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animatedamerican:

parsleysagerosemarytimemachine:

animatedamerican:

jumpingjacktrash:

homunculus-argument:

Cultural worldbuilding tool: Give them an untranslatable word or or expression or a few. Even if this culture doesn’t have its own language, there can be a slang term, or final traces of a lost language that nobody fluently speaks anymore. But those few words have lingered, because they simply cannot be replaced with something else.

Like calling someone _____, which directly translates to “the chicken salesman”, but is actually an expression for a very specific kind of a con man. It’s a reference to an ancient play, in which the scammer in question first steals someone’s chickens, and then sells the victim their own chickens’ skulls back as a magical ward against chicken thieves. Most people who use the term don’t even know the origin, and fucking nobody has actually seen the play.

A single word that means “the weeks of after-image”, a word for that time in mourning, when the grief hasn’t set in yet, but you notice the ‘after-images’ of the deceased everywhere, silence where they used to make noise, their favourite tasks sitting undone.

One that can be translated to both “outlasting determination” and “survival spite”, though neither translation really satisfactorily expresses the feelings involved. It’s a common term for the phenomenon where two elderly people who fucking hate each other live into improbably long ages because both refuse to be the one who dies first.

i love doing untranslatable idioms. for instance, the kyri in my forge verse have an idiom where “painting your wagon” sorta means taking advantage of someone else’s misfortune, but can also refer to a death in the family, in an irreverent way, like ‘kicked the bucket’ or ‘bought the farm’. because it’s a tradition that if you inherit a wagon, or buy one that’s up for sale because its owner died – which is always real cheap, because of the work it takes to make it Not Haunted afterwards – you have to change its whole look. the old superstition is that the ghost won’t recognize it. which gives it some obscure additional meanings based on those superstitions.

so that’s confusing for outsiders, because even if they learn ‘paint the wagon’ as equivalent to ‘kick the bucket’, or as meaning like “bad things happening to that guy turned out lucky for me,” it’s still going to be confusing when someone up and says “eh you just gotta paint the wagon” when they mean like… not giving your new address to your crazy ex.

I once wrote a thing in which a courteous sign-off for a written communication was a phrase that literally translated as “Eyes of my mothers.” A footnote explained that this was an abbreviated version of a longer phrase meaning “May the eyes of all my mothers dilate upon you.”

Untranslatable idioms are fun.

If you like this, there’s a whole game about making words like this: Dialect.

Get some friends together for an evening and create a fading community and the unique turns of language that will remain once everyone is gone. If you like words, and tragedy, and combinations of both, it’s great!

oh hey I lovewords and tragedy and combinations of both!

ivylaughed:

silverssarcasm:

lady-of-the-spirit:

One of my favourite tropes is “character who you wouldn’t think is good with kids is actually great with kids”

Some faves:

• Asshole character who is incredibly sweet and patient with kids
• Cocky bastard character who is very mature and collected when kids are around
• Big strong scary character who is careful and gentle with little tiny ones
• Aloof character who is incredibly tuned in on the needs/fears/struggles of children
• Depressed/Grumpy character who lights up around kids and spreads so much joy
• Character who often states they don’t like kids yet in the presence of one will behave exactly right and/or become very protective of them because it’s the right thing to do

#don’t forget

#‘doesn’t change anything about their personality when kids are around and the kids love it’

baggebythesea:

j4gm:

Every funeral is a Viking funeral when Sea Hawk is invited.

Putting the fun in funeral