Today I accidentally discovered that apparently AO3 has synned the Sonichu fandom tag under "Pokemon - All Media Types." Why.
Back on this again because boy has it not stopped being a problem. I feel terrible for the person who wrote this thread because knowing that your own concerns are heard, understood, and still don’t weigh in as important enough to ultimately change minds is a special kind of bad feeling. That resonates hard with experiences dealing with ableism. “We hear ya, and no we’re not planning to do anything about it, but we hear ya.” Thanks, my soul is combusting inside my body. I’m a little bit horrified that they have standardized data storage for tags but apparently no one who could write a script that removes diacritics from a specific set of tags while saving both versions as linked items in an external data structure? This is not a unique problem no one has had before, and it’s exactly what computers are good at: a highly repetitive task on a dauntingly large scale that has a limited number of clearly definable rules. It really shouldn’t have to be done manually. It also doesn’t have to be done irreversibly by destroying the diacritic information. Swapping the diacritics back in is simpler than taking them out. Even if something changes with archive-wide formatting, it’s unlikely to be something you can’t adjust a script to work with unless the change is an enormous, dedicated yet inconsistent mistake, in which case there are much larger problems. A human would still need to check the output, but they really should be doing that anyway because manual data entry is one long opportunity to introduce human error into your data. I suppose it would be a lot more work per person for the programmer(s) who write and test the code, but this is exactly the kind of thing programmers are for. It would be a mercy compared to asking them to interact with anything attached to a proposal to destructively and ambivalently edit over 2000 strings by hand. I was hoping my diacritics problem was just about a new unfamiliar thing that I’d get used to if I just gave it time. I don’t think it’s working. I have repeatedly had to give up browsing for fic because my brain just won’t parse the tags. The spirit is willing but the thinkjelly just isn’t up to the task. It would be nice if the discussion about English speakers having trouble with the tags was a bit less thoroughly “have you considered not being racist?” Yes, thanks, I have considered that angle, and having given it much thought, I would still actually like to more easily browse for English language fanfiction and be able to read the tags. That does not mean I think the world should revolve around me. It means I have opinions about the usability of the website. I’m not the one who made this a zero sum game. If you ask me, I’d honestly like the site to cater better to both English and Mandarin speakers, as well as speakers of other Chinese dialects and basically everyone ideally. It’s not my job to figure out a solution that accomplishes that before I get to have an opinion on whether it’s working for me. I don’t have an opinion on how well it’s working for Chinese users not because I don’t care about them but because it’s not my opinion to have. Don’t play us off each other like we’re out to screw each other over for our own convenience and that’s why the site is hard to use.
fanfic authors writing anime characters swearing when 1. most subtitles, fan or licensed, do not include swears ime and 2. it doesn't fit the character's personality/speech style is a real turn-off
I've seen it done in a way that feels natural a couple of times. Not nearly as often as I've seen it done poorly, though - even for a character with a fitting personality there's kind of technique to actually including it in the dialogue properly, I think.
For me it’s heavily dependent on the character. Like, for instance, I could totally buy Amethyst dropping F-bombs left and right the instant Steven leaves the room, but delightful memes aside, I find it pretty jarring when I read fic where Pearl is doing the same. (Also iirc Japanese doesn’t really have swears the way English does? So I can def see it being gratuitous in a lot of anime fandoms.)
Yeah, the closest equivalent in Japanese is extreme, macho informality. The word temee gets translated to "Bastard!" a lot, but it literally just means "you," it's just rude about it. That's why you get the occasional fansub or scanslation that's like because the character is speaking in an informal register, and the fansubbers are trying to translate the fact that they aren't speaking like you would in polite company by dropping f-bombs like it's going out of style. But that's not usually a very good translation, because the impact is different and fictional characters tend to code-switch less than people do in real life, so if your Tough Guy Protagonist Who Doesn't Play By The Rules calls himself ore most of the time and you try to convey that through swearing he's quickly going to reach Karkat levels of swear saturation, never mind if he also has Tough Guy friends who also habitually use ore.
This is why localization is hard lmao You have to account for cultural differences! and even if you do it well people will still complain
Not rly a gripe because I find it highly amusing but i find it so funny that inevitably I'll encounter hockey rpf in the wild Like barely any other sports, where are their rpf??? No wild basketball or tennis rpf in sight. Hundreds of hockey rpf on random authors who only has written one fanfic of a fandom im in and then its hockey rpf, bandom, and police procedural shows Anyway these authors tend to be excellent writers I just don't care about their other fandoms, ah well
I honestly never thought about how it is almost always just hockey rpf till now. And now I am kind of wondering why.
As far as politeness levels go, yeah, you usually get a fairly consistent politeness level per character regardless of circumstances. Then there’s Orihara Izaya in Durarara!! In the online chat room: watashi To the girl he catfished: boku To Celty: ore But this show was adapted from a series of light novels, and his use of language is a noteworthy character trait.
Re: hockey RPF, WWE RPF and also football RPF -- these are all sports that emphasise the dramatis personae in the rink/ring/on the field in different ways, and that include a lot of physical contact. The appeal is a little different for each of them, though, like. I don't really hockey, so IDK what is up with that, but footballers are known for their overwhelming displays of emotion and affection on the field, and WWE is just a stage drama for bros, so.
I'm not super familiar with hockey rpf, but I spent a lot of time in the adjacent Check, Please! fandom (which is hockey fiction that references/uses IRL teams and I think a few IRL players), and the explanation a writer in the fandom gave that I read at one point is that a lot of hockey fans are just... Like that? Like, even outside of typical "fandom" and fanfic spaces, the level of wiiiiild superstition & investment in the Narrative is just a fundamental part of the sport. I'll have to see if I can hunt up that post/note for you guys, and I know I'm not wordsing the best, but yeah
Ohh I'd love to see that post if you manage to find it! Tbh I don't know much about the sport or its fanbase - wrestling seems obvious though because it seems pretty dramatic from the wrestling fans I know in my life
Well, the post isn't showing up in any of my tags, so I'm not sure if it's just a casualty of my sporadic tagging practices, or if it was in an author's note or comment on a fic. Regardless, for an idea of the kind of culture vibe thing I'm talking about, check out the Wikipedia article on IRL Stanley Cup traditions & superstitions or the tag "Stanley Cup Magic" on Ao3.
I've seen multiple male writers have lines about how women with Hartman Hips have to wear thongs because no other underwear will fit, and as an actually fat DFAB I'm just like "... buy a size up?" I guess they could be talking about how ones big enough to go over their hips would be too loose at the waistband, but, you know, characters don't need an excuse to wear a specific kind of underwear, do they?
That...makes literally zero sense. I’ve got proportionally huge hips, and thongs aren’t somehow better-fitting on me.
I've heard women with large butts specifically, not just wide hips, saying they find thongs fit better, but I don't think it's a general thing
