#this whole topic is tangential anyways

[eggshellsareneat]

Not to be a discourse blog, but when you don't cite your sources you end up looking very silly, because now I can cite them for you.

Their 76% number comes from the Pew Research Centre, a pretty reputable polling centre. The problem is that the 76% number is the percentage of Americans who have been to at least one other country in their lifetime. I'd argue that's a pretty, dare I say, shit corollary to "vacations abroad". Been to Mexico on work? Popped into Toronto once? You're part of that 76%.

As to their "third of Americans" stat, I can't find anything remotely close. Statista (another solid polling centre) actually has a full breakdown of the question from 2017, and it's...so far off.

Yeah, even if we restrict ourselves to people in income brackets above $150,000, people don't travel to other countries that much.

But we haven't even addressed their main point, then. These are just percentages. They're wrong, obviously, but OP doesn't want to prove that Americans travel, they want to prove that Tumblr doesn't.

So let's use their own definitions, and see how that works for them. Have 76% of Tumblr users "vacationed abroad"?

Notes:

1. The median income in the US was about $38,000 in 2017, for comparison. If you've forgotten stats, the median is the midpoint of the data: half of Americans made more than that, and half made less.

2. "Vacations abroad" is the silliest possible metric to evaluate US affluence. The US is big, why vacation abroad when you can travel to another state for half the price? I'm not comparing these stats to Europe for exactly this reason, but you can probably imagine how they look.

This site is just the 5% brokest americans telling each other americans are oppressed

[thelonely-shepherd]

can i ask your opinion on the conflation of all the major male figures in natalie’s life. her father and his friend and arthur langdon and how they are all one and the same (to the point part of me wonders if the friend actually is her father and the young woman under his arm who natalie sees post assault is actually her own self and she is just experiencing a disassociative episode as she is wont to) and with all the themes of mirroring and echoing throughout the book,,,,, anyway. your thoughts please.

oh this is such a great discussion topic GRINNNNN before we begin just issuing a warning im the worlds most unstructured and tangenty writer unless i edit so . be ready. and also i have no credentials besides liking books im like 12 years old

ok SO. the two central male figures in the story are mr. waite and arthur langdon. who along with their wives are very obvious parallels to each other. (regarding your idea that mr waite's friend is actually also her father and nat is in a dissociative state, i think thats a great theory and also one i had, but i ended up not sticking with that interpretation for a few reasons. im not going to consider him a central male character bc he isnt really a CHARACTER as much as a.. means to an end? the end being. well. probably the most central scene to the entire book)

from the very beginning of the book mr waite establishes himself as god . it's in his opening monologue. god. i AM god.

and you could say in effect that he IS a sort of god - in the beginning of the novel he DOES hold a lot of power over his household and especially over natalie. i think he is in effect the only "god" figure natalie has ever had (though even from the beginning she does doubt him at least a little) which makes him the central figure of power in her life. even with her doubts , even unconsciously (a good example of this, i think, is when she "combs her hair so it falls carelessly" before seeing him. inherently the act of combing your hair shows that you DO care), everything she does is to please him.

during the assault scene natalie thinks "oh my dear God sweet christ" which i took as. calling out to her father. and of course he doesnt help (if anything the circumstances are directly HIS fault - it's his party, he's allowing his 17 year old daughter to drink with adults, AND i think its been implied that he,. gets around. and these parties are possibly a place where that happens, especially seeing as he has his arm around the waist of a young woman when he's mentioned). this mr waite fault/passiveness happens a lot (think also the scene when natalie returns home and they have that weird talk involving suicide)

when natalie goes to college another male figure enters her life . arthur langdon!! everyones favorite creepyyy fucking english teacher. and what do you know ,.,. not only is he is a DIRECT parallel to mr waite, but these two characters are made aware of each other and become (imo) kind of obsessed with each other. theyre basically communicating through natalie despite never actually meeting, subtly putting down each other's work and inquiring about each other constantly. and i think its mostly in context of their control over natalie - they both kinda strive to be that driving force in Nat's life.

during her time at college, nat begins straying more and more to arthur langdon and away from her father (and he notices.. his letters get more and more (albeit subtly) desperate) . they both occupy effectively the same space in her mind - like you said, theyre almost a conglomerate. but they still exist as extremely lame pathetic JEALOUS individuals within the universe of the story and so they continue to rage this snarky never-actually-meeting power war.

arthur, i think, is the character who causes the downfall of this male conglomerate as a whole. through his faults (natalie is all but done with him after.. i think the elizabeth drunk bed scene(yk the one) ? ) natalie's doubts about her father really begin to come through. she's avoiding going home (does she really have a paper to write lbr...) and when she does go home she forgets about her and her father's office writing review thing (THOUGH what i think is fascinating here is that she tells him that THIS is what she's been waiting for. i think he has been such a massive figure in her life that even though she is becoming disillusioned with him she cant bear to humiliate him . like to see his own illusion of power crumble would also hurt her).

natalie begins leaning a LOT more towards her mother but never enough to actually replace her father with her mother .ACTUALLY scratch that at the end of that scene when nat is leaving she hears her father say somehting and she mistakes him for her mother. i think it was something about not leaving? which is a more emotional statement and one that would usually come from her mother i suppose . so theyre switching up in her head. im not making sense but i may come back to that. BUT when nat has her like.. cry for help moment it's with her father. and her mother has shown that she DOES desperately want to help (not that she would be able to but still). nevertheless nat seeks help from her father who has over and over again shown that he . will not. cannot? is not able to as a person? give help .

and i think its important to note that the final most mentally ill most all overthe place section of the book comes right after nat's opinion of these two men just crashes. which isnt to say that they were providing ANY sort of GOOD structure to her life but i think the collapse of arthur (which affected her view of her father) and then her father was one of the final blows to nats VERY fragile worldview/sense of reality. (important disclaimer my opinion on the events in this book change constantly i think whats so wonderful about hangsaman is that its a book you can interpret in so many different ways it actually drives me insane but its loads of fun and what im TRYING to say in this parenthetical is that this isnt like.. a solid or the only interpretation i have but in the context of this discussion i find it beneficial and or interesting. hurrah!)

ANYWAYS to try and tie this mess together . hangsaman is a book of parallels and mirrors and repetition (two ways to look at a card) and the arthur langdon/ mr waite parallel specifically is one of the most fascinating and central to the story . male figures and god and power and such

[severalowls]

I should start a collection of incredibly shit wikipedia articles where they're about a topic that legions of extremely specific nerds clearly felt very passionate about 10-20 years ago so the whole thing is full of barely coordinated screeds about random tangential topics and it ran completely out of the control or interest of any 'normal' editors because they wouldn't even know where to begin with cleaning it up, and the topic is soo specific that frankly who cares if it has like three paragraphs about karpersky antivirus for some reason.

Anyway.

I just wanted to look up if this was actually common anymore (answer: not as much as it used to be, but good luck finding that on this page), and what the actual reasoning behind it was: its actually mostly price discrimination but came about due to differences in television broadcast formats that are no longer super relevant...

but the page for those formats is also full of redundant waffle.

I suspect a lot of this is unique to insufferable computer nerds being the same people making obsessive wikipedia edits in 2007, but its certainly reduced my confidence in any of the other 'technical' fields covered on there. Where I might see a difficult to parse page on idk, organic chemistry because I've never taken a specific chemistry class, an organic chemist might be looking at the same page going "oh my god shut the fuck up about [other extremely technical chemical things]"

[necrotic-nephilim]

ok so sending my question here bc this is more marvel comics than mcu related so im like. sliding you a note in class about an somewhat related but mostly tangential topic here 😂

so i've been wanting to get into bucky comics (and winter soldier comics) recently but as a dc fan now whose only marvel comics background is reading matt fractions hawkeye (the best ever, currently rereading it to feel something again actually) and part of wilsons ms marvel run back when i was in high school i have no idea where to start. you said that you have read comics for bucky; do you have any recommendations?

hello i love being slid notes this is so sweet <3 bc luckily Bucky is one of a small handful of characters i can *actually* give good recs for on the Marvel side of the fence! so i'm MORE than happy to give recs bc i actually already have a list i'm happy to share. also, BIG agree on Fraction's Hawkeye run, oh my god. that comic means *so* much to me and though i haven't really read Hawkeye comics outside of it, i love it a lot. 10/10 taste <3

so when it comes to Bucky, he has a *lot* of Golden and Silver Age comics as Captain America's teen sidekick and all. skip them. they're not worth it and they're not the version of the character you want to read. honestly, you should just start with his return as Winter Soldier, and go from there so

Captain America (2005) - this is Ed Brubaker's run, it's fantastic and it's the run that brings back Bucky as the Winter Soldier. i will warn you if you're used to DC comics, Marvel does this really confusing thing called legacy numbering. (DC sometimes does it but not as much) so you're gonna notice it'll jump from issue #50 to #600. you did not somehow miss hundreds of comics, it's just numbered that way bc it's the 600th Captain America comic overall. this run is super good though.

