#i might have a problem with his character a bit...

[amiya-shirou]

I genuinely believe Federico is like 90% of the reason why the central themes of emotion, humanity vs seaborn, and human connection actually work, because it would be so easy to completely ruin the message by making it a vehicle for typical "love is what makes us humans" "if you don't feel love and emotion exactly like everyone else does you're not an ACTUAL human with a SOUL!" nonsense, like to the point I'm also anxious I might end up sounding like that every time I try analyzing the seaborn conflict in any way, but thanks to Fede being written the way he is while having such a central role in Zwillingsturme and being so close with and important to Arturia we know that when she says "it has to include everyone" and when the game falls on praising human qualities and the power of human connection they don't mean "everyone who can feel normal human emotion :)" "everyone but they're gonna need to become human" but simply everyone, no one left behind, no one erased. The focus on destroying the barriers between people exists as an answer to oppression and discrimination, to bring humanity together so they can work as a whole to face adversity, not because not feeling empathy the same way Arturia does is "wrong". Even during the piano scene when Fede is shown as unable to understand why music, why art move people the way it does, despite it being a focal point of everything about Arturia and everything about the humans who stand against the Seaborn, it's never presented as a failing on his part, never presented as him being fundamentally incompatible with humanity - in fact that scene is where he learns how to approach emotion from his own angle in his own way as a form of data and it's when he grows as a person and becomes able to use it to better get Arturia despite his difficulty in conveying and "feeling" emotion. He doesn't get Sankta empathy, he values logical understanding over emotional connection, he's joked about from other characters as being more like a robot than a human, he's deliberately written as being an opposite to Arturia's unrestrained empathy, and yet he is the protagonist to Arturia's antagonist role, he is the one who understood her the most and who could support her in the finale, he's the one outsider who cared the most about fixing things in the Monastery while the "proper" Sankta were all busy dealing with their own problems or actively worsening things (hi Oren). His character arc doesn't have anything to do with him starting to "get" emotions like "real people" do but just about starting to ask questions, to find a way forward when his strict adherence to logical reasoning fails him, to interpret why he does what he does and feel the way he does, to understand why things happens and why people act certain ways, and in quite a few scenes that's precisely why he could reach a conclusion others couldn't.

His biggest scene in Hortus involves him refusing to accept Clement's position that just because the only flower left from his garden he had a deep emotional attachment to was a bit damaged and not perfect the way he grew all the others to be, the way he wanted it to be, then its survival is meaningless.

Just because Clement couldn't see the worth in the flower's existence it doesn't mean there was none for anyone.

Just like Federico was the one chosen by the Law amidst countless "perfect" Sankta well accustomed to their supernatural Empathy.

Everyone means everyone.

[goddamnitmahtin]

Real Robins Can Fly

( a dc x dp prompt)

As a part of a charity event, Bruce holds a cosplay contest where contestants show off their cosplays, explain their processes and even show off a little if they have a talent of some sort that kind of fits the theme of the character.

Problem? Everyone he invited to be judges at the event are league members and they all had a case suddenly interfere so Bruce and his colleagues can’t show up. So he asks Dick to round up as many of his siblings as he can to be judges for this event. The lineup ends up being Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephanie and Damian. Duke was almost able to make it but he got caught up with work.

Dick was surprised that Damian even wanted to come considering he was drowning himself in studying for his finals. He was about to graduate high school and wanted to make sure his gpa was flawless. Nevertheless, he found a way to drag his youngest brother out of the library and into the judges panel.

The contest was fine. Most people dressed as local vigilantes or villains that were easy to recognize. There were some really good ones. There were a few that none of them recognized. A few only Tim recognized. Apparently they were from animes or something.

The day dragged on and on, all of them having to stop for breaks at different points. Dick needed to get up and walk around because sitting in one place for too long made his joints hurt. Jason had to leave to do breathing exercises when a really accurate second Robin cosplayer came through holding a crowbar of all things. Tim had to leave a few times to make phone calls as co CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Steph called the babysitter (Cass) a few times about her now 2 year old daughter. And Damian used every single one of those breaks to cram in more studying.

What nothing that day could have prepared them for was the last contestant. The 13 year old boy walked onto the stage with a huge smile in a perfect replica of Dick’s very first Robin suit. Down to the last detail everything was correct. Except that… it had been torn up and damaged in places and there were painted on bruises and wounds in the places missing fabric. Part of the mask was ripped off and being held in the boy’s hand. And the face underneath that broken mask looked just like Tim.

Tim: *after recovering faster than everyone else* Wow. What a suit! What’s your name and tell the process of creating your cosplay.

Danny: *smiles* I’m Danny! I’m 13 years old and I wanted to be Robin! Robin is my favorite vigilante because he’s an inspirational figure for younger people. I decided to design my outfit based on the very first Robin in his first ever suit that he was spotted in but I wanted to pay homage to all of the Robins so I changed it up a little bit. I studied the Robins from the past in photos and was able to come up with at least one thing from each.

Steph: I see. Could you show us these homages?

Danny: YES! *his eyes glowed green in excitement, catching Jason and Damian off guard* I designed the suit itself to look like the first Robin as he was the pioneer of the Robin title but I made the entire outfit from materials only used on the current Robin. As you can see the color scheme for the suit is more muted than the original as the current Robin uses shadows and corners more for attacks than the others did.

Damian: *smiles slightly*

Danny: I chose my wounds and distresses in the costume based on photos of the second and third Robins. They took more physical blows than the rest did. *pointing to each wound, pointing to one in the abdomen* This one is just a theory of mine but I think the third Robin might of at one point had a surgery around here from his fighting style. He would protect his abdomen from attack more.

Tim: …… I see.

Danny: And the fourth Robin was a deviation from the pattern because she was a girl that didn’t have the dark hair that all the others had. She wasn’t Robin for very long but her style and decision making were more unpredictable than the rest so if you just give me a second… *fidgets with his gloves for a moment* Whole watching her footage I noticed how her hair was accounted for in her fighting style without it ever getting into her way. *slides off his glove* So on my wrist I have a replica of the headband she used in her suit but smaller so it’s more of a bracelet.

Steph: *noticing how accurate it is* Oh- wow-

Jason: That’s really impressive Danny. Tell us a little bit more about how you actually created the suit. Your process.

Danny: Well the entire thing is made of an armored flex material that I made in my sister’s basement. I studied pictures of all of the Robin suits and noticed parts of the fabric that stood out and made my prototype from there. *smiles* I have a small sample for you guys to pass around! *hands Jason said sample*

Jason: Oh that’s really impressive-

Tim: You said you made it in your sister’s basement? How did your parents feel about it?

