#which is why i deleted the first time

[season1mac]

sometimes i’m like. i think we should all just watch this show the way it was intended to. brains off and laugh. and then they do shit like show mac being burned by his mom for not being quiet and dennis actually trying to be calm and charlie apologizing to his mom and taking care of her when he didn’t do anything and she did it to herself. and i’m just like. oh okay i’ll be insane

[tytoalbatross]

god damn i do not post often but can i talk about intentionality for a second?? one second please

i'm gonna be talking about bg3 but this really applies to any fandom space. people will, surface-level, agree that a Black character is not getting enough content compared to their white counterparts because it's. obvious . take wyll, who is several hours behind on voiced lines compared to other origins despite being one of the original five (before they added karlach and whiteified her too but that's another post). it's hard to deny cold hard facts

but then instead of engaging in content that uplifts Black characters and creators, they'll go right back to pumping out more and more content of just their white faves. on its own, it's not actively harmful, but here's what the implication is, whether they acknowledge it or not: yes wyll has less in-game content, yes his writing didn't get the attention it deserved, therefore i don't like him as much. it only perpetuates wyll's lack of content by contributing to his sidelining in fandom spaces

what i would love for fans who claim to be allies to do is to step out of the comfort zone of their initial favorites (which can, in fact, be biased!) and start pursuing content centering Black characters with intentionality. like all things, anti-racism (actively pushing back against racism rather than simply "Not Being Racist") takes practice and effort. you can't really agree with us that wyll needs more content, then in the same breath say that it's because of that that he's not interesting to you . the point was right in front of you doing a jig and you still missed it

[obsob]

mmgngm i was all excited tellin my mum abt me wanting to start bookbinding n she was just like well. what about your portfolio. are u sending it to people? youve been working on it for ages. yes i know!!!!!! im slow and disabled!!!! and want hobbies!!!!! bites you!!!!!!!!!!!

[utilitycaster]

I'm still thinking about that post about how female characters and especially wlw and f/f ships are treated in fandoms because I got a reply that I deleted on my post about how all the Nein were big shippers on deck for Beau and Yasha that boiled down to "haha Caleb making a tower so the useless lesbians would admit they liked each other!" and it's like. He made the tower to Beau's orders. She had already asked out Yasha, who in turn had of her own volition written Beau a phenomenal, beautiful letter instead of a poem as recommended by Jester. This is factually incorrect and obnoxiously dismissive of a genuinely great dynamic and attributes all agency to a man. When you say shit like this you sound like you are Chat GPT. No new thoughts no time actually spent analyzing a relationship dynamic just "ooh i see a woman in fiction what is the phrase most associated with this ok done onto the next task".

[k-yujin]

read the tags !! // officially quit

[skunkes]

ok posting it here bc im not sure if its going to stay in the doodle page

[puppyeared]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[bellamyblakru]

i will never understand how some people can actively shit on something they know someone loves and finds joy in right in front of them. how can you hate something that makes someone else happy in this absolutely fucked world in front of them.

its the passive aggression for no reason i will never ever understand or do to others. if you have a passion, fucking LIVE it. if nothing else, passion gets us through every shitty day, and i will always support it.

have passion in spite of those who hate.

[willbyersabyss]

some people in this fandom are so pretentious and rude

[moonchild-in-blue]

Oh.

[longagoitwastuesday]

So so indebted to u for posting those lovely illustrations from Cyrano <333 & even more so for yr tags!! I'm completely in love w yr analysis, please feel free to ramble as long as u wish! Browsing through yr Cyrano de Bergerac tag has given me glimpses of so many adaptations & translations I'd never heard of before! I'll be watching the Solès version next, which I have only discovered today through u ^_^ As for translations, have u read many/all of them? I've only encountered the Renauld & Burgess translations in the wild, & I was curious to hear yr translation thoughts that they might guide my decision on which one I buy first (not necessarily Renauld or Burgess ofc). Have a splendid day & sorry for the likespam! 💙

Sorry for the delay. Don't mind the likespam, I'm glad you enjoyed my tags about Cyrano, and that they could contribute a bit to a further appreciation of the play. I loved it a lot, I got obsessed with it for months. It's always nice to know other people deeply love too that which is loved haha I hope you enjoy the Solès version, it may well be my favourite one!

About translations, I'm touched you're asking me, but I don't really know whether mine is the best opinion to ask. I have read... four or five English translations iirc, the ones I could find online, and I do (and especially did, back when I was reading them) have a lot of opinions about them. However, nor English nor French are my first languages (they are third and fourth respectively, so not even close). I just read and compare translations because that's one of my favourite things to do.

The fact is that no translation is perfect, of course. I barely remember Renauld's, but I think it was quite literal; that's good for understanding the basics of the text, concepts and characters, but form is subject, and there's always something that escapes too literal translations. Thomas and Guillemard's if I recall correctly is similar to Hooker's in cadence. It had some beautiful fragments, some I preferred over Hooker's, but overall I think to recall I liked Hooker's more. If memory serves, Hooker's was the most traditionally poetic and beautiful in my opinion. Burgess' is a whole different thing, with its perks and drawbacks.

Something noticeable in the other translations is that they are too... "epic". They do well the poetic, sorrowful, grief stricken, crushed by regrets aspects of Cyrano and the play in general, but they fall quite short in the funny and even pathetic aspects, and that too is key in Cyrano, both character and play. Given the characteristics of both languages, following the cadence of the French too literally, with those long verses, makes an English version sound far too solemn at times when the French text isn't. Thus Burgess changes the very cadence of the text, adapting it more to the English language. This translation is the one that best sets the different moods in the play, and as I said before form is subject, and that too is key: after all, the poetic aspect of Cyrano is as much true as his angry facet and his goofy one. If Cyrano isn't funny he isn't Cyrano, just as he wouldn't be Cyrano without his devotion to Roxane or his insecurities; Cyrano is who he is precisely because he has all these facets, because one side covers the other, because one trait is born from another, because one facet is used as weapon to protect the others, like a game of mirrors and smoke. We see them at different points through the play, often converging. Burgess' enhances that. He plays with the language itself in form and musicality, with words and absences, with truths masking other truths, with things stated but untold, much like Cyrano does. And the stage directions, poetic and with literary value in their own right in a way that reminded me of Valle Inclán and Oscar Wilde, interact with the text at times in an almost metatextual dimension that enhances that bond Cyrano has with words, giving them a sort of liminal air and strengthening that constant in the play: that words both conceal and unveil Cyrano, that in words he hides and words give him away.

But not all is good, at all. Unlike Hooker, Burgess reads to me as not entirely understanding every facet of the characters, and as if he didn't even like the play all that much, as if he had a bit of a disdainful attitude towards it, and found it too mushy. Which I can understand, but then why do you translate it? In my opinion the Burgess' translation does well bending English to transmit the different moods the French text does, and does pretty well understanding the more solemn, cool, funny, angry, poetic aspects of Cyrano, but less so his devotion, vulnerability, insecurities and his pathetism. It doesn't seem to get Roxane at all, how similar she is to Cyrano, nor why she has so many admirers. It does a very poor job at understanding Christian and his value, and writes him off as stupid imo. While I enjoyed the language aspect of the Burgess translation, I remember being quite angry at certain points reading it because of what it did to the characters and some changes he introduces. I think he did something very questionable with Le Bret and Castel-Jaloux, and I remember being incensed because of Roxane at times (for instance, she doesn't go to Arras in his version, which is a key scene to show just how much fire Roxane has, and that establishes several parallels with Cyrano, in attitude and words, but even in act since she does a bit what Cyrano later does with the nuns in the last act), and being very angry at several choices about Christian too. While not explicitly stated, I think the McAvoy production and the musical both follow this translation, because they too introduce these changes, and they make Christian as a character, and to an extent the entire play, not make sense.

For instance, once such change is that Christian is afraid that Roxane will be cultured (McAvoy's version has that infamous "shit"/"fuck" that I detest), when in the original French it's literally the opposite. He is not afraid she will be cultured, he is afraid she won't, because he does love and appreciate and admires those aspects of her, as he appreciates and admires them in Cyrano. That's key! Just as Cyrano longs to have what Christian has, Christian wants the same! That words escape him doesn't mean he doesn't understand or appreciate them. The dynamics make no sense without this aspect, and Burgess (and the productions that directly or indirectly follow him) constantly erases this core trait of Christian.