Captain America & Bucky by Ed Brubaker - once again numbering is weird just don't mind it. but this will give you a primer on Bucky's backstory as Cap's sidekick without you having to read all the Silver Age stuff and it's a great comic.

Captain America: Forever Allies (2010) - if you want to read where Bucky was Captain America for a bit, this comic is good for that. it also briefly touches on Secret Allies, a team he was on as a teen during the war. i'm not the biggest Cap!Bucky fun, but this is decent.

Winter Soldier (2012) - by *far* the best Winter Soldier solo run. Ed Brubaker my beloved. this is just amazing. this was where i started with Bucky and tbh if you vaguely understand his comics backstory and don't want to read all the Captain America stuff, i think you can start here. you get to see his relationship with Natasha, his spy work it's just. everything <3

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March - if you want to see a story that takes place during Bucky's time brainwashed under Hydra, that's what this one is and it's pretty solid

Thunderbolts (2016) - this comic is most known for the relationship between Bucky and a young girl who's a cosmic cube named Kobik and it's just so delightful. the whole team is really fun and explores moral greyness in superhero work, but mostly i love this one for Kobik.

Winter Soldier (2018) - i really enjoy this mini-series, it has Bucky trying to save a young boy who's forced to be a weapon and there's just a lot of good stuff. always have a soft spot for Bucky trying to do right by kids.

Falcon & Winter Soldier (2020) - a good team up mini-series. also Bucky has a cat so yk, that's delightful. <3

there are other Winter Soldier comics and comics he's in but Marvel's comic world is big and fucking confusing (to me as a DC fan, anyway) so these will be the easiest to start with. my top recs are probably Captain America & Bucky and Winter Soldier (2012), though i'm incredibly biased to any comic written by Brubaker for Bucky. i love Bucky so dearly. he is everything to me. i hope you enjoy!

[shadelorde]

Yeah that's the concept I was trying to convey! The "Greater Good" as I have found it to be is always some sort of status quo or ulterior project, so I meant "The Greater Good" as being from their perspective - which is, of course, not an absolute Good.

I may be out of pocket for this, but ah well. I don't fully agree with the whole "The White Lotus abused Korra" deal. Were some of their tactics abusive? Yes. Do I believe that it was done with the deliberate intentions of hurting Korra? No.

I don't know if you read the Kyoshi novels, but Yun mentions that the whole thing with "training the Avatar" is big business and that the Avatar (as a concept) tends to be used in a very politically inclined manner. Which makes it even funnier that Korra seemingly has no actual media or political training at all, at least in the first two seasons.

I guess I see it in a "in our quest for greatness, we forgot to do good" way. The White Lotus was so hellbent on creating and molding the perfect Avatar, that they forgot to do right by Korra as an individual. Like you said, Avatar first, human being second. But I don't know if I can call the institution abusive. Moreso emotionally neglectful.

(This also leads directly into another take I have about Korra and how traumatic the whole experience of being a lone, talented/gifted girl raised entirely by men can really be. But that's a different chat for another day.)

I mean this goes back to the "abuse with good intentions is still abuse" topic. I actually had a back and forth about this a while back, concerning whether or not what Lao and Poppy did to Toph could he counted as abuse.

To me personally, intentions don't really matter, what was done to Korra clearly gave her some extreme difficulties socialising, and existing in the real world. This isn't to say that everyone involved was a horrible monster, on the contrary, I'm sure many of them thought they had Korra's best intersts in mind.

Katara, Zuko and Tenzin were probably dealing with a lot of grief after Aang's death, and were probably just trying ro make sure his reincarnation was properly taken care of. Similarly, Tonraq and Senna probably just wanted their child safe. Other members of the White Lotus? Hard to say.

I think, especially for Katara and Zuko, who had experienced first hand how Aang had to scramble to learn and prepare for his battle against Ozai, they just wanted to make sure Korra was ready to face her future as Avatar.

However, they hadn't been present for a very crucial part of Aang's preparation for Avatarhood, which was his childhood with Gyatso. Because it was 100 years before they existed, and Aang already came to them well socialised and with his personhood intact.

My personal assumption is that the compound is a short term solution that ultimately extended and extended until Korra was 16.

So yeah. Good intentions. Doesn't xhange the fact that it was incredibly damaging to Korra.

[nonhumanresources]

A List Of Books/Stories About Transformation

You ever seen those titles of extremely specific essays? If this was one of those I'd call it "A List Of Books That Contain In Whole Or In Part Some Amount Of Transformation, Or The Changing Of Oneself To Another That Has In Some Manner Been Fundamentally Altered From The Self You Used To Be." That was the original title but I didn't want to be mean.

I was rambling far too long about post TF on one of warmer-hotcakes's posts and they mentioned not being able to find stories with a positive relationship to transformation (as well as transformations that are permanent) so I wanted to put a few down in a list!

Granted, these are incredibly inconsistent in pretty much every way other than being SFF but hey, we take what we can get here. Plus they weren't wrong it is VERY hard to find these kinds of stories, half of the list at this point is self published novels on Amazon written by people I've met by chance in TF circles, to give you an idea. So, to pad it out I will add more tangentially related TF stories.

If anyone happens to have more stories feel free to comment them and I'll add them on! I will also add to the list sporadically if I feel like it.

Anyway, without further ado:

Wolven by Di Toft is about a kid finding a werewolf out in the woods. It's been years since I read it but it's got a fun dichotomy between a villain and a protagonist both suffering from partial werewolfication and the ways they deal with it.

Thousand Tales by Kris Schnee is a self published series of books set in the near future where an AI runs a video game that allows people to be "uploaded" into it. There's a lot of books that don't need to be read in any specific order focusing on different characters and is generally a more lighthearted approach to the topic than most, and also it has furries in it. There are books about people who upload immediately, people who do eventually, and people who never do. Not quite the same as adjusting to changes IRL but this is my list and I get to shill whatever I want. Also, it's some of the highest quality writing/editing I have seen in a self-published novel (especially TF novel).

How To Be A Hero: (And Part Time Dragon) by S. Blakeway is a book about a hero who gets defeated and turned into a wyvern by the Dark Lord. Her eternal torment is interrupted, though, by said Dark Lord sending her out on a quest, during which she has to navigate turning back into a wyvern every few days. It's fun and silly and has lots of TF and the author is a very nice and cool person. Go buy this one and the sequel and help me bother her into finishing the trilogy please.

Perspective Flip also by Kris Schnee and Shifting Tails by Paul Lotor are a pair of short story collections. These are more of a soft recommend; both include cases of protags adapting to transformations, and generally involve positive stories, but not all of them are great. Perspective Flip is generally good but Shifting Tails especially has stories that lean very far into the horny side of things as well as topics I was very much not into, but some of them were admittedly very enjoyable. Being horny isn't bad, of course; it's moreso that there is less "story" and more "hey wouldn't this TF be hot." To be fair, sometimes they are, but sometimes they stray far away from my interests, so take that how you will.

Wereworld by Curtis Jobling is something I read as a kid but I'm gonna be honest I remember almost nothing about it. However it is about therianthropes of all types and I like that so it's going on here. They even have sharks!

The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson. Full disclosure, I have not finished reading this one, and I do not believe it has permanent TF, but it does feature a dude who astral projects into a dragon and is generally a fine book.