Danny: My parents are gone. It’s just me and Jazz. I spent all of my money on the materials to make this. I’m hoping to win because the prize money will be enough for her to buy a car so she can find a new job. And maybe with the rest I’ll finally be able to go to space camp this summer. I’ve always wanted to go! But we could never afford it.

Steph: *covers her gasp softly* Oh-

Damian: Did you have a talent you wanted to show off for us today?

Danny: YES! *pumps his fist excitedly*

Damian: Could you demonstrate that for us please?

Danny: Okay! *climbs up the light tower next to the stage and hangs from the metal bars like a proper gymnast before jumping off, flipping and grabbing frames and pieces of rigging to swing from, replicating old tricks Dick used to do as Robin that he learned in the circus before flipping down and landing nimbly in the center of the stage* Tadah!

Dick: *absolutely shook* Why did you- choose that as your talent?

Danny: Real robins can fly. So why can’t I?

After Danny leaves the stage, it takes a few minutes for them all to collect themselves from that. Especially Dick.

Steph: So that Danny kid is gonna win.

Tim: 100 percent. He was able to recreate the fabric we make our suits out of through pictures!

Jason: We better not tell Bruce or-

Damian: Too late. I already texted father. He’s drafting adoption papers as we speak.

Dick: *who was planning on doing that himself* Dammit!

Damian: I for one, am thrilled at the prospect that this Danny child will take up the Robin mantle when I leave for college.

Steph: Well real robins can fly so why shouldn’t he? *smiles*

Dick: Stephanie I’m literally going to cry.

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Why Do Trans Women Love New Vegas (Video)

Script and thumbnail below the fold!

This script is based on this original article.

Hello everyone, my name’s TalenLee, also known as the Wrath in Pride Month, and this is a video article that seeks to answer the question ‘Why do Trans Women love Fallout New Vegas so much?’ To accompany this I’m presenting a single segment speedrun of Fallout New Vegas All Sleeping Partners % as run by Tomatoanus, or as TiredTransbian called it, World’s Fastest Bisexual Trans Woman Goes on a Bender Around the Mojave. Tomatoanus did make the video but unlike in his videos, I didn’t get him to help me explain things and you really shouldn’t go bothering him to justify his relationship to things I say here just because he gave me permission to use his video. He is as best I know, very nice and doesn’t need any further guff. If you are going to go check out TomatoAnus’ work based on this video all I ask is that you

do

not

embarrass me.

I’m providing a specific Content Warning here for drugs and violence. Not that anyone clicking on a video about Fallout New Vegas would be surprised by those things. It’s just nice to do.

This is a video version of an article I wrote a bit over a year ago and if you’ve read that article you already know the thrust of what I’m going to say, but because this is going up on Youtube, I want to pre-emptively put some stuff out there that will get the snowflake crowd to petulantly comment and then piss off. Rent-lowering gunshots, as we say on Tumblr. Anyway, trans women are women and trans men are men, at least inasmuch as they want to be, and while I’m at it, all the popes are bad, even Big Poppa Pizza Pope you got now. This isn’t one of my hand-holding babymode conversations about how trans identities work, written as if I’m explaining a baseline gender studies concept to someone to afraid to look it up and do readings, this is about an extremely in-group cultural signifier. A meme. Specifically, the meme that trans women

love

Fallout New Vegas, explained in <>.

Released in 2010, Fallout New Vegas is a classic of the first-person-shooter role-playing-game genre or FPSRPG, which sounds like a file format your phone uses to save links, which sought to bring Fallout 1 and 2’s semi-open choice-driven narrative structure, into the first-person floaty Skyrim-with-guns combat in a ‘second parse’ at the – let’s politely call it – rough execution of Fallout 3. In this game you play a character called The Courier starting at the point in their story where Matthew Perry shows he won’t be there for you, then shoots you in the head, giving you an opportunity to discover and then intervene in the existing events of history with an all new, all exciting direction.

The story is a sort of noir cowboy steampunk fantasy – there’s the trappings of modern technology and post-apocalyptica, but the world that was and its infrastructure isn’t really important as much as the way it just sweeps aside a options for progress. Technology is chunky and heavy and there’s a durability to everything, where things break, but they can always be fed more technology to make them un-break. Everything has an independence to it, a scrounging, foraging, make-it-work, it’ll-do-for-now technologism all typified with a gun at your hip and your duster fluttering in the hot wind.

When it isn’t crashing.

The game has a lot of positive sentiment around it, seemingly beloved by fans and lauded by youtubers looking for long-form stuff ever since renowned solver of plagiarism problems Harris Barris Garrus dropped ‘Fallout 3 Is Garbage, And Here’s Why,’ nine years ago.

Thing is, if you’re not in the trans community, or at least not living next to it because they have all the good electronic music, you might not know that Fallout New Vegas is notorious for being a game beloved by trans women. This renown is a meme unto itself, a joke about being into Fallout New Vegas being a gateway to the experience of being a trans woman.

Now, I position myself as both an investigator of games, and I also serve what I think is a valuable purpose which is being up to several trans people’s token cis friend. This lets me return from the hidden city then explain their mystic secrets to the normies, in the hopes that you won’t ask them annoying questions.I thought, equipped with this understanding, I could, this Pride Month, explain why all trans women love Fallout New Vegas:

They don’t, largely.

Oh, sure, there are trans women who are fans of Fallout New Vegas. A bunch of them! And they tend to describe ideas in Fallout New Vegas that excite them, it tends to be things like:

I get to shoot Matthew Perry in the face.

The story is all constructed such that everyone’s story is somehow ensnared with the dam.

There is a meaningful dialectic between Caesar’s Legion and his own ideology.

You can do drugs and shoot baddies.

Cazadors are amazing.

The courier has a backstory, has a meaningful life and narrative that you have to reconstruct through play.

Cazadors suck.

The final building is exciting and beautiful and engaging.

Spurs go Jingle Jingle

The idea that the Las Vegas strip is the kind of thing that survives our worst and is darkly funny and what we deserve.

There’s an anti-nuclear thread running throughout the whole story.

There’s more. When I compose a list of this kind of thing reflecting on feedback, I’m typically trying to collapse together similar responses, and there really isn’t a lot of commonality between these unless you start to get really broad. And when you get that broad, what it tends to come down to is:

It’s an enjoyable game and I find it engaging.

What’s more there’s some feedback I got that doesn’t match the feedback given. Now, I did ask explicitly only to trans readers to respond to this question, so I have assumed that everyone who responded did, but normally, when I ask a question like ‘what’s something about this game that excites you’ and you find a way to structure your answer to be a dunk on the question or complaining about something unrelated, I think of that as not answering the question and not being helpful.

But still, in the sense of completeness we also got:

The game is buggy and I don’t like it

The game didn’t leave an impression on me

I’ve never played the game

And okay, was this what you were expecting? These are all pretty distinct opinions, some fine enough to be about individual mobs in the game, some are about the story structure, some are about vibes of the space, and some are uuuh just about the sheer enjoyment you can get out of shooting racists while high off your face.

Every explanation I’ve heard from trans people about why they personally like Fallout New Vegas has been specifically about liking the game as a game. Not as a piece of Trans Media, something in the canon from some sort of Trans Authority. It’s not even a game with a blatant expression of Trans Rights – you can turn the lens of this game pretty easily to see it making fun of ‘man in a dress’ narratives, if you want. You can play the whole game and never find the character I’m referencing here, which means it’s obviously way less prominent than Cazadores or the Dam or Nuclear Bombs.

This is the middle of the video, and a natural break between its two major thesese, so, in honour of the runner TomatoAnus here, I’d like to say, as he would, that I hope you’re doing well. If you’re not, then please remember, as always, that there is a tomorrow and that no feeling is final.

No matter what’s going on, it cannot take that away from you. How you’re feeling does not define you, and I do know that it feels like what’s going on is all there will ever be. But that isn’t the case. It happens little by little, so small you likely won’t notice day-to-day, but someday in the future you’ll be able to look back and see how far you’ve come.

You’ll see that where you’re at now, well, it’s just that. Where you are, rather than who you are. There is so much more to you than how you’re feeling, and you’re so much stronger than you realize.

Please keep that in mind.

Back to the point about the idea of Fallout New Vegas as a game that has a particular following amongst trans women. See, I think the idea that trans women love Fallout New Vegas is a great opportunity to explain what we call a kind of floating signifier.

A floating signifier is a term for ‘a reference without a referent.’ That is, it’s a term that doesn’t have a specific, actual thing it’s referring to. The easiest example I can point to is money. While we’re probably all familiar with money, there’s nothing that money represents that actually exists. Bills and coins and bank balances all reference money, but those aren’t money; money is a system, a shared fiction that we all accept exists. If everyone tomorrow decided to not partake in the shared, communal idea of money, then nothing disappears – there’s no Money Creature that starves because it’s not getting any fairy dust or belief or something.

That’s not to say a floating signifier is a meaningless term. It’s more like an empty box that we primarily understand because of the things we have put into that box. Even if that box is full of things that doesn’t mean the box has any inherent qualities of its own. When we talk about an elephant for example, elephants are things that exist outside of our human heads, so we can go check and see if an elephant is something. On the other hand, there are a host of very normal human social experiences that we need to refer to for one another, but which have no basis outside of the shared fictional space of Humans Talk About This Thing.

(Like Gender, for example.)

Lots of people like Fallout New Vegas. It’s not a secret mysterious cult hit. It doesn’t need special trans significance to be a beloved game in the trans community. Coming out in the right chunk of time for a community with common interests means that of course a bunch of them would relate to it. Since the game is good, and people like to talk about this game they enjoy, and the game has modding, and the game has a shared common conversation (a discourse), that means you’re inevitably going to get The Trans People Who Like Fallout New Vegas, who talk to one another. They notice it’s a thing, they notice one another, they share common space, and in so doing, a meme forms. You might as well point out the common thread of trans women using Windows 7, because in the same general band of time they probably did.

(Not all trans women run Linux boxes.)

(I mean, of the four I immediately thought of in my friend space, they do. But not all of them.)

The meme that trans women love Fallout New Vegas is based on the meme that trans women love Fallout New Vegas. Stating the meme, sharing the meme, is not about a scientific fact, but rather it’s a matter of representing that you are aware of that meme, just like if someone’s coming up Milhouse. It’s a cultural marker, something that shows that you are in on this specific joke.

Now, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but memes are not particularly complicated things to understand – as a discipline, that is. They’re sticky, which isn’t the same thing as clever. Sometimes people think a meme is like a punchline or an image, but really, what a meme is, is a unit of communication. A meme transmits meaning, and that meaning needs to be shareable. You might already be familiar with some memes like this, such as, y’know, words. The purpose of memes is not to be explanatory in and of themselves, but to be useful for explanation. The fancy term we use for this, in describing a network of memes with related meanings that indicate a communal space, a sort of ‘meme dialect’ that a community holds to, is the word memeplex. A memeplex can be seen as a specific set of memes you get that indicate a shared space of meaning, in almost any fandom.

(In cult studies, they call it ‘distinguishable vernacular!’)

There is another thing here.

It’s what I think of as permissive diagnostics.

The nature of being trans is often an end point of a series of conversations with the self and with others that are entirely about undoing a series of mental hurdles that are meant to stop trans people from considering themselves trans. Some folks have rock-solid ironclad long-term considerations of their gender in one way, but for some folk it’s a lot more complicated.

Maybe you think ‘I would be a trans woman, but’ or ‘I mean, if I was a trans woman I’d be unhappy because I wouldn’t be attractive’ or ‘man, I’m jealous of trans women getting to solve something so simple about themselves,’ and those thoughts are often part of this same trapping matrix of ideas. These are things that trans folk often wind up talking about, after the fact, looking back on themselves later and going, ‘wow, it was really obvious and I didn’t notice, huh?‘

And look.

Maybe there’s no special reason trans women love Fallout New Vegas, but maybe you love Fallout New Vegas because you’re a trans women. And if that sounds like incoherent nonsense to you, then don’t worry about it.

It’s not a message for or about you.

Maybe next time I’ll do a long form video on how Doom Eternal explains the way that so many trans dudes own a short-sleeved collared blue shirt with a repeating pattern of small white dots on it.

If you made it to the end of this video, thank you so much and also thank you especially to TomatoAnus who gave me permission to use this footage without knowing if I’d do a good job of this video or not. I’ve been a fan of his channel for years and even copying his scripts like this as a bit is a reminder of how thoughtfully put together his work is and the level of attention to detail he takes in delivering excellent explainers.

If Fallout New Vegas speedruns interest you at all, or speedrun explainers do, you should check out his channel, and if being trans is a thing that interests you, you should check out your local informed consent clinic, and seek out your nearby queer community because we all need to stand together these days.

And a huge thank you to my Patrons for helping make this video possible. My Patrons don’t get anything at all out of being my Patrons which is why it’s so amazing to me that they bother to spend any money to encourage me to keep doing the things I do on the internet to give them things to read and watch in the moments before the workday really kicks in and nobody notices them scrolling on their phone having a coffee.

I know that things are super uncertain right now though, so please don’t feel compelled to support.

It’s greatly appreciated but not at all necessary.

And that’s what makes you all so so special.

Thank you all, truly.

That’s all for this video though.

This was a video article about Trans Women and Fallout New Vegas and you learned the word memeplex and the term floating signifier, all told in the style of Tomatoanus. I’ve been Talen Lee, and I hope you have an above average day.

[jules-ln]

I just wanted to say I completely agree with the conversation you had about Jayce and violence. People have this urge to make him a babygirl, wouldn’t hurt a fly, JUST because in the show he’s shit at fighting.

(IMO, being bad at fighting but choosing to anyway makes you more violent. Vi deciding to defend someone comes from her knowing what it means to get hurt and doing so consciously. Jayce made a Big Fucking Hammer and decided the right answer was to break people’s bones. That is absolutely a desire for violence.)

People who have only seen arcane have this urge to make him helpless and it drives me up the wall. Making him harmless removes so much nuance from the character, both in the game as he’s a scientist who only knows how to communicate through what people expect of him, and the game, where he’s twisted and bent to the will of others through politics. The hammer is a representation of his fall and why it physically disables him.

It is infuriating, and nice to see someone stand up to it. Thank you.

Aw thank you, I don't care about social rules and I'm a very opinionated person, therefore I won't shut up when I have an unpopular opinion even if I know it's controversial lmao

Tbh I think Jayce it's like a personification of "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail"

A bit on the nose I know, but then again, Arcane isn't exactly subtle with its subtext lmao

He actually reminds me a bit of Vi, because even in the show its mentioned how she has a tendency of "blocking with her face", meaning, she prioritizes attack over defense, and that says a lot about her character

In Jayce's case, I think he has a very bad case of tunnel vision, he focuses on one thing at the time, and only one thing, and it's not like he's not intelligent, it's simply that when he's holding the hammer, why wouldn't he try to hit things first to solve the problems? Like, no he isn't inherently violent, but his extreme focus makes it so that when he's holding his hammer he has difficulty thinking of another non violent solution

Because that's why Viktor is there for. And that's also why I love JayVik so much lmao

I'm not saying that Jayce is a brute and Viktor is the calm one, I'm saying that Jayce probably only thinks straight forward while Viktor thinks sideways; they're both extremely smart, but approach things in different ways, and that's also why they're so good for each other, because when Jayce it's stuck with something Viktor pulls him out of that and helps him see another perspective, meanwhile Jayce helps focus and direct Viktor instead of letting him drift to the side

So, if Viktor had been there with Jayce to help him with the hammer related activities, he might've been able to tell him to calm down and think about another way to do things

And on the other hand, if Jayce had been with Viktor during the Hexcore experiments, he might've been able to find a way to make things work with the Hexcore without going sideways towards the blood and the shimmer

It's quite literally that the problems with these two only began once they separated lmao

Two volatile components that neutralize each other when mixed together

And I think another example of him having tunnel vision was back in S1A1, when he tried to commit suicide, he was so focused on how things should be, so when things couldn't go that way anymore he was completely lost and couldn't find his way out, that was until Viktor showed him the alternative path

That's also why I think people headcanon Jayce as having bipolar disorder, because his pivot from "it's over" to "we're so back" it's so sudden that it seems like a manic depressive episode; though I personally think he fits more with the rigid thinking of autism, but that might be me projecting since I also have autism lmao (low empathy autistic Jayce headcanon my beloved <3)

But as you can see; Jayce being violent is a very interesting part of his character, so I think instead of asking whether or not Jayce is violent, we should ask why is he violent

Also, violence isn't inherently negative, but rather a neutral thing; violence can be used for positive things

And, I find very ridiculous to think that these characters; that are league of legends characters, don't have any capacity for violence; like, I myself don't play LoL, but my friend does and has tried to drag me into hell, I mean, make me play LoL with her for years now; so I've been watching her playing LoL for a long time and I know what the game is about; and as I said before, fighting and inflicting violence it's baked into the very core of these characters, even Viktor and Ekko are designed to fight

Also, might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think Jayce is a bad fighter, he just doesn't have a lot of fighting experience, but I mean, in the fight with Vi, for being his first time to fight with a giant hammer, he doesn't do all that bad

[beanarie]

⭐️ for the temperature of becoming something (or any of your post-s8 fics) I'd love to hear about your approach to writing the 118 and how they ought to have treated buck, and how you balance nuanced characterization with what the show gave us! Really enjoying that story btw.

oh gosh i love this question. fair warning this will be long on words and possibly short on sense!

so temperature is the first fic where i tried to contend with the essential abandonment of buck by his family. for each character, i put them on a couple of different spectrums to figure out how to repair the relationship.

proximity is one spectrum. hen is the character with the most distance from buck. one on one, all things being equal, she maybe gets along a tiny bit better with him than chim does (where is my chim & buck daydrinking scene, timathon?), but the maddie connection shoves chim in the other direction. eddie is the closest to buck. even after he moved to texas, he and buck talked regularly about life shit (at least eddie's life shit, tho i guess buck telling him about everyone forgetting hen's birthday counts in the buck column).

not sure if i've had to say the plural of spectrum before. spectrums looks silly but spectra feels wrong, too. pretentious. anyway the next spectrum regards level of trauma/ability to recognize what was going on with buck. chim is on the high trauma end, as the one bobby sacrificed himself for, and as a guy with a heavily pregnant wife that might descend into a depressive episode as soon as the baby is born. hen is again the closest to the other side. she was sad, but she had her head on straight. and then there's eddie fighting for his life to steal chim's spot. do not get me wrong it makes sense to be upset under those circumstances! bobby's death triggered some shit. it did. but to make out like his struggle was worse than any of the others? bro literally made it all about him while accusing buck of doing that. fucking wild.

so between closeness, level of spiraling, and a couple of other things, i sussed out how responsible they each were for buck being left out in the cold. i didn't read eddie's "no one knows how to handle you" as accurate. hen and chim never had to "handle" buck on their own before. i think they would naturally assume eddie had him, so hen could concentrate on athena and i guess her kids (tim? bueller? remember bobby's stepkids??) and chim could wallow/be there for his wife & kid. still not very toretto style family of them, given buck's relationship with bobby, but eddie's the only one who knew exactly how little support buck was actually getting.

for maddie and chim, i kept the explicit amends to a minimum, instead focusing on them showing a commitment to doing better. because they do love buck; they've just been stuck on a rollercoaster the last six months and hadn't been able to take a breath long enough to see what's going on. also this is a divergent au where the transfer request never happened, so buck announcing he was going on leave was their first real sign of a problem. for hen, because she was in a better position to see buck wasn't okay, i went a little further, having her identify the issue and sincerely apologize for it.

for edmundo, my guy needed actual consequences because his main character syndrome is absolutely devastating for everyone around him. i wanted chris to be mad because he had just returned to la and one of his favorite people bounced due to his dad's mouth. i wanted buck to recognize how awful that one-sided fight was, and to go fully no contact for a while to force a reset including some actual growth for the two of them.

[partyof4game]

How would the RO's deal with someone who is also interested in the MC and is courting them?

