#and it would be interesting to be able to study the linguistics of both japanese and korean
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in an ideal world i could just spend all my time studying languages
#i’ve been trying to pick another language to study but man….#so much to consider#will this language be useful to me?#do i want to go to a country where this language is spoken?#considering finances will i be able to find people locally to practice this language with?#should i wait until i’m back in school and start my studies formally? will i have time?#since korean is grammatically close to japanese and i already passively ingest a lot of korean pop culture i figure it’s a good option#and it would be interesting to be able to study the linguistics of both japanese and korean#and compare and study the history#especially if i do end up looking towards getting a phd#i doubt it tho#and realistically am i gonna go to korea??? i can barely decide whether i want to go back to japan dhskdhdj#tirah talks
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tagged by @deep-space-atomic-clock in this post, how fun! hi oz o/
Were you named after anyone?
for my first name noooope, my name being the same as lisia pokemon was an absolute coincidence, i was named after the lisianthus flower in reality!
my middle (bianca) i ended up picking myself bc i didn't have a proper one, so it is after the most important person in my life, though it's not completely her name exactly... i wanted a middle name and knew in my heart it would be after her in the end. if you know you know♡
When was the last time you cried?
i think two weeks ago when i was finishing up the cardcaptor sakura manga? a lot of parts in it really hit home to me in some ways, it's a special series to me for sure.
What sports do you/have you played?
when i was a kid i did a lot, probably because i was sickly so being active was important? soccer, baseball, flag football, basketball, some volleyball, and dance... wanted to play hockey badly but i was an undersized girl so i would have been eaten up i think. nowadays i don't really like doing much other than tennis, which i played for my high school for three years! (i also bike and roller skate but those are for transportation not sports)
Do you use sarcasm?
hmm, i'd like to hope i don't very often, but i make it really obvious when i am. i try to be more earnest than not though?
First thing you notice about people?
hmmm... probably what kind of clothes they're wearing? i'm into fashion and it's really neat to see people around wearing j-fashion, i instantly feel more comfortable around people who're brave like that.
Scary movies or happy endings?
happy endings!
Any talents?
hmm... i can speak japanese but i don't think that's a talent? i can cook and bake... i can play rhythm games at an okay level, too, i guess. i am also a magical girl but that doesn't count i think.
Where were you born?
i was born three months before my due date, though some would say in america, others would say in sootopolis city, it is up to you, reader, to decide which is true. o7
what are your hobbies?
similarly to oz i also really like tea!! it's fun to try different kinds, especially bc i grew up in a faith where tea wasn't allowed. i like flavored green tea the most? my big tip is that loose bags keep very well when placed in resealable bags in a fridge. i also have a crab shaped tea steeper it's one of the parts i like about tea
i also like studying the other languages of japan like okinawan and ainu! it's interesting to see how jp has influenced both of those...
i also like to cook and bake, too! i mostly try japanese recipes bc it's what i'm most knowledgeable about making. chahan is my fav ever..
Do you have any pets?
i do NOT sadly... i want a cat someday eventually though!
How tall are you?
despite the circumstances of my birth i'm 5'9... and forever underweight LOL. i've been told i have a 'short' vibe though... i don't like being tall but i know it is good for some reasons. maybe i'll shrink someday who knows
Favourite subject in school?
japanese! it's always been an easy A for me, so. aside from that i've always liked biology, science is a kind of magic too after all~
Dream job?
to be honest i'm really not sure! having a job where i'll be able to use my linguistic skills would be nice, but i dunno exactly. translating things is fun but it doesn't pay well... maybe being a tv presenter on NHK World showcasing different parts of japan...? i've always thought those shows were neat and i somewhat enjoy travelling, so.
ok gonna tag others because it seems that's what you do here, so sorry for the disturbance! please feel free to not do this i do not mind one way or the otherrrrr
@blxnc♡ @electrobiology @salon-maiden-anabel @torchickentacos @notwerewolf @zodiacoracle @runawaycarouselhorse hi!! apologies for the disturbance orz
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No it's fine, don't be sorry for rambling since we can both ramble! lol (I was worried before that my asks were getting long for no reason 😭 but it's fun to just have conversations). You literally did grad school, write so well, are fluent in 3 languages (so cool how easily you picked up French!), and are learning your 4th and 5th languages so I'm sure you're not stupid at all.
I'm fully fluent in Tagalog and English, and then my brain decided to only be partially proficient in several other languages whether I Iearned them for several years or only a couple months: conversational listening in Spanish (from 4 years in middle school), only translating and reading aloud in Latin (despite 4 years in high school and 1 in college), reading French (from 2 semesters + sporadic Duolingo), reading and translating Old English (from just 1 semester but one of my niche/useless in daily life expertise is Medieval European History lol), and Japanese and Korean in the capacities I explained before.
I seriously considered doing linguistics in college since languages are so fun and interesting, but I was already on track to disappoint my parents by majoring in History and then doing Education for grad school lol.
It sounds like you're pretty close already to being able to watch Japanese shows in the background, you probably understand more than you realize! But yeah, I'm more an immersion/listening learner too so I'm def picking up more Korean from watching and listening to stuff (I'm a fast subtitle reader👍) than the workbook I got, although me taking notes with colorful pens is what fast tracked my learning Hangul so quickly.
There's so many things I wanna read in Japanese that people online haven't translated yet so I'm suffering too but I can't get myself to even consider learning hiragana/katakana/kanji until I get better at Korean since I have a limited summer time (the school year fills my brain with too many other things 😔).
Hope everyone else doesn't mind all the random infodumping I'm doing on your skz blog lol
-👻✌️
I apologize to everyone who has my post notifications on who are now being subjected to feelbokkie nerd hours, lol
Fluent in creole and French is a stretch. I can mostly understand and kinda read and write but I'm not actively using them so I'm losing them again. and I think me picking up French quickly is cheating since I technically already knew the language mostly. But I will give myself props for trying to learn 2 more languages. Idk, I think I'm spiraling because I'm done with school until I convince myself that I actually do want a Phd and I love learning and need something to do with my free time.
I wish I could learn latin. I had so much fun when we were learning Greek and Latin root words and etymology in middle school (God, I'm such a nerd) and I did Shakespeare acting competitions for 3 years in hs school so I got really well versed in reading Shakespearean English. Like I have a collection of all his plays and sonnets that I'm reading and analyzing for fun (again, I'm a nerd).
Linguistics wasn't an option for me in undergrad because my school didn't have a linguistics program. But it's amazing that you studied History! I would have switched to History but I already disappointed everyone by switching from criminal justice to English and then doing more English in grad school lol.
I'm so excited to do my color coded notes and all that again. I found a box of mine a few days ago from when I was relearning French full of all my note cards so I can only imagine how bad it's going to be this time.
I can also imagine how little time you have outside of teaching to pursue your hobbies and special interest. But at least you have time during the summer to work on your Korean.
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I posted 1,398 times in 2022
That's 1,179 more posts than 2021!
80 posts created (6%)
1,318 posts reblogged (94%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@thelaundrybitch
@whispering-about-the-tmnt
@tmnt-roni-paws
@turtle-ika
@tmntstyle
I tagged 192 of my posts in 2022
#tmnt - 78 posts
#teenage mutant ninja turtles - 66 posts
#rottmnt movie spoilers - 37 posts
#rottmnt spoilers - 37 posts
#tmnt 2003 - 25 posts
#tmnt comics - 17 posts
#michelangelo - 16 posts
#leonardo - 14 posts
#rottmnt - 13 posts
#hushbats - 13 posts
Longest Tag: 89 characters
#the samurai vs ninja way of thinking is a much better reason for the raph vs leo conflict
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
My language headcanons for the turtles that nobody asked for!
So, in addition to the obvious English, all of the turtles also know Japanese but to varying degrees.
Leo and Mikey are the most well rounded in all four skills (speaking, reading, listening, and writing) in Japanese. Even though they aren’t innately good at languages, they put in a lot of hard work and study to get where they are. This is largely due to their motivations. Leo wanted to be able to talk with Splinter in his native language, while Mikey was super into Japanese pop-culture, anime, and manga. As Japanese was something both were passionate about, this is the only language other than English they speak.
Raph, on the other hand, does have an ear for languages and can mimic what he hears really well on first try and somehow retain it. He never actively studied Japanese in the traditional sense beyond what Splinter made him do like Leo and Mikey though resulting in poor reading and writing ability. On the upside, he is the only one of the four that is truly multi-lingual. From childhood, he used to sit with Splinter while he watched Spanish telenovelas. He would get really into them and parrot the characters lines. This continued throughout his childhood and early teens until he eventually could have really detailed (and dramatic) conversations in Spanish. His Spanish is probably better than his Japanese. After he started going topside, he was exposed to a few other languages from hanging around areas of New York with large immigrant populations, and has picked up a little from a few but not enough to say he speaks them, but who knows, maybe some day!
Donnie sees language a little differently to his brothers. Being a man of science, Donnie views language as a puzzle, or a code to be cracked, rather than a tool to communicate or consume media. Basically, he’s more into the linguistics of it all, studying how each language is built and how to conjugate correctly etc. Therefore, Donnie put a lot more of his time into reading and writing Japanese, and thus, he is much more confident in those abilities than his speaking or listening skills. He also suffers quite a bit with language anxiety and fears making mistakes which has also hindered his speaking ability. He finds linguistics interesting and sometimes reads about it in his free time, or during breaks in his projects, so he has knowledge of a lot of languages and can recognize most languages just from seeing/hearing it.
So they all grew up learning Japanese from Splinter, but that does not mean they are native speakers as they pretty much always spoke to each other in English. If they were to speak to a native Japanese, that person would instantly know they didn’t grow up in Japan. Leo’s Japanese is quite stiff and formal because he usually only uses it with Splinter, a person he must show respect to, and so he finds it difficult to switch to informal Japanese when appropriate like when speaking to his brothers. The opposite is true of Raph. Though his pronunciation and intonation is flawless, he only uses informal Japanese and refuses to use or learn keigo, the honorific Japanese used with your seniors, therefore he comes off as extremely rude sometimes (but what’s new there!). Mikey talks like an anime character and is oblivious to it. He thinks it’s normal because that’s the type of Japanese he’s most exposed to, but a lot of the language used in anime is specific to anime and isn’t used by Japanese people in their daily lives. And finally, Donnie’s main give away that he isn’t a native speaker is his hesitance as he searches for the right word or sentence, but like Raph, his pronunciation and intonation are pretty good once he gets going.
In addition to spoken language, the turtles also have system of hand signals they use to communicate when in the field as ninjas. This isn’t a complex system and can only be used to give directions when on a mission. Leo started developing it not long after he was made leader and all four turtles and Splinter can use and understand it.
268 notes - Posted March 3, 2022
#4
Just checking out the concept art for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (2023), and just look at Leo!
Really look at him
They gave my boy braces!!!
Source: Cartoon Crave on Twitter. Copyright: Nickelodeon.
285 notes - Posted February 16, 2022
#3
Donnie would never!
Template source: @west-brooke
306 notes - Posted June 14, 2022
#2
More Japanese language headcanons for the TMNT boys that nobody asked for!
These are my head canons of how the TMNT boys address each other when speaking Japanese.
I see much of the fandom, particularly fans of the 2012 series, have the younger turtle brothers refer to Leo directly as お兄さん (onii-san) and often have the older brothers refer to the younger ones as 弟 (otouto) in fan fics and it's had me thinking more about how I think the turtles would interact with each other in Japanese. お兄さん (onii-san) is very formal and actually creates distance between siblings, implying they do not have a close relationship when used. It’s usually used to refer to another person’s older brother, or sometimes to talk about your own brother to a third party. 弟 (otouto) is never used to directly address one’s younger brother. So here are my own personal head canons of how I think the turtles would actually address each other in Japanese.
I 100% believe that Raph and Donnie would call Leo 兄貴 (aniki) when speaking directly to him. 兄貴 (aniki) is interesting, because those somewhat familiar with Japanese media might recognize this word as one used by Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, to refer to those in a higher position than them. However, it is also used by close siblings either seriously or as a kind of joke. I think Raph and Donnie would use it for Leo both ways depending on the situation. And I think Donnie would use it for Raph, too. As for Mikey, I think it depends on the version. Most Mikeys would probably use 兄貴 (aniki) too, except for 2012 Mikey. He seems like he would be more likely to use 兄ちゃん (nii-chan) to refer directly to each of his older brothers. Dropping the honorific お (O) at the beginning and adding -chan instead of -san is a much more natural way for a younger brother to address an older brother he has a close relationship with. It also sounds more innocent and child-like coming from the speaker which is why I think 2012 Mikey is most likely to use it, but I think 2003 Mikey would use it when trying to suck up to his older brothers to get what he wants or get away with something. I think 2003 Donnie might occasionally use 兄ちゃん (nii-chan) for Raph because they seem to have that kind of relationship with Donnie calling Raph, “Raphie”, in the show.
How older brothers refer to younger brothers is more simple. They would likely use the brother's name or nickname followed by the suffix ～ちゃん (-chan), or simply use their name without a suffix like we do in English. I think Leo is most likely to use ～ちゃん (-chan) when speaking to Mikey. Sometimes he'd use it with Donnie, but never Raph. Raph is always just Raph.
Raph always adds ～ちゃん (-chan) to Donnie and Mikey's names when speaking to them in Japanese, and Donnie always uses it to refer to Mikey.
They all address April as 姉ちゃん (nee-chan meaning older sister) when speaking to each other about her. She doesn't speak Japanese, but she asks Splinter one day why they sometimes call her Nee-chan, and she is delighted to learn they think of her that way.
Anyway, I'm by no means saying don't use Onii-san and Otouto in your fics or anything. I just wanted to provide some more natural alternatives for anyone out there interested in sprinkling a little authentic Japanese into their fics to keep bilingual readers invested in the story. Do with this info what you will.
397 notes - Posted April 24, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
A typical Raph and Mikey pillow fight:
Mikey's a tough one to pin down!
Source: Daniel Labelle on TikTok
1,632 notes - Posted February 5, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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RAY DROP THE DETAILS ON THAT LINGUISTIC RESEARCHER THING BECAUSE I'M FOAMING AT THE MOUTH THAT'S MY SHIT AND SO INTERESTING HELLO???????
*clears throat*
I mean where does the fascination come from? 🥰
you opened the flood gates with this one friend
I majored in linguistics in college and absolutely fell in love! I love how it has technical and social aspects and is such an integral part of the human experience that we are both conscious and unconscious of. I would love to be able to just read linguistic research and run studies of my own without being worried about academia (aka being a professor), costs, or any other constraints
I actually attended a conference once where a researcher presented a project they worked on studying the use of English words in kpop songs and how they might differ between boy and girl groups!
Another thing getting into kpop made me really reflect on is language aquisition and reinforced the incredible awe I have for how babies are able to absorb linguistic information in their environment and make sense of it without explicit instruction. I mean, I’ve been watching and listening to a lot of Korean for going on 4 years now and, even with consistent exposure, know maybe 50 words I can identify in context and still have yet to make much headway in identifying grammatical patterns and that just amazes me to no end
I have a running list of research questions I would love to study; some kpop related ones include:
the use of animals and corresponding emojis to reference people as a form of attribution and written shorthand
the dichotomy of soft/hard stans, use of descriptors like “babie” vs “daddy,” and how that relates to the infantilization and hyper-masculization/sexualization of male idols
subtitling’s ubiquitousness in kmedia and its use as a form of audience-aimed commentary, particularly on variety shows
the multilingual landscape of kpop/kmedia in general - Japanese and English only releases, non-native Korean idols, subtitling and translations conveying accurate and culturally-salient information
anyway, thanks for reading my mini dissertation if you made it this far 💕
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Help i cant stop thinking about how reductions could be different for a clone dialect of basic... idk why this specifically is so interesting to me i love studying them in real languages but thinking about them in the hypothetical is maddening. Yet I am intrigued. Can't stop thinking about how speaking clone lang also would influence how a dialect of any other language would develop. Thoughts
(cries I had to Google reductions)
Oohhhh that's so interesting but tbh I don't think we'll get a proper sense of reductions down until we have a structured enough language to figure out which most commonly used words end up getting chopped up.
