#but like sometimes letters in different orders and languages make different sounds.

[thesundanceghost]

“none of these letters are pronounced the way they should be” in english. if you’re following english rules, yeah. if youre following the rules of the original language, that doesn’t apply

[timkontheunsure]

Blitz's has dyslexia 🙂

Him singing it is just so cute.

He dose know the alphabet as Blitz gets it right right after this. So this is an ordering issue.

(I still have to use the alphabet song to get it right, and worked at a library for a while and used to tutor English).

Dyscalculia is a fairly normal side effect of dyslexia, and is under the same umbrella term.

This can make estimating groups on the fly very difficult.

Blitz struggles to switch language tracks, and doesn't pick up that Loona's making a joke out of he skinning the manly meat with the manly men.

Blitz is normally great at these sorts of dirty jokes, but because it was unintentional he doesn't spot it.

This is because being serious and puns/jokes are sorted in a different 'box'.

Stols - Blitz spell a lot thing as they sound, with a few transportion errors like night to nihgt, and some typos like missing the o in sorry, or missing words out.

As he says Sto-lus, that gets shortened to Stol's when said quickly. It's a cute nickname. 🙂

He also occasionally reverses letters.

(oh look a nice wee pile of evidence).

Transcription - the case files are written by Blitz dictating to Moxxie. This is normal adaptation for working around this disability.

Ok addressing the elephant in the room, cus someone always says it. "But Blitz is just uneducated".

He got in and went to collage. (Dropping out was probably to do with the fire. Blitz is met to have been around 19-20 when that happend).

And Fizz, who he grew up with and worked the same job; has perfect spelling. They would have had the same people teaching them.

Honestly this idea bugs me a lot, because it's equating being poor to a lack of education. And then spelling proficiency as a stand in for intelligence level.

We saw this when people were trying to claim Blitz was too thick to use the word supremacist. 🤦

This ties in to whole host of classist and ableist tropes.

Blitz can with alot of effort Sometimes spell correctly, when it's very important. (For Fizz and Loona).

It takes 4x as much energy for dyslexics to do these tasks. It's common to sometimes get it right, but not others.

Dyslexia is kind of short working memory issue.

Working memory is the time you can hold something like an image, or a string of numbers, in your head before it fades.(Human ram). If it's short it can be extremely difficult to get it into long term memory.

So rote tasks with nonsensical none phonetical rules don't stick well. (Eg Fonetic).

Blitz getting it right some of the time, when trying hard at the hospital tracks. Cus he doesn't want to stress Loona out more.

The 'wiring' of dyslexic brains also makes it difficult, because reading and writing are processed across both hemispheres. Nerotypicals all do that one side, which is quicker as less far for the impulses to travel.

We also don't get the visual overlay trick that alot of Nerotypicals get. The thing were you can see the spelling in your imagination and copy that pattern to spell it right every time. (Anyone able to do this is so cheesy 😛).

And lastly Blitz talks a mile a minute, but only write a few short replies to Stolas' wall of texts. (Which are probably tricky to read as of bad formatting).

Here's hoping Stolas gifts him a better phone with a good spell check, and speech to text at somepoint. Then he gets more than just memes.

[haedalkoo]

Do you have a favorite thing about the way the boys speak as individuals (can be about their general type of speech, words/phrases they use, etc.)? Can be jimin and jungkook or any of bts!

For example, I don't speak korean, but jimin's speech always sounds so soft and comforting. Even when he's not trying to be cute, he still sounds so sweet. Armys joke about kindergarten teacher jimin, but I really do feel like even his voice and speech give that gentle vibe.

This is the cutest thing you could've asked me! Let's go in order:

Namjoon: I love the way he mixes Korean and English so seamlessly. I think he has two modes, Serious-Leader-Speech, very eloquent and straight to the point, carefully chosen words; and Regular Kim Namjoon, still all of those things but super cute, he rambles a lot and mixes languages and tends to use a lot of slang? He def lurks online. But guys, he's also so poetic. He sounds like he's reading a beautiful novel. He always sounds super polite too (when he's calm I guess!! he can get super hyped up lol) but he doesn't slur his words, it's so easy to understand him even though sometimes his vocab is really precise and advanced. OMG AND he doesn't have an accent!! BUT he imitates the members satoori and it's super goofy bc he's not great at it, so it's like his own made-up satoori.

Seokjin: Jin is an amazing speaker. I think the actor training has a lot to do with this, but he has such a good voice for narration and when he speaks in korean interviews he sounds super gentle and eloquent. IDK how to describe it, but he has a v specific tone and pauses in a very unique way, making his tone very melodic and almost like a news anchor hahaha. But when he's talking to the guys he loses that formality and he stresses random words that give him a kind of goofy tone? And he uses a lot of expressions like “야” (yah) or “으아” (euah) as sentence fillers. Again, like Joon, no satoori!

Yoongi: oh he's by far the member I have the most trouble understanding. He slurs his words a lot, starting off somewhat strong but almost losing the entire ending of the sentence. I'm sure you know what I mean even if you don't understand him. A friend once mentioned to me that his pronounciation of the letter ㅆ is not as strong as it should be, tending to sound more like a regular 's' sound like in the letter ㅅ. This is apparently due to his accent! Also, like Joon, to me he tends to sound really poetic, maybe more unconciously than Joon bc I feel like he's really deliberate with his words and Yoongi is more spontaneous. As a sentence filler, he clicks his tongue a lot and sucks in air (something I think JK has also taken from him)

Hoseok: Hobi always brings a smile to my face. I think his accent is the most notable (or maybe I just catch it better than the other's, especially since it's different from the rest of the members' given he's from Jeolla.) His entonation varies a lot, it's very melodic but in an energetic way because of this accent. He also ends sentences with 잉, ing, a lot, which leads to those "said cutely" translations. HE LOOVES onomatopoeias and adding random noises when he's doing things or describing smth. He's just a really fun guy to listen to. I noticed he uses 되게 (dwege) as a filler.

Jimin: you were right, anon. Jimin is incredibly soft-spoken and extremely careful about his words, that's why he tends to mutter or start sentences over and over again to convey the feelings he tries to express. This leads into very long sentences, with a lot of what I call 'pleasing' expressions. This is, Korean (like other Asian languages such as Japanese) is a very indirect language. When you want to express your disagreement with something, you don't straight out say 'I don't like this' or if you're telling someone to do smth differently, you don't say 'be careful next time, don't do that'. You say things like 'in the future, i believe that if you are able to do so it might be benefitial if this issue were handled in a different way' (this is a random example). Your sentences get endless bc you add words and politeness that softens the blow of your different opinion. Jimin does that more than other members who tend to be more blunt, like YG, TH or JK. I think this has changed over the years with the growing international fandom, but he used to sound really informal in his vlives to sound like an old friend with armys. now I think he expresses his outmost respect for us by speaking really formally and in ways that are easy to automatically translate. I also read he has some "feminine" speech patterns, since Kr is a very gendered language in the sense that girls and boys have diff sentence endings or words they use. I think this kinda contributes to how softspoken he is.

Taehyung: Tae's speech is all over the place, but he's extremely sensible and I think he offers the most unique metaphors when he's being sentimental. He's very heartwarming, but sometimes it's hard to understand him because he changes the subject, grammatical order or point of his sentences a lot to adjust to the speed in which things are coming out of his mind. This has gotten better over the years, though. I think age has offered him a sense of calm that allows words to flow better than in the early years of bangtan, where he was an excited puppy. He pauses a lot between sentences, saying "ohh" quite often, and he has a bunch of characteristic filler words like 약간 (yakhan, a bit) or 이제 (ije, now). If you watch the run bts ep where they forbid words for each member, I think ije was one of those for Tae.

Jungkook: guys he's so cute. I'm so grateful that he started doing lives more often, bc I always got the impression he struggled to put his thoughts into words more than other members and that's why he shied away from giving speeches. He still has a lot in his mind, but when he's not in a rush, he pauses a lot and stumbles over his words without shame until he gets the thought out. He speaks really really fast when animated, mumbling and slurring his syllables (that's why it's so hard for me to translate the travel show without proper subs.) We all know he has a lisp, I believe it might be a characteristic of his Busan accent, which is quite present on the regular (in contrast with Jimin, who sometimes forces it out, often around JK. He even joked that he was losing it a little). When he's directing his words to army, he tends to be really soft-spoken and formal, speaking in a way that you know comes from a place in his heart. He also uses a lot of onomatopoeias when describing things, and he adds cute endings to his words just like Hobi (my aegyo kings.)

[vidavalor]

Ngk.

Yes, this is meta on ngk. I know, right? Possible origins and other layers of meaning? Ngk.

When Crowley uses it, "ngk", as we know, is the sound of a very clever word nerd just being so floored, confused, overwhelmed, or otherwise incapable of speech that we might think that what he says sounds like a bunch of random letters. It comes out like a curse at times... or a !!!!!... or it would be a squeak of frustration, if only his voice weren't so deliciously low. People read it as the verbal equivalent of a short keysmash and, emotionally? It probably is, but... those letters are not at all random.

