tango, florist, male, 30+, INFP, canadian
"i'm no weeb but"
-Tango "Weeb" McFlowers
i love flowers and birds and i only use my tumblr to reblog stuff i wanna' find later. i don't really tag anything. male pronouns please. cheers.
[ID: The original Connecticut Clark and Malfina saga. Clark is a simply drawn, oddly shaped humanoid with a snout and no expression. Malfina is a very tall woman with a witch’s hat, large horns, long dark hair, a prominent bust, and purple eyes. She is drawn in more detail than Clark.
Part one begins with two sock puppet people. One holds up a paper with a drawing of Clark and says: “This is my OC, his name is Clark.” The other one smiles and says: “Wonderful, what sort of OP powers does he have?” The creator of Clark says: “None.”
Their friend says: “Ok thats cool..ls he attractive at all?” Clark’s creator says: “No he’s quite below average honestly.” Their friend’s face falls and they ask: “Ok well what about an over dramatic back story?” Clark’s creator says: “not really, his parents love him very much.” The friend frowns: “Ok well where is he from? Hell? A magic forest?” Clark’s creator says: “connecticut.”
Part two starts with Malfina’s entrance. She booms: “MORTALS BOW DOWN, I AM MALFINA THE DEMON WITCH AN- woah dude you are a solid 4/10.” Clark says: “Howdy i’m Clark want to come over to my parents’ house for a connecticut dinner”. (Note: “Connecticut” is spelled wrong). Malfina stares, then squints and asks: “what.”
Part three starts with Clark saying: “Welcome to my parents’ home.” The view changes to show Clark’s parents. They look just like him, but one wears a red bow and one wears a top hat. They say: “We are proud parents, please drink the connecticut water.” Clark’s mother holds out a glass of bright yellow-green liquid. Malfina looks down with horror at the glass, then looks up with a frown and says: “I do not want the connecticut water.”
Part four starts with Clark’s mother saying: “You look like a cold harlot out in a snowstorm, here is a sweater.” She holds out a pink sweater that says “connecticut kitty” with some kind of animal on it. Malfina puts her hands to her mouth in delight and says: “oh.” Clark’s mother says: “I baked it fresh for you this morning.” The view zooms in on Malfina’s face, her eyes wide and shadowed as she says: “what.”
Part five starts with a woman of similar form to Clark. Her head is elongated, and she is wearing a green bow. She says: “Hey clark who’s this hussy you’re with? I just won "miss tall head connecticut”. Why don’t you get with me a REAL woman.“ Malfina looks unimpressed as she says: "I could vaporize you.” Clark interjects: “Now you hold on right there Cindy, this gals got a heart of gold and you can’t talk down to her like that.” Malfina’s expression does not change, but she blushes very faintly.
The last part starts with Clark offering out a ring and asking: “will you make me the 3rd happiest man in Connecticut and marry me?” Malfina stares for a second. Then, without her expression changing, she says: “ok.” The last panel shows Clark and Malfina at their wedding. Clark is wearing a top hat, and Malfina has her hair up and is wearing a white wedding dress with black gloves and a black choker with Clark’s face on it. She is smiling and holding a bouquet of white flowers. She is comically taller than Clark, who only comes up to her thighs. End ID]
Jenny was originally designed to be a shape-shifting superhero; her “pigtails” are rocket thrusters, and her entire body can morph and shift to create weapons. Given her standard appearance is more to look like a humanoid girl, it seems reasonable that that’s an appearance she chose, rather than her default, especially because we know she can modify her appearance however she likes, albeit restricted to her two base colors unless she gets a new paint-job.
Though her mother learns to be more supportive of her later on, Jenny was originally confined to house arrest save for doing her job, supposedly because the world around her wouldn’t accept her.
She is canonically six-foot-six, which is rather tall, though it seems the average height of humanity has also gone up. So it’s not too uncommon for other men to be taller than her, but she’s also taller than most people. She has so far only dated other men who are taller than her.
