#As in I copy them wholesale

[phospolipid-bilayer]

I will definitely redesign all the Voices cause I think I've improved a lot since then and got some new ideas... Like Cold being a pilgrim (To where? Seeking what? Will it ever arrive there?), Paranoid living the hermit life, the cult crew wearing high-end royal tier stuff... Actual landsknecht Smitten!!!

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

And remember kids, the next time someone tells you, "George R. R. Martin wouldn't make Jon Snow the typical fantasy hero because that's cliche".....

Oh yes he would!

One viewer wants to know what character would you play (on the show)? GRRM: If I could magically clap my hands and become a different person, it would be cool to play Jon Snow who's much more of the classic hero. Everybody wants to be the classic hero! ABC Interview, 2014

GRRM: And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Meduza Interview, 2017

In fact he already has ☺️

[chetungwan]

You know what, I've sat on this opinion long enough. The worst thing about the Eragon series wasn't that the quality declined with each successive book. It was that the resolution to the prophecy was bullshit.

Being told that you will leave your homeland and never return is fucking terrifying. It was presented in a terrifying manner, and it was a terrifying prophecy. And how it was resolved was bullshit. He fucks off to raise dragon babies and there's technically nothing stopping him from coming back, he just doesn't. That's bullshit! That's unsatisfying!

Also, I think there shouldn't have been more eggs. I think dragons should have fully been doomed to go extinct. I think that Thorn and Sapphira should have been the last ones left alive and hated each other until the end.

But that's a personal opinion, it's not objective. What is objective is that Eragon should have been tragically driven out of Alagaësia, and if he were to ever come back, would doom it.

[cinematicnomad]

guys, if you like my gifs and feel the need to share them on twitter can you at least just...link to the original gifset and give proper credit. please. i'm begging you.

[more-gremlin-than-fae]

To all the undergrads/new grads on here who think plagiarism doesn't matter or doesn't hurt anyone. This is why.

I feel like those of us who are longtime Video Essay Enjoyers™ have been aware something was suss about James Summerton (I remember when Lawrence called out Summerton for stealing their Hannibal essay years ago) for a while. But I think it's cynical to reduce Hbomberguy's vid to just a "dunk" when it's more of an odyssey railing against how influencer and content culture devalues the work of culture critics, academics, and activists. As Harris said, it's not a problem exclusive to Summerton, but a corrosive attitude baked into late capitalist "content" culture. The video is a clear exploration of the consequences of all media and art being flattened into "content" creates a system where the labor of marginalised creatives and storytellers are exploited and stolen by people with more privileges and resources. As someone who has witnessed rich tiktokers quote articles and posts I've written verbatim without credit to make money from their 1000s of followers, this video hit super hard for me. From James Summerton claiming the works of dead gay activists, to Charli D'Amelio building a career from stealing dances created by Black tiktokers - plagiarism is often inseparable from discrimination and exploitation of labor rights. Harris' video is about how the nature of influencer content culture has further exacerbated the exploitative systems that already existed, wrapped up as YouTuber drama analysis. But I hope people don't miss the forest for the trees and remember you should always be citing your sources, fact checking, and be very wary of people who don't. And for the love of God, please stop getting your information exclusively from video essays, tiktoks and podcasts.

[nicespam1]

in an su group on facebook and they consistently post fusions where at least one of the components is huge but the resulting fusion is still stick thin every time

[meanderfall]

so. i finally met nishitani in yakuza 0.

i understand now.

[carriesthewind]

Ok I'm not done complaining about this.

The IA's tweets about how "Publishers removed '1984' [and Fahrenheit 451] from our library"! really underscore how to me, their messaging has been more about self-serving performative manipulation than anything else.

They are deliberately comparing the enforcement of existing copyright law against them, individually and specifically, to the wholesale destruction and suppression of knowledge.

The metaphor really doesn't work in this case*, but that doesn't matter. The idea is not to convey a truth, but a feeling of oppression and injustice.

I just checked. I can check out both of those books, by ebook, from my local library. As in, they are available to check out right now.