But in the meantime we can play around with who's got more or less usage of reductions by battalion. Like maybe the 212th has a tendency to stay away from them while the 501st uses them heavily and then the 104th has an even mix
But also I've been thinking, what about how constants are handled between battalions? What's a rhotic r versus an alveolar trill in some places (I had to Google that lol, a rolled R if I got it right) versus just becoming the letter L in others.
And not only that, but I was wonder about language lengths and density in space time. This is gonna be SUPER specific but I learned that Spanish and japanese tend to sound fast because each syllable is not as information dense as "slower" sounding languages, meaning that you need to make more sounds to get the same point across.
So for instance in English, we say "Rex's blaster". In Spanish it's "El (blaster) de (Rex)". Two versus four words. In Igbo, it would be "(blaster)(Rex)", so also two words (translated, idk how to say blaster in Igbo and this is complicated by it being a rather literal tonal language)
But this makes me think about how info-dense clonelang would have to be in order to match up with their fast paced lifestyles and need for efficiency and high volumes of information to be traded quickly (not that any other language is inefficient or anything like that).
So I think that the clones' language would sound slow to us, but it's because they're getting a lot more info across given the same amount of time as other language speakers. Ik I went on a WILD tangent I'm so sorry anon fbaksnak but this actually wraps back around to what you said!! I think the clones would then make use of reductions if it means being able to convey more in a given time. Maybe it's compounded by both their battle lives and the fact that they're just here shorter than we are, life span wise.
Please bear in mind while I am studying anthropology, I'm not a linguist dbaksja I think I'd have a better understanding of language ideologies than the mechanics, although this is all really cool! I had to force myself to stop
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what majors do you think the haikyuu guys would choose in college?
hi these are very idealistic (and maybe controversial). half based on post-timeskip and half based on my own thoughts!
❕minor timeskip spoilers below ❕
haikyuu boys and their college majors
→ HINATA majors in linguistics. since he already knows a few different languages, he decides to go for it, not realizing how much science and math is actually involved. knows the basics of ten languages but is fluent in only two of them.
→ KAGEYAMA majors in statistics. was originally going to do accounting but didn’t actually know what accountants do. he’s surprisingly smart when he puts his mind to it, and he basically thinks of statistics as fun math. still puts volleyball first, so how he does in school doesn’t matter much to him.
→ TSUKISHIMA majors in anthropology. he’d intended to do evolutionary biology, archaeology, or history before settling on something he genuinely loves, as niche as the program is. hates that the store anthropologie is more popular than his degree is.
→ YAMAGUCHI majors in electrical engineering. he hadn’t realized it was such a competitive major until he actually went to college and realized that engineering majors have it really rough. a ray of sunshine in his department.
→ SUGA majors in elementary education. he considers nursing school or being a physician’s assistant, but he realizes that he’s more passionate about teaching. doesn’t love the salary he earns, but he doesn’t do it for the salary.
→ DAICHI majors in political science. he might consider doing criminal justice or even sociology; something about those fields suits him and strikes him as both interesting and useful. (kuroo won’t stop telling him that polisci isn’t real science.)
→ OIKAWA majors in astronomy. he knew he was going to go pro in volleyball and that his major wouldn’t matter much, so he decided to go for something he likes. originally did it because he wanted to be the one to discover extraterrestrial life. gets really offended when people mix up astronomy with astrology.
→ IWAIZUMI majors in sports science. he’d taken lessons from volleyball to heart when he went to college, and his major is a combination of two things he’s passionate about. might specialize and do sports med or nutrition. actually uses what he’s learned in class in his day-to-day life.
→ KUROO double majors in chemistry and finance. as a stem major, he probably feels like he has the authority to make jokes about business majors even though he’s basically studying business. gets made fun of a lot by his friends for “selling out.” seriously considers going into consulting after he spends 20+ hours in lab one week.
→ KENMA majors in computer science focusing in game design. it’s a mystery that he’s staying afloat in classes while maintaining how much time he spends gaming every day. gives all of his program classes really weird names and probably has a favorite coding language.
→ BOKUTO majors in international affairs. he’s not a fan of math but also hates doing readings required by most humanities majors, so he settled for international affairs. really hoping that professional volleyball works out for him because he’s struggling in classes.
→ AKAASHI majors in japanese literature. can always be found writing an essay with an absurdly high word count or page requirement. he realizes his job prospects are bleak but studies lit anyway. dreams of writing a novel one day and considers getting a master’s degree.
→ ATSUMU majors in sports psychology. he’d heard he wouldn’t have to spend too much time studying it so he’d be able to focus on volleyball, but now he actually really likes it and puts a lot of time into the classes he takes. also, frat boy energy and varsity athlete vibes.
→ OSAMU majors in business. he’s cruising through college while his friends suffer in weed-out classes and organic chemistry. might drop out or graduate early, and he ends up starting his own business and makes more money than all his friends combined.
→ SUNA majors in neuroscience. he’d originally wanted to be a psychology major because he thought it was easy and interesting, but he got more into the stem side of things and switched to neuro. likes to see people’s reactions when they hear he’s a neuroscience major.
→ KITA majors in agricultural science. he’s been invested in it since he was young. people mix it up with environmental science and ask him about climate change a lot, and he’s too polite to correct them.
→ SAKUSA majors in molecular and cellular biology. really annoying about it and always says the full name of the major instead of just saying he does bio. likes the chemistry side of things and and sucks at genetics. majors in it partly so he could avoid having to write any essays.
(+bonus: YACHI majors in design or architecture and KIYOKO majors in sports administration.)
#haikyuu headcanons#haikyuu hcs#haikyuu x reader#hq headcanons#haikyuu scenarios#haikyuu imagines#philia.headcanons#request.filled#holiday.hcs
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(Answering publicly as an ask with permission)
For screenreaders, the text reads:
Hello! Sorry to bother you again... You've mentioned quite a lot of times that you're learning japanese and I see you're even able to read manga in the original text(kudos to you for that!) I'm an aspiring japanese learner myself-I've recently mastered all the hiragana and katakana, but I'm kind of clueless how to continue from there, since I'm studying on my own. Do you maybe have any tips on what I could tackle next? Sorry that I couldn't send this as an ask. Unfortunately tumblr isn't really cooperating with me today. Thanks a lot in advance!
This is going to be a long story, because: this is actually the third time I’ve tried learning Japanese.
The first time, my parents bought me a (I’m told very expensive) program for Christmas when I was twelve to learn Japanese at home--it came with a bunch of CDs and books and things. It was a lot like all of the materials for a foreign language course, at home.
But I was twelve and didn’t know what I was doing, and had no support or encouragement from anyone else, just a desire to learn, so it didn’t end up really working out. I remember some of the info from the books, but honestly, it just didn’t work for me. I didn’t really even know how to use any of the stuff.
In college, I made it through three semesters of Japanese. I learned a lot there, but it, again, didn’t quite work. I had my classmates and a couple friends, a teacher, but I have never been motivated by grades, and there just wasn’t much of a reason to keep on.
Anyway, years later, JR happened, and I desperately wanted to read them, but I was nowhere near close to being able to tackle that. At all. So I picked up Duolingo and found that my Japanese from college was coming back to me, and that was pretty cool, but it’s not like I was getting anywhere. JR is much too high a level for me to really take a crack at.
And then I ran out of YuuMori scans.
This was back in...November? The end of October? When only up to chapter 27 had been translated, and a new chapter was getting uploaded in English every month or two. And I was dying, because I’d been reading like a volume a night and other people were definitely going to accidentally spoil things for me and I hate spoilers.
But a couple of my friends who are fluent in Japanese were reading it that way, and after I saw a couple screenshots, I noticed that everything had furigana in it, and after some puzzling with a dictionary, I could figure out some of the speech bubbles, because I still remembered my kana from college! Cool! I asked one if they thought I could manage is, and she was encouraging, so after a week of debating, I went and bought volume seven so I could keep reading.
This has been going much better, and I’ve been learning far more Japanese than I have before.
Why this time?
I have a really good reason to keep reading (YuuMori, yay! Fan comics! Random stuff from Japanese people on twitter!) that I can actually hope to mostly manage because it’s not too high a level for me to make it through (although...the politics in YuuMori is...rough.)
I have friends who are fluent in Japanese this time (did not have that before--I could ask the Japanese TAs in college, but we weren’t friends, so it always felt awkward). I can ask them for help, they correct me when I get things wrong, and sometimes I pop into their DMs like “Hey, I keep finding this weird grammar bit that I don’t understand and isn’t in the dictionary, what does it mean?” And since I’m livetweeting, if they see I got something very off, they’ll comment and go, “Hey, actually....” or will help if I’m totally confused.
One of them is a Japanese to English translator, so she gave me the recommendation for the Japanese to English dictionary I’m using (which is super useful, omg), and a browser extension, which is also really helpful.
Plus, having multilingual friends is really nice when I’m like “Hey, this part of learning a language is like...normal, right? It’s a good sign, not a sign I’m a total disaster?” and they can reassure me because I’m anxious.
Another friend also recommended this book called All About Particles, which has been useful for that part of Japanese that I reference a lot. Another recommended I pick up Learning the Kanji but I haven’t gotten around to that just yet.
I have a couple friends who are also not quite fluent who I DM back and forth in Japanese from time to time, which helps up both practice, too. Having a reason to really use the language is incredibly necessary for me. After all, language is a communication tool, right?
There’s also this cool website I found a few weeks ago that I haven’t had a chance to use yet called https://learnnatively.com/. It ranks Japanese books and manga on their difficulty, so you can buy and try to read them (after all, that’s how little kids in Japan learn Japanese--isn’t it?).
Another thing I was doing all fall and winter, but have mostly stopped now, was taking out a notebook (my old Japanese notebook, lol), and diagramming out the sentences. Okay, sure, I could look up words in the dictionary, but I needed to figure out how they fit together. So I would write them out in order with the particles, look up the conjugations and particles on google, and then note that, and then piece together how all the words fit together.
I don’t need to do that so much anymore (although it would probably be helpful, lol). But then, I’m very gifted with grammar and always have been. A couple of my friends who are fluent have commented they’re very impressed by how fast I’ve picked up the Japanese grammar, and even my mother was like, “Yeah, you’ve always been good at that since you were little...” And discussing some linguistic things with my friend who has a Master’s in translation led to her asking me if I’d studied it because I said things that she’d heard there, which..well, no, it just made sense to me.
So. I have that going for me, too.
There’s also tons of podcasts and YouTube series and things like that designed to help learning Japanese...that’s not really how I learn, so I haven’t been using them and can’t give any recs. But they’re certainly out there!
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing, and it’s been going pretty well, all things considered.
I hope this helped, and if not, was at least sort of interesting to read.
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hello besties i took a lil break from writing for my birthday so i thought i'd share an intro to my cmc Rose in the meantime (chapter 2 of At Your Side will be out soon though <3)
🌀🌀you care about my cmc you care so much about my cmc🌀🌀
Rose Prichard is 23 years old and has been living in South Korea for just over a year. She is from the US and was raised by her parents who are both professors. Rose has a twin brother who is more interested in the arts and is a musical actor, whereas Rose has always been an academic. She speaks English, Japanese, and Korean fluently, and majored in linguistics with a minor in science communication. During her last two years of college, she studied abroad in Japan and then in South Korea before graduating at age 22. She is a freelance translator/interpreter, mostly working in science communication and for international nonprofits. Because I'm not a fan of the canon timeline in all aspects, I imagine Rose was a colleague of or at least familiar with Rika through her nonprofit work, so she was offered the job by V because it's not dissimilar from work she'd already be doing.
I'm a big fan of the webcomic, so Rose's story with the RFA is sort of a mix between canon and the webcomic. She does her party planning both over a longer period of time and from an office at C&R where she is able to see all of the RFA members in person.
Rose is also (like me) a reform Jew, so she keeps Jewish holidays when possible, which I think would be interesting for the RFA to learn about and participate in idk idk.
Saeyoung and Rose are fast friends, but nothing more for a while. They have a similar sense of humor, one that is both obscure and absurd, which makes Saeyoung fall for her quickly. Rose, however, is enamored with Zen and caught up in an intense possibly-more-than-friendship with Jaehee. Once Mint Eye begins to threaten the RFA, Saeyoung is forced to move into the apartment and Rose realizes that she may have been displacing her feelings for Saeyoung all along.
Saeyoung and Rose have their first kiss at the apartment after the RFA party. It's late and they're both exhausted, but it feels right. They sleep in the same bed, passed out still in their party clothes. The next morning, Saeyoung resolves to leave the agency and head up an investigation into Mint Eye with C&R backing him. He recruits Vanderwood to help him with this, and together they form an intelligence unit under C&R's umbrella. They are able to find Mint Eye headquarters and rescue Saeran and Rika, but V does still die in the conflict. Saeran is rehabilitated and eventually Rose moves into the bunker with Saeran.
some random hcs:
Saeyoung speaks fluent English, and speaks to Rose in English either to make her more comfortable or to annoy the other RFA members, depending on the situation.
Rose curses in English pretty frequently and listens to songs in English that are explicit sometimes it goes unnoticed, but occasionally Zen will overhear her singing along to explicit lyrics or cursing on the phone with her brother and he will fall apart "a beautiful lady like you shouldn't talk like that!!!", etc. Saeyoung finds it just SO funny.
Rose is a great driver, having been taught to drive as a teenager in America, and it surprises Zen that she has a license. Saeyoung even lets her drive his babies on occasion <3
After Saeran is out of the hospital and starts seeing a therapist as an outpatient, Rose will offer to drive him to appointments. At first it's awkward and hard for both of them, but Saeran appreciates Rose's ability to sit in silence that is comfortable. She's much less on edge with Saeran than Saeyoung can be.
Being a twin herself, Rose understands the bond that Saeyoung and Saeran share, and understands how best to help them communicate. Also, when Saeyoung and Rose visit Rose's family in the US, they eventually bring Saeran along and find that Saeran and Rose's twin brother are actually very similar and get along quite well.
Since Rose is an interpreter and in science comm, there are several videos of her speaking on the internet, and Saeyoung has seen every single one many times over.
One of Rose's hobbies is gardening, so she helps Saeran make a garden outside the bunker after moving in.
Rose's other hobby is cooking and baking, she auctions off fancy baked goods at future parties and is always inviting the RFA over for dinner.
Saeyoung and Rose would have kids in the future, but I will do another post about this if anyone is interested >:)
thx for reading lov u xoxo
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Shinobu Mustard Episode 4
028
"Kanbaru. Do you mind becoming a slave for tonight? Also, lend me your house."
"All right!"
Second slave, secured.
"Oikura. Tonight, become my slave, and cook for me."
"Don't think you'll be able to live until tonight."
Third slave, failed to secure.
The reason for that failure was most likely because I'd been a hurry and said "my slave"... Well, it wasn't like I could tell her to become the slave of a golden-haired, golden-eyed girl.
And because of her connections with Gaen-san, I couldn't exactly get Kanbaru fully involved in this either, so renting her house for one night should be good enough.
As the "citadel" of the king of oddities.
I'd heard yesterday that her grandparents were out on a trip, so Kanbaru could stay over at Higasa-chan's house or even Karen's room in the Araragi house and hold a pajama party there, while I was allowed to do whatever I liked in the meantime.
I knew it made me sound like an outlaw, but it was a decision I couldn't avoid—the only building I could think of in this town that could serve as a vampire's stronghold was Kanbaru's mansion.
Just as the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster, had once taken up residence in the "Castle of Corpses", the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, needed a building of suitable pedigree in which to take up residence.
It was fairly Japanese-style for a castle—or rather it was just a Japanese mansion—but hopefully, this being Suicidemaster's first visit to Japan, she wouldn't be able to differentiate between castles and mansions in Japan... Not that I, a Japanese person, could.
"But no, I didn't say that just because I wanted to show off. If Suicidemaster were to learn that her former thrall who she came to visit had been rendered harmless and sealed in the shadow of a pervert—nay, human—she may close herself off entirely. We won't be able to hear a single shred of information. In the worst case, you might even be killed. Would you be fine with that?"
"No, I wouldn't, but..."
