#idk if its a popular phrase in japanese tho

[mrshayakawa]

the falling devil choosing to dress like a chef…do we think fujimoto is aware of the phrase “let him cook” and how many people have been saying it ab the pacing of part 2 LMAO

[arytha]

why do you only read chinese fiction?

I'm going to hope this isn't in bad faith and that you're actually just innocently curious. If you're not being innocent about this, I don't have to explain anything to you about what I decide to get into. Thanks 💜

Anyways, I've certainly leaned towards reading mainly Chinese fiction lately, but its not the only thing I read. (See: ORV and TCF obsession, both Korean novels) I've been reading a lot of chinese novels lately bc I like them? I mainly read on my phone, so translated novels and the like are the easiest to get into. I mainly find novels through NovelUpdates, and I tend to want to read similar things bc it keeps my brain in check. I also take recommendations from friends, which is how I found out that I like these novels in the first place. I'm also (now) comfortable enough about what I know with MTL translation errors in Chinese that I can read unfinished translations without too many issues besides using more brain power with some phrasing (and completely avoiding novels set in the palace bc mtl does not play nice with all the terms of address), which opens me to reading more novels, because if I'm reading something I prefer it to be complete because of how I read.

I grew up reading mainly English authors. In my teens I read a lot of Japanese visual/web/light novels (Fate, Umineko, Shield Hero, Death Mage, DenYuuDen, etc) and manga, but its harder for me to get into manga rn (latest was Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun). I've been wanting to read more Korean novels, but I haven't found many that I like, and I'm totally up to suggestions. I actually tried reading Worm (english webnovel) last year due to popular demand but couldn't get through it bc I wasn't in the right mindset. It is still on my list of stuff to read later tho!

I rotate through hyperfixations, and I just happen to like a lot of the tropes (Infinite Flow, I'm fascinated by Cultivation novels, etc) and novel types that Chinese novels have to offer right now. I guess I'll probably rotate out of this and off to some other obscure-or-not media type that's as weirdly niche at some point. Idk. I just need something to occupy my brain while going through my day and reading helps me with that.

[xmoonlitxdreamx]

Galar Star Fanbook Notes (p.5)

Page 4: [x]

Here’s the next page of this thing. :0 This page is a special article on Raihan called “Raihan’s 15 Secrets.” Tbh most of this stuff is directly from the game, but feel free to read if you’re interested!

Apologies for any confusing phrasing here... some of these sentences were quite long and I don't have a ton of practice with long sentences;; I tried to break them up when it was more natural to do so in English, but idk it’s not perfect... Also, I referenced in-game phrasing which I found on serebii and bulbapedia for a couple sentences. I’m not 100% sure if some of the things in the magazine were intended as direct quotes from the game, though.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a professional translator and my Japanese is honestly not that good (I’m like N3-ish I guess, never took the JLPT tbh). I only lived in Japan for around 2 years before moving back to the US. I’m definitely going to be missing a lot of nuance in my translations & there’s a good chance I may translate some things incorrectly. I’ll do my best tho. ^^;

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Reader-Selected Popularity Poll: 1st place commemoration project!

Raihan’s 15 secrets

To celebrate the winner of this month’s Nintendo Dream Pokemon Sword & Shield Major Character Popularity Poll, we’re releasing a special feature article on Raihan. From fundamental facts that fans would know and regard as common knowledge to a few lesser known facts here and there, here are the 15 secrets!

(Includes some speculative content done by the Nintendo Dream editorial department. Some areas may differ from the character's formally-established profile.)

1. Raihan comes out as by far the tallest of not just the gym leaders but of all the major characters in Pokemon SWSH. His Pokemon Scale World Figure (Bandai Co.) is about 1/20th to true size; it’s around 9.75 cm, so he’s maybe around 195 cm?

2. Raihan’s rotom phone is the red color type. (The protagonist’s is orange and Hop’s is blue.)

3. His greatest partner is his Duraludon, which can gigantamax. It knows the moves Dragon Claw, Iron Head, Stone Edge, and Body Press. Duraludon’s sp. attack is higher than its attack, so it’s unusual that it only knows physical attacks. It may be that Raihan was taking into consideration his rival Leon’s Charizard, as well as what to do after gigantamaxing—which is why he made sure that Duraludon can attack with a powerful rock-type move.

