Japanese Elden Ring players baffled by English meme messages about Fortnite and buttholes

gamesradar.com:

The English-speaking Elden Ring community's favorite meme messages often don't make a lick of sense when translated to Japanese, and they've even sparked some bizarre theories among Japanese players. 

As freelance Japanese-English translator DistantValhalla observed on Twitter, the abundance of Elden Ring messages using the words "Fort" and "Night," which are meant to be a joking reference to Fortnite, have caused some cross-cultural confusion. When Japanese players read these messages, they see the specific kanji for the actual words, leading some to believe that they were hinting at a secret that would only occur at a fort at night.

Japanese Twitter user ETC only discussed their experience with these messages, and their tweet's attracted over 6,000 shares, many of them from other Japanese players echoing their bemusement. A Google translation of their tweet reads: 

"I've been searching for a big night-only event at some fort because I see messages like 'fort, night' everywhere in Elden Ring, but apparently people playing in English are Fort and Night. I'm crying because it seems like a message that I'm just laughing at making Fortnite by combining." 

The layered circumstances that led to this misunderstanding are just incredible. Firstly, it's actually pretty reasonable to assume that some Elden Ring messages would be teasing a night-exclusive fort encounter; there are lots of forts in the game, and several enemies and bosses only appear after the sun has set. Then there are the differing cultural lenses for Fortnite and memes in general, which are already ripe for confusion. 

Finally, we have Elden Ring's message system, which – at least theoretically – can easily be translated to other languages since it limits