#thinking about how the majority of the other animators are not native english speakers but we all speak english to each other

[kabutone]

thinking about the “you speak english because it’s the only language you know, i speak english because it’s the only language you know” and feeling things

[mydelicateships]

A TRAGIC CHARACTER: KOKICHI MUTA

Since Kokichi Muta or also known as Mechamaru has the spotlight for an entire episode in season 2, I am here to talk about how I empathize with Kokichi Muta as a character who had suffered a lot and got nothing in return—or maybe he got something but it was short lived like the small moments with his friends—His true form, covered in bandages and fragile to the light and almost everything because of heavenly restriction, is confined and isolated from the social world; he was able interact with his colleagues through his machine called “Mechamaru” and with the help of his “puppetry manipulation technique”. He longed to have a healthy body and be with his colleagues but luck was never on his side. The life he had was never fulfilling to him as he was depressed, stressed, unhealthy, and desperate to be normal like others—albeit mostly see and protect Kasumi Miwa—He is (at least in my opinion) one of the most tragic characters in Jujutsu Kaisen.

I found him likable even if he was the mole that caused some major incidents in the anime/manga. I think it is because I empathize with the small but impactful happy moments he had with his friends even if his friends/colleagues had never known his name, never seen his face, and never had been with him in flesh. I felt sorry for his desperate attempt to attain his only wish/desire that resulted in naught. How I wish he were able to escape from his misery,  be among his friends/colleagues, lived the life he tried to fight for, and confess his love/affection to Kasumi Miwa—I am still sulking from the heartache Gege sensei has brought me—He was tragic; he lived alone and died alone. His love/affection was unrequited (as far as I can deduce, Kasumi Miwa was interested in him in a friendly sense). And I have bawled when he died thinking about Kasumi Miwa 🫠. Why can’t Gege sensei give him a moment with his friends before killing him?! The dude just can’t fathom why he suffered so much (physically and mentally); his parents did not even know he was still alive for 17 years. 

This character just broke my heart into pieces; he forever left an impression on me (unlike any other characters I have watched in anime) ❤️⭐️. Now that he has ascended to peace, I will just root for Kasumi Miwa’s happiness and other Jujutsu Kaisen characters (especially the students). 

Ps: I am not a native english speaker so if there are grammatically errors feel free to criticize me hehehehe.

[languagestudymaterials]

How to learn new words in your target language

Read about my personal experience here

Vocabulary, or linguistically speaking: lexis, is relatively easy to learn. You get a list, you memorize it, and you feel like you’re good to go.

But after a while, you realize that you can’t communicate. You blame your poor vocabulary for it, so you study more, and then again, you can’t communicate… and that’s how you start vicious circles. How come tho? You memorized so many words, so many swipes on Memirse, Quizlet, and Anki and you still can’t handle a conversation.

Let me show you where the problem is.

What does it mean to be conversational?

Well, it’s easy; you want to be able to strike up a conversation with a native or a non-native speaker and carry it for a longer period, utter meaningful sentences, and survive, right?

The first thing that comes to your mind is “To do that, I need to know more words” (that’s where our vicious circle starts). You go to Memirse, Quizlet, or Anki and you start memorizing your super long word lists.

Tip#1 To be conversational, decide what topic you want to talk about in the first place. About games? Fashion? Daily activities? Search useful language related to the topics you want to learn to talk about.

Tip#2 Set mini goals, for example, “By the end of this week I want to be able to talk about my favorite game!” and focus solely on that.  

Pockets of fluency

Have you heard of that? An extremely useful term. When you study a language, at some point you’re becoming well-versed in certain topics. You know lots of words related to those topics, and they create your pockets of fluency. I’m well-versed in teaching methodologies and anime because I studied the first one (I’m a language learner myself too) and I’m obsessed with the other one (my master’s thesis is on anime). In this case, my pockets of fluency are extremely full.

Pockets of fluency = topics you want to be able to talk about ��� becoming conversational.

English for work or other professional purposes

Sit down, then, and think about your duties at work. What phrases, words, and sentences do you use daily? Make a list of them and start searching for translations. Don’t limit yourself to words only; look for whole sentences too. Are you a sewer? Then look for articles related to sewing, extract useful language, and adapt it to your needs.

Tip #3 Useful language in teaching means words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Not just words! To become conversational, you need to learn as much useful language as possible.

Tip #4 Don’t look for lists of words only. They are a good jumping-off point, but you need more. Articles, people’s comments, videos will help you sound more natural.

Avoid these!

Learning words that you don’t really need. Let me tell you, during my college years, I learned a shit ton of words that I haven’t even used since then (not even once). I’ve seen, maybe, 10 in novels and NY Times articles. But hey, that’s what you get when you major in languages.

Off-topic!

Whenever your brain sees new words, it immediately starts making connections with the words it already knows. That’s why you remember some words faster and some not. When you learn a completely new word, your brain is kind of lost, it sort of asks:

What am I supposed to do with that word?

So, your brain puts it in a random place and just waits… for you to use it again in a context. When you use words in context, your brain easily associates the new words with the old words, it says:

Hey! I remember that! We spoke about it last time, and we used these words… ok I’m going to put it here, in this pocket of fluency, seems useful!

Conclusion? If you don’t use words, your brain forgets them.

Passive learning is another thing to avoid

Study actively. Anki, Memrise, and Quizlet are good for revisions, but real learning starts when you use the words you’ve learned in real-life situations. If you can’t put yourself in such situations then create them yourself, in your head, on paper, with other language learners.

An example from my classroom

The instruction says: What words do you already know? Check your knowledge first. Don't look for words without verifying what you already know. The blue box is for words you know. The pink one is for words you don't know. To expand your vocabulary, you can create a mind map, like the one below the boxes. You can start with vague words, for example: activities you associate with housework, and then look for more detailed vocabulary related to each specific word.

[sylvarantii]

The title is a bit deceptive, and while clever, it still doesn't improve things all that much.

I'm not sure if there's going to be much I can say about Detective Conan Movie 18: Dimensional Sniper (or as some title it "Sniper from Another Dimension")

It's fine. The story's fine and I am really pleased to finally have a movie with Sera in it (as well as Subaru, but his parts were smaller, so I don't feel like I can say much about it).

Anyway, was definitely expecting something more. I'll give credit where credits due and say though that the sniping scenes definitely had this weight of danger to them. I think in media, it's very common to see shoot outs with just hand guns and over all people being killed at closer range.

Or that's my case anyway.

To see scenes of people being shot down by a rifle gun is so brutal in another way. It feels so powerful and like the power of the bullets just does so much more damage. And then of course, the horror of being completely oblivious to it all. Just going about your own business and then it suddenly happen? I don't know, I just very much feel like the movie and animators conveyed how terrifying this sort of thing is.

I overall try to avoid heavy spoilers in case anyone wants to watch the movie for themself, but I do want to make one spoilery comment, so if you'd rather watch the movie first, I'm just going to comment enter in my thoughts in the space below and indicate when I'm done with the same cut off lines.

___

I was a bit touched by the relationship between Hunter and Yoshino. Yoshino clearly cared a lot for Hunter and even when Hunter had second doubts about their plan, Yoshino insisted because he wanted to help him get revenge. It's sort of a bittersweet moment, but it was exchange I liked, personally. It was a little touching, in a way.

___

Kudos to the guy who voiced Waltz by the way. I'm not trying to rag too hard on the voice casting for this series or the movies, but a lot of times they do hire vas that really do not speak English all of that well and it's very easy to tell. Even in this movie, a lot of English speakers were a little stilted and their performance sort of suffers because they're just not accustom to the language.

But damn, the va for Waltz? He at least has the pronunciation down. I could very easily understand what he was saying and I have to at least give him a bit of praise. Being a native Japanese person and having to do a performance where you need to be a foreigner and speak English through a good majority in your role can't be easy. He did a really good job.

Anyway, onto the ratings list, I suppose.

1.) The Raven Chaser (13th Movie)

2.) The Fourteenth Target (2nd Movie)

3.) The Lost Ship in the Sky (14th Movie)

4.) The Time Bombed Skyscraper (1st Movie)

5.) Magician of the Silver Sky (8th Movie)

6.) Captured in Her Eyes (4th Movie)

7.) Crossroad in the Ancient Capital (7th Movie)/Lupin the III vs. Detective Conan: The Movie

8.) Quarter of Silence (15th Movie)

9.) The Phantom of Baker Street (6th Movie)

10.) Countdown to Heaven (5th Movie)

11.) Strategy Above the Depths (9th Movie)

12.) The Private Eyes' Requiem (10th Movie)

13.) Full Score of Fear (12th Movie)

14.) The Eleventh Striker (16th Movie)

15.) The Wizard of the Last Century (3rd Movie)

16.) Dimensional Sniper (18th Movie)

17.) Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure (11th Movie)

18.) Private Eye in the Distant Sea (17th Movie)

Yeah, I have to say, a pretty unimpressive movie overall. I really did try to like it and of course, it has its good moments. But man, just like some of the other movies, the build up and pay off is a little too slow and small for my liking.

Still a pretty good watch though. Especially if you enjoy anything with not only Sera and Subaru, but the FBI Agents.

[millipedish]

Update thoughts

Spoilers for the Night of the Full Moon update that came out 9/29

First of all I have to say that the translation to English is abysmal, and that really bums me out. It's most noticeable in the little pig monster dlc bc that's a brand new story introducing new characters, but just about all the new stuff is kind of shoddy. I mean, every time there's an update, the translation is a little silly. But it's particularly hard to parse this year. It feels like they put the text through google translate or some shit.

Sometime in the future we might get a better translation, and maybe not. It does bum me out that they keep releasing the game as unfinished, but I do get that the core audience is in China, not English speakers. IDK, I think I would be OK with there being a delay between updates being released in certain regions, just to give them more time to polish it up. Lowkey I'm amazed all characters have English voices.

How can the line reads be so good and the text is so confusing? Isn't finding voice actors harder than finding translators? To make it worse, I've seen posts on their facebook where the devs ask for translators and outright state it's not paid work which...no. No, no. You can't do that. You can't ask for free labor from your fanbase for a game you profit on. You just can't. Like yikes.

Getting little pig monster out of the way first because it's the biggest departure. I was super disappointed to find out that this story is completely separated from the notfm universe and the pig monster is not, indeed, a monster living in the black forest. The gameplay isn't much to comment on.

You'll find that the pig monster mode has a different art style and more fluid animation. Turns out that this is because it's part of a collab with a chinese animation studio, and some animated clips are in the game. This is sort of like, a game version of an animated short. The story is a chapter from Journey to the West, I think. But the translation is so odd that I kept getting a dead end just for answering questions the wrong way. Like I kept thinking I was saying one thing and I said the opposite.

The Spirit Caller is legit fun, tho. It's fun to make these hybrid cards that totally destroy the monsters. My favorite combo is star and poison, especially if you fuse it with a particularly big tree. Then you're putting a shitton of poison on the enemy, twice.

But I'm the guy who freaks about lore, so that's enough about gameplay. Very interesting that all the spirits Red synthesizes all look like wolves. I wonder how young Jerry feels in this universe, seeing his friend playing with ghost wolves all the time. Would him make him more bold about spilling his secret? Or does this Red feel like werewolves are a perversion of her beloved spirit wolves?

Not sure how I feel about the offbrand native american imagery in the weapons especially with the eagle's feather hat. That feels like it might be offensive but I cannot speak to that. It wouldn't be the first time, though. The feral child's design is 100% uncomfortable. Like why would you do this.

The two new factions in memory in the mirror are like, I mean, they're what they are. I played through it using an all witcher team once and that was enough for me. Honestly mitm is my least favorite mode. The game is not as fun as the other modes and gets more repetitive. It happens in another world? Maybe? A majority of these characters just do not matter, with the exception of the wolf doll.

Wishing Night has the most interesting new content by far, lore wise. New enemy characters! And a new protagonist! Now you get to be the witch! Yanno, from full moon.

I do love to see her lore filled out more. Her relationship with her father, though tragic, makes a lot of sense. A lot of people go into bigtime denial when it comes to their abusive family members. I'm kind of shocked to learn that the witch is 17. Wishing Night takes place a year after Full Moon, and Red is 16 in full moon, so the Witch and Red are the same age. That's wild. For some reason she seemed like in her late 20s or something.

It kind of changes how I perceive the witch and the priest. The priest found this girl, turned out by her own family, and exploited her compromised mental state. And she was a child at the time. Really solidifies him as the true big bad, in my mind. One wonders if the reason that she believes that her father is possessed is because of the priest's rhetoric.

The update page mentioned something about finding descriptions of wn characters you can recruit in the 'art book', but idk what the artbook is or where to find it. I would have really liked to read more lore. Esp I started writing my fic series to figure out why the Mech Magician and the Tin Man are still cursed and hanging out with Little Red Riding Hood, now.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

Your major sounds so interesting! What attracted you to study linguistics?

Oh, thank you lol

I've been fascinated by languages since I was a kid. I love this incredible thing that humans created. I really think language and music are the most amazing things humans have made, and I know people study animal forms of communication, but there's nothing else like human language. Language is limitless, and when we can't find a word, we use the rules in our languages to make new ones (how many times have you or someone talking to you tried to combine words to express a concept and gone, "That's not a word, but--" and you know what the meaning is regardless?). It's why something like doublespeak in 1984 is actually nonsense in real life lol.

There was no blueprint for humans developing language--it's not like we were put on earth with a language pre-installed into our brains--and I love reading about how similarly separate languages express similar concepts, and how differently. How did these groups of people across the globe develop a very similar mechanism to express x concept? How did this really different method develop? One of the reasons why I chose to study Japanese was because it's so different from English, and I'm really interested in learning about the things it does that English just plain and simple does not do (even something as simple as conjugating adjectives according to verb tense and whether it's positive or negative), and I'm amused when I see something in Japanese (even a saying) is similar to what we do in English, too.

There are other thoughts, like what are the rules of our languages that are hardwired into a native speaker's brain, which we're not even aware of until someone points them out to us? What happens when non-native speakers try to learn those rules, and how is that affected by their mother tongues? How do phonotactics (the rules which dictate the sound system of a language) play a role in learning another language's phonemes? How do non-native speakers find a way to express their thoughts without knowing the exact word they're looking for? These are the things which I encounter in my job a lot.

And then there are all the ways in which sociology and politics are affected by language, and vice versa. What are the linguistic features we used which are influenced by our identities, and how is the internet changing all of that and developing its own dialect? How have the sociolinguistics of different groups developed throughout history in a given place or community, and what factors made that change happen?

This isn't even getting into the more speech pathology aspect of things, either, with how the fuck our brains instantly find the words and sentence structures to express our thoughts and rapidly move our moth and throat muscles to speak--and how that process can go wrong in various ways in different speech and language disorders.

So yeah, when people are wholly uninterested in language and linguistics, I think they're pretty close-minded tbh, because this is an absolutely insane things that our brains do every single day.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm have a little prob. So uhh, I'm attempting writing a fic but I've see that a lot of people complain/critique when someone describe a character using the hair color. Like, «the red-headed said». Personally I don't find it annoying (only when overused in every single paragraph), but a lot people say it's bad to describe characters that way. Aaaaaand here's my problem: how can I describe a character that no one knows their name? (I'm writing my fic in third person but it isn't omnipresent, more like just focusing on a specific character's feelings and all of that. POV but not actually that POV-y, BTW.) Have anyone a tip for describing this character without using the «the red-headed said» or abusing «that boy», «the stranger», etc. I prefer asking because a lot of articles and all of that crap that appear when I google it aren't really helping, LOL. Thanks!

--

OH GOD EPITHETS

That POV is called 'third person limited', and the POV does convey character. The description you should use is the one that the POV character would actually think in their head.

The reason the hair color thing is so egregious is two problems:

First, the vast majority of the time, this is not how you'd be thinking of someone whose name you didn't know. You'd be thinking "the bank teller" or "the girl in the corner". If you're looking at security footage in color that's shot from above, you might ID various people by their hair color. If you're super horny for redheads or if red hair is super unusual or important to the plot, you might think of this lady by her hair color. But in general, it's not an in-character way to describe anybody.

(This also applies to bullshit like "the shorter man" or "the younger man" when the dude isn't like 30 years younger or a foot shorter. 99% of fanfic uses are about characters who are a centimeter different in height and look the same age.)

The second reason is amply demonstrated above. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of fic uses hair colors in ways that are not grammatical or natural in English, whether the author is clearly EFL like you or a native speaker. You need a noun.

"The redhead said..."

"The blond said..." (men only)

The blonde said..." (women only)

"The brunette said..." (women only)

Notice that there is no male equivalent of 'brunette' in English. If you want a dude version, it's "the brown-haired man". All other hair colors including black are "the [whatever]-haired person". Fandom really needs to lay off 'bluenette', 'pinkette', and other crimes of early anime fic.

This also applies to that egregious horror "The younger said...". It's used occasionally in 1920s novels and constantly in fic, but it's HORRIBLE. "The younger man said..." is also bad, but it's less stupefyingly godawful than "the younger".

--

Now, back to your question: I see your problem. There are lots of generic writing advice articles out there, so it's hard to know which one to listen to.

You say your fic isn't "POVy", but that's nonsense.

If the fic is third person limited rather than omniscient, then the way everything is described is that character's POV. What color words are used, which clothing or architecture is even described at all, whether smells and sounds are described or only visual input: everything like that builds a sense of the character. You may not be including a lot of detail, but any detail you put in is building their POV and thus their character.

Is your character the kind of person who gives weird nicknames to people? He'll call this redhead "Eyebrows" (capitalized like a name) because he noticed she has funny eyebrows. Is your character an overly serious cop? He'll call her "the suspect" or "the witness" or something. Is your character from a hardboiled detective novel? He'll call her "the dame". Is your character barely thinking about this woman? He'll refer to her as "the woman".

Pick one simple detail that is the most important aspect of her to your POV character. That becomes her "name" for now. The POV will call her that and only that as though it is a proper noun.

So if she's "the redhead", she is not also "the red-haired woman" or "the woman". Use only this one epithet plus she/her, just like you would normally use only a name plus she/her.

The only exception would be if your character has a good reason to update what they call her, usually because they've gotten new info about her identity (her name, her job description, she's so-and-so's sister, etc.). If your character calls everyone by a long list of constantly-evolving nicknames, then that's a character point, and you can do it, but you have to do it consistently (and it's probably going to be super annoying, so I would not personally pick this as your character's defining trait).

--

Epithets suck when they are out-of-character for the POV you are trying to write. When they are in-character, they are fine.

That's the rule.

[cat-fire]

How is Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai a game changer for content aimed at mature audience – Notes on Yashiro #1

I took some time to write in the middle of a gloomy afternoon. I started from my thought that Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai (both manga and anime) is an unique piece that forever has changed the quality of content aimed at mature audiences, but I ended up writing about Yashiro and why he is one of the best written characters that I’ve ever seen.

It will be a long text and you already know that I am not a native English speaker, but I am trying my best, so bare with me. I have so much to say, that I could not fit everything in one post. Expect more to come, but due to my busy work schedule I can only write once a week. Thank you! 

Disclaimer: There will be talks about abuse, rape, explicit sexual content, and I won’t refrain from using words like f and d. So it might be a lot of fucks and dicks. Also, a lot of personal side notes ahead.

[keep reading ♡♡♡]🖤🚬

I will analyze from a personal view the most important perceived elements of Yoneda Kou’s work, altogether with their perceived impact on content aimed at mature audience. In order to avoid any confusion that might occur due to my, at times, ambiguous manner of writing, I’ve decided to split my ideas into sections/headers which will highlight the main points. If anything gets foggy, I will gladly fragment it and explain it the best I can, later.

We’re living in an era where content is stored and shared everywhere. Content looks like a deep and wide ocean. Right before I watched Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai for the first time, I was looking to consume something romantic-but-controversial, dramatic, slow-paced and engaging, but with a tint of action, a need of mine that shows on Netflix, HBO or any other largely consumed broadcasting platform could not fulfill anymore.

I know for sure that too much existing content can be overwhelming. But is it really “this much content” quality content? The question is food for thought. With the illusion of endless choices in mind and at a click distance, it’s surprising to find out that there is so little content on topics like mature-romance-drama-action. This being said, I do not aim to compare Saezuru with anything else, as I know there are maybe other titles within the same tag (however, they are different!), and I don’t want any sort of bias to perpetuate and create divided opinions. Instead of comparing to other titles, I’d rather focus on why Saezuru is unique.

Even though Saezuru gives us the impression that it is niched on a certain audience, you have to hear me out how unique and amazing it is, that even while included within a huge scope of media entertainment, it still ticks the box for appeal on a larger audience. Larger than manga lovers. Larger than BL and romance lovers. I deliberately chose this term “content for mature audience” because I think that Saezuru perfectly fits it, more than it fits BL manga/ yaoi tag. 

Saezuru has endless potential and I am writing this because I want to see and hear more of it in the future. I wouldn’t mind a visual novel with Yashiro and Doumeki, more movies, or a long anime series. I see it as a game changer because it creates, through a series of elements well thought and put together, a genre on its own whose complexity makes it so difficult to put a label on, which ultimately is the source of its power over conventional content.

There are certain elements that make Saezuru what it is: art. We’re going to follow in-depth and with examples 2 important elements: development of characters and immersion. These two elements are interconnected, but I will attempt to discuss them divided. Looking from a far, it does not seem like much, but they are major game changers.

