justalilhime

[justalilhime]

Out of curiosity I checked the Brazilian edition for this specific passage and found it really interesting:

(Re)translatating it pretty literally (because I'm far from decent at this and some expressions are just Hard™):

Jiang Cheng still had something to say, but suddenly he felt a weight on his leg. Lowering his face, he was faced with a baby who, at some point, approached him, hugged his leg and, now, was firmly staring at him with that face full of baby fat and round pair of eyes. He was even a cute and delicate child, but Jiang Cheng wasn't a person of affection and love.

"Where did this kid come from? Take him away."

So while it kinda went for the simplistic description for A-Yuan, it did deliver that Jiang Cheng himself isn't someone really capable of (expressing) love... Which makes it all the more interesting that 7S didn't manage to at all.

We're going to talk about the loss of context of the Seven Seas/Suika translation as this in particular annoyed me and makes the punch of lines more stale and outright wrong in translation. The lines for context are as follows,

Official English Seven Seas:

Official Taiwan Traditional Mandarin Pinsin Edition:

Digital Print English: He was quite an adorable child, but unfortunately, Jiang Cheng wasn’t the type to care. He turned to Wei Wuxian and demanded, “Where’d this kid come from?

ExR English translation: He was quite a fine, lovable child. Unfortunately, Jiang Cheng had no love in him at all. He turned to Wei WuXian, “Where did the kid come from?

Traditional Digital Mandarin: 倒是個玉雪可愛的孩子,可惜江澄這個人毫無愛心,他對魏無羨道:「哪來的小孩?

My translation and Pinyin: He was a strikingly lovely child, but pityingly, Jiang Cheng had no love in his being. He turned to Wei Wuxian saying, "Where did the kid come from?"

ǎo shì gè yùxuě kěài de háizi,kěxī jiāngchéng zhè gè rén háowú àixīn,tā duì wèiwúxiàndào: 'nǎ lái de xiǎohái?

And I see EXACTLY why they picked " didn't care" and called A-Yuan adorable instead. It's meant to be funny and a joke since it's a narrative punch at Jiang Cheng's expense fully. And another instance of our faceless narrator cutting in to comment about the cast during their play.

But the same character is repeated with "love" ài (爱) for that very reason since the entire point of how it's worded literally is A-Yuan is "like jade and snow and easy to love" if put flowery, and Jiang Cheng is too much of an asshole to be charmed by a child being a child. Now this "可愛" kěài can translate to cute, but that's also simply without further context and it's most basic meaning. The focus within this passage is that it should be irresistible to want to indulge the toddler with love and spoiling, unless you are Jiang Cheng who is cruel and cold to a scary degree.

Needless to say, I am not amused at this shoddily made rewrite to appeal to a certain base.

[justalilhime]

Honorifics: Trey Clover

Trey does not use any honorifics with any of the 1st year, 2nd-year or 3rd-year students, with no exceptions that I was able to find!

Note: As of this post I have not been able to find a scene where Trey refers to Silver by name, so a screenshot with Silver has not been included below (Trey and Silver may have the least amount of overlap in the game).

More:

・Riddle and Honorifics

[justalilhime]

Hello, hello! First of all, happy holidays! And a huge big major thank you for all your posts. Your translations and info compilations are not just really interesting but also literal life savers, as a fanfic writer. I appreciate them a lot 💜

Recently I've started keeping the Japanese honorifics in my fics because it's just as you said in one of your posts: they're great ways to show relationship progression without needing many words and also speaks tons about the characters and their relationships. The one issue I'm finding, though, is actually finding the right ones. Aside from Rook and Floyd, there aren't many good lists out there. The appellations pages in the wiki are severely incomplete for most characters. So I was wondering if you'd have any good resource to point to on that? Or if you'd be willing to make a list of them?

Thanks for the attention in advance 💞

Hello hello!! Thank you so much for this question, and I am so glad to hear that these little collections of screenshots can be helpful sometimes! ♡ You are too kind!

I have made the list! :> It is very much a lot of information and I am not sure how to share it without spamming 22 posts at once, so I think I will try gradually posting it to this blog and then compile into a reference post separated by dorm, which will then culminate into a master list of everything--I hope this will be okay!

Starting with Riddle:

Riddle does not use any honorifics with Trey, Cater, Ace or Deuce.

Riddle also does not use any honorifics with any of the first-year or second-year students.

Riddle uses the "-senpai" honorific with the third-year students.

Exception: Riddle typically uses "-senpai" with Leona, with the (thus far) one-time exception during Book 2 where he dropped the honorific from Leona's name in the panic leading up to Leona's overblot.

[justalilhime]

My friend and I made a brand new proship TWST Discord server. It has dedicated NSFW and Dead Dove categories and channels, from which you can also opt out altogether. There are also spaces dedicated for your writing/art creations, as well as a roleplaying are for your RP needs. We're striving to make it as friendly and safe for neurodivergent and queer people as we can. Reblogs more than welcome!

https://discord.com/invite/YKX5aAe8y4

[justalilhime]

some of you think ‘nuanced’ only means ‘morally grey’ and I’m here to tell you that actually straight up good characters can still be nuanced and unapologetically evil characters can still be nuanced. the character doesn’t have to be an anti hero or morally dubious to have depth. they don’t even have to feel sorry about their crimes to have depth.

[justalilhime]

Promises vs Morals

Wei Ying breaking of his so called “Twin Pride” promise is something JC stans and even JC himself aggressively hold on to. It is the example they give to prove how JC was a poor fellow abandoned by his brother over a broken promise. JC brings this up as an argument when everything else fails in the Guniang temple. 

Let us ignore the circumstances in which that promise was made. Let us also ignore the situations and arguments that led to this promise. Let us forget about how invalid that promise is and how that promise is always interpreted differently by JC. Let us, for the sake of this argument consider that JC and Wei Ying were good brothers once and this promise was between two brothers. 

So what if Wei Ying gave his promise and then broke it? Are promises more important than innocent human lives? Which is more important? Breaking a promise or saving lives? And was it only Wei Ying who broke this promise? It is about the “Twin Pride” and not “One pride and one follower”. If you call someone your brother, then you have his back. It is an implicit promise. If JC had not broken the implicit promise of brotherhood and abandoned his morals and his so called brother, this promise would been kept.  

Many fans seems to believe that JC abandoned WY to save his sect. Fine, let us believe this to be true for a moment. In that case, JC has no right to blame WY for breaking his promise. WY choose to save innocent wens and broke his promise to JC. Similarly, JC choose to save his sect and broke his promise of brotherhood. So, even from this angle, JC should not have any complains.   

Forget about all this. We will only talk about WY breaking his promise. Here, I would like to give an example from one of the greatest epic ever “Mahabharat” from my country. Once there was a prince who was about to be declared as the heir to the throne. He was the only son of his king-father Shantanu. This king falls in love with a fisher woman and wants to marry her. Her father asks for one condition for the marriage: her son should be the next king. In order to save his father from heartbreak, the prince vows that he will never be the king and he will never marry so that his sons will not contest for the throne later.  He also promises to be a servant of the throne instead of a prince.

Years pass by. The fisher woman has two sons and both of them die one after the other. The whole kingdom is doomed without a king or a heir. The prince refuses to break his promise to take the throne. He arranges for other means to have heirs. Among the latest generation of heirs, one is blind, one is very pale, and one is a son of servant. Even though the blind heir is the oldest, his younger brother is made the king. This new king dies soon after. And the saga continues. Everything ends up in a huge war which wipes out the entire continent. 

This is what the Lord Krishna has to the prince who made the vow in the beginning. “When you made your promise, the circumstances were different. When your half brothers died without heirs, you refused to become the king. You refused to break your promise of being a servant and use your strength to usurp the next generation king when he was not doing his duty to his kingdom. It was the common people in your kingdom who suffered in the end. Once your promise was your strength of character. Later the same promises became the chains that stopped you from doing what is right.  What use is a promise when your strength and prowess is not used for the betterment of your kingdom?” Of course, I am over simplifying a lot of things. The story is much more complex. 

But it makes the same point. So what if WY broke his promise? Saving innocent lives and using his powers for the better is always the right choice in the end. 

[justalilhime]

(Please god I had to block like 15 of them today)

[justalilhime]

Sometimes it feels like the main message that a lot of people miss in MDZS in their leaps to justify one character’s hatred for another or attempting to remove them from the world because they will never be at peace until that person is completely eradicated, is that it poses a question of “how much blood does it take to satisfy the anger? How much death is necessary to live? How much pain that you want to inflict is truly equal to what you have suffered? Where is the line between justice, vengeance and murder?”

MDZS does not have our modern sensibilities and laws for such a thing, and it’s on purpose. It’s set in a time where there is no emperor or god onscreen to merit out justice or retribution, it’s all in the hands of the mortals. They get to decide how much is enough.

And the thing that so many people miss is that for almost every character (and I will include Wei Wuxian in this with a caveat) go too far at some point. Sure, the desire to kill your brother’s killer is understandable. But what about the people who you harm in that path? Nie Huaisang does end up taking down Jin Guangyao, but the cost is that Qin Su also dies, destroyed even before her death by the reality of what the men around her will stoop to do out of pride and anger, what they will use her for in the process.

Why do I stand so firmly against the people who say that Jin Guangyao and Jiang Cheng had their reasons, that they were right to go as far as they did? Because the text itself does take the time to show us what is reasonable in that world and what is greedy, wrathful, unjustified.

Jiang Cheng has every right to hate the men who invaded his home and killed his family. In the natures of their society it is not wrong for him to step him and take revenge against them. The supervisory camps in Yunmeng were built on the blood of his people. I have no qualm with him removing them from his land, even though it ends in their deaths.

But that does not mean that his righteous war should extend to all who bear the Wen name and that is where the gap comes in. Wen Chao had him tortured and his golden core crushed. By the rules of that world as extolled by Xiao Xingchen when talking to Xue Yang, it is reasonable to take back what was done to him in blood there.

But Wen Ning is not Wen Chao. Wen Ning risked his life, his sister’s life and ultimately ended up contributing to Wen Ruohan’s campaign toppling and ending in dust because when he was offered the choice to either stick by his family or stick by his morals, he chose the former. The Wen’s attack on Lotus Pier was wrong. The lives they took were unjustified. Their actions were deplorable.

By standing up and protecting Jiang Cheng in the way he does, smuggling him back out of Lotus Pier and hiding him away from the Wen who would kill him, he is declaring that his own family is in the wrong, and instead makes a sacrifice that could have had him and his sister killed should Wen Ruohan ever find out about it.

Jiang Cheng knows this. This is where the right of hatred falls flat. This is where his righteous anger becomes a hunger for blood that will never be satiated.

Now I’m not saying that Jiang Cheng should hug and kiss Wen Ning for everything. There are limits to what humans can endure, even ones as good as Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. But he refuses to ever acknowledge what he knows. He refuses to ever act in kind. He owes a debt and he knows it. And he instead not only refuses to pay it by not necessarily taking them into his lands, but even acknowledging that they did anything. He buries them with their family and his words. He lets his hatred overwhelm all else.

He was not powerless at the end of the war. Far from it, in fact! He had a sect that was still rebuilding its forces, but it had been three years since the start of the war so it can’t be tiny anymore, and he had Wei Wuxian with the Yin Hufu. The only two necromancers in the world, who are powerful enough to hold whole barriers on their own. This is the whole point of the display at Phoenix Mountain. Wei Wuxian is showing the other three great clans and all the smaller clans that it does not matter how many of them they have, Yunmeng Jiang has him and while they have him, they are untouchable. This is a known fact.

Jiang Cheng would have faced no long term retribution from doing anything. He could have simply let Wei Wuxian pull them out of the Jin indoctrination camp and take them through Yunmeng to somewhere else and after some grumbling and some pleading on Jin Guangshan’s part, nothing would have happened. Wei Wuxian is too strong and the other clans are too aware of that. No one was safer than Yunmeng Jiang at the end of the war.

That is why the Jin play off of his jealousy and anger and get him to throw aside Wei Wuxian. It is literally their only option.

This brings me to the other half of my discussion, which is where does the bloodshed end? What is enough spilled blood?

If Jiang Cheng hates Wei Wuxian enough to try to kill him, then this should be a vengeance that ends with Wei Wuxian’s death. Death ends all obligations. We owe no more money, we settle no more debts, we leave the shackles of the living in life and the dead move on as do the living.

So why then is it acceptable that Jiang Cheng spends the next thirteen years killing people that remind him of Wei Wuxian? That the moment that Wei Wuxian does return, his first action is to try and kill him again? That he tortures him multiple times and it is only Lan Wangji’s presence and Jin Ling’s quick thinking that save him on those occasions? By all rights including our modern ones, Wei Wuxian should be free and Jiang Cheng should have moved on in thirteen years. Thirteen years is long enough to raise a child almost to adulthood, but Jiang Cheng clings to a hatred that has had no outlet for that long and continues to try and demand Justice that he has already received.

Where is the line? When is enough? Why does the blood of innocents have to be paid too for the hunger of the mighty? Wen Ruohan subtly assassinated Nie Mingjue’s father, but Nie Mingjue decided that there was only to be death for anyone related to the Wen. They didn’t have to do anything, even if they tried to stop him it wouldn’t be enough. Only the death of every Wen would slake that hunger, and then in death when he is driven only by that hunger, only the death of every Jin. Including the ones who weren’t even old enough to hold a sword at the time he died. Jin Ling is as good as Jin Guangyao for Nie Mingjue to kill. All that matters is that he’s connected. All that matters is that there is another body to feed the never ending hate that fills him.

Xiao Xingchen says that for Xue Yang to take a finger or an arm from the man who harmed him as a child is reasonable. Even to kill him if that is truly the only way to end his hatred. But what is a finger to an entire family? “Because it is mine!” Declares Xue Yang and this is where the crux of it lies. “It is my hatred, it is my anger. It is my right to kill anyone because I am angry and I refuse to let it go.” This is the trait that Jiang Cheng, Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang all share. “I am angry and I am hurt so it is my right to do as I will and no one should take that away from me or I will hurt them too.”

This is why they are antagonists. This is why two of the three of them end up dead. This is why Jiang Cheng staying his hand in the temple and Wei Wuxian’s mercy towards him is the only reason that he survives the end. You can’t ask the world to feed your endless hatred. Eventually you will hurt the wrong person and by the very laws that you and the world have set, will come for you. There is no such thing as bloodshed without pain. There are people who will miss those who are gone. And not all of them will be as good as Lan Wangji. Not all of them will move forward in their lives and ignore you. Sometimes the oriole will stalk you in the shadows, waiting for the moment the praying mantis slips up. The wheel ever turns and those on the bottom eventually rise up.

Now as for Wei Wuxian, we see a different answer on him from the others and this is where his morals really come into play. Cause at first he does exact justice for those lost at Lotus Pier. Steps in which the narrative does not fully condemn him, but suggests lightly that it is the sort of thing that he does not linger in, as well as he himself looks back and decides that maybe he did go too far then. Maybe he did do too much in the name of anger and justice. Three months after the event he is willing to kill and torture Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao. But three years later he looks at the members of the family that killed his and goes “I do not love you. But this is not right. You do not deserve this. I will not let you suffer this any longer even though your name is Wen.”

For Wei Wuxian, the line ends at the end of war, at the deaths of those who directly caused him the most pain. He does not necessarily forgive or absolve. But he does recognize that there is no sense in continuing the bloodshed or allowing others to continue it out of some misplaced sense of vengeance. He is offered a chance to stop the wheel and he tries. He tries so goddamn hard. He tries until it kills him and everyone else he protects because the anger of the rest is too wrapped up in their self righteousness to examine what is reasonable and what is the cost for what they do.

I do not exonerate the Lan here, but I do point out that they at least actually make an attempt to change things afterwards. We see it in the way that Lan Wangji continues to act in the world. We see it in the way that Lan Xichen stops and reconsiders what he knows of Wei Wuxian, and helps him when the wheel attempts to spin back to where it was before. Where the juniors go out hunting on their own to help people of all kinds. They find weird mysteries and they follow them, they are kind to all. It does not absolve what they have done in the past, it does not make them blameless.

But it is a start. And one that Jiang Cheng has not taken. If he had, we wouldn’t be having these debates and arguments about what is a reasonable enough amount of death and destruction that he can cause on account of his past.

This is where the line is.

Modaozushi asks the question of how much death is enough and concludes at the line “when you continue to court death to satisfy your anger, you will eventually find death standing at your door too.” It happens to Xue Yang, who after killing Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing and everyone in Yi City, finds A-Qing’s ghost leading those who can end his hurting of others for good. It happens to Jin Guangyao who assassinates and hurts so many people that Nie Huaisang finds allies in Mo Xuanyu, Sisi and Bicao, all of whom are willing to help him drag Jin Guangyao to the depths by the chains of his reputation.

Jiang Cheng is offered another chance. Leave Wei Wuxian alone and move forwards with his life. At the end of the book he accepts that chance. It is probably the last one he will get, but he accepts it. This is why he finishes out the book alive no matter how much blood he has on his hands. You can always change your actions until you are dead.

This is the question that Modaozushi posits and answers to all of us and to which I now offer to you when you consider the actions in story. What is enough? How much blood must be spilled before you are happy?

Why does it matter to you that those who are hurt are allowed to hurt without consequence? Where do you draw the line when all of those who caused you pain in the past are buried?

What is the price that you demand for your happiness? When is there enough blood on your hands to be happy?

When do you say “there has been enough death. I will stop this here and now because it is enough.”

Will you be the hero or the antagonist in someone else’s story?

[justalilhime]

Welcome twitter users fleeing the absolute cesspool that twitter is going to become as Musk gets his way with his awful ideas! Things are better here, and hey, if you're an old user coming back, they've actually improved shit!

Here's a list of important notes for tumblr usage:

Don't censor words, particularly trigger warnings. Tumblr has a very functional blacklist (found in your settings) that can filter by post content and/or tags. But the word needs to actually be present for the filter to work. Censoring words like r*pe is actively harmful to people attempting to avoid those topics.

Use tags liberally, you have as many as you want, but don't tag unrelated shit. You'll get reported for spam really fast if you do.

Set an avatar and reblog things, otherwise you look like a bot.

You are not obligated to have your real name anywhere in your blog/bio/etc. Most people here use handles.

You can turn your ask box & anons on or off if you are experiencing any kind of harassment. You can also turn off replies on your posts, and turn off reblogs if you need to.

Tumblr has keyboard shortcuts on desktop. You can find them listed under the blog/account menu. Go learn them, they make life so much easier.

Reblog things. Seriously. Also set your dash in chronological order. You can maintain several blogs if need be, but reblogging things is normal, expected, and how you pass along stuff you enjoy.

The majority of people aren't reading your card/dni/blog bio before they reblog stuff. Posts get passed around and the OP often isn't the focal point of the post. Learn to live with it.

Fic writers: you have unlimited words, do not post fics as images.

Reblogs with comments/tags are encouraged. It's not like twitter's QRTs. The OP will see everything there. Know that before you comment.

You have a queue. This means you can set posts up ahead of time to run while you're busy. You can also completely ignore this and just spam your follows whenever you're online. Both are very commonplace

It's not weird to go through someone's blog and reblog old posts. That's actually very normal. If you add /chrono to the end of a tumblr page then you can view all the posts in chronological order to make this easier.

"Spam" liking and reblogging isn't a thing that is a problem. This is invented by people I do not understand. If someone claims this is a problem, they can learn how to turn off or manage their notifications.

The only form of promotional posts that tumblr has is "blaze". There is no ad targeting or any kind of invasions of privacy with blaze. You just get subjected to w/e someone wants to show you. If you want to give tumblr some money to help the company keep going and providing an alternative to twitter, it's not a bad way to do it. You can make people look at cat photos.

Also, we have fun colors here. Plus actual formatting ability. Use it!

People lie on here for fun. Don't accept everything you see at face value, check the reblogs/replies or google something if you're skeptical! Critical thinking is good!

Above all else, be chill, use your block button if you need to, and have fun.

[justalilhime]

So today I found out there are some people who didn't realise you could block someone on anon. NOBODY should have to put up with it, it's bullying. So for those who don't know, here's how........

First of all, go to the ask inbox from your account settings page (not the notifications page. You can do it from there, but it's more longwinded) Open the ask inbox.......

Tap on the three dots and those options will appear. You can either report, block or delete.

Please reblog this so anyone who keeps getting anon hate knows what to do ☝

[justalilhime]

Looking for something to read or needing a reason to read Ad Oblivione? Look no more: @anonbaph gives you all reasons you need!

Acanon-divergence story where WWX travels back to the past after his death instead written for the Journeys Big Bang hosted by @pocketfulofrecs. One of my proudest works, and Baph's terror dream 🔥

You can read it here: Ad Oblivione

[justalilhime]

Reblog, click the picture, and prepare for battle.

[justalilhime]

I checked and my physical version is pretty much the same as 7S. Could it be that the removed was removed from the traditional Chinese edition? I'm not sure which one the fan translations are based on. Interesting discovery 🤔

Wondering if someone with the other official translations could check it up tbh.

Re-reading MDZS for the millionth time and this absolute miniscule detail that I loved in a few other translations, but 7S seemed to have omitted, always comes to mind.

He gradually lowered his head. The distance between the two faces became closer and closer. Closer and closer. At the point where it became hard for Wei WuXian to breathe, Lan WangJi finally opened his mouth. He stayed silent for a few moments, “Get off.”

Chapter 12 - ExR

I always find this little scene full of sexual tension. WWX is totally enjoying himself here, whether he wants to admit it or not! But my favourite part is LWJ's lips parting... I'm at it again, but here's something interesting about that particular action. Parting your lips is a subconscious flirting signal, especially if holding someone's gaze - which is exactly what is happening here. It's a subconscious cue you want to kiss the person you're holding eye contact with. Of course, it's also a sign someone wants to talk. Which is what he eventually does, after 'a few moments', but considering that he's currently being pinned to his bed by the object of his lust affection, he must be feeling a little excited as well!

Now we all know LWJ is sexually attracted to WWX, so it's no surprise! But I just love it and I'm sad to see it's not in the 7S version.

[justalilhime]

Fandom pet peeve: when people pick a character and say, “oh, they did some bad things, they must be morally grey!” With no regard for their actual attitude towards morality, or their mindset during that time and whether it was any different from how they are normally, or the fact that those actions may have been taken a long while ago.

Please, say it with me: moral greyness is not about what things people have done in the past! It’s about their relationship with morality, in the present. 

…But the attitude people have towards that is scary, and not just for fandom-related reasons. That way of thinking seems to hint that you think that once somebody does something wrong, they can never really be a good person, and it’s all too easy to apply that to real life, too. And that is often the case, if cancel culture is anything to go by. 

Accept that people change, that characters change. They’re not irreversibly corrupted if you make the slightest misstep, or even one that’s not so small. Someone can do bad things, grow, reflect, and change as a person, into someone who would not do that. And afterwards, they are not morally grey! They’re someone who did bad things and then learned from them!

(And just for the record – if the character, in the actual events of the story, is a person who acts on their morals and in the best interests of others, and had one period in their backstory when that wasn’t necessarily the case? Or if they were evil and were reformed prior to the events of the story? Yeah, there’s no excuse. If you want to talk about their more dubious actions and say they were morally grey, specify the time period, because that is not who they are in the story itself.)

[justalilhime]

The five deadly sins of transformative fandom:

Treating popular fanon regarding a character as authoritative, and getting angry at people whose feelings toward that character are informed by the version who appears in the actual text  

Conflating “it’s possible to construct this particular narrative from elements present in the text” with “this is the narrative the text in fact presents“  

Dismissing criticism of a particular aspect of the text on the grounds that you can imagine some hypothetical context in which the cited elements wouldn’t be problematic  

Elevating a particular body of fan-work above the actual source material, and acting like anybody whose fandom doesn’t take the former into account is missing the point  

Getting so immersed in a deep subtextual reading that you reflexively assume anyone who has an issue with the explicit text of the source material is engaging in bad faith

[justalilhime]

so.

i guess fanfiction wasn’t a phase….

[justalilhime]

Also is no one gonna talk how Sherlock's shadow is Liam shaped?? Like??? Soulmate behavior y'all

HELLOOOOO SHERLOCK AND BILLY VOL COVER AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH