#japanese fans rank

[elgaberino-mcoc]

MCOC WISHLIST TOP TEN MOST-WANTED ASIAN / PACIFIC CHAMPS, PART 2

Ranked by Summoners

014 Lady Deathstrike 017 Silver Samurai 023 Silk 031 Wenwu (The Mandarin) 041 Shatterstar* 047 Sunfire 064 Armor 065 Blink* 125 Daken 130 Radioactive Man

Vote: http://tinyurl.com/mcocwishlist 

*denotes Asian casting of a non-Asian character

[winged-self-indulgence]

Why Do People Like Yanderes?

Hi everyone, my name is Diya, and this was going to be a YT video-essay-type-thing but I'm too poor to afford a mic and too busy with college to learn how to edit videos, so here's my vague exploration of the psychology behind why people like yanderes so much through the lens of my favourite Visual Novels.

TW for uh. yandere content. Mentions of sex, gore, and non-con, particularly in the last topic. This is more like the first draft of an academic paper so while it's not explicit, I do go into some detail.

Introduction

If you’re a fan of anime or visual novels, then you’re probably already aware of what a yandere is, or at the very least you’ve seen that one picture of Yuno Gasai. Still, for the sake of thoroughness, let’s take it from the tippy top. The term ‘yandere’ is a Japanese portmanteau of ‘yanderu’ – the progressive form of ‘yami’ – meaning ‘sick’, and ‘deredere’ which roughly translates to ‘loving’. Together, the word refers to someone who is – in short – extremely lovesick. Obsessive to the extreme, and with little morality to spare, the standard yandere is characterized by a dangerous fixation on a chosen target, often appearing shy and caring at first only to flip the script and become violently aggressive towards perceived threats (Kroon, 2010).

It should be noted that yanderes are not a strictly romantic or sexual trope. The Ancient Greeks classified at least six forms of love, from familial (storge) to guests (xenia). Modern psychologists may distinguish love as either Companionate or Passionate (Kim & Hatfield, 2004) or consisting of three dimensions of Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2018). Realistically, possessiveness shows up in a variety of relationships. However, people are generally primed to view certain dynamics as inherently amorous. Societal norms tend to encourage the idea that romantic bonds ought to rank above all others, and therefore if Person A is bizarrely fixated on Person B, then clearly there must be an element of sexual interest involved regardless of the actual relationship between the individuals in question.

Regardless, yanderes remain quite popular in fiction. Many dismiss it as a fetish, which it can be, but that isn’t the case for everyone. While there is nothing wrong with indulging in kinky fiction, not all of us get horny at the thought of being chained up in someone’s basement, no matter how hot our captor may be. So why is it so pervasive? Why is this trope so appealing that most writers cannot help but include at least a single line of dialogue implying that – if circumstances had been ever so slightly different – my wholesome shoujo romcom might have turned into a psychological horror?

Hybristophilia

‘Hybristophilia’, also known as Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome after the titular criminal couple, is a word is derived from the Greek word ‘hybridzein’ meaning ‘to commit an outrage against someone’ and ‘philo’ which means ‘a strong preference for’. Sexologist John Money reportedly defined it as a paraphilia in which an individual is sexually aroused by a partner who has a predatory history of hurting other people (Money, 1986, as cited in Matuszak, 2017). In his book, Serial Killer Groupies, true crime and crime fiction author RJ Parker distinguished two forms of hybristophilia: passive and aggressive. The former is when an individual contacts a criminal with the intention of striking up a relationship with them, allowing themselves to be seduced and manipulated but having no interest in committing a crime themselves. The latter are far more dangerous, as the individual not only derives sexual pleasure from their partner’s atrocities but are active participants in carrying out or covering up the crime. To quote Griffiths (2013, as cited in Pettigrew, 2019):

“[They] help out their lovers with their criminal agenda by luring victims, hiding bodies, covering crimes, or even committing crimes. They are attracted to their lovers because of their violent actions and want to receive love yet are unable to understand that their lovers are psychopaths who are manipulating them.”

In some ways, hybristophilia is the nearest thing we have to a realistic understanding of why people love yanderes. I mean, much of the fantasy surrounding such characters and their media tend to be filled with posts begging to be spat on or calling the rightfully terrified main character ungrateful for being a teeny bit upset about finding surveillance cameras in their ceiling. However, enjoying fictitious immoral activity does not predict real perpetration, so what does? There exists little consensus amongst psychologists as to what sparks this particular predilection, and that was strange to me. You would think there would be more studies into this topic, in spite of or perhaps because of its controversial nature. Heck, that one dude wouldn’t shut up about white women’s obsession with Bundy and Dahmer, and I assumed he had gotten that information from somewhere, but it turns out that was just him using modifiers to justify sexism.

However, I believe that we can hedge a few guesses, and over the course of my research, I’ve organized the main rationalizations under four umbrellas which I will explore through the lens of my favourite yandere-themed Visual Novels. Please keep in mind that most of these games are rated as mature due to sexual scenes and/or gore. Additionally, in the spirit of transparency, this ramble will be focused exclusively on male or masculine yanderes. So, without further ado:

Call Me Bob the Builder Because I Can Fix Them

If you’re familiar with DC Comic’s Batman, or just happen to have attended any costume event held over the span of the last 20+ years, you may be familiar with the character of Dr. Harleen Quinzel, better known as Harley Quinn. Initially created as the Joker’s one-off sidekick in Batman The Animated Series, she was so well-received by audiences that she became a recurring character in the cartoon and was eventually given a proper origin story in the form of a one-shot titled Mad Love.

Harley’s origin story has seen some alterations over the past decades, but the core aspects remain largely untouched. In the beginning, Harleen Quinzel was a promising young woman who wanted was a degree from the university’s prestigious psychology department, which she gained through…less than scrupulous means.

(Listen, I’m not sure if the authors were leaning on the Dumb Blonde stereotype, or if they simply thought that casting her as a genuinely bad student would make her later actions more believable. Either way, the idea of Harley as someone with a legitimate PhD came later)

After landing an internship at Arkham Asylum – a half-hospital and half-prison straight out of the 1870s that might as well be built out of one-ply tissue-paper soaked with gasoline and left next to a crate of fireworks – Harleen set her sights on the then incarcerated Joker. At the start, her fixation on the criminal wasn’t remotely sympathetic. She didn’t want to help him, she wanted to use him. Harleen Quinzel wanted piggyback off his infamy and write a tell-all tale detailing what sort of messed up childhood resulted in Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime. Yet the more she interacted with him, the more the Joker took advantage of her empathy. By the end of their sessions, Harley no longer saw him as a violent serial killer with a clown schtick, but as a “lost, injured child looking to make the world laugh at his antics.”

But Diya, you may be asking, what does this have to do with the video? The Joker never loved Harley, and it could even be argued – as Shehadeh did in a 2017 essay – that her obsession with the pasty-faced clown is more akin to Histrionic Personality Disorder. While that may be the case, I believe that Harley’s story provides one of the reasons yanderes are so popular: their backstory.

Whether they were abandoned by their family, bullied by their peers, experimented on by evil scientists, starved on the streets, died under mysterious circumstances and then trapped in a haunted VCR tape for decades, or are simply so impossibly inhuman that they frankly do not understand why it isn’t socially acceptable to imprison their crush in a pocket dimension made of meat and non-Euclidean geometry, yanderes often have fairly sympathetic or at least understandable explanations for why they are Like That. Your mileage may vary significantly depending on how much you sympathize with these motives, but the point is that yanderes always make sense to some degree. Their morality and priorities may be twisted or even completely incomprehensible, but the audience almost always knows the reason, and that can be comforting. In the real world, other people aren’t always straightforward, and we never really know what they’re thinking, but narrative coherence demands a semblance of internal consistency lest the audience end up frustrated and confused. So yanderes are not only easy to sympathize with, but also fairly predictable. In-universe they may be unhinged freaks with a blood fetish, but to you watching from behind the safety of the screen they’re just acting out the script written for them based on a prototype. And if you understand the why behind their loose gears, then you might just be able to put them back together again.

The concept of rescue romances or “I Can Fix Them” has been around in our stories for thousands of years. The Epic of Gilgamesh detailed how Shamhat essentially ‘civilized’ wild man Enkidu through ritual lovemaking, and a concerning number of religions push the idea that women are dutybound to save men from the follies of sin. Yet men are not exempt either, with one notable example being the German fairytale, King Thrushbeard. Call it what you will regardless: Knights in Shining Armour, the Florence Nightingale Effect, or a plain old case of Because You Were Nice to Me, studies have shown that human beings generally like helping [DA2] others, even when the reason doesn’t necessarily stem from pure altruism. I will delve deeper into this later, but care and compassion are deeply ingrained in human nature, and arising from those roots is the appeal of this mentality: You can save them. You can change them. You can make them better. You are special, and the way you treat this person carries a weight that has not and will never be matched by anyone else for the rest of their mortal or immortal existence.

The illusion is a delicious one, especially if the person you’ve helped turns out to be a billionaire CEO with cash to burn, a super powerful ghost king willing to raze continents to dust for you, a demon having fun on a Friday night, or just your average hot creep with a knife. Moreover, different people have different ideas of what ‘fixing’ even means. Maybe you want to single-handedly rehabilitate your yandere into a functional member of society. Maybe you’re cool with the incessant stalking but would like them to stop slaughtering your friends, family, and local service workers. Maybe you want to make them much, much worse.

Not only do yanderes provide immediate proof that your actions have a tangible impact on the lives of others, but the fantasy also includes the desire of being seen as special. Of being admired and adored by someone whose life you inexplicably made better by virtue of simply being yourself, or an idealized version of yourself. In this fictional world, in this imaginary setting, the person you are is so uniquely, impossibly irreplaceable to someone. And if that’s the case then they can’t risk losing you, can they?

The Allure of Obsession, or ‘Til Death Do Us Part (Literally)

It shouldn’t be necessary, but here is my obligatory disclaimer anyway. Ahem: obsession is not a good thing in real life. Fixating on another human to the detriment of your own wellbeing and that of those around you is dangerous, as is encouraging someone else to obsess over you. You might think you are being worshiped, but real life is not a visual novel. The outside world doesn’t come with an age rating, the author’s guiding pen, and a convenient fade to credits sequence once you’ve reached an ending. The consequences will still be there in the morning, so don’t do it. Just don’t.

PSA out of the way, it’s natural to want to be wanted. Maslow’s Hierarchy places it just above physical safety, but I’d argue that it could easily be compared to baser drives. According to many psychological and anthropological studies, much of humanity’s continued survival and environmental dominance is largely attributed to our ability to form groups, cooperate with one another, and maintain complex interpersonal networks. Social support, intimacy, and a sense of belonging are linked to emotional and physical benefits, such as more optimistic health perceptions, higher subjective well-being, increased creativity and innovation, and greater self-efficacy (DeWall & Bushman, 2011; Harandi et al., 2017; Wang & Sha, 2018). Therefore, it’s perfectly understandable that rejection of any sort would be construed as a threat.

But if someone is obsessed with you, then you have no reason to worry about that, right? No more nights spent agonizing over how they feel about you, asking yourself whether your last text made you sound too desperate, or if you’re boring them because you spent the past hour info-dumping about Stardew Valley farm layouts. With a yandere, there will never be any doubt that they care about you. Sure, they might go about it in weird, manipulative, and insidious ways that violate your physical and mental autonomy, but you can’t deny their loyalty. They do love you in their own bizarre way. You are the sun around which they orbit. When you’re in the room, no one else exists. Every single messy flaw is just another bullet point on the mile-long list of why they adore you.

In essence, yanderes are not only attentive, but their love can be virtually unconditional. A yandere might know everything about you, and still revere you. It’s unhealthy as hell and you might genuinely question their taste, but it can be tempting to pretend that all of you, right down to the ugliest parts of yourself – the traits and choices that you would never share with another living soul even at gunpoint – are worthy of understanding, if not open praise and affection.   

Attractiveness, or Okay but Have You Considered That They’re Hot Though?

.

.

.

I mean what am I supposed to say here? They’re hot, what do you want from me?

No, but in all seriousness, fictional media paints an idealized version of the world, and most yanderes are hot because they have the freedom of existing purely behind that screen; artfully arranged and edited to forever appear compelling to anyone who happens to enjoy their particular style. And there are a lot of styles to choose from. Whether you want them pretty faced and disarmingly cute, or scarred up and big enough to pin you like a butterfly, yanderes come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that are meant to pique your interest and draw you in like a naïve little fish being lured towards the mouth of an angler fish, unwilling to believe that anything bad might happen to us when the bait is this pretty.

This is often referred to as the Halo Effect, a form of cognitive bias referring to the tendency for people to assume that a single obvious positive trait must be associated with other positive traits. The go-to characteristic is typically physical attractiveness, but a nice voice, good humour, and cooking skills are also factors which serve to influence our perceptions.

So, conventional physical attractiveness is one thing, but that’s only skin deep. What about beyond that? After all, the yandere still has to talk to you before they enact their master plan of tying you up in their basement until Stockholm Syndrome kicks in.

When I showed my friend a picture of John Doe from the game John Doe, she told me that he looked like a creepy slob, and she’s far from the only person who’s ever thought so. Look at them. I feel like if I tried to comb that hair it would simply eat me, and some of the CGs really put the scopophobia in Scopophobia Studios. I love Doe, but he is not hot, and he doesn’t behave in a normally appealing way either. If the player chooses not to take a bath, Doe will immediately comment that you “smell good” before following you home, breaking into your house, and leaving a bloody organ on the floor for the player to trip over. Many yanderes can at least fake a veneer of normalcy, but from the get-go Doe doesn’t even bother to pretend he’s anything less than an otherworldly creature stuffed into a vaguely person-shaped meatsuit. In an effort to find out why so many people had latched on to Doe – including me – I shopped around social media and YouTube for answers, and what I found was a widely unanimous sentiment.

While some were drawn to his fun design and goofy personality, most simply thought that he wasn’t inherently malevolent, just very confused. In addition to being a supernatural being with a completely alien axis of morality, Doe’s meta-awareness and unbridled attempts at winning the player’s affection lends him quite a bit of support from the audience, especially if you yourself also happen to struggle with social cues and relate to his pure earnestness. In Ending 7 of the extended version, the player character has the option to tell Doe – who has altered himself to pass as more ‘normal’ – that they prefer who he truly is, at which point he grows visibly flustered and sports an adorable pair of literal heart-shaped pupils.

Whether they’re charismatic, seductive, cute, sweet, funny, nurturing, or generous, the best yanderes have engaging personalities. Even while they’re committing truly heinous crimes against God, man, and your guts, you still kinda want to hang out with them, and you want them to acknowledge you as being just as interesting. And this is all fine in fiction because you’re the one in charge, and if you ever get bored or uncomfortable or busy with something else, then you can simply close the tab or window with zero consequences, which brings us to the final and most important reason.     

Power Dynamics and Consent in Fantasy (I Couldn’t Think of a Joke Here Guys, This Is Kinda Serious)

Once again, I feel that I must preface this section just for the sake of my own peace of mind: sexual coercion and assault are vile and disgusting crimes that should never be emulated or tolerated in the real world. We are speaking purely of fictional media, specifically adult-oriented media in this case, so please be mindful.

In 2009, Bivoni and Critelli conducted a study on 355 undergraduate women with the goal of assessing the reasons behind fantasies of non-consent. At the time, there were two leading explanations of this phenomenon. One stated that women with high libidos but repressed views of sex used these imaginary scenarios to alleviate the guilt they had grown to associate with sex. Because the simulation was a purely mental exercise and they themselves were cast as helpless victims in the scenario, they were able to remain blameless while still finding sexual gratification. The second stated that these fantasies were an expression of liberation by women who were adventurous and comfortable enough with their own sexuality to engage with taboo ideas that they weren’t at all interested in performing in real life. Which do you think was more common?

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If you guessed the second option, you’d be right. The study found that of the 220 women who had experienced such fantasies, 45% found theirs erotic, 46% were mixed, and only 9% reported pure aversion. One justification for this outcome relies on psycho-biological theories, for example masochistic preferences or the unintended activation of the sympathetic nervous system and subsequent mis-attribution of arousal. Other reasons have to do with higher order thinking and are tied to the power dynamics within such fantasies. On the surface is the appeal of being so desirable to someone that they simply cannot control themselves, but then there is a deeper impulse, which the researchers referred to as Adversary Transformation. To quote the article: “[fantasies] involve a struggle between an assailant and a potential victim in which it is relevant to consider who is the winner and who is the loser. At one level, it is a struggle over sex, but the woman's non-consent may be feigned or token. At another level, the woman may be seeking a victory that is not about whether sex occurs, but about what happens emotionally between the protagonists.”

Basically, the imaginary perpetrator may have ‘won’, but the self-character need not have ‘lost’.

Media provides an extra layer to the illusion, one that you as the viewer have absolute control over. If you are choosing to engage with a piece of media that explicitly labels itself as including R18+ yandere content, then you clearly have some expectations, and that background awareness goes a long way in reducing long-term discomfort and allowing audiences to make informed decisions. If you don’t like the plot, you can simply turn it off it with the click of a button, and when the screen goes dark it’s not like the yandere is going to punish you for saying no. Strade isn’t going to break into your house with a drill, there are no homicidal clown ghosts hiding in your TV, and no suspicious pink-haired hackers watching your webcam. They aren’t real, and the consequences aren’t real either. You have all the power here.

Conclusion

In summary, Yanderes are appealing for a variety of reasons. Whether you want to save them, think they’re attractive, wish to indulge in a dream of being utterly coveted, or simply enjoy a bit of spice in your me-time, it’s obvious why the trope has persisted for so long and will likely continue to do so. If you enjoy yanderes but are worried that having a taste for the less wholesome side of things might imply something about who you are as a person, don’t be. The notion that fantasies and media preferences directly reflect subconscious desires is not only painfully out of date debunked nonsense but also indicative of restrictive ideologies wherein bad thoughts = sin. This isn’t 1984. You haven’t committed a thought-crime by having a weird kink. You aren't going to superhell for fantasizing. The human mind is hardly ever so mathematically rational, and the point of fiction is to allow us to safely engage with and explore various ideas, provided the everyone involved is mentally, chronologically, and emotionally mature enough to do so.

Thank you all for listening to me. If you learned something or were just a little bit entertained. If you're curious about knowing more, I've listed my sources below

REFERENCES

Bivona, J. M., & Critelli, J. W. (2009). The Nature of Women’s Rape Fantasies: An analysis of prevalence, frequency, and contents. Journal of Sex Research, 46(1), 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490802624406

Critelli, J. W., & Bivona, J. M. (2008). Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and research. Journal of Sex Research, 45(1), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490701808191

DeWall, C. N., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). Social acceptance and rejection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(4), 256–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411417545

Flynn, F. J., Reagans, R., Amanatullah, E. T., & Ames, D. R. (2006). Helping one’s way to the top: Self-monitors achieve status by helping others and knowing who helps whom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(6), 1123–1137. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.1123

Harandi, T. F., Taghinasab, M. M., & Nayeri, T. D. (2017). The correlation of social support with mental health: A meta-analysis. Electronic Physician, 9(9), 5212–5222. https://doi.org/10.19082/5212

Hazen, H. (1983). Endless rapture: rape, romance, and the female imagination. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3161300M/Endless_rapture

Kroon, R. W. (2010). A/V A to z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms. McFarland.

Matuszak, M. (2017). Hybristophilia White Paper. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55dfd21ee4b0718764fb34cc/t/5cb7cabee5e5f00ab13be58b/1555548863275/Hybristophilia+White+Paper.pdf

Oarga, C., Stavrova, O., & Fetchenhauer, D. (2015). When and why is helping others good for well-being? The role of belief in reciprocity and conformity to society’s expectations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(2), 242–254. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2092

Parker, R. (2014). Serial killer groupies. RJ PARKER PUBLISHING, INC.

Wang, T., & Sha, H. (2018). The influence of social rejection on cognitive control. Psychology, 09(7), 1707–1719. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2018.97101

[themissinghand]

Solo Leveling Mochi Cat

Requested by: @vereimeja

Request: m!y/n gets the "harmless soft boi" treatment from his fans, even though there's proof of him slaughtering an orc with his bare hands. this is mostly because he tends to be quiet, as he's usually too bothered to speak, and because he's short and often wears oversized sweaters for comfort, as he doesn't like tight clothing. someone also somehow got a picture of him being healed by Beru, who is like 8 feet tall (?), which only fueled the fire. If someone were to treat him like that in real life, he'd just,,, stare.

Summary: In which Jinwoo never thought of getting a cat until he met you. 

Or, it just happens that you don’t look like the typical hunter, just the opposite of that actually. 

Pairing: Sung Jinwoo x M! Reader

Note: Thanks for your patience!

Warnings: Lots of fluff :)

★・・・・・・★

Sung Jinwoo met and saw a lot of hunters in action. 

Even now, when all he sees is S-Class hunters, he could match the face to their power quite easily as it seems to fit. Same with their name and title, whether notorious or famous, Jinwoo didn’t have any trouble finding them in the crowd. 

Thomas Andre and Liu Zhigang, for example, fit his image of a S-Class hunter quite well. 

That is until he met you, or as others call you, “Mochi Cat”.”

Why? Because you were cute, short, and soft, and Jinwoo thought your fans must be crazy. Some of your fans even included some of the S-Class hunters. 

Perhaps you were more of an idol than a hunter. 

But he had to admit though, your photos were kinda cute. Just kinda.

It was during the Jeju Island S-Rank Gate mission, where he gathered with the Korean and Japanese hunters, was when he first saw you. 

At first, his impression of you was akin to those of everyone else, mediocre and quite frankly, disappointing. 

You were short, and wore an oversized sweater as if you were a student that woke up from their tutoring class. You looked like a middle school boy who had not grown up. 

With your nonchalant and silent attitude despite the provocations from the Japanese team, Jinwoo believed that you did not care. 

Until you were forced to. 

In a face off, he watched you immediately crush your enemy with pure destructive power. Without using any weapons, you smashed their heads to the ground, successfully KO’ed them without any warning. He must admit, he didn’t expect the image of you standing above two of your enemies while sucking on a lollipop. 

Then, he saw you snap your head around and send him a look. 

Ah, it looks like he was caught. 

You stared for another few seconds before you hopped off, and wiped your face with your long, long sleeve, which somehow covered your entire face. 

Yea, Jinwoo could definitely see the cat now.

“Stop staring at me like that, both you and your friends.” Jinwoo blinked when he looked down at you, who sent him an annoyed look, before walking (floating) away. 

Your words took a moment to process, and he immediately snapped around and tried to reach you, but you were already hidden in the center of all the other tall hunters, preventing him from reaching you. 

For the next few rounds, Jinwoo wanted to get your attention, but it seems like only his match interested you. Other than that, you had the same bored expression on your face, even when you had someone talking to you.

“Hey, (Y/N) right?” You purposely turn slowly to meet him (and was that a disgusted look?), and Jinwoo extends a hand for you to shake.

“My name is Sung Jinwoo.” You shake his hand hesitantly, before nodding. 

“Would you like to eat dinner together-”

“No.” Without another thought, you rejected the offer, and walked away, leaving him in the dust. 

Ha. 

There’s a first for everything. 

But if you could see his shadows, there must be more to you than he thought. 

Jinwoo is not stalking you. 

He is using his shadows to monitor you, making sure you don’t do anything out of his expectations.

Which oddly enough, is happening. 

Because all he does is see you get surrounded by fans cooing at how cute you are, to you sleeping on rooftops in your oversized hoodies. 

Jinwoo doesn’t understand how you and he could possibly be the same age. 

Did you not hit puberty? 

“Why are you following me?” Jinwoo felt his lips twitch up in amusement when one of your eyes pop open in annoyance and glare at him. 

“I’m curious.” 

“Don’t.” Before you get up and cross your arms. 

Jinwoo finally see the reason why you have so many fans, because everything you do look cute and childish, due to your outfit choices and nonchalant personality. 

What he also found out was how much you hated that kind of attention, but didn’t want to take the initiative to fix it, creating this infinite loop. 

“You’re injured, but you don’t treat it.” No response, just stares. 

“Beru. Come out.” Even when Beru comes out of the shadow, nothing changes, if anything, you become more vigilant. It made Jinwoo more curious as to how you got your powers and what is making you act this way,

“Beru can heal you.”

Without any response, Jinwoo took it as a sign of acceptance, so when he approached you, he resisted the urge to pat you on the head like he would do to his little sister. 

Within a few seconds, the blood was gone, and he received a nod in thanks. 

“What do you want.” 

Very blunt and curt, something Jinwoo doesn’t dislike. But, do you not like to talk to him or something? Did he do something wrong?

Jinwoo chose to push aside the doubt.

“I’m thinking of making a guild, and I want you to join.” There was silence in the air as he awaited your answer. 

“...maybe.” That was enough for Jinwoo. 

Once again, he shook your hand.

Then, he suddenly felt someone watching the two of you, and he turned around, only to see a reporter bowing happily before running away. 

Jinwoo was confused, until the next day, he saw the hunter news. 

It was the tiny you, beside him and the even more gigantic Beru. 

You really looked like a cat in the face of two giants. 

Jinwoo could already imagine the look of disgust on your face, the little scrunch of your nose and eye roll. He could also see you reading the news in the bed, and simply throwing your phone to the wall before going back to bed. 

“Oppa, do you also follow Hunter (Y/N) too? I love him! He's so strong but also so cute!” Jinah shoved her phone in front of him and he saw your fan page. 

“Mochi Cat”

Below were updates and threads, and even galleries with photos of you. 

“Oppa, I saw you were together with him too! Is he really that small compared to you?” 

Jinwoo thought back and with a little chuckle, he patted his little sister’s head. 

“Yea, he is.” 

Maybe he should invite you over sometime, Jinwoo had no doubts that his Mom would treat you like a child too.

That would be fun to watch you struggle and get annoyed.

 

“How does this happen?” 

“Don’t.” You looked completely dead inside when you showed up to the guild office, and sat on the other side of the couch from him.

“You are able to rip an orc and an ant with your bare heads but people think you’re cute when you do that?”

A sharp glare, but Jinwoo couldn’t be scared of you when you just looked like a grumpy cat.

“What if you changed your outfit?” Jinho suggested with stars in his eyes, for the past few days since you’ve joined, he had always tried to get you to change. 

“No.” With a flat rejection, he could only shrink back to his desk and sigh.

“It is one way to change the public opinion.”

“No. They’re uncomfortable.”

Jinwoo sighed, and unconsciously reached over and pat his head. Even when you move away and push his hand aside, he couldn’t help but tease you.

“You know, you might be more popular than me, ‘Mochi Cat’.”

“Shut up.” 

“Can we adopt him Mom?” 

“Only if he agrees-”

“No.” 

“But oppa! I wanted a cat before and-”

“Jinah, let’s listen to ‘Mochi Cat’.”

“Shut up.”

JInwoo laughed, why get a cat when you can get a cat in a person?

"You should meow for your fans."

Jinwoo could never forget the look of horror on your face, followed by a look of disgust.

"Is that what you're into?"

Jinwoo chose to only gave a little smile, and instead pat your head.

"Of course not."

"Then wipe that smirk off."

"Sure sure..."

"Sung Jinwoo..."

"Oh, scary."

Jinwoo's cheek had a red imprint for the rest of the day, giving everyone else a field day for pissing off the one and only, "Mochi Cat".

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

🎊 twst 4th year anni ABEMA stream 🎉

***TWST JP news + anniversary spoilers below the cut!***

The stream starts with Ace, Deuce, Jack, Ruggie, and Sebek's VAs replying to a bunch of quiz questions. I think Ace or Deuce responds with "810" when asked how many items there are on the Heartslabyul lounge's coffee table. Sebek's VA also has a hilarious answer when asked how many Draconians (wakasama fans) there are, he pulls out some super absurdly high number with tons of zeros in it.

There is then a Master Chef/Culinary Crucibles-type section where the VAs decorate their own cake for TWST's anniversary. It’s a team effort! Ace and Deuce put on the cream, Sebek added cookies on top, and Jack and Ruggie did the final decorations. It ended up looking pretty cute ^^ (Ace's VA is the one that added all the whipped cream peaks; it was mostly thanks to Ruggie's VA that the cake still looked aesthetically pleasing at the end.)

Actual game-related news time!!! The SR Grim card for the 4th anniversary is... drumroll please...!! 🥁Apprentice Chef Grim!!! ABGKSKVUkvuDSQEVUOFDFIHAFVA HE'S SO CUTE, HE EVEN HAS A LIL TUNA CAN CAKE 😭

For anniversary, there will be a series of free items given out if you log in during the event period (11th to 25th), which includes THREE 10-pull keys (released on the 11th, 15th, and 18th, respectively). You can receive up to 12 days' worth of freebies. There will be an anniversary banner as per usual; you can earn tokens by pulling on this and then trade them in for a SR magical key (50 tokens) and/or past event-limited SSRs (150 tokens), including past years' birthday cards (100 tokens). There will be a new "Event Recollection" feature which allows you to experience events that you may have missed getting the initial chance to play through yourself.

Mr. S's Mystery Shop will sell items from past events such as limited Groovy materials and spell upgrade materials. This is called the "Memory Shop".

You will be able to mark (multiple) parts of the story as your "favorite". This will be indicated with a pink heart icon.

Battles will have a new feature which allows you to save team compositions for them. Up to 25 compositions may be saved at a time. You can also pin your supports, so you no longer have to scroll to find a specific friend's character to borrow.

There will be 3 new item gachas added to the "Item Lotto" of the shop (for Crewel, Vargas, and Trein). Previously, there was only Sam's. You use a new type of medal (obtained by taking classes) to roll on the teachers' lottos, and can pull items related to what you'd typically earn in each of their classes.

Crewel's gacha may provide an herbal tea which can be used to boost Buddy Levels, including those for characters that are otherwise unable to take Alchemy classes. That means Crowley, Rollo, etc. are fair game. (Yes, you can force feed them tea to obtain FRIENDSHIP✨) The tea may also drop during Special Lessons or Alchemy class.

We finally get magical key conversion! On the summoning screen, you can turn 10 single pull keys into one 10-pull key (which guarantees at least 1 SR; single keys do not have this benefit).

The Guest Room will receive a second floor to decorate. This will be unlocked once you reach a Guest Room rank of 31.

The Guest Room rank cap will be increased from 30 to 40. Additionally, all properties of floor 1 appears to carry over to floor 2. This means the same comfort level and attributes will be present across both.

New BGMs will be added to Mr. S's Mystery Shop. There will also be new voice lines added to Alchemy, Flying, and the outfit selection screen. The official TWST soundtrack will be released on the 29th of May, though preorders are tentatively open now. It is 140+ tracks (149, to be exact!) across 4 discs and goes for 4620 yen (inclusive of tax; without tax the soundtrack is 4200 yen). Japanese retailers are offering different dorms' A5 sized holographic sticker sheets as bonuses for preordering.

That's it for now, mostly quality of life changes! There will most likely be a 4th year anniversary PV/animated short on the actual anniversary day (the 18th)!

[four-loose-screws]

Hi! I’ve seen people people say that Dimitri speaks in an informal rude manner in Japanese so him being super polite in English is weird changes his character a lot, but I’ve also seen people say the localization is just fine. Could you clear up please? Thank you!

This ask has been in my inbox forever, and I know other ENG/JP bilingual FE fans have weighed in on this topic before. But exploring the nuances of Japanese formal vs. casual speech is always super fun, so I want to share my own thoughts too. There's always a chance there will be more to learn with each new person's input on the same topic. Plus, I discovered some things even I didn't expect! So, I'll still offer everything I have to say!

First, I'll explain the full background this ask is referring to. Japanese has 2 major distinct speaking styles - casual and formal. I was taught to call the formal style "distal" - because it is more about respecting distance in social standing than being formal specifically. But formal is the more common term, so I tend to stick with saying formal most of the time.

The distinction between casual and formal is made with pronoun choice, word choice, and other factors as well, but the fastest way to differentiate the two is to look/ listen for the use of desu and masu at the end of someone's sentences. Formal uses them. Casual drops them. This concept is entirely foreign to English speakers!

Dimitri drops desu and masu most of the time. His "I pronoun" is also ore, and his "you pronoun" is omae - both casual, blunt, and masculine choices. But does speaking casually to most of the cast make him rude?

Short answer is... no, not at all! There's 2 major reasons for this.

Reason #1 - the rules for casual vs. formal speech are a bit different in reality vs. fiction:

Partially, Dimitri speaks casually because he is showing his personality. He's got all those traits most standard FE protagonists share - he's strong, straightforward, and wants to connect directly on a personal level with everyone he meets. He tries to convince several characters that they can speak casually with him, because he sees people as people, and doesn't want social status putting distance between them.

Fictional characters generally speak more in-line with their personality more often, rather than following the socially acceptable speaking rules of the real world. (Though don't get me wrong - casual real Japanese people will speak casually in more circumstances than the average Japanese person.) This is simply the style that Japanese writers largely choose. And I think it is one of the great benefits of Japanese - anyone can start to pick up on a character's personality archetype almost instantly, thanks to their speaking style!

Reason #2 - Dimitri is a prince, making him of high social rank:

Here's the second nuance to this - it is absolutely standard for a superior to talk to their subordinates in casual style.

In modern times, this is shown in the workplace. Bosses and those in other leadership positions will frequently speak casually with the staff in a lower-ranking position than them. The president of the office I now work at is Japanese, and he speaks very casually with me - I have to be formal in response though, because he's at the top!!

But in the past, this would have been a distinction made between lord/ royalty, and those beneath them. Which is the case that is relevant in Fire Emblem's setting.

Dimitri can also speak casually without coming off as rude, because he is one of the highest ranking people across all of Fodlan.

-

Okay, so that's the answer in broad strokes - but let's get a bit more nuanced, go down Dimitri's support partner list, and confirm whether or not he always speaks casually!

Group #1 - Dimitri and the other citizens of Faerghus (8 other Blue Lions + Gilbert)

Dimitri has a multi-layered relationship with all of the other 8 Blue Lions. They are citizens of the country he is a prince of, therefore he is ranked very highly in social standing above them. But they are also his friends, classmates, and later, war allies; placing them on the same social level in that regard. So the way they speak to him comes down to a little bit of column A - personality, and a little bit of column B - which aspect of their relationship with Dimitri they feel is the "main" one.

Gilbert is also here in this category, as another person from Faerghus.

Dedue: Dimitri speaks casually, Dedue speaks formally, as they have a lord/ servant relationship. Dimitri wants Dedue to be a very close friend to him though, and wants Dedue to speak casually with him - this is a major source of tension in their supports. In the end, being able to mutually speak casually with each other and be friends, is a place they may reach one day. With other characters, Dedue speaks casually.

Felix: As royalty above Felix's noble house, Dimitri speaks casually. Felix is Felix, so he speaks casually too. I imagine he sees Dimitri quite literally as more of a wild boar than a human being, much less royalty.

Ashe: Dimitri speaks casually, Ashe speaks formally. However, pretty much the whole point of their supports is Dimitri attempting to get Ashe to speak casually with him.. Ashe tries in earnest to switch, but in the end sticks with speaking formally, otherwise he feels too uncomfortable. His view of Dimitri as his prince is too strong for him to let go and speak casually.

Sylvain: Dimitri speaks casually, and Sylvain speaks casually more often, but actually switches to desu and masu more than once. When a relationship is "in-between" higher/lower social standing and friendship, it's not uncommon for at least one person to switch back and forth between casual and polite speech, depending on which side of the relationship they are appealing to more at the moment. This happens in real life too as people shift from strangers, coworkers, etc. to friends.

Mercedes: They both speak casually. In Mercedes' case, I think she's speaks more in-line with her personality rather than paying attention to social status.

Annette: Both speak casually, but Annette is well aware that there's something a little wrong with that - her father would never let her get away with it if he knew!

Ingrid: Dimitri speaks casually, Ingrid speaks formally. But I think Ingrid speaks formally with everyone.

Gilbert: As you can probably guess based on my comments in Dimitri and Annette's analysis, her father most certainly speaks formally with Dimitri! He is very formal and takes social heirarchy very seriously. Dimitri, as the prince above him in social status, speaks casually.

Group #2 - The other characters at the monastary:

Since the remaining characters are not from Faerghus, Dimitri is not their prince. They'll be more likely to view him through the lens of a different relationship than royalty/ subject.

Catherine is originally from Faerghus yes, but she has cut her ties from her homeland completely to serve Rhea, so she fits into this group now.

Raphael: Both speak casually. I think Raphael treats everyone like a life-long friend!! He at least attaches san or sensei (teacher) to the names of his instructors, but that's about it for formal language for him.

Marianne: Dimitri speaks casually. Marianne speaks formally, as she does with everyone. I think she even attaches san to everyone's name, conveying how much she keeps her distance from people, trying not to form close relationships.

Flayn: Dimitri speaks casually. Flayn speaks formally, as I think she does with everyone.

Hapi: Both speak casually. I think Hapi speaks casually with everyone.

Alois: Now *here's* where things get interesting! At this point, I really thought I would discover that Dimitri speaks casually with everyone. But alas, he does NOT! Dimitri speaks formally with Alois, while Alois speaks casually to him. Why? Well, while Dimitri is a prince, he's also a student at Garreg Mach (in Part 1 of course). In this way, he is below all Garreg Mach staff and professors in social standing. So it makes perfect sense that he'd speak formally and Alois would be casual in this case.

Catherine: Same situation as Dimitri and Alois - as someone who serves as an instructor at Garreg Mach, all students like Dimitri are below her in status at the monastary. So Dimitri speaks formally, and she speaks casually.

Byleth: I left Byleth for last, because while Byleth is a professor at the monastary... Dimitri speaks casually with them. I imagine this has more to do with Byleth being the self insert than anything. Everyone bonds to Byleth on a deep level faster than magnets stick together.

And that's all I can think of to say for now! This is a super fun example of how nuanced Japanese's casual vs. formal language can get, and showcases one of the many reasons why Japanese has such a high barrier of entry for anyone learning it - including young native speakers! You don't get all this desu and masu stuff, until finally you just do.

Let me know if I missed anything, or if anyone has any follow up comments to make!

I apologize it took me so long to respond to this one! Thank you anon, and all readers, for waiting! I hope it helped explain even more of the trickier nuances of Japanese.

[yurimother]

Fan Favorite Yuri Series 'Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl' Licensed in English; Omnibus Release September 2024

On February 14, Seven Seas Entertainment announced that it has licensed the popular Yuri romance manga Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl (Ikemen Girl to Hakoiri Musume). The manga is written by Mocchi Au Lait and illustrated by majoccoid.

The publisher describes the series:

When Okuma Satomi’s friend seeks her help wrangling guys for a crossdressing cafe, Satomi winds up with a boyfriend! Sort of. After asking her handsome and aloof classmate, Kanda Mizuki, to help out in the cafe, Mizuki agrees, but on one condition: the two of them must go on a date. Satomi eagerly agrees, delighted to have such a good-looking guy interested in her, but Mizuki realizes that Satomi has completely misunderstood something crucial: Mizuki is a girl! Will this case of mistaken identity blossom into something beautiful, or will the truth leave both girls brokenhearted?

Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl was originally serialized in Comic REX from September 2019 until its conclusion in October 2020. It was based on a work posted on Twitter before being picked up for serialization. Ichijinsha published two collected volumes of Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl in Japanese.

Despite its lack of an international release, the manga quickly became popular with English-speaking audiences and is highly ranked on cataloging websites such as MyAnimeList and Anime-Planet.

Creator Mocchi Au Lait is a pair known for their Yuri manga works, many of which have a shared world and lose connections. In addition to Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl, they have contributed to several anthologies, including Yuri Drill, Syrup (licensed by Seven Seas Entertainment), and the official Yuri Is My Job! Anthology. Many of their works are independently released online. Their other serialized works include Yamitsuki and the currently running adult comedy series Warui ga Watashi wa Yuri ja Nai (Sorry, I'm Not Yuri) from Kadokawa.

Illustrator majoccoid, also known by the circle name Haratama, has also contributed to several manga anthologies and is currently the illustrator of Shimesaba's romance manga series Tayutau Kemuri wa Tsukamenai, which is serialized in Comic HOWL.

The complete series of Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl will be released in English in September 2024 as a single omnibus under Seven Seas' GL label.

Source: Press Release, Seven Seas Website

[famousblueraincoatmp3]

weird fucking animals in the sea tier list

big fin squid. what in the actual fuck is this?

2. phronima. inspired the face hugger from alien

3. big red jellyfish (thats its scientific name....)

4. squid worm???????? wtf is this monstrosity against god? (i love it)

5. frilled shark....just why?

6. barrel eye fish. its cute i guess but it looks so sad like a renaissance painting:( hey little guy cheer up you have lots of fans x

7. chained cat shark so cool but why tf is it in our ocean

8. japanese spider crab (i love this freaking thing but even a fan like me has got to admit this looks like a dark souls boss you'll die to 500 times before looking up various elemental tactics on reddit and gamefaqs.

9. bristle worms. they are sturdy to me ♥

10. blobfish...shes not that weird to me the thing thats weird is that people apperently eat it??? but folks will eat anything i swear to god. leave it alone its just a weird guy!!!!!!!

11. goblin shark. presented with no further explination. shark evolution is so fucked man

12. sixgill shark. he's back and hes coming in hot. i love his goofy ass

13. whatever in gods green earths name this is (black swallower, shes soooo real)

14. is it a tier ranking without me bringing up 12 squids? i dont think so. this here's a vampire squid, miss, a fine specimen for sure

15. gulper eel. ???

[colourstreakgryffin]

Hii! Can we get a fic with how would it like to be if the reader was basically douma same personality appearence etc. With Alastor? I REALLY WANT TO SEE HOW IT WOULD GO.

Oh my fucking god. This Duo— it’s this duo and Discord with Alastor, I think would mesh well! Haha! Anyway! I am definitely trying this out, thank you, loves! Hope you enjoy!

Alastor- Rainbow Irises

Ah… a cannibalistic murderous cult has rolled into the Pride Ring. Alastor isn’t surprised when he hears over the new Overlord being the Eternal Paradise Cult leader. He’s heard worse

Though… her eyes are a mesmerising rainbow. A gorgeous, colourful, almost hypnotic swirl of multiple colours and the way she has presented herself to the Pride Ring… menacing yet elegant and cool-headed. Dressed like a fancy old-fashioned Japanese woman and wielding golden sharp fans

You’re an entire walking-talking red flag of a person. Speaking smooth and doting to everybody you meet but raising your fangs to their neck. You’re possibly even worse than Valentino. You trick everybody into thinking you’re polite and considerate and playful but you have a VERY ugly monster under those rainbow eyes

You have that charisma and friendliness Alastor uses regularly, coming off as upbeat and you greets all the Overlords politely but the proclaims you make… the way you eat other sinner demons with no problem and even brag about putting heads of decapitated men in pots. You have everybody in the room’s spines shivering in both disgust and intimidation at how you’re like

Alastor respects the way you establish yourself and getting his full respect is hard. You are intimidating, you are menacing, it’s a sign of how strong you actually are. The second strongest Overlord in Hell’s history(right behind Alastor). You regularly loom over Alastor and enjoy sweet-talking him

Alastor can recognise when a psychopath is talking so he never falls for your tricks nor your innocent act. You’re dangerous and twisted, specifically targeting and only eating men, hence you’re only-men member cult. He won’t let you even try take a finger off him

Alastor is basically our Shinobu, except Al doesn’t beat on us

Alastor doesn’t like you just touching him. You’ll reach out and touch him, solely to annoy him. He isn’t scared of you but he can tell why the other Overlords are so tense around you… you’re the most perfect cult leader, a inviting aura and a sensual voice that screams illusionary safety

Alastor has to hold his breath around you. When you’re angry, you turn ice cold and you don’t mind making the air too frozen for anybody to breathe in. So, he is quite careful with you. Juggling inbetween cold treatment and warm treatment, he feels like he is handling a spoiled brat when he talks to you

Alastor ignores the ‘gifts’ you make or get him. The lotus ice statues are wonderful but he knows what you’re trying to do… he may compliment your work but he won’t let you talk him into anything

But that doesn’t mean, Alastor doesn’t find your work nor your power impressive. He is very impressed and he rewards you for all you’ve done with your little cult and rising up to the rank to being the second strongest Overlord ever known in Hell. It’s a grand feat that he will clap to

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Aren’t you even a little bit worried about me, Lord Alastor~?”

“Darling. Kindly do not touch—“

“You don’t know how dreadfully worried I was. Since you all are cherished comrades of mine. I’d be heartbroken if I lost any of my comrades~”

Alastor finds your Japanese voice and language irresistible in a way, since it reflects your English and ‘nature’ very well but once again… he won’t fall for how often you say you like him. He knows people like you, he’s one of them. He’ll just commend what you’ve done as a Pride Ring Overlord

Alastor HATES the ‘Lord Alastor’ nickname you give him and always address him under… yeah. You give it to every other Overlord, he isn’t the only one who is called ‘Lord’ but it feels so condescending and in reality, it is…

“Silence, my dear. The adults are speaking… now, calm down that temper of yours. We don’t need anymore aircon in this room”

[vashtijoy]

Idk if you’ve talked about this before, but in the event where ren and akechi are playing that shooting game together there is a very funny interaction and my fellow shuake fans and I are unsure what it means.

In English, Akechi jokes that he’s practicing gunplay to take ren out. Clearly this could either be a murder joke or a date joke. In Spanish, he apparently uses a phrase that can only mean a date.

What does he say in japanese? Was it ambiguous there too or was it clearly a murder joke or date joke? Again, sorry if you already explained it lol

…also this is kinda awkward but was the usage of the term gunplay intentional or does it have multiple meanings and fanfic has just ruined me orrr…

Hello! I am so happy to be able to go over this with you. Many thanks to @platinumdream, @minkhollow42, @somethingpersonarelated and the r/spanish subreddit for verifying this one for me.

This line stands out because the Japanese and English (and also the Spanish) translations are all radically different—different enough that what we have here is a stellar example of "the Xerox effect".

Let's take a look.

the scene in japanese

Akechi 気付いた? そうだよ、いつか君も懐に忍ばせたこれで⋯ kizuita? sou da yo, itsuka kimi mo futokoro ni shinobaseta kore de... [lit. you noticed? that's right, some day <see below>...]

Let's take a quick look at the grammar of this line, which I think is dual-meaning in Japanese just as it was in English (and if any of this seems like bullshit please get in touch, as it never ends well when I try to produce sentences of my own):

Akechi does not finish this sentence—he's left off the verb. So, as often happens with him, his meaning is ambiguous. Let's take the obvious one first:

いつか君も懐に忍ばせたこれで【ある】 itsuka kimi mo futokoro ni shinobaseta kore de [aru] Some day you, too, will have one of these concealed in your pocket.

Short and sweet: "I carry one of these, concealed, and some day you will too". Note that there's nothing here about practicing, as there is in the English.

But there's another possible meaning here:

いつか君も懐に忍ばせたこれで【撃ってあげる】 itsuka kimi mo futokoro ni shinobaseta kore de [utte ageru] Some day I'll [shoot] you, too, with this thing concealed in my pocket.

WELP. Like I say, I'm not entirely sure, but I do think the strong likelihood is that this dual meaning exists in Japanese.

I should say I don't think there's necessarily a suggestion here that he carries an illegal gun (though since Naoto has one in P4, it's very possible)—I think it's a metaphorical pocket, his inventory in the Metaverse.

Though I don't think this is really what's going on, there are also a startling number of idioms with futokoro that suggest embracing....

but what is the futokoro?

Idiomatically speaking, 懐 futokoro often translates pretty cleanly as "pocket". But something else is going on: your futokoro is explicitly your breast pocket.

Originally, it was the flap in the front of your kimono where you tucked things away. And so it also appears in a lot of idioms relating to the bosom, or the heart. 懐に飛び込む futokoro ni tobikomu is to throw yourself into someone's arms. 懐に入る futokoro ni hairu, for instance, means to worm your way into someone's affections, or to win someone's confidence—sound familiar at all?

But there's something else going on, of course, with Akechi concealing a weapon in his breast pocket:

Yep. Here's the payoff for this line in rank 5. Akechi tucks that silencer away in his breast pocket—just like he told Joker he would. And then he laughs. So did he know at rank 5 that this was going to happen, or did he bring this up for some other reason? Well, you decide.

By the way, here's Joker's question about gunplay:

Joker 撃ち慣れてる? uchi nareteru? Are you used to gunplay?

The Japanese just means "Are you used to shooting guns?"—I'm not sure it has any of the more, er, fanfic connotations of the English "gunplay". @specterthief agrees there doesn't seem to be any innuendo to the Japanese line.

the scene in english

Akechi: Ah, you noticed? Well, I'll need as much practice as I can get if I'm going to take you out.

Let's look at what's happening here, because it happens very often. Like much of Akechi's dialogue, this line in rank 5 was originally a double entendre—it has a very obvious, and relatively innocuous, meaning, but if you squint, you can see Akechi is hinting at something far less innocuous.

Wordplay of this kind takes a lot of time, thought and skill to translate. So what happens in practice is that the translator has to choose one meaning to put front and centre. The English translator has decided, very reasonably, that Akechi's implied "I will kill you" is more important than the joke about the concealed weapon.

To be clear, this was probably the right call. I love the relative subtlety of the Japanese and the 11/20 callback, but it's important that people playing the game understand what's going on—even if, over here in blorboland, it's clear that He Would Not Fucking Say That.

the scene in spanish

Do sit down.

Akechi: ¿Te has dado cuenta? Bueno, tengo que practicar todo lo que pueda si quiero invitarte a salir.

Now, I need to be as up front as I can possibly be about the fact that I do not speak Spanish. But I know a lot of people who do, and they have responded with one voice:

...

"Ask you out"? "ASK YOU OUT"?????

This is what is meant by "the Xerox effect".

We start in Japanese, with the relatively subtle "I have a concealed weapon", which becomes "I'm going to shoot you with a concealed weapon" if you think about it a little more. Then, in English, we become more blatant, with "take you out" having the up front meaning that Akechi will shoot Joker; rather than being subtext, it's now the point of what he's saying. And it's introduced something new—the alternate alternate meaning, of "take you out [on a date]".

It is possible that the Japanese line has a third meaning, very similar to this reading of "take you out"—you would have to torture the context here to get dating from the English, in the same way you'd have to torture the Japanese to get embracing from it.

But there's no torture in the Spanish. Oh, no. Spanish Akechi, as they say, just fucking goes for it. and why the hell not.

but what happened here?

The Spanish localisation is an indirect translation, translated not from the Japanese original, but from the existing English translation. It retains any and all errors in the English script because of this. And when the Spanish translator looked at this line of Akechi's, they saw not the original Japanese dual meaning, the one the English translator saw, but the one the English translator introduced—the dual meanings of the English "take you out".

And the Spanish translator, again, had to choose which of Akechi's seeming dual meanings to keep. Should they keep the line about shooting Joker? Or should they keep the line about taking Joker on a date?

Just like photocopying a photocopy, detail and accuracy are progressively lost, and errors accumulate. Of course, these indirect translations are not without their positives—translating from English allows for a far wider range of translations to be done quicker and more cheaply. Without them, far fewer languages would see official translations at all.

Also, it's really funny and that Spanish translation is a gift.

revision history

click here for the latest version.

v1.1 (2024/01/11)—confirmed no innuendo on uchi nareteru.

v1.0 (2024/01/10)—first posted.

[monayen]

how about something sfw for a change? can you do a ranking of who’s best at cooking?

Cooking Headcannons

➷ Paring - Multi x Fem!Reader [Randal's Friends / Ranfren]

➷ CWs - very light mention of consuming blood and cannibalism. that’s about it !!

a/n - i feel like im a bit rusty at pure sfw stuff… but i will try for NNN ~_~ this isn’t a ranking, since a good chunk are either just bad or barely cook. mostly just hcs about food they like, what’d they’d make you, and habits etc. ratmen are excluded cus you know those boys scavenge rather than cook !!! also ignore any mistakes i wrote this really fast

Sebastian

While Sebastian did work at a pizza place for a bit before becoming Randal’s pet, it was just as a delivery boy

I like to think he was in the training process of learning how to make the food, but he got lost before he learned anything skillful. He does have half the recipe for garlic knots memorized though 

A personal hc is that his parents were semi-absent with him (which probably helped lead him to being in the adoption center in the first place), so he survived a lot on sandwiches and microwave meals since they were easy and available

He wasn’t a big fan of it then, but now he craves them a lot. His favorite were the microwaveable kraft dinner mac & cheese cups. Foods like that are a comfort for him, and he’ll love you forever if you manage to get some for him to eat

Luther doesn’t trust him in the kitchen, so even if Sebastian wanted to cook, he wouldn’t be allowed. Deep down, he doubts his cooking skills anyways

Randal

A terrible cook. He has no idea how to properly prepare a meal and his attempts often end in disaster

Randal doesn't understand the concept of recipes or following instructions. He just throws random ingredients together and hopes for the best. “How to Basic” levels of culinary skills

Despite his terrible cooking skills, Randal still insists on trying to make meals for people (or you) to try. Truly believes he's good and everyone else just can’t handle his exquisite tastes

Once, Randal tried to make surprise pancakes for breakfast. He used baking powder instead of baking soda and the pancakes turned out hard as rocks. He still ate them anyway, breaking a couple of his teeth in the process. Don’t worry, they grew back by supper

He used to try to cook at least a couple times a week, but Luther banned him after he 

somehow managed to set water on fire on the stove. Now he’s restricted to just the microwave. Which is alright, just remind him to add the water in his instant noodles before they explode

Randal will also eat almost anything if it's covered in enough sauce or condiments. He's been known to put ketchup on his cereal and maple syrup on his pizza. Swears by it, will probably make you try all his weird food combinations

Satoru

This little show off!

Cooks and bakes purely to give it away to you or Randal. He doesn’t even eat them himself, always insisting you try his new recipe

The reality is that he steals most of his ideas from cookbooks. While he has the skill to execute them, coming up with his own dishes and perfecting them is a bit beyond him—but that’s a secret he keeps to himself!

He’ll sit there, watching closely as you eat his carefully prepared food, studying your reactions and asking if it’s good, like a chef waiting for feedback

But he’s memorized what you like already, and he makes sure to tailor his dishes just for you, hoping to earn your praise when the flavors hit your tongue

Exceptional at chopping, so fast at it you worry he’ll cut a finger off or something if he’s not careful enough. A part of him doesn’t mind if you taste something that has a little bit of his blood in it…

Doesn’t exactly have a favorite meal or food, he likes whatever you like :) is a bit partial to Japanese cuisine though, especially sashimi

Nyon

Nyon's cooking skills are quite limited. As a catman, his preferences lean more towards raw meats and simple  foods. Or whatever Luther gives him

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t like a good home cooked meal, but if you put him in a kitchen with every ingredient and tool that could potentially make something avant-garde or delicious… he’d probably just end up making hard boiled eggs

He does have an odd skill of picking though. Pickled cucumbers, onions, beets, all in unlabeled, merky, mason jars. Has a goal to pickle everything that can be pickled, just to try

Keeps a stash of it in the pantry and munches on them when he gets high. Will share if you ask (he kinda wants you to, pickling takes practice!) 

Nyon has the stance that he’d much rather wash the dishes and put away the ingredients than actually prepare the food, as it’s a lot of effort and stress on his part that’d he’d rather avoid

Nyen

Really only ever cooks for himself. Not a fan of sharing and to be honest… you probably wouldn’t like what he makes anyways

Lots of slabs of undercooked chicken and beef, barely seasoned because “it doesn’t need that.” Protein buff, but not keen on eating beans… or eggs… or fish… Okay, usually just eats chicken to maintain his muscles

Unironically picky, doesn’t eat a lot of what isn’t what he usually eats. If you give him a plate of pasta or something, he’ll just stare at it like you handed him a severed cow head. Even Luther knows this, making sure he keeps the fridge stocked with Nyen favorite foods so he’s in the best condition to get through the day!

Does have a small sweet tooth, so you can coax him into baking if he’s in a good mood. His favorite are raspberry muffins :)

You still might have to do most of the work, but he’ll mix shit and keep track of the dessert in the oven for you. Don’t ask him for anything else—just hand him a muffin and clean up the mess, okay?

Luther

Quite the chef! 

He’s domestic, and even though Randal always begs him to get fast food to eat, he always prefers to make something at home

Uses “passed down” recipes. Passed down from who? Who knows. He keeps them all in a little old notebook, pages yellowed and worn out. The last ingredient in all the recipes is always “love ♡”

He’s also a big fan of those southern mom baking shows, especially during the holiday season, he’ll bake like a madman!

Likes nature, so he does have a small garden in the backyard of the house he’ll tend to when he has the time. Specializes in exotic vegetables you probably aren’t used to eating. Ask him how his kohlrabi harvest is going, he’s quite proud!

The type of humanoid to surprise you with your favorite meal after a long day. Makes enough for everyone, of course, but Luther puts in effort to see the smile on your face when he presents you with it at the dinner table

He does expect compliments after you eat any of his food, even if it’s something as simple as scrambled eggs. It means a lot to him, so don’t forget to do so. He might take it the wrong way if you don’t 

Luther swears up and down that he’d never eat a human. Cannibalism is wrong! But he did get very close to once… just to “expand his pallet”

[sanjipussyindulgence]

i doubt we're ever gonna get names for all the characters in fan letter, so i think we should come up with our own. ive seen a few fandoms give names to background characters before so fuck it lets do it here

here's some of my suggestions:

for everyone's favorite girl in the whole wide world, im thinking either lettie or mihana.

lettie is admittedly a bit on the nose... but also the king of ballywood kingdom who looks like abraham lincoln is named ham burger. so it wouldnt be out of place for one piece's naming conventions.

mihana has more of a thematic meaning to it. if japanese-names.info is to be trusted, then it can be spelled with the kanji for 'not yet' 'wave' and 'droplet'. since nami's name means ocean wave, i think that's a fitting name for someone who wants to follow in her footsteps.

hot marine brother #1 could be keiichi.

again, if japanese-names.info is right, then it can translate to 'older brother' and 'marketplace'. considering that two of the only things we know about him is that he's the older brother and a former grocer... well its the best i got.

matching his brother is syouichi.

it has the same character for 'marketplace' as keiichi, but also 'rise'. and since this guy won't shut up about rising up the ranks faster than his brother i think its an obvious fit. ik a lot of characters in one piece don't have japanese names but whatever.

anyway if anyone else has name ideas pleeeaaassseee reblog this or post them. these guys deserve names.

[project-sekai-facts]

no i think that other anon had a point, there was a regular constant nene-centric hate train that lasted basically daily until around curtain call that received multiple trending hash tags and a huge target was nene and rui's dynamic. they wrote all kinds of insane shit insinuating "rui is nene's slave" and that they "made up his backstory in RMD exclusively for nene." like it's a very real thing that a decent portion of japanese fans get super ship warry and misogynistic as hell about nene in general

it got so bad they sent violent threats directly to clpl's emails and sent hate to machico

oh. i see. i knew about the nenehime stuff and the rep she had for getting loads of 4*s and no reward cards etc and getting focus in mixed events even if they didn't have her as a card, but i didn't know the fandom was that bad about it. someone pointed out in the comments of the post yesterday that rui is a pretty popular yumejoshi target in japan (he ranked 1st or very high on multiple inter-fandom polls), so that probably factors in somewhere since a m/f ship gets in the way of x fem!reader. but yeah that makes more sense as to why clpl had held off giving them a cover for so long.

[ventique18]

This statistic is so interesting to me because of a few things.

(These "reasons" are purely my conjecture and may be right or wrong.)

All along I thought that Malleus was NOT popular in JP. Because a) He doesn't have many fanfics on Pixiv, and b) He doesn't really get voted highly in Yume, or Japanese xReader poll rankings. I've just come to a conclusion that he simply was not popular, but I somehow doubted that because his merch are ALWAYS sold out in Amazon JP and other stores. It's very rare to find Malleus items that aren't preorders. So I was thinking, Malleus JP fans are probably the silent majority-- those who don't really have time to create stuff, but are curious enough to search content through Google and has enough financial capability to hoard his merch: the working adult class. He is very popular with adult players.

He is very consistently popular in EN and was beaten by Riddle because of meta keywords like "How to beat Riddle twst" (Malleus does not have a boss battle early on), Riddle twst figure (Malleus does not have a scale figure yet), or Riddle twst cosplay (Riddle's just more pleasant to cosplay compared to Malleus tbh lol).

Malleus keywords are the horniest out of literally everyone. He's the face of twst's x Reader keywords both in EN and JP. Additionally, JP people have been searching for his specific body parts lmao. The others' popular keywords are pretty tame.

My marketing analysis from way before was correct. Malleus is the "honey trap" of the game; the character deliberately made to be appealing to hook the casual players quickly.

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

I'm always fascinated when someone at the club rants about "how they just invented T'au to cash on them anime weebs", completly oblivious to the time and culture of their creation. So T'au came out first in 2001, and were obviously conceptualized some years prior, which puts them into the late 90s in their original design. This is slowly hitting "the majority of the populance has no relevant internet access whatsoever" levels of "barbaric analog ages".

So imagine where GW sits in the late 90s - its a small studio somewhere in England barely coming to touch with the first elements of the internet, with the most dominant medium being television which... is not really about "exotic" shows from the other end of the world? Those get ported over when they have proven to be a hit in their own country mostly.

And without the internet as we know it today, the anime community just... did not exist. You have to understand that the whole concept of online anime culture centred around piracy, fansubs, fanart, and the creation of the term "weeabo" was a mid-to-late 00s thing, and it took almost another decade before "weeb" was somewhat reclaimed and no longer an online-slur.

There was a whole generation that grew up with (often horribly localized) japanese shows on TV (Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon) which came over with some delay to their release in Japan. By the time this generation came to congregate into online spaces and form any sort of fan-identity and culture, the T'au and their battlesuits had already been a design over a decade old.

"But wait isn't Gundam from the 70s"? Yes, that is totally correct. However, this is the one glaring mistake people make: you cannot compare modern day media content circulation around the globe to the analog ages. Those of us who remember these barbaric analog times know how it was: you just did not know stuff existed. If it was not in the newspaper or on the telly, it might as well not exist unless you knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy.

Sure, the Internet was slowly becoming a thing that found widespread use, but it would still take a while - not to mention the technical limitations. No streaming episodes. You start the download (if you can find someone who hosted the file of a series you had to know even existed first) somewhere around lunch, to hopefully get something to watch in the afternoon. Oh and also that blocked the household's phone-line and if the download cancelled for whatever reason then it was back to square one. Under such conditions, the online community we know today could simply not exist, as the alternative was importing stuff from the other end of the world for quite the money, or hoping a really shoddy localized VCR-tape ended up at your Blockbuster-equivalent.

Of course there was anime before that time, even those regarded absolute classics in the west, but those mostly achieved that rank over here in retrospective. When in the late 00s people wanted to watch stuff and had the ability to do so they shared what was considered "the classics" first (shared to the best of their ability with one episode cut into 5 parts on youtube with sometimes very questionable subtitles).

So even if we assume there was someone at GW in the 90s who was a total "proto-weeb" and Gudam-fan, there was literally no reason to "make knock-off Gundams" because the miniscule western wargaming audience SIMPLY DID NOT KNOW THE STUFF.

You can't make a marketing ploy to reference something your average consumers have never heard off. If anything, the creation of the T'au as a robotic-centred faction was inevitable: they needed a design that could hold their own in the setting, but Necrons hogged the full-robot niche, Imperials were weird cyborgs, Orks the "madman-scrap-tech", and Nids the "biotech". The only thing left here was "not full robot but also very clean and efficient" - and just like that, the Battlesuits and Drones were born.

It was only in later years when the Internet had come into full swing where they decided to go full-suit with releases such as the Riptide, but if we talk about the OG design of T'au and the first decade? Nothing to do with anime or "fishing for weebs". The fish would not be coming to that spot for almost a decade, and it would take a bit more before their numbers were plentyful enough to make it worth casting a line out.

[rainbowsillz]

𖤐 A MODERN READER THAT CAN'T TALK IN JAPANESE 𖤐

Warnings: Yandere behaviors, manipulation, possessiveness.

Note: I'd perish on my own accord if they send me here I swear. An experiment for a first post in kny fandom (･x･)/.

Featuring: Douma X Gender Neutral Reader.

i. gracious founder.

Summary: Many would be more than willing to have a chance of a life you were living. Not you, it was a nightmare..

The moon was overcast by darkness overhead.

[ DOUMA - 童磨 ]

“Truly a poor thing you are... why don't you come back with me? It's dangerous wandering out there at night.”

Obviously, you have to accept whatever he voiced at you (he was inquiring if you'd like to go with him).

And so you were at his abode...

You kept saying "Hello." Or "Goodbye." Which came off as quite baffling for him. Like you can't speak normally.

The demon was a bit too stunned to comment at first.

"Can you understand me?" He prompted you.

Then it made sense for him! You were a foreigner, weren't you? This had him watching you with a broad grin.

Now, now.. He can't have you being like that here. As someone once said. Education matters, does it not?

So — he'll be instructing you on learning the basics of the fundamentals. You looked sharp, this should be a cakewalk.

(Your ADHD self would throw hands at him if you could.)

Hmmm, he doesn't really can tell about how you got isekai'd into the universe of Kimetsu No Yaiba however. Luckily.

You'll take this secret to the grave with you.

Although he was drawn to you because of 'something.'

"Maybe it's fate!" He chirped like a puppy with you.

He enjoyed feeding you treats like you were his pet. Oh, it'd be a waste, right? So you better keep eating that.

You only were able to do easy phrases but he seemed delighted enough. You dreaded the day you'd end up in his belly because.. you weren't even a slayer to begin with.

He could break your neck if he wanted to.

His favoritism didn't help in the slightest. Other people weren't on friendly terms with you. You were miserable.

As the time flew by, the season changed.

Your Japanese was average to comprehend his message now. You hated to admit this... he wasn't an awful mentor....

You missed your home.

A firm arm draped around your shoulders, the humming gave away whose it was. It was Douma, no doubt about it.

You suspected it was a setup. He did it on 'purpose.'

It intrigued him when your breathing hitched at his arrival.

You backed yourself away and you asked a question.

"Why would I isolate you? Is my little fox mad?" He pouted.

His rows of teeth were unlike human's ones.

Was he supposed to be a cult leader? How repulsive.

"I loathe you." You spat in your second language.

His smile was faltering at your words, there was a shift in his expression as he snapped his hand fan close after that.

"I wonder what you stated about me." His tone was a jab.

He patted your head like you were nothing in his eyes. There was venom underneath and in his sentence. A disapproval.

This confirmed it, he was a sick bastard ಠ_ಠ.

Earning an ire from everyone was the last thing you needed.

Despite that he had no clue on your mother tongue.

It was also unbeknownst to you—

...Since The Upper Rank Two was fluent in English.

[beatsyncer]

thank you for the tag!!

these are only the songs i remember actively listening to after i heard them (because i naturally have forgotten the ones i didnt listen to entirely or more than once)

Xin Hua: either Honey² - Tiny Minim or Magic Melody - HoneyWorks

Luo Tianyi: step on your heart - Luna Safari

Yuezheng Ling: Scarlet Drop - Rosary

Kagamine Rin: either Delusional Symptomatic Cross-examination - Minus-P or Second World on the Palm - KulfiQ

Otomachi Una: Hate It! Hate It! Huge Ego! - KurageP (same song? same song!)

Natsuki Karin: i listened to her speech bank first and thus the first song i heard with her didnt leave as much of a mark on me, so i honestly have no idea 💔

Rana: Manic - *Luna

KAFU: Shikisai - ATOLS

Aoki Lapis: Winter Happy Night - Clean Tears

GUMI: A Fake Fake Psychotropic - Kairiki bear

+ bonus Hatsune Miku: Redial - livetune, it was airing on tv no less!

tagging: @honeycaat @pennerigate @yuiaka @micr0machine @vsingers @only4void @jofiah (if you feel like you can remember this!)

Vocaloid tag game!

Tagged by @yukarishoodie

Grab your ten favorite vocaloids and/or vocal synths and name the first song you heard for each of them!

I don't actually remember the first song I heard from most vocaloids, so this may not be 100% accurate, but here we go!

Hatsune Miku: world is mine by ryo

GUMI: I believe it was Matryoshka by hachi

Otomachi Una: Hate It! Hate It! Huge Ego! by KurageP

Yuzuki Yukari: Either Chururira Chururira Da Dda Dda! by KurageP or the girl locked below by cooroosii

CYBER DIVA: Either Kaleidoscope Haze by Project OverDoze or Exorcism by Creep-P

IA: Six Trillion Years And Overnight Story by kemu

flower: Again, I genuinely have no idea. Best guesses are: kyaami's cover of shake it! or Appetite Of A People-Pleaser by Ghost

Kaai Yuki: Calalini by Crusher-P

MAIKA: Yo Te Espero by AlexTrip Sands

MEIKO: I genuinely have no idea, but my best guess is kyaami's cover of The Snow White Princess Is

I'd like to tag @beatsyncer @suricata-uwu @hiyari8 @vocaloidcurated . No pressure! Also if anyone else wants to do this, feel free to do it and say I tagged you^^