garran | English to english

AFAIK, the closest we have is make out, but with some connotations. As in, you do not snog your wife, but you do snog your mistress.

They left in the snogging, no substitution. I was kind of suprised, actually.

Really? That's awesome!

-Garran

(deleted comment)

I like "snog"; mostly because it's so entertainingly irreverent, and so very british. It made them sound very like teenagers, still a little uncomfortable with the activities they're describing, so I rather approved.

You're right, though, that it's a nice touch that Harry treated it differently when it was actually happening to him.

-Garran

AGH!!

I shouldn't talk to anybody anymore. ;____;

Whoops, sorry. I guess I've just been assuming that if an LJ entry has anything in it that even remotely looks like it may possibly turn into being Harry Potter related, people who don't want to see spoilers are avoiding it. I pretty much avoided the whole internet for three days, out of fear.

I assume that's what you're talking about, anyway.

I wasn't even aware the edition released in America was different at all. If it's true, this discovery upsets me quite a bit.

Well, I can't be certain, given what others are saying in these comments, but it certainly was true of the first five books. Britishisms are Americanized, and, for some bizarre reason, the word 'Philosopher' was excised from the title and content of the first book.

Canadians get the original versions, on rainforest-friendly paper.

-Garran

Movies, too. In the first movie, scenes in which references were made to the "Philosopher's Stone" were reshot and "Sorcerer's Stone" was filmed instead, for the American release. I never did find out what was the reason for all that, but I suspected it might have something to do with what "sorcerer" and "philosopher" mean to us, in America. Or maybe Rowling just thinks we're all daft and hates us. *shrugs*

I think it had less to do with Rowling and more to do with her editors/publishers. I could be completely wrong, of course.

Apparently Rowling took the suggestion of her American editor Arthur Levine that the original title would mislead her audience about the contents of the book.

So yeah. She thinks that children are stupid. :D I suppose her other agent didn't suggest that "Philosopher's Stone" would go over kids' heads...

Remember that the title of the book was changed first. Then the title of the American movie plainly had to be the same as the American book. For immediately evident reasons. The public would figure it was a whole new movie, of course. Unless some sort of hypothetical "thought" occurred! And we obviously can't rely on that.

...but I suspected it might have something to do with what "sorcerer" and "philosopher" mean to us, in America.

Really? How do you think the meanings differ?

Even if there has been such linguistic drift, though, 'philosopher's stone' is a term with meaning beyond its component parts; it's a pretty well-known alchemical myth. One of the most bizarre things about the (thoroughly bizarre) switch is that they took this element, which was the product of a certain amount of consideration and research, and replaced its name with something random that they had made up!

-Garran

It's more the way in which "philosopher" differs from "sorcerer". A "philosopher" would not really be one who deals in magical things, but a "sorcerer" would. I figured whoever made the change thought the American public too stupid to understand the term.

Argh. I can't figure out why you say the name was changed or whether you say it was a good idea. I'm guessing you prefer "Sorcerer". But you think whoever decided on "Sorcerer" originally is an idiot.

You'd be crazy to believe that, so hopefully that's not...? Meh, I already have a bad opinion of you from your "Hi Garran. You make me want to kill myself" incident.

Er...? She offered a hypothetical reasoning for the change, but I don't think she made a value judgement, or expressed a preference between the titles.

-Garran

Hmm~ There seemed to be a reason that it was a more appropriate word. So naturally one would prefer it.

If there's a good reason for the change, why insult the person who made it? And if it was a bad reason, why mention it at all? Not I understand.

And if it was a bad reason, why mention it at all?

Because sometimes people do things for stupid reasons, but that's still easier to understand than when no reason can be discerned at all!

-Garran

Hai...

Wow, something is wrong with you.

Seeing as you don't really know me, I can understand why you managed to so completely misunderstand the things I've said here and prior. I didn't say them to be understood by the general public, I said them to a friend that I knew would understand, because he knows me and would know where I was coming from.

