Are people still insisting that passive voice is to be avoided? (originally posted on uCoz)

Part of the problem, if my school experience gives any indication, stems from confusion about what, exactly, passive voice is. Many of my teachers told us to avoid any form of the verb "be", and some even had us memorize a list of its various forms—I can still rattle off "am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been" without even thinking about it—as part of the effort to avoid it. At least one took it a step further and gave instructions to avoid words like "exist" and "become" as well! Even at best, though, looking for "be"s at most serves only as an aid to finding passive voice, not the definitive identification it was sometimes treated as. Not until taking college courses on the Japanese language (which has a verb ending specifically for passive form that gets regular use) did I correctly understand the concept of passive voice.

Toilets Still a Battleground Somehow (originally posted on uCoz)

It all started when a friend on Facebook shared an image macro with some unsettling implications. Well, no, it all started long before that, but the image is what eventually led directly to this blog post. "I don't care what your son 'identifies as'," it said, "he doesn't belong in the bathroom with my daughter." On first glance, to the average person, it may seem innocuous enough. Wanting to keep your daughter safe? That much is understandable... even admirable. However... the post rubbed me the wrong way as soon as I saw it, though it took longer to articulate exactly why.

What's the Big Deal?

Let's consider what kinds of messages that statement sends.

Some Japanese Vocabulary Relevant to Video Games (originally posted on uCoz)

It feels like I'm past due to make some sort of update, and I've been putting this list together on and off for a while, so here it is.

Miscellaneous Vocabulary Related to Video Games

On Lavatories (originally posted on uCoz)

There's a parody of the Christmas carol "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" called "The Restroom Door Said Gentlemen". In short, the singer enters the wrong bathroom after some prankster switches the signs, where he finds "two nuns, three old ladies, and a nurse" who turn on him before he's realized what's going on. It's played for laughs, but considering he meant no harm and didn't even begin to do anything threatening, it hardly seems fair that he's hit with a can of mace and a handbag before he even gets half a chance to explain himself. Ending up with "two black eyes and one high heel up [his] behind" feels like something he ought to be pressing charges for. I get that men are expected to stay out of the women's bathroom, and vice versa (though apparently to a lesser extent, given that most people seem to be generally fine with women using the men's room when the women's room is crowded), but that reaction seems a bit excessive. Yet he might have problems even trying to go to the authorities, since the laws in some places are such that he's committed a crime just by walking through that door. That honestly shocked me when I first heard about it. Social disapproval is one thing, but legal prohibition? What a waste of law enforcement.

Which brings me to what led to this posting, though I've been sitting on it for a few months.

Tricky Japanese terms: さすが (originally posted on uCoz)

Related to やっぱり, but subtly different, さすが is typically used when remarking on something that affirms an expectation or assumption based on a reputation or role that involves the object of the expectation being noticeably different from ordinary. It could be something good, bad, or just strange, but absolutely not commonplace and boring. It also seems to carry a sense of being impressed despite having already expected something impressive.

Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 2 / Legend of the Holy Sword 2 in the works (originally posted on uCoz)

So I've finally gotten around to putting together full text dumps from the game, with everything decoded except control codes (movement, sound effects, music changes, and so on are all lumped in with the text, instead of the text being in its own block and called by reference like it is in most of the other games I've dealt with). Aided by a reasonably functional editor, and a gamefaqs message thread with a remarkable amount of technical data as reference, and BizHawk's RAM Watch functionality to test some things, the section is shaping up rather nicely.

It's not ready to be posted yet, but for now, here's a list of some findings I thought were interesting and possibly surprising.

Tricky (or at least often mishandled) Japanese terms: やっぱり (also やはり) (originally posted on uCoz)

An actual site update is in the works, with the largest part being alternate endings and other additions to the Chrono Trigger page, but in the meantime, have a blog entry.

I've seen やっぱり all too often blindly translated to "as expected". While that isn't a bad approximation of the meaning, it's frequently unnatural in a sentence. So, that brings up the question of what exactly やっぱり is used for. Basically, it appears when a situation is confirmed to be in agreement with previous expectations or assumptions.