#it's Japanese in my Len'en fics

[maideninorange]

⭐️ for the To Be series 👀

Anything I want, you say? The To Be (One With the Garden) series of mine they are referring to is...a lot. It's intended to be very open-ended, with a lot of things never being outright stated, and if you read any given fic with a given assumption about Olimar's unfortunate situation, said fic(s) can easily be made more or less horrifying. Add in the fact that neither Olimar nor the Pikmin are always entirely what you'd call a very reliable narrator (no matter how much the former likes to think he is, for the most part), especially as time goes on, and well...things can get tricky, to put it mildly.

As a result, it can be kinda hard to talk about this series, because I don't want people to take my own reading as fact on too many things. It's more fun seeing what kind of interpretations people come to on their own, at least, in my opinion as the author of these four things.

So hm...What to talk about, what to talk about...Do I point out that one bit where I fucked up how much oxygen is in the Earth's atmosphere that's been driving me a little crazy? It's 21% not 70%...Wait! This is probably going to be one of the only times I get to share some language factoids about the Pikminish language I've imagined the characters speaking that I have been writing with in mind! Check what I wrote in Discord convos... remove parts that are kinda spoilery to that huge knife twist in the "back half" I've been planning since the beginning...Place cut for my non-Pikmin followers and here!

Generally speaking, Pikminish outright lacks pronouns. Where pronouns would be in English is generally something most would understand in context. It is generally assumed that plural takes precedent, unless stated to be otherwise (so the word that would most closely resemble "I" and "you" when one must state the topic would most literally translate as "this one" and "that one"). Referring to a third person is referenced through hand gestures like pointing, or through the use of titles (like "Leader", that is ever present). The thing about the Pikmin, you see, is that referring to the group is taken to be the norm due to their odd eusocial structure (For those not familiar with it, eusociality refers to the sort of social structure things like ant nests and bee hives have, although the version in "To Be" is more a cliffnotes version). This is why the default pronoun for the Pikmin is "We" in these fics with "I" being emphasized, due to the fact that they find it unnatural to refers to themselves as individuals. There's, unfortunately, no real way to communicate this in English, but if you are familiar with languages like Japanese, it's kinda like that except Worse.

Adding onto this is the fact that the Pikmin, lacking a social concept of gender, naturally lack a language feature for gender. This is why they refer to Olimar with they/them pronouns, which is something I've mentioned before I think. However, something I haven't mentioned is that I tend to think of Hocotatian as a language with quite a few similarities to Pikminish, one feature of such being that it is similarly context based, although Hocotatian is more just average pronoun avoidant as opposed to outright lacking in pronouns. This is why Olimar never so much as remarks on it when he probably would've otherwise: gender in Hocotatian is typically conveyed through gendered nouns applied to people (think "salesman" or "actress"). As the situation he's found himself in is one in which use of nouns that would be gendered in Hocotatian are few and far between, it's not something he ever really has any opportunity to pick up on, and so it goes unremarked upon. Naturally, English, being a very pronoun heavy language, this kinda makes conveying that specific detail nigh-impossible outside of something like this. Curse you English, you broken broken language.

I like to imagine Pikminish as one of those languages where common words tend to translate to something flowery in another. Not bad for a language where sentences tend to be fast and words are stuffed with as much information as they can be! (Never know when predators might be on the prowl, after all.) This ties into the very musical way I like to imagine them talking, but you already know that, and this thingy is for things I can't convey in fic.

Word order is more than likely SOV in both Pikminish and Hocotatian. (Subject -> Object -> Verb order for those unaware). It's a very common order for words to flow in general out in the real word though, right next to SVO. I just thought this detail was interesting. (English is SVO, so this would've been impossible for me to convey). I like to imagine Pikminish as having pitch accent as well, due to a lack of varied sounds to create various different combinations of words with.

I would've killed to explain any of this in fic, but as you can kinda observe, Olimar is not a language nerd (and therefore would have no reason to take note of any of these things...Though I imagine his notes would've been very extensive if he was lol), and the Pikmin sure as hell aren't. So unfortunately, a lot of this had to go unexplained, even though I was writing these fics with that in mind.

Sorry if this isn't the most interesting director's commentary, but I really wanted to get this bit out there somewhere considering I couldn't write any exposition on it in naturally. But I had fun writing this out, so I hope that counts for something!

[magicalmelancholy-blog1]

A Quick Overview Of Why You Should Vote For TsubaKuro

@homoerotic-shonen-rival-showdown

Look I know CatAdora is going to sweep because they're fucking CatAdora. But why not consider a ship you've never heard of instead?

At the very least, read this if you've never seen She-Ra, because if you're going to vote based on second-hand knowledge, you should at least vote based on second-hand knowledge about both sets of characters.

And by secondhand knowledge, I mean I'm going to post dialogue straight off of the wiki. I'll try my best to include context, but it'll be short since I wanna focus on the stars of this poll.

The most important context is that Len'en is a bullet hell game, and thus for most of the on-screen time, people are going to be fighting.

Reason 1: Kuroji is always going on about being inferior to Tsubakura.

(Note: The Tsubakura here is a fake Tsubakura. Still, Kuroji hadn't realized it at this point so their response is genuine.)

Tell me there's a heterosexual explanation for this. I mean, you're allowed to interpret Tsubakura and Kuroji's genders in a way that would make them straight, but even if they're straight, that still doesn't make them straight.

(Note: Yabusame is a mutual friend of theirs and works with Tsubakura at the shrine you'll see talked about in these dialogues.)

(Note: Saragimaru is someone Kuroji blackmailed into doing their bidding because they're an asshole. This is a section of the game where KuroSara and YabuTsuba fought because the game creator didn't have enough slots to fill in all 6 stages otherwise, and a bullet hell game's gotta have 6 stages right? This isn't a critique I love all the duo attacks, themes, and character interactions that came out of this arrangement.)

(Note: Shion is a newborn youkai made up out of many souls that got entrusted to YabuTsuba after the third game.)

Reason 2: Kuroji vagues Tsubakura even when they're not around.

(Note: "black" here is used because Kuroji has kinda black hair and Tsubakura wears mostly black. I assume it's more natural in Japanese.)

(Note: Shou and Lumen are boss enemies in the second game.)

Reason 3: Witty banter

(Note: "The dumb one" is Yabusame.)

(Note: This is after Tsubakura said that Kuroji is actually a good person sometimes. You'll see that bit of dialogue later.)

Reason 4: Tsubakura has praise for Kuroji too!

(Note: This is YabuTsuba's bad ending for the third game. I actually forgot to include this in my submission! Anyway, the joke is that Tsubakura died but got brought back to life by a magic flower, and everyone is acting like they're still dead for the bit.)

(Note: Jinbei is the familiar of the shrine YabuTsuba work at. They help out with various duties.)

Reason 5: This Conversation

This time I'm going to give the context beforehand, since this conversation is a bit long. Some dialogue for the upcoming Len'en game was released a year ago, to give us a teaser. This dialogue consists of two characters, NiLU and Tom, going over the dialogue for the first game for the sake of information gathering.

Mainly it's just an excuse to have the dialogue from previous games in there at all (since it's a mobile game that the creator plans on using as an entry point for people that are interested in his series).

You remember from before when Kuroji said something like "You always, always surpass me"? This is the reaction to that.

Reason 6: I dunno where to put these two interview questions so they're going here:

Some Fanfic Recommendations:

This is mostly so you can experience the same thing that the runner of the poll did when I sent them a submission. Remember, these are not a reflection of canon. They are, however, fics I like (yes I know one of them is mine, that's because I'm proud of it).

Typhoon Commute by Nobelium

The Next Step by Nobelium

I Kept It Warm For You by FatalYeet

Only A Fool by MagicalMelancholy

[friendshapedplant]

Kanae's streams really are amazing~ For me it's worth the effort of waking up a bit before 8am, since I have to wake up early for some of my classes anyway. I can't believe it, Len'en Project is making me wake up early.

Of course, these aren't the only types of streams Kanae does, as I'm sure you know. Kanae also does chatting streams and gaming streams on the weekends (right now they're on Saturday and Sunday respectively).

I love using Kanae's streams to attempt to improve my Japanese skills. I also like the productivity streams because I get to focus on something for an hour~ It's actually helped me complete a couple fics so far, not to mention assignment (some of which are of course Japanese, actually a lot of them now that I think about it).

Anyway whoops I was autistic in your ask box.

No worries cus now its my turn on the autism >:)

I can't wake up at 8 but I do like to put on those weekday productivity VODs whenever I get around to working on homework! Very effective for body doubling and not having to worry about getting distracted by the other person (Except for when I'm watchin the silly Len'en ball drop go and making sure my blorbo is in the lead (rip Sukune clay had a good run)). I just hope this strat lasts for me cus I seem to run through different studying strats way too fast and keep pickign them up and dropping them. This one being tied to a SpIn might help tho :D

Unfortunately I work on weekends w little to no free time, but perhaps I'll go and watch a VOD of one of the game ones sometime. I ain't know shit for Japanese other than some hiragana so I dunno how much I'd get outta his chat streams other than his fun voice and laugh and vtuber model (which are great. is that weird to say idk)

Also gotta say Love it when your SpIn shapes your life in positive ways like this, hella good shit thank u Kanae Tabinoki. <3

(If anyone else wanna rant/infodump bout things they love at any point without any prompt my inbox is open 24/7 for this shit I wanna see what people love!)

[maideninorange]

Hello there! I'm Maiden in Orange, but you may call me Maiden or Orange, I have no preference, and I go by she/her pronouns. I'm also aro-pan in case any of you were curious!

I'm a veteran fanfic writer of at least ten years now, but it is only fairly recently I actually decided to start posting stuff and getting social media accounts like here on Tumblr due to my bad anxiety. As a result, my body of work is... lacking, compared to some other writers of my level.

Right now, my works are mainly dedicated to angsty and horrific works about characters from funny danmaku games. No, not *that* one. The other one! You know, the one where nobody has a set gender! That one! Len'en Project! (Though I do really like Touhou too.) So you can probably expect to see my writing, headcanons, and messy worldbuilding for that once I figure out how Tumblr works from this side.

Besides my perpetual obsession with Len'en, I occasionally wander into other fandoms, though I mainly ramble about my OCs and the world they inhabit here. I dream of writing the world they live in one day, but alas, I'm too much of a fanfic writer right now to do anything more than occasional snippets and flinging them into other 'verses. Maybe one day...

What else...Oh yeah! Besides video games, I'm a nerd for any field of zoology, an occasional history nerd (and enjoyer of social sciences), and am teaching myself Japanese! (Not good enough to post translations yet, but I wanna be one day!) Oh, and I draw sometimes!

So yeah! That's all about me! Not too interesting beyond my penchant for rambling in the tags lol.

Here's my AO3 if any of you are interested in angsty Len'en fics!