#i'll tag them again in that specific poll

[thatlittleegyptologist]

What are Hieroglyphs? - A Q&A from a Poll

I ran a poll last week to see what people most wanted to know about how Hieroglyphs and languages such as Old/Middle/Late Egyptian work. While certain responses had more of an interest, the most common tag/comment I was getting was 'umm all of them?'. So, I'm going to do just that, but under a cut, because no one needs a post that's going to be as long as this one is without choosing the colour of the sky. Trust me, this is colour of the sky long.

So, without further ado, these were the results of the poll (yeah it's not finished yet, really, but the percentages haven't moved in 4 days and the poll ends in about 12 hours so here we are):

I'll start with 'least interest' and move onto the bigger things, as some of these I can get out of the way pretty quickly. I'll apologise to screen readers in advance, because you might imagine how difficult it is going to be describe hieroglyphs in a way that makes any meaningful sense, especially if they're using different cultural concepts. So, here we go!

How long does it take to translate?

Honestly, it depends on the text, and to some extent the language I'm translating it from. For me, Late Egyptian is the easiest, so a text in Late Egyptian (with all that entails) is a breeze. Others will find Late Egyptian really difficult because that form of the language (used from the Amarna period onwards when the written language changed to reflect the spoken language...except on monuments and tombs which kept using Middle Egyptian) uses a lot of semitic loanwords and has differences in orthography (the way signs are laid out and spelt), as well as changes in grammar (moves to frontal exposition so all the markers come at the start of a sentence).

Once you're past the 'oh it's in a form of the language I like/hate' you're into 'what kind of bullshit is this text going to pull on me?' and that can be easy or nasty grammar, lots of spelling mistakes/no spelling mistakes, what kind of text it is like biographical (formulaic, tend to be easy) or literary (not formulaic, full of metaphors and strange sentence composition), or religious (formulaic, but *Chalmers pointing* Dear Lord what is happening in there?). You can get a formulaic biography that's nasty to deal with (Tjetji) or a 'I'm so full of metaphors that I can fight god' literary text that's actually pretty nice to deal with.

In any case, if we're talking about something longer than 5 lines of text we're talking hours to translate. It's not like the films where they just read it on the fly (though you can reach some level of that), you are going to need a notepad, a dictionary, and several hours. This obviously lessens the more experience you have.

Why are the signs so specific?

We're dealing with a language whose script communicates in what are essentially pictures with sounds. It's also an art form as well as a written script. This means that it can, through necessity, create a new sign to express something. More often than not, these signs are very specific, which means you don't see them all that often (hello religious texts again) or they've combined two signs together (overlapped them essentially) for space reasons and it's ended up as it's own sign eventually. I mean, if you had the ability between trying to use what you've already got, and drawing an entirely new sign that is literally a picture of what you want...you're gonna draw a picture. This is why you get the penis glyph. There was always going to be one because at least half the population has one. There are also tit hieroglyphs. Equal opportunities and all that. The tit ones have less applications though, sadly.

How do you remember all the values for all the signs?

I'm gonna be annoying and say: Practice

But it's true. Just like children learning to speak, it has to be repetition repetition repetition. The more you see it, the more you're exposed to it, the more likely you are to remember sign values. There are still some signs I have to look up because they never stick in my head, but mostly I'm able to transliterate very very easily. Once you've got sign values down, you're more likely to begin to recognise them in word groups, which means you're more likely to just know the words by sight. It is very much like learning to read. First you learn the letters T, H, & E, and then you learn that T, H, & E together spell the word 'the' and then you simply recognise the letter group as the word from then on. Same principle for hieroglyphs! Some people will be able to remember them effortlessly. Some people will never be able to remember them. It's all about how your brain works, so don't beat yourself up about it.

How do you work out the grammar?

*laughs nervously* erm....so y'know how I'm bad at remembering grammar? This is going to be a wild ride. In the simplest terms, there are markers within the Egyptian, just like we use certain endings (like '-ed' for the past tense or -ing for present action) or markers (! ? . , etc), so do the Egyptians. I'm not going to cover them all here because goddamn no one needs to know those unless they're actually learning the language and it would get LONG. But I'll show you at least the past tense, pronouns, some special markers called Particles, and prepositions.

Pronouns

Simple, yet important. These little guys come at the end of verbs (at least in Middle Egyptian). They have every pronoun we do except the singular 'they'. Now there are several different types of pronouns depending on whether they're the subject/object attached to a verb, or subject/object that are independent of the verb. This is where you get the 'suffix' (attached to the verb as the subject), dependent (not attached to the verb but related to it), and independent (come at the start of the sentence, not attached to the verb but still the subject. Usually Participial Statements have these). I'm only going to deal with the Suffix pronouns here because sweet jesus this is a whole chapter to itself in a normal grammar book and I'm not doing that. They look like this:

For other hieroglyph readers sake: I am of the school of hieroglyphs that uses =i instead of =j, and I don't use z for one of the s signs. That's why you're seeing that difference.

For the rest of you: Sometimes there are variants of types of signs for a pronoun, so I've listed them all. The most common one you'd see when translating is at the start of each entry.

As you can see, the pronouns are fairly distinctive in construction, especially when they come at the end of a verb in a sentence. The only ones that would give you any real issue would be the =n (we/our) and =t (she/her) pronouns. This is because they look like the 'past tense .n' and 'marker of the feminine verb .t' endings (sometimes they omit the plural strokes the =n 'our' pronoun and that's just not cool). When you're starting out, you essentially have to look at the context the word is in, and partially continue with the rest of the translation to see if a pronoun is there or it's a tense/feminine marker. Correctly identifying which one it is, is again down to experience. Thankfully this one is something you pick up pretty quickly, because your sentences won't make much sense otherwise.

An example of a pronoun in action is the following sentence:

You can see that the pronoun =k (you) comes after the verb 'sDm' to hear, and before the object of the sentence miw (cat). Any of the pronouns above can be inserted where =k is, and the sentence will read as necessary.

Prepositions

Prepositions often tell us where one noun is in relation to another (e.g., The coffee is on the table beside you). But they can also indicate more abstract ideas, such as purpose or contrast (e.g., We went for a walk despite the rain). Prepositions also indicate direction, time, location, and spatial relationships, as well as other abstract types of relationships. Just like we say 'the cat is on the mat' or 'the fox at the house', Middle Egyptian can do the same thing. Here's a list of prepositions:

These, of course, occur anywhere within a sentence in Middle Egyptian just like they would for English. They can also take pronouns like xr=f 'under him' in order to give a subject or object for the sentence. If you were translating and you saw one of these, you'd know that you were about to change direction/time/place or get more information on a relationship in that sentence.

I've constructed an example here:

MEg readers: There's probably supposed to be some sort of nominal -pw construction in the first sentence to get the 'is' sense, but it's late and I am le tired, so please ignore this potential glaring error. The gist of the sentence is at least right.

Everyone else: You can see I've used the prepositions xr 'under' and mi 'like' to construct this sentence. If I was translating this from the Egyptian, they would be the grammar markers that tell me something in the sentence has got or changed a location, or that it was a comparison. Basically, if you're looking at a word and it's not a verb/pronoun/adjective/noun, you're probably looking at a preposition.

Particles

These are tiny words, which don't always translate as anything, but give more meaning or information about a sentence. Basically, they have a grammatical function, but don't actually translate. In English the word 'to' performs this function, as it appears with many verbs 'to fly' 'to go' etc, but doesn't actually translate (yes, I'm aware 'to' can also be a preposition). I'll only deal with a couple of the more common particles here because there are a lot of them, and you don't need to know all of them.

iw is probably the most common particle. As far as we're aware it doesn't have a translation (there's debate), but it always comes at the beginning of a clause. We don't even know why they use it, because it's one of the particles that you get taught 'always comes at the beginning of a sentence/clause' but then once you learn more MEg (Middle Egyptian) you realise that it barely shows up at all. Anyway, the little guy looks like this:

In a sentence it looks like this:

This is a few lines from the Shipwrecked Sailor, a literary text from the Middle Kingdom. You can see the 'iw' particle used twice in this sentence and both times it does not impart any direct meaning to the translation, but it does tell us of a new clause.

ir is another particle that turns up semi regularly and has the meaning 'as for/if' depending on the context. The original context for it, is that it stemmed from the preposition 'r' 'to/from' (see table above) and evolved into its own usage. It looks like this:

So if you see it in a sentence before a noun like so:

ir will only translate as 'as for' when before a noun. That's how they mark that sort of grammar.

