#the english lexicon is not enough for me to explain

[aimbutmiss]

ZoLu and love as a religious experience:

What does it mean to dedicate your power, your dream, your whole life to someone? What does it mean to become ablaze with your whole being for them? Zoro doesn't believe in God, but every night he prays to the sun until it rises again. Because everyone wants to bask in the sunlight, but he wants to burn in it. He yearns for it. So, when Luffy turns out to be a god, it doesn't surprise him one bit. Because for Zoro, loving Luffy was already a religious experience.

What does it mean to go further than devotion for someone? The meaning lacks a word, it is indescribable.

So, Zoro loves Luffy, and that's that.

.

What does it mean to let someone worship the ground you walk on? What does it mean to trust someone completely, with the entirety of your existence? Luffy trusts his first mate to be by his side, always, no matter what. What can he give in exchange for such devotion, if not the one thing the other desperately needs? (Faith.) He let's Zoro drown in his warmth, because he knows that's what he needs from him. If he needs a god, that's what Luffy will be. Because how can a man have faith in something that doesn't exist?

What does it mean to become a god for someone's sake? There is no word to describe it.

So, Luffy loves Zoro, and that's that.

.

The devotion between a captain and a first mate is special. No one would dare argue against that. Once they take on these titles, the two men's lives and their very beings become so intertwined that they become impossible to separate. 

Zoro and Luffy's souls have been tangled up in each other from the very first day. They exist as one. Devotee and god. Did the god create the man because he was lonely? Or did the man create the god because he lacked direction, or guidance? Either way, they are one. 

Captain and first mate. 

Devotee and God.

[marnikula]

I vow

I've been in the opposite of a writing slump today and I really just want some fluff, also, I've already written a one shot for Morgan and Reid respectively so I thought now would be a good time to show Hotch some love.

Here is a little something, It is pure fluff with Hotch just being a silly guy in love with the reader, reader is a gn, use of YN!

✨Enjoy!✨

"When Haley divorced me all those years ago I thought I would never be able to love again, and when she died I thought I would never be able to laugh again. Then I met you and my broken world felt like it was being mended again.

I still remember the first time I saw you, papers flying everywhere as we ran into each other. The feeling of your hand brushing against mine as I handed you your papers has been ingrained in my very being because that was the moment I knew there was still hope. Hope that I would be able to feel complete again.

You have become the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, the person I want to raise Jack with, the person I want to grow old with, and the person I want to wake up next to every morning. I want to hear your grumbles when I open the curtains, and your soft thanks when I hand you your coffee with too much sugar. I want to help you make breakfast on weekends and I want to dance through the kitchen with you when our song starts to play.

Y/N, I promise to love you until my bones have turned to dust and my heart has long since stopped beating and I will continue to love you even still. I promise to make all the things we've dreamt of come true and I promise that even when we don't see eye to eye, I will still greet you with a kiss and ask you how your day was. I promise that I will stand by you in the mall while you try and find the perfect book to buy or what squish mellow to add to your collection and I promise to take my card out and pay for it before you even have the time to turn to me with puppy eyes and ask.

I promise to be a family with you, to be happy with you, and to always remind you every day how amazing, beautiful, kind, endearing, generous, funny, and brilliant you are. The list goes on, but I don't think there are enough words in the English lexicon to explain what my feelings towards you amount to.

Y/N, I promise to be your faithful husband in this life and the next, and I promise to love you fully and entirely."

These were the vows Aaron Hotchner said to you on your wedding day, and he has managed to keep every single one of those promises, even as you now sat next to him with a satisfied smile on your face and a cup of tea in your hand as he told your grandchildren for the 100th time about your love story.

[aiteanngaelach]

[Image ID: Foreward. When I was a youngfla of about six or seven, the neighbours had a Yank cousin called Jake over to visit. He was sound enough and had toys of the Turtles, which I’d never seen in Ireland. One day I says to him, ‘Are you going to the shop, you are?’, and Jake gets a pure bowsy look across his lip, like I was trying to pull the piss. ‘Why are you telling me to go to the shop? I’ll go to the shop if I want to,’ he says. ‘I was only asking, I wasn’t telling you to go to the shop, Jake,’ I said back. I’d no idea what had gotten him upset. My da was over by the gate listening in with a smirk. Later on he says to me, ‘That thing earlier with the young Yank, when he thought you told him to go to the shop? Do you know why he couldn’t understand you?’ My da then explained to me a theory about the way Irish people speak English, a theory which was given to him by his da. My granda lived on a bóithrín below in West Cork that was on the way to a creamery. He was a member of Tom Barry’s IRA flying column and would constantly watch and take note of whoever passed. Regular Irish people would traverse with their horses loaded with buckets of fresh milk and would come back with horses packed with butter in their saddlebags. This was a brisk, fast-paced road, no time to stop and chat, as milk would go sour in the sun and butter would soften on a horse’s shoulders. It was for this reason that British soldiers would stop and harass anyone who walked the bóithrín: to interrogate, to rile, to get horses pure greasy with sweaty yellow butter. A small injustice, a show of power, and an opportunity to make a person emotional enough to lash out and say the wrong thing. My granda would notice that when an English soldier questioned a man on the way to the creamery, no answer would be right or wrong; any answer meant a long wait and your papers inspected regardless. The standard rules of human interaction had broken down, and to give an answer as Gaeilge would be met with violence. So, the Irish people figured out an in-between.A yes and no at the same time. A quantum superposition of an answer. An answer that would cause the soldier to say, ‘Stupid Paddy gibberish’ and usher the person off before the butter melted down the horse’s shoulders. And this here was my da’s theory as to why I asked the American, ‘Are you going to the shop, you are?’ It was an absurd post-colonial way of arranging a question that had its roots in years of interrogation from the English. Now, I’m not saying that’s the case. This is merely a story that was passed down to me. But, as an adult, I learned that there was a name for how I speak, how I arrange sentences and for the words I use. Hiberno- English: a resistant way of speaking the English language, a language we never asked for. As an author and a musician, I often find myself writing words as if they are music. I search for melody and rhythm on the page. Jazz and blues are African American forms of music, born out of the resistance of African songs to European instruments. Musical notes exist in the African scale that do not exist in the Western scale. These notes are in between the Western notes, and these in-between notes give jazz and blues an emotional complexity that the traditional Western scale cannot deliver. The playful, bowld and fluid way that Hiberno-English resists traditional English does the same thing. This improvised musicality to how we think and speak provides me with a deep literary confidence to explore the in-between, especially when the writing process presents me with resistance. T.P. Dolan’s book is a rigorous lexicon of Hiberno-English words and their etymologies. Words with roots in Gaeilge and words with roots in Shelta.

Dolan died in 2019, and it is my sincere and deepest hope that new lexicographers will continue to document the rich changes in English as it is spoken in Ireland as of 2020. The continual development of Hiberno- English incorporates the influences of African, Eastern European and Asian dialects, as well as newly emerging pidgins forged in the cruelty of direct provision as asylum seekers from different parts of the world communicate with each other while being denied their freedom.

BLINDBOY BOATCLUB June 2020. End ID]

I think I read this before you know

[reborrowing]

How do you actually go about making conlang?

A love of language and probably some confidence that borders on hubris.

(this is kinda long and rambly and probably points to me not being inclined to teaching but)

I think conlanging is something works best if you jump straight into it, as long as you’re willing to learn as you go. Imo, there’s not a single “right” way to make a conlang, but there’s a dozen “wrong” ways that you only really discover/understand when you try them.

Really, step one isn’t going to be making anything, so much as deciding what you want the language to do. Are you trying to create a certain aesthetic for a given race/species? Are you experimenting with how communicate works—how to express emotions, maybe, or honesty or clarity or efficiency? Are you building off of a pre-existing language? Are you playing with grammar? With sound? What you want to do with a conlang should determine where you’re going to focus (and might also point out some blind spots). You should also think at least a little bit about who’s going to speak the language but imo that has the biggest impact when creating your words.)

Like, for Kíkítok, my first page is literally:

Language used by a diminutive people/mouseworld society that exists in parallel with a fictional version of the modern day, typically in urban environments. Culture values resourcefulness, knowledge, tenacity.

Reasonably naturalistic

Possibly toy with sound symbolism and/or ideophones?

Takes loanwords from English, occasionally from Spanish

Reduplication?

And then I looked up cross-linguistic onomatopoeia for mice and searched around for what languages people perceive as “cute” and picked a lot of my sounds from there. It doesn’t have to be too serious.

The actual language creation part is easier if you already have some linguistic background, but that background isn’t necessary. I started conlanging before I studied linguistics. There’s a lot of material out there that explains language building better than I can.

