#and you can't. translate it into a different language or character system and then to english i have triedddd

[cheswirls]

reading sa fic in vietnamese like. why have i never thought of this before. ik 2 viets that were active sa creators a few yrs back.

anyway it's a goldmine as always to discover a new fic database in a foreign language. this rly will end up being the year where i comb the entire internet for sa fic.

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[undreaming-fanfiction]

This is an appreciation post for non-native English fanfiction writers. I respect you all so much.

I respect that you might be from a country that doesn't speak English at all. You might be picking up different phrases and spellings from US English, some from RP, some just a random international mix. Or you moved to an English speaking country late and even if you speak English fluently, your brain still operates in your primary language. Maybe English lessons in your country sucked (hi, my fellow post-Socialist states of central and east Europe!) and you just learned through trial and error.

I admire that you keep writing even if you get stuck on a phrase for 30 mins because you have a perfect saying, but it's in your first language and you can't just translate it, so you end up searching for an English equivalent that just doesn't fully cover what you want. You struggle to keep the spelling consistent because there's no international standard and so you randomly switch between "colour" and "flavor" and then have to correct it again and again.

Maybe your first language doesn't have the same sentence structure like English and when you read your finished fic, it just doesn't sound right. Maybe your parents or friends speak to you when you're writing and you switch to your first language and the sentences become even wonkier.

(special shoutout to my fellow suffering Slavs and others whose languages don't have articles. Even if we know the rules, we sometimes just toss all "the"s, "an"s and "a"s into the text and pray they land correctly)

You might struggle because those events in the US history or in the Anglophone world in general that shaped a whole generation mean nothing to you. How do you keep your characters realistic if you don't know? And don't get me started on measuring systems. "What the hell are inches," you may weep as you google all those conversions.

And punctuation? Commas in all the places that seem so wrong to you but they're apparently right?

And yet you decide to struggle with all of that to show love to your fandoms. You conquer your fear of sounding wrong and being ridiculed to share your thoughts with all the fans. Consuming media in another language is difficult enough, but creating something? That's so much more.

So to all of you who struggle with all or some of this like I do - I see you. And I want you to know you are awesome.

[necromancy-enthusiast]

Traditional Chinese Translation of Homestuck Analysis-Beta Troll Typing Quirks

That's right, there's a full traditional Chinese translation of Homestuck. You can find it, along with links to other translations, here. If you want to jump to Hivebent when all the beta trolls are officially introduced so you can see this for yourself, here's a link to the first page.

But first, I'll give as succinct of a rundown of the elements of the Chinese language that are relevant as I can. The Chinese writing system doesn't have an alphabet, instead words all have unique characters. So a lot of the trolls' quirks just can't be 'transliterated', because they have something to do with spelling. Similarly, Chinese characters don't have upper or lower cases.

There are multiple ways to type Chinese on an electronic device, but the most common is using a Latin script keyboard. You type out the pinyin of a Chinese character (which is the system mostly commonly used to romanize Mandarin Chinese nowadays) and some suggestions for characters with pinyin romanizations spelled that way pop up in a little window, and then you pick the one that you want.

Chinese also has A LOT of homophones because instead of making a wider variety of noises like English, Chinese opted to differentiate words partially based on the tone they're spoken in. This is absolutely fantastic for puns and wordplay, English could never hope to be anywhere near Chinese's level in that regard. This comes into play with some of the trolls' typing quirks.

And just to clarify, sometimes I say 'Chinese' and sometimes I say 'Mandarin', that's because Mandarin is the official dialect in both mainland China and Taiwan and now the mostly widely spoken one in the world. It isn't mutually intelligible with most other Chinese dialects (this is part of why some people argue that Chinese isn't a single language but a language family). However, written Chinese can generally be understood regardless of the dialect you speak, even if people speaking in different dialects often have different ways of saying the same thing, like greetings and whatnot. When I say Chinese I mean things that broadly apply to written Chinese or the Chinese language/language family as a whole, when I say Mandarin I mean things specific to the Mandarin dialect. I think that about covers it. This post is already getting a bit long so I'll put everything else under a cut. Here's the breakdown:

Aradia: Replaces characters with the Arabic numeral for zero 0. I looked it up and apparently the Chinese character for zero also carry connotations of negation or mean things like 'nought' or 'no', which seems to fit with at least most of the instances she uses it in. Apparently this character can also have some link to death and dead spirits, which would fit given how she's a ghost at the beginning of the story.

Tavros: Uses the character 呃 a lot, which can be used like 'uh' or 'eh'. Uses 嗯 which can be used like 'hmm' or 'uh' as well, or like a general mumbling/light groaning sound, but with less frequency. Still, types haltingly, and uses commas, a lot, like in English, without any periods, Since Chinese doesn't have upper or lower cases, Tavros cANT DO THAT THING HE DOES IN ENGLISH, WHERE HE TYPES IN ALL CAPS OTHER THAN, THE FIRST LETTER OF SENTENCES, sO UNFORTUNATELY, there isn't a lot else to say here.

Sollux: Still refers to the others by their nicknames like KK and AA. He uses reduplication more often than most of the others, which is when you repeat part of a word or even a whole word for various reasons, often to stress your point. He also replaces characters that are pronounced as 'shi' in Mandarin with the Chinese character for 4, which is pronounced as 'si' and written as 四. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be reminiscent of his lisp. EDIT: AS @autumntides reminded me, in at least Mandarin and Cantonese four is a homophone with death, and thus it carries the stigma of death and unluckiness. This fits in well with Sollux's mage of doom class and everything related to it, like Vriska mind controlling him to kill Aradia and him dying during the vast glub because he didn't make it into the game in time before Feferi revived him. I still think it's also the lisp, though.

Karkat: He doesn't type in a larger font size then the others so he doesn't really have any typing quirks, at least none I've been able to ascertain, but he's just as imaginative with his cursing. It can be pretty rough for me to parse and equally rough to translate into English in a way that doesn't sound really awkward, but one of my favorites is 'Rotten bloated corpse of God Almighty! Goddammit, what the fuck does your pockmarked think stem want?'

Nepeta: Uses onomatopoeias that equate to 'cat sounds' like meow and roar, as well as a good bit of reduplication. Still uses asterisk marks and speaks in the third person to indicate when she's role-playing.

Kanaya: Doesn't use punctuation. That's it, since she can't capitalize things like she does in English. I really wish I could say more but that's all I can see. She's still verbose, though.

Terezi: Replaces words that are homophones or near homophones with the numbers 1, 3, and 4 in Mandarin with their Arabic numerals, presumably to resemble how she types in leetspeak in English.

Vriska: Still types out characters 8 times occasionally, but rather than letters (since the Chinese writing system doesn't have an alphabet) it's the whole 'word' like 月月月月月月月月. Replaces words that are homophones (or almost homophones) with 'eight' in Mandarin with the Chinese character for 8 八. I'm pretty sure it's meant to signify that she's dragging the word out rather than repeating it, like when she does thiiiiiiiis in English.

Equius: Still uses % like X's, but he just types it and then types out the word. Again, I don't know exactly what kind of keyboard he's using, but if he's using a Latin script keyboard, he's just typing things like %xuan but when he's finished typing it looks like this %選.

