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jolynejay · 9 months

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SPOILERS AHEAD

Actually, with the new update have a little post on why I believe that the proper name of Malleus' mother is "Malenore" and not Malenoa:

Ok, so as discussed in this post, I hypothesize that Crowley is Malleus' father - the illusive Sleeping Dragon Lord Raven.

And that is important because (1) that makes him the Twisted Wonderland's personification of original Diablo the Raven. Oh! And would you look at that! Diablo and Crowley are both names associated with devils, demons, and the occult.

And (2) it cements both his role as an ultimately subserviant figure to the Queen (Malleus' mother) of Briar Country as well as his role as Mad Hatter.

A man who lost his most beloved, most beautiful Flower of Evil - his wife. And a man who through one way or another ended up in a constant state of overblot, a state of madness, nonesense, and repeating patterns born from trauma and unresolved mental issues. (Almost like the Twisted Wonderland as a whole, eh? but I digress..)

So, that being said: Are you familiar with the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe?

It is quite famous after all: The story of a man slowly driven to madness in mourning the loss of his beloved by the appearance of a raven in his chamber.

And what is the name of the raven plagued man's beloved?

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And if we adhere to the Twisted Wonderland's apparent naming tradition of the Draconia family always having "mal" in their name as reference to the same prefix meaning bad, wrongful, or well... evil, then we suddenly have the name:

Malenore.

[Edit: look in the reblogs for the official transliteration as pointed out to me by @onionrimgs, my reaction to it, and some additional thoughts if you'd like :)]

#twst #twst spoilers #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #twst levan #twst crowley #twst meleanor #jo's theory corner #if the eventual official english translation calls her malenoa i'm gonna riot #i have beef with that transliteration #well if nothing else it's for once at least a theory that will be easy to prove/ disprove #i'm not even pulling that connection out of my but #yana toboso regularly makes intertextual references #literally look at malleus

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fangirlinglikeabus · 5 months

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been a while since i've done one of these but under the cut are my thoughts on the novelisations of doctor who, season 8

doctor who and the terror of the autons by terrance dicks this is one of those early actually pretty decent dicks novelisations. it's the little details i think, like having a lot of What Characters Think of Each Other (without stating the obvious) that gives it some substance, or the physical effects of action like the ropeburn being paid attention to. MY personal favourite added detail is yates encountering the master (who he doesn't know is the master) and as a result briefly fantasising about what HE'D look like with facial hair. also we get an evil auton energy octopus, which is a nice added detail. there are recaps of several different stories when they have bearing on this one's plot, but the mention of liz is cut altogether, which means that the novelisations as well as the tv series are lacking in any clarification as to her departure. to my great regret the other thing that's cut is jo going 'oh! hello :)'. in terms of actually bad bits, there's a relatively minor but pretty glaring issue in not only the master being consistently referred to as foreign looking but the evil doll subsequently being described as having 'a slant-eyed oriental face', both of which seem to link the human(oid) foreign/other to the villainy of aliens invading england. there's also a line about jo and women's intuition that bothered me a bit but not nearly to the same extent. overall: i think it manages to differentiate itself enough from the tv version to be an interesting skim at least, but go in forewarned at the handful of dodgy bits.

the mind of evil by terrance dicks i have NO idea if this is worthwhile. for the record i'm not too big on the tv serial (i like it well enough until the missile plot comes to the fore, at which point i almost completely lose interest) so keep that in mind…but i think the novelisation is this weird mix of legitimately good and frustratingly half-arsed, with some racism sprinkled on top. i can't speak on dicks' rendering of hokkien, which is presented from the brigadier's point of view ('it sounded like…') so i'm assuming is not a 100% accurate transliteration. however the bit i REALLY have an issue with is the description of barnham having a 'low bulging forehead, protruding jaw and huge powerful hands' like…why are we reviving victorian criminal science in my little sci-fi book. there's also a really gross line comparing the master's black chauffeur to the car he drives. the narration also really doubles down on what i SEEM to remember as a mike line from the original about chin lee's attractiveness by describing her face as 'marred' by a near permanent scowl. sorry she's not constantly performing beauty for you guys! the final bit i have actual beef is that the doctor thinks of jo as 'this feather-headed child' which isn't problematic so much as it feels mildly mean-spirited. ON A LIGHTER NOTE there's a cute bit where benton pretends to be james bond, and there's lines like 'naturally, the master was lying' which made me laugh. i also think it's got a really strong opening, which builds up to the keller machine experiment by describing it to prisoners' reactions to executions throughout the ages. we get a greater elaboration of the fear visions than seen on tv too (the benefits of not needing to worry about budget!). overall…i think there are interesting points to this one, but also some Very Dodgy Bits, and it does kinda fizzle out by the end which disappointed me given i enjoyed the opening.

doctor who and the claws of axos by terrance dicks ok i need to open with this because 'author describing character's hair as a colour i would never consider it' is becoming a recurring Thing so for the record jo's hair is described as brown in this. tardis wiki has a whole List of changed things in this serial but tbh i think a lot of them were so small that i didn't even pick up on them, so for that reason i'm not certain if its worth it, personally. a brief rundown: as per usual the violence/body horror is a bit more pronounced than on screen, and the special effects are improved on in prose. i quite liked the opening wrangle with chinn and the brig, not least because it tells us that the brig forgot to establish the doctor's official existence and i found that funny. chinn's 'britain for the british' argument with the doctor is cut, and while i SORTA get that for space reasons, i think it also diminishes the critique of his character if his general behaviour/philosophy no longer so explicitly tied to xenophobia. there's a nice new closing scene where jo goes to join everyone arguing how to get the tardis down for some rubble while thinking 'it was nice to see things were going back to normal'. there was also a line i liked: 'in the space/time continuum axos traced an unending spiral course, whirling forever in an endless figure-eight'. but overall….i'm kinda 'eh' on this one.