That said, why don't you try not being rude to people you don't even know, next time?

You spoiled an important part of HP6, remember, and you didn't give a warning. And, I mean, I can go and read that whole March 31 thread right now - it's really obvious that, although he was fine with it, he did not expect it at all.

For goodness' sake, you got angry at him and told him that if he didn't like what you were saying, then the alternative was to kick you out. That's not some kind of conversation! That's you being an incredible jerk to Garran, who is too much your friend for that to bother him.

Certainly I wouldn't carry this irritation over to real life, if I ever met you... But I'm not going to be nice to you here if you're a jerk here. If you're going to flame people in public, it will bother their friends. If you're going to spend three days avoiding spoilers, then immediately post them yourself, that's just a little absent-minded. But if you give an excuse and hey, it's not an excuse, it's a suggestion that it's our fault, that we shouldn't have been reading here in the first place, what do you want, applause?

The above post was pretty much an excuse to mention this thing that is wrong with me, and to take revenge for all the time I spent trying to figure out what you were saying.

(It was that the American distributors didn't think we'd understand "Philosopher's Stone" was a magical artifact, right? But I rejected that for a while, because you were talking about the meaning of "philosopher" and "sorcerer" as if something unexpected were happening.)

I can't believe you're still harboring dislike from four months ago. But since you are, I'll address it.

I wasn't angry with him when I told him he could kick me out if he wanted. I was trying to give an explanation for my behavior. I was posting because I thought I was allowed to. If I was mistaken somehow and I was not allowed to, I was making sure he knew he had every right to take that privledge from me and I would not complain. Don't confuse directness with anger.

As for the HP spoiler, I'm going to have to assume you're talking about where I spoiled Masamage up there. Yes, I made a mistake. I had assumed that, like me, people who wanted to read Harry Potter would be avoiding ANY LJ entry that looked even remotely like it could lead to spoilers. Since this post was talking about Harry Potter, I figured anyone who cared would be avoiding it. If you'll notice, I apologized for my error.

As for "flaming people in public", in that March 31st thread, I was NEVER flaming Garran. I would not do that. I was ranting to him about a problem I have with something. So, essentially, it looks like you're pissed at me for some misunderstanding you made four months ago. I just wish you'd kindly leave me alone.

For the record, yes, I was saying that maybe whoever was in charge of the change thought Americans wouldn't understand why a magical object was called "Philosopher's Stone", but they would understand that from "Sorcerer's Stone", because of the difference between what "sorcerer" and "philosopher" mean to us. I will add that I'm not sure what they may or may not mean to people in other countries, though. That was never part of my equation.

Um, I don't think that's correct! I'm not angry about the spoiler, and I'm not still angry about four months ago. At the time, I said that that's part of what friends are there for - to get mad at.

What I'm angry about (surpisingly enough) is the apology that you made. It seems to me that your reply is very close to "Whoops, sorry. I guess I've just been assuming that people would take more care."

So I said to myself, "That was on purpose, and it was a pretty mean thing to say." I was mad at you when I asked for the clarification. (Also, thanks for explaining your argument.)

To the original arguement, my understanding (and I believe somewhat what Chirra-chan was trying to say) is that it was assumed that Americans would have no idea about the origins of the Philosopher's Stone from other sources, and so, without that pre-existing knowledge, the decision was made that a "sorcerer's stone" sounded more like an magical artifact than a "philosopher's stone" (note lack of capitalization) to our ears, because we'd be basing it entirely on our knowledge of the words philosopher vs sorcerer, rather than the legend of the Philosopher's Stone.

That said, sodaman, methinks you need to back down a bit. Isn't it a little unfair to jump on someone for wronging someone else without regard to what they've already done to make up with that person? Garr-kun and Chirra-chan had a misunderstanding/arguement back in March, but they cleared it up and they've certainly socialized enough since then to put it behind them I should think, and if not, that's really for them to decide. In fact, it would seem you didn't even bother to read her reply in that entry clearing up that she was -not-, in fact, angry at him. Chirra-chan accidentally spoiled something for Sorcy, but it was an accident for which she apologized and explained herself, and if Sorcy requires more to make ammends, again, that's for them to decide. I love Garr-kun and Sorcy, and if Chirra-chan were to hurt them unrepentingly, I would be among the first to poke her about it, but as it stands, stick to the topic.

Gomen, thanks for taking an interest! I can't really think of anything that I haven't said already, but I didn't want to ignore this post. ^^;

Cola: you know that I generally appreciate your forthrightness and rigorousness in expressing your irritations and indignations, but in this case I think it's doing more harm than good to the discourse, not to mention rather upsetting Rachan personally (so that she lashes out and then you get more acerbic and the whole thing continues to degenerate and I watch in horror and amazement). So, like, there's nothing you're doing that makes me want to say, "That behaviour is unacceptable in my journal!" except in this particular case, where your tone is really doing hurt to a friend of mine, so please take a different tack.

(I must admit I'm kind of surprised, since I thought your comments to Rachan way back at the time of the invoked previous thread were pretty friendly and sympathetic.)

Um. In response to some other things in this thread:

(No, you don't get attributions.)

I can't believe you're still harboring dislike from four months ago.

I just want to register that I think this statement is kind of awesome.

Don't confuse directness with anger.

I'm not sure it's a great thing for me to talk about the aforementioned prior thread now, but this reminds me of how, in your second comment there, you implied that you'd read me as angry (So if you're pissed off at my response...), which I wasn't; mostly I was just extremely bemused. I always thought it was interesting that that misreading was made in both directions.

Certainly I wouldn't carry this irritation over to real life, if I ever met you...

This may not be the best time to mention it, but actually, you have met. You got along fine. >___>

...as it stands, stick to the topic.

This is not actually a requirement in these comments. Topic drift is fine and is not the reason I don't want this exchange to continue as it has.

-Garran

...where your tone is really doing hurt to a friend of mine, so please take a different tack.

Okay. I hope the above reply is an improvement. ^_^;

I thought your comments to Rachan way back at the time of the invoked previous thread were pretty friendly and sympathetic.

Yes! I was saying, "There's no harm in getting mad if they are your friends and don't mind." That is, I didn't believe her when she said she wasn't angry at you, but I had no problem with what I thought she was really doing.

This time I thought she was talking to the entire world, or at least anyone who hadn't read HP6 yet - I felt like she was saying that it was my fault I read the spoiler. And she didn't even edit them out in case someone else shows up. (I know that's ugly on Livejournal, since it involves posting a modified copy as a reply and then deleting the original. But still.)

*sighs* I didn't edit it out because I didn't think about it, not because I'm an evil sadistic bitch.

Look, I really don't understand why everything I say or do is being taken as being so harsh and mean. That's what's really bothering me, here. Everything is being interpreted as having some underlying motive of trying to be mean to people. It is just not possible to believe that I could be saying or doing these things and NOT intending harm or meanness towards other people? In addition, I don't understand why you seem to be having so much trouble believing that the explanations I give you are the truth, especially since you don't really have a reason to do otherwise.

My apology for the spoiler was exactly as you claim. I was assuming people who were concerned about spoilers would take more care. But your interpretation that I somehow did this purposely with a cruel intent is untrue and unfair. I don't understand why you'd leap to that conclusion. Is my assumption an unrealistic one to make? Why should I not assume that those who are wary of spoilers would take care not to stray where they might find them?

And in case everyone still can't figure it out, this and all of my other comments in this thread with regards to this conversation have been written with a tone of sadness, not a tone of anger. This is making me very sad, not angry.