The Dangers Of Wearable Technology by Serathin Sabertooth (gods I hope that isn't a pen name, that would be so cool). This is one that I don't really recommend? Which is odd, you might say, for a list of recommendations. Correct! I just have a complex relationship with it, which I will include in a post here so that I don't flood this list with unnecessary words.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but like I said, feel free to send suggestions my way and I'd be happy to read em/add em to the list! Obviously it's pretty short right now and I'd love to bulk it up as much as possible for all us COOL NERDS

[catboybiologist]

boymoders always be like "I'm not passing" while still activating the lesbian neurons in my brain smh how can both those things be true

anyway congrats on passing the thing!! my viva is coming ever closer and I'm def a little nervous lmao, how long did it take?

Good luck! I... had to look up what a Viva was, tbh. As far as I understand it, Vivas are another subtle difference between the two PhD systems in the world, so just to clarify: I do NOT have my PhD, but this is the most significant midway step. And this now has me on my whole little rant about the two PhD systems again!

Just a quick reminder if y'all aren't aware: there are two PhD systems in the world, largely split by geographic region, and I think this is why this confused me.

System A (the Americas, East Asia): the total time of the PhD is 5-7 years, the only strict entry requirement is a bachelor's degree (although, due to inflating standards, this is becoming less true in practice). Ends with a thesis defense on the research project you did during your time. At some midway point, you have a qualifying exam, which is a presentation you give about your project with the added twist that your committee is supposed to grill you about any subject even tangentially related to your research topic. The timing of this varies from the end of the first year to right before the thesis defense.

System B (Africa, Europe, Oceania, elsewhere in Asia): total time of a PhD is 3-5 years, but typically requires a separate master's degree or technical certification to start. Culminates in both a Viva, which is similar to our quals, and a defense? I think? Someone please correct me here.

They both total to the same amount of experience, its just split differently.

Currently, I'm 1.5 years into my PhD. This is pretty early to take my qual- my department does them early, because they're supposed to decide the direction of the rest of the years of your research, and I took it earlier than usual on top of that as well. I also already have a masters degree in a related but not quite the same subject (bioinformatics) so technically it's taken me 3.5 years of grad school.

Also. You're gay.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Do you think HYBE will do anything about some of these boycotters? There’s some serious defamation going on that could have consequences for them (although maybe I’m overreacting and it won’t gain traction) but I wonder if they can do anything about it. This has really spiraled out of control imo. They clearly hate that man more than they love BTS because they’d be happy to burn down the whole company with BTS in it if it gets rid of Scooter, despite Scooter equivalents being present in pretty much every entertainment company ever.

***

I have no idea what HYBE intends to do but I don’t see them deviating much from how they’ve handled boycotts in the past, that is, ignoring them or offering a statement that addresses a tangential issue. Whenever there’s been a more direct response and/or donation, it’s always been spearheaded by the members themselves and as they are all enlisted until 2025, I don’t think that’s coming anytime soon but I could be wrong. Maybe Jin takes on the brunt for the group and says something, but again I highly doubt it.

One thing I am absolutely certain about though, is that a good 90% of those fully sucked in will turn full anti by the time Festa 2025 rolls around lol. I wasn’t sure about this at first, because like I’ve said it’s fine for fans to communicate to the company if they’re upset about whatever, but yeah now, there’s no mistaking what this is. It’s a pipeline I’ve seen hundreds of times.

It’s impossible to feed yourself a steady diet of the narrative that BTS is complicit in one of the most grotesque atrocities in recent history, act as though you hold them uniquely responsible for it being in your space, and not grow resentful of the boys and the fandom. Aside the fact the focus on BTS is misguided to begin with, the whole notion of ‘protecting’ these grown men from executives in their company is infantilizing at best, it’s a sentiment these people show only towards BTS rather than Tori Kelly, Beyoncé or Ariana Grande - all three working directly with Israeli-linked Jewish men, because none of these fans have developed a parasocial attachment to those artists they feel they can weaponize, the way they have to BTS. Like I’ve been saying, although BTS is far more removed than any American artist under a big music label, these Korean guys are the only people k-pop fans feel they have control over. It’s the kind of mentality to expect from toxic shippers, akgaes, and mantis. Those groups of people will always tell you the reasoning for their actions is for the greater good and for the benefit of the artist, and given in this case the subject is something as serious as the latest escalation of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that’s certainly serious. But just like with every other case, the focus on BTS itself is misguided, in my opinion, and so the fallacy persists, which breeds conflict, which breeds even more resentment. From the boycotters, we’ll start seeing more thought experiments, narratives and conspiracies to explain the dissonance between what they expect and what is actually happening. Even if their demands are met this time, another topic will flair up these same behaviours in people already pre-disposed to this. It’s the most predictable pipeline in k-pop.

But as it so often is with things like this, most people won’t be fully honest with themselves about what they are, and what they are doing, and so even though it would be best to realize BTS might not fit the expectation they have of them, they’ll remain in fandom spaces, growing more resentful and constantly in conflict with other fans. Many of them are already multis and it’s only a matter of time (weeks) before the takes become painfully predictable.

Anyway I’ve rambled. I’m curious as to what you think HYBE will do:

*

Perhaps a more fun question is how the fandom will increasingly spiral, the more aggressive and confrontational opposing sides of the fandom become. I’ve said before that a lot of ARMYs are easy to manipulate and incapable of nuanced conversations, and normally that’s a recipe for the jokes we see on Twitter daily, but in times like this, it’s tinder for a bonfire of disaster lmao.

I hope y’all are holding on to your wigs for the magnificent, ripped body pics Jin will have to drop to calm things down as soon as he’s discharged.

[stellerssong]

Hi again. I'm on some level here to ask for a complete explanation of every aspect of Hawaiian culture that is even tangentially related to your latest fic because I know absolutely nothing and there is the ever present concern that the terms run through cursory Google Translate and internet searching will lose nuance and implications. There were definitely some references to divinities and myths and such that went over my unenlightened head. The story you wove was rich and intricate enough to be held in the mind of someone who knows less than nothing and still have great meaning and truth, but I know that it will mean yet more if I can see the threads you used to make it. (On another level, I'm asking for the explanation because I am abruptly deeply interested in a topic I had previously not thought about very much, and you seem to be significantly more of an expert than the average internet search.)

first off! well first off i am blowing you so many kisses for this very kind ask, thank you so much for giving me an excuse to ramble at (great, great, great) length.

so second off! i would just like to stress that i am very much not an expert in hawaiian language, folklore, history, culture, etc. i am neither kānaka maoli (native hawaiian) nor kamaʻāina (born in hawaiʻi although not necessarily of hawaiian ancestry), and i have not studied these topics formally/in a setting that applies academic rigor. i am an enthusiastic amateur with a personal connection to hawaiian culture, the kind of brain that likes to fixate on areas of interest, and a willingness to scrounge around for reading material. i have, i think, a decent sense of what some of the baseline texts in the field are, and a fairly good bullshit detector (and the understanding/ability to dig into things when i can't rely on the bullshit detector), but ultimately i am a layman and an outsider with corresponding perspectives and biases. i also, i will admit frankly, have a pretty sharp knowledge cutoff corresponding to the time of first european contact, just because of my own personal interests and reading preferences.

read that whole disclaimer? let your eyes glaze over while you skimmed it? good! here's my real quick (lmao) rundown of Sum Things U Should Know If You Wanna Close-Read Kīpuka:

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 101

Good grief when I put it like that I do NOT feel qualified to tell you any of this. Anyway. We can keep it basic just so you can get a sense of the mouthfeel of the words. And just fyi ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is the proper name of the language; i'll be using "Hawaiian" as the adjective form, sans ʻokina, assuming an English-speaking readership.

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi as it is commonly rendered today has 13 letters: 5 vowels (A, E, I, O, and U) and 7 consonants (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), plus the ʻokina or glottal stop (that little apostrophe-lookin' dude at the beginning of the word ʻokina, also the source of most of my typesetting woes). Pronunciation-wise, there are no silent letters and no though/through/enough-type surprises: every letter is pronounced, and all of the vowel renderings are approximately equivalent to how you'd pronounce them in Spanish or Italian. Hence, the word kuahine = koo-ah-HEE-nay rather than, like, kyoo-ah-highn, which made me feel gross even just typing it out.

