#it's not projection shut up

[andorerso]

Rebelcaptain Whumptober: Day 10

for the prompt "Stranded" (warnings: character death, but not Jyn or Cassian. it's Melshi. also zombies)

Curled up in the corner, legs pulled up against her chest, Jyn scratched at the bite mark on her wrist. It was getting itchy. Not a good sign.

Across from her, next to the cashier’s desk, Andor was still staring at the mangled corpse of his… friend? Boyfriend? Brother? She had no idea what they were to each other, but she didn’t think Andor had moved a muscle since the man took his last gurgling breath so she gathered they were close.

Everything went to shit so quickly.

Jyn’s people had been battling another group of survivors to seize control over the area for months now. Small skirmishes here and there, taking out a scout or two, capturing and interrogating members for intel. Nothing major so far, but it was all building up to something. The Rogues had supplies Jyn’s people so desperately needed; food, medicine, water… But the Partisans had weapons and the advantage of an old US military base that anyone would be envious of.

Yavin County wasn’t big enough for both groups. A conflict was inevitable, and they had been preparing for this battle for months. Here, at the ruins of the small town that separated their two bases, was supposed to be the last stand. Jyn had her targets in sight, had spent countless nights pouring over the intel they had, deciding who would need to be eliminated first, who was their weakest link, who could spell trouble… She was to take out their best soldiers, leaving room for others to sneak into their base and ambush their leaders. The rest of the group would then scatter or fall into line.

Yeah, sure. When were things ever that easy?

Nobody counted on the fucking horde that showed up. The new recruits panicked, took off on their own or got swept up in the first wave, while the braver ones attempted to take out as many undead as they could. That went about just as well as panicking.

Rule number one: you didn’t fight a horde. You ran.

Saw called a retreat, but Jyn was too in the thick of it to make it back to her jeep in time. She’d ridden with Reece Tallent, and the fucker couldn’t care less that not everyone returned. He took off at full speed with whoever was on board as soon as he jumped into the vehicle; the rest of them? Tough luck.

Then there was that stupid bite, of course.

Jyn fired a bullet between the zombie’s eyes, but the damage was already done. Partisans and Rogues alike were fleeing. The horde was advancing. She couldn’t make it back to one of the jeeps now, even if she wanted to. Some of them still lingered while they waited for the last survivors to jump inside, but running into the thick of the horde was suicide. The only thing she could think to do was take up shelter in the hardware store across the street.

She wasn’t the only one left behind, it turned out. She saw one of the Rogues running to make it to a truck that was just leaving when three zombies toppled him to the ground. Somebody from the car yelled “No!”, and out of the corner of her eyes, Jyn saw a man jump from the back of the truck to try and rescue his friend. The car took off without them in a cloud of smoke.

Jyn didn’t stop to help. That man was a fool; one of the undead went for the jugular, his friend was as good as dead. But that didn’t stop him from dragging his bloody and barely conscious body to the hardware store, and damn it, they may be her enemy, but even she wasn’t cruel enough to leave them out there to be torn apart by the horde. Curse her bleeding heart.

The man pulled his friend inside, and Jyn slammed the doors shut just in time. Bodies crashed against the glass, mindless in their pursuit to get inside. Clashing teeth, decaying flesh, dead eyes staring at her with hunger. Jyn stood there for a second in frozen shock.

Then she snapped into action, finding the nearest shelf in the store and attempting to push it against the door.

“Fucking help me, will you?” she hissed at the Rogue. He turned his head to glance at her, and she finally recognized him as Andor.

Who knew he was so selfless?

With a quick look at his convulsing friend on the ground, — definitely dead, Jyn decided, he was missing half his throat — Andor got up and helped her push the shelf in place. She wasn’t sure how long it’d hold, but it was better than nothing. Andor immediately returned to his friend, grasping his cheeks in his hands, murmuring something.

Jyn had the decency not to eavesdrop, but even from the spot she claimed in the corner, she heard it clear as day when his gurgles turned silent.

She glanced at them. His body had stopped twitching, his eyes staring into nothing. Andor’s head was bowed, one of his hands grasping the man’s jacket, his shoulders shaking. It wouldn’t take long before he turned…

Luckily, Jyn didn’t have to voice that. With an audible inhale, Andor lifted his head, retrieved a dagger from his pocket, and slid it into his friend’s head. Killing the brain before the virus had time to reanimate him. The action seemed strangely gentle for what it was.

Then he placed the dagger on his dead friend’s chest and went completely motionless. Still crouching by him, still clutching his jacket, still staring at his lifeless eyes. He just turned off.

After an hour, Jyn couldn’t take it anymore. She had tuned out the banging on the glass, she had tuned out the horrible groans and rattles, she had tuned out the uncomfortable stares of dead people. She tried not to think about her own impending doom, tried not to wonder who made it from her group and who hadn’t.

But her eyes kept wandering back to Andor, waiting for him to move, to say something. Kneeling right in front of her line of vision, he was impossible to ignore.

Oh, fuck it.

Jyn stood from the corner, slowly approaching. He didn’t look up when she stopped by him, but she shrugged out of her jacket, using it to cover his friend’s mangled body.

Andor finally lifted his head, and their eyes met. She couldn’t read the look in his eyes, his expression smooth as stone, but she held his gaze and said nothing. They didn’t know each other, and I’m sorry would have been fucking offensive when under different circumstances, she might have been the one to kill his friend. She couldn’t act like she cared. But… it was a gesture. Because she knew what it was like to lose someone.

The silence that stretched between them should have been uncomfortable, but it seemed like he understood. He glanced away, finally releasing his death grip on his friend’s jacket, and sat back against the cashier’s desk. Jyn took that as a success.

She made it back to her corner, a little unsteady on her feet. The world tilted for a second. Shit… She clutched her wrist again. How long before the fever kicked in?

When she sat back down, Andor was watching her curiously.

“What’s your name?”

“Jyn,” she replied, her tone clipped.

“I’m Cassian.” His gaze strayed towards his friend’s body, a flash of grief in his eyes. “And his name was Melshi.” Determination hardened his features as he stood up. In a tone that left no room for argument, he continued, “I’m getting out here.”

Jyn snorted. “Good luck with that.”

He shot her an annoyed glare like she was being unreasonable for seeing the situation clearly. Getting out of here… Yeah, right. And go where?

“Were you bitten?” he asked, his eyes roving across her body.

So he did see her wobble. Jyn gave a curt nod, absentmindedly scratching at her bite.

“Okay. We need to treat that first.”

She wanted to laugh in his face.

A bite didn’t always have to be a death sentence, but in this case, it almost certainly was. With a mortality rate over eighty-four percent, it was difficult to treat under better circumstances. Let alone when you were stranded in a hardware store with a horde waiting for you outside. She didn’t see what he could possibly do to help her now. Maybe if she had made it back to base… But even then.

The bite killed you more often than not.

“What’s the point?” She waved her hand towards the store entrance where the undead were only growing in numbers. “Look outside. We’re dying here.”

“In that case.” Face blank, Andor pulled out his gun and held it out with its handle pointed towards her. Jyn stared at him. “Or would you rather I do it?”

She said nothing. Satisfied, he withdrew his hand and reholstered his gun.

“So let me fucking help you then.”

God. What a dick.

xxx

Andor searched the store for supplies, returning with some bandages, cotton wool, antiseptic, and rubbing alcohol. Jyn watched him, still a little wary as he crouched in front of her and ripped open the cotton wool packaging. Her head was foggy, her limbs a little sluggish, her mouth dry, her skin hot.

The bite was pumping its venom through her system, leaving her weak and vulnerable in front of a man who was, for all intents and purposes, her enemy.

It scared her. He could overpower her right now, and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. It scared her more than dying.

But all he did was pour alcohol on the cotton and reach for her hand to clean the wound. Her body tensed up, but she didn’t fight him. His grip was loose, his touch surprisingly gentle, and still, she couldn’t make herself relax. Always anticipating a blow, that was her life. She watched him as he worked, the furrow in his eyebrows, the lock of hair that fell over his eyes, the downturn of his mouth as he inspected her bite.

He was, Jyn mused, undoubtedly handsome. The thought may have been a side effect of the fever that was surely ravaging her body by now, but it was still true, which was rather annoying. It was the last thing she needed to be thinking right now. If she had to die, she wanted to die with some damn dignity.

But yes. The photo she saw of him didn’t hold a candle to the real thing.

After a while, Andor lifted his head and met her eyes. Jyn knew she was caught staring, but she didn’t flinch away, holding his gaze as if daring him to call her out on it. She’d use the about-to-die card if she had to.

“You look like shit,” he said after a pause.

She barked out a laugh of surprise, the sound rough. “You’re a fucking asshole, Andor.”

He stilled. Jyn didn’t realize her mistake until he spoke. “I didn’t tell you my last name.”

Goddamn it. She would blame this on the fever as well.

Jyn opened her mouth, hesitating. What were her options? If he wanted to, he would kill her anyway. Which wasn’t a terrible loss as the bite might still do that for him. But she could be honest and hope he saw it as a gesture of goodwill. He knew she was with the Partisans; they’d been shooting at each other not two hours ago. He knew she had killed members of his group before, and would have killed more if things went differently today.

What did it matter if she admitted she was going to kill him as well?

“We surveilled your group,” she spoke softly, watching for his reaction. “You were one of my targets.”

Andor grunted. His face gave nothing away. “Is that so?”

“Mmhm.”

Deemed dangerous and competent enough to be a problem. He was one of the three people she was supposed to handle.

Figures he’d end up being the one possibly saving her life.

For a second, Andor only stared at her, his eyes roving her face. Jyn shifted in her place, tightening her hands into fists, preparing for a fight. She had two daggers up her sleeves, another in her boot. A gun strapped to her thigh as a last resort. She was a little dizzy, but she could get the jump on him, go for the neck before he had the chance to realize —

Andor nodded, interrupting her battle tactics, and went back to applying antiseptic to her wound. Jyn waited, but he didn’t have any comments for her. No snippy remarks or angry quips. Not even a ‘it’s a good thing you didn’t kill me then.’

What was wrong with this man?

“You’re all done,” he said after he finished wrapping her wound. Jyn’s eyes followed him as he stood up, a question on the tip of her tongue.

He met her gaze and raised his eyebrows as if to say, spit it out, we don’t have all day.

“I killed your people,” she said. A statement, not a question. But he understood the meaning. Why are you helping me?

“I killed yours.”

“Does that make us even?” she wondered.

Andor shrugged. “I don’t know what that makes us. I just know I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

His gaze strayed back to the body on the floor, just for a split second. Melshi, he had said. Was this guilt then? Atonement? Trying to make up for what he felt was a failure by saving someone else?

Well, either way. She wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

But there was still the matter of the horde out there. And it was getting dark soon. If he had any bright ideas, it was time to come out with them.

“We still can’t fight our way out.” She gestured to the undead, clawing at the glass. “Even if I was in top shape. Which I’m not.”

He fixed her up, so her wound hopefully wouldn’t get infected, but the fever would only grow worse. God only knew if she’d even survive.

“We’re stuck here.” Her tone was factual, hiding the desperation that reared its ugly head. She was not going to be a zombie meal. Any death would be better than that.

Andor’s jaw worked as he scanned the store, taking inventory of the shelves. His expression shifted, a glint in his eyes that revealed he had an idea.

“Jyn?”

She blinked, surprised at the sound of her name from his mouth. It was… hmmm. Better not think about it now.

“What?”

His mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but something akin to a smirk. “How much do you know about making bombs?”

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

idiot brothers

[atlas-of-galaxies]

quick ena5 doodle before it destroys us all

[an-inspired-eternity]

to be loved is to be changed

[kaffkanya]

you KNOW they fucked after this. like, you wouldnt want to be their quarters neighbor that day. i know it was NASTY. i just know it.

[rithion]

He who is reborn through pain, again and again // Body euphoria

[dkettchen]

she would've told them unlike her canon! version who decided not to be an ally smh

[14dayswithyou]

💖 Day 3.5 is now available! 💖

For the last couple of months, only Server Boosters had access to the 3.5 update... Buuuuut now it's available for everyone to play in the 14DWY Discord — and soon itch.io once I'm happy with the QA and state of the game — so please don't feel pressured to join unless you want to!!

The full devlog + even more screenshots are under the cut ^^

What's been added to the 3.5 version?

📺 Streamer Mode!

I've been told that it's difficult to stream and monetise age-restricted videos on YouTube and Twitch, so I added an option to remove the sexual content and strong language used in the demo.

Now y'all can invite Ren into your bed for cuddles without putting your streamer career on the line /silly /lh

This won't affect the 18+ rating or dark themes/elements of the game, however! Although Streamer Mode will prevent you from seeing any "gruesome" CGs in the future, most of the core elements of the game will still be tied to the choices and decisions you make. So you won't miss out on the overall experience by using streamer mode!!

⚙️ Custom Pronouns!

It only took me one entire year to get around to it, but you can finally choose your own preferred pronouns (or use a set of pronouns instead)... At the cost of being able to change them mid-game ^^;

Since the original pronoun screen wouldn't update until a new scene was displayed, I temporarily disabled the feature. But once I find a workaround, I'll bring it back!

💗 Choose how others perceive you!

You can now choose how the cast and narration perceive you! Originally, the narration was kept strictly gender-neutral (outside of pronouns and genitalia picked by the player), but this will soon change in future updates.

For more clarity: you don't get to choose the words specifically, but you can choose between masculine, feminine, and androgynous terms!

📋 Separate top and bottom genitalia!

You can now choose your tatas and pps separately! >:3

Alongside that, you can also choose your preferred body type!

I removed the "both" genitalia option because a few players still assumed it was an obscure version of "intersex". That wasn't my intention and I don't want to mislead anyone, so I took it out for now ^^;

I also didn't want to include a screenshot of the new genitalia choices in action (because it's NSFW), so y'all get the same character menu screen for the nth time instead lmao

📱 Relationship Screen Overhaul!

You can now change your own status for more immersion, and long-term Server Boosters will eventually be able to submit and use their own icon within the game as well!

Stalking finding your friends has now become easier by using "Buddy Maps"; a new app that allows you to see the location of all the cast members!

I want to offer players more incentive to check the relationship screen since they tend to miss the status updates, so hopefully this might help ;v;

It also says it "updates every few hours" so folks don't go overboard and check every 5 seconds to see where Ren is gdsghf (also keep in mind that he's a hacker lol)

🖤 Additional Scenes Update!

Day 2 received a brand new CG!!!!! Originally, I planned on only adding a few CGs sporadically throughout the game, but it didn't feel right to leave Day 2 so... empty... so I added a brand new CG to (hopefully) make things feel more balanced and natural!

If you decline Teo's offer on Day 3, Leon will now call and try to convince you to reconsider. However, players are still allowed to decline, and if they do, they'll reach a dead end.

After listening to feedback on itch, I changed some of the dialogue during Days 1-3 to make it seem more consistent! They're only small changes though, so it's honestly not worth looking for sdgjssga

🎶 Updated BGM and SFX!

I wanted to try out a different style of music to see if it fits the vibe of 14DWY more! The BGM features more acoustics to suit the "beachy" theme of Corland Bay, though I made a conscious effort to include piano elements as well to stay true to the original!!

I figured it'd be better to give players a live example before I make a poll (to see if they prefer the change or not) and publish it to Itch.

Some new SFX have also been added, though it's very minimal and honestly not that noticeable.

How to download and play the update?

(warning: clicking on the following links will open Discord!!) To download the Day 3.5 update, simply join the 14DWY Discord server, verify your age, and visit the "14dwy-updates" channel!

Alternatively, you can also wait until the update is publicly released on Itch to play it as well!! (It normally gets released shortly after a round of QA testing/getting feedback from the server, though I may release it earlier if I feel like it hehe ^^)

Enjoy!!

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.

[arthur-lesters-right-arm]

[rootbeerrex]

gonna start writing an au where janet drake survives and immediately serves jack with divorce papers, making tim's parental shitshow as robin about a million times worse

[ranmaru-kageyama]

bros.......

"After the story, Mizuki Akiyama will stop appearing in the 'real world'. Would you like to keep reading?"

[unforth]

As I deepen my study with Chinese, the more I'm struck by how word meanings work. The monolingual USAdians I know or encounter online, who studied only as much as needed to get through school, really do seem to think languages are plug and play: know the word in both languages, and swap.

But that couldn't be further from the truth. There's on Chinese word, 稳当 (wĕn dang), that's really struck me for that. Because my flashcards give three translations for 稳当: reliable, secure, and stable. And in English these words are all fairly different! Clearly related but very much do not mean the same thing. How can one Chinese word mean these three different concepts? Well, of course, it doesn't. 稳当 means 稳当, some fusion of those three concepts we have words for in English but not quite any of them, that makes it appropriate to use in places where English would use any of those three. There are surely shades of meaning, and which interpretation of the meaning is most appropriate to a given context will be understood upon reading.

Now, expand this understanding - that a word doesn't mean (exact direct swap in English) but rather the word means the word, and we approximate it to the closest English equivalent we can - to *every single word in every single sentence in an entire book.*

Then translate that book.

Translation is an art, not a science, requiring tremendous verisimilitude in *both* languages, and an understanding of the story, and a deep familiarity with the culture (social, historical, linguistic, etc.) of the original work, and often knowledge of the authors intent (if possible to ascertain), and a range of other skills. Translation will always be interpretive and transformative, because (word in one language) doesn't precisely mean (word in another language). They're not "the same." If I present you a sentence with 稳当 in it, does it mean stable, reliable, or secure? Well that depends. On what? How it's being used, the surrounding context, other factors, and of course... the reader or translators interpretation.

It drives me insane when I see people present alternate translations as some kind of "gotcha" that one translator got things wrong. And don't get me wrong - of course some translations ARE just wrong, obviously if I translate 稳当 to mean "goldfish" I'm not interpreting I'm just incorrect. But beyond obvious mistakes, a world of nuance exists, and different translators can in good faith reach different conclusions on the most appropriate translation. This is WHY famous books not in English get translated repeatedly by different people, and why a reader would want to read multiple translations of the same work - to see, in different translations, some shadow of the wonderful nuance embodied by the original words that do not, and cannot, simply be swapped 1 to 1 for a perfect English translation. And this is *especially* true of a language like Chinese, which is ancient and beautiful and deeply steeped in understandings of Chinese history and literature.

Why do you think I and many others are studying Chinese for years? For me, it's all so I can read the actual books myself and get that much closer to the story, that much closer to my own interpretation. I'll never have the skills of a knowledgeable translator - this isn't my profession, it's my hobby - but I'll gleen things nonetheless and it's important to me to try.

Too many of yall disrespect those skills so much that you'll throw a sentence of a language you know nothing about into Google translate and then declare the translator Wrong (and sometimes Bad and Malicious) based on that.

稳当 means 稳当. It doesn't mean "reliable." It doesn't mean "the exact translation of 稳" plus "the exact translation of 当". It's a Chinese word with a Chinese definition that we retrofit English on to.

And the hardest part? Look, I'm still a Chinese novice. For all I fucking know, 稳当 actually MIGHT have three distinct definitions. Everything I said about it above might be wrong. I don't know enough Chinese yet to know for sure, and that's a level of nuance and understanding I'll only reach by reading more.

Multiply that by *every single word in both the original language and the language it's being translated into.*

That's what translation is.

Good luck.

[dicctor-blog]

Solar Eclipse day

[an-inspired-eternity]

say “shinonome transition” and everyone goes crazy but say “mizurui transition” and no one bats an eye... society.... LOOK AT THEM ALL!!!!!

[heartorbit]

happy birthday, dreamer

(from the emukasa zine canvas 🎉)