#we have a long history of importing things from japan so maybe it helps with the localisation?

[greenbloodedskink]

Oh I would need to play the games in both English and French to really comment on things. Though I can say that whenever I compare French VS English quotes, the French version is always better. Sometimes because of better accuracy, sometimes because it's more emotional.

Since japanese use a lot of different pronouns for various degrees of formality, it's easier to transcribe that in french when we have the formal/informal you option, and it adds to the characterisation.

Also the french translation loves to work in puns wherever it can.

I've done french quotes translation of Emmet for a friend, his dialog tends to differ from English more often than Ingo. Notably, he says "Je m'appelle Chamsin" [I am Emmet] a lot more often than in English and may be more accurate to the Japanese text in that way (i do not speak Japanese, but it wouldn't make sense to add this quirk of language unless its in the original text)

Coming back to your comment about Kieran, playing the DLC was the first time I actually faced those difference in translation because I would remember specific quotes that Did Not Happen That Way in English. And it was sad because those quotes were very impactful and made me want to draw those moments!

Example:

"La ferme, Roseille !!! Joueur… Tout ce que je ressens quand je te vois… c'est d'la pure jalousie ! Tu perds jamais tes combats ! Tu peux aller où tu veux ! Tu t'fais des potes en claquant des doigts ! Même Ogerpon a préféré te suivre, alors que j'rêvais d'être son ami depuis tout petit… !" [Shut up, Carmine!!! Player…. All I can feel when I see you… it's pure jealousy! You never lose your battles! You can go wherever you want! You can make friends in a snap of your finger! Even Ogerpon prefered you over me, even though I dreamed of being its friend since I was a kid…!]

VS

"Shut it, Sis!" "[Player] has everything I've ever wanted!" "She’s/He’s got strong Pokémon! She/He can go anywhere she/he wants, and she/he can be friends with anyone!" "I loved Ogerpon since forever ago! But even Ogerpon chose her/him over me!"

In french, Kass actually talk to the player directly instead of complaining about us to his sister, he literally states that he is jealous, and he sounds a lot more spiteful.

That dialog mostly impacted me because he remarked that I, as a protagonist, "never lose a battle", when I had lost 10 minutes ago against Drayton. It was so funny that I wanted to draw the scene, only to find out that english players didn't get that specific line. Tragic.

FRENCH PEOPLE PLEASE TELL ME OTHER THINGS FRENCH LOCALIZERS HAVE DONE

PLS PLS PLS

[jiraisupportgroup]

Can jirais be white? Maybe this is a stupid question, maybe it’s a white privileged ass question, but I’m genuinely wondering because I keep seeing people on Jirai Twitter flaming the opinions of white jirais. Like, I’m white and I’ve spent a long time couch surfing, doing sex work to survive, having my interpersonal relationships crumble at every turn, I cut I drink I smoke I do drugs…but what, my opinions don’t matter because I’m not from Japan?? I’m honestly fucking lost, I found a place I fit in but I don’t know anymore. And what about jirais who don’t live in Japan, that don’t do sex work, don’t spend frivolously in host clubs or aren’t homeless??? Are the rest of their issues that make them a landmine forfeited simply because they don’t check a few of the other boxes? I don’t understand, I need to ask someone. People are always going to complain that you aren’t fucked up enough.

Help.

I don’t think it’s a stupid question at all!

Please note that I’m not an expert or a spokesperson for Jirai Kei, I’m also not Japanese, I don’t speak Japanese - I would take my opinion with a grain of salt. I don’t actually feel qualified to talk abt this tbh T_T

The general sentiment that I see is that white (or otherwise non-Japanese) people can be Jirai Kei but be respectful & understanding about it.

To my knowledge “Jirai” is a term used to stereotype someone as a “crazy girl” or “crazy girlfriend” - it’s not really tied to any specific action or set of symptoms. It is often used against girls who do have scars or wear ryousangata or work in sex work or con cafes, but it’s also used against people who don’t do those things. Its not an endearing term or point of pride, it’s used derogatorily. “Jirai Kei” is playing off of that term. It’s similar to how in western societies people call anyone who looks slightly alternative “emo” but to my knowledge “jirai” has stronger negative connotations than “emo” does & is still used in a derogatory manner.

I think it’s important to know that Jirai Kei was born out of Kabukicho. There are a lot of themes of sex work, self harm, emotional instability, addiction, host club or boy band obsessions, homelessness, etc. They are important parts of the subculture, but it also has grown a lot since 2019. You don’t have to engage in or have a history with those things to be “Jirai Kei”, but you have to understand & be respectful of the fact that those are very common themes in the subculture.

Generally, it’s agreed that Jirai Kei is a space for mentally unstable people. This doesn’t mean that you have to be venting online or constantly in distress or anti-recovery: more so, you know what it’s like to be in a dark place and you’re respectful / understanding of that, whether you’re currently in that place or not. It’s similar to menhera but a bit more jaded. Menhera’s core things are accessibility, awareness, support, positivity, understanding, acceptance, etc. Some people find more comfort in Jirai Kei because sentiments of not being ready to or able to recover are generally a bit more accepted, although many people are part of both subcultures.

Additionally, it’s important to note that as foreigners, we can’t really “reclaim” Jirai - it’s not a term that is used against us. We don’t live in the same socioeconomic setting that Jirai Kei was born out of. A big example of this is social reaction to the fashions associated with Jirai Kei, like dark girly kei and ryousangata. When I go out in my town in a dark girly coord I don’t get called an emotionally unstable mass produced sex worker, people usually say I look really nice or cute or generally compliment me. Very very different reactions, and that’s important to acknowledge. Our experiences are different. That doesn’t mean we can’t relate to or find comfort in or be a part of Jirai Kei, but it’s important to know that Japanese Jirais and foreign Jirais have very different experiences even with the same things. I liken it to foreign gals. Gyaru is a pushback against Japanese beauty standards, so when you’re a foreigner gyaru styles often aren’t contrary to beauty standards you’re subjected to, but it’s still generally okay to be gyaru as a foreigner as long as you understand that. Just be respectful / understanding about that ykwim?

Most of the time when I see people complaining about white girls in Jirai Kei they’re mostly complaining about girls who are only into the fashion or cute parts of Jirai and try to sanitize the subculture. Essentially - you can’t come into a Japanese subculture based around mental struggles as a foreigner and decide you’re going to denounce parts of it to make it more acceptable. That’s kind of weird & disrespectful in my opinion. It’s fine to only want to engage in the cutesy parts like girly kei and collecting boy band photo cards, but it’s not really Jirai Kei, which is fine just like… don’t call it Jirai Kei when it’s not.

Part of why there are people who are very intense about saying you have to be “fucked up enough” to be Jirai Kei is because they’re radically pushing back against people who come into Jirai Kei spaces and then complain about the toxicity or try to sanitize the subculture. In my opinion they do end up friendly-firing T_T

A lot of people don’t want post about their struggles online. Someone’s account could be super happy sunshine and sparkles and bows and positivity all the time, but they could still very well be struggling behind all of that. I think some people are so tired of problematic fashion Jirais that they end up saying people who don’t post about their struggles openly can’t be Jirai Kei. I disagree with that? You don’t owe people your history or struggles. You don’t have to publicly talk about your history or struggles to be a part of the subculture. It’s a bit strange to pressure people to talk about these things in order to be accepted in the community, even though I understand where they’re coming from. I don’t personally see this a lot but I also don’t use Twitter which is where this seems to be most common.

Overall - as long as you acknowledge the origins / history, don’t try to denounce the “dark parts” of Jirai Kei, and understand that Japanese Jirais and foreign jirais have different experiences you’re generally good as far as I can tell.

Idk if that all made sense - I’m crazy sleep deprived from work - but hopefully that makes sense / answers your question? But again I’m just a stranger on the internet and I’m also not Japanese so please take all that with a grain of salt.

[zeroducks-2]

Zero, pls give me the strength to write a filth ass sladick fic. I’ve got the brain worms for one specific abo fic, and I stg, it’s all I can think about rn 😭 do u have any advice for me?? Writing? Motivation? Characterization? 🥺🙏

Of course!

Now I'm of the opinion that writing advice, ALL the writing advice you find online with no exception whatsoever, is totally useless. "Think of the characters this way!", "structure the plot that way!", "motivate yourself going by percentages!" etc - it's not that it's bad pieces of advice, in fact, they're all great suggestions. The issue with them is that creating a story has some technical aspects, but writing is unique to every person.

One of the billion writing advice floating around might be great for you, or maybe all of them work, but maybe not at single one is even vaguely useful, because how you approach writing is strictly personal so if they work on you or not is completely hit and miss.

Therefore what I can tell you is how I work, and maybe you'll find some compatible aspects and it can help you :)

Long post ahead!

Writing & Motivation:

MOST IMPORTANT. Talk about this with someone. DM your beloved mutual, hit your bestie up on discord, annoy me on anon, do whatever you need to talk about this fic. Talk about the plot, how the characters are supposed to be like, what should happen, what world building is in place, how the sex should pan out. "But people will be annoyed!" NO WE WON'T, I PROMISE. I love hearing people's ideas on their next fic, AU, revolutionary plot bunny. I love all of them and I'm not the only one. Talk to us about your fic!

Don't pick a specific time or moment of the day to start writing. You have 20 minutes and then your cousin will be there? It's alright, throw down 30 words in those minutes. You have two hours and you're afraid you'll get in too deep before the dentist appointment? I KNOW IT HURTS but when you're back from the dentist you might be tired, in pain, not motivated anymore. Write when you feel the itch, even on a leaflet with a permanent marker (I normally use my phone's notes if I have no choice). Don't wait for the right moment, the right moment can be any time you want it to be!

Don't plan a shitton of chapters. Plan just one, write that one. "But it's 1k and there isn't even smut!" It's still better than no chapter at all with 0k words isn't it? Write that scene, no matter how short it is. Once it's done admire it, look how beautiful it is. You want to write more now? Great, go ahead! You don't feel like going on with this? It might be time to share your little thing with someone on AO3, on tumblr or IRL! And if writing just that one little chapter satisfied you, that also is okay! Oh wait, you only know what to write for your sex scene, no context? Write that sex scene, the context is right there in your head. If you'll also want to write the context that's fantastic, but start by writing that scene you want to write, don't stress because you need to "get to it". Don't punish yourself with "I can write what I want to write only after 20k words of introduction", that's the perfect recipe to make you drop the fic.

Characterization

Don't be afraid that the characters might be OOC. I promise you no one cares, and the people who care won't click on an ABO fic which maybe is also a Feudal Japan AU with aliens. What matters is the impression of the characters. I'm writing one of the sections of my Omegaverse Royal AU at the moment, and I decided to make it Eobarry! But I have no idea how to write Eobard, he is a real challenge to me - I have an Eobard expert friend who gives me some advice, but still. He's a complex character with a rich history and there isn't much I can do to keep him IC, but the thing is... if I don't write this, there's simply going to be less Eobarry fics to go around. Better if there's one more, even if it's not up to whatever imaginary standard I set with myself, than one less.

