#I need to translate this conversation as what they mean vs what the other hears

[frogaroundandfindout]

Dick: Look. I know why you’re here. You don’t want Bludhaven’s problems spreading into your precious Gotham. And you don’t trust me to contain this. But the Haven is my personal crusade. Just like Gotham is yours. And I’ve been doing all right so far.

Bruce: I never means to intrude. I’m surprised to hear you talk about Gotham that way.

Dick: it’s not my hometown. I was born in a trailer by the big top. I never really had a hometown. Until now.

Bruce: I didn’t know you felt like that. But I understand. Well. That’s it then.

Dick: Damn.

Nightwing Vol.2. #14

[magicalmanhattanproject]

Okay, so with Quackity Studios tweeting about adding new people and the need for tolerance and patience with people who don't speak English, let's just take a second and have a chat about what that's gonna look like.

First: you will hear things or read things on the translator that hurt or offend you.

This is inevitable. Do not immediately post about it. What you need tolerance for is hearing things that hurt or offend you and what you need patience for is figuring out of malicious intent was present or if this is a hill worth dying on right now.

As an example, we're pretty sure at this point that Korean is gonna be the next language added. The second person pronoun in Korean sounds a lot like the n-word in English. The n-word in English, if you're not aware, is like the single most offensive slur we have. It's not something that you want to hear unexpectedly. But also, if we get Koreans, they're gonna be using the word for "you" and English speakers are gonna have to be able to tolerate that.

On the other side of things, Korean has a complex system of honorifics and addressing someone without an honorific would be considered very forward and intimate at least if not very rude. None of the QSMP languages have honorifics though and only French really retains formality* so no one else is going to address them with honorifics unless they specifically explain it to people and walk them through it. That will probably be weird and uncomfortable for them and they're going to have to be able to tolerate that.

*Spanish and Portuguese do technically have formal vs informal but it's disappearing quickly in both of them.

These natural cultural clashes and pain points are going to be harder to overcome since we also know that at least some of these creators won't speak English at all so they can't just switch to English to helpfully explain things to us easily in a way we understand. We're going to have to deal.

So here's the thing: just because there can be cultural miscommunications and mistranslations, that doesn't mean that people can't also be assholes. How do you distinguish between the two?

Step One: Assume good faith. Assume that everyone in a given encounter is trying to communicate respectfully and compassionately and that a failure to do so can be overcome

Step Two: Don't get involved. Especially not in Twitch Chat. Two or more people trying to communicate through a language barrier does not get easier when they're also trying to wrangle hostile viewers.

Step Three: Are you sure you heard what you thought you heard or saw what you thought you saw? Did the translator fuck up? Is it a word that just coincidentally happens to sound like another word? If this is the case, the streamers can ask for clarification or use another tool and get it cleared up. Keep watching and see if they do.

Step Four: If they did say what you thought they said, are the streamers handling it? We had a thing a while back where Bad called some friends, including Bagi and Etoiles, uncultured because they didn't get a reference he was making and Etoiles was like "bro I'm French" and Bad apologized. That should have been the end of it, but I had to see people arguing about it for weeks. The problem was solved in 10 seconds.

Step Five: If the person is doubling down, are you sure this is something you can fix by yelling about it on Twitter or Tumblr? Would it be better to let people who actually know them talk to them behind the scenes? Pierre made a few missteps in the beginning of the server, Quackity said they had a chat, Pierre hasn't misstepped since. It's just easier to sort things out in private, one on one conversation than yelling at someone in public.

In short: it's fine to take note of behavior in case patterns start to emerge in it, but yelling on social media about how so and so is the worst person possible is not constructive.

[gayofthefae]

Thinking about how crazy together is so meaningful because it isn't some romantic promise. It isn't just that, without context, "mad for each other" type "we'll go crazy together hypothetically".

It isn't hypothetical. The conversation that led them to that point is "I am scared I'm genuinely losing my mind because I become so immersed in my visions of monsters that I lose reality" "I am also scared that I'm losing my mind because I see people that aren't really there" "Hey, on the upside, maybe we can room together at Pennhurst Asylum"

Like that was the conversation. It was earnestly "our real life experiences and symptoms are making us actually worry about our sanity, let's promise not to tell anybody" and then Mike, loving in the way that he does, says "but it's some comfort knowing that, like everything, we're doing this together too"

And now I'm thinking about "I have no idea what's gonna happen next, but I think it'll be better if we work together. If we're a team. Friends. Best friends" and my other post about how if you look into it's kind of a version of "I want to jump into the abyss with you, I'll be less scared". It's also logistic, of course "us fighting won't help anything" but they had also already stopped fighting. So now I'm thinking about how, really, that's just a rephrasing of "Hey, well if we're both going crazy, at least we'll go crazy together, right?"

It's easy to isolate that line and think of it how it's used in other shows, more of a "hypothetically, we'll go crazy together", but in this, he was saying "this real thing that's happening is made better by you being here with me. I think we're gonna be okay."

And I sometimes read fanfics of it where it's more cavalier, but I feel like we need to remember that "craziness" was very stigmatized, just look at how they all treat Joyce's history with mental illness is season 1 - basically equating anxiety and depression as "only a matter of time before she fell into full delusion and hallucination". I don't think that they'll necessarily repeat it because it wasn't "let's go crazy together" it was "we are going crazy together". Without the real-time stakes to it, it doesn't mean the same thing so a callback would still be romantic but used in a different context, it would be different. It didn't mean "crazy together" like "let's take this supernatural risk together" or "hey, wanna do something crazy?"/"that was crazy of us!" They're using it as the stigmatized word that it is. They're using it with the weight that it holds.

It's closer, to me, to "Maybe I'm crazy! Maybe I'm out of my mind, but God help me, I will keep these lights up until the day I die if I think there is a chance that Will is still out there." - which makes sense with all the season 1 parallels between Mike and Joyce i.e. her seeing the lights vs him hearing the radio and everyone else is like "it's ok sweetie, we know you miss him"

I think the best subtext I can translate is what I already said: a lighthearted "Hey, well, at least maybe we can bunk together at Pennhurst."

edit: a better way to put it is I feel like it's this as opposed to how people usually treat as more of a "you die, I die"(-Dustin to Steve, s3)

[mamuzzy]

MAMUZZY READS HARD CONTACT: Chapter 1.2.

In case you need to hear it from someone: reading this book won’t make you misogynistic, queerphobic, terf, ableist, genocide-supporter and [insert whatever antis may have called you]. In fact, no book or movie, or game makes you one of these. How you behave with a flesh-and-blood person is what defines you, not the media you consume.

But maaaan… you can’t believe how hard this was to write. We are at still only on chapter 1, yet heavy themes such as grief, survival guilt and possible caste-system among the clones was already mentioned. And now as we follow a different point of view by introducing the secondary protagonist in Hard Contact, Etain Tur-Mukan, we’ll get into more darker topics. Getting the right words to talk about sensitive and serious topics like misogyny and sexism, rape and xenophobia was truly a challenge.

While I’m grateful to those repcomm-critical people who actually sat down and pointed out the problematic parts of the book for me in the past, I still feel that being critical of RepComm is like an exclusive club, where you can get inside if you already possess the secret of knowledge of… well, being critical thinker, and other “basic” criteria.

I mean, these are supposed to be serious problems. They fucking are. Misogyny is a serious problem all around the world, helping people to understand why you find certain parts problematic might be much more effective instead of going on full rage and tearing people heads off and make a fucking joke out of real people’s misery by gatekeeping information about serious topics.

In this essay, I will use related quotes from this section of the book to talk about an issue what I’m struggling with lately: relearning english language to be all-gender and sexuality inclusive. I know that lot of non-native english speakers are struggling with this, especially around my age or above, so I try to explain what does it mean to have addressed as female/male instead of woman/man in an everyday conversation, without calling you derogatory names for not knowing. Sorry that this has to be specific, but I’m truly angry about how antis rhetorics are basically about “if you don’t already know this, the problem is with you”. You can never assume with what background the readers come. Never.

-- FEMALE vs. WOMAN --

I started to recognize the differences between Hungarian edition and the original English release. Hungarian translations can be really good when a passionate and professional hand touches it and the more I read the English version, the more I think that the translation is faulty at some places. I often had that feeling that yeaaah, I get what the original english sentence would have sounded like. Karen Traviss’ style is much more simple, less-artistic and surprisingly easy to read despite the military topics.

Because of these differences, nuances can be lost in the translation.

Also, I started to feel the influence of the constant exposure of critical voices toward the books, and made this segment truly hard to read. Because when you hear certain voices, labels and slogans all the time, you are unconsciously trained to notice these things, I mean, that's how real life propaganda works. Immediately getting focused on certain words or expressions and immediately have the "appropriate" emotional response. And then you spend hours to figure it out if this is how the author intended or the curtain is just blue and that was it.

Here are some examples:

A friend of mine once told me that the book uses the word “female” a lot instead of woman and that is usually a telltale sign of someone being a TERF. Because of this, I immediately noticed that Ghez Hokan referred to women as such, moreover, he was talking to an alien.

I thought that our culture uses these terms entirely differently, but now that I researched a bit, it is not that different: the only difference is that english language uses “female/male” terms are incorporated in everyday speech like it’s nothing, while in Hungary, you don’t use such terms so casually.

What does this mean and why is this important in connection to queerness and especially trans-related topics?

In what context you use female/male?

You refer to people by their sex.

It is used in scientific context.

You use this when talking about flora and fauna.

You use this when you are talking other species that are not human and fantasy species.

If you use female/male terms on a human, you basicly degrade them to their mammalian status and reproductive abilities. You basicly call them animals.

A little Hungarian lesson: Hungarian language doesn’t have a word for gender. We use the same word for sex and gender, so basically there is no difference. Government use “dzsender” as a slur against transpeople in their propaganda, and deliberately don’t invent a Hungarian word for it, so it will still sound like english, therefore, it makes easier to alienate people even more from the “rotten west” when you use scary foreign words which meaning you don’t know and you don’t care to look up.

Because we don’t use female/male in our everyday language, only in scientific context, calling a women “female” sounds exceptionally rude and people will give you a weird look because of it.

You would say how our country is progressive language-wise (I love how people are going crazy over how we have a single gender neutral pronoun <3), but actually we are far from it. Yeah, it sounds nice that we use respective language when addressing women, but when a women are culturally encouraged to be treated like a breeding cattle based on their reproductive organs and constantly associated to motherhood, nice words just simply lose their meanings. That’s why I don’t really hung up on single words usages and labels. You totally focus on one thing and miss everything else around it. Women are treated shit no matter how appropriately you call them.

So imagine the confusion that I was introduced to a culture where you call women or men casually as animals and I’m expected to learn this language so the majority of the world may understand me, only to encounter with other people who will call me TERF and I don’t even know why. Progressive fandom spaces don’t automatically come with unconditional friendliness and patience.

Just for curiosity, I upload the hungarian version of this scene.

English in comparison

Because hungarian used the term of “nőket” (woman+plural+accusative), the potential problematic usage of “female” are completely lost in the translation. Even if you have the misogyny-lense on, in hungarian, you won’t find this scene problematic... well apart from the obvious that someone is getting killed brutally. “Nő” is a completely acceptable way to talk about women in Hungary, and you use “hölgy” if you especially want to be polite or talking face-to-face.

-- ABOUT XENOPHOBIA --

Other thing I wanted to show you regarding this scene, that beside misogyny and terf-associations, Karen Traviss is often accused by fans by being xenophobic to alien species other than humans. If you remember in what cases we call living beings female/male, anything that is not human are referred like that in everyday English language.

I honestly can’t decide if the word usage of “female” was due to the guy being weequay (an alien, other than human), or because Ghez Hokan don’t respect women or it has some significance at all. We actually see Hokan talking to a woman later so we can check this later.

Also I can’t decide if comparing the “incoherent animal sound beings made when pain overwhelmed them” is just a description of sound or the so-called KarenTravissness. See what slogans and labels do to your brain? If you are fed that this book is xenophobic, you will see xenophobia everywhere.

I’m not here to make judgment about english language, but I hope I could provide help in translating one of the common slogans and catchphrases people usually don’t bother to explain, because this is something you are supposed to know on your own.

Don’t gatekeep important information to make yourself feel more intellectually and morally superior!

-- WEEQUAY LORE --

Etain actually has opinions about the Weequays. She starts the chapter being on the run, chased by a Weequay mercenary. First of all, Etain is not having a graceful entry because she spends her first minutes hiding in a barq-field (very expensivy luxury grain), most precisely, in manure, and this scene alone made me fall in love with her. But also the Weequay didn’t hide what intention he has when he founds Etain.

A certain someone in repcomm tumblr said that Etain should sort out her racist and xenophobic thoughts because Hondo Ohnaka definitely has a diverse vocabulary. I don’t know, but if I was chased by a someone in threat of getting raped, I wouldn’t think nice and politically and socially correct things either, but it's probably just me. People really should sort out their priorities. But it only made me wonder and research further. Because I played old Star Wars games, I know that Weequays are fluent in Huttese but it made me wonder: do weeqays have their own language?

LORE TIME!!!!!!!!!

The first weequay appeared in the Original Trilogy serving Jabba the Hutt, called Pagetti Rook.

But who are these guys actually?

Weequays are a humanoid race originating from the desert planet of Sriluur, The Outer Rim with a neighbouring Hutt Space/Hutt Sector. Their appearance evolved due to the harsh weather conditions. They have clan-based, harsh society with a mindset of “only the strongest will survive”, and what is especially interesting about them that they don’t use speech as their primary communication form, they use pheromones to communicate. When a weequay is from another clan, there is no guarantee that they will understand each other, let alone people from other races. They don’t use names (only when they are blending among non-weequays), because they identify each other by smell. This is one reason other species find them inferior and uncivilized and unintelligent. You can see braids on his head which has cultural significance, weequay women are bald.

Weequays already appeared in the Original Trilogy serving Jabba the Hutt, and usually in this role you will find them: due to their neighbouring influence of Hutt Space, they serve Hutt clans. It’s one of the very common star wars cantina scenes, where you see women of different alien species entertaining guest, and if the bar is Hutt affiliated, there is a chance that they are slaves and kept against their will. Weequays are different: they remained independent from the Hutts, but they will lend their aid, lend their mercenaries to serve them, so they are mostly associated in with gangs, crime syndicates, drug cartels, smugglers etc. Weequays and Rodians often associated with criminal gangs in Legends.