The reasons why these letters were chosen are so. very. Crowley. that I think you'll find that the character's (and Pratchett's) interesting word kink might, as Mrs. Sandwich would say, put a smile on your face. 😊

I am pretty sure that ngk is two, different but interconnected, word history jokes related to the Greek language. Why the Greek language? Because it, along with Latin, is at the core of basically every language that etymologists refer to as being part of the Indo-European language family, which is pretty much every language of European countries, the Persian Plateau (sometimes referred to as the Iranian Plateau), and the northern Indian subcontinent. If you ever do word history research on words in English or Indo-European languages, it won't take you longer than two minutes to start finding your way back to the Greek roots for many of the words you look up. Greek is both a language in its own right and also the part of the origin story of words in dozens of other languages. Greek is at the core of the etymology-inspired figurative language in Good Omens and in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

Because Greek has existed as language for literal ages and is so foundational to the study of other languages, etymologists needed a way to differentiate between the before and after period of big change in the Greek language.

Known to date, there really was one, massive shift that the language underwent over a period that has been narrowed down but the exact time and cause is debated. The most common theory is that it is related to The Fall of Constantinople and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The point is that, during this semi-disputed period of time, Greek underwent some big shifts that are, by and large, what differentiate between what we'd call "Ancient Greek" when looking at word history and how Greek has been written and spoken since through today. It's all the same language but it's just shifted so much, especially during this one period, that there are differences in it that people looking at word history need to be aware of when looking at the origins of words versus what things might mean or how they might be spoken in Greek in our current times.

In order to do that, etymologists created the term "New Greek" to mean Greek as spoken after this period of massive change to differentiate it from the Greek of more ancient Greece. NGK or ngk is the etymology world's acronym for "New Greek." Making this even more confusing? At some point in the last couple of decades, etymologists began calling "New Greek" by a different name-- "Modern Greek"-- but it means the same thing and, from what of it I've seen, they have largely kept the same ngk acronym. (The change to "Modern Greek" happened after Good Omens was first published.)

So, the first thing of the two things that ngk is? It's Crowley being so speechless or over everything that he's like argh, it's all fucking New Greek. He's cursing or exclaiming in frustration using the acronym for the shift in languages that underpins all of the languages he most frequently speaks, the evolution of which he lived through. Even word-nerdy poets have moments of FUCK WORDS and that appears to be one level of what ngk is. This also might be a little joke as well on the controversial old idiom that exists in different forms throughout different languages-- "it's all Greek to me"-- that was popularized in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. For more on that, I'd refer you to this really interesting Atlas Obscura article on the idiom.

Ok, so, that's the first of the two Greek-related things that ngk is. Let's look at the other one so you can see just how great a Crowley joke this...

While ngk is an acronym, it also, separately, happens to be a double consonant sound in Greek. Do not worry if it's been awhile since you studied a language, I will simplify. 😊

In English, a double consonant is when a consonant appears twice in a row in a word, like the two times in a row the letter l appears in the word balloon. In Greek, it's a different thing. A double consonant in Greek is a combination of two consonants that make one, collective sound together. Greek double consonants are closest to (if not exactly equivalent to) what is called a digraph in English phonics, which is the sound made by two letters commonly put together, like sh, qu, ch, etc. When you were first learning English, you were taught things like how sh makes a "shh" sound, in addition to learning the individual letters of the alphabet, right? That's kind of what some double consonants are like in Greek.

One of the Greek double consonants is the combination of the letters gamma + kappa in the Greek alphabet. When you say the double consonant of gamma + kappa aloud?

You are saying: "Ngk."

The letter gamma here in this double consonant is pronounced a little differently than usual and has what's known as the "gamma nasal" quality that causes it to be pronounced like "ng." Kappa here is pronounced and written like the English letter k, for which it is the direct ancestor. The pronunciation of the gamma + kappa double consonant is the sound that Crowley says in the bandstand in S1.

So, Crowley is actually cursing/exclaiming out a double consonant of the Greek alphabet...

Why? And why this one, when there are a bunch?

Start by checking out how the uppercase and lowercase letters for both gamma and kappa are written below:

Uppercase gamma is the crank part of a crank tool. Lowercase gamma is the origin of the English letter y-- homophone: the signature word of questions: why?

Gamma is a term used all over the place in math and science, including gamma rays from electromagnetism and gamma waves, observable neural movement that is connected in the mind to large-scale, high-level cognitive activity, often related to memory, perception, creativity, and attention. These are also some of the brain waves most impacted by mental health issues and that are also some of the most affected by things like meditation.

Gamma is also a Greek word for the camel. (Lest you think that Good Omens forgot a rideable animal for their never-ending horses/transportation euphemism fiesta... found the missing camel! 😂) The word gamut also comes from gamma and originally referred to music-- the entirety of the musical scale-- but now you can say "runs the gamut" about anything in a way that means the same thing as the idiom "from soup to nuts"-- just everything, from beginning to end. From creation to completion and back to the start again.

Kappa has ties to some Crowley-related science and spirituality, such as The Kappa Effect, which is a theory explaining how the mind's perception of distance can affect its perception of how much time has passed. In early Buddhist scriptures written in Pali, a kappa-- referred to as a kalpa in later writings-- refers to a very long period of time between the creation and the destruction/recreation of a world or universe and related to the lifetime of that world or universe.

So, we have memory, time, the creation of the universe, crank tools, asking questions... these letters are turning into a whole list of Crowley-related things, yeah? There's more...

Kappa is written in both cases like the letter k-- homophones: 'kay (as in, ok/okay) and cay.

The etymology of ok is actually an example of a briefly-existing cant vocabulary, which... heyyyy. That feels relevant, yeah? 😲

In the late 1830s, a (very limited) cant vocabulary emerged in New England that created new slang out of making acronyms out of intentionally misspelled existing phrases. It is thought to have started or been encouraged by a Boston Morning Post article that mocked a competing newspaper by saying it was spelling things the way its rival did-- spelling "all correct" as "oll korrect." A lot of issues of newspapers from this time period no longer exist so the exact issue that caused this paper to troll its rival is unknown. There is some speculation that it might have been something of a class warfare battle being played out between papers who appealed to different groups of people, given that the mocking "oll korrect" sounds, when spoken aloud, to be of the same pronunciation quirks of the 'pahk the kah in hahvahd yahd' variety of Boston accent.

"Ok" is believed to have originated as an abbreviation of "oll korrect." This article either prompted-- or was an example of-- a cant vocabulary that did a rare thing-- united Boston and New York lol-- for a little while in the late 1830s. There were other abbreviations used as words like this, for which you had to understand one of Crowley's favorite word things-- homophony-- and know the pattern to understand. KG meant "no go", off of the homophonic "know go," for example.

Ngk, like ok and these other words, is an abbreviation being used as a a word. Not of one that's misspelled but one that is from the cant vocab of etymology nerds, making it fun in an especially meta sort of way.

The most famous of these phrases from this late 1830s Boston/New York cant-- and the only one to survive-- is "ok", which etymologists think was probably was helped to remain by being picked up and used in President Martin Van Buren's failed reelection bid in 1840.

As you can probably tell from the fact that I said that it was used in a Presidential campaign, the cant vocabulary spilled into the mainstream and, so, lost relevancy as it was no longer something that not everyone understood. "Ok" was kind of like the "brat" of the 1840 U.S. presidential campaign, in some ways? Once everyone got the joke, people still used it in the mainstream because it was a quick thing to say or write as an affirmative but its subversion was lost by its meaning becoming commonly understood.

While this 1830s cant vocab was *much* smaller, the best anyone can tell-- more like a handful of phrases and not much more-- it's kind of similar to Polari, in terms of the language burning out but leaving lingering words in mainstream English.

Ok, so the other word from kappa: cay.

A cay is a low island. It has a synonym-- one definition of the word key (Key Largo, The Florida Keys, etc.). So, we have a low island-- the use of the beach/the sea/fish/bodies of water as figurative language for sex in Good Omens-- and its also the word that is a key. Keys you use to start engines to drive and also to unlock language. A key is the necessary component to interpreting hidden language and here's one of the keys/clues to taking apart the use of language in Good Omens right here in ngk.

Kappa is from the Phonenician kaph, which meant the hollow of the hand (the palm) when it is forming a cup shape... as in when praying/meditating or when creating or presenting something...

...and the sole (homophone: soul) of the foot-- its arch, in particular. Arch, alternative meaning: playful, knowing, dry teasing.

In other words, kappa, etymologically, is the movement of the hands and feet-- it's living on Earth. It's using the hands to make magic and art, to worship and give to others. It's the the cobbler walking the Earth-- living life.

Crowley's story is the double consonant of gamma+kappa. Not just the angel he was and his life on Earth since his fall but how they're really all intermixed into one person because he's always been the one person. Ngk is who he is and that is why, of all the possible sounds, he says this one.

While it was both an acronym and a sound prior to the novel, ngk was, to the best of my knowledge, not written as a word in its own right prior to the publication of Good Omens. Crowley's exclamations are the first utterances of ngk as a word and our understanding of what it means comes from the context of when and how he uses it in the novel and in the series. In that way, ngk is Good Omens' own contribution to language evolution.

Terry Pratchett, who wrote his Discworld novels and Good Omens with etymology-based figurative language, made word history such a big part of Good Omens that he had the book itself contribute to language evolution by having it birth a word in Crowley's ngk.

From interpreting its meaning by the context of how Crowley uses it... from researching from where this grouping of three letters as a word could have originated... from incorporating the word into fan art and fanfic... and from using it amongst ourselves in real life and explaining it to other people if they ask for the last couple of decades?

We've all been collectively helping Terry Pratchett contribute a new word to the English language.

Let's get it into the dictionaries next. 😊

[ghostsandfools]

An analysis of Moonflower and the owners of Gardenview:

Dandy x Astro, our favorite toxic yaoi couple. Even if you see them as just friends, you’ve got to admit, their dynamic is ripe with potential.

Then there’s Arthur and Delilah, two lesser known Dandy’s World characters. For those who don’t know, Delilah and Arthur took out a loan together and started Gardenview Educational Center. They are the owners of the building and (supposedly) created the toons as well.

But I wonder, could their relationship be a parallel to Dandy and Astro’s? Let’s talk about it!

Astro and Dandy have been close since the beginning. They were two of the first toons, created along with the other mains in 1988.

Not only that, but they seem to have been friends in the show as well. Even if you don’t ship them, it’s clear that they were close with each other.

Arthur and Delilah also seem to be close friends. The first interaction we get between them is when they sign a loan together in 1984, presumably the money they use to start Gardenview. While a loan isn’t very interesting, you probably wouldn’t want to sign a loan with any random person on the street, so they were probably pretty close even before then.

Arthur doesn’t fully understand what Delilah is doing or how she brings the toons to life, but he trusts her. They’ve seemingly been friends for a while, and he really, truly trusts her. She’s never failed him before!

And then the issues arise. After a while, things begin to change. Dandy starts acting differently, and so does Delilah. In 2002, Gardenview is shut down due to lack of regulations as well as something called the “malfunction incident.” When questioned about these things, Arthur remained quiet, and there’s no mention of Delilah being questioned at all.

She stays completely quiet about everything. It seems the only person she talks to about it is Arthur, and even then, she denies knowing anything about it. He asks and asks to talk with her again, but it’s unclear if she ever fulfills that request.

The language he uses here is especially interesting to me. He seems suspicious of her, frustrated and confused. But it almost seems like he’s nervous about calling her out, he’s hurt that she didn’t talk to him. He seems less angry at her and more concerned or worried. His tone is demanding, as if he’s had enough, but it’s not bossy. He’s still polite, almost friendly as he asks to speak with her again.

Before, their letters seemed busy, rushed, hasty. They were too busy running Gardenview to send emails or have long conversations in person, scrawling silly notes and messages to each other instead. Delilah seemed demanding of him, ordering him to bring her more coffee and send her more reference pictures, but it didn’t seem malicious then.

Now though, Gardenview is closed. Arthur has all the time in the world to compose a nervous letter to her, questioning their friendship and if she’s trustworthy. Before he blindly trusted her, but now he finally realizes something is wrong. He’s not hurriedly scrawling a letter and dropping it by her office because he’s too busy to talk in person, he’s writing to her because he doesn’t feel like he can talk to her. Their friendship is falling apart.

Doesn’t all of this sound familiar? It sounds just like Astor and Dandy’s relationship, starting as friends (or lovers) and slowly falling apart.

Astro only mentions Dandy by name once, in his dialogue with Pebble. He says he’s worried about Dandy. However, there is one more interesting piece of dialogue, his dialogue with Teagan.

Teagan: "Astro, are you still talking with... Him?"

Astro: "Yes... well, sometimes... not as often..."

Teagan: "Goodness Astro, you need to make up your mind!"

Astro: "...Sorry."

Now, many people think the “Him” is Dandy, and i agree. It doesn’t really make sense for it to be anybody else, unless it’s a character we haven’t been introduced to, but that would be kind of dumb.

This shows that Astro still feels some attachment to him. He knows he shouldn’t be talking to Dandy anymore, but after all the time they’ve spent together (and all the manipulation, probably) he just can’t bring himself to cut ties completely, similar to Arthur.

Another interesting thing is the requirements you need to fulfill to buy Astro. To buy Astro, you have to have seen twisted Dandy. To BE Astro, you have to have seen twisted Dandy. Which makes me wonder: is that important to the lore? Has Astro actually seen Dandy in his twisted form? And if so, how much does he truly know? Does he understand the full extent of what he saw? Or is that why he’s so worried about Dandy, because he’s seen his true form and doesn’t understand why the person he’s been friends with for so long is now suddenly so different, why Dandy is suddenly hiding things from him.

That all ties back in to Arthur and Delilah as well. Arthur references how Delilah “had to have known something like this could have happened to him.” Yet another mysterious him, and I wonder: Could Arthur have seen twisted Dandy as well? Maybe that’s what he’s referring to in his letter. Delilah built the toons, she owns the building, she oversees everything! And if Arthur couldn’t explain what was happening, there’s only one person who could.

This leads into a theory I’ve mentioned before: Dandy wasn’t the true mastermind behind the ichor operation. Once, he was normal, he was kind. But Delilah, his creator, basically a god to him, began to corrupt him with ichor and turn him into a twisted. Perhaps they even worked together. After all, how would Dandy know how to corrupt everybody by himself? How would he get his hands on this mysterious “ichor”? With the help of a human.

The relationship shipping potential here is amazing! Imagine the struggle Astro would go through, the struggle of knowing that his lover, the one person who had been with him through it all had been corrupted by a monster. And what if the real Dandy is still in there somewhere? Watching helplessly as his body worked on its own, hurting everyone he loved.

Even if you don’t like shipping it’s tragic! Poor Astro, having to decide between his best friend’s trust and everyone else’s safety. Maybe that’s why the game references him frowning so much, he keeps worrying about Dandy, to the point he can’t even put a smile on for the kids. And poor Arthur as well: I can’t help but wonder what happened to him. Did he cut ties with Delilah? Did she manipulate her way back into his life? Is he even alive?

Let me know what you all think, I never see anyone talk about this and it drives me crazy! Arthur and Delilah are such clear parallels to Dandy and Astro, their names even start with the same letters!

[bcbdrums]

Perfect Edition is a little less than perfect...

I've bought up through volume 5 of Soul Eater's perfect edition, very excited to have the manga hard-bound and with supposedly a better translation... But I found almost immediately that was not the case.

This is far from a complete commentary since as I said, I've only bought up through volume 5. But I have parallel-read the Perfect Edition alongside the original Yen Press publication to note each and every change. A pattern emerged immediately that remained consistent, and sadly....as I said...these releases are far from perfect.

All text changes are ink-saving. Nearly everything has been altered and reduced to use as few letters as possible, eliminating entire sentences and phrases from the original. Often times the meaning is less clear or changed entirely as a result. Example: replacing the word "ambiguity" with the word "anger." These aren't even remotely close in meaning, but it saves several letters! Nothing at all ever increases in length or gains clarity. All changes make the text shorter and...kind of "abridged" feeling. This was clear from volume 1 and it's only gotten worse with each volume.

Many changes are trying to sound extremely American, to the point of characters sounding stereotyped. There are a couple of cute dialogue changes, but for the most part they come across as contrived, unnatural, and don't sound in character at all for anyone, which has also gotten worse with each volume. A lot of times I'm left re-reading a dialogue box in confusion because it's so out of character in the attempt to sound American and save ink.

Following that last point up... Sid's dialogue specifically is altered to sound more "black" which I find offensive, even worse when combined with the ink-saving strategy. Abridged racially stereotyped dialogue...

They removed all Japanese (okay, no problem) but there is no consistency with how it was replaced/changed except in the case of Lord Death which makes me wonder if different translators worked on each character's dialogue. For whatever reason, a character's name is not enough so Lord Death gives everyone cutesy nicknames. Some of that feels in character for him, some does not. But no one else has any consistency... Sometimes a -chan is replaced with just a name, but sometimes the same character addressing the same person will be trying to say something cutesy. The fact is, the Japanese way of addressing people by social class and respect doesn't translate because it's not part of American culture, and they shouldn't have tried to find a middle-ground. It comes off weird, distracting, and out of character.

There is no new art. As I recall, one selling point for Perfect Edition was the inclusion of new art. No. There is no new art. None whatsoever. They have changed the order in which some of the original art pieces are presented in the manga, but it's all entirely the same. Unless you count the covers. But that's all.

The harsher language is severely softened. All of the swearing is greatly reduced, which for characters like Giriko for example greatly impact characterization. Part of who he is is crude and terrible, but with his using only the mild swears he comes across entirely differently. It's not just swear words, but insulting phrases spoken by many characters are entirely changed as well (just like all the text). This really changes the meaning of things from the original.

Things in the actual art you'd expect to be fixed aren't, such as Medusa's hair twist being on the wrong side. No art errors are fixed at all.

The manga still reads right to left, but in the vertical text boxes many of those suddenly have the text reading left to right like English. But then a few still read right to left like the original, like Japanese translated manga is meant to be. There's no rhyme or reason, except the ones reading properly (right to left) do seem often clustered together like the translator forgot. This change to try to read left to right is very, very confusing and since vertical text boxes are common in manga it slows down the reading.

They didn't change all of Crona's pronouns. That's right...they missed some. One error was very early on, too. I was like, wait a second, "he"??? But I read it right. The translators missed some.

Speaking of Crona, the one thing I've found that didn't save ink but was an added editorialization was in Crona's very first scenes to state they are a victim. Part of the power of Crona's story is the slow reveal/discovery of who they are and what they've been through. Simply stating from....what knowledge??? That they are a victim in their very first appearance undermines the power of their story, which is just my opinion but still. Our main characters are suddenly declaring from nothing that Crona is a victim and that's weak storytelling too.

This next point isn't an issue with the translation, but I have seen many a Tumblr post and Reddit post with people saying their Perfect Editions arrived with missing pages. One of mine arrived with several pages stained in bright blue dye. There's a lack of quality control somewhere in the printing and distribution....

And you might say, but I only have volumes 1 through 5, so why am I so sure about all this? Well, it's been extremely consistent in all five volumes. But more, I've asked some people who have later volumes for pictures of various important pages, and all the flaws of these early volumes continue in the exact same pattern.

Thus, my conclusion is.... It's not "perfect" at all. It's just yet another translation. One with far fewer words, slightly more family-friendly in language, and with stereotyped Americanizations. It's not worth my money.

Will I still read it (paralleled to the original of course)? I can't help my curiosity, so yes, yes I will. By checking them all out from my local library. But I'm not gonna be suckered out of any more money on something that is just not what was implied to be in the title and advertising.

[lavenderbuckyy]

stevie headcanons for his birthday! ❤️

wakes up at 5 am EVERY DAY to go for a run

sometimes he has so much energy in his body he HAS to do something physical, like go running or use an exercise machine. bucky calls it the zoomies 😭

with this excess energy, he fidgets a lot. rubbing his hands together, tapping his foot/jigging his leg, cracking his knuckles/neck

he knows sign language!

he's a total introvert and needs time to recharge. he doesn't like big events or parties and prefers low-key time with friends

irish accents always remind him of his ma. sometimes when he hears one in public, he feels like he's back in his apartment in brooklyn with her

(he's fond of F.R.I.D.A.Y. for this reason)

he's a great listener. the avengers come to him when they have a problem because they know he truly cares and he'll pay full attention

on days off he likes exploring different museum exhibits in brooklyn

burns in the sun sooo easily, he's constantly reapplying suncream. when the avengers have beach days, he always has to sheepishly walk up to someone and ask them to do his back

his favourite colour is blue!

although he's more of a cat person, steve is fond of golden retrievers. no real reason, he just thinks they're neat

awkward around kids, but he tries his best

this man is so well hydrated. he brings his reusable water bottle everywhere and is constantly sipping on it

orders sharing platters just for himself at restaurants bc of his metabolism

he has a lot of respect for natasha; she's one of the first people he truly came to trust in the 21st century. they spar together a lot!

he loves the smell of apples cooking 🍏

his movie night snack of choice is salted popcorn

likes strategy games like chess, battleships, etc. he's an absolute MENACE at monopoly and nobody wants to play with him

he is truly haunted by star spangled man with a plan and rappin' with cap

his hair gets lighter and more golden in the sun. natural highlights 🌤️ plus he gets little freckles across his shoulders and nose!

he is so sappy on the inside fr ❤️

prefers pancakes > waffles (he and bucky fight over this)

he attends a lot of protests (e.g. women's rights march 2017), both because he cares and because he knows it'll bring more media attention to the issue if he attends

he is so touched by the fan letters he gets from little kids. he keeps them all, but he sticks up his absolute favourite artwork on the fridge

pretends to not understand modern technology just to aggravate tony

uses perfect punctuation and caps in his texts — except he leaves out full stops at the end of sentences because he thinks it "makes him sound annoyed" 😭

hates doing dishes. usually he just rinses off his plate/mug and leaves it in the sink for later

bottles up his feelings. usually he exercises as a way to work out his frustration, but he won't talk to someone until he's at breaking point or they make him

absolutely awful at first-person shooter games

he hates lemon desserts and sour candy. bur he loves lemonade... hmm 🤨

[kendrene]

oooOOOOOOH how's about avatrice with "You’re so warm.” ?? :)

The paper is thin under the pads of her fingers. 

Ava smooths it flat against the surface of the table, holding it there. Presses hard enough she can feel the ridges of the old wood through it, where age and neglect chipped the paint job away. Her thumb catches against a deep groove. Some past accident. The table meeting a knife. 

She pushes down harder. Her fingers, her hand, all the way to her elbow it’s just one big ache. She aches all over today. Then again, she hurts all over most days. Her free hand scrambles past a stack of unused paper for the pencil she’d let go to shake off a cramp. It skidded far across that sea of white and Ava is forced to stretch, bow over the table in order to grasp it. The motion tilts her halfway out the chair, which rolls back; Ava shifts her hips forward and sets herself back to her task. 

The book she's copying words from is the one Bea had gotten for her second-hand the first and last time they were here. The apartment is the same too, down to leaking pipe beneath the sink Beatrice still hasn't figured out how to fix.

It's Ava who's different. And everything else that has changed.

In the textbook, rows upon rows of German words and phrases march alongside their Portuguese counterparts. It had taken several tries for Beatrice to find it, days of scouring flea markets in the small towns nearby. Sometimes alone, most often with Hans. 

“It’ll be easier to learn if you build up from your native language.” She explained after Ava had pointed out an English to German book would have worked just as fine. It had been. Easy.

Except now it’s hard.

Today’s lesson is about the items used in the kitchen. Der Wasserkocher, Ava writes diligently, eyes flicking to the battered red tea kettle sitting on the stove. Der Ofen, she adds on a whim. Even though it isn’t in the book, she knows the German word for stove.

She’s about to write down the word for dishwashing detergent, which is long winded and sputtery both in letter count and in sound, when another cramp hits.

This is the worst one so far. It starts at her fingers, trailing up from her hand to the hinge of her wrist in increasingly powerful waves. Ava’s entire arm seizes. She watches her hand contract like it isn’t her own. Clench, release, tighten, release. The final shock has the pencil tear a hole through the last, half-written word, then snap against her palm.

Ava sucks in a breath at the sting. A sharp fragment of wood scores in her skin. She wills her hand to relax so she can take a look at the damage, but it’s an impossible ask, as though her internal wiring has been cut. Ava thinks about her fingers uncurling, face fixed in a frown. Thinks about it so hard she makes herself dizzy. Her hand stays exactly the same, and droplets vivid red, more viscous than ink, patter down on the page.

The rest starts while she watches the droplets expand. Ava knows, logically, that she’s not bleeding that much. Wherever she looks, though, she sees red. Red kettle, red microwave, old red radio on top of the fridge. 

Ava closes her eyes, or maybe it’s her vision that crawls dark at the edges. There is a shift, a tilt to her axis, and the next thing she is aware of is her cheek, bruised, pressing against linoleum warmed by the sun. 

“Ava?” Beatrice calls, voice uncertain, from what could be the opposite side of the world. “Ava I heard a noise. Are you —?” Ava blinks hard. Next to her, one of the chair’s rear wheels revolves slowly. “Ava?” Beatrice again. Closer. “Do you need me to — oh.” 

Strong hands cup beneath her armpits. Lifting, pushing, pulling away. Ava’s world spins with the faltering speed of a merry-go-round that’s finally come to a stop, and she finds herself propped against something that is, at once, solid and soft.

“Hey.” Beatrice’s lips are pressed to the shell of her ear, mouth half slanted in the hair behind it. “Ava, I think that you’re having a panic attack. I’m going to put my arms around you now. I don’t want you falling again. Is that okay?” 

Ava just nods. 

She feels as battered and old as this house, where some things are broken and others don’t work like they should. Her body isn’t even her own anymore; she’s along for the ride, but doesn’t control it. Walking and running — something as stupid as writing. She can’t seem to be able to consistently do any of it anymore. 

“Hey, hey, hey.” Beatrice’s arms wind around her middle and she’s rocking the two of them gently, back and forth, in time with the sobs Ava hadn’t even realized are shaking her shoulders. “It’s alright.” One of Beatrice’s hand worms its way under her shirt, to the spot where the Halo sits heavy and idle and so very cold. “Just breathe with me. Do you think you can do that?”

Beatrice takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “Like so. Now we do it together okay? On my count. One. Two —”

On three Ava opens her mouth. The first breath is torturous, like pulling in air through a straw. It doesn’t help that her nose is runny and clogged, and that the hand she lifts up to wipe it only makes it as far as her chest.  

“Here.” Beatrice’s fingers guide hers around a handkerchief she must have had in her pocket, then help Ava bring it to her nose. The fabric is the kind of soft that comes with a lot of washing and the pattern — Ava thinks it was once a herd of stylized galloping horses — is pretty much gone. She blows her nose, and the next breath she takes comes a bit easier.

“Better?” 

“I think so.” Her voice still feels off, as if she’s speaking a language she doesn’t quite know. Ava fights down another sob. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Beatrice scoots them backwards so that they’re further away from the table and fully sit in the sun. Ava watches her legs trail along; she’s starting to regain a measure of feeling, and with it comes the pain from her fall. It will be a while until they can move, longer until she can heave herself up on the wheelchair on her own. If she’s lucky, tomorrow will be a good day and she’ll be able to walk. If she’s lucky.

Lately, she’s not been very lucky at all.

“Have you heard of the 3-3-3 rule?” Beatrice asks, breath a warm wash against the side of Ava’s throat. Her hands have never stopped moving. One splays over the Halo, steady and grounding. The other covers Ava’s nerveless fingers, thumb tracing the network of veins at her wrist, that look bluish-black in the sun. 

“I know the 5 seconds one.”

Beatrice snorts. It tickles.

“That’ll do. Can you tell me three foods that you like then, Ava?”

Ava frowns. She’s starting to come back to herself, and with her mind clearing up and the fear wearing away it’s easy to see what Beatrice is doing.

“I know what you’re doing.”

“Then humor me, please?” The hand at her back pauses, and a hum rises from under Ava’s skin in response. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. The Halo has barely kept her alive as it is. Ava tries not to get her hopes up. She did at the start, after she came back through the Arc, and it was a big disappointment. 

She can’t afford to get hurt that way, not again. She wouldn’t survive. 

“Ugh, fine.” Afternoon sunlight, buttery smooth, streams in through the window, coating the entire world gold. “Mint chocolate chip ice cream.” 

“You have horrible taste, but go on.”

“Tacos al pastor.” 

“Okay, I can get behind those.” The hand on her back travels lower, following the ridges, the dips of her spine, and Ava feels it again. The tiniest hum, a buzzing. It’s almost a sigh. “What’s the third food?” 

“You.” 

The hand falls away. Beatrice’s arms around Ava tighten. Chin hooked over Ava’s shoulder , she rests her head there for a beat, face naturally tilting into the space between collarbone and jaw like a comet unable to resist a planet’s orbit.

“Ava.” A flash of heat spreads across Ava’s back, and she can’t tell whether it comes from the Halo or if Beatrice is blushing.

“What?”

“I just —” Bea smiles against her shoulder, plants a kiss there. “I’m not very nutritious, calories wise.”

“True.” Ava twists around in Bea’s arms, makes herself comfortable there. Given a choice, she’ll stay like this for the rest of the day. “But you’re tasty.” 

Beatrice clears her throat. “We should get you off the floor.” She suggests, deflecting. Her gaze cuts away to the floor, and she swallows. Ava will never tire of it, of how even the slightest flirting will have Beatrice in knots. Of how she’ll swallow, cheeks suffused red, pulse racing, near visible, under the cut of her jaw.

“Wait.” Ava digs in, hand gripping the front of Bea’s light pullover. She sways forward and in, and her lips brush on purpose right at Bea’s throat. Her heart pounds so fast Ava can taste it. Or maybe it’s her own. “Can we stay here a while longer? You’re so warm.”

Beatrice pulls back to look at her, mouth quirking into a bigger smile.

“We can stay here a while.”

//

“Die Schwester” Lilith has picked up Ava’s textbook after dinner and is making her way through some words, mangling them all. 

“Your German is terrible.”

“My German is perfect, thank you very much. It’s simply accented.”

“Whatever. Give me my book back.” Ava braces one elbow against the wheelchair’s armrest and stretches up, the other arm fully extended. Lilith puts the book down, just out of reach. 

“I’m so gonna run you over.”

Lilith scoffs. “And how do you plan to do that?” 

“We’re in the Alps. I’m going to wait until you’re on an incline, then let gravity do the rest.”

“Sure.”

Lilith phases. Reappears behind Ava a second later to help her closer to the table where Camila and Mary are setting the pizza they ordered for dinner on plates. 

“Why are you learning family vocabulary anyway? You and Bea are pretty fluent already.” 

“I’m not.” Ignoring the plates, Ava grabs for the box of pizzawitheverythingonit nobody else has the stomach to touch. The first bite is delicious but hot. Ava juggles the food in her mouth, speaking around it. “I have the best family ever already.”

Everything’s changed. 

Nothing is ever the same.

Ava will not walk today and she may not walk tomorrow. But as the sky fades to black and they crowd on the old couch, fighting over whose turn it is to pick a movie, Ava thinks change is alright. 

[kywaslost]

hello! is it okay if i can request headcannons for aizawa with a student who has a processing disorder and has to have things like simplified for them? i have something called auditory processing disorder and i cant really understand people sometimes, so i need things simplified for me or for someone to say something slower so i can understand it better. im sorry if this will be a bother!

Reader Has A Processing Disorder - Aizawa

A/N: Hi! This isn’t a bother at all! In fact, I enjoyed researching the different processing disorders, especially since I really love Anatomy and Physiology or anything to do with the human body. I decided to include all processing disorders, if that’s alright! Hope you enjoy it!

I found all of the information in this fic here.

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) - impacts comprehension and recall of what you hear and auditory processing in the brain; can result in issues related to listening for children, including repeated requests for clarification of spoken directions, or difficulty understanding conversations if they’re in a noisy place.

When you tell Aizawa about your APD, it really doesn’t bother him

You need him to clarify or repeat himself? He can do that.

You ask to audio record each class? He lets you sit in the front row to better pick up the audio

Takes you to speech therapy if you ask him to, since it’s off campus

Helps you learn sign language if that’s what you’d like so you’ll be able to understand him better

When you do your work studies, it can get loud and hard for you to understand your mentor, so you end up using sign language a lot outside of the classroom

Overall, Aizawa is willing to do anything to help you excel in the classroom

Just because you have trouble processing sounds doesn’t mean you should fall behind your classmates

Like I said earlier, your APD doesn’t change the way he thinks about you or how he treats you

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) - can result in over-responsiveness to sensory input, such as extreme sensitivity to loud noise or itchy clothing, or under responsiveness, which could be shown as a lack of awareness of personal space or a desire for thrill seeking.

Aizawa is much more aware about how you feel and how you’re acting when he learns you have SPD.

Your school uniform is too itchy or the fabric bothers you? He helps you talk to Nezu about ordering a new uniform in a fabric that doesn’t bother you.

The lights are too bright? He dims them down as much as he can without making the other students sleepy.

It’s too loud? Let’s you wear noise-canceling headphones and uses sign language for the rest of class as he speaks so you don’t miss anything.

Knows if you have aversions to certain foods and their textures

Keeps foods that you’re comfortable with in a drawer in his desk in case of emergencies

Have trouble moving, like climbing stairs or going far distances? Aizawa will walk with you to make sure you get to your location alright

Or makes sure someone is always with you

Your quirk doesn’t require you to do much physical activity, so you should be ok in that aspect

On the other hand, if you’re under stimulated and can’t sit still, Aizawa has plenty of fidget toys for you to mess around with

Notices when you begin to chew on your pencil or hoodie strings and gives you something else to do so you aren’t constantly chewing on things

Yet again, he tries to help you the best he can to make sure you’re comfortable and not a threat to yourself or others

Visual Processing Disorder (VPD) - one may not be able to distinguish between shapes, have difficulty copying notes from the board, or have difficulty remembering the correct sequence for letters or numbers in a series.

Aizawa is going to need to help you a bit more with this one

But he doesn’t mind

Knows you struggle with taking notes so he’ll either give you his notes or makes sure that one of your classmates helps you with your own notes

If you’re asked to read aloud in class, he’ll help you since you often mix up letters

But he tries his best to keep you from reading in class

He knows how embarrassed you get by it sometimes

Offers to help you with math homework

Especially when you have to do the same online assignment 8 times to get 100% just because your numbers move around on you (not me in calculus yesterday…)

Writes even bigger on the board to help you try and keep your letters and numbers in the right order

Schedules study sessions with you to make sure you’re keeping up with him and the other students

Helps you in as many ways as possible

[dreamy-love222]

I used to write really long love letters to the boys I have had a crush on and hide them in my room.

My first love letter I wrote was when I was 11. It was In French my first language (at home we mainly talked French and sometimes the Tunisian dialect but even our dialect was different from the main dialect which was mostly Arabic with a bit of French words (because France colonised Tunisia) and English words because Americanisation of the Tunisian dialect…

So I wrote this letter on the weekend when I was in my grandmother’s old home in the Zahra (Tunisia) (my grandparents bought in the 80s) (they sold it in 2020 so they can live closer to my aunts because they grew old)

I spent 4 hours on this letter, it was about 6 pages long, I was confessing my undying love for Amir, see amir was a really interesting boy. He was the first in our class yet he was always causing trouble. I knew him since I was 5 years old and his mother was friends with my mom. He was cute but what really made me admire him is his intelligence. He pretended to not be serious about his studies but he was, his dad told him he has to be the first in order to do Judo after school. So he did everything to be the first. I admired his drive and his motivation to get what he want.

I remember in a math exam there was the mention of a dinar. That was the first time we ever got told to solve a problem with a dinar in it (dinar is like a euro) 1 dinar is 1000 millims (like cents) we were 7 or something so we didn’t know that. Except Amir. I know it doesn’t sound impressive but it was to me at that time. The problem was like Zayneb had 1 dinar that she got from her grandparents to buy candy. She bought 9 pieces for 50 millims (equivalent of cents)

How many millims does she have left

I also liked the attention he used to give me. He used to sit behind me in class and used to pull on my hair lol.

The teachers always complain about how nosy and not serious he is and how he makes his friends not pay attention in class.

He knew I knew how to draw because everyone in class knows and after lunch time we had free time and I would draw. Sometimes he would shyly ask me to draw him Mario/pikachu/sonic.

Since I was a kind little girl I would draw him what he wanted and the way his eyes sparkled when he sees my finished artwork made my day.

I was really good at sports too. So I would play soccers with the boys when I was younger than 10.

I was bullied from the age of 7 till I got out of this school. At 7 a traumatic sexual event happened to me, before that I was skinny and healthy. I never binged, I liked candy like all kids but one lolly would be enough for the day. But I started gaining weight. I remember I was 37kg at 8 years old and my classmates made fun of me for being that weight. Also became really closed off and I had a few accidents where I peed myself because someone touched me agressively behind my back and I got flashbacks of my nanny touching me… I became the weird girl that peed herself. No one would let that go. But still Amir continued to treat me the way he always have. He wouldn’t ignore me. Would sometimes tease me, never mentioned my accidents! He treated me normally when all the girls and boys in our class either ignored me or made fun of me.

When I didn’t have flashbacks I completely forgot what had happened to me (trauma related amnesia)

Everyone noticed how I started behaving. I became even more quiet and shy.

I was always melancholic. I used to always think about why my Daddy was so far away, why he had to leave to work in Paris as an orthopaedic surgeon… why he left me… but it got worse once I got abused because I thought if he was at home maybe i wouldn’t have had a mean nanny and her nasty boyfriend that always touched me in places I didn’t want to be touched. Mind you she only stayed for a month and then went to jail for grand theft from us. She basically stole 3 months of hard work that we never got back and her fiancé / bf left her so he won’t get in trouble. I remembered the touching but never the extreme moments of rape.

Anyway. So I was the weird kid because of all of this right? He still treated me the same and when no one else was watching he would ask me if I was okay. He was friends with my bullies but whenever he was around they wouldn’t be mean to me.

One of his friends started sexually abusing me when I was 9. It was the end of the school year and I was wearing a jean skirt and a hot pink tank top with hello kitty drawn on it and sneakers… his name was Youssef. (This dude forced me to greet him the French way when I met him again in 2022 March, kiss him on both cheeks it was awful I was completely neutral but my heart was beating so fast and I was so glad my cousin was with me and she felt that something very weird was going on) (he also tried dming me when he found my insta, saying how hot I am and how he wants us to be a couple, needless to say I blocked his ass) the abuse happened in tutoring sessions with my teachers present. He would touch me under the table and do anything to get to me, even with his nasty foot and would take my hand and make me touch his private parts. Ugh just thinking about it makes me shiver. Also when I hear tights ripping I get mini flashbacks, like my vision goes blurry and I find myself scared to death.

So Youssef at some point touched me when I started growing body hair (after summer 2015?) I was 12 then and the abuse went on for that long. And after he would abuse me he would make fun of me with the other bullies. He made a disgusting face and still touched me anyways, and and he started calling me a gorilla and a man. A cow and a fatty in Arabic. All the boys started calling me that and it made me feel like a monster… when I was just a little girl minding her own business that got touched without her consent when she was attending expensive tutoring sessions my mom payed for so I get better grades.

Anyway Amir defended me saying that they aren’t real men if they treat a girl like that. And I really appreciated that because he never really stuck up for me like that. He when they said I was fat he told them it’s true I was a bit overweight but I was really good at sports. I also did gymnastics at the time and ballet. So I could do some impressive tricks in gym class.

From that point on I started seeing him in a different light. He was the first man that defended me from other people who wanted to harm me. My dad was busy in Paris working and providing for us. But at least Amir was there. I started seeing him as my Savior. He was always there.

During the year of the 7ème (Tunisian school system I was 12) I developed a huge crush on him.

And I made a best friend called Yasmine, she wasn’t overweight but she was heavier than me (67kg, taller, super fit, puberty hit her early) (I was 62kg when I first turned 12 then my weight skyrocketed ) and I found her very pretty, she was a very light blonde with turquoise eyes that I found absolutely gorgeous (eyes exactly like dabi’s just a bit greener) (kinda had my first girl crush on her but I thought it was friendship) we both liked anime and drawing and we were in the painting club in our school) so I called her after I went back home from my grandparents home (it was a 2 hours long drive from there to home) and I read her the letter. She was like ewww you like himmm???? Out of all the guys in our class?? And I was like yes. He started having a deep voice, always wore sauvage(Dior) perfume. Has a very symmetrical face with harmonious features. was taller than me. Had a good sense of humour…. What’s there not to love. Anyway she wasn’t convinced but she was like you’re my BFF I’ll always be here for you… I took my letter to class on Monday. During after the school lunch time we went back to our class and there was a teacher watching over all the students of our class.

I was sitting next to Yasmine. We were talking about my love letter, and Amène was sitting behind us with her friend, that was also a beautiful girl with big brown eyes, porcelain skin and long silky dark brown hair. They were eavesdropping. And they were shocked that I liked Amir.

Yasmine was suspicious but we ended up showing them the letter. They were absolutely shocked because it was such a long romantic letter, I literally thought I was going to marry this boy. Talking about how I would love it if he was my first kiss… how we would have a home together. How much i admired him as a "man" and what qualities i admired about him. how manly strong and intelligent i thought he was… how i wanted him to be my husband and the father of my children. i really wrote that haha. (i didnt know how babies were made LMFAO) (maybe thats why my grandma was so upset when she read my letter) (but my mom told me when i was five that children were made out of love and i thought i would magically become pregnant after i get married and i would just have to wait one year after marriage and then i would get pregnant LOLOLL)

Anyway I keep getting off topic but!!!! She took my letter and told me « after this you will become a couple with Amir »

She walked all the way up to Amir. She told him to come next to our table and she whispered something I didn’t hear in his ear. He went so red and started reading the letter out loud. Everyone that could hear it was shocked. And I could tell he was going through all kinds of emotions while reading it. After what felt like an eternity of him reading the love letter that I wrote in French. He said he couldn’t believe his eyes and it was the best thing that has ever happened to him. That it was so well written and that he will cherish it forever. Then Amène told him ( his friends (my bullies) that were sitting behind him were listening) that she didn’t wrote it, Sarra did while pointing at me. He was disgusted and threw the letter on the ground saying ew and that he took back everything he said about it. He told me he would never be with me. Ever. That he didn’t find me pretty or cute. That he only loves Amène. It was the worst rejection ever. My heart shattered in million pieces. It hurt me so bad. I had tears in my eyes and I asked the teacher to go to the bathroom. She let me go.

So yeah that’s the story of how little Sarra got rejected for the first time. I still liked Amir but not as much as I did before. Because I didn’t want to love someone who will never be with me.

We are still friends on facebook but we never talk lol. Maybe I should mention this to him… because it was so silly looking back but it really did hurt.

Another moment worth mentioning is that while on a break in PE class I went to the girls bathroom to wash my face and it was empty, the boys bathroom was next to it and Amir went at the same time. The girls bathroom makes your voice echos so I started singing. I loved singing (still do) I was singing we were staying in Paris?? Or closer… I am not sure and the echo effect amplified my voice. When I got out he looked shyly at me and told me I had a really amazing singing voice and that I should be a singer… It made me fall in love all over again because I wasn’t used to compliments… my brother would always tell me that my voice was terrible and I should shut up.

Anyway all my classmates that made fun of me switched up after I lost weight and got rid of my acne. And he was the one that sent me the friend request on Facebook haha… keep in mind at this point I was one year younger than all of my classmates only in France I repeated two years and I found myself as the eldest classmate. Which feels freaking awful btw. Don’t get as bad as I did and have to get hospitalised for months and repeat years. Waste years.

Should I talk about Mehdi next? I think I will.

(I hope someone reads this and I haven’t wasted my time talking about insignificant school girl crushes…) is this interesting guys? Am I wasting my time? Ughh I want to feel closer to my moots haha… you should share your rejection or first instance of crushes… I would gladly read.

[gothhabiba]

hey, would you happen to have any tips for IDing/transcripting text in a language you can't read? sometimes I come across Arabic text in an image, for example, and I can't type that and I can't read it to double check if the OCR I use transcripts it correctly. no worries if you don't have any tips lol, thanks in advance!

on the one hand writing systems are just shapes and you don’t actually need to be able to read them in order to recognise and copy those shapes. on the other hand, this is made more difficult if you’re trying to transcribe something that’s an abjad (like Arabic), syllabary, or abugida rather than an alphabet (since the letter forms aren’t discrete but change in reference to each other)—and also different fonts can make the process of form recognition difficult (like, what changes signify stylistic differences between two things that are the same letter, and which ones signify different letters?).

I usually use google translate’s keyboard input to type alphabets (Greek, Cyrllic) and may use the draw input to figure out anything else. OCR outputs can be “proofread” with just shape recognition but see again the font thing, and also the fact that OCR is less likely to be helpful with anything very stylised. try translating the text after you’ve transcribed it to see if it sounds coherent.

there are other techniques I use to quickly half-learn writing systems for the sake of a certain apocryphal cooking blog, but honestly unless you have an independent interest in writing systems in general I don’t think I’d bother. it’s understandable that you wouldn’t be able to transcribe text you can’t read—maybe just write the rest of the ID, identify the language / writing system, and see if anyone else can complete the ID?

I’d also be happy to transcribe Arabic text if you send me a DM.

[ivansergeyevichturgenev]

what is CRAZY is even privileged children lag behind their peers when taught to read using methods like "balanced literacy" or whatever the fuck they call it. because it straight up doesn't work and is not an efficient way to teach reading and it drives me BANANAS that like half of us states do not require reading instruction to be evidence based (even though we have known for decades what works and what doesn't). on top of that, many states also require students to be held back if they aren't on reading level eoy 3rd grade. sounds good right, considering a child not reading on grade level by 4th grade is unlikely to EVER catch up with his or her peers, a phenomenon referred to as the "matthews effect" (poor get poorer while the rich get richer) in the literacy field? WRONG. these programs do not work and children will not learn to read being taught the same flawed methods for a year. structured literacy with a heavy foundation first on phonemic awareness (the individual sounds in letters make up sounds cat = /k/ /a/ /t/ which includes skills like can you blend /k/ /a/ /t/ together can you change cat to mat /m/ /a/ /t/) is the ONLY evidence-backed method of teaching reading that reaches all students of all levels and backgrounds. it is based on the simple view of reading which has decades of research backing it up and is usually tl;dr: defined as this equation: decoding (word recognition is another term frequently used) x linguistic comprehension (or language comprehension, referring to the ability to understand spoken language etc) = reading comprehension. ie students have to be able to read written words (decode) and understand spoken language in order to translate that into reading comprehension. this is an example of a balanced literacy approach, which does NOT work

"owl eyes" sometimes referred to as "eagle eyes" means LOOK AT THE PICTURE. "skippy frog" means SKIP THE WORD. "flippy dolphin" means try different vowel sounds (instead of teaching different vowel patterns explicitly? for example tack has a short a sound while take has a long a sound because of the cvce pattern, sometimes explained to children as the "magic e" in structured lit programs that include phonics instruction. Shocking bc it's direct, explicit instruction). and if privileged children struggle to read this way, guess what? children who are struggling struggle even more. because all of this guessing and lack of explicit instruction means children with lds like dyslexia simply cannot learn to read. you increase a child's cognitive load exponentially when you teach them just to guess through reading instead of teaching them how to recognize patterns. i also recently had the pleasure of listening to a lecture by a phd student who taught middle school for years but left to pursue secondary reading instruction research because her middle schoolers could not write and she wanted to understand why. she delivered a very interesting lecture on morphology, the study of how words change, and how it is a promising way to teach secondary students more strategies to read better. this would include instruction on different roots and affixes around 4th grade, earlier if children are ready, so students have the knowledge they need to break up unfamiliar words before running to a dictionary. another tool is something called a word matrix. they haven't been studied really but the idea is students can see all of the parts of a word and can build onto the base word. there's space for analysis as well given sometimes spellings change, some words in the matrix aren't real, etc.

anyways i could go on forever about reading education and if i ever go to grad school i will probably go for this my specific interest is why do children have so much trouble translating spoken speech into written speech/how do we improve that

[inyoursheets]

writing ask(s): 40, 12, 30, and/or 5

thank you dear!!!! i was gonna answer them all but then this got so long bc i went all metaphory when it comes to translation so i didnt

12. If you write in more than one language, what's the difference?

i haven't written dutch fic in a really long time, god bless. i mean i did when i was 13 and my english wasn't good enough to write fic, but the idea of writing fic in dutch right now makes my brain break

for me, writing in with a different language gives me more space to work with. it's like.... an extra place to store my thoughts. an alternative route to express the same sentiment. sometimes in a way that's very close to how i would in dutch, sometimes not at all. i like having more than one route. a different way of expressing something can be transformative (of the sentiment and of the sentimentee/speaker).

idk working with a second language is like..... meeting your partner's family and getting to observe a family up close without being part of it/being raised in it. that gives you insight into it in a way your partner doesn't have (you're so used to your own family of origin that there are things you don't notice bc they're normal to you, but not to an outsider). and at the same time there will always be parts you can't understand or feel into the way your partner can, having grown up with these people. there are always things you're never gonna know when it comes to a language that isn't your mother tongue. there will always be nuances in english that i won't notice. there are things that go past me. and there may be ways i can use english that someone who only speaks english maybe can't, or won't think of to do, because i was (literally) raised in a different language. i take what i was raised in with me as i speak english. sometimes that results in good writing (whatever that means) and sometimes that results in clumsy sentence structures and grammatical mistakes. dutch word order is very different and sometimes when i use that structure in english, it sounds natural to me -- because im used to that structure, not because it is correct.

im at a point in My English JourneyTM where i dont think about it at all. like im not sitting here consciously translating, this is happening on autopilot. the way i work with english is intuitive -- i usually feel when something’s off in my sentences/phrases. except when i dont. it's only when i am literally translating that im suddenly truly fumbling (tried to literally translate a cover letter and my resume the other day and oh my gooood, literal translation doesn't work for me at allllll). or sometimes i can’t find the word im looking for when im speaking, but somehow that only rarely happens when i write

the downside to second language usage can be that words don’t hit as close to home as they would in a first language, as ive mentioned before. that’s not to say that something phrased in english cant hit me in the feels -- i think we’ve established that english can make me Feel Things

anyways i think ive completed run away from the question itself so let me stop lol

tysm for asking!!!!

let's get ficcin'

[japanese-cryptic-beauty]

Does it fit you?

There's a lot of advice for learning Japanese out there, and sometimes it just pisses me off.

Now, it's always good to look at why something irritates you in case there's a grain of truth that you're not seeing... or wanting to see. I mean, some things are unavoidable - like there being quite some work needed to learn Japanese. Especially if you want to see some results. But...

Maybe an example will help. IIRC, the YouTuber was called Mochi. I just browsed through her tips what is needed to learn Japanese, but if you want me to distill it for you, it was essentially a brute force approach, not very different from how Japanese students learn it. Using her app for Space Repetition (SRS) was basically the only nod to anything that has happened in the "learning Japanese for Westerners" space at all. I bowed out at "learn to write kanji" as a needed step.

Now, undoubtedly, writing kanji a few times can give some insight into kanji themselves, to learn concepts like stroke order. It isn't especially hard, either. And if you have problems telling certain kanji apart, this might help fix them into your brain. But in general, from my own experience, I disagree.

You see, I started out by learning to write 1,000 kanji. But now I have largely forgotten all the connections between meaning and kanji built through this exercise already. Maybe the effort to learn kanji that I've seen before through this method is lessened, but I still learn them all over with Wanikani.

I'm not claiming she said that only learning to write kanji was enough. That would be misrepresenting what she said. But if I were to paraphrase it another way, she basically said "Learn it how I did. Trust me, I'm Japanese."

Don't trust the Japanese

I've been talking about SRS a lot, and so you might think I'm a big proponent for Spaced Repetition. To that I would say... it depends.

You see, SRS by itself is only a slightly better way to do rote learning so that you are more likely to retain it in the long-term. So if somebody tries to sell you their approach by saying they use SRS (and nothing else), all they offer you is to schedule your rote learning for you. ("Anki", as I recently learned, the name of the most popular free SRS software, may simply to mean "memorize" - because that's the Japanese kanji/word for it.)

If you want to rote learn Japanese, be my guest.

I mean, it's a valid approach. It's not the fastest or most intuitive, but it's a big part of how Japanese learn the most vexing parts of, well, Japanese, aka "reading and writing Japanese."

But the general majority of Japanese dispensing advice on learning their language on the internet seem frankly uninspired. If you're looking for strategies matched to your own way of retaining information, it's quite hit and miss. (Wanikani has a Japanese founder, though.)

I have written kanji, I have trained them over two different types of SRS. But at times they don't come to mind directly, and then I'm glad if I can recall the mnemonic story I've associated with them. Because I might not recall the meaning of the kanji directly, or its readings, but maybe any of the other ways I stored them will come to mind. But that's not the effect of SRS (or SRS alone), but of an alternate learning strategy, not simply relying rote memorization.

What is your goal? What are your priorities?

But Mochi is not the only one. NihongoDekita is someone I like to watch YouTube shorts of. She wins the prize for making the lamest argument why you should learn to read Japanese (= kanji + hiragana + katakana) natively. She puts an English sentence in Japanese letters and reads out loud and says "that's not English, that's Japanese" as her argument why Romaji is not good enough for learning Japanese.

But... while Japanese is incapable to produce the sounds English requires, you can read Romaji and produce exactly the sounds Japanese requires. (You would make yourself aware of how to pronounce it properly, but the same is true for learning Hiragana as a Westerner - or any language in the world transcribed to Roman characters.) Talk about a badly made argument.

Your learning of Japanese would certainly be incomplete if you didn't learn how to read it. But then your learning of Japanese is also incomplete if you don't learn how to write it. Or if you don't learn Kansai dialect. Or if you don't learn conversational variations how contemporary Japanese change Japanese from "proper" to day-to-day speech. Etc.

But there's one question to cut through all of this: What do you want to achieve?

Do you want to learn to read manga originals? Learning to read is not optional for that. Do you want to learn basics of face-to-face conversation? Romaji is a viable way, then. Same for understanding what characters in anime say (if you are willing to ignore all the displayed kanji). None of these require being able to print kanji. And so it goes.

Learning kanji would be a bad investment of time if your primary goal or priority is to learn to converse fast. It will majorly slow you down. Ironically, it will slow you even more down if you learn less! Learning 100-200 of the most common kanji is harder because some of them are more complex ones and since you wouldn't know the radicals they are composed from from other kanji, you have less to anchor them in your brain with.

Wanikani has been criticized for not preparing you for the JLPT N5 and N4 tests, but its goal is teaching kanji in a good way for building a bottom-up understanding, not get you to the goal of the most common the fastest. You go from building blocks to bigger structures, and you build from what you know. Which helps retention in a different way. Simply using SRS would not have the same effect for retaining the kanji because they would look still alien to you. Frankly, they would, even if you learn to print them without a structured approach.

Return On Investment

The reality is, your learning time is likely limited. So might be your patience before you see results that reward you for your progress.

Yes, if you learn kanji, learning to print them can anchor them in your brain better. But if you want to learn to print them from scratch, there's an additional investment of time. In the Heisig method, you would arrange your mnemonic story so that you can actually give yourself hints what to print in what order. That's a more complex requirement for a mnemonic story than merely coming up with a story that helps you spotting the elements in any order to remember what kanji this is. Kanji elements can become quite crowded, and can appear left/right, above, under, etc. Then you need to retain some memory as to how to arrange the elements in the given space so that you can actually write the character properly.

The same time might be used to learn more kanji and vocab, or to practice grammar, tackle some graded readers... And it requires you have time to sit down and do it at a desk or table, pretty much. Commute times, in comparison, might be usable only for an app or index/flash cards, or reading.

Each learning strategy needs to evaluated for how much time it uses, how effective it is, and what kind of structure it builds for the future.

So, for example. If your goal is to take the JLPT N5 test ASAP because you need it professionally, Wanikani is not your best choice. Yes, by now I've covered practically all of them. I referenced two separate lists, and they basically say I have 99% of them. But they did not come in that order. And when I go over Bunpro's N5 vocab deck, there are lots of kanji in there that are in neither list.

I, myself, find that okay, since my goal is a complete learning of the Japanese language, not a test, but if you really have to, you might rightfully get frustrated by such "you will eventually get there" approaches. (Heisig is way worse, after all.)

There's no one true way to learn Japanese.

There are always compromises you make. And if you're taking classes, the compromises your teachers make. Reevaluate them over time and compare them to your goals. You can approximate what works best for you as you learn about the learning of Japanese itself.

Over time, unless you do courses in a fixed system, you will have to structure your Japanese learning yourself. And even then, if you apply your Japanese in some way in the real world, you need to come up with strategies to come up with the missing parts that class didn't cover yet. So being aware of your goals and priorities and comparing your current approach with them once in a while can give you a valuable sense of direction.

[hedgehog-moss]

in what ways do you prefer French as a language, and in what ways do you think English is better?

I love how flexible English is, and I love how rigid French is! I know I've talked about this before but these traits always stand out to me and each has my preference in different contexts...

English is blessed with a very complaisant syntax, it often gives you multiple choices with regards to sentence structure, word order, verbal forms, etc, and if you worriedly (Frenchly) ask which one is the right grammatical choice, English speakers will say "Idk, depends on the way you want to say it? on whichever one seems best to you in this context?" (Distraught French speaker: "How can it be up to me? what does the rulebook say?? Which one were you forced to learn by rote in school and recite like a robot?")

English also offers a profusion of monosyllabic words which essentially act as Lego bricks you can stack on top of one another to innovate to your heart's content, it’s amazing. And much harder in French, which has longer base words, often with silent letters at the end, which may or may not need to be pronounced if they end up in the middle of a compound word, where they were never supposed to be... Poets in English love compounding because concision makes a poetic image more vivid (e.e. cummings’ "a watersmooth-silver stallion" obviously has more impact than "a stallion with a silver coat as smooth as water"—the immediacy of the image is what matters.) Fantasy writers love it as well; they can invent words in a really natural-sounding, frictionless way. French translators do their best but can only come up sometimes with a longer, awkward, painfully-hyphenated word because French has much more of a "who do you think you are" approach to inventing new words. (In Lord of the Rings “Dimrill Dale” was translated as “La Vallée des Rigoles Sombres”, “lockholes” as “trous-prisons”...)

French on the other hand is blessed with a very unforgiving syntax with a well-defined framework of rules (and yes, I know, many exceptions, but those are rules under another name), plus a profusion of little grammatical footholds (think: wherein, thus, thereupon...) so as not to lose your grip on the meaning of a long sentence. A badly-structured, pointless sentence in English can hobble along clumsily, tricking you into thinking it's viable until you try to understand the point it's making and are like "... what did i just read"; while this sentence in French would crumple down like a dry sandcastle and refuse to get up until you've made some attempt at fixing it. Usually by making a better use of semantically-weak “tool words” that don’t carry any information but are here to make sure the sentence holds together well. French primary school kids are force-fed these words and the grammatical structures they enable in truly excruciating detail.

So all these rules (and their painstakingly-defined exceptions) provide a solid frame which makes it possible to build long meandering sentences without loss of clarity. English can be more fun because you're swinging from vine to vine at greater speed and with more freedom of movement, but in French which forces you to lay railway tracks for your train of thought, it’s often easier to see how each component connects to others and how it led your thoughts from here to there.

I've found that great writing in English is often taken to mean, a way with language that evokes vivid imagery with simple but powerful words (by powerful I mean instantly evocative—meanwhile ornate, meandering sentences are often perceived as convoluted purple prose), while great writing in French has less to do with imagery and more with the motion of language and how it carries you through feats of momentum and balance. I’m generalising, and not trying to say you don't find both types of writing done well in each language, but overall what English does best is allow your words to convey a wealth of meaning and images in a concise, striking manner, while French makes it easy to swim for a long time before coming up for air, and feel the flow of language around you. I love that English is flexible while French is rigid, and that both are blessings in the hands of a talented writer.

[pandora-crash-landing-survivor]

Just a couple of notes from someone who is still in process of learning the language, but getting better at it for all you fanartists and fic writers:

Na'vi to english doesn't translate 1:1 and the language has its own unique grammar rules. This includes name/word making where while letters you want to use themselves may exist, not all combinations are actually valid

The ' is it's own letter and it can't be just added to stuff willy nilly. Similarly, ì and i as well as a and ä are different letters. Don't be lazy, copy+paste them if you must, but accents matter A LOT

If actual na'vi speakers come across your art and comment about these things, please don't feel bad, we are not trying to bully you. The majority of us is genuinely just super happy to share this language with other people and to help them to get better at it. Unfortunately, beginners or exclusive dictionary users tend to make lots of mistakes, usually because they underestimate the level at which the language is actually developed.

Chat GPT may be instructed to translate english to na'vi for you but it does even poorer job than you checking out individual words in available dictionaries. Don't touch it with a 10ft long pole. Whatever it spews out is an absolute garbage

Na'vi has no verb "to love". Yawne is an adjective meaning "beloved" and tìyawn is a noun meaning "the love". The sentence "I love you" in na'vi is expressed as "nga lu yawne oeru" or any combination of those words in any different order, with all of them literally translating as "you are beloved to me"

In the case of the word lu meaning "to be" proceed with caution. It is almost as irregular and as messed up in its use as english "to be" and can express anything from "am/is/are" to "have/own" and it has some more gramatical shenanigans connected to it. You have been warned

In na'vi we have ✨ AFFIXES ✨ Just... so many affixes. Most of them stack. Sometimes a word has more affixes than core letters. Looking at you, kä (to go) turning into käpeykimvängä meaning "made oneself go (with a special little -iv- thing for other gramatic purposes) with the person in question being unhappy about that fact" because yeah, no

Na'vi has the rattling R sound and also the longer RR version. It's not the same sound one as the french R and it's definitely not the muted half swallowed english R, and it is generally very hard to learn to pronounce correctly for english speakers. If your art includes a clash between humans and na'vi, or humans having to speak the language, feel free to use this as a part of your plot or as the point of a joke. Missunderstandings, misstranslations, or just being made fun of for sounding as silly as a slurring child with missing baby teeth - they are all right there waiting to be used by you. The choice is yours

More funky sounds! The X in kx, tx, and px means that they make a pop, like when beatboxing people imitate drums, which could again be used against human speakers. Think of all those times someone calls someone else a skxawng - moron. Tsu'tey pronounces it excelently when he mocks Jake as he is trying to catch his ikran

Na'vi don't have any form of written language and they can't read (unless taught by humans which so far seems to be only the case of Omatikaya people). Again, this may be important for your storry. Doesn't matter if someone scribbles a note in na'vi if the native "reading it" has not learned letters from someone before that

Have fun including these bits and pieces in your fics and fanart!

na’vi language i would love to see being used in fics:

yawntutsyìp - darling, little loved one

yawne - beloved

tìyawn - love

‘awsiteng- together

yawnetu / yawntu - loved one, lover, beloved person

atan - light, source of illumination

syulang - flower

muntxate - wife, female spouse

muntxatan - husband, male spouse

txe’lan - heart

tsamsiyu - warrior

oeyä - my (possessive)

sevin - pretty (mainly for female)

sayrìp - handsome, good looking

lor - beautiful, pleasant to the senses

yuey - beautiful (inner beauty)

narlor - beautiful visually

tsawke - sun

oare - moon

letsranten - important

tanhì - star, bioluminescent freckle

hì'i - small, little

flrr - gentle, mild, tender

tìmuntxa - mating, marriage

kalin - sweet to the taste

paskalin - honey (term of endearment)

tstew - brave

mowan - pleasing, enjoyable (physically, sexually)

manga - hey, hey you

nga - you

ngatsyìp - little you, you little

fahew - smell

onlor - good smelling

lu - be, am, is, are

vonvä’ - butthole, asshole, dickhead (requested)

nìwotx - all (of)

mei - wet

fìtxan - so

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