Gamzee: Types out every other character in a slightly smaller font size then the default, he's the only one that changes his font size to resemble his English typing quirk. I'm guessing/hoping they have a set up where he can just as easily change font size as Latin script keyboards can change between lower and uppercase by hitting a certain button, but who knows. He uses ta ma de 他媽的 a lot, which is pretty much the Chinese equivalent of 'motherfucker/motherfucking', and cao 操, which is just 'fuck' but the verb.

Eridan: Still refers to the others by their nicknames like Fef and Kan. A lot of reduplication. A LOT of it, way more than Sollux or Nepeta even. I think this is supposed to be reminiscent of how he doubles his Vs and Ws in English rather then symbolizing true grammatical reduplication, though. It also seems to be that his specific flavor of reduplication is like Vriska's, it's meant to signify he's dragging the sound of a word out rather than repeating it. He also types ~ right after reduplication, seemingly to resemble the waves on the ocean and that he's sort of saying it in a 'wavy' manner, like how in English the comic remarks that he has a 'really weird kinda wavy sounding accent'. Honestly it's annoying to look at, and other Chinese speakers have told me the same thing when they saw how he types. Maybe that was intentional?...

Feferi: She does the same thing as Equius does with X but uses ) ( in front of words whose pinyin romanization starts with H. Uses 'gulu' in the place of 'glub' as transliteration. Replaces characters like those for 'is' 是 and 'have' 有 for characters that have that character in it but also have the character for fish 魚 like 鯷 and 鮪. Also occasionally uses ------ before characters, I think it's meant to symbolize that she's saying something excitedly.

And there you have it. This was rough and took a lot of time, but it was fun if at times deeply frustrating. I may do more of these posts comparing the Chinese translation to the original English, I'm particularly interested in the alpha trolls, but who knows. If you enjoyed this I'd greatly appreciate you sharing it :)

[kurenai-works]

Hello everyone, today is my 29th birthday.

With that in mind, I figured it would be the best time to talk about this, so I'm proud to present to all of you 東方雷秘儀 ～ Strike in the Holy Apex, my very first Touhou Project fangame!

The game's story will be centered around a mysterious thunderstorm that's raiding the entirety of Gensokyo, so it's up to a group of heroines to investigate the situation and save the day.

As some of you may know, around November of last year, GameMaker has become free to use for everyone, which prompted me to take the opportunity to create an engine that looks roughly similar to ZUN's original Touhou Project games. I showcased it in greater detail on YouTube sometime around late February and I was very pleased by the generally positive feedback it got.

Taking that into account, I continued to expand the work I've done and it has grown a lot during the past four months; menus function properly, game settings can be modified, controller support has been added, several gameplay tweaks have been implemented, and so on. There's still a number of things that need to be ironed out by the time I'm writing this post, but considering the progress I have done on it so far, I have faith that a trial version for the game will be ready for release soon. This has to be the biggest project I've worked on... by a country mile. Speaking of the trial version's release date, that will be disclosed at the very end of this post.

GameMaker being free to use has given me a joy I genuinely can't describe, and I bet my inner child would’ve been happy too by hearing those news. After all, I've had experiences with GameMaker for well over 15 years, basically almost half of my entire life!

So, what should you expect by the time the trial version is released? First things first, it'll obviously consist of only three stages.

Secondly, you'll be able to play this adventure as the usual duo; Reimu and Marisa. More playable characters will be available in the full version.

Thirdly, the game's main mechanic. It's called the Brave Gauge, and it has functionality almost similar to the Season Gauge found in Touhou 16: Hidden Star in Four Seasons. It's not the most original idea I've had, but for the record, and coming back to my familiarity with GameMaker ever since my teenage years, this system was taken from a very old draft which dates all the way back to 2014, while making some adjustments to it. Here's a little bit of proof:

I'm going a bit off tangent here, but seeing these filenames kinda makes me feel embarrassed. The game has "Ascii" on the name because all of the graphics in there were made using ASCII characters, which was done during a time when my artistic talents were non-existent, so they looked quite messy and overall made the game have a goofy aura to it, haha.

And lastly, considering that I'd like this game to be played by a wider demographic, it's gonna be available in three different languages: English, Spanish (my native language, hooray!) and Japanese. These can be selected anytime via the options menu.

I don't know any people who are fluent in Japanese, and the few friends that I have don't seem to know much about the language either, so that translation is gonna be handled 100% by myself using tools like DeepL. I know that translating all the stuff in one go can lead to heavily mistranslated results, so I'll be making sure to convert my game's text as meticulously as I can. If there's anyone out there who understands Japanese fluently and is willing to translate the text for me, please hit me up because that'd be really appreciated. In case that happens, I won't be able to reward the translation financially, but I will be adding your name to my game's end credits.

So yeah, I don't have much else to say. The game's trial version will be available on Itch.io this August 30th.

The game has a long way ahead from being completed, so anticipating a release date for the full version is not feasible, at the moment. Regardless, I'll make sure to update on that once I have made abundant progress on it.

Both versions of the game will be released as pay-what-you-want. In simpler words, they'll be available free of charge with the optional choice of depositing a sum, in case you're feeling generous. After all, not to brag, but it goes without saying that I'm handling every detail in the game; not just the programming, but also the art, music and writing. While I have used some code libraries to facilitate the inclusion of certain aspects in my game, most of the heavy lifting is carried out by me, so it'd be really appreciated to have some compensation for the work I have been doing for almost half a year. It's not by any means mandatory, so it's fine if you can't for whatever reason, hahaha.

Anyway, I hope you look forward to this game of mine as much as I do! See you then!!

[electricsoul-rpg]

Watching cdramas and donghuas can be so frustrating. To be honest, my Mandarin is not good enough for me to do completely without English subtitles. I could deal with Chinese subtitles only but it would be difficult and would probably give me a headache. But my Mandarin is good enough that I can tell how bad it all is. And sometimes, they're not even using Chinese subtitles as a base, but probably AI and speech recognition? On a tonal language? Which is so very complex and depends heavily on context? I've seen 8 different translations for one word, in half as many episodes, in a "fansub" that is probably just AI. This is ridiculous.

And one thing that I absolutely hate: all the pronouns, honorifics, titles and forms of address that are just...completely erased. Everything is replaced by first names (!!!) or "Mr." or "Mrs.". It is so frustrating. It looks so so so so so wrong. These pronouns, honorifics, titles and forms of address are important. They give so much context and information about characters and their relationships! One little word, and it tells you a whole story. And I know, it can't translate well in English, because there is no equivalent, the Chinese system and culture are too complex and the English language is too poor. But damn, foreigners have no problem adapting to Japanese terms! Why is it so impossible to think they can learn Chinese ones?

Why can't we have good subtitles, good translations, that respect the Chinese spirit and meaning? Done by proper translators and not just machine translation? I know foreigners probably don't matter to Chinese companies and so they don't bother at all with quality subtitles but. Still. It is depressing. Frankly, sometimes, it feels like, if you don't know Mandarin, you are not going to properly understand 1/3 of a story, with the subtitles missing the complexity of the characters, relationships, power dynamics, cultural references. It is that bad.

*Sigh* Good luck to all the people who watch cdramas and donghuas without understanding Mandarin and who rely completely on the quality of subtitles. Good luck.

[beyourownanchor6]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

thanks for the tags beloveds @wikiangela @spotsandsocks @bi-buckrights @hippolotamus 🩵

How many works do you have on ao3?

—246

What's your total ao3 word count?

—1,469,436

What fandoms do you write for?

