#or just plagiarism? i have no idea

[sparkles-oflight]

Which is gayer?

LGBT?

Or

[autisticrosewilson]

First of all, you have given me so much to work with, thank you so much. Second of all, I’m really glad you could see where I was going with Grant’s real test not actually being about killing Slade. Third of all, I absolutely love what you’ve suggested with the powers and I am currently designing met gala esque outfits for the trio and Tara’s specifically is really fun to play around with. I’ve been thinking to show they’re becoming more divine I’ll change their hair and eye colours but not their faces for the most part. I was drawing robin Jason with Natalia and decided he should have brown eyes and a crooked nose from breaking it as a kid but once he returns his eyes get weird (eg go blue and occasionally other colours), a patch of his hair went white and he lost all of his scars. Also, I think the closer they get to divinity I’m gonna draw cracks on their body that glow with their specific colours just to hammer home how they’re shedding their mortal forms.

With Tara being able to see the strings of fate, I though it’d be fun to give her a harp and then with Jason having the see no evil trait I thought it’d be fun to give him weighing scales since lady justice wears a blindfold. Idk what to give Grant though. I mean probably a weapon of some sort or maybe a Shepard’s crook that he can turn into a scythe to play into the sheep, wolf, Hunter thing.

With Jason and Tara’s splintering, I love the idea of them making fun of Grant for being the baby god. He hasn’t even had a cult yet, gosh he’s so young. Also them being besties just holds a special place in my heart.

And I just came up with this, of course they have parallels to the trinity but in universe rumours of their existence have been around much longer than Bruce, Clark and Diana. They’re the big three of the justice league but these guys are justice gods. So they start calling themselves the justice trinity but then people get confused about which trinity is which because the justice leagues’ trinity sounds awfully close to the justice gods’ trinity. The new all caste is certainly more distinctive branding but the point isn’t to be distinctive, it’s to be petty.

I'm so glad my unmedicated rambling helped!!! And I'm so excited for the outfits!!! I love when characters start becoming less and less human, when they're stuck in that uncanny valley spot of not quite human but not entirely Other, when they lose control and the cracks start to show...um I should probably give a warning for slight body horror elements. Not in the gore sense, in the "this body is not made of flesh and there is something divine clawing it's way out". Uh also there are teeth. Just. Teeth. I dipped into a little bit of cosmic horror at the end there because I wanted to cover my bases with mixed mythologies

Jason, with his defined splinters, is usually depicted with three faces in ancient texts. The Child, gaunt and dark colored, is said to appear before the downtrodden and impoverished. The few stories remaining tell of kindly people who give him an offering, and in exchange he reveals his true form, with his crown of golden ivy and beautiful strong wings to gift them bounties of food and water and riches. Other stories tell of not so kind encounters, where The Child witnesses an injustice - typically against women or children - and again reveals his true form, one with clawed hands and a mouth dripping with blood. Scholars argue what the wings looked like, but whichever All-Caste member annotated it before has compared their likeness to either a Robin or a Shrike.

There's also The Ghost, He appears young at first glance, but his hair is wirey and gray, his eyes milky and unseeing, in bloodied armor he greets the souls of the damned as they're delivered to him, and with scarred hands he wipes the tears of children taken too soon. Accounts of this face are few and far between, but all of them are entrenched in sorrow.

Finally there is The Soldier, scarred and still smoking from the ruins of battle he emerges, giving voice to the weak and resources to the needy. He champions revolutionaries and philosophers first, a strategist who delights in the liberation of the people from corrupt systems. Accounts of him usually come from times of famine and war, and he was particularly popular with poor villages, who would mark the graves of their dead with the symbol of his sword as offerings. For some reason or other, he got particularly popular with the youth, girls and boys both seemed to pray for him and leave him offerings.

The way these manifest on Jason is subtle at first. I could go the body horror route, but I won't. Yet. Instead I think his splinters show up as reflections, shadows, imprints. The faint echo of bell-like laughter when Jason does a move he learned as Robin, the image of a younger him with longer hair and unblinking eyes staring at him in the mirror. It gets worse when he gets the blades, the white streaks his hair, the swirling mark covers more of his skin every time he uses them, he trails the scent of smoke and blood behind him like a signature. His scars...they should disappear. They have for everyone else who used the pit, but instead his skin starts cracking. Any place he's ever been scarred glowing cracks break up his skin. He can't feel them, but he's always aware of them, the meaning behind them, the divinity literally leaking through his body. His eyes aren't brown anymore. They aren't even green. He looks in the mirror and they are copper, molten and burning. He tries his best to keep his mask on.

What do you think of when you imagine the word divinity? Probably something like Tara. Something with skin carved from stone, with moss and fungus crawling up her legs and snow laden shoulders. They say her hair is made of swirling clouds and the sun and moon are her eyes.

