General Chat: Dawn of THE FIRST DAY (72 hours remain)

Zeitgeist has been a loanword for a long time. And you forgot the best one of all, schadenfreude.

Also, there's nothing particularly special about German in this regard. English borrows words from a crapton of other languages. For instance, we stole "rendezvous" from French.

I didn't mean to imply that German is special, just that, because *I* am german, it is especially noticable to me, which is why it always feels weird.

As I said, the German language does the same with words from other languages. We have a lot of english words and we used to have a lot of french words as well. It's mostly that people are ether using words that don't exist in their language or they start using words from a culture that they consider "cool" or "hip" or whatever you want to call it. The best current example of that is the "weeabo" thing or whatever it is called, where fans of mangas and animes adopt japanese words into their language. People have been doing that for ages and it's the reason why in Germany we used to call the people who show new clothes "Mannequins" and now call them "Models". Heck, the only truely German word I found for that was "Vorführdame", which the dictionary especially called out for being a very oldtimey word.

We stole LOOOOOOOOADS of words from French! Far more than we have from German - besides your Germanic root words, of course, but they don't count because Old English was weird. I love french loanwords though. They often sound really exotic and sophisticated because they don't obey the (admittedly sketchy) English rules. "Ballet". See? Mad.

I've heard similar sentiments before, though. Once on dA years ago I was chatting to one of my friends (English) about the tiers and I mentioned the Uber tier, when another of my friends (Dutch) saw the post and asked what a word like Uber (sans umlaut) was doing in an English post. It happens!

EDIT: I didn't realise Rucksack was a german word? But that's because it's perfectly fine English, too. At the same time, I've never questioned it - it's a, uh, sack of, umm, rucks? TBF though it's rarely used.

basically what english did was mug every language in a back alley took their wallets pulled out a few words from everyone threw them into a hat shook them up and mispronounced them

*cough, cough*
kansas
*cough, cough*
arkansas
*cough*

inb4 "placenames don't count" and "there are reasons", it's still pretty funny. Don't they border each other?
ALSO

Worcestershire. England, I am disappoint.

...I still can't quite grasp how to pronounce Worcestershire. And for the longest time in my childhood I always jokingly pronounced Arkansas how it was spelled and got called out for it repeatedly until I was shamed into stopping.

Actually, given that I was this really quiet kid who got all my vocabulary from reading, I was called out for a lot of mispronunciations so people probably did have a good basis for thinking that I actually had no clue how to pronounce Arkansas. (Fun fact: I mistyped Arkansas as "Arkansaw" three times just now!)

I did that as well when I wrote it :O You know what this reminds me of?

Dammit I couldn't find the video.

But it's one of the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episodes; the Grim Reaper is chasing Bart around the house and Marge shouts "run like the wind, bart!" but pronounces it to rhyme with "rind" as she's only ever seen it in books. I thought that was clever.

Ruck - A sudden motion, the word is a bit old timey, but is still used in phrases like "Erst mit Müh und dann mit 'nem Ruck" (Something like "With difficulty at first and then all at once" I guess), it also continues in the word/phrase "Hauruck" which basically means something like "pull/push NOW!" (It's the German word for jerk in the sense of a sudden motion, not in the sense of being a douche)

In this context, however, I think that it probably come from the German word "Rücken", which means "back"

And "Sack" means something like bag. (Though, fun fact, "Sack" is also a colloquial term for your ball sack, which gives us such nice German insults as "Sackgesicht", which basically means your face looks like someones balls)

So it's basically the same as backpack, just German.

And yeah, words where you ignore or missuse an umlaut (Which is itself another German word by the way) are especially weird. The times where a band adds a weird umlaut to its name are actually worse then the times when someone doesn't use the umlaut. Motörhead just sounds incredibly ridiculous if you know how it'd be pronounced with an ö.

Blatantly stolen from a reddit thread thingy, but I gotta ask:

Pokemon become real in this world, you're stuck/blessed with the Pokemon that's in your team in the most recent main series Pokemon game you've played. How screwed are you?

Bonus question: What's in your Battle Box if the Battle Box is a thing in the last game you've played?

Spoiler:

Im going to have trash hoenn pokemon from early game. only redeemable one is ralts and marshstomp

I'm not sure if I played pokemon since I started The AS and promply stopped since I noticed I hadn't kept bank and thus wasn't able to move the starter to the bank.

If I haven't since played any pokemon, I have a starter and I think a zigzagoon? Maybe?

God damn it, I was so excited for the game and then bank blocked me and I got distraced with so much else...