— 911, teen wolf, animal kingdom (not actively but still counting it)

Top five fics by kudos:

if i lay here, would you lie with me (forget the world)

nobody can do everything

i want to love you (but i don't know how)

five + 1 (idk who allowed me to name a fic this 💀)

someone to stay

Do you respond to comments?

—always! even if it takes me a few weeks, i always respond to them. i'm so so appreciative of anyone who takes the time to leave them 🥹

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

—come back home (version 2) i just had to get it out of my system, sorry 🥲

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

mmm, idk besides the one listed above and one other, they're all really sappy and fluffy endings 😅 it'll probably end up being whatever sappy ass ending i write for the chris doesn't come back au after everything i've put them through 😂

Do you get hate on fics?

—not really, more like just annoying people nitpicking stupid things

Do you write smut?

—i do indeed 😏 can't say if it's good, but i've got lots of it posted 😂

Craziest crossover:

—umm i write tons of au's but idk if this refers to that or doing an actual crossover with another fandom?? i wish not to talk about the one that still haunts me, but i did use characters from the step up movie for my au: let me lose myself

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

—not that i know of...

Have you ever had a fic translated?

—somebody asked once but idk what ever happened with that

Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

i have! 3 different times with my wife @loserdiaz 🫶🏻

—no body, no crime

—this is my idea of fun (playing video games)

—i don't want to keep secrets just to keep you

All time favourite ship?

—buddie! the brainrot for them has been unmatched jsiodj

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

—uhhh probably my divergent au...i've had the placeholder for insurgent with like 3 sentences sitting in my wip folder for forever 😬

What are your writing strengths?

—i'll just list the things people have told me because i have no idea sjwioe. i always get compliments on my characterization, descriptions, and metaphors <3

What are your writing weaknesses?

—shutting the fuck up and writing anything short 🫠

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

—i've done it in the past but not really anymore

First fandom you wrote in?

—teen wolf

Favorite fic you've written?

—that's like asking me to pick between my nonexistent children 😭

i'm picking 3 idc

coastlines

if i lay here, would you lie with me (forget the world)

the ducking of evan buckley

tagging: @redlightsandicedtea @monsterrae1 @honestlydarkprincess @onward--upward @daffi-990 @wildlife4life @underwaterninja13 @bigfootsmom @thewolvesof1998 @eddiebabygirldiaz @elvensorceress @zainclaw @watchyourbuck @ronordmann @queerbuckleys @spaceprincessem @jacksadventuresinwriting

[ewingstan]

What do I do with this.

I'm not gonna claim that the text is endorsing this or anything. It did construct a situation where leaving someone on an empty world was the best choice with Monokeros, and we can analyze what that writing choice means, but I don't see this conversation being something we're meant to nod our heads along to. I can't see someone writing "we're gonna disappear people on this list" and "its fine if you're especially violent vigilantes we'll put you in our especially-violent-vigilante support network" and not mean for it to be read as awful. Otherwise it would use words that sound less bad on the face of it. Maybe I'll hear that WB has spent the last few years arguing on reddit that this was actually totally moral and cool but with the text in front of me, with the language used, I cannot see a reading where any of this is meant to be seen as okay.

But more to the point I don't see how we got here? Worm did an amazing job of making every choice Taylor made believable and understandable in the context of what choices she's already made and how she's been changed by her experiences. I do not understand what has prompted Victoria to suggest this and every other member of breakthrough (and every major hero team) to go along with it. I can see why its accepted on a systemic level, its not too different from the birdcage and most of the villains sent there were given sham trials at most anyway. But literally no one on the team is pushing back on this. Two members of breakthrough were just in prison—three, if you count Damsel. Its not clear that she's even given up on the top-tier villain persona even if she's not making moves to pursue it, why is she going along with this. Several of them have done things that at least approach getting put on a list like that. You're living in a world where Riley and Valkyrie and Legend are load-bearing pillars that people rely on, and suddenly disappearing powerful capes that are currently a problem is the only option we can think of? Is the whole "the city is the place of renewed chances" thing really being abandoned so thoroughly?

Kenzie had just told Swansong how much it hurt for her to go to prison, how much it felt like breaking a promise to not leave her alone even though they kept in contact. They were just having a conversation about how much Chris meant to them, how much his deal is a result of horrific circumstances that its the group's original goal to try to work through constructively and come out a better person with. Chris would almost have to be on a list like this, right? Apparent shadow-leader of a cape dictatorship? Sveta would've been on a list like that as Garotte, if it wasn't apparent how much she hated what she was doing. Sveta had spent the last chapter yelling at Carol for her views on criminal rights. Why is there such a huge disconnect here that the text isn't seemingly doing anything with.

Its not even that I can't see a version of this beat working for the story. The track just hasn't been laid for it. The prison break story set up "hey there's a lot of really dangerous capes and knowing where they are can let people try to break them out" thing well, but that does not automatically translate to "everyone will be on board for Secret Prison Colonies" given all the strong character and thematic reasons for the opposite reaction. Why isn't this the result of a more gradual slide or a series of moral compromises? Why is this something that's being described in jump cuts?

[gamie99]

Skibidi Grammar: A Brief Amateur Study

Because I honestly have nothing better to do. We studying the Skibidi writing system up in this bitch 🔥🔥

(Spoilers for Episode 70 Part 2 below! Proceed with caution!)

In the latter half of Episode 70 Part 2, Plungerman picks up this document in what I'm calling 'the hardware artifact room', featuring what is very clearly the written form of the language used by the Skibidi Toilets. This honestly kind of shocked me (the toilets have a writing system??) but at the same time it doesn't - every intelligent civilization, no matter how absurd, has to have some way to keep records handy, especially one as advanced as the toilets.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that we obviously can't translate the Skibidi language, the exact nature or contents of this document are completely unclear. However, I'm going to analyze what we can see and understand anyway, because that's fun and I have horrific brainrot. LET'S BEGIN!!

But before we start analyzing the actual text itself, I'd like to quickly get the two photos on the document out of the way:

The first photo is of the Scientist Toilet, with some weird round thing behind him that kind of looks like an airplane engine. His photo is apparently captioned, written in red and in larger text than the rest of the text on the document. What is the caption? Is that his legal name?? Again, it's completely unclear.

The second photo depicts an Astro Toilet - his style of helmet makes it obvious. What isn't obvious, however, is who this Astro Toilet is. He isn't the one from Part 1, and he doesn't resemble the other two Astro Toilets we've seen before either - all of their helmets are different. If I'm not mistaken, this is the fourth Astro Toilet we've seen in the series, and looking at where we currently are at, he definitely won't be the last.

Why these two are featured on this document is, again, unknown. But we can deduce that the Astro Toilets and the Scientist Toilet are connected in a very important way.

Now, with that out of the way, time to actually analyze the written toilet language!!

The Skibidi language is written in all caps, and makes obvious use of some of the characters from the Greek alphabet - you might be familiar with a few if you've taken any kind of advanced math in school. This seems to be purely for aesthetic reasons, seeing as how the Greek letter Ψ is used in place of the Latin letter Y in 'YES' when Ψ makes the 'ps' sound. I ain't gonna complain though. I love doing shit for the sake of 'make it Fancy™'.

A couple of the words are underlined, which wouldn't be too strange by itself, if not for the fact that some of the words are also overlined (this can most clearly be seen in the first 'SKIBIDI' in the second paragraph). Some kind of punctuation or markings to denote proper nouns, maybe? I don't know.

