#rip to gakuen but it has lived its time :(

[whirling-fangs]

[[so uh.... i've made an interesting purchase at a con today ....]]

[kareofbears]

Ok. . . but can you give an in-depth explanation as to how you feel about akeshu?

yes. 

rest is under the cut since this is going to be a long answer 

im a big big big big big fan of enemies to lovers. love it. loved the initial hate, the heightening tension between two characters with conflicting situations or personality types. i love the anger, the arguments, the sighs from everyone around them because they’re tired of the repetitive beef. during quarantine, i even wrote out and gave a verbal presentation to my beta explaining how an enemies to lovers arc would work through writing and all the needed dynamics in order to justify a person falling in love with their enemy. 

and yeah, the process is the best part of it. i want to be able to see the transition between worst enemy to begrudged partner to lover. that’s the best part!!! the character development!!! the molding around each other and learning to accept their character flaws!! the willingness to defend that flaw in front of other people!! 

but here’s where the problem lies: akechi goro. 

oh akechi. oh akechi goro, the bane of my existence and the object of affection by everyone in this god forsaken fandom. look, i get it. it’s really really fucking hard to resist the charm of akechi goro, i admit it. he’s so interesting, he’s so in-depth, he’s so cool and rugged and he’s such a bastard that you end up kind of being obsessed with him, and that’s fine. I'm also kind of obsessed with him. 

but i don't like him. because he isn’t a likeable character. there’s a huge difference between thinking he’s a fantastic character and loving him. because i don't love him. i hate him. i despise him. he’s caused so, so, so much grievance, so much pain to so many characters in persona that it honestly impossible to give him a redemption arc. it’s not possible. even if you go down the Black Star route (amazing fanfic, brilliant work) it still doesn't redeem him. he killed futabas mom (which literally led her to her spiraling depression and self hatred and manifested intense mental illness that led to her isolating herself from the world and made her lose her mom that she loves so much) and killed haru’s dad (how on earth can you justify that one??? god, haru wanted nothing more than to just see her dad happy again) and killed so many other random people!! and don’t feed me that “oh he had a sad life” shut the fuck up literally everyone in p5 had a sob story and you don't see them killing people. he’s complex, not likeable. 

but here’s the good part: the game doesn't want you to like akechi. i mean it. they never said what he did was okay (never. they never said it was okay), they never said that you had to like him. all they said was that you had to work with him. even in the third semester, the one people are so insistent on calling a redemption arc, isn’t a fucking redemption arc. they just want you to see who akechi really is!! without the facade!!! all they want is for you to see how complex he is, see him spiral and angry and bitter and they want you to see him turn out the complete opposite of akira. 

and here’s where we actually start talking about akeshu

akechi and akira are two halves of the same coin. akira chose the side of justice (by ironically being a criminal) while akechi chose the side of vengeance (which is ironic, since he’s a detective.) see, even with that whole crime vs justice thing, they’re connected. the person who ruined their life is the same person (shido), they both have had hard lives. but they turned out as opposites, with akira having a much better life than akechi--which is why akechi is so obsessed with akira. what does akira have that he doesn't? why did he turn out happy when he’s still miserable? and that creates a tension (which we will talk about later)

akechi and akira are rivals. they are connected, they always will be. it’s a hero/villain narrative that we all love, it’s an interesting character dynamic. it’s fun to see them interact. 

but by god, it does not mean that akechi and akira are good for each other. i would go as far to say it would do akechi a huge disservice as a character if you made them end up together. 

remember how akechi is a complex character? if akechi ends up with akira, you would essentially be ripping out all of his complexity just to have both of them date. akechi doesn't want to be with akira, and if you honestly think akechi is in love with akira id be surprised because he’s not--he’s obsessed with akira, infatuated with him. what he’s feeling isn’t love, it’s the feeling of frustration. he doesn't care about akira, or anyone. he cares about himself, and that’s it. which is what makes him so interesting because this never changes throughout the entire game!!! that's so FUN!!!

and the game never wants you to forget that complexity!! because they never gave akechi a redemption arc!! they want you to remember him as someone who’s willing to die for himself. (and, in a way, that’s the extent of akechis mercy. because before shidos palace, he wasn't even willing to die for himself, you know what i mean? he was willing to die in shidos palace because that’s what he wanted, he wanted to defeat shidos cognition of himself, he wanted to save the thieves because they were the first to listen to him and understand him, but he didn't really do it out of empathy. he did it because he’d rather die than continue living shidos lie--funny because that how he ‘dies’ in the third semester. nice one atlus)

and i get it. the game gives them such an undeniable tension that its super easy to see it as love, but its not. it’s not love, guys. that tension isn’t love, because what it’s actually tragedy. it’s tragic that akechi can’t have happiness (in canon, at least.) it’s tragic that akira, the person who loves his friends more than anything, who would die saving someone he doesn't even know, it’s tragic that he can’t save someone who’s the most desperate to be saved. and that is why i love platonic/non-romantic akeshu, because i think that concept is way more interesting than them falling in love. it’s about akira’s obvious trauma that he couldn’t save everyone, it’s about akechi’s hard-headedness about not wanting to be saved because he’s been let down too many times for him to ever put trust into anyone again. 

it’s tragic. it’s meant to be tragic. persona 5 is a game about fighting for reality, and reality is fucking hard. so the fact that these two people have such a tragic ending despite what we, as an audience, are used to (happy endings), is part of the game. they’re not meant for each other. they won’t work, they don't work. that tension isn't made out of love or sexual tension--it’s stemmed from tragedy and hate and confusion and such a deep rooted sadness from inside of them. 

they both deserve better than each other. akira deserves to be with the friends he made in tokyo, and akechi deserves to be with someone (if he lives) who isn’t associated with the metaverse at all. he deserves a clean slate, he deserves a fresh start. he deserves a reset. 

and another reason is that akira loves his friends too much. he would do anything for them. it’s supposed to be funny--the wildcard, with no vulnerability, no weakness, has the most weakness out of all of them because he cares too deeply about his friends that if one single thing were to hurt them akira would fold like a deck of cards. you think akira would do that to haru? to futaba? yeah, right. he would never. akira can forgive but he would never forget. he’d never compromise. not for his friends.

so going back to the topic of enemies to lovers--akeshu is not enemies to lovers, because there are certain rules for enemies to lovers. enemies should be fun. it should be people on the opposite team with different perspectives. enemies should not be morally horrific. the ‘enemy’ should be forgivable. both characters should still come off likable. they should both be able to stand up on their own legs as characters even if you take away their love interest. for example, hermione/draco wouldn't work because draco calls Hermione a slur on many occasions. that is not forgivable. if draco instead, i don't know, cheats off her test or something and she gets mad and they have a back and forth thing, then sure, hermione/draco could work. 

a fantastic enemies to lovers would be snowbaz from carry on. uh, zootopia? thats a great one. natsume and mikan from gakuen alice is good too!! basically, there’s a lot of actual good enemies to lovers out there. enemies to lovers shouldn't be morally ambiguous. it should be fun. it should be the right kind of tension. the characters should be likable from both sides. and akeshu does not have that. 

tldr stan akiryu and akesumi instead 

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Translation Plans

Well... my break was pretty good. was finally able to download the clean fresh live version of the cxm secret mission that i had my eye on since i ranked up, saw the 1984 wonder woman movie (it was okay and I could write an essay on what didn’t sit well with me as a fan of the comics [im kinda of a comic book purist when it comes to the way characters think and their behaviour] but I really liked Lynda Carter’s cameo).... made a lot of progress on one of the hakumyu piano arrangements i’m working on (have now probably listened to certain parts of that song over a hundred times now), watched a bunch of the original hakuoki musicals in hd.... and I finally got my dad to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. My bro and I have been trying to get that to happen for years lol... especially since it has Conroy and Hamill doing the Batman and Joker voices (the animated series is the best!). super steep learning curve tho since it’s being played on the ps3 and the last console he used was the Nintendo Gamecube.    