1.   Development of characters

Overview

There is no doubt that Yoneda Sensei’s characters feel alive. They breathe, take each step, weather and suffer more than you’d think it’s possible, in a manner that looks beyond convincing to the audience. Each of their fights will leave them with scars, and scars as physical features are an important symbol in the chosen appeal for realism. Needless to say, scars, under the emotional and mental umbrella, are present, bold, and they hurt. Sensei just knows how to depict everything with intensity and accuracy.

If you are watching the movie, or reading the manga for the first time, it’s going to literally sting how relatable Yashiro is, how real and raw Doumeki is, and how the other supporting and secondary characters are not just there by coincidence, but have a sustaining role in the atmosphere and story.

In the following section and further posts, emphasis is placed on Yashiro, but I’ve included key moments that capture the charm of all the other characters involved in the story, though I will treat Yashiro and Doumeki separately, putting each in light.

 Yashiro and his past self

Following the proposed logic with Yashiro, from the start, we can easily see that he is bound to be a pellicular main character, but relatable, without taking over the role of a “prince charming”, although objectively handsome looking. He does not have a linear evolution, his upsides and downsides happening at random times.

Yashiro has a turbulent life as a teenager, after suffering trauma from rape in his childhood, then gradually encountering hope after meeting Kageyama, just to be let down by his ignorance, and to ultimately follow the masochistic path that sculpted him into the person we see when he first meets Doumeki. The psychological tools used in shaping Yashiro are not unusual, but he, as a whole character, stands out. I always wanted to deep dive into what makes Yashiro so damn charming. There are several instances that stand out about him and scenes where his evolution/transformation curve is visible.

At the very start, Yashiro himself tells us that he is "twisted beyond repair" and enjoys pain because this is everything that he’s ever known, ever since his stepfather raped him at the age of 10. 

Kageyama was an important turn in his life as a young adult, as meeting him gave him the hope for a romantic relationship. Kageyama touches Yashiro’s scars in the doctor’s office and in the audiovisual room, but this stops as soon as he finds out that Yashiro was raped. Kageyama seems like the light at the end of the tunnel at first, but it turns out to be just the entrance for a pitch black pathway. He isn’t the salvation Yashiro hoped for. In fact, Yashiro does not even know what to hope for and what true salvation means, which mixed with his dark background, results in a depressing and hopeless spiral type of outcome. He also has no parents by his side. He's never had someone to guide him and warm his freezing heart during childhood. We might as well assume that Yashiro is broken from the beginning. But how broken, is it really beyond repair? I think that is not the case.

I found interesting how Yashiro’s idea of love is contoured around the time shown with Kageyama. Yashiro, after all the trauma, creates a liaison between sex and hatred, as they coexist in his mind and actions (= the famous defense mechanism). It is best shown when in love with Kageyama, he will imagine, and get turned on by a version of Kageyama that is vulnerable and helpless. Not by a dominant version that could, for instance, fuck him. 

“The Kageyama in my fantasy wasn’t on top or on bottom. He just cried.”

His true love interest is perceived as complete opposite of how he sees his dominator. But even more, Yashiro does not know how the opposite of pain feels like, so he is too afraid to find out as his defense kicks in. His love interest is never going to touch him the way that everyone who abuses him does. That’s why I don’t think he ever fantasized or had dreams about being penetrated by Kageyama, which, proves that violent sex is his main coping mechanism for his trauma. As a consequence, he is unable to romanticize sex or to make love with someone he has feelings for, as “making love” has no known meaning to him. Also, his basic emotional needs from childhood could not be fulfilled, because of the mistreatment that he received from his family, so he could not fully develop that side. This is why Yashiro can only look, sink into his thoughts, disconnect from the world and be an onlooker to his beloved Kageyama.

Here I would see fit to also point one thing: the scenes where Yashiro is lusting over Kageyama are so well made. They are absolutely flawless, and they show in a few panels the whole anguish, confusion and arousal of a troubled and lost kid, especially the moments when he runs and masturbates in the heat of the moment, thinking of Kage, away from everyone.

When Yashiro chokes on his regrets as he jerks off over and over... I could literally feel dark butterflies in my stomach and a metallic taste on my tongue. So expressive and graphic, I loved it.

Soon enough we find out that Kageyama doesn’t really care, and this realization of him not caring, gradually contributes to Yashiro’s mental state degradation. I cannot stop wondering what would have happened if Kageyama would have cared enough to protect Yashiro from further twisting the knife in his own wounds. Yashiro breaking down and crying because of Kageyama's ignorance is one heartbreaking thing, but knowing that Yashiro is biased and blind to the fact that Kageyama is one guy that half asses things in life, is another. A receipt of how Kageyama fucks it:

He gave wrong signals to Yashiro all along. You’re telling me that for two weeks, he touches his wounds because he has a fetish for marks, then he stops and never touches him again, and calls Yashiro just “a friend”. What if Yashiro isn’t simply twisted to fall for the first thing that appears as rescue, but instead, he gets those signals and understands them right to a point, just to be let down and have Kageyama take it all back, just because Kageyama is a coward himself who wouldn’t take things further. Might sound harsh, but Kageyama has always been a closeted gay and together with Yashiro’s zero self esteem, nothing good could come out of this relationship, not in the way that Yashiro wanted it. If we look at how things turned out with Kuga, and we compare Yashiro with Kuga, we can so easily see that Kuga pushed for the old man’s feelings, while Yashiro stood silent and chose to keep these feelings in himself. What if Yashiro pushed harder in high school for Kageyama’s reactions? What if Yashiro demanded and was a bit more pushy, just like Kuga did? But then again, seems at peace with his past, while Yashiro lives everyday with the consequences of his past, gets lost in these consequences and he constantly swallows them like cigarette smoke.

Kageyama does only half the things. He isn’t even paying attention to Yashiro and never really got to “know” the real him. That’s why he seems so ignorant and a dick. Even Kuga can figure out more about Yashiro at a glance, than Kageyama could in 20 years. It’s no doubt, I can see why Yashiro fell for this type that our doc is, but he is not even a good doctor to begin with. In “Don’t Stay Gold” his trembling hand and lack of accuracy while performing medical tasks proves this point. When he pulls the bullet out of that guy, it looks like he does not even know what he is doing. And even without pointing that out, he could not care less if something happens to Yashiro. He will be there to help, of course, but he will never leave the comfort zone. On top of that, Kageyama later claimed to have shown a lot of compassion towards Yashiro. I am struggling to see it and it hurts me, both as a reader and observer. 

 Bitterness aside, Kageyama just wanted to be normal, not associated with someone weird like Yashiro. It's fair in a way, but twisted and unfair in another way, because someone already damaged as Yashiro is, did not really deserve it. No human being deserves that. And... Being looked down on and feeling sorry for... Two things that happened before to Yashiro. Two things that he desp adores. Kageyama does them both. But guess what? After all Kageyama isn’t a bad guy, he is just human. And humans are not all black and white, they’re so many colors and shades, and they have good and bad in them. Kage is just human, whether we keep a grudge on him or not. One more point scored by Sensei’s realism, as it’s impossible to hate side characters.

And with all the loneliness, and all messed up, Yashiro is still showing compassion. Why? Because he shows up to the funeral of Kageyama’s dad, being there for his only friend when he literally has no idea how to show support because he never experienced having someone care for him. Yet, there he is. Broken, but not broken enough not to empathize.

Also, later on, another moving moment which shows how big of a heart Yashiro has, is when, on his path to enter Yakuza, he hears about the discussion about the old hospital that belonged to Kageyama’s family and begs Misumi not to sell the land. That scene equally shows the interest that Misumi starts to take in Yashiro, seeing Yashiro not moved an inch after he was beaten to almost death, but gets all on fire and begs when it comes to this. Here is about how selfless and ready to endure everything is Yashiro, even if betrayed and left on the sidelines every time.

Surrounded by the disappointment of rejection, Yashiro steals the contact lenses from Kageyama, but not to make him suffer. This act of theft is nothing but a symbol for his need for closure. Yashiro wanted to own something that could comfort him and be his, if Kageyama could not be his. A lot of great people on Tumblr explained so much better than me these aspects about the symbol that is the contact lenses case, so I am not going to insist on it. I really love how such a small recurring symbol was inserted into the story. It shows the idea that Yashiro is, in fact, sensitive.

“I am a wonderful actor”. 

In similar instances, he is full of contradictions, one moment he laughs, another he is dead serious around his crush. Unstable and tormented by what happens to him if he emotionally gets hurt by the soon to be doctor, he finds relief in pain from sex with older men. And later on, he is plotting on making Kuga and Kageyama meet, just to give himself a lot of pain seeing Kageyama finally falling in love with a man. Yashiro isn’t only an actor, but he is a great observer himself. He knows exactly what his type and movements will be, so he knows how to act till the end, when he can finally push himself to accept that Kageyama will never be his man.

What I really wanted to say by showing all these examples, is that Yashiro is so much more than his trauma and so much more than he is perceived by Kage. His complexity goes beyond the expectation of just a broken kid with a "fucked up past". Sadly, he is the only one blinded, not capable to see inside of himself, mostly because of what others did to him. At some point he says that it's no one's fault for his past, and that alone speaks volumes about the person that he is. He took all the blame on himself and continues to carry on as a side observer to his own life.

Fast forward the described scenes, some feelings remain dormant as Yashiro gets into the Yakuza, but I think daddy Misumi takes care of certain aspects of Yashiro, and thanks to him, they’re not lost forever. The dynamic between Yashiro and Misumi is another interesting topic.

Misumi is, well, both a daddy and a dad for Yashiro. It’s so intriguing to read everything that Yashiro went through when he first got into the Yakuza, and for sure, how Misumi saved Yashiro in all the ways that he could have been saved. He gave him a place to stay, and he gave him a bit of worth after partially convincing him not to sleep around with every single person, when they could simply sleep together. Misumi could give Yashiro the violence he was hungry for in bed, but he also could give him the affectionate care of a parent, because I’m pretty sure that Misumi loves Yashiro like his own son. He believed in Yashiro the way he was, even though he met him while he was at his lowest, being fucked by an entire gang and covered in cum. Here I think Yashiro’s recklessness, charm and not giving a fuck energy, played a major role in seducing Misumi, and by seducing I mean... More than just getting hard at the sight of Yashiro.

 This just turned from a character analysis to I LOVE Misumi so much and everything he’s ever done for Yashiro. And honestly, I hold myself not to insert the image of Ryuzaki hearing how fucking good Yashiro looks after being taken under Misumi’s wing. Thinking of how in love Ryuzaki is with Yashiro, it makes me kind of excited to see his reaction.

Before meeting Doumeki, Yashiro has a few more details worth mentioning:

Self neglect habits, which can be linked to his depression. I am sure that Yashiro skips meals, especially in the days before Misumi took him under his wing, when he was fucked by Ryuzaki's gang. Maybe he doesn't get enough sleep from the way I see him at times, and he lacks overall the self care that he needs and constantly falls into the dark haul of hating himself not leaving any time for nourishment. 

