#first name as a pronoun

[plague-of-insomnia]

Kuro First-Person Pronouns: Layla & Al

Unlike English, Japanese has many first-person pronouns ( “I”). These often will give you information about the type of person the character is. Are they very feminine or masculine? Polite or brusque? Young or old? Are they higher or lower in the social hierarchy? How close, psychologically, are they to the listener?

It’s not uncommon for one person to use different pronouns in different situations, and that is sometimes the case in the manga, depending on the character.

These ofc get lost in translation and are something I find very interesting. So this series will go through some of the Black Butler characters and show you which pronoun(s) they tend to use in Japanese and what that says about them as a character.

[More about Japanese pronouns]

•私•僕•俺•儂•自分•我•私•僕•俺•儂•自分•我•

Layla | Al : “レイラ” | オレ*

Used By: Young Girls/Children/Adults wanting to sound cute | Casual or Polite: Casual

Used by: Men | Casual or Polite: Casual

[*Also used by Bard and Doll]

I wasn’t going to do a post on Layla originally, since I can barely even use her real name and not call her merely Lolib*tch for attempting to kill my man, but someone mentioned her and “Al,” the other personality inside her, wondering about their pronouns. I got curious, since I couldn’t remember paying much attention to this ~2 years ago when Bard’s arc started.

Lolib*tch has two personalities inside her: Layla and Al.

Layla seems to be the dominant personality, and it’s possible the body is hers (his?). She’s unique as far as the characters I’ve reviewed for this series so far in that she does not use a personal pronoun at all, but instead consistently uses her own name (レイラ ) when she needs to refer to herself.

In other words, instead of saying, “I killed him,” she’d say, “Layla killed him.” In English, this comes off as annoying and arrogant, which is probably partly why the official translation just used “I,” for her, but it has a very different association in Japanese.

In Japanese, it’s common for very young children who haven’t learned to use personal pronouns to use their name instead. So a young kid might say, “Jake wants drink” in Japanese the same way in English a younger kid might say “Me want drink” or “Want drink” bc they’re still learning how to properly use personal pronouns, too.

Because of this association, though, some girls (especially) will copy this because they feel it makes them sound young and cute, like a little kid. It’s possible Yana wanted to tie into this idea with Layla, while also cleverly disguising that she’s actually only one of the personalities in that body. Because Layla as a loli in a manga wouldn’t come off as odd using such language.

However, once Al is introduced, not only does he get a different font, but his manner of speech is very different, including his pronoun. Like Bard (and Doll), Al consistently uses オレ (ore), a hypermasculine pronoun, and his speech aligns with this.

Al seems like a stark opposite to Layla; she’s small and cutesy, he’s much more brusque and masculine. It isn’t clear whose body it is, and whether or not it’s a male body or not. The collie class appear to be all male, so it’s possible Al is actually the body’s owner and Layla is the transplant; we have no way of knowing now.

Perhaps we will see what happens to them when they’re brought back to the reaper HQ.

•私•僕•俺•儂•自分•我•私•僕•俺•儂•自分•我•

This is part of a series. More to come!

Sebastian | Our Ciel | Bard | Mey Rin | Finny | Lau | Grelle | Undertaker | Real Ciel | Blavat | Doll | Agni | Soma | Snake | Layla & Al

•私•僕•俺•儂•自分•我•私•僕•俺•儂•自分•我•

[ X ]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Quest Continues...

(part 1- part 2)

[zecoritheweirdone]

hey do you guys wanna see a comic for a msa au me and my friend ascel came up with? trick question yes you do. anyway- hehehehehhhoo body swap au <3.

okay quick context for this rq- this is an au where it diverges after freaking out- instead of possessing the truck, lewis ends up chasing the gang for a while, maybe a week or two? arthur and vivi don't know why this random ghost they met ages ago keeps going after them, but one things for sure- he really, really wants arthur's head on a spike.

cut to the present- arthur got separated from vivi and mystery, and lewis ends up chasing him into the woods!

[softcryz]

You guys seemed to really like the eclipse dude so I drew aum again [this time with colour]

[whatudottu]

Hello I put way more effort than I needed to into this, but have it anyway :P

Boniface meets Bonifire, what will they do :P

A version of this page without text because technically this was the first page I drew and put all my effort into that one first lmao-

[adairtrashart]

im counting it in the cotltober stuff because i consider the mushrooms to be somewhat a different character and sozo ate the mushrooms so plot (also ive been working on this for a while and just now got it done so theres that too)

(also the mushrooms dialogue is literally just the mushroom tumblr post)

day one you are who you eat

[souldagger]

so normal about the gender fuckery of the Polish murderbot translation (lie i am on the verge of tears)

[pigswithwings]

queer discourse has seemed so damn bad lately does anyone have like. nice moments of being queer theyd like to share with the class

[i-really-like-phrogs]

Franken-Lyds I conjured up a bit back. I loved this look—Well— to peices! (Bwahahaha)

[mars-ipan]

it's pride month of course i'm going to push my transfem komaeda agenda

[thecatundertheladder]

So with my Fsm lives au (which you can find here) I've decided the logistics of Wu and Garmadon and how Fsm might appear to them.

