This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
There ain’t anything Winter 2015-related for me to review yet, so have some filler.
Bouncy Girls
If you’re as 25 years old as me, you may remember these gifs, and how they was so hype across anime forums for, like, a month or so.
Well, apparently they’re from the Magical Drop series. I only bring this up to let people know that the franchise didn’t always make me want to kill myself.
The Gameplay
It’s a puzzle game, and I’m not a middle-aged housewife, so I can’t say I’m the best person to review this. Too bad for Magical Drop.
There’s a bunch of bubbles and you match colors to– Don’t you think this review would work well as a video? Yeah, so do I. Maybe I should look into that for the future.
Whatever, it’s a puzzle game. Moving on.
Typical Gameplay Session
1. Press Start
2. Pick Story Mode, Normal
3. Cringe at the dialogue
4. Cringe at the loading screen
5. Lose
6. Try Story Mode again (this time on Easy, but let’s pretend I kept it at Normal)
7. Cringe at the dialogue
7. Win \o/
8. Lose the next round
9. Quit
Verdict
This is a bad anime game.
Stats:
MSRP: $0.99 (Yeah, I know you’re tempted, but if you buy it for the +1, keep it in the backlog.)
Metacritic rating: Who cares? Fuck Metacritic.
# of times I enjoyed myself playing it: 0. But I watched Shoujo Sect right afterward, so we’re good.
Have you played pocket girlfriend 2, D_S? I downloaded it for my phone after watching the
anime, and it was even worse than the anime!
I’ve played pocket pool, if that counts.
You mean you attempted to play.
The cue was too short to grab so you hit the balls with your fist to play. It didn’t work out well so you quit after a while.
>Magical-Drop-V-Loading-Screen.jpg
u srs
Legit srs
>Magical-Drop-Victorly-640×360.jpg
don now how tu react
I outsourced all my image naming to China. It can’t be helped.
Review good games ;_; I can only laugh so much at a game until I start thinking to kill myself for how bad it is.
I bought Nekopara. That should be good, right?
Welp, guess we’ll find out.
Bought? On Steam?
…son of a bitch, it’s censored!
All right, lemme go buy the Japanese version too. Ain’t nothing gonna keep me from cat titties.
Steam is 2pure.
It’s okay to have a murder simulation but save the children from the neko titties!
https://twitter.com/nekopara_pr/status/532289446301794304 English version of adult version available since three days ago apparently
Yeah, already bought. Playing the game right now.
Don’t forget to spam P.
Wŭt du ju hav ëgenst Spelingriform? Pråpërly dŭn it kød meyk ingliš Orþågrëfy bouþ yzyër and mor igzôtik-løking, ðë Latër ŭv witš wød definitly meyk ju fyl kulër wen ryding and rŭyting it. It wød sëvyrly kŭt daun ån Spelingmisteyks and påsibly inkrys Litërësy ål ouvër ðë inglišspyking Werld.
And if ju dount keër ëbaut helping Pypël (az åy ikspekt ju mŭyt nåt), rimember ðat if wy beys ðë nju Orþågrëfy ån ëmerikën Ingliš (az ëpouzd tu sŭm Britiš vëråyity, for egzampël), it wil signël tu ðë Werld ðat Ëmerikë iz ðë best, and ju lŭyk Ëmerikë bying ðë best, rŭyt?
Åy ëgry ðat låts ŭv egzisting Prëpouzëlz for riformd ingliš Speling år ryly ŭgly, bŭt its këmplytly påsibël tu meyk ë prity wŭn.
>re-adding Old English characters
>using varying regional pronunciations
>inconsistently applying rules
>non-nonsensical rationale
>random agglutination
>capitalizing some nouns and not others with no clear reason
>puts the silliness of IPA to shame
>silly usage of y
>changing the sounds consonants make to how they sound in other languages
>random assorted silliness for the LOL SO RANDOM XD
>basing reform on aesthetics
Absolutely disgusting as a spelling reform. 2/10
It’s even meh as a cipher (like leet)
If the reader knows what the characters mean, it isn’t that difficult to read. Translation spoiler below.
What do you have against spelling reform? Properly done it could make English orthography both easier and more exotic-looking. The ? of ? would definitely make you feel cooler when reading and writing it. It would severely cut down any spelling mistakes and possibly increase literacy all over the English speaking world.
And if you don’t care about helping (as I expect you might not) remember that if we base the new orthography on American English (as opposed to to some British variety, for example), it will signal to the world that America is the best, and you like America being the best, right?
I agree that lots of existing proposals for reformed English spelling are really ugly, but it’s completely possibly to make it a pretty one.
As a bonus:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.html
Nice objections.
>re-adding Old English characters
Diagraphs suck, and if you need single letters to represent IPA /ð/ and /θ/, why not eth and thorn?
>using varying regional pronunciations
Like what? Other than certain words that are pronounced slightly differently when unstressed (like “a”) everything follows what most guides recognize as General American.
>inconsistently applying rules
Like? The only non-phonetic things I think I used were “ng”, which could be /ŋg/ or just /ŋ/ (because ŋ sucks) and not transcribing the American “flap”. But I’m consistent with that.
>non-nonsensical rationale
Þ-Þanks?
>random agglutination
Noun-noun compounds are agglutinated, as are non-predicative compound adjectives.
>capitalizing some nouns and not others with no clear reason
Like variety and example? Maybe I just suck at remembering how to do it.
