This is a collection of meta notes for the Essarr LoreBook written by me to, hopefully, be useful for new (andor regular) readers.

The Assumptions & Spoilers section is very important if you want to avoid spoilers at all cost!

Spoilers appear like so: Spoiler ← hover over to show the content.

This wiki uses two primary kinds of footnotes. The letter-based footnotes^A) are notes that have additional information, which is typically unrelated to the article’s main topic, or information that would otherwise mess with the flow of the article. The number-based footnotes¹⁾ are used for references/sources for the information they follow.

I’ll say this now to avoid potential misunderstandings. The majority of reviews on the LoreBook are written with the assumption of familiarity on the part of the reader…kinda.
What this means is that I’m assuming that you, the reader, have gone through whatever it is I’m reviewing. However, and this is a big however, the reviews are also written with the assumption that you’re unfamiliar. That might sound contradictory but, in practice, this means that I’m going to avoid spoiling anything…and I’ll actually put the formatting in place to avoid spoiling stuff. This is mainly because, well, the word ‘review’ implies it’s for those who are unfamiliar.
However…this only applies to the reviews…and this is important to keep in mind. Speculah, Analysis and Critique^B) are not written with the assumption of unfamiliarity. So spoilers are not marked there, at all. This is partially (mostly) out of laziness, partially because it won’t be as annoying to read and common sense. Let’s consider: why are you reading the speculah/analysis/critique if you’re not familiar with whatever it’s concerned with?

The dialect^C) of English I speak is unusual, and this reflects in the written grammar as well. This does lead to some questionable decisions on my part, which may confuse readers. I’ll lay out the notable differences I can think of here.

To indicate possession, I always use apostrophe s (‘s) with a noun. This is technically incorrect in ‘normal’ grammar, but it’s how I do things.
Note that apostrophe s can also indicate a contracted ‘is’. Which is which depends on context^D).

This wiki is almost entirely written in English. However, Japanese is used in a few places. Currently, this is entirely limited to just the names of series and the occasional and random use of honorifics.
In the future, this may change.
Whenever Japanese is written in kanji, a phonetic transcription is written above in hiragana and an English translation is provided in brackets following it.
There are some exceptions to the above. For example, katakana might be used instead of hiragana.^E)
However, occasionally, rather than an English translation, you might see a transliteration instead. This is mostly dependent on two things: 1. The transliteration is more commonly known (Hanasaku Iroha); 2. I prefer the transliteration over the translation (Hansaku Iroha). In general, though, you’ll see the English translation in the opening text 9 times out of 10.
Excluding the use of Kanji, Japanese is used extensively for the names of Japanese media. Outside of this, the use of Japanese is largely context-dependent.

• 葉庭(はにわ)(Leaf Garden)
• 花(はな)咲(さ)くいろは(Hanasaku Iroha)

This is a list of terms which are uncommon in general, but used often on this wiki. I’ve added it because I’ve been told, several times, that it’s difficult to understand what is written here.
So far, it’s just a list of words that I’m aware might be difficult to understand…but more may be added in the future. Another general rule is that, if it’s listed on ‘Words, Phrases, Names, and Quotes I find interesting’ in the ‘Unorthodox’ section, it’s likely to be used somewhere on the wiki.
Some are used more often than others.

• Lingua
  • This is an alternative word I use for ‘language’ which I borrowed from Spanish. I use it because I find it quicker and easier to say.
• Primary world
  • This is a term that refers to the real world, our world, in relation to a fictional world (which would be the ‘secondary world’).
    • You are unlikely to see the term ‘real world’ unless I made a mistake. Generally, that term is reserved for, for example, the real world within a fictional story (like SAO/Log Horizon).
  • There is a longer explanation here.
• Satori
  • This is a word that means something like ‘understanding’ and I use it as an alternative to ‘philosophy’, as ‘philosophy’ implies something other than ‘love of knowledge’. Not that satori is the best alternative, but I think it’s acceptable.
• Speculah
  • This is just internet/4chan slang for ‘speculation’ or ‘analysis’.
  • I use it mostly to refer to speculation/analysis in relation to media.
• Vidya
  • A shortening of ‘video games’ that originated as 4chan slang.

Probably not the best place to put, but I can’t currently think of how I’d structure this better.
This contains a list of terms that have some confusion surrounding them and how I hope to resolve that. Not the best wording, I know, but think of it as temporary until I fix it.

• world.of.darkness/chronicles.of.darkness instead of old World of Darkness/new World of Darkness
  • Bar a few exceptions, I will use these two terms exclusively to refer to the separate brands.
  • The why is simple: it’s too much of a hassle to keep adding ‘Chronicles of Darkness or the new World of Darkness’ all over the place and mentioning it outside of the dedicated articles seems pointless to me. Plus, ‘World of Darkness’/‘Chronicles of Darkness’ are less confusing than oWoD/nWoD and still betray some connection between the two.

This was initially because I didn’t realize you could have the first headline be set as the title of a tab. Because I prefer to read what the article title is, I made the sub-sections of the site two-letter combinations.
I’ve kept it like this because changing the namespaces of all the wiki articles at this point would be too much work, and because two letters aren’t difficult to type. LoreBook became ‘lb’ because I wished to separate the site into different sub-sections, that would generally be separate from each-other. So basically: Stories is where you go for stories; Essarr LoreBook is where you go for wiki articles.
Start initially reflected this, and had an explanation of each section, but then I realized I could just move that to the opening text of Essarr LoreBook. It will likely remain like this until some drastic change occurs.