#but 'man who speaks exclusively in one or two word sentences and has a translator derive his meaning from it'

[jojotier]

i love you "reincarnated into the body of a villainess/my own villainous past body so i have to figure out how to do things differently so i don't fucking die" manwhas i love you attempts at political storytelling that aren't even slightly coherent i love you accidental neurodivergencies and male leads who are utterly whipped for the fl and also i love you sweet sweet taste of revenge

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

so anyway I really did start compiling a kinyarwanda/english dictionary/grammar guide out of all the random resources i've been hoarding on my phone (it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be better than searching multiple different files every time I'm looking for some obscure vocab or grammar detail) and one of these resources is some PDF uploaded to the internet archive and it's... not great. from the writing and contents it's clearly

old (my guess is mid-1900s. I don't remember colonial and post-colonial Rwandan history specifically enough to guess well here, but based on some of the typos, it was done on a typewriter and then scanned with OCR)

intended for missionaries (some examples of actual sentences in the "translate this" exercises include "I praise God because He saved me and He gave me peace and joy" and, I shit u not, "The blind man cannot see the Word of God, but he can hear and he can know the love of Jesus." it's. well for one thing this is basically useless vocabulary for me, and also it's cringe af)

written by someone who was not a linguist (at one point instead of just saying "if T is preceded by an unvoiced consonant, it turns into D" they give you a list of every unvoiced consonant and then recommend that you invent a mnemonic phrase to memorise the list?! why?)

written by someone who was shit with pronunciation (legit so many places where they're like "there's no way to describe how this sounds, you just have to ask someone to make the sound for you" my good bitch the phoneme might not be in english but I could describe it just fine. skill issue.)

but the thing that's really killing me about all this is that every time they try to explain tonal vowels or phonemes that aren't in english, they tell you to "ask an African to say it for you."

an. an what now? an African? babe there are approximately 1.5 billion people in Africa. Africa accounts for about 20% of the land on earth, it's the second-biggest continent, and it has an estimated two thousand living languages spoken throughout the continent.

and kinyarwanda? it has maybe 15-25 million native speakers, depending on which source I trust. it's spoken (almost*) exclusively in rwanda, which is the 9th smallest country in Africa--and that roundup includes islands off the coast of the continent. It has the second densest population in Africa but it still only has like 13 million people in it. and it's a very unique language. its closest relatives do not have the same phonemes that kinyarwanda has, and its closest relatives are also spoken by relatively few people. I don't know enough about kirundi to say much but I do know that it doesn't have the same vowel tones in all instances and it doesn't have some of the same consonant clusters. and the more widely spoken related languages that you're more likely to stumble on someone who knows how to speak? they're even worse for a reference; ask someone who speaks kiswahili to pronounce kinyarwanda for you and they will not pronounce the difference between, say, umuceri (rice) and umucyeri (berry), or the tonal difference between words like umusambi (floor mat) and umusambi (crested crane).

so, like. it's just absolutely sending me, this random white lady who was obviously a colonialist missionary, bothering to make a whole language guide to teach me how to proselytise in kinyarwanda, but along the way she's like "just ask an african--any african--how to say this" lady less than 1% of them are going to know this language but go off i guess

*almost because there's the diaspora of rwandan expats and immigrants in other countries plus the banyamulenge which is a whole aspect of it that has so much fraught history on all sides that I won't even try to say something intelligent about it, it's totally not my place/something i'm educated enough about, but to my knowledge most of them speak dialects that are more or less dissimilar to kinyarwanda; kinyamulenge and kinyabwisha are not the same as kinyarwanda. take it from my munyamulenge coworker who could never pronounce the difference between c and cy

[ashtxeman]

*slides in here*

Can we get some Soda HCs?

Ooh, great place to start!

Soda's name is Ignat Sidorov. He had one sibling, a brother named Dimitri, who is no longer around.

The soda he drinks is called 'Denní světlo' (a Czech name, translating to 'sunlight'). It is exclusively produced for him by Sun Corp, a company partnered with the WVBA responsible for all that sciency crap in Soda's TD cutscene.

Soda is best friends with Bull. They've been inseparable since they first met in their early 20's, having joined the WVBA together and helping each other through some tough times. Despite this however, Soda doesn't know what happened to Bull's eye and Soda doesn't tell Bull about his involvement with Sun Corp.

Speaking of Soda and his Sun Corp connections, they have a lot of say in how he lives his life. As a result of a contract he signed when Mac was making his way through the ranks, Soda is legally monitered by their staff whenever he's at work or in a public area. He is also unable to speak about what he does with his co-workers or other outside personel, and cannot under any circumstances let somebody else drink his soda.

He's a very jolly person, even if you don't know him that well. Since Bull is an incredibly introverted and harsh person to be around, Soda balances that attitude by being friendly and talkative. He laughs in almost every sentence, even if there's nothing funny happening. He just enjoys making peoples days a little bit brighter, ya know?

At one point Soda was in a relationship with a lovely Polish woman named Blanka Stracić, but when things began to catch on some certain scientists had him end the relationship to avoid him spilling secrets.

None of Soda's family can visit him in the US. His only opportunity to see them is during his annual trips to Russia.

Soda has two huskies, Sila and Vlast, alongside a miniature pinscher called Sergey who he rescued from the streets. He loves them all dearly.

As well as his dogs, Soda's other beloved is his motorbike. He often rides it to work, or otherwise takes it out for a spin with his three pups on the side.

Out of the main guys, Soda is probably the roughest for English next to Bull. On top of already speaking sloppily, for obvious reasons, he often leaves out words or uses the wrong tense. On the brightside though he can actually read English far better than he can speak it, and at times even has to help the weaker readers (like Kaiser or Joe) wrap their heads around a sentence.

Soda has a scar on the bridge of his nose because of a snow mobile accident. It flipped over and smacked him right in the face. It could've been way worse, but he finds it funny and often has a good laugh about it when people ask.

Throwback to the eye colour post! Soda's eyes glow in the dark (and as a sidenote so do Tiger's).

He's a very cold man.. not emotionally, but physically. Holding freezing soda bottles all the time makes him cold to the touch! He's also sticky since half of the contents of those bottles completely misses his mouth.

In the A-Bracket, Soda gets along best with Bull, Macho, Kaiser and surprisingly Joe!

In the B-Bracket, Soda gets along best with Muscle and Bob.

[todomitoukei]

English vs. Japanese Mr. Compress (and Dabi) - A 294 Comparison

The past two weeks we have taken a look at the differences between the official English translation and the original Japanese version of Dabi in regards to the newest chapter. This week’s chapter mainly focused on Mr. Compress, so for this comparison, we will look at the two lines Dabi had as well as some of Mr. Compress’ lines and where/how they differ in the two versions.

Did Mr. Compress actually call them a band of egotists or was it another case of lost nuance?

One of the first things that stuck out to me when looking at the Japanese version is that there are six times during this chapter, where Mr. Compress mentions Shigaraki. While in the English translation for this chapter, he either calls him Shigaraki, Tomura, or boss, the Japanese version is pretty consistent.

There is one instance in the chapter, where it just says the Japanese word for boss - namely when he “addresses” Harima in his speech and saying that what Harima couldn’t do, Mr. Compress will “now hand off to my boss”

The Japanese line reads 「俺のボスに任せるよ」

「俺 ; ore 」-> I

「の ; no 」-> particle to indicate possession, works like an apostrophe

「ボス ; bosu 」-> boss

「に ; ni 」-> to

「任せる ; makaseru 」-> to entrust to another; to rely fully on one’s full strength/great ability to get something done

「よ; yo 」-> sentence ending particle for emphasis

= “I will hand entrust it to my boss.”

Meanwhile, the other five times he mentions Shigaraki it’s always done like here when he says that Shigaraki is the key:

The line reads 「死柄木(ボス)が。。。鍵だ。。。！」

「死柄木 ; shigaraki 」-> Shigaraki

「ボス ; bosu 」-> boss

「が ; ga 」-> subject marker particle

「鍵 ; kagi 」-> key

「だ ; da 」-> to be; is

= “Shigaraki is the key.”

You may have noticed, I put bosu in brackets. The reason for that is that the bosu is what the furigana say, even though the Kanji are read as Shigaraki.

As mentioned before, when the furigana differ from how the kanji are actually read, the furigana represent what the character says, whereas the kanji represent what the character actually means. In the case of Mr. Compress, he always says boss when talking about Shigaraki during this chapter, however, except for that one exception, we’re being shown that the meaning behind boss is Shigaraki. It’s interesting because he could just refer to him as boss all the time and we would know that he means Shigaraki, so there isn’t a need to specify the meaning with kanji. To me, this reads as a way to show that while he might use the term boss, Shigaraki he isn’t just his boss. First and foremost, he is Shigaraki, the person.

After first bringing up Shigaraki, Mr. Compress says: 

“Told us to run amok, right?!”

The Japanese line reads「皆揃ってさァ暴れましょうってこったろ！？」

「皆 ; minna 」-> everyone

「揃って ; sorotte 」-> all together

「さァ ; saa 」-> expresses the speaker’s intent to get the listener to (like “come on”)

「暴れましょう ; abaremashou 」-> to act violently; to rage, to be riotous (polite volitional form of 暴れる, abareru)

「って ; tte 」-> you said (casual quoting particle)

「こったろ ; kottaro 」-> (casual form of ことだろう) indicates that the speaker is very emotional

= “You told everyone that we should all be riotous together!”

There are two key points in regards to that part. The first one being that nuance of kottaro. That expression conveys a sense of deep emotion, so for this sentence, it shows us that he isn’t simply recalling that Shigaraki brought them together and wanted them to be violent. Rather, his inner monologue is him being desperate - worried about Shigaraki and trying to remind himself that they are currently in the midst of what they set out to do. But they’re not finished, so this is no time to give up. In a way, it’s a way to remind and motivate himself to keep going despite their current situation.

The other point is the word abaremashou. The “to run amok” phrasing in the official translation is… not that great, in my opinion. The general definition of this is someone that behaves in a violent or uncontrolled way. And yes, in essence, they are being violent. But it’s not exactly uncontrolled. The word “riotous” captures their goals a lot better considering they all have a bigger goal they are trying to reach. It’s not just being violent for the sake of violence, but rioting against a system that has denied them thus far.

Shortly after, we get this line:

“It’s just as our associate Spinner says.”

I’ve briefly talked about this already in a separate post because that word associate bothered me right away when I read the official translation.

The Japanese line reads 「スピナーの仰る通りだまだ何も」

「スピナー ; supinaa 」-> Spinner

「の ; no 」-> particle to indicate possession, works like an apostrophe

「仰る通り」-> it is as someone says (honorific)

「だ」-> to be; is 

「まだ ; mada 」-> yet

「何も ; nanimo 」-> nothing

= “It’s just as Spinner says; nothing yet.”

Notice how none of those words mean associate? Reading that in the official translation felt so stiff. We know - through various instances - that the League is close. Mr. Compress even later on in this chapter literally says that he loves the League. Associate feels like they are just business partners. I can kind of understand trying to make that capture Mr. Compress’ overall personality, but he literally just doesn’t say that, hence it just feels like another biased translation instead.

Just as a side note, I would also like to mention that this man really mixes the language as he pleases. Like most characters in manga/anime, he generally uses the casual way of speaking and yet he sometimes peppers in polite/honorific words, too? A real entertainer indeed...

Next, we got this line「俺。。。敵連っ。。。合好きだったぜ」

「俺 ; ore 」-> I

「敵連合 ; viran rengou 」-> League of Villains

「好きだった ; sukidatta」-> loved

「ぜ ; ze 」-> ending particle for emphasis (more casual/ruder version of yo)

= “I really loved the League!”

Yes, even the official translation got this one right. The main difference between the fan translation and the official translation is the “really” which I also included here. Although that word isn’t technically in the Japanese line, the ending particle does emphasize the line and with that, the word “really” captures that emphasis the best in English.

There isn’t much to say about this line other than that it’s nice to have him say this so directly and also how sad it is that he is saying this in the past tense and thus signaling to us that he does not expect himself to survive this.

After this we got the lines that really didn’t sound great in the official translation:

“A collection of warped minds who never bothered prying into each other’s pasts. Just a band of egotists.”

The fan translation on the other hand had told us this line says: “No matter who it was, one’s past never came into question, we were just a group of deviants. This was quite the unruly bunch.”

So which one is more accurate?

The Japanese line says 「誰も過去を詮索したりしなかった。歪んだ奴ばかりで。手前勝手な集まりだった。」

「誰も ; daremo 」-> no one

「過去 ; kako 」-> past (i.e. a personal history one would prefer to remain a secret)

「を」-> direct object marker

「詮索 」-> inquiry into; prying into

「したりしなかった ; sensakushitari shinakatta 」-> very strong never, kind of like “would never do that, no matter what” (attaches to the word that came before)

「歪んだ ; yuganda 」-> warped (past tense of 歪む, yugamu)

「奴 ; yatsu 」-> fellow (derogatory)

「ばかりで ; bakari de」-> only (in regards to the word that came before)

「手前勝手な ; temaegatte na 」-> self-centered; selfish (see explanation below)

「集まり ; atsumari 」-> gathering

「だった ; datta 」-> was

= “No one would ever pry into each other’s personal past. It was a selfish gathering of only warped fellows.”

I’ve seen a lot of people who voiced their dislike towards the use of the word selfish or egotists, when the fan translation was relatively harmless with the term “unruly bunch” and in a way, rightfully so. Yes, I translated it as selfish, too, but it’s a nuance that’s hard to put into a few words.

If you were to look up the word selfish in a dictionary, you would get many results, but temaegatte isn’t the top result. When you directly look up temaegatte you will see that it’s not considered a common word, either. So this word was chosen for a reason.

Temaegatte in itself is a combination of the words 手前 (temae) and 勝手 (katte), both of which have their own separate meanings.

Temae consists of the kanji hand + in front of and means before oneself; in front of one; nearby.

Katte consists of the kanji victory + hand and has two meanings: something convenient; to act in a way that is convenient for oneself, without considering others.

When you combine those two words together, you have a word that refers to behavior that is convenient only for oneself - “nearby convenience” if you want to be literal. This word can get used in the business world in response to being asked to do something when you want to decline. Instead of bluntly saying that you can’t do it, you would essentially apologize for being so selfish as to not accept the person’s request. It’s a soft way to decline something whilst simultaneously acknowledging the other person’s feelings etc. At the same time, the word can also be used when you are the one making a request and you want to apologize for being selfish for doing so.

Temaegatte is an adjective that connects to the word that follows, which is atsumari (gathering) - put together a “selfish gathering” but what does that mean?

Them getting together as the League of Villains was the result of them all having parted from society to put themselves first. They became villains for their own convenience, not necessarily out of selfishness, but rather because they are doing this for themselves, to put themselves first, without considering others. It might sound similar, but selfishness is more defined as being exclusively concerned with oneself. And an egotist is someone who talks too much about themselves or someone who has an exaggerated sense of self. There is a difference between being selfish/ an egotist and putting yourself first. Instead of just following society and suffering because of it, these people have decided to stand up for themselves and fight back against a system that has been against them for their entire lives.

So yes, you can translate it as selfish - but that only scratches the surfaces of what is actually being said.

This chapter felt a lot like Mr. Compress confirming that the League is actually close and caring about one another. Another panel that captures that, happens a little later in the chapter:

The Japanese line says 「解放戦線。。。敵連合の死柄木が」

「解放戦線 ; kaihousensen 」-> Liberation Front

「敵連合 ; viran rengou 」-> League of Villains

「の ; no 」-> particle to indicate possession, works like an apostrophe

「死柄木 ; shigaraki 」-> Shigaraki

「が ; ga 」-> subject marker particle

= “The Liberation Front’s… League of Villains’ Shigaraki.”

Funnily enough, the official translation did a really good job by translating this as “The Paranormal Liberation Front’s… the League of Villains’ Shigaraki…” -

which highlights it a lot more that Mr. Compress is correcting himself here. Though officially they still are the Paranormal Liberation Front, in their hearts they will always be the League. Interestingly, here, the furigana also say Shigaraki, so this time around he legitimately says Shigaraki instead of boss, which adds another nice, personal touch to the line and describes Shigaraki as a member - much like the rest of them - rather than dividing them by hierarchy. He might be their leader, but at the end of the day, they are all equals, too.

This chapter was definitely really good in showing that very real bond of the League and the fact they genuinely care about each other. Meanwhile, the official translation misses that nuance by just writing them off as egotists and associates, when they are actually a group of outcasts that have found a home with each other.

Before we end this comparison, I just want to quickly mention that short Dabi part of the chapter, too.

Starting with this panel:

which says「ごめん焦凍事情が変わった。」

「ごめん ; gomen 」-> I’m sorry

「焦凍 ; shouto 」-> Shouto

「事情 ; jijou 」-> circumstances

「が ; ga 」-> subject marker particle

「変わった ; kawatta 」-> changed

= “Sorry Shouto, the circumstances changed.”

And then this panel:

which says「轟炎司がまだ壊れてない上に気絶しちまったらこのショーの意味がないごめんな最高傑作」

「轟炎司 ; todoroki enji 」-> Todoroki Enji

「が ; ga 」-> subject marker particle

「まだ ; mada 」-> (not) yet

「壊れてない ; kowaretenai 」-> to not be broken

「上に ; ue ni」-> as well; in addition to; besides

「気絶 ; kizetsu 」-> faint

「しちまったら 」-> combination of しちまった (to happen completely) + たら (when) = when something happened completely (focuses on the results that come from this first part)

「この ; kono 」-> this

「ショー ; shoo」-> show

「の ; no 」-> particle to indicate possession, works like an apostrophe

「意味 ; imi 」-> meaning

「が ; ga 」-> subject marker particle

「ない ; nai 」-> nonexistent

「ごめんな ; gomen na」-> I’m sorry

「最高傑作 ; saikoukessaku 」-> masterpiece

= “When Enji Todoroki is not yet completely broken and has fainted, this show has no meaning. Sorry, masterpiece.”

This isn’t exactly different from the official translation, but it’s once again emphasizing the fact that Dabi doesn’t care about killing Shouto, the person, he only cares about doing whatever it takes to ruin Endeavor. And killing his masterpiece seems like the perfect way to hit right where it hurts. I know there are a lot of people that are upset that Dabi is willing to hurt Shouto, and again I can only repeat myself in saying that there are years of psychological issues that have led some part of Dabi to view the idea of killing his own brother as okay. But it’s also a place he can’t just get out of himself, so instead of just blaming him for being at the point he is right now, we should hope that the story will let him heal.

What’s important is that he doesn’t hold a personal grudge against him. Sure, there might be jealousy involved, yet his reason for considering harming Shouto is purely because of Endeavor. With that, Shouto still stands a chance at somehow being able to get to Dabi and help him - after his arc, of course.

Anyway, to sum this up: I continue remaining hopeful in terms of Dabi and Shouto. The League cares about each other, even if that wasn’t their original reason for getting together. They are now at a point where they are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure each other’s safety. Hopefully, and I cannot stress enough how hopeful we have to be, they will all make it out of there now and not suffer any more deaths in their little group.

[drwcn]

@cloudyfromoobsession​

Hi! :) 

On the topic of talking in third person when referring to yourself, it is actually quite prevalent in cdrama, especially the historical ones, but it never shows up in translation because well... it sounds really weird in English and often there is no direct translation. So most translators just do away with it. 

In modern spoken Chinese, third person speech is no longer used (in fact it would be very weird if you did), so below is only pertaining to historical or fantasy dramas.

If I could insert my personal opinion on the matter: there’s no need to use third person speech in English. Chinese third person speech is incredibly nuanced depending on context and person, and it is incredibly easy to misuse it in English. Writers end up not conveying their intentions and actually making things really awkward. As someone who is fully bilingual, I personally find that third person speech, when used in excess, makes the writing stilted. Another example is Lan Wangji’s “concise speech” which I see very often. It does not work in English. It makes him sound like he doesn’t know how to speak properly and is grammatically incorrect. Chinese is a language that is designed to be able to be shortened in certain ways and still follow all its grammatical rules. English’s syntax does not work the same way at all.  Speech is a major contributor to a fictional character’s personality. Sometimes those subtleties cannot be transposed directly from Chinese to English. To still capture the character when writing in English, each writer has different ways of doing this, but personally I like to keep Lan Wangji’s speech - for the most part - simple and concise. No complex or compound sentences but all his sentences should still obey the grammatical rules of English. 

Okay, onto third person speech, since I find it interesting and it’s like a cool language quirk. 

NOTE: below is about referring to oneself in the third person. Referring to someone else in the third person is a whole thing on its own. 

The “talking in third” person you’re probably referring to stems from the episode when LWJ got drunk with One Braincell Trio, and the next morning he went to his uncle and said 忘机知错 or 忘机有错. I can’t remember specifically which one he said, but essentially it means “Wangji knows his faults” or  “Wangji is at fault”. Using one’s own name to speak in third person is actually less common than some of the other examples I will explain below. There are many ways to speak in third person depending on the situation, your position and the person you are talking to.

Before I do that, I’d that to point out that the pronoun “I” 我 is seen as rude or not following etiquette if you use it inappropriately with people who you shouldn’t be using “I” with. For example, a girl entering the palace to serve as a maid will be trained to stop using “I” when she is speaking with nobility, royalty and anyone of higher rank than he. She will in fact be verbally corrected by her supervisor (and may even be punished)  if she used “I” inappropriately. A palace maid’s “noun” that she will use in place of “I” is nubi 奴婢. Instead of saying 我不知到 “I don’t know”, she will say  奴婢不知 “nubi does not know.” 

Notice the grammar issue that we’re presented with. Because there are no verb conjugation changes in Chinese, substituting “I” with another noun doesn’t change what happens to the verb in Chinese, but in English, you have to make conjugation changes. This makes dialogues sound even more weird in English. 

“I” can be used amongst friends, close siblings, family (with exceptions) individuals or colleagues of relatively equal ranking or (sometimes) strangers on the street. Children, especially civilian children, almost always use “I”. As a general rule, civilians mostly use “I” with each other, it’s only when they speak to someone of rank that they switch their pronoun to a "non-I” noun. Also! Chinese doesn’t differentiate between the subject ‘I’ and the object ‘me’. They are both 我 “wo”, so both “I” and “me” are affected in the same way when switching to a ‘non-I’ noun. 

So now I will list some of the “nouns” that are used in place of “I” in c-dramas. They will be listed in categories based on people’s station in life. 

It’s important to note that Chinese can and is spoken passively, especially in old speech and in dramas. You won’t get the same flack for not using “active tone” the way you do in English. In fact, using “I” or “you” in old Chinese speech actually makes it sound informal. However, this again is one of those language quirks that doesn’t translate and can’t really be transposed. When writing in English, when in doubt, always follow English’s grammatical rules and syntax practices.  

I have no degree in Chinese history or even East Asian studies. These are just some of the commonly used terms I’ve seen over many, many years of drama watching. Sometimes, drama gets it wrong, and these misconceptions will get passed to the audience, but it’s not like we’re submitting manuscripts for academic publication, so does it really matter if it’s slightly inaccurate? 

Citizens, when talking to Officials, Royalty or the Emperor: 

1) cao min 草民 - “grass” “citizen”  2) min nv 民女 - “citizen” “woman”  3) min fu 民妇 - “citizen” “married woman” 

An average jo farmer when speaking with any government official or nobility or royalty including the Emperor will use cao’min to refer to themselves. Cao’min is gender neutral, so both men and women, old or young can use it. For example: “M’lord, I didn’t kill anyone!” -> “大人，草民没有杀人!”

“min’nv” on the other hand is used exclusively by women, usually younger women, while “min’fu” is used exclusively by older married women. The context of their usage is the same as cao’min. Both married and unmarried women can use cao’min as well. (nv is a weird word isn’t it? It’s because there is literally no alphabet to make the 女 sound. The closest we can get is nu, but that’s actually another word, so pinyin uses nv to as substitution.)

Notice, all three of these nouns are actually more... “formal”, as in these are the nouns people will know to use when they are being brought before a local judiciary court, or being called to testify before the Emperor himself. In a street setting, nouns #4 and #5 are usually used. 

Sidenote: da’ren  大人 is an honorific that can be used for any government official that holds some kind of public office or police status. A citizen can use “da’ren” with officials as high as the prime minister all the way down to their local mayor or even just the guards patrolling town. A lower official refers to his superior as {Last-name-da’ren}, and a higher official ALSO refers to their subordinates (who are not close friends of his) as {Last-name da’ren}. More nuances apply but generally these are the rules. 

Worker/Trades person/Citizen, when talking to someone of higher class and wealth: 

4) xiao de 小的 - “of little”  5) xiao ren 小人 - “little” “person”

Example: Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walks into an inn, the busboy greets them and says: Chinese:  “二位公子，[小的]是这里的小二，二位打尖还是住店？”  English: “Young masters, [xiao’de] is the busboy/waiter of this place. Would you like to take your meal here or check in for the night?” or basically “Hi! I am your waiter and I’ll be helping you today. Are we eating or checking in?” 

Adults of Scholar/Gentries Status/Martial Artists in Pugilist Society/Cultivators: 

6) zai xia 在下 - “is here” “lower”  7) wan bei 晚辈 - “later” “generation” 8) di zi 弟子 - disciple 9) lao sheng 老身 - “old” “body” 

zai xia - The thing with old Chinese speech is that it inherently is overly politely. In many many cases, you always put yourself in the lower status when speaking to a stranger of unknown status because you don’t want offend the person you don’t know. Zaixia can be used by men, women, usually not too old. If you’re a senior man or woman you usually default to 9).  Example: two cultivators who’ve never met fought off a ghoul together. After the fact, they introduce themselves. One of them says: “在下云梦江氏魏无羡， 多谢仙友相助。”  Meaning translation: “I am Wei Wuxian of the Yunmeng Jiang Clan. Thank you so much for your help.” Literal translation： “[zai’xia] Yunmeng Jiang Clan Wei Wuxian. Much thanks cultivator friend for help.”  This entire sentence contains neither ”I” nor “you”. But that’s just not... feasible to talk like that in English. 

wan bei is used in CQL. Ex: A disciple of Yunmeng Jiang may refer to themselves as wan bei when speaking to a senior of another sect. When a disciple is speaking to a senior of their own sect, they will use “di zi” (disciple). 

Family:

10). xiao xu 小婿 - “little” “son in law”  11). hai er 孩儿 - “child”  12). sun nv 孙女， sun er 孙儿 - “granddaughter” , “grandson” *there are more, but I’m use putting these up for examples*

In most families, there’s no need to refer to yourself in the third person. You’re family, just use “I”. But! In certain high society families, the rules are stricter and etiquette is everything. For example, places like Cloud Recesses with a stick up its collective butt would probably follow these rules. If Lan Wangji’s parents were still alive, he’d refer to himself as “hai er” to his parents. He would also refer to himself as “xiao xu” to Cangse and Wei Changze if they were alive. In Story of Minglan, Minglan refer to herself as “sun nv” when she’s speaking with her grandmother. 

Government Officials

13). bei zhi 卑职  14). xia guan 下官 both of these mean the same thing “subordinate”.  People use it when speaking to their superiors. Foot soldiers in the military will use 13, not 14. 

15). wei chen 微臣  {wei chen} is used SOLELY with the royal family. If you are a government official of ANY rank, when speaking to the emperor, empress, dowager empress, you must use wei chen in formal settings. To a prince or princess or a royal concubine, government official can use 14 xia guan. Using “I” in front of royalty is very disrespectful. Exceptions do apply, but this is the overarching rule. 

臣 - the word “chen” means subject. The term 君臣 refers to the special relationship of respect that exists between 君 the emperor, and 臣 the people who work on his behalf and whom he rules. 

Royalty 16). zhen 朕 - no translation This is a special pronoun used ONLY by the Emperor and he uses zhen a lot. Like, there is no need for him to be humble or whatever and avoid using pronouns. It is his “I” and he can use it as freely as he likes. 

17). ben gong 本宫 - “self” “palace”  An Empress or a concubine of higher status (ie. a Noble Consort) use this to refer to themselves when they are talking to anyone of lower rank: citizens, servants, a government official, or a lower concubine. This places them in a position of power. Everyone who they’re using ben gong with should be lower than them in ranking. Remember when I said using “I” is rude, well in this case, a noble consort will not use “I” with a servant because she is more noble them, and they not “noble enough” for her to use “I” with. If it’s her close servants, her confidants, she can and often do use “I”, as a sign of familiarity.  

18). pin qie 嫔妾, chen qie 臣妾  Lower concubines use “pin qie” and higher concubines use “chen qie” when speaking to the Emperor, Empress or Dowager Empress. The Empress uses “chen qie” when speaking to the Emperor or Dowager Empress. When chen qie or pin qie is used, the speaker is in a lower position than the person they’re speaking to. 

19). er chen 儿臣 Princes and Princesses will use “er chen” with their fathers (the Emperor). In front of their mothers (Empress or concubine) and grandmothers, they usually use “I” or 11 “hai er”. If it’s a formal situation, they will switch to “er chen”. An Emperor will also refer to himself as “er chen” when speaking to his mother the Empress Dowager. 

20). ben wang 本王 - “self” “lord/duke” An Emperor’s sons, brothers or male cousins are often qinwangs or junwangs (princes, lords, dukes). They will use “ben wang” to refer to themselves in formal settings to any one who is lower than them. In informal settings, they will use “I”. In formal setting when they’re talking to the Emperor, sons of the Emperors will use 19 “er chen”, brothers of Emperors may use “chen di” 臣弟, and cousins or more distant relatives will be simply “chen” or 15 “wei chen”. 

21). ai jia 哀家 - “sad” “family”  Empress Dowagers: literally the most respected and highest ranking person in any Chinese dynasty. She might not have any real power, but by rank she kneels to absolutely no one. No exceptions. Not even to her son who is the Emperor. He kneels to her. An Empress Dowager will use “ai jia” when she wants to be more formal, but to her family with whom she is close, she can and do use “I”. 

Lastly, Jiang Cheng gets a special mention: 

When Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen bring Wei Wuxian to Jinlintai at around ep 41, Jiang Cheng, being a total shit disturber says, “不知是那位名士大能，可否为江某引荐一番？”

Translation: “Who is this famous and talented cultivator? Could you introduce him to me?” 

But lemme break that sentence down for you. 

可否 = can or not 为 = for  江某 = Jiang “mou”  引荐一番 = make introduction. 

He does not make use of “him” “you” or “me”. In English, when speaking in the imperative mood, aka, “put the dishes in the dish washer”, it is implied that ‘you’ are the person putting the dishes in the dish washer. Similarly, the ‘him’ and ‘you’ are implied in Jiang Cheng’s sentence, and the only “pronoun” he uses when referring to himself is “jiang mou”. If Jiang Cheng had used “you” or “him” in his sentence, it would’ve been ruder. As is, his sentence was still (albeit falsely) courteous. 

The ‘third person’ speech in this context is the use of 江某 “jiang mou”. It is a fairly neutral third person noun. Unlike the above 21 examples, ‘mou’ doesn’t place a person in a position higher or lower than the person they’re talking to. They’re just saying “hey I am a person with the last name Jiang”. It is gender neutral and can be used by both men and women. It’s not limited to cultivators. Scholars can use it, nobility can use it, government officials can use it. (Your average farmer... probably doesn’t use it, because it’s just... not used.) 

So that’s it. 

There are definitely MORE nouns that are used in third person. These are some of the commonly seen ones. I hope it helps. 

Again, this word vomit I just wrote is for general interest. It is absolutely not necessary to use it when writing fics in English. When in doubt, stick to using pronouns the way we would normally. 

[dotsayers]

20 Questions: Writer’s Edition

tagged by the beloved @myrmidryad 

this is a LONG one so here’s a cut to avoid do you love the colour of the sky syndrome

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

101 after a recent purge... no one may know about my Past

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

329004! used to be about 350k but again... purge

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

on ao3 i’ve written for (chronologically) doctor who, skyfall, discworld, les mis, star trek, lord peter wimsey, marvel (various), in the flesh, red vs blue, roosterteeth rpf, check please, hockey rpf, star wars, daredevil, rivers of london, dishonored, emmerdale, dirk gently, holby city, hot fuzz, kj charles, guardian, the covert captain, taskmaster rpf, good omens, ghosts, roswell new mexico, leverage, schitt’s creek, the magicians, 9-1-1, it chapter two, the magnus archives, the old guard, the mandalorian, the ritual, the locked tomb

way back on the pit of voles i wrote for twilight, harry potter, hetalia and xmen first class. and on the newsround chatrooms i wrote exclusively harry potter fic about my oc neville and luna’s daughter

as you can tell i am not prone to staying in one fandom writing wise, i tend to end up with one complete fic and seven abandoned wips concealed deep in my google drive

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

finally see what it means to be living (captain marvel, carol/maria, i really hit the zeitgeist with this one i think i was something like the fifth fic in the ship tag)

do whatever you think (the magnus archives, this series is actually #2-7, then #8 #9 and #11 for me so i’m going to cheat a bit)

standing in a world of my own (daredevil, matt/foggy/karen, another zeitgeist hit! really miss writing for daredevil actually... it’s a perennial fave)

a winding road that stretches towards the truth (iron man, tony/rhodey, i STILL don’t know when this got so many kudos. i swear i looked away when it was at 100 and suddenly it ended up here)

where the long shadows grow (star trek aos, kirk prime/spock prime, thank god some people are checking the prime kirkspock tag is all i’m saying!)

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i don’t really Do angsty endings... possibly a blanket of stars just because i ended it on something of a cliffhanger and then completely zoned out of rnm for long enough that i forgot where i was going with it. there was definitely the intention of fixing things but then i just... did not do that. and now the show is on s3 and i’m over a season behind! life comes at you fast

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

where the long shadows grow, because it reunited kirk prime and spock prime and they DESERVE TO BE HAPPYYYY. i’m a complete sucker for presumed dead/back from the dead stories, actually, so on a similar theme i have two (TWO) daredevil fics which follow the trope, one about ray coming back post-s2 (might never be normal again) and one about foggy and matt reuniting post-endgame (in the corner, taking up space). this is the only time i will ever acknowledge endgame ever again

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

i do write crossovers! in fact i am often roundly mocked by my friends for the increasingly esoteric nature of my crossovers. way back in secondary i wrote a twilight/labyrinth crossover where angela was sarah and jareth’s daughter  because i had a massive crush on a girl who liked both twilight and labyrinth. however, since that has been comprehensively scrubbed from the internet, i think my craziest crossover is probably part three of ‘traced upon the skies’, already an esoteric crossover of rivers of london and hot fuzz, when i added in a crossover with the horror movie ‘the ritual’ just because i wanted rafe spall’s character to be happy 

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

EXTREMELY rarely and only with extreme embarrassment. i will not be any more specific than that

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

i used to really struggle with doing this, to the point that i had over 300 comments just. lingering in my inbox unanswered. so i decided to give those up and just commit to answering them from then on, which has been working fairly well for about a year and a half now. i love getting comments but i get overwhelmed really easily and struggle with replying in a way which feels meaningful without getting in my head about it! 

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

yes lmao it was for a harry potter fic on ff.net where harry got sorted into hufflepuff instead of gryffindor. it wasn’t a very good fic but i think the fact it was clearly written by an 11 year old should have scared off at least some of the less flattering comments.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don’t... think so? i don’t know how i’d find out to be honest, my vanity googling is rarely very effective

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! as bronze may be much beautified (skyfall, mallory/bond) got translated into chinese, i was extremely pleased. i think it’s mandarin but the ao3 page for the translation doesn’t say and my mandarin is.................. extremely poor

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

also yes! me and jess little-smartass have written a lot together, although only our star trek/les mis series has been published, more’s the pity. we spent a lot of les mis fandom time workshopping aus and we were always extremely correct about all of it, imo

14. What’s your all time favourite ship to write for?

oh god. i think probably kirk/spock, although there’s some recency bias to that since i reread space manhattans recently and was reminded of my love for them. i really like writing jon/martin but i’ve mostly done that from outsider pov which is a bit different to writing shipfic, i think. joe/nicky from tog was also something i really liked writing but i struggle with plotting longer fic with them

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

i recently went through my abandoned fic folder so i actually have a few options for this. the obvious choice would be ‘any of the hockey ones’ but i did delete most of those just for my sanity. more recently i started writing a vaguely smutty pre-the thing mac/fuchs fic for alex @milkdrinker5000 which i really WANT to finish but am struggling with. most obscure answer (even beyond the thing) and most likely to remain unfinished is the insanely in depth post-tog booker/copley fic i had planned out back in about october. i wrote a good 6-7k of that one and then i realised it was going to be, like, difficult, and decided if i was going to put that much work into something it may as well be the novel im meant to be writing

16. What are your writing strengths?

once a friend told me i had an excellent facility for dialogue and ive thought about it every time i write ever since. i love writing dialogue and i think i’m good at knowing what sounds ic and what is right out. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

one of the things i struggled with for a really long time, and honestly still have trouble with, is depicting action in words. once i wrote a hockey fic which featured multiple hockey games and i spent probably four times as much effort editing those to make sense and be interesting that i’ve ever done on a talkier scene.