This post has two pieces:

--

I think there is kind of a de facto rule that if there's no spoilers in the post itself, there oughtn't to be any in the comments. So, um, I think it really was too much to expect that people would skip the comments. A post about the translation of "snog" would look pretty innocuous.

You seemed to say, "I'm sorry you smacked into my door when I opened it suddenly, but you shouldn't have been riding your bike in the apartment building." I think you were at fault, though; that you were asking for more caution than someone would expect to need to exercise. So, um... I thought it should have been an apology for your mistake. And you seemed to say instead, "Sorry! Try not to do that next time!"

(Also, goodness, I guess I have been pretty unpleasant to you. You deleted your post completely, I guess because you didn't want to deal with this any more. Could I use this evil influence over you just to remove the spoilers and post it again? Cuz it was a good post and I still have a copy.)

--

I haven't interacted with you very much, and mostly I just remember that one D&D thing. I have only read five or six posts by you that look angry... But what you have told me about them is:

"Sorry, you're just misunderstanding that... and that and that and that. Let me sum up: Every time you think I'm angry, you're wrong. I was not in an argument with Garran then. And we aren't now having an argument.

"I wasn't angry when I said, 'Why don't you try not being rude to people you don't even know, next time?' I wasn't angry when I said, 'I'm angry.' I'm never angry."

Yeah you are. ^_^;;

I'm not trying to insult you by saying this. How could I possibly have anything against anger after posting the way I did? But, um, please don't be angry at the peoples when they are friendly. (around here, everyone! but me XD)

Fine. I get angry. My point was that I don't get angry nearly so often as you seem to think I do. I may speak in a direct manner, but that doesn't mean I'm angry. I may be upset or annoyed but, to me, those are entirely different things. And most of the time, when I'm direct, I'm probably just trying to convey an idea.

But when I fucking say, "This is how I felt when I wrote that. The way you think I was feeling is NOT how I was feeling," then you should probably BELIEVE it, because I think I know more than you do about how I feel. (For the record, this paragraph was written when I was angry, but the preceeding and following paragraphs were not. If that's too difficult to comprehend, then oh well, I guess.)

Anyhow, fine, I fucked up. I posted a spoiler where I shouldn't have. Are you happy, now? I didn't mean to. It was an accident. Maybe I shouldn't have expected people to exercise as much caution with regards to not stumbling across spoilers as I did prior to finishing Half-Blood Prince, but the fact of the matter is that I DID and I didn't deserve to get all this shit thrown at me for a mistake that no one had bothered to explain to me how I'd made. So your error is as grave as mine. You assumed I would just realize what I'd done, I assumed people would just not click in the first place.

I understand that you're trying to wrap up this argument now and I appreciate the olive branch. I'm genuinely sorry that I'm unable to accept it genially. This argument has upset me too much and for too long to just end it all without getting some things straight, first, though I find it unfortunate that I had to be pushed to the breaking point before this could be accomplished. I hope my, what I believe is, well justified anger in this matter is, if not accepted, then at least understood. It is not my wish to further inflame matters, but I feel this is the only way I can express how very strongly I feel about this whole ordeal.

I can't work out what it is you want from me. An apology? An admission of truth with regards to some theory of yours about me? Please tell me so we can end this.

As for the post I deleted, I thought about trying to reword it to omit the spoiler, but I couldn't easily see how. Also, if I'd reposted it, it would be at the very BOTTOM of the LJ comments, causing it to be not really connected in any way with the replies that were made to it which, previously, sat directly below it. These two things together made me decide to just delete the comment entirely. However, if it pleases you, I will repost the comment however you'd like. I no longer have a copy, though, so you'd have to send me one for me to repost it. My e-mail address can be found in my LJ userinfo.

