#bentoask

[bentosandbox]

have you seen qiubai's new skin on CN?

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

✅HAT ✅LEAF ✅CAPE

the dress could have been longer (see bottom of post) but thats just very personal preference the clothing tags??? near/on the sword is so funny

skin trivia under cut with more unsolicited thoughts

Her skin name 霜林醉 or in HG-lish 'Wine-flushed is Woods of Rime', (i hope they shorten this if global gets it lol) is from Romance of the Western Chamber

碧云天，黄花地，西风紧，北雁南飞。晓来谁染霜林醉？总是离人泪。

found 2 english translations, one from 1935 and the other from 2000

i do very much prefer this long skirt but the skin is still good 👍👍👍👍👍

now that chunfen is out on global... she really is like your average swordsman protagonist huh. which is making me even more glad that qiubai is not a man even though (i believe) she would have been incredibly popular as a long haired bishounen because it would have just made all her actions just part of the status quo of guys doing whatever the fuck they want (see water margin) to exact their own sense of justice without the fear of any repercussion. im not sure what point im trying to make here lol let girls just be some guy??? <how is this such a rarity in current year etc

anyway i enjoyed chunfen way way more than i did with vernal and the latter had chen AND lin in it

[chenswire]

Probably a dumb question but are you and Bento the same person? I haven’t thought about it till now. Also you art you is delicious, just love how you do poses and coloring

yea LOL ty for the kind words 🥹

[bentosandbox]

The museum collab outfit?

so glad you asked now i can finally dump all the info i gathered for a good reason

during the LNY stream, a few minutes? after they revealed the biker chen skin they dropped this along with my jaw: a collab with the Nanyue King Museum that lasted not even 2 weeks lol (prob because LNY started from the 10th this year aka everything closes)

tl;dr historical museum/mausoleum in guangzhou (the closest china has to HK) with a lot of artifacts, and the collab highlights a few

the original PV for it if you want to hear some guy say how the tiger hook perfectly covers up the broken part of the jade dragon ornament and it looks like theyre fighting like a certain two and that they complement each other

i typed out a transcript so i could tl it and the lin commentary in..due time also here's a vlog from bili to live vicariously through

what lin commentary you ask. incidentally i also saw people asking 'why is Lin even in this the PV just kept mentioning tigers and dragons' well ok remember how her profile mentions she's a Yanese art history nerd enthusiast... there are qr codes on-site you can scan that will being you to a microsite? and they got her CN VA to narrate the descriptions!!! with comments!!!!!! here's a quick TL i did the other day as an example

so yea... she's basically the tour guide 🥹🥹🥹

chenswire and linchen photospots, why did they put swire all by her lonesome at the mausoleum

so. they had a small merch lineup for those who couldnt make it (half/ 3/4 body acrylic stands like the mooncake collab) but there is also a notebook....

WITH CONCEPT ART? OF THE OUTFITS INSIDE... they mention it in the video but they incorporated the artifacts into the design which is so so cool (their outfit silhouettes? are also based on tang-dynasty clothes iirc) BUT ALSO SEE... CHEN WITH PANTS.... i think she could lose one of the twintails but that's not important here so yeah cool historical-fantasy outfit with baggy pants vs cop outfit with funny tied up shirt and skin tight pants... no contest

[bentosandbox]

hi! i was just thinking about your animatic for il siracusano and felt the need to tell you that that scene of lappy for "seems like I'm just lappland too" has never left my mind since the day you posted it. absolutely marvelous, i cannot thank you enough for this entire video!

🥹🥹🥹thank you!!! shes just lappy!!!!!!!

[bentosandbox]

do you still have that art of mostima you did where it's like blurred and zoomed in and she has sunglasses on with a thumbs up i am obsessed with it it was the last thing i saw before my twitter got suspended

ya there is no thumbs up though

[bentosandbox]

What are your thoughts on the new Earthspirit EN voice?

