#relevant to their interactions maybe

[y-rhywbeth2]

Anyway, key points about Bane in Undead, since talking about Thay brought it into my brain:

You can summon gods, much like you can summon any outsider. It's just difficult and even more dangerous.

Bane's divine aura is one of 'sudden sense of overwhelming wrongness and malice.' It also blots out the light of the sun and moon, and presumably the sun, too.

Bane respects practically suicidal levels boldness in those who would solicit his power and aid; just make sure your hubris is entertaining him. If you can best him, just a little, then he will respect that. Laugh at your audacity. Maybe agree to a bargain. And also backhand you with his gauntleted hand for your presumption.

The Witch-king of Angmar look is in play, complete with a comparison to spectral undead:

His form was murky, but Szass Tam could make out dark armor, the infamous jewelled gauntlet, and the glint of eyes. On first inspection, the Lord of Darkness appeared no more terrible than some of the spectres Szass Tam had commanded in his time. Yet an aura of vast power and cruel intelligence emanated from him, and the lich felt a sudden urge to abase himself. [...] Bane sneered, although how Szass Tam knew that, he couldn't say,for he couldn't make out a twist of lip in the smudge of shadow that was the deity's face.

Bane learned what an indoor voice was between the Time of Troubles and the Spellplague. Bake him a cake to celebrate. Do we even have enough black icing for that?

His voice is very deep, and pleasantly musical, in an extremely threatening way that makes people instinctually want to start begging for mercy and might make your ears start bleeding. His laughter is also 'musical.'

I swear between his 'mellifluous' voice, Fzoul still mourning him three years later and getting mocked by Mask and told to 'move on' in Prince of Lies, and The Kelemvor Scene in the Avatar Series... What is it about Bane? What is it about the authors who write him?

He has, maybe, a minuscule iota of appreciation for his followers. At least compared to everyone else:

"How dare you summon me?" said the god. His bass voice was soft and mellifluous, but some hidden undertone pained the ears. "I invited you," Szass Tam replied, "by sacrificing twenty men and women in the prime of their lives, twenty accomplished necromancers I can ill spare, and one of Thay's wealthiest and most powerful nobles." Bane sneered, although how Szass Tam knew that, he couldn't say, for he couldn't make out a twist of lip in the smudge of shadow that was the deity's face. "Say, rather, twenty slaves, twenty charlatans whose magic had largely forsaken them, and a half-witted, cowardly toady." "That is another way of looking at it, but my perspective is as valid as yours. I tendered the gift at a moment when I had every reason to fear the magic would wriggle out of my grip and destroy me. I hoped that even a god would appreciate such a compliment." "I might," said Bane, "if it came from one of my worshipers, but that you have never been."

[cosmicredcadet]

Sometimes...characters being in a romantic relationship is worse.

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[project-sekai-facts]

How are we feeling about ensekai’s emu3 translation!!! (I’m mad)

(if you remember the 3 whole posts i made when asahi got de-gayed on EN you'll know i am mad too and that this is probably going to get long)

i don't like to be too cynical but it was so obvious that they were going to change that line, i had a feeling since the event first released on JP and after the incident with Asahi where I went through and tracked down multiple other examples of EN removing queer subtext it became clear to me that in no way shape or form was "emu-chan really loves nene-chan" making it to EN without getting changed. what i didn't expect was them changing Nene's line after Luka's comment, which actually makes this whole situation far worse than many of their other instances of toning down queer subtext.

for anyone who isn't aware of what happened, in chapter 5 of the current Emu event, there's a scene where Nene, Rui and the Virtual Singers are talking about what would cheer Emu up. The vsingers all talk about how much Emu loves spending time with Nene, leading to the following exchange

If you look for them, any fan TL of this scene will be something similar to this:

Luka: ...Fufu. Emu-chan really loves Nene-chan, doesn't she? Nene: Th-that's nothing special...

EN's official translation is this:

So what's the issue? I'll start with Luka's part. In the original text, she uses the word daisuki, which can mean to "like a lot" or "love". It's a word you will see frequently in the idol/idol-adjacent genre of games, due to its ambiguity in that it can be read as either platonic or romantic when used towards a person, and often will be used in ambiguous situations so that it's harder to confirm the writers' intentions either way. so here, fans of the emu/nene ship could view the fact that emu loves spending her time with nene as more on the romantic side, but people who don't like the ship could view it as platonic and move on.

while they didn't translate daisuki directly, Luka's line still works, and still contains the ambiguity that works as ship tease in the original text. it's a perfectly fine localisation that still conveys the original intent. despite that, there is something to be said about EN's consistent refusal to translate daisuki as love in most instances when it's not used on An/Kohane (but then again, EN has literally teased An/Kohane on their twitter account so is it all that surprising?).

Here's some examples:

Aibou no koto ga daisuki de / he loves his partner -> he cares about his partner very much (The Power of Unity chapter 7 when Kaito is comparing Arata to Akito and Toya)

HARUKA-CHAN, DAISUKI DAYOOOO!!! / HARUKA-CHAN, I LOOOOOVEEE YOU!!! -> You're the best!!! (Dear Me, As I Was Back Then chapter 4 when minori is at an ASRUN concert. this one isn't actually that great of a localisation)

Honachan no koto daisuki dakara. Kore de iinda yo. / I love Honachan, so this is fine. -> I want what's best for her. And this is it. (Leo/need main story chapter 14 after Saki tells Honami she won't bother her anymore)

Minna daisuki de - taisetsuna tomodachi na no / I love them all - they're my dearest friends -> They're all amazing, and very dear to me. (Leo/need main story chapter 17. this isn't good either)

What's particularly amusing about that last one is that there's a second official translation for it that I assume was done by JP staff (since EN never promoted doing the Journey to Bloom subs like they did back when they provided subs for Petit SEKAI) that actually keeps the word daisuki as love.

Yeah. I love all my friends - and they mean the world to me.

It's a better localisation than the official EN team one.

Questionable localisation choices aside, Luka's line is fine and is actually in line with the original. The issue with this localisation very much lies with Nene's part, because that is an entirely new line.

In the original text, Nene's "that's just normal" or "that's nothing special" or however you choose to TL it, is meant to be her questioning Luka's statement, since all the things that the other vsingers said that Emu liked were pretty normal things like going shopping and playing video games with nene. To Nene, these things are normal activities for them to do together, so she gets embarrassed by the fact that Luka concludes from that information that Emu loves Nene. When I dissect it like that I think you can really tell what the writers were going for here lol.

"That's just us being friends" does still convey the idea that Nene thinks these activities aren't anything out of the ordinary and she isn't sure why the vsingers are picking these out as some of Emu's favorite things to do, but it's very different from the original line. "But those are just normal things we do together" is something I just came up with on the spot, but it's a lot closer to the original text and still conveys the same meaning. The fact they changed the line to "that's just us being friends" is, honestly, not even subtle that they're covering up queer subtext. The original scene was very clearly written in as ship tease, and EN mentioning "friends" for no reason, especially since the word nor anything close to it was not used in the original, is instantly a red flag because it's like the go-to for queerbaiting and censorship. This was intentional. There was no need for them to specify that the relationship is platonic, Luka's part is ambiguous for a reason so that fans can view it how they like.

Just to top all this off, here's Rin's original line just before that Luka+Nene interaction:

Oh, and! And! She said that playing games with Nene-chan is also super fun!

And here's Rin's line from the official EN translation:

That's not the same thing, but even more weirdly, the incorrect part (super fun->really loves) is a correct translation for the part changed in Luka's line. So, they can do it, they are willing to say "really loves", just not in the right places. Maybe because Rin's part is less personal than Luka's part? It's strange actually, this isn't the first time they've done this either. Off the top of my head I can think of an example from Shiho's Varied Kindness 2* story where they translated the word "suki" as really loves, despite that being much stronger than the original word used (and the fact that daisuki is used a lot in the Leo/need stories and it's incredibly rare if not entirely unknown for them to translate it correctly).

It's not subtle that they're trying to remove implications of the characters possibly being queer, they did it in curtain call and they did it in walk on and on, and multiple times before then too. And considering some of the content in this year's events and the amount of times they say daisuki alone, it's gonna keep happening. honestly i hate the fact that i keep trying to justify the translations in these posts. these translations are intentional. what happened in the curtain call translation back in october says enough. when a character who uses explicitly romantic language towards another guy passes as a straight character in the translation you know they're doing it on purpose.

oh and once again, it's only the EN server that has this issue. The scene in question was translated almost word-for-word on the TW and KR servers.

read fan translations. they're better than what EN gives us and people put a lot of effort into them.

[cepheusgalaxy]

look guys i very strongly disagree with the "trans men hold privilege over trans women" point of view and i'm finally able to articulate why:

I think trans men don't hold privilege over trans women, because privilege is kind of a consistent thing.

Like, bear with me: I'm an abled person. I have privilege in relation to disabled people. Because, if me and a disabled person are in a Situation where this distinction is relevant in some way...I'm literally never gonna come out with the worst hand. Never. No matter what the situation is. This is a consistent fact.

Now, when we talk about different transgender identities, I think this gets more shady, because the "who has privilege in relation to who" is a relative statement. One example I saw of people explaining why in their view trans man have privilege over trans women is kind of like this: Imagine there are two passing and stealth trans people, a trans man and a trans woman, in a workplace. Then, it comes a coworker, being blatanly misogynist. Regardless of their views on trans people, in this situation, the trans woman is gonna get the worst of it, in relation to the trans man, because he will be viewed as a man.

It makes sense, and I don't think this hypothetical situation is inaccurate or anything, but I'd also like to point out why it doesn't work as a good point to why transmascs have privilege over transfems. Imagine we change about any variable in this situation. Let's say the trans woman is closeted as a guy, and the trans man is openly transgender. The misogynist coworker then would very much target the trans man in their points, especially if they are particularly transphobic. Now imagine both of them are out and openly trans, with the bonus that now both the man and the woman are gnc. Depending on other specifics, the misoginyst coworker might be bigoted to just one or both of them.

Like, do you see? In different situations, the different trans people have the worst hand. So that doesn't mean that because of the first case, trans men have it generally better. Because there are many kinds of trans men, and simply not all of them have privilege over trans women. In some cases, they might even have it worse precisely because they are trans man. So the privilege the trans man in the first example has is not a consistent thing over trans man! Maybe it's common, I don't know, but when we compare it with someone who has real privilege, like me, an abled person, I ain't ever encounter myself in a situation where I'm having it worse because I am abled in comparison to someone who is disabled.

That's why I think trans woman and trans men simply don't hold privilege over one another, simply because it varies. It depends on who the trans men and women are, it depends in what situation they are in, it depends on the people around them, it depends of so much!!! So saying that trans men have privilege over trans women sounds simply surreal!

I think that, also, the different patterns of the situations in which trans woman have it worse are important to be discussed, and that's why we have the word Transmisoginy, to discuss these issues pertinent to the nuanced oppression trans woman face (and on a similar note, that's why it's also important to have fucking words like Transmisogynoir, because a black trans woman's Situations will be different from a white trans woman's Situations and it's important to to recognize that). THAT's why I also think that we need words like Exorsexism and Transandrophobia, to identify the patterns of situations where trans men have it bad precisely because they are trans men and not something else or because nonbinary people have it bad precisely because they are nonbinary.

SO, in short, my opinion on the "trans man have it generally better than trans woman and that's why they have privilege" debate is that trans man don't generally have it better than trans woman, but some trans man in specific situations have it significantly better than trans woman and that in other situations trans woman have it significantly better than trans man and that is basically a case-to-case scenario and that's also why we need the specific words for different shapes and faces of transphobia to better understand these cases and why x happens with y at z situation. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[katoska]

"Proceed with caution as sandworms can be extremely dangerous, for both the Living and the Dead. If a Deceased Soul is eaten by a Sandworm, they will still remain in the Afterlife. The same applies to the Living, they must live in the Afterlive as a million tiny particles."

[senblades]

I don’t remember if it ever came up, but now that Akechi has his memories of the last timeline back, did he have Confidants then too?

hmm.... i think i kept meaning to bring it up, but since shuake are in divorce mode and Ren's the only one who would know to ask, it keeps slipping me by

and in all likelihood it will keep slipping me by, so I'll just provide an answer here:

ehhhh yes and no? I would say that he DID unlock the Justice confidant, smiled very brightly and thought "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck" but i'm going to pull this out of my ass right now and say that it didn't happen at the TV studio like it did for Ren, but rather after their first game of billiards, since that would be the tipping point for Akechi having genuine interest in him beyond just "that's the guy that's so fucking dumb he announced his criminal activity in a hallway"

of course, this timeline the Justice arcanae activated at the same time, both because of the established precedent of Sumire and the things she'd spilled to Akechi, but also because of last timeline Justice Confidant Fuckery, as it was wont to do in early fftsr.

I keep going back and forth on whether he would have unlocked the Moon or the Devil in the first timeline. I definitely think that Akechi would have had far less interaction with the Velvet Room, to the point where they stopped bothering him at all, maybe even the entire year, since he was on-track to play his role perfectly. This time, though; even though Yaldy wasn't entirely in the know at first, he still noticed that somthing was up with time. Plus, his chosen champion kept making friends and that was a real pain in the ass.

Hm okay actually i'm going to make a call about the Devil/Moon situation. Since i've established confidants as "connections that will change fate (for better or worse)" I'll say that Akechi did get the Devil, but skipped Moon. The OG timeline was a very bleak place for Akechi HAHAHA.

He definitely was Not Thrilled by this outcome, and put all his energy into ignoring it was happening. He honestly probably thought he was hallucinating, since the Velvet Room never confronted him on it lmao.

annnnd that's it! I really did mean to bring it up at some point, but, alas. Maybe one day Ren will get curious. fhsdjkdf i remember that Sumire and Haru know about the arcana and that Akechi has them, but I can't remember for the life of me if Probably Sumire shared that information with Ren. I'll have to check

ty for the ask!

[quirinah]

intuition

[bardace]

put these goobers in @butterscotch-goat ‘s story, escapism!!! I was actually planning on doing this before awbtl because it’s funny to me that charles and forts look so similar while having WILDY different personalities, but I couldn’t think of what powers they’d have or if they had any at all. I had a lot of fun with this!! y’all have cool worlds!!!!

[hibernating-stag]

I FORGOT THAT THE NEXT GUILTY GEAR X2 CHARACTER STORY MODE I NEEDED TO WATCH WAS I-NO…

I abandoned my girl I’m a fake fan…

[arttsuka]

.

[britishdisasters]

.

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

like I do feel bad to not be happy about something that a lot of people are happy about but almost every summer servant being lb6 AND the anniversary servant being a summer servant connected to lb6 is just. A lot. Like I’m glad that you like aesc and she works with her already existing narrative but putting a summer servant (bc she is, Morgan shows up in a swimsuit and her alignment changes to lawful summer in third ascension) uo as the anniversary servant is just. It feels really weird to me and i don’t like it. Even pan human history Morgan would’ve felt more suited to the slot than a summer unit.

[darcyolsson]

truly did not expect to come out of my tmi reread a hardcore jimon but i should have known that the second i started ironically shipping them it was over for me

[risingsunresistance]

damn i kinda dont like it here anymore

[anglerflsh]

your blog is actually like an anglerfish because you come for the pretty light (piece of media you enjoy) and then you get eaten (insane text posts that covince you to stay instantly) then suddenly you've been following this fish (blog) for years

Glad to know I live up to my name