#send an ask for any other tags | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fyodorkitkat · 5 months

Note

Hiiiiiii <33333 so! I know we know next to nothing about fyodor and Nikolai’s relationship BUT I had an epiphany and since we know that fyodor is inspired by Ivan Karamazov and specifically the scene with his devil, how do you feel about Nikolai=Ivan Karamazov’s devil and whatever this implies???

Tomà idk if you love me or want to torment me by sending me this.

I haven't reread The Brothers Karamazov still (I read it when I was a teenager so my memory is not great) so I don't know that I'm a great person to ask about this at all. I'm also not great at analysis posts and I am doing this all on my phone. But I like you, so I want to try at least, so I reread the part with Ivan's conversation with the devil in his delirium. You're welcome.

Is this a good fit for Nikolai's role? I'm not so sure that it is.

Because what I get from that part is that Ivan is having a conversation with an apparition born from his delirious state, and that the "devil" exists within himself.

Not to say that he has no hope or is literally the devil, it makes sense with some of the other things the devil explains and the nature of the conversation that makes it seem like Ivan is angry for being in his mind. (It seems more like anger for him appearing and being in his room but if we are going off it being a hallucination influenced by Ivan's subconscious the room is his mind then that is where the devil actually is)

Wait a damn minute where else have we heard this reference to rooms...

"I am crime. I am punishment. Crime and punishment are close friends. Borders vanish. Rooms awaken. The incarnation of death, the master of the ability-consuming fog… Eat, howl, and make violence as your instinct desires. This is neither a loss of control nor a singularity." Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Dead Apple

**I'm going to come back to this after i finish explaining why I don't think Nikolai is fit to be representative of the devil to Fyodor's Ivan but you can probably already guess *who* i think is**

Anyways back on track sorry I'm not great at this sort of thing at all. So Ivan's conversation with the devil to me comes across as an internal struggle between good and evil. The devil's statements (and he really does most of the talking) are around the nature of the devil and the idea of the necessity of evil (the devil goes as far as to say nothing would happen without evil, like if there was nothing to go against there would be no events and nothing to life). He also explains the devil exists in everyone's daily lives in mundane ways, but also that the devil (and God) can exist inside of people too.

“All the rest around me, all those worlds, God, even Satan himself – for me all that is unproven, whether it exists in itself, or is only my emanation, a consistent development of my, I, which exists pre-temporally and uniquely”

There is also a part where the devil explains that without him, there would be nothing but hosanna (/joy) and that life of nothing but joy isn't a life really at all, basically saying that it would be a life with nothing happening and no suffering but a life without suffering and only joy could be it's own hell.

This is doesn't really align with Nikolai's beliefs right? He sees awareness of what he views as the cage he (and people that just aren't aware) is in as the cause of his issues. That people are unaware that they aren't truly free, but he is aware and has to rid himself of what he views as chaining him (settling on his feelings for Fyodor in the end).

Now you could argue that maybe Nikolai would agree with the devil here in the sense that a life of blissful unawareness is similar to a life of nothing but joy, with nothing happening, and that is a hell in and of itself. But I think they are talking about two different things, because I don't think Nikolai thinks people who aren't aware of their cage lack suffering, or lack the existence of evil in their day to day lives. They don't have that life of nothing but joy that the devil is talking about so I don't think they mesh well enough to say it works as a representation of Nikolai.

Also, Nikolai doesn't appear to be trying to convince Fyodor of ideas, his battle is with himself, so that also doesn't fit the role of the devil in this chapter I don't think not for Fyodor.

Basically, none of this to me is screaming Nikolai. But if you had ideas as to why you think it does I'm definitely down to hear them.

If Fyodor is inspired by this scene in tbk it think this means that Fyodor is Ivan and Fyodor's ability (or also Fyodor himself at the same time) is the devil. Because the devil in the form Ivan witnesses is part of Ivan in the first place, it comes from his mind, and from what I rememeber he is lonely in comparison to the other characters in that book, so who does he wrestle with these issues with around his guilt and concerns? Himself, and he figures out his path from there. Ivan even says it himself to the devil at one point, "You are myself.”

The words the devil speaks and the concepts he argues aren't created from nothing, but related to the role of Satan and evil, this is just him essentially arguing outloud with himself about these things. It also why he probably is really not into accepting a lot of the ideas about faith the devil also explains to him, because it is like he is presenting them to himself via hallucination.

Anyways I am absolutely rambling, so back to the dead apple quote.

"I am crime. I am punishment. Crime and punishment are close friends. Borders vanish. Rooms awaken."

If the devil is born of Ivan's psyche and loneliness is that not similar to a sort of friend? The devil appears in his feverish delerium, maybe exactly when he needs him to, to have this conversation about evil, God, and challenging Ivan's reliance on logic. Maybe you could argue the border between the "devil" or "evil" in him and the rest of him disappeared for that moment, and "the devil" awoke in his room with him, letting them talk as if he was a separate being.

