#just toned things down

[dead-dove-dolly]

"Oh, Dubbed animes are the same as the dubbed animes! You can watch either one, you'll be watching the same thing!"

Newer anime MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE in the dub, sure! But older anime? No. Some hot localized and mistranslated so bad, they are completely different.

Newer anime fans, I beg of you, WATCH YU-GI-OH. WATCH BOTH THE ENGLISH DUB AND THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE. OH, HOW ABOUT YOU WATCH THE SEASON THAT NEVER GOT AN ENGLISH DUB! SEASON 0! In which we see some pretty gruesome shit, especially those last few episodes with Bakura, where Yami Bakura literally stabs the sharper parts of the millennium ring into Bakura's chest! Oh, and stabs his hand on a DND castle.

I'm so serious, the dub of Yu-Gi-Oh took out SO MUCH. They cut at least 40 Episodes! The Shadow Realm wasn't even a fucking thing in the original! You just straight up died! Never forget that Marik developed DID from extreme trauma because his father carved a tattoo into his back with a burning knife! Amongst so much more.

How about Yu-Gi-Oh GX! Where 4!Kids literally took out the LGBT+ rep! And 40+ episodes to boot, an entire season that gave context to Yubel and Jaden's relationship! How about the fact the protag is bi or pan, is poly, and has a NONBINARY LOVE INTEREST AND A MALE LOVE INTEREST! Oh, don't forget, they made the nonbinary Duel Monster spirit a female in the English dub.

I'm begging you, PLEASE, if you're going to watch older anime, especially those dubbed by 4!Kids, just watch the original Japanese instead. It is NOT the same thing.

[lhislucas]

B! Sh: "What are you staring at? Jealous now, are we, little Faker?" (1/2)

P!Sh : "Tch." (2/2)

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[project-sekai-facts]

How are we feeling about ensekai’s emu3 translation!!! (I’m mad)

(if you remember the 3 whole posts i made when asahi got de-gayed on EN you'll know i am mad too and that this is probably going to get long)

i don't like to be too cynical but it was so obvious that they were going to change that line, i had a feeling since the event first released on JP and after the incident with Asahi where I went through and tracked down multiple other examples of EN removing queer subtext it became clear to me that in no way shape or form was "emu-chan really loves nene-chan" making it to EN without getting changed. what i didn't expect was them changing Nene's line after Luka's comment, which actually makes this whole situation far worse than many of their other instances of toning down queer subtext.

for anyone who isn't aware of what happened, in chapter 5 of the current Emu event, there's a scene where Nene, Rui and the Virtual Singers are talking about what would cheer Emu up. The vsingers all talk about how much Emu loves spending time with Nene, leading to the following exchange

If you look for them, any fan TL of this scene will be something similar to this:

Luka: ...Fufu. Emu-chan really loves Nene-chan, doesn't she? Nene: Th-that's nothing special...

EN's official translation is this:

So what's the issue? I'll start with Luka's part. In the original text, she uses the word daisuki, which can mean to "like a lot" or "love". It's a word you will see frequently in the idol/idol-adjacent genre of games, due to its ambiguity in that it can be read as either platonic or romantic when used towards a person, and often will be used in ambiguous situations so that it's harder to confirm the writers' intentions either way. so here, fans of the emu/nene ship could view the fact that emu loves spending her time with nene as more on the romantic side, but people who don't like the ship could view it as platonic and move on.

while they didn't translate daisuki directly, Luka's line still works, and still contains the ambiguity that works as ship tease in the original text. it's a perfectly fine localisation that still conveys the original intent. despite that, there is something to be said about EN's consistent refusal to translate daisuki as love in most instances when it's not used on An/Kohane (but then again, EN has literally teased An/Kohane on their twitter account so is it all that surprising?).

Here's some examples:

Aibou no koto ga daisuki de / he loves his partner -> he cares about his partner very much (The Power of Unity chapter 7 when Kaito is comparing Arata to Akito and Toya)

HARUKA-CHAN, DAISUKI DAYOOOO!!! / HARUKA-CHAN, I LOOOOOVEEE YOU!!! -> You're the best!!! (Dear Me, As I Was Back Then chapter 4 when minori is at an ASRUN concert. this one isn't actually that great of a localisation)

Honachan no koto daisuki dakara. Kore de iinda yo. / I love Honachan, so this is fine. -> I want what's best for her. And this is it. (Leo/need main story chapter 14 after Saki tells Honami she won't bother her anymore)

Minna daisuki de - taisetsuna tomodachi na no / I love them all - they're my dearest friends -> They're all amazing, and very dear to me. (Leo/need main story chapter 17. this isn't good either)

What's particularly amusing about that last one is that there's a second official translation for it that I assume was done by JP staff (since EN never promoted doing the Journey to Bloom subs like they did back when they provided subs for Petit SEKAI) that actually keeps the word daisuki as love.

Yeah. I love all my friends - and they mean the world to me.

It's a better localisation than the official EN team one.

Questionable localisation choices aside, Luka's line is fine and is actually in line with the original. The issue with this localisation very much lies with Nene's part, because that is an entirely new line.

In the original text, Nene's "that's just normal" or "that's nothing special" or however you choose to TL it, is meant to be her questioning Luka's statement, since all the things that the other vsingers said that Emu liked were pretty normal things like going shopping and playing video games with nene. To Nene, these things are normal activities for them to do together, so she gets embarrassed by the fact that Luka concludes from that information that Emu loves Nene. When I dissect it like that I think you can really tell what the writers were going for here lol.

"That's just us being friends" does still convey the idea that Nene thinks these activities aren't anything out of the ordinary and she isn't sure why the vsingers are picking these out as some of Emu's favorite things to do, but it's very different from the original line. "But those are just normal things we do together" is something I just came up with on the spot, but it's a lot closer to the original text and still conveys the same meaning. The fact they changed the line to "that's just us being friends" is, honestly, not even subtle that they're covering up queer subtext. The original scene was very clearly written in as ship tease, and EN mentioning "friends" for no reason, especially since the word nor anything close to it was not used in the original, is instantly a red flag because it's like the go-to for queerbaiting and censorship. This was intentional. There was no need for them to specify that the relationship is platonic, Luka's part is ambiguous for a reason so that fans can view it how they like.

Just to top all this off, here's Rin's original line just before that Luka+Nene interaction:

Oh, and! And! She said that playing games with Nene-chan is also super fun!

And here's Rin's line from the official EN translation:

That's not the same thing, but even more weirdly, the incorrect part (super fun->really loves) is a correct translation for the part changed in Luka's line. So, they can do it, they are willing to say "really loves", just not in the right places. Maybe because Rin's part is less personal than Luka's part? It's strange actually, this isn't the first time they've done this either. Off the top of my head I can think of an example from Shiho's Varied Kindness 2* story where they translated the word "suki" as really loves, despite that being much stronger than the original word used (and the fact that daisuki is used a lot in the Leo/need stories and it's incredibly rare if not entirely unknown for them to translate it correctly).

It's not subtle that they're trying to remove implications of the characters possibly being queer, they did it in curtain call and they did it in walk on and on, and multiple times before then too. And considering some of the content in this year's events and the amount of times they say daisuki alone, it's gonna keep happening. honestly i hate the fact that i keep trying to justify the translations in these posts. these translations are intentional. what happened in the curtain call translation back in october says enough. when a character who uses explicitly romantic language towards another guy passes as a straight character in the translation you know they're doing it on purpose.

oh and once again, it's only the EN server that has this issue. The scene in question was translated almost word-for-word on the TW and KR servers.

read fan translations. they're better than what EN gives us and people put a lot of effort into them.

[snowyh2o]

My hand slipped—

Anyways, drew what I think Alastor might look like as an angel.

Couldn’t decide which looked better so have both.

[lovesickeros]

☆ love; heretical and divine

{☆} characters tsaritsa {☆} notes cult au, yandere, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings blood {☆} word count 0.8k

To love a God is heretical. It is an act of blasphemy– it is to drag them down from their throne of hollow gold, to topple the pedestal the worshipers uphold on their shoulders like lambs at the herders heel. It is the act of forcing them to their knees and ripping that beating heart of glorious gold and beautiful, cruel divinity from their chest, so pure it burns.

To love a God is to make them sin. To make them painfully, horribly human.

To love a God is to sin.

The love of a worshiper is no love at all, brilliant in its raw purity, untainted by sin. It is fear and obedience masked by adoration so overpowering it corrupts. It makes the lamb so unquestioning in it's faith it will never question the knife that cuts, the teeth that rip, the claws that tear. If the Creator deemed them unworthy of the very life crafted by their hands, then they must have committed a sin so grave there lay no salvation for their horrid soul.

But she is no worshiper– her lips speak of heresy as easily as she breathes, her words nothing but lies, cold and cruel like the ice that crawls along her skin like webs.

She loves a God like a lover should.

A damned sinner reaching longingly for the heavens.

She loves a God in the subtle brush of their lips, their muffled voices behind closed doors as they indulge in curiosity untamed. She is a sinner through and through, but she feels herself fall further with every brush of her hand across their cheeks, every touch she bestows upon them like a lover. She memorizes the imperfections of their body like memorizing a map– every scar, every mark, every line drawn on their body like a canvas, her touch the brush that stains the pristine white.

No devoted lamb shall ever see the painting they create in these stolen moments– it is for the eyes of a heretic so vile it makes them shudder, their body dirtied by the love of a woman so vile even their divinity is obscured by the ice.

The lambs may be satisfied with fleeting glimpses of gold and empty words from lips that guide them to the jaws of the wolves, but she is not. Her hands crave them like a starving hound, aching to touch that imperfect skin hidden by the veil of gold that obscures the painfully human body beneath. She longs to free them from the golden cage that binds them– to see their wings blot out the sky, their divinity tainted by sin and making them all the more beautiful for it.

It is a longing that leaves a festering wound that cannot heal, will not heal. Even if it could, she would not let it.

For as much as she tries, deny it as she may, she is no better then the blind lambs following the herder who holds a blade in their hand, glittering like gold in the sun, stained by dull red.

She is a fool, and what a fool they make of her with the touch of their hands against her skin– so cold it leaves frost on their fingertips. Yet they do not fear the cold, mapping out every inch of her imperfections, carved into her body by her own hands.

She has always been a heretic, cursing the divine until she could speak no more, but if divinity can be found in them – in this love that consumes, that burns her hands and her lips – then she is a Saint, praying at the altar until her throat bled.

But in the end, she has and will always be a cold woman with hands stained with blood. Until it is all she can taste, until it is all she can smell, until it is all she can feel. These hands of hers, heretical and divine, will bleed the God from their veins– she will become the wolf to their lamb until the rivers of Teyvat run gold with their ichor, until the gold bleeds into red, the taste of their divinity on her tongue.

Until she drags a God from their lofty throne and makes of them a monster.

There is no greater triumph to the heretic then to love a God into sin. To make a God sin to love.

To love is to be human, and they are no God.

Even if she must tear the gold from their very being until all that's left is something human. Even if Teyvat crumbles and decays, even if it begins over and over again..

She will do it again and again, until the gold can bleed no longer. Until her sins grow too great for Teyvat to contain.

To love a God is to devour, and be devoured. An endless cycle of sin that dulls the glow of gold into something new– something horrifying and divine, in it's own right. Something just as horrid as her, just as divinely corrupted by the sins she carries on her shoulders like a trophy, as gold as the sun and as cold as ice.

Divinity, carved into something human by love all consuming, until it all bleeds away and they begin their dance anew, for as many cycles as it takes.

An eternity, if she must, of dooming this world of theirs to fire and decay for a glimpse of the being snared by their golden shackles.

[dandelion-roots]

[ID: a digital drawing of fukuzawa and ranpo from bungou stray dogs. in the first half, fukuzawa finds ranpo, here drawn as the autism creature with black hair, a cape and a black hat, sitting in a box in an alley. he thinks, well, i guess i'm a father now. in the second half, fukuzawa is holding ranpo like a cat. ranpo's eyes are shiny and he thinks, papa... while surrounded by a pink background and imaginary flowers. end ID]

fukuzawa asked 'who's going to adopt this autistic child' and didn't wait for an answer; alternatively- what do you mean this isn't how the scene went???

[kaeyachi]

Kaeya had always been an efficient and hard-working individual (he had to be to support Diluc in the background as his brother rose thru the ranks after all).

He has so much free time because he completes all his work way ahead of schedule. And if he still has enough time, he adds more to the workload in secret.

And once all of that was done and over with, he makes time for everyone. He has to. He feels as if every moment has to be given to someone else.

No one knows how he does it. No one has to know.

Every mission has a dozen strategies in line, and every battle plan is made with efficiency in mind. His perfect record will not be tarnished. He can't risk it (even if it baffles others that he would willingly activate a ruin guard just to prevent a failed mission. Jean disagrees with his methods, but Kaeya can say that the results say otherwise)

He needs to be quick.

Efficient.

Perfect.

And so he comes and goes like the wind.

Kaeya values time because he knew every second counted. He can't just stand there as if he were frozen. Time could run out in an instant.

Kaeya had only been late once his entire life.

He'd rather he never be late ever again.

It took one day of being of being imperfect for everything to fall apart. On that tragic day...had he gotten there on time... then maybe...

.

.

.

" Come on, let's get moving, traveler. We're not frozen in place after all. " Kaeya teasingly says. He stiffles a giggle at the traveler's exhasperated sigh.

"Yeah yeah, we've heard enough of you calling us a slacker. Can't you be a bit more patient?" Paimon whines at him.

Kaeya snorts, but acquiesces, hiding the shaking of his hands at the thought of being idle.

He imagines hearing a clock ticking.

Kaeya knows that that is his own problem. He tries his hardest to relax as he waits for the traveler to finish whatever they're making on the alchemy table because, seriously, it is supposed to be a relaxing day. There's nothing major going on, and his schedule is once again empty as intended. What's the hurry?

Kaeya taps his foot on the ground as he waits. He wishes he could take his own damn advice when he tells others to relax.

[annabelle--cane]

biting this scene. sinking my teeth right in.

[varilien]

given that i've ran this blog for as many years now i think i should get much credit for this being what, only the third dick joke i've ever made here hdfkhkj

anyways. there's this point in the story where vash and wolfwood have to go their separate ways for a while, but neither of them are dealing with it particularly well

(image id below the cut since it's a longer one)

[image ID: a rough, doodley 5 panel digital comic of vash and meryl from trigun, but from my leaden skies au where they've both been lightly redesigned to fit into the setting of monster hunter. vash is a wyverian with long pointed ears, wearing a red coat with gold trim and buttons. meryl is a human wearing a beret as seen on other guild girls, but her all-white outfit is a practical two-piece blouse and shorts set. the whole comic is comprised of warm colors, orange and yellow and dark purple

panel 1: vash sitting in the foreground at a brown desk covered in candles and books, with a book opened in front of him that he flips through with a bored expression and his cheek resting against his hand. he appears to be in a library, lit by candles on dark grey chandeliers hung from the ceiling. meryl is in the background stretching up to reach a book high on a shelf, and beside her is a table which is also covered in candles and several tall stacks of books

panel 2: a closeup of vash's face as his eyes widen and his ears prick up. something in the book has apparently caught his attention

panel 3: a closeup of the page vash was looking at, an illustrated info sheet about the flying wyvern, khezu. a candle in the table brightly illuminates the colored page

panel 4: meryl has come around by vash's shoulders with a stack of books held in her arms. she quirks a brow as she looks over vash's shoulder at the book. vash has a neutral, hard to read look on his face, but his ears are still up and his eyes are still shiny and wide as he seems to consider the page for a while

panel 5: a yellow word bubble comes from vash, who huffs a long sigh and says, "maybe i should call him...". his head has tipped to the side as he rubs his neck and frowns, blushing a little with his ears drooping. meryl physically recoils from him and her face scrunches up in disgust, saying, "eww" and, "there's something wrong with you"

end ID.]

[ponchusjbonchus]

[tiredbitchposts]

Fine, this may be a conspiracy theory, but does anyone else thinks that after seeing the popularity of the non-canon ships in the scum villain fandom MXTX decided to write her next protagonist to be completely isolated on purpose? Because that has been on my mind a lot. Like, it's a fact that she hates it when people ship her MCs with anyone other than their canon love interest, MXTX wrote her first book with an MC that had a long list of people who adored him and were willing to die to protect him in-work, people ate it up, she noticed that a great part of the fandom ships her MC with basically anyone, she hates it, but no matter what she says the ships keep going, then she writes her next book. In that work her MC is a charming, popular cultivator, who suffers a terrible fall from grace and by the end of it he's lost pretty much everything from his past, except his canon love interest. Even if we take away all the love, respect and adoration Wangxian has towards each other it's pretty clear by the end of MDZS that Lan Wangji is the only one left for Wei Wuxian, everyone else is either dead, distant or just hates him

[nyenyerle]

i sound old but we should have more respect for the text of the silmarillion :) like don’t just take out the idea of nerdanel’s sexy biceps. it’s been written by a man who really liked texts :)) not saying you must also like texts. it’s fine (and im saying this sincerely) if you only like fingon’s 14 karat bobby pins!! but you should be able to recognise and willing to admit and ready to mention that the text itself is good fucking literature. no more “it’s unfinished” “chris tolkien didn’t even like it” “haha elf phone book” “i’ve read it on tolkien gateway that somewhere in the HoME there’s a gayer version of this sentence” stop joking about how it’s bad. like we do know that it has literary value far far far far far far far beyond providing lexical information about our elves of choice right? :(

[smolstarthief]

Eh, since I took some screencaps of him in the main show minus well do a bonus with the Pilot. Have at it dears! (Part 1 because curse Tumblr image limit!)

[sculkshrieking]

dude your hoffstrahmdon is changing my life! have you ever thought about including adam in the mix for the au? ship thing or not i'm just curious about if he gets to live :-)

teehee i'm glad you like them :D!! I had to think about this for a little bit. Adam generally stays dead in my head because i love the guilt and haunting and also because i don't think John with his barbed wire grip on all three apprentices would ever allow his freedom. HOWEVER we love to self indulge in this house and throwing Adam into the mix sounds so chaotic.

Maybe Hoffman plays a part in getting Adam out which is what makes Lawrence feel indebted enough to come and warn him not to go after Jill (which just makes me think of Lawrence and Adam in the makeshift jigsaw hospital room getting tended to by Hoffman while John and Amanda are off getting bloodboarded).

Lawrence and Adam are insanely codependent because I wouldn't have their post-bathroom relationship any other way. They will bite, kick and scream like frightened dogs if you try to separate them.

With Hoffman, Adam probably has some mixed feelings in a "You're horrible and I can't stand you, but you saved me" type way. Mostly the first part, really. Meanwhile, I think Hoffman just finds him annoying and grating as hell, he wants that twink obliterated and all that.

The Strahm and Adam roasting matches are insane. It's a constant PvP zone in there and absolutely no one is safe. There are parallels between them that they're both doing their best to ignore. Also they can smoke out on the balcony together as a treat <33

I don't know what kind of situation would force them all to have to spend a bunch of time together but i personally would love to see the resulting carnage. I also would love for them to kiss, i just have a hard time imagining all of them liking each other </3. Hate sex is absolutely still on the table however <33. Adam how come your mom lets you have THREE big hot middle aged men around you etc etc.

In conclusion:

[lunarharp]

when an obsessed orufrey person plays ace attorney for the first time in a while