Yashiro is a heavy smoker, that is a detail that can equally reflect 2 things: he is trying to escape through his addiction, but smoking is also part of his interesting personality, a detail that makes him versatile. He smokes since high school, so this habit has been there for long enough to become part of him, maybe as another way to cope with trauma. Just like all the coping with trauma through sex.

Yashiro is not a monster; after all he becomes a successful man who’s got so many desirable attributes, yakuzas would kill for. I think that even while twisted beyond repair, hopeless and left behind, our Sensei left space for Yashiro to be able to empathize and feel love, even in the moment t0. He just doesn’t know it yet, because no one truly loved him. But what we do know, however, is that he always wanted to be loved.

I will conclude this post by saying that Yashiro changes a lot from high school up to entering in Doushinkai, so he was not stagnant at all before meeting Doumeki. He is not ready for love, but he refrained a bit from the gang bang and sex with just anyone. He does it smarter now. His dynamics with the other characters, his own struggles and past, and the position that he got within the group, remain all connected to his wonderful charm. It overall seems like there is no side character that is left untouched by Yashiro’s beauty, and as a result most of the people he crossed paths with, either bear feelings or admiration for him. Ok, maybe not Hirata. But the plot is so exciting, I could not even imagine that a character like Yashiro could reunite politics and affairs around such an immersive circle.

- to be continued - 

[onigiriico]

hi! i saw your milgram pv translation thread and i wanted to ask a few unrelated questions about japanese if that’s okay!! i was just curious how long you’ve known japanese for. did you learn it? if so how long did it take to reach fluency? or was it your native language? i was curious because i want to start learning japanese and use it to fulfill my foreign language requirements when i go to uni. do you have any tips for a beginner who wants to learn japanese?

Ohh this is gonna be a long one, I hope you don't mind 😂

I started to dabble in it back in 2014/15, but I only got more serious about learning it around 2019 I think? I taught myself the basic grammar and the hiragana/katakana from a textbook at first and then used Duolingo later on. The majority of my vocabulary is actually stuff I've picked up while consuming JP media, though - a lot of it from different kinds of anime/manga, drama CDs, interviews, some variety shows etc. That's mainly a personal studying preference though - I have the easiest time learning languages while I'm actively doing things with them, whereas a lot of people seem to prefer going by textbooks from what I've heard. Different methods work for different people!

(The textbook I used is a German publication so I doubt it'll be much use to you, but it's this one if you're interested 🙇‍♂️)

I do have to admit that I'm not actually really fluent in the language - I understand a decent amount (especially when listening, since that's where I've got the most practice) and I can make basic conversation, but I'm far from native speaker level 😂

I've never studied Japanese as anything more than a hobby so I can't really speak on using it to fulfill requirements for uni, but I do believe that it's a relatively easy language to learn (in comparison to other languages I've studied)? In terms of grammar at least. We don't talk about kanji lmao

As for tips,, the most important things are to keep at it and have fun! Finding a studying method that works for you + maybe even finding a way to connect studying the language to your other interests can really help keep your motivation up in my experience. (Also don't feel discouraged when progress is slow, it is a completely different language from English after all!)

I'm wishing you all the best on your Japanese learning journey, anon! Good luck!

(I'm putting a list of some of my favorite Fun Ways™ of learning new vocabulary and stuff under the cut in case you want some input / ideas btw 👉👈 I'm not sure how useful these are when you're a complete beginner but maybe it'll be useful)

slice of life / highschool anime are a really nice way of picking up new words in passing since they tend to not dive into complicated / very specific vocabulary (e.g. there's no talks about law / medicine / etc etc) and the characters usually don't speak in specific dialects - I'm especially thinking of Miira no Kaikata and Gakuen Babysitters here, but I'm sure there's more

(the same goes for anime specifically geared towards children, but I don't have any recommendations there 🙇‍♂️)

once you know hiragana, renshuu's J-crosswords app is a fun way of practicing them and expanding your vocabulary!

when it comes to kanji, I've found it helpful to just jump right into it and try to read manga in Japanese. a lot of manga include furigana (i.e. the pronunciation of the kanji written next to them in hiragana), so if you know hiragana, you'll eventually start picking up recurring kanji as well 👌 you'll definitely be best off with digital publications for this though, especially if you don't have excellent eyesight. the furigana in manga volumes are small fdjhsgdjfd

listening to native speakers (especially in actual conversation & not acted like in anime) is always very helpful as well! I'm personally pretty interested in the seiyuu industry so I tend to go for anime-related radios or shows like Seiyuu Yoasobi for this, but it works just as well with Japanese (or bilingual!) Youtubers etc - this is also a matter of finding things that with your interests honestly

and, last but not least, following some native speakers on social media! you probably won't understand much initially without the good ol' translate button but I personally still always feel a little sense of achievement whenever I can actually read a tweet on my own 😂

[devilfic]

Oh yeah, advent children!! I also haven't seen that movie. I'm glad though that more people are talking about crisis core, because i love it a lot. Nier: automata!! Its popular too, and that gif looks very pretty. My big brother has a ps4 (or ps5? i can't remember) with some stuff including nier automata, and a while ago i asked him if i can play some games on it, and he didn't mind, so i'm definitely gonna do that the next time i visit him. Fortunately for you, i'm very much used to subtitles, as i'm not a native english speaker, so that wouldn't be a problem at all!!

Right, i guess i do have a liking towards boy groups that lean to hip hop. I didn't really notice that. But yeah, they are older compared to.. the new ones lmao. As for block b, i actually tried to listen to them, but i guess they're not my cup of tea, not sure why.

Oooooh yeah the legendary trio, superwholock.... Don't worry, i too was a fan, but not doctor who though, i've never seen it, just supernatural and sherlock. Before that, i was a major weeb, so uhhh yeah. I was also into video game stuff and gaming youtubers, like markiplier, jacksepticeye and such. They were actually the reason i joined tumblr a looong time ago!! And i still do watch their stuff, just not that often anymore. Oh and hannibal!!! And some other netflix shows like umbrella academy, and yeah, stranger things. I used to watch kdramas often too, but now, not so much. If we're talking about music other than kpop, well i'm just a casual fan of a lot of bands that i don't know much about. Other than that, just the usual marvel stuff. Anyway, i'm never really active in these fandoms. Sometimes i draw fanarts though, but i rarely post them. I just lurk most of the time... and send really long anon asks to people... which is what i'm doing to you right now haha

I'm aware this is getting really long, but i just wanna say OH. MY. GOD. YOU'RE OPENING REQUESTS?????? After all the frustrating stuff i've been through in the past weeks (and more in the near future, i'm afraid) i feel like i'm gonna explode out of excitement!!!!! I really need to think of a good request. Okay. Uhhh. First i'm just gonna ask you something i often ask to other fic writers about requests. Do you write for multiple characters in a single fic? Just as an example, a one shot involving the older teens in stranger things, including steve, nancy, robin and eddie. Would that be something you're okay with???

-cain

zack is such a sweetie in it ;-;;; also "me? gongaga" was trending a while back sakjfksjd. and SWEET lemme know what you think of it (and yakuza if you can get it!) whenever you get a chance. they're truly really great games

aw darn, I really thought they might be up your alley LOL but that's okay. have you ever listened to stray kids? I know they're relatively newer but I like some of their sound, that might also be something you like 👀

oh markiplier!! you know, I never really got into his videos because he was always a bit too animated for me but I still really admire him as a person and content creator. he seems like a genuinely lovely guy. also that's entirely fair, I lurk for every fandom I don't write for and it's a lot more fun just sitting back and watching than engaging. but also! you draw fanart? that's so cool! how long have you been drawing?

I'm so sorry to hear you've been having a rough time :( are you doing okay? I hope whatever it is won't last long. but yes!! I'm comfortable with that. actually, reading this gave me a small idea for some headcanons involving those four that I'm gonna post later LMAO

[tl-notes]

Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 10 Notes

I’m extremely not an expert in birds, but I tried to look these up to see if they were a species native to New York (since they’re similar to the sparrows we usually see around Kobayashi’s place). Apparently there are few similar-looking species in New York? My totally uninformed guess is that they may be house sparrows.

The sun sets in Japan relatively early (probably around 6:30pm when this episode takes place), which would make it entirely plausible that if she just flew east (with a slight northward angle) she’d find herself over New York in the early morning while most of the rest of the country is still dark.

These bumpy grey pads at the pedestrian part of the intersection here are known as (among other things) tactile paving; they’re to assist people who can’t fully rely on eyesight to get around.

Interestingly (imo), they were actually invented in Japan in the 60s (by a Miyake Seiichi), where today they’re extremely ubiquitous. They even show up later this episode!

They’re often referred to in Japan as 点字ブロック, tenji (Braille) blocks, and they tend to come in two types: the “dot” design, which indicates a place to stop (or an angle change, or more generally “caution”), and the “line” design which indicates you can safely keep going. They’re generally colored yellow in Japan, ideally making them stand out more to help people with impaired vision find them, and are mandated by law in most places public transport can be found (among others).

Not really a translation note, but “deer cola” felt especially funny in the context of all the horse medicine stuff. 

I guess “[animal] [drink]” is a common branding device in-universe, given the crab beer Kobayashi’s always drinking.

Also not really a translation note, but the difference between how “hard” Kanna and Chloe are running to be at the same speed was a nice animation touch.

遊んだ遊んだ！ asonda asonda!

One feature of the Japanese language is a very heavy use of repetition. This includes “reduplication,” a linguistic term for creating words by repeating a root (e.g. a “boo-boo” in English or the dara-dara example below in Japanese), but also just like… saying the same word multiple times, as Chloe does here.

Typically this is done for emphasis or to help increase clarity: if you’ve worked in a Japanese office, you’ve likely heard someone in a phone conversation say desu desu in response to someone asking for confirmation. 

This acceptance of repetition sort of extends beyond the obvious uses like this as well: for example, personal pronouns are much less common; instead (if the subject isn’t dropped) you’ll often just use the person’s name again. You’ll notice similar trends with other types of words as well.

Not to mention the ubiquity of things like otsukare.

This often ends up being a challenge for translators, because reusing words in English (when it’s not for an obvious reason) tends to stick out rather unflatteringly, even if they aren’t that close together. 

(Like when I overuse “hence” in these notes.)

This “Christ” in the Japanese was “ったく” (short for 全く mattaku, but just used as a semi-generic exclamation). I mostly bring this up because it’s a good example of a word that doesn’t work out of its cultural context; e.g. it wouldn’t make any sense for a fantasy character to say “Christ,” but since this is an American speaker it works just fine (and helps distinguish that fact, even). 

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but English uses a lot of “explicit reference” words like this, that can break immersion if put in the mouths of characters who wouldn’t have exposure to said reference—which can be annoyingly limiting when trying to write dialogue sometimes.

As a bit of a culture shock for a lot of Americans I’ve met, most Japanese homes tend to have wall mounted air conditioning units, like this one, that are only for heating/cooling the one room they’re in. (Many also have a “Dry” setting that makes them act kind of like a dehumidifier as well.) It’s common to not have them in every room, like bedrooms, however.