"In that case, become my slave again like you were in last year's spring break, and prepare a castle and a banquet. To make my reign more convincing. If you can secure two or three more fake thralls, then that would be great."
The slave sealed in my shadow stuck out her chest in pride and ordered me as such from the child seat.
Erm...
"So basically, you want to greet your old pal with a master-servant relationship in that sort of fashion?"
"Fashion is important in hospitality. I'm pretty strict on fashion. Like a Parisienne."
"No, rather than a Parisienne, you're more like a putting-on-airs-ienne. Respectfully speaking, Shinobu. Wouldn't a petty trick like this just be found out immediately..."
"Oh, you're already getting into it. 'Respectfully speaking', you say? Ka ka, you're an expert at acting like a slave already! Have you done this before? Wait, of course you have! Ka ka, keep it up for the real thing!"
With a loud laugh as if she'd already gotten accustomed to being the master, Shinobu sunk back into the shadows... It almost looked like she was assimilating with the child seat.
What a mess. She'd appeared as if she was going to listen to my concerns, but then she just said whatever she wanted to—however, as soon as I parked my New Beetle in the parking lot, before I went inside, it was then that I called Kanbaru, who'd been in the middle of her morning run, and Oikura, who'd been indulging in her slumber at her lodgings.
Kanbaru had eagerly agreed (it was scary how eager she was, but I decided to call her back and discuss it properly, as well as other things), while Oikura had refused (if I left her alone, she'd probably call me back, so at that point, I'll more or less apologize from the bottom of my heart... and ask for her home cooking separately).
Well, Shinobu putting on airs was the same as always.
I almost wanted to tell her to be more show-offy towards me, but considering the way she was cooperating for this case, I couldn't bluntly refuse that honesty... I had better properly inform Gaen-san about this, too.
Thinking about it, Kanbaru was the "niece of that Gaen-san", but in reverse, Gaen-san was the "aunt of that Kanbaru". What if Gaen-san casually went, "I'll do it, too! Let me be a slave, too!" after I went to her with our plans?... I didn't want to see Gaen-san like that.
What an odd family they were.
On the other hand, even though my parents were ordinary, upright public servants, why had all their children turned out like that?
Speaking of which, the fact that only the members of the girls' basketball team of Naoetsu High were being attacked could be rephrased as "only Kanbaru's juniors were being attacked", so maybe it was a good idea to think about things with her as the focal point.
Even if the gourmet Suicidemaster were only able to dine on "Princess Beauty", Kanbaru Suruga was the daughter (in other words, the direct descendant) of Gaen Tooe, who's practically talked about as if she were a legend—so for the club members that were under her influence, the possibility of them being targeted is...
Although, in that case, maybe Kanbaru herself would be targeted? Actually, it was fairly possible that that was the case—and if so, then using Kanbaru's house as a meeting place wasn't a bad idea, if only to see Suicidemaster's reaction, but Kanbaru herself should probably be kept far away.
That was what ran through my mind as I wandered around the campus of Manase University to kill time, having arrived earlier than expected (it was a fairly expansive university, and I still hadn't seen all of the campus yet. Supposedly, it would take over four years to check out all of the facilities—what was this, the British Museum?), but once it got close to 7:45 am, I knocked on the door to the lecture hall for my international linguistics class.
Although it was called "linguistics", it was different from classes on foreign languages in that it put languages from all over the world, both famous and unknown, on equal footing and compared them in detail. Ultimately, an unproductive course with no destination in sight—there were many incomprehensible courses like this in college.
But I liked that sort of incomprehensible stuff. Could this be Ougi-chan's influence?
It was a liberal arts course unusual for someone in the mathematics department to take, and it was hard to say that the course was particularly popular even taking into account how early in the morning it was, but for Meniko, whose goal was to work with codes in the future, there was no way she couldn't take this course—well, for her, international linguistics probably wasn't even an "incomprehensible course" (in exchange, Meniko was bad with normal foreign language study).
"Hola. Araragi-chan, you're ea~arly. How diligent of you~u."
"I dunno about being called early when you're here in your seat before me. Hola."
Not to mention, I planned on skipping class after this. Unfortunately (or not), today's lecture hadn't been canceled.
It seemed I'd have to borrow Meniko's notes another day—the number of favors I was asking her was increasing. Someday, I'd better do something for her in return.
I bumped fists with Meniko and sat down next to her, and then asked, "Do you mind if I asked you to decipher another code?", showing her the sequence of numbers that I had displayed on my cell phone.
"Hmm. Hmm, hmm?"
A normal person, after being asked to solve codes like these two days in a row, would find it strange and ask for my intentions before even trying, but this was Hamukai Meniko—she couldn't not solve a code that was put before her.
It was a difficult personality, but I liked that about her... It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but neither I nor my proud network of friends from high school were people that moved without some reason or purpose.
Even Hanekawa and Oshino.
And even the violent onmyouji Kagenui-san that was heading towards this town was actually a person of reason—she moved according to her own, unique logic.
As a result, there had been a time when I'd thought that people were just like that, but after becoming friends with Meniko, I came to learn that there were people who weren't like that—I'd been enlightened.
Meniko also seemed to be rather interested in the fact that I was (in a rough estimate) rather logical about things, so I suppose it was a mutual thing.
In order to maintain this relationship, I didn't dare introduce Meniko to any of my other connections, such as Oikura, even by mistake—of course, I had absolutely no intention of breaking off my connection with Oikura, who I had reconnected with after entering university, but as for her... Rather than our connection being broken off, it could be more like she herself would snap.
"A cell phone, huh. Was the code recorded in a cell phone?"
"Yep. Although I don't know if that holds any meaning..."
"That's tru~ue. These days, cell phones are like a part of our brains now, aren't they? Some people criticize the fact that when you go on a trip, you end up looking at the scenery through the small screen of your smartphone, but looking at something with the camera of your smartphone is basically the same as looking at it with your own eyes. Maybe when people complain about train passengers playing with their cell phones, it's a sign that they've failed to pair their phones with themselves?"
I hadn't exactly mastered the use of a cell phone myself, so it was hard for me to wholeheartedly agree, but, well, it wasn't like I didn't understand what she was saying.
"Anyway, this time it's only numbers, huh. Hm. I did solve it, bu~ut."
"Already? You're really the one that's early to things, aren't you. The truth is, I didn't have the slightest idea."
It wasn't like I didn't feel helpless when delegating the whole thing to Meniko, so I'd thought that I'd challenge it on my own in the period of time before I took it to her, but I'd spent most of that time on Shinobu's matter.
"It doesn't seem like putting it on a phone and not on paper really mattered? But numbers are easy to make into a code, aren't the~ey. Languages can vary from region to region, depending on grammar and culture, but numbers are worldwi~ide. No matter where in the universe you are, one plus one is two, and a prime number is a prime number, ri~ight?"
"That's not actually the case. For example, in Nepalese, the representations for '1' and '9' look similar, so when a Japanese person sees them, the math wouldn't add up at a glance. The logic would look completely wrong. Also, it's only in Japan where people use the '正' kanji to count to five, and for someone like me, the little horizontal bar used to distinguish a '7' from a '1' is enough to make me not think of it as a '7'".
"I see. For someone like me, a '7' with a horizontal bar looks kind of like the kanji for seven [七] upside down, so I end up getting those confu~used. So you're above me when it comes to that, huh, Araragi-cha~an."
There wasn't really an above or a below in this exchange, but aah, I wanted to have a conversation like this.
I suddenly realized.
When Shinobu—when Princess Acerola, as "Princess Beauty"—went about destroying countries... When she was a human, did she feel the same way as this when she met a vampire?
Even though it was a relationship of eat or be eaten.
The interpretation that they were vampire and thrall, or master and slave, was at odds with the lighthearted way in which she spoke of her as an "old pal".
She had said that she'd reflected from that time with Shishirui Seishirou, so I'd interpreted it as the master-slave relationship having been reversed, but what if it wasn't that? What if Suicidemaster really was just a "friend" to Shinobu?
Like, for example, Kanbaru and Higasa-chan.
According to Hachikuji, Suicidemaster had called Shinobu a friend as well.
A friend, huh.
There had been a fiercely determined class representative who had declared, "If I can't die for someone, I wouldn't call that person a friend". But what if Shinobu wanted to meet Suicidemaster with that in mind?
Did I have the qualification to stop her?
Talking about qualifications at this point was what made me, me—regret may always come too late, but logic always took precedence. If I ultimately acted upon my emotions, then I would most likely act too late to a disgusting extent.
I should learn a bit from my new friend.
What I wanted was not qualifications, but qualities.
"Hmm. Araragi-chan, what's the matter? Thinking about something?"
"No, I'm trying hard not to think about something. So, what's the answer to the code?"
"Like yesterday, I managed to solve it, but it's a dead-end that isn't really refreshing. Even though I managed to decode it, it just leaves me stressed aga~ain. But it ended up being letters of the alphabet aga~ain."
"Alphabet—then, 'D/V/S'?"
"No~ope. This time, it's 'F/C'."
"F/C"?
029
"If 'F/C' are also initials, I wonder if there's someone from the girls' basketball team who has those initials," said Gaen-san, the human representative of logic, after hearing my report.
We were once again in Naoetsu General Hospital, in yet another hospital room different from the three we'd been in earlier—the hospital room where Kanguu Misago-chan's mummy had been put up.
"I wonder if the message was left on a cell phone to hint at that. Since they had matching straps with their initials."
"Aah... That's right, they did have those," I said.
In that sense, I would've had more hints to decipher it than Meniko did.
It wasn't really a contest, but I did find it a bit frustrating.
"By the way, Kanguu-chan also had a strap. Since she's Kanguu Misago, it was 'M K'."
"Eh? But wait, Gaen-san. Wouldn't that mean that the vampire that we're looking for is actually among the members of the girls' basketball team?"
If, not the dying message, but the living message was indicating a specific member's initials, and Suicidemaster was being falsely accused of a crime, then that would be it.
"F C".
"Not necessarily. It could be that Kanguu-chan, in a hazy state of mind, was just trying to write the name of a friend she thought of. Or it's an act of deception to make us think that way. In other words, diversionary tactics by Suicidemaster."
A vampire trying to blame a human for their vampirism—it seemed a little narrow-minded, almost pitiful at that, and not at all in line with the image of a vampire. Well, if we can consider the possibility that the crime is being pinned on Suicidemaster, why can't we consider the opposite?
Taking it to extremes, it was even possible now that this was a diversionary tactic to make us think that everything was fabricated, like a deduction in a honkaku mystery.
Us people of logic.
"You're right. It would be too unexpected a truth for there to be a vampire among the club members."
"I don't remember explicitly denying that possibility. You can't say for sure that there aren't more oddities like you, Koyomin, that put on an air of innocence and casually attend school, right?"
"Again with the jokes."
And this was a bad joke, at that.
The phrasing of "air of innocence" felt like biting words.
"It's not entirely a joke, though. Well, this is just a brute force through all the possibilities at the moment. Like a canvassing operation done by throwing more people at the problem. It's true that, as a result of last night's events, the suspicion placed on Suicidemaster has faded. 'F C' seems like it would be fairly rare for initials, so I'm sure we'll be able to narrow it down to just a few girls out of the hundred on the basketball team..."
As she spoke, Gaen-san began flipping through the register of names borrowed from Higasa-chan, beginning her check. I'd promised not to make any copies of it, so it was the original document.
"For reference, do you mind if I ask, Koyomin? About how the code was deciphered. It's possible that the method can also provide a hint for us."
"Understood. However, I don't think it'll be very relevant."
"I'd like to hear it anyway. I may not exactly be a sciences person, but it's not like I hate number puzzles. It's a great way to exercise the mind and relax."
Relax?
Putting aside exercising the mind... She didn't really look like it, but was Gaen-san actually stressed right now? With this incident taking longer than expected, Kagenui-san drawing closer to the town with every moment, and my betrayal that must not be forgotten, well, there were plenty of things that could be cause for concern.
Well, if revealing the trick is somehow relaxing, then I'll gladly do so.
It's atonement for my infidelity.
"However, this code ended up not being a number puzzle. It had nothing to do with prime numbers, either—though it's still in the sciences, it was not mathematics, but the field of natural sciences."
"Natural sciences? If we're talking about fields, in middle school, they'd divide the natural sciences into the 'first field' for physics and chemistry, and the 'second field' for biology and geology."
"In that respect, it would be the first field—Celsius and Fahrenheit."
In other words, temperature notation.
Like numbers, temperature was the same throughout the world, or perhaps even throughout the universe, and high temperatures were high, low temperatures were low, and absolute zero was absolute zero—but temperature wasn't notated in the same way everywhere. The units differed.
And that difference was Celsius and Fahrenheit.
"Ah—that's why it's 'F' and 'C'?"
As expected of a logical person, she caught on fast. After speaking, Gaen-san flipped the register shut—it seemed she'd finished checking it all.
She was even fast at reading.
"But how does '820/280/610/160' become Celsius and Fahrenheit? Although, since Celsius is 'C' and Fahrenheit is 'F', perhaps I should ask how it becomes Fahrenheit and Celsius."
"For both Celsius and Fahrenheit, a '°' is placed in the top right direction to denote 'degrees'. In the same place where you would write an exponent."
"Do an explanation like that for a science major. I got it just from you saying 'in the top right direction'—don't go off in a completely different direction, Koyomin. And?"
"We look at the '0' in the code and interpret it as a '°'—basically, the '0' in '820', the '0' in '280', the '0' in '610', and the '0' in '160', all the zeroes at the end of the numbers, should not be taken as numbers but as symbols. Then, '820/280/610/160' becomes '82°/28°/61°/16°'."
"Aha. Highest and lowest temperatures, huh?"
That was exactly it.
The code that had been left behind was showing yesterday's temperature, represented in both Celsius and Fahrenheit—just like the Rosetta Stone, which could be described as the originator of cryptanalysis.
However, the essential letters of the alphabet were missing—"F" and "C".
"That's why, 'F/C' becomes the deciphered text to the code. Oh, but if they're initials, you can't really call that a text. But I see. It's amazing that someone could come up with something like that."
"Yes. Checking the daily high and low temperatures may be natural for an athletic person, but even then, I don't think they would have been able to come up with that in their hazy state of mind."
"No, my intention was to praise your friend, Koyomin."
It would be a bit troublesome if you show too much interest in her.
If you point your finger at her.
This was entirely my own self-interest, but I'd like to settle this case before I needed to ask for help with a third code...
But after relying on Hachikuji and getting Shinobu's cooperation and borrowing Kanbaru's house, I'd strayed pretty far from what I'd originally intended, so maybe next time I'd just give up and go to Ougi-chan for help with the cryptanalysis... Although, that girl likes to be befuddling, so she definitely wouldn't just give me the answer straight up like Meniko.
She was also a person of logic. A mysterious form of logic.
But anyway, let's return to the main subject.
For the sake of protecting Meniko, and for the sake of resolving this case.
"But anyway, how many people in the girls' basketball club have the initials 'F C'? Although we'd probably need to check whether that girl has a strap or not..."
Since the first mummy, Harimaze Kie-chan, didn't have a strap on her phone, it wasn't a given that everyone had a matching strap. Perhaps, within the club, that small level of resistance against peer pressure was allowed.
"There were as much as zero people."
"Eh? What did you say?"
"Sorry, that was a weird way to put it. Zero. There were none, is what I meant. Girls with 'F C' as their initials, that is."
030
"Have you looked for the reverse order? You know, when representing the name of a Japanese person, there's the pattern of 'first/last name' and 'last/first name'."
"Of course. There were none like that, either."
Could Meniko's solution have been wrong?
No, there was no way.
"I wonder if we should expand the range of possibilities. Should we include the third-years that have already retired as candidates?"
"Umm..."
It wasn't impossible to ask Higasa-chan through Kanbaru for a list of the OG members, but I wasn't sure. If we expanded it that far, it felt like the possibilities would be endless.
It didn't seem too productive to force the solution into the initials 'F C' and look for a person that matched, either... Rare as the initials might be, it wasn't like there was nobody with those initials.
"We did figure out that the victims were members of the girls' basketball team using the straps as the hint, but like with 'D/V/S', maybe there's a famous vampire with those initials?"
