#EDIT: ADDING IN THAT THIS IS TONS OF SPECULATION & I WAS STILL TRYING TO FIGURE THEM OUT HERE

[mysticsparklewings]

I’m Not Dead‪

I'm not laughin', You're not jokin' I'm not dead I only dress that way Out nowhere take me out there Far away and save me from my Self-destruction, hopeless for you Sing a song for California --My Chemical Romance, "Boy Division" ____ Have you heard?? Have you heard the news?? Well if not, I'm gonna tell ya: MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE IS BACK, BABY!!! :D On Halloween, we got the announcement that they will be playing a show in Los Angeles, California on December 20th. And just a few days ago we got the news that they're also going to New Zealand, Australia, and Japan which basically confirms to me they're doing so sort of tour, whether they actually call it that or not. There's still a lot we don't know for sure; whether this is just a one-time reunion tour or their official comeback tour, if we'll be getting new original music both at the shows and available for download/purchase or if they're just going to redo their existing music and covers, if it's only going to be the main four that were there at the end or if there will be some of the other members that were in and out over the years rejoining them...Where all they're going to go on this tour...the list goes on. But! The important thing, at least to me, is that they came back at all. Six years. Six years we've waited and hoped and prayed, been let down by false rumors and speculation...And now it's actually happening. I just... Hence why I had to make an art piece celebrating the occasion and as an excuse to talk about it. (I figure if I'm going to dump my opinions on the internet I might as well make some art to go with them. Sue me. ) Originally, I was planning on making something more along the lines of true fan art, as this is more pseudo fan art here, but I just couldn't settle on one good idea that I felt really comfortable pursuing. Although I am still considering doing an updated (or at least colored in) version of my Killjoys, Make Some Noise! (lineart) I did a couple of years ago...we'll see. Anyway. Since we did get the news on Halloween, it's worth noting that originally I'd been debating if I wanted to do any makeup this year at all or just slide on a mask since my only plans were going to Krispy Kreme, who was offering a free donut if you showed up in costume. But after the news broke, my decision was made for me. I had to. MCR isn't strictly associated with skeletons/skulls, as has become my preferred Halloween costume, but The Black Parade, their second album, does have a little skeleton as the leader of the marching band, and the band members did wear skeleton/skull inspired makeup during that time. Admittedly this year's makeup wasn't nearly as involved or elaborate as what I've done in years' past, but it beats last year's absolutely nothing. I ended up taking a few pictures to preserve the look, as I always do even though I rarely take photos of myself, and I would decide to draw one of them where I was trying to do this face that Gerard (the frontman and lead singer of the band) has made on a several occasions; this wide-eyed intense stare. Partly because this, I'm sure, is very close to my actual face when I heard the news that they're back, the makeup was inspired by them anyway, and also because it pairs very well with one of my favorite lines from my favorite song by them. Said line being, obviously, "I'm not dead I only dress that way," from Boy Division, as cited at the top of the description. If I'm being completely truthful, I can't even really put my finger on what it is about Boy Division specifically that makes it my favorite, as I've yet to hear an MCR song I truly do not like, but I think there's something in the lyrics of the full song that just sells it for me in combination with the high-energy music. But whatever the case, it is my favorite nonetheless. Beyond that though, it's really hard to place the rest of them in any coherent order because, at least to my ears, they're all really great. Anyway. So I went about drawing my face, erring slightly more on the realistic side than usually (but obviously not too much) in hopes of capturing the facial expression. Which, it's pretty good, but I do think it could've been a little better. I think my biggest problem was getting the eyebrows a mouth right, and I'm still not sure they're quite there since my real eyebrows are pretty translucent and the mouth was hard to balance between looking logical and more neutral than sad/angry. And I think maybe the proper expression was a little more apparent in the sketch, but it's pretty normal to lose some feeling between the sketch and the final product so that I won't discount too much. After that, I had to take a break from the drawing to think about how to color it in any style it and everything. I ended up transferring the sketch to Mixed Media paper after deciding I wanted to use alcohol markers as a base but not knowing if I'd need to adjust it with colored pencil and/or other mediums on top or not, and I did the lines with my Faber Castell Polychromos once I felt like just black lines would be too harsh and thinking colored lines would be better. Plus, the Polychromos are very non-reactive to water, so if I really wanted to I could add watercolor or something water-activated without having to worry about the lines getting messed up. I did not consider how the Polychromos would react to the alcohol markers, but other than one or two spots where the top layer of pencil kinda dissolved after some heavy layering (which was easily fixed by just going back over the lines in that area again really quickly), fortunately, it worked out okay. Although sweet sparkles I swear it took at least twice as long to actually do the lines as opposed to normal between having to apply enough pressure to get the right amount of color down and working on the differences inline weight.   Anyway. I was a little worried about some of the shading/effects I'd be doing with the markers, but I think I did alright with it. This mixed media paper (Strathmore 400 series for anyone who cares) is nice and thick, so I had plenty of room to layer up and blend as I needed to get the look I was going for. This came in especially handy around the eyes and on the nose when I told myself to at least try and get the colors like the photo before cheesing it and just using straight (or nearly) black. The only area that I think came out a little rough is really the skin, mainly the forehead. But that has more to do with 1. There isn't much contrast on the face in the photo so I didn't want to take it too far in the drawing and 2. I think I may have started slightly too dark for skin this pale. I realize that's a weird thing to say, but when you're pale as a ghost like I am, you'd be surprised how easy that is to do. And to be fair, I probably could've tried to adjust that with colored pencils, and my original plan was to add some white pencil on top in the areas of the face where a highlight would naturally hit (forehead, bridge of the nose, cheekbones, etc.)  But by the time I got done with the markers, I honestly felt like it was nice enough without any additional pencil that I thought it might be best to just leave it alone. Since I still have the original drawing, my thoughts may change on that and I could update this eventually, but for now, my decision stands. On the other hand, I was actually pretty pleased with how the hair turned out once it was colored. That is until I scanned it in. I don't know why, but the darkest shadows in the hair were too dark and too bluish on the scan, despite everything else looking fairly color-accurate. I fiddled with the scanner settings for a few minutes to try and fix it, but it became quickly apparent there wasn't much to be done about it at the level. Which meant I had to try making the adjustments in Photoshop. Now, I've done my fair share of scan-fixing, photo editing, and just color adjustments on digital art, but for the life of me I could not get things to work the way I wanted them to here. It became to the point I'm starting to suspect if the actual true-to-life shades of purple of the drawing are just really hard or even impossible for computers to capture and/or create accurately. Fluorescent colors fall in that category, surely they're not the only ones. In the end, after more time than I bothered to document messing around with settings and adjustments, and firmly decided I was not going to essentially manually re-color/shade the hair digitally, I tried the only other thing I could think to do. I took the hair, as I had been for all my adjustments since the rest of the colors were fine, on a separate layer and took all the saturation out so I was left with just the gray values. And I noted while I was at that point that it didn't seem to be an issue of the contrast between the shadows and the rest of the hair. The transition looked perfectly acceptable in grayscale. Then, I added a color layer on top of that one, clipped it to only show up on the hair, and changed it to an "overlay" layer so that I would get the values from the gray layer, but colored purple. It did take a couple of tries to get the right shade of purple for the color layer, and I'm sure it's still not 100% accurate to the IRL drawing, but it's a heck of a lot closer than it was. And this gets even weirder when you consider that just a few days before I made this drawing, I made a different one for a friend where I used the exact same marker colors for the hair, blended in almost exactly the same manner, on the same paper, and it didn't have this problem when I scanned that one in. I have never in my life. Anyway. The accessories actually didn't give me much trouble in drawing or coloring. Admittedly, I did tone down how many feathers and stuff are actually on the tiny hat for my own sanity's sake, and while I did my best with the lace on the choker, I don't have a ton of practice with drawing lace like this so I'm sure it could be improved. Although I did decide to color both of those areas (what I didn't draw/fill in with the pencils at the line stage) with a super dark blue-violet instead of a gray or straight black for the purpose of not totally hiding the linework I'd put in and to make it just slightly more dynamic. Which I think was a good call as it seems to tie in pretty nicely with the grayish tones on the face. Other than that though, I did try to stay fairly accurate with my color choices, and I think I did pretty well with that, all things considered. (Despite having a much larger selection than I did just a few months ago, I do still need a wider selection of alcohol markers in some areas just for the sake of color accuracy and smooth transitions.) Once my face was done, then came the text. I searched for a while, hoping to find an MCR appropriate font that I could hopefully add by hand, but my search came up empty. I did find one I really liked the look of though, called "Miserable." So I scanned the drawing in and after the aforementioned hair struggles, I got to play with the placement and structure of the words. I knew I kinda wanted something that just has that "I'm a logo/t-shirt emblem" kind of feel, and in the end, I think I got that. But I do think I could've planned out the drawing itself a little bit better in terms of the space left to fit the words into. I really didn't do myself a lot of favors on that one.   It has its problems, but I'm still really actually kind of proud of how this turned out...and that's really all I have to say about it. Eh, maybe I'm just really happy because I know why I made it in the first place. Now if MCR can just come within 1-2 hours of my location so I can actually go see them...please... ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[quicksilversquared]

