#solve language problem

[lilybug-02]

oh no.

Bug Fact: American Sign Language for "bug/insect" is made by signing the number "3" , placing your thumb to your nose, and bending your index and middle fingers twice. Pictured Below!

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Volume 2 Masterpost

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[starcurtain]

Hey! I apologize if this question has been asked before since it seems like a pretty obvious one, but where do you think the idea of Aventurine being a sex slave came from? Other than the obvious factor of it being something fun for the fandom to mess around with, I mean.

It's something I kind of took for granted as being true before playing his quest, but after finishing it I realized there wasn't really any indication. The only thing I can really think of is his master's comments about him having a good body. Is there anything in his behavior you can think of that would lead to this conclusion if it wasn't a popular fan interpretation already/kind of just an easy conclusion to reach with a slave character?

(also kind of related but what do you think of the idea that he sleeps around/with his clients to make deals? he's obviously willing to sexualize himself with the boob window, but that doesn't necessarily mean he goes further.)

As far as I can tell, the idea that Aventurine was involved in sexual slavery comes from three (maybe four) places:

First, the comment from the master about Aventurine's appearance. People were holding this comment up as refutable proof that Aventurine was used in sexual slavery on top of being tossed into the Hunger Games; however, the response from other players on this interpretation, especially the Chinese side of the fandom, was very mixed, with a lot of people pointing out that the context in the game probably meant the slave master was talking about Aventurine's ability to attract attention from fans watching the literal Sigonian Hunger Games, rather than having a direct sexual-slavery connotation.

Second, the comment from Sparkle about stripping naked and getting on his knees for Sunday. This one has way more implication in English than I think it might for an Eastern audience, actually. In English, this pretty much sounds like Sparkle saying Aventurine trades sexual favors for success in his gambles. However, I suspect the original intention in Chinese was more about humiliation. Western audiences don't have as much history with honor-based prostration, i.e. accepting corporal humiliation as a form of reconciliation that Eastern audiences might be more familiar with. And in any case, Sparkle is Sparkle. She probably just went for the lowest blow she could think of here.

Third, the general assumption that if Sigonian slaves were being chained, branded, beaten, sent to death matches, etc., it seems logical that they would also be taken advantage of in other ways. I honestly think this is probably the fairest take--many, many real slaves around the world faced (and still face!) sexual abuse, so if slaves from Sigonia were treated so poorly you could make them fight to the death for entertainment, it stands to reason they were probably also not safe from other forms of assault. We also have no idea what happened to Kakavasha in any of the years between his being a tiny child fleeing the massacre and then being purchased as a slave as a late-teens-early-twenties person. That's a very long time for a child to have to survive on their own on an extremely hostile planet and not face risks of all kinds or end up needing to do unspeakable things to survive. So I think this is at least not that far-fetched, although it's important to say there's nothing in the game that directly confirms this.

And fourth: I read a tweet semi-recently that stated that one of the Chinese (or maybe it was Japanese) names for a quest Aventurine was involved in was actually a reference to a book about a teenage sexual assault survivor. However, when I tried to verify this myself, I couldn't find any quest Aventurine was in that was based on a book about sexual assault in either English, Chinese, or Japanese. It's possible I just missed something, but I'm taking this one with a bit of a grain of salt currently, since I can't confirm it personally.

Regarding your other question, about whether I think Aventurine sleeps around to make deals...

I definitely think he does not, for one major reason.

First, I will admit that Aventurine is definitely willing to use his appearance to his advantage. This is pretty obvious. He wears incredibly flashy clothes, baths himself in cologne, overloads on glittering golden jewels, and absolutely calls attention to his appearance when working with clients.

We see him actively doing this in his Moment Among the Stars video, where he is clearly using his looks as an equal tool (to his wealth), to daze his target.

It's not an accident that he says things like "Use me as you wish," with all the explicit connotations preserved. The implication is there. However, unless he was absolutely backed into a corner, I think that implication is all it will ever be.

The reason I think this is that the devs go out of their way to give Aventurine three fairly noticeable physical behaviors in his in-game scenes:

For one, he has some of the most closed off body language of any character in the game.

Aventurine's default conversation pose is arms crossed directly and tightly in front of himself. This is like "Defensive Body Language 101." By crossing your arms, you put a symbolic barrier between yourself and the person you're speaking to, and also ensure that your hands are up and available in case you actually need to physically defend yourself.

Virtually all of Aventurine's conversations take place from this stance, no matter who he is speaking to (from the Trailblazer all the way to Topaz). He deliberately closes his pose off and tightens up his silhouette, which just sends a glaring "Don't touch me" message.

This closing off is also blatantly apparent when you compare it to the deliberately open poses he strikes while trying to make himself seem accessible to others (like tempting clients) or seem powerful (to intimidate):

Complementing this habit of closing himself off is a second noticeable aspect of his body language: He frequently avoids eye contact to the point that he even holds conversations while entirely facing away from the person he's speaking to.

I might be a bit lenient and say maybe he's doing this to on purpose to be mysterious, whoo~~ But... in all honestly, he just does this with everyone, even with Ratio while trying to talk about an actual important issue (wanting to look into Acheron's real identity). Hell, even the fake Aventurine does it to himself!

We can even say that wearing the rose-tinted glasses in the first place is another intentional barrier, one Aventurine deliberately removes in specific moments to give people the (false) impression that he's "letting them in" to his circle:

Now, this might be a bit more complicated in Aventurine's case, because eye contact has a whole extra meaning when eyes are the defining trait of your species and come with particularly challenging racial stereotypes. So it may be that Aventurine is simply used to conducting conversation while looking away to minimize racial prejudice against his eyes' unique appearance.

However, I'd also argue that the devs deliberately turned his entire model away in cutscene after cutscene to create a clear sense of being inaccessible, unapproachable, and unwilling to engage in the physical intimacy of standing closely, directly facing, and staring at his conversation partners.

While he faces away, he controls both the figurative and the literal direction of conversation, forcing people to keep their eyes on him while he is free to move as he pleases. Over and over again, it just says "I want to be the one in control. I'm not afraid to show my back to you, but you are not welcome to come near me."

And, in fact, that's a third aspect of his character's body language that I am sure the devs did not include accidentally: More so than other characters, many of Aventurine's conversations are conducted from weirdly far distances. Like, half the time he's talking, he's standing all the way on the opposite side of the room!

This habit of speaking from a-larger-than-normal distance is apparent in the first scene with Himeko...

And then in just about every other conversation too:

The bubble is twenty feet in every direction.

Like yes, he does approach and have conversations like a normal person... sometimes... But it is significantly more noticeable with Aventurine than with other characters that he often conducts whole conversations--even with his allies--from a distance. Just genuinely weirdly far apart.

Leaving space for Gaiathra, I guess.

And it's because these significant decisions were made with Aventurine's in-game body language that, when he deliberately alters his own behavior, it is instantaneously noticeable.

In 2.0, he closes the distance, the glasses come off, and he gets directly up in the Trailblazer's face.

It's uncomfortable not just because the player is suddenly being loomed over, but because this behavior has already been subconsciously established for the player as out of character for Aventurine.

The barriers the character himself was putting up are deliberately stripped away so that he can use physicality and demanding eye contact to intimidate his target. He has to reverse his own normal body language in order to come across as domineering (and, I guess if you're into that, appealing in a domineering manner).

And ummmm, just a tiny aside here because I can't resist:

This does mean that when the game goes out of its way to demonstrate Aventurine altering his own normal habit of distant and defensive body language, it is absolutely intentional.

Yes, this is a Ratiorine post in disguise. There literally isn't any other character in the game that Aventurine is shown being comfortable standing so close to and interacting with in this manner. This doesn't occur in every one of their scenes, but Ratio is the only character that this happens with repeatedly. It's not an accident that the devs literally added "They were walking side-by-side" as flavor text.

But look, I'll be fair: There's a great example of this in Aventurine's scene with Acheron too, where he closes the distance and attempts to make eye contact with her--seeking her guidance and closeness--and she is actually the one stepping away, speaking with her back turned, demonstrating her power and control (and issues with connection!) in that scene.

Anyway, this was a whole longggg tangent into analyzing Aventurine's body language, but my point is that, overall, the devs deliberately adjusted his model's actions in-game to give the impression of a person who clearly wants to be in control of every interaction he has with other people, who insists on distance over intimacy, and whose stances and habits suggest that he is significantly less accessible and open than his "Use me as you wish" motto might suggest.

Long story longer, I think that there is almost zero chance Aventurine is willingly ceding control over himself or the actions expected of him to anyone he isn't 100% comfortable with, and I think that using physical intimacy of any kind would be an absolute last resort for him. Frankly, he comes across as more likely to shoot himself in the foot than let someone he doesn't trust lay hands on him.

To me, he reads very much as "You may look, but you may not touch."

[i-lavabean]

“It’s okay”

(Inspired by @noshirdalal describing Bode having used sign language signals with Kata)

[iamfuckingsorry]

So I've recently realized that murderbot's been translated into my native language and it's apparently a he in the translation (which admittedly makes sense, because it's a heavily gendered language and 1. gender-neutral language doesn't really exist in general and 2. "bot" and all the related words - I believe they use "droid" for mb in the translation - are grammatically masculine).

It made me curious how it's been handled in other translations though!

*e.g. being referred to by multiple gendered nouns/pronouns depending on the context, like both "bot" (masculine) and "machine" (feminine).

[deathinagarden]

today i brought you teleneo isekai au

a couple of months ago me & my friend came up with this au where modern! telemachus was faced with the fact that his stupid teammate was replaced by an ancient Greek warrior who looked exactly like him, but...hotter, okay?

at the same time modern!neo is stuck in ancient Greece with this spoiled prince who looks exactly like his annoying teammate

yeah it's a love story with a moral "i will fall in love with you over and over again"

[uncanny-tranny]

One thing I always appreciated about English is the fact that "love" as a word conceptually refers to all types of love - from familial, to romantic, to platonic, to sexual, to the love one feels for strangers - all forms of love are referred to with the same word. What I love about this is that love isn't placed on a hierarchy (in theory). To me, this feels almost egalitarian, where all forms of love can be valued in the same way

However, I think this is also a double-edged sword that works against how we express love. Because love so often is still viewed as hierarchical, the kinds of love we can express is narrowed. It's very normal to not express love unless it is familial or romantic, and thus, all other forms of love become unrecognized and unnamed. We've shut away part of humanity in the bid to emphasize certain behaviours and emotions, and I really think that works against us in the long run.

I don't necessarily think English needs new words for different types of love per se. I love that other languages have the distinction ("te quiero" is different than "te amo"), and I think that's a valuable communication device. What I think we ought to do, instead, is focus on emphasizing all love as intrinsically equal to each other. I think introducing new words without solving this issue will only introduce the same kind of strife we are experiencing now.

[lily-claw]

If someone'd buy procreate or csp for me, I'd give my blood to them for the rest of my life

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see that "fandom is worse now because all the POPULAR KIDS got into it" post or any of the bajillion similar ones I die a little on the inside. You all sound like a 34 year old white cishet self identified gamer scoffing about how "all these girls pretend to like anime when IN MY TIME they would have bullied me for being a nerd" before he goes on to watch 4 more videos from a youtuber who participated in gamergate.

[klug]

@nibwhipdragon hope it's okay I reply to these tags!!

To be honest... I would argue that there are characters who do develop (Amitie and Klug come to mind for me!) but it's not really in ways that are meaningful to most people. Like, they're not grand developments, but they're things that you notice if you pay attention basically

I think,unfortunately, because Puyo/Madou is like a franchise founded on nostalgia, characters who are introduced in each game HAVE to achieve their end development by the end of their introductory game. puyo is...in general walking a really fineline of trying to be accessible to people that have never played it before but want to know the characters while also building on stories/ideas that were introduced 20 years ago (Yes fever 2 released 20 years ago)

[willnonsense]

i am a normal person. this involves normal things.

like writing the first irish fic for pokemon on ao3 (technically just a translation but shush...)

e.

[gwempire]

I am screaming internally at how words in mando'a will have a double vowel, usually 'aa' like 'chaabar' (to fear) or 'haalas' (chest), and the stress will be on the single vowel syllable, but only half the time. Sometimes it swaps, like 'haatyc' (visible) or 'naakla' (peaceful), and I cannot work out why?? Like, maybe it's because a 'stronger' vowel sound, like a diphthong, takes precedence like in 'jai'galaar' (shriekhawk). However, 'baatir' (to care) stresses the first syllable while 'laamir' (to jump) stresses the second. Surely their spelling similarities would indicate that they follow the same prosodic conventions, but no, apparently not? It's not word class either, because 'chaabar' and 'baatir' are both verbs. I understand that languages don't have perfect consistency, but good God? Mando'a is supposed to be a simple language. This is stupid and I hate it. From now on, 'aa' is the stressed or 'drawn out' syllable. I make the rules now. It's MY bad Star Wars conlang and I'll spell however I want.

[studioboner]

..

[rabbitindisguise]

Oh I just realized that Japanese authors might pick words based on how easy their kanji is to write just like how I might pick a synonym based on how difficult the word is for me to spell lmao

[poogle-races]

the way I rly wanna make a document for character designing principles I personally use...

Big supporter of free art education here.

[anightydragon]

@krysmcscience @crinklytinfoil

Well you know what

Problem solved

Also go check my other drawing that I posted in a repost of iebee, I think that my jokes are hilarious okay

[elftwink]

have to work on a project today and an unrelated thing happened that just made me so so so so so mad (just some irl personal stuff), which normally derails my entire day because i find it so hard to come out of the angry/upset state and tend to just circle back and obsess over whatever triggered it but! today after 20 minutes of that i had a council meeting about it (<- what i call my decision making process) the outcome of which was putting it aside (!!!) for later when i could actually talk about it and resolve it (!!!) & in the meantime we could just do other stuff.

local man exuberant and jubilated to achieve feats of basic emotional self-regulation and was seen excitedly telling reporters he "never thought this day would come" and began giving a thank you speech to nobody in particular. more on this story as it develops