Maybe that's Fyodor, and the writers for dead apple (since they got that speech from Asagiri about Fyodor's character) took inspiration from that?

To me, Nikolai doesn't have anything to do with it. And that also makes sense I think, because from what we do see with their relationship and Nikolai's own words, he didn't know him very well. It didn't sound like they were very close or had deep conversations prior with what Nikolai said after his death.

Plus when you take into account the breakdown that might be lies or might have truth where he says he was weak and his ability took over because of that, and that his ability is evil, the constant references to him being a demon, and the weird differences between Fyodor's separated ability in dead apple compared to everyone else's.

I think there is more of an argument to be made that Fyodor's ability is more akin to the devil in The Brothers Karamazov in that chapter, or Fyodor himself is both. That he's based off Ivan in that scene and the devil is part of Ivan's psyche because of his condition, so Fyodor is both because that part is also a part of him as well. But since abilities are tied so closely to their users, it makes sense either way to me.

#sry if this is disjointed and incoherent i wrote so much just to disagree with you but it made me think and also break out tbk to do so #when i havent even read it since like 2006 and havent started my reread of it yet even though i said i would #so im mostly joking about the torment thank you so much for the ask tomà im mostly touched that you thought to send this to me #bsd analysis #bsd fyodor #bsd nikolai #bsd #ill tag this but sry sry i did this on my phone pretty quickly #but i am totally down to hear other ppls takes or potential additions on it so that is why #-Lue asks #sry for any grammer and spelling errors too i might edit this later idk #i didnt want to nit pick it forever

31 notes · View notes

moonshine-nightlight · 5 months

Text

Story Length Poll

Now that 'Nothing's Wrong with Dale' is wrapped up and my work busy season is coming, I'll be taking a writing hiatus for the first few months of 2024. still, i'm trying to plan out what my next projects are going to be.

so i wanted to try to get a feel for what people prefer when it comes to story length as such, please see below!

Short Story: between 4 to 10 chapters (from ~15k to 35k words)

*Update: See this post for a similar poll on short stories!

Long Story: more than 10 chapters (more than 50k words)

*Update: See this post for a poll on long stories!

i normally do a mix of short and long stories, but i've been pretty busy lately so i keep defaulting to just the long story

obviously with a mix of short and long, both stories i'm posting will take longer, but there wouldn't be such a long wait for the long story to pay off, but there wouldn't be as many short stories as quickly.

just trying to get a sense of what people are interested in!

i'll probably put up some polls for different candidates for short and long stories, based on ideas I already have, after this poll finishes for next year

thanks!

#writing #polls #story length #short story #long story #nothing's wrong with dale is a long story #everything else i've posted is a short story #in this context #if you've got any other thoughts on this #just say so in comments or tags or send me an ask #thanks!

29 notes · View notes

geddy-leesbian · 5 months

Text

RE2 Serrennedy AU headcanons

(I'm a Darkside Chronicles stan on main so that version of the events is usually what I have in mind, with some bits and pieces from other canons thrown in)

so a lot of these were in a fic I posted like a couple months ago and eventually deleted because I wasn't happy with it, so until I rewrite and post it again here they are in list format

Prior to Luis and Leon meeting: Birkin is how Luis ends up getting transferred to Raccoon City. There's something in Wesker's Report about how Birkin went totally insane when he felt upstaged by the 10 year old Alexia Ashford, and while Luis isn't as impressive as her, I can still see Birkin's ego feeling somewhat threatened when Umbrella Europe starts trotting out their new hotshot child prodigy. He would hope Luis just meets the same fate as Alexia and dies in an experiment, but it never comes, Luis just continues to be impressive and live up to expectations, so eventually he gets really psycho on main again and starts scheming to get Luis transferred to Raccoon City. So that he can take matters into his own hands and arrange a tragic "lab accident."

There's enough rumors and gossip for Luis to be able to figure out that the transfer is likely bad news for him, but he doesn't feel like he has much of a choice– Either he accepts it and maybe gets killed, or he tries to fight the transfer and gets branded "disloyal" and sent to Rockfort.

Leon and Luis meet at a bar on the way to Raccoon City that Leon stops at when he decides not to go. But then Luis lets a bit about what's happening slip, and Leon goes into hero mode and decides he does want to go after all, and Luis goes along with it because he's instantly down bad for Leon. (it's not essential reading for this post but I have a one-shot of them meeting that spawned this AU)

Luis would try to downplay how much he knows about Umbrella overall, acting like he had no idea what they were up to until he got transferred to Raccoon City. Leon is still naive enough to not question much, but Claire would be a lot more suspicious.

Overall Luis is kinda useless at first. He goes into it with a daydream/fantasy about how the little bit of shooting he did with his grandfather will kick in and be enough that he'll be badass and save Leon. That does Not happen. He doesn't panic and become a burden or anything, but he can't contribute much as far as fighting goes. Of course he's brilliant and able to help with puzzles/navigation/etc.

Luis tries to feel useful by being obsessive about making sure Leon is okay. He gets so much as a scratch, and Luis wants to clean and slap a bandaid on it.