doctor who and the doomsday weapon [aka colony in space] by malcolm hulke the most significant change in this is PROBABLY that its position in jo's time as companion has been moved: she's now in her very early days at unit (just become the doctor's assistant, hasn't met the master) which is understandable given this was one of the early novelisations where hulke perhaps felt the need to have an excuse for providing necessary context and easing the reader in - he does a similar thing by expanding the prologue bit with the time lords, positioning one as a trainee who doesn't have knowledge of the doctor's life - but i was disappointed that as a mechanic it's dropped very quickly. this is not a story that lends itself well to exclusively focusing on jo, given that she gets sidelined in the second half; still, i felt it was a missed opportunity, especially since she knows the doctor less well than on tv and is understandably thus a lot more combative when this comparative stranger whisks her off to another planet, before the plot snaps back into the path the tv version takes. in terms of that path: if you're looking for a novelisation that addresses some more questionable aspects of the original then i'm afraid this isn't it - if anything it exacerbates any issues of racial coding and its relation to the real world that a story about the colonisation of a planet inhabited by a 'savage' race already has, with lines like 'a few primitives, who, if handled properly, would be no trouble.' there's also a few minor moments that suggest a pretty gender stratified society among the colonists that hulke is depicting unquestioningly, which is frustrating but not unexpected. on the other hand, there's actually quite a lot of detail about the imc men and life back on earth that i appreciated being included. we also get a few funerals that weren't depicted onscreen. ashe has some jesus imagery surrounding him that MAY be making a link between christianity and morality (since in this horrible grasping future the bible apparently isn't very well known) but it's not so explicit that i can say that definitively. there are a few lines that jump out to me as cuts - 'i want to see the universe, not rule it', the gag about the brig saying 'come back at once' and, most tragically, 'wiggle away'. we do get a dr who pun to make up for it though. aside from that, the moment where the doctor finds out jo is tied to a bomb is reduced to summary, which seems an odd dramatic choice to me but i do also realise that hulk had to cut a six part story down into 40k words, so something had to go. final point: dent makes a comment about how imc never break the law and the narrator immediately contradicts him, and personally i feel it would be more interesting if that was TRUE - what does it say about a society where THEY'RE not actually breaking the law? anyway i realise this might sound like i'm complaining a lot but after the last two i found this one quite refreshing in how much detail there was to it, and i do generally enjoy reading hulke's novelisations. it's probably not his best, but it's interesting enough to check out even if it does maintain the original serial's flaws.

doctor who and the daemons by barry letts what is there to say about this one, except that it's a very solid rendering of an already solid tv story? one minor quibble in terms of the process of adaptation is that the scene near the beginning where the gang are watching tv is something i found less interesting when we're not watching with them - because it's prose, we lack that moment of complete identification where we're ALL watching tv together. but otherwise i think the writing is lively, and while it may not diverge significantly from the tv version it does flesh out what's already there for the prose medium. a personal favourite for me was azal being 'as amused as a man warned to leave his own home by a kitchen mouse' when the doctor tells him to leave the planet. it's been a while since i've seen the tv version but i did a brief skim of the transcript and i THINK most of what goes on with the villager (and at some point cult member) stan is new to the novelisation. various minor heads' up: there's a character in chapter three who's a bit self-conscious about his weight, and a bit later on a brief mention of a child being hit as punishment; the inside of the barrow has carvings of the "old witch religion, literally thrust into the darkness of the underground by the light of christianity" which is a characterisation of christianity-as-civilising-influence that i suspect originates in the genre dr who is cribbing from here; barry letts describes azal as having a hooked nose which isn't necessarily INaccurate to his screen depiction but i do think letts is still unconsciously drawing on cultural assumptions of what (racialised!) facial features signify evil. also there's a bit where stan acts to help jo 'as quickly and as naturally as one might reach out to prevent a child from falling' which just minorly irritates me - jo is an adult, please don't compare her to a child here. other than that…i'm a big fan of letts' 'trying to teach the kids road safety' bit where jo falls out of bessie and the doctor thinks 'if only she had put on her seat belt!' oh and jo is wearing that white robe OVER her clothes and therefore wasn't stripped by any of these men, thank you very much. on the minor edits level, letts keeps the mary had a little lamb joke but he rewords 'five rounds rapid' and the brig's response to mike asking him for a dance. but he also says the doctor's name is doctor who so i win! this is longer than i meant it to be but i think my overall conclusion is that this is maybe marginally less of a must-read than it was in a time before home media and the internet made the daemons easy to watch - letts makes more tweaks than i've listed here but i think they're mostly minor - but i never felt that he was phoning in the process of turning it into a novel, and AS a novel it's largely enjoyable.

#doctor who #classic who #third doctor #jo grant #mike yates #sergeant benton #brigadier lethbridge stewart #delgado master #laura reads dw books #target marathon #this has been almost done for a while but i ultimately decided i wanted to finish my OTHER long running dw project (the vnas) first #because i had too many projects running at once otherwise

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thewapolls · 8 months

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Ya know I figured I'd start with some of the familiar early game enemies, but this shit's about to get busy/complicated fast so buckle up! The Gobs are at least pretty straight forward, but there's just a bunch of them... So today's enemy poll is,

The standard GOB(LIN) started as a pretty basic D&D derived design at the start, briefly detoured in WA2 into being an obtuse Gundam reference, and then settled into the WA3 design that would endure for the rest of the franchise.

The HOB GOB(LIN) was a pretty sensible recolor for a beefed up Gob. The original swapped green skin for orange, but later iterations would opt to keep skin tone and instead change out the Gob's green uniform for an orange one. This in turn makes Alter Code F's odd one off recolor, the BRAVE GOB nearly identical to WA3's Hob Gob, while F's own HOB Gob actually became more brown than orange.

The original Wild Arms also had a blue skinned GOBLIN SHAMAN recolor that was for some weird reason localized as "ORC LORD." I'm counting the SHIELD GOB from WA4 as a kind of throwback/spiritual successor to the shaman. And then in WA5 a recolor of the Shield Gob was used for the boss quartet of military ranks Gobs, named GOB DIRECTOR.

In WA1 there was an enemy called GOBLIN PRINCESS that got renamed to "GNOME" in English for, again like the shaman, no discernable reason. She would make a comeback in WA4, and her model would be reused in WA5 as the DOCTOR GOB enemy. (She also appears on the back cover of the ADULT MAG enemy in WA4 and 5.)

The funky blacksheep of the family... CALUPDIS in WA1 was a recolor of the GOBLIN PRINCESS but would go on to have a unique model for the rest of the franchise. This would be further obscured by WA2's localization randomly choosing to name the enemy, "RED BARNEY." It would go back to being CALUPDIS until finally being transliterated correctly for the first time in WA4 --the name was of course always meant to be CHARYBDIS, as in the Greek mythological monster... (confusingly she is mythologically associated with the monster Scylla, which also appears in the Wild Arms franchise, yet the two have never actually appeared together.)

