#not with my limited knowledge of the japanese language :D

[corneille-moisie]

just so we are all on the same page, these gif were made from this :

and that comes from here

so yeah, it is hotwave, it was sometime in 2003, as they were promoting new vogue children.

i dont have much else to add to this, aside from saying that this person in the comments might be right about this being a lost media lol

[jeidafei]

Hi, DGM fandom! I'm jeidafei. You may have seen me in Kougeki-scans' scanlation of D.Gray-Man.

I know Kougeki releases have been delayed for these past few chapters. And people have taken to releasing their own translations on Reddit and MangaDex as early as a few days after the Japanese release. We at Kougeki have asked people to wait if they could. People have told us to, basically, go d*e.

And of course, you are perfectly entitled to say so. You are perfectly entitled to release your own translations and not wait. After all, we at Kougeki are just fans of D.Gray-Man, similar to you. We have zero claim over the series.

I normally stay out of the fray when it comes to quarrels with these 'snipers' until now. When I saw the quality of the translations some of these people are putting out.

(Specifically, Chapter 250 on MangaDex)

Japanese is a difficult language. D.Gray-Man is a difficult manga to translate due to its ongoing status, complex nature and plot twists. I have made mistakes myself that others have pointed out. I have my own interpretations that might be different. I readily forgive mistakes I understand are due to the complex Japanese grammar, and the confusing mysteries of the D.Gray characters.

But these are not it. These are just blatant laziness and lack of basic knowledge of even the most recent developments in D.Gray-Man. Or even simple logic. These are the results of people dishing out sub-par work quickly just to get the most exposure possible.

So while we wait for Kougeki's version, I am going to point out these egregious mistakes. We need transparency so that going forward, you can make your own decisions on whether it is speed or accuracy you are looking for.

The original Japanese text says "7,000 years ago" (七千), not "17 years"（十七）. A difference any beginner Japanese learner would notice. Even most D.Gray-Man fans without Japanese knowledge would probably realize something is off based on what we know of the story so far.

The original text says "Do(es) the passion/sentiments run so deep, you must reincarnate into a human who resembles Nea?" (the word 'regret' is simply not there). I think 'passion' or 'sentiments' are more compatible here, considering earlier theories about Tyki, the Noah of Pleasure.

Jasdevi is saying they were at their limits anyway and wouldn't be able to keep restraining Apocryphos for long. When Wisely orders them to dispose of Apo, they scream "Oni!" (Demon) which is quite similar to "Onii-san" (Elder brother), but most people would probably know which one is more fitting in this scenario, even without Japanese knowledge.

When Desires asks Wisely if he is just going to set Apo free like that, Wisely explains that this way, Apocryphos (not Desires or Wisely as in the translation), can keep searching for the Heart for them. Again, basic story knowledge.

Wisely didn't say "Fine, enough already"; this bubble is a continuation of the earlier bubble, spoken by Desires. Together, he is saying "Wouldn't you just spit it out already!?"

In Japanese, many words sound the same and the meaning can only be determined by context or the Chinese characters (kanji) used. In this case, "kikai" can mean either "machine" (機械) or "opportunity" (機会) or "strange" (奇怪), among a dozen others.

Yes, it's difficult, I know. But, you see the kanji. You know the context. I'm sure you can take a guess.

There are a couple more minor mistakes (ones that don't impact your understanding of the story too much). But I'm just going to leave you with one more, the most conspicuous mistake:

The chapter is named "Curse's End" by this translator. Actually, it's the opposite in Japanese. "Owaranu" is a form of "Owaranai" which means "not ending", which fits the revelation of this chapter by Wisely that their 35-year curse has yet to come to an end.

So, there you have it.

As you can see, I'm not shaming people for not being as fluent in Japanese. Not everyone can dedicate almost two decades to learn a language. As I have pointed out, most of these mistakes are rookie-level, and should have been picked up in double-check if that someone is familiar with D. Gray-Man at all. With these nigh unforgivable mistakes, even Deepl and Google Translate are more accurate.

This is a matter of someone not giving enough of a sh*t, plain and simple.

I'm also not gatekeeping scanlation whatsoever. I'm just pointing out the mistakes and actual text because the fandom deserves to know. With the localization drama going on, it proves faithfulness to the actual text and accuracy matters.

Of course, anyone has the right to put out their translation. And I have the right to point out whether they can be trusted. I'm not passing judgment. I'm just providing evidence so the bystanders can decide for themselves.

Lastly, from the bottom of my heart, I thank everyone who has supported the work of Kougeki Scans and waited for our release. I apologize for the delays. We're working on the latest chapter and will release 249 and 250 very, very soon.

[tiktowafel]

Headcanons for Neito Monoma?

yup here you go! tagging @fabpops1 because she also asked for Monoma headcanons

no coloring today because the one i made two years ago sucks and i don't feel like remaking it :'D honestly i feel like Horikoshi and I both half-assed his casual clothing sketch lol

him and his parents were all born in Japan but he has some relatives in Belgium, whom he really enjoys visiting. it's the main reason why he seems so interested in european culture (his profile page states he likes french cuisine and franco-belgian comics)

he can also speak french very well thanks to that

he's also fluent in english (though he has trouble understanding Pony sometimes - he's much better at reading and writing than he is at listening) and has a basic knowledge of several other languages. he doesn't really expect it to come handy at any point in the future, he just learns them because he finds it fun

besides that he also likes history, classic literature, theatre... yeah this guy is a huge humanities-leaning nerd and i don't accept criticism

nor do i accept the fact that he's supposed to be a bad student in canon?? like, he's so smart and also competitive, no way he isn't top of the class... he may not be as good in science and math as he is in japanese and history, but nothing an all-nighter can't fix

in middle school he was part of the drama and debate clubs. and while hero course students aren't supposed to join clubs because they should focus on hero work, he managed to argue his way into the same clubs in UA by saying that his theatrics and speeches are an important part of his hero persona. Kuroiro joined the drama club alongside him (didn't contribute to the argument at all, just nodded wisely every time Monoma presented a point)

class 1-B's culture festival performance being a stage play was actually his idea! it didn't really go the way he intended (he did NOT expect it to turn into a four-way crossover more ambitious than infinity war) but he greatly enjoyed performing in it anyway! maybe even too much

his knowledge of quirks rivals Midoriya's. he researches them a lot mostly to help his copy quirk but also out of genuine curiosity

he often helps his classmates with training their quirks and comes up with new techniques to try out. he's particularly good at it because he can actually try other people's quirks himself, which gives him a better understanding of how they function and what their limitations are

^ which is why i believe he'd make an awesome hero course teacher!! (in all might's role - i don't think making him anyone's homeroom teacher would be a good idea, he'd be just as biased towards his class as he is now lmao) it's definitely one of my favorite "future" headcanons

he praises his classmates' quirks a lot and says he considers them all great, but he does have preferences when it comes to copying them

his favorites are Yanagi's poltergeist (somewhat boring, but easy to understand and very versatile both in battle and everyday life), Tokage's lizard tail splitter (he almost died when he copied it for the first time because he barely managed to put his body back together before his quirk's time limit ran out, but that didn't stop him - he always found Tokage's quirk very fun and useful, so he put a lot of work into fully figuring it out and now he uses it pretty often), Shoda's twin impact (Monoma's physical strength.... leaves a lot to be desired, and the second impact always being significantly stronger than the first helps make up for it) and Kuroiro's black (you can move around very fast and it's fun :) )

quirks he does not like copying Honenuki's softening (fun, but quite difficult to control and avoiding collateral damage with such a destructive quirk is a pain in the ass. Honenuki understands that perfectly) and Shishida's beast (just... really not his thing lol)

for some reason i see a lot of people headcanon that he has pet ferrets, and you know what? i agree. he does seem like a ferret person

prefers smart clothing, a polo shirt is the most casual he'll go. he only ever wears tshirts for exercise (which he hates doing lol) and probably doesn't own a single hoodie

in general i think he has a good eye for elegant design... his dorm room is very stylish and nicely coordinated too. i think one of the light novels also describes it as "vaguely french" and yeah that fits

while he tries to keep his room neat and tidy on the outside, all his drawers and cabinets are horribly messy

he's that one kid who has like 17 different allergies and is completely useless if he forgets his meds on a spring day (spring is his least favorite season due to this. i think winter would be his fave)

luckily he is not allergic to dairy so he can eat as much stinky french cheese as he wants 👍

speaking of food i think he's a pretty good cook actually

prefers listening to older (and mostly foreign) music and is a huge snob about it

honestly he probably acts the same about movies and books too

arguing with people on the internet is one of his favorite ways to spend his free time. if there are no 1-A students around, you can always show off your impressive vocabulary by bullying random internet strangers with bad taste in movies!

almost everyone in 1-B considers him a friend despite his... anti-1a bullshit, because he's just really nice and helpful to people he likes + he's a great leader! however he's closest to Kuroiro (friendly drama king rivals! they're constantly arguing about dumb shit using the fanciest words they can think of and they're always trying to outperform each other in the drama club meetings they both attend, but they love each other trust me <3 also Monoma helps Kuroiro with studying because he sucks at school), Pony (when he's not trying to trick her into insulting 1-A he can be pretty helpful with japanese, he also likes listening to her talk about her home country), Honenuki (he's Pony's best friend, so you usually befriend them both at once, but Monoma thinks he's also interesting to talk to by himself) and Tetsutetsu (they don't share many interests but Monoma hates exercising so he has Tetsutetsu force him to do it. his positive energy certainly helps a lot)

ever since they got to know each other during their joint training fight, Monoma's been using 100% of his persuasion skills to convince Shinso to join 1-B instead of 1-A. Shinso is conflicted to say the least

aaand that's all i have for him! hope you enjoyed these!!

[petrichorade]

What you guys have been waiting for...my Hitsuhina's Children Headcanon!

Finally I've decided to upload this after a while :'D this is my personal headcanon of how their child would look like.

Early Disclaimer:

It's going to be long

I have limited Japanese ability, but I do understand some lexical context. This is why I never engage myself to do fan-translation works despite have knowledge about it as I prevent sharing misinformation. I learned about translation etiquette during my days as literature student in university, so I did my best to not being biased while creating this, despite people's translation style could be different from one to another. Nevertheless, I accept any critics from those who's much more fluent than me and have more knowledge regarding naming rules and cultures in Japan. I will take it as reflection to deepening my knowledge more with Japanese language, culture, history, and societies since all of this are tied together and can not be separated! Along with taking down this post if any of the content turn out to contain any misleading information.

I haven't made any art for them, but I hope the explanation below could help anyone visualize how they would look like in my headcanon!

Now let's get down to the business!!

1. Hitsugaya Hayato (日番谷 隼)

隼 (はやと) = peregrine falcon

This one was pretty tricky since name 'Hayato' in most case were written like this -> 隼人 by adding 'human' kanji at the end. But since I saw a real public figure named Hayato who have their name being published with single kanji like above, I can say that Hitsugaya Hayato will have the same case!

Birthday: March 17th

Zanpakuto: 青山郎 (せい・ざん・ろう || Seizanrou = Blue Specter )

I imagine he will inherit Momo's hair and Toshiro's eye color. His overall features will look like Toshiro uwu. I honestly conflicted to made him having Toshiro's hair with Momo's feature instead of the one I come up with, since on Kazui and Ichika's case, they have their father's hair and their mother's feature. But then I remember Ichigo have Isshin's face and his orange hair were probably inherit from Masaki's side, so I'll make Hayato having that situation too.

He'll wield an elemental zanpakuto with a fire-type spirit. His zanpakuto's name will be 青山郎 (Seizanrou = Blue Specter). This zanpakuto naming idea were inspired by Hyourinmaru itself. Hyourin (氷輪) if translated literally means 'ice ring' but it could also mean ' the moon (that shine as cold as ice)' hence why there's a crescent shaped pendant at the end of Hyourinmaru's chain.

