#[ I could make some more observations ]

[tea-cat-arts]

You know what, I've read enough fanfic. I'm confiscating Madame Yu from you guys

Free my girl- she did the things she's being accused of, but not as frequently or severely as the fandom pretends, her actions are being taken out of context, and her depth is being reduced to that of a Colleen Hoover antagonist

[lokh]

ive been thinking about this but. i think shuro understands laios' character pretty well, but he doesn't value his strengths or interests (monster knowledge). in the DVD extra where laios imagines what would have happened if they'd been on better terms, shuro STILL leaves because he thinks his chances are better with a trained crew (which....... is likely to be true but. look at how he ended up anyway lmao). meanwhile kabru recognises that while the party isnt particularly strong, the reason they get so far in the first place is BECAUSE of what laios knows about monsters. shuro seems aware that laios knows about monsters or has an interest in them, but views this as frivolous and a waste of time and doesn't seem to realise how much this knowledge carried them in the first place

[sisterdivinium]

Genetic engineering, DNA modification, tested it on herself... Why would Jillian go through all this trouble? Adoption would be easier, surrogacy wouldn't be an issue for a woman with so much money, so why this devotion to medical science, to gene manipulation?

This doesn't seem very logical unless we take one step further in examining her characterisation as a sort of Virgin Mary character implied by her clothing and framing during season one: a man is never mentioned in connection to Michael's conception, either as donor or father... Possibly because Michael has no father. Jillian has made him up from scratch or, at least, using only her own genetic material.

This would surely equate to an awesome "medical marvel" and it would accomplish two additional things: first, it would account for just how sick Michael needs to be so that an extremely rare substance that doesn't even belong to this world can be his sole hope in surviving (the result of a miscalculation, an unforeseen mutated gene, some error in Jillian's design, the absence of something); and second, reproduction without the aid of man ("sinless", sexless) not only ties Jillian's character more closely to the theme of the holy mother, it also more strongly makes a Jesus figure out of Michael.

This is significant because it makes him into a designated saviour: Michael, too, "dies", crossing to "the other side" and later returning with the mission of saving humanity, which is the role he is sure he will play during all of season two. This story has been told before, the structure is the same and we all know it. He mirrors Christ in his being born of a woman untouched by man, in going beyond life and back, in being tasked by a higher power to act for others in his sacrifice. It is a destiny clearly written out for him, a classic narrative, a hero's journey neatly set up for Michael to accomplish and all he has to do is follow the script.

And yet, doing everything right, by the book, Michael ultimately fails.

If, according to all of the doubts awakened by the developments in Warrior Nun (is Adriel's realm not Heaven? Is he not an angel? Is Reya God? Is Jesus just as alien as Adriel? Etcetera), the Catholic church's teachings are all twisted, incomplete, when not simply ignorant of all that is true in spiritual, metaphysical matters, then this saviour narrative that constitutes the foundation of the institution itself is doomed — as well as whatever guidance it could supply.

I was discussing with @halobearerhavoc earlier about (among many other intriguing things) how myth informs the show and how it might predict Reya's fall, but also how that event would necessarily depart from how it plays out in the original myth. That is due to the fact that our protagonist here is Ava, a woman, and that this tiny little fact of sex alone forces a shift in how things are presented, in which values are prioritised, in how conflict is treated, escalated or resolved — this applies here as well.

Michael was the textbook redeemer, he was made for this, brought up by Reya with this explicit purpose and with the acquired conviction that he was the key to it all.

Ava, on the other hand, is a product of coincidence, of accident, of the unfathomable. She is already a rupture in tradition — dead and brought back, unknowingly, unwillingly the "usurper" of the halo, inserting herself in the line of bearers at random when she doesn't even seem to have any belief... Ava exists outside of tradition. To Michael's determined "Destiny", she is the one imbued with free will (it isn't out of guilt or duty that she returns to the Cat's Cradle, but through Mary's sympathy, through her own understanding and action). Ava is the unplanned factor, contrasted with Michael who was so planned that his life might have begun inside a Petri dish.

It isn't determinism that will save us, a mantle of glory woven by someone else wanting to place it upon our shoulders regardless of our own wishes; it isn't a decrepit institution or some despotic deity that will define us or what we do; it isn't the heavy, malodorous layers of ancient mould gathered over the endless tomes of Established Tradition or the carefully made calculations of arrogant scientists who think they can predict and explain and control everything.

Salvation cannot be through what Michael represents: an imposed duty, a stagnant, hackneyed story.

A story, we would do well to remember, which was already used to subjugate others, whatever its initial intentions might have been; Jillian certainly didn't predict what would be of her son and surely the primitive Christians didn't see into the future to understand what their devotion and their modes of its transmission would cause, yet it came to happen. The extermination of the Cathars, the persecution of pagans, the burning of "witches", the suppression of indigenous beliefs, activities and lives, to name but a few of the atrocities committed in the name of this one story...

So it cannot be Michael, embodying this narrative so well, that will bring about a fortunate ending to humanity's troubles.

Instead, salvation comes through Ava. She herself might be inhabited by a number of parallels with Christ, but she also carries freedom, an outsider's view which makes the inside so see-through, love, an ability to move outside of what had been previously set for her by someone else (one might even argue that these are the traits that made Christ before the story surrounding him came about)...

The walls built around her needn't contain her — and, phasing as she does, they do not.

Moreover, what would have been the real ending to Reya's plan, had it been followed exactly as it should have? The divinium bomb did hit Ava in the end, but wouldn't it have been worse had she not been interrupted in running up to Michael while he immobilised Adriel during the televised freak circus?

Ava's unpredictability, her impulse, her innate need to act with free will rather than constricted by what others dictate — Ava is the foil to fate itself, the foil to a structure, to a hierarchy that has been festering and rotting from the beginning of time, it should seem.

The hero of this story could only ever be her.

[autisticlee]

i'm aroace, sex repulsed and don't get traditional romance or find the need for it, but I still often think how it would be neat to have a gf/partner for other purposes that arent romance and sexual. but it seems impossible to make someone want to date you if you take out those things????

sometimes I think it would be nice to have a gf to do cute gay cosplay photoshoots with. there would be mouth smooching and you usually can't do that with a friend and I don't really want to either, so a gf would be useful for that.

then there's hating showers because they exhaust me and it would be nice to have a gf to wash my hair and stuff for me??? can't call up a friend to do this every time I need to shower. that won't work and I doubt they'd want to/be comfortable doing that.

most friends will end up putting all their priority into their partner and/or family they create. I want someone that will make me their priority and not run off with someone else they start dating and abandon me??? something like that. their priority is cleaning our home together, hanging out together, going shopping and other domestic/partner stuff. they don't do that with someone else or use me temporarily until they can find a partner. so it's essentially dating/being partners. but it looks different from your typical expected romance and partnership.

doesn't matter how aroace I am, I have accepted that a relationship is beneficial in many ways and there's certain things that you can't expect friends to cover and they can't fill. but I have zero interest in looking for a partner in traditional ways that requires small talk/flirting/dates/etc. so that makes me realize i'll most likely not trick someone into partnering with me lmao

the internet seems to call this kind of thing "queer platonic relationship" (did I remember it right?) and you just need to find another sroace person to do it with. but either way, there's no textbook to study for how to get that and where to find these people. it seems harder than the puzzle that is regular dating tbh.

there's that saying "there's other fish in the sea" but i'm a worm in a puddle the other worms got out before they drowned. there's no fish here lmao. my options are so limited that I haven't met a single option yet in my life. there's barely any chance the first aroace person I meet irl will be compatible, or the first compatible person will accept a relationship with an aroace. you know what I mean? any other aroace that's interested in some kind of relationship/partnership and feel like you don't get that whole sea to choose from like everyone else and only have a dried up puddle? 😅

[dkniade]

Translating Neuvillette’s Opening Chest (II) & Joining Party (I) Voicelines

UEEE SO YOU UNDERSTAND

(An attempt to translate based on what little I know of his character.) I will show the Chinese line, then the official English localization, then my English translation, then some thoughts on the word choice in Chinese, and English localization. For the first voiceline, I’ll also show the Japanese localization and my English translation of it, to support a claim.