However, if 'ir' is before a verb, this happens:

The sense becomes 'if' when before a past or present tense, meaning the particle has express a conditional sense. If it was before something other than the past or present tense, the sentence would read entirely differently, and thus wouldn't have ir there in the first place. That's how we know to translate it that way. mutters something about the ir conditionals

Past Tense

I'm not sure I need to explain the past tense to most of you, but rest assured that Middle Egyptian also has the past tense. This can usually be identified by the .n ending after a verb, but before the pronoun. You might be sitting there saying 'wait, lottie. isn't the pronoun for 'we' also an 'n'?' and yeah you'd be right! It's all to do with context.

Let's take a very basic sentence:

You see the 'n' sign above the pronoun =i ? That's the .n of the past! It tells us that the verb preceding it, in this case sDm 'to hear', is being read as the past tense and thus we have to translate it with the -ed past tense ending in English. Yes, it does look very similar to the 'n' pronoun for 'we' (=n) and the preposition for 'to/for (a person)' (n). It's because they are all the same sign, they're just being read in different ways.

What do all the .'s, ='s, and brackets mean in transliteration?

So as I just showed you, the marker of the past tense is denoted with the water sign 'n' which is attached to a verb in transliteration using .n at the end. You've also seen me use the equals sign with the pronouns like =i. In Egyptology, at least, we use these symbols as a way to differentiate between different markers of grammar and basically make it easier to spot when we're just reading someone else's work. Say you've got sDm.n=n mdw r=k 'we heard the words concerning you'. Here are the glyphs:

You can see that sDm is easy to see (the ear reading sDm, and the owl reading m as a phonetic complement, forming the word) and then you've got two water symbols for n, and three vertical strokes. Now, as I've already shown you, the n of the past tense, and the n that's the pronoun for 'we' look pretty much the same, but you know they're different. However, when they're together in one sentence it makes them difficult to distinguish. In order to make them distinct when transliterating we use .'s for marking the endings of verbs be they tense markers or say the feminine .t ending. For pronouns we use ='s so that it's clear they're separate from both the verbs and grammar markers. Otherwise you'd end up with sDmnn mdw rk and it would really tell you absolutely nothing if you were reading it without the glyphs.

I should note at this point that some schools of Hieroglyph teaching use the . for both the verb ending marker and for the pronoun. So it'd look like sDm.n.n and that would be completely fine. I didn't learn this way, so I won't be using it. I'm just mentioning it here for the sake of completeness.

For brackets, I'll do a quick run through: … denotes a lacuna (a hole in the text) with no restoration, [ ] denotes a lacuna with restoration, < > denotes an omission made by the original scribe, whether intentional or accidental, and ( ) denotes a modern addition, usually in the translation to give proper English sense or to provide clarification. In cases where an Egyptian word is legible but the meaning is unclear, ___ denotes an unknown transliteration and a (?) denotes an uncertain translation.

How do you know where a word stops and another one begins?

Ahh the classic! This is a two parter: the first part is 'usually there's a sign that tells you' and the second part is 'more experience with hieroglyphs.' With experience you tend to learn how the most common words are formed, so you know what those look like and how they're spelt. This means that you tend to be able to pick those out of a sentence, and whatever is left must be a word/s you don't know. Over time you'll begin to realise what signs do and do not form words, so if you're trying to read a word and it doesn't make any sense you probably need to separate the signs you're looking at. It really is just practice and becoming more familiar with the language.

The other way, is learning how to spot what are called 'determinatives'. A determinative is a sign that helps to categorise a word without having any consonantal value. It’s just there at the end of a written word, like a man with hand to mouth at the end of the word ‘vomit’ in Egyptian tells the reader (most of whom were illiterate) that the word had something to do with something that comes from the mouth). Not every determinative has the same value as the word it’s written for, and some can even be metaphorical in nature. If I bring back the first sentence I used in this post 'You hear a cat' I can show you what a determinative looks like:

Since you know that sDm is the verb 'to hear' and =k is the pronoun for 'you', then miw must be the word for 'cat'. But there are 5 signs and only 3 consonant values in miw, which ones are we reading? The answer is the first three signs: the m 'owl' the i 'reed leaf' and the w 'quail chick'. So what about the last two signs: the seated cat and the pelt? Well those are the determinatives I told you about. They're part of the word, but they don't have any sound values. They're just there to tell us that the word is about a cat (seated cat!) and an animal (pelt!). Now I could have written the word miw 'cat' with just the seated cat sign, as that by itself has the 3-consonantal value of miw, but here, along with the pelt, it's just being used as a way to reinforce to the reader that this word is animal based and that animal is a feline.

It also helps that words in Egyptian tend to have no more than 2 or 3 consonants in them (some have 4, but they're not as common). So if you're transliterating and you've got a word you don't know that appears to have more consonants in it...you might want to take a look at it because you've probably added two words together, or joined the past tense marker or pronouns into the word you're looking at. In fact, knowing the grammar markers, and the pronouns, and what a determinative looks like is what helps you pick out the words more easily. It's sort of a process of elimination of words/grammar you do know, to see what's left and that's where you get the dictionary out and start looking things up.

I'm going to try my best here to show this in diagram form. Ideally, this would be done in person where I could write it on a board and go through it in real time, but since I can't do that I'll have to go with this:

This is an excerpt from the 'Dialogue Between a Man and His Ba' and you're looking at it going 'oh dear god'. So let's start by marking out where our words separate in blue:

So, these are all the words within this sentence, and I hope it at least shows you where the transliteration is following. However, how do I know this? You can see the pronouns in the transliteration marked with the ='s sign. I'll mark those in pink:

So you can see for four words in these two sentences they end with either the =f 'he' (second person masc.) or =i 'I' (first person masc.) pronouns. Those suffix pronouns only come at the end of words, so those must be the ends of those words, and what comes before is the word. Cool. So, what about determinatives in these sentences? Can seeing them help us see the end of any other words? I've marked them in green:

So, now you can see where the determinatives are. The walking legs determinatives noting a verb of 'motion' appear twice before pronouns, and that's fine, they're marking the end of the word where the pronoun goes anyway! Some of them don't though! The first set that don't are the Ra 'sun' symbol and the single stroke, which are determinatives for the word hrw 'day'. These determinatives are a) showing that the word hrw has something to do with the sun (passing of time), and there's only one of them (hence the single stroke). Thus we know this means 'day'. The next is the bird and plural strokes at the end of qsn.t 'suffering'. Plural strokes don't usually come in the middle of a word, so that helps us to identify the end of a word quite easily. The bird is what's known as the 'bin' or 'bad bird', which turns up as the determinative for words that have bad connotations (not always being used in a bad way though). In this case we have the word 'suffering', so the bad bird is here to tell us that. With those two together, it tells us this is the end of the word qsn.t. After the word 'gs' (meaning 'side') you can see I've highlighted the single stroke determinative. This is because that sign can also be read as 'm' like the owl sign in the sentence before it, and what they're using this sign to denote is that 'hey we're not dealing with a preposition here this is a noun!'. The last set are from the word nHnw 'praise singer'. You have the man with his hand to his mouth indicating that the word is something that comes from the mouth (in this case singing), and then the seated man is not a pronoun (this is one of those cases where you'll have to watch out in your translations!) but another determinative telling us that this is a 'person' word i.e. someone who does the action. Thus we translate it as 'praise singer' rather than 'praise singing'.

There are no tense markers, like the past, in these sentences so I'll skip that. There is another grammar marker of the .t ending in qsn.t, but that would require explaining an entirely different verb form and no one is here for that. I'm just noting it's there for people who can read this and are like 'girl there's one right there!' I know and I'm choosing not to perceive.