On the bright side, there were force-sensitive weequays in the Jedi Order: Que-Mars Redath-Gom - Died in the Battle of Geonosis Master Kossex - died in the First Battle of Kamino Master Tyr - died in the Battle of Thustra Master Sora Bulk - Betrayed the Order and joined Count Dooku General Sev - Died during O66

So according to Legends-lore, Etain’s little comment about the weequays’ communication skills is not entirely out of place. Now if Etain was aware that they had weequays in the Jedi Order or not is another question, or more like, if Karen Traviss was aware. From what I know about her, she wasn’t well versed in the Extended Universe’s (now Legends) lore.

… I really hope that my little lore-detours don’t bore you. It will happen again.

-- ABOUT MISOGYNY --

UFFFFFF-!!!!!!! Reminds me of a time, when once I walked late at night to home, I looked behind my back because I heard someone and the guy yelled after me with hurt self-esteem: YOU especially don’t have to worry!

The swift comeback indicates that maybe this isn’t the first when Etain got such comments about her looks. We actually got a glimpse about her appearance by that weequay.

Scrag-end is a derogatory slang for thin and veiny people.

I want to make clear another thing. Misogyny is present in this book, and I truly believe that depicting misogyny itself is not misogyny. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MISOGYNY, but like a mature person, and not treat it like a fucking fandom trope!!!

It’s the sad reality that things like this exist in the real world. Erasing it from literature because it makes you uncomfortable - regardless if you are affected or not - won’t help anyone. “It should be actively condemned by the narrative!!!!” Like you would actively condemn misogyny happening before your very eyes? Would you be brave enough to step between a guy and her girlfriend who is being yelled at or you decide it’s not your business? Will you call out a woman (and your boss) who claims that women should make the environment clean because boys are just stupid boys who can’t do shit on their own (which is now a road to misandry as well. LOL! Misandry is not recognized as a legit word in scrivener)? You would probably just politely smile while serving a woman customer who just told you that you shouldn’t lift heavy things and do man’s job because your uterus will be damaged and you can’t have kids. I’ve got more misogynistic remarks from women than men actually.

Nobody will teach you how to protect yourself from misogyny and people like these. I never feel protected and loved by couch activists who are supposedly on women-side preaching about fictional misogyny but I can protect myself from actual assholes face-to-face, because I had to learn to do it. This book won’t teach either the how-tos, but maybe you can recognize speech patterns. This is how you use a “problematic” literature. You learn from it. If you learn from all this that it’s okay to talk about women like that, the problem is with you, my friend.

-- ABOUT ETAIN --

We get to know about Etain that she is not very good user of the Force, or at least she is not mindful in stressful situations like this. She is exhausted and not have any strength left, emotions completely overrun her.

It made me really wonder what Etain was through if her first thought was to cut down a farmer with her lightsaber.

You know… the more I read about Etain (and what I remember about her in the other books), I would say that she is written as a child soldier. Which is weird because Jedi are ultimately are not trained to be soldiers

There are a lot of paragraphs where she compares herself to the clones and comparing their upbringing to hers, but her reactions in this scenes, it made me really wonder.

*SNORT* This part made me chuckle. Clever girl.

Etain definitely has doubts in her own abilities. It is not known if Master Fulier truly thought about Etain this way, some gestures indicated that in the past, or simply Etain’s low-self-esteem is talking. In this part, we don’t get to know more about her relationship with her master, but Fulier is described a challenge-loving person, and that could explain Etain’s jumpiness as well.

Interesting parallel that for a clone’s punishment is decomission if they fail their tests.

While it’s not supposed to be a punishment for a Jedi, those padawans who are not suited for knighthood are sent to one of the four service corps (Medical, Agricultural, Educational and Exploration). Etain is certainly feels it as a punishment to be sent here. Imagine you are trained for one thing in your life, and if you fail, you ultimately failed everything in life. Not exactly death, but almost.

-- JEDI AND THE TERRITORIES OUTSIDE OF THE REPUBLIC --

Another so-much-heard critic about Karen Traviss’ work that she wrote everyone hating on the Jedi, even the civilians.

But: Qiirula at this time (and probably before) is a Neutral planet in the midrim. Meaning, they have no ties with Republic. They don’t get aid, they don’t get Jedi visitors because it’s not their jurisdiction to care about. Ultimately the Senate decides where a Jedi should go and maintain peace. I don’t see why should an average quiirulan look at the Jedi like a godly entity and positive figure if they never see one before. Legends and hero stories won’t feed your stomach after all but you have bullies like Ghez Hokan and his mercenaries and the Neimoidians traders who will exploit you shitless.

There is no active war on Qiirula, but the Jedi are here - Padawan Etain and her master, Kast Fulier -, and that means, there is something here that is worth something to the Republic and something requires a Jedi presence after all.

The Jedi are not obligated to help the neutral systems or those under the CIS unless the Republic sends there forces to occupy and then they have maintain peace and enforcing the political decisions that had been made. At least that's what real life peacekeepers are doing in contries with tension. Do what you will with this information.

I certainly don't vibe with the Jedi Order as a government supported religious order.

That’s it for now, Chapter 1.3 will be the next, a smaller post introducing Fi and Niner and that will sums up the entire Chapter 1. ^^

Sorry if this one sounded like a rant, but I hate when people are throwing labels here and there and words eventually lose their impact.

[agentrouka-blog]

My favourite thing when anons want to stir trouble is that like, inevitably they have consistent misspelling habits which mean you know exactly who it is sending repeat asks. So unself-aware.

Anyway, I do think there is a balanced path between the text and what the author says. GRRM's comments about Sansa are about as light as they could come. I love when people want to ungenerously frame the debate as if she's tantamount to Tyrian or Daenerys, come on. Girl took a steak knife to see a drunken knight in the godswood. The most harm she's going to inflict is driving Jon crazy with the incest. I'm trying to be lighthearted here.

Anyway, Rouka, what's your opinion on author vs. text? How much is too much, relying on the former? On the other hand, with the Daenerys is a tragic hero fandom, there's a lot of outright twisting of the text. Does relying on the author's comments provide some clarity or just make the conversation harder, since one would want to reason based on the text? Thank you for your time and your graceful handling of us terrible anons 🥰

(The posts referenced: one and two)

(I'm chronically bad at recognizing these individuall spelling patterns. Unless they make it obvious, every anon is a newborn dawn to me.)

Hello and thank you!

For me, the actual text of the books should always be central when it comes to actually analyzing the books. (You know. Obviously.) Interviews can be nice, but should be absolutely optional to any of it. If you NEED an interview to support your position, you're not analyzing the text.

Perhaps I am biased because I can't be bothered to follow GRRM interviews, let alone dig up ancient ones - unless I am feeling especially motivated.

But also, most of the time we don't have a lot of good context for GRRM's quotes. How exactly a question was phrased, what direction the conversation went before it, how distracted or rushed was GRRM when answering, how likely is it he actually managed to get across exactly what he meant, and how easily can it get twisted around? Who edited and published it? Worse, did it go through a translation process?

Take the "Aragorn's Tax Policy" quote that still has people frothing at the mouth. People hear him mention Tolkien and lose all sense of nuance. No, he's not describing how his endgame king will be elected on his tax plan. He's giving context for parts of ADWD. That's it. Still people wail about what an evil hypocrite GRRM supposedly is because Bran was crowned king in the show without a single published treatise on his taxation policy.

Same with some commentary on the show, specifically Dany with Drogo. I've had people in my Inbox arguing for Rhaegar/Lyanna because GRRM is obviously okay with adult men preying on teenaged girls based on that interview. Which... you know, actually read Dany's chapters? Please?

The books, on the other hand, were not blathered out in a hurry. They are not a commentary on a text, they are the text. A labor of many hours of writing, editing, rewriting and more editing. They are complete and fully intentional in their form. They are the message.

So, while I admire how someone who knows what they are doing is able to create a brilliant body of supporting evidence on book content by compiling quotes in a meaningful way, often with good sources and context - looking at you here, @kellyvela - these lovely metas should never be considered necessary to understanding the text, and they should certainly neither replace nor supercede it. They augment the experience of it.

Knowing GRRM approved on the Meereenese Blot essays is nice.

But you don't need to know them, nor what GRRM thinks of them, in order to arrive at the same conclusion.

Knowing GRRM agrees with the statement that "Brienne is Sansa with a sword" is nice.

But you need never have heard of that quote in order to understand the similarities between these two idealistic, dutiful female characters.

He called Tyrion a villain, which is nice.

But you can arrive at that same conclusion by reading the books.

On the other hand, you can take one quote about the Key Five Characters from a decades-old outline that deviates from established plot in multiple significant instances, and then try and justify dismissing the importance of other characters. You just need to ignore the published text in order to do it!

So I just can't take that anon seriously when they gesture wildly at some quote about Sansa while ignoring the way it's entirely contradicted by the actual body of the text.

And if some members of the fandom have a habit of very selectively reading the text then this makes their analysis suspect, so what's really the point of arguing with someone who isn't really interested in analysis in the first place?

If "she burned a slave alive" or "she is ordering her servant to please her sexually" or "she condons torture even while she knows its useless" or "she ordered the murder of children" isn't going to convince them, an interview snippet isn't going to do it, either.

[languagedaemon]

A Clear and Holistic Explanation of the Subjunctive Mood: Non-Statement

Conventionally, the subjunctive mood is taught according to a case-by-case logic (by means of triggers such as No creo que/Es + adjetivo + que) or, when the aim is to give a comprehensive grip, one resorts to formulations of the type “The subjunctive is used to express desires, personal opinions, unreality”. The problem with studying the subjunctive case by case is that it can become overwhelming, too many triggers to memorize, you end up with quite a long list of situations in which you need it, and if you add to that your other lists of verbs, nouns, etc., learning Spanish resembles data analysis. The issue with the second explanation is that it is simply not correct: wishes, opinions and unreal or hypothetical situations can also be expressed in the indicative mood. Students who follow this route end up making sentences that are quite original, but not really natural. Luckily, the Spanish scholar José Ruiz Campillo has given us another alternative, which in my experience is bulletproof: the subjunctive as a non-statement.

Indicative vs subjunctive

Let us begin by distinguishing the subjunctive from its “arch enemy”, the indicative. Both are moods that contain different verb tenses. That is, both the indicative and the subjunctive have their present, past, future and so on. Yo soy is a present indicative, yo sea is a present subjunctive. Now, what is important for this topic is that while the indicative states, says what things are, ventures, takes risks, the subjunctive does not state, it allows itself to participate in the discussion, to mention things, to refer to them, but never puts its neck on the line, never says what it is or is not, it refrains from doing so. This will make sense later on.

Ella es o ella sea

An example given by Ruiz Campillo is really useful to understand what is at stake between the indicative and the subjunctive. Suppose we have a friend in common, Margarita, and we are talking about her. Unbeknownst to us, Margarita has walked past us and heard us say …Margarita es tonta… (indicative). In this case, our friend has every right to be annoyed, because no matter what came before or after those three words, the fact remains that someone is declaring her to be dumb. But now suppose she walks past us and hears …Margarita sea tonta… (subjunctive), in this case our friend doesn’t have much to complain about, because everything that can complete that sentence is a non-statement, for example: no creo que Margarita sea tonta/es una mentira que Margarita sea tonta, etc. So, in our conversation we have touched on the subject of “Margarita ser tonta”, yet we have not pronounced ourselves in favour of this idea; we are commenting on it, but we are not confirming it. That is the meaning of the subjunctive, which can refer to things and situations, without this implying that we are stating that they are so.

Subjunctive of desire

A common structure (a trigger) to express wishes is Yo quiero que/Me gustaría que/Espero que or the impersonal Ojalá que. In all these cases the subjunctive is needed for the second part of the sentence Ojalá que llegues bien a tu casa/Espero que te vaya bien mañana/Yo quiero que todos vivamos en paz. Why? Because if we were to make a statement in the second part, we would be doing something rather odd: wishing for something we already have. “Ojalá que llegas bien a casa” (indicative) is a contradictory sentence, because at the same time that I wish for you to get home safely, I am in fact stating that you have already arrived. Why wish for something that we already have or that has already happened? Of course, this difference is specific to Spanish and other Romance languages, and it loses its meaning completely if applied to English or other languages, so instead of translating, try to stay within the logic of Spanish.

Subjunctive of questioning

Another common trigger are sentences that begin with No creo/No pienso/No considero. Here we are basically announcing that what is coming, the second part, is something we don’t want to state. In fact, that we are countering someone else’s statement. No creo que sea buena idea/No pienso que tengas razón. The subjunctive should be used here because we cannot question a piece of information/statement, and then go on to state it. No creo que es buena idea (indicative) is a contradictory sentence because at the beginning we are being critical and then we finish off with that same statement we want to oppose, affirming what we are questioning, a nonsense.

Subjunctive of non-identification

Now a case in which the decision to use the subjunctive or the indicative modifies quite a lot what we want to say. If we go into a shop and say Estoy buscando una mochila que es roja, with the indicative, we are implying that we already know what model we are looking for, perhaps we saw it online, or in the shop window, but we know that this specific red backpack exists, it is something particular and different. If we go into the shop and say, instead, Estoy buscando una mochila que sea roja, with the subjunctive, we imply that we are not thinking of any particular backpack, that we are looking for any backpack, with the only condition that it is red. Similarly, if we are in a public place and we say to a stranger Estoy buscando a una persona que tiene el pelo azul (indicative), it is understood that we already know this person, that we know he/she exists and is a specific friend we lost and are looking for. If we say, on the other hand, Estoy buscando a una persona que tenga el pelo azul (subjunctive) something very different happens, we are saying that we do not know this person, even: that we are not even thinking of a specific person, it is just that we are looking for any person who meets this trait.

Subjunctive of valuation

A much more subtle case, which really tests the explanation of the subjunctive as a non-statement, is what happens in sentences with the structure of Es + adjetivo + que, such as Es molesto que tú no me entiendas/Es horrible que me hables así (…these are not autobiographical examples…). Here, if for the second part we were to use an indicative no me entiendes/me hablas, we would be committing an error which has to do with the different weights or importance between the subjunctive and the indicative. The indicative is strong, it declares, it weighs, it has the spotlight. The subjunctive is weaker, it mentions, it is lighter, it stays quiet. When in a sentence with this structure we use two indicatives, it is not clear which is the important one, which one is the message we really want to give. Es bonito que estamos juntos (both indicative) is a somewhat defective sentence because it contains two statements, es bonito and estamos juntos, and it is not easy to tell which is the one we are interested in emphasising. It is not a serious mistake, and probably many natives have made similar sentences during their lifetime, yet it is a somewhat weak sentence, poorly built: both statements weigh the same, but although they seem similar they are saying in fact very different things. On the other hand, Es bonito que estemos juntos (subjunctive) puts all the spotlight, all the importance, on that first statement es bonito (indicative) and the part of estar juntos is less strong, because it is obvious, because we take it for granted, because we know we are together and it is not necessary to state it again, what I am interested in stating, communicating, highlighting, is that this, being together, es bonito, and so I give all the spotlight to it.

There are still more cases of the subjunctive than the ones we saw in this article, but the next time you come across one you can do that test, ask yourself why is it a non-statement, why is that subjunctive there instead of an indicative, what would happen if we changed from one mood to the other.

Of course, mastery and correctness depend a lot on intuition, and intuition in turn depends on practice, on experience, so don’t try too hard to master the subjunctive after reading this article, it is a process that will happen in time, once you have seen enough wild subjunctives in nature (in context). However, the idea of the subjunctive as a non-statement can help you to digest this subject better, to find some ground, some compass, above all: to know that there is a logic behind the subjunctive, a raison d’être, and that little by little you will be able to understand and use it.

You can also go to Tercera Gramática, Ruiz Campillo’s website for Spanish learners.

[hael987]

Another [3] continuation of the 'language' reversal (SS -> E7 -> E8 -> E9 -> E10)

Kinn’s natural ‘language’ being physical/actions vs Porsche’s natural ‘language’ being verbal.

The ‘language’ reversal (speaking each others’ ‘language’) goes well when the relationship is going well, they’re open to one another, and their emotions are good. It breaks down when that's not the case.

Well, to sum up, everything's gone to sh*t, which isn't surprising. Tawan showed up and popped the bubble allowing an influx of negative emotions to cloud the relationship and break the 'language' reversal [LR, henceforth]. The real kicker is they were trying but the true messages just weren't making it through (because the LR broke down).

Kinn places Porsche in charge as one of the key bodyguards who guards Tawan. This action shows his trust in Porsche but the message isn't conveyed because 'trust' is never confirmed verbally (Porsche's 'language') and with the LR broken, the message received by Porsche is wildly different.

Kinn gives Tawan a phone. This action itself doesn't mean anything or may be part of a plan but for Porsche, it's a worrying sign. In ep 8, Kinn gave Porsche a phone and the message was clear: you're special, you're an exception. But now Kinn gave Tawan a phone too. This, in addition to having to guard (only one step removed from serving) Tawan, is enough for Porsche to start doubting and feeling maybe his superior position to Tawan is not secure after all (based on the mistranslated LR messages he's received from Kinn's actions). He thinks he's been given a very clear message. He's not considering things correctly in Kinn's 'language' but his own mistranslated interpretation.

Porsche is still attempting LR though. He's feeling insecure and decides to use Kinn's own 'language' (actions) to confirm that Kinn still loves him, still wants him. So instead of taking the opportunity (the one time in the whole episode that they're alone) to talk it out in his own language, he decides to seduce Kinn and have sex instead. The issue is I don't think Kinn hears that deeper meaning. He doesn't even realise that Porsche is angling for sex until he's right on top of him. They're not on the same wavelengths at all - he doesn't realise Porsche's first meaning [sex], so how is he ever going to recognise the deeper ones [insecurity]?

Obviously, Porsche's attempt at self-reassurance doesn't work though because he hasn't tried to get what he actually needs (verbal confirmation of things). So he plants listening devices in order to achieve this. So he can hear words (his natural 'language' that he trusts) that can allow him to understand and feel more at ease. [Obviously didn't work though, the words he heard just make him more worried].

Porsche follows Kinn and is caught snooping. The snooping isn't the issue though, the message of this action is. In ep 8, Porsche is also revealed to have snooped [gaining Tawan's photo] but Kinn doesn't mind and the bubble is intact, the LR is alive and functioning, so the message is clear: 'I'm feeling insecure' and Kinn appropriately responded. This time though, the action to Porsche should be him saying 'I'm insecure and worried' but the LR has broken down so what Kinn hears instead is 'I don't trust you'.

There's a chance Kinn might still be trying to converse in Porsche's 'language' though when he says "I don't trust anyone"/"I trust no one" [depending on the translation]. Key note here: "no one" – Tawan included. Or maybe the key word being "anyone" as in Porsche isn't just simply anyone. But the LR has long since broken. If there was that intent then it was never going to get through, especially as Porsche is straightforward and doesn't play in double meanings. Porsche is not hearing or focusing on what "no one" means, he just knows he's included in that.

Regardless, Kinn is talking with his eyes (action) that it's paining him to do so but Porsche doesn't hear it. There's no LR intact for him to ever pick up on and 'hear' those actions.

Porsche calls out verbally to Kinn. What Porsche needed [as the OST said], at the moments when he doubts Kinn's heart might have changed, was trust - for Kinn to say something for him, but he's met with silence and, worse yet, (supposed) indifference. That's why it's going to be really hard to recover from that, Porsche's bottom line and heart were trampled on.

They were still trying but the reversal completely broke down. All the messages received were wrong from the very start.

It was mistranslation, miscommunication and misunderstandings galore stacked one on top of the other throughout the whole episode. Not a single successful piece of 'language' reversed communication at all.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 316: We've Had One, Yes, But What About Second Explosion

Previously on BnHA: Deku was all “[powers up like whoa because it’s time to end the fight]”, and he saved Overhaul from getting not-shot, and then smashed up Nagant’s arm with the power of his new rechargeable super knees. Nagant was all “yoooo this kid is crazy strong whaaaat, it’s like he’s some kind of protagonist or something.” Deku was all “I AM A PROTAGONIST, ACTUALLY, DO YOU WANT TO JOIN FORCES AND FIGHT BAD GUYS WITH ME?” Nagant was all “ah shit why the hell no -- ” and then AFO was all “SURPRISE” and everyone was all “?!?!?!” and AFO was all “TIME TO EXPLODE NOW” and made Nagant explode because he’s an absolute fucking dick. And then Hawks showed up, because Horikoshi just wanted to stuff as many plot points as humanly possible into a single chapter I guess.

Today on BnHA: Hawks is all “good job giving motivational shounen redemption speeches Deku but I’ll take it from here” and screams very earnestly right in Nagant’s face until she finally wakes up. Nagant is all “oh hey it’s my successor, you seem surprisingly unfucked-up from your own HPSC tenure, how did you manage that?” Hawks is all “fandom is going to love hearing this one, but basically it’s because I’m very upbeat and also I had the world’s best role model Endeavor to look up to,” and I swear this man stirs the pot on purpose, but damn it I still love him so damn much. Overhaul is all “HELLO AGAIN, JUST A REMINDER THAT, THE BOSS!!” and Deku is all “MAYBE TAKE TWO SECONDS TO REFLECT ON HOW YOU TORTURED A LITTLE GIRL,” which, thank you, lol. Nagant is all “btw AFO’s hiding in a house in the woods”, and so Deku and the gang go to the house in the woods. Video recording!AFO is all “hi I’m AFO welcome to Jackass” and blows up the house. Sometimes I wonder if this manga is just a weird dream.

I am once again reading the Bean version because I think it was actually the best out of all three translations last week. and that is surprisingly including Viz’s. “faux” is not nearly as entertaining as “knockoff”, and also I have literally no idea why Caleb thought Deku was saying the Third’s lines lol

oh hey, Endeavor’s here too! not that you’d ever be able to tell from this first panel lmao

glad you received All Might’s call, mysterious unidentified glowing smudge

oh snap he says he’s weaker in the rain. is that why AFO told Nagant to attack then?? except that as we discussed the other day, I believe that AFO fully intended for Nagant to lose the fight, so him giving her info that would give her an advantage doesn’t really fit in with that. maybe he wanted Deku to be separated from Endeavor and the rest for maximum angst, though

btw Deku’s eyes are unsurprisingly back to the new normal here

alas, the angst continues. I say, pretending like I’m not totally eating it up each and every week and writing essay after essay about it lol

anyway so apparently Hawks can’t actually fly lmao. he was just yeeting himself with style

for some reason this is the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen omfg. wave to Hawks, kids! say “bye, Hawks!”

j/k of course Deku is catching them. -- except???

wow so he was just running on fumes there at the end. well, good to know there is actually a limit to his shenanigans, particularly regarding this new “knockoff” 100% OFA. it will definitely not alleviate any of the discourse, but it’s good for my own peace of mind because it’s solid confirmation that he still needs his pals in order to win this thing

anyway, but on to the rest of this conversation, which is basically Deku deducing what we all deduced last week -- AFO implanted some sort of trap into Nagant when he gave her Air Walk. though I’d still like to get the actual details from AFO and/or Horikoshi, because this was particularly wild even by quirk standards lol

omgggggg

she still has a face after all!! so it’s confirmed, Horikoshi has no idea what “blowing up” actually means. we might have guessed, based on what happened to Toga in the MVA arc, and also based on everything Katsuki does ever, but shhh

so now Hawks is all “NAGANT PLEASE WAKE UP, IF I SHOUT MY NAME AT YOU WILL THAT DO THE TRICK”

this is actually kind of touching though because even though we all know (or most of us acknowledge at any rate) that Hawks is a pretty caring person, it’s rare to see him actually panic over someone’s welfare like this

oh shit Horikoshi is really doubling down on it

I wonder how much Hawks knew about what really happened between Nagant and the HPSC. regardless, he probably sees her as a kindred spirit of sorts, and I’m more than happy for Deku to pass the redemption torch onto him now that he’s on the scene. like no offense Deku but they actually know each other and stuff lol

DAMMIT NAGANT CAN’T YOU SEE HOW LOUD HE IS YELLING

apparently being freed from his HPSC shackles has finally given Hawks the space to embrace his own inner shounen protagonist. is there anything more shounen than trying to motivationally scream someone awake when they’re lying in your arms inches from death?? 100% guaranteed to work

!!! IS THIS NAGANT’S POV OMG

SO SHE IS ALIVE. THANK GOD. Horikoshi doesn’t want to meet with my emotional distress lawyer today after all

love how she’s all “just gonna stir up the weekly Hawks Discourse pot here by implying that he probably committed a lot of Atrocities just like I did, so now people can get all hopped up about that, even though there’s no evidence he’s ever killed anyone aside from that one horrible ‘damned-if-you-do...’ situation with Twice.” no one asked for your provocative speculation young lady!! trust me Nagant, our rabbles don’t need the rousing lol

but nice save there with the “so how are your eyes so untainted” well you see it’s because even when he was following the HPSC’s orders he always went to great lengths never to go against his own moral compass. which just to be clear was incredibly difficult, and led to a ton of pain and suffering on his part, because the life of a spy is basically just one impossible situation after another. but in spite of that he never stopped trying to do his best to help people. I don’t really know where this tangent came from or is leading to, lol, but anyway p.s.a. I love Hawks a lot and he’s a good kid dammit

oh shit??!?

how is the League always able to swing all these fancy forest mansions. where do they find them. how many do they have

so Deku’s dropping them -- very roughly, not sure if he was reacting to finally getting AFO’s location, or if his energy really is giving out -- and now Nagant’s saying that AFO hired other villains as well. well of course he did. gotta keep chipping away at OFA’s ninth successor little by little

now Nagant is asking Hawks how he’s able to keep making “that” face. I assume she’s again talking about the fact that he somehow didn’t let the HPSC wear down his spirit

oh my god???

thanks for stuffing this chapter to the brim with good nutritional Hawks Feels, Horikoshi. what a good. he just keeps on trudging forward undeterred no matter what bullshit comes his way. what a steadfast little guy. I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM DISCOURSE MY SWEET SUNSHINE

lmaoooo

“SPOTTED THIS DUDE JUST CHILLING OUT THERE ON THE ROOF WITH NO ARMS, SEEMED PRETTY SUS” good job Endeavor

anyway so you don’t really need me to tell you that Overhaul is immediately starting in with the “BUT THE BOSS WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE ME TO THE BOSS YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD TAKE ME TO THE BOSS” stuff again. but I will go ahead and tell you anyway. so yeah. he’s doing that

OMG YOU GUYS LOOK AT DEKU’S “of all the fucking assholes to just randomly drop in on my life once again why did it have to be you” FACE THOUGH, OMG

fun fact, if you go back to chapters 124 through 160, there was an entire story arc where Overhaul imprisoned and tortured a little girl. yeah, I know!! suuuuuuuuper evil. anyways just an interesting little anecdote for you all that’s somewhat relevant to the current situation

OMG, YES. FUCK YES, DEKU

THEN WHAT ABOUT SPARING ONE FOR HER!!! YES!!! EXACTLY!!! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, SOMEONE GETS IT

HERE’S THE PANEL OF DEKU SAYING THE EXACT SAME THING I’M SAYING LOL

(ETA: so apparently there’s some discourse about this because some people are interpreting this as Deku saying “you should apologize to Eri”, which would obviously be a terrible idea even if Overhaul actually wanted to do that, because Eri shouldn’t ever have to see him again. however I just want to point out that there is a HUGE difference between saying “it would be nice if you could direct that feeling of regret/being sorry towards Eri as well”, vs saying “you should also apologize to her.” all Deku is doing is rightfully pointing out that Overhaul has hurt way more people than just his boss, and if he really is remorseful, then he should extend those feelings of remorse to Eri and the rest as well. it’s not a directive to take any specific action, and I’m 1000% sure no one at U.A. would let Overhaul within 100 miles of Eri ever again.

tl;dr “try feeling remorse sometime” =/= “do you want me to fly you over to U.A. right now to surprise the little girl you traumatized”, lol.)

[slings an arm around Deku’s shoulders] you’re a good kid. I like you. I don’t know if I tell you that enough, but it’s true

meanwhile here is Overhaul’s “spare... a thought... for Eri...???????” face sigh

the struggle is real y’all

(ETA: and that’s... the last we ever saw of Overhaul, I guess? well all right then. I assume Deku will make good on his promise, so we know he’ll get that little bit of closure before going back to jail or whatever, and I confess I’m more than fine with leaving the rest of it open-ended, especially given his character’s history. I think this was pretty generous all things considered.)

lmao holy shit

All Might what did you do to those tiki torch guys?? did you thrash them. did you give ‘em those hands. did you deliver their own asses to them complete with a sticker reminding them Amazon Prime Day is on June 21. we missed out goddammit

so Endeavor, who wasn’t the one he was asking, is telling him that they captured (well let’s be real, Deku captured, give the credit where it’s due) Nagant and Overhaul. and so I guess they’re going to take Nagant to the ER now

fire is no one’s weakness

-- oh my GOD I scrolled down and audibly gasped

[is politely but firmly approached and asked to remove my arm from Deku’s shoulder by the physical manifestation of all this Dekuangst] “we’re sorry, he’s not allowed to have visitors right now” oh shit, my bad. [goes to stand behind a police barricade]

lmao what. did you run out of room on the previous page

what an exaggerated fade to black lmao

-- AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I actually can’t see what he’s reacting to so maybe I’m just seriously jumping the gun here lol, but THE HELL WITH IT. the next panel appears to be a cut to Haibori Forest, so I’m just gonna go ahead and declare that Deku ran off on his own all wounded to go have more Dekuangst, just like I manifested. now go call Katsuki goddammit

[scrolls three more inches down] oh

yeah so like I said, Deku is walking very slowly a few feet in front of Endeavor, who’s telling him to wait up. yep. we’ve all gotta be so careful to not just jump to conclusions. I know we’re excited but still

anyway, so! welcome back to Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods (ARE YOU GUYS DATING) and Edgeshot! have fun walking into this obvious trap lol

dammit Deku why are you so determined to tempt fate

[monkey puppet meme faces]

OH MY GOD THIS IS PURE GRADE-A CHEESY COMIC BOOK VILLAIN 101 SHIT AND I’M HERE FOR IT

that’s such a weird way of clapping who claps like that

unlike certain other people who shan’t be named, AFO doesn’t feel the need to inexplicably take his shirt off when recording sinister villain monologues. I think we’re all pretty grateful for that

high fives to everyone who called it!! yep yep

anyway so this whole scene has major booby-trap vibes, which I’m enjoying immensely even though I don’t think anything is really going to come of it lol. probably just another long-winded AFO Speech. but wouldn’t it be funny if like the ceiling started lowering down to try and squish Deku afterwards lol

(ETA: well the explosion was still pretty funny too ngl.)

ffff

[“Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies]

anyway so yeah. he’s just hitting up all of his usual villain talking points. we get it, you’re so smart and you see right through the thin veneers of society and people who don’t conform are left to fend for themselves and labeled as villains and history is written by the victors, and blah blah blah dude are you just jumping randomly from one soundbyte to another lol. literally what are you talking about. what does this have to do with you blowing up Nagant

-- holy shit??

[”Dekuangst is the trap” intensifies MORE?????]

LOL WHAT

BRO. WHAT IS WITH YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO LAY ANY OTHER KIND OF FUCKING TRAP GOOD LORD

“YOU’RE NEXT” THE CALLBACK?? THE PARALLELS?? THOUGH WHEN ALL MIGHT POINTED HE MADE IT LOOK WAY COOLER. AFO’S POINTING JUST LOOKS LIKE SMOKEY THE BEAR

HAS ANYONE CHECKED IN ON KAMUI WOODS I HEAR HE IS WEAK TO FIRE?? THE ONLY ONE WHO IS, APPARENTLY

r.i.p. to this particular forest mansion. don’t worry they have a ton of backups

remember last week when I said maybe AFO thinks explosions are gauche. well never mind. he fucking loves explosions

anyway so that’s the end of BnHA, everyone. hope you enjoyed. it was a good ride while it lasted. see you all, good luck in your travels

[tempenensis]

Jujutsu Kaisen Light Novel #2

Firstly, @bonsai62​ provides me with raw text of this - so thank you very much! This is the first eight pages of the first chapter from the second light novel. That being said, I don’t know how much I get this translation right, but enjoy anyway. Though this is cut at bad point lol

The title of the light novel is Thorny Road at Dawn. Text in bold means that it is spoken in English. 

Chapter 1: Nobara and Toge

.

“About Toge?”

August has begun.

Under the overlapping form of trees in the schoolyard, Panda asks back to Kugisaki who he has been holding on his arm and turning over 180 degree.

For the upcoming exchange event, Fushiguro is also working hard to train as participating first year.

He is in the middle of training with assumption that one-vs-one sorcerer combat can break especially during the fight.

Even though she is training, Kugisaki is now thrown towards Panda – repeatedly thrown towards him in a stage. But because it seems that her motivation is high, she’s become into it, as long as in the end she can be successful facing Todo and Mai even just a little bit.

“Yes. I understand Maki-san is worth of my respect. I also know that Panda-senpai is sorcerer with ability.”

“I also want you to say the same thing about me like Maki.”

Kugisaki answers as she stands up and brushes away leaves attached to her jersey.

“I respect you. I’m not saying bullshit about Panda-san.” (1)

“Well, if you become able to chat while being blown away, I’ll praise you.”

“My body can easily remember just blown like this.”

“Hooon. Then”

Panda looks around, confirming that Toge who went to pharmacy has not come back.

“What about Toge?”

“What kind of senpai is he?”

“Eh, you don’t know from talking to him?”

“Not that I don’t understand. Well, I know he is not a bad person, but if all his vocabularies are riceball fillings, talking with him will be limited, right?”

“We already get too used to it, right Maki?”

“Aah. Now that you say it, it naturally becomes question.”

Maki is spinning around a staff, sending a sympathetic look to Fushiguro after she lightly avoids Fushiguro’s attack and land a small hit on his head.

“It hurts…”

“You are thinking too much again with your head.”

Maki joins the conversation as she glances at groaning Fushiguro. Out of breath but clean of dust, she circles around Panda calmly.

“Among us maybe he is the best at taking care.”

“Yeah, he has a bright personality (2). If you exclude Yuuta, then he is the number one good person in our year.”

“His flaw is that he can get carried away a little.” (3)

“Is he?”

“You are the one who always get carried away when we are together, that’s why you don’t know.”

“That’s unexpected. We are not like that though. We like to join in the fun.”

Kugisaki’s body fitness is finally reaching that point where she can chat while doing her training. Even then, the second years who are lightly talking among them without difficulty remembers existence of Kugisaki of August (4) in the nearby stage.

Just a bit when Panda’s attention is at Maki as they converse, Kugisaki tries to do a feint from the side and mixes it with an upper but—

“Anyway.”

“Geh.”

Panda sways easily, then he hesitates a little before swipe Kugisaki’s feet in sobat-like (5) kick.

Kugisaki, whose pivot foot collapses, falls down rolling. Her body becomes totally irresponsive. In several weeks here, it’s a movement that she kept thought she could do.

That said she becomes irresponsive and she can’t win the match.

As he looks down at Kugisaki who makes a discouraged face, Panda opens his mouth.

“Toge is a good guy. That alone you should know.”

“….I see.”

More than that, her body has become irresponsive and her back is hurting.

The frequency of her falling down sloppily has not reduced, also buying a replacement jersey have also becomes necessary -- Kugisaki at summer time thinks with melancholy.

.---.

The story continues when it has turn to fall.

After the incident of Yasohachi has passed, there’s a brief spare time.

At that day, Kugisaki is alone in Shibuya.

Fushiguro is locking himself up and reading in his room as he is still exhausted after he overexerted himself.

Itadori has gone out to watch a maniac movie in a cinema currently doing a whole-building screening.

Maki is currently on a mission different from Yasohachi bridge, so she can’t meet her conveniently in a while. Kugisaki who completely doesn’t have a plan, aims to go shopping to make-up and clothes shops which are hard to go with boys, then buy daily necessities.

“Winter clothes set, winter shoes, inner and foundation and…”

Grasping paper bags in both hands, she lifts them up as she confirms her haul today.

She doesn’t think she bought too much, but she has walked more than she had planned. Maybe wearing the pin heel boots she bought the other day is a bit mistake.

But it is a rare chance that she gets to go out and shop alone. There’s a lot she still needs to buy.

Kugisaki is thinking to go looking for bags next as she walks in traffic jam.

When she had just arrived in Tokyo, it all seemed to be glittering scenery. After around three months has passed, she gets used to it a lot, used to hearing noisy sounds.

That being said, it is a backside of being busy and lively. It’s a thing that’s called taste of convenience.

“And that, it is really a masterpiece.”

“Doesn’t it make you angry?”

“Hey, hey. Girl, are you alone? Are you free?”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“Salmon.”

“We’re opening a new shop! Please take care of us.”

“Are you not going to eat?”

“How much are you going to eat?!”

“It’s damned boring, how about we skip work today?”

“Mama, buy me that!”

A lot of voices. It’s an intersection where a lot of life collides.

There are daily life as many as the number of people, there are worlds as many as the number of people. In the city where many wills and voices flying around, of course there will be a lot of people who is feeling gloomy – but not Kugisaki.

For her who has a firm sense of self, she understands that everyone has their own way of living in the hustle bustle of the city, it even feels like a kindness.

Now that she thinks about it, the village where she comes from was suffocating.

An exclusivity that imitate the people who had come before (6). An ecosystem long existed that doesn’t recognize individuality of a person. A closed world that gently rot — exists there in that village, Kugisaki thinks.

Compared to the crowd of the city, it is tough yet she can live with freedom.

In the city, someone says that the concern towards other people is weak. Kugisaki laughs, thinking that is wonderful. She has her own way and won’t blame anyone over it. She will stand and walk with her own foot.

However, mixing in the city crowd during the holiday, a mysterious chance can happen.

“Hm?”

Kugisaki who walks towards the direction of Shibuya Hikarie (7) in the lane across the street, makes a face of remembering something as she found him. It is the only one of her acquittances who hides lower half of mouth with closed overly long collar.

It’s Inumaki Toge.

There is also another one. A male foreign tourist with thoughtful blue eyes who can’t be someone familiar. Kugisaki becomes interested on the exchange between the foreigner and Inumaki.

“What are they talking about?”

Kugisaki changes her destination, then crosses the road when the traffic lamp changes at the right timing, and strolls towards Inumaki. When she is near them, she overhears their talk.

“I’d like to go to SHIBUYA109.” (8)

“Salmon salmon.”

“Could you tell me where I can get a taxi?”

“Salmon roe.”

“Ah… Which way should we go?”

“Seaweed.”

“Ah…I, want to go. 109 (9). Please. Ok?”

“Salmon.”

“Shake?” (10)

“….Salmon?” (11)

“….Salmon!? Why?”

“Okaka…..” (12)

“Ee…?”

For some reason, in Kugisaki’s guess ten times over, it has become a troublesome situation.

She knows that Inumaki, who is a cursed speech user, only speaks in onigiri fillings to avoid sudden outburst of curse. How come that he is asked by foreigner tourist for direction.

No, Inumaki can use Inumaki’s way of showing the way – he points his finger and gestures using his body and hands. With that, she wonders if the foreigner becomes impatient (13) as Kugisaki decides to get in between the two of them.

“What are you doing, senpai?”

“Tunamayo.”

“It can’t be ‘tunamayo’. Jeez.”

“Oh! Geisha girl!”

“Who the heck is geisha girl?!”

.

.

--- tbc (hopefully can do more)

(1) More literally, she is saying things about Panda that “doesn’t smell like fairy tale” (2) “His root is bright” is the literal translation (3) 悪ノリ (akunori) is a bit hard to be translated. It’s like, getting carried away in mischievous manner. (4) Overheated Kugisaki lol (5) Sobat : back kick in wrestling (6) literally “To follow the right” (7) A skyscraper in Shibuya (8) A department store in Shibuya (9) Spoken in broken Japanese lol. (10) Shake = salmon. He repeats what Toge said to him. In Inumaki’s language means “yes” (11) Salmon, as in engrish lol (12) Okaka = chopped katsuobushi, in Inumaki’s language means “no” (13) literally, “becomes hot”

[plannedparenthood]

9 Conversation Tips on Race & Health Equity

Seeing friends or extended family by video? You can have a huge impact by talking to them about issues that are important to you. Take the opportunity to discuss health care access for communities of color. 

Here are 9 tips for leading the conversation. Remember: Talking with your friends and family about the issues you care about can have a real influence that extends even beyond your circle.

Tip #1: Open the dialogue in a way that’s welcoming.

Share how the last couple of years have affected your views on health and health insurance. Say something like, “I’ve been [concerned/angry] about COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on [Black and Brown communities/our community].”

ASK: “Could we talk about how racist our country’s health care system is? I have some ideas about what can be done, and I’d love to hear your take.” 

Tip #2: Get everyone on the same page by defining common terms. 

Racism

Racism in America is the outgrowth of white supremacist policies and ideas that assume white people are superior to other racial groups. 

Racist policies are written and unwritten laws and customs that cause racial inequity, putting racial groups on unequal footing.

Public Health

Public health is built on the principle of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities.

A public health crisis happens when something threatens the lives and health of an entire community or multiple groups of people.

ASK: Have you [seen/experienced] racism in health care?

Tip #3: Define some terms about race that are less common.

Anti-Blackness refers to a worldwide ideology that devalues being Black.

Anti-Black policies and institutions in white supremacist systems dehumanize and marginalize Black people around the world.

Anti-Black racism covertly disregards and overtly attacks anti-racist policies, Black people, and Black institutions.

Structural racism is a system in which policies, practices, and other norms perpetuate racial inequity. It’s the root cause for the health inequities we see today.

Racial inequity in America blocks Black and Brown people from living freely and safely — while putting white people in power, giving them more resources, and chipping away at their humanity.

Racist health care policies cause health inequities for racial groups, fortifying long-standing barriers and creating new barriers to health care access for Black and Brown communities.

Tip #4: Define some terms about health and fairness that are less common.

Equality vs. Equity

Equality gives everyone the same exact things, but ignores differences. Equal access to COVID-19 testing means everyone could theoretically get a test. But for many people, testing is too expensive and far away, or only open at times where they are unable to take off work or get childcare. 

Equity gives everyone what they need, tailored to their individual situation. Equitable access to COVID-19 testing would be affordable, nearby, and have flexible hours for everyone.

Health Inequities vs. Health Equity

Health inequities are systemic, avoidable, and unjust differences in the health of a group of people compared to other groups. 

Health disparities are any kind of differences in health outcomes for a group compared to other groups. Disparities don’t refer to social or structural causes like inequities do. 

Health equity happens when everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as: poverty, discrimination, powerlessness, limited education, unstable housing, unsafe environments, and lack of health insurance.

Tip #5: Provide examples of racial and health inequities. 

Racism is embedded in the structure of the U.S. health care system. The people in charge of that system — including politicians and insurers — have carried out discriminatory practices throughout its history.

Institutionalized discrimination in the U.S. health care system has thrown up roadblocks to insurance, testing, treatment, and care for communities of color. That includes the system’s reliance on employer-sponsored insurance. Because of historic economic barriers, Black and Brown people are less likely to be working in jobs that offer this benefit.

Racial bias among medical researchers and health care providers — such as the erroneous belief that Black people feel less physical pain — have withheld needed care and pain management from Black patients.

Being Black in America takes a toll on the health of Black people. 

Racism, microaggressions, and discrimination cause chronic stress.

Researchers have shown that racism stresses and prematurely ages human cells. 

All that stress causes physical and psychological harm over time.

The result: increased rates of illness and death among Black people.

Tip #6: Share how health care inequities have led to dramatic disparities in health conditions for Black and Brown communities.

Racial and health inequities help explain why — regardless of income or education — Black and Brown patients have disproportionately fared worse compared to their white counterparts across many health outcomes.

Racism’s chronic stress is linked to higher risk of depression, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Black people disproportionately experience police-inflicted harassment, violence, injuries, and murder. Living in fear of state-sanctioned brutality causes a host of underlying health problems. 

Because of racist policies like redlining, Black and Brown people are more likely to live near toxic sites and amid high pollution, as well as in neighborhoods that lack healthy food options and places to exercise. These environments are linked to higher rates of asthma, respiratory illnesses, and cardiovascular disease.

Long-standing, systemic health and social inequities in the United States and discrimination in doctors’ offices and hospitals all have resulted in a high maternal mortality rate among Black women — three times the rate for white women.

Structural racism, public health failures and economic inequalities — including that the location of Black and Brown workers’ jobs are more likely to put them at risk of catching COVID-19 — have all translated to exponentially higher COVID-19 infection and death rates in Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities.

Tip #7: Discuss why racism is a public health crisis.

The American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, several states, and other U.S. institutions declared that racism is a public health crisis and called for urgent action from policymakers and institutions.

Discrimination creates barriers to health, both inside and outside the doctor's office. Your health depends on whether you can access health care, employment, good wages, food security, clean air and water, and stable housing — all of which are hurt by racism.

SCROLL UP: Refer to the definition of “public health crisis” and share how you feel about it.

ASK: “How do you feel about racism being declared a public health crisis?”

Tip #8: Share what federal policies you support to address racial inequity. 

For example, you may want them to support policies that:

Aim to eliminate the inequities and biases woven into the fabric of this nation’s institutions, particularly the racial inequities in maternal health. 

Provide additional COVID-19 relief that helps Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities — which have been disproportionately ravaged due to ongoing systemic racism and oppressive policies.

Defund the police. Instead of investing in police forces that brutalize Black people, prioritize a public-health approach that strengthens Black communities, promotes community support, and connects people to services.

Support Black organizations and leaders who are at the forefront of the fight to fix the public health crisis that racism presents and the systems that exploit people of color.

Tip #9: Express gratitude for everyone in the conversation.

Thank your friends and family for connecting with you on this issue, and let them know that you’re open to speaking with them again. 

Show them some warmth — and give them the time and space to sit with the discussion. 

[dialovers-translations]

DIABOLIK LOVERS Do-S Kyuuketsu VERSUS II Vol.1 Ayato VS Laito [Track 6]

Original title: 断罪と贖罪の夜明け

Source: Diabolik Lovers VERSUS II Vol. 1 Ayato VS Laito [CD not owned by me]

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Midorikawa Hikaru & Hirakawa Daisuke

Translator’s note: I am so glad somebody requested this CD because it is probably my favorite VERSUS CD I have listened to up till now. T _ T I really like the relationship between Ayato & Laito a lot in the games so I am glad I was able to learn more about it through this track! The conversation they have about their time as children was truly touching and I felt bad for both boys. They deserved so much better. (and Kanato too I guess even though he’s my least favorite triplet :p)

Track 1 ll Track 2 ll Track 3 ll Track 4 ll Track 5 ll Track 6

→  LIKE MY TRANSLATIONS? SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI!

Track 6: Dawn of Judgement and Atonement

*Creaaak*

Laito: Here, a towel. Ayato-kun.

*Rustle*

Ayato: Che...Can’t you just get out of my sight already?

Laito: Geez...I’m starting to get a little tired of this back-and-forth banter, you know? Say, Ayato-kun. Since we won’t be able to settle the score anymore, why don’t we just say that Bitch-chan belongs to both you and me?

Ayato: ...Aah!? Fuck off!

Laito: Well, I guess I should have seen that one coming. ...Woah there. Bitch-chan, here. At this rate, you’ll make a soaked mess of the bed too. I’ll wipe you down with the towel.

Laito wipes you dry.

*Rustle rustle*

Ayato: Stop spacin’ out, geez! ...Here.

*Creaaaak*

Ayato starts helping you change clothes. 

Laito: ーー You say that, but you’re helping her get out of her wet clothes~ You’re so nice, Ayato-kun.

Ayato: Yeah! Unlike you, I’m a true gentleman! ...Here, put on a gown!

*Rustle*

Laito: Fufufu~ Ahaha!

Ayato: What’s so funny? 

Laito: Fufu~ Oh no~ I just thought it was hilarious how there’s two Vampires carefully tending to a damsel in distress like this~

Ayato: We have no other choice, right? At this rate, she’ll drench the bed and we won’t be able to sleep! 

Laito: Mmh~ Besides, we’re the reason why she can no longer move by herself.

Ayato: There we go...Oi, Chichinashi. Let’s hit the hay. ーー But before that, I gotta take off my soaked clothes too.

*Rustle rustle*

Laito: Me too then~ 

*Rustle rustle*

Ayato: Aah!? Don’t tell me you’re gonna sleep here as well? 

Laito: Let’s all sleep together with Bitch-chan sandwiched between us~

Ayato: Annoyin’...I’m seriously gonna kill you!

Laito: Be my guest. I couldn’t wish for more.

You protest.

Ayato: Haah...? How could we not fight in this situation? You should learn to think before you speak!

Laito: Fufu~ While Ayato-kun is too busy getting himself worked up, I’ll use Bitch-chan to warm up a little~ 

Laito crawls into bed with you, his arms wrapped around your frame.

*Rustle*

*Creaaaak*

Laito: Hah~ ...Bitch-chan? You can snuggle up to me even more, you know? No need to be modest.

*Rustle*

Ayato: Oiーー! Wait, Chichinashi! Don’t you dare snuggle up to that guy!

Laito: Nfufu~ It feels a little odd for the three of us to be underneath the covers together like this.

Ayato: It’s only for today! I’m only givin’ you permission because it strangely enough doesn’t piss me off ‘cause of that annoyin’ moon. 

Laito: Well, I guess you have a point. I usually would rather not share the bed with someone who has such a horrible sleep posture like you, Ayato-kun. 

You tilt your head to the side.

Laito: Hm? What’s wrong, Bitch-chan?

You ask if the two of them have slept together before. 

Laito: Ah, that’s right. When we were children, Ayato-kun, Kanato-kun and I would often share a bed.

Ayato: You’re talking about when we were really young still, right? Besides...

Laito: Hm?

Ayato: You’d always disappear from the bed at some point, right?

Laito: Ayato-kun...You were aware?

Ayato: ...

*Rustle*

Laito: You see, I often thought about why I was the person I was. Or why I couldn’t be like you or Kanato-kun instead?

Ayato: Che...!

Laito: That’s why I hate you...I loathe how you feign ignorance when you actually know exactly what’s going on. And above all...I’m envious of how you can be so honest and upright about everything. ...I know I can never be like that. I’ve been ruined by that woman. I’m not hiding my feelings either. They’ve simply been erased from within me. ...Haha.

You frown.

Laito: ...Say, Bitch-chan? I’m sorry.

You seem surprised by his words.

Laito: I wonder what I should do?

Ayato: I hate you too. You’re never honest...I mean, if only you had asked for my help at some point, I would haveーー 

You look over at Ayato.

Ayato: I knew you were putting up a tough facade the whole time. ...However, as much as I admired you for your strength, it also pissed me off at the same time. I couldn’t forgive you.

Laito: Ayato-kun...

You suddenly grab hold of their hands.

Laito: ...Oh! ...Oh? Bitch-chan?

Ayato: The fuck, Chichinashi? Whatcha holdin’ our hands for?

Laito: Fufu~ ...Are you showing empathy towards us? ...But more importantly, have you figured out your own disarrayed emotions yet? You were crying earlier, weren’t you?

You shake your head.

Ayato: What do you mean, ‘it’s fine’? ...Haah...I really don’t get women at all.

Laito: Women are forever whimsical and selfish, you see. 

Ayato: Oi, Laito.

Laito: Yes, Ayato-kun?

Ayato: I’m sorry ‘bout earlier. For punchin’ you.

Laito: Fufu~ Honestly, you’re lucky to be such a simpleton.

Ayato: Aah!?

Laito: No. I’m sorry too. ...However, it hurt to hear you say those words.

Ayato: My bad...

Laito: It’s fine. ...That moon is to blame for everything. The lunar eclipse is simply messing everything up for us. That’s...all. So...Let’s just go to bed.

*Rustle*

Ayato: ...Yeah.

Laito: I’m sure we’ll be back to normal when we wake up again. Forgetting about everything. So, you too, Bitch-chan, okay? ...Goodnight.

ーー THE END ーー

[thegoldenreport]

GOLDEN REPORT

You are now a staff writer for the Golden Report.

Welcome to your first day!

We understand it is dark and cramped and that your primary emotion must be an acute paranoia. Do not be alarmed. That is a very common feeling when one suddenly wakes up in a place they don’t recognize. 

You might be wondering what your “work” is, what to do. Well… 

Why don’t you go outside and interview a stranger? Get those journalistic juices flowing. See what happens. Post your findings.

And remember, sunshine drips slower in dreams.

…

To be honest, I don’t know how I got here. And I don’t think anyone who works for the Golden Report does either. They just sort of…take you one day and then…this is your job. You don’t question it. You just start writing.

The panel opened shortly after I awoke and read the above message. My eyes squinted at the beam of sunlight. Surprisingly, I did not see this as a perfect time to escape. Didn’t even register in my mind to try.

I grabbed a notebook and pen from the left cabinet drawer of my obsidian desk and headed outside. I found myself in some kind of terrace or garden. A stone slab path winded around ivy bushes and other greenery. It didn’t take me long to find a subject. As far as I’m aware, she was the only one besides me in this whole park.

There she reclined on a wired bench, cloaked in an olive green overcoat and black goggles over her eyes. Her arms were crossed as I approached her. My voice cracked when I introduced myself. I stumbled over my words. She smirked. Beckoned me to sit next to her. Almost like she had been asked many times before.

She called herself the Architect and would not give me any other name. So this was our conversation in full.

GE049: Good evening, my name is GE049 and I am a staff writer for the…

ARCH: I know your kind.

GE049: Do you consent to an interview?

ARCH: Of course. Let’s begin.

GE049: First off, who are you?

ARCH: I’m the Architect.

GE049: Okay. Do you have a…another name?

ARCH: No.

GE049: Architect. Now what does that mean?

ARCH: I build. I tear down. I rebuild.

GE049: What exactly are you building?

ARCH: If it’s in your mind, I’ve touched it.

GE049: Interesting…

ARCH: Very.

GE049: Is this a character you play?

ARCH: Are you not also playing a character now? The nervous writer, first day on the job and the mysterious architect, full of cryptic responses…all part of one big overarching story. A living myth. Yet we do not merely play characters. It’s who we are.

GE049: If this is a story, than what side are you on?

ARCH: Side?

GE049: Good vs. evil?

ARCH: Both. As is the Golden Report.

GE049: How often do you spend in this park?

ARCH: You’re an odd one.

GE049: And by the way, where are we?

ARCH: You’re in the Spiral…quaint and mindnumbing. A labyrinth for your thoughts to get lost in. I’ve been sitting on this bench for approximately five hours.

GE049: Sounds nice.

ARCH: It is…easy to just let them go.

GE049: Do you listen for anything in particular?

ARCH: Not usually. Maybe the wind. The snake rattle through the trees. But I come to the Spiral to be less aware. 

GE049: Explain what you mean by that.

ARCH: There is a museum, a gold open dome where clay figurines dance to the ticking of a clock. Inside this dome, there is also a white room. Ten by ten foot surface area, which houses the watchers in their white robes and raspberry eyes. I meet with them often. They speak to me strangely. Symbols. Codes. Flashes of images speckled with visual snow. It takes the whole day to translate and understand what they mean. So then I come here. Where their words will run the Spiral. Unspin themselves.

GE049: You seem the keeper of some great purpose.

ARCH: I am no better than you. 

GE049: Why are you with us?

ARCH: All things are vulnerable. All things are bound to crack. But you…and I, we fill in the cracks with liquid sunlight. Fluid and flexible. Reality bent, but never totally broken.

GE049: This is my final question. What do I need to hear right now?

ARCH: Do not fear the twists. Lean into it…as they come.

At this time, the Architect stood up and sauntered off, further down the path. I returned to the black box, my office, I guess you could call it, and compiled my first report. 

I do not know who this woman is. I get the feeling she is more important to the story than she lets on. I am grateful to have wandered through her world, if only for a moment. I hope we see her again.

[mikami]

I was the one that asked for manga recs and I laughed out loud when I saw your new post, thank you <3. I just assumed you weren't into manga when you recced only anime, thanks for taking the time to add manga! Here's an actual DN question though. Do you have any insight through experience on what we westerners miss out on when interacting with DN? Things like the exact meaning of god vs kami, the capital punishment being a given, politeness not being a facade but the expected norm etc.

My anime consumption is definitely more varied in genre, haha. I used to read manga more than watching anime, but nowadays I mostly read Yuri manga..... no regrets though.

But okay, Death Note!

I feel the need to restate the obvious disclaimer that I'm a European white woman and my knowledge comes from research and sometimes veeery rough twitter conversations with Japanese mutuals - I don't speak the language with any level of fluency, so my sources are limited, etc. I am open for corrections!

I think you listed the main ones I've noticed already.

The most major thing is always how much fans tend to take the Christian imagery as something profoundly meaningful in the text rather than as a loose aesthetic allegory. Obata's love for putting Christian imagery everywhere leads people to think that the characters use Christianity as their framework for what a 'God' is and that's just... not true. Christian aesthetics are really commonplace in Japanese media and only rarely have particularly deep meanings.

Light is not culturally Christian. Neither are the other Kiras. They don't think in those terms. The concept of 'God' in Death Note is not that closely related to 'the Almighty' at all.

The second thing is the way the Japanese justice system works by systematically excluding cases from going to trial at all. Light's specific frustrations are very very much impacted by that specifically - the injustices he perceives most often are not the same as the ones a, say, American audience does.

I think this shows most majorly in the Musical's concept album vs final translation. "Where is the justice?" in the English focuses intensely on capitalism and white collar crime - the Japanese translation removes all that and instead focuses on going with the flow and not making waves as a problems in the pursuit of justice. The differences between the concept album and the final product always make me laugh that way because I can just hear the translator going "yeah, no, that's not what this is about" and silently fixing it.

(Not to say capitalism and white collar crime aren't issues in Japan or even in Death Note, but they aren't Light's focal point.)

And the third big thing that comes to mind is that not everybody who engages with Misa as a character knows much about idol culture - she's often treated more as a rich and powerful Western style rockstar and I don't think that really compares all that well.

[xiyao-feels]

A Comparison of the Stairs Dialogue in CQL vs MDZS, Pt 1

(Pt 2)

A few introductory notes:

-This wasn't intended to be a big project post; I was just doing the comparison because I thought it was interesting. As I went I thought other people would probably find it interesting too, and it would be worth having it all written down, so I did turn it into a post after all. But I'm not really arguing any central point or anything; I'm really just comparing the dialogue and writing down my thoughts as I go.

-This also of course means my usual pro-JGY and consequently very annoyed at NMJ biases are on display. As ever, if this will upset you, please don't read!!

-This is a comparison of the text of the dialogue, not everything about their interaction; I don't necessarily note it if e.g. the acting doesn't match the dialogue tags in MDZS, or what have you.

-To do a proper comparison, you really need to compare the Chinese text, not the English translation; this is what I'm doing, though of course I've included the English from the Youtube subs, for CQL, and from the Exiled Rebels translation for MDZS. (For the Youtube subs I recorded "Yao" as A-Yao and used da-ge instead of Big brother when 大哥 was used and er-ge when 二哥 was used, just because this is my habit when copying down the dialogue.)

-Speaking of which: for MDZS, I just copied from the text, but for the CQL dialogue both English and Chinese I copied down the subs. I don't actually speak Chinese, but fortunately CQL on Youtube has the Chinese subs as well; my reading level in Chinese is also completely terrible, but I can often recognize most or many of the characters, and what I can't I can find by identifying radicals or drawing it in a handwriting recognition thing, etc. I did my best to be careful and thorough, and I also checked it against the Chinese subs I downloaded from Netflix, but there may still be some errors, fair warning. This also means that, unlike the Chinese from MDZS, the CQL Chinese dialogue isn't punctuated beyond spacing it out as it appeared on the screen; this is because the Chinese subs aren't punctuated, and I am certainly not going to make that judgement myself.

-The characters that differ in a given line between the MDZS and CQL versions are bolded, to help make the difference visually clear.

With that aside, the comparison is below the cut.

CQL  

LXC: 阿瑶 大哥他心性不比从前 你千万不要再惹怒他了 他最近深受刀灵侵扰之苦 若不是你日日给他弹清心音的话 恐怕他 A-Yao. Da-ge's temperament is getting worse. Don't ever displease him again. He's been subject to the harassment of his blade lately. If you hadn't been playing Cleansing Music for him everyday, I'm afraid he'd be…  

MDZS  

LXC: 只是一时气愤，口不择言罢了。大哥现在心性不比从前， 你千万不要再惹怒他了。他最近深受刀灵侵扰之苦， 怀桑又和他争吵置气，到今天还没和好。 His anger was simply too great for him to have thought before speaking. Brother’s temper cannot compare to how it was in the past. You must not provoke him again. These past few days, he has been deeply troubled by the saber spirit, and HuaiSang has argued with him again. They still have not made up yet, even today.

I'm comparing the CQL dialogue to the equivalent dialogue in MDZS, but of course in MDZS this exchange isn't before the stairs in ch 49; rather it's part of a broader conversation NMJ hears before he bursts in to try and kill JGY on the spot, because he doesn't like how JGY is talking to LXC about him, in ch 50. (Note, incidentally, how obviously impossible this renders the task of not displeasing da-ge, even aside from his not being satisfied with anything less than Xue Yang's head, as JGY and LXC were having a private conversation at the time.) The mention of NMJ and NHS' falling out is removed, replaced with the information that JGY has been playing to MMJ "every day"; the reference to NMJ calling JGY son of a whore is of course removed, since it hasn't happened yet. One effect of this relocation is on our understanding of LXC's injunction not to "displease him again/provoke him again" (再惹怒他 in both). In MDZS, this seems to refer to the stairs incident where JGY talked back (as the text notes, unusually); here perhaps it might be read as suggesting that JGY somehow has a habit of avoidably displeasing NMJ, which I think is absurd.

However, that's not the only possible interpretation. Although CQL doesn't quite give us the scene mentioned in chapter 30, where NMJ shows up and lectures JGS into announcing XY would be executed (…and heaps abuse on JGY when he tries to intervene, terrifying JGY sufficiently that he hides behind LXC—observe that in the sentence immediately prior to this we are also told that NMJ had unsheathed his sabre), in episode 35 we are told that all the clans wanted to punish XY except for JGS, and given a brief flashback to JGS yelling. Therefore, I think, it's not unreasonable to assume that something like the scene described in ch 30 occurred in CQL. Perhaps LXC is referring to this, although of course JGY would still be held between the fatal opposition of NMJ's and his father's wishes.

It's also relevant of course that in removing the surrounding context, CQL removes the context of the conversation of JGY expressing his pain about how NMJ treats him, and LXC replying, and rather turns it into an apparently unprompted expression of concern on LXC's part.

CQL  

NMJ: 金光瑶 Jin Guangyao!   

MDZS  

-

It's worth noting, I think, that in MDZS NMJ never refers to JGY as "Jin Guangyao" throughout the entire stairs encounter. 

CQL  

LXC: 大哥 怎么了 Da-ge, what's wrong?   

MDZS  

LXC: 大哥 Da-ge?

CQL  

NMJ: 你别动 你出来 (to LXC) Don't move. (to JGY) Come out. 

MDZS  

NMJ: 你别动 你出来 (to LXC) Don't move. (To JGY) Come out.  

CQL  

JGY: 二哥 劳烦你帮我再过一眼 百花宴贵宾的名单 我先去和大哥说点私事 回头再请你讲解 Er-ge, please check the list of guests of the Floral Banquet for me. I need to talk some private affairs with da-ge. I'll explain it to you later.  

MDZS  

JGY: 二哥劳烦你再帮我理一理这条，我先去和大哥说点私事，回头再请你讲解 Brother, could you please help me go through this one? I have some private matters to discuss with our eldest brother. I’ll have to ask for your explanation at a later time. 

Interestingly the exact same sentence in the Chinese, 回头再请你讲解, is translated in CQL as JGY's promise to explain later—where the implication seems to be he'll explain about what he's discussing with NMJ, perhaps?—and in MDZS as JGY's intention to ask /LXC/ to explain (the work he's going over in JGY's absence) later. In MDZS, of course, they're working on the watchtowers…while in CQL host with the most LXC is /helping JGY put his banquet guest lists together/, omg. I wish they'd kept more about the watchtowers but I admit I enjoy this as well. They plan parties together!

In both CQL and MDZS NMJ tries to hit JGY after they are outside and before further words are exchanged.

CQL  

JGY: 大哥 何必如此 有话好说 Da-ge. Why act like this? We can talk nicely, can't we?   

MDZS  

JGY: 大哥，何必如此，有话好说。 Brother, why the rage? Let’s calm down. 

CQL  

NMJ: 薛洋呢 Where is Xue Yang?   

MDZS  

NMJ: 薛洋呢 Where's Xue Yang? 

CQL  

JGY: 他已被关入地牢 终身不释 He's been shut up in the dungeon, for life time.   

MDZS  

JGY: 他已被关入地牢，终身不释…… He’s already been locked inside the dungeon, imprisoned for life… 

CQL  

NMJ: 我当年在不净世是怎么跟你说的 我要他血债血偿 你却给他来个终身不释 What did I tell you in the Yet Clean Realm at that time? I want him to pay his killing debts. You now give him life imprisonment.   

MDZS  

NMJ: 当初你在我面前是怎么说的 (JGY is silent) 我要他血债血偿，你却给他个终身不释？ What did you say to me back then? (JGY is silent) I wanted him to pay blood with blood, yet you have him imprisoned for life? 

"What did you say to me back then" is interesting; we're not actually given a specific time or a specific thing said, which means we must speculate. An obvious candidate for 'back then' would be the ch 30 scene previously mentioned, when NMJ convinces the Jin to announce that they'll execute XY. Yet the Jin giving in on executing XY seems to come /after/ JGY is sufficiently frightened by NMJ that he hides behind LXC, "not daring to say anything else." NMJ is perhaps conflating JGY with JGY's father, or perhaps assigning to JGY an authority he does not in fact possess, as though JGY and not JGS was the person who made decisions for the Jin.

In CQL of course NMJ takes the position that /Jin Guangyao/ owes him obedience because Meng Yao used to be NMJ's servant—not even just that, but that Jin Guangyao must display obedience to orders NMJ gave several years ago, when JGY was MY. This is absurd and insulting, and even before NMJ actually calls him Meng Yao it demonstrates that NMJ does not actually recognize JGY's legitimacy /as/ Jin Guangyao. Honestly, I don't have the words.

CQL  

JGY: 只要他受到惩罚 无法再犯 终身不释和血债血偿也并无 As long as he's punished, and can't recommit crimes, I can't see the difference between life imprisonment and death sentence.    

MDZS  

JGY: 只要他受到惩罚，无法再犯，终身不释与血债血偿也并无…… As long as he receives his punishment and can’t offend again, perhaps paying blood with blood and being imprisoned for life is… 

CQL  

NMJ: 我问你 当年在不净世 究竟是谁放走了薛洋 是我的总领 还是你 Tell me. When we were at Yet Clean Realm, who on earth released Xue Yang? It was my captain, or you?   

MDZS  

NMJ: 你举荐的好客卿，做出的好事情！事到如今你还敢袒护他！ The good things that the good guest cultivator whom you recommended has done! Things are already like this and you still dare defend him! 

Imho, this gets to a central fault in the CQL XY storyline—why the heck is NMJ trying to have XY killed for the Chang killings, instead of for collaborating with the Wen and/or for killing a bunch of his men??????

I tend to put that aside because it doesn't… actually… make any sense at all, especially since CQL NMJ is quite clearly still preoccupied with XY's old crimes.

CQL  

JGY: 我没有 我为什么要放走他 不过当初是当初 现在常萍已经翻供 没有任何明确证据证明 薛洋屠杀了常氏五十人 而我父亲又一定要留下这个人 It wasn't me. Why should I let him go? But the past is in the past, Chang Ping had withdrawn his confession. No certain evidence can prove that Xue Yang had massacred 50 people of Chang clan. And my father insists on keeping him alive.   

MDZS  

JGY: 我没有袒护他，栎阳常氏那件事我也很震惊，我怎会料到薛洋会杀了人全家五十多口人？可我父亲一定要留着这个人…… I didn’t defend him. I was also shocked by the case of the Changyang Yue Sect. How could I have known that Xue Yang would kill more than fifty people? But my father was set on keeping him… 

So—I'm sorry, that in CQL Chang Ping has already withdrawn his testimony makes this completely absurd. In MDZS, that doesn't happen until /after/ NMJ's death, after the Jin have been hounding him! In CQL, the situation appears to be that they have officially condemned him to the dungeons for life /purely based on NMJ's pressure/, with no actual clear evidence at all—and note that unlike in MDZS, where the Chang killings happened like a month beforehand and XXC presents the evidence that it was XY to the assembled clans, in CQL the killings happened /several years ago before a war/ and Songxiao didn't present any evidence it was XY to anyone else at the time that we saw. I mean, they didn't need to because at the time he confessed when challenged,* but it's not at all clear to me what if any evidence is left! And—in this situation where the one surviving victim is publically saying it wasn't XY, and they're /still officially locking him up for life on NMJ's say-so/—NMJ thinks that JGY should nevertheless go and execute XY.

*To an audience that if I am not misremembering included JC, who was alive and a sect leader independent from NMJ and could presumably have been asked to testify at the trial. This doesn't seem to ever be mentioned, however. Again, the CQL XY subplot doesn't make a huge amount of sense.

I can only guess that they moved up the Chang Ping revokes his testimony timeline to emphasize Jin power? But to me it has almost the opposite effect, since if they're still locking XY up on NMJ's say-so it rather suggests /NMJ's/ power; and more to the point it makes NMJ's already frankly unreasonable demand completely and ludicrously absurd.

CQL  

NMJ: 为什么 ��身上还有一块阴铁你不知道吗 你把他重新招揽回来 究竟是为了什么你自己心里清楚 Why? Don't you know he's got a shard of Yin Iron on him? You're trying to reclaim him now. I can clearly see what you have in mind.   

MDZS  

NMJ: 震惊？招揽他的是谁？举荐他的是谁？重用他的是谁？少拿你父亲当幌子，薛洋在干什么，你会不知道吗？！ Shocked? Who was the one that invited him? Who was the one that recommended him? Who was the one that regarded him highly? Don’t use your father as excuse. How could you not have known what Xue Yang was doing?! 

English of course doesn't distinguish between plural and singular second-person, but I think it's worth noting that NMJ is using singular here, 你, and not plural. This is true in both CQL and MDZS. In MDZS, I think the problem is that, although he is in fact referring to things JGY individually did, he refuses to accept the truth of JGY's position: that whatever JGY knew or did not know, he can't actually afford to kill XY if that's not what JGS wants. In CQL, by contrast, the problem is that he's locating the desire to obtain the Yin Iron specifically in JGY, despite JGS'…well, JGS' entire everything.

CQL  

JGY: 大哥 真的是我父亲的命令 我无法拒绝 你现在要我处置薛洋 我该怎么去跟他交代 Da-ge, this is really my father's order. I couldn't deny. If you want me to execute Xue Yang now, in which way can I report this to him?    

MDZS  

JGY: 大哥，真的是我父亲的命令。我没法拒绝。你现在要我处置薛洋，你让我怎么跟他交代 Brother, it really was my father’s orders. I couldn’t refuse. Now, if you want me to take care of Xue Yang, what would I say to him? 

The use of 你 vs the more formal 您 throughout this exchange is interesting. In their exchange before JGY goes outside with NMJ, he uses 你 for LXC; here, he uses 你 for NMJ, but you can see throughout the exchange he seems to use both. It would probably be very interesting to go through the text and observe which JGY uses, to whom, and when.

CQL  

-  

MDZS  

NMJ: 不必废话，提薛洋头来见。 There’s no need for explanations. Come back to me with Xue Yang’s head in your hand. 

CQL  

—  

MDZS  

JGY "wanted to speak"

I think the upshot of these exchanges is much the same in CQL and in MDZS, despite its shortening in CQL: NMJ utterly rejects the validity of JGY's desire to give NMJ a /reason/ for going against JGS' explicit wishes, the explicit wishes, I remind you, of a man he has a moral duty to obey as his clan head and father. Truly, we can only imagine how NMJ would react to JGY killing someone against the wishes of the leader of the clan he served because he deserves it in JGY's own moral judgement… Except of course we don't have to imagine it, because it occurs in both CQL and MDZS, albeit differently. It's not that NMJ recognizes as a general principle that subordinates should be allowed to kill people against their leader's wishes if that subordinate judges their victim deserves it; it's simply that he believes in the primacy of his own, obviously righteous judgement. (And in CQL, again, there isn't any actual definite evidence, and Chang Ping has retracted his testimony.)

I think the main things the slightly more extended MDZS version has, not present in CQL, is, first, the explicit visual of XY's head, and second, that NMJ's subsequent response isn't a response to JGY's actual speech; JGY was about to speak in reply, and NMJ responds in irritation to what he thinks JGY is going to say—responds, indeed, by calling him 'Meng Yao'.

(Next)

[nanami-says]

Part III (1/2): chapters 19-25

Vs. Mahito Arc

Chapter 19 (aka why this blog exists)

J:”Yeah, we know that. But we flatter her because she looks easy.”

⇒ ”And the three of them know it as well. But they flatter you exaggeratedly anyway because they think you’ll let them do you”

Actually Junpei’s lines.

J:”I can’t believe people like that go to my school.”

Not incorrect, I just want to point out that Junpei didn’t just say “people”, the word he used is “race” (人種）, which implies he doesn’t see them as the same kind of human he is.

J:”Was it that guy who did it? There’s no way a person could do that! If he did it, he must not be human.”

⇒ “Was it that person just now? No, would such a thing be even possible for a human being? And if it was, would they really be a ‘human being’?”

Overall correct but the flow was different. Mind you, 人 can be translated both as “person” and “human being” (among others) depending on the context. Imo this captures the nuance better but YMMV!

N:”I’m here to identify the truth and uphold the law. There was a time when I thought the society had the same goals”

⇒ ”Adapting to the facts [in front of you] and managing yourself accordingly. That’s who I am. There was a time where I mistakenly believed society operated on the same basis.”

This was really hard to translate, especially since the phrase Nanami uses here is rather formal language. I actually checked the official anime subtitles for this one and they went with “I adhere to the facts and judge on that basis”, which I guess is close enough? I’d probably go with it as well if not for the fact that he doesn’t just say 律する but 己を律する (己/onore = I/me in humble language).

Seems like the exact meaning of the phrase is difficult to understand even for Japanese people - there are whole articles out there breaking down the meaning and giving examples of how to implement it in life 8D Anyway, the simplest explanation is “to control yourself”, with further nuance of “enforcing rules on yourself in order to achieve a goal”, “restricting your desires and impulses by your own will” etc.

Thanks a lot, Gege.

Btw, Ino, who respects Nanami greatly and considers him a mentor, actually uses the same phrase, word for word, in ch. 95! (事実に即し、己を律する) That’s how important it is. Also, continuity!

Y:”Let’s do it!”

N:”There’s no need to get excited”

⇒ Y:“Let’s go all out!!”

 N:”No, if moderate’s enough, let’s just do it moderately”

They both used descriptors for just what kind of intensity they should approach the mission with. Imo, an important distinction because after they learn the full extent of the situation, Nanami takes back his words from this moment and agrees with Yuuji, going as far as to use the same words Yuuji did here.

N:”I wonder what others would think hearing you say that”

⇒ “I’m sure the others wouldn’t want to hear that from you [of all people]”

So not so much “don’t be rude” as “dude, you’re the weirdest of them all”. Emphasis mine.

N:”What I learned at Jujutsu High is that jujutsu sorcerers are idiots” 

& “What I realized while at the office is that work is idiotic”

He actually says “shit” both times lol. If it was just the humour that suffered here, it still wouldn’t be too awful but unfortunately it’s not just that. The “sorcerers are shit” line gets recalled when Nanami’s facing death, trapped in Mahito’s domain, which makes it pretty damn important. It gets translated yet differently by the official release then, too, which further damages continuity I believe Gege intended for this.

”So I took the lesser of two evils. Nothing more, nothing less”

⇒ “If both are shit, then I just chose the one I’m more cut out for. That’s all as far as the reason for my coming back is concerned.”

I mean, if we realllllly insist on watering down everything that Nanami says (as JJK translators apparently did), then the basic meaning was conveyed but the original wording and nuance was closer to what I proposed.

N:”Prove to me that you can be useful in spite of the demon Sukuna inside of you”

⇒ “Give your best to prove that you’re useful despite carrying the bomb that Sukuna is.”

Considering how 2 pages later Nanami tells Yuuji that he’s not the one Yuuji should be proving himself to, it’d have been weird if this is actually what he’d said, wouldn’t it. But Nanami’s nothing if not reasonable, so that wasn’t the case.

Y:”I’m weak and useless. I’ve been hearing a lot of that these days”

⇒ “That I’m weak and useless... I’ve been realising that to a painful extent these days”

“I’ve been hearing it” would imply that someone was actually saying it either to Yuuji himself or to others which he was aware of. (I mean, other than Sukuna.) The original wording doesn’t really hold such connotation.

N:”If you think you’re in trouble, let me know”

Y:”Have some faith in me, will ya? Just a little.”

N:”It’s not about faith.(...)”

Y:”A child? I’d rather be underestimated”.

⇒ N:“If you decide you cannot win, please call me.”

Y:”Aren’t you underestimating me too much?”

N:”This is not about ‘underestimating’ or ‘not underestimating’.(...)

Y:”[Even] being underestimated would’ve been better over being treated like a kid.”

I guess the translators wanted to avoid saying “underestimate” 3 times in a row? Albeit that’s what the original does.

More importantly though!!

N:”I’m an adult and you’re a child. I have the obligation to look after you”

⇒ “(...) It’s my obligation to prioritise you over myself.”

Quite a different nuance, right. Not just “I have to look after you” but “your well-being [life] takes priority over my own”.

N:”Experiencing these little losses is what helps people grow into adults”

⇒ “It’s the accumulation of such small despairs that turns people into adults”

Not that wildly different but despairs (hopelessnesses) >>> losses, y/y. Also “helps” made it sound more positive when it’s both a poignant and at the same time dry statement.

Chapter 20

N:”There are techniques that aren’t affected if revealed to certain enemies”

Those two feel more like separate examples to me. I.e. that there are techniques that aren’t affected if revealed, and there are some enemies that you can afford to reveal your technique to. Could apply simultaneously but don’t necessarily have to, if that makes sense?

“There is a merit to revealing one’s hand and the rules it initiates. You can make your technique even more effective.”

⇒ “It has its merits too. The ‘binding’ of ‘revealing one’s hand’ amplifies the effectiveness of your technique.”

Wild lost “binding” appears! Like I indicated before, it’s the lack of consistency to translating terms that are consistent in the original, that has negatively affected the fans’ ability to understand the basics of jjk techniques and world-building.

[Explaining Yuuji’s divergent fist]

GJ:”But it’s a lot easier said than done for anyone else.”

⇒ “It’s not something that can be easily done on purpose”

N:”His physical strength is superhuman. The impact of his hit doesn’t have incredibly strong energy, but it’s still about 20% more than a normal sorcerer. That means his delayed hit comes from his main source of cursed energy. It must be quite annoying for those on the receiving end. Such potential. If he’s able to go out all and combine his full physical strength with a cursed technique…”

⇒ “(...) The initial impact contains little cursed energy but it still achieves 120% of an average sorcerer. And then the actual cursed energy hits with a delay. For those on the receiving end it must be more unpleasant than one could imagine. And he’s got potential for growth, too. If he becomes able to add 100% of cursed energy to a 100% body…”

Uhh, this was a tricky one because on the first read it doesn’t seem that terribly wrong but when you read the original carefully, you realise this and that got lost in translation. My version should be closer to the original meaning.

I:”We’re going to have to ask the murderer about the technique”

⇒ “That’s just something that you can’t know unless you ask the offender about their technique”

Obviously Ieiri wasn’t suggesting to literally ask the murderer.

“However there’s evidence the brain stems were modified. Their consciousness were also modified to create a state of confusion”

⇒ (...) This was probably done to create a disturbance of consciousness... a state of mental confusion”

Slightly different nuance for this one.

Y:”For me, the gravity of death is the same regardless. This isn’t right!”

First sentence is mostly correct but it should’ve been “the gravity of death of another person” (emphasis mine).

Second sentence sounds too mild for what is actually Yuuji being super mad specifically about the way those people were killed? The phrase he uses means something like "This is just in way too poor taste”, “way too vulgar” etc. I guess if you went for a less literal translation, you could say “just too disgusting”/”revolting”.

N:”This matter won’t be taken care of so easily. Let’s do it”

⇒ “Looks like ‘moderately’ won’t be enough here. Let’s go all out.”

This is the instance of Nanami retracting his words and backing Yuuji up by borrowing his own words that I mentioned earlier!

M:”Jujutsu sorcerers brand such entities as “special grade potential spirits” and fear them as much as powerful curses. The fact that they categorize them as such really shows their shallowness”

⇒ “Jujutsu sorcerers register them as “special grade potential apparitions” and remain on alert against them [on alert for their appearance]. The same applies to powerful unidentified curses. That they categorise them as ‘potential apparitions’ just shows how little they truly see.”

It’s not that sorcerers fear them per se but that they (most likely) monitor them and are on guard against them. When followed up by the “what people truly genuinely fear are natural disasters [forces of nature]” conversation, it becomes clear that what Mahito scorns sorcerers for is their short-sightedness for thinking all powerful curses must be born out of people’s imagination, ~urban legends~ etc.

[Junpei asking what Mahito was born from]

M:”Thanks to the hatred spewed between people I was born”

⇒ “I’m a curse born out of the fear and hatred people harbour towards [other] people"

or even

“I’m a curse born out of people hating and fearing people”

Again a quite different nuance. They really shouldn’t have edited “fear” out.

Chapter 21

J:’Don’t you think that whoever first said, ‘The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference’ must be rotting in hell? There’s no way hating people is better than feeling indifferent towards them.”

⇒ “(...) There’s no way that approaching others with evil intentions is better than not interacting [with them] at all”

The first sentence is mostly fine although the original doesn’t include the “is not hate” bit, it only says “the opposite of love is indifference”. The second part is quite different. After all, hating doesn’t necessarily imply there’s any action taken.

“Complicating simple things for the sake of meaning is such a Japanese thing to do”

⇒ “Japanese sure love it - complicating simple answers and gloating in it”

I didn’t like the “for the sake of meaning” bit, imo it’s over-interpreting.

J:”Indifference. That’s what humans should strive for.”

M:”Sounds more like revenge”

J:“Are you saying that I got it all mixed up?”

Junpei’s first line here is fine although interestingly enough he puts it as “a virtue humans should strive for”. Then it’s

⇒ M:“And yet you wish for revenge”

J:”Are you trying to say I’m contradicting myself?”

M:”In this world, only I understand the soul’s composition. I can even transmogrify living beings. Emotions come from the soul. It’s too simplistic to call it ‘heart’. People overthink the things they can’t see. (...)”

⇒ “In this world I’m the only one who understands the soul’s composition. After all, I change the shape of living beings by touching it. Emotions are products of the metabolism of the soul. It’s altogether too mechanical [of a process] to call it a heart. People assign too much value to things invisible to the eye.(...)”

Last one is literally “consider ‘special’ way too much”, simpler wording than what I went with but I tried to make it more legible.

The “metabolism of the soul” phrase is especially vital because Junpei throws it at Yuuji almost word for word when confronted by him at the school after his mother’s death.

More philosophy lessons from Mahito-sensei \o/

“Don’t limit yourself to just being indifferent. There’s no reason to live by such a restricting philosophy.”

⇒ “Don’t allow yourself to be shackled by the ideal called ‘indifference’. There’s no need for there to be consistency in one’s way of life.”

Mahito actually takes the “is ‘consistency’ necessary” stance a few times in the manga, including when he and Getou squabble about the relationship between the body and the soul in Shibuya. A pity about the mistranslation here.

“I support everything you represent, Junpei”

⇒ “I’ll affirm your everything, Junpei”

Imo the act of supporting and the act of affirming while similar aren’t one and the same, hence the change.

N:”Either come alone, or risk bringing Itadori with me. I chose the former, nothing more. He’s still a child, after all.”

⇒ “The risk of venturing [into the enemy’s territory] alone, or the risk of bringing Itadori-kun with me. I simply chose the former. He’s still a child, after all.”

Idk, I feel like cutting out “the risk” from the first option makes Nanami sound more callous? Like Yuuji’s a liability and going by himself is a sounder option. Whereas, it was actually him weighing two risks against each other and deciding that potentially endangering Yuuji is the one he can afford less.

[After Yuuji asks why he doesn’t know important jujutsu related stuff.]

I:”Because Gojou’s your mentor.” ⇒ “it’s because Gojou’s ...”

He actually uses a lovely adjective to describe Gojou, which can mean a plethora of things, including: irresponsible, sloppy, lazy, unreliable, careless, perfunctory etc. etc.

Ichiji? Not a member of Gojou Satoru Fanclub.

Y:”This feels like a bad plan”

⇒ “This feels so staged, I don’t like it.”

Lit. “play [perform, read] one's own work”. I think what Yuuji might’ve meant here was that the plan felt dishonest? Second sentence could also be “I don’t feel up for it.”

Chapter 22

M:”Was that some kind of cursed technique?”

N:”What do you mean by ‘some kind’? I don’t appreciate questions that are left open to interpretation”

⇒ “(...) I hate abstract questions that put the whole burden on the other person”

Lit. “that leave it to others”. Other than Nanami being more straightforward with “hate”/”dislike”, I think this was him expressing he doesn’t like people who don’t even try to think for themselves and immediately demand answers from others instead.

“It would be silly to not assume a connection(...)”

⇒ “It would be more unnatural not to assume a connection(...)”

Different wording (unnatural instead of silly), which imo affects Nanami’s characterisation.

M:”The shape of the body will always be dependent on the shape of the soul”

This sounds a bit too passive and generic? Closer to “The shape of the body gets pulled along by the shape of the soul”, which is literally what Mahito’s technique does.

I’m heavily paraphrasing but!

magazine raw scans: ”it's 6:30 PM now and I started working at 11 AM, so I'm going to finish by 7PM no matter what”

official English release:”it's 5:30 PM now and I started at 10, gotta finish by 6”

The time change is so random, I wonder if Gege simply changed it themselves for the volume release. Maybe to bring it closer to the common office job times? Typical Japanese work day at the office begins at 9AM and lasts 8h + 1h break (completely unpaid but compulsory). I guess if Nanami skipped the break then working 10AM-6PM would make it exactly 8h?

The biggest mystery of jjk.

Chapter 23

M:”Even if sorcerers can protect their bodies using cursed energy, they can’t protect their souls”

⇒ “Even if sorcerers can protect their bodies using cursed energy, they [just] aren’t used to protecting their souls”.

So it’s not that they “can’t” as in “are incapable of” and more that there’s never been the need, so they never learned how and aren’t used to doing it. As proven by Yuuji later it’s not impossible.

M:”Overtime? He restricts himself based on time! He was limiting his power until now!”

⇒ “Overtime work? A ‘biding’ based on time! He was suppressing his power by himself until now!”

Another instance where “binding” as a term makes its appearance (it even uses quotation marks) but wasn’t properly denoted by the translators.

M:”A large-scale attack, and he doesn’t care if he gets hit while doing it!”

⇒ “A large-scale attack [done] with the resolve of [potentially] getting killed along with me!”.

The phrase Mahito uses here is 相打ち, lit. “killing [hitting] each other at the same time”. Also, “doesn’t care” and “is prepared/has the resolve” are quite different, aren’t they.

Chapter 24

J:”The way a perfectionist is willing to lay everything out there is beautifully portrayed”

⇒ ”The change in emotions [leading up] to a perfectionist abandoning everything is properly portrayed here”

I’m including this because knowing Gege, it’s not just simple movie talk, and it’s actually foreshadowing Yuuji’s future fate or something 8D

I can’t decide if it’s “abandon” (also “throw out of the window”) or “sacrifice” because the word used can mean either. I’m leaving that to everyone’s interpretation.

“Like I thought, that sorcerer’s nuts!”

⇒ “He doesn’t look it but he sure does reckless things, that sorcerer”

How does "he doesn't look it but (...)" even become "like I thought (...)"? He was laughing at and enjoying the contrast between Nanami's appearance/attitude and his actions/fighting.

M:”My cursed energy is also controlled by my will”

⇒ “The spending of cursed energy too is among things I can supply by myself.”

I’m not entirely sure because it’s a tricky one, so take this one with a grain of salt. But the official release is definitely missing “spending/expenditure” and Mahito isn’t talking about using/manipulating his cursed energy in general but “the amount of cursed energy spent”.

“Mr. Irresponsible Gojou” ⇒  “Devil-may-care Gojou-san”

“Mr. Mature Nanami” ⇒ “The adult of [all] adults Nanami-san”/”the adult above all adults”

I just really enjoy Ichiji and his little epithets, I guess.

J:”Have you ever killed anyone?”

⇒ “Have you ever killed a human being/another human?”

Just putting it out there because imo there's a distinction between “anyone” and “a human being”. Especially considering how much of this arc was questioning what being a human means.

Y:”Um… I mean, the choice to kill will definitely find its way to me”

⇒ "How to put it... once I've killed someone, "killing" would become one of the possible options [to take] in my life".

Maybe the nuance was there in the official release too and I just didn't pick up on it but to me the former makes it sound more like he’s saying "I may still have to kill one day". Whereas the original seems to hold the connotation that if you do something once - even if it’s something as horrible as killing another human being - it becomes easier to do it again in the future because it's a choice you've made before, it's not untouchable anymore.

Chapter 25

[Yuuji expressing his regret over Nanami choosing to go fight Mahito alone.]

"Am I in your way, Nanamin?”

⇒ “Am I a burden [to you], Nanamin?”

A different nuance for this line.

“’My friend died but I wasn’t there because I’m a child.’ I wouldn't do that to you. That said"

⇒ "’My comrade died. But I wasn’t there. Why? Because I am a child.’ I would hate something like that" [to be put in such a position]

And this is just pure mistranslation. The whole “my comrade died but I wasn’t there because I’m a child” line is actually Yuuji painting a possible scenario (he does it with short sentences but the speech is overall polite). What they translated as “that said” was actually a follow-up to that scenario and could be translated as “something like that”.

N:”Being a child is not a bad thing”

⇒ “Being a child is in no way a crime”

I wanted to point this out since the original word’s most common meaning is actually “sin”, which is significantly heavier than just “not a bad thing”. Could also go with a milder “is not something to feel guilty about” here I guess.

G:”How’s the curtain coming along?”

M:”Can’t get in, can get out. This only applies to humans with weak cursed energy.”

⇒ G:”What’s the effect of the ‘curtain’?”

M:“Can't get out from the inside, can get in from the outside. (...)”

Literally the opposite for the curtain’s effect. Emphasis is Gege’s, too! Also Getou’s question was actually about how exactly the curtain in question would work, and not just how it was coming along.

M:”We’ll make them fight and force Yuji Itadori to make a binding vow in Sukuna’s favor”

Just to reiterate, whenever “binding vow” appears, it’s actually just “binding”.

[to part iii (2/2)]

[to part iii (2/2)]

[itsclydebitches]

Discredit Part Three! (Click on each pic for something resembling quality!) 

Part One---contains translations, podfic, and related works---Part Two

Tagging, credit, and transcript all below the cut 💜

First off, people who specifically asked to see more of this nonsense may God in all Her glory bless you accordingly: 

@internet-or-sleep, @just-some-girl-on-the-internet, @readytoocomply, @vocallsama, @fellowshipofthegay, @lucky-leafeon, @alph4centauri, @sumoranges, @diaphanedreams 

Aziraphale’s profile pic is courtesy of good old Neil, found here. All others are from Creative Commons. 

Sorry it took so long to produce more stupidity. YOU ALL ROCK  🎊🎊🎊 Here, have a messy transcript. 

Abdou G. 

Have you ever walked in on a conversation and, despite clearly missing the majority of it, feel like you could reconstruct it, word for word if necessary? That happened at Fell’s today. The ‘talk’ had obviously been going on for a while, but I can give you a perfect summary here: rude fuckboy thinks he gets to say who God is, Fell was having none of it.

Best response? Turn around, walk back to your apartment (pro-tip: this only works if you’re just a few blocks away), and change your shirt. I walked back in with my I MET GOD, SHE’S BLACK tee and had the pleasure of seeing Fell do a double-take.

“Yes, thank you, that’s what I’ve been trying to say!”

***

Doug E. 

Scout’s honor: I once saw that Crowley dude unhinge his jaw and eat a large pizza in one goddamn bite.

Update: you heathens read about this gay abomination with his dislocated jaw and what you decide to question is whether I was acTUALLY A SCOUT? 

***

Mary L. 

I came in with my four-year-old last week fully intending to keep him within sight at all times. Yes, I bought one of those kiddie leashes and no, I don’t regret a thing. You try holding down two jobs as a single mom to the bonefide antichrist. I love my boy, but the devil got to him, telling him things like, “Yes, Freddie, permanent marker would look just great on Mum’s only work jacket!”

I said as much to the owner because this mom needs to vent sometimes.  

I wish I could give this place a higher rating, but the ownership is frankly terrible. Inconsistent hours, no help when you’re trying to find a book, just basically all around bad customer service, BUT it still gets five stars because when I told the guy I was raising the antichrist?

“Oh yes. I did that myself not too long ago!”

We parents need to support one another. Otherwise the world is going to burn. So here’s a good review for you, Mr. Bookshop Guy. A part of me hopes you’re a better dad than you are a bookseller. The other part? The bigger part? It’s very aware that Ms. Pot here just met Mr. Kettle.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Freddie just got into the flour.

***

Alfred B.

I hereby nominate Mr. Fell as the British Steve Irwin. I’ve never seen anyone handle a red bellied black snake like that. I mean yeah, they’re a chill species overall, but there’s a difference between casually handling a snake and fucking chucking one onto the chair because it’s in your way. (Okay. Maybe Irwin was a little nicer.) 

Renee K. 

whos steve irwin?

Alfred B. 

...How old are you?

Renee K. 

15

Alfred B. 

You existed on this planet for two years with him and you dare to ask me this? Go boil your head and then use google. Good god.

***

Mark F. 

overheard the owner telling his boyfriend that last they met his brother tried to set him on fire? and succeeded?? actually now that I think about it, not sure which brother they were talking about---his brother or boyfriend’s brother--but WHOEVER has the brother needs to... i don’t even know. do something about that? ring the police or go to therapy or SOMETHING. i mean maybe they already have, i’m just an eavesdropping tourist, but the idea of someone setting that bow-tie cutie on fire—DID I MENTION THAT? PERSON ARSON. MURDER—makes my blood boil

***

Shiefa N. 

People aren’t joking about overhearing weird conversations here. I walked in on two men (owner and husband? owner and escort?) debating Seven Minutes in Heaven. You know, that stupid kissing game the better looking kids got to play in middle school. It got pretty heated at one point (pun not intended), arguing about whether seven minutes of making out was divine or damning behavior. I hung out long enough to catch the segue into a lust vs. love debate and then had to skedaddle. Nice couple. I support their weird flirting habits.

***

Chang Z. 

Is it legal to visit a store for things other then what it sells? I realize that makes me sound druggie or something but I swear I’m dealing with a much healthier addiction. (Ha. Maybe.) I cosplay (yeah, yeah, move along, trolls) and Mr. Fell has an absolute wealth of historical clothing. It’s astounding! I thought they were particularly detailed costumes at first, but no. I’m majoring in Textile and Apparel Studies. I know a naturally worn piece of fabric when I see it. Mr. Fell is always cracking jokes about how he wore this frock in the 19th century, this shirt in the 17th, oh don’t you just love my old vest? (He has... so many vests...) I indulge him because anyone who lets me borrow this stuff for free deserves all my attention and fake laughter.

Yeah. You read right. Artifacts borrowed for free. He’s even let me alter some of the stuff because I’m not exactly his size. Should this stuff be in a museum somewhere? Probably. Am I calling anyone to take my personal cosplay supply away? Noooope.

***

Leah M. 

Helping to spread the word here because I’m not sure how much foot traffic this place actually gets.

I pass Fell’s every morning on my way to work and yesterday there was a new sign in the window. This might not seem very interesting to most people on here, but you’ve got to understand that Fell’s never changes. None of it. I’ve lived in Soho since I was a boy and this place has always had the same placard with his insane times listed, same stripped paint on the door he’s never gotten around to fixing, same spiderweb in the corner I absolutely swear. My dad used to pop in there when he was in college and I swear he’s taken me through the stacks, points out books that haven’t moved in 30+ years. It’s nuts and more than a little bit impressive.

So you can imagine my shock when I passed by and saw not one, but four new papers in the front window. They’re drawings and I recommend going and taking a look for yourself. I don’t think I can accurately describe the utter chaos of crayons and glitter that’s displayed there, let alone what it’s trying to depict. A dystopia? The end of the world? If so the apocalypse features a surprising number of dogs.

There’s a fifth paper off to the side, written in Fell’s messy penmanship. It just says, “My god-children drew these!” and if that’s not the cutest things you’ve ever heard get out of my face.

***

Gabriel A. 

azirfell

alzaphral

azzzzzirafal

i’m a litttle drunk but azifjkaafha’s place is good he just needs a name easier to spell

***

Aziraphale 

Dear Gabriel A,

My partner Crowley told me about this site and the many lovely well-wishes you all have left us here. I have come to express my thanks and to offer a bit of advice. You are hardly the first person to struggle with my name, dear girl! I recommend the following three step process:

A - simple, yes? + zira - a nickname I’ve adopted over the years, easy enough to recall + phale - this is admittedly more difficult as our ending, “phale,” is neither spelled in a way nor presumed to be pronounced like the “fell” sound we end up with. In truth my name is more along the lines of Azz-ear-raf-AE-el, but change is inevitable and you needn’t hear about that transformation, nor the etymology involved in getting “fell” out of “phale.” I say this not because I don’t wish to teach you, but because my partner has reminded me--in a rather rude tone I should add--that this site has a word limit. Suffice to say you should simply memorize the “phale” portion and you shall be, as the expression goes, in tip top shape!

Best regards,

Aziraphale

P.S. Nothing personal, dear boy, but I fear I’m not terribly fond of your name either. I would highly recommend changing it if you’re ever of a mind to do so. Cheerio!