I’m pretty sure I started with Biblaridion’s playlist on how to make a language when I first got into conlanging. I also enjoyed Artifexian’s conlanging videos (It looks like he’s restructured his channel so things aren’t as organized anymore tho).

Zompist’s Language Construction Kit is probably the most-referenced conlanging starter guide. The material is free on the website and also available as a book if you prefer. (If you’re buying books, I really liked David J. Peterson’s The Art of Language Creation. But. Money.) It’s been awhile since I’ve been on reddit, but when I was, r/conlangs had a ton of useful references to work with.

Once you get the basics of a language down, most of your time will probably go into lexicon/dictionary building. It’s so overwhelming. I recommend keeping track of how you’re forming your words even though I’m super lazy about it. (It’s why I recommend it, I end up unhappy with some of my stuff lol). There are so many words. You will never ever have enough words. The last time I was working on mouse in the basement, I found out Kíkítok has three words for kill/cause-to-die but no words for injure or pain? Ugh.

Language is huge and majorly interconnected, so there's not really a single good entry point for starting a conlang. Especially early in the process, you end up going back and forth as other parts of the conlang evolve. You kind of have to just start somewhere, whether it’s sentence structure or a couple of words, and be open to the idea of changing things later. But! Do write everything down. It doesn’t matter how intuitive something seems when you first think it, you won’t remember your own reasoning. And it's fun to see how the language changes over time!

[thatoneluckybee]

cause me for a second about to screech incoherently to the void

OKAY so going back over I found the guides I like for Old English pronunciations because I'm not good at it and can never remember how to pronounce things. So on the poll I was gushing in tags about where the word orange came from. In Old English we just used yellow-red or red-yellow, or technically the word was "geoluread." In today's English there's a few ways it could be read. "Geo" would likely use a "j" soundish like "geology." "Lu" and "luh" are fairly similar in modern and old English so just "uh" like "put." "Read" could be "red" or "reed."

SO I'm probably butchering how I say things (like I said still practicing) and explaining but this ramble is for fun so 'tis fine. I think the "eo" would be considered a front vowel so the "g" is said similarly to our "y" sound is "yes." "Eo" is better explained by this specific area of the website I'm on right now (lots I'll just between but this one has examples) as "like the 'e' in bed gliding to the 'o' in 'cough'" so "eh-aw" almost? Or the "aw" and "ough" in "awesome" and "cough" are identical in my accent (Texan accents do that fairly often.) Then of course the "luh" sound, and then "ea" is described as "ai" in fail. I saw fail differently from the speaker but from other descriptions and guides it seems similar to "ey-ah." Not exactly but I suck st describing things.

Y'all. "Geoluread" put together ("g" "eo" "lu" "read"). The best I can visualize it is "yeh-oh" "luh" "rey-ahd"

When we say yellow or at least the way I've grown up talking there's the slightest hint of an "o" between "eh" and "l." Just from how your move your mouth (same reason what did you becomes didja and what you becomes whatcha." Voicing the "o" in "eol" snf NOT voicing it has your mouth move almost the exact same way.

Geoluread is spelled so strangely to me but it's LITERALLY JUST YELLOW RED. IT'S THE SAME THING AS IT WAS IN THE 11TH CENTURY LMAO

And this also is cool to me (I am bored in class with nothing to do have been typing for well over ten minutes about a fruit word) is English has evolved a LOT but spelling and lexicon seem to have changed a lot more than pronunciation from Old English. This word is hard for me to pronounce because (and true for a lot of Old English words) the vowels have you holding your tongue a lot further back than speaking Modern English. That's a fun quirk I like about today's English—compared to a lot of similar languages (I.e. Spanish and French I believe? Been a bit since I've looked into this) we have a tongues naturally resting a lot higher (on roof of mouth vs bottom). And Modern English seems to pronounce sounds with the tongue closer to or touching the teeth than Old English does. I know of the Great Vowel Shift so I'm wondering if that whole 15-16th century language drama was the cause? I have done research on it but I don't have IPA Symbols memorized yet so it's hard to tell what the shift was responsible for and what is just the passage of time changing things.

So this is what I do if I get bored enough at school apparently. Lose my mind over pronunciations of words centuries ago because I saw one (1) poll about whether orange the color or orange the fruit came first (it was the fruit. Wasn't until Margaret Tudor around a century later I think that it was recorded to describe a color.)

[thorraborinn]

etymology stuff

I have at least a half-decent guess for everything here now, with the exception of Lóðurr. It's difficult to even get started here.

-urr can come from several sources. A basic internal reconstruction would be *-uraʀ, found in words like fjǫturr < *feturaz, jǫfurr < *eburaz, and others. These seem to be all, or at least mostly, Indo-European derived, and then within PIE it seems they can come from two sources, one a simple root that happens to end *r and the other from a derivational morpheme.

It can also come from compound-word names that fuse, causing the second component of the compound to undergo heavy contraction and syncope. This is pretty common and mostly well understood although sometimes the details can be ambiguous. Some examples: Ǫzurr < *and-swaraz or *and-swaruz; Véurr < *wiha-warjaz. Lena Peterson seems to favor reconstructing *-waruz in these spots, probably to explain the u by umlaut, but there is only one runic inscription with waruʀ (which is not believed to be part of a name) while there are many verifiable Elder Futhark-era names ending warijaʀ that I think can reasonably be connected to -urr names in Old Norse, with the raising and rounding of the vowel explained by the w. So stainawarijaʀ > *Steinurr, bidawarijaʀ > *Biðurr, ladawarijaʀ > *Lǫndurr.

There are a number of dwarf names in Völuspá that end -urr; these could have been made up recently before Völuspá came together but Peter Alexander Kerkhof made a pretty strong argument that Bǫfurr could be an actual exact cognate with Latin faber (though, while the argument is well-formed technically, I still find it very speculative in light of other possible explanations for both words). But the possibility means that there could be -urr names in Norse that really are from thousands of years prior to their attestation.

This is all before even getting to the Lóð- part. If the name is that old, it's not necessarily the case that looking within the Old Icelandic lexicon will be helpful, yet there are multiple lóð in Icelandic and any of them could be pertinent to Lóðurr (though most of them are only attested much later). Some scholars have argued that Lóðurr is actually Freyr, and that his name is built on lóð 'crops/produce.' This seems like a stretch to me, though there's no technical reason to reject the 'crops' meaning over any other, whether or not we tack on the identification with Freyr (which I would not do). There's also 'weight' and 'plot of land,' 'trawl line,' and others, not well-attested in ON but present in Modern Icelandic; it might be possible to rule all of these out with a little research on when they appear and if they seem to be late loans. Others have connected Lóðurr to cognates of English loud; I don't really think this is tenable (and would mean his name was originally *Hlóðurr, and there's no reason for Old Icelandic not to reflect that).

Meanwhile, runic logaþore is tempting, yet not quite enough to ignore the problems with trying to connect it to Lóðurr, nor is logaþorē easy to explain etymologically anyway.

All of this is agnostic with regard to whether or not Lóðurr is Loki, by the way. If I could narrow down the phonological problems enough for semantics to be a factor that could become important but at this point it isn't.

[jade-lightnleaks]

I have a question.

For the small point of intersection of people who both are schizophrenic (somewhere in the schizo spectrum) and have studied Latin. (And i expect tumblr might be the best space to find such fellow intersection of people).

My question is: have you had the experience in full psychosis and processing breakdown ( esp language processing - both comprehension and production) falling apart and disintegrating so badly that the processing ( both production and comprehension but more especially comprehension) have you had the experience of that comprehension processing of your own 1st language was something very akin to translating latin. With all the having to painstakingly sort through which form is the form being used in this exact moment of utterance or writing. And puzzling out through all the grammatical structure and parts of speech and likely meaning within the context utterance (passage) etc. With still retaining all the lexical information of the lexicon (have retaining all the meanings of the words you have in your 1st language) but the structural information all fallen apart and not retaining the structure as such (as it did before the psychosis and the fall apart).

And having to work through and work out the meanings through the various possible forms to determine which form and meaning is being utilised in the moment and context of utterance ( or writing).

The native language lexicon retaining. But some of the on the fly and unconsciously accessed structural information disappearing, disintegrating, and/or otherwise becoming inaccessible for the duration.

I doubt that i would have had much framework to figure out anything of what was going on and find my way through it in that extreme fall apart if i had not had some prior experience to liken it to and analogise it from.

I wonder how many of us (in various modes of schizophrenia and schizo spectrum processing breakdowns and glitches) have these experiences and also have nothing close enough to analogise it to and frame it in terms of and in relation to some other already known frame of reference of experience.