"The vampires here are from overseas, after all. It's normal to add a middle name... It's unnatural to have initials with just two letters."
"Is that so..."
I'd ended up bothering Meniko with this (though she'd been happy about it) and I'd ended up skipping class (though I probably would have skipped class anyway), but it didn't end up being that much of a hint... Well, even Oshino had said that fieldwork was a cycle of futility.
It was important not to dwell on it.
"By the way, Gaen-san. You don't seem to be in that good of a mood, so is it possible that you received more unpleasant news while I was out?"
"Hm? Did it seem that way to you? I was trying to act calm about it, but this onee-san that knows everything must be losing face to receive your concern, Koyomin. Even though I want to be an onee-san you can always rely on."
"No, no. Gaen-san, you're always an older woman that I can rely on..."
"I'm not trying to be a dependable older woman. No, but anyway, Koyomin. Your worries were right on the mark. The contents of a high school girl's cell phone weren't something we should have looked at."
And the fact that it hasn't produced any good results so far is nearly breaking my heart, said Gaen-san as she laid eyes upon the mummy on the bed—the owner of the cell phone, Kanguu Misago-chan.
Having been made to wear a patient gown and laid to rest on the bed... I didn't want to say I was getting familiar with the sight, but I was getting used to it.
When humans become nothing but skin and bones, it's hard to distinguish between them—their height became ambiguous when laid down, and since they were in a sports club, their hair was fairly short, so it was hard to distinguish them that way, too.
Kanbaru had also had a short haircut when she'd been active... Don't tell me it wasn't just because they were in a sports club, but because they were following after Kanbaru...?
Everyone doing the same thing... Hm?
"Even so, this onee-san won't be surprised any more. Seriously, after being shown the ugly side of human relations, I won't even be scared of vampires."
"Being shown? Gaen-san, you're the one who went and looked at it yourself."
"And I have nothing to say in response to that. They say you're not supposed to check your partner's phone, and that's completely true. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
What was in that phone, exactly?
Honestly, if she said it like that, it made me even more curious... However, it probably was better to not ask. For the sake of respecting their privacy, and for the sake of my own health... If Gaen-san ended up like that, I might even end up hospitalized as a result.
And if it wasn't producing any good results, then all the more reason not to.
"Well, I suppose the girls' basketball team is pretty unique. If this sort of thing was commonplace... Well, it's not something I want to think about, as an adult. Their club activities are certainly strange. It felt like they were bullying themselves."
"But aren't all athletic clubs more or less like that? Even more so if you're a powerhouse."
Or rather, a former powerhouse. In the case of Naoetsu High.
Of course, that may have intensified that athletic mindset...
"Mm. I've always had a commander-like nature since I was in high school, but even then, I was still pretty incompatible with those sports-minded people."
"So there was a time when you were a high school girl, Gaen-san."
"It's not like this onee-san was always an onee-san from the moment she was born. Or an older woman."
"That wasn't what I meant... But even so, the hardest person to imagine as a high school girl would probably be Kagenui-san."
She didn't seem like she would be in the liberal arts or the sciences, or in a cultural club or a sports club... What kind of high school girl would she have been?
"That girl was actually a surprisingly diligent student. Although I only knew her as a college student, not a high school student. She's the only one from that trio to graduate without dropping out."
Is that so.
Human beings really couldn't be described one-sidedly, huh.
"Oh nooo. While I carelessly stepped into a colony of high school girls and got my feet stuck in a murky, bottomless swamp, Kagenui will probably arri~ive!"
Even if you lament the word "arri~ive" all cutely like that, that in itself seemed more lamentable.
Please remain a reliable older woman.
"It may be fine for me to think this way, but Gaen-san, aren't you being a little too cautious regarding your junior? She may be a bit uncontrollable, but it's not like she completely ignores the orders you give her, right?"
In the first place, Kagenui-san was coming all the way back from the North Pole because she was called by Gaen-san—plus, if she were truly uncontrollable, she would've ignored any sort of harmless certification and gotten rid of Shinobu and me.
Though she was infinitely violent, that was just a matter of the way she did things, and it should be possible to talk things out—she was a person of logic, too.
"That's right. It's true that, if I explain the circumstances, she might understand the reasoning behind why it's not necessary to exterminate Suicidemaster. It might even be possible to certify her as harmless, with how much of a little girl she's become."
Even while stuck in a bottomless swamp of high school girls, it seemed she'd long since considered the things I'd thought of, with the way she spoke.
"Yes. In fact, as soon as I'd heard that Suicidemaster had broken through Hachikuji-chan's mayoi-ushi barrier, those thoughts had already crossed my mind. It wasn't that Suicidemaster had broken through the barrier with brute force, but simply that she had been weakened to the point that the barrier didn't even react."
"......"
Was that even possible?
It sounded pretty painful and distressing, considering that she was the progenitor who birthed and named the legendary oddity.
"Even in that state, she should still be able to suck the blood of high school girls, so just by being in this town, nothing has changed regarding her being the prime suspect. However, the reason she became a mummy might not be because she was attacked by someone, but because she'd weakened to the point that she entered cryptobiosis by herself."
"In that case, would that mean she was the one to bury herself in the mountain?"
"Yes, it would be safer in the dirt, after all. The cryptobiotic-sleep, hibernation-sleep, dozing-sleep vampire. In that case, perhaps she was attempting to make her way back to Hachikuji-chan who was in charge of immigration control, and collapsed along the way. Well, we're still just brute forcing the possibilities here—the strongest possibility is still that she grew so hungry that she attacked a high school girl, but for now, we can apply the principle of innocent until proven guilty. But the problem is, that won't work on Kagenui."
"...Why is that?"
She sure was stubborn in a weird way.
In a sense, she was pretty laid-back to even put her faith in someone like me, but right now, Gaen-san was being weirdly obstinate in regards to Kagenui-san.
"Well, this is just between us, but they share a bit of a past. The problem at hand, Suicidemaster, and the even bigger problem, Kagenui."
"The problem—and the bigger problem."
"Even if Suicidemaster happened to not be the culprit for this case, and even if it's possible for her to be certified as harmless after not having harmed a human for the past six hundred years—even then, they share a past that makes it impossible to stop Kagenui. Though justice is the only thing that can put that unorthodox onmyouji in check, she's very likely to move out of a personal grudge for this time alone."
G—grudge?
That bundle of justice?
"If I make the wrong move, I may find myself having to excommunicate yet another junior. And I don't want to do that."
031
Kagenui-san's personal grudge probably wasn't something that other people should be prying into, so let's return to the main subject. Although the main subject was a ghost story with intense pressure. But anyway, back to the main subject.
The risk of intruding into her private life had been clearly demonstrated, and Gaen-san, who had hinted at it, didn't dare tell me the details of her past—perhaps she'd let it slip after being embroiled in the high school girls' darkness.
Speaking of being embroiled, it seemed that the reason Gaen-san associated the initials "F C" with the members of the girls' basketball team was not only because of the alphabet strap, but because she'd looked into the darkness of the club displayed on Kanguu Misago-chan's cell phone and had been influenced by it (it seemed she even considered the possibility that, in her dazed state, Kanguu-chan thought she could pin the crime on a team member that she had some friction with). But in the register, there was no one with those initials—and, as long as there was no initial for a middle name included, it likely wasn't the vampire's signature, either.
Before expanding our reach to the OG girls, one more possibility came to my mind.
"What if these aren't initials, but an abbreviation for something in English?"
"Abbreviation? ...In other words, something other than a person's name?"
Normally, Gaen-san would have come up with something in an instant, but at the moment, she'd been caught up in the murky mires of those high school girls... And it could be even more damaging to her as an adult.
I've learned that the private life of others is nothing but poison.
"It probably isn't 'franchise (FC)'—then maybe it's something like 'football club (FC)'?"
It seemed appropriate.
First a basketball club, now a football club.
It also wasn't impossible to interpret it as a franchise of making vampire thralls, forced as it was—but there was no need to twist it that much.
But before we went to Naoetsu High's soccer team, we couldn't forget the other organization in that high school that we should consider.
"'Fan club (FC)'."
"Hm?"
"There was something like that. In the past—well, it wasn't that far in the past—an unofficial fan club for the superstar Kanbaru Suruga."
It was an organization separate from the girls' basketball team, yet was an organization that was strongly influenced by Kanbaru, in a way different from the girls' basketball team.
It was something that came to mind after thinking that all the mummies' hairstyles were the same—let's see, as I recall, that fan club's name was "Kanbaru Soeurs"?
"What's that? Is it something like the Rukawa Kaede Imperial Guard?"
"Exactly. But somehow they ended up getting involved with me and I forced them into disbanding—"
"That's something really scary you're saying as just an introduction, Koyomin. Forced them into disbanding. You really are a delinquent like the rumors say, aren'tcha?"
"I think the remnants of that fan club could be related to this case."
As much as the hypothesis that there was a vampire among the girls' basketball team members was incredible to believe, the possibility that there was a vampire mixed in with Kanbaru Suruga's fan club was just as ridiculous.
But we weren't in a situation where we could afford not to consider ridiculous possibilities just because they were ridiculous.
"That's a fact that this onee-san that knows everything didn't exactly need to know. Ah, yes, but my dear sister had a cheerleading squad like that when she was in high school, too."
"It doesn’t seem like it will have much of a connection, but I suppose I should do something now that I've thought of it. She wasn't a member of the fan club herself, but my little sister is pretty close with that organization, so I'll look into it just a teeny bit."
"Your little sister?"
I looked at Gaen-san's clouded expression.
"My little sister (the bigger one)," I amended.
After hearing that, Gaen-san seemed to relax, smiling.
"You mean Karen-chan. Okay, do as you see fit. But, out of concern—from this old lady's point of view—please don't bring Tsukihi-chan into this. Of course, Koyomin, you were originally the one who said you didn't want to cause trouble for your family, but even discounting the thing with Yozuru, things that go well just don't go well when Tsukihi-chan is involved."
She's talking about you in a pretty amazing way, my little sister (the smaller one).
"And, I apologize for the late report, but Shinobu laid out some conditions for her cooperation in Suicidemaster's interrogation."
I presented an outline of the master-servant reversal to Gaen-san. Even though the plan seemed like it would be laughable regardless of the time, place, or occasion...
"Right, that sounds good."
I received the commander's approval.
Of course, she didn't say anything like "I'll do it, too! Let me be a slave, too!"
"Although, rather than an interrogation, it's practically an undercover operation at this point—but if Suicidemaster mistakenly sees that Shinobu-chan is doing well in this country, then she might end up chattering away without any caution."
Mistakenly. Well, she would certainly be mistaken.
Rather than "doing well", she'd been on the verge of being exterminated, on the verge of being killed, and on the verge of death, and in the end failed to die, turned into a little girl, and then ended up sealed in a teenager's shadow.
At any rate, seeing as I'd gotten the go-ahead to put the plan into action, it was inevitable—I wasn't sure if I could pull off the part of a slave, but I would do what I could.
"In that case, even if it didn't have to do with the fan club, I figure I should have a proper discussion with Kanbaru about this, but is there anything I should be careful about when talking to her? The situation has completely changed from yesterday."
"Something to be careful about... I'd like if you could avoid the storm entirely. I know you might feel a sense of duty, but don't go poking your nose into the murky depths of your juniors."
Her advice was not as a specialist but as a person with more seniority in life, but I wanted Kanbaru, too, to follow these words of Gaen-san, who was called a senior by various people.
Even if I couldn't mention Gaen-san's name.
Even if I doubted that Kanbaru would actually follow them.
"I'll stay at this hospital and do my best with the cell phone analysis while waiting for a report from the search party and preparing for the night."
"I'll meet up with Karen-chan and Kanbaru, and if I have some spare time I'll go drop in on Oikura."
"Putting aside your childhood friend, when it comes to your little sister and Suruga, there's no need to wait up until they come back from school. Koyomin, I think you should go back home at least once for a nap. Though I know all-nighters aren't hard on you thanks to your vampire constitution, you must still be at your limit, right?"
That was true.
Thinking about it, vampires, being nocturnal, did go to sleep in the daytime... Just as Shinobu was doing right now.
The truth was, I'd been working out a plan to drop in on Oikura's place until school let out for the day, but it seemed I'd have to abandon that idea.
Even sleeping was work.
Well, if it was around this time, that mathematics maniac was probably in class, too...
"Ah. I know. I'll split the difference and go to Oikura's place to sleep. I have a spare key, after all."
"Childhood friendships are pretty hard for other people to pry into, huh."
032
I decided to just go to my own home. Of course I needed to catch up on sleep, but I wanted to take a bath, too. Alas, I didn't have any clothes to change into at Oikura's place. I'll do something about that later.
Afterwards, I thought about saying thanks to Ononoki-chan for last night—since I'd left in a hurry, I hadn't been able to talk to her about how she relayed Hachikuji's message to me, or how she called over Gaen-san to the mountain after that.
From Ononoki-chan's point of view, I'd gotten a fortune slip and left all of a sudden, and then decided to go to hell—I probably seemed pretty weird to her... I couldn't bear being thought of as a weird guy by Ononoki-chan.
With both parents working, the first daughter a high schooler, and the second daughter a middle schooler, the Araragi house was generally empty in the daytime—I would be able to speak to Ononoki-chan, who'd infiltrated the house as a stuffed doll, without reservations.
It was one thing to give my thanks, but I figured I may as well tell her that Kagenui-san was approaching this town like a hurricane—for Gaen-san and me, it was an approach that was currently fairly inconvenient, but it could be good news for Ononoki-chan, who idolizes (?) Kagenui-san as an "onee-chan".
Because Ononoki-chan was busy with something else, she wasn't participating in this incident, but it wasn't like she was intentionally left out of the loop, unlike Shinobu until she found out—if the conversation went well, perhaps I'd be able to learn about the past between Suicidemaster and Kagenui-san, which I had failed to ask about, or rather, which I had wanted to hear but didn't want to hear.
Perhaps those ulterior motives led to my ruin, for when I arrived home, it was not just my parents and sisters but also that expressionless, frilly-dressed stuffed doll that was absent.
It seemed that young girl was even busier than public servants and middle school students, though not college students.
Well, I'd like to hear as much as what she had to say, but I didn't think it was a past that I wanted to dig into myself... If anything, maybe what I should be doing is to let the foreshadowing die so that her past doesn't get revealed?
Araragi Koyomi, killing the foreshadowing.
With that, feeling a mix of disappointment and relief, I took a shower and crawled into bed.
It seemed I'd been more tired than I realized (perhaps out of worry, too), so I slept soundly until the afternoon, waking only to the sound of Karen's return—despite her training in martial arts, she was a lot noisier in her movements, so it was easy to hear.
"Yo, Karen-chan. By the way, I wanted to ask about Kanbaru's fan club."
"That's way too direct. I haven't even taken off my shoes yet! At least welcome me back. You gotta have some sort of introduction before starting off the main topic with a 'by the way'. What happened?"
Araragi Karen. 16 years old.
She was super tall. My bigger little sister.
Tsuganoki Private High School first-year. She did not take part in any clubs, and continued to attend a martial arts dojo—something like that.
Also, her hairstyle returned to a ponytail.
"Kanbaru-sensei's fan club? Ah, aah. The one that nii-chan smashed up, huh."
"If I didn't break them up, they would've broken me. Just remembering it now, it's super scary."
The fact that she was still calling her Kanbaru-sensei was pretty considerable, but then again, the way Karen yearned for Kanbaru was... pretty unique.
I couldn't exactly give a thorough explanation of the circumstances, so I simply said, "Have you heard anything about, say, them having resumed activities?" and continued the conversation without explaining my reasons.
"Mmm. No, I don't think they have. When an organization like that comes apart once, it's pretty hard to reorganize."
"Is that so?"
"The crux, Kanbaru-sensei, retired, after all. Fans easily heat up and easily cool down."
I see... I guess it was like that.
Just as Karen said, if Kanbaru had continued to be active, then perhaps the fan club could have been passed down to the next generation, but now that the target of their admiration had retired, it was probably hard to gather new members.
And Kanbaru herself wasn't the kind of person that liked attracting that kind of attention, too—I had to admit I felt a bit elated at the inspiration of reading the deciphered code "F/C" as fan club... But I guess it wasn't that easy.
