#translation for reverse text below:

[just-rainbow-thoughts]

Why don’t you go shopping with your weird clone and maybe you’ll feel better

[webtomo]

Tomodachi Life Mods

By far my most popular post on this blog is my post about the gay marriage mod by Kobazco. To my knowledge, this mod has been on hiatus for quite some time, and unfortunately will probably continue to remain on hiatus for a long time. This mod requires reverse engineering of the games code, which is complex and takes time.

HOWEVER, there are a multitude of mods that I would like to highlight that actually are available for download currently (including one that actually works around the gender issue). All of them are relatively simple to install (assuming you are either using Citra, or have custom firmware on your 3ds).

Below the cut, I have chosen some specific mods and addons I would like to highlight!

Gender Removal Mod

This mod aims to remove any and all gendered language in Tomodachi Life, replacing any mention of "He" or "She" with They/Them pronouns. Of course, this does not get rid of the gay marriage discrepancy, but it does prevent any of your Miis from being misgendered.

The only issue in my experience, is that the European version of the mod does not change pronouns in Mii News (which I believe is not an issue in the US version of the mod). Some visual stuff is also not edited, but is possibly subject to change in the future, though the developer has not updated the mod in over a year.

Japanese & Korean Tomodachi

This mod replaces Japanese and Korean text from those versions of the game with English text. This mod is relatively recent and still has a few issues, but I think this is a really cool mod if you want to check out the Japanese or Korean versions without having to manually translate text. Most of the text in this mod is not directly translated, and instead is pulled from the English version(s), but it does seek to translate the stuff that is not available in any English versions.

The biggest issue I have had with this mod is specifically with the Japanese version not being able to open Mii News without crashing. I have also had issues with it crashing on an emulator in both versions occasionally (and also has some text formatting errors). Regardless though, I will keep an eye on the development of this mod, as it is being actively worked on currently.

HD Mii Texture Pack

This is a Citra texture pack that gives the Mii faces HD textures. Though not technically a "mod" for gameplay, I do want to highlight it. This texture pack exclusively for Citra that just replaces the low res Mii face textures from the Mii Maker with higher resolution textures. If you are deciding to play the game in HD on an emulator, I think this is something you will appreciate, considering the Miis make up a good percentage of everything you see in-game.

I personally have had no issues with this texture pack, though it seems that some people have had issues with lag and crashing. So, I would just be aware of that if you decide to install this pack.

Tomodachi Enterprise

This is a mod that changes tons of food, adds custom rooms, clothing, activities, interactions, items, and more. This is a mod that I have not actually played myself (yet), but is one i am looking forward to finally checking out. This mod is currently in development and is being actively updated, and I would consider to currently be the most in-depth mod for Tomodachi Life.

The only reason I have not played this yet is other life obligations, but I have seen a lot of what's in it. I would still say that if you are interested in mods like this, I would definitely go check it out yourself!

---

But yeah, this is what I would consider to be interesting mods for the game if you are looking for something like that. All of these come from Gamebanana, and this is not the full extent of what is available on there, these are just some of my personal favorites. I suggest looking into it yourself if you are interested, or if you are interested in developing mods for the game yourself! I just wanted to highlight some mods that I find interesting. I may post some other mod related stuff if you are interested!

[talonabraxas]

Buddha Nature

Amrita: The Nectar of Immortality

In Indian mythology and spiritual philosophy, “Amrita” holds a special place. Derived from Sanskrit, “Amrita” is often translated as “nectar,” “ambrosia,” or more intriguingly, “the nectar of immortality.” This concept permeates not only Hinduism but also Buddhism, Sikhism and Greek mythology each offering unique perspectives on its significance. In recent times it was also the story line for a James Cameron’s movie.

Amrita in Hindu Mythology

In the realm of Hindu philosophy, Bindu Visarga is a fascinating concept that delves into the depths of human consciousness and potential. Bindu Visarga, located at the top of the head towards the back on the same plane as the third eye, is considered a psychic center of immense significance. The term ‘Bindu’ translates to ‘point’ or ‘dot’, symbolizing the potential consciousness and creative force each individual possesses.

According to ancient texts, Bindu Visarga is the residence of the moon, and when the moon is full, it releases its nectar or ambrosial fluid that permeates the entire body. This nectar is known as Amrita is believed to fortify the body against toxins and strengthen immunity against viruses. From a physiological perspective, the release of Amrita is associated with the secretion of hormones from the pituitary gland into the bloodstream, enhancing overall health and longevity. Certain yogic postures such as Sirsasana (headstand) and Sarvangasana (shoulder stand) are believed to increase the production of Amrita.

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika (HYP), a classical text on Hatha Yoga, suggests that practicing Khechari Mudra can reverse the body’s degeneration process. Khechari Mudra involves turning the tongue backwards into the cavity of the cranium and directing the eyes inwards towards the eyebrow center. However, mastering this mudra is not an easy task and requires diligent practice under the guidance of an experienced teacher.

The nectar of immortality begins to flow when the tongue becomes flexible enough to be inserted into the upper epiglottis. This nectar descends from Bindu Visarga to Vishuddhi Chakra (throat chakra), where it is purified and distributed throughout the body. However, for one to attain immortality, specific techniques and practices need to be performed to trap and consume the nectar within the human body.

Jalandhara Bandha, also known as the throat lock, plays a crucial role in this process. ‘Jal’ means ‘water’, and this bandha is used to hold the nectar in Vishuddhi and prevent it from falling into the digestive fire, conserving prana or life-force energy.

The story of the churning of the ocean by the devas (good supernatural deities) and asuras (the supernatural forces of chaos) and the subsequent extraction of nectar and deadly poison provides a rich symbology for understanding Vishuddhi chakra and the nectar of immortality. Lord Shiva’s ability to drink the poison, retain it in his throat, and purify it signifies the yogi’s capacity to assimilate both positive and negative aspects of life, maintaining balance, health, and equanimity amid life’s dualities.

On an energetic level, the concept of Amrita-nadi or ‘conduit of immortality’ provides a profound visualization tool. This pathway of light between the deep centers of the upper coil (midbrain to crown) and the lower coil (below and behind the navel) illuminates the body with radiant bliss, reflecting the heart’s essence. This visualization serves as a powerful tool for spiritual enlightenment, embodying the transformative power of Amrita, the nectar of immortality.

Amrita in Buddhist Philosophy

In Buddhism, Amrita appears in a more metaphorical context. It’s perceived less as a physical substance and more as a state of consciousness or realization that leads to liberation from suffering and cyclic existence, essentially a form of spiritual immortality. In Tibetan Buddhism, Amrita is associated with initiation rites where practitioners receive blessings from their teachers, symbolizing the transformative power of the teachings.

Amrita in Sikhism

In Sikhism, Amrita refers to the holy water used in the Amrit Sanchar ceremony (Sikh baptism). Prepared by stirring sugar into water with a double-edged sword while reciting five sacred verses, this Amrita is given to initiates, signifying their commitment to the path of truth, service, and devotion as outlined by the Sikh Gurus.

Amrita in Greek mythology

In Greek Mythology, Ambrosia holds a position of supreme significance. It is often considered as the divine sustenance of the Gods, a potent concoction that bestowed upon its consumers the gift of immortality. The term ‘Ambrosia’ is derived from the Greek words ‘a’ (meaning ‘not’) and ‘vrotos’ (meaning ‘mortal’), clearly indicating its association with eternal life.

According to Homeric tradition, this celestial nectar was transported to the Gods residing on Mount Olympus by doves. It’s believed to be the divine essence exhaled by the Earth itself, adding an extra layer of mysticism to its existence. Often intertwined with the concept of nectar or the ‘elixir of life,’ Ambrosia was a crucial element that added a dash of magic to the already enchanting tales of the Greek Gods. Although the Gods were inherently powerful and immortal, the presence of ambrosia and nectar in these myths added a certain allure and excitement to their narratives.

One particularly compelling account is found in Homer’s epic poems, where the Goddess Athena uses Ambrosia in a rather intriguing way. It is said that Athena sprinkled Ambrosia over Penelope while she slept. Upon waking, the effects of age had miraculously vanished from her skin, making her appear youthful and radiant. This transformation was so profound that her suitors were consumed with passion at her sight, showcasing the transformative power of this divine nectar.

Amrita in contemporary cinema

In the blockbuster movie Avatar 2, Amrita takes on a whole new meaning. It is portrayed as a neurocrine liquid of a yellowish hue produced by tulkuns, a creature from another world, in the glands located at the base of their brain. This substance is no ordinary fluid; it possesses extraordinary properties that can halt the aging process in humans entirely, providing them with a form of physical immortality.

The tulkans get mercilessly hunted. by humans. to extract Amrita which is portrayed as the most expensive commodity in 2170. This narrative surrounding Amrita illustrates the lengths to which humanity might go in its quest for immortality.

Amrita: A Symbol of Spiritual Aspiration

Across these diverse interpretations, Amrita stands as a potent symbol of spiritual aspiration. It represents the quest for immortality, not in the physical sense, but as a transcendence of the ego, ignorance, and the cycle of birth and death. The pursuit of Amrita is, in essence, the pursuit of enlightenment, liberation, or self-realization.

Whether it’s the epic churning of the cosmic ocean, the profound meditative practices of Buddhism, or the solemn rites of Sikhism, Amrita serves as a reminder of our inherent potential for spiritual growth and transformation. It invites us to embark on our unique journey towards immortality, guided by wisdom, compassion, and the enduring hope for liberation.

[folatefangirl]

On The Darkest Corner of the Heart

A comment on how Booktwt, Booklr, and Booktok media reactivity has lost the plot

Or, I think y'all need to log off and touch some grass and think about your actions for a hot minute. Note: This rant is a tad long, because I'm fucking pissed.

Disclaimer 1: I don't personally know the author of this book or anyone screenshotted in the drama. We aren't friends. I have no reason to either defend nor criticize these people, except for the fact that I've been a primary reader of self-pub and indie books for almost a decade now, and yes, including romances that some people don't consider worthy of civility. I'm also a queer healthcare worker.

Disclaimer 2: I don't want anyone mentioned/screenshotted here to be spammed with hate. Please do NOT contact them, including any authors mentioned. I included the primary actors for the current drama primarily so people don't claim I'm talking out of my ass.

Book blurb:

Forbidden. That's what they are to each other. Maddie Stevens has never felt good enough. Not good enough to keep her parents’ love. Not good enough to be independent and stop being her brother’s problem. Not good enough to build the future she wants. When she injures her ankle before a ballet audition that could change her career forever, she’s convinced her life is over at twenty-one. What’s the point of having dreams when they can go down the drain at any moment? And because the universe has a cruel sense of humor, her physical therapist turns out to be a tank-shaped grouch who doesn’t even seem to like her that much. It’s totally unfair that, for six weeks, she’s forced to look at that handsome beard and listen to that deep voice that makes her head all dizzy. Top that with the fact that he’s ten years her senior, and falling for James Simmons is a recipe for disaster. But when their forced proximity makes the lines start blurring, the forbidden temptation becomes impossible to resist.

The Timeline:

Events preceding 2023: Lisina Coney, author of The Darkest Corner of the Heart, was born in 1999 in northern Spain. She worked as a translator prior to publishing books.

Initially I thought these books were only self-published, but in fact are published under the formerly indie publisher Page & Vine, founded by romance novelist Meredith Wild.

January 27th, 2023: The Brightest Light of Sunshine is published by nearly 24-year-old Lisina Coney. On Goodreads, it currently sits at 3.87 stars as of today, February 10th, 2024, with 27,727 ratings and 3,592 reviews. Note: For a small-time author, especially for a debut novel, these numbers are huge.

May 2023, Page & Vine announced that Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster would distribute their books as an imprint beginning in summer 2023.

In mid-to-late 2023, Lisina's website and socials announced The Darkest Corner of the Heart, her second novel to be published with Page & Vine on February 20th, 2024. Note: This means the events below occurred BEFORE the book's publication.

February 5th, 2024: anaborbareads on Twitter/X posts the cover and other art of Darkest Corner with the text, "a forbidden romance between ballerina and physical therapist???? pls i need this book now 🥺✨💗🫶🏻"

February 6th, 2024: h0mmelette on Twitter/X responds to anaborareads with "the booktok genre of forbidden romance is hilarious. theyre straight… whats forbidden"

February 6th, 2024: a tumblr user reposts the twitter thread from above to tumblr. Other tumblr users reblog and add on, and it quickly goes viral.

