#I have only google translator right now but this line is literally translated as 'The Slave of Destiny should have told you that the flesh

[breadvidence]

@ineffable-gallimaufry asked in the tags "#okay but quick question. i thought that in... well hapgood titled it vague flashes on the horizon i don't have the number exactly#i thought it was specified that his mother had gone to jail for fortune telling?? which was what i was basing the assumption off of#maybe i misread it or it was a weird translation i'm just wondering how that fits in"

Good question! You're right and you're wrong and you've been misled by some stereotypes. The line you are thinking of is in 1.5.5 and opens the paragraph which contains the quote I wrote this post around, and goes: "Javert était né dans une prison d'une tireuse de cartes dont le mari était aux galères". Tireuse de cartes is translated as "fortune-teller" by both Hapgood and Donougher, which is not a weird translation at all, it's sensible. The term more literally is "drawer/puller of cards" or more naturally in English "card reader", and refers to the practice of telling fortunes based on variously laying out or picking cards from a deck (Javert's mother wouldn't have been using Tarot cards in the occult sense you might be imagining--what the pagan girlies are doing now wouldn't be popularized until around the time Javert was born, when the European occultist fancy weirdo movement got rolling; his mother's deck you could probably turn around and use for a quick hand of the 18th c French version of Texas Hold 'Em). This is also called cartomancy.

While fortune-telling is part of the mystical, magical, satanic prejudicial associations with Romani people in Europe, there's two things to know: humans really fuckin love telling fortunes and have been doing so globally pretty far back in the record of our species crafting special objects, and also telling fortunes can be really really profitable. This combination means that Europeans of all ethnic origins were paying for their fortunes to be told and getting paid to do so. So, historically, there's not a meaningful racial/ethnic implication in this being Javert's mother's profession. The reason it seems like there could be can be laid, to some degree, at the feet of those occultists: in order to pump up the prestige and mystery of Tarot and fortune-telling, they whole-cloth fashioned histories having to do with origins in Egypt (and recall the Romani were also called l'égyptien) and other various ancient places "abroad", when in reality Tarot is from 15th c. Italy and fortunes are made everywhere. From a business perspective, you also get fortune-tellers making up personal histories having to do with foreign or exotic origins as a way to bolster their cred, further distancing the modern popular perception of this as a thing that white Europeans do. Hugo himself would've been very familiar with Parisian street fortune-tellers and is unlikely to have had a specifically Romani woman in mind when making this Javert's mother's profession, though we do have to acknowledge that he was influenced by that popularization of the falsified occultist history and stereotypes about Romani, too, rather than having a 100% accurate knowledge of French profession demographics.

It's unfortunately focused a bit later than the period we're most interested in if we're talking when Javert's mother would've been jailed (around 1780), but this article provides good context for Hugo's personal milieu, since I doubt he did research into the legal and cultural minutiae of cartomancy prior to his birth, and also it popped up near the top of Google when I looked for a reference to offer + is free: https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/37/4/379/7310795

As an aside: note that Javert's father is only said to be in the galleys--we don't get a specific crime or whether he was a lifer. While my fondness for writing and reading about Javert having a homoerotic dalliance with Jean Valjean means I like to think of his father being some kind of thief or other peasant-style criminal for maximum daddy issues, there's no textual evidence in any direction, and you could hare off on a fun alternative thought process about whether he was some kind of clerk doing labor because of fraud or another bourgeois crime.

Hope that helps!

[ETA] To be clear, this is still very much a socially questionable—and specifically legally liminal—profession, and I would personally infer from the itinerant/vagabondage implications of race de bohème that mama is fortune-telling because she doesn’t have the means or domicile for a more respectable profession (like Fantine’s sewing). Also? The fact that we’re told “breaking her ban” (not reporting appropriately to the authorities while on parole) is a specific crime Javert would not flinch from persecuting her for makes me realize I’m sleeping on his relationship with Valjean being centered on mommy issues.

" [. . .] il se sentait je ne sais quel fond de rigidité, de régularité et de probité, compliqué d'une inexprimable haine pour cette race de bohèmes dont il était." [LM I.V.V]

What did Hugo mean by this phrase? This is a question with a clear answer, in my opinion. Also in my opinion, this does and doesn't matter: it matters to understanding how Les Mis engages (or fails to) with the literary tradition of race and ethnicity in Europe through Javert, and it doesn't because most of my readers here are bent fannish in their style and do as much enriching of the text as reading of it. What I'm saying is: Javert is not a Romani man in the Brick, but there's no damage to making him one in your fanwork.

Hapgood translates this line as " [ . . . ] he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung"; Donougher has it as " [ . . . ] he was conscious of some underlying inflexibility, steadiness and probity within him, compounded by an inexpressible hatred for that gypsy race to which he belonged."

So, bohème: at the time, you have this idea that the Romani people in France came from Bohemia, from which also bohémien, right? And because white Europeans had (and have) a complex, hateful relationship with the Romani people, caught up in exoticization and prejudice and xenophobia, unsure whether they were (or are) more enamored of the idea of free travel and "unconventional" lifeways (from which the entire "Bohemian" art movement) or repelled by stereotypes of criminality (for which see the modern American slur-derived phrase "to gyp"), by the 19th century the word is tied up in complex dual set of associations and is so frequently used in those two-steps-removed senses from the ethnic group it initially described that you can't in any specific case know which of those three meanings is intended without context cues. This is why we have Magloire relate the people of Digne calling Valjean a bohémien--in this case, this means "criminal, itinerant", not "Romani". In contrast, when in I.III.IV we are told "toute une bohème de papillons s'ébattait dans les achillées", these aren't Romani butterflies or imports from Bohemia, the intent is to evoke that positive (so to speak) set of associations.

What cues do we have here that point to the derogatory meaning rather than ethnic?

Within the chapter itself, Javert's hatred is elaborated on as "la haine de la rébellion", where rebellion is crime: this use of la haine, to my reading, is the same la haine as referred to in the earlier sentence, and the phrase "tout ce qui avait franchi une fois le seuil légal du mal" describes the same people as "race de bohèmes". In the header quote for this post, Hugo describes Javert's perception of himself; in this later section, the narrator elaborates and confirms the point. There's no ethnic specificity in the narrator's phrasing. Further, when we get to which class of criminals are particularly terrified by Javert, we're told it's the "gens sans aveu", rendered by Hapgood and Donougher as vagrants: an itinerant class associated with criminality; the point isn't re-iterated that he shows particular antipathy or suspicion of an ethnic group, but of a specific criminalized class.

Hugo never mentions it again. For how Hugo talks about Romani characters, we quite helpfully have Notre-Dame de Paris, and when I say that he cannot fucking stop talking about Esmeralda being la bohémienne, l'égyptienne, fille bohème: he cannot. A search for these word pulls up hundreds of hits for the novel. It's more than central to her character, it's central to how the narration refers to her, and it's key to how she's conceived of bodily and in temperament. Now: you could write Javert as so vigorously working against what it means to be a bohémien that none of these come into play in the narration, or that he wasn't raised in that culture and thus doesn't have any of those influences on his attitudes or habits, but (1) this is not present in the text (2) the reading "his mother is Romani, but this has so little impact on him outside racial hatred that it never comes up again" doesn't really do it for me (3) I would be surprised if Victor Hugo could parse the idea of being ethnically Romani and not temperamentally Romani.

While race and ethnicity are obviously an inextricable part of societal power structures, Les Misérables? It barely fuckin' cares about that (and to be quite honest I'm glad Hugo didn't try harder than his sort of confused gesturing with Thénardier's slave-trading in the end; he's not the man for the job). Javert's character is centrally about Law as an artificial, immoral tool that maintains a bourgeois power structure to the detriment of Society as a whole and the misérables in particular: introducing the question of race/ethnicity alters that one-note to the point of needing to be nested in a different novel. The topic of criminality and race is a whole fucking rodeo, and if it would be an interesting addition to the concept of "society does not include criminals; criminals are a class you can become by committing crime; criminality is an ambiguously heritable trait" that's going on here, it's not in the text. The fact that the idea of criminality as heritable has faded in our culture (it's certainly no longer considered scientific or acceptable to be explicit about, in any case) means that Javert's focus on the idea of being somehow constitutionally impacted by the crimes of his parents reads a bit through modern eyes as racial, but in my opinion that's crossing two streams that are related but not in fact identical.

A minor point, and one I'm less confident of, but: Donougher's use of the slur with a lowercase g feels sharp, precise, and deliberate in this context, particularly given she's European. In my experience, Americans tend to be far less sensitive to it--hell, I've got a friend of a friend who named her tortoise G****. Our racial hatreds focus elsewhere. The implication, here, feels the same as the blanket use of the n-word to refer to anyone dark-skinned. It's a matter of denigration, not a way to identify someone's ethnic/racial background.

Again: fanwork exploring what it would mean for Javert to be a person of color is both a fair place for the fandom to have hared off to based on the multiple meanings of the word bohème and a deeply intuitive step to take given how race and criminality are intertwined in the modern consciousness. What there isn't is textual support for the idea.

[fragmentedblade]

"I am sure Destiny's Slave already told you that the swords of mortals are incapable of killing someone with the flesh of an Emanator"

I kept thinking that the wording at times make it seem as if Blade were an Emanator of Abundance

[mewhenimanangel]

everywhere ʚɞ miles morales x reader

pairing: 42!miles morales x reader

synopsis: you beg miles to help you write your extra credit paper so he invites you over.

wc: 3.2k

warnings!: swearing, harassment, creepy men, n word use, making out, google translate spanish

prev ʚɞ fin

why are you everywhere, fuck. miles couldn't get you out of his head it's like you were taking over his life. you became the center of his drawings, spending like three hours perfecting the small details on your face, your wispy eyelashes, the brown and pink in your lips, everything. and that kiss didn't make it any easier, it wasn't his first kiss but god it made him obsessed.

it was becoming a problem for his prowler work, his uncle told him to get his head in the game.

you were sitting in physics and he wouldn't stop trying to touch you. he kept his knee pressed on yours the whole class and kept crossing the imaginary line on the table to touch your elbow with his. you looked through the side of your eye and saw that he was staring at you. "the way i can feel your stare right now is insane" you giggled, whispering. "i literally don't know what you're talking about" he pressed his lips together and shook his head.

neither of you have spoken about the kiss you'd shared three nights ago. things weren't awkward it just kind of went back to the way it was before. at least that's what you thought.

it was the end of class and your teacher assigned a partner paper that was due on monday for extra credit points, miles didn't need the points however you did. "can you pleasee just work with me?" you begged, following behind him down the hall. "i don't even need it? i have a 98" he told you. "alright well unlike you my grade sucks, pleaseee i wanna make honor roll, and right now i have a 79" you pleaded, hooking his arm. he let you keep your hand there, secretly enjoying the contact. "why don't you ask somebody else who needs it?"

"cause you're the only one i talk to there, everyone else seems boringgg. plus you're smart" you tried to inflate his ego to work in your favor. he didn't say anything he just looked down at your pleading eyes. "milessss" was all you said until he rolled his eyes. "relájate maldita sea, i'll do it with you. can you come to my house tomorrow night or your dad still hate me?" he joked and you laughed a bit. "if i tell him it's for school he might relax a lil" you said "so does that mean you'll help??" you asked again with a smile on your face.

he loved that on you, definitely going back in his sketchbook. "ain't that what i just said chiquita"he scoffed. you squealed "thank youuu, okay i'll see you later" you pulled off his arm and turned down the hallway to your locker.

ʚɞ

you walked out of the grocery store with bags and a small baguette in hand that you were chewing on. god you adored the bakery in that store. you turned down the street in the direction of your building when you heard someone "ay pretty lady what you doing out here this late" you turned to your side and saw some random guy talking to you. "ha, don't worry bout me." you nervously said back, deciding to just keep walking. "ah mami, don't be so cold~" now you could hear the slurring in his words, obviously drunk. you still kept it pushing and he just followed behind. "that ass is looking tight though" he reached a hand out and squeezed at your butt.

"what the fuck?!" you shouted, reaching into your pocket for your mace to spray him. you turned around but paused when you saw the familiar mask you knew from the news, the prowler. he was staring at you with a finger over where his mouth would be and reached his claws around the guys neck and pulled him into the alleyway nearby. you heard the guy scream, and some thuds before ultimately what you thought was blood splatter and a body dropping to the ground.

that was when you decided to make a run for it, and when the grocery store was out of sight, you walked as fast as you could back to your building. even though he'd just helped you, you did not want to get caught up with the prowler at all. he would be on the news for various crimes - theft, arson, aggravated assault, murder, etc. again, you couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. you ran into your building and up the stairs unaware of that mask staring at you from the building across.

♱

miles was on his way home jumping from the rooftop to rooftop when he heard some voices on the street. he looked over and saw you being followed by some guy who looked drunk out of his mind. he followed on the roofs before jumping down, as silently as he could, behind the guy. he looked at the fright on your face and put a finger up to his mouth.

he grabbed the guy by the throat and pulled him into the alley behind him. he threw him down on the ground sending a kick to his face. he sent a punch to his face with his clawed gloved before throwing him up against the wall, sending another harsh blow to his face. it enraged him knowing that guy was tryna hurt you..or worse. he used the sharp claw to slice against his neck, the pressure sending his blood on the walls. he went limp and dropped to the ground. "one less fucking weirdo." he spat. he peeked out from the alley to see you were gone and practically sprinting back to your building, smart girl.

he followed behind you on the rooftops, something he's grown quite fond of doing when he would see you out on his patrols, to make sure you got home safe. he'd figured out which window was your bedroom a few weeks ago and didn't leave until he saw the lights turn on and your shadow illuminating against your curtains.

ʚɞ

it was friday afternoon and you got dressed to go over to miles' house. you got dressed in a pair of track pants with a baby tee and sneakers. you still wanted to look cute but you didn't want to feel like you were doing too much. you threw on your sweater and put your things in your bookbag and left.

you felt your palms getting sweatier the closer you got to the door. you knocked on it when you heard a muffled shout from behind the door. a few seconds later, you were met with miles - hair out and curly afro falling at the sides of his fade, black wife beater   on that exposed his gold chain and well defined muscles. he had a pair of black joggers on that showed the waistband of his boxers, god he looked good.

"you gonna keep standing there or do you want to come in" he joked with you. you rolled your eyes fondly before taking your shoes off by the door "you took your braids out" you pointed out. "getting em redone tomorrow" he told you. "by the way, my mom's here and she insisted on making you dinner" he told you, you nod your head before following him to the kitchen. "ahh cariño, you must be y/n" a woman greeted you with a smile and a hug. "i'm miles' mom, rio. when he told me he was bringing his little girlfriend over i had to meet you. and i made dinner, hope you don't mind" she told you. "momm" miles groaned making you giggle.

"not at all ms morales" you smiled at her. "miles baby be a gentleman, take her bag and her sweater for her" she told her son. he went up behind you and gently pulled them off your back before going to his room. "you want a plate baby? i made pollo guisado y arroz" she asked you. "that sounds really yummy, thank you" you answered. miles came back from his room and shared his own plate along with you guys' and you all sat at their dining table. you sat in the chair that you figured was his dad's and you found yourself growing a little sorry.

you took a bite of your food and your face twisted in delight. "oh this is so good, been too long since i had good home food" you admitted, taking another bite. "thank you sweetie" her face softened with a sorrowful look. she'd heard about your mom after miles explained why he ditched school and why she got a call from some man telling her he was kissing his daughter.

"your house is really nice by the way, i love the feel of it it's so pretty" you told her. "ahhh you're gonna give me a big head, thank you bonita" she smiled at you. you looked up and saw a picture of miles sitting on the wall ledge when he was a toddler, mean mug on his face. "awww is that you?" you asked him, pointing to the picture. he looked at where you were pointing and smiled a little before nodding his head. "ahhh you're so adorablee" you said in a baby voice. he looked at you and you continued "and you still got that same mug" you joked, poking his cheek.

rio began sharing stories of miles when he was a kid and how stubborn he was. how he would test his parents' patience even though he knew they didn't play like that. she pulled out her phone and opened an album she had dedicated to miles and gave you to scroll through. you giggled at how cute and silly he was, but he did not seem amused. a video popped up of rio recording jeff throwing a small miles in the air and telling him how much he loved him. the air grew a little somber and rio cleared her throat "um don't you guys have a project or something, i don't wanna keep you waiting all night" she said picking up the plates.

"uh i can help wash up" you offered. "no, está bien. go hang out and do your work." she smiled. you followed miles to his room and looked around at his choice of decor. his bed sheets were a plain black, not much decorations on his wall except for a few rappers and album covers. he had a desk by his window and a mirror on the side of it. on his desk sat a laptop, notebooks, a lamp, pictures of his mom and dad and a sketchbook off to the side. it was open to you decided to be nosy and move closer to take a peek.

your eyes jumped a little bit when you saw what was an unfinished drawing of your face mid smile. "is this meee?" you picked it up and turned the page back one. this time it was multiple sketches of you from different angles. he moved to pull the book out of your hand and you gave him an awkward smile. "someone's obsessed. am i your muse?" you teased him. he closed the notebook and hid a smile shaking his head, "you are mad nosy" he told you. "draw me like one of your french girls, miles" you teased him some more.

you looked at his posters "frank, tupac, okay tasteee" you said. you continued looking around the room but he didn't seem too bothered by it considering he was sat on his bed just watching you. you looked a little through his shelves, checking out his book collection "i didn't know you read, scholar" you said, taking one down to read it. when you did that, something fell to the floor. miles jumped up to stop you from picking it up when he realized what it was. your smile dropped when you saw the mask you'd just encountered the night before.

