#IDK he's just perfect in so many ways

[turtleblogatlast]

No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.

The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.

And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.

He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.

[solace-seekers]

in my jason feels again….

[fraternum-momentum]

I CANT I CANTTTTTTT I WILL LITERALLY EXPLODE RJIKNHGKRSBKFUCKNHJHFBNJEA JFHBAEJHBFJHBHBHBHBHBBAZHJDBAJHDBAJKHBDJKNA????A//////!?!!!!!!!!??!!???!?!?!??!! I CANNOT I LITERALLY NOT THE CAN I CANTTTTTT RAUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[longagoitwastuesday]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[capricioussun]

Will probably delete later but genuinely WHY do so many ppl hate uf papyrus. "He’s horrible and a bad brother and abusive >:(((" my guy. YOU made him that way

[irritablepoe]

how to stop crying about mushimizo

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

imagining an alternate eotd where when asked about her confusing gay crush under threat of daleks one neuron in yazs brain fired differently and instead of going with "i dont know what you mean" she said "yes". same but opposite energy of when the doctor asks if shes a bad date and yaz super boldly just says "no". same but opposite.

because like imagine youre dan. he probably already had a good guess about what the situation was but his assumption being wrong is not out of the realm of possibilities. the idea that they could have talked about is not out of the realm of possibilities! if youre dan! if you just got here. if you didnt see all of s12.

like just imagine that scene! yaz just baldfaced lying as a way to like, bounce the idea off of him plus double duty to affirm her own beliefs that like the doctor never would plus triple duty paralleling 11x4 for 13 to ensure dan is never gonna ask about this again.

and WE'D KNOW. WE'D FUCKING KNOW. it'd be such a doctor move.

"have you ever told her?" "told her what?" "how you feel about her" "...yes." "well what did she say?" "i think you can guess" yaz snaps because she thinks she can. she has guessed or assumed or sort of correctly inferred a while ago that like, nothing is going to happen here, theres no point in her saying anything because the doctor isnt interested. and dan is like "i find her kind of hard to judge actually" because he still wants to hear an actual answer from yaz but yaz just laughs and goes "tell me about it" and then shes saved by a dalek.

of course we still want dan forcing their hand but thats easy to arrange by instead of him going all battering ram with "she likes you" in the next scene he just has to mention it. and i dont really know how he'd mention it because im not really sure how this would look to him.

so particulars to be determined but he does mention it In Some Way and now theres the doctor in a situation yaz indirectly accidentally put her in where shes suddenly having a Lot to process and also shes gonna lie about :) shes gonna lie about it so hard :)

maybe dan's guess is that whatever the doctor said was less-than-definitive ie vague as fuck because hes known her for like a week and has already seen how good she is at explaining herself and also because of yazs bitter "tell me about it" so maybe what he says is like "you better not be stringing her along"

and the doctor, in her perfectly inscrutable grey area between true What The Fuck Are The Humans Talking About This Time and a carefully crafted mask of obliviousness, goes "string her along what"

"i just mean that you gotta make sure your intentions are clear because it's really not fair to keep her guessing, and hoping"

and the doctor says "i dont understand what youre saying dan" because she really doesnt <3

and dan can still say his canon line "i think that you do, but you pretend that you dont" and in this case hes wrong, but he still hits the mark, wrong calculation right answer because the doctor is still like Fuck.

because she does know, of course. she does know about yaz and shes knows about herself and she knows what shes avoiding. and she will still do the same thing in sea devils. and this weird little lie yaz told will probably never come out. the doctor and her talk, dan isnt there, never sees how New this all is. the doctor has no reason to find out what yaz said to dan.

but we know. we know!!! we get to see this whole comedy of errors play out and still somehow arrive at the same answer. we have to live with how clearly none of them correctly assume each other's understanding of the situation. it'd be frustrating as fuck and such a nice encapsulation of what thasmin has been since the beginning. these half-communications that bounce off each other kind of painfully like billiard balls.

they would never find out. sea devils and potd play out exactly as they did and nobody would ever know. except us. it's a portrait of their shared fatal flaw finally laid out for us in broad daylight at the exact moment they come together. and only we can see it.

[g0thsoojin]

🔮

[queen-scribbles]

add this to the list of things that annoy me about Lana*

[turtleblogatlast]

Something I think is cute is that - y’know how Raph’s eyes are more on the yellow side?

Well, you know who also has slightly yellowed eyes? Donnie.

While Raph’s are more yellow, I think it’s cute that this is something that they share and I don’t see it pointed out too often?

It’s also something they both share with Draxum and Splinter’s current form (though again, these two have much more yellow sclera than the boys do.)

But yeah, I like that there’s this little detail that ties Raph and Donnie together, even if it’s small.

[bangcakes]

.

[todayisafridaynight]

born to do a Saeko Only y7 run forced to be technically illiterate

[dredshirtroberts]

people?? being niceys to me???? for no reason except loves me?????????????

it's more likely than i think, apparently.

[zappedbyzabka]

John “This is your last chance, Johnny” and “There’s nothing I want more than a second chance (with you)” Kreese

[vagueiish]

…coming to the realization that tav!oli is basically cinderella

[fagryanlucan]

the more I replay the game the more I firmly believe alex has cptsd and anxiety, steph has adhd, ryan has autism