>puts the silliness of IPA to shame
IPA is kinda silly, you’re right.
>silly usage of y
Well, “i” had to be used for /ɪ/ because it’s such a common vowel in English, and y is already used for /i/ in a bunch of places (like at ends of words), so why not? It’s a nice un-diacriticized vowel that needs to be put to use.
>changing the sounds consonants make to how they sound in other languages
But the whole point is to make English more like other languages because other languages are better.
>basing reform on aesthetics
I’m also in favor of introducing a mandatory full-period calligraphy class in every high school in America.
Oops, I forgot to go back and change the two ?’s that I left since I didn’t immediately understand as I was reading it. They are “latter” and “which” respectively.
>digraphs
Why don’t go all the way and use characters for all the sounds used in the English? What’s wrong with nearly doubling the alphabet?
Diacritics are at least as silly as digraphs, if not more so.
>General American
Yeah, I assumed you weren’t. I also doubt you are a native English speaker, which sort of biases any sort of “reform” you may want. I’m guessing German or a Scandinavian country. Yes, I’m also including Finland in that regardless. Or maybe I should say Nordic and include Estonia. Oh the jokes. Or in the case of German, let’s assume Standard German is all there is.
>capitalizing nouns
My mistake. From what little I know, it looks like you are following the German form of capitalizing.
>other languages are better
It’s certainly true that English is alone in that it is a major language whose development centrally directed by an organization.
>calligraphy
“”If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
Steve Jobs apologist pls.
If anything, your proposal is reactionary, and certainly not a reform.
Why not Esperanto or other synthetic language?
All spelling reforms are probably doomed to failure.
There’s a short story that comes to mind about linguistics that comes to mind, but I don’t remember its name. It was about the evolution of “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” over the course of several centuries which included several catastrophes and the general downfall and rebirth of humanity.
There’s another one that does come to mind and it’s called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang about literally alien ‘linguistics’.
I only have minimal interest in linguistics.
It is (mostly) one character for each phoneme in (American) English:
a = /æ/ (as in “cat”)
e = /ɛ/ (as in “red”)
i = /ɪ/ (as in “pit”)
o = /ɔ/ (as in “more”) or /o/ when used in the ou diphthong (as in “both”)
u = /u/ (as in “spoon”)
y = /i/ (as in “need”)
å = /ɑ/ (as in “pot”)
ë = /ə/ (as in unstressed “a”)
ô = /ɔ/ (as in “caught”)
ŭ = /ʌ/ (as in “fuck”)
ø = /ʊ/ (as in “book”)
All the consonants are pretty intuitive except
j = /j/ (as in “yes”)
š = /ʃ/ (as in “she”)
ž = /ʒ/ (as in “pleasure”)
þ = /θ/ (as in “thing”)
ð = /ð/ (as in “the”)
Now that I’m listing it out again, both the “cow” diphthong and the “no” diphthong should probably use aø and oø respectively, since that’s more accurate, but aø and oø both look ugly so maybe I’ll swap ø or some other letter… maybe y with some sort of diacritic.
And I guess there’s no real need for o and ô if I’m going to let o be both /o/ and /ɔ/, should probably do something about that…
My comment about phonemes was that there 26 letters in the English alphabet, but that there are ~38-45 phonemes. With “General American”, it’s listed as 38. So, with the 26 base you’d need to add 12 characters to have a 1:1 letter:phoneme ratio. You have 9 listed, å,ë,ô,ŭ,ø,š,ž,þ,ð, which puts you 3 short of the “minimum” amount. As such, I asked “Why not go all the way?” Yes, the doubling remark was a bit of an exaggeration.
There still remains the problem of what to do with representing new loanwords that use characters, let alone phonemes, that aren’t in the native language. The façade is there, but is there anything inside?
I understood what you meant. The problem with those listings is that they either list phonemes that are only distinct in regional dialects or ones that are really allophones of each other.
Going off this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Phonology
It says there are twelve monophthongs (not including the r-colored ones, because those can be written as just vowel+r), but also notes that /e/ is rarely pronounced as such (usually closer to /ɛɪ/) so we can use whatever character we use for /ɛ/ in there. That leaves eleven vowels, matching the eleven I have: a e o i u å ë i ô ŭ y.
It also says there are twenty-four consonant sounds, so thirty-six phonemes in total. As I mentioned earlier, /ŋ/ sucks, so there’s no character for it. /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are also counted as separate phonemes in that chart, but they can just be written as t+ʃ and d+ʒ. Then add in that c and x are unused and it all adds up.
And loanwords can be handled the same way loan words are handled in many other languages with phonetic scripts, by writing them phonetically. When a word is loaned into English, it doesn’t keep its original pronunciation — it always invariably gets Anglicized somehow. Façade would be written “Fësad”. Besides, why would you use foreign words anyway? Are American words not good enough for you?
> Besides, why would you use foreign words anyway? Are American words not good enough for you?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg
No, no they aren’t.
Well, the next stage of the revolution is Anglish: http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Headside
That being said, English is quite the mess of a language.
Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_%28orthography%29
But you see, English wouldn’t be that messy if everyone just listened to me. Ergo everyone should listen to me.
It’s okay. When the future comes and we are all telepaths we will communicate with our FEELINGS and EMOTIONS and IMAGERY or something. Then there will be people trying to standardize those and continue the oppressiveness of prescriptivism.
Then of course calls for reform. I guess it never really ends.