#grammarpedant

[tainbocuailnge]

Hey, do you have or know where to find a breakdown on the "people die when they are killed" line? I distinctly remember reading an analysis of the meaning that was lost in translation/adaptation, and I thought I saw it on your blog, but I can't find it now (though I've enjoyed the excuse to deep dive good Fate posts again).

that line has been such a hot topic of discussion for so long that there's been a billion posts you could be referring to so I'll just give you the explanation myself again

"to not die when killed" is a pretty common japanese turn of phrase. "to be killed" should be understood here as "to be lethally injured," and "not dying even when killed" means "being able to survive even lethal injuries". it does not read as something odd to say in japanese, and in english it does not read as something odd in context either.

what shirou says is "people die when they are killed, that's how it's supposed to be." the scene in question happens near the end of fate route, when he's giving avalon back to saber so that she's better equipped to fight gilgamesh. shirou, until this point, has not been dying when he gets killed because of avalon's restorative powers, and he'd been relying on these restorative powers to throw himself headfirst into danger to satisfy his traumatic saviour complex. saber asks him if he's sure about giving up that safety net, and he responds by saying yeah, this isn't something I was supposed to have anyway. avalon is what allowed him to repeatedly throw himself in front of saber to "protect" her and live to get scolded for it later, and giving it back to her means he will truly trust her to fight for him now.

also, people die when they are killed. shirou, for most of his life since kiritsugu saved him until this point, hasn't really been a person so much as an empty husk propelled forward by trauma and survivors guilt. he'd been throwing himself into these lethal situations because he doesn't value himself and his life as anything other than a tool to save others. but through his growing relationship with saber he's been forced to confront this way of thinking and how the ways he endangers himself hurt the people that care about him as a person. people die when they are killed, and shirou hasn't been dying when he's killed, but he's ready to be a person now.

[specialagentartemis]

trick or treat!! 😋🎃

Happy Late Halloween!

Have a fanfic snippet inspired by a conversation from the Preservation Tree Server. Where is it going? Who knows but the concept was very funny to me.

Pin-Lee was frowning at her feed screen and tapping her fingernails on the table arrhythmically when Mensah sat down. “You said there was an update on the TranRollinHyfa suit?” Mensah asked her.  Pin-Lee’s expression was causing her stomach to twist.  Deep breaths, let her chest fill with cool Preservation Station air and release it calmly.  It couldn’t be that bad.  Surely it couldn’t be that bad. “Yeah.”  Pin-Lee grimaced slightly and laid her screen down.  Seeing Mensah’s expression, Pin-Lee’s eyes widened just a little and her grimace turned apologetic.  (Was her own face that bad? Was she that obvious?)  “It’s not bad!  It’s… I mean.  We’re fine.  We’re.  Okay.  So you know that the governing board of shareholders for TranRollinHyfa sued us for the mess we made on their station.  And we counter-sued them going, are you fucking serious right now.” Mensah nodded.  “I’m aware,” she said dryly. “Yeah.  So we sued them for, y’know, allowing you to be held hostage on their station for twenty-two cycles and not only doing nothing about it, taking bribes to actually prevent our ship from docking.  Also letting GrayCris’s asshole lawyer carry around an illegal gun.  Also emotional damages for you, and for me, Ratthi, and Gurathin for good measure.  Approving SecUnits to come after you trying to kill you.  Lots of stuff to counter-sue for.  And it was intentionally overkill.  Trying to send them a message to knock it the fuck off.  I expected them to settle for dropping their suit.”  Pin-Lee’s smile was pained.  “But.” “But?” Mensah prompted.  “You look concerned.  Did we lose?  Do we owe them money after all?” “No,” Pin-Lee said.  “I’m too damn good at my job, I guess.  We won.” “… I don’t follow.” “We were awarded everything we asked for.” “You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.” Pin-Lee tilted her head back and forth in a gesture of ambivalence.  “Turns out they don’t have the money to pay it.” “So we’ll take exactly what they were suing us for, and call it even.” “Can’t. TranRollinHyfa is going into bankruptcy and liquidation for this.  But for something the size of a station, that’s really, really bad, and tends to end up with assassinations and a bunch of employees dying rather than having their contracts auctioned off and it’s a whole fucking nightmare.  So.  They offered to settle for everything.” “And when you say ‘everything,’ you can’t possibly mean…” “I sure do,” Pin-Lee said, spreading her arms to mean either expansiveness or defeat, Mensah couldn’t tell which.  “Preservation is now the sole owner and proprietor of TranRollinHyfa Station.”