And 青山 ( せい・ざん -> Seizan) if translated literally means 'lush/green mountain', but it could also mean 'grave' or 'burial place'. Adding 郎 ('rou', same as the last kanji in Toshiro's name, means 'boy') at the end of it, I made the equivalent translation being 'Blue Specter' (boy from burial place → 'someone' from the graveyard → a ghost).

//I wonder if it make sense, and if it's appropriate to name zanpakuto this way//

The command will be 蘇れ! ( よみがえ・れ = Yomigaere = (lit.)"Resurrect!" || But my personal translation to make the context a lot sensible in battlefield -> "Rise from the Death!" ), and the shikai technique will looks like blue fire orbs appearing on top of his blade. As Hayato calls its name, the blue flame will rise and change form into what Hayato desire to attack the enemies, as if it was a ghost that raises from its death body beneath the ground.

I'd like to think it's manifestations being a cemetery caretaker/keeper with lantern on his hand. Seizanrou's manifestation and overall concept was also partly inspired by 'Lantern Specter', the ghost in Taiwanese horror game 'Detention'.

I'd like to think it'll be great to have Hayato having a horrifying dream when Seizanrou on its own way to communicate with its master, the way Hyourinmaru did to Toshiro. Hayato will have a great equal portion of training from Toshiro as they experience the same case, but also with Momo as fellow fire-type zanpakuto wielder.

2. Hitsugaya Kanjirou (日番谷 柑蒔朗)

柑 (かん = citrus, orange) 蒔 (じ / ま・く = to sow)朗 (ろう = bright, cheerful) → "Orange Tree"

Birthday: October 3rd

Zanpakuto: 霜咲 (しも・ざき || Shimozaki = Blooming Frost)

This time she inherit Toshiro's hair and Momo's eyes, with overall feature dominant to Momo. She might gonna be daddy's little girl, because I like the idea of Toshiro having daughter, and that he has a soft spot for them :'))))

I was almost thought this name feel a bit too boyish for her, since so far I know, the commonly used ろう kanji was in this form for naming -> 郎. I did further research and find out this 朗 (ろう) kanji could also be used in naming, and have a great meaning. Adding the fact that I just found out 'Kanjirou' was actually A FLOWER NAME.

It's a sub-type of Camellia sasanqua, one of many types of camellia with deep magenta colors that natives to both China and Japan. This flower also blooms during fall to winter, which I think is perfect with my birth date set-up for her. I like the idea of either Momo or Toshiro get the inspiration to name her 'Kanjirou' the moment they saw this flower blooms near Momo's due date, while their home at the time starting to be filled with the sweet-citrusy smell of clementines.

Adding the fact that Momo's name not only refers to the 'peach' fruit itself, but could also be the 'peach blossom', we now have Father-Son duo with animal inspired name and Mother-Daughter duo with flower + fruit inspired name in our Hitsuhina little family! ^q^

For her zanpakuto spirit, she's a wielder of ice-type elemental zanpakuto. And her zanpakuto name will be 'Shimozaki' (霜咲 = Blooming Frost).

霜 (しも || Shimo = Frost)

咲 (さく・-ざき || sa-ku・-zaki = to blossom)

I haven't though so far about her shikai, but I like to imagine the technique will involves around scattering ice particle in form of haze and freeze the enemy in a form of blossoms.

Also I haven't thought about the spirit manifestation form TwT maybe later //forgive meee//

Again, she's also receive equal portion of training from both parents. As she's a fellow ice-type zanpakuto wielder, she practice swordmanship with Toshiro, and taught Kido by Momo (she's good at it!)

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

Andddddddd as you all can see, I'm trying my best to have their child looks like their 'literal' child with names and everything. It took me a while to find children's name that would match them, but I'm lucky to encounter 'Hayato' and 'Kanjirou' since I think it'll be a great idea for Hitsuhina's children to have names that rhymes with their parents' names (Toushirou and Momo). One of many things that motivates me to create this characters because I want to have their appearance on my fic :') so starting now, if ever I come up with Hitsuhina domestic stories/art in the future, it's easier for me to just pick them back from this reference and add them to the story/art uwu

The concept art will follows sooner~! Please have this for a while!

I guess this is it from me >< and I hope anyone like this silly little brainrot of mine hehe

[melonnmiru]

oc interactions lets GOOO

thank u thank u for letting me write interactions with your ocs, this was super fun to do!! :D

koi [ @niagaragrape ]

— ukiyo definitely sees koi as a younger sister, probably calls her 妹 every once in a while (妹 — younger sister)

— she's like the energetic older sister/cousin, hangs out with koi often and helps her out when she can

— ruffles koi's hair . like way too much

— kiyo hates doing paperwork but if koi ever suggests doing it for her, ukiyo is shaking her head no and insisting she can handle it and that koi should rest !!!

— koi is just so nice, ukiyo loves her sm and only wants the best for her! this does mean ukiyo buys her a bunch of stuff like sanrio keychains and sweets

— she can't draw but she'll ask koi all about graffiti and ask if she can draw one of her ghosts

— gave koi an omamori for pretty much everything, prosperity, safety, success, you name it

— she has trouble controlling her ghosts sometimes but she'll try her best to have them on their best behavior with koi as to not spook her! (well spook her too much at the very least) if they do end up scaring koi, ukiyo will be scolding them for the next hour or two

— also?? ukiyo and koi dressing up together!??! ukiyo may or may not buy a few dresses that fit koi's style and they run around in frilly little dresses together!!!

— if koi ever adds a few patches and pins to one of her dresses, she will absolutely CHERISH it forever

— " 妹! lookie, i got you a new kuromi patch! isn't it cute? it took me about.. 30 minutes to get..? ahhh, no worries! it was cute, i had to get it for you! "

— " oh, koi! tell me if you ever get a nightmare. i'll summon up a baku and it'll eat up any bad dreams you have! "

cub [ @fishincherrycola ]

— im sorry but ukiyo is probably a bit intimidated by her,, she holds a lot respect for her!! she's just a bit scary sometimes

— even though ukiyo is intimidated, she'll still try her best to talk to cub! even like really awkward small talk about the last mission

— if she somehow finds out cub is into astrology too, she'll definitely try talking with her about it!! uki's knowledge about astrology is pretty limited so she would ask a few questions about it too!!

— tried visiting cub's room and almost became a popsicle ,,

— speaking of becoming a popsicle! uki complains way too much about becoming one when they have missions in icebox and tries asking cub how she handles it (probably gets no response though..)

— honestly these 2 probably wouldn't have many interactions with cub being quite the introvert but uki will do her best to talk to her

— really likes when she can hear cub playing piano from her room, uki thinks she's super talented with it

— has seen how scary cub is with astra and made a little mental note to never get on her bad side 

— uki probably bought cub a little cinnamoroll keychain because it kinda reminded ukiyo of her and left it at the door to cub's room

— (in icebox) " ahh, its so cold here.. how are you not freezing right now cub? .. cub? "

— " hey, cub! did you get the keychain? i left it by your door. tell me if you want a different one! "

ulti [ @fishincherrycola ]

— UKIYO AND ULTI WOULD BE BFFS !!! uki really likes all ulti's dresses and buys him a few as well :D

— emoticon users 🤝

— if uki notices that ulti hasn't been out of his room in a while, she'll leave him some food that isn't instant noodles along with a little my melody plushie

— them just watching anime together!! uki definitely asks ulti for recommendations and they watch them together

— constantly reminding him to eat things other than instant noodles by buying him different food and making him tonkatsu!!

— if ulti understands japanese, they'll definitely talk in japanese a lot!! it makes uki happy that she can talk to someone else in her first language :D

— they have boba runs together i don't make the rules

— shows him her ghosts and talks about how she caught them

— points out any yokai in anime she has and summons them to show to ulti! this does mean she'll summon a more.. evil spirit than anticipated but dw she'll do her best to seal it back up so the two can continue watching anime

— " ulti, you've had like 15 cups of instant noodles today! why don't we buy some crepes or something? my treat! "

— " yo ulti! i found this new anime and, and! it's centered around yokai! can we go watch it? pleaseeee? "

zero [ @solitudexviii ]

— uki holds a lot of respect for miss zero!! her ambition is just so admirable

— she finds things like coding and literally anything that has to do with money and investment boring so she'll happily let zero handle all of that, maybe ask a few questions here and there about it

— uki is the type to respect interests and ask questions about it even if its not really her cup of tea! so she'll ask zero how things work and will happily listen to what she says!!

— she really likes zero's piercings! uki's piercings are all on her ears but she does want a few new ones like zero's :0

— do sanrio plushies fit zero's style? not really. is that stopping uki from buying her a chococat plushie? not at all,, like even if zero and her aren't all that close, if uki finds something that reminds her of a certain agent, she's buying it and giving it to them

— ukiyo can get really teasing sometimes but she's a bit too scared to say anything about zero,,,

—  genuinely admires zero and will get really hyped if zero wants to teach her something !!!

— " whatcha doing zero? coding? oh cool! what does.. all of that mean? "

— " oh, zero! i made some yuzukosho and i was wondering if you wanted some! you just mix it with soy sauce and you can eat it with meat and stuff. "

chameleon [ @lianecamoufle ]

— they would have kind of a sister relationship!

— i think that even though they would be pretty close, uki would find her abilities just a bit unnerving. she tries to just play it off as light teasing but the idea of being able to transform into other people is kinda scary

— chameleon's kindness probably helps in making uki more trusting of her but she still keeps her guard up

— she probably bought chameleon a keroppi plushie because it was the closest to a chameleon :D

— she also may spook chameleon with her ghosts every once in a while for funsies,,

— " do you have long or short hair today, chameleon? oh, why don't you try doing something like mine! "

askal [ @thecreativewolf ]

— UKI AND ASKAL WOULD BE REALLY GOOD FRIENDS !! she really likes dogs so despite bantay being a robot, she'll try to pet it and stuff

— uki 100% buys askal pochacco keychains and plushies

— she doesn't have the nicest voice but she'll definitely sing karaoke with askal!! they might get a noise complaint or two though

— these two playing with dogs! super true 😒

— uki has probably seen askal go feral and is a bit too scared to touch his gadgets, doesn't mean her ghosts won't knock a few things off though,,

— she's not that into gadgets and such but she'll definitely ask about what he's working on and things like that!

— i think they would both feed strays they find :0

— also? askal has stickers?!? uki is begging for a few of them so she can decorate her room

— uki isn't all to familiar with filipino food but if askal has a recipe for sinigang, she won't mind cooking some! :D

— " heeey askal.. sorry about my ghosts, y'know, knocking over your stu— wait why do you have a wrench..? WAIT NO WE CAN TALK THIS OVER— "

— " i got you another plushie, askal! hehe it's cute right? if you squint, it looks like bantay! ..no? "

[dulcidyne]

Writing Tag Game

Tagged by @dispatchwithlove <3 <3

How many works do you have on AO3?

16

What’s your total AO3 word count?

233,438

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. Experiments in Diplomacy (ME: A Jaal/Ryder)

2. The Cursed Hand (Cullen/Trevelyan Edwardian Fairytale AU)

3.  Ghost in the Machines (Shakarian Control Ending)

4. Big, Dramatic Love Confession (Shakarian, smut)

5. Experiments on Attraction (Cullen/Trevelyan modern college AU)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to always respond to comments, although sometimes it takes me a really long time depending on how crazy my life is. Even if it takes me forever and a day, I am over the moon over every single one. I get that no one owes me their time or attention and it's really touching that not only has someone read something of mine but also taken more time to tell me what they think. It's incredibly touching.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

White Rabbits and Wormholes. Ghost in the Machines is very angsty but the ending is not.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Portrait of a Man. It ends with the nicest moment I think I've ever written and I think best of all, it reinforces the central theme of what it means to live in the shadow of your own legacy and how a normal person possibly handles that. Cullen's gift is...so perfect and fits in so well to the emotional core of the fic. I don't like to re-read my finished work but the ending of this gives me a bit of a gut punch of warm fuzzy feelings and catharsis every time.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

No, I need my sandbox to be more limited by canon in order for me to focus enough to write fic for it--which is why I don't typically write non-canon couples even if I really, really ship them (Femshep/Tali, Femshep/Miranda or Jack, MaleShep/Garrus, MRyder/Evfra...ugh, I REALLY ship this one, I was was so tempted to write fic for it)

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not to my knowledge?

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

As of now, yes. And...I don't know? I see smut as the sexytimes version of an action scene. I need character motivations, needs/wants and impediments that get resolved through physicality (with tension and timing) otherwise it's a momentum drag for me. Physical intimacy for physical intimacy's sake isn't something that really intrigues me from a writing perspective (reading on the other hand...lol, I have a much easier time enjoying other people's work than my own)

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No idea, I don't think so.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes? My best friend in high school and I co-wrote original fic together. I think it is still up on ff.net.

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

It's a four- way tie: FemShep/Garrus, Elizabeth Bennet/Darcy, Usagi Tsukino/Mamoru Chiba, and Fenris/Hawke. I don't write for the last three, but they are most of what I read.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

The Cursed Hand, sadly. I was re-working it for original publication and ended up quitting that midway through so now it is an absolute mess and I don't remember where I left off.

What are your writing strengths?

I think I do well with character-driven writing and most days I'm happy with my prose--not all days though.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I have an issues with cluttering my writing up with too much description and losing the central action. I think I am better about it than I used to be but my impulse trends towards more pretty prose = better. Now, I try to use it more sparingly and with moments I want to really land/linger. But most of the time I only catch it in edits, when I can see more of the forest through the trees and get a sense of how much it's dragging the pacing.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Hah, I'm just flashing back to Sailor Moon fanfics littered with just the worst, most cringe Japanese phrases. But no, I like it for the most part now. As long as it isn't "Kawaii desu!"

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Sailor Moon. Once and never again haha. I should go find that fic because it is a showcase in the whole 'problems overdescribing a scene'

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

White Rabbits and Wormholes has a special place in my heart because it's a fic written for my childhood. It's...uh, hard to write about childhood abuse for obvious reasons. And it IS sad but it's also not about the explicit abuse itself, but about imagination and escape in that context. For me, these are the hallmarks of my experiences--I never faced it head on. I was always escaping into my imagination.

I also absolutely love this opening: 'In a house tucked away in the countryside, a boy is locked in a closet. The thin, flat finger of daylight curls around the doorframe to pluck curiously at his ankles and he counts the hours by it, watches the bright digit of pale gold deepen into sunset ochre then grow faint and grey before finally withering to nothing in the dust and dark.'

Tagging: @otemporanerys and anyone else! I'd love to hear more from other fic authors!

[schwa-chsinn]

could you explain particle tone doubling to me? it sounds interesting, does it only happen in Korean?

Sure! Gotta say, though, I only read over this chapter yesterday, and my knowledge is only very restricted: Korean is a head-final language, which means that the verb is by default always at the end of a sentence and that the head of (nearly) every phrase is on the right. So, because Korean marks case by particles, those particles always follow the word or the phrase they mark. You can have a very simple entity marked by case, e.g. one word (dongsaeng-i brother-NOM) but the entity can theoretically also be bigger: (dongsaeng-e meori)-ga (brother-GEN head)-NOM  = “the brother’s head” (nominative) However, despite it technically being possible that speakers mark very complex, big phrases with one particle, that doesn’t happen too frequently, especially not in spoken language. So what happens naturally instead is something like this: Jina-ga dongsaeng-i meori-ga Jina-NOM brother-NOM head-NOM  = “Jina’s brother’s head” (lit. “Jina brother head”) Semantically, this is one phrase, the head of which is meori “head”. Syntactically though, it seems like every part of the phrase is marked individually. That’s the “doubling” part. The “tone” part is what happens in these phrases as a result of the particle doubling: In the sentence intonation, a speaker’s voice will go up when there is a particle. The particle is doubled, and the tone on the particle is doubled, too. That’s what you can see in the graph of the other post :D (What’s controversial about all of this is the reason why speakers do it, but I’m not gonna go into detail any more about that because there’s no clear explanation and that would make this post a lot longer!) About the second question: I have no idea whether it also happens in other languages. As far as I know, the language that is typologically closest to this kind of case marking system is Japanese, and my knowledge of Japanese is way too limited to say whether it could be happening there, too. 

Thank you for the question :> tl;dr In Korean, particles sometimes double in spoken language, and because the particles double, the tone on them does, too.

Reference and examples stolen from: Kiaer, J. (2014). Pragmatic syntax. Bloomsbury Publishing. (p. 185-200).

[drwcn]

Hi there! I’m doing this off anon...I’m a little shy 🙈 but wanted to pop in here really quickly. With respect to all the YZY talk in the fandom recently...I don’t disagree with anything you said! I’m 50/50 cn/jpn (born and raised in US, English is my only language).

When I first watched The Untamed, I watched a good part of it through not exactly “western eyes,” but also certainly not with as much context that Chinese/Chinese diaspora would have (if that makes any sense)....so I was frustrated with YZY (mainly for JC because he’s my fave 💜💜) and yea maybe I did think she may have possibly “took it too far” with WWX. (But she put him on the boat! And didn’t whip him to shreds with Zidian! And didn’t chop off his hand! That’s so important!!!) And I can see parts of myself in JYL so I have a soft spot for her. But “abusive” was never a word I would use to describe YZY. (I actually...really liked YZY in the donghua adaptation? She was such a boss even with all her ferocity to JC, JYL, WWX).

Because of how I was raised, I would say my knowledge of Chinese (and Japanese) culture is limited. I’m always learning and growing. So I admit that I’m not equipped to handle breaking down complex topics like this....like there’s so much I learned recently. When I find myself uncomfortable with a character/theme in a foreign drama, I always go digging like a mole for more context so I can understand better.

There’s no specific question here, just wanted to say thanks for everything you do and its really eye opening to see different takes. ❤️

And on a random note...if you want to see more crazy and nonetheless confusing “family” dynamics but in a modern setting, the c-drama Go Ahead (2020) is a good place to start 😆. Its so so relatable. Sorry this got so long, hope you have a great day! ☺️

Hi friend! 

Lovely to meet you! :) And you’re very welcome! Thank you for following and for reading my ramblings.❤💕😊 I’m not an expert; I don’t have a PhD in chinese studies or history or literature; I’m just a person with a laptop, but I do hope that I can try and lend some perspective where perspectives are needed. 

Honestly, your feelings of YZY are shared! I felt the same when I first watched the show. I was like: woah she’s kind of a bitch. I don’t like her necessarily, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call her “abusive”, that’s just such a...misrepresentation. 

I heard about Go Ahead! I am going to watch it one of these day :D Thank you and take care *^____^*

[totchipanda]

20 Questions, Writer's Edition!

Thanks for the tag @demigodbeautiies!!

How many works do you have on AO3?

6. I haven't gotten around to uploading the works that live(d) on ff.net.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

57, 637

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Let's see.. Bleach, Final Fantasy VII, Six of Crows and An Ember in the Ashes on AO3, but I also have unfinished/unpublished fic for RPF, Gundam Wing, Fushigi Yuugi, Dragonriders of Pern, Robotech, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Babylon 5, Star Wars, the Valdemar series,

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Four Seasons (Six of Crows)

Somewhere Between Limit Breaks and Mako Eyes (FFVII)

Halfway to Anywhere (An Ember in the Ashes)

Raison d'etre (Bleach)

A Lantern in the Dark (An Ember in the Ashes)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I'm trying to! It's been so lovely to receive them, and I know how much I love receiving a reply, so I'm trying for all my lovely commenters <3

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Technically it would be one of the Bleach fics, but none of those are finished yet.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I have not!

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I have not, thankfully!

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes I do. My published stuff is M/F but I have written m/m as well.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

To the best of my knowledge, no.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have not.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I think... technically no? I had co-written some original stuff that had been born of fandom but that didn't go far.

What’s your all time favourite ship?

I always come back to Zutara.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I'm sorry Bleach fans, I've been poking at Raison d'etre for so long, but it's probably not gonna get done...

What are your writing strengths?

FEEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS. I'm told my smut is pretty good too ;)

What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing in a linear order, and finishing what I've started.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

It can be done well, but rarely is. I don't mind as much when the words are written in the fic's language and then otherwise marked as being in another language when it serves a purpose. Back in ye old'n dayes, people would write whole conversations in romaji Japanese and never provided translations and it was HARD y'all.

And for the love of pete, don't write accents. Especially don't write really thick accents.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Teddy Ruxpin lol. I was like 9 years old.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

Gosh, I don't know! I'm so enjoying The Four Seasons and my Ember in the Ashes fics right now, it's been a very very very long time since I wrote fic, but these were my first forays back into it and it's been so fun!

Tagging @bastetsbard, @marycontraire and @anonniemousefics

[hokuromii]

FAKE MOTION Episode 8 is subbed!

It’s really the final episode of the series! T^T

I still can’t believe it! :( 

I’m happy to say that I’ve accomplished my first ever Japanese drama series subbing project! I truly had a lot of fun working on Fake Motion: King of Ping Pong.

To be honest, I had doubts about working on this project because I lacked the confidence (in my knowledge about the Japanese language and in subbing).

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that I wanted to “try” making subs for this drama. Then I did so, and started off by working on the first episode. I have to admit that it wasn’t a simple task. One reason is because my Japanese is still way too limited. I’ve made subs for short video clips, but working on a full 20-minute episode--not to mention an entire series—is a first for me. Another reason is that I’m still new to subbing. The timing, the effects, and other stuff… I knew that I still had to learn more about them. But seeing the positive response from everyone after I uploaded the first subbed episode, I felt reaallyyy happy, and that’s when I decided to keep working on this series.

I’d like to express my huge thanks to one of the admins of DISH//er Philippines, Paula (Masaki’s partner *wink wink*), for sharing the first subbed episode on Twitter! That’s how more fans (of EBiDAN, J-drama, etc.) got to know about my little subbing project. Thank youuu. Because of that, it gave me the idea of posting updates on Twitter alongside Tumblr. :)

And of course! To my fellow PH //ers! Thank you, thank youuu for the heartwarming support. I was able to keep working on this project all because of you guys! This might sound a bit cheesy, but you guys are like new family to me <3 We may not know each other in person, but that’s what I honestly think. All the sharing, the kindness, and the crazy fun fill my heart with happiness. Looking forward to more kabaliwan! Let’s keep supporting DISH//! :D

And yeah, part of the reason (just kidding, it’s actually the main reason) why I wanted to work on this drama is because of DISH//. All DISH// members are in the drama! I’m a huge fan of them, so there’s no way I’d miss watching it! Takumi, Masaki, To-i, and Daichi, is in one drama series! Don’t you all agree, dearest Slashers? :D

Honestly, I wanted to wait until someone would willingly translate and sub the series for us fans. Even if I could watch it, I wouldn’t understand their conversations that well, so if possible, I wanted to watch it with subs. But I guess I kinda got impatient, so I ended up working on it myself. A huge challenge :D

One of my fellow PH //ers was hinting me that I work on Fake Motion, so I gave it a shot. And I’m glad I did ‘cause it was worth it! While working on the subs, I was able to understand their conversations, and eventually the story. I learned a lot of new things along the way (Japanese words, and subbing knowledge), and I enjoyed the drama, too :) Most especially, I get to share the fun in this series to everyone!

