#now I am tired and hungry. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yo9urt · 30 days ago

Text

jpmd update post #6! for some reason i thought we were further than 6 by now

EVEN LONGER THAN USUAL!!!!!!! also today's post is ENTIRELY about the bidoof special episode because that is all i did today!

as always, cool observations and thoughts first:

PRONOUN TRACKER:

bidoof's mama calls him お前, he calls her 母ちゃん, his little brother calls him 兄ちゃん（あんちゃん）; bidoof's mama calls herself 私 and お母ちゃん

the camerupt npc called him あんた, marowak called him おめえ, the slakoth/slowpoke team called him きみ

jirachi (!) calls himself 僕 and calls bidoof きみ before properly waking up and learning his name (after that i believe he only calls him bidoof-さん)

not a pronoun but doesn't fit anywhere else; as mentioned in previous posts, bidoof uses あっし and でゲス which are both words i've never heard anywhere else, and he has a relatively unique voice/accent in english, so i was on the lookout for more unusual language, but...there wasn't too much...he did say "兆枚" which jisho tells me is a rare term, and when talking to the kecleons he also said "こんちは" and "すまない," the 2nd of which is essentially the same as すみません but i'd never heard it before (i think) so it was cool

ALSO not a pronoun but doesn't fit anywhere else - this was probably happening in past sessions but today in particular i noticed how many npcs use かい to ask questions (teddiursa, kangaskhan, corphish) which was kind of reassuring because the only other time i've EVER seen かい is in one singular song on my entire japanese playlist and i was almost doubting that it was a real thing lol

FUN AND SILLY DIALOGUE NOTES

the slakoth/slowpoke npc team has some funny dialogue early in the episode where they go "aren't you the guy who screws up all the time?" (textbox ends, new box starts) "yeah...us too"

marowak dojo is "ガラガラ dojo" - ガラガラ meaning (among many things) "rattle/clatter," "rough (personality/speech)," AND "almost empty/uninhabited/etc." which is kind of perfect - the clatter of bones, the rough personality of marowak, and the emptiness of the dojo...i understand why the localization team didn't bother with a stylized translation and just called it "marowak dojo" in english lol how could you capture all of those things the same way in english?

also, one thing i didn't know - if you visit marowak in this episode, he goes on a very long ramble about how the dojo has failed and it's kind of funny you showed up on the last day before he closes it, and then he gives you a reviver seed (!). also in that speech, he lengthens practically all of his vowels and says "ぜーーったいにーーーーーーー" and "だよーーーーーー！！！" a lot and sounds like an anime character lol

bidoof ends a LOT of his sentences with かね which gives him a really...like it makes him sound really unsure of himself lol poor guy

at the end, when he made his wish, he said he wanted "かわいいこうはいs" - i don't remember what he says in english here but i remember when he meets the protag team he gets teary eyed and refers to them as "juniors" and "rookies," and of course at the end of the special episode you watch your team chatting happily with each other while bidoof watches, teary-eyed again, from the side, and it was...very endearing...i do think this is something that might have gotten lost in translation because once i read かわいいこうはい i went "oh!" and knew exactly what he meant, it gives him more of a big brotherly feeling in relation to the protags, which is pretty cute when you remember he's the big bro of 2 siblings back home...almost like he missed being in that せんぱい sort of position :') it really recontextualized his relationship to the protags for me, very endearing

SPECIAL SECTION JUST FOR SNOVER/GLIGAR/BAGON

this group was FAAASCINATING to watch. they were NASTY. but of course, snover puts on a front at first, and i'll say i think the fact that japanese has specific and more strongly marked registers for (im)politeness made the big reveal much starker than in english

PRONOUNS: bagon said "俺たち" implying 俺 for himself, called bidoof お前, called snover きさま (!) before the reveal and お前 afterwards, pre-reveal he also called snover "そこのお前" lit. "you there" which made me giggle because that's what street fight NPCs say in yakuza games lol

PRONOUNS PART 2: bidoof called bagon/gligar "お前たち" in the reveal and called snover "きみ" before it; pre-reveal, snover used "僕" and lots of "でしょう"/"ません," post-reveal he switched to "俺さま"/"snover-さま" (omfg), he also started calling bidoof お前 (see above - super formal language vs. super...not...)