4. He’s a dragon type user, but he’s also proactive about having non-dragon types in his party like Gigalith, Sandaconda, and Torkoal. His gym trainers do the same.

5. He likes to strategize around changing the weather. He puts together his teams such that they can utilize weather conditions: in the Gym Challenge he centers his team around sandstorm, while in the Champion Cup and the Galar Star Tournament his team utilizes strong sunlight.

6. The Hammerlocke Stadium gym mission is not at the stadium, but is instead conducted inside the Hammerlocke Vault. It seems the reason he has trainers participate in double battles is so that he can see how they perform under all kinds of circumstances.

7. It seems he is teaching the following principles to the Hammerlocke Gym gym trainers: the strength of dragon types, as well as how to make the battlefield work to your advantage in order to utilize that strength.

8. When battling Raihan, if the player or Raihan himself change the weather, he will say a special line of dialogue.

9. It seems that he has not once won against the ice type gym leader Melony. Even when up against her in the Champion Cup Tournament, he generally loses. Raihan has a lot of Pokemon on-hand who have a type-advantage over ice types, so he and Melony should be rather evenly matched in essence, but… maybe it’s that he finds her hard to deal with in some way?

10. When you meet up with Kabu on the Isle of Armor, he tells you that he himself was the one who suggested that Raihan add Torkoal to his team.

11. Other than the Pokemon League symbol and the dragon type gym symbol, the Macro Cosmos Bank logo is also depicted on Raihan’s uniform—this is the same logo which appears in advertisements at Hammerlocke Gym. Macro Cosmos Bank recruits strong-looking dragon type Pokemon for Poke Jobs to protect their investments, so having them as a sponsor is perfect for Raihan.

12. There’s an advertisement in Hammerlocke Stadium that seems to depict a Machoke and some sort of supplements. Perhaps it’s Protein or some sort of dietary supplement?

13. You can meet Raihan on the Isle of Armor while he’s in the middle of some “top-secret training.” He talks to you about various things depending on the weather. He has also taken a liking to Challenge Road as a great "selfie spot".

14. He often uses “ore-sama” when referring to himself, but he also uses “Raihan-sama,” “ore,” and “Raihan.”*

Raihan & Melony, Raihan & Piers, or Raihan & Leon as your opponents

15. In the Galar Star Tournament, you can see special dialogue in the following circumstances:

Raihan as your partner with Milo, Kabu, Melony, Piers, or Leon as your opponent (or vise-versa)

Leon as your partner with Piers & Raihan as your opponents

Hop as your partner with Leon and Raihan as your opponents (first round)

*(TN: If you don’t know these Japanese honorifics or pronouns here’s my explanation... I’m not an expert so this is just my understanding. “ore” is a first person pronoun used by boys and men (generally considered more masculine and/or informal than watashi or boku), and “-sama” is an honorific kind of like “sir” or “madam”.  “ore-sama” is kind of a fictional first person pronoun that establishes a male character as someone who thinks highly of himself. Tbh it doesn’t really happen in the real world unless someone is joking or trying to sound like an anime character… it’s just something characters use in anime/manga/games/etc.

For “Raihan” and “Raihan-sama”: referring to yourself by name is usually considered kind of childish and cutesy, and then adding -sama to the end of your name (Raihan-sama) has the same effect as “ore-sama” of being kind of proud or cocky. Again referring to yourself by name is pretty uncommon for adults to do outside of anime/manga/games/etc. I think I only had one adult acquaintance who did this and she was kind of a strange lady tbh lmao… a couple of the middle school girls that I taught referred to themselves by first name, tho.

Anyway since Raihan’s a fictional character, these are all relatively common (?) first person pronouns that kind of establish him as proud/cocky and maybe playful/cute at times.)

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Thanks for reading!

