that’s relevant to its climax, would you include a reference to that theme, one of the only explicit references to the theme in the game, in an easily overlooked detail on a single character design? Moreover, does a minor detail on an illustration from an artist who by all accounts seems divorced from the writing process constitute evidence for such a theme? In the artbook commentary for Gaston, Doi mentions that the spear references the battle with Lucifer; no mention of archons at all.  

Finally, the lion-headed snake. I feel I have to quote you here, Bunkerbead: “Sure, the over-designed plagues nonsense looks stupid, but that’s another matter. If I was going to draw the demiurge, I probably wouldn’t leave the head as a lion either.” Okay, so, this classical appearance for the Demiurge, one you have submitted to me or Kaneko’s Crib Notes multiple times as an explanation for the YHVH 2 design and why it isn’t nonsensical, is something you admit doesn’t actually apply to the design and you yourself would immediately reject? I...rest my case.

I’m sorry Bunkerman/Beadman, your arguments here are just too inconsistent, lack real evidence, and are more easily explained in other ways. It’s very tempting to jump to immediate conclusions that support a narrative of your own creation, even if it’s far grander than what the creators intended, but that road more often than not quickly strains the limits of credulity and, as I think has been displayed here, an unwillingness to accept the direct evidence that refutes what you would rather believe.

[ribbonstrawberrysurprise]

Ribbon vs. Reborn

This is one of those big TMM translation arguments.

I guess I’ve already taken a side due to my url...

Putting that aside for now, why is there a debate over the first word of the Mew Mew’s attack names? And does one option have more evidence?

The Mew Mew’s attacks all* begin with リボーン (ribōn/riboon/riboun). 

*except sometimes Pudding in the manga

Japanese syllables (except for “n”) cannot end in a consonant, so foreign words written in katakana try to sound sort of like the original pronunciation without violating that rule. Sounds like “or” and “ar” in English usually become an “o” or “a” sound held for twice the normal length (sort of like the British pronunciation).  For example, “star” would be broken down into su-ta-a, and written as スター, with “ー” meaning to hold the vowel longer.

This means that the typical translation for リボーン is reborn.

“Ribbon" would more typically be written as  リボン (ribon).

However, the “ ー ” in katakana just means that the vowel at the end of a syllable is held longer, not why it is held longer. So,  リボーン could be reborn, said normally, or ribbon, with the “bon” part held for a dramatically long time (i.e., Ribboooooooon, Strawberry Check!).

Like it is in the anime.

So, which was intended?

Unfortunately, as far as I know the attack names have never been written in English on any official Japanese merchandise or publication, and there’s no word from Mia Ikumi or Reiko Yoshida.

So what about the official English?

Both official English translations (Tokyopop and Kodansha) used Ribbon for the attack names. However, the Tokyopop translation is known to have seriously mistranslated lots of katakana and been incredibly inconsistent with attack and weapon names.

Kodansha is definitely better, but they still couldn’t get Quiche until a la Mode.

So, both versions of the English manga think it’s ribbon, but neither is infallible when it comes to translating names in katakana.

What about the anime?

Well, Mew Mew Power used entirely different attack names, so it and any dubs based on it won’t be helpful. Of the dubs listed on the TMM wiki, 5 were based on the original Japanese: Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, and Italian. Of these, the Cantonese cuts out Ribbon/Reborn entirely, and the Korean and Thai transliterate ri-bo-o-n into Hangul and Thai script, respectively.

The Mandarin dub definitely uses ribbon because that part of the attack is written in English.

...but there are obviously some other issues. I can honestly see how サプライズ (sapuraizu) was misunderstood as スプライセス (supuraisesu) and ラッシュ (rasshu) as ズラッシュ (zurasshu), but you’d think someone would check the meaning of the English words...

The Italian dub actually uses Italian for the attacks rather than transliterating the original Japanized English. The wiki lists Ichigo’s Italian attack as “Ribbon of Light,” but this is misleading. Mew Berry’s attack in Mew Mew Amiche Vincenti is “Fiocco di Luce,” which would more accurately translate to Bow of Light. Her weapon is “Fiocco del Cuore,” (Bow of the Heart/The Heart’s Bow). Mew Mina uses “Cuore di Mina” (Mina’s Heart), and her attack is “Fiocco d'Azione” (Bow of Action). The other Mews’ are along the same lines as Mina. This isn’t really a use of ribbon, but it definitely suggests that the translators interpreted the original attacks as using “Ribbon” when coming up with the Italian ones.

