nikkotinamide

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so ok yeah fine i watched gravity falls again and read the book of bill

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What are you proud of?

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 03 / Ep. 06

Bonus:

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woke up today and thought "how have I not drawn his iconic pose yet"

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Uta and her dads! ❤️💙

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swept by the tide.

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I want you to tell me the truth in person, or I'll burn your mouth with chilies!

AI DI, our 小辣椒 (little chili padi)🌶️🎉 KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Bonus: Cayenne Auto Shop

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The He family’s heiress and the Mo restaurant’s daughter ca.19XX

(vintage fem!tianshan bc I wanted to draw them in qipao!)

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莫仔 in heatstroke! ♨️

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IM HERE! Julian, I absolutely love your interpretation of the Ep 9 scene, it hit the nail on the head. Ep 9 in general is just so heart-wrenching, to this day nearly one year after Kiseki, “只有我，从小看到大。我蠢，我猪。” (Only I, since I was young till now when I am old, have been looking at you. I'm naive. I'm foolish.) still deals max emotional damage 🥹

堂口 does refer to their Cayenne auto shop and I remember coming across a post mentioning that it probably was named as such with Ai Di in mind which I totally concur because our bbyboy is such a 小辣椒 (little chili padi)! And it just goes to show how Ai Di is invariably tied to Yiyun Meng.

I firmly believe that Chen Dong Yang treats both of them as his sons (he asked them to call him dad!) and that he intended for both of them to eventually take over, with Ai Di fulfilling the role as Chen Yi’s Zhou Ming Lei. I think it can generally been said that it is very difficult for anyone to leave a secret society/gang, and I think that Ai Di being to leave so easily could only be because of CDY’s affection for him. And the way he allows Ai Di to talk back to him (a gang leader?!) in Ep 12? That’s an indulging daddy…

so i've been going down several translation holes while giffing kiseki... finding different sources which have their own translations, etc. then trying to choose the words that fit the meaning of the scene im giffing best.

i just wanna talk about two lines in particular that have made me tilt my head and wonder about nuances, so here we go:

the first line/translation i want to mention is from ep9, and is to do with the meaning and intention of the characters/story. it's when chen yi is confronting ai di after he gets out of prison about the time ai di slept with him four years before. i found three different versions of what ai di cuts him off with:

these all contain insanely different meanings in english. i was losing my mind trying to figure out the subtleties of what ai di was saying here, so i reached out to a very helpful speaker of the language who has made kiseki translation posts before, @nikkotinamide , and they said this about it:

and i just got so excited about that...the nuance! the specifics! referring to it as "settling accounts" is likely where the first translation about "the past" comes from, but the other two are closer to the true meaning. however, if you simply went with the revenge line you would miss the complexities that are being suggested in ai di's character.

thinking of that night as a debt he owes to chen yi and has to pay back... as something to be settled - something he isn't even really asking about but more expects chen yi to follow through on... it makes this line so much more poignant to me because it describes his guilt and heartbreak about what happened between them - about what ai di chose to do - in a much more specific and cutting way. ai di expects anger, rejection, and retaliation from chen yi, and tries goading him into reacting in those ways bc he believes he has done something unforgivable (and also that chen yi doesn't (and will never) love him), so he would rather chen yi push him away than risk being that close again.

(un?)luckily for him chen yi is absolutely smitten with him and doesn't let him get away with it. ♥️

the second translation i want to focus on is in ep12 & has more to do with words that don't translate exactly into english, but i went on a similar bender trying to decipher it:

specifically the translation of the last two characters: "堂口 (táng kǒu)" - the word translated here as "office".

bc outside of youtube i found those characters also translated as "headquarters," "gang," and "hall", which are all, again, wildly different from each other. so my best guess was that it was actually a very specific word that highly depended on the context it was being used in, and that context was being translated generally so that non-speakers in the audience would understand. but i wanted to know what that specific word and context was!

so i reached out to a bestie who did some more digging and she found this:

which IMMEDIATELY made me batshit insane because of course that's what it means; of course it's that specific!!

"office" is too professional for where chen yi lives - it's a car garage; it's their front as an auto shop. but it's also not yiyun's "headquarters" because that's the building with the spa where chen dongyang and his husband operate out of: the true central point of the gang. but because of this other line in episode 3, we know chen yi (and ai di too through association; they're a pair, do not buy separately, etc.) leads a specific division of yiyun gang:

so when chen yi asks ai di in ep12 if he's going to the bar or to "堂口" he's asking if he's coming home to the auto shop: their specific division of the gang, (which we knew all along was what he was talking about in the first place).

(...and this is just me continuing with the meta side of it, not the translations, but i also think this connects to what xiao jie and ai di were both talking about when they brought up chen yi's succession as the leader of yiyun:

because chen yi is currently just a leader of one branch of the gang, and young (25 at the point where cdy retires), so to me it makes sense that older, senior members of the gang - possibly even leaders of other divisions - would want that spot. but chen yi is practically cdy's son so get wrecked guys the gang passes to him. 🥰

and that's also why cdy is urging ai di to just come back and be a member again. bc he raised both chen yi and ai di (they are a pair, do not buy seperately) and because chen yi is gonna need ai di to watch his back as he takes over full responsibility. ...im mad we didn't get to see more inter-gang dynamics. that could have been so COOL let me IN.)

anyway those are the two translation bits that have left the biggest impression on me while i've watched and giffed kiseki so far. i just think language is so fucking neat.

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moshang cookies 🍪 🏳️‍🌈 (inspired by @/keripalods svsss cookierun au but designs are mine!)

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I was just playing that night. Just for fun, okay? I'm no longer with the gang. We don't have to meet again. Save us both the trouble. You are lying.

Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME, Ep. 09

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从故事的最开始，他就把自己沾满鲜血的手背到了身后。From the very beginning of the story, he had already been keeping those bloodstained hands behind his back.

- 破云II吞海 Ch 131

Huai Shang uses 背 - bear. The line is meant to be translated as above but the implicit meaning is that Yuyu’s hands that are stained with fresh blood have always been the burden on his back. Which is one of the many reasons for his behaviours and characteristics 🥲

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总有一天我们都将得到永远的光明和自由。One day we will both eventually see the light of day and gain eternal freedom.

- 破云II吞海 Ch 130

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"i wanted to spend my tomorrows with him" that realization that exact thought word for word and he has it in the middle of a battlefield that will become that same mans graveyard in just a few short moments. do you ever think about that? how he admits to himself what he wants and immediately that confession is met with wedding bells and a kiss of death? this is the same ground the man he wanted in all of his tomorrows will be buried under. this is the ground he bleeds on at the same place and the same time as that confession of guilt. guilty of wanting. do you ever think about that? how admitting that to himself happens just before he has to bury wolfwood? do you think about that

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go to sleep at a reasonable hour or stay up late to finish this page you'll never guess which one i picked

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3hrs into lovingly rendering their faces/hair and i realize at some point i accidentally merged the sketch & lineart layers 🙃

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we solemnly swear we're up to no good