#If I don't struggle at least a bit

[bumblingbabooshka]

[Tuvok & Janeway: Control, Distance, Duty & Connection.] Sources: St Voyager Transcripts / Mitski 'First Love Late Spring' / Disco Elysium

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I can't believe it's taken me this long to have Leliana and Sten together in a party. I won't lie, Sten's usually my least used companion so I'm making a conscious effort to use him more this playthrough.

His banter with Leliana? It's so good.

Leliana: I saw what you were doing back there. Sten: Oh? Leliana: Don't play innocent with me. Sten: What are you talking about? Leliana: You. Playing with that kitten. Sten: ...There was no kitten. Leliana: Sten, I saw you. You dangling a piece of twine for it. Sten: I was helping it train. Leliana: You're a big softie! Sten: We will never speak of this again. Leliana: Softie!

And then she continues to call him "Softie" in later banter, I love it.

I also appreciate all of his banter with Shale, that's been a real interesting one.

Shale: I have a question of religion, Qunari. Sten: For you, kadan, I will answer. Shale: Would its "qun" accept a convert that was a golem? Sten: I do not know. It has never happened. We accept beings of all walks of life, so long as they are willing to accept their place in the world. Shale: And what place is that? Sten: One of equality. Within the Qun, an individual exists to serve. Shale: Hmm. That is less appealing. Would it consider birds to be its equal as well? Sten: Birds? Birds are... but animals. Enlightenment does not await them. Shale: Excellent. That sounds very promising.

Like... it's not that I don't like Sten, he just ends up being the companion who gets benched the most, especially once I've gathered everyone else. My Tabris always gets high approval with him, though don't ask me how. Every time they talk at camp, Sten's out here throwing "+7 Approval" and "+13 Approval" left and right? Rose is straightforward and doesn't take his shit, so I guess he likes that? I don't know, they're buddies though.

I have a rule that Alistair's never allowed to leave the party--he's a grey warden, too. He and Rose gotta deal with all the bullshit together no matter what, but that means I already have a warrior constant in my party. When I want another, I tend to gravitate toward Oghren more than Sten. That's mostly because I like Rose and Oghren fighting together a lot before Awakening, and that means poor Sten's a benchwarmer in the Blight.

Not this time, though, I'm working to rotate my party around a lot.

Except for Alistair.

He's never sat on the bench and he never will.

[nayruwu]

what we see:

what the hiiragi see:

[nobodysdaydreams]

Giving a complicated tragic childhood backstory to your favorite character is all fun and games, until you realize you need to account for how old all the other adult characters would have been at the time and realize that scenes that would work perfectly if one character was twenty three and the other was fourteen stop working when you need other characters who are played by adult actors clearly younger than they are to be in college at the same time so your story beats line up thematically.

[quirkle2]

who wants zombie au writing. don't answer that ur getting it anyway (1.6k words)

His shoes knock against the old flooring of the house, wood creaking under rubber soles that slide over the woodgrain. He drags them a bit, lifts his limbs up no more than he strictly has to, and they lead him to the nearest sittable surface.

The couch is old and dusty and has likely gone untouched for months, much like everything else nowadays, so he watches the thin cloud of dust billow off the cushions largely with disinterest. He collapses into the fabric heavily, feels the whole thing scoot back an inch and hit the wall behind him. The sound echoes, carried by lifeless rooms, while he unceremoniously drops his backpack to the floor by his feet.

The breath he lets out is slow and methodical and born of pent up muscles, aimed at the ceiling where he rests his neck against the back of the couch and relaxes every limb one by one. It’s a process he forces himself through, if only to rid the constant ache beneath his skin.

Slow, sweeping footsteps meander around the room in front of him, and Ritsu angles his gaze down from his craned back position to look at his brother. He wanders, like he so often does—seemingly aimless, but there’s something procedural about it that he’s convinced he just hasn’t figured out yet.