HOW DID I MISS THIS ASK

ze accent is so cute ja...

a little amused she sounds so proud/smug in the sub-3 star clear line like we didn't just flop a little

had totally forgotten 'provence' is french so hearing her say it stunned me for a sec

'you think i'm kidding🤨do i look like i'm kidding?🤨🤨🤨'

i have no idea what she's saying in selecting operator 1 though the text says 'here' and what she actually says isn't in the extremely tiny german dictionary in my head somebody help

PERSONALLY i do wish she sounded a bit more gnc deeper(?) like aoi yuuki , but im already pretty happy with what we got!!

[bentosandbox]

don't block me for this bento lol but while yes i get that her being Huge is hyperbole, i just can't suspend my disbelief that her being tall for a typical IRL asian woman jives with her in-game quote about having trouble getting through doors. she's the only op (outside mudrock i guess) who even has such a line, while men bigger than her have no problems or worries about banging their heads off the supposed tiny doorframe. i'm just being nitpicky about environmental implications i guess lol like why does she have this problem that no one else seems to have. gacha be gacha c'est la vie

also, what was the right line hoshi said to bagpipe? this is the first i've heard of it being mistranslated? :o (thank you for your TL work btw you're one of the few bastions of sense in this wasteland)

you're welcome + all good dw i have a pretty high block threshold for better or worse

Yeah i get it! BUT here is my copium reasoning

184cm + horn height (if as long as her face + average face length = 20cm) + boot heel height (about 3cm) = 207cm which is just very slightly over average door height (here?) which is 205cm and my view is that just slightly missing a few cm is way more troublesome than going through a door that's obviously smaller than your height since you'll definitely know when to duck than having a perceived illusion that you can make it through without bending down a little and then BANG the rhodes door frame has a little hole or something

I mentioned it here in a little rant i did last july but i'll explain it more in detail below (i thought i did before somewhere. probably twitter but i can't find it so i'll just do another one here)

I'll do a more literal TL first

风笛: 那个......我的钱包和护照都丢在莱塔尼亚了。 Bagpipe: Um...I lost both my wallet and passport while I was in Leithanien. 星熊: ......我是不是该佩服你？ Hoshiguma: ...Should I be admiring you? 风笛: ——被炸得一点不剩了。 Bagpipe: ——They got blown up with not even a shred left. 星熊: 我确实该佩服你。 Hoshiguma: Indeed, I should be admiring you.

And 佩服 really does mean admire

'what's wrong then' But admire has like 2 main definitions

And whoever translated it went with the second definition instead of the first; it's not admire in the 'oooo you have an admirer' (someone who fancies you) way, it's admire in the 'wow i admire your tenacity to make your way all the way from Londinium to Lungmen even after almost getting blown to bits otw'

'what makes you so sure its that reading over the other' just read the context of the conversation + I'm well aware of my bias for the JP loc but like. it's because their TL track record is pretty good (esp with characterisation) so I sometimes check it to double confirm my readings, and they use 褒める here which is homeru for you weebs and for everyone else

So back to the lines, admire sounds strange in context, but the idea is that hoshi is so impressed by her tenacity that she goes 'wow should i praise you?' so I would use 'impress' here

Bagpipe: Um...I lost both my wallet and passport while I was in Leithanien. Hoshiguma: ...Should I be impressed? Bagpipe: ——They got blown up with not even a shred left. Hoshiguma: Yeah, I should be. (Or 'Yeah, that's pretty impressive.' to flow better but it loses the 'should' which I prefer because Hoshi has a tendency to be very passive in her speech)

also also sorry i need to get this out lol i know they want swire to be as bratty as possible or whatever but :\ aghdgfhfgffff as someone who also calls their dad 爸爸 with cantonese tones and not mandarin im just really fucking bummed ok the rep would have been cool it, also has the slightly childish vibe to it that 'daddy' has so (without the discord kitten vibes even /shrug) Yuxia calls her dad 爸 if anyone was wondering

bonus since i mentioned chen's op rec in that og post

insane that swire's oprec was the last of her batch and chen is the first of the batch after so theyre next to each other in the medal list

TL is fine for the most part but man this is some 'parents making you call them by their first name' level of americanization (they took out most of the 警司 especially the one in their 'first' meeting??naur way...)

