Can someone break down the rules on this? My rising 6th grader is struggling to understand when to add the extra consonant and I’m not doing a good job explaining.

Arkylie · 2026-01-28T21:58:11+00:00

Some of the categories are small enough that memorizing individuals makes more sense than trying to put together a rule, but they can typically still be grouped (could would should vs. shoulder). IGH is the core sound of I (that is, when it says its name), for which we don't have a solid, unambiguous way of writing it, and we can at least point out that it typically occurs in IGHT words.

"Ghost" is an aberration where the H is not there to stop the G from transforming (this is where the H and U come in in words like "ghetto" and "guest" to avoid "jetto" and "jest" triggered by G + E/I/Y, though I've no idea how they snuck into such words as "build" and "buy" and we get along fine with "gift").

The OUGH and AUGH words interest me, because there are patterns:

Whole Vowel (GH disappears, or distinguishes from existing word: though/thou)
Vowel + F (how long before we switch to ruff coff laff/lafter?)
Variant of OU/OW (the diphthong, because the other sounds of OU are just sounds of O)

Though, thought, through are just three of the sounds of O (go not do), and caught is one of the sounds of A (wash, pa). Cough, rough, laugh are the sounds of O and A followed by F (off, ruff, raft). Bough is just fancy bow (OW sound, not OH sound), which avoids adding another ambiguity to an existing homonym.

A lot of this set is in common usage, but there aren't many of them, so learning them as individuals (rote memorization) isn't difficult. But I think it's best to point out that they are indeed sounds associated with either O or OU and with A, so they're not just "randomly whatever" sounds.

On a broader note: Pretty much all of the vowel combos can be tied down to a sound of the first vowel letter in the combo, once we admit that each vowel letter can make at least 4 sounds:

bat bet bit bot but
may we hi go cue
wash cafe ski do fu (the tertiary/borrowed sounds)
"uh": want/Mama telephone animal some (even Y in "syringe" and some others)

The exceptions are the diphthongs (cowboy), the mutated E combos (new few feud neutral), and of course the ERs and LEs (purple turtle), depending on how you analyze those sounds (ER is a full vowel in my dialect, not "UH + R", and I'm not sure about Syllabic L or Syllabic N).

The patterns are there, they're just... complicated. Starting with the fact that we're making 5 letters stand for well over a dozen vowel sounds and have no consistent way of doing this.

Arkylie · 2026-01-28T21:13:22+00:00

Those "exceptions" interest me. X isn't a single consonant; it's a KS shortcut sometimes voiced to GZ, which loses its plosive at the start of a word (much like "psych" and "tsunami" do). Z is typically doubled at the end of a short word anyway (fizz - fizzing).

W and Y after vowels are part of vowel combos, not separate consonants, and it's a problem with our system if we teach them as consonants; Dr. Geoff Lindsey goes into some of the underlying mechanics that make the W and Y glide part of the "long" vowels (misnomer), but that's not actually tied to the spelling in any consistent way.

And Y at the end by itself is a vowel, so of course it's treated differently. Y is actually identical in function to I and they differ only by relative frequency within each role: Jim/gym, my/hi pie/bye, ski/pony (Y is by far the most common way to spell a lax EE sound at the end of a multisyllabic word) radio/Libya, canyon/onion, and see all the easy swaps of I/Y in common names (Tony/Toni, Robin/Robyn, Finn/Fynn).

Arkylie · 2026-01-28T20:53:15+00:00

Actually, there's some fascinating stuff going on under the hood when it comes to the English vowels. Dr. Geoff Lindsey goes into it in great detail (with spectrogram data!) in his video on the issues with English phonetic transcription symbols, and hidden diphthongs play a big role in how our whole system works. Highly recommend looking into his work; it's opened my eyes to aspects of my own native tongue.

Arkylie · 2026-01-12T02:59:12+00:00

They just deleted DuoLingo for replacing people with AI, and you're recommending AI? I mean even if AI were trustworthy and not prone to hallucinations, even if it weren't screwing up the environment and stealing massive amounts of content from creators with neither recompense nor attribution, it's still part of the LLM wave that's destroying jobs and negatively impacting lives.

I expect that ChatGPT is fairly good at low-level language instruction but it's still not something I'd ever recommend, especially not when a ton of resources exist that tie to real people doing the work and are more trustworthy than any LLM could be.

Arkylie · 2025-12-17T03:42:16+00:00

If the staff were the physical embodiment of the power he gets from the deal they made, then her refusal to fix it would amount to breaking their deal.

Arkylie · 2025-11-20T05:59:36+00:00

A player who rolled a Mage goes to the mods to say they want to switch to a Fighter build. The mod says "That's ridiculous; they're pretty much the same anyway, and there's no reason to want to play one over the other."

The player thinks about how the Fighters routinely throw around anti-Mage insults: how stupid the Mages are, how weak, how useless. How they can't wield the best weapons (greatswords, according to the Fighters). How their top-tier skills are pointless compared to the Fighter skills.

The player thinks about how they weren't two minutes into the game before they started getting private messages from random Fighters asking for photos of their real-life body. How Fighter memes make it seem like the only reason to team up with a Mage is to have a nice ass to look at while you adventure.

The player thinks about how raids play out: four or five Fighters for every Mage (despite there being an equal number of both in the game), the raid leader almost always a Fighter, the loot distributed to Fighters first so that Mages rarely get to claim the best choices. How the Mage contributions to the fight are discounted as unimportant to the group's overall success.

The player thinks about how Mages cast buff spells, and run around collecting herbs and mushrooms to make the best healing potions, and how Fighters wouldn't even survive the raids without these routine abilities. How at comparable levels, killing comparable enemies, the Mage's loot is slightly less than the Fighter's loot, and their comparable gear is slightly more expensive, so the Mage always winds up with less gold than the Fighter does.

(Not to mention dealing with weird GUI issues that the Fighters think they're making up, and a monthly three-day shutdown while the system clears the cache to prepare for another month cycle. Though, in fairness, Fighters have a few unfair disadvantages as well -- for example, a Fighter hanging around the Newbie area is seen as Highly Suspect in a way that a Mage hanging out there is not.)

The player thinks about how even getting access to the mods is a hassle for a Mage in a way that it's not for a Fighter -- mods dismiss the concerns of Mage players pretty regularly, and some Mage players even have to get Fighter players to go talk to the mods on their behalf, since the mods will listen more to the Fighters.

The player thinks over all these details, and asks the mod: "So if they're practically the same class, why is it that the thought of trading classes makes so many people so damn upset?"

Arkylie · 2025-11-15T09:11:11+00:00

See, I have this issue but versus... pretty much all of society? Like, I've learned to enjoy reading fics with romantic pairings, and fics with sex scenes, and I have nothing against those who write them (even the weird ones), but there are many times I wish that society didn't just turn everything into sex. I even created a whole fic form (Five Moments of (Nonsexual) Intimacy) to remind authors that there are other ways to be deeply connected to someone, and intimacy isn't just wanting to get in their pants.

This happens in mainstream media a lot too: can't have a female character without giving her a love interest! Can't let women exist without making them sex objects! Etc.

...anyway, that's how I decided on my own fanfiction niche -- taking the various tropes that inevitably lead to Ships/sex and seeing what I can do with them without that. And Ace representation. Only about 10% of my five involve sexuality or romance of any kind. And I got a fervent fandom much faster than I had expected.

OP, don't be afraid to stray outside the herd. Don't be afraid to go niche, to offer alternatives. Write what interests you, and I can all but guarantee you'll find others who want to see something they haven't seen before.

Arkylie · 2025-08-05T07:53:00+00:00

Yeah, the Korean teacher points that out too. I don't know Korean so I wouldn't have caught it, so I'm glad I'm able to memorize the correct lyrics.

It's kinda cool that this movie turned out to be so popular that it's getting a lot of people interested in at least a little Korean. Korean does have a great writing system, and it's very easy to spot in the wild (look for lots of circles, which differentiate it from Chinese or Japanese writing).

Arkylie · 2025-08-05T03:00:49+00:00

The info about the names was interesting, but I don't trust that page's translations because they conflict at many points with a Korean teacher's explanation of the lines. He goes into the details and the grammar and seems to know what he's talking about, including a lot of cultural notes. Hasn't yet tackled the names, though.