Game: Genshin Impact

Developer: miHoYo / HoYoverse

Fan Localizations: Dusk

Opening Treasure Chest: II

(Original Chinese)

是不错的东西吗？至少打开它的一瞬间是不错的心绪吧。

.

(Official English Translation)

Is it what you wished to find? Hopefully, the excitement of opening a treasure chest has at least made it a worthwhile experience.

.

(My Chinese-to-English Translation)

Is it something nice? At least the split moment of opening it felt nice, right…?

(Official Japanese Localization)

悪くない代物か？少なくとも、開けた瞬間の期待感は、心地良いものだったのだろう。

(My Japanese-to-English translation)

Is it something nice? Even if it’s not a lot, the anticipation you felt the moment you opened it was pleasant, right…?

.

THE FLEETING MOMENT OF ANTICIPATION UE UE

(@ EN ver: my, so formal Monsieur Neuvillette)

It feels to me like Neuvillette doesn’t know what’s in the chest, so he asks if the Traveler—who’s opening the chest—has found something nice. But then it seems he automatically assumes that the Traveler is disappointed at the treasure, so then he assures them that—and this is key—at least the split moment between opening the chest itself and seeing the treasure inside felt nice. (Morphologically, Mandarin Chinese doesn’t really have affix-based verb tenses like English so it’s a bit hard to explain.) It’s so sad… Why does he assume that… I mean, as players we might be more excited to open a chest than to see what random artifacts/materials/weapons are inside, but in-universe, why would Neuvillette say something like this, I wonder…

Though, 心绪 (xīnxù) is a literary word that means state of mind, but that word usually refers to negative emotions (compared to 心情 / xīnqíng which can refer to both positive and negative emotions), so I’m not sure why Neuvillette would use it in a positive sense. You could say it’s because he doesn’t understand human emotions well, but linguistically speaking, Genshin Impact text in general often has Chinese sentences in a strangely wordy structure or overly complicated/fancy word choice, to the point that it either feels like a weird translation, or that it’s just not a syntactic structure native speakers would use (e.g. using too many prepositions where it could all be omitted and simply implied)

Still, 心绪 alone doesn’t make the tone of the whole Chinese line formal, compared to its official English localization. I can’t comment as much on the Japanese localization, but content wise it’s much closer to Chinese, since the two languages are more similar… It seems the Japanese localization is politely casual too since he uses the casual verb form.

Another important thing: In the Chinese line, the second sentence starts with 至少 (zhìshǎo) which is at least, and ends in the question particle 吧 (ba) which marks uncertainty at the end of a declarative sentence. This makes the sentence structure something like a rhetorical question such as At least [statement], right? (E.g. At least it’s not raining, right?) even though it’s not marked with a question mark. This tone is… quite difficult to translate. It’s common in Chinese (and I believe Japanese too) for rhetorical questions or casual comments/observations to end in a period, but it’s not so in English (unless it’s social media, like Tumblr, right).

—

Joining Team: I

(Original Chinese)

感谢你许可…嗯，邀请我同行。

.

(Official English Localization)

Thank you for permitting— No, inviting me to join you.

.

(My English Translation)

Thank you for permitting… Ahem, inviting me to travel with you.

.

Official translation is good here. Granting permission vs invitation huh… Is it out of formality or does he feel so out of place with humans that he thinks he needs permission to even join them on their journey

(There’s that rhetorical question again)

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know multiple of these are likely important to people, but I'm asking in terms of like - which of these do you tend to focus on the MOST, enjoy the most, that is most essential for you to actually care about the media, etc.?

(For example: someone finding "Relatability" most important would likely not enjoy a show much if they have trouble empathizing with the characters/relating to it, even if it were good otherwise. Or, someone might be able to overlook bad acting and ugly costumes, as long as the Character Dynamics are fun to them, because they value that more than Aesthetics- while for others, bad costumes would be a dealbreaker.)