February 7th, 2024: From what I can tell via reverse image searching, the first iteration of the fake ARC page that's going around appears to be from Twitter/X user queef1ng. About 4 hours later, the same fake ARC page was reposted on the tumblr post mentioned above. And from here, this story takes a turn from people wanting to feel like they're above a romance novel writer to potential legal territory.

Of the 122 ratings on Goodreads for Darkest Corner to date, 9 appear to be 1-star reviews and from what I can tell, most/all of them were only published since the events began on 06Feb2024. 71 are 5-stars and while some of those are ARC readers, many newer ones appear to be trying to counteract the review bombing from the fake ARC page.

As of today, February 10th, 2024, it looks like the book will still be published on February 20th as planned, but we'll see.

Wait, so how do you know the page is fake?

I can't believe people have been so gullible but fine, here's my analysis:

Lisina's real ARC readers have stated that it isn't from the book (not gonna document all of them in the screenshots but you can easily go to the book's GR page and see the ARC reviews there).

As other folks pointed out on the tumblr repost, no real ARC page does a weird review watermark like that. Speaking from my own experience in reviewing ARCs or beta-reading, I agree.

The font tipped me off because it looked like it had literally been written on a Fanfiction.Net page. Not that Verdana, font size 10, is unique to FFN, but it looks like fanfiction typed font. Which brings me to:

Literally how could you believe this author writes like this? You can read her website or preview her first book or just have the bare minimum common sense to understand what satire looks like. If you don't believe me (because I know framing a post like this will put a lot of people on the defensive), I've also included screenshots below. The prose and dialogue are COMPLETELY different from the alleged screenshot. The only thing that is similar is that both characters are ballerinas.

But wait, all of this doesn't explain why YOU, Cinnia, are so pissed about this?

You're completely right! It really doesn't. All of the above is mostly documentation so the naysayers can't say I'm just some silly fangirl of the author.

The initial premise of the drama is that you can't have "forbidden love" in an m/f relationship. First of all, William Shakespeare would like to have a word with you regarding Romeo and Juliet. Second of all, yes you fucking can. See also: Religious and cultural differences and human history for a starting point. I know it may be hard to touch grass and look at media that is not tumblr queer media-centric and understand that people who are NOT you might enjoy it very much. Note that I'm a queer person saying this and I do read or watch m/f media at times because I don't like limiting myself. Go watch Bajirao Mastani and enjoy one of the most beautiful movies about forbidden love ever produced.

The book itself falls into the medical romance subgenre. For those not familiar, these are romances (usually m/f) that often involve a healthcare worker and their patient. In the real world, where people touch grass, a healthcare worker like me having a relationship with their patient is such a huge ethical violation that it will get you fired. In Darkest Corner, James is Maddie's physical therapist because she's a ballerina with a sports injury and he is treating her. Ergo, it is forbidden for them to get together and the initial premise for mocking this book is on very shaky ground.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the folks mocking it seem to very likely not be familiar with romance novels and their subgenres at all, or else they'd be well aware of the concept of straight romances marketed as a "forbidden romance" because they're fucking everywhere on any place that sells romance books. I have a personal collection of over 14,500 kindle ebooks. While not all of those are romances, a good chunk of them are, so I think I can count myself as a bit of a source here, you know?

The fake screenshot and social media drama has spread to at least Twitter, Tumblr, and BookTok, which all have huge reader hobbyists. For a small-time author barely past her debut novel's publication, allegations of this sort tied to your author name and book titles can last on the internet and in web searches for a long, long time, hurting an author's career. Maybe you're like "boohoo, who cares about their careers, I pirate all my fiction books anyway" and well, a post like this was probably never going to convince you of anything. I'm talking to the folks who might still have a sense of shame and self-reflection. Authors, even authors tied to a Big 5's imprint, earn peanuts. This sort of manufactured "scandal" is not ideal when the book is weeks away from being published. In fact, if the book has fewer sales than the first book in the series, Simon & Schuster may have legal grounds to go after the person who made the fake screenshot. A smarter person would have kept that to the groupchat or posted it as a clearly marked fanfic on AO3.

As a reader, this also sucks because when shit like this happens, the reviews of a book are permanently biased by both the bombers and the fans of the author, no matter how good or bad the book ends up being. Do I know if this book will be a 1-star or 5-star now, based on the reviews? Nope. Will I read it? No, because I don't read medical romances as it's a squick for me. But I may read her first book, which has mercifully escaped most of the social media nonsense.

This isn't the first time booktwt/booktok/booklr has engaged in a similar mob mentality towards books they don't like and I doubt it'll be the last. See Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao and the allegations that turned out to be false then, too. However, I would like to ask y'all to please check your sources and not blindly accept what someone says on social media as truth. Get used to doing the research because manufactured misinformation is everywhere, and it's not gonna get better. (And for fuck's sake, not everyone is gonna like the same books and fandoms you like! It's not illegal to enjoy reading different things!)

Screenshots/Evidence (click for better resolution):

[ihaveforgortoomany]

Prologue Translation Changes: The Living Past pt.2

This is the important one since translation changes to how Vertin describes the Storm (potential lore implications?)

These changes were made during 1.8 patch

(again image is the new translation, below is the original and notes)

(original) - "From the countdown to the millennium, the exposition of the supernova in the 80s, to the unveiling of VHS"

Right this not only clarifies that the First Storm of 1999 had reversed to the 80s. (The Manus only start to influence Storms in 1929, before then all of these were 'natural')

The "Supernova in the 1980s" is the first supernova (SN 1987A) discovered that year, being the first supernova that modern astronomers were able to study in detail (thank you wikipedia). Observed independently by Ian Shelton and Oscar Duhalde at the Las Campranas Observatory in Chile on the Feb 24 1987 (I will leave this here)

(og) - "I never met them again" (the new line hurts more)

(og) - "In an accident" changed to "At one point"

(og) - "Maybe I should just record the time and spend no feelings on what I see" (again line changed just hurts more)

(Parallels to Gatsby in this new line, Nick desired to be "silent, emotionless observer" in Gatsby's narrative, but here Vertin does not desire to be this way)

(og) - "There is someone that ... can see what I see in this world so..."

(og) - "For the last time" (hammers home this is Vertin's last hope in a sense, who knows what would of happened had Regulus been reversed like everyone else)

(og) - "Whoa, whats up?" (Again Regulus is more panicked and distressed in this redub, makes sense since her world has been turned upside down)

(og) - "leaving no sign of you after the 'Storm'" (the change carries that emotional importance of Regulus to Vertin, she unlike many other had survived and Vertin had not failed again)

(og) - "On top of that" is omitted here

This last bit of the prologue is interesting in its changes, alot does emphasise Vertin's character here: this is independent of the Foundation's wishes and it is her own desire to seek the Truth of the Storm.

(There's is a lot of emphaise to showcase that Vertin is not a self-insert here more, she has her own goals and motivations in the story independent to the player even if they align, both narratively and metanarratively)

So far I do not think Chapters One and Two have received optimisation yet, potentially they may add either with Windsong or 1.9. AlthoughI have noticed in Chapter Two in streams around the global launch, a certain "addio" later in more recent months have been translated in text to "goodbye".

[asksythe]

Qiongqi Beast, one among the four legendary primordial beasts of China - Namesake of Qiongqi Path (MDZS) - The foreshadow of Wei Ying’s death. - Illustration by Shan Zhe, published in Guan Shan Hai, the compiled and edited version of the OG Shanhai Jing, by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House.  

Recently I got my hand on Shanhai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas), the 2200+ years old classical text on Chinese fantastical flora, fauna, beasts, strange people, and gods. Qiongqi is counted among Shanhai Jing menagerie. Below is my translation of the description of Qiongi Beast directly from Hunan’s Shanhai Jing. 

窮奇 (Qiongqi)

- Text directly from the 2200+ year old Shanhai Jing: Qiongqi has the shape of a tiger with wings. It eats human, starting from the head. Those who it eats all have their hair unbound. It lives North of the Peach Dog’s den. 

- Modern Anthropologist Notes (by Hunan Publishing House’s editing team):   

1/ Qiongqi beast has the shape of a winged tiger. It is a vicious man eater. When it eats, it starts from the head. Those who are eaten by it all have their hair unbound.  

2/ Qiongqi also appears on Xishan Jing (Classic of Western Mountains), where it is described as ox-like, with porcupine quills, and barks like a dog. This description is vastly different from the one in Shanhai Jing. 

3/ Qiongqi is mentioned in many ancient texts. In the Records of the Five Emperors, Qiongqi is said to be the hideous, good-for-nothing son of Shaohao (son of the Yellow Emperor, one of the three legendary ancient emperors of China) (*). It is said to destroy those who are loyal and faithful and fawn over those who are deceitful and perverse.

(*: In other words, Records of the Five Emperor claims that Qiongqi was a human prince who fell to beasthood out of wickedness) 

4/ Both the Records of the Five Emperor and Shenyi Jing (Classic of Strange Gods) agree that Qionqi is an evil beast that has completely reversed concept of good and evil. Shenyi Jing notes that Qionqi eats those who are good, honest, and loyal and will aid wicked liars. 

- End Translation - 

 .....................................................

Symbol of Qiongqi in MDZS: 

If you have read MDZS, then there’s probably no need to repeat the name Qiongqi Path. The symbolism is readily apparent.

Qiongqi Path is the site where Wei Ying was repeatedly forced onto a death path by Jin schemes. The first time was when he rescued the Wen remnants (who were forced to move from a neutral territory Ganquan  甘泉 to Qiongqi Path, controlled by Jin after the Sunshot campaign, as per the novel). And the second time was during Jin Zixun’s failed ambush.   

In other words, Wei Ying’s death was foreshadowed in the name of the location itself. Qiongqi beast destroys and eats the good, honest, loyal person with hair unbound. It eats from the head down, symbolizing the loss of agency and ability to call for help or argue the person’s own case. Wei Ying was symbolically eaten by Qiongqi. 

If you want to look further, there is also correlation between Qiongqi’s origin as a human prince associated with the color yellow who fell to beasthood out of wickedness and the Jin’s origin as a cultivator House founded by royalty and whose primary color is yellow.  

[crehador]

translation issues aside, the story of reverse 1999 is really surprisingly good for a gacha. i'm vibing with the characters and setting, and the STRUCTURE of the currently released chapters is just downright excellent

major spoilers for chapters 1 through 4 below the cut

introducing us to the world through regulus was such a good call for chapter one, it's all new to her just like it's all new to the player. we get a chance to learn through her eyes

another reason this works so well imo is it paints vertin, in regulus's eyes, as this hyper-competent character with her own agenda and agency (only to reveal bit by bit that she's in a much more difficult position than it may seem at first, and in so many ways is still just a hurt kid trying to right the wrongs she's seen in this world, desperate not to lose more people)

then we move on to chapter 2, where we see schneider's tragedy unfold and meet some major players like arcana. schneider's story even on its own is pretty damn good, but the way vertin acts and reacts in chapter 2 is full of perfect little hints to what kind of past trauma might have shaped her

THEN CHAPTER 3. THE TRAUMA. i loved schneider's story, but i think this is where we really dive into the meat of the overarching plot. and it is such a perfect dive

like after the events of chapter 2, it does more or less make sense that vertin is being treated for Something. right away chapter 3 gives off a bit of a foreboding feeling because vertin's in the hands of the foundation now, which we as a player knows she doesn't trust, and it's deliberately made ambiguous what she's being treated for and exactly when she'll be released

but at this point, to me at least, it still seemed... possible that she really was just being treated for damage from chapter 2

THEN THE HORRORS UNFOLD vertin's past is shown to us throughout this chapter, and bit by bit it dawns that the foundation is capable of much more heinous acts than we already expected. when we meet the ring and isabella, a feeling of dread sets in right away. because they're clearly important to vertin, but where are they in the present? it's not hard to figure out she lost them (which adds so much dimension to her reactions to everything with schneider)

when the escape plan is coming together, with those side looks at what constantine is scheming, the inevitable dread gets heavier and heavier. like even knowing exactly what would happen, that the kids would be deliberately funneled into the storm just so vertin would see them die and feel responsible because it was her plan that led them there... seeing it actually happen was still a major gut punch, very effective

vertin's naivete in this past is such a haunting thing to see as well, there are moments where the text even shines a light on "will they realize this is going TOO smoothly for them?" and no! no they do not!! because they are 12-year-old kids who haven't lost all hope in the world!!!

