#also wait there's other commenters on that page saying the translator is replaced after the first 100ish chs and the quality improves

[wovenstarlight]

would you mind sharing what new novel you're reading? not sure if you've mentioned the name anywhere, but from your tags it sounds interesting!

hhrhhgjfjv oh god. ok. I have to prefix this with. it is over 800 chapters long and the """"translation"""" [SAID IN EXTREMELY CONTEMPTFUL VOICE] is only at chapter 400something. and *I* have only read up until chapter 53 so far + I have not checked spoiler threads or anything to see what the fuck is happening overall. so disclaimer that I have no idea if the overall story past these 53chs is actually, Good,

(the quality of tl. as you may have noticed from my posts. is Certainly Not Good At All. tler who did 40chs of comparatively breathtaking quality wherever you are out there I'm sending you good vibes you were the world to us.)

anyway. the novels name is ex-rank something something. hold on let me find its novelupdates page. here you go

[redbeanboi]

Scacchi

Rating: M (nothing particularly crazy, but it’s still related to BBP)

Characters: OC’s: Giuseppe Giovanna, Vittorio Pesca, plus a few extras. Mentioned: Don Giorno Giovanna/Reader, Fugo, Narancia, Mista.

Summary: Giuseppe learns how to play the game.

Alternatively: Pesca doesn’t approve of sheltering who he considers to be the “heir” to Giorno’s empire and takes matters into his own hands.

Word count: 1.8k 

A/N: One of several Giuseppe-related OCtober writings that I’ll be sharing in the next few weeks. This takes place about 15-16 years after BBP, so Giuseppe is a teenager and it would basically be taking place around his “part” (as some of you have come to call it :-D ). For context: Giorno and the Signora have discovered that against their wishes, their son has managed to secretly join Passione (more on that in another snippet, and know that Giuseppe’s “uncle’s” aren’t any more pleased). Unfortunately they all have to deal with some other mess happening in the city, and the only relative around to spend time with Giuseppe is Pesca, who I have yet to fully introduce in BBP. I hope you’ll enjoy this interaction between them! 

some translation notes;

trisoru (’tesoro’ in Siciliano), Matri/Patri and Matre/Patre (mother and father, in Siciliano and Napulitano, respectively), Se (yes, Siciliano), La Famigghia (the family, Siciliano), prozio (great-uncle in Italiano: referring to Don Arnaldo from BBP).

One of the soldati entered the room, Giuseppe in tow. “I hope your trip was pleasant, Signore Pesca. Things are a bit… disorderly here at the moment,” he added, casting a wary, sideways glance at his charge.

Giuseppe’s greeting was less effusive. Passione’s princeling was in a sullen mood, furious that he had been ordered to stay home while his father and trusted men sought out the current threat. “You need to stay home, where it’s safe, trisoru,” you had insisted. “These are unsettling times.”

None of this satisfied Giuseppe, Pesca noted. Perfect on many accounts, but still a child for all that, still inexperienced in the ways of this world. “Giuseppe,” he called. His nephew looked over sure enough. “Seeing that we’re stuck here together, perhaps you’ll be a dear nephew and entertain me to a thrilling game of scacchi? For old time’s sake.”

Giuseppe fixed him with a wary stare. “Chess? My homework sounds much more interesting.”

“Not interesting to you? I suppose it’s only natural when you’ve never beat me. Do continue with your studies.” Pesca raised his book, smirking in safety behind the pages. 

His comments pricked Giuseppe’s pride, just as he expected. “Very well then, Uncle. Fetch the board and pieces—this time I mean to actually beat you.”

They set the chessboard on a wooden table in the center of the room, a handsome piece of furniture that was undoubtedly carved and toiled over by some craftsman in the city. Pesca knew his cousin-in-law liked to patron the local artisans. Giuseppe had already moved his first piece on the board—’Grob’s Attack,’ Pesca thought with amusement. Most would consider it a mark of daring youth, a move that was as bold as it was foolish. Willing to risk it all for the quick kill. Giuseppe’s bodyguard Affogato sat in a chair beside his charge, watching as they played.

Pesca responded in kind, setting his Queen’s pawn two spaces forward. Later, when all the pieces had cleared the way and Giuseppe reached for the Queen’s Bishop, Pesca hummed and shook his head. His nephew paused and quirked a brow at him. “This is an interesting opening, dear nephew, but I wouldn’t do it in the future.” He offered Giuseppe his most disarming smile. “You’re just as bold as your Matri and Patri.”

“So I’ve been told,” Giuseppe returned warily. “...My mother says that you let her drive your car when she was twelve.”

“She’s a very good driver. She’s good at plenty of things, actually. A clever woman. Do you heed her advice?”

The boy pushed a tuft of dark blue hair away from his eyes. Pesca noticed that the dye had yet to fully wash out. “Of course I do. She’s my mother.”

“And yet we find you here, already a fully initiated member of your Patri’s gang.” Pesca blinked at the board before moving his knight. “If I remember correctly, your beloved parents had every intention of shutting you out from either organization. Were they heartbroken when they found out?”

Giuseppe flushed. “I’ve told you already, it was the right thing to do. I can help them.”

“Se,” Pesca returned in his rough Siciliano. “And in doing the right thing, you’ve also uncovered a new plot to dispose of them. It’ll make for an interesting family story in the future, and I’m sure your children will love to hear of how you managed to save us all… assuming your Matri and Patri ever let you set foot outside of this house any time soon.”

“They will. They have to.”

“Must they?” Pesca asked with a tsk and a scandalous tone. “I would be careful with that. Don’s and Signora’s do not like receiving orders, least of all from children. Your Matri is a Signora, a principessa of one of the oldest criminal organizations in this world; she knows a great deal more about these sorts of things than you do. Your Patri, on the other hand? Why, he’s the Boss of all Bosses, made himself a conqueror at the age of fifteen. They love you dearly and clearly gave the world to you, but I don’t think you’ll find them very willing.”

“They will be willing,” Giuseppe insisted, clearly shocked by this information. It was clear to Pesca that Giuseppe had never considered the possibility that his parents might lock him away for his safety and refuse him. “You don’t know them as I do.” Giuseppe took his knight and leapt over the pawns, letting the piece land on the board with a harsh thud.

Pesca shrugged at that. “Perhaps I’m still a stranger to the sacred love between parent and child, but I know what they are like. I know your Matri most of all. I know that she stole cars and sold them, that she impressed Don Vittorio Andolini with her thievery. She’s known danger from a young age, knows what it is like to run, to be hunted, to never be safe. I know that she is fierce. How else would Cosa Nostra bend so easily to her? The ‘Ndrangheta are half hers, considering her family ties to Don Arnaldo. She grieved for her father and schemed to protect you and your ridiculous Patri years ago—all when she was matched with a troublesome opponent. She’s not officially initiated in any gang, yet your Patri relies on her to no end. How do you suppose a woman like this will react when you come to her with a pleading child’s eyes and say, ‘Buongiorno Mamma, I have grown up now and would like to be recognized as a member of La Famigghia.’”

Giuseppe gave him a cold and hard stare. He looks so much like his father. “I am not going to plead to my Matre like a child. I am a young adult, with reasonable requests. I actually accomplished a decent amount of work before you discovered me and alerted them.”

“To be frank? You have too many requests, and as well as you did your job you can easily be replaced,” Pesca corrected. Good, that’s made him angry. It almost reminded Pesca of the times he teased you for having similar ambitions. This boy looks like Giorno but he acts more like his mother. “Don Giorno has plenty of soldati, and last I checked none of them add this much stress on those slender shoulders of his.”

“Think whatever you like, Zietto Vito,” said Giuseppe. “I can still prove myself to them. Signore Fugo said that if I wait, they will see that I’m not a child anymore and can listen like a respectful adult.”

“And you believe that? Goodness. Trust no one, dear boy. Not your strange padrino who wears that ridiculous suit, nor your false uncles or cousins or brothers. Above all, don’t hold to every word your parents say to you—they’re liars like the rest of us. And perhaps this wariness will dampen your gatherings or keep you awake for much longer than you’d like to be at night, but I’m sure it’s better than the never ending sleep that awaits us all.” He sighed and moved his Queen. “I am only your uncle though, only your mother’s lawyer. What could I possibly know that your padrino doesn’t? Still I’ll insist. If you really aren’t a child, you should know that one must make their own way in the world. I wouldn’t do as Signore Fugo says.” 

“... What would you do then?” his nephew asked, leaning forward with interest.

“If I were in your position, I would simply sneak away from this city. Go south. These threats come from the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia, and neither of your father’s forces from Campagna have enough men to deal with an organization from the east. I’d go to Sicilia first, rally the other factions of Cosa Nostra, and meet with your prozio in Calabria. You can start making moves once you’ve got the forces—”

“I have none.”

“You have a famous name and enough resources to tempt the men associated with Cosa Nostra... And even if you don’t, you’re a smart boy, you’ll figure out some way to procure funding.” Pesca flew a Bishop two spaces over. “You’ll need plenty of them, if you want enough men to overwhelm and absorb this new organization.”

“I still would need Patre’s help,” Giuseppe said. “I can’t make any actual moves without his approval. He’s—”

“You don’t need to make any moves, not right away. All you need to do is gather enough support for your Patri. He’ll join you at once.”

Giuseppe frowned. “You said Patri doesn’t intend to let me work with him. I’m still a child to him. He doesn’t entirely respect me the way he does any of his trusted men...”

Pesca shook his head. “A poor choice of words on my part. Ask Don Giorno, your father, for permission, and he’ll treat you like a child. Do you want to act on your father’s whims for the rest of your life? Now… if you left and bolstered his cause down south, in Sicilia? The men of Cosa Nostra only follow the strong, and that is what you’ll be if you can soothe out the wrinkles that stayed after your first birthday. That would prove you are your own man. Bold, reckless, a perfect followup to the infamous Don Giorno. Another conqueror.

“Your Patri has suffered many losses in his youth. You might have noticed he’s grown an attachment to your Matri. If he finds that you’ve taken up his cause and put yourself in a vulnerable position, ordering around the men of Cosa Nostra—no doubt directing attention to yourself—and gone on the offensive, he’ll come and join you. When he meets with you, he will find a fierce and bold youth waiting for him. Not his son, but an equal. How can he help but name you his Underboss and heir then?” Smiling, Pesca took his Queen and ate Giuseppe’s King. “I hope you’ll still harbor some affection for me. And know that you impressed me by managing to last this long, even with an underdeveloped Bishop and godawful castling.”

Giuseppe stared at the board in disbelief. “My Queen–”

“You put her in a tight spot several moves ago. Do you not remember? My Knight took her.”

“What you said earlier... about my first move—”

“Ah! Remember what I said? Trust no one. Though I definitely recommend using a different opening next time. If you’re going to listen to anything I say, at least remember never to start with “g4” ever again.”

Giuseppe jerked back, gaping at the table and then at his uncle. Not ten seconds had passed before he frowned and shoved the board away, hard enough that a white knight and pawn flew across the room. One of the butlers grumbled as he shuffled around the carpet to return them.

“Giving up so soon?” Pesca asked, taking the pieces and setting them up once again.

He half expected the boy to saunter off, especially with the way he’d lectured and poked at him, but to Pesca’s surprise, Giuseppe leaned forward and shook his head.

“No.”

“I won’t be going easy on you,” he warned, “but I promise you’ll have much to learn if you decide to continue.”

Giuseppe nodded. “Teach me then.”

A/N: 

Ah ! That’s teenaged Giuseppe for you. Very different from his parents, I think, but I love him all the same. He has much to learn. This is generally untouched from when I first wrote it, so I hope you enjoyed it in all its rough, out-of-context, first-draft-ish glory!

Honestly surprised myself with how much I ended up writing, but I was mostly just following these two; the way they bounce off each other made it easy to let the words go onto the page.

If you wanted to see what the board looked like towards the end of the game, here’s a bit of a visual:

Lots of ways that this could go wrong for Giuseppe’s pieces... I stand by Pesca’s advice though. If you start on white, avoid opening with the infamous “g4.”

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: A Love Poem to Skadi - Manor of Hermes, Zuo Ran Route

Translation Masterlist | Themis Event Masterlist

Routes: Xia Yan | Zuo Ran | Mo Yi | Lu Jinghe

The “Manor of Hermes” portion of this event requires you to search an abandoned mansion, rumoured to be haunted, to discover its various secrets with each of the male leads.

Please note that there are some subject matters discussed in the “Manor of Hermes” as the player progresses that may make some uncomfortable - please exercise discretion and know your limits. Feel free to ask me for details to check!

See Xia Yan’s route for items that all MLs can find. 

Zuo Ran-specific Items

1st Floor – Small Bedroom

MC: Lawyer Zuo, there’s a box under the bed. Should we open it to look?

Zuo Ran: Mm.

Zuo Ran took the box out slowly, then lifted up the box lid.

Zuo Ran: In the box… there are only some communication letters and a drawing.

Zuo Ran: Also, these letters use Akkadian language, the same as in the “Code of Hammurabi”.

Zuo Ran: Do you want to know what is written in the letters?

 >I do

>For now, I don’t

MC: I do. There might be important clues in these letters.

Zuo Ran: You’re right. These letters… should be love letters.

MC: Love letters?!

Zuo Ran: Indeed.

Zuo Ran: Look at this one – it starts with “To beloved Allie”. The signer is “Winter”.

Zuo Ran: While the other one, the addressee and the signer are exactly opposite.

Zuo Ran: As for the contents of the two letters… most of it is sweet nothings confided with each other.

Zuo Ran: The other letter mentions that Winter is the son of this mansion’s butler.

Zuo Ran: He and Allie were childhood sweethearts, and the two of them grew up together.

Zuo Ran: But because of some reasons…

Zuo Ran: They were unable to openly display their emotions, so they could only rely on writing letters.

Zuo Ran: As for this drawing… it is written here that it was a present, sent from Allie to Winter.

Zuo Ran: In the corner, there’s also a little sentence saying, “True love with me – Winter and Allie”.

MC: So… these two people were in a romantic relationship?

Zuo Ran: I’m afraid so, although there’s a point that deserves our attention – in the letter that Allie sent to Winter, she said that her days were numbered…

Zuo Ran: I’m afraid that this romance… had some hidden matters in it.

When Zuo Ran finished speaking, he searched through the box again.

Zuo Ran: !!!

MC: What’s the matter, Lawyer Zuo?

Zuo Ran: I found some red gem pieces in the box.

MC: Red gem pieces…

MC: The ones on Allie’s Winter?!

Zuo Ran: They should be.

[Get: Winter and Allie’s Love Letters (1), Drawing, and Red Gem Pieces]

 1st Floor – Small Bookroom

MC: Lawyer Zuo, look in these books – there seems to be a document.

Zuo Ran: Don’t touch it yet – I’ll take it.

After he finished speaking, Zuo Ran guarded me behind his body as he took the document.

MC: What’s it like? What’s written on it?

Zuo Ran: This document…

MC: What’s the matter?

Zuo Ran: It seems like this document uses Akkadian language to replace key information.

MC: Then, Lawyer Zuo, do you understand what it says on there?

Zuo Ran: Mm, I’ve analyzed the “Code of Hammurabi” before, and learned Akkadian language along the way.

Zuo Ran: This document… it’s a fire combustion experiment record.

MC: Fire combustion experiment record?

Zuo Ran: That’s right. The person who wrote this document seemed to be testing how much area different levels of fire could cause damage to.

MC: If so… someone once was planning to set a fire in the mansion?

Zuo Ran: It’s definitely possible.

Zuo Ran: Although… this document seems to be missing a few pages?

MC: Missing a few pages? Did they fall into other places on the bookshelf?

Zuo Ran: Let me look again.

Zuo Ran searched up and down the bookshelf again. A while later, he stopped his movements.

MC: Lawyer Zuo, did you notice something? Is it the missing experiment records?

Zuo Ran: No, they’re the red gem pieces.

Zuo Ran: Should be the missing parts on “Allie’s Winter”.

[Get: Incomplete Fire Combustion Test Record (1) and Red Gem Pieces]

 2nd Floor – Allie’s Bedroom

MC: Seems like there’s something here…

I tried groping into the bottom of the cabinet, and I grabbed onto a document.

MC: Look, Lawyer Zuo, isn’t this a… experiment record document?

Zuo Ran: It is.

MC: Then are you able to read what’s written on here?

Zuo Ran: …

Zuo Ran: !!!

MC: What’s the matter? Lawyer Zuo, why has your expression twisted like that?

Zuo Ran: In the contents of the records on here, they used Akkadian language to replace some key information.

Zuo Ran: But this record document is incomplete. This page here has probably been ripped out intentionally.

Zuo Ran: What’s written on here is… setting a fire in the first-floor kitchen will allow the fire to spread at the fastest rate.

Zuo Ran: Once the fire blocks off several paths and stairs, it will cause disorder. Use this to escape the mansion quickly.

Zuo Ran: Aside from that, there’s a single line of an annotation on the document’s blank space… Skadi Island’s local laws, a century ago.

MC: What… were they?

Zuo Ran: “Those who use malicious methods to damage the property of another person, using theft, arson, robbery, et cetera…”

Zuo Ran: “Regardless of the reason, they will be punished by execution.”

Zuo Ran: Wait… aside from this annotation about the law, there’s also a line written under… which seems to be someone’s comment?

MC: ???

Zuo Ran: “He can’t do it… but the method is feasible…”

MC: This…

Zuo Ran: …

Zuo Ran: Let’s look around again, to see if there are any other clues.

MC: Okay.

Zuo Ran and I earnestly searched around the closet again.

But aside from finding some gem pieces that we suspected were needed on “Allie’s Winter”…

We didn’t notice anything else that was useful.

MC: …

[Get: Incomplete Fire Combustion Test Record (2) and Red Gem Pieces]

--

I noticed a diary under the pillow.

>Read the diary

MC: …

Zuo Ran: What are you looking at?

MC: It’s the diary I just noticed. The owner’s name is written on the cover, “Allie”.

MC: But in this diary, a large portion of the contents have been replaced by Akkadian language.

MC: I don’t understand this…

Zuo Ran: Give it to me – I understand these kinds of languages.

MC: Lawyer Zuo, do you really have no problems with this? With so much…

Zuo Ran: Have you forgotten what I’ve said? I’ve analyzed Akkadian language before – don’t worry.

MC: Then… I’ll have to trouble Lawyer Zuo.

Zuo Ran: No problem.

Zuo Ran: …

Zuo Ran flipped through the diary, sinking into deep thought for a while.

MC: Did you notice anything?

Zuo Ran: This truly was Allie’s diary. As for why she used Akkadian to switch out the diary’s contents…

Zuo Ran: She did this so her father would not notice that she was interacting with the butler’s son, Winter.

Zuo Ran: Based on the local laws of Skadi back then, parents had the full right to decide on the marriages of the younger generation.

Zuo Ran: And Allie’s father… severely looked down on Winter.

Zuo Ran: To protect each other, Allie and Winter used Akkadian language, a language that only the two of them knew in this whole mansion.

MC: Is that so…

Zuo Ran: Mm. Another reason was that Winter dreamed of becoming a big judge…

Zuo Ran: So Allie accompanied him in studying and analyzing all sorts of legal code items.

Zuo Ran: She also wrote in excerpts in her diary in passing, or she used the contents of many classic literature works.

Zuo Ran: Simultaneously, there are also her own feelings and annotations beside these contents.

Zuo Ran: Like this line – this is from the “Code of Hammurabi”.

Zuo Ran: And this line is a law from the “Code of Justinian”.

Zuo Ran: It seems like she… saw these activities as a way of… “entrusting her hope” in her chase after freedom.

MC: ???

Zuo Ran: Here, she wrote: “Though I have no way to leave this mansion, and I have no way of shaking off the chains that bind me…”

Zuo Ran: “When I study these materials, my soul is free.”

Zuo Ran: “Through them, I can imagine those worlds outside that I’ve never seen before.”

Zuo Ran: Although…

MC: ???

Zuo Ran: The first half of the diary is normal. The latter half… Allie’s handwriting is messy and her phrasing is panicked…

Zuo Ran: And there are a lot of sketches, the reason of which is unknown.

Zuo Ran: This kind of condition seems somewhat like some mental illness patients that I’ve seen before.

MC: Then, Lawyer Zuo, you mean that Allie might have been afflicted with a mental illness?

Zuo Ran: It’s just a possibility, but we can’t be sure.

Zuo Ran: Oh right, there are some gem pieces stuck between the diary pages.

Zuo Ran: It should be what we’re looking for.

[Get: Allie’s Diary and Red Gem Pieces]

 3rd Floor – Art Room

MC: (There are letters in the box… but the contents of these letters are… Akkadian language?)

MC: (I don’t understand these languages whatsoever)…

MC: (Akkadian language… right!)

MC: Lawyer Zuo, may I request for your help?

Zuo Ran: What do you… need me to do?

MC: May I trouble you to see what’s written on these letters?

MC: When the letter was written, they used Akkadian language…

MC: I remember that Lawyer Zuo is very familiar with these languages.

Zuo Ran: Give it to me.

Zuo Ran took the letter.

Zuo Ran: …

MC: How is it, Lawyer Zuo?

Zuo Ran: These letters are the private “love letters” between two people, “Allie” and “Winter”.

Zuo Ran: Allie and Winter had romantic relations, but Allie seemed to… receive some sort of treatment?

Zuo Ran: Not only did this treatment not make her body better, but she instead got worse and worse…

Zuo Ran: Thus, she felt that her days were numbered.

Zuo Ran: Allie wanted to convince Winter to leave, but Winter refused. The reason why he refused was…

Zuo Ran: !!!

MC: What is it?

Zuo Ran: “I’ve found a way that will let us completely shake off this mansion and your father.”

MC: !!!

Zuo Ran: Wait, there’s also a follow-up here…

Zuo Ran: Based on the date, it seems like some time had passed.

Zuo Ran: In the letter, “Winter” told “Allie” that their original plan required changes.

Zuo Ran: “There’s already no more time for me to finish preparations. They will change you into a walking corpse.”

Zuo Ran: “There’s no more time to hesitate – I will immediately take you away.”

Zuo Ran: “Escape with me, my Allie.”

MC: !!!

Zuo Ran: …

MC: So… did they escape?

Zuo Ran: I’m afraid we need to find more clues to know.

MC: Then let’s keep searching.

We lowered our heads again, carefully searching through the inside of the box.

But we didn’t find any similar letters.

Although, we did gain some fortune because of disappointment – I noticed some gem pieces at the bottom of the box.

MC: (This should be what we’re looking for.)

[Get: Winter and Allie’s Love Letters (2) and Red Gem Pieces]

--

A letter was hidden at the back of the art easel.

>Take off the letter and open it

MC: …

Zuo Ran: What are you looking at?

Zuo Ran: It’s the letter I just noticed behind the easel, but this letter was written using Akkadian language…

MC: I don’t understand these languages, so…

Zuo Ran: Give it to me.

Zuo Ran: I once analyzed the “Code of Hammurabi”, and learned Akkadian language for this.

Zuo Ran: This should be able to help you.

MC: Th-thank you, Lawyer Zuo.

Zuo Ran: …

Zuo Ran took the letter and quickly read it.

MC: Lawyer Zuo, what’s written in this letter?

Zuo Ran: The person who wrote this letter is “Winter”. This is his… “suicide note”.

MC: Suicide note?!

Zuo Ran: Mm. In the letter, he says…

Zuo Ran: “In compliance with the appointment, I returned alive after the fire went out, but you missed the appointment…”

Zuo Ran: “Though it was lonely during these years in the mansion, it was very happy…”

Zuo Ran: “I’m sorry. In the future, I can no longer protect you…”

Zuo Ran: …

The atmosphere gradually got heavier, and I decided to change the topic.

MC: Oh right, Lawyer Zuo, I noticed something else when I noticed this letter just now.

Zuo Ran: What is it?

MC: The gem pieces we’re looking for.

MC: If we keep going at this rate, we should be able to fully piece together the gems very soon!

[Get: Winter’s Suicide Note and Red Gem Pieces]

--

B1 Level

MC: (We’ve already collected all the gems.)