Shigeo’s empty eyes crawl along the hearth of the fireplace, explosions of ash sprayed out across the red brick. His head tilts up to trace his attention around the angular lines of the television, hung on the wall and screen grey with dust. He flits back and forth between the roundness of the bricked mantle and the sharp edges of the screen, like he’s taking notes.

Shigeo paws the television. Four lines of muck are cleared. The zombie blinks, paws at it again with dusty, curious fingers. Ritsu watches him make a mess of the television screen in silence, blinking tiredly.

He almost closes his eyes, but he fights against the urge and moves his fingers down his lap to reach for his bag. His middle hooks around the loop at the top and he lugs it up and into his lap, where he unzips it and peers into the shadowy contents.

Ritsu fishes out the water bottles. He finds the one with the messy R scribbled along the cap in sharpie and takes a big swig of it. It’s warm going down, constantly insulated in a bag of old, sweaty clothes. He feels like he can taste the odor in it, but it clears the grain in his throat from stomping all over dirt roads today, so he’s still grateful.

He holds out the one labeled S to Shigeo. “Thirsty?”

Shigeo looks at him from where he’s crouched down to the floor now, inspecting the soot along the hearth. Unfortunately, he sees handprints in the black already, and when his brother reaches a hand out to take it, his palm is covered in soot.

He lets him have his fun and settles his own bottle back in the mess of tangled clothes and rolls of bandages. Ritsu rakes his fingers through their stock with no real purpose—he knows exactly what’s in here, and none of it is useful.

They’d been searching all day; Ritsu doesn’t really know how far they’d walked, but it had to be a lot of miles. In and out of stores, up and down empty houses, weaving between warehouses—they didn’t really stop for a break. Not when Ritsu can hear Shigeo’s stomach from here and he himself has shaking hands. They can’t afford a break.

Nothing, though. Not a single goddamn thing worth taking. A settlement must have come through here long ago and swept the highway. They’re in the countryside, where houses are spaced out acres from each other and there’s entire cow pastures between properties. And yet every house they’d seen and entered provided nothing.

Ritsu stares into the negative space in his bag where there should be supplies. His stomach cramps and if he smells another whiff of that godawful sweaty, bloody sweatshirt he still carries, he’s going to throw up bile.

He leans away from the open pouch, eyes wandering to his brother who draws… something into the soot of the hearth. His water bottle sits on the floor, abandoned and still unscrewed. Ritsu leans forward with great effort and a grunt, leaning over his bag to grab at the top of it.

It takes him two tries to get Shigeo’s attention, and one more for an answer on where the cap is. It’s then placed in his palm, covered in soot and also saliva. Ritsu swallows down the nausea that rolls up his throat and wipes it off with his frankly already disgusting sleeve, and screws it back on.

He leans back again, succumbing to the urge to let his eyes rest, and he listens to the very subtle swipe of his brother’s hands across brick. There’s birds outside, chirping, and even though it’s still very much a common occurrence, Ritsu cannot help but feel nostalgic about it.

If he ignores the awful hum of silence, and the distinct lack of an electric thrum throughout the walls, and the fact that this is a stranger’s couch and not his, he can almost imagine normalcy. He can almost say this feels like those quiet moments after school, when he settles on the couch and scrolls through his phone in a house that only holds him and his brother because their parents simply aren’t home yet.

He can almost hear the creak of wood from Shigeo walking around his room upstairs. He can almost tap his fingers on the couch cushions to the pattern of his brother making his way down the steps. He can almost hear the fridge opening, and the sound of milk being poured into glass.

Almost. But Ritsu listens to sharp silence instead, and he tries not to think too hard.

He drifts for a while, feels himself truly sink into the couch and let the cushions claim him, and he thinks about nothings because if he doesn’t, then he’ll lose it. He carefully sifts through the nothingness of his mind, through the passing thoughts that have no bearing, and he focuses on that, on the lack of substance. His head is too full of things that have too much substance.

