#posts that sound relatively normal within fandom spaces but if you think too hard about it are actually a bit insane

[pseudophan]

meeting dan and phil is great and all but honestly even just seeing them irl is just as fun... idk just something about them being Right There is addicting i want to go to dnp events forever and ever and always

[skammovistarplus]

Culture and Translation - S01 E04

Slowly getting through these, although they’re out of order. I’ll post an index when I’m done with season 1. 🤦‍♂️

CLIP 1: A wild mom appears

22:30 is a perfectly cromulent time to have dinner in Spain, but ngl, I’d have it a bit earlier on a school night. Eva’s supposed to be at school at 8:30.

Eva is eating the Hacendado store-brand “natillas de vainilla” from Mercadona (vanilla custard). Lol can you imagine that Skam España gets enormous, and people from abroad make trips to Mercadona because of Skam España?

Pesada (“annoying”): Okay, I love “pesada” because it literally translates as “heavy,” but it actually means that someone is being annoying/nagging to the point where it feels tiring to put up with them. There’s an idiom in Spanish: “eres más pesado que una vaca en brazos” (you’re heavier than carrying a cow bridal-style) and I find the visual hilarious.

CLIP 2: Carrying their bags for some reason

This clip dropped at 11:39, but the characters are all carrying their bags and backpacks. You don’t take your backpack out for recess. You leave it in the classroom and take the valuable stuff with you. We don’t have lockers.

Ni de reojo (“Not even a glance”):  Looking at someone “de reojo” is looking at them from the corner of your eyes, but that’d have been too long.

Bien, normal (“Good, fine”): In Spain we often use “normal” to respond to small talk (how are you doing, what’s the weather like, how was dinner with your family, stuff like that). I went with fine, as I haven’t really heard “normal” being used that way in English.

CLIP 3: Are these our biology buddies?

I do like the juxtaposition of Eva telling Nora everything is fine, only for Eva to UNLOAD on Lucas the very next clip.

I can’t watch this clip without remembering that I did the Social Sciences track of Baccalaureate, and yet, I had to translate a fucking optical microscope exercise for Skam. This fucking show.

Es que es muy heavy, Eva (“You crossed a line, Eva”): I also really like the Spanish slang “heavy.” It comes from heavy metal, and it’s meant to bring to mind the intensity of the harder heavy metal bands. And hey! It shows up on Urban Dictionary with the same meaning: Serious and intense, but also too much. I think this might be outdated slang in the US?

Y yo estaba rayada (“And I was going crazy”): I’m pretty sure that to be “rayado” comes from “discos rayados,” i.e. skipping records. When you’re “rayado,” you are stuck on a specific thought or emotion to the point of obsession or being unable to move past it. It’s NOT “sounding like a broken record,” as in English, because being “rayado” is internal. You’re stuck on a continuous loop within your own mind. It comes up several times throughout the show, and I’m pretty sure I used a different expression each time because nothing felt quite right.  

Tú qué vas a decir (“Like you’d say anything different”): The literal translation would be, “what are you going to say.” However, that sounded like it could be a question, even a rhetorical one, when Eva is throwing Lucas’ words back in his face.

CLIP 4: Carrot cake

Carrot cake is a relatively new import in Spain. I think it’s trendy for coffee shops to have it on their menus now. Since it’s so recent, it was adopted with its English name, rather than the Spanish translation. This also applies to brownies, pancakes (which were actually called “tortitas” for a while, but now it’s become trendier to call them pancakes), muffins and cupcakes.

Aquí os quedáis (“I’m out”): Lucas actually says, “you stay here,” but the connotation is that Lucas is leaving because he’s Done with Eva and Jorge. Eva and Jorge can choose to stay or leave or do whatever, but Lucas is leaving and not taking Eva and/or Jorge with him.

Que aproveche, chicos (“Enjoy, you two”): Enjoy, as in enjoy your meal, of course! “Chicos” could be translated as “kids,” and when the teachers use it, I do translate it as kids. But the waitress is calling Eva and Jorge “chicos” just because they’re younger than her, not because she’s calling them children. You are either young enough to be “chicos” or old enough to be “señores.”

I mean, if Lucas is going to parent trap them, he could’ve at least paid for the cake. This entrapment with an unpaid bill is kinda rude!

CLIP 5: Nailing Viri

Eva has a palmera in her hand! See Wikipedia for info on this supposedly palm leaf-shaped pastry. The picture captioned “Pig’s ears” is closer to the one Eva has in this clip,

Un clavo saca otro clavo (“there are other fish in the sea”): The literal translation is, “a nail takes out other nail,” as in, the construction kind of nail. The connotations of both sayings are a little different. “There are other fish in the sea” has the connotation that you’ve been dumped, but there are plenty of people in the world for you to explore. “A nail takes out another nail” can mean you’ve been dumped or that your love is unrequited, and that the only way to get over it is to find someone new asap. I also found a debate in a translation forum over whether the nail in the idiom means a dick, as in, only by hopping on another dick you can get over the previous dick, and I can honestly say I have no idea if the idiom is about dicks or not.

Viri con la mierda (“Viri with the junk”): Viri actually says “Viri with the shit.” Haha. This girl squad is so gentle and well-spoken.

Quick note on grades: Grades can be 0 to 10, where 10 is the highest grade. You pass with a 5. Anything under 5 is a “failing” grade. 5 through 5.99 is a “passing” grade. 6 through 6.99 is a “good” grade. 7 through 8.99 is a “notable” grade. 9 through 10 is an “excellent” grade. Once you’re in university, you can also get an “honor roll” grade. Only one or two students can get that grade on a specific course. As far as I know, “honor roll” does not exist as a grade in Spanish primary schools, middle schools or high schools.

Encima se pica (“She goes and gets ticked off”): “Picar” literally translates to “to itch” or “to sting” (such as a bee or a wasp sting). If something “te pica” in the slang sense, it means something has offended you, and the speaker thinks it shouldn’t have. There’s a saying, “si te pica, te rascas,” which translates to, “if it itches, then scratch yourself.” It means that if the tea has been too hot, you don’t get to lash out, you need to deal with it. Cris is indignant that she’s trying to help Viri out by telling her the truth straight up, and Viri is offended, instead of grateful.

Una chica de cuarto (“A fourth grader”): Fourth grader as in being in her fourth year of Mandatory Secondary Education! A grade below the girl squad.

CLIP 6: Underage drinking  

I don’t know where that tunnel is, and I desperately want to know. On that note, I was so fucking chuffed when the clip came out. I really didn’t think they’d even attempt a street drinking scene. They obviously had to have it a secluded place in order to keep the shooting a secret, but it works.

Okay, so my personal take on the call to prayer scene is this. The clip dropped at 20:07 on the 6th of October, and Isha (the fifth prayer) happened at 19:08 at the very latest. (There are several methods of calculation.) So Amira probably did pray before meeting up with the girls. However, once she took in their initial reactions, Amira might’ve wanted to see exactly how badly the girls would take it, so she pushed a bit harder. Committing to praying five times a day might also be new for Amira, and so she might’ve wanted to test those waters. Ngl, asking her to do it somewhere where nobody sees Amira is with them is pretty fucking bad.

A buenos días (“Good morning”): Jorge is doing one of his voices here. I guess he sounds a little like a rural old man. And yes, he says “good morning” even though it’s visibly dark outside the tunnel, lol.

There’s a conversation happening below the camera line and a bit aways from the mics. It’s hard to catch all of it, But Lucas drops the bag with the ice cubes and tells people to help themselves. Dilan grabs ice cubes with his bare hands, and Hugo calls him out for being gross. Dilan asks Hugo why he minds. Tbf to Dilan, a botellón is usually a gross affair with drinks being spilled, vomit, and sometimes piss, so touching the ice with your hands is small potatoes in comparison, lol.

Verdad o atrevimiento (“Truth or Dare”): For the record, the version I played was called Beso, Verdad o Atrevimiento (Kiss, Truth or Dare). I guess there’s a larger English language influence that’s made it more authentic to drop the Kiss option from the name, if not from the dares themselves.

Va lanzada (“going for it”): Lucas says Cris is “lanzada,” which literally translates to being launched, or going as fast as something being launched. Such as a rocket, for instance.

Pa mala yo (“I’m the badass”): Cris is quoting the Aitana and Ana Guerra song Lo Malo, which comes up again later in the season. The gist of the quote is that Cris has no need for bad boys, when she can be a bad girl herself.

Le dio un amarillo (“she had a whitey”): In case you’ve never heard of “a whitey” before, you can find a detailed explanation on Urban Dictionary, which corresponds 1:1 with the Spanish expression.  I had to do a lot of research to find the best translation, so pls appreciate!

Fue muy borde contigo (“He was an ass to you”): “Borde” is yet another classic Spanish slang words. To be “borde” is to be rude for no reason. While it’s slang. It’s not a swear word, and it’s not rude to use. I went with “ass” as I figured it comes across as softer than “asshole.”

CLIP 7: Safety considerations are ignored

Both this clip and the clip before (which dropped at 20:07) generated a discussion in Spanish fandom spaces, specifically about when Spanish teens go out and what their curfews are. Lots of people felt Eva and her friends are going out too early and going back home early, as well. Part of the discussion has to do with something the remakes have shied away from: dropping clips at ungodly hours. As some might remember, during Isak’s season, clips would drop at 3 am because Isak was insomniac. So far, the remakes have held back on dropping clips during hours the target audience may not be awake to react to them, generate discussion on social media, etc.

Spanish people have a (not unearned) reputation of starting the party after dinner time (so 22:00-23:00) until dawn. That said, every teen has their own set of parents with their own set of rules. Personally, I didn’t have a curfew, but we were generally partied out by 4 am.

That said, if I’d been as wasted as Eva is in this clip, I’d have headed home at midnight, sure. Mostly ‘cause I’d have wanted to nap it out.

It makes me smile that Eva and Jorge are jay-walking. There’s no penalty for doing so in Spain, by the way. And especially in small towns or villages, where traffic is light and sidewalks not wide enough for more than one person, it is far more common for people to walk down the middle of the road, rather than using the sidewalks.

I don’t understand how Eva’s house works, by the way. That door makes it look like Eva lives in a detached house with a front yard, a fence and a gate. But we know from other clips that you can show up at Eva’s front door without needing to be let in through a gate. Also, there’s no window by the gate. You can definitely see a window by the door in the final clip.

My friends were shocked and appalled that Jorge would leave without ensuring Eva got inside her house safely, since she was so drunk and it’s past midnight. Grudges have been held.

The gagging noises at the 18:54 mark are poetic cinema.