Anyway, the last things to look at are prepositions and particles. Do we have any of those in these sentences that could help us identify where words begin/end? I've marked prepositions in red and particles in yellow:

So we have one preposition and it's the preposition 'm' in/from. So we know, thanks to the pronoun before it that it doesn't belong to that word, and since 'm' as a preposition is a single sign, it can't belong to the next signs. Then we have the two particles. One is right at the start and is the 'iw' particle that has no written meaning. It's at the beginning, so we know that this is the opening to a clause and therefore the signs that precede it in the text (which aren't shown here) don't belong to it. The pronoun attached it is the 'he' at the beginning of the clause. The other =f pronoun attached to tkn is what's known as a resumptive pronoun, meaning it's there for emphasis but isn't read in translation.

The other particle is 'mi' 'like', which comes after a determinative stroke for 'gs' (side), and before a lot of signs that end in the two men (hand to mouth and seated). So we know that if 'mi' is a particle by itself, it doesn't belong to the signs that come after it, and therefore is its own word. If you tried to read it with the other words, you'd get miirnHnw and since we know that Egyptian words tend to be 2-3 consonants long, with a max of 4, this is too long to be an actual word. Therefore mi has to be separate from ir and nHnw.

There's another little bit of grammar I didn't cover, because 'too advanced for this post', but for completionist's sake: there's another type of pronoun in here called a demonstrative pronoun. In English it's what the words 'this/that' are referred to. Here the word 'pf' (the sign group with the rectangular box and the horned viper) is performing that function meaning 'over there'. So in the sentence we have: aHa=f 'he should stand' (subjunctive + second person masc.), m 'on' (preposition), pf 'the other' (demonstrative pronoun), gs 'side' (noun), mi 'like' (particle), ir 'does' (infinitive verb), nHnw 'praise singer' (noun). If that makes sense? It probably doesn't, but that's how we know pf isn't connected to either m or gs. Somewhere my lecturers are feeling a weight lifted from them and it's because I'm finally able to express this without confusion. Sadly they'll never see it lmao.

So what do we have left unmarked? Those are all your verbs, nouns, and adjectives! tkn (stay close), hrw (day), qsn.t (suffering), aHa (stand), ir (does), nHnw (praise singer). Once you remove all your grammar markers what you're left with can only be those three. The only one that isn't clearly marked is 'ir', and that's because it tends to just show up as the eye sign, or the eye sign with an r 'mouth' sign beneath it. Here it's just the eye sign, and an inexperienced reader will likely either read it with the particle 'mi' making miir, or with nHnw making irnHnw. Either way they're going to run into some issues, and unfortunately the only way they'll stop making that mistake is experience with translating MEg.

I hope that this post has at least somewhat cleared up the confusion about how Hieroglyphs and Middle Egyptian work. If I'm honest, I think it's more likely to have confused some of you even more. I apologise for that. Trying to explain a dead language, for which most of you have no reference point, on a medium like tumblr is pretty difficult. If what I've said here is too complicated, I would suggest getting yourself a copy of Mark Collier's 'How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs'. That book is about £10, and it's really easy to get hold of. The British Museum shop has copies you can buy (it got a reprint thanks to the Hieros exhibit) and I know it's on Amazon too. Go forth and get the book written by the man who taught me how to read them! sorry Mark

Congrats on reaching the bottom of 'Do you know how to read hieroglyphs? Which one?'

𓋹𓍑𓋴 ꜥnḫ wḏꜢ snb

[whoishotteranimepolls]

I post over 50 random polls a week all in the name of some good fun. Requests are Closed. Please stick to the rules. All polls are queued so if you did make a request it may take a few days for them to be posted but the queue is also frequently shuffled so I can't give an exact timeline

Propaganda is welcomed. However, please be respectful.

Request Rules

It must include both the character name and show name (please make sure names are spelled correctly or at least close enough that Google can figure it out)

It must be a matchup for example character A vs character B from X and Y show. Don't just send me a random list of characters

Characters must either be assumed to be adults or highschoolers in the story or canonically confirmed to be over the age of 15 Absolutely no one under that age. Now that means minors can and probably will be matched up against each other and against 18+ characters. Please don't come at me about that choice, these characters are fictional. You can't hurt them, and a blog like this isn't going to normalize preying on minors. YES it's wrong in real life, but anime teenagers are not normal teenagers. I literally just finished an anime about an assassin trying to get back to his wife. He was 16 and had a wife I swore he was at least 20 sometimes anime ages don't make sense. Please don't start anything or I will start blocking. But for those of you who don't want to participate in those polls, I will tag them with #minor poll so you can block all polls that have confirmed 15-17-year-old characters. So if you have a problem with this decision, block the tag and don't participate. Don't start crap. Now that does mean please in your request say there is a 15-17-year-old so I can add the special tag for the sake of everyone that doesn't want to participate in these polls

Characters must be from a manga, anime or anime like show. Right now no characters from webtoons and webcomics no mechs and no sentient weapons. No strictly video game characters. Not sure if the show counts here is it a list of cartoons and anime like shows and if they can be requested before you ask

Up to five matchups per request. A lot of people have been ignoring this. So quit doing it. Your request will be deleted moving forward if you go over the max.

You can request up to Four-Way polls.

Please limit your request to two ask a day during the duration of requests being open that's up to 10 matchups. Let's let everyone request polls

Please format your request in a way that's easily legible, I am very dyslexic I have multiple examples of good request formats shared. You can find them easily. If your post is illegible to me, I will give you a chance to resubmit it in a better format then it will be deleted. Look under the tag #requests example if you want to know how to format your request so it's easily legible to me

If you don't follow the rules, and submit an underage character It will be deleted

Rematches are allowed if you feel like your character was wronged or victim of recency bias but the original poll must be over. That's one of the advantages of not doing a tournament and just doing random polls for fun

Not required but recommended if you want your poll to end up in the queue faster putting their age in the submission saves me time and will probably make your poll end up in the queue faster. Especially if there's a 15-17-year-old so I know to put the special tag

Also recommended but not required. You could submit photos along with your request. This is especially for people who have super specific photo requests. You just did half the work for me and as long as it's not fan art because I would need that artist permission to use it, I'll use it. And again because you just did half the work for me. So, your poll will more likely end up in the queue faster. Now if you do submit photos, please make sure both photos share The same orientation they either both got to be landscape or portrait for formatting reasons.

And if you send photos please no photo links. They are unreliable. They frequently do not work. And because I try to only use official photos, I do not accept links to Facebook or Pinterest for photos

If you have any questions, or even want an example of a wonderful request that makes my life easier please look under the tags, #not a poll #ask #request rules #poll requests #request questions & #requests example. See if your question was answered there. If not, shoot me a ask and will add it to the ever growing list of post under those tags

Polls that contain spoilers relating to any fandom will be marked with the tag #spoiler poll so you can go ahead and block it now

If you request polls anonymously you probably won't get a response unless I make an announcement that says I emptied out the request box and everything's in the queue. And honestly, there's a chance your poll might be posted before I do that. The only other way you will get a response is if there is an issue like I can't find a photos because the show came out 2 weeks ago so you should try again in a month when there's actual photos on the wiki or something

However, if you don't request anonymously, I can always just respond privately to your requests telling you that it's in the queue

And if you are curious about my observations of fandom behaviors and trends. You could always look under the #poll analysis tag because I do read basically every tag and comment. That has also led to the nicknames and funny tags post series where I collect all the funny nicknames and tags related to multiple fandoms into a series of posts which you can find under the #nicknames and funny tags. Plus sociology was my favorite class in college. So I have made some observations and documented them or other curious peoples viewing pleasure

[leafofkudzu]

Screeches to a halt in a cloud of dust HELLO I'M LATE I'M SORRY. The first Saturday of a fresh month is tomorrow, which means it's time for another community art party hosted by [VS] Verdant Shield! Last week I ran a(n also late) poll and the winner was Rata Sum, a place we haven't been since the very first small test party all the way back in January!

For those who haven't heard of them before, art parties are an idea carried over from Final Fantasy XIV - big (or small!) get-togethers for artists/writers/creatives of all kinds to hang out, chat, and create together! Put together your most eye-catching look, find someone who inspires you, and get to work! Afterwards, everyone uses the party-specific tag (ours is #VSArtParty) to share their creations so others can see and spread the love around via reblogs! The tl;dr I always say for these is this: the 'goal' of an art party isn't to be drawn, but to draw others, and share with the community!