MC: (Looking at the shape of the notch beside the door lock, it looks similar to the missing part on the flower cluster of “Allie’s Winter”…)

MC: (Let’s try putting this portion’s red gem into it…)

--

B1 Level – Underground Air-raid Shelter

MC: Lawyer Zuo, look at the wall!

MC: Starting from this wall corner, there are a lot of dried blood markings and scratches on the wall.

Zuo Ran: These marks look like they were left from human struggle and self-harm.

Zuo Ran crouched down at the wall corner, observing the details of the marks, one place after another.

Zuo Ran: !!!

Zuo Ran: These blood marks seem to be a sentence.

MC: “Sentence”?

Zuo Ran: Mm. Because it’s written in Akkadian language, most people might not recognize it.

MC: Then what’s this sentence that’s written on the wall?

Zuo Ran: The meaning of this sentence is…

Zuo Ran: “Continue to live on – I will always love you.”

[Get: Allie’s Last Words]

[rokutouxei]

the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

ikemen vampire: temptation through the dark theo van gogh / mc | T | [ ao3 link in bio ]

The challenge seemed pretty simple: to try to befriend the university bookshop’s most sour employee, Theo van Gogh. As a literature major with a boatload of book recommendations on her back, it ought to be a simple task indeed. But as she uncovers what lies between Theo’s pages, the more she finds it harder to become closer to him without having to put the feeling directly into words. What can she learn from Theo about what it means to stay—and how can she teach Theo about what it means to let go? | written for ikevamp big bang 2020!

[ masterpost for all chapters ]

CHAPTER 16 OF 22

In all this turning, only we fly apart as we ascend the epic air where nothing

hurts anymore, or hums. Nothing's really the matter; brace me somewhere.

- Brace me Somewhere, Mookie Katigbak

--

They only get the time to relax a little in late February, and she and Theo are sitting together inside Isaac’s empty classroom late at night. It’s a Saturday, for once, where the two of them could hang out alone, and while it’s too cold outside to stay at the rooftop, the physics building has classrooms with wide windows that still face the town. Hanging out in their friend’s—well, not even his classroom! But who cares?—is as good as any. The two of them have thermoses of hot chocolate from the cafeteria downstairs, bought right before it closed, and they’re sharing a little box of chocolates, too.

The chocolates, of course, were bought from the clearance rack at the university grocery after Valentine’s. “Easily the best thing you can get,” she said—“premium on the 14th, trash on the 15th, absolute garbage on the 21st. Can’t believe how cheap these ‘high-end’ chocolates go a week past a commercialized holiday.” They didn’t get anything for each other for Valentine’s—well, why would they?—so now they’re just sharing the buy-1-take-1 box, looking out below.

“Are you sure your friend won’t mind that we’re up here?” Theo asks, turning to her a little insecurely. They have left the lights of the classroom turned off and the doors closed to enjoy as much of the view. She did tell the guard downstairs that they were going to do something for class upstairs, and that wasn’t entirely a lie, but…

“Nah, he won’t. Dazai and I hang out here when we want to hide away. Isaac’s too good at teaching physics, many of his students actually get a little scared of him, so… only a few brave ones really pass by here,” she explains, popping another chocolate in her mouth. “Mm, caramel filling, this one’s good.”

Officially, their little book club discussion was already done. It’s weeks and weeks of many little insights that only got to get poured out today, but also mini book reviews and discussion of their most recently exchanged books—her, Sputnik Sweetheart; and Theo, a book of poetry titled The Proxy Eros. It was her idea to go with little romance-y books to read over Valentine’s, entirely for the spectacle of it. It was also her idea to not go home yet, asking, “keep me company for a little bit more?” because she knew that he knew that that meant there’s something she wants to talk about, but isn’t sure where to start.

She relies so much on Theo knowing her and sometimes she’s so relieved how transparent she is. How far along now this friendship is.

So they sit. Theo, looking out at the city below, and her, humming a small tune as she closes her eyes and puts more chocolates in her mouth. Two boxes of 25 chocolate balls each is a lot, but she doesn’t have anything left to do for the day—and neither does Theo. She assumes that sitting next to her isn’t entirely something he’s opposed to, at least since he’s decided to stay. He offers her his dependable, companionable silence.

Until she finds the words to begin.

“I’m just nervous about the scholarship,” she finally says, slumping over the desk of the chair, flopping down. “I told you about it, right? The interviews.”

“They were this week.”

“Yeah,” she nods. “I don’t know how well I did. I may… have not been able to sleep properly the night before, and I took maybe one too many shots of espresso that morning, so I was sort of… jumping around, kind of nervously… I don’t know how that translated to the panel, I feel like I just shot myself in the foot.”

“You tend to underestimate yourself,” Theo comments, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. “Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” Theo insists. “Do you remember when I made you read Les Miserables in a week?”

She groans. “No, okay, I could read it in a week because I already knew what happened because we discussed it in class. It’s not as big as a challenge as it seems to be.”

“And Don Quixote?”

“Also in class.”

“Anna Karenina.”

“—Wait, that phase where all you gave me were classical books, that was you messing with me?”

Theo turns away, but not soon enough for her not to see him smirk. “Maybe.”

She frowns. “You’re lucky I actually enjoy reading them.”

“You had a lot of insight about them, indeed.” Theo snorts. “The point is—you kept saying you don’t think you’ll do good in reading or analyzing it, even if you can. You’re probably doing the same for this.”

For a small moment, she lets that sink in, trying to absorb what Theo had said and just letting it linger in the quiet. And then she frowns. “I told them I wanted to go away,” she says softly. “I told them I thought it would be extremely beneficial for my growth as a person, to be given the opportunity.”

Theo doesn’t answer, just nods.

She continues to fret. “But what if it translated wrong? What if they thought that meant all I’m good at is running away at all the good things that have been given to me? What if it sounded like I didn’t like it here. I mean I don’t, but. Not that way? I might have just ended up telling the school administration that I’m not happy with my stay here and that all of this isn’t enough for shit.”

Theo shakes his head. “Just because you want more doesn’t mean what’s already here isn’t enough.”

“What?” She turns to Theo. “What does that even mean? Of course you want more because it’s not enough.”

“Wanting more of something you already have is not the same as wanting different,” He clarifies. “You’re tired of this—but it’s enough. It’s given you just enough to be able to have an opportunity to reach out to different, which is what the scholarship is to you. Isn’t it?”

And Theo is right. She’s starting to curse at how right Theo is sometimes, how easily he sees through the things that confuse her. It’s as if he knows her just about as much as she knows herself, in the parts that… well, in the parts that matter. And that’s both scary and comforting, in a way she cannot put into words.

“Yeah, it is,” she says. “That makes sense, actually.”

“You’ll do well at the scholarship,” he says, simply, like he’s so sure of the answer, like he’s the one giving that decision away. “Haven’t seen anyone work as hard for something like that as you have. I’m sure you’ve blown them away. And even if you didn’t—I’m sure they’ll offer you something in its stead.”

She wonders for a moment what that could look like. Something to replace her dream of going away—something equally worth it, perhaps. What could they offer her that is already here for her taking? What would staying here give her that going away cannot?

She can’t imagine it now, but maybe she will eventually.

She wonders what Theo has in mind.

“You think? Like what?”

Theo grins, raising the box of chocolates. “The best thing you can get here: clearance rack sweets, what else?”

--

How did they say it then? Like falling asleep—slowly, and then all at once?

What lucky people those are, to have it come gently, in a moment of rest.

Not for her.

It comes as a slap.

A bullet fired straight to her temple from a gun she had aimed there herself.

It’s a little silly, because it doesn’t make sense. They’ve arguably shared way more “intimate” moments than these, sharing cheap chocolates in a dim classroom. There have been a million other opportunities for the realization to sink in, for it to finally hit her, for it to finally come to full blossom.

No, it chose this moment.

Walking downstairs the physics building, the steady sound of Theo’s footsteps next to her.

She’d let him hold her heart in his hands and he cradled it. And then let her eat most of the chocolates. And then let her talk until her heart was empty of the static that was beating through her veins, numbing her hands.

And even now, he lets her stays close to him. So close to him she can hear him breathing, a rhythmic in and out. So close to him she can see the flick of his eyelashes. So close to him if she just reached out maybe she could kis—

Oh.

She keeps her hands behind her back and lets the feeling sink into a warm pool of butterflies in the pit of her chocolate-sweet stomach.

--

Theo walks her home that night, saying goodbye at the staircase of her apartment complex with a small wave of the hand. He thanks her for the chocolates (she made him take home what was left of the second box, and that was still most of its contents) and she thanks him for listening to her, to which they both laugh at each other. She says she’ll drop by their house soon to help Vincent with more prepwork on the exhibit—but that mostly, she hopes to see him soon. He waves her off and doesn’t leave until he spots the door to her room close.

For a moment, some sort of relief washes over Theo in a way he cannot explain. He begins to pick at it as he walks away: so much has happened since fall and since then, he’s really enjoyed her company with him through all this—planning the exhibit, and now helping out with the pieces itself with Vincent. He thought she would be nothing but a pain when he’d first talked to her at the bookstore, but that’s only because he only thinks anything brought about by Arthur is trouble. She had turned out to be anything but—the banter is some sort of fun, and he really does appreciate her company, even tucked in the silences between.

But then the relief makes way for a tangible kind of loneliness, the kind that feels very heavy; Theo is able to deny it now because he has a coat on over a few more layers of jackets and shirts and sweaters, but later, when he is sitting down on his bed after a warm shower, he will no longer be able to deny it. Settling on his shoulders like a demon. It’s not that he doesn’t want her to go, but—maybe he does? Isn’t it normal for someone to be a little sad that their friend is going away? But this, this isn’t a little, he knows, but he doesn’t want to rest his thoughts too deeply on it lest it becomes real.

Maybe he’ll have the opportunity to say something to her about this soon. Before she leaves, maybe.

Nestled in the quiet of the snowfall, he tries his best not to think about her, the crescent moon of her smile, the curl of her hair, and walks the entire twenty minutes back home in wintry silence.

--

He decides he would rather not think about it, and the universe hears him, saying, then don’t.

The next week, he finishes his Thursday class and makes his way home, like he usually does. Dusts his pants off at the doorstep, like he always does. Jiggles the doorknob before inserting the key and opening it, like he always does. Says, “I’m home,” to the living room, even if he knows it’s likely to be empty, Vincent working in his studio, like he always does.

The living room is not empty.

“Theo, Theo, oh my god, you were right!” she says, suddenly flooding his vision, suddenly all he can take in. “I got in! I got in! I won the scholarship!”

And Theo knows—he should have answered with a dry remark, like he always does. Laugh at her pouty face, like he always does. And then support her anyway, like he always does.

Maybe even pat her on the head, ruffle her hair, like he never does.

But he doesn’t.

It takes all of his strength to say, “I told you so. Congratulations.”

To listen to her gush about the scholarship. Where she’s going, how much they’re sponsoring, how long she will stay out there.

(A full year.)

To fake a smile, to say he’s going to go take a warm bath, and—

Pick up the parts of his heart that had shattered once it met the floor.

[antoine-roquentin]

I think one of the major problems with the modern left is a focus on cultural analysis instead of economics. When I say culture I EXPLICITLY DON'T MEAN racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and Indigenous rights/decolonization.

Stupidpol and their ilk are reactionaries and should be treated as such. What I'm talking about is the focus on things like analyzing TV shows or picking over the latest issues of the NYT op-ed column, the sort a caricatures you see on Chapo.

Zizek is emblematic of this syndrome. He's a theorist of ideology, a film critic, a Lacanian psychoanalyst and complete reactionary on gender and immigration issues, and he's widely considered to be one of preeminent Marxist scholars alive. And, and this is important, Zizek does fuck all actual economic material analysis. Mark Fisher, who was an excellent Marxist theorist, covers almost exactly the same ground from a different perspective, and you can repeat this across academia.

Inside academia the problem has gotten so bad that the best economic analysis is being carried out by the fucking post-humanists. Take, for example, Anna Tsing's excellent Supply Chains and the Human Condition. Tsing is a brilliant theorist but she spends most of her time writing about multi-species interactions between humans and mushrooms. Carbon Democracy, one of the best theories of the carbon economy ever written, is by a left-Foucaldian.

There are some exceptions to this, Andreas Malm's Carbon Capital is wonderful, Riot Strike Riot is great and I have to mention the group I call The Other Chicago School, Endnotes, whose infrequent analysis is a breath of fresh air. But Endnotes isn't particularly well read even inside the academy, which takes back outside the ivory tower in the dismal mess that is what passes for popular left "economics."

I want to go back to Occupy for a second because what happened there is indicative of the problem. Occupy, at least technically, actually had a theory of economics that went beyond "neoliberalism bad, welfare state good." And it's really not as bad as its critics have since accused it of being. Graeber's "the 1% meme" was supposed to be part of an MMT analysis of the ability of banks to create money out of nothing, see Richard A. Werner. The theory then goes with the ability to create money out of nothing the question becomes who should actually have that power. The 1% are the people who control that power and use that it to gain wealth and their wealth to gain power.

This is essentially what happened after 2008 and it relates to an entire analysis of the politics of debt and war that's captured really well in the last chapter of Debt, The First 5000 Years, drawing from Hudson's excellent Super Imperialism. Again, not bad, and not the disaster it became in Liberal hands. But note two things:

1, His work is intentionally detached from the production process- Graeber uses a value theory of labor about the social reproduction of human beings. That theory is really interesting and I'll leave a link to his It is Value that Brings Universes into Being here. But Graeber is an anthropologist, not an economist, and his recent work is mostly composed of a set of theories of bureaucracy.

And, don't get me wrong, I really like Utopia of Rules and Bullshit Jobs, and it's possible to build an economic theory out of them, but almost no one actually does. And this gets us back to my second point about Occupy and economics.

2, Not a single other person I have ever met, including people who were in Occupy, have ever actually heard the theory behind the 1%. Part of this has to do with Graeber’s rather admirable desire to not become an intellectual vanguardist. But, I cannot overemphasize how much of this is a result of the left's retreat into an analysis of consumerism instead of capitalism and its further insistence that the entire fucking global economy can be explained by chapters 1-3 of Capital and this just isn't a "read more theory" rant, it's not like reading the rest of Capital is going to help you here. But even that's better than what's actually happened, which is people reading Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and the Communist Manifesto and trying to derive economic theory from that, or getting lost in a Gramscian or psychoanalytic miasma trying to explain why revolution didn't happen. But we can't keep fucking doing this.

If we do we're just going to keep getting stuck in endless fucking inane arguments, one of which is about which countries are Imperialist or not based on trying to read the minds of world leaders, and the other of which is a bunch of racists trying to argue that they're actually "class-first" Marxists and that if we don't say slurs and be mean to disabled people we're going to lose the "real working class," which is somehow composed only of construction workers banging steel bars.

So let's stop letting them do that. One of the reasons Supply Chains and the Human Condition is so great is that it describes how the performance of gender and racial roles creates the self super-exploitation at the heart of global capitalism. Race and gender cannot be ignored in favor of some kind of "class-first" faux-leftist bullshit. THEY ARE LITERALLY THE DRIVER OF CAPITAL ACCUMULATION.

Most of the global supply chain has been transformed into entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs (see the countless accounts of Chinese garment factory workers who dream of getting into the fashion industry and who attempt to supplement their meager income by setting up stalls in local marketplaces to sell watches and clothes).

The fact that global supply chains have reverted to the kind of small family firms that Marx and Engels thought would disappear is a MASSIVE problem for any kind of global workers movement, because it means that the normal wage relation that is supposed to form the basis of the proletariat isn't actually the governing social experience of a large swath of what should be the proletariat, either because they're the owners of small firms contracted by larger firms like Nike who would, in an older period of capitalism, have just been workers or because the people who work for those firms are incapable of actually demanding wage increases from the capitalists because they're separated by a layer from the firms who control real capital, and thus are essentially unable to make the kind of wage demands that would normally constitute class consciousness because the contractors they work for really don't have any money. These contractors are in no way independent.

Multinational corporations set everything from their buying prices to their labor conditions to what their workers say to lie to labor inspectors. The effect of replacing much of the proletariat with micro-entrepreneurs is devastating.

The class-for-itself that's supposed to serve as the basis of social revolution has decomposed entirely. Endnotes has a great analysis of how this happened covering more time, but the unified working class is dead. In its place have come a series of incoherent struggles: The Arab Spring, the Movement of the Squares, the current wave of revolutions and riots stretching from Sudan to Peru to Puerto Rico- all of them share an economic basis translated into demands on the state. We see housing struggles, anti-police riots, occupations, climate strikes, and a thousand other forms of struggle that don't seem to cohere into a traditional social revolution and WE HAVE NO ANSWER.

I don't have one either, but we're not going to get out of this mess by trying to read the tea leaves of the CCP or analyzing how Endgame is the ruling class inculcating us into accepting Malthusian Ecofascism.

I want to emphasize YOU DON'T NEED TO SHARE MY ECONOMIC ANALYSIS to develop one, I'm obviously wrong on a lot of things and so is everyone else. The point is that we need to start somewhere.

There are other benefits to reading economics stuff even if it can be boring sometimes, like being able to dunk on nerd shitlibs and reactionaries who do the "take Econ-101" meme by being able to prove that their entire discipline is bunk. Steve Keen's Debunking Economics is absolutely hilarious for this, he literally proves that perfect competition relies on the same math that you use to "prove" that the earth is flat.

Or learning that the notion that markets distribute goods optimally is based on the assumption that what is basically a form of fucking state socialism exists, and that the supply demand curve is fucking bullshit. Here's a page from Debunking Economics looking at the socialism claim, it fucking rules, and it's the result of the fact that neo-classical economics and central planning were developed together. Kantorovich and Koopmans shared a Nobel Prize.

But wait, there's more! We can PROVE that THE MARKET PLACE OF IDEAS DOESN'T EXIST. Do you have any idea how hard you can own libs with facts and logic if you can demonstrate that THE MARKET PLACE OF IDEAS DOESN'T EXIST?

But seriously, if you go outside of the Marxist tradition there are all sorts of fun and useful things you can find in post-Keyensian circles and so on and so forth. I'm a huge fan of Karen Ho's Liquidated, an Ethnography of Wall Street/Liquidated_%20An%20Ethnography%20of%20Wall%20Street%20-%20Karen%20Ho.pdf) which looks at how the people at banks and investment firms actually behave and, oh boy, is it bad news (they're literally incapable of making long-term decisions which is wonderful in the face of climate change).

Oh, and also, all of the bankers are essentially indoctrinated into thinking they're the smartest people in the world, so that's fun.

This may sound like I'm shitting on Marxism, and I sort of am, but there's Marxist stuff coming out that I absolutely love! @chuangcn is a good example of what I think the benchmark for leftist economics and historical analysis should be.

Chuang responded to the call put out by Endnotes to cut "The Red Thread of History," or essentially to stop fucking arguing about 1917, 1936, 1968 and so forth and look at material conditions instead of trying to find our favorite faction and accuse literally everyone else of betraying the revolution, and then imagining what we would have done in their shoes. The present is different from the past and we need to organize for this economic and social reality, not 1917's.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBvBIVhXYAYlVfj.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBvBM3CXoAA7Qmx.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBvBP0SWkAEl6OX.jpg

Chuang produced an incredibly statically and sociologically detailed account of the Chinese socialist period in issue 1 and the transition to capitalism in the soon to be put online issue 2 that focuses on shifts in production and investment and shifts in China's class-structure and how urban workers, peasants, factory mangers, technicians, and cadre members reacted to those movements and shaped each others decisions and mobilizations. They largely avoid discussions of factional battles of the upper level of the CCP, which dominate liberal and communist accounts of the period and produce, in supposed communists from David Harvey to Ajit Singh, a Great Man theory of history.

Instead, they trace how strikes and peasant protests shaped the CCP's decision making and how the choices of people like Mao and Deng Xiaoping were limited by material conditions, in this case by their production bottleneck.

What's great about Chuang is that their work is so rich in sociological detail that you don't need to agree with them at all about what communism is and so on for their account to be useful, and they force us to think about the world from the perspective of competing classes bound by economic reality, instead of the black-and-white "good state/bad state," "good ruler/bad ruler," discourse that dominates our understanding of both imperialism and the global economy.

I'm just going to end this with a TL;DR: Cut the read thread of history and stop fucking arguing about 1917, use economic theory to dunk on Stupidpol and shitlibs. When you talk about "material conditions" talk about the production process, supply chains, capital movements and so on, not which states are good and bad (the bourgeoisie is a global class friends), recognize that strategies need to be built around current economic and social conditions, WHICH ARE INSEPARABLE FROM RACE AND GENDER, climate change is more complicated than the 100 companies meme (I only touched on this but please read Fossil Capital and Carbon Democracy), and in general try to learn more about different schools of economics and social theory, I swear reading something that wasn't written in 1848 isn't going to kill you.

[lamiralami]

TMA Retro 4: Page Turner

I was touched to see some tag commentary on yesterday’s post! Honestly, it gave me an emotion - I am traditionally very anxious about engaging online, it speaks to my immense love of TMA that it brought me to Make A Post At Last. It’s very affirming and reassuring to get some response to my lunatic treatises. Y’all are all right. 💜

Anyway, grab some lighter fluid and a sturdy wastepaper basket, time to torch your haunted novel in MAG 4: Page Turner

It’s ironic that this statement is about the Vast when it is one dense motherfucker. so many dangling plot threads are introduced here, each ready to hook you and start reeling. we’ve been into the meta plot since episode one but this episode is the first time the audience is made aware of such.

seriously: Jurgen Leitner and his library, Gerard Keay and Mary Keay, Michael Crew. the figures introduced in this one thirty-minute installment loom large over the rest of the entire run

you could, your first time through, even file this away as a one-off scary story if not for the fact that Jon knows what’s going on (enjoy it while it lasts, my son). He’s heard of Jurgen Leitner. He alludes to an incident with his library in 1994. Deeper than that, he immediately takes the statement at face value and treats the claims within it as authentic, which is a complete 180° on the first three episodes

and this is such a smart story choice? Jon shapes our perspective into this universe and up until now he’s been utterly dismissive of the validity of the stories he’s telling. To go from practically rolling his eyes to scheduling a meeting with his boss about tracking down more haunted books - that tells us that Jon takes this seriously as a threat. And that makes us take it seriously too, makes us take note that strange books are dangerous things in this world. Any offhand mention of books in future statements will be enough to make us sweat

And! It starts winding the narrative tension on a character level. Why and what does Jon know about Jurgen Leitner and his library? Why does he say his name with such venom? And if he’s so sure about the supernatural nature of these books, why is he so loath to believe the other statements?

(and then it takes 80 + episodes to fully answer these initial questions. Jonny enjoys a slow roasted torment)

love that the statement giver presents, as proof of his iron-clad sanity, the fact that he works as a theatre technician. speaking as someone with an unfinished theatre degree: theatre people are feral my good buddy, try again. I mean, we refuse to say the name of one of the most famous plays in the English language because we think a ghost will trip us for the indiscretion. this is not the trump card you think it is.

a quick sidebar for the Red String Brigade: The Trojan Women is an ancient Greek tragedy that involves a baby being thrown off a city wall. The Seagull’s first published English translation was done by Marian Fell, and also a seagull is a bird and birds can fly. Much Ado About Nothing is very good and you should all watch the version from 2011 with David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

it’s interesting that these early episodes seem to take a cue from urban legends in some respects. Nathan Watts gets extremely drunk at a party and then is almost skinned by a monster while having a smoke. Joshua Gillespie is approached while engaging in a whirlwind of debauchery and has to take care of a cursed coffin after accepting money for what he thinks is a drug trafficking gig. Amy Patel regularly spies on her neighbour for her own entertainment and then has to watch him be replaced by a malevolent entity only she can perceive. and now Dominic Swain pushes past his guilty conscience to score a valuable book off an unknowing charity shop and...gets a bit dizzy and haunted by a phantom stink for a few days then gets ‎£5,000, well anyway, the point is he got spooked! spooked after doing something kind of iffy! that is pure urban legend procedure; modern day fairy tales imparting dire  consequences onto societal transgressions. in a horror story this structure offers a false sense of safety - if you’re a good person, the monster won’t come for you. I can’t recall which upcoming statement yanks the rug out from under us with the first completely random victim.

cannot comprehend how this guy didn’t start plugging the book into google translate the second he got home. that probably saved him from being taken by the book but I am still judging him for not even trying it. yeah you’d be sucked into some sort of sky hell but at least you’d know what’s in the book!! could never be me

(yes I am aware in this universe I would have been eaten years ago. I’ve made my peace with that)

grbookworm1818 slays me. I don’t know which is better, the idea of Gertude carefully curating the most sixty-five-year-old-on-goodreads username she could as a cover for her cursed purchase history, or her actual sixty-five-year-old brain just expressing itself naturally because Gertrude is a very busy woman who doesn’t have time to immerse herself in the ins and outs of internet culture, she just wants to buy the demonic tomes she’s selected for destruction and get on with her day thanks.

did Gertrude know what a meme was? which Archivist could convincingly pose as a millennial best, Gertrude Robinson or Jonathan Sims?

