There's a magical moment during the awakening process when it seems like anything is possible. I often have strange thoughts during that magical time -- most of which make no sense at all. But sometimes they do, even though they are probably not profound.

Here's one from my most recent nap: I bet you cannot whisper Chinese and be understood. How would you represent "tones"?

UPDATE: Speaking of strange thoughts, I really like this page. It's an attempt at perverse retconning of various series, some of which are anime. One of the most interesting is that the characters on Gilligan's Island represent the 7 Deadly Sins. And Gilligan himself is the Devil; the island is Hell, where he is punishing the others.

One time J mentioned his idea for an alternate retcon for Hand Maid May: that "Cyber X" was a villainous guy attempting a hostile retroactive takeover of Cyberdyne. It'd fit right in on that page.

By the way, some of the theories are not so perverse. The first one for Haibane Renmei agrees with what I think about the series. And it whould be pointed out that the whole page is loaded to the gills with spoilers.

UPDATE: Getting down to the section on Haruhi, the first entry is an old friend: it's really Kyon that's God, and Haruhi is just a physical manifestation of Kyon's power.

But the second speculation is a more interesting one. It has to do with Mikuru; who is she, really? Spoilers, ho:

My wildass speculation on that was that Mikuru is actually the daughter of Kyon and Haruhi. But their speculation is that Mikuru is actually Kyon's younger sister.

If so, she must be using an assumed name. We never hear what Kyon's sister is named, but presumably she's got one. I think it would cause comment.

Of course, if this whole thing is Kyon's solipsistic fantasy, then perhaps his sister doesn't have a name. And maybe he himself doesn't, either. Who says a solipsistic fantasy has to be complete?

Anyway, if Mikuru really is Kyon's younger sister, it adds an entire fetish element to the whole thing, don't it? Siscon, anyone? And it does lead to the question of just how time-travel technology became so common so soon. My idea of Mikuru as Kyon's daughter at least provides a bit longer for that to get developed. (But adds its own fetish which may be even creepier. Eeew.)

If you feel the urge to write spoilers in comments, please remember how to form the spoiler tag: (spoiler)your text(/spoiler) except use square brackets instead of parenthesis. Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in at 06:12 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 291 words, total size 3 kb.

1 You're kidding, right? Tonal shift doesn't require volume.

Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at July 04, 2007 07:11 PM (Ef+b7)

2 Well, I just tried it and it seems to work okay.

Posted by: Aaron at July 04, 2007 07:11 PM (IPZE2)

3

It's not a question of volume, it's a question of voice. Whispering means you don't run your vocal chords; instead you modulate a hiss. That leads to some ambiguity in English, most notably the fact that it becomes impossible to differentiate "s" from "z", but not much and the language contains enough redundancy so it isn't an issue.

But if there's no voice, how do you do tones?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 04, 2007 07:18 PM (+rSRq)

4 After some more experimentation, I think that you can vary the pitch of a hiss through constriction of the windpipe and mouth. Well enough for me to understand myself, and I'm pretty sure other Chinese speakers would understand me too (though I can't be certain without trying).

Posted by: Aaron at July 04, 2007 07:33 PM (IPZE2)

5 Since whispering (can) produce(s) a subset of white noise, you can use your lips and tongue to do act as a band-pass filter, and represent the tone shifts with frequency shifts of the white-noise.  This, with amplitude and/or emphasis substituting for high tones, plus context, will probably suffice to make most whispering intelligible.

Also, fourth tones are generally shorter in duration, so that kind of helps also.

I don't know if I'd try pillow talk with a fluent partner, being a beginner at the language.  Too much room for misunderstanding.  Or hilarity.

The problem is greater with both Cantonese (7 tones, give or take), and Vietnamese (4 or 5? tones, and important slight differences in vowel pronunciation).

---

That half-awak moment has produced many great solutions to engineering problems, which turn out not to work when you get to the office and start putting them to paper.  And for me, it has also produced hilarious topics for blog posts... which turn out not to be nearly as funny after breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee.

Posted by: Kurt Duncan at July 04, 2007 07:38 PM (AdzZZ)

6 Personally, I like the Evangelion entry on that Wild Guessing page.

"Oh, wait that's actually true.  And that.  And I guess that's true too... Huh."