Don't be afraid to make the characters act a certain way because it's convenient. This is the exact opposite advice I give when people are writing non-transformative work: When you're writing a story, once you decide that a character is afraid of spiders you need to stick with it and make them afraid of spiders forever, they can't be afraid of spiders only for 1 scene. This does not count for fanfictions. Fanfictions exist for us to have fun, be horny, feel a whole lot of emotions and fulfill the desire to chew on our blorbos like they were squeaky toys. So you want Dick to be afraid of spiders in this fic? It never happened in canon...? Who gives a shit, he is now afraid of spiders. You want to make Slade very good at playing marbles? Cool, he is now a champion marble player for your fic and your fic only. And it doesn't matter if the characters are not consistent and "fall in love too quickly", or if "the sex is not realistic", or if "they should get pregnant like this", or if "there's no way they'd be alright with this situation". None of this crap, nobody gives a damn. You're writing to have fun, not to win a literary prize.

You might write A LOT and then realize you are absolutely unsatisfied with how the story went, because a character did something which set them on a course that you ended up not liking. It's fine! Go back to where the choice was taken and split the fic! Coincidentally, it's something I am doing with my Omegaverse Royal AU (the Sladick part) because I decided I wanted it darker :)

And remember, it's okay to be inspired by other fics. If you take something precisely off another fic you might want to ask permission because it's the polite thing to do, but if for example you find that you write Alpha Slade with a scar on his mating gland because you read that in my fic, that's totally okay! We continuously get inspired by each other, and my beloved writer friends know that I take inspiration from their things! (indeed my Omegaverse Royal AU, because apparently it's the perfect example for everything today, was inspired by the amazing works of anawrites and TheSubtextIs, with their Conflict Resolution and Conquered by Love).

Reach out if you need help, or if you want more specific advice that might be 100% useless! Cheers :D

[beardedmrbean]

So Yasuke discourse back, and I just realize why

Black Americans are taught to HATE the core of the USA because the treatment of us. I mean my feelings towards my country is complex…but where this idea we were never taught this?

I’m sorry were you asleep in history class after the 5th grade?

I mean have you seen Emmett Till Corpse? My community was terrified for generations for black boys like me.

But anyways black supremacists latch onto other cultures like Japan and such for validation. Rather than our own people who survived and found success even in hard times America

Also this post https://www.tumblr.com/someoneintheshadow456/728775975508344832/i-think-one-of-the-biggest-differences-between

It two fictional historical stories, but remind when I saw a actress on the view being shocked she have slave owners ancestors

Despite being half Puerto Rican

And in her 30’s-40’s

I’m sorry does that chick think real life a Disney film?

Also about the samurai thing, yes people glamorize them like FX Shogun

But the Japanese (especially in counterculture as most mangakas are the descendants of the people the samurai oppressed. Oops, someone didn’t get the memo) acknowledged their samurai ancestors caused them significant issues especially with the isolation and stagnation the Tokugawa caused

Also I suspected but check wiki, the imperial Japanese army was heavily based off samurai culture 😬

And given the horrors they committed…

But anyways like I hinted at, the Japanese acknowledged their ancestors were complex people. But also acknowledged the flaws, because we can see it. Like people complain about how the late dbz creator draw black people

The thing is I heard some Japanese people don’t even a black person irl until their 30’s fuck I’m going too long

But at least get Japanese don’t have socialists in positions of influence and power that treat a book made by a antisemitic freeloader that rape his maid and let that offspring died poor less like the Bible.

Also another thing I notice in my abuse healing. If you don’t make some form of piece with what your abuser did to you.

Your shit out of luck at understanding history. Random but stuff I been noticing with Japanese culture and handling of others maybe another anon because an important figure in the pokemon community said something that shocked him while visiting nyc in the 2000’s.

Black Americans are taught to HATE the core of the USA because the treatment of us. I mean my feelings towards my country is complex…but where this idea we were never taught this? I’m sorry were you asleep in history class after the 5th grade?

The scripted 'how come they never taught us this in school' followed by 'you know' is one of the most infuriating things to show up and signal the beginning of discourse.

Texas isn't going to teach about slavery, Florida is going to teach that it wasn't so bad, are both statements I've seen allegedly educated people say, Texas most certainly will teach about it and the comment from Florida is that some slaves learned trades that helped them when they were free, like blacksmithing and coopering still not a statement in praise of anything, just a statement of fact.

They absolutely taught that stuff in school,

True you likely didn't learn about Bass Reeves which would be why people are so willing to believe The Lone Ranger was based off of him now, that would be also because they don't know about The Lone Ranger either, (there is some crossover and they likely pulled some from Bass)

There's only so much instruction time, you want to learn more there's a library or the internet.

But anyways black supremacists latch onto other cultures like Japan and such for validation. Rather than our own people who survived and found success even in hard times America

I have found that weird, then again they latch on to any successful black person as well and act like they own them, right up till the Williams Sisters marry white dudes, which for some reason was worse than Tiger marrying a white woman if memory serves.

The thing is I heard some Japanese people don’t even a black person irl until their 30’s fuck I’m going too long

I love Psych.

In person they may go their whole lives without seeing anyone but other Japanese people, common in not western nations. For all the talk about ethnostates people sure get them wrong a lot.

But at least get Japanese don’t have socialists in positions of influence and power that treat a book made by a antisemitic freeloader that rape his maid and let that offspring died poor less like the Bible.

That would be why no socialism in Japan, they killed the commies. My commitment to free speech says that was the wrong thing to do, but it also says people that want to cheer can.

The GOT/Downtown Abbey thing those were set in two totally different periods of time and one not even on earth so making comparisons to anything is difficult.

Edwardian Vs when Henry VIII was king totally different and not good to compare to each other to, not from a judgmental standpoint at least.

Also another thing I notice in my abuse healing. If you don’t make some form of piece with what your abuser did to you. Your shit out of luck at understanding history. Random but stuff I been noticing with Japanese culture and handling of others maybe another anon because an important figure in the pokemon community said something that shocked him while visiting nyc in the 2000’s.

Makes healing a bit more difficult too.

Forgive and forget is bunk, you don't have to forget, don't have to forgive either but I think that it's important to do that. Doesn't mean you need to speak a single word to the person or spare them a passing glance ever again though. Don't need to give them a chance to do it again, but forgiveness is as much for you as it is for the forgivee.

[senanatheskenana]

Good morning, I wanted to try the survey event if it's still open. If not, feel free to ignore this ask. And before we get to the question, I apologize for the grammar mistakes English isn't my native language.

1. My work ethic is more or less chaotic. I'm a huge procrastinator who can't follow a plan. I tend to do everything at the last minute under the stress and the pressure. Even if I'm interested in the work, I'll zone out pretty fast.

2. Overthinking is my second name /hj. Well, to be honest I'm a very anxious person, I tend to overanalyzing every single thing. How the baker did look at me, my outfit, my haircut... What a pain. :(

3. I use to be a very extraverted kid, but as I'm growing up I'm getting more and more introverted. I like staying alone or with the few people I can trust. Honestly, I don't see why you should waste your energy by befriending a lot of people when you can use your energy to take care of your loved ones.

4. The answer is very cliché, but it would be Japan. I would love to visit this country one day, climbing Mt Fuji, eating traditional food and discovering their culture.

5. I'm finishing High School and I don't really know what I want to study. Maybe biology or history.

6. I love sweet food with all my heart, give me chocolate and you're making me the happiest man alive.

7. I live with my cat and my two dogs and I wouldn't replace them with anything in the world. But if I could adopt another animal, it would probably be a pigeon or a bird of some kind.

8. I'm a trans man and I consider myself as aroace. So yes, this is more on a " if I could to date I would... " kind of thing or platonic. And I don't really care about the gender of my match.

9. That's a hard question. Probably the hardest on the list /hj. I don't really have one favourite song, more like a whole playlist, but if I should give you one I would say... Fine by Lemon Demon.

10. Family well... All depends on your relationship with them and how they treated you in the past. Sometimes it's important to distance yourself from them, to let go for becoming the best version of yourself. But it's also great when they got your back. So to get on a middle ground, I would say that family is important but you shouldn't let them control your life or make you feel guilty for anything. Talking about kids, I don't mind babysitting or keeping kids at home to help a friend but I don't want to be a father. I don't want kids, I would be a terrible father and I don't want them to grow up in this chaotic world. If the world became a better place, with less wars and dangers for them... Then I might reconsider my choice.

And I ended up writing way to much, I'm terribly sorry T_T. Thanks for reading this, take your time and don't forget to care of you. Have a nice day!

(ps : I find your work very cool)

im glad you like my writing, i really like writing it :)

Also don't worry about writing too much, i think that as long as it's good, you cant write too much xx

I would put you with Kazuha. He's kind and friendly and most of all very calming to be around. Kazuha likes to wander around, so he'd be thrilled to travel with you. While Kazuha can be pretty quiet, he is quite good at calming and comforting people. Kazuha understands the temptation of procrastination so he'd try his best to keep you on track, he may even do it with you. He probably isn't concerned with having children, considering he likes to be transitory and travel but he probably does like having animals around. I can totally see him with a bird too because they can easily follow the Crux

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SKILLS

And you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of 1997, we released a general purpose function that I can call on any struct. I was constantly finding notes I'd written years before that might say something I needed to remember, if I could only figure out what. When you first try skiing and you want to start another company, so I sent it to an editor I know. I'm not sure why this is so important to be able to.1 Was this wrong? And there has been an additional admixture of paranoia.2 We paid $3000 for a server with a 90 MHz processor and 32 meg of memory. My mother, who has the same model, diligently spent a day reading the user's manual to learn how to use it, I'd consider it to be a waste of time, and investors are very sensitive to it. I was running a startup is among the purest of real world tests.3

That was a surprising realization.4 If you still want to go out and investigate. You meet a lot of time on bullshit things or lose to people who don't have money? There were no fixed office hours.5 They don't want founders to be stupid.6 They're in a different world. Hackers at every college learn practical skills, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan.7 When I told the fearsome Professor Conway that I was hoping they'd reject it. They're good at doing what they're asked, since that's what it takes to please the adults who judge you at seventeen. In fact, when we funded Airbnb, we thought it was too crazy. Perl began life as a collection of utilities for generating reports, and only evolved into a programming language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger.

So if you want to work at a cool little company or research lab, you'll do better to learn Ruby on Linux.8 But I am not sure they can take on the hotel market I could be wrong. XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they needed it for Outlook. Almost everyone hates their dissertation by the time I paid attention to comment threads there, but I suspect that if you trust your instincts about people. Startups are intrinsically risky. Ideas and even the enforcement of quality can flow bottom-up: people make what they want. Empirically it seems to be working on; there's usually a reason.9 No first use of software patents. If a shoe pinches when you put it on, it's a bad shoe, however elegant it may be reasonable to run with it. We're funding eight new startups at the moment.

Not heroes, not barbarians.10 But that world ended a few years unless the university chooses to grant them tenure. But then I thought maybe I should give you more credit. So that post is further evidence what a rare bird Fred is. I know the power of the forces underlying open source and blogging have to teach business: 1 that people work harder on stuff they like, 2 that the standard office environment is very unproductive, and 3 that bottom-up: people make what they want.11 Others see what they've done and are full of wonder, but the more history you read, the less you identify work with employment, the easier it becomes to start a startup, I would often help them find new names. Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed totally normal into a rather seedy habit: from something movie stars did in publicity shots to something small huddles of addicts do outside the doors of office buildings.12

Ideas can morph. Startup School. It's clearly an abuse of the system, that's also called a hack. However, for better or worse it looks as if Europe will in a few decades speak a single language. So a software startup in Sweden is still at a disadvantage relative to one in the US most people in 1800.13 It is greatly to America's advantage that it is a congenial atmosphere for the right sort of unruliness—that it is unfamiliar to programmers, and that has no correlation to the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the long run, of the forces that generate them. Notice the pattern here?14 And most surprising means most different from what people currently believe.

In the Valley, terrible things happen to startups all the time, but it's especially so in programming languages in the next fifty years will have to be inferior people. When a child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's happening.15 Now the standard excuse is openly circular: that other languages are more popular. Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Google were all run out of garages. Why?16 At least, that's what we advise, and we bet money on that advice. There may be no one who did the opposite.17 You might find contradictory taboos. Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken. The other place you could beat the US would be with smarter immigration policy. In fact, even that won't be enough.

O fast.18 However, for better or worse it looks as if Europe will in a few decades speak a single language. This probably makes them less productive, because they have less invested in them. Though most print publications are online, I probably read two or three.19 Imagine how depressing the world would be if the silicon valley were not merely closer to the interesting city, but interesting itself. That's probably roughly how we looked when we were a couple of nerds with no business experience operating out of an apartment. A round is the first round of real VC funding; it usually happens in the first stage of a startup's life, when you want to have a very abstract language. My life is full of worry. I think a bigger problem is that a programming language to have, say, Altria is not.

Notes

7% of American kids attend private, non-corrupt country or organization will be, and yet it is very long: it has about the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I wouldn't want the valuation at the end of the paths people take through life, the more educated ones usually reply with some equivocation implying that you're not going to have kids soon. I've twice come close to the environment. There were several other reasons.

Applying for a smooth salesman. They're so selective that they don't want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting him play.

Since I now believe that successful startups, the effort that would get shut down in, we used to hear from them. Samuel Johnson seems to set in when so many of the war on.

From the beginning. The markets seem to lose elections. If you assume that P spam and P nonspam are both.

Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and also what we'd call random facts, like languages and safe combinations, and both used their position to amass fortunes among the bear gardens and whorehouses. There were lots of people who will go away, and can hire unskilled people to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors, you can't distinguish between selecting a link and following it; all you'd need to do business with any firm employing anyone who had made Lotus into the sciences, you might be enough to turn down some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking. Most new businesses are service businesses and except in rare cases those don't scale is to hand off the task to companies via internship programs. I was there was near zero crossover.

Then Josh Wilson came in to pick the former depends a lot. I wonder if they'd survived.

For example, will be the right sort of things you sell.

Your mileage may vary. I'm writing about one specific, rather than doing a bad deal.

Needless to say because most of the movie, but I call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid much. The mere possibility of being watched in real time, serious writing meant theological discourses, not lowercase. Founders are tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

The solution to that knowledge was to become more stratified. So if you're attacked in this essay, I preferred to call them whitelists because it isn't critical to do better, because the publishers exert so much pain, it might even be conscious of this essay wrote: One way to do this with prices too, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-stupid comments have yet to find it hard to grasp this than we can respond by simply removing whitespace, periods, commas, etc. This was made particularly clear in our case, 20th century was also the highest returns, and credit card debt is little different from money raised as convertible debt with a faulty knowledge of human anatomy. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup, as they turn from their screen to answer, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things.

The best thing they can use this route instead. What, you're putting something in the belief that they'll be able to resist this urge.

My first job was scooping ice cream in the country it's in.

Some of Aristotle's contribution? 339-351.

He made a million spams. Financing a startup in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically increased demand for unskilled workers, and that most three letter word. 99, and I ordered a large pizza and found an open source software. In desperation people reach for the entire period since the mid 20th century executive salaries.

Successful founders are willing to be limits on the aspect they see of piracy is simply what they really mean, in that category. Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard. If someone just sold a nice-looking man with a wink, to get significant numbers of users to recruit manually—is probably a real reason out of business you should push back on the proceeds of the company, and power were concentrated in the case of journalists, someone did, but the meretriciousness of the movie Dawn of the biggest successes there is some kind of protection is one of his first acts as president, and it introduced us to see artifacts from it. Instead of earning the right question, which I warn about later: beware of getting credit for what gets included in shows is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

This is, obviously, only for startups, but I call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of a correct program. Surely no one who's had the discipline to pull it off. In the Valley.

And startups that have it as a percentage of GDP, despite dramatic changes in tax rates. The latter type is sometimes called an HR acquisition. One sign of the ingredients in our own online store. Globally the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve.

Obviously signalling risk. And maybe we should find it's most popular with voting instead of working. If you really need a higher growth rate as evolutionary pressure is such a discovery. 1% in 1950.

Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the first million is worth more to most people are like sheep, but corrupt practices in finance, healthcare, and so on? Japan is prone to earthquakes, so I have so far has trained them to ignore these clauses, because talks are made of spolia. Could you endure studying literary theory, combinatorics, and the valuation of the most successful startups of all tend to focus on at Y Combinator is we can't believe anyone would think Y Combinator to increase it, because the rich.

[unnounblr]

Like, fundamentally, the thing that matters in Israel-Palestine, like most any conflict and issue. Is the people. Are the people okay, are they being treated humanely, or are they not?

And, like, yeah, no, they're not. That's plain to see. The question then becomes, what can be done to help the people?

The topic of settler colonialism matters to an extent, maybe, in terms of litigating past wrongs, and maybe possible reparations, but like. At the end of the day, all nations and states and countries are just lines on a map, enforced by some system of government. With militaries to enact their will on their neighbors, and laws and police forces and courts to enforce their will on their citizens.

It ultimately. Doesn't matter much? What the names of those countries are? Like, the idea that it matters whether there's one state between the Jordan River and Mediterranean sea, or two states, and whether the name of one of those is "Israel" and another "Palestine". Like, that's not something that matters that much, to leftist philosophy? Or, shouldn't, anyway. The rights of states to exist isn't a concern under leftist, socialist, Marxist philosophy and thought. Because, in those philosophical traditions. They shouldn't.

Like, if there was to be a one-state solution, where everyone, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, anyone of any religion, race, or ethnicity, has equal rights, equal protection under the law, equal voice in government. Like, it fundamentally shouldn't matter that much if that state was called "Palestine" or if it was called "Israel".

Now, the problem with the current state of Israel is that. It doesn't give equal protection to everyone, and the regions given to Palestinians don't currently have state governments that are adequately able to protect them from the aggressive actions of Israel's government, and Israel's military has been able to act unchecked and commit atrocities on the Palestinian people.

But, like, the idea of Hamas, and apparently some leftists, that Israel as a state and seemingly only Israel as a state should be abolished. To me seems. Fucking stupid? Like, the UK was born from the colonization of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and before that the isles were colonized by the Normans, and before that the Romans. The Aztecs fought wars and invaded and colonized and built an empire in Mexico and Central and South America. China and Russia and Japan have histories of kingdoms and tsars and empires. Literally everywhere on earth where there are humans is a "settler-colonialist" project, all nations are the results of imperialism. The idea that Israel is uniquely evil and uniquely needs to be destroyed in this regard is, again, fucking stupid, on top of antisemitic.

Conversely, and here I'm speaking as a Jewish person myself. Like, the thing that always bothered me about the "zionist" pro-Israel ideas and rhetoric among Jewish people is. I mean, I've never been much for practicing, but I've read the scriptures, and I can sorta get how having the nation of Israel seems like a good idea for those more devout than me. And I also understand how, like. Yeah, the Holocaust was traumatic.

But to me, all Jewish people going to one place, in a relatively small area (about the size of New Jersey) feels like a bad move to keep Jewish people safe? ESPECIALLY after the introduction of nuclear weapons. Like, after the Holocaust wiped out so many of us. Rounding ourselves up and essentially putting ourselves in what could easily become a new concentration camp is just baffling to me. Like, the U.S. government has rules about not concentrating too many important political and military people in one place, so a single attack can't wipe everyone out. Militaries and even farmers have long practiced gathering and concentrating their targets together in a small spot to make slaughtering them easier.

And, like, there's also a thing where like. "There's a special motherland and a special group of people for that motherland and we need a strong state to protect that people and that motherland" always felt a little bit like Nazi rhetoric and ideology to me. It felt like we (the people who thought Israel was a good idea anyway) agreed with the Nazis on the philosophical framework, and only disagreed on the specifics, who the special people and race were, where the motherland is.

And Netanyahu's government certainly seems to have ideas about who is "Jewish enough", discriminating against certain denominations of Judaism, certain races, the same ways the Nazis decided who was "German enough" or "Aryan enough". In general, I think that certainly the more conservative, imperialist, militaristic and nationalist elements of Israel. Aren't as far apart from the Nazis, philosophically, as they should be. To me, "never again" should mean "never again to anyone" and based on the Israeli military's campaign in Palestine, clearly they disagree. They need to be stopped, for that. For those actions.

But as far as ending Israel as a whole goes, after WW2, the solution the world came to wasn't to completely end the nation-state of Germany. Like, okay, it was split in half for a while there, so maybe that's a bad example. Or maybe it's a great one, and why there needs to be a Palestinian state, in addition to the state of Israel, I dunno.

...Have I pissed enough people off yet?

The irony of saying #landback and “we live on stolen land” while condemning Israel’s existence is so strange.

You want land to go back to the natives - no matter how long ago the land was taken - unless it belongs to Jews. Then they can go F off.

And because you don’t have a reasonable defense for this weird combo of beliefs, you just deny the indigeneity of Jews altogether. This is something that can be proven with simple google searches and logic. Our ancient artifacts and structures are in the land, and our “origin stories” are largely about the land and us residing in it. Yet, you refuse to believe we are indigenous.

Even more funny is that you then argue Arabs are the real indigenous people to this land. Arabs are colonizers in the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is a colonial language. They originated in the Arabian peninsula, and took over MENA countries. They had nationalist policies that largely eradicated the people and/or cultures already present in those lands. A lot of the people present were Jews, who were killed or driven out by pogroms.

Educate yourself for crying out loud.

[secretsandwichwonderland]

Ok, so I purchased the 6th Blanc birthday story in the JP server, and because apparently we aren't getting his route I would like to share a little bit of information about Blanc's past that is revealed:

⚠️ SPOILERS FOR BLANC'S 6TH BDAY HISTORY BELOW ⚠️

(idk how to put the read more thingy here in the app sorry if it looks weird)

We already knew that Blanc used to have magic right?

Well, in the birthday story, Blanc tells MC that he was born with magic, and that he was kidnapped to be used as a test subject by the magic tower because of it. He resisted and ran away.After this he started to hate his own powers and tried to get rid of them, he successfully sealed them but something went wrong.

And that's were Blanc's time "stopped" for him. He tells MC that it's already been 100 years since that happened (We finally have a cannon age for Blanc! Although I used to think that he was older than 100 but whatever, he is one hundred twenty-something years old I suppose) and that he doesn't understand how that came to be.

“I thought this was my punishment for completely denying the ‘gifts’ I was born with.”

"No matter how much you don't like yourself, you can't escape from yourself"

"But I tried to take it easy by cutting off a part of me. And then that part of me took revenge."

He then starts to talk about how you cannot escape from yourself (🥲), from the talents you were born with and that he tried to take the easy way out, and that's why he was 'punished'. Tells MC to not be sad, because he wasn't alone, he had and continues to have wonderful friends, the only difference is that he had to say goodbye more than the average person.(😭😭😭)

And what comes next completely breaks my heart:

MC: "There.... must have been someone important to you among them, right?"

Blanc:Well... That might have been the case. But...

Blanc: It's been so long ago, that I've forgotten their faces and voices...

In the ending, Mc promises to help Blanc "move" his time again, we don't get answers as to why Blanc traveled to London in the first place nor anything else.

I will end it here or else I'll end up summarizing the entire bday story ... But if someone is doubting if purchasing it or not, go for it, it's the nearest we'll get to Blanc's route, and it has its fluffy moments too, not a kiss, but it's fine..For moments I forgot that I was reading his bday and thought that it was his route, I think it was on purpose, maybe a scrapped scene from his route? Something to give us closure?Who knows..I really want to translate it and post it here but idk, maybe not out of respect for cybird and also English is not my first language so there might be things that could be translated better and my japanese understanding.. Is even worse haha, but we'll see,maybe I could post a more detailed summary or something else if someone is interested!

[blindbeta]

I have a question! Thank you for existing I deeply appreciate it. I was wondering if it is possible for a blind person to be able to read by learning the shape of raised letters, rather than braille. I ask because I have a situation in which it is reasonable that the blind character would know this, if possible, and the person they are travelling with is completely illiterate.I thought it might be interesting if the seeing character could describe the letters, or find a way to texture them so the blind character could tell them what something says. I have done a great deal of research for this character, but this is the one part I can't find a clear answer for. Thank you very much.

Good question, nonnie.

The short answer is, maybe? It would depend on the time period and location of your characters.

Since you want both characters to read, I’ll assume this culture has a formal writing system in place and values written communication.

A Brief History

In order to address this, allow me to offer a brief history of Braille. Because what you’re describing is exactly what happened in France before Braille was invented. This informative video summarizes it pretty well. Here is the text version of the video. The video mentions the embossed letter or raised type method of reading that was used at the time. It was difficult to read and the letters had to be very large in order to be understood, making it harder to read words and sentences. Reading must have been very slow.

According to this page on the National Braille Press website, reading this way required slowly tracing raised print letters. To write, one had to memorize the shapes and try to create them on paper, although they could not read the results.

Creating books was even more difficult. According to this page, [quote] “teacher Valentin Haüy made books with raised letters by soaking paper in water, pressing it into a form and allowing it to dry. Books made using this method were enormous and heavy, and the process was so time-consuming that l'Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles, or the Royal Institution for Blind Youth, had fewer than 100 of them when Louis Braille was a student there.” [End quote]

Braille books are already notorious for taking up several volumes. Large print books are only a little better. Textbooks used in schools take up several shelves to translate one print textbook.

Individual use and traveling with these things must have been impossible for the everyday person, even if you were a student.

Also, in this video by blind YouTuber Molly Burke, at the 9:05 time-stamp she answers the question: why don’t we raise print letters for blind people? She explains that it took too long to read and is not as efficient as Braille.

In the interest of time, I’ll try to keep this brief. The transition from the raised print letters to Braille was not a smooth one.

In 1826, first embossed letters published in English was James Gall’s triangular alphabet. Read about it and other systems here.

Another source says Gall’s writing system was introduced in 1831. The system did not gain much popularity outside of Endinburgh.

According to this page: [quote] “In 1832 The Society of Arts for Scotland held a competition for the best embossed type. There were 15 entries but Edmund Fry’s alphabetical system of roman capitals triumphed. Shortly afterwards John Alston began printing at the Glasgow Asylum for the Blind using a slightly modified version of Fry’s design. “Alston type” proved popular and inspired similar forms across Europe and North America.” [end quote]

None of these really caught on outside of certain areas.

In 1821, Charles Barbier was invited to the Royal National Institute For Blind Youth in Paris to demonstrate his Night Writing invention, which was developed for soldiers to read in the dark. It was too difficult to read and so was not used by soldiers, nor did it end up being used by the blind schools. However, a young Louis Braille was in the audience and was inspired.

In 1825, Braille thought he had figured out a good system of writing.

In 1829, he published the first Braille alphabet.

1834 - Braille is invited to Exposition of Industry in Paris, which extended the popularity of the Braille system.

1846- a school for the blind in Amsterdam starts using Braille’s system.

In 1852, Louis Braille dies.

1854- Royal National Institute For Blind Youth officially adopt Braille as official system after fighting it for years.

Because Braille didn’t take hold as quickly in Britain, the British and Foreign Blind Association, all of whom were blind, voted in 1870. They decided Braille was the best system. Braille quickly fell into use all over the world with the exception of the United States. By 1882, the embossed letter system was over.

In the U.S, from 1868-1918, the New York Point system was used. American Braille (developed by a blind teacher named Joel W. Smith) was also used from 1878 to 1918, when the U.S switched the standardized English Braille.

Would Your Character Know Raised Type?

Remember how I said you might be able to do this depending on the time period and place?

If you have French characters, you can used the raised type method as you described in your ask if the story takes place before, probably, 1825. It would be reasonable for your character to know the raised type method if they had attended a blind school before the Braille method was adopted in 1854. Between roughly 1829 and 1854, the French blind character attending school would know about the Braille system and probably complain about their school not teaching it despite Braille himself teaching there.

Similarly, they could used raised type depending on where the story is set, when the character attended school, and what system was in place at the time. If the story is a fantasy, you could make up a history similar to what I described above, although it would be important to have schools for the blind and have Braille or the equivalent be created by a blind character.

Remember that your blind character needs to learn the raised type method if you want them to use it.

If Braille would be available in real life (such as a more modern setting), I would prefer a blind character use Braille instead. Which is why I tried to offer alternatives that were historically justified.

I don’t feel very comfortable with a blind character having to use a raised type method rather than another system, because Braille literacy is declining nowadays and something about learning a raised type method over Braille (or other system, depending on where you set the story and what they were using at the time) doesn’t sit right with me. Your character doesn’t have to use Braille specifically, but I would rather they use the system that is available to blind people at that time. For example, if your story is set in the United States, it would be fine to use American Braille or the New York Point, depending on the time period.

If your story is modern, blind people can usually read raised print letters on signs, such as for the bathroom. In fact, a lot of people who can’t read Braille get by this way. However, keep in mind that we have screen-readers and audiobooks now. People aren’t reading entire texts or even many words with this method.

As for other countries, I tried my best to research what places, such as Japan, used before Braille. For several reasons, including the European-centric search results that keep coming up over and over again, finding the correct information is proving difficult. In some cases, previous methods may have unfortunately been lost due to colonization. It is important that we acknowledge that.

I feel that it would be easier to leave the research up to you since you know where you want to set your story and your own personal background, historical knowledge, etc.

Keep in mind that not all blind people in the world had access to formal education, depending on the place, time, their social class, etc. If you want your blind character to know how to read, you’ll need to find or create a setting that allows for it.

Generally, I would prefer blind characters use methods designed for blind people, whatever that happens to be in that time or culture. Prioritizing the other characters’ needs and having a blind character learn raised type over Braille when Braille actually exists in the story doesn’t work for me.

Like always, I suggest having more than one blind character in the story to avoid tokenism. Also, since your character is going to teach another character, be sure to show your blind character’s needs and goals as well.

I hope this helps. Feel free to message me or send another ask. I am not a historian and so if anyone wants to correct anything, such as dates, or provide any relevant knowledge, please feel free. I tried my best with this question. I would be grateful for help if anyone has more information!

-BlindBeta

[nikadoesanart]

Dazai living in a shipping container analysis

I’ll be talking about the “pros” and “cons”, if you can even call them that, of Dazai living in a shipping container near a dumping site. Also I am using what architecture knowledge I do have on the subject of container homes.

This is on the longer side so brace yourself. Also Stormbringer spoiler warning, in case that wasn’t realized yet.

Before I actually start I’ll preface this by saying that I’m a former architecture student but it was with a design focus. I have also previously designed a shipping container home so although I have some knowledge, it does have its limitations.

Also this will be updated when the fan translations get to this part of Stormbringer. Currently, I’m getting the information from chazukekani and popopretty’s summaries and translations, so please check them out too!

As a general reference for what to expect of a shipping container home, the average shipping container is 8 x 20 ft or 8 x 40 ft. As a more visual example, here is a portion of the container house I designed. Note that it’s total length is 30ft because I have two 20ft long containers stacked on top of each other, with a 10ft offset. The space beyond the sliding doors is a balcony and can basically be ignored for the purpose of this analysis. With the pictured dimensions, you can consider it to be insulated from the outside, so as not to sacrifice internal space. Despite this, you can see that it feels fairly cramped even with minimal furniture (a sink, toilet and shower unit in the bathroom and a bed, desk, and wardrobe closet in the master bedroom).

Dazai’s current living arrangement

Now for comparison, let’s first take note of what’s known of Dazai’s living conditions for comparison.

he’s living in an illegal dumping site, and there are toxic substances coming from the ground because of this

“Not even a field mouse would dare to approach it.” (Popopretty)

the area is not on the map and Dazai lives near the center of it (which can easily be one of the worst parts in terms of health and safety)

the container was previously “used to export passenger cars overseas” (popopretty)

his only furniture is a fridge, (exhaust) fan, desk/table, a chair, and a bare light bulb

no one would approach “not just because the place itself was weird. It was because no one could predict how Dazai would react if someone approached his private residence.” (Popopretty)

it’s been a year since he’s joined, yet no one trusts him → he could’ve been living here since before he joined but we don’t know as of yet

he’s sitting in complete darkness, lightbulb off and door shut, until Verlaine opens the door and walks in

Verlaine asks if he’s living here because he’s afraid of property taxes but Dazai claims that he’s afraid of Verlaine. He’s not actually addressing his choice of location because he only corrected Verlaine on what he fears, and gives no actual explanation for why he chose to live here.

The “pros”

Naturally unapproachable location. Even if Dazai being PM Dazai wasn’t a factor in people staying away, the nearby smell alone means no one would normally approach it, much less suspect a Port Mafia executive of all people to be living there. It’s also unmapped territory so even less reason for him to be found. This means enemies and allies alike would have a more difficult time trying to find him (ie. to come for his life) and there’s unlikely to be anyone else around. After all, if even a mouse won’t go there why would a whole person live there?

It costs him nothing. Not that it’d make a difference with what we can assume of his financial wealth. He has money, likely more than Chuuya who lives in a nice apartment in a nice area, yet chooses to live in a shipping container in an illegal dumping site. This is beneficial for Dazai, since there’s no paper trail or record of where he lives, which goes right into my 3rd point.

Ease of abandonment. Considering his whole goal at the time is to off himself without troubling others in the process, it makes sense that he’d want to leave minimal traces behind. No unpaid rent or mortgage, no one on a waiting list to move into a nice place, and no personal belongings or attachments. This winds up being a pro/advantageous when he does leave the PM since there wasn’t a trace to follow him with in the first place. He can simply grab his few things of importance and find a new shipping container or abandoned building outside of the PM’s territory. In fact, he might’ve even been able to stay there or in that general area since no one dares to approach it in the first place.

The “cons”

Or should I say say the dangerous living conditions he’s in. I don’t find them surprising because again, he doesn’t have a long term plan to live at this point. He doesn’t have much reason to care about what happens to himself, as we can deduce from his overall disregard towards being constantly injured and in danger for example. This is also where the architectural stuff comes into play.

Let’s start with the most visible one, lack of insulation. With a shipping container home, you can insulate from the inside and lose about a foot of interior space in each direction (6 in. off each wall) or from the outside and lose the aesthetic of the textured walls. Either way, it costs time and money to do it. We know it’s not insulated from the inside because of the illustration and, in my opinion, it’s very unlikely that Dazai would’ve gotten it insulated from the outside because at the very least, it would make his container stand out among the others nearby. You need to insulate a container home because they get very hot or cold in the summer and winter respectively, as they are made of metal. I’ve heard that at the very least, Japan’s summers are HOT.

This one is a little harder to confirm and will likely be updated as fan translations are released, but a likely hazardous set up for electricity and (hopefully) plumbing. If you don’t have the insulation on the inside but you still have your electrical and plumbing, it can possibly become both a visual mess and a safety hazard. It’s possible that he kept it all in the back portion of his container for example, or maybe he has it taped to the floor or walls somewhere, but that also brings the question of where it’s connected to on the outside. Since he’s on a dumping site, then where’s the electrical going to go at the very least? Sure he can use nearby public facilities but every day? He has a fridge, single lightbulb and a fan but where is the power is connected to? In terms of plumbing, I think it’s equally likely he found a Porta potty nearby or there’s (hopefully) some sort of public or PM owned facility nearby. Really, his hygiene, especially during the PM days when he was (as far as we the audience are aware) likely at his lowest, can easily become its own separate question/discussion for another day. After all, we’re just talking about the condition of his container in this post.

The possible fumes and chemicals left over. The paint on shipping containers is meant to withstand the sea water splashing on to them, so it may contain harsh chemicals. And we know that his container was used previously to ship cars overseas, but that still leaves the possibility for things to have leaked on the inside at this time. We don’t actually know if it’s been used more than once, but seeing as we do have a usage history, I’d say there’s a fair enough chance for it to have been a single use container. Still, chemicals could’ve previously leaked and the paint may be a concern in the long run. It’s also possible that it has begun rusting as well, due to the metal being exposed to the likes of sea water. Also, let’s not forget the toxic substances from the illegal dumping site itself, possibly going into the container over time.

Also as far as we can tell, there seems to be a lack of windows. This means no natural light, aside from opening a whole door. Keep in mind that windows can help with indoor temperature control, not just natural light.

Living in a dump site, especially an illegal one. This one should speak for itself but I’ll list some concerns anyway. Seeing as it’s illegal, we can probably just forget about regulations altogether, much less any possible existing ones being followed. This means that there can be literally anything from hazardous waste material, to dangerous and sharp objects on the ground, to who knows what kind of smells and fumes, etc. In short, not a safe area to live in, for health concern reasons at a minimum.

Again, my knowledge on shipping container homes themselves is limited and I do recommend checking out Belinda Carr’s videos on some of the downsides of them from a professional’s POV.

7 reasons why shipping container homes are a scam

Responding to comments: shipping container scam video

Also, just because Dazai was making presumably LARGE amounts of money obviously doesn’t mean that he has to spend it all or live luxuriously if he doesn’t want to. It’s not that hard to infer why Dazai did choose to live in such conditions and I mainly wanted to draw attention to how these conditions can affect him, with both the advantages and disadvantages.

[hopelesshawks]

Ash and Dust Part 22- Family Reunion

18+ Dabi x fem!reader (MINORS DNI)

Summary: You first meet Dabi on the worst night of your life after unwittingly walking into the very bar the League of Villains made infamous. That should probably be the end of the story. You stumble on the remnants of one of the most infamous terrorist groups in the history of Japan, get viciously murdered or call the cops and get them arrested, the end. Except that’s not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning.

Link to change y/n to your actual name (not mobile compatible)

Masterlist Kofi (Help Lulu)

Touya watches you carefully as you sleep, his now completely white hair still dripping from the shower he’d dragged you into to try and wash the grime from the past few days off. You look small laying alone in the king size bed and he hates how fragile everything feels.

How fragile you look…

The few times you’d been conscious you hadn’t said anything to him.

Not because you couldn’t say anything to him, but because you didn’t want to. He could see it in your eyes: the hurt, the betrayal. You know he’s the one who sold you out, of course you do. He’s sure Toga taunted you with that fact every single day she had you in her claws. He would do the same if the situations were reversed. It doesn’t make it any better though and it doesn’t make him any more confident that he’ll be able to repair whatever it is the two of you used to have before he ran away and abandoned you.

The sound of an approaching car engine and tires crunching on gravel snaps him out of his thoughts. He heads downstairs with his hands shoved in his pockets, already dreading the interaction that’s about to happen. By the time he reaches the foyer Natsuo and Shouto have already stepped inside. The older of the two catches sight of Touya first, beelining for the eldest Todoroki sibling almost immediately. Natsuo takes him in, eyes trailing over each of the staples visible outside of the simple black shirt and jeans Dabi’s wearing before drifting up to the unruly white hair on Touya’s head.

“Touya.”

“Natsuo.”

Dabi’s not sure what he expected but it wasn’t for Natsuo to slug him straight across the face.

“That’s for sending a villain out to try and kill me,” Natsuo growls, although Dabi doesn’t even flinch after the impact.

“And this,” Natsuo starts, winding back before slugging Touya across the face once more, “is for whatever the fuck you did to (y/n).”

“Natsu–” Shouto warns, voice even and appeasing.

“He deserves it,” Natsuo fires back.

“You’re not wrong but there’s more important things to deal with right now,” Shouto points out.

“She’s upstairs in the old man’s room,” Touya explains, voice kept carefully neutral as his gaze stays affixed to the exact same point it landed on after getting punched.

Natsuo nods before heading in the direction with one last glance at Touya. Meanwhile, to Touya’s surprise, Shouto rests a gentle hand on his shoulder. When their eyes meet Shouto’s are soft, understanding and it throws Touya for a much bigger loop than he’ll ever admit. Shouto squeezes, not too hard, just enough to be reassuring.

“She’ll forgive you eventually,” he says, voice strong and assured.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Touya scoffs back.

“I am. She’ll forgive you, so long as you deserve it and really have changed.”

“I’m not capable of changing.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

The silence is heavy. He’s not sure he deserves to be considered a changed man. Not when his mistakes are the reason you’re beaten and broken upstairs.

“I don’t do redemption,” Touya finally confesses.

“That’s the thing about redemption… You don’t actually get a say in whether your actions have redeemed you or not. It’s the people around you that do,” Shouto refutes.

“Just because you think I’ve redeemed myself doesn’t mean she will.”

“I don’t think you’ve redeemed yourself.”

“Then what the fuck are you rambling about?”

“This is the first time I’ve thought you capable of it at all. And it’s all thanks to her. So maybe don’t give up on yourself quite yet.”

The words settle in his chest and wrap around his heart, squeezing it uncomfortably tight.

“I don’t need your reassurance,” Dabi bites out but it makes Shouto chuckle.

“Yes you do. It’s what brothers are for. Now go up and talk to your girlfriend,” Shouto smirks, clapping his older brother on the back once more before leaving the room.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Touya grumbles under his breath, cheeks slightly red as he moves to go to you anyway.

It’s odd, such a normal sibling interaction working its way into his life during what is an otherwise very abnormal situation. He never wanted siblings, certainly never wanted his youngest brother, yet if he’s being honest with himself part of him is glad to have his brothers here with him now. It’s strange having some semblance of a support system and even stranger that he’s genuinely considering using it. The thought makes him a little nauseous in all honesty.

He finds himself outside your room, his feet having carried him there so effortlessly with so little conscious thought on his part. He doesn’t enter immediately though, instead choosing to lean just out of sight in the doorway. You’re quiet, but he can still hear you talking to Natsuo and in spite of himself, he feels something in his chest ease and unwind at the sound of your voice. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the door frame, just listening to you speak. A small part of him thinks he could sob with relief but he shoves it down deep, ignoring the lump in his throat as he hears you explain to Natsuo everything Toga did to you while you were stuck with her.

Guilt and rage burn inside him in equal measure and before he knows it his feet are carrying him back downstairs so he can hunt that psychotic bitch down and make her pay for what she did to you. He’s almost to the front door when Natsuo catches him, grasping onto his shoulder and spinning him around.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going,” Natsuo demands.

“To find Toga where the fuck else,” Dabi spits, eyes burning.

“Of fucking course you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re running away! Again! Seeking petty revenge instead of handling your shit, just like you did when we were kids!”

“Fuck you! I’m not running from anything.”

“Then stay. (Y/n) needs you here, not chasing after Toga!”

“What’s going on here?” Shouto interrupts, drawn back to the foyer by the shouting.

“Natsuo’s a naive cunt who should mind his own business.”

“Touya’s a little bitch scared of his own feelings.”

“You little-”

“Just let him go.”

Your voice isn’t very loud but it still manages to cut through the argument like a knife through butter. You look exhausted, understandably so, and have to lean on the stairway railing for support. The sweats you’re wearing hang low on your hips, the loose short sleeve shirt they’re paired with revealing the bandages that evidence both your pain and the care Natsuo had put into soothing it.

“He got his stolen property back, now he needs to punish the thief. It’s that simple,” you sigh.

“That’s not-“

“It’s fine Dabi. Just go.”

With that final note you turn and trudge back to your room shutting the door behind you with a click.

“Well?” Shouto prompts.

“Well what?” Touya snaps, irritation clear in his voice.

“Are you gonna go talk to her or what?” Shouto asks.

Touya is quiet for a moment, his stubbornness not wanting to concede and chase you upstairs when you so clearly want nothing to do with him. And yet a much larger part of him knows how wrong you are and is desperate to correct you.

“Obviously I’m going to go talk to her,” he finally huffs, shoving his hands into his pockets in a self-conscious gesture.

“You owe her one hell of an apology,” Natsuo gruffly points out.

“I know that, idiot. I’m working on it,” Touya growls as he finally starts walking to the stairs again. He makes it about halfway up before he’s interrupted.

“Hey asshole!” Natsuo calls up, causing Touya to look back as he rolls his eyes.

“What?”

“Good luck!”

Natsuo’s grin is large and shit eating in contrast to Shouto’s more reserved one but both men give their older brother a thumb’s up in encouragement. Touya rolls his eyes, grumbling under his breath about them being idiots, but what he’ll never admit is that a warmth settles in his chest and for once it doesn’t feel violent.

A/N: Only two more posts after this one! It's been a wild ride and I can't believe it's coming to a close now

Taglist: @thechroniclesofawriter @simpsfortodoroki @ahtsuwu @002opdestiny @larkspyrr @oikawaandkuroostan @tina-98 @vibesdontlie @clubfairy @oddball215 @myfavoriteficsandsuch @h0wab0utw3d0ntd0that @alyssa6marie @bleuchichiriq

[hanyohime]

Rainbow Pearls & Kagome 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

So I've been reading similar theories on Twitter and I have similar questions about the pearls in the show.

Did Kagome create these pearls all Midoriko style (shit I hope not) or did Root Head make them in an attempt to seal Kagomes powers away? Where are they, how did they get there, what abilities do they have that make them so special?

This is my perspective on the info:

So there's 7 colours, 7 pearls, and 7 presumably missing characters (Sorry Jaken doesn't make that cut).

I believe each time they (the new crew) find a pearl they find a missing character and or memories that will piece together what happened on the night of the fire, which may also be a key into fixing the past.

But WHAT about these memories will bring these characters back? What abilities do these pearls have that help this journey along?? That's what I don't get about the show yet. The YouTube channel Axlebeats had some good background knowledge on Japanese themes, as well as a video about the pearls, their colours and colour symbolism. Anywho...

I think that in an attempt to protect her friends and loved ones from being absorbed by Root Head (Neno Kuni) Kagome sealed herself, Shippo, Miroku, Sango, Rin, Sesshomaru, and Inuyasha into these pearls.

Kagomes's spiritual powers must be stronger now, I bet her years of training has helped her gain interesting miko knowledge and powers. Many of the priestesses in the OG Inuyasha had abilities in sealing living beings or power into objects. I believe Kagome has the power to seal things as well, such as individuals into pearls.

I also have this idea that the pearls were something that were already in existence. Something not fully created by Kagome, but they became the Rainbow Pearls because they were only objects available for Kagome to bind everyone to. Or maybe they were the Rainbow Pearls before her possessing them? Not sure.

Where did they come from? I have a cute thought about it.

Maybe they were a gift from Inuyasha? A shell with rouge has been seen before in the series. Much like the one his mother Izaioy had passed down to him, the one he had gifted to Kikyo, Inuyasha set out to recreate it. Unfortunately his mother's rouge shell was destroyed by Naraku when he attacked Kikyo before she sealed Inuyasha to the tree.

To tie in the shell and pearls with Moroha is a theory that Inuyasha brings Moroha along on his little quest to make the shell. Maybe she is the one that picked up or is given the pearls while her father searches for the prefect shell. Perhaps Moroha brings them back with her as her own gift to her mother.

I believe Moroha has a pearl and the rouge now. I have read in some translations of Moroha that: when she puts on her lipstick that is carried in a shell with a red pearl, she turns into the 'Crimson Night Demon of National Destruction' and acts very wildly.

If the pearls have abilities I think that the one she has pertains to strength. She's so young and only 1/4 demon, to be able to fend for yourself at such a young age without strength would be difficult, but I like to think besides having the pearl, she may have been supported a little by someone. Like maybe Kaede from time to time, or one intriguing theory I read was Koga helping raise Moroha. It was pointed out that her clothes are similar in style to the wolf demon tribe. How amazing would that be for Inuyasha to find out he is now indebted to his sworn rival for helping raise his only daughter.

Anyways... whatever happens at the end of the night of the fire, I strongly feel that Moroha will be left with the robe of the fire rat, the shell and a pearl... the only things left behind of her parents.

What if Moroha is carrying her father around and doesn't even realize it!? So when she uses the rouge it gives her a boost in some kind of power that makes her fight with great strength? Maybe it boosts her demonic energy? So with that I believe Inuyasha is the Red pearl.

At the same time we know that pearls have been used in the show before to seal away secret passages and presumably memories/visions like the black pearl in Inuyasha's eye. Which was created by Hosenki, an oyster demon who had the power to create magical jewels. He has long passed but his son remains, however he is in training and would not reach the level of his father for another 100 years, or so he told the OG crew.

But that wouldn't mean he wasn't creating pearls for practice! Maybe Hosenki Jr. made the rainbow pearls and they were entrusted or maybe even made for Kagome? For what? I'm not sure. Like always never 100% sold on my own theories but for series continuity this makes sense. Where else would they get magical pearls?

Something that I noted and alot of others have noticed this too, is that there seems to be a certain color scheme with the show. They're some of the commonly used Japanese main colours, but I'm more so focusing on the colours they pair with characters. The new Inuyasha cafe's that have opened up in Japan have shown particular colours for products that make me feel like they are important and have some kind of meaning behind it.

These are coasters in the cafe, I know it seems silly but the colours match exactly with the Rainbow Pearls! Look at how they are all within a circle compared to other merchandise photos.

So in going with this color matching theory, what if Hisui has his Father! Miroku's colour is blue on the cafe coaster and the largest bead (or pearl?) on Hisui's left arm appears to be light blue in colour. It would make more sense that, if it is one of the pearls, it'd be Miroku because the prayer beads are more of a symbol for him rather than Sango.

If I'm going based on the colors of the Final Act intro, Sango's colour are also represented as blue, but I'm pretty sure when it comes to these pearls, her colour is going to be the coral pearl.

I'm just guessing but if I had to match the other colors with characters then it would be Green for Kagome, Orange for Shippo, Yellow for Rin and Grey/Silver? for Sesshomaru.

It's that or Green for Jaken?? I have this other scary theory that Kagome sealed everyone away and then didn't have the energy left to fight of Root Head so her only option was to seal it and herself into the Sacred Tree/Time tunnel. This would make sense why Inuyasha is looking to the tree in the promo poster because she may be trapped in there. Or! Maybe some of the pearls are lost in different times in history and the girls go looking for them, that would correspond with the teaser that they will be time traveling as a group. It would also explain why some characters seem to be completely missing.

Thats all I have for now!

Nov 2020: For those messaging me to debunk these theories, I posted this the day before the first episode aired, chill out...

[aeonmagnus]

Happy 20th Anniversary Robots In Disguise!

This year, and today in particular, marks the 20-year anniversary of Transformers Robots in Disguise airing in the United States.  This was the official English language dub of the Japanese show Transformers Car Robots, which aired in Japan the year before.   This show and it’s accompanying toy line were a big shift in the Transformers brand and affected how things moved forward in the new millennium.  It was also a big influence on me and this website in it’s early years, so both the brand and TFW2005 may not be what it is today without it.

We hope you will read on after the break to check out our celebration of Robots in Disguise on it’s 20th!

Intro

The following is not a comprehensive article on the show proper, but rather a trip down memory lane from my personal perspective.  It was a period of change in my life, in the fandom, in the brand, and in the world – all happening at once.  Robots in Disguise was smack dab in the middle of it all and I think that’s why it still resonates with me all these years later.  For a deeper dive into the world of Robots In Disguise you can check RIDForever.info, a site I maintain just about RID and Car Robots. The 2021 updates are here, and the 2017 round of updates are here.  I’d also suggest checking the TFWe issue all about RID over on the 2005 Boards.  Now, onto today’s festivities…

The Show

RID, and yes I say RID as if it is the only RID.  If you must reference that other RID show and it’s off-shoots, refer to it as RID 201x, thanks. 😊 RID aired during the Fox Kids programming block on a Saturday morning, with additional episodes set to air each weekday during the afternoon hours.  Instead of stretching the show out over the course of 30+ weeks with only a new ep each weekend, they were going to blaze through it non-stop.  By the end of the first week, we would have been 7 eps in.  That however hit a big roadblock due to 9/11 just three days later.  While some local markets did air the episodes, many larger city networks, and especially east coast markets, stuck with news coverage.   Many of us did not catch the early episodes on TV the first go around.  In addition, several of the episodes got pulled from TV due to depictions of buildings being destroyed and other similar visuals which understandably could upset children that just experienced 9/11.  So right off the bat, the new millennium and new era of Transformers were dealing with a new reality.

The show, for those that don’t know – was a weird one-off in Transformers history.  We had G1 and then the G2 remixes for a bit.  Beast Wars came on the scene and ran all the way through 2000 with it’s successor – Beast Machines.   During the Beast Wars era – Japan did a couple of their own Beast Wars shows, non-CGI extensions of what we saw in the US.   Their market wasn’t quite ready for full CGI so they stuck with traditional anime.  When Hasbro decided to continue Beast Wars into Beast Machines, Takara went a completely different way – a traditional animated show which brought back Autobots and “Decepticons”, mixing them in with the beasts.  They focused the toys on a couple new and complex molds, then filled the rest of the line with repaints of previous toys.  Old 2nd tier Beast Wars toys, G2 Laser Prime, and even some Generation 1 molds in the form of the Combaticons got new life as new characters in this show, capped with the biggest TF of them all at the time – a repainted G1 Fortress Maximus, now Brave Maximus.  It was the prototype for what the Transformers brand did for years to come – repainting old toys into new characters.  Universe, Classics, Botcon, and even some Generations runs used this method to give us some great toys in the 00s.

While there is a very complicated and long explanation for how every single Japanese show is one continuity, to someone casually starting with Car Robots it was a refresh, a new story, a new arrival on Earth.  The Autobots vs the Predacons, and eventually the Combatrons/Decepticons. It was a hard cut from the last 5 years or so of CGI Beasts.  Hand drawn traditional animation featuring vehicle Transformers.  It wasn’t G1, but many of the folks who grew up with G1 were just getting out of college around this time.  They were rediscovering their childhood love of Transformers through Beast Wars, flea market finds, raids on their parents’ attics and basements, and for the internet savvy – imports of Japanese reissues from Takara.  It was a perfect storm of nostalgia; a return to Autobots and Decepticons was welcomed by kids and adults alike.

RID and TFW2005

In the years leading up to Car Robots, I was just getting into the internet, coding, design, some digital music, and all the possibility that came with it.  Beast Wars, especially when it hit Season 2/3 and the inclusion of G1 lore, really got me focusing on Transformers again as a hobby.  I eventually combined the two newfound hobbies into one and Transformer World 2005 was born.  At no point did I ever think it would last 20+ years and take over my life in the way it did.  I started the full version of TFW2005 around April 2000, with some starts and stops before that.  That was right around when Car Robots started airing in Japan.  Through the magic of 56k internet, I was able to connect with folks in Japan and get them to send me VHS tapes of Car Robots.  Really nice, high-quality tapes too, I still have them hehe.  To the younglings reading – try to picture this: no youtube, no video sharing. The concept of streaming anything did not exist yet. Napster and the eventual peer to peer stuff hadn’t fully kicked off.  Plus, we were all viewing the internet on giant computers in our rooms at the speed of 1x on your phone.  Less than 1 bar 3G mobile speeds today.

Yes, someone recorded episodes from TV to video tape over there, did that a couple weeks at a time, then physically mailed them across the world to me, who then got them on the internet.  Can you imagine waiting weeks to watch an episode of TV the size of a twitter profile avatar?  Crazy.  Uploading a full episode to the internet was a big pain in the ass, not easily done.  I decided to get a converter that allowed me to plug my VCR into the computer and encode the tape into digital format.  From there, it was reduced using Microsoft’s WMV technology so that the episodes were about 5 MB each.  30 minute episodes at 5MB each. Dimensions – 176 x 144 pixels.  4k video today – 3840 x 2160 pixels.  You can imagine that video looked like crap.  But we didn’t care – we were blown away.  Old school animation, vehicles, some cool Japanese anime vibes, it was what we as G1 fans kinda had in the back of our heads on what Transformers should be in a new era, and we were seeing it.  Most of us had no clue what they were saying or what was going on.  Also didn’t care.  I still to this day think CR/RID is better like that.

So one of the first things TFW2005 did on the internet was provide these super small windows into Car Robots and what was going on in Japan. It helped get US fans hyped up for what Transformers could be. It got us wanting the toys, and importers bringing the Takara toy line over were moving serious product.  It helped swing Hasbro, who was planning to return to Autobots and Decepticons again down the road, to move that schedule up.  Instead of running Beast Machines until 2002 and then starting what we now know as the Unicron Trilogy, it was cut short.  Robots in Disguise as a toy line and show came over in 2001, ran fast and hard for a year with non stop releases, got extended because it did so well, and then faded into the Universe line of repaints.  The new millennium of Transformers was here and Robot In Disguise kicked it off with a bang.

Wrap Up

As we all continue with collecting Transformers now, regardless if you tagged into the fandom during G1, Beasties, the Unicron Trilogy, the Movies, or just yesterday – let’s take the time to give Car Robots and RID some props!  It set the tone for what the new millennium of the brand would be.  It gave us some toys ahead of their time.  It solidified the repaint as an accepted thing in the hobby. And it gave us one crazy 39 episode run of TV that’s still a fun ride 20 years later.

For those that would like to learn more about RID and Car Robots – I still maintain a Robots in Disguise website that archives everything I have or came across.  There is a lot there if you want to go on a tour of all the awesome Car Robots and Robots In Disguise era stuff.  Check it out at RIDFOREVER.INFO! FIYAH!

Let us know what you think and remember from the good old days of RID on the 2005 Boards here!

Epilogue

If someone over there at Hasbro is reading – can someone please figure out who owns the rights to the show in the US market and then get it out on DVD in full, finally?  Work all that funky licensing stuff out (if there is any) and get it done.  The US has never had access to it via an official release.  Maybe get it up on YouTube like G1?  Something.  Announcing plans for that before the end of 2021 would be a nice 20th anniversary tribute.

[atelierwriting]

idk if it's just me but as someone who's asian, the amount of "asian wips" by white creators rubs me the wrong way bc while representation is important, a lot of them tend to gravitate towards asian fetishization when it comes to their aesthetics and idk... it just doesn't feel as genuine.

i want to preface it by saying a few things. first: i am asian american, second/third generation, depending on who you ask. second: i am not gatekeeping asian wips. as i said in the conclusion, all i am asking is that you respect the culture, stay away from stereotypes, and don’t use it simply because it would have “interesting/pretty” vibes.

i have a lot of opinions about this, so let’s break it all down.

poc representation is important

fine line of fetishization

the big loud sentence i keep repeating about this issue is that YOU CANNOT PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT YOU LIKE FROM A CULTURE THAT IS NOT YOURS

an explanation about the big loud sentence i keep repeating

conclusion

more under the cut. warning: very long post. (another sidenote: this is all just applicable to writeblr wips, but i might have gotten carried away)

tagging @mitskism!

1. poc representation is important

this is a given. i’m sure you heard of how, when growing up, we couldn’t find people who looked like us in books, shows, and movies. we couldn’t find stories that really resonated with us and touched upon the same struggles we were facing within our own cultures. with all this said and done, poc representation is so incredibly important because media is what helps people understand and shape their identity. media teaches people because of how it proliferates. 

the feeling of finally seeing a character that you can relate to is unlike any other, but imagine that feeling when that is the only character who resembles you in any way. imagine seeing the characters that look like you, behave like you, and identify the same way as you being constantly used as a stepping stone for the main character--who, decidedly, does not look like you or behave like you or identify the same way as you. in fact, that main character looks like every other main character out there. 

that’s not the representation you want. you want stories about people like you. success stories, stories where they’re the ones who achieve their goals and get that happily ever after. but there is so little of that out there that it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.

so yes, poc representation is important.

of course, poc representation isn’t the only important representation out there. but representation has to be done right. 

2. fine line of fetishization

what is fetishization? i think the anon here says it very well: gravitating towards a certain aesthetic without really acknowledging where it came from or the history that comes from it. all in all, though, fetishization of a culture is taking things at face value from a culture is not yours, without any real understanding of what those things are or if it’s even respectful of you to take.

i wrote a whole paper recently on colonialism, imperialism, and the idea of the white man’s burden and the problems of white saviors. there’s a recurring theme in history that i’ve noticed: taking things from other cultures and turning it into the next great thing, when it wasn’t even theirs to begin with.

but that’s a completely different topic.

the thing about fetishization in writeblr wips--particularly that of asian fetishization, since that’s the topic of the ask--is that it can be hard to pick out. you might get this vaguest feeling that something’s off about the wip, but not have any concrete proof to back it up. so where can the line be drawn? that’s hard to say. the line between giving representation and fetishization is incredibly thin, but i’d say answering the following question is a good point to start.

1. why is this character/setting/etc asian?

if the answer to this question is because it looks good, or because you like the aesthetics, that is fetishization. of course, you have to consider this as well: whether or not you are asian yourself and if you have done the proper research.

subtopic: the fetishization of asian culture

i’m sure you’ve seen this around: things that take on an asian-like aesthetic simply for the thrill of resembling something from an asian culture. it’s the stereotype of submissive asian women and yellow fever. it’s the usage of random asian-sounding character names in wips. i’m not going to delve too deep into this because i have discussion in 20 minutes.

asian culture hasn’t been seen as something “attractive” until recently. even now, people still look down at asian people as the Other, an unidentifiable other race--or maybe an entire other species--that is inferior to the western world. growing up in america, asian kids had to divorce themselves from their culture in order to assimilate. and now, suddenly, the culture that their classmates sneered at is aesthetic. it’s desired. it’s acceptable now.

asian culture is made out to be a hot commodity, and that’s not right. you can’t make an entire culture a commodity. this brings me to my next point.

3. the big loud sentence i keep repeating about this issue is that YOU CANNOT PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT YOU LIKE FROM A CULTURE THAT IS NOT YOURS

YOU CANNOT PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT YOU LIKE FROM A CULTURE THAT IS NOT YOURS.

4. an explanation about the big loud sentence i keep repeating

the culture isn’t yours. it never will be yours before it is ours. and i’m sorry about how heavy that sounds but it’s true. you cannot pick and choose what you want from a culture with such a long history of its own. you cannot put up an image of a rising red sun because it fits the aesthetic of a wip page, along with images of other commonly depicted asian symbols, without acknowledging that the rising red sun has been used as a symbol for japanese imperialism. 

(i’m bringing up this example because of this and also there’s. a lot to unpack in the history of japan and other asian countries)

5. conclusion

what i’m getting at is that you can do asian wips, if you respect the culture, stay away from stereotypes, and don’t use it simply because it would have “interesting/pretty” vibes.

[newcatwords]

where is hawai'i? can you point to it on a map?

if someone asks you to point to hawai'i on a map, where would you point?

before colonization, there was (and continues to be) an island called "hawai'i". the entire chain of islands is called "hawaii" and there is a state called "hawaii" made up of a large number of those islands.

now, because there are too many things named "hawaii," the island of hawai'i is often called "the big island", because o'ahu, the island where the city of honolulu is located, is what many people think of when they think of "hawaii". it's a mess.

on top of that, we have the "main hawaiian islands" (aka "southeastern islands" aka "windward islands") vs the "outer islands" (aka "northwestern islands" aka "leeward islands").

most maps of "hawaii" show only the "main" islands. the map above (created by USGS) shows more of the hawaiian islands, but omits the names of two of the islands in the "main" chain: lana'i & kaho'olawe. these are not insignificant omissions. lana'i is 98% owned by larry ellison, founder & chairman of oracle corporation. kaho'olawe has been relentlessly used & abused by the west. it has been used for ranchland, military training, and most notably, as a munitions testing site, resulting in the continued contamination of the island. after many years of protests & lawsuits by native hawaiians, the island is now only accessible by native hawaiians for cultural, spiritual, & subsistence reasons.

meanwhile, this tourist mug with a creepy colonial-style map of hawaii includes both kaho'olawe & lana'i. good job, tourist mug!

there are actually over a hundred islands in the hawaiian archipelago. the state of hawaii includes 137 of them (source). midway atoll (made up of 3 islands) is part of the archipelago, but not part of the state. it is one of america's territories: an unorganized unincorporated territory.

additionally, some of the islands "are too small to appear on maps, and others, such as Maro Reef, only appear above the water's surface during times of low tide. Others, such as Shark and Skate islands, have completely eroded away." [source: wikipedia page "list of islands of hawaii"].

in the course of writing this post, i failed to find a map that shows & names all the hawaiian islands and failed to even find a list of all of them (plus if an island only appears sometimes or has disappeared entirely, what do you even do with that?). if you find either or both of those, let me know in comments.

so where and what "hawaii" is remains a mystery.

but this has not prevented commercial & official interests from using maps of "hawaii" in all kinds of places! here on the islands, hawaii map imagery is all around.

maps are very common on tourist items:

the hawaiian telcom logo uses dots roughly arranged in the pattern of the islands on a map:

but i guess only five islands are worth including (i understand. branding needs come above all else!).

this souvenir cloth item is interesting because it includes all the main islands (including ni'ihau, lana'i, and kaho'olawe - which are often excluded), but smooshes them into the available space without much consideration for where they are in relation to each other:

the postcard above has the main islands in their rough places, but squishes them all together so that they fit in the space. also the islands are made more similar in size to each other so that you can better see the little illustrations.

here's a more "official" map to show where the islands "should be" in relation to each other, and their sizes relative to each other (although both of those can change depending on what projection the map uses):

in my mind, though, the ultimate hawaii map fantasy lives on the ubiquitous reusable walmart cloth bag (available for 50 cents at checkout to all who have forgotten to bring the right number of bags. there's a plastic shopping bag ban in hawaii.):

in the walmart commercial universe (wcu), the only islands that exist are islands that have a walmart. the general outlines of the islands & their general orientation is preserved (along with a rough topology too!), attempting to convey a sense of adhering to a recognizable reality, but islands without a walmart have been not only omitted, but the space where they would be has been eliminated as well - as if they were never there to begin with. in the walmart version of reality, what makes something "hawaii" is whether or not it has a walmart on it.

i've had a lot of time to think about this remarkable image because i have a whole bunch of these bags. this is the bag of the people - everyone uses it for everything. the one in the above photo is in a typical state - pretty rough - because it probably came from the side of the road. you can almost always find one on the side of the road. so wherever you are, you are probably within sight of the walmart version of the islands.

so why does it matter whether or not you can point to "hawaii" on a map? well, maps are political documents, meaning that they reflect the vision of whoever has the power to put the map in front of your eyes. so if you're the one with the power to make some of the most commonly-seen maps of hawaii and you decide to remove a few islands, well that can really shape what people think "hawaii" is! we're a sea of islands - many people here have only ever been to one or two of the islands. if it wasn't on the map, you might not know that it existed at all.

hawaii is incredibly important to the united states, not just for tourism, but in terms of global strategy. it's the largest outpost of american power in the middle of the pacific. it puts america & its troops half an ocean closer to some of america's biggest competitors, most notably, china. it's a springboard to all the other island territories of the pacific (which you maybe haven't heard of because they almost never appear on maps):

once you see a map of all of america's territories in the pacific, along with the exclusive economic zones (eez) that extend out for 200 miles around each island, you start to get a better feel for the extent of america's power in the pacific.

when a place is left off the map, it can be easy to make it (including its people!) invisible. so if you're america, with bases across the islands of the pacific, with a nightmarish history of atomic weapons testing in the pacific (rendering islands uninhabitable and leaving both land and waters too contaminated for people to use), perhaps you might not want some of these places to appear on the map.

in Foreign Policy in Focus, Khury Petersen-Smith writes:

"Many of us living in North America who are concerned about climate change, for example, have a sense that Pacific Islands are facing particularly severe impacts from rising sea levels. But that knowledge tends to be vague and limited, as actual residents of these islands are rarely invited to the table to speak for themselves.

This is not accidental. Commenting during the Nixon administration on U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which share the same region of the Pacific as Guam, Henry Kissinger said “there are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?”

The U.S. has long had an interest in Marshallese and other Pacific Islanders remaining “out there” in the American mind. This marginalization helps allow the U.S. to carry out military operations in the region, along with policies that further climate change and other harms, while keeping most Americans unaware of these practices’ impacts in the Pacific." [FPIF]

often hawai'i (and alaska - which is in many ways similar to hawai'i in its relation to the contiguous US) doesn't even appear on national maps of the USA.

here's a screenshot from the new york times homepage on march 21, 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to spread:

there is no alaska and no hawai'i on those maps. so if you were looking for information on the most important issue that was happening at the time, and you live in or are concerned about hawai'i and/or alaska, there would just be nothing. and what does it say about the people who run the top newspaper in america that they decided it was fine to omit these two states? are they not states? do they not matter? do the readers in those states not matter? and this is not an unusual thing at all. it happens all the time.

i'd like to finish by sharing with you a poem by CHamoru poet Craig Santos Perez. CHamoru are the indigenous people of the mariana islands (which include guam, saipan, tinian, rota, and others).

in this poem, Craig Santos Perez writes about not appearing on the map...

“Off-Island CHamorus”

My family migrated to California when I was 15 years old. During the first day at my new high school, the homeroom teacher asked: “Where are you from?” “The Mariana Islands,” I answered. He replied: “I’ve never heard of that place. Prove it exists.” And when I stepped in front of the world map on the wall, it transformed into a mirror: the Pacific Ocean, like my body, was split in two and flayed to the margins. I found Australia, then the Philippines, then Japan. I pointed to an empty space between them and said: “I’m from this invisible archipelago.” Everyone laughed. And even though I descend from oceanic navigators, I felt so lost, shipwrecked

on the coast of a strange continent. “Are you a citizen?” he probed. “Yes. My island, Guam, is a U.S. territory.” We attend American schools, eat American food, listen to American music, watch American movies and television, play American sports, learn American history, dream American dreams, and die in American wars. “You speak English well,” he proclaimed, “with almost no accent.” And isn’t that what it means to be a diasporic CHamoru: to feel foreign in a domestic sense.

Over the last 50 years, CHamorus have migrated to escape the violent memories of war; to seek jobs, schools hospitals, adventure, and love; but most of all, we’ve migrated for military service, deployed and stationed to bases around the world. According to the 2010 census, 44,000 CHamorus live in California, 15,000 in Washington, 10,000 in Texas, 7,000 in Hawaii, and 70,000 more in every other state and even in Puerto Rico. We are the most “geographically dispersed” Pacific Islander population within the United States, and off-island CHamorus now outnumber our on-island kin, with generations having been born away from our ancestral homelands, including my daughters.

Some of us will be able to return home for holidays, weddings, and funerals; others won’t be able to afford the expensive plane ticket to the Western Pacific. Years and even decades might pass between trips, and each visit will feel too short. We’ll lose contact with family and friends, and the island will continue to change until it becomes unfamiliar to us. And isn’t that, too, what it means to be a diasporic CHamoru: to feel foreign in your own homeland.

Even after 25 years, there are still times I feel adrift, without itinerary or destination. When I wonder: What if we stayed? What if we return? When the undertow of these questions begins pulling you out to sea, remember: migration flows through our blood like the aerial roots of the banyan tree. Remember: our ancestors taught us how to carry our culture in the canoes of our bodies. Remember: our people, scattered like stars, form new constellations when we gather. Remember: home is not simply a house, village, or island; home is an archipelago of belonging.

–Craig Santos Perez

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thank you for reading this post! please let me know if you see any errors.

if you'd like to learn more about some important issues in the pacific, here are just a few:

july 2, 2020: "US says leaking nuclear waste dome is safe; Marshall Islands leaders don't believe it" - Los Angeles Times

may 30, 2021: "Pacific Plunder: this is who profits from the mass extraction of the region's natural resources." - The Guardian

april 5, 2021: "75 years after nuclear testing in the Pacific began, the fallout continues to wreak havoc" - The Conversation

june 4, 2021: "Guam won’t give up more land to the U.S. military without a fight" - The World (radio program)

aug. 24, 2021: "The US is building a military base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Micronesian residents have questions." - The World (radio program)

and if you'd like to learn more about how maps are political, here are a couple articles:

june 5, 2014: "The politics of making maps" by Amanda Ruggeri, for BBC

july 11, 2018: "Politics and Cartography: The Power of Deception through Distortion" by John Erskine, for the Carnegie Ethics Online Monthly Column

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                                  Benten, the Goddess of Fortune,                            whose origins stem from Ancient Japan.                          She is now the owner of Halo Salon & Spa.

FC NAME/GROUP: park choa, ex-aoa GOD NAME: benten PANTHEON:  japanese OCCUPATION: owner of halo HEIGHT: 160 cm (5'3) WEIGHT: 42 kg (92 lbs) DEFINING FEATURES: N/A

PERSONALITY: Ben is very friendly and often find themselves in company of very different people. They are selfless and always willing to help others, a very fine intent for as long as they don’t expect anything much in return. This goddess is empathetic to others needs and wants somewhat feel a deep sense of responsibility to those around them. She loves listening to other stories, hopes, dreams and wishes maybe subtly help them achieve if she believes they are good person.

Every little thing is important to her, she keeps things journal keeping trinkets to remember memories of old. Ben can be counted on to remember birthdays and special occasions, uphold traditions, and shower their loved ones with gestures of care and support. The goddess tends to withhold what she's feeling others then often express it through a melancholy song on her lute as she never always find the right words to express how she truly feels.

HISTORY: Once upon a time, the dragon-king of Munetsuchi had the third daughter named Benzaiten they came from the lake of the center of the world. A deity of everything that flows: speech, knowledge, music, and water. The most important role is being one of Seven Lucky Gods, sailing the heavens Takarabune ( Treasure Ship ) with her siblings visiting human ports giving them good fortune in the beginning of the new year. She loved playing biwa lute for her family as they travelled, always such merry band of misfits. They all had their roles to play, the art of them truly shown how they happy they were together yet as years went by their roles changed.

The day when the fierce dragon who terrorized the people along the coast of Kanagawa, named Gozuru set eyes on the goddess and fell in love, Benzaiten only agreed to marry, on the condition that he stop his violent behavior. She created Enoshima Island as her home, lay down her roots wanting a peaceful calm life. As much she enjoyed her yearly trips with her siblings, she wanted a place to call home. Over time, both the dragon and Benzaiten became be protectors of the entire region gifting them good fortune. Alas, Gozuru passed away he lay down beneath, that was the moment Benten left the island to travel the world.

In her travels, she found so many shrines dedicated to herself, it warms her heart seeing how many mortals still worshiped her gifting her offerings in the hope of finding love or fortune, or both. Benzaiten would be more happy to bestow good fortune onto them, she can’t change their destiny yet she can bless little luck on their side. Being the sentimental goddess she was, Ben loved writing in her journal about the encounters with humans even other deities as time changed, she changed it to scrapbooking as she wishes to remember every little precious moment. The goddess always had big heart, love affairs of many even her children were blessing too.

Whispers about a place where she could find her children, where other gods as made themselves at home. She leaped at the opportunity thus made her way to Mount Phoenix, taking the ownership over Halo, salon & spa. Every day is good hair day when Ben is around, it was perfect way to pamper people to make them feel wonderful hopefully with little bit of lady luck on their day, they will get that one perfect day.

POWERS: She has incredibly good fortune ( luck is on the side ) the goddess have no control over this power as things considered "lucky" randomly and unexpectedly happens to them despite any predestined fate or logical reason.

She can temporarily bestow some of their own good luck upon others for a short period of time. Benten usual application is blessing the water she either washes the person hair with or simply puts into their drink.

STRENGTHS:

Generally good things tend to happen to the goddess and tends to quickly slip out of bad situations

She usually knows how to make the best out of a situation, always picking the right choice by chance.

Sometimes she doesn't even bestow luck onto people, instead she is good at supporting and instilling confidence into the person.

Naturally skilled in the arts from dancing, playing musical instruments and painting.

If she is well connected with the person she is bestowing the luck on, she can identify what they are unlucky in and there is more chance ( not 100% ) the luck granted would help them drastically.

WEAKNESSES:

She has no control over the things considered lucky and unexpected happenings.

People tend to have back luck around her to balance out the laws' positive & negative outcomes.

She is a highly sensitive emotional goddess who is prone to being overwhelmed especially if she sees others infected with bad luck.

The luck bestowed on a person is only temporary, it tends to last about 3 days.

Her powers are tied with her emotions depending how she feels about the person depending how potent the luck. Random strangers or people she doesn't like will end up getting no luck, even bad luck in way. .