Oooo okay so this can happen in the IF, so while I don't consider it super spoilery (it doesn't affect the plot), it is more or less how a character will react if MC has more than one interest before a romance lock.

Jem would suffer in silence, until he simply couldn't be silent any longer. He knows you're the one with all the admirers and that you're the one who has to pick but... please pick him? Please?

Raena, as she has already shown, is very blunt about it. As soon as the other suitor is out of earshot, she'd say: "Do you like them? If you don't, I can tell them off for you. I'll let them know you hate them, but like me, don't worry!"

Vana would openly brood about it, but respects the fact that you have to be the one who chooses her. It's bad enough she's not great at flirting, but now she has competition? Is that bad weather or is it just the cloud that follows a jealous Vana around?

At most Linzel might suggest you go for the other person. He'd be operating under the assumption that you see him as a fun way to pass the time, so if he thinks you have better prospects for a long-term relationship, he has no problems letting you go for it.

Maymie gets loud and starts up pissing contests. "You think you're so great, but I know how to kill a Drake with nothing more than my dagger and a bit of windspeed, I know {name} thinks that's sexy. THE BIGGEST THING I'VE KILLED IS A WYVERN BUT YOU'RE NEXT IN LINE, BUDDY! (I imagine this one spoken directly to Aslo)"

Aslo's reaction depends on his current level of intimacy; if insta-love he has no problems telling off any would-be suitors that they're messing with his true love, and threatening them a little with bodily harm. If on the slower romance route he'd work SO HARD to be as polite (read: silent) as possible, but it'd be like having a golem looming over your shoulder while shooting death lasers from its eyes at the other person. Not intimidating in the least, no way.

Sweets is pretty chill about it and, depending who it is, might even suggest a threesome to pass the time — or hey, maybe it'd even help you pick who you think is better. If not, you know you can always come and find them whenever you're in town and are tired of your other prospects.

[ilovegt]

Hi! I love your art and I love Trevor Bennat and Hank!

If you don't mind, I have a question for you.

Do your characters have any bad habits or negative traits?

Yes, of course.

The main negative trait of Trevor is that he’s a bit dumb. I mean, sometimes he just can’t figure out the most basic things (this is even noticeable in the comic at certain moments). But at the same time, when he’s with friends, he somehow manages to do such idiotic things that a normal person wouldn’t even think of.

Give this dumbass a Darwin Award—no, give him hundreds of Darwin Awards. He’s earned them.

He’s also a very sensitive person when it comes to others (and to all living things, really). I think that’s a good quality, but because of it, he’s easy to deceive, and Trevor tends to get very emotionally attached...

And he often keeps his real feelings to himself. He’s never allowed himself to cry. He forgot how a long time ago, and he’ll never talk about his problems.

However, now Bennett is in his life, and I think he’s capable of changing that.

As for Bennett, overall, he can come across as a much more negative person to those who don’t know him well. Bennett is sometimes grumpy, angry, and overly emotional during arguments. He also worries and gets anxious a lot—fortunately, most of those traits faded after his teenage years. But even if they’ve weakened, they’re still there to some degree.

As for bad habits:

Trevor has almost none, but Bennett has quite a few.

He overthinks and worries too much, and because of that, he often chews on his knuckles. He neglects sleep, rarely goes out in the sun, eats a lot of sweets, and when stressed, he might clean obsessively (though I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bad habit).

[cdr2002]

I hate fandom moral police lmao, I get it. Someone tried to tell me like five characters I’m not allowed to like by extension of Gul Dukat making me uncomfortable once. It was annoying.

While I agree, Section 31 are, at least in the way I interpret their DS9 appearances, unambiguously villains, but also outside of the novels they have no coherent arc, so I kinda get why people have a problem with them even if I don’t as much. Later series muddy the waters with characters we are meant to like who are associated with the organization such as Malcom Reed and Ash Tyler, but these can be seen as a bit of greyness shading that particular character, or that character can be interpreted as an antihero, and thus not someone we’re mean to 100% root for.

There’s also a very narrow “they exist in opposition of Julian Bashir specifically and are designed for that narrative function” read of Section 31 but I don’t find that idea interesting in macrocosm or useful to the discussion.

I think the question of the Borg and genocide is in the way that one shuts down the Collective. Janeway’s virus, from what I can tell, largely freed drones or rendered them in stasis. The shit they were suggesting in “I, Borg” sounds a lot more like genocide to me and I’m glad Picard and co chose to abort, and it really shows a dark side of Nacheyev and Starfleet Command when they’re mad Picard didn’t do it later. The reason I have a problem with the idea of genociding is not because the Collective is a culture in need of preserving, but because every single drone is a captive person who deserves freedom and should only be mercy killed if there is no other immediate option. (And sometimes our heroes can try harder than they do, as Lily critiques Picard got with Ensign Lynch)

Individual characters like Picard or Sisko opposing the Maquis because of who those individual characters are make sense, I agree. I try, and maybe this is cope, to interpret the “actually this was always hopeless” thing as Sisko’s personal opinion and see the narrative of Eddington’s final episode as rightfully presenting a tragedy, even if previous episodes critiqued the Maquis for the glory seeking of some of its members. I do think Sisko and Eddington are both equally up in their own pride for most of their interactions and none of their friends on either side will tell them no.

I also view the Thomas Riker episode as a critique of people who join fights to be validated. I like Thomas so I don’t want to say “white guy at a BLM March” but I struggle to think of something else right now. I don’t see Kira as saying the Maquis as a whole are doing it wrong, there’s actually a strong current of Maquis-Bajoran solidarity in the franchise further bolstered by beta canon it might be too much of a side tangent to get into. I think Kira is trying to tell Thomas that he is doing it wrong and is going to get his fellow Maquis killed.

So I for one see the Maquis as flawed but not in the wrong, but I think it’s fair, despite my takes, if someone sees the media as outright condemning them. Like that’s not unreasonable. Main characters as the moral authority is common in fiction. Star Trek is just usually more nuanced so sometimes I notice when I think main characters are wrong or not seeing the whole picture.

Regarding fandom and even certain creators, I think some have an easier time condemning the Maquis than Section 31 because the Maquis fight in opposition to the dream utopia while Section 31 ultimately seeks to preserve it. While I see these things as facets that make Section 31 interesting nuanced antagonists, who believe in an optimistic future, just not for themselves because they view themselves as needing to do the dirty work, and that frames the Maquis as an example that this seemingly utopian future doesn’t always get it right and an ideal society is something we must continuously work towards, others see it as one group opposing their dream and one darkly enforcing it, I think. I could be talking out my ass.

Others still condemn both groups and don’t want to have to deal with the moral implications of either because they can’t handle Starfleet being wrong in one direction or another.

