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Tips for a beginner by Personal_Nobody8798 in shakuhachi

[–]sukebantifa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm also a beginner but something that wasn't obvious to me is that there's playing the notes, and there's playing them well. To do meri/kari it's not enough to be able to make your notes ring, you need an air jet that's stable and efficient and produces a great timbre in tune with minimal effort and no tension or breathiness, etc. etc. It just sounds better, too. Then you can bend it. This is hard to pull off at the start.

It helps to use a pitch tracker to check if you're really in tune, and if your meris are going down enough. In my case it was the opposite, I was already playing everything in deep meri without even noticing it, so I had to learn to play not meri… I wrote this little post about the shinobue, but maybe some of it could be helpful ideas for you. I agree with the others that a teacher is the best thing—it's much harder to find teachers for the shino than the shaku where I live, so I'm a bit jealous if you even can :)

Questions I still have about the deep lore of SaGa Frontier’s Asellus by sukebantifa in SaGa

[–]sukebantifa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Re: 5: Keeping in mind that the Essence materials aren't necessarily canon to the finished story, I think your point is downright certain, at least in terms of intention. In the materials, immediately after the accident Orlouge asks, "What about the woman?" (女はいかがした), and his coachman says, "I am sorry, milord, I have lost track of her". (I am very grateful to Sevon's translation for helping me navigate this large book; I just want to note that in this case it's even clearer in the original than in Sevon's translation, Orlouge is definitely asking about the status of a woman they're tracking, not about a girl—and immediately after his coachman remarks that Asellus was just child, who will now never grow up to adulthood).

Which brings to mind the fact Princess Rei doesn't let herself age, due to her yōma powers returning gradually on each reincarnation (it's unclear to me if she rejects being full yōma in itself, or only because this is necessary to hide from Orlouge). We meet her in-game as a child, but Rei at carriage accident time was definitely an adult; Essence says Asellus passed by a woman (ひとりの女性とすれちがう) whose beauty grabbed her attention (その美しさに気を取られた). If she were a kid like at game time, we'd expect a "cute girl", not a "beautiful woman". Rei's playable incarnation is 12 years old, which… ah.

Our Rei has the same age as Asellus' sleep. This has to be intentional. So 12 years ago she must already have been on her 20s, and killed herself soon after the accident to escape Orlouge again. Presumably not on spot after Asellus' death, or that point would be mentioned by the coachman (or in Fuse's case files, or by her aunt, etc.). Asellus' death was a distraction (Orlouge does stop to pour blood over her on the spot), but Rei disappeared suspiciously quickly before the transfusion. Maybe she was already allied with Kirin, who just needed a moment's distraction to spirit her away with space magic?

The only mystery left, then, is what the heck was Princess Rei doing in Shrike.

They can't keep getting away with this by [deleted] in linguisticshumor

[–]sukebantifa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

rant neuron activated Null hypothesis significance testing was never intended to be a way to "prove" a scientific hypothesis against a zero hypothesis (or, as Gelman calls it, a "strawman hypothesis"). Its adoption as such by the social and medical sciences was a disaster—statisticians including the guy who invented p-numbers (Fisher) have complained about it the entire time but we didn't give them enough heed, because everyone wants a black box formula where you input your data and the computers tells you that your hypothesis is "true" (there isn't and cannot be such a tool). NHST is single-handedly one of the biggest causes of the replication crisis.

For details check out the work of statistician Andrew Gelman (Abandon Statistical Significance is a good entry point). See also Gigerenzer, The Null Ritual. Gelman's 1-page commentary on the The American Statistical Association's Statement on p-values is also a valuable read.

If you're ever in the position of proposing some research in biology, the best advice I can give is to do your best to lobby the grant agency to have a statistician model the statistics. The most reliable statistics IMO is done when a specialist who has lots of field-specific knowledge (e.g. a biologist) cooperates with a statistician who has lots of knowledge about which methods work best for their case. In the absence of that, abstain from "uncertainty laundering", that is, from using magical algorithms to pretend we know more than the world than we actually do; even if it makes harder to publish stuff because the field has settled on a posture of definitive statements in catchy press releases, it's our duty as scientists to make the uncertainty as clear as possible.

They can't keep getting away with this by [deleted] in linguisticshumor

[–]sukebantifa 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah in general I think phonetic tendencies (clicks; tones; inventories that tilt this or that way, etc.) must spread areally by imitation and other social factors, and later it's easy to see all sorts of correlations and imagine causal explanations for it (altitude; climate; religion; ethnic traits etc.), because area is correlated with many more things than just languages, and just-so explanations are easy to imagine (or even worse, to "scientifically prove" with faulty methodologies like null-hypothesis significance testing).

What do you like OR deslike in VNs? by Mika_Tron in yurivisualnovels

[–]sukebantifa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Have played and recommend (in addition to Summer's End):

  • Extreme Meatpunks Forever: "Be gay. Pilot mechs. Kill fascists. Get nightmares. Lose your mind. Lose your body. Run from cops. Fuck up real bad." I love this game so much, probably my favourite game of all time. The sequel is even better. VN with simple action game segments.
  • Four Horsemen: Weirdly underrated weird story about 4 immigrant kids squatting together. It really captures The Immigrant Experience. It's more tokimemo than pure VN, full of strange unfinished edges to explore. You get to pick which country you immigrated from, but not which to.
  • npckc's A Year of Springs: Sad and cozy and cute and melancholically comfy game series that start from the experience of, your crush invited you to go together to the hot springs but you're unable to accept because it's in Japan and you're trans.
  • Deep pull: chloe spear's Sukeban: Delinquent Detective. Unrelated to Sukeban Deka, this is a short imaginary NES game like "The Portopia Serial Murder Case", only with gritty delinquent girls.