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stock up on translations as much as I would have liked to during this time on account of my hardware seriously acting up... to the point that I needed to send my laptop in for repairs and get a new one. Aside from how unresponsive my keyboard was and how hot it got, the laptop itself had become quite slow... though that might have been because my passport [external storage drive] took a bad fall which made a lot of my files harder to access since it was barely able to handle files being accessed/copied/moved off of it (this is after diagnosing it and repairing it via command prompt chkdsk x: / r), with the latter being what I spent most of my break waiting for as i avoided using my laptop since the majority of my drama rips and game capture videos were on it... To give you an idea of how long this took (and how long it is still taking), I went from being able to transfer my 50mb of files in a few seconds... to sometimes taking more than a day (tho other times i’d be able to get 4gb moved in >24 hours, making the timing super inconsistent. also i don’t have access to a cd drive now so i can’t just re-rip things)... which is why I haven’t been able to work on any videos since my last post (I have more than 1.3TB of stuff to move, so my new laptop isn’t exactly at its best right now and won’t be for a long while since I’m not going to be using a recovery service as waiting out the transfers for everything out will definitely be cheaper... the ballpark estimate I got was being anywhere from $500-2000, which is money that i am not exactly eager to part from just for the sake of saving time)... meaning I also probably won’t get to videos for a while since subtitling requires accurate timing and im not fond of things freezing on me while working on videos... ugh. i still have to do an insane amount of grinding later in warframe once my current batch of files finishes transferring... 

Anyway, below is a list of what I’ve mostly managed to schedule (anything with a “?” is something that I haven’t committed to) and a list of what I’d like to get done this year (can’t make any guarantees... however, im probably going to try and translate some things with souma this year cuz of hakumyu), while the stuff in bold text is on my shortlist of things I intend to prioritize (Saito’s Ginsei no Shou chapters and Shinsengumi Oni-tan are still being worked on though not as actively since they’re a lot longer...). 

Also, aside from December, the month that CNY falls on (February this year) and March (bday) will be the only foreseeable times when I put out less translations tho I’ll probably be playing video catch-up during that time this year since i’m not sure what i’ll be able to get done as i wait for my files to get moved.

oh well. I’m still aiming towards posting stuff on a weekly basis for the rest of the year... here’s hoping that it’s less volatile.... tho i unfortunately have non-existent expectations given what made the news yesterday. just glad i don’t live there.

YAISA!

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January

Yuugiroku 3 Saito Fall story today!

Chapter 7 of Saito’s route from Ginsei no Shou + 4-koma

Hakuoki Kyoka-Roku Kazama CG Character Perspective [no vid. havent beaten this game and im not sure when i’ll feel like speed running through it]

Hakuo Gakuen Q & A

February 

Stellaworth Hana no Shou After Story - Harada

Chapter 1 of Saito’s route from Ginsei no Shou

Web drama 8

March

Yuugiroku 3 - Short Episode #8 (Kazama/Amagiri/Shiranui) [still need to get video and screenshots] 

Yuugiroku Drama CD Thumb Sized Samurai Track 1-4 (4 is WIP)?

Char monologue?

April

2017 Otomate Hakuoki SSL April Fool’s Day

薄桜鬼 遊戯録 隊士達の大宴会 店铺特典「教えてください山崎さん！」 (completed yesterday)

Yuugiroku 3 - Short Episode #6 “Yukimura the page’s secret”?

char perspective?

Other

Hijikata Biyori (cuz these are short) 

Yuugiroku 3 Short Episodes (these are longer than the ssl cross and daily stories)

Kyoka Roku Conversation in the Rain - Okita/Toudou/Kazama

Kyoka-Roku CG perspectives

2013 Otomate Party Hakuoki drama “Ideal place for a disagreement”

Saito Ginsei no Shou Chapters

Shinsengumi Oni-tan

Stellaworth Hana no Shou After Stories - Souji, Heisuke (THIS YEAR FOR SURE DAMMIT!)

2011 Hakuoki Reimeiroku Otomate Party drama

Stellaworth Nightshade Kuroyuki CD

薄桜鬼 遊戯録弐 祭囃子と隊士達 A店特典「あなた好みの想いの形」

薄桜鬼 真改 ~風華大全~ 特典「稽古の痛み」

2016 Otomate Party Code:Realize drama* (this is almost 30 min so i will probably translate less that month if i get to it)

2019 ????????????? Halloween SS?*

????????????? Stellaworth Vocal CD (8 tracks)*

*have to check these 3 since I don’t actively follow these fandoms/tags tho im pretty sure no one has translated anything from the fandom for the last 2 items.

also, re:patreon goal - i am currently not able to access the files for the drama i am looking to get a translation commissioned for as it is in the process of being moved off of my damaged passport. 29gb  remains as part of that transfer, which is the result of me trying to move all 865 files from where i keep the majority of the hakuoki dramas i’ve saved all at once... ended up doing that because every time I access that hard drive, each time i open up a folder, and every time I highlight a file to move, the file explorer goes “not responding” for an uncertain amount of time, and have instead opted in doing something that would hopefully reduce the likelihood of something crashing.