Speaking of punctuation (kinda), we have some symbol usage in the form of {}! They're used to surround a set of words in the second paragraph ({DOB YES YES}).

< and > also make an appearance! In the second paragraph, they're used to separate two words (SKIBIDI<>DOM), and in the third paragraph, they're used to surround four words (>SKIBIDI SKIBIDI SKIB IDI<). Again, no idea what purpose these symbols have - maybe they have a similar function to the {} we see here?

And now, for some various other interesting things I've noticed!

The first four lines of the first paragraph is the classic unaltered Skibidi chant. Neato!

There's a lot of variety in the community when it comes to spelling the word "DOP". This document features three different spellings - 'DOP', 'DOM', and 'DOB' - which I suppose makes them all correct! There's also the word 'DIP' that's featured here too.

There's a random upside down A in one of the words in the second paragraph (it's a bit hard to read due to the faded text, but I can best Latinize it as 'YES∀SKIBIDI'). Interesting!

'BRRR' and 'BRRRRH' are words. Hahaha!

And that's about all I have to say about the Skibidi written language! Moral of the story: ...uh, man, my brainrot is horrible right now have a good day everyone LMFAOOOO

[phoenixcatch7]

The thing with stories of any type is that everything is a translation. Sometimes literally, from the author's own head, from another language, from book to TV.

Then there's things like visual metaphors, props and fake backgrounds, set pieces, onomatopoeia, paragraphs of description that everyone will visualise slightly differently, animated contortions, unrealistic but helpful sound effects, camera angles to emphasise mood.

In fantasy or scifi settings you can't even assume they're speaking the language you do. That their culture is exactly what's shown and nothing more.

So much of what makes up good world building is shorthand, is making it work to the audience, is using something in the right context rather than digging up every detail that would make or break the illusion.

A character in a magical world, or even simply a non English speaking country, would not use the same curse words. Leather could be presumed to be cow but could just as easily be any number of bizarre creatures. Booking a hotel could require a very different system to one we're used to. Champagne, the word, wouldn't exist without France but it carries the meaning of expensive alcohol for celebrations and parties, the readers would understand what it means.

Tolkien did it with LOTR and it was a masterpiece. The prevalent themes of dark and light being mere shorthand for expansive good and evil, used to convey the messages it needed rather than entirely new words the readers wouldn't intuit? The characters not even going by their actual names? A whole entire conlang that never even gets mentioned in the actual story??? That's a man who has a grasp on how tightly interconnected the world, history and culture all reflect each other. I mean of course he did, it was his job, but what he did was nothing short of fantastical.

All this to say, I believe this is the root of all world building. Cohesive, well balanced, feasible, detailed-but-not-too-much, no words that'd break a reader's/viewer's immersion, expansive enough, realistic, resonant, coherent, believable. All of it, whether fantastical or realistic, stems from one thing.

Is this a good translation of what you had in your head?

[lovebugs-and-snakecharmers]

LBSC Sprint Challenge April 2024

The LBSC Sprint Challenge is now open for writers and artists! The prompts are:

1. "Guess what I just did?" 2. “I knew she was the one when she tried to flirt and ended up breaking my nose.” 3. When Luka's new single drops a few days ahead of Jagged's, for one shining moment he was #1 on the charts while Jagged was #20, and Luka will never let him live it down. 4. Hawkmoth is standing right there & you can't transform. What's a desperate superhero to do? 5. "I wish I had princess energy instead of feral gremlin energy but here we are." 6. Wildcard - pick any previous challenge prompt, or play LBSC Smooch Roulette to generate a prompt!

You have until Wednesday, May 1 to complete your 3 15-minute sprints/45 minute art sprint and post the results. Once you’ve completed the sprints, you have 24 hours to edit (which can include some new writing to smooth transitions and make it feel complete, and whatever work you feel appropriate to get your art to a state you consider ‘finished’).

Please note you may sprint in the language of your choice, and you can either translate the final fic before posting, post it in the original language, or both as you choose. You can join us on the LBSC discord or sprint on your own! Just be sure to tag @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers in your final post so we will see it and reblog it. The rest of the rules can be found here under the cut.

Rules!

We’ll post a beginning and end date to the challenge, and a prompt.

Writers, If you choose to participate in the event, write for that prompt in up to three 15 minute sprints. No writing outside the sprints until you have completed all three! After the 3 sprints are complete, you have 24 hours to edit (which can include some new writing to smooth transitions, etc). You can also choose to break that 45 minutes up differently if you find a different split works better for you.  After those 24 hours, post what you’ve got. Tag your posts with @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers so we can reblog it to the LBSC blog. If you post your work on AO3 or somewhere other than Tumblr, you can leave a link in our ask box or in the appropriate discord channel so we can be sure to promote it. After the designated challenge end date, we’ll compile a listing of the submissions and post it to the LBSC blog.

Feel free to sprint in whatever language is most comfortable to you! You can post it in your own language or translate it before posting, or both!

Artists, you have 45 minutes to sketch and 24 hours to do any cleanup or coloring you’d like to complete. You can split your 45 minutes up however you like, or not at all. There’s no requirements on your finished piece, just aim for whatever goal seems challenging but achievable to you.  Tag your posts with @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers so we can reblog it to the LBSC blog. If you post your work on Instagram or somewhere other than Tumblr, you can leave a link in our ask box or in the appropriate discord channel so we can be sure to promote it. After the designated challenge end date, we’ll compile a listing of the submissions and post it to the LBSC blog.

If you’re wavering as to whether or not you think you can accomplish anything in 45 minutes, we really encourage you to give the challenge a try. You may be surprised what you can do! Feel free to join us in the discord linked above so we can encourage and cheer you on.

Obviously, this has to run a bit on the honor system and we won’t be tracking your times, but please do your best to honor the spirit of the challenge! If your sprint fic becomes an Entire Thing (these things happen sometimes) and you want to continue it, feel free! However, please still post whatever you’ve got after your 3 sprints with the tag. No fair busting out a fully polished fic or art without showing us what it looked like at the challenge stage!

We want to keep this a positive space and event! This does NOT mean that you can’t write or draw anything critical of a character or episode, but it isn’t the space for character bashing or hate either. Please keep the characters in character and save the more speculative work for another time. NSFW sprint works are permitted but must be tagged appropriately (please use “NSFW LBSC sprint challenge” for easy filtering on the blog) and with appropriate warnings.  (More FAQ about the process here)

This is a Lukanette blog and a Lukanette event, so while Lukanette does not need to be the main ship, it needs to at least be included or referenced and considered endgame (in other words, they don’t have to be together by the end of your work, but the intent is that they’re headed in that direction). The decision about what qualifies for reblog rests solely with the LBSC moderators. If a piece hasn’t been reblogged within a couple of days, either the mods felt the piece didn’t meet the criteria or it was simply missed; you are welcome to reach out in the asks to inquire which. There are plenty of other spaces out there for other ships and OT3s, and people are welcome to use the challenge rules and prompts to write for their own ships! They just won’t be reblogged to the LBSC blog, and we ask that you please not use the event tag (a modified form is fine - “InsertAlternateShipName sprint challenge” instead of “LBSC sprint challenge,” for example).

Happy sprinting!

[yanderefairyangel]

Ok so I just wanted to say this : I got some people telling me that I was arguing semantics when debunking the vid. And that worries me cause in media analysis, you ARE supposed to play semantics...

