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riality-check · 1 year

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Out of all the languages she knows, Robin thinks English is the worst.

It’s so… restricted. English has a lot of words, and it has a lot of fun words, but they’re all so broad. English has a few words that mean a lot of things. It’s confusing and takes five more sentences and mental gymnastics to understand the specific meaning of a phrase that could be conveyed much better in Spanish or French.

This is part of the reason why she wants to learn German, once she’s got a good enough grasp on Russian. They have specific words, and they actually use them. That and it should be pretty easy, as a native English speaker.

Reading Cyrillic was fun and all, but her brain needs a break.

All of this, of course, is the subject of her latest ramble to Steve since her parents already know and no one else listens to her the way he does.

(She repays the favor when baseball season rolls around, and he starts spitting stats at her. She thinks that if the word problems in school were about baseball, or if he believed in himself enough to take a statistics course, he would have kicked ass at math.)

“There’s only one way to say I love you in English, and that’s so stupid!” she says, starfished on top of Steve’s bed. God, his sheets are soft. “In other languages, there’s ways to say it to friends, to family, to whoever you’re dating-”

“Wait, really?” Steve glances at her in the mirror. His hands fuss at his hair, which, as always, looks fine.

She’s a little jealous of that.

“Yeah,” she says. She sits up and shakes her hair out of her face. “Like, in Italian, you say ti amo, which means I love you, to who you’re dating, and that’s only if it’s super serious.”

Steve straightens the collar of his shirt, the blue one with the white stripe, and turns back to her. “What do you say otherwise?”

“Ti voglio bene,” she answers automatically.

“What’s that mean?” Steve asks. He moves sits down across from her, tucking his knees to his chest.

That can’t be comfortable in jeans, but that’s what Robin has affectionately dubbed Steve’s listening position, so she knows he’s paying attention and actually cares.

“I means I love you,” she says.

“No, like…”

“Oh, do you mean the literal translation?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “What’s it mean?”

Robin wracks her brain for a few seconds before she remembers. “It means I want you well.”

Steve cocks his head at her in the way that reminds her of a curious, confused dog.

“It doesn’t translate super well,” Robin says. “So it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, I think it does.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, if you love someone, you want them to be happy and healthy,” Steve explains. “You want things to be good for them. You want them well.”

And Steve says he isn’t smart.

“It makes a lot of sense when you say it like that,” Robin says.

Steve cracks a small smile. “Can you teach me how to say it?”

“What, ti voglio bene?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Robin says. She reminds herself to not get too excited because that’s weird, then promptly throws that thought out of her head.

She’s with Steve, and she can be as weird and excited as she wants.

“Repeat after me. Tea.”

“Tea.”

“Vole.”

“Yee.”

“Oh.”

“Ben.”

“Ay.”

“Okay, ti voglio bene,” Robin says.

“Tea vole-yee-oh ben-ay,” Steve says, awkward and stilted.

Robin itches to correct his pronunciation, but she stops herself. She remembers that it’s really hard for native English speakers to get from the “vole” to the “yee” and have it sound correct unless they grew up speaking those sounds.

Mentally, she thanks her nonna for insisting on correct pronunciation.

“Not bad,” she says honestly.

Steve picks at the cuff of his light wash jeans. “It wasn’t great.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she argues.

“I think I’ll stick to English,” Steve says.

“Okay,” Robin says. “But you’ve got potential.”

“I want you well, Robin,” he says, and then he grimaces. “That sounds prettier in Italian.”

“Everything sounds prettier in Italian. Even insults.”

Steve laughs, and Robin nudges his leg with her foot.

“I want you well, too,” she says, and she thinks that it might actually sound better in the language they both understand.

#stobin #steve harrington #robin buckley #stranger things #stranger things ficlet #st #st ficlet #platonic with a capital p #ria writes #fluff #inspired by a conversation with my grandparents

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physalian · 1 month

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The Fantasy Language Translation Matrix

Whether you intend to write your own full-blown lexicon with different verb tenses and formal vs informal language, need unique words for spellwork, or just need new names for all your foreign places, behold… the Physalian patented Fantasy Language Translation Matrix.

(I kid. I have no idea if I’m the first to come up with this)

**Disclaimer!** After rolling out your fresh new vocab off the word assembly line, make sure you google it and that it doesn’t already exist and mean something you don’t intend.

Step 1: Pick your Derivative

You can make it sound completely foreign and like total gibberish, but I find it easier for you and other people to read if they have some real-world reference to compare it to, and so they have a clue for which pronunciation rules to rely on. For example: I did not know who René Descartes was my freshman year of high school. His last name was in my algebra book, and I, thinking he was Greek like so many other ancient mathematicians, pronounced his name as if he were Greek “Des-kart-ees.” I got made fun of.

Spare your readers the humiliation.

So say I want a vaguely… Russian/Latin/Italian influence. As opposed to French. Cool. That’s my starting point.

Step 2: Reorder the most common letters from English to your new language

In English, the average use of the standard alphabet by letter in order is this:

Ignore your vowels for a second. I don’t use charts like this on the regular, I use the Wheel of Fortune method and focus on RSTLNE, then go from there. I also want to make sure this isn’t a complete 1:1 ratio so it’s not super obvious I’m just juggling letters around, so I’ll knock out some “duplicate” letters and swap out singular letters for specific sounds.

The goal of this isn’t to stare at two existing language matrices and perfectly match them up, it’s to take the most common sounds and letters in English and make them new, common sounds in your new language, to sound more uniform and like you have a real etymology.

And I end up with this:

This might look a little confusing on how I got from A to Z so the basics:

All my vowels remain in the same place, they just get juggled around so I don’t end up with 8 consonants next to each other and word garbage

My “duplicate” letters are combined so I have more room for the new sounds, like c/k, f/ph/gh, h/wh, s/z. The new sounds then get the spare letters I had left over

Common english suffixes get reduced down so the pattern isn’t as obvious

If you want to include accent marks, this is your chance

I wanted to really emphasize the long “e” and long “i” sounds, so those got extra attention

Step 3: Translating

Oftentimes this is not perfect, or you end up with a word that just doesn’t fit the rest of your new vocabulary, because English is the bastard lovechild of German, Latin, Danish, and French.

I start with English, usually, but if the English word is too short or too long, I translate it first into another language, like Spanish, and go from there. Like “bus” vs “autobus”.

Using your matrix, go one by one. Let’s use a word like “letter”.

English: L-E-T-T-E-R

New: T-A-C-C-A-Z

Step 4: Polishing

So now I have my new word: “Taccaz”

Which is serviceable. I can throw an accent on either A or fiddle with the Z. I can start with “carta” instead and end up with “kizci”. The matrix is just a starting point. It’s designed to streamline the process when I’m otherwise feeling uncreative and in a rush, and it moves very quickly when I need to come up with full phrases and sentences that someone would actually say.

Step 5: Full sentences

This is only if you’re really digging deep and not coming up with the occasional fantasy curse word or new name for your fantasy land/realm/noun etc.

For this you’re going to need lots of tables. I based mine off romance languages because I know Spanish and romance languages make sense. This is where you decide how many pronouns, if any, you’re going to use, how the infinitive changes based on past, present, or future tense, how many nouns the word references, etc.

This is… a lot. Way more than you’d ever need for your manuscript. Ever. But I did it just for my own sake. Does it get long? Yes. Does it get tedious? Yes. The point here is to have little pre-manufactured word bytes you can plug and play with, with as little mental effort as possible so you can save it for the rest of your work.

