#i think it could be improved in a lot of ways. mainly with comparisons of tony to ben

[hearty-an0n]

you can see marvel become more and more soulless via a mcu spidey marathon

[dr-spectre]

I've been thinking about this a lot considering that Splatoon 3 is about to end its content updates.

When people (mainly casual fans and game journalists) say, "oh Splatoon 3 feels more of the same! They need to do something dramatically different for the next game! The series has to evolve!"

I agree with that statement... but like... when you say that you want significant changes in the gameplay to where Splatoon 4 is nowhere near the same as Splatoon 3, what do you mean by that?

Like seriously, what the hell do you mean by significant and dramatic changes to the formula? Can you name some examples? You want a battle royale mode? Do you want a gimmick of some kind? Do you want the Inklings to turn into werewolves at night? Do you want the Inklings to be given a ring that gives them fiery powers? Do you want them to be given a talking sword, LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!?!?

it's hard for me to wrap my head around that statement because I actually genuinely agree that Splatoon 4 needs to make Splatoon 3 look like a 3/10 in comparison. But I don't know how they can do it and I dont know If game journalists know either. They just throw out statements without giving any sort of creative ideas to back them up.

Also to those who say Splatoon 3 is just Splatoon 2 again. Play those two games back to back, you will notice a lot of differences.

Faster gameplay, new movement options, different specials, different sub and main weapons with unique and fresh ideas, Salmon Run feels way better and chaotic in Splatoon 3, a rogue like mode, multiple hubs, improved graphics, improved UI that better accommodates the Switch.

The only similarity is that the camera is the same, that's it lmao. Splatoon 3 does what any good sequel should do, take the base formula and make it better! Not EVERY sequel needs to be some dramatic switch up you know? Should Splatoon 4 make some significant changes to make stuff fresh considering that it will be the fourth game in the series? Sure! But what kind of changes or addictions could they do?

I don't know! I'm not Nintendo!

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I feel like this is a horrible thing to say, but when I'm shown examples of when Marinette is having a hard time, it's hard for me to feel bad for her.

It's not like I think she deserves it and I certainly don't draw any joy from it, but I just don't feel any sympathy for when she's struggling.

My theory is that the show has toted her so much as the all-important one-and-only, all while ignoring everyone else's important moments and struggles, that I'm struggling to feel sympathetic for when Marinette is going through some sort of misfortune. Every single one of her struggles are always highlighted in such a way that it's supposed to be this incredibly-important thing that makes Marinette look so sad, but then she's comforted and validated until eventually, this struggle eventually gets resolved and she's all happy again.

But then there's Adrien. No closure about his mom, his dad, Natalie—nothing. He's slapped with all the responsibility of comforting and validating Marinette, who eventually gets her personal conflicts resolved without lasting impact.

I'm not saying Marinette hasn't done anything to comfort and validate Adrien, but his conflicts just feel largely brushed aside and/or downplayed in comparison to Marinette's, which are highlighted and emphasized as significant events.

I don't know if this makes me a bad person or something, and I do kind of feel bad about it, but I just struggle to sympathize with her when the show tries to make us feel bad for her.

Marinette is a fictional character. It's totally fine if the bad writing has completely turned you off to her and drained you of sympathy because the entire purpose of her existence is to entertain people. She's not some meaningful representation that you should want to connect with and understand to improve your world view or something like that. She's just a poorly written teenager in a bad kids show. As long as you're able to acknowledge that fact and own that this is mainly a writing issue - and it sounds like you are - I wouldn't stress about it. The writers have done a lot to make her unlikable! I totally get why someone would not want to watch a show starring her canon self. I struggle at times and I genuinely like Marinette! Her writing is one of the many reasons I just don't know if I'm going to watch season six.

I don't defend Marinette because she's done nothing wrong. I defend her because her faults are so clearly just bad writing and not some grand plan for the character where she's going to learn something, which makes me feel protective of her because I genuinely love the base character concept and what she could have been. It's annoying to see people treating her like she's the problem and not the writing because she's literally not allowed to learn lessons and change, so of course she keeps coming across worse and worse! Her flaws are genuinely fine for a serialized story, they just have no place in an episodic one where the characters stay largely stagnant.

For example, nothing about the season five conflict and final naturally follows the BS season four conflict where she supposedly learned to trust Chat Noir. As much as I don't agree that with that synopsis of what the conflict was, it is how Ladybug sums it up in the final:

Ladybug: Why don't you just give up on me? I've lost ALL the Miraculous! I'm the worst Guardian EVER! I wanted to control everything, I didn't listen to you, I lied to you, I kept you at a distance! Every time you offered me a helping hand, I never took it! I really made a mess of EVERYTHING! Cat Noir: We're gonna get them back one by one…until the very last. And we'll make sure this never happens again.

And yet none of this seems to impact season five. Chat Noir and Ladybug maintain all their secrets and they do absolutely nothing to track down the missing miraculous because the plot won't let them even though it really doesn't fit Marinette's character. She certainly hasn't given up controlling things because, once again, the show literally will not let her do that. The rare episodes where it happens always see her punished like when Alya handing out miraculous lead to SentiNino which almost lead Gabriel to knowing Ladybug's secret identity. Adrien suffers for similar reasons. So does Alya and so many other characters! I totally get why someone would not be able to look past canon's writing since it's not like the flaws are minor. I have the same problem with both Lila and Nathalie.

I just cannot stand Nathalie even though I know that she's as much of a victim as Marinette and all the other characters. None of Nathalie's flaws are her fault because she doesn't exist. It's just that Nathalie's bad writing hits me in a way that makes me despise her while Marinette's hits in a "protect and defend" way. There's no wider logic here. It's just a matter of what characters I connected with enough to look past the bad writing. The type of fanfics I read probably also helped...

My only real piece of advice on this topic is to watch your mental health and take a Miraculous break or even leave the fandom all together if you notice that your Marinette hate (or hate of anything in canon) is really messing with you. I've mentioned before that I'm debating about watching season six and a big reason why is that I don't know if it's going to be good for my mental health. Lila's writing has consistently got on my nerves, but she was a minor enough character that I was still having a good time. Given that Lila is our new big bad with the added bonus of how shitty season five was and the show may have hit a point where it's just not fun for me anymore.

Previously, I had issues with the overall writing, but genuinely enjoyed watching the show as the writers are pretty good at short form story telling, so canon was a nice mix of genuinely enjoyable moments and writing issues that were fun to talk about. That was not true for season five and I just can't picture how it will be true for season six. The only reason I'm even considering it is because I watch the show with my SO and he has a lot of fun listening to me rant about bad media, so I may still have a good time with season six. It would not be the first time that I suffered through a piece of bad media for the sake of a loved one who really wanted someone to rant about it with.

I'm not the kind of person who will tell people they're not welcome in a fandom unless they like X. That sort of gate keeping is ugly and often straight up bullying, so don't read this as me saying that you have to like Marinette to enjoy the show or that you need to disengage if you don't like X% of canon. As long as you're having fun and not forcing your dislike on others by sending clearly unwelcome asks or engaging with sugar posts in an antagonistic way or anything like that, then I'm going to defend your right to be in fandom even if we personally aren't going to get along and need to stay in our separate fandom bubbles.* All I'm saying is that it's important to know when to disengage from a piece of media. To keep track of when something starts consistently bringing you more sorrow than joy. When that line is crossed? It's time to move on.

The sad fact is that, while you may utterly adore a piece of media, you have no control of what that media will do, so you need to be very careful about trusting your mental health to total strangers. It's part of why I tend to be so critical of media. Analysis and plot pitches like I do on this blog are genuinely fun for me, but they're also a much healthier way to engage with a story than just trusting it to be good and getting burned when it isn't. There's a reason I avoid theory crafting. I've gotten really into that in the past and wound up hurt because I put way too much faith in strangers who ended up sucking at their job.

*Btw, the line about separate fandom bubbles was not aimed at you. It's just a general statement about how fandom works. All are welcome, but all do not need to directly interact. Curating your fandom experience is important self care. Blocking someone isn't some sort of value judgement. It's just sometimes a thing you need to do in order to keep from seething when you accidentally see their asinine hot takes.

[mayordea]

songwriting with meiko 🎙️

i have a few things to comment abt this which will be isolated under the cut so the post doesnt get too bloated :] mainly small hcs about meiko/kaito/miku hhhh

an idea that briefly popped in my head when i was brushing my teeth that i did not want to let get away. it was ambitious and i liked the concept of using my hc'd versions of the younger crypton vocaloids (miku's beta design and meiko/kaito's v1 designs) interacting with each other, so i went for it. i designed the general vibe of the background in animal crossing, ol reliable for these kinds of things, since i knew i wanted to cram as much detail in the environment as i could. i made a post about it on my personal account here since i was quite proud of this build.

as i was decorating, i kept spontaneously making headcanons for the younger meiko/kaito/miku unit in order to understand how to populate their living space with accurate clutter. i ended up totally overdecorating the whole thing and only referenced a small portion of the interior (like, why'd i go so hard on thinking about the yard? thats just what happens when i try taking this route) but i did like some of the ideas i came up with to explain my decorative choices. here's just a ramble.

oh yeah i guess i should get something i mentioned in the tags of that art i made w all the crypton gang's "younger" versions out of the way: i hc the character vocal gangs' "younger" designs to be their "IF" or beta designs. and meiko and kaito's younger versions are their V1 designs, mainly inspired by how they appear in the earlier project diva games (every time i look at them i just see them as awkward teens still trying to figure out who they are lmao)

also mentioned there that sakine meiko and meiko are one in the same and the fanloid and vocaloid arent separate entities. sakine meiko was meiko in her early music career as a relatable teen pop idol, with the "sakine" family name being made up to create that image. once meiko grew into an adult, she put the persona behind and just went by meiko, and around that time she met kaito and theyd be musical partners for a while

meiko sort of adopts miku into their unit when she recognizes her potential and serves as a mentor to her after then. kaito is the same but acts more as a supportive guardian in comparison. rin, len, and luka would come along later of course.

yeah i really fuck with the idea of the crypton gang being a little family :] i think it's neat! and this art/animal crossing build was a fun way to explore that hc a little

meiko is a physical media fiend, especially for music. loves collecting cds and vinyls and the like; they're littered all over the house. loves rock music too

kaito on the other hand has a knack for gardening and tends to the very modest garden outside their house. also collects a lot of art he finds in thrift marts and such for novelty's sake

miku always dedicated herself to improving her craft and finding her voice thanks to the help of meiko. she was also kind of a nerd at this era. very serious and dedicated

these folks did not know how to clean shit up, everything left lying on the floor ends up being an intentional decoration (probably not clear in this but i did like scattering stuff around to the best of my ability in the AC build)

ummm that’s it for now i guess i had less than i expected? but i’m glad to get this down somewhere lol feel free to share your own hcs if you wish, i love hearing them

[aconflagrationofmyown]

Your writing is incredible. Each sentence is so carefully crafted and satisfying to read. I was wondering if you could give me any writing advice? In terms of just improving my writing. Structuring sentences are always such a difficult one for me, mainly because I am trying to avoid sounding repetitive and bland with my descriptions. So, any advice would help so much 😭

Ooooh goodness, this is the stuff I adore talking about but the minute I’m asked for advice my brain goes blank and the imposter syndrome chokes me. Nevertheless, it is sweet words like yours that fuel me to keep putting my writing out there and keep improving, y’all are literally watching me try to better myself because I’m aware that the more daring I get, the more technical fallacies I commit. But all that said, I’d love to encourage you and share what’s helped me.

I’ve got to give a load of credit for any wordsmithing talent I may have to my having read two things voraciously growing up: old books and old letters.

I mean start as far back as the 1920’s and then keep going back, nothing too modern as those became a little terse, which was talent in itself but a little unhelpful for the issue of repetition. The letters aspect is helpful because it’s so cool to see how people back then crafted telling average and mundane stories about their days in a way that was super compelling. Most correspondence today by comparison is dry as dust. I really rely on that ingrained way of picking out the meat of a sentence and starting there instead of rambling too much beforehand.

My mode of operating is that I’d rather someone be a little lost in my story than fully bored. So I keep the details minimal, I try to think of a goal with each sentence.

Say this one sentence is detailing a doorframe…let’s keep it to just that after we’ve made sure that’s even needed. The next sentence is detailing how the girl feels after the love of her life just walked out, that sentence may be far more complex but it might also mention the doorframe because when we are overloaded with emotions we sometimes shut down and notice trivial things like the peeling paint on a doorframe. Someone once said to describe war you don’t need paragraph upon paragraph detailing carnage, you just need to mention a child’s little shoe burning in the middle of the street. Sometimes the little things are the sucker punch. Does that make any sense at all?

I try to keep my descriptions of surroundings or individuals concise and often anecdotal- that’s necessary to hold my own attention and so that’s what i apply to my own writing. It’s a whole lot of:

“would this bore me or would this shock me or would I do a double take to make sure this was actually meant or would this resonate with me?”

and work on from there. Some of my sentences have grammatical errors, very often in fact, and that’s something I want to grow in but for now I don’t care as it’s a training wheel to keep the sentence structures more interesting.

So, I guess my chief advice is consider your own favorite books or fics and study them. Find a paragraph or dialogue sentence that really struck you as effective and study the hell out of it. How did they begin it? Was there a comma and portion in the middle to squeeze in more info without burdening the beginning? How many dialogue tags were there? -sometimes a simple “he said” is better than tacking on an emotion or description to everything.

So, studying like that is what I do as an exercise, then writing my own with those structures in mind. So much of it is rhythm of a sort.

All my love and feel free to pop back in if this ramble did nothing for ya or you think of something else you’d like to ask! I love it. Best wishes!

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

CW: childhood trauma, complex trauma, emotional flashbacks, difficult recovery

Seeking: mainly reassurance, also advice/resources

I've recently realised that what I thought was anxiety is actually emotional flashbacks. I have done some reading about them and how to manage them and have started tracking them in my bullet journal so I can be more aware of them and therefore manage them better.

But while this seems to already be helping it is quite distressing to realise I'm getting upwards of ten emotional flashbacks in a day. I'm hoping the number is inflated due to me just thinking more about it and therefore more likely to think triggering thoughts but I think it's more likely that I am simply being more aware of what was already happening.

One piece of advice is to document and avoid your triggers but I don't see how I can do the second part when my trigger seems to be "anything that I am capable of imagining can cause me harm that I feel I have insufficient control over"

I am on the waiting list for professional help, with plans to refer me to other help afterwards but I'm feeling really out of my depth right now. I know that the fact that there is time in-between flashbacks now instead of just constantly feeling that way like I was a year and a half ago is improvement but that doesn't make it feel less distressing.

I guess I just want to know that it can get better. Even just getting to the point where I only get one or two a day would be heavenly in comparison to right now.

Hi anon,

There are both pros and cons to keeping track of negative events, whether it's triggers, flashbacks, even nightmares, etc. On one hand, like you said, it can help to recognize a pattern and use that to inform how you navigate your day. But it's very common for this kind of documentation to reinforce those thoughts and feelings by giving it more space in your life. I used to record every PTSD nightmare I had to try and notice a pattern and then I realized that writing it down was making them happen more. When I stopped recording them, I gradually stopped having those dreams.

However, as someone who has journaled on and off since 2012, I strongly believe in the therapeutic benefits of journaling. Instead of documenting and dating each episode, it might be better to use that space to express how you feel, what you think, and how your day went or what plans you have. Documenting triggers in particular, especially for the sake of avoiding them, can create additional fear around those triggers, which makes them more intimidating and powerful. Something that tends to help a lot of folks is to try to stay grounded in the present and focus on the positives as much as possible. By doing this you can slowly give your triggers less power until they no longer have influence over you.

I hope I could help and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

[sunriseverse]

tagged by @lucientelrunya to do a “twenty questions for fic writers” tag meme (thank you!!!!)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

376. about 200 or so of those are pacrim promptfics though, which inflates the number.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

1,234,900. i unfortunately suffer from a chronic inability to shut up, and fanfic is basically my only non-academic hobby.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

as of march 2023, various adaptations and canons falling under the dmbj umbrella.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

strike it through (start again) (922)

do you feel the hunger (does it howl inside?) (616)

a love that echoes through the distance (472)

strokes of love (441)

chart a course for a better tomorrow (390)

(honestly i’m kind of annoyed my ofmd fics are so popular, since i got in at just the right time (a lot of fandom interest but comparatively few fanfics in comparison to demand) to get a decent amount of attention to them, but i don’t really care about the show anymore so seeing it skew my stats miffs me a bit. also, i think my recent works are just far better written because i’ve improved at my craft.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

probably 95% of the time, yeah! even if it’s just a “thanks for commenting, glad you liked the fic!” i think it’s important readers know that i’m not just some faceless set of hands posting—i am a real person, as much a part of whatever fandom i’m in as any lurkers.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

uhhhh well. there’s one i wrote that’s canon-compliant for cql? but i feel like canon-compliant mcd doesn’t count. other than that………i THINK i wrote a “newt dies” fanfic back in ‘19 or ‘20.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

no idea how to go at this question, honestly. with few exceptions, my writing is all either happy endings, or hopeful endings. i don’t have the emotional bandwidth to leave something an open wound, you know? but “the things in this forest have teeth and claws” was probably the most personally-settling things i’ve written.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

yeah, sometimes. i haven’t had this problem since i migrated to ao3, but it did happen on ffnet. before i stopped crossposting to ffnet some time in ‘20/‘21, i got someone calling me a “fat f*g hag”, so. [shrug] i’m pretty used to just deleting comments and not letting them get to me, though, so it’s not a big deal.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

as a rule, no; it’s not really my thing. i prefer to explore interpersonal intimacy in other ways. that’s not to say i won’t imply smut, though—it’s something the characters i write about engage with as part of the course of their lives, and i don’t have any interest in ignoring that, either, even if i don’t explicitly write it out.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

i used to write more crossovers, but now i mainly write fusions (dæmon/hdm fusions and pacrim fusions are some of my favourites). i think probably the wildest fusion i can think of is the tma/iasip fic i wrote one time. i read it the other day, and while it’s a little rough, most of it still holds up, and it’s pretty funny.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge, no. just in case, though, i have a disclaimer in my ao3 bio about any works appearing anywhere besides my ao3 or ffnet (same user) is stolen and i do not authorise it to be there.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

someone asked me years ago (in 2019, i believe) if they could translate one of my pacrim fics into russian. i haven’t heard from them since, though, so effectively the answer here is “no”.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

a couple times! it’s a bit hard because you have to do a lot of coordinating and planning, and that’s assuming the fanfic doesn’t just wind up languishing in the draft/idea phase forever.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

this is going to sound silly, but—ozma of oz/dorothy gale. look, i read all the oz books i could get my hands on as a child, and i was always fascinated with their “close friendship” (i wonder why!)

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

i have a wip that was grandfathered in from my friend emma, who wound up leaving fandom (good for her; as she tells it, her mental health improved because of this), that i sometimes stare longingly at with a deeply bittersweet fondness. it’s hannigram, and will probably never be finished because trying to rewatch the show just makes me incalculably angry at brian fuller.

16. What are your writing strengths?

description! i’ve been told i am able to paint the things i write so vividly they almost feel real. i also enjoy descriptive writing, which probably helps.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

plots that aren’t character-driven. i’m a character writer first and foremost, and my projects generally are emotionally-driven, so i don’t have much chance to try and write action-driven plots. which is fine by me, i’m not terribly interested in them. if there’s action in my writing, it’s almost invariably in service to character.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

depends on how it’s handled. it can either be very good, or very bad.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

to absolutely no one’s surprise, warrior cats. this was back in the days of writing fanfic by hand and hiding it away. my oldest still-published fanfic, though, is a discontinued 2017 warrior cats fanfic that centres a deaf apprentice. it’s a pity i never kept any notes for this fanfic (or, if i did, they at some point got lost), because i think the concept is fascinating.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

self-indulgence is the rule here, so probably “best laid plans”, a very silly concept that accidentally acquired a lot of emotion to it. oops!

tagging…………… @lunarriviera , @butchybats , @fixaidea , and anyone else who sees this and wants to participate!

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

dw i dont think the poll was that deep! i just really like talking about these things lmao, i really love ofmd and brba so its hard for me not to think about the comparison deeper. in response to your thoughts on the matter, i just wanted to say— jesse actually didnt snitch! it gets revealed by the police later that krazy8 actually snitched on his own cousin, and had been an informant for them for a long time. all the characters in the show are pretty morally bankrupt and jesse is the best of them tbh (excluding almost all of the women and all of the kids). selling meth is basically like murder in ofmd where its like, so many of the characters sell meth and are criminals or crooked cops that the scale of morality is skewed. like i wouldnt call ed a bad person in the scope of ofmd because he’s committed murder (not by his own hands ofc but like, thats semantics, hes caused a lot of death.) i also dont really mind him saying faggot because its funny lmfao but stops he does stop saying it eventually, which is an improvement. he may say faggot but he’s honestly one of the least toxically masculine characters in the show. any toxic masculinity he exhibits is really limited (imo, its mainly his casual homophobia in the beginning of s1) and it never hurts anyone, unlike izzy who hurts so many people because of his toxicity. a consistent theme in the show is jesse being walt’s foil. the meth business brings out the darkest of walt’s narcissism, apathy and disregard for others lives and wellbeing, which turns him into a monster. all the while jesse stays empathetic, and is good at heart even if he fucks up sometimes and commits crimes. i could list all of the things that jesse does that drive home this point and personally make my heart ache for him but this ask is already long enough!! idk TLDR basically ofmd’s narrative condemns izzy’s actions and used him as contrast to the goodness of the other characters, whereas brba’s married frames jesse as decent person who is used to contrast walt’s genuine psychopathy and machiavellianism. i dont really think the characters are comparable from a narrative perspective but tbh i get why you would compare them from a fandom perspective! they are both poor little meow meows in fanon, and thats more accurate to what your poll was measuring. sorry again for how long this is i just have so many thoughts T_T

oh ok werk. It really seemed like he was lying about not being the informant when he was called on it but I suppose that'll come up soon enough. Like, that man is not very good at not coming off suspicious. I agree tho about your point on the homophobia. Like if a real guy like Jessie was coming at me with the f slur like that I would feel very unsafe, but the way it reads in the show is like him calling the very heterosexual Walter White a homo as he, Jessie "t-boy swag" Pinkman, zooms in on his ass with a camera so it's like the homophobia is so undercut, dude. Like homie you are coming off so fruity for a guy who uses faggot as an insult.

But yeah Like I said in the first ask I don't consider selling meth evil, an argument could be made to me about "well they profit off of people's addictions" to which I would respond "So you agree? Selling things that people need to continue functioning is evil? Which means selling food is evil and it should instead be free." To me drug dealing is not that bad in a society where we let people die of no money all the time. We're all doing what we gotta do to get by. I'm just using dealing meth as a morality argument because I don't expect mainstream television shows to share my rather libertarian(Leftist) views on drugs and I assume any meth dealer on my screen is going to do other things that I am against, like, idk murder. I have no beef with the real life Walts and Jessies of the world, although you would do well to stop cutting your drugs. Jessie, Jessie, I'm begging you not to synthesize baphomet's dandruff (Meth + cHiLi PoWdEr) my nostrils are burning just thinking about that shit.

[daydreamycrustacean]

Thinking about which mgs games are better/worse in terms of their misogyny in comparison to the first solid game, which does kinda get a pass because its "regular 90´s videogame misogyny what can you do about it".

But if we are judging the games on the quantity/quality/plot relevance and impact of its female characters then the best game would be...Maybe mgs3 or mgs2? (Gonna start with mgs2 because I'm gonna do this in chronological order to really see if it gets worse.)

I do think that Metal Gear Solid 2 does sorta better than mgs1 in this regard, first of all, there are more female characters, which doesn't mean that its immediately better, mind you.

But the difference, i think, is in the way that unlike in mgs1 they are not actively sexualized by the camera. In mgs1 both female characters have a moment where the camera focuses on nothing but their butts as they walk, mgs2 never does some other male-gazey equivalent to this (that I remember). I think this makes a big difference, you could say that Fortune´s design is sexualized because she is showing a lot of skin, but I personally never found it that way and I don't mind her design mainly because its never treated as something sexy by the game itself, unlike how Sniper Wolf and Meryl are framed in mgs1.

The female characters in mgs2 are all killed off, though. Except for Rose, who is there to be a "nagging girlfriend", which is not great! but I do think it might be a slight improvement from mgs1. But I just remembered that there's sexy posters of female models strewn across the game environments, so maybe it cancels it out.

Now onto Metal Gear Solid 3, in which when the second on-screen female character that we see appears in the game, we are given a button to stare directly at her boobs. Thats a rooough start and maybe makes it already worse than mgs2, but although eva´s constant sexualization at the beginning of mgs3 is deeply annoying, I do not think it immediately makes her a bad character and I don't really hate her design. She is a charm agent who is here to seduce the protagonist in order to steal information yadda yadda and she succeeds, which doesn't excuse the View Boobies NOW Button (seriously, fuck that) but you know, she has stuff going on she isn't just a romantic interest she has plot relevance and agency, which is nice.

The other two voiced female characters in mgs3, Para-medic and The Boss arent sexualized and they have memorable personalities, The Boss being one of the most important characters in her impact on the series.

I think she and eva are another example on how camera focus and framing does a lot of the objectification on a character. Because unlike with Eva, when The Boss unzips her sneaking suit we are not given the option to sexualize her, take the focus away from her as a whole and into a part of her body. In fact, the act is not sexualized at all, the focus of the scene is on the scar and its meaning, the depth of her words.

So is mgs3 worse? I think it's hard to tell.

Now Me-hahaha... Metal Gear Solid 4 is definitely worse than any of these other games in terms of objectification. no objection. I think its kinda funny and ironic that the only mgs game that passes the Bechdel test is the one that has the Beauty and Beast unit in it. I don't even have to elaborate on how they alone make it worse than any other mgs game in terms of misogyny and sexualization (for now. i will mention mgsv later.) This part is shorter because all you need to know is that they are removed in the mgs4 novel, which should tell you all you need to know about their impact on the plot.

Peace Walker! Its not as egregious as mgs4, but honey its a low bar. I think its the mgs game with the most voiced female characters. they have different and vibrant personalities, great and not immediately gross designs, and varying degrees of plot importance and impact.

Some of them are still treated weirdly though!!! Paz gets the worst of it, and I really don't know where to begin with the way she is treated sometimes. I could say a lot on what specifically bothers me about the way that both strangelove (one of my favorite mgs characters) and paz are written and treated at certain points, but it would make this post way too long. lets just say that portraying your only explicitly lesbian character as predatory and sexualizing a character that we are led to belive is a minor for the most part of the narrative is a big blunder, Kojima.

The gross way that Paz is treated bleeds into ground zeroes, I didnt want to mention her torture tapes (I haven't listened to them. never will) but oh boy those certainly exist!

Okay. now we are finally on Metal Gear Solid V. It is the worst one on this regard. Period. Quiet is the only female character there. why elaborate? shes the most distilled example of a sexy lamp character ever.

Oh wait! we also have hallucination Paz! our second female character! who isn't real and is also half naked.

Finishing this off by going back to mgs1, to say that I actually think Sniper Wolf is great. its surprising, and it was done completely on accident but I think there's something kinda subversive on the way she is initially presented as a sexy femme fatale. You roll your eyes and think "90´s videogames am I right?" as the camera focuses on her low poly ass. thinking that shes only here to be sexy and ~dangerous~. but this initial impression falls away at her death scene, in which she is suddenly given weather-appropriate clothing and the camera treats her with dignity in her final moments. It feels like the fact that she is given these clothes gives her more agency on her interior, more revealing clothes, makes it seems like its something that she chooses to wear rather than a terminal horny videogame developer brain fungus decision. I don't know just a nice closing though, I do like sniper wolf and I don't think this subversion in objectification never happens again in the series. it feels like Kojima wanted this with Quiet with his "you may ogle at her body but shes naked for a Deep reason!!!" bs. which obviously does nothing.

So after all this rambling the answer to "does it get better" is "although it varies from game to game, not really. and the fact that a series that started in the 80´s and ended in the twenty-tens never improves on its writing of women and the most recent game is the worst one in this regard kinda sucks!"

Anyways after this interlude im now gonna go back to drawing mgs fanart. say peace!

(image credit @/captmelbourne)

i rember that a while ago, someone in the mgs tag that had just played mgs1 asked if the treatment of female characters/misogyny of the game series does get better/go away as the games go on. And honestly? even if solid snake´s interactions with women become better over time (the original post was specifically abt the way solid snake talks to women in mgs1) I would argue that the series treatment of women almost gets worse.

[lovee-infected]

So Merlin the goddamn great, smh but no ROOK LORE I AM FURIOUS! I STILL WANT TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS

Warning: Spoiler alert!

Oooooofff the final episodes of chapter 5 did seriously explode the fandom I see, from the overblot Grim to our twst Merlin, everything literally everything about the end of this chapter was a big surprise but... This chapter has also brought up a considerably huge wave of drama along with it, which is basically because of Rook voting for RSA instead of NRC. I, personally, considered it to be just a reason to laugh and make a meme or two about this chapter and all. But looking at the fandom, I can clearly see that it's been causing some serious consequences, some fans/creators are leaving the fandom, there has been a couple of offensively worded Rook hate posts (small memes and jokes aren't counted) and there's ever a #RookIsOverParty on Twitter now.

Okay but, it was all cool and chill until it was just a joke. Can't you see? This happens in many fandoms! And is often a good chance to laugh! But...This is getting serious. A huge majority of this fandom (even Rook/Vil shippers and Rook stans themselves) are hating on Rook/Rook stans and fans are leaving, therefore I believe the situation needs to be clarified before it leads to more dramas.

Many of you had also requested a Rook analysis before sooooo- here we go!

First off, this episode did eventually give us a considerable amount of Rook lore although it wasn't as perfect as we wanted it to be. Most of us wanted to get to know him more, but I'd say focusing on all we've got already would do for now. But before that, let's talk about what exactly happened in chapter 5 and why are fand hating on Rook rn:

after the performances are voted on, it’s revealed that nrc lost to rsa by just a single vote. that vote turned out to be rook, who voted for rsa in favor of their own team as he was moved by their spirit. the whole nrc team is shellshocked (of course) and vil faints

it’s also later revealed that rook is one of neige’s biggest fans, possessing albums full of his bromides, going to each meet and greet, and even writing him anonymous fan letters.

Okay okay I know this was quite unexpected and resulted in NRC's loss, but before you say how much of a shitty character Rook is consider this:

1) He was totally honest with his opinion and thoughts.

One of the interesting facts regarding Rook's character design and presence in chapter 5, is how he played the role of both the huntsman and the mirror.

He was honest with his beliefs and decision, although it was against his friends. Just as how the mirror introduced Snow White as the fairest one of all although Evil Queen didn't want to hear of her.

This is also what Rook did, he judged based on his idealistics towards beauty. NOT because he's a screaming Neige fanboy and NOT because he disliked Vil.

Honestly, if there's one person whose judgement would be strong and on point, that'll be Rook and only him; in parts (2) & (4) we'll explain why.

2) His decision has nothing to do with his personal relationship with Vil!

Yes, he voted for RSA, but to assume that this means he secretly preferred Neige over Vil all this time and call him a betrayer now, that's wrong.

Look, if there one person who could judge NRC's process through the training sessions fairly, that'll be Rook. He's been there all this time, watching each and every second of Vil's coaching and team's progressing, note that he also helped Vil the most, this performance would've been impossible without his help!

But, he was also there when Vil lost it, when Vil's fear of not being the winner took over him and made him even try to poison Neige. At some point Vil was nothing like the perfect coach he was at the very beginning, and if Rook hadn't told Neige to escape who knows how terrible the whole think might've gone.

His decision, on the other hand, was HIS decision. He was asked to choose one performance, and he chose what he liked; that's all, no big deal. Note that the silly thing with the whole issue isn't mainly how Rook voted for RSA, it's also about how half of the audience as well voted for RSA which makes it sound almost stupid, this point will be explained in part (5)!

3) Have you all really forgotten what Rook is like?

I mean, come on this is what he is in general! This is Rook Hunt we're speaking of, one of the rarely known characters of the game and mister of surprises and unpredictable decisions!

Him being a Neige fan is no big deal, and I assure you, he probably stans a lot of other people else than Neige too. Don't forget that this is the same monseiur Rook who gave 100 points! to anyone who participated in NRC's VDC test, so there shouldn't really be a panic taking all over the fandom just because we know he stans Neige, Rook is one to greatly appreciate the concept of beauty in general, and Neige is one of the most famous and beautiful people in the whole twisted wonderland, so other than this being much of a snow white reference, it was totally expected to see him stanning Neige as well. Keep this in mind that just because he's a fan of Neige, it doesn't mean that he hates or he has betrayed Vil.

In Rook's point of view, there is no such thing as rivals in beauty, he just appreciates both Vil and Neige's beauty regardless of what's going on between them.

4) This chapter proved that Rook is indeed a perfect friend for Vil.

While there hasn't ever been a mention of a canon relationship between Vil and Rook, shipper may be happy to know that this episode didn't sink the ship at all. And if you judge and see through what happened in the right eye, you'll see it even shows how strong their friendship is.

Note that this wasn't the first time Rook criticizes Vil either, back in Vil's SR lab coat story he openly criticized Vil and said he's gonna get fat if he continued to eat like this. See? Rook never the once lied to Vil, he openly judges him, and his judgements are logical and on point.

Vil on the other hand is always working his hardest to improve, to become better and completer by each and every day that passes. He needs such a friend by his side to judge him nonetheless, a friend to judge him just like the mirror judged the Queen. But there's a difference, Vil accepts and appreciates criticism BECAUSE, he wants to improve.

A friend like Rook is seriously what he needs, Rook supported and helped him all the way as RSA was getting prepared for VDC, he could've just made them lose and by ruining their training sessions if he wanted to! Can't you see? He helped Vil more than anyone else, but didn't lie to him when it was the time to judge. Vil still has a long way to go, and Rook is aware. He wants Vil to see that he isn't yet complete so that he can become better than he already is.

That's it, that's what a real friend would do.

5) Twst needs to be more considerative toward story line and sudden reveals.

On the one hand, it's mainly fans who are exaggerating the whole issue and starting drama over a simple voting and all, but twst itself as well is partly guilty. This is such a huge and active fandom, each and every detail about the story can be super effective (ex: Sebek being half human, Malleus being an orphan, etc). After making RSA's Yahoo performance look super silly they worst thing they could do was to make NRC lose like this, meaningless, silly and helpless. Why?

Twst seriously needs to take details more seriously as they could've AT LEAST made this comparison sound reasonable by choosing a better and stronger song than a twisted version of Heigh-Ho.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Rook voting for Neige, but seriously? Rook voting for Neige had to be a symbol of honesty and Rook's loyalty toward the concept of beauty itself and not Vil, not an stupid decision to make Rook prefer a childish song over NRC's wonderful performance and look like a helpless Neige fan boy.

-Sigh- Well, I guess that's all I had for now, hope I didn't miss anything. But anyway, the Rook drama is slowly getting overwhelming. There's nothing wrong with memes and jokes AS LONG AS THEY'RE JUST A JOKE- offending characters with clear intention and causing drama because of it is not okay. I know that was unexpected please remember not to exaggerate the story too much either!

[neurodihuegent]

[PART TWO] Huey's Real Nemesis

Since the beginning of season 3, DT17 crew made it clear that Huey would face his own nemesis this season, and by the end of the season, it was revealed to be none other than Bradford Buzzard. Now, I do think that this is accurate, especially because Bradford is pretty much a representation of what Huey could've potentially became if he continued to let his need for order and his fear of the unknown continue to consume him, which is something he definitely overcame by the end of the season.

But, after finishing season 3, while it was obvious that Bradford really was Huey's nemesis in the end, I do think he faced an even bigger enemy throughout the course of the season, and that was himself.

Being neurotic: Faced with his own fear of failure, Huey starts behaving a bit more irrationally than he normally would: Leaving Violet behind because he thinks it’ll ensure him a win, creating an imaginary JWG in his head despite the fact that he is well versed in the book because the thought of not having it at his own disposal drives him up the wall, becoming increasingly anxious (understandably, because the course was a bit too intense for two children to be embarking on alone) when he was faced with every new twist that the course offers.

Being neurotic: Faced with his own fear of failure, Huey starts behaving a bit more irrationally than he normally would: Leaving Violet behind because he thinks it’ll ensure him a win, creating an imaginary JWG in his head despite the fact that he is well versed in the book because the thought of not having it at his own disposal drives him up the wall, becoming increasingly anxious (understandably, because the course was a bit too intense for two children to be embarking on alone) when he was faced with every new twist that the course offers.

Fear of the unknown: Huey probably knows the JWG like the back of his hand, and realistically wouldn’t need it for this course, but the feeling of having to go through this course without the use of it at all whilst competing against someone else for a title that they both worked hard for and want, nearly drives him insane. We see this fear increase throughout the episode, between him having to walk across the lava and being faced with the bear.

Huey’s “need for order”, however, is more focused on in episodes such as Quack Pack!, where he was the first one outside of Donald to notice that they were in an alternate universe solely because things were out of order and weren’t the way they’d normally be which is something that the other characters largely ignored until Huey continuously pointed it out, in The Trickening! where a lot of his conflict with Louie resided in Huey wanting things to be like how they used to be prior to moving into the mansion and feeling as though he needed to control how they were spending their Halloween night, and in The Rumble for Ragnarok! where his plot in the episode mainly focused on him being in an environment being in a situation where he once again, couldn’t control everything on his own and needed to rely on the help of others (Launchpad in this case), in order to be able to handle the task at hand.

A lot of these episodes highlighted how, Huey’s need for order and his fear of the unknown, greatly hindered him from becoming the person he could truly be, and Scrooge even lampshades this in the book “DuckTales: Solving Mysteries, and Rewriting History!”:

“Weakness: Doesn’t trust himself nor his abilities. Ditch that paperweight of a book!”

Huey has the role of “smartest of the smarties” for a reason: He is a very intelligent person, and a good person to rely on when it comes to fact checking or finding the best possible routes or solutions to an adventure. Yet, he always sells himself short when it comes to this aspect, because he’s gained this perspective of himself where he’s “nothing without his junior woodchuck guidebook”, or gets easily stressed out if he feels like he can’t control a situation at hand.

Prior to the series finale, the main thing that Huey overcame was embracing his anger, and learning to not treat it as if it’s something that needs to be hidden. One of the most prominent reasons as to why he was so embarrassed of that side of him and chose to bottle it up rather than face it, was because that side of him brought out emotions that he didn’t have any control over. With the help of Lena, Huey learns to accept that this anger isn’t a separate entity to him, but rather a part of him that he needs to both embrace and learn how to control and to put it to use in situations where they can’t always be figured out or resolved from words.

However, by the series finale, Huey has shown that he has grown quite a lot in terms of learning how to trust himself and rely on his own instincts rather than the JWG: Because his real enemy, outside of Bradford, was literally himself. He was the main person who put obstacles in his own pathway, because he had a hard time giving himself enough credit to know that he is capable of figuring something out without his JWG at his disposal, and because of his crippling fear of facing the unknown.

Huey didn’t spend too much time in the limelight during the series finale, especially in comparison to Webby and Scrooge, but the moments he does have in the finale signify great development on his end: In season one, if Huey had to deal with going against F.O.W.L and trying to devise plans to defeat them without his Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, he easily would’ve failed from the pressure. In the season finale? He was able to tip off his brothers about his whereabouts without a JWG in his presence, left his JWG behind on accident when chasing after Webby and didn’t seem phased by it at all, and generally was able to maintain his composure throughout a lot of the finale despite the high stakes situations the family dealt with that day.

TL;DR Huey's biggest enemy all along, was himself: in the way that he would get consumed by every negative thought which would often prevent him from being able to think on his feet. He struggled a lot with selling himself and his intelligence short, yet was able to show signs of improvement in this aspect by the series finale.

[kaialone]

Kirby Planet Robobot Translation Comparison: Pause Screens (Part 2)

This will be a comparison of the original Japanese version and the US English localized version.

Specifically, this will cover the pause screen descriptions of all bosses faced exclusively in the extra modes of the game.

While I’m mainly comparing the US English version to the Japanese one, I’ll bring up differences in the EU English version that I find notable, too.

For the comparisons, the usual points apply:

Bolded is the original Japanese text, for the reference.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

Italicized is the official NOA translation.

A (number) indicates that I have a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

As you read this, please keep in mind that with translations like these, it’s important not to focus on the exact literal wordings, since there is no single “correct answer” when it comes to translations.

Rather than that, consider the actual information that is being conveyed, in which way, and why.

--

This part will work the same as the last one.

And since a lot of these pause descriptions are somewhat connected to their counterparts of the main story as well, I would recommend reading the previous part first, if you haven’t already.