This is in contrast to the central air conditioning system used by a majority of homes in the US (though type/use of AC in the US varies a lot by region; less common in the north for example)—and places like the UK where apparently residential AC units of any kind are quite rare.

You may have noticed that the doors between rooms always seem closed in Kobayashi’s apartment. That’s not just to make the backgrounds simpler, it’s also a good habit to keep if you’re going to be running the AC!

“Kobayashi, are you お休み today?” 

“Yeah, お休み.”

お休み o-yasumi, is a noun form of the 休む yasumu, to rest. The word has a variety of applications, as we see here. A day off work/school, i.e. a rest day? お休み. Want to say “good night” to someone before bed? Also お休み.

In this case, it’s not even necessarily clear it’s being said as a pun; as mentioned earlier, repetition is a common feature of the language, so despite the yawn there wouldn’t really be any reason for Kanna to think Kobayashi was about to go to nap or anything.

“Laze about” here is だらだら dara-dara, another phenomime (擬態語 gitaigo in Japanese)—one of those words that mimics the “sound” of an idea/concept/state, which don’t actually make a sound per se.

These phrases aren’t necessarily childish or anything (overuse of them can be, but you can find them even in news articles and political speeches for example). They are, however, used frequently by children, and by adults talking to children, as they’re very “easy” words: they’re expressive, they capture useful daily-life concepts, and they usually roll off the tongue. You’ll notice, for example, that Kanna uses them a lot.

Kanna has a very interesting way of talking actually, which I’ll touch on a bit more later.

Kobayashi’s “bean jam” here is あんみつ anmitsu, a traditional Japanese dessert (technically a spinoff of mitsumame). It typically is a mix of red beans (and/or red peas), agar (an algae-based gelatin equivalent), some fruit, some variety of rice flour product (shiratama in this case, similar to mochi), and a syrup (often black sugar based).

You can find it year-round, but it has a strong summer association and is even used as a summer season word. (It’s typically chilled and you can often get it with ice cream as an ingredient.)

It’s also sometimes paired with a green-tea flavored something as well (e.g. ice cream, agar, or syrup). The trinity of green tea, red beans (aka azuki), and shiratama makes what I like to think of as the “Japanese S’mores Flavor (for Adults)”. No I will not elaborate on this.

I will though point out the shaved ice flavor Kobayashi ordered later in the episode:

え？今スイカ様子あった？

A word of note here for language learners is 様子 yousu, which has a lot of definitions, but in cases like this where it’s attached to a noun or phrase means roughly “the appearance of __” or “an indication of ___” etc. In actual use, it typically means something that makes you think of whatever ___ is—or the lack of something that would make you think ___.

For example here, it’s like “Watermelon? Where’d that come from?” (since the TV was talking about a different dessert-y food entirely). 

Or an unrelated example: “I think that guy is hiding something” → “Really? I haven’t seen any yousu of that.” In other words, it can be a lot like “sign,” as in “I’ve seen no sign of ___.”

These color-bordered envelopes (originally colored based on the flag of the country of origin) used to be the standard for air mail, domestic or international, though they haven’t been required for several decades.

That said, they’re still popular for that “ooh, international mail!” feel (at least in Japan) and you can buy them at most places that sell stuff like envelopes. As here, they’re often used in media to immediately convey that a letter came from outside Japan.

Kanna (and Kobayashi) says エアメール, lit. “air mail” in English, which is used colloquially for international mail specifically, rather than “mail sent by plane.”

They’re having what’s called 冷やしそうめん hiyashi soumen, chilled/cold soumen for lunch here. (Soumen being a thin wheat noodle; udon but thinner.) As Kanna says, it’s very easy to make!

Basically you just boil it, wash it in cold water, add ice, get some sort of sauce to dip it in, and you’re done! It’s a popular quick meal in summer, and much easier than the more involved nagashi soumen setups you may have seen elsewhere, where they slide the noodles down a chute for you to try to grab and eat. (It’s basically the same meal aside from that though.)

(You can of course add more to it, but as we see here, you don’t really have to.)

The type of tea here, for the curious, is 麦茶 mugicha, barley tea. Mugi is the general name for cereals/grains including wheat (komugi), barley (oomugi), rye (kuromugi or rye mugi), and oats (enbaku or oat mugi). It’s incredibly common in Japan (and much of East Asia), where it's the household summer drink.

It has no caffeine like many other teas, and has a bunch of various nutritional benefits, so it’s considered a good way to stay hydrated as you’re sweating buckets in the muggy Japanese summer weather.

帽子した？  boushi shita? した！ shita!

I thought this was a cute way of phrasing this question/answer, and a good example of the “parent and their young child” way these two talk.

The suru (past tense shita) verb used here is the ultimate in “generic verb,” and it basically doesn’t get any simpler grammar-wise to phrase something as “noun+suru” like Kobayashi does here (even the particles are dropped). 

Kanna, for her part, doesn’t respond with a “yes” or etc, but instead just repeats back the verb itself in confirmation.

Just to note another one of those words like dara-dara: bura-bura, used for things like wandering around, doing something (or nothing) casually/aimlessly, or (with one bura) for something dangling/swinging in a more literal sense, like a spider, slack yo-yo, or wind chime.

These booklets are a common homework assignment for practicing kanji; you can see along the left side there it shows the stroke order, with the first block giving an example to trace over & showing where to start each stroke.

Each character is made up of radicals (e.g. “hot” above: 日 and 耂), which each have a standard way to write them. There’s 214 such radicals (though many are pretty niche; only about ~50 of them are needed to make most characters), and once you get a hang of them it makes learning new characters much easier (not too different from learning word spellings in English imo).

Kanna is repeating out loud the reading for the “hot” character as she writes it.

In addition to the above workbooks (which usually involve both kanji and math problems at Kanna’s grade), elementary school summer homework in Japan typically involves doing an illustrated diary (not a daily one necessarily) and some sort of research project about a subject of your choice. (Think kind of like a small science fair project).

The “research” project part is pretty expansive, and you can typically even do something more arts & craftsy for it.

Manhole covers in a lot of Japanese municipalities feature art representative of the area. For example, the city of Chofu, where the author of GeGeGe no Kitaro lived most of his life, has several with art of that series.

(Photo from https://www.gotokyo.org/jp/spot/1734/index.html)

I mentioned earlier that Kanna has an interesting way of speaking. Probably a better way to put it is that she has a pretty convincingly childish way of speaking (despite the monotone). That is, she uses simple grammar and “easy” words most of the time, but then throws out random big words and fancy idioms from time to time that make you go “...where did you learn that?”

In this case, the phrase she uses is 巷で人気 chimata de ninki. Chimata originally means like a fork (in the road), and since those are often places with lots of people passing through, it expanded to mean “the undefined place where people talk about ~stuff~.” So it’s used for “many people are saying~” or “word on the street is~” types of situations (or “talk of the town,” as here).  

It’s kind of an “adult” word though; for example the character for it isn’t included in the jouyou kanji (the 2000+ that are taught in elementary through high school). Hence Kobayashi’s reaction here.

The word she uses for “protected” here is 死守 shishu. The word is the combination of the characters for “death” and “protect,” ~meaning to protect something even at risk to one’s life (to the death, as it were).

It's a word that you learn in third grade in the Japanese education system—the same grade Kanna is in!

Both of these types of signs are common sights in residential areas like this: depending on where you live, it can feel like there’s always some sort of construction project going on, and Japan’s many family/individually-owned businesses like this tend to be closed on various extra days during the summer (and certain other times) to allow for time off.  

In this case, them being closed August 12th~16th implies they’re taking off for Obon (and probably leaving town to visit family).

The word Kobayashi uses here is 風物詩 fuubutsu-shi. Fuubutsu refers to something that makes up part of the “scenery” of a place or season, in a pretty broad sense. This shi typically means “poem.”

So fuubutsu-shi is originally a type of poem celebrating a season or a scene of natural beauty, that sort of thing. From that, it’s also now (more popularly) used to describe things that are representative of a season; the kind of stuff you say “it’s not winter until…” about, or “you know it’s summer when…” (It can also be used for places + seasons, like the ice sculptures of Hokkaido winters, or even summer Comiket in Tokyo.)

They’re very similar to the season words I’ve mentioned previously, though they’re far less strict about what counts as one. Here, Kobayashi’s could be referring to the whole package experience of “having to take cover and wait out a sudden heavy rain, despite it being mostly clear skies a few minutes ago,” which you could call fuubutsu-shi (summed up probably as like 夏の雨宿り etc.)

In contrast the relevant season word here would probably be yuudachi (or niwaka-ame), a word referring to the short, sudden bouts of rain that tend to fall (from cumulonimbus clouds, the makings of which are noticeable in the backgrounds before this) on summer evenings.

Feels like in season one she woulda eaten it. Three cheers for character growth!

The parentheticals there are just the “English” in hiragana/katakana.

Kobayashi’s comment (nihongo de ok, roughly “you can just use Japanese”) is an internet-born term people originally would use to reply to someone who said something that didn’t make any sense, had terrible grammar, or was so full of katakana loanwords it was hard to read etc.

Kanna says this line in English, and while I have no proof at all, my guess is that the specific choice of “wicked” was taken from the translation of “maji yabakune?” used in season one.

[kailedger]

for all the YOI fanfic authors

I’ve been reading a lot of fanfics in this particular fandom and, as a Russian, there’s like... little things that constantly bother me. Don’t get me wrong, the works are amazing, but every time I see this little innacurate details in a really good piece I’m like... slightly dissapointed lol

So here’s a couple things from a native speaker and someone who actually lives in Russia. (Also pardon my grammar, since English is not my first language).

NAMES. I couldn't stress it more, honestly. Here's the thing: most of Russian names have a full version and a short version. For example Victor (or Viktor, whichever you prefer) is the full version and Vitya is the short version. Sometimes I see authors using the short version, but most of the time it's described as something unusual (like Victor gets TOO excited to hear it from Yuuri). But in real life everyone in Russia will call him Vitya. It's not a big deal, the closest equivalent I can think of is this: if you wanna adress someone as Ms. or Mr., you can use the full name, but if two people are on the first name basis, in Russia they most likely will use the short version. So, like, Yakov, Yurio, Mila, Georgi will definitely call him Vitya (as I recall, in anime Yakov actually does? Or have I been reading too much fanfiction?). 

If it's an official kind of thing (for example, press meetings etc.) Victor can be adressed by his full name, sometimes even with his paternal name. (Paternal names in Russia is a whole other thing, pretty close to second names, but a little bit different. We always adress elder people like teachers with both full name and paternal name). I actually think Victor would adress Yakov with his paternal name, but that heavely depends in their relationship (honestly, Victor has like zero chill, so I wouldn't put it past behind him to have no respect in this matter lol). 