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

i’ve done it but only when i knew more or less what i was talking about - i did italian at school so i felt confident using it for nicky in something particular and real. i try not to italicise when i drop in words from other languages, which is what i usually do when i’m using a language i haven’t studied in depth (for example, joe’s use of arabic in some of my fic), and to only use words which i’ve heard used by native speakers in that context. i think if you don’t feel confident using another language, generally speaking, you shouldn’t do it. and for god’s sake don’t use google translate for a full sentence

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

harry potter on the newsround chatboards. ariana lovegood-longbottom my sweet child

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

this used to be an easy question because hands down the fic i was proudest of on posting it was i’ll be seeing you. i spent a year and a half on research and writing! but these days i do cringe a little at my hockey fic, and i think i’m prouder of some of my shorter works. let’s do a curveball and say layer on layer, down on down, which is my favourite of my rnm fics and the one i like most from a narrative voice perspective. getting michael right was stressful and i’m still proud i got it down for a TIME LOOP FIC, my absolute favourite trope

tagging @little-smartass and @leescoresbies just in case they want to try this

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Hakuoki Drama CD Flower and Oni Translation

First post of the month! so as always, I’ll once again start by asking you to please support me if you can either on ko-fi, through paypal or patreon  for access to my blog post translations or just to support me (current special access is my translation of the seventh Saito Ginsei no Shou chater)... also let me know if you have any hakuoki drama cds that you’d be willing to share that are on my looking for list since i either do not have audio for those cds or do not have audio that i can share... 

btw, was there an image of the sky in SSL that matches the one here? sorta want it for something but can’t exactly remember if it was in the game cuz i haven’t picked up my vita in a long while since i screwed mine up....

also, to whom it may it concern: 中秋快乐! slightly delayed tho lol.

Anyway, this is my translation of the Hakuoki MesseSanoh store exclusive drama cd  - Flower and Oni “花と鬼.”

one of the dramas i found back in june... at the time, i coincidentally obtained CH translations of all the other Tokuten cds that were released with the ps2 Hakuoki Shinsengumi Kitan game (based on info from tokio-fujita’s drama cd livejournal page). no idea when i’ll get to those.... since all the ones that haven’t been translated yet are +10min long (i did somehow manage to obtain the audio for all of them months before i got the CH tls for em).

Also, there was one sentence missing in the tl for this. had the translation of it commissioned from @jokertrap-ran​. left that text in bold.

enjoy~ final edits will be done when i do a video for it (i’m 90% sure the sighs/laughter and other misc sounds weren’t translated properly in the text i found but oh well).

Hakuoki MesseSanoh Store Exclusive Drama CD Flower and Oni

Translation by KumoriYami

Kondou: Hah......to be able to relax on the porch/corridor/veranda while enjoying the flowers, it really is nice.

Souji: Areh? Kondou-san? What are you doing over here?

Kondou: Oh, Souji, do you want a cup of tea? Come, sit here.

Souji: Are you appreciating the flowers right now?

Kondou: Although there are assignments, and despite how every day is recently bloody [reword later], it's really nice to be able to appreciate the flowers like this once in a while

Souji: It's really nice, the sun is warming and shining brightly, and the blooming sakura are beautiful.

Kondou: Yes

Souji: Nn, it's really nice [says comfortable/feeling well].

Kondou: haha, Souji, have another cup of tea.

(footsteps)

Souji: I won't be polite then.

Kondou: Nn, those footsteps are quite noisy.

Souji: Those footsteps, they're Hijikata-san's.

Hijikata: Really, everyone is like this......

Souji: Look, I guessed correctly.

Kondou: haha, that's really amazing.

Hijikata: What, it if isn't Kondou-san and Souji.

Kondou: You don't look that happy, Toshi, come have a cup of tea.

Hijikata: You two are really relaxed, to be drinking tea while enjoying the flowers. 

Souji: I think this is better than drinking, or it because we're not having sake that you're angry?

Hijikata: Kondou-san, this concerns the warriors who recently joined our ranks.

Kondou: Ah, it seems that a lot of people have gathered, so the Shinsengumi will get better and better in the future.

Hijikata: If only if that were the case.

Kondou: Nn, what's the problem?

Hijikata: I was training the new members just now. Although it's good there are many new recruits [says volunteers. if audio doesn't have xin in it, i'll change it to interested volunteers], a lot of them are lazy and completely useless, few of them can be used/can be put to use.

Souji: Isn't it your job to train them? Vice-commander Hijikata. [check for -san]

Hijikata: Souji don't just relax and drink tea, you should be training them with me. 

Souji: No/Don't wanna.

Hijikata: What?! For what reason?

Souji: Because I'm resting right now.

Hijikata: It doesn't matter if you are or aren't resting. If the executives don't take the lead, what is to be done? tell me [answer me]!

Souji: Really. Here we go again. It's because you take these arbitrary and out of place actions, that everyone gets annoyed [more literally: bored].

Hijkata: Oh, who's fed up with me [then]? I'll ask you to give me their names.

Souji: You didn't notice? Hijikata-san, you're unexpectedly slow.

Hijikata: Hey, I say [literal translation. i'm assuming this is more along the lines of 'say that again!']

Kondou: Come on, come on [im guessing the audio is 'ma, ma'], you two should let it be. Come, calm down and and look at the sakura......

Hijikata: don't say anything else Kondou-san, this is Souji's and my problem.

Souji: Sorry, Kondou-san, I don't want to bother you, you can look [at them] by yourself.

Kondou: Ah, is that so?

Souji: I've wonder, but is Hijikata-san's way of doing things really okay?

Hijikata: What? Souji. Do you have a problem/complaints with me? [Or] are you looking down on me/[Or it] just that you hate me?

Kondou:  What am I, your nanny!?

[will probably change that to ‘what are you, his nanny?’ for language flow]

Souji: No/That's not it? Anyway, I'm still the First Division Captain of the Shinsengumi.

Hijikata: If you're a captain, you should act like one, and take care of the team members.

Souji: I have taken care of it [that].

Kondou: To be fighting in front of beautiful flowers...... really what a headache. As a warrior/samurai, how can you not enjoy the cherry blossoms?!

Hijikata: What is there to look at/see, it's because of this that I work so hard.

Souji: You're not happy/Are you upset? I thought Hijikata-san was quite willing/happy to do this.

Hijikata: What?!

Kondou: Oh, right, I've thought of something good, both of you listen. As the chief of the Shinsengumi, I have a proposal.

Hijikata: What?

Souji: What?

Kondou: In order to promote friendlier relations within the team members, how about holding a hanami/sakura viewing party?

Hijikata: Kondou-san, do you know what time it is right now?

Souji: I approve/support that. I think that that the team members will improve after those that don't know each other are able to deepen their friendship.

Kondou: Nn, thats it/like that, I also wanted to say that.

Souji: That's just like Kondou-san, you're different from a certain someone who is difficult to deal with.

Hijikata: Souji, say that again!

Souji: What?

Hijikata: well, i finally understand. compared to those new guys, souji, you're the one that's useless.

Souji: If yo're too harsh, the new recruits will run away. Hijikata-san, drink some tea and calm down.

Hijikata: You!

Kondou: Toshi, take a teacup and quickly drink.

Hijikata: Ah.

Souji: then i should probably go back to training.

Kondou: You're going, Souji?

Souji: Yes, Kondou-san. But, don't let everyone run away from the training grounds again. [tho that's an accurate tl, i'm guess this should be more among the lines of "But I can't help it/it's not my fault if everyone runs away from the training grounds again/ But make sure that no one runs away from the training grounds again]

Kondou: Oh?

Souji: they all ran away as soon as they saw my face Why is that?

Hijikata: That's because you're way of teaching is extremely bad. Really, your swordsmanship is better than everyone else's/you are one of the best swordsmen, but why are you so incapable? Listen Kondou-san, rather than training other people, this guy loves fighting way more. Everyone was beaten to the point where they could't get up off the ground.

Kondou: Then it's understandable for why the team members are unwilling.

Souji: Ahaha, to speak of being gentle, I really didn't expect those words from the demon vice-commander.

Kondou: What, in fact Toshi is a very gentle man, right, Toshi?

Hijikata: Hn, who knows.

Kondou: That's how it is, be gentle to everyone.

Souji: Yes yes, but, i've really been gentle with everyone. Then I'll be going. Kondou-san, thank you for your hospitality.

Kondou: Ah, I'll be counting on you [tl literally: please requesting you. check audio]

Souji: Yes.

(souji walks away)

Hijikata: Hah, well, never mind that guy.

Kondou: Do you want another cup of tea?

HIjikaa: Ah, another cup.

Kondou: Then I'll have another as well.

Hijikata: Souji's way of teaching is extremely rough/cruel, so it's unclear if he's actually training other people, or using them for himself to practice.

Kondou: That's because he takes what he does for granted/his success for granted, which is why it's impossible for him to understand those who are unable to.

Hijikata: That guy is still a child, he sticks his foot into everything, but always gets bored immediately after.

Kondou: You don't quite understand souji.

Hijikata: everyone will probably run away again [?].

Kondou: If you're worried, you should go and see.

Hijikata: Eh, there's nothing to be done about that/no way around it then, I'll be going then/I'll be going.

Kondou: I'll go too.

Hijikata: No need, Kondou-san you should just stay here and relax.

Kondou: Nn?

Hijikata: It's because you're the face of the Shinsengumi. The trivial matters of the troop, it's best for you not to be involved in them at all, I'll deal with everything.

Kondou: Nn, is that so? I'm sorry.

Hijikata: the tea was verry good. Then I'll see you later.

(hijikata leaves)

Kondou:　Oh. It seems that the beauty of sakura has no effect on an oni. Heh. Good grief.

　 Hijikata Toshizou, Miki Shin'ichirō Okita Souji, Morikubo Shōtaro  Shōtarō Kondou Isami, Ōkawa Tōru

----

image from suruga-ya.

[literaphobe]

that's so AWESOME, being a polyglot sure as hell is hot! and such an advantage with korean fanart! If you don't mind, which one is your favourite (for writing, speaking, listening)? When talking, do you alternate between the three of them?? Which one do you think is the easiest? Any anecdote involving language?? How do you got interested in learning korean?? i don't know, id like to read more about it asdkdj

hehe sometimes i see the korean spop art n comics on twitter and they will have some like english translation and i will feel like an insider because i will look at the original korean one and know what it Really says 

also! english is the language i’m technically the most proficient in? but when i speak to family n friends who speak english and chinese i tend to code-switch! it is fun and also my parents used to make me terrified of chinese because they would scold and belittle me constantly for not speaking it well when i was like in my preteens to teens (even tho it was their fault! for almost exclusively speaking english to me because english proficiency is an advantage and is prioritized in my country). but my mom now admits i speak chinese well <3 i don’t necessarily know all the words but whatever i say tends to come out nice <3 also with korean.... mmm its hard to get opportunities to speak it because i don’t know anyone who can speak korean with me <3 i feel very shy about using it <3 there was a period of time tho when i spoke korean to my dogs for fun it was funny 

between english chinese and korean..... it’s interesting because english and chinese both for the most part follow the SVO (subject verb object) sentence structure, whereas korean follows a SOV (subject object verb) sentence structure. BUT english and korean both have an alphabet (its why i learnt how to read korean in like! idk an hour i’m guessing) whereas chinese does not </3 its a... [big sigh] pictorial language. so each character is some new fucking picture you gotta learn. SUCH a bitch in oral examinations because sometimes u will just come across a word that u don’t know! never seen that shit before! so u don’t know how to read it <3 so it’s like a guessing game where there is every chance you will be completely wrong <3 so sometimes u gotta fucking <3 pretend the word doesn’t exist <3 or make up your own pronunciation <3 i remember sitting in a hall once with two of my malay friends and they were moaning about how scared they were because what if they pronounce stuff wrong :( and i’m like aw :( well :( but at least u have an alphabet :( which is like the same letters as the one in english :( that’s like safer right because how wrong can u go? and they’re like ok but u see :( the word could be said slightly different as compared to how its spelt :( and i’m like oh <3 that must be so hard <3 

and the thing is u see. they learnt exactly how much easier they had it. because our school had this program where they made the chinese students learn malay and the students who spoke malay, hindi, tamil, basically everyone who was not chinese. they had to learn chinese </3 and that was honestly like a racist hate crime, because after class my friends would come up to me on the verge of tears like. michelle :’( HOW are you doing this. chinese class is so scary we hate it why must we memorise every new character. and me, who got second in class for malay (the ONLY reason why i didn’t get first was because i forgot what ‘yellow’ was in malay. and now i will always remember it is ‘kuning’. anyway my malay teacher was BEAUTIFUL and she told me i got full marks for reading because i said everything perfectly. i did not understand a single word of the malay passage i was reading <3) was like i am so sorry :( you do not deserve this :( 

anyway its a hate crime to make a person learn english and chinese because imo those are two of the most different languages in the world :) its why white people fucking suck at chinese. and honestly so do most chinese american like. actors. ever seen a movie where they speak chinese? most times they are speaking it horribly <3 anyway, learning korean was really interesting because of how it strengthened my chinese! like, because a lot of korean words came from chinese (there are korean words taken from japanese too. because. well. lmao) and the korean alphabet was literally invented because traditional han characters (written chinese) was too fucking hard. even the chinese people realized traditional chinese was too fucking hard and decided to make simplified chinese. like make those pictures less complicated! 

the reason why i learnt korean was because. of this korean variety show called running man. it is the most internationally recognized korean variety show. so what this show is is like. there is a main cast made up of actors, singers, and comedians. and they are forced to compete against each other/team up to achieve a common goal, through playing various games and stuff with a final objective that involves someone winning/getting punished. it’s a little hard to explain, but they’re like an irl found family trope (while also being fictional? because they essentially play characters on that show that are like exaggerated versions of themselves) with EVERY AU ever. like seriously think of a concept they’ve probably done it. high school, super powers, super heroes, aliens, college students, olympic athletes, sherlock holmes, james bond, chess, etc etc etc. so an example of this would be like the staff will tell the members “this week you are the drama department in the high school and you are competing against the athletics department to determine who is the best club in the school” and they’ll have to do it. and sometimes the cast gets really into the theme of the ep and its really funny when they gotta Act to sell something. anyway they also have this game which the show invented called ‘nametag ripping’ so essentially on their backs everyone has a name tag stuck to their clothes with velcro and you have to rip off the nametags of other people. the cast in this show has incredible chemistry so the banter is amazing and very funny. i also have to admit i additionally liked the show because two of the members had this ‘best enemies, best collaborators’ chemistry that i found very compelling and fun to watch. so i started learning korean so i could get what they were saying without subs ie watch the show live. and i guess my parents found that impressive which is why my mom constantly nags me to learn more languages. which. is not gonna happen because i have adhd <3 and the thing about me is. i won’t say i’m a genius. but i can do anything so long as i want to do it. its the worst superpower to have <3 so anyway. that’s why i know korean i guess! sorry this is so long 

[hamhamparadise]

August 6th, Happy Birthday Hamtaro!

Hamtaro is our main protagonist of the show! Finally, it’s his time to shine!

Hamtaro is often referred to as a “golden hamster”, albeit his fur being cream-colored like pretty much all males in the series, and he sports an orange semi-circular stripe that runs around his forehead. He also has an orange spot in his butt and his back is orange up to the tail.

Hamtaro's personality is the embodiment of childish innocence, kindness and adventurous. He is also apparently oblivious to love matters, as he considers them “too complicated”. That, however, doesn't stop him from becoming a great friend to anyone that spends more than 2 minutes talking with him. Hamtaro likes to help his friends, and he is also a natural born leader, that all the Ham-Hams run to him to ask him for an opinion or decision on a subject. Hamtaro is also very dumb not only to love, but other stuff that should be quite obvious for many, but to be honest this is a common occurrence between all the Ham-Hams You could say many of them are just small furry 5 year olds though that might be a given due to the target audience. During the series he keeps growing up, if only subtle, and sometimes we can see an slightly annoyed or a blatantly angry Hamtaro, but these times are quite rare.

Hamtaro lives with his owner Laura Haruna, the human side protagonist of the series. He is a good friend to Brandy, the Haruna’s dog . The series starts when Hamtaro's family moves to a new town, and he goes out to explore. However, before that, he lived in Sumire Town together with Laura. Hamtaro is the only Ham-Ham of whom we know his parents are, more specifically his mother. He was born to Yuki, a white hamster that was a pet to a kindergarten in Sumire Town, which Laura attended.

However, and we won't go too deep on this, the Hamtaro manga originally gives a whole lot of different family trees for Hamtaro (there's 5 of them in different generations!). Hamtaro's Japanese name is Hamutaro-kun, which it's pretty much a direct translation. The “taro” part is a common suffix for boys names. For example think of Momotaro (Peach Boy). Hence, Hamtaro's translated name would be “Hamster Boy”.

In the Japanese dub, Hamtaro finishes most of his sentences with “nanoda” or “noda”. This is just a cute addition to his speech, emphasizing his childish portrayal as it is mostly used by kids. He also refers to himself as “boku”, which is mostly a young boy’s way of saying “I” or “myself”. Compare to Boss’ “Ore-sama” which is more smug and thinks very highly of himself.

Hamtaro's birthday is once again another Goroawase pun. Same reason as Cappy is the fact that the words for 8 and 6 can be read as “Hamu” or Ham. According to some interviews from Ritsuko Kawai, Hamtaro’s creator, Hamtaro's original birthday date before the anime started was July 24th! (That might be why Prince Bo’s birthday is that specific date now.)

Relationships

Hamtaro is an involuntary stud. For a guy that literally has no interest on love, he has quite a bunch of ladies after him.

Bijou, naturally, is the main one. Albeit Hamtaro only sees her as his “best friend”, multiple media and merchandise like to picture the two together, sometimes even in clearly couple situations, for obvious reasons, as they're both the main characters of the series. They interact in pretty much any episode, and they even have a “date episode”. However, Hamtaro is too dense and never really officially reciprocates Bijou's feelings. This is the most supported pairing from the fans, but sadly the series never offers a proper conclusion. There is, however, the third movie, in which Hamtaro appears to be really focused on his task to “retrieve” Bijou from the pirate gang. This can be interpreted as he being jealous, or he just being his usual goofy self of “don't be mean to my friends”.

Sparkle comes a close second. Although she was very abrasive to the Ham-Hams at first, in later episodes she develops both a crush on Hamtaro and a rivalry for Bijou, which given her straight-forward and fighting nature, makes her a quite obvious contender for the hamster’s heart.

