Seeing your opinions on writing dialogue in other languages in fic was really neat. It seems like you put a lot of thought into how you handle dialogue and it made me curious about how you approach this in A Funny Old World. When Moist meets everyone, is he speaking Japanese? Do you have Morporkian and Japanese as being the same language in this fic or is there something else?
♡___〆(・∀・) What a wonderful question @verdigrispatina !! Thank you for asking!!
It's a little tricky in A Funny Old World because it is a bit of everything. Two things are happening that are true:
Moist is from the Discworld (a world as we know strongly powered by belief. Believe something hard enough and it might just manifest in strange and interesting ways.)
Teruki is hinted at actively reading and dreaming about Discworld books ( I said in my fic notes, I'm working under the assumption Japan was very lucky to have all 41 books translated.)
So what happens when these two very true things happen at the same time? And I've sort of built it off of that.
Moist is able to communicate with Reigen and Teruki not only because his book was translated and Teruki was having strong emotions about the series, but also right from the get go Reigen mistakes Moist as Just Some Guy™ -why wouldn't this average looking guy in Japan not know how to speak Japanese? Even if he looks a little foreign, his face is hard to pin down.
In a future chapter when Reigen and Teruki start questioning this a bit more, especially when the three of them grab ramen together, the pair of them can see how strong their influence on Moist can be with their belief.
In the scene not only has them wondering how it is that Moist can communicate with them, but other small things like a seasoned pro (using chopsticks for example), the more Reigen and Teruki start to agree that, maybe it isn't very realistic that Moist would know how to use chopsticks, the more Moist starts gradually not being able to use them and gets increasingly frustrated because: 'I was managing perfectly before!'
This leads to Moist having his own version of the famous Taako Adventure Zone quote: I have emotions! It’s not all abraca-fuck-you and what have you. I have a beating heart! I’m multi-dimensional! I’m a fully-realized creation! FUCK!
That is to say Moist ends up working over time trying to continuously explain that He's a REAL PERSON!! He has a WIFE WAITING FOR HIM!!!! Cue Moist having to believe in his own existence - it gets very existential haha
And YET that too is the power of belief, if Reigen and Teruki don't believe then Moist has to work EVEN HARDER to believe in himself, and his existence. (There's this really silly, but hopefully powerful scene I want to get to, where Moist and Reigen are out on Reigen's balcony while Reigen smokes, and Moist has a rendition of "I miss my wife, Reigen. I miss her a lot." and the scene slowly becomes more and more sobering.
Full of complex emotions, leading Reigen to accept that, yes he might be a character from a book, but Moist is also right in front of him with flesh and able to bleed and cry. What's more real than that?)
After all that number 1 detail that is still very true!! Moist IS REAL, REALLY from the Disc. Specifically a post canon Disc, and paired with that, well, I very much like to head canon Fedecks (the pseudo Hermes of the Disc) never really left Moist after what he did in Going Postal. Moist as a character embodies so naturally all the things that Fedecks (Hermes) represents: thieves, messenger of the gods-and messages in general, psychopomp, watcher of travelers and cross roads.
I have a lot of feelings about Moist and his similarities to Hermes, which I hope to explore further in detail in other works (A Runaway's Gamble is for sure one of those works)
That is to say, I like to think Fedecks borrows in Moist, just in there along for the ride in his fancy silly avatar- delightfully curious as to what he'd do next. And because of that, Moist is, unknowingly, a trans-dimensional trickster god. Very human, can still bleed etc, but certain things will work or not work by, essentially, Bugs Bunny Logic (whether it would be funny, or hilariously not funny) and ye olde narrative convention.
Something Moist unknowingly taps into while trying very hard to believe he is real.
The only character who gets close to figuring the whole piggybacking trickster god thing out is Dimple who tries to possess Moist (multiple times). Only to get jettisoned (or self ejects) out after a harrowing encounters with Fedecks.
All this to say, the answer is Yes!
Morporkian is Japanese, because the Discworld books were translated in Japanese.
But also, Morporkian is still Morporkian and Moist has a piggybacking trickster god inside that thinks it'd be boring if Moist couldn't use his words.
I hope this made sense, and that I articulated it well!
♡⸜(*ˊᗜˋ*)⸝♡Thank you so much again for asking!!♡