Which actually made me realize that most of the video essays on ytb analyzing supports or dialogue never really questionned why a character speaks in a certain way and how it conveys their personality, what does it shows about said character and the overall effect.

While there is not one way to analyze a media, in general the literacy ask you to try to ask yourself what something represent symbolically and that can comes through the use of words. Which is why I insist on using the jpn version for Engage. Each language has its own rules, system and own semantics with all the subtlelty and nuance possible. This is what makes translation so hard, the fact that you have to choose the right words to properly render the nuance of the original sentence without adding or removing in meaning. Even then, you can't rely on translation one hundred percent to study the writing of a media. Words are tools, and they create effects by creating meaning. That's why studying semantics is important and checking the original text is.

In japanese there is several words with different nuance that English can't take into account. You can say "I" by either using watashi, boku, ore, atashi, washi, ware/waga/ga, jibun etc. And all of those have slight different nuance due to the practice linked to those words, the context in which they are usually refered to and so on and so on. Each information transmitted by the text is important, the wording and how it is said, all of this are another way of showing something.

And also, taking into account the subtext behind a character's silence.

Take chapter 2 for example, in chapter 2, when Lumera told Alear she hoped they would view her as a mother like they used to 1 000 years ago, Alear remained silent and made a rather sad face, showing their uneasyness. This silent is playing into the many instance of foreshadowing in Engage, where Alear's lack of familiarity towards Lumera is apparent. Their awkward reaction comes from the fact that Lythos Castle and Lumera don't ring a bell and when you know the truth behind all of this, it all makes sense that Alear would not feel familiar with that place.

Yes I play with semantics, but playing with semantics is essential in an analysis. I know the meme of the "curtain are blue means nothing deep" made a lot of damage, but every choice matters. The "curtains are blue" means something : either it is linked to the mood of whoever choose the curtains, either it is a choice made by the author to create "un effet de réel" to quote Barthes, an element that might play later on, existing for aesthetic reason to create a sonority like Flaubert used to.

If you never try to look into a sentence, you won't obtain a deeper analysis and will only stay on a surface level.

[landwriter]

PSA: The Death of Translation has been translated into Chinese! Go give it love, or read my rambling essay and then go give it love:

翻譯之死 by @thirrith

How do you translate a story where meaning hinges not only on the words themselves, but the meaning made by the reader's knowledge of their obscurity? Where misspellings aren't misspellings at all, but memories? Where sentiment is drawn from syntax differences? Well you start by being absolutely fucking brilliant!

I was so lucky to be able to hang around in the document while Eth worked on this. The level of creativity and diligence that has gone into this is mind-blowing. It is such a gift, and the process was incredible. It doesn't matter if you can't read Chinese - if you liked the fundamental premise of The Death of Translation, if you like language at all, you need to know how this was done:

Eth's translation is in Traditional Chinese characters with the addition of Classical Chinese and Cantonese to translate the Middle English. Classical Chinese - also known as Literary Chinese - isn't representative of how Chinese used to be spoken in the vernacular, which is why Eth chose it specifically for the written portions of Middle English...and those lines spoken by Dream, naturally.

Hob's Middle English lines are in Cantonese, which has the benefit of being older than and still at least a little intelligible to readers who only know Mandarin. Middle Chinese can't be used the way Middle English is used in the Sandman fandom (delightfully and gratuitously), because unlike the alphabetic characters of English, where words can be sounded out and phonetic spellings will exist in written record - a huge part of understanding how a language once sounded - logographic characters don't directly specify phonology. And even if they did, Middle Chinese spans from the 5th-12th centuries AD - making it contemporary of not Middle but Old English, and covered an area several orders larger than the parts of a small island where Middle English was spoken for about three hundred years - it's nowhere near as homogeneous(ish) or accessible(ish) as Middle English; Cantonese, despite being a different language, serves the same effect.

And then, the grocery list! This is where writing systems go ham. In English, it contains abbreviations, the medial s (ſ), archaic spellings/misspellings, and fancy old ampersands (one of the only logograms in the English writing system, I think, originally Latin's et and evolving over time into the shape of & - in Jane Austen's Persuasion you will find this aural history of 'et' instead of 'and', where &c is used to mean et cetera).

Eth used Cantonese, Simplified Chinese characters (a 20th century addition, faster to write, that Hob definitely would've embraced), variant character forms (which typically have a visual resemblance to each other), and 通假字, homophone characters that were conventionally used interchangeably with one another in Classical Chinese:

English and Chinese have such different writing systems and histories, and Eth has used all the compounding effects of that (upon things like phonology, modern-day intelligibility, writing system changes) to the absolute fullest effect and made choices that add invaluable implicit meaning to the story and characterization.

(As if that's not enough, the translation also features hot-linked footnotes that provide context for cultural references?! Literally everything a reader could ask for.)

And this is all super clever and fascinating if you're a big language fan like me, but the soft artichoke heart of my wonder can really be summed up best by this fact:

For many years I've loved the Jack Gilbert poem 'The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart', enough to put the first lines at the beginning of the fic:

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko we write, and the words Get it wrong.

And for just as many years, I assumed Michiko was a place name, or some classical reference to art or literature beyond my plebby ken - until I saw Eth's note in the translation document.

Michiko, in fact, was the name of his wife.

The whole thing is such a testament to translation: the true deliberate practice of it, not just figurative language imagining a fictional character and his long-lived idiolect. And Eth's translation has only underlined my conviction that there is, sometimes, I feel, deeper work of understanding done - greater art made - and lovelier agonies to be had - in carrying words across languages than there is in putting the words down in the first place, in a first language.

[operafantomet]

Hi Anea! Out of curiosity, how many languages you know? Are most Scandinavians multilingual?

"Know" is a bit... fluent. I tend to separate between how many languages I could read a book in VS how many languages I could order food in... Hah.

I think most Scandinavians learn the neighbor languages during their childhood or teenage years. I learned Danish as a very young child. My dialect is close to Danish and we frequently visited Denmark - it was a three-hour ferry trip away. And Swedish because of all the Swedish children's programs, Emil, Pippi, whatnot.

The three languages Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are quite similar, with some differences in words and pronunciation but not so much you would not get understood when talking your own language. I master all three as such, but prefer to speak my own language when talking to adults. For children I might change completely, depending on their level. But when I have visited Denmark with Swedish friend Josefine, we have all spoken our respective languages without much issues.

There's also hybrids for easing the communication - the most made-fun-of version is "svorsk" (svensk/norsk, AKA Swedish/Norwegian). It's sometimes done on TV and it's rather amusing. I think the best illustration is this candy, as that middle letter is a hybrid between Norwegian/Danish Ø and Swedish Ö. It doesn't make sense in any language, yet A+ for trying.

So yeah, I speak and read Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, albeit I only actually speak the two latter when forced as I feel I'm a character in a TV series when speaking it. I guess the best comparison in English would be to fake a Scottish accent. It's do-able, but doesn't feel natural.

Then there is of course English. Most Scandinavian kids learn it both in school and from the internet. Most are also encouraged to do a second foreign language later on. For me it was French, but I'm somewhere between "can ask simple questions and hope for a simple answer" and ordering food. This is also my approach to German. There is so much similarities to Norwegian I understand a lot of what I read and hear, but I can't form my own sentences.

With a base in English, Germannic languages and a Latin language I can fake my way through many European countries and at least order food, understand basic newspaper headlines and manage my way through non-English websites (for example looking for tickets or info).

As an adult I also tried to learn Greek. The grammar absolutely killed me, but I can read it fine enough (in the pace of a child). I just don't understand a lot of what I read. Hah! I can also - again - order food, say my name, ask how people are doing, understand ticket systems etc.

So yeah... I would say I master four languages - Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and English. I can fake my way through French, German and Greek to some extent, and that also translate into related languages (for example Italian, Dutch). But I could never read a book in those languages, or hold a meaningfull conversation past "Hello, my name is (...), how are you doing?".

[kokomelt]

I think it's very obvious I'm a Genshin enjoyer, but also I must mention I'm an avid Inazuma Eleven enjoyer too, and I will never get over the fact we have a nation literally named "Inazuma" (I know it's because it's the Electro nation, but still...let me be unu) so...how come Inazuma Genshin AU isn't a thing?? It probably is but I haven't seen much about it. Genshin has an element system and so does Inazuma Eleven, Archons can equal to keshin right? Or maybe the Go coaches? Imagine Endou or Kidou as Archons–

Ahem...wait, you must be wondering (sadly, I think you're not), who's this random person? Howdy, I'm Coco/Mimi, and you are watching me yap and gnaw at this AU's messy concept because I can't write to help myself (because English isn't my first language, sorry) and I'm in no way cohesive nor make much sense most of the time while trying to explain stuff.

Now let's get back on track under the cut...

When I say Inazuma Eleven Genshin AU I don't mean that it should follow the original plot, because who could even be Aether and Lumine??? But conceptually the Visions, nations and Archons just click to me for Inazuma Eleven, somehow (and if it doesn't you'll have to pry this AU from my wimpy, damp hands)!! Besides, most hissatsus could be translated to elemental powers so they can keep them even in Genshin (some of them at least) and it'd still work.

Before I dive into this any further, for those fans of Inazuma who are unfamiliar with Genshin, if you're wondering how much of the lore/basics you need to know to understand this, don't worry, not much really...i think?. I won't say anything that's not like very well-known regarding Genshin and/or common knowledge about it, any other thing I'll try to badly explain it without losing the flow (this is a mess, so spoiler: that's not likely to happen, i'm so sorry).

For any fan of Genshin who ended up here without knowing much about Inazuma Eleven... I'm not going to tag this under the Genshin fandom, because without context of Inazuma Eleven this will be even more of a bigger wall of nonsensical text.

For the sake of making this somewhat understandable I'll separate it into different topics, it won't make it more organized but at least it would be split into parts so no one gets (more) lost + with cute pastel dividers to try and be aesthetic about it...

Also I can't promise this is spoiler free, I doubt it so if you don't want spoilers for Genshin and/or Inazuma Eleven I think you should stop here.

꒰ The General Plot of this AU kinda ꒱

As I mentioned above, I don't think this AU can or needs to follow the original plot for Genshin, at least not the one with Aether and Lumine because again, I don't know who could fit the role so let's just say this is an AU who only grabs the concepts of Genshin (set in Teyvat, 7 elements and nations, Archons, visions, The Abyss, etc) and throws Inazuma Eleven characters into the setting.

However, some things make sense to me and I think can be equated to certain events in Inazuma Eleven but tbh, I don't even know which timeline would this follow. For example, Fatui being akin to Teikoku, and Kageyama Reiji being the Cryo Archon could fit. But also the Fatui sound a lot like they could be the equivalent of Fifth Sector, and the SEEDs are the Harbingers.

That's why I say I have no idea really what timeline this could follow, personally when this nonsense came to me while daydreaming I thought of it being set on the Inazuma Eleven Go timeline because idk, in Genshin the first element the player gets is Anemo (wind), and who other than Tenma could be both a protagonist and had an Anemo vision? But I won't jump into the vision headcanons yet.

So I think if that's the case, maybe The Fatui were indeed the whole of Teikoku. Archons are deities, ok, but one can ascend to become an Archon, so my take on Kageyama Reiji being the Cryo Archon stays but...what if he died like what supposedly happened in Galaxy? Basically...Kageyama was the Archon, but died, and who could succeed him? Well, I was thinking Kidou could, therefore that would make him the new Cryo Archon on Tenma's timeline.

But if the Fifth Sector is like the Fatui (somewhat, it's just because they're the main "evil organization"), and Fifth Sector was something created by Goenji, why would he bring back a group that's so related to Archon!Kageyama?

Also the whole Aliea incident could be tied to the Abyss Order or something, because the Aliea Stone and the Abyss corrupt people.

So yeah, that's what I mean with "it should follow the original plot yet not exactly". But I'm not that meticulous to actually try and make this make sense.

I still support my version where this AU is set during the Go timeline, but that's because I'm biased towards Tenma (and because Endou as an Archon sounds fun to me).

꒰ Everyone has Japanese names + why I won't use the dub ones ꒱

As you may have noticed by now, I'm using exclusively the original japanese names, nor the dub ones. This part is mainly a quick explanation about why I would refer to them with those names in the rest of the post about the AU.

Even though in Genshin there are 7 Nations based on mash-ups of different cultures (Fontaine is France + England, if I recall correctly, but basically you get what I mean) and characters are named accordingly, I physically can't use (nor recall all) the dub names, so let's just assume that while everyone here will be referred with Japanese names, they may be from different nations.

But whoever decides to develop this whole idea can do whatever, I just ask you to please, throw the link to me so I can read/see it because I'd love to >3<

꒰ Genshin Elements vs Inazuma Elements ꒱

I'm not going to develop this much...I hope??

I'm just going to mention that Elements in Inazuma are a beautiful mess (Wind encapsulates Ice, and Wood element somehow is tied to Darkness and Space...and I don't even know why???), but honestly I don't see logic (not much at least) trying to give the characters the same element they have in the games.

How am I supposed to translate the fact Hikaru uses Wood element? Cryo? Dendro because it's literally Plant so Plant = Wood? But his hissatsus are clearly Darkness and/or Space themed so I don't see how that fits.

I have read countless theories regarding the criteria to give someone a certain Vision, most of them revolve around ambitions or desires strong enough that Celestia acknowledges the individual who has them. I like the theories though, and it somehow makes sense even if it's not something set in stone (yet), so I guess we can still follow it a bit. I'd explain any theory but some are lenghty to sum them up, at least I, myself, can't.

Now with Inazuma Eleven. It doesn't have a similar elemental assignation system (again, there's Wood encapsulates Music, Space, Darkness and so on, while Genshin has just plain Dendro element for Plant powers) so I can't really give them their exact element + I think some visions' descriptions fit some characters that coincidentally don't have that same element in the canon source.

Who are the Archons though? Once again, I don't know, this whole post is a big "I have this idea, is making me tweak and roll, but I have no clue on who is what or what is who." so yep.

At some point I thought Daisuke Endou could have done the same as Zhongli. He was the Geo Archon and faked his dead (like in Inazuma, you know?) but also the idea of Endou being a normal human and ascending to Archonhood sounds epic, because he was a normal guy on the Inazuma Eleven series but upon reaching Inazuma Eleven Go he's a whole icon for the rest of it, he's the basis of new Raimon and now Tenma carries the torch.

Yes, I don't know what to do to develop this, moving on to the following point to tackle...

꒰ Aliea Stone = Abyssal Power? and much more ꒱

This is going to be long because to address this I need to explain Genshin stuff to show how it makes some sort of connection (to little delulu me, at least).

First off what is 'The Abyss' aka 'The Void' and to some extent Khaenri'ah, because both are tied deeply.

The Abyss originated because Celestia destroyed Khaenri'ah, which was a former nation of Teyvat without a deity (because they didn't need one (?)). Also the Abyss wants to destroy and/or corrupt all the other nations (the main 7 Nations) in revenge.

But according to the wiki it refers to four different things too, which are interconnected. However, I'll use just two mainly when referring to it: The Abyss as one of the Three Realms and the region beneath (and beyond) Teyvat that's considered a different world entirely.

To sum it up badly, The Abyss I'm talking about was a nation but became what it is nowadays after its destruction.

Why do I relate it to the Aliea though? Because Abyss power is purple, or at least that's the main color we can see in the Abyss' Mages floating runes and most importantly: the upside down corrupted statue of The Seven.

The whole purple power that corrupts people it's very reminiscent to the Aliea Meteorite, who glows in purple and alters the mind of people who use its power (just look back at what it did to Kazemaru).

But I did mention The Abyss is considered part of 'The Three Realms'...well, this section isn't also called "and much more" for nothing, because I'll have to bring Desuta and Sein into this AU...

You may not remember them, but don't worry my sweet little jellyfish. So...remember when Inazuma Japan had a match against literal angels and devils because Haruna and Rika were abducted by them? Hope this has unlocked a few memories from that chapter.

The Three Realms in Genshin are basically The Human Realm, The Light Realm and The Void Realm.

In the past The Void and The Light existed opposite to each other until the Human Realm was created.

In any case, the point is that The Void Realm could be akin to Desuta and his team, the Makai Gundan Z. and The Light Realm would be Sein and his team. Because, you know, Dark Void vs Light dynamic.

Also we have the Abyss Order right? That should have its own equal thing but I couldn't come up with anything, at least not Inazuma Eleven related.

꒰ Genshin characters that remind me of Inazuma Eleven ones ꒱

For no particular reason, maybe vibes, maybe personality idk. This doesn't mean I'd give them the same visions, nation, and/or species but rather that I find parallelisms between them somehow.

However, my fish brain can't pinpoint all the similarities they have and it's not good at analyzing. Also, I'll be mentioning from most seasons (if needed, also Ares/Orion timeline).

Charlotte and Haruna. Yes, it's probably the camera/reporter thing they have going on.

Scaramouche/Kunikuzushi and Kariya. Trust issues, both are very cat-like and they are most likely sassy (Scaranation, please don't chase me down, I know he has a lot of depth, I just tried to be extremely concise about it)

If you prefer, I also consider Scaramouche could have parallelisms with Fudou.

Dottore/Capitano and Kageyama Reiji. It's the unapologetically evil guy vibe I guess.

Bennett and Endou. I feel like these two have an unyielding positivism, sometimes they can get overtaken by doubts about themselves but on the end, they're sweet guys that deserve happiness.

Alternatively, Bennett and Tachimukai also work.

Thoma and Taiyou. Both of them have very warm vibes, they're rays of sunshine but at the same time I think both know more than what they let on. Also it's canon that both are popular.

Sucrose and Hayami. It's the glasses indeed, but also both of them are intelligent individuals who seem kinda shy or easily flustered.

Keqing and Natsumi. It gets easily overshadowed in Go!, but we should always keep on mind that Natsumi is incredibly smart (didn't she solve a case that was left on the drawers by the police or something?). Also, they both have kind of a tsundere-like attitude.

Ningguang and Koumei. Both of them are elegant, powerful and smart women.

On a side note, we have our own iteration of Koumei in Genshin. Koumei is Kongming, aka Zhuge Liang, and Kokomi has a reference to Zhuge Liang in her constellation.

Also not a comparison in itself but dragons who can take human form exists in Teyvat. Hakuryuu being one would make sense.

Amber and Nae. Cute bunny-themed girls, spirited and extroverted. Amber is excellent at gliding, Nae was the best runner in the track team.

Dehya and Midori. Fiery, untamable and strong girls. Midori somehow fits Dehya's title "Flame-Mane".

Shenhe and Minori. Both of them seem cold at first, and have a serious deadpan expression. However, Shenhe has quite a temper and so does Minori when she's not being possessed by Potomuri.

Yaoyao and Shinsuke. Small and warm-hearted balls of sunshine, they care deeply about those around them.

Raiden Ei and Tatsuya/Hiroto Kiyama. Albeit not quite the same, their situations are similar in the fact they ended up taking the position of their respective siblings (because yes, I consider Tatsuya and Hiroto brothers), and physically look like them (I'm not taking into account how grown-up Hiroto Kira looks in Ares/Orion. Both Hiroto and Tatsuya looked a lot like each other when they were younger in the og series).

꒰ Some Vision Headcanons ꒱

I want to think if someone read through this was at least to get to this part. I won't say my Headcanons on who gets which Vision are permanent (I'm always willing to listen to suggestions or just read your own Headcanons), they are open to change if I reconsider some.

And as I said above, not all of the characters I'll mention have a Vision that matches their canon element in-game.

Also I'll be choosing some based on the theories regarding what criteria do the Archons follow to hand out the Visions. I'll explain it (badly and super simple) to make it more understandable.

Credits to this post because it's what made sense to me for the Vision's criteria. At the same time, since it's rather ambiguous it makes sorting them somewhat easier.

► Anemo: Had past failures, struggles or suffered from unspecified problems, maybe a loss of some kind. Hardworkers with a sense of duty who do –or prefer to do– their own thing and follow their own pace.

► Geo: Care and worry deeply about others. Could take the lead in certain specific situations based on their talents. Rather single-minded and/or simple-headed. Very committed to what they believe or want.

► Electro: Lonely people or they just have a small circle of interactions. Some of their life matters could be too important that they affect other's lives. Prone to awkwardness or second-guessing themselves. Sometimes quirky or just unique, they may have accomplished great deeds.

► Dendro: Scholars or people oriented to knowledge. Good thinkers even in dire situations, sometimes creative. Some want to expand their field of knowledge and can get themselves in over their heads.

► Hydro: Highly specialize in certain skills or areas that others may not have or show. They're role models in what they do or strive to maintain it as such. Tend to weather their own hardships and seek excuses for it, wether they're self-sought hardships or not.

► Pyro: Ambitious people who will keep going even if others oppose them. This also applies to people who may hurt themselves in the process and fully acknowledge it, either for their own sake or because of others. Some keep people at arm's length, not always intentionally.

► Cryo: People who feel lost, specially after a life changing or impactful event on their lives. They may be stuck in the events of their past, so it influences what they live for or what they think they should do next. Some aspect of their life comes back or gets in the way of their goal.

I would also want to mention that while these may be criteria and I refer to them as such. I also believe the theory that says Archons will give out Visions based on each person's ambition/desire and of they support it. However, considering in this AU we don't have the same Archons and they may not have the same personalities as the originals, I decided to not follow that rule.

In addition, it is somewhat confirmed that it may not be that Visions follow a personality checklist to decide who should have which one. Apparently, Lisa's personality changed after receiving her Electro vision, and since it's always mentioned that stars guide the fates of Teyvat denizens (hence, constellations being a gameplay thing but also something important within Teyvat's beliefs, as shown with Mona being able to read people's lives/personalities on them), maybe Visions are also linked. Basically, we could conclude that Visions also shape someone's mind somehow, as mentioned in this post (which is rather old and doesn't feature Dendro, sadly). I recommend you also read the comments of that post to see further of my reasons for some of these headcanons.

But let's get into some Vision Headcanons, shall we? I'll try to be clean and make this in order but I don't know if I will be able to, and they're just a few because Inazuma has a lot a LOT of characters and I couldn't just think about every single one >.<

Tenma: I already said this but I'll also add it here because it's one of the Headcanons I refuse to change. Tenma gets Anemo vision just because wind is his thing, I always relate him to it regardless of wether it makes sense or not. I think he does fit the fact he's a hardworker but he goes at his own tempo, but what matters is the journey to reach any goal he has.

Taiyou: This boy gets a Pyro vision and you can't tell me that's unreasonable. He's the very definition of "will keep going even if it hurts him". Also going with the personality theory, I feel like Taiyou would take initiative of things (he's the captain of Arakumo after all) and openly expresses himself.

Kirino: I'd go for Electro vision for him, but this has a reason and that reason is Chrono Stone. Mainly the fact I thought it was very clear that Kirino has a tendency to doubt his actions or decisions, sometimes feeling like he's falling behind in regards of Shindou.

Shindou: I decided to give him Hydro, it makes sense to me and I think I can try to explain it. I wish the fact that he's a good pianist was brought up more in the anime, because it's one of the reasons I chose Hydro, since he comes off as your typical case of gifted child when it comes to music. I also think he's a role model to his teammates and strives to meet the expectations they may have about him.

Kurama: One of my fav characters, sadly we don't have much info about him but I tried my best to pick a vision for him. I ended up going for Cryo because of certain reasons. Kurama seems like a blunt person, but at the same time some episodes make me see him as someone who also doesn't expresses himself that much, like...he's not all that honest, but he's rather harsh in the process. Think of him like Diona or Eula, were they are fairly nice and caring but inevitably end up acting in a way that makes others perceive them as rude somehow, or just crabby (?).

Minaho: I'm bringing Minaho here just to at least mention Dendro (and because I like him a lot). Maybe he doesn't directly pursue knowledge but I have always perceived him as an extremely curious person that wants to uncover as much as he can, and that's somewhat tied to wanting to know. Also, owls are associated with wisdom and Minaho has an owl motif. I'm open to hearing thoughts about this though.

Akane: After considering it, I chose Anemo: for her. However, unlike Tenma, she's an Anemo: user not exactly because of accomplishing any journey or goal, but because I feel like she really does her own thing at her own pace and chooses that willingly. Most Anemo: users care more about the journey in itself, or have a recurring theme of freedom of choice. Akane overall expresses her interests very freely and doesn't seem to mind what others may think.

Goenji: Yet another one who getsPyro, because I feel like Goenji also has a bad tendency of being very stubborn and marching forward towards his own goals (mainly for other's sake) even if he gets hurt in the process. I think he'd definitely be a Diluc Case, were his personality doesn't exactly match the stereotype associated with most Pyro users (bubbly, energic and outgoing).

Endou: I would say he fits Geo, he has many of the traits mentioned on the theory. He's a very caring person overall even with rivals, I have always considered him simple-headed but with a clear goal and purpose somehow and it's commited to it. He's also a legit hardworker.

Kidou: He was hard to decide, and he's still one of the many I'll hear suggestions about. Anyways, I think he fits Cryo. AU wise he may have been a Cryo user even before meeting Kageyama Reiji and experiencing everything that entailed. I feel like Kidou works behind the scenes for strategies but that's an outloud secret somehow, he may come off like Shenhe or Rosaria at first because to me he has always seem a bit hard to approach, maybe the type of person you would define as stoic or something. Again, Kidou being a Cryo user isn't set in stone for me, I just wanted to make the break trio all have different elements.

Nosaka: I thought a bit about this but ultimately decided on Electro for him. Mainly, because Nosaka seems like unique in some sort of way, not only that but he has accomplished things to be able to stand out as "the tactical emperor" after all. Also, I feel like, despite how popular he may be, he has a small group of friends.

Fuyuka: I think Cryo is fitting for her, which is ironic considering that she lost her memories of her past, and Cryo users may be stuck in events from their past. However, Cryo users also have self-contradiction as a common theme. In Fuyuka's case I think her self-contradiction is the fact that the shocking event of her past shaped how she is now but at the same time she can't recall it. Also, she fits the stereotype of Cryo users being introverted.

And this concludes this long, messy, nonsensical but well-intended post, made with love but not much logic (and probably some grammar mistake I overlooked somewhere). If you reached this point, thank you very much for trying to pay attention and understand my chaotic rambling and Genshin fixation n.n ♡

This is just the outline of what I think this could develop into. I have messy headcanons that I couldn't really fit here nor wanted to as to not made this even longer, like races such as the Katzlein or Adepti, I may post them randomly, who knows? Keep in mind a lot of this was biased or subjective so not everything has factual points to support my ideas about it. In any case, my asks are always open if you want to throw in ideas or suggestions or just want to say anything at all.

[astrabear]

A writer friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

A FB friend made a post asking if writers have any sort of ethical or moral responsibility regarding our writing. Most of the answers were about our only responsibility being to the "truth" of the story and characters, or the like. The following was my response. ---------- I guess I'll be the voice of dissent. As writers, we *absolutely* have a responsibility to the culture and times we live in--or rather, to the people who share them with us. Any piece of fiction longer than a short story (and many short stories as well) has a socio-political message. It may be minor, and it may well be unintentional, but it's there. It's there in the decisions we make about what characters to spotlight, and how we portray them. It's there in the attitudes we don't even mean to express. It's there in our choice of what struggles to showcase, and why characters on different sides of the issue make the choices they do. You can choose to craft your message deliberately, or not. But it will be there. It is our responsibility to be aware of what we're saying, and if what we're saying is harmful to people, to choose to say something else. If (to choose some random examples) your survivalist ammosexual turns out to be right, and his way of self-centered violence is the correct way forward? You're saying something that speaks to issues our society is facing right now. If your villain is Black or trans, and your heroes are all white or cis? That's a message. In a world of true equality, it might not be, but in this world? In a world of persecution and hate crimes and laws of deliberate oppression across multiple states? It's absolutely saying something. And what it's saying is harmful. It literally contributes, however small your audience may be, to a greater harmful attitude and world view. As a writer, you own that. And as writers, I believe we have an ethical and moral responsibility not to make things worse, if we can't make them better. And if doing harm is the only way you can be "true to the story"? Then you damn well tell a different story. As humans, our obligation is to our fellow humans, the marginalized most of all. Being a writer or an artist doesn't change that; it only changes how we go about it.

Me again. Now, this author writes novels and screenplays (Ari Marmell, he writes mostly fantasy with some sci-fi/horror, many of them have audiobook versions, some have been translated into other languages, see if your library carries anything but don't pirate minor authors who barely make enough to get by please) but this is the crux of the conflict I see in fanfic discourse.

And I don't know if it's possible to have constructive discussion between people who agree with these underlying principles (that everything communicates a political viewpoint, that what you put out into the world becomes part of a larger system of beliefs and values, that you are responsible for the effects of your work) and people who disagree with them.