He misses boredom. He tells himself he misses boredom—the complete insubstantiality of it—because if he lets himself think of what he really misses, it’ll drive him insane.

The cushions move, and Ritsu peels his eyes open and lets himself get pulled from liminal mindspace. The cotton in his head recedes, and he blinks, and then he’s swiveling his head to look at his brother who sits in the cushion right next to him.

His hands and the cuffs of his hoodie are smothered in black. Shigeo sits hunched, gaze still wandering even when there’s not much decoration in this house to look at. He studies the off-white walls, the chips in the paint, the holes drilled in where there maybe used to be photos hung.

Ritsu gazes at him quietly, chest instinctively rising and falling to match his brother’s rhythm. He watches the expansion there, under his hoodie, in the subtlety of the folds and the way they warp over the movement. It’s slightly quicker than what he’s used to, but Ritsu knows his brother’s heart rate is much slower. He’s felt it before. He’s listened to it before, with his ear against a chest.

Ritsu’s attention moves to his eyes, and the heavy bags underneath them, and the paleness of his pupils and the ghostlight of him underneath that. He stares into them, looks for stray, familiar thoughts that might enter his head. Looks for old memories that might shine through in the form of recognition when he sees furniture layouts, and candy wrappers, and ads for soda.

Ritsu looks for it all the time, that glint of familiarity. And he finds it, sometimes. And really, he thinks that’s keeping him going more than food ever will.

Shigeo turns his head, and looks at him. Sometimes, when his brother looks at him, there’s not much there. No substance, no anything. And Ritsu finds it a bit evil that he craves silence in his own head, and yet noise in Shigeo’s, and often times it is the other way around.

His brother looks at him now, though, with that comforting recognition. That growth of the pupils, that softening of the hard edges of his face where unknown stressors have gotten to him. Ritsu wonders what zombies get stressed out. He figures it’s the same deal with humans, considering they’re largely alike.

Ritsu wonders if Shigeo knows he’s sick. He wishes he could ask him. He wishes for a lot of things. Silence in his own head is one of them.

Ritsu swivels his head away and stares at the ceiling, if only to force the thoughts to pause. He studies the popcorn ridges above them, traces the peaks with his gaze. It calms him, gives him something to focus on. He looks for patterns in the shadows they make.

Shigeo shifts next to him. And then he shimmies down, settles into the cushions, and plops his head right down on Ritsu’s shoulder.

Static roars in his mind and his heart stammers. Ritsu swallows the lump in his throat but that just makes it bigger, so he clamps his mouth shut and breathes carefully through his nose.

The tears cut through the grime on his face. He plops his own head down against his brother’s, and lives in the noise.

[hermitw]

Usually I forgive gege/sukuna for his crimes bc gege gives us so many beautiful images of true form sukuna and it takes me an hour to read a chapter bc I just. Keep looking at him. And he's one of my favorite characters.

But he's in time out rn!! Both sukuna and gege ughhhhh that was........ No.....

It can't be Chosover.

[tuituipupu]

daydreaming about my 25th in feb 💭

[clotpolesonly]

Mister Impossible ch 19 // Greywaren ch 25

[caspersscareschool]

being an ambiguously androgynous adult is so weird because on one hand I'll still have to correct people in self-proclaimed progressive spaces who degender me and they're like "Oh I'm sorry I know you used masculine terms and had he/him in your email but once I saw you in person I wasn't sure!" *continues to use they/them* Or alternatively they'll overcompensate by constantly calling me dude boy bro masc male king like WAY more than is organic so it's clear they're funneling every ounce of brainpower in the conversation towards being a #ALLY. meanwhile I'll be about to leave the grocery store where my brother's card got declined at self checkout without us noticing and the loss prevention officer will be like UM EXCUSE ME GENTLEMEN. or a 4 year old at work will forget my name and call me The Boy Teacher. or I'll thank my middle aged bearded catholic uber driver who has not noticed or acknowledged me being transgender because he's been talking about baseball for the entire drive and he's just like Anytime brother *spits on the ground* . like i don't know how to describe it but the most euphoric sense of recognition as a man only ever comes from the most mundane innocuous acknowledgements

[sysig]

Editing takes forever and it's lonely and boring to do it for too long by myself, I'm gonna stream a session at some point

[daily-whistlepaw]

daily whistlepaw until ah becomes PoV day 1167

I think I finally understand how people feel when around a crush, can't say I enjoy it

[xstarlightxstarbrightx]

thoughts on how the Inazuma Archon quest went [1]

i'm including the interlude chapter here b/c tbh i need to have no more procrastination excuses. SO!

Kaeya and Lumi've been in Liyue for a bit now, doin their thing. Lumi's doing a lot of exploration / learning about this nation, Kaeya's helping her out while also expanding his connections, etc etc.

So then Ningguang drops the whole "who wants to help rebuild the Jade Chamber~~" so ofc the Traveler Trio is like "well obviously this is a great idea". like who wouldn't want to ask Ningguang a question ????? so cue the Trio deciding to take it upon themselves to help fix the Jade Chamber

i feel like when they first stumble on Shenhe, Lumi and Kaeya have a moment of like "well she gives off Vibes(tm)" and immediately debate if she's an adepti. ofc, even if she is an adepti, getting harrassed on the street isn't cool. Kaeya gets the Millelith, and everything's aok.

Lumi: you okay? Shenhe: Shenhe Lumi: bless you. Shenhe: my name. Lumi: OH.

i'm like 90% sure Kaeya is Concerned that Shenhe doesn't know what laws are, but Lumi is like unfazed b/c she, too, had to learn the laws of this world. however, EVERYONE is bewildered by Shenhe's choice to eat medicinal herbs. like,,, girl,,, u live like that?

Paimon: she's totally an adeptus Kaeya: nah she's got the vibes but she's not an adeptus Lumi: maybe she's one of those pilgrims Xiao mentioned once. like the ones that go into the mountains for adeptal blessings? Kaeya: oooo, that's a good guess. how much Mora u wanna bet? Lumi: let me see what i got on hand... Paimon: why are u two like this. Kaeya: you not betting? Paimon: ... 500 on her being an adeptus.

anyway, Shenhe joins the club and they have to convince her not to murder everyone. Lumi's already a little bit feral, so poor Kaeya's got a lot to juggle between Shenhe's "dispose of the competitors" and Lumi's "kinda tempting ngl".

another highlight from this quest: Xingqiu: so that thing ur looking for is like 500 million mora Lumi: wh....at.... Xingqiu: oh, I said it's 500-- Kaeya: no, don't repeat it, you might kill her. Xingqiu: ... well, it's not worth it anyway, so don't worry about it!!!

since Paimon, Kaeya, and Lumi have a bet on Shenhe, i feel like Shenhe yapping abt the adepti keeps making Paimon go like "heheh i'm gonna wiiin" and Lumi and Kaeya are just like "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm". they probably started doing bets like this b/c of Zhongli, tbqh.

ok i gotta scramble the next part out b/c i have work soon, but i swear i'll continue this when i can.

[welcometogrouchland]

I get the impression that money was a bit tight on clouds on the horizon in general, what with the uneven time put into the lumity kiss vs the hexsquads fight outside blight manner w/ the infamous cha cha slide, plus background details going wonky (like baloony hunter), but my favourite semi-wonky frames are the closeups on Hunters face when he's talking with Luz about him being a grimwalker.

bc the proportions are just. So funny to me. Why is his nose so long. Why are his eyes in the middle of his face. When did his forehead get so big. What's happening. Did I die. Is this purgatory. I unironically love this bc it reminds me that this show was made by people who were trying their best. And sometimes their best looks the Bunter Vs hexsquad fight in thanks to them and other times it looks like this

