Okay, little help here.

I'm trying to see if I can come up with an alternative to the 'Trnaslator' that Melody uses in my comic to let the crew learn Hinode's language quickly. Because it's a really campy idea, to be honest. Well, it's better than making them all speak English, I suppose.

Hinode's language is close enough to terrestrial languages (well, like a mix of them, probably with a Romance language base, since I want to work it out, and Spanish is the only language I know at all well. I would be cool to use Japanese, though.) that it's at least pluasible that a translation computer could make heads or tails of it. For that matter, Hinoiri's native language is Germanic in base -- with me attempting to root out the Latin bits that sank in. There's also a dialect/related language that's the native tongue of the Halfings, and a more Roamnce-like language for the Dryads. The Hinode language is kept as a lingua franca by the Sprites, who have magical communication -- there are probably still local dialects running around, correptions of the old languages, but Hinoden is the language of trade and government.

But, anyways, as fun as this is, do I have any other options besides the translation computer (a combination of AI and psi-tech)? Ideas?

Your soul is a what?

Crossposted from Journalfen, in response to this thread (Note: Journalfen is 18+, but nothing unwholesome is happening in the thread. it is worksafe).

Disclaimer: I am not Otherkin or Otakukin. I have affinities towards certain animals, mythological beings, and fictional characters, and consider them personally signficiant. However, this is because I am me, not because I was one in a previous life, as far as I know.

Okay, I guess I see it like this. I have some friends who are... well, I don't really know how to describe their religion, but it involves a lot of mysticism, and one of the beliefs is reincarnation. I've listened to my friends describe some of the past lives they think they've had. Most of these past lives are pretty ordinary for the time. My friends describe them as matter of fact as they would the life of a friend I haven't met, and seem to see it as that life was a learning experience or had soemthing they needed to accomplish then -- small things, like being in the right place at the right time for someone else. They don't use it to lord it over another person. I also have friends who are Otherkin, and again we see this matter of fact attitude -- 'yes, I'm a dragon on the inside. That's the way I am, it doesn't make me better than those who are human on the inside, and I still have to deal with being human on the outside, at least in this life.'

But, there are people who claim to be the reincarnation of 'insert historical person here'. and will get snitty over the mundanes -- not just for getting mocked over their beliefs (understandable) but for not being anyone particular in a past life. There are Otherkin like this as well. Once, I was talking about my mythological obsessions (I'm nuts over anything to do with the ocean) and was joking about the fact with this and my Irish/Scottish ancestry, maybe I was part selkie. A friend of mine looked at me and told me I couldn't be because I was 'hopelesly mundane'.

Otakukin seem to be more prone to this, in my opnion, because, like our famous-past-life people, they are named entities. An Otakukin is never 'Random Extra from Excel Saga' but is Sailor Moon or Lina Inverse.

Believe what you want, just don't think less of me because I think I am a (pretty strange) human on the inside, and that who/what I was (if anyone) doesn't matter as much as who I am. But you probably shouldn't bring up Otakukin status in fandom to prove a point -- after all, if there are an infinite number of universes (some of which hold anime characters) there are an infinite number of near misses. ^_^

(no subject)

I am going rock climbing tomorrow (if the weather breaks). I will need to get up at 8:00 in the freaking morning. Thus, I will be going to bed some time between 12 and 2. If I am not in bed by two, please bitchslap me. Thank you.

FYI

(Crossposted to writer_girls)
For all of you science fiction/science fantasy writers...

There are two ways astronomer measure the distance between stars, light years and parsecs. A light year is the distance light travels in on eyear in a vacuum. A parsec has to do with parallax (the fact near things seem to move with respect to distant things if you lok at them form a different position). A parsec is the distance for which the parallax is one arcsecond (1/3600 of a degree) -- it's about 3.26 light years.

Astronomers give ligth years out to the public and to students, but most of them use parsecs (or kiloparsecs, or megaparsecs) themselves.

Thank you. Any further space/astronomy questions? I'll be here all week!

Life, she is good.

Okay, so I've been talking to this guy on IM recently -- we met at a roleplaying board,a nd he became a fan of my comic. You might have noticed the Shashi fanart he drew me. Well, anyway, he asked me to do some desgin work once he gets his website up in July, and will even be paying me (his original offer was for webspace, but as I am probably moving to my own domain in the fall, I declined it)