Party details are in the image above, but I'll toss an expanded text version under the cut with things like /squadjoin information!

Location Details:

A guildmate suggested we have the party down by the docks this time so we could have a boat party, and I totally agree! I may have put Antidawn Anchorage as the primary land point, but if you have a skiff feel free to take to the water as well! Worth noting that in order to interact with others' skiffs you must be in the same party or squad, and you do not need to have a skiff of your own to interact with a party/squad member's one!

Now, for those not familiar with Rata Sum, here's a quick image of the spot in question, which can be reached by taking the Antidawn Anchorage or Dawnside Quay asura gates nearby the Magicat Court (Antidawn) and Metrical Court (Dawnside) Waypoints:

Time & Squad Details:

As always, the party will consist of two separate events, with an hour break in between (though technically people jump from one to the other immediately anyway so the NA one tends to 'start' earlier than the scheduled time).

The first party will be on EU servers and begin at 9pm Central European Summer Time (aka 3pm Eastern Daylight Time or 5 hours before in-game reset). I’ll be hosting on my EU alt account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Toxicologist Mosse for an invite.

The second party will be on NA servers and begin at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time (aka 1am Central European Summer Time or 1 hour before in-game reset). This one I’ll be hosting on my main account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Teekzi for an invite.

IMPORTANT NOTE (mostly for the NA party): If you join and the squad is at or above 45 members, please just taxi into the right map and then hop out of squad to allow others to do the same! Essentially all conversation now happens in say chat so you won’t miss out on anything by being outside of squad!

Closing Words:

My apologies for the extremely short notice on this one everyone, I've been slapped with a bunch of IRL stuff (it's nothing bad, don't worry!) that's kept me out of the game for longer than I'd hoped. With all the exciting game news buzzing around lately though, I might just have to set aside some proper time to let myself get invested in this again, we'll see! Anyway, as always, thank you so much to everyone who comes out to these events and helps make them so special - I can't wait to see you all again tomorrow night! ♥

[pearwaldorf]

The tags in this poll are fascinating to me. I do not think I'm a purity wanker or a prude, but I would still be uncomfortable if people left comments more detailed than "This was hot, I liked this part".*

This is a problem romance writers also have, where all of their work is presumed to be based in fact on some level. Nobody ever asks a true crime writer if they're into people getting chopped up irl, y'know? And I know at least one writer who has written kinks they personally find squicky, so there must be others.

I think it's actually rather puritan to treat writing sex differently than any other kind of fiction. Obviously you have to find it interesting in some sense (the act, what it reveals about your characters) but it doesn't mean it's something you would personally find arousing/titillating.

It's also about the relationship between author and reader. Like, we're not intimate like that, and it makes me profoundly uncomfortable when people presume it is. I remember reading a fic where the author noted it was based on a personal fantasy of theirs they acted out with their partner. I did not consent to be roped into their sex life, and I felt extremely gross after reading that detail.

It's similar to trauma dumping, in that somebody is transgressing a boundary that is there for a reason. You don't drop heavy backstory on a stranger, and you don't tell somebody how you got off to their fic unless they specifically indicate it's welcome.

And just because somebody writes things that contain sex it doesn't mean they'll appreciate encountering it outside of that context? I have a friend who wrote a lot of porn in their fandom and people took it as an invitation to inbox them the most nasty, explicit stuff they wanted to do to them personally. That's sexual harassment, full stop.

Somebody commented that if you're not comfortable talking about your explicit fic you shouldn't be writing it. And I agree, but I'm not going to talk about it to somebody I don't know from Jesus or Vishnu. But then again, I wouldn't talk about my fic with just anybody either.

I have no issue with people who are into getting those type of comments, and I'm glad there's a tag that indicates they're open to them. People are allowed to have boundaries, and I don't think it's a bad thing to err on the side of caution.

--

* Other fandom-specific variations are acceptable, eg "I'll be in my bunk" or "Thank you for my pornography".

[archie-sunshine]

ARCHIE'S CAPTAIN'S (B)LOG(Mar 1st '24)

Hey there sailors! thanks for sticking with me for another EXCITING INSTALMENT of archie's captain's blog.

Starting off with some housekeeping! as usual, today is the inbox extinction event day, so I'm going to be picking through and trimming all the ones I won't be answering this time around, and answering as many as I can!!

The 7th chapter of survey says is on it's way, and will be released HOPEFULLY before the end of this weekend, and if not, before the end of the week.

On the 3rd of march I will be posting the new chapter of Rehab/Cohab!

Don't get too excited, but I'm preparing to work on finally making a SIMPATICO HEADCANON MASTERPOST so that all of the people desperate to hear my thoughts on them for literal months now will finally get to hear my ramblings.

Commissions are being worked on, and I'll be reopening once I am finished all of my other comms!

BUT!! IN BIG NEWS!!!

I made myself a dang picarto account so I CAN STREAM MY DRAWINGS!!!

I'll likely be starting off by filming my quick request fills from the inbox, but from there, who knows what else I might get up to!!! please feel free to drop by and say hello. I will be silently streaming(specifically so I can still be listening to youtube videos while I draw) but I'll be excited to catch you guys there to watch the uncensored porn drawing in action.

OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT THE LINK: https://picarto.tv/archiesunshine

2. NEW WEEKLY EVENTS!!

I've decided that i've been sketching far too much, and I need to start working on my colouring, and so, once a week, I will run a single day long poll on the subject matter of my ONCE A WEEK FULL COLOUR PIECE. You are all encouraged to swing the vote in tags and reblogs and comments, make propaganda, or just generally freak the fuck out in my tags.

Thanks everyone again for sticking around. I know that the whole tumblr ai thing has scared a few of my friends off, which makes me sad, however, those of you that have stuck by, I can't thank you guys enough for that :]

See you on the 15th for another update!!

[wolfinshipclothing]

Amphibia Fanfic Poll!

Alright, full disclosure, I'm in a bit of a writing funk. I can't get more than a few words down and I hate them! Its a painful situation...

So, to get my writing groove back, I thought about writing something shippy and Amphibia-related.

And since I have many ideas and don't know what to write, I'll make a poll so you guys can choose for me.

Just pick the fic in the list you would want to read! I'll probably pick the first and second winners, so as to have more to write about.

(also i love polls and this was a good excuse to make one)

There you go! Again, i'll pick the first two (maybe three?) most voted options to write about, so feel free to vote if you like any of my ideas OR feel free to tell me what, exactly, would you like to read about!

[thgfanfictionlibrary]

Hi! First off, I want to say how awesome and well-organized this page is. I know how much work it must be to put it together. I do think that the word retired has an air of finality to it, like it's implied that the authors who appear on the retired authors list are done writing THG fics. But they might just have stuff going on in their lives or writers block and that's why they haven't updated in awhile. I feel like there might be some authors who won't enjoy finding themselves on that list. Anyway, thanks for hearing me out. I've enjoyed seeing all your posts.

Hello!

Thank you so much for your perspective! I can understand where this is coming from and did debate on what term to use for categorizing the authors, which is why I do put that note on the top of each masterlist noting the differences in categorization. I, in no way, meant to imply that these authors are never coming back into the writing game! I've seen writers take years off and come back into the writing game stronger than ever. I'm truly sorry if it came off that way.

I looked into a few other fandom blogs similar to this and noticed "retired" being a main word used for authors who haven't updated fics in a while but are active in the fandom or writing but from other fandoms. I've also seen the word "Hiatus" used and debated on that for a while. I'm always open to suggestions and comments like these, especially from authors as you are the individuals most directly affected by my word choices. I never intended to make authors feel upset and tried my best to use more inclusive terms. I chose not to do "inactive authors" series for this exact reason because I did not want someone to stumble upon the list and be hurt by it in some way.

Please continue to share your thoughts on how I can make this blog more inclusive of everyone in the fandom and how I can use my language in a better way for this specific series which is "a blog/writer who has updated within the past year but has not posted a fanfic in the fandom in the past year". Or let me know if the series should be terminated if the idea isn't a good one. I truly thought that by highlighting these authors it may help more people find them and perhaps inspire them to write again or at the very least have a nice few comments to discover one day. BUT if this series seems in poor taste please let me know!