seeing these grand scenes unfold with chess (and later go) on the screen was visually very cool as well, imo. might feel a bit gimmicky but it's a gimmick i enjoyed

anyway so then we get to chapter 4, and by then the sense of dread surrounding the foundation has fully set in. so it's almost unsurprising (yet still HORRIFYING) when you realize holy shit the foundation is keeping vertin hostage in a medically induced coma!! treatment for trauma my ass!!!

i feel like chapter 4 was the perfect place to end this arc as well, it was like an extended prologue. a lot of the tension/excitement for me came from the realization that vertin doesn't yet have a place to belong, it's not like "manus bad, foundation good" and that's that

looking at it through the lense of arknights, it would be like if doctor didn't have rhodes island at the start. all these factions around vertin, with their own agendas, and she doesn't have her own "home" yet

we get there, at the end of chapter 4. but of course it's not perfect, the terms of her operating her own team are very conditional, and there are loads of unanswered questions for the future

but it's a nice little set-up for future events, for vertin building this team (family) of arcanists who have some measure of freedom. the tension is still there, the foundation is still scheming, and some new mysterious organization is getting ready to enter the chat...?

all in all just, imo, an excellently structured story so far. it's a shame the translation detracts so much from it, i do think some powerful moments suffered from that. but the actual story is really quite strong, and vertin and her circle are all quite captivating to me so far

[copsecore]

my thoughts on the "fanon-isation" of sam (and his newest ba)

(taken from a long winded text conversation i had - slight NSFW talk below the cut) [WORD COUNT: 1047 WORDS, IM SORRY]

psa: while i am complaining about it, it's just my own thoughts, and none of which is an actual criticism of erik, feel free to add your opinions, as per the usual

Maybe its coz time is passing, and the relationship is developing but i feel like i’m enjoying the dynamic between sam and darlin’ a lot less than i did at the beginning. It feels a lot less “human-realistic” and more “tailored for fan preference” (you sam fans gotta hear me out on that bit okay).

Clearly erik isn’t “pandering” towards the fandom or anything, however there HAS been a change in sam’s writing that i don’t know if anyone else can see, or whether it’s just me.

 Fight me, but i feel like whatever’s happening to guy, the reverse is happening to sam. In the sense of where guy is gaining lore and becoming more plot relative, sam seems to be losing that position, which doesn’t cover all of my opinion, but it’s the simplest way i can think of putting it. 

He feels more “disconnected” as a character and I wish i could write this more specifically but there’s almost no “good” way of putting it, i’m just trying to put my vibes about this into readable thoughts in a way that’s somewhat well communicated.

It feels like he’s being diminished, where there’s less of the gruff dad-type personality, protective semi-asshole, gently-caring-in-a-non-tsundere-way, and a lot more “here’s your standard cookie-cutter southern bf who just so happens to be a vampire, however that’s essentially irrelevant because it’s never referenced in a way that’s plot-needed”. 

It’s quite flat and 2D now in a way that i can’t explain, so therefore don’t yell at me for saying it. While he’s still hot ofc, I don’t enjoy his character nearly as much as i did pre-quinn era, which is a shame because it’s difficult to let go of the fact that he’s one of my favourites, but the energy’s shifted and it’s ���off” now. 

Maybe it’s because I’ve changed as a person in the last four years, which i know i have, but it doesn’t seem to be just character development, in the nicest way possible, it feels like he’s being written “out of character”.

Character development in any way is good, I’m a writer myself, I would know that, but those words aren’t what i would personally use to describe it. Forgive me, but i just felt like i needed to get everything out so i could see if anyone else agreed. 

You could say “it’s not that deep” but I’m autistic; this is my special interest, so as much as you can say otherwise, it is in fact “that deep” for me. 

Don’t get me wrong, i still thoroughly love sam as a whole, complete character, and the more recent videos that i don’t like as much could never take that away from me, so again, don’t come at me saying i’m “hating on him”, because i’m not.

This is as constructive of a “rant” that i can make it, and yes, my anonymous asks are turned off. I’m not gonna go on about how “i’m not criticising erik, BUT-” because if you know me at all, you’ll know i would never send hate towards him. 

With the “fanon-isation”, that’s just a word i threw out there to header this whole thing. I meant it mostly in reference to how a large part of the fandom seems to idealise or romanticise darlin’s character, and somewhat how that seems to be translating to the canon of their relationship with sam, and thus effecting him as well. But that wasn’t the right wording - the sam fangroup is big, and i’m already throwing myself to enough proverbial wolves as it is.

The thing that sparked all of this - and if you don’t have the patreon then you probably won’t know - is that Sam biting darlin’ for the first time happened in his most recent ba, which wasn’t something that i really liked. It felt weird to me that, even though it was fully communicated and both parties were okay, it would happen FOR THE FIRST TIME in a sexual setting. While it made sense for darlin’s character, it made less sense for sam’s.

 It also means that (at least as i’m writing this) the non-patrons won’t experience the very plot-important aspect that is sam biting darlin’ for the first time, considering how built-up it’s been throughout their storylines, it didn’t feel right.

It almost felt like the only reason the reverse-comfort audio even previewed for a ba was because THAT was the video that fell on release day. The circumstances just didn’t feel right for it, not given sam’s past and everything that happened in the quinn arc. 

i figured it would at least happen with a sit down conversation, in an sfw audio, even if it was ON patreon, but free. Of course - knowing darlin’ - it was going to be sexual at some point, but i didn’t think it would happen for the first time.

 I’m not going into any more specifics on the audio itself, but those are my thoughts on that bit. Sam bites darlin’, and i didn’t like it. My gripe is neither that it happened, nor that it’s not available to the public, but that nothing about the setting or the build up felt right, and it felt like it happened “just because”, which was a big let down for me, personally.

It wasn’t even the first time I’ve gotten the gist that something was “up”, THAT happened in sam’s hbs 2023 audio (NOT the ba, just the youtube access one) where it definitely felt more like “this is what the audience wants” because yes, who wouldn’t want to see a hot southerner get down and dirty in a club? But it didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but more so now it seemed like fandom influence of a sorts.

Almost like I was reading a fanfic or something that was posted on here (no hate of course, I would say my "platform" on here is mainly constructed of fan based content, just that it seemed more “headcanon-y” and less Just Canon) rather than something that erik himself wrote.

TL;DR: sam feels more and more “out of character” to me as a long-term viewer, and it all came to a head in the most recent bonus audio

[toskarin]

while I'm on a STGposting kick, here's some lesser-known Hellsinker. soundtrack trivia that I couldn't justify putting in their own posts, pulled partially from old blog entries and also just the game itself (dude trust me)

stuff below the break is written without trying to avoid spoilers, because otherwise it'd mostly just be a huge block of censored text

see below list for bonus notes on certain points

in at least one instance, hiranyon (the name TONNOR was using at the time) played with the idea of having the boss themes start in mono and then explode outwards into stereo after the boss entered the stage. in the end, he opted for the music to make use of hard L/R panning instead, to represent the boss entering through the centre

Segment 1L Boss (F. Rex Cavalier) was titled Keep your dignity, and if that phrase being the title didn't give it away, hiranyon outright confirmed the foreshadowing to be intentional in a blog post talking about writing the song

Segment 4 Boss (Rusted Dragon) was titled Fade away. apostate with an added explanation of the intentional ambiguity in the title, with the apostate (the translation he gives is 背信者) being decided by the outcome of the battle

there was an old track called shrine.ogg which notably didn't sound even a little bit like a stage theme, especially not a stage theme like Shrine of Farewell. the pre-release song which has the most in common with the Shrine theme proper is actually titled boss3.ogg. if you think about the Shrine in the context of being a boss (which makes a weird amount of sense, it just doesn't register as one because it's kind of free-floating), I guess it could come third?

people used to theorise about Aozora/Aoxola, the final boss from Radio Zonde, being Lost Property 771. I don't really believe this is true, but it's worth pointing out that Aozora/Aoxola's hidden phase theme is incredibly similar to Shrine of Farewell, to the point where I wouldn't blame someone for thinking the Shrine theme is a direct arrangement. I'm actually still kind of suspicious, myself

speaking of Radio Zonde callbacks that imply... something? the string section in Fade Away. apostate appears to be an arrange of Opaque Heart from Radio Zonde

there are cat sounds in a startling number of songs. the earlier in the game the song is, the more distorted the cats will be, but they're still almost omnipresent. the most obvious are in the second to last phase of the GARLAND theme where there's a constant choir of cats singing the melody, but you can also hear them in Segment 4 and 5 (both sides, stage and boss theme) if you listen carefully. hiranyon likes to bury them in sections with lots of other instruments

there are, generally speaking, two kinds of cat sounds that I've noticed pop up in the soundtrack. I'm going to call them the "cat piano" and the "meow pad" because hiranyon uses both of them pretty extensively, and it's really obvious what he's doing because he uses them most in songs directly associated with Lost Property 771

most people know this by now and I almost wasn't going to include it, but it feels weird to have a list of Hellsinker soundtrack trivia without mentioning that Past Rising Again (reprised as PAST RISINGS AGAIN) is an arrangement of the boss theme for early bosses in Radio Zonde. it's a distorted version of that theme because you're fighting a duo boss that's meant to resemble the old players, now having been distorted into prayers

the cat screaming in The Great Majority isn't a sound effect playing from one of the enemies. it's actually baked into the song. this probably isn't trivia to anyone who got into the game through the soundtrack, but I felt insane when I listened to the soundtrack and realised this

The Way of All Flesh, being the finale, reprises the game in reverse order. as an aside, all of Hellsinker is synced to the soundtrack (and hiranyon prides himself on this), but it really stands out here more than anywhere else. there's one especially notable bit where the screen flickers, displaying the text "Wherever did you put?" before

-

[1] hiranyon: 盛り上���る前のトコ　公開当初の時点では。音が中央に寄る（圧迫感）→ステレオに戻る（開放感）という　絵に同期した仕掛けを意図したものでしたが。後期のものは音を限界まで横に広げ中央を空けて、ちょうど画面上では音の逃げた跡の。真中手前にボスが迫る、という演出構造にしたつもりでした。

[2] hiranyon: 満身創痍になりながらもそれを気にかけず進む者・それに相対する敵。強くありたいが周囲に押し流されそうな危うさや　そうなりきれずともそうあろうとする姿

[3] hiranyon: そう言われている時点では、その場に居るどちらがapostate（背信者）かは不確定です。恐らくどちらかが膝を折った時、それは決まるのでしょう。

[4] shrine.ogg is REALLY short, almost like it was only expected to loop for a single input screen. this seems to imply that the Shrine of Farewell might have gotten its name from originally being something at the end of a run or stage, like the results screen theme in Radio Zonde, but afaik there's no actual information on this at all and I just like to draw conjecture.

[5] hiranyon being someone who likes motifs and also someone who has specific flourishes that he keeps unconsciously using when writing melodies makes it really hard to say anything like this for sure. he actually complained about his tendency to over-write organ sections in his blog post about about rewriting Fade away. apostate lol

[8] the first instance of the cat piano I can think of occurs in Segment 2b, although it's heavily filtered so you almost have to know what it sounds like in the final boss to pick it out here. the first instance of the meow pad, however, is in the first menu theme

[dramavixen]

For those who aren’t quite over An Ancient Love Song – the story from Lu Yuan’s perspective

Hello all! This will be a translation of two videos by Bilibili creator 小城问路家 that I found to be exquisite character analyses. I considered subtitling them, but I don’t want to rip the videos from his platform and I think they still work effectively in essay form. If you understand Chinese/have a Bilibili account, I highly recommend giving these videos some support:

Part 1 | Part 2

Below begins the full translation. FYI, I’ll be editing content where necessary to make this read better. I also recommend having a snack and some water at the ready because this is going to be quite lengthy.

Viewers are all aware that this drama is presented from Shen Buyan’s perspective. From his point of view, the instances in which he travels back are separated by a very short period of time. Between some leaps, there isn’t any separation at all. What that means is that his and Lu Yuan’s situations are drastically different.

When it comes to Lu Yuan, there are large periods of “empty” time in between Shen Buyan’s time leaps. Three years, five years, ten years, and then the rest of her life. Likely, the production team became aware of this problem and created a special episode that retells the story from elderly Lu Yuan’s perspective. But perhaps due to financial and time length restrictions, this special episode more so uses material from the full drama and plays it in reverse while incorporating elderly Lu Yuan’s narration in key moments.