[professorsparklepants]

1) As a Hindi speaking, Indian-born Hindu I would say there are a bunch of set phrases peopl use but generally grammatically the word for god is the same in singular and plural phrase unless in a sentence having a verb. So if you're saying 'I swear by god' ('I swear by god/mom/you/me (those are the popular options to swear by) that whatever I am saying is the truth'), the word would be the same if the person was referring to plural or singular

2) tho in practise it’s singular because hinduism still does have the concept of the one overarching very-monotheistic God & the word ‘bhagwaan’ functions exactly like 'god’ in english. But (modern) Hinduism is unlike European polytheistic religions because while there are a bunch of (ALL-male) gods who are cognates of the greco-roman gods (the devas led by thundergod Indra, king of devas) they aren’t worshipped as proper gods anymore and not sworn by in any capacity except Agni (fire) …

2.5) because Agni is supposed to be the witness of the gods so he gets invoked in weddings and deaths as the divine witness. So basically swearing by Agni (singularly) in practice kind of means swearing by this old/vedic pantheon of gods because that’s his job. This comes up a lot in TV/movies when people have impromptu marriages for ~love when they swear to take each other as wives/husbands 'with Agni as my witness’. So 'Agni as my witness’ == 'the God(s) as my witness’ in many ways.

3) But! while you might invoke them in some rituals (anything yagya-like which draws from the vedas primarily)if you catch a Hindu 'praying to a god’ s/he is certainly not thinking of one of those guys in that Indo-European pantheon. Instead when people are thinking 'gods you pray to’ it’s from the Trinity family of gods which are pretty explicitly supposed to be '3 aspects of the same omniscient omnipotent capital G god. Which complicatedly get split into masculine and feminine aspects too.

4) The Trinity would be the masculine Trimurty - Brahma the creator, Vishnu the protector & Shiva the destroyer and the feminine Tridevi - Saraswati the goddess of Knowledge, Lakshmi the goddess of prosperity & Parvati the goddess of … transformation & spiritual fulfilment(ish). This is where the modern stuff gets weird and complicated. Cuz while the modern Hindu would consider each of the above as gods in practice people consider themselves devotees of 1 single aspect of the above ….

4.5) …. and boy are the a LOT of different combinations/intepretations of the above 6 aspects which different levels of popularity. Ram and Krishna, two of the Avatars of Vishnu are very very popular so 'hey Ram’ (also the last words of Gandhi) and 'hare Krishna’ are popular phrases with similar intent as 'oh god’. But most religious ppl consider themselves the main devotee of 1 single aspect while also considering other aspects valid & praying to them as/when situation/festival demands

5) Which v long story summarized means that no at least Hindi-speaking Hindus do not say things like ’ oh my gods’ cuz a) the word for god has identical singular-plural form and b) the modern practiced religion is not as simply polytheistic as portrayed in most of the fantasy greco-roman inspired pantheons where chars say 'by all the gods!’ etc. Also c) Hinduism has never really been a single religion it’s more a fusion/synthesis of traditions classified as a single religion cuz colonialism.

6) I think if you’d like to really find out if organic language in a truly polytheistic society of the kind found in fantasy lit would talk like that one might want to study past language use. Even Modern Japanese Shintoism is blended with Buddism and its one/higher god conception of Buddha (btw interestingly Hindus consider Buddha to be an avatar of Vishnu) and I think Mandarin doesn’t really do singular/plural divide.

7) PS: sometimes if it is a long sentence with a verb (where some differences crop us specifying singular and plural use) some people do occasionally use gods! For example I just thought of this. 'Gods be with you' is an actual thing but so it 'God be with you' because the difference is literally just the addition of a nasal sound on the verb which many people don't pronounce very well colloquially. But also that plural could be just the respect plural (tu/vous thou/you distinction) so hmm. idk.

8) PPS sorry for spamming your inbox but your question made me think! But speaking as a person who grew up Hindu with multiple gods in the cultural landscape, the use of 'gods’ in fantasy lit conversation does not bother me at all. It’s a nice use of flavor. What I often find more (mildly) annoying is that apparently everyone has same religion/pantheon throughout the world with no variation in beliefs.

Oh wow, tysm for the in depth answer! I knew some of this, but having the whole thing put into context with history and grammar was really helpful. (And honestly anon? The monotheistic world beliefs thing bothers the HECK out of me, too).