As followers of the blog, or THG writers, I'd like your input on what that series should be called. I'll make the appropriate changes/edits to upcoming releases and past releases in accordance with the results of the poll.

I put the a week timer on the poll and will hold the remaining posts in that series until this poll closes and we decide on a new term as a community.

Again, I am so sorry if I offended or hurt anyone in the community. I strive to create an inclusive and friendly safe for everyone!

-Admin:e

[mashpoll]

Welcome! This blog is running a poll bracket between every single episode of M*A*S*H (excluding Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen). You can view the entire bracket here!

(other info below)

The Method

Each match in the first round has been randomly generated. I did it this way to have more of a variety between the episodes competing, instead of having episodes from the same season compete for a lot of the bracket. I could have also traditionally seeded it (so the "best" episode competes against the "worst"), but while I was up for running this bracket, I was not up for making a theoretical ranking of every single episode of MASH based on how popular it is on Tumblr. lol. That's what this poll is for.

Due to the sheer amount of matches in Round 1 (118 to be exact) I will be splitting it up into 4 groups of around 30 polls. I will also be splitting Round 2 into two halves.

Also, 10 episodes (again, random) will not appear in Round 1 and will instead be inserted into Round 2. This is due to the number of matches in Round 1 not splitting up completely evenly. (i'm glad there was the Challonge website to set up the bracket for me, it would have broke my brain otherwise)

Most episode descriptions are from Hulu. Some are from Wikipedia or IMDB if I didn't think the Hulu description was very good.

Why I'm Not Including GFA

I feel like GFA is on another level compared the regular episodes of the show, since it's basically a movie and does the task of wrapping up 11 seasons of one of the most popular shows ever made. And to be honest, I think it would be the obvious winner and be unfair to the rest of the competition. The point of this tournament to me is to determine what people's favorite regular episodes of MASH are.

Navigating the Blog

Every poll is tagged with the episode names (no punctuation except for apostrophes), the seasons of both episodes, and the round number. If you want to vote for a specific episode, theoretically you should be able to search the episode name, but if Tumblr's search function is being... itself, you can use this url: https://mashpoll.tumblr.com/tagged/episode name

Sending Propaganda

As you've probably seen in other tournaments, feel free to send "propaganda" supporting your favorite episodes. I'll be posting them without a response/commentary to try and keep it unbiased. I'll also tag it with "propaganda" so you can filter it if you just want to see the polls.

What's my main?

I'd like to try to remain semi-anonymous. I say semi-anonymous because I have posted about this poll on my main, so you can probably figure it out pretty easily if you're already following me.

[hueynomure]

WIP Reblog Game

Thank you @coffeebanana for the tag! I'm not one for very long fics and/or starting posting plotty stuff if I don't already have most of the fic written out (too high of a chance of having to correct/retcon shit) so I'm adding fics that only live in my WIP folder lol

List the titles your top five priorities for WIP updates (link your fics for new readers!)

An upcoming scene, event, or detail in each fic that you’re looking forward to writing

Bonus: make a poll for your followers to vote on which top 5 WIP they are most excited to see an update on!

Then tag 10 writer friends!

WIP TITLES

Are Hexagon Square Dances a Thing?: Born as a LoveyWeek entry, I got stuck on the very last chapter fml

Uncovering, Unraveling (working title): Imagine Marinette had accidentally outed her Loveybug identity (as in Woven In) to Cat Walker in the (Un)Suited plotline... basically Farewell Gifts but make it smut lol

The Merits of Bagging a Hero (working title): Adrien and Marinette are invited at Alya's and Nino's place for their usual wine&dine night. Everything is going fine, Mari being flustered and Adrien being oblivious as usual - until Alya brings out the topic of hero-specific free passes and the two become inexplicably passionate about who would be the best hero lay between Ladybug and Chat Noir...

Poker Face: Loveybug AU, Cat Walker angst

Heart(s) on Her Sleeve: Companion piece for Poker Face, Loveybug's side of the angst

UPCOMING

Tbqh the biggest motivation for getting this done is getting it over with, which is probably why I've been having so much trouble tackling it lol. I'll just say that I initially intended it to end with platonic Mariwalker buuuuut there may be some smooching hehe

Turns out I'm a SUCKER for scenarios where Cat Walker learns Marinette is Loveybug lol I will have a lot of fun writing the surprise conversation (won't go too much into details bc spoilers) they'll have about his feelings... with Adrien still inside Marinette, both of them deliberately avoiding addressing the fact or doing anything at all abt it lol

This will be 200% crack and I will have SO MUCH FUN writing the most batshit stuff I can come up with. Alya, ever the shit-stirrer, figures out Adrien is Chat Noir halfway through the conversation and spends the rest of the fic basically eating popcorn and fanning that trashfire of a debate lol

Chat Noir is a necessary outlet for Adrien. When Cat Walker has to pick up Loveybug's slack, his energies and enthusiasm are slowly but surely drain until the only reason he dons his mask, the only reason he gets out of bed, is Loveybug's unrestrained and unconditional affection. This can't last - and yet, it's his duty to carry the weight and not let anything show. I'm gonna enjoy writing the pressure building >:3c

There's one phrase to describe Loveybug!Marinette: bracing for punishment. She's too raw with all the Loveybug intensity, she just CAN'T turn into Ladybug, so she just keeps pouring her heart out knowing that at some point, somehow, she will be horrifically punished for it. Just like with Kim. Just like every time she tried to confess to Adrien. But as a hero, the consequences of her mistakes could be... she doesn't want to think about it. She keeps her head low and prepares for the worst, dreading and longing the moment when she'll be forced to wear Loveybug's lovestruck smile again.

Anyone I would have thought to tag Kayla has already tagged, with the excellent exception of @asukiess, so I won't be tagging anybody else! Feel free to join in the fun and consider this a soft tag if you (yes YOU reading this rn) want to tho :3

[tf2shipswag]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! READ FOR RULES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

alright, hello tf2 community!

welcome to the tf2 ship swag bracket!

BRACKET ROUND 1 POST HERE

BRACKET ROUND 2 POST HERE

BRACKET ROUND 3 POST HERE

BRACKET ROUND 4 POST HERE

BRACKET FINALE POST HERE

in this bracket you'll have your favorite tf2 ships killing eachother to death for funsies!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RULES FOR SUBMISSION: - as much as i love tf2 ocs, please stick to canon characters! - i'm a minor so if you so choose to submit propaganda or anything, please don't submit any nsfw! - scout x spy and classic heavy x medic shippers are not welcome here. - feel free to submit multiple ships but please put them in separate forms for easier sorting! - do not submit the same ship twice, it won't make me any more inclined to put it in

i'll decide to end submissions whenever i feel like i have enough!

-> SUBMISSION FORM <-

by the way propaganda is heavily encouraged, i think it'd be a fun little excuse for more tf2 ship content HUFSUAHHASGHI

and also do not harass anyone about this, this is PURELY for fun so please don't be genuine assholes lmao

also there are some ships that are already going to be in the bracket so there's no need to submit them again unless you just want to talk about them, and if that's the case feel free to just send me an ask about them!

already included ships are: - sniper x spy [bloody suit] - engineer x spy [napoleon complex, practical espionage] - engineer x pyro [texas toast] - sniper x scout [speeding bullet] - zhanna x soldier - zhanna x soldier x demoman - sniper x demoman [swordvan, kaboomerang] - heavy x medic [red oktoberfest] - medic x sniper [bushmedicine] - soldier x demoman [boots n bombs] - sniper x scout x demoman

thank you for reading, may the Subjectively best tf2 ship win!

ALSO the tag for talk about the tournament, propaganda, etc. will be #tf2shipswag2023 and the poll exclusive tag will be #tf2shipswagpolls

propaganda will from now on be tagged as #propaganda and anything that's not a poll will be tagged as #not a poll! any polls that are not my specific poll will be tagged as #not my poll!