Not having that seems to me so much even more extremeness of terrifying than what i have experienced myself in my own breakdowns of structure etc with having some means and models and prior experiences by which to explain to myself some portions of what was going on in the immediacy of thoroughly terrifying -everything is breaking down, disintegrating and falling apart - immediacy of experience.

Anyway I'm wondering if others in both categories (schizospectrum and having experience of language processing breakdown, and having studied Latin at some point - have had the shared experience of the breakdown of 1st language comprehension resulting in something that very easily maps onto in similarity and being analogous to the process of translation in intermediate Latin learning. Because when i had a time of very bad fall apart in the structure processing of language in the worst psychosis I've experienced, the closest thing I could grab into that was similar to my experience of trying to process and comprehend my 1st language (English) with the particular structural fall aparts and not maintaining stable the fixity of meanings to context was that it being very much like translating latin. But retaining still having the full English lexicon i possess (so not having to look up any unfamiliar vocabulary like when doing Latin translation assignments). But losing something of the structure and structural cohesion.

And I'm wondering if this is at all a shared experience.

It seems that this might be a thing. Showing something about language processing and the breakdowns of it. And not just a solitary experience of one person (me).

( And this is a past experience for me, not a recent one. I'm not actively in a psychosis at the moment. Nor am i actively at the moment studying Latin :(

But it was such a striking experience that I'm still wondering if it's at all shared by those in a same or similar boat).

[findroleplay]

using the word cock or bitch is different than a word that’s a slur though. that’s why people check before making words up so they don’t actually name their characters after a slur. you’re being weirdly aggressive about this for no reason, especially because it hurts no one to just put slashes between letters.

First, I think you're actively trying to misunderstand what I mean - or maybe I'm not clear enough so I'll try to explain my point of view again. No, cock and a slur are not two words that are equally offensive. What they have in common is having two different meanings, one that can be considered offensive and one that can be considered 'SFW' (and as far as I know have two completely different etymologies, not sure about this because I don't know where the word cock comes from), and normally people are able to differentiate the two and use them correctly in context without the need to censor the word even when it has its 'SFW' meaning.

Frankly, this attitude reminds me of the haiku bot in action. It is only able to detect a 5/7/5 syllables pattern and marks it down as an example of haiku. Actually, a composition needs much more than that to be considered one but the bot can't grasp the meaning of the words. In the same way, one sees three letters in a certain order and marks it down as a slur when the meaning is extremely different. There is only a superficial similarity and nothing more.

if you've never heard of words having homonys I don't know what to tell you but it's actually quite a normal thing. Secondly, I don't think 'accidentally naming an OC after a slur' is such a common problem that people need to check the slur list. But even if it was, then what? I'm not making up a word on the spot, I'm using a word that already exists. I think I've seen the word float around ever since I got into fandom 10 years ago.

I'm being aggressive because I think it's an argument with no basis. I personally have no stakes in the matter: I tag omegaverse when the post says omegaverse and I tag abo when the post says abo, not like I have a weird fetish for one word over the other. If I used slashes or not depended completely on which version of the tag shows up first in my suggestions. To be honest I've thought more about omegaverse in the last 24 hours than in the past 10 years combined. I'm absolutely not attached to the word in any way. That said I think it's crazy how some people think you get to label random words slurs when the only thing they have in common is the spelling and then force this view on other people. You don't want it on your blog because you can't help associating the two words or it just feels wrong saying it? Valid. You don't want me to say it when I talk to you because it triggers you any way? Valid. Don't want me to say it at all? Not valid. It's objectively not the same word, just looks the same. You may get to decide on the usage of slurs but not of the entire English lexicon as you see fit.

This is honestly the last post about the omegaverse thing because I said my piece and anons had their chances to say theirs. I doubt most of the followers are here for slur discourse. If you have any more to add send asks off anon and I'll post them privately.

[seventfics]

A linguistic analysis of Ravkan and Ravkan names in SaB*

(*Written by a non-native who studied Russian, with respect, and grateful for any feedback)

Hi it’s me. Your friendly neighborhood bookworm (who studies linguistics). 

When I first read the SaB trilogy, I had been taking a year of Russian. The fantasy-lover in me instantly latched onto this grand magical world, and looking back, I remember getting so excited about the little hints of Russian throughout the book because, “Oh! I recognize that!! It means/references [X]!” That said, the linguistic student in me would stop in confusion at all the discrepancies, because...well...the language in SaB is not Russian. It’s fake/fantasy Russian. 

Russian is the obvious carbon footprint of Ravkan, just looking at its inspired Slavic myths, the straight-up Tsarist government, the architecture of the palaces. There’s other stuff too that adds to what is supposed to be “Ravkan culture” by being written with Russian words: kefta, sankt, kvas.

Even so, Ravkan is very distinctly assimilating Russian into something more English-native friendly. The names are wrong. The Anglicizied terms look off. The way characters refer to each other—in name, status, and formality—is completely Americanized. LB herself said that Ravkan is “inspired by Russian and Mongolian,” which. Doesn’t mean anything if actual Russian speakers can’t understand it.

Which is why I’m writing this, for my own linguistic interests and your curiosity (or peace of mind, I don’t know which one you came here reading for). I’m giving you my linguistic analysis of Ravkan, not as a badly-butchered Russian offshoot, but as a child of one of two possible linguistic phenomenon: relexification or creolization.

Relexification is the sudden rapid change of the lexicon in a language. Basically, one language adopts almost all of the lexicon of another language into itself:

Imagine, in this exercise, that the first speakers of Ravkan were originally nomads in what is now known as Ravka. Their tribe might have come into contact with the first settlers of the region (who, for the sake of our fictional linguistic analysis, must have been actual Russian speakers). As a minority, they could have adopted the majority-spoken Russian lexicon, but following the rules of their original language. Then powers changed. Ravkans became the majority. Russian went into obscurity while leaving a lasting linguistic imprint.

This, in theory, explains the discrepancies that exist in the use of Ravkan languages.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of relexification being the reason for Ravkan’s creation, since it doesn’t explain everything. A whole lexicon overhaul doesn’t explain the change in naming conventions. 

So, let’s talk about creolization!

Creolization is my favorite headcanon for Ravkan’s origins. It is a nuanced process that cannot be quantified just through lexicon, but is possibly just as dramatic in a short amount of time. I could write a whole paper on creolization and how most, if not all, languages in the world exist in a Creole spectrum-continuum based on language contact with other languages. However, this is a tumblr post for a dumb fictional world. Sigh, another day.

Let me elaborate with canon compliant reasons as to why creolization is a Thing That Definitely Happened in Ravka:

The creation of the Fold. With the creation of the Fold circa 400 years before the present time, language has had more than enough time to change in the aftermath of a drastic geographical alteration. 

The show even gives us more context by bringing up ‘Old Ravkan,’ which to our (read: Alina’s) ears, sounds pretty Russian. West Ravka also calls itself the ‘Old Country’, leaning into the idea that Old Ravkan (actual Russian) originates in the western side of the shadow border, and Ravkan can no longer be identified with it, as hundreds of years have passed in language isolation. So, Ravka developed separately from Old Ravkan? That’s not creolization. 

Well, what about the displacement of hundreds, even thousands of people, stranded east of the Fold? Those people and the languages they speak don’t just go away—they get integrated into the regional dialect. Fjerdans, Kerch, Shu Han, Suli, Ravkan tribes that each spoke their own variety of languages and used to live in different regions across Ravka. All of them pushed to share the same stretch of land, removed from sea paths. 

West Ravka probably underwent its own creolization because of the same reasons, but to a lesser extent.

Patronymics and diminutives have “vanished” from common usage. In both Ravkan and Old Ravkan, there once was an indicator of diminutives, as presented by the existence of Grisha coming from Sankt Grigori. Some characters also have diminutives as names. However, no patronymics seem to be in use, spoken nor in documentation. 

One reason for this “simplification” (a hot and loaded term to have in creolistics) is that since not every linguistic group stuck east of the Fold used them, patronymics and diminutives were dropped from usage completely, with some being preserved as first or last names.

(Sure, this is linked to how Russian patronymics and diminutives do not have a mirror form in English so Author worked with cultural bias, but the disappearance of them could tie directly with the next point, which is:)

The gender indicator of family names is, in some instances, completely flipped. This one is the strangest linguistic pattern I can point out, because of consistency.

Alina is Alina Starkov, despite standard -ov surname endings being masculine in Russian. Alright, everyone simplified Russian surnames even further so only masculine markers remained. Except, why are Ilya and Aleksander called Morozova, when -ova endings indicate a feminine marker? (Here’s where I say it would have been interesting to see if Aleksander calls himself Morozov, or what does Baghra call herself. They are literally from a different era, but alas). The gendered flip happens in multiple instances. Genya Safin (instead of Safina); Nadia Zhabin (Zhabina)... 