[ID: a screenshot of a close-up on Hunters face from clouds on the horizon. The placement and proportions of his face are slightly off. End ID]

(although in searching for this image I was informed that a different studio than normal animated clouds on the horizon. Which is probably at least part of the reason why there's so many bungled frames. Also probably why the cha cha slide got animated the way it did. God I love animation)

[astromechs]

no really, but, like. rebelcaptain is The ship for me, because i honestly cannot think of another where i very equally love both characters involved to this extent and also project an equally insane amount onto literally both of them

[goldentigerfestival]

Since I'd been talking a lot about JP Vesperia (primarily Yuri and Flynn and the heavy changes that surround them, and because I'm highly passionate about them in their original context), I wanted to compile some more jarring if not outright glaring mistakes in the localization (or what were likely intentional changes, because I can't look at some of these and just call them "mistakes"). I'm not going to mention every little change throughout the game, so smaller things I'll mostly be leaving out (namely things that don't really affect characters or context). I primarily just wanted to give some insight on some of the bigger parts.

Some of the changes seem to have been mistakes in translation itself (not just localization, but misunderstanding what was being said in general; such as, there's an instance I mention of that between Patty and Don), so I've got some mentions hanging around for clarity purposes as some scenes didn't make much sense, likely because of this.

Vocal tone with Yuri was the most prominent issue that got me making this, and the context that was changed being right after if not equally next to that (most often also with Yuri but also Flynn).

This is something that has been bothering me for a while and I've been wanting to share this stuff with people interested in seeing the game with its original context. Generally speaking, the plot and story themselves are on point. The majority of the differences surround Yuri and Flynn respectively, so there's going to be a lot of mention of them throughout.

I've also posted video clips of my favorite scenes and the heavy changes, so consider those a supplement to this and vice versa.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

(Other) GTF Favorites.

I'd like to preface this by mentioning the chief director and producer of the game itself has also spoken about localization inaccuracy issues, so that's something to keep in mind (it's in Japanese, but you should be able to use the offered post translator).

I'd also like to preface this by mentioning that in the original, Yuri is more playful and relaxed/casual (generally but including with Flynn, which the dub pretty much entirely changed until arc 3), but also gentler and softer. He has a very large variety of tonal behaviors/tonal "moods" that were pretty much nuked from the dub.

Basically, to get the full experience for Yuri, I can only really recommend playing the game in JP audio. Obviously you won't get the actual context because all you'll have is the dub context, but that's also partly why I'm making these posts - to cover the contextual changes while the video clips cover some of the tonal changes (because lbh I don't expect anyone to actually go watch the entire game in JP with subtitles unless you're as insanely dedicated as I am, and I'm largely doing it out of my love for the original Yuri and Flynn and my disdain for how the localization treated them).

As a heads up, there won't be many skits in here because I'm going through a specific YT playthrough for these screenshots. Specific skits won't always come up in the playthrough in question, and I can't find a whole list of skits in JP anywhere online. I don't have all skits unlocked in my own save either yet (you can unlock all skits with Grade which I have yet to do in the DE), so I can't use that to compare all skits right now.

There are plenty of small changes here and there that I won't be including in these posts because there are some sentence changes that aren't impactful but do exist. I just don't want to be here for a year covering the random changes that don't matter much. I'm also not going to include details of a lot of honorifics because I'd be here all day, but there is one one major instance that I mention later on.

For reference if anything wants to actually watch the game in JP with the subs (it goes until just after Hypionia), most of the references come from here. Since in some cases the subber just reused localized text even when the context wasn't the same, I did bring some of those up in these posts too. These were subbed before the DE version came out. I used screenshots with subs where possible to make it easier to follow along.