Also feel free to reblog and explain your answer or more information in the tags- I've always been curious about people's relationships to media, how they conceptualize it/what they get out of it, how some people value some parts more than others, how that informs their overall taste and genres they may be more inclined towards, etc. :0c

[bunnihearted]

goddess the body feels sooo good after a workout 🫠

[random0lover]

Tf141 members x single mom!reader makes me want to roll around on the floor crying.

[one-half-guy]

Thinking here... Naruto & Boruto's time skips have two glaring flaws that are really opposite to each other...

When we get to see Naruto after the 2,5 years time skip, he barely changed anything, he basically:

Learned the Oodama Rasengan (A bigger Rasengan... After 2,5 years... Wow)

Learned to break free from genjustu (??? Why don't they teach it in the Ninja Academy again???) (And yet, he fails when he needs to use it in an actual fight)

And Kyuubi's power got more unstable and he still barely controls it, getting to go four tales rather quickly now (What's ironic given that control this power was Jiraya's focus)

Meanwhile everyone around him seems to have got really stronger: Sakura became a really good Medic Ninja and got Super Strength, Shikamaru evolved his shadow jutsu into a more offensive and independent in combat version, Neji became a Jounin, Chouji got better with his Body Expansion jutsu and was already praticing to use its best version without special pills & Sasuke well... Got a lot of boost, he even had the Kirin already when he first met Naruto & Sakura again... EVEN KAKASHI WITH HIS KAMUI!

Naruto seems to have got stuck in time to then just later have an actual evolution.

Like, I understand Kishimoto probably wanted us to witness Naruto's evolution, (and probably hadn't thought of the concepts properly by that time) but he could at least have made Jiraya drop some stuff and pass to Naruto some basic principles (such as the Chakra Natures (again, why didn't they learn that in the academy???) and what Minato actually wanted to accomplish with the Rasengan or even the Sennin Mode)

In the end the time skip really makes Jiraya look a bad teacher as later in the anime Naruto learns & improves such abilities in record time compared to his predecessors, impressing his teachers...

Meanwhile, Boruto's time skip of 2 years got to give nothing to the secondary characters besides new outfits, otherwise they receive near to zero attention and if we can say they actually evolved, they evolved nothing beyond we could expect or even still got under we could expect.

On contrary to Boruto himself, who reached a new power level, far beyond the average (being able to easily subdue Code who was previously pointed as a huge threat), learned the Hiraishin no Jutsu, had a change of personality, trained with the Frogs from the Myoboku Mountain and even CREATED A FREAKING RASENGAN THAT USES NOTHING LESS THAN THE PLANET'S ROTATION ITSELF...

The brat got absurdely stronger out of our eyes...

So in short: Naruto got almost no evolution in his time skip, what's really disappointing as we look at how much everyone else evolved in the same time; Meanwhile, Boruto evolved so much that it feels a loss we couldn't witness it considering how nobody else seems have been able to follow the pace... Really two opposite issues

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

Ok so like. Film adaptations of books are not universally bad things on principle. I’m definitely not saying that it’s impossible to produce a good one. But at the same time, film and the written word are different mediums that aren’t necessarily suited to telling stories in the same way.

For example, in a book, especially a highly character driven one, you get to directly see and read a lot of a character’s thoughts. And this has a huge impact on your experience of the story. And sure, you can convey this in a somewhat similar way with a voice over in a film adaptation, but depending on the scene being adapted, this doesn’t always work great or feel natural.

And that’s not a bad thing. It just means that it doesn’t translate to film well because film is a different medium that tells stories in a different way. And there certainly are books that translate well to film. But to be honest? A lot don’t. Especially not in a way that even comes close to touching the original that it is based off of. And that’s fine. Plenty of amazing movies and TV shows wouldn’t translate well into books and most people wouldn’t really want or expect them to.

So no. I really don’t think that “achieving” a film adaptation should be seen as a goal the way it seems to be for a lot of books and I think that seeing this as a goal is often doing a huge disservice to the original work. I think that books that are well served by film adaptations are the exception, not the rule, and that most of the drive to produce film adaptations of popular books is driven by the urge to squeeze every last possible bit of profit out of every single creative idea ever rather than like. I don’t know. Actual appreciation for the source material and a genuine wish to understand it in a different light.

[cyberfunsupporter]

i don’t really like yurifying m/f ships for a number of reasons but when i say harijun is yuri i’m so damn serious about that… whenever i remember that’s not canon i physically recoil like seojun is NOT a guy 😭 that’s a he/him butch AND HIM AND HARIN ARE LES4LES please don’t make me sick……….. he literally came out ok😭 Stop etop they’re so butchfemme please god

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

If you're still interesting you and anons might like to know that Dorothy definitely knows food words in Italian (Sicilian?) Because there's a few times where Sophia is cooking something and only says the name so Dorothy explains the dish to Rose/Blanche. You might remember the jokes where Sophia says gobblegook and Dorothy is like "even I don't know that one" and Sophia says that wasn't a meal that was her dentures slipping lol

Hi anon, of course I'm still interested!! I'm actually in the process of doing some research about all this stuff, it's just taking a long time because I've been very busy lately, haha.

I can confirm that Dorothy understands (or, at least, knows, which is a slightly different thing imho) the names of foods in Italian, yeah! And those names are in Italian alright -- I actually don't recall any instance of Sophia talking in any Sicilian dialect (although, as I mentioned, I'm still researching).

The episode you're referring to is S6E23: Love For Sale. The whole dialogue is:

SOPHIA: I'm not happy with my zabagliones.

BLANCHE: Maybe you just need a push-up bra.

DOROTHY: Blanche, zabaglione is a traditional Italian dessert. It's my Uncle Angelo's favorite.

SOPHIA: Yeah, my brother. He's quite the scungiscoror-or-or.

DOROTHY: Even I don't know that one.

SOPHIA: That wasn't a word. My dentures slipped.

The Zabaione is, indeed, a traditional Italian dessert; it's a sort of sweet cream prepared with egg yolks, sugar, and sweet wine (you can find out more about it here). The way Sophia pronounces it, it sounds as if she's spelling it zabaglione, but that also makes sense from a linguistic POV, because many people (especially uneducated people from poor regions of Italy, like Sophia herself) do tend to spell it that way, to sort of 'overcorrect'.

The zabaione is supposed to have originated in Northern Italy (although the actual origin has been lost to time, unfortunately), but it's become common all over the peninsula, especially in places where they prepare famous sweet wines -- and wouldn't you know, Sicily has exactly the right place for the job! The wine they make in the city of Marsala is delicious and deliciously sweet at that (not to mention very well-known), so it's perfect to prepare the zabaione.

Digressions on Italian wine and desserts aside -- you're absolutely right, anon! Dorothy clearly knows what the zabaione is and acts as a translator for Blanche in this instance. I also recall her naming dishes by their Italian names in other instances, although I have my doubts about the recipes Sophia uses (she makes lasagne with marinara sauce...?). I'll be sure to include a full round-up of all the Italian food mentions I can find in the series in my deep dive!

[emdotcom]

My infatuation & subsequent obsession with media is often tied to the ways in which I am incapable of talking about them. Whether it's because of the abhorrent contents therein which demand too much; the incomprehensible nature of my feelings on the matter; the shoddy & underbaked construction; no matter what, there is always something within all my beloved interests make them hard (or even impossible) to talk about. Instead, I talk within myself in an endless echo of speculation & alteration, as a means to replicate the sounds of a room that is not so empty. I, on my own, (no matter how many of me I am in the moment,) will never be able to fully encapsulate the sounds of a room brimming with people, though, so I double down & try to chatter more, to make up my impossible deficit.

[killadelphias]

thoughts.......................

[inksandpensblog]

“Putting characters in messed up situations” isn’t enough. I need to put characters in situations with obstacles that are designed to herd them towards one horrible outcome…and watch them shine as they navigate a way around the obstacles to an outcome that’s not as horrible as it could’ve been.