Posted by: Dave at July 04, 2007 07:50 PM (mjr3n)

7 Spoiler for Haruhi: Mikuru doesn't look quite similar enough to imouto-chan to be her adult form, but does look similar enough to be related, so it's possible she's Kyon and Haruhi's daughter - or imouto-chan's daughter, for that matter.
Spoiler for Jungle Guu: It's clear from the series that Guu is some sort of elder god - but not actually evil.  She's just bored.
Spoiler for Calvin and Hobbes: Everything in Calvin and Hobbes is literally true.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 04, 2007 08:25 PM (PiXy!)

8 Good stuff.

I got quite a kick out of the Eva ones.  But the Haibane ones confused me... I thought the first one (who the girls are, why they're there) was generally accepted as canon.

Posted by: Big D at July 04, 2007 09:17 PM (JJ4vV)

9

Regarding Haibane Renmei:

It's beyond dispute that all Haibane have previously lived as humans, and that their cocoon dreams are about how they died. But why they died is less clear. Some fans, including me, think all Haibane are suicides. Others think that it's only the sinbound.

But I don't want to turn this thread into a discussion of that series, OK?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 04, 2007 09:57 PM (+rSRq)

10 Sure.  Switching topics... your first paragraph intrigues me--because I'm a lucid dreamer.  I tend to have most of my dreams toward the morning, and as I start to wake up, I gain control of them, to the extent that I can recognize plotlines, and change things around as I see fit.  I don't dream schematics, alas, just story concepts and ideas, and I'm not a writer any more than I am an engineer.  Still, it never fails to fascinate me.

What's really interesting are the (thankfully rare) nightmares--they always involve loss of control over the dream, preventing me from taking control, even if I'm self-aware.

Posted by: Big D at July 04, 2007 10:25 PM (JJ4vV)

11

I'm Chinese.  As far as I can tell, it's possible to whisper in Chinese.  Are all of the tonals preserved?  Probably not.  But that doesn't mean you can't still understand from context and other non-verbal cues.

But I don't think trying to whisper in Chinese is the same as, say, trying to whisper underwater ...

Posted by: bkw at July 05, 2007 08:03 AM (h/KQ9)

12 Uf da, my bad!  Can't edit the posting....

Posted by: Jonathan Souza at July 06, 2007 03:00 PM (69Thb)

13 Try it again. Use "spoiler" instead of "spoilers".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 06, 2007 04:12 PM (+rSRq)

14 Okay, let's try again...

Haruhi thoughts-
My theory?  Kyon is a faery/changling (Western tradition) that is trying to get OUT of Fairyland, by trying to find the normal, "real", banal world.  The problem is, Fairyland and the small pocket universe he created(a'la Serial Experiments Lain) isn't willing to let him go just yet...and Haruhi is the thing they created so that Kyon won't leave...she traps him again in his world (which is symbolized by the black and white turning to color).   In the process, they also draw in three other entities-

Yuki Of The Logic-Her story is true, she's a part of a entity of pure logic, who's only mistake is to think that Haruhi is the one in control.

Itsuki The Builder-He's fighting the Shinjin because they're destroying the world that they think Haruhi is creating, and the rest of the Organization is trying to keep the "real world" around, in an effort to anchor the world and hopefully retain a "real world" that would exist beyond Haruhi.  They were dragged in from reality (their "awakening") and think that Haruhi is creating the world.  When it's actually Kyon doing the making...

Mikuru The Eternal-She forever exists out of time, as "frames" in a world that she can never quite completely interact with, because she's like The Doctor-forever not quite in sync and possibly being somewhere before, during, and after...and around.  And, she knows how it all ends...

And, they're all making the assumption (tho Yuki suspects otherwise near the end) that Haruhi is the prime mover, and drawing Kyon into their conspiracies, because Kyon isn't "unique" except that Haruhi chose him.  She respects him-and as long as she likes the world he made, that world will stay.

Remember, it was the last episode (airdate wise) where Kyon accepted the world that Haruhi created, mostly...it stablizes.  Perhaps he knows that he is the maker of this world...or not.

Tho, I wonder what a Kyon/Lain crossover would be like...

Posted by: Jonathan Souza at July 06, 2007 08:28 PM (yWPgT)

15 one <spoiler>two</spoiler>three

Posted by: kumar at July 08, 2007 09:35 PM (L0KHa)

16 Use square brackets, not angle brackets.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 08, 2007 09:51 PM (+rSRq)

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