I have a lot of passion for JP Yuri and I hope I can pass on some of that passion to others. 🙏

Apologies in advance if some of these sound cranky. If I sound cranky about some specific changes, it's probably because I am.

---

Since I talked about the whole, Raven being shady and Yuri therefore not being grateful to him incident that the localization for some reason butchered and made Yuri sound like a generally ungrateful or just outright dumb person who doesn't understand gratitude, I'll summarize that one again here:

Yuri has a skit with Estelle originally talking about how he can't find himself being grateful to someone like Raven for showing him how to sneak out of the castle. Basically, Raven is shady and he's not sure he should be grateful to someone like that, and is confused as to why Estelle would be so grateful when she doesn't even know him (because in his mind, he isn't sure he wants to trust a guy with those vibes). The dub just kinda... makes him sound like an ungrateful jerk and not so much because he's not sure he wants to trust Raven. It doesn't really sound like it's an issue of his with Raven specifically but more that he just generally doesn't feel grateful for the aid (and that in general one shouldn't feel grateful for aid like this), which gives off a really wrong impression of him that doesn't hold up throughout the game. Yuri wasn't wholly ungrateful for the gesture itself, but because of who it came from (and I imagine a weird peppy guy in jail is good cause to be skeptical).

We start off we a classic "Yuri, you idiot!" that was changed to "come on already!".

Yuri's response to Estelle mentioning he'd been in the knights doesn't actually give a time frame for how long he'd been there (the dub made up three months, but there was never originally even a time frame given).

Here when Yuri asks Estelle why she can't just leave, her response indicates she actually does know why. The dub made it more ambiguous, which could be easily misinterpreted as she really doesn't know, so I'm dropping this one here.

For some reason the localization seemed to have Estelle responding to Karol directly about the ace always performing their attack last ("I don't think so"). What she was referring to was the tiny monster that walked by, asking for confirmation that that monster was not the eggbear they were looking for (I wasn't gonna fight with the video to get a better screenshot without the annoying YT red bar in the way so the monster is in the corner mid-movement lol). Not sure if that was a genuine mistake, but it was an odd one.

(Also, side note and not putting an image here because it's more general, but Yuri refers to Karol as "Karol-sensei" which was translated in the localization to "Captain Karol". Basically, Yuri calls him "sensei" because that's a teacher/professor, and he's making a play on Karol's knowledge and being their "teacher" about monsters/maps/etc.)

I'd say this is more along the lines of overexaggerating and not overreacting, but this line was literally changed to "haha" in the dub. The whole point wasn't that Yuri just brushed her comment off or found it funny. At this point he still literally thinks she's exaggerating about her lack of knowledge out in the world, her excitement, etc.

Not the only instance you'll find of the dub just changing entire sentences to something meaningless as if they ??? didn't know what it meant (they actually changed Patty saying an entire sentence to "aye"). In some cases they added entire sentences that weren't even there...

Even though I can kind of see where they went with the dub here, the point was supposed to be that Flynn actively thought he would be happy for Yuri to go outside the barrier and see the world.

The dub changed this to Flynn saying that he, in the now, is happy that Yuri is outside the barrier, but then says he got a little less happy when he saw the wanted poster, indicating he was previously happy but got less happy, yet says in that moment that he is happy.

It's a weird case of (past/present) tense usage for the most part, but they also removed the fact that Flynn is literally saying "I thought I would be happy" (thus expressing he'd been wanting Yuri to see the world outside the barrier and would've been happy to find out he did). The reason he's not finding himself happy is because of the wanted poster and the crimes listed on it, following up that his honest happiness for Yuri (ultimately because of the poster) was a lie.

This also means they removed Flynn expressing the honesty of his happiness for a positive concept for Yuri, which, given all the changes toward Flynn in the dub, already now takes away from the fact that he'd been actively hoping for good things for someone and we're left with this more sarcastic take on him being "happy".