Some say she's a nymph although no one knows what kind. You're just as likely to see her name among the naiads as the dryads. Whether flowers bloom where she dances or waves crash when she sings, she's known to be more vicious towards suitors than her sisters.

Others have said she's a faerie, who takes the faces of lost daughters and lovers, slipping into their places seamlessly, forcing unruly men to pay their dues. Others say she's a shifter of a different sort, with a shawl of feathers and a crown of twine and gems. Stories range from men trying to steal her coat (and paying dearly) to lost children returned safely home on the back of a swan.

Tara doesn't think about it at first, the way gravity tends to cede to her, she doesn't notice how sunflowers turn their faces towards her instead of the sun. She doesn't notice the way her face...shifts. it's imperceptible really, and it's not like she looks in the mirror all that often. But everyone around her notices it, on some level, the way her expressions are off. A little too exaggerated. The way her limbs bend just a little too oddly. The way she never looks quite the same as she did the day before, the way she picks up features from the people around her the way she picks up rocks from ground to add to her collection. Clay molded subtly into the image of those she loves, a museum of everyone she's ever met. She does notice when her hair starts going white at the ends, the strange way her hair starts to curl unnaturally, almost floating. She's not so upset about her eyes, the deep blue of her father that has glared down at her day after day, she has changed her hair, her face, her language but she could not change her eyes. It seems she didn't have to, when she wakes up with one a little too silver to be gray and one a little too gold to be brown. And then her skin starts splitting, a cavern made from a broken rib and ravines made by the slashing of knives. She doesn't even bleed anymore, they never scab over. They crystallize, amber like ambrosia, like ichor. Her body a geode waiting to be cracked open to let the thing within finally break free.

They know the least about Grant, whatever he used to be. Half written scrolls, torn or burnt or simply stopped abruptly, illegible journal entries with symbols never recorded in any known language, half finished sketches where the details are never quite clear. A few things are usually consistent though, signs that he's been there, usually from hunters down on their luck or the particularly old and sickly. First, the howling. Like a wolf or a storm, although later accounts would add that it occasionally sounds like a mechanical whirring. Then the rabbits, dead and gutted, but not a trace of blood. Piles of them left in heaps on doorsteps or windowsills. Some have reported knocking at strange hours or finding teeth in their homes, a mix of human and animal. There is one photo on record, the most recent thing in the archive most likely, of claw marks on the side of a barn, too big and oddly serrated, certainly not from anything native to the area. Elderly that report these phenomena typically pass from heart problems within the week, according to some of the old medical files.

Grant came back wrong. Physically, at least. He knows that he's still himself for the most part, dying didn't make him a selfish asshole he did that all on his own, but...but something is wrong with him. It's the way lightbulbs flicker when he's mad and how cameras, no matter the quality, never quite get a clear shot of him. The way Joey can't ever grasp his features, not fully, the details slipping from his mind like water. The way eyes on his face slide right past, unable to look directly at him. It's in the gray spreading from his roots and his eyes too wide and dark to belong to something human. It's the way death clings to him like a second skin, sickly and pallid turning the tips of his fingers gray. His teeth are starting to feel too sharp for his mouth, and he hears things no one else does, whispers of voices that Are Not and Can't Be. The worst part is the orange, liquid candlelight under his skin, lighting up all of his veins and scars, webbing together like the world's worst game of connect the dots. No, there is no mistaking him for something human, so there is no reason to try. If this is his fate then he will take it, because he is not a sheep and he will not be a wolf, he is a hunter, and he is hungry.

[gibbearish]

btw its interesting the way james tries to imply that like. well the videos that have plagiarism are the ones our dumb stupid annoying patrons requested about bad topics that didnt deserve to have the effort put in to covering them well so basically its fine. like obv thats interesting on its own but moreso the fact that he doesnt actually /say/ it, or like. give a list of the videos hes referring to, just says "those videos are very clear on which ones they were" i think as a nod meaning like "yknow the ones everyones talking about". unless what hes meaning is that like they put a note in certain videos saying "this video was requested by a patron, we here at james somertom incorporated do not espouse these views" which seems unlikely to me. idk methinks maybe it's because there is indeed a lot more than people think and with all the buzz he's not sure which ones have been discovered yet or not, so putting down a solid list that missed some would look like he was still hiding things whereas putting down a fully sourced list would be admitting to wayyyy more than anyone's found yet

[miraphoenix]

Right off the bean, this is not a callout post. I'd talk to the person this is about 1-on-1, but a) he's had me blocked for 4 years, and b) it's mutual. This is me venting on my personal blog, something that he decided to vague about me doing back when I had my first blog.

With that out of the way. I'm really fucking tired of people stealing from Valenth/Revecroir, and from its creator.

Years and years ago, when they were a literal child, my bff/queer life partner--for the purpose of this post, their name is Leupai--made lizard-critters with hands on their tongues and called them leupaks. Eventually, they ended up splitting off from Subeta where they worked at the time, making an affiliated petsite called Valenth where the leupaks featured quite prominently as creatures in a fantasy-meets-steampunk world.