The ʻokina is pronounced, and bear with me here, like the dash in the english nuh-uh. or, if you're a try-hard vocalist—reattack the vowel after the ʻokina instead of eliding it to the vowel prior. So the place-name Kaʻū is pronounced ka-OO, as distinct from the word kau which is pronounced more like kow (which is a bit of an oversimplification of the latter word, but I'm trying to be efficient here).

That leads us neatly into the other diacritical marking used in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the kahakō or macron which helpfully appears in its own name. No worries here; the kahakō just serves as a stress marker, so you'd say kahakō = ka-ha-KO instead of ka-HA-ko, or from the example above ka-OO rather than KA-oo.

There are a couple of other little pronunciation tricks here and there. The letter W is sometimes pronounced as a V, and unfortunately I can't really describe the rules for that shift; that is one I must admit I know mostly from vibes. For example, the correct pronunciation of Hawaiʻi itself is ha-VAI-ee, but I've never heard the place-name Waimea pronounced as anything but why-MEY-ah.

Occasionally you will encounter the letter K pronounced as a T, which I believe is an artifact of the morphological shift from older related languages such as Tahitian and Samoan which do preserve the letter T as a unique phoneme. To my knowledge, the Kauaʻi dialect (spoken today on Niʻihau) also preserves the T, but most spoken ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi heard elsewhere is based on the Big Island dialect, which lacks the T. One notable exception is the word tūtū (an affectionate/respectful term for a grandparent or elder), which you really don't hear pronounced as kūkū.

Really, though, listening to Hawaiian music is how I got the language in my ear and imo it's the best way to get it in yours. Can't go wrong with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" fame), but I have a personal soft spot for Kealiʻi Reichel, Weldon Kekauoha, Amy Hanaialiʻi, and the Cazimero Brothers.

The Place-y-ness of Hawaiian Literature

This is more of a sidenote than its own heading, but I'm the one driving the essay, and I think it's an interesting thing to point out, just because it helps establish a particular perspective I wanted to keep in mind while writing this fic.

Something you might notice as you start to look at Hawaiian oli, mele, and myth is the high level of specificity of place. Hawaiʻi is, let's be honest, not that enormous of a place when you consider it on a global scale—but the specificity of localities within Hawaiian literature is kind of astounding. Not only are there loads of place-names referenced in any given work, there are unique Hawaiian names for landmarks, cliffs, peaks, hills, streams, waterfalls—even rains and winds of specific locations merit their own names.

"kīpuka" is very specifically set on the windward side of Hawaiʻi island, so I made an effort to focus my references to place-names on that region—Hilo, ʻŌlaʻa, and Waiākea are all locations on the eastern side of the island, and the one reference to Kona on the leeward side reflects the coming of someone bearing grievances (in addition to eia aʻe ka makani Kona being an existing idiom warning the listener to watch out for an angry person, the windward and leeward sides of Hawaiʻi island have a long history of territorial warfare and jockeying for control of the island). I'd also considered having the bird discussed in the fic be a different species, the kākāwahie—but that species is/was endemic to Molokaʻi, and quite honestly my knowledge of the history and culture of Molokaʻi as a separate polity is not that great.

(This is partly due to sample bias—my introduction to Hawaiʻi was within a Big Island-based context. At the same time, another thing you may notice about the better-known source texts is that many of them center around Hawaiʻi island and, to a lesser extent, Maui, thanks to the political supremacy during the unification/post-contact era of Hawaiʻi island and Maui aliʻi. Ross Cordy wrote a whole ass book about the Oʻahu chiefdoms that is simply not to be had for love or money no matter how I search for it. I am THIS CLOSE to straight up cold emailing the man and being like I WILL VENMO YOU $75 USD DIRECTLY IF YOU WILL SIMPLY JUST SEND ME A COPY OF YOUR BOOK. PLEASE. SAVE ME ROSS CORDY.)

Girl (Gender Neutral), I Cannot Explain Hawaiian Mythology, Poetics, and Mythopoetics As a Subheading in One Post

Honestly. I can't do it. But some tidbits to assist your further research:

A great deal of Hawaiian literature and oral tradition hinges on kaona, roughly "allusion" or "metaphor." In a description that is useful to precisely no one but myself, it's not unlike the complex plays on words, puns, and deep well of references used in Heian Japanese epistolary poetry. Some of it is easy to grok for newbies: for example, the concept of one's lover as a lei adorning the body, or being splashed or sprinkled with water as a euphemism for sex. Some of it goes a lot deeper, relying on historical or folkloric place-name associations, puns, and ancient practices and superstitions.

The Hawaiian "pantheon" I place in scare quotes because ancient Hawaiian religious practices and superstition were highly syncretic, often extremely localized, and more contradictory the more you read into it. In a very, very, very, VERY rough and off-the-cuff sense, though, there were thought to be four major gods: Kāne (associated with dawn, the sun, the sky, running freshwater, and irrigation-based agriculture, among other things), Kanaloa (associated with the ocean, sea creatures, and sometimes death, as an opposing or complimentary force to Kāne), Lono (god of fertility, agriculture with something of an emphasis on dryland agriculture, rainfall, and peace as embodied in the Makahiki festival), and Kū (god of war, the deified kingship, fishermen, sorcery, and quite honestly a ton of other things in various manifestations).

There were also quite a large number of "lesser" gods, the word "lesser" used just in the sense that they weren't honored to the same extent as the four previously named in state-sanctioned religious practice. Probably the most well-known of these is Pele, the volcano goddess. (I reference another in the fic, Niolopua, god of sleep—but the jury's out on whether or not that refers to an actual god or is just metaphorical in the same way that most people think of "the Sandman" as a euphemism for sleep and not a literal guy who comes into your house and puts crusties in your eyes.)

The gods were thought to manifest in a variety of forms, called kino lau (literally "four hundred bodies"). You can think of this in the sense of "Lono takes on the shape of an albatross or a tropicbird to interact with mortals, while Kanaloa prefers to manifest as an octopus," and in stories kino lau are sometimes represented that way, but in practice it's less of a Greek myth-style practice of shapeshifting and more of an animistic religious belief. The kino lau in nature embody the god and in a metaphorical sense illustrate the interconnection between divine and earthly and the presence of the divine on earth.

(HUGE OVERSIMPLIFICATION. HUGE OVERSIMPLIFICATION. PLEASE DO MORE RESEARCH AND DO NOT TAKE ONE TUMBLR POST AT ITS WORD ON THIS.)

The Endless, in the fic, are very easy to loop into the concept of kino lau, because of their canonical universality. Danny appears as a shark (a symbol of chiefhood), a pueo, or Hawaiian owl (an 'aumakua, or ancestral guardian), a manu-o-Kū, or fairy tern (a bird associated with the god Kū, likely in his aspect as a god of fishermen, navigators, and wayfinders), a kalo plant (a staple crop of ancient Hawaiʻi, a kino lau of Kāne, and a symbol of duality and rebirth), and a snowcapped mountain (a sacred site considered kapu, or forbidden, to all but the highest chiefly individuals). Despair, meanwhile, appears as an ʻalae ʻula, or Hawaiian moorhen (another ʻaumakua, but also an animal whose cry was thought to foretell misfortune), a stingray (for her barbed tail), a hāpuʻu fern (in contrast to Dream's kalo, the hāpuʻu was considered a famine food), a lava flow and its first growths (acknowledging Pele as both a destroyer and a creator of land, just as Despair also embodies hope), and a number of other things meant to embody the devastation of Hawaiʻi (rats, feral pigs, and mosquitoes have decimated endemic birds and insects; the kiawe is an invasive plant species that forms dense, thorny, and difficult-to-destroy groves; light pollution affects behavior and migratory patterns of both avian and aquatic species).

All pretty simple, obviously!

Further Resources and Recs

Okay, so, obviously I'm not going to be able to explain every single reference in this fic in a single post, though I obviously tried my damnedest. In lieu of that, I'll offer some useful resources for further reading:

Stephen Trussel's Combined Hawaiian Dictionary is a fantastic resource for vocab that incorporates several major Hawaiian dictionaries in a straightforward (well, as straightforward as this gets) text-based web page. Ulukau also has a searchable interface, which is a little easier to interact with, but I like having the Trussel for reference.

Huapala is everyone's go-to for translations of Hawaiian lyrics. I've linked to it in the endnotes of the fic for readers interested in more on "Ka Ipo Lei Manu," but it's got nearly any ʻauana-style Hawaiian song you please, and if I recall correctly even a few traditional oli. Again, another slightly old-fashioned text-based site—but we all know how to use CMD + F in a page, do we not?

Native Books is awesome if you, like me, prefer reading things in print but would prefer not to feed your dollars into the maw of the Amazon beast. A lot of the lit on Hawaiʻi was printed either a long time ago or in very small releases and is now out-of-print and difficult to find even in libraries, so it rocks that there's an independent bookseller that specializes in getting those works to an audience in hard copy. @ NATIVE BOOKS PLEASE CONSIDER GETTING ROSS CORDY TO RE-PRINT THE RISE AND FALL OF THE OʻAHU KINGDOM THANK YOU SO MUCH. University of Hawaiʻi Press is also a good source for academic texts, although their website is...mm...difficult to navigate, and do be warned that they charge academic press prices.

In terms of who to read, you really can't go wrong with Mary Kawena Pukui, a Native Hawaiian scholar, author, composer, and educator whose work is the backbone of just, a fuckton of writing about Hawaiʻi, both academic and popular. Her book ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings is worth at least a skim just to get the feel of the Hawaiian mindset; it also contains a healthy dose of myth, folklore, and history in the explanations of the sayings. Absolutely adorably, I've found two books she edited that I read the absolute FUCK out of as a child available as PDFs through Ulukau: The Water of Kāne and Other Legends of the Hawaiian Islands and Hawaiʻi Island Legends: Pīkoi, Pele, and Others. Definitely worth a quick read if you want more on the myth side of things.

As a non-specialist, I've really enjoyed Patrick Vinton Kirch's writing on precontact Hawaiʻi. For a field archaeologist, his writing is both highly engaging and very respectful of the peoples he studies, and trust me, I do get my back up easily when it comes to white people writing about Other Cultures TM, so I'd posit it means something that he passes my sniff test. A Shark Going Inland is My Chief is a great overview of the history of the Hawaiian chiefdoms from the first settlement of the islands to immediately precontact, and Kuaʻāina Kahiko offers a bit of a closer look at everyday life in a specific locality in the islands (in this case, Kahikinui, Maui).

Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo by Stephen Desha (trans. Frances N. Frazier) began its life as a serialized Hawaiian-language history of the rise of Kamehameha I. It's a dense read, and it WILL test your ability to remember who the hell all these people are to its limit—it mostly discusses the lives and times of the major players of the aliʻi class in the late precontact–early postcontact era, and when you remember that a) a hell of a lot of personal names in this tale begin with the letter K and b) the aliʻi class of Hawaiʻi practiced a mindboggling amount of political marriage, consanguineous marriage, and sanctioned adoption between blood relatives, the family trees get real complicated REAL fast. If you can hang on through all that, though, it's an intensely detailed and very vivid portrait of a culture at a tumultuous moment, it gives a great sense of how the Hawaiians viewed themselves and the world, and it's an interesting exercise in the mythologizing of the Kamehameha dynasty.

Okay, So...?

So...if you hung on through all that, god DAMN are you dedicated. Have what is quite possibly my favorite Hawaiian song for your trouble. It is, funnily enough, about a bird.

EDIT: I am retroactively making this post unrebloggable. I'm really, really glad folks have found it interesting and are looking into the resources I shared, but I absolutely do not want this getting passed around as Hawaiian Culture 101. If you want to learn more about Hawaiʻi, I must stress that you should look to a reputable source and not some schmuck on Tumblr rambling about her effortposting fanned fiction.

[lorillee]

highkey theres just too much to talk about in this game. so its gonna be a little all over the place but in short easily best written rgg game and my 2nd favorite overall. phenomenally good. absolutely in love.

ichiban as protag is a breath of fresh air that this series. incredibly desperately needed. like profoundly so. like to some degree after 7 straight games of running around with kiryu you have to kind of want a break. which y6 attempted to give in the sense of almost completely dropping kamurocho entirely and barely doing anything with the recurring cast of the previous games but honestly it kind of felt sad and weirdly disjointed from the rest of the series as a result.

i unforutnately never got around to doing my y6 writeup in which i probably wouldve talked about it there but honestly i think wholesale dropping kiryu as the main protag is the better solution to this issue. but lets talk about the arakawa family soap

ok to be honest at first i was like really idgaf about ichiban & masato's relationship. but actually im rescinding that opinion and aggressively so its kind of bonkers crazy and im obsessed with it.?

one of the recurring issues ive kind of had with rgg that i havent really talked about but has bothered me is that a lot of the time the main characters dont really have a whole lot of narrative connection to the final boss. its kind of like well we're beating this guy up because hes in the way but most of the time the narrative foils are kind of tangential/shoehorned at best or if theyre not then theyre really not nearly as fleshed out/built up enough as they should be

however for ichiban and masato that is . NOT THE CASE. NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like because one of the things that i was. well we're getting partially off topic here but whatever anyways one of the things that i was initially hestiant about wrt ichiban being arakawa's bio kid was like the focus on blood ties when thats not really all that relevant to the themes of the game but actually im like actually kind of bonkers crazy about how they executed it. im bonkers crazy about everything honestly dude its so good

like the choice to keep it ambiguous that we dont actually know which baby was which is like DUDEEEEE its so good its sooooooo good actually hold on cuz i need to actually collect my thoughts about this.

honestly initially like i said before i was like Well this is kind of a weird decision……. when they started aggressively hinting that ichiban was arakawas bio son. i have changed my mind though im obsessed with this decision its actually crazy fascinating and shoots arakawa from a pretty interesting character to an absolutely fascinating one and im like well im CRAZY ABOUT ITTTTTTT

ultimately the most important thing here is the complete ambiguity on what arakawa knows and when

did he realize when he walked into that shed and saw ichibans face? because i dont think ichiban looks terribly similar to arakawa but we've never seen akane so its very possible he was the spitting image of her

^and if this is the case it would completely recontextualize him cutting off his pinkie for ichiban and spending the next several years fending him off from joining the arakawa family until it is clear that he has straight up nowhere else to go

additionally if he knows from this early on it also completely recontextualizes him always putting ichiban with masato because before clearly it was to give them someone their own age to hang out with but if he knows that ichi is his bio son this is pretty clearly an attempt to set up a sort of brotherly relationship

and of course. most importantly. this makes the decision to axe ichi for masatos mistake REALLY INSANELY FASCINATING.

because i feel like in a lot of works where theres an adopted child and a bio child the bio child INSTANTLY becomes the favorite the moment its revealed and its well frankly a little stupid. but in this case arakawa lies to his bio son to get him to go to prison for fifteen years to make up for his adopted sons screw up

not to even mention its even more fascinating with the relationships that he has with both of them anyways because masato and arakawa's relationship has always been strained but ichi loves him so much he would do anything for him, a decade and a half in prison be damned - like you have to imagine when ichiban agreed so readily the guilt ate away at arakawa so so so bad. duuuuuuude

^^^^^And of course this is all assuming that ichi even IS his bio kid or that he is extremely confident in the fact. because its also very possible that arakawa just straight up doesnt know or isnt sure. duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude

NOT TO EVEN MENTION ARAKAWA SHOOTING ICHIBAN? like ichiban was saying arakawa knew he would survive but nanba literally says a milimeter in any direction and ichi wouldve been dead in a ditch. there was a snowballs chance in hell of him surviving but. well

but seriously the likelihood of ichiban living through this was basically zilch, and the bio son maybe reveal makes everything arakawa does with about or around ichiban absolutely like fascinating beyond all words and comprehension. WHATS HIS PROBLEM?