SHERRY. Luis becomes the Designated Babysitter because it's a way for him to be useful, and at first he's Struggling because he has like negative experience with children. Like when he was Sherry's age, he was being groomed by Umbrella and being told how he was so much smarter and more mature than normal kids his age and already working on his degree and being treated like an adult for the most part. So not only has he never been around kids her age, he has no idea what it's like to even be a kid her age. And it doesn't help that she's Sherry Birkin. "hey so I'm like 75% sure your dad was going to kill me haha" isn't a great icebreaker. But once they warm up to each other, Luis ends up being a natural at the whole Being A Dad™ thing. He has no idea what he's really doing, but she likes him and he tells stories and sings to her when they're not worried about being quiet, and carries her to comfort her when they don't want to make noise.

Luis literally just speed runs having a family. Dude goes from being a man whore sleeping around with random women to basically having a husband, daughter, and sister in a few hours.

Tbh I'm still kind of thinking about how exactly Ada would fit into everything, but she would definitely know about Luis to some extent. She wouldn't want to give away too much, but might drop something about her "boyfriend, John Clemens," knowing that Luis would recognize the name, but to Leon and Claire it would sound pretty generic and not mean anything.

And Luis would REALLY want to get (and stay) the fuck away from her after that, because 1. he's playing with his cards close to his chest witch Claire and Leon and trying not to let on just how much he knows about Umbrella/how involved he really is, and doesn't want to run into people who know about him and might. 2. He's not sure what the hell he's going to do after this, and therefore would like it if no one at Umbrella finds out where he was and thinks Luis just fucked around partying the whole time, and didn't go to Raccoon City. (While he definitely doesn't want to go back to Umbrella, burning the bridge literally puts his life in danger.)

So when Leon and Claire bicker about going after Ada, Luis would jump in to back up Claire. It would be for his own personal reason, but his argument to appeal to Leon would be that clearly Ada knows what she's doing and can take care of herself, so instead of going after her they should focus on finding people who do need help. (they would still bump into Ada here and there tho)

Using Leon A/Claire B as precedent, Sherry doesn't get infected, to make a neat happy ending easier. Luis goes with Claire to look for Chris, but before leaving, he drills into Leon (and Sherry to some extent) what to say/do: Play dumb and naive. Insist that he drove into Raccoon City and saw shit on fire and knew something was up, but no idea what. All he did was go to the police station, find it was trashed and Sherry was the only person there. He took Sherry and immediately left the city, without looking around or investigating what was happening. And thanks to having 3 people working together, Leon isn't visibly wounded enough to make it Immediately obvious he went through some Shit. (And Luis instructs him to simply say "rough sex" if questioned about any wounds that are noticed.)

Leon plays the part well enough that the government just views him as a potential useful idiot. He acts like he's still confused and asks if they know what happened to the city, and they feed him a bullshit cover story that he pretends to whole heartedly believe. They still tell him not to talk about it and give him some money they say is to compensate/reward him for the trouble he went through and rescuing Sherry. Really it's just more of a bribe than anything. They assume that if they're nice to him this naive kid that trusts authority and eats up the cover story will happily regurgitate what he was told and vouch that it wasn't the government's fault at all and they even treated him so well after, making him a useful idiot for damage control purposes, if the story starts getting out.

So basically: Leon isn't a government agent or anything, just a normal dude. During the questioning he also keeps saying that if they can't find Sherry's parents then he wants to adopt her, pulling the "I was an orphan too!" sob story card. And they do give him custody of her, thinking she has zero clue what happened/how her parents were involved, so keeping her with a useful idiot like Leon who won't ever try to question anything or dig into her family makes sense.

Luis also gave Leon his jacket to hold onto before leaving. It was originally a present from his grandfather to his mother and eventually got passed down to him, so it's sentimental and he's afraid of it getting fucked up on his adventure with Claire. Leon uses it as a pillow some nights.

Leon decides to just live off the government money for a bit, being unwilling to let Sherry out of his sight. Eventually Claire/Luis get an address for where Chris is and send it to Leon, before getting captured and losing contact. Leon gets there and catches him up on everything, and Chris introduces him to Barry so he's got some type of support system and not just raising Sherry all on his own, and Sherry gets to get some social interaction without Leon going down anxiety spirals worrying about if she's okay.

Chris finds out where Claire and Luis are and goes to rescue them. Leon wants to go, but stays with Sherry.

will probably do another post with headcanons for Luis's adventure with Claire and after they get back?

#send me asks with a topic and i will do more headcanons <3 #like just a general theme or about any of my au's or just my headcanons about Luis's backstory. Anything #luis serra #leon kennedy #serennedy #serrennedy #sherry birkin #luis leon and sherry are the focus dont want to clutter up the tags for other characters who arent a focus here #re2 #resident evil #headcanons #hc

24 notes · View notes

gayelectro · 5 months

Note

Do you wanna talk about Aiden? I haven't seen anyone ship canon Iron Leaguers with OILs here before!

