Tudor Trash

Fabia & Serena Sheen: "Sheen" is from the English word meaning "radiance, shininess". "Serena" means, well, "serene". In the Japanese dub, the name is for some reason changed to Celine, which is ultimately from a Latin word meaning "heaven". Fabia, on the other hand, comes from a Latin word meaning "bean", specifically the fava bean. Yyyeah, I guess we all know who was the favorite daughter. Fabia is also the name of a Byzantine empress, Fabia Eudokia.

Jin: from a Japanese word meaning "compassion, benevolence". Adorbs.

Elright: probably from "elf" and "bright".

Linus Claude: "Linus" is from an Ancient Greek word meaning "flax", while "Claude" comes from a Latin word meaning "lame" or "crippled".

Ren Krawler: "Ren" can mean either "love" (as in, specifically romantic love), "lotus", or "clean, honest" depending on the kanji. Unfortunately, it's written all in katakana so I have no idea which one it is. I think it's probably one of the latter two, since the first one is more commonly a girls' name. If you're keeping track, this means both his and Fabia's names have something to do with plants. His last name was most likely chosen for the term "web crawler" in reference to his programming skills, as well as the fact that in katakana it's spelled out "Kurora" and "kuro" in Japanese means "black", referencing his Darkus attribute.

Mason Brown: self-explanatory. In the Japanese version he's named Bruce Brown for some odd reason. Yeah, I think I like Mason better. Anyway, "Bruce" comes from the name of the town of Brix in northern France.

Jesse Glenn: "Jesse" ultimately comes from a Hebrew name meaning either "gift" or "existence", while "Glenn" is a Scottish name meaning "valley". In the Japanese version his first name is Ethan, which is Hebrew in origin and means "solid, enduring", and would've honestly been a better name for a Subterra brawler.

Zenet Surrow: I have no idea where "Zenet" comes from. It could be from Hungarian "zene", meaning "music". Alternatively, it could also be either the Greek name "Zenaida", which is in turn derived from "Zeus", or the Turkish name Ziynet, which is in turn from a Persian name meaning "ornament". As for Surrow, it's probably from the Slavic surname Surov, which is of unknown meaning. In various Slavic languages, "surov" is also a word meaning "raw, undercooked", which is hilarious. In the Japanese version it's changed to Sirone, which is one letter off from the Finnish surname Sironen, which is derived from either a word meaning "delicate" or the Germanic name Sigfrid, meaning "peaceful victory".

Sid Arkale: "Sid" is a short form of "Sydney", which means "wide island". As for Arkale, no idea. It's similar to Italian "arcale", meaning the arch of a door or a window. It's also vaguely similar to the name of Italian film director Franco Arcalli, who collaborated with the Italian resistance movement during WW2. Make of that what you will, I s'pose.

Chapter 14 of The Siren and the Demon is here

I’m going to date myself a bit here, but I’ve been reading/writing fanfiction for ten years. And when I first started it was a wonderful community. There was an unspoken rule – if you read/enjoyed it, you review it. You take thirty seconds to tell an author who probably spent anywhere from three days to a week writing that chapter you just enjoyed to tell them you enjoyed it. Even if it was as simple as “Great chapter, can’t wait to see what happens next!”

Writers spend so much time on stories, and then they post it because they have this thing that they’ve invested so many hours into and they want to share it with the world. They know how they feel about the story, and they want to know how other people feel, what other people think.

And when you read it and don’t review, you know what message you’re sending that author? That they’re not worth your time, or you didn’t enjoy their story. So why should they keep posting it? Yeah they might continue working on it in their own time, for their own enjoyment, but you might never see another chapter again because you couldn’t be bothered to take thirty seconds out of your day to tell them how you feel.

I’ve written stories in eight different fandoms, ranging from very small to very big (I’ll openly admit I wrote Twilight fanfiction once. Once. It was an Alice/Jasper story and haters can hate all they want but I’m still proud of it). I took a break for a few years because I fell out of fandoms during college, and when I came back apparently it’d become the norm to just greedily consume writing without telling writers how you feel. And that is one of the saddest things in the world to me because fanfiction is where I really started getting serious about writing. It’s how I’ve honed by skills and become the writer I am today. And that was largely in part because of all the support I got when I was an itty-bitty thirteen-year-old writing crappy W.I.T.C.H. fanfiction.

Everyone keeps saying “reviews don’t matter, you should just write for yourself.” Well, you’re wrong. Reviews make or break fanfiction. Reviews tell writers whether it’s worth their time to continue posting that story online or whether they should keep it on their hard drives and never share it with the world.