Basically a few decades (?) before Lloyd is born the Fsm disappears completely from Ninjago. Prior to this they tell Wu and Garmadon that he has something to take care of and as a result won't be overly available to talk to them or meet in person. Wu and Garmadon then don't see or hear from them until Lloyd is born where he makes a brief appearance to meet baby Lloyd, after which they fuck off again.

Now Wu and Garmadon don't see this as concerning at all. I mean they're immortal beings, a few decades isn't all that long to them (and I hc that the Fsm has really poor time management when it comes to other people so Wu and Garmadon are probably used to this sort of thing).

Fast forward to Garmadon getting banished and Fsm is trying to his best to not interfere with his children seemingly fighting to the death (they know that can't and won't kill each other, I mean he knew something like this was going to happen after all, but those are his babies! why do they have to let this happen) so when Garmadon gets banished to the underworld he's immediately relieved because it means they've stopped fighting.

(Later as they start to think over the implications of Garmadon getting banished he has a panic attack because there's no way this guy doesn't have anxiety)

After the fight he goes down to the underworld to find Garmadon unconscious and heavily injured from the fall and the lightning strike. Fsm stabilises garmadon, triggering a partial transformation into his Oni side, and then immediately fucks off again because 'oh shit the prophecy's beginning'

(Garmadon is vaguely aware that someone healed him after he fell. He has his suspicions as to who but nothing is ever confirmed)

Later when Wu's wallowing in sadness Fsm goes around and cleans the monastery and puts meals out for Wu to eat and generally helps him out but since Garmadon's banishment to the underworld was prophesised they can't really talk to Wu about it and comfort him. But Wu is aware that he is there and they'll talk about random things together.

He does, however, leave again once Wu shows signs of being able to take care of himself again.

Fsm starts showing up and talking to Wu again soon after he finds Cole, but it's never to comment on what might be coming next or even about how his student's training is going (that doesn't stop Wu from bragging about their accomplishments though), it's always inane stuff like 'Mystake's making me go therapy Wu can you believe it' or 'Kai fell in a ditch while trying to impress a girl. No I'm not stalking them Wu I'm just making sure they're safe'.

The ninja can't see them full stop though.

But the point of this long winded post was that Wu, being slightly less involved in the prophecy is fully aware that his father is just kind of there sometimes, but Garmadon, who is a key player, is not (he does have some suspicions however).

[totaleclipse573]

New character obsession just dropped‼️‼️ it’s my oc again

[babblingfishes]

Another bit, from another wip:

"I don't remember a word they said in the dream, but I do remember the way they looked. Um...if you'll hear me out?" The Driver leaned into the microphone. "Francis, I don't know if I told you this, but the car's started turning on the radio every time I hit the gas, and I'll listen to anything if it drowns out another four minutes of 'Swansea'." "Oh, do you want me to broadcast some of my cassettes?" "No," the Driver said flatly, pulling over beside a salamander grotto. "Tell me about your freaky ghost dream."

[theshadowrealmitself]

It’s so weird for me, I’ve made a ton of progress this last year with finding stuff that’s gender affirming for me while also coming to terms with accepting parts of me that I can’t change, and I’m still far off from being fully comfortable in my body, but still, I’ve made so much progress, progress I just hadn’t been making beforehand

But it doesn’t look like anything to other people, they don’t understand the significance of my changes, and it happened over a year long period, so it doesn’t seem like sudden changes

But I lived that previous way for years, just barely tolerating my body for years, this is significant!!! but no one else can see that and it’s so weird to me

Like my previous hair style that I had a year ago I had been maintaining it for like a decade, and I mostly had that hairstyle as a way to cope with being in public because it hid my face a lot, and now I don’t have a hairstyle I like, but none of my hair covers my face anymore and I’ve been leaving my place with it actually pulled back a lot!!! That’s huge!!! I’ve just been??? Going in public?? Accepting how my face looks??? (Still wearing a mask, but still!!!)

But despite having had that prev haircut for so long, no one really thinks my new one is that big of a deal, and it’s just been small changes like that this year, like wearing a shirt that shows my shoulders despite my back acne, or wearing shorts despite my general shame of my legs

Idk I just needed to talk about this, it’s just so wild to me that no one has said anything to me irl, this has been a big year for me on working on myself and I really hope this progress continues!!!

[octarineblues]

in Blue Beetle, I love how Jaime Reyes went to Gotham University - there was a moment in the movie when after being chosen by the scarab he was like "this is fine, strange things (superpowers) happen to people all the time" - and I am sure that his time in Gotham prepared him for this bullshit. Khaji Da could have chosen any member of the Reyes family, let's be honest, because they're all pretty fucking cool. But it chose Jaime because he's got first hand experience of the absolute fuckery that is Gotham and so would be one to just roll with the situation. And he absolutely did.