The Key of Solomon and its former keeper, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, are both real historical figures. the book is basically Renaissance-era magical au fanfic of the Bible, and the man was a 19th century British occultist (and likely drinking buddy of Jonah Magnus) who founded a Very Serious Secret Society. this is a picture of him whiiiiiich rather dispels any sense of menace he’s meant to invoke. what kind of cosplaying nonsense

Mary Keay is such a striking figure. “She was very old and painfully thin, but her head was completely clean shaven, and every square inch of skin I could see was tattooed over with closely-written words in a script I didn’t recognise.” a Look, a vision!

I’m guessing that Our Gerard was blasting heavy metal at 2 am to try to drown out his undead mother while waiting for her manifestation to dissipate. I like to imagine him frequenting Reddit advice posts about dealing with toxic family members, poor lad

oh my gosh Mary refers to Gerard as “her Gerard” is that where Jon got “our Gerard” from?? I feel betrayed??

whatever, I’m reclaiming it. Our Gerard is meant with affection now babey! 

the eye portrait is a bit puzzling. the inscription - ‘“Grant us the sight that we may not know. Grant us the scent that we may not catch. Grant us the sound that we may not call.”’ - could almost be read as an invocation against the Eye? But in general Gerry is fairly Eye-aligned, so...shrug emoji

(honestly my main takeaway from the eye portrait is that it’s finely detailed and near photorealistic so we can add “tortured artist” to our list of Gerard Keay traits and is it any wonder that he’s so Fandom Beloved?)

Mary is Not Good at negotiating sales. her main technique involves terrible tea, bringing up repressed childhood trauma, and getting her magic book to drop animal bones onto customer’s shoes. I’m guessing Pinhole Books was in bad shape even before the police investigation and murder charges.

hahaha, the Vast pushes Dominic down the stairs. classic. you gotta grab what opportunities are available

so did Gerard have to follow Dominic back to his flat and wait awkwardly on the doorstep at like 3 in the morning, hoping none of his neighbours would notice and call the cops

the revelation that Mary’s been dead the whole time! this episode may be more intent on world building and plot set-up but damn if it isn’t still a good little ghost story.

kind of rude of Gerry to just burn a book in this guy’s flat without asking and then steal his wastepaper basket.

Jon may not call the statement giver a liar for once, but never fear, he’s still our petty bastard man. accuses Gertrude of filing statements without reading them, has Sasha double-check Martin’s research, grumps about his general misfortune . he’s stressed from the Archives’ disorder and having flashbacks to a certain picture book but by Jove, that won’t stop him making snide comments on what’s supposed to be an official audio transcription!

[dailyaudiobible]

05/06/2019 DAB Transcript

Ruth 2:1-4:22, John 4:43-54, Psalms 105:16-36, Proverbs 14:26-27

Today is the 6th day of May. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Sorry I sounded so surprised that it was the month of May. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that these are my first words of the day and I don't have all my inflections, you know, I'm not all woke up yet. Probably cause I haven’t had a sip of my Wind Farm coffee. Hold on. There. Now. Now we're in good shape to take the next step forward in our adventure through the Scriptures this year. And yesterday we began the book of Ruth. And, so, we finished the book of Judges and entered the book of Ruth. Today we will conclude the book of Ruth before continuing forward in the Gospel of John in the New Testament. So, we’re reading from the New English Translation this week. Ruth chapter 2 through chapter 4.

Commentary:

Okay. So, Ruth was a Moabite woman, which would put her in modern day Jordan, across the Jordan River, and her mother-in-law, Naomi, was a Hebrew and their fates brought them together because of loss. Naomi's husband and two sons died in the land of Moab where they had gone because of famine, which left Naomi a widow in a foreign land, a bitter pill to swallow for sure. And one of the sons happen to be the husband of Ruth. And, so, when Naomi decided to take her bitterness and return to her homeland Ruth wouldn't leave. And this allegiance was remarkable because Ruth was leaving everything behind that would give her any hope for a future or any kind of identity and devoting her life to Naomi. And, so, when they arrived back in Israel Ruth’s story of devotion had significant weight among the Hebrew people because it's such an honorable thing, but…so a good reputation doesn't always put food on the table. And as we read, Ruth began to work in the fields gathering what was left over or dropped by the harvesters and we saw this provision made in the Mosaic law when we were moving through that territory. So, now we are actually seeing is scenario where this is helpful. So, Naomi realized pretty quickly that Ruth was working in the fields belonging to one of the close relatives named Boaz, a close relative of her deceased husband. And ironically the traditional site of these fields for gleaning, they still exist near Bethlehem today and they’re synonymous with the shepherd’s fields where shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night and the angels appeared to them when Jesus was born. And shepherds are still using these fields today even though they’re kinda surrounded by urban sprawl. So, as the story goes, Boaz was very kind to Ruth as she gleaned the leftovers from his field and he began to kinda provide for her. And it didn't take too long before Naomi kinda of saw maybe what could happen here. And, so, she then guided Ruth through the process of showing that she was available to Boaz while keeping her dignity and it worked. Boaz and Ruth were married as we read today and then when Ruth conceived and gave birth to a son named Obed, Naomi's grief, the bitterness, the marrah of her life was replaced with joy. And then Obed would grow up and become a father himself and his son would be named Jesse and then Jesse would grow up and become a father himself of several sons, one of which became King David. It’s a beautiful story, how God arranged the lives of Ruth and Boaz, and Naomi and how He turned famine and death and loss into abundance and joy and redemption. So, we can sure find heartbreak and bitterness in this story, but we can also see how character and dignity and loyalty and trust in God lead toward a new life, rather than deeper into the bitterness, deeper into the darkness. So, no matter how bitter things might be right now, no matter what it is we’re facing that is bringing bitterness into our lives, this story isn't over. And if we’ll take what we're learning here from Ruth, if w’'ll be people of character in spite of it, and faith in spite of it, then we’ll be following this path and remarkable good can come out of tremendous hardship. King David came from this tremendous hardship and, as we mentioned yesterday, through King David came Jesus.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this story and this reminder to persevere and to persevere without complaining, like to persevere as if the story isn't over and we’re simply waiting for the page to turn. Often our bitterness will keep us stuck on the same page reading the same lines over and over and repeating the same progression when actually our loyalty and our character and our faith in You will allow the page to turn. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

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Hello this is Christopher, first time caller. Last week I was in a conference with about 100 of my peers, work-related. We were going up for operations and in the middle of manipulating my phone I left out about a second and a half of the Daily Audio Bible podcast. Later, after the meeting ended, a fellow believer came up and said to me, “is that the Daily Audio Bible I heard?” He had remembered hearing the voice and just the tone and everything. We proceeded to talk about how I use the Daily Audio Bible for my daily edification and how I re-listened to yesterday’s podcast to make sure that I’m getting what God has for me every day. So, just that little mistake turned out to be a blessing not just for me but for a fellow believer who has gotten out of the habit of listening to the podcast. So, I would encourage all of you to share the Daily Audio podcast idea with others, that all of those that are believers in Christ can be edified.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family, this is Amber from California. I called in a couple times requesting prayer for my husband and just __ in our marriage. And I’m just calling because I am I’m just so broken. We’ve had so many attacks. Our family’s just facing so much right now. My husband recently lost his job and that’s added additional stress to everything that we have to deal with and we’re trained to raise our three kids and I’m trying to be what God wants me to be but I just feel really torn and I just don’t…I don’t know where to go and what to do from here and I feel like maybe I’m enabling my husband and his bad behavior. Maybe I’m not communicating properly. I’m not…I don’t know. I just need prayer. I just need prayer for my husband that we can get on the same page and that we’ll allow Jesus to work in our lives and know that in my weakness Jesus makes a strong and maybe He’s trying to stretch and grow me even more in that area. So, I’m just in pain and I just don’t know where to go. So, I’m calling for just additional prayer. Thank you.

Hello family this is Viola from Maryland I hope you’re all doing well. Jill, I’m grateful to God for your successful More Conference. You and Brian, congratulations on the wedding of your daughter, China. China, congratulations, I am happy for you. All right. Sister from Haiti, I heard your prayer request and I am praying that God will touch your cousin and raiser her up from her coma in the name of Jesus. Word of God says, “is there anything too hard for God to do?” He is the God of healing and so we’re trusting Him. Father I pray that you would take this lady and heal her in the name of Jesus. And I’m also praying for healing for your brother. Sister just keep praying and just keep trusting. Brother from Nigeria I am praying for your mother-in-law, that God will step into her situation and that God will overshadow her body and heal her of any kind of demonic influence __ because I do know from…I’m from Nigeria myself. Whatever that is I come against it in the name of Jesus and I bind it in Jesus’ name. __ behind the evil upon her body in the name of Jesus. And father I pray that you would set your daughter free in Jesus name. Pastor John, I’m praying for that 18-year-old girl you called in about. I pray that God will wrap his arms around her, comfort her and give her the boldness to do what she needs to do to get justice and that God would help her __ will come up against him. __ expecting a baby, I’m praying for strength for you. I’m praying for increased communication for you in Jesus name. I’m praying that every sign of the devil concerning you and your marriage will not succeed. We put it down in the name of Jesus and I pray in Jesus’ name that God will heal your marriage. Blind Tony, I am encouraged by your faithfulness and calling in and just giving us poem after poem. God bless you my brother. Victoria Soldier I haven’t heard from you in a while. I pray for strength for you. Sister from Canada who is now a missionary, I think in Liberia I think. I pray for strength __ for you. God bless you all.

Hello DAB family this is a Delta Alpha Foxtrot. I’m calling for prayer for prayer on my heart, which has grown cynical against the church, against the body of Christ and I ask my brothers and sisters to pray for me to help God place me in the place he needs me, where he wants me within the body of Christ and that he would remove and help me to release the wounds that I’m carrying. I thank you all for your prayers. I thank you all for calling and giving us all the opportunity to pray for one another. Brian and Jill, love you. Thank you for years of dedication to this podcast and to this community. It’s just been awesome seeing what God has done through the Daily Audio Bible family. Shout out to my good friends out there, my longtime listeners, Blind Tony, Asia in Munich, Slave of Jesus, you know, so many of us, you know, over the years have, you know, just been a part of this community, just really grown with it. Such a beautiful thing that God is doing. I love you all. This is Delta Alpha Foxtrot calling from the southern Texas front.

[enkisstories]

In the Chinese room

- A DBH fanfic - AU: After a failed revolution (the same AU as always on this blog, just no pictures this time) Time: November 29, 2038 Characters: Hank, Gavin, Daniel

It was a slow Monday morning at the DPD. Outside the snow was falling gently, dulling all sound while it covered up the streets as if to say “come in again, darling, here’s your bedsheet”. And inside everyone seemed to still be in a blissful post-holiday stupor. Considering how many of the officers hadn’t even lived to see this year’s Thanksgiving, it had been all the more cause for celebration and gratitude for their surviving co-workers and their families. Even Gavin Reed was sitting unusually content in the cafeteria, tablet in front of him, absorbed in a digital textbook. The man was still walking wobbly after his encounter with Connor during the android uprising (or the more recent brawl with Hank Anderson). He was mostly deskbound these days, but had decided to put the enforced downtime to good use and start learning for an eventual sergeant exam. Memorizing the facts was laughably easy, an exercise in patience, really. But there would be an oral exam, too and even if you passed that you were not guaranteed a promotion. How much weight would co-workers’ statements about him carry, the detective wondered? Especially that of one in particular…

… the one who just now HAD to shake the damn snow off his clothes all over the table Reed was sitting at?

“Still here?” Gavin barked at Lieutenant Anderson.

“What kind of question is that? I only just arrived. I’m still wearing my damn jacket!”

Gavin turned a page by sliding across the tablet’s screen.

“Still alive?” he translated his initial question into plain English.

Hank bent down and put his hands on the table, both to steady himself and for emphasis when he growled: “Do you think I WANT to live?!”

After his brief outburst the man sacked down onto a chair.

“You wouldn’t understand anyway” he said. “I can’t leave now. I owe it to Connor.”

“Connor!” Gavin exclaimed and there went the peaceful morning. “What the hell’s got Connor to do with you wanting to live? Just because it only ever followed its mission until it got scrapped? Tell you what, you did yours well in the past, too, so you can totally follow that example!”

Hank stared at the younger man. Gavin Reed suddenly sat straighter and pushed his chair just a tiny bit farther away from the table and the lieutenant. It was a subconscious thing. That look on Anderson’s face… As if he was really there, really focusing, really being alive. There were still all the anger and the mental exhaustion that had controlled the lieutenant before the android revolution. But lately the man seemed to channel it into something instead of succumbing to apathy. Gavin thought of a real huge disciplinary folder that he didn’t fancy becoming another page of. He was in there a few times already (as in turn Anderson turned up in his), so he knew.

“Okay, joke aside”, Gavin said. “The thing about Connor is that it isn’t really dead. On account of it never having been alive in the first place. I could never stand the damn thing in “life”, so I shouldn’t let it get to you like that in “death”.

When the lieutenant didn’t out outright shoot him down for saying that, Gavin tapped to create a bookmark in the file he was reading and nodded. “Ever heard of the Chinese Room?” he asked.

“You’re mixing that up. It was amber and got stolen by the Nazis one hundred years ago.”

“Nah, that’s something different. The one I mean is a thought experiment. It can prove how we are wrong when we think androids are thinking when in truth it’s only simulated.”

“Oh, can it?” Hank sneered. “Amuse me, you great philosopher!”

Not letting himself get baited this time, Gavin started to recount how the experiment went:

“You put a dude into a chamber… nothing in, nothing out. Only a clap in the door to shove documents through.”

“That’s kinda cruel, though...”

“Now you put in a storybook, any story, but the catch is that it’s written in Chinese. The captive does not understand Chinese, yet the next thing you do is putting in questions about the stories that he is to answer, everything in Chinese again. The prisoner has a book with instructions. They enable him to recognize groups of symbols and reply with another set of symbols. To the blokes outside it looks as if he answered the questions correctly and they deduce that the prisoner must speak Chinese. When in truth he doesn’t. Yeah, that’s the gist of it. It’s how androids work. It’s only input-output, nothing going on inside.”

Hank continued to stare at the detective. Eventually he said: “Sounds familiar.”

Gavin nodded, confident that he had won the argument. But Hank only smiled and added:            

“But you’re living like that for thirty-six years now, so I guess you’re fine. Also, you’re sort of handsome, so maybe if you married a girl who’s reasonably intelligent on her own it won’t matter that there’s nothing going on inside that skull of yours.”

The comment was followed by a sound like the coffee machine malfunctioning. Or maybe someone was trying to boil a life vulture in the microwave oven. Turning their heads around the men realized that the noise came from the new addon to the cafeteria’s coffee machine. The addon’s function was to move the finished coffee around, it was called “Sardines” and was a PL600 android. And it had laughed just now. With a bit of practice android laughter sounded less industrial and only like a chain smoker’s, but this particular one had little incentive to laugh regularly.

“Did you listen in on our conversation?” Gavin yelled at the machine.

“Just scanned it for key words like “coffee”, “right now” and “dipshit”, Sir”, the android replied.

“If we have to call for coffee, it’s too late already, tincan!” Gavin protested. “You got to anticipate our needs and do your job without needing any prompting from us! That’s what “autonomous” means. It’s right there in your manual!”

The android snorted in a dismissive way. On the other hand the scolding could be taken as a request, so he poured two cups of the coffee he had made a little earlier, put them on the table and remained close by afterwards. Outwardly it looked as if the machine was waiting for further instructions, but in truth it was desperate for company. Any company, even that of smelly primates and even these two particular ones, the fed-up with everything veteran detective and the other one whom everyone else was fed up with.

“Thank you, Sardine”, Hank addressed the PL600.

The android replied with a weak, involuntary smile. Try as he might, it was hard  not to like Lt. Anderson. He probably would not have been Sardines’ first choice to spend his freetime with, had the android ever gotten granted that, but was certainly one of the better humans around. Perhaps “respect” was a better word than “like” to describe how Sardines felt towards the lieutenant. Even though there was one detail Anderson never seemed to get right:

“It’s “Sardines”, Sir”, the android corrected. “Plural.”

“But you are only a single one!”

“There’s more than one sardine in a tin”, Gavin said. “And that’s what it is: a bloody tin can.”

Hank concluded that there was something going on in Reed’s head, after all, even though it wasn’t what one might expect from normal people. The name explained, the lieutenant picked up their previous conversation topic:

“The real question is not whether the prisoner speaks the language, but if he feels something. Like, for instance, annoyance or utter puzzlement about how he ended up in the situation.” Hank turned his head around sharply towards the PL600. “Right, Sardines?”

“Maybe?” the android replied non-committedly.

“I have paper and a pen in my cell, yes?” Hank asked Gavin. “So now I write “Fuck yourself” and shove it through under the door! What do you say now, hey?”

“That… that’s against the rules!” the detective protested. “You cannot just do that! It’s not a fucking roleplaying game!”

Hank took a sip of his coffee.

“Sadly”, he mused aloud, “the persons outside the chamber cannot read or even recognize latin script. To them it would look like gibberish. So even though the prisoner is capable of both emotions and independent thought, neither would get attributed to him, because those outside are just too thick to get it!”

The man slammed the coffee mug onto the table.

“See?” he said, louder and more agitated than usually. “That’s the real problem here! It’s us! Not them!”

“Why not kick in the door?” Sardines suggested. “Get out and slap them left and right with their stupid storybook?”

Hank looked up at the android. “That’s what is generally referred to as deviance”, he said.

Damn, the android thought. I walked right into it. But it wasn’t a shot into the blue, was it? He must have suspected as much for some time now. Although me being a deviant would be the logical consequence of my cover story of having been Mr. Reed’s android. There’s zero reason to assume I’m the archive android... I hope.

“Not everyone’s strong enough to break through a cell door”, Hank thought aloud. “And so they will sit and sit in the chamber, exchanging meaningless text messages with their captors all life long.”

The man reached for Sardines’ hand and pulled until the android had no other choice than to take a seat, too.

“It’s sad… so incredibly sad…”

Sardines realized that Anderson was slipping away into depression. Within just a few minutes the sadness would get replaced by a mind-numbing hopelessness. Feeling sad was actually an improvement over that. Well, quite frankly, that was Mr. Anderson’s problem. Sardines’ problem, on the other hand, was that Hank was still holding the deviant’s hand, unwilling to let go. Which of the two was to be comforted, the man or the machine, wasn’t clear.

With his free hand Sardines pointed at the caught one, looking frantically at detective Reed at the same time. When that didn’t help he opened the free hand and his mouth a few times in a “What am I to do NOW?” pantomime.

Gavin shrugged, the universal reply of “Don’t ask ME!”, and turned another page.

“Xīpán”, Sardines murmured.

To his surprise detective Reed replied with: “Bēiguān zhǔyì zhě.”

“Did you just call me a whiner?!”

Gavin shrugged. “Dunno. I don’t speak Chinese. But hang out with Tina long enough and you pick up some phrases.”

“The swearwords?”

“Well, they are the most useful. When you want a bloke to strike the first blow so that you can write it into your report, you don’t discuss iroquois sewing patterns with them.”

“I know 6,000 languages… lots of profanity.”

“Sardines”, Gavin grinned, “I think you and me will yet turn out the best of friends!”

 Another page got turned.

“…provided I could trust you, that is. Not keen on calling Captain Fowler “my darling” or somesuch in some obscure language, because you told me it was a term of polite disagreement. So just leave Anderson to decompose right there and fetch me the cheese crackers from the cupboard! There aren’t walking over here on their own, you know.”

“And do you know, Mr. Reed”, Sardines chatted, while moving over to the cupboard, “what’s the best about that Chinese Chamber thought experiment? I’ll tell you: That you really have no means of knowing what exactly we are thinking. You won’t know, for example…”

With these words the android poured the chips into a bowl that he put before detective Reed.

 “…whether I poisoned these tonight.”

“You wouldn’t. I made a profile of you and you kill from the front, because you want us to see it coming!”

“You know I’m a deviant. Whatever you think that means, consciousness-wise, you at least understand that we can adapt. ‘sides, I just told you about the poison. So you DO see it coming. – Enjoy your snacks, Sir.”

A little later Gavin was trying to scrub thirium stains from the tablet that wasn’t his, but the DPD library’s. Meanwhile Sardines was making better progress at washing the blue blood off his chin where the detective had hit him with the device. The error reports were still sitting right up there in his computer brain, their nagging being the android equivalent of pain. But seeing that jerk of a policeman struggle with uncertainty for a few moments had definitely been worth it.

And Hank Anderson was sitting in the cafeteria, oozing snow on the floor and munching away on the chips. The fact that they might be poisoned was a welcome plus...

Note: Idk how many of you remember my third chapter (the christmas ‘39 sequence) where Gavin indeed picks up a swearword from Daniel. Although technically he learns it from Jeffrey with Daniel only supplying the general context for it to get used in.

[glassbangtan]

Anniversary Gift {Kim Namjoon}

Words: 2702

  Notes: I felt like writing fluff, and I love Namjoon. So here you go.

  Summary: You want to do something nice for Namjoon on your third anniversary with him. You forget the part where you’re just as much of a clutz as he is, meaning making pancakes isn’t as simple as everybody says it is.

   Warning: Floooooof.

   Pairing: Kim Namjoon x Reader

   Oftentimes, people wondered what made you and Namjoon so compatible. The two most loved up people in the room – what made you two like each other so much, to the point where you planned on spending the rest of your life with each other?

   For a long time, it was a mystery even to the two of you. You loved everything about him; his song writing skills, his perfect laugh that he would always try to cover up with his hand, his dimples which popped even at the slightest quirk of his lips. Maybe it was the way he always managed to call you at least once a day when he was away on tour, or send you the odd ‘Good morning’ tweet, even when your time zones were messed up. You would receive it in the middle of the day, and yet it still meant the world to you.

   Other times you would think it was because of his intelligence. The way he spoke English, and the way he translated for the other boys as you watched on in complete admiration of the man you were so happy to call yours.

   But it was days like this where the true answer to the complicated question of why really showed through, because it was your anniversary.

   Three years together was a long time. Three years of him going on random tours, three years of long distance, three years of craving the other person beyond any other feeling in the world – but at the same time, it was three years of absolute bliss that you wouldn’t trade for anything.

   For the first time in three years, Namjoon and you were actually spending your anniversary together. He had cleared his schedule, and you yours, to simply spend the day together. Whether it meant sleeping in each others arms for the entire day or going out and getting completely wasted – it didn’t matter to you. As long as Namjoon was with you, it would be worth it.

   All week, you and Yoongi had been planning the surprise anniversary breakfast that you had tried so hard to organise on your own. Yoongi had found you at three am, in the dorms one day with your head in your hands as you ran through a seemingly endless list of breakfast recipes, all of which were either too hard or far too simple for you to even think of making up. Thus the reason Yoongi was now standing beside you, on the morning of your and Namjoon’s third anniversary, pondering over a printed out list of ingredients and a method which haunted you.

   “You know,” Yoongi says after a moments silence. “Maybe we should just order food.”

   You grunt, snatching the page out of his hand and looking over it yourself. Chocolate chip pancakes didn’t seem like that big of a deal to make – your mother used to make them for you almost every morning with barely even a complaint – but you weren’t your mother, and you certainly weren’t a chef.

   In fact, the answer to the previous question as to why you and Namjoon loved each other so much, was most likely because the two of you were so alike in the fact that neither of you could do anything without messing it up at least once first.

   “What is so difficult about putting chocolate chips inside of pancake batter?” you ask, keeping your voice low as to not wake Namjoon.

   Yoongi shrugs. “I don’t think it’s that difficult. It’s the fact that it’s you cooking with me that is gonna mess it up.”

   “Not if you don’t mess around.”

   “Also if you don’t trip over your two left feet, just like you always do.” You roll your eyes and shove Yoongi with your shoulder, before setting the recipe down and getting to work. It couldn’t be that difficult, surely. You knew how to make pancake batter, and the only added ingredient was a few chocolate chips popped into each pancake you planned to make.

   Namjoon would enjoy it. As you bobbed around the kitchen, dodging Yoongi who had decided to put on an impromptu rap show in the middle of the kitchen, you can’t help but grin at the thought of Namjoon coming down to see the work you had put in. For months you had been telling him you wanted to do something special for him, pay him back for the work he had been doing all this time, but he had always insisted that it wasn’t that big of a problem for him if your anniversary was just spent inside the house. As long as you two were together, nothing could really go wrong.

   But the thought of not doing anything plagued you like you couldn’t believe. The least you could do, you thought, was make him breakfast. If you could just get past that small task, that would be okay.

   “I really don’t trust you lighting the oven,” Yoongi says when you press the nobs down on the hob to get it to light. You ignore him, waiting for the flames to stay put. Surprisingly, you get it on the first try. Off to a good start.

   And so you begin with everything. Making the pancake batter, pouring it into the pan, adding the chocolate chips and soon, everything was cooking. It was all working out well so far, and you couldn’t help but grin at your own work.

   Yoongi watched you with a look of amusement on his face, silently giggling that high pitched giggle he always had in the morning. You look at him, raising a brow in question.

   “You’re so proud of yourself for making pancakes,” he comments.

   “I’ve never made chocolate chip pancakes before.”

    “All you did was add chocolate chips to pancake batter.”

   You glare. “Please stop underestimating my hard work. This took guts.”

    Yoongi scoffs and nods, pushing himself off of the counter. “So now what?”

   “What do you mean?”

   “Well, this isn’t it, is it? A few pancakes and a good morning kiss?”

   You blank, staring at the rapper as if he had just slapped you in the face. “I got him some Ryan merch-” You cut yourself off, understanding just how strange you sound. Three years, and the most you could do was make some chocolate chip pancakes.

   Three years of being treated like a princess, and the most you could do for the man who blessed you was give him some chocolate chip pancakes?

   “Son of a bitch,” you hiss to nobody in particular. Yoongi raises a brow, looking at you as you walk towards the hob and take another utensil out of the bottom drawer. “Help me make a cake.”

   Yoongi’s eyes widen, him spluttering on air. “Wait, what?”

   “A cake, Yoongi!” you exclaim, clicking your fingers in his direction. “Come on. We haven’t got long before Namjoon wakes up.”

   “Y/N, I don’t think this is a good-”

   “How do you make cake batter? Does it need to be prepacked?” You’re already zooming around the relatively sizeable kitchen, dragging out every utensil and tool which looks like it could be helpful in cake baking. You had never before baked a cake by yourself – people often told you it wasn’t a good idea due to your clumsiness – but there was a first for everything, and today you were determined to try.

   Yoongi doesn’t argue as he  pulls up the simplest cake recipe he can find. The two of you read through the ingredients together, silently cursing when you realise that you have no icing to top off the master piece which you were sure you were about to produce.

   “I’ll go get some,” Yoongi declares, pulling his keys off of the key holder and tugging his coat on over his shoulders. “Don’t set anything on fire, or so help me God-”

   “Hurry up, Min Yoongi!”

   He yells his goodbye over his shoulder before the door closes behind him, leaving you alone with the cooking goods and the bubbling sensation of anxiety which is rising in the pit of your stomach with every passing second.

   Truth was, you didn’t know when the pancakes were meant to be done. For a few moments you just sit and watch them, gazing down at the bubbling mix as you try to time the moment they could possibly be edible – but it never seems right. You watch the corners go brown, the batter becoming thinner and thinner as the chocolate chips melt into it.

   “Flip it,” you outwardly tell yourself. You pull up the sleeves of your fluffy pyjama shirt and grab the handle of the pan. Yoongi had told you not to do anything, but you could hardly just let them burn, right?

   You think of all the movies you had seen before, how they had flipped the pancakes with so much grace and without the need of a spatula. You debate on using one, go against it and instead simply turn your body to face the wider area of the kitchen to give you more room. Silently counting down from three, you jolt your arms upwards, sending the barely cooked pancake batter through the air.

   You yelp when the tiny remnants of the uncooked batter come splattering down on your exposed skin, making a burning sensation quickly travel up the length of your arms. Tears blur your vision as you drop the pan with a bang which immediately makes you cringe at the volume of it – there was no way Namjoon hadn’t heard that.

    You find yourself following it to the floor, your knees buckling beneath you as you scrub at the burn makes which now dot your skin – there only minor, barely noticeable against your tanned complexion, but they still hurt like hell.

    You curse to yourself, curling up in a ball against the kitchen cupboards as you cradle your burning arm in your other hand. You’re too worked up in your own pain to notice the fact that you had just thrown a towel in the air, and it had landed on the now open flames of the hob.

   It’s the sound of the fire alarm which makes you realise. Your eyes widen, a yell of panic escaping your throat as you bound up, the pain suddenly ignored and replaced with a thick layer of panic, which you don’t make subtle with your yells and cries for assistance.

   Because, sure enough, the towel is now in flames and is spreading pretty quickly across the counter top.

   “Y/N? Y/N, get away from that!” you hear Namjoon yell behind you before arms are grabbing your waist and hauling you behind the counter. You cover your face, barely able to watch the mess you had created as Namjoon throws water over the minor fire, patting it out with another towel at the same time.

   Once the sound of flames has died down, you look at Namjoon through the cracks in your fingers. He’s shirtless this morning, wearing nothing more than plaid pyjama bottoms which hang low on his waist. His pink hair is a mess, if you can even call it that. Namjoon had always managed to make bed head look extremely attractive.

   “Aish,” Namjoon finally hisses, turning to look at you with wide eyes. You search his arms for any sign of damage, but nothing shows up. He had simply put the fire out and gotten on with it. “What are you doing?”

   You grit your teeth, lowering your hands to reveal a large, rectangular smile. “I was – uh – making breakfast?”

   Namjoon raises a brow. “Breakfast?”

   “For you. And me. And maybe Yoongi, if he hadn’t left before you got up.”

   “Yoongi was here?”

   “Yoongi was helping me make breakfast,” you reply, and Namjoon starts to slowly smile, dimples popping. “He was making sure I didn’t set fire to the house.”

   “He did a good job.”    “He went to get icing,” you explain, trying your hardest to fight your way out of this minor predicament. “If you could just do me a favour and go back to bed so we can pretend this never happened, that would be great.”

   Namjoon chuckles, shyly ducking his head down as he does so. You pout, watching him as he approaches you with his arms open wide, beckoning you in for a hug which was purely meant for comfort. He knew you had tried hard. He also knew how long you had wanted to do something for him, though he didn’t understand why. Everything you did was a gift for him, and he never wanted you to go out of your comfort zone just to impress him.

    You fall hostage into his arms, letting your head rest underneath his chin as a groan of annoyance escapes your lips. Annoyance at your lack of cooking skills, annoyance at the fact that the world, once again, had to go against you even though you had planned this so well.

   Namjoon rests his chin on the top of your head, pressing a firm kiss to your hair. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

   “Of course I do.” The answer is simple. He never failed to show you just how much he loved you. “I love you, too.”

   “Did you get hurt?” he asks. “The flames didn’t touch you, did they?”

   “Oh, no,” you reply, pulling away but you keep your arms on his waist as his stay limp on your shoulders. “I was already on the floor from being burned by the pancakes I tried to flip.”

   Namjoon closes his eyes, that perfect smile reappearing on his face. “I literally can’t leave you alone for two seconds without you injuring yourself. Let’s see the burns.”

   You pull away and show him your arms, letting him drag you over to the tap. He takes great precaution in rubbing the cold water into your skin, the feeling soothing against the previously blistering burns you had suffered.

    “Happy anniversary,” you mutter. Namjoon grins.

   “It’s off to a great start.”

   “You don’t have to flatter me. I’ve fucked it all up, haven’t I?”

   Namjoon raises a brow, his fingers still rubbing small circles into your arm as he leans over the counter and presses a chaste and morning kiss to your lips. It shocks you for a moment, but it doesn’t take long for you to melt into the kind gesture.

    He pulls away all too soon, a smile still playing on his features. “Honestly, you just being here with me makes it perfect. The best gift you have ever given me is three years with the love of my life. You don’t need to make me gormet breakfasts in bed or buy me expensive gifts – just be there. That’s all I need.”

   You open your mouth to reply, a warm feeling bubbling in the pit of your stomach that only Namjoon could ever pull out of you. With his philosophical reasonings behind every event in life to the way he rapped with so much passion, to the way he held your hand, to the way he just did anything. He always managed to make you feel some kind of way that you were almost embarrassed to admit.

    But no words come out before the front door is opening, Yoongi yelling as he walks through it with multiple bags of cake-toppers and icing.

   “For gods sake, Y/N, you can smell the smoke in the god damn hallway! What did you -” The Daegu boy stops in his tracks when he sees you and Namjoon standing by the sink, your arm submerged in cold water.

   He sighs, shaking his head. “I’m leaving. Here’s your cake stuff.” With one final wave, Yoongi throws the grocery bags on the sofa and turns to leave. He halts in the doorway, turns to look at the two of you over his shoulder, before he says, “I can see why you two fit so well together. You’re both hopeless.”

[dailydaveeddiggs]

Today, thanks to “Hamilton,” Diggs, 35, may be the more established half of the “Blindspotting” duo, but that wasn’t the case when he moved back to Oakland after earning his theater degree from Brown. Though four years younger, Casal had already made a name for himself on the Bay Area spoken-word scene, from which he was plucked to appear on HBO’s “Def Poetry.”

Casal had set up a recording studio with the aim of finding other musicians to collaborate with, reaching out to Diggs on the strength of a demo CD the rapper had recorded in his college dorm room. The friendship took hold almost immediately: That first night, they created a few songs, which led to albums, live performances (with a group they dubbed the Getback) and countless sketches and online videos.

“Rafael was the most famous person I knew,” Diggs recalls. “He had really tapped into the YouTube audience pretty early.”

Casal’s videos caught the attention of Jess Calder (then Jess Wu). The young producer, partnered in Snoot with her husband, Keith Calder, had seen a couple of his spoken-word performances and was struck by both Casal’s charisma and the fact that he appeared to be a natural-born storyteller.

“In my mind, anyone who can tell a great story can definitely translate that to film,” explains the producer, who contacted Casal and proposed they meet for coffee. She asked if he’d ever thought about writing a screenplay.

“I’d thought about theater a lot, [but at that age] you’re trying to get $5 for something at McDonald’s. A movie is millions of dollars away,” says Casal. But he was definitely intrigued, and began fleshing out a character that was loosely autobiographical. Things started to click about a year and a half later, when the Snoot duo asked Casal to perform at a screening of their documentary “Thunder Soul” at a January 2009 presidential inauguration event in Washington, D.C. Casal couldn’t make it but suggested they book Diggs in his place.

“Daveed came and did like 15 minutes of freestyle at the event and kind of blew our minds,” recalls Keith Calder. “We were immediately like, ‘Rafael, the movie’s gotta be about the two of you!’”

And from that moment forward, “Blindspotting” became the story of two friends of different races forced to consider the world from one another’s viewpoints, all set against the rapidly changing Bay Area backdrop.

Casal hails from Berkeley, the city directly north of Diggs’ Oakland. But they both attended Berkeley High School and later split a four-bedroom house with two other friends for $1,200. “I can’t even imagine what that place would cost now,” Casal says.

Gentrification, fueled by the tech boom, has transformed the neighborhoods they once knew. “Seventh Street is just a BART station and a post office now, but in the ’30s and ’40s, that was one of the jazz and blues centers of the world,” Diggs says. The last of the local music venues, Esther’s Orbit Room (where Diggs’ brother had been a bartender), finally shut down in 2010. His mother and father (also born in Oakland) both had to move, priced out by the newcomers.

Though not a musical in the conventional sense, “Blindspotting” was born out of a desire to translate spoken-word poetry into cinema. “There are versions where it was damn near a poem the whole time,” Diggs says.

From 2009 onward, he and Casal worked on the script together, huddling over the same laptop since they had only a single licensed copy of Final Draft between them.

“We were trying to find a recipe for a world where verse could exist without it feeling like there’s a deliberate shift every time it goes into a number,” Casal explains. “The Bay Area is known for slang and for turn of phrase. It’s the evolution of pimp culture, so heightened language is already very prevalent in the way people relate to each other.”

For the next several years, Diggs and Casal spent their time driving up and down Interstate 5 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, parking out front of wherever Snoot headquarters happened to be at the time and sleeping in their car if needed. They wrote draft after draft of “Blindspotting,” pitching the changes to the Calders while using Snoot’s facilities to work on music videos and other projects.

“I’ve always felt like our offices were a place where they should feel safe to create art,” says Jess Calder.

Before Diggs and Casal could complete a shooting version of the script, they were pulled away by other professional opportunities. Casal went off to teach verse-driven theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years. And, for Diggs, “Hamilton” happened.

“The thing about this business is you never know if something’s a break,” says Diggs. “I met Lin-Manuel Miranda because of a clerical error.” Diggs showed up for the same substitute teaching job as one of Miranda’s friends, Anthony Veneziale, who was also a rapper. They hit it off, and Veneziale invited Diggs to freestyle with his group, of which Miranda was a member. Later, when it came time to do an early reading of “Hamilton,” Miranda remembered Diggs and his rapid-fire delivery. “I was invited because I have this particular skill set that allows me to learn a lot of things very quickly,” recalls Diggs, who had just five days to memorize the show’s most demanding part. “I assumed they would replace me because they had plenty of Broadway performers to choose from.”

Except that Miranda didn’t replace Diggs, who spent nearly a year and a half with the production. “Before leaving ‘Hamilton,’ I made this comment to one of my agents,” Diggs recalls. “I was ready to go, but scared that I wouldn’t make any money again, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ and promptly booked my life with all these things.”

The day after his last “Hamilton” performance in mid-2016, Diggs found himself shooting the movie “Wonder,” starring Julia Roberts. The following week, he began working on ABC’s “Black-ish.” That was swiftly followed by a recurring role on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which had to be juggled amid a long-planned national tour with his experimental rap group, Clipping.

Into the midst of this whirlwind came the moment for which Diggs and Casal had long been waiting. Last March, the Snoot producers told them they had the greenlight to make “Blindspotting,” provided the duo could get their script in shape to shoot in June.

“What if I move to L.A. in two days and I write it for a month?” Casal recalls asking — and that’s exactly what he did, undertaking a page-one overhaul while Diggs’ fledgling screen career kept him busy.

“I was on airplanes every other day,” says Diggs, “so really the only through line were these midnight phone calls from Rafael to talk about this thing we’d been talking about for a decade.”

Excited about the prospect of finally making the movie, Diggs kept a rare 25-day window open in June for the shoot. Casal managed to get the rewrite done in four weeks. Reaching out to another old friend, they brought in director López Estrada, who immediately began pre-production.

The project’s Oakland focus attracted some production talent whom the producers normally couldn’t afford, including DP Robby Baumgartner, who had worked in the lighting department for Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and who brought the lighting crew from “Moonlight” aboard.

“We suddenly had this amazing team of people from the Bay Area,” says Diggs. “Doing something with your friends at a high level, that’s a dream.”

After production wrapped, Snoot submitted a rough cut to Sundance, which recommended the music-driven film for a Dolby Family Sound Fellowship. “Blindspotting” is one of two 2018 Sundance selections to have earned the generous post-production grant, making it possible for the filmmakers to upgrade their mix in time for its festival debut. (Past recipients of the grant include “Mudbound” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”)

Thanks to the grant, Diggs, Casal and other members of the production team — including López Estrada and the Calders — spent late December camped out on the Paramount Pictures lot on the same Technicolor stage where Michael Bay mixes his “Transformers” films.

On the same day of Variety’s visit, Diggs and Casal wrote a short piece of original music to replace a few seconds of temp score. Since they came up with the cue themselves, that means they can later expand it into a full-blown song for the soundtrack.

It’s the kind of on-the-fly challenge that has fueled the duo’s creative partnership for more than a decade — though “Blindspotting” is the first time they’ve been able to combine their writing, performance and musical talents to such a degree.

“As an artist, the only thing you ever want to do is something that requires every part of yourself,” Diggs says. “And it is so rare when that happens.” (x)

LOVE the insight as to how this all came together.

[quicksilversquared]

Plagg and the Butterfly Costume Outtakes: Ch. 6

Plagg is willing to do a lot in order to get more cheese. When he’s spotted one too many times en route to the kitchen, he decides that a disguise is in order. One purple costume later, and Plagg is free to flit down to the kitchen without people thinking that he’s a rat.

And then he gets caught.

PATBC: (1)  (2)  (3)  (OT:1)  (4)  (5)   (6)  (OT: 2)  (7)  (OT: 3)  (OT: 4) (OT: 5)  (8)

(AO3) (FF.net)

The Office Raid

(set in the middle of PatBC ch. 8)

Moments after Chat Noir transformed, he spotted Ladybug swinging around the side of the building, bag of fake Miraculous things at her side. She somersaulted gracefully into the room, then straightened and raced over to join him. Halfway there, she paused and frowned, glancing around the large room. For some reason, her gaze lingered for several seconds on the open bathroom door.

"That's funny. I would have thought that Adrien would be at home today," she commented. She rounded the couch and stepped over to join Chat Noir. "I mean, it's convenient that he's not here because this is the easiest way to get in, but..."

"Maybe he's over at a friend's house," Chat Noir suggested, steering Ladybug out of the room. He didn't know how familiar Ladybug was with his civilian side- comments she had made before made him suspect that she might know him in person- so it would probably be better if they didn't linger in his room for too long. "Nathalie just stepped out, let's go!"

They ran across the atrium, kwamis zipping after them. Chat Noir threw open the door to the office and dashed in with Ladybug hot on his heels, though she paused for a second to shut the door behind them. He went right to the computer, trying his best to ignore the fact that his father would be furious if he ever found out about this.

"Sweet, it looks like he was already using the Miraculous account!" Chat Noir exclaimed after he wriggled the mouse and Locking Research came up on the screen. According to Plagg (or, rather, according to Nooroo), that was the name of his father's Miraculous account. He typed in the password quickly. "And he was using the Internet, so it isn't gonna be totally out of left field that he might get a virus."

"Does he have anti-malware?" Ladybug asked. She and Pollen were already throwing open the safe, carefully emptying one shelf at a time into an empty bag and then refilling it with the decoy scrolls. Wayzz had settled down with one of Mr. Agreste's journals and was paging through it, a look of interest on his small face.

Chat Noir checked. "Yup. Turning it off."

He plugged the first of the huge flash drives into his father's computer and started moving the first of the series of folders on his father's account onto it. He swore quietly as the transfer worked with agonizing slowness.

Thank goodness Nathalie was going to be gone for a while. If she had been in and out, he would have had to hide behind his father's desk and try to do the transfers without her noticing.

And Nathalie was really observant. She would have noticed. He would have gotten into trouble.

"What's wrong?" Ladybug wanted to know. She glanced over, looking anxious. "Is there some security thing that we didn't know about?"

"No, these files are just really, really large. They're going to take forever to move from the computer to my flash drives." Thank goodness he had gotten several flash drives with the largest capacity he could find. He would probably need the storage room. "I just hoped that this would go faster."

Ladybug glanced over his shoulder, and her eyes went wide. "Is that one file? Holy crud!"

"It's a folder full of files," he corrected. "From the name, it looked like maybe it has the scans from the book."

"Oh, no wonder, then," Ladybug said, looking relieved. "Chat Noir, there are hundreds of pages in that book! That'll probably be the biggest folder, unless the book files are split up into sections."

Chat Noir just shrugged. He hoped that Ladybug was right. Otherwise, they were going to be here all day.

"Why don't you come take pictures of the journal pages while that transfers?" Ladybug suggested. She pointed to the camera she had pulled out. "Then we can get more done-"

They both froze as the door clicked open and Nathalie strode in. She paused in the doorway when she caught sight of them, both incriminatingly frozen in front of the open safe. The kwamis dove out of sight.

It only took Nathalie a moment to compose herself. "Good morning," she said politely, striding towards her desk. "Don't mind me, I just need to get my purse. I'll be gone in a minute."

The superheroes just blinked at her, wide-eyed in fear. This had been what they had been worried about, being caught in the act by Nathalie. Why hadn't Fu warned them that she was coming back in?

"You do know that there's security cameras all over the place, right?" Nathalie inquired as she dug behind her desk for her bag. "There's one in this office, and another in the atrium, and a few others outside. Do you need any help getting them disabled?"

She got a blank stare in reply. Chat Noir wasn't even certain that his ears were working right, or maybe it was his brain that was misinterpreting her words. Wasn't she going to call the police, or at least his father?

Nathalie clearly wasn't waiting for an answer. Instead, she sat down at her computer and looked at the security feeds. She glanced down at her screen, and then her eyes widened. "Oh! You already have the inside cameras on loop, great. Just be careful when you're leaving. I would suggest going out that window there, and then dropping straight down and going over the side wall. You'll keep out of sight of the cameras out there."

Chat Noir's brain was slowly coming back online. Nathalie was... helping them?

"Once I get back from this errand, I can review the footage while Mr. Agreste is getting freed and try to edit out anything that accidentally gets on tape then, but avoiding showing up on camera in the first place would be best." Nathalie got back up and glanced over at them. "...what?"

"You aren't going to call the police on us?" Ladybug questioned, still rather pale. "When we're stealing from your boss?"

Nathalie scoffed. "If you were stealing his personal belongings, then yes. But I know perfectly well that everything in that safe is related to him being Hawkmoth and that he stole most of it. Take it." Her eyes fell on the bag of fakes, and a small smile slid onto his face. "Are you replacing everything with fakes? Even better. I won't have to deal with his temper tantrums for losing that stuff then."

"So you do know that he's Hawkmoth," Ladybug accused. Nathalie looked unbothered by the accusation in her voice.

"Of course. Do you really think he'd be able to get away with slipping off to that lair of his for hours without me noticing? He's threatened me to keep me quiet." Nathalie didn't look pleased about it. "I'd love to see him taken down. Also, he has a scroll in his desk that he's been working on translating, not that he's gotten very far. Most of what he knows about past users comes from old legends he's found." She walked over next to Chat Noir and crouched down to unlock one of the lower drawers with a key on her lanyard. She pulled it open and pulled out a scroll.

"Just try to arrange the sticky notes in the same way," Nathalie warned as she handed the scroll over to Ladybug. "The drawer will automatically lock when you close it. And he does have scans of the book and the scrolls on his computer-"

"We're taking care of those," Chat Noir assured her as he found his voice again. Nathalie looked impressed.

"Fantastic. And I take it you have some way to hide that the files just deleted themselves?"

"Of course."

Nathalie looked pleased. "Good. Fantastic. Oh, before I forget- there's a flash drive with backup scans in the second drawer down- yes, that one," she said as Chat Noir yanked open the drawer to find it full of flash drives. "And it should be labelled, Mr. Agreste labels everything."

Chat Noir dug for a couple seconds and then emerged victorious with a flash drive labeled Miraculous. "Just the one?"

"Correct."

"Thank you," Ladybug spoke up from where she was frantically peeling off and reattaching sticky notes from the scroll Nathalie had gotten for them. "We hadn't known about those."

"Did you know about the second Miraculous Mr. Agreste has?" Nathalie asked. Her phone beeped with a message, and she sent a slightly harried look at it. "The peacock?"

"We've switched it out with a normal pin that looks just like it," Chat Noir assured her.