So, the dubs and English manga seem to generally like “Ribbon”. Why then, is there a debate?

Aside from the fact that リボーン is translated as “reborn” in every other context, “Ribbon” is a totally random word that doesn’t seem related to any of the attacks or even the Mews in general. Admittedly, “Check” also seems totally random, but the other words at least seem vaguely suggestive of the attack or the Mew’s attitude. “Ribbon” is a random cute word, whereas “Reborn” is thematic.

There’s a lot of rebirth/resurrection in TMM, usually due to Mew Aqua.

Deep Blue is reborn as Masaya, a bird is reborn to show off the power of the Mew Aqua, everyone in Tokyo (the world?) except Ichigo is reborn due to the final Mew Aqua, then Masaya and Ichigo revive each other due to love (and possibly residual Mew Aqua).

The anime underplays this by specifying that the bird in ep. 21 was only injured, but it’s more explicit about the main characters’ deaths in the last few episodes. 

Either way, “Reborn” makes sense thematically because the Mews’ power seems somehow tied to Mew Aqua (e.g., it reacts when they’re close).

So, “Reborn” is thematic, but “Ribbon” is a cuter word (always a concern for girls shows) that’s probably more familiar to the target audience. After all, the loanword ribon is a term used day-to-day to refer to stuff like hair ribbons, whereas riboun is not very common*. Official translations favor “Ribbon,” but none of them are flawless translations, and all of them are influenced by previous translation choices (e.g., the Tokyopop translation influenced fansubbers, who influenced the fandom, who influenced the Kodansha re-translation). 

* It’s become more well-known due to the Reborn! manga/anime, but those came out after 2002, when the TMM anime takes place.

Choosing between them seems like more of a matter of personal preference, but I think choosing just one is unnecessary. 

(EVERYTHING PAST THIS IS HEADCANON)

How did the Mew weapons, etc. get named? (In universe, so Ikumi/Yoshida is the wrong answer.) 

Presumably either Keiichiro or Ryou designed and named everything themselves. We know that they at least created the Mewberry Rod because Ryou gives it to Ichigo in episode 15, and it can’t be that different from the other weapons because Ichigo summons it by default from then on.

Ryou is intelligent but has no people skills.

His idea of a fun nickname is “biological weapon”.

Ryou cannot have named the weapons or attacks because they aren’t something like “Chimera Disintegration Beam”. Keiichiro, who is used to smoothing things over when Ryou offends someone and is at the very least capable of designing cakes, is a much better candidate for the designer/namer of the weapons, outfits, cafe, etc.

It’s also possible they outsourced it since we know they don’t work entirely alone. I don’t want to go through the whole series right now, but I’m pretty sure the anime mentions them getting results from a lab a few times, and Mary McGuire at least seems to know Ichigo’s secret identity. (Also, why else were they hosting a party if not to gather/recruit members of the project?)

Regardless, I think Ryou pushed for something too scientific or unappealing and person B compromised with something that the average Japanese elementary or middle school student wouldn’t hate. Thus “Reborn” to get him to agree, but secretly “Ribbon”.

To explain/justify that, let’s consider the name of the Mew Project. 

ミュウ (myū/myuu) is a slightly irregular spelling of  ミュー , which can refer to the cat sound “mew” but also to the Greek letter “Μ” or “μ” (mu) which is pronounced the same way. The symbol μ is used to represent the mutation rate of a gene in genetics research, and the Mew Project is sometimes written as the μ-Project in the anime.

Greek letters also show up in a manga illustration.

(In case you’re wondering, horizontally is an attempt at “Ichigo Momomiya” and vertically is an attempt at “Tokyo Mew Mew”)

There’s no way that no one noticed that μ is both scientifically appropriate and a cat pun. Similarly, there’s no way no one noticed that “Reborn” sounds like “Ribbon”. Considering all of the weapon names are already puns, it should come as no surprise that the names of other things are puns as well.

I think that whoever named them (probably Keiichiro) always intended them to be both at once. So, both μ-Ichigo and Mew Ichigo, both Reborn and Ribbon. Ryou would approve of the first and either not notice the second until too late or grudgingly agree that it makes an okay cover for a cafe name

Out of the Mews, only Zakuro might know the Greek alphabet and possibly be aware of its use in genetics. Theoretically all of them might have the English knowledge from school to get both “ribbon” and “reborn,” but Ichigo “I am a Ichigo” Momomiya is not great at English. She definitely knows the word for hair ribbons though, because she uses it in episode 1 (about 3 min. in, “Arrhh! The ribbon snapped!”). Ichigo is also one who officially names the team “Tokyo Mew Mew” to the press, and even Ryou ends up using that name eventually, despite reacting negatively when he first hears it. Since that name gets accepted as official both in and out of universe, I feel like Ichigo’s interpretations of all the names should be the “official” ones unless specifically talking about Ryou and Keiichiro’s research. 