What viewers should understand is that that episode is told from elderly Lu Yuan’s perspective, who has access to an omniscient point of view. She already knows about this entire story.

Meanwhile, what I think really appeals to us as viewers about this story are those long periods of waiting. During those three, five, ten years that Lu Yuan spends waiting, her understanding of the story isn’t actually complete. We can’t use an omniscient perspective to understand Lu Yuan. She only experiences small bits at a time, and she also refuses Shen Buyan’s attempts to reveal more details to her. When I rewatched the show from Lu Yuan’s perspective and ignored omniscient knowledge, I discovered all the little details that the director and writers slipped into the show.

Jing Ping Year 30: Lu Yuan, 18 years old

Let’s start from when Shen Buyan traveled to when Lu Yuan was 18 years old. At this time, Shen Buyan is carrying the regret of not fulfilling his promise to stay with her. He has come back in a very frail condition and encounters Lu Yuan. Then the following exchange occurs between Lu Yuan and Shen Buyan—remember this scene, as it will become relevant later:

LY: You recognize me? What is the matter? Why are you crying? SBY: Someone’s waiting for me. But I went the wrong way.

18-year-old Lu Yuan sings the following lines of poetry as she returns home. These lines also appear in prior parts of the plot:

At first, when we set out, The willows were fresh and green; Now, when we shall be returning, The snow will be falling in clouds.

Translation from the Chinese Text Initiative of the University of Virginia

This poem comes from the Classic of Poetry's "Caiwei," which tells the story of a soldier who is enlisted into battle at a faraway border. In the endlessly long years of war, he expresses longing for his family. These lines discreetly touch on the drama's three main themes: the cruelty of war, longing for your beloved, and prolonged periods of waiting.

Shen Buyan first decides to keep his distance from Lu Yuan. But when he discovers that she's being mistreated, he still reveals himself to pass knowledge on to Lu Yuan.

Some of his teachings are more obvious foreshadowing, like hiding secret codes in music or when he teaches her things about the nations that are beyond the time period's understanding—even though it isn't explicitly said, we can still guess that in addition to geography, he teaches her all about economic and military matters. Hence, he gives her what she will need to become the mother of the emperor who will unify the nine nations.

Aside from that, the first lesson that he teaches her is to "understand larger truths from smaller signs." When we first watch, we might see this teaching is foreshadowing for when Lu Yuan later takes down the husbandry official—it's through this lesson that she discovers the official is secretly selling military horses to Beilie.

But I think the lesson is mainly a prelude for the rest of the drama. When people talk about this show, they all say that Lu Yuan is a wise and intelligent female lead. I think that everything started with this lesson of "understanding larger truths from smaller signs," because it explains how later—be it with Shen Buyan's time travel or her battles with Li Yong—she's able to understand everything. This includes how, through very small details, she will deduce the truth of the reversed timelines. It's a huge reason why Lu Yuan is able to become the person she is at the very end.

After Shen Buyan finishes teaching her and she defeats the official, Shen Buyan decides to end things and leave. However, Lu Yuan bravely expresses herself and manages to obtain for them a period of time in which the two of them are happily together. But with the start of war, Li Yong sees potential in Lu Yuan and recruits her as a spy to go to Beilie. She says goodbye to Shen Buyan, and ends this first time leap.

In this first leap, I think two details that should be noted are:

Lu Yuan remembers every little thing that Shen Buyan tells her. Specifically, she remembers every little thing from their time together. After a pair of lovers separate and think about each other afterward, aside from looking at physical belongings (like the jade or the konghou), they're likely to spend more time remembering all their tiny interactions with each other. So every detail throughout this first leap is something that Lu Yuan can recall clearly. This is very important to remember for later, when we observe how she changes.

In the three years during which Lu Yuan searches for Shen Buyan, she makes use of the chancellor's connections and resources. In the drama, she says that after completing her mission, she continuously searched for him. During her search for him, she follows Li Yong to Jiangdu. As Li Yong's intelligence director, the information available must be incredibly thorough and it also covers intelligence about all nations. You can assume that she used that intelligence to look for him through an exchange that comes later:

Where have you been all these years? I searched for you for so long. They all said they could not find someone like you. They did not know of you.

We can largely assume that the results of her searches tell her that no such person as "Shen Buyan" ever existed. So in these three years, Lu Yuan must be suspecting whether or not "Shen Buyan" was a real person or who he actually was.

What must Lu Yuan feel as she searches for him? I think we can mainly interpret that at this point, Lu Yuan views him as her first love. If, in this kind of relationship, Shen Buyan never turns up again, we can presume that Lu Yuan would house it away in her heart forever as her first love before moving on to live the rest of her life.

This can be deduced because when Lu Yuan is 18, the difference between this time and her later years is that she doesn't know that Shen Buyan will come back. Plainly, there are no such promises between them. The only thing that exists is the period of time that they spend together. She asks Shen Buyan to wait for her, but when she comes back, she finds that Shen Buyan didn't wait. She wouldn't think that Shen Buyan "disappeared," she would think that he "left." He left without promising to return.

Then, in the following three years, he doesn't contact her at all. So mainly, Lu Yuan would think, He left. Has he forgotten me?

Based on this, you can guess why in her older years, she recalls meeting him again at 21 like this:

Three years later—on the day of the Shangsi Festival—when I thought that everything was simply a beautiful dream from my youth, he suddenly appeared before me once more.

When we think about her in those three years, she must be missing Shen Buyan. But she also wonders whether Shen Buyan has forgotten all about her. If Shen Buyan hadn't returned, she would have preserved him in her memory forever, but she also would have started a new life.

--

Yuanqi Year 1: Lu Yuan, 21 years old

While it's fairly easy to understand Lu Yuan's perspective from when she's 18, it gets much more complicated in the second time leap. Let's first summarize how it goes:

Right when Shen Buyan arrives, he intends to kill Li Yong. After Lu Yuan stops him, the two of them enter into some disagreements. Ultimately, Shen Buyan gives up on his plans before going with Lu Yuan to their home in Nanmeng Lake. They spend some peaceful and happy times together, with Shen Buyan respecting her decisions.

Then he returns with her to persuade the young Emperor against his movements north, and they later witness Li Yong's betrayal and his role in incapacitating the Emperor. Throughout this time, Lu Yuan discovers instances in which Shen Buyan doesn't remember certain things that occurred in their relationship. Afterward, Lu Yuan decides to move to the palace. Shen Buyan fully intends on following her there.

The scene of the rainy night in which he disappears from the carriage is widely recognized as an intensely sad one, but I have a different perspective on it.

First, let's look at the overall progression of this second time leap. We know that Lu Yuan has discovered the existence of the reversed timelines. When she realizes that Shen Buyan doesn't remember the fruit tree or the jade, she'll then think about the words that Shen Buyan spoke in his sleep before and put everything together. That's when she realizes that they're trapped in reversed timelines.

I do think that she only understands it at surface-level and hasn't yet thought about it in more depth. Like how realization dawns on us as we watch the last episode, she more so only recognizes the foundation of things.

My second thought is based on the first. In the rainy scene of the carriage, why do we all find it to be a very sad scene? One part of it is that Shen Buyan promises to stay with her, but can't follow through. He suddenly disappears without explanation. The second point is that Lu Yuan doesn't know exactly what has become of Shen Buyan, even if she knows that he's disappeared. That she's in pain and turmoil, but she doesn't know how he feels.

We can guess that Lu Yuan overturns these doubts at a later point: when she's in the rain looking for him, she ultimately has to get up on her own and take the carriage herself to the palace. After this, five years pass.

In these five years, she knows much more than she did in the previous three. She knows for sure that Shen Buyan is from the future. She knows with certainty that he had no choice in disappearing. So over the next five years, she will eventually deduce that how they parted from one another when she was 21 was also how they met when she was 18.

She'll think, Why was it that back when I was 18, Shen Buyan was in such awful condition? It was like he had been through hell and back. He was completely frail and kept calling her name.

At 18, she couldn't understand why. But after five years, locked in the palace, after spending every night thinking about it, she will eventually figure it out: While I searched for him in the rain, he had not wanted to leave. And when he returned by the river, he was in the same condition that I had been in—no, even worse.

So the reasons for which we deem the rainy scene will be resolved as she thinks everything over. She will realize that he felt just as awful as she did in that moment, and that perhaps he searched for her even more desperately than she did for him. I think after realizing this, Lu Yuan smiled truly, from the bottom of her heart.

In actuality, the director also borrows 18-year-old Lu Yuan in their first meeting to tell Shen Buyan what 21-year-old Lu Yuan wants to say:

Look at the state you are in. I think that she definitely would not blame you!

My third thought is that over these five years and through her understanding of the reversed timelines, taking into account details from the two times that they met, she will be able to conclude that their very first meeting did not happen in this time leap. Since she didn't recognize Shen Buyan when she was 18, then when Shen Buyan first meets her in the future, he won't recognize her either. Thus, while their relationship is bound to begin at some point in between, it can't be when she's 21. That's because when they first reunite during this time leap, the two of them are clearly already in love with one another—even though Shen Buyan doesn't know about events from when she's 18, he still loves her already in this second time leap.

With this, you can tell why Lu Yuan will ultimately stick to this decision:

Shen Buyan. If there truly will be a next time, I would rather we not recognize one another.

It's easy to interpret this as her being hurt severely by his departure, but I think the deeper meaning is that when she puts together the puzzle of her meeting Shen Buyan at 18 and 21, this is a decision that will protect Shen Buyan. She's thinking about how to change his fate. Just as Shen Buyan once did to her when she was 18, she wants to leave him, pretend that she doesn't know him so they can avoid their entire relationship from beginning at all. She knows that as soon as it does, they'll end up hurting each other.

This drama is quite symmetrical. Shen Buyan leaving Lu Yuan to protect her and Lu Yuan's decision to do the same after five years' worth of consideration are parallel:

LY: Since you clearly do not wish to leave, why can you not stay? SBY: For efforts that will not lead to any results, what is the point in forcing them?

SBY: Lady Lu! What do I need to do for you to believe me? LY: Do not follow me. If you continue, I will no longer remain so polite.

Without me, she seems to be happier.

I am afraid the more that I care about him, the more I should not reunite with him.

So over these five years, she has concluded that Shen Buyan never forgot her, but instead he had no choice but to leave when she was 18 due to the reversed timelines. So every doubt she had over the last five and previous three years has been resolved.

When we think about those first three years, she waited for nothing since there was nothing promised. But in these five years, she has something to look forward to. Unlike before, she now knows for sure that she and Shen Buyan will meet again. But unlike the next leap where she knows that it will take 10 years for Shen Buyan to return, in these five years, she doesn't know how long it will take for him to come back. Shen Buyan doesn't tell her—not this time, nor when she was 18.

However, based on experience, she can guess that since their first and second meetings both took place during the Shangsi Festival, then the next time they meet will also be on the day of the Shangsi Festival. You can imagine that in these five years, during every Shangsi Festival, Lu Yuan is hoping to see him again. Maybe she walks on the street or goes to places they've been before to wait for him. But he doesn't appear until Yuanqi Year 5.

In these five years, Lu Yuan's thought process must be incredibly complicated. She has a lot of time to think about things like, How did we meet before? Why did you appear in my life? Why did we grow so attached to each other?"

At the same time, she's in a lot of pain, as she'll recall later at 26:

Each time, I harbored expectations. Yet they were shattered every time. But still, I held a little hope.

She knows very clearly that the two of them cannot be together and that they're destined to come to an end, but she can't help it. She can't control her feelings. Or, she has no way of leaving her feelings behind.

I think that these five years are much harder for Lu Yuan to endure than the previous three. Whereas in those first three years she viewed Shen Buyan as a typical romance partner, within these five years, the most painful part is having to part ways.

When two people begin growing closer, being together is part of it, but leaving one another might be the bigger part. So when they've already experienced parting from one another, the experience of a happy reunion will brand this love of theirs into Lu Yuan's life. She'll feel more and more that fate is toying with them, that it's ensuring that the two of them will never be together. That sense of fate will push her to miss him even more intensely and await their next meeting with even more anticipation.

But alongside this expectation, she may return to Nanmeng Lake and see the wish Shen Buyan made to change her fate. At this point she'll think, I want to change your fate too. Maybe I cannot change whether or not you return, but I can change whether or not you fall in love with me. By not letting you fall in love with me, by pretending to be a stranger, I can lessen your pain.

Now when you think about their interactions when she's 26 and pretends not to recognize him, you'll discover that it's actually a very sad arc.

--

Yuanqi Year 5: Lu Yuan, 26 years old

When Lu Yuan is 26, the progression of the plot is that by the time Shen Buyan arrives, Lu Yuan has already decided to ignore him. But as chance would have it, Shen Buyan saves the Emperor and follows them into the palace. Li Yong begins the battle at Huofeng Fort. Shen Buyan wants to go to battle with Lu Yuan to change Lu Shi's fate. They'll assume that they've successfully prevented Lu Shi from dying, and then they'll go to Nanmeng Lake. That is when they discover Lu Shi's fate hasn't changed at all, and Lu Yuan uses the Phoenix Tablet to take the position of Empress. Together, Lu Yuan and Shen Buyan confront the enemy outside of city walls—then Lu Yuan and Yi Hua are captured to the palace. The time leap ends when Shen Buyan takes the arrowhead from Yi Hua to assassinate Li Yong.

Let's take note of some details in this third time leap. First is that Shen Buyan makes a promise to stay. At this point, Lu Yuan doesn't say anything. Take note of her expression:

SBY: I've decided. No matter how difficult it is, I will stay here and face everything with you, together.

Based on what Lu Yuan is aware of at this point, she previously heard Shen Buyan say something similar during that rainy night in the carriage. Right after he did so, he immediately disappeared—this became a very painful memory.

But now that she's hearing it again, she doesn't say anything that would point that out. You can tell why based on something she says later:

SBY: Since I have told you so much, you should tell me too. In our past, what exactly did we go through? LY: I cannot tell you that. Otherwise, once you meet the me of the past, everything you do will be too purposeful. It will not reflect your true feelings.

Then, Shen Buyan tries to assassinate Li Yong and disappears again. We know that Lu Yuan will endure 10 years of waiting.

But in these 10 years, she has something to wait for. Shen Buyan very, very clearly tells her that they'll meet again on the day of the Shangsi Festival. And within these 10 years, she will put together the events of what has happened during this leap and the previous two.

First, she'll understand why when she was 21, Shen Buyan tried to kill Li Yong immediately after arriving in the timeline. That was because right before he disappeared when she was 26, he tried to assassinate Li Yong in Lu Yuan and Yi Hua's stead. Li Yong held them as prisoners, planned Lu Shi's death, and caused the Emperor to become mentally disabled, so the first thing Shen Buyan desperately needed to do back when Lu Yuan was 21 was kill Li Yong.

Lu Yuan will remember that at the time, she rebuked him for it. That was possibly their one and only argument, but now she understands why he acted as he did. And she'll think, How ridiculous of me, that I stopped him. That I did not believe him.

Even though while she was 21, she found out why Shen Buyan wanted to kill Li Yong when she witnessed what Li Yong did to the Emperor, she didn't yet know why killing Li Yong was the very first thing Shen Buyan wanted to do. Now she does.

The second thing of note is that through this leap, she now knows how they came to love each other—more accurately, how Shen Buyan fell in love with her. She knows that the next time they meet will be a time when Shen Buyan isn't in love with her. That's because when they first meet in this leap, Shen Buyan calls her "Your Majesty." At that point, their relationship was more so him reporting his knowledge to an Empress, so there was no love to speak of.

Lu Yuan learns that the reason Shen Buyan falls in love with her during this time leap is that while Shen Buyan intended on going to take Lu Shi's place in Liuli Valley, Lu Yuan ends up taking Shen Buyan's place. That is the start of his feelings for her.

During this time leap, there's an interesting parallel that can be drawn: Lu Yuan is doing to Shen Buyan what Shen Buyan did to her when she was 18; that is, trying to end things between them. But ultimately, neither of them succeed. What provides the parallel for their shared failure are two hug scenes:

1. 26-year-old Lu Yuan obviously loves Shen Buyan very deeply, but she pretends to be distant and pretends to not know him. She keeps this up until the incident in Liuli Valley, where they come to the conclusion that they can change fate.

2. Compare the above to when Lu Yuan was 18 and Shen Buyan very clearly loved her, but still pretended that there was nothing between them and tried to leave. It was only when Lu Yuan told him that even if she had only 10 days left to live, she would still want to be with the person she loved that they reconcile with another hug.

There's something additional here that will let us see the actors and directors' attention to detail. Throughout Lu Yuan's life from when she was 18 to when she's 26, there are a total of four hug scenes:

18-years-old: Shen Buyan is full of sorrow and wants to leave. Though he embraces her, Lu Yuan is still crying:

21-years-old: There are two hugs, during both of which Lu Yuan is happy, but still visibly concerned that Shen Buyan will leave again:

26-years-old: They embrace one another and Lu Yuan believes that they have changed fate, meaning that Shen Buyan can truly stay with her. This is the only hug in which Lu Yuan is completely happy:

Let's now take a look at Lu Yuan's life between the ages of 26 and 36. Before disappearing, Shen Buyan tells her to "keep living."

I think this line has a very deep meaning. In a short period of time, Lu Yuan has witnessed the deaths of her little brother and her lover. They both die in her arms.

LY: I have already lost Lu Shi. I cannot lose you too.

For the sake of the country, she marries someone she doesn't love, yet she still becomes the hateful "Demon Empress" in everyone's eyes. If it weren't for Shen Buyan's words and his 10-year promise, if it weren't for Shen Buyan telling her to keep living, if it weren't for the thought that Shen Buyan's sacrifice won her the opportunity to end the war...it's greatly possible that Lu Yuan couldn't have lived on.

We can also feel exactly how difficult it is for Lu Yuan in these ten years. Even though she has no longer has the military support of her brother, she slowly grows while tolerating it all. She gradually forces Li Yong from a position of great power to fleeing to Beilie with the city defense map. In these ten years, she also puts her soul into raising and teaching Chu Tongchang. She must pass down all the knowledge she gained from Shen Buyan to Chu Tongchang—after all, this child is the direction and hope that Shen Buyan brought to her in this latest time leap.

In these ten years, she also walks without hesitation toward her destiny. She now understands everything about the story of her and Shen Buyan. When she thinks about all their short encounters, she will remember that even though Shen Buyan does not have memories of the times they spent together, he still has feelings for her while respecting her decisions. From the very beginning, he has been someone who will sacrifice himself to protect her—even when he didn't have feelings for her.

To Lu Yuan, someone who maintains such a pure heart at every moment and who is constantly trying to change her fate will inevitably move her over and over again. All of these beautiful yet painful memories support her lonely self and become her motivation to keep moving forward in the palace.

So although these ten years are long, Lu Yuan waits and prepares amidst her sorrow for the Shangsi Festival that she and Shen Buyan promised to each other.

Knowing that he would arrive in ten years gave me endless hope in those long days.

--

Yuanqi Year 15: Lu Yuan, 36 years old

36-year-old Lu Yuan meets Shen Buyan, who views her as a stranger. For answers to three of his questions, she exchanges three favors: changing his clothes, having a meal, and roaming about the festival. After a brief reunion, Lu Yuan uses the information that Shen Buyan gave her ten years prior to corner Li Yong. She blocks an arrow for Shen Buyan and ends this time leap. Out of all the time leaps, this is the shortest one, but the amount of emotion in it is the deepest and most enduring.

Let's look at these three favors. When we watch the show, we think that these are things Lu Yuan is completing based on what she always wanted to do with Shen Buyan during the Shangsi Festival. Of course, this is the first level of meaning.

We know that within the last ten years, based on the information that Shen Buyan provided her when she was 26 and his attitude toward her, she will conclude that this next meeting of theirs will be very short. Then she'll think back to the time when she didn't recognize Shen Buyan and how he treated her back then.

Lu Yuan knows that she won't have the same amount of time as he did. When Shen Buyan met her for the last time, he left behind knowledge, the konghou, and the jade. Through these, he gave her things to reminisce over during her future days of sorrow. So, she also wants to leave something for Shen Buyan.

She thinks about how in the days that she spent getting older, the one thing she kept wondering was whether Shen Buyan still loved her. Hence, she wants to find some way to tell the future Shen Buyan that in these ten years, she was constantly thinking about him.

Of course, an overly direct confession to someone who doesn't know you will only scare them. She must think of alternatives. I believe that in the three favors, aside from fulfilling her own wishes, they also contain all the things that Lu Yuan wants to tell Shen Buyan.

1. Changing clothes: These clothes are ones that Lu Yuan made for Shen Buyan when she was 18, but she was never able to give them to him. When she was 21 and they went back to Nanmeng Lake, the director took care to give a close-up of Lu Yuan packing up these same clothes.

Top: 18-year-old Lu Yuan sewing the clothes - Bottom: 21-year-old Lu Yuan packing them up

She brought them to Nanmeng Lake, so why is it that she still didn't manage to give them to him? When we think of the possibilities, we have to consider that making clothes by hand in ancient times was typically done with the intention of giving them to lovers or husbands. You can think of this as a method that women could use to more directly confess to someone within a conservative society. Lu Yuan has also always been someone to whom such rituals are important, as displayed by this scene from when she was 18:

LY: I finally have the opportunity to tell you. You still owe me one last lesson. I hope that after that lesson is complete, we can find a place with just the two of us so I can tell you.

When she was 21, even though they were together, Lu Yuan was preoccupied with how to convince the Emperor against war. Not to mention, she also thought that Shen Buyan wouldn't be leaving again. What she wanted was to give him the clothes properly, after they managed to persuade the Emperor. But we all know what happened.

I don't think that the gifting of clothes is a simple gesture. In the Classic of Poetry that she and Shen Buyan use as a code book, there's a poem called "Zhengfeng Ziyi." It talks about the feelings of a wife as she makes clothes for her husband, representing the way that women in ancient times expressed love. By finally giving Shen Buyan these clothes, Lu Yuan believes that later—when Shen Buyan will go over the Classic of Poetry with her 18-year-old self—he will then understand the silent confession of her 36-year-old self.

And when we look at her pained expression in this scene, we can imagine that from the moment she finished the clothes, she has pictured personally giving them to Shen Buyan and seeing him wear them an infinite amount of times.

SBY: How did she know my height and measurements?

2. Having a meal: We know that Lu Yuan made the food, but what I want to focus on is how the act of having a meal represents Lu Yuan's attachment to Nanmeng Lake.

Nanmeng Lake was a part of every prior story of theirs. The beginning of their story took place at Nanmeng Lake. She also requests to Chu Tongchang that she be buried there. So she really hoped that she and Shen Buyan could go back there together.

But she knows that their reunion will be very short, and she also has to remain in Jiangdu to counter Li Yong. Knowing that they can't go back, she could instead make food from Nanmeng Lake.

In the past, it was always Shen Buyan and Yi Hua who would grill fish for her. I think that over the last ten years, Lu Yuan practiced cooking this meal repeatedly. Because she knows that once Shen Buyan goes to the past, he will understand what she wanted to tell him through this meal: "Although I am in the palace, my favorite food is still that simple food from Nanmeng Lake. Although I gave up our love over and over again for the sake of my country, all I really want from the bottom of my heart is to go home with you. I wanted to do as you asked when I was 21, and settle down with you at Nanmeng Lake."

SBY: Are you willing to leave Jinghua House and Jingdu to settle down at Nanmeng Lake and stay with one another?

3. Roaming the Shangsi Festival: 21-year-old Lu Yuan's dream was to spend Shangsi Festival on the streets with Shen Buyan. 36-year-old Lu Yuan takes a willow branch to drive calamities away from Shen Buyan.

In this scene, Lu Yuan hasn't actually told him everything about this tradition. To complete her explanation, the director and writers borrow the voice of an old town crier in every successive time leap:

I wish that all of Dasheng's people may drive away calamity from themselves, and welcome the return of their beloved!

Yes, Lu Yuan only tells Shen Buyan half of the tradition. What she leaves out is also the answer to his last question:

LY: My regret is not being able to spend the Shangsi Festival with someone. SBY: Who? LY: Is that your third question? You will find out next time.

The answer is: "May you avoid calamities. I have welcomed the return of my beloved."

I think these favors form the best method that Lu Yuan can come up with that both wouldn't disturb Shen Buyan and also express all of the longing and love she has felt in these ten years.

With this, the time leaps forming the main story are effectively over. To Lu Yuan, these four encounters with Shen Buyan encapsulate all the love in her life. Each encounter was shorter than the last, and each time she had to wait longer. I think she doesn't regret meeting Shen Buyan, but she grieves that she keeps waiting longer and longer and loves him deeper and deeper, yet their periods of reunion are shorter and shorter. She laments that they never went back to Nanmeng Lake and that they couldn't say a proper farewell.

--

The remainder of Lu Yuan's life

The first shot after the time leaps is of Yuanqi Year 20, where Lu Yuan is hanging another wish tablet, on which she has wished to meet Shen Buyan one more time. The second shot is of 56-year-old Lu Yuan sitting atop the city gate, where she sees Shen Buyan in the last moment of her life before she jumps down.

A few details: in the scene where Lu Yuan is hanging the wish tablet, take note that like Yi Hua, she is in mourning clothes. Aside from the death of Lu Shi that occurred when she was 26, I think that when she was 36, she also started mourning for Shen Buyan. Because in her heart, Shen Buyan was her lover and husband.

Important to note is that at this time, we're still tracking the years by the Yuanqi calendar. "Yuanqi Year 20" means that Emperor Yuanqi hasn't died yet. In a time when the Emperor isn't dead, the Empress dressing in mourning clothes must have caused her to be on the receiving end of much negative sentiment.

The second detail is that Lu Yuan believes that fate has changed since she didn't die that night in the palace. In actuality, her fate hasn't changed at all. It's just that when Shen Buyan left, he didn't know that her death was fake, so from his understanding, he always thought that she died after being struck by the arrow. Maybe Lu Yuan considered that, but in all her years of waiting, she needed a reason to keep going.

The third detail is that after the time leap from when she was 36, she has waited for Shen Buyan for 20 years. Her biggest question in these 20 years must have been, "Does Shen Buyan still think of me?" She kept missing him, but she knows that it's probably only been a few months to Shen Buyan. Compared to the separation that death brings, the more distant separation comes with time. She doesn't know whether or not Shen Buyan will forget her in the time to come, or if he'll still miss her.

I tend to think that Lu Yuan never arrives at the answer to this question as she approaches the end of her life. A lot of people think that 56-year-old Lu Yuan remembers that she met Shen Buyan when she was 6. I don't think that this is logical, especially since she doesn't address these memories directly in her narration of the special episode. So I believe that she struggles with this question until she dies.

The fourth detail is with the old woman who sold the jade to Shen Buyan. Her life's duty is to give the jade to someone called Shen Buyan and tell him to hang a wish tablet. Her request for him to do so is also quite insistent.

When some viewers discovered that this old woman isn't Lu Yuan, they felt a bit disappointed. But if you think about the context of this woman being a descendant of the Chu family, it makes the story even more impactful.

We all know that Lu Yuan doesn't have any descendants, but Yi Hua, who she considers family, also doesn't. Only her adopted child Chu Tongchang does. We can deduce that Lu Yuan spends the rest of her life thinking of Shen Buyan and must repeatedly tell Chu Tongchang that the jade and the wish tablet request must to be passed down to his descendants. And we can see that this will become the most important duty of the entire Chu family. Otherwise, how could her requests survive so many years until modern-day?

The fifth detail is regarding elderly Lu Yuan and the konghou with the snapped string. My personal take on this is that when elderly Lu Yuan saw Shen Buyan when he traveled for the very first time, "I miss you" was what she wanted to tell him. At this point in time, Shen Buyan doesn't know anything. But once he experiences everything and sees that konghou with a snapped string being excavated, he will understand that the ancient love song Lu Yuan played that day and her breaking a string upon seeing him will have been her saying "I miss you" before she jumped.

SBY: I do not understand either. How about you tell me? LY: I...miss you.

When Lu Yuan leaps down from the city gate, aside from it being an act to take responsibility for all the nation's anger, it can also be considered a form of liberation. I think that after witnessing the deaths of Lu Shi and Shen Buyan, she had already considered dying, but two things kept her going: one being that she had to raise and teach Chu Tongchang, another being that she had to wait for Shen Buyan.

But in 56-year-old Lu Yuan's life, Chu Tongchang is already an adult who can handle himself. She's waited for Shen Buyan for 20 years, and he hasn't shown up. She can let go now. Yet her sincerity proves fruitful, because in her last moments, she sees Shen Buyan again.

In that scene of the rainy carriage night when Lu Yuan was 21, she said the following to Shen Buyan:

You and I have different duties. With our different duties, we walk in different directions.

Lu Yuan's duty is to end a tumultuous period and raise an emperor who will unify the nine nations. Shen Buyan's duty is to track history and restore Lu Yuan's good name.

Lu Yuan of the past never cared about the burden of the mark "Demon Empress." Shen Buyan of the past never cared about the Sheng nation's fate. With that, they were destined to move in opposite directions. But as time passes and they near the end of their lives, they have both slowly changed their previous perspectives and eventually end up on the same page.

Lu Yuan was always protecting Shen Buyan. Physically, but more so emotionally. Apart from when she was 18 and 21 and didn't know the truth of their situation, she constantly restrained herself starting at 26. She did so toward the lover of hers for 5 years, 10 years, even if it meant each reunion could possibly be the end of any beginnings.

Shen Buyan was also always protecting Lu Yuan. With a very average physique, he stood up for her in the middle of danger and revolt. During war, he was willing to take her brother's place in facing death. In the palace, he attempted to assassinate Li Yong to protect Lu Yuan and Yi Hua, buying Lu Yuan 10 years' worth of time to repair the nation of Sheng.

Aside from protecting her, Shen Buyan also respected her choices. Once he learned of 18-year-old Lu Yuan's wishes to depart for Beilie—even though he knew this was the last time he would see her—he respected her choice and said nothing but his last farewell. I think this is the true meaning of Shen Buyan's name (T/N: "Buyan" literally means "without speaking").

LY: See you again! Wait for me! You have to wait for me! SBY: See you again!

Now that we're at the end of the story, I want to interpret her line of "I have grievances, but no regrets."

She doesn't regret meeting Shen Buyan. It's in her persistence in leaving behind something for Shen Buyan before she dies.

She doesn't regret showing courage. In each short encounter she had with Shen Buyan, as an ordinary woman during a conservative time period, she still bravely expressed her own feelings. She didn't let any meeting of theirs simply slip by.

She doesn't regret that she spent her life lamenting a lost love. In the last episode, they describe that Lu Yuan was buried in Nanmeng Lake. Buried alongside her were the konghou and the sheet music for a love song. She spent her whole life performing and interpreting this ancient love.

She also doesn't regret giving up family, love, and her own life for the sake of her country.

As for her grievances, I believe we already know what those are.

[adarkrainbow]

The Grimm fairytales: Little Red Riding Hood

After making a whole post about Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood, I had to make one about the version of the Brothers Grimm!: 

What is quite fascinating is that everybody thinks they know Little Red Riding Hood story - the German one, and they basically sum it up as “Like Perrault’s, but a woodsman comes and save the day in the end”. However things are a.... bit more complicated than that. 

So, the German Little Red Riding Hood, by the Brothers Grimm, is usually translated in English as “Little Red Cap”, Rotkäppchen . Again, the “riding hood” is not seen, just like in the French version, this seems to be a purely English expression. To do this recap I will mostly focus on the differences between the Grimm version and Perrault’s.

The beginning is quite similar, describing the little girl as a child beloved by everyone but especially by her grandmother, who gives her a “little cap of red velvet”, that the girl loves so much she doesn’t wear anything else, hence her name Little Red-Cap. [Interestingly we have here an actual transliteration of the “chaperon rouge” of the original French tale, as an ornamental red velvet headwear, though the ribbon turns into a cap]. The way the mother sends her child into the forest is however VERY different. In Perrault’s tale, the mother says that she heard the grandmother was ill and thus sends her child with some a small cake and a pot of butter to check on her - but that’s it. In the Grimm fairytale, the mother KNOWS the grandmother is ill and sends her child with a small cake and a bottle of wine (maybe a remnant of the oral versions of France?) to make her better. Not only that but, unlike in Perrault’s version, the mother of the Grimm versions gives her daughter precise instructions and advice before she sets alone for the woods - “set out before it gets hot”, “walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path”, “don’t forget to say Good-morning”, “don’t peep into every corner”, etc... So the motif of Perrault’s original tale (a mother spoiling her child and not giving her the right advice and information about life) is removed and changed to a “breaking of the rules” story. Because this is the mother’s order to “not run off the path” that is broken by Little Red-Cap per the wolf’s temptation. And so, from a Petit Chaperon Rouge victim of her mother and grandmother’s mistakes, we have now a Little Red-Cap somehow “punished” for breaking the “rules”. 

Similarly, when the wolf appears in front of the little girl, in Perrault’s tale the little girl was said to ignore “that it was dangerous to listen to wolves” - while here the text rather claims that the little girl ignored that it was a “wicked creature”, and thus was not afraid of him. The situation of the grandmother’s house is also changed in the Grimm stories - in Perrault’s version the grandmother lived at the edge of a village, on the other side of the wood ; in the Grimm’s, she lives deep into the woods, “under the three large oak-trees”, right below the nut-trees.What is also quite fascinating is that the wolf seems to want to eat the grandmother first - since it is what motivates him to ask where the grandmother lives... But he then notices how of a “nice plump mouthful” the little girl is, and thus decides to eat her alongside the grandmother. (This is the reverse of the Perrault story, where the wolf wants primarily to eat the girl, and only gulps the grandmother as a collateral damage, so to speak). Instead of a sort of race between two paths, and the wolf encouraging the little girl to take the longest path, the wolf of the Grimm rather encourages the girl to stay off the path by pointing out the pretty flowers, the singing birds and the merry woods. Ultimately Little Red-Cap decides to run off the path into the woods to pick flowers, to make a “fresh nosegay” for her grandmother. 

The wolf runs to the grandmother’s house, and the iconic French sentence “Tire la chevillette et la bobinette cherra” is turned into a mere “Lift the latch”. Another massive difference occurs when it comes to the arrival of the girl. In Perrault’s story, the wolf thinks of locking back the door behind him, and the girl is surprised by the deep voice that welcomes her but places it on account of her grandmother’s cold. Here, the wolf forgets to close the door, which the girl notices, and while the “deep voice” element is removed, the girl expressedly says that she feels uneasy walking into the house, unlike what she feels when she usually goes to her grandmother’s. The wolf is in bed, the cap of the grandmother “pulled down over her face”.  The dialogue with the grandma-wolf is also changed, into the iconic exchange known by everyone today. Or almost...

“Oh grandmother, what big ears you have!” “The better to hear you with, my child.”

“But grandmother, what big eyes you have!” “The better to see you with my dear.”

“But grandmother, what large hands you have!” “The better to hug you with.”

“Oh! But grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have!” “The better to eat you with!”

It is quite interesting to see that the dialogue between the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood people know about is usually a mix of the Grimm’s and the Perrault’s dialogues. 

At this point we reach the most famous addition of the Brothers Grimm, who continue the tale beyond Perrault’s original ending. The wolf falls asleep in the bed, snoring loudly. A huntsman passing nearby hears the very loud snores coming out of the house, and thinking it is “the old woman” he decides to check f she needs anything - but is amazed to find the wolf on the bed. Interestingly, the hunter exclaims that he has been looking for the wretched creature for quite some times, indicating that the huntsman was literaly hunting the wolf... Another interesting detail: most people recall the savior of the protagonists as being a woodsman with an axe, but here it is a huntsman with a rifle, who is about to shoot at the wolf before he realizes that maybe the wolf devoured the old woman of the house. So he takes a pair fo scissors, and cuts open the belly of the sleeping wolf (yes, this wolf has a DEEP sleep). When he cuts, he notices the “shining red cap”, which encourages him to dig deeper until he delivers the girl, and then the grandma (another interesting detail - how the Grimm versions uses the red cap as an actual story tool, rather than it just being an ornamental wordplay like in Perrault’s). Another thing people often get wrong with the story: they remember that the one who puts stones in the belly of the wolf is the woodsman/huntsman. Nope... it is Little Red Cap herself with picks up the rocks and places them in the belly, so that when the wolf awakes and tries to run away, he falls down dead.  

Everybody is happy. The hunter takes the skin of the wolf and returns home wth it. The grandmother eats the cake and drinks the wine and heals thanks to it. And Red Cap promises herself “As long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.” Again, here the shift of the moral is clear - the Perrault concept of a girl dying/endangered because she was badly raised becomes “a girl is taught a lesson for dissobeying to her parents”. 

But what is even more fascinating is that the tale of the Brothers Grimm doesn’t stop here - there is another part of the story that has dropped from people’s memory. It is added that another day, as Red-Cap was again bringing cakes to her grandmother, another wolf came to speak to her and tried to convince her to stray off the path. But Red-Cap, having learned her lesson, refused to do so, and upon arriving at her grandmother’s house told her about meeting the wolf. She adds that he had such a wicked look in his eyes, she was quite certain if they hadn’t been on a “public road” he would have eaten her (this is a leftover of the Perrault’s version, where the wolf doesn’t eat the girl in the woods because he fears the wood-cutters). The grandmother than shuts the door so the wolf may not enter, and they do good because the wolf arrives and tries to pass off as Red-Cap to have the door opened. Since the two girls do not answer or react to the wolf’s knocking, the beast decides to jump on the roof and wait until the evening falls - so that when Little Red-Cap leaves the house, he might devour her in the darkness. The grandmother, however, quickly guesses what the wolf is doing and prepares a plan...

In front of her house is a great stone trough. She tells her grandchild to take the water in which she boiled some sausages yesterday, and to fill with it the trough. When the wolf smells the scent of sausages, he sniffs and peeps down, stretching himself by the side of the roof - until he loses his footing, falls into the trough, and drowns in the water (when comparing this to the French oral variant where the washerwomen drown the wolf in the water, it seems fairytale wolves do not know how to swim). 

The story ends on a sentence that is... quite bizarre. “But Red-Cap went joyously home, and never did anything to harm any one”. Wait, what? Why would Red-Cap harm people? Well... to be fair the story showed her having an un-childlike behavior, as she came up with the stone in the belly idea, and participated in the drowning of a wolf - so maybe the narration tries to reassure us that all the massacres are done, and the murders are not needed anymore, and the little girl won’t grow up to become a serial-killer? 

While this is the full story as recorded by the Grimms, as present in many English translations of their märchen collection, and unchanged from the first edition (while I do not like Jack Zipes’ treatment of Perrault, his work on the first edition of the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales is a precious treasure), I heard that in ulterior publications - the 1857 edition of the book for example - they had shortened and simplified the story (for example removing the second wolf’s part), to reach the version most widespread and known today. I am not sure of this, but I’ll leave it here, and if someone can compare the various editions of the Grimms, don’t hesitate to correct me!

I already talked heavily of the shift in “morality” the Grimms created, by turning the “example tale” of Perrault where the girl’s fate is the one of a tragic victim, into a “teaching tale” where the girl’s fate is a lesson to better behave. 

The reason there are two wolves in this tale is because the brothers Grimm ended up being told two different versions by two members of a same family, Jeanette Hassenpflug and Marie Hassenpflug. They ultimately decided to make Jeanette’s version the main story, and Marie’s an addendum at the end. But what is extremely relevant here is that the two women were part of a family of French descent, and thus a lot of the stories they brought to the Grimm were actually French-flavored (I’ll get more about this when I’ll talk about the Grimms in general). Most obviously, it is quite clear that the story of “Little Red-Cap” is actually a slightly modified version of Perrault’s fairytale. Except for the happy ending with the huntsman - but Michèle Simonsen studied the evolution of the story, and she has concluded that this “hunter-ending” was actually the invention of miss Hassenpflug. Simonsen actually believes that miss Hassenpflug found this ending from a theater play that was very popular in Germany at the time, and that was a modified version of the famous “The wolf and the seven goats/kids” story. This is notably why the Grimms themselves, and many other people afterward, drew parallels and relationships between the AT 333 (Little Red Riding Hood) and the AT 123 (The wolf and the seven goats). 

The transition from France to Germany of the “little red cap” seems to have been easy due to a particular custom typical of the Hesse region, where the Grimms collected most of their tales: in this region, the traditional outfit for women included a little velvet cap. And said cap changed color depending on the age and condition of the person wearing it: when a woman was married, she wore a green cap, when she was a widow the cap was black, and when the woman was a child or a young girl, a maiden... Then she wore a red cap. 

Speaking of red, I want to evoke here the topic of “why is the cap red?”. Many, many interpretations have gone by. The “naturalist” or “weather” theory so prevalent in many fairytales is that the cap is red to symbolize that the little girl is a solar symbol, a diurnal character that has to be rescued from the wolf with a belly “so dark” (it is the main complaint of the girl upon leaving it, the darkness inside, while it is the shining red of her cap that allows the hunter to save her) he seems to be an embodiment of night - so the story is read as a remnant of the ancestral myths of “the ravishing of the sun/the return of the sun” ; or in a variation as another story of “the spring/summer female deity that has to be returned from the world/monster of winter”. It is a very common interpretation... but a false one given we know that the “red cap” seems to have appeared with Perrault. Other people, picking up on the sexual subtext (or sexual text for oral variations) of the story, proposed that “red” was chosen by Perrault due to it being a color of sexuality and romance. Which is also a very common intepretation (many people see the “red” as a menstrual blood symbolism)... but just as anachronic, because the idea of red being a color of sexuality is younger than Perrault’s tale - Michel Pastoureau, the French experts on colors nowadays (he published several studies on the colors, their use, history and symbolism), proved that the color of sexuality, at the time of Perrault’s, was actually green and not red. So where does this red comes from?

A concept we find in both the Grimm’s versions and the oldest written version of the tale (which I talked about in my previous post) are those of protection, religious protection - as red was for a time a very common color for baptism outfits, and the red cap “protects” the girl in those tales (the red dress protects the girl from the cubs, the red cap allows the hunter to get her out of the belly). This is doubled by the Hessian tradition of colored caps I talked about previously, which highlights the red as a color of youth, innocence and virginity. But this all can’t possibly work for Perrault, since in his tale the “chaperon” precisely fails to protect or shield the girl in any way (see the wordplay on chaperon/chaperone I talked about in my Perrault post). So... a mystery? Not quite. There is actually a solution that has been brought forward by my research director quite recently - as she proposed a “proverbial reading” of the fairytales of Perrault, and by doing so found out the very possible reason Perrault chose the color red. But I’ll reveal that in a later post, when I’ll talk of her work.

A last note about the Grimm version: the addition of the huntsman introduced another main actor in the story, or more precisely another male character in the story, a benevolent masculine force counterring the negative masculinity of the wolf. Even more - we can easily read his character as a paternal figure, since he is the only other human character in this group of exclusively female ones. The idea of him being a paternal figure is heavily tied to the saving of the little girl and the grandmother, which many have noted to appear as a scene of “birth” or “rebirth”. Either a grotesque parody of natural birth, either a more allegorical, if not religious, scene of resurrection, of being reborn as a better person - it depends on what you prefer. But the imagery is quite clear: a little girl that is removed from a dark belly and brought into the light, a belly that is cut open with scissors by a paternal figure... After the death of a girl that disobeyed, we find the return to life of a girl who learned her lesson... 

[choco-pudding]

Space Channel 5 Part 2: Sugoku Sugoi  Guide Book p. 096-103 (Translation by @lavoszero and myself. Edits and typesetting by myself)

Fourth part of Report 4.

Imgur link to all of the  Sugoku Sugoi Guide Book translations we’ve done thus far.

Plain text below

p. 096 Channel 5 HQ · Central Core A

Shooting Dancing

Ulala’s Stars: 10 At this moment, Ulala halts Purge's attempt to rob the station of its Space Transmitter (antenna). He even has the audacity to use the abducted President Peace as a weapon… At first glance, the shooting battle that unfolds here looks easy since Purge leaves an input trail. But rely solely on your eyes and you'll miss the key timing.

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066 🠮 🠬 🠮 067 🠬 🠮 🠬 068 🠩 ⬇ x 069 o

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Perfect! 093

Toyota toyota toyota toyota toyota right left

p. 098 Channel 5 HQ · Central Core B

Shooting

Ulala’s Stars: 3 Purge decides to “play a game” of reverse inputs, using the Peace Carrier—and the president within—as a human shield. It’s tricky, if you shoot in the direction Purge shouts, you’ll hit the president… Even missing can get  your head in a whirl. The trick is to ready your aim in the direction Purge wasn’t at.

17. Singing

Purge: “Playing in reverse!” 🠬 x x 070 “Playing in reverse!” 🠮 x x Purge: “Don’t hit the president” 🠮 x x 071 “Don’t hit the president” Purge: 🠬 x x 🠮 x x 072 🠮 x x 🠬 x x

Pine’s Comment In this reverse input game, when Purge says, "Playing in reverse, left, chu, chu," we have to respond with, "right, chu, chu," or else the president gets attacked. Since this might be hard to comprehend with just the inputs for Ulala's turn listed, I’ll mention the commands for Purge’s turn, too. This mark will indicate when it's his turn.

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Perfect! 094

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p. 099

18.

Purge: 🠮 x 🠬 x x 073 🠬 x 🠮 x x Purge: 🠬 x x 🠮 x x 074 🠮 x x 🠬 x x Purge: 🠮 x 🠬 x 🠮 x x 075 🠬 x 🠮 x 🠬 x x

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Perfect! 095

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p. 100 Channel 5 HQ · Central Core C

Singing

Ulala’s Stars: 3 Now Purge has merged with the Peace Carrier to use the President's Song Power. In turn, Ulala must fight back with Space Michael's singing. In other words, the Chief gets a solo performance! The singing can be inputted with the down button, but it looks like you can vary the actions by pressing up, left, or right. It’s just like playing a musical instrument.

19.

076 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 077 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 078 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 079 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 080 x x x x x x 081 o o o o o o 082 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ x x x 083 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ o o o o

20.

084 ⬇ ⬇ 085 ⬇ ⬇ 086 ⬇ ⬇ 087 ⬇ ⬇

Pine’s Comment As the BGM slowly rises from silence, it gets harder to keep up with the rhythm. At sets [85] and [87] there's a pause before the commands kick in (said commands are timed to what we call off-beats). Avoid inputting your moves to the background “tis tis” for those sets.

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Perfect! 096

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p. 101

21.

088 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 089 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 090 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 091 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇

22. Timed Chu

092 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ x~ x 093 ⬇ ⬇ x x ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 094 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ x 095 x~ x 096 ⬇ ⬇ 097 ⬇ ⬇ 098 x o 099 o x 100 ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 101 x~ x 102 ⬇ ⬇ 103 ⬇ 104 x x 105 x o

Pine’s Comment Keep in mind that sets [95] ~ [99] and their inputs come at you in rapid succession. Then there’s [103]. You gotta wait an extra beat before entering the input. If you’re having trouble timing it, just imagine there is another input before it, like in set [102].

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Perfect! 097

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p. 102 Channel 5 HQ · Central Core D

Finale!

Ulala’s Stars: 1 “Go for the head, get him in one shot!”

“Ready to fire!”

Chu! Chu! Chu!

Ulala’s Hearts: 1 “Ulala, the rest is up to you, the galaxy depends on your funky moves!”

Down! “Fuse!”

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Perfect! 098

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p. 103 Special Issue Astrobeat Interview by 88Man

88Man: Noize, Noize. Noize: Oh, hello. 88Man: We do specialized interviews about machines and robotics,  please describe your report team's equipment for this issue!  Start with the Astrobeat. I've heard that it's managed by Fuse himself! Noize: Not exactly, 88Man. It's true that Fuse is in charge of the Astrobeat, but the antenna should be the thing that's credited with doing most of the work! 88Man: So that's what makes it different. So then, Fuse's true identity must be the right part of the ship, attached to the Astrobeat's antenna, near where the wings are and the fire comes out! Noize: Excuse me... Uh, that's not exactly correct either, 88MAN. Here, I'll tell you all the facts.  And I'll explain it thoroughly. The Astrobeat is a generic space broadcasting ship used by Channel 5, but we tricked it out with some special installations. It's equipped with a medium-sized space transmitter, which improves the performance of live broadcasts. It's also modified so that the Astrobeat Jr. can be docked at the bottom of the hull. The Astrobeat Jr. is self-driving but I can pilot it too. We modified it to have a platform on the back for dancing too. It's customized with an ultra-compact space transmitter as well, so we're able to broadcast from it directly, even though it's small. After Channel 5's HQ was destroyed, the broadcast about it was sent out by Astrobeat Jr.  The signal was picked up by Pine's Space Police ship, the Playgirl, sent off to all the Space Police offices, and then received by space broadcasting stations galaxywide.

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Perfect! 099

Up right left down toyota honda toyota

[skelezomperman]

This is in regards to Fe4 which is that though you might prefer one ship to another, you have to often read other lines a character has based on their other lovers just to get a general picture of what that characters story is. Like for instance, Lachesis being told to go to Leonster and seek refuge with Finn can very much be more related to her wanting to visit Ares there which is something only brought up in her Noish lover conversation. This part of her character’s story is pretty much something that can work for any type of pairing you have in mind for her and it is something I wish Fe4 fans would do more often.