The only surname that doesn’t apply to this flipped rule is Lantsov, which could still be logical if we consider that the Lantsov name is inherited down a long royal line that can be traced back 400 years, possibly to Old Ravkan. With male rulers, the gender indicator froze and stuck to -ov.

Town/city names, preserved locations. To understand this point, we can look into places like England or the United States, where a lot of towns and villages have roots in the language of original settlers (see Gaelic in England; the many Native American languages in the US). Ravkan town and city names could have been preserved from Old Ravkan (Russian), though people in East Ravka no longer speak it. 

Fossilized words. Every language has these, and they are honestly really cool. They are antiquated/obsolete words that we no longer use in any context except in certain phrasing. The thing about fossilized terms, though, is that native speakers have no context or awareness of the original meaning of the word or phrase they are using—like when English speakers say “just deserts” (which comes from the Middle English desert, “to deserve”) and is often misspelled to be “desserts” (a different loanword from French, desservir, unrelated). 

Some Ravkan fossil words we could extrapolate: kefta (it has no translated equivalent in the text, it is exclusively used to mean the clothing Grisha wear, and in Russian, a kefta is a dish); kvas (simply because the actual Russian kva would not get anyone drunk, so it is a misnomer/fossilized term from something stronger), the term Grisha itself (frozen to indicate powered individuals, and nothing at all with the diminutive of Grigori), and otkazat’sya (at this point, Ravkan natives say it originates from ‘abandoned’, but it is used to signify non-Grisha humans in a non-pejorative way...and a majority, socially superior race would not call itself ‘abandoned’).

Pronunciation and spelling. Ravkan is not Russian. Not the way that characters speak or write it. 

1. The show invented its own alphabet which, while inspired by the Cyrillic alphabet, separates Ravkan from Russian even more. It’s not Cyrillic anymore, it’s Ravkan. 

2. The “mispronunciation” of what we know to be Russian words is apparently the correct pronunciation of Ravkan words. Russian nyet is Ravkan net. Moya should have been pronounced maya because of how the written -o- in Russian has two pronunciations, based on syllable stress. The same applies to koroleva, which phonetically should be /karaleva/ as the stress is in the /e/, and not in either /o/. In the show, this was a decision to pronounce. 

Casual native speaker bilingualism. This one is a bit of a cheat, but a big part of a lot of Creole societies. It’s Author’s choice to use a handy Russian dictionary while also making it known that the English narrative does have a word for it. (Quick examples: the use of da/net along with yes/no.)

A bilingual/plurilingual society is more likely to develop Code-switching jargon and Creole lexifiers, which can directly explain the shift in pronunciation, spelling, and even the expression of grammatical gender in Ravkan.

At the end of it all, I want to reiterate that I don’t have the means to question LB or SaB’s showrunners directly on why they made Ravkan the way it is (I wish). Everything I’ve written here is from a studying linguist’s perspective, attempting to make reason out of something that otherwise isn’t reasonable to Russian native speakers. My concluding piece of analysis: 

Ravkan is a Russian-lexifier Creole language with restructured rules and relexified jargon. 

If this post is of any help, I am glad to have been of service. Otherwise, take it with a grain of salt, or feel free to argument on the points I’ve presented!

[rallamajoop]

How (not) to say ‘fuck’ in Etruscan (and other things I cannot believe I spent so much time tracking down for a throwaway joke in a Witcher slash-fic)

Buried in chapter 4 of my fic Something Nice is a joke which, as much as it amused me, no-one else is going to get unless I explain it. So here we go.

For the last few people in this fandom who haven't heard yet: The Witcher 3's vampire-language is Etruscan. To my knowledge, there's never been an official statement from CDPR to confirm this, but the evidence (ie. that basically all the vampire vocab can be found in online Etruscan sources) seems pretty solid. To explain why this made me go oooooh that's so NEAT, we need a little context.

Context!

The Etruscans (in my admittedly far-from-expert understanding) were a people who lived in Italy back before the Romans got around to conquering-slash-assimilating the rest of the peninsula, and the language they spoke is one of the most frustratingly mysterious of the ancient world. Most dead languages are at least related to something modern linguists have a decent handle on, but Etruscan seems to have been related to almost nothing else spoken – it may even have pre-Indo-European roots (a whoooole other tangent I am in no way qualified to cover).

Surprisingly, we do owe our modern Latin alphabet in part to the Etruscans, since the earliest Roman alphabets were adapted from the Etruscan (who got it from the Greeks, who got it from from the Phoneticians, and so on). The Etruscans may even be the reason we're stuck with so many weirdly redundant K-sounds (not only K and C, but X and Q, which are really just 'ks' and 'kw' with an overblown sense of superiority).

But being able to sound out every surplus K-word from an Etruscan inscription isn't much help nowadays when there are no surviving Etruscan dictionaries to tell us what it actually means – not even a decent Etruscan Rosetta stone to give us a push-start. So while modern linguists may rattle off Ancient Greek fluently or puzzle out Egyptian hieroglyphs from thousands of years before the Etruscans even had an alphabet, the Etruscan vocabulary available to us nowadays remains embarrassingly limited. Bits have been figured out from context or thanks to loanword exchanges with their neighbours (plenty of ancient Greeks and Romans certainly spoke Etruscan, even if they failed to write it down), but a lot is still as mysterious to the experts as it would be to you and me.

So why to I love the idea of using Etruscan as the Witcher’s vampire-language so much? Basically, if you want a language that will sound both old and reliably alien to anyone listening to it – be they the mainstream English-speaking market or the original Polish-language audience – Etruscan is a damn good call. You're not going to have much vocabulary to draw from, but it's not like there's a lot of vampire-chatter in the game anyway. It's a cool little easter egg for fans nerdy enough to try and figure out what they're saying.

Translations and Sources

You aren’t going to find a lot of great Etruscan language sources on the web – few of the easily-discovered online sources on Etruscan vocab appear to have been updated within the last ten years, and lord knows how consistent some of these are with current scholarship (let alone how sure linguists can be about anything with a task like this). All the same, have some links you may find useful:

Etruscology – Brief, but more readable than most

Lexicons.ru Etruscan Glossary – Probably one of the best collections of many terms in one place

Maravot.com Etruscan Language pages – Hard to navigate, but gosh there are a lot of vocab here I have not seen elsewhere

Old, Tripod-hosted Etruscan Glossary – I think these are mostly just the same terms from the Lexicons page, but in harder-to-use format

Etruscan word search – Decent, but not the most extensive vocab

Introduction to the Etruscan Language – Looks to be from Maravot.com, but in pdf format

Paleoglot.com’s Etruscan tag – Blog by an actual linguist who regularly discusses Etruscan material, and who even created their own translation applet! – which was, unfortunately, in flash, and is thus no longer usable. (There is a certain irony that even the tools available online to help you understand Etruscan are written in a language that is now no longer supported or understood by any modern browser.)

Not that translating what’s in the game is going to be easy, oh no. Take, for example, the oh-god-please-don't-kill-me ceremonial greeting Geralt has to offer to the Unseen Elder to survive that meeting – "Eclthi, lautni ama".

'Eclthi' is apparently a "demonstrative (locative)" (’here’, ‘there’, etc). "Lautni" is trickier – it means a freed slave, but may also imply a familial relationship or a client of sorts, while the root “lautn” apparently designates simply “possession.” House slaves in the ancient world were often considered part of the family, and freed slaves were an important class in many ancient cultures, who often maintained relationships with their former masters, so you can see the internal logic, but what sense was the Witcher using it in? It’s hard to know.

"Ama" is possibly worse – most translations seem to have taken it as "to be", but sometimes also “to love”, or even "now" or  "meanwhile." Then you hit the question of Etruscan grammar, and I have no idea where I’d even start. So, with a little creativity, you could probably translate that phrase as anything from "take this and consider me a friend" to "meanwhile, this is family" to "a demonstration of love from your slave." I mean, you've got the same general theme going there regardless, but there's a lot of ambiguity in the inflection.

For what it's worth, I feel garasham's translation efforts are easily the most convincing I've seen – they have the above line as “Here I am a slave / a friend / kindred” FWIW. (Mind you, given the wiki doesn't even try to do more than offer you one possible meaning for each word, there's not exactly much competition out there).

So, bringing this all back to that fic and how to say ‘fuck’ in Etruscan...

I've already gone to the web's Etruscan dictionaries once while I was writing Forget-Me-Not, seeking inspiration for a 'real' name for "the Queen of the Night" from the first Witcher game. Neither 'queen' or 'night' got me far, but the Etruscans did apparently have a goddess of the moon called 'Aritimi, Artume or Artames', which worked pretty well. If anything it's almost too close to the better-known Greek goddess Artimis, who was obviously a relative (ancient cultures bleed into each other even when they're not bleeding all over each other, nothing new there), but I'm not going to be picky.

However, being a) a giant nerd, who b) writes a lot of smut, and c) is no more mature deep down inside than the rest of us, I couldn't resist seeing if I could find some slightly more obscene vocabulary. Did the Etruscans have a word for, say, 'fuck'?

Alas, if they did (and I mean, they totally did, c'mon), the web wouldn't tell me about it. Nor could I find much else relating to sex or genitalia (male or female), or even a decent word for 'thrust'.

On the flipside, there were a couple of different terms meaning 'plough'. And anyone who's played – well, any of the games, but especially Witcher 2 – would probably realise exactly why that filled me with so much glee.

Speaking of which, here, have a picture which is in no way related:

The fact that the various Etruscan terms meaning ‘plough’ could also apparently be translated as things like “to worship“ or “to act through movement, including ritual acts,” or that an important mythological figure was “a prophetic child who sprang from a freshly plowed furrow” was in no way discouraging.

The word I ultimately picked was 'esari'. Admittedly, variations on the prefix ‘ar-’/‘ara-’/’aras’ were much more consistently attested to throughout the various online Etruscan dictionaries as ‘terms meaning plow’, but figuring out how to convert an Etruscan prefix into a satisfying word is officially where even my enthusiasm for all this nonsense gives out. Esari was, by comparison, already a much more solid-sounding term, so let’s go with that.

Why go to all this trouble anyway? Well, the honest answer is “entirely for my own amusement”, but the nominal excuse comes right back to “so I could give Regis and Geralt this little exchange during a sex scene.”

"Unless you have any particular objection," said Regis, moving to straddle Geralt's body, "I thought we might engage in some esari... hm, what was the equivalent term in your language again?" The vampire leaned in close to Geralt's ear as he made a show of remembering his answer, "Ah, yes—I thought I'd fuck you."

Never let anyone tell you you never learnt anything from porn!

[daveedstan]

there are not enough words in the english lexicon to explain what this picture does to me. i just can’t

[lockawayknight]

❤️ of-forossa and yellowfingcr <3

from send ❤️ + a url for some positivity [accepting!!]

HEY OKAY U WANNA SEND IN TWO OF MY MOST FAVOURITE PPL IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD HUH I SEE HOW IT IS my GOODNESS where do i even begin,,,,

listen @yellowfingcr was one of the first rp blogs i ever followed, like i think the second ever fjdkd even before i was writing or in the community like i just loved their heysel so much i couldnt NOT follow it was like a Requirement, THE TALENT,,, THE RANGE to muse heysel and licia AND NITA listen im gonna scream,,,, i could go off about each individual muse i really really could cus each one is so fuckin unique and developed and feels so real and my GOODNESS i just am obsessed

and that WRITING TALENT and the energy and passion and love that goes in it like?? keep my dash ALIVE babes every time heysel pops up to ask what the mood of the day is i know it’s gonna be a good day,,,, such drive and love gets put into everything u can tell, GOD i wish i could keep up with stuff that diligently and passionately anD UGH IDK i just am full of such a baffling amt of admiration

AND THE ART?? HELLO 911 IM HAVING A HEART ATTACK THIS ART IS SO STUNNING??? every character is so unique and so beautiful!! the striking features, strong and defined, the range of style, the beautiful paintings and crisp comics, i just!!! i scream every DAY i look at every gift i’ve been given with so much love i just am blessed to have had my stinkman drawn by someone so talented BLESSED i say

and literally the nicest person ever??? hello??? we muse in the dms a lot and it is the most wonderful thing in the world to have someone i can just go off memeing abt the fingers with it is SO GOOD AND NICE i always feel like such a burden when i send ppl random posts but they just always help with confidence and positivity and always check in on health and it is so nice like i cannot BELIEVE how kind they are hhhh im gonna freicken cry just thinking abt it….

—

AND @of-forossa LISTEN can we just talk abt this dude’s skill with the english language like??? everything is PURE POETRY every post every drabble every reply every OOC POST literally this mf could talk abt his dog chewing thru ethernet cables and it’ll make me feel like i’m back in oregon at the shakespeare festival, he words everything SO GOOD AND NICE

and the passion behind the writing??? so much thought and love and dedication to the craft, so much imagery and thought, so much emotion through location and everything, i really just cannot express how incredible it is. who else takes simple meme prompts and turns them into goddamn vignettes like literally he is a PAINTER OF WORDS yr inbox is a canvass whenever he touches it literally it is like a little blessing every gd time i can’t even explain,,,

and brom??? hello brom the best man in the fuckin world??? and all the hcs abt forossa and the lion knights and everything that comes with it??? this man is a WORLDBUILDER who the FUCK else can craft not just an oc detailed and complex enough to feel completey human but also craft them an entire world that feels real enough it’s like i’ve been there. so much intricate knowledge and lore, and written with so much carefully detailed crafting, it’s so effortless to insert your own char into the world bc it is so fleshed out it feels like home. AND BROM IS ONE OF MY FAVES EVER ngl me and my partner are always talking abt brom just in our everydays we just have entirely replaced the cursebearer with brom in our lexicon cus he’s so fucking good he is the BEST

and the mun is just generally such a sweetheart? while STILL being a poet, every ooc message and meme and musinng feels crafted by gods but still is so sweet and entertaining like i CANNOT give this guy enough props for how sweet and wonderful he is,,,,

hey did i mention the language by the way. what about the language. and the language?? listen i’m a fangirl ngl cjcnsks

god there is so much more i could say abt both these wonderful folks but i’m already super over my break JFNFMSMSK ty ty sm!!💕💕

[nocturne-pisces]

Title: Get A Load Of This Trainwreck

Pairing: Reader x Bucky Barnes

Rating: PG-13 for language, minor violence, suicidal ideation.

WC: 1.9k

Summary: You’re just a receptionist. You can’t save the world.

AN: This was inspired by a couple lines in a Cavetown song. Any notes would be appreciated. I take drabble requests, I specifically work well with the kind of whumpage like what I’ve written here. Special thanks to @frnkensteingrl​ for giving me the extra push and giving me an audience.

______________________________________________________________

You felt the pad of Bucky’s thumb trace over your knuckles as he drove. 

“I’m thinking after things-” he cleared his throat, figuring out how to phrase what was going on between them”-uh...get better. We should take a vacation. Anywhere.” 

The words echoed in your ears, registering as sounds in the English lexicon, but not really absorbing them. You’d barely spoken in the last couple weeks. Barely eaten. Barely slept.

You spent most of your time sitting on the floor of your bathtub letting your tears mix with the water. The drops of water drummed against your ribcage. Hollow and empty. 

“Okay,” you answered, voice cracking from underuse. He looked over and offered a genuine smile, happy that he got to hear the sound of your voice. 

A sigh raked its way through your chest as you pulled into the parking lot for Dr. Raynor’s office. Bucky had finally convinced you to go to couples therapy when you’d called him James one too many times. You were only three weeks deep. Bucky did all the talking,  you mostly stared out the window, just sitting there to appease him. 

The problem wasn’t him. The problem was you. You took a leave of absence from work for a few weeks, and it had given you the time to truly dwell on all of the things that were wrong with you. 

You sat on one end of the hideous gray Ikea couch and Bucky sat on the other, making himself comfortable while you just figured out a way to make yourself small. 

Dr. Raynor made you feel naked, like she saw through you. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line as she looked from Bucky to you. 

“How was last week?” She asked, swinging her notebook open and jotting down notes as Bucky began. 

“I think we’re doing better. She still barely speaks, but I convinced her to go out to a local pizza joint last Friday night.”

Thinking about leaving your apartment building last Friday night made your empty stomach lurch. Your friend had sent you the headline as soon as it was posted ‘MRS. WINTER SOLDIER LOOKING WORSE FOR WEAR.’ The picture attached was one of you where you looked particularly washed out, the bags under your eyes practically fucking glowing while you hugged your cardigan close to your frame. 

“And what about you, Y/N? How do you think last week went?” Dr. Raynor asked.

“Fine,” you answered, pulling your cardigan closed around you again now. 

Bucky’s leg was starting to bounce, he did that when he was irritated or under duress. You could feel the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, a tell tale sign that a storm was about to roll in. You swallowed hard.

