#mother novel

[sundaywarning]

doodle dump of mother stuff from over the last couple of months

[demonpopstar]

Hello my friends…! I haven’t posted art in a while… I’ve been super burnt out again but I’m slowly getting my groove back. I don’t have a lot of MOTHER art to share, sadly. I’ve been drawing my ocs a lot… (I’m shy but I might share if anyone is interested.) BUT I have some Ken drawings! I love you Ken mother 1 novel ..

[topazlight]

I think probably my rarest pair of all is Cerue CogDis and Giegue’s biological mother from Saori Kumi’s MOTHER 1 novel, who is also named Giegue

[creepcroack]

Hewo.

I luv Mother saga :] ✿

[riverc1an]

obsessed with these panels <3

[lucidloving]

In the Blood— John Mayer // @lucidloving // @chaosinline on Instagram // Édouard Levé, Suicide // @futngina // @lucidloving

[xiximalette]

Cale in the new Chapter🔥🔥

Bro keeps getting finer every chapter no doubt

We also got Raon with his piggy bank!!

Best Father and Mother goes to Cale Henituse!!🥳🥳

[franciscolicari]

Preacher's Daughter if it was a gothic pulp fiction novel

illustration by me (fran_licari) @mothercain

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Francisco Licari (@fran_licari)

[gillmossyagate]

I could beeee a good motherrrrr

Chat they make me so ill :(

[childrenofcain-if]

As amazing C and MC's rivalry is, I can't stop thinking about how competitive Elias would be during events where parents had to attend, say something swimming related. I can imagine him yelling and being the biggest supporter while beefing with C's mom 🤣🤣😂

the natatorium’s air was sticky with chlorine and nervous energy, the sound of splashing water punctuated by the muffled echo of parents yelling over each other.

it smelled like bleach and snack bar nachos, a sensory combination that left you feeling vaguely ill. parents packed the bleachers, cramming into rows with territorial elbows and passive-aggressive blanket spreads, while the kids—most of them wiry and shivering—fidgeted in clusters by the pool, nervously adjusting their swim caps.

you sat on the bleachers, clutching the strap of your goggles, trying to tune out the background noise of overzealous parents and the faint, taut laughter of kids waiting for their turns. beside you, C was idly tapping their foot against the concrete, exuding the kind of nonchalant cool that set your teeth on edge.

“don’t think too hard about it,” C said, not looking at you. “overthinking leads to choking. you wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of all these people.”

“thanks for the pep talk,” you shot back, trying to ignore the way your stomach was twisting itself into knots.

“anytime,” C replied, smug and effortless.

it wasn’t fair how calm they were right now. even with their dark brown hair clinging to their forehead and a bruise-like shadow of exhaustion under their eyes, they looked quite nonchalant and uncaring. like they belonged here in a way you didn’t, even if you were the one with better times in practice.

a sharp voice cut through the din, rising above the clash of sound.

“let’s go, kiddo!”

your father. of course.

everyone else was sitting politely in their spots, clapping politely at the polite intervals. elias stood at the edge of the bleachers, one hand gripping the metal railing like he might vault over it at any second, the other cupped around his mouth to amplify his already too-loud voice.

“that’s my little shark!” he bellowed, even though you weren’t even in the water yet. you were still waiting for your event, seated with your teammates and trying to disappear into the bench. “you show them how it’s done! this pool’s your kingdom!”

“he looks like he’s going to start swimming himself,” C said, tilting their head toward the commotion.

“at least he cares,” you muttered, though you could feel your face heating up.

C opened their mouth to retort, but another voice joined the fray—low and scornful, with a faint french accent curling around the edges.

“perhaps if you let the professionals handle it, monsieur, your child wouldn’t be embarrassed before the race has even begun.”

your head snapped around in time to see her: louise lecomte, her presence as cutting as her cheekbones, arms crossed and expression caught between disdain and amusement. she stood out even in the chaotic crowd, her elegance unruffled despite the humid air and cacophony of shouting parents.

elias straightened immediately, his face twisting into a theatrical scowl. “my kid’s going to wipe the floor with the competition. don’t worry about us, ms. lecomte. maybe worry about yours keeping up.”

louise’s smile was razor-thin. “ah, yes. because nothing says good parenting like living vicariously through your child’s achievements.”

“better than showing up just to critique everyone else,” elias shot back, his voice rising enough to turn heads.

“i am here to support my child, not treat this event as a proxy war,” louise said smoothly, though her chalcedony green eyes flashed.

you sank lower on the bleachers, wishing you could evaporate into the chlorine-soaked air. beside you, C snorted. “your dad’s really going for it, huh?”

“shut up,” you hissed, yanking your goggles over your head.

“he’s not wrong, though,” C continued, their voice maddeningly even. “i’m probably not going to place. swimming has never really been my thing.”

“then why are you even here?”

they shrugged, leaning back and stretching their arms over the bench. “extra credits.”

you could barely suppress your eye roll. honestly, you weren’t even surprised at their answer.

still, they weren’t the one with their father breathing down their neck like some vicarious olympian, shouting encouragement loud enough to drown out the starter’s whistle.

“first heat up!” the announcer called, and you rose to your feet, every muscle in your body taut with tension.

***

the water was a sanctuary and a battlefield. the moment you dove in, the noise from the stands dissolved into a muffled roar, your world narrowing to the lane lines and the rhythm of your strokes.

kick, pull, breathe. over and over, until the rest of it fell away—the pressure, the crowd, the looming figure of your father yelling incoherently.

you swam like something primal, something desperate. when you hit the wall at the end, your lungs burning, you looked up at the scoreboard and saw your name in gold.

***

elias’s cheer was deafening, his voice cutting through the applause. he was practically leaping over the railings, shouting your name like it was a victory chant. you wanted to be proud—you were proud—but mostly you just wanted him to sit down.

C finished a few heats later, their time decent but not medal-worthy. they climbed out of the pool without much ceremony, shrugging a towel over their shoulders like they hadn’t just faced a crowd of hundreds.

“congrats,” they said to you, their voice light but edged with something unreadable.

“thanks,” you replied, unsure if you were being mocked or not.

***

by the time you were leaving the building, the crowd thinning as families trickled out into the cold evening, louise intercepted you and your father. she was still impeccably put together, her scarf draped artfully around her neck, her balenciaga coat fitting her completely.

“congratulations,” she said, her tone warm but her eyes fixed on elias. “you must be so proud, monsieur. though i suppose modesty was never your strong suit.”

elias bristled immediately. “some of us don’t need to be modest when our kids win gold, ms. lecomte.”

you wanted to sink into the floor.

louise laughed lightly, the kind of laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “oh, elias. always a little too loud. it’s a good thing that your kid clearly inherited their good traits from their mother.”

she turned to you then, her gaze softening slightly. “well done,” she said, and for a moment, her smile felt real.

“thank you,” you mumbled, glancing at C, who was leaning against the wall, watching the exchange with visible annoyance.

“come on, C,” louise said, tossing her scarf over her shoulder. “we’ve had enough of this circus.”

“yeah, yeah, maman,” C replied, sauntering past you with an infuriatingly smug expression. they stuck their tongue out at you as they passed.

before you could react, they were gone, trailing behind louise like a shadow.

elias huffed beside you, crossing his arms. “unbelievable woman.”

“you’re both ridiculous,” you muttered, already walking ahead. “i was beginning to wonder who were the middle schoolers and who were the adults.”

while elias huffed playfully, there was a flicker of warmth in your chest that you couldn’t ignore. as mortifying as he was, as obnoxious as his volume and his competitive streak could be, there was no denying it: your father loved you loudly, shamelessly, with his whole being.

and maybe, as you let him ruffle your hair despite your indignant protests, that wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

[sundaywarning]

do you guys see my vision

[demonpopstar]

any MOTHER/Earthbound Beginnings novel readers? or perhaps even... novel LIKERS?

Ken is a shithead, so hateful. It's funny. I love him honestly.

[nonexistentirl]

Every single battle in LCF has been nothing but iconic. But the battle of the Gorge of Death has a special place in not just mine but all of our hearts because of the way Cale went around the battlefield carrying Raon bundled up in blankets in his shaking arms.

[rlaehrwk21]

they should invent a kind of love that does not require sacrifice

[mxtxfanatic]

While flipping through mdzs to verify some stray thoughts of mine, I happened to fall into a translation discrepancy that I feel really, really emphasizes how important it is to have a proper grasp on the language you are translating before translating for a public audience.

Now before we get too deep into this, I want to reiterate that I am someone who does not understand Mandarin in any form but has been reading translations (both by humans and machines) for a few years now. However, because I have been reading translations that tend to follow the Mandarin more closely in grammar and because I haven't shied away from reading machine-made or bad human translations, I have noticed some places where mistranslations from Mandarin to English are common: pronouns, verb-subject matching, negatives, prepositions, and conjunctions. For this post, we will be focusing on the latter two.

In the lead-up to the Wen invasion of Lotus Pier, we are given a scene where Madam Yu whips Wei Wuxian, and in this scene, we are given a glimpse as to Madam Yu's average punishments towards the young ward.

While Madam Yu always pelted him with hostile words, she’d never really hit him hard before—two or three lashes at most, or being made to kneel or confined indoors, and it never took Jiang Fengmian long to release him from that.

—Vol. 3, Chapt. 12: Sandu: The Three Poisons, 7seas

In the past, although Madam Yu had always come at him with harsh words, she had never truly been cruel to him. The most that he’d been through were two or three strikes and being grounded. He’d also be let out by Jiang FengMian soon later.

—Chapt. 57: Poisons, exr

Reading these back-to-back, it should be very clear that though the same section is being translated from the same exact source, these translations do not say the same thing. The official stresses that Madam Yu had never hit Wei Wuxian "that hard" before, as well as saying that his punishments were a few lashes OR being made to kneel OR being confined, three separate punishments never taken together according to this diction. The exr translation, however, states that Madam Yu had "never truly been cruel to him" (emphasis mine) and that him being whipped was in addition to being confined. The emphasis on the strength of her lashings is absent, but an emphasis on the intent behind her actions—that she never meant to be honestly cruel to her ward—is established in its stead. (While this section as translated by exr does not mention kneeling, later scenes reflecting on Wei Wuxian's childhood in Lotus Pier do.)

Both of these translations... are wrong.

If we give exr the benefit of the doubt by virtue of being the original completed English translation of mdzs, then the official 7seas release should automatically raise red flags for the ways it seems to directly contradict the narrative that has existed for a few years before the novel was licensed. It doesn't help that the official has been riddled with many mistranslations and omissions from the very first volume, lowering any credibility it would otherwise have to stand on. But if we were to examine the rest of the exr translation, then the emphasis on Madam Yu's intent also rings false given the fact that we are told over and over again in this same translation that 1) Madam Yu is, in fact, unnecessarily, illogically, and erratically mean-spirited and cruel, and 2) Wei Wuxian knows this even at this time in his life (shoutout to the Lotus Pod Seeds extra) and understands her actions as targeted cruelty. What does the actual text say, then?

Although Madam Yu always spoke ill of him before, her hand had never been this viciously cruel. At most, she whipped him two or three times and ordered him to kneel down and be confined to his room, and he would be released by Jiang Fengmian sometime later.

—@jiangwanyinscatmom (emphasis mine)

Madam Yu has never been "as cruel" as in that moment when whipping Wei Wuxian, because normally she only whips him 2-3 times. She would whip him a few times and send him to the ancestral hall to kneel and be in confinement, which matches up to the memories that Wei Wuxian reflects on in other parts of the novel. This translation gets rid of the character inconsistencies that the other two translations create. So how did we get here? Remember how I pointed out those common Mandarin-to-English translation mistakes? Well, both the exr and 7seas translations fall into the trap of confusing conjunctions and prepositions. That's how we get a list of punishments rather than an order of events for a singular punishment type. That's how we get "not truly cruel" instead of "not as cruel." That's how we get these sections contradicting what we know about Madam Yu's personality and behavior from the rest of the novel through those two translations. Unfortunately, both translation teams just happened to flub in the same area in slightly different ways, and while I'm willing to give a multi-lingual grade-school student translating in their spare time the benefit of the doubt, a paid translator with a translation team hired by a professional publishing house should have better quality control than a spare-time hobbyist.

Also, just in case anyone wants more proof on what mxtx meant for us to take away about Madam Yu's treatment of Wei Wuxian from this scene, it was also apparently so important to mxtx for readers to know that Madam Yu was truly cruel to Wei Wuxian during his childhood that the act of her routinely whipping him whenever he was in her presence was something that was added into the revised mdzs. It was not in the original unedited version of the novel.

In the past, although Lady Yu always insulted or patronized him, she never laid a hand on him. At worst, she’d make him kneel for prolonged periods of time, but he’d always get bailed out by Jiang FengMian after a while.

—Chapt. 57. Act 12: Sandu/Three Poisons, Part 2, qinghe-nie

[k-l-ng]

Hey so how does it feel to be reminded that Wangxian being Lan Sizhui's fathers and doting on him is purely fandom's wishful thinking ?

That by the end of the novel and in the extras Sizhui would only call Wei Wuxian 'Senior Wei' and Lan Wangji 'Hanguang-Jun' ?

That Sizhui wouldn't dare to act improperly in front of Lan Wangji, much less familiarly ?

That Lan Wangji would only be affectionate to Wei Wuxian, not Sizhui ?

That Sizhui using Yunmeng Jiang sect's moves is, in Lan Wangji's opinion, inappropriate and deserving of punishment ?

Because I need comfort and lots of fanfics to forget what I just read in the extra : Intrusion (Part 3).