Also, as a general note, you’ll see that all the stronger versions of the regular bosses have the prefix “Re:” added in the Japanese version.

This was changed to “2.0″ in the English version.

From what I’ve seen, “Re:” in Japanese pop culture is often used as a cool, sometimes futuristic way to refer to a “renewal” of something, so adapting it as “2.0″ makes sense.

--

Re:ウィスピーボーグ

ウィスピーボーグが 新モデルに リニューアル。 ねんぴも よくなり はいきガスも へっているので、 カンパニーも かんきょうに はいりょしながら しょうエネ開発を 進めている もよう。 価格も 前モデルの 半分に おさえられている。

Re:Whispy Borg

Whispy Borg has been newly remodeled. The improved fuel efficiency and reduced emission of exhaust gases indicate that perhaps the company too strives to be environmentally friendly, developing new ways to conserve energy. Its price has been cut down to half the previous model, too.

Clanky Woods 2.0

Clanky Woods has been redesigned and upgraded. Better fuel efficiency and fewer emissions demonstrate the company's new environmentally friendly initiative. It costs only half of the previous model!

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

The description has been slightly shortened as usual, though there are some potential errors or changes, too.

-

In the English version, the text mentions “the company’s new environmentally friendly initiative”, whereas the Japanese version doesn’t make it sound like this would be a new thing for them.

It’s possible that this was a mistranslation, but it could also be that they intentionally changed it in English to be a little more obvious about the irony - because the Haltmann Works Company allegedly trying to be environmentally friendly is ridiculous.

-

Also, in the Japanese version, the original wording makes it more clear that Clanky Woods’ price being reduced is seemingly referring to the cost a potential buyer would have to pay for it, rather than the cost of producing it.

This feels like it might be alluding to how in real life, manufacturers of electric cars or the like will try to cut down their prices to some degree in order to get more people into them, and thus creating more of a demand for them in the future.

The English version could be going for that as well, but it’s a bit less clear.

--

Re:ホログラフ防衛システムズ

マザーコンピューターにより リニューアル された この 防衛システムも、他の星に ねむっていた せっけい図を もとにして 作られた ものだが、一部 データが かけている ため、 本来の せい能を はっきできずに いるらしい。

Re:Holographic Defense Systems

Revised by the Mother Computer, this defense system was also created based on blueprints discovered on another planet. But, because part of the data is missing, it is apparently unable to demonstrate its original performance. (1)

Holo Defense API 2.0

Redesigned by the Mother Computer, this defense system is based on a blueprint found on another planet. It's missing a segment of data and is unable to demonstrate its full potential.

Translation Note:

What I translated as “original performance” here could also be translated as “true performance” or the like. I don’t think the specifics make much of a difference here, but thought I would note it, just in case.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This description is mostly the same, but there is an interesting detail about it.

-

The Japanese version notes that this defense system was “also” based on blueprints found on another planet.

This directly implies other things have been based on such blueprints, but it doesn’t specify which those are, nor how many blueprints and planets are involved.

From its looks though, we can gather that the Holo Defense API was likely based on Pix from Rock Star, as seen in Kirby 64.

Similarly, we can assume that the Security Force mid-boss was likely based on Metal General from Halcandra, as seen in Return to Dream Land.

And of course, Star Dream is heavily implied to be something similar to Galactic Nova from Milky Way Wishes - and both of them are implied to be so-called clockwork stars, also first mentioned in Return to Dream Land.

But even considering all that, keep in mind that we still can’t say for sure where and when the Haltmann Works Company would have precured any of their respective blueprints, and series director Shinya Kumazaki intentionally left the answer up in the air when asked about it during the second Planet Robobot Ask-a-thon on Miiverse.

Just so we are all on the same page here.

In any case, the English version is still missing the indication that the Holo Defense API isn’t the only one that was based on blueprints found elsewhere.

The EU English version actually goes one step further, rephrasing the line in question to say that the defence system was built “based on the blueprint found on another planet”.

The wording of “the blueprint” would imply there was only ever one, which does not appear to be the case in Japanese.

--

Re:ホロ・クラッコ

この 雲のモンスターのデータは、 ぶんせき すればするほど、様ざまな こうげきパターンが 見つかる。 その いったんが システムのリニューアルに より かいほうされ、手強くなっている。

Re:Holo-Kracko

The more data of this cloud monster is analyzed, the more attack patterns are discovered. A portion of them have been unlocked by the system's revision, making it a more formidable adversary.

Holo-Kracko 2.0

They further analyzed the data of the cloud monster and discovered even more vicious attacks. The system redesign has implemented these attacks and made Holo-Kracko even more powerful.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This description features some slight alterations.

-

The Japanese version mentions that a larger variety of attack patterns is being discovered, while the English version says that “more vicious attacks” have been found.

Aside from those being different things to discover, the Japanese version also makes it clear that this analysis is still being done continuously.

The Japanese version also states that the system’s revision has “unlocked” these additional patterns, but the English version states that it has “implemented” the additional attacks.

So, the implications of how the system works are slightly different here.

-

The US English version also has this description start with “They further analyzed the data of the cloud monster and discovered (...)“, while the EU English version phrases it as “Further analysis of data from the cloud monster has uncovered (...)“.

The latter matches the Japanese version a bit more, with the narrator having a more neutral position regarding the progress.

But, the former isn’t really wrong by comparison either, and the narrator does refer to the company in third person like that occasionally in other places.

--

Re:ホロ・ローパーズ

このモンスターは、スージーが かつて入手した データを入力し 生み出されたのだが、異空間と よばれるエリアに すくう このモンスターの データを 一���いつ、どこで 手に入れたので　あろうか。 かのじょのナゾも また、深まる ばかりである。

Re:Holo Lopers

These monsters were created by entering data that Susie had acquired in the past. But, just when and where exactly did she obtain data on those monsters which live in the area called another dimension? There is no end to the mysteries surrounding her, either.

Holo-Doomers 2.0

These monsters were created by Susie entering data she acquired from her travels. Where and when did she encounter the original monsters from another dimension? Who knows?

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This description is mostly the same, with some slight oddities.

-

Of course, the term “another dimension” used in the Japanese version here is the same as before, so my notes on the regular Holo-Doomers also apply here.

And just like before, the EU English version changed “another dimension” to “extra dimension”, which I also went over back there.

-

Also, the Japanese version specifically uses the word “area” to refer to another dimension, which is also the term used for “areas” in Planet Robobot as a game.

I think this could just be to add some flavor to this description, though.

The game seems to use “area” in favor of “level” to give it a more mechanical and business-driven vibe. And so the narration is consistent with that internal logic of the game’s aesthetic.

-

The final line in the Japanese version says that there is no end to the mysteries about Susie “either”, which I think is simply a follow-up to the final line of the regular Holo-Doomers description.

The English version doesn’t have a connection between the two descriptions like that there.

--

Re:ホロ・アイスドラゴン

かつて 存在した、古代のドラゴンという 生命体の データから 生み出された ホログラフだが、もしかしたら 今でもまだ どこかの 島の どうくつの おく深くで、 ひそかに 生きのびて いるのかも しれない。

Re:Holo-Ice Dragon

This hologram was created from the data of an ancient organic life form called a dragon, which has existed in the past, but it is also possible that they secretly continue to live on, deep inside a cave on an island somewhere.

Holo-Ice Dragon 2.0

This hologram was created from an ancient dragon. Dragons are no longer seen, but one of them may still be living quietly in a cave on an island somewhere. Who knows?

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This description is mostly the same, except for a small detail that might be a bit confusing, but I’ll try to explain it.

-

There is some potential issue here regarding the usage of plural versus singular.

In my translation of the Japanese version, I have the description refer to dragons in a general sense, rather than one individual dragon.

The English version chose to use singular instead, for the most part.

As I mentioned before, there usually is no clear distinction between plural and singular in Japanese, so either way could work here.

That being said, the English version would still be slightly off, because if one chooses to use singular for the translation here, it has to be applied to all of the text.

If I were to apply singular for my own translation, it would become this:

This hologram was created from the data of an ancient organic life form called a dragon, which has existed in the past, but it is also possible that it secretly continues to live on, deep inside a cave on an island somewhere.

Therefore, the English version’s line “Dragons are no longer seen, but one of them (...)” would be inaccurate for that approach.

It should at least be something like “This dragon is no longer seen, but it (...)” instead.

At the end of the day, I don’t think the specifics actually matter much in this case right here, but I still wanted to explain them.

--

Re:ホロ・ガラーガ

このモンスターが いたという 天空の国が 存在 するらしいが、いまだ キカイ化の しんりゃくが とうたつ できていない もよう。 この星には まだ、様ざまな みかいの エリアが 残されていることが うかがえる。

Re:Holo-Garāga

It appears that the land of the sky where this monster is said to be from really exists, but the mechanization invasion seemingly has yet to reach it. It's clear that there are still many uncivilized areas left on this planet.

Holo-C. Rattler 2.0

It is said that the People of the Sky who enshrined this monster still exist. It seems that the mechanization invasion has not reached them, due to their remote location.

Comparisons & Thoughts:

There are some slight alterations in this description.

-

Like before, “land of the sky” is changed to “People of the Sky”, so my notes on that also apply here.

-

The Japanese version has the narrator note that the supposed land of the sky apparently does exist, but the English version has the narrator say that the People of the Sky “still” exist.

The latter would imply that from the perspective of our vague narrator, the People of the Sky were known, but also previously thought to possibly not exist anymore.

In contrast, the former implies the land of the sky is only just being discovered.

-

Next, the Japanese version notes that there are still many “uncivilized areas” on Pop Star, following the prior statement that the land of the sky has yet to be reached by the invasion.

The English version changes this to stating that the People of the Sky have yet to be reached by the invasion “due to their remote location”.

This might have been an intentional change to sound less demeaning, but I can’t say for sure.

Really, this mostly changes the narrator’s attitude about the situation, since the Japanese phrasing still would imply that the company just needs more time to reach Floralia and other locations further away from their operations.

Also just for the reference, the word “areas” is once again the same one they use for the game’s main levels as well, keeping with the game’s aesthetic.

-

As an aside, the general narrator of these descriptions is not really a character, so slight differences in their limited knowledge and attitude about the world like in the two previous points are not that big of a deal.

But it’s interesting to me that in this description right here for example, the Japanese version of the narrator seems to roughly reflect the knowledge and attitude that the Haltmann Works Company would have.

In other places, the narrator’s knowledge and general perspective does shift to other sides too, I’m guessing to fit the mood that works best for each description.

-

Also, I mentioned in the last part how it’s strange that the English version didn’t just go for the shorter “Holo-Rattler” as the name, and this choice comes back to haunt them here, cause they had to spell “Holo-Coily Rattler 2.0″ as “Holo-C. Rattler 2.0″ to make it fit.

--

Re:秘書スージー

おさないころ、マザーコンピューターの 起動 じっけん時に じこに まきこまれ、ゆくえふめい となった という。時がたち、何を思い、ふたたび カンパニーに もぐりこんだので あろうか。 フルネームは「スザンナ ファミリア ハルトマン」。

Re:Secretary Susie

As a young child, she was supposedly involved in an accident during an experimental start-up of the Mother Computer, and went missing. (1) Whatever she may be thinking, some time later she must have snuck her way into the company once more. Her full name is "Susanna Familia Haltmann".

Susie 2.0

As a child, Sue [sic] was involved in an accident during a Mother Computer experiment and went missing. Why has she joined the company after all this time? Her full name is Susanna Patrya Haltmann.

Translation Note:

What I translated as “experimental start-up” could also be translated as “start-up experiment”, or the like.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

In the Japanese version, Susie’s middle name is “Familia”, which was changed to “Patrya” in the English version.

The Japanese one is probably based on the English word “family” or maybe even “familiar”, alluding to the story going on with her, and keeping with that Western influence they go for with her and the company.

I’m guessing the English version changed it because “Familia” might’ve seemed too on the nose about it?

Going by that, I think “Patrya” might be based on something like “patriarch” and related terms, which would also allude to the story surrounding Susie’s character.

The actual description is mostly the same, just rephrased to be shorter.

-

In the Japanese version it’s stated that the experiment during which Susie went missing was one about starting the Mother Computer, which ends up omitted in English.

Not hugely important, but interesting if you care about finer specifics of the story.

-

The Japanese version also mentions that Susie later “snuck her way” into the company, implying some obfuscation of details on her part when she joined.

That detail can already be inferred from the story alone, so not as much of a loss.

-

The US English version refers to Susie as “Sue” in this description for some reason.

I’m almost positive this was just a typo, since it seems very unlikely they would randomly introduce a second nickname for her only in this one screen.

The EU English version rephrased the first line slightly and fixed that spelling in the process, too.

--

強化量産メタナイトボーグ

メタナイトボーグのデータを もとにして 作られた、セキュリティマシンの量産型。 最新ぎじゅつにより かなり強化 されている。 もしも 実用化された場合、��ンパニーの 戦力は ひやくてきに こう上するであろう。

Enhanced Mass-produced Meta Knight Borg

A mass-produced security machine model, built using data from the Meta Knight Borg as a basis. Its strength was enhanced considerably with the latest technology. If it were to be put into practical use, the company's military power would increase dramatically.

Stock Mecha Knight

This mass-production model is based on an upgraded Mecha Knight model. If this model goes into commercial production, the company's military power will dramatically increase.

Comparisons & Thoughts:

The ”Enhanced Mass-produced Meta Knight Borg“ had its name changed to “Stock Mecha Knight“, because yeah, there was probably no way to make a more literal translation fit here.

I think going for “Stock” here is pretty clever, boiling down the idea to its bare essentials, and with such little space, too.

The actual description is mostly the same, just rephrased to be slightly shorter.

-

The English version’s phrasing does make it sound like Stock Mecha Knight was based on Mecha Knight+ in particular, whereas the Japanese version has it be based on the data of the regular Mecha Knight.