I also came up with very common words already conjugated, like “to be” so I can just glance and type without having to remember to take “is” and go through the process over and over again.

Which means that I can take an entire sentence and translate it to my new language in about two minutes.

English: The payoff is worth it, this is so satisfying. New, roughly: Nu kioyb ela fyzip ne, iski ela valo nicenbalaev.

Of course, you can keep tinkering until you get something that’s easier on the eyes (I’ve been working with this language for years so I can read it pretty well), but not all languages are smooth and pretty and simple.

To be frank: Most readers will just gloss over this stuff anyway, but it shows that you put in the effort and it enhances the lore and the immersion when you do this. At least in the written medium. You can’t ignore it if this is meant to be in a screenplay.

Is this what a language professor would do or recommend? Probably not, I have no idea. Does it work? Yes. I have a fully functioning grammatical system where any input can give me a legible output.

To make this yourself, just change the order of the letters around, adjust your shortcuts, and come up with your own common sounds for those last two rows. The conjugation matrix is where you can really make it distinct, assuming you are basing yours off a romance language, which you don't have to.

—

And there you have it!

Don’t forget to vote in the dialogue poll before it closes!

#writing resources #writing advice #writing tips #writing tools #writing a book #writing #writeblr #fantasy #sci fi #fictional language #language #world building

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birdofmay · 16 days

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I'm honestly so confused whenever someone in the reblogs of my poll says that it's skewed because it's in English and therefore directed at the English speaking world...

I can't speak Chinese or Russian, and I don't know how to reach those who do. You'll need to forward it to them manually. Plus, a poll in Chinese or Russian would've excluded those who learn English as their first foreign language in school and French, Spanish, German, or Italian as their second foreign language. Or those who learn their ancestor's native language as a first or second foreign language because it's actively revived.

Yeah, Chinese is spoken by MANY people, but almost everyone understands English at least to a degree still.

And why would you think that an English post automatically is directed at "the English speaking world"? I could've posted it in my country's sign language or our family's North Frisian dialect, THAT would've been directed at a very specific target audience, yes. But English?! That's directed at literally everyone who understands it or has a dictionary nearby.

#not autism

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50cal-fullauto-astarion · 2 months

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Keziah Niamh. Ffhjjd. This got so fucking out of hand. I LOVE YOU TY DARLING. 💖💖

König x f!OC (Rivka) / 1.8k words / NSFW

AU where for some reason, there's been a concerted effort to imprison skilled operators in the Gulag. König is used to kill whomever the guards point at--he does not question why. His reward is a visit to a solitary cell, where a woman holds his vile heart in her fist like a benison.

TW: descriptions of extreme violence and gore, machine-translated Russian.

When König’s shackled by wrist and ankle, with a chain running up to around his waist, he knows he’s one sin against his fellow man away from getting his little prize. If he were a rat, violence was a lever, and getting dragged up to solitary was a pellet, he’d stomp that fucking lever into the ground every fucking time.

No one had ever accused him of being smart, apart from one person, but there was not a person alive who had suffered the work of his awful hands that would not hesitate to call him brutal.

He’d been such a fucking problem when he was jumped and dragged to the Gulag all those months ago that he warrants a cadre of six guards in their full tactical gear to escort him down the halls to the boiler room. They like a good little show with a nasty atmosphere. It makes them think of home.

Once there, he’s aimed like a gun at another face that doesn’t matter to him.

Older guy, beard, body hair like a werewolf. He’s got scars across his face that’ve taken one of his eyes, and when he snarls, he’s got no teeth across the bottom. Without his shirt on, König can make out eyes tattooed around his hips. Eh. Poor fuck, unlucky enough to get tagged for liking dick, it seems. Doesn’t matter. Not much of this does.

No one in the room speaks German, and he doesn’t speak Russian, and they won’t answer in English, so he just gestures for whatever weapon they want him to use on the raging asshole that’s about to become his victim. Sometimes, they get creative—hand him a pair of tongue and groove pliers or wire strippers, once even the broken wheel of an angle grinder.

They don't give him bladed weapons, or anything that can be used like one. He kills too fast to get their rocks off like that.

Today, it's simple. A claw hammer. His opponent is given an old skinning knife. It's not quite even odds, and König can remember a few fights that had been easier.

When it starts, König is fast and ugly in nature and action. He's got reach, a hammer, and a lever to break off the fucking hinges.

The bastard gets a few good slices in trying to go for his neck—a blood-groove carved over his cheekbone, a valley on his bicep that damn near splits the veins in his elbow. But König lands that first blow, and it's all over but the death rattle.

The claws fit perfectly under the windpipe. Can't rip it all the way out, but he can absolutely mutilate it.

He's the perfection of violence with every arc of his arm drawing the hammer back—cracking it forward, pulverizing the joint on one side, ramming the claws between skull and cartilage on the other. The blood boils in his fucking veins, finally seeing the world in color, iron flooding his sinuses, thick on the soft palette, heavy on his tongue.

The old man staggers, slurring, eyes unfocused. Trips on his own feet, goes down hard on his ass, looking around in confusion like a toddler. The guards howl like baboons showing red ass; they close in, smother, wanting a look at the damage.

König doesn't feel pity. That human feeling had been demo'ed and ripped out of him decades ago.

Slams a canvas basketball shoed foot on the gushing throat, crushes him back in a crouch with all his weight bearing down, and beats.

And beats. And fucking beats.

Might be the animal rage of being locked in a cage. Never loved a cage that he was forced into. Might be that he's named with his name, never called by his callsign. Might be that he's on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea, and anything short of an Armageddon-sized riot would be a death sentence when eyeballing escape. Might be he just can't choose how he kills.

Might fucking be that his unit is dead, and the only thing he's got left is in the hole, and the only thing he's got left is the only reason he'd ever capitulate to these filter-faced fucks instead of killing as many of them as fast as he can, dying, but dying in defiance.

His chest is heaving, he bleeds from the wounds cut into him, and he sits on the corpse's ribcage. He doesn't ask what the man did—wouldn't get an answer, fucker probably didn't do anything, and König doesn't care.

Their tones change, and the tasers come out once gore streaks up across the floor and the near wall, hammer striking concrete when there's no more bone to crush.

Fuck—the meat, and blood, and bone chips are hot splattered on his legs, up the wifebeater on his chest exposed by his rolled-down jumpsuit. It burns on his exposed neck and face, and he can even detect it on the numb tissue of his warped burn scars.

“Odinokiy. Seychas.” His voice rasps, throat hot and dry, wanting water, but he grates out the only Russian he knows, throwing the hammer away.

Solitary. Now.

Rivka had been dumped in the hole five months ago for influencing the guards and other prisoners. For a woman with a subatomic amount of charisma, she was spilling poison in ears across a dozen languages.

The only word he recognizes as he's paraded with his chains dragging and hobbling him through the corridors on the far side of the facility is Zabludowicz. It's the only one that matters.

Her eyes never went back to normal—that scope glass gray he'd know in his dreams and mania now gone forever—and she still couldn't read, but she could still run her engines in the red, burning spite and ugly, fester-fuck rage for fuel.

No one needed a reason to pack her off to proverbial Siberia. They just did. And when they dragged her out of the showers, they beat her. It—broke something. In her head.

The first time König had seen her after, both her eyes were dilated black, and she slurred her words together. Told him in the halting sentences of a child that she couldn't read the Cyrillic on the labels of the guards’ gear. Couldn't read anything in the Latin alphabet, either.