Continuing on, and to far less degree, we have a whole array of secondary hamsters that one way or another fall in love with the hamster, but we won't get on much detail: Oshare, Bijou's French friend, apparently out of nowhere, develops a crush on Hamtaro that is not hard-pushed as she is only officially in love with him for one episode.

Lapis, although not ever really developed, is very close and friendly to Hamtaro, and that makes Sparkle put her under the radar of possible love rivals. The kiss she gives him in the cheek (which make him blush like crazy) doesn't help either.

Lazuli, Lapis' sister, also falls in the same category in early episodes, however she quickly leans towards Snoozer.

Barette, in her original episode, appears to be interested on Hamtaro, but that fades away later on.

Penelope, apparently, has a crush on Hamtaro, but we don't know if this is short lived or not. In the presentation audios and also in the Love Love Attack Plan song, as well as a bunch of episodes, it is implied that Penelope has a crush on Hamtaro. Given how easily she crushes on many other creatures, this might be just a phase.

And then, we have two other contestants, although these are up to debate as they were probably more meant as a joke than actual love interests:

Jingle, who apparently can't ever remember Hamtaro's name, is always around to offer his jammin’ support, and even take care of him when he was sick. He also pushes Hamtaro into becoming a wild hamster and travel with him a few times, so clearly has an interest in the golden boy.

Bo, who considers Hamtaro his best friend, clearly expects a lot from the boy and acts a little embarrassed and nervous about him. Their relation in the third OVA clearly shows there's something going on. Now, although I have been pointing out that Hamtaro clearly has no interest in love, this has two exceptions. Both are exclusive for movies, so it is debatable whether we should consider them canon or not since Hamtaro acts pretty ‘non-canon’ in these movies to be honest.

First, and this one is also featured in the series, is Laura. Mainly in the first movie (but also in later episodes), Hamtaro develops a clear crush on Laura. And we're not talking innocent “I love my owner”, he really loves Laura romantically. The whole plot of the first movie is how he wants to spend Laura's birthday with her and he is sad and jealous when she goes out with her friends, but specially freaks out when Kana mentions Travis. In the anime he also worries when Laura tells him she is going out on a “date”, and he stalks her to see with whom. We can discuss if this is some kind of innocent love, but it is undoubtedly romantic love.

Lastly, we have Hamtaro's only love for a same species critter: Princess Cye-Ra. In the second movie, Hamtaro falls in love the very same moment he sees Cye-Ra in the flesh for the first time. This is painfully clear as he gets awe struck and then nervous and blushy around her. Later on he gets a kiss from her on the cheek, and he pretty much freaks out and ponders why his heart is beating so fast. Later on, Cye-ra reunites with her fiance, and Hamtaro is truly devastated. But, to date, this is the only time Hamtaro has truly loved someone.

Episodes

Now, since pretty much all Hamtaro episodes focus on the boy one way or another, we will only highlight a few. Episode 1 – Hamtaro!

Naturally the first episode of the series is a very important one! Hamtaro gets to explore his new house and meets a few new friends!

Episode 24 – Hamtaro, please come home!

Hamtaro gets trapped in a box inside a truck that is going to some place far away! Laura and the Ham-Hams frantically look for him but will Hamtaro ever returned?

Episode 114 - Hamtaro, the Knight A typhoon blocks Laura's parents from getting home, so Laura and Hamtaro spend a scary night alone. Hamtaro decides to act as a Knight and protect Laura!

Episode 135 – Hamtaro gets Cold

Hamtaro overhears Laura wrong and thinks she doesn't like him anymore, so he goes on a journey with Jingle. But he catches a cold, and Jingle has to take care of him!

Episode 251 – Oh no, Hamtaro!

Hamtaro is stuck at Mindy's house after playing, and he has to return, but Boss decides to pretend to be him so Laura doesn’t get worried!

Episode 271 - Hamha-Man the Justice Hero  

Hamtaro dreams that he is a Hero of Justice and have superpowers! Who will he fight?

Movie 1: Adventures in Ham-Ham Land!

It’s Laura's birthday, and he prepares a lot of gifts for her! However, Laura leaves with her friends, which makes him really sad. And a bit angry when he learns that Travis is there too. Later, the Ham-Hams learn of Ham-Ham Land, when there's a magical seed that allows a hamster to speak the human language! Hamtaro wants to use it to wish Laura a Happy Birthday!

OVA 1: 3000 Hammy Steps on Search of Mommy

It is Hamtaro's birthday and he decides to go search for his mother! She is apparently in a far away place, but his friends are there to help! Meanwhile, the Ham-Hams that are left preparing his birthday party!

Hamtaro's birthday is a very special day for everyone! Happy birthday!

[creepingsharia]

“F**k Your Pig-God!” Muslim Persecution of Christians, April 2019

(Midway Presbyterian Church , South Carolina)

by Raymond Ibrahim

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.  Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:

1)          To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2)          To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Muslim Persecution of Christians, April 2019

Slaughter of Christians

Sri Lanka: On Easter Sunday, April 21, Islamic terrorists launched a bombing campaign on Christians; the death toll reached 359, with hundreds more wounded.  Eight separate explosions took place, at least two of which were suicide bombings: three targeted churches celebrating Easter Sunday Mass; four targeted hotels frequented by Western tourists in connection with Easter holiday; one blast was in a house, and killed three police officers during a security operation.  At least 39 foreigners — including citizens of the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan, Denmark and Portugal — were among the slain.

Most fatalities occurred in the three church-bombings. The worst took place in St. Sebastian’s, a Catholic church in Negombo; there at least 150 Christian worshippers were murdered. At St. Anthony’s Shrine, another Catholic church in Colombo, the nation’s capital, at least 52 were murdered; and at the evangelical Zion Church, at least 38 were murdered.

“I don’t have words to express my pain,” said a Christian man who survived the bombing at St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo:

We lost so many people…. The smell of flesh is all around me…. We are a peace-loving community in this small city, we had never hurt anyone, but we don’t know from where this amount of hate is coming. This city has become a grave with blood and bodies lying around…. Since the past three years, we don’t know why, but we see an extremist’s mindset developing among the Muslims. I know many good Muslims, but there are also a lot who hate us, and they have never been so before. It is in these three years that we see a difference.

“People were in pieces,” recalled Ms. Silviya, 26, concerning the bombing of St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo. “Blood was everywhere. I closed my son’s eyes, took him out, passed him off to a relative and ran back inside to look for my family.”

Nigeria: The jihad on Christians claimed dozens more lives in April:

On Sunday, April 14, Muslim herdsmen slaughtered 17 Christians who had gathered after a baby dedication at a church.  The infant’s mother was among the slain; the father was left hospitalized in critical condition. 

On Wednesday, April 17, 2019, Fulani militants launched an attack on a predominantly Christian village; four people were killed, six were injured; over one hundred homes and food storage barns burned down. 

On April 19, Muslim raiders killed 11 Christians returning from Good Friday church service; they also kidnapped and slaughtered a female British aid worker. 

On Sunday, April 21, ten boys were killed while taking part in an Easter procession. Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigerian human rights lawyer remarked in an email, “The Holy Week killings in Nigeria do not grab headlines like Sri Lanka but still Nigeria’s Christians are dying the deaths of a 1000 cuts in as many installments!”

The author of a separate April 21 report, a Nigerian Christian, gave his take of the nonstop carnage of Christians in the West African nation:

In the course of investigating anti-Christian violence throughout Nigeria, I have seen things that drove me to tears. I have entered rooms and houses that were covered with blood. I have seen bodies that were shot and butchered; corpses of pregnant women who had their stomachs ripped opened, the bodies of unborn babies strewn about; homes destroyed; mass graves. In some of these attacks, entire families were killed. In a visit to one state in northern Nigeria, I went to 13 villages that were desolate as a result of herdsmen attacks. In another state, I visited eight churches that were bombed in one day, and in one town I saw the only four Christians who survived a Boko Haram onslaught. They were in hiding after all other Christians fled.

Another report quotes a local Nigerian pastor’s reaction to another church attack in April:  “After that attack, I came to visit the villages in the two-mile area around my church, and it was like a cemetery, as dozens were killed. I have dozens of little children, with no school supplies, no uniforms and no desks, and I need to create a school for them.”

United Kingdom:  A court “sentenced a Muslim Iranian asylum seeker to jail,” an April 5 report says, “for stabbing his wife to death, in part for her conversion to Christianity.”   Dana Abdullah, 35, stabbed Avan Najmadiein, his estranged wife and 32-year-old mother of four, 50 times with a kitchen knife because she refused to support his asylum application.  He was deported from the UK in 2013 for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl, had returned illegally, and was now “threaten[ing] to kill his wife because she ‘dishonored’ him by converting to Christianity, authorities said.”  One detective involved in the case characterized Abdullah as “an arrogant and controlling man,” who “killed Najmadiein because he resented her rejection, her refusal to support his application and her conversion to Christianity.”  Abdullah was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years and one month in prison.

Attacks on Churches and Crosses

Italy: A 37-year-old Muslim migrant in Rome was recently arrested for attempted homicide after he stabbed a Christian man in the throat for wearing a crucifix around his neck.  “Religious hate” is cited as an “aggravating factor” in the crime.

Days earlier, a separate report noted that “crosses on graves in an Italian cemetery in Pieve di Cento have been covered with black cloth so as not to offend those who may come from another religion,” an apparent reference to Muslim migrants, some of whom have been known to desecrate Christian cemeteries.   “The cemetery,” the report adds, “has also installed motorised blackout curtains in a local chapel following renovations to hide Roman Catholic symbols during ceremonies involving other denominations.”

United States of America:  South Carolina’s Midway Presbyterian Church was vandalized, including by having its 125 year old windows shattered.  “SUBMIT TO GOD THRU ISLAM” and “MUHAMMED IS HIS PROPHET” were spray painted in black on the church’s side. “It was very disturbing because we feel like this was an individual act and we don’t hold any religious group responsible for it,” said Bob Harrell, a church leader. “We think it most likely was some misguided young people.”

Indonesia: Several crosses in the Bethesda Christian cemetery in Mrican were vandalized, broken and burned in the most populous Muslim nation.  The cemetery keeper said that “in the ten years since he has held the job, he has never seen such vandalism.”  The report notes that

the incident joins a long list of cases of intolerance that have taken place in recent months….   In December 2018, some residents in Purbayan removed the upper part of a cross placed on the tomb of Albertus Slamet Sugihardi, after informing his widow, Maria Sutris Winarni, that the cemetery was ‘for the exclusive use of Muslims.’  Before that, the Catholic family was forced to hold a private funeral to avoid tensions with the Islamic community.  A few weeks later, Christian tombs were vandalised in several cemeteries in Magelang, 30 kilometres north of Yogyakarta, Central Java.

Germany: While cursing his “pig god,” Muslim migrants beat and repeatedly stabbed a homeless man in Berlin for apparently displaying some Christian symbol.  According to the report, “Arabic-speaking youths were caught on video assaulting and stabbing a homeless Berlin man is speculated in the German press to be an anti-Christian motivated attack….  After physically attacking the victim, one of the men then drew a knife and stabbed him several times, leaving him with severe injuries to the buttocks, thigh, and arm, according to investigators.”   The Arabic words they yelled were translated as “We f*ck your sister, we’ll finish you!” and “Your pig-God, we f *ck your pig-God!”  The report adds that this “incident is not the first in which a migrant-background Christian has been physically attacked by Arabic-speaking young men for displaying Christian symbols in public in the German capital.  Recently, a 39-year-old had been beaten for wearing a necklace with a cross on it.”

Separately in Germany,a migrant man, apparently of Somali origin, entered a church in Munich during Easter Mass and threw dangerous objects at worshippers (variously described as stones or firecrackers) while shouting, “Allahu akbar” (Allah is greater).  Congregants hurled their Easter meal baskets on the ground and rushed out in a panic.  Some were injured; children were left in a “state of shock.”  Authorities concluded that he was “mentally ill” and therefore not responsible for his actions.

Egypt: After a large Muslim mob beat two Christians, one a Coptic priest, in front of 200 terrified children who had gathered for Bible lessons, authorities responded by arresting the beaten Christian priest and shutting the church in compliance with the mob’s wishes.   On the previous day, the mayor had gone to oversee ongoing reconstruction of the church.  Angered at what he considered too much of an “add-on,” he accused the church of “treason” and riled local Muslims against it.  At that point, according to the report,

The city council immediately arrived, stopped the work and confiscated building materials, including the cement and the reinforced steel.  The next day at 4 p.m., dozens of angry demonstrators tried to enter the church premises but were unable to get through a steel door. Carrying clubs and knives, they started shouting, cursing and pelting the building with rocks, according to Coptic Solidarity.  Additional forces arrived, and Father Basilious was struck as he and another priest were escorted off the premises. Parents and church leaders were not able to move the 200 children away from the angry, chanting villagers until security forces dispersed the crowds. Though police witnessed the beating of the priest, no arrests were made.  Both Father Basilious and Father Bakhoum were taken for questioning into the evening hours.  Police issued an indefinite closure order, pending investigations, and froze all activities of the 10-year-old church, including its daycare and the Sunday School.

One local Christian woman said, “The hardest emotion in that incident is the kids lived the incident in the reality. They saw the extremists attacking the church and how they injured the priests. This incident will hurt them psychologically in the future.”  “This is a very hard situation,” said another. “You can see kids praying in tears because of their feelings of fear … that is very painful for us as Christians personally. I don’t trust in the government promises, but we have to continue praying for [a] reopening [of] the church.”

Attacks on Muslim Converts to Christianity

Kyrgyzstan:  Three Muslim men nearly beat to death a former Muslim man because he converted to Christianity.  After they broke into the home of Eldos, in his 20s,

They shouted at him that he was a kaffir (a derogatory term for a non-Muslim) and that he had betrayed Islam (the classic Islamic view of Muslims who leave Islam).  Then they tried to force him to say the shahada (the Islamic creed), which is considered conversion or re-conversion to Islam, but Eldos bravely refused. They then repeatedly kicked him in the head as he lay helpless on the floor, fracturing his jaw and smashing his teeth and leaving him semi-conscious.  They then threatened that they would come back to kill him if he did not leave the village by the morning. 

Eldos reported the incident to local authorities—only to find them siding with his attackers.  He “was held captive for ten hours in a prosecutor’s office in the capital Bishkek by the lawyer of his attackers. The lawyer tried to force Eldos to drop the charges against the three men who viciously attacked him.”  Among the threats made during his ordeal, the defense lawyer told Eldos, “We are going to lock you in prison and you are going to beg me for your life.”  Eldos and his uncle, also a convert to Christianity, fled the Muslim-majority nation two days later.

Uganda: A  former Muslim imam and secret convert to Christianity, Sheikh Hassan Podo, 28, explained what happened to him after an informer told his family that he had been missing mosque prayers and was seen entering a church: “my brothers immediately began surrounding me, with sticks. It was difficult to escape [from the family house]. They began shouting, beating and insulting me as an ‘infidel’ and enemy of the Islamic religion.”  A local heard “a loud cry emanating from Podo’s homestead, raising a big concern from the neighbors who arrived at the scene of attack and helped Podo to escape.  He bled as he fled for his life. Later he was found in a pool of blood a kilometer away from the homestead, unconscious.”  His wife and two children managed to escape to a nearby Christian neighbor.  Podo was rushed to a clinic, where he was treated for wounds to his head and body; two days later he was discharged to a pastor’s home. According to the pastor, Podo’s father has since assembled a group of Muslims from different mosques “to hunt for the life of his son, declaring a fatwa and disowning him, and giving his land to the brothers for bringing blasphemy into the family.”

Kenya: Charles Ndingi Mudasir, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity in 2014, shared some of what transpired once his Muslim father learned of his apostasy:

One Sunday morning, [my father] followed behind me and saw me enter the church. That evening, he called two imams and my uncles. All of them descended on me with blows, slaps, and whips, calling me a kafir (infidel)….  They forced me to repeat the shahada [several times]. They continued to beat me mercilessly. My furious father hit me in the head and I fainted. When I woke up, I found myself locked in a dark room and with a lot of pain. Back in my mind, I knew that I was still a Christian and if I died I would go to heaven. I was released after two days. Life was never the same again. I was not allowed to leave the compound on Sundays.

Then, “in 2015, my father arranged a trip for me and my uncle, Mohamed, to Qatar. We were to be there for a month and come back,” continues Charles.  While at the airport with his uncle, Charles asked his brother why he was weeping:   “My brother, who is still a Muslim, had compassion for me. He [told me of] the plan my father had devised; to have me beheaded in Qatar because I had refused to convert back to Islam. I acted very fast, escaped from my uncle at the airport and rushed back to the church.”

Later, “while surfing in a cyber café in Mombasa [with] my childhood friend, some people blindfolded and whisked me into a waiting car,” says Charles:

I was taken round and round by the men, [who were] praising Allah that they had found me. Finally, I was taken to a mosque and uncovered…..  I was later moved to another house and locked inside a small dark room. I was given seven days to repent and re-Islamize. Every day, I was given a blue pill with very little water. My captors told me that my father had sent that pill to help me remove unbelief from my thick head. Yes, my father again. My heart sank deeper….  On the eighth day, I was told that they would take me to the mosque to either be killed or [to be dropped off after] injecting me with poison. I knew my end had just arrived. I said my final prayer for deliverance from the claws of the enemy or a gracious welcome to the heavenly presence of God. The Lord answered my prayer, and my captors asked me where I wanted to go. I told them that I wanted to go to the South Coast.

He was again blindfolded, shoved into the car, driven to the South Coast, and dumped near the Word of Life Mombasa.

General Discrimination and Persecution

Palestinian Authority: On April 25, “the terrified residents of the Christian village of Jifna near Ramallah,” states a report, “were attacked by Muslim gunmen … after a woman from the village submitted a complaint to the police that the son of a prominent, Fatah-affiliated leader had attacked her family. In response, dozens of Fatah gunmen came to the village, fired hundreds of bullets in the air, threw petrol bombs while shouting curses, and caused severe damage to public property. It was a miracle that there were no dead or wounded.” The “rioters,” the report continues, “called on the [Christian] residents to pay jizya—a head tax that was levied throughout history on non-Muslim minorities under Islamic rule. The most recent victims of the jizya were the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria under ISIS rule.”   Moreover, as often happens when Muslims attack Christians in Islamic nations, “Despite the [Christian] residents’ cries for help … the PA police did not intervene during the hours of mayhem. They have not arrested any suspects.”  