When comparing the girls' basketball team, of which Kanbaru had been a member, with the fan club, which was unofficial and separate... The quality was certainly different—if it became a fan club full of stoicism that could enforce ironclad laws without the actual person in question, it would be one of the best in Japan.
If only it had been "C/F", then it could at least have been read as "center forward", a basketball position...
Well, whether the culprit was in the girls' basketball team or in the fan club, it didn't change the reality that the vampire might be nonchalantly attending Naoetsu High—if that was even possible.
Of course, even though Gaen-san had been trying to implicate me, there were quite a few students that had gotten entangled with oddities, like Senjougahara Hitagi, Hanekawa Tsubasa, Kanbaru Suruga, or Oshino Ougi.
Well, a high school girl being a vampire did make for a prettier picture than a high school boy being a vampire—oh yeah.
"Karen-chan. You're a high school girl now, right?"
"What's with that, all of a sudden? But, that's right. I've become able to get married."
"That's not because you're a high school girl, it's because you've turned 16 years old. If anything, you've gotten harder to marry. Especially for me."
"Nii-chan, for you I'm the most difficult person in the world to marry. I'm your little sister!"
"How does it feel to be a high school girl? Is everything going well with your new friends?"
Regrettably, I pretended to be an overprotective older brother and started a survey to try and collect some live opinions—could even Karen be mired in the murky depths that had been a downer for the easygoing Gaen-san?
"I dunno what sort of school life you mean by 'going well', but this new world is pretty fun. I almost want to go to school on the weekends, too."
That's pretty insane.
But that's true, it's not like all high school girls have a dark side to them. There are individual differences, and it depends on the environment and the situation.
To put it in a good way, Karen's personality was endlessly bright, and to put it in a bad way, she was endlessly idiotic, but that wasn't just it—when surrounded by a stiff atmosphere, even the brightest idiot would lose some of that excitement. However, Karen was a follower of Kanbaru—
"—Oh yeah. Can I ask one more thing, Karen-chan?"
"What is it now? Today, it's all questions and no groping my boobs, huh."
"Don't talk like groping your boobs is a regular occurrence. I'm not going to touch them. This year."
"It was a problem when you've been touching them for the last year. Touching a girl's boobs like you were kneading clay. And? What's the question you were gonna ask?"
"You know the Fire Sisters, that you and Tsukihi-chan were a part of? You guys disbanded after you graduated, right? What happened after that?"
"Whaddya mean what happened. I told you, didn't I? Now, Tsukihi-chan's working hard on her own as Moon Fire."
I may have heard that before, but regrettably, the information she had on her sister was a bit vague.
Not that I could speak for others, considering I was the same way when it came to that sister.
What I wanted to ask was how the community of Tsuganoki 2nd Middle School changed after Karen, the mainstay and core of the school, left, like with the girls' basketball team—wasn't there anything like a war to be the replacement for Tsukihi's partner, or any sort of factional strife?
"Oh, for that, Tsukihi-chan, as the staff officer, handled it pretty well. For better or worse, Tsukihi-chan thinks she's so special that she doesn't expect anyone else, including me, to be able to imitate her."
I see. I'd been worried about my youngest sister's (excessive) self-consciousness, but that was an insight.
As is often the case with hard-working superstars, Kanbaru's self-esteem was quite low, and she had a tendency to believe that "anyone can do what I can do if they work hard enough"—that was something I could appreciate from a human perspective. However, if someone that was charismatic on a national level said such empty words as "if you work hard, your dreams will come true", then it would lead to a generation of people that actually buy into it.
Even though it wasn't Kanbaru's fault, the current state of the girls' basketball team was probably a climate formed by such a belief in hard work.
If I had to say it, when Kanbaru retired from the club because of her left arm, she should've picked a proper successor instead of leaving everything to Higasa-chan—though it was useless to say that now.
"Tsukihi-chan is basically a 'wasted effort is wasted' kind of girl. She'll say stuff like, 'Instead of hard work, just do what needs to be done!' 'If you put in wasted effort, you'll get even farther away from your dreams!'"
"I can't say that leaves a good impression..."
"She'd always insist, 'Find a way to make yourself a lucky boy or Cinderella girl!'"
"Tsukihi-chan probably shouldn't publish any business books. Speaking of which, it worries me that Tsukihi-chan, a middle school student, is coming home later than you, a high school student. Rub rub. What in the world is Moon Fire up to now that she's gone independent?"
"I dunno either. Rather than being independent, Tsukihi-chan's always been a dependent person with an independent spirit. Nii-chan, what were those rubbing sound effects you tried to mix in for the first time this year, without even trying to get them lost in the confusion? And I've heard rumors that you were helping out a magical girl, but how much of that is true?"
"Hmm."
Especially with Kagenui-san's return, I wanted Tsukihi to stay quiet, but she wasn't exactly the kind of sister that listened to her brother.
If I'd been able to talk with Ononoki-chan, I could've asked for her to do something about that... Rather than worry, it made me a little anxious.
Being a big brother was a lifetime job.
"Then, Karen-chan. I'm going to leave the house now, and I don't think I'll be coming back today, so in the meantime, watch over Tsukihi-chan carefully, all right?"
"You mean, today also, right? College students shouldn't be so flashy with their playing around at night. Your new life is an important time for you, too, nii-chan. I don't want to see you get burned like you did when you became a high schooler."
"Those are useful words. Worthy of engraving onto a chest."
"Don't engrave them on my chest!"
033
My fearless (of even a god) strategy to get Hachikuji to sit in the child seat ended in failure.
In transporting the ancient vampire from the Kitashirahebi Shrine to Kanbaru's house while waiting for her awakening (sunset), I'd proposed the formation of putting Hachikuji in the passenger seat and Suicidemaster in the back seat, but considering the size of the target of transportation, I was defeated by the logic that it would be legally safer to secure Suicidemaster, a six-year-old girl, in the child seat.
Well, considering that, in terms of outward appearance, Hachikuji was fixed in the form of a ten-year-old in fifth grade, it was already kind of impossible to fit her in a child seat—and Hachikuji was fairly grown for a ten-year-old. Over the past year, I'd directly felt her measurements with my own hands, so this was for certain. Of course, if the child seat itself were to break, it would be the end of everything.
It was a child seat I hoped to use for many years to come.
However, I'd been worried that Suicidemaster would suddenly go berserk in the middle of the day after being taken out of the shrine and lowered from the sacred mountain, so I consulted with Gaen-san on the phone and ended up applying further seals before securing her in the child seat.
The seals that Hachikuji applied as instructed by Gaen-san were, in simple terms, a blindfold and shackles on her arms and legs, but the image of a blindfolded, shackled little girl in white clothes fastened to a child seat honestly did not make me feel the slightest bit of safety in the legal sense.
If I were to go through police questioning, it wouldn't just end with my license being revoked.
My life would be revoked. Societally.
"A~ah. It was fairly controversial for Araragi-san, who loved his bicycle, to start riding around in a car, but I have to admit that the mobility of a car is certainly different. You can go all over the place, in every direction!"
Hachikuji herself seemed rather happy-go-lucky from the back seat—incidentally, she was in outing mode, which meant she'd changed from her white clothing to her clothes for an outing through the town, with her rucksack on her back.
She was sitting backwards, looking out the rear window, and flapping her legs—was it like a field trip for her?
"Hachikuji. Did your daytime stroll have any results? If you went around looking but couldn't find it, then that would mean the fifth mummy has yet to be made—maybe?"
"I'm not sure. If my godly eyes were able to reach every corner of this town without any problems, you could say this incident would not have happened in the first place. Although it's not that I regret allowing Suicidemaster-san to pass through without security."
"Well, sure."
From Hachikuji's point of view, she might even be a lifesaver—upon Suicidemaster-chan's arrival in Japan, it wouldn't have been odd if she had trampled Hachikuji underfoot, mountain and all.
Even though she was a god, our Hachiku-jin wasn't all-powerful—even in her weakened state, it could be possible for Suicidemaster to defeat even an athletic high school girl in a single blow.
"Hachiku-jin? Please stop. Don't give me a weird nickname. It seems your respect for gods is lacking, you know?"
Hachikuji did a half-turn and took her seat in the normal position.
"I knew that, with the case of Shishirui Seishirou-san, Shinobu-san had messed up twice, after all. I hoped that this could be an opportunity to wipe away that irreversible trauma—although, it would be a lie to say that I wasn't worried about letting Suicidemaster-san meet Shinobu-san, who was currently practically enslaved by a human."
That's why I'm all for the master-servant reversal, said Hachikuji.
"Although, I think it would be better to be honest about it afterwards. It would be sad to lose a friendship because of vanity. When I was alive, there was a boy in my class that I was close to, but because I'd been too vain—"
"Let's save that story for another time, Hachikuji. When Gaen-san called earlier and taught us about the sealing methods, I tried probing a bit, but it doesn't seem like they've found the fifth mummy yet."
"You seem way too uninterested in my flashback scene, Araragi-san."
"The analysis of the cell phone is still in progress, but it doesn't seem like there's any traces of her having made a call or sent a text or used an app since Kanguu-chan went missing, so it's hard to pin down the time of the crime. In other words, we still don't have proof of Suicidemaster's alibi."
I glanced at the little girl in the passenger seat.
The golden-haired little girl fixed in the child seat, in white clothing, blindfolded, arms and legs shackled.
"Is that so? Well, my credibility is at stake, too. I'll cooperate to the full extent of my power. Is it fine if I pretend to be a slave, too? Uhehehe."
"You sound less like a vampire's slave and more like a slave to money. Mm, I've thought about it, but..."
"So you've thought about it? Turning Hachikuji Mayoi into a slave?"
"But ultimately, a vampire's slave should be at least a little vampiric, or the lie will be found out. If it were Ononoki-chan, I may have just barely asked her to, but she's on bad terms with Shinobu. Plus, she's away at the moment, so it seems I'll have to be the only slave. If anything, Hachikuji, you can act as the local deity and be a guarantor for the relationship between Shinobu and me."
Not a bondsman, but a bondsgod.
It seemed rather apt.
Just as we were about to arrive at Kanbaru's house, the cell phone that I had left in the cup holder between the driver and passenger seats buzzed. This time, a call from Gaen-san—had the fifth mummy, Kiseki-chan's mummy, finally been discovered?
I felt slightly nervous, but I was driving, after all, so there was no way I could be the one to pick it up.
I'll leave it to my secretary.
"Who are you calling your secretary? Yes, hello? This is Hachikuji."
Seems like you've taken a liking to it.
"Araragi is currently driving. Yes. Yes. —Yes, I see. Understood. I'll let him know."
Finishing up the short phone call, Hachikuji returned the cell phone to its original position.
"What was it. Did we make any progress?"
"Rather than progress, it's more like we've fallen backwards."
That was Hachikuji's response.
"Putting aside the 'F C' initials, it seems they've completed their brute-force investigation of the remaining members of the girls' basketball team who were on the register, but everyone has been confirmed to be safe."
Everyone was confirmed to be safe?
"Isn't that a good thing? It's the first good news we've heard in a while. What's so backward about good news that's really worth celebrating?"
"The fact that they're safe means that they're also innocent—the results of the investigation made it clear that there is no vampire among the remaining members of the basketball team."
Back to square one.
034
The girls' basketball team members were cleared of suspicion, the fan club was also cleared of suspicion, and there were no signs of another vampire that could be associated with "F/C".
With this, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster wasn't just the prime suspect, she was the only suspect—the only reason that could lead me to believe that she was innocent would be Shinobu's testimony that "Suicidemaster, whose diet is unbalanced to the point of refusing food, would never suck the blood of an immature high school girl".
Tonight's interrogation was becoming increasingly important—it wasn't an exaggeration to say that everything depended on my ability to act as a slave.
I never thought that I would get the opportunity to become a slave to a little girl and deceive another little girl, but I guess I never really know where life will go.
There were many things that made me think that my high school years were the peak of my life, but as I lived on, there were many more interesting things occurring.
And with that, a greeting to my sponsor, Kanbaru.
The sealed little girl and the deified girl had been left in the New Beetle parked in the parking lot of Kanbaru's home—of course, I'd made sure the air conditioner was left on. It certainly wouldn't do if I left two children in a car and came back to find that they'd been mummified.
"Hiya, Araragi-senpai. We only just saw each other yesterday, but it feels like it's been so long ago."
"It hasn't been that long!"
"Yes, now here, the key to the house. Use it however you like."
I figured it was impossible for an ordinary person to imitate this sort of openness—if you tried too hard to act simple, you'd crumble under the stress.
However, they say a person is only as unhappy as the number of keys they have... I wonder how many keys I will have in my lifetime.
"Tonight, we decided to hold a pajama party at Higasa's place. If you've made any progress with the matter from yesterday, I can pass it onto her."
It wasn't progress, but falling backwards.
But it was a bit hard to say that.
However, I couldn't turn back now, and I was committed to it—I wasn't going to pretend that I didn't know anything about the girls' basketball team now.
Regardless of the outcome of this case, I should work together with Kanbaru and Higasa to come up with a plan to reform, or perhaps break down, the current situation. Without going against Gaen-san. She'd called it a pajama party, but it seemed it was actually a gathering of the OGs of the girls' basketball team to brainstorm about the current situation of the younger team members...
This had nothing to do with Karen's remarks, but as a former near-dropout of that high school, I couldn't just leave behind the students that seemed like they would drop out. Even if it was odd to speak of me, who nearly dropped out on my own, and the club members, who were about to drop out because of their stranglehold from club activities, in the same breath.
"Oh yeah, Kanbaru. When you ended up reuniting with Hitagi-san, the senior that you yearned for, at Naoetsu High, what kind of airs did you put on?"
"Airs? What do you mean by that?"
Of course.
Even if the person she was talking to was a senior she admired, she wasn't the type to pretend to be something that she wasn't—she was the type of person to charge in just as she was. If anything, it was maybe Hitagi-san that was likely to put on airs at the time.
Or display her stubbornness.
As a result, it would end up taking over a year before Senjougahara Hitagi and Kanbaru Suruga, the Valhalla Combination, would reunite.
"Huh. You're talking as if you're looking for wisdom in regards to Shinobu-chan reuniting with an old acquaintance!"
"I didn't talk like that!"
I didn't even bring up Shinobu's name!
She certainly was Gaen-san's niece, and I couldn't let down my guard—if I let something slip, this capable junior might decide to get involved all on her own.
She might decide to pretend to be a slave all on her own.
As someone who felt badly about the fact that I'd gotten her involved in the case of Shishirui Seishirou because of my own personal circumstances, this was a situation I wanted to avoid.
I needed to make up some reason to change the subject and get rid of her as soon as possible.
"Oh yeah, Kanbaru."
"Araragi-senpai, you sure come up with things frequently, don't you. What is it?"
"There's one more thing I wanted to ask of you—"
035
Though we'd settled on Kanbaru's place for our choice of location, it would be effectively impossible to clean up my junior's disastrously messy room before sunset, and, even if she'd told me to use the house however I liked, it certainly wouldn't do to infringe upon the territory of her grandfather and grandmother, so we ultimately decided upon using the Japanese mansion's garden for the revival of Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster.
Much like at Ryōan-ji, it was a Japanese rock garden.
Well, even if it was a measure of desperation, the mansion gave off much more of a castle-like impression when viewed from outside rather than being inside.
Yesterday, it had felt like I'd greeted nightfall feeling like I'd run out of time without doing everything I had to do, but today, it felt like I'd done everything I could and was greeting the night having run out of material. Now, I wonder what will happen?
"Thanks for waiting. So, shall we begin?"
At the moment the sun had set about halfway, Gaen-san appeared with a one shou bottle—the ones to welcome her were me; Shinobu, who had woken up early and crawled out of my shadow; Hachiku-jin, our witness; and Suicidemaster, who had been laid down—it seemed a little too pitiful to lay a restrained little girl on the bare ground, so I'd put down a rush mat (I'd found the rush mat in Kanbaru's room—why did she have something like that?).
All the actors were in place.
The show must go on.
"I've set up a barrier going all the way around the mansion, so if by some chance a battle breaks out, we'll be fine."
"That 'some chance' is what I'd like to avoid... But, Gaen-san. What's with that bottle?"
"Well, I am a specialist, after all. Wine would be better for vampires, but I figured we could do this the Japanese way, with sacred sake for a demon."
I guess I couldn't rely on crosses and holy water in a Japanese mansion with a shrine's god present... Her behavior was as if she'd come to a late-night drinking party, but in this Japanese mansion it held an air of sophistication.
"You should've come in full dress, then."
"Did you want to see me in shrine maiden's clothes, Koyomin? Unfortunately, I don't respect formalities and ceremonies as much as Meme does. I may be a pacifist, but at the same time, I'm a rationalist."
Indeed, now that I thought about it, that careless-seeming middle-aged Hawaiian shirt guy was surprisingly pretty picky about arrangements and whatnot to the point of irrationality... And looking closely, Gaen-san's bottle was just a bottle of cheap sake from a discount store... It was a bit difficult to call that sacred sake.
I guess it's the Gaen way to push through what's difficult.
"Goodness, I never thought I'd be visiting the Kanbaru house that rejected my dear sister like this—the wheel of fate sure turns."
As she spoke in an amused manner, Gaen-san casually turned over the one shou bottle and poured it over the body of the little girl.
Rather than occult ceremony, if anything, it seemed more like the "magic kettle" thing they did in rugby clubs.
Good, judging from that composed demeanor of hers, it seemed Gaen-san had managed to safely get through the murky swamp of the high school girls.
"Ooh. White clothing getting wet and sticking to a little girl's body... Kind of erotic, don't you think?"
Hachikuji made a vulgar remark, unbecoming of a god—for the record, though I hadn't touched upon it (double meaning) out of kindness, when you were meditating under a waterfall for a joke yesterday, you looked the same way, y'know?
Putting that aside.
"By the way, Shinobu-sama."
"...... Hm? Ah, you mean me, my master?"
She wasn't getting into her role at all.
Her servile disposition was so deeply ingrained in her.
"I mean, my servant. What is it?"
"Even if you catch it right away... Well, it's fine. Listen, Shinobu-sama. My master. Would you allow me the honor of inquiring something of you?"
"If you bring that quality of acting to the real thing, it'll be your fault if we get found out, my mast... my servant."
I think it would be both our faults.
But since we didn't have time, I continued instead of retorting.
"I haven't really thought too deeply about this until now, but... What's it like, living for six hundred years?"
"Huh?"
"I mean, if I may be permitted to speak for myself, I believe I have undergone quite a few changes, just looking back over the past year."
"Speak normally. I can't tell what you're saying at all."
Right.
I didn't even know what I was saying at all.
"In the course of our lives, we change our opinions, change our minds, realize our mistakes, and learn right from wrong, right? I won't make friends, because my strength as a human would decrease—when I used to say that, I really believed it, and I don't think I could have believed back then that I would have normal friends in college."
And that was in just a single year.
If that had been six hundred years—I'd ended up suddenly wondering how I would feel when I looked back on the past.
"I can't tell what you're saying at all, even when you're talking normally—after all, I've been quick to cast away the past that I can't remember."
Was it because she couldn't remember, or because she didn't want to remember? She probably didn't even remember that.
Well, it's fine. I just wanted something to say at the last minute—not even I, speaking normally, could tell what I was saying at all.
Just because they were meeting again after six hundred years, didn't mean they had to make the same decisions they made six hundred years ago—is that what I wanted to say? However—if I ran into Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade on the verge of death in an alleyway again, what if I would offer up my neck again, just like I had done a year ago?
"In the first place, before oddities are immortal, they're unchanging, universal. They don't change so frequently, like humans do."
"Then, let me ask you the same thing I did in that spring break. Shinobu, to you..."
To you, what are humans?
When Oshino Shinobu had not been Oshino Shinobu, when she had been the vampire, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, she had responded immediately.
She'd responded—"food".
But for Shinobu now, that was incorrect.
Even under the premise that she was sealed—but when you took that out, it was still incorrect.
However, what she would respond was another matter entirely—and it was as if Shinobu had been caught off guard, because for a moment, she fell silent. But, as if aiming for that moment...
"O devourer, o imbiber, o lurker! Now that the holy sun has set, tear open the coffin and rise! Boil the flesh in blood, and stir it with the bones!"
Gaen-san started chanting something like a magic spell that had taken the world by storm a few decades ago—it seemed like a joke, but it was for real, right?
"Come together with the night! Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster!"
It seemed like the sort of hackneyed incantation that I would've been convinced if she'd said, "Just kidding," but in that instant, the little girl soaked in cheap sake began to glow gold—or so it seemed.
But it was just my imagination, and my misunderstanding.
In actuality, the girl who had been sleeping as if she were dead had suddenly opened her eyes—the blindfold flew open, revealing two eyes as golden as her hair, and it had felt to me as if they were glowing.
Miss Suicidemaster's facial features, who had previously appeared as expressionless as Ononoki-chan's, became clearer as she awoke—though they had the same golden hair and golden eyes, she gave off a different impression from Shinobu.
The sake that had been sprinkled over her evaporated in an instant—not only the shackles on her arms and legs, but even the sash of her white clothing flew off, just like her blindfold.
Had Gaen-san broken the seal, or had the little girl herself broken it? It wasn't clear from afar—but if anything, my impressions were more towards the latter, and I couldn't help but think, "What part of her is weakened?"
I was just beginning to regret my thoughtless act of treatment, which made me recall my actions last spring break, and was wondering if it would have been better to leave her as a mummy, but then...
Creak!
The little girl's face turned towards me.
Lying on her side, only her head turned to look towards me—no.
Not me. Those golden eyes had fixed their gaze upon the one standing on my shadow, the other little girl in this garden—within moments of waking up, the ancient vampire had sensed her former thrall.
And then.
"Ha."
She said.
"Ha." "Ha."
She said.
"Ha." "Ha." "Ha."
She said.
"Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
She said—sprawled out on the ground, from the lowest position imaginable, her laugh rang out louder than I could have imagined.
And in response to that loud laugh, Shinobu, who had borne vivid witness to her former "master"'s revival—
"Ha."
She said.
"Ha." "Ha."
She said.
"Ha." "Ha." "Ha."
She said.
"Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
She—laughed in return.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
If it weren't for the barrier, their loud exchange laughter would surely have disturbed the neighbors—it was like microphone feedback. How long had it gone for?
Six hundred years. A thousand years.
Did it go on for eternity?
It was quite the uproarious bout of laughter, as if Gaen-san and Hachikuji and I weren't even there in that garden, but it was finally brought to an end.
"Somehow or other, it seems I've died again."
That was the remark from the little girl on her back.
And, hearing that, Shinobu shrugged her shoulders.
"It seems we've both grown old," she said.
The two little girls had reunited for the first time in six hundred years.
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Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Community Outreach Coordinator
I often talk about the time I spent working in community radio. Not because I worked there very long (it was only a few hours a week in my final year of undergrad), but because it was a very formative experience, it still influences the way I teach, and the importance of communicating my research to different audiences. In today’s interview, Olivia Fava also shares my enthusiasm for radio. You can follow Olivia on Twitter (@o_fava).
What did you study at university?
I attended McMaster University in Hamilton (Ontario, Canada). Fun fact: I actually started my university career in the chemistry/physics stream! I didn’t know what linguistics was in high school while I was deciding my major, but I realized pretty quickly that the sciences weren’t for me. Once I learned about linguistics, I realized it would be a perfect fit and switched over in my second year of university.
I took a broad range of courses in my first couple of years, but by my fourth year, I had concentrated the most on semantics and pragmatics. Linguistics majors at my university are also required to study at least two languages from two different language families; I studied Japanese, Italian, and American Sign Language (ASL). I also spent a semester on exchange in Japan in pursuit of my language credits, which worked out well because it was both a great experience and one that was very useful towards my degree.
I graduated this past June, but I’m currently working at my university, so I’m still continuing to take linguistics courses that I didn’t have the time or space to take while I was a full-time student. I’ll be starting a course on programming for linguists soon, which I’m very excited for.
What is your job?
I work at my university’s radio station (93.3 CFMU), and my job title is Community Outreach Coordinator. I’ve volunteered there as a radio host for about three years now, so once I graduated I applied for a job and the rest is history!
Day-to-day, I host the morning show and do interviews on local news, culture, and politics. I also plan, oversee, and write and/or edit all of our other news and arts coverage, mostly articles or videos. Communications-wise, I manage a fair bit of our external communications and all of our social media. I also help train and supervise our part-time staff and volunteers. Our staff is small, so I end up wearing a lot of hats, but I’d say most of my work falls under the umbrella of media and journalism.
In a given day, I’ll most likely go from hosting the morning show, to training volunteers, over to editing articles, and then researching ideas for new articles or documentaries (and, of course, there’s always emails to answer in-between). It’s a very fast-paced job that demands a lot of creativity and adaptability.
As a campus radio station, we’ve been moving a lot more into podcasting as well since that’s very popular with my generation, so I also spend some time on audio editing. With how popular podcasting has been recently, that’s experience I’m really glad I’m getting now!
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
It helps me immensely! Being able to pronounce names more accurately in interviews is the one that non-linguists will immediately pick up on, but linguistics training also helps me in subtler ways.
I’m especially grateful for having studied semantics and pragmatics, because picking up on the finer shades of meaning words have can really help in interviews. Listening carefully to the words my guest uses and understanding presupposition and other speech acts really helps me understand precisely what they’re trying to convey, whether they’re experienced speakers or first-time interviewees. It also helps me pick up on how they feel about a particular topic, what they might be hinting at or not saying directly, and what lines of questioning I should explore more for maximum impact. And, most importantly, it helps me do all this quickly.
That quick linguistic analysis ultimately helps me come up with good, pertinent questions to ask as I am met with new information, which is a very useful skill for doing interviews. A secondary part of my job is also training other people on how to do interviews, so I definitely appreciate having the terminology on hand to really break down how spoken communication works.
The other thing about my job is how many different people I speak to every day. Studying linguistics has really helped me quickly grasp how a person speaks, and I find that I’m able to modulate my speech to ‘match’ them when necessary. It might seem like a small thing, but it can really help people feel more comfortable.
Also, linguistics has definitely made my writing more accurate and more interesting. My understanding of semantics, syntax, and pragmatics helps make my writing accurate, well-structured, and interesting. With regards to speaking on-air, I find it also helps me understand how to properly use verbal cues like emphasis. I write my own scripts for radio, a medium without visuals where you need to keep your audience engaged with just your writing and your speaking voice, so linguistics has been very useful for that.
Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
I mostly just wish I had known about linguistics in high school. The dilemma for me was that I didn’t feel like I quite fit in with either sciences or the humanities. I was more oriented towards languages and literature, but the analytical framework the sciences appealed to me greatly as well. In short, I wanted to do analysis with words, something I didn’t think was even possible. I spent a lot of time in high school and early university worrying over finding the right major, time I don’t think I would have spent if I had known about linguistics sooner.
Regarding university more generally, I really wish I’d been told more that changing your path is an absolutely natural thing to do. I always worried that I had a limited number of years to solidify my life path, so redirecting would mean I had “lost” those years I’d spent on whatever I was doing before. Once I adjusted my perspective and realized that life is more than just a single linear trajectory with set time limits, I became much more adaptable – and happier, as well!
Any other thoughts or comments?
Dear reader: if you’re like me and you appreciate both language and scientific analysis (and/or find yourself studying the etymology section of the dictionary in your spare time), you should definitely explore linguistics if you haven’t already. Even if it’s not as a major or career, it will probably a) fascinate and delight you and b) help you better understand how communication works, which can only serve you well in work, school, and life.
And if you are considering going to school for linguistics, I can tell you from my own personal experience that I’m very proud of my major, I can’t think of a single course I didn’t like, and although I’m just starting out in the working world, I can already see the massive benefits studying linguistics has had on my work. I’m very excited to see where my linguistics knowledge will take me in the future!
Recently:
Interview with a Marketing Content Specialist
Interview with a Software Engineer
Interview with a Product Manager
Interview with a Communications Specialist
Interview with a Learning Scientist
Check out the Linguist Jobs Master List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews
#language#linguistics#linguistics job#linguistics jobs#lingjobs#linguist job#jobs#job#career change#careers
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Luckily I think I have a knack for languages but only for different aspects of each one? lol. Like, I grew up watching/listening to a lot of Japanese stuff (anime, dramas, music) so I have decent listening/hearing comprehension for it--enough that I was able to communicate with Japanese exchange students in college (I'd answer them in English, which they also had a working understanding of, or in my simple baby Japanese lol). But I cannot for the life of me understand kanji so I'm always going to be Japanese illiterate 🥲 (My brother is also learning Japanese so my catchphrase for whenever he shows me anything is "I can't read this!" lol)
I picked up Hangul real quick and I get the grammar structure now, but my Korean vocab is so all over the place that I can read/write but not know what anything means lmao. I'm hoping I'll absorb it naturally by watching and listening to more Korean media but the school year is so busy. I'm hoping I'm not too mentally dead by the end of June so I can activate all my brain cells this summer vacation to hopefully get fluent 🤓
At least my pronunciation for both languages is decent so I can sing in them now 👍 Let's both aim for "being able to watch shows in the background" proficiency 🤝 because tbh that's what I'll be using any language for the most...
-👻✌️
I love learning languages, which is probably why I picked up linguistics quickly despite never taking a class before grad school. My brother (who is 18 years older than me and literally a genius) accidently picked up Japanese. Like he literally was buying manga to look at the art mostly because he's an artist and went "oh, I can actually read this" and got his hands on more Japanese media. So when I came around he literally raised me on jdramas and read me manga to bed and play me jpop consistently. He's genuinely upset that I'm not fluent like him by now, but I'm also stupid. But at the same time, I also grew up speaking English, French, and Haitian creole (literally the only one of my sibs to pick up the last two, perks of being the youngest). So I think a 4th language would have been too much for my little brain. But I literally retained none of the Spanish I learned in school despite learning it for 13 years and picked up French in 2 (had to do 2 years for college). And I keep picking up French books and reading French posts and being like "oh, I can actually read this" (like brother like sister I guess).
I think I know more Japanese than I actually do because I can watch subbed shows relatively quickly and I've caught myself looking away from the screen while drawing or something and forgetting to look up again and still being able to follow. But ask me to read something and I'm lost. I'm literally learning to read bc one of my fav video game series published a side story book and it's only in Japanese and my brother says I'm too old for him to read for me 😭 (asshole) and nobody has translated the book yet despite there being an English following of the game. But pronunciation wise I'm okayish with japanese since my brother made sure to drill me on how to read when how things are written out in romaji. Compared to watching anything in Korean, I still have to pause for subs sometimes, but that might just be because of how some of them are timed. I'm an auditory learner/person so I think I'm better learning that way. I bought some workbooks for both Japanese (elementary so it should be kanji and hiragana, maybe katakana I think) and Hangul and they both come with audio components so I should be set. Literally, the way I would study for English vocab test back in middle school and high school would be me listening to my friends study together and I would pass every time. So I think if I consume enough Korean and Japanese media I should be able to pick those up too.
I am so sorry for rambling but you hit one of my favorite topics/ special interest and I couldn't help myself 😅 But yes, let's both aim for "being able to watch shows in the background" proficiency!
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My language headcanons for the turtles that nobody asked for!
So, in addition to the obvious English, all of the turtles also know Japanese but to varying degrees.
Leo and Mikey are the most well rounded in all four skills (speaking, reading, listening, and writing) in Japanese. Even though they aren’t innately good at languages, they put in a lot of hard work and study to get where they are. This is largely due to their motivations. Leo wanted to be able to talk with Splinter in his native language, while Mikey was super into Japanese pop-culture, anime, and manga. As Japanese was something both were passionate about, this is the only language other than English they speak.
