#cultural nuance

[captaingimpy]

An Analysis of Localization Choices and Emotional Weight in Dandadan

As I’ve been watching Dandadan, I’ve been experiencing it without subtitles in both Japanese and English, giving me a direct comparison between the original script and the English dub’s localization choices. Through this, I’ve noticed several key differences—not just in word choice but in how emotional weight, character perception, and narrative tone shift depending on the version. While the…

[luthienne]

anyway literally everyone is going through something all the time!!! everyone is wounded!!! everyone is human & no one makes it out of this life unscathed!! maybe try approaching people in good faith instead of always defaulting to the worst possible interpretations of each other

[maulfucker]

racism in star wars will have wikis saying shit like "this species that is inspired on a real life non-white people is just too stupid to use the Force"

[francesderwent]

thinking about snarky cultural/theological commentary and. the thing about snark is this: it’s easy, and it’s instant gratification. it’s easy because you’re playing to a likeminded audience. you get the way they think, you know the sort of things they find ridiculous, and so you know what’s going to play well with them. it’s not that hard to come up with a zinger that’s going to earn you applause from your own side. it’s also pretty easy to make another human being who’s not on your side look stupid, because we’re stupid creatures and we all have plenty of exploitable weak spots. it’s preaching to the choir, and it’s preaching meanly to the choir. and then, your snark bears all its fruit right away. you get the glowing feeling of having scored points against the enemy while being patted on the back by your friends for being so brave. if you succeeded in being snarky, you get the rewards of snark that very instant.

on the other hand, seeking to share the truth you possess in a mode in which it could actually be received—that is, says St Thomas, according to the mode of the recipient—that’s hard, and it’s so far from being instantly gratifying that you may never see the fruits of it in this life. not only are you not thinking about your likeminded audience, you’re not even going to trot out the truth simply in the way you understand it and call it your best effort. rather, you have to try to get inside your interlocutor’s frame of mind and understand how the truth you know is going to fulfill their own priorities and longings. you have to understand them so well that you see the truth of their position, even if that truth is buried very very deep, and then see how that truth connects them to the truth you see. you have to be insightful, and compassionate, and so, so patient. you don’t get to score any points, with anybody. your interlocutor might still get annoyed with you and turn around and make you look stupid. but you can’t just say ��I’m going to speak the truth and I don’t care who hears and how they take it”—you have to care how they take it, because the truth is relational, it’s given and received, not just spouted into a void. and frankly you have to care how they take it because you have to care about their salvation.

don’t get me wrong, there are times in every person’s life when they will be called to stand up and be counted, to put fumbling words to what they hold most dear even if they can’t make everyone understand. but I don’t know that it’s a virtue to be always focused on being seen saying the truth, with no consideration given to who hears you and what they’ll hear in it—and it’s certainly not a virtue to be always focused on being seen saying the truth in a mean and funny way. “instruct the ignorant” is a spiritual work of mercy. but instruct the ignorant does not mean “instruct the ignorant while making the knowledgeable laugh and/or high five.”

[cosmicredcadet]

"This fandom is so queer friendly!" This fandom literally hates, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and aspec people but ok.

[barrenclan]

is it ok to ship ranger and rainhaze? in like an exclusively toxic way. tongues and teeth by the crane wives

I can’t really stop you, but I don’t personally care for it. Largely because I don’t think “shipping” really captures their relationship, and it’s also important to me that Ranger has no genuine feelings for Rainhaze outside of manipulation and amusement.

[pand1on]

i wish i could articulate my frustration with the knuckles series/scu's handling of knuckles' heritage. i just hope that people recognized that stupid 'joke' where wade couldn't pronounce pachacamac's name as the anti-Indigenous racism it was

[disastergenius]

i appreciate Alex noting that just because he would know Draconic from the orb wouldn't mean he would have the cultural/social context of the language

[kindred-spirit-93]

cassandra & clytemnestra

class doodles <3

cassandra: super proud of how she turned out!! i love noses so much and ive managed to give her a really glorious one today. she got a few compliments too hehe

clytemnestra: idk how well ive managed to depict it lol but cly is both mourning iphigenia and planning out her vengeance. its going to be a long 10 years but she will have her killers blood.

--

i still have a long way to go till i finish the iliad so i dont know everyones story yet, i do know however that cly like many before and after her arent often portrayed with the complexities that make them them, that make them human, but instead as paragons or pariahs. and i think theres lots to be said on the matter, but i dont want to get ahead of myself lol. anyway enjoy :D

[mayasaura]

Being so real right now, there is something so essential to John Gaius' character that can be encapsulated in the song Foreigner's God. It's about alienation. It's about feeling helpless to heal the home you love, and fearing you'll only cause more harm because all you know is a legacy of violence. It's about knowing everything you were taught down to the language you learned it in isn't really yours, but having nothing else. Not even your own way to mourn the loss.

Screaming the name of a foreigner's God. The purest expression of grief.

[rebellum]

The whole transandrophobia discussion thing is weird bc it feels like it's a bunch of poc and jewish trans people being like "here are my experiences of how specifically being MASCULINE had affected me, and the discrimination and violence I experienced based on that. And here is how that relates to me being a racial/ethnic minority"

And then a few loud white trans people going "ohhh you wanna be oppressed so bad you *slur*. This is why there aren't any poc in your movement it's because REAL poc understand intersectionality"

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[zenkindoflove]

I have a new hypothesis about why the ACOTAR fandom is so weird.

And I think it's because there is a difference between the people who enter this fandom as shippers and the people who enter because they like the romance genre*.

I think many life long shippers enjoy romance. Maybe they don't always seek out the genre but they see romance in whatever media they are engaging with and they take those characters and put romance spins on them even if those characters aren't from a romance story. You ship because of a feeling. You see a dynamic or maybe you think about what a dynamic could be and then suddenly you're pulled in. Like falling in love. But you're falling in love with the idea of a couple. How that couple ends up becoming in canon is independent about how thinking about them together makes you feel.

I think romance readers aren't necessarily shippers*. They enjoy reading romance in a romance canon but they don't necessarily ship in the way shippers do with obsession and devotion regardless of what the canon says. They ship because they see that this couple is good together and it does make them feel squishy inside. Similar to a shipper. But they weren't necessarily going to see that until the canon actually played it out. To me that is responding to a romance plot as the author intended.

And maybe that is something different than shipping. I know for myself, I can read and watch romance and feel pulled in by the love I see but I don't "ship" them in the way I have shipped my OTPs with the level of obsession and devotion and need to construct my own head canons and fanon.

And I think that is a big issue when people from different backgrounds try to talk about shipping and the ship war in ACOTAR if they aren't coming from a similar experience. As I discuss a lot on this blog, there is history and culture behind shipping. And shippers have developed a common language to discuss shipping in a way that respects others shipping habits while also maintaining your devotion to your own ship.

It seems like those who are in this fandom because they enjoy canonical depictions of romance only are often confused by people who are taking characters into their own fanons and playing around with them or are devoted to them regardless of what the canon validates or not.

If you are used to shipping generally it seems very weird for people to say things like "I ship this because they're end game" or "I'll stop shipping if they don't end up together". Because shippers tend to not ship because of end game. They would LIKE end game because having canon validation is great. But it is not necessary (I also am tempted to make a whole post defining the differences between canon vs. fanon vs. end game ships because I frequently see the ACOTAR fandom using these terms incorrectly).

I think sometimes we are talking across each other and not to each other because we don't share a common cultural understanding of fandom or approach to shipping.

*obviously people can be both. Maybe the first couple you shipped is because you got into a romance series. But the point is that shipping at its heart comes from a feeling. How thinking about these characters together makes you feel squishy inside. And that can exist with or without canon. Shipping canon couples does come with many rewards, and canon can validate and be positive feedback on your shipping feelings, but you don't ship because they're end game. You would ship them regardless because you saw something special in their dynamic and whether the canon gets it or not isn't going to stop you. I like reading romance but I find romance in any genre because my shipping brain never stops.

[alphaketoglutaricacid]

when toshiro got on laios ass for being inconsiderate and never thinking about how his actions affect others like he was mean abt it but hes not wrong. Thats a pretty major character flaw and a pattern of behavior for laios — w not choosing jobs that made money for namari who is in a pretty dire financial situation where she cant even get off the island and has to go adventuring in the dungeon to get out of debt, who even explicitly brought this up, eating marcilles familiar immediately even tho she was attached to it, kidnapping shuro into his party and putting him in life threatening situations without like really checking he wanted to be there…?, wanting to see if izutsumi has more than one set of nipples when dehumanization is a HUGE huge issue for her the list goes on and on and on. Like when a friend does this to you its just kinda annoying but when ur the leader u really should be checking if everyones needs r met without them telling u. Like the autism plays a factor for sure, his cultural upbringing plays a factor for sure, but as ppl regardless I think u gotta step up to meet the needs of ppl in the moment or realize u shouldnt be calling the shots. just bc its influenced by factors out of ur control does not make it not a serious character flaw. And its written as such in the story.

[prolibytherium]

There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

[thebeautifuldaughter]

fascinating to watch how hozier speaking Irish in his new music is making some people: 1. fetishise him further and/or 2. make 'fun' jokes about gaeilge/gaelic/'''garlic'''' bc like. babes. i can guarantee you neither of those actions are separable from the lingering impacts of colonialism.