Pidgin Guide

Any moment now, I expect Elyscape to disconnect my internet, load up a new LP, and command, "Type. Use everything."

... nope

I think I remember reading about it in the Dream Thread.

Ellie Scape?

Ah, then it was on Skype. Nevermind. (quoted for archival purposes :P)

Mod edit: you underestimate my power.

You cheating bastard.

You can always cheat back with liberal use of the PrtScr key.

Oh, THAT'S what OTP means.

I know absolutely jack-all about emoticons. Please ignore me.

It was in the original HRMBLARGH group. I remember something about buying girls clothes too...
eta: (I meant in the dream, in case that wasn't clear. And I could be wrong.)

This seems like a good place to throw in a question: What's with all the "fufufufffuuu!". I mean, I know what "fffuuuuuuuuuuuuu...!!!" stands for, but "fufufu <3!" seems like a different thing. Explanation mabye? Anyone?

I assume it's onomatopoeia for chortling.

Japanese onomatopoeia for laughter. Roughly equivalent to "mwahahaha." Makes more sense if you realize that ふ sits somewhere between "fu" and "hu" by our standards - there is no "hu" kana, as a matter of fact. (No other "f" sounds, either.)

A generation of English-speakers is going to have grown up not realizing this expression is an import, by the way, because of the fact that the Generation II Pokémon games had every other asshole going all "FUFUFUFU I WILL MURDER YOUR PETS." In English.

Not to be confused with Goons going all "FO FO FO FO" in local...

Or David Byrne going "Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa" in Psycho Killer.

You're missing a fa.

Oh, well then. DON'T WORRY. I GOT THIS.

One too many actually, the last fa should be far. (better)

Tue confession time: back in the 90's (when I was 18-20 or thereabouts) I wrote a LOT of erotic fanfic. Tons and tons, in many different fandoms. I even met and fell in love with a girlfriend over a fandom.

However, for me it wasn't so much about the lovey-dovey emotional part as it was about the hot sex. I wrote slash, femslash, hetero fic, and various combinations thereof. Then I went on to write original-character stuff and stopped writing fanfic. But writing fanfic was a lot of fun for a while there...

Yo, I got nothing but mad respects for that. My own skills lie in a different field (give me a crack prompt and you will regret til the end of your days, but to be fair sometimes just an errant comment will do cuz m'muse will happily ruin without much provocation) and I feel like I ought to clarify that some days you just want lemons. Or everything else really. When it comes to my OTPs (and I have an armada) I don't usually ship them ace or platonic. Because that skin hunger is such a lovely human thing and most of my halves are touch starved anyway.

I waver between writing and not writing fanfiction. I write stiltedly safe itty bitty ficlets because I otherwise have a distinctive voice more's the pity and I'm trying to keep under the radar. Stupid sensual language bits. Although it's been some years. Eh, I'll be getting my invite soon so we'll have to test it out sometime.

Nute has it about right though, I'm one of those terrible terrible authors. (Although I can be nice.)

I too like to drown people in rivers of melancholy, when I'm not making them laugh hysterically. HAPPY ENDINGS MUST BE EARNED

I also like to play with implications a lot. For instance, something may seem happy or good or perfect from one angle, but if you look at it from an entirely different perspective it's kind of fucked up. One person's happiness may be another person's despair. Sure, our glorious hero has returned wreathed in the heads of their enemies, but what of the destruction left in their wake and the child who had everything taken from them, who will spend the next 20 years honing their vengeance? And this society looks idyllic until you see the portion of their humanity they've had to sacrifice to maintain it!

Run-run, run, run, run-run-run awaaaaaaaay

I am also a misery writer. My stories rarely (if ever) end happily, both in fanfiction-land and original works.

I'm a huge pessimist. Entirely happy endings almost always feel fake and hollow to me. Because we are all infinitesimally tiny blobs of sloppily slapped together atoms clinging to the skin of a tiny ball of dirt in an infinite sea of mostly nothing and we're all gonna die eventually and none of us can control when or how that's gonna happen and even if our actions make a tiny bit of difference in human society, human society is either going to self-destruct or get destroyed when the sun inevitably dies anyway and I'm like... what is this thing you call a "happy ending"? STOP LYING TO ME, YOU STUPID PIECE OF FICTION! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HAPPINESS FOR THE HUMAN RACE!