König throws his hideous, hyena-pitch cackle when the guards slam him against the cast iron door casket-lidding her miserable cell, grating out, “Rivki—Schatzi—it's me,” in a gout of German that sends the guards cursing, twisting his cuffs tighter, cutting into his raw skin.

Death is death is death, and it still stands in the place of a gift in this shithole, but they find a purgatory in leverage levied.

It's on purpose. It's all on purpose, and it all hurts, and the worst things they can do to him, they won't.

Pain upon Rivka is his punishment, and they won't kill her until they reap all the connections they can from her head. Pain upon him is her pound of flesh; they know she stops speaking when he bleeds too much, and they know she'd send him to his death with silence, even if his delivery was torture in all its many natures.

There's coarse Russian yelling, orders and threats spat, and König is wrenched away from the door, his limbs freed and howling just as it slides open with a bang that should burst his ear drums.

He's shoved in with all the force of an aircraft carrier launched out of dry dock on bad water, and there are thousands upon thousands of fucks he can't give, because there's Rivka, against the far wall.

Her eyes are black, and they keep shaving her head without even the guise of delousing, just degradation. Stupid shit to think they could ever degrade her.

Not sure which one jumps first after that microsecond of recognition—the space at the bottom of lungs between breaths, where dying eventually finds its way, where the lungs prepare to intake the scent of home—but the crash is painful, and Rivka is the shrapnel edges of broken glass with her starvation-raised bones digging into his bruised muscle.

Here, in hell, is his health.

Her hands find his wounds, and her voice is a sharper cut than the knife used against him, “The fuck are they giving out now? Scalpels? You-you-you need glue t-to close-close-close.”

Her words are precious now, so he does not interrupt, but Rivka wouldn't know the difference between a limb severe by saw and a neck slit with a straight razor, and the love König carries for her would crush him to death the moment he stopped asking it to.

“I missed you,” he says in place of a reply, feeling the quarks in his atoms want to break apart in the face of his relief and full-body shaking, “fuck, I missed you.”

Her eyes snap back to him, and her expression crumples. Her features—austere, alien, fae—animate as her humanity bubbles back up through the cracks, too strong facing him to remain trapped even with her ruthless burial.

“Missed you bad,” she says, nose wrinkled snarl-like at her recovering vocabulary. Where she lacks in words, she masters in movement, arms around his neck, pulling body against body. She grabs the strap of his wifebeater, warping it, yanking him close, and he doesn't care. He listens. She's the hand on his collar, he'll always arrive when she signals him.

She gropes for hair at his temples that has long been buzzed away. She searches for silver that exists only in stubble. She kisses him like she'll take the soul from his body, devour it bloody, and carry it for safekeeping.

He gathers her up like there's still some chance in hell that he can protect her, dropping on her miserable bare cot of a bed, dragging her onto his chest, and between his legs, and under his arms. All he can do is wait for her vengeful brain to heal, then there will come a plan, and he will faithfully (faithfully, faithfully, faithfully—as blinded by loving obedience as Abraham on the mountain, with wood for the pyre meant for his sacrificial son) be the finger on her trigger. He will be her executioner. He will carry out her will.

Her body is too tired and worn for fucking, and he wouldn't ask or accept it anyway. If it was a matter of too many eyes, they possibly could swing it from sheer savagery, but it's not. He can't make himself ask her to expend the energy. She has so far to go still.

But her razor-slide lips are a refrain. We'll make it through, we'll make it through, we'll make it through.

Rivka is the only higher power König believes in.

#konig #könig #call of duty #cod mw2 #mw2 #konig mw2 #konig call of duty #konig x oc #my work #oc: rivka

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dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night · 10 months

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You Can't Follow your Heart if There's a Stake Through it chapter one

TW: stalking, kidnapping, captivity, obsession, death threats, fear of death, burns, muzzling, restraints, displayed dead body parts, delusional thinking, creepy whumper, human whumper, vampire whumpee, captive whumpee

After months of Jacob watching Rurik from afar, they were finally making eye contact. A lovely moment, truly a dream come true, and surely their lives would grow all the more happy the longer they spent in each other's company.

The love of Jacob's life stared up at him, stricken with panic and fighting against the leather padded silver restraints. Despite his disappointment, Jacob couldn't blame him for it. Rurik was, after all, muzzled and tied up in his own earth filled casket.

Jacob tucked a piece of hair behind Rurik's ear. It was softer than it looked, like Jacob was petting a rabbit. He ran his fingers through it a few more times, the first gesture of affection of many more to come.

"Shhh," Jacob whispered. "You're alright. I've got you. I won't hurt you. I must say, you're even more handsome up close."

Rurik tried to speak, but the large bit in his mouth harshly stopped his voice from escaping his curled back lips. He leaned away from Jacob's touch, still frightened despite his reassurances.

Rurik's fear hurt Jacob down to the marrow of his bones. All Jacob wanted to do was show him the love that had blossomed in his heart so long ago. But reason still meant something to him, and he realized that he wouldn't make any progress until Rurik felt he was on equal footing with him.

Vampires were all proud creatures. Narcissistic, vain, and prone to flattery. Being tied up and muzzled by a human must have been a humiliation. Jacob hated himself for putting Rurik through so much pain, even though it was necessary.

Jacob gently lifted his beloved's head to unfasten the bit, and set the wretched thing on the floor. Oh, how Rurik's fangs gleamed. Vampires were perfect killing machines, and never before had Jacob looked at one with such glee. Not even after staking dozens if not hundreds through the heart, listening to their screams with sick satisfaction.

"I'm sorry about that," Jacob apologized. "It's just that I didn't want you escaping. I won't muzzle you again if you behave yourself."

Rurik didn't answer. He moved his jaw, trying to adjust to the bit having been removed. His eyes flicked around the room, but he didn't look once at Jacob. His eyes widened as they came to rest on something behind Jacob- Jacob loved those cat like orange eyes, with their thin pupils and gorgeous lashes -and Rurik began struggling all the harder against his restraints.

Jacob turned to see what was bothering his beloved, fully intending to do away with it. His eyes met with his various "trophies" and he mentally kicked himself. He should have hidden the macabre display before opening Rurik's casket. He hastily threw a large blood stained towel of the glass display case, hiding the fanged skulls and other morbid curiosities.

"There," he said, looking down at Rurik, "is that better?"

Rurik shook his head wildly. Jacob couldn't find anything else in the room that could be bothering his love, so this confused him greatly. In all his years as a vampire hunter, he had never seen one looking so much like a frightened prey animal. Rurik must be deeply misunderstanding the situation.

"I am not going to hurt you," Jacob promised. "I love you. You don't need to be so frightened."

"Кто ты?" Rurik shouted, working himself into a panic as he failed to escape his shackles.

"I don't understand you," Jacob said apologetically. "Could you speak English? I know you know how."

It took Rurik a few minutes to calm down enough to speak properly. Jacob waited patiently, hating his inability to learn other languages. He had tried Russian, along with Spanish, Japanese, and German. But his brain was like a leaky bucket when it came to foreign words, let alone grammar and sentence structure.

Still, Jacob liked the way Rurik spoke, even if he didn't understand what was being said. He had such a lovely voice. It evoked such lovely shades of brown and gold, reminding Jacob of cattails growing on the banks of the river he grew up next to. A childhood lovely memory, brought to the surface by the colors of Rurik's voice.