[greenerteacups]

I absolutely adore the way you write Harry and Ron as clever and snarky in their own ways (Harry's conversation with Snape was hilarious and clever in Norberta). All too often in Dramione fanfics they are shown as lesser than because writers want to make Draco and Hermione exceptional, but your D and H are incredibly interesting and smart on a level that still allows them to shine next to remarkably wonderful Harry, Ron and all the other fascinating characters you write

Thank you so much! This is a really touching compliment, because I share the same pet peeve. Something I was careful of when writing the fic was not to pitch Harry and Ron too OOC (as with all canon divergences, you increasingly can't help it, and I think it shows in Harry the most — I just have to steer him a bit harder than JKR does in order to develop him when I can't rely on his internal monologue). I think there are three major reasons that Harry and Ron get washed out in Dramione fics — the first being a simple plot mechanic to get Hermione alone and in a mental state where she would be open to a connection with Draco, which, admittedly, is pretty unlikely if Harry and Ron remain in the picture. By the time OOTP wraps, she and Draco are just so ensconced in their separate social circles that she seems to regard him as irrelevant in HBP, so obviously, if they're going to get together sometime in that timeframe or afterward, their social situations need to change. On the other hand, though, if a fanfiction is taken in some respects as a theoretical argument for how a ship could happen, I always thought Harry/Ron bashing was implicitly a sort of weak argument for D/H, because it requires Hermione to be totally iced out of her own friend group before she considers Draco as a friend or partner. Not to mention that you lose the opportunity to develop these rich auxiliary relationships (Hermione and Harry as unofficial siblings, Draco and Harry as foils, Draco and Ron as foils, Harry and Ron as platonic soulmates) that provide shape and contrast to Draco and Hermione's relationship. The books are a story about love and family! Different kinds of love! And deep platonic love, honestly, more than anything else!

The other side of the coin is that bashing sometimes happens as a natural consequence of having to Do Something About Ron. The need to retcon Hermione's crush and/or relationship and/or marriage with Ron to clear the stage for Draco means that a fanfic author has to just fiat some stuff from the books out of existence. And so you get Death Eater Ron, or Ron as a terrible boyfriend, or cheating, or just being cruel. Or dead! I've read a few where Ron just gets unceremoniously fridged, which is maybe a little better than character assassination, but also pretty sad for all rare us Dramione Ron Enjoyers. Like, I don't think that Ron and Hermione would work out, but I think that's because they share zero interests and tend to aggravate each other's insecurities, not because they don't care about each other, or God forbid, that Ron was secretly a shit person and a bad friend for seven years.

Then you have the final group, which is people who actually do dislike Ron for his behavior in the text. Everyone has that right, so I don't hate, and I can especially understand it if you read his arcs in Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows a certain way (I hate the first half of Deathly Hallows, actually, almost exclusively because of the dumb ass Ron's Vacation subplot). JKR doesn't do him any favors here, because she doesn't give him a real reconciliation with Harry or Hermione before he comes back in Deathly Hallows — all their fights sort of end with a shrug and a joke and a comment like, "wow, that sucked, let's not do that again," which is not unrealistic, if you're talking about teenagers, but also does not solve the problem that caused the fight, and we know that because it keeps happening in other books: someone steps on Ron's feelings, he lashes out, they get hurt, and instead of asking for sympathy or trusting his friends to mend his feelings if he explains them, he storms off to sulk. (This is a pattern that I imagine starting at the Burrow, when poor Arthur and Molly just wouldn't have had time to have proper sit-downs and debriefs whenever their kids fought, and so Ron's self-soothing method was to isolate — we see hints of this in Chapter 32-33, and again near the end of Chapter 38 — until he can pretend to get over it.) But going from just canon, it's not impossible to come up with a reading of Ron as this selfish jerk who gets jealous of his friends and screws them over when he gets mad at them. A lot of those people come to Dramione for the catharsis of watching Hermione find a bond with someone who just... doesn't do that, and I don't blame them at all. All the same, I hope Lionheart!Ron can offer an opportunity to experience the joys of Ron Enjoyment for a wider demographic.