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hikari-kaitou · 3 years

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Capcom's Official AA Fanclub Surveys - DGS Edition

Many Western fans may be familiar with the Turnabout 4koma comics that get posted on the official AA fanclub site that Capcom runs, thanks to some lovely fans on tumblr and elsewhere who have shared their translations. What fewer people seem to know about is the character surveys.

Back in the old days, they used to hold a survey on Capcom's official AA fansite every few months where they'd write about the seasonal activities of a handful of characters and ask fans to vote for the funniest/most pleasant/strangest/etc answer.

They stopped doing them in like... 2016? 2017? The original text is lost for good as far as I can tell. Even the wayback machine couldn't help because the content was password locked and you can't get past the password wall while remaining in the archived version.

Fortunately, I saved some of my translations of them so I thought I’d share them.

Cut for length...

"February has begun, and the DGS cast is nearing the end of their journey aboard the RFS Alacrei. Which of them acted the most strangely?"

Ryuunosuke ~ Exhausted from his intensive study session, he decided to try some katana swinging practice as a change of pace and to combat his recent lack of exercise. But because he wasn't used to handling the katana, he swung it too hard and it went flying out of his hands and got stuck in the wall right next to Sherlock, who had just entered the room. Sherlock asked him, "aren't you supposed to be studying right now, Mr. Naruhodo?" and handcuffed him to his desk.

Susato- worked on developing a curriculum for Ryuunosuke. 'If we keep going at this pace, he won't be able to learn it all in time... It'll be hard on Naruhodo-sama, but we'll have to work hard through a couple of nights together.' With that thought, she created a harsh study schedule, and almost seemed to be looking forward to it for some reason.

Sherlock- Driven by excitement over the thought of returning to England after a long absence, he went up on deck to stare at the ocean. Being February, it was very cold out there and he ended up being chilled all the way to the tips of his fingers. He returned to the ship cabins and amused himself by putting his frozen hands on Ryuunosuke, who was stuck in his room studying.

Van Zieks- Upon hearing from Vortex that there was a Japanese exchange student coming to England to study law, he smashed a Lord's Bottle. He apparently also didn't care for the fact that that Japanese student wouldn't be alone, because he proceeded to shatter his chalice, too.

Hosonaga- in order to provide a respite from studying, he provided some hot chocolate. They enjoyed a pleasant tea time, marveling over how sweet and delicious the drink was until Sherlock piped up with some unnecessary trivia: 'Actually folks, chocolate has long been used in Europe as an aphrodisiac!' Everyone promptly spat it out."

"The long winter is nearly over and spring is on it's way, putting the DGS cast members in a celebratory mood. Who found the best way of enjoying spring?"

Ryuunosuke: the Yuumei University faculty members were holding a flower viewing event, and he joined the assistance committee. He exhausted himself keeping the blankets clean so the intense shower of flower petals wouldn't pile up too high on them, delivering sake and snacks, and mediating whatever pointless fights arose. To top it all off, for some reason his compensation was only a single piece of leftover candy. Talk about a sad result!

Susato- her father and the others living in his dormitory were holding the flower viewing event, so she got up early to prepare the bentos. But her father carelessly forgot to tell her that they wanted tea cakes, so she had to go around the house and neighborhood collecting sweets. For some reason, she ended up being able to gather caramels, biscuits, candy sticks, basically everything but tea cakes, for the tea ceremony.

Sherlock- he disguised himself as a beat officer and infiltrated Scotland Yard to have some fun. There was a real beat officer napping on his feet in the spring sunshine, and while observing him, Sherlock ended up falling asleep too. Detective Gregson gave them a good scolding when he found them, but then Sherlock revealed his true identity with a "hey, it's me, folks!" "What the blazes do you think you're doing?!" Gregson shouted, his rage growing even more, and Sherlock ended up making a run for it.

Van Zieks- went to the vineyard to oversee the production of the contents of his Lord's Bottle. As he viewed the still unopened grape blossom buds, he thought about how they would someday grow up to fill his Lord's Bottle, and ended up going around to look at each one. But the farm hands couldn't stop wondering whether the bottle itself or its owner's heel might come flying at them and were quite uneasy.