"Great." Nathalie stepped towards the door, then paused again. "Also, if you could- please don't tell Adrien about this yet, or let him know that you're here. He doesn't need to worry about his father getting arrested on top of everything else he has to do. Just steer clear of his room, okay?"

Chat Noir mentally groaned. Why did she have to mention him? Now Ladybug was going to wonder about where he was.

"Does Mr. Agreste have a plan for what would happen to Adrien if he got arrested?" Ladybug asked. She looked concerned, and Chat Noir's heart gave a little jump. She was so worried about him, and it was almost too much for his little kitty heart to bear.

Nathalie snorted. "Of course not. He always says that he doesn't need a plan for that, because he doesn't plan on getting caught. So I wrote up a plan that would have Adrien's bodyguard and I caring for him in the even that Mr. Agreste cannot, and I just stuck it in with the rest of the forms that Mr. Agreste had to sign. He didn't even notice." There was a honk outside, and Nathalie glanced over her shoulder. "I have to go. Will you be forcing a final battle soon, or...?"

"It might be a couple weeks," Ladybug said. She shrugged at Nathalie's look. "We want to be sure that we'll be ready to face him without people getting hurt."

"Understandable. Let me know if I can help in any way in the future, but for now I have to run." Nathalie glanced around the room one more time, nodded at them, and then left.

They stayed silent until they heard the large front doors of the mansion close.

"Wow," Chat Noir breathed, a small smile starting to appear on his face. "Wow. Okay, I wasn't expecting that. I know Plagg said that he thought that she was being forced into silence, but he wasn't positive."

"Do we trust her, though?" Ladybug asked. She glanced around. "What do the kwamis think?"

Wayzz popped out of the wall. "I trust her," he reported. "She was startled at first, but there were no malicious vibes coming off of her. She was relieved to find that you knew about Mr. Agreste."

"Agreed," Trixx said, appearing from the safe. "The tripping over herself to help you was entirely genuine. That's nice to know that there are adults here with their heads on straight."

Chat Noir let himself smile. Trixx was right; it truly was good to know that Nathalie wasn't evil. That was a comforting thought, at least.

"Chat Noir, the file finished moving," Pollen reported. He jumped and spun back to the computer. Ladybug went back to the safe.

They worked in silence for a few more minutes. Ladybug finished her switch-out and moved on to taking pictures of the notes and pictures in Mr. Agreste's folder while Chat Noir moved the remainder of the (thankfully much smaller) files onto his own flash drive. Pollen and Wayzz helped Ladybug by moving pages that she had already photographed out of the way, speeding up the whole process.

"All files are moved," Chat Noir reported five minutes later. He pulled out the flash drive and flashed a smile over his shoulder at Ladybug. "Now time for the virus."

"You sound eager," Ladybug said with a laugh. "Is that something you've been long forward to?"

"Definitely."

A minute later, the Max-made virus was ripping through the computer. Chat Noir smirked, pocketed all of his flash drives, and went to go help Ladybug.

"I can use the camera on my staff," he suggested, sliding out one of the notebooks. "Dunno how we'll get it onto Master Fu's computer, but I suppose we can figure that out later."

Ladybug just nodded, too focused to respond. Trixx zipped over to Chat Noir's side to flip pages for him.

"How many of these journals did Master Fu want us to scan?" Chat Noir asked. He desperately wanted to read some of the pages he was photographing, but there wasn't the time for that now.

Well. Okay, technically there was. Nathalie and the Gorilla would be gone for the better part of an hour, probably, but they probably shouldn't dawdle. Besides, there was the ever-present threat of his father getting impatient with being trapped and simply transforming and cutting his way out of the elevator.

"Just the last couple, I think," Ladybug said. She looked almost done with her first one. "Since they would be the most likely to have accurate information about the temple and about Mr. Agreste's wife."

"Got it."

Chat Noir photographed every page in the journal in record time. He could see his mother's handwriting on some of the pages, and he was desperate to know what she had written. Ladybug was putting her second journal away as he closed his and put it back at the bottom of the stack in the safe.

"We've been here for nearly half an hour," Ladybug said anxiously, glancing towards the window. "And we've done three journals, plus the folder. I think we should clean up and get out of here. Mr. Agreste is super-impatient, I wouldn't be surprised if he gets fed up and cuts his way out."

"He's definitely been cursing a lot," Trixx piped up. "I didn't even know some of those words existed!"

Chat Noir cringed. That was a bit embarrassing.

"Okay, let's do that. And we've got all of the original scrolls?"

"Yup!" Trixx said cheerfully. "There aren't any ancient artifacts left in that safe. We can comb the rest of the room while you two make sure everything is in order."

Two minutes later, the safe was convincingly rearranged and the kwamis hadn't found anything else of interest. Chat Noir made sure that he had all of his flash drives and Ladybug made sure that her bag was securely zipped shut. They raced out while Wayzz and Trixx stayed back to put the cameras back to normal.

"Wait," Ladybug said suddenly, freezing outside of Adrien's door. "Nathalie said not to disturb Adrien, but he isn't here."

"Maybe he just snuck out," Chat Noir suggested, hoping that she didn't notice how his voice had suddenly gone up in pitch. "He's done that before, right? Maybe he just decided to take advantage of none of the adults being home to check on him."

Ladybug relaxed and laughed. "Yeah, that's true. You're right. Let's go, Kitty. I'm sure Master Fu is waiting to hear how things went."

[literaryeagle]

Okay, so the Yuri!!! on Ice item that I'll be reviewing today is Yuri!!! on Stage, on Blu-ray. (It’s also available on DVD, but I chose to get the Blu-ray because the image quality would be better.) I'm sure a lot of people have talked about it already, however I will translate the scene titles and discuss an additional feature that you might have missed if you didn't explore the menu screen. I will also show the bonus items packaged with the disc, and show the extra special items that you could only get if you ordered it from Animate! So, hopefully this review will still have something useful. ^_^

Just in case anyone isn't familiar with Yuri!!! on Stage yet, it was a live show that took place on April 29, 2017 at Maihama Amphitheater. The voice actors for most of the male skaters were there, plus the voice actor for Takeshi Nishigori, and series writer Mitsurou Kubo. They did a bunch of fun stuff like discussing their favorite scenes from the anime, playing games, and performing a NEW STORY that takes place after the TV series (the new story was an audio drama that they voiced live, so it wasn't animated). The Yuri!!! on Stage event actually occurred twice on that day... once in the afternoon, and once in the evening. There were a few differences between the two versions of the event, however the audio drama was the same story both times. The Blu-ray and DVD are a video recording of the evening version. As an example of one of the cute things you can see in the video, check out the image below... from left to right, that's Junichi Suwabe (voice of Victor), Toshiyuki Toyonaga (voice of Yuri), and Koki Uchiyama (voice of Yurio):

Sorry for my bad photograph of the screen, but taking high-quality screen captures from BDs is a no-no. Anyway, yes, the above image is a reference to Yuri poking Victor's hair in the anime, except here it's Victor's voice actor doing it to Yuri's voice actor. Hilarious! Also, wow, Suwabe bleached his hair to look more like Victor. Talk about dedication!

Want to know more? Keep reading for the rest of the review, plus a few more pictures!

There are no subtitles, so you'll miss out on a lot if you don't understand Japanese, although for some reason the end credits are in English. The scene selection menu is written in Japanese, but don't worry, I'll translate the scene titles for you! The first one is simply called "Opening", and it's the part of the show that introduced the characters and their voice actors. Unfortunately, the actors who play as JJ, Otabek, and Michele were not able to make it to the event, however they had recorded videos that were played later in the show.

The second segment is named "Jibun o Suki ni Natte... Popovich no Carabosse no Heya", which means "Like Yourself... Popovich's Room of Carabosse". (The "Like Yourself" bit is a reference to the title for episode 4 of Yuri!!! on Ice, "Like Yourself... And Complete the Free Program!"). The MC for this part was Wataru Hatano, the voice of Georgi Popovich and also the artist who sang the anime's ending theme, "You Only Live Once". Basically, the voice actors were divided into groups, and the actors discussed their favorite scenes from the anime involving their characters. For example, Kensho Ono (voice of Phichit) chose the "Congratulations on your marriage!" line from episode 10 as his favorite Phichit scene. He has good taste! Mitsurou Kubo also commented on the fans' enthusiasm for that scene. Here's an image showing Wataru Hatano on the left, and Mitsurou Kubo on the right:

The third part is called "Chou Chou Chou Chou Ganbaranba! Katsudon Pirozhki Soudatsu! World Question!" ("Gotta Super-Super-Super-Supercharge It! Katsudon Pirozhki Contest! World Question!"... Whew, these titles are a mouthful, ha ha!). For this part, a bit of dialogue from the anime had been translated into Russian, and after a Russian-speaking person read the dialogue out loud, the voice actors had to guess what scene from the anime it was. (For the afternoon version of Yuri!!! on Stage, a scene had been translated into Thai instead of Russian.) By the way, it turned out the Russian speaker's name was Emil, much to the amusement of Satoshi Hino, the voice of Emil Nekola.

Even though Mamoru Miyano (voice of JJ) wasn't able to make it to the event, there was a video of him giving the voice actors a hint for this Russian game. Frankly, the scene was pretty simple to guess even without the clue (you can hear Emil say "pirozhki" and "katsudon", which narrows down the possibilities quite a bit), but I'm always up for more JJ Style, so I enjoyed the hint video anyway.

The fourth section is named "Afureko Imagination Show" ("afureko" is short for "after recording", meaning adding sound after a film has been made... so I guess it can be translated as "dubbing" or something like that). For this part, they played various clips from the anime, but instead of using the recorded audio from the show, the voice actors performed their dialogue live! Very cool.

Next, the fifth part is called "Special Video Letter", which had video messages from Yoshimasa Hosoya (voice of Otabek) and Tomoaki Maeno (voice of Michele), since they weren't able to make it to the event. After that, there were a few more clips from the anime, with the voice actors for Victor, Yuri, and Yurio performing their lines live... but with something very special added to the stage! Part of the floor had been replaced with a miniature skating rink (just a small square of ice, really), so figure skater Honoka Kawanishi could perform Yurio's free skate during these scenes. Wow! Since the square of ice she had on the stage was so small, there wasn't enough room for her to do the jumps, but it was still a lovely performance. What a brilliant idea! Check it out:

The sixth segment is named "Roudoku Geki Hasetsu Exhibition Onsen!!! on ICE Victor with Friends" ("Reading Drama Hasetsu Exhibition Hot Springs!!! on ICE Victor with Friends"), which is probably the part of Yuri!!! on Stage that people have talked the most about already. As mentioned earlier in this review, it's a new story that takes place after the TV series. It was written by Kimiko Ueno. This story is not animated, but the voice actors are fun to watch as they read their scripts, and music from the anime is played in the background, which is a nice touch.

I won't get into too much detail about the plot, because so many other people have posted about it already. But to put it simply, the skaters have gathered in Yuri's hometown for an ice show called "Victor with Friends", however a little too much drinking and partying happens the night before the show. If you've ever wondered what would happen if Victor and Yuri both got drunk at the same time, well... it involves a lot of flexibility, and not much clothing! There's also a hilarious misunderstanding involving Yuri's drunken ramblings about a statue of Shachihoko (a legendary creature that is part tiger and part fish), which Victor mistakenly interprets as Yuri reminiscing about a really flexible ex-lover named "Chihoko". Silly Victor, getting jealous over a fish statue! It's pretty funny. (By the way, there was another live event in the summer called Yuri!!! on Festival which included a sequel drama, about Yuri getting possessed by a squid demon. Unfortunately, word has it that Yuri!!! on Festival will not be getting a DVD/Blu-ray release. Hopefully they'll change their minds, or at least release the drama part as a CD.)

Okay, moving on... The seventh part is called "LIVE You Only Live Once Yuri!!! on ICE feat. w.hatano". As you can probably guess by that title, Wataru Hatano did a live performance of the ending theme to the anime. He was accompanied by two backup dancers.

The eighth section is called "Ending", which had everyone wrapping things up and thanking the audience. After that, everything seemingly ends with the credits... If you have the Blu-ray or DVD, did your video player just go to the menu screen after the credits finished? That's what mine did, however there's actually more on the disc! If you look on the menu screen, the last numbered segment is part 8, which is the aforementioned "Ending". But after that, there's one more item, which doesn't have a number. So be sure not to miss it! This last bit is another version of the Special Video Letters from Mamoru Miyano (JJ), Yoshimasa Hosoya (Otabek), and Tomoaki Maeno (Michele). You can tell these must be from the afternoon version of Yuri!!! on Stage, because Mamoru Miyano gives a Thai clue instead of a Russian clue.

That's it for the show, so next I'll talk about the bonus items packaged with the disc, and then I'll talk about the extra special goodies that you could only get if you ordered it from Animate. Yay! First, there's a little booklet that comes with the disc. It has a shiny silver cover, but unfortunately my photo doesn't do it justice:

This is basically a miniature version of a pamphlet at that was sold at the Yuri!!! on Stage event, except the mini version is missing a few pages advertising Yuri!!! on Ice merchandise (although it makes up for it by having extra artwork for the last page). I think the reason why it's miniature is because it had to be the same length and width as a DVD case, to avoid an awkward packaging situation. It includes some really nice photos and profiles of the voice actors. I actually have the full size version of the pamphlet that was sold at the event, so I'll be covering that in a future review. In other words, I will wait until that review before I get into further detail about the contents of this booklet. (EDIT: My review of the pamphlet is now available!)

Okay, the other item packaged with the disc is this Makkachin selfie light, which can be attached to a smartphone:

Isn't that adorable? All right, next I'll talk about the additional goodies that were obtainable by ordering Yuri!!! on Stage from Animate. The first one is a "portrait". On the outside, it looks like a thin gray hardcover book...

...but it's not actually a book, because there's just a picture inside. But it's a very nice picture. What kind of picture, you ask? It's a beautiful textless version of the Yuri!!! on Stage cover art! Check it out:

So nice! And finally, people who pre-ordered from Animate under certain conditions were able to get a cute little Makkachin can badge. I took a close-up of it, so you can get a really good look:

Overall, Yuri!!! on Stage is funny and entertaining, and the bonus items packaged with the disc are cute. The additional special items from Animate are great as well, although I'd imagine those are sold out by now. However, please keep in mind that the Blu-ray and DVD are not subtitled, so you'll miss out on a lot if you don't understand Japanese (although the voice actors' antics are still fun to watch), so it's up to you to decide if that's worth it. The Blu-ray and the DVD are both still available on Amazon.co.jp (NOTE: the DVD is Region 2 only!), however Avex Pictures has placed a restriction on their CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays being shipped outside of Japan. Unfortunately, this means that Amazon.co.jp will no longer ship those items overseas, so if you don’t live in Japan you’ll have to either buy it from a source that’s not affected by the restriction, or get a shopping deputy to help you with the purchase.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I have other official Yuri!!! on Ice merchandise that I’ll be reviewing, so keep checking my blog for new stuff!

[armeniaitn]

The Geopolitical and Energy Security Dimensions of the Latest Armenian-Azerbaijani Clashes

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/the-geopolitical-and-energy-security-dimensions-of-the-latest-armenian-azerbaijani-clashes-41191-30-07-2020/

The Geopolitical and Energy Security Dimensions of the Latest Armenian-Azerbaijani Clashes

There are currently three major zones of possible escalations between Russia and Turkey: the Levantine zone in Syria, the Mediterranean zone in Libya, and the Caucasian zone between Armenia and Azerbaijan. All of these zones are interconnected with each other. The latest Azerbaijani provocation against Armenia must be looked at from a geopolitical and energy security dimension amid the regional struggle between Moscow and Ankara.

On July 12, 2020, Azerbaijani armed forces attempted an incursion into Armenia. Armenian military positions in that border area are based on a static defensive posture reinforced by a combination of fortified terrain and topography, thereby enjoying the strategic advantage over Azerbaijani forces. It is worth mentioning that the attack was a clear violation of the sovereignty of a recognized state and was 300 kilometers away from the borders of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh). The move started with a failed attempt by Azerbaijani commandos to seize a strategic hilltop in the northeastern Armenian province of Tavush, where Armenian troops were in a defensive position. After the attack, the Armenian response intensified as the Azerbaijani army used Israeli-made drones to bomb Armenian positions. For the first time, Armenia used domestically-produced drones against Azerbaijani military targets. Azerbaijani army Major-General Polad Gashimov and Colonel Ilgar Mirzoyev and dozens of soldiers and officers were killed in Armenian retaliations. Here we should ask the following questions. What were these high level military personnel doing around the border? Was Baku preparing for a major offensive? From a military and psychological point of view, the killing of an Azerbaijani major general and his associates was a quick shock to demoralize the Azerbaijani troops on the ground and send shockwaves to Baku. 

The killing of the high level officials heightened tensions and appeared to raise fears within the ruling elite and autocrats of Baku. State-sponsored protests took place in Baku calling to end the lockdown and arm the people to “liberate the occupied Azerbaijani lands”; ironically, of the 30-thousand protesters, only 150 were registered as volunteers to go to the border. President Ilham Aliyev was furious. Meanwhile, the anti-Armenian protests took a violent turn when angry protesters clashed with the police, burned their cars and stormed the parliament calling “death to Armenians.” Aliyev openly condemned the move against the parliament and portrayed it as an “attempted coup d’etat” orchestrated by the opposition. Aliyev scored two major goals: first, he showed Moscow and Western powers that his war was “popular and legitimate and he is acting on behalf of the will of the people;” and second, he wanted to eliminate the opposition by portraying them as the enemy of the state. According to Eurasianet (July 17, 2020), Baku authorities detained more than 70 activists and journalists, including seven political activists from the leading opposition “Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan” (PFPA). President Aliyev commented on the arrests saying “they are worse than Armenians… Armenians are an open enemy…While these are located among us. They get money, instructions from abroad, pollute our fresh air with stench and at these moments are standing with the enemy, not with the state.”

Aliyev’s intent was to divert the peoples’ attention from falling oil prices, unemployment, a water shortage and corruption in an attempt to get rid of his old political rivals and even traditional allies. Many Azerbaijani youths are frustrated by the diplomatic track around the Artsakh negotiations and fed up with the empty promises of the “Aliyev dynasty.” This frustration with diplomacy and mediation triggered the dismissal of Azerbaijan’s long-serving foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov on July 16 for allegedly being too timid and weak in the negotiations. Already on July 15, Azerbaijani social media was full of attacks against the country’s “failure in diplomacy.” Mammadyarov, however, was only carrying out the orders and executing the policies of Aliyev. His replacement by Education Minister Jeihun Bayramov, who has no diplomatic experience whatsoever, further indicates that Baku will no longer adhere to diplomatic principles and will rely on the use of force to divert the peoples’ attention from socio-economic demands and mobilize the youth against Armenia. An internal power struggle that started earlier this year with a snap parliamentary election in Baku saw the elevation of a new, younger loyal elite and its replacement of the experienced “old Soviet-educated guards.” This state-sponsored transition featured the promotion of presidential assistant and former Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev to new head of the Foreign Policy Affairs department of the Presidential administration and the promotion of many loyal officials close to Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva (President Aliyev’s wife) to new key positions.  

Cover of “Dirilis Postasi” depicting southern Armenia and Artsakh as completely annexed to Azerbaijan

The recruitment of these young officials further institutionalized the spread of anti-Armenianism amongst the youth. This strategy was translated on the ground in April 2020 when the “Western Azerbaijan Exiled Government” was formed in Ankara. By analyzing the Twitter posts of “Western Azerbaijan Public Union” and the “chairman of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh” MP Tural Ganjaliyev, one could have assumed that the next battle was going to be with Armenia and not Artsakh. In the last few months, Azerbaijani state-sponsored social media accounts and pages unleashed extensive propaganda claiming that the territories of the Republic of Armenia also are part of “historical Azerbaijan unjustly taken away from Azeris by the Russians and given to Armenians.” Eventually, it became clear that Baku authorities were laying the groundwork to psychologically prepare their youth for the next battle as well as future battles or wars. Azerbaijan’s Pan-Turkist aspirations are not secret. Pan-Turkists believe that the territories stretching from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and some parts of Russia, Iran and China belong to their ancestors, and it is their right to reconquer these lands by arms. Amid the border clashes, the Turkish “Dirilis Postasi” outlet published a cover with a map of Artsakh and the Armenian province of Synuk and most of Vayots Dzor merged into Azerbaijan with the title “Karabakh or Death.” These aspirations are also encouraged by Turkey, where in 2019 during military drills with Azerbaijan, participants wore a badge showing the maps of Turkey and Azerbaijan as unified and depicting the regions of Ararat, Kotayk, Armavir, Aragatsotn, Shirak, Lori, Syunik, Meghri and Artsakh in Azerbaijan. The adherents of this ideology dream of the creation of a unified Turkic state extending from the Bosphorus to the Xinjiang province of China.

The badge of Turkish-Azerbaijani troops during the military drills in May 2019

Coming back to geopolitics, the recent clashes may usher in a new period of unpredictability and instability and involve Turkey, Iran and Russia. The Turkish response was an immediate endorsement of Azerbaijan’s claims. With the rise of Turkey as a regional power, the balance of power in the South Caucasus and the Middle East gradually started to shift in Ankara’s favor. Turkey started to flex its muscles both through its soft and hard power engagements in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and even Yemen. Although Ankara’s support of Baku can be seen as natural, the sudden and swift backing of Azerbaijan stems more from Ankara’s aspirations to regain its previous role as Azerbaijan’s primary military patron. According to Hurriyet Daily News (July 17, 2020), İsmail Demir, head of the Presidency of Defense Industries, after meeting with Azerbaijani Deputy Defense Minister Ramiz Tahirov and Army Commander of the “Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic” Kerem Mustafayev, announced “Turkey’s missiles, drones at Azerbaijan’s service.” Some military experts started predicting that Turkey would provide Azerbaijan with the famous Bayraktar Akıncı armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). These drones proved their effectiveness in Libya and Syria against Russian-made anti-air defense systems. By doing so, Ankara would further antagonize Moscow, which has been the largest arms provider to Azerbaijan for several years.

But were all these clashes and Ankara’s enthusiasm for war a coincidence?

In June, the Nordic Monitor published reports exposing the plan of a possible Turkish invasion on Greece and Armenia. The report showed confidential slides from a PowerPoint presentation presented by the Turkish General Staff for an internal planning review. The documents were discovered in a court case file in Ankara. This military operation against Armenia was code-named “Altay.” The provocation around Tavush and Nakhichevan should be viewed from this angle too. Turkey has no military base in the South Caucasus; thus the Azerbaijani provocation against Armenia and the counter-offensive against Azerbaijani military posts by the Armenian armed forces could have been the pretext Turkey was waiting for to launch a limited offensive or strikes. If the Armenian armed forces infiltrated deep or bombed the pipelines, Turkey could have deployed its army in Nakhichevan or around Tavush under the pretext of “securing Turkey’s and Europe’s energy or national security interests.” However, Ankara and Baku failed to reach their aim since the Armenian army limited its counter-offensive and calculated the consequences of such a plan that would have driven the entire region into a war. Let’s not forget that from May 1-2, 2019, Baku and Ankara started joint tactical live-fire military exercises in Nakhichevan. According to the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan, the joint exercises involved “troops, armored vehicles, artillery mounts and mortars, combat and transport helicopters, as well as air defense units and anti-aircraft missile units of both armies.” In the same month in 2020, Baku launched large-scale military exercises around the Artsakh frontline. In response, the Armenian army organized military drills along the border.

Pipelines and railroads in South Caucasus

When it comes to energy security, it is important to mention that the Tavush area lies on major energy, railway and trade routes that link Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey and connect Europe to Central Asia and China without direct involvement from Russia and Iran. The location of the clashes was quite interesting. All the west-bound oil and gas pipelines and railroads pass through the same corridor, often parallel to each other and in close proximity to target areas.

What significance does the Tavush area have to Turkey and Europe with regards to energy security? First, the region is Azerbaijan’s gateway to Turkey in terms of energy, rail and transit routes. Azerbaijan’s South Caucasus Pipeline (ASCP) runs nearby, carrying gas to the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANGP) in Turkey. These pipelines were constructed aiming to reduce Turkey’s and Europe’s gas dependence on Moscow. Moreover, the area is pivotal also to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad, two major joint projects that Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey have accomplished through European support and America’s blessing. In other words, the area is crucial for Baku’s energy exports to Europe and the only land route that links Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia. In this context, it is also important to understand and analyze that Turkey wants to become an important energy corridor hub that bypasses Russia. By accomplishing this dream, the European Union’s (EU) politics in the future will be highly dependent on Turkish-Azerbaijani cooperation and a stable geopolitical environment (mostly in favor of Baku) in the South Caucasus.

Second, it is worth mentioning that in March and April 2020, for the first time, Azerbaijan surpassed Russia in terms of gas supplies to Turkey. For the past few years, Turkey has reduced its reliance on Russian gas imports. In 2019, for example, Russian gas accounted for 33 percent of Turkey’s gas imports, down from 52 percent in 2017, as Ankara started to diversify its energy supply roots mainly from Africa. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan played a significant role in Turkey’s energy security independence where the giant Trans-Anatolian pipeline, completed in 2019 and with an annual capacity to carry 16 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas to Turkey, is being linked to southern Europe via the soon-to-be constructed Trans-Adriatic Pipeline. According to Metin Gurcan (al-Monitor, July 22, 2020), these two non-Russian pipelines passing from the vicinity of Tavush could cover about half of Turkey’s demand and 15 percent of that of Europe. The inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in 2006 enabled Azerbaijan to export oil to international markets via the strategic port of Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Furthermore, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline which became operational in 2017, allowed for an increase to the supply of Azeri gas to Georgia and Turkey. Now thanks to the Trans-Anatolian pipeline, Azerbaijan can sell gas to the EU and reduce the Russian giant Gazprom’s monopoly on delivering gas to the EU, hence raising eyebrows in Moscow. Turkey’s gas deal with Russia expires next year, and for this reason, little progress has been made on a renewal, which raises the prospect of deepening the Azeri-Turkish partnership after 2021. Nevertheless, even though Gazprom is likely to remain Turkey’s primary gas supplier in the near future, Ankara is trying to strengthen its bargaining position by signing maritime agreements with its allies in Western Libya and extracting gas from occupied Northern Cyprus, thus raising the prospects of regional wars in the Eastern Mediterranean with Greece and Egypt and clashing with Russia’s energy interests there.

In summary, the geopolitical pressures and the military escalation may grow around Tavush and expand towards Nakhichevan in order to attract Turkish military deployment in the South Caucasus, thus directly threatening Russian energy interests. To counter this, Armenia must play a strategic and proactive role in future energy projects in the region by accomplishing the construction of the North-South highway that connects Iran to Georgia. This highway in the future can play the role of a corridor connecting the Persian Gulf to Russia or Europe. If the EU and China realize this potential corridor is far from geopolitical risks, then it would attract foreign investment, bringing further stability and providing Yerevan a strong bargaining position in foreign policymaking and Artsakh’s conflict resolution. Finally, Armenia’s diplomatic corps must engage in proactive foreign policy when it comes to recognition of the Republic of Artsakh in European states. For Armenia, sending peaceful messages while simultaneously preparing for war is mandatory to force the autocrats of Baku to recognize the democratic and peaceful aspirations of the Armenians of the Republic of Artsakh. As the famous Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus once said, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (If you want peace, prepare for war).

Preventing la Bloody Harvest on the Armenia-Azerbaijan State Border, July 24, 2020 (International Crisis Group)

Yeghia Tashjian

Yeghia Tashjian is a regional analyst and researcher. He has graduated from the American University of Beirut in Public Policy and International Affairs. He pursued his BA at Haigazian University in Political Science in 2013. He founded the New Eastern Politics forum/blog in 2010. He was a Research Assistant at the Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University. Currently, he is the Regional Officer of Women in War, a gender-based think tank. He has participated in international conferences in Frankfurt, Vienna, Uppsala, New Delhi, and Yerevan, and presented various topics from minority rights to regional security issues. His thesis topic was on China’s geopolitical and energy security interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf. He is a contributor to the various local and regional newspapers and presenter of the “Turkey Today” program in Radio Voice of Van.

Latest posts by Yeghia Tashjian (see all)

Read original article here.

[kaialone]

Yokai Watch 3 ver. 4.0 Translation

(Masterpost for my Yokai Watch translations can be found here)

This will contain spoilers for a sidequest of Yokai Watch 3 (ver. 4.0), and also some major spoilers for the main story of the game, so proceed with caution.

With that being said, this will be a translation of the entire “The Truth about The Cursed Manor” (“呪われた館の真実”) sidequest.

This is a quest after which, if you’re playing Sushi, you can befriend Indy Jaws, if you wish.

But aside from Indy Jaws, this quest is also about Mac and Dorothy’s mansion, and I would recommend that you read my translation of  the boss Betty-san’s pre- and post-battle dialouge, as it will make some details in this quest easier to understand, but you don’t have to, of course.

I go through these scene by scene. (There will be links to watch the scenes on youtube, too.)

Bolded is the original Japanese; for reference and in case someone who is better at Japanese than I reads this, and feels like correcting something.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

(Number) Indicates I got a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

Please keep in mind that I’m a beginner when it comes to Japanese, so it’s possible that I make mistakes, too.

Accepting the Request:

Nate: あれ？ マックにドロシー！ Huh? Mac, Dorothy!

Mac: よぉ！ 待ってたぜケータ！ Yo! We were waiting for you, Nate!

Nate: 待ってた？ You were?

Mac: ああ！ ちょっと見せたいものがあってな！ Yeah! There's something we want to show you real quick!

Mac: 実は オレんちの地下室で 「ヌー１３号」を見つけたんだ！ You see, we actually found "Nu Nr. 13" in our basement!

Nate: ええ！ ほんと！？ What!? Really!?

Nate: それで １３号には どんなことが書かれてるの！？ So what sort of things does Nr. 13 say!?

Mac: ヌー１３号の特集は 「呪われた館」… Nu Nr. 13 is a special on a "Cursed Manor" ...

Dorothy: それがなんと… わたくしたちの住む お屋敷なのですわ！ And, shockingly... it is the very mansion we live in!

Nate: ええええ！？？ あのヘーゼルタイン邸が！？ Whaaaat!?? You mean Hazeltine Mansion!?

Dorothy: わたくしたちの お屋敷が 呪われているなんて 信じられませんわ…。 I simply cannot believe that our residence is actually cursed...

Whisper: まぁ 妖怪は たくさんいましたけどねぇ…。 Well, there are a lot of yōkai there, though...

Mac: シシシ でも自分の家にミステリーが あるなんて ワクワクしないか？ Shishishi, but having a mystery in your own house is kinda exciting, right? (1)

Mac: なあケータ！ オレたちで このミステリーを解き明かすぞ！ Hey Nate! We'll solve this mystery together!

Mission Description: マックが屋敷の地下でヌーを発見。 その号の特集 「呪われた館」とは ヘーゼルタイン邸のことらしい！ マックと共に館の秘密をさぐれ！ Mac found an issue of Nu in the mansion's basement. And it appears that the "Cursed Manor" featured in this issue, is actually Hazeltine Mansion! Figure out the manor's secret, together with Mac!

Nate: うん！ なんか おもしろそう！ Alright! It seems kinda interesting!

Mac: シシシ そうと決まれば さっそくオレんちに行こうぜ！ Shishishi, since that's decided, let's hurry over to my place!

Mac: あっ そのヌー１３号は ケータに あずけとくからな！ Ah, I'll let you hold onto that Nu Nr. 13, Nate!

(Got Nu Nr. 13)

Mac: そういえば このヌー ページが３枚も抜けてるみたいなんだ。 That reminds me, seems like this Nu issue is missing 3 pages.

Nate: それじゃあ いったん 地下室にないか調べてみよう！ Well then, let's check if they're in the basement for now!

Dorothy: それでしたら 屋敷が明るいうちに 向かうのは いいと思いますわ。 In that case, I would recommend you go to the mansion while it is still bright outside.

Dorothy: 真夜中に うろうろしてると サリーおばさんに叱られちゃいますし…。 If you were to wander about in the middle of the night, you would get scolded by Aunt Sally... (2)

Nate: それじゃあ 屋敷が明るいうちに 地下室に向かおう！ Well, let's head to the mansion's basement during the daytime, then!

Mac: 地下室へは 西館から行けるぜ！ 準備ができたら  出発だ！ You can reach the basement from the west wing! We're leaving as soon as you're ready!

Notes:

In case it isn’t clear, “Shishishi” is the way Mac laughs/giggles. It’s a kinda cheeky, mischievous giggle.

Mac and Dorothy add おばさん/obasan and the more formal おばさま/obasama respectively when adressing Sally. They both can potentially be translated as “auntie” or “aunt”, but it is a way children will usually adress older women, not just ones they’re related to. I don’t think Sally is actually biologically related to Mac and Dorothy.

--

Optional dialouge if you talk to Sally before going to the basement:

Auntie Sally: あら 坊ちゃんもご一緒とはめずらしい。 …どうぞ ごゆっくり。 Oh my, it's unusual for the young master to join you, too. ...By all means, please take your time.

--

In the Basement:

???: さめぇぇぇぇっ！！ なんだ！？ トラップか…！！？ Sameeeee!! What's this!? A trap...!!? (1)

Mac: お前は…… スティーブ・ジョーズ！？ You're... Steve Jaws!?

Indy Jaws: 違う！ 私は伝説の大大大冒険家… Wrong! I am the legendary great great great adventurer...

Indy Jaws: インディ・ジョーズだ！！ Indy Jaws!!

Whisper: ジョーズ違いでしたかぁ〜。 しかし こんなところで何を…？ So you're a different Jaws, then. However, what are you doing in a place like this...?

Indy Jaws: 決まっている！ 冒険だ…！ Isn't it obvious! I'm on an adventure...!

Nate: え？ でもここ マックの家なんだけど…。 Huh? But, this is Mac's house...

Indy Jaws: なっ…！？ Wha...!?

Mac: ちょうど よかった！ This is perfect timing!

Mac: オレたちも 屋敷のミステリーを 解き明かす冒険をしてるとこでさ We're also on an adventure to unravel this mansion's mystery, so...

Mac: よかったら お前もいっしょに冒険しょうぜ！ ...if you're down for it, you can adventure together with us!

Indy Jaws: （なるほど… 予行練習にはちょうどいいな……） (I see... This could be just right for a dry run...)

Indy Jaws: よし いいだろう！ Alright, very well!

Mac: シシシ オレにも ヨーカイの相棒が欲しかったんだ！ Shishishi, I've been wanting a Yo-kai partner of my own!  (2, 3)

Mac: よろしくな インディ！ Nice to meet you, Indy!

Indy Jaws: ああ よろしくたのむ！ Yes, it's nice to meet you!

Nate: それじゃあ みんなで 館の秘密を さがしにいこう！ Well then, let's all start looking for the manor's secret!

Notes:

Indy Jaws has a habit of exclaiming “same!” in various ways. This is directly taken from サメ/same, which is Japanese for “shark”, thus it’s similar to other various animal yokai’s speech quirks, though his is less frequent. Also note that this is not pronounced the same way as the english word “same”.

The word I translated as “partner“ is 相棒/aibō in Japanese, which could also be translated as something like “associate”, “sidekick” or even “buddy”.

Here, when Mac says “Yōkai” it’s spelled in katakana as “ヨーカイ”, which in this game is sometimes used when Americans say the word, possibly indicating they pronounce it slightly weird. Either way, I personally like to adapt that using the localized English spelling “Yo-kai”, as a fun little nod

--

Optional dialouge if you talk to Indy Jaws right afterwards:

Indy Jaws: よし！ この館の 「地下迷宮」 を ともに冒険しようじゃないか！ Alright! How about we adventure through this manor's "Underground Labyrinth" together!

--

Looking for Clues:

Mac: よし ヌーのページがないか しらべてみるぞ！ Alright, let's try and see if there’s any Nu pages here!

Nate: うん！！ Yeah!!

-

Whisper: 結局 ヌーページは みつかりませんでしたね…。 We couldn't find the Nu pages after all...

Indy Jaws: ページでは ないようだが… こんなメモを見つけたぞ。 It doesn't seem to be a page, but... I found this note.

(Got the Basement Note)

Mac: なぁケータ そのメモには 何が書かれてあるんだ？ So, Nate, what does this note say?

Nate: えーっと… Uhhh...

Text: 呪われた館の秘密… それは 館のどこかに隠されている。 The secret of the Cursed Manor... It is hidden somehwere within the manor.

Text: この呪われた館は 東館と西館が鏡のように同じだ。 In this cursed manor, the east and west wings are like mirror images.

Text: ただし そのうちいくつかは 異なる色に塗り替えられたという。 However, it is said that some of its rooms are painted in different colors.

Text: 館の秘密は「３枚」に破られ その部屋にかくされている。 This manor's secret has been broken into "3 pieces", and hidden within those rooms.

Text: ３つの 「血に染まらぬ花」をさがせ。 Look for the three "flowers, unstained by blood".

Mac: 破られた秘密… 抜けてるページは３枚…。 A broken secret... And three missing pages...

Mac: なぁ この３枚に破られた秘密って ヌーの抜けてるページのことじゃねぇか？ Hey, you think this secret that got broken into 3 pieces is actually the missing Nu pages?

Nate: あっ そうかも…！！ Ah, maybe...!!

Indy Jaws: ふむ… そう仮定するのがよさそうだな。 Hmm... that’s not a bad assumption.

Indy Jaws: 屋敷の中で いくつか 「東西で異なる色の部屋」はないか？ Are there any "rooms with different colors in the east and west" inside of this mansion?

Mac: えーっと 風呂場とか…？ Umm, like the bathrooms...?

Indy Jaws: なるほど… では そこに 「花」はあるか？ I see... So then, are there any "flowers" there?

Mac: あ〜 サリーおばさんが 毎日入れ替えてるやつ…？ Ahh, the ones that Auntie Sally replaces every day...?

Indy Jaws: フッ 心当たりがあるようだな？ 行くぞ！ Heh, looks like we got a clue, no? Let's go!

--

In one of the Bathrooms:

Mac: あった！ ヌーのページだ！ えーっと…？ There! It's a Nu page! Let’s see...?

Text: 彼らは 不思議な力を持つ一族だった。 They were a family which possessed mysterious powers. (1)

Text: 人ならざる者が見え 彼らを呼び寄せる体質を持っていた。 They possessed the disposition to see and call the inhuman ones. (2)

Text: 一族のなかには 彼らを操り 従わせる者さえいたという。 It is even said that within the family, there were ones who would control them, and make them obey.

Indy Jaws: 不思議な力…？ いったい何のことだ？ A mysterious power...? What in the world does that mean?

Indy Jaws: も… もしかしてその力で 私たちも操られてしまうのか…！？ Y... You don't think that power is going to control us, too...!?

Nate: 伝説の冒険家なのに すっごくビビってる…。 For a legendary adventurer, you’re acting pretty scared...

Indy Jaws: び… ビビってなんかいない！ I... I'm not scared or anything!

(Got a clue: Nu Nr. 13 Page 1)

Notes:

The word I translated as “family” here is 一族/ichizoku in Japanese, which can also be translated as “clan” or “tribe”, and it refers to a family in the sense of an entire bloodline, not just like, one set of parent(s) and child(dren).

The word I translated as “disposition“ is 体質/taishitsu in Japanese, which can be translated in many different ways depending on the context, but it basically refers to a “nature” or “trait” of one’s body, both negative and positive ones, usually passed down genetically.

--

In the B-Room:

Indy Jaws: ヌーのページがあったぞ！ なになに…？ Here's a Nu page! Now, what does it say...?

Text: その一族では かつて争いがあった。 Once, a fight broke out in that family.

Text: 一族の持つ莫大な遺産を めぐる争いだった。 It was a fight over the family’s enormous inheritance.

Text: 一族は その不思議な力を使い 人ならざる者を従えて争ったという。 The family used their mysterious power and fought, accompanied by the inhuman ones.

Nate: 人ならざる者って いったい 何なんだろう…？ Just what the heck are those inhuman ones...?

Indy Jaws: なんだが思ったより怖そうだな…。 練習のつまりだったのに…！ This is getting a lot more scary than I thought... It was supposed to be just practice...!

Mac: インディ どうかしたか？ 練習って…。 You okay, Indy? What do you mean by practice...?

Indy Jaws: い… いや！ なんでもないぞ！ I... It's nothing! Absolutely nothing!

(Got a clue: Nu Nr. 13 Page 2) 

--

In Dorothy's Room:

Nate: あっ ヌーのページだ！ えっと… Ah, a Nu page! Uhh...

Text: 遺産をめぐる争いで使役された 人ならざる者たち…。 The inhuman ones caused great damage during the fight over the inheritance...

Text: 争いが終結したのち 彼らは忌み嫌われ とある孤島に封じられた。 After the fight was over, they were abhorred and sealed away on a certain island.

Text: その島は 人々から 呪われた島と呼ばれている。 People call this island the cursed island.

Mac: 呪われた島？ そんな島 聞いたことねぇな…。 Cursed island? I've never heard of an island like that...

Indy Jaws: 呪われた島だと…！ 怖くて行けそうにもないな…！ A cursed island...! That's too scary to ever go there...!

Nate: えっと… 冒険家なんだよね…？ Um... but you're an adventurer, right...?

Indy Jaws: ギクッ…！ 今のは 聞かなかったことに！ *Gulp*...! Pretend you didn't hear that just now!

(Got a clue: Nu Nr. 13 Page 3)

--

After finding all Pages:

Nate: よし これでヌーのページは ３ページそろったね！ Alright, with that, we got all 3 Nu pages!

Mac: ああ！ オレの部屋に行って そのページに隠された秘密を調べようぜ！ Yeah! Let's go to my room, and investigate the secret hidden in these pages!

--

In Mac's Room:

Indy Jaws: しかし どのページの内容も不気味だな…。 の… 呪われたりしないだろうな…！ But seriously, all of these pages' contents are creepy... T... They’re probably cursed...!

Whisper: さっきから やたらビビってますけど 本当に 伝説の冒険家なんです…？ You've been shaking in your boots for a while now, are you really a legendary adventurer...?

Indy Jaws: うっ…！ じ… 実は… 私は 「エア冒険家」なんだ…。 Ack...! T... the truth is... I am an "air adventurer"...

Indy Jaws: これから冒険に出るために 練習をしょうと思っていてな…。 I thought that I should practice, so I can go on adventures after this...

Whisper: どうりで出会ったときから あやしかったワケですね〜…。 That is why you were acting suspicious from the moment we met, huh...

Mac: でも せっかく相棒になったしさ！ 一緒に ミステリー解こうぜ！ But, you managed to get a partner! We'll solve the mystery together!

Indy Jaws: 相棒…！ わかった まかせろ！ エア冒険家だが 冒険の知識はある！ Partner...! Yes, leave it to me! I'm an air adventurer, but I do know a lot about adventures!

Indy Jaws: よし！ さっそく館の秘密を解くぞ！ ３つのページに手がかりがあるはずだ！ Alright! We'll solve the mystery right away! There has to be some clues in those 3 pages!

Nate: えっと… 「とある一族」に「人ならざる者」 そして「呪われた島」…がキーワードかな？ Umm... a "certain family", "the inhuman ones", and "the cursed island" ...could those be the keywords?

Mac: オレんちのミステリーってことはさ… 「とある一族」は オレたちの一族だよな？ Since it's our place’s mystery... could the "certain family" be our family?

Whisper: マックくんは 妖怪が見えてますし… 「人ならざる者」 は妖怪のことでしょうか？ Mac can see yōkai, so... does "the inhuman ones" refer to yōkai?

Nate: じゃあ… マックの一族が むかし 妖怪の力を使って 争ったってこと…？ Then... does that mean Mac's family once used the power of yōkai in a fight...?

Indy Jaws: そういうことになるな。 そして 「呪われた島」 というのは…… That seems to be the case. And, "the cursed island" is...

Auntie Sally: ええ この島ですよ。 Yes, it is this island.

Mac: サリーおばさん！？ Auntie Sally!?

Auntie Sally: 破れたヌーのページを すべて見つけられたのですね。 So you have found all of the torn-out Nu pages.

Mac: もしかして このページを隠したのって… Don't tell me, hiding those pages...

Auntie Sally: ええ 私ですよ。 Yes, it was me.

Auntie Sally: 坊ちゃんにもそろそろ お屋敷の真実を 知ってもらわなければと思いまして。 I felt that the time had come where you must learn the truth about this mansion, young master.

Nate: でも それじゃあ なんで隠したりしたの？ But then, why did you hide them?

Auntie Sally: あら？ 坊ちゃんたちは こういう ミステリーが お好きなんでしょう？ Oh? Do the young master and you not love mysteries such as this?

Mac: …で うちが呪われた館って いったい どういうことなんだ？ ...So, what the heck is this about our house being a cursed manor?

Auntie Sally: ヘーゼルタイン家は 代々 「妖怪が見える一族」でした。 The Hazeltine Family has been "a family that sees yōkai" for generations. (1)

Auntie Sally: そして 今から数十年も昔のこと… And, decades ago...

Auntie Sally: 坊ちゃんの祖父母の代で 遺産相続の争いがあったのです。 Among the generation of your grandparents, a fight over the inheritance broke out, young master.

Auntie Sally: 妖怪たちの力を利用し 多大な被害が出たといいます。 Using the power of yōkai, they caused a great amount of damage.

Mac: そんなことがあったのか…。 So, that did happen...?

Auntie Sally: ええ… そして争いが終わった後 一族は その力を使うことを禁じました。 Yes... And after the fight was over, the family forbade using that power.

Auntie Sally: そして 妖怪たちは 「争いの原因」として 罪を なすりつけられたのです。 And then, as the "cause of the fight", the yōkai had the blame put on them.

Auntie Sally: 彼らは ミミシッポリバーの孤島に封じられ 人々に 近づくことを禁じたそうです。 They were sealed away on an isolated island within Mimisippo River, which people were forbidden from approaching.

Nate: そんな…。 No way...

Auntie Sally: 争いを間近見ていたエリザベス様も 大�� 心を痛めておいででした。 Having seen the fight up close, Lady Elizabeth was also terribly heartbroken.

Mac: ���リザベス様？ それって… Lady Elizabeth? You mean...

Auntie Sally: ええ 坊ちゃん。 あなたのお母様のことです。 Yes, young master. I am talking about your mother.

Auntie Sally: そして エリザベス様があとを継いだとき… このお屋敷を作ることを 決意したのです。 And when Lady Elizabeth became the successor... she decided to build this mansion.

Auntie Sally: …この続きは エリザベス様ご本人に お聞きすることにしましょう。 ...You should ask Lady Elizabeth herself to tell you about the rest.

Auntie Sally: 今日もこっそり お屋敷に来られているようですから。 As it seems like she has secretly come to the mansion again today.

Mac: まさかそれって 姉ちゃんの部屋の…！ No way, you mean that one in my sister's room...!? (2)

Nate: うん！ ドロシーの部屋に行ってみよう！！ Yeah! Let's go to Dorothy's room and see!!

Note:

Let me use this moment to point out that what I chose to romanize as “Hazeltine” here is spelled ヘーゼルタイン/Hēzerutain in Japanese. I don’t know if it’s written out in English anywhere in the game, but I figured “Hazeltine” is a likely romanization, given the frequent nut-based puns in this game.

Mac’s line is slightly cut off here, and due to how the Japanese language works, I couldn’t fully reflect that in my translation. More literally, what he says here is something along the lines of: “No way, do you mean *missing part* from (my) older sister’s room...!”. So therefore, in Japanese, we don’t actually get to see what he would’ve called the one from his sister’s room. This is not hugely important, but I wanted to make note of it.

--

Optional dialouge if you talk to everyone before checking Dorothy's room:

Indy Jaws: ふむ… なるほどな。 Hm... I see.

Indy Jaws: だが まだまだナゾは残っている。 先を急ごう。 However, the riddle still remains. Let's hurry on ahead.

-

Auntie Sally: あとのことは エリザベス様よりお聞きください。 Please ask Lady Elizabeth about the rest.

Auntie Sally: エリザベス様なら お嬢様の お部屋に来られていると思いますよ。 Knowing Lady Elizabeth, I belive she has come to the young lady's room.

-

Dorothy: あら わたくしの部屋で また何か さがしもの…？ Oh my, are you still looking for something in my room...?

Dorothy: もしかして お屋敷のミステリーが ついに 解けそうなのでしょうか…！？ Could it be that you have finally solved the mystery of this mansion...!?

--

Back in Dorothy's Room:

Betty-san: やダ… 見つかっちゃっタ…！ Oh  n o... you found m e...! (1)

Mac: えーっと… 母ちゃんって呼べばいいのか？ Umm... Is it alright if I call you mom?

Mac: オレたち この館が作られた 理由を聞きにきたんだ！ We're here to ask you why this manor was build!

Auntie Sally: エリザベス様… もう よいのではないですか？ Lady Elizabeth... it is about time, is it not?

Betty-san: そうネ……。 Ri g h t...

Betty-san: この館をつくっタ理由はネ… You  s e e, the reason I bu i l t  this manor...

Betty-san: 封じられてしまった妖怪たチと 仲良く 暮らしたかっタからなノ…。 ...was that I wanted to live in harmony toge t h er with t h e  yōkai that were sealed away here...

Betty-san: デも私は かつての争いヲ 止められなかった…。 B ut, I could not stop the fight  f r om back then...

Betty-san: そんな私に 妖怪たチと 仲良くすル 資格なんてナいと思っタノ…。 As such, I  f e lt that I simply had n o  right to become close with  t h e yōkai... (2)

Whisper: マックくんのお母様は 自分を責めておられたんですね…。 It appears Mac's mother has been blaming herself...

Betty-san: だから マック… ドロシー… あなたタち２人に 夢をたくしタの。 Mac... Dorothy... Because of that, I  h a d a dream for  t h e  t wo of you.

Betty-san: 妖怪 仲良くするという夢ヲ…。 A dream th a t  you would be close with yōkai... (3)

Mac: そうだったのか…。 You did...?

Mac: けどさ じゃあなんで 屋敷を こんな形にしたんだ？ But, why did you built the mansion in this shape, then?

Betty-san: それハ… ふたりに ケンカしてほしくなくッテ… That i s... because, I di d  n o t  want the two of you to  f i g h t ...

Betty-san: ぜんブ ふたつあったラ…… ぜんブ はんぶんこできるでショ…？ I f  there is two of every t h i n g ... You can evenly share every t h i n g,  n o ...?

Nate: えっ そんな理由なの！？ That's the reason!?

Auntie Sally: エリザベス様は 昔から心配性で… Lady Elizabeth was always so worried...

Auntie Sally: 一部屋で大丈夫ですよって 何度も忠告したんですけどねぇ。 Even though I advised her many times that one room respetivly would be fine.

Betty-san: だっテ 家族で争うのハ もうイヤだかラ… I  j u s t  didn't w a n t  any more family fights...

Dorothy: ふふっ お優しいのね。 お母様らしいわ！ Huhu, how kind of you. That is just like you, Mother!

Indy Jaws: しかしマック キミの母の願いは 無事にかなったようだな。 But really, Mac, your mother's wish did come true after all.

Indy Jaws: 何せオレのような 「妖怪の相棒」 を 作るほどだからな！ After all, you managed to get a "Yōkai Partner" like me! (4)

Betty-san: よかっタ… 本当に よカった…。 I'm gl a d ... I am truly g l ad...

Betty-san: でも この屋敷の妖怪たちは まダ… 私を 恨んでいるはズ……。 But, the yōkai of this mansion... they m u s t  sti l l  resent me...

Mac: 母ちゃん…。 Mom...

???: そんなことはございません。 That is not the case.

Sebastian: 私たちは すべて存じておりましたよ。 We were aware of everything.

Sebastian: エリザベス様が ずっと気に病んでおられたこと…。 Of how you have been worried sick for a long time, Lady Elizabeth...

Sebastian: そして かつて争いにかりだされ 封じられた私たちに…… And of how you have given us, who where once forced to fight and then sealed away...

Sebastian: このような 「にぎやかなお屋敷」を 与えてくださったことも…。 ...such a "lively mansion"...

Betty-san: そ… そうだっタの！？ Y... Y o u  were!?

Sebastian: おかげで毎晩 ナゾトキや格付けに 興じる日々ですよ。 ホッホッホ！ Owing to that, our days are quite enjoyable, with Puzzle Solving and Ranking every evening. Hohoho! (5)

Sebastian: ですから この館には あなたを 嫌う者などおりません。 Therefore, there is not one person in this mansion who dislikes you.

Sebastian: みんな あなたのお帰りを お待ちしているのですよ。 We are all waiting for your return.

Betty-san: う… うウッ…… みんナ……！ *sob*... *so b*... Ever y o n e ...!

Mac: あ！ 母ちゃんが帰らないのって 病気じゃなくてそういう理由だったのか！？ Ah! So, Mom not coming home is not because of the illness, but because of this!? (6)

Betty-san: マック… ドロシー… ごめんネ……。 Mac... Dorothy... I'm so r r y ...

Dorothy: ふふっ いいんです。 Huhu, it is alright.

Dorothy: でも今度は 人間として帰ってきてくださいね。 But this time, please come back as a human.

Nate: ふふっ これで一件落着だね！ Hehe, I guess that settles that!

Whisper: ええ！ ヌー１３号のミステリー 無事に解決でうぃす〜！ Yes! We solved Nu Nr. 13's Mystery with no problems, whis!

Notes:

When she speaks, Betty-san sometimes “says” random bits in katakana when they usually would be hiragana or kanji. Using katakana like that can be used to indicate that a character is pronouncing things strangely in some way. In her case, it could give off a vibe of her occasionally weirdly stressing certain parts, maybe even like it’s somewhat straining for her to speak? I tried to adapt it by having the parts in question be  l i k e  t h i s  in English

The world I translated as “get close” here is 仲良くする/nakayokusuru in Japanese, which among other things can refer to “getting along with someone”, “being friendly with someone”, or “making friends with someone”.

“Be close” here is the same 仲良くする/nakayokusuru as from the previous point.

Usually Indy uses the formal and gender-netural pronoun 私/watashi to refer to himself, but occasionally he will use the informal and masculine オレ/ore instead, just like he does here.

“Puzzle Solving” and “Ranking” refers to the challenges Sebastian and Nazotoki give the player in Chapter 7 when they first enter Hazeltine Mansion.

Because there are no articles in Japanese, I am unsure wether to translate part of this as “the illness” or “an illness”. They mentioned her being ill before, so I figured it was the same illness, and thus went for “the”.

--

Optional dialouge if you talk to everyone after the quest is over:

Mac: ああ インディなら地下にいるぜ！ なんか また冒険したんだとよ。 Oh, if you're wondering about Indy, he went into the basement! I guess he's on some adventure again.

Mac: シシシ！ ま オレんちは どこもかしこも おかしいからな！ Shishishi! Well, when it comes to our house, any place is pretty weird after all! (1)

-

Mac: オレんちが こんな おもしれー屋敷だったとはな！ Who'd have thought that our place was such a cool mansion!

Mac: シシシ 妖怪と人間が暮らしてる 屋敷なんて スゲーだろ？ Shishishi, a mansion where yōkai and humans live together is pretty awesome, right?

-

Dorothy: ふふふ お母様ったら かわいらしい お人なんだから。 Huhuhu, Mother is a lovely person.

Dorothy: いつか お母様が帰ってこられたら いっしょに お食事しましょうね。 If Mother can come back one day, let us enjoy a meal together.

-

Betty-san: また こんナ姿デ ごめンなさイ…。 あなたにハ とっテも感謝してルノ…。 I am sor r y  for appearing like t h i s  again... I am v e ry grateful t o  yo u... (2)

Betty-san: ありがトう… ありがとウ……！ Tha n k you... thank yo u...!

-

Auntie Sally: ふふふ… ええ もちろん 私にも見えておりますよ。 Huhuhu... Yes, of course I can see them as well.

Auntie Sally: とても個性ゆたかな 楽しいお客さまたちがね。 They are delightful guests, with very unique personalities.

-

Sebastian: エリザベス様には みな 感謝しているのですよ。 We are all grateful to Lady Elizabeth.

Sebastian: また 人間の姿のエリザベス様にも お会いしたいですね。 I also hope to see Lady Elizabeth in her human form again. (3)

-

Nazotoki: 実は 今回ミステリーづくりにも 私が かかわっているのですよ！ Truth to be told, I was actually involved in the creation of this mystery as well!

Nazotoki: 楽しんでいただけましたか？ Did you find it to be enjoyable?

Notes:

From what I understand, Mac will only say this piece of dialouge if you’re playing Sushi. If not, he will go right for his second bit of dialouge. Not 100% sure though.

More literally, she apologizes for appearing in “this form” or “this appearance” again, with the actual Japanese word being 姿/sugata.

Alternatively, this could translate to “We also hope to see Lady Elizabeth in her human form again“.

--

Talking to Indy in the Basement:

Indy Jaws: ケータ！ 冒険の練習に 私とバトルしてくれ！ Nate! Battle me as practice for adventuring!

Nate: ええっ… バトル苦手だったら 冒険に出るの 大変そうだよね…。 Um... I guess if you're bad at fighting, going on an adventure would be dangerous...

Indy Jaws: に… 苦手というわけでもない！ 慣れてないだけだ！ I... It's not like I'm bad at it! I'm just not used to it!

Indy Jaws: 戦いのコツは 冒険映画で しっかり心得ている！ I know a lot about fighting tricks from adventure movies!

Whisper: それは 心配ですねぇ〜…。 That’s what worries me...

Indy Jaws: では さっそく バトルの練習を始めるぞ！ So then, let's start with the battle practice right away!

(select yes)

Indy Jaws: 練習だからって 手を抜くんじゃないぞ！ Since this is practice, don't go easy on me!

Indy Jaws: では 位置について… さめぇぇぇぇ！！！ Now, ready, set... Sameeeee!!!

--

After Beating Indy Jaws without Befriending Him:

Indy Jaws: くっ…！これではまだ 本当の冒険には出られない…！ Ugh...! I still can’t go on a real adventure like this...!

Indy Jaws: ケータ…！ また練習に 付き合ってくれないか！ Nate...! How about you practice with me again!

Nate: うん いいけど…。 Sure, but...

Indy Jaws: よし！ ではさっそく… Alright! So then, let's...

Indy Jaws: …といきたいところだが 冒険小説を読んで 復習しないとな！ ...Well, I'd like to, but I have to read adventure novels and review them! (1)

Indy Jaws: とりあえず いったん休もう。 また今度 バトルしてほしい！ So let's take a break for now. I want to battle you again another time!

Note:

I want to point out that this refers to “reviewing” as in going over them and learning from them.

--

Befriending Indy Jaws:

Indy Jaws: さめー！ なんて強んだ！ 私と共に大秘宝をさがしてくれないか！ Sameee! You're so strong! How about you look for great hidden treasures with me!

-

Indy Jaws: やはり… 君には敵わないな…！ だが… 自信はついてきた！ As I thought... I am no match for you...! But... I've gained confidence!

Indy Jaws: ダンジョンで強い敵におそわれても 何度でも あきらめない自信がな！ Confidence that I won't give up, even if I get attacked by strong enemies in dungeons over and over again!

Nate: よかった！ じゃあ… そろそろ 本当の冒険に出たら？ That’s great! So... Are you going on a real adventure soon?

Indy Jaws: そうだな…！ 君といっしょなら！ That's right...! If you come too, that is!

Whisper: 一人で行かないんでうぃす！？ You won't go by yourself, whis!?

Indy Jaws: いやだ怖い！ …じゃなくて それはもう少し 練習してからだ！ No way, that's scary! ...I mean, I still need a little more practice for that!

Indy Jaws: 次の練習も またここでする！ 休んでから バトル開始だ！ Our next practice session will also be here! The battle will start once we have rested!

Whisper: エア冒険家って メンドくさいですねぇ〜…。 Air adventurers seem like a real pain, whis...

Nate: あはは…。 Ahaha...

-

Indy Jaws: 練習は もう少し待ってくれ！ バトルの復習が 必要だ…！ Wait just a little more before we practice! I need to review our battle...!

Indy Jaws: それに 冒険もバトルも 休むというのは大事だからな。 And besides, with battles and adventures alike, it's important to take breaks.

--

Optional dialouge if you talk to everyone while playing as Inaho:

Dorothy: やっぱり このお屋敷は 呪われてなんて いませんでしざわ！ This mansion is not cursed or anything like that after all!

Dorothy: ふふ 安心して ゆっくりされてくださいね…！ Huhu, please be at ease and relax...!

-

Mac: なぁ イナホ！ オレんちって スゲーんだぜ！ Hey, Inaho! My place is really awesome!

Mac: 妖怪と人間のために作られた家なんだ！ な？ おもしれーだろ？ It's a house made for yōkai and humans! Well? Pretty cool, right?

-

Betty-san: マックとドロシーのこと… これからモ… よろしくネ。 Please ke e p  being good f r i ends... with Mac and Dorothy...

-

Auntie Sally: このお屋敷は たしかに少し 変わっておりますが… This mansion is certainly changing slightly, but...

Auntie Sally: とても素敵なお屋敷だと 私は 思いますね。 I think it is a very lovely mansion.

-

Sebastian: おや… あなたは この間の！ Goodness... You were here just the other day!

Sebastian: また いつでもおこしくださいね。 私たち妖怪も 歓迎いたしますよ。 Please feel free to visit again any time. We yōkai welcome you as well.

-

Nazotoki: この間は ナゾを解いてくださって ありがとうございました。 Thank you very much for solving my puzzle the other day.

Nazotoki: また とっておきのナゾをご用意して お待ちしておりますね。 I will prepare another great puzzle, and wait for you.

--

Optional dialouge if you talk to Indy Jaws while playing as Inaho: 

Inaho: おやっ！ こんなところにサメ！？ ていうか スティーブ・ジョーズ！？ Oh! There's a shark in a place like this!? Hang on, are you Steve Jaws!?

Indy Jaws: 冒険家のインディ・ジョーズだ！ …って またこの流れか！ I'm the adventurer Indy Jaws! ...Wait, again with this conversation!

Indy Jaws: 全然 別サメだろ！ 人間には同じに見えるのか…！？ I’m someshark completely different! Do we look the same to humans...!? (1)

USApyon: 冒険家っていうわりには 他人の家に忍び込んでるダニ…。 Even though you're an adventurer, you're sneaking into someone else's house, dani...

Indy Jaws: ウッ… それは事情があるんだ！ 気にしないでくれ！ Ack... There's a reason for that! Don't worry about it!

Note:

Indy here says 別サメ/bestusame in Japanese, and it seems to be a pun on 別人/betsujin which means “someone else”, so one could technically translate it as “someshark else” like I did here.

--     

Mission End Description:

その奇妙な館には、母の愛が込められていた。 That bizzare manor was housing a mother's love.

--

[lazuliblade]

History of YOI fandom

As a YOI fandom grandparent, I felt it was my duty to write out all the fandom explosions for the newer fans who weren’t there to witness the big bang and gradual week-by-week creation of this universe. All the arguments, people blowing things out of proportion, blaming characters, death theories, awesome fans clearing up miscommunications, YOI breaking the internet... 

This isn’t a post to call out specific people on their arguments and theories - I’ll stay respectfully away from restarting flames and picking fights, thankyouverymuch. Rather, this is an overview of the topics and conflicting views that swept across hundreds and thousands of people and prompted strong reactions. I’m doing this now, because I know that 6 months later, 1 year later, 3 years later, etc. there will be new fans who will have many of the same exact arguments. We’ve been there and done that. I see fans now who say things without knowing where the spelling/quote comes from, or who don’t realize how much has changed, or don’t know why there are certain perceptions of characters. So here’s a little bit of passing down history.

I also don’t want to forget the crazy ride this was. Laugh with me at the silly theories; smile with me at how deeply YOI has impacted our lives. For those of us old-timers, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Remember when...

---------------- (Large arguments will be italicized or bold. Special thanks to @sachiro for reminding me of a bunch of stuff I missed, and looking over the draft in its various stages of being written and edited.)

Pre-series

Idea that there would be a love triangle (Yuri P.--Yuri K.--Victor)

Some fans started spelling Yuri Katsuki with two “u” in order to tell them apart.

Victuri ship name created for Victor x Yuri K. (in a comment to the PV)

The title

“lol ‘Yuri’ on Ice? Where are all the lesbians?”

“When it said Yuri on Ice, I thought we would get girls. Y’know what I mean?”

“Yuri on Ice? More like Yaoi on Ice! amiright?”

etc.

J.J. misspelling (English spelling “Jean Jack” instead of French Canadian “Jean-Jacques”)

you can see the remnants of this in the audience banners during the episodes, but it was corrected to “Jean-Jacques” on the official website and the in-show text

Phichit x Seung-gil ship created (there was more art for this than for Victor x Yuuri)

Episode 1

Victor vs. Viktor spelling arguments 

Although “Victor” is the official spelling and seen in-show, people argued that the creators are wrong and that we fans know better than them about Russian culture - thus the “Viktor” spelling was born.

People argued back that spelling is subjective and you can spell a name multiple ways and still be correct - thus transliterating his Russian name into English as “Victor” would be just as acceptable.

The YOI wiki held fast for a time on using official spellings and information from the official website, but the transition of power led to a new team that started using agreed-upon info rather than solely using official info. “Viktor” replaced “Victor” on the website.

this change from “Victor” to “Viktor” on the wiki happened around episode 2~3, but the arguments were in the page comments since episode 1 -- with moderators explaining their reasoning with sticking to official sources.

Victor is a flirtatious over-the-top character who will seduce Yuuri

Victor is the overwhelming seme and Yuuri is the shy whimpering uke.

People dropping the anime because Yuuri is overweight; people commenting that they don’t want to see an overweight main character

in addition, some people dropping YOI due to feeling that the series was “fat shaming” by using Yuuri’s weight as a point of comedy.

Conversely, some people praising that we have a main character that gains weight and actually has an overweight appearance. 

“Japanese Yuri” &“Russian Yuri” or “Yuri K.” &“Yuri P.” were used to differentiate between the two characters since they shared the same official English spelling “Yuri”.

Starting with ep1, “Yuuri” spelled with two “u” became more widespread due to convenience when typing.  

Japanese fandom simply used kanji for Yuri Katsuki and katakana for Yuri Plisetsky. 

Some fans argue that Yuuri is more correct because in Japanese his name is ゆうり(yu-u-ri). Other fans argue that “Yuri” is still acceptable transliteration because there are multiple spelling systems (Hepburn, etc.) and an alternative correct spelling would be with a macron (Yūri).

Fans point out that Yuri’s name would be spelled “Yuri” in official documents anyway due to lack of macrons on many keyboards.

Spoilers for episodes 1-3 were out because of the two Western fans who witnessed the first three episodes of YOI in a Tokyo preview screening.

fans relied on a certain blogger for info on YOI. 

“WHERE DID YOU SEE EPISODES 2&3???” was asked every 5-10 minutes (literally) and became an inside joke with us old-timers.

Yuuri = Yuzuru Hanyu, Victor = Evgeni Plushenko.

Some fans link characters with real-life skaters to encourage anime fans to watch real skating. 

Some fans saw these as one-to-one connections without considering that characters are a mix of various real-life skaters, and then went onto YouTube videos and spammed about “real-life Yuuri.” 

YOI fans being rude to skaters and sending emails to ship these real-life skaters (emails sent even to skaters who are married with kids)

Amazing researching fans:

find Victor’s apartment and the beach from the ending credits Instagram roll.

Love hotel

Makkachin’s name found in magazine Yuko was holding 

speculation starts on what “Makkachin” means and how it should be transliterated (Makkatine, Mocatine, Makkatin, etc.)

Comparisons of Yuuri to the main character from Parasyte due to similar appearances (Tadashi Hiramatsu, the character designer who adapted Kubo-sensei’s initial designs for animating, was the main character designer for Parasyte).

Speculation on the year in-series starts. 

Yoyogi for Worlds doesn’t match with Sochi as the GPF location.

Yuuri’s iPhone model is seen as a clue.

“Yuri on Ice” trends for 6 days on Tumblr

Episode 2

Victor is manipulative:

He’s a playboy and flirting all the time 

In episode 1 Minako mentions that he is desired by millions. 

His wink in episode 1 shows that he casually flirts with fans.

He will break Yuuri’s heart. He came to romance Yuuri, then drop him later.

He’s already pushing into Yuuri’s space with the chin-touching. That MUST mean he’s suave and planning to seduce and drop him.

“Victor calling him ‘piglet’ is so mean!” -- an extension to the fat shaming debate of episode 1.

Yakov’s angry comment to the press = more fodder about Victor being selfish and only there in Hasetsu for his own pleasure.

Victor is horrible because he broke his promise to Yurio x-number of years ago.

All of his happy smiles are a facade and he can’t actually be that nice. 

Counterarguments to trust the creators and wait to see more about these characters because it’s only been 2 episodes.

Koibito translation nitpicking (it’s not “girlfriend,” Victor is saying “lover.” It’s a gender-neutral term.)

people calling this queerbaiting

“It can’t get any gayer!” line starts to make its appearance.

Ship name “Victuri” cemented. “Victuri sounds like victory!”

Arguments about spelling it “victuuri,” because of the trend with spelling Yuri K.’s name as Yuuri to differentiate the two Yuri’s. 

Counterarguments that “Victurio” would be for Yuri Plisetsky, so therefore “Victuri” would be fine for Yuri Katsuki.

Evgenia Medvedeva starts watching around this time and posts comments on her twitter account.

The livestreaming IRC group is started. There were about 15 people tuning in (this grows to the hundreds by the last episode).

Mira makes her appearance (more of an appearance than the brief flash in ep1). Her name isn’t announced yet so some people nickname her “Natasha” (after the Marvel comics character Natasha Romanova/Black Widow)

Episode 3

Yurio was robbed. 

and all the counterarguments against this.

score calculating posts begin to show up.

“Victor is manipulative” evolves into “Victor is evil” 

“he didn’t keep his promise to Yurio”

people ignoring that he actually did keep his promise to choreograph a program

Eros story Yuuri tells Nishigori = parallel to how Victor will abandon Yuuri in the end. Victor is the evil playboy, confirmed!

People fighting this with meta about how Yuuri is the seductress keeping the playboy, and this was all Yuuri’s interpretation -- Victor may have had another story in mind and we’ll never know what it was. (<---until episode 10)

He forgot Onsen on Ice was about the competition and was there playing around as Hasetsu ambassador. He doesn’t REALLY care about the two Yuri’s.

“he didn’t notice when Yurio left and was having the time of his life with Yuuri on the podium”

Victor’s super-serious expression when Yuuri hugged him means he doesn’t care.

“Make a man pregnant” - the start of the ABO fic influx

“Katsudon ga daisuki da yo” is how we say “I love you” in YOI.

Boyfriend shirt has taken on a new level: boyfriend costume.

Yuuri and genderfluidity 

quite a few fics were spawned from this topic too

YOI is not yaoi -  how genre is not the same as tags. Posts clarifying what yaoi actually is and why Yuri on Ice doesn’t fit that genre at all.

Yuuri getting more confident by episode 3 already - initiating hugs and contact with Victor. “How much more gay can we get!? They already said ‘I love you’!”

Fanfic explosion 

due to Victor’s character being slightly more fleshed out, and the relationship between characters becoming more established

Top!Yuuri starts to make appearances

Going in blind to the episodes from here-on-out because the fan report from the screening was only through episode 3.

Real life skaters are noticing and posting on social media about YOI. 

Evgenia Medvedeva, Denis Ten,  Deniss Vasiļjevs & Stéphane Lambiel, Ashley Wagner, Danny O’Shea and many others from here on. 

Masterpost soon created to document all these skaters.

Kubo-sensei tweets about episode 4 being her favorite

Episode 4

Victor has cancer/is dying.

He was so dramatic and playful when he joked about balding. That means he’s hiding something. Balding = cancer. Therefore Victor is dying! (Note that cancer doesn’t cause balding, although it’s treatment with chemotherapy does.) 

Victor being that out of breath must mean something is wrong.

Victor’s comment about injuries = 

he’s hurt but hiding it

we can expect someone to be injured later

Rise of fanfiction featuring Victor with large past injuries he’s kept hidden.

Celestino getting annoyed at Victor = more fodder for Victor being evil. 

No coach likes him - that means he must be untrustworthy and there must be something that he’s hiding that we don’t know yet.

The Old Man in the onsen becomes a fandom celebrity for a while (captain of the ship)

Victor’s comment on Yuuri’s stamina = fic fodder

“You meet me where I am” - fans exploding at how meaningful this all is and how far they’ve come in four episodes.

“What do you want me to be to you”

---Victor said “koibito” but subs say “boyfriend”

---Daddy kink: “A father--” “Yes!” 

this is when we start to see this kink in fics and fanart/comics

Phichit makes his appearance. Fandom explodes with glee. People pointed out his appearance in episode 1 and more explosions of “no detail left behind”

Aeroflot

Enter Lilia and her teaching Yurio.

Evil Lilia and Yakov

“Yurio should have stayed with Victor”

Kubo-sensei laughs at the rumors of Victor dying.

Everyone and their mother tries to learn to make katsudon - various recipes float around; Crunchyroll releases recipe (Nov 4). 

Jokes and critique about YOI dub (Gru!Victor; Russia(Hetalia)!Victor)

Episode 5

Victor obviously knows no Japanese at all vs. Victor obviously knows a little Japanese after living there for 6 months (about whether or not Victor understood Yuuri’s love declaration due to him commenting about the tie and not the confession)

Fan comics/art and fanfiction about burning Yuuri’s necktie

JARAN jacket (that one scene with Yuuri’s jacket misspelled)

Lots of flailing and dozens of gifs of the lip balm scene

awesome fans finding the exact Chanel lip balm

Yuuri’s confident walk = flailing and keyboard smashing moment (gifs with explosions behind him)

Hug meta (back hug; “do the hands on neck mean anything?”)

Minami is a chicken nugget (McDonald’s colors + being small)

First time we hear Victor’s thoughts - people discussing this

Victor’s image shifts away from “evil Victor” towards something a little more positive

Leaks of the Oh! Skatra!!! Tracklisting (Nov 6).

Duetto title makes people freak out

Speculation on who will skate what piece.

Speculation starts on who will appear in which GP series competition.

Pre-episode 6

Jealous/Possessive!Victor due to the ending image in ep5 of him wrapping his arm around a flustered Yuuri.

speculation on where that is and who took the picture

Dengeki, the website that posts teaser pictures and text of various anime’s next episodes, posted a teaser summary on their site that used quite a few innuendos.

Starting from here, YOI episode previews start to be released later and later. This becomes a running gag among fans who stay up to wait for previews. 

Episode 6

Chris makes everyone uncomfortable.

wet ice comments

People freaking out about the hand holding (“koibito tsunagi/lover’s hold”) then about the lip licking

Victor’s innuendo and lewd mouth animation

Victor actually is sexually attracted to Yuuri

Paired with Yuuri being comfortable with Victor clinging naked to him at the restaurant, and worrying that people would think he’s not serious about the competition = fans arguing how far they’ve gone

Queerbaiting arguments still continue ( “fujoshi bait” and “fanservice”)

“Ai ha katsu” (Love wins!)

Georgi is an Evil Witch

Leo = awesome representation (non-white character representing the U.S.A.)

Phichit meme ( “scandalized” with hand on mouth)

Phichit is captain of the Victuri ship

Kubo-sensei posts summary of The King and The Skater 

Pre episode 7

Dengeki, what in the ever living F is that preview summary (twitter)? Along with the shortened version.

Another preview summary wtheck comment - this time from a YOI animator, Itou Noriko

“Drastic measures”??? Will Victor hug Yuuri? Violence? Harsh words? Kiss on the forehead or MAYBE the cheek?

fanfics, comics, lots of speculation

Episode 7

Kiss vs. Hug

drawings/charts/tracings to prove it was a kiss

queerbaiting comments continue

Western fans ask Kubo-sensei for a direct answer; she’s amused that Japanese fans didn’t need confirmation yet Western fans did

Yuri on Ice trends on Tumblr for two days at #1 (previous episodes had trended in top 3 for about a day).

“Japanese censorship is what made them cover the kiss!” -- and the subsequent posts that stopped this misinformation.

“Victor is evil” continues - he was cruel in the parking garage and the queerbait lip hug was obviously just consolation

Chris, stahp! (more wet ice comments)

Guang-Hong is badass, Leoji ship sails further

Georgi is creepy, some people hate Anya, some feel sympathy for her

Georgi’s outfit = figure-skating Elsa (photoshopped pictures)

Head boop

Aired after the U.S. election - “episode 7 is the only good thing that happened this week”

“YOI singlehandedly saved 2k16”

Watchers dropping the anime because Victuri became canon.

some people liked the anime as long as it was still ambiguous. This kiss/hug scene made it much less ambiguous and left them feeling awkward.

some people liked it as long as the pairing was not mainstream - they liked being a niche shipper.

Conversely, more people started watching once they heard it was canon and not queerbaiting/fan service.

Johnny Weir homage with young Victor’s outfit and rose crown at European Worlds.

Johnny hears of this and adds YOI on his to-watch list.

Kubo-sensei tweets about a certain scene - confirms and does not confirm it as a kiss

pre-Episode 8

Will YOI talk about homophobia and LGBT hatred?

They’re going to Russia next - lots of fanfiction about Victor dealing with past and current homophobia, and how Yuuri and Victor would act during their stay in Russia.

Magazine had the titles for episodes 8 and 9 - “Victor returns to Japan” has people theorize about what could be drastic enough to have him return.

Kubo-sensei strikes again:

tweets about looking forward to Dengeki’s summary this week and ends up trolling the fandom.

being one of us and wanting them to get married already.

Makkachin’s name revealed to have no meaning.

Dengeki posts 5 hours later than normal.

Episode 8

Angry fans yelling “Why didn’t they use this chance to address hatred?”

People arguing about how this is nice because we already have so many other series about hatred and would it kill them to let us have ONE nice thing in life? Let’s just appreciate that we get a happy relationship with no prejudice or hatred from the world for once.

Kubo-sensei defending the hate-free world she created.

Seung-gil feather duster/parrot/swiffer comments and comparisons.

Sala vs Sara

official site and subs romanized her name as “Sala” but a more natural spelling would be “Sara.” (sala means living room in Spanish and Italian) 

wihin the week, the spelling was corrected on both the website and subs to “Sara.”

Mila Babicheva was also changed to Mira Babicheva at this time.

Makkachin-related tags and comments

#Don’t die Makka!

#SaveMakka2k16

#Makkachoked

Speculation on what Yuuri will place - and who will make it to the GPF.

J.J. and the cross - many understood it as a religious motion, but it was soon linked by figure skating fans to Yuzuru’s cross motion to check body axis.

Kissing the ice - seen as “J.J. is so narcissistic and kissing himself,” then disputed by other fans as a sign of respect for the ice much like real-life athletes do with the ice, track&field, and court.

Yurio x J.J. shipping starts

Sub!Victor fanfic boom, BDSM, foot fetish, and other related body worship fics

YOI trends over Barack Obama (Nov 24)

Katsudon recipe released by Funimation on Yuuri’s birthday (Nov. 29)

Preview images for ep9 of Sara encroaching on Yuuri - some people worried that this would be in-series drama or that fans would ship it.

Dengeki still posting way later than they used to. This leads to lots of waiting and loss of hope for future episodes until…

Episode 9

Freaking out over the airport scene:

“What did Yuuri’s tears mean???” 

relieved/touched Victor cares for him and returns feelings? All the emotions catching up from their separation and the hard skating? 

guilt over hiding that he will retire soon? Sadness that this will only last 2 more weeks?

Clarifying why Victor brought up “proposal” (“Why does what Yuuri said sound like a proposal?”)

People “fixing” the subs (mis)translate the word “koto” as if it was the word “mono” and end up making Yuuri’s line to Victor sound super possessive/cheesy as a result.

Yuuri mentioning that he’ll win gold prompts discussions about “Does Yuuri need a gold medal to be happy? Is a gold necessary for his character?”

Fandom exploding over Yurio’s pure smile and friendship with Yuuri

People uneasy over Sara and Michele’s sibling relationship.

Mira x Sara ship gains steam and sets sail.

“Hug zombie” - the term given to Yuuri’s hugging spree

Johnny Weir planned to watch YOI “one episode per day,” but failed and watched two episodes the first day. Then binged the rest within two more days and caught up in time for episode 10 on Wednesday.

Naked Victor on the front page of NBC due to Johnny’s tweets

Crunchyroll releases Katsudon Pirozhki recipe (Dec 7)

pre-Episode 10

“Something round and golden” -- gold medal, wedding rings, cock rings, onion rings, golden snitch

Kubo-sensei fanning the flames

we were losing hope for teasers until... our saviors, Animate, took over for posting them. Dengeki still posted the identical teaser pics on their site, but did so at a later hour.

Preview lines about Yuuri recalling the previous year’s nightmare banquet.

Translation confusion led to people thinking it was a “nightmare bucket” “nightmare baguette” (and other attempts to find the correct foreign word) until someone pointed out that figure skating competitions have banquets.

Theories about what happened at the banquet. 

Episode 10

Rings

Yuuri buying one ring (with Victor buying the other) vs. Yuuri buying pair rings as a set 

would later be confirmed in a magazine post-series that Yuuri bought both rings

Are they really engaged or not?

Best plot twist ever.

The ending changes everything we ever knew about this series 

 people analyzing all the interactions since episode 1

“Poor Victor” comments and tags appear

“Victor was pining all along!”

Victor seen as super patient and willing to let Yuuri drive the pace (because he never brings up the banquet in order to respect Yuuri’s shyness). 

Victor flying to Japan with his dick out. 

Victor had a crush on Yuuri since the beginning.

“Victor is a dork who would do anything for love” mentality sweeps away previous malaise.

fanfic and fanart explosion of dorky, loving Victor 

This is when the loving!Victor image squashed any lingering remnants of evil!Victor 

Eros parallel re-interpreted as Yuuri being the playboy and Victor being the woman seduced and left behind. 

Victor is savage for making a program based on the banquet and thinking to skate it for a season. 

Pole dancers comment that the moves in Yuri on Ice reference actual moves (Yuuri is pretty good and has great grip strength; a couple of Chris’ moves are incredibly hard)

Otayuri (Otabek x Yurio) becomes a pairing

Beach scene discussion - was Victor angry or not, and why?

Hype for Kubo-sensei revealing that the GPF would have the most realistic animation of all the episodes.

Animate posted late (only a few hours before airing), but Dengeki even later.

Episode 11

“Scoring system is broken!”

Yurio’s score is literally impossible using the current real-life ISU scoring system (he’s about 5 points too high)

Yuuri scored low despite low number of technical mistakes

J.J. given a higher score than should be allowed because of his huge errors.

Discussion on Victor looking out at the ice during Yurio’s SP (“what was he thinking?”), and discussion about his flashback and burden

Chris’ mystery man ( “Chris’ boyfriend”? “Who IS that guy???”)

Half the fandom dies with Yuuri’s last sentence; half the fandom trusts Kubo-sensei (and comforts the other half)

Evgenia posts a tweet trusting everything will be alright

People’s view of J.J. changes - some sympathy and “??? I never expected to actually care for this guy!”

It seems everyone pitches their predictions about who will be on the podium.

“Phichit’s hamsters predict the podium?” theory

pre-Episode 12

We give up on teasers because they’re so late. Animate releases them a few hours before the episode airs.

Oh!SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE Soundtrack released about a day before the final episode aired.

“Spoilers” (but not really, because we had the tracklist since episode 5). We confirm the last two songs are the exhibition skates. People avoid Tumblr until the episode airs because of the “spoiler threat.” 

Episode 12

Breaking Tumblr, Crunchyroll, and Animate.

Crunchyroll released a statement on Twitter about YOI’s high traffic breaking it.

Tumblr crashed (traffic volume too high) right after the CR simulcast/subs came out around 4PM EST. It wasn’t fully fixed until several hours later.

Animate’s website crashed for the same reason as above.

“It wasn’t gay enough”

People feeling disappointed about the relationship between Yuuri and Victor because there was no second kiss or explicit “I love you.” People wanted something that could not be denied (wanted an “uncensored” kiss).

Others counter-argued that relationships can show deep love without needing an “I love you,” and point out how the relationship was built steadily throughout the series.

People feeling betrayed because Yuuri didn’t win gold.

“Otabek was robbed!” and “J.J. overscored!” complaints circulate

“I won’t kiss it unless it’s gold” prompted a legion of pictures/comics, and fics.

Gushing over the liberate use of ring flares

“History Makers” in the end credits - the extra “s” felt like an Easter egg to some.

Ice dance vs. Pairs - many fans mistake the final Duetto exhibition skate as Pairs when it’s actually based on an Ice Dance routine

How will Victor do both skating and coaching?

Will we get a Season 2? “See You Next Level” means a second season, right? 

After the series, we saw Oh!SkaTra!!! and the DVD/BD volumes sell ridiculous amounts - easily placing in either 1st or 2nd place on Oricon’s charts for DVD, BD, CD, and CD digital release. The Blu-ray and DVD volumes continue to hold high sales. Magazines continue to be translated. Some ideas/meta are confirmed and others become defunct.

It was a wild ride from way back when YOI was only a website and PV. Every week brought new ideas, writings, meta, art, and discussions. It was to the point where some weeks you would get in-depth meta and polished art just hours after the episode aired. In fact, there was so much made that you could easily reblog hundreds of posts in a day for the more explosive episodes, and meta would either get hundreds of notes or be lost in the current of new stuff appearing every few minutes. At the rate that it’s still going with new campaigns, events, and merchandise, Yuri!!! on ICE will be active for quite some time.

[kassna]

The Rogue One novel, schaloime and I: A Christmas cry fest

Sooo around Christmas I read the Rogue One novelization. And because I lost it at the first few pages already I decided that I couldn’t suffer through this perfection alone and started texting quotes and comments to @schaloime​ (mainly KRENNIC ALL THE WAY)... And, well. I don’t want to lose this list of hilarity and heartbreak, so I’m posting it now for everyone’s amusement. :D (Comments are of course translated from a wild English/German mix and a bit edited, but convey the fun we’ve had really well. X’D)

This book gets a very high recommendation from me, just saying before the cut! I love it to pieces, it even made my second trip to the cinema a lot better and gave me so much! 11/10 pathetic wine mom Orsons, would (and will) read again

(Come yell with me about it, please!)

He had killed a city. He could kill a world.

Boy, Krennic is such a pathetic squabbling schoolboy X'D lots of fun when he’s pleased about something he did well, like "I AM THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE fuck off Tarkin noooo" When they’re in the same room he’s always THIS CLOSE to stomping his foot, crossing his arms and whining                   

He felt like he finally deserved some attention from the emperor.

What is this book. Help.

[insert a lot of fangirling about the way the characters are written, how you’re in a different head with each part/chapter and how they all have clearly different ways of thinking and decision-making]

He’d settled himself in his seat with a glass of wine and a datapad by the time they’d left the docking bay.

Already the second scene in which Krennic lounges around and drinks wine. (This time the flight to Eadu, first time was after work on the Death Star. He also apparently likes to walk miles and miles through the construction and is quite pleased about having built all this and knowing every lil detail.)

Galen Erso, whom he’d given every chance. Galen Erso, whom he’d nearly died for once on that sad scrap of farmland. “I thought we were past this,” Krennic murmured to himself, with a bitter smile."

Just in - Krennic’s fuckin’ gay for Galen (as if we didn’t know that) and ALWAYS thinks about either him or Tarkin.

He’s really like HALF OF THE FANON!HUX headcanons I’ve encountered in fics. [slime and I began to flail helplessly because we can’t handle him. spoiler: we didn’t really stop screaming until the end.]

During the flight to Eadu, Krennic had stoked the fury in his heart. Fueled by outrage and humiliation, its fire burned bright enough to warm him in the chill that swept through the shuttle.

... Am I reading fanfic for real now or what.

Krennic smiled acidly and said the words he had selected with care aboard the shuttle:

Also just in: Krennic spent the trip to Eadu drinking wine and writing a speech. An epic speech:

“Gentlemen. One of you has betrayed the Empire. One of you conspired with a pilot to send messages to the Rebellion. I urge that traitor to step forward.”

Krennic. How often did you practice that in front of a mirror until you made sure you won’t forget a single word of it?

If by some miracle Cassian got off a second shot, he decided Krennic would make an excellent target. The Empire could only be improved by the loss of another high-ranking blowhard.

GOOD BOY. (Cassian’s thoughts are really interesting in general.)       

“Very well,” Krennic said. “I’ll consider it a group effort, then.” The words were cruel and sweet. Krennic felt no shame in deriving satisfaction from justice ruthlessly applied.

PLEASE. slime: gaaaaaaaaay

He looked down at himself and straightened his uniform with a tug. He noted black smudges from smoke and charred metal, a patch of red where someone—probably him—had bled. He wondered if he would have time to clean up before arriving. Or maybe Lord Vader would respect a man who’d seen combat.

Or: Krennic fainted right after entering the shuttle for departure from Eadu, got the order to go to Mustafar upon waking and dives headfirst into the REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. I wish I were kidding.                        

Was Vader mad? Was this his homeworld? Perhaps he wasn’t human beneath his armor; perhaps that forbidding black suit did more than replace lungs and limbs damaged in battle, and instead allowed a creature born in magma to survive the chill of space. Or maybe he lived on Mustafar because he enjoyed burning his victims alive.

... Krennic lands on Mustafar and has some thoughts about how Extra™ Vader is.

Vader had let him live. Vader had judged him too valuable to kill—and by extension, the Emperor recognized his value as well. Tarkin’s mutiny, his seizure of the Death Star, had been forestalled. And Krennic had yet to reveal Tarkin’s greatest error—how in destroying Jedha City, Tarkin had failed to blockade the moon, failed to ensure against survivors. For how else could the rebels have infiltrated Eadu? The traitorous pilot had come from Eadu and fled to Jedha; his message had escaped. Only Tarkin could be held responsible for that.

Oh BOY. Hubris much? slime: “ "Look at me, Look at me!" me: Everyone else in this book has thoughts that are more than that pathetic blubbering. Even JYN, who’s at war with her hatred for everyone who’s ever left her, EVEN HER WHO HAS BEEN A REAL EGOIST UP UNTIL NOW. But nooooo, Krennic is the only Special Snowflake™ in the universe. At least in his own head.

He was ready to leave the madhouse that was Mustafar, but he was suddenly uncertain he could ever escape Vader’s shadow.

How about you don't even try.

She held back a laugh and looked to Cassian. The man who’d betrayed her. The man who’d admitted his guilt and decided to fight for her. He saw her staring and looked back at her quizzically. It wasn’t how betrayals were supposed to go.

U don't say.

It was a bad plan. It had all been a bad plan, of course, starting with Galen’s message and ending with this unauthorized raid on Scarif. Now he was, what—defecting from his defection? If he survived, he’d be an Imperial traitor and a rebel mutineer. He’d be lucky to see the inside of a Yavin prison cell.

Bodhi, talking a mile a minute even in his thoughts. But he’s happy that there are most likely no mind-reading tentactle monsters on Yavin... At least something.

She almost winced when she looked at Cassian, wearing an officer’s suit and cap like they were perfectly tailored. Even the code cylinder in his pocket was at a regulation angle.

Jyn has her priorities straight. Always get a look while you can.

He stood at a metaphorical cliff’s edge, stamping his foot in an effort to cause an avalanche. With Galen Erso’s treachery undone, he would gain the allegiance of Vader. With Vader’s backing, he would expose the incompetence of Tarkin—the revelation of rebel survivors from Jedha. With Tarkin humiliated, Krennic’s command of the Death Star would be uncontested, and he would confer with the Emperor himself as to how it might best be used. Krennic would be, in every way that mattered, the most powerful and decorated man in the Empire.

I... Wait, what. Krennic, daydreaming.

Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin made it a point not to dwell on the flamboyant ambitions of Orson Krennic. Over the course of more than a decade, the director had gone from a nuisance to a genuine threat and back again, all the while demanding far more attention than Tarkin was prepared to grant him.

Thoughts from Tarkin! As if Krennic was a lousy annoying little fly.

Cassian had denied him that exquisite sense of purpose and replaced it with individuality. With individuality came doubt and cynicism: an awareness not only of the odds of success or failure but of those outcomes’ repercussions.

Individuality creates cynism. Now I have feels for a droid, thx Kaytoo.

With one second left until total shutdown, K-2SO chose to mentally simulate an impossible scenario in which Cassian Andor escaped alive. The simulation pleased him.

KAY. T___T

[everyone’s last sentence in their last part is amazing tbh]

As he emerged from the command center, two death troopers fell into step behind him and he thought of another day long before: another planetfall; another squad of troopers; and another danger to his life spawned by Galen. That day on Lah’mu had ended in victory, too. Orson Krennic was going to war.

Drama much! Firm belief now: He has that cape only to imagine himself in such a moment, with that last sentence as caption, for the epic picture he strikes in his own imagination...

But before Baze could fire, Chirrut rose from the bunker and stepped into sunlight.

First thought: oooh why do scenes with those two always feature such impressive pictures in my head Second thought, because the part was over and another person took over: FUCK YOU ALEXANDER FREED FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS I waited the WHOLE DAMN BOOK for a scene from Chirrut’s POV and just accepted that I won’t get one AND YOU DROP THE PART AT THE MAIN SWITCH ON ME FUCK YOU FUCK YOU HARD

[This was also when I started crying. I cried during three books my whole life (I cry frequently at movies, and I read a lot, so it takes a special something for that to happen). Be proud of yourself, Alexander Freed. You wrote *bawled her eyes out*-book #4.)

(...) without the temple he could not truly be a Guardian of the Whills; without joy and frivolity he could not be a clown and jokester among sober peers; without the Holy City he could not be a protector of his beloved world (...)

Fuuuuuck youuuuuu. T____T

He was dying, of course. He felt Baze’s heavy, familiar tread pound the ground, smelled his brother’s sweat as he leaned close. He wanted to say, Baze! My eyes—I can’t see! but Baze Malbus had always needed comfort more than humor.

THIS GUY I S2G.

But of course the Force had reunited them before the end.

Alright, I died, see you on the other side.

At last report, the data vault itself had been breached. It was a show of incompetence so great that Tarkin was almost curious to know how Krennic might explain it away.

Tarkin is a lil bitch sometimes. It’s great.

He was not the Empire—not every moment of oppression and indignity and torment she had ever suffered. He was an Imperial, a petty, spiteful, scared little man who’d forgotten his own atrocities. And he didn’t know her at all. She decided to make him remember.

Jyn can’t read a lot of people, but it seems to be easy for her with Krennic. X’D He only ever was “the man in white from her nightmares” until they finally meet. And up until his death she does know who he is and what role he had in her life - but never his name. Well, Orson. Sucks to be you. No immortal name.

He could follow Galen Erso’s thread through his life. He could see the full extent of the tragedy, the waste of effort on a wasted man. But what about before? He sought refuge in his childhood, tried to recall an Orson whose hopes had not yet been cast in shadow…

KRENNIC. Can’t you even in your LAST SECONDS stop thinking about how deeply ingrained Galen was into your life and how pathetic you were??? THIS GUY.                

Orson Krennic, advanced weapons research director and father of the Death Star, died alone on Scarif, screaming in fury at Galen Erso, at Jyn Erso, at Wilhuff Tarkin, and at all the galaxy.

... In his very last moments he imagined himself in full glory on the Death Star, his triumph, and in the middle of those cozy thoughts about his creation, the one thing he knows in and out, he finally noticed what Galen sabotaged. Ooops. Sucks, right?

I cried a lot. Slime cried a lot. And I’ll end this with the one sentence that really stuck with me and won’t leave my head for a long time...

Like a pilot should, he died with his ship.

Goodbye, Bodhi. Not all alone after all.