I would love to!

I know I've seen "OIL" thrown around before, but I'll be honest, I don't know what it means! Happy to hear that Aiden miiiight count as one?

Here he is!

(Art by @toxiccaves! The big ref sheet is here!)

I dunno if you wanted to hear more about his backstory or his history with Top Joy, so I'll give you a little sprinkle of all of it.

Basically, Aiden was custom commissioned for a furniture store. Mostly just as a huge flex to say "we can afford a mecha". It's a teensy bit advertising, but more than anything, Aiden is a retail worker and a pro mover. He can lift very heavy things with ease and he's really precise and careful. But the thing is, in the Iron Leaguer universe, retail bots are outrageously few and far between. By and large, it just makes more sense to hire humans, they're cheaper and don't run on oil.

So overall, Aiden is a very lonely guy and super isolated from other mecha. Plus, his job (where he works somewhere between 60 to 80 hours a week) is soul crushingly boring. So, like many people, he watches sports to escape. He quickly becomes attached to his local pro basketball team. Since their home court is so close, he ends up getting to go watch live games a lot! The court is the only place he feels connected to others, even though he only spectates.

The Dark Queens is my headcanon name for Top Joy's first basketball team. It just follows what we know of that country's naming convention for DARK Federation teams; "Dark [Noun Relating to Royalty]". And DQ just happens to be Aiden's local team. He was already pretty new to basketball in general when Top Joy joined as their Super Rookie. So naturally he becomes a bit of a super fan himself.

Top Joy is sooooooooo happy to have such an enthusiastic fan, so he in turn makes an effort to get close to Aiden. After all, if Top Joy is gonna be the best Leaguer in the history of the league, he's gotta be good to his fans. They become fast friends. Both Aiden and Top Joy are inexperienced and desperate for attention, so they fit together like peanut butter and jelly. A puppy love blossoms between them. Fan meet and greets dissolve into romantic trysts after work. They're cute and giggly and sweet to each other.

But unfortunately, they feed into each other's worst habits and tendencies. Namely, Aiden is a people pleaser, thinks his opinions make him an expert at things, and jumps to put others on a huge pedestal. Which means that when Top Joy vents about his teammates being mean to him, Aiden calls his teammates jealous, because TJ is perfect and his way of playing is the most entertaining. And TJ will listen and take it to heart, mostly because it's exactly what he wants to hear.

Aaaaaaaand we all know that Top Joy's ball hogging and showboat-er-y eventually got him totally kicked off of the team. Because of how DARK handles things, Top Joy essentially just disappears one day. Aiden's boyfriend is gone without a trace and he slowly pieces together that most Dark Queens fans are glad that he's gone. This makes him further retreat back into his job.

But holy crap, the entire plot of Shippu! Iron Leaguer happens! Top Joy goes through a crazy amount of development and now he's got a soccer world championship under his belt?! The news is crazy enough and big enough to reach Aiden, even in his reclusive state. Aiden tried avoiding talking about his job as much as possible, so it would've been hard for Top Joy to find him, but thankfully it's pretty easy for Aiden to find TJ once he knows what team he's on!

They'd end up reconnecting really easily at that point. Aiden had been heartbroken that Top Joy left without so much as a word, but he genuinely believes him when he explains that it wasn't by choice. Plus, in the time they've been apart, Top Joy has grown a lot as a person. He's a lot more emotionally mature than he was. Sadly, Aiden was sort of frozen in place by the separation and self-isolation. So they probably wouldn't fall in love again, they're now in different life stages, but they would be the best of friends.

Plus, now Top Joy has lots of friends and would be eager to introduce everybody on Silver Castle to his first fan and first boyfriend. They'd love him and he'd get the chance to finally make some more connections, deeper connections, to other mecha. Hell, someone might even convince him to try playing a sport. If anyone could do it, it'll be Top Joy and Silver Castle.

Also this is his voice claim:

#Aiden #long post //#oc x canon #OIL #...?#this post is already OBNOXIOUSLY long so if you wanna know more like how the color scheme was thought about so much #or any other design and conceptual details... send another ask because I am a rambler by nature #fuck me I hope this doesn't end up on the main tags I forget how many filler tags you need nowadays #Top Joy #Shippu! Iron Leaguer #AidJoy

23 notes · View notes

pumpkinspicenietzsche · 6 months

Text

how do you fund an organization you have heard nothing about?

Okay, so after the Wilbur stream, I have been THINKING, and I've been THINKING SO GODDAMN HARD and something is just NOT adding up to me.

So q!Wilbur knows jack shit about the federation, despite... apparently, Lovejoy being a key funding source? Which has been killing my brain for a while because you know... it makes no goddamn sense. I don't need to explain to you why this makes no sense. You read the title, you get the point. You get why I'm confused.

If this isn't a blatant plothole, q!Wilbur knows much more than he's letting on. Or, some secret other option where the feds are just... iunno, spouting shit? That's all I can think of.

But I really like that secret option I know nothing about because it means q!Wilbur is way more likely to begin experiencing THE HORRORS, which he hasn't really experienced yet (sure, his daughter's missing, but I bet you could inflict a LOT more trauma on this poor sickly musician boy come on, step up your game qsmp admins)

As much as I LOVED thinking of Wilbur being more aligned with the federation before he came back, this man needs some CHARACTER MOTIVATION, which means he needs to not be evil, at least for a bit. Just a SECOND.

No matter how it turns out (except for the plothole outcome because that would be upsetting), I'm extremely excited to see where Wilbur's arc goes from here!

#qsmp #wilbur soot #lovejoy #qsmp wilbur #q!wilbur #q!lovejoy #yeah thats a tag now its canon babyyyyyy #bc i said so #qsmp theory #qsmp federation #please correct any mistakes i may make in theories btw #like if it actually makes total sense q!Wilbur's completely clueless (or you can chalk it up to anything)#also no matter if im right or wrong PLEASE talk at me about qsmp shit like this #reblog reply send me an ask hmu in dms ANYTHING if you have anything to add please do so #i enjoy talking about theories with other people so much

50 notes · View notes

hephaestuscrew · 5 months

Note

You listened to Greater Boston, right? Is there a metaplot? Like, is it a conspiracy theory red string board podcast or a listen on long car trips looking out the window podcast?

I’m trying to listen to more things post w359 and heard Greater Boston was good, so… yeah

Hello Anon! Yes I do listen to (and love) Greater Boston! I'm going to try to to focus on the particular questions you asked here, but for more of general attempts to pitch the show, you can look at these posts of mine: Greater Boston description ask , Greater Boston pitch post. (These posts are from a while ago, so stuff has happened in the show since, but I still think they provide a decent introduction, to the extent that it is possible to sum up this show.)

Greater Boston very much has an ongoing plot, or rather a range of interweaving ongoing plot threads. I hesitate to call it a 'metaplot' because I almost think that implies an apparent anthology structure (like in The Amelia Project or The Magnus Archives, both of which I'd describe as anthology shows from which a metaplot emerges. Greater Boston isn't really that). The first couple of episodes might seem slightly like they are each a few somewhat self-contained stories, but that approach changes quickly. The show follows a wide range of characters and events, but I'd say that the connections, throughlines, and returns to key characters are frequent enough to create the sense that you are following one big story.

I'm not sure I completely understand what you mean by your dichotomy of red string vs long car ride podcasts. Greater Boston definitely lends itself to a fair amount of red string thinking, given that there's an extremely high number of characters who interconnect in a range of ways, and some really interesting stuff going on with the nature of the storytelling later on.

But, at least in my eyes, Greater Boston is not primarily focused on figuring out a mystery/conspiracy, or theorising about what will happen, in the way that the 'red string' approach might imply. There are some mysteries, but for all of the utterly wild stuff that happens in this show, what appeals to me the most about Greater Boston is the characters, and how the show forces you to engage with everyone from the main focus characters to the smallest minor character to the antagonists you thought they couldn't make you sympathise with. What ultimately keeps me thinking about this show is the emotional journeys of these characters, the ways they struggle and impact each other and relate to one another... (And to be honest, I don't really kid myself that I can actually predict where this show is going to take you next.)

Does Greater Boston fit the "listen on long car trips looking out the window" vibe? If the long car journey vibe means a show you can just let wash over you while you tune in and out of it, then probably not. But if you mean something that can hold your attention for a long period, with enough variation in tone and plot to keep you interested, then Greater Boston definitely slots into that category for me.

Obviously I'm going to say you should listen to it, because, well, you came to a fan of Greater Boston in order to ask about it, but I hope this response helped you figure out if it's the vibe you're looking for at the moment!

(From the past tense of 'listened' in your ask, I wonder if you might be under the impression that this podcast is fully released. So I just thought I'd mention that while the Season 4 finale had some sense of resolution, there is still a fifth and final season of the show planned!)

#Thanks for the ask anon!#I love being asked to talk about my favourite podcasts #Greater Boston #Greater Boston podcast #I'm putting this in the Greater Boston tag just so any other fans can share their thoughts for anon #I'm fascinated by this way of categorising audio dramas #Where do different shows fall on the red string to long car journey spectrum?#If I've misinterpreted what you meant anon #feel free to send another ask to help me understand #or just if you have more questions #Also if at any point you do listen to it #I'd love to hear what you think #the empty man posteth #the empty man answereth #Long post

20 notes · View notes

leaf4e · 19 hours

Text

bowls

9 notes · View notes

stellerssong · 2 months

Note

Hi again. I'm on some level here to ask for a complete explanation of every aspect of Hawaiian culture that is even tangentially related to your latest fic because I know absolutely nothing and there is the ever present concern that the terms run through cursory Google Translate and internet searching will lose nuance and implications. There were definitely some references to divinities and myths and such that went over my unenlightened head. The story you wove was rich and intricate enough to be held in the mind of someone who knows less than nothing and still have great meaning and truth, but I know that it will mean yet more if I can see the threads you used to make it. (On another level, I'm asking for the explanation because I am abruptly deeply interested in a topic I had previously not thought about very much, and you seem to be significantly more of an expert than the average internet search.)

