I have two chimps within, Laziness and Hyperactivity. They smoke cigs, drink yerba, fling shit at each other, and devour the face of anyone who gets close to either.
They also devour my dreams.
I often heard something similar, in spirit. Roughly translated: “if you aren’t a commie when you’re 20, then you’re heartless; but if you’re still a commie when you’re 40, then you’re brainless.”
I’m 40 this year. Still a communist. I guess that makes me brainless?
Days without Meta violating basic principles of honesty, dignity, and decency: zero.
Days without Meta reverting harmful decisions only because people outraged at it: zero.
(And no, neither counter is broken. They don’t reach one… because.)
See, there’s stuff that’s clearly wrong, like:
But canned yerba? That isn’t just wrong, it’s abomination! Refer to Dante’s Inferno: the 8th circle is for the fraudsters who put cheese on garlic-and-oil pasta and ketchup on pizza, but the 9th one is for the ones who drink canned yerba! It’s treason!!!1one
(I think it should be clear for anyone I’m joking with the fake outrage. Specially given I quite like tereré, i.e. Paraguayan style cold yerba. And unlike Che I’m not some boomer to tell others to stop enjoying what they enjoy. But seriously, I bet he’d be mad at the canned yerba. And most other things in the meme.)
Anyway, it isn’t just about the caffeine content, it’s all that nice ritual and the flavour and everything else.
I think this doesn’t have to do with the writing system, but with how heavily a culture relies on context to convey meaning. In general, East Asian cultures do it way more than the ones from Western Europe and the Americas, so Japanese/Mandarin/Korean/etc. speakers are way more likely to omit contextually clear words than German/English/French/etc. speakers. And if the translator is inexperienced they might try to translate the sentences word-by-word, or even get the context wrong, and in both cases you’ll get issues.
EDIT: crafted a cute example based on… well, weeb knowledge. Consider the following situations.
Your typical English speaker would answer #1 with “are you alright?” and #2 with “I’m alright.” Or similar. They might perhaps clip the verb from #1, or replace “alright” with “okay” from either, but the subject will be always there.
And yet that’s exactly what Japanese does with “大丈夫” daijōbu. Sure, you could phrase it as a question in #1, like “大丈夫ですか。” daijōbu desu ka?, but for most part you don’t need to; and you’re certainly not including the pronoun, it’s kind of obvious that the word refers to whoever fell down.
Now. Imagine you’re translating that “大丈夫” into English. A noob translator might translate it with “alright”… and it gets hella confusing — what is supposed to be alright? Or they might pick the context wrong, and translate it as “I’m alright” when it’s supposed to be “are you alright?” or vice versa.
Except Japanese won’t do this just with the pronoun, or the “hey, this is a question!” mark. It’ll do it pretty much all the time — why two words, one enough?
It’s not just uncensored loli porn. It got censored in the LN from spy cam footage of his niece in the shower (the main reason why his brother gets so violent).
[Rudeus on Sylphy and Roxy]
The anime and WN are a bit more explicit on that, but even the LN is crystal clear on Rudeus being a paedophile. And I think the folks doing mental gymnastics to claim otherwise also lack basic media literacy, just like I criticised the “third way” ones.
In the meantime I find your “option 3.5” fairly reasonable. It’s completely fine to criticise the work for not doing a good job of calling out shitty behaviour, specially in the light of its theme.
Rudeus does mention once that Paul (isekai father) is scum, and that’s why they understand each other, but… that’s it. In the meantime Paul cheats on Zenith (who’s monogamous) with Lilia (who’s employed by Paul, so Paul is in a position of power over her), and gets away with it.
I’ve also seen an interesting discussion about how much of the author’s personality is reflected in their works.