Unfortunately, their boss was a piece of work, and following a rather large kerfluffle involving another petsite lifting other elements of my partner's work (namely, a dragon concept and a companion concept), my partner was fired by the Subeta head boss. The leupaks were renamed into leupai, and Valenth expanded into Revecroir. This was in 2014, give or take a few months.

Through about half of the Valenth era and into the Revecroir era, Leupai was dating someone else, who went by Sixar at the time, later Kismeti, and the two had a long-distance open relationship. Kismeti also did a fair amount of site art for Valenth, and described himself as Leupai's biggest fan; when he'd met Leupai originally, his username referenced leupaks, he had a bunch of leupak characters, and a leupak sona. I met both of them in 2013-2014, right around the close of Valenth, and started chatting with them both. Leupai was more responsive, Kismeti was more reserved, but I did the best I could.

Over the years, I kept trying to reach out to Kismeti, but found that Leupai was honestly more willing to talk with me, so I did become better friends with them. Note that I was friends with Leupai, and trying to be friends with Kismeti. We chatted, we sent memes, we played World of Warcraft, I bought folks pizza across the Pacific Ocean, you know the drill.

Through this, I became really familiar with Leupai's world, at that point named Revecroir. I got to know their lore, their worldbuilding, their current projects, and the leupai creatures themselves.

The leupai were--and are!--still fat lizards with paws on their tongues, who can open portals between worlds with acid in their claws, who transfer their consciousnesses to other bodies if one is destroyed, and whose strength comes from the realm of dreams and creativity. In the early days, in lore that wasn't publicized, leupai were roaming around to find a world to live on after Valenth. This was a project that was supposed to be worked on with Kismeti, but nothing really ever came of it. Eventually, Leupai kind of moved on from that storyline to write more about Revecroir itself.

At the same time, I tried asking Kismeti about his worldbuilding, because he had characters and allegedly a world of his own, but didn't really get a lot in the way of answers. I saw a lot of Sonic fanart, I saw a lot of homestuck, I saw a lot of MLP:FiM, I saw a lot of Captain Planet. Eventually, I kind of... Gave up asking? And that's on me, but frankly, if you ask someone to share their stuff and they don't share their stuff, I figure that's the signal to stop asking.

As time went on, though, I was seeing some cracks forming in the 10-year relationship between the two, and I was helping Leupai through a lot. I watched as he yelled at my best friend for not responding to messages fast enough. I watched as he made plans with Leupai and then fucked off to do other things for hours, leaving Leupai in the lurch and worried about his physical safety. I watched as he gaslit Leupai about their ability to use a computer. On one memorable instance, when Leupai's internet was unstable while we were all playing WoW together, Leupai left the voice call to go reset the router, and Kismeti decided that it was a great time to shit-talk Leupai's intelligence to me. For a half hour straight. Until Leupai rejoined the call.

Eventually, I visited Leupai in person and watched as they were broken down to tears by Kismeti failing to respect their boundaries for literal hours, until Leupai caved to Kismeti's preferences. That was a rough night, and I remember wondering why the fuck my best friend's partner was treating them so badly.

About a month and a half after I visited Leupai, they decided to break up with Kismeti, because they'd had enough of him verbally berating them for not responding fast enough to memes sent over instant message, among so many other things. He, to put it mildly, lost his shit.

(For the record, I know what went down, because Leupai had me read the messages sent back and forth, to make sure they were grounded, and were reading things right. I've seen logs going back 10 years. His original vague accused me of not knowing what I was talking about, but boy howdy I was either there, or have read the raw logs.)

Anyway, he begged for Leupai back. Leupai gave him a chance that he fucked up within a day. Leupai said goodbye and blocked him. He then started messaging me about this on discord, clearly trying to use me as a go-between to get to Leupai.

At the time, I was going through some Complex Feelings about my own abuse by various people in my life, triggered by his behavior, so was reblogging a lot of support stuff on my original blog. I guess he decided this was vaguing about him, because he made a vaguepost accusing me of not knowing all the details (unbeknownst to him, I'd read everything) and finally blocked me.

I figured this chapter in my life was done at this point, and moved the fuck on. Made a new blog because I didn't feel like getting all his shit off my old one, moved across the country, got a new job, the whole shebang. Leupai and I entered our odd QPP/partners/bffs/???? phase, and I genuinely didn't think much about him, unless I was helping listen to Leupai talk about stuff they'd gone through with him.

Until this year. When I saw some comment of his break containment and end up on my dash, under the name "riftclaw". I had a bit of an inkling, so I broke my "don't look" rule and looked at the linked toyhouse to confirm it was really him.

Turns out, riftclaws are... Lizard creatures. Who open portals between worlds with acid in their claws. Who are looking for a new world to call their own. And who have some divine properties, that may involve body switching.