I’d like to express my warmest thanks to everyone who supported me and this project! It’s amazing! I feel so delighted that there are people from different parts of the world who are happy with the subs! For the warm messages, comments, and support you guys have given me, thank you all so much! T_T <3

I guess you can tell by now that I’m a person who totally lacks self-confidence. But thanks to this project and to everyone’s support, I was given a good boost of confidence. It’s like I’ve taken a new step forward. Truth be told, I never thought that I could accomplish something like this, not even in the slightest! Alongside the fun in working on the subs for Fake Motion, I was able to discover more about myself (this includes the fact that I really love DISH//, and most of all, their main vocalist :D). 

It’s uncertain if I’m going to work on subbing projects like this again. But all I can say is that this one was all worth the time, the experience, and the fun! <3

I think this post is getting way too long (I should’ve realized sooner). Teehee.

If you have any corrections, suggestions, or questions regarding the subs/translations, please send me a message :)

I hope you enjoyed and appreciated EBiDAN’s first ever drama project, Fake Motion: King of Ping Pong!

Giving out hints or spoilers isn’t really my thing, so do watch it!

P.S.  I’ve uploaded this final episode a bit sooner than usual because I might get busy in the near future. I decided that I might as well upload it now while I still have more time. :D

Thanks for reading this extremely long post! Cheers!

STREAM/DOWNLOAD LINK

If you enjoy my translations, please support me on Patreon or Ko-fi! 💖

Follow me on Twitter @HokuroTk for subbing updates! 😊

For timely updates about DISH// brought by passionate PH Slashers, like and follow @dishslashersph on Facebook!

[demonfox38]

Completed - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Oh, my language is going to be vulgar on this one.

So, I'm a crusty millennial who likes old garbage. Most of the media I like is old enough to drink and be a member of the US congress, but probably couldn't be due to the country that produced it. Now, I'd like to think that I've got good reasons to like older media, particularly when it comes to video games. It's a bit hard for my NES to bug me for microtransactions/DLC and emanate the screams of children and man-children alike. But, as much as I like my retro junk, there's one thing I'm very, very happy about regarding modern video games. The variety of game types now-a-days is a blessing. It's rare that someone is stellar at all game types, and I sure have my weaknesses.

It took me a long time to realize that I could be good at video games, and I wholly blame the glut of 1980s platforming games on that.

Look, platforming is not a forgiving genre. Particularly, back in the day where you had characters dying in 1-3 hits before factoring in death pits. It existed then for the reason that fourteen million instakill indie horror games exist now. Instantly killing the player is a lot easier to code than, say, having to track a health bar or their new position as an enemy swats them into a different room. Sometimes, a coder's gotta do what they can to keep themselves sane.

But, from a player's perspective, this style sucks!

Getting good at a platforming game requires practicing the same levels over and over again, developing a sense of your character's inertia and limitations. Without a save state or a warp to narrow in on a particularly troublesome location, it's hard to get learning to stick. You could lose a lot of games and time trying to put it all together. And some poor little character is always suffering because of your ineptitude! Such failure feels like a fork in an electrical socket. Succeeding in these circumstances requires a great deal of emotional resilience and a contrary attitude. And you know what? That's just not something I had as a kid. In fact, one could say I had my aggression and competitive drive scolded out of me. I'm just now getting that back.

So, yeah. I had a little trouble with "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link."

"Zelda II" is part of a trifecta of NES games that get routinely shit on by retro reviewers. Like its peers "Super Mario Bros. 2" and "Castlevania II", this game is generally considered an inferior game due to an extreme change of gameplay and appearance from its predecessors. And you know what? That attitude sucks. I'd rather have a variety of different games with a cast I like than have them pigeon-holed into one genre. In "Zelda II"'s case, however? The game mechanic shift was so extreme that I can easily see the ire it raises. Hell, I felt it. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's the worst Zelda game ever, but man, does it have structural defects.

In "Zelda II", Link's goal is to save an ensorcelled Zelda from eternal slumber by picking up a Triforce chunk that was pitched into a fuck-off palace way at the edge of Hyrule. (No, not the Zelda from the first game. Another Zelda. Same Link, though.) To do that, he's got to slap six gemstones into various temples across the countryside. Naturally, that includes picking up his trusty sword, leaping into battle, and then maybe straight into a death pit.

That's right. This Zelda is actually a Mario.

Further complicating the matter is a sharp switch in battle style and item accruement. While the previous Zelda game was about room management and ranged combat (or at least, as much as that was allowed), this game is all about jamming Link's dinky sword into an enemy's face and running off as fast as he can. Now, Link can learn a few tricks to help with the slash and dash, like directional stab mechanics and spells. But, as far as getting new weapons to help you? Sorry, bud. No bombs or boomerangs here. Well, except for the assholes throwing boomerangs at you, anyway. You just can't steal them.

The game encourages polishing the player's skill with Link through a level system. After acquiring XP through good ol' fashioned monster murdering, Link can cash his points out, improving his life, magic, or attack power. As the player levels him up, stats become more costly to improve. If Link gets a total game over before you use your XP, it is wiped out. Alright, fine. Fair, I guess. But, I wouldn't recommend looking at Japanese footage of this game if you don't want to give yourself a migraine. It turns out that as a part of some rebalancing, the level-up system was stacked to try and keep players from dumping all of their points into a single stat early into the game. Particularly, attack. Considering how painful and annoying enemy logic gets in this game, it's such a drag to learn that Japanese players literally could cut their way right out of that struggle. Thanks for dicking with the game design again, American publishers.

I guess we got better looking sprites and sound effects out of the deal? Hooray for wiggly Barba.

Even with leveling mechanics and a handful of heart and magic containers, this Link feels much frailer than the original Zelda's Link. Like, it's hard to believe he's supposed to be the same guy. Even at max health and defense, you could get Link wiped out with 8-32 hits (as opposed to 16-64 hits from the first game.) Exacerbating that is a life system that can yoink those health bars at any pit's whim and Link's range/health restoration being tied to a limited pool of magic. It feels like you're playing with a ceramic replica of the original character. You can make it work in a fight, sure, but you'd rather have a sword than a shard of a broken teapot.

If you don't have a bushido-level acceptance of death, you're not going to make it very far in this game. I'm not being hyperbolic. You have to accept that you are going to kill Link. You're going to watch that little fairy boy fade to black as the world flashes around him, and you're going to see that a lot. You're going to toss his bitch ass into the river to get a game over and restock your lives because fuck if you're going to wipe out inside a dungeon and have to start your bitch ass back at Zelda's temple again. That little counter on the main menu isn't how many times you have wiped out. It's how many times you've clawed your way out of the abyss with a middle finger raised.

Oh. Minor epilepsy warning on boss and Link deaths, by the way.

Having gone full bleak there for a moment, there are a few pieces of knowledge that can help slow down the cycle of life and death:

There are towns with nice ladies in red dresses and orange robes that will heal your ass for free. You should talk with them a lot.

There are classes of enemies that will drop items after they have been killed six times. Most of the time, this is a magic bottle that restores MP. Sometimes, it's a bag of experience. No monster will drop anything to heal your HP.

Also, some enemies are literal rat bastards that steal your XP. Some also give you no XP on killing them. Yeah. I know. Annoying.

The Life spell is in Saria. The downward stab is in Mido. (I realize these are very strange sentences if you're more familiar with "Ocarina of Time.") Getting these can make a night and day difference in surviving the game. So, keep that in mind.

You do get a spell that will turn you into a fairy. You can use it to game pits and sneak past lock doors. Just don't abuse it too much. It's expensive.

The dungeons have this little statue in front of them that you can whack with your sword. In most locations, it'll drop either a magic bottle or an Iron Knuckle. Game entering and exiting a dungeon as much as possible to restore yourself to full vitality.

You can get into random fights on the overworld (represented either by a little black blob or a more threatening human-sized blob.) Staying on gold roads will mean these encounters produce no enemies.

Also, you can use those random battles to override forced platforming sections. Not that I would recommend cheating in such a fashion. 😉

The game will give you a level up after you plug a gemstone into a dungeon. If you're close to leveling up anyway, turn around and grind up to the top, cash in what you've got, and then go pitch that gem.

Link has a crouch, not a duck. You think pressing down on the D-pad will evade projectiles aimed at your face, but it does not. Crouching is only good for blocking floor-level garbage. It's best not to think of the down button as much as possible, really. Only use it to pick up crap off the ground and cheese the final boss. Otherwise, jump.

I know that I said earlier that "Zelda II" is mechanically like a Mario game, but you know what other perspective might help? Try and play Link as a Metroidvania Castlevania character. There's an attack style in games like "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" and "Aria of Sorrow" where you walk, jump, and attack in such a way that you never stop moving forward. That's what you've got to do. Walk, jump at an enemy, bonk on forehead. (Depending on how fast you press the attack button, you may need to delay swinging your sword just a teeny bit. At least, I had a bad habit of swinging too early.) With any luck, when you hit the ground, you will be able to keep on moving. You do not want to get stuck playing "poke-the-hole" with your enemies, particularly with how turtle-y some of them can get.

So, the game's a brutal bitch, but I don't want to spend the entire time shitting on it. Let's talk about improvements.

Honestly, I like the sprite style of the side-scrolling sections better than the previous game. Everyone/thing has more room to be rendered, so they look clearer. I can't say the monster or dungeon design here is my favorite, but hey. Easy to see. Yippie. Could have used a map though. Maybe some more tile textures in the dungeons?

NO. STOP. BE NICE.

There are more people around that want to help Link out. Like, whole towns filled with helpful healing ladies and dudes that will teach you magic and the occasional sword strike. Most of their conversation makes sense (although, there's a memetastic fault in translation regarding a character being named Error instead of what I'm assuming should have been Errol.) People good. Want to help people. People help me.

Except for towns where some of the people are monsters, and one of the times they overlapped a healing lady to get text box priority, and then they killed me. Boo.

I'M SORRY. I HAD A HARD TIME.

The music variety is pleasant. Only a few tracks have escaped the game to go into use elsewhere, but there's only one that I'm really iffy on. The NA release did a fine job transposing what they could using a different sound chip, and there are striking uses of the sample channel being used in ominous situations.

But…like…I struggle to see where fighting through this game is worth it. And maybe it comes down to the final boss. Like, the penultimate one? Absolutely cool. A bitch to fight, but I can't knock how massive and intricate its sprite is. But, the final boss? I suppose it comes down to personal tastes, but I find mirror matches/rivals to be exceedingly dull. Like, good for you. You know how I fight. I do too. Come back to me when you know the weaknesses of my style and use a fresh set of skills to throw at me.

Like, it's not the worst ending in the Zelda series. (My vote for that would go to "Link's Awakening.") You do get Zelda saved. But, given that the final boss is some kind of dark clone of yourself…it begs a lot of questions. Was there any concrete plan for the forces of darkness in Hyrule, or were various monster tribes just scuffling around, being dicks without any overarching plan? Were some monsters trying to keep you out of the Great Palace for a good reason? Would there have been any threat of Ganon reviving at all if Link just…sat on his ass behind a castle for the next century or managed his anxiety in a different way? Why does the manual bother to separate Zeldas and the game does not? Oh, wait. The Japanese intro correctly distinguishes this and the American one does not. Why am I not surprised? What's the difference if you don't see the Zelda you saved from the first game, anyway?

This game is a lot of work. I had to psych myself up to play it every time, and by the end, I was rattled enough by my nerves that I literally camped in my bathroom for a few minutes just to make sure I didn't get sick on the couch. Very stressful. And I'm not sure that stress was worth it, frankly. Life's hard enough as it is right now. I literally have a stress rash on my neck from the shit I'm going through in real life. No, you did not need to know about that. But maybe you need to know that I've been having a hard time lately, and this game did nothing to alleviate me from the stresses of reality. And what's the point in checking out from reality if a fantasy world is just going to make me miserable, too?