"wait what is this?" you asked, tone a little more serious. "listen" was all he got out before you kept going. "don't tell me you're..." you looked at the mask and then back at him, mouth dropping as you made the connection. "ohh don't tell me you're the prowler!" you got a little louder and he slapped a hand over your mouth. "would you hush?! my mom doesn't need to know" he whisper yelled. you stuck your tongue out to lick his hand and he pulled it off you wiping your spit in his sweats. "well that's a really fucking dumb hiding spot!" you yelled back in a whisper.

"miles, you are the prowler??" you asked holding the mask in your. he looked away from your eyes before letting out a sigh and nodding his head "you cannot tell anybody" he pointed a finger to you . "aren't you literally killing people and stuff?? how could you do all of that?!" you argued in a hushed tone. "listen, you don't get it alright? im doing this to help my situation out so don't be coming up in here and judging me!" he argued back.

you sympathized with him a bit before biting back "but you're killing people, oh my fucking god you killed that man last night!" "i was doing that for you! stop fucking walking by yourself at night by the way" he said back to you.

"when did i ask you to do that for me?" you pointed a finger to your chest. "y/n don't you get it. i would do anything for you" he was getting desperate, moving closer to you. "what?" you furrowed your eyebrows. "there's not a line in the world that i wouldn't cross for you." he grabbed your hands. you didn't know what to say next. the tension was so high and you two just looked at each other.

he leaned in and pressed his lips against yours, the force pushing you back into his shelf. his hands moved to your waist and your arms crossed behind his neck, deepening the kiss. he pushed his knee between your legs and your breath hitched in your throat. rio opened the door coming into the room "miles gonzalo morales, no hanky panky! you have work to do. ¡puerta abierta!" she shouted before leaving. your heart sank in your chest and you took a deep breath before looking back into his eyes.

"right that's why i came here. didn't come here to argue with you, think i'm gonna leave now" you said moving past him to your bookbag. "don't. i can still help you, i could write it for you if you want" he tried to stop you. you pushed your feelings down, you do still need his help, you could be mad at him later.

you spent the next thirty minutes searching through your textbook for information and typed it while miles looked up formulas and concepts.  you groaned and threw your head back on his pillows. "ey i told you i coulda just wrote it for you, you wanted to be stubborn. ahora haz el trabajo" he told you. you only whined in response before staying silent with your thoughts.

"why are you doing it?" you spoke up. "what?" he furrowed his eyebrows. "the whole prowler thing" "i told you. to help my situation out" he shrugged. you got up on your elbows "no but like why?" he sighed and rolled his eyes

"i do it to help my mom out. she keeps taking mad shifts at the hospital and no matter how much she tells me not to worry, i do. i don't wanna see her stressing herself out like that, it's not fair. so me and my uncle help her out, he was the one who had told me he was the prowler and then i took over but now he just helps me out. and listen i'm not killing people like that. i know what the news says about me and i've only really touched like three people, plus that guy last night. and if i do kill someone it's never innocent people." he explained.

"so like a vigilante typa thing?" you asked him. "i don't know maybe. probably not the good kind though. " he chuckled, feeling a little sorry. you sat and listened to everything he had to say "i know i'm not innocent either, not anymore. but i'm not gonna stop till things are right for us again. i really hope you can understand?" he asked you. you thought for a second before nodding your head. "i don't even know why i'm telling you all that, you not an opp right?" he raised an eyebrow at you. "no, please i could never" you giggled.

he leaned so his face was close enough that you could feel each other's soft breathing while you looked into each other's eyes. he pressed his lips against yours, loving the way your soft lips felt against his. the kiss was softer this time, different from the one before. he put his hands on each side of your jaw.

he moved to line kisses down your neck and you reveled in the feeling it gave you. you bit your bottom lip and put your fingers in his hair before you caught yourself. "wait" you pushed him back a little "your mom said no hanky panky" you mimicked her with a giggle. "so?" he said moving back to your lips. "so..your door is literally open and she's in the room next door" you told him. he moved back to your lips "i can close it" you kissed back for another minute before pulling away again.

"i have a paper to finish" you licked your lips and you could still taste him on you. he helped you finish your writing and after about an hour and a half you clapped, glad to be done. his mom poked her head through the door "mijo, it's getting late. think it's time y/n head home?" she asked the two of you. you both frowned a little bit but you figured it was pretty late and nod your head "yeah okay, we finished up anyways" you smiled at her. you packed your stuff in your bag and miles shoved his feet in his uggs.

"you're coming?" you furrowed your eyebrows. "duh. don't think i'm letting you walk by yourself" there was so much sass in his voice you had to laugh. "alright nigga relax" you giggled.

"have a good night sweetie" rio called out to you from the couch. "you too, mrs morales" you smiled and waved. miles opened the door and followed behind you.

the two of you walked down the few blocks in comfortable silence side by side. miles copied the speed you walked and made his feet match yours in sync. "thanks for helping me by the way. i deadass wouldn't have finished this until probably second period on monday" you told him. "and that's why your ass was pushing a D" he joked with you.

you got to the outside of your apartment building and said your goodbyes, you gave him a kiss on the cheek and entered the building, heading up to your apartment. you showered and went to lay down with a lot to think about.

taglist ౨ৎ

@prettypink-princesss @itsnotino @r3d0n33 @iluvprowlermiles @jmsanchoo @stevenknightmarc @melllinaa @

[ateez-himari]

[241126] WOOYOUNG BIRTHDAY

[NEW UPLOAD FROM HIMARI]

ATEEZ(에이티즈) @/ATEEZofficial

[#히마리] Youngie Oppa, you're getting old so it won't be fair to fight with you anymore, but don't worry I'll take care of you now just like you have always done for me ❤️ Even though you make me watch the Harry Potter movies so much that I can recite most of the lines, I always love going over to your dorm and spending time with you, you make me feel at ease. Your very being makes the days brighter than even a sunrise, you're happiness itself. I hope you like the cake the kids and I brought, it didn't end up on your face this time so you finally got to taste it ㅎㅎ Happy Birthday WooWoo Oppa! #ATEEZ #애이티즈

Translated from Korean by Google

3:48pm · 26 Nov 24 · 94K Views 29K Reposts 796 Quotes 84K Likes

mikah @/himaswife Replying to @/ATEEZofficial Our November babies born only 3 days apart from each other 🥺 I can't believe he made her change into custom matching Harry Potter pajamas during her own birthday live 😭 They're the proof ATEEZ are way more than just work friends

Minnie Moe @/bestspotifyplaylistrex Replying to @/ATEEZofficial the fortune teller said that their energies are apparently entangled so closely that they're like batteries to each other, they're able to be so joyful constantly because whenever they feel down, being around the other 'gives them more light' 🥹

Hotteokie N.1 @/yunhosbuckethat Replying to @/ATEEZofficial i never get tired of seeing the cakes Hima bakes for the members 🤧 she always stays up late just to make sure they're ready for early the next day (the way Wooyoung was so disappointed that there was no cake until she walked in-)

왔다 갔다 @/yeosangiecookie Replying to @/ATEEZofficial Didn't he say that she ran down the stairs just to jump on him right after that picture was taken 😭 Also omg anyone remember him telling Atiny that he felt like she was a slightly older Kyungmin and that she's the little sister he's always wished for-

에헴 비헴 에헴 @/ughtannnbang Replying to @/ATEEZofficial the first snow literally JUST fell in Korea and we already have a tiktok of them tackling each other in it and giggling 😆they adore each other sm leave me alone jgkfej

[sparklecarehospital]

Suggestion : add a button to "translate" the page transcript to a specific Language ( like Spanish or Portuguese ) .

English is not my first language so I have to translate some lines ( And Google translations often come out very wrong. And I believe that some people that have the same problem ) , I'd be happy if you thought about it :D

this would be awesome in theory, and I have thought about it before, but translating the comic/site isn't as easy as it sounds, especially when the only language I personally speak is English. Translating a website in general requires not only knowledge of the language itself (I wouldn't be able to rely on google translate obviously for the reasons you said) but a lot of JavaScript work. I would love to do this someday but right now it's beyond my ability. This isn't something I'm not WILLING to do, it's just literally not possible right now.

If anyone would ever be interested in helping me with translations someday that would be awesome, but right now I don't think it's happening any time soon- even if someone offered translation help right now, it would still be way too much of a task for me to realistically finish before launch of the revamp, especially considering the fact I'd like to have multiple languages options if possible 😔 thank you for understanding and your patience!

[nrdmssgs]

Activision doesn't understand, how Russian language works

Spoilers to CoD MW3 below the cut.

@sofasoap @siilvan @cumikering @stag-beetle-wastaken @gamergirlbonestaskforce141riot be my guests.