Obviously his happiness wasn't really a lie because most of the crimes were falsified (primarily the ones that would make him actually mad, because Flynn has had to have been aware this whole time that Yuri has committed small time crimes for the past few years now), but at the time, the focus on this conversation is that Flynn thought he'd be happy at a time that Yuri left the barrier; meaning he'd been hoping for it prior to it happening.

I'm also mentioning it because it's the very first in a whole line of changes the dub made to their relationship (and it's their first in game interaction ffs) and to Flynn himself as he's perceived as a character. The original is much more expressive of how important they are to each other in a lot of various ways.

Inserting the JP audio version of the following scene with Flynn here.

And... the following one from there.

This was changed to "damn, we if lose our balance...". I know they did it because Yuri had just fallen over, but I'm including this one because the context isn't... really the same thing?

This dub change is a bit odd to me. They had him saying something along the lines of "she is a princess after all" in the dub, regarding the council backing her.

The original context is more like, the council is backing her and he's hearing it directly from Ioder and he probably doubts Ioder would lie like that or about that, cementing that yes, she truly is, like he suspected, a princess, but it's almost still a bit odd to know. It's sort of like, he knew/had suspicions but hearing it directly from Ioder just confirms it for certain.

The dub just made it sound like well yeah, it's obvious they'd want to back her, she's a princess... but Ioder is a prince, so that doesn't explain why they're not backing him. She is a princess after all, so of course they'd back her... but what's stopping them from backing the prince?

Another weird one for me. In the dub Yuri says that "even the Commandant was a little in over his head", when he actually... really wasn't? All he did was step in. Things got bad enough that he had to, but he wasn't in over his head. Not sure how or why the dub ended up with that.

An example of the dub having a habit of just adding in random lines that didn't actually exist (and in this case the one added didn't even contextually make sense. This was no thank you from him, this was literally him making Yuri do something for him because he was going to ask Flynn for a favor and ended up with Yuri in the cell instead).

Another super weird one in the dub. They had Yuri saying Flynn was "too" late, implying he hadn't made it in time, but he did. He made it just before the battle started, but the original context only says he's late, not too late (which makes sense given that they were ready to fight but hadn't started yet).

This was changed to Yuri just mentioning there was one way they could get out of there without actually saying what it was, and Judith saying if he thinks it might work what's the harm in trying it out. Not sure why they changed Yuri literally telling her his plan, so... again, a super weird change that I don't get why they didn't just keep the context the way it was.

Third image was changed to "someone get me away from this psycho", which... I also don't get why they put that there unless they just wanted so much flavor text that they wanted to change the whole "they're in a fight and he's telling her not to come over here because he's pissed at her because they're fighting" part of the fake fight they had going on.

Not one I have a huge problem with, but definitely good examples of them going out of their way to change just... perfectly normal stuff that literally has no reason to be changed? Some of it is flavor text and some of it feels over the top for me. Stuff that makes me like... why would you change that when there was no reason to? Could be more of a personal pet peeve of mine, but I just don't like unnecessary changes when there was nothing wrong or odd about the original text and doesn't at all come off odd in English. Unfortunately Vesperia got littered with those.

I didn't feel like getting a whole video for this, but basically Judith gives a little laugh instead of just the more upset/distressed(?) sound she made in the dub. Feels more fitting imo to keep up the "lie" Yuri started for her. The dub makes it seem more like she feels guilty, versus here she's giving a little forced giggle to go along with it. Again, a change I'm not sure why they put in.

Ngl I get completely different vibes from these. The JP comes across more as concern, rather than... treating them like they're some mob on the loose...?

Once again, this gives off negative vibes toward Flynn as a character imo.

Here Judith gives more of a reason for coming with them, which they changed in the dub to "with the circumstances being what they are, this is just how things turned out". Reasonably, she didn't have to stick around after they ran from Dahngrest, but here she gives a quick "reason".

The dub changed this to "I'll bet he is". They were just told he's the current magistrate in Heliord, and all Yuri says here expresses he's letting it sink in and realizing exactly why all this is happening here. It's not a huge story beat or anything that gets changed, but it's an example of changing things that don't need to be changed as if trying to play things up in a way that... doesn't feel necessary to me? In this case the situation is kind of dawning on Yuri as he realizes how bad this situation could be/why it's like it is, but in the dub it comes across as more just unimpressed and "of course he'd do that".

An unfortunate, classic moment of them changing how much Yuri believes in and trusts Flynn. They changed this to "gotta run, Flynn!" and he just... leaves. I'm sorry but in what universe does "leave the rest to you" equal "gotta run"???

This one is one of those cases where the localization text was super awkward and wonky, and worse, they actually voiced it that way (like "we have guild's job to deal with". Yes, they actually voiced it that way too on top of everything else grammatically wonky with the entire conversation that they didn't bother fixing when the DE came out).

Also here, they changed what Yuri says about Cumore and Flynn. "I don't know how I could explain this to Flynn" doesn't, at least to me, carry the same weight as Yuri actually feeling ashamed (in the dub he says "what a shame", but does not express shame, versus him saying "how pathetic" and expressing shame in feeling pathetic) and saying he can't even face Flynn because Cumore got away. The thing is, Yuri does tend to posture, so when he fails at something, it hits him pretty hard.

And let's be honest, this just hits way harder than "he will get what he deserves".

Interestingly, Yuri could also fall into the category of viewing himself as sinful later on, which I talk about in my favorites post and the usage of "crime" and "sin" within the JP context.

Not particularly important, but just another (more mild) case and example of how the dub just randomly changed tone/mood/wording for no reason.

Another case of Yuri being more aggressive in the dub than he actually was. Here, all he says is just a plain statement. In the dub, he has an attitude about it and says it in a tone that's more insulting that Ioder didn't know about Heracles.

This isn't the only case of dub Yuri acting aggressively toward Ioder when he wasn't supposed to be and we'll get to that, but Ioder is another similar case of the dub making Yuri unnecessarily vocally rude (despite that Ioder is very polite toward Yuri).

(I left out the subtitles because all they did was copy the dub's localization, which kinda defeats the point of this post LOL. This will be the case going forward for any same circumstances.)

This one's a more interesting tidbit to me and less of a harmful change (i.e. I find that a lot of if not most changes relative to Flynn do more harm than good when compared with the original context). Basically it's saying "sweet mask and sharp eyes", implying Flynn's sweet face is a mask and saying it contrasts with his sharp eyes. I could get into a whole rant about why I love that in relation to some side material, but even in the game itself, there's the knight Flynn with his sweet, polite side and his real side that only shows when he's around Yuri (basically, who Flynn has to be for his job and who he actually is as a person, which he only gets to be around someone who knows the real him).

I'd guess this got changed in the dub because they weren't sure how to word it, though there's no mention of "heartthrob" here at all and instead actually says "sweet mask" as if, again, to say his sweetness is just a mask. It's actually a very interestingly accurate representation of his character - how he tends to not be himself when he's being "knight Flynn", and how that sweet face is contrasted by the look in his eyes (which they say, you know, eyes are the windows to the soul, so this would imply the sweet face is the mask and the eyes are the real Flynn. And of course, this Flynn is implied to show himself in his sparring with Yuri in Aurnion, where sword fighting is the best way to express himself. This isn't to say Flynn being a nice person in and of itself is a lie, but that his overly polite, respectful, kind knight side is a sweet mask contrasted to the man who loves to fight and has a sharp look in his eyes)

For now, we'll be back at Mantaic in the next post (due to image per post limit).

[katya-goncharov]

i'm constantly torn between hmm maybe i should get a diagnosis for at least one of the several ways i'm definitely neurodivergent and hmm but actually i'm slightly terrified that it will just give the tory government ammunition to take literally all my rights away