She gains two different disguises for looking human. The first one doesn’t pass at all, while the second passing one convinces her to behave like a normal human girl, whispering into her ear to not only look, but behave like a “normal” girl, even if it’s not in her best interests.
It’s evidently quite common for androids to be made from different base personality points- Kenny, a boy she dated for a little while, was a re-purposed dog robot, and still carried over some of his dog traits.
The two most popular girls in school specifically have it out for her, because she’s a robot “pretending” to be a girl.
Jenny is allowed to play in her high school’s male football team.
I’d suspected Jenny was trans coded for a long time, but this scene was what had me 100% convinced.
Prior to this episode Jenny had always treated Ms. Wakeman as her mother, always referring to her as “mom/mother”; which caused Wakeman to be mocked by her peers. Ms. Wakeman was typically cold towards Jenny, always referring to her as XJ9 (essentially Jenny’s deadname) and usually treating her as nothing more than a defence droid. But in this scene Ms. Wakeman is actually seeing Jenny in danger and rushes to protect her, finally calling her “my daughter” for the first time. As soon as she does, the pure joy and amazement in Jenny’s voice just makes my heart swell.
This show is so incredible and SO ahead of it’s time.
Worth noting that the creator of the show acknowledged this, basically saying “We didn’t intend for Jenny to be trans coded, but we’re ecstatic that trans people are finding comfort in her. Just because we didn’t intend the subtext doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
Very cool and way the hell better than Hartman handles shit like this.
MY BROTHER TOLD ME HIS TEACHER SAID “WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD” IS ACTUALLY A JOKE SAYING THAT PEOPLE WHO WALK INTO TRAFFIC TO KILL THEMSELVES ARE COWARDS
THE CHICKEN IS A PERSON
CROSSING THE ROAD IS WALKING INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC
Not long ago I saw this this tweet pointing out that the in-game language in Metaphor is Esperanto (written in another script) and I decided to investigate for myself! The vocal tracks are in Esperanto as well, but I want to focus on the text here since I don't have a great ear for it. (The quoted tweet also points out that you can rearrange the title to get an Esperanto phrase - I think it would be more accurately spelled "Metafore Fantazio," or "metaphorically fantasy"!)
For the unfamiliar, Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed language, developed in the late 19th century with the aim of being an easy to learn secondary language that could act as a bridge between speakers of other languages. While its vocabulary and grammar are largely derived from various European language families, it has speakers worldwide, including a sizeable number in Japan. Given the relationship between Metaphor's world and our own, I think it's a cool choice to take a constructed secondary language and make it the in-universe primary language—not to mention the game's themes of uniting different people with a language intended to do just that.
I studied Esperanto myself for some time 9 years ago, though I've forgotten most of it, so I'm very rusty. That said, I was able to sit down and parse one particular block of text that the game provides a translation for, and use that to read the rest! I'm slowly combing through the demo and translating any legible text, and I wanted to share some of the interesting details I found. If any Esperantists see this and want to weigh in, please do! There's plenty I may not remember or be aware of.
Continued under the cut, including content from the demo:
Let's start with the text the game translates for us! Here's what the VO/subtitles say:
O Great Seeker, bearer of fantasy empowered...
Hear my wish, and come forth from thy epoch of glory to grant me thy guidance.
Here's the "deciphered" Esperanto:
Ho, granda serĉanto, kiu vivas en epoko de gloro, kiu enkarnigas la povon de fantazio. Bonvolu disdoni al li vian gvidadon.
And here's a more "direct" translation:
O Great Seeker, who lives in an epoch of glory, who embodies the power of fantasy. Please grant him thy guidance.
Not too much different of note here other than the pronoun usage—in Esperanto, the speaker explicitly uses "he," likely referring to the protagonist. I suspect that the English is actually translated from the Japanese line, which is ambiguous, so they made an educated guess here. But, since this is the same speaker who narrates awakening cutscenes and new bonds, it makes sense that they're calling to the Seeker on his behalf!
This is a point I'm unsure about, but from my understanding, "granda" (here translated as "great") typically refers to size, so it seems like an odd word choice to me—but it's possible there are connotations I'm not aware of.
After some poking around I stumbled across some text on the background of the name entry screen that reads "signaro" (character set), followed by the whole Latin alphabet on the next line.
"But Batts!" you may say. "Esperanto doesn't use QWXY! What about the diacritics!"
Well. There aren't any! There are 6 characters with diacritic marks used in Esperanto (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ), and since our character set doesn't use any of them, we have to make some educated guesses about which one it is at any given time. This is mostly a non-issue since they're real, existing words, but it does make it a bit trickier at points, and relates to another problem I'll get to in a bit. (There are a select few instances where I've seen diacritic marks on handwritten text or shop names, but there are still far fewer than there should be.)
That said, there is also some plain English text using this script as well, so the game does make use of those extra letters, such as the Memorandum UI - scrolling books have titles like "Marine," "Royal Capital," "100 Mystery of Ningen (humans)," and "Melancholia Gen" (?), plus cute notes in the background like "I want to read slowly" and "already read very good."
Anyway, this diacritic ambiguity bugged me for a bit when I started translating some text with "Euchronia" in it, like the above "Regno de Eŭcronio - Dezerto de Tradia." The Esperanto "C" and "Ĉ" are always pronounced "ts" and "ch" respectively, so the pronunciation here is a bit awkward either way, as both characters are meant to precede a vowel. A more natural pronunciation in line with both the Japanese and English would be "Eŭkronio," a spelling I found once in the body of the contract our protagonist signs to join the army, and never again. Alas.
I noticed a few interesting details while translating place names - the "Trad" in "Grand Trad" (Granda Tradicio) means "tradition" - and many locations are labeled on the map that I don't think are mentioned in the demo's runtime - Oceana to the west is named, but also of note are Kalendulo ("marigold," maybe "Calendula" in English) to the east, the Hulkenmont mountains surrounding that region, and the "Malnova Insularo" (old archipelago) to the south.
(Screenshot grabbed from justonegamr on Youtube.)
Lots of fun stuff going on with these posters - the big propaganda poster says "Mi volas vin por homoj" - "I want you for humans!" The poster immediately to its right and the one with the light-haired paripus are both wanted posters with rewards of 50,000 and 7,000 respectively, and the former has a somewhat legible name - Mikelan something (?). There's also quite a bit of illegible text that I'll need to boot up the game to stare at, textures willing.
Here is where I noticed an occasional problem with the text in this game: some of these posters include words that should have diacritic marks, but instead the characters are gone entirely or replaced with a space. For instance, the poster with the face that appears twice on the bottom row reads "Ser a peto - i tiu viro" where it should say "Serĉa peto - ĉi tiu viro" (Search request - this man). I spent so long wondering what "Dan ero" meant on the poster with the red "no" sign before I realized it was meant to be "Danĝero" (Danger).
This extends to some other parts of the game, such as the world map title ("Unuiĝinta Reĝlando de Eŭcronio" written as "unui inta re lando de e cronio," which is how I knew it was a plain C oops), and the giant statue in More's study covered in archetype names, some of which are missing characters.
I suspect that at some point in the process, these characters couldn't be properly encoded and got lost before making it into the game. Most of the UI text seems to be intact, and this only affects graphic text as far as I've seen. Luckily, we can usually use context to guess at what they should be.
There's a ton more that I'm still hunting down and translating, so if you'd like to see it, you can check out my spreadsheet here! I'm hoping to keep updating it as I play through the full game, and I may make some more posts if I encounter any particularly interesting details. A few more tidbits before I go:
This appears to be an annual calendar - number 1 is at the top and it circles around to 12, and then the inner circle runs from 1-30, likely representing the weeks.
Various graffiti found around Sunshade Row that reads:
