#just gonna make my rules into a post so its easily accessible lmao

[smirkbastian]

blog rules   //    ♔

♔  ( intro )     Hello, anybody that may be reading this! My name is Marcel, and I’m just a guy that loves both Sebastian Smythe and torturing peoples existence with his shenanigans. Half a joke, half not. I have been role playing Sebastian for over three years now and have come back to love my boy again after a long time of taking a break from the RPC, and my previous blog was bcingnicesucks. I am in the PST time zone, if that means anything to you. I love making new roleplay partners and meeting new friends through this hobby, so please always feel free to reach out to me and say hi! I can be bad at initiating first interactions but I still want them to happen trust me! I look forward to writing with you. 

♔  ( selectivity/follows )     I am private and highly selective purely for the fact that I am particular about what I want to write and keeping my number of partners minimal to an extent makes me able to put all my energy and heart into every plot I write with you. If I follow you, it means I want to write with you. I only interact with mutuals. I don’t care how pretty your blog looks or what kind of icon you use. I could honestly care less. I just care about your writing and the dynamic we plot out for our characters. I don’t roleplay with people who use huge gifs just because of clutter reasons but anything else goes (icons, gif icons, no icon or gif at all, smallish gifs, etc.). If we are mutuals though, feel free to bug me anytime any day for all the plotting. I am such a slut for plotting and adding depth to the dynamic our muses have. I obviously am a bit bias to glee characters but I adore universe-colliding as well as OC’s and will be posting various AU’s for Sebastian over time. I also love glee characters that are highly off-grid from the canon glee plot. I’m not completely anti-following other Sebastian’s (I’ve written and been close with Sebastian’s in the past) but I don’t really make an effort to do that. 

♔  ( writing )     Roleplay is meant to be fun! It’s all fun and games! So let’s have fun! I don’t like petty stuff if there’s no reason for it, ngl. I am not triggered by any subject when it comes to writing so come at me with whatever. I like to write long things and short things-- but I really do prefer something somewhat in-depth overtime. If you get frustrated with long replies though, I’m probably not the right writing partner for you. I never expect you to match the length at all, as long as you give me a little bit of something to work with, my love for lengthy writing is purely just something I enjoy to do so that the universe in which Sebastian exists in is prominent and vibrant in my head. I will never judge you for lack of writing or long replies as long as it’s not like a one-liner reply to my two paragraph reply. Do what you can! Express yourself! I don’t care about grammar being perfect either, that’s an unrealistic expectation considering not everybody is the best with grammar and some people come from different first languages. 

♔  ( content )     The mun is 18+, and Sebastian is lowkey a hoe, so in no way will this blog be free of NSFW content. I used to be fine with interacting with minors so long as it wasn’t shippy or anything but now I”m kinda even uncomfortable with knowing a minor could be seeing NSFW content on their dash coming from my blog so I highly prefer things to stay 18+ around here. Sebastian has a dark character background, meaning their may be mention of child abuse, death and more on this blog. I will tag everything I post accordingly always. If there’s something specific you’d like tagged that you see, hit me up. I can accommodate to that. 

♔  ( activity )     My activity varies from what’s going on in my life but I intend to stay active as I can always. September-December I will be doing an internship with Disney so I may be a bit busier than usual meaning my activity might be spottier as far as actual replies but I’ll stay active on the dash and you can always feel free to remind me of replying. I don’t like to be harassed but I do lose threads sometimes so I appreciate your reminder if you give it. 

♔  ( portrayal )     Seeing as there was literally never a specification for Sebastian’s sexuality in the duration of the show, I have always imagined him to be bisexual. This being said, I play Sebastian as being interested in both men and women with a stronger interest in men. Sebastian is a human and there is a reason for every negative thing he may do, but Glee is a campy show and role play is fiction-- meaning my Sebastian is a dick. Yes, Sebastian is a good person but he can also be a bad person. He is a learning human and he is a pest, I will not lie. If you are offended with anything Sebastian says or does to your muse, then you can let me know but this is a warning now that if you’re highly sensitive or offended by characters who like to fuck things up a bit then I don’t recommend writing with me haha. 

♔  ( shipping )     I am so easy to ship with I’m not gonna lie. Sebastian is different story but as far as I go you can ALWAYS come to me with your ship ideas or needs. I love to ship unexpected or strange pairings and I get so excited about ships. I prefer to go hardcore with ships, and what I mean by this is when I have a ship with you I will make it my upmost effort to make it unique for the both of us and mainly prioritize just having fun! 