Another key moment of Christian Burgess butchers is the scene in Arras in which Christian discovers the truth. Burgess writes their discussion masterfully in form, it's both funny and poignant, but it falls short in concept: when Cyrano tells him the whole discussion about who does Roxane love and what will happen, what they'll do, is academic because they're both going to die, Christian states that dying is his role now. This destroys entirely the thing with Christian wanting Roxane to have the right to know, and the freedom to choose, or to refuse them both. As much as Cyrano proclaims his love for truth and not mincing words even in the face of authority, Cyrano is constantly drunk on lies and mirages, masks and metaphors. It's Christian who wants it all to end, the one who wants real things, the one who wants to risk his own happiness for the chance of his friend's, as well as for the woman he loves to stop living in a lie. That is a very interesting aspect of Christian, and another aspect in which he is written as both paralleling and contrasting Cyrano. It's interesting from a moral perspective and how that works with the characters, but it's also interesting from a conceptual point of view, both in text and metatextually: what they hold most dear, what they most want, what most fulfills them, what they most fear, their different approaches to life, but also metatextually another instance of that tears/blood motif and its ramifications constant through the whole text. Erasing that climatic decision and making him just simply suicidal erases those aspects of Christian and his place in the Christian/Cyrano/Roxane dynamic, all for plain superficial angst, that perhaps hits more in the moment, but holds less meaning.

Being more literal, and more solemn, Hooker's translation (or any of the others, but Hooker's seems to love the characters and understand them) doesn't make these conceptual mistakes. Now, would I not recommend reading Burgess' translation? I can't also say that. I had a lot of fun reading it, despite the occasional anger and indignation haha Would I recommend buying it? I recommend you give an eye to it first, if you're tempted and can initially only buy one.

You can read Burgess' translation entirely in archive.com. You can also find online the complete translations of Renauld, Hooker and Thomas and Guillemard. I also found a fifth one, iirc, but I can't recall it right now (I could give a look). You could read them before choosing, or read your favourite scenes and fragments in the different translations, and choose the one in which you like them better. That's often what I do.

Edit: I've checked to make sure and Roxane does appear in Arras in the translation. It's in the introduction in which it is stated that she doesn't appear in the production for which the translation was made. The conceptualisation of Roxane I criticise and that in my opinion is constant through the text does stay, though.

[set-wingedwarrior]

I know it happens often to see writers during a long fic to complain at some point about the first chapters because they got better in the meantime and they look bad to them now.

But this is the first time where I saw this happened when the writing actually got worse

[spurious]

fic writer 20 questions

I was tagged by @alienfuckeronmain & @nimuetheseawitch to do this one!

How many works do you have on AO3? 108. I need to add some ficlets to my collection but I've been slacking a bit on that, so.

What’s your total AO3 word count? 274,716

What fandoms do you write for? Star! Gate! At! Lan! Tis! The hyperfixation is strong ok. It's the thing that shook loose my half-decade dormant desire and ability to write, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 1. Twenty Questions, 248 kudos 2. Ink and Wings, 221 kudos 3. Five Times Rodney (and John) Visit the Millers, 190 kudos 4. Solitary in a Wide Flat Space, 163 kudos 5. Abercrombie & Rodney, 151 kudos

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I really try to!!! One of the things that was not good about posting all my ficlets onto AO3 in quick succession was ending up with more comments than I could handle, so now I have a...backlog. Getting comments makes me feel so good though, and I just...want to honor the effort made with some of my own in return? Idk, I've talked about this a fair bit in a handful of posts but I'm just really not used to the amount of interaction I get in SGA fandom and I still feel.......very blessed lmao. Bleh sincerity on main how gross

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? We Are Standing On the Edge, a Jin/Kame fic about a road trip and the apocalypse which I wrote for @merionettes in a fic exchange in 2010.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Most of my fics either have happy endings or implied happy endings? I like making good things happen to the characters I love so much. Sometimes after making bad things happen to them, but. At any rate, O I Think We Should Be Brethren is my personal happiest ending because of how long and hard a journey it is to get there.

Do you get hate on fics? I got a hate comment once, on the (in)famous Kanjani Cannibalism Fic.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Do I ever! I like to write kinky sex as a means of exploring and facilitating vulnerability. I also like to write blowjobs.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I've never written a crossover! ..............I don't think, at least.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I am aware of.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! A couple of my Johnny's fics have been translated into Russian and Chinese.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not to completion.

What’s your all time favorite ship? Yokohina, Sakura/Syaoran, McShep...don't make me choose between my children like this??? Sakura/Syaoran literally invented romance for my teenage self, like I am not kidding at how formative of a ship that was for me in my life. Also why I started learning Japanese, so. Yokohina will forever be beloved to me in the same way that Kanjani8 will forever be beloved to me, in a way that is (literally) tattooed into my flesh, in a way that influenced my life massively, in so many aspects. I will never not be thirsty for the two of them saying weirdly romantic things about each other in public forums, for them being the solid foundation upon which their group is built. For Yoko being a pigtail-pulling twelve year old boy towards Hina even as they're in their mid-forties. AND THEN THERE'S FUCKING MCSHEP. A ship that I knew about when it was popular and brushed off as an Any Two White Guys, Migratory Slash Fandom Thing. A ship that, when my wife and I started watching SGA, we said "haha wouldn't it be so funny if we ended up being all in on mcshep?" A ship that resonates in my heart in the most bizarrely intense way and shook loose the desire to write and create from its atrophied place in the back of my head. I love them. I hate them. They're perfect.

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I have about 25k of a later-years yokohina friends to FWB to lovers fic that I wish I could finish but the McShep brainrot is.........so strong. On the other hand, never say never?

What are your writing strengths? haha so much harder to answer this than weaknesses!!!!!!!!!!!! I think I can write good funny dialogue, which is amazing to me because when I started writing my dialogue was horrendous, just absolutely awful and stilted and I hated writing it so much! like it was a running joke between me and my best friend at the time that I could not write anything that sounded even remotely natural or like real human speech. guess that shows that practice makes perfect or whatever? idk.

What are your writing weaknesses? endings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ensemble casts/scenes with more than two people in them. plots more complex than simple romantic contrivance.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? nah. It always feels a bit fanfiction.net anime fandom to me?

First fandom you wrote for? speaking of fanfiction.net anime fandom....I wrote Sakura/Syaoran angstfic into a notebook when I was 13. The first things that I actually shared with other people were either Harry Potter or the fics I wrote about the boys at my church who were just unnecessarily homoerotic with each other in the way that only teenage church boys can be (iykyk)

Favorite fic you’ve written? guess. 🙃

Tagging: @sga-owns-my-soul @stargayatlantis @hearteyesmcgarrett @texasdreamer01

[stormyweaver]

I have a Mighty Need for your First Time for Everything continuation.

You and me both, Poni! (there would be a crying laughing emoji here if I was on mobile)

I made like barely any headway yesterday on part 3, but I'm still trying to juggle not sleeping well with work + school, so unfortunately fun things like writing and hopefully soon drawing are taking a backseat for the time being.

Kind of.

I'm still making time for it, but I also can't afford to like... dedicate as much time as I'd want to solely to writing fun stuff. The inspiration is there beneath all the extra shit, it's just hard to say 'Alright here's my hour or two of writing time!' when I'm exhausted and frankly too brain-dead to think and write cohesively.

Plus, I've been chronically online for a long, long time and I'm kinda trying to shift that this year because being online for too long (especially in a community like this) isn't healthy for me personally. I just tend to get sucked in and spend hours doing absolutely nothing productive or even relaxing or fun. It's purely doomscrolling.

Anyway, TL;DR: Part 3 is in the works but I have no definite date, nor will I have one until I can settle a lot of stuff outside of this space. It's super nice to know that someone's looking forward to it though! :3

[loumauve]

I snapped today at work, and by snapped I mean I politely commented on a help desk ticket by summing up an mess of an (type of) issue that's come up for at least the fourth time in the 2+ months I've been managing user accounts, and asked the person responsible to fix it (himself for once) because last time I fixed his mess-up it took me two whole days to work out the details with at least four other colleagues from different departments and I really don't want to do it again. there's other shit that needs doing, I've been working 10+ hour days for most of this week already, so I need to cut down not add on more.

(good thing tho - at least we managed to fix the issue where the dataset of a newer employee got mixed up with another one of the same name and therefore wasn't able to apply for any of the access/accounts she needed. technically not entirely my area but it does impact us not being allowed to create an account for her so I figured I might as well track that issue down. took three days and at least three other people, but hey - it should all work out now. yay for that)

[nobodybetterlookatme]

The love/hate relationship with my coworkers is so real lmao like why are they like this