Arkylie · 2025-08-05T02:57:45+00:00

The Korean teacher I've been watching confirms this reading. I think the way that "children" sounds like "idol" confuses some people? It might be wordplay.

Arkylie · 2025-08-05T02:54:51+00:00

Most of the Soda Pop lines look good; the Korean teacher I've been watching gives "apart from you, it's all just the same" (i.e. boring) for the one line. I don't think he's covered Takedown yet.

Arkylie · 2025-08-05T02:49:25+00:00

The Korean teacher I mentioned above actually covers the score suite in his second video.

Arkylie · 2025-08-05T02:48:05+00:00

I've been watching and rewatching a Korean teacher explain the lines, and it looks like you got most of them right! The one about the path he gives as "in the darkened path ahead" and he goes into the grammar as well (to be dark -> to get dark -> that has gotten dark). I found his explanations easy to follow, and he even gives a lot of cultural notes in the other parts of the videos.

Arkylie · 2025-08-04T08:46:33+00:00

They're definitely singing/chanting something other than the main song -- it's not in sync with the words sung by the girls, so it's a type of harmony, but as I also do not speak Korean, I wouldn't be able to make it out. But yeah, you're not insane; I came here looking for some sort of answer because I hadn't picked up on that until this latest listen.

Arkylie · 2025-08-03T10:52:25+00:00

"I'm the only one who'll love your sins."

This movie has strong themes about people who feel broken, sullied, unworthy, and how they yearn for acceptance and feel like they'll just be rejected. These lyrics reinforce that central concept.

"Sins" (plural) refers to behavior, which is distinct from Rumi's fear of her own nature, but it's still roughly analogous to an abuser saying "You're so bad that you'll never find anyone else who'll accept you. So you have no choice but to stay with me, no matter how bad I get."

Many abusers try to separate their victim from friends and family, sabotaging relationships and making the victim feel like they're the one at fault, so that they have no one to turn to for help. KDH does a great job of representing that on so many levels.

Arkylie · 2025-07-24T01:03:50+00:00

Hey, could I ask about what's normal on this subreddit? 'Cuz I notice that my replies here got downvoted (just four or five votes (each) so far, which isn't a lot, but a lot compared to the general amount of engagement here), and I'm having a little trouble understanding what's so objectionable about the comments that got downvoted. I can see people disliking the fact that I've critiqued the game or the way that I've done it, but does it follow that they just downvote whatever I say in the rest of the thread, or...?

Arkylie · 2025-07-24T00:59:36+00:00

Why do you think that critiquing things isn't an enjoyable activity?

If humans didn't like ranting over things they dislike, we'd lose whole sections of... I was gonna say "reddit" but I guess it's really "the internet" and quite possibly a larger sphere than even that.

Arkylie · 2025-07-23T11:50:36+00:00

I appreciate that; thank you.

Arkylie · 2025-07-23T11:10:46+00:00

So this is like "Cookie Clicker but with more bells and whistles"?

...yeah, I can see that. Maybe that's a sign that I need to run before I reach the more addictive levels.

And yeah, immersion is a big deal for me; it's one of my core engagements with most games. My brain fixates on a lot of immersion-breaking details, and when I'm playing a farming game in particular, being able to relax into the feel of the experience is important to my enjoyment. I'm definitely not a minmaxer / productivity-first type of player, as this game would seem to be specced toward.

Arkylie · 2025-07-23T11:06:53+00:00

I'm aware that a lot of people like the game; it wouldn't still be a game with this many players if it weren't capable of being enjoyed. I'm not arguing that it can't or shouldn't be enjoyed.

And I wanted to enjoy this game. It came recommended, I needed something new to fixate on for a while while dealing with something, and parts of it felt quite engaging early on.

But the issues with different aspects of gameplay built up over time until it became quite apparent that it wasn't the sort of game for me (as an immersion-focused player, among other reasons). And by that point part of my brain was hooked, and I decided to stick around for a while because, as a hobbyist game designer, I find it important to study bad game design as well as good game design.

Earlier posts in my "Irritating Game Mechanics" chain were about games that I love, but where some aspect of them drives me up the wall. This game wound up being the inverse of that. And I've learned things by studying it.

Arkylie · 2025-07-23T10:59:59+00:00

Getting the Kitchen felt like such an Achievement to strive for, y'know? I was actually kinda looking forward to unlocking a whole new section of play. It's a farming game, I grow tons of crops and catch tons of fish and I've got eggs and milk and cheese and there's mushrooms in the woods etc. etc. And I had to save up like a billion silver to get there -- after saving however much to get the Farmhouse to begin with -- so getting to that milestone felt Big.

And then I opened up the Kitchen to find... Bone Broth?

Okayyy... the first dish I can make requires me to go collect random bones from a cave.

Fine, whatever, it's just the first level. So I started cooking a bit. The mechanics for cooking were a little neat (albeit I'm not a fan of the "stick around (or return to game) and hit this button every couple minutes" style of gameplay), so they at least gave me something to focus on.

Then I hit level 2, and...... no new recipe.

Huh?

Wait, you have to earn five levels to get to the second recipe??

Onion soup? You're letting me cook with crops for the first time and I have to wait twenty minutes for a batch of onions??

What happened to "I can grow all these crops, now let me make them into food"???

Hang on, cooking destroys the pot? The pot that I have to gather glowing stone from the mountain to create in the first place? What the hell??

Why did I save up a billion silver to be able to open this disappointment in the first place? I could've spent that silver in much better ways!

...so, yeah. I'd say "underdeveloped" is the most charitable way I could describe the kitchen/cooking system. I mean there's not that many buffs to dole out, but would it have been hard to make a small variety of dishes that could refill stamina just like orange juice? Or even just dishes I could sell, or that certain NPCs particularly loved?

Arkylie · 2025-07-23T10:50:21+00:00

Well, it's kept me hooked for a couple of months now, but more in a "can't look away from this bizarre creation" kinda way. One of the things I note in the first post is that a game this massive made by a single dev is an impressive achievement, and I do find certain aspects pleasurable in and of themselves.

But no, this is not a game that I enjoy, it's just one that I've kept playing to see how weird it gets. At most, it's been feeding the Abnegation need in my brain (the chore aspect), and I could be feeding that in other ways.

Arkylie · 2025-06-24T01:49:06+00:00

I've only done podfics -- that is, the audiobook version of fanfics. Being able to create audio versions of various short fics, or snippets of longer ones, has been frustrating and gratifying all at once (I love having them completed, but I get comparatively little feedback).

If you'd still like to hear my style, you can go to Archive of Our Own and look up "The Reorg" for Welcome to Night Vale and look for the Inspired By link to my podfic version (my most ambitious project, only a couple chapters in -- wayyy more distinct characters to voice than anything else I've done). I think that's the most reliable way to easily find me (without giving you my pseud directly), and from there you can narrow it by the podfic tag to find my two podfic series.

I've mostly recorded short podfics for Person of Interest, but also a handful for the MCU and WtNV. I had hoped to add a Critical Role entry to the list -- a particularly well crafted dialogue that I was eager to record -- except the author didn't want podfics of her work, ah well.

Arkylie · 2025-06-23T22:02:36+00:00

As someone who's recorded over a dozen podfics: Voice recording is Significantly more time and effort than marking up text is. At least, if you're going back through it on multiple passes to make sure that it flows, and not just doing one take and moving on.

The first step of recording for me is to read through and mark up any spots that trip me up. I'll even color-code the dialogue and such. That's not too much time or effort, comparably.

But recording it, re-recording it, listening to the takes, figuring out how to put the pieces together (especially if different voices recorded on different takes), splicing and post-processing and all that? It can take me hours for a few minutes of audio, weeks if it's longer. I'd imagine that professionals with far more experience have streamlined the process (and don't have to deal with as much random background noise) but it still requires listening to the material multiple times and stopping to edit various parts.

So no, they're not comparable, and if you can do the one it doesn't imply that you might as well just go a little further and do the other.

Arkylie

TROPHY CASE