There are better games to play in this style. Hell, there are better games on the NES in this style. You know what you should go play? "Faxanadu." It's uglier than "Zelda II", sure. An absolute idiot when it comes to basic mathematics. But it's very chill about platforming and death. And maybe I just want to chill the fuck out for a while.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #318

“what can you do, where can ya go, when your mama is a burnout, and your daddy is a pyro?”

Do you have your ears pierced more than once? Yeah. Do you use an electric toothbrush? Yes. When was the last time you changed in front of someone? Oh, I have no idea. That's something I avoid like the plague because I loathe my body. When was the last time you got high? Never. Do you get along with your parents? Yeah. How many bracelets do you have on your wrists right now? None. Have you ever used a Ouija board? No, I don't fuck with that stuff. Have you ever met anyone who claimed to be a witch? Yes. Do you go along with prank-callers, or just hang up? I don't answer numbers I don't recognize to begin with. Would you ever tattoo a lover’s name onto your body? Nooooo. Do you own any version of Guitar Hero? I have a lot of 'em. Do you use mouthwash every single day? No. Do you know anyone with asthma? Yeah, my mom. Have you ever walked through a forest at night on your own? Uh, no sir. When was the last time you were in a graveyard? It's been many, many years. Do you know what an ‘AMV’ is? Yep, used to make 'em. How many items are in your recycle bin? (On your computer!) Oh yikes, probably loads. I haven't emptied it in... I don't know how long. Would you rather be a bird or a fish? A bird. What’s one award show you have to watch every year? None. Who do you like more: the Batman or the Joker? Joker. Heath Ledger's is my favorite. Have you ever had a pet rock? No. How much do you weigh? Yeah, no. If you are outside, what are you most likely doing? Taking nature photographs. Have you ever lost your luggage at an airport? No. Have you ever been on a rollercoaster that actually scared you? I don’t do roller coasters to begin with. Have you ever gone in a sauna? Ugh, hell no. Has a stray dog ever tried to bite you? No. Have you ever had an eating disorder? No. Are you attracted to people outside of your race? Yes. Are you in love with anyone at the moment? No. Have you ever dated someone more than once? No. Best cough drop? Those creamy strawberry ones. If you have a pet, does it make a lot of noise? One's a snake, so she's silent as could be. My cat is generally quiet, but he has his times where he just walks around meowing, normally for attention. Are you a fan of eyeshadow? If I actually wear makeup, yeah, I like black eyeshadow. Can you tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi? Absolutely. I don't like Pepsi. Would you feel funny if you kissed somebody of the same sex? Done it before, didn't feel weird. Besides furniture, what’s the biggest thing in your bedroom? A Silent Hill poster. Which of your friends makes you laugh the hardest? Girt. Have you ever been in a Catholic confessional? Yeah, as a kid. What color was the hair of the last person you kissed? Brown. What was the title of the last song you listened to? So today I've really been digging dark synthwave/cyberpunk-ish music, and right now I have a playlist on that's currently playing "DNA War" by Absolute Valentine and Billy Mays. How far away is the closest Walmart? Not even five minutes. Can you do a backflip? No. Who is the lead singer of your favorite band? Well, Ozzy is the lead singer of Ozzy Osbourne, haha. When was the last time you went fishing? Not since Sara visited and we went catfishing with my dad one night. What brand of deodorant do you use? Secret. Have you ever liked someone and never told them? Yes. Do you regret it? Nah. Who was the last person to buy you a drink? My mom, lmaoooo. Who was the last person to buy you dinner? Also my mom, haha. How old is the oldest person you’ve dated? Juan's maybe like... 28 or something by now, idk. Have you ever run a stoplight? No. Have you ever dated someone & then dated their sibling? YIKES, no. That sounds miles beyond awkward. Are both your parents still living? Yeah, thankfully. What’s something that makes you feel more creative? Music, for sure. Do you collect Mason jars to use for crafts? No, but I do find those super cute. What gives you a quality of life? Not much nowadays, idk. What would give you a high quality of life? A sense of purpose, direction, and worth. Do you have any rugs on top of carpet in your home? We have a big one in our living room, yes. I don't get it. Do you have a mattress cover on your bed? Yeah. Do you hate taking naps during the day? No; naps are normal for me. Who has the best personality on YouTube? Maybe I'm biased, but I genuinely do think Mark for a multitude of reasons. He's just extremely likable imo and sincerely a fucking spectacular human being. Do you have any vinyl records? No, but I would love to collect classic rock and metal ones. Which serial killer(s) do you find most fascinating? I'm quite honestly not well-informed in serial killer stories. I think they're interesting, but not enough for me to learn about them. Have you ever visited any celebrity gravesites? No. How do you feel about archaeology? It's fuckin dope. Any animals whose behaviors you find particularly interesting? ALL OF THEM AHHHH!!!!! But I particularly love learning about social animals, like meerkats (mongoose in general, really), African wild dogs, wolves, etc. What are your thoughts on gun control? I don't support the idea of banning firearms altogether, but I am very much in favor of some reform. There needs to be a much, much more strict and complex system in order for you to legally own a gun, and I also support periodic "check ups" to ensure you still fit whatever criteria is laid out. "Bad people will still find guns;" yes, some most certaintly will, but you can't convince me that the numbers wouldn't decrease. It would take a serious villain to put so much effort into pursuing obtaining a firearm. Do you like animals better than most humans? Sure do. Have you ever had to block people online for harassing you? I've blocked people to prevent that. If you collect anything, what is your favorite piece of that collection? I cherish the plush meerkat Jason gave me most, probably; out of my Silent Hill stuff, the limited edition Revelation flyer I have in Japanese. Are you friends with anybody you didn’t like at first? Hi, meet my best friend lmao. Are there any musicians you didn’t like at first, but grew on you? Probably. Do you have any favorite books you’d like to have signed by the author? Not really. Well wait, Ozzy signing my copy of his autobiography would be pretty damn cool. Do you like any board games or card games? I'm not really a board game fan, but Magic: The Gathering is fun as far as card games go. What historical figure(s) are you most interested in? I'm not incredibly interested in any, but I do think Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a bad bitch. She was one of the extremely few female pharaohs, and if my memory serves me right, one of the most successful. Do you like Breaking Benjamin? I sure do. How many people of the opposite sex have you told you loved them? One. Have you ever had to change your phone number? Yes, because I was getting strange texts from numbers I didn't know. Have you ever played bingo at an actual bingo hall? No. What’s your favourite comic book/graphic novel? I don’t read any. What is something you take pride in? How far I've come as far as my mental illnesses go, particularly depression and PTSD. What’s the biggest magnet on your fridge? I'm not getting up to go look. Have you ever eaten a Big Mac? No; I hate lettuce on burgers, so. What brand is your vaccuum cleaner? Dunno. Do you believe in sex before marriage? Sure, but I don't believe it's a must for everyone. Plenty of people don't even want to get married. Be intimate once you're comfortable with the person, and be safe and smart about it. Are you for or against abortion? I'm pro-choice. Do you feel like you need to lose weight? It's fact that I need to. My body just doesn't want to, afuckingpparently. All I seem to be capable of is either maintain or gain nowadays. Is summer your favorite season? It's my least favorite, actually. Do you wear glasses? I'm basically blind without 'em. Can you say the alphabet in more than one language? Yeah, in German. What do you want out of life? To feel like I made a difference, even if it's a small one. Do you ever get carsick? No. Do you groom your eyebrows? Not really anymore, no. Have you ever liked someone who treated you badly? No. When was the last time you went in the car past midnight? Oh boy, probably not since I had my cyst in I think '16. I was in so much agony and we had no painkillers, so I had to wake up Mom to go to Walmart to grab some. They barely even helped at all. God, I couldn't imagine dealing with that again. Were your last two kisses with the same person? Yes. Do you have alcohol in your house? I don't think we do right now, no. Do you have any personal fashion rules that revolve around your own preferences/body type (e.g., you never/always wear a certain color, sleeve type, or length of dress)? Yeah; I don't wear anything that shows my legs unless I shaved, but I will never wear a dress that isn't at least past my knees. Do you remember any celebrity whose style you admired when you were a teen? What do you think of that style now? Avril Lavigne was/is an ICON. I still think she looks badass. So, is it gif with a hard G or soft G? I used to say the opposite, but I say "gif" now. Apparently that's how the creator of the term says it anyway. When you are invited to things like wedding showers or baby showers do you tend to go or skip? What about graduation parties? If Mom is able to take me, I'll try to go to the first two if they're my closer friends. Do you like spicy chips? Oh FUCK yes. What’s the last movie you watched at a friend’s house? Elf with Sara's fam. Can you remember your parents’ birthdays? Mom's, yes. Dad's, only the month. Do you read your friends' surveys? Yep, I love learning about them. Do you know anyone with a glass eye? Not to my knowledge, no. Do you ever use the n-word? Absolutely not. What piercing do you like most on the opposite sex? I tend to like lip piercings. Do you prefer beef, chicken or steak? Chicken. Ever spent the night in a tent? Yeah, multiple times as a kid, "camping" in the yard with Dad, haha. What do you call your grandparents? I called both sets just "Grammy" and "Grampa." Have you ever cried while reading a book? Oh, certainly. How many college degrees do you want? I got none, and I'm not going back to college. Do you know how to play pool? What about foosball? Yes. Have you ever attended a professional sporting event? Yeah, hockey with my dad a few times. Do you own any jerseys? No. Were you born with naturally straight teeth? No; that's why I had braces. If you were the opposite gender, what name would you like to be called? Maybe like... Victor. Idk. Do you prefer original or sour Skittles? I love both, but sour. Do you like bacon bits on your salad? Yeah. What is your favorite kind of soup? I'm not a soup person. Did you learn to type through a computer program for kids? Yeah. What do you take for pain? Advil/Ibuprofen. What is your favorite place that you’ve lived? My pre-teen and teenage years house: in the woods on a dead-end road and down a gravel path that everyone always missed when learning where our house was. The actual road itself had very, very little traffic, and there was a large expanse of cotton fields. I loved it and miss the house itself, but it's got a lot of bad memories rotting in it. Who are your favorite kids that you’ve babysat? My niece and nephew. <3 Who is your favorite cousin? I don't have a favorite. We barely interact at all. Does one side of your family live in another state? Literally none of my extended family (or half-siblings) live in NC. What states did your parents grow up in? New York and Ohio. Have you ever had an allergic reaction to an insect? No. Is there a good hospital where you live? God no. It is notoriously awful. When was the last time you were asked out? Did you accept or decline? Mid-2017. I aceepted. Does your job allow piercings or tattoos? N/A Do you want to get married? If so, what color will your dress be? Yeah. Probably white/ivory or black. Ever had a caricature done of yourself? How much was it, and were you satisfied with it? No. Do you like peanut butter and fluff sandwiches? No, I don't like the texture. If you got married and then got divorced, would you want to re-marry? Probably not. What’s your favorite amusement park? I haven't been to nearly enough to know. Do you play video games? If so, what kind? Yeah. My favorite are horror games, but I also love me some story-driven survival games like The Last of Us, and then there's "kids" games like Spyro, etc. I like a looot of different kinds. Would you buy used clothes? I don't think so. I know it's easy to wash clothes and stuff, I'd just still feel kinda... grossed out by it.

[wardoftheedgeloaves]

An Overview of Comparative-Historical Chinese Dialectology (II.i): Old Chinese

Let’s imagine a world in which the modern Romance languages are all extant and written in the Latin alphabet; however, Latin is not attested. If you were collecting cognates of the word for “middle” or “medium”, you’d get [mɐi.u] from Portuguese, [mitʃ] from Catalan, [med.dzo] from Italian and so on and so forth. You don’t have any Latin to compare with, but it’s not that difficult to determine that Proto-Romance had a form *mɛdjʊ or something like that.

