#IT'S BRILLIANT

[insanity-laughs-under-pressure]

[musicandotherstuff]

The shuttle for fans at the end of the concert in Bristol

29/05/2023

📸: se4na

[profounddefendorcrusade-blog]

In Defense Of Ceroba

Even though I'm still probably the biggest Starlo apologist you've seen, I wanna talk about Ceroba today. Particularly, my initial and current thoughts on her (but also why she works as a deeply flawed and tragic character).

Anyway, here we go.

Ceroba wasn't a character I liked at first. It wasn't dislike or hatred I felt for her, but rather... not much, if anything. She simply didn't catch my attention like Starlo did, with his larger-than-life personality. Ceroba wasn't like that. She wasn't in the spotlight, she seemed calm and level-headed, sarcastic and easily annoyed with the Five's nonsense, but also kinda just.... there, in contrast to the more 'cartoonish' Starlo.

you can clearly see who the goofy one is

Heck, I was so focused on NOT wanting to get to know and understand Ceroba that I payed little to no attention to her, even in the Steamworks, which was her section as well as Axis'. I completely forgot about the talk option too, so I missed on a lot during my first playthrough. I didn't even laugh at her sarcastic comebacks (that I find funny now, as you can see in my post titled 'Ceroba's sarcasm is growing on me').

And when I found out Ceroba injected Kanako... let's just say she became my least favorite character. I didn't understand why she had done it. It seemed like a poor writing choice not to have Kanako get her paws on the serum and inject herself. Ceroba actively going against her husband's last wish and being the cause of her kid falling down left a bad taste in my mouth.

Only later did I finally put the pieces together.

Ceroba was depressed. Like, really REALLY depressed. So depressed, in fact, that she became blunt with her choice of words when it came to the Starlo situation and unaware of his troubles/the fact he was trying to help her out of the rut. Ceroba was clearly way harsher towards him than she used to be before all the tragedy struck (but said she was sorry)

Starlo describes her as compassionate and hard-working (and they've been friends for a long time, so he must know). Or at least, that was who she was before all the sadness turned her into a shell of her former self.

Now, Chujin... oh, Chujin.

Chujin meant a lot to Ceroba and that is very clear. From her blindly following his legacy even after his death, to accepting to kill Clover (someone she had grown to respect) with tears in her eyes.

If you ask me, it wasn't Ceroba's cold, sarcastic, gloomy heart that destroyed her. Quite the opposite. It was love. More specifically, her love for Chujin.

I would, without an ounce of doubt, call this fox romantic and emotional. Someone who loves hard and deep. Someone who trusted him, her love, so blindly that she never suspected Chujin was up to anything suspicious. And when he was stripped away from her, it hurt so much. She even blamed herself for not noticing. It's sad.

So... why inject Kanako, something Chujin didn't want her to do? Simple. Because of her major character flaw: stubbornness.

See, Ceroba had refused at first. But the line that got her to change her mind was this:

Ceroba, still in emotional distress and not thinking clearly (much like Starlo), trusted her heart and not her head. And her heart was telling her that Chujin, wherever his soul was, would be proud of her for fulfilling his dream. Making his legacy come true. Saving monsterkind was a bonus, but I believe the main, true motivation here was honoring Chujin and what he wanted to accomplish for monsterkind. And so, instead of focusing on remaining a good parent to her only child, Ceroba chose her husband. She chose something greater that he believed in.

Ceroba loves Kanako, don't get me wrong. She remembers how Kanako and Starlo would watch westerns together, how Kanako would play with brick toys when she was younger, she says how her love for her could be enough to shatter the barrier. She'd tuck her in every night. She promised she'd be safe during the extraction. The two hugged tight and said 'I love you.' All signs point towards Kanako receiving a lot of love from her mother. She even made a drawing of the three of them, and this picture on the right says it all:

Chujin, too, loved his daughter, and I believe this love for her was more prominent before the attack (he even gave her the chance to play video games in her room, how cool is that?). He, too, like Ceroba, prioritzed the wrong things. Instead of making sure Kanako was alright, he made Axis chase after the human and didn't stay to comfort her. He was so focused on the prejudice towards humans (he believed Integrity would have 'continued the crusade' and it hadn't just been fear or self-defense that made them attack) that he forgot that the safety of his child and helping Dalv was far more important.

But Chujin... Ceroba can't even look at her own daughter without being reminded of him:

Ceroba talks about Chujin a lot.

Even though Ceroba messed up badly by injecting Kanako, not paying more attention to what Chujin had been doing, manipulating Clover and the Feisty Five, wanting to kill Clover so she'd save Kanako and monsterkind (notice how she is so blinded that, even as she talks about Kanako, it seems like she sees her as a tool for finishing what Chujin wanted, ACCORDING TO CEROBA. In reality, the man just wanted Kanako to be happy and for her to stay out of all this),

and almost killing Starlo and Martlet, she acknowledged her situation and later admitted that she was wrong. The reason Clover hugged her and forgave her easily was because Clover is like that. Completely altruistic. Starlo and Martlet are sweethearts, too. All three have good hearts and lots of empathy and understanding. And, me, personally? Instead of it putting me off...

...I find it admirable.

[luimagines]

Time ranting/complaining to warriors because

"why did twilight have to go fall in love with a demigod, couldn't he settle for a nice farm girl like I did" time paces back and forth with a grouchy expression as warrior watches.

"well.... In a way you have godly power when you put on your FD mask, so in a way malon settled down with someone who had godly powers...... So if anything twilight takes after making" warrior said with a raised eyebrow awaiting his reaction.

Oh my god-! XD

What a twist!

Time is lamenting over Twilight just being like that and thinking that it's his fault, when it's actually Malon's fault. Time chose her. ...So I guess it's still technically his fault, but not for the reasons he thinks.

[padfootagain]

In case y'all were wondering...

Northern Attitude ft. Hozier has been on repeat for an hour and a half and I am not ever going to get over this...

[landwriter]

PSA: The Death of Translation has been translated into Chinese! Go give it love, or read my rambling essay and then go give it love:

翻譯之死 by @thirrith

How do you translate a story where meaning hinges not only on the words themselves, but the meaning made by the reader's knowledge of their obscurity? Where misspellings aren't misspellings at all, but memories? Where sentiment is drawn from syntax differences? Well you start by being absolutely fucking brilliant!

I was so lucky to be able to hang around in the document while Eth worked on this. The level of creativity and diligence that has gone into this is mind-blowing. It is such a gift, and the process was incredible. It doesn't matter if you can't read Chinese - if you liked the fundamental premise of The Death of Translation, if you like language at all, you need to know how this was done:

Eth's translation is in Traditional Chinese characters with the addition of Classical Chinese and Cantonese to translate the Middle English. Classical Chinese - also known as Literary Chinese - isn't representative of how Chinese used to be spoken in the vernacular, which is why Eth chose it specifically for the written portions of Middle English...and those lines spoken by Dream, naturally.

Hob's Middle English lines are in Cantonese, which has the benefit of being older than and still at least a little intelligible to readers who only know Mandarin. Middle Chinese can't be used the way Middle English is used in the Sandman fandom (delightfully and gratuitously), because unlike the alphabetic characters of English, where words can be sounded out and phonetic spellings will exist in written record - a huge part of understanding how a language once sounded - logographic characters don't directly specify phonology. And even if they did, Middle Chinese spans from the 5th-12th centuries AD - making it contemporary of not Middle but Old English, and covered an area several orders larger than the parts of a small island where Middle English was spoken for about three hundred years - it's nowhere near as homogeneous(ish) or accessible(ish) as Middle English; Cantonese, despite being a different language, serves the same effect.

And then, the grocery list! This is where writing systems go ham. In English, it contains abbreviations, the medial s (ſ), archaic spellings/misspellings, and fancy old ampersands (one of the only logograms in the English writing system, I think, originally Latin's et and evolving over time into the shape of & - in Jane Austen's Persuasion you will find this aural history of 'et' instead of 'and', where &c is used to mean et cetera).

Eth used Cantonese, Simplified Chinese characters (a 20th century addition, faster to write, that Hob definitely would've embraced), variant character forms (which typically have a visual resemblance to each other), and 通假字, homophone characters that were conventionally used interchangeably with one another in Classical Chinese:

English and Chinese have such different writing systems and histories, and Eth has used all the compounding effects of that (upon things like phonology, modern-day intelligibility, writing system changes) to the absolute fullest effect and made choices that add invaluable implicit meaning to the story and characterization.

(As if that's not enough, the translation also features hot-linked footnotes that provide context for cultural references?! Literally everything a reader could ask for.)

And this is all super clever and fascinating if you're a big language fan like me, but the soft artichoke heart of my wonder can really be summed up best by this fact:

For many years I've loved the Jack Gilbert poem 'The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart', enough to put the first lines at the beginning of the fic:

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko we write, and the words Get it wrong.

And for just as many years, I assumed Michiko was a place name, or some classical reference to art or literature beyond my plebby ken - until I saw Eth's note in the translation document.

Michiko, in fact, was the name of his wife.

The whole thing is such a testament to translation: the true deliberate practice of it, not just figurative language imagining a fictional character and his long-lived idiolect. And Eth's translation has only underlined my conviction that there is, sometimes, I feel, deeper work of understanding done - greater art made - and lovelier agonies to be had - in carrying words across languages than there is in putting the words down in the first place, in a first language.

[cassmouse]

Okay I have to say it

'Robot Hell' from S1 E9 of Futurama has to be one of the best spontaneous musical numbers from any series ever it is absolutely magnificent

[explomb]

things just got a lot more lesbian around here, thank the lord

[ladyminaofcamelot]

The foreshadowing of Royce being represented by the stray dog who isn't actually a stray because he has a collar only for it to turn out that he is a stray because the woman who loved him enough to give him a home and care if he dies has died herself and now he's just sitting by her grave and growling at anyone who tries to reach out for him... brutal. Absolutely gut wrenching.

[pardonmydelays]

rhyming burr with sir 184747488383 times is just A++++++ and so funny, let's not forget that

well, yes! absolutely! one of my favourite rhymes for sure! thank you for reminding me about it (it's not like i listen to hamilton every day so...).

also, i'm just gonna drop these here:

(this is from hamilton book btw, i especially love the second one because i'm fucking dumb & i haven't even noticed he rhymed sister with if, burr, i had to read about it to find out lol. but also this rhyme reminds me of pubwe/rugby soooo)

[dirtboy-merc]

one of my favorite things in cyberpunk 2077 is the tense power-walking NPCs will do when they sense danger. like, sometimes you'll fry someone and people start screaming and running which is fun and all, but it's so much better when they see you doing something not so chill and they just start power-walking in the opposite direction like "nopenopenope not today satan i'm peacing the fuck out"

much more realistic lmao they're just tryin to mind their own business and go about their day

[darkhorse-javert]

To everyone overseas who's going to be watching 'Mr Bates Versus The Post Office' - from a Brit who's seen it.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TISSUES HANDY, before the start! You will cry- and you may also swear occasionally.

@paulinedorchester @kivrin (?)

[mtab2260]

I absolutely love the fact that Thrawn is this amazing tactician, the galaxy's best, and yet he was outsmarted by an eighteen year old

Like... It's just so funny to be

[yanderemommabean]

MOMMA! I need you to see this shirt I found via Twitter. I think it is a perfect representation of everyone who follows this blog (bc I know I HEAVY relate to it.)

You're not wrong, I just feel completely called out.

-Mommabean (its entirely accurate, I love it! ))

[thequeenofsastiel]

It is admittedly surreal to watch Off and Gun in such a gritty, award winning, profound political thriller, and then see this:

[nostalgic-shamefest]

I LOVE the lacho hivemind!

Like this ship comes from essentially nothing and the fandom version is the best written, most detailed, complex love/hate story I've ever experienced

(courtesy of insanely talented people who for some reason lend their gorgeous gorgeous minds to creating media, headcanons, fanart, writing, humor, analysis etc.)

we're like those people who danced themselves to death in France

We're crazy but we are free!!!