[blessphemy]

that d&d quiz is wrong about you btw. I'm assigning you Druid (nature proficiency but unlike the Ranger I think you would shapeshift) with proficiency in artisan tools (writing and bookbinding)

who am I to argue with someone who knows that they’re talking about

[moonbittern]

@grammarpedant said: this passage has always resonated with me really strongly as someone with a bicultural/bilingual experience, of being read instantly by the other party as not belonging to the same minority group, and being politely othered using the language of the majority culture- complete with the "actually I CAN speak X language" follow-up interaction. (cont'd) it's sort of tangential to your questions, but one thing that I've noted before but which strikes me as interesting now is that, although MB typically talks to other bots over the feed, in the initial meeting with ART in AC it at one point opts to refuse to talk to ART with the feed "like it's my client." The feed seems to be... not just comfortable, but intimate. idk, it makes sense to me from a bilingual POV haha

yeah, i think there’s a lot to say about murderbot feeling alienated around humans and bots - and there’s a societal dynamic there where murderbot isn’t a member of either of those groups, but we’ve largely seen it in contexts where constructs don’t have their own social category, and so various people will shunt it to one side or the other (erasing some of its experiences either way). murderbot relates more to bots than to humans, but it finds itself alienated around them anyway.

ooh, that’s a good point! it’s also been brought up a couple times that emotions, desires, etc can “leak” into the feed, which makes it a more vulnerable means of communication too. and “client” is such a complicated concept for murderbot at this point that i’m not sure if it even really knows the full implications of that choice.

[minutia-r]

for the ask meme, 15? I want to see what magic you can work with the phrase ^u^

(a/n: No pressure, huh :P)

I open my hands. I close them. "Operating at eighty-seven point three percent capacity and falling," I say.

I can feel adrenaline flooding my biological parts, and my drones dash down the corridor looking for the threat, but there isn't one, nothing I can see.

"Operating at fifty-two percent capacity. This unit recommends--" I clamp my mouth shut on more words, because I'm not garbage, I'm not disposable, and Amena is here and I can see that the way I'm acting is freaking her out, because sometimes some humans aren't completely stupid. I've got to get myself under control.

I open my hands. I close them. They're trembling.

[worldsentwined]

for that rpg characters meme, 10, 12, and/or 65 for Odile?

Oooh nice! I haven’t had a chance to play her much yet so this is a good time to flesh out my swan-turned-human barbarian girl. :D

10. how often do they lie? what situations cause them to be dishonest?

I think the answer here is “hardly ever, because it wouldn’t occur to her”. She might pass on a lie that someone else told her though, because she’d believe it was true. Despite all the murdery tendencies, Odile is very earnest in her pursuit of Learning The Human Things and interprets anything that seems weird as “just a new human thing”. Maybe that will change if she meets someone who can impress upon her the importance of deception, we’ll have to see!

12. have they ever been in love?

As a human? Absolutely not, she’s too new and does not understand social conventions well enough.

As a swan? I...honestly hadn’t thought about it before, but NOW I am and the possibilities are delicious. Apparently swans mate for life, so the way I see it, if we go with “yes”, we have three options:

Odile’s quest to become a swan again is successful and she ends up flying into the sunset with her swan partner,

At some point another swole-as-hell, confused-as-fuck human shows up - it’s Odile’s partner, who went around harassing powerful magic users until one of them did a transformation spell, or

Odile wanders around with an actual swan and introduces them like “Hi, I’m Odile and this is my partner [unintelligible bird noises].”

65. what is holding them back?

It’s a pretty steep learning curve to go from swan to human - she doesn’t have the decades of experience she would if she’d actually grown up in human form. So she’s mainly held back by not knowing things are possible, and by her desire to go back to who she was. It’s hard to make goals as a human when you don’t intend to still be one.

[distractionactivated]

[banging on your window] has anyone sent you 69 for the spotify meme yet! (if yes then 21, or feel free to answer both lol)

Lmao nope! Let’s go both.

69: Tell That Devil, Jill Andrews

I gave you all I got to give / I know that ain't no way to live / So I told that devil to take you back 

21: Black, Kari Kimmel

All the rules are changing now / You're living in sin / Everything around you is caving in

[gurguliare]

I just realized you have a nirvana in fire tag which I'm voraciously going through as we speak; for the ask thing, can I get Jingrui and Yujin?

I’ve been sitting on this one because I find it hard to add to the charms of Jingrui and Yujin in canon, BUT, post-canon I do think there’s a lot to be said for Yujin attempting to get Gong Yu and Jingrui to play out his romcom scenarios (“Jingrui, you nobly step aside, having lost the chance to woo me in your blind infatuation with Sir Su earlier this year!” “Okay, now, Gong Yu, you contemn me for using too harsh a justice with my oldest friend!”) but then they both just sort of soddenly go along with it and he has to run damage control on his own script