first off! well first off i am blowing you so many kisses for this very kind ask, thank you so much for giving me an excuse to ramble at (great, great, great) length.

so second off! i would just like to stress that i am very much not an expert in hawaiian language, folklore, history, culture, etc. i am neither kānaka maoli (native hawaiian) nor kamaʻāina (born in hawaiʻi although not necessarily of hawaiian ancestry), and i have not studied these topics formally/in a setting that applies academic rigor. i am an enthusiastic amateur with a personal connection to hawaiian culture, the kind of brain that likes to fixate on areas of interest, and a willingness to scrounge around for reading material. i have, i think, a decent sense of what some of the baseline texts in the field are, and a fairly good bullshit detector (and the understanding/ability to dig into things when i can't rely on the bullshit detector), but ultimately i am a layman and an outsider with corresponding perspectives and biases. i also, i will admit frankly, have a pretty sharp knowledge cutoff corresponding to the time of first european contact, just because of my own personal interests and reading preferences.

read that whole disclaimer? let your eyes glaze over while you skimmed it? good! here's my real quick (lmao) rundown of Sum Things U Should Know If You Wanna Close-Read Kīpuka:

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 101

Good grief when I put it like that I do NOT feel qualified to tell you any of this. Anyway. We can keep it basic just so you can get a sense of the mouthfeel of the words. And just fyi ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is the proper name of the language; i'll be using "Hawaiian" as the adjective form, sans ʻokina, assuming an English-speaking readership.

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi as it is commonly rendered today has 13 letters: 5 vowels (A, E, I, O, and U) and 7 consonants (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), plus the ʻokina or glottal stop (that little apostrophe-lookin' dude at the beginning of the word ʻokina, also the source of most of my typesetting woes). Pronunciation-wise, there are no silent letters and no though/through/enough-type surprises: every letter is pronounced, and all of the vowel renderings are approximately equivalent to how you'd pronounce them in Spanish or Italian. Hence, the word kuahine = koo-ah-HEE-nay rather than, like, kyoo-ah-highn, which made me feel gross even just typing it out.

The ʻokina is pronounced, and bear with me here, like the dash in the english nuh-uh. or, if you're a try-hard vocalist—reattack the vowel after the ʻokina instead of eliding it to the vowel prior. So the place-name Kaʻū is pronounced ka-OO, as distinct from the word kau which is pronounced more like kow (which is a bit of an oversimplification of the latter word, but I'm trying to be efficient here).

That leads us neatly into the other diacritical marking used in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the kahakō or macron which helpfully appears in its own name. No worries here; the kahakō just serves as a stress marker, so you'd say kahakō = ka-ha-KO instead of ka-HA-ko, or from the example above ka-OO rather than KA-oo.

There are a couple of other little pronunciation tricks here and there. The letter W is sometimes pronounced as a V, and unfortunately I can't really describe the rules for that shift; that is one I must admit I know mostly from vibes. For example, the correct pronunciation of Hawaiʻi itself is ha-VAI-ee, but I've never heard the place-name Waimea pronounced as anything but why-MEY-ah.

Occasionally you will encounter the letter K pronounced as a T, which I believe is an artifact of the morphological shift from older related languages such as Tahitian and Samoan which do preserve the letter T as a unique phoneme. To my knowledge, the Kauaʻi dialect (spoken today on Niʻihau) also preserves the T, but most spoken ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi heard elsewhere is based on the Big Island dialect, which lacks the T. One notable exception is the word tūtū (an affectionate/respectful term for a grandparent or elder), which you really don't hear pronounced as kūkū.

Really, though, listening to Hawaiian music is how I got the language in my ear and imo it's the best way to get it in yours. Can't go wrong with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" fame), but I have a personal soft spot for Kealiʻi Reichel, Weldon Kekauoha, Amy Hanaialiʻi, and the Cazimero Brothers.

The Place-y-ness of Hawaiian Literature

This is more of a sidenote than its own heading, but I'm the one driving the essay, and I think it's an interesting thing to point out, just because it helps establish a particular perspective I wanted to keep in mind while writing this fic.

Something you might notice as you start to look at Hawaiian oli, mele, and myth is the high level of specificity of place. Hawaiʻi is, let's be honest, not that enormous of a place when you consider it on a global scale—but the specificity of localities within Hawaiian literature is kind of astounding. Not only are there loads of place-names referenced in any given work, there are unique Hawaiian names for landmarks, cliffs, peaks, hills, streams, waterfalls—even rains and winds of specific locations merit their own names.

"kīpuka" is very specifically set on the windward side of Hawaiʻi island, so I made an effort to focus my references to place-names on that region—Hilo, ʻŌlaʻa, and Waiākea are all locations on the eastern side of the island, and the one reference to Kona on the leeward side reflects the coming of someone bearing grievances (in addition to eia aʻe ka makani Kona being an existing idiom warning the listener to watch out for an angry person, the windward and leeward sides of Hawaiʻi island have a long history of territorial warfare and jockeying for control of the island). I'd also considered having the bird discussed in the fic be a different species, the kākāwahie—but that species is/was endemic to Molokaʻi, and quite honestly my knowledge of the history and culture of Molokaʻi as a separate polity is not that great.

(This is partly due to sample bias—my introduction to Hawaiʻi was within a Big Island-based context. At the same time, another thing you may notice about the better-known source texts is that many of them center around Hawaiʻi island and, to a lesser extent, Maui, thanks to the political supremacy during the unification/post-contact era of Hawaiʻi island and Maui aliʻi. Ross Cordy wrote a whole ass book about the Oʻahu chiefdoms that is simply not to be had for love or money no matter how I search for it. I am THIS CLOSE to straight up cold emailing the man and being like I WILL VENMO YOU $75 USD DIRECTLY IF YOU WILL SIMPLY JUST SEND ME A COPY OF YOUR BOOK. PLEASE. SAVE ME ROSS CORDY.)

Girl (Gender Neutral), I Cannot Explain Hawaiian Mythology, Poetics, and Mythopoetics As a Subheading in One Post

Honestly. I can't do it. But some tidbits to assist your further research:

A great deal of Hawaiian literature and oral tradition hinges on kaona, roughly "allusion" or "metaphor." In a description that is useful to precisely no one but myself, it's not unlike the complex plays on words, puns, and deep well of references used in Heian Japanese epistolary poetry. Some of it is easy to grok for newbies: for example, the concept of one's lover as a lei adorning the body, or being splashed or sprinkled with water as a euphemism for sex. Some of it goes a lot deeper, relying on historical or folkloric place-name associations, puns, and ancient practices and superstitions.

The Hawaiian "pantheon" I place in scare quotes because ancient Hawaiian religious practices and superstition were highly syncretic, often extremely localized, and more contradictory the more you read into it. In a very, very, very, VERY rough and off-the-cuff sense, though, there were thought to be four major gods: Kāne (associated with dawn, the sun, the sky, running freshwater, and irrigation-based agriculture, among other things), Kanaloa (associated with the ocean, sea creatures, and sometimes death, as an opposing or complimentary force to Kāne), Lono (god of fertility, agriculture with something of an emphasis on dryland agriculture, rainfall, and peace as embodied in the Makahiki festival), and Kū (god of war, the deified kingship, fishermen, sorcery, and quite honestly a ton of other things in various manifestations).

There were also quite a large number of "lesser" gods, the word "lesser" used just in the sense that they weren't honored to the same extent as the four previously named in state-sanctioned religious practice. Probably the most well-known of these is Pele, the volcano goddess. (I reference another in the fic, Niolopua, god of sleep—but the jury's out on whether or not that refers to an actual god or is just metaphorical in the same way that most people think of "the Sandman" as a euphemism for sleep and not a literal guy who comes into your house and puts crusties in your eyes.)

The gods were thought to manifest in a variety of forms, called kino lau (literally "four hundred bodies"). You can think of this in the sense of "Lono takes on the shape of an albatross or a tropicbird to interact with mortals, while Kanaloa prefers to manifest as an octopus," and in stories kino lau are sometimes represented that way, but in practice it's less of a Greek myth-style practice of shapeshifting and more of an animistic religious belief. The kino lau in nature embody the god and in a metaphorical sense illustrate the interconnection between divine and earthly and the presence of the divine on earth.

(HUGE OVERSIMPLIFICATION. HUGE OVERSIMPLIFICATION. PLEASE DO MORE RESEARCH AND DO NOT TAKE ONE TUMBLR POST AT ITS WORD ON THIS.)

The Endless, in the fic, are very easy to loop into the concept of kino lau, because of their canonical universality. Danny appears as a shark (a symbol of chiefhood), a pueo, or Hawaiian owl (an 'aumakua, or ancestral guardian), a manu-o-Kū, or fairy tern (a bird associated with the god Kū, likely in his aspect as a god of fishermen, navigators, and wayfinders), a kalo plant (a staple crop of ancient Hawaiʻi, a kino lau of Kāne, and a symbol of duality and rebirth), and a snowcapped mountain (a sacred site considered kapu, or forbidden, to all but the highest chiefly individuals). Despair, meanwhile, appears as an ʻalae ʻula, or Hawaiian moorhen (another ʻaumakua, but also an animal whose cry was thought to foretell misfortune), a stingray (for her barbed tail), a hāpuʻu fern (in contrast to Dream's kalo, the hāpuʻu was considered a famine food), a lava flow and its first growths (acknowledging Pele as both a destroyer and a creator of land, just as Despair also embodies hope), and a number of other things meant to embody the devastation of Hawaiʻi (rats, feral pigs, and mosquitoes have decimated endemic birds and insects; the kiawe is an invasive plant species that forms dense, thorny, and difficult-to-destroy groves; light pollution affects behavior and migratory patterns of both avian and aquatic species).

All pretty simple, obviously!

Further Resources and Recs

Okay, so, obviously I'm not going to be able to explain every single reference in this fic in a single post, though I obviously tried my damnedest. In lieu of that, I'll offer some useful resources for further reading:

Stephen Trussel's Combined Hawaiian Dictionary is a fantastic resource for vocab that incorporates several major Hawaiian dictionaries in a straightforward (well, as straightforward as this gets) text-based web page. Ulukau also has a searchable interface, which is a little easier to interact with, but I like having the Trussel for reference.

Huapala is everyone's go-to for translations of Hawaiian lyrics. I've linked to it in the endnotes of the fic for readers interested in more on "Ka Ipo Lei Manu," but it's got nearly any ʻauana-style Hawaiian song you please, and if I recall correctly even a few traditional oli. Again, another slightly old-fashioned text-based site—but we all know how to use CMD + F in a page, do we not?

Native Books is awesome if you, like me, prefer reading things in print but would prefer not to feed your dollars into the maw of the Amazon beast. A lot of the lit on Hawaiʻi was printed either a long time ago or in very small releases and is now out-of-print and difficult to find even in libraries, so it rocks that there's an independent bookseller that specializes in getting those works to an audience in hard copy. @ NATIVE BOOKS PLEASE CONSIDER GETTING ROSS CORDY TO RE-PRINT THE RISE AND FALL OF THE OʻAHU KINGDOM THANK YOU SO MUCH. University of Hawaiʻi Press is also a good source for academic texts, although their website is...mm...difficult to navigate, and do be warned that they charge academic press prices.

In terms of who to read, you really can't go wrong with Mary Kawena Pukui, a Native Hawaiian scholar, author, composer, and educator whose work is the backbone of just, a fuckton of writing about Hawaiʻi, both academic and popular. Her book ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings is worth at least a skim just to get the feel of the Hawaiian mindset; it also contains a healthy dose of myth, folklore, and history in the explanations of the sayings. Absolutely adorably, I've found two books she edited that I read the absolute FUCK out of as a child available as PDFs through Ulukau: The Water of Kāne and Other Legends of the Hawaiian Islands and Hawaiʻi Island Legends: Pīkoi, Pele, and Others. Definitely worth a quick read if you want more on the myth side of things.

As a non-specialist, I've really enjoyed Patrick Vinton Kirch's writing on precontact Hawaiʻi. For a field archaeologist, his writing is both highly engaging and very respectful of the peoples he studies, and trust me, I do get my back up easily when it comes to white people writing about Other Cultures TM, so I'd posit it means something that he passes my sniff test. A Shark Going Inland is My Chief is a great overview of the history of the Hawaiian chiefdoms from the first settlement of the islands to immediately precontact, and Kuaʻāina Kahiko offers a bit of a closer look at everyday life in a specific locality in the islands (in this case, Kahikinui, Maui).

Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo by Stephen Desha (trans. Frances N. Frazier) began its life as a serialized Hawaiian-language history of the rise of Kamehameha I. It's a dense read, and it WILL test your ability to remember who the hell all these people are to its limit—it mostly discusses the lives and times of the major players of the aliʻi class in the late precontact–early postcontact era, and when you remember that a) a hell of a lot of personal names in this tale begin with the letter K and b) the aliʻi class of Hawaiʻi practiced a mindboggling amount of political marriage, consanguineous marriage, and sanctioned adoption between blood relatives, the family trees get real complicated REAL fast. If you can hang on through all that, though, it's an intensely detailed and very vivid portrait of a culture at a tumultuous moment, it gives a great sense of how the Hawaiians viewed themselves and the world, and it's an interesting exercise in the mythologizing of the Kamehameha dynasty.

Okay, So...?

So...if you hung on through all that, god DAMN are you dedicated. Have what is quite possibly my favorite Hawaiian song for your trouble. It is, funnily enough, about a bird.

EDIT: I am retroactively making this post unrebloggable. I'm really, really glad folks have found it interesting and are looking into the resources I shared, but I absolutely do not want this getting passed around as Hawaiian Culture 101. If you want to learn more about Hawaiʻi, I must stress that you should look to a reputable source and not some schmuck on Tumblr rambling about her effortposting fanned fiction.

#chatter #this is why we don't tell swan ''make your own post about it.'' because then she does. this #i must stay confined to the tags field lest i become drunk with power and challenge god.#i have a handful of other text sources that i can rec but they all come with caveats for one reason or another #and i'm going to be so incredibly embarrassed if i hit some kind of post length limit with this thang. so uh. send another ask i guess #AGAIN. I'M NOT AN EXPERT OR AUTHORITY OF ANY KIND. IF I WAKE UP TOMORROW WITH PEOPLE IN MY INBOX #DEMANDING TO KNOW WHO MY KUMU IS I'M GONNA BE REAL PISSED AT Y'ALL FOR RATTING ME OUT. SO BE COOL PLEASE

13 notes · View notes