Finally realizing that his struggle was useless, Rurik tried to curl up and make himself a smaller target, holding his arms tight to his chest.

"Who are you?" he asked.

After spending so long watching Rurik and becoming intimately knowledgeable about the inner workings of his mind, Jacob had forgotten that the love of his life didn't even know his name. But this could be quickly remedied. Surely as soon as Rurik gave Jacob a chance, he would fall deeply in love, just as Jacob had fallen in love with him.

"My name is Jacob Amity," he said, going back to stroking Rurik's mousy brown hair. "I love you, so you mustn't struggle. I know you must be shocked, but I've been planning this for such a terribly long time. Please be patient. I'll get you situated."

"Please don't kill me!" Rurik begged. "I haven't done anything."

Jacob growled in frustration. Rurik clearly wasn't listening. Why couldn't he just listen?! But as he gave the matter more thought. Jacob realized this was his fault.

Vampires from different parts of the world were divided into their own subspecies, all with different abilities and weaknesses. Rurik was Russian, and this made his position all the more terrifying. Being restrained in his burial casket made him vulnerable to Slavic practices of vampire slaying. Jacob had learned of these methods in obsessive detail.

A hawthorn branch driven through the vampire's heart while they slumbered, staking them to the soil of their grave. A brick placed in their mouth to keep them from biting as they fought to survive. Their head removed and placed between their legs, so that they could not heal from the decapitation. Finally, the casket sealed and buried as a final precaution.

Many people debated whether or not the vampires were really dead, or if they were simply sealed away in eternal torment, incapable of ever healing from their injuries. But Jacob couldn't care less about that. He realized now Rurik's intentions in how he positioned his arms over his chest, though they were still shackled to the casket. He was shielding his heart.

The sight filled Jacob with anguish. This hasn't gone according to plan, not one bit.

"If I let you up, will you try to run away?" Jacob asked.

"No- No, I will not."

Jacob withdrew a key from his pocket, and began undoing the shackles around Rurik's ankles. He removed them from the casket, and set them on his desk. He went to work on those around Rurik's wrists, leaving the cuffs in place but removing the chains holding him down.

The silver tucked away within the leather padded cuffs would keep Rurik from shape-shifting into mist or some wild beast, an obvious precaution when fear made him so flighty.

Rurik stood up, and Jacob gently brushed some of the grave soil from his back. Rurik flinched and bolted away. Without hesitation, he twisted the handle of the only door in the room. His shrieks of pain were the worst noises Jacob had ever heard, despite hearing similar screams from so many other vampires. Rurik clutched his horribly burnt hand, shielding it from further injury.

"That's silver," Jacob yelped. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I should have told you. I'm such a fucking idiot."

"Why am I here?" Rurik demanded. "Where is here? Who are you?"

Jacob knew he had made several serious blunders. How could he convince Rurik to love him now? It seemed so impossible. But surely, if Jacob had made it this far, he would succeed.

"My name is Jacob Amity," he said in a soothing tone. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm sorry about the door and the restraints. They're necessary, just for right now."

Rurik stared at Jacob, his gleaming orange eyes meeting the dark brown of Jacob's. Jacob knew full well that the superstition that vampires could hypnotize people was a thing of pure fiction, but he felt it must hold true. How else to explain these feelings?

"Permit me to leave, Jacob Amity," Rurik ordered. "I need to return home."

"But I want to keep you here," Jacob pleaded. "Please stay. I know things haven't gone well so far, but I'll make it up to you. I love you, Rurik."

"We never met," Rurik growled. "You are vampire slayer and I want to return home."

"You don't get it," Jacob said, heart broken. "You really don't get it."

"Get it?" Rurik asked. Whether his confusion was over the odd English phrasing or over the true meaning behind the words, Jacob had no idea.

"I mean, you don't understand. I've been watching you for months. Finding out everything there is to know about you by following you. I knew you'd never love me unless I did something. You're right, I am a vampire slayer. But I would never hurt you. I want you to love me the same way I love you. You're a remarkable creature who has seduced me without even trying. Please don't try to leave me."

Surely Jacob baring his innermost feelings to his beloved would have them returned. Even a vampire couldn't be cold hearted enough to reject him after all the effort he put in. If it took hours, or days, or weeks, Jacob would make up for every misstep.

"You can't love me," Rurik said, backing himself into a corner of the room. "You can't love me. I am not seductress. I did not seduce you by mistake."

Jacob nearly started crying. How? How could he be so misunderstood? Was it a simple matter of Rurik being panicked and injured? Was Jacob not explaining himself well? Or, worst of all, did his love only view him as a threat instead of a devoted partner?

"I can kill you," Rurik said. "Bite you. You will bleed and die. I will return home."

So, he did view Jacob as a threat. What a horrible revelation. Jacob had no idea what he could do to make his intentions any more clear. Why was Rurik so stubborn? All Jacob wanted was to listen to his golden voice, braid his lovely hair, and show him any other kind of affection he could muster.

"You can't," Jacob explained. "That's the only door, and it's lined with silver. You can't change form, because of the silver in those cuffs. You can't leave. And if you kill me, the other vampire slayers here will kill you."

"Other vampire slayers," Rurik repeated, his chest rising and falling in rapid breaths. "Others? More?"

"Yes." Jacob nodded. "I want to keep you alive, so you have to stay here. This is my room in the stronghold. You're allowed here. If you leave, they will murder you. Only I can keep you safe."

Jacob grabbed Rurik's hands, careful not to cut himself on the sharpened claws. Finally being allowed to touch the love of his life filled him with heavenly joy. Rurik's hands were as cold to the touch as was expected of his undead nature. It reminded Jacob of flipping over his pillow in the night, tired of the warmth produced by his own body and enjoying the untouched chill of the flipside. Human blood ran too hot for his liking.

"I love you," Jacob repeated. "You may not know me, but I know you. Just give me a chance."

Finally coming to his senses, Rurik nodded, still staring at the door. He pulled his burnt hand away, and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket, leaving Jacob feeling guilty for having touched it.

Taglist: @hugh-lauries-bald-spot @devourerofcheesecake @heavenly-whumper @whumpsday @whumpshaped @kira-the-whump-enthusiast

#Abraham original: Hot off the press #Whump #Stalking whump #Captivity whump #Vampire whumpee #Vampire hunter whumper #Human whumper #Nonhuman whumpee #Creepy whumper #Intimate whumper #Captive whumpee #Whump writing #Whumpblr

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thestobingirlie · 11 months

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ppl using the gumby thing or steve literally just confusing the names of things sometimes (esp the nazi vs german thing when we literally know his granddad fought in ww2 and told him stories and he probably referred to the nazis as germans) as proof that he can't read or is just incredibly dumb is so fucking irritating to me. esp when it's pulled from s3 when steve literally figured out on his own that the russian code was coming from hawkins within the same span of episodes. obviously s3 is where they really started pushing the "steve is dumb" jokes but s3 is also where they show us how capable steve is (the code, getting them out of the elevator, winning that fight, saving like half the cast by crashing the car w/o injuring himself or robin). like sorry but eddie canonically couldn't graduate high school and was not capable when it came to upside down problems (he was a princess in a tower most of the season and when he had to do more he died immediately) and no amount of lotr references changes those facts. this fandom is actively trying to make eddie my enemy at this point.