[I'm sticking this here randomly because I couldn't find a way to work it into any of my other paragraphs.] I don't think I was being angry towards people who were being friendly. At the least, I don't make a habit of doing it. I can honestly say I don't even know what you're talking about, with regards to this.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't say this, and maybe you'll just laugh, but I hope all of this hasn't caused you to dislike me. The entire reason this argument has been upsetting me so much is because it seems like someone is disliking me for all the wrong reasons. I don't mind if people dislike me for what I do do, but when I'm being disliked based on misperceptions and misconceptions, it just sucks a lot. I can't stand being misunderstood. If you want to feel neutral about me, that would honestly be great. I'm not asking you to like me. I just don't think you should dislike me based on things that aren't even true.

I wanted... Um... I wanted you to tell us that you cared that we were spoiled. It was one of my more stupider ever ways to ask for something.

Also I wanted to ask for that clarification. I had the feeling that you would say that you hadn't been confusing, and would make fun of me for asking. I had no reason for feeling that, and in hindsight I don't think you would have done that.

I wrote my first two posts on that assumption, that is, to "win the argument," so they were full of crap. It sounded like a big deal, but my "bad opinion" was only this: I thought I could criticize you and be polite and friendly, and you would still insult me because you don't like being criticized. Um... Sorry, I guess I'm still not sure you wouldn't have... But even if you would, that's all I dislike about you. ^_^;

(Also I think I put in "please don't be angry at the friendly peoples" for no other reason than that it sounded good. Bleh.)

So... yeah. I think I have a way to edit it so it's not specific, and I can show the result of that to you. Thanks very much for fixing it, I think it was a good idea; and the way I tried to get you to do that was socially retarded and I apologize for being such an idiot.

I retract at least my first two posts, and I would delete both cuz they're stupid and embarrassing, but then you would appear to be arguing with nobody. ^^; My other posts aren't so hostile, I guess.

I hope the above reply is an improvement.

Yeah, I think it is. Thank you.

If the spoiler-fallout was your real grievance, why didn't you complain about that from the get-go instead of the myriad other things you brought up, including this thing that, if I now read you correctly, you didn't actually have a problem with?

For what it is worth, I get what you're saying about Rachan's form-of-apology as an evasion of responsibility (which is a separate issue, I think, from whether she was being malicious or not), but that wasn't how I read it; I took her to be saying, "I'm sorry I messed up; here's the erroneous assumption I'd made that caused me to mess up, so you don't think I was just being wanton," and I still think I'm right about that. (I actually consider myself to be rather more culpable in that particular spoiling than she is, since I saw what she'd said, and knew Rachel would almost certainly read my comments, and totally failed to have it even occur to me to send a warning. Sigh.

Were you also spoiled? That is, do you read Harry Potter? If so and if I knew this, it has totally fled my consciousness.)

-Garram

I hadn't realized at first that I was bothered by that. >_<

That is, I wanted to ask what haibane_rachan's post meant, and that whole time I was writing it I was paging up to her apology and going "grr!" But I never realized that, gee, maybe I should go and say something over there instead.

My first reply was to, like, "Why do you have a bad opinion of me?" And I listed all the reasons that I had. Then after that, before my second post, I thought about why I had posted in that angry tone, and I remembered grr-ing at the apology.

I wasn't spoiled except that I might want to read the series someday. I'll probably have forgotten by then, though.

This is not actually a requirement in these comments. Topic drift is fine and is not the reason I don't want this exchange to continue as it has.

Yes, this was somewhat poorly phrased on my part, but better phraseology eluded me at the time. Certainly, I would do nothing to quash tangental discussions only vaguely related or even unrelated to the original topic in my own journal, let alone another's. Perhaps it would be better to say stick to discussion, as opposed to personal attacks-ish (don't ask me why I feel this requires an ish modifier, but I do)...

Let it be known that I have now finished the book. And that even though I was frustrated about the spoiler at first, it took a long time to get to that part, so I got over it. When I arrived there, my foreknowledge actually didn't at all ruin the feeling of that scene, because of the way it was led up to.

So, no harm done, at least to me. Here's a squeeze for anyone who wants it.

English to english

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject