Fractoluminescence

Vetted by association I’m ayoosha-stuff friends

Hello friends, I am Yasmin from northern Gaza Strip. I am 27 years old, a mother of two children, Sila and Youssef, and I have been married for more than 7 years.

I was studying Journalism and Media at the University College, and I had both a home and a job. But because of the war, I lost my home, my work, and everything I owned.

My family’s house was also destroyed, and now we have nothing left except a worn-out tent whose torn walls cannot protect us from the heat of summer or the cold of winter.

My husband is injured. He was involved in a traffic accident while trying to get aid, and he is now disabled and unable to work.

My children have suffered from malnutrition due to the lack of food and proper nutrition.

That is why I am only asking for your help and support. I am here trying to save what is left of my children’s lives. They are between life and death.

Please, try to support us and donate whatever you can.

Some background: Japanese is written with a mix of kana (which are phonetic characters that each represent a sound) and kanji (more complex characters which have both a meaning and often multiple possible sounds).

But little kids aren't expected to know every kanji yet, and there can be obscure words or names with oddball pronunciations that would puzzle any reader. So you can also put some small kana alongside the kanji to tell people how to pronounce it. Those are called furigana, and they're common in a lot of manga for youngish audiences.

As an example, here's the kanji 神 (meaning "god") with the furigana that say かみ (kami) in case you didn't know how to spell that one in kanji yet:

But at some point someone figured out that, hey, you don't HAVE to have the furigana match the kanji. There's nothing stopping you from just...

Using a foreign or made-up word but with a built-in definition: the kanji 祓魔師 (exorcise-demon-professional) pronounced as the English word エクソシスト (ekusoshisuto = exorcist)

Letting a character talk to himself really literally: 俺 (me) with the furigana おまえ (omae = you). You, by which I mean me,

Harping on the fact that you have a light themed villain this arc: 光 (light) but with the OTHER WHOLE KANJI 闇 (darkness) as the pronunciation. Darkness, but our darkness is Different because it's actually Light...

Clarifying what someone means like a little parenthetical statement: 俺達 (us/we) pronounced イルミナティ (iruminati = Illuminati). We, the Illuminati...

And many more. Those were just examples from Blue Exorcist that I already had saved to my hard drive. I cannot emphasize enough how much manga likes to create double meanings this way.

As you might imagine, this can be awkward to translate into a language that doesn't have even the slightest concept of furigana.

Usually you end up doing something that either ignores it (just pick the word that was most important of the two, or use the made up word but only define it the first time) or gets the job done but feels a bit like a cop-out (list both words, or put one in parentheses after the other)

But not always. Not in this one case from the first chapter of Blue Exorcist, translated for Viz by John Werry:

Second - I studied translation as part of my university studies some years ago, and damn, that sort of thing is the amazing stuff that I wish they had done in the official English translation for the Bleach light novels-- (whoopsie let me not get into that lest I go on a rant)

Anyway-- So while it may not be the right term for this exactly, but in French-English translation, one of the tricks you have up your sleeve is called the chassé-croisé (which more or less means things exchange places without encountering/touching each other...or something, I don't really use the expression. I think it's maybe a dance move you can do with your feet too...? IDK). It's used when French and English express something using different parts of the sentence, and so it's better to move part of the semantic meaning of a sentence onto another word.

For instance (example stolen from the first website that popped up when I looked it up, I.E. Major Prépa):

He backed out of the garage -> Il sorti du garage en marche arrière (He exited the garage 'in back walk' (in reverse gear, basically))

The idea of going backwards was in the verb, and it is moved instead to a sort of adverbial position - because there just isn't a term for walking backwards in French (sometimes there Is a word but it just doesn't sound great or whatever else)

What I'm saying is - I love that so much. And yeah, coming up with that fix on the translator's part shows that they took their job seriously and did it with care, which is awesome (not something all translators do...seriously, whoever did the one for CFYOW either wasn't paid enough to care, or-- *interrupts own speech with a cough*)

So many people seem to think that translation is that easy thing where you just need to find the most accurate way to say the exact same thing. Have the meaning come through. That's it's easy and replaceable work.

It's not. It's really not. Translation is tricky AF, and many time either the literal meaning isn't ideal to translate literally because it's an idiom or whatever else, or, even more commonly, it simply messes with the syntax or is downright impossible to keep as-is. There are different issues depending on what language is being translated into what other language - in French, it's in great part the fact that English is a lot more Condensed than French is, for instance.

And then there's whatever the fuck that's going on with what OP described. And I think that amazing and so fucking goddamn cool.

DAMNIT why did i use hirigana for my name when I literally know the kanji character for thousand ughhhhh🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄i was being all pretentious about my tiny baby-level, barely even a beginner japanese skills and I couldn't even do it right lmfao... anyway i finally changed my ao3 icon:D Been wanting to change it for like 4 years smh

Welcome to the 7th year of Angstober! We're delighted to unveil the prompts for this year of angsty, spooky fun. We've had over 1,090 works submitted to our AO3 collections over the past years. It's wonderful we've inspired that many works!

What is Angstober?

Angstober is a yearly October challenge with 31 angst-themed prompts to inspire you to create. The challenge is open to all sorts of creative work - writing, art, edits, whatever you want - in whatever medium you want. Original work or fanworks? Whatever you feel inspired for!

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How do I take part?

Tag your works with #angstober or #angstober2026 and the day of the prompt (e.g., #day 01) to share on tumblr. Feel free to @ us directly in the post as well! To share your work on AO3, add it to the Angstober 2026 collection.

You can post your works whenever - early or late - and use as many or as few prompts as you feel inspired for! We'll do our best to reblog as many works to the @angstober blog as we can.

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Are there any other rules or limitations?

Yes. No AI. No AI written texts or AI generated images. This is an event to celebrate creators, and we do not think AI generated material does that. Otherwise we do not limit what you can create in terms of content. Angst can include some darker topics. We just ask you tag your work appropriately.

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Alternative prompts:

Not feeling a prompt? Wanting to do more? Switch it for one of our alternate prompts.

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Is there a banner to post my work with?

Yes.