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fangirlfiction · 6 years ago

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Every Bucky Barnes Line in the MCU

I mean, not that I needed a reason to rewatch the entire Captain America trilogy (+ the other two movies our boy is briefly in), but I gave myself one. And that was to compile every line of dialogue that Bucky Barnes speaks in the MCU. Since we all fell in love with a man who only has 46 minutes of screentime across the MCU, I thought that it might be useful for fanfiction writing. Or just because.

Also, I included the Winter Soldier’s Russian lines as well. I gave the English translation, what I believe the Russian is, and how to phonetically say the Russian. But please keep in mind, I don’t speak/know Russian and I am relying on a few different translators, so I apologize if I got it wrong! (eta: thank you to @thedarkcaustic for the corrections to the Russian lines!!!)

After hours of hitting pause and play, I present to you, all 120 lines out of Bucky’s mouth, sorted by movie!

Captain America: The First Avenger

Hey! Pick on someone your own size.

Sometimes I think you like getting punched.

How many times is this? Oh, you’re from Paramus now? You know it’s illegal to lie on your enlistment form. And seriously, Jersey?

The 107th. Sergeant James Barnes, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.

Come on, man. It’s my last night! I got to get you cleaned up.

The future.

I don’t see what the problem is. You’re about to be the last eligible man in New York. You know there’s three and a half million women here?

Good thing I took care of that.

Only the good stuff.

Holy cow.

Hey Steve, what do you say we treat these girls…

Come on, you’re kinds missing the point of a double date. We’re taking the girls dancing.

You’re really going to do this again?

As who, Steve from Ohio? They’ll catch you. Or worse, they’ll actually take you.

This isn’t a back alley, Steve. It’s war.

Why are you so keen to fight? There are so many important jobs.

Yes! Why not?

Right. Cause you got nothing to prove.

Yes, we are.

Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.

You’re a punk.

Come on, girls. They’re playing our song.

Sergeant. 32557.

Is that…

Steve?

Steve.

I thought you were smaller.

What happened to you?

Did it hurt?

Is it permanent?

You don’t have one of those, do you?

Gotta be a rope or something!

No! Not without you!

Hey! Let’s hear it for Captain America!

See? I told you. They’re all idiots.

Hell no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I’m following him. But you’re keeping the outfit right?

Ma’am.

You don’t like music?

Then what are we waiting for?

I’m invisible. I’m turning into you. It’s like a horrible dream.

Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?

This isn’t payback, is it?

I had him on the ropes.

AHHHHHHHHH! (yes, this scream is exactly what you think it is, but it counts)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

I have her. Find him. (Bucky says this is Russian, which I believe is: она моя. найти его. Phonetically: ona moya. nayti yevo.)

Who the hell is Bucky?

The man on the bridge. Who was he?

I knew him.

But I knew him.

We looked for you after. My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery.

How was it?

I was gonna ask…

We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids. It’ll be fun. All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash. Come on.

The thing is, you don’t have to. I’m with you until the end of the line, pal.

No, I don’t!

Shut up!

You’re my mission. You’re! My! Mission!

Captain America: Civil War

Ready to comply. (Originally said in Russian: Я готов отвечить. Phonetically: Ya gotov otvechet.)

How are they? Are they good? Give me six, thank you. (Originally said in Romanian: Cum sunt? Sunt ele bune? Dă-mi șase, vă mulțumesc. This line is not 100% confirmed to be correct as the subtitles don’t translate this line. This is what I found after doing some research.)

You’re Steve. I read about you in a museum.

I wasn’t in Vienna. I don’t do that anymore.

That’s smart. Good strategy.

It always ends in a fight.

I don’t know.

I’m not gonna kill anyone.

My name is Bucky.

I don’t wanna talk about it.

What the hell is?

No.

Stop.

Stop!

Ready to comply. (Originally said in Russian: готовы подчиниться. Phonetically: gotovy podchinit'sya.)

Steve.

Your mom’s name was Sarah. You used to wear newspaper in your shoes.

What did I do?

Oh, God. I knew this would happen. Everything Hydra put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words.

I don;t know.

He wanted to know about Siberia. Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where.

Because I’m not the only Winter Soldier.

Their most elite death squad. More kills than anyone in Hydra history. And that was before the serum.

Worse.

Enough.

With these guys, he could do it. They speak 30 languages, can hide in plain sight… Infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize. They can take a whole country down in one night, you’d never see them coming.

Can you move your seat up?

We should get moving.

They’re evacuating the airport.

What the hell was that?

You couldn’t have done that earlier?

I didn’t kill your father.

We gotta go. That guy’s probably in Siberia by now.

He’s gonna tear himself in half?

What’s gonna happen to your friends?

I don’t know if I’m worth all this, Steve.

I know. But I did it.

Was that the time we used our train money to buy hot dogs?

What was her name again?

She’s gotta be a hundred years old right now.

Long enough to wake them up.

Yeah.

What the hell?

I remember all of them.

I can’t trust my own mind. So, until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head, I think going back under is the best thing. For everybody.

Black Panther

Bucky.

Good. Thank you.

Infinity War:

Where’s the fight?

A semi-stable hundred year old man.

Not bad. For the end of the world.

God, I love this place.

They surrender?

What the hell?

Not for sale.

Steve?

Endgame:

How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.

Gonna miss you, buddy.

Sam.

Go ahead.

Bucky Barnes Deleted Scenes: The Battle at Azzano (CA: TFA)

Radio B Company, tell them we need cover!

Here they come!

Down!

The Airport Battle (CA: CW)

I gotta get me one of those.

#bucky barnes #steve rogers #bucky barnes quotes #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction reference #fanfiction reference #writing reference #MCU reference #infinity war #black panther #civil war captain america #winter soldier captain America #captain america the first avenger

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rigelmejo · 5 years ago

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progress

i started trying to learn some chinese like idk in august. and i have never related more to a story i read once, of a 60-ish year old woman suddenly striving (and managing) to learn enough russian to read russian classics like war and peace in their native language.

because that’s how i feel... like i’m desperately trying to get to the point where i can read priest’s novels... because the translation is fine, and also sometimes impressive, but i know just enough to see all the details i’m missing, and

i actually am gonna have a physical copy of guardian and imperfections/defected goods and i feel like The Pressure to be able to read them at least basically

which. ahahahaha ;-; That is SUCH a lofty goal for the Near Future. Maybe long term, a very long term goal, but soon? Ahaaahaha ;-;

Anyway, i need to appreciate my progress. In about 3 months of studying, I have managed to go from knowing nothing but hello/thank you, to being able to read some subtitles, make out some long video titles/captions gist, to be able to look at a novel text and at least pinpoint moments of action taking place (which has been enough to at least look at an english translation, that says something like ‘shen wei’s right hand was kissed’ then look to the chinese version and find that line in text, so that i can word-for-word look up things with more precision). And these are things I should be very proud of myself for.

When I started studying French, the first language I took serious when trying to study - it took me 6 months to read most general texts and gleam the gist of the meaning. It took me 3 months to read the gist of titles/some captions/some summaries of nonfiction nature like instructional texts and news. And then it took me a year maybe to start being able to look at FICTIONAL things like novels or shows and start being able to follow the gist. With Japanese - it took me 1.5 YEARS to get to the point of being able to read the gist of titles/short captions/some small dialogues in manga.

Studying chinese for 3 months, i can now: follow short comical manga-based audios on youtube about 70-80% (I followed a lan wangji/wei wuxian short video audio), read very short fanartist comics (saw some guardian short comics and managed to follow them without looking anything up), can look at the chinese titles of videos on youtube and maybe 1/2 the time reasonably get the gist of what it means, i can look at chinese subtitles on the shows i’m watching and grasp maybe 50% of what i’m looking at. Mostly, again, the action oriented dialogue like ‘i said’ ‘he’s dead/what happened’ ‘what’s that’ ‘madam, help me please’ ‘10k years ago’ ‘brother/sister/etc can i’ ‘no need/worry’ ‘smile’ ‘the meaning is/so/therefore/but/however/still’... and clearly most of the more specific words I know that are adjectives or nouns, are catered toward the shows/stories I’m consuming - since ghost/demon/puppet/bright/smile/dead/murderer/chief/god/lord are the first kinds of nouns I started recognizing.

All of those achievements though... I should be grateful to have gotten to this place. In august, when I first looked at Guardian’s original text... the ONLY things I could understand were the numbers, and ‘hello/thank you/cat’. Now, even though I couldn’t read a chapter, I could skim through and find the names of people, and see if they’re doing something like speaking/smiling/looking/waiting, or if a ghost has appeared. Which is miles more than I could do three short months ago. And it is incredible to me, because it really is a lot of progress for me, in such a short time.

It really points out to me how starkly different japanese was to start learning. I think part of the huge difference, is chinese really is somewhat easier structurally for me to look at and parse through (and I get now why it’s rated Slightly easier to learn for native english speakers than japanese is), and I think part of it is because I’ve spent enough time studying languages now that I’m more efficient at it. It certainly appears I’m more efficient than I was in the past. My reading in japanese is... still pretty awful. I really... can only glance at maybe manga dialogues, or real short image captions, or real short physical comedy skits, and understand the gist. Anything more, and I quickly get lost. And I studied Japanese pretty consistently for 2ish years. Whereas with chinese, I am already at the point where I can look at a wall of text like an actual fictional novel (not comic, novel), and start parsing out at least some of what’s going on. Where I can watch a show and follow at least some of the main ideas without translation. I do think part of the difference also, is which words I tried learning first in what language - in Japanese I learned comedic words first, and everyday ‘go to school/work’ words, so for daily life comedy vlogs/slice of life simple manga I can follow some of the gist - but for more literary things I am completely lost. With chinese, I was watching shows from the get-go, so immediately action words/nouns that are repeated a lot, were the first words I started understanding. And I think learning action words helps a lot with following what is physically going on - which is something I did not focus on immediately in japanese. Now, in chinese, I’m focusing on a lot of literary words like ‘its just/its only a’, ‘but even/however’ etc kind of words, and adjectives, so I imagine over time those kinds of words will pop out to me easier as well.

I have learned how it is I tend to learn the fastest, although it’s not quite in line with the perfectly-rigid approach I wish I could manage instead:

- I need to start using the language immediately. - Not coddled. I need to use it. Get thrown into it. Throw myself into actual materials IN the language. The textbooks and readers with english are a crutch. I learn faster the more I dive straight into the actual language materials IN that language. - As usual, find a vocabulary guide and/or flashcard set with the most common words, use that as a place to start for vocabulary. With Chinese, that was the 1000-most-common-words-in-chinese-dramas memrise deck, some other anki decks i look at on occassion, and the words-by-most-common clozemaster chinese. - As usual, find a grammar guide, start CRAMMING through it. Inevitably, I am not going to understand the grammar until I see it working in the real language. But if I just make myself READ grammar points, then I’ll have a framework to understand the grammar I’ll see later being used. I’m currently working through https://www.chinese-grammar.org/ , which has been a very nice guide to just chug through. There are some other helpful guides - nanchinese is okay, but I HATE how slowly it progresses a user through the material. Again, I seem to do best when I’m just thrown into the deep end and FORCED to progress faster than I want to. Inevitably, I will always stop myself and keep covering the same basic material longer than I need to, if given the chance. So for myself, I really do need to just force myself to look at materials that look more difficult than I feel I am ready for. Again, future self: even if you feel you haven’t mastered the material, even if you haven’t memorized it yet, LITERALLY JUST PROGRESS as soon as you understand the gist of it. That’s it. Literally keep moving forward once you think you somewhat understand. - As usual (for non romanized alphabets), get a book/guide that covers the characters by most common, and start CRANKING THROUGH IT. Again, do NOT pause until you’ve memorized, just KEEP PROGRESSING once you feel you understand the basic gist, move forward. You will look over the same characters again and again later, there’s time to reread a whole book/guide later - the point is to get exposed to those characters and words, so that the next times you see them it’s reinforcing the learning instead of your first time. For this, there is a great book: Reading and Writing Chinese: Third Edition, HSK All Levels (2,349 Chinese Characters and 5,000+ Compounds). I got this one, which I like because as far as I can tell, it includes all the characters and words I’d need to learn for the HSK levels (which at least somewhat prepare you to have some command of the language/some ability to comprehend the language). So, this book prepares a learner decently by at least teaching things that are more likely to be commonly found in the language, and therefore going to pay off to learn overall. I also have been looking at this guide: http://www.mementoslangues.fr/Chinois/Sinogrammes/Table3000CaracteresChinois.pdf . It has 3000 chinese characters in order of frequency. Which, again, is useful in trying to learn what will be most applicable to understanding many things. When reading through it, I’m on the 50th character and pretty much knew all of them already in 3 months - which is good, and probably why I’ve felt what words/characters I’ve learned have paid off in understanding so much. If I had more time to read it, I might find I know a whole lot more. In the RaWC book, I’ve been highlighting the characters I know, and I’m still reading through the book, but maybe 300-500 I’ve highlighted so far cause I already knew them. For learning characters, any book/word guide that at least partially prioritizes for frequency, and for broadly what is going to be useful to comprehend that language, helps a lot to focus you on studying things that will improve basic understanding. I also found a book by Lingomastery, Chinese Most Common 1000 words - which I’m looking through too, when I get the time. Again - for me it’s not about looking things over until I’m perfect - it’s about looking once, understanding just basically, then as I see it over and over multiple times learning it fully. Because for me that is faster than slowly memorizing, because I’m a perfectionist and I often choose to move on much slower than I can actually learn. -Other things that have helped a ton: decent translators. The app PLECO is great, and can also translate some idioms. Google translate is nice because the app allows you to draw or speak the word instead of typing it so that if you don’t know the exact pinyin you can just draw the character you see. These three apps I found useful for translating chunks of sentences: https://fanyi.baidu.com/#zh/en/%E5%8F%AB%E5%89%8D%E8%BE%88 (I especially like how this one handles chunks of texts, and gives more precise footnotes of words/idioms at the bottom), https://translate.systran.net/translationTools/text?source=zh&target=en , https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary - The app Idiom is GREAT for looking at a chinese website/webnovel, and just translating word by word - it will give the character and pronounce it out loud. The translations are pretty freaking rough and sometimes not quite correct, but for super fast translating in-line on the same page while reading, it’s incredibly convenient. Likewise, the app BaiduTranslate allows you to just highlight text on your phone in any app, select ‘share’ select ‘baidutranslate’ app, and then it will translate the whole chunk of text - pinyin, audio, english, and some keywords/idioms more precisely translated in a footnote.These two apps, along with google-translate to draw in characters you can’t copy/paste, are good for super quick rough translations when working through a text/show. - Honestly, I think it has been helping as well that I’m watching so many chinese shows, and chinese youtube fan-made videos. I don’t personally think I do much with the audio to help myself learn, but I think it’s been helping me get better at looking up words (by pronouncing the tones closer to correct, and by drawing a character in the subtitles, and in youtube when there ARE english subs by looking from the english to chinese-hard-subs and matching some characters to specific words - it’s how i learned meaning/but/however/therefore). Even though I don’t notice significant improvement because of doing this, I do think it simply helps I’m interacting with chinese a lot. (And, of course, I love getting to the point in knowing a language, where you know JUST enough to be able to tell when the english subtitles CLEARLY DO NOT match what’s actually being said - that’s always fun). I do think that because I’m hearing chinese a lot, it’s easier for me to transfer my reading skills to listening skills - since I’m practicing both at once when I see the chinese subtitles, since I listen enough that they sound relatively familiar to what I think characters sound like in my head when reading (which, my internal voice still isn’t necessarily accurate, but it’s improving). This is significant, because I know in french I did NOT do this. So as a result, in french I could listen and would struggle significantly to match words to subtitles or text - I could read quite well but my listening lags behind. In chinese, I can reasonably follow along to audio with the text - they’re close enough in similarity to me that I don’t fear my listening comprehension is lagging as considerably as it does in french. Pretty much all the chinese words/phrases I am most sure I understand, are the ones I heard before reading. In french this was not the case, in part maybe because french has so many english cognates i could slide by in reading without necessarily learning the french pronunciations for a lot of words. Also - in chinese I generally plug new words into google translate or Pleco, both of those translators provide audio. I listen to the audio, because I want to make sure my tone is right. So for a majority of the words in chinese I learn, I listen to them several times at the beginning. I do think short term, so far it’s been paying off in listening comprehension a LOT with shows. And long term, I think if I continue doing this it will pay off in helping to keep my listening/reading comprehension a lot more balanced then it is in french. Which personally, I find hilarious, just because - when I started trying to learn chinese, I was literally ONLY concerned with reading comprehension. I didn’t care at all if I could pronounce or even knew what the words I was reading sounded like. But... to be fair, in chinese (thankfully!!!) many of the characters hint at their pronunciation based on how they look. So for chinese its often a matter of ‘okay this is gui/wei/shi/etc but which tone is it?’ Which I personally find... eons easier to come to terms with, then japanese characters, which often have multiple pronunciations, and those pronunciations rarely have to do with the appearance of the character. But with chinese, I see my favorite little ghostie radical, and know it might be pronounced gui or wei, and know it will probably have something to do with spirits. I see the speech radial and know it’ll probably have to do with speaking or communication or words. I see the ‘up’ radical and know it might be pronounced similar to ‘shang’. I deeply appreciate that in chinese the characters clearly have a logic - and though of course there are exceptions to those patterns, there are exceptions in many languages anyway, and for the most part those patterns are greatly useful.

Just a little thing I’ve noticed, but also I find the characters/words are much easier for me to remember BECAUSE I have names of characters, story plotlines to relate them to. Because I’ve seen Shen Wei/Wei Wuxian, it’s easy for me to remember Shen Wei’s wei has a mountain on top and is a high tone, and wei’s doesn’t have the mountain and is a different one. Because I’ve seen the ghost character in so many plotlines, I can recognize when it’s spirit, or ghost, or puppet, or demon. Cat, wolf, dog, owl... they’re all easier for me to remember because I can think of specific sentences and situations where I’ve read/heard those words. If I was just reading them in a textbook, they would not be so vivid in my memory. In a way, it’s like the words I pinpoint in a story stick out in my head as these bright points, and then new things I learn connect outward from them like spiderwebs. I know daren from guardian is like a lord, so then when I see lord-god in Destiny and Love I know what to relate it to, when i see furen as madam i know how to relate it to what i already know. And so on and so forth.

While I think there is definitely a place for learning in a structured way (and god I wish I was like that), I think my mind personally learns the fastest when I approach things based on most useful then work outward, and when I cover things quickly and broadly at only an understanding level of basic-gist-grasped, and then just start throwing myself into challenging material. I really think my mind prefers to dive headfirst into challenging things - it appreciates a challenge, it wants to problem solve, and it seems to work harder and focus better when it’s in the middle of being challenged. Now, working through challenging material can be very draining - and it still is, even though my brain learns faster by doing it. But seeing the progress after just 3 months, clearly its worth it.

3 months ago, I looked at a wall of text and understood nothing but the calendar number dates. Now I can look and sometimes even follow whats going on! Now I can see chinese subtitles and follow some of the action! I looked ad Mo Dao Zu Shi the other day, and managed to read the first few paragraphs! I just looked at Zhen Hun today, and scanned through it to pinpoint a few scenes - some I managed to find and read in chinese, some I only managed to make out one line from. But ALL of that is still miles above what I could manage to do at the start. I’m personally... very excited. I have so much more that I want to be able to do in the language. But I’m extremely happy with how far I’ve managed to progress so far.

---

Literally... my goal had been... to be able to start getting through the guardian novel in chinese at least grasping the gist... in the end of November this year. HA.

That is... not a reasonable goal. If I can manage it, even just like small snippets of the novel... then I will be floored with myself. We’ll see.

#rant #I was just reflecting #I really... have gotten through a lot #I can't believe I only started this in August.

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langernameohnebedeutung · 6 years ago

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Would you have any recommendations on where one could hear/learn a German accent? I'm learning the language but my most recent teacher said that my accent/pronunciation is not very good despite being at a B1 level. I think this is probably due to I have not one, not two, but THREE separate American accents already because of how many times we moved when I was younger, so adding another accent is hell my mouth cannot keep up. Thanks for your time.

Hey sorry that I took my time answering this.Okay, first of, Josie’s personal opinion time (feel free to skip this lmao): It’s not bad to have an accent. Everyone has an accent - not just because of your native tongue but also because of the people around you, your class, family, friends or whoever you practice with. I have a German accent and probably always will have, because I learnt English from teachers with German accents, with partners and fellow pupils who had a German accent and now I study English at a German university and people around me still speak with the same accent. 90% of the conversations I hold in English are German-accented English. But at this point, I refuse to consider my accent “inferior” to...a Yorkshire accent or a New York accent just because those are “native” accents. Of course, it’s also not bad or anything to want to sound like a native speaker and I’m not going to tell you that if you truly want to speak like a native-speaker you shouldn’t pursue that interest - but it’s something few people really 100% accomplish, so pls make sure you’re not putting the actually important things like vocab, grammar and you know - enjoyment - on hold to pursue something really elusive that your teacher thinks is important. It is very hard to accomplish especially for someone not living in Germany and Germany is a country with a lot of different regional and foreign accents, so most of us have some experience with different pronunciations - so you will most likely be understood.

Now, the my actual answer to your question:

Listening to people always helps, so does talking. I noticed it when I was still in school. I started watching American shows and it strongly affected my vocabulary and pronunciation - mind you, we were taught to speak strictly British English, American English was an evil taboo - but later I discovered my love for British films and tv shows and I reverted to the English I learnt at school, for the most part (not regarding the language level but the variety). So I definitely recommend exposing yourself to native German-speakers bc otherwise, your main influence will be your fellow students.

There are a lot of German shows on Netflix - you can check if some of them have English subtitles, I know “Dark” for example does. (I’m not sure about Vorstadtweiber, but if you want to get a taste of a Viennese accent, this might also be fun to check out. “Extra3″ is a German satire show that puts all its episodes on Youtube and with a VPN you can also access the ZDF Mediathek and RTL-Now, two very big German tv channels).

It’s especially helpful to watch out for words you’ve so far only seen in their written form so that you know you struggle with. If you hear them, maybe stop the video and try to repeat it. If you’re interested in specific accents from specific regions (which might be a bit hard, mind you) you can also look for some source material from different regions. For example the German audio of “My Fair Lady” has her speaking with a very thick Berliner accent instead of Cockney, so that’s something you might find interesting bc it’s a film you might already be familiar with. Another tip: I noticed about myself that I easily start thinking in another language, even if I’m really far from fluent and miss words. And doing that I noticed that my inner monologue still has a German accent but it’s much weaker than when you know. my actual physical mouth is involved, for some reason. I can also imitate different English accents in my head much better than I can when I speak - you might try that and even talk to yourself. If there’s no one to tell you you are doing it wrong, it becomes much easier to experiment and have fun with language.

In my experience, it also helps to imitate the accent the speakers of your target language have while speaking your language: I noticed that when I was practising Russian on duolingo: Now, duolingo makes you repeat sentences to practice your pronunciation and my Russian pronunciation was horrible - until I purposefully tried to sound “Russian” - suddenly Duo understood what I was saying. So you might try to speak German with what feels like an exaggerated German accent to you, even if it feels weird at first. (I do the same when I want to sound British)Another thing that helped me (much more than teachers ever did) is to watch English people contemplate and imitate and play with German accents - because even if it’s something I made fun of a lot these last days, it’s interesting and helpful, because if done for comedic or storytelling purposes (I’m going to give an example of that later on), it often highlights the aspects that make it sound different from a native pronunciation and help you localise these aspects in your own language use. That said - the reason I make fun especially of British people playing Germans is that their accents are often based on other British people pretending to be German, not actual Germans so it sounds...very different from the way we speak English. So keep in mind that it’s not always authentic. (Personally, I still think I learnt how not to pronounce the word “convenience” from an episode of Blackadder but that’s another story)

Okay I threatened that I would add an example on how accents in media might help you understand your own accent better:

There are many examples of English-speakers pretending to speak German, but since you are already at B1 and probably speak better German than most of them (many just say stuff without knowing the words or even...just make up sounds that they think sound German), so I picked a film scene that I mentioned in a post a few days ago: the pub scene from Inglorious Basterds (which I saw on youtube is apparently popular for language teaching purposes).

It’s interesting because Michael Fassbender is half-German and knows the language somewhat so he at least knows what the words he’s saying mean. Also, he’s surrounded by native speakers which make for good comparison material. (mind you, Inglorious Basterds is obv. a film about the NS-era so while the German they speak sounds rather modern, I can understand if you would like to avoid that content. Especially since the second video ends in a shooting.) I couldn’t find the whole scene online but if you have the DVD, you might want to look into it, because it’s much longer than the excerpts I found online and maybe you can spot more of the language patterns I will point. (It also has Christoph Waltz in it and his Austrian dialect which might also be interesting to you)

Now, what you need to know is that Fassbender plays an English spy pretending to be a German officer - but when someone points out his accent, he tries to pretend to be Swiss. He does a pretty good job speaking German actually and a German would understand every word he is saying (unlike we do with some other actors pretending to speak German) - but it’s also very obvious with every word that he’s not a native speaker (and no one would actually mistake him for Swiss.) (btw if you want to check out what an actual Swiss dialect sounds like: (x) (I could imagine it’s very difficult for English speakers, because it has a lot of “ch” sounds and is very guttural.

Now, back to Inglorious Basterds:

The first thing that’s very interesting to look at is the first 30 seconds of the first video because it’s clear that they made Fassbender exaggerate his accent because in that scene it leads to a German soldier he’s talking to noticing and pointing out his strange pronunciation. At 0:35 in the first video it’s very, very obvious when he yells the word “zurückkehren” (which finally makes the soldier address the issue)- because he pronounces it “zurück-kerr-än” - a very typical pronunciation with an English accent. Whereas a German would usually say: zurück-kehr’n” (You can compare it to one of the Germans saying “zurückkehren” at minute 2:30) It is also interesting to compare how Fassbender pronounces an “r” vs. how the Germans do it - because he pronounces it like you would in English, while the German “r” sound is a bit harsher and produced a little bit further back in the throat. (Tip: If You can feel it vibrate in your mouth, you’re doing it rrrright).

When he says “rrrrrüpelhaft” it seems as if he’s trying to pronounce the “r” like a native speaker there - but overdoes it. (Fassbender does the same exaggerated “r” sound at 2:56 with the word “Regisseur” and at 2:33 with “Riefenstahl”) - which just sounds a bit off. Compare it to Til Schweiger at 1:00 saying “betrunken (oder völlig) verrückt”. btw If you compare the way Schweiger says “sprechen” in that sentence with Michael Fassbender saying “sprechen” at 2:35 you will also notice the difference in the way they pronounce the “ch”.In that sequence at 2:30, Fassbender also says “gesehen” a lot - and always pronounces it G-esehen, while a German would probably pronounce it ge-seh-’n

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Something that many German learners struggle with - that you can observe in these videos as well - is the pronunciation of infinitive verbs. German verbs, as you know, usually end in “-en” (gehen, sagen, sprechen, hoffen. etc). Now, German speakers usually barely utter the second “e” at all, it’s often: geh’n, sag’n, sprech’n - it*s something that sounds a little off sometimes when Fassbender speaks, because he often puts more emphasis on it than a German would for example when he asks “Haben Sie den Riefenstahl Film gesehen?” or at 3:24 in the second video when he says “aufsteh.en.”You can also observe the impact of the native English - at 2:50 when he says “Brüder” it comes out as “Brüddr” which sounds a lot like “brother” - while in German, the “ü” is stressed and the “r” is almost inaudible.I think the biggest challenge for English-speakers is the “ch” (which unexperienced speakers often turn into a “k” sound - for example turning “Nacht” into “nackt”, always fun). You can see Fassbender struggle a little with that a few times as well (it’s particularly important to keep in mind that there are two “ch” sounds - the one produced in the front of your mouth like in “ich” or “frech” or the one produced farther back in your mouth like in “Nacht” or “Bach” - so if you encounter a word with a “ch”, it’s best to check out which one it is.You can also see him struggle with the long words in German - he basically forces “tausendjähriges” out very quickly which sounds very strange and mechanical and at 3:20 in the second video he has a different strategy and stresses EVERY part of the world Hauptsturmbannführer: “Haupt. Sturm. Bann. Führer.” which sounds ... strange even when done for dramatic purposes. You can compare that to the way the German actor says the same word at 3:31. (especially if you pay attention to how they pronounce “Führer” you will notice the proximity issue. “Führer” is a word that many English-speakers find difficult to pronounce and I think it’s a) because many English-speakers are familiar with the word “Führer” but never heard a German pronounce it b) because of the close proximity of an “ü” and two “r” sounds. When Fassbender pronounces “Führer” it sounds very much like an English person would pronounce the world in an English context while the German guy pronounces it like a German does - that’s something else to keep in mind, that words you might be familiar with like “Volkswagen” or “Weltschmerz” or any of the others are usually pronounced with an accent when English-speakers use them (The same is, of course, true for any other loan words)

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There*s a similar scene in First Class also with Michael Fassbender sitting in a pub with Nazis (seriously that’s... a huge part of his repertoire it seems) which you might want to check out bc again, he speaks German and the other guys are native speakers so if you want to keep looking for different pronunciations and accents, it might be interesting.

(Also “Auslautverhärtung” is a big issue with English-speakers and German-speakers. The reason why German speakers tend to say things like “sayin-k” and “goin-k” and “leavin-k” is because the last sound of a word is usually spoken harsher in German than it is English. English-speakers often have the opposite problem and swallow the last sound a little. I didn’t notice particularly jarring examples of that in these scenes, but it’s still something to keep in mind)

All of that said and done and dissected, I think natural development and interacting with native speakers is much more effective and fun than just trying to avoid certain pronunciations or imitate how other people sound, especially bc I don’t want to bore you with technicalities or even worse, make you nervous about speaking because honestly? Accents are fun and everyone has them. Don’t worry too much about it

If you speak slowly, people will understand you and if you spend some time around native speakers, it will help a lot, it has a strong impact on the way you speak (so obviously i recommend listening to a lot of spoken German, watch films, shows, youtube etc.) And yes, pronunciation is important - you need to be understood after all - but having an accent is natural. Everyone has at least a regional accent and I don’t understand why foreign accents are automatically considered a flaw or a sign that someone isn’t able to communicate fully in that language they learnt.

I recommend you focus on words and grammar and listening and reading comprehension and let things grow naturally and don’t actually enjoy having an accent. There’s nothing wrong with it.

#nonfandom #languages #Anonymous

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sweetener-forever · 6 years ago

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People Need Subtitles

Rating: T

Pairings: Iida/Uraraka/Midoriya, Bakugo/Kirishima

Tags: Hard-of-Hearing Bakugo and ADHD Uraraka. Pairings are in there, but they are more of a background thing. Mostly focusing on the weird friendship of Uraraka and Bakugo. This is set in their third year. Shinsou is in Class 3-A, fight me.

Summary: Ochako and Bakugo aren't exactly close, but they understand each other well enough to at least be tentative friends.

AO3 Link

Conversations with Bakugo are difficult to say the least, not that he hasn't improved since their first year at school! At least in Ochako's opinion he has gotten loads better at talking to people. Which is to say that he sometimes will actually start a conversation without any prompting.

"If you just took the two and pulled it around-" Ochako really was trying hard to focus on what Bakugo was saying, especially since it isn't often he feels like explaining homework to anyone that isn't Kirishima, or occasionally Kaminari and Sero. But she can't be blamed because math is so boring!

"-not that fucking difficult, if you-" Tenya's gesturing wildly to Deku out on the school grounds, it's hard to tell if he's scolding Deku or explaining strategy, but those look like his excited arm movements, so probably not the former.

Although Deku looks sheepish about something, his face is red and he's attempting to hide it away from Tenya. So, maybe Tenya caught him staring at his ass again instead of doing the warm-ups? Hm, Tenya did have a nice ass, it's a shame Ochako can't see it from where she is sitting in the common room. Maybe later Tenya will be too worn out to be embarrassed over her squeezing it.

Two years and counting of dating hadn't actually done much for Tenya's embarrassment thresh-hold, but he was starting to loosen up. Maybe next week they could convince him to actually drink with the class instead of being on hangover patrol. She's pretty sure Kaminari is supposed to be in charge of getting the alcohol this time, but he always gets so nervous and zappy. It makes touching the metal caps of the bottles dangerous and like a weird game of Russian roulette. Last time Deku had gotten shocked so much that his hair started to resemble Bakugo's. Not that she was dumb enough to mention that to Bakugo.

Kirishima got away with it though and that was funny. The two of them ended up wrestling over the couch and broke one of the tables, so Momo had to fix it. Tenya made them sit on the floor as punishment and Ochako was pretty sure Bakugo must have at least been tipsy at the time since he obeyed the punishment for all of three hours-

BOOM. The explosion startles Ochako hard enough that she pushes away from the small table and tips her chair over. She lays there dazed and mildly bruised as Bakugo leans against the table and smugly grins down at her, as if he hadn't just made a tiny explosion right next to her shoulder.

"You paying attention now, Squirrel-Cheeks?" Her glare is about as effective as throwing a rock at a tank. Which is to say it just makes Bakugo lay his face against the table and laugh at her.

Ochako has changed her mind, Bakugo is still as much of an asshole as before.

~OwO~

On a good day there were very few people in the dorms that would disagree that Bakugo sometimes needed instant karma. There are absolutely zero that would argue with this sentiment on a bad day.

Today hasn't exactly been a bad day, but suffice to say that Bakugo had not started it off on the right foot. Ochako couldn't say for sure what exactly happened, but Kirishima had been snappy at Bakugo since they left their shared floor for class.

And if Kirishima or Kaminari started off a day in a bad mood it had a tendency to spread to the rest of the class.

For Bakugo's part he kept his own sour asshole attitude until lunch time, when he began throwing looks at Kirishima and looking like he was regretting his entire life. It was an expression akin to the one Deku would get if he tried to challenge Toruu for how many sour candies they could put in their mouths before the other person died.

Ochako would feel more sympathy for him if he wasn't also snapping at anyone who tried to intervene and help. Which included her, Todoroki, Momo, Mina, Deku, and Kaminari. Granted she does feel a little bad for him, but only because he does actually try to apologize after lunch and gets the cold shoulder.

It really is a testament to how far he has come though that he doesn't immediately start blowing stuff up and acting like a bigger jerk. Instead he kept trying until he managed to get Kirishima to agree to having a home-cooked dinner an an apology. Kirishima had managed to get that, and an actual apology out of Bakugo in front of the entire class.

Which is really inspiring and all, but also not the point that Ochako is making about karma. No, that was not the instant karma that Bakugo truly deserved, but it was the set-up that allowed Ochako to sneak across the common room in socks and into the attached kitchen without Kirishima immediately greeting her.

Oh, he noticed her alright and could probably even tell what she was doing. But instead of giving Bakugo a head's up, like he normally would have with all the loud background cooking noise going on, he turns back to Bakugo and eagerly starts chattering about the weather.

Ochako gets as close as she possibly can to Bakugo's back without the boy hearing her, her hands poised just an inch above his waist, and she can tell that Kirishima is trying really hard not to compromise her position by laughing. She holds her breath and leans in on tip-toes until she is nearly touching the back of Bakugo's hair.

"BOO!" The reaction is instant, Bakugo yelps and swings around to try and explode Ochako, but she's already activated her quirk on him, sending him bobbing up to the ceiling the instant she pushes him.

"YOU PINK-CHEEKED FUCKING MENACE, I'LL CHOP YOU UP AND THROW INTO THE SHITTY PAN RIGHT ALONGSIDE THE SHITTY STEAK! BURN EVERY LAST SOCK YOU OWN AND THEN SHOVE THE ASHES DOWN YOUR THROAT!" Bakugo screams, cusses, and carries on like this, but Ochako and Kirishima are too busy leaning up against each other and laughing so hard that they're crying to really pay him any attention.

"KIRISHIMA, YOU ASSHOLE, TRAITOR!" He thrashes on the ceiling, punching his hands and feet against it as if that would get him closer to the other two. Incensed and looking like he is out for blood.

But if anyone were to walk by they would probably see the grin on his face and the way he doesn't even try to activate his quirk to get down. Because sometimes even Bakugo knows he needs a little instant karma.

Doesn't mean he has to like it though.

~OwO~

Guest Pro-Heroes coming in to lecture the class and give demonstrations are both Ochako's favorite and least favorite thing. On one hand it's cool to see how different pros use their quirks and what advice they have about being professional heroes. On the other hand it's kind of obvious that they have never had to teach a class before.

"You want to get just the right tourniquet for stopping vikings by holding your shance like this- and then twisting your boudice like so." The pro-hero Wingman demonstrates, his mouth moving a mile-a-minute as he twists a dummy's arm almost over its own shoulder.

"Of course you want to be coffied grounds as any wrong ment could break your villain's arm instead of (?????) them." He cheerily instructs in a softer and somehow even more fast tone as he pulls the dummy's arm clean off. Ochako is completely lost, especially since he started off talking about combat, then pulled a dummy out of his side, went on about vikings for some reason, and now there are villains?

It's impossible for her to follow, but when she glances around at everyone else they seem to be comprehending it just fine. Deku is taking notes in fact and muttering up a small storm from where he is standing next to Tenya, and normally Ochako thinks it's cute how involved he gets when guest heroes come in, but she really wishes he would look at her and see her obvious distress instead. Tenya is also likewise enthralled, only pausing to lean over to cut off Deku's mutterings and to comment quietly on what he has written. Ochako of course can't hear it from where she is standing next to Mina and Tsuyu, but it's still distracting as her stupid brain tries to read his lips. Which isn't actually something she can do.

"-cufflinks of course are excellent for this as well!" What, cufflinks!? Ochako whips her head around so fast to see Wingman doing...something with the dummy's wrists and honestly she can't even tell if cufflinks is what he actually said at this point.

It is all starting to become too frustrating and she's debating just tuning the hero out in favor of daydreaming about the cute dogs she saw the other day while out on at the park with her datemates. That is until Bakugo's loud voice explodes through the field and cuts right over the top of the guest speaker's speech.

"Could you speak up or at least face us if you're going to try and educate us?!" Bakugo is gritting his teeth and Ochako can tell that that is the only thing keeping him from actually cussing or yelling louder like he actually wanted to.

"Excuse me, could you not intro me while I'm trying to give a demon station?" Even though Wingman is now facing the class fully Ochako is still having a hard time understanding what he is saying, mostly because he seems incapable of actually raising his voice. At least she isn't alone as Bakugo's face screws up with annoyance.

"Your what?"

"My demon station!" Demon station, Bakugo keep up. Ochako has no idea herself.

"I can't understand a word you're saying, could you try talking clearly." Bakugo makes sure to enunciate each word with an almost exaggerated tone.

"Well, I'm sorry that my knowledge and wisdom isn't important enough for you to pay attention to!" Wingman actually speaks up, his voice rising out of the near whisper-pitch he had been keeping up for the majority of the lecture. He even made sure to enunciate every word said.

You could hear a pen drop it was so silent. Even the birds that had been hanging out near the training grounds were silent.

"Excuse me, Wingman, sir." Tenya, bless his heart, has a hand raised and clears his throat to get the hero's attention.

"Uh, yes?" Now that the silence has been broken Wingman seems to be coming back to himself, color high in his cheeks as he turns pointedly away from Bakugo to put his full attention on Tenya. A mistake, really, since the class president looks like he is about to lecture the guest lecturer. Which isn't really Tenya's style to question people higher in authority unless he has a really good reason.

"Our classmate, Bakugo, is hard of hearing and located at the back of the group. I would be hard-pressed to say that Bakugo was not paying attention. I simply think he could not hear you, as you were facing away from us and speaking quietly." Tenya nods rapidly with what he is saying and gestures as if he is afraid his point won't get across fully if he doesn't. There is also a nervous eye-shuffle he does to Mr. Aizawa leaning against a near-by tree, but when Tenya isn't immediately scolded he relaxes his posture a little.

Wingman to his credit looks embarrassed and glances between the class and Mr. Aizawa as if he isn't sure what to do. Mr. Aizawa has little mercy and patience for those who can't take criticism, especially if they are pro-heroes, and pointedly does not throw Wingman a life perserver.

Instead his eyes are like the cold waters of the ocean in winter, and all they are saying is: Drown.

Wingman flounders for a little bit more, but eventually has everyone pair up to try out the techniques that he was apparently lecturing about. Something Ochako isn't exactly thrilled about since she didn't actually understand any of the lecture.

"Yeah, right, as if you could understand that loser even if you were in the front." Bakugo says it loudly, but he's looking directly as Ochako instead of Wingman or Tenya. Making his way over to her instead of pairing up with Kirishima like he usually would have.

At least Ochako isn't alone in her dislike of guest lecturers.

Also, apparently he did say 'cufflinks' and Bakugo doesn't really understand what that was about either.

~OwO~

At least some things have managed to stay pretty consistent at U.A. over the years. One of those things is that Monoma somehow manages to stay an unrelenting jerk when it comes to class A.

Ochako had once hoped that when they started doing their once a month movie nights between the two classes that it would ease out some of the tension. Especially after they all agreed to alternate between A and B dorms to keep it fair. No such luck. Monoma still has a talent of pissing off even the most docile of classmates and gloating loudly as if it were his mission in life.

This is one of those such times.

Since they are teenagers who love to procrastinate their homework and relax as much as their strict schedules at U.A. would allow, they manage to get through at least 3 or 4 movies in a night. So, between the two classes they do manage to get around to everyone having a pick, as long the movie isn't offensive or makes students uncomfortable.

Tonight's movie night is in B dorms this time around the B students get to pick the movies they want to watch. Which isn't bad and Ochako for sure is not going to protest seeing what movies the other class likes to watch. Except that tonight Monoma is managing to top all of his previous strings of asshole incidents.

"Subtitles? Why would The Great Class 3-A need subtitles for? We of Class 3-B don't need subtitles, unless The Great Class 3-A is admitting that they need help understanding a kid's film!" Monoma's mocking laugh is thankfully put swiftly to an end by Kendou's neck chop, although it is way too late to reverse the damage done.

"Oi! I didn't say I needed fucking subtitles, I just asked you nicely to turn them on you copy-cat! I don't need your shitty useless subtitles!" Bakugo would probably be standing up on the couch so that he could lean over Monoma's slowly recovering form, if it isn't for Kirishima's ever-tightening grip on his waist.

"Dude, nobody's saying you need the subtitles, but-" Kirishima is cut off pretty abruptly by an explosion to his shoulder and he doesn't attempt to open his mouth again. Although Ochako can see the way he chews on his bottom lip as he eyes the back of Bakugo's head, clearly worried.

It's not like there is much anyone can say to him to get Bakugo to change his mind when he's being stubborn like this. Not even after a day of hard-core training that has most of them yelling so Bakugo can even hear them over the ringing in his ears. Heck, even if they weren't ringing Bakugo still turned on the subtitles if they were watching anything, since his hearing is slowly getting worse over the years.

Instead they all suck it up and don't complain further when the movie is finally switched on.

It's not like this movie is the most riveting or exciting movie Ochako has ever seen before, so she doesn't feel bad for letting her attention drift away from it. Instead she entertains herself by counting the freckles on Deku's neck as he leans up against Tenya, then moves on to drawing shapes around Tenya's engines that rest in her lap.

Of course that gets boring too after a while and her attention wanders to the rest of the class. Ojiro and Tooru look invested in the movie, or at least Ochako has to assume Tooru is since she isn't saying anything. Although maybe she just fell asleep like Mina and Kaminari had. A dangerous decision really as Jirou has procured a marker from Momo and is drawing bunnies and pikachus on Kaminari's face.

Tsuyu, Tokoyami, and Shouji seem like they're having a deep conversation with Kendou and Tetsutetsu, probably about the movie. While Aoyama most certainly isn't paying attention to the movie, instead he's looking out the window and smiling, which is weird, but pretty on brand for him.

Satou got up at some point to make some more popcorn for everyone and enlisted Koda's help in getting all the snacks safely from the kitchen to the common room. They haven't returned yet, but Ochako is pretty sure that they're just lost in class B's kitchen set-up.

Todoroki looks like he is about to fall asleep at any second, head nodding and eyes blinking slowly as he tries to stay awake and pay attention to the commentary Shinsou is saying next to him. Which is more than Sero is doing since he seems more interested in braiding his tape in with Kirishima's hair; who is doing a great job of pretending to be interested in the movie, but seems more invested in staring at the back of Bakugo's head.

Bakugo, who is leaning forward and squinting at the screen because he can't hear the movie, and can't read the animated character's lips. Ochako had noticed a long time ago that it is something he does when he can't hear what someone is saying. Like squinting is an automatic reflex that will magically make it easier to hear the other person talking. Mostly it just helps telegraph how frustrated he is. Monoma is clearly enjoying himself watching Bakugo struggle.

It's something Ochako can really only put up with for about 20 minutes. Her and Bakugo aren't particularly close or anything and he really isn't missing anything with how boring the movie is, but he should at least get the choice to ignore it like everyone else.

Her plan isn't exactly rocket science or anything, but it does take her another few minutes to willingly extract herself from her warm boyfriends to put it in motion.

She stretches out her limbs and makes like she's getting up to go to the bathroom. Then when Monoma moves his legs to let her past she grabs the remote to the TV.

It's clearly shock that keeps Monoma from immediately chasing after her as she hops out of his reach. She does trip over Tooru on the floor though, but Tenya is her angel in disguise and catches her, pulling her into the safety of his lap.

Ochako locates the subtitles button quickly and floats the remote up to the ceiling before anyone else can so much as inhale; and the struggle is over.

Monoma's jaw is hanging open like he can't believe what just happened, but Ochako is too pleased with herself to really pay him too much attention. Instead grinning up at Tenya and feeling extremely satisfied with herself when he smiles back fondly.

The room settles back down after Kendou silences Monoma with another chop and practically has Tetsutetsu sit on him to keep him from complaining.

The only real change is that Bakugo settles back against Kirishima and isn't squinting at the scream anymore. His screwed up expression is more from annoyance with the movie now rather than from the frustration of being unable to follow it.

When he catches Ochako looking at him and turns his head to face her, she gives him a grin and a thumbs up. In return he snorts and rolls his eyes, but she doesn't miss the small twitch of a smile as he turns back to the movie.

Yeah, Ochako and Bakugo aren't exactly close, but they understand each other well enough to at least be tentative friends.

#My Hero Academia #BNHA #fanfiction #My Fanfic #Uraraka Ochako #Bakugou Katsuki #Boku No Hero Academia

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noddytheornithopod · 6 years ago

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Okay, here’s my full thoughts on the Phineas and Ferb effect, SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT:

My feelings are growing increasingly mixed. I want to make it clear that I DID enjoy the episode despite the language barrier, and it’s likely many issues I have could be fixed when we get English subtitles, but given how a lot of stuff was handled, I’m not sure how much is gonna be fixed. I mean, many people who watched the Russian dub of AYA didn’t change opinions at all when the English version finally came out. Time for specifics:

- Okay I know what you’re all wondering: how did I feel about Isabella’s appearance? My feelings are like the episode overall, mixed. When I saw her and the Fireside Girls show up to rescue the others I was pretty happy, and seeing her turned into a Pistachion now turned against Phineas and Ferb was quite terrifying. But then... I started to think. I don’t really have an issue with the fact her role was absurdly small (apparently Bradley has more lines lol), I mean based on the promos I was expecting it to be so. My issue was more how poorly integrated into the story she was.

Like, I can see an early version of the episode with her being with Buford and Baljeet (you know, what I thought was the most logical way to go :V), but then they wrote themselves into a corner with Phineas, Ferb, Milo and co being captured and someone needed to get them out. Ergo, Isabella was then written to go guerilla with the Fireside Girls (which does make sense at least) and then show up to untie them and drop off the Milo mech.

Like I said, in-universe this is all perfectly logical. My issue is how Isabella was basically just there to be a plot device, not only that but what is basically a deus ex machina to free the others. She did her plot things, and then all she was there for was to be transformed and brainwashed into a pistachion minion. And then after she becomes herself again, she doesn’t show up with the other friends at the end, which I find pretty weird. Like, okay, Isabella didn’t get to meet the MML characters properly so I can see the reasoning I guess, but it still felt odd that now things were normal she wasn’t hanging out with them? I guess Fireside Girl duties call for a report on the nut people invasion or something lol. Or the rift between her and Phineas is already beginning, cue Act Your Age music.

- SPEAKING OF DEUS EX MACHINAS... I don’t know if they set this up in any dialogue, but I kinda doubt it. But anyway... Professor Time. Besides some things I’ll get to in a bit, the way he resolved everything was my least favourite thing about the ep. Like, he literally just shows up at the end, picks up Orton and takes him back to 1965 to kill Derek. And like... if he was going to do that anyway, does this mean if nobody did anything and Orton just needed to be sent back to his time, everything was basically pointless? Like, I REALLY hope there’s dialogue clarifying this, because if Professor Time just shows up and goes and kills Derek with Orton anyway, it basically renders the episode pointless, which is pretty unfortunate.

This isn’t something I thought about at first, but it’s also pretty weird that we have such major information about Doofenshmirtz being dropped here after his show? Others have better articulated thoughts on this than I do, but it’s pretty odd. I think it was described to me like it was instead about this persona Doofenshmirtz has invented for himself instead of Doof himself.

- Probably the main thing I was initially disappointed with at first was Candace. At first everything seemed fine. I’ve seen some concern over whether she was in character, but so far everything seemed fine to me. Well, until she was captured. Then she was suddenly gone in the final act, only there to be tied up and turned into a pistachion. Like, the scenes with Candace and Milo seem great already, but then suddenly she’s not important. She’s basically THE main character of PnF, and she’s a complete non-presence in the final act. I forget if she even had any lines there. And like Isabella, she doesn’t show up with the others at the end, except with her it makes sense for her to since she got to know the others.

Seriously, she appears and is in the plot, but then suddenly she doesn’t even matter. It’s so messily written. I’ve been discussing her with other people too and they also find it odd that she didn’t really have much agency in the plot, which is probably because we’re used to her being a protagonist, she’s always there with her own strong plot or character arc for the episode while here she’s merely a supporting character. This isn’t her story, sure, but she doesn’t exactly get to do much here in terms of actual plot contribution even if she did suggest weaponsing Murphy’s Law. I also looked at reactions where she didn’t feel too in-character, and while I disagree with the idea overall, I do see that because she’s now a supporting character her defining traits aren’t really there? As a result, the lack of character focus means we don’t get to explore much of how she feels about this, which I guess people find off because she’s such a strong character who always has some major reactions to things. I felt like her pessimism towards Milo made sense, and I mean overall I didn’t think Candace was OOC, but I think it’s more that she was just given such a minor role compared to what she’s used to that she didn’t get much time to shine beyond the Milo interactions.

Also... her introduction was eh. I did like the shadow gag and I get she was focused on her phone and stuff, but it felt pretty random for her to just show up unassuming of anything going on (I mean, everything is fucking decaying around her lol). Also... Ducky Momo Go. It was such a serious “HOW DO YOU DO FELLOW KIDS?” moment.

- Say, speaking of “HOW DO YOU DO FELLOW KIDS?”... Baljeet dabbing. I have no words. BALJEET FUCKING DABBING. WHAT EVEN WAS THAT?

- Baljeet and Buford are... interesting. Baljeet was probably one of the better handled character in my eyes actually. Like, he wasn’t too big, but it made sense for a character like him. He had memorable moments interacting with Zack and Melissa (and... THAT), and he actually contributed to the plot by helping figure out how to do the whole Milo mech thing. I definitely want to hear his dialogue for sure. Buford on the other hand was completely pointless narrative wise. He was just there because we gotta have all the main Phineas and Ferb characters so we can have our big reunion and then make him an evil brainwashed nut dude in the climax.

- Alongside Candace the other PnF character I feel really got screwed over was Perry. Again, he shows up and is great (even if I was surprised how short his time with Milo was) and is there doing stuff, but then suddenly he’s sideline to the point of basically not even existing. When they go to the island, I forget if he’s even there. Doof could’ve used his company I feel. :V And again in the final act, he’s only there briefly and then is irrelevant once Phineas sees him. Like, he just shows up, beat up some pistachions, Phineas sees him and then he and Diogee disappear from the episode. We really could’ve used your help against Derek and his machine, Perry. :V And yeah, Diogee is similar. He just is there for a bit and disappears from the episode.

- The Island of Lost Dakotas reveal is something I’m going to have to wait on. The stuff we saw seemed good enough, but I’m definitely going to need the English dialogue to make a true judgement. I’ll say this though: I’m not sure if this was the right place to have this reveal. We didn’t get much time exploring Cavendish’s reaction before they got the Dakotas as their army to fight the pistachions, I feel like Cavendish discovering the island is something that deserves its own episode focused on it. In general Cavendish and Dakota were good though.

- Phineas and Ferb were mostly fine I feel. I did see some saying Ferb’s role felt minor, but I felt like he was at least there enough (and to be fair being the quiet one he’s also had this situation before, like in AT2D). That English clip where he says “nutjobbers” just feels off to me though. Like, besides Baljeet, they were actually there doing stuff and had a presence in the story. Milo worked as well I think overall, given he’s the protagonist and such. I did like what we saw of their interactions, and of course the idea of using positive PnF energy to weaponise Milo’s negative energy was really cool.

- Zack and Melissa are kind of a Buford and Baljeet situation. Melissa was there enough to warrant her presence and she was doing stuff, but Zack didn’t really have much of a presence. It wasn’t as bad as Buford, but he didn’t really have anything to do. Where Melissa and of course Zack fail though is the final act - they’re the other main characters alongside Milo in Milo Murphy’s Law, and like Candace their presence was barely there. They didn’t really do anything relevant in the final act after being freed except joining the brainwashed nut people horde. They at least were there at the end, but still I’m not exactly satisfied with their roles in the episode.

- All of the other characters were fine even if they were minor I guess. Minor characters are gonna be minor, lol.

- Most of the gags I caught despite the language barrier were funny. As said, I still enjoyed the episode even if I found its handling of the characters quite botched.

- The music department was good, I can’t wait to hear both Baljeet’s version of Chop Away at my Heart and the Orton and Doof duet. I liked the scoring too, some themes I did recognise from earlier PnF and MML material but some stuff seemed new, I’m not sure if I heard the rock score during the pistachion battle before (around when pnf and milo get the mech and derek is turning their friends into pistachions).

- Animation was fine, I guess? Some stuff looked a bit off but it might have just been lighting or a low budget. I think some of the closer details may be off but I’m not here to nitpick, I didn’t find anything super distracting.

- I think the issues with the characters and plotting are down to one big factor: it’s a crossover trying to cram too much into 44 minutes, that and also meant to resolve story arcs from Season 1 of Milo Murphy’s Law. They wanted to do this big special where all of the PnF and MML characters get to play off each other, but we unfortunately didn’t seem to get much of that (though maybe English dialogue will remedy that). Instead of actually getting to compare and contrast the characters and themes of the show, they had to focus on the plot to resolve the pistachion storyline (a plot solved by a deus ex machina no less). As a result, we get something that’s more plot driven than character driven, which is not what a crossover should be.

Also, this only really confirms my fears about Milo Murphy’s Law being stuck in Phineas and Ferb’s shadow. After seeing something that was this messily written despite being enjoyable, I definitely think Milo Murphy’s Law crossed over with Phineas and Ferb too soon. I don’t feel like they absolutely needed Phineas and Ferb in this storyline, not when they didn’t really get to explore the themes and characters of the respective shows. It’s like they were pushed to have the crossover too early despite always intending to have both shows in the same universe, and thus we get something where the PnF characters are here simply because they have to be instead of it feeling more natural.

Simple things that I think would’ve made it work better? If they had to do the pistachion storyline, give us less characters. It feels so all over the place and imbalanced. I would’ve been fine with just Phineas, Ferb and Candace in the A-plot to be honest. Less awkward spreading out thinly and more time devoted to the central characters of each show. But to be honest... I feel like a crossover shouldn’t have been plot driven like this. The characters here had to resolve a complex plot instead of getting most of their time to be themselves. They could still have some event to generate conflict of course, but it should be something where the characters interacting gets focus and they drive the story instead of it being something where they have to serve a plot first and all of that comes second.

Also I think it should be acknowledged: like Act Your Age (which I feel has shockingly similar parallels to this situation), I think hype backlash is certainly a possibility in how I feel. Like I’m not gonna lie, I am disappointed. Still though, even if it’s a factor, the fact that I’m able to pinpoint the issues I have so easily instead of it just being a vague emotional reaction is a shame.

#mml spoilers #milo murphy's law #phineas and ferb

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mercuryismygenius · 6 years ago

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Book Review: ‘How Bad Writing Destroyed the World’

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis by Adam Weiner

Despite the subtitle, Weiner only focuses explicitly on Rand in two chapters, the Introduction and the final chapter. The rest of the book is dedicated to the publication and social fallout of an 1863 Russian novel, What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

What Is to Be Done? is probably one of the most influential novels we have never heard of.

(Putin preening around shirtless on a fucking horse makes so much more sense to me now.)

First, a few caveats: One, this book is a literary analysis. Yes, it gets political, but Weiner is a literature professor, and the book focuses on Russian writers, including Dostoevsky and Nabokov.

Two, there is no glossary of terms and people. I often found myself looking back through previous chapters trying to remember who was who and why it mattered.

Nonetheless, any effort is worth it for the discussion of the power of literature and ideas (in this case, a damaging power). Turns out, Ayn Rand is the modern heir of Chernyshevsky’s legacy, for, “with the exception of Rand’s substitution of capitalism for socialism, her objectivism is precisely the same as Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism” (200).

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World moves chronologically, actually starting with Dostoevsky, his early style, and his experiences with the Petrashevsky Circle, a group Lenin has cited as the progenitor of Russian socialist movements (31). Specifically, Dostoevsky met Nikolai Speshnev, a radical revolutionary who was “rationally calculating, philosophically enlightened, politically uncompromising, and prepared for action” (31-32)---and identified by Weiner as “a possible historical prototype for [Chernyshevsky’s] uncompromising revolutionary superman, the ‘rigorist’ Rakhmetov” (36).

As I said, this book is a literary analysis.

Weiner touches base with Dostoevsky in several other chapters, but in Chapter 2, “‘The most atrocious work of Russian literature’,” he summarizes What Is to Be Done? The chapter heading comes from the reaction of a contemporary critic---a reaction that seemed to be the general consensus at the time, except for the fanatics who latched onto the book as a bible. For some background, here is the Wikipedia entry on What Is to Be Done?, although Weiner is more thorough. He organizes his summary around four Platonic dreams the character Vera Pavlovna has, which represent her ascending Socialist enlightenment. Yet, despite the diametrically opposed positions of socialism and capitalism, in Chernyshevsky we can see Rand quite clearly.

For example, in What is to Be Done? Vera Pavlovna, in her quest for both independence and Socialism, forms a collective of seamstresses---a working girl sorority, so to speak---and “because the interest of each seamstress coincides with the interests of the collective, the business is successful” (45). Naturally, when fans tried to replicate these collectives, their businesses failed, because reality is complex and generally full of humans.

Too bad Objectivists don’t know this history. In Weiner’s Introduction, he cites an excerpt from Alan Greenspan’s testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in which Greenspan admits “’I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms’” (13). No kidding.

Another parallel is how much characters talk, philosophize, navel-gaze, and generally congratulate themselves on their rationality and selfishness, both of which lead to ‘correct’ political views. Weiner notes that Chernyshevsky’s characters

attach ‘great importance’ to rejecting certain desires as false and fantastical while retaining others as authentic, because Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism requires people to act on their desires, but only those desires that are underwritten by logic, and only that logic which leads to socialism (51).

Change Socialism to Capitalism, and it’s Atlas Shrugged. More to the point, “the essential core of both Chernyshevsky’s and Rand’s thought is not socialism or capitalism but the tyrannical will to control humanity and shape its destiny” (9).

Basically, Weiner successfully makes his case about Ayn Rand and Nikolai Chernyshevsky---in only three chapters (the Introduction, Chapter 2, and Chapter 8).

Not that the rest of the book is filler. As stated above, Weiner touches base with Dostoevsky, outlining his attempts to counter Chernyshevsky via deconstruction, and later he cites Nabokov’s scathing, parodical dismantling of both Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky.

Additionally, Weiner traces the revolutionary activities of Russian socialists, the most significant being Sergei Nechaev, a terrorist and conman, whose basic philosophy was none other than Chernyshevsky’s Rakhmetov, “who lives solely for the success of the revolutionary cause” (99). Of course, a man like Nechaev could never be content merely imitating a prototype, and had to publish his own writings. “The Catechism of a Revolutionary” is probably Nechaev’s most well-known work, and in it he outlines his revolutionary ideal [summarized by Weiner]:

He has cut himself off from the civil order, from the world of education, from the sciences, from conventional morality, from all human society. His only passion is hatred of the existing order and the only science he practices is the merciless science of destruction (109).

Weiner also notes that the work “reeks with the revolutionary methodology of Nikolai Speshnev: infiltration, conspiracy, and blackmail” (99).

Not only do these chapters discussing “revolutionary” development in Russia evoke current Russian practices, but also much of contemporary political discourse in general, with Weiner noting that “the tyrannical urge in Lenin to shout down any opposition by means of generalization, simplification, or whatever device he deems expedient results in the heaping up of insults and slogans in place of logic” (164).

Sound familiar?

The thread connecting these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian socialists to mid-to-late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century American capitalism is Ayn Rand.

Which is not to dismiss or ignore all the other factors of U.S. sociopolitical dynamics, but Rand has had an inordinate influence on the Right in the U.S., and Weiner traces a continuous ideology.

And yes, living up to his subtitle, Weiner gives a few revealing tidbits about Rand and her worldview.

Her admiration for a serial killer, for one. “Infatuation” is the word Weiner uses, and the serial killer was William Edward Hickman, on trial in 1928, “soon after Rand’s arrival in the United States.”

Rand was so taken by Hickman’s story that she used him as the prototype for the hero of a novel she never wrote that she wanted to call The Little Street. In her notebooks, Rand wrote with loathing about the “mob” that had formed around Hickman and reasoned that the public outcry was a reaction to his “daring challenge to society.” Hickman was “one of these rare, free, clear spirits” whom the mob cannot control. She valued his “remorselessness,” “strength,” “his calm, superior, indifferent, disdainful countenance,” and “his immense, explicit egoism” (196-7)

All of Weiner’s citations come from The Journals of Ayn Rand, and there is no indication whatsoever that she ever had a change of heart.

On a brief sidenote (and for disclosure purposes), I have only ever been able to get through one of Rand’s books, Anthem, which is more of a novella. It’s certainly not a tome like Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. As a surface read, it’s not that bad, belonging to the same basic dystopias of Orwell’s 1984, or Zamyatin’s We. In Anthem, the future is run by a government that’s basically the bastard child of socialism and communism combined, and citizens are as much a hive mind as humans can possibly be, using the pronoun “we” instead of “I.” One man escapes all this.

We and 1984 are each far superior both in social commentary and in style.

When I first read Anthem, I thought it was twice as long as it needed to be. Narratively speaking, it is---the protagonist regains his sense of individuality halfway through, reclaiming the word “I” and thus the concept of individuality. Rand just keeps going though. Because the protagonist needs to find the sacred and forbidden word “ego.” Which is Latin for “I.” Hence the ending seeming redundant to me when I initially read it. “Ego” as the base for “egoism,” however, adds another level to Anthem, and its length makes sense.

Rand does not care about the individual. She cares about the bully. Having a sense of self (“I”) is not enough. One’s sense of self must be predicated on having one’s boot on someone else’s neck (egoism). So yeah, simply using the word “I” to refer to himself after an upbringing in a collective doesn’t suffice. The protagonist only arrives when he finds his Ego.

Thanks for the literary insight, William Edward Hickman. Of course, “not one word did Rand write about the actual victim of Hickman’s crime, Marion Parker [the 12-yr-old for whose murder Hickman was specifically on trial]” (197).

Weiner further dissects Rand’s hypocrisy, her “tone deafness” (196), her inability to adhere to her own dictate to “check your premises,” and an attitude that at best can be described as myopic. Specious and delusional might also apply. Essentially, Rand’s approach is to begin with her desired conclusion and contort her premises to match---the exact opposite of what she claimed to value: rationality.

Weiner briefly touches on a particularly emblematic example: the Prometheus myth. Most of us know this one. The gods controlled fire, Prometheus stole it, gave it to mortals, and Zeus punished Prometheus by binding Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle tear out his liver each day.

However, in Atlas Shrugged,

the Promethean Galt climbed a mountain in order to discover “the fountain of youth,” which he intended to bring down to men [Rand 178]. Instead, “after centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire---until the day when men withdraw their vultures” [Rand 517]. Rand amusingly substitutes a collectivist vulture for the standard eagle in her version of the myth of Prometheus (207).

Rand’s version of the myth is either an intentional manipulation, or incompetent literary understanding. She removes all context, snatches the idea of the unfairly-punished-for-doing-something-beneficial character, and arranges her players according to who she wants her audience to label the hero, and who the villain.

This is just bad writing---it’s advertisement writing---propaganda writing. It’s telling the audience what to think. But as Rand intends Atlas Shrugged as a piece of propaganda, we’ll forego assessing her narrative abilities.

That still leaves the philosophical problems. First, the notion that the fire naturally belonged to Prometheus. It didn’t. He didn’t create it, invent it, develop it, or even assemble it---he stole it. We love him for it---he’s our cultural hero---but in the face of Rand’s twisted telling, we must acknowledge that it is not “his fire.”

Second, as an analogy, the Prometheus myth fails Rand’s purposes because the parts don’t align. Here’s the story again: The gods (those in power) controlled fire, Prometheus (the outlier/equalizer/anti-1%) stole it, gave it to mortals (society at large), and Zeus (chief of the ‘people who count’/ the 1%) punished Prometheus by binding Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle (Zeus’s symbol) tear out his liver each day.

Mortals don’t punish Prometheus, Zeus does. Those in power hated that someone leveled the playing field, even a tad; thus, Rand’s designated heroes are the Zeus’s, withholding their benedictions until mortals properly worship them. She doesn’t have a Prometheus figure in her works---she can’t---because Prometheus, who acted selflessly, is antithetical to Objectivism.

Checking one’s premises includes analyzing analogies to make sure said analogy applies to the situation. But Rand, and her followers, have a tenuous grasp on actual logic and rationality. Her followers do, however, have a habit of similar distortions, i.e. mangling the point.

On a final note, Weiner discusses fan interactions with Rand’s works, much as he did with What is to Be Done? And this is another reason I recommend this book. We---especially us bibliophiles and story-lovers, those of us with positive fandom experiences, and those of us working in books or movies or any storytelling medium---we often wax philosophic on the power of stories. The pen being mightier and all that.

We talk less about detrimental effects. We try when it comes to hate speech (and defining what hate speech is); it might come up with the Twilight series, or its derivative, Fifty Shades of Grey. I mean, what do these stories say about relationship goals, and is that really why people read them? But actually acknowledging that stories can be more than stories, and that textual analysis is a skill many haven’t developed to a usable degree---that’s not a favored topic.

(I have many many many thoughts on this; suffice it for now to merely point out that textual analysis is not the same thing as reading for fun, though you can do both (even to the same story).)

But how far, really, can bad books inculcate harmful ideas into a cultural subconscious? According to Weiner,

In an essay entitled “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art” Rand boasts that many fans of The Fountainhead had reported to her that they had resolved dilemmas in their own lives by asking, “What would Roark do in this situation?”--whereupon “faster than their mind could identify the proper application of all the complex principles involved, the image of Roark gave them the answer.” This is the precise method of brainwashing through idolatry that I have been describing in this book: it works by switching off critical thinking in order to facilitate identification with an idol. In another essay on the nature of fiction Rand argues that a rational person reads a novel in order to find there “an image in whose likeness he will reshape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals” [Rand, “Art and Sense of Life”]. This is precisely how a human being yields up his volition, hollows out his personality, and allows himself to become a “Manchurian Candidate,” triggered to perform whatever action is required. Roark is a terrorist who blows up a huge building in New York City, so a reader who asks, “What would Roark do?” and then allows Roark’s image to guide his actions might do just about anything (199-200).

The idea that art exists only on the sociopolitical level is hardly unique to Rand. In Dostoevsky’s early career, he had butted heads with the critic Belinksy about the nature and purpose of art (as does every society). Dostoevsky claimed that art=art and that it required no agenda; “the one thing that Belinsky demanded of artists, however, was the pursuit of political and social ideas of a particular tendency” (28). In the Soviet Union, art was for the State---to exult and exonerate its “particular tendencies.”

To define art as having a singular purpose limits expression---limits thought and diversity of voices---and thus acts as a form of censorship. It’s the defining characteristic of propaganda, which, by limiting the function of art, petrifies its purpose, and limits the number of interpretations to ONE. Art, however, exists on multiple levels---the political, the personal, the communal; as unfettered expressions of the imagination, or as observations of the real world. And there are multiple ways to interact with art. Meanings may not be absolutely infinite, but they are varied and often fluid.

The degree to which Rand’s followers clung to the “distant goals” of her fictions as irrefutable reality came to disastrous conclusion---one foreseeable by critics of Rand---in the financial crisis heralded by Alan Greenspan. A crap economy is not the only danger, however.

. . . Greenspan’s ignorance, dogmatism, and hubris blinded him to material proofs that invalidated his worldview. That is what you would expect from an ideologue. But now let us imagine a sociopath’s encounter with objectivism, which tells him that his relentless, amoral pursuit of material or political gain is the very thing that makes him better than the people he tramples to get to the top. Presumably such a reader of Ayn Rand’s novel does not probe deeply into this philosophy. He does not wince at Rand’s stylistic lapses. Nor does he perform “due diligence” on the ideas presented. He plunders what he needs from them and goes back to work with the pleasant new belief that his rapaciousness has solid intellectual and even moral foundations. To some this justification of greed must be irresistible (17-8).

The idea of “due diligence” is most striking. Skills such as reading comprehension and information literacy have a reputation as belonging to stuffy librarians or pedantic snobs. But the inability to distinguish between the subjective and the objective is dangerous. Its benign form is flame wars. In its more insidious form, as Weiner aptly shows with Ayn Rand, a story can be wielded as an instrument of destabilization, or just generic oppression. Because I’m pretty sure some of those sociopaths are in power right now, consulting Rand wherever they’re not cherry-picking Bible verses.

I used the phrase “on a final note” rather a long ways up there. And then I just kept going, which is really what this book does. As focused as it is on a few specific Russian writers of a specific era and Ayn Rand’s probably-unintentional debt to them, it makes you think. It made me think. On literature, on history, on politics and social movements, on propaganda, and very much on the necessity of information literacy (because I don’t believe in banning books).

I just hope that if somehow he comes out with a second edition, he includes a damn glossary.

#book review #How Bad Writing Destroyed the World #author: Adam Weiner #literary analysis #Russian literature #What is to Be Done?#Nikolai Chernyshevsky #Atlas Shrugged #The Fountainhead #Ayn Rand #her hero was a serial killer #wish I'd already known that #bad writing #on writing #on literature #information literacy #on fandom #my stuff #book reviews

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sarah-wants-to-write · 5 years ago

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I Dare You to Love; Part Two (Star Trek AOS)

Shari has settled into her role on the Enterprise, and her friendship with Jim continues to grow. Days settle into routine, though it's thrown for a loop when she finds her friend in need of help. Help Jim didn't even know he needed and in the end, a truth comes to light that could change everything.

(A/N: feel free to ignore the subtitle in the gif. It’s the look he’s giving that matters~)

It had been a few months since the Enterprise left Yorktown, and Shari wasn’t at all surprised to find herself busy. Day in and out, studying the records of previous planetary surveys that the Enterprise had done, along with her work with Asha, and the occasional away mission. Being the only high-ranking zoologist, she had been on plenty of missions. It didn’t hurt that most were with her new friend, Jim Kirk.

Being friends with the captain definitely had its positives, both personally and professionally. Professionally, it meant that he trusted her judgment and actions even more than if he’d just based it off her work. Personally, it meant that she’d been introduced to and became friends with many people on the bridge. Spock found her work with Asha rather fascinating, discussing his old childhood pet I-Chaya with her in confidence. Shari gladly honored his request to not speak publicly, and expressed her sympathy at the loss of a beloved pet. Uhura was a perfect friend for fun talk, along with Sulu, and Chekov was like a little brother to her. Constant conversations in Russian, with Shari switching to Ukrainian or Polish when he was getting too…enthusiastic about something, just to get the kid re-focused.

Of course, the rare occasion happened where someone found their soul mate, and shifted.

It was the strangest part of human physiology, according to Spock, and Shari couldn’t help agreeing. Every human, and potentially half-human, had either an animal sleeping within their soul, or a song in their heart for their fated one’s animal. When someone was trying to find their soul mate, those with the animal within would hear from them, telling them yes or no. Some were more cooperative than others, from what she had heard.

When a pair finally met, and the shifter’s fated one was in danger, the shifter would turn into that animal. Mostly predators, though some were larger prey animals that were scary when angry. Size also depended on the age at which it happened. When the shift happened, though, the shifter wouldn’t be able to change back without the help of their mate. For that person, they had to sing or hum the song in their heart, which usually ended up being a song that both in the pair knew, which fit the two perfectly. After that, the shifter would be able to change back and forth at will, to protect their mate.

When Spock asked what determined which in the pair would be the shifter, Shari could only shrug. It was honestly something humans had speculated on for years. Sometimes only one person was the shifter, sometimes both were, and there were many theories about it.

Each time a person shifted, Shari was immediately called in, just in case the person was injured and wasn’t changing back any time soon. Her gentle nature and firm hand had earned the lieutenant a reputation as one of the better medics on the ship, and most crew who were able to shift came to her for help on how to take care of themselves in animal form.

The process of shifting what something that Shari talked about with Jim quite a bit whenever he came by her lab and office. They spent so much time together that he insisted she could call him Jim when they weren't on official business. Stuck there with her work most of the time, her dear friend came by to talk quite a bit when he could. Though mostly, he came by to say hello to Asha and spoil the levytsya with attention. Shari often teased that he only liked her for her lioness.

“Well, not only.” Jim would shoot back, smiling as they both laughed. Most of the time, they did reports together, especially those concerning away missions they’d both been on. It was nice, having company, and always good for a laugh when one of her Ensigns came by with paperwork and jumped upon seeing their Captain on the floor with Asha’s head in his lap, just tapping away at his PADD like it was the most normal thing in the universe.

However, today was somehow…different. Normally, Shari would have seen Jim at lunch, or just around in the halls, but she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man. Working in her lab, her back to the door, she smiled when she heard the tell-tale jingle and whoosh of the door opening.

“It’s about time you showed up, sir.” She teased, keeping her back to the door.

“Didn’t know you were expecting me.” Okay, that southern accent distinctly wasn’t Jim.

Turning around, Shari was surprised to see Doctor McCoy standing there, with a slight smirk on his face.

“Sorry, commander,” she smiled sheepishly “thought you were the Captain.”

“Then I take it you haven’t seen him,” McCoy responded, more of a statement than a question “everywhere I’ve looked on this damn ship, I can’t seem to find the man. He’s either not been there or had just left.”

“Is everything okay, sir?” she asked, concerned that their CMO was looking for the captain so thoroughly.

“Our fearless leader’s dodging his annual physical again,” McCoy sighed “his usual antics, which he drags most of his friends into. If you see him, please try and send him my way.”

“I’ll shoot you a message if he stops by here,” Shari agreed “and try to keep him here so you can actually find him.”

“Even better,” the doctor nodded “thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll see you around.”

“Of course,” Shari smiled, nodding back as he left “happy hunting, Doctor.”

She could hear McCoy laugh a bit as the door closed, and chuckled a bit herself, before going back to her work. Though she couldn’t help her worry now. Jim seemed fit, so why would he avoid his physical? Sure, medical anxiety wasn’t uncommon-she dealt with it herself-but he seemed like the type who would do something he didn’t like right away just to get it over with.

Not too long later, her door opened again, and this time it indeed was Jim.

“Afternoon, Captain,” she greeted, smiling “busy day?”

“Just making my rounds,” Jim replied, smiling back “how’s your work going?”

“As interesting as ever, since it’s survey study day,” Shari declared, holding up her PADD to show the report “haven’t had many visitors, so it’s been quiet.”

Watching as Jim greeted Asha, before settling into his usual spot so she could rest her head on his lap, Shari was even more worried. Jim may have been smiling and upbeat, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Was it just a long day?

“Doctor McCoy came by earlier,” she spoke up, watching Jim’s head shoot up to look at her with guarded curiosity “asked if I had seen you, said you had an appointment and he’d been looking for you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth; I hadn’t seen you yet today. Wished him happy hunting.”

Jim chuckled a small bit at the snark, though his shoulders were almost as heavy as the near-silence in the room. The only sound was the occasional computer beep or chirp as both of them returned to their work.

“Not curious about why?” Jim asked, not looking from his PADD. Shari glanced at him, and saw that Asha was watching him too, with a twitchier tail.

“I am,” she replied, looking back down at her own PADD “but your reasons are your own, Jim. I’m curious, but I won’t pry.”

Jim hummed in response, and it was quite for a good while. Shari had decided not to message McCoy, deciding that her friend needed time to sit and relax. The question of why he was avoiding the doctor had almost slipped her mind, if she was being honest.

“It started with doctor’s exams. Said that it was to make sure people were okay during the famine.”

Shari looked up at Jim’s sudden, quiet declaration. He was looking down at Asha, petting her head, and pointedly not looking anywhere else.

“Most think it was sudden,” he continued “a jump from coup to…but it wasn’t. That’s why he could get as far as he did.”

As he spoke, Shari got up from her seat to sit on the floor near Jim, heart breaking as she put two and two together. She knew that Jim was a survivor of Tarsus IV, but she hadn’t expected to ever hear about it from him.

“And after, I was in and out of hospitals for a long time,” he concluded, shoulders tense as he finally looked up at her “so….”

“You’ve got more reason than most, then.” Was all Shari said, hesitating before reaching and putting her hand on his.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Jim declared, eyebrows furrowing “I’ve never talked about it, so how did you…”

“I did my homework, when I found out about my assignment here,” Shari admitted, smiling sheepishly when his eyebrows shot up towards his hairline “I’d always admired and looked up to you, and wanted to know more. When I read about what happened on…well, my heart broke, and I now really understand why you don’t like appointments or physicals.”

The look in Jim’s eyes was strange, but Shari didn’t squirm under his stare. It was more that she felt…seen. Like he was seeing the real her.

“Though you should probably go and get it over with,” she suggested, watching his eyes lose a small bit of the twinkle that had come back “the Enterprise needs her Captain in top form. Would it help if Asha was there?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Jim replied, looking down at the lioness, who seemed to have the same concerned look as Shari.

“Would it hurt?” Shari continued, watching him think it over.

“No.” he declared.

“Then I don’t see why she shouldn’t go with you,” she replied, shrugging a bit “I’ll go as well, say I have to talk to M’Benga, so Doctor McCoy doesn’t question it too much. Could say it’s part of my work with Asha, as a potential comfort animal in the Med Bay.”

Seeing she was offering him the choice, and a good-not to mention truthful-cover story for the situation, Jim was surprised to find himself agreeing.

“Okay, let’s go.”

To say that Bones looked surprised when Jim walked into the Med Bay was an understatement. Shari walked in right behind him, and Jim watched as she went straight to M’Benga to talk. Asha stayed right by his side, though, clearly as dedicated to helping him as Shari was.

“Alright, Bones, let’s get this over with,” he told his friend, nodding over to a bio bed “want me over there?”

Bones could only nod, getting his PADD and equipment together as Jim went over to the bed, Asha sitting on the floor right next to his knee.

“Lieutenant Neilson’s work?” Bones asked, nodding down to Asha as he got set up.

“You could say that.” Jim nodded, hand going to Asha’s head to help ground his mind. This was one of his closest friends, nothing bad was going to happen. Asha was here, too, as was Shari.

Nothing bad was going to happen.

That became Jim’s mantra, helped by the rhythmic scratching and petting of Asha’s head during the whole appointment. Once things were done, and Bones stepped away to log everything, Shari approached with a smile on her face.

“How did she do?” she asked quietly, gesturing to Asha, who had plopped her head on Jim’s lap in contentment from all the scritches and pets.

“She helped,” Jim admitted, just as quiet as he gave a small smile that finally reached his eyes “draft up the paperwork, and I’ll make sure Bones gives the green light on this part of your experiment.”

“I’ll head to my office and get started,” she nodded, smiling for him “I’m glad she could help. I hope you don’t hesitate to talk to me about things, if you need to. I promise I’ll listen. It’s what friends do, isn’t it?”

Jim’s smile grew, putting his hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze as he nodded, before Shari woke Asha up. She bid Jim and Bones farewell before she left the Med Bay, Asha by her side. Jim watched as she left, heart feeling lighter than it had all day.

Shari was a good and loyal friend, a highly intelligent scientist, and an incredibly beautiful woman in Jim’s eyes. She’d won his loyalty and fierce friendship, especially with what happened that day. Jim would rain hell on anyone who tried to hurt her.

Deep inside, the wolf in his soul had fully woken up, and couldn’t agree more.

#star trek aos #star trek fic #kirk fic #james t kirk #star trek kelvin timeline #i dare you to love fic

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yuriplisetsk · 8 years ago

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I kno everyone speaks Japanese in the show bc it's a Japanese show, but I've looked through the wiki and I don't think Viktor actually knows Japanese??? It's not listed among his known languages in the trivia section (Russian, English, and French). I couldn't find what languages Yuuri speaks but it's likely he knows English from living in the states, so maybe they communicate through English??? I bet Viktor learns Japanese over time, but I don't think he already knows it at the beginning.

Hey there!!! So, I scoured the net to find both canon and fanon sources. In this interview it’s confirmed that Yuuri and Viktor use English as base language of communication, and they’re both fluent. As you said, though, it’s also confirmed that Viktor’s fluent in Russian, English and French. Nothing is said about Japanese. In that regard, this post is super interesting. I’ll quote some of the tl;dr points here for practical reasons:

When Victor speaks Japanese he sounds like a foreigner

Victor maybe has rudimentary Japanese skills, but not enough for him to understand or participate in complex discussions. (Example: ep 4, when he has to ask Yuri what everyone is talking about.)

Every person Victor has had an in-depth conversation with so far has good English skills.

So, from auditory cues we can tell that Viktor does actually know a little bit of Japanese, but his conversational skills are stilted at best. He uses English to communicate with Yuuri, Minako, the Nishigoris and other international skaters. I guess he does too with Mari? The funny thing about this is that, while in Hasetsu, people like Yuuri’s parents will most likely speak dialectal Japanese, which is harder to grasp and understand than regular Japanese, much less to learn.

Let’s keep in mind that Viktor already knows cyrillic and the roman alphabet, and has probably been studying English and French since he was 8/9 years old (even younger, if he was home schooled). Nonetheless, the fact that he’s fluent in both is still no small feat. If anything, I’d say he has a knack, or we can call it a talent, at grasping the basics and going with it. So a wild guess, before going to Japan he took like some online courses real quick to learn a general knowledge of it, for example how to ask for the bathroom and directions and food, drilled some useful vocabulary into his head and flew out because he just couldn’t make Katsuki Yuuri wait, now, could he? Once he got there, his skills gradually improved with time and practice. Actually, I really like thinking that he started learning Japanese directly after the banquet because he fell so hard he wanted to shorten the cultural distance between them immediately. (I read a marvelous fic about the whole language topic, I absolutely recommend it, it’s Repeat After Me by queenieofaces)

And now, my hcs on the thing because of course.

- I bet Viktor hates not being able to communicate smoothly, so he tries super hard to learn Japanese while in Hasetsu. He probably subjects every willing person to his terrible rapid fire babbling and eagerly awaits to be corrected, stumbles through the phrases until he gets it right. He’s absolutely not embarrassed about his abysmal knowledge, finds it funny instead- he starts practicing his Japanese with Yuuri too. He loves when something he says is so horrific that Yuuri has to scrunch his nose up and start laughing, makes him explain what was wrong and absolutely repeats the same error again just to be sure (and make Yuuri laugh again)- he totally downloads a learning Japanese app on his phone to fiddle with whenever he has nothing much to do, like when Yuuri’s stretching and he’s bored out of his mind; catch him flopped on a bench under the shade of a tree repeating very slowly “the cat is on the table” in Japanese while Yuuri is sweating in between lunges, having just run around Hasetsu castle fifty times (“You’re doing so great, Yuuri!” he chirps, without looking up from the screen, and Yuuri’s eye twitches a little)- even in St. Petersburg, while Yuuri tries his best to learn Russian, Viktor keeps exercising his Japanese (I bet at this point he’s gotten really better at it, because he’s been in Japan for a long time and usually language full immersion does miracles) and they start mixing phrases and words and languages together. Viktor switches to Russian in the middle of a phrase on purpose and Yuuri squints and replies in Japanese. They swap nose kisses and correct each other’s pronunciation, at the grocery store Viktor lets Yuuri read the labels on the products and makes sure they don’t buy salt instead of sugar- the first thing they teach each other are curse words - followed by how you say “I love you” of course- they watch Russian movies with Japanese subtitles and Japanese movies with Russian subtitles, sometimes re-enact the plot dramatically while spooning on the couch- Viktor is a little shit and keeps slipping French into their daily lives too because Yuuri gets flustered and confused - their whole conversations are unholy mixes of garbling multilingual nonsense and no one but them really gets it which is really useful when you want to talk shit (it’s super effective)- their babies are gonna grow up knowing three/four languages and I cry at night thinking about it

#victuuri #viktuuri #victuuriwriters #yoi #yuri on ice #meta #i love languages and learning them and talking about them #and yuuri and viktor are like #a ray of sunshine into the dark #weeps #scribbles on ice #anonymous

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oneweekoneband · 7 years ago

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Translation in Action: An Interview with International_EaglZ

The account International_EaglZ (YouTube / Instagram) was set up this summer for the explicit goal of translating original material into English for fans not fluent in Kazakh or Russian to enjoy. They’ve done about a dozen translations so far, including the group’s post-debut interview and more recent news reports. As someone who very much benefits from their work, I reached out to them for an interview on how they discovered Ninety One and the difficulties, and rewards, of translation work. As you’ll see, having a translator on hand is valuable not just for the actual translation but for helping ignorant fans (like me) put Ninety One’s work into a more accurate political and social context.

When and how did you first hear about Ninety One?

It all started one night (maybe around 5 months ago). I was chatting with one guy from Kazakhstan, and he asked me have I heard about Q-pop. Afterwards he asked me to check out group "Ninety One", and so I am here now.

I think that the language and similarity with K-pop attracted me at first. They made a nice "crossover" in music genres.

What K-pop groups do you like?

I’m a loyal fan of VIXX, but I listen to many, K.A.R.D., EXO, Big Bang etc, I also like many K-rappers.

Anecdotally I've noticed that a lot of international Eaglez seem also to be ARMYs. It may be just because BTS has such a large fandom.

Nowadays many like BTS, and yes, ARMY fandom is rather huge. I suspect that many new EagleZ are also ARMY`s as they liked k-pop first, and only later found out about Ninety One and Q-pop.

Actually, I used to be an ARMY myself, but I left the fandom as everyone straight off stereotypes me as an ARMY if i said that I like k-pop. Neither I was useful as an ARMY, I’m more useful as an EagleZ.

So is that why you decided to become International_EaglZ? to be useful?

Hm... Probably so. It started from me trying to find eng sub for some of Ninety One videos, and I couldn’t find any. Later i found videos with Russian subs. I could watch videos and understand what they said, but I realized that there also are foreign EagleZ, that can’t understand them. I used to be a K-pop fan, and knew what it feels like. And so then I decided to do translations.

How active is the Russian fandom? Are there Kazakh-to-Russian translators you can follow?

Russian fandom is there, but I haven’t seen many "stable" Kazakh-Russian translators. Some fan pages are Russian only (for Russian speaking audience). If you need to find something with Russian subs, it’s much easier than finding something with English subs. Personally there are no such active translators that I follow. They may exist, but I may simply not know about them.

Are you able to get a sense of how accurate the Russian subs are?

There isn’t always guarantee that subs are 100% correct. At first I was asking some of Kazakh speaking people to take a look at those translations and let me know if they are accurate. Now I just go with trust, as most of videos with Russian subs have a lot of views, I suspect that if they would be incorrect, someone would have noticed it.

Do the members ever speak Russian?

Yes, they do, in some interviews and more in their episodes of "space". ZaQ (rapper & choreographer of the group) has won international Olympiad of the Russian language. All of the members speak Russian, though A.Z (rapper & leader) is the least Russian-speaking member.

Okay, now the part about ZaQ holding up the Russian dictionary in the first Space episode makes sense! One thing I hadn't been able to figure out is whether they grew up speaking Russian or got taught Russian in school, since they would have been in the first generation of students to be educated in an independent Kazakhstan.

Most likely they are taught both Kazakh and Russian in their schools. Other way to know the language may be that older generation (parents, grandparents) speak Russian, so they learned it since they were small from hearing it.

Can you tell from the Russian subs if there are any differences in the way they speak? whether they use different slang, are more or less formal in their speech, those kinds of differences.

Not actually, I don’t know much of Kazakh language, so I don’t even know which words are formal, and which not. If they use slang, usually translators include a small caption about it in the video.

How much time does it usually take you to translate / sub / upload? Say, for a 15-minute video.

This may sound weird to some, but a 15 min video may take up to an entire day to make. Right now I`m working on an around 30 min video, and it`s my second day of translating. Some may ask "Why does it take so long?". Thing is that I want to give only high quality content, it means that I try to make as accurate translations as I can. The size and placement of subtitles also takes time, as they must be in the correct place. One more reason is that sometimes it’s hard to understand what they mean, so at first I must understand what they wanted to say, and then figure out how to make correct translation. 15 Minutes may actually take up to 9 hours (breaks included). After the translation, I must watch over typos. Uploading doesn`t usually take too long, maybe 2 hours or so (with rendering). Of course i could be less accurate and pay less attention to the way translations look like, but my respect for Ninety One "forces" me to make the best I can. Even if it takes away all of my free time.

That helps explain why a lot of K-pop sub sites have teams of subbers/uploaders. have you ever talked to anybody about trying to split up the work?

I thought of it, as 91 movie is going to be released soon, and I`ll have to attend school. Maybe at first i feel like i should learn to make subtitles and translations very well before I could "require" something from others (no matter who does the translations, high quality must always take a part, if it`s on my channel). I`m just not sure that I may find people that are ready to work just as much as me for Ninety One.

So do you feel like you've been able to meet more English-speaking Eaglez through your translation work?

I did, actually. At first I didn`t know many EagleZ at all, but after creating fan page I’ve met some of the foreign EagleZ.

I get the impression that it's still a pretty small fandom, but growing.

It may be that not yet all of the foreign EagleZ are active / show themselves to us. We need to make more of English content for English speaking people in order to attract them to Ninety One and Q-pop.

What would you like to see happen, in terms of English-speaking fans growing the fandom?

If fandom outside of Kazakhstan gets bigger, that`s enough for me. As long as there appear more of foreign EagleZ that love and care for Ninety One, I can live in peace. Of course, not forgetting so support translators would be nice too, but Ninety One is always number 1 priority.

What kind of support would be helpful for you (and other translators)?

Support as likes and comments is nice for all of the translators. It may seem that it`s easy to translate, but it can be much harder than it seems. Even a simple "Thank you" can motivate a person to not stop what they`re doing. As personally for me, sending videos (if you find them) with Russian subs (regarding Ninety One) would be nice, as I not always find them, or have time to search for them. If there are videos without Russian subs, AND you can make them, believe me, international EagleZ will be thankful for your effort (so will be I).

introductory post / all Ninety One posts

#ninety one #international_eaglz #fansubs #translation

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toraonice · 8 years ago

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Yuri on Ice interview translation - PASH! 2017/03 (p11) (Q&A part)

Here’s the Q&A part that was published with the episode commentary and I didn’t have time to translate the other day.

Regarding the question about Chris’ acquaintance, you may want to read the report of the other day’s talk show to get a more complete idea.

(Side note: I still haven’t had time to answer some of the questions I received, please wait a little... I will also work on the very long interview with Kubo on the magazine Febri from tonight. Interview rush this month, really.)

***If you wish to share this translation please do it by reblogging or posting a link to it***  ***Re-translating into other languages is ok but please mention that this post is the source***

Mitsurou Kubo presents Q&A exhibition!!! We asked Kubo-san about curiosities that didn’t fit the commentary, in a Q&A format.

Q. Why is Victor cold to JJ? A. He genuinely doesn’t care (LOL). He doesn’t even remember JJ’s name correctly, but that’s because he is the type of person that doesn’t try to remember things he isn’t interested about. It’s not like he’s looking down or him or doesn’t get along, he really just doesn’t care. Until this point we hadn’t clearly shown Victor not being interested in someone, so I was thinking about a character who wouldn’t feel hurt even if Victor didn’t care about him… and realized that it could only be JJ. In fact, he wasn’t really bothered.

Q. What is Victor to JJ? A. I think he is someone he has to challenge. The type of person he wants to confront and beat when they’re both in their very best condition. He would never want to win because Victor is in a bad condition or just out of a slump. More than admiring him, I think he wants to be his equal rival. And he believes that if he does his best he will get the gold medal. Therefore, to avoid looking at Victor like someone who is no match for him, he takes the liberty of speaking with him in that overfamiliar way. But I think that JJ is currently the one who is fighting against the fear of losing more than anyone else. It also looks like he didn’t really have a good relationship with his previous coaches and people didn’t understand him.

Q. Is Victor worried about the “whorl” of hair on his head? A. More than Victor, this is something many Russian people care about. Though in Victor’s case I think it’s more like his hairline than the whorl (LOL). But I think that having such a weakness makes him a fascinating person. Before the FS in episode 7 Yuuri even presses the top of his head while a large audience is watching. In this scene I wanted to do something that people wouldn’t actually do in the real figure skating world, I had fun drawing it.

Q. We want to know more about Otabek! A. In his private life he is also a DJ, and he’s kind of a street style guy. He actually has many mischievous friends. That’s why he finds Yurio really cool, because he has so many things that Otabek doesn’t have and admires. And he’s also the type who doesn’t give importance to hierarchies, so Yurio was happy that he wanted them to be equals. So you figure what happens when he asks him “will you come or not?”… (LOL)

Q. Who is the handsome guy always together with Chris? A. He’s a man from the Swiss Skating Federation. I created him because I didn’t want Chris to feel lonely (LOL). I’m not going to say anything about what his relationship with Chris is, but we believe that he’s a former ice dancer that belongs to the Federation.

Q. We want to know some secret anecdotes about the last episode! A. When I wrote the storyboard, I added “They say Katsuki is retiring.” as a subtitle. For Victor’s line I also considered “the ‘katsu’ in ‘Katsuki’ is the ‘katsu’ from ‘selfish’!*”, but I thought “nah, Victor is not that good at Japanese” and I didn’t use it (LOL). Also, in the storyboard there was a scene where Yuuri, before skating, is trying to tell Yurio that he’s going to retire but in the end isn’t able to tell him. But there was no time, so it was cut in the anime… [*translator’s note: “Selfish” in Japanese can be said “jibunkatte” 自分勝手, where the kanji for the “kat(su)” part is the same kanji as the “Katsu” in “Katsuki” 勝生. I’m glad she didn’t use that because it would have been impossible to translate properly… though Victor does still use the word “jibunkatte” in the episode. Also, in the end they are supposed to be speaking in English together, so yeah. By the way, the subtitle she originally thought, which in Japanese is “Katsuki, intai suru’tte yo” is probably a reference to the title of the novel “The Kirishima Thing” that in Japanese is “Kirishima, bukatsu yameru’tte yo” and was adapted into a movie. The ’~tte yo’ wording has kind of become popular after that.]

Q. How did you decide the way Victor cries? A. I drew it so that Victor’s tears wouldn’t stream down his cheeks but “drop from the tip of his eyelashes”. Sometimes people who aren’t used to crying do not move their facial muscles and don’t wipe their tears, so they just trickle down. The way Victor cries is something I had already roughly sketched in a meeting with the director.

Q. Why didn’t Phichit talk to Yuuri about his dream? A. I think the reason Phichit-kun still hasn’t talked to Yuuri about his dream of holding an ice show in Thailand is that he too wants to surprise him. They have this kind of relationship. I think that all skaters, even if this time they couldn’t achieve their best results, are thinking about what they can do to create a skating world that they can enjoy even more than now, and about what they can do for their home countries.

Q. Why does Michele speak in the Hiroshima dialect? A. In the setting he is from Naples and speaks English with an Italian accent, so to express that I decided that he would speak in Hiroshima dialect.

Q. Tell us how you feel now that the series is over and about the future! A. I am very well aware that you are all hoping for a continuation of the show, and with director Yamamoto we always talk about what we would like to do if we ever have the chance to work again with the staff that has gathered to make this series. We still do not know if a “St. Petersburg arc” would be the best. However, it’s definitely not something that I can do alone, and to draw this series again we would need to collect a lot of information and find many new things. It wasn’t a series that was possible to create just inside my head. But we must create something convincing, otherwise people are not going to follow us, and it wouldn’t come true. More than anything, the thought that we might not see Yuuri, Victor, Yurio and the other characters again makes us sadder than anyone else. Actually, I’m going to go on a trip abroad with the director soon (LOL), and we are planning to talk about the future too. I hope we have time to discuss carefully about what lies ahead for “Yuri on Ice”, and I’ll be happy if you keep on supporting us in the meantime.

#YOI #Yuri on ice #translation #interview #commentary #pash

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attract-mode-collective · 8 years ago

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The Hottest Fashion Accessory For 2017 Is The HuCard

Behold the latest from THUNDERBOX, a Japanese fashion label that not only uses video games as an accessory in various product shots, but as inspiration for threads as well. The two highlights of the SHOTSHOT STAGE3 would have to be appearance of HuCards, or Turbo Chips in the West…

And this Takahashi Meijin (from his appearance in the GAME KING mockumentary) inspired top…

You can either watch GAME KING here or simply refer to this collage that miki800 whipped up…

As for other game-centric attire from THUNDERBOX, here’s this snazzy Famicom inspired button up, from their CASE FOURTEEN line…

And this jack and suit combo from SHOTSHOT STAGE1…

Sticking with the subject of apparel real quick, @HeavyViper recently tweeted a pic of himself wearing Mountain Graphics’ STAR SOLDIUS shirt (grab yours here, BTW) while making boops and beep on stage with a Game Boy…

So GDC was this past week, a place not normally known for cosplay, yet when the creator of Seaman shows up… as well as @TheAnnaTheRed…

As I’m sure everyone already knows, the NintendoSwitch also finally came out, and there’s been lots of celebrating online. This is perhaps my fave piece of fan art I’ve seen thus far, by quistal…

BTW, I’m not making the biggest deal about the release because, I dunno, I simply don’t have one yet? Though I will say, leading up the launch, I did find myself somewhat swept up in the excitement, which wasn’t quite as big, yet in some ways managed to echo the buzz that surrounded the the original Wii’s release.

I also came across something that’s related, which I’ll be sharing in the next installment of the Super Attractive Club newsletter, but until then, please enjoy this recap of a Nintendo hardware launch over 10 years ago, when I was just starting my tenure at GameSetWatch. I wonder if this girl got the Switch?

According to Arcade Crusade, a proposed Sega Classic Arcade Machines Lego set reached the 10,000 supporters necessary to be considered for a real thing, so that’s pretty neat! Personally, I’d rather have a Lego Virtua Racing cab, but I’ll get whatever set that includes a Lego Yu Suzuki…

Coming soon to Japanese airwaves is Final Fantasy 14: Daddy Of Light, a show about a father and son that become closer while playing FF14 together. Here’s the intro, and... how many times have you watched something and wondered if it was some Saturday Night Live parody? Does Japan have something along the lines of SNL?

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And speaking of Final Fantasy, remember this? Well, here’s something along those lines (via the-entire-furry-fandom)…

Does anyone out there also remember CRT Souls? Well, didn’t realize it until recently but there’s been updates since last time. Here are my faves from parts 4 and 5…

Much news has been made with the recently unveiled Video Game History Foundation, and for good reason. Though it’s worth being reminded of the Japanese Game Preservation Society, which I’ve mentioned previously. And sixteen-bit recently posted a fairly recent profile produced by NHK World that’s an absolute must watch for anyone interested in the preservation of old Japanese games, in the mother land…

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On a related note, here we have a 40-minute long video featuring Primal Rage 2. The play through is based upon a recovered work in progress ROM dump. It’s worth noting how the Friday Night Fisticuffs crew initially thinks it’s going to be dumb yet they become fans real quick. I myself was a huge fan of the original, cuz of my love for stop motion plus, of course, dinosaurs.

The sequel has humanoids (they’re actually gods, I think) that transform into dinos, plus vice versa, which would be so dumb if not for how well animated said deities are. Also, I absolutely love the cue given, to signal the usage of a fatality: “DO IT!”

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For whatever reason, I am fascinated with this look at games that attempt to deal with a player’s indecisiveness when being asked to continue (via meldowiseau)…

Swarm explains: “Bungie using a bunch of unnamed icons to make images inside folders in OS9. I’m ready for this to make a comeback.” Me too buddy, me too…

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned Toco Toco around these parts, so here we have the latest episode, featuring the director of Persona 5 discussing the usage of Tokyo as the setting for the game (be sure to turn on subtitles)…

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Wait a minute; there was an Uzumaki game for the WonderSwan (via vgjunk)?!?!

This week’s recommended reading is this post entitled: “How to get good at Pinball”. A small taste…

“Here’s something newbies don’t often know: not only is it okay to nudge and tilt the playfield, the game actually assumes you will and incorporates that into play. Don’t do it too roughly or the ball will void, but yes, you can nudge the table, usually twice each ball. To quote Dr. Strangelove, ‘it is not only possible, it is essential.’”

Which do you prefer? This Ulala Figma, coming later this year…

Or these vinyl Morolians, available now…

Time for some random bits of Sonic! Starting with this illustration in which Knuckles seems generally happy with the train wreck of that 32X game that he stars in (via vice-s-assistant)…

Then there’s Knuckles in a hospital bed, with Sonic and Tails looking on, somewhat non-plussed. It really feels like Knuckles did something stupid or the like (via hypostatics)…

Here’s what Sonic would look like if he was human (via finalfantasyvii)…

And here’s from the intro to some Sega Saturn game in which a girl has Sonic and Tails dolls stuck to her head (via sonicthehedgeblog)…

Now might be a good time to also share some highlights from Super Mario Broth. Like the sculpture created to raise awareness for I think a koala hospital in Australia…

This bad ending in a choose your adventure book in which Mario accidentally causes the death of Luigi…

Mario with Buzz Aldrin…

And Mario with some Russian, who apparently had the rights to Tetris that Nintendo needed…

Speaking of Tetris, I have no idea what the deal is with this scantily clad animu babe (via larvalhex)…

For whatever reason, this oldie but goodie from around these parts got reblogged like crazy a few days ago, on PlayStation 1 audiophiles…

And finally, yet another quality head-to-head from VCDECIDE, this time of two separate Sakura Taisen stage productions…

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Don’t forget: Attract Mode is now on Medium! There you can subscribe to keep up to date, as well as enjoy some “best of” content you might have missed the first time around, plus be spared of the technical issues that’s starting to overtake Tumblr.

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sercram-blog1 · 8 years ago

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Recap of Hiatus: Social Life - January 9, 2017 - February 3, 2017

This recap will deal with my social life during the hiatus of blogging. Week 1: This was a fairly social week since our classes weren’t too crazy yet. During our lunch breaks, many of us from class would go eat together across the street from the school at this 5-story mall called the Palladium. The top floor was a big food court, so many of us used to go there and eat and chill during our break. After a while though, it became cheaper to pack our lunches (obviously). But, I will say, I always thought McDonald’s in the US had the best fries, but now I think differently. The McDonald’s in Czech have the best fries. I don’t know why that is, but they are saltier, the salt tastes different, the potatoes might be more real, and I rarely get a soggy fry. They taste so stinking delicious. I will admit that I have probably eaten more fries and Pringles (better here for the same reasons as fries) than I should have. The Language House took us out for dinner this week at a restaurant called U Bulinue after our first day of class on Monday, which was delicious. The food was all really good (pork medallions, steak, beef tartare, etc.) and was actually reasonably cheap. We all had a great time and took our first shots of Beckarovka (sp?) which tastes very cinnamon-y and delicious. Lots of people didn’t like it, but I didn’t mind it. It was a great way to end our first day of class and chat with some of the staff at the Language House as well. After dinner, most of us went to a little bar near my and Tarlin’s apartment called Moskyt. It’s just a tiny little basement bar and had cheap drinks. We all played a big game of “Never Have I Ever” and got to know each other really quickly. We all laughed and had a ton of fun. Some of the locals were listening in and laughed at us too. This really helped us all to open up and become more comfortable with each other in a fun way. We all started to head home around midnight or so. On Friday, the November Language House TEFL class took us out for a bar crawl. Beforehand, we had food and drinks at Jordon and Andrew’s apartment. Wine here is SUPER cheap (a bottle is rarely more than $10, even for the classier stuff) and so is beer (a half-liter is generally a little over $1). So a bunch of us had a great time and then went to the first bar of the bar crawl. It was a neat place with a big open floor. I must say, my brain is a little fuzzy from here on out. I remember I almost got in a fight with some Russians (smart choices, Serena) because I was trying to say goodbye in Russian to them and must have totally botched it to the point of insult. Whoops. The previous TEFLers were fun to meet and pick their brain about the course. We moved on to the second bar, which was in a neat place that was underground. I started to drink a lot of water here, and I apparently stole other people’s waters too (which sucks because here you actually have to pay for water). I remember there were wine glasses here that said “Terra Serena” which I found to be super cool. There was also a TON of people in this bar (aside from our group of 30 or so) so it was really hard to navigate to the bathrooms. We ended up taking some shots here – I took 2 (unwise). They shots were Beckarovka (sp?) liquor which gets you very drunk, very quick. Again, not the best decision for me, but I was having a great time. Chatted with people here for quite a bit (and guzzled some more water). Moved on to the third and final location, which was as club called Lucerna. It was pretty neat because it was 2 stories – there was a bar upstairs that looked out onto the dance floor in the downstairs (basement, of course). They played mostly 80s and 90s dance music, which was fun and reminiscent of younger days. There was a ton of people on the dance floor and it was so fun. I slapped a man (American, of course) right in the face for calling one of our friends a very derogatory name. I remember most things that happened here because of all the water I was drinking, and continuing to drink. I apparently had some sweet dance moves (not), but hey, I was having fun, apparently. It was nice that we had such a large group with us because we all felt pretty safe. We all sang our hearts out when Grease Lightning came on – pretty funny, really. Afterwards, we all dispersed – some people went on to go to another club, but me and a few others went in search of food. It’s about 2:30 in the morning at this point, and what’s open? McDonald’s! We walked in and ordered cheeseburgers and fries and ate to our heart’s content. It was so delicious. Tarlin and I walked back to our apartment and went right to sleep. She was kind enough to make me desert burritos in the morning, but my tummy was just not ready to consume too much, too quickly. I was able to eat it all eventually, but it took some time for sure. Spent the rest of the day recouping and relaxing. We had some of our friends over and Tarlin made a delicious chicken dinner. Drank lots of water. Spent Sunday lesson planning.

Week 2: This week was less social because we started to teach this week. We were pretty stressed this week, so there weren’t a whole lot of gatherings. We occasionally did meet up for a dinner at someone’s place to eat and work on lesson plans. Pretty much laid low this week to try and get a lesson plan system going. One fun thing some of us did was go see a movie at the cinema. It had assigned seating, which was annoying. But, the popcorn was good and salty. The movie was La La Land. The audio was in English with Czech subtitles, which made it easy for us. Some of the previews though were in English, Czech, and French. It was very interesting. But they had many American movies at the cinema, as well as a few other Czech and international films.

Week 3: Social life picked up a bit this week because we were all into our grooves and felt more comfortable with what we were doing. Ate at a restaurant called Lokal and tried fried cheese and some goulash with dumplings. It was delicious, but plain food. The beer was good though! Then went on a Ghost Tour of Prague’s Old Town and Jewish Quarter with a few people from class, which was fun. We were told scary stories and visited “haunted” areas of the city. I looked up some of the stories later, and they weren’t too far deviated from their original stories – so at least it was pretty informative. Also explored some other restaurants this week as well – found a great meat deli that makes burgers/sandwiches called Nase Maso, which was amazing. Jordon cooked a delicious dinner this week that consisted of cucumber salad and curry chicken. A group of us came over and ate it while we studied. Granted, we chatted a lot while studying, but we were sort of productive about it.

Week 4: We were not feeling like social butterflies during the first half of the week due to studying for our big grammar test on Wednesday, but some of us did do study groups and whatnot to try and help each other out. My birthday was on Wednesday, and it started out great by taking the grammar test and passing it! Woohoo! Tarlin took me to eat at Nase Maso for a birthday luncheon, and then I took off (didn’t have to teach that night) and did some solo sightseeing, which was so much fun and beautiful. I did some work, and then Tarlin and Shanleigh came over to our apartment and we had cheese, meat, bread, and wine while we chatted. It was getting late, but it was insisted that we at least go have one drink at a bar to say that we “went out” on my birthday. So we ended up going around the corner from our apartment to a little bar called Moskyt and had beer. Some young Czech people heard us talking and started chatting with us in English. It was 4 guys and a girl who worked near the area and were just finishing a project at work and celebrating. It was fun to speak with them and get their perspectives on politics and life in Prague. We said our goodbyes after one drink (we still had to go to class the next day) and went home. Great birthday. On Thursday night, the school organized an event where we all went to a pub (called The Pub, clever) to go eat and drink with some of the Czech students we’d been teaching over the course. It was really nice – not a lot of my previous students were there, but it was still fun anyway. There were bar taps at each table, which was awesome, because you could just fill up your beer whenever you wanted rather than wait for your waitress. Pretty innovative. FYI, Czechs drink more beer per capita than anyone in the world (including Germans). So they know how to do beer. I didn’t drink at this pub though because my stomach wasn’t feeling the greatest from my birthday last night. But they had good burgers. On Friday night, the school threw us a graduation party! Me and a few others dressed up and went to dinner beforehand, then went to the party location. It was in a basement bar (go figure!) in a huge event space. It was a great night. It was really the last time we would all be in one place together – all of us students, our instructors, the staff, and the previous classes joined later. Jordon brought his DJ equipment and we all started dancing. There were free drinks for the first hour of the party, so we were all feeling pretty good. We all danced our hearts out and sang to our favorite songs (any Backstreet Boys song was guaranteed to have a sing-a-long). Awards were handed out, which I got the award for most artistic materials! That was unexpected and exciting! I got a little box of chocolates. They were delicious. Overall it was a great night. We partied until about 12:30 at night and went home. The only bummer was I thought the metros were running still, so I got off at an early stop and then realized the metro was dark – they stop running at midnight. So, I had to wait 20 minutes for the next tram to come pick me up. During my wait, this man asked me if the tram went to Karlovo Namesti. I looked on the tram schedule and said yes, but only curtain numbered trams. He asked me where I was from because he was an English speaker too. I told him I was from the US and he proceeded to pretty much berate me for being American. He was from Manchester, England, and was furious that Donald Trump might meet the queen. Then he proceeded to say that our products are shit, we use a ton of slave labor, etc. People around us were staring because he was getting loud. I took a few steps away from him and he continued to yell – it didn’t even seem like he was drunk. It was super annoying, but then the tram came and he got on. He said good night to me and I didn’t respond back. Then he thought to add “Well, Americans aren’t all that bad, but America is terrorist state and should not be a part of any business transactions.” The tram doors closed and I flipped him off. It drove off and I giggled to myself because he did not get on the right tram. Teehee. I got home safely and went to sleep.

During the course, I came to be friends with just about everyone. We had such a fun, close-knit group that it was comfortable to hang out with anyone. We all made such great memories, whether it was teaching together or hanging out together. I will cherish all the friendships I have made during this course.

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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What If Japan Got the Atomic Bomb First in World War II?

Universal History Archive/GettyTOKYO—What if Japan had been the first to use the atomic bomb in World War II—and what if its top-secret research provided the backbone for the nuclear threat the world now faces from North Korea? These are some of the tough questions asked in Robert K. Wilcox’s book, Japan’s Secret War, first published in the United States in 1995, but appearing now for the first time in Japan as the world marks the 74th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. U.S. Planned to Drop 12 Atomic Bombs on JapanThe book, bound to be controversial here, has been updated extensively, and the subtitle has been changed. Formerly it was “Japan’s Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb.” Now it’s “How Japan’s Race To Build Its Own Atomic Bomb Provided The Groundwork For North Korea’s Nuclear Program.”Its Japanese translator views it as a nuclear deterrent in itself. * * *No Longer a Secret* * *Wilcox has written a number of books examining historical mysteries and conspiracy theories, from the Shroud of Turin to the Kennedy assassination, which may put some readers off. But over the next nearly 24 years since the first publication of Japan’s Secret War he has continued to research this country’s WWII atomic program, building on his already extensive research as he gathered first-hand interviews with Japanese scientists who worked on the project, talked to U.S. officials, gathered classified and declassified documents from many countries, and put together a compelling narrative of Japan’s attempts to acquire the ultimate weapon. (Ironically, this third edition of his book is being published in Japan before it will be published in the United States; it won’t be available in America until January.) While it is known that Japan was developing an atomic bomb, the scale and intent has been sharply debated. Wilcox notes that U.S. officials, out of political expediency, helped Japan cover up some horrendous war-crimes, including cruel biological experiments on prisoners of war. He argues that in the same vein the U.S. government may also have kept secret much of what it knew about Japan’s nuclear program.“Make no mistake,” he writes, “Japan would have used the bomb without hesitation or compunction” had it successfully produced one. The Japanese leaders and their scientists “were committed to creating such a device” at a moment when they and other nations “raced against each other and time to make history’s first nuclear weapon. They failed but they were closer to success than history has given them credit for.”Wilcox makes a case that Japan successfully detonated an atomic device close to what was then called Konan, Korea, on or about August 12, 1945, which is to say six days after Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, killing over 90,000 civilians, and three days after the Nagasaki bomb that killed at least 40,000 people on August 9. Japan’s decision to accept unconditional surrender on August 15, according to Wilcox, came after its own test and, perhaps, the realization that it was too late to respond in kind.* * *Japan as Victim and Villain* * *In 1991, William Chapman, a former Washington Post Tokyo Bureau Chief, in his book, Inventing Japan, noted that post-war education here ensured that most people knew little about the suffering of others under Japanese rule. “For the average Japanese, Japanese atrocities were the rumors of war….The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the incendiary raids on [Japanese] cities, these were indisputable…. The war made sense only if Japan were a victim, and that is how a great many people remembered it.”Those observations are even more true now. The current administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, backed by a strong Shinto cult and right-wing lobby, Nippon Kaigi, has made tremendous efforts to erase memories of Japanese war crimes, or flatly deny them. (This desire to hide the past is likely the driving force behind the current trade war with Korea, which comes after Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to pay added compensation to former Korean slave laborers.)* * *Plans to Bomb the U.S.* * *There are many here who still have no idea Japan was building its own atomic bomb—and almost succeeded—but was too late. The United States was almost too late learning that fact as well. The U.S. likely became aware that Japan was attempting to develop an atomic weapon by early 1945, and was caught off guard. In February 1945, the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) circulated a report about “stories” of “an atomic discharge to be used against [Allied] aircraft.” A few months later, allied intelligence sources filed a report about a scientist rising to speak to the Japanese House of Peers [the parliament of Japan at the time] and announcing “he is succeeding in his research for a thing so powerful that it would require very little potential energy to destroy an enemy fleet within a few moments.” It was clear to those who knew about such things, that the scientist must have been speaking of an atomic bomb. So, when a large Nazi submarine was captured in May of 1945 that was supposed to be carrying a half a ton of uranium to Japan, the U.S. was greatly alarmed. Is Japan About to Hit Its Nuclear Tipping Point?After the war ended, intelligence officials learned that the Japanese military, just prior to their surrender, had actually developed and successfully test-fired an atomic device. The project had been housed in or near Konan (the Japanese name for Hungnam), on the coast in the northern part of the peninsula.To make matters worse, by the end of 1945 the Soviets—who did not yet have an atomic bomb—had occupied much of Korea north of the 38th parallel and the plant where the Japanese atom bomb had been developed was under their control. In the summer of 1946, David Snell, an agent with the 24th Criminal Investigation Detachment in Korea, who had been discharged from service, wrote about it publicly in the Atlanta Constitution. He had interviewed a Japanese officer on his way home from Korea who said he had been in charge of security for the atom bomb project. The name used for the source was an alias. You can read the original dispatch and related dispatches here. Snell wrote:Japan developed and successfully tested an atomic bomb three days prior to the end of the war…..She destroyed unfinished atomic bombs, secret papers and her atomic bomb plans only hours before the advance units of the Russian Army moved into Konan, Korea, site of the project.Japanese scientists who developed the bomb are now in Moscow, prisoners of the Russians. They were tortured by their captors seeking atomic "know-how." The Korean project was staffed by about 40,000 Japanese workers, of whom approximately 25,000 were trained engineers and scientists. The organization of the plant was set up so that the workers were restricted to their areas. The inner sanctum of the plant was deep in a cave. Here only 400 specialists worked.The article summarizes the tactical and strategic goals of the project: When task forces and invasion spearheads brought the war ever closer to the Japanese mainland, the Japanese Navy undertook the production of the atomic bomb as defense against amphibious operations. Atomic bombs were to be flown against Allied ships in Kamikaze suicide planes.Since the Soviets did not explode their own device until 1949, it is unclear how much they knew about the Japanese research efforts, in fact, and how useful the intelligence was, or was not. David Holloway, in his scholarly tome Stalin and the Bomb, does not mention the Japanese nuclear program. Much of the Russian research was based on information stolen from the Manhattan Project in the United States. But in his book, Wilcox sets out to substantiate much of the 1946 scoop and add much more detail.Japan had been considering an atomic bomb from early in the war and research had taken place in the late 1930s. The original plan was to detonate an atomic bomb in the continental United States. Circa late 1942 or early 1943, Premier Hideki Tojo called Minister of War Gen. Toranosuke Kawashima to his office. He told him, “The atomic bomb projects of the U.S. and Germany are progressing. If we are behind, we will lose the war. You start to make it.”* * *Uranium: A Double-Edged Sword* * *Japanese scientists had a good knowledge of atomic theory, and they knew they needed massive amounts of uranium. The plan to make an atomic bomb began in earnest, and scientists all across the Japanese empire began working on the project, especially at the Korean complex, where there was a wealth of hydro-electric power and possibly uranium deposits. The Korean site became the Los Alamos of Japan’s Manhattan Project as Japan began searching for uranium all over its empre before, finally, turning to its Nazi allies. They had a source for it in Czechoslovakia.There are moments of dark comedy in the book as it describes Japan’s attempts to get enough uranium from its German allies. Yasukazu Kigoshi, technical specialist and embassy attaché with the Japanese contingent in Berlin, said at first the German Ministry of Economics was uncooperative.In his interview with Wilcox, Kigoshi recalled, “So because of my nature, I got very angry and I sent a telegram to the German government by myself. I told them, ‘The reason we need pitchblende [uranium ore] is for the development of atomic power. We are now under the Tripartite Pact [the Axis agreement] and we are both fighting against America and England. So what is going on here that you don’t want to cooperate?’ Either my telegram was good or Oshima [the official] talked to Hitler directly…. They answered that they would give us two tons.”Toward the end of the war, as Nazi Germany fell apart, a German submarine was dispatched to Japan with two Japanese officers on board and 1,234.59 pounds of uranium oxide for the Japanese military—which if successfully enriched would be enough to make one atom bomb. During the expedition, Germany was defeated and Hitler committed suicide. Less than a week later the ship surrendered to Allied forces on May 14, 1945, roughly 500 miles from Cape Race, Newfoundland. The discovery of the uranium sent off shock-waves. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb, is said to have personally come to inspect the cargo. It was requisitioned for the Manhattan Project.Wilcox notes the “irony” is that uranium bound for Japan’s atomic bombs may have “helped bring atomic devastation to Japan” with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August that same year.* * *The Book as Deterrent* * *Yoshiaki Yano, who translated the Wilcox book, was formerly a major general in Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and is a noted expert on nuclear deterrents, explains the reasons are more complex. “The first and second editions were both deemed possibly fabricated for lack of evidence,” Yano told The Daily Beast. “That made things easier for the scientists involved in the development, the industry, and the allies… for Japan to position itself as a nation that was just a victim of nuclear weapons and incapable of possessing these powers itself. The Japanese, especially in the academic world, the media and the education industry took it upon themselves to follow through on this and collectively worked to conceal this part of history and ignore the facts presented in this book.”Yano also is convinced that the work left behind by Japanese scientists helped create North Korea’s nuclear program as detailed in the book. “It’s clear that the United States, the Soviet Union, North Korea and China and the Chinese Nationalist Party all must have known the truth about Japan’s nuclear weapons, but have hidden it through and through along with the fact that they have intercepted Japan’s work in the past. The father of North Korea’s nuclear program is very closely connected to Japan. The irony is that Japan is now being threatened by China, Russia and North Korea’s nuclear powers.”Yano sees the publication of the book as a positive thing. “The Japanese people and especially the people running this nation should know that Japan has a high potential ability to possess nuclear arms and that [we] do not need to be scared of the nuclear threats.”He adds, “Japan possesses an independent power of nuclear deterrence. It should strive towards independence in its national defense while actively sharing the management and stabilization of international society.” The Bikini Atoll Apocalypse of 1954 Was a Vision of Trump’s ‘Fire and Fury’ FutureIn the end, the takeaway from Japan’s Secret War isn’t that the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because the Japanese would have bombed the United States first if they had been faster. The real lesson is that Japan was one more nation that came very close to creating a viable nuclear weapons program, and like Dr. Frankenstein, may have helped create its own monster. Wilcox calls for further study of Japan’s atomic bomb history and into the reasons the U.S. government still keeps many of the materials classified. The Japanese destroyed much of the research related to their weapons programs at the close of the war, but new evidence continues to be found. Certainly, more study would be merited. There are lessons to be learned from the tragedies of war, but in order to learn them you have to accept history as it is, not as you would like it to be. And in modern Japan revisionist leaders like Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are more concerned about rewriting history than learning from it. That is also tragic. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. 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kelnius · 6 years ago

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A Viewer’s Review of...

When I was a kid, I used to daydream walking to and from school. It's one of the reasons I became a writer, I loved creating these worlds with robots, heroes, dragons, monsters and mad scientists. There were big fights, explosions, melodramatic moments but, most of all, there was a lot of crazy-cool action.

The movie I'm talking about today, Guardians, feels just like those childhood daydreams come to life. For our heroes, there's a dark, brooding man who can psychically control rocks; a tattooed gymnast who can turn herself invisible; a ninja with superspeed and huge blades & a man who can transform into a monstrous, gun-toting bear. That is incredibly cool, and if you think that sounds cool too, you might enjoy this movie.

For a spectacle like this, you really need spectacular special effects, and for the most part they are really good. The computer effects aren't as polished as Western cinema, but it wasn't bad enough to take me out of the film. The props and costumes were pretty good as well, however the rubber prosthetics, especially on the villain character that was meant to look like a muscle-bound mutant did look a pretty silly - especially since the overall pink tone of the skin, and his round, bald head, made him look like a big muscle-baby.

Oh, and that's another thing to keep in mind, this is NOT a Hollywood feature. If you haven't heard of this before, I should let you know that this is a Russian film. I chose to watch it with an English dub, and the voice-acting was… off-putting. Firstly, the voice actors were lively and overacting, as though they were dubbing a 4kids anime; secondly it appears as though the localization team didn't have access to a separate audio track, and sometimes when the Russian dialogue was muted, the background noise was muted as well, losing a lot of the film's ambience.

I rewatched a few key scenes with subtitles instead of voice-over, and I recommend that over the dub. I prefer a good dub, but this is not a “good” dub. Either way, no matter which version of the film you see, nothing really improves the quality of the dialogue . . .

Yes, this film is awesome, with over-the-top “cool for the sake of it” scenes like my childhood daydreams. But, just like those daydreams, the plot is incredibly lazy and contrived, with the storyline existing for the sake of having another fight scene. The Russian government makes a bear-man, and a man who can move rocks with his mind… just because. Then a mad scientist goes crazy, and creates a machine that controls all technology and accidentally mutates himself into a muscle-monster at the exact same time that the Russian army happens to create a super tank… how convenient.

And almost all of this, we learn in the first 15 minutes via clunky exposition.

And don't even get me started on the evil villain’s plan, which would have required more funding and planning than one muscle-mutant could have possibly knocked together overnight, as he does in the film. It's all very contrived, and silly, done not because it makes sense, but because it will lead up to an action scene.

Not to mention, all of the main characters, literally one after the other, have a “dramatic, meaningful conversation" with their boss about their deep, dark past. They're spaced apart by the rest of the plot but because they each happen about twenty-minutes apart (and three of them use the exact same “sad music” melody), it is both cheesy and blatantly obvious. Don't get me wrong, the actors do an okay job at emoting, but the dialogue just isn't there…

Speaking of actors, a lot of the acting in this film is subpar, in my opinion. A lot of the secondary characters feel stiff or unemotional. However, the four main characters are all very good at what they do. Sebastien Sisak is Lernik (the earth-bender), and he acts as a wise, world-weary makeshift leader of the group. Sanjar Madi is Temirkhan, (the blade-ninja), and he is cold, calm and confident. Anton Pampushnyy plays Arseniy (the bear-man) and when he's not transformed into a CGI bear, he has a wild, rugged presence, and acts caring but quick-tempered. Finally, Alina Lanina is Kseniya (the invisi-girl), who acts like a loner, but truly cares about her friends.

If their acting was bad, this would be pretty unwatchable, but they manage to act as well as one can, given this script, and even though the music and editing made it feel cheap, they managed to imbue some emotion into their respective “sad, quiet moment” scenes. In fact, on paper these characters don't have much personality besides “looks cool”, so it's good that the actors tried to put a little personality into their performances. I also want to mention Stanislav Shirin, who played August Kuratov (muscle-mutant villain). He looked goofy throughout this whole movie, but in all fairness, I think that was the ridiculous rubber suit he had to wear. In one scene where he stands still and the camera only focuses on his face, you can see the actual, human effort he put into this role to try to be menacing, it's just a shame that nobody can be taken seriously with that stuff on them, but he gets a lot of points for trying.

Now, the majority of this film skips over the dialogue, and goes for action set-pieces and superhero spectacle. There are over a dozen separate fight scenes in this movie, as well as cool slow-motion, collapsing buildings, explosions, pseudo-scientific energy weapons, robots & very well choreographed action scenes. If that is what you want in your superhero movies, this delivers.

However, as much as I enjoyed those parts, I feel like this movie has so little substance. Near the credits (this isn't a spoiler, it's not relevant to the plot at all, and I'm being vague), a side-character makes some comment about friendship in an attempt to sound deep, as though that's what this movie was about. But, before she said that, I thought the movie was meant to be about “patriotism”. Think about it… bear, sickle, mountains, cold water - these characters are Russia. The superhero program is called “Patriot”, so I thought that's what this was meant to be about. But, no, not really…

The saddest part is, there is a lot to like here, this isn't a terrible movie - if I had seen this as a kid, I would have adored it. But, as cool as this is, I can't forgive this film for its lazy plotting. I can't even tell you how this movie ends because not only is it a spoiler, but it is meaningless and makes no sense, even in the context of a film with a bear-man holding a minigun. Especially with the slapdash “Friendship” moral tagged on at the end, this movie clearly didn't know what it was trying to do with its story, so I have to call it like I see it.

In Soviet Russia, Superhero make Marvels… - 4.5 ⁄₁₀

#A Viewer's Review #Guardians #Защитники #Zashchitniki #Sebastien Sisak #Sanjar Madi #Anton Pampushnyy #Alina Lanina #russia #superhero movie #action #rule of cool #blade ninja #bear with a minigun #invisible girl #geokinesis #kelnius

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