Now imagine that you dig up a 2700-year-old tablet in southern Italy, and it has the word mefiú on it. It’s clear that it’s pretty close to your Proto-Romance, but it’s not quite the same. Some tokens of /p/ in the tablet-language correspond to *p in Proto-Romance, and some of them correspond to Proto-Romance *kw. On the other hand, it seems to have some distinctions Proto-Romance doesn’t, such as a diphthong ou which seems to fall together with Proto-Romance *u. You can read it, and it’s clear it’s closely related, but it isn’t Proto-Romance.

Imagine a different world. Here, the Romance languages are written with logograms and have been for three millennia. Thus the character 中 is read [mɐi.u] in Portugal, [mitʃ] in Catalonia, [misu] in Sardinia and [med.dzo] in Italy. You can reconstruct a Middle Romance reading *mɛdjʊ for this character.

One day a 2700-year-old tablet is found in southern Italy. The characters have strange, archaic forms and the syntax is really unusual, but it can be read. It includes an early form of the character 中. Is it Latin? Or Oscan?

Keep this analogy in mind as we dive into Old Chinese.

Old Chinese is attested from about 1250 BC in the form of inscriptions on oracle-bone tablets, followed shortly thereafter by longer texts during the Zhou era. Archaeological excavations are turning up lots of texts on wood and bamboo strips from the early and mid-first millennium BC, so we have much more raw material from the Old Chinese period to work with than we did even two or three decades ago.

Here the trouble begins. Every other script from antiquity, with the possible exception of Mayan (whose basic structure I still find entirely inscrutable), includes considerable phonological information: the cuneiform syllabary, Linear B, even Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many of these scripts can be underspecifying to the point of ambiguity for modern scholars, like Linear B or hieroglyphs, but the basic organizing principle is phonemic. If you see wa-na-ka on a Linear B tablet, you have automatically narrowed the reading of the word down to a handful of possible phonemic interpretations.

With Old Chinese, all this goes out the window. Oh, it’s not that there’s no phonological information available to us about the period; there’s plenty if you know where to look. But Old Chinese, and the script in particular, only reveal their phonological secrets through smoke and mirrors. It’s a difference of kind, not of degree, compared with such relative walks-in-the-park as a cuneiform syllabic with two possible readings or an unvocalized scrap of Semitic.

Thus, reconstructing Old Chinese requires drawing on a vast amount of rather disparate evidence, which includes (but is not necessarily limited to):

 the phonetic clues in the actual script, particularly the rebus principle used to create phono-semantic compound characters; 

rhymes in ancient poetry;

the recoverable historical phonology of the modern varieties of Chinese; 

early borrowings into neighboring languages such as Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Hmongic and, to a lesser extent, borrowings into Sinitic from foreign languages such as Tocharian;

comments on “rustic” or “incorrect” forms of speech in early sources;

unusual character usage (before the Han dynasty or so, many words are found written with more than one character, and some characters are used to write multiple words; usually these conflations involved some degree of phonetic similarity)

last and (for the most part) least, evidence from non-Sinitic relatives such as Tibetan and Burmese. This is the most fraught and least reliable source of evidence, because Sinitic doesn’t seem to have any particularly close relatives within Sino-Tibetan and the state of Proto-Sino-Tibetan is still quite hazy.

Now, Baxtar and Sagart conclude that attested Old Chinese is so vanishingly close to the last common ancestor of all attested varieties of Sinitic that “Old Chinese” and “Proto-Sinitic” can be conflated except in the most pedantic and exacting of contexts. It’s tempting, therefore, to assume that we can just throw Min, Mandarin, Cantonese and maybe a few borrowings into Korean into the comparative method and collect Old Chinese as it comes out through the grinder. But this is wrong. Old Chinese was almost identical to, indeed for almost all purposes was, the last common ancestor of attested modern Chinese varieties, but it doesn’t look much like modern varieties of Chinese and the comparative method alone will give you a highly incomplete picture. It should therefore serve as a cautionary tale for overly optimistic comparativists; the comparative method is usually lossy even with a wide range of languages to work with, but in the absence of contemporaneous attestation we simply can’t know what we don’t know.

So what did Old Chinese look like?

First and foremost, no tones. Tones do not begin to develop in Chinese until sometime in the Han period. As far as I know every single modern variety of Chinese is tonal (barring fringe cases like Wutun that have lost tone under the influence of unusual contact situations), and I believe the tonal system of every modern variety can be derived through various twists and turns from the “four-tone” (really three-tone; we’ll get to it later) system of Middle Chinese.

How does this work? Essentially, what’s going on is that the comparative method can reconstruct distinctions and developments that occurred at different times. Tone in Chinese is somewhere around two thousand years old and develops at the very end of the Old Chinese period (you could make a case for its development being the Old Chinese-Middle Chinese boundary). Every single modern variety has it, because it spread across and encompassed the entirety of what must have been the dialect patchwork of Han-dynasty China. But that dialect patchwork was not uniform, and traces of its nature from before the rise of tonal distinctions are still with us. For example, there must have been an allowed Old Chinese coda consonant *-r which merges, in Middle Chinese and in almost all conservative dialect groups such as Min, with *-n. However, a small corner of Shandong has -j for Old Chinese *-r despite the fact that dialects that preserver the *-n/*-r distinction are otherwise completely unexceptional varieties of Mandarin--coda stop loss, tonal and sibilant developments, the whole nine yards. Zhou- and Han-era dialects of Shandong, see footnote at end of post.

Does this mean that we have to revise the phylogeny of Chinese to look like this?

No!

It simply means that “Old Chinese” was not uniform, resembling in important ways the dialect continuum of Iron Age Italy more than the standard Latin of Cicero, and while the Old Chinese patchwork developed as a single unit in important ways (such as tonogenesis) during the transition from Old to Middle Chinese and into modern varieties, there are still glitches in the matrix.

To beat a nearly-dead analogy, we can imagine a variety spoken in a village in Umbria which is mutually intelligible with standard Italian and has undergone identical developments for two thousand years, but which happens to reflect Proto-Italic *f *þ medially as /v/. It would be incorrect to say that this variety is modern Oscan and more separate from its neighbors, to whose speakers it is merely an odd accent, than its neighbors are from Portuguese or French. At the same time, its conservation of a distinction that not even Ciceronian Latin maintains introduces complications into our sense of what “proto-Romance” or “the Romance languages” or “Italian” actually mean. And since, grammatically, this variety has developed along with the Vulgar Latin and Italian dialects that surround it, we would be unable to recover the Latin passive or the case system from it. The “last common ancestor” that maintained all the distinctions of the Romance-languages-plus-Italian-with-Oscan-characteristics was Proto-Italic, but vast swaths of Proto-Italic have still been lost to time, and the comparative method will deliver you a language that was never spoken by anybody (Vulgar Latin, except with a four-way medial distinction *-f-/*-þ-/*-b-/*-d- rather than a two-way *-b-/*-d- distinction).

As a final note on this topic, nobody appears to have noticed that the *-r/*-n distinction was carried on in modern Chinese until Sergei Starostin in 1981, and even he did not identify which dialects had the distinction, only that some did*. This is another reason it’s important to do fieldwork and descriptions of Chinese varieties spoken in rural areas; cities are easier to get to, but they don’t usually have the really unusual varieties that you need access to find distinctions from this. It is possible, for example, that there’s still a corner of Sichuan that speaks Ba-Shu Chinese, an old dialect group that is thought to have been completely replaced by Mandarin during the Ming period and extinct except as a substrate. But we don’t know, because an exhaustive dialect survey of Sichuan has not (to my knowledge) been done.

(This post is long enough to publish at this point and so I’m going to cut it off here and turn Old Chinese into a subseries of posts.)

*It’s not clear on a second reading whether or not Shandong dialects still reflect *-r as -j, because the sources cited are contemporaneous complaints about Shandong speakers. Apparently though the *-ar rhyme is reflected as -i in some Min varieties and “Chǔ-Qú”, which seems to be a group of Wu dialects spoken on the Zhejiang-Fujian border, so the above analogy holds except that it’s Chǔ-Qú Wu that plays the part of Oscan-flavored Italian. I do recall reading somewhere though that there are definitely varieties of “Mandarin” that maintain distinctions not even found in Min, so...

[ichigopanhpff]

BNHA Fic: Blink! Ch. 1

My first BNHA fic! It’s a slow start, but we’ll get there. I’m gonna let the story take me to the ships organically. My writing style doesn’t like forcing anything. Also working on the OC profile sketch so you guys can get a better visual :D

I’ve also noticed the reader inserts are definitely more popular within the fandom. But me being me, I like to go against the grain and made an OC instead. Or you can just imagine yourself as my OC ^_^;

The world is your hero loving oyster.

This chapter will cover a little bit of the “Two Heroes” movie and takes place post All-Might’s retirement and the start of dorm life. It will also cover everything that will be in S4. So if you don’t read the manga, it’ll be major spoilers for you :X You’ve been warned, frens.

Enjoy!

---

Masterlist

With the U.A. dorms being implemented for the safety of students, Aizawa took a deep sigh, pinched his nose bridge and squeezed his eyes shut in hopes of lubricating his eyeballs and relieve some stress. With All-Might handling Midoriya’s enrollment at the moment, he had one extra business to attend to in regards to class 1-A.

“Mr. Aizawa, we’ve arrived,” the driver announced.

Thanking him upon exiting the car, the sulking sleep-deprived man looked up at the high scale apartment complex with a light breeze blowing past.

This was his fail-safe in case he can’t be there.

While there were others he’s considered for the role, Aizawa knew it had to be her; the way her mind worked set her apart from the other candidates; hell, she could even mentor someone like Yaoyorozu in expanding her battle stratagem methods.

Class 1-A’s homeroom teacher was greeted by the front desk in the lobby as he made his announcement to see someone in the Takahiro residence. Making his way to the elevators, Aizawa pressed the designated floor and rode it up in silence. Having been her homeroom teacher before, he wanted to see her progression and perhaps, push her a little bit more in becoming the hero he sees in her.

To push away the doubts and darkness from her past that constantly cloud her heart.

The moment his feet carried him to the apartment, the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged woman slightly shorter than him with tied up brownish pink hair and hazel green eyes.

“Ah, sensei! Welcome!”

“Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Mrs. Takahiro,” the man greeted with a soft bow before entering to remove his shoes. “Especially with your busy schedule at the moment.”

“Oh it’s no trouble at all!” she happily responded. “And please: call me Victoria. My last name makes me sound like an old lady.”

Making idle small talk, Victoria led Aizawa into the living room from the foyer. A girl with short rose gold coloured wavy hair could be seen curled up on the couch, reading a book. A teapot with three cups of tea had already been prepared on the coffee table.

“Ren. Aiwawa-sensei’s here.”

She looked up to meet his tired obsidian eyes.

“Oh. Welcome sensei,” she softly greeted and closed the book. “What brings you here?”

“Lots of things.”

He softly huffed as he settled himself down on the couch opposite of her. Ren set her book down to give her full attention.

“Ah, is it about the dormitory format for the upcoming semester?” she asked. “That’s one of the things I wanted to discuss with you and your mother.” “But we already submitted the proper paperwork for it.” Victoria sat down next to her daughter. “Did we fill out something wrong?” “No not at all,” Aizawa responded and leaned forward with clasped hands, making eye contact with the two. “This is a bit sudden, but I’ll cut right to the chase: Ren, I’d like you to move to 1-A.”

His request was met with sudden confused silence.

“I’m sorry, what now?” Ren chirped out with a blank expression. “I’m rather confused too,” Victoria agreed. “She’s already a second year...” ”Am I being left behind?” “Allow me to elaborate: I’d like Ren to be the Resident Advisor for 1-A’s dorms,” he clarified. “I think you’d be a great asset to further develop the class’ bonds and abilities as heroes.”

“While it seems like a good idea and all...” Ren’s mother trailed off with a look of concern. “Do you think she’s ready for that big of responsibility? Given what’s been going on lately with villain attacks and some of your students being caught in the crossfire...”

“That’s exactly why I’d like your daughter to help them. Her first-hand experience and knowledge would know best in how to maximize survivability in those situations. And to talk some sense into them when their hero complexes get out of hand.”

Both mother and daughter let out an uncomfortable sigh the moment those words left Aizawa’s lips. Ren tightly gripped the hem of her long black t-shirt, physically trying to repress those memories as she stared down at her now white knuckles.

“Of course, it’s a big adjustment on your end and I’m not expecting an answer immediately,” he continued with a sympathetic tone. “But let me ask you this: what kind of a hero do you want to be?”

Her head immediately jolted up to meet Aizawa’s serious expression. It was a question he’s asked her time and time again during her first year, as if to remind her the reason for being at U.A.

“Would you rather be the character in a story where you’ll let your misfortunes dictate your life or overcome it and be the tragic hero?”

“Aizawa-sensei,” Victoria interjected, feeling rather defensive. “You of all people should know this is a very big ask. May I ask your reasoning behind it?”

He let out a heavy sigh before answering and looked down at his tea cup.

“Out of my years at U.A., this is the first time I’ve felt the real limitations of my role as a teacher and as a pro hero.”

“You’re talking about USJ and Kamino incidents...” Ren plainly said.

“Exactly. I need someone I can fully trust to support me and the students when something happens.”

“I see…” She looked down at a random spot on the floor, feeling unsure how to answer. “But there’s gotta be other students my year who are better suited for this.”

“I have considered your classmates, even some from the support course...” Aizawa began. “But they lack the one thing you have: the ability to have a clear mind when facing chaos.”

“You speak too highly of me, sensei...” The girl’s face expressed anxiety. “I can’t help but think you chose those words to appeal to my ego.”

“I’m just seeing the things you don’t see in yourself,” Aizawa bluntly stated. “So, if we agree to this...” Victoria chimed in. “What will Ren have to do?”

“She’ll still go to her classes as usual. But as I mentioned, she’ll be living in 1-A’s dorms to supervise the students in case anything happens, be it a fist fight or a break-in. She’ll also be a confidant for them to help with their mental and emotional growth in order to become better future heroes.”

Before the discussion could continue on, a mobile phone’s shrill ring filled the silence at the far end of the room. Victoria apologized for the intrusion and went to immediately grab it. She can be faintly heard speaking in Dutch as she made her way into the home office.

“Your mom… knows a lot of languages,” Aizawa praised.

“It’s because of her quirk, Polyglot,” Ren answered and picked up her cup of lukewarm tea and took a small sip. “It allows her to know every known speaking language without having to pick up a book on it. Pretty handy, given her job and all.”

A short silence filled the two.

“When… do you need an answer from me?” “Two days.” “That’s not a lot of time huh.” “It really isn’t. I’m sorry to impose this on you, but would you please give it some thought?” Ren gave a small nod, still feeling uneasy about the proposal.

“Ah my apologies,” Victoria said in Japanese while walking back to the living room. “Just a small work emergency.”

“No, no it’s fine. I think I’ve covered everything any way.”

Aizawa took a quick sip of tea before standing up from his seat, with the two following suit.

“We’ll need to hear your response in two days,” he reiterated. “If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.”

“Given what the teachers have to do at the moment, it can’t be helped. We’ll have a proper discussion about it. Thank you, Aizawa-sensei,” Ren’s mom said and bowed. “I’ll show you out.”

Watching the two adult’s backs shrink down the hallway, Ren took a shaky breath. Her, a leader of one of the most rambunctious hero classes that’s ever graced U.A.? They must be desperate, she thought.

–

After washing the dinner dishes, Ren showered up and entered her room. Letting out a long sigh, the day’s event replayed through her head. Her thoughts were interrupted with a soft melodic ring from her mobile phone; it was Melissa calling. She immediately sat down on the comfort of her bed before picking up.

“Ah, Mel!” she answered in English. “You finally got back to me.” “Yeah sorry! So much has happened!” “Are you okay? I saw on the news what happened.” “Just a few bruises and scratches. I’m fine.” “What about your dad? I mean...” “He’s cooperating with the authorities right now to get leniency on his sentence. Sam, however, didn’t make it… He lost too much blood from the gunshot wound.”

A quick beat of silence sat between the two girls.

“I’m… sorry to hear that… But you’re not gonna get kicked off of I-Island are you? You can always stay with us–” “Ren I’ll be fine,” Melissa reassured. “You’re always such a worrier.” “It’s because you’re not and always have your head in developing support items,” she huffed.

All she could do is agree and laugh. Ren and Melissa Shield were childhood friends from when she still lived in California. Despite her being a year older, she was practically a sister from another mister.

“I also heard some U.A. students were there to help All-Might when stuff went down.”

“Oh yeah! They were all so amazing! Their quirks were so powerful!” Melissa excitedly spoke and told her about everyone she met; it was mostly about someone named Midoriya Izuku though since he stuck by her from the get go and Uraraka Ochaco.

“Hm, they sound like an interesting bunch. What year are they?” “From what I can remember, Deku said they’re all first years.” “First year...” Ren mumbled and flopped down on her bed.

The dots connected and her shoulders jolted up.

“Ah. Could it be… class 1-A… by any chance?” her voice quivered out. “I think so… Why do you ask?”

She told Melissa everything that happened earlier in the day about Aizawa’s proposal in regards to her being an R.A.

“Well what do you think? Are you up for the challenge?” “I dunno,” Ren groaned out and face palmed. “It just makes me sound like a glorified babysitter. And I have to start thinking about where I’ll do my work-study soon. I don’t wanna rely on my mom for money forever.” “I get where you’re coming from...” Melissa began. “But you don’t have to decide on that until later on anyways. So I say go for it! You shouldn’t limit yourself to only the things you can do well.” “Yeah, I guess.”

Chatting for a bit longer, the two friends said their good nights and hung up.

The next day felt like it came too soon. Ren decided to wake up a little earlier to catch her mom before she left for work; she knew she’d be back late tonight. She also had to start packing up her stuff to be sent to the dorms. Shuffling out of her room in a sleepy daze, she managed to peek one eye open wide enough to see the back profile of her mom.

“Oh morning, sweetie. You’re up early,” her mom greeted while reaching for the house keys in the foyer. Ren started mumbling incoherently.

“Really now. I know my quirk can understand everything, but that’s just being disrespectful,” her mom teased.

Rubbing her face to wake herself up a bit more, she let out a long sigh before trying again.

“Mom, I’m gonna do it.” Victoria took a beat to process what her daughter just said. “I had a feeling you would...” her mom said with a small smile. “Your eyes looked restless yesterday.”

Victoria came up to her daughter and wrapped her in a tight embrace, with her returning it.

“Your dad and brother would agree too… They are the reason why you wanted to be a hero in the first place.”

All Ren could do was nod into her mother’s shoulder, increasing the strength of her hug. They survived their personal hell; being a glorified babysitter is just another item on the list.

“This doesn’t mean I’ll worry any less,” her mom sniffled. “You’re gonna give me more wrinkles.” “I’ll try my best not to and contact you on the weekends,” Ren reassured.

Releasing from the hug, Victoria sighed and softly cupped her daughter’s face to get a good look at her.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re growing up too fast and before I know it, you’ll be out there everyday saving people from danger… I can’t help but feel proud and scared at the same time.”

All she could respond with was a small smile and sad eyes; no matter what she could say, it’d offer her mother no comfort whatsoever. Ever since losing her dad and brother from when they lived in California, all they could do was rely on each other after moving to Japan. Even when they had strong disagreements, the two of them always manage to talk it out at the end of it all.

While Ren was busy packing up her life at home, Victoria handled the rest of the details regarding her daughter taking on the position with Aizawa. With everything close to finalization, the mid-summer heat in August slowly waned as the new lives for U.A. students began at the recently built dormitories.

The only thing she was looking forward to was not having to take trains during the morning rush hour anymore. Despite having first day jitters back at school, her schedule was packed to the brim: not only did she have to show up for dorm orientation with her class, she then has to run down to 1-A afterwards so Aizawa could introduce her. And then, she has to unpack and go over her duties with the class.

Thankfully, her orientation ended early and she had a bit of time to hang out with her friends before making her way over to 1-A. They found a good shaded spot outside the dorms to chill out.

“I think I bit off more than I can chew...” Ren tiredly blurted out to her friends and sighed heavily as she fanned herself with her hand. Cicadas could be heard chirping loudly around the tree-covered campus. “This damn heat’s not helping either. I just wanna sleep.”

“But man, for Aizawa-sensei to pick you to look after the problem children...” her friend Seri remarked, admiring her newly manicured nails. “That’s rough.”

“Y’think he’s doin’ this on purpose to torture ya?” her other friend Tomoe teased and took a sip from her juice box.

“No, no. He doesn’t have time for stuff like that,” Ren waved it off. “He seemed pretty serious ‘bout it.” “It does suck though. I was really lookin’ forward to being in dorms with you,” Seri pouted. “You’re only sad ‘cus you won’t be able to raid my room to copy my homework and eat my snacks,” Ren half-jokingly pointed out, only to be responded with a hearty giggle. “Ya know me too well, Ren-Ren.”

She quickly looked at her mobile phone and her watch for the time.  Her eyeballs immediately bolted out of her sockets.

“Oh crap! I have to go. Like, right now.” “Ehh? I thought you had more time to hang!” Tomoe exclaimed. “I thought so too! Until I realized my watch is dead! Oh holy shit!” “And there it is: the Takahiro Special,” Seri deadpanned with a chuckle.

Ren hurriedly gathered her belongings and ran off shouting, “I’ll text you guys later!”

After mad dashing for 10 minutes in the oppressive humid heat, the rose colored haired girl barely made it to the entrance to 1-A. Huffing heavily at the door and dripping with sweat from her forehead, she pushed it open to see the backs of the entire class with Aizawa’s ebony black hair peeking up.

“Sorry...” she gasped out in between breaths with one hand on the door, the other on her knee for support. “Watch… dead… time...”

“It’s fine,” Aizawa quickly replied in his monotone voice. “Just get in here already.”

Slowly making her slumped form up to where 1-A’s homeroom teacher was, Ren could already feel their excited and curious eyes on her.

“Before I leave, I have one more announcement: This slumping bag of sweat here will be your new Resident Advisor,” he stated and looked to the side at her. Excited chatter started up among the class. “Hey, introduce yourself. You’ve caught your breath right?”

She took a deep breath before standing straight up to face the class, wiping some sweat from her face with her sleeve; she can only hope she looks presentable right now.

“I’m second year Takahiro Ren and will be living with you in this dorm for the duration of your first year,” she introduced with a small smile. “You can just call me ‘Ren.’ I’ll do my best to help you all.”

“Takahiro will be helping me keep an eye on you all,” Aizawa interjected. “If you wish to regain my trust given recent events, I assure you do not want to anger her. She’s tough enough to contend with the 3rd years and will make light work of you zygotes.”

Ren immediately flicked her head in his direction, eyes widened. “W-w-wait wait wait! Aizawa!” she stuttered out in a state of panic. “Don’t say somethin’ like–”

“Well, I’ll leave you all to it in unpacking your rooms,” the scruffy teacher ignored her pleas and continued on. “I’ll give you an explanation tomorrow of how things will operate from now on. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, sir!” the rest of the class greeted as Aizawa left.

“Senseiii!!!!!!!” 1-A’s R.A. shouted at the disappearing figure and groaned dejectedly. “You’re not gonna make this easy, are you?”

“There, there,” one of the girls came up to give a comforting pat on her shoulder. She looked up to see a bright smile from a girl with pink skin and hair. “Aizawa-sensei’s always been that kinda person.”

“No I’m sure this is karma...” Ren muttered out with a dark look in her hazel green eyes. “I gave him a hard time last year, even after he expelled almost the entire class.”

“Ehhh?! You mean that actually happened?!” some of the boys exclaimed. “We thought it was just an empty threat!” a boy with long spiky blond hair said.