Bucky’s thin patience snapped and his head whipped around to stare at you lightning fast. “Why wont you work on this like I’m working on this?” he thundered. You startled, your body going rigid as Bucky’s tone rolled over you in waves. He might as well have stabbed you in the stomach and twisted the blade. He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the panic rising in his chest. The love of his life had been slipping away from him for months and he didn’t know why.

“There’s nothing you need to work on,” you offered meekly. You just wanted to deal with it on your own, compartmentalize and get over it so you could go back to being The Winter Soldier’s Perfect Wife.

“I know, I know. It’s not a me thing, it’s a you thing, but you’re not getting better and I can’t help unless you tell me what’s going on.” His voice started to falter, like he was about to fall and he was grabbing onto anything that would keep him from the drop. “Please, baby, please…” he took your hand in his, bringing it up to his mouth and kissing it. 

Though you didn’t turn to him, you closed your eyes as you drown yourself in his concern, the sob getting lost behind your ribcage while you wondered what he’d ever seen in you. The tears flowed anyways, falling off of your face and onto your sweater. When you didn’t respond to his touch, he let you have your hand back, keeping his body angled towards you. 

“Y/N, you have to let other people in if you expect to get better,” Dr. Raynor said. 

Your body felt like it was compressed too tight, like an aerosol can in a hydraulic press. Just a couple more pounds of pressure and…

“Do you want a divorce?” It was barely a whisper on your right side. You turned your head to see Bucky eye locked pointedly on his hands, eyes red and glossy while he twisted the wedding band on his ring finger. 

Your jaw dropped as your breathing became ragged. No. Absolutely not, you didn’t want a divorce. You only loved him. You only wanted him. How were you supposed to explain that you didn’t understand why he didn’t want a divorce. 

At the sound of your breaths he looked up. Bucky’s eyes went wide watching you hyperventilate. He could see the fear in your eyes as you tried to hold on to the reality around you. 

“Baby it’s just a panic attack, breathe with me,” he said, moving to crouch in front of you. 

Dr. Raynor got up from her chair and walked over to stand next to where Bucky sat.

“Deep breaths, Y/N,” she said, laying a hand on your shoulder. 

There were too many people too close to you and it was too much to handle. You felt yourself fill your lungs with air before letting out an ear splitting, blood curdling scream. You screamed until you had no air left, and then you took a breath and sobbed. 

You fisted Bucky’s shirt and shook him, rage and venom lacing your voice. 

“Ever since Steve died you’ve been America’s fucking golden boy. Your fucking redemption arch is Oscar worthy. Take a look at this monster! He doesn’t know how to communicate, everyone just give him a little bit of space! 

“And then there’s me. Little ole me. Too fat. Too skinny. Wears too much makeup. Doesn’t wear enough makeup. What is that dress? Does she own anything other than sweaters. Who designed the bags under her fucking eyes what a GODDAMNED TRAINWRECK.”

It was all pouring out of you and you couldn’t stop it. Everything you’d bottled up for Bucky’s sake since the funeral. Everything you’d tried to deal with on your own. 

Bucky was reeling. It was like someone had flipped a switch in his head and he was coming to understand everything.

“I’m just a fucking receptionist. Yes, my husband is the Winter Soldier-” you mocked, looking over at your pretend patient from your pretend desk “- He's doing so well recently. Can I schedule your fuCKING FOLLOW UP APPOINTMENT?”

You reached back and swung down into Bucky’s left arm, wanting to take your anger and frustration out on something, anything. Needing the release of catharsis, the release of pain. Bucky didn’t even flinch, he felt like he deserved it after having been this fucking oblivious for so long. When your fist connected you felt a crunch in your wrist and your face contorted as you let out a strangled cry. Bucky jumped and reached for your hand but you jerked it away from him, tears still running down your face.  

Dr. Raynor’s eyes were wide, looking to Bucky to see if she needed to call an ambulance, or a local psych ward. Maybe an exorcist? Buck just shook his head. This is the breakthrough they’d been praying for for months now, you just needed time to work through it. 

“I’m just a fucking receptionist. I can’t save the world,” you cried, cradling your busted hand to your chest. Your chest felt like it was fracturing and falling in on itself and in just a second the couch was going to swallow you up into the endless black.

You looked up at him finally, tear tracks standing out against your skin, your hand starting to swell. “Why do you love me when I’m so useless?” 

At that moment, Bucky would rather have sat in the chair for another 70 years than hear the pain in your voice. 

His own tears finally crested and tracked down his face, his nose burning and his throat dry. He set his forehead down on your knees, holding onto your calves for dear life. 

Bucky could remember every cup of tea, every tissue you’d used to wipe his tears, every time you’d woken him from a nightmare, every time you’d slept on the floor with him, every time you stitched him up so he didn’t have to deal with a hospital, every time you got the groceries by yourself because he’d broken down in the shakes in the middle of the paper goods aisle, every time you’d remembered to grab his favorite cookies, every time you waved off him being on a mission during a birthday or an anniversary. 

Bucky could remember every time you’d sacrificed yourself for him, but couldn’t remember the last goddamn time they had an in-depth conversation about you. 

It felt like someone had slapped him in the face. Fuck, you should have slapped him the face.

“I am so fucking sorry,” Bucky said, his voice cracking as he looked up into your face. 

“I’m not special, I don’t-” you started, but he cut you off. 

“You are special,” he pleaded, taking the hand you weren’t cradling against your chest in both of his, “Goddamn does it take a super kind of woman to put up with my bullshit, and you do it all without breakin’ a sweat.” 

“James, I--”

“You really gotta cut that James shit, you only call me that when you’re mad at me. Are you mad at me?”

That earned a broken chuckle from you, he wasn’t wrong. 

“No, Buck, I’m not mad at you. I just wish I was more. That I did more. Maybe if I saved a planet-”

Buck cut you off again, shaking his head. 

“Baby, you save my world every time you make brownies,” he breathed, meeting your eyes. 

It felt like the world finally rolled off your shoulders. You felt so incredibly stupid and relieved at the same time. 

Bucky wasn’t done, “no one behind a camera or writing for a blog or a newspaper or whatever the fuck they have in the impulse aisles at the grocery store can tell me all the superpowers that my wife has.”

“Oh god, I know, I’m so stupid,” tears started to spring forward again as you leaned forward into Bucky’s shoulder. 

“You’re not stupid, baby, no, but I just might be the world’s oldest idiot,” he replied, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “I had no idea it was affecting you like this. I am so sorry I haven’t been paying attention.” He took your face in his hands and blotted away a couple stray tears with his thumb, leaning in to lay a long, loving kiss on your forehead.

“I’m sorry I let it get this bad without saying anything,” you croaked back.

Dr. Raynor cleared her throat, trying to get everyone’s attention. 

“I am so glad we have made so much progress today, but Y/N’s hand is turning purple,” she said, pointing at the hand laid against your chest. Your wrist throbbed something awful, like you’d just remembered you’d been in pain to begin with.

“Oh fuck, right, I’m sorry,” you bit back more tears, this time from physical pain. 

“Shit doll, let's get you to a hospital,” Bucky said, helping you stand and ushering you out the door. 

“Next week, same time. We’ll do another check in,” Dr. Raynor called after you. 

Maybe tomorrow, in your pain killer haze, you could look at gated communities to move to.

[insane-control-room]

The Linework

Chapter Two, Segment Three

previous - next

Spasm

Masterpost

“Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds,” Sammy’s smooth voice had sent Joey launching to the ceiling via the powerful tool known as ‘surprise’. Sammy ignored his mortified expression, turning to address the more dignified Henry instead. “But we need you downstairs to check the music for the new episode. Allison keeps complaining about one thing and Susie about another. Basically we need you two to either agree with or veto them.” 

“Mhm,” Henry got up, picking Boris (who had been oblivious to his parent’s romantic actions) from the floor, tucking him with total ease under his arm and heading down to the music department with Sammy. He turned around, smirking back at Joey, who stared at them, doe eyed and sweet. “Coming?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I am,” Johan nodded, shaking his head to clear it from the yelling that was reverberating in his mind. He tripped over his own feet, Henry snorting and shaking his head as he continued on with Sammy. Johan glanced at the space they once were, and sank into Henry’s chair, breathing hard and heavy. He looked at his hands. One, two, three, four, and five. Same on the other hand. Same on the other hand. Right? Breathe, damnit! You are not under water! You are on land, man, open your eyes and see it right before you! And yet, still, he could not quell the pounding in his chest. His legs felt both like silky soft jelly and quick stabbing pins and needles all at once. What was happening to him? Nothing. Nothing. Everything was fine. So… why did it feel all wrong? He was supposed to do something right now, what was it? His whole body felt numb, twitchy, off kilter. There was only one word to describe how he felt, and his dry, heavy mouth managed to form it. “What?”

He had experienced this before; but before, his mind had matched the state of his body, and in his swapped, uneven, incorrect form, temporally misaligned, his mind was quickly reaching a similar reaction.

Panic can be a lot of things. Such a word is simultaneously a verb, adjective, and noun. And right then, all at once, Joey was all three definitions, yet his mind had not caught up to it yet, though it could be described easily enough to an onlooker (like you).

His body was panicking (the verb), his chest heaved in quick panicked (the adjective) breaths, and his mind was acutely aware of said panic (the noun) overtaking him.

Joey could not see two feet in front of him. Was there anything to see, even? He felt, rather suddenly, light headed, like… like… as though he had lost too much blood.

With a gasp, his head fell back, and he was falling, falling, falling….

He returned to himself with a gasp, gripping the seat of Henry’s chair so tightly his knuckles showed the white of bone beneath nightly dark skin.

Breathing felt like honey on the back of his throat; sticky, sweet, however with that crystalline unscratchable itch on the back of the throat. How long had he been sitting there, in a half present, half reality torn state? As he groggily returned to his senses, he became uncomfortably aware of the fact that it was not only the air that stung like the bees’ produce, but his skin felt clammy, sticky, and his limbs were difficult to maneuver. 

God damnit. 

Damn damnit goddamnit.

Now that the wave of panic had subsided, he was forced to deal with the wreckage, and how he loathed it. He was late downstairs, right? To the music department. He got up on painful jelly legs, feeling like an old hag back in his hometown who had gotten mad at him for going into the library (and exiting unscathed) had jammed her knitting needles straight through his femurs. Both of them. At once. With about forty needles. Sure, at the time it had happened, one seemed more than enough, thank you, but right then, as he stood, with no needles in his legs (he checked) the pure agony of that simple motion shot nausea roiling through his gut. 

He slipped on Boris’ crayons, and yelped as he pitched down into the staircase.

He closed his eyes tight as he waited for his head to bash against some painful and rough surface, but that never happened, instead a rush exiting his lungs as he was caught in soft, muscular arms. 

Joey peeked an eye open, and saw Henry looking at him; with some fondness, some concern, and a bit of teasing. Okay, a lot of concern, now that he could get a proper look at him.

“You don’t look so good, Johan,” he told him, even as he carried him, koala style, down the stairs. Johan only grumbled something, he thinks he mentioned a headache, pressing his forehead against Henry’s shoulder. “Something wrong, sweetheart?”

“N-no,” Johan mumbled, feeling light and airy. There was a fog misting his mind again already. “Just jittery, is all it is. I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Henry questioned, sounding even more concerned. “You started acting strange as soon as, well, as soon as Sammy interrupted us.”

Inky hands reaching, persecuting, angry and dead.

“Joey?”

“Huh?”

“Stay with me.” Henry’s voice had a tone of commandment. He heard someone ask a question, Henry answering. What a weird answer. “He’s fine, just overworked himself as usual.”

Johan tried to lift his head. 

“Mnah,” were the sounds that came out of his mouth. His mouth… he should kiss Henry, right? Yes, that seemed like the right thing. He looked up with glazed eyes to the doctor. The doctor looked so worried. He should kiss the worry away. He pulled himself up slightly, and pressed his lips to Henry’s, a little whisper on his lips. “Love you, Ray. M’sunshine.”

“Johan, snap out of it,” Henry’s hands were warm and solid on his cheeks. He wanted to ask him what he meant. “Joey, can you say where you are?”

“Sure I can, with you,” he easily answered. “In… in… in….”

Where was he?

“The studio, Joey,” Henry’s gorgeous earthlike orbs glinted with compassion and concern as they roamed over his face. “The studio, our studio. Remember?”

He nodded. Yes. He did. And that opened the floodgates of his mind, and his eyes widened as his memory took its course and did its job of remembering. 

“Music department,” Joey whispered, and turned bright red. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry, Henry, I, I didn’t mean ta embarrass you like that, how can I make it up f-for you?”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Henry rocked him in his arms. The three kids that were there looked up at them, then decided that the musicians were more interesting than one of their fathers putting the other to sleep, though Alice did let out a dreamy sigh. “You don’t need to do anything. I think a big of good ol’ PDA would help you a lot, especially with that PTSD of yours.”

Joey felt his nose wrinkle.

“You and your acronyms,” he snorted, not quite contemptuously, but close enough to get the point across. “And I hardly know english, and it makes it all the worse.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing the extent of your spanish lexicon,” Henry smirked, watching Johan practically shrink into himself. “I think there would be some interesting words locked away in that pretty head of yours.”

“Explain what you said first,” Joey demanded.

“I mean that you freak out over a lot of things,” Henry sighs. “And then, you completely shutdown. That’s normal behavior for someone who went through what you did.”

He was not wrong, Joey gulped.

“I’m fine.” He muttered, turning away. Henry turned him to face back, glaring, but with love. “Like hell you are.”

Johan blinked, and then pouted.

“I think that loosening up would help you a lot.” Henry informed him. “More spark, less routine.”

“I like order, Henry,” Johan shuddered as he recalled a world without order, ones and zeros strewn about haplessly, without any true form, no meaning behind any of them. “I need it.”

“You’ve grown dependent on it,” Henry corrects him with a small, sad smile. “Too dependent. You said it just now. You need it. It’s… it’s the opposite of Numerica, isn't it? Truly chaos disguised by order. Numerica was order disguised by chaos. You need to let go, Joey. You hold too tight to the moment. You need to let go, to go with the flow, to overcome each hurdle as it comes. Chaos is a part of our world. You need to let it in, sometimes.”

Joey does not even bother arguing.

Henry is right, he knows it, and Henry knows that he knows.

So he lets the music of their little orchestra sweep over him, and tries to lose himself in the contours of the melody, tries to soak up the unexpectedness and nuance of simply sound from instruments, hoping that his body could keep up.

[animationforce]

Helen McCarthy’s Words Broke Cultural and Gender Barriers in Manga

(This interview took place in 2019, now published for the first time in a two-part series. Read part two here.)

A longtime fan of Japanese comics, British writer Helen McCarthy was determined to showcase women’s place in art and fandom.

When British author Helen McCarthy set out to write a book about manga, Japanese comics, in the 1980s, few people were open to her idea of writing an English language book about Japanese animation. Yet McCarthy had already fallen in love with the way manga told stories through imagery; manga didn’t rely on words, which, to a writer, was remarkable and humbling. 

“It took me 10 years of knocking on doors, being rejected, and having people hang up the phone on me,” McCarthy, 68 of London, said. “I knew nothing about how to write books. I knew nothing about pitching, but I was determined to do it and I kept going.”

Manga — the comic or graphic novel style telling of a story — and television-centric anime are distinct from Western animation. Both styles favor large, expressive eyes above minimally drawn noses and mouths (which can, conversely, also be overly exaggerated). Greater detail is given to things like eyelashes, hair, and clothing; colors have more variance and are shaded to add more depth, according to Lifewire. 

While Western comics are often considered a “family-friendly superhero genre,” UK-based magazine Manga Big Bang noted, manga is more likely to explore darker themes and material like “sex, violence and scatology.” 

“The reason for this freedom in exploring such concepts is cultural, as the primary religious affiliations of Japan is Shinto and Buddhism—religions that do not equate sex with shame,” the magazine added. “This allows the Japanese to be more liberal in exploring sexuality than most Americans.”

Perhaps because of this subject matter and lingering anti-Japanese sentiment in Britain following WWII, McCarthy was told time and time again that there was no interest in consuming or reading about Japanese animation. Yet her own experience voraciously reading manga would prove otherwise.

“It was actually the rejection that kept me going. People, it was mostly guys, were essentially saying, ‘Go away little girl and do something sensible,’” she said. “And why should I do something sensible? I'm going to do this. And I'll show all of you.”

McCarthy initially read everything she could find on Japanese animation in the UK library system, the British Library, and then the British Film Institute Library, though she found very little information. But being from a family of Irish immigrants (and, McCarthy says, the Irish love to read), she learned early on that “if there wasn't a book about you [or a topic] ... you go and write it yourself.” 

“In 1983 Frederik L. Schodt published his seminal ‘Manga! Manga! a History of Japanese Comics,’ and I expected a flood of books to follow in its wake,” McCarthy explained via email, “but that didn't happen, so we just plodded on getting as much as we could, meeting the few other Brits who knew about anime and manga and building a small network.”

