Anghel Dust

[davidn]

Today's episode is actually quite short, consisting mostly of a large discussion where we're basically reassuring ourselves that what we're seeing is in fact real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MLLoCwv33E

0:40 Hoping for no further mutations
1:10 Anghel's weapon
3:00 Haah!
3:15 Anghel dust
3:35 Endangered windows
3:55 DavidN sanity check
4:20 School food
4:55 11 Wisdom (5)
5:05 Anghel highlight
5:50 More post-revelations
7:15 The Kalante family tradition
8:15 Nothing but tests
8:55 More plot verification
13:45 Back to the game/cave doorbell
15:05 Happy new year!
15:45 Hibernation
16:15 Enjoy it while it lasts
17:15 Racism count!

Comments

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I was looking at the discrepancies between Nageki and Ryouta's Anghelized names, and Google Translator showed an interesting discrepency.

"Funeris" (Ryouta's title) simply translates to "the funeral," thus making "Textoris Melodia Funeris" into, as I put it, the Weaver of the Song of Death. A rather fitting title considering that, if he'd gotten away at the end of BBL he'd have killed off the entirety of the human race with the Charon virus.
"Funus" (Nageki's title), however, is a bit more specific: "His funeral." I see this as making his title "The Weaver of the Song of His Own Death," which looks like a reference both to his carrying the Charon virus and to how it drove him to kill himself.


For the record, I still stand by my theory that Anghel is the only one with a grasp on reality in this game.

[kjorteo]

Let me just add something to that:

I was wrong about my whole emphasis on the Demon Spores being something in the preparation for the Charon Virus rather than the virus itself (that speech starting at 11:55 in this episode.) I got confused, because Anghel used the Textoris Melodia Funus line in this route, where obviously Ryouta isn't infected yet, forgetting that, um, you know, he's talking to Nageki, Ryouta isn't even in this scene. In BBL, Anghel uses the Textoris Melodia Funeris line on Ryouta when they meet up, which is well into around the 4th class or so, so obviously Ryouta is already infected since Hiyoko is already dead and the whole BBL plot is already underway. Therefore, the Demon Spores probably are the Charon Virus and there is no time-based contradiction in that regard after all. Sorry, don't mind me!

[kjorteo]

Hah, you used the Psychological Difficulties test pattern. :D

Edit: And the Anghel Dust quip made the highlight list and the episode subtitle! Goodness, your selections are getting more and more flattering, thank you. :)

[xaq.livejournal.com]

*checks the test pattern again*Wow, I didn't even catch that. Heh, score! :D

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Something that just crossed my mind....who's this new character you guys mentioned at the start of the 3rd term?

[davidn]

It's this alert-looking pigeon, he's on the characters page - he appeared in a screenshot with the new golden pheasant character and a partridge that looked suspiciously like Shuu, but I can't seem to find the wider screenshot at the moment.

Oh - the file name might actually give away more than I had hoped for...!

[kjorteo]

Here you go.

Looking at the filename of your new link now, I see that I totally called it with my guess back then.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Okay, yeah, that's who I thought you were talking about.

Moa already told who all three of them were in her Tumblr post where that screenshot came from. (http://moa810.tumblr.com/post/20341707946/tohri-the-golden-pheasant-was-an-inventor-in-the)That's Ryuuji, Ryouta's dad. The Shuu-like Partridge isShuu, back when he still used the name "Isa Souma." The golden pheasant, Tohri, was a co-worker of theirs who has a vendetta against Shuu for, basically, being the better bird-scientist.

In other words, yes, Teo completely bulls-eyed them with that guess.

[premchaia_pre4]

Hang on! Something seems a bit off. “textoris” would be genitive, no? My Latin dictionary doesn't list “melodia” directly for some reason, but I'm assuming it's first declension, which would make that a valid nominative or vocative, which would make that the primary noun. “funeris” is the genitive form of “funus”. So I'd think it would be more “weaver's death/funeral song”. If it were “funebris” (or a number of other possibilities) it would be more like “weaver's deadly song”.

But I'm fairly rusty, and it's not implausible that Hatoful would have somewhat wobbly Latin either, I suppose. Is there a more authoritative source around somewhere?

(Why can't I preview my comments in this theme? And why can't I turn off the auto newline handling? Am I missing the button somewhere? (in davidn's Solstice voice) Goodness' sake!)

[premchaia_pre4]

Which I suppose could make sense either way, as vs lbh vagrecerg gur travgvir nf orvat gur fbhepr bs gur fbat, vg pbhyq or jrnire svapurf (ol rkgrafvba bgure oveqf), naq vs lbh vagrecerg vg nf orvat gur gnetrg bs gur qrngu, vg pbhyq or gur bayl perngherf xabja gb npghnyyl qb nal jrnivat, but those links seem a bit weak.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I took a less-than-optimal route to those translations, to be honest:

-Punched "Textoris Melodia Funeris/Funus" into Google Translator
-Took what came up, "weaver funeral melody," and reworded it into something that sounded Anghelish without losing the basis of the translation.

In my defense, what I arrived at seems to work pretty well.

[davidn]

Right. Makes perfect sense now you say it.

I can't believe the extent to which... this all makes sense, compared to the amount we were all laughing at it for being so meaninglessly insane the first time around...

[davidn]

I genuinely do not have a shpxvat clue - I think I must have been off sick the day we did this in school.

[davidn]

I don't know - it sounds dangerous ;) It's difficult to say, given how surprising it's already been that this game knew what it was doing to us for so long, how far its knowledge goes and when we're just projecting things on to it... and I'm afraid to speculate.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

...what?

[davidn]

Gur EBG13 pvcurerq grkg, fbzrjung harkcrpgrqyl, vf gur cneg bs gung cbfg gung V haqrefgbbq gur zbfg.

[premchaia_pre4]

I only got to take two levels of Latin in high school because I ran out of high school before I could get to the third level. I really wish I'd done more!

[premchaia_pre4]

I'm beginning to wonder whether you people are making it up that you find this sort of after-the-initial-observation connection surprising! I find it surprising that creatures would find this sort of thing surprising, myself, rather than merely delicious.

This is oddly similar to the difference between my response and you folks's to Hanano Puzzle, in retrospect.

[davidn]

I was taught neither Latin nor the finer points of the construction of grammar... which made it more difficult to learn how any other language worked, really.

[davidn]

Why would I make anything up at this point? This game makes it completely unnecessary.

[premchaia_pre4]

Somehow an awful lot of the human-types around me have this general instinctive recoil when confronted with strongly formal or abstract methods of almost any description. Mostly in mathematics, but language seems to count too. They have this sort of wishing they did more thing without ever actually liking it, whereas I always wished I did more and enjoyed it immensely but often don't have the resources to progress very quickly or steadily nowadays. I never really understood this!

(I don't know whether you fall into that category or not, from your note. I was just making a related general observation.)

[xaq.livejournal.com]

*10 minutes of confusion and searching later*

Oh, okay. Sorry, this is the first I've ever even heard of this particular cypher.

(Bancuhymmo, E's suna y vyh uv dra Al Bhed myhkiyka vun kuuvpymm ahlnobdeuhc mega drec.)

[davidn]

Yes, sorry :) ROT13 has been around for a very long time, having the advantage that the same algorithm can be used to both cipher and decipher text.

I liked Al Bhed a lot, though - just by shifting the vowels and consonants around separately, the end result was a language that sounded... believably pronounceable, for the most part, with words like "essateydamo". It instilled a fascination in me that I hadn't felt since Commander Keen :)