An interesting discourse that has recently gained attention. I personally prefer Finn/Lach, of course, but it's not really implied by Genealogy. I think a lot of misinformation comes from people misreading the conversation between Lachesis and Beowulf in Chapter 5 which is something that I've felt for a long time. Below is the conversation in the Project Naga translation:

Lachesis: Beowulf... Beowulf: Look, Lachesis. If somethin' happens t'me, I want ya to go to Leonster fer me. Quan's kids're there with Finn. Help 'em out where I can't, yeah? Lachesis: No! You mustn't say such things! If I go to Leonster, you will come with me! Beowulf: Lachesis... I don't think I've done right by ya. Lachesis: W-what? Why...? Beowulf: I knew how ya really felt all along... Lachesis: ...Oh! Beowulf: Look after yerself, Lachesis. This was fun while it lasted. Lachesis: Wait! Beowulf!!

Let's focus on the emphasized lines because those are the ones at hand. The first thing that Beowulf tells Lachesis is to go to Leonster and help Finn with Quan's children. Notice the context that Finn is mentioned in: he is mentioned in the context of being Leif's caretaker, not as a lover for Lachesis. I would argue that Finn being mentioned is incidental, but the original text does mention him first while PN reverses the order to have Beowulf mention Quan's children first.

The second thing he says is that he "knows how Lachesis really felt all along." What does this mean? It means that Beowulf thinks that Lachesis doesn't truly love him at that point...and that's it. Beowulf doesn't say who Lachesis is truly in love with, just that he thinks that their relationship fizzled out. Any claims that Beowulf was thinking about someone specific requires conjecture - it requires the person to project their own inference onto the conversation. I will also point out that it's not even necessarily that Lachesis moved on to someone else because Beowulf never implies that - he only implies that the relationship fizzled out, or perhaps that it wasn't even real in the first place.

The error is that people think that Finn being mentioned earlier in the conversation means that Finn is Lachesis' lover. But as I stated earlier, Finn is mentioned in the context of being Leif's caretaker. His presence within the conversation is incidental. By the same logic, one could perhaps claim that Beowulf thinks that Lachesis was in love with Quan because if that were the case, it would make sense for Lachesis to want to take care of her crush's children after his death. It's not illogical to think that Beowulf is breaking off the relationship because Lachesis pines for Finn, but a strict critical reading of the conversation does not provide any fodder for or against this assertion. Ultimately, like with many things in this game, the cause of Beowulf and Lachesis' separation is up to player interpretation.

For posterity, here is the conversation in Japanese:

ラケシス

ベオウルフ･･･

ベオウルフ

ラケシス、もし俺になにかあれば

レンスターに行ってくれ

レンスターには

フィンと、キュアンの子がいる

俺に代わって彼らを助けてやってくれ

ラケシス

そんなことを言わないで！

行くときはあなたも一緒です！

ベオウルフ

ラケシス、

おまえにはすまなかったと思っている

ラケシス

え？ 　どうして･･･

ベオウルフ

おまえの気持ちは知っていた･･･

ラケシス

！･････

ベオウルフ

ラケシス、元気でな

短い間だったが、楽しかったぜ

ラケシス

待って！　ベオウルフ!!

And by the old DTN translation:

Lachesis:

“Beowulf…”

Beowulf:

“Lachesis, if anything were to happen to me, I want you to go to Lenster. Fin is there with Cuan’s children. Give him a hand, okay?”

Lachesis:

“How could you say that? When we go, we’ll go together!”

Beowulf:

“Lachesis, I’ve got a confession to make.”

Lachesis:

“Hm?”

Beowulf:

“I’ve known your true feelings all along.”

Lachesis:

“What…!”

Beowulf:

“Take good care of yourself. It was mighty nice while it lasted.”

Lachesis:

“Wait! Beowolf!”

I don't think that this changes the meaning too much, but I will note that DTN translated the first emphasized line as "give him a hand" and not "help 'em out." One might note that the pronoun 彼ら means they, not he.

[fancysasquatch]

I've decided to watch Gravity Falls, and I want to see if I can figure out the various mysteries without looking up any answers. I'm going to catalog my efforts to do that here on tumblr.

Going into this I've only seen two episodes back in like 2013 (the pilot and one where there's a pig) but I'm not totally in the dark about the show because there's a few things I've gleaned from cultural osmosis on tumblr. Namely, the bad guy is a pyramid man named Bill Cypher and also Grunkle Stan either has a twin or a clone, I'm unclear which.

I'm currently two episodes in and I've already discovered and cracked one secret code, and am keeping my eye on a couple other things. During the credits of episode one I noticed a string of garbage text, pictured below

Knowing this show's reputations I figured this might be a coded message, probably either a substitution or transposition cipher (since this was a code meant for children and those are "Baby's first cryptography" material). I put it in an anagram finder and got back 48 results that all contained the word "fjord" but none seemed like an actual message, so it probably wasn't a transposition cipher.

If it was a substitution cypher then there were three options that seemed the most likely to me. It was either a shifted alphabet (each letter in the message is shifted a certain amount up or down the alphabet, so A becomes B becomes C, or A becomes C and B becomes D, et cetera), a reverse alphabet (every letter is mirrored back to front, so ABC becomes ZYX) or a keyed alphabet (where every letter's replacement is randomly determined by a secret key).

If it was a keyed alphabet then I was out of luck for now, I would have to wait until either they reveal the key or I collected enough messages to brute force it. I tried a reverse alphabet first but it was still garbage text. So it was down to being one of 25 different shifted alphabet keys (unless it was multiple codes, like a reverse alphabet and a transposition, but I'd finish dealing with single codes first).

I could have tried each of the 25 possible shifts first, but that's a lot of work, so instead I focused on the two letter word. One of those two letters has to be a vowel, and there's only six vowels so that means 12 possible options. Only two of the options were real words. Shifting back two letters turned "wr" into "up" but the rest of the message was nonsense. Shifting it back three letters turned "wr" into "to," and applying that to the whole message made it read "Welcome to Gravity Falls."

With that code cracked, I moved on to episode 2. I hadn't paid much attention to the intro during the first episode but this time I paid closer attention, and noticed a few things (and then went back and confirmed they were the same in the first episode's intro).

In Dipper's title card there's some symbols on the wall that look like runes, but the only real rune is the third symbol. The others don't seem to appear in any actual runic or pseudo-runic alphabets I can find online. I'm going to be writing this off as purely decorative for now, but I'll keep an eye out in case these keep popping up as a symbolic alphabet, like the alien alphabet from Futurama.

At the very end of the intro this pops up for a split second. That guy in the middle is Bill Cypher, I already know he turns up later. I recognize several of the symbols surrounding him as being from the show. The shooting star is on Mabel's sweater, the handprint is on the cover of the book, the tree is on Dipper's hat, the lobster claw is on Grunkle Stan's hat, and the question mark is on Soos' shirt.

To the right there's a string of text which, when translated using the same alphabet shift code from above, reads "Stan is not what he seems." It also has the Konami code, which I'm just taking as an easter egg.

On the left there's a few possible number codes. In red it looks like something in binary but it's doesn't actually mean anything in binary. But if you convert it to morse code it could be either "sror" or "oksk." Using the same -3 shift, "sror" becomes "polo," which means nothing for now. Reverse alphabet shifting does nothing, I used an online tool to test every other alphabet shift but nothing came up. I don't even know where to begin working on the other two possible number codes.

The credits for the second episode had another hidden message. Using the -3 shift, it becomes "Next week: return to Butt Island."

[mountainsea-chronicles]

Weekly Shanhaijing 6 - Joint-Wing Birds ( 比翼鸟 )

This is sort of a continuation to the previous Weekly SHJ. As in 1) the passage below directly follows the one from last week, and 2) I’ve created something of a narrative thread between the instalments.

比翼鸟在其东，其为鸟青、赤，两鸟比翼。一曰在南山东。

The joint-winged birds are to the east. They are blue-green and crimson, and two birds fly on shared wings. It is said they are to the east of South Mountain.

-From the Classic of Southern Lands Beyond the Seas ( 海外南经 )

Red bird,

be my wing.

I cannot be whole

without it.

Green bird,

stay beside me.

Take me across the mountains.

I don’t know what we’ll find 

across the ridge,

but just the feeling

of flight on joined wings

the sky above and mountains below

is enough.

Translation

“…to the east.” - I know I just translated “其[direction]” as “to its [direction]” in the last post, but in retrospect, “to the [direction]” would make it work better, both as a standalone excerpt and in the context of the work as a whole.

“..blue-green…” - “青” is honestly one of the most difficult concepts to translate. It’s not just a single colour, but a whole spectrum, from bright green to intense blue. “Blue-green” has become my go-to translation for the word.

“…and two birds fly on shared wings.” - The word “比” in this context is difficult to explain; it’s something like “put them together,” “put them side-by-side.”A more literal translation would be “two birds put wings together.” I decided against that because it felt too vague. Went for something that would paint a clearer image instead, while still trying to keep the economy of the language.

Art

While the text just refers to these guys as “birds,” I’ve always imagined them as looking like waterfowl of some sort, particularly ducks or herons ( the former was probably because I’d been subconsciously influenced by the symbolism of mandarin ducks in Chinese culture ). I decided to combine the characteristics of the two types of bird and sprinkle in my usual funky patterns.

The blue-green bird’s design was also partly drawn from a description of the joint-wing birds from a later chapter, the Classic of the Great Western Wilderness ( 大荒西经 ):

有比翼之鸟。有白鸟青翼，黄尾，玄喙。

There are birds of conjoined wings. There are white birds with blue-green wings, yellow tails, dark beaks.

Writing

I imagined a sort of rhythm throughout the poem. I guess this could be considered a reverse tone poem- the music came first, the words settled into the beat later.

It may not seem like it, but I swear there’s a connection between this and the previous instalment ( apart from the little cameo of the snake-fish ). It’s that feeling of discovery, of exploration.

Speaking of the snake-fish, we’ll see more of them in the next instalment. Stay tuned!

[scary-senpai]

According to Reddit the fan translation is expected to take longer than usual. (I am still amazed and grateful and blessed that people do this for free, and promptly!)

But the Spanish translation is out!

Here is my Labor-of-Love attempt at translating the Garou parts. It’s been awhile since I read things in Spanish, I’ve been up for like 3 days, and I will not be offended if you give me feedback or corrections. If I do anything egregious, I’ll try to make edits at some point

We’re like two degrees of separation from the original text so that increases the likelihood of errors or bad takes. And again I’m super tired but I’ll never turn down an opportunity to practice language especially if it’s about something a blorbo.

Images and translations below

Garou: hey, top disciple, bring me water & yakisoba bread. Now.

Bang: some kohai** you are (derogatory)

Garou: ouch!

**kohai = underclassman. (Senpai is upperclassman. Fyi in previous scenes, the honorifics are reversed - Charanko calls Garou Senpai to his face (which is normal given the social context) and “scary senpai” behind his back.

Garou: what bullshit! I who once perfected martial arts have to do the cleaning day after day

Sourface: hey martial arts master, here the cleaning looks a little lacking*

**the word is literally “suave,” not sure what that means in this context? Soft? Light? Mild as in not strong?

Garou: wE hAvE tO Do oUr bEsT

Bang: you’re the lowest ranking disciple. You have no choice but to do your best to get along with others because of all the trouble you’ve caused

Garou: tch

Bang: alright — It’s time for you to leave for work.

** My brain is having trouble with this sentence. I want to say it’s more nuanced and indefinite like, “there will be a time where you get along with others” but he also looking straight at the clock. Por y para, man—qué dolor 😭

Garou: shit, it’s just one thing right after the other

Bang: don’t complain. This is part of your court-ordered reformation program. You should be thankful.

Sourface: there aren’t any disciples left since you went crazy and destroyed the place, and now the dojo is having money problems. So go out and earn money, lowest disciple!

Garou: tch

Garou: even if you weren’t nagging me, I’d still go out and make a lot of money. Just wait and see, freeloaders!

Sourface: do your best!

**probably intended sarcastically?

——

// end translation

Idk am I wrong or is it like Garou spent this whole panel getting bullied right in front of Bang?

Get your shit together, school of seltzer water crushed ice! If I have to sell a kidney to get a therapist up there, I will.

—