First and most important: this rant is not aimed to 'make Russian culture great again'. I am not offended as a representative of some cultural or linguistic group. But as a member of gaming community, I feel, as if Activision... kinda didn't give a flying f about the gaming experience, that they are trying to sell me for 60 Euros. And I can't say, I like this feeling.

Second: I will be criticizing some approaches to language, that I will never criticize in fanfiction. Because you guys are doing it for free, for the sake of having fun. So I will be ok with you just straight using Google translate to write e.g. Nikolais lines in Russian. Because you never ask me to pay 60 Euros for the right to read your works. With that being mentioned, lets roll!

Activision doesn't pay attention to their own script, when it comes to Russian lines

Ok, this is a major issue. Because Activision sometimes gives completely different information in character line and in the subtitles. And it is not some minor information, we are talking about major plot details!

Let's just watch 20 seconds of a playthrough (time code 8:44)

Pay attention closely to how Makarov starts his monologue after Nolan says "Its an honor, commander". Makarovs subtitles say 'four years', when Makarov says something like 'shest let'. "four" in Russian is "chetyre", "six" is "shest`". These words sound nothing alike! And to check this, you literally need 5 seconds on google translate! Here, Activision, I did your work for you and I don't even ask for 60 freaking Euros! You learn these numbers on your second-third lesson of Russian 101!

There are ways to fix this scene. There are even ways to do it without reshooting Julian (because ok, I get it, maybe he costs so much, that all our 60 Euros purchases would never help Activision to economically recover...). All you need is to ask him to record TWO WORDS!

Activision doesn't care for wording even in the simplest proverbs

You remember a saying "enemy of my enemy is my friend"? I mean, of course you do, even John Price remembers it! And you know, who forgot this saying? Activision did! Because honest to god, I was very happy with our new Yuri, until he produced this ominous linguistic construction... (time code 56:10)

And if you think, it sounds just a tad off in English... Well, in Russian this sounds, as if a Colonel, a man, who spent tenths of years constantly communicating with soldiers, superiors, officials, started learning Russian... a month ago.

This is an international proverb, it exists in many languages! Now this is a safe case to use an automatic translator! It gives you a very simple answer.

But for some mysterious reason, Activision writes their strange line, translate to russian and find a poor-working synonym so that Yuri doesn't say 'opponent' twice... And in the end it kinda still makes sense, but this whole phrase sounds so off!! You never choose this sick long, overloaded wording for a proverb, that you literally learn at school. They just make it look like zarin is already there and it affects Yuri heavily.

This is just one example, but in reality, almost every Makarovs monologue sounds very strangely formulated. I just got you one example, but believe me, this is a systematic issue here. And the strangest thing is that all their errors are so easy to fix, but they never bothered!

Activision doesn't care for how Russian sounds

Ok, this is not a rant against Julian Kostov. The guy does his wor absolutely gorgeous! He steals every scene, where he appears, and I have nothing, but respect for him. However... Russian is a complicated language. For real. It is full of long words, with many unfamiliar for European ear sounds. It is not only difficult to understand it - it is complicated even to imitate it.

Now apparently Julian knows Russian to some extent just because of his origin and age. But that doesn't save him from swallowing some letters, syllables, sometimes even big parts of words. And when it happens in almost every line of his character - it becomes an issue. An issue, when even Russian-speaker has to read subtitles to understand, what is going on in a scene with two Russian characters!

This whole scene is a nightmare (time code 1:42:54). Replaced letters, disappearance of parts of words, strange accents - they collected a bingo on this one.

And I dont blame actors here! Because on every shooting there is a director - a guy, who is responsible for how overall scene will look and sound in the end. There is always a possibility to find someone, who actually speaks the language and make them sit and listen! And if there are many issues with pronunciation revealed - you just come to your actors and say 'guys, you did amazing jobs, we are so happy to work with you. Now can we please do another shot and pay attention to these lines of yours?'.

And believe me, it is ok to have multiple shots for ingame cutscenes! Actors are ok with that! I don't ask for a perfect pronunciation, I just ask Activision to make sure, their characters don't sound as if they are speaking gibberish!

The most strange part here is that there are super-clean lines in game as well! Milena spoke with accent too, but she sounded clear! Some NPCs sounded perfect!

So Im sorry, but at the end of the day - this your most accurate Russian character by Activision. Because he chose to speak English.

[geneticcatalyst]

as promised, an exploration of my one pet problem in fandom, or: misinterpretation of jby's first death (ft. zzs)

heres the thing. i occasionally see people reference what seems to be a misconception of the (english translation) text in qi ye. both the fact that its a translation and the metaphorical phrasing make it pretty clear to see why they got the wrong idea, but i firmly believe its still the wrong idea. i am by no means calling the people who got this mixed up dumb or bad, i am simply leaning over their shoulders going 'wait no bestie pls read that again pls read that one more time!!' because this is one of my favorite books and this thing is a key piece of one of my favorite things about it.

i said i was gonna pull screenshots for this post but i think it will be a little while before i get to another reread and i can't ctrl+f the google doc so im just gonna whip this out from memory. if anyone does have this particular passage on hand feel free to pop it in here. the rest of the context/explanations are just from my cursory research, im not chinese or a historian.

cards on the table. the only thing i love more than unhinged gay romances is unhinged platonic soul mates. its catnip to me. i go feral every goddamn time. and i havent stopped losing my mind about zhou zishu and jing beiyuan since that first qi ye scene. what do those guys have going on? not even sure they know but it's A Lot. ive got like 18 other unpublished drafts trying to work that out slash losing my fucking mind at the lengths they go to about each other. that relationship is at the center of both novels even if the spotlight isnt on it. so I admit that my readings are colored a bit by how much i like that they like each other!

which is why im shocked baffled and, ok, lightly salted, to see a few people make the claim that zishu (personally) tortured/killed beiyuan in his first life.

so what the text says is that after helian yi stopped trusting beiyuan (after su qingluan's accidental death), he was basically put to death. but even the emperor has to have a half decent reason to execute someone. the text describes these reasons- ten of them- as zhou zishu's masterpieces. it also refers to them as great shames to beiyuan's standing. what's happening is that helian yi has zishu frame beiyuan for treason or other betrayals against the emperor/the country. it isn't specific as to what, but it doesn't really matter, because its all fake and zishu is really good at his job. so yes, it is fair to say that zishu is the INSTRUMENT of beiyuan's death, but he didn't kill him, he just laid the groundwork.

the text goes on to another slightly confusing line where it says something to the effect of that when each of these accusations were read out in court, each line drew blood from jing beiyuan. that's a metaphor! it's just saying that his reputation was torn apart and ultimately his fate is sealed, despite the phrasing there are no literal injuries happening.

also, i may not have the timeline perfect on this part, but in zishu's introduction in the beginning of the novel, the narration tells us outright that while zishu is partially responsible for beiyuan's death, he was like. cool about it. in what seems to be the first and only time he ever steps out of line or goes against helian yi's command (!), after setting all this up but- if im remembering right- before the news actually breaks in court the next day, zishu warns beiyuan. now this admittedly doesnt do a whole lot because the only other possible option (cut and run) isn't a very good one, but it's the only thing zishu can do. he doesnt have to, but he does it anyway (!). of course beiyuan doesnt even consider doing this, he's stubborn and heartbroken, but he really seems to 1. appreciate the risk zishu took here to try to give him a chance and 2. not hold the whole set up against zishu or take that bit personally.

so what actually happened at the end of beiyuan's first life? he was sent the 3 zhang of white silk. the text does explicitly say this once, but if you're not familiar with the practice it may not click. receiving the white silk from the emperor is what happens when you're too high ranking to execute like a commoner but you've fallen from grace and are being politely asked to hang yourself in order to clear your name. and of course beiyuan, stubborn and heartbroken, does. yes, it's a forced suicide, but it isn't a murder.

anyway, its in that secret conversation, where zishu secretly meets with beiyuan seemingly to try to convince him to save himself and beiyuan outright refuses, that beiyuan promises that if theres a next life (ha), they'll get drunk together. and of course against all odds, there is and they do.

the thing about the idea that some people might think that zishu killed beiyuan is that after that nothing between them makes sense. even if it was at helian yi's request, i just cant see that not permanently damaging the friendship, i don't think beiyuan could immediately pick back up being best friends in the seventh life with that memory in the way. why would zishu go out of his way to warn beiyuan one day if he was perfectly capable and fine with killing him the next? why would beiyuan not only be happy to meet zishu again in the seventh life but also go out of his way trying to save zishu's? none of their other interactions really make sense if you believe there was a murder done there. idk. it clouds the whole throughline of the story which is that they have a bond!

i think maybe people think it is in character due to the other ruthless murders, and they're not wholly wrong, but that's the kicker for me. zishu will murder all kinds of innocents no questions asked, but he's suddenly trying to give an out to his coworker and drinking buddy? hello? thats insane, and that's the point.

furthermore, if you think maybe it would make sense for helian yi to have beiyuan violently killed (since it keeps fucking happening later), i actually have to become helian yi's lawyer for a moment here and say that that doesnt make sense either. helian yi is sitting on a throne gained by shadowy means but he's the Good Guy Ruler and that reputation is important. hes not a cruel person and he may have become paranoid but he still has a shared history with beiyuan. plus, even the emperor has to abide by a certain amount of decorum when he wants to have people killed, especially when that person is also a high ranking member of court. beiyuan's status is basically second only to the royal bloodline, he's essentially the prev emperor's godson, as well as a previously close confidante of helian yi himself. the white silk was regarded as a privileged, dignified means of offing someone. helian yi is perfectly within social acceptability to do this to beiyuan with the pretext of beiyuan's disgrace. but it would be pushing the boundaries for the good and just emperor to suddenly have one of his top advisors and members of high nobility brutally killed like a common criminal. he could probably do it, but it would reflect on him and his reputation too. he could do it in secret, but would have to cover up the disappearance of a prominent court figure. it just makes sense to use the white silk as the neatest, most acceptable legal justice channel here. maintain emotional detachment, be polite, everybody's honor gets honored and such.

so that's the ted talk. theres even some beautiful fanart on here of white-haired first life beiyuan holding the white silk! he wasn't tortured or outright executed, and he chose to obey rather than escape or fight the false claims of treason even though his friend tried to give him the only out he could manage. to interpret things differently really skews the character motivations and plot for everyone- beiyuan, zishu, helian yi- in a way that warps the story out of believability, imho.

[naminethewriter]

Foreign Help

Hello! I'm a barista at the Sleepy Bean Fanfic Café run over at @tsspromptmonth and this is an order for @kieraelieson! It involves Janus centric angst, a happy ending, only one bed and a language barrier. Hope you enjoy!

Summary: Janus came along to his future stepfathers' cousin's wedding in hopes of getting to visit Germany and see some interesting things and not to have to share a bed with another cousin's son. Especially since they don't speak the same language. Literally.

Content Warnings: Human!AU, Angst, Happy Ending, Flashbacks, Nightmares, Language Barrier, German

Read here one Ao3!

German translations at the end.

~~*~~

“I didn’t agree to this!” Janus growls into his phone. His future stepfather sighs on the other end of the line.

“I know, Jay. But there’s nothing I can do about it! The hotel’s booked out, there are no other rooms. It’s just one night,” Remus tries to reason. Janus can hear the dull sound of more voices in the background.

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem for you to switch with me. I can sleep with my dad, and you can sleep with him!”

“Look, I know you’re frustrated, but you can’t actually believe that it’s appropriate for me to sleep in the same bed as my 15-year-old nephew who I hardly know. Especially since we’re out at a bachelor party right now and will be back late and intoxicated. Neither you nor Patton want to sleep next to us afterwards, I promise you.”

“Who thought it was a good idea to have the bachelor party the day before the wedding anyway? Aren’t you all just going to be hung over tomorrow?”

“Never mind that, we’ll deal. Now, you said you’d be okay earlier, what changed? I may not know Patton super well but he’s a good kid. I can’t imagine him doing anything that would upset you this much?”

“It’s the fact that the dude doesn’t seem to speak a lick of English! How am I supposed to tell him what not to do if he doesn’t understand me?!” Janus glances inside through the glass door that leads from the balcony back into the room. Patton is sitting on the bed with a DS in hand, concentrating on whatever game he’s playing.

“He can speak a bit of English, and I taught you a bit of German, you can figure out the rest. Plus, you both have phones, use google translate if you must. Patton knows how to politely share a room, it’ll be fine.”

“Siblings sharing rooms isn’t the same, Remus.”

“He’s an only child. He’s—” Remus breaks off and for a moment Janus thinks the line died. “Look, I don’t want to go into detail, but Pat’s been through a lot. He’s been sick since he was young and spent a lot of time in the hospital. That’s also why he doesn’t speak English all that well, he’s been homeschooled and his parents reasonably decided to focus on other subjects. He’ll be cordial, you can do the same, I’m sure.”

Janus doesn’t say anything but groans maybe a bit dramatically.

“I promise you, Jay, I talked with my cousin, and she made sure that at the wedding venue tomorrow you’ll have two beds. One night. That’s all I’m asking of you. Go to bed early and it’ll be even less of a problem.”

“Urgh, fine! But you owe me.”

“Sure thing, champ. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Janus hangs up, though not before he hears Remus chuckling on the other end. The guy is so lucky that his dad’s infatuated with him or Janus would hit him in the morning. He lets out another sigh before returning back inside.

Patton looks up from his game at the sound of the door sliding open.

“Okay?” he asks, his head tilted to the side.

“Yeah. Has to be apparently.” He mumbles the last part under his breath and ignores the confused look on Patton’s face. Instead, he tries to recall what little German phrases Remus had taught him before they came here.

“Dein,” he says, motioning towards the side of the bed Patton is sitting on. “Mein.” This time he points at the unoccupied side. “Kein fassen.”

Patton blinks at him before repeating the gestures.

“Me. You. No touch?”

Janus nods.

“No touching my stuff.”

“Natürlich. Would never.”

“Good.” With that, Janus decides to ignore his reluctantly accepted companion and gathers his stuff to go take a shower. Thankfully, the bathroom door locks.

~~*~~

He smells the fire first. Then he feels the heat.

Oh no.

His eyes snap open.

The smoke is surrounding him from all sides.

Not again.

He can’t do it again.

Wasn’t once enough?

What kind of sick joke is this?

He tries to call for help but the air, thick with ash, chokes him before he can muster up a single sound.

Where even is he?

He hears wood groaning and splintering. Something crashes to the ground.

“Janus? Janus!”

A voice he doesn’t recognize rings through the dark. It’s calling his name, but the pronunciation is off.

“Janus! Wach auf! Komm schon, wach auf! Du musst atmen!“

He doesn’t understand. What kind of a language is that?

He has no time to dwell on it as something next to him falls. He flinches away but that only leads him closer to the heat. He turns around and is face to face with the flames.

“No. No. Please. I can’t,” he whimpers, unable still to raise his voice. His knees give away under him and he falls to the ground.

The air is thick down here as well and he starts coughing.

Is he going to die this time?

“Janus? Tut mir leid, aber Remus hat gesagt das würde helfen…“

What is the voice saying? He doesn’t—

Suddenly there’s something cold on his hand and Janus gasps.

His eyes fly open, and he sits up as if stung.

“Oh, Gott sei dank.”

Janus is still trying to get his breathing under control as his eyes find Patton sitting next to him, a water bottle in his hand. A drop of water is running down its side.

Ah, so that was the cold thing.

“What—” He gasps for more breath. “What happened?”

“Oh, uhm… Moment, please.”

Janus watches as Patton sets the water bottle aside on his nightstand and grabbing his phone instead. He types on it for a moment.

“You niktmare?” he asks, holding out his phone for Janus to see. It takes him a moment to get his eyes to focus on the screen, his breathing finally calming down. Patton has pulled up google translate, one side reading Albtraum and the other nightmare.

Oh yeah.

That would explain things.

His scars itch at the memory but he pushes the sensation away.

Patton is still looking at him, concerned.

“Yes,” he nods. “Nightmare.”

“Guessed. Called Remus. Coming here. With Logan.”

Janus sinks back down onto the bed with a sigh. So, his dad and soon-to-be stepfather were on their way back to check on him. He doesn’t like to admit it but he’s glad. He likes to pretend that he’s 16 and totally independent but staying in a foreign country with a guy he doesn’t know seems to have stressed him more than he thought if it brought back the worst memories of his life.

“Danke,” he says and Patton smiles.

“Kein Problem. Ich hoffe es geht dir bald besser.“

Janus can only guess what that means but he doesn’t press.

It’ll be okay.

A tap on his shoulder makes him flinch and he looks to Patton who’s holding the water bottle again.

“Drink?” he asks.

Janus wonders for a moment where the bottle had even come from but then he remembered the mini fridge. They’d have to pay extra for using it, but… He could really use a cold drink right now.

He nods and Patton brightens, eagerly unscrewing the lid.

Janus watches him and thinks that maybe the next few days aren’t going to be that bad.

~~*~~

Natürlich - Of course

Janus! Wach auf! Komm schon, wach auf! Du musst atmen! - Janus! Wake up! Come on, wake up! You need to breathe!

Janus? Tut mir leid, aber Remus hat gesagt das würde helfen… - Janus? I'm sorry, but Remus said this would help...

Oh, Gott sei dank. - Oh, thank God.

Danke - Thanks

Kein Problem. Ich hoffe es geht dir bald besser. - No problem. I hope you feel better soon.

[ystk-archive]

“I feel like we released a party-in-a-box album” (Nakata)

He makes music for Perfume and MEG, created the soundtrack of the TV drama “Liar Game,” and wrapped up an album with Sakai Kate as part of the unit COLTEMONIKHA. The number one producer on the cutting edge of now is unmistakably Nakata Yasutaka, and his main project capsule released their eighth album “Sugarless GiRL,” followed it with a remix best-of compilation called “capsule rmx,” and are already set to release their third album in a single year.

“Up until now, I’d been sort of following the oldschool pop format to a certain extent. I think my songs until the ‘Sugarless GiRL’ album were easy to listen to, but I don’t feel like they need to be that way anymore because capsule isn’t the type of unit that would appear in music programs on TV. I’ll leave the karaoke-friendly songs to idols and pursue creating something with capsule that can only be done in the kind of environment we exist in. Our remix album that came out in October falls in line with this: it’s a collection of tracks that we use often, so there is the implication that it’s a best-of album, but I wanted to refresh the sound instead of just re-releasing the songs as they were. It takes the ‘party’ feeling and packages it up all neatly, like a party-in-a-box. But I do fundamentally want people to listen to our newest album first and foremost.” (Nakata)

“We’re having fun creating things that we think are interesting.” (Koshijima)

That new album is “FLASH BACK,” their ninth overall and first original release in ten months. It breaks from their previous works in that it isn’t like the soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist; “FLASH BACK” instantly conjures up images and memories from the past in the way that a movie inserts a literal flashback sequence. It doesn’t use a story or specific pretense to do this — instead, particles of sound flood out from the listening device (whether that be speakers or headphones) and form intense, hard-hitting electro music, bit by bit.

“I thought it was interesting to have several moments in time playing simultaneously, like I’d cut out scenes from a movie. There isn’t a pattern to how it changes; the entire album is constantly shifting. I thought it’d be good to have a strong contrast like that. My mental image of it is a sort of inner dive. I made it with a clear contrast in sound so that the listener can really delve into it, and I think if you sync up with the music, you can get into the album quite easily. However, I did think it would be kind of tacky if the album was too trendy-sounding. It’s perfectly situated in that space where you can’t decide if it’s cool or not.” (Nakata)

“During recording, we’d get all excited like ‘this is SO lame!’ (laughs). But we’re really into just making whatever we feel is interesting to us right now, so we hope everyone will enjoy listening to it.” (Koshijima)

from spring magazine・scan & translation by ystk-archive・HD download (Google Drive)

[strawberripuffy]

So I was reading/listening to those translations of the Latin in Bloodborne lyrics, as one does, and I found the one for the Moon Presence and, it just didn't sit with me like the rest did. Didn't feel right, so I went on Google Translate and went to see if it would give me something different. It did, in fact, give me something different. Here below, I'm gonna state my opinion on it all

I want to preface this with the following facts:

1. I am not a Latin expert by any means

2. I know Google Translate can be unreliable (I originally tried to use DeepL but it didn't have Latin)

3. This is just a little ramble, I'm sorry if I forget any piece of official lore or something that may be important, and I'd love to know what you all think of my interpretation

4. Please ignore the discord markdown. It's 4 in the morning, and I don't wanna change it

· · ────── ·𖥸· ────── · ·

The provided (source below) Latin to English translation is as follows:

> Ruler, on the day when you came

> The curse is born

> Ruler, on the day when you came

> You are reborn

> On the day when the ruler come

> Ruler's curse is born.

I don't know what 'Ruler' here is referring to. I mean, it could be the Moon Presence, but she's never been referred to as a ruler, anywhere, nor has anyone else. Saying it's a reference to Queen Yharnam or Queen Annalise is a little bit of a stretch in my personal opinion because they have no connection to the Dream, and I don't think they have any connection to Moon Presence.

The word 'curse' here is also confusing for similar reasons? Though I can kinda see it referring to the Beast Scourge, because the Blood Moon does kinda make people transform into beast(?) But it's not any 'Ruler's curse, or at least I don't think

At least the themes of rebirth make sense though and carry over, as, if you're fighting Moon Presence then at that point the only ending you can get is Childhoods Beginning

· · ────── ·𖥸· ────── · ·

Now, onto the Google Translated version (Original)

-# also note that I did to change "Dīrae" to "Dirae" because it wouldn't translate to anything and when I looked at Google Translates dictionary for the word, it spelt it with the regular 'i'

> Days will come

> It creates a monster

> Days will come

> You are born again

> The days are coming

> He gives birth on a terrible day

This makes a bit more sense, after all, the note that your character wrote talks about ascending the hunt by seeking Paleblood and that would end the hunt, something worthy of telling in the context of something like "Days are coming". As well as my opinions on the other lines (⬇️)

> It creates a monster

This (again, in my opinion) is a reference to how "ascending" in any sort of way, whether it be beasthood or godhood seems to force you to sacrifice or lose your humanity, but it could also be literal and referring to a Great Ones (usually) monstrous looking appearance

> "You are born again"

Obvious. You turn into an infant Great One

> "He gives birth on a terrible day"

This ones pretty up in the air but (in my opinion) it could be talking about how it's only on the terrible day (night) of the hunt that you have the opportunity to get to the bottom of this eldritch madness and be reborn

· · ────── ·𖥸· ────── · ·

Now here's the Google Translated version but changed a tad using the drop-down type menu (shown in the image)

> The day will come

> He creates the beast

> The day will come

> You are born again

> The day comes

> On a terrible day he gives birth

Most of these changes are minor ones, such as changing the day related lines to be singular, talking about one specific day (night) because we all know The Hunter does it all in one night as well as making the line after "The day comes" past tense, making it sound like the day has already came, like it's describing something that already happened which makes sense because the other line, "You are born again" sounds like it's describing something that just now happened/is happening

There's one specific line that I changed though: "It creates a monster" to "He creates a beast"

I did this because in regards to my last interpretation of the former line was simply just it referring to the loss of humanity, but this line could refer to a few things

1. The possibility that your player character could very well just restart the hunt or make it worse, yes the hunt ends (I think?) after you become an infant Great One but there's no telling what you'd do after that! There's an infinite amount of possibilities, yes you 'usher humanity into a new childhood' but who's to say that's a good thing?

2. This is a bit of a stretch but maybe referring to how the Beast Scourge was originally humanities fault for poking their nose around with the Old Blood and using it as a magical cure-all

That concludes my ramble. Thanks for coming, guys, and goodnight

[kukuandkookie]

Lmfao help I totally forgot I scheduled my last post where I rambled about Jian Suiying in the tags (I probably scheduled it to seem more normal or something because I didn’t want to flood my feed 😂).

The reason I find it extra funny is because I literally feel like I’m going feral right now and I did just draft another Twitter thread ramble before coming on here and immediately seeing my scheduled post with those tags LADNSKDNS.

My Twitter is still on hiatus until further notice—aka when I am more comfortable interacting and sharing things socially—but over the past few weeks, my drafts have become very full of thoughts on LiJian (Li Yu and Jian Suiying) and YuBai (Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu).

And the main reason I feel so feral right now—as in right this minute—is because of the author of this really good fic (which I found thanks to the fan audio drama adaptation on MaoEr FM) that’s multi-chaptered where the premise is that a younger Li Yu ends up in the present day in Li Yu and Jian Suiying’s house. Li Yu is obviously very upset by this because he hates his younger self for how he treated Jian Suiying, and the story is about helping him heal from that past.

And well anyways this post isn’t about that fic specifically, although it’s a really good fic and I went crazy over it a while ago as well: since it’s told entirely in screenshots on Weibo at least, I actually captured every image of text until I had everything and then I MTL’d them using Google Translate and then I severely edited them on-and-off based on my own Chinese knowledge—so this included grammar and pronouns but also less obvious stuff where I had to check line by line or turn it into audio to listen to. 😂

It’s a really fucking good fic though. So worth it.

And well the author has done other versions; one is where a younger Yu Fengcheng gets transported into current Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu’s life, and I’ve already collected every part of that one (it’s still incomplete).

Except it referenced a case where there were two Jian Suiying’s, a fic the author said they were planning to write back when they released the two Li Yu’s fic, which obviously made me a little feral.

I struggled to find it until I finally did (yay!!) alongside a masterlist of their fics in general (yay!!!), and I really really want to translate and read it right now.

But part of me also wants to save it—because I like saving things I like—to the end, since the author has other fics I can translate first, including one where Li Yu gets amnesia, which will definitely also be quite interesting.

And yet. I cannot get over the concept of there being two Jian Suiying’s and how that might resemble or reflect or differ from the fic where there were two Li Yu’s (especially since the two Li Yu’s one is just very thematically perfect).

I might just translate it first because I can barely resist??? I already translated the second half of the first part just to tease myself, and it has me screaming because like:

(The above screenshots are from this fanfic here by 丧心病狂de凌子 on Weibo!)