Malaysia:  After moving to a Muslim village, Slamet Sumiarto, a Catholic artist and his family “were expelled from a village because they are not Muslim.”  Sumiarto made a video about the situation:

I just moved here to Pleret and brought all my stuff and paintings to Karet.  Today I am very sad to know that I do not have the “right” to stay and live here simply because I am not a Muslim and my whole family is Catholic.  From an emotional point of view, I am really exhausted from this unexpected experience.  My poor wife, my children and I hope to soon find a good solution to this problem so that I could stay here, in this rented house in Pleret.

Although some local officials tried to get involved after seeing his video, in the end, Sumiarto and his family opted for prudence and moved.

Pakistan:  On account of his Christian identity, Muslims attacked and beat Kenneth Johnson, a 27-year-old Christian, after he tried to open a small grocery store.  According to Johnson, a poor agricultural laborer who takes care of three children, “It took about a year for me to save and arrange the required funds to establish a grocery store. However, Christians in this Islamic society are not allowed to initiate a business.  I had customers in my shop when Fiaz Khattak led an armed group of about a dozen Muslim.  They attacked my shop, damaged the stuff, thrashed me, passed derogatory remarks against Christians and Christianity. However, I managed to escape from the scene and protected myself from major injuries.”  The Muslims told Johnson things like, “How dare you, a Christian, initiate a business of a grocery store in the village. You are born to clean the roads and our houses, not to do businesses.”  Johnson continues:

The police did not reach the scene on time when we called the helpline.  Instead of a legal course of action, the police officer referred the case to the community leader. However, the community leader is even more helpless in front of an influential Muslim, therefore, I have not got any relief.  It is very hard for Christians to uplift themselves.  They are deprived and discouraged at different levels and face discrimination. Muslims often resist to provide opportunities to Christians. Rather, they create hurdles to keep them at lower positions.

Egypt:  On April 16, parliament approved the final draft of Egypt’s proposed amendments to the 2014 Constitution.  Although the Sisi government had emphasized that these constitutional changes would help ensure the rights of Christians, the final language has disappointed many Copts.  According to Article 244—the only article that mentions Christians—“the state shall guarantee that youth, Christians, the physically challenged and Egyptian expatriates are fairly represented in line with laws regulating this aspect (adequate representation).” Aside from likening Christians to handicaps and minors, “the language is in itself problematic, as the population of Christians is considered a state secret and thus it is impossible to ascertain what fair representation looks like for believers,” notes one report. “Most Egyptian Christians live in the Minya Governorate, where they are believed to represent nearly 50% of the population. The proposed constitutional changes also ignore other challenges Christians face, such as being treated as second-class citizens and difficulties at getting new churches approved.”

Read all of Ibrahim’s previous monthly reports here.

[badbadmovies-blog1]

The Magic of Mika Penniman

Or, why you should watch Stasera Casa Mika

If you don’t currently live in western Europe or eastern Asia, you’ve likely never heard of Mika. You’d be forgiven for this. Despite being a household name in Italian and French speaking countries and a serious force in Korea, China and Japan, Mika is a virtual unknown in the English speaking world. This is a real shame. Mika is a pop star with a message and a countenance and a fandom distinct from any other. His greatest work is his 2 season Italian primetime variety extravaganza, Stasera Casa Mika, but it’s truly impossible to understand the show or its importance without an understanding of the man and the people who love him.

Mika is a man of many places and many languages. He was born in Lebanon, raised in Paris and London, is a fixture of television in France and Italy and keeps homes in Paris, Milan, London and Miami. One of his most immediately impressive talents is his ability to rapidly switch between speaking 3 or 4 languages across just a few sentences. On top of his native French and English and fluent Italian, he also speaks Spanish (moderately) some Arabic, and some Chinese. Search for him on YouTube and you‘ll find hundreds of videos of the man meeting his fans; it’s not uncommon to see him speak to 3 different people in 3 different languages, switching to respond in any language without so much as pausing. He’s tall and certainly handsome, albeit the latter in a non-traditional sense. His hair is curly and voluminous and sometimes completely out of control. His eyes are golden brown with hints of green, his jawline is sharp; yet still he describes his own face as “odd”. The chiseled handsomeness is offset by plump, often flushed cheeks and deep dimples. His smile is wide and bright and his front teeth are crooked. His appearance truly depends on his expression: when neutral or serious he’s solidly what anyone would call sexy. But he’s giggly and good natured, he smiles easily and often, and as soon as he does he shifts from sexy to simply adorable. With the crooked front teeth and plump pink cheeks he sometimes looks something like a bunny or a chipmunk. But still, a beautiful chipmunk.

Mika, serious

Mika, goofy

Even with his beauty it’s his personality that’s earned him so many fans. He’s bubbly and energetic on television and onstage, and while that’s 100% genuine, it’s more one of his moods than an accurate representation of his personality as a whole. There’s another side to him, equally entertaining but very different. Mika was snarky and loud when he first rose to fame at the age of 23 but as he’s aged he’s mellowed and calmed quite a bit. It’s an absolutely lovely transformation to witness if you’ve been following him for some time. Young Mika was hilarious and good hearted but sometimes brash and rude (to be fair, always entertainingly, endearingly, sassily so). The man he is now is pure and gentle. He’s soft-spoken and exceptionally kind. Watching him interact with his fans is like watching the human version of a cup of hot tea.  The man also seems to have stunning talent for feeling a room. He picks up on his fan’s emotions without a word being said. One of the best “Mika picking up on people’s feelings” stories involves him noticing a woman in his audience of thousands crying, and pulling her onstage mostly to hug her. Another fantastic tale tells of him going out of his way to ensure one of his fans felt included in a conversation when another person seemed to be getting all the attention. He told a fan on an airplane that he would meet her at the destination airport baggage claim to take a picture with her, and not only did he make good on that promise, the fan discovered he had no luggage of his own and went to baggage claim exclusively to wait for her. He’s got 2 dogs he dotes on and a penchant for sweater wearing. There’s something about him that just seems inherently huggable.

Mika’s claim to fame is his one of a kind brand of dark bubblegum pop. He pairs cheery, poppy music with dark, sometimes disturbing lyrics. Between the beat and the brisk singing, it’s easy to miss the lyrics entirely and get wrapped up in dancing around; this is the key to the success of formula. You may be thinking that cheerful music and dark lyrics are not unique, but this isn’t Melanie Martinez. Mika doesn’t lean on the darkness of his lyrics, singing to the camera with dramatic pauses to make sure you get it. He just sings, and trusts that his audience is smart enough to understand the point on their own. It’s on you to notice that the cheery song about teenage freedom you’re singing gleefully to on a summer afternoon contains the words “Left here on my own/ I’m gonna hurt myself”.

Mika’s first two albums, Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much, are about his childhood and adolescence viewed through an abstract lens. Most of the songs are vignettes about imaginary characters in metaphorical and absurd situations, but all of what might first seem like nonsense has meaning. It’s a distanced way to talk about real things, and Mika has plenty of real things to work with. His family was evacuated from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War in 1983 and his father was held as a hostage in the Gulf War for 8 months when Mika was just 8 years old. Mika suffered badly from dyslexia, did poorly in school (not helped by cruel teachers), and was mercilessly bullied to point of going mute for a while. His music draws on all this inner pain and a talent for empathy to write darkness in a way that feels authentic. It never feels like just an emo aesthetic. His third album, The Origin of Love, diverges from theme for an airier sound and more cheerful lyrics. It’s an album about love in forms both positive and negative, and it feels much warmer and more optimistic than the work that came before. His 4th (and as of this writing, most recent) album, No Place in Heaven, is another departure from his previous work. If Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much discuss Mika’s life and problems in metaphor and simile, No Place in Heaven is the clear, plain English version, without the euphemistic wordplay. The album discusses Mika’s anxieties, from the trivial to the existential, with detail and without fear. No Place in Heaven is the modern English facing page translation to Life in Cartoon Motion and The Boy Who Knew Too Much’s Shakespearean stanzas. “Good Wife” is about the pain of a gay man in love with his straight friend and speaks his thoughts that he would be a much better partner than his friend’s unkind wife; “All She Wants” is an unflinching description of Mika’s fears that he’s a disappointment to his mother. “L’amour Fait ce Qu’il Veut” is an uncomplicated love song which manages to simultaneously remain unpolitical and make a clear statement by simply using the grammatical gendering system of the French language to assign male pronouns to the entity of love. The musical sound itself is different from his previous music. It’s more singer-songwriter, more guitar-heavy, and less electronic, but the whole thing is still recognizably Mika. This album feels like a catharsis for him. It’s not that he ever seemed sad or depressed, but post No Place in Heaven Mika seems like a new man. He looks healthier and happier than he ever has before. It’s as if a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

Mika’s honest lyrics and cheerful music have attracted a large, exceptionally dedicated and tight-knit fan base. Mika’s fans aren’t fans simply because they enjoy his music. They’re fans because they find comfort in his lyrics and his philosophy. You’ll always find at least some people in any fandom who feel this way, but for Mika fans it’s the rule. Ask any of them why they love Mika or how they discovered him and they’ll tell you a story that describes Mika or his music being there for them at a point in their life when it was most needed.

Mika is deeply important to people. Celebrities have fans, Mika has a flock. His fandom, largely (though not entirely) young and mostly (though not entirely) female, flourishes predominately on Twitter, Instagram, and a dedicated fan forum, where they communicate with each other across time zones and language barriers, often learning parts of languages they otherwise don’t speak. There’s a warmth here, a deep love and concern for each other. These people, most of whom are in some form of school, are spending their spare time learning languages by choice only to understand each other, and Mika, better. Due to Mika’s aforementioned cross-language popularity and success, to be a Mika fan is to be at least partly bi- or tri-lingual.  A short venture into #mikainstagram on Instagram (Mika and his fans have dedicated their own tag based on his Instagram handle, as #Mika is flooded with posts about a coincidentally named anime character) will show you thousands of affectionate posts about Mika, common for any fandom, but they talk about him in the kind of elevated language people normally use to discuss royalty. Even the absolute briefest interactions with his fans prompt deeply emotional responses. Even a smile matters. And it’s sincere - there’s no sarcasm here, no snark, absolutely no “too cool for it” artificial lack of concern. The people who speak about how Mika’s smile changed their life aren’t kidding in the slightest. He genuinely has that power and that kind of energy; it’s unique and almost impossible to understand without being inside it. When he’s part of Q&A sessions (he tends to do at least one a year), he doesn’t get asked nearly as many questions about himself and his music as he gets asked for general life advice. When given the opportunity, Mika’s fans literally bring him their problems, as if to the world’s coolest advice columnist.

All this information is necessary because what Casa Mika is and the effect it has is hard enough to explain on paper alone, and becomes completely impossible to explain without all the context (watching the show, however, will provide all this context pretty immediately whether you’ve ever heard of Mika or not; he really is magic and you’ll pick up on his energy immediately). Mika is a source of wisdom and a protective presence to his fans. He’s trusted and relied on in a way that celebrities rarely are, and he therefore finds himself in a position of power to influence many young people’s lives for the better.

Being a judge on the Italian version of The X Factor launched Mika into household name status in Italy as people who discovered him through his television appearances then discovered his music. Italy has become his strongest market since his time on X factor. Italy also has a long tradition of primetime variety television shows, and 2016 they were ripe for a new one. Mika’s creative wheels happened to be turning, and so Stasera Casa Mika was born.

Casa Mika (almost always referred to in this way, the “Stasera” is generally left off) is a very hard thing to put into words simply due to it being…really hard to put into words, but “variety show” still comes the closest to a concise description. The concept is fairly simple: Mika is your host, inviting you into his home. “Stasera Casa Mika” translates roughly into “Tonight at Mika’s house” in Italian. There are skits, comedy segments, and many musical performances, some starring Mika and some not. In between all this Mika talks to the camera and undergoes a breathtaking number of outfit changes. The first episode opens with Mika driving the tiniest car imaginable and singing to his dogs, and it really only gets warmer and softer from there. He’s got a co-presenter in both seasons. The first, Anglo-Italian actress Sarah Felberbaum, has a presence and warmth that mixes perfectly with Mika’s. They make fantastic presentation partners. Sarah is replaced in the second season by Luciana Littizzetto, who’s a pure gem and brings a whole lot of love and light with her. It works extremely well in the context of the second season.

There’s a whole genre of media that I adore but find it hard to put a name to. For lack of a better term, call it “self-confident”. It’s art that doesn’t care if it’s objectively good or if it has wide appeal. It’s only concerned with being whatever it’s going to be, and trusts that the right audience will find it. Sometimes it turns out objectively good and sometimes it doesn’t, but’s always interesting. Within this genre you’ll find the shamelessly and unabashedly joyful and pure things. Joyful and pure are not en vogue. Media was forcefully sugar coated and inaccurate to real life for so long that a collective decision was made that everything has to be realistic and gritty, that we’ve got no time left for fearless joy. But every now and then you find a movie or show that’s just good and pure and has no qualms about being so.

My personal benchmark for this genre is Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. If you’re a child of anywhere between the early 70s and the late 2000s and you spent time watching American public television, you probably at least occasionally watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hosted by Fred Rogers, a man who can only be accurately described as an angel walking on the face of this undeserving earth, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a slow paced and kind children’s show which discussed very real and serious problems and current events in grounded and intelligent ways that children could understand. Yet between the much needed and challenging social commentary was a lovely, caring show that wanted nothing from you. It protected you. Fred Rogers ended every episode with a lovely song about how he loves and cares for you, he’s just happy you’re alive. Mister Rogers and his show hold a very special place in the hearts of the people who grew up with them. For those people mere mention of it is bound to start them crying. It stuck with people, and it does to this day.

Casa Mika, to me, feels like a version of Mister Rogers for adults. It manages to be joyful without ignoring problems in life and in the world. Old media was joyful as it pretended that life was always perfect and nothing was ever thorny. Casa Mika is joyful despite the thorniness of general existence. It doesn’t shy away from problems or politics; it just takes them in its joyful stride. It’s sort of like an uplifting emotional movie. You’ll cry but it will still bring you up in the end. Mika talks about human and civil rights, about poverty, about crime, about prisons, and you still come out the other side feeling a whole lot better than you did before.

Most episodes of Casa Mika follow a similar format: Mika opens the show with a pre-filmed skit that leads into the opening number of the show, a large and energetic performance of the show’s theme song. The show itself is a mishmash, with any number of live and pre-filmed skits and performances. Common segments include: Mika driving a taxi, learning how to do a job from someone, traveling Italy meeting talented musicians from unlikely places, musical performances by Mika and others, and interviews with celebrities. Mika ends every episode by climbing into an oversized bed while wearing pajamas, gently bidding goodnight to the audience, and shutting off the studio lights. It’s important to know this show originally went off at 11:30 PM – people really were going to bed; he’s truly bidding his audience goodnight.

Stasera Casa Mika promo photos

The cheerful opening, the calm come-down ending, and the clearly defined structure brings to mind children’s night time television. It brings to mind children’s television in general; it brings to mind Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. And somehow that’s exactly what it is, simply aimed at a very different audience. Casa Mika is Mister Rogers for the 2018 young adult or teenager. It’s darker and slightly cracked. It’s facing the real problems of the world but it’s facing them led by this lovely, protective figure of a man. He’s even got the sweater and sneakers at one point. It’s as if Mister Rogers was painted by Picasso.

It’s important to draw a distinction between the two seasons of Casa Mika. They’re two seasons of the same show but they’re still separate entities in a lot of ways. They’re both uplifting but season one is more purely joyful while season 2 deals more consistently with harder topics. Season 2 introduces Gregory, a large monster who looks like he jumped straight out of Where the Wild Things Are. Gregory is introduced as Mika’s close friend, and It’s made clear in unambiguous language that Gregory suffers from crippling, chronic depression. If you started watching Casa Mika to forget all your problems this show has other plans for you. Mika’s more or less taking care of Gregory, and he explains that he does this because sometimes you have to, and that sometimes the best way to help people is to simply be present. Gregory gets a whole lot of screen time over the course of the season, and every moment he’s on screen is taken as a moment to provide some simple but effective comfort for everyone watching who’s going through a mental illness of some kind or other.

The first season of Casa Mika is free, joyful, loud and pure. The skits and performances are hilarious and uplifting. It’s all one giant party, bringing as much energy as it can straight to your heart. It lifts you out of your problems enough that you feel strong enough to look them in the eye. The second season of Casa Mika gently guides you through those problems, in the kind of way that makes you weep, but it’s a good weeping. It’s a cathartic, detoxifying weeping. Casa Mika came right on the heels of Mika’s newfound lightness after No Place in Heaven, so watching the series feels a bit like joining him on a journey, an emotional experience you’re on together. Much like you, the viewer, Mika takes a season to be truly free and the next to face problems, some of which are quite clearly his own. If you watch the show, the whole show, all 8 episodes, in order, you’ll be taken on a teary eyed trip through Mika’s mind and your own, and all the dark corners of both.

If you go into this show with a feeling that no one cares about you and no idea who Mika is, you’ll come out the other side feeling slightly better because now you know there’s a guy named Mika who cares about you. And like Mika’s music, this somehow manages to feel truly authentic. While there have been a million people and a million celebrities who speak and post and tweet encouragement to mental illness sufferers, Mika is easier to believe. I tend to think it’s in his presentation. His message is less of a blithely optimistic (and often annoying) “THINGS WILL GET BETTER” and more of a soft hug from a friend telling you that yes, things will eventually get better but even more importantly that they still love you while things AREN’T better. Mika focuses on the normalcy and okay-ness of sadness and depression, that there’s nothing to be ashamed of in your struggles. He’s got so many of his own (it’s heavily implied that Gregory is not only a fictional character but an anthropomorphization of Mika’s own mental health struggles) that he’s able to talk about mental health from the perspective of someone who’s not only been there but has developed a philosophy that holds optimism and realism in just the right balance to be comforting but not infuriatingly positive. Like a really good therapist, Mika makes you feel better about the future without making you want to punch him.

It’s all written and presented in such a way that it will only really affect you if you too suffer – if you have no struggles, Casa Mika’s discussion of them won’t bring you down. The show remains uplifting and energetic throughout, and if you take it on without needing any particular catharsis it will simply be one of the best and most entertaining things you’ve ever watched. Mika is like human sunlight, an actual joy on your television. But let’s face it: that’s not the case for most of us. Something about the present is just hard for everyone, and most of us are struggling with something. Maybe you, reader, don’t. And that is FANTASTIC! Now go find a TV and watch Casa Mika, because it will only make you happier. But perhaps you DO suffer from something. Many things. Maybe you’re a little sad or a little afraid. Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe you’re reading this in a bed you don’t feel like you have the energy to get out of. If that’s the case, here is my advice. Join mikafanclub.com . It’s free and easy and all they want is an email. Joining will give you access to their thread of English subtitles. As Casa Mika’s broadcast language is Italian, you’ll probably want them. From that thread you can find watch links for all 8 episodes of Stasera Casa Mika. Watch them. Watch them all, in order. They’re about 3 hours each, so it’s a solid 24 hours of television. I recommend a pace of about half an episode a day. There’s a lot going on and there’s so few of them, so it’s best both to give yourself time to absorb each half episode and to stretch them out as long as you can. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry a lot.

To be clear, I’m not claiming or suggesting that 24 hours of Italian television will cure your depression. But it will put you through something. You’ll be made happier and more introspective in turn. And in the end, the very end, the part where I always end up grossly sobbing, you’ll probably be grossly sobbing too. And it’ll feel like crying out emotional toxins. Like a really intense therapy session, emotionally exhausting but purifying. Sometimes the cure we all need is a little bit of snot running down our faces.

Written by Savannah

Find me on Instagram Twitter Mika Fan Club

Useful links:

Mika Fan Club (site with English subtitles for Casa Mika available after free registration)

Stasera Casa Mika on Rai 2 Season 1 Season 2 (watch for free,no registration required, no strings attached)

Casa Mika season 1 trailer

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (documentary film about Mister Rogers) trailer if you aren’t familiar with Mister Rogers

[artificialqueens]

Searching, Waiting, Looking -Ch02- (Trixya) - Pichitinha

A/N: it took me 84 years but I’m back with a second chapter. This is as cliche as the first one, a little bit longer and overall gay. It’s also on AO3 and I’m here on tumblr as @pichitinha

Chapter 2 - We’re all patiently impatient

Trixie makes absolutely sure that she’ll be at least fifteen minutes early to their agreed coffee meeting because the first time she’d met Katya had been the first time she’d been late to anything in ages and she already hates that that’s the first impression she caused. Granted, Katya hardly looks like the type of person that would hold it against her, but that was a fluke, it’s not who she is, and it’s important for her that Katya knows that. So she’ll be her usual Trixie early, ready for anything with her entire schedule planned out for her - both in her brain and in her little planning book where her whole life is stored, really - and wait for Katya if she has to. She doesn’t mind waiting, she’s used to it, but she wants Katya to know what kind of professional - what kind of person - she is.

As she’s crossing the street to the little café they agreed to meet at, though, she can see Katya turning the corner and arriving at the same time. Maybe she also likes to be early to everything. That’s a quality Trixie loves in people, especially those she has to work with, so she hopes it’s true. Katya looks serene, a bit lost in her thoughts, and it tugs a smile to Trixie’s face.

“Katya, hey!” She waves as she’s crossing once she and Katya are close enough that she doesn’t have to shout. Her outfit today is more tasteful - well, it’s less horrific, more normal and fitting for an afternoon out in a coffee shop, but the pattern is still troublesome and Trixie’s really curious as to how she always makes her looks work when they’re actually are super ugly. Maybe she’s just really naturally pretty.

“Oh, hey! You’re early.” Katya hugs her quickly, more of a squeeze with one arm than an embrace, and Trixie can faintly gather the smell of her shampoo, something light and breezy that she can’t really place but that makes Trixie think of dandelions flying in slow motion and that somehow matches the way Katya’s hair dances in the light wind that’s hitting them on the sidewalk. It’s poetic, almost, and it widens her smile a little.

“I usually am, yesterday was a complete rare event, I swear.” Trixie feels the need to explain herself, for some reason she really wants Katya to be assured of her personal qualities.

Katya merely raises both her hands as if in surrender. “Hey, I’m not the time police. It’s fine. Let’s go in, I really need a coffee.”

They find an empty square table at the back of the café where the light isn’t great - which explains why most of the students in the place are crowded at the tables at the entrance where the sun is peeking through the window - but it’s quiet and there’s space to spread sheets on the surface and it’s not on the way to anything so there shouldn’t be people walking by. Katya orders a black coffee, Trixie sticks with a tea, and soon they’re seated in silence and Trixie wonders where the hell one starts planning a wedding.

(She’d googled it, of course, for hours the previous night. She’s still lost, though. She has no idea what she’s doing. But she’s doing it anyway.)

“So,” Katya looks just as lost as she is, but she’s still very joyful. “How about we play a bit at our actual jobs of pressing a button in a camera and throwing flowers around in a room before we dive into, you know, planning an entire wedding from beginning to end with zero experience?” She places both her elbows at the table as she speaks, rests her head on her hands and opens a very large but clearly dry smile as she finishes her sentence, and Trixie can’t help the laugh - or rather scream, as her friends have complained she does - that escapes her throat. She looks very cute like that, younger somehow with the two pigtails she has adorning her face, and Trixie can see in the hollows of her cheeks the coat of foundation she’s wearing.

“Yeah, ok, that’d be good.” She smiles and settles comfortably into her chair. Katya is as easy to talk to as Sasha had mentioned. “I do more than throw flowers around a room though, sometimes there are ribbons.”

“Oh my, how could I forget the ribbons!”

They laugh together and both start digging papers and photos out of their portfolio bags. They turn to each other, each with a huge stack of things at hand, and both giggle again.

“You go,” Trixie offers, settles her things on the empty chair next to her and watches as Katya spreads a few simple wedding pictures on the table.

Trixie’s barely glanced at them but her jaw drops immediately.

“Ok, so these are some weddings I did where the theme was like fall, which is kinda boring if you ask me, but anyway. So each was with a different decorator and idea, of course, but this is a type of photo I always like to get with the couple no matter what type of wedding it is and I think it translates well, no matter what’s going on around them. What do you think?”

Katya has her eyes on the photos as she speaks, her eyes fidgeting over them as if she is nervous, but now as she asks Trixie the question she can feel her eyes on her, questioning. She doesn’t look at them, though, can’t tear her own eyes away from the raw emotion that’s displayed on the photographs on the table. The scenery is different for all of them, the colors matching in the pastel and hazel fall setting but different in every other aspect, and the poses each couple is in also differs - there’s a man and a woman locked on an embrace, their faces almost touching but their eyes closed, expression serene, and there’s one with two men, one hugging the other from behind with his head buried on his neck, their eyes also closed and happy little smiles, and the others all follow the embrace and eyes closed pattern, but in different ways, different expressions, different everything.

Except for the feeling. Trixie isn’t sure how she does that - how she gets the couple to portray exactly what she has in mind, even - but she feels pure and unadulterated contentment when looking at each and every one of them. She feels calm, in peace, and a little bit in love herself - with what she doesn’t know, but she feels it.

Sasha wasn’t lying when she praised Katya’s work. She has no words.

“I… these are phenomenal, Katya. Like, truly magnificent.”

“Oh, please.” Katya waves her hand, makes light of the situation, but a quick glance is enough for Trixie to notice the faint blush on her cheeks. It’s adorable, really.

“I’m serious, there’s so much emotion in these. How do you do that?”

Katya shrugs sheepishly, lets her fingers roam the pictures as if she’s reminiscing.. “I don’t know. I just… that’s why I became a photographer, you know? It was never about photographing something but rather what that photograph would mean. Does that make sense?”

Weirdly, it makes all the sense in the world to Trixie. That’s why she never sold herself as a wedding decorator per se but ended up doing those almost exclusively. She doesn’t know the couples, doesn’t follow their lives afterwards to know if it worked of if they got divorced the week after, but there’s just something when she’s decorating a room for a wedding, when she knows that the day will be important, even if briefly, even if only then, that the people in there will be at their happiest for a couple of hours at least, it just severely beats down decorating a room for a company fifteen year anniversary.

“It does.” Trixie sighs. “It really does.”

*

They spend another half hour looking over Katya’s pictures, Trixie’s intent on analyzing every single one carefully resulting in several minutes spent in every set of new photos that Katya displays. Trixie can’t help it, really, she’s beyond amazed with Katya’s talent. And she doesn’t seem bothered, on contrary, seems flattered and even a bit embarrassed at Trixie’s clear awe when looking at the pictures. She keeps pointing out details, describing what feelings she gets from each, and every time Katya seems a bit surprised at how well Trixie reads what she meant to show. Trixie’s proud of herself, if she’s honest.

“We make a great pair,” Katya mentions lightly at yet another one of Trixie’s observations, this time on the last set of photos she has to show, and Trixie feels the corners of her lips tugging into a grin before she can even process it. The words sound nice.

“I’m not saying we don’t, but your pictures are so clear. You’re really talented, anyone would get what your goals are.”

Katya shakes her head, but doesn’t let her smile disappear completely. She looks so pleased and Trixie’s a little pleased with her own self for it. “You’d be surprised.”

Trixie can’t picture anyone looking at what she just looked and not being completely awestruck. Katya’s talent is clear in every colors she uses and to think that people might not see that is mindblowing. “Some people are really dumb.”

“Ugh, stop with the complimenting already, it’s gross!” Katya swats Trixie’s hands away as she jokes, her eyes shining as she gathers her things to put them back in her bag. Trixie laughs at the cute grump face she makes and moves to get her own pictures. Katya seems absurdly interested. “Yes, show me your talents now.”

“Before you see anything you should know that I have unfortunately never had a photographer that could capture my ideas as I wanted them to be captured so don’t judge me too hard.”

Trixie isn’t usually shy about her work - she’s a good decorator and she knows it - but now that it’s her time to share her work her brain is haunting her with everything Katya just showed her - beautiful, amazing works of art -, and it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed.

Katya merely looks at her like she’s grown an extra head. “Uh, I’m a photographer? I’ll be able to tell that the photographer did a bad job, don’t worry.”

Trixie’s heart swells with her plain confidence that whatever she sees will be the photographer’s fault, and Trixie hopes briefly that she’s right, that none of the photos she brought - although chosen very carefully to share her talent - have any of her mediocre decorations, where the time was too little, or the theme too strict, or the couple too unhelping.

Trixie starts with her outdoor wedding photos, knows it’s a bit irrelevant given Shea and Sasha actually have a closed hall, but she loves them and their simplicity and the fact that her decorations have to match the existing nature; and she really wants Katya to see what she’s capable of - what she knows she’s capable of. After what she’s seen of Katya’s work, she wants her to think she’s a worthy partner. She knows she is, she just needs to prove it.

Katya grabs the first one off the table and puts it weirdly close to her face, her eyes squinting and roaming through the entirety of the picture, searching. Trixie is oddly uncomfortable, loves the wedding she’s currently scrutinizing and really hopes she doesn’t hate it because if she does, Trixie doesn’t think she’ll have anything else better to save herself.

“That was such a poor choice of lightning for this photo. They totally missed how a color gradient could have formed with the flowers and the sunset in the back.”

Katya moves to show her, places her finger on the middle of the frame where the intersection between the flowers and the sky is, but Trixie doesn’t look, she doesn’t have to. She had placed those flowers there strategically, had known that the sun setting in the back would create the perfect colors to follow the line of the flowers if taken from the right angle from the ground at the beginning of the carpet. She’d told the photographer that, several times, up until the point he had outright told her he went to school for this and she didn’t. He never did take the picture she wanted, never immortalized the image she envisioned, and the crappy photo she took on her personal phone is the only proof she has of that.

Now Katya’s pointing that out, after maybe staring at the picture for thirty seconds, and she seems sad at the missed opportunity. Trixie’s heart aches for a moment, because that’s a particular event she’s never really forgotten, was never able to replicate again, and she’s part sad by the confirmation that what she wanted was indeed possible, but mostly happy because Katya gets it. She wasn’t there, she didn’t see it, but she gets it.

“Trixie?” Katya asks with arched eyebrows and Trixie notices she’s been staring at her the whole time, mouth probably agape.

“Sorry, I just- hold on.” She takes her phone out of her pocket and frantically looks for the picture she took that day. She had an older phone, then, but she’s saved it through all the months and always has it in her gallery. “Bare in mind that I am not a photographer and this was taken with an old iPhone, ok?”

Katya nods even though she seems lost, and takes Trixie’s phone.

“Oh!” Katya stares at the phone for several long seconds, and then the right side of her lips tugs into a cute side smile, content. Trixie’s heart soars. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. That was wicked smart, Trixie.”

Trixie can feel herself blushing, readjusts a bit on her chair as she feels warmth spreading all over her face and chest in pride. She never realized how much she wanted to be recognized for that feature that’d been gone unnoticed. “Thanks. I’ll never forgive the photographer for not capturing it.”

Katya nods in agreement, eyes still on the crappy picture on her phone. “It truly is a shame. Maybe next time you do something like this you can invite me to take pictures?”

“Yes!” Trixie finds herself nodding before Katya has even finished speaking, her reply perhaps more enthusiastic than necessary. “I think you’re right, we make a great pair.”

Katya finally gives her back the phone, stares at her again like her entire focus and attention are on Trixie and she can practically feel the weight of it. “We do.”

*

“Ok, so that’s basically it, right?” Katya asks staring up and down the page on her notepad where she and Trixie made a list of everything they have to do for the wedding - well, everything they think they have to do. They looked at several websites and discussed each item to see its real relevance and added a few of their own - are there oddly specific photography and decoration items? Yes - and currently they have an entire written page consisting of no less than seventy-four items.

“Basically,” Trixie snorts. “Yeah, I guess that’s basically it.”

Katya smiles and gives a little laugh, puts down the notebook with a sigh as she leans back on her chair and stretches. Trixie can see a tiny part of her stomach, then, and it’s lighter than her arms but tanner than her face and it’s fully toned. She averts her gaze when Katya speaks again, “So where do we start?”

“By moving to Mexico and pretending we never agreed to any of this?”

Katya’s laugh is loud this time and it fills the entire room and it is undeniably adorable. Trixie can’t help but smile in return. “Good plan,” Katya replies when she manages to stop, leans on the table still completely focused on Trixie. She hasn’t stopped smiling yet. Trixie wouldn’t ever stop smiling if she had her teeth, she thinks.

“I don’t know, there are definitely lots of things to do and we don’t even know the date they’ll get yet. Which, of course, is number one on the list. We don’t have a lot to work on right now.”

“Let’s discuss the couple then, maybe we’ll get some ideas. Tell me about you and Shea, how long have you known each other?”

Trixie feels her smile dropping for a second before she puts it right back on. She loves Shea, she’s been her best friend for years, but she doesn’t like discussing their friendship, especially with someone she just met, no matter how fast and easily they hit it off, even if they’re someone who knows and loves Shea as well.

“I met Shea back when we both still lived in Chicago. When I decided to move there from Milwaukee my friend Kim told me she had a spare room that she and her roommate needed to rent, so there I went. Her roommate was Shea and we became friends very fast. The three of us were inseparable.”

Katya raises her eyebrows, seems weary. “What happened to the third friend?”

“Oh, she’s fine. She still lives in Chicago so we don’t see each other all that much. But we talk everyday, I’m sure she’ll be the maid of honor.”

Trixie stops talking then, feels like she’s given pretty much all of the important details - what else could she say? Katya is still looking at her like she expects more though, and there’s a few uncomfortable silent seconds where neither says anything and both look uncertain.

But Katya recovers quickly, clears her throat and takes it upon herself to share. “So, I’m Russian.”

“Oh?” Trixie isn’t sure where she’s going with this, but she’s glad for the change of subject.

“Yeah. I mean, technically. I was born there but my parents moved to Boston soon after that. But anyway, I met Sasha in Russian 101 in college.”

“Why would you take Russian? Why would Sasha take Russian?”

“She didn’t, she was the TA. I did because I figured it would be an easy A. It was, but that’s neither here nor there.” She makes a dismissive motion with her hand and Trixie laughs at her sly grin.

“You cheated, you mean.”

“They never said a fluent person couldn’t take the entire language curriculum. French and Russian awarded me with an honors degree, thank you very much.”

“Cheating,” Trixie insists.

“Loophole,” Katya replies, a giggly sound marking her sentence. Trixie giggles with her. “But, anyway, we’ve been friends ever since.”

“Was she stupid smart at school, too?” Trixie asks, has always wondered what Sasha was like in college. If she was anything like she pictures, effortlessly good at everything and often praised, Trixie thinks she would have been impossibly jealous had they studied together.

“I don’t think Sasha knows how to be anything other than stupid smart, honestly.”

Trixie chuckles, nods for lack of what to do. “Yeah, I figured.”

There are a few seconds of silence in which they each finish their now cold beverages and Katya takes the opportunity to change her expression to completely serious for the first time.

“Do you… hm, do you like Sasha? Like as a partner for your best friend?”

Trixie feels her jaw dropping instantly, sits up straighter at the shock of the words - or rather her tone. She sounds convinced the answer is actually no. Granted, Trixie has several unresolved personal issues that may or may not have a side effect on how she thinks of Sasha sometimes, but at the end of the day Sasha has been a constant presence in her life for the past three years and she’s been a really good friend and a perfect match for Shea. Trixie genuinely loves her and she really hopes that she doesn’t give off the wrong vibe.

“Oh my god, yes! I adore her. Did she say something? Does she think I don’t?”

“No, no, no! Sorry, Sasha likes you a lot. You just made a face, just now. I thought… I misinterpreted, sorry.”

“Oh.” Trixie doesn’t know how to explain it. She can’t find the proper words when she herself isn’t sure yet of why she sometimes feels the way she does. So she takes the easy road. “Single’s jealousy, I guess.”

“A wedding decorator who wants to get married? Groundbreaking.”

Trixie scream laughs again, swats Katya’s arm lightly. “Shut up!”

*

“So, is she mad as a hatter or what?”

Trixie and Shea are seated as comfortably as it’s possible on Shea’s ridiculously old couch, the one she’s been saying for over a year she was going to replace and now she won’t because she and Sasha will buy a new one when they move in together after the wedding. They each have a box of chinese food and they are halfway through them when Shea asks about her meeting with Katya.

“She most definitely is. We actually hit it off pretty well.”

“You did?” She raises her eyebrows, seems surprised at that.

“Yeah? Why? I wouldn’t peg her as someone difficult.”

“Oh, she isn’t. I’m surprised by you.”

Trixie kicks her on the shin as she scream laughs. “You bitch!”

Shea laughs out loud, throws her head back for good measure, and Trixie cuckles to herself. She wonders briefly how it’ll be between them once Shea gets married. She wonders if the next however many months they’ll have before the wedding will be like a countdown of last moments like this. The thought leaves a lump on her throat and she tries really hard to force it down with her wine.

“I’m kidding, I’m glad you hit it off. She’s a good friend to have, she’s the most selfless person you’ll ever meet and I’m marrying Sasha.”

“Wow. Is it a Russian thing? It doesn’t sound Russian. She’s as selfless as a Russian. Nah.”

Shea smiles mischievously and places her empty container on the table, picks up her glass of wine. “Wow, you already know she’s Russian? It took me three months.”