And all of Kismeti/riftclaw's old leupai characters are now riftclaws.

Oh, and he was planning to make them into a closed species. To make money off them.

Now, leupai were decently popular back in the day. I still have leupai characters, and make some periodically from time to time. There's a tag on tumblr and everything; if you're reading this, there's a decent chance you remember Vee yourself, as a fair number of my followers were there too. People still talk about Valenth from time to time. Leupai still has a folder of old fanart from back in the day with some 800 pieces of art in it. They were, by all accounts, successful until they weren't.

But the height of popularity was back when Vee was still around, in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The only new stuff in the tags is from an archive blog of old Vee assets.

Despite that, though. And I know this from messages between the pair, I know that Kismeti tore into Leupai repeatedly for "being more popular" and "having more eyes on their work". Even though "those eyes" didn't keep Leupai fed or housed, or really give them any income. Even though "those eyes" meant getting 50 notes on a tumblr post as opposed to 20. Even though "those eyes" just increased thievery and the constant pressure to be a Content Creator(tm), and were a major part of what drove Leupai off the internet entirely starting in 2018.

So imagine. Imagine for a moment. Being so hungry for clout and attention. That you steal your ex-partner's species concept that they've had since they were literally 8 years old, barely file off the serial numbers, and then make that your entire online persona four full years after your partner broke up with your ass twice for being an abusive piece of shit over a 10-year timeframe.

To borrow my own tags from this post, which got me thinking about all of this again?

#This is all to say; if you're jealous of someone else's success? Fine. Go have your emotion. But don't lift their shit.#Your emotions are valid; your actions aren't.

(Oh, and this is the smallest thing in the world, the least important piece of this? Riftclaws are already a thing from a game released in 2016 called Grim Dawn.)

[mint-is-here]

hey guyss,,,, if i did a like.. murder drones lmk au would you guys like. be fine iwth it??? pls i need confirmation

[fairyhaos]

*gritting my teeth* imitation is a form of flattery, not stealing. imitation is a form of flattery, not stealing. imitation is a form of flattery, not stealing. imitation—

[jennilah]

do u guys ever have an idea for a drawing & u need to quickly hunt down a similar piece by another artist that u havent seen in a hot minute to make sure ur idea came from your own head and their exact posing didnt accidentally inception its way in there despite being unable to specifically recall how they drew theirs

[daydadahlias]

some of y'all make it really fucking hard to keep creating in this fandom im just gonna be honest.

[randomnameless]

Localization discourse has started to rear its head again because of some Funimation localizer defending a line from Dragon Maid but it really got me thinking, I feel like so many people are so quick on demonizing anyone who doesn't like localization changes as pro-GG when it's much more simpler. People don't hate localization changes because of the message itself but rather because it's not what the character is saying 9/10 and it comes off as calculated and cynical. I feel like it's kind of a direct consequence of transformative fandom, with the whole "I'm going to write the story the way I want it to be and fill up the spaces" but instead of a fanfic it's with the original source material.

Pro GG?

What is GG? AI?

I remember this argument of the "it's not what the character is saying" and people being pissed because they couldn't get the "right" script - and tbh, after reading some arguments here and there, localisation always comes with necessary changes/adaptation to the text, let it be grammatically or to convey ideas from a language to another, so if you want a 100% faithful script then... better start to learn the language lol

With Funimation though...

The Shinchan earlier post was telling enough of my opinion about drastic changes that aren't used to transcribe a meaning or convey an idea to a foreign audience, it's just... erasing the source material and swapping your own ideas on them.

Like, uhhh

Funimation acquired the Shin-chan US license in 2005. Funimation's dub takes many liberties with the source material and was heavily Americanized. Many sexual references, dark humor, and references to then-current popular American culture were added, including many jokes about subjects such as Jews, terrorism, and Viagra. Characters were given significantly different personalities and new, previously non-existent backstories. For instance, Shin is refused an allowance, on he basis that he could use it to buy drugs (crystal meth), his schoolmate Kazama ('Georgie Herbert Walker Prescott III' in this dub) was an absurdly hawkish ultra-conservative Republican, the unseen father of Nene (known in the dub as "Penny") was suggested to be physically abusive towards both his wife and daughter, Principal Enchou was rewritten as a half Romani, half Peruvian man with a complicated, checkered backstory that includes a stint as an accident-prone magician, The kids' teacher: Yoshinaga-sensei (known in the dub as "Miss Polly"), was rewritten as a kinky and often domineering nymphomaniac,

The earlier Vitello and Phuuz dub also edited some jokes and/or what was considered indecent exposure like shin's buttocks and tried to "occidentalise" a few references, but it wasn't like straight up changing what a character is or their personality!

No doubts funimation was "authorised" by whoever had the rights of the franchise to lolcalise and edit it as they did but it just comes out as a "why did they rewrite that stuff like they did", to make more money, to make another "mature cartoon" like Family Guy expy, idk.

And to be honest... I don't really care, because I grew up with the Vitello Dub and read some manga chapters of Shin-chan, so I know what the manga/anime (sure, the dog wasn't named lucky but shiro!) is supposed to say and/or be about.

I don't agree when you say those "lololcalisations" are a consequence of the transformative fandom in general, transformative works have existed since... forever lol (some dude wrote in the early middle ages (grégoire de Tours?) how Franks are descendans of Achilles or something to explain how kickass his king and his people are like, at this point, he's writing a self-insert OC story, right?)

But in modern times, there used to be a clear (?) divide between what was transformative work and what was canon - 50 Shades of Grey sort of started as a Twilight fanfic, but it became its own thing and no calls it a Twilight adaptation or "Twilight" anymore.

The Aeneid? Despite what devoted fans wants the world to believe, is "just" a fanfiction, aka someone writing about the characters he """loves""" no matter how OOC they are. It's a Fodlan fanfic and treated as such. Or should lol.

Still, if in a fanfic, Flayn can apologise for being born as a lizard because having lizard blood means she's automatically evil and oppresses humanity due to the fact she exists, it's only a fanfic. It's not something I like, OOC as fuck, but okay, moving on. Rhea eating ketchup is my own hc, also OOC since we don't see her eating any in the games, same thing - but fanfics are OOC by essence because they're a transformative work !

As I said, okay, moving on.

But when what is supposed to be as close as "canon", albeit translated, dips in the same "OOC" territory?

Sure, Eng!Raphael will say "I" instead of "ore" to refer to himself - and yet, imo, if professional localisers (at least the people picked by the company to bring games to an international audience!) have some sort of leeway with canon, their work is inherently transformative - since they're localising -they are still bound by some rules, unlike a fanfic author, because the aim of their work is not the same.

When you write a fanfic, you write it for yourself, to tell the story you want.

Of course it depends, like the funi shin chan dub showed, but usually, I think, when you are a professional localising something (a manga, anime, book, tv series, myth, story, anything!) you are supposed to only bring "necessary" changes to the source material to bring this source material to the "targeted audience".

And it's kind of hard to determine at what point is a "change" necessary or not - back in the 2000, "Jonouchi" had to be changed in "Joey" because, supposedly, non japanese children wouldn't be able to understand/connect/watch/idk a show with a foreign name (even here in France, we got "Petit Coeur" aka Small/Little Heart for... Piccolo in the early 90s!) - but now in the 2020s Midorima isn't dubbed "Mike".

(even if 2013 saw a localised Fates edit "Suzukaze" to "Kaze" for reasons as foggy as Fodlan's 10k years of lore)

And we of course have the notion of "targeted audience" - here in France, in the 90s, basically any "animated cartoon" was supposed to be targeted for children, like 3 to 10 years old. Which is the reason why we got lunar dubs for Hokuto no Ken and City Hunter (no "brothels", but instead, "vegetarian restaurants"!).

Yugioh was dubbed for a younger audience than, I guess, what was the targeted audience for the manga (even the original anime, regardless of the dub or not, feels like it was made for younger "children" than the ones who would read the manga!).

And this is where I wanted to come with the modern "transform the source material!" lolcalisations - are they "heavily" edited because they target a specific audience?

Like... the funimation Shinchan dub was obviously not aimed at children the manga, or even the original anime, hell even the Vitello dub, were targeting.

It's almost as if we're not talking about "bringing this definite thing to random people", but "finding/tweaking random things to definite people".

Take Fodlan's lolcalisation, especially Treehouse/Pat's.

NoA was the only regional branch to have, on the official website, something like "the Church controls Fodlan".

Through the 4 (already 4!) years of coverage, some people are still finding dub exclusive lines that portray the CoS as "BaD" or in a more negative light than the original text. Pat completely missed (or was it on purpose?) Rhea's character, so Leigh had to dub Rhage, when Supreme Leader was scrubbed off her most, uh, dubious personality traits (tfw no information campaign anymore :( or calling Rhea a Nabatean as an insult :()

Why? Why those changes? Is it because Pat/Treehouse didn't want to bring the game to the US, but wanted to bring this game to the "Dany revolution yas slay kween" crowd + the "organised religion especially catholicism BaD" crowd? Or because they thought bringing "a game" to this crowd would bring more money than to bring "Fire Emblem Three Houses" to the general US crowd? So they "reworked" FE16 to have messages that would attract this certain crowd ?

(and apparently it worked, iirc the US sales made up for 50% of FE16's sales, so it was very popular (and profitable!!))

The Pat/Treehouse changes weren't "necessary" to understand the source material, or try to find similar references (a trip to a hot spring in Shinchan was replaced with a trip to Paris, because children who might not be familiar with japan might not know what is a hot spring, or what a "trip to the hot spring" is supposed to be), so why were they made?

Is it like the Funimation dub? To reach specific people, even if the meaning and essence of the original material is lost?

In a nutshell, I don't think localisation companies (Treehouse or Funi) work in a vaccum, if they can lolcalise so much, it obviously means they got the authorisation of whoever has the rights to the original source material (maybe even the creator themselves!) to "edit" the content...

But that's what I came to regret the time where localisation, even if they had westernised names and more westernised refs, wasn't that "free", as in, Funi and Pat/Treehouse write their fanfic of Shinchan/FE16 ? Sure, why not, I mean, everyone can write a fanfic. Can I get a peak at the original source - edited as necessary because i'm not reading in the original language and I might not catch all references - please? No, because the only thing available is either something I cannot understand, or a fanfiction that takes liberties, as fanfic do, with canon.

Take Shinchan.

OG : Shin is a preschooler who has a dog named Shiro - meaning white - because his dog is white.

Vitello dub : Shin is a preschooler who has a dog named Lucky.

Funi dub : Shin wants an allowance but his parents are afraid he will buy meth and he has a dog named Lucky.

Remove the "old school" Vitello dub, and either Shin is a preschooler who named his dog "white" because the dog is white, or Shin is... a young child who receives money but lives in an area where he could buy drugs.

I can't understand the OG material, and I know the Funi one is a fanfiction, so what should I do? Treat this fanfic as canon, or, learn the language/try to understand the material by myself using dubious tools like translating apps? Or am I cursed to forever miss on Shinchan, even in the 2000s, aka an era where people can translate and localise movies from one language to another, but apparently for this one manga/anime, it's not possible unless it's lolcalised? Snowhite was turned into "Blanche-Neige" but the story is mostly the same than the one told in the US, but for Shinchan, I can only get the "Family Guy" version that isn't told in Japan?

I remember there was a controversy about localisation (when the thing that sparked that controversy wasn't even localisation related!) where some people, annoyed with the "liberties" they have with their dub version, became intense and rude and want to see localisers as "mere" translators...

And it escalated to have some localisers basically saying a game they localised is "their take" on a story - which is true, because each translation/localisation works with the bias of the translator/localiser, even if they try to be as neutral as possible, they can't completely remove themselves from their work -

Still, in FE16, Pat'n'Treehouse removed the "Supreme Leader uses propaganda" mention. Why? Is it their bias talking, they don't want her to "look bad"? But the script, the game wants the player to know she uses "information campaigns". Pat's "take" is she doesn't use it, but as a player, can't I be offered the choice to make my own take after seeing the script that mentions it, or not? Is Pat the one who directed the script, and wrote it as the "main thread" that links everything in the game (regardless of Fodlan's consistency lol), or was it Kusakihara/someone else?

If pat arbitrarly "removes" this part of the script, but I see it because I play in Japanese/Chinese/Korean/heck maybe other languages whose dub wasn't overseen by Pat, can it be said I played the same game as the players who played with the Pat dub/script?

Pat's CF!Felix calls Dimitri a monster, OG CF!Felix calls him a man -> thankfully we can count on fans to find stuff like this out but, again, why this bias against Dimitri in CF - that comes here from the lolcalisation, and not from the original text?

Why is it there? What if someone wants to play, and hopefully, understand, not Pat's "take" on their relationship in CF, but the writers/developer's? Is that someone fucked, or kindly asked to learn japanese (aka to do Pat'n'Treehouse's job?).

I don't really have The Perfect Solution (tm) anon to the general localisation discourse, at one point I was on the "just translate" fence, but when you understand a pun or a reference, and how it connects to something else, the game/book/anime/movie you're watching takes another level and it's much more enjoyable!

And yet, growing up with 4Kids and seeing shit like Treehouse butchering stuff, or hearing about Funimation Shinchan is... disheartening.

The only thing I can say is I'll always be rooting for dual audio, let it be for preferences but also to get at least what is easily understandable to everyone (I mean intonations, shocks, laughs, etc etc) and a glimpse at what the game/moving/anime is supposed to be enjoyed, especially with story heavy scripts like the FE series - while reading subs, because even the script is translated/localised, at least with the audio, it's easier to spot "lolcalisations".

And let's not forget the most important lol

The Fandom itself!

Let it be for FE, Tales or anything else, what I find fascinating (on Tumblr but even on redshit and SF once upon a time!) is how fans will be able to compare scripts, people familiar/fluent/who know a language will be able to spot the changes, and inform anyone who wants to be informed in the community that, say, Xander and Marx are pretty different characters, just like Jp!Effie and "I love to eat"!Effie.

Of course sometimes there will be misinformation (remember the Dimitri is rude because he uses the omae pronoun?), but I still find fascinating how, faced with ridiculous lolcalisations, fandom itself - aka part of the people who were supposed to be the targets of said lolcalisation - tries to "correct" and remove the unecessary edits. There are still people who dgaf about what was lolcalised from what wasn't, but even if it's just a consequence of the lolcalisation growing more and more unrestrained/unchained to the source material - it makes fandom engagment all the more precious and fascinating.