This may have been slightly incoherent but hey thought rambles. Hope this was interesting and I didn’t make an idiot of myself

TNG: The Maquis are an example of governments screwing over native groups and also show an ugly side of the Federation where they are legally correct but morally in the wrong

DS9: the Maquis are disillusioned people, horny for personal glory, fighting for a cause that may be righteous but they’re doing it wrong. Also they’re theatre kids so bombing them for space is morally correct

Voyager: The captain is the most stick-in-the-mud will-always-follow-the-rules Captain we’ve ever had and her first officer is a principled man who left Starfleet to fight with the Maquis for his homeland. Oh god oh god oh god. Girls are shipping them. Abort! Abort! Maybe if we ignore the characters’ canonical devotion to each other while never challenging or explaining it (or the conflict between a rule following Captain depending so much on a man who broke those rules for righteous reasons) the girls will get their icky hands off our cool explosion show for boys.

Picard: Ro betrayed daddy Picard Starfleet when she joined with the Maquis but she’s spent her career making up for that

Prodigy: Chakotay was wrong to join the maquis but his intimate yet undefined relationship ship with Janeway cured him. Remember kids; the government always has your best interests in mind and there’s never a reason to raise up against them or resist them in any way. Don’t read the Hunger Games

[appl3j4ck-k1sser]

any fop hot takes..... your posts are good

I think peri should just quit godparenting entirely, he's terrible at his job, he's hurt too easily, he gets cocky after getting dev back but hes not worried abt Dev's being at all, downright leaving dev on his own without considering who will take care of him, stalking him but didn't do anything, making things worse with his godkid by interrupting him at his worst state when he should've ask dev if he needs space to think abt the whole situation (and gets upset when asked to leave???WHAT WERE YOU THINKING), that one ep where he says "Well, that should keep him busy for a while", LIKE HUH??? was that necessary??? he then never made an attempt to apologize or comfort him, he doesn't even know what he's doing for most parts nd have literally admitted it on that one ep, he's too independent and acts like he doesn't, he ran from his responsibilites or when there's conflicts, he's overwhelmed wayy too easily, he lashes out at his godkid (which mind you, he shouldnt do that cuz Dev's a child, doesnt matter how shitty he is), and he never considers Dev's own feelings even when it's his job to make the kid unmiserable... All he's ever known for outside of his job is being a smartass and his attractiveness which you can obviously tell wouldn't be fitting for a godparent, so overall he deserves to quit nd live with his parents

[wow-an-unfunny-joke]

Aaaaaaagh I wanna write mechanisms fanfiction so bad!!!! I don’t know the character thoooo it’ll be so bad

[maraschinotopped]

hello brothership fandom. today i present you with the first proper to-be-multi-fic ive written in ages: 'a one-sided bond'. it is about cozette and whatever the fuck shes going through mentally after the end of brothership, through the eyes of literally everybody but cozette. so you can get the true experience of prying her emotional state out of her as god intended. oh and reclusas back too. hes the reason any of this is happening. yay <3

you can go read the first chapter here. more chapters to be released hopefully in some semblance of time.

it is on google docs because ive never posted anything to ao3 in my entire life. and i never created an account on there in the first place. sue me.

a more fancy, proper summary under the cut:

Cozette is, above all else, a conformer to expectations.

She understands that everybody expects her to return to her Wattanist duties, what she dedicated her life to do. What she was brainwashed to break away from, they say. She knows the reality- it haunts mercilessly, eating away at her- but its easier to accept what other people tell her is true rather than face it. So, she rewrites the truth in her mind. She takes up her Wattanist duties once again, and falls into a familiar routine..

...for all of two days, before Reclusa inexplicably reappears and she can feel herself unravel from the inside out due to the implications.

[nabaath-areng]

I have way too many alts that I keep to myself (which is why I generally refrain from posting them), but I'm going to ignore that habit for a moment just because I'm feeling particularly insane about this guy.

[worfianism]

Im still thinking about Belinda. The biggest problem with the finale is not that she became a mother. You could have kept the Poppy storyline and had her become Poppy's mother. But for a character who from the off valued and pushed to have her agency respected, the fact that this child didn't come into her life through any choices she made should have had ramifications. It's the same problem as in Interstellar Song Contest. Belinda recognises that the Doctor is dangerous in episode 1. He essentially kidnaps her and nearly gets her killed multiple times after that so. As much as she can like the Doctor, how does it not become a sticking point to her that the Doctor TORTURED someone and nearly got her killed AGAIN. And then again in Wish World/The Reality War, she has a child, but it's because of Conrad and the Doctor's wish so when she realised this she could have still felt like "I have memories of Poppy and I am her mother and I want to keep her safe" and also "Doctor I just wanted to go home and now my life has been changed so radically without my consent" and when they were discussing the possibility of losing Poppy she should also have had a moment to recognise that because of the Doctor she is facing a huge huge huge loss. The loss of a child is no small thing. What im saying is there were no emotional ramifications that felt truthful to the Belinda of Ep 1 throughout this season. Her character was cheated of any lasting traits and personality. She could have even come to recognise that she wants adventures with the Doctor but still reckoned with the fact that she was right. He is dangerous. He is pretty words and talks of destiny and then wreaking chaos into her life and upending it without her say so. He's like fire. Stand too close and you get burned.

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[keeps-ache]

physically i feel like i've experienced exhaustion going at least 75 on a side road while i was just chilling and standing next to my own mailbox when it hit me with its stupid 2025 ford f150 But at least my eyeballs aren't itchy :)

[goldentigerfestival]

Since I'd been talking a lot about JP Vesperia (primarily Yuri and Flynn and the heavy changes that surround them, and because I'm highly passionate about them in their original context), I wanted to compile some more jarring if not outright glaring mistakes in the localization (or what were likely intentional changes, because I can't look at some of these and just call them "mistakes"). I'm not going to mention every little change throughout the game, so smaller things I'll mostly be leaving out (namely things that don't really affect characters or context). I primarily just wanted to give some insight on some of the bigger parts.

Some of the changes seem to have been mistakes in translation itself (not just localization, but misunderstanding what was being said in general; such as, there's an instance I mention of that between Patty and Don), so I've got some mentions hanging around for clarity purposes as some scenes didn't make much sense, likely because of this.

Vocal tone with Yuri was the most prominent issue that got me making this, and the context that was changed being right after if not equally next to that (most often also with Yuri but also Flynn).

This is something that has been bothering me for a while and I've been wanting to share this stuff with people interested in seeing the game with its original context. Generally speaking, the plot and story themselves are on point. The majority of the differences surround Yuri and Flynn respectively, so there's going to be a lot of mention of them throughout.

I've also posted video clips of my favorite scenes and the heavy changes, so consider those a supplement to this and vice versa.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

Note because people have vagueposted about me since making these: Do not start "dub versus sub hurr hurr" arguments with me or imply that's what I'm doing with these. Firstly, Japanese is a language, not your English subtitles. Secondly, these posts are not in main tags and I am not bothering anyone by making posts of my feelings on my own blog related to these facts. If you have time to vaguepost and whine about my untagged opinions after hatereading (or not even reading it at all and making stupid assumptions), you have time to be nice to people and find something fun to do. Lastly, I've said many times that the entire loc/dub in this game is not bad. There are specific things I take issue with. It does not mean I'm anti dub and hate all dubs. It does not mean I go out of my way to find dub fans and start shit with them.

Update: Went back through to correct the way I used "dub" and "localization" interchangeably. I don't do that anymore bc "dub" obviously refers to the dubbing of foreign media, and dubbing is a part of the localization process. Lines themselves are not the dubbing, and the dubbing is the vocals. Thus, I edited cases where I really didn't think about that while writing these and changed mistaken "dub" mentions as needed.

---

I'd like to preface this by mentioning the chief director and producer of the game itself has also spoken about localization inaccuracy issues, so that's something to keep in mind (it's in Japanese, but you should be able to use the offered post translator).

I'd also like to preface this by mentioning that in the original, Yuri is more playful and relaxed/casual (generally but including with Flynn, which the dub pretty much entirely changed until arc 3), but also gentler and softer. He has a very large variety of tonal behaviors/tonal "moods" that were pretty much nuked from the dub.

Basically, to get a better experience for this Yuri, I can only really recommend playing the game in JP audio. Obviously you won't get the actual context because all you'll have is the loc context, but that's also partly why I'm making these posts - to cover the contextual changes while the video clips cover some of the tonal changes (because lbh I don't expect anyone to actually go watch the entire game in JP with subtitles unless you're as insanely dedicated as I am, and I'm largely doing it out of my love for the original Yuri and Flynn and my disdain for how the localization treated them).

As a heads up, there won't be many skits in here because I'm going through a specific YT playthrough for these screenshots. Specific skits won't always come up in the playthrough in question, and I can't find a whole list of skits in JP anywhere online. I don't have all skits unlocked in my own save either yet (you can unlock all skits with Grade which I have yet to do in the DE), so I can't use that to compare all skits right now.

There are plenty of small changes here and there that I won't be including in these posts because there are some sentence changes that aren't impactful but do exist. I just don't want to be here for a year covering the random changes that don't matter much. I'm also not going to include details of a lot of honorifics because I'd be here all day, but there is one one major instance that I mention later on.

For reference if anything wants to actually watch the game in JP with the subs (it goes until just after Hypionia), most of the references come from here. Since in some cases the subber just reused localized text even when the context wasn't the same, I did bring some of those up in these posts too. These were subbed before the DE version came out. I used screenshots with subs where possible to make it easier to follow along.

I have a lot of passion for JP Yuri and I hope I can pass on some of that passion to others. 🙏

Apologies in advance if some of these sound cranky. If I sound cranky about some specific changes, it's probably because I am.

---

Since I talked about the whole, Raven being shady and Yuri therefore not being grateful to him incident that the localization for some reason butchered and made Yuri sound like a generally ungrateful or just outright dumb person who doesn't understand gratitude, I'll summarize that one again here:

Yuri has a skit with Estelle originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing him how to sneak out of the castle. Basically, Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes). The loc just kinda... makes him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. It doesn't really sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically but more that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game. Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from (and I imagine a weird peppy guy in jail is good cause to be skeptical).

We start off we a classic "Yuri, you idiot!" that was changed to "come on already!".

Yuri's response to Estelle mentioning he'd been in the knights doesn't actually give a time frame for how long he'd been there (the loc made up three months, but there was never originally even a time frame given).

Here when Yuri asks Estelle why she can't just leave, her response indicates she actually does know why. The loc made it more ambiguous, which could be easily misinterpreted as she really doesn't know, so I'm dropping this one here.

For some reason the localization seemed to have Estelle responding to Karol directly about the ace always performing their attack last ("I don't think so"). What she was referring to was the tiny monster that walked by, asking for confirmation that that monster was not the eggbear they were looking for (I wasn't gonna fight with the video to get a better screenshot without the annoying YT red bar in the way so the monster is in the corner mid-movement lol). Not sure if that was a genuine mistake, but it was an odd one.

(Also, side note and not putting an image here because it's more general, but Yuri refers to Karol as "Karol-sensei" which was translated in the localization to "Captain Karol". Basically, Yuri calls him "sensei" because that's a teacher/professor, and he's making a play on Karol's knowledge and being their "teacher" about monsters/maps/etc.)

I'd say this is more along the lines of overexaggerating and not overreacting, but this line was literally changed to "haha" in the loc. The whole point wasn't that Yuri just brushed her comment off or found it funny. At this point he still literally thinks she's exaggerating about her lack of knowledge out in the world, her excitement, etc.

Not the only instance you'll find of the loc just changing entire sentences to something meaningless as if they ??? didn't know what it meant (they actually changed Patty saying an entire sentence to "aye"). In some cases they added entire sentences that weren't even there...

Even though I can kind of see where they went with the loc here, the point was supposed to be that Flynn actively thought he would be happy for Yuri to go outside the barrier and see the world.

The loc changed this to Flynn saying that he, in the now, is happy that Yuri is outside the barrier, but then says he got a little less happy when he saw the wanted poster, indicating he was previously happy but got less happy, yet says in that moment that he is happy.

It's a weird case of (past/present) tense usage for the most part, but they also removed the fact that Flynn is literally saying "I thought I would be happy" (thus expressing he'd been wanting Yuri to see the world outside the barrier and would've been happy to find out he did). The reason he's not finding himself happy is because of the wanted poster and the crimes listed on it, following up that his honest happiness for Yuri (ultimately because of the poster) was a lie.

This also means they removed Flynn expressing the honesty of his happiness for a positive concept for Yuri, which, given all the changes toward Flynn in the loc/dub, already now takes away from the fact that he'd been actively hoping for good things for someone and we're left with this more sarcastic take on him being "happy" (his line is more like, "but I lost my sense of genuine happiness when I saw this!").

Obviously his happiness wasn't really a lie because most of the crimes were falsified (primarily the ones that would make him actually mad, because Flynn has had to have been aware this whole time that Yuri has committed small time crimes for the past few years now), but at the time, the focus on this conversation is that Flynn thought he'd be happy at a time that Yuri left the barrier; meaning he'd been hoping for it prior to it happening.

I'm also mentioning it because it's the very first in a whole line of changes the loc/dub made to their relationship (and it's their first in game interaction ffs) and to Flynn himself as he's perceived as a character. The original is much more expressive of how important they are to each other in a lot of various ways.

Inserting the JP audio version of the following scene with Flynn here.

And... the following one from there.

This was changed to "damn, we if lose our balance...". I know they did it because Yuri had just fallen over, but I'm including this one because the context isn't... really the same thing to me?

This loc change is a bit odd to me. They had him saying something along the lines of "she is a princess after all" in the loc, regarding the council backing her.

The original context is more like, the council is backing her and he's hearing it directly from Ioder and he probably doubts Ioder would lie like that or about that, cementing that yes, she truly is, like he suspected, a princess, but it's almost still a bit odd to know. It's sort of like, he knew/had suspicions but hearing it directly from Ioder just confirms it for certain.

The loc just made it sound like well yeah, it's obvious they'd want to back her, she's a princess... but Ioder is a prince, so that doesn't explain why they're not backing him. She is a princess after all, so of course they'd back her... but what's stopping them from backing the prince?

Another weird one for me. In the loc Yuri says that "even the Commandant was a little in over his head", when he actually... really wasn't? All he did was step in. Things got bad enough that he had to, but he wasn't in over his head. Not sure how or why the loc ended up with that.

An example of the loc having a habit of just adding in random lines that didn't actually exist (and in this case the one added didn't even contextually make sense. This was no thank you from him, this was literally him making Yuri do something for him because he was going to ask Flynn for a favor and ended up with Yuri in the cell instead).

Another super weird one in the loc. They had Yuri saying Flynn was "too" late, implying he hadn't made it in time, but he did. He made it just before the battle started, but the original context only says he's late, not too late (which makes sense given that they were ready to fight but hadn't started yet).

This was changed to Yuri just mentioning there was one way they could get out of there without actually saying what it was, and Judith saying if he thinks it might work what's the harm in trying it out. Not sure why they changed Yuri literally telling her his plan, so... again, a super weird change that I don't get why they didn't just keep the context the way it was.

Third image was changed to "someone get me away from this psycho", which... I also don't get why they put that there unless they just wanted so much flavor text that they wanted to change the whole "they're in a fight and he's telling her not to come over here because he's pissed at her because they're fighting" part of the fake fight they had going on.

Not one I have a huge problem with, but definitely good examples of them going out of their way to change just... perfectly normal stuff that literally has no reason to be changed? Some of it is flavor text and some of it feels over the top for me. Stuff that makes me like... why would you change that when there was no reason to? Could be more of a personal pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like unnecessary changes when there was nothing wrong or odd about the original text and doesn't at all come off odd in English. Unfortunately Vesperia got littered with those.

I didn't feel like getting a whole video for this, but basically Judith gives a little laugh instead of just the more upset/distressed(?) sound she made in the dub. Feels more fitting imo to keep up the "lie" Yuri started for her. The dub makes it seem more like she feels guilty, versus here she's giving a little forced giggle to go along with it. Again, a change I'm not sure why they put in.

Ngl I get completely different vibes from these. The JP comes across more as concern, rather than... treating them like they're some mob on the loose...?

Once again, this gives off negative vibes toward Flynn as a character imo.

Here Judith gives more of a reason for coming with them, which they changed in the loc to "with the circumstances being what they are, this is just how things turned out". Reasonably, she didn't have to stick around after they ran from Dahngrest, but here she gives a quick "reason".

The loc changed this to "I'll bet he is". They were just told he's the current magistrate in Heliord, and all Yuri says here expresses he's letting it sink in and realizing exactly why all this is happening here. It's not a huge story beat or anything that gets changed, but it's an example of changing things that don't need to be changed as if trying to play things up in a way that... doesn't feel necessary to me? In this case the situation is kind of dawning on Yuri as he realizes how bad this situation could be/why it's like it is, but in the loc it comes across as more just unimpressed and "of course he'd do that".

An unfortunate, classic moment of them changing how much Yuri believes in and trusts Flynn. They changed this to "gotta run, Flynn!" and he just... leaves. I'm sorry but in what universe does "leave the rest to you" equal "gotta run"???

This one is one of those cases where the localization text was super awkward and wonky, and worse, they actually voiced it that way (like "we have guild's job to deal with". Yes, they actually voiced it that way too on top of everything else grammatically wonky with the entire conversation that they didn't bother fixing when the DE came out).

Also here, they changed what Yuri says about Cumore and Flynn. "I don't know how I could explain this to Flynn" doesn't, at least to me, carry the same weight as Yuri actually feeling ashamed (in the loc he says "what a shame", but does not express shame, versus him saying "how pathetic" and expressing shame in feeling pathetic) and saying he can't even face Flynn because Cumore got away. The thing is, Yuri does tend to posture, so when he fails at something, it hits him pretty hard.

And let's be honest, this just hits way harder than "he will get what he deserves".

Interestingly, Yuri could also fall into the category of viewing himself as sinful later on, which I talk about in my favorites post and the usage of "crime" and "sin" within the JP context.

Not particularly important, but just another (more mild) case and example of how the loc just randomly changed tone/mood/wording for no reason.

Another case of Yuri being more aggressive in the dub than he actually was. Here, all he says is just a plain statement. In the dub, he has an attitude about it and says it in a tone that's more insulting that Ioder didn't know about Heracles.

This isn't the only case of dub Yuri acting aggressively toward Ioder when he wasn't supposed to be and we'll get to that, but Ioder is another similar case of the dub making Yuri unnecessarily vocally rude (despite that Ioder is very polite toward Yuri).

(I left out the subtitles because all they did was copy the Eng localization, which kinda defeats the point of this post LOL. This will be the case going forward for any same circumstances.)

This one's a more interesting tidbit to me and less of a harmful change (i.e. I find that a lot of if not most changes relative to Flynn do more harm than good when compared with the original context). Basically it's saying "sweet mask and sharp eyes", implying Flynn's sweet face is a mask and saying it contrasts with his sharp eyes. I could get into a whole rant about why I love that in relation to some side material, but even in the game itself, there's the knight Flynn with his sweet, polite side and his real side that only shows when he's around Yuri (basically, who Flynn has to be for his job and who he actually is as a person, which he only gets to be around someone who knows the real him).

I'd guess this got changed in the loc because they weren't sure how to word it, though there's no mention of "heartthrob" here at all and instead actually says "sweet mask" as if, again, to say his sweetness is just a mask. It's actually a very interestingly accurate representation of his character - how he tends to not be himself when he's being "knight Flynn", and how that sweet face is contrasted by the look in his eyes (which they say, you know, eyes are the windows to the soul, so this would imply the sweet face is the mask and the eyes are the real Flynn. And of course, this Flynn is implied to show himself in his sparring with Yuri in Aurnion, where sword fighting is the best way to express himself. This isn't to say Flynn being a nice person in and of itself is a lie, but that his overly polite, respectful, kind knight side is a sweet mask contrasted to the man who loves to fight and has a sharp look in his eyes)

For now, we'll be back at Mantaic in the next post (due to image per post limit).