Trixie rolls her eyes, is not surprised at all by Shea’s comment and has no doubt about where she’s going: there’s nothing Shea likes more than trying to set Trixie up. Anyone, anytime, anywhere.

“We were discussing how we met you guys. Because we’re planning your wedding. We’re business partners.”

“Sounds kinky.”

Trixie gets up then, fake exasperation. “Oh my god.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m joking!” Shea laughs and moves to grab Trixie’s arm, pulls her back to sit on the couch. “She’s a catch though, if you’re interested. And she’s gay.”

“Much better than last time when you tried to set me up with your straight coworker, I’ll give you that.”

“She’s not straight, she’s pressured by society’s heteronormativity and she’ll realize that soon enough, give it a year!”

Trixie rolls her eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“Ok,ok!” She surrenders with a motion of her arms, light smile on her lips. “Tell me about my wedding then. Did you plan it all already? Can we do it this Saturday?”

“Yep, in fact we have already reserved the dumpster down the street.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely. How-” Shea stops talking when her phone lights up on the coffee table, Sasha’s name and photo on the screen. “Uh, sorry.”

Trixie dismisses her. “Go ahead.”

Shea gets up to answer the phone on the other room and Trixie takes these few minutes to breathe. She finishes her wine, makes the last sip turn to three as she stares at the apartment that Shea’s lived in since she moved to California a few months after Trixie. It’s familiar to her, like in sitcoms where it’s always the apartment of one of the friends that becomes the point. Kim always stays there when she’s visiting and so does Trannika even if she visits less. Pearl is there constantly and she always has Violet with her and no one is sure why they go to Shea’s place when it’s the furthest and not the biggest, but it’s their thing now, she guesses.

She doesn’t want to be that friend, the best friend in the Bridesmaids movie that gets jealous and bitter and ruins everything because she can’t get a hold of her emotions, but it’s hard when it feels like the last solid thing she’s managed to maintain is going to fall apart. Shea’s friendship is the one thing she managed to keep after all the turmoils in her life - leaving her family in Wisconsin, leaving her friends in Chicago, leaving a string of relationships that she wasn’t able to save everywhere she went. All her friends are married or in a relationship or some even happily single and Trixie still struggles with the ghosts of all her past girlfriends haunting her. She’s not old but she is getting older, and she hates the feeling that she’s stuck while everyone else passes her by. While life passes her by.

She gets up from the couch and grabs all the boxes and dishes to clean the place a little bit, tries to ground herself to the reality of the now and to convince herself that she’s overreacting and things will be fine. Kim lives almost on the other side of the country and their friendship is still one of the strongest bonds Trixie has. She’ll be fine with Shea having a wife. A wife that Trixie knows and likes and is friends with.

Shea is happy and that’s all that matters. It is.

“So Katya thinks you’re ‘one of the most talented people I’ve ever met’, quote, and seems very infatuated by you, says Sasha.” Shea says when she enters the kitchen and finds Trixie pouring herself some more wine, leaving just enough on the bottle for Shea to get half a glass.

“Sasha did not say that.”

“Ok, that’s my interpretation of what Sasha said.”

Trixie rolls her eyes. “You can’t expect me to date every single person you’ve ever met, Shea.”

“I wouldn’t keep trying if you dated one! You’ve been single for like five hundred years, Trixie, you gotta get out there!”

“It’s been like less than a year.”

“Potato, potahto. But anyway, she seemed really impressed with your work, Sasha says she’s looking forward to working with you.”

There’s still some sort of innuendo in Shea’s voice, but Trixie ignores it in lieu of the compliment, smiles despite herself. She can’t help the giddy feeling in her chest at the praise. She loves what she does and she loved Katya’s work and she doesn’t necessarily need validation but she loves that she got it, especially from her. “Me too! Her photos were mindblowing, she’s amazing. Your wedding’s gonna be, like, the best wedding ever made.”

Shea smiles back, seems happy at the prospect, but then she sighs a little. “I know that you’ll be the best decorator in the seven realms and that my wedding is gonna be the most beautiful in all of the lands, but I’m still sad you won’t be my maid of honor.”

Trixie sips on her wine at that, tries to find the right words to reply.

She’s sad too. But it’s better this way.

“You’ll forget about that as soon as you see how magnificent the hall will look.”

“I can’t wait. We’ve decided on a date, by the way. It’ll be in six months.”

“Oh.” Trixie’s not sure how to respond. Six months isn’t that close but she kind of thought they might wait for another year or so. “Already?”

“I know it’s a bit tight for the planning, but you know we don’t want anything too big, right? We’ll make it work, don’t worry.”

Trixie nods, smiles a bit as she pours a tiny bit more wine. The planning. Right. That’s why she’s surprised, because the closer it is the less time she has to plan.

“Of course we will, I’m amazing at what I do.”

“You are a conceited little country gal, that’s what you are.”

Trixie shrugs and grins into her glass. Her insecurities be damned, she’ll focus on the now. “Maybe.”

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: So I’m a Spider, So What? Lead Voice Actor Aoi Yuuki

  The upcoming Crunchyroll Originals series So I’m a Spider, So What? will be making its way to Crunchyroll in January 2021, and to celebrate the upcoming release, today we are publishing some exclusive interviews with the voice cast of the show! If you want to check out the original Japanese interview, you can do so right here. In this interview, voice actor Aoi Yuuki (Madoka Kaname in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Diane in The Seven Deadly Sins) talks about what it is like voicing a spider, all the internal monologues she voices in the series, singing the ending theme, and more! 

  Also be sure to check out the interview with voice actors Shun Horie (Shun) and Kaito Ishikawa (Hugo) right here!

  The translated text follows.

    “I” was reincarnated in another world... as a spider the weakest of all creatures. How will “I” survive in a dungeon filled with fierce, powerful monsters?!

  The TV anime So I’m a Spider, So What? is set to begin airing in January 2021. We’ve interviewed the main cast for a special program to be aired right before the series premiere. For our first interview, Aoi Yuuki-san, the voice of “I (Kumoko),” will tell us about the highlights of the series as well as some behind-the-scenes stories!

  I’m sure you never expected to be reincarnated as a spider.

  Yuuki: That’s for sure! But another character I voiced not long ago, Gwen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, was also a pink and white spider, so I guess I actually have a bit of a connection with spiders. I’m definitely not into bugs or anything, but since Kumoko and Gwen had such cute designs, I’ve slowly grown to like spiders a little more.

  Do you remember your first impression of the novel series?

  Yuuki: Mainly that it had a lot of words (lol). I first came into contact with it in the form of the manuscript I used to audition, and I remember being surprised by how great each sentence was. Another interesting thing was that it had a much harsher setting than most stories about being reincarnated in another world. Usually, the protagonist starts out at a high level and immediately gains really strong powers, but this one reincarnates as the weakest of all monsters, in a really tough environment and with very little room to develop her abilities, so that made it seem new and unique.

  Kumoko does seem to just barely squeak through all her battles.

Yuuki: That’s the interesting thing about a story that’s specifically about how she survives as a spider. In many isekai stories, the protagonist’s knowledge from their former life aids them in their new world, but in So I’m a Spider, So What?, she has to both learn and mature as a spider.

    Was it easy for you to grasp what kind of character Kumoko is?

  Yuuki: Yes, I could tell right away that she was a very positive girl who recovered quickly from setbacks, and when we started recording, the director said we’d be fine as long as I had those two qualities pinned down, so it was easy to grasp what her personality was like.

  So you would sum it up by saying she’s very positive?

  Yuuki: This sort of connects to that, but she really likes to eat, and one of her fondest hopes is to eat lots of good food. When someone is surrounded by enemies and doesn’t even know where they are, I think they’d want to give up. But not only does Kumoko fight and never give up, she also finds the hope to stay alive. I think that’s really amazing.

  Looking at the original novels, she seems to eat a lot of very strange things.

  Yuuki: Thanks to that, I now know some new ways to spit up food (lol). There aren’t a lot of titles that include so many ad libbed spitting-up scenes, so I’ve been trying some different variations. But as the story progresses, she starts to find some monsters that taste good. Before I knew it, I started to think they looked delicious too, even though I’m playing a monster myself, so my mental strength has been improving along with Kumoko’s.

    Kumoko is just a small spider in the story, and seeing how she fights monsters that are much bigger than her, some in large groups, is one of the highlights.

  Yuuki: I guess she must be really smart. There’s something philosophical about how she develops a spider’s quick wit, and it helps her persevere in battle. I think it’s really cool how she thinks quickly while also moving quickly.

  Something tells me she’ll have a lot of internal monologues, too...

  Yuuki: The sheer number of words in this story makes it a challenge!

  So your initial concern carried over into the recording?

  Yuuki: It’s physically difficult to fit so many words into such a limited span of time. I thought I was actually pretty good at speaking quickly and working various kinds of expressions into a single sentence, but a lot of moments in this title shook my confidence a bit... That just makes it even more fun when everything fits just right, though. I often compare voice recording to rhythm games, so when particularly difficult recording sessions go well, it feels like I just landed a great combo and hear a long string of “Perfect! Perfect! Perfect!” And if a “Great” or Good” makes it way into that, I get annoyed and want to do it over (lol). So I feel a particularly strong sense of accomplishment after a successful recording session for So I’m a Spider, So What?

  It sounds like the recording has been pretty harsh.

Yuuki: It might be because I get too eager, but there have been moments when I had to ask for a break due to low oxygen levels. It’s rare that I get so out of breath during a recording, but that has happened at least once per session with So I’m a Spider, So What? It’s rough, but I know it’ll pay off in the end.

    How do you prepare for the role?

  Yuuki: Everything she thinks and feels is expressed in her lines, so even without trying too hard to understand or add flavor to them, I can clearly tell what kind of character she is and what she’s thinking. I owe that to the original novels and the scripts. Kumoko is very good at explaining things about herself, meaning all I need to help me understand her more is the script, so it hasn’t really been necessary to give too much thought to preparing for the role.

  Did the director or sound director give you any particular instructions?

  Yuuki: The one that left an impression on me was that they wanted the battle scenes to look really cool. I was asked to include comical battle cries as well as calmer, more serious reaction sounds. In particular, when she’s concocting a strategy or engaged in a do-or-die battle, even I’m surprised by how cool she is. That said, about 80% of it is silly gag humor!

  It sounds like the recording sessions are going smoothly.

  Yuuki: Yes. I’ve come to understand what kinds of reactions the director wants and the right timing for them, and it feels like we’re on the same wavelength now. Since it’s a comedy series, it’s important to know how its ups and downs should flow as well as where and how to insert punch lines, and sharing ideas until everything fits together perfectly is important since everyone interprets things differently. But we’re in a place now where I can offer suggestions as to what the director might want from me, so it’s fun thinking about what I’ll do in the next session.

  Incidentally, the original novels follow the hero’s side of the story concurrently with Kumuko’s. How have you viewed that?

  Yuuki: To be honest, I haven’t touched on any of the hero’s side of the story at all. Of course, I’ve read the scripts, so I know what happens, but they’re handled separately in the story, and given the current state of the world, all of us voice actors have been recording separately. I currently have no idea what kind of acting the others are doing right now, so I’m also looking forward to how their two stories will eventually connect.

    You also sang the ending theme, “Theme of Kumoko-san,” from Kumoko’s perspective. What kind of song is it?

  Yuuki: At 400 BPM, it’s a super high-tempo song! And the lyrics are fitting for a 400-BPM song, so I hope everyone will listen to the effort that went into them. Even I was shocked by how far a person can stretch their own limits. And the lyrics are representative of the story, so I think people will be able to imagine the various expressions of Kumoko when they hear it.

  It sounds like a very tricky song.

  Yuuki: It has a level of excitement that I had never seen or heard before. But learning that I could actually sing such a difficult song gave me a lot of confidence. Of course, I got through it with help from lots of people, though. In that sense, both the anime and the ending theme made me feel like I was seeing things I’d never seen before.

  Finally, please share a message for the fans looking forward to seeing the anime.

  Yuuki: It’s a pretty dark, harsh story about how Kumoko struggles to survive in a world filled with monsters, but at the same time, it shows off Kumoko’s sillier side with gag humor, making it a very unique series. It somehow comes across as comical even though the main character is completely serious, so I hope everyone can relax and enjoy it for the fun series it is. It also offers different tastes by following both Kumoko’s story and the hero’s story, so I think people who like to speculate will also find it satisfying. Also, I hope everyone will remember that acting out Kumoko consumed tremendous amounts of oxygen (lol).

      Kyle Cardine is an Editor for Crunchyroll. You can find his Twitter here.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[thesffcorner]

The Gentleman

The Gentleman is directed by Guy Richie, and follows a star-studded cast of characters. We start with Frazer (Hugh Grant), a private eye, who is blackmailing Ray (Charlie Hunnam) and his boss for 2 million pounds. Ray’s boss Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is the undisputed lord of weed, having a business worth 400 million pounds, which he is trying to sell to American ‘businessman’ Matthew (Jeremy Strong) and retire. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances involving a farm robbery, a brush with the Chinese mafia, the unfortunate death of a Russian oligarch’s son and a newspaper mogul’s personal vendetta, the deal seems to be in danger of falling through, and Frazer is there to capitalize on it.

This movie is wildly entertaining, though nothing original. If you’ve seen one Guy Richie film, you’ve seen them all; the specifics are different obviously, but this is still another gangster action-comedy with a men with heavy accents, coming up with the most creative ways of using the word cunt in every sentence and a plot so convoluted, you need to be taking notes.

It’s a good film, is what I’m trying to say; as good as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, but definitely on par with RocknRolla or the Man from U.N.C.L.E. I have a lot of thoughts, as I always do with Richie’s films, so if you are curious to know more, and don’t mind some mild spoilers, join me after the cut.

The framing device of this film reminded me a lot of the Cloud Atlas story about the Russian gangster, turned author who threw a critic off of a roof, because it’s all told in flashback, with Frazer explaining everything that happened to Ray, as if he’s writing a Hollywood screenplay. He has in fact written said screenplay, and there are even some funny scenes where he has Ray help him act it out.

I’m not really sure how I feel about the framing device; it was at once annoying to have over half of the film told to us, because I kept thinking we were still setting up the characters when we are over half of the film in. However, there is a point to this, in that Frazer is an unreliable narrator, and he fabricates portions of the story and even invents entire scenes. However, you really do need to enjoy Hugh Grant’s voice if you are going to watch this because he has a LOT of narration. He isn’t an active player in most of the film, and yet he’s the POV character; everything we know about Mickey, Dry Eyes and Matthew we learn from him; the only character who isn’t entirely informed by him is Ray.

Grant is an entertaining narrator; he has a rather colorful vocabulary, which makes even the most basic descriptions of the characters hilarious or if nothing else shocking. He seems to speak exclusively in sexual innuendos, and every sentence is him hitting on Ray or a metaphor for sex. A lot of the blocking in the scenes, and even entire jokes are at the expense of men trying to outwit and outplay each-other in the most homoerotic of ways, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be laughing at the absurdity of the situation or at the implication that Grant is gay and is failing to hit on Ray. None of characters are queer, and yet the film has no problem with queercoding the two more effeminate characters in the film, and having them be the main villains, which was… a choice. In Richie’s defense, everyone is a horrible person in this film, but there is a rather clear distinction between the way say, Mickey is presented and Frazer.

Even Ray, who is his own POV character, spends a lot of the film running around London at Mickey’s bidding. He and Mickey are glued to the hip; Mickey has a wife that he clearly loves and is devoted to, and yet if he and Ray aren’t sharing a scene they are on the phone with each other. I can’t tell what the film is trying to say with that, other than that Ray is completely devoted to Mickey, and if there is some bigger metaphor there, I missed it.

The action was surprisingly mild and played mostly for comedic effect. There were a few brutal scenes, like someone getting run over by a train, or a truly, TRULY unnecessary rape attempt of the ONLY female character in the film. But for the most part, the action is played for laughs: there is a hilarious chase scene throughout London that had me in stitches, and then an even funnier music/combat video of a robbery.

But let’s be real; you are here for the dialogue and the characters. Side note, I don’t know who was translating this film in Macedonian, but they were having a field day with the subtitles: I had no idea there even existed that many ways to say the word cock in Macedonian.

As any Richie film, the characters are absurdly crass and verbose; every line is a euphemism for sex, and the characters are constantly casually racist or misogynist. They are meant to be like that; they are gangsters, drug dealers and killers after all, but even the characters we are meant to sympathize with, like Ray display some weirdly vicious hatred of women and especially drug addicts. Rich coming from someone who smokes weed. It’s explained away that he is just a germaphobe, and he considers addicts filthy, but that isn’t exactly painting him in a better light. Ray as a whole was a character of contradictions. He is very judgmental and snobby, but he also hates rich people. He is presented to be out of touch, but also clever. His relationship with Colin Farrel’s coach character was pretty funny (and the most explicitly queerbaiting), but I do have to admit that his attempts to come off as threatening to the Couch were more hilarious than genuine.

The character I liked the most and who had the least amount of dialogue was weirdly enough, Matthew McConaughey’s Mickey. He was perfect for the part; he just exudes power, and a thinly veiled aggression that could explode at any moment. I absolutely bought him as a ruthless and intelligent businessman, and every scene he was in I was engaged. I also just have a weakness for characters who are indisputably powerful and yet they love their partner, in this case his wife Ros.

I wish Ros was in the film more; she’s entertaining, she has some funny lines. I think Richie might have a thing for women and cars, because this is the second character who works as a mechanic; in this case she makes extravagant sports cars for the rich wives and mistresses of gangsters. I also liked how she supported Mickey’s desire to retire, while not actually being the one who makes him do it.

However, she was the only female character in the film, and there is the aforementioned completely unnecessary rape attempt. I actually hated this part, because there is nothing funny or entertaining about sexual violence, especially not in a film where there are no other women. There only other female ‘character’ is Laura, who has 2 lines and gets unceremoniously killed off.

The scene where she dies is supposed to be a dramatic climax of the film; it’s the scene where we acknowledge for a moment how truly dangerous heroin is and how the people who make and deal heroin are actively ruining lives. But to have that verdict come from a white man, a white AMERICAN man who has made a fortune off of selling weed to rich kids and aristocrats was infuriating. Don’t try to have some kind of moral high ground when your lead character is proof of men who exploit the unjust legal system and get away with crimes that people of color could never.

There were many scenes that were ‘comically racist’; the standout is the Coach arguing with his black student that the phrase ‘black cunt’ isn’t racist because he is black and a cunt. I’m not going to debate you on whether that’s racist or not; I’m not black.

However, the entirety of Henry Golding’s character? That was racist.