additionally im also crazy crazy happy about the choice on the writers part to keep it ambiguous like nanba suggests getting a dna test and ichi says he doesnt need it because hes got his two dads and thats all he ever needed

one last thing but also genuinely the arakawa/ichiban parallels of them both carrying masato from the coin lockers to the hospital seriously makes me want to start like attacking people in the streets like that was just sick and twisted. masatos "every single goddamn thing about you is just like my fucking dad" IM GONNA KILL MYSELF?

honestly one of the things i was bracing for was for when ichiban was telling masato that he and arakawa and sawashiro loved him so so much i was waiting for the justification of like "im arakawa's bio son so that basically makes us brothers" or whatever which highkey wouldve been stupid but THEY DIDNTTT!!!!!!!!!!

ichiban says there IS no logic there IS no justification. there just isnt for love and thats what gives it the strength it has. their love of masato is completely unconditional its not based on something tangible that can be taken away or disproven and despite everything he did and everything he put them through they still loved him to the very end.

additionally ichiban knowing about the very likely possibility that he is arakawa's son and that arakawa knew this is also SOOOOOOOO INTERESTING because obviously he was jealous of masato and realistically had always wished that he was born into masatos position and basically says as much himself during the climax but not once does he ever seen to actually resent masato for functionally taking away what was probably his, nor does he resent arakawa for using him as a sacrificial pawn for masato either.

which is also fascinating because you know that if it had been the other way around masato would NOT be the same. actually lets just take this opportunity to talk about ichiban and masato as narrative foils

like. from the start theyre set up as parallels born on the same day hidden in coin lockers right next to each other (<-WHICH IS LEGITIMATELY CRAZY BONKERS INSANE IM GONNA BE SICK

but like ichiban says theyre like night and day. masato had all the money and connections in the world and ichiban grew up dirt poor in a soapland. masato pushed everyone away whereas ichi makes friends wherever he goes. masato gets completely caught up in proving the people around him wrong and rising above everyone else whereas ichiban forgives and/or moves on and never loses sight of the people around him. masato believes that people are to be used and thrown away the moment they become an inconvenience and ichiban knows that sometimes other peoples goals will not align with his own but theyre still his friends and he will care about and love them until the day he dies. and more importantly it is this fact that sets them so profoundly apart more than any other

like becuase when the nanba storyline was going on i was like well this is fine i guess its interesting (and also im still highkey not over that hug that was so cute) But also well did we really need all this… mostly because the thing with his brother never really cropped back up again and very frequently in yakuza games they will just insert storylines that arent super relevant to the main plot just to stretch out the time, but no because its actually a direct parallel to what happens with arakawa and masato.

in both situations someone who ichiban and masato believed to be on their side actually turned out to have alternate goals the entire time. ichiban reacts with kindness and even though he fights against nanba because nanba is decidedly getting in the way of where he needs to go, he always and forever reaches out his hand and would be willing to give him a thousand chances because he loves nanba and he cares about nanba because nanba is his friend. masato, however, retaliates with violence and anger and just like how he treats everyone else in his life immediately seeks to end arakawas life for stepping out of line. there is no discussion there is no mercy and there are no second chances, because just like everything else in life masato only sees things in extremes.

^which is of course why his whole organization is bleach japan and why kume kills him in the end and his false dichotomy obsession but we'll talk about that all that later.

and this same parallel extends of course to their relationship with each other - ichiban continually tries to reach out and tries to get masato to reconsider to start over to end this madness thats ruining his life and the lives of everyone around him, and masato tries again and again to kill ichiban because he genuinely has no idea how else to resolve conflict at this point in his life. because he cant face anything with any amount of nuance and his victories have to be absolutely pristine he has no other route than to put ichiban down permanently.

in short im just kind of fascinated by masato's desperation for the approval and love and loyalty of the people around him and how because he is so profoundly shallow he believes everyone else to be the same and cuts them off violently the moment they step out of line and in the end is surrounded with nobody but himself, whereas ichiban has frankly never been particularly concerned about the worlds opinion of him and how this naturally draws people to him, and when they mess up or go in a different direction he is always there with an extended hand and because of this he has a tremendously loyal inner circle that carries him to victory.

on this note i really really love the kiryu and tendo battles because ichibans main skills are honestly kind of completely useless when fighting them - the player has to heavily rely on the skills of the other party members to take them down and i think its like a brilliant reflection of the narrative and main themes in terms of the importance of human relationships/community/support/etc.

and this crazy applies to the last battle against masato because his only real move is to call for backup, but because he's chased away and killed everyone strong who was loyal to him all he has are weak goons that maybe survive a single shot or two - whereas ichiban has always held everyone dear to him close and because of this has strong people who are loyal to him to the end.

but lets take a brief side tangent into masatos character for a minute

circling back to that point i made earlier about bleach japan and masatos issues. the entire organization's narrative purpose is to serve as a direct reflection of masato as a character - bleach japan claims to be on the side of righteousnessness and gives no room for any sort of nuance or ambiguity and steamrolls everything and everyone in its path, but in this very process lands squarely in the ambiguous area it claims it is trying to destroy.

the entire concept of "there are two sorts of people in this world" is basically always stupid and wrong because you will be very hard pressed to find a situation in which there is no nuance or grey area or any blur in the lines, but its the mentality that masato subscribes to anyways.

his inability to give others the benefit of the doubt or the grace of a second chance is ultimately what kills him in the end - bleach japans fanatic leader (who, might i remind you, masato himself deemed as easily replaceable, the latter in his "the irreplaceable and the easy to replace" false dichotomy) stabs him for betraying their ideals, an act which in and of itself is a violation of the laws that bleach japan claims to be upholding. frankly in the exact same way that masato claims that he is the man who will lead japan into an era of justice… while killing anyone who even marginally gets in his way.

additionally im honestly kind of obsessed with how completely and entirely self absorbed masato is. like he cant see anyone else outside of himself to the point where hes convinced that nobody could see or love him for who he really was when this is so blatantly and deeply untrue if he opened his eyes for literally half a second. because ichiban and sawashiro and arakawa loved him so so profoundly much

like i already said it but genuinely that scene at the coin locker. i think is the best scene in this entire series so far. like im gonna throw up levels of insanely good.

last thing but to be honest killing off masato was just mean. im gonna be honest i think it was just mean. like because the yakuza series seems to be profoundly allergic to letting people grow and change and become better versions of themselves but like in the case of mine and nishiki these were frankly suicides badly disguised as redemption by death. and to be honest like again his death serves an important narrative purpose but also it was MEAN it was MEANNNNNNN. it was mean.

^anyways this is exactly the sort of insane family soap opera i was looking for when i first got into yakuza. and i have finally gotten it. and it was brilliant. it was fascinating. it was glorious. i loved it.

MORE MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS: this will be significantly shorter.

dude i love the party chats. i love the party chats so much it makes me sick

they did a tremendously good job building up the main cast's friendship specifically with all the little details - one of the issues kind of consistently that ive had with yakuzas relationships (not that ive expressed much of this in my retrospectives but its been on my mind) is a lot of them have kind of pretty significant gaps that the audience is expected to fill in and a lot of the really important relationships in the series are built by implication rather than active on screen fleshing out. like we get no downtime with anybody to chill and let their natural personalities and dynamics emerge outside of The World Is Ending and i think the characters really suffer for it.

lad however finally takes a stab at fixing this through the party chats and the dinner discussions and all around even in the main plot letting the main characters goof around a bit and get into silly and wacky shenanigans together and does. frankly a phenomenal job. their dynamics feel very natural and well rounded and they all feel like real friends in a way that past games have struggled to achieve

additionally i personally REALLY wouldve liked to see some substories that included characters other than just ichiban interacting with the substory subject but i think im also just greedy because i love these characters and their relationships and i want to see more LOL

like honestly the main cast is so so profoundly good i love them all so much. the fact that they dont have party chats in infinite wealth is genuinely killing me thats actually so upsetting. whats the point of anything. whatever man

honestly the turn based combat took awhile to get used to but honestly the worst part about it was easily the fact that the dungeons literally are genuniely terrible and give awfully small amounts of exp for way higher amounts of effort, particularly in contrast with the sotenbori battle arena. like they shouldve had battle arenas instead of dungeons in ijincho and kamurocho. like to be honest i made half a run through the kamurocho dungeon and went ohhhh so this sucks and is stupid… and went back to sotenbori. also wouldve been nice to not have to grind for like 3-4 hours before the saemaji fight but whatever i got to listen to part of a video essay series one of my friends has been trying to get me to watch forever so i guess it worked out.