It’s somewhat clear for me that Magonote doesn’t really care too much about social causes, such as the role of women in society. And that he caves in to readers’ pressure a bit too easily. But past that, I don’t know, really.
not on special interest for etymology
[User banned from linguistics@mander.xyz]
actually it’s entomology
[User banned from the whole mander.xyz instance]
Just kidding :-P
Yup, they are. Fixed — thanks for pointing it out. (I was in doubt on where to rank it, and accidentally split both names apart.)
IMO it’s a series with a damn good worldbuilding, and it got some good animation; for me it was way more enjoyable than Higeki no Genkyou, surprisingly so because I like Pryde’s story way better in the manga (The Barbarian’s Bride gets a bit stale over time IMO). But at the same time I couldn’t see myself being as excited with it than I was with Bertia.
>canned yerba mate
What the bloody hell.
Ongoing, will keep watching because I’m having a great time with all three:
Watched / finishing, top of the list:
Finishing, I don’t regret watching it:
Deserved a better adaptation:
Dropped:
Etymology is kind of bait for me. Doubly so with what-if scenarios.
It could be too. It depends if the Qhadaf in question was the one founding it (like Cecil Rhodes), or simply some noble the discoverer was trying to please, while fighting the local tribals who were “refusing to be civilised”. Either way, it’s some name that feels completely out-of-place from Europe, much like all three we mentioned.
Ah, my bad; I don’t know it either.
The suffix -(i)s(e)tan in Classical Persian and descendants means roughly “place of $noun”. While you see it often being attached to human groups, that isn’t the only way to use it. Like,
So you could theoretically name some place after the local fauna with -stan.
It helps if you remember that suffix is cognate to “stand”, “status” (see status quo), “stay”.
This map is the gift that keeps giving:
Surprised to not see any place being called “Big River” or “Day of Arafah Island”.
The show was great. Faithful to the manga, in both events and spirit: it’s a short story and not-too-deep story about love. I really enjoyed the ride.
I think it’s both because I’ve seen people also dissing Ascendance of a Bookworm, simply for being an isekai. Even if its worldbuilding is extremely detailed and well-thought, like:
And it does those really well IMO.
That said, I do agree with you that Mushoku Tensei also puts people off because of the main character; probably more than for being an isekai.
I was a nice guy, but I was on the heavy side, didn’t have good looks going for me, and was in the midst of regretting my entire life.
My brash behavior around the house hadn’t won anyone over. I was the sort of guy who’d bang on the walls and floors to get people’s attention without leaving my room.
He’s a “nice guy”, hated by his looks. Sure. Totally not hated for his behaviour. /s
I’d only been homeless for about three hours. Before that, I’d been the classic, stereotypical, long time shut-in who wasn’t doing anything with his life. And then, all of a sudden, my parents died. Being the shut-in that I was, I obviously didn’t attend the funeral, or the family gathering thereafter.
Lives off his parents, can’t be arsed to attend their funeral.
my older brother, the one with a black belt in karate
If his brother achieved something, it shows the issue is not simply “his family was bad”.
What the hell had I even done wrong? All I did was skip out on our parents’ funeral so I could spank it to uncensored loli porn.
He is not just a paedophile: he’s a paedophile NEET who gives no shit about his family and is completely nonchalant about it.
I’m quoting the LN but the anime does follow fashion.
At least for me it’s clear why Mushoku Tensei does this: it goes out of its way to represent the main character’s start as the rock bottom, because it helps to deliver the theme. MT’s theme is *“persevere and try to become a better person, regardless of your failures; it pays off” — and if even scum like Rudeus can do it, the reader (who’s likely better as a person than Rudeus, it’s hard to not be) can do it too.
His attitude towards his family in the LN volume 12 (second half of the second season) shows that rather well IMO. In no moment the reader is told “Rudeus has changed! He is not the same as that Earthling, he’s a better man!11one”. But his actions show he cares about his isekai family in a way he never did about his Earthling one, and yet they feel natural because he has been becoming a better person over the course of the years.