♔  ( stealing )     Yes, a lot of roleplayers have some similar headcanons if they roleplay the same character, but I have a very specific headcanon childhood and story line for Sebastian so I can tell if you stole specific details. I would never assume someone of copying if I didn’t feel confident in it, because again, from personal experience headcanons can definitely be the same between two people without intention of stealing them. If something is not credited on the things I post, that means I made it. All icons are made by scratch by me. 

[izzyovercoffee]

Hello there, I feel you're the best person to ask about this. If someone was learning Mando'a, but didn't have any experience in learning languages, what should they learn first? I'm aware Mando'a is missing a lot of basic words, so would that be an issue?

aww thank you, that’s very sweet of you to say !! 

actually, before I get into it since I don’t want to take all credit, I just want to recommend also speaking w/ @jacensolodjo as we’re both fairly conversational in mando’a. @cassiansfuzzyjacket regularly releases mando’a vocabulary once a week in addition to general mando posts. @thesummerstorms also works on developing mando’a and missing words with the above and myself. There’s also general mandalorian reconstructionists around tumblr (@suspendnodisbelief being one of the people who posted really interesting development wrt mando’a and mandalorians in the past, and I think still does? EDIT:: also @reconfemmandoforares ). I am definitely missing people, but these are the ones I’m most/easily familiar with so we can start there. I’ll make a post eventually.

I also peruse the mando’a and mandalorian tags/searches often.

Also generally I would be careful w/ mandalorian reconstructionists bc a few in the larger community perpetuate toxic beliefs (toxic masculinity being one of the most common along w/ sexism, but also ableism, racism, and specifically catholic interpretation of mandalorians) that don’t actually … exist. That’s a discussion for another day, but the general conlang mando’a resources are worth checking out if you can find them, keeping the aforementioned in mind.

There’s also the MandoMercs forums, and I would caution exactly the same as the above when entering the community.

Okay. So. That said, I won’t beat around the bush here: learning mando’a can be difficult because, like you said, the language is missing quite a few basic words. Learning mando’a will, at least in the beginning, require maybe having easy access to a mando’a dictionary and creative use of words.

Things you might need to remember:

The rules for mando’a are more like … guidelines … and sometimes to get the point across you need to play fast and loose with grammar. 

If you get too creative w/ word construction, some people are not gonna be able to follow you/your meaning. 

This isn’t necessarily a reflection on you, however, but a downside to limited vocabulary.

Drop words that aren’t absolutely necessary (cuyir, “to be / is / are,” is a big one, te, haar “the” is another, etc) 

mando’a does not recognize/utilize gender markers.

For me, personally … learning / being able to speak some french has been incredibly helpful for mando’a pronunciation and verb conjugation, but not so much on the combining words to make other words. German, on the other hand, is great for that. English is also guilty of doing this, but you know … lol.  

Sentence structure often reflects English, possibly because the origins of this conlang are meant for ease of translation with a majority English-speaking audience and the people involved did not have any familiarity with nor background in linguistics (which also may explain the missing basic words). 

Generally, in learning new languages, we tend to remember words that are most relevant to us / used often. But the process of learning language is kind of difficult, especially if you haven’t before — because there are different ways to learn new languages, and what works for one person might not work for another. ie. some people retain language better with writing down phrases and vocabulary repeatedly or writing/reading in the language, while some others learn better via auditory lessons and verbal recitation / jumping straight to practicing with others.

Admittedly, I am (slowly) trying to compile basic necessary words that are missing in mando’a and filling that gap, but that project is a long, long way from completion (I mean, look how long it took for us to settle on the word for boat lmao). And, bc of the nature of language in general there may always be multiple words meaning the same exact thing, and multiple ways to say the same thing.

What I mean is that there is no “right” way to speak mando’a, so long as your meaning gets across clearly, concisely, and sensibly. At its very core, mando’a is a language meant to be easy to speak and easy to understand. Try not to get bogged down in excess, and any time you can shorten and simplify a sentence do it. You can outright drop entire words, so long as context can be derived.

That aside, also remember most importantly: have fun with it.

I know, I know “that’s so corny” but l i s t e n. Mando’a is meant to be a constantly changing, evolving language. Enjoying messing around with the conlang, coming up with new words/phrases or breaking down existing ones to see the how/why, is some of the best ways to familiarize yourself with the language. And tbh don’t be afraid to message me if you want to practice, and feel free to engage with my posts. I’m always welcome to talk about mando’a and mandalorians in general, and I’m working on being more … uh, time efficient with responding now.

anyway … that was a lot longer than I intended. I hope this helps, and I hope I answered your questions. If not please let me know !! and I’ll see if I can be more clear about everything.