How to Fake A Marriage Outtakes: Ch 2

So this was a deleted chapter from HTFAM that I discarded in favor of a bit of a time skip and then decided to keep and turn into an outtake. It's set after Adrien and Marinette decide to move in together for the remainder of their time in London.

(AO3) (FF.net)

One of the funniest things about Adrien and Marinette, all of Marinette's team members agreed, was that the two of them were not anywhere as smooth as they thought they were. The two of them hadn't even remotely tried to hide how friendly they were with each other during Marinette's first year, and everyone had seen how their relationship had gradually progressed from a simple close friendship into something more.

And everyone had seen how suddenly, they were working to keep a little distance between them, like they were trying to pretend that they were back to just normal friend status- but when they thought no one was paying attention, they gravitated right back towards each other with little touches and fond looks. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they were dating but for some strange reason, had decided to keep it secret from the world- or, rather, as secret as it could be when speculation about their love life was being published in the tabloids every other month.

None of them asked why. It had become a kind of source of amusement for the group of them, watching as Adrien and Marinette scrambled to act innocent whenever there were other people around. But everyone could see how Marinette lit up at the mention of Adrien and how she was always happy to go home and spend time with him, and how protective Adrien was of Marinette and how eager to please her he was.

Even if they weren't actually living with each other, the two of them acted like newlyweds and not all of the acting in the world could hide it.

Abbey Bernard's lips twitched in amusement as she thought about her most recent visit to Adrien and Marinette. She had mostly wanted to swing by to tease Marinette about the most recent slew of tabloid coverage about her and Adrien- their spa visit hadn't gone unnoticed, and wasn't that the cutest thing ever? Abbey wished that she could find a guy that would treat her as well as Adrien treated Marinette- and Marinette hadn't been over in her apartment. Instead, to the surprise of absolutely no one, she was hanging over at Adrien's apartment across the hall.

And- wasn't it the funniest thing?- it rather looked as though Marinette lived over in Adrien's apartment. Her things were scattered all over, her work ID tossed casually in a bowl on a table near the door next to the apartment keys and Adrien's school ID and bus pass and two sweaters of hers over the back of the couch. The last time that Abbey had seen the inside of Marinette's apartment, it had looked curiously bare.

"Hey, Abbey!" a voice called, and Abbey internally groaned, re-focusing on her work. She had a whole pile of paperwork that she had to get done- most of it having to do with fabric orders- and any interruptions would drag it out that much longer before she could finish and return to actually designing. "I had a question for you!"

"If it's about the editing on the latest photoshoot, I don't have a clue, ask Shannon," Abbey said automatically, and then she glanced up and saw Marinette hanging over her cubicle call. "Oh! Marinette! Hey, what's up?"

"I had a non-work question, but first- uh, could you keep something a secret?" Marinette cringed as soon as the words came out. "That sounds weird, I'm sorry, I mean-"

"If this is about you and Adrien dating, everyone here already knows- or, well, they all suspect, at least," Abbey said, cutting her off and making Marinette's eyes fly wide in surprise. She just internally shook her head. Had Marinette really thought that no one had noticed? Good lord. Well, maybe now they could stop the acting, now that they knew that their secret was out. "You two aren't subtle with the flirting, you know."

I- but-" Marinette spluttered, looking incredibly flustered. "We haven't flirted here-"

"You two never stop flirting." Abbey grinned, shaking her head. Even as sickly sweet as Adrien and Marinette could get at times, it was still cute. "But I'm guessing you didn't just come over to update me on your relationship status after-" she checked her calendar- "what, almost ten months of dating?"

Marinette spluttered even more, looking completely taken off guard. Abbey just waited patiently, knowing that it shouldn't take too long for her to recover. Thankfully Marinette managed to recover, though her cheeks were still a bit pink. Abbey watched as she straightened her shoulders, visibly composing herself before speaking again. "I, uh- well, I was wondering if you were still looking for a new apartment to move to."

Abbey made a face at the question, remembering her latest attempts to get out of her (rather terrible) apartment. It wasn't that the space was a mess or anything- it was just cramped beyond belief, was freezing all the time because it was always in the shade, and it wasn't in a great location, considering where she worked. The only opening that she had been able to find at a slightly better location had gotten snatched up before she could get it, which was actually worse than not being able to find anything at all. "Yeah. I gotta re-sign my lease by the end of the week, though, if I can't find anything. And I haven't been able to find anything. Why?"

"I'm planning on moving," Marinette told her, and Abbey's eyes went wide and hopeful. Marinette was moving? Oh, but that would mean that one of the lovely prefurnished apartments in the Rosalie workers' preferred building would be open! "Into Adrien's apartment, so mine will be open."

"But your lease isn't up until- what, the fall? Isn't that what you said last year?" Abbey's mind raced, trying to figure out how she could make sure that her lease would line up with Marinette's apartment opening. If she went for a month-to-month, maybe-

"I've been cleared to sublease," Marinette said before Abbey could think about it too much, and she immediately perked up. "And subleasers get approached first when the main leaser's contract is up and they aren't renewing."

Abbey was grinning. "Oh, I officially love you," she told Marinette. "Not as much as Adrien does, probably, but- oh my god. I've been trying to get into that building for forever. My current lease is up at the end of the month, but I can extend for a week at a time if needed. When can I move in? And will I need to sanitize every flat surface?" she added impishly, her grin turning wicked.

Marinette snorted. "No, we've kept that to Adrien's apartment- I mean!" she corrected quickly, catching herself just a few seconds too late. Abbey snickered in amusement. "No! We're- we've- that's- I mean to say that that's not a concern and also I'm cleaning before I move out anyway, so there!"

Abbey howled with laughter, cackling at Marinette's red face. It took her a minute to calm down and wipe the tears from her eyes. "Right, right. So, anyway- when will I be able to move in?"

Marinette stepped into the cubicle so one of the senior designers could get by, pushing a rack of clothing. Abbey waved to them sheepishly as they gave her a look. Clearly everyone in their section of the floor had hear her laughter. "We can probably manage at the end of the month. I just have to get a few more things out-"

"-aka you've been living with Adrien for a while, then," Abbey filled in, grinning.

"-and then clean and get the inspection done before you move in. It shouldn't take long. Adrien and I can clean this weekend." She giggled. "I'm sure he'll love that I'm volunteering him."

Abbey grinned at her, excitement starting to properly brew in her chest. "That's so great! I'll have to talk to my landlord, then, and tell him that I'll be moving after all. And then I'll start packing, and maybe move some boxes over? Would I be able to store a few small things in Adrien's apartment until the inspection is done? I mean, I can definitely wait, but if I could just move a few things per day so the final push isn't so hard..."

"I'll ask," Marinette promised. "And then I'll text you tonight to let you know. We could probably store some stuff under the couch or maybe in the hall closet. And I'll try to get the apartment cleaned up soon so I can get the inspection done."

"Wanna go over the details at lunch since we're technically supposed to be working right now?" Abbey suggested. She glanced down at her pile of paperwork a bit ruefully. "I want to know everything about the contract, of course, but I'm also supposed to be reviewing a bunch of paperwork right now."

"Of course!"

  "You really don't have a ton left in here," Adrien commented as they surveyed Marinette's apartment that evening. "I mean, I think a lot of your clothes are over at my apartment anyway, and your blankets and pillows and towels, too, and- I mean, I think your apartment is basically just a sewing room at this point, and it's only even that much because we haven't moved the sewing machine back yet."

Marinette nodded a little sheepishly. "Sewing room and extra kitchen, really. And extra room so that Nino and Alya don't realize that we're living together when they visit."

"I'm so glad that Alya won the competition," Adrien said as he and Marinette headed back to the bedroom to see what she had left there. "Not just because I'm proud of her, of course, but she'll be preparing for her trip and then gone for a good chunk of the year, and all of Nino's trips will be to see her. We'll just have to figure out how to keep them from coming over after Alya gets back in- what, January?"

"I just figured that we would make a lot of trips to Paris under the guise of getting most of our stuff back home before the end of the school year," Marinette offered. She checked the first drawer, then reached in to pull out a pile of socks and underwear that she then promptly deposited in Adrien's arms. "And if I find any jobs to apply for, then I would go back for tours or interviews. Hopefully that would be enough visits for them."

"Hopefully," Adrien agreed. He had to think that their trips to Paris would be enough. Nino would be wanting to save money for his trips to see Alya, so if they just resolved to visit Paris several times a semester- which was more than what they had been doing- then maybe they could get away with living in the same apartment. They could maybe schedule more Skype calls as well, so that they could talk... well, not face-to-face, exactly, but as close to face-to-face as they could. "It's funny- like, I want to see Alya and Nino in person, of course, yet I don't want them to visit. That sounds so bad."

Marinette laughed.

It didn't take long for them to clear out the bedroom, even with Marinette's rather extensive wardrobe, though it took longer to puzzle out where they could store things in Adrien's apartment. The rest of the apartment took a similarly short time to clear out, even the living room. Marinette had apparently spent a couple evenings cleaning up and packing away the scraps and leftover fabric into bags before she went back to Paris, so it was no big hassle to move all of the sewing things back to their normal spot in Adrien's apartment.

By the end of the evening, Marinette's apartment was sitting empty and was ready to be cleaned- especially the living room, which had bits of fabric fibers everywhere thanks to all of the cut fabric from the commissions, and the bathroom which, despite their best efforts at the time, had some of the screen-printing chemical residue still smeared on the floor and in the tub.

"That wasn't that bad," Adrien commented as Marinette locked her apartment for the night and they headed back across the hall to their apartment. "But it's going to be harder to move out of our apartment once we're done in London," he added, making a bit of a face. "We'll have tons of stuff to carry back and we'll be cleaning and still living there at the same time."

Marinette made a face. "Oh, don't think about that now," she said. She kicked off her shoes at the door and tossed her keys on the table while Adrien locked the door. "I know we'll have to bring stuff back gradually, like most of our summer things going back to Paris at the end of summer and most of our fall things going back at Christmas, but it's still going to be so much."

Adrien couldn't help but laugh. "Funny, you say that we shouldn't think about it, and then you start talking about what we should do to get ready to go back."

Marinette just stuck out her tongue.

The next evening, they started the cleaning. Adrien attacked the bedroom and the living room with a vacuum while Marinette took on the bathroom. It wasn't fun work, especially when Adrien had to pause in his vacuuming to unwind a ribbon that had gotten overlooked and sucked into the vacuum and was very much stuck, but since Marinette had kept the apartment in such good condition for so long, it didn't need a deep cleaning. The kitchen just needed a quick wipe-up, a thorough scrub of the fridge, and a check to make sure none of the cooking things or silverware had migrated across the hall before it could get crossed off of the list of things to do, and the hall closet just needed a quick dust.

"Marinette, can you come help me move the couch so I can clean behind it?" Adrien called, flipping the vacuum off for a moment. "After those are done, the bedroom, the hallway, and the living room will all be finished."

Marinette came trotting out, wiping her hands on a towel. She was grinning. "Really? That's great!"

"And then I'll finish up the closet and work on the kitchen," Adrien told her as they moved the couch and the armchair away from the wall. He flipped the vacuum back on and quickly cleaned the newly exposed carpet. "It helps that most of the apartment hasn't really been used much for a while. There's not a bunch of grit and grime built up. Everything is just a quick clean, really."

"Says the guy who isn't cleaning the bathroom," Marinette said. She waited until the vacuum was off again and in the corner before grabbing her end of the couch so they could move it back up against the wall. "I've gotten most everything off, but there's a few stubborn spots, and I need to clean out the drain."

"Fun, fun."

"Not even remotely. I'm almost tempted to transform into Ladybug so I can have super-strength for the scrubbing. It might go a little faster that way."

Adrien couldn't help the snicker that slipped out. It was just a funny mental image, thinking about Ladybug super-cleaning a bathtub. "Somehow I don't think Tikki would be happy about that."

Marinette's lips twitched upwards in a small smile. "No, probably not."

Despite Marinette's grumbling, it didn't take long at all to get the rest of the cleaning done. Marinette went over the entire apartment again, making sure that that the windows were fully closed, nothing had been left out on the balcony, the adjustable dimmer light over the table was fully off, and all of the chairs were pushed into the table straight. Once that was done, Marinette joined Adrien at the door.

"I thought it would feel weird to be pretty much officially moved out of here, but it doesn't, not at all," Marinette told Adrien. "It feels more like well, at last."

"Well, you haven't exactly been living there for a while," Adrien pointed out, holding the door so Marinette could leave. "It'll probably be weird to move out of our apartment next year, though." He paused when Marinette didn't leave the apartment, eyes still scanning the room. His voice softened. "Marinette?"

She startled, as though she hadn't realized that she had checked out for a moment, and then reached over and took his hand, smiling up at him as she did. "I'm fine. I'm just really tired from all of the cleaning today and I just zoned out for a second."

He scanned her expression. She looked exhausted, almost like she was going to fall asleep standing up. Hopefully she could make it through the shower before falling asleep. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Let's go home."

[eyedelater]

notes (translation and otherwise) on chapters 100.12 and 100.13

basically i typed these up the day of translation for the respective chapters but never published them because i was feeling weird about them but i figured i’d put them out there anyway

translation notes marked with a * at the front so you can read only those if you want. overall this is pretty long and kind of nonsensical

--

for 100.12

*the "brother you can earnestly compete with" is the same phrase that i translated last chapter as "serious conflict," as in "there's never been a serious conflict between us," and i can't decide whether i translated it too strongly and then too weakly or vice versa but basically the meaning of the phrase (honki de butsukariau) is like, “seriously clash.” yeah, clash is the best word, isn’t it. it��s got all the right connotations, like bouncing off each other and general conflict but not necessarily a destructive fight and also not necessarily a friendly competition. yeah i should’ve said clash both times, huh. do you ever have regrets

*i was right about the sound effect at the end of 100.11 being a flash, sort of..? it was a precursor to this first panel's sound effect, which is "PIGIIIIN" which is an unusual sound effect, or at least, one i haven't really seen before. i mean it's entirely possible to just invent a one-off sound effect for any particular situation, you know? but in this case the sound effect appears to describe the phenomenon of ritsu being utterly immobilized by ???% in an instant

i was wrong about the percentage meter being mob's :0

raise your hand if you lost your shit after doing a double- or triple-take between the omake title and the omake itself and finally realizing what it was

i still need to sort out exactly how ritsu's interpretation of ???% and my ???% hypothesis work out, but i've been too busy playing psychonauts... plus i'm sure we will continue to better understand the nature of ???% as this chapter progresses. [[edit: psychonauts was good, and i’m probably going to reserve judgment on ???% until we get the full story, since there’s no point in speculating when your speculations will be addressed a week later]]

--

for 100.13:

*well, i had a lot of decisions to make in this chapter... which i guess actually just means i was slightly confused/ambivalent a lot. it comes with the territory of not actually being that good at japanese. i've said this before, right? it's on my about page. so don't let it come as a surprise to anyone that i'm not that good at japanese. i mean i'm not terrible, i have a solid handle on it. it's just that my approach to translation is more like decrypting a cipher as accurately as possible and then phrasing it in a way that captures both the meaning and the feeling. i try really hard, but i know i couldn’t be a professional translator without further education. that’s why i never claimed/aimed to be the best or only translator of this series. but i do still believe my work is accurate. 

*anyway, starting on the first page. ritsu says "wakatta... wakatta yo..." and wakatta just means "understood" and the "yo" adds emphasis, but we don't quite have any emphasis-adding particle in english, so i changed the latter to "i get it" to make it sound more insistent. even though i really try not to translate the same phrase two different ways, especially not in direct sequence like that. but at first i translated it as "i get it... / i get it, okay..." and that sounded way too whiny, so i thought the better way to phrase it would be to do what i did. i think ritsu feels bad about causing distress to ???% and is saying, like, "i know it feels bad, but i had to do it." (<< interpretation, not a translation)

*when ritsu says "right...?" i was thinking about translating that as "don't you think...?" (what he actually says is just "nee...?" which is just a call for confirmation basically) and while i do think "don't you think...?" would've been the cuter translation, i went with "right...?" because it has the same number of syllables as the raw line and maintaining brevity is important to me sometimes.

*thanks again to femoralynn for hand-drawing the "STOP!!!" on the third page~ i think it makes a big difference. in the raws it was also hand-drawn and it said "TOMAREEE" which means... "STOP," but in english there's no good way to add more letters to "stop" to indicate you're stretching out the pronunciation, so i added three exclamation points in order to convey the intensity and desperation of the line. even though i usually try my best to stick with the punctuation offered in canon without adding or removing any.

*translating newscasters is an ordeal because they use hella kanji but i think i got the majority of it down... the only bit i'm not very confident on is the speech bubble to the right of tsubomi's face, but like, i don't think it will have a huge bearing on the story, and i'm pretty sure it's close enough. i've said before that i'm not going for archive quality, and i'm not going to go back and fix little mistakes unless they're really annoying or really important to understanding the story (like the mistakes i fixed last week).

*i hope it's clear in the "the government has claimed that no official agencies are involved in this matter" line that they're saying that no official agencies are responsible for causing this disaster, and what they're NOT saying is that there's no government agency investigating it. because like. surely there is. like, joseph works for the government, and he dropped touichirou on it, so the government is doing Something.

*yes, ???% uses "boku" pronouns. an established fact, but just a reminder to the curious who forgot or didn’t know in the first place.

*oh, i might've mentioned this in previous translation notes, but whenever i put "power" in quotes like that, it's because it's in quotes in the raws. whenever it's Not in quotes (like in ritsu's "innermost power" line), i don't put it in quotes. i'm not yet sure about the significance of this, because although mob seems to use "power" in quotes consistently, he's not the only one who does it, and yet, not everyone does it. hmm.

i guess i’ve unconsciously switched to using “he” pronouns for ???% sometimes in my meta. this is probably exactly what ???% wants...!

*now about the confusion that led me to post the chapter an hour late. on page 8 of the chapter (labeled page 149 in the bottom right corner), you'll notice that the four speech bubbles in the last two panels have no tails to indicate the speaker. tailless speech bubbles are my mortal enemy, as both a translator and a comics reader in general, and if you're someone who makes comics or ever will, i strongly urge you to add tails to your speech bubbles no matter what (and if the speaker is offscreen, do the thing where you make an inverse tail in the speech bub by taking out a wedge). so basically, i rely heavily on context and got confused about who is speaking in the last two lines of this page. of course, i was also confused by the grammar to a degree, otherwise i wouldn't have had to rely on context in this case. anyway, at first, i thought it was ???% saying, "if you do that, you'll disappear. i live freely." the first line makes sense in a way, telling mob that he'd disappear if ???% disappeared, but the second line seems like a non sequitur, and i couldn't really make sense of it. then i thought, oh, it's mob talking from offscreen, and he's saying, "if only you would disappear. then i could live freely." that's a very reasonable sentiment for mob to express, and it would make sense as mob elaborating on the line that came directly before those two lines... but then, on the next page, it seemed strange for mob to be saying his fifth line in a row. it seemed like it should be more of a back and forth than just mob talking at ???%. and note that i had poor femoralynn typeset all these confused iterations as i thought of them at like 11:25 this morning. sorry again for that. but anyway i finally realized that ???% really IS the one talking in those last two lines (no thanks to the tailless speech bubbles, again), and he's responding to mob's request to go away by suggesting that mob should be the one to go away, since he's the fake one. and finally that makes perfect sense with the lines surrounding it. i don't know why it took me so long to understand that... but the speech bubbles definitely had something to do with it. remember, kids, if you put dialogue in your comics but don't indicate who is speaking, the reader doesn't know either! unless they're the only one on the page, like when mob was yelling into the void inside his own head.

it doesn’t help that in japanese, they often leave the subject (and sometimes the object) out of the sentence entirely and leave it to me to interpret who is doing a verb to what/whom. because in english, you can’t just leave the subject out of a sentence. (e.g. “korosu” is just the verb “to kill” but if you say “korosu” to someone, you’re essentially saying “i’ll kill you.” notice how i had to add the subject [i] and the object [you] even though the literal translation would be nothing but the verb “kill.” so if i see a speech bubble that says “korosu” and it doesn’t have a tail to indicate who is saying it, i Literally Cannot Know who is threatening to kill whom or what, except by using context to make an educated guess. you see why this is a problem? and naturally they do this with tons of verbs completely unrelated to killing, i just thought of “korosu” first because bakugou katsuki says it all the time)

(ONE-sensei is usually very good about tailing his speech bubbles. i wonder if the lack of tails was intentional here, meant to further reflect the fact that mob is arguing with himself and that they’re kind of both technically the same speaker. still confusing though)

(oh and for the curious, the raws for the last 3 lines on that page, page 149, were as follows: 「僕の中からいなくなってくれ。」 「だったらキミが消えてくれ。」 「僕は自由に生きる。」 yeah the "kure" in that second line really threw me off bc i'm a fool and also i translated that same "kure" as "please" for mob but i didn't put "please" in ???%'s line because i couldn't figure out how to put it in there concisely and also it's clear that ???% is being a dick even if he kinda said please. and also because i don't know shit)

(and fuck, if i'm being honest, that "please" probably teleported up to ritsu's "so please... come home..." line, because he didn't actually say please in that line. should i correct it? i feel like a fraud. i just thought the "please" helped convey the sentiment of the line, but in retrospect i could've translated it more accurately without losing the feeling of it.......... what ritsu really says in that line is "dakara... kaettekite ne..." which, if you've watched the one punch man anime, you can only hear as the lyrics to the extremely sappy ending credits song, so maybe that impression of extreme sappiness sapped through into my translation and made me make it sappier than it really was...............)

about how ???% is like "ritsu is my little brother. he was saying that i'm his older brother." i might be wrong in my interpretation (not translation, which is more or less literal, but the interpretation i'm about to give), but i took this to mean something along the lines of "just now, ritsu kept addressing me as his brother. i think that means i am his brother. today i learned that i am ritsu's brother." as opposed to meaning something more like "i'm the one he called 'nii-san,' so i'm his brother and you're not." (plus ???% did not literally say, “he called me nii-san.” i translated that line accurately.) although either way, it seems to indicate that ???% only just recently started noticing (or being able to notice) whom ritsu is addressing as "nii-san;" otherwise, ???% would have known that the other million times ritsu has called someone "nii-san" in his life, it has been directed at mob, not ???%. so even if ???% is suggesting that he is ritsu's only True nii-san, his claim is only based on the last few minutes of ritsu addressing him directly, which would back up my claim that ???% only learned/decided just now that ritsu is his little brother... if any of this makes any sense.

i love how serizawa is like "let's get out of here i'm sure kageyama-kun is fine" and reigen's like "...he's in the tornado isn't he" and seri's like "..........maybe"

and serizawa's new umbrella, which he must have picked out and bought himself specifically to use as his preferred vessel of psychic power, is transparent. is that... a bubble umbrella...?

[vinayv224]

Russian president Vladimir Putin addresses the Federal Assembly in Moscow on January 15, 2020. | Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Vladimir Putin is looking to the future and trying to figure out how to hold on to power.

It’s not every day an entire government resigns, but that’s what happened in Russia on Wednesday as President Vladimir Putin announced plans for major constitutional reforms that could extend his grip on power long after his term in office is supposed to end.

Because Putin’s power is really what this surprise announcement is all about. Putin’s tenure as president is up in 2024, but because authoritarian strongmen don’t tend to just quietly retire, the Russian leader is trying to secure his position long after those term limits.

Putin’s plan for staying in power past 2024 “has been in the works for years,” Alina Polyakova, director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution, told me. “It’s not a power grab, it’s a plan to ensure that Putin de facto remains in power for life.”

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his entire cabinet resigned abruptly Wednesday, right as Putin announced the new constitutional reforms. It’s still unclear if Medvedev and the other officials were surprised by Putin’s move or whether they were part of the plan all along.

But Medvedev, a longtime Putin ally, will still have a role in government, as Putin has placed him as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, a powerful body that advises the president on national security decisions.

Just a few hours after Medvedev’s resignation, Putin appointed a new prime minister to take his place: Mikhail Mishustin, a technocrat who’s been in charge of Russia’s tax services for a decade.