people act like forgetting a children’s cartoon name, and getting it one letter off, means steve’s illiterate? which is just ludicrous. and the german thing really annoys me, especially because the characters call the soviet’s ‘russians’ all the time (thanks to @findafight for reminding me of that lmao), and yet no one points that out. but steve calls nazi’s ‘germans’, likely, like you said, due to his grandfather’s war stories, and suddenly he’s the dumbest person on earth.

i think the only way you can honestly think steve is dumb is if you only listen to the few dumb jokes present in every season, but don’t actually watch the show. because we are shown time and again that steve is intelligent. he pays attention to the things no one else does, he’s emotionally aware, he’s talented enough at sports that he was a captain in two during high school and trained as a lifeguard for three summers, and he trusts his gut in a way no other character does, and has, as a result, saved nearly everyone’s lives multiple times.

eddie’s strengths aren’t in school, or dealing with monsters from an alternate dimension. fair enough! he’s clearly smart in other ways! but just the fact that he’s read books doesn’t mean he’s academic. and for some reason merely pointing this out sends people screaming out that steve is a dumb, fucking idiot who’s lucky he’s pretty.

people are so desperate for eddie to be better than steve that they willingly ignore canon, just to make sure their fave isn’t the ‘dumb one’ in the relationship. like fuck. at this point just leave steve alone.

i do like eddie, but jesus, the version of him praised in this fandom isn’t anywhere near canon, and is, to be honest, really fucking annoying.

#steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #asks #anon

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hetalia-angel · 6 months

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Could you do some headcanons for Prussia, Russia, France, Spain, England and Romano with a darling who's trying to learn their native languages, pretty please?

Ofc Pookie bear. 🩷🩷🩷

Darling trying to learn the countries native language

England

Arthur is so used to everyone already knowing English since it’s the most known language in the world, so having a Darling that wasn’t fluent was a very new experience for him.

Arthur is a dad at heart a dysfunctional one but that’s something for another day. He’ll print off those worksheets that make you write the cursive alphabet and spell different words as a fun activity. Arthur will also try and include reading, movie nights, and listening to music to boost his darling’s fluency.

Arthur will sit his darling in his lap while he reads one page to her and she reads the next as they alternate.

As mentioned before he’s an awkward dad at heart who’s trying to do his best to help.

7/10 for effort in his teaching skills

France

Francis will be very flattered that his darling has decided to learn his language. He’ll try to expose his darling to lots of French media and tv shows to accustom her to the language.

Francis will be whipping out the old children’s books and lullabies he used to use for Matthew and read them to his darling. The children’s books are easy to follow and simple for beginners to understand.

He’s not the best teacher his he’d rather just kiss his darling and murmur the sweet French into her ear instead of explaining it.

Be prepared to receive lots and lots of texts and letter in French. Francis will be declaring his love to his darling at 3am. These messages will be so long that they have the read more button at the bottom to click to see it in full.

Francis gets a 0/10 since I would get into a fight with him any day.

Prussia

Gilbert was immediately very supportive of the idea. He attempts to try and talk to his darling only in German but he has a bad habit of speaking in English so it doesn’t come naturally.

He attempts to show his darling german tv shows… but Germany is notorious for dubbing over them in every language possible. Gilbert could find every one besides the ones in german…

He keeps attempting to teach you until he gives up and asks Ludwig to come over and teach you. Ludwig is a strict and thorough teacher and Gilbert’s darling will definitely be fluent by the end of a few sessions.

4/10 Gilbert tried his best, okay?

Romano

Lovino loves his darling and his language… but he’s a terrible teacher. He has a short temper, doesn’t explain assignments, and is confused when his darling doesn’t understand things he finds simple.

He tries for a few week to teach his darling with no results. Eventually he makes his darling download duolingo and he pays for premium so she can learn faster.

Lovino will occasionally quiz his darling and check in on her progress.

2/10 Lovino is doing his best which isn’t that good. Still better than Francis though.

Russia

Ivan is a sweet guy to his darling 24/7 so when she decides to learn Russian he’s over the moon. He’s booking them a trip to St. Petersburg and taking his darling on a full tour.

He’s as calm and patient as possible with his darling while teaching. Ivan accidentally distracts his darling with his accent since she finds him a little bit too sexy to keep focus on learning.

Ivan’s teaching method is easy enough to follow and he goes all out getting lots of help for his darling to learn. Everything is going smoothly until the day he decides to teach you Russian cursive. Ivan’s darling can’t follow his teachings since she claims that it all looks like scribbles.

9/10 Ivan puts in the effort unlike Francis who I’ve decided I have beef with.

Spain

Antonio is more than happy to teach you everything about his culture and language. He’ll waste no time to show his darling telenovelas and Spanish songs.

Spanish is a widely learnt language so he searches up one of those curriculums online to teach to his darling.

Antonio loves that his darling is learning Spanish mostly so he can find a new way to flirt with her.

#aph england #hws england #aph france #hws france #hws prussia #aph prussia #hws russia #aph russia #aph spain #hws spain #aph romano #hws romano #hetalia au #hetalia #1p headcanons

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lonewolfinthetardis · 2 months

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My experience reading Respawn of the Dead

So I decided to read a classic piece of TF2 fan fiction, Respawn of the Dead. It has glowing reviews and it seemed like an interesting idea for a fan fiction, albeit one I've read countless times. I enjoyed the first few chapters, until I came upon something that stayed with me the entire time I read the fic. The characterisation of the mercs.

Spoilers below the line

Yes I know that this fic was published only two years after the game came out, therefore we knew basically nothing about the backstories of our beloved mercenaries. But the way these characters were written rubbed me the wrong way. These were not the lovable characters that I've come to know and love (the exception being Pyro). These were characters that I had trouble visualising in my head, I could not see them as the beloved mercenaries of Team Fortress 2 (except Pyro again, and sometimes Heavy).

The author of course went down the route of "Medic and Heavy are German and Russian, let's make them an ex-nazi and a communist!", which is something that has me fuming. Of all the possible backstories for those two, the author had to choose that?! I honestly thought it was a joke at first, but nope, that was the backstories they chose for those two much loved characters.

Don't get me started on Soldier! This man is a raging homophobe and xenophobe (the fic's words, not mine). This fan fiction is also the only time I've read Soldier using racial slurs about Demo. There's other issues with Soldier, but I don't have time for that.

Other issues I found with this fic were the constant outdated terms, derogatory names, racisms, and homophobia. While I understand that this fan fiction was set in the 1960's, and those terms were common then, doesn't mean that readers had to go in without knowing what they were in for. Which brings me to my next point!

The tagging, or the non-existant tagging. This fic contains extremely confronting imagery, scenes, and language. You'd think that there would be at least some tags right? Wrong. The only tag is the Heavy/Medic ship tag. No warning of gore, violence, major character death, or implied non-con. No warnings about the racial slurs, bigotry, or just general tags telling the reader what the fic is about.

I genuinely don't know why no-one else has brought up the horrible mischaracterisation in this fic before (yes I know it's 15 years old), and I don't get why so many are praising how well it's written?! There are no paragraph breaks telling you where one scene ends and another begins, which left me confused until I came across context clues.

All in all, this fan fiction left me fuming. I understand not getting the characterisation right due to how new the game was, but a little imagination would've been nice.

The only good thing about this fic was Pyro. They were a lovely character, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about them. It was definitely a refreshing part of the reading journey.

Respawn of the Dead had an interesting idea, but was executed poorly in some places. While some may love this part of TF2 fan fiction history, I will gladly leave it in my "never read again pile".