So, both options are correct depending on the circumstance (e.g. Ichigo talking vs. Ryou talking, official Project report vs. news broadcast), but Mew and Ribbon should be the default.

tl;dr, 

Ryou tells μ-Ichigo about her attack, Reborn Strawberry Check.

Mew Ichigo tells the media about her attack, Ribbon Strawberry Check.

Keiichiro has once again saved the day using people skills and puns.

[currylangs]

Persian Alphabet, Lesson 3

Sorry about this being a day late! I completely dropped the ball, my bad.

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So, we have 5 letters to learn today. They don’t all share the exact same shape, but they are quite similar. So, here they are:

د ذ ر ز ژ

This time, we’ll actually start with the first letter: د. This one is called dâl, and makes the sound “d”. It’s very common, occuring extensively in both native Persian words and loanwords. Now we need to talk about its forms, because it’s a bit unique compared to the letters we’ve covered so far:

د د- ـد- ـد

One of the first things you’ll notice is that it doesn’t really have an initial form. This is because د does not connect to the letter after it like all of the other letters we’ve learned do. It does connect to the letter before it though, but the form doesn’t really noticeably change at all; you just kind of add a line to the bottom of it. Now, I can actually give a real Persian word as an example!

اَدات

In case it’s not clear, the line above the alef there marks “a”, that isn’t an alef madd. So this is read as “adât”, and means “instrument” or “tool”. In all honestly, it’s not very common, so it’s probably best not to try and memorize this one, but be proud that you can read it!

Next up on the list is ذ, called “zâl”. This makes the sound “z”. Like the letters ث and ح which we’ve learned previously, ذ only occurs in Arabic loanwords. Even then, it’s not very common. I can’t really think of any example words you can read yet, so sorry about that.

But don’t worry, now we’re hitting another really common one: ر re! This is pronounced as “r”, but not the English “r”: in fact, it has multiple possible pronunciations. At the beginning of a word, it can either be pronounced as a trill (like in Spanish “perro”) or as a tap (like the “tt” in the American pronunciation of “little”). Elsewhere, it’s basically always a tap. But, like any other letter, it can take a tashdid and be lengthened, in which case it sounds like a trill. So, for all the time I spent explaining pronunciation, there’s not a whole lot to explain regarding the forms. Like د and ذ before it, it doesn’t connect to the letter after it.

ر ر- ـر- ـر

One thing that might be difficult at first, however, is telling the difference between د and ر, especially in small fonts. Remember those pieces of paper that teachers in early elementary school would give you to learn how to write, with lines everywhere so you know where to write the letters? Imagine a bottom line where most letters are supposed to end. While د stays on that line and doesn’t dip below, ر goes way down below that line. In addition, it’s much more curvy and less angular than د. In handwriting, though, one very common thing that happens is that ر is written as just a diagonal line:

While د is just a wedge (see the second letter to the right):

Hopefully with practice you should be able to easily distinguish the two. Now, we have a new letter, ز ze. This one is pronounced “z”, like ذ. You heard me right, both letters have the exact same pronunciation. The difference is, though, ز is by far the more common letter to represent this sound, occurring in tons of native words and loanwords alike. You see, ذ in Arabic is actually pronounced like the “th” in “this”, and as it used to be in very early New Persian. However, it eventually merged pronunciation with “z”. Meanwhile, even in Arabic, ز is just pronounced like a normal z. And seeing as it’s such a common letter, I can give you another example word:

زَرد

This means “yellow”. And now, our last letter for this lesson: ژ zhe. This is pronounced like the “si” in “vision” or the last consonant sound in “beige”. This letter was actually created specifically for use in Persian, and doesn’t occur in Arabic at all. It’s also not super common, so because of that I can’t give an example word that doesn’t also contain letters you don’t know. And, that concludes this week’s letters. Now try out the exercise and make sure you still remember letters from the last 2 lessons.

READING PRACTICE: transliterate these possibly gibberish, possibly real words. (Real words are italicized):

ژُپّ، راز، پَر، جَذّاب، خِرِز، رُخ، تَرِژ