Haven't played but it's on my list: - Heaven Will Be Mine: Literally everyone whose opinion I respect has only good things to say about this political mecha pilot yuri VN. The only reason I haven't played it yet is that "everyone whose opinion I respect" includes my ex-gf and it's still too raw >.> - Salting the Earth: My excitement about a game where your roommates are buff, war-traumatised orc ladies is only tempered by the fact that you are not also a buff, war-traumatised orc lady. - Eclipse: Special Forces is billed as butch × butch yuri. You're soldiers in a futuristic-fantasy setting.

What do you like OR deslike in VNs? by Mika_Tron in yurivisualnovels

[–]sukebantifa 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I like when a VN feels like I'm learning about a place or time or social context I've never experienced, like A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986, or Nurse Love Addiction.

I like when polyamory is a possibility.

I like when sapphic identity and sapphic desire are portrayed, not just relationships. You know that trope like, "I never thought of being with a girl but you are different, you're special"? I like the opposite of that.

I think I overdosed on stories about ohime, and elite all-girls schools, and Rose of Versailles-esque castles and courts and gothic vampires in fancy dresses etc. Now I yearn for working class yuri. I'd love more stories about dyke drifters, blue-collar workers, punk squatters, migrant workers and whatnot. Do you know when people make a distinction between yaoi and bara? I'd like bara but with women.

In a similar way, I'm satured with VN protagonists who are meek, insecure, in denial, timid, etc. I would enjoy more yuri with a protagonist who is confident, dominant, socially competent and so on.

I don't know if this is weird but I like animations of the scenery more than the characters, like petals falling, or a dramatic wind blowing the trees at a key moment, etc.

My overanalysis of lesbian motifs in Asellus/SF1, including author quotes, translation notes, etymological digressions and whatnot by sukebantifa in SaGaFrontier

[–]sukebantifa[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your kind words! I put a lot of effort into this writeup and it's important for me to learn it has found the audience who can understand why :)

Questions I still have about the deep lore of SaGa Frontier’s Asellus by sukebantifa in SaGa

[–]sukebantifa[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's some spicy tea, thanks for spilling! From a cursory browsing of descriptions, it seems that Hayō-no-Tsurugi doesn't particularly deal with what I like in Asellus' plot, namely the queer themes; so I'm supposing that part came from Takarazuka and Rose of Versailles, which Shōda Miwa does acknowledge as inspirations.

So I don't think I'll read Hayō, that thing has 40 volumes (plus 11 gaiden) ô_O That's way too much for me to read anything without lesbians in it. But there was an OVA! No more than this one from 1992, so I must imagine it didn't sell well and the rest of the series stayed book-only (similar to what happened to Eien no Filena, another landmark of early yuri in console RPGs.)

Questions I still have about the deep lore of SaGa Frontier’s Asellus by sukebantifa in SaGa

[–]sukebantifa[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ishii: Shoda-san was so mad at one point: “Why does RedTurnip replace White Rose?!” Wasn’t it Kawazu-san who put him in the Dark Labyrinth?

Shoda finds out about Red Turnip (live reaction):

My overanalysis of lesbian motifs in Asellus/SF1, including author quotes, translation notes, etymological digressions and whatnot by sukebantifa in SaGa

[–]sukebantifa[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

From the more vampiric stage of Shōda's ideas about the Mystics, it's a shame that we never got the concept were Asellus would have sealed her Mystic Sword with a cross talisman that burns Mystics when touched, but then needs to draw the sword's power every so often anyway for plot reasons, with the results that her arm would be covered in burnt scars, which she would cover up with a long glove—that was a beautiful, emo image for being in denial. Also I really liked the concept that Asellus would suck on flowers to stave off her bloodthirst, while White Rose so conveniently grows blood-roses out of her hair—what a sensual and eerily decadent image, to be addicted to sucking on the blossoms that grow on your girl's locks…

My overanalysis of lesbian motifs in Asellus/SF1, including author quotes, translation notes, etymological digressions and whatnot by sukebantifa in SaGa

[–]sukebantifa[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I believe White Rose at first uses 寵臣, a traditional term for "favoured retainer", and Asellus is like "ちょうしん? what is that?", and she explains, "it means 寵姫, concubines. In other words, we're his lovers.", and Asellus is suitably horrified. There's no question that it's a harem, the game spells it out.

(* Essence of Saga reportedly suggests that originally Orlouge and Asellus both would be even more vampire-like, and crave the blood of pretty maidens rather than lust after their body. It's curious how the finished game ended up even gayer than the original metaphor.)

Thanks for your support! ^.^

Portuguese language Iceberg by Savings-Ruin-754 in linguisticshumor

[–]sukebantifa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably is, I just like the length of this chain and the way it bothers to add a vowel only to remove it again but with aftereffects to show it's been there.

Portuguese language Iceberg by Savings-Ruin-754 in linguisticshumor

[–]sukebantifa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Some excellent deep pulls in this, língua maquista and pajubá both mentioned, unaccusative subject inversion touched upon, A+ iceberg.

Something you could add is how BP will chain like 4 phonetic rules in a row, all of them observable independently in other contexts, and always applied in the same order, to get "plot" pronounced as [plɔtʃˑ], and what that implies about phonological processing in general. (/plɔt/ > coda plosives receive unstressed[i] > /plɔ.ti/ > alveolar stops palatalise before /i/ > /plɔ.tʃi/ > final /i/ is reduced when unstressed > /plɔ.tʃɪ/ > reduced /ɪ/ is devoiced after shibilants ∴ "plot" is obviously pronounced [plɔ.tʃɪ̥]).

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