I don’t blame him for taking the role; he gets to be an unhinged gangster holding his own against Matthew McConaughey. He gets to piss on a corpse. But he also plays the Oriental vicious and violent opponent, to the calm, collected and suave white man; he attempts to rape someone, kills his own boss in blind ambition and double crosses his partner, while relying heavily on stereotypes, which were not fun to watch.

Then we have Matthew who is Jewsh, which is very strongly hammered into us by the film. He is effeminate, duplicitous, greedy and physically weak; and then he gets to be the main villain and mastermind behind everything. Jeremy Strong is great in the part as always, but he’s still playing a rather overt and dangerous stereotype. Let’s not even talk about Frazer or the amount of fat jokes made at Eddie Marsan’s expense.

Overall, I liked this film. I enjoyed it, I laughed, I was appropriately shocked. But I just couldn’t shake some of the more problematic aspects of the story, and I don’t even think they were intentional. But I think those things still should be pointed out and discussed because I know Richie can do better, and relying on outdated and lazy stereotypes in 2020 is just a bit weak.

letterboxd

[kaialone]

Yokai Watch Busters 2 Website Update (spoilers, naturally!)

So the other day, the website for Yokai Watch Busters 2 updated with more information.

A lot of this was already in the magazine leaks I recently translated too, but it does go into a little more details in some cases, so I will go over them and translate most of them under the cut.

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Mastertag for pre-release Busters 2 information.

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I will go over each part to the website that was newly added and either translate the text, or explain the basic idea of it.

If you want to know about the parts on the website that aren’t new, you can read about those here, but note that this post also contains stuff about Movie 4.

Now, let’s get started:

新たな舞台 「カラクリ島」で、 大大大冒険！ A great great great adventure, on the new stage, "Karakuri Island"!

いざ！ お宝探しに「カラクリ島」へ！ Let's go! To "Karakuri Island" for a treasure hunt!

大大大冒険家のインディ・Jに導かれて やって来たのは「カラクリ島」！ どうやらこの島には、 特別な仕掛けが隠されているらしい…！ Lead by the great great great adventurer Indy Jaws, they arrive at "Karakuri Island"! It seems like there are some special contraptions hidden on this island...!

--

ストーリー

バスターズハウスに１億円の家賃滞納が発覚！？ バスターズは、 いきなり存続の危機に…！

Story

An unpaid rent of 100 million yen is discovered for the Busters House!? Suddenly, the Busters are in a crisis that threatens their survival...!

Komasan: もんげ〜〜っ！？ オラたちがこの基地から出て行くって…？ Mongeeeee!? We’re gonna have ta leave this base…?

１０日後までに１億円払わないと バスターズハウスから追い出される! If they don't pay 100 million yen in 10 days, they will be kicked out of the Busters House!

Jibanyan: もしダメだったら１年後にここから 出て行ってやるニャ〜ン！ If it doesn't work out, we're leaving this place in a year, nyan!

(Note: I am unsure about this line, because there's little context, so it might be something else.)

その契約を勝手に結んだ犯人は… ジバニャン！？ The culprit who signed that contract without permission is... Jibanyan!?

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大ピンチのバスターズの前に現れたのは、 お宝探しの仲間を探していたインディ・J！ インディの相棒Mr.スコップが見つけた宝の地図を手に、 お宝が眠る「カラクリ島」を目指す！ Indy J., who had been looking for treasure hunting companions, appears before the Busters as they're in a great pinch! With the treasure map that Indy's partner, Mr. Scoop, has found in hand, they head for "Karakuri Island" where treasues sleep!

インディ・J ブリー隊長が呼んだのは 大大大冒険家のインディ・J！ Indy Jaws The great great great great adventurer Indy Jaws, called over by Sergeant Burly!

Indy Jaws : 私が 「秘宝調査委員会」から派遣された 特別秘宝調査員… インディ・Jだ！ I am a specialized hidden treasure investigator, dispatched by the "Hidden Treasure Investigation Commitee"... Indy Jaws!

(Note: This is the bit of dialouge from Indy that I couldn’t read before)

Whisper: お宝地図！？ A trasure map!?

偶然見つけた宝の地図をもとに お宝探しの冒険に出発！ Because of a map found by chance, they depart on a treasure hunt!

Mr.スコップ Mr. Scoop

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カラクリ島には、 原住民が！？

カラクリ島には、 ヤドカリのような原住民が住んでいる！ その名も、 「ドヤガリ族」！

There are natives on Karakuri Island!?

There are hermit crab-like natives on Karakuri Island! And they are called "The Doyagari Tribe"!

「ドヤガリ族」とは…

ヤドカリ状のかぶりものをしている、 島の原住民。 「ぶっちゃけスゴイべ？」などと自己アピールがハンパない。 バスターズが「島にワザワイをもたらす」と信じ込み、 「イケニエ」にしょうと狙ってくる。 果たして、 バスターズは誤解を解くことができるのか？

The Doyagari Tribe is...

Natives of the island, wearing hermit crab-like headgear. Saying things like:“Not gonna lie, we're really awesome, yeah?", their self-promoting is impressive. They believe that the Busters brought a "disaster" to the island, and try to turn them into "living sacrifices".

(Note: Again, while I am unsure, I believe these crabs speak in a Tōhoku dialect, using “-be” and the like as their sentence endings. From what I’ve heard, it’s also considered a coastal accent by some?  Their name seems to be taken from “Yadokari” (hermit crab) )

大変だ！！ 仲間が人質に！ Big trouble!! Our friends are taken hostage!

Sergeant Burly: ぐぐ… 人質さえ取られなきゃ このオレが… Ugh... I of all people got taken hostage...

Doyagari Tribe member: 「ワザワイ」が復活したべ！ ぶっちゃけ お前らが島を動かしたせいだべ The "disaster" got revived! Not gonna lie, it's you guys' fault for moving the island

ドヤガリ族の言う 「ワザワイ」って！？ What is this "disaster" that the Doyagari Tribe is talking about!?

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ほかにも新妖怪がたくさん！ 「ソード」「マグナム」の両バージョンで登場する 新妖怪もまだまだいるぞ！！ There also also a lot of new yokai! There are still many more new yokai that appear in both the "Sword" and "Magnum" versions!!

らいせガール 無理に元気を出させようとするけど、 もう来世しか残されてないような応援で、 相手を更に落ち込ませる妖怪。 Raise Girl A yokai who forcibly tries to cheer one up, but with support that makes it seem like only the afterlife is left, she only manages to bum out the other person even more.

(Name pun: Raise (afterlife) + girl; there might be more to it)

ちょうせんしゃ とりつかれると妙にテンションが上がり、 ゲテモノ料理を食べたり、 バンジージャンプに挑戦するなど、 誰もが恐れるような危険なことに挑戦したくなる。 Chōsensha When you get inspirited by him, you become energetic, and you will want to challenge dangerous things that everyone fears, like eating weird food, or going bungee jumping.

(Name pun: Chōsen-sha (challenger) + sensha (tank) )

しょうりん爺 アクション映画を見た後に、 無性にアクションのマネをした くなるのはこの妖怪のせい。 Shōrinjī (or Shàolín Jī) Whenever you really want to imitate the action after you watch an action movie, it's this yokai's fault.

(Name pun: Shōrinji (Shàolín temple) + Jī (old man) )

ナーガラージャ ご飯を食べながら新聞を読むなど、 いろんなことを同時にしようとして、 片方の行動が雑になっているのは この妖怪のせい。 Naga Raja If you start trying to do multiple things at once, like for example trying to read a newspaper while also eating, and one of the actions becomes sloppy, it's the fault of this yokai.

(Name pun: Naga Raja + "nagara" ("while") )

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冒険の拠点・バスターズキャンプ

カラクリ島でバスターズの拠点となるのがバスターズキャンプ！ ここでしっかり準備を整えてから、 冒険に出かけよう！

Adventure Base - Busters' Camp

The Busters' Base on Karakuri Island is Busters' Camp! Go out on adventures after properly preparing here!

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バトルポイント Battle Points

どこから聞こえる「バンバラヤー！！」

本作のサブタイトルになっている、 謎の言葉「バンバラヤー」。 ダンジョン冒険中、 急に「バンバラヤー！！」の掛け声がかかることが！ すると、 敵や味方に特別な効果が発生するぞ！！

From Somewhere, "Banbarayah!!" is Heard

The mysterious word "Banbarayah", the subtitle of this work. During an adventure in a dungeon, suddenly "Banbarayah!!" will be shouted! At that moment, special effects will happen to both friends and foes!!

バンバラヤーの効果例

敵味方のちからやようりょくが 鬼アップ OR 鬼ダウン！

敵味方のHPが全回復！

落ちているアイテムが全ておにぎりに！

など

Examples of Banbarayah Effects:

Friends and foes' power and spirit goes Oni up or Oni down!

Friends and foes' HP is fully restored!

All falling itens turn into riceballs!

and the like

(Note: I am not sure what “Oni Up” or “Oni Down” means, if I had to guess it’s a cool-sounding way to say they go “WAY up”, or “WAY down”.)

なんと！ 「バンバラヤー」はストーリーでも 重大なキーワードになるらしい…。

What's this?! It seems that "Banbarayah" will also be an important keyword in the story...

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「スーパーチャンスタイム」を逃すな！

ボス���トル中、 不思議な砂時計が出現し 「スーパーチャンスタイム」が発動！ ボスだけが一定時間スローモーションになる大チャンス！

Do not miss "Super Chance Time"!

During boss battles, a strange hourglass appears, and activates "Super Chance Time"! Its a big chance, where only the boss will move in slow motion for a certain time!

攻撃をたくさんヒットさせると、 ボスだけが一定時間スローモーションになる「スーパーチャンスタイム」に！ 協力プレイでスローモーション中のボスを 袋だたきにしよう！！ If you land a lot of hits, it will become "Super Chance Time" where only the boss moves in slow motion for a certain time! In cooperative play, beat up the boss while they're in slow motion!!

スローモーション中のボスを 攻撃すると大量の鬼玉がでてくるぞ！ このチャンスを逃すな！ While the boss is in slow motions, lots of Oni Orbs will come out of them as you attack! Do not miss this chance!

(Note: Again, the new boss shown in these screenshots appears tp be called “ViKING”.)

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This part here shows off some of the yokai that are going to be version-exclusive, some among them being new yokai, some old.

Exclusive to Sword:

ミーフー Mīfū

ヤミキュウビ Yami Kyūbi (Darkyubi)

ダークコマー Dark Komar

あきらMEN AkiraMEN

(Name pun: “akiramen” (dont give up!) + men )

かてんし Katenshi

(unsure about the name pun, but it contains “tenshi” (angel) )

Exclusive to Magnum:

フウ２ Fū2

ヒカリオロチ Hikari Orochi (Illuminoct )

ヒーローニャン Heronyan

ふてくさる Futekusaru (Name pun: might be “futekusareru” (to sulk) + “saru” (monkey) )

モノマネキング Monomaneking (Name pun: momomane (mimicry) + mannequin + king)

Unless I’m mistaken, this part also notes that there’s going to be more exclusives besides these ones.

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This part talks about how, if you have both the Sword and Magnum version, you can obtain T-USApyon if you link them.

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This part goes over how to get Dark Enma again.

To sum it up, if you get the package versions of both Sword and Magnum, and thus get the two medals included with them, scanning in both of their QR codes will allow you to battle and befriend Dark Enma.

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This part talks about, if you get the download versions of the games instead, you can obtain D Komasan in Sword, and D Jibanyan in Magnum, who are Komasan and Jibanyan in Doyagari Tribe clothes.

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This part talks about how, if you own Yokai Watch 3 Sushi, Tempura, and/or Sukiyaki, you will be able to befriend Sushijiba, Temkoma, and/or USAtofu respectively.

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This part talks about how, if you own the original Yokai Watch Busters Red Cat Squad and/or White Dog Team, you will be able to befriend B Jibanyan and/or B Komasan respectively.

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And that’s it for new stuff on the website as far as I can tell, feel free to notify me if you feel like I missed something.

(Also sorry that this means movie 4 news is taking a bit longer, I’m gonna work on that asap)

[origami-goblin]

Remember the Name - Tips for NPC Creation

Back in high school, one of my history teachers had us write several DBQs – Document-Based Questions. The premise was to use several documents from a specific time in history and use them in conjunction with your own knowledge to generate a supported answer to a given question. For example, there might be a question about the Industrial Revolution and one of the documents might be a labor log listing out employees at a French textile mill. You could then draw conclusions about the period by using data from the document (i.e. average age of the workers, number of hours worked per day, etc).

My teacher stressed the importance of determining a person’s Frame of Reference (FOR) to see how that shaped their Point of View (POV). Using the same example, the log would have likely been created by the mill owner. Their frame of reference, as a business owner, would involve the desire to generate the highest amount of profit. From their point of view, employing children or having employees work long hours was an engine for wealth. Furthermore, there weren’t any strict labor laws regarding work conditions, so there wasn’t much reason, other than common sense, to leave money out on the table.

The point is, that people are, to some extent, the results of their histories. This translates directly to tabletop gaming as well; regional folk tales, growing up in a barracks, associating with ‘low-lifes’ – these things get incorporated into a character and helps us catch a glimpse into their motivations and desires. It gives us a lens through which we can understand a character. 

Our players tend to glob onto NPCs when we least expect it. What determines whether an NPC will exhibit that ‘star-status’ and become beloved by the party? Sometimes it’s as simple as the voice, or maybe the NPC stands out from the crowd in some way. There’s always SOMETHING, and as a GM you can give your NPCs one unique characteristic that invites the players to welcome them with open arms. 

Here are a couple tools that you can use to flesh out your NPCs more: 

Cast Away 

One of the best ways to get your players to mentally connect with your NPCs is to cast them as an actress/actor. Bonus points if your players recognize the name! Oftentimes, I’ll say who the actor is and then whatever show or movie that they’re from. The caveat with this is that your players will often have some predisposed attitudes or feelings towards this character if they’ve already seen the flick. Lucky you! Feed those biases and create some red herrings!

My Entire Life Story 

You don’t have to go overboard with an extensive lineage through five generations, and you certainly don’t have to write a novel detailing childhood to the present. If you’re a player creating a new character, that’s most acceptable. These are NPCs that your players might embrace into the story or maybe the only interaction will be a brief conversation in passing. Putting too much effort into this stage runs the risk of being wasted; that’s not much fun for the GM. Even if you wanted to reuse the backstory elsewhere, you’ll always remember who it originally belonged to. Nostalgia. 

When developing a backstory for an NPC, the most important thing to determine is to establish how their individual history influenced their current FOR/POV. What circumstances led them to hold specific beliefs or feel a certain way about the government, a nearby town, or a close neighbor? How did they come to be in their profession? Do they have a family? Have they always lived here? Are they active in the community? Where do they spend most of their time? 

Typically, I would recommend this kind of depth for an NPC that is guaranteed to play a role in the campaign, because this sort of information will usually only come up as a result of dedicated conversation. If the PCs visit the baker to buy a sweetroll to bribe a guard, the baker isn’t going to hand them the pastry while mentioning the time they were bullied as a child which is why they dedicated their time building an insane amount of muscle. There must be context for this backstory to come out.

Unique Voice 

Something as simple as giving your NPCs a unique voice is enough to draw the players into the narrative. Now, if you’re not a professional voice actor (at least 99% of us), don’t get stressed out with trying to reinvent the wheel. In fact, every person if your campaign likely won’t have their own voice: most people native to a specific region are going to share some of the same affectations, inflections, and dialects, so use this as a baseline for your characters in a specific location. For example, everyone in a village might speak with a Welsh accent, but the blacksmith might be a bit gruffer thanks to years of breathing in thick forge smoke. 

Keep in mind that different regions will have unique names for the same thing. I’ll use ‘Shamble-Men” from the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss as an example. In the novels, the ‘Shamble-Men’ are monsters who are formed out of the discarded remnants of the harvest and slowly march towards the villages at night. They are a folk tale, however, and only a ‘backwater’ village would believe such tales. Having your NPCs hold superstitious beliefs, like wearing a phial of salt around their neck or keeping a copy of every holy symbol nearby, can help define a region and give some flavor to their persona. I’m looking at you, Beni:

Trinkets & Quirks 

A quick and easy method of setting your NPC apart is to give them physical attributes or possessions that are exclusive to them. Whether it be a purple mohawk, a pet ferret, or an ugly brooch, NPCs are bound to have something that nobody else has. Give them a purpose within society, be it an actual occupation, hobby, “calling”, or odd-job. Then, think of what that might mean for their belongings and how they might handle themselves. Take this a step further, and give them the OPPOSITE disposition of what the norm might be. For example, a butcher might be stereotypically described as being a well-fed man with an abrasive personality. What if the butcher in this scenario is a shy woman with quick temper who prefers a foreign blade over the Empire’s steel meat cleaver? 

Jewelry, family heirlooms, pets, weapons, hairstyles, clothing, artifacts, relics, family, occupation, tattoos, piercings, allergies, taste preferences, affinity for ale, specific pronunciations, language barriers – there are numerous possibilities that you can have fun with here. 

Gimme the ‘Block, stat! 

You can never guess the reception that your NPCs will get from your players. Conversations run amok far too often, and civilities give way to violence and rolling for initiative. It doesn’t hurt to keep several basic statblocks on-hand to reference in case it starts to go down. For your average NPC, these statblocks are going to be nondescript and more barebones than a chilly skeleton on All Hallow’s Eve. Keep some mundane weapon stats nearby so you have the damage ready, and maybe swap out a feat or two depending on who your character might be. I’m going to plug it again, but Hero Lab by Lone Wolf Development is a fantastic tool in this regard, as you can save your premade portfolios and have the numbers calculate automatically while you quickly make adjustments mid-session. 

Donjon is an excellent resource for generating NPCs on the fly. In the provided link below, a list of NPCs will be created with race, brief physical description, possible weapons/armor, and a sentence of flavor. Sifting through a bunch of these lists can give you some great ideas to start with! This is only the tip of the donjon iceberg – there are map-making tools, name generators, weather, shop inventory, loot drops…it really is an incredible wealth of information. I highly recommend that you give it a look and poke around to see what jumps out at you. 

Link to Donjon Resources

This is not a complete list, by any means, and it’s certainly not the final word on NPC creation. You will develop your own style over time and find something that works well with your campaign preparation. Just like there are no two NPCs alike, there isn’t an incorrect method to prepping for your games. If you are creating an NPC that is going to be a prominent, vital link to the story as a whole, then you’ll probably want to combine a couple of these methods that you can use for easy descriptions and help your players connect with your setting. Plus, as you start fleshing out these characters, you will undoubtedly have a better handle on HOW you are going to portray them and get a feel for who they truly are. After all, the GM gets to walk in the shoes of every character!