And that's not true for everyone, I want to acknowledge! There are real access issues, even for popular books like those. And there are absolutely a number of people who only had access to certain in-copyright books because of IA. ...but also, again, because of how IA works, 1) those are also people who already had the ability to access the internet and all the content therewithin (including other resources designed specifically by librarians to get people access books that may be banned where they live), and 2) they still have access to so many other books through IA (and other resources).**

*And just to make it clear - I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of good arguments and examples about how aspects of the current copyright regime are dystopian. But in this context, these specific books are not the metaphors you are looking for.

**They are currently retweeting a bunch of folks from India, and it feels...a bit weird to me, in context. I know literally nothing about access to books and media in India. (I suspect, given the number of people, it is a topic with a great many facets and issues.) But there's something that feels...off to me, about how much they are focusing on the fact that this removed "more than 1,300 banned and challenged books"***, all of which, as far as I can tell, are either English-language books or books that were already published in English. It makes me question to what extent anyone involved in leadership in the IA knows about access needs in India either.

***Worth noting: they are counting each individual copy of a book - so in getting to their numbers, they count Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, as 38 books removed.****

****Also you can still borrow all of these books from IA if you need access because of print-reading disability. They aren't actually removed and if you were relying on their print-reading accessibility program, you can still use it.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for tracing AI art?

A client (and friend) of mine - for whom I've previously made Twitch emotes for - showed me some images they wanted to use as emotes. She admitted to me that they were AI and I immediately put the brakes on.

I explained some of the issues with AI and why I thought using the images was a bad idea. She didn't seem to fully agree with me about AI, but she may have just been defensive because I had just poo-pooed what would have been her new emotes.

She really liked the expressions on them, and I said I could make my own versions of the images for her if she liked them. Price to be determined later, like I said, this is also my friend, so favors for favors is not an uncommon form of payment.

So I made up a quick copy of one, which she seemed to like so I'll probably do the rest. But while I only traced the vague shape of the head/body to make it fit the style of my art (and her other emotes) better, I DID directly trace the shape of the eyes and mouth with only minor stylistic changes, since the expression was the part she really liked. Basically I cartoonified and recolored them to better fit the style.

I'll admit, I don't 100% understand how AI generates the images, but I don't think the shape itself should have been wholesale copied from someone's actual art? I could be wrong, and I'd accept that I'm TA in that case.

By the time this goes out, the set will probably be complete so it'll likely be too late to stop or change them.

I won't be claiming full credit for them and won't include them in any portfolios, but Twitch doesn't exactly let you credit AI as an artist. So from her viewers perspective it'll look like it's just my art if they don't ask about it. "My art with the help of AI" is PROBABLY how I'll credit it? And ask my friend to credit it the same way.

[libraford]

Hi there!

I'm getting married next year, and I would love to get some advice regarding florists since you worked for one for so long. I don't want to be a pain in the ass or a bridezilla, but I also don't want to be a doormat who gets taken advantage of because I have no idea what I'm doing.

Do you have any general tips or recommendations for how to choose a reputable florist and correctly place an order? 💕

Choosing a florist really comes down to research- find the florists in your town (or the town that you're going to be having your wedding in because its easier to hire local to the venue than it is to import someone to the location.) Some florists don't do weddings. Some florists only do certain styles. Most will have a photo gallery on their website that you can look through. Yelp reviews are not actually very useful here because people WILL try to ruin a business over an amount as little as $3.

Word of mouth is better- ask a married couple who they used, or get on a local facebook group and ask. You're allowed to shop around.

I think its a good idea to go to bridal shows and see flower arrangements in person, meet the designers, and talk prices and goals briefly.

When it comes to big orders like weddings, we usually ask the party to come in for a consultation. The bridal coordinator sits down with you and talk you through prices, colors, aesthetics- etc. Be detailed about what's important to you (for a lot of brides this is the bouquet, boutonnieres, table centerpieces; but also factors like colors, aesthetic types.)

What's useful to the florist is visual guides- especially if you have copies you can leave with the florist. Color swatches, pin-board images, pictures of the venue (maps of the venue if you got it.)

My biggest advice on not being a Bridezilla is knowing that there will be sacrifices to make on certain things. Flowers have seasons. Certain flowers do not come in some colors (we've come a long way in making designer colors, but I'm sorry- you will not get peonies or roses in blue. There's flower-safe spray paints that can sort of make it happen, but its a tough color to get right.) They might be limited in things like hardware, vases, containers.

If you want special kinds of containers, you may have to source them yourself (sometimes people had us doing arrangements in things like lanterns, wine bottles, shallow bowls.) You'll want to bring them to the shop about a week to 2 weeks before the wedding.

On the subject of time deadlines, if you want flowers- don't put this off to the last minute. Some items might require a month to source- shoot for at least 3 months lead time to see a consultant.

Some things will be more expensive as a wedding item than as a daily item. This is because we have the stuff already on-hand and we've already budgeted time to make it. When doing something like that for a wedding, you have to keep in mind the amount of time it takes to make a larger quantity with a special order of wholesale flowers.

Essentially- if the florist says 'we can't do that,' then accept that the answer is 'no.' The limited nature of floristry was one of my many complaints about the industry- I understood that you couldn't get daffodils in October, but explaining it to someone else was a real crapshoot if they'd tear your head off.

Be patient, be understanding, be prepared.

[tragedynoir]

— introducing 003: PLAYER ONE + [ link ]

a semi-mobile friendly google doc template inspired by retro nintendo gameboys and 1 bit platformer games. this template is super versatile and perfect not just for gamer muses, but also sci-fi rps or tabletop games like d&d. it can also double up as an rp information document, or even an app form for rps, as the template has been made to be flexible for the inclusion of extremely long writing! this premium template and a page-by-page preview can be found in the link above or in the source link.

features:

10 unique 11" x 8.5" pages with plenty of space for writing; some quotes, multiple short sections and special long text and connection sections that make them flexible to fit your needs

duplication of specific pages that will allow many connections or writing as long as you require in the document while maintaining aesthetic cohesion!

pages that can all be easily duplicated, deleted and rearranged to your liking, with some google doc knowledge

all elements that are fully customizable within google docs & google drawings — including stats and health bar

terms of use:

you may edit to your heart’s desire. Change the colours, replace, add or remove elements and images etc.

you may remix pages with pages from my other templates.

you may not remove the credit from the templates.

you may not copy, sell or redistribute my templates whether wholesale, in part (i.e. taking out certain pages) or remixed (i.e. modified).

you will also receive an additional guide with images on how to use and edit google doc templates! if you have any problems or issues, feel free to leave an ask or join our discord server.

this is definitely my favourite template so far, and I'm so excited to be sharing this with all of you. it's just so versatile, practical and easy to edit. I hope you enjoy this template as much as I do, and as always, likes + reblogs are always appreciated. ♡

[puckpocketed]

not to like. wholesale copy more articles but nbcsports pieces have broken for me in the past so uhhhh!!! archive text be upon ye!!!

Published 9th December 2024, Grier explains why Sharks couldn't refuse Avs' trade for Blackwood - by Sheng Peng (link)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — For Mike Grier, this was one of the toughest trades of his short tenure as Sharks general manager.

On Monday afternoon, the Sharks announced that they traded goalie Mackenzie Blackwood and winger Givani Smith, along with a 2027 fifth-round draft pick, to the Colorado Avalanche for young winger Nikolai Kovalenko, goalie Alexandar Georgiev, a 2025 conditional fifth-round draft pick (can go up to a fourth if specific conditions are met), and a 2026 second-round draft pick.

“This one's tough because Blacky and I go back to the New Jersey days together, been more than a hockey player. I love the kid,” Grier told San Jose Hockey Now in an exclusive interview.

Grier was a Devils assistant coach before landing the Sharks job in the summer of 2022. The next summer, he acquired Blackwood from New Jersey for a sixth-round draft pick.

Grier spoke at length with SJHN about the trade after informing Blackwood, who turned 28 on Monday. Blackwood participated in Sharks practice earlier in the day, before the team departed for Raleigh.

“When someone calls you with an offer you feel like you can't refuse, and it's going to help continue to build this and set you up for the future, you have to kind of take it,” Grier said.

Grier shared how much the Sharks like Kovalenko, how preliminary chats with Blackwood’s agent about an extension for the pending UFA goalie might have contributed to this trade, what he’s hoping for from Georgiev and more.

Mike Grier’s opening statement:

"I've had a couple of these [trades] that have been tough. The [Tomas] Hertl one was tough. This one's tough because Blacky and I go back to the New Jersey days together, been more than a hockey player. I love the kid. He's a great kid. I'm happy that he's kind of taken this opportunity and he's kind of ran with it.