Experts told me that Mishustin is not a well-known or influential figure even within Russia, so Putin likely sees him as a placeholder — a loyalist type who isn’t looking to accumulate too much power for himself.

Which all kind of works out as Putin prepares for his future.

How to be in power for life, Putin edition

Putin’s proposed constitutional reforms broadly seek to limit the power of the presidency and give more responsibilities to the Parliament, including the job of choosing the country’s prime minister. He also intends to give more power to the State Council, an advisory body to the head of state that doesn’t have a ton of authority right now.

On paper, this all doesn’t sound too bad; vesting more authority in the Parliament and checking some of the president’s powers might not be a bad move, and Putin is a perfect example why.

The problem is that Putin’s constitutional changes intend to limit the power of a president who is not him, thus ensuring his successor is far weaker than he was.

And what Putin hasn’t quite revealed yet is where he’ll, personally, end up. There’s speculation he may become prime minister again (a role he held in 2008, when Medvedev took over as president), who will have more power under the reforms, or he may put himself atop this newly elevated State Council as a sort of shadow figure running the show behind the scenes.

But Brian D. Taylor, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, said all of these constitutional tweaks are clearly designed to give him “multiple options” for how to maintain control of Russia beyond 2024.

“I’m not sure his plan is fully worked out from A to Z,” Taylor added. “He might only know A to E — and we’re at about A to C right now.”

Putin was always going to find a way to stay in power. The question was how.

Nobody really expected Putin — who has effectively been in power since 2000 — to quietly retire after his tenure ended in 2024. Putin served as president between 2000 and 2008, then stepped into the role of prime minister when his term limits were up, from 2008 to 2012. His close ally Medvedev took over as president, where many saw him as a placeholder for Putin. Then, Medvedev let Putin come back as president in 2012.

Putin, then, has attempted this kind of power reshuffle before. The question was how exactly he would orchestrate it this time.

The first, and most obvious, option was to extend or eliminate presidential term limits again, buying him more time in the role. Putin is almost certainly not choosing this route, as his proposed constitutional changes include limiting the president to two consecutive terms.

Another option he apparently considered: creating a brand-new country and becoming president of that place instead.

This is not a joke — it just doesn’t look like it will pan out for Putin. The country in question is Belarus, a former Soviet Republic in Eastern Europe that borders Russia. Belarus declared its independence in 1991, but in 1999 Belarus and Russia signed a union pact that outlined, albeit vaguely, closer integration between the two countries. The Moscow Times likened the agreement to trying to replicate something like the European Union’s Schengen zone, with no customs checks and the same currency.

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the pact, which jump-started talks between Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko over what a union between the two could look like — and whether it would ultimately lead to Belarus being absorbed by Russia.

This led to some speculation that Putin would try to become president of a united Russia-Belarus and basically get around term limits that way. The talks haven’t been going all that well, though, and a lot of opposition exists, so the prospects for that avenue looked pretty grim.

That brings us to option three, which seems to be the one Putin chose — what Taylor dubbed the “half leave” scenario: Putin won’t be president anymore, but he’ll still be Putin-ing.

“He’s leaving the presidency, but he’s almost certainly going to take some other position and try and stay on,” Taylor told me. “But we still don’t know what this position is, or when this is going to happen.”

“There were multiple options under consideration,” Polyakova told me. “This was always the most straightforward one.”

Right now, the two most likely options, experts say, are the prime minister or the head of the State Council, which Putin said would be getting new powers. But it’s still not clear what his ultimate move will be.

Putin has said that he will seek these constitutional changes through a national referendum — something that isn’t actually required to change the constitution but which he said would give the reforms legitimacy. Or, at least give Putin’s initiative the veneer of consent.

Putin’s proposal isn’t a done deal, though. Far from it.

Putin has faced pressure in recent months, including massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow this summer.

Putin and the ruling United Russia party (from which Putin keeps his distance) have been slipping in popularity as more Russians become disillusioned with the state of the Russian economy, including rising inequality and falling incomes. Declining oil prices and sanctions have squeezed the Kremlin, and the government had to push through unpopular measures in previous years, including increasing the retirement age.

Experts told me this resistance is partly why Putin is making this announcement now. The Kremlin is under pressure, and what better than a shake-up to help distract from those issues. Polyakova told me it helps give Putin an “image of stability and strength.”

Putin’s future, though, is still not decided, and obstacles remain. Challenges with the economy and questions of corruption can’t totally be ignored. David Szakonyi, a professor of political science at George Washington University, told me that reforms and other changes will need to accompany these tweaks to the power.

Russia also has parliamentary elections in 2021, which means Putin has to make sure he retains overwhelming support there.

“I think it would be a mistake to assume that he’s got this all under control and everything’s going to go smoothly,” Taylor said. “We’re at the early stages of a multi-process, multiplayer game and lots of things can still go wrong.”

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