#also Zigi of all people would not and did not misspell bourgeois wtf

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Okay sorry I told myself the nerd slapfights do not matter, if the professional translation skipped a one-off mention of a new nation it doesn't really matter, if instead of a Seraise swordsman it says seraphim's ensign it doesn't really matter, if it doesn't align with the Hamlet quote the Dros quote the Luiga quote the Measurehead deep lore it doesn't really matter, if it calls the ICP the CoPo the discerning Disco fan can sort it out from context etc etc etc. Nerd slapfights. Nothing but respect for a professional translator who self-evidently was handed this cactus of a text without the means to know or check anything about Elysium and did what they could on that front, and many great things otherwise.

But what's clawing at Nilsen, what's at the core of his conflict, is that the communists were prey. Not "beasts" like that translation says. The point is they were slaughtered. When Zigi gets beaten up, he's prey, he's a victim who can't fight back. Nilsen slaughtered thousands in turn to fight back. A weapon of mass destruction would be terrible but hey at least they would not be prey anymore.

That's game, hunted animal.

Translating it as beast would work in other contexts but here it thoroughly changes the meaning. "Beautiful beast, communism loves you" means a very different thing; "[too bad about the WMD] and at least this way we are no longer beasts" just doesn't connect.

All this to say, just a heads up that that's not what the text is saying, in a rather central aspect of its whole rather central discourse on the slide from communism to nihilism.