The image of Li Yu dragging whom he assumes is his spouse (and he is; just from a different time period) back home only to come face-to-face with his actual spouse (of this time period) being all cute in his soft cozy home clothes with a little mug instead of having gone out drinking (which the Jian Suiying from a different time period in his arms had been doing—as all the fics so far have had the person from the past end up in the present after getting blackout drunk) which was a thing about Jian Suiying that Li Yu used to worry about…

(The above screenshot is canon and from the original novel!)

Yeah do you see what I mean???

I’m just so excited because you’ll get the chaos of two time periods intersecting, but also because Jian Suiying used to go out to such places and it upset Li Yu a lot since he knows Jian Suiying’s past life and their relationship took so long to get to a good place that he’s afraid Jian Suiying will discard him again when out partying—so seeing Jian Suiying here, at home on time, patiently waiting for his husband to come home from his business trip…

*sigh* They’re pretty cute even after all the craziness of their original novel lmao. 🥹

And yeah. Typing all this out…I think I’ll translate this first out of all of the author’s fics. I’m going to go insane otherwise SLFNKSDJSKS.

[invested-in-your-future]

Just because I got few similar asks asking about that

The issue with "Fixing" a writing of a show is that you are naturally assuming you are only fixing specific "season" and that there will be a point in the show when the writing "goes back" to being coherent and proper.

So for example, if you are trying to fix Volume 4 as Volume 5 is airing, you might, consciously or subconsciously, hope that V5 ending is where everything once again "clicks" and thus you just need to alter what doesn't work in V4 and what doesn't in V5.

So you think up of which parts should be changed. And sure that might mean entirety of Menagerie location needs to go (because real world implications of that whole arc are just...NO and you can probably think up a better WF storyline in half a hour with how bad that was) and Port needs to disappear off the face of this fictional story and pointless empty scenes of Ruby and Co walking through exact same forest textures need to be changed, but the structure might still work right? They are still traveling towards a specific goal right? So you just have to change HOW they get to that goal, because there is a goal right??? And then You just need to tweak the elements that don't work in V5 up to the ending where you hope things might get shaken up a bit more and go back on track.

But then V5 ends and the writing's still a mess. And before you manage to quite think through what to do, V6 starts and the writing is STILL a mess and what's more, it has a whole new set of problems and by this point you realize that for example, the entire structure of Kingdom of Mistral doesn't quite make sense, as if "someone" just plopped bunch of town locations in a straight line and then used Google's translation feature to just make up bunch of names for them, because entire continent is ultimately just an irrelevant detour.

Whoops, now you have to review what you did with fixing earlier parts and see if new problems arose, change up the geography of the story a bit, etc. You just realized that there's not really "a point" to the adventure of traveling through Mistral anymore so you need to think something up as you realize that the main character of the entire story has absolutely zero character growth from V3. The show is back to status quo yet again and its like V4 through V5 are completely pointless.

You realize, that Ruby Rose, the character that went through some of the most lifechanging events ever, just spent two seasons just ambiguously walking through bunch of forest areas and towns.

What's more, the team is back together but literally nothing that happened has been addressed in anyway and there's no actual growth of the characters at all. That can't be right. Right? Surely at least Yang and Blake w-... Oh no...

Resigned, you go back to your thoughts about what would need to change in V4 and a lot has to change once again to make Mistral anything but one huge pointless detour.

But its okay you th-...wait what's that sound? Its as if, somewhere just outside, a train just went off the rails as it was crossing a bridge and then somehow managed to jump over a shark and then exploded as it hit the ground...Whoopsie daisy.

In this exact moment, the writing throws you the infamous "Salem Flashback Episode", "The Lost Fable", and accidentally entire lore is now broken completely and it might be one of the worst written things in the entire show till that point, that kind of trivializes multiple mysteries people were waiting for and makes the writing for lead villain extremely tropey and honestly (yet again, as you start to notice a pattern in how the show writes women) misogynistic and if you want to make things work you might as well redo that too. Wait..."that" as in what??? As in the entire core of why the show is happening in the first place? THAT's broken? Well F-...

So now you barely started sorting out the mess of V5 (because its entire volume of basically literally nothing happening and whatever interesting happens always gets off-screened) and the show-proper just basically NUKED almost all of it's set-up and more than half of it's mysteries.

You realize you are staring at an episode that honestly can compete with worst seasons of Voltron in how bad it is. You actually start to think it might compete with the second genLOCK season in awfulness, but end up not thinking it can be THAT bad. I mean the show will never go bad as genLOCK S2, riiight?

Its okay, its okay - you have been theorycrafting RWBY stuff since the first trailers hit. You've read all the song lyrics which are filled with all these immaculate hints at the intent behind the show, thoughts of various characters and where things are going, you can maybe piece together something other than another "disgruntled manipulative woman" storyline. The songs having actual lore is great. I mean they wouldn't just suddenly throw that away, right? As that thought hits you, a sense of dread starts to overcome you.

And thus as another disaster closes in. at this point, little does your past self know that in the future, few years latter, the show will deliver a whole season of nothing but train crashes, but this time the sharks being jumped will talk like humans do.

So yeah... you can't really "Fix RWBY". Sure parts like Ren and Nora's backstory episode are nice and there are moments that felt good otherwise, but at that point, pretty much majority of post-V3 stuff is outright unusable. At this point to Fix RWBY means to redo literal core reasons on why the story is happening, how the world and it's lore works, motivations of the characters and, well, everything...

And that's how you end up with a file over hundred pages long that quietly has chronicled both your efforts to make sense of what the show even wants to be, as well as the show's descent into just complete randomness...

After all, when a writing team writes EVERY volume as one huge pointless detour that in no way actually enhances the characterization or story, at some point the whole train is bound to derail and crash...over and over again.

[bad-dagon]

riemann spheres as a fundamental type, pt.1 basics

ive been thinking on and off about riemann spheres for a while now, a couple weeks really, and so far i think there's some utility to them as a building block of a type system of some kind for a joke/toy computer language

background: riemann spheres are a neat tool in complex analysis where we imagine a sphere whose equator intersects the complex plane, and every number on the complex plane is representable by a point on the sphere such that a line is projected from the north pole and through that point onto the complex plane. naturally, this means that the north pole is P(∞) and the south pole is P(0). see below how that would look like with other unit points of the complex numbers

a neat thing the riemann sphere allows us is to define meaningful division by zero so now z/0 = ∞ clean and simple! and also its inverse, z/∞ = 0 is well behaved as well. this simplifies doing complex analysis but stereographic projection is an absolute bitch to work with turns out, and doing arithmetic on points on the sphere is a mess because it's not a linear mapping (it's continuous though so that's fine)

if we're dealing with ONLY real numbers in relation to a circular slice of the riemann sphere, it already starts looking like a mess; for any number n∈R its projective cognate on the circle is located at (2n/n²+1, n²-1/n²+1). on the real riemann sphere though? zoo wee mamma

an arbitrary z∈C, represented as a point (x,y) on the complex plane, has to walk through a rather ugly mapping (related to the previous one) to find its point on the sphere; more accurately, given the coordinates (x,y) of the point on the plane, the point on the sphere is located at (2x/1+x²+y², 2y/1+x²+y², -1+x²+y²/1+x²+y²), which is godawful in spherical-to-polar coordinate terms, this is much simpler; for a polar pair (r,θ) the point on the unit sphere representing it is (φ,ξ) = (2*arctg 1/r, θ); and conversely projecting from the riemann sphere is also dead simple, given the zenith-azimuth pair (φ,ξ), (r,θ) = (ctg φ/2, ξ). of course, translating from polar to real coordinates is ALSO dead simple; x = r * cos θ, y = r * sin θ. if a computer system were to store complex numbers (or any coordinate on a 2d plane really), it makes sense to store them in terms of spherical coordinates of a riemann sphere, since this makes infinity well-behaved as a unit (zenith = 0, azimuth = literally who gives a fuck) and is surprisingly efficient. knowing that the zenith is ∈[0,π] and azimuth ∈[0, 2π] can allow for some formidably dumb optimisations that can save on space and ensure granularity. compared to storing them as 2d cartesian or polar coordinates, this provides the benefit of having neither number be larger than like 6.3, so an underlying/backing type that can offer great precision in this small range would be more efficient numerically than, say, floating points which have insane baggage and gaps

or iunno i'll look into that one a bit later, i'm just kind of furious right now that i rederived stereographic projection on my own when the formulas were right fucking there if id only just googled for them

[touchreceptors]

opm 179/224(jp) TL commentary

so, about the Saitama vs Tatsumaki battle in the latest chapter.

Normally, I’m tired enough at the end of the work day that when the JP OPM chapter updates drop, I'm happy to just skim the chapter and wait for the usual fan TL team to do their good work and drop the English translation the next day. Usually, I find them very decent and competent.

This time around, however, Saitama’s lines on this particular page had me sitting up a little straighter.