In her 30s, McCarthy began reaching out to anime/manga fans around the world and relied on the knowledge of fans from other fandoms like Star Trek and supermarionation (a style of puppetry popularized by British television production company AP Films in the 1960s) to learn more about the art form and the culture surrounding it. She travelled throughout Europe, purchasing cheap manga in French and Italian, which she understood enough to passively read.

In the 1980s, McCarthy noted, “there were very few people in Britain who could even pronounce the word anime. And as far as I know, nobody was doing any work on manga in English—even [UK based comics journalist] Paul Gravett hadn't got hooked at that point!” 

Before a publisher would give her a chance on the misunderstood medium, McCarthy took things into her own hands. In 1991 she co-founded the magazine Anime UK, a worldwide publication that covered Japanese pop culture. McCarthy was inspired by Anime-zine, the first American semi-professional anime magazine, and the Japanese magazines she and her partner, Steve Kyte, loved. The magazine grew from a fan publication newsletter, also called Anime UK, created after British national sci-fi convention Eastercon in 1990. Wil Overton, who subscribed to the newsletter, shared the newsletter with his boss Peter Goll, who agreed to publish and fund Anime UK through his company, Sigma. Overton and Kyte worked for the magazine as designers and artists while McCarthy served as editor. 

Anime UK hoped to tap the UK’s burgeoning anime fandom, and achieve the aesthetic beauty of those Japanese magazines, mirroring the “accessible yet authoritative writing of Anime-zine.” The magazine ceased publication in 1996. 

A year later, McCarthy’s first book, Manga, Manga, Manga: A celebration of Japanese Animation at the ICA Cinema, was published.The book collected illustrations, offered plot synopsis, a term lexicon, and descriptions of prominent anime of the time such as Akira and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Since, McCarthy has published 12 books, won a handful of awards for her work and curation, and attended innumerable conventions (including one she chaired), where she has spread her love of Japanese animation across the globe. 

CONTINUED IN PART TWO

--

Amanda Finn is a Chicago based freelance journalist who spends a lot of evenings in the theater. She is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics Association. Her work has been found in Ms. Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, the Wisconsin State Journal, Footlights, Newcity and more. She can be found on Medium and Twitter as @FinnWrites as well as her website Amanda-Finn.com. 

[matt0044]

The Anime Community has a FUNimation Problem. Full Stop.

In Prison School’s seventh episode, Anzu Yokoyama’s dialogue with Shingo Wakamoto has her calling out his attempt at talking to a woman and kicking starting a fairly obligatory romantic subplot. The English Dub, up to that point, had all the hallmarks of FUNimation’s script writers playing off the already existing comedic aspect of the title. Some disapproved while other embraced it.

However, the dub would go a step further by having Anzu’s emasculation of Shingo involve a reference to the then ongoing Gamergate controversy. If anybody knew of the movemen then, you’d know this wasn’t a good idea. Every geek and their mother took offense to it right out the gate, claiming that it was FUNimation “shoving politics” where they don’t belong and insulting their fans.

To play devil’s advocate, Prison School as a whole is all about young men being integrated into a formerly all-girl school with all the sleazy shenanigans that the title’s become infamous for. It’s already pretty provocative in terms of visuals and how it pushes the envelope on its fan-service element. Something the dub team were keen to embrace with all of the dialogue reflecting this tone.

Yet Tyson Rinehart was raked over the coals for what was suppose to be an edgy joke for the sake of it, not unlike a lot of Prison School’s humor. Bare in mind that it within was one scene in the seventh episode out of a twelve episode Anime. We don’t get any other references to Gamergate like Anita Sarkeesian or the like in any other scene of any other episode. It’s just... this.

Yet even now when the line was redubbed to remove the reference for the home release, you’d think that this one line is all the dub is. That it’s akin to Shin Chan or Ghost Stories where the dub team wrote their own story and made jokes out of every kind of current event controversy because that’s what gets the lulz. Yet, again, it was just one scene in one episodes out of the twelve.

Of course, the cycle seemed to begin again with Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid which had a more... small scale kerfuffle in regards to the titlular human character claiming that, “I’m not into women or dragons.” Ironically, Jamie Marchi claimed she wrote that line since something like, “But I’m a woman,” came across as homophobic to her. However, I wrote my piece on all that.

What really got the wider community all up in arms was in regards to the character of Quetzalcoatl AKA Lucoa, specifically a single scene where she and Tohru exchange dialogue for less than ten seconds at most over her more conservative attire. Lucoa is pretty much THE fanservice character with breasts big enough to nearly suffocate a little boy in his sleep. Yes, that did happened.

Lucoa explains her more conservative attire as feeling uncomfortable with everybody looking at her in her other revealing outfits with the official subtitles by both Crunchyroll and FUNimation at the time. The dub would take it a step further so to speak by having her claim that she changed clothes because of “pesky patriarchal standards” getting on her nerves, something a tad different.

Well, I say, “different,” in the sense of what she’s referring to in regards to why she changed her clothes. The sub has it come out to “everybody” in a general sense like men, women and children alike while “patriarchal” is more specific in referring a societal phenomenon. However, that’s not what fans got in a tizzy over. The word, “patriarchal,” is the real focal point for this scene’s controversy.

It’s not secret that this word is thrown around most Feminist circles to the ire of geeks who “just wanna have fun” and hearing this word alone set off all the alarms. Like with Prison School, FUNimation was accused of trying to push a political agenda using Anime as Lucoa’s line was spread across the community.

By now, I’d like to be frank in how this all feels overblown. Using a word that’s common in the Social Justice lexicon can stick out but the idea that it turns the dub into political propaganda never made sense to me. I mean, it’s one thing the entire scene was rewritten to recite some kind of feminist manifesto but it only mentions the “patriarchy” and... that’s about it for this one scene alone. :/

I’d bring up “My First Girlfriend’s A Gal” but I feel like the points I made with Prison School largely apply here. However, I feel like some fans are hypocritical in how they claim that the dub’s dialogue is “inaccurate” when most enjoyed the dub for how it nearly went full Ghost Stories. Many felt that the dub was spicing up an otherwise by-the-numbers Ecch Fest that people would’ve written off. :P

Yet along came Episode 7 and the usage of the words of “SJWs millenials” among others was enough to make the dub “propaganda” in the eyes of many. Despite the fact that the script does convey the spirit of the original with the cafe manager trying to get the female cast into reading smut to nerd without their consent. What does that matter when the dub uses terms like “cuck?” :/

What about the voice acting? Doesn’t matter. Anzy referred “Gamergate.” That’s all that matters about Prison School’s English dub now and forever.

How well does the dialogue hold up on the whole? Doesn’t matter. Lucoa mentioned the “patriarchy.” That’s all that Maid Dragon’s dub amounts to.

Is it enjoyable in any way aside from said foibles? Doesn’t matter. The mention of “SJW millennials” in that one scene has now tainted the dub. Oh, the shame.

Starting to get the picture? I don’t want to be the guy who says dubs should go off doing as they please with not consideration for what the original’s narrative was trying to convey. Even if the occasional liberty can be intriguing, it’s always better for an English dub to keep the story in line with their source material. I, of course, type this for those who actually approach any dub in good faith at all. :/

The problem comes when the examples described above are weaponized by those who never had good faith in dubs and/or had it out for the likes of FUNimation to begin with. It’s not about discussion. It’s about propping up their bias of dubs being trash at best and trying to falsely villainize a company for making mistakes that ultimately amount to a handful of off-sounding dialogue.

By all means, discuss how those like FUNimation could improve on things such as where their streaming services are available region by region. Discuss how dubs like Danganronpa and Phoenix Wright recast the characters from the VAs in the games. Discuss how good or bad their script writing can be when it leans more loosely. All this fearmongering and vitriol does nothing but poison the well.

But weren’t these choices in adaptation politically motivated? Hell no? There’s a different between humor made in fairly poor taste and trying to brainwash your audience into believing, what, that women have problems? It’s not propaganda when you recognize it right away. And while Tyson Rinehart and Jamie Marchi responded rather rudely to the backlash... can you blame them with all of this?

I say this not to “kiss up” to FUNimation. Much as I admire their script adaptation process like the nerdy nerd I am, there can be times where I do feel they might’ve missed the mark. Particularly with their earlier dubs of the Dragon Ball franchise where they were borderline 4kids. However, dubs such as Fairy Tail and My Hero Academia are modern examples of how far they have come.

This mentality of holding grudges over fairly small potatoes that personally offend you gets us nowhere. I mean... isn’t it like the stereotypes SJWs are known for. A piece of media does something offensive, however big or small, and is deemed problematic forever by purity crusaders. Can’t we take a joke? It honestly gets to the point where I kind of have to quote Anzu Yokoyama here:

“Do you have a stick up your ass or are your one of those Gamergate creepshows?”