“Hm? No.” She looked up to face the group of boys to her right. “He called them garbage heroes with no potential. Expelling first years has been his signature at U.A. . Quite Darwinistic, but understandable. You can’t have the hero market saturated with the ones who can’t do their job right. We’d have no jobs by the time we graduate.”

The entirety of 1-A could only stand there in shock.

“Honestly, I was surprised the class was so big when I walked in,” Ren sheepishly confessed with a side grin to match it. “So you must’ve done something to really impress him.”

As expected of Aizawa-sensei, class 1-A collectively thought in despair and huffed a sigh heavy enough for their souls to leave their physical bodies. Feeling the gloom exuding out, she had to quickly divert their thoughts.

“A-anyway!” She clapped her hands to gather everyone’s attention again. “Let’s unpack our stuff first and then we can talk some more.”

Everyone went about their own tasks in settling into their new home.

Finally finding her room on the 4th floor, she changed out of her school uniform and into an over-sized white tank top with a black sports bra peeking underneath and loose sport shorts that came down to her knees before getting down to business.

Before they knew it, the early late summer night crept into view. Exhausted from their efforts, those who finished made it down to the common room to relax.

Ren, however, had been staring at one specific box intensely for the past 15 minutes from her bed. While her room was in order, the presence of that one box irked her to no end. She tied her hair up into a messy bun, revealing her fresh undercut and getting lost in her thoughts. The verdana door was open to get some fresh air in.

Did she subconsciously pack it by accident?

No. She was sure she left it back home with her mom. Shaking her leg nervously and chewing on the tip of her right thumb, she decided to shove it into her closet for now and deal with it later.

Making her way to the elevators, the doors opened up to reveal a boy with spiky ash blond hair; he was wearing a scowl on his face with closed eyes.

Bakugou Katsuki.

He casually walked past her on his way back to his room.

“H-Hey, Bakugou-kun,” Ren greeted with a hint of nervousness, already aware of his infamous temper. “You’re all settled in?” “Yeah, I’m ‘bout to go sleep. Those idiots downstairs are sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout a room contest. I don’t want them extras bargin’ in my space.” “Ah I see. Then I’ll–” “Takahiro-senpai.”

She turned to meet the explosive boy’s ruby red eyes currently glaring at her with intent, sizing her up.

“Aizawa-sensei... He said you were strong.” “W-well, not really. It’s just Aizawa doin’ his usual–” she stuttered out. “Don’t gimme that crap,” he growled out in annoyance. “If you weren’t, he would’ve expelled you.”

Bakugou then flashed her his signature cocky grin and pointed his thumb to himself.

“Fight me. Right now. I wanna see your strength with my own eyes.” “It’s against school rules for upperclassmen to fight underclassmen outside the designated fields without a teacher present,” she plainly stated, as if reading from the school manual and crossed her arms.

Clicking his tongue, he walked away from Ren. The door to Bakugou’s room could be heard opening and closing.

It’s just as his file says, he’s sharp, she thought. Definitely someone who you can’t let your guard down around.

A close-to-mid range fighter too. If they ever face off, he’ll prove to be troublesome.

“Wait a minute...” she muttered to herself and realized something. Running back into her room, she opened her top desk drawer and took out the roster file Aizawa gave her on 1-A. Separating out each student’s profile by their fighting range type, she slammed her hand onto the desk angrily.

“So that’s your game. I totally got baited,” she huffed out in defeat.

Screw the whole “I need someone trustworthy to have my back.”

Aizawa just wanted her to work on her weakness in confronting close-range fighters!

And half of them made up this class! As expected of Eraser Head, having eyes everywhere. Inwardly groaning at the realization, muffled footsteps and chatter could be heard going past her door outside.

“Whadaya think?! Isn’t it cute?!”

That’s Ashido’s voice. That means... Oh crap.

The room contest.

Chapter 2

[datasoong47]

Script Idea

One conceivable type of script I’ve thought about that, to the best of my knowledge, does not exist would be a semi-syllabary in which every syllable would be encoded by two characters, one representing the onset, the other the rhyme.  Bopomofo comes close, as it does have single characters for rhymes, but medial glides are represented by a separate character, as is the tone, so a syllable can be represented by up to 4 characters.  This idea was inspired by the Chinese fanqie method of representing pronunciations of characters

This method would work best for languages with relatively simple phonologies.  For example, suppose a language with 5 vowels and, say, 16 consonants /p t k b d g m n f s v z l r y w/, with permitted syllables (C)(l,r,w,y)V(n, l, r, w, y), with some fairly straightforward restrictions on clusters, like liquids only after obstruents, and no glide-glide sequences.  There would be 65 possible onsets* and 28 possible rhymes (5 vowels * 6 possible codas, including no coda, minus iy and uw).  A pure alphabet would require only 21 characters, but even this kind of semisyllabry would only require 65 + 28 = 93 characters, quite doable, but a pure syllabry would require 65 * 28 = 1,820 characters (well, in practice probably fewer since there’s likely to be some accidental gaps and possibly some systematic gaps like no *Cyi or *Cwu), far too many for a practical syllabry

One could imagine such a system evolving easily from something exactly like fanqie, but instead of being limited to use in dictionaries, unfamiliar characters would be replaced by fanqie-style representations.  Then, after a while, each onset and rhyme would be narrowed to a single character, and the logographic characters would be lost.  Of course, the characters themselves would also simplify.  So, similar to the development of kana, except representing parts of syllables rather than full syllables (of course, you could also have a mixed system like the Japanese mixing of kana and kanji)

*Possible onsets are: Null onset: 1 Single consonant: 16 Obstruent-liquid: 10*2 = 20 Consonant-glide: 14*2 = 28

[kingofthewilderwest]

 the-lady-of-the-bluereplied to your post: 22! ��

You are really good to be able to self-study a language. Especially a language that hard. What sites/books/stuff do you use to learn grammar because I feel like you can only get so far with the stuff that’s available online in example and grammar is like my worst part.

Oh my goodness! Thank you so much for bringing this up! In fact, you’re the exact person I wanted to ask about grammar books! I’ve been thinking about sending you a message asking on this subject... and now look! You brought up the conversation yourself! :D Bless you. Because you’ve been studying this language and gotten lots further than I have.

I am bludgeoning through the hard way by teaching myself, that’s for sure. I think it’s only the fact I’m consistently enthusiastic, and spending so much time with the language, that it’s actually working for self-teaching. I’ve got a great system set up for myself that involves a lot of writing in notebooks. It does help that I’m flexible learning new writing systems and the like, though? Hiragana and katakana were easy to solidify on my own, and I’ve got a very solid system for teaching myself kanji. And with that, it makes learning vocabulary not-too-difficult-to-do.

Grammar is indeed the hardest area for me to learn on my own right now. It helps that I’m working intentionally more on passive listening and reading skills (because that’s what I’ll use Japanese for), but I am also trying to get as good at generating writing as I can, too (since that’ll help the passive skills! and I do love learning to write Japanese). With grammar learning, though, I don’t have an instructor’s feedback to know if I’ve picked up the material correctly; the best I can do is check through sample sentences and real world Japanese, but that’s not always practical.

The Only Decent Thing I have going with grammar is that, as a linguist, I know what sorts of things to look for and look out for. So, for instance, I knew off the bat that I’d need to check for grammatical differences in conjunction (like, whether it’s a list of nouns or two clauses being adjoined), and indeed that’s a Thing in Japanese, hello there. But. Even with that. Of course I’m still trying to find materials that will teach me the things I want to know! And that’s a lot of challenge!!! I do need to get my grammar game on and I might need some help there. I’m really pathetic on grammar and can’t really put together sentences (with a few exceptions).

I go through many materials, including some sites with exercises and basic grammar lessons, as well as novels I own that are entirely in Japanese, but here are the materials I’ve been adhering to the most:

Jisho.org 

I think this is a blessing of a dictionary site and such a useful resource for me. I use it for learning new kanji and for picking up new words. It’s got good detailing of words in the language, sample sentences, audio samples, references to idiomatic expressions, kanji and their meanings, the various readings a kanji can take, stroke order, and more. I fish around a LOT on this website. One cool way I learn new vocabulary is to take a character I just learned, search for written words containing that character, and see how it combines with other characters I know. Thus, I’m learning lots of new vocabulary pretty quickly based upon semantic relationships.

Essential Japanese Grammar (Everett Bleiler)

This is outdated. I know that. The copyright is 1963. Languages change fast, and Japanese has recently undergone lots of changes from loanwords, etc. But. It’s still very good for learning grammatical structures. In fact, this book is one of my favorites because it writes the materials less like a lesson book and more like a formal linguistics grammar. Information typically isn’t way watered down, but is presented in a succinct, informative, organized format so I can comprehend all the basic grammatical structures Japanese has. It’s slightly dense but also great for a beginning learner like me. 

Essential Japanese Grammar (Tanimori and Sato)

I like this book a lot because it doesn’t water down information. However. The problem is this book’s grammatical presentation is sometimes beyond my current scope of capability. As in, I’m not AT these levels of grammatical competence in Japanese, so I have to pick and choose information from this book to learn. The areas I do understand, it’s drastically helpful. It’ll be more useful once I’m more stable on my feet, though. I do still feel like it’s a good resource - given as it does go into grammar deeper than I can “get” now, and it has a hoard of sample sentences. But it’s more about summarizing Japanese grammar to help... than it is to teach Japanese grammar from step one.

Tae Kim

I haven’t gotten too far into this site yet but I’ve got a good feeling I’m going to.

Memrise App

I don’t use this one *as* much as these others, but it’s a great way for me to learn some practical vocabulary, and drill it to me in effective study ways.

Beyond that... I’ve also looked at books that conjugate verbs and give verb-specific grammar information; websites with basic lessons like this one; various print dictionaries (especially ones with lots of sample sentences); songs I like; and I’m hoping to soon find good websites that flat-out teach JLPT N5 grammar and vocabulary. I also peeped at what text books my university used for Japanese students, but I didn’t find a book for first semester students.

Ahhh. Throwing this out there. *IF* anyone has any book or website recommendations for hardcore learning Japanese grammar, I would LOVE to hear them! I am DEFINITELY still looking for good learning sources!!! I would be forever grateful! 

If it helps to peg my level or what might be useful to me, uh, I am:

Someone who’s been studying Japanese doggedly since about June (I dabbled in it before that point, but June/July is when I committed).

Someone who’s already picked up hiragana and katakana completely, knows about 160 kanji, and has a vocabulary of about 500 stable words (though some are really weird, impractical words...). I’m all set when it comes to learning how to read the orthography system.

Someone who has been, admittedly, pathetically neglecting their grammar work in favor of vocabulary (especially noun vocabulary) work and needs to get their ass on being forced to learn grammatical structures and putting together fucking sentences. I know the basics of sentence structure order; the basics of what は, が, か, and を do; how to conjugate simpler verb tenses; how to count; have just *STARTED* work on adjectives; but I am terrible and shaky at LOTS OF THINGS verb- and adjective-related in particular. So... summarily I’m Quite a Beginner with Lots of Gaps in Knowledge. I suuuuuck. XD I have a very, very, very, very, very limited ability to put together SOME sentences.

Someone with a collegiate background in linguistics. This means I prefer books that don’t drastically dumb down grammatical information, but are willing to give me the actual names of grammatical forms, what those grammatical forms do, etc. rather than pamper me with baby-steps exercises (I still need exercises though!!! and WANT more exercises!). This also means that there are some things I’ll pick up quicker simply because I have the advantage of being familiar with relevant cross-linguistic processes.

Basically, I’m a straight-out newb beginner of innocence and ignorance, with a very strong start on orthography, and some strange advances in sporadic areas.

But yeah that’s about what I’ve got going grammar-wise thus far and I know I need to get my ass on it more.