I'm sorry it's 6:24 in the morning and I am in desperate need of sleep and/or sugar orz

Someone more articulate knowledgeable than me should probably explain 'moe' and 'yangire' as well.

It's funny how I never knew what any of these terms meant (except 'kawaii', maybe) until I joined BF.

Yangire = yandere without the love, so basically a scary sadist hidden behind a cute act, and no love interest to curb their scariness.

Moe is...how do you explain moe? It's that feeling of absolute cuteness, something that is just attractive, something that gives you a warm feeling in your heart. If something is just so adorable it makes you squee, it's moe. It can mean various things to various people, which is what makes it such a beautiful term. Clumsy girls are moe. Blushing girls are moe. Smiling little children are moe, although the term is more often used towards attractive girls than anything else.

The best explanation for moe I ever came across is "Moe is when your heart gets a boner".

Ooooh don't get people started on "moe". To my understanding there's a huuuuge difference between how Japanese audiences and Western audiences use it too, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt. The stereotypical definition for it is "cute girls with huge eyes and adorable quirks and cute read passive and infantilized personalities", but I also hear people defining it as "characters that inspire the desire to protect". Seems like it's generally used to describe any character that the viewer finds adorable and cute though. For example:

"OMG ANABANANA IS SO MOEEE I WANT TO TAKE HER HOME WITH ME AND SQUISH HER ADORABLE YANDERE CHEEKS KYAAAAA KYAAAAA"

On that note, there's currently an exhibition match featuring male characters (for once!) in International Saimoe. Okita Souji from Hakuoki is one of the contestants, just so all you Hakuoki fans know. Oh wait never mind, voting just ended.

Yangire is a character (typically female) suffering from some kind of mental illness, IIRC.

MOEEEEEE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
... means cute, more or less~ It's a kind hard to describe, kinda one of those know-it-when-you-see-it sorta things, I guess? When you see something moe, you really want to hug it or protect it or kidnap it and keep it in your closet forever? Something innocent and loveable in a child-like way.
A waitress in a maid cafe trips and breaks an entire tray of glasses, then turns beet red and bows up and down apologizing? MOE~
High school junior with a baby face treats you to soft-serve and gets some ice cream on his cheek? MOE~
Al Capone? Not moe.

And yangire is basically yandere (cute-looking, acts innocent, totally homicidal on the inside) except the psychoticness isn't activated by love for another character, it's just natural for them. If Princess Uguu of the Kirakira kingdom acts all cute and innocent and then kills the oldest son of the Ufufufu kingdom because she wants her crush Prince Kyaa to become the king, she's yandere. If she acts all cute and innocent and then kills the oldest son of the Ufufufu kingdom for shits and giggles, she's yangire.

Al Capone is the very epitome of moe.

Anxifera, I wanted to say something along those lines but wasn't sure how. Thank you for doing it for me.

Related to this, I've also seen moe used in the context of talking about a fetish that you have. Not a sexual fetish, but a... "specific things that you find really adorable"-fetish. (Okay, so the correct term should be kink, but whatever, you get what I mean.)

For example, there are people whose hearts get boners whenever they see old(er) men (oyaji in Japanese). In that case, you can say something like "Oh my god Al Capone really gets my oyaji-moe juices running".

No, seriously. The Count from Gankutsuou (the anime adaptation of Monte Cristo)? I watched a Japanese interview from the creator who said that the Count was deliberately designed to provide a "moe element" or "moe aspect" for female viewers.




Yeeep. This guy would be considered moe (for female viewers) in Japan.

Another thing to clarify is that "moe" is not a characteristic of a particular character; technically, it's the response to a particular character that is called "moe". But eh, we throw the term about pretty loosely in English-speaking circles, so don't worry about it.

Ah, my apologies, I'll change it right away!

Also I changed the image to the BF-hosted one.

To say that moe can be a little troubling is an understatement. Sometimes, it occurs to me that you could make a killing with a magazine called Nonthreatening Girls/Boys Weekly.

("Schoolgirls, maids, and schoolgirl maids - NOW WITH MORE BLUSHING!")

Then I realize that someone probably has already.

There's a kind of retrograde Victorian sense of idealized fragility here. Quite a bit of VN sentimentality reminds me, in the worst way, of the death of Little Nell.

This is one reason why I think a goofy sentence-fragments-and-CAPSLOCK approach to anime fandom is relatively healthy. It sure beats taking the implicit messages here seriously and believing them.