Oh, and Yurio's name is a mess in most fanfics. The full name would be Yuri, the short version is Yura. Since Otabek is from Kazakzstan, there's a very high chance he's actually fluent in Russian, so he would definitely use "Yura". The cutesy dimunitive would be Yurochka (not Yuratchka as it's stated in the anime subtitles), but it's only appropriate to use with a big age difference (like Yurio's granpa calling him that) or in a really sweet manner, to a point of being almost nauseating. (BTW, dimunitive from Vitya is Viten'ka). 

Mila's full name doesn't actually have a short version, but if you're looking for a dimunitive it's Milochka (which is also the same word for "darling" in Russian, and this version can be kind of sarcastic, so be careful with it). 

Georgi... Oh my God, where do I start lol. There's like two common short versions: Zhora or Gosha (sometimes even Goga, we have a very popular movie quote with this name, it's like a well-known joke for Russians).

Pet names. That's a whole other different level of hell. I often see people writing Victor using pet names, sometimes it's good, most of the times it makes me go "He would never use that, please, stop". 

"Zolotse" as in "gold" is actually a pretty good one - altough it's a little conservative and not often used, it has a personal meaning for Victor and Yuuri and isn't, you know... cringy. But for the love of God, don't use "krasavchik" (handsome guy) or "detka" (baby), it's just... no. Miliy (darling), lyubov moya or lyubimiy (my love) are pretty good. A little too sweet for my taste, but I actually think it's appropriate for Victor since he's clingy lol.

Accents. So here's the thing. I lived my whole life in Russia, I learned English through some additional courses (not very advanced) and watching a lot of american/english tv-shows and movies and reading literature in english. When I had the chance to talk to native speakers (one was from Boston, I believe, and also a bunch of people in England when I went on a vacation there), most of them said that I barely had any accent at all. 

Victor presumably has been participating in international events from a very young age. My point is - sure, he can have an accent, but in my opinion it's not gonna be very distinctive. Unless he's specifically speaking in a broken English, but, like, why would he do that? On the other hand, Yurio and Mila are both pretty young, so it would actually make sense for them to have an accent or even have trouble speaking English.

Customs and traditions. Pretty sure most people know it already, but in Russia we do wear our wedding rings on the right hand. Has something to do with our main religion being eastern orthodox church. 

We don't usually celebrate Christmas. Our Christmas is on 7th of January and it's a pretty religious holiday, most of us barely acknowledge it. So 25th of December is not a holiday in Russia. But! New Year is the biggest holiday for the whole country. We celebrate it starting from 31st of December, and the celebration itself usually involves the New Year tree, champange, tangerines and a whole bunch of salads. We have official holidays from 31st of December all the way to 7th on January (some years even 8th or 9th). So it's a whole week of celebration where people usually get drunk a lot lol. 

The stereotype about russians drinking a lot is not exactly a sterotype tbh. We DO drink a lot, not all of us, of course, but still. And yeah - vodka is pretty common since you can find it really cheap and it doesn't have a particular taste or smell (if you don't count the smell and taste of alcohol itself). But I, for example, prefer rum in my cocktails, so it's like a preference thing. 

Not exactly a tradition or custom, but still fits here. Yeah, it can get pretty cold in Russia, especially in winter or late fall. But this winter (of 2019-2020) was pretty mild honestly, not a lot of snow and the temperature was rarely below -10 degrees celcium. And our summers can get unbearebly hot. Since the humidity in St. Petersburg is very high, it makes the hot weather even worse. Oh, yeah, and in St. P it rains A LOT. The city itself is pretty gloomy and dark, but that's kind of part of it's charm if you're into this kind of thing (some people are not, I've got a lot of friends from Moscow who hate St. P for being so moody). 

Russia is also pretty big. The travel from St. P to Moscow is from 4 to 12 hours on train (depends on what train you're on) or 1.5 hour on plane. But both of those cities are in the western part of the country. Vladivostok (the city on the eastern coast) is actually closer to Japan than it's to St. P or Moscow (2 hour flight to Japan, 45 hour flight to St. P, crazy, right?)

Homophobia. Kinda heavy topic, beware. Russia is a homophobic country. Not to the point of same-sex relationship being a criminal offence, but propaganda, as our authorities would call it, is an administrative offence. And the court can judge A LOT of your actions as a propaganda, especially if you’re a public person. I mostly prefer to not dwell on this topic in fanfiction, I think even the creators of anime itself stated that there’s no homophobia in YOI world, so best stick to it, I guess? But if you wanna go for something realistic, here’s how it would have been in Russia. If Victor EVER publicly acknolewged being in a relationship with another man (like... kissing one on a national televion, ya know), he would be heavely criticized. There would still be supporters, people who would say that it doesn’t matter, what his personal life is like, but there would be a lot of backlash, especially on official level. Which would make his life in Russia pretty miserable tbh. He would most likely lose a majority of his sponsorships in Russia, there’s even a high chance of administrative penalty (since he’s a public person). That’s really sad and makes me very, very angry, but, unfortunatly, that’s the reality. Oh, and same-sex marriage is illegal in Russia, in case that wasn’t clear. 

Phew, that was a lot, and I think I haven’t covered all that I wanted to lol. But in case you have any question, feel free to ask!

p.s.: part two, if you’re interested: https://kailedger.tumblr.com/post/621623611041759232/for-all-the-yoi-fanfic-author-p2

[thelivebookproject]

Talking Books With @tricksterdreamsreads!

[What is this and how can I participate?]

Important note: I haven’t changed or edited any of the answers. I’ve only formatted the book titles so they were clearer, but nothing else. Because I’m incapable of shutting up, my comments are between brackets and in italics, so you can distinguish them clearly.

----------------------------------------------------

[Image description: a square titled “Know the blogger”. Handle & pronouns: TricksterDreams, she/her; country: Germany; three adjectives to describe her: shy, quiet & introverted /end]

1. What is a book that profoundly shaped the way you are/think?

Wow, this is a hard one! I don’t have “a book” that made me who I am. It’s more a collection of books and other media that shaped me, or rather: shaped my personal interests. I remember reading a children’s book series called Der kleine Vampir by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg (‘The little vampire’) when I just started middle school and liking it very much. To this day I enjoy vampire novels and urban fantasy in general.

Then, of course, I grew up with Harry Potter. That’s probably the boring answer. But I grew up with it like so many other booklovers and it holds a place in my heart.  The Deathly Hallows was the first book outside of school I read in English. I just couldn’t wait for a translation and got it on release-day on a whim. This certainly takes me back, down nostalgia lane. I didn’t understand every single thing, but it was enough to follow the story. I became a straight-A-student in English after the summer break! Today I am as fluent as you can be as a non-native-speaker. I even chose English as a major at university. (I dropped out after a few semesters and now I work as a lawyer’s secretary instead. Turns out, university just wasn’t for me.) That book was the catalyst in developing my love for the language. (Though I have to say, current events regarding the author do put a damper on my enjoyment of the books.)

Aside from collecting “regular” books, I also collect Manga. That started about half a lifetime ago. It started with only watching Anime on daytime TV when I was a kid. Then one day I stumbled upon Yu-Gi-Oh! Vol. 3 at my local library and it became the first Manga I ever read. Then Vol. 1-3 became the first Manga I ever owned. Today my ever growing collection contains between 1200-1500 volumes (I don’t have an exact number). I think my life and identity as a fangirl originally started with Anime/Manga, though I didn’t know the term “fangirl” at the time.

2. Last book someone gave to you?

I don’t think anyone gave me a book in ages. I really can’t remember! I usually get my books myself these days. Also, people who know me refuse to gift me more books since my TBR “pile” (more like my TBR bookcase) is longer than my life-expectancy already.

Looking at my shelves an old vintage tome sticks out at me. Die Gartenlaube – Illustriertes Familienblatt. It’s probably not the last book I was given, but it’s one I remember getting. It’s an old tome collecting articles from a German magazine or illustrated paper from 1892. The book is not in the best conditions (it’s pretty tattered) but it’s well over a hundred years old and I think that’s pretty neat! I got it from my grandparents and they got it from someone else, though we don’t remember where they got it from. Check out my blog, if you’d like to see it. I am going to post some pictures soon. Feel free to remind me if I forget!

[It sounds so interesting! I would be terrified of accidentally being too brusque and breaking it, though. A hundred years old is really old!!]

3. Do you set yearly reading goals?

Every year since 2014 I set a goal of 50 books for my goodreads reading challenge. And every year I fail spectacularly. The results span from 7 to 19 books per year so far. But each year I try again. One year I will succeed! I just finished reading the tenth book of 2021 an hour ago! Hopefully my progress won’t stagnate there again…

[“Just” as in 20th April... I hope you get close to your goal this year!! Keep me updated!!]

4. Comedies or tragedies?

Hmm… So the thing is, I enjoy “Angst with a happy ending”. Actually, I looove angst with a happy ending. But tragedies are all the angst without the happy ending, so I’ll have to go with comedies. After all, who doesn’t like to laugh? Though sometimes, I do actually feel like having a good cry over tragically sad stories, sooo… *shrug*

5. Have you ever organized a reading challenge or readathon?

No, I haven’t.  Haven’t participated in one either, even though I always wanted to. Lately I’ve been tempted to start a “read as many Manga from your TBR as possible in one weekend” read-a-thon. But I probably don’t have enough of a following on social media to catch the interest of people. Aaand I’m lazy, so I wouldn’t trust myself to organize one anyway. But maybe I will just quietly challenge myself one of these days.

[Aw, don’t think that!! I’m sure there will be lots of people interested in a Manga readathon, if you ever get the impulse to organise one I’d say you go ahead!! I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.]

Free space!

Let me use this space to randomly list some of my favorite books:

The Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost

The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski

To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo

City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

The Gospel of Loki by Joanne Harris [Seconded!!]

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard

ElfQuest by Richard and Wendy Pini

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black [Seconded! And the rest of the trilogy too]

A Gentleman’s Gide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee [Seconded!!!!!]

Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa

You’re never weird on the internet by Felicia Day

The Guardians of Childhood series by William Joyce

You can follow her booklr at @tricksterdreamsreads and her personal blog at @tricksterdreams​. 

------------------------------------

Thanks, lovely! This was super nice.

Next interview: Wednesday, 2nd June

[lairofsentinel]

Talking about the smidgens we saw of Gale, the wizard of Waterdeep.

[Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access Spoilers]

Updated, AGAIN, because the hell of new aspects we saw when some bugs were sorted out. Warning:  all this analysis was done for game versions 4.1.83 and 4.1.84

Well, I had to rewrite all this because the explorations of dialogue options and the bugs being, somehow, solved, allowed me to see small details from Gale that stand out or end up being more than curious to me. I'll list his main features to make things short (hopefully), and useful for... eventual fics:

Gale is a char who approves any good treatment to animals (and creatures in general). He has a cat, a Library, and writes poetry sometimes.

He doesn't like gratuitous murdering which is implied in the anecdote he told us about how he stopped a massacre in a Waterdeep city inn just by buying a round to everyone. It is also implied in his approval in most situations; even in the one with the ogres having sex.

He gives you disapproval most of the time if you use violence and intimidation as your first approach in solving a situation. He prefers eloquence, diplomacy, and negotiation. However, he is flexible enough to approve a performance-intimidation in front of goblins to avoid bloodshed. Point (2) is primary. So... he truly is a pragmatic char. It's not white and black: “never use intimidation/lie” or that kind of over-simplistic view.

He likes logical and reasonable conversations. An action that earned his disapproval can be undone if the main char (MC) talks to him and explains their reasons. You can disagree with him without having approval penalties most of the time. You can question many situations and, as long as it remains a mental exercise, there are no penalties. That surprised me a lot. Most characters disapprove you if you wonder about a potential situation, but Gale no. He is the scholar, he will allow a safe space to think around things without being too judgemental. We will see if this attitude lasts in the full game. No wonder some players see in him “the Teacher” archetype. Quite so.

He was an Arch wizard while being Mystra's Chosen One, and fell from grace when she put him aside. What is hard for me to grasp is if he remained Chosen One and therefore able to cast silver-fire during that intermediate period when he stopped having Mystra's whispers and his folly with the netherese taint. We know that in that moment Mystra removed herself from his life completely. But before, she has only stopped whispering and sleeping with him. So far I understand, being her Chosen One doesn't imply sleeping with her, most of the time.

He was a teacher (not surprising, since his over-explanation vices and details such as the pronunciation of “Trashj” make us suspect it), and had some students that he could not keep longer since their ineptitudes irked him. 

Unlike the stereotypical “scholar” type, he knows how to cook, since he has been doing stews for the party in the camp. He also loves baths. A bit siding with the stereotypical “scholar” type, but a nice change for a “standard adventurer” type, in which most of the time it is implied that they are stinky with “animalistic” scents and uglier descriptors. No, Gale likes his lavender-scented baths. Good. 

He is an over-thinker strategist. And also a char who takes responsibility for his own mistakes to the point that, when he dies for the first time, a programmed image is activated to help anyone to revive him. Despite the fact that he is dead and can give a shit about that, he is still responsible of the catastrophe that may happen if that weird magic orb stuck in his chest erupts.

He is also forcing me to check the dictionary like no other game has done in a while... the fucker uses uncommon words a lot of the time. Smidges? really? Gale is a hard char for a non native English speaker.

We can assume that during his teenage time, he was a pretty prideful peacock to the point to be blind at the reality (well, yeah, he romanced a goddess; if that doesn't give you a hell of a ego boost...) He remembers his young self's pride with a thick level of regret. He is now a mature scholar that, for a change, does not patronise you or thinks of himself better than anyone. Sure, he over-explains a lot, but that's something that most scholars/teachers do when they are worried that, maybe, they won't be understood.

He is confident in his years of study (for that reason he is a capable wizard despite having lost Mystra's favours), but he acknowledges his limits. Which is a nice change to see in the “scholar” archetype, the typical know-it-all. He knows a lot, he knows that he knows (it would be ridiculous to hide his knowledge), but he is human, and like he says: “humans are fallible”. However, it’s more than obvious that he has a big ego for everything he does, which makes sense since he follows a motto in his life: “try to excel at everything”. High accomplished scholar lifestyle, indeed.

If you don't share the Weave with him, he will state that nights are lonesome. It seems he truly is looking for some connection with a keen fellow mind. Probably it's this loneliness which triggers his urge to see Mystra's face during the night. We also know he, in general, lives in constant fear due to the Netherese taint in his chest. So, very lonely, and very scared. 

I don't know if this is his poet side unable to be switched-off or it's another implication of how he sees sexual encounters: he never says sex (at least in my many runs, he never did it). He always gets around the word: love-making, art of the body, intimacy. For a scholar who is so prone to use the technical word for everything, and has already stated he is not coy at all, the use of these metaphors make me wonder if it's because he always conceives sex as something more than mere physical pleasure. For him, it seems to come with a more emotional connection (which makes sense if we think he will only sleep with those who connected to him through the Weave). Another small detail that may confirm this is when he asks the MC if the “other night” was wonderful. If MC claims it was “fun”, Gale shows a certain degree of uneasiness by that word choice, making us infer that he certainly doesn’t see sex as “fun” but as something else, deeper. 

His tadpole dreams are about Mystra (rather obvious). His most desperate desire is forgiveness. Mystra's forgiveness.

Mystra was his first love. The affair did not last long. And since soon after her abandonment he looked for the Primal Weave book and was infested by it; one could assume he has been focused on solving his problem for the rest of his life than putting some energy in romance, especially if we think about (13). It's hard to say with certainty (especially with banters like these), but since he is a char that you can only sleep with if you share a mind-connection through the Weave, it seems less plausible that he could encourage into casual relationships during all this period of his life looking for a solution to the Netherese orb. If he got previous relationships, they may have been meaningful, but clearly not enough to win over the goddess’ and his urges to see her, lol.

He did not mind Mystra having many other lovers besides him. It seems to be the same with the MC, since he will insist in sleeping with them even after the party and even after the MC slept with someone else (however, that only occurs if the romantic connection through the Weave happened.) This fact combined with (13) and (15) make me wonder if he certainly wants to be with the MC too badly, even in an open relationship. We need to see the rest of his romance to be sure.

Since he looks for forgiveness so desperately, he is a char who will forgive most mistakes made by the MC if they acknowledge them.

He is a char who knows how grey and complex situations can be. This is inferred by the way he speaks of the tiefling girl who tried to steal the idol in the Grove: “She is not innocent, but that doesn't mean she is guilty.” (of course there is a lot of self projection there). This is also implied in his (surprising) approval of raising Mayrina's husband and giving her the control wand to search for a solution in Neverwinter. That shows that he can accept the fuckest weirdest situations, recognising that “sometimes we can’t choose situations but we can try to do our best, not always having the best results”. Also self-projection.

He appreciates his privacy to the point to leave the MC if the abuse of the tadpole power continues. However, and honouring (4), you can abuse of these powers and convince him with reasons: if you don't lie to him and explain that you have a responsibility with the group to know what happens with his secret, he will understand, and despite disapproving the MC actions, will remain without major troubles.

Certainly, as long as you give him reasons and logical concepts, he can almost understand everything with no disapproval or at least little one.

Consent and negotiation are vital to him, apparently. However, this aspect reaches a flaw. He was too angry with Nettie when she almost killed the MC, and he made a short speech about how nobody has the right to decide your options for you. Yet, in his romance scene, we see that he deliberately hid his true relationship with Mystra and his bomb-condition in order to sleep with the MC. In fact, during the party, if the MC tells him that doubts if he is the one they want, Gale will drop a curious argument: “That’s because you’ve yet to find out what your’re missing” (implying that he himself is what you need), followed by his most curious “Doubt is a spoilsport. Cast it aside”. That coming from a scholar is rotten, lol. He tries every convincing argument to sleep with the MC (if they shared the moment of the Weave, of course)

This happens in every variation of the path: whether the MC sleeps with him in the party, or afterwards, Gale will always wait for sharing a night with the MC before speaking the truth. It's hard to read this aspect since, he is a char who, apparently, needs a mind-connection with his partner for intimacy (see (12) and (13)); so this terrible strategy is like his way of trying to guarantee that the MC will not abandon him. I guess there is something along those line, specially if we keep in mind the book he explained: a book which is not only about the art of the body and the night and sex, but of other things such as conversation, exploration, and acceptance of oneself and the other. He is expecting with this night to reach the MC to a certain degree of intimacy in which, despite the raw truth, the acceptance will prevail. Remembering (16), he truly wants to sleep with the MC, baaaadly. And somehow everything feels like he wants to push things in a subtle way to a certain degree of commitment. Following the concept in (12), I think he has been alone for too long, and desperately needs someone in his lonesome nights and in helping him to deal with his burden. Finding someone who connected to him through the Weave (such a personal experience for him as it is) made him a bit desperate or eager. We know his emotion for the MC may have grown over those days since the connection with the Weave. In two occasions he or the MC can ask if both of them think about that moment. Gale says yes with such enthusiasm, that it may imply...that maybe, he has been thinking about that more times than he truly wants to tell the MC. The Weave moment had such a strong effect on Gale that, if the MC spent the night with another companion and rejects Gale’s proposition later, he will trail off a sentence that implies he was convinced that the MC and he were heading into something serious and deep.

Of course, once he sleeps with the MC, he confesses the truth right afterwards, accepting--without approval penalties--the harshest responses that the MC can give. He clearly knows that such manoeuvre was truly disloyal, especially contrasting it with all his speech of consent and rights to know about the true situation one is in. In the next morning, he acknowledges it was a rotten thing to do and apologies. But this shows that his principles can be bend and even be broken when it comes to emotions. I'm still a bit wary of his emotional stability, what can I say.

Mystra is more than an ex-lover for him, it’s magic. And Magic is everything for him, even more than life. I wonder if, given the opportunity, Mystra forgives him and asks him to return to her side, would he accept it without second thoughts leaving the romanced MC? It's true he also acknowledges that all that fascination he had with the goddess was a product of his youth; he knows he was a plaything in her hands. But I don't see he got over with it. He still idealises her, as such a good poet does. Idealisation, especially when a Goddess is involved, is a terrible thing to fight against for the next partner. No matter what speech of loyalties and consent he states during the whole game, the MC knows that magic and Mystra are Gale's Achilles’ heel, and factors in which they  can’t predict his behaviour.

We also know that, because his bomb-condition, he tries to take all the opportunities to enjoy the little things of life that make him human.

Gale is a straightforward and honest (mostly, let's say) char. But we can see that he prefers to be honest in most situations, except in his Achille’s heel. Even when he wanted to hide all the stuff about the bomb in his chest, he did it by explicitly warning us that he was hiding something he did not want to talk about. Which is an honest approach considering the hardcore burden he carries and the immediate rejection it can mean if the truth unfolds too quickly among strangers.

When it comes to concepts, Gale has the symbol of the storm attached to him. So far, we see he talks comparing things with storms or storm elements: his lack of knowledge to explain why they are not Mind Flayers yet: the silence before the storm; the fear that rushes into his body when the Weave orb asks him for magic to consume: the thunder of a storm reverberating in his soul, the day it will erupt: the lightning striking, the consumption of magic: water running through a sore throat, Life itself: a tempest. When he asked the player if they were a wizard, he explains that he needs an Arch wizard and compares them with a Tempest. If we see the main image of Baldur's gate 3, it's clear that his main element is electricity/storm... so... full witch-bolt-guy here.

[updated later] The Weave moment is important to romance Gale. Leaving the moment in ambiguity will give the MC another opportunity to make their intentions clear during the scene of the Loss. However, remaining vague will lock Gale into a friendship path. What happens during this scene may suggest that the ambiguity in the Weave was enough to keep Gale thinking about the romantic possibility, but he will not engage into it by his own, which confirms (15). Unless the opportunity presents itself clearly before him, he will not pursue the MC. Further details [here].

Last moment detail: Gale says “I cherish you” when he explains he will await death alone if the Netherese orb goes out of control. I was not sure if that meant something more or less than love or like (I can’t not overlook the subtle meaning of the words coming from Gale’s mouth, he is a poet and his word choices matter). Checking the dictionary I found that “cherish” (in a relationship) is defined as to hold or to treat as dear, to feel love for and to care for someone deeply and tenderly. This man went straight into a commitment relationship without thinking it twice, and without (I believe) the MC knowing it either xD. 

Let's see how these characteristics shift or develop deeper once the full game is out there. Now we have to wait a lot :(

To see videos where all this stuff is inferred or explicitly said, you can check [here]

More videos added later [here] and [here]

More content of bg3 in general [here]

[languagebraindump]

Vocabulary, or linguistically speaking lexis, is relatively easy to learn. You get a list, you memorize it, and you feel like you're good to go. But after a while, you realize that you can't communicate. You blame your poor vocabulary for it, so you study more, then again, you can't communicate... and that's how you start vicious circles. How come tho? You memorized so many words, so many swipes on Memirse, Quizlet, and Anki and you still can't handle a conversation.

Let me show you where the problem is.

What does it mean to be conversational?

Well, it's easy; you want to be able to strike up a conversation with a native or a non-native speaker and carry it for a longer period, utter meaningful sentences, and survive, right? The first thing that comes to your mind is "To do that, I need to know more words" (that's where our vicious circle starts). You go to Memirse, Quizlet, or Anki and you start memorizing your super long lists. There is potential in that, but the execution is extremely poor.

Tip#1 To be conversational decide what topic you want to talk about in the first place. About games? Fashion? Daily activities? Search useful language related to the topics you want to learn to talk about.

Tip#2 Set mini goals, for example, "By the end of this week I want to be able to talk about my favorite game!” and focus solely on that.  

Pockets of fluency

Have you heard of that? An extremely useful term. When you study a language at some point you're becoming well-versed in certain topics. You know lots of words related to those topics and they create your pockets of fluency. I'm well-versed in teaching methodologies and anime because I studied the first one (I'm a language learner myself too) and I'm obsessed with the other one (my master's thesis is on anime). In this case, my pockets of fluency are extremely full.

Pockets of fluency = topics you want to be able to talk about -> becoming conversational.

What if I need English for work or any other professional purposes.

Sit down then, and think about your duties at work. What phrases, words, and sentences do you use daily? Make a list of them and start searching for translations. Don't limit yourself to words only; look for whole sentences too. Are you a sewer? Then look for articles related to sewing, extract useful language, and adapt it to your needs.

Tip #3 Useful language in teaching means words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Not just words! To become conversational you need to learn as much useful language as possible.

Tip #4 Don't look for lists of words only. They are a good jumping-off point, but you need more. Articles, people's comments, videos will help you sound more natural.

What to avoid!

Learning words that you don't really need. Let me tell you, during my college years I learned a shit ton of words that I haven't even used since then (not even once). I've seen, maybe, 10 in novels and NY Times articles. But hey, that's what you get when you major in languages.

Off-topic!

Whenever your brain sees new words it immediately starts making connections with the words it already knows. That's why you remember some words faster and some not. When you learn a completely new word, your brain is kind of lost, it sort of asks "What am I supposed to do with that word?" So, your brain puts it in a random place and just waits... for you to use it again in a context. When you use words in context your brain easily associates the new words with the old words, it says "Hey! I remember that! We spoke about it last time and we used these words... ok I'm going to put it here in this pocket of fluency, seems useful!" Conclusion? If you don't use words, your brain forgets them.

Passive learning. Study actively. Anki, Memrise, and Quizlet are good for revisions but the real learning starts when you use the words you've learned in real-life situations. If you can't put yourself in such situations then create them yourself, in your head, on paper, with other language learners.

[fandomtrumpshate]

Fan Labor roundup (now with links!)

Folks, we had a whopping eighty-nine people sign up to offer fan labor this year, for a total of ninety-four fan labor auctions, and the range of things on offer is nothing short of phenomenal. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches.

The one and only drawback of this incredible response is that potential bidders could easily get overwhelmed by the task of perusing all ninety-four of these offerings. That’s why this post exists! It’s designed to offer you a sampling of the amazing offers we have this year, and to help you find and connect to the fan labor auctions that appeal to you most.

What we’re giving here is an overview of the specific kinds of support and expertise that our fan laborers are offering. While almost half of our fan labor offers are open to any fandom at all, fifty of the offers are fandom-specific in some way. It’s also the case that some fan laborers have restricted the ratings level that they are willing to work at. You can find out these details by reading each offering post carefully, or you can preemptively limit which auctions you see by searching multiple tags at once (e.g. “fanwork: fan labor: culture picking” + “fandom: teen wolf” + “rating: explicit”) Our post on searching tags explains how to do this.

The majority of our fan laborers are offerings beta work (though some of them are also offering others things, too!) This includes everything from SPAG (spelling and grammar) through developmental editing, helping you work out the basics of your story structure. We have a number of professional editors of various stripes (find them here, here, here, here, and here, and we are pretty sure there were a couple more we couldn’t turn up, sorry!) We also have a lot of experienced and insightful people even though this isn’t their day job. We also have a fan laborer who specializes in helping non-native speakers of English with English-language fic, and someone with professional expertise in upgrading translated works “from ‘rough draft’ to ‘sounds like a native speaker,’“ both of which may be of special interest to non-native English speakers writing in English. Check out the beta reading tag to see them all!

Some of our auctions tagged “other” (rather than beta reading) are offers to help you build your story from the ground up. We have a developmental edit offer, an offer for brainstorming, for plot and structure beta, and for cheerleading. We also have a couple of podfic beta offers in the other category: a beta listener for podfics and an offer for podfic editing!

Many of our fan laborers are also offering culture-picking or expertise picking. The culture-pickers can help you capture the nuances of a particular geographical region or of some other kinds of subculture; the expertise pickers can provide with you an expert’s knowledge of some specific skill or craft, or an insider’s view of a particular profession, or simply the insight into a kind of lived experience you don’t have yourself but want some of your characters to have.

We have a wide range of culture pickers to advise on the culture and speech patterns of various places, mostly (but not exclusively!) on various parts of the Anglophone world.

We have several Brit-pickers (here, here, here, here, and here) including some who can offer specific insight into London (here, here) Oxford, or Durham.  We’ve got some Yank-pickers (thanks to HugeAlienPie for this term!): find them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We also have some experts in the culture and geography of New York City (here, here) and the American Northeast more generally. We have someone who can tell you about Los Angeles, and someone to advise on Illinois and the midwest more generally. We also have an offer for the rural US, one for the American South, and one for rural Alaska.

 Outside the Anglophone world, we’ve got an India-picker, a France-picker, and a Czech-picker. We’ve also got community insider perspectives for you on both goth subculture and riot grrl subculture.

In terms of necessarily second-hand cultural experience, we have someone who can advise on ancient Greece and Rome, someone who can help with Victorian/Edwardian period language as well as French ancien regime. and a Star Wars slang-picker!

Our expertise and experience pickers cover an amazing array of topics. We’ve tried to organize it into sections as best we could... But honestly, some of this defies easy categorization.

If you’re looking for an expert in religion and/or mythology, we have people to help you with Hindu mythology, Norse mythology, American Catholicism, Ashkenazi Judaism, (two of these, one specifically for Good Omens,) an expert in oral history in general, and a someone with a PhD in religion.

If you’re writing about characters struggling with mental health, we have a lot of people who can help with that! People with experience of depression (here, here),  anxiety (here, here, and here,) PTSD, and someone who can talk about bipolar. We have a couple people who can advise on being chronically ill (here and here.) We also have a professional counselor who can help with mental health topics.

If your characters work in a particular field or profession, or if your story involves professional expertise, our fan laborers have you covered! In particular, we have many people to help with educational settings: a couple of professors who can help you get the details right in your college or university AUs (here and here,) several current and former secondary school teachers (an English teacher,  a middle school teacher (who can also help with science education), and a special education teacher. We also have someone who went through Bible School and can advise on that setting.

We have a couple people who can help you with legal-picking here and here, and if you specifically want to know about family law, we’ve got that too! We also have someone who can help with the bar exam (writing about it, not studying for it.) As for medicine and physical health, we have an expert in several aspects of medicine, and a nurse with experience in trauma and surgery. 

As for other kinds of professional and work environment expertise, we have someone with experience of small tech companies, someone else who can advise about the publishing industry, and two people in the translation industry (here and here.) We also have someone who has worked as a personal assistant and two people who have worked in libraries (here and here.) We have two fan laborers who have worked in disaster response (here and here.) We have someone with a longtime involvement in theater who can also advise about other performing arts )  And if you’re looking for information about the paint industry, someone’s got you.

If you’re centering sex or relationships, we have many folks with experience in BDSM (here,  here,  here, here) including a trained dungeon monitor, and a couple of people willing to advise on polyamory/nonmonogamy (here and here.) We’ve also got someone with firsthand knowledge of sex work (including online sex work).

In terms of sensitivity reading for sexuality and gender identity, we have nonbinary folks willing to help you think about enby experience (here and here)  and ace folks who can advise on asexuality (here, here, here, and here.) We have trans folks offering to advise about their experiences here, here, here, and here.

Other experienced-informed readings available are for fat experience, for addiction recovery, for tattoos and body modification, and for celiac disease. And, for your kidfic needs, we have someone offering to help you with parent/child relationships, and someone who can help you create a realistic toddler character.

Are you writing about animals? Our fan laborers include a professional veterinary technician and two people experienced in working with farm animals (here and here.) We also have someone who can advise on service dogs in your fic, and someone else to advise on raising kittens.

We’ve got lots of experts in craft and other recreational sorts of things. (This is a broad and messy category, we know. Work with us, here.) We’ve got people who can advise on American team sports and someone who can advise on circus performance. We have fan laborers who have offered to advise on martial arts, various kinds of dance, guns, and tarot.  We have a cooking and baking expert, and someone who does gluten-free baking. We’ve got experts to advise you on calligraphy, knitting (or yarn crafts more generally), origami, and of course taxidermy.

Finally, if you’re thinking about world-building, we have a professional environmental sciences researcher who is excited to help you with sci-fi or fantasy worldbuilding.

And if you want someone to help you set up a Fanlore page or help run a fanworks challenge, we have that covered too!

We also have nine people offering translation work of some kind. We have one offer that is for English into French, and two English-German offers: one to translate between German and English in either direction, another English to German only. We have one offer for Spanish to English,  someone who can translate lines of dialogue or indeed your whole fic from English to Czech, and another offer to translate from Russian to English. We also have a couple of people willing to work between French, Spanish and English in various configurations (here and here.)