Subject: Not really on topic, but that guy kinda looks like Elsa from Frozen.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-05-02 01:21:53 UTC
Otherwise, though, I don't deal much with other-language characters.
Subject: Not really on topic, but that guy kinda looks like Elsa from Frozen.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-05-02 01:21:53 UTC
Otherwise, though, I don't deal much with other-language characters.
I just would like to know whether most PPCers use capitalization Minis.
incorrect spacing, punctuation (missing apostrophe from possessive), name order (putting a Westerner's last name before name), word use in fixed terminology (calling a Twisted Wonderland dorm a "house") and invalid transliteration (using Japanese reading of a Chinese name in a fic not in Japanese) are also mini-worthy.
I agree with the first one (FrodoBaggins is definitely a mini of Frodo Baggins), but the rest, I'd like to debate.
Missing apostrophes can create minis (Frodos can be a mini of Frodo), but they can also create temporary clones ("Frodos" could result in multiple copies of Frodo existing until he is next referred to in the singular). Depends on what's more fun and works better for the mission.
Personally, I wouldn't get mad at someone for switching up name order as long as it's consistent. It's one way in Western culture, the other way in Eastern culture; neither is wrong in their own context. And, like, what if you learned the names from a show that presented them one way, even if they were originally the other way? Anime does this all the time. I don't know if it goes the other way, with Western shows translated in the East, but it wouldn't surprise me.
If I wanted to make an issue of it, though, I reckon it would be a new character, not a mini. Like, you could theoretically have the canon character Uzumaki Naruto and his oddly inverted-looking double Naruto Uzumaki... Except you'd really have to make a case that the author should somehow have known better even though that's how they learned it from the version of the canon they're familiar with.
For "house" instead of "dorm," I'd think that would make the setting morph to match, not make a mini. That illustrates the nature of the error better, IMO, and "house" isn't a misspelling of "dorm" any way you look at it.
For the last one, I'd again suggest that it's fine as long as it's consistent. If the fic uses one style of transliteration for all names, that's probably a deliberate style choice, and style choices should usually be respected. If it's mostly one style, but some other style is randomly chucked in, though, that might count.
~Neshomeh
When western names are translated in Japanese and Chinese, we use a little dot thing. For example, Harry Potter is ハリー・ポッター in Japanese and 哈利·波特 in Chinese. The dot thing signifies first name first.
I can see a language-mucking charge if someone doesn't realise that, say, Uzumaki Naruto's last name is Uzumaki and has been treating it like it's his first name the entire time. (For example, in IAHF2, I spent Takeda Kane's entire screentime treating her first name as "Takeda", but that was more because I was trying to parallel IAHF1's Nurse Takara. I'm sure someone else has done something similar out of sheer ignorance!) Japanese names can be used in both orders, though -- my students write their names in both orders, regardless of whether or not it's accompanied by kanji. I don't think anyone in the PPC is writing a mission of a Japanese fic, so there's really no point in nitpicking someone using "Naruto Uzumaki" in a Japanese fic. Either way, it wouldn't create a mini.
For Chinese, it would absolutely depend on the media. Danmei novels for example mostly require the entire full name in Eastern order: Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji. Wuxian by itself wouldn't cause a mini, but it would read as odd. Wuxian Wei would also be odd, and might create the inverted character, since it's against the genre's naming convention. I'd also even argue that referring to personal names (ex. Wei Ying) with just the first name (so, "Ying", in this case) would be a language-mucking charge because you're just letting this single-sound name sit around by itself which is against the genre's naming convention. But I don't think it creates a mini. Maybe it creates a baby or cherries? (Since that's other words that sound like "Ying".) But that's dependent on the mission writer's preferences. Narrative Laws of Comedy before nitpicking, honestly.
On the other hand, Chinese game Genshin Impact has single-sound names like "Xiao" without any surname, but since that's just how the game has named him, nothing needs to happen.
As for Japanese-versus-Chinese name readings, I also wouldn't make minis unless someone misspelt it (which, ha, have fun, hiragana-to-romaji can have variable spellings as I've learnt from my own students). For example, Wei Wuxian becomes Gi Musen in Japanese and Lan Wangji becomes Ran Bouki. These are official name readings for the MDZS dubs, so who are we to say they're mini-creating misspellings? The issue is also, what kind of person would be using the Japanese readings for MDZS characters if they're writing a fic in English? At best they'd have heard the Japanese dub of the donghua, but they'd probably have seen subtitles change it back to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. If they're fluent enough in Japanese to understand the Japanese dub, wouldn't they have searched up the kanji for their names and gotten the Chinese spellings? Why would those people be writing fics in English?
Someone would have to go out of their way to use the Japanese readings if they're writing English fic, in which case you'd probably end up with language-mucking charges alongside, possibly, fangirl Japanese and conflating Chinese and Japanese culture charges. That'd really be the only time in which I could see it becoming an issue in English fic.
Finally, as I've noted on the mini-Xuanwu page: the variability of romanising Eastern names causes some alternate spellings that are not misspellings. For example, based on how one chooses to render Bakugo Katsuki's name, you could get Bakugou Katsuki, Bakugō Katsuki, Bakugô Katsuki, Bakugoh Katsuki, Bakugoo Katsuki -- and then ofc, you can flip his name around since his first name is Katsuki. All of these ways to render Japanese long vowels are valid!
You'll even end up with variable romanisations for foreign names in anime, too -- Nataliya, Natalya, Natalia for ナターリヤ・アルロフスカヤ, Mila versus Mira for ミラ・バビチェヴァ, Victor versus Viktor for ヴィクトル・ニキフォロフ. Sometimes you can't even rely on the official romanisation from the show -- I think the showrunners for Yuri on Ice tried to say it was "Sala Crispino", for example, instead of "Sara Crispino". Ultimately, as Nesh says, it depends on internal consistency in the fic. It may be down to the author's style. (I use "Viktor Nikiforov" in my fics, for example, since I wanted to render it with the Russian spelling, but for the one YOI mission I did, I used "Victor".)
TL;DR Rendering names in Eastern languages for Western audiences trying to write fics in English is hard and we need to give writers a bit of grace rather than insisting everything creates a mini.
My current lust object the character Vil Schoenheit has a German surname that can be spelled Schönheit, which is plausible in a real-life language (and is a word that means "beauty" (quality)) but is never actually rendered this way in the work (note that the game actually gives out official romanizations early on). I personally would make this an acceptable spelling, but what do you think? There are also headcanons bouncing around that his first name is really Wilhelm or Wilbert or whatever (because what parents name their kid something that sounds like "evil", based on the Evil Queen or not?), and I see calling Harry Potter "Harold" deemed mini-worthy on the wiki. Again, what do you think?
That’s the same issue with Viktor versus Victor — one is closer to the spelling in the character’s language and the other is an anglicisation. As for Vil — iirc German pronounces “w” like “v”, so Wilhelm as the actual name would also make sense. It’s not necessarily canon if you’re strictly considering canon to be what the developers have decided are the official spellings, but in considering a fic’s authorial intent and style, it wouldn’t be a misspelling either.
Edited to get rid of a bit of irony in misspelling “misspelling” 😅
And, can confirm that W is pronounced like V in German, and OE is an acceptable substitute for Ö if you can't or choose not to render letters with umlauts. If they're using a strictly English alphabet for romanizations, that makes sense.
I'll add that Wil with one L is a valid name, though not as common as Will with two Ls, so the fully Deutsch-ified name could simply be Wil Schönheit.
... I miss Hieronymus Graubart. An actual German person would be nice to have on hand right now. I'm pretty confident, but I don't actually speak the language, so... sigh.
~Neshomeh
but not gonna lie, Wil Schönheit looks sexy.
The statement that the name is used among speakers of English and Dutch doesn't imply that is isn't used among speakers of other languages—especially a very closely related language like German. It might be less common, but Google around a bit and you'll find it comes up as a German name or name element, too. I like Behind the Name because it's more scholarly than the gajillion shlocky baby-name sites out there and doesn't hide the information behind a pay wall, but it doesn't know everything. {= )
~Neshomeh
Otherwise, though, I don't deal much with other-language characters.
IMO, having an Elsa parallel in there is a bit… tricky? Not because she's not a villain (some main characters in the game show signs of being based on Disney Princesses and other good-aligned characters), but because she has a fixed elemental power, which would clash with this game's elemental attacks mechanic.
shoves gardian under the bed
Ahem, anyways. I personally don't like using minis with improper caps because it could make two minis with the same name. I have one exception and that's gardian, but that's because I continued with the all lowercase letters. If I stopped, it wouldn't be consistent, as annoying as it ends up being.
If caps in the middle, or no caps, or no caps in the middle when they should be are the only errors, a mini is not made, in my opnion. gardian exists because it's a misspell of Guardian (Spirit), not because of lack of caps.
-kA
So, "gardian" was originally a misspelling (with additional orthography error) of the word Guardian. Once a mini spawns, though, the word is no longer merely a representation of the abstract concept of errors; it is also the proper name of a character, and as such the rule is that it should be capitalized. The mini Gardian is thus created from the error "gardian." Quite logical, no inconsistency, QED. {= )
Not trying to pressure you to change it if you don't actually want to, though. I have Strong Feelings about this, but people are free to use their own best judgement if they don't agree with me.
~Neshomeh
I think, when I get my first mission, I'll use "anything except an initial capitalization error makes a mini, with the initial capitalization the same, unless starting a sentence" as my rule. Seems a logical compromise to me.
And it bugs the bejeezus out of me when I see uncapitalized words at the beginning of a sentence and uncapitalized proper nouns anywhere forced on a PPC work just because someone else made a mistake. Why should we let someone else's error induce us to create additional errors, beyond misspelling, in our own works? Argh.
I'm also convinced that taking initial capitalization errors as minis is a relatively new phenomenon. This may mean "arising in the last ten years," so not actually new-new at this point, but I'd swear it wasn't a thing to begin with. Has anyone checked?
~Neshomeh
Since Sue Lord rewrite had me taking out a bunch of the capitalisation minis with the exception of jack harkness since he's already been written into continuity. :P
Like, people were very keen on spotting and cataloguing all the minis for a couple of years or so, and were taking any excuse to make more. I think we even scolded someone for trying to retcon a mini into existence from someone else's older mission, as though the mission-writer had committed some grave sin by choosing not to highlight every single error. Rude!
The obsessive attitude around it quite possibly what drove me to have Strong Feelings about mini creation. Like, calm down, people. Quit grasping at straws and focus on something more important. {X D
(This is sort of why I don't go in for POVs, either. They're fine, I don't hate the idea, I just don't have a drive to make the stuff, collect the stuff, share the stuff... IDK. It's just stuff, and pretty much all the same stuff at that. *shrug* But if you enjoy it, that's fine!)
~Neshomeh wanders away whistling "Little Boxes."
I have to say, there's a few in My Immortal that I really want. Rumbridge and Volzemort, particularly, as those two make up my wiki name. (I'm really excited for Iximaz's upcoming mission.) I do think collecting minis is fun. And I think I get everyone's views on this. Great thread.
only for non-initial capitalization – I currently have gingersnap. I also retain capitalization of any mini I encounter, initial or not (momji and ibaraki doj)