(mis)adventures in procreate

“Vod, what were you doing on the battlefield 🤨”

—idk, I didn’t find the original post

I was thinking of the Mandalorian penchant for adoption and the problems therein the other day and had the thought that it feels like something that would have developed in a response to endemic warfare. That is, something that was a nomadic society’s way to ensure that orphans were taken care of and clans survived—nomadic people don’t exactly have stable orphanages.

But practically, it might also have become a way to steal a clan’s lands and wealth while still nominally respecting the law and social order. Warring while not breaking into total warfare and breaking down of social order.

My FAVORITE thing about this question is that it’s something that comes up like every couple months or so. This specific “How do I pronounce Mereel?” question. I’m also like … simultaneously the best and worst person to ask, because my answer is literally “all ways to pronounce Mereel is the correct way,” and I maintain that Mereel would very likely feel the same way, given how he likes to flex words in any way he can.

I feel like one can really express just how they’re feeling @ Mereel simply by how they pronounce his name.

And like … even though I’ve been writing things to do with Mereel directly for quite a long time now, I still don’t pronounce his name in the exact same way every time bc … lmao, of course I don’t.

Personally, on any given day, I’d pronounce his name as either meh’REEL or meh’REY’ehl, or if shortened, then REY’ehl, as opposed to REEL. Pronunciation is entirely contingent on one’s accent and one’s dialect — of which I’ve insisted that mando’a must have multiple dialects, specifically due to the widespread reach of mandalorians during the Mandalorian Wars.

On a more serious note though …

Determining how Mereel’s name is pronounced “correctly” would actually require learning from where his name actually comes from, and its origins. If it’s a loan word from a different language, that generally affects how pronunciation “should” or “could” be. 

Mereel’s name actually comes from a mandalorian clan: clan Mereel, of which Mand’alor Jaster Mereel was apart. The thing is, he’s native to Concord Dawn, located firmly within Mandalorian space, and served as a Journeyman Protector (the group that Fenn Rau belongs to) … but for whatever reason, he was not considered mandalorian until he was formally adopted by a True Mandalorian (faction). 

The tricky thing here is that, at least in Legends, Concord Dawn has its own particular accent and dialect different from “standard” mando’a and main mandalorian space where Sundari is located. Jaster Mereel did not change his name when he was adopted, and so Mereel is technically a Concordian family name. 

Where am I going with this?

Well, Concord Dawn was a predominantly agriculture world — the vast majority of the population who called the planet home were farmers, or part of an agriculture-focused industry of some kind. 

The word that sounds and looks closest to Mereel would be … Neral, which translates to grain. And, it would make sense for a family name of a family native to an agricultural world, to be close to, or similar to, grain.

I feel like this is the closest, most genuine origin of the name. And, if this really is the case, then the “correct” way to pronounce Mereel would be closer to 

mer - EYL / meh - REYL

I mean … aside from neral, there aren’t any close/similar words in mando’a that I can see. Then again, like many other family names, some changes can happen over time — and this isn’t quite taking into account dialectical differences between mando’a spoken by a Sundari mandalorian vs a Concordian.

On top of that, I could be completely off and it’s entirely possible that it’s not a name of Concordian origin but a combination of other words, something perhaps from:

mircin — cage

mhi — us/we

mhor — [rare, archaic] ours

used with some variation of IIL or AAL, or EL, though aal is more likely, as its word would already exist: aalar, to feel … but possibly also from elek, meaning yes

mir’aal — claustrophobic

mhor’el — agreement, accord

Ke barjurir gar’ade, jagyc’ade kot’la a dalyc’ade kotla’shya. Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger. lit. “Raise your children, male children strong but female children stronger.”

Like, well, firstly, before we get into the important issue, my minor quibble: barjurir bothers me. It’s not conjugated when it should be. And, it seems misspelled; in other places, to educate or to raise children is not barjurir, it’s ba’jurir, note there’s only two r’s, not three (as a noun, bajur, and the beten is, well, whatever). It’s silly to argue with Traviss about a language she invented, and silly to get hung up when the language isn’t overly stringent on its grammar rules, but by the few she created, it should be actually: ke ba’juri…

The more pressing issue, however, this nonsense about raising sons and daughters differently. Like, it annoys me so much that Traviss wrote (expositionally) that Mandalorians do not have traditional gender roles, or any sort of gender roles, and yet she continues to do things like this. (I will not start on RepComm, most especially ImpComm right now.) It’s even just weird, generally, when their language itself doesn’t even typically have gender. The pronouns and nouns are all gender neutral. Their adjectives male and female are used only when very strictly necessary; so, frankly, like never. It just baffles me how she can write such a saying while simultaneously trying to say that there is complete gender equality in Mandalorian culture.

I suppose it comes across to some as odd that I’m complaining about something that is apparently upholding Mandalorian women as the stronger. Well, it rubs me a little wrong because it implies that women are inherently not as strong, so they have to be trained to be stronger? Or something to that effect. I’m also not really about false flag Strong Women™ who are really just considered Strong™ because they are “like men”.

Like … in the past, and even now, my brain struggles to process this phrase within the context of mandalorian culture as it is developed, written, and shown … and the only time I can make sense of it is within the context of a society that, while they don’t recognize gender, recognize the role that gender plays in a larger society actively trying to snuff them out.

Because how many instances have we seen of societies that don’t follow or recognize a gender binary have people within those cultures face extreme hardship and violence for failing to adhere to strict gender roles of the more powerful societies they have to navigate? In this case, navigating the Republic as the Republic clearly have gender roles that are expected to be followed.

So then is this phrase meant to indicate a raising of children based on surviving a harsher galaxy where they may not always be able or allowed to be who they are? Can it be? Is that something we can twist the original toxic meaning to allow it to become?

But even so, it still causes a rift — discordance in what is mandalorian (not recognizing gender) and what isn’t (emphasizing specific gender binary). 

Even more insidiously, it demonizes weakness and softness in it’s implied condemnation of “not strong,” — it’s an important mechanism to perpetuate toxic masculinity while under the “innocent” guise of empowering women. And if a daughter is not strong, is that her failing, or her parents? Her family’s? If she then comes to be hurt in some way, is it because she was not strong enough? Is it then her fault?

Victim blaming is insidious, and easily stems from common phrases that were so innocuous on first glance. Then there’s a lot to be said about this phrase and it’s purpose in the grand scheme of things as KT writes mandalorians — that is, there’s a lot of female-coded labor that is purely expected and hoisted onto the shoulders of all the women that she writes, and to a degree that renders her female characters not as individuals with autonomy but servants to perform that labor that “of course” the men can’t (emotional labor,  “housekeeping” and “cooking/cleaning” that’s traditionally coded as “women’s jobs”). The woman is expected to act as the foundation and hold up the clan, and it is ultimately a thankless job that can (and often is) taken for granted.

I’m really concerned about the demonization of “not strong” as a serious issue, not just because traditional femininity is coded as soft and fragile, but that the idea of a person being soft and fragile is no longer someone deserving respect — and that is something that leads to dehumanization, and abuse. 

And for a series that so carefully emphasizes that Mandalorians mark helmets to indicate disabilities as both a badge and a quick forewarning to prepare the person who approaches of any issues so that they can accommodate any disabilities, why then have a phrase that flies in the face of that kind of mindset and culture? Because having a disability is usually coded as not strong, especially when they are not “earned in battle,” ie another facet of the toxic meaning of strength. 

Or is it a different kind of strength, and thus our translation is then lacking? Not strong in the physical brutal way, but strong in the way that it means to survive anything? Because even weak, fragile things can and do survive in the face of adversity — and is that something that we can then use to restructure the phrase, to give it an alternative meaning or connotation that translates more appropriately?

And I think about the LENGTH differences between a single phrase of six core values, a group of canons, a manifesto and a codex. Like, I can’t stress enough that the reason we don’t have a canon Supercommando codex is because a codex is an entire book, a compilation of rules, lists, values, and priorities grouped together, organized, and put into book form.

cheese sits on the toilet while we take showers, and i like to stand on my tip toes and draw his silhouette in the steam from a high angle, then stand back to see how warped it is from his actual shape