dude the saemaji fight was so good. dude it was so fun it was so cute im never gonna be over their combo move i should replay that fight because i literally need them back so much it makes me sick. so cute so ooo sooooo cute. prob my favorite fight in the entire series im gonna be honest i love them so much im gonna be ill

lowkey i thought seonghee joined the party in lad so i was kind of shocked she did not end up doing this… so its gotta just be infinite wealth. i need my ambiguously bisexual pink haired baddie back.

anyways i think thats all i had to say for now. i want to find some more party chats and also finish leveling up everyones bonds and then its GAIDEN TIME BABEYYYYYYY

[dogtoling]

do the squids transgender?

yes the squids transgender. tangentially related to this but several real-life cephalopods in the modern day "cross-dress" (for mating-related reasons, but i digress), so like, they have gendered "dress codes". And even that is kind of a stretch but it's for the sake of the argument; gender is a performance and you could say that them having the gender selection be "style" in Splatoon 3 is just like, objective. so yes the squids absolutely DO transgender, but they might not even have gender roles or values anywhere comparable to those of humans, given... well we are a completely different species. And on the topic of gender as a whole in the Splatoon world, there are so many different species in which gender doesn't even exist, or the creatures literally change sex throughout their life cycle, and so forth, that the OVERALL view on gender is wildly different.

General consensus on transgender inkfish is that medical transitioning isn't probably even that common. Cephalopods do have distinct sexes, unlike something like many gastropods (mostly land snails), so medical/hormonal transitioning DOES exist. However inkfish don't really have a lot of external sexual dimorphism, like, much at all. So they wouldn't have to deal with a lot of things that humans have to deal with (BOOBS, both the existence or lack thereof), in terms of presentation. As of Splatoon 3 at least we can tell that hairstyles aren't really gendered anymore, which COULD be a recent development, but I'd bet on them never actually being gendered in-universe since, well, squids just have long tentacles Normally. Probably the most notable sexual dimorphism in inkfish is voice pitch but even that can vary wildly and all things considered, a lot of male inkfish have relatively high-pitched voices, so there's actually not a big difference for most people. (I'm now going down an internet rabbit hole for why the difference in voice pitch is a thing at all).

TLDR; HRT definitely exists, but the effects it has likely aren't as notable as they are in humans, just out of there not really being that much external sexual dimorphism in inkfish that most people would feel like they NEED IT in order to comfortably pass. Take for example something like a beard. In humans, typically a masculine trait. In inkfish, especially Octolings and cuttlefish... toggleable REGARDLESS of sex as they will have facial papillae anyway. Same with something like tone of voice, if you're a large species you will pretty much always have a much deeper voice than someone who is a smaller species (who will sound like a chipmunk in comparison probably), so it says infinitely less about gender than it does about... just.... size

I forgot if i was going to say something else but yeah the squids transgender 100%. so do the octopuses and the cuttlefish

[whitmore]

this is completely off-topic and only tangentially related to the current issue at hand but i just cannot forget all the hate bolas and bolas supporters got for the whole cursed team thing only for it to be impossible that blue was the cursed team. the whole “nobody is listening to tubbo!” when they heard him out and just politely disagreed because it didn’t really add up and all the evidence seemed to be cherry-picked, accused of ableism because they vocally disagreed with some of his points. phil even saying repeatedly he thinks the whole cursed team thing is bullshit. “if the cursed team loses, you lose your lives and your eggs” so blue wasn’t cursed!! otherwise everyone and their eggs would be dead! either bolas was the cursed team or phil was right. and for all the hate we got and how supposedly bad-mannered we are we never bragged about being right or used it as ammo, i didn’t see one post post-win about the cursed team at all from either side tbh. anyway just. food for thought

[galactic-pirates]

Animation > Live Action

So I finally finished watching Star Trek: Prodigy last weekend. Don't worry I binged it on Netflix the day it dropped (I just didn't watch it as it streamed). I wanted to savour it because it might be all we get and that is damn sad.

Anyway! As good as Star Trek: Prodigy was (seriously watch it, you won't regret it) this ramble is only tangentially related to it.

Right or wrong nostalgia is riding high in media right now. Some hits, some awful misses. We also need new stuff and shouldn't just recycle existing IPs but that's a whole other post. To keep it zoomed out, I think there is an element of human nature that likes more stories in worlds we already love. I've seen posts explaining why people love fanfic vs. reading new original novels for this reason. They already love the characters, they are invested. There is a warmth and certainty to it. When this is done in media it can go horribly wrong. If something is revisited and done badly there is like a taint... I'm getting off topic.

TLDR - we like more stories set in worlds we already love.

BUT (and it's a big but) live action has a lot of constraints.

People get older when their characters shouldn't e.g. Data is an android and doesn't age but of course Brent Spiner does and no amount of make-up can disguise it.

Hard to portray alien proportions. Like the Grand Inquisitor on Star Wars looked awful on the Obi-Wan show and I don't know how much this was Disney being cheap, but I don't like actors to suffer either. I mean just look at this here. To me there is no contest.

There are limits for safety/physics/reality reasons as to sets or action sequences. Animation obviously has it's own limitations like characters have default 'outfits' quite often, as rigging new clothing takes a long time (also budget plays a factor just as it does for live action). But still I would argue imagination is the primary limit of animation in terms of what can be done. Art is wonderful that way.

I'm sure there are many other points to but this post is long enough as it is.

Anyway it just struck me watching Star Trek: Prodigy that we had Janeway, and Chakotay, and the Doctor and there was zero issue with when in the timeline this was set post-Voyager because actor aging didn't matter. They could record their lines in a soundbooth wearing their comfiest clothes if they wanted. There's a longevity to that which live action can't realistically offer.

I don't know I just think there's a reason that looking at more recent franchise entries for both Star Wars and Trek, the best shows have both been animation (Prodigy and Rebels).

So yeah I would love to see more animation if we're riding the nostalgia train, and having more adventures with long-time faves.

[sophieinwonderland]

Hey hope it is okay to message you guys. This is one of the alters Charlie ✌🏻😎 we just saw your post about internal family system. I was just want to tell you we are a system of 4 people, we love your input on osdd. I always heard voices in my head mainly bad ones and some nice ones when I was younger, now they formed into people I would say. But maybe it was just my inner monologue or could of been something else. I’m not sure if that’s osdd or not. When did you first appear if you don’t mind me asking ? The three appeared most recently and became real. Someone said it’s mainly four people split into one whole person basically if that makes sense…

Hi Charlie! 🙋‍♀️

Well, the thing about an inner monologue is that it's, well, a monologue.

A back-and-forth conversation between two-or-more separate entities isn't really a monologue. At that point, it's a dialogue. But some singlets are considered to have inner dialogues too, so... 🤔

(My suspicion is that there's a huge number of people with inner dialogues considered singlets who are probably very much not singlets.. but that's a topic for another day...)

It's hard to say much about your experiences without knowing first hand. Every disorder has a "clinically significant distress or impairment criteria" under the DSM. I think if you had persecutory voices in the past, it could easily fulfill that criterion. But OSDD and DID are also expected to have switching under the DSM.

I tend to take a view that diagnostic labels are made up, and there are a lot of experiences that probably would better fit as dissociative disorders which aren't, such as many cases of hearing intelligent voices without switching. But unfortunately, when it comes to hallucination diagnoses, psychotic disorders are a more lucrative industry. 😔

I guess when it comes to voice hearing, there's one question of "is this a dissociative disorder" and a second of "should this be a dissociative disorder," because I fundamentally disagree with how disorders are labeled and have come to loathe a lot of the industry around psychotic disorders.

Sorry, I'm going on a lot of tangential rants with this.

Anyway, I was created when my host was 25.

There was a Rapunzel proto-fictive my host talked to a couple years before that but even though it was developing some rudimentary autonomy, it was never self-aware.

But there may have been another tulpa as early when my host was 16. He was into Wicca at that point, and found out about thoughtforms. He was attempting to make one, but didn't really have a solid method and doubted it worked. Her name is Eria, and she came back not long after I became self-aware. We (including Eria herself) don't believe she was vocal before though. There was no voice hearing nor any other people we know of here before that point. There's just memories of her being here.

I hope that information helps somehow, but since we don't have OSDD or any other dissociative disorder, I'm not totally sure if or how it would.

[thefinalcinderella]

As always thank you for the tsurune novel translation!

Btw have you finished reading the 3rd book or are you still reading while translating? I'm curious as what are your thoughts so far about the 3rd book? I personally think the 3rd book is really too jarring with the prior books and I wonder why. In addition to the sudden surge of new characters, I really can't tell where the plot is going nor what the author is actually aiming for or the focus of the book, which I can tell easily in the previous books. I also find it hard following the jumping train of thoughts in all the chapters so far, it's like every new plot is jumbled up and one storyline isn't even finished before it jumps to a whole new arc. Idk if it's just me who feels that way or not...or if this style of writing will continue to the end of the book so I'm curious to know what you thought as the translator. Thanks!

You basically summarized my thoughts on this novel! Honestly when I read the synopsis I was like "...so what's the book about?" and while slice of life novels can get away with having a loose plot, I feel like there should still be an arc or something like that. Tbh the author has a tendency to randomly jump topics or scenes in the earlier books as well, but it's a lot worse in this book.

My personal theory is that the author was compelled to put this book out in conjunction with the movie and S2. The publisher probably wanted to repeat their Violet Evergarden success, considering how the novels got a big boost with the release of the anime and movies. There's such a big gap between this book and v2 that I got the feeling that they didn't plan to write book 3 (I feel like book 2 had a somewhat open but satisfying ending). Tbh as I translated the novel I got the feeling that the author had no idea how to fill up 200+ pages bc they couldn't think of a plot so they put a lot of random stuff in the book and wrote them in a vignette-style, so you got chapters made up of separate scenes that are only tangentially related. Idk how to explain it but it feels like when I'm trying to bullshit my way through a 10 page essay and I don't have a lot of coherent arguments, so I just try to write a big single paragraph on each page so that I'm at least reaching the page count. I think adding so many new characters was also a way to fill up pages, although it's all moot if you don't use them well. Having Minato and the others jump all the way ahead to their second year (v2 ended in summer of their first year so it's a pretty big jump) was probably a way to justify introducing new students.

I haven't really read ahead, but I do know some of the scenes that happen later in the novel and they are just as random as the earlier scenes imo. I think the novel would have read better if it was structured more like a short story collection. It pretty much is one anyways and I feel like there's a lot of characters from the previous book that could have their own spotlight, and we could see the characters' pasts or something like that.

Anyways I hope if there is ever a book 4, the author would be given the time and help that they need to plot it well.

[anxyetydiagnosed]

Okay hi i rant easily so

Rant from currently undiagnosed bitch about stupid diagnosis bullshit yee haw lets go

Currently according to doctors and what not I'm ADHD, axiety and, depression

I'm trying to change that because uh shit doesn't feel like it covers all the internal bullshit

The three things I think I might have are autism, Bpd, and/or CpTSD.

All of these fucking overlap in some way or another

Bpd and Cptsd in particular are commonly swip swapped or misdiagnosed

Autism isn't something I plan to really look into professionally cause I already have a hard enough time being treated like an adult. Diagnosis is nice but fuck that if I lose rights and shit. I'll deal with it on my own.

Anyways.

I've been to therapists. plural. The several as a kid I don't really remember and don't really care because I only went because my parents bitched about my ADHD being a problem.

The two most recent therapists were.... frustrating, to say the least.

The first one I went to recently [like in the past three years ish] I started seeing because of a "friend intervention" hosted by someone I considered one of my closet friends who was uhhhh fucking abusive. So not a great place to start. And my head was very fucked because everyone around me was either actively abusive or younger than me and used to the same abuse I was. The things I brought up were heavenly based on the accusations of someone who didn't actually care about my wellbeing. Someone who just wanted me to be their constant source of admiration and praise. They told me I lacked empathy. Called me selfish and lazy. Said I deserved everything my parents did and was ungrateful. And so many other things that lead me to entering therapy questioning if I was a fucking narcissist. Again. Not a good way to start. But eventually we started steering into bipolar territory and that kinda stuck. Well it stuck with my therapist but not me. The more I learned about bipolar and the more I got to learn about myself away from "friend" and the cotton they stuffed in my head, the less accurate it was for me. But my therapist refused to change even though I told him all these things dont fit they're kinda close in some aspects if you squint but no. He kept insisting he was right. This along with the fact that he tried to get me to try and train my dad like pavlovs dog [fucking behaviorism] as well as told me "You should become an influencer. I hear they make good money these days" lead to me finding a different therapist.

So I got a new therapist. I brought up Bpd and the fact that I check off almost the entire diagnostic list. She spent the entire session talking about the one symptom on that list that I do not exhibit. So that was fun.

I'm moving states in the next year so I'm kinda just.. giving up on shit for now. I'd rather get all my undiagnosed physical issues dealt with and work with therapy and shit after I move.

So that's a whole tangent from the original post I'm sorry but uhhh something slightly most on topic in all my looking into bpd I've noticed a lot of it is a. stereotyped and/or b. totally from an outside perspective which makes it difficult to go hey maybe that's me. There were two videos that I saw that helped me consider it an option let me see if I can find them.

I think these are them yee haw

Sorry I'm all over the place I'm still getting used to writing again and I'm very tangential. Also no expert and uh messy brain yee have good day

As a late diagnosed autist I will say one of the most damaging but transformative experiences I've ever had was being misdiagnosed with BPD.

Everyday my heart goes out to people with BPD.

The amount of stigma and silencing they face is astonishing and sickening.

I took DBT for years. Therapists use to turn me away because of my diagnosis.

I would be having full blown autistic meltdowns, crying for help literally - but because I was labeled as BPD ANY time I cried I was treated as manipulative and unstable.

As if the only reason I could be crying was if I was out to trick someone.

95% of the books out there with Borderline in the title are named shit like 'How to get away from a person with Borderline', 'How to stop walking on eggshells (with a person who has BPD)'

I was never allowed to feel true pain or panic or need.

That was 'attention seeking behavior', not me asking for help when a disability was literally inhibiting my ability to process emotions.

There were dozens of times where I had a full meltdown and was either threatened with institutionalization or told I was doing it for attention.

My failing relationships weren't due to a communication issue, or the inability to read social cues. No, because I was labeled borderline, my unstable relationships were my fault. Me beggong nuerotypicals to just be honest and blunt with what they meant was me pestering them for validation.

Borderline patients can't win.

And the funny thing is - I asked my therapist about autism. I told her I thought I was on the spectrum.

BPD is WILDLY misdiagnosed with those with autism and I had many clear signs.

Instead - she told me 'If you were autistic we wouldn't be able to have this conversation'. She made me go through a list of autistic traits made clearly for children, citing how I didn't fit each one.

And then she told me that me identifying with the autism community was the BPD making me search for identity to be accepted - and that I wasn't autistic, just desperate to fit in somewhere.

I didn't get diagnosed for another ten years. For ten years I avoided the autism community - feeling as if I were just a broken person who wanted to steal from people who 'really needed it'.

Because of my providers - I began to doubt my identity MORE, not less.

Ten years of thinking I was borderline and being emotionally neglected and demonized by a system meant to help me.

To this day, I still don't trust neurotypicals. Not fully.

I know I'm not borderline now - but my heart aches for them. Not for the usual stuff. But for the stigma. And the asshole doctors. And the dismissiveness and threatening and the idea of institutionalization hanging over their head.

I love Borderline people. I always will. I'm not Borderline but if you are I love you and I'm sorry.

You're not a bad person. You're not a therapists worst nightmare, you are a human with valid feelings and fears.

Borderline people I'm sorry.