I thought his word choice was oddly far too chummy given his usual personality and his attitude towards people like Tatsumaki, so I decided to check the original Japanese pages again and sure enough, found that I gleaned a very different idea from the JP lines. I would definitely have translated these differently.

Let’s take a look at the 2 phrases in question.

1. “She’s not in the mood to chat at all” (JP: 全然会話になんねえーな )

The plain form of this (i.e. after you distill it from Saitama’s typical style of speech) is 全然会話にならない which is far more often representative of the sentiment “It’s impossible trying to get through to you/this person”. It literally translates to “This is not becoming a 2-way conversation at all” or "you can't have a 2-way conversation with this person"; Google “会話にならない 英語” and you will see multiple suggestions along the lines of “It’s no use talking to you.”

This phrase is used to indicate that the other party is not willing to listen, usually to something important the speaker has to say. Saitama isn’t looking to have a friendly “chat”, he’s trying to make a point to Tatsumaki about not attacking other heroes and laying off his new home before that gets destroyed too. So, while the use of “chat” may help to preserve the lazy informality of his speaking style, it downplays the severity of the situation and his annoyance at her not getting his point. 

I personally would’ve used “Ugh, she’s not gonna listen at all, is she” or “Ugh, talking isn’t gonna work at all, is it” or a similar variation.

2. “Guess I’ll keep her company for now” (JP: 相手しとくか)

Context is everything. Just because “keep company” is the first option in a whole list of different definitions that pops up when you do a dictionary search doesn’t mean that it’s the right definition to use for a translation/localization. Nor does it mean it’s how the phrase is most commonly used in practice.

I'd wager you don’t even need to have much RL experience in Japan or with Japanese people to know which definition should've been picked. Watch enough shonen and sports anime with the original Japanese audio and you’ll soon learn that any time there is a pair activity, game and most importantly, a fight, 相手 i.e. “aite” refers to “opponent”. In a classroom setting, being asked to “相手して” doesn’t mean to keep a student “company”, it means to take up the opposite role in pair work. I’d add that in the close to 15 years I’ve spent studying and/or speaking Japanese, and the 3.5 years spent living and working in Japan, I’ve never heard this phrase being used to mean “keep somebody company” - but since experience can also be subjective, let’s just look at what we can be certain about: context, and our own knowledge of the target language and all its nuances.

a. Context - What’s happening, and who is saying it: Are they fighting? Yes. As opponents? Yes. Is Saitama referring to their fight and a strategy he's going to take (i.e. letting her tire herself out)? Most certainly, yes. Is this line being said by the same guy who thinks of Fubuki only as an acquaintance who's always dragging him into her business against his will, the same guy who in the last frame of this very chapter is thinking to himself "Man I reeeeeaallly wanna go home"? Yes. Should you have picked a definition more related to fighting and opponents from the dictionary's MANY different options like, idk, "take on a rival" to base your translation on? Yyeeess??? Why wouldn't you have?

b. Decision-making when localizing a text: What does “keep somebody company” imply in English? Is there a better way to phrase this and make the localized script more representative of the situation and the character's intent, and less loaded with English meaning that isn't present anywhere else in the text? I mean, Saitama certainly isn't suddenly thinking about loneliness and company when he mentions the lack of buildings and people - a safer distance away from civilization he deliberately went to the trouble of bringing Tatsumaki to.

I'd take some creative/artistic license here myself to make the language less stiff, but would definitely have gone for something less distorted, like "Guess I'll keep her occupied for now". If unsure, then even a more literal "Guess I'll take her on for now" would do a very decent job of conveying Saitama's intent, staying faithful to the original language without sounding too stiff when inserted into the sentence they came up with.

But well, who'm I to talk, eh? Translators are humans, there's no way to be completely objective in any interpretation, and they still do far more work than I am willing/able to do for this manga every update. I just wonder if they were letting certain biases guide their interpretations rather more than usual this time. Suffice to say, I'll be very curious to see how the guys at Viz choose to frame this bit for the official English TLs.

[emblemxeno]

(Feel free to post this publically)

The “Nohrian and Hoshidan skies reverse” was a localization fuck-up:

Gunter (EN): When the dawn turns... Hmm... Oh, I get it. Once every few decades, the skies above Nohr and Hoshido will reverse. If I remember right, that should happen a few months from now.

Gunter (JP): Dark becoming light… Light becoming dark… I’ve heard of that. It only happens once in several decades, but there’s a phenomena where Nohr’s sky switches colors with Hoshido’s and vice versa. It won’t happen for another several months though.

Sure, the latter doesn't absolutely confirm that switching colors is the only thing that'll happen to the skies, but it'd be ratty as fuck to try and just blindly assume, with no evidence, that two countries' skies magically switching colors with each other for a few days would lead to any sort of changes to the fauna and flora of Hoshido and Nohr when Gunter would have absolutely brought up the color-switcharoo also affecting the weather if that was the case; i don't blame anyone for assuming that to be the case in EN tho, especially when the explanation given is both vaguer and worded in such a way as to heavily imply that the skies are literally changing positions.

(Also, for what it's worth, the color-switching explanation is consistent among Fateswartable, the English Patch, and the raw kanji after being google-translated, leading a decent amount of credence to that being accurate)

Interesting find, thanks for letting me know! I wonder why they removed the mention of it happening every few decades.

I'm on the fence cuz while this does give better context as to why no one seemingly gives a shit in the other routes, I still find it a bit... out of place, in a way.

Nonetheless, there is more of a line up given what we know of what happens in BR and CQ as well that I missed. Corrin, Azura and Gunter exit Valla through the Bottomless Canyon during CQ in Chapter 15, and BR chapter 15, Corrin and Ryoma see the sun rising while in Nohr even though it's not supposed to happen. So that's something.

[lattesqueeze]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you @wanderingblindly I love love LOVE answering these!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just five! I haven’t actually published very many (obviously) but maybe I will in the future :-)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

40,450 apparently!!

3. Which fandoms do you write for?

These days, just F1 RPF. I used to write for other fandoms (the other published fics on my AO3 are for The Arcana, if any of y’all know that lol)

4. Which are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Given that I literally have five published…

- fallingforyou (random Lestappen word vomit)

- Enchanted (Lando’s Version) (little Landoscar drabble thing)

- The Magician (The Arcana - I wrote this one unemployed summer, mostly while wine drunk, aged maybe 22)

- Grimoire (The Arcana)

- Eridanus (The Arcana - this had potential but I never finished it teehee)

5. Do you reply to your comments? Why or why not?

YES! I don’t get very many, and appreciate each and every one! It makes me feel validated ngl 😅 i love engaging with other people who have things to say about something I create. Like, that’s so cool right?!

6. Which of your fics has the angstiest ending?

Honestly, none of them. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, so I will be tying up all loose ends to finish my fics. Maybe I’ll say Enchanted (Lando’s Version) purely because it doesn’t really have an ending - just a “perhaps”.

7. Which of your fics has the happiest ending?

I guess fallingforyou. I think it ends on a fairly hopeful note.

8. Do you get hate on your fics?

Not so far! I don’t think I have enough of an audience to generate hate comments, so I’m grateful for that lol

9. Do you write smut?

I do! Not necessarily very well, mind. It’s not often very dirty, more romantic smut. Is that a thing? It is now.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Nope. That’s some big brained behaviour and simply is not for me. I can’t keep up with one fandom, let alone multiple lmao much respect to those of y’all who manage it!!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge. Like I say, I don’t think I have enough reach.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope - for reasons above!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Not really. Although I help out my beloved Lola ( @twinkodium ) on hers, if that counts

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

LAWD i do not have one 💀 currently Lestappen or Brocedes (thanks to @like-pilot-lights for that one hehe)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but probably never will?

Like In Karting, my Lestappen passage of time daydream. Will I ever get to the end? Probably not! Do I love it dearly? Absolutely!

16. What are your writing strengths?

Openings. Like, first lines. I can introduce a scene like nobody’s business. Just don’t ask me to finish it.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Pacing. I desperately want to just get to the point, which makes my fics feel rushed. Pls help me fix this.

18. What are your thoughts on writing in other languages in fics?

Besties i don’t even write well in English 💀 I feel like a lot of the time, it serves no great purpose. Especially if it’s randomly inserted google translate phrases that nobody speaking that language would ever actually use.

19. What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

I guess like Harry Potter or One Direction, circa 2010 lol

20. What’s your favourite fic that you’ve written?

One that I published anonymously of the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat variety. I love it so much - it’s genuinely the only fic of mine that I read back and actually enjoy. I usually just publish my work and leave it there.

Of the fics actually associated with me, I suppose fallingforyou? I dunno. I actually hate both of my recent ones soooo

I don’t know who hasn’t been tagged yet, so I’m tagging @twinkodium and @lestappenforever because I love you both and I love your work and I wanna hear everything y’all have to say :’)