[slaviclore]

thanks to everyone who responded to last week's translation challenge (which you can see here, or under the cut below)! All your answers have been really fantastic and useful. 303 people voted, of which 119 are Polish speakers. I tallied up the votes from the Polish speakers (i changed your vote if u expressed regret in the tags after voting), and I summarize under the cut the various takes on this question and add my 2 cents (or possibly more like 2 dollars, as this is a Long Post). Read on to learn some things about the Polish language and Chopin history. :]

context again:

This is the opening sentence of a letter written by Fryderyk Chopin (who I'll refer to as FC for convenience) to his friend and/or boyfriend Tytus Woyciechowski (TW) in 1829. He's 19/20 years old (we're not sure about his DOB), and he's been spending some time with Prince Antoni Radziwiłł and his family at their palace in Antonin (near Poznań). Radziwiłł is a huge music nerd, and Chopin is having a great time over there. The mood of the letter is mostly positive and upbeat, and you can probably expect him to be at his cheekiest.

There are 3 published English translations of this letter, which I included as options in the poll. None of the 3 professional translators are native Polish speakers. They are: EL Voynich (option 1), David Frick (option 2), and Arthur Hedley (option 4). Option 3 is my own take on the translation (I am a native Polish speaker but not a professional translator).

why is this important?

1) it's an interesting grammar problem where the combination of a referred statement (FC is summarizing what TW said), a command, and a reflexive (się) makes it unclear who is to kiss who. Can we figure out what TW's original statement was based on how FC referred to it? Did he say some version of "kiss me", or "kiss yourself", or something else?

2) We have 22 letters from FC to TW, but we don't have any from TW to FC, so it's useful to piece together the way he may have written to him -- especially since we're not sure what their relationship actually was.

3) FC has a habit of teasing TW for not liking to be kissed, which historians have taken a bit too seriously, if you ask me -- this was some inside joke between the two of them. But if this short exchange was part of that joke, it gives us a chance to understand them a little better.

4) Arthur Hedley was a prominent Chopin scholar in the 20th century. His translations are the ones that are usually quoted to this day, and the choices he made in his translations and biographies have had a huge impact on the field. Some were good choices, and some were bad. Today, he's a controversial figure. I don't think he can be dismissed or blindly trusted, but rather critiqued point by point... we can take on one such point here.

The full original sentence from Chopin's November 14 1829 letter:

Ostatni twój list, w którym mi każesz się ucałować, odebrałem w Antoninie u Radziwiłła.

here's some definitions:

Ostatni twój list -- your last letter

w którym -- in which

każesz -- a command word in the second person present tense: you tell/you command

ucałować -- to kiss

mi -- me

się -- a reflexive to indicate the self, non-specific for gender or person (can be me, you, him her, etc)

odebrałem -- I received/I picked up; first person past tense

The main issues of this translation are:

the order of the 3 phrases (separated by 2 commas)

word choice, especially what to call the kiss

word order of the middle phrase, i.e., who is to kiss who

Several of you mentioned that this sentence is weird. Yeah. Sigh. Unfortunately, Chopin is very dead and has made that everyone's problem. No one specified why it's weird, but I guessed that it's the order of "mi" and the reflexive "się" in the middle phrase, so I asked you in a separate poll if another order would be better. 25 people voted on that one, of which just over half were Polish speakers. No one said that the sentence was weird for some other reason, which explains why the available translations could not agree on how to interpret the directionality of the commanded action (who is to kiss who). Voters were also split pretty evenly among those who preferred an alternative word order (especially "...w którym każesz mi się ucałować..."), and those who said that there's nothing wrong with the sentence or that changing it would change the intended meaning even if it does sound better. I therefore propose that we give Chopin the benefit of the doubt and assume that he said what he meant to say, even if it was awkward.

Some poll responders were not concerned about the kiss at all, and focused almost entirely on the order of the phrases in the sentence. They argued that starting the sentence with the "I received" fragment rather than the "Your last letter" fragment shifts the emphasis away from the location (Antonin), which is the main point of the sentence, and that the kiss is only a secondary point. Those who mentioned the kiss agreed that calling it anything but a kiss is not helpful, but the second most popular translation was the only one that replaced this word. Arthur Hedley's preservation of the sentence order, and maybe his dampening of the kiss subject, is likely what earned him second place -- 20 people voted for this translation (option 4), or 16.8% of the Polish-speaking voters.

--

Arthur Hedley, Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin (1962), pg 36:

Your last letter, in which you send me your warmest greetings, reached me at Radziwill's place at Antonin.

--

Kisses are thrown around left and right in Chopin's letters, regardless of who is writing or receiving them (friends, family, any informal context). While "ucałować" is literally "to kiss", Hedley's goal was probably to remove the ambiguity with which a kiss might be interpreted by an English-speaking audience and instead give you (the suspiciously British) "warmest greetings". This is something he did regularly in his translations and has made himself rather unpopular for it. Even if he is basically correct and the fundamental goal of the kiss is just to offer a warm greeting, replacing the word removes your ability to make the following 2 arguments, should you choose to do so:

Though a kiss is indeed a common greeting/sign-off, when FC refers to the **whole letter** as the one where you tell me to kiss you(/myself/send me a kiss), this creates emphasis not generally afforded to greetings and sign-offs. Presumably, TW wrote other stuff in that letter (if he literally only wrote "kiss me" and nothing else, holy shit i'd have fainted) -- but FC has relegated the rest of the letter as less important than the kiss, even if TW himself didn't give that bit a second thought. It's like if Harry wrote you a whole email with a bunch of stuff in it and signed off with "love, Harry", and then you wrote back, "Harry, i got your email where you say you love me". I'm not going to argue whether this is flirting or not, but I hope you see how it might be.

(watermelon sugar is playing as I write this, but u can have any harry u want in this simulation)

FC's emphasis may also be a reference to whatever inside joke these two seem to have that makes him insist (in other letters) that TW doesn't like to be kissed. So FC's intention may be the very troll-like: i got your letter where you tell me to kiss you(/send me a kiss) but i **thought** you don't like kisses?? interesting!!??

🤔🤔🤔

Either way, Hedley robs us of the TW eye-roll we deserve, so I think he blew it on this one, even if similar choices worked well in other contexts.

For me, the main difficulty in the translation was whether TW's original command was "kiss me/give me a kiss" or "kiss yourself/give yourself a kiss", with FC's rephrasing therefore being either "...to kiss you" or "...to kiss myself", respectively. So who gets this imaginary kiss? TW or FC? and which of them is supposed to give it? David Frick takes the most ruthless route to this answer (option 2), and 17 of you agreed with him, or 14.3% of the Polish-speaking voters, giving him 3rd place.

--

David Frick, Chopin's Polish Letters (2016), pg. 143:

I received your last letter, in which you tell me to give myself a kiss, in Antonin at Radziwiłł's.

--

Some of you said that this is the most grammatical choice -- while others brought up the very valid point that... why would anyone be told to kiss themselves? and how does one go about doing that?? Maybe Frick imagined TW's original command as something along the lines of: since I'm not there, give yourself a kiss for me.

I think this is a good take, even if FC made it weird and Frick refused to save him from his own grammar. In a stark contrast to Hedley's method, Frick tends to stay close to Chopin's wording and syntax. Though I do find some over-interpretation in Frick's translations and annotations, some of which I think is incorrect, his translations are very good, and I defer to his choices unless I have a good reason not to.

One poll responder brought up the alternative interpretation that actually TW's original statement was hostile. After I read Frick's translation, this did also cross my mind, and I imagined the exchange as something like this:

FC: kiss me

TW: oh ffs, kiss yourself

FC: i got the letter where you tell me to kiss myself

😔😔😔

hilarious. If TW really is as allergic to being kissed as FC insists, this interpretation is a viable option. Unfortunately for my personal amusement, I don't think he's really so allergic to it. Also, if this were the case, I would expect FC to emphasize "himself" with something like 'sam się ucałowac'. Here "sam" is a type of "self" you use to say you're doing it (by) yourself/oneself.

In this scene from Borat 2 (with which I have a conflicted emotional relationship that belongs in a different post, but I did laugh my ass off at this scene) Borat's daughter says, in reference to the monkey that was dead in the crate (in their fake language that mixes Hebrew, Slavic and Near and Middle Eastern languages), something like "sam się zjad" which is probably meant to be a Slavic "he ate himself", when it was clearly she who ate the monkey:

I think the commenter had something even harsher in mind for the interpretation of TW's letter, though, like where kiss yourself is a euphemism for fuck yourself. I don't know how people told each other to fuck off in 19th century Poland, but now I'm desperate to find out. Dearest Tytus, your last letter, in which you tell me to go fuck myself, I received in Antonin...

oh my lord this is sending me. I suspect this Bieber-esque usage is modern though, but I'm not sure! Either way, the rest of FC's letter is very affectionate so it doesn't seem super likely that he just got told to fuck off, unless he absolutely cannot take even a single hint

Since FC frequently signs off his letters with kiss me/give me a kiss, it's reasonable that TW might do the same. My translation was option 3, which keeps the structure of the sentence and assumes that FC's rewording is meant to say "kiss you/give you a kiss". This was the most popular option, with 68 votes or 57.1% of the Polish-speaking voters.

--

Me, tumblr, 2023:

Your last letter, in which you tell me to kiss you, I received in Antonin at Radziwiłł's.

--

I can't tell if Frick's "kiss myself" or my "kiss you" is the more grammatical interpretation -- if u have an answer for this from the depths of Polish grammar, I'd love to see it. But! I think it doesn't really matter! Since this is a personal letter, all we can safely assume is that FC is being rational, not necessarily that he's being fully grammatical.

On my first reading of the letter, I didn't consider Frick's "kiss myself" possibility at all. I just assumed it was "kiss you", and some of you echoed that sentiment. After I read the published translations, I ran the sentence through google translate (the least reliable of all our translators but still useful for comparisons), which agreed with me. As GT is trained on modern content, I was concerned my translation may be a modern artifact... which may also explain why many of you voted for it -- the professional translators may have simply known better.

I wondered if I could find historical precedent for this sentence structure being used to refer to the giver of the command (kiss TW) rather than the one being commanded (kiss FC). I found this in a prayer called "Litania o Milosci Bozej" or "Litany about God's Love". here is a fragment with the relevant grammar in bold:

Boże, któryś mnie sam wprzód umiłował, zmiłuj się nad nami.

Boże, który mi każesz się miłować, zmiłuj się nad nami.

My translation:

God, you who loved me first, have mercy on us.

God, you who commands me to love you, have mercy on us.

--

I haven't been in a church in a thousand years, so someone who goes to Polish church, pls tell me if I'm getting this wrong. Here, God commands the individual saying the prayer to love Him (not to "love yourself"). The grammar is the same as in FC's sentence. The last word is the specific verb (love for the prayer, kiss for Chopin), 'każesz' is 'you command/tell', 'mi' is 'me', and 'się' is the reflexive:

the prayer: który mi każesz się miłować

-- you who commands me to love you

chopin: w którym mi każesz się ucałować

-- in which you tell me to kiss you

I don't know how old this prayer is or how long it's used this specific wording, but I found a version of it from the early 20th century -- it might be a lot older. While this doesn't tell you what FC meant in his letter, it does offer precedent for the "kiss you" translation and argues that TW having asked for a kiss is, at least, a viable take that's not necessarily modern.

--

EL Voynich, Chopin's Letters (1931), pg 73:

I received your last letter, in which you send me a kiss, at Antonin, at the Radziwiłłs'.

--

Though it may not seem like it, Ethel Voynich's translation (option 1) actually comes to the same conclusion as Frick's -- Voynich was first by 80 years, tho, and the first person to translate Chopin's letters into English -- but she got the fewest votes: only 14, which is 11.8% of the Polish-speaking votes. Like Frick, Voynich switched the phrase order, which may have put some of you off. She also packaged her interpretation in a simpler way that may have felt false to poll responders. In her translation, like in Frick's, FC is the recipient of the kiss. It's just that, here, the kiss is sent to him, rather than administered by virtue of his own action, as Frick would have it. The same is true for Hedley, actually, where FC is the recipient of the greetings. Most of you, and I (and the robot), thought it was TW who should be getting the kiss instead.

One poll responder suggested a hybrid option, which agrees with my interpretation of the middle phrase but Hedley's choice to rename the kiss: "Your last letter, in which you tell me to send you greetings, reached me in Antonina".

So what do you think? Was TW's original statement something like "kiss me/give me a kiss", or more like "give yourself a kiss for me", or even "kiss yourself (hostile)"? Or did TW always intend FC to be the passive party in receiving the kiss or greeting? Was this flirting? Was it part of the "TW hates being kissed" inside joke? There's no right answer to these questions, and a consensus doesn't mean the winning answers are true. We will probably never know for sure what TW really wrote... the best we can do is guess.

Some of my takeaways:

it's useful to look at multiple translations to see where translators have disagreed and where the uncertainty lies

if you remove ambiguity in the translation of a Chopin letter (like Hedley did) or complexity (like Voynich), you're in danger of removing nuance, which Chopin stuffs into his writing like it's build-a-bear.

but if you go with the direct meaning (like Frick), you may end up trying to convince the world that Chopin was asked to kiss himself somehow for some reason

and if the only one who agrees with you is a robot, you'll probably have to dig up an ancient prayer to justify your possibly modernized take (like me).

This is the curse in a nutshell.

Thanks for reading! hope you had as much fun with this poll as i did

[whoishotteranimepolls]

Poll analysis part 4

I normally don't do these so soon, but since I started doing the duo and the trio polls that really brought out some interesting trends

Naruto, I know I've called you guy my problem child fandom just because of how you engage with me. But you guys can't seem to catch a break unless it's Kakashi or Madara. You think one of the most popular animes of all time would at least be able to win something. But no. You're coming in dead last in the Battle Royals. Even just the regular polls with your characters have extremely low engagement. With the only exception being Kakashi or Madara. I have my theories on why this might be happening but I want to observe some more because there are so many more Naruto Polls in the queue before I put anything in writing publicly

Sailor Moon oh boy, did you guys come out to support your lesbians. I was not expecting so much support for those characters, I think I threw them in as a last minute I need an all girl Duo and you guys turned out. I'm curious to see if this continues with all the Sailor Moon characters

Samurai Champloo these characters get mentioned so many times in the comments. Like where are these characters why aren't they in the swordsmen or trio Battle Royale and no one shows up to support them. Why is this? I know Samurai Champloo is iconic but you all are pulling an Attack on Titan. I think the fandom is comatose and the characters only get mentioned out of respect for its iconic status

JoJo's apparently has characters that are trying to give Senshi a run for his money when it comes to panty shots or booty shots. Those polls have been funny. I'll give you that. And it somehow feels appropriate for the JoJo's fandom to do everything for the meme and submit those polls with those specific photos

Berserk you guys only show up to support Griffith and Casca. There is very little love for Guts that might be due to his opponents most the time, but I think that is somehow thematically appropriate

Fullmetal Alchemist I thought you guys only showed up for general Armstrong when I paired up Hawkeye and Mustang as a Duo. You all show up in droves to show your support.

Castlevania You guys show up pretty consistently no matter the character, it's been entertaining because you all can put some interesting things in the tags

One Piece is trying to submit the most obscure characters in that show and then put the most ridiculous tags on it so I have to add them to that already ridiculously long post. At least that's what it feels like because it feels very deliberate.

Cowboy Bebop you exist and your characters are hot. They're even hotter together. That's all I can really say

Bleach You exist. Your characters are mostly hot and Yoruichi is top tier waifu that sweeps in basically every poll she's in

Well that's all for this update There again will be another one. Don't know when but there will be one

[neptunevasilias]

Why you should vote for Seamonkeys

(The poll in question)

First of all

Second of all

They actually genuinely have one of the most interesting dynamics, or at least my favorite. I'll be talking about things from the books here

Sun has taken off without his team to go to another kingdom not once, but twice (the first time was when he left early to go to the Vytal festival)

The other members of the team, Sage and Scarlet, are rightfully angry at him after the second time and try to separate themselves from him, but Neptune does NOT. This is even remarked upon a few times by other narrating characters such as Velvet.

It’s implied he is angry, though, he’s just not saying it because he wants to be around Sun again

Between the fact that he hides his "nerdier" interests, the whole thing with not being able to dance, and most importantly the fact that he avoids his semblance and is even afraid of it, it is easy to say that he is someone who has troubles expressing himself, to say the least

Therefore, his refusal to be outwardly angry at Sun to "keep things normal" could be seen as part of his problem expressing himself

In the flashback near the start of the book about the glowing golden tree, Sun is shown wanting him and his cousin to be able to find a place to stay, and then he sees the tree and thinks that it would be the perfect place to make a home. The memory of that tree is what he thinks of to center himself every time he uses his semblance. Therefore, Sun deep down wants to be able to find a place to call home. The fact that he's always moving from place to place means the he, also, is avoiding his real self. They're twinning ^_^

Then there’s this

This random, oddly cinematic shot that lasts like five seconds, that uses probably the most important bit of imagery in rwby(the sun and moon), which specifically has a romantic context in the show(bumbleby, ozpin and salem, and arkos). I wonder what that could mean.

Other things:

There's just like..... some kinda poetic things that happened in general. Like Sun leaving both times on a boat, which means Neptune wouldn't have been able to go with him even if he'd had the chance to.

Sun had black(/gray?) eyes in volumes 1-3, matching Blake, but from volume 4 onward he has blue eyes, which match Neptune. Neptune's goggles are yellow, matching Sun. And just like yellow and purple are opposites on a red/yellow/blue color wheel, yellow and blue are opposites on a red/green/blue color wheel.

Neptune's introduction includes Sun taking a long look at him from the legs up, after which he basically admits Neptune is good-looking (so he checked Neptune out)

Tbh, if Neptune was a girl it'd be pretty obvious the show was going in the direction of seamonkeys. It's that trope where the girl waits for the lead guy to stop chasing after the girl that isn't right for him and they get together at the end.

Look at how Neptune smiled when Sun said "it was never about that, brainiac"

Please just consider what volumes 4 and 5 would have been like from Neptune's perspective. Please.

Lastly, there's just the fact that like half their bits in rwby chibi have to do with making fun of how gay they act, and/or neptune specifically(things like him liking musicals, using moisturizing cream, etc)

ALL OF THIS IS TO SAY that Seamonkeys DEFINITELY deserves to win this round. They have at LEAST as much going for them as the other ship in the poll(name omitted to keep this out of their tag), they'll almost definitely be in volume 10, and also they are my special guys. So vote for them if you love me.

[horriblemanprotagonistshowdown]

Horrible Man Protagonist Showdown!

Oh boy, I can't seem to be stopped, can I?

Hey howdy, folks! Your favorite pollrunner is back again with a fresh new competition for you! Does your favorite piece of media just have the worst main character ever? Do you stand for their cause, whatever it may be, but just hate them with every fiber of your being? Maybe it's how they go about their mission, or maybe they're just not a very nice person to be around. Well, this is the competition for you!

Hi, I'm Hermann (pronouns are they/them, please!), the mod of @clash-of-the-wizards and @nichesexymanbloodbath (which, hopefully, should be getting some new life in the fall) and overall bad person in media liker, coming at you again with another fresh and hip competition! In the horrible man protagonist showdown, we pit some of these protags who you wouldn't ever want to meet in real life against each other and see who the most unpleasant one really is, or just who Tumblr likes the most. I don't know, I feel like I opened pandora's box with this one. The possibilities are endless!

GUIDELINES

This isn't really the place for anti-heroes or villain protagonists. It's basically the inverse of the Affably Evil trope-- Good is Not Nice, if you will, people with good morals or an honorable end goal who are just really mean, and overall absolute dickfaces.

NO REAL PEOPLE. Hopefully, this goes without saying!

Please don't come back and repeatedly nominate the same person. I know who you fuckers are. Save your voter fraud for the actual polls (/hj)

I won't BAR specific media, but, like, if I view it as problematic or feel I may get backlash for including it, I simply won't. So, uh, be careful, I guess.

This is specifically for horrible man PROTAGS. Those main characters you love to hate. I know every piece of media has its Good Is Not Nice character, but it's so much more fun when it's the main character

Horrible man is a gender-neutral term in this case.

Be civil and have fun!

DEADLINES

I don't feel like dealing with fucking INFINITE amounts of entries (Clash of the Wizards and Niche Sexyman Bloodbath both had 300+ entries I had to sort through), so I'm going to be cutting off either at the end of the month, aka, SEPTEMBER 30, or when I hit over 200 entries. Whichever happens first. These deadlines are flexible, though!

Got any questions about the polls or about me? My ask box is open, and I'll try and answer everything! Something about the comp inspires you to make art? I think you so should! I just ask you either drop it in my inbox or you tag me in the post!

Of course, as is customary, I shall tag my inspiration. This competition was inspired by @affablyevilshowdown , @germanboyjoust , and @bestadaptationtournament specifically, but it's mostly just because I wanted to run another poll

Think you got it? Good! Now.... SEND ME YOUR AWFUL MEN!!!!

[yuripoll]

MASTERPOST

season 1 (WINNER: Bloom into You) ||| season 2 (WINNER: The guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all) ||| season 3 (CURRENT)

curiosity round (schedule | tag)

NAVIGATION:

matches: poll posts without additional comments or reblogs

yuri propaganda: any posts regarding contestants (series tags are here if you want to browse)

results: winner announcements for any completed match

knockouts: for shoutouts to the losing contestants & certain rejected submissions (knockout masterpost can be found here)

yuriposting: for any general reblogs about yuri as a concept

other polls: what it says on the tin!

blacklist "stfu elly" if you don't want my asks / non-tournament talk on your dash. if you don't want to see reblogs of poll posts, blacklist "match boost" xoxo

If I miss any CWs or you want to dispute the ones I've listed, please let me know; I try to be thorough, but my memory is a sieve and I'm not always exact.

Submissions are still open while the poll is running! Rather than any submission being unsuccessful, it just gets added to the spreadsheet for next time :)

Guidelines, submission form & additional info under the cut.

SUBMISSION YAYS:

Not limited to just manga; as long as we're talking GL (or, at the very least, comics about lesbians), manhua, webcomics & other non-japanese comics are fine!

Oneshots, anthologies & ongoing works are all equally A-OK.

While I ask that you don't submit straight up hentai, any amount of sexual content in a work is alright (just give a heads up 👍).

Titles that explore or touch on dark subject matter are fine (encouraged. even.), again just give a heads up.

SUBMISSIONS NAYS:

While there's no strict page minimum, future polls won't include very short works; I'll still shout them out if they're submitted, but I feel they don't make for very fun competition.

Submit as many titles as you like, but number of submissions has little to no impact on acceptance, so no need to spam the same one.

Anything romanticising or sexualising incest/rape/grooming/etc will not be accepted; its a blurry line between that and having dark themes, of course, so acceptance and rejection are up to my discretion.

SUBMISSION FORM IS HERE: LINK

PROPAGANDA:

I take screencaps & go through series tags for the bulk of propaganda, but submitted propaganda is also readily accepted. All that stuff gets queued, but I share submissions right away.

Tag me in a post, send things via DM, or jump in the ask or submission box - any is fine! If it's been a minute and I haven't shared it, I probably haven't seen it; in that case just let me know directly.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Polls give a general heads up of any notable warnings for the series in the post, but once they're out of the tournament, they get a more detailed recommendation post that's more specific and comprehensive.

That being said, some of these I didn't read a lot of, haven't read in awhile, or are still ongoing, so be please be cautious!

SEEDING:

Seeding is based on MAL ranking or, if there's no MAL ranking available, it's assigned a random number between 1500 & 10,000 and placed into the challonge bracket based on that.

OFFICIAL TIE PROTOCOL:

TIE IN THE MAIN BRACKET -> Treated as a double loss, aka both go to the Losers' Bracket in a three way match. Of the two that tied, the highest scorer goes back to the main bracket. The lowest scorer of all three gets knocked out.

TIE IN THE LOSERS BRACKET -> Treated as a double win, aka both go to the next round of the Losers' Bracket in a three way match. The highest scorer moves forward, and the other two get knocked out.

WHAT ABOUT A TIE IN THE THREE-WAY MATCHES? -> I have chosen not to think about that <3

WHAT IF, LIKE, THERES A TIE IN THE LOSERS BRACKET AND MAIN BRACKET IN A WAY THAT WOULD RESULT IN A 4 WAY MATCH? -> I delete my blog.

(ran by @nicastamatis, also ran @foodiepoll)