#tf2 #cw: gore #cw: facism #cw: mentions of noncon #cw: mentions of slurs #tf2 medic #heavy tf2 #tf2 pyro #tf2 soldier #tf2 demoman #I just needed to tell people about this fic #Respawn of the Dead

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adarkrainbow · 1 month

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As you might have noticed with my latest post, I have been looking into Frau Holle recently. And I just read an article by Dominique Peyrache-Leborgne which has some interesting points.

The article starts out by pointing out the difficulty of translating "Frau Holle", the very name of the tale/entity, in French. "Frau" can become easily "Madame" or "Dame", Miss or Lady, no problem... But what about "Holle"? The very name is a part of German folklore - and not just German folklore, a very specific regional folklore in Germany around Hesse - and as such it means nothing to a French audience. Not only that, but since French is a Latin-derived language, unlike German, the very name "Holle" does not bear any connotations, implications or echoes in French the same way it does in German or even English. As such, while there were translations as "Madame Hollé" as early as 1869, the idea of keeping "Frau Holle" as "Frau Holle" or just transliterating as "Lady Holle" is quite recent - and only applies to scholarly translations. Meanwhile, for older or more "common" translations, a specific trend appeared in France, a translation-tradition that still lasts to this day. Translating Frau Holle as "Madame la Neige" (Miss Snow), "Dame Hiver" (Lady Winter) or other cold-related names.

An habit that the author of the article severely criticizes, because while indeed snow plays an important part in the fairytale, Frau Holle is not supposed to be a spirit of winter or an embodiment of the snow - or at least she does not appear exclusively as such. Frau Holle is a very complex cultural figure with various functions and appearances.

To help the audience understand the complexity of Frau Holle, the article presents in a simplified and summarized version the list of supernatural beings that appear in variations of the "Frau Holle" tale around the world - a list extracted from a work by Warren E. Roberts, a "very complete synthesis" called "The Tale of the Kind and Unkind Girls" (1958). To highlight this intertextuality not only helps understand the various roles and elements surrounding the "part" Frau Holle is supposed to play ; while also proving how Frau Holle synthetizes all of those various aspects together.

In most fairytales of the type "The Kind and Unkind Girls", the supernatural being is a female entity of magic. For example, a fairy - fairies are very recurring in this type of fairytale though, unlike in Perrault's famous "Diamonds and Toads", there is never just one fairy, they are always three. It is exemplified by Basile's "The Three Fairies" in his Pentamerone ; they also appear within several Judeo-Spanish fairytales of the Balkans (there was a recent anthology of them translated in French published by the José Corti edition), and it is quite common for these three fairies to be washer-women, or at least tied to water/rivers (several variations in the French region of Gascogne have the fairies as washer-women by the river). There is also an equally important number of fairytales, among these "female tales", where the girls rather deal with witches - characters that very easily replace or are confused with fairies in folktales. The most famous of those witches tale is the one Afanassiev called simply "The Baba Yaga", and where the famous Russian witch plays the part of Frau Holle. A third option also exists for the female magical being: just "an old woman", "little old woman", who is clearly magic but never called by any specific name like "fairy" or "witch" (this type of character, the "magical old woman", not quite a fairy not quite a witch, is very common among the Grimm fairytales). The "simple old woman" appears for example in another one of Basile's tales "The two little pizzas", and in a Bulgarian fairytale "Girl of gold, girl of ashes" (a story which did reach France through the Père Castor collection for children). Sometimes the old woman will ask to have lice removed from her head (for example in Greek fairytales). Finally, in lands with a strong Catholic presence, of course, the female supernatural entity is replaced by the Virgin Mary - something very common among Christianized fairytales, where the Virgin Mary plays the part of every positive female magical character (an example is the Spanish fairytale "Three Balls of Gold").

So we have here a quite coherent group of female entities, though quite ambiguous, the fairy-witch group. There is also a share of those stories that have male characters as the supernatural entity. Usually these are earthly entities tied somehow to nature: in the Ludwig Bechstein's "Golden Mary, Sticky Mary", it is a "wild man" or "savage man", the "Thürschemann" ; in Afanassiev's The Old Grumpy Woman it is a leshy, a male "forest spirit" ; and in Grimm's own "The Three Little Men of the Forest" it is, as the title says, three dwarves living in the woods. When it comes to the male stories, having them be a specific entity related to the weather or the flow of time similar to Frau Holle is quite common: in England you have Jack Frost, in Russia Grandfather Frost ; and in many European fairytales the supernatural group of men embodies either the four seasons or the twelve months (Basile's "The Months" for example ; the article also notes a 1996 French children book "Adeline, Adelune et le feu des saisons", Adeline, Adelune and the fire of the seasons).

Finally, there is also a set of tales with more enigmatic and mysterioues entities, whose roots seem to belong in myths, religious symbolism or magical rituals. For example in the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic traditions, the entity is usually three disembodied heads within a well, that asked for their hair to be brushed, or simply to be treated with respect. Miranda Jane Green evoked this trope within her "Celtic Myths", and James Orchard Halliweel collected a version of it, "The Three Heads in the Well" for his "Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales of England".

And Frau Holle, as an old and ancient avatar of a lost Germanic goddess, manages to compile and regroup all of those aspects and all those various entities within her. Like the three heads in the well, she is associated with ancient myths and the world of the dead. Like the four seasons, the twelve months, and Jack/Grandfather Frost, she is a spirit of the weather and the cycle of time. Like the wild-men and forest-spirits, she is an entity of wilderness and nature (the Brothers Grimm, in their "German Legends", do note several times that she leads a "Wild Hunt" throughout the forest). And finally she is the ultimately fairy-witch ; she is the kind and benevolent wise woman... and the terrifying ogress-like long-teethed hag.

A complexity of character, a multiplicity of faces, that is retranscribed within the ungoing debate surrounding the etymology of "Holle". For those who want to study the German fairytales under a mythological angle (Jacob Grimm was one of the most famous names to do so, more recently Eugen Rewermann, a religion specialist, took back the Grimm theory), Holle is survivance of the old pagan goddess of Germany Hulda, a mother-earth goddess (hence why Frau Holle lives underground, down a well). This is notably this analysis that led Lucie Crane, the woman that translated the Grimm fairytales for the edition illustrated by Walter Crane, to translate "Frau Holle" as "Mother Hulda": it was an attempt to give back to her a mythological glory. But other scholars have argued that Frau Holle could also be a female version of this Norse winter-god associated with the dead that appears in the Eddas: Uller/Holler. Another analysis, that is tied to the fairytale, is the homonimy between "Frau Holle" and "die Hölle" - which is "Hell" of course, but since here Frau Holle rules over a benevolet underground "land of the dead", we can think of it as a generic term for the "Underworld" (the same way for example in some languages the Greek Underworld are referred to as "Hell" despite having the paradise of the Elysian Fields). And more so: "Holle" coul also be... "die Holde", which means kindness or benevolence.

Many, many possible readings all true in their own way, which not only testifies to the cultural wealth behind the figure of Frau Holle, but also reflects perfectly how the character is one of paradoxes, duality and multiplicites. Frau Holle is so powerful that she mixes the up and the down - her realm is underground and yet in it she makes it snow in the sky, as a goddess both chthonian and celestial... With Frau Holle, life and death becomes a blur ; and more importantly Frau Holle gathers within her all seasons, because she might make it snow like in winter, her domain is stilled filled with the fresh flowers of spring and the hot sun of summer...