Asougi: exhausted himself running around since early morning helping with the professors' flower viewing event. When it was over, he took a break, sharing his reward candy stick [the name of the candy literally translates to 1,000 year candy] with Ryuunosuke, who had also been helping out.

"I wonder if the candy's effect is halved if you share it with someone."

"That still gives us 500 years."

They laughed and enjoyed looking at the flowers until dark. Then they parted ways with a handshake and a "see you later, best friend."

(This one was something about celebrating New Years. For some reason I didn't save the original question)

"Ryuunosuke ~ To celebrate New Years, he planned to pound mochi with everyone at the office. He somehow managed to get his hands on some mochi rice and he and Sherlock started pounding. Iris was having such fun watching them that she steamed a whole bunch more mochi rice so they could have some to share, and he and Sherlock spent the whole evening pounding mochi like crazy.

Asougi~ Because it's New Years, he went around to a bunch of shrines. When he drew his new year's fortune, he got a "horrible luck" result. "I'm not worried about it," he claimed, and headed up to the mountains early on New Years morning and work hard on a full training course of purification by water, meditation under a waterfall and wooden sword practice. It seems that he was working really hard to clear his mind of all earthly thoughts

Sherlock- Agreed to help Ryuunosuke pound mochi. As Ryuunosuke was flipping the mochi over, he carelessly dropped his badge into the bowl and Sherlock mixed it in without noticing, so they had to crack open both the hard and soft mochi to look for it. Fortunately they found it in the 4th one they checked, but apparently Sherlock got his hands and face covered in sticky white mochi in the process.

Susato- Wore a furisode and went with her father to do the first shrine visit of the year. The shrine was incredibly crowded and they had to wait in line for a long time, but she brought the Encyclopaedia of British Law and a copy of the Strand Magazine in her sleeves to secretly read as they waited so she actually ended up enjoying the wait.

Van Zieks- Ryuunosuke cheerfully gave him some mochi as a New Year’s (which at that time was celebrated at the same time as the Chinese New Year) gift, which he accepted confusedly, wondering “...Can the Japanese not even keep track of when the New Year is?” Because Ryuunosuke referred to it as a rice cake, he tried to eat it like a regular cake without softening it with heat first. It was so hard that he couldn’t imagine how it could possibly be food, and ended up misunderstanding the Japanese even more!

"Autumn has arrived, and the weather is starting to cool off, which means that everyone is becoming more active. Which character chose the most pleasant autumn activity to keep busy with?"

Iris was making bread but her hands are small and it’s difficult for her to knead the dough, so she asked for Ryuunosuke’s help. She wanted to make enough to hand out to Gina and all the other homeless children in the East End, so she made a massive amount and Ryuunosuke was stuck kneading this massive mountain of bread dough all day. Apparently he became such a expert at kneading that he could be a baker now.

Asougi was practicing with his sword, slicing autumn-colored ginko leaves as they fell from the tree. He cut so many leaves, though, that he ended up making a big mess on the ground, the number of fallen leaves now having increased, and it took him a long time to clean it all up.

Sherlock: Ryuunosuke told him that he was making anpan (bread filled with sweet red bean paste, the bane of my Asian-dwelling existance) and asked Sherlock to help by being in charge of getting the poppy seeds they’d need to sprinkle on top, so Sherlock went out and gathered a ton of poppy seeds. In fact, he got so many of them that no one knew what to do with them all cuz they had a huge amount of leftovers. Sherlock said, “Well, they’re only the size of poppy seeds! Surely you two can deal with them somehow! Ahahaha!” and Iris scolded him.

(I couldn’t capture it in English, but Sherlock’s line contained a pun, and a pretty stupid one at that, so that’s part of why he got scolded)

It’s grape harvesting season, so Van Zieks commutes to the winery regularly to direct the production of the contents for his “Lord’s Bottle.” He demands perfection in everything from the selection of the grapes to the way they’re squeezed, and the winery staff is terrified by the “grim reaper’s” gaze and heel swinging (i.e. the leg thing he does in court) so they grumble as they work.

"Hearing that there’s a holiday in the West