--

Re:クローンデデデ

声も すがたも まるでデデデ大王 と同じだが、 その心まで クローン化する ことは だんねんした。 いくつかの しさくでは、食べ物ばかり もとめたり、 とある こん虫を やたらと おそれたりと、 兵士として、不完全で あったため である。

Re:Clone Dedede

Its voice and appearance are just like King Dedede, but they have given up on cloning his heart, too. This is because there were several prototypes only interested in food, or exceedingly afraid of a certain insect, as well as other aspects that made them imperfect soldiers.

Dedede Clone 2.0

It has the look and voice of King Dedede, but not his soul. Some things can't be cloned. Some of the trial models were only interested in food, some were fearful of a certain insect, and all were imperfect.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

There is a pretty significant alteration or possible error in this description.

-

In the Japanese version, it’s stated that the company has given up on cloning Dedede’s “heart” because several prototypes ended up being imperfect soldiers.

What this means is that cloning his “heart” is actually possible for them to some extent, but since that causes the clones to take on parts of Dedede’s personality, it made them worse as soldiers.

So, they have given up on cloning the heart specifically because the clones having one has proven to be a detriment for their purposes.

In the English version, it’s instead stated that the company is unable to clone Dedede’s “soul”, because “some things can’t be cloned”.

In turn, the issues with the trial models are also implied to be unrelated general cloning issues.

So, while the Japanese version somewhat eerily states that cloning a heart is possible, but the company is now making the clones heartless on purpose, the English version seems like almost the complete opposite and states that cloning a soul is just not possible.

This could have been a translation error, but it could also be that the English localizers wanted to avoid crossing a certain line here and thus changed it intentionally.

-

Continuing from the previous point though, you may have noticed that the Japanese version uses “heart” while the English version uses “soul”.

The actual Japanese word used here is 心/kokoro, which is most commonly translated as “heart”, but it can also be translated as “soul” like the English version did - and also as “mind”, or even “feelings”, as well as other things like that depending on the context.

Because of that, it can have different connotations than just the English word “soul” on its own.

I think “heart” is a broad enough term that it works well here, and the Kirby series has a frequent heart motif as well, so I went with that, personally.

The term will also be brought up again in future descriptions down the line, so keep it in mind for later.

--

Re:クローンデデデ&D3砲

この立体砲台は とてつもなく高がくで、 ウィスピーウッズや メタナイトの サイボーグ化の なんと4倍。あの ギガヴォルトより 50億ハルトマニー も 高い。それでも、ハルトマンの乗る、純金の 「プレジデンバー」の 4分の1ほど ではある。

Re:Clone Dedede & D3 Cannon

This three-dimensional artillery is extremely expensive, costing no less than four times more than the cybernetic conversions of Whispy Woods and Meta Knight. It even surpasses the Gigavolt by 5 billion Haltmoney. However, that is still only about a quarter of what the "Presidenver" that Haltmann rides is worth, which is made of pure gold.

Dedede Cl. & D3 2.0

This tridimensional cannon is extremely expensive, costing a whopping four times more than Mecha Knight. However, it's still much cheaper than Haltmann's Executive Suit, which is made of pure gold.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This description is mostly accurate, just rewritten to be shorter.

-

The English version simplifies the different cost comparisons in this description a lot, which is mostly expendable information, so that’s understandable.

Still, since the Japanese version has the room for it, it’s fun to see it continue with the trend of comedically focusing how much everything costs compared to one another, going with the themes of the game.

-

Also, Haltmann’s own mech is revealed to be called “Presidenver” in Japanese, which was changed to “Executive Suit” in English.

Either one goes along with the name of Susie’s mech, but since its name was omitted in the English version, this fact doesn’t come across there.

“Presidenver” is pretty self-explanatory, just adding “president” to “Rereinver”.

“Executive Suit” might be a play on “executive suite”, which is pretty amusing to me.

--

Re:プレジデント・ハルトマン

フルネームは「ゲインズ インカム ハルトマン」。 かつて ひとり娘を じこで なくし、それいらい 人の心も きおくさえも すて、カンパニーの成長の ためだけに 生きる男。だがそれも、娘に ふたたび会いたい ただその ねがいを かなえるため であったのだが…。

Re:President Haltmann

His full name is "Gains Income Haltmann". He once lost his only daughter in an accident, and ever since then, the man has been casting aside his heart and even his memories, living only for the sake of his company's growth. But even that too was only for the sake of granting his wish - to see his daughter once more...

Pres. Haltmann 2.0

His full name is Max Profitt Haltmann. Ever since losing his only child, he's dedicated his life to his company. However, his only wish is to see his daughter once again.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

In Japanese, Haltmann’s given and middle names are “Gains Income”, which was changed to “Max Profitt” in the English version.

“Gains Income” is obviously taken directly from “gains income”. Aside from probably referring to the fact that he’s about earning money, this also is another English-sounding name to go with the company’s aesthetic.

“Max Profitt” is a similar play on earning money, but done in a way that works better as a pun-based name for English-speaking audiences.

The actual description has one fairly notable omission in particular.

-

In the Japanese version, it’s specifically stated that Haltmann has been “casting aside his heart and even his memories“, which is not mentioned in English.

The fact that Haltmann doesn’t have all his memories anymore is crucial to understanding the story at this point, so leaving this out caused a lot of confusion for English-speaking fans around the time of the game’s release.

It would eventually be brought up again during the second Planet Robobot Ask-a-thon, so fans did get to learn about this, but it was still an inconvenience.

Not to mention that Miiverse has since been shut down.

The detail about Haltmann’s “heart” is interesting as well, since it gives additional insight into how Haltmann has presumably grown more callous over the years as well, rather than starting out the way we see him in the present day.

For the reference, the English Miiverse post adapted this as “compassion”, which works perfectly fine in this context, too.

-

The US English version doesn’t mention that Haltmann specifically lost his only child in an accident, but the EU English version actually included that part, too.

So I’m not really sure why the US English version omitted the “accident” detail.

--

クローン剣士ダークマター

星の夢に 入力されている データの中でも かなりの 強さをほこる 黒き剣の使い手。 クローン化に せいこうした ものの、かいせきは データの 一部に すぎず、その正体について いまだ、全ようかいめい には いたっていない。

Clone Swordfighter Dark Matter

Among the data that has been entered into Star Dream, this dark sword user boasts especially tremendous strength. Although it was cloned successfully, only part of its data has been analyzed, and its true nature has yet to be confirmed with certainty as of right now. (1)

Dark Matter Clone

Creating this dark swordsman pushed Star Dream to the limits of its abilities. The cloning process was a success, but only a partial data analysis was possible, and its true form has not yet emerged.

Translation Note:

The word I translated as “true nature” could also be translated as “true identity”, or other things along those lines. Either could potentially work in this context.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

“Clone Swordfighter Dark Matter” is shortened to “Dark Matter Clone”, most likely for space.

The US English version of the True Arena labels this boss as “Dark Matter Blade”, so I wonder if they originally intended to reflect the “swordfighter” part in the name as well, but partially dropped it.

The actual description has a few potential errors or changes.

-

In the Japanese version, it’s stated that Dark Matter Blade is one of the strongest included within Star Dream’s data.

The English version instead states that cloning him pushed Star Dream “to the limits of its abilities”.

This could have been a translation error, but it could also have been an intentional rewrite.

-

As mentioned in the translation note, I can’t say for sure if the Japanese version is supposed to refer to Dark Matter Blade’s “true nature” or “true identity” not having been confirmed yet.

The relevant line could either be referring to Dark Matter Blade’s true form, which the clone does take on during the battle, but it could also be referring to the other general mysteries about Dark Matter and its background.

Either way could work in this context, so I went with “true nature” in my translation, because you can read either interpretation into it.

The English version specifically goes for “true form” here, but also changes “has yet to be confirmed” to “has not yet emerged”.

So the implications are slightly different there.

--

クローンセクトニア

この星の しんりゃく時に 見つけた 巨大な 植物の花から データを さいしゅ。不思議なことに、 こん虫の 女王の剣士の クローンが 生まれた。 データには 1000年にも およぶ 様ざまな 生物のデータが ふくまれており、ナゾがたえない。

Clone Sectonia

Data was collected from the flower of a giant plant that was discovered during the invasion of this planet. Curiously, it produced the clone of an insect queen swordswoman. The data includes that of various organisms, spanning a period of over 1000 years. The mysteries continue.

Sectonia Clone

Data was collected from traces of a giant flower the invaders stumbled upon. Cloning it produced the insect queen. Its data contains elements of creatures spanning a period of 1,000 years.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This description is mostly the same, just rephrased to be a bit shorter.

The switch from “Clone Sectonia” to “Sectonia Clone” is probably just to sound a bit more natural in English.

--

ギャラクティックナイト リターンズ

その力ゆえ おそれられてきた、全てを ほろぼし かねない 古の剣士。クローンではなく、未知なる 異空間ロードから 時空をこえ よびさまされた。 様ざまな時代で ふういん されてきた きろくが 残るが、しょうめつ させることは できていない。

Galactic Knight Returns

An ancient swordfighter, capable of destroying everything, who has come to be feared due to his power. He is not a clone - he has been awoken across time and space, from the unknown Another Dimension Road. There are records left behind of him having been sealed away in various eras, but he has yet to be destroyed completely.

Galacta Knight Returns

This ancient swordsman is feared for his immense power. He is not a clone. He was awakened and brought here via an extra-dimensional road beyond the space-time continuum.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

“Galactic Knight Returns” is renamed to “Galacta Knight Returns” in English.

This matches how this character has always been called in the English versions of Kirby games, of course.

The actual description is mostly accurate, just shorter, but the final sentence has been omitted entirely.

-

In the Japanese version, the final sentence provides some neat insight into Galacta Knight’s background, particularly the impact he has apparently had on people across history.

It’s a shame this is missing in the English version, but they most certainly couldn’t make it fit.

-

The “Another Dimension Road” is mentioned here again, which I already went over when I covered Meta Knightmare Returns, so all my notes there also apply here.

The English version again adapts it as “extra-dimensional road“, staying consistent with what they used in the cutscene.

--

星の夢.Soul OS (First Phase)

未知ノ ダメージに ヨリ、最終プログラムが アンロック。 アノ生命体ヲ ハイジョ デキる カクリツは、99.99% トナル。タダ ハルトマンと イウ 生命体の「ココロ」と いうモノが 不要なソンザイ とナル モヨウ。 コレヨリ、ハルトマンのメモリーの 消去ヲ カイシスル。

Star Dream.Soul OS (First Phase)

Unknown DAMAGE HAS CAUSED the final program TO be UNLOCKED. PROBABILITY OF ELIMINATING THAT organic life form is NOW AT 99.99%. ONLY THE OBJECT called the "HEART" of the organic life form CALLED HALTMANN WILL LIKELY PROVE TO BE innecessary. NOW INITIATING erasure of THE MEMORY OF HALTMANN. (1)

Star Dream Soul OS (First Phase)

The final program has been activated. Its calculated victory probability is 99.9%. However, a small part of Haltmann's soul is yet to be purged, which could throw a wrench in its plans.

Translation Note:

The literal term used in Japanese here is メモリー /memorī, which is a transliteration of the English word “memory”. This is normally used to refer to computer memory, rather than a person’s memories. Though the double-meaning might be intentional in this context.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

There are some notable details in this description.

-

First of all, the Japanese version is once again written from the perspective of Star Dream, as seen by its unmistakable speaking style.

However, unlike in the main story, Star Dream does not refer to itself in first-person here at any point.

Since the Soul OS battle seems to roughly follow after the events of Meta Knightmare Returns, this might reflect how Star Dream presumably never gained its own sense of self in that scenario, but that’s just a guess on my part.

Either way, in the English version this description does not seem to be written directly from Star Dream’s perspective.

If this is the case, it might have been an oversight, but I can’t say for sure.

I do think this is a shame, because it’s a nice callback to its final pause screen from the main story, and also may become more impactful once you see the remaining pause screens from this current boss battle.

-

A smaller detail, but the Japanese version specifies that the final program was unlocked by “Unknown DAMAGE”, which may refer to the cut done by Galacta Knight - as it can still be seen on Star Dream here.

This gives this boss battle a stronger connection to the events of Meta Knightmare Returns, even if the continuity of these extra mode stories is rather vague, of course.

-

This next detail will take a bit longer to go over, so bear with me.

In the English version, it’s stated that Star Dream has yet to purge “a small part” of Haltmann’s “soul”, and that this could be detrimental for it.

But in the Japanese version, Star Dream instead comes to the conclusion that Haltmann’s “HEART” will be innecessary. It also proceeds with the erasure of the “MEMORY” of Haltmann, which the English version does not yet bring up.

This results in some different potential implications here.

In the English version, the usage of “soul” would suggest that this must be Haltmann’s actual soul or spirit, but it’s not quite the same in Japanese.

While these extra stories only have vague continuity, keep in mind that as far as we know, Haltmann was never actually taken over directly by Star Dream in this scenario.

If this was meant to refer to Haltmann’s spirit, they could’ve easily used the same word for spirit they used during the final battle of the main story.

But instead, they use the same term “heart” that has already come up before in the descriptions for Dedede Clone 2.0 and Haltmann 2.0, which this current description also seems to follow up on.

Just like in the Dedede Clone 2.0 description, a heart is deemed as a flaw by Star Dream here. And we know from the Haltmann 2.0 description that Haltmann has been casting aside his own heart too, in a way.

This goes into speculation territory, but one could assume based on this that the “heart” of Haltmann which Star Dream currently possesses is the same heart that Haltmann has cast aside, either literally or figuratively.

Again, remember how the Dedede Clone 2.0 description confirmed that a heart is something that can artificially be reproduced in some form, so it wouldn’t have to literally be the same.