In a curious move WA4 splits the standard Gob into two types of common enemy, the SHOTEL GOB and the AXE GOB, although in WA5 the AXE GOB is elevated to mini boss status while the SHOTEL GOBs are treated as subordinates. The GOB CHIEF in WA5 is a recolor with a blue uniform.

The AXE GOB is as mentioned above, and had an orange recolor in WA5 called GOB GENERAL. It feels like that should kind of link it retroactively to the HOB GOB, but I'll keep them separate options here.

Like I mentioned, WA2's Gobs made reference to Mobile Suit Gundam: The standard GOB was modeled after the MS-06 Zaku-II, RICK GOB was modeled after the MS-09R Rick Dom, the GEL GOB was modeled after the MS-14 Gelgoog, and an unused and unnamed design was modeled after the MS-07B Gouf. (Presumably the Gouf inspired design would have been blue, which may have been a reference to the GOBLIN SHAMAN's blue skin, and/or referenced back to by the GOB CHIEF's blue coloration.)

The BOGLE is a yellow recolor of the WA3 GOB that appears along side a black recolor named COB. The Bogle (also spelled Boggle or Bogill) is a Scottish umbrella term for a broad array of more specific folkloric creatures. The wikipedia page on Bogles mentions giants associated with Cobb's Causeway, aka The Devil's Causeway, which is where I assume the name for the accompanying COB came from. (As it happens the etymology seems to be shared with that of Bogey(man) and Goblin, which is appropriate.)

And finally BARBAROI GOB is a block recolor with a spiked helmet like a German pickelhaube, and a sword; kind of an odd overall German vibe to reinsert to the design. And WA5 uses this same character model for the GOB COMMANDER.

#wild arms

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saltcherry · 1 year

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post going around like “worst Anglo/Latin bastardization of Hebrew/Jewish names” and it’s giving me the Well Actuallys in a bad way.

First of all your post uses English transliteration, not Hebrew letters so aren’t you already Latinizing it yourself? second of all the singling out of Anglo/Latin and the combining of them together is inarticulate. Say Christian if that’s what you mean, it’s okay. third of all some of these alterations originate in the septuagint which is in Greek, and then moved through different languages to end up in their English forms... all of which have perfectly explainable phonetic changes. (Which I will go through and that are not complicated). Fourth of all, the conflation of Jewish and Hebrew...I understand what you’re doing and it’s irritating. Fifth of all, what’s your point? Should language and names never be translated, localized, or changed? Historically in many nations Jews have had Hebrew names and names in a local language, or just Hebrew names, or just names in another language. Sixth of all, I know OP is basically trying to be snide at Christianity, but what’s the end goal? To get Christians to talk about Mary and Matthew with “miriam” and “mattisyahu”? Sounds annoying to experience from the outside, and it doesn’t make sense inside their own traditions, which rise out of Greek more than Hebrew.

Moshe -> Moses. Greek has no “sh” sound and in the Septuagint the Hebrew letters mem-shin-hay were written as Μωϋσῆς (this is a modern rendering, not sure if the Septuagint is exactly like this but the sh sound was dropped for a s sound and the s at the end is typical of Greek names that do not end in vowel sounds (Zeus, Patrocles, Achilles, etc.).

Miriam -> Mariam (Greek) -> Maria (Greek) (short form) -> Mary (English)

Chava -> Hava -> Eva -> Eve. the “ch” in Hebrew can shift to either a “h” or a “k” in languages that lack the sound. “H” is easily dropped. end sounds shift easily. English names often drop an ending “ah” such as Anna -> Anne, Maria -> Mary, usually by way of French (I think?).

Rivka -> Rebecca. come on now. raysh-bet/vet-kof-hay. RE-BE-KA is fine.

I’m too bored to do the rest but I literally figured out stuff about Greek, a language I know jack shit about, by just looking at trends and thinking about other Greek names.... anyway you may not like translation or localization but maybe you should educate yourself on how it actually happens. Because you’re beefing with the Greeks here anyway.

#this is why if i go on so called jewish twitter i immediately lose it #so many people on here want to present an authoritative version of jewish [whatever] and will not commit to learning #sometimes letters for sounds don't exist in other languages bc the sounds don't idk what to tell you man

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laskinpublishing · 1 year

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SCROLL DOWN ▼for Laskin Publishing's Books & Artwork

Now: Don Laskin’s Uncalled for Commentary on Just About Anything That's Often None of His Business

Even More Tales of The Pine Center

Back in the Forties through the Fifties, in the foothills of the Catskills in Upstate New York, my family owned The Pine Center, a small hotel in what the city people called “The Mountains”. These are their stories.

The Soda Magnate

I was cute. I mean REALLY cute. Well, at least that was the consensus among female hotel guests who couldn’t help pinching my cheeks till they were rosy red…and swelling to the size of watermelons. I exaggerate...cantaloupes.

Worst of all were the two-fisted pinchers. They’d take a cheek in each hand, twist my little head so I’d be looking up at them and squeeze thumb to forefinger on each cheek exclaiming in roughly transliterated Yiddish,” Zaya-a-shane-a.. Zaya-a-kloogeh”, which my limited anglicized understanding translated to “handsome; and so smart.” Still holding fast, they’d add in English, “Ooh, I could just eat him up.” Fearing there was that possibility, the instant I felt their fingers loosen I was gone.

As it happens, I was exotic as well as cute. These people had never seen a real live country boy with an accent as foreign to them as their Bronxite and Brooklynese was to me. Example:

“You a native?” the kid asked me.

“Uh-huh”

“I’m from Nuh Bronx.”

“New Bronx?” I asked for clarification.

“T-H-E”, he spelled out, adding, ‘”Bronx,” then put it all together, “Nuh Bronx.”

I can’t remember if I’d learned to spell yet, but I got the gist. Eventually, however, we natives and the invaders from New York were able to converse. And once a trading language was established, I began my first tentative steps in the business world selling soda at dinner time and ice cream in the afternoons.

Now our guests literally feasted from morning till night. After a breakfast of orange juice, eggs, bagels, herring, toast, French toast, pancakes, and more, there was a slightly lighter lunch a few hours later to tide them over till a dinner that started with fruit cocktail, cantaloupe or honey dew, followed by chicken fricassee or chopped chicken liver. Then came barley, corn or possibly chicken noodle soup. A main dish of roast beef, pot roast, roast chicken or steak came with a number of sides. Topping things off would be dessert like my Mom’s lemon meringue pie and cookies filled with raisins, cherries and nuts.