[chenswire]

Now that you said it I’m really curious about the foods in swummer files and voice lines now😳 not knowing Chinese is a pain sometimes.

copypasting this following paragraph from a writeup i did for a friend so it might sound a little more deranged than usual

in swummer's profile archive 4 they say the LGD officers will sometimes secretly(🤨) compare the difference between chen and swire's leadership styles in private; when following chen you have to yolo speedrun with her and will need half a day to recover from it while following swire requires you to multitask but in a controlled and not chaotic way and everything is very clearcut etc etc everyone generally agrees that they both 'seem to have 8 heads each, if i were in their shoes i would have been a goner after the first day' and it ends with rat king and wei two lungmen boomers drinking tea talking about the two of them too i was like ???? telenovela moment??? well not as crazy as the archive also saying that chen's desk was vacant (read: untouched and not taken over) for 2 years before swire tidied it up and put all the stuff into a box (read: not throwing them away) and labeling chen's (full) name on it (very normal about this meaningless detail)

Voice lines time

Talk 3

咳……检查了一下最近的行动记录，看得出这几年来，罗德岛的战术也更专业了，不错不错……哈？作为曾经的训练顾问看看任务记录不是很正常吗？我才没有偷看陈的资料！ Ahem...! I just checked your recent operation records, and it seems like Rhodes Island's tactics have significantly improved (lit: even more professional) in the past few years, not bad at all… HAH? Isn't it completely normal (CNT: Is there a problem) for a former instructor to be interested in this sort of thing? I-I didn't sneak a peek at Chen's data!

Talk after promotion 1

当上局长也没什么大不了的，无非是任务重了点、操心的事多了点，更能理解陈了点……啊，再强调一遍，我是接管近卫局，不是接陈的班！就算她现在回来，也是要叫我“长官”的！ Becoming the (department) Chief isn't that big of a deal. It's just that my work and responsibilities have increased by a little bit, and I can also understand Chen a little more... Ah! I'll say this again, I'm not taking over her position, but the entire LGD! So even if she comes back now, she'll have to call me Chief!

I like how she uses the same syntax? for all three, but I couldn't figure out how to word the [(noun) (verb) 少少] pattern succinctly in english AND keep the nuances lol skill issue... repeating 'a little bit more' thrice just sounds so wordy yea but anyway

the first two is 重 (heavier so a increase in both amount and importance) and 多 (more) but CNT has the last verb as 深(deeper) and also instead of 操心 its 烦 which is more like 'bother' than 'worry' aren't nuances great yippee

in her JP dub she says あのバカ龍 on the last chen mention while CN/CNT just uses the equivalent of 'her' instead of 仆街龍 but understandable because the word is a little strong lmao but im taking the nuance of her using 而家返嚟 as opposed to 現在回來 as a W regardless (something like come home vs go back)

this line is also referenced in a 123 rhodes comic strip

she does call her 仆街龍 in her module when talking to Hoshiguma though i'm tell you

别看那个了， 快帮我分分礼物。这是给你的冲浪板，这是给臭老鼠的火山泥面膜，这是给扑街龙的唱片——等她回来自己拿吧，还有给老魏的水果罐头…… Stop looking at that thing already and help me sort out my souvenirs. This surfboard is for you, this lava mud mask is for that cau lau syu, this album is for that puuk gai lung—she can take this herself when she comes back, and there's the canned fruit for old Wei...

>>>>>>>>>>等她回来自己拿吧 a more literal TL would be like '(you can kinda fit a I'll/we'll in here..???Let's) wait for her to come back here to take it herself'

this and the box thing from her profile the 'waiting for her wife to return from the war' vibes is off the charts tehe still hoping we get an actual voiced Puuk Gai Lung (swire edition) one day though (looks at global)

[bentosandbox]

Assuming someone hasn’t already sent it in, 41!

this only means i get to talk about more fics ehehehe

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

yeah its a CN one sorry (yeah its a chenswire one sorry)

reposting from my containment acc i will also add: they write swire soooo 'tch-core' if that makes any sense... feel like people usually characterise them aggravating each other very directly (me included) so it was very refreshing to see a more subtle approach

its kinda like crunchy fried eggs with runny yolks vs the half solid half runny ones that are (imo) perfect for sandwiches/burgers because theyre still somewhat runny but they dont make a mess thats what the writing/characterisation feels like

Her good mood was still stranded in an argument that happened a few days back, so Swire fiddles with the ends of a hair curl, waiting for a tide of pedestrians to separate them into strangers.

ok translated like 1 line lol i realise i like writing that i find difficult to effectively adapt into comic/visual form

[bentosandbox]

(This is not an ask if you don’t mind me dumping my thoughts here 🙏)

TIL that the way everyone (who’s close to her) calls chen are different from one another which I find fascinating and cute…

Swire: 阿陈、扑街龙、疯龙etc (ofc Missy with the most nicknames 🫵)

Hoshi: 老陈

Lin：陈晖洁

Bagpipe：陈陈 (Fiona’s so bold… I love her sm)

Fumizuki: 小陈

Wei&Rat king&talulah: 晖洁

Kids in lungmen slum/downtown: 陈姐姐/龙姐姐

Other: 陈sir、陈警司、陈小姐…

Wonder if hg’s gonna add more…

(nodding intensely) wow thanks for collating this

Technically not a nickname but Swire also has 姓陈的 and uses 老陈 when she and Hoshi are talking about Chen in Dossoles which probably means nothing in the grand scheme of things but this little tidbit is just stuck in my head for some reason

[chenswire]

After watching the ep 11 preview, I think they will cut a lot of contents from chapter 5 🥲 anyhow, I’m still looking forward to chenswire flirting live on screen 🫡🫡

yeahg it'll be inevitable 😔 so much kino simply cannot be contained...... but at least from the preview we know the water scene is there so WELL. already getting fed (is this early copium setting in)

the one scene i really want to see/hear in the CN dub is probably the ah chen part since i feel like they're deliberately trying to not do a 1:1 adaptation characterisation wise (since the story is already set in stone and all that) and it's a really good vehicle(??) for that. idk what im talking about

hopes are high for that part to show up because its right before this cut in the trailer (which at first i thought the voice was too deep to be swire's but uhm. hm. hmmmm i dont think anyone else says this right and its lipsycned and all)

also this is. probably her saving chen's ass that wasnt shown at all in the game so. how are we feeling soldiers

[bentosandbox]

I think that majority of players don’t even know that chen is one of the main character in game that it’s sad. I see a lot of people complaining about her appearing in stories after reunion arc even though her screen time is already a lot less than amiya and kaltsit… I think yj already forgot about the main characters concept lmao but her getting new outfit at different region is cool i guess but why are those outfits so weird- (sorry this is just my personally ranting…

true! before I go on my own ramble everyone else can scroll down to the bottom for (unconfirmed??) ten thousand mountains lore/trivia

i have a feeling this image is somehow related to your ask LMFAO...

actually... have they mentioned the whole 'kaltsit = past, chen = present, and amiya = future' thing outside of CN or did i dream this i feel like they said it somewhere...i can kind of see how people would think amiya is the only protag seeing as there are people who unironically think the doc is the (sole/main) protag and chen/kal acting so antagonistic early on probably didnt help lol

2. yea its sad but as always if chen has 1 morbillion fans i am one of them if she has one im that 1 fan etc drinking their salty tears 🫡🫡🫡

3. uhhh went on a little costume design ramble sorry. my outfits copium is basically telling myself she's really getting the 'dad who does not really understand fashion buying(designing) clothes for child' treatment anime-style (like what can i say other than point to the night and day difference of dossoles chummer e2 fit vs the ice cream collab fit)

i have my personal nitpicks for every outfit but (looks at gavial2 summer skin) a 8.8 is so much better than a...nvm i'll refrain from grading. but for all the nits i pick i think they still pass the baseline of costume design because of the storytelling they do

base chen: cop who likes to yolo a bit too much, leave that one button undone so roll up her sleeves, give her gloves, give her a walkie talkie/earpiece etc, e2 makes that jacket even bigger and has that yummy rhodes teal

CNY skin: still of the opinion/hc that its the dress fumizuki mentioned which is why she looks like shes wearing it grudgingly, it has shorts though at least !!

chummer: shes (trying to be) on a holungday so bring back her epic tourist c cap and make her existing recognizable jacket more summer-y, also the duck heart emoji

victorian arc: cop sideclass(?) to sheriff detective or something, embracing her cringe but free era by leaving her collars up now has the sense to tuck in her shirt and wear actual pants, better coverage against the elements etc etc thank terra nevermind the fact theyre so tight fitting this is just like khr also she looks flatter in the animated PV smile i'm reminded of a wb comment that went sth like 'why are you dressing like this when youre already 30' on this fit and shes not explicitly 30 etc etc but i really like the 'chuuni(cringe but free) at 30' vibe

yumen: passing-by traveler with the cape!!! 👍👍👍👍👍👍 i really like how it looks in the cg lol with the thinner/darker stripes on the outside, ngl no fucking idea what that green box is but i appreciate chen still having a little green and yellow on her outfit, the shortness of the dress? bothered me at first but ive come to the terms that chen is a shorts enjoyer so

10k mountains: youxia-core with the hat and cape👍👍👍👍👍👍 and keeps the plastic part from chummer jacket as well as the checkers (i think they were zips but you know, the black and white alternating…lol remember how her current thing is supposedly dealing with the reality of being grey or whatever as little sense as that makes. we are in full hc territory here but its so much better than adding another 20 belts) the heels dont exist to me though

like idk it's not even a high bar honestly just nail down the role/silhouettes first before adding your morbillion belts/fanservice 😭 looking at a certain bunch of characters anyway this is why swire has the best track record for outfits 1/? ill stop here before i start tambling about her summer drip

anyway everyone should look at this Canon(as in camera brand not the other meaning) ad ft. real cormorant im convinced they got the designs from HG early because they dropped a photoshoot ~bout a week after the 4anni livestream and they got the 2hu-style sleeves right that you can never see unless you look at the sprite sheet, uh

wait what's this on the back

oh its from a poem wait whys that so famili

just going to link some translations/explainers of the poem i think but you can also look up '涼州詞 王之渙 + english translation' or something for more there's quite a few

[bentosandbox]

hell yea comics. 10, 23, 30, 40, 41 if you like

10. How do you decide what to write?

A little parasite in my brain says hmm today i will do thing and i just roll with the cringe

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

omegaverse i think it'd be extra fun when it's 2 emotionally constipated office workers vs a pairing like texlapp whoa who said that does 'daydreamed and doodled a bit but didn't start on anything solid yet' count as never written if yes its then wuxia AU where chen and lin switch places kinda (basically want to extrapolate that part in chen's op rec where the rat king invited her underground)

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

this chen and hoshi one technically but also the chen and swire one that i still havent posted in english so sorryyyyy (i wrote them at the same time iirc.. just didnt have time to draw the second one until later)

first time i forced myself to write internal monologues AND angst in an actual script on google docs instead of just dumping lines i want characters to say in my own discord server channel shoutout to my friend who gassed me up with the comments they left on the doc lmao 'damn i wanna make the angsty af introspective comics i always see' > 'wait damn i have to make it myself fawjkkkkkkkk'

idk if it affected my approach because the Very Serious chen and Lin character study comic i had planned ended up being a shitposty copybook so i went back to my old style of smashing dialogue in a notepad (if the anon that sent the ask about this comic sees this sorry i got cold feet and i still havent exported it out of my tablet)

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

we don't have a choice do we...

i did just reread the fic i mention below tehe i do reread CN fics way more because sometimes ill be lazy and read it through machine translate while other times i'll sit down and try to translate it (in my head) while EN fics have an easier time searing into my mind

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

its not cheating right

fr tho to write fever dream-esque(?) scenarios that end in girlfail...!!

ok the chenswire one aside the nearl one is also a favourite something about looking at the tired human through the chinks in the infallible knight's armor

[bentosandbox]

If this is a pain to actually answer, feel free to ignore it, but I do wish to know if you know any other parts of the EN translation that have been less than faithful to the source material when it comes to Arknights, to the point an important narrative beat or bit of characterization is muddled or outright different? I saw the recent addition you made to a post regarding Dossoles, in which the original text more or less affirmed that Ch'en knew about the whole bodies in Lungmen issue with Lin, whereas the EN text effectively made it seem as if Ch'en was still in the dark, which is a rather grave change. I was wondering if there were any other of those that you personally know of, speaking strictly of the game script (as opposed to erroneous beliefs due to shoddy fan translations of CN content, such as the misstep I had with Qiubai at one point, which you so kindly corrected). Thanks in advance!

Today I found out that the second half of Rat King's 'Ssh. Heaven knows' line is more obvious (?ymmv) in the CN/JP lines

EN: Besides, when you knew we would— CN: Besides, isn't it (precisely) because you knew we would do it that you— JP: Besides, you knew that we would do this...

So I guess it does make sense why EN people are like ???

and yeah I have a few here that I should really make a loc tag or something although half the time i'm just whining about nuance loss or something minor to most

Lappland has like….a bunch I think but ATM the one that comes to mind is this part in her Archive File 3

In fact, she seems to be taking some degree of pleasure in Texas playing hard-to-get, as it were.

is more like

She intentionally keeps to Texas' pace and relishes the ambiguous (more literally: not close or distant) relationship that they have.

Gavial and Tomimimi's dynamic

Hoshiguma in bagpipe's record (personally most egregious)

Swire's profile:

Just took this from the fandom wiki because I kind of contributed that

And like two lines they changed, 1 good, 1 that didn't need to be changed because it lost the nuance (imo)

[chenswire]

It's a good day when you post, thanks

and thank you for making my day!!

[bentosandbox]

What do you like about your favorite Arknights character(s) like what makes you like them? (If you don’t make me asking 🫣)

And do you have any character that you only like them for their designs but not their lores?

if they're a handsome gnc 姐姐 its basically joever for me jk well not jk but also uhh

gap moe (eg. earthspirit talking to her rocks, shu fishing in a water jar) idgaf spirit (chen, swire, lappland, degenbrecher & many many more)

but hmm i think characters i want to study under a microscope have something... human about them (?) like when Lin had her near-death experience and she was wondering about of all things 'hmm... at least id get a +1 to my good morality scale right' posturing still in your final moments??? I Get It Though and chen just shitposting right after that instead of asking if she's fine great example why she's one of my faves ig or even how LGD is basically just office drama in a way like yea... theyre kemonomimi slayges but they are also very humanly stubborn does that make any sense . wait no i got it 'character flaws (possibly to probably) from childhood trauma'

Swire is a special case because i usually dgaf about ojou archetypes but they cooked up a perfect storm (banger outfit character design [alter too] + irregular tsundere + girlbosses and failgirls + HK refs + world-changing kuroblood outfit. damn) with her that i'm willing to draw her drills 70% of the time (i felt some kinda deja vu when i started typing about chen so ill just stop here for now) i wouldve preferred if there was more trauma in there but its ok... thats what fanwork is for

damn i can't think of anyone for the second question tho. and i scrolled through the entire aceship gallery npcs included LMAO i can't even think of any lore i dislike tbh design for me comes first anyway since designs i like will usually mean lore i like