"It'll be tough for our group. Our group really likes the kid and enjoys playing in front of him.

"It's kind of still in the stages of where we are. We look back historically on returns for goalies and in season. There's only two guys that have ever gotten a second-round pick, and both of them were coming off Vezina seasons, I believe, in Fleury and Robin Lehner. It was a return we thought we couldn't pass up.

"It's probably a little earlier than I would have envisioned doing it. But the return, it's a good return of two draft picks as we continue to build.

"We really like the Kovalenko kid. We had talks about him with Colorado last year. He's going to come in and play for us right away. Give us something a little bit different than what we have, he's a competitive, north-south player. He's someone we're hoping we can grow with.

"So it's a tough day for me. I'm sure it's a tough day for the group, coaches, everyone. Blacky has meant a lot to us.

"But as well as you've seen these last couple games, where as much as things are better and we're improving, I think you guys all see how far we really are away from what the championship standard is in this league, and that's what we're trying to get to. It's my job to look at the present but keep an eye on the future as well. We got to keep building it.

"I wish Blacky nothing but the best. It's a good team, good situation. You're going to have a chance to win, which I think will be important for his career going forward, not only in the NHL but for Team Canada and things like that. In my view, he's probably outplayed the goalies that made that 4 Nations [Faceoff] team. But one thing he's probably missing on his resume is playing important games and pressure situations. This is something for him, I think that will help him.

"If this was two years from now, would probably be a different story. He'd be not someone to be looking to move on from, but the fact that he's a UFA, and to his credit, he probably outplayed his way out of here too, for what he's gonna earn. Speaking with his agent and everything, what he's going to be looking for, and what he's rightfully earned as a UFA to make. I hope he gets what he's looking for.

"I think he kind of played his way out of probably the ballpark figure of what we were looking for, especially with Askarov coming up as well."

Grier, on preliminary chats with Blackwood’s representation about an extension:

"We had a conversation about, just in general, what he'd be looking for. And like I said, he probably played his way out of what we would be looking for, especially, he's going to want some term. He hasn't had some term, and he's going to want some money. It's his first chance to make money. And every player, if they get to that point where they can be unrestricted, that's up to them and it's more power to them. They should try and earn as much money as they can.

"He's earned this. He's played really well for us for two years. Hopefully goes there and plays really well. Does well when the summer comes."

Grier, on potentially keeping both top prospect Yaroslav Askarov and Blackwood:

"There was definitely a possibility here of having a competition with him and Asky and kind of a 1A-1B type of thing.

"But like I said, my job is to look down the road too, and how much money do you want in the net? If one guy happens to beat out the other.

"Owe him a lot. He's done a lot for our group, and not easy circumstances for a goalie.

Grier, on Nikolai Kovalenko:

"When you watch him, the competitiveness, the inside game he has, and it's come to the forefront these last couple games, right? They're "big boy" games, you got to play inside, you got to win pucks. Those teams [Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning] showed what it takes to do it. And we're not quite there yet. I think he has the ability to do that.

"When you see him, he's built like a refrigerator, so he gets to the net, gets around the net, and wins battles. We have to keep adding that to our group.

"He can play left or right [wing]. A lot of those guys grow up [in Russia] playing on their off-side. From talking to our scouts and the guys in Colorado, I think he's comfortable on either wing."

Grier, on acquiring Georgiev:

"It just gives us a little, maybe a little bit more time for Asky to play down there and keep building on what he's doing down there. For Georgie, I had him in New York. He's a playoff-tested guy. He's won a lot of games in this league.

"For him, it's an opportunity to maybe, he's playing better now, but maybe get his game back to where he wants it in a less pressure-filled environment. We'll kind of see what happens during the next couple months after that.

Grier, on how losing Blackwood affects the Sharks' locker room:

"It's gonna be difficult for them, and I understand it. It's the bad part of the business.

In an ideal world, it would have happened later in the season. But that's not the reality of sports, right? They're in a situation there where they're battling for the playoffs and they needed something and they were willing to kind of ante up for what we were looking for. By no means were we looking to move Blacky. But when someone calls you with an offer you feel like you can't refuse, and it's going to help continue to build this and set you up for the future, you have to kind of take it, even if maybe the timing is not ideal.

Grier, on seeing Kovalenko as a playoff-caliber middle-six winger soon:

"That's the hope. I think he can play with all different types of players. He can do some of the dirty work with our top guys or play more in a checking role. He's pretty versatile."

[sparklepocalypse]

Soapbox moment incoming --

We love a rarepair writer, but -- there's evidence that one of the most prolific Alex/Raf posters on Ao3 right now is using ChatGPT to generate their fics instead of actually writing them. They removed the line when they were called out on it, but when they initially posted one of their works, they left "Chat GPT said..." at the top of a chapter. They've also evidently systematically deleted any comments suggesting they're using AI.

This same user "wrote" a POV switch of a fic that another person in the fandom put actual, significant mental energy and time into creating, and there's no doubt in my mind that this was also ChatGPT-generated. I have blocked this user on Ao3, but blocking someone on the site only prevents their works from showing up in search for you, and prevents them from commenting on yours. It doesn't prevent them from seeing your works, or you know, copying and pasting them wholesale into a natural language processing site or app and having it word vomit out "their" version of a work so they can post it as their own "writing."

If your immediate response to this is "Telling people not to use AI to write is ableist," you can shove that bullshit right up your ass, because they're stealing words that other people in the fandom have created and claiming they put the same sort of time and energy into them as people who actually write. But, if your immediate response is "Yeah, fuck this noise, who the fuck does this person think they are," then you are precisely my sort of person.

And listen, I'm not saying AI isn't useful. There are certainly a lot of practical applications for AI. However, there's a line about a mile wide between using AI as a tool to help you when you're stuck or looking for ideas (or hell, using it professionally to turn your recorded meeting transcript into meeting notes), and just saying "fuck it," and passing off AI's regurgitation as your own work. It's not your work, nor will it ever be; it's other people's work and you are using AI to steal it, and then basking in the easy dopamine hit from the recognition that it gets once you hit post. Fucking stoppit.

If you find works on Ao3 that are generated by AI, please note that while AI-generated works are not in and of themselves banned by the site (because, sadly, it'd be almost impossible for the Ao3 team to identify and ban them all at this point), plagiarism is explicitly against the site's Terms of Service and you should report plagiarized works for content violations. (Don't submit more than one report per user; their small but mighty team of volunteers doesn't need to be spammed about the same person to address a concern.)

[brostateexam]

ok, im well out of the loop with cassie clare, i havent read one of her books in at least 10 years, but i was big on her as a teenager. did she start off as a fic author? (that wouldn't surprise me) or did she just straight up plagiarise a bunch of shit?

The answer to this question is: both!

I will start off by saying: All of this is to the best of my recollection. This is not a perfect accounting of events. If you really, really want to know, I'm sure there are people who are like actual fandom scholars and archivists who will get it all right, but that is very not me.

And on the offchance that any lawyer is reading this: Please consider all of this as a recollection of events that happened. Not trying to defame anyone here, just talking about events that already occurred. Anything mentioned about the author in question that is not a recollection of past events is speculative and should be taken as such.

Cassie Clare did indeed start off as a fic author. She was decently prolific and wrote a lot for a very big fandom at the time, Harry Potter. She wrote a series (Draco trilogy, had names like Draco Dormiens) that was very, very popular. Presumably many modern readers are now reaching for rotten tomatoes or airsick bags as applicable, but this was circa 2000-2005(ish?), so the attitude toward HP was different back then, to say the least. Her stuff was put up on a fansite that was dedicated to HP only on like a featured page, which was basically reserved for decent writers and big name fans that the fansite runner knew and liked.

All of these people have names and are findable, but I don't remember them because it has been decades.

Draco Dormiens and or the others in the series were at the center of this controversy, and I think that with the benefit of time, it did not age well, but it was very of the time, and people loved the idea of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, and Ginny as articulate, witty, hot older teens being rich and glamorous and magical and cool. Keep in mind, we gotta rewind the clock here. I remember the plagiarism controversy really gaining steam in early 2003, so at this time about 4 or 5 of the books were out and the main people reading them were teenagers and college kids, not the 30- or 40-somethings going to the theme park that you see on the internet now. So this was wildly popular and it's probably not hard to understand why.

Her popularity took a hit when she began to be accused of plagiarism, and when it didn't immediately recede it become a full on controversy. This was a big accusation to level, because she was very popular and very well-liked, and was friends with a lot of other authors who were also popular and well-liked, who largely speaking had her back. Finally, after the furor grew and grew, she acknowledged the controversy and made a statement that amounted to something like: "Okay, I thought it was pretty clear that I was just making references to popular TV shows by stealing dialog from episodes word for word, but I'll attribute everything I use in this way from now on, and I will also go back and add attribution for everything I used in this way."

This was a very savvy way of dealing with the accusations, because it was true that she was doing this (largely lifting stuff from Buffy and from Babylon 5, as I recall) and it was also true that if you were a fan of either show and read her fics, you could absolutely see that she was doing this and take it as a send-up or reference, not as plagiarism. This gave her friends and fans an out, a way to say to people "okay we get it, she acknowledged it and added attribution, can you shut up now?"

Except that wasn't actually the extent of it. Cassie Clare, well known for her super cool magical concepts she introduced in her Draco trilogy, was lifting those from a then out-of-print fantasy series by Pamela Dean. And it wasn't just ideas that she was lifting wholesale and not bothering to change the names of. She was also copying out whole paragraphs and pages, secure in the knowledge that you couldn't buy the books anymore, so it wasn't like she could get nailed by someone picking up the book at a Barnes & Noble and going "hey, wait a sec."

Except, perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of people who like fanfiction for Harry Potter also like fantasy as a genre, and people absolutely clocked some of her lazier plagiarism, because it was seriously word for word, sometimes for paragraphs.

This ultimately led to her getting banned for plagiarism from fanfic.net lol and the entire Draco trilogy was removed.

I think the lesson she took from this may have been the wrong one, and I fear it may have been that if you copy stuff and are popular enough, you can get away with it for years, so keep copying. Her entire career she's been accused of plagiarism, for both for her YA series and for her new series. I can't say if any of the subsequent allegations were true or not. Personally, I'm inclined to believe the claims simply because she has a history of doing it, doing it shamelessly, and lying about it or at least obscuring the full truth back in her fanfic era.

Anyway, I'd like to conclude this by saying if you really like her stuff and want to keep reading it or whathaveyou, I don't think that has a particular moral valence. I believe people in their 20s mostly know her for Shadowhunters, and from what I've gleaned it's about hot people in their 20s being glamorous and magical and witty and rich, and that's a winning formula now just like it was a generation ago. The person who should bear the burden of not being a plagiarist is the author, not the audience.

Hope this was informative, and thanks for asking!

[cosmogyros]

I posted elsewhere about that horrific translation of Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, and a friend commented: "I'm curious how a translator looks at other's work and knows it's a bad translation". Of course the translation nerd in me was thrilled for an opportunity to rant about my specialty, and I proceeded to reply with a multi-comment thread analyzing this particular example. For posterity, I'll combine it all into a single messy "essay" here.

It's actually quite easy once you're familiar with translation "from the inside"! I'll come back to this post with some examples later today, because I'm a huge nerd and love talking about this stuff, haha.

...

Okay, big thread incoming, buckle up. The book is called Kitchen and is by the author Banana Yoshimoto, who – from what I understand – is well-known and beloved in Japan. The book description on Goodreads starts this way:

"Banana Yoshimoto's novels have made her a sensation in Japan and all over the world, and Kitchen[,] her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book [...]"

So, clearly this book is something special, right? I started to read it, and on every page – in practically every paragraph – encountered language that I can only describe as "weird", such as the following:

Three things in particular struck me in this example: the word "alarmed", the word "abruptly", and the word "it" strangely set off in quotation marks. None of these word choices have any larger context in the story that would make them make sense.

Someone else who wrote a very astute review of the book on Goodreads was able to put her finger on exactly what the likely problem here is:

"There are simple errors in translation that can only result from using a bilingual electronic dictionary that provides a list of approximate synonyms rather than actual definitions."

When you look at it this way, it immediately starts to make more sense. Imagine this re-write of the paragraph above:

"When I stepped off the elevator, I was startled by the sound of my own footsteps echoing in the hall. I rang the doorbell, and Yuichi opened the door at once. 'Come in!'"

If you're familiar with "the way literature works", so to speak, you'll immediately recognize that "startled" and "at once" are examples of words that have a similar meaning to the (presumed) original Japanese word, but fit more accurately in the context of the English translation.

(This is obviously different from "creative language", which is lovely and fun and not to be messed with. I love the line "my gaze landed with a thud", for example!)

Another perfect example of bad translation here: the sentence "I couldn't know," which stands out so oddly that it throws the reader out of their reading rhythm. It would make much more sense for the flow of meaning if it said:

"What was this table doing in the apartment? I had no idea."

or

"What was this table doing in the apartment? There was no way to know."

To an experienced translator, a grammatically correct but contextually wrong choice such as "I couldn't know" at this particular spot stands out like a sore thumb. If Google Translate had existed at the time this translation was made (1993, I believe), I might have accused the translator of using it. As it is, I suspect she must have been using whatever the equivalent tool was, at that point in time.

If you want more analysis, check out this fantastic review (the one I quoted above) from Sarah on Goodreads.

Two more good examples she provides in her review are the following, which I will copy in wholesale:

"Words in Japanese that have more than one possible English meaning are translated not only incorrectly, but inconsistently. (The Japanese '笑' could be 'smile' or 'laugh' in English. Maybe it is not a huge distinction, but when a character 'smiles' at something his friend says and then can't stop shaking it creates the impression of an unbalanced or perhaps epileptic person when, in the original, the character was simply laughing.)"

And:

"Even the friendly Japanese exclamatory 'えええ' has been translated with an inappropriate emotional volume. In response to a ringing phone: “[Mikage] answered it. 'Aaaah!' screamed a high, thin voice. 'Mikage, dear? How have you been?'” This accounts, I suspect, for a huge amount of the inconsistencies in the prose, and for characters that vacillate wildly between contradictory and inappropriate emotions."

Sarah follows this up by observing:

"Japanese is a context-dependent language. A translator who can't be bothered to acknowledge multi-sentence discourse is not ready to translate prose. Instead, she has given us characters who emote passionately, overreact wildly, and then are described as cold, hard-to-read, independent and stoic (or vice versa)."

In conclusion: How do you know if it's the author or the translator you're displeased with? To a degree it's guesswork, sure. But if you ask yourself "What EXACTLY am I displeased with? What strikes me as odd?" and the answer is repeatedly "the specific words on the page" (see all my examples above), then you have to keep in mind that it is the translator who chose those words.

If the original is NOT weird and stylistically unsettling, then it's the translator's responsibility to make sure their translation is not weird and stylistically unsettling either.

If the original IS weird and stylistically unsettling, then it's the translator's responsibility to create a writing style that displays sufficient internal consistency that the reader rapidly recognizes, "Oh, this book IS supposed to be odd and quirky – that must be the author's personal style!"

This translator did neither A nor B.

[gamenburger]

so i started selling my zine in the

Real wORLD

And the really funny thing is that my favorite local zine shop/arts hangout ended up wanting to buy some copies of it wholesale as I was assemblin it- and they thought my sale price was my cut so they basically valued what I made happily at double my price- which i didn't realize until I was out the door because i am number blind. The next time I sell to them I will make up that difference, but until I resolve that it means the other bookstore sellin it right now (see above) had to price it at the same (double what I wanted it, to me it feels weird to like. sell a review for a game that's more than the game? idk??) or else it would undercut my favorite community space (TT_TT)

This is what i mean when i like. feel like I don't like money. I like not not having money, but i think trying to value like. art, esp against other art in different mediums is like sticking your hand in a tissue box made entirely out of knives. I don't like it!!! Those oily blades give me hives!

So yes. This is me finding a way to be weird about the fact that people value my stuff more than I do. In truth, it is actually very nice! Of course there is a part of me that has price is right bells going off in my head when i see my zine at a bookshop. Maybe someone will think it is Cool!!! Literally the person at the counter wanted to read it because they were literally watching a playthru of the game that morning!! It felt cool to be part of that passion!

Idk thank u all. It looks like the bonus features/behind the scenes will in fact go up *sometime* tomorrow. I sure hope you like reading about

PAPER

(also yes, the print versions are coming with this. as with all things I saw like a few billion things I could do better to improve the look of the thing in print, so I went ahead and did them. I sure hope u have a thing for those oversized printing dots)