Other
facefault - humorous collapse prompted by another character saying something particularly weird or out-of-context
“I woulda bit all their heads off already/Yeah, well, as much as we all admire Ozzy” - reference to an incident during which Ozzy Osbourne, a British rocker, bit the head off of a dead bat during a concert.
Osaka Hall - a concert hall in the city of Osaka
Budokan - some kind of concert hall, or annual band event, or something like that. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it without really knowing what it was...
Richi-Rich - stupid, stupid reference to the American movie, “Richie Rich,” about a little rich boy whose last name was Rich and first name was Richard (Richie). I think it was a comic at some point, too, I don’t know why. Another horrible pun from Daisuke.
“’Scuse me, while I kiss the sky” - line from a Jimi Hendrix song, “Purple Haze”
pachinko - Japanese gambling machine
udon - a kind of Japanese noodles no da.
E-Boy - electric guitar boy-->electric boy-->E-Boy. Confused yet?
“...about a dear friend who’s going away.” - I shouldn’t tell you about this, you SHOULD be able to figure it out for yourself, but - well - just prepare for some
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Tohru wrote this song about her mother, who committed suicide when Tohru was seven. There.
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gay porn - Chiiru-chan and I like it, so everyone else should, too. XP
banana symbolism - forget it. If you can’t get your mind in the gutter long enough to figure it out yourself, this is not the RP for you.
nut’n honey - stupid family in-joke belonging to moi. Steal it and die.
moi - French word for me.
“... and a giant talking marshmallow is Prime Minister” - paraphrased from the book Big Trouble, by Dave Barry. You want to know the circumstances, read the book. ^.^
Vulcan Neck Pinch - if you don’t know this, you’re REALLY sheltered, but oh well. Here goes. It’s a little trick from the Vulcan species of Star Trek which consists of pinching a little bundle of nerves between the shoulder and the neck, thereby rendering the victim unconscious. Do not try this at home.
salaryman - refers to any standard Japanese businessperson
’shipper - short for relationshipper, i.e. a fan of a certain couple. Dun have to be a straight couple, either - I own up to being a Kyo and Kaoru ’shipper. ^.^ Man, those two wanna get snuggly - and how!
Stradivarius - a) a maker of fine violins in the 18th or 19th century or some old time like that, I forget. b) a violin made by Stradivarius, reported by Dave Barry to contain twenty ounces of pure heroin in a secret compartment opened by pressing your chin. ^.^ Yes, I do like Dave Barry, why do you ask?
black holes - stars that were so large that when they collapsed into themselves after running out of fuel, they collapsed so small and became so dense that their gravity is strong enough to suck in even light. Er - so I like SF, so bite me.
“The Rebels - they’re on Dantooine...” - if you don’t get this, you’re from another planet. Anyway - it’s from the first Star Wars movie (episode 4, that is). The bad guys are trying to make heroine Princess Leia tell them where the Rebel base is; she holds out for a long time, then lies and tells them it’s on a planet named Dantooine. BTW, this sparked a HUGE OOC bubble conversation about various merits/demerits of episode 1.
“I claim the Fifth” - okay, for everyone who hasn’t passed basic civics or watched any given police/lawyer TV show, the Fifth Amendment provides an accused or suspected criminal the right to remain silent and not incriminate him/herself.
“*sitting in office working, like Tetsuya*” - reference to Open Circle, a super-cool serial roleplay perpetrated - uh - written by me, Chiiru-chan, Giga, and our friend Ryuujin. Go read it! https://www.angelfire.com/anime3/opencircle/ Anyway, the actual ref is to my character Tetsuya, who - what’s a good non-spoiler way to put this - he sits in his office and works a lot, even though his job wouldn’t seem to require it. n_n;;; I don’t know why he’s always in his office. Maybe he just likes it there.
flat - British term for an apartment, but I bet you already knew that, didn’t you? Smart-aleck.
Chuck E. Cheese’s - okay, this is a bit weird - it’s like this big restaurant/playground for kids. It serves mostly pizza, and you can play skee-ball and climb around and yell and stuff. What scares me most of all is that I’ve BEEN to one... (I was a child once, technically, but I’m glad I grew out of it as quickly as I did.)
sukiyaki - chicken on a stick. Yummy. (Pickles on a stick! Whoo! Uh - don’t mind me... *hides*)
soba noodles - buckwheat noodles. Nasty. >.<
“*pokes fingers together in well-known gesture* Rabu rabu!” - heh - very interesting story behind this one. See, “rabu” is the way Japanese people say the word “love” (in English, the Japanese word is “ai”), because they don’t have an l sound or a v sound, the o sound in love is closer to the Japanese a sound than to the Japanese o sound, and the only consonant sound a word can end in is n, so - uh - that just made things more confusing. Anyway, don’t take my word for it - ask a Japanese person to say “love” to you! The gesture is just a thing that grew out of Chiiru-chan’s and my first-year Japanese class, when Chiiru used to fight with a guy named Blake all the time. Our mutual friend Brian joked that the two were really in love, and it was he who coined the gesture. I don’t know where he got it, and frankly I’m not that curious.
“I am the egg man, goo goo goo joob” - this is a (probably inaccurate) reference to - uh - somebody. I really forget where I read this, but I think it was a Dave Barry column/book and referenced the Beatles. If anyone else knows, tell me pwease...
“Remember, you can’t sound worse than Ozzy” - maybe it’s just me, but Ozzy Osbourne has a TERRIBLE singing voice. It’s not like Kyo, who would have a good voice if a) he took lessons and b) he actually sang instead of screaming/vomiting.
a cappella - music term meaning unaccompanied singing
nympho - short for nymphomaniac, which in turn refers to - ah - a woman who likes sex. A LOT.
“Simon, by Lifehouse” - Lifehouse is a spiffy American band, and Simon is a song they play.
“Linkin to the Park/[I try so hard, an got so fa...]” - Linkin Park is another American band, and the line Daisuke tries to sing is from their song “In the End,” which I like too much for my own good.
“Whispers in the Dark” - a song Chiiru wrote regarding another roleplay of ours... Lyrics are available at Open Circle, in the Side Stories section, at the bottom of the second part of the side story “Whispers in the Dark.” See the connection?
“Breathing” - another song by Lifehouse. A very good song by Lifehouse, if I do say so myself.
arse - Brit for “ass.” Daisuke likes Brit swear words.
“[Sanku yuu. Rinken Paaku, yo!]” - Daisuke tries to speak English. Daisuke has little success. What he’s saying is, “Thank you. Linkin Park, yo!”
W007 - this is l337, a language spoken primarily by hackers, gamers, and nerds. Basically, it means “whoo!” Very clever, yes? Nope, I don’t think so, either.
“*heads off in a funny Mel Brooks-ish type of swagger*/*...not walking that way...*” - Mel Brooks, acclaimed comedic director, has a kind of running gag where one character will say “Walk this way!” and then walk funny, and the other character(s) will follow the first chara while walking in the same funny way. Or maybe that was only in Robin Hood: Men in Tights... either way... it’s pretty funny...
“Rock the Kasbah” - there’s some party song I hear on the radio every so often, and the part of the chorus is “rock the Kasbah” - don’t ask me what it means, I think it’s an eighties song.
Amelie - a French movie highly recommended to me by Chiiru. I really am going to watch it someday...
“The Fangirls Strike Back” - not so clever pun on The Empire Strikes Back.
improv - short for improvisation, which means making it up as you go along.
“Helen of Troy” - a woman famous in Greek history/literature for causing both the Trojan War and The Illiad/The Odyssey. Supposedly THAT beautiful.
staff-lined paper - have you ever seen sheet music? With those rows of five lines that each have a squiggly thing at the beginning? Well, those rows are called staves (plural of “staff”), and that’s what music is written on. I could get MUCH more confusing and detailed here, but I think my explanation will suffice.
“What time would you say this was in?” - it just so happens that the method of determining what each beat in music is worth is called time. Depending on the time of the piece, a quarter note (which in standard four-four time lasts for exactly the beat) might be only half or a third of the beat. Boy... that band training never really does wear off...
The entirety of the lyrics Tohru writes for that weird bass line Daisuke comes up with - okay, that song is a poem I wrote, ages ago, and after we started Hidden Faces I thought that it might make an okay song if we could come up with a weird enough melody/harmony. For a detailed explanation of all the symbolism and references, email me!
Mozart - famous classical composer. He did The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, whole bunch of famous stuff like that. Naturally, he’s one of Kazuhiko’s idols.
“Wanna drink tea with us?” - Japanese punk way of trying to pick up girls. Well, that’s the one *I* learned, anyway. The more *polite* one.
“... going down for the third time...” - common American folklore that drowning people only die the third time they go under. Is it just me, or do Americans have really dumb folklore?
“... call 119” - 119 is the Japanese equivalent of 911. That’s why it’s all, you know, just 911 reversed and stuff.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” - this is a reference to a computer game called Myth II: Soulblighter, where there are these dwarves, and they throw/set bombs, and a lot of times when they throw bombs you can hear them yelling “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” (Or sometimes “Burn, baby, burn!”) Maybe it’s a reference to something else, but I don’t know what.
“off by half a measure” - a measure is yet another music thing which divides music into certain even amounts of beats. In standard four-four time, there are four beats to a measure.
“pretty awesome penpal from America who sings” - yeah, that’s actually Chiiru. It’s our RP, so you can just bite us.
Shin’ichi Akemi - the Shin’ichi is out of nowhere, but Akemi is the middle name of me an’ Chiiru’s best friend Nicole. n_n She played some fangirls for us a while back, and we wuv her to pieces.
“party like it’s 1999” - there’s a pretty famous Prince song which enjoyed a revival in 1999 about the world ending in 1999 so everyone should party like crazy. It’s kind of funny to think about it now that it’s 2002 and the world pretty obviously didn’t end.
“Keep that funky music goin’, white boy” - from some song or other.
“Work work work work work!” - I didn’t realize this was a reference when I made it, but actually this is something Mel Brooks’s character in Blazing Saddles says. (Of course, we all know what work HE was getting up to. ^.^)
Engrish - well, when Japanese people try to speak English, they don’t do very well because there are a lot of consonant sounds in English that there aren’t in Japanese. Also, a lot of times their grammar is kind of bad, because they weren’t taught English well or forgot what they were taught. The results - hilarities such as “All your base are belong to us” and “Pocari Sweat” - are known as Engrish (Japanese people can’t pronounce “L” sounds).
“I’m Yayoi/No wonder, with a name like that” - this is a terrible little pun thing I came up with, so blame me... Yayoi is a Japanese girl’s name, and there’s a word - yaoi - which is usually used to describe anime/manga/fanfiction that contains gay sex (shounen-ai, “boy-love,” has a similar meaning but is usually limited just to romantic stuff [i.e. only implied sex]). Anyway - Yayoi - yaoi - you can see the pun, right?
“*needs a lexicon or something*” - yes, as hard as it is to believe, Richi is still that innocent. Well - close enough to that innocent so that he has no idea what yaoi fic is. And of course a sheltered little rich boy knows nothing of anime conventions.
Daisuke’s “being-around-Tomo-face” - in typed-faces, that face and his normal “^.^” look alike, but in real life (or anime), the former expression would be a sort of polite but mistrustful inscrutability, while the latter is an “Oh-ho!” expression.
“richer than Croesus” - in the words of various Terry Pratchett characters, Croesus was “some rich old foreign bugger.” Other than saying that he was either a Greek or Roman legend, I have nothing more to add.
“Noh masks/hero mask and oni mask” - Noh is a kind of traditional Japanese theatre, and all the players wear masks which represent their role - i.e. hero, woman, oni (demon).
100,000 yen - I’m not sure of the current exchange rate, but it’s about 100-120 yen to the dollar, I think. So - about a thousand dollars. Not bad for an obscure starving artiste.
shogi - Japanese chess. I think. A very old and respected Japanese board game, anyway.
“*quoting Snape unconsciously*” - c’mon, you’ve at least HEARD of Harry Potter, right? Well, Snape is one of the professors (he’s played by Alan Rickman - Alan Rickman is God, or at least the Metatron), he hates Harry, and is generally unpleasant and sarcastic. The “tangled love lives” bit comes from book four.
E-string - one of the strings on the bass, the one that plays E. Dur - hey! As I was just informed by Matt Mezynski, it’s also the lowest string.
Richard Madoc - a character from The Sandman (a kick-ass American graphic novel series) who got smacked down by Morpheus (the main character) for doing bad things; he got overloaded by ideas and got so desperate that he was writing them down on walls with his fingertips. A very gruesome little story.
The Golden Compass/daemons - The Golden Compass and its sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, are real, very, very good books. You should read them. For those of you who don’t have the time at the moment because you’re reading HF (we love you! *hearts*), daemons are normally the opposite gender of their humans. For convenience, I’ll just type up all the daemons with their humans, genders, and fixed species. (Until around puberty, daemons can change shape; afterwards, they settle in one form for the rest of their lives. I’ll bet you a lot of money that Richi’s daemon didn’t settle till he was nearly 14. n_n) Anyway, the list:
Tohru - Cesca, phoenix, male
Daisuke - Wolfwood, chocolate lab, female
Shuichi - Moe, Great Dane, male (for the record, I thought Moe should be female because of the thing with Leesa, but I was overruled)
Yoshi - Liam, ferret, male
Kazu - Susanna, chameleon, female
Richi - Niro, genet (a small, catlike little critter from South Africa with a pretty spotted coat), male
Another thing to remember - daemons can touch each other to a certain extent, but touching another person’s daemon is taboo. Unless you’re lovers or something. ^.^
“*built and colored like Toby*” - Toby is my family dog; he’s a chocolate lab, but with a very dark coat and a very traditional British lab look. He’s a total pain, but I love him. n_n
“No one expects the English Phoenix!” - terrible, terrible reference to a Monty Python sketch - that I haven’t even seen... n_n;;; Anyway, the actors keep popping up and saying “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!” the whole time.
madrigal - some type of classical music that I forget. Chiiru’s the song expert around here.
Daisuke’s Humphrey Bogart impression - Humphrey Bogart was a very, very famous and respected actor for a loooooong time. He’s best known for his roles in Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, and he was also in Sabrina and Mutiny on the Bounty. (And probably a thousand other movies, too, but those are the four I remember.) He had a funny kind of slurred voice, hence “shweetheart” and “kish.”
capisce - Italian for “Understand?/Got it?”, as all viewers of The Godfather know.
“And keel us slow, senor?” - okay, there’s this movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or something, which I haven’t watched, but there are some guys with horrendous Mexican accents, and I believe that to be one of their lines. (How should I know for sure? I got it from one of Richie’s bad impressions in It.)
“You can drink now if you want” - in most countries that are not America, the legal drinking age is 16; Germany is definitely one of those countries, I’m pretty sure Japan is, too. Oh, and the age of consent is 14. -_- Pervy Japanese people.
“*Soup-Nazi voice*” - the Soup Nazi was a character from the long-running American comedy show Seinfeld who wouldn’t serve anyone who offended him. If you didn’t know that, you haven’t talked to people or watched TV for many, many years.
Ieyasu Maria - the Maria is nothing special, but Ieyasu was the name of the first Japanese shogun (military overlord).
“*kawaii ki pajamas*” - a reference to a pic I drew of Richi asleep and more adorable than ever. It was a combination birthday/thank-you present for my friend Ki-chan from Deviantart.com, so I drew the Japanese character for “tree” - ki - all over his pajamas. n_n With luck, I’ll have that pic up on this site soon.