[The author of the article did praise greatly John Warren Stewig's decision of translating the character's name as "Mother Holly" in 2001. "Holly" is close enough to "Holle" in sonority, but it also makes the character feel more familiar to an English-speaking audience since it is a quite common name ; and "Holly" also plays cleverly on both "holly", the plant, one of the defining symbols of winter, and "holy", evoking Frau Holle's alternate roles as a saint or a goddess]

#frau holle #grimm fairytales #mother holle #brothers grimm #mother holly #german fairytales #the kind and unkind girls #fairytale type #fairytale comparisons #supernatural beings #supernatural beings in fairytales #lady winter #mother hulda #european fairytales #mother winter

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airasora · 1 month

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I just experienced some casual... microaggression, I guess you could call it? xD

So for those unaware; I am Danish, very much Danish, but my name is not - and that goes for both my first and last names. My first name is Turkish and/or Hebrew, and my surname is Russian and/or Polish. This does usually cause a bit of confusion, but it's never anything major.

So I just booked an appointment with a psychologist because I'm fairly certain I may have ADHD so I'm getting that checked out and I had to spell my name to him, and he said;

"That was fairly easy to spell even for a native like me."

I beg your finest pardon, sir! I am very much native too! I'm so Danish that my dad is part German! 😤

It's not the first time I experience people assuming I'm not native Danish, but he's the first who was this blunt about it xD

#irl #looking forward to meeting him #maybe i can casually inform him that i'm very much danish like excuse you XD

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si1v3rtr33s · 3 months

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bungo stray dogs bilingual/multilingual character headcanons, barring the obvious ones (guild members = english and japanese, rimlaine = french and japanese, fyodor = russian and japanese, nikolai = ukranian and japanese) and the extra obvious one (everyone speaks japanese)

(this is gonna be really long, almost 1400 words, so under the cut it goes)

akutagawa with french and chinese, because he used an oddly high amount of french in his stories and a lot of them had influence from chinese mythology. also i think it’d be sweet to see him learning french from gin who learned it from verlaine.

speaking of, gin and kyōka learning french from verlaine. i just think those three sitting in the basement together, teaching and learning, would be cute. and i wanna see atsushi and kunikida confused as to why kyōka can speak fluent french.

atsushi with chinese for similar reason as akutagawa. we’ve seen him reading in a library, so it wouldn't be far-fetched to say they had access to other languages. i also think that kyōka is teaching him french and lucy is teaching them english.

chūya taught himself some english in the sheep, which was reinforced by doc (who we are going to hear about later), and taught himself french after rimbaud’s death because he felt drawn to the language. a year later, he met his french brother and resented the language a little bit for a while but come meursault and he can actually talk to any of the locals they come across because he picked it back up after dazai defected.

ranpo speaks way too many to count. he got bored as a kid and they just stuck. english is most notable and most commonly used (mainly poe but also the occasional foreigner witness or run-in with fitzgerald), but i imagine him speaking some german, chinese, latin, french, and a bit of filipino. anyone can add on to this list with little to no reason and i would accept it.

the tanizakis are learning english in school because y’know. school curriculum. i think poe is helping them study and that would be cute.

dazai learned german in the pm just to speak very aggressively at mori. i think it’d be funny to see him and ranpo, slacking off and holding a conversation in german. nobody can understand them and think they’re making plans or discussing a confidential case, but they’re just talking about something trivial like cats or candy or just gossiping. they also know a good bit of english, enough for him to hold conversation decently well with poe (which is an achievement in and of itself; poe speaks eloquent english and dazai speaks old man japanese) (see the first few chapters of the manga to see what i'm talking about because they said some of the most grandpa-type shit to atsushi there). i think it’d be nice to give him some down time.

jōno knows braille and japanese sign language. neither are spoken languages, but sign language is a language of its own with its own grammar and vocabulary. and braille because... he’s blind.

adding onto that, techō knows braille for jōno and sign language because (headcanon) he’s hard of hearing. and because he goes nonverbal (autism) and still has to communicate somehow.

you know what, all five hunting dogs (yes even fuckcoochie) know sign and braille. because they are a family (yes even fuckcoochie, but only before the doa arc) and they accommodate each other. and they need something to do on the day off but that’s a discussion for another time.

sigma is a funny one since we don’t know their author, but their name is literally just a greek letter so they know greek and their dad is russian so uh nikolai’s teaching them russian so they can communicate with fyodor easier. have at thee.

ango knew a little english, enough to hold a half-decent conversation. dazai tutored he and oda (pre-t homo teaches their homo dads english) when they had nothing better to do.

hhh time for white people.

fyodor and nikolai know the other’s native language because russian and ukranian are similar enough and fyodor’s japanese sucks ass (and nikolai hits on fyodor in russian/ukrainian so nobody knows what the fuck they're saying). fyodor also knows latin and hebrew because he’s canonically orthodox and he’s just devoted like that. and latin is pretty.

bram, other than irish gaelic and japanese because yes irl bram stoker was irish mhm potatoes red hair (catch me drawing bram with reddish hair and freckles), i think he’d know english because british people (｀_´)ゞ (/pos) and a bit of french and german.

the younger guild members (minus lucy because parentless behavior /hj) know some spanish because of the american school system and i’m not going to bother looking up whether second language was required in the eighties and nineties. (future silver here, i asked my mom that went to high school in the nineties and it was but spanish was the only option so i had to rewrite poe’s section smh fuck the american school system’s history)

poe also taught himself french because they thought the language was pretty and got hooked and a pastime turned into passion and now they’re fluent ten years later. he’s silly like that. and they understand raccoons because karl is their son. yes raccoon is a language and poe, ranpo, lovecraft (see next paragraph), and kenji are fluent.

lovecraft knows irish gaelic because i’m pushing my (kuni)bramcraft agenda (multishipper behavior smh) and i think they’d know french because poe taught them and raccoon because karl was there too and i strive to put images of fluffy platonic domestic situations into people’s minds.

nathaniel hawthorn (that minister guy that akutagawa fucked up and shot sigma) knows latin and hebrew too for the same reasons as fyodor except he’s catholic.

you might think i’m gonna bring up fitzgerald and languages he knows but his entire character is what the fuck is a kilometer and capitalism (/j) so no he only knows 🦅🇺🇸american🇺🇸🦅 english and semi-fluent japanese with weird pronunciation because WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER RAAAAHHHHHHH (yes i am american and yes i am ashamed)

i think verlaine picked up a lot of different languages in his nine years of being the assassin king. english, german, italian, turkish, filipino, czech. you name it, he can probably hold a decent conversation in it. any time the pm gets a document they can’t translate for one reason or another, down to the basement it goes. he may or may not be teaching q his tricks…

and now dead people.

rimbaud also picked up a few languages, but forgot a lot in his amnesia. before the suribachi incident (in which they and verlaine were nineteen, aka not really adults, which not enough people know or talk about), he had english down fluently as well as a little german. rimbaud my beloved.

so the flags… a funny group that i’ve attached myself to despite them having about fifty pages of life. tragic. doc canonically went to med school here in the states, so he knew english fluently. i don’t think iceman knew anything other than japanese simply because i don’t think he saw any reason to. i’m on the fence with piano man and albatross because my brain says they didn’t know anything else but my heart says they knew something else as well. piano man is leaning toward latin because he’s pretentious and annoying like that and if he did then albatross knew it too just to fuck with him. i also think albatross, if he knew anything else, knew the languages of the surrounding countries because he was the head wheelman and often went on “excursions” with chūya. so korean, russian, thai, and filipino. maybe a little indonesian, as a treat.

lippmann gets their own section because favoritism. they were head of relations so they definitely spoke with foreign allies and enemies. they were also an actor, so i like to think they dubbed their lines themself. i’m thinking english, spanish, korean, and french because, again, they’re pretentious like that. and job requirements but whatever.

as for oda, i think he knew a little english but he was nowhere near fluent. he was a simple man.

shibusawa-sensei irl translated french works to japanese so add them to the list of french speakers. in real life he sucked in german class so no seltsam wütend language for them. and i think they’d speak latin because, and say it with me, they’re pretentious like that.

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lulu2992 · 10 months

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Vaas’ (almost) unreleased dialog in “Payback”

I need to talk about an interesting thing I discovered 9 years ago!

So, in Far Cry 3, in the mission “Payback”, when you attack Vaas’ camp, he speaks to Jason over the loudspeakers and says:

Oh, Jason, Jason, Jason! You come to fuck with me in MY OWN house for a bitch, for Citra.

And a few moments later, he adds:

Don't worry, hermano, don't worry. I don't like my family either. When you meet me, OK? When you see me, you better thank me, because I am gonna free your soul.

The first time I heard these lines in English, I was a bit confused because I originally played the game in French and remembered they were longer, more violent, and that Vaas mentioned Jason’s brother (probably Riley). I wondered if the French localization team had just decided to do their own thing and change the text (that happens), so I looked at how the lines had been translated in the game’s 15 available localizations:

What I discovered is that in Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Korean, Polish, and Swedish, Vaas says what he says in English. But in Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, the lines are longer, and they all pretty much mean the same thing:

Oh Jason, Jason, Jason. You come to fuck with me in MY OWN house for a bitch, for Citra. And you wouldn’t even lift a finger for you own brother? You fucking sellout/traitor! [More insults]!

Don’t worry, hermano, don’t worry. I don’t like my family either. When you meet me, OK? When you see me, you better thank me, because I am gonna free your fucking soul, [says Jason’s soul is corrupted/poisoned/sick and insults him again].

In the Step Into Insanity Trailer which came out on June 5, 2012, almost 6 months before the release of Far Cry 3, we hear Vaas say a few lines he never says in the game, such as, “The pain will stop once Jason Brody is dead” or, “The thing is, I am not crazy. But you are”. In the trailer, he also says: “You better thank me, because I am gonna free your fucking soul.” This line is in Far Cry 3, but the word “fucking” isn’t.

It can’t be a coincidence that several localization teams translated Vaas’ dialog into the exact same thing. My theory is that those two lines used to be longer and that this first, long version was sent to 9 of the teams to be translated… but the devs were not done working on the game, and a bit later into development, they decided to change the dialog. This new, shorter version was then sent to the remaining 6 localization teams, and what they translated is therefore identical to the final English script.

I’m not sure why Vaas’ lines were eventually shortened. Maybe the devs thought Riley shouldn’t be mentioned because, at this point in the game, Jason and the player believe he’s dead. The old, long version of the lines sadly isn’t available in Far Cry 3’s English audio files anymore, but as a fan of unreleased/cut/early content, I’m glad that, thanks to the game’s other languages and the Step Into Insanity Trailer, we know they existed!

#far cry 3 #vaas montenegro #jason brody #I really made this image in 2014 #at the time I was too shy to post things #now I can share it :)#far cry 3 spoilers

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phandomtaleweaver · 3 months

Text

“Chien de Garde”

No parings, fluff, humor, 700+ words

New to the team, Finka always get the feeling she’s being watched when she talks to Doc, Monty might be able to tell her why

(Please don’t come at me for my French or Russian, I used google translate)

Only a week after the team had returned from Truth and Consequences, Finka visited Doc in the med bay for the first time. The conversation had been innocuous, some follow up about the Chimera Virus. The doctor had been working in the main area of the med bay, rather than his office. After leaving Lera couldn’t shake the feeling that she and the doctor were being watched. Nothing terribly sinister, just the simple feeling of being observed. Thinking back, Finka didn’t remember seeing anyone else in there, as Jäger, the only patient, had moved back to his own room, where he was far more comfortable.

Over the next couple of weeks Lera noticed the same feeling, but only when she was talking to Doctor Kateb. She thought about asking him about it, or Oliver, except the latter might start a fight. Finally, after three weeks, Lera had had enough, so she approached the next closest person to Gustave to see if he knew anything: Gilles “Montagne” Toures.

She approached him one quiet evening in the common room. Most other operators were doing their own things elsewhere or had gone out to the pub for a pint and Lera and Gilles were virtually alone in the common area. Gilles sat on a couch reading a book titled Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. She sat on a chair catty corner to him and he looked up.

“Um, hello, Toures, I hope I’m not interrupting your reading.”

The older man chuckled, a rich, warm sound and shook his head. He then inclined his head for her to continue.

“I have an odd question, but one I don’t know who else to ask,” she watched his face for any adverse reaction, but none came. He merely maintained his previous warm expression, waiting patiently for her to continue. “Do you ever feel like you're being watched when you talk to Doctor Kateb?”

The Frenchman looked incredulous then seemed to think for a moment. “Non,” he finally responded. “But I may know what you are-” he paused searching for the word “-signifier, oh, what you mean.” He stopped speaking, realizing his faulty English was probably hard to understand. “I know, what the feeling you have, I understand it. You are aware of Gustave’s “Chien de Garde”. His, uh, guard dog.”

“His guard dog?”

“Oui, I can introduce you.”

“Why not?” Lera chuckled, still slightly confused.

Gilles stood and beckoned for her to follow him, “Viens.”

The two walked to the med bay together in companionable silence, and a bit of anticipation on Lera’s part. Upon arriving Lera saw the med bay looked empty, aside from the doctor organizing something. The minute they were fully in the room, the CBRN specialist felt like she was being watched.

“Bonsoir, Docteur,” Gilles greeted.

“Salut, vieil ami. добрый вечер, Lera. What brings the two of you here so late? Not an injury I hope.”

“Non,” Gilles smiled, with just the slightest hint of mischief in his eyes. “Lera wanted to meet your Chien de Garde.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes and shook his head. “He is in my office if you wish to speak with him.” He turned back to what he was doing.

“Not any more,” a voice said from the doorway of the aforementioned office. Lera looked and there stood Dominic Brunsmeir. Lera had never met the man formally, but he had been waiting for the team when they had returned from T&C, only to remain at Jager’s side till he was released back to his own room. She had heard jokes and whispers about him possibly being a drug dealer, though she doubted that. She realized in that moment that his intense blue eyes observing her was the feeling she had felt all those times talking with the doctor.

“I don’t see why you find it necessary to terrorize everyone, Dom,” Gustave sighed, breaking the silence.

“I'm not terrorizing anyone, artz, just keeping you company,” the German smiled, attempting to look innocent and failing.

“You are as good at keeping me company as Tania would be, you just like to lurk,” the doctor shot him a faux glare. Then turning to Lera he continued. “He hangs around me to make sure no one bullies me, though I don't need it. I think he just likes to scare people, hence the nickname Gilles and Julien have given him: Chien de Garde.”

#r6s #rainbow six siege #video games #doc r6 #r6s doc #r6s finka #monty r6 #r6 bandit #gustave kateb #lera melnikova #Gilles toures #Dominic brunsmier #r6 fanfiction #video game fanfic #fanfic

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