From that, you can go two ways, I think. The first one is to accept the MC is shit trying to become less shit, and enjoy the story and worldbuilding. The second one is to skip it; I don’t blame anyone for doing it, if they want a more relatable main character, I think different people want different stuff and that’s completely fine.
Additionally there’s a third way: some people instead lie / bullshit / assume that the work defends NEET-dom, or paedophilia, or not caring about your parents. I think it’s lack of basic media literacy.
Sorry for the wall of text!
People look down on the idea Mushoku Tensei and Ascendance of a Bookworm would have good worldbuilding, because both are isekais, but unlike a lot of later series they aren’t simply copypasting stuff from earlier series, and they got a lot of original ideas.
A creator god made six worlds, all of them unstable, and patched them together into a die-shaped one. Then split his soul into six, each becoming a god.
Orsted’s father was the original Dragon God. As he died, the title went to his child. He’s also the grandson of the Human God. The series has a literal god as a villain-then-ally. (told ya I’d mention spoilers!)
You know who is not a god, though? Hitogami! Born in the seventh world, the void formed within the “die”. He killed and usurped the role of the actual Human God (Orsted’s maternal grandpa, BTW). He’s also responsible for the death of the first Dragon God, and the Demon God’s soul splitting into two (one half being murderous). No wonders Orsted hates him so much.
Hitogami always does his shit indirectly, through three or four “apostles” — people whom he shows visions, and automatically trust him. He tried to do it with Rudeus but it backfired, since Rudeus’ soul is not from the six-sided world the “you’ll automatically trust me” gimmick didn’t work.
For example, his intervention against Laplace was to make the Fighting God an apostle and have both fight. You’ve seen that Fighting God; he’s that huge four-arms “WAHAHAHAHA!!!” guy, Badigadi.
The evil half of Laplace fooled the Superd into madness, creating their bad reputation… and the discrimination against people with green hair, like Sylphy. Additionally, people who have green hair are likely to have the Laplace Factor, it’s like the other half of Laplace is slowly tweaking with the inheritance of multiple people, to create a perfect vessel for his reincarnation over the course of millenniums.
There’s at least one religion in the world, the Milis faith, but it’s clear not everyone follows it. It preaches monogamy, while apparently most people are fine with polygamy. The difference in mindset becomes clear near the end of the second season, look at who gets pissed at Rudeus for bringing a second wife home — not his first wife Sylphy, but his sister Norn! Guess who follows the Milis faith? It went worse for Zenith, though, since the guy violating her religious principle was her husband Paul. (And then her son. Poor Zenith. Nobody cares about your faith.)
Time loops are an actual thing in MT, and the reason Orsted has such an odd reaction towards Eris when they just met. Or he says Paul Greyrat was supposed to have two daughters, not a son. There’s also a second “loop chain” where Rudeus visits his past self, to tell him to not trust Hitogami; in that timeline Roxy died, Sylphy left Rudeus, and he never married Eris. He did this because Rudeus and Roxy’s daughter Lara has a pivotal role on defeating Hitogami.
Orsted’s curse doesn’t apply to Rudeus descendants, by the way. Now imagine all three of Rudeus’ wives terrified of Orsted… while their children are like, “dad’s boss! He’s a cool guy and doesn’t afraid of anything”.
I didn’t even scratch the surface of MT’s worldbuilding with the spoilers above, by the way. I could’ve talked about politics of the kingdom of Asura; or what exactly was the Mana Calamity; or the role of Nanahoshi into the story. The more you dig, the more you find, it’s frankly addictive.
Grandma I don’t think you know what LOL means… = “I assume you’re an ignorant”
Shitlet deserved it.
I think it’s a good signal for us users, but for game devs it’s still a problem. Indie games get less reviews, and a negative review means less exposure — the number might not mean anything, but plenty people still act like it did.
Plus game devving is artistic expression, and if there’s something that pisses plenty creators off, it’s when their creations get misunderstood.
Nope. Still loafing around:
