#through someone's headcanons/characterization) but how much scrutiny is too much? when do we get to remember that fandom is a place to

[autisticlancemcclain]

Could you explain your position on Shallura? Since Allura was established as a teenager when she started dating Lance and Shiro was very clearly an adult. I can understand the bi shiro headcannon but the shallura thing worries me

i am going to remind yall that i have been in this fandom since 2016. and in the early seasons, allura was not established as a teenager. in fact she was coded as older, as closer to shiro's age -- there was a specific divide between her and the younger paladins that she did not have with shiro. they made her younger (both explicitly and in mannerisms) as the show went on. and i do not give a fuck about voltron like...post s4 and i didn't even watch s7-8. so like. especially with older fics, im going to enjoy shallura.

[filipinoizukuu]

I saw your post about the FA's translations, and I totally agree. Sometimes, when they do not translate accurately, is to make it sound better or cooler in English, but it just ends up taking away a lot from the context and characters. We know how one of the most affected character interpretations is Katsuki's, a main character, no less. And Izuku and Katsuki's relationship too, which is something super super wrong, considering is deeply intertwined with the main plot of the series, thus if someone misinterpreted their dynamic, this person would miss a bigass chunk of the message the story has.

Here is the panel you mentioned before btw

I remember when I read this, only 10 or 11 chapters into the manga (?), and I was like "...I'm...pretty sure this guy didn't say that" khshsjdhs

OK FIRST OF ALL LMAO HELLO MANG!! THANK YOU SO MUCH AND DW ABOUT IT I TOTALLY GET WHAT YOU MEAN !!

(this is your warning for a long post ahead!)

In any case, I still think you're very correct on this! Not to ramble a bit, but Horikoshi's particular talent in developing the plot of MHA is actually very very brilliant and there are a lot of blink-and-you'll-miss-it details that together, assemble the big picture of what MHA is.

Translations are such an integral part of being able to understand foreign media. MHA or otherwise. The simplest of details say a lot about a character and often times make or break a series because everyone knows that strong character dynamics are what carry even the shittiest of plots.

First and foremost, I want to clarify that because of the nature of fan translations and the fact that most of it is volunteer work/ written out of pure enjoyment of the manga--we shouldn't judge these fan translators too harshly (if at all) for interpreting it the way they want to. FA, as far as I can tell, is a fan-based group that works out of donations.

The first thing I wanna bring up is that when it comes to fandom and its works, there are two types: Curatorial and Transformative. Now, the transformative part is something that must be very familiar to a lot of you. Fanfiction, fanart, and most headcanons fall under Transformative Works (i.e. AO3) because they are all about transforming the canon world to fit each individual's personal preferences. Meta-analysis posts and Character Breakdowns are also classified under this.

Curatorial on the other hand are fandom interactions made with the explicit purpose of being as close to canon material as possible. This is working out the logic of quirks, for example, or memorizing as much canon content about your favorite villain as possible. These are more cold, hard undeniable facts that lend themselves to the DIRECT VISION the creator/author had while making this media. If you were to ask me my opinion on this, this would be the moment where I tell you that the Curatorial side of fandom is where fan translations should (for the most part) fall under.

What people need to know though is that oftentimes, fan translations do not.

Translating isn't and has never been a one-is-to-one process. There are hundreds of thousands of aspects in a language that make it so that it isn't perfectly translatable. Colloquialisms to sayings to dialects, to just plain-out words that don't have a proper English translation to them! Manga is made by and for a Japanese audience, so obviously in a lot of instances, there will be cultural nuances that will not be understood by anyone who hasn't immersed themselves in Japanese culture/language.

So what does this mean then for fan scanlations?

It means that a vast majority of translators teach themselves to only get the essence of the message. They take the dialogue as they understand it and translate it to something of their interpretation. When language and cultural barriers exist, translators do what they can in order to make it understandable to the general populace. This means making their own executive decisions on how they see a character speaking. In example, if they see Todoroki using very direct and impersonal Japanese--one translator might interpret it to mean that Shouto is stiff and overly formal, while another may see it as him being rude and aloof.

The problem is, translators are fans just like us.

Like with the image Mang posted above, the translator based the usage of curse words off of their understanding of Bakugou's character. The lack of foul language in the original Japanese might have made the translator think "Oh. There just aren't enough Japanese cusses for his character." And took that as an initiative to make Bakugou's lines more colorful and violent because this was working off of the image Bakugou had had at this point in canon.

But Codi! You may cry. Wasn't it proven multiple times that Bakugou prefers concise and short lines? They should've known better!

Yes. Maybe they should've known better. But tell me honestly in your first watch-through of MHA, did you perfectly understand Bakugou's character either? Did you catch the whole 'direct and no flowery language' aspect of his language when you first saw Season 2?

Most people don't. I only really understood this fact after I'd read multiple discussions of it and even double-checked the manga myself. These are the kinds of things that only become noticeable with a sharp eye and some time to scrutiny. But the fact of the matter is that when it comes to fan translations, the clout and recognition are always going to go to who can post the quickest.

Am I excusing erroneous translations? A bit, I guess. It's hard for us to go in and expect translators to catch all these errors before release when we ourselves only catch these errors like 4 months in with a hundred times more canon context than these scanlation groups did at the time of its release.

Still, there are plenty of harms that come with faulty translations.

When a translation is more divorced from the original's meaning than usual, it creates a dissonance between what is actually happening versus what the audience sees is happening. This looks like decently-written character arcs being overruled and rejected by most of the readers because of how 'jarring' and 'clumsy' it seems. By the time translators had caught on to the fact that Bakugou was more than just a ticking time bomb, we were already several steps into showing how significantly he cares for Deku.

The characters affected most by these translation errors are often those with the most subtle and well-written character arcs. A single mistake in how the source material is translated can make or break the international reception of a certain character to everyone who isn't invested enough in them to look deeper into the canon source.

It creates hiccups in plots. Things that seem out of character but really aren't. Going back to MHA in specific, the way that inaccurate translations hurt both the 'curatorial' and 'transformative' parts of the fandom is that people have begun to cite them as proof of the main cast's characterization.

Bakugou and Todoroki are undeniably some of the biggest examples of mistranslation injustices.

Katsuki, in a lot of people's minds, has yet to break out of the 'overly-aggressive rival' archetype box that people had been placing him in since Season 1. One of the most amazing aspects and biggest downfalls of Hori's writing was that at first, nearly every character fit into a very neat stereotype for Shonen Animes (Deku being the talking-no-jutsu sunshine MC, Uraraka being the overly bubbly main girl, Todoroki being the aloof and formal rival). He made the audience make assumptions about everyone's characters and then pulled the rug beneath our feet when he revealed deeper sides of them to play around within canon.

What made this part about Horikoshi's set-up so good though were the many clues we were given from the very beginning that these characters were more than what they acted like. Even from the very first chapters, for example, we learn that Katsuki (as much as he acts like a delinquent) dislikes smoking because it could get him in trouble.

That is just a single instance of MHA's use of dialogue to subtly divert our expectations of a character.

Another example is when they replaced 318's dialogue of the Second User saying that Katsuki "completes" Deku with him saying that Katsuki merely "bolsters" him. This presents a different situation, as that line was meant to reinforce the importance of those two's relationship as well as complete the character foils that MHA is partially centered around. By downplaying their developed connection, it becomes harder for the MHA manga scanlations to justify any future significance these two's words have on each other without mottling the pacing of the story.

AKA, it butchers the plot.

With every new volume, there are dozens and dozens more of these hints and bits scattered around! So many cues and subtle foreshadowing at the trajectory of everyone's character arcs--yet mistranslations or inaccurate scans make it so that we don't notice them. This is what I mean when I said that some character arcs are being done great injustices.

Until now, many people can't accept that Katsuki Bakugou cares for anyone other than himself (much less his rival and MC, Izuku Midoriya), nor can they accept that Todoroki would ever willingly work by Endeavor's side. The bottom-line then becomes that because of people missing heavy bits of characterization that become very plot-significant in the future.

When it comes to the point where people can no longer accept or fit their interpretation of the earlier manga events to what is happening in canon, the point of a translation fails completely because it has lead people to follow an entirely different story.

TL;DR - Fan scans are hard. Translating is hard. Don't get too mad at fan translations, but also maybe don't treat them as the catch-all for how characters truly operate. Thanks.

Side note: DO NOT harass FA for any of these things. FA is actually a pretty legit and okay source for scans (they've been operating since like 2014 ffs), but regardless of that they still don't deserve to get flack for their work. You can have any opinion or perspective of canon that you want, I don't care. These are just my two (more like two million tbh) cents on translations. I suggest reading takes from actual Japanese audiences tbh if you wanna know more about the source material of MHA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[dream-girls-evil]

How do you characterize Shelby and Audrey? Like when you are writing them, what are their base motivations for doing things? I'm wondering what you think makes them tick cause different authors write them pretty differently!

This is a great question! And so true! There’s not a lot of fics about them out there, and honestly we don’t get to know them very well in the show so there’s a lot of wiggle room with their personalities. I haven’t written too much for them myself besides random headcanons (although I have a Roanoke fic planned for the future), but I do have a pretty good idea of how I imagine them. They’re an interesting pair, because they really do not get along at first, but they’re really very similar. And a lot of Audrey’s characterization is wrapped up in Shelby since we only really get screen time with Audrey in that one episode before everyone is screaming and trying not to die.

 Forgive me in advance, because this is all pretty much just word vomit.

Audrey, I think, is a survivalist. She’s independent and ambitious and is good at pretending to have a thick skin–she’d have to be to put up with the scrutiny female actors are under. She seems like the kind of woman who’s always fought to be recognized in the industry and sacrificed personal relationships to do so, but now people have started talking about her age and she’s kind of having a midlife crisis, realizing that there isn’t unlimited time to do the things she always said she’d do after achieving her career goals. I think she loves Rory in a way, but not the right way for marriage; she loves that he’s so caring and attentive and makes her feel beautiful, but he’s also very immature and she feels like his mom sometimes. Audrey also compares herself to Shelby a lot. First of all, as an actor, she has to be very empathetic and know how to get in other people’s heads, but she also seems to really focus on what she sees as the worst of them. She’s also very stubborn, so once she makes her mind up about Shelby, everything Shelby does is filtered through that lens. 

Audrey’s constantly had to prove herself and defend her decisions and deal with the criticism…and here’s soft, emotional Shelby, who is perfectly content to rely on her husband and be a victim, becoming America’s sweetheart by making up a scary story. It seems to annoy her that Shelby’s life was so easy and perfect and that she just gave up and cried when it all went wrong, because Audrey is the kind of person who always picks herself up and pushes on. She’s very judgmental of Shelby, but in part it seems to be because she assumes everyone is already judging her. She interprets Shelby’s comment about love as an attack on her age and feels threatened by how much everyone loves Shelby–remember her line, “are you sure it isn’t me you love?” Shelby’s the kind of person everyone desires, and she’s who they see when they look at Audrey instead of actually recognizing her as a talented actress. Since she’s worked so hard to get where she is, I think “earning” what you have is something she believes in very strongly, and to her Shelby hasn’t done anything to earn the love and recognition she’s been given, so she thinks Shelby is selfish for wanting and taking it–not only with the media attention, but with how she used Dominic. Audrey is pretty loyal to her friends, even if she does leave Monet for dead and lock Dominic outside with the pig man. We’ll call those extenuating circumstances.

 Considering Shelby, “fiery and pathetic” is actually a pretty apt description. She’s got a sharp tongue and quick temper, but she’s also very dependent on other people and would rather keep the peace than hold her ground. She’s very family-oriented; her big goals in life are to have kids and open a yoga studio, which shows how much she enjoys taking care of people. She doesn’t seem to take much initiative in her own life–she gives up her job to move where Matt wants and stays home missing him when he goes away, but she also doesn’t take much initiative to change that by making new friends or getting involved with any social activities. She’s reactive, rarely actually initiating conversations or actions. She wears her heart on her sleeve, but feeling very deeply means she gets hurt very deeply by criticism, and she’s come to doubt herself a lot. We see that it’s pretty easy for Matt to convince her she didn’t actually experience what she says she did. She lets Lee and Audrey both kind of talk over her protests when they take something she says differently than she meant it. The fact that it happens more than once also shows that she’s not super confident, and despite her best intentions, she often doesn’t think before she speaks or acts. She’s too wrapped up in her own problems and making herself feel better to realize when she might hurt someone, like when she sleeps with Dominic or drinks in front of Lee or comments on Audrey’s relationship. 

When she does realize that she’s done something wrong, it makes her angry with herself. She takes every mistake personally, and those feelings tend to build up inside until she has enough pain to act out. The fame certainly doesn’t help. She seems to hate the attention and has no way to insulate herself from the criticism, only distracts herself from the pressure with bad choices. Others perceive her as helpless, but I don’t think it’s because she wants attention or protection. To me it seems like she really truly believes herself to be weak, and you can tell that it’s in her head because there are moments where she breaks out of it, like when she has to protect Flora. Despite appearances, she really is a fighter, and she’d call people out on their games and passive-aggressiveness.