The price of the food was included in the accommodations. So no one could really complain about a kid charging a paltry ten cents for a bottle of soda. Also, did I mention that everybody thought I was really cute?

Of course soda wasn’t the only available beverage. We didn’t have a liquor license, so no beer or hard liquor. However, there was hard water. Pumped fresh from our well, the minerals dissolved in it made for lousy lathers, but a unique flavor people raised on city water couldn’t get enough of.

While ice cold well water may have cut into my profits, I made out pretty well — well enough to keep me in bubble gum baseball cards and every issue of Classic Illustrated I could lay my hands on. These comic books were adaptations of literary classics such as Les Misérables, Moby-Dick and Hamlet and proved an invaluable time and energy saver in my later academic career. But, I digress — As I said, I was making out pretty well, so well in fact though I can’t say I remember it happening, it became family lore. It seems that when my pockets got so heavy with change that my dungarees sagged (no jeans in those days) threatening to go down and take my shorts with them, I purportedly told people I had enough money and they didn’t have to pay. Since I am admittedly a rotten businessman, there could be some truth lurking in the retelling.

HOWEVER, the following incidents I remember well. Now, diet soda was a fairly new thing back then, so new that our soda distributor didn’t carry any. At dinner when I went around taking orders, a thin lady with thin lips, a thin face and thin aquiline nose asked me for diet soda. Informing her I didn’t have any, she told me about a store where I could buy it for her.

Everybody in a service business knows the customer’s always right. Naturally however, this doesn’t apply to a kid on summer vacation whose priorities run to swimming, playing hide and seek, climbing apple trees to get to the fruit, building a club house in the woods, reading comic books, collecting bottle caps, catching Monarch butterflies, etc..

The next day when the thin lady with thin lips, thin face and thin aquiline nose again asked about the diet soda, I replied, “I don’t have it,” adding under my breath, “but you sure could use it.” Yes I know. She was already thin. But I was a kid without a fully developed sarcastic vocabulary.

“What did you say?” she called after me as I made my escape pretending not to hear. “Little boy! Oh little boy! Come here little boy!” Somehow I managed to avoid the thin lady with thin lips, thin face and thin aquiline nose for the rest of her stay.

That story reminds of this one. My father had turned off the water to one of our bungalows to repair a pipe. When he was done, he asked me to run over and make sure the water was on again. Now the top of the door had four panes of clear glass at my eye level. When I knocked, a stark naked lady came to the door. Caesar said, “Veni. Vidi. Vici.” (“I came. I saw. I conquered.”) Donny said, “Veni. Vidi. Cucurri.”(I came. I saw. I ran.”)

Okay, I never said it, but I sure did it. Bolting off the bungalow’s tiny porch I headed out full speed as the lady called after me, “Little boy…little boy…come back, little boy.” No, it was not the same lady as in the diet soda affair. As a matter of fact I distinctly remember this lady as being pleasingly Rubenesque. What she was thinking I couldn’t guess.

Oh, the water was on.

A PERSONAL NOTE:

If you followed my posts (and surprisingly some of you do), you know I tried to get one out every week or so. This is my first one since the end of August when I had a spinal stenosis flare up (translation: damned nasty back ache). I was allergic to the drug I was prescribed causing more problems including a couple of weeks of withdrawal and was likely a contributing factor to a fall that damned near broke my kneecap.

Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing, but love having written.” Writing is a painful process. Add a dose of physical pain and…well that’s what’s taken so long.

Best,

Don

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oakfern · 3 years

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Washing Silk (Yûzen nagashi), Kitaoka Fumio, 1970.

#art #woodcut #japanese woodblock #print #printmaking #kitaoka fumio #silk #colors #if u have beef w the english transliteration of the title pls take it up w the carnegie museum of art #i just copied it #remove the credit and suffer 7 years of bad luck

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hunxi-after-hours · 3 years

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Hunxi ive a question please. Re: your twt book vaguing post tags-using diacritcs for transliterated Chinese names is bad. i fully accept that as you said its Othering and for sure we need to not do that. But like for they help give an idea of pronunciation so im wondering if theres something else i should be doing for that now....like how exactly should i work out how things should sound instead??

hey anon! sorry, should clarify — I'm not against the use of diacritics to denote pronunciation of Mandarin characters at all! I was specifically whinging about the use of diacritics for a Chinese name in an English novel that never otherwise 1) brought up any other Chinese names or 2) used diacritics or any other foreign language markers/scripts elsewhere in the (checks notes) 300+ pages despite its ostensibly "international" scope (I mean there was some French in there but there are so many English loanwords from French that a ç really doesn't count okay)

my particular beef with the use of diacritics to denote names in Chinese emerges wholly from the context I usually see it in: predominantly, a text where the language surrounding the transliterated diacritics is uncritically in English. it's like. So why are you putting diacritics on the obviously Chinese name? What authenticity do you think it lends you? Who are you performing it for? Not a native Chinese speaker, that's for sure — for starters, most native Chinese speakers don't bother with diacritics in script (in fact, much of fan/internet culture deliberately leans on the ambiguity of meaning by using homophonously interchangeable words, or the pinyin without any sort of identifying markers beyond just context). secondly, diacritics are plain annoying to type, so most bilingual speakers I've seen who want to denote tone just place a number after the pinyin, like 妈 ma1 麻 ma2 马 ma3 骂 ma4

and heck, I spent a few years in the Anglophone side of Sinology, and it's not even academic standard to use diacritics when rendering the pinyin of relevant Chinese characters, so like. what is a dark academia fantasy novel that otherwise never brings up anything remotely Chinese trying to prove with its usage of diacritics, beyond accidentally but undeniably participating in the ongoing practice of othering Chinese language, culture, and bodies?

because I feel like it must be said, I have nothing against AO3's tagging system that occasionally uses diacritics in character names/tags on Chinese-language fandoms. those diacritics are there and remain there for reasons beyond what I'm complaining about in this post, including but not limited to site infrastructure and fandom linguistic drift. this post is NOT about that particular corner of AO3 discourse, and please don't take it as such

