#creating OCs is an artform in a sense

[guess-my-next-obsession]

Starlight — Prologue

pairing: fae!ezra x princess!oc (Marigold)

rating: M (first person POV, split second mention of death, strained paternal relationship, arranged marriage, fantasy elements, i literally created a world and lore for this so if none of it makes any sense that is why, this chapter is just meant to build the world—we meet Ezra in the next chapter)

wc: 1.2k

a/n: hi everybody!! i’m well aware this book will not be one of my more popular series, but i really just wanted to write something fantastical, and even if i’m the only soul who reads this, it’s fine! we love a bit of self indulgence every now and again! anyways, hope you guys like this little prologue. i’m hoping to have the next chapter out within the week 🤍

series masterlist

All I’ve ever known is summer.

In my world, Etos, there are five kingdoms: Heims, Oceanus, Florere, Ember, Nox, and Solis. Anywhere else is far too dangerous for a mortal to step foot into, even if they could manage crossing the sea that separates us from the Fae lands and beyond.

The furthest land from my own is Heims, a frosty wonderland full of people hardened by the perpetually cold weather. Most of our coal comes directly from Heims, as well as my father’s toughest soldiers. My eldest sister, Wilhelmina, or Mina, as far as our family is concerned, married the charming Prince of Heims, Kristofer, and currently resides in the castle made of crystal so clear it almost looked like ice, setting the standard for the rest of my sisters.

Oceanus, too, was an important ally to have—their land producing the entirety of our fish as well as guarding the coast from those who seek to take back Etos. My father knew this well, and soon arranged for my second eldest sister, Peregrine, or Peri, to be married off to the King’s highest ranking emissary, Lord Titus, assuring the alliance between our lands. Luckily for soft-natured Peri, Titus seemed to be a gentleman and truly in love with my sister. I would have never allowed my father to marry her off if he wasn’t. Her gentle and kind spirit was far too precious to me to allow some man to ruin it.

Ember, a land of constant autumn, was where the academics went to study the arts and the sciences. My sister, Wilhelmina, was the actually the very first woman to be admitted into the university. I always admired her tenacity in the face of adversity, but even in my admiration, I feared her intellect and drive, just as my father must have after breaking down and allowing her to leave Solis.

The softer lands—at least in the minds of the northerners—were Florere, a land of eternal spring, and Solis, my land, the eternal summer. Octavia, the sister closest in age to me and by far the only one I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy due to her mean-nature and competitiveness, had recently left Solis to be with her betrothed, the Prince of Florere, Ignacio. I didn’t bother to vet her partner, but from what I could see by his solid gold carriage and fine regalia, he seemed to be just as pretentious as she was. A perfect match as far as I was concerned.

Even in all the beauty of Etos, all the varying climates and scenes, I never wanted to live anywhere else but my home. Solis.

Here there was no reason to be cruel and cold. Here, we appreciated the arts, and believed that leisure itself was an artform. We worshipped the sun, we worshipped our gardens, and when it came to love, we worshipped one another.

My father, his mother, and her father before her all wore the golden crown of Solis. Warmth and sunlight was woven into my bones, tanned my skin, softened my heart. My mother once told me, long before she passed, that my sisters and I were all born beneath a blazing sun at her request. I suppose she believed a warm birth meant we’d all live warm lives and die warm deaths.

As I wandered through the garden contemplating my newly revealed fate, I couldn’t help but wonder if her efforts were in vain.

My father, a once-loving, soft man I cherished more than the sun itself, had changed since my mother’s shocking and violent death after she was mauled by an injured wolf while attempting to remove an arrow from its side in the very forest I now padded my feet into. He grew cruel and hateful towards me, his youngest of five girls. I suppose I understand why, if I truly think about it.

Unlike my four older sisters, I took after my mother so much that even I found myself shocked at the resemblance. And even if I didn’t have her shimmering, gold eyes, or her caramel-brown head of long curls, or the same dimple in my left cheek, I had her heart. Soft, curious, and empathetic. Everything my father once loved about my mother, he now hated about me.

Of course he found it hard to look at me, to talk to me. I was his grief personified.

But even in all his iciness and hatred, I never expected that he’d sign my life away to the coldest, darkest realm in the world. To Nox. To marry the infamously insufferable King Kaius and become the future queen of the starland.

Whether I wanted to or not.

It felt personal, his choice in my betrothed. A daughter of the sun being forced to never see it again. It almost felt like another death to endure. Everything I have ever known and loved gone overnight.

As I found my place underneath my favorite elm tree, the one me and my mother used to sneak off to with our stolen bundle of sweets from the kitchen, I couldn’t bring myself to loathe him the way I wanted to.

Perhaps the distance would chill the warmth I still held in my heart for him.

Perhaps then, I could hate him the way he deserves.

My sister, Cosabella—the most cautious and maternal out of the five of us, happily married to the head of our father’s King’s Guard—and my father stood in front of our palace, its white marble and green grass beckoning me to stay. To fight for my right to live here in the sun, just as my mother had. But one look at my father’s cold and emotionless face and I knew there was no point.

This was how he wanted it.

“Take care of yourself,” Cosabella warned, slipping me a golden dagger. “Do not trust anyone. Write when you can. I will see you…” She trailed off, but I knew why. She didn’t know when we’d see each other next, if at all. “Just…be careful. Remember that just because the sun is gone, does not mean mother isn’t right there with you. She lives in you, Mari—“

“Enough,” my father shouted, gesturing behind me at the carriage waiting with two footmen and two Kingsguards. “Off you go.”

“Yes, father,” I replied, my voice as small as a child as I gave Cosabella one final hug, memorizing the citrus of her perfume.

“Go on, now,” she smiled as she pulled away, wiping the tear from my cheek. “Go introduce Solis to Nox. Bring them a little light.”

“I love you,” I managed, nodding my head at her command. “I will see you.”

“I love you too.”

I knew she wouldn’t promise me anything she couldn’t assure, but it didn’t help my cracking heart as I climbed into the carriage, leaving everything I’d ever known behind.

I placed my hand upon the glass window and watched as she lifted her own, waving at me before resting it over her equally breaking heart.

“Make yourself comfortable, Princess,” the footman that I’d known since I was a child called back into the carriage. “It’s a long ride to Nox.”

To the eternal darkness.

I wasn’t sure how they managed any of it. How cold they must be, not only their bodies but their hearts and minds. I couldn’t imagine any beauty in a black sky.

I’d heard about stars in my astronomy courses, learned that the sun itself was a star, but it never seemed to make any sense to me to spend time contemplating a billion little specks of light when I could lay beneath the biggest. A light bright enough to shine over the entirety of the world—except for Nox.

My father had said it was cursed by the fae Kings and Queens who once ruled over these lands, a punishment for the mortal revolution. And based on the description he gave of his own visits, I was inclined to believe him then. But now…

Curse or no curse, this was my fate. I could either accept the cards dealt to me and make something of them, or I could fold.

My mother taught me to never fold.

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fic #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal fluff #ezra prospect #ezra x oc #ezra x ofc #fantasy #starlight

[changingplay]

Pokemon Yellow, Furries, and Interactive Cuteness

Cute is powerful. Commercially and critically, cuteness has garnered incalculable success in today’s consumerist Western society. This extends to various franchises and media, from animated film to video games. One such franchise which utilises the power of cute through its multimedia empire is Pokémon, a worldwide success which is currently the highest-grossing media franchise of all time (“Top Media Franchises”). To achieve this lofty height, Pokémon has been reliant on the aesthetics of cuteness in all its media. This essay will look at the impact of interactivity on the appeal of cuteness, prodding at how Pokémon’s success is borne through a combination of cuteness and interactivity with cute objects which inspire “emotional attachments to imaginary creations” (Allison 382). As such, this essay will focus specifically on the video games arm of the Pokémon franchise. I first wish to discuss the design philosophies which spawned the close relationship the game medium has had with cuteness since its inception. Early computer systems were too limited to produce detailed graphics, which meant relying on abstraction. Cute, however, is often simple, making it a viable principle to design game characters around. This inherent tie between video games and cuteness naturally led to a taste in game players for cute characters, one which has persisted to this day despite technological advancements allowing for photorealistic graphics. Secondly, narrowing the lens to purely the Pokémon video games, this essay will examine Pokémon’s personal relationship with cuteness and the impact of its interactivity. Through hours of play and dozens of different titles spanning over three decades, the game series is designed to evoke a sense of longing and care for the Pokémon creatures that players catch and bond with through the games. Pokémon Yellow Version will be used as a case study for the various game design innovations which developers Game Freak made to enhance the game’s cuteness, and therefore add to the relationship between player and character. This included having Pikachu follow players outside of battles and react to various story events. Lastly, I will discuss the Pokémon franchise through the context of the furry fandom, a large worldwide group of people who craft their identities around anthropomorphic animals (which include Pokémon). Furries mimic and recreate Pokémon characters in real life, often creating OCs, or original characters, which represent themselves through the cuteness of Pokémon designs. Cuteness becomes identity; a vision of oneself which through years of interaction and bonding inspires people to spend thousands on costumes to briefly become those self-same cute monsters.

Despite its relative modernity compared to other media, video games have evolved substantially across the past five decades of their prevalence. Technology has allowed games to create entire 3D worlds that are inhabitable in virtual reality, yet the origin of the artform stems from basic lines and pixels on a 2D plane. The limitations of early games in the 70s and 80s created a symbiosis with the ‘cute’, a necessary marriage birthed from the need to represent characters with such little power to render detail. The consequences of these limitations led to the birth of many different memorable gaming characters: Mario, Kirby, Sonic, Pacman etc. The general connective tissue with these characters is their art style. Derived from the ‘chibi’ aesthetic that was popular in manga at the time, these Japanese created games all featured characters with features often cited as “essential” to the creation of a cute character. Take Kirby, a pink circle with eyes (fig 1). The properties of Kirby’s design are derived from the limited canvas video games offered, which also happen to mesh with the design principles that make designs cute – “round, without bodily appendages, (…) non-sexual, mute” (Cheok 298). The list expands beyond this, yet most traits associated with cuteness are also fundamentally simple, which makes them easier to render for low-tech hardware. With Kirby, the intent was clearly to make a cute character, yet this principle applies to characters that aren’t necessarily meant to be cute. Pacman is just a moving pie-chart in the arcade game, a vehicle for the game’s mechanics. However, this necessity to make Pacman look like he’s eating using so few pixels also happened to be a perfect companion to making a marketable, cute mascot. By using cute character designs, developers can create characters that are easy to render and memorable, while publishers are able to market games through their appeal as cute objects – both in advertising for the games themselves as well as merchandising. This relationship was spawned exceptionally early in the lifespan of video games as a form of commercial media, and that ensures a consumer market that associates video games, at least partially, with the aesthetics and tastes of cuteness.

Taste in video games and in the cute, then, have been nurtured concurrently in consumers. To speak of taste is to speak of many systems which effect the enjoyment of a vast array of subjective activities and media. It is a vast subject, one which can only be touched upon in a limited capacity here, yet I think it is important to discuss what taste in video games and taste in cute says about the medium and its consumers. Hennion describes tastes as being “lived by each but fashioned by all, (…) a history of oneself permanently remade together with others.” (103). This description is pointed in its assertion that taste creation is a collaborative, social enigma. Tastes are ever shifting with the tide of a wider society, through media and through friendships. One can receive a taste for something or give that taste to someone else. Taste inherently becomes a tool of influence, a way to define a person and change those definitions over time and over different experiences. This makes taste incredibly powerful in a capitalist society that is fuelled on the ability to sell anything and everything to a consumer. New technologies and media, such as video games, are perfect vehicles to create more consumers by giving them a taste for something new, something expensive, something profitable. Cuteness, in this regard, then becomes the tool by which video games can achieve mass appeal – a way to paint over the foreboding and intimidating technologies which produce the games we play. Focussing on Japan, the region most closely associated with cuteness and technology’s intermingling, it’s hard to ignore that “many cultural transformations in Japan are essentially obsessed with technology” (296). This includes traditional video games, such as Mario, and gadgets and devices such as the Tamagotchi that fall somewhere between traditional toys and video games. These devices transformed consumer cultures in Japan, and their relationship with cuteness assured that cute sensibilities were ‘in taste’, popular and ever-present. The cute or “Kawaii” is irrevocably associated with “the technological landscape of Japan” (Cheok 298). I would argue that through the influence and popularity of games, the world outside of Japan also associates the cute with technology, if less severely. Pokémon is the perfect example of this.

Appearing in the late 90s, Pokémon made a clear impression on the gaming market. Quickly becoming an astronomical success, it was impossible to avoid the multimedia deluge of Pikachu laden content that graced both the West and Japan. The games are about collecting and fighting a multitude of Pokémon creatures, 151 in its initial release, through a role-playing adventure across a world inspired by the Kanto region of Japan. It follows a basic RPG formula of a grand adventure spanning tens of hours, all the while your characters gain experience and grow stronger through the course of the journey. Uniquely compared to other popular RPG franchises like Final Fantasy, however, is the fact that Pokémon is set in an urban setting not dissimilar to the modern world we live in. Characters in the game have televisions, while large shopping centres and gambling parlours are found in the region’s bigger cities. It is a modern world infused with Pokémon creatures. By making the world of Pokémon so closely fit our own, players can better relate to the events of the game and imagine our own world filled with cute creatures that roam around. It makes it easy to imagine interacting with Pokémon. “Bringing these characters out of the screen, so to speak, triggers the fantasy of enveloping them into everyday life” (Allison 385), and such, the marketing machine would pump out endless supplies of merchandise specifically to sell these cute creatures to consumers who had played the games and become attached to their Pokémon. How could they not when the game design is so catered to making sure players build an intimate relationship with their Pokémon? The game opens with a choice between three Pokémon to be the player’s first. The player is shown a portrait of the potential choices and can therefore make an instant connection with them based on their cute appearance. Given the game only lets you take six Pokémon with you at any given time, and that the starter Pokémon you choose is designed to be one of the strongest, it is likely that the player will keep this Pokémon in their team for the whole game. Growing with them, leading them to victory or defeat, hearing their cries of pain or success. This ability to influence these creatures, interact and play with them, enhances the relationship between video game character and player. “Cuteness here involves not only interaction with a virtual creature, but also its creation and maintenance.” says Anne Allison, and in maintaining this creature, they gain “pocket intimacy”, a “portable companion with whom they can interact with where they go” (391). It is the mingling between cuteness and the interactivity of video games that makes this possible, and I would extend Allison’s idea to its logical conclusion: this interaction with cuteness leads to a desire for people to take the Pokémon out of the game, and into their physical world through the purchase of merchandise.

Many of Pokémon’s most effective ties between cuteness and interactivity were present since the first trio of games were published, yet Nintendo never stopped adding more cute creatures or ways to bond with them virtually. Over the past three decades, Pokémon has released dozens of games across eight generations, a term used to describe when the franchise adds a new set of Pokémon to the roster – we are close to reaching over one thousand. The second game in the series, an add-on to the original trio based on more heavily on the wildly popular anime series that was releasing at the time, was Pokémon Yellow Version. Still in the first generation, this game made clear the direction of the franchise and its commitment to enhancing the bond between player and merchandisable product. The most immediate change was to the branding – while the original games featured a choice between three starter Pokémon, this version would only allow players to start with the eponymous Pikachu, just as in the anime TV show. Players are immediately met with Pikachu’s visage from the box art to the title screen (fig 2). The Yellow Version in the games title obviously referring to Pikachu’s immense surge in prominence. The cute mascot of the wider Pokémon universe had made its mark on the games and would come to define the entire experience. As a mascot, “Pikachu was chosen for a number of reasons: its bright yellow color, memorable chant (…), unforgettable shape, and, most importantly, its cuteness which could attract just about anyone.” (Allison 385). These aspects of the character were defined in concept art and the anime, yet not apparent in the original games, which used a far pudgier version of Pikachu (fig 3) compared to the sleek design used in later media (fig 4). Pikachu’s power of cute would tie with Yellow Version’s new game mechanics to create an experience that gave personality to Pokémon creatures. Pikachu would now follow the player in the world of the game, rather than being contained in a Pokéball like all other Pokémon. This would allow players to always see Pikachu, not just in battle, and feel the intense sting when a poor choice results in them being incapacitated and disappear from the game screen. Pikachu even reacts to story events, making varied cries and noises voiced by Ikue Ōtani, their voice actress in the anime (all other Pokémon use synthesised cries). One can talk to Pikachu to see how they are feeling, and they’ll react with a variety of different animations (fig 5). The ability for the player to interact more closely with their Pokémon further sells them as companions to bond with instead of tools to win battles and complete the game with, and it is their cuteness which allows this intense bond.

Pokémon was a smash hit, in no small part due to the marketable power of cute anthropomorphic animals. The choice to use animals as a basis for the design of most Pokémon makes sense, given that animals in the real world are both cute and ferocious – necessary features when creating a game about fighting and raising creatures. The appearance of many of these Pokémon would mimic the design sensibilities of kemono, a Japanese concept which merges human features with animals. This is generally comparable to the concept of furries in the West, a widespread fan culture based around the creation of anthropomorphic artwork. Pokémon such as Lucario (fig 6) or Zeraora (fig 7) are extremely popular within the fandom due to their clear anthropomorphic design sensibilities. While Pokémon does not market directly to the furry fandom (the demographic, despite consisting of millions, is neither mainstream nor respected), these designs do inspire an amount of fan creativity and relatability that goes beyond what the games can offer independently. Essentially, furries take the idea of Pokémon, of being able to play with and bond with different cute creations, to the real world by crafting fursuits and fursonas based on these popular designs. Furry as a sub-culture is engaged with “fairly idiosyncratic fandom-related interests: they construct fursonas – anthropomorphic animal-themed identities to represent themselves.” (Reysen 1). As such, by creating fursonas that are based on Pokémon, furries mesh their constructed identities with what they perceive these Pokémon designs represent. Oft times, this is forged from a desire to become these cute creations, if only for entertainment and recreational purposes.  It is an extension to the desire to own “iconized (…) commercial goods” which Pokémon appear on, such as “T-shirts, bookbags, calendars” (Allison 387) etc. The purchase of these products stems from a desire to bring Pokémon creatures into the real world – furries conclude that line of thinking. As such, intricate and expensive fursuits are created of these designs (fig 8 & 9) that allow furries to play as their favourite cute Pokémon in the real world.  This extreme length to deepen the bond between player and product reminds me of Annemarie Mol’s musings on taste in food, where she states, “tasting cannot be done from a safe distance, it requires bodies quite literally to mix with this rest of the world.” (279). I would argue the intimacy of tasting here, the requirement of vulnerability, of openness to mix with others, is quite apt in describing the eagerness with which furries bring the world of Pokémon into the real and allow their cuteness to inspire them creatively.

The emergence of Pokémon within the furry fandom throughout the 2000s has been enormous, and this is interesting as fursonas are often representations of a person’s identity. By creating this personal identity around a marketable and copyrighted design, the case study brings up some concerning questions around the power of capitalism and consumerism in controlling a consumer’s ‘ideal’. Fursonas are “alternate identities” (Reysen 1) and are often constructed as “psychologically or behaviourally similar” to the person, essentially an “idealised version of themselves” (6). Through effective design, these Pokémon designs have become a part of certain furries’ ideals, which demonstrates the power of cute to impact the tastes and personalities of people around the world. I hesitate, however, to deride this morally – many capitalist products are personally impactful to all manner of people and become part of their identity (favourite films etc). It is important to keep in mind that the most integral part of the furry experience is the ability to self-curate personality and aesthetic traits into an alternate self. Pokémon creatures are therefore used as a base to build upon; add personal flair to. Cuteness is the ideal in itself; Pokémon is the vehicle by which people can attain it.

Virtual cuteness is ever-present in today’s consumerist society. From the early beginnings of video games as a commercial medium, technological restrictions on the creation of games have assured a clear connection between the aesthetics of cuteness and video games. Early gaming devices did not have the ability to render graphics with high fidelity, meaning games would rely on simplistic graphics which naturally mesh with the principles of cuteness. Cute is often simple, as seen in designs like Kirby. This early connection between cute and technology meant that the taste for video games was tied with a taste for cuteness in players. “Consumption is speedy, and the threshold of boredom is a slender line, each Kawaii character battles for supremacy and then survival.” (Cheok 299). Hence, the success of franchises like Pokémon relies on the “supremacy” of their cute mascots. Pokémon games are a perfect combination of cuteness and interactivity. They take the traditional principles of RPG video games and transcribe them into a modern day setting with cute creatures around every corner. Players grow and bond with their Pokémon, both through success and failure, through tens of hours. Pokémon Yellow Version demonstrates some of the evolution of the Pokémon franchise, showing a further reliance on the cuteness of Pikachu as a mascot and a design focussed on bonding with a character with a clear personality. Lastly, I have discussed here the impact of Pokémon and cuteness on the furry fandom, a group of people who craft alternate identities through donning the appearance of anthropomorphic animals. Furries recreate Pokémon in the real world through custom fursuits. This brings Pokémon closer to the real world and demonstrates the impact of cuteness in pop culture on groups of people. Pokémon, and their cuteness, allow people to adopt their designs as a base for imprinting their own ideal identities onto. The taste for cute, driven to the masses by the vehicle of a multi-billion dollar franchise.

Works Cited

Allison, Anne. “Portable Monsters and Commodity Cuteness: Pokémon as Japan’s New Global Power.” Postcolonial Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2003, pp. 381–95.

Cheok, Adrian David, and Owen Noel Newton Fernando. “Kawaii/Cute Interactive Media.” Universal Access in the Information Society, vol. 11, no. 3, Springer-Verlag, 2011, pp. 295–309.

Guttmann, A. “Top Media Franchises by Revenue 2021”. Statista, 18 Aug. 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1257650/media-franchises-revenue/

Hennion, Antoine. “Those Things That Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology.” Cultural Sociology, vol. 1, no. 1, Sage Publications, 2007, pp. 97–114.

Kirby Sprite. Retrogamer, https://www.retrogamer.net/retro_games90/kirbys-adventure/

Lucario Official Artwork. Pokemondb, https://pokemondb.net/pokedex/lucario

Mol, Annemarie. “GOOD TASTE: The Embodied Normativity of the Consumer-Citizen.” Journal of Cultural Economy, vol. 2, no. 3, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009, pp. 269–83.

Pokemon Blue Version. Gameboy Version, Nintendo, 1997.

Pokemon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition. Gameboy Version, Nintendo, 1999.

PriamWolf. “Lucario Fursuit.” Furaffinity, 2017. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/20139678/

Reysen, Stephen, et al. “My Animal Self: The Importance of Preserving Fantasy-Themed Identity Uniqueness.” Identity (Mahwah, N.J.), vol. 20, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1–8.

Willowcookie. “Zeraora Full Testfit.” Furaffinity, 2018. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26076982/

Zeraora Official Artwork. Pokemondb, https://pokemondb.net/pokedex/zeraora

#pokemon #cuteness #cute #furry #anthro #game critique #games #video games #nintendo #essay #analysis #game design

[clavicuss-vile]

i really really wish there was a way to make like. custom skyrim followers easy on xbox. i wanna play kin'aru and marrow delving into dwemer dungeons together :((

what i usually do is just substitute followers for ocs and put a hood on them, 'miraak' on ime's save is just belrand in a hood bc the i dont like how actual miraak uses shouts all the time in the mod we have but

1. there's 0 ohmes-raht characters in skyrim full stop so i cant substitute kin unless i wanna use a bosmer

and 2. theres no dunmer followers that use the khajiit speech!! so they'll talk and i'll be like :( that's not Marrow :(

very upsetti i wanna figure out what their fighting styles would be since they're both more academically minded than arcane minded

#illumina's rambles #my ocs #oc: kin'aru #oc: marrow #im thinking Kin'aru might dabble in necromancy?? i mean his whole field of study is how life and souls actually *work* #and how that can be turned into a magical artform #(for example allowing same-sex couples to create a life) #so it would make sense that he would study the literal act of reanimation

[ionfusionpunk]

Mando’a Conjugation Tangents Because My Brain Got Lost

AKA: A Study of Ancient Mandalorian Culture and Society and the Development of Mando’a by Dissecting a Bunch of Words in a Bid to Find the One (Which I Don’t Find, but That’s Okay)

Um. So, I got carried away? 

It started with me creating a clone oc: Clone Commander Alloy. I love creating fun nicknames for my characters, and I thought it would be cool to give him a nickname in Mando’a. I thought: Hey, ‘alloy’ is close to ‘ally’, so maybe one of his close friends/vod call him tomad: ally. Cute. Then I thought, but what about ‘alloy’ in Mando’a? 

(You can jump to the very end for the TL;DR)

Cue me realizing there isn’t a straight translation. Cue me realizing there’s only one (1) metallic element given any sort of name in Mando’a: beskar, which is Mandalorian iron made of a metallic alloy (steel, which itself is an iron alloy, hence Mandalorian iron).

Cue me wanting to dissect the word beskar to figure out where it comes from.

After fighting with my brain for an hour, I finally just made it simple: since beskar is a confirmed alloy of which iron is the major part, then I just need to identify which part of the word is ‘iron’. Easily said and done if one considers that be means ‘of’ in Mando’a, leaving skar to mean iron. (I also cross referenced the Mando’a dictionary to make sure there weren’t any other words composed of skar as a word fragment in any form; it’s not). Literally translated then, beskar means ‘of iron’ which makes sense considering it’s an iron alloy - an alloy made of iron. Thus beskar transliterated is ‘alloy of iron’.

Now I want a word for ‘metal’, because ‘iron’ is too specific to be the only related word in Mando’a. 

I started by looking for ‘forge’, like a blacksmith forge, thinking it might hold a clue. It didn’t. ‘Forge’ in Mando’a is actually nau’ur kad: lit. light up a sword. And, like, I can see where that’s coming from? But it’s more poetic than functional. This is when I recall the word goran: blacksmith, metalworker.

Cool. Okay. ‘Metal’ is included in ‘metalworker’, so I might be a step closer. Unsatisfied with the poetic version of forge, I decide I want a single word that means something closer to what ‘metalworking’ implies; I turn goran into a verb by adding -ar, making it goranar: metalworking, and call it good. 

But I still want to isolate ‘metal’. Alright, so what part of goran is ‘worker’? Turns out that borarir is worker, and it’s base is bora: job. Instead, goran might come from gotal’ur: make, create/ gotal: made, created (an ‘-ized’ suffix). This is cool because tal means blood, so the Mandalorians seem to believe that to create something is very symbolic/ritualistic (like putting your blood, sweat, and tears into something). 

(Kay. Taking the Mandalorian culture into account, it would seem that they would have definitely practiced metalworking as an artform, right? Historically, only the nobility had swords because only they had the time to learn how to properly use them, and we’ve seen that the Mando’ade who aren’t soldiers are often agriculturalists. Yet kad is still a known word, and beskar is basically a deity. It would make sense that, in their development as a culture/society, metalworking would have been way big especially as an art form (I look back at the p o e t i c term for ‘forge’ as an example). It then stands to reason that there’s no reason why the words I want to create don’t exist. They’re just... buried. Deep. Just throwing that out there so I seem less crazy lmao.)

Now, I would think that ‘metal’ would be something close to ‘iron’ considering, logically, there would be a word for ‘metal’ first and then iron later as it was found to be the superior metallic element, especially in alloy form. Kar shows up in a few words, like kar’am: breath, kar’ta: heart, kar’tayl: awareness, knowledge, and kar’taylir: know, hold in heart. As far as kar’ta goes, ta is obviously derived from tal for blood. The am in kar’am is ‘change’. Taylir is hold, keep, preserve. Comparing with mandokar (which we should all know the meaning of by now, it’s used so. often), we can assume that kar either has something to do with the ‘self’ or is more an indication of something personally/culturally/spiritually precious (not the soul, though; colloquially, manda is used as ‘soul’). Furthermore, kar seems to be used in words where emotion is involved (like, 9.5/10 times). 

Personally, I think that kar could mean ‘iron’. Think about it: ‘iron change’ or the ‘change in iron’ to indicate breath just like how different levels of oxygen within the metal itself would affect quality. ‘Iron blood’ which, like, duh, but they wouldn’t have had the tech at the time to know human blood contains iron; they would have just compared the red of rusted iron to the color of blood, which, still cool. Mandokar would then be ‘an individual of/containing iron’ which fits with the definition.

Now, I can’t really get behind the fanon definition of kar being ‘star’. I can’t, because Ka’ra is ‘stars; ancient Mandalorian myth - ruling council of fallen kings’, so I would think ka would be ‘star’ and ra derived from the short list of words that start with ‘ram-’: ramaanar: die (general term), ramaanla: mortal (in the sense of fallible or vulnerable), ram’ika: raid, ramikad: commando, ramikadyc: commando state of mind, ram’or: attack, beseige, ramorla: beseiged, and ramser: sniper, marksman. Considering ika is a known diminutive, ram probably boils down to ‘battle’ or ‘war’ or something similar. Ka’ra then, would literally be something like ‘warrior stars’ - the great warrior kings of the past. 

Back to to beskar, then, which I can actually keep breaking down. In the dictionary is bes’bev: Mandalorian wind instrument also used for combat, a large metal flute with a sharpened, cut-off end. Knowing that laar is song and bes’laar is music, but also knowing that a defining feature of pure beskar is the ringing sound it makes when hit against more pure beskar, and bev: needle, spike, and considering my ‘metalworking as art’ theory, I can see where bes’bev comes from for sure, especially if we assume beskar as a word was created first so that bes could be used to indicate the sound of the metal-strikes. 

(Fun Facts: laar shows up again only in galaar: hawk, jai’galaar: shriek-hawk, the two conjugations of laar that give us ‘singing’ and ‘sing’, and werlaara: myth (archaic). Now, jai- comes from jair: scream, shriek, so that word’s self-explanatory. But werlaara is cool, because wer is archaic for ‘eon’, and laara would be the conjugated form of laar once again. From this we catch a glimpse of ancient Mandalorian culture - namely, the way they told stories: using music. Just thought that was supper cool.)

That still doesn’t really help me except just show where other words branched off. So. Square one (1): beskar breaks down into be: of and skar: iron. I would think the ‘s’ comes from the word for metal, especially if iron specifically, using the kar as an indication of strong emotion, is extra important as a metal to the Mandalorians. Based on the words I could find, the best match seems to be eso: flank, side. (Think of how the metal would have been used as armor to protect their flanks/sides). Look at bes; look at eso. I think metal might have been beso, because they would have used metal for armor before they ever used for art considering their warrior-clan history (again, in my head). So, beso: metal. 

Back to goran, ‘cause I think I’m on to something here. So, the closest to ran I could find was rang: ash. Considering the role that ash actually plays in forging metal objects, that makes a lot of sense to me if goran is a metalworker/blacksmith. If I think about how ne’tra is ‘black’, it’s not inconceivable that the ‘ra’ in goran is actually derived from that (again, ran means nothing by itself, and ra is ‘or’). The ‘n’ is most likely just tacked on bc why not and to make it a noun. That just leaves go which seems to have a direct link to whether the word is about creating/making something or not. Conclusion: go: the shaping of something. 

In the end, I couldn’t pin down a specific word for ‘alloy’, but I might get there someday. Thoughts? Sorry for the rambly-ness of this whole thing. I leterally was typing this up as the thoughts hit lol.

TL;DR: 

beskar: alloy of iron (from be: of and assuming kar: iron)

goranar: metalworking

kar: a uniquely Mandalorian word used to indicate extreme emotional/spiritual importance to the subject; iron

ka: star

bes: a uniquely Mandalorian word that indicates the equally unique sound made by hitting two pieces of pure beskar to together

beso: metal

go: the shaping of something

#mando'a #more language #meta #star wars #language meta #mandalorians #mandalorian meta #thoughts? #star wars meta #sw #sw meta #sw headcanons #disregard of fanon