Notes on "Shifted"
Oct. 31st, 2021 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theturkishrugIf you're reading this, I'll assume you've read Shifted. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed writing it! I'm so happy to bring Esen to your world, as well as Hakan, one of my oldest original characters, who has finally found his home in the voice I've always imagined him to have.
In my head, Shifted was born out of the idea that a woman, or at least a female-presenting character, could turn to a man, or a male-presenting character at will, especially whenever she needed to employ violence. Think Yu Gi Oh with Yugi and Atem, but more about a gender binary. I was endlessly fascinated by that idea. I was especially curious how the female character would feel about it, to have a man - so much social capital at her disposal. Especially a girl that may have had a similar upbringing to me, or felt forced and restricted in ways her male counterpart wouldn't even feel.
I believe every work can, and should, stand on its own without a Word from "God". However, here are a couple pointers that I'm aware I didn't bother explaining and might help for a fuller picture:
On ages: The way Austrian high schools are set up, you graduate at age eighteen or nineteen; Esen is or turns eighteen during this piece. The Turkish "abla" is a suffix for an older sister: Sezen is ten years older than Esen is. The Turkish "abi" is a suffix for an older brother: Okan, I imagined, is a clean five years older than Esen.
On school: I heard that in the US, you only see your classmates in homeroom. In Austria, where this work is set, you have every single class with your classmates, excepting some elective classes. In rooms with twenty, twenty-five people (even up to thirty!) that makes language classes difficult. It's rather common for one class to have two English teachers who will split up one classroom; this usually happens on an alphabetical basis to make grading easier.
In Austria you have to be in school for nine years (four years elementary school + four years middle school + one year in high school, or extra schools called "Berufstechnische Mittelschule" or "Polytechnische Schule" or, as the most apt English translation, you-have-to-sit-here-to-fulfill-your-legal-obligation school.) Okan's career path, then, basically involves these nine years of school, then an apprenticeship as baker. These schools also have a certain, well, reputation for housing a lot of non-white, immigrant people, as you can well imagine (though I've been told this is no longer the case in real life anyway), and are not seen as favorably as your high school and college degrees.
The "thesis" Esen mentions is called Vorwissenschaftliche Arbeit in German ("pre-scientific work"). Previously known as Facharbeit before the educational reform in 2016, it's basically a sort of college-level essay that high school seniors have to write in their freetime. (In certain other high schools with an engineering focus, this is a "diploma work," and, yes, it functions like a smaller-scale bachelor thesis, complete with a whole defense on oral finals).
All I know of university applications is that they're difficult and a lot of paper work. A great majority of Austrian universities don't require entrance exams, machine engineering included. (TU Wien - the university of technology in Vienna - explicitly mentions how badly they want girls to enroll in this course online. Oh well...)
Suffixes: abla (up-lah, kind of?) is older sister, abi (uh-be) is older brother, hala (huh-luh) is an aunt from the father's side.
On pronunciations: I'm aware what's happening in this work is basically a double whammy between mentioning the German, wrong pronunciation and the Turkish, correct pronunciation, particularly with Esen's name. The German e is extremely flat. I believe in IPA you would write it as eː. Esen, the way Austrians would say it, would go "Eh-sn." This rhymes with the word Besen, broom, which is basically "Beh-sn." When Sezen says her name "the German way", she says "Seh-zn" but Austrians could at any given point say it as "Seh-tzen". Tolga is... a funny one. Tohl-Guh, kind of. Out of all the names in this piece, Tolga and Hakan come the closest to being phonetically as close as it gets in these languages.
Now the problem is that the e in Turkish is completely different. It's as open as the e in pen (or, if that's difficult to keep in mind, always assume we say eh and ah and oh); not only that, but we stress the syllables completely differently. Esen is E-SEN. Sezen is Se-ZEN. Esen's aunt would be Feh-Rih-Deh.
Hakan would be Huh-CUN, Okan is ohCUN. Tolga is... Well, Olga with a T. You know?
Thank you, always, to Jenni and her unwavering support towards whatever idea I hurl at her. She didn't even bat an eyelid when I brought up Hakan to her, even though she knows him in at least five different contexts by now. He's found a home now, see!
In my head, Shifted was born out of the idea that a woman, or at least a female-presenting character, could turn to a man, or a male-presenting character at will, especially whenever she needed to employ violence. Think Yu Gi Oh with Yugi and Atem, but more about a gender binary. I was endlessly fascinated by that idea. I was especially curious how the female character would feel about it, to have a man - so much social capital at her disposal. Especially a girl that may have had a similar upbringing to me, or felt forced and restricted in ways her male counterpart wouldn't even feel.
I believe every work can, and should, stand on its own without a Word from "God". However, here are a couple pointers that I'm aware I didn't bother explaining and might help for a fuller picture:
On ages: The way Austrian high schools are set up, you graduate at age eighteen or nineteen; Esen is or turns eighteen during this piece. The Turkish "abla" is a suffix for an older sister: Sezen is ten years older than Esen is. The Turkish "abi" is a suffix for an older brother: Okan, I imagined, is a clean five years older than Esen.
On school: I heard that in the US, you only see your classmates in homeroom. In Austria, where this work is set, you have every single class with your classmates, excepting some elective classes. In rooms with twenty, twenty-five people (even up to thirty!) that makes language classes difficult. It's rather common for one class to have two English teachers who will split up one classroom; this usually happens on an alphabetical basis to make grading easier.
In Austria you have to be in school for nine years (four years elementary school + four years middle school + one year in high school, or extra schools called "Berufstechnische Mittelschule" or "Polytechnische Schule" or, as the most apt English translation, you-have-to-sit-here-to-fulfill-your-legal-obligation school.) Okan's career path, then, basically involves these nine years of school, then an apprenticeship as baker. These schools also have a certain, well, reputation for housing a lot of non-white, immigrant people, as you can well imagine (though I've been told this is no longer the case in real life anyway), and are not seen as favorably as your high school and college degrees.
The "thesis" Esen mentions is called Vorwissenschaftliche Arbeit in German ("pre-scientific work"). Previously known as Facharbeit before the educational reform in 2016, it's basically a sort of college-level essay that high school seniors have to write in their freetime. (In certain other high schools with an engineering focus, this is a "diploma work," and, yes, it functions like a smaller-scale bachelor thesis, complete with a whole defense on oral finals).
All I know of university applications is that they're difficult and a lot of paper work. A great majority of Austrian universities don't require entrance exams, machine engineering included. (TU Wien - the university of technology in Vienna - explicitly mentions how badly they want girls to enroll in this course online. Oh well...)
Suffixes: abla (up-lah, kind of?) is older sister, abi (uh-be) is older brother, hala (huh-luh) is an aunt from the father's side.
On pronunciations: I'm aware what's happening in this work is basically a double whammy between mentioning the German, wrong pronunciation and the Turkish, correct pronunciation, particularly with Esen's name. The German e is extremely flat. I believe in IPA you would write it as eː. Esen, the way Austrians would say it, would go "Eh-sn." This rhymes with the word Besen, broom, which is basically "Beh-sn." When Sezen says her name "the German way", she says "Seh-zn" but Austrians could at any given point say it as "Seh-tzen". Tolga is... a funny one. Tohl-Guh, kind of. Out of all the names in this piece, Tolga and Hakan come the closest to being phonetically as close as it gets in these languages.
Now the problem is that the e in Turkish is completely different. It's as open as the e in pen (or, if that's difficult to keep in mind, always assume we say eh and ah and oh); not only that, but we stress the syllables completely differently. Esen is E-SEN. Sezen is Se-ZEN. Esen's aunt would be Feh-Rih-Deh.
Hakan would be Huh-CUN, Okan is ohCUN. Tolga is... Well, Olga with a T. You know?
Thank you, always, to Jenni and her unwavering support towards whatever idea I hurl at her. She didn't even bat an eyelid when I brought up Hakan to her, even though she knows him in at least five different contexts by now. He's found a home now, see!