I guess I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to engage with Chinese as a language and Chinese-ness as a nebulous element in English-language fiction and fanwork. for example, we can look at fandom's increasing vocabulary of untranslated, transliterated Chinese terms. people often leave honorifics like 宗主 zongzhu / sect leader or 公子 gongzi / young master untranslated now, which was most certainly not the case, hm, two years ago. heck, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I had a direct hand in increasing the proliferation of casual untranslated/transliterated Chinese in Anglophone fandom. at the same time, I do wonder about the motives of style and when/why certain terms are chosen to remain untranslated. for me, it's always been a matter of language and rhythm — again, I watch all of these shows in Chinese with Chinese subs, so quite frankly I don't even know what an English translation should sound like until I scribble one out. the sounds and rhythms of the language are so fundamental to how I engage with these texts that I occasionally find myself writing fic or dialogue or even meta bilingually, to get the cadence and tone of what I'm trying to say right in my head, before I go back and re-translate those words, phrases, even entire sentences into English

this is not to say that the rhythms and sounds of voice and language are unimportant to the viewer who isn't fluent in Chinese — they certainly are, which is precisely why watching these shows can be such a powerful language-learning supplement. but the fact remains that a Chinese-fluent viewer engages with the linguistic fabric of these texts in a different manner than a non-fluent viewer. this isn't a flex, or judgment, or a bid for superiority — merely a critical acknowledgement of a difference in perspectives

where it gets really interesting and thorny, though, is the production of non-Chinese fanwork for a Chinese text. I'm thinking primarily of the points brought up in this phenomenally thoughtful meta on chinoiserie and international MXTX fan production that I'll never forgive for beating me to the punch of using chinoiserie as a theoretical framework for engaging with contemporary Chinese media BUT I'm getting distracted. these are the lines that feel particularly relevant:

... as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people?

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

and of course, the line that haunts my most liminal, linguistically-porous hours:

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese?

neither I nor the author of this meta intend for our posts to be call-outs for Anglophone fandom, but both of us are definitely interested in how and why Anglophone creators engage with the essentially Chinese elements of these texts. I think about the many months during which people asked me to come up with personal names, courtesy names, titles, alternate names for at least half the cast of CQL. it was, I concede, fun at first — like a scavenger hunt, a logic puzzle, and trivia rolled into one. how could I leverage my proficiency in language and paltry knowledge of literature (and somewhat better knowledge of literary databases on the internet) to scheme my way into a richly-textured name based on a specific set of circumstances laid down by an anonymous ask in my inbox? but as time went on, the whole process felt more tedious and exploitative than anything, so I stopped doing it. even now, I still take emotional/psychic damage from whenever someone, even a friend, especially a friend, asks me to help them with Chinese naming. if your fanfiction is written in English, and is intended for an English-speaking audience, what does it matter if this title or courtesy name or personal name has an actual, translated equivalent in Chinese? how and why has this name-based ornamentalism become the unspoken standard for a nebulous kind of 'authenticity' in Anglophone fanfiction?

perhaps it is because language, with our electronic dictionaries and language-learning apps and the ever-present Google Translate, often ends up becoming the most accessible aspect of Chineseness — easier to look up a word or several than it is to try and track down a Real Live Chinese Person who can answer questions about cultural norms and etiquettes, histories and values. at the same time, when a writer’s research begins and ends at this superficial level, I can’t help but read it as tokenization, as ornamentalism, a way of telegraphing an authenticity that nevertheless feels cheap and flimsy in my hands

and that’s another crucial aspect of it — in my hands. I, as a person who operates at the particular nexus of privileges, experiences, and expertise that I do, have particular standards. as a reader, I cannot be mollified or hoodwinked by a cursory paragraph generalizing the principles of “Eastern thought” (I’m back to vagueing this book again), because I know this shit and I absolutely will be the reader to point out the fact that this erases the plethora and diversity of the manifold schools of Chinese thought alone, which doesn’t even get into Japanese philosophy or the mind-bending acrobatics of Buddhist reception, and this paragraph leaned on the most basic, essentialized, Orientalized understanding of a singular principle of something that one might be able to identify as Daoism, if all one knew about Daoism was the yin-yang symbol. what I’m TRYING to say in this already overlong post is that I recognize that I am a single, subjective person with extremely personal preferences, and I hardly believe that my preferences should be generalized outwards into fandom norms or cultural practices. I mean, it’d be neat if they were, but I don’t pretend I’m infallible enough for that to occur unproblematically. I just think that we could all stand to think about the complex crosscurrents of modernity and history, (neo)imperialism and (post/de)colonialism, language and engagement, fandom and fan production, ornamentalism and Orientalism

I've wandered very, very far afield from where this post started, which was vagueing a book that has little to nothing to do with cnovel/cdrama fandom, but tl;dr anon there's absolutely nothing wrong with diacritics in language learning, I just get real touchy when I suspect the usage of diacritics as an exoticized linguistic ornament in Anglophone texts

#not to constantly be on my SWBTS agenda but #Shelley Parker-Chan wrote every goddamn word of that novel in English #and it was still the most diasporic and bilingual text I've ever encountered #they pulled off punnery chengyu idioms wordplay linguistic register historical reference #completely in English #and in its own unquantifiable way it feels far more authentic than any number of transliterated zongzhus or gongzis or zhijis #idk idk idk #心怀杂念字数无量 #坐实了啊我

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tunmiseokuku · 3 years

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I’d like to capture some phenomena that seem to have become ubiquitous in human relations and veils -at least to me- as some form of behavioural reinforcement.

Give me my flowers

This is totally subjective. That is my opinion. Not universal

I see a lot of posts about people celebrating people after they are gone. And quotes like give me flowers when I can smell them. It is all well and true. And indeed I hope I do so much so for the people that I love and I hope I get that reciprocated. Truth?! It is not always how we expect it to be. And how one person is celebrated is dependent on various factors that we may never be able to grasp. I mean never. I’ll start with some ‘dark’ thoughts.

Say you have been friends with someone for so long and then life just happened. Even with all of your efforts to keep this person in your life; you have reached out; you have attended all their invites. Even been there for all their good. And bad news. The connection feels strong from your side. But, it’s not you suppose, being reciprocated. So you get to the point and tell yourself ‘I’ll not stay where I’m not welcomed ‘. No beef; no bad blood, you just got to a realization that this person’s - let’s call it role- in your life is over. Maybe they sensed it before you did. Well, you got there. You still do chit chats, and in these days find yourselves on social media streets and salute each other so warmly and familiarly that you begin to wonder why you can’t keep that energy up IRL (in real life) - see I’m trying to be in trend 😁.

Anyways fast forward to a well-lived life kinda death, or a violent one; or just because kind of transition. Let me ask, will you not ‘mourn’ what has been; what could’ve been and what is? ‘ strange as it might sound. At the scent of news of eternal transition? All emotions good and bad vanishes. And one will want to keep the good memories. It’s just a kind of coping mechanism. Simple. No matter how much you try to fight it. The bad experiences with this /these person(s) will matter very little.

Now move on to people you ‘just ‘ met in life. Not there from your beginning, but very instrumental in this phase that you are. Everything is going fine. You have the same energy! ‘Love’ is flowing effortlessly. Wow, you say to yourself ‘ I’ve finally found my tribe!’ And you are cruising in blissful ignorance not knowing exactly what or having an idea what kind of tribe this new ‘tribe’ member had, is building, or has.

-tribe here doesn’t refer to ethnicity- Then you begin to get deeper into this new tribe member's life. You have become ‘no see; no sleep’ (that’s a direct transliteration from Yoruba); then you begin to really SEE, and you found there have been masks all along. Your core values don’t really align. This person isn’t a ‘bad person. But for all that they have ‘done and become’ in your life and to you; you find out after such a long emotional investment that you do not align. You move on; not because you hate the person; or they have done you badly; you just want to protect yourself. The sense of self-preservation is indeed a deep and strong one. So after this revelation; this tribe member remains in the tribe but their role in the order of your life is ‘managed’.

Fast forward again to transition to eternity, after the shock, I can almost guarantee that one of the first memories that will come rushing back is that of the beginning of the formation of the tribe and how beautiful it was and enabling and invigorating. The ugly memories will only flash through. And when they do; one might even begin to question oneself maybe if I had?…

This is not a universal thought process. For I have met people either by design or nurture; won’t spare a moment for somber emotions that comes with death. Maybe that also is a coping mechanism or…🤷🏾‍♀️

Now there’s another set of people one will meet in this journey called life. They only pop in when the need arises and vice versa. That’s about it. That’s what the universe meant for the relationship to be like. Pursue anything deeper and you might just truly get hurt. And a person that was supposed to be there for just a moment and several moments in life becomes an ‘enemy’; hater; and all the titular designation we give people we perceive not to align with our perception, for a lifetime.

Then again the news drops and the questions start. I dare say again before the ‘off moments’ of this fleeting relationship are explored. At the ‘scent’ of that news, the most probable memory that will pop? Is the first moment they ‘popped’ into one's life.

Wondering what I’m trying to get at?

It’s all well and good to expect certain reciprocity in life from people we believe we have invested in emotionally. At the risk of sounding like I am invalidating the hurt and pain that comes from feeling used; if we work ourselves to be aware enough we will know it is not that ‘deep’.

Foster deep relationships! By all means!

That is all I’m about anyway.

I found it very difficult until very recently in the history of my life- to keep ephemeral relationships. It just wasn’t something that came easily to me. I’ve been burnt a thousand times and even recently CHARRED. But I’ll give a recondite relationship a go first.

I however have come to learn. There are different kinds of people that will saunter through one’s life however short or long.

The deal is to be present enough to be able to discern the role of each ‘member’ assigned to your tribe. And deal accordingly.

Before I round this off, best believe that, that flower that we are expected to give each other while living, might only come BECAUSE of a transition. Because at the announcement of a transition is when some people were destined to be known, and WHEN their impact will begin.

Trying to understand the enigma called life is tough work.

My strategy? Work as much as you can to live ‘presently’. It is a very difficult task I tell you; especially in this world that thrives on rat race(s).

For the present? If no one is giving you the flowers. Biko cut some, buy some for yourself and smell it. That person you are expecting that flower from might not even know you want them to give you flowers.

That is the conundrum existing and living is.

Love yourself; love your neighbour; love your country; above all love God; He’s the essence of your being.

#TDK

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expatimes · 3 years

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Pokémon at 25: How 151 fictional species took over the world Written by Oscar Holland, CNNWhen the Gameboy titles "Pocket Monsters: Red" and "Pocket Monsters: Green" were first released in Japan in 1996, few could have predicted what came next.The concept was simple enough: Players would traverse a fictional world capturing, training and battling the creatures that inhabited it -- a mission encapsulated in the game's famous slogan, "Gotta Catch 'Em All." But within just a few years, Pokémon, a portmanteau of the Japanese name "Poketto Monsuta," was a global phenomenon. By 1999, the game had launched in multiple Western markets, later becoming one of the most successful franchises of all time. It spawned an anime series, which was translated into over 30 languages, and trading cards that swept the world's playgrounds during the "Pokémania" of the late 1990s. It also imprinted the identities of 151 entirely fictional characters into the memories of millions. Japanese children participate in a Pokémon card game tournament in 1999. Credit: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty ImagesA quarter of a century on, many first-generation Pokémon are as recognizable to millennials as they are to their children. This is partly thanks to a post-2016 revival inspired by the mobile game "Pokémon Go" and movie "Detective Pikachu." But the franchise's success is about more than clever marketing -- it is the result of unique characters that were universal enough to cross cultures and diverse enough to make catching 'em all a challenge, not a chore.Their origins trace back to Pokémon's creator Tajiri Satoshi, whose childhood love of collecting bugs inspired a game with a strikingly similar premise. Most of the individual designs were, however, the work of illustrator Ken Sugimori. Sugimori had worked with Tajiri on the magazine Game Freak, which would eventually grow into the games company behind Pokémon. As the firm's art director, he brought his collaborator's vision to life through a complex and imaginative taxonomy, complete with individual lines of evolution and fictional genuses, like grass- or dragon-type Pokémon.Bulbasaur, one of the most recognizable Pokémon from the first generation. Credit: Courtesy The Pokemon CompanyGiving the characters distinct personalities was always going to be difficult. Even with an accompanying TV series, most were only able to utter their own names repeatedly. Their appearances, therefore, were especially important.Sugimori's designs were gloriously diverse and grounded in science -- not just biology and zoology, but geology (see Geodude, who was essentially an animated rock), chemistry (the noxious gas clouds Koffing and Weezing), paleontology (the fossil-like Omanyte and Omastar) and physics (the likes of Magneton, who loosely drew on the principles of electromagnetism). The resulting catalog of creatures, known as the Pokédex, was essentially a periodic table for game nerds -- and was, for many, much easier to recall. Going globalPokémon's ability to evolve was part of their appeal, according to Joseph Tobin, a professor of early childhood education at the University of Georgia and editor of the 2004 book "Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon" (a subtitle that, he readily admits, completely failed to predict the franchise's revival)."Along with Tamagotchi, the narrative was that you're caring for them," Tobin said in a video interview. "You care for them so they grow up, and kids can identify with getting stronger. But then you also care for them by (making sure they) don't die. It was unusual to have this in a battle game ... it took some of the features of war and then combined them with nurturance."Squirtle, a light-blue turtle. Credit: Courtesy The Pokemon CompanyThe cutesy Squirtle (top) evoled into Wortortle and, eventually, Blastoise (bottom). Credit: Courtesy The Pokemon CompanyThis juxtaposition was reflected in the designs, which were at once both cute and fierce -- or, through the process of evolution, morphed from cute to fierce, from the big-eyed, babyish Squirtle to the formidable Blastoise (by way of Wartortle). None, however, more aptly embodied this dichotomy than Pikachu, the franchise's most successful and marketable figure. Dumpy and rosy-cheeked, with a high-pitched voice, the electrified mouse was also a powerful fighter. The character's design also played into Japan's wider drive to export pop culture in the 1990s, according to Tobin."The idea was -- or the corporate strategy as a nation was -- we want 'our' mouse to compete with Mickey Mouse," he said. "So I think the fact that Pikachu is a mouse-like creature is not coincidental, but (the character) was made to be hyper-cute -- cuter than Mickey or Minnie."There were, however, fears that Japan's "kawaii" aesthetic wouldn't resonate with kids elsewhere. Superheroes in Western markets were, at the time, often sharper and more muscular than their Japanese counterparts. Ahead of the game's US release, late Nintendo boss Hiroshi Yamauchi was reportedly shown a beefed-up alternative version of Pikachu, though the company's American subsidiary stuck with the original designs for its 1998 launch.Not all of the Pokémon were the talk of the playground -- like Metapod, a crescent-shaped chrysalis. Credit: Courtesy The Pokemon CompanyBut while the likes of Pikachu and Bulbasaur stole the limelight -- and made it into the all-important merchandise -- there was strength in sheer diversity. And some among Pokémon's vast cast were neither cute nor fierce. Take Diglett, a crudely-drawn sausage-shaped mole, or Metapod, a droopy-eyed and immobile chrysalis, whose sole ability is hardening its outer shell. All were relatively useless in battle; none were the schoolyard's most sought-after playing cards. But they were part of a complete universe -- one that had something for everyone. In the gender-normative world of 1990s toy marketing, that mattered, Tobin said. "At the toy store (at the time) you had a blue aisle and a pink aisle," he said. "But Pokémon was created to reach across the aisles."The art of localizationWhile the characters' designs remained the same overseas, Pokémon was nonetheless adapted for different markets, especially when it came to language. Cultural references would, inevitably, be lost in translation: Many characters were rooted in Japanese folklore. While audiences in Japan might have recognized the influence of fox spirit Kitsune in Pokémon like Vulpix, or the mythical thunder beast Rajiu in Pikachu's design, these would never translate.A woman browses goods at a Pokémon store in Tokyo. Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty ImagesBut the Pokémon's new names often remained true to the spirit of the originals. Take Sawamura and Ebiwara, who had been named after a Japanese kickboxer and boxer, respectively, but were called Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan in English, a reference to martial artists that kids in the West would recognize: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Or Ivysaur, whose Japanese name Fushigisou combined "fushigi" (strange) and "sou" (grass), resulting in a similar principle being used for the French version: Herbizarre.Some names, like Pikachu, were transliterated more or less directly from the Japanese. But elsewhere there were portmanteaus like Psyduck (a duck with psychic powers), or names that only resonated with speakers of the language in question, like the slothful Slowpoke. There was also puns of varying quality, from the jellyfish-like Tentacool, to Exeggcute, a collection of furious eggs.Psyduck, a duck with psychic abilities. Credit: Courtesy The Pokemon CompanySome were a little less imaginative. There was a horned seal called Seel, and a crab named Krabby. The serpentine Ekans and Arbok were made simply by reversing the words "snake" and "kobra" (sic). But there were moments of linguistic sophistication, too. The game's three "Legendary Birds" were named Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, with the Spanish suffixes -uno, -dos and -tres reflecting their consecutive order in the Pokédex. An amorphous blob, able to assume the form of anything it saw, was named, appropriately, Ditto.The anime series was also subtly adapted for overseas markets. For instance, human characters were more central to the US version's narrative, because it was believed that "Americans wanted someone to identify with that was more than just bugs and animals," Tobin said. But, he added, Pokémon always retained something quintessentially Japanese."I think the amazing thing is that it wasn't changed that much. Not only was the Japanese-ness not a liability, it was associated with 'cool Japan.' Kids didn't like it because it was Japanese, but they certainly got the idea that it was a little bit exotic," he said, likening it to a type of soft power for the country.'Inter-generational nostalgia'The designs kept on coming. Today, there are almost 900 characters, though many are, arguably, less memorable than their predecessors. Later generations of Pokémon have included Chandelure, a sentient chandelier, Milcery, a cream-based Pokémon resembling a splash of milk, and, inexplicably, a floating keyring called Klefki that is "constantly collecting keys... (and) will protect them no matter what."A Hasbro employee shows off components of the Pokemon Battle Stadium at the company's showroom in New York in February 2000. Credit: Richard Drew/APAffection for the first generation endures, however. The original 151 may represent just a fraction of the Pokédex, but they account for over half of the Pokémon featured in the 2019 movie "Detective Pikachu." In December, a first-edition holographic Charizard card sold for a record $369,000.Tobin, having failed to predict Pokémon's longevity last time around, is more optimistic about the franchise's next 25 years."I was wrong in that I thought Pokémon would, like most kids' media or cultural products, rise and fall and be replaced by the next big thing," he said. "But I think what I, and the other authors in the book, got right was (understanding) what made Pokémon so attractive at the time. And the things that made it attractive were not limited to the culture of the 1990s.Performers dressed as Pikachu during a "Pikachu Outbreak" event hosted bin Yokohama, Japan, in 2018. Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images"I think it's become one of these very rare products that will, now, never end, because it's so much in the popular imagination," he added. "It has this inter-generational value of nostalgia, in the way that parents who grew up with Barbie now might want to (buy them for) their kids, or people who grew up with baseball cards want to do that with their kids."It becomes self-recognizable -- there's value to its own fame."Top image caption: 1999 (L To R) Pikachu, Psyduck, Togepy, Squirtle In The Animated Movie "Pokemon:The First Movie." Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=18465&feed_id=35100

#design #Pokémonat25How151fictionalspeciestookovertheworld-CNN

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adambstingus · 6 years

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Eating Drunkards Stir-Fry With Anthony Bourdain

Way back in 2013, while I was in the throes of researching my book, Pok Pok The Drinking Food of Thailand, I approached Anthony Bourdain and asked if he’d consider meeting up in Thailand to share a drink or two at a spot that specialized in aahaan kap klaem. To my surprise, he proposed devoting an episode of his CNN show Parts Unknown to the drinking food of Thailand. I eagerly volunteered to be his guide. This, I figured, was the perfect opportunity for my first foray into phat khii mao.

After all, of all of Thailand’s drinking food, phat khii mao is perhaps the only dish named for its purpose. The literal translation is “drunkard’s stir-fry.” The explanations for this title vary. Some say a drunk man invented the dish, his hunger inspiring its late-night, raid-the-fridge composition—just as my buddy Adam (who edited the photos in my book) and I, as pissed lads, used to throw together pasta, peanut butter, celery, and chile that we found when we raided his roommate’s fridge late at night. Others claim the name comes from the aggressive seasoning meant to tear through the dulled palates of the inebriated. Whatever the reason, phat khii mao became quintessential boozer grub—fiery and salty enough to encourage another round.

Americans might not know much Thai, but my guess is that if you’re reading this, you have at some point rattled off the words pad kee mao. Like phat thai and green curry, phat khii mao (as I prefer to transliterate the dish’s name) is so ubiquitous on Thai menus in the United States that you’d think you’d find it on every street corner in Thailand. Yet during more than two decades of eating in Thailand, the dish never made it onto my table—not abroad or in the States. I had nothing against it. But in Thailand, at least outside of the tourist ghettos, phat khii mao is just one Central Thai dish among hundreds. There was so much else to try. The story was similar back home, where I typically seek out a Thai restaurant’s specialty—that is, what Thai customers order. And that’s just never happened to be phat khii mao.

I might not have eaten phat khii mao, but I was aware of its defining ingredient: noodles. Nearly every American menu offers the translation “drunken noodles.” In Thailand, I’ve seen the dish in woks and on tables, and it featured noodles as well. This struck me as odd, since I kept hearing from knowledgeable friends in Thailand that the original dish didn’t contain noodles. By now, I’m used to these seemingly contradictory revelations—constant reminders of the chasm between our understanding of “Thai food” and the food of Thailand.

To get some answers and to make sure Tony ate well, I put out the word among friends that I was looking for a place that served a killer version of the noodle-less dish. I settled on Raan Kaphrao Samrap Khon Chawp Kin Phet, or “Restaurant That Sells Stir-Fried Holy Basil Dishes for People Who Like to Eat Spicy Food.” (No shit, that’s more or less the name.) It isn’t frequented only by the intoxicated, but it does attract its fair share. When a waitress, surprised to see a group of farang enter (me, Bourdain, and a camera crew, no less), asked which of us had picked the restaurant, someone nodded in my direction. She smiled and asked, teasingly, “Pen khii mao, chai mai?”—“He’s a drunkard, right?”

Since that visit, I’ve been haunting the restaurant to eat its exemplary version of phat khii mao as well as several other spicy classics and to interrogate the owner, Mae Tu.

Even in Thailand, phat khii mao has become so closely associated with noodles that many people assume it is and always has been a noodle dish. Mae Tu is not one of these people. “The original was not,” she said. “But nowadays, Thai people want to eat everything with noodles.”

Sometimes the evolution of food involves immigration, occupation, and war. In this case, I suspect it’s just because Thai people love noodles. In an ironic twist of cultural crossbreeding, if you conduct an Internet search in Thai for phat khii mao, the top hit is “spaghetti khii mao”—aka the dish made not with wide rice noodles but with spaghetti.

To come up with her rendition, Mae Tu ate the dish all over, then came up with a composite that showcased her favorite qualities (essentially what I try to do at my restaurants), in particular several sources of aroma and heat: phrik khii nuu (rat-shit chiles) crushed with garlic, phrik thai awn (fresh green peppercorns), bai kaphrao (holy basil), krachai (a spindly ginger relative), and slivers of phrik chii faa (skyward pointing chiles). These strike a beautiful balance in the saucy, noodle-less jumble of beef, long bean, baby corn, and onion. To those raised on the starchy American version, Mae Tu’s take is only vaguely recognizable.

Although no rigid formula exists for any food, and particularly not for a dish thought to be concocted on the fly by a sot, there are emblematic seasonings. “You can’t forget the green peppercorns or the krachai,” she told me, which of course, American versions almost always do, perhaps because in America these ingredients, at least until recently, have been almost impossible to find fresh.

She doesn’t explicitly offer phat khii mao with noodles, though she doesn’t deny the occasional customer who requests it. So much of the food in Thailand, especially dishes made to order such as stir-fries and papaya salad, is customizable. This makes it especially susceptible to shifting tastes and fashions, even changes to its fundamental makeup. The noodle version, then, has become as Thai as anything. Still, when I’m crowded around a table full of beer, it’s the original phat khii mao that gets my attention. It’s the dish that sent Tony Bourdain into a fever dream. Mae Tu was proud. To this day, she displays a banner with a photo of her and her family with Tony at the front of the restaurant.

Andy Ricker is a two-time James Beard Award winning chef and owner of Pok Pok Restaurant in Portland, Oregon and several other establishments in Portland and New York, such as Whiskey Soda Lounge, Pok Pok Wing, Pok Pok Noi, Michelin Starred Pok Pok Ny, charcoal company Thaan and a drinking vinegar company called Pok Pok Som.

Reprinted with permission from POK POK The Drinking Food of Thailand by Andy Ricker with JJ Goode, copyright © 2017. Photography by Austin Bush. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/eating-drunkards-stir-fry-with-anthony-bourdain/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/170773421787

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allofbeercom · 6 years

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Eating Drunkards Stir-Fry With Anthony Bourdain

Since that visit, I’ve been haunting the restaurant to eat its exemplary version of phat khii mao as well as several other spicy classics and to interrogate the owner, Mae Tu.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/eating-drunkards-stir-fry-with-anthony-bourdain/

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samanthasroberts · 6 years

Text

Eating Drunkards Stir-Fry With Anthony Bourdain

Since that visit, I’ve been haunting the restaurant to eat its exemplary version of phat khii mao as well as several other spicy classics and to interrogate the owner, Mae Tu.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/eating-drunkards-stir-fry-with-anthony-bourdain/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/eating-drunkards-stir-fry-with-anthony-bourdain/

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