calamitaswrath

[calamitaswrath]

I've had a lot of conversations lately about what's lacking in cosy fantasy and romantasy, and the general consensus is that it boils down to being written like fanfiction.

Fanfiction is an entirely different beast than published fiction. Your reader is already invested in the characters, and you don't need to sell them on anything to get them to read it. And that's great! That's the beauty of fanfiction! You should write that if it is your true passion!

Cosy fantasy and romantasy that has no fucking plot whatsoever argh often skips the step of getting you invested in the characters. You're already supposed to be into the "hot mysterious baddie" trope, therefore there's no effort being made to make you interested in this particular hot dude. Female leads are interchangeable. What were they like growing up? What are their morals? Who cares, let them fuck.

Don't get me started on DnD-lite books that rely on you being familiar with DnD to do the world-building for you. First of all, this is boring as all hell. If you're not willing to world-build, you're not going to give us a good story. Second of all, DnD can be a great world-builder, and everyone not taking advantage of that is just being lazy. If you have orcs in your damn book, I want you to tell me what that means. I shouldn't have to flip through a source book to understand the conflict you're setting up goddamnit!

And listen, you can say queer cosy fantasy/romantasy fixes this problem, and I can promise you it doesn't. Some of it is better, but the vast majority is still written for tropes and nothing more. Please, I am begging you, you need more than tropes to write a good book. You need to actually convince us, the reader, to care about these characters as much as you do. That means letting them make mistakes. That means they have to have real problems that aren't solved by the power of love, but by confronting their own flaws. You cannot do this if your characters don't actually have flaws.

I cannot wait for this trend to die.

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Mous-fer-RATu.

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Everyone keeps talking about "the writer's barely disguised fetish". But I still haven't heard about "the writer's barely disguised huge ass pet peeve"

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The Japanese Version of Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4

last year i made a post covering aspects of deltarune chapter 2’s japanese localization that i hadn’t seen others talk about. people seemed to like it! and i liked making it as well, so now that chapters 3 and 4 are out, i’ve looked at the japanese text for them to see if i could find anything interesting.

and… yep i did.

since i’m one of the first english fans to look at the new japanese text in this manner, there’s a lot that i skimmed over or just straight up didn’t read, as a decent amount of dialogue is jumbled or shoved under “scr_text”. i mainly focused on the lore-important segments, since there aren’t as many character voices or jokes with interesting translations as there were in chapter 2… with two exceptions.

tenna

tenna is generally pretty well localized. i didn’t translate a lot of his dialogue, but 8-4 has done a pretty outstanding job of making tenna sound like a japanese TV host. for example, the narration to his intro video is translated from this:

It's now time for our feature presentation FEACHER Coming straight from your house Coming straight from YOUR house! He's the One He's GROOVY and NEVER glooby! You can't get this from an EGG! The sensation of your screen The show that makes you scream Say it with him, folks!

to this:

大変オマタセいたしました！ (Thank you for waiting so long!) はぢまるヨ！ (Lettuce begin!) アナタの　おうちから　お届け！ (Delivered from your house!) アナタの！　おうちから！　お届け！(Delivered! From! Your! House!) ピカ“１”の (The number “one”) シケシケしてない　トレンディマン！ (trendy man who never goes out of style!) タマゴには　マネできない！ (He could never be imitated by an egg!) アンビリーバボーな (With an unbelievable,) キセキの　サケビを！ (miraculous scream!) さあ～　みなさん　ごいっしょに！ (Now… everyone, all together!)

they didn’t need to intentionally misspell the line that replaced “FEACHER” but they did and i love that.

a lot of lines like these were translated to be more in the style of japanese television, and that’s awesome. i really admire the effort, and the shift is palpable even to me, who isn’t fluent in japanese at all.

jackenstein

others have already been curious about how “YOUR TAKING TOO LONG” and its variations are translated— in fact, this youtube video that i found beat me to the punch with covering it. (edit: this one provides a comparison between languages, which is very nice)

jack uses a mixture of hiragana and katakana (no kanji), refers to himself in the third person, misspells things (mostly using ワ for the particle “wa” instead of は), and occasionally uses emoticons. all of these give a strange but fairly childish impression.

and here’s how his iconic phrases were translated:

YOUR TAKING TOO LONG -> ナガイ　シすぎ (nagai shisugi / you’re taking too long)

YOUR TOO BRIGHT -> マブシイ　すぎ (mabushii sugi / you’re too bright)

YOUR LONG -> ナガ　イ (nagai / long)

YOUR TAKING TOO LONG IS TAKING TOO LONG -> ナガイ　シすぎ　ニ　ナガイ　シすぎ (nagai shisugi ni nagai shisugi / you’re taking too long with “you’re taking too long”)

YOUR TAKING TOO TOO -> カワイ　すぎ (kawai sugi / you’re too cute)

YOUR TOO TOO -> すきすき (sukisuki / you look cute, I like you)

raise up your bat

i looked at raise up your bat’s lyrics to see if there was any extra lore behind them. there wasn’t, but… ralsei’s replacement lyrics are pretty funny in this version. here are the full lyrics

鮮血 流れる 悪魔の心 (Senketsu nagareru akuma no kokoro / The devil’s heart flows with fresh blood) -> 先月 出会った あのコと今日も (Sengetsu deatta ano ko to kyou mo / Today, that kid I met last month) バットを振りかざせ (Batto o furikazase / Raise up your bat) -> チャットをするからね (chatto o suru kara ne / will have a chat with me) 希望は　ついえた (Kibou wa tsuieta / Hope has died out) -> 昨日は　ついつい (Kinou wa tsuitsui / Yesterday we ended up) 明日は見えない (ashita wa mienai / and tomorrow’s not in sight) -> 朝まで電話 (asa made denwa / talking on the phone until morning) バットを振りかざせ (Batto o furikazase / Raise up your bat) -> やっぱり楽しいね (Yappari tanoshii ne / It sure is fun) 夜をブチのめせ (Yoru o buchi-nomese / Do it all through the night) -> 今日もウキウキね (Kyou mo ukiuki ne / I’m excited today too) 闇の中へ こぎ出そう (Yami no naka e kogidasou / Let’s row into the darkness) 心の箱船で (Kokoro no hakobune de / With the ark of the heart) 闇の中でも　そばにいる (Yami no naka de mo soba ni iru / I’m by your side even in the dark) その心に導かれ (Sono kokoro ni michibikare / Guided by that heart) 鮮血 流れる 悪魔の心 ( Senketsu nagareru akuma no kokoro / The devil’s heart flows with fresh blood) -> 先月なかよくなった友だち (Sengetsu nakayoku natta tomodachi / The friends I made last month) バットを振りかざせ (Batto o furikazase / Raise up your bat) -> パットと　ブリトニー (Patto to Buritonī / Pat and Britney) 希望は　ついえた 明日は見えない (Kibou wa tsuieta ashita wa mienai / Hope has died out and tomorrow’s not in sight) -> 気取った　ポーズで ダンスがしたい (Kitotta pōzu de dansu ga shitai / They want to do a silly dance) バットを振りかざせ (Batto o furikazase / Raise up your bat) -> ハットをかぶってね (Hatto o kabutte ne / Put on a hat) 夜をブチのめせ (Yoru o buchi-nomese / Do it all through the night) -> スーツを着こなして (Sūtsu o kikonashite / Wear a suit fashionably)

who are pat and britney? are they the secret key to all the mysteries of the story? who knows!

UNUSED

i didn’t find many changes in the text of the chapter 3 and 4 “unused” text (otherwise known as “the voice in the code”), but i noticed that their dialogue sounds a little less feminine/childish compared to in chapter 1. maybe. it does seem like a lot of time has passed. idk

edit: actually, after looking back at all the unused text, it seems like they’ve been always more gender-neutral than i previously assumed.

prophecy

a few changes to the prophecy lines stood out to me.

THE THIRD HERO. A PRINCE, ALONE IN DEEPEST DARK. (eng) The third hero / A lonely prince living in the depths of darkness (jp)

reference to “depths”. nothing of note besides that

THE FLOWER MAN, TRAPPED IN ASYLUM. (eng) The flower man is captive in a facility (jp)

this is the word used to replace “asylum” here. take it as you will:

and the one i found by far the most interesting…

LOVE WILL FIND THE GIRL. (eng) The girl will learn the true meaning of love. (jp)

huh????? what the fuck does that mean??

also, the word for “love” used in japanese is 愛, which refers to any kind of love. so no double meaning here, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of an intended double meaning in english, as the japanese translation of undertale has often had to erase intended double meanings that were not translatable, like “determination”.

addendum: As you know,

i’m editing the post to add this in because i forgot that it’s important.

you know the carol line where she says YOU in bright red text and no one knows whether she’s talking to kris or the player? well, luckily, japanese usually omits the word “you” in place of a person’s actual name, so hopefully looking at the japanese version of the line should—

she just uses the word for “you”.

this just makes it more evident that it is meant to be unclear who she’s speaking to.

CONCLUSION

wow that’s it. that’s a lot less than i expected there to be, but again, the game is translated pretty faithfully and there aren’t as many jokes that had to be localized in these two chapters. if you notice anything or want me to translate specific text, don’t be afraid to ask! i’ll be happy to answer any questions and help people out.

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Kris's war on the word "tsundere":

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I LOVEEE NEW FRYE OUTFIT

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While I honestly appreciate all the Xenoblade 1 AUs that I have seen people post about, I'm personally a bit disappointed that to this day, no one else seems to have thought of a Fiora-Dunban roleswap AU.

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👁️ ㅅ 👁️

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Check out the bonus panel on the site!

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

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livetweeting my re-listening to Guards! Guards! audiobook.

lady sybil is my hero

and vetinari and his rat allies … i .. am obsessed with everything that man does

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dykes for trans rights quilt - sarah-joy ford

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Nya Marie Monday