Maybe you should repurchase bank then

Yes, I knooooooow

Bluh, there were so many thing I needed to take care of and then I get distracted...

I'll try to take care of it soon

What's small and early and unexpected and ends on a cliff?

Spoiler:

Welp, another update, this time with text

Spoiler:

I think we can dispense with the spoilers, it's not that big of an update.
Wasn't that the point, though? She does steal the limelight. That's her thing! And Karkat isn't so much being pushed as he is willingly sitting there in the background playing with the Mayor. Arguably his character arc has been less about being a great leader and more about learning he doesn't have to be. Fact is, the meteor crew are (and always have been) A.O.K with not doing anything much until they have to, sans Vriska. As for Terezi, well, she did pipe up but damn if Vriska doesn't make some good points. Terezi always played a background role in the scourge sisters anywho - as Vriska said, she gets the limelight, but Terezi is the secret soul of the team.

The only bit I thought was odd was when Vriska found Arquius really funny. But that could be a genuine quirk or because she doesn't want to admit Arquius is necessary to ensure the whole origin-of-lord-english thing.

All in all, I enjoyed the update. A lot of people on MSPAF are claiming the characters are out-of-character - are they though? I don't think so. After three years of preparing for your doom on a dark and boring meteor, or whatever it is the others were doing, they're hardly gonna be really excited and psyched up about it. They're not anime characters, sheesh. Apathy is a genuine human emotion that teenagers have. Plus, none of them sans past-Karkat are the kind of people who'd take pleasure in interrupting one of Vriska's monologues. Girl likes to talk, the rest of them have learned to accept it. Like a radio!

I think part of the "THEY'RE OOC" crew comes from being used to fanon depictions of the characters instead of how they really are.

Dave, especially - he's been more emotional for quite a while now, seemingly having picked it up from Karkat. He noticeably gets more open when relating to the mayor and completely loathes time travel, which is the next step he has to overcome.

Also I think the fact people are acting like Vriska is going completely out of blame and like everybody loves her is really funny because the characters quite clearly aren't the biggest fans of her as a "leader" and the story is quite obviously setting Vriska up for a MAJOR fall

probably involving that plan of hers or wtvs

Yeah, it totally was the point. It's just not a point I like I guess? As I said somewhere else, I don't like how Vriska is stealing the spotlight but it's not like it's unexpected, that's sort of exactly what she does, being the Thief of Light and all.

Still, it would have been nice if maybe she had learned by now that not EVERYTHING revolves around her. I guess that is a lesson she didn't learn when Terezi didn't kill her.

Here is hoping that Roxy can counteract Vriska a bit.

TBH I kind of like Dave's reverse arc. Time powers in HS are a horrible burden and he took to them like a bird to water - but as a person he shouldn't need to just because Sburb says so. I hope he manages to go without using any! I'd support him because I think I'd resent having to use them too.

Ehhhh IMO Vriska's probably setting herself up for a noble sacrifice of some sort. Something that is equal parts abosutely good for the group and also entirely obvious as being her showing off how important she is. But there's nothing *wrong* with that. After all those plot arcs, Vriska may be a tad insufferable, but she's a good kid and she means well. If she's breezy now it's because she's learned from all the other Vriskas how selfdoubt or guilt is not something she needs to carry like the proverbial cross in order to be a Good Guy. Was she dangerous before? Absolutely. I genuinely don't think so now. She's practical, and sensible, and has come to terms with her personality AND her own importance to the story. I can respect all of those things. Any dip in the character arc wouldn't really be well served - how, exactly, could she improve as a character now without giving up all the things that make Vriska Vriska?

(i <3 vriska's character and her arc, but I gather a lot of people on mspaf resent her for reasons or something?)

Not to mention, she was kind of the biggest change that John made. It's not really all that surprising that she's taken over so much.

And on some level, that might explain why Terezi's so chill about it. It's because it was (admittedly an alternate version) her idea to bring Vriska back! So she's okay with her being around too (Since the things John's planted would have led her to the same idea anyway). Nowadays if the story revolves around Vriska it's because it genuinely has to, not like when she inserted herself into Bec Noir's origin story. This time it's out of necessity.

Nah, I still think it's setting up for a downfall. And after whatever that failure is, THEN Vriska will probably start being redeemed/learning from her lessons and being less... control freak-y.

And I like Dave's arc, but I still do think he'll come to terms with his own hero-ness and time powers and such, so shrug;.

I have no real problem with Vriska, but I feel like being dead was doing good for her, and now that she never died she missed out on all of that. No date with alternate John, no treasure hunt through the Furthest Ring, no Meenah influence. I think that's kind of unfortunate for her.