Like, you have real people basically combing the script and/or providing a translation - for free! - to help other fans, when some lolcalisers are paid to... edit and "lolcalise" the script some fans want to see.

And so, we're back to square 1 : who is the targeted audience of Funi's Shinchan or FE Treehouse?

The players/watchers?

FE Fates was, I suppose, ultimately lolcalised for a """western"" audience", aka an US one because no one gives a fuck about the rest of the world - and yet, assuming a majority of fans are from the US, said lolcalisation was mocked/ridiculed and ultimateld decried by part of that audience from who the game was lolcalised.

Some people (I've seen a redshit post about it today!) claim the lolcalised changed aren't made for the audience, but, much like a fanfiction, those changed weren't made to be more palatable to an audience, but were made for themselves - aka to push some agenda (see redshit's theory about funi pushing a "woke" agenda in their dubs and subs when it doesn't exist in the og scripts).

And to be fair, with FE16's US exclusive "Church BaD and controls the world!!!" + "Dimtri is not a man but a monster!", idk what Treehouse was trying to do, push their "organised religions BaD" agenda and "Supreme Leader is right so let's make her opponents BaD to highlight how right she is" bias? - but I can't help but wonder if it was indeed the case, and given how Pat sucked as a voice director, if the localised!version wasn't just some sort of trolley Treehouse used to convey their ideas, regardless of what the game wanted to say.

I mean, it's still fascinating, to this day, nearly 5 years after the release of the game, that we still find "Treehouse exclusive" lines, or how FEH who's still running, also has "Treehouse exclusive" lines for Fodlan characters that absolutely don't match the non global, aka, jp lines, let them be written or spoken - putting on the tinfoil hat, I wonder if Treehouse or whoever oversees the localisation isn't deadly afraid that if they don't pay extreme attention and/or rewrite anything related to Fodlan, global!players will realise that they were fed "Pat's Fire Emblem Treehouse", instead of FE16, thus takes extra care to comb and/or rewritte every line/dialogue that could make a global player think twice and note that this thing they're reading/hearing of in FEH (or even Engage!! See Dimitri's lolcalised line about people of different races living together!) is completely different from "Pat's Fire Emblem Treehouse".

Tl;Dr because I ranted and disgressed and idk where am I anymore with this post lol :

I think there's a difference between fandom's transformative works - done for fun, as a hobby! - and some lolcaliser's transformative works - they're paid for that and aren't supposed to bring a fanfiction to the audience, at least not as localisers ; so I wouldn't blame "fandom" for the fuckery that happened (Funi's shinchan is more than 17 years old!) and is sadly still happening.

On the contrary, given how fandom (at least some part of it) actively refuses to accept the lolcalised "fanfiction" - to the point of doing translation work! - I think fandom is the reason why this discourse is happening.

[grim-echoes]

since that hbomb video went up james somerton has deleted his twitter and all of his patreon content and has lost 17k subscribers as of the time of posting this and i think it's so funny that hbomb of all people was the one to single out this specific creator and utterly obliterate him to the point that even hundreds of thousands of people who have never heard of him before now have him on their shit lists, i feel so vindicated lmao

[meximango]

Day 19 - Taken - Tibby - G

Summary: Tibby leaves home.

Ngl I don’t remember the layout of the Ruby Sea and how she would’ve gotten to the big city organically lmaooo I was too tired to open the game and map it out myself.

I could’ve made this the continuation of the last one so easily, the word was like PERFECT, but alas! Too sleepy to think of how to do what I want to do with that.

So I made this instead. A chance to dip my toe into writing about Tibby! Idk if I'll write her again for the current event, but I'm glad I gave it a shot.

Tibby did not have to survive on the surface for long before she found an abundance of inspiration and resources. 

Sui-no-Sato had been all she’d ever known. Her life there had been safe, simple, free of worry–and it was incredibly boring. She might not have ever mustered the impetus to leave, had the outsider not arrived. 

When an adventurer passed through and shared stories of her travels and grand encounters with the townsfolk, Tibby had been enraptured. She was a very animated miqo’te (she’d never seen one before! A tail covered in fur instead of scales, and two fluffy ears atop her head instead of horns. Truly fascinating.) The adventurer also had a book full of complex equations and geometrical figures, which she used to bring forth elemental creatures to aid her in battle. The beautiful blazing Phoenix, a fearsome visage of Bahamut, the winds of Garuda, Titan’s hold over the earth, and Ifrit’s flames. Yet despite being able to summon such miniature simulacrums of terrifying primals, Tibby’s favorite was the simplest creature, the default carbuncle. So cute! That was the first spark that lit the fire in her soul that wished to leave and travel. She wanted to travel the world so she could see other cute creatures, until she found the one she liked best. Then, she would recreate it in mechanical form. (She’d made a few tiny robots while growing up, but they were simple, so they couldn't do much. Also, they were ugly. Bleh.)

She was too shy to talk to the adventurer one on one, but she did a lot of eavesdropping and watching her as she went about her time in the village. The outside world was full of danger, but adventuring sounded so exciting! Besides, she had a plan for getting around the danger. She’d just blow it up or hide behind the safety of other adventurers. If she could make it all the way to Ishgard, she could get an apprenticeship at Skysteel Manufactoryl to become a machinist, so she could get the big guns–literally. She felt completely prepared to leave her bubble under the sea and go to the surface world as soon as she gathered enough materials. It was a few months after the adventurer left that Tibby felt prepared enough to depart. Her backpack stuffed to the brim, she rented a striped ray to take her to the shores of Onokoro, and from there convinced a porter to take her directly to Kugane. 

She helped at the city’s blacksmith for a while so she could learn more about crafting weapons. She was used to tinkering with whatever was laying around her home village, so she had the building and engineering side down, but she hadn’t been able to do much with it. She was going to need firepower if she was going to be an adventurer and stand a chance against enemies. Either that, or she’d need to learn how to build up her defenses. That was when she split tracks and started to apprentice at the armorer’s shop as well. 

During her downtime, she kept up with her self-taught studies as well, which was easy enough. The amount of scrap to be found up here had her spoiled for choice! Her bosses didn’t need to know when she took bits and bobs here and there, especially the unwanted junk–treasures to her, just as the phrase went. If she also went around the other shops in town, especially the goldsmith, and did the same? Well, nobody ever caught her or cared enough to say anything, so she made a habit of it. If she had been caught, she would have simply explained she was just a poor soul trying to hone her craft! Surely that was a worthy pursuit entitling her to some free crafting components?

Once confident that she could craft defensive and offensive implements equally well, as well as the delicate work involving cogs, springs, and crystals, she sold a bunch of her creations to make enough gil to travel from Othard to Eorzea–specifically, to Ishgard. She was lucky the city let her in, as it apparently had been shut down to outsiders for ages during the Dragonsong War, but they were opening their gates more and more ever since a certain adventurer swept through (she knew there was more than one adventurer on the star, but the descriptions she heard certainly sounded familiar, so she was pretty sure she’d met some major celebrity level of adventurer. How funny, that she came to their secluded, tiny town. Hydaelyn worked in mysterious ways. But also, damn. She should have gotten an autograph when she had the chance!) 

She was reminded of home briefly, but that was ok. She could go back one day to visit, but she was still on a mission. Ishgard was in need of help with reconstructing a district of theirs called the Firmament, so her crafting skills came in handy. She gained the notice of Skysteel Manufactory’s owner, and from there she finally got her wish to learn how to become a machinist. With the help of Stephanivien, she developed a rook autoturret. It was certainly fancier than her previous robotics, but still not very cute… She took it apart and built it up again, and again, and again, each time with slightly improved designs. Eventually, Tibby wanted to modify it into something truly unique. Maybe she’d make it look like a karakul, those were pretty darling. A sheep that shot bullets, what could be better than that?

For now, Tibby was content to learn all she could with Stephanivien, but one day soon enough she knew she’d get the itch to really start adventuring in earnest so she could fulfill her quest of finding the cutest creature out there to have the honor of becoming the visage for an automaton death machine, the queen of all turrets! Then normal citizens could feel safe, knowing monsters stood no chance against the face of something that could pass as a mechanical pet to the undiscerning eye. Maybe even the people in her village would feel safe enough to leave and see the world for themselves…

She wasn’t really sure if what she wanted was ridiculous, why she cared. Would she grow out of it? What would she do when her goals would be reached? How does one even know when they’ve found the right creature? Did she just want to see new things? To prove her innovativeness and become a celebrated inventor?  She may have not been completely sure, but she’d at least try out adventuring. If she hated it, she could go back home. If not, then maybe she could make some friends who could help her discover more about life purposes. She had plenty of time to figure it out.

[lacewise]

I have seen a bunch of plagiarism scandals where professional writers and/or experts in the associated field have defended the plagiarist. At length. Doubling, tripling, quadrupling down and laughing at the people who called out their lack of ethics.

Now, ~suddenly~, even ~miraculously~, they have a problem with it. Sure. That makes sense.

[astranauticus]

idk what is it about that one throwaway line from han sooyoung about her writing 10 chapters in one day that finally broke me but oh my fuckin god i love her so much

[themidnightcircusshow]

Watching Hbomberguy's follow up on Illuminaughtii and am suffering because "youtubers who know nothing about anything can misunderstand a bunch of articles and just lie to millions of people."

[yangjeongin]

.

[carcarrot]

will i ever come up with a creative idea that is easy and not incredibly involved