In any case, Star Dream’s method to rid itself of this “heart” is to start erasing the “MEMORY” of Haltmann.

This could mean that at the very least, the memories that Haltmann has lost over the years are stored or documented within Star Dream in some form.

Though not from the pause screen, further evidence of this is the fact that the objects summoned by Star Dream during its respective third phase are officially called “MEMORIES”.

And while they are all parts of Galactic Nova, they also all relate to specific details about Haltmann that were revealed in a Nintendo Dream interview (June 2016 issue.)

The Soul OS version of the attack also adds piano keys, a possible reference to Susie’s own profile mentioning that she plays the piano.

-

That last point was rather long, so to summarize it briefly:

While the English version suggests that Star Dream here contains Haltmann’s soul or spirit, much like in the main story, the situation appears to be a bit different in Japanese, given how the term “heart” can be used - and how it has been used in the game so far.

--

星の夢.Soul OS (Second-Final Phase)

だれが 何のために 作ったのかさえ 分からない。 そんなモノを なぜ わたしは 起動 させてしまったの だろうか。そうだ、かなえたい夢が あったはずだ… あぁ だが、マシンが 夢など かなえては くれない というのは、もう 分かっていたこと だというのに…

Star Dream.Soul OS (Second-Final Phase)

I don't even know who made it or for what purpose. Why would I activate something like that? That's right, I think I had a dream I wanted to be fulfilled... Ahh, but I already knew that a machine could never make dreams come true, and yet I...

Star Dream Soul OS (Second-Final Phase)

"Why did I reactivate such a terrible machine? Oh, I remember -- I wanted to see her just one last time. How foolish! I should have known that no machine could make such a dream come true."

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

Just like the previous one, there are several notable details about this description.

-

Now, in both versions, this pause screen appears to be from Haltmann’s perspective, though the English version actually added quotation marks to it.

This could have been to make it more clear that this is from a specific person’s perspective, but the same was never done with Star Dream’s narration.

There could be another reason for this, which I’ll go over next.

-

Here’s a subtle detail you might not have caught.

While this is most likely Haltmann narrating here, the Japanese version has him refer to himself with the first person pronoun わたし/watashi.

In the actual story, he only ever used ワシ/washi to refer to himself.

But here’s the thing: in fiction, having a character refer to themselves as ワシ/washi is generally used to indicate that the character is old, and just by comparison, わたし/watashi sounds younger.

This could imply that this quote might in fact be from a time where Haltmann was at least somewhat younger than he is now.

In other words, a memory from the past, rather than a current thought in the present.

Being shown a memory of Haltmann at this point would also fit with Star Dream’s narration from the previous pause screen.

Because of that, I think the English version could be using the quotation marks to indicate this temporal distance, since they can’t really show it in the same way the Japanese version does.

But I can’t say for sure if that was the intent.

-

The Japanese version has Haltmann mention that he did not know who made the machine he’s talking about here, which is most likely Star Dream.

Interesting backstory tidbit there, if you’re curious about these.

-

Also in the Japanese version, Haltmann believes that a machine can’t actually make dreams come true in general. Though, we can’t know if he is correct about that.

In the English version, Haltmann only comes to the conclusion that no machine could make his specific dream come true.

-

On that note, Haltmann is never shown to recall what his dream was in the first place in Japanese, he only says that he must have had one.

In the English version, he explicitly remembers wanting to see “her” again being his dream.

It seems like almost a given that Haltmann’s dream here is referring to his wish of being reunited with his daughter, so it makes sense that the English version would change the text to make it obvious.

There is a non-zero chance that Haltmann actually had another dream, but that’s a whole different topic.

--

星の夢.Soul OS (Final Phase)

このコアからも ハルトマンのメモリーは、消えた。 最後に想う あの心も、消えた。その瞬間より 星の夢は 完全な 存在から ただの こわれたマシン となる。 夢も見ない、ゴハンも食べない、そんな あいては もはや、星のカービィの てきでは なかった!

Star Dream.Soul OS (Final Phase)

Haltmann's memory has disappeared from this core, too. And in the end, that feeling heart disappeared as well. That very moment, Star Dream turns from a perfect being into a mere broken machine. It doesn't have dreams, it doesn't even eat lunch - an opponent like that no longer stands any chance against Kirby of the Stars!

Star Dream Soul OS (Final Phase)

All of Haltmann's memories have been deleted from the OS. Even his soul-- the last trace of Haltmann--has vanished. Star Dream has gone from a near- perfect being to a cold, mindless machine.

-

Comparisons & Thoughts:

This is the final description, so of course there is a lot to say again.

-

A minor detail, but in the Japanese version it’s said that the memory of Haltmann has now disappeared from “this core”, which is pretty straightforward, all things considered.

For some reason, the US English version instead says that Haltmann’s memories have been deleted “from the OS”, and the EU English version says they have been deleted “from the Mother Computer”.

This is also the first time the memories are brought up in English at all, so their relevance is a lot less clear.

And another minor detail related to this one.

I believe the specific phrasing of “disappeared from this core, too” in Japanese is meant to refer to the fact that Haltmann’s memories had already been lost by the man himself.

At least, that makes the most sense to me.

-

Once again, the English version uses “soul” where the Japanese version used “heart”.

The distinction between the two becomes especially important here, because while the English version says it’s the “soul” of Haltmann, the Japanese text is more vague about it.

Of course, the first Japanese pause screen of this battle did refer to it as the “heart” of Haltmann, but at the same time, remember that this would have basically been Star Dream’s own heart as well.

This also seems to be the implication going by the lines that follow afterwards.

-

Interestingly, the Japanese version describes Star Dream as having been a “perfect being”, whereas the English version just goes for “near-perfect being”.

This is very similar to how they changed Kirby’s energy from being described as “infinite” to “nearly infinite” in the main story.

I suppose they just don’t want to deal in absolutes with these.

The English version also goes on to describe Star Dream as now being a “cold, mindless machine”, instead of just a “broken machine” like in Japanese, which has different implications.

Star Dream being actually broken and not functioning as it should is another point that Kumazaki reiterated during the second Planet Robobot Ask-a-thon, so that’s another plot detail the English version technically omits here.

The English phrasing also leans more into the idea of Star Dream being a scary opponent, while the Japanese phrasing leans more into the idea of Star Dream being something pitiful - a similar sentiment to the descriptions of the main story’s final battle.

-

Adding to the point above, the English version also omits the final part of this last description.

The phrase “It doesn’t have dreams, it doesn’t even eat lunch“ references a recurring concept first introduced in the manual of Kirby’s Adventure - the fact that the people of Dream Land, and Kirby especially, love to take naps after lunch to have fun dreams.

This was referenced in the Japanese version of Kirby Super Star as well, where the pause screen description during the Starship segment of Milky Way Wishes features the line:

マルクのやぼうを さっさとくいとめ、 ゴハンたべて ねよう。

Let's stop Marx real quick, then have lunch and a nap.

That’s another Milky Way Wishes connection only in the Japanese version, but said line also wasn’t featured in the English version of Kirby Super Star in the first place.

And since the “Kirby of the Stars” title is also not really used in the English localizations of the Kirby series, it would have been hard to make this final bit of the pause description work, even if space weren’t an issue.

I think the Japanese version is stronger for having it, but there probably wasn’t much the English version could have done about this.

-

With all of the point-by-point comparisons out of the way here, I want to take a moment to go into some general thoughts on this battle as a whole and what each version implies about it.

Naturally this will have a bit more speculation on my part too, so keep that in mind.

If you only look at the English version, the implication you get is that during the Star Dream Soul OS battle, Star Dream is fused with Haltmann’s actual soul, in a similar manner to the events of the main story. (Even though those events may not have happened in the extra scenarios.)

It must be Haltmann’s own soul, because the English Dedede Clone 2.0 description states that a soul cannot be cloned.

Star Dream then proceeds to delete Haltmann’s last memories as well as his soul, because Haltmann’s soul had a chance of stopping its plan. (Even though it had no apparent issues about fusing with his spirit in the main story.)

Therefore, during this battle Haltmann is essentially killed “deader than dead” by Star Dream, for the lack of a better wording - his very soul eradicated for good.

The middle pause screen during the battle may be thought of as Haltmann’s final thoughts before ultimate oblivion in this interpretation.

I don’t think this is just what I myself take away from the English version, because this is the most common interpretation I have seen from English-speaking fans over the years.

It can come across as a tragedy in which Haltmann is finally destroyed for good by a terrible machine he could never truly control.

Now, onto the Japanese version.

The exact details leave more room for speculation, because of how vague the term 心/kokoro or “heart” can be.

But the way I understand it is that Star Dream has been storing the memories that Haltmann has been losing over the years.

In addition to that, it would likely have data on Haltmann’s current memories and thoughts as well, as seen in the main story.

From this, it gained the “heart” of Haltmann, or at least a partial reproduction of it, allowing it to feel and think in a way similar to Haltmann. Just like the early Dedede clones with cloned hearts acting similar to King Dedede in various ways.

However, Star Dream never fuses with Haltmann’s spirit in the extra scenarios.

Because of that, it never gains its own sense of self, and fails to understand the purpose of a heart, deeming it a potential flaw to be purged, just as it did with the updated Dedede clones.

Thus, it deletes the memories of Haltmann, which brought about the heart in the first place, and thus loses said heart again, becoming a lifeless object once more - no longer able to think and feel anything.

And there is another subtle detail in the Japanese version related to that, too.

During this battle, the first description is narrated by Star Dream, the second seems to show a memory of Haltmann, and the final one goes back to the general narrator.

This could possibly represent the transition of Star Dream starting out with that heart, sifting through the memories to delete them, and finally having become just a machine again, so it no longer has any thoughts that could serve as the narration.

This potentially paints the Soul OS battle specifically more as a tragedy of Star Dream itself. A machine that achieved the miracle of being alive with a heart, but proceeded to undo said miracle all on its own, without even realizing what it was really doing.

Also, Kumazaki only specified this on Miiverse, but Haltmann losing his memories from overusing Star Dream was also because it was broken.

So this was never something that was supposed to really happen in this way, had it functioned properly.

Overall, Star Dream can feel like more of a tragic figure in the Japanese version, and more of a villainous figure in the English one.

Several small differences between the versions across the game reflect this, with moments painting Start Dream as pitiful or even pathetic being altered or omitted.

However, this is a very general summary of it, the Japanese version still has Star Dream being the main antagonist, and the English version has plenty of moments where the tragic aspects to Star Dream are still apparent.

--

Final Thoughts on the Pause Screens:

First, let me say, I am very impressed by the English localization of these pause screens.

Really, look up these screens for yourself some time, they pushed these to their limits. Almost every single one of them is crammed full with as much text as they could possibly fit in.

Yes, they still had to cut a lot out here and there, but clearly not from lack of trying.

Of course, the fact of the matter still ends up being that the Japanese version simply has more good stuff in it.

A lot of stuff is “expendable”, but losing fun fluff all the time adds up, I feel.

The extra modes pause screens especially also feature a few major errors or alterations, as well as omissions that do end up being detrimental to the story in some form.

The biggest one I feel is the fact that Haltmann’s memory loss is not brought up at all, because that one detail is the puzzle piece that makes everything fall into place and let’s the player finally understand what is going on with the emotional core of the story.

So much of the details regarding Star Dream are up to interpretation, so I’m perfectly willing to let the broader details be, but the Japanese version still does a better job of dropping small details earlier on that become relevant for it at the end.

And it’s not just Star Dream, the Japanese version overall has more of these smaller connections and continuity across the pause screens, and connections to the actual story contents as well. So they feel more like smaller pieces in a carefully crafted whole, where everything is interconnected and enriches the story.

Again, the English version probably couldn’t have done much different here, due to the difficult conditions translators and localizers usually have to work with - lack of context, lack of time, limited space, etc.

I guess what I am getting at is that I do prefer the Japanese version, and would recommend fans to check it out (though if you are reading this, I suppose you already have), but don’t assume this means I have a disdain for English version.

It’s very well done, considering the circumstances.

--

And with that, my coverage of the game’s pause screen descriptions come to a close as well.

Feel free to check out the previous parts of my Kirby: Planet Robobot translation comparisons if you haven’t already, and thank you very much for reading!

--

< Previous Part | Start | 

--

[dianight]

I wanted to use a post I can't find to reference but oh well.

So I read up to chapter 140 (up to date right now) and there's a few things I wanted to mention. In no particular order:

Same author as Akame ga Kill! so the femdom aspect is understandable.

Kyouka was first on the third popularity poll but not the first two. Which is weird because she is one of the main characters with the least development. She definitely changes but compared to literally all the other mains she feels stuck(?). New techniques and such but there's something too rigid about her in a meta sense. Not necessarily a bad point if she gets to be on the spotlight more, but being (arguably) an ecchi harem series it seems unlikely until much later, if she's supposed to "win".

Premise makes it sound like a bad series. Not even close. There's a few complaints I have but they are either kinda silly or just minor things.

I know it's an ecchi series but it's distracting from the story, which is pretty solid so far. I've read other series with explicit sex and it's never been this ubiquitous so that's what I find a bit annoying. I'm not really the target demographic so I understand. It's personal taste at the end of the day, a bit too much for me while at the same it's horny in a teenager kind of way.

I don't like how Yuukicentric all the plot points are. Once again, understandable. But I find other characters way more interesting (for obvious reasons) and at the end of the day the "aura that makes everyone interested on the mc" is a negative in my eyes. Not like he is bad or uninteresting as a character, he's got a few too many of the typical selfinsert characteristics.

Loving how every fight against the gods has felt. Very serious and challenging, as the main antagonists it takes a lot of effort and teamwork to even have a chance. Great sequences. Also used to show how overpowered Ren is in comparison.

Mira vs Kuusetsu was the most popular fight on the third poll. Completely understandable. Even as the weakest god it took several chiefs and other powerful people to eventually defeat her, mainly thanks to Mira.

One important, perhaps unintentional thing about that fight is how hard Kyouka gets sidelined. Not the first or only time, but I think one of the biggest examples. Yeah she does get to participate, but that's exactly what I mean on my criticism of her being underdeveloped. Others get the spotlight while she is there by virtue of being the deuteragonist but never emotionally(?) matters as much. Again this could be intentional to make it impactful if/when her turn comes, but I'm not super optimistic after 140 chapters.

Since I was also thinking about Tatara and Yuuki fighting together, once again someone else getting the protagonist role instead of Kyouka, one of my favourite tropes is a vastly weaker character standing up to protect others against a threat (chapter 96 pages 6-8). A sister trope to the whole "stronger character who wants to kill a weaker one since they'll be a problem later".

Speaking of tropes, we could do without evil clone character but with darker skin to signify evilness (Fukuma). Not a fan.

Initially I disliked Tenka since she was the first character to introduce ecchi shenanigans outside of rewards. Yakumo had that vibe too but never went too far. Since she's been shown to have grown since and other characters (Azumas p.ej.) are also throwing themselves at Yuuki my opinion of her has improved a lot.

Once again mentioning that due to the ecchi nature of the series it doesn't have that great many panels. A minor negative, most action series benefit a lot from impactful spreads, but all the focus goes into the rewards and such leaving fighting scenes a bit lacking in that regard. Paneling suffers a bit too, but it's so minor that might aswell just be a me problem.

Regarding Kyouka, I believe another reason I'm not too happy is that all her growth comes from helping others whether directly or indirectly. Thinking specifically of the Azuma head fights and Varvara's power in particular. There is a bit of a dissonance in how Kyouka is very important in universe but feels unimportant in a meta way, aka the author not giving her enough attention.

As a positive, I like that Kyouka is never embarrassed or awkward when people sing her praises while remaining extremely humble. Perhaps one of her most endearing traits.

The post I mention at the start was a bit misleading so my expectations were a bit different to the actual series, but I'm glad I gave it a chance due to it. Definitely a "mistake" to mix action/comedy/ecchi with a great story, it manages to make the action sequences a bit worse; the comedy feels a bit, just a bit out of place at times (this gets better later on, to the point that the comedy aspect is the strongest one despite not being mainly a comedy); and the ecchi feels overwhelming at times and omnipresent to the point that it gets a bit repetitive. Too many characters trying to get into Yuuki's bed or kidnap him, as a note.

Ultimately a fun series. If the author focuses a bit more on Kyouka and tones down the women throwing themselves at Yuuki like ~5-10% it would be even better.

[I am obviously biased because I like Kyouka a lot]

I'm up to date on Mato Seihei no Slave. Lots to say about it. Later.

[nightspeckle]

Jurdan Summer Au part 2

Description: 

Cardan and Jude have been summering with each other since they were babies. They have spent every summer at the beach together but they have never been friends, until now.

Part 1 

*****

Jude woke the next morning to the sounds of the ocean waves and seagulls squawking. The sun from the window was heating her already pink skin. She could hear her family from downstairs, they were what woke her up. Back home she would have been infuriated and yet at the beach house, she couldn’t care less. 

When she looked over to Taryn’s bed it was already empty. Of course. 

Downstairs Madoc and Vivi were eating breakfast in the kitchen. When Jude got closer she could hear them bickering again. 

“Vivienne, how many times do I have to tell you to get a job?” Madoc was pushing his eggs around his plate in a menacing way. 

Vivi just sighed “I have to work on my art portfolio if I have any chance of getting into the art school I want. I just don’t have enough time.”

Madoc went to open his mouth again and Jude decided to step in before it turned into the screaming match it had been for the past few weeks. 

“Where’s Taryn?”

“Guess” Vivi supplied and Jude knew exactly where she was.

“Great,” Jude huffed while pouring herself a bowl of cereal. 

When Jude sat down she saw Vivi was still in her PJs. “What are you doing today?”

Viv smiled apologetically at Jude, “I’m going to the studio in town to get started,”

Madoc cut Vivi a glance that reeked of disapproval before shifting his focus to Jude. 

“Why don’t you come with me and Eldred, we’re going on a hike to dragonfly cove,” Madoc looked gleeful at the prospect of spending the day with his daughter.

Jude could think of a hundred things she would rather do than go hiking with two old dads. 

Madoc could sense Jude's lack of desire and scrambled to entice her. “I’ll enforce a mandatory family dinner on Taryn tonight if you come,”

Jude knew that it wasn’t exactly very cool of her to want to force her sister to spend time with her. But it was only their second day at the beach and none of her work friends were out of school yet, so although it was selfish she didn't mind. 

“Alright,” She mumbled. Madoc’s face turned giddy.

“Perfect we're leaving at 9:30, so hurry up,”

Jude looked at the clock on the stove to see it read 9:15 and just rolled her eyes before polishing off her cereal and heading up the stairs to go change. She just couldn’t wait for a hike with her dad and his old friend!

...

When Jude piled into the back of the jeep she didn’t expect to see another child who had been roped into this hike. Cardan had his head rested against the seat. He didn’t say anything as Jude climbed back into the seat. 

When Madoc jumped into the passenger seat he cracked a smile at Cardan. “I see Eldred must have bribed you into joining too,”

“Bribed?” Eldred asked while he started up the jeep.

“I bribed Jude so she would come along, did you not?” Madoc asked.

“Of course not, I just made him,” Madoc looked at Eldred as if he was a genius. Jude just prayed Madoc wouldn’t get any ideas about forcing her into family bonding. That would not go over well. 

The top of the jeep was off and Jude's ponytailed hair started to flutter around her. She had almost forgotten Cardan was there while she watched the world around her pass by. 

“What did he bribe you with?” When Jude turned back to Cardan she could see a gleam of curiosity in his eyes. He had put an arm around the back of the seats and tilted to face her more. 

Jude was immediately embarrassed as she had agreed to Madocs terms. She didn’t want anyone else knowing how she was using her dad to make her sister spend time with her. 

When it was clear Jude was not going to spill Madoc piped up from the front. “I promised to make Taryn come home for dinner tonight,”

Jude slumped back into her seat with a sigh feeling defeated. She expected Cardan to comment on how pathetic that was but when she looked over at him he was smirking. 

“I should probably thank you for that,” Cardan said playfully. 

“It’s what friends do,” Jude jokes.

The smile Cardan sent her way was nothing like she had ever seen from him. He was looking at her like they truly were friends, like being able to smile together was normal. 

Jude was starting to wonder why she had spent her childhood constantly writing him off. She had never liked how he disregarded her when they were younger. She had always felt that he thought that Jude and Taryn were beneath him. 

But the way he was acting now made her question everything in the past. Maybe she was wrong about him. 

Jude spent the rest of the drive to dragonfly cove with her fingers dangling out of the jeep. She spent her time getting distracted by the passing green trees and the feeling of the summer sun. The only thing that kept drawing her attention back to the car was the constant terrible sound of her father's and Eldred's voices singing along to their summer reggae playlist.

She couldn’t help herself but make eye contact with Cardan when both of their fathers voices cracked. Cardan laughed then, the sound filling Jude with a certain lightness. She couldn’t help but laugh herself. 

Jude was having a much better time on her Dad's usually boring adventures. When Jude looked over at the black haired boy next to her she knew he played a larger role in it than she wanted to admit. 

This was not good.

...

Dragonfly Cove was not a particularly popular place to hike. The reason for that being that there was one trail. It went from the parking lot down to the beach 50 feet below. The path to the cove event consisted of a set of wooden stairs with rails on both sides. 

If you were to ask anyone outside of the Greenbriar and Duarte families they would say that Dragonfly Cove is not a place to hike. Instead, they would refer to it as a small beach that required a short walk to reach. 

If you asked Madoc and Eldred they would tell you that Dragonfly Cove was the best place to hike out of anywhere in the area.

If you asked their children they would tell you that hiking at Dragonfly Cove was toeing death itself. 

If after taking the path and stairs down to the beach, one were to travel to the end of the beach and climb over a massive rock they would be able to see the “hike” that Madoc and Eldred had taken their children on years prior.

The “hike” consisted of climbing up an extremely steep slope made of unstable rocks and ledges. There had been many close calls of falling in the past. Orianna had even forbidden Madoc to try and reach the top of the cliff ever again. 

Now standing at the bottom of the cliff Jude was thinking that Madoc should listen to Orianna much more. She was certain looking up at the incline that she would face certain death. 

Eldred and Madoc had already taken off. Surprisingly for their age, they seemed to have no problem scaling an unstable cliff.

“Afraid Jude?” The smug voice to her left startled her.

When she turned to look at Cardan she saw the amusement in his eyes. 

“It seems even the fearless Jude herself is afraid,” He looked to be enjoying the way Jude was squirming at the idea of climbing up the cliff. 

She kept having flashbacks to the time a rock had given way under Taryn's feet. Jude had had to lunge to grab her sister's arm before she could tumble all the way down. 

“No need to worry Duarte, I’m sure we will be back down soon if you want to wait,” Cardan said with mock reassurance. Jude could tell by the look in his eyes that he was enjoying taunting her. 

Cardan took off towards the rocky slope without looking back. Jude’s hesitance at hiking the steep slope disappeared the second Cardan had alluded to her inability to do so. Jude Duarte was not one to ever be bested. She would show him.

Jude spent the first half of the “hike” solely paying attention to her feet. She refused to make a misstep or stumble. 

She could see how effortlessly Cardan was making his way up the incline above, she would not do worse than him. 

By the second half Jude had mastered the art of scaling a steep incline. She was doing so well that she even passed a delighted Madoc and enthusiastic Eldred. 

Jude's mood improved even more when she looked back to see Cardan a good distance behind her. 

She couldn’t help herself when her foot slipped the tiniest bit. “Are you alright down there Cardan?” 

Her smile grew when he sent her an annoyed look. “I’m sure your Dad would help you up the rest of the way if you want to wait,”

“I’m quite fine Duarte,” 

Cardan had gotten closer to catching up to Jude as they continued but she didn’t mind. She had still made it up there first, which was all she cared about anyways. 

The two of them stood at the top of the cliff looking out at the ocean quietly for a few minutes. They didn’t say anything to each other until they heard the telltale signs of their fathers down below. 

They both looked down to see Madoc and Eldred huffing for air and stumbling on the rocky terrain. It was amusing to watch their overconfident fathers falter on the hike they claimed toddlers could do. 

Jude watched Eldred slip on a rock and immediately looked to Cardan. When they made eye contact they couldn't help but burst out with laughter. 

After waiting for Madoc and Eldred to catch their breath at the top they headed back down. Jude found the descent to be extremely easy in comparison and managed to beat everyone down to the bottom. Cardan was in her heels the whole time but that was a fact she would choose to omit if anyone asked. 

Cardan continued to tease her (mainly about how she had walked into a pool of water without realizing) as they made their way back to the car. She had used to believe his teasing to be annoying and insufferable and now she couldn’t help but smile every time he had a snarky comment. 

Jude was on the verge of pinching herself every ten minutes. She couldn't believe she was actually enjoying herself. 

Madoc and Eldred decided it would be fun to go on an hour long drive by the coast. Something which Judge was surprisingly happy about.

They stopped on the way back at a farmers stand selling fresh fruit. Jude bought blueberries for Viv and a few peaches for herself and Taryn. Oak was in an anti-fruit faze at the moment. The discovery that tomatoes and olives were fruits sent him for a real loop.

Jude couldn’t help but laugh when Cardan’s peach was dripping all over his face and onto his shirt. 

Jude’s own peach dripped all over her when she took a bite. The taste was worth the stickiness. It was even worth Cardan's growing amusement. 

When they got closer and closer to the house Jude felt something strange deep within. It was a very small sliver of disappointment. One she was not happy to find. Was she disappointed she was going home? Or was it that her time hanging out with her dad, Eldred, and mainly Cardan was coming to an end?

Whatever the reason, she decided that ignoring it was the best course of action. 

When they pulled into the driveway she got out slowly. Now that she was done with her bribed time with her father what would she do? Taryn was probably still not home, Vivi was busy, and none of her local work friends were out of school. 

Whatever it was that she would do, she knew that it wouldn’t be as fun as this morning, that was something extremely surprising to her.

....

Jude ended up doing some summer reading outside on the porch for a bit. When Oak came home from wherever he had disappeared off to with Orianna she supervised him at the beach. 

She actually did enjoy herself but it wasn’t until dinner that she was truly having fun again. The families were eating together outside again. 

She ended up sitting next to Cardan and Viv who had come home 30 minutes before. Jude had a few moments where she caught herself smiling for no reason and laughing because of the dumbest things.

Dinners usually lasted for a few hours with the families in the summers. The parents would stay talking for longer than they would anywhere else. Jude who usually snuck out after 30 minutes to do something else ended up staying for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until Viv declared she was heading back that Jude did too. 

“You look happier than you did yesterday,” Viv commented when they got back to their house. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jude said amused.

“You’re smiling more you weirdo,”

Jude had been smiling more than the day before. When she looked back on the day it had mainly been because of Cardan. But there was no way that he was the reason for her smiles. Maybe it was just because he was funny.

Was Cardan funny? Jude wasn’t so sure about that. 

“Oh, whatever Viv,”

Vivian and Jude broke into the moose tracks ice cream and watched a movie before going to bed. When Jude crawled into her bed it was only 11:15 but she didn’t mind. 

It was only when she was about to go to sleep that she noticed Taryn’s bed was empty. Not only was she not there but Jude realized she hadn’t even shown up to dinner.

The funny thing was that Jude didn’t even care.

~~~

tags (or my one LOL) : 

@big-daddy-maddy

[animeyanderelover]

Hello 💖Could you do Tusnade and Sakura with a s/o who wants to learn medical nin?

It’s been a while since I posted anything about this girls.

Tw: Yandere themes, possessiveness, obsessiveness

s/o wants to be a medic

Tsunade Senju

🐌I can imagine that Tsunade might feel a bit conflicted about this. On the one hand she feels totally fluttered that her darling wants to be a medic just like she is because let’s be honest, Tsunade is the one who inspired you to be one. But on the other hand she’s also a bit worried that her darling might get hurt. The common view on medics is that they need to stay back in fights. And we all know how the Hokage thinks about this. She believes that medics need to know how to fight because they’re so important for the team. But what if you get hurt on a mission? What if she can’t save you? These are just worried thoughts in her mind since she experienced it already twice that she couldn’t save her loved ones.

🐌Tsunade adores her darling a lot, but I can see her going pretty roughly from time to time on her darling. She of course knows when you’re about to collapse and will stop there, but she will certainly push your limits every once in a while. She does it because she wants you to be good in what you do. Of course you won’t only learn how to heal and perform complicated medic jutsus. You’ll be also teached how to fight and that’s where Tsunade will really become strict. She’s a bit paranoid since she already lost important people to her and on a battlefield there’s always the danger that something might go wrong. You need to know how to fight against strong opponents. If you can’t do that, you can be prepared that she’ll never let you go on missions. Instead you’ll have to live with working in a hospital for the rest of your life. Of course she won’t say anything against it, if that’s what you want. Would be even relieved, knowing that you will most likely never have to be put in direct danger.

🐌Depending on where we are in the timeline there are also a bit different scenarios. If she trained you before Sakura, you would be some sort of assistant to her, a superior student who she would let teach the pink-haired girl from time to time too so you can gain experience. If you and Sakura started training around the same time, she might have a bit of a hard time since it’s somewhat obvious that she favors you. But Sakura will understand since she knows how important you are for Tsunade. If this is after Sakura started training and has already a lot more experience than you, than Sakura will sometimes teach you stuff with Tsunade watching from the side and Sakura will also of course always give you advices on how you can improve your skills.

🐌At one point you will start watching her when she does operations, assist most likely and learn by watching her. You yourself will most likely start with small surgeries with Tsunade keeping a hawks eye on you and instantly jumping in if you seem to have troubles. She wants you to improve, sure, but she won’t risk a patient’s life. But you are bound to improve with Tsunade as your teacher and after the first difficult surgery you pulled successfully off without her help, she most likely went with you for a sake night. I can see her teaching you how to use the Strenght of a Hundred seal and if you are good enough, you will most likely made her personal medic assistant. But no matter how good your jutsus are, she won’t let you go on missions with a high danger of being attacked by strong shinobi until she thinks that you are strong enough to fight on your own. It’s still clearly obvious that she favors you since she isn’t that strict and hard with you in comparison to all the other medics who work with her.

Sakura Haruno

🌸She would be definitely totally happy when she finds out that her darling wants to be a medic just like her and even more if they ask her personally for help. It makes her flustered with a slight blush on her face. She was most likely an inspiration for you since she used to be not the most outstanding, but managed to become one of the strongest shinobi and greatest healers known in the villages. Especially if you might have been similar to her when you used to be younger, more on the shy and not strong, but not weak side either, she would be somewhat your idol. If that is the case, Sakura would be even more fired up and motivated about teaching you since she sees a lot of her younger self in you.

🌸She has a lot of similarities to Tsunade, it was drilled into her during her long period of training. But the difference is that she is less intense and more mild than her sensei is. She would go hard on you, mainly because she’s determined to be a good teacher, especially if you asked her to help you, but she wouldn’t be as strict as Tsunade is. Different from Tsunade she won’t push you over your limits if you don’t feel like you can handle it anymore and need a small break. She isn’t as pushy as Tsunade is and will only try to encourage you to step over your limits and would be very proud of you try. Fighting will be teached as well and here again, she will be eager, but won’t go as hard on you as Tsunade. Most likely because she somewhat sympathizes with you, remembering her hard training with Tsunade.

🌸I definitely see Tsunade getting one way or another involved. It’s of course open to question whether Sakura called her over or Tsunade came looking for herself. I think there’s a chance that Sakura might have called Tsunade over herself since despite being confident in her abilities, she respects her sensei and feels like there might be certain things where Tsunade might bring the point over better than she can. But I can see it just as much that Tsunade might have decided to look after you and Sakura herself since Sakura used to be her student and she’s curious about how Sakura will train you, since Tsunade knows how much she loves you.

🌸But I feel like she would focus majorly on teaching you medic jutsus and everything involving it whilst Tsunade lays her focus equally on fighting and healing. For Sakura on the other hand it’s more important to teach you what you asked her for. That’s teaching you everything she knows as a medic. She would only after being sure that you are good enough with being a medic, start suggesting that you might start training Taijutsu with you. But before all of that she would approach this similar to how Tsunade did it, starting with the training with the fish until you’ve involved into watching in real life a surgery, most likely with her as the one leading the whole thing. Would afterwards explain to you every question that might have popped up during the operation. Sakura would let you most likely become at one point her personal assistant, still doing the most difficult parts for herself, but letting you do some smaller things like stitching wounds. Totally proud as well as so joyful for you when you finally did your first real surgery without anything going wrong and doing everything professionally. Would take you out on a small date as a celebration and would love it if you two would work more often together. Like this many conversations you two will have, will start being a lot more about patients you two recently had and will have in the future and mentioning complicated names from medicines and names of body parts and muscles that a normal citizen will not be able to understand. Not like any of you two care.

[not-xpr-art]

Art Advice #3 - Drawing tips!

Hi everyone!

As you may know, every week or so I’m writing blog posts with art advice hints and tips for artists of any skill level in the hopes of helping some people out a bit! The tag is here so feel free to check out some of my other posts!

This week’s post is going to be some drawing tips I’ve picked up over the years that could hopefully be useful for beginner artists! 

(this is about 1800 words altogether btw)

Drawings tips!

I’m going to split this post up into little sections which will hopefully make it easier for you to scroll to find certain advice you’re particularly interested in!

Part 1 - How to get started?

I’m a firm believer that anyone can be an artist, regardless of what materials or equipment they have. So when it comes to my advice on what kind of materials I recommend for beginner artists, I’d mainly say ‘whatever you have’. 

But if that’s a bit vague, I’d essentially recommend you have a set of pencils which you can usually get relatively inexpensive online or in craft/art shops which range from 6B all the way to 6H (’B’ being for softer, darker pencils, often good for shading, and ‘H’ for the harder pencil leads which are best for much lighter shading or if you want a really faint sketch. Something important to note about ‘H’ pencils is not to press too hard with them since they’re a lot more likely to leave indents in the paper than ‘B’ pencils! For general sketching I personally use 2B or 3B pencils since they have the perfect balance of soft & hardness in my opinion!) 

Of course, you can just draw with whatever pens or pencils you already have, so definitely don’t feel you have to go out of your way to buy something new or expensive just because your favourite artists use a particular brand of pencil or pen... Of course, often higher quality pens or pencils (especially colouring pencils) will have better pigment payoff than the cheaper alternatives, but as someone who’s been using the same WHSmith pencils they got when they were a child, I definitely think that as long as you have something to draw with, you’re all set to produce masterpieces of your own!

A lot of my art education got us using charcoal for a lot of our drawing practise. It’s not a medium I’m particularly fond of personally, but it is a great way to practise being a lot quicker and expressive with drawing, so definitely if you’re up for the challenge you can try some charcoal stuff! Only piece of advice is that I wouldn’t really recommend those ‘charcoal pencils’ you can buy in some shops, since they mostly just break apart every time you try and sharpen them... Regular charcoal is messy, though, and smudges very easily, so if you are interested in using it I’d say to do a little bit of research before hand! 

(Or feel free to send me an ask if you want any further advice on using it!)

If you’re wanting to get into digital art, I’m planning on making a post discussing my tips for beginners to digital so... keep an eye out for that in the near future lol!

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Part 2 - Getting over ‘Drawing Anxiety’

Drawing can be a daunting thing, particularly when artists who are already pretty good at it can seemingly produce a perfectly proportioned face out of thin air. But these artists weren’t magically born with this skill, of course, so with practise and some perseverance, I can assure you that you’ll be at that stage one day!

So my first piece of advice here is to be patient with yourself. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect straight away. 

Second piece of advice is to sketch constantly!! I notice a lot of people who haven’t been drawing long are really careful about how they draw, almost like they’re afraid to be rough with the pencil. So I’d really recommend just starting to sketch a lot: be rough, be messy, draw things you can see and things from your imagination! 

Observational drawing is another thing I think is crucial in improving your drawing skills (and I’ll go into more detail with this in a bit), but honestly just sketching things you like is such a great way to help you grow as an artist! And yes this includes drawing anime fanart or drawings of your original characters! 

Below is some comparisons of my attempts at drawing Freema Agyeman from 2013 to 2019... Is the latest version of this perfect? Of course not. But I just want to show what constant practise can achieve!

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Part 3 - Observational drawing

I honestly think that observational drawing was one of the most important things I learnt in my years of art education. 

Observational drawing can take on many meanings. Perhaps it’s drawing a still life of a fruit bowl, or a life drawing class with a naked dude in front of you, or even drawing from a photo. The point of observational drawing is to improve how you translate the world around you onto a 2D surface, essentially. 

And you don’t need anything fancy to do observational drawing either! Just placing an array of things in front of you and trying to sketch them (try and focus on a mix of textures and surfaces for the objects. So, for example, including a cup along side a woolly hat will help you get a handle on how to create texture with your drawing, and drawing anything with a reflective surface like cutlery is both challenging and interesting to do! Basically just use what you have around you!)

If you’re lucky (or unlucky, depending on how fond you are of seeing naked people lol) enough to have the chance to do life drawing, I would honestly recommend it! Often the final results aren’t great, but it’s a really good way of practising your observational skills! And even if you don’t have the opportunity, just trying to sketch a friend or family member from across a room, for example, is something that can really help you improve! 

Top tip: a teacher once told me that when you’re drawing something like a face, for example, a way to improve how you draw is to see the face not as a ‘face’, but instead as a collections of shapes. Because our brains have a preconceived idea of what a face looks like that we end up drawing what we think we can see rather than what we can actually see! 

There’s a lot of art snobs who believe that drawing from reference images is ‘cheating’ in comparison to life drawing, Of course, this is bs, and I’d say I’ve learnt just as much from using reference photos for the basis of my art as I have from drawing from ‘real life’. For more information about my thoughts on references and how to use them, see This post!

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Part 4 - Drawing from references: Tracing, Grids and Freehand (which is best?)

Tracing in the world of art is a ... Contentious subject to say the least. And I’m not really interested in getting into the ‘moral’ implications of whether it is ‘cheating’ or not.

Instead I want to focus on the pros of using something like tracing when you’re starting out. I think particularly if you’re trying to improve how you shade things, colour things or how to get better at blending, then I do think that tracing can be a useful tool! Even I used tracing in the very start of my delve into digital art, but soon found that tracing wasn’t really something that was helping me in the long run so moved onto freehand stuff. 

Overall, I think tracing is good as a starting point when you’re still learning about art, and also if you’re not too comfortable with your freehand drawing skills yet. I’d also recommend you mention if you have traced a piece if you share art to social media. Of course, no one is obligated to do this though! 

This is an example of an artwork that I traced (it’s from 2013, hence why it looks... like That lol)

But if you’re someone who perhaps has used tracing in the past and found it doesn’t really work for you, or if you don’t want to start with tracing at all, then a good ‘next step’ I’ve seen other artists get into is using grids. 

Now I have to admit, I’m not the best person to talk about grids since I’ve actually never used them lol... But I know a lot of artists who do, particularly people who do a lot of traditional work, since it makes it a lot easier to translate the reference image to your piece of paper or canvas. 

And in a way I would recommend grids more for people starting out in drawing than tracing, and this is mainly due to the fact grids force you to use a lot more observational drawing skills than tracing! If you’re interested in getting into using grids I’d recommend doing a bit of research yourself! 

The final technique of drawing from references I want to talk about is freehand! Now this is the one I’ve been doing for the majority of my art ‘career’ and honestly is probably the most ‘difficult’ to do of the three techniques. 

But I find freehand drawing particularly rewarding with the ways it can make you reimagine an artwork in ways you never intended! Like what I mentioned in my Reference advice post, I have found that making ‘mistakes’ in freehand drawing can actually lead to more interesting and unique works of art than tracing or grid work could ever do! 

I also think that freehand allows you to create your own characters or concepts in a much more free way. For example, my Spirit of Somerset piece was something I created from a variety of references (I seem to remember I used Isak from SKAM’s mouth as a basis for the girls’ mouth?) and the dragon was based on a real mishmash of references, which is something that I I feel I couldn’t have done if I’d have been using grids or tracing!

With this I’m not trying to say that freehand is the ‘best’ way of drawing, it is just the one that I personally have found to fit me the best, which is the entire point of this post! All of my advice is just pointers I think could be useful for new artists, it is up to you to find which ‘path’ in art suits you best!

And of course, I’ve phrased these techniques as separate purely for the sake of explaining them easier, but the fact of the matter is that you can use a combination of these in your art if you wish! 

If you struggle with drawing the outlines of hands, perhaps use tracing as a way to get a handle of the shape and then maybe use freehand to fill in the colour of them! Use a grid to draw a tree but freehand the leaves and bench below it! 

Remember that your art is your art, and no one can tell you how to draw things! 

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I think I’ll leave this here for now! But I may do a part two at some point in the future! & my ask box is always open for anyone who wants any specific advice!

I really hope you found this at least moderately helpful, and a massive thank you to everyone for the constant support of these posts and my art!