Raph, on the other hand, does have an ear for languages and can mimic what he hears really well on first try and somehow retain it. He never actively studied Japanese in the traditional sense beyond what Splinter made him do like Leo and Mikey though resulting in poor reading and writing ability. On the upside, he is the only one of the four that is truly multi-lingual. From childhood, he used to sit with Splinter while he watched Spanish telenovelas. He would get really into them and parrot the characters lines. This continued throughout his childhood and early teens until he eventually could have really detailed (and dramatic) conversations in Spanish. His Spanish is probably better than his Japanese. After he started going topside, he was exposed to a few other languages from hanging around areas of New York with large immigrant populations, and has picked up a little from a few but not enough to say he speaks them, but who knows, maybe some day!
Donnie sees language a little differently to his brothers. Being a man of science, Donnie views language as a puzzle, or a code to be cracked, rather than a tool to communicate or consume media. Basically, he’s more into the linguistics of it all, studying how each language is built and how to conjugate correctly etc. Therefore, Donnie put a lot more of his time into reading and writing Japanese, and thus, he is much more confident in those abilities than his speaking or listening skills. He also suffers quite a bit with language anxiety and fears making mistakes which has also hindered his speaking ability. He finds linguistics interesting and sometimes reads about it in his free time, or during breaks in his projects, so he has knowledge of a lot of languages and can recognize most languages just from seeing/hearing it.
So they all grew up learning Japanese from Splinter, but that does not mean they are native speakers as they pretty much always spoke to each other in English. If they were to speak to a native Japanese, that person would instantly know they didn’t grow up in Japan. Leo’s Japanese is quite stiff and formal because he usually only uses it with Splinter, a person he must show respect to, and so he finds it difficult to switch to informal Japanese when appropriate like when speaking to his brothers. The opposite is true of Raph. Though his pronunciation and intonation is flawless, he only uses informal Japanese and refuses to use or learn keigo, the honorific Japanese used with your seniors, therefore he comes off as extremely rude sometimes (but what’s new there!). Mikey talks like an anime character and is oblivious to it. He thinks it’s normal because that’s the type of Japanese he’s most exposed to, but a lot of the language used in anime is specific to anime and isn’t used by Japanese people in their daily lives. And finally, Donnie’s main give away that he isn’t a native speaker is his hesitance as he searches for the right word or sentence, but like Raph, his pronunciation and intonation are pretty good once he gets going.
In addition to spoken language, the turtles also have system of hand signals they use to communicate when in the field as ninjas. This isn’t a complex system and can only be used to give directions when on a mission. Leo started developing it not long after he was made leader and all four turtles and Splinter can use and understand it.
#tmnt headcanon#tmnt#teenage mutant ninja turtles#leo#raph#mikey#donnie#tmnt 2003#tmnt 2012#tmnt comics#tmnt leo#tmnt raph#tmnt mikey#splinter#2003 leo#2003 raph#2003 mikey#2003 donnie#2012 leo#2012 raph#2012 mikey#2012 donnie
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Miscommunications in the Margin of Language
AO3 here
It takes Yuri all of 72 hours to realize other-Yuri speaks Russian.
It isn’t something that’s hard to figure out.
Of course, other-Yuri isn’t obvious about it. He never speaks it- though, if Yuri had to guess he’d say the pig is probably perfectly capable- and he doesn’t participate in the conversations between Viktor and him, never even going as far as to nod in the appropriate places. But he listens, and sometimes Viktor will give Yuri a correction, and other-Yuri follows the order without a second thought, straightening an arm, or standing up taller, even though he’s all the way across the rink.
And he listens to the conversations with a detached ear, occasionally letting out quiet huffs of laughter at some of Viktor’s more ridiculous turns of phrase. He just sits and listens, even as he appears to be doing something else; stretching or bandaging his feet before tying skates, or even just brushing Makkachin. Yuri knows from experience that listening to a language you don’t understand for that long can be trying; music is your best friend is foreign countries.
And when Hiroko mentions that other-Yuri studied languages and linguistics, well, it suddenly clicks into place, confirms what Yuri is pretty sure he’s known since the first day.
He doesn’t think much of it. Takes stock of the knowledge, adjusts his conversations with Viktor accordingly, privately acknowledges that other-Yuri is clearly very intelligent (Not only does he know three languages, but three completely different alphabets too. Yuri is fairly certain he wouldn’t have graduated without at least passing literate comprehensibility in his chosen languages (it doesn’t surprise Yuri in the least that he chose Russian) ) and moves on.
~
Yuri anticipates other-Yuri’s arrival is Russia with trepidation and excitement, in that order, not that he’d ever admit that out loud.
He’s found that Yuri is far better company than Viktor, quiet and supportive and caring in a way that doesn’t make Yuri feel like he’s being suffocated.
So when Viktor asks him if he wants to come to meet Katsudon at the airport he grumbles a lot but agrees before Viktor has enough time to rescind the offer.
By the time they arrive, other- Yuri is already waiting by the carousel, watching as the bags spin past with an impatient expression on his face.
“Lubov! We’re here!” Viktor practically drapes himself across his fiancé, and Yuri tries hard to stifle his snickers when other-Yuri jumps, and pushes him off, before turning to Yuri.
“Yura! How have you been?” He asks, wrapping arms around his shoulders in a bracing hug Yuri wants to hate but can’t.
Yuri doesn’t bother answering in English, ‘Fine, now get off me!’
Other- Yuri raises an eyebrow, but shrugs and let's go, moving to grasp Viktor’s hand in his own. The old man doesn’t seem to notice, and Yuri can’t help but wonder if he knows yet, or if he’s really just that dense.
He wonders if other Yuri knows that he knows, or if he to doesn’t even really differentiate between the languages anymore then Yuri does when he spends enough time in an English speaking country. They start to blur together. He doesn’t care enough to ask.
Two days later and other- Yuri and Viktor are in the rink, up before dawn, and skating before even Yakov is there. Skating in Russia is different than skating anywhere else. They work harder, longer, and Yuri doesn’t think that other-Yuri is going to be able to handle it, but it’s noon already by the time Yuri gets on the ice, and they’re both still there, Viktor watching from his position on the rink- even though Yuri’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be warming up- as other- Yuri runs through his step sequences. Even Yuri admits they’re beautiful, at least, he admits it to himself, he’s always thought so, but the love lorn look on Viktor’s face has gone so past professional admiration, past coach-ly pride, and into sickeningly in love that Yuri shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. He’s a child and the lust in Viktor’s eyes is most certainly not appropriate. He’s saved from possibly having to go to jail by Yakov, who’s screaming Viktor’s name the minute he spots him hovering on the ice. Other- Yuri doesn’t falter, only adjusts his position so he’s occupying the corner of the rink Yakov had just told Viktor his student could use. Viktor doesn’t seem to notice that other-Yuri’s already there, already keeping his position, only relays the message in English, and turns to face Yakov, but Yuri notices, and judging from the squinty glare Yakov is throwing the other- Yuri, so did he.
Practice continues in the same vein. Viktor and other-Yuri show up for practice at obscenely early hours for Yuri’s private rink time. Their practice over laps for about two hours, with other-Yuri’s cool down and Viktor’s warm up, and then Yuri disappears sometime in the middle- Yuri later finds out it’s for ballet, with Lilia, who genuinely seems to like him- only to return towards the end to watch the last of Viktor’s private ice time with Yakov, who also seems to genuinely like him. Yuri isn’t sure how other-Yuri managed it, but everyone at the rink seems to love him. He even heard some of the ice dancers whispering in the lunch room yesterday about how good he was for Viktor.
About two weeks in he’s pretty sure that everyone at the rink is aware that other- Yuri has at least a passing comprehension in Russian except his own fiancé, who continues to translate random phrases that he deems important. He catches Yakov speaking quietly with him in Russian over the edge of the rink, Viktor nowhere in sight, and while other-Yuri is definitely answering in English, he’s obviously having no trouble keeping up with Yakov’s brusk manner of speech.
It’s a struggle to decide whether to point it out, or watch patiently for it all to explode in a million pieces. He can just picture it, other-Yuri’s tomato red face when the truth comes out. Part of him wants to see it, other-Yuri’s impending embarrassment, but the rest of him knows that this whole predicament is obviously Viktor’s fault (maybe Yuri should have said something but really, it’s been obvious from the beginning!) So he decides it’s probably best if he asks because, like everyone else, he’s fallen for his stupid, irresistible charms and he actually likes him. Even if he’d rather cut off his own foot than admit it. He’s pretty sure other-Yuri knows anyways.
“Can I ask you a question?” They’re in the locker room. Yuri is starting later than normal today, and other- Yuri must just be leaving for his ballet lessons with Lilia.
Other-Yuri pauses in untying his skates.
“Of course Yura. Is something wrong?” He sounds so genuinely concerned, and Yuri wars with the desire to yell at him for it, or hug him. There’s something so unerringly disarming about his presence that Yuri’s had to stop himself from doing exactly that at on multiple occasions.
“I just- well.” He hates himself for his stuttering speech. He could blame it on the English, which he still tends to use with other-Yuri out of habit, blame it on the fact that he’s barely spoken it at all in months, but he’s pretty sure nobody would believe him, least of all Yuri, who is startlingly observant at times (and unsurprisingly oblivious when it comes to himself).
Other-Yuri is sitting up straight now, efforts of unlacing abandoned, and he’s got a frown so deep on his face Yuri thinks that he’s probably going to pull a muscle.
“Yura?”
“Yeah, just, Viktor doesn’t know you speak Russian.” He says it quietly, calmly, it’s probably the first time he’s said something to other-Yuri that hasn’t been screaming or an insult, but he doesn’t even look surprised. Of course he doesn’t. Because other-Yuri can see through him like he’s made of glass, knows exactly what he means even when he’s saying the exact opposite.
Other-Yuri visibly flinches, and glances surreptitiously at the door behind Yuri’s shoulder, like double checking that no one’s there to hear them. He looks so guilty that Yuri almost feels bad for asking. “No, he doesn’t”
Yuri doesn’t respond, only raises an eyebrow for him to continue.
“I- he, well. You know I studied languages, da?” And, wow, the fact that Viktor doesn’t know when other-Yuri is using Russian replacements for what he knows were once Japanese and, maybe once upon a time, English, colloquialisms without seemingly any thought is simply astonishing.
Maybe he thinks his boyfriend- fiancé says a voice that sounds uncomfortably like Viktor’s- picked it up from him, but they’ve only been in Russia two weeks. Maybe Yuri’s over thinking this, but, even if he is it still should be obvious. He doesn’t say any of this though, only nods, once, slowly, and waits for the Katsudon to continue.
“Well, he knows I studied linguistics and languages. My kaa-chan, ah… my mom, she told him, first week he was there, same as she told you. I honestly thought he knew for the longest time, Yuri, really. I wasn’t keeping it from him on purpose, I mean, I also speak French, a little German, conversational Thai, it’s.. it’s not uncommon knowledge in the skating circles that I’m, well, interested in languages,” Yuri almost laughs out loud here because interested is not the word. He would have used gifted, maybe. He’s allowed to admit these things in the safety of his own head. “anyway, he spoke in Russian a lot, those first couple of months, and it dwindled, a little, but it picked up again after we-” he stops, coughs, normally Yuri would complain but he doesn’t actually mind and right now isn’t the time. “Never mind, I’m getting off track. My point is, I thought he knew until Barcelona, when he started translating things for me, and even then I thought it was a joke, but then he started translating for Chris, who thought it was hilarious by the way because I love Viktor but my French is better than his, and when I finally realized… It’d been months, Yuri, and then I remembered everything he’d said in Russian and I realized those were probably not things I was supposed to understand. It wasn’t anything terribly interesting just, god I’m so embarrassed? And he still hasn’t noticed and-” His breath gets a little heavy and Yuri, in all his bluster and teenage angst, knows that his anxiety is worse than he lets on, knows because he understands.
“Hey, wow, Katsudon… Yuri. Can I touch you?” Other-Yuri pauses, then shakes his head and takes a deep breath.
“I- I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to…”
Yuri shakes his head raises a hand to pat his shoulder, remembers his original refusal, and drops it back into his lap. Yuri notices, of course he notices, and smiles at him, small and trembling.
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t mind. You’ll just have to return the favour sometime, da?”
Apparently that does actually surprise him, this small display of weakness, not, Yuri thinks, because it is actually a weakness. Because it isn’t, no matter what Katsudon or anyone, or even Yuri sometimes thinks. He isn’t sure if it’s Yuri’s own admittance of it, or the actual fact that surprises him though. It doesn’t matter anyways.
Other-Yuri sighs, and reaches out tentatively to grasp his his hand, nods solemnly. Yuri doesn’t bother pulling away, there’s no one else there to see it.
The conversation ends there. Yuri doesn’t point it out when Viktor continues to translate random snatches of conversation, although, he does roll his eyes more, usually in view of Other-Yuri, and has to stifle laughter when Yuri in turn shoots him exasperated, pleading looks behind Viktor’s back.
Other-Yuri starts taking him out to lunch on the weekends, when Viktor’s at the rink and it’s both of their days off.
Yuri still snarls and scoffs and hurls insults, but now other-Yuri just smiles sweetly and raises a challenging eyebrow, like he’s asking if that’s all Yuri’s got. (It isn’t. Of course not. But he doesn’t actually want to hurt the Katsudon’s feelings so…) They fall into an easy sort of companionability, and, he will even admit out loud, for Katsudon’s ears only, that he enjoys it.
He’s friends with Otabek, obviously, and Mila, sort of, and he had a handful of friendly acquaintances before he started doing all his course work by correspondence, but Yuri, (who has recently given him permission to call him Yuu-chan, if it made things easier (Yuri did, in private because he was sort of honoured- he looked things up alright?)) was different, he didn’t demand anything of Yuri, didn’t expect anything of him, and, when he was feeling particularly vulnerable, held up his promise without question. They were friends, equals, which is why Yuri is trying to signal him to stop talking.
They’re at the rink, it’s Viktor’s day off, and they’re standing at the boards talking. (Yuri had finally managed to convinces other-Yuri to actually speak Russian, instead of just listening, because he was never going to improve if he didn’t, Yuri had agreed reluctantly. (Turns out his Russian is perfect, if slightly accented with softer Japanese vowels, and, rarely, oddly pitched English sounding consonants)).
Other- Yuri is facing the middle of the rink, speaking loudly, because everyone else had left for lunch, when Viktor walks through the door. Yuri immediately switches to English, flicking his eyes behind other-Yuri’s head, but he doesn’t seem to catch his meaning. Continuing his complaints, slouching over the boards, and only blinking, surprised when Yuri switches languages out of no where.
Viktor’s getting close though, and he’s definitely going to notice, and as much as Yuri thinks finally, he doesn’t want Katsudon to be hurt, so he pokes him in the stomach and hisses.
“Yuu-chan!” At the same time that Viktor says “Yuratchka!”
The other-Yuri nearly falls over in his hurry to turn around, skates slipping out beneath him, barely grabbing the boards in time to keep himself up right.
“Vitya! What-” he catches himself, pauses, reassess, tries again. Yuri’s pretty sure it’s too late now though.
“Viktor what are you doing here?” It’s English this time, but Yuri can see the moment Viktor gets it. It’s the same moment that other-Yuri lets all pretences drop and thunks his head down on the boards.
“You’ve been learning Russian!” Or maybe not.
“What? Viktor, no.”
“Yes yes, I just heard you! You don’t need to hide it anymore. Was it supposed to be a surprise? I could have helped!”
Yuri can’t help the look he throws the Katsudon because really could Viktor be any dumber right then? He finds that Yuri’s already looking at him, but his gaze drifts back too Viktor a moment later.
Yuri’s tempted to leave, to skate away, but this is also horribly fascinating, so instead he sidles up to the boards and pulls himself up. Other-Yuri shoots him a half disapproving look, but he doesn’t say anything, Yakov isn’t here to get mad right then.
“Viktor, I didn’t need your help.” He says it slowly, like he’s hoping Viktor will get it without him having to say anything outright.
Viktor just frowns, one hand fluttering to his chest. “Oh.”
Other-Yuri sighs. Tries a different tactic. Yuri’s half way to blurting ‘he’s been speaking Russian as long as I have!’ but refrains. He’s just here to watch.
“Viktor… you know I speak French right?” Viktor nods, looks at Yuri like he thinks he’s trying to change the topic of conversation. “So.. You know you don’t have to translate anything when Chris calls right?” Viktor just blinks, like this is a surprise, and Yuri knows he’s not dumb. He really isn’t, he can calculate the exact angle and velocity needed to land a jump in his head, but sometimes he wonders how he gets through the day because he really just never bothers to think.
“And… You know I studied Languages in college?” Viktor nods, and Yuri thinks that maybe he’s starting to see a dawning of understanding in his eyes.
“So… Ya. I ah, honestly thought you knew? I guess? And when I figured out you didn’t I just- well, it’d been so long. I didn’t know how-”
“How long have you been able to speak it?” Viktor doesn’t look mad. Mostly curious.
“Oh, well. Ah… Properly? Only since my second year of University? But, my comprehensions been pretty decent since I was… 15 or 16 maybe? I started learning when I was 13.” Yuri looks proud, but also a little embarrassed to admit that.
Suddenly Viktor’s bright red and “oh my god you understand me.” This doesn’t make any sense to Yuri, but the other-Yuri goes a little pink and coughs, throwing a glance Yuri’s way before looking back at Viktor apologetically.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to, at first. And I mean, there were some things… Not exactly every day vocabulary you know?”
The doors bang open then, and Yakov storms in, followed by Mila. Yuri can just see the trickle of other skaters and coaches on the other side.
“Viktor! What are you doing here? It’s your day off. You’re distracting Yuri! Don’t think I don’t see you on those boards Yura! Suicides! And then I want to see jumps from both of you, Yuris!”
Viktor opens his mouth, looks at other-Yuri, who’s already skating backwards, and turns impossibly redder. “He didn’t ask me to translate.” He says, “He hasn’t, does everyone know?” Other-Yuri looks guiltier in contrast.
“I’m really sorry Vitya. Vicchan. I am I promise.” Viktor shakes head, beckons him closer, presses a kiss to his lips, still looking a little dazed, but then he turns to Yuri and… Oh no, what does he have on him that he’s going to use to turn the situation around? Yuri knows that look.
“So. You’re calling him Yuu-chan now?”
Yuri’s going to kill him. He doesn’t care if Katsudon will be sad.
#viktor nikiforov#yuri on ice#yuuri katsuki#viktuuri#katsuki yuuri#yuri plistesky#my writing#oneshot#drabble#language barrier#linguistics#i decided#to actually post this here to!!#fanfic#fanfiction
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VERY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY !!
RULES. repost , don’t reblog ! tag 10 ! good luck !
TAGGED. stolen !!!
TAGGING. anyone who wants to do this tbh cuz this is long as shit and i dont want anyone to do this who might not be able to aljdhfskjdhkj
BASICS.
FULL NAME : galo thymos
NICKNAME : himbo, idiot, rookie, newbie, #1 firefighting idiot
AGE : 21
BIRTHDAY : june 30
ETHNIC GROUP : japanese (+ korean / western european)
NATIONALITY : american
LANGUAGE / S : english / japanese / studied french and spanish
SEXUAL ORIENTATION : demisexual
ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : biromantic
RELATIONSHIP STATUS : single
HOME TOWN / AREA : promeopolis (i envision this being around nyc / tri-state area)
CURRENT HOME : lives with older sister and niece
PROFESSION : firefighter, undergraduate student
PHYSICAL.
SKIN : pretty fair tan, but he sometimes appears a little darker than usual. his skin does a strange thing where it changes shade in different lighting. his skin is usually smooth, but right after getting finished with work, he sometimes is covered in dust and appears somewhat dried out.
EYES : slightly upturned, deep-set, wide and somewhat of an almond shape. irises are usually very round, and are a bluish-cyan color. pupils often alight with mischief. in intense lighting, you can see a little red dot reflecting off his eyes.
LIPS : pretty thin and nude, hard to notice. matches his skin tone very well. usually quite smooth. tends to get chapped after working.
COMPLEXION : pretty fair, but in different lighting, he can look a lot tanner than what he really is.
BLEMISHES : he has a few moles here and there, but overall his skin is fairly clear and clean. he doesn’t suffer from acne nearly as much as he did when he was in grade school.
SCARS : he has some tiny, barely noticeable acne scars on his face, chin, and neck. the most noticeable ones are on his left arm from when he was practically set alight by a burnish flame. these are thick and quote coarse, and can cause some discomfort when touched. he also has a very small nick in his left ear, which was how his sister identified him when he found her after being separated from their family after the burnish incident when he was a kid.
TATTOOS : an arrow that goes right below the nape of his neck to the middle of his back. the point is at about the small of his back, and there are a few decorations along the arrow.
HEIGHT : 6′0, 183 cm
WEIGHT : 165 lbs, ~75 kg
BUILD : very muscular, quite athletic. very beefy arms, strong chest, well-built abdominals. however, his thighs and waist are pretty thin and trim.
FEATURES : his most distinct features are his dramatic haircut and scars on his left arm, as well as the small white line on the outer helix of his left ear. his chest and shoulders are also quite broad in comparison to his rather thin waist.
ALLERGIES : slight peanut allergy, dust, pollen.
USUAL HAIR STYLE : undercut with a dramatic, spiky blue mohawk.
USUAL FACE LOOK : mischievous smile or smirk; sometimes looks a bit wistful, like he’s thinking about something.
USUAL CLOTHING : is normally shirtless, wearing thick red firefighter pants with a yellow “3.” most often wears black rubber boots, black gloves, ear lobe piercings, and an industrial piercing. sometimes wears a black tee-shirt.
PSYCHOLOGY.
FEAR / S : spiders, bugs, needles, being in love (kind of), losing his sister or niece, finding out his parents are dead.
ASPIRATION / S : to continue his firefighting career, to receive a masters in emergency medical technology / fire prevention & safety technology.
POSITIVE TRAITS : brave, caring, friendly, modest.
NEGATIVE TRAITS : daring, reckless, sensitive, over-attachment.
MBTI : entertainer (ESFP-A)
ZODIAC : cancer
TEMPEREMENT : choleric / sanguine
SOUL TYPE / S : performer
ANIMALS : zebra
VICE HABIT / S : twiddling thumbs, jiggling leg (usually the right), twirling & playing with hair, biting nails, chewing lips, swearing, sighing, pen clicking.
FAITH : none; would consider himself agnostic.
GHOSTS ? : yes.
AFTERLIFE ? : not sure.
REINCARNATION ? : not sure, but leaning towards no.
ALIENS ? : yes.
POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : independent, opinions slightly more left-leaning
EDUCATION LEVEL : graduate student
FAMILY.
FATHER : nikanor thymos
MOTHER : agape thymos
SIBLINGS : danai thymos (older sister)
EXTENDED FAMILY : james (ex-brother-in-law), aria (niece)
NAME MEANING / S : his first name is of an unknown meaning, but it could mean “from gaul” in greek. his last name comes from the greek word “thumos”, which means “spiritedness” or “the need of recognition.”
HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : not that we know of, i think ???
FAVORITES.
BOOK : harry potter / hunger games
MOVIE : the lion king
5 SONGS : rick astley - never gonna give you up, lady gaga - born this way, beyonce - countdown, ariana grande - god is a woman, pitbull - timber (feat. kesha)
DEITY : zeus
HOLIDAY : christmas
MONTH : july
SEASON : summer
PLACE : his bedroom / the lounge at work
WEATHER : partly cloudy
SOUND : meditation sounds
SCENT / S : coffee, flowers, fresh baked desserts, fresh pizza, light cologne
TASTE / S : coffee, vanilla cake, milk chocolate, parmesan cheese, green tea anything tbh
FEEL / S : soft blankets, comfy pillows, loose-fitting clothes
ANIMAL / S : dogs
NUMBER : 13
COLORS : teal blue / flame red
EXTRA.
TALENTS : piano, singing, writing, linguistics, thinking quickly, firefighting
BAD AT : drawing (sort of), getting himself organized, following orders (sometimes)
TURN ONS : kindness, sensitivity, acceptance, openness, agreeableness
TURN OFFS : irresponsibility, lack of free time, ignorance
HOBBIES : piano, singing, writing (stories, poems, etc), karate
TROPES : ambiguously gay, antiquated linguistics, broken tears, calling your attacks, the chosen one, firemen are hot, going commando, hunk, idiot hero, innocently insensitive, large ham, mr. fanservice, oblivious to love, the protagonist, rookie red ranger, scars are forever, shonen hair, you gotta have blue hair (found here, there’s a lot more actually)
QUOTES : “medals are made to be awarded to and from people who deserve them.” / “you can’t just kill for no reason!” / “[i’m] the universe’s #1 firefighting idiot!”
MUN QUESTIONS.
Q1 : if you could write your character your way in their own movie , what would it be called , what style would it be filmed in , and what would it be about ?
A1 : honestly??? i think i would keep it the way it is, BUT i would like to have seen some more canonical information about galo’s family. as of right now, we know that kray saved him after his family was attacked by the burnish. if i were to direct a new movie about galo, i would focus it mainly on his family.
Q2 : what would their soundtrack / score sound like ?
A2 : i think it would be a mix of melancholic music as well as more upbeat stuff. on my blog’s main page there are links in the sidebar to both a soundtrack playlist as well as a pop music playlist; i definitely think it’s fair that a variety of genres would suit him and his experiences.
Q3 : why did you start writing this character ?
A3 : when i first watched promare, i was instantly drawn to this buffoon himbo. i’ve always had a thing for upbeat, energetic characters who are also quite caring and a bit dumb (which yes galo is very smart but he has his moments). while their personalities differ greatly (despite having the same personality type), he reminds me a lot of lance from vld, who i absolutely adore as well (and i also rp him too oops)
Q4 : what first attracted you to this character ?
A4 : again, probably his personality. while i’m not as energetic and upbeat as galo and i have a very, very different personality type than him, i feel like i definitely do understand him. i understand why he feels he needs to be overly confident, and i also have my moments where i just need to storm off and be alone. god i could write paragraphs and paragraphs about why i like galo but i wanna keep it short and sweet and just stick with those two points, which i consider to be the biggest points.
Q5 : describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse.
A5 : look, i know i said i liked confidence, but something about galo that annoys me is the fact that he can often seem too confident. like yeah he seemed pretty humble in that pizza scene at the beginning of the movie, but i can’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance towards people who put themselves right into the center of attention and be all like “yeah i know i’m great.” like my boy i love you but do u have to announce urself every time u appear on the scene??? and pls stop being so reckless u honestly might die too soon one of these days we want u to be around for us to enjoy u
Q6 : what do you have in common with your muse ?
A6 : i definitely feel like we both have our moments where we just need some peace and quiet. of course, everyone needs this, but when galo talked about running off when he was pissed reminded me of me; i tend to go and cool off and vent to myself if i’m annoyed about something. we’re both naturally people-oriented and love to be around others, even though galo likes being the center of attention a little bit more than myself.
Q7 : how does your muse feel about you ?
A7 : in the sense that if galo were real, i honestly think we would get along fairly well. we have different ways of dealing with things, but we have similar habits and personality traits. however when it comes to rp blogs, while i do like to headcanon things about my muses that mirror my own opinions and beliefs, i do consider the mun/muse relationship fairly symbiotic. we as real people can learn so much from fictional characters and in how we play them, and of course, the mun will determine some things about the muse that will deter from canon.
Q8 : what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ?
A8 : i just started this blog and have had very minimal interactions, so it’s hard to say ! i’d say that an interaction with a kray muse would be the most interesting. part of me wants galo to forgive kray and to have a better relationship with him post-movie canon, but there’s still so much about galo and kray’s relationship pre-movie as well; what was their relationship like? was kray like a father to galo? how can i describe the psychological mindset that galo had after finding out that kray betrayed him? there’s so much about these two that i really want to discover and look at, while of course providing my own insight (cuz that’s what muns do, right?).
Q9 : what gives you inspiration to write your muse ?
A9 : i like to study galo’s actions in the movie, and try to find the underlying cause of the actions he takes. however, when it comes to headcanons, i will often think of a scene or an idea in my head and then internally apply it to galo and see if it works. this is usually what kindles my writing fire: the thoughts that often rush through my head.
Q10 : how long did this take you to complete ?
A10 : like two whole days lmao im so slow
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Ask Sensei: Venti Skim Half-Caff Pumpkin Spice Latte With Extra Whip Edition
Cooler weather is coming to those of us in Texas, or as I like to call it, the Down Under of the US. A friend of mine, who hates hot weather, is always looking for the annual appearance of “pumpkin spice” products around this time. Since I enjoy hot weather but not pumpkin spice products (nor spending $7 on the titular beverage), it’s not a big deal to me either way. But as Saint Augustine put it, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
This time, with our blog’s focus on Ghibli movies, my boss esteemed colleague TWWK has ordered asked me to address this question: Studio Ghibli films evoke a sense of nostalgia for so many of us, both fans of anime and those that really don’t watch the medium. Do you have a similar fondness for Ghibli movies? Do you have a favorite? Have you visited the Ghibli Museum? I may take heat for this, and not just from my esteemed colleague, but my one-word answers are No, No, and Yes respectively. My somewhat longer answer is that I have seen several of the Ghibli movies, my first one having probably been Spirited Away, which definitely made an impression on me, but that’s about all I could say. I think the Ghibli movies are important, but I have no particular fondness for them. I did visit the Ghibli Museum on my first trip to Japan, with the group tour that I joined for the trip. The museum has some interesting architecture, and offers a good historical perspective on the Ghibli films. Also, while there, I did buy a tiny plushie of Jiji the cat, so I guess that’s something. Finally, because Sensei wants to make sure all his students are well-informed, ジブリ is the accepted katakana spelling of Ghibli, so in case you were wondering, the correct pronunciation is “Jibli.”
Kelsey Syers’s question reflects an interest apparently shared by many of Sensei’s readers: How is Japan’s current immigration system? Do you foresee any future changes? I can’t claim to be an expert, but beyond a reminder of the point I’ve previously made that Japan is a monoculture, and regardless of how long one lives in Japan, or for what reason, it is practically impossible to “become Japanese,” I would add only that Japan seems to prefer to invite people who are skilled and self-sufficient, and are willing to learn to live within the prevailing culture. That being said, whenever I’ve dealt with “Immigration” in Japan, it has been to receive only a three-month tourist visa; and even then, I’ve never stayed longer than about two weeks.
Kenneth See asks a thoughtful question, one which I’m probably not enough of a linguist to answer, but I will try:
The answer that comes first to my mind is that it depends on where you want to spend more time, China (or Taiwan) or Japan. If living in Taiwan is in fact your goal, it would seem to me that Chinese should be your priority, but then again I have heard that not a few Taiwanese are at least conversational in Japanese as well. If you’re planning to spend significant time in Japan, I think it would be good to aim for at least JLPT N3 level proficiency, and ultimately N2 level. That being said, I often take a rather dim view of my progress in Japanese, as it seems to me that I have too many other interests to put in the necessary time and work for Japanese. I often think that I’d have found Chinese easier to learn, as although it has some sounds that are difficult for native English speakers, I’ve heard from multiple native Mandarin Chinese speakers that Chinese and English word order are surprisingly similar. But alas, it seems that Japanese is not a language one can learn with half-hearted commitment. To this day, even after at least a decade of on-again-off-again studying of Japanese, my German is far better. And that’s in spite of my last official training in German having been over 30 years ago. But then again, German is a far easier language for native English speakers than Japanese is.
One thing I know for sure is that learning a foreign language is one of the best things you can do for your brain. And one thing I’ve noticed is that people who gain proficiency in Japanese often go on to study Chinese, if for no other reason than the historical interest. But in the end, I’d say it depends on what you want to do with either language.
Perhaps this will be the year I finally attempt the JLPT N3 test. I’ve signed up for it at least 4-5 times before without showing up to take it. The worst that can happen is that I’ll fail, in which case I’ll at least know in which areas I need to focus on making progress. From what I can tell, N3 level proficiency should correspond to something like “minimally functional,” being able to understand conversations on ordinary topics, or to read a newspaper article and get the gist of it. My readers seem to think me an expert on the Japanese language at least to some degree, so I think I owe all of you at least that much.
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You can ask sensei your own question by tweeting at him or using the hashtag #asksensei on Twitter. You can also email us your questions.
Featured illustration by popman3580 (reprinted w/permission).
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