OTHER BITS: snover used assertive sentence ender さ, gligar used ぜ (very masculine and a bit rough/forceful/sneaky), snover used "ねえ" instead of ない which adds even more colloquiality, all 3 of them interchangingly used "な" and "ろ" command forms, both of which can be (and in this case, were) impolite. (this was very well timed because i JUST studied command forms this morning!)

BONUS OTHER BITS: gligar taught me a couple new words: "やがる," which is attached to a verb to show that the speaker has disdain/contempt/hatred for what someone else is doing, and "このやろう," which is rude to the point of being listed as "you bastard/son of a bitch" in jisho. also, ALL THREE OF THEM used くそ, and interestingly, くそ was always written in hiragana and always followed by a small つ pause, which was in katakana. weird!

i was genuinely surprised by how nasty their language was, even worse (way worse) than team skull (at least so far). but it was pretty effective writing! nasty fellas!

general notes: this was easily the best play session ive had so far, like, bar none. maybe its because i studied a lot yesterday and i had some residual smartness or maybe ive just made a lot of real progress but today i felt like i was FLYING through most of the sentences, and concepts/constructs i was mildly-to-moderately familiar with suddenly became so much easier to get!!! and the best part is that i've only played sky once, so unlike the rest of the game, i DON'T have hard-coded memories of the special episodes and their associated dialogue; all i had to go on here was what i remember from playing the game like 3ish years ago + the synopsis on bulbapedia (i was checking to see how long it is because i was getting tired lol). so, i'm REALLY PROUD OF MYSELF for basically wading into (young) native-level material that i'm only kinda familiar with and understanding it so well!!!!!! today was great!!!! i've never felt so 日本語上手!!!!!!!!! ^_^

GOOD SENTENCES (realistically i should put like 75% of the episode here, but i can't, so just some of the best instead)

(all translations are freehanded by me since i don't remember the real english dialogue lol)

90+% of the conversation between chatot and bidoof at the beginning of the episode. seriously i barely looked at the dictionary at all during this part and i could tell what they were saying and what the feeling was WHEEEE i'm so happy

"プクリンのギルドをそつぎょうできりゃあんたりっぱなたんけんかになれるよ" (said by camerupt to bidoof) = "if you can graduate from wigglytuff's guild, you can become a magnificent explorer" (lit. "wigglytuff's guild OBJ graduation DO-POTENTIAL-CONDITIONAL you magnificent exploration TARGET become-POTENTIAL-NONPAST NEW"

"じつはあっしってなにをやるにしても。。。どうもどんくさいようで。。。いつもギルドでしっぱいばかりしてるんでゲス" (said by bidoof to himself at the shop) = "really, no matter what i try/do, i always seem stupid/clumsy...at the guild, i do nothing but fail..." (lit. "reality TOPIC i QUOTE what OBJ do TARGET do-EVEN-IF...awfully stupid/clumsy likeness COPULA-CONN...always guild LOC failure nothing-but do-EXIST-IN-STATE EXPLANATORY (COPULA)")

^ proud of myself for understanding the sentence structure here, i think my particle-understanding and structure recognition are both improving by leaps and bounds

"いつかこんなひがくるかとおもってね。。。まえからすこしずつためてたんだよ。なにかこまったことがあったらつかっておくれ" (said by bidoof mom to him when giving him $) = "i figured this day would come eventually...i've been saving up money bit by bit for a long time. if you get into trouble, use it, okay?" (lit. "someday (when QUESTION) this-kind-of day SBJ come-NONPAST QUESTION QUOTE think-CONN SHARED...before since a-little-bit piece-by-piece save-up-EXIST-IN-STATE-PAST EXPLANATORY (COPULA) NEW. something (what QUESTION) trouble (troubled thing) SUBJECT exist-CONDITIONAL use-CONN-???)

^ i thought the "おくれ" on the end was from regular old "おく" but...maybe it's not...? maybe it's an irregular conjugation? i don't know...

"あっしはきがよわいからああいうやからとはあまりかかわりたくないでゲスよ。。" (said by bidoof to himself watching bagon/gligar pretend to harass snover) = "since i'm so timid, i really don't want to get involved with that group..." (lit. "i TOPIC ki SUBJECT weak since (distant)that-kind-of say-NONPAST group QUOTE TOPIC excess get-involved-with-WANT-NEGATIVE COPULA NEW...")

^ i'm endlessly fascinated by all the collocations of 気. i know it's usually translated as spirit, energy, mind, etc. but lately i've been experimenting with thinking of it as just the original chinese qi/chi concept (at least i assume that's what it is.....erm) and taking the collocations literally and it works surprisingly well - in this case "since my qi is weak..."

"いちりゅうのたんけんかになるというあっしのゆめもかなえてくれるかもしれないんでゲス！" (said by bidoof to himself while chatot tells him about star cave) = "maybe even my dream of becoming a first-rate explorer can be granted!" (lit. "first-rate CLASS exploration QUESTION TARGET become-NONPAST QUOTE say-NONPAST i POSSESSIVE dream EVEN grant-CONN-give-down-NONPAST QUESTION EVEN(?) know-POTENTIAL-NEG EXPLANATORY (COPULA)!"

^ how many particles do we need man???????

"ただ。。。あのばでちからまかせにうばうとさわぎになる。" (said by snover to bidoof in the cave) = "but...if we went full power and took it by force out there...there would've been an uproar." (lit. "but...that place LOC using-all-one's-strength ADV take-by-force-NONPAST CONDITIONAL uproar TARGET become-NONPAST")

^ i think i'm getting better at recognizing what と is doing in any given sentence, which is great because i hate how many functions it has, and my grasp of conditionals is getting stronger too! i kind of appreciate how japanese does it similarly to english (vs. spanish) - but that's a topic for another post

#mine #the bottom section of this post looks like shit sorry tumblr formatting is ass #sorry this is just a giant wall of text lol that's the way it goes #anyway i feel really smart!!!!! >:)#this took up like. most of my day atp lol i'm so tired now...and hungry too...going to relax all night #maybe play more y4 or maybe minecraft or maybe neither i really dont know #but i deserve a break...ahh #pokemon fushigi no diary #next post we'll be back with the boys and maybe even starting the expedition...look forward to it (cause i sure am)!!!!!#i was thinking the special episodes can be like mini checkpoints for progress tracking #since i don't know their dialogue in advance like i do with the rest of the game #they're like little mini tests for me to see how good i am at spontaneously understanding japanese #rather than understanding japanese with a translation already in my hand #btw the reason i type everything in hiragana here even tho i could use kanji is just cause thats what i see ingame #i want it to be accurate...no help from kanji in the post if thats not what i got ingame #i actually think the forced-kana thing is doing me a huge favor in terms of recognizing and differentiating words #when i started playing it was hard to tell where a word ended and a particle began #but now im like pro at it #immersion really does wonders doesnt it lol

3 notes · View notes

razzle-zazzle · 2 months ago

Text

Whumptober Day 10: Blow to the Head

"I can't think straight"

1923 Words; Rewired AU

TW for discussions of injury and violence

AO3 ver

“What’s up with him?”

Morris froze, disgruntled expression replaced with something more along the lines of deer in headlights. Gisu imagined she must have looked the same, as three awful realizations hit her.

Realization One: Dion was in some part responsible for the deaths of several prominent psychics in recent months.

Realization Two: Raz didn’t know this.

Realization Three: There was no way Raz wouldn’t find out eventually.

Morris shot a desperate look to Gisu—she could almost feel him trying to project Do NOT tell him! through his concussion. But what else was Gisu supposed to do? She didn’t like this situation any more than he did! She was tired and sore and angry, still reeling from the gala, and it was too damn close to ass’o’clock in the morning—wait, what was Raz doing up at around… what was it, somewhere between two and three AM? He was still wearing his jammies, it looked like, but he was also wide awake and Gisu was too tired to think up her own explanation.

“Why are you even awake?” Gisu voiced her thought. Morris relaxed slightly in the corner of her vision, while Raz crossed his arms.

“You’re only questioning that now?” Raz summoned a levball to sit on, yawning slightly as he spoke. “The interns had a movie night.” He explained, sticking his tongue out. Even though he was pretty much a full agent in all but name, Raz was still only sixteen; this left him still living in the dorms with the interns and junior agents. “And you asked me to bring you your board.” He added.

Oh, shit, did Gisu wake him up? “Sorry.” She grimaced. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“And let me miss out on—” Raz started, looking the both of them up and down, “actually, what did happen? Nobody would tell me anything.”

As one, Gisu and Morris looked at each other. Though they were both out of their gala outfits and in jammies, cleaned up and mostly unscathed—the exhaustion was clear. There was bruising along Morris’ forehead, Gisu had asked Raz for her board, and Lizzie wasn’t even there in the room with them, which probably spoke volumes to Raz about how much everything at the gala had gone wrong.

“The automaton happened, that’s what.” Morris groused, “The robot that almost killed the senior agents.”

Raz winced, leaning back on his levball. “Is Lizzie…?” Suddenly, her absence seemed all the more ominous.

“She’ll live.” Morris reassured.

“She got stabbed.” Gisu said, at almost the same time. At Morris’ disgruntled look, she hurriedly added, “But Morris is right! She’ll live! She’s being transferred to Clay Ridge.”

Raz sighed. “That’s good. And you two…?”

Gisu snorted. “We got off easy.” She buried her face in her hands as the events of the gala played over in her mind again. “Fuck, when the party started I was trying to get that waitress’ number.” Her hands fell to her lap, and she stared at them, at scars well-known from lightning and her projects. She felt unreal, caught between exhaustion and panic.

It wasn’t the first time a mission had gone wrong, or one of them had been badly injured. It wouldn’t be the last, either.

But it was all still so fresh.

Cold blue eyes disappearing under empty red LEDs—

Lightning burning her fingertips the light burning her eyes—

An eruption of glittery ice, the crush of a crowd—

“Pooter,” Gisu started. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to tell the kid in front of her to go back to bed—and then go to bed herself—so she could keep the second most awful part of the night hidden from him.

But even if Raz didn’t get into the debriefing, it’d go on the mission report. He would find out, no matter what Gisu did—so wasn’t it better, to break the news to him now? Didn’t he have a right to know what had happened to his brother?

(Even if Gisu still didn’t have the full picture herself—)

Raz deserved the truth. Even if it was awful.

“So, you know how Dion went missing four years ago?” Gisu asked, nervously tapping her fingers against her board.

“Gisu—” Morris hissed.

Raz’ eyebrows drew together, his shoulders drawing in. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Gisu took a breath. Right. She could do this. She could totally tell the sixteen year old kid in front of her, the one she’d known since he was ten, that when she took off the anti-psychic automaton’s mask she had seen the face of his missing older brother.

Morris’s jaw was clenched, like he wanted to interject. But he said nothing as Gisu bowled through, words spilling from her lips like a river of confession.

“When we knocked the automaton out I took off his hood and realized he wasn’t fully a machine and then I took off his mask and it was Dion’s face under there!” Gisu barely even breathed until it was all out there, hanging in the air between them.

Morris groaned, burying his face in his hands.

Raz stared at Gisu, brows furrowed as he tried to parse her words. Eventually, he spoke. “...what?”

“It was Dion.” Gisu repeated, wondering if maybe she should have just waited. But she was tired and sore and angry and she didn’t want to think things through anymore. She wanted to do something. She wanted to skate. She wanted to collapse into her bed and forget this night ever happened. “The robot assassin? I took his mask off. It was Dion.”

The words felt like a finality.

+=+=+=+=+

10:00 AM came way too soon.

At least, that’s how it felt to Gisu as she and Morris trudged into one of the conference rooms used for mission debriefings, dressed and clean and looking only marginally better than they had the night before. She glanced at Morris’ hands; he had them folded in his lap, staring straight ahead as they took their seats across the table.

Hollis was waiting for them, alongside Truman and Oleander. It was more and less than Gisu expected. After a moment of everyone settling in—Gisu settled her levboard in her lap—Truman called for things to begin.

Mission debriefings were all the same, pretty much; Morris and Gisu traded off talking as they explained the where, when, and what, from their initial mission plan and the gala’s opening to the moment the skylight shattered. If it wasn’t for his concussion, Gisu would have let Morris do the majority of the talking—except he was still concussed and also he hadn’t been conscious throughout all of it. Because Dion—the automaton—Maybe-Dion had sucker punched him with the hilt of his sword.

At that point, Gisu took up the description, trying her best to fill in the parts that Lizzie wasn’t there to say. She recounted, not quite as professionally as Hollis may have wanted but still cleanly enough to be understandable, the ice cocoon Lizzie had put together as a last-ditch effort, the loss of psychic power and the pressure it left in her head, the desperate scramble to keep the cyborg’s attention while not getting stabbed herself. She skipped over some details, but as long as the Heads and Oleander got the gist it was fine.

“So you electrified the android after Morris shot it?” Truman asked. “And that was when it went down.”

Morris nodded. “The problem was that it didn’t stay down.”

“You gave it a good enough fight to make the thing retreat.” Oleander commented. “It would have been nice if you’d taken it out, but you managed to hold it together in the heat of battle.” He nodded, already thinking of ways to try and counter the automaton’s ability to block psychic powers—which in and of itself wasn’t anything new; people had been trying to counter psychic abilities for decades.

“While it was down…” Gisu tugged at a lock of her hair, her other hand gripping the edge of her levboard, “I saw behind—I managed to take the mask off.”

“Mask?” Truman stroked at his beard. “Why would a robot wear a mask?”

“Cyborg.” Gisu corrected. At Truman’s look, she elaborated. “He had a human face beneath the mask. I saw it…” She had to take a breath, here, before she could speak further. Morris’ reaction had been bad enough—Raz’ had been even worse.

“You think you saw his face.” Morris muttered. Gisu shot him a look.

“If you saw his face, then we can identify him!” Oleander smacked his fist against the table. “We need a description, stat!”

Gisu swallowed. Morris glared at her from across the table. “I don’t believe she actually saw its face,” he said to Truman, “because it’s really not believable in the slight—”

“It was Dion!” Gisu blurted out.

“Wh—we don’t know that!” Morris interjected—

“I saw his face! What more proof do you need?” Gisu slammed her hands on the table. Morris leaned forwards, his voice starting to rise as he and Gisu really started to argue.

“It was a high-stress situation! You could have been projecting—”

“I know what I saw—”

“It’s been four years—”

“You are literally concussed, you don’t get to argue—”

“Agents, please!” Hollis cut through the argument, hands smacking the table as she stood up. Gisu and Morris shrank back, chastened, and Hollis turned to Gisu. “You’re absolutely certain of what you saw?”

Gisu’s hands curled into fists in her lap. She thought back to the previous night, to the moment where she shoved down the hood and pried off the mask. “Yes.” She knew what she saw. Four years and a different hairstyle couldn’t keep her from recognizing him. “He was even doing flips around the ballroom,” she added, her throat tightening. “And yet it didn’t feel like him at all—” She took a breath. She was not about to cry in front of Hollis and Truman and Oleander. She wasn’t! “Something happened to him.”

“That much is clear.” Truman commented. He and Hollis shared a look, mentally conversing with each other and Oleander. After a moment, he spoke.

“That’s enough, you two. Dismissed.”

Morris wasted no time in rolling out, and Gisu stood to follow him. The third time she’d shared what she’d seen that night, and it still felt no less raw. As Morris turned down the corner without a word, Gisu almost followed him—though what she even wanted, she didn’t know. It wasn’t like he was in the mood to talk to her.

Gisu briefly considered hunting down Raz to check in with him, but—well. Raz had made it pretty clear that he needed space. Sam and Adam were out on a mission, and until Norma tracked her and Morris down for answers Gisu didn’t think she’d be up to being pestered. Everyone else either had something to do, or didn’t need Gisu hanging around bringing the mood down—

Gisu turned towards the atrium. She wasn’t really in a state to go skating, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do; chances were that Otto was in the lab and Gisu was too wound up and exhausted to work on any of her projects. So skating it was, at least until her head cleared. If it ever would.

Ugh, this whole thing was such a mess—and not the kind that anyone, least of all Gisu, had any idea how to fix.

Raz was right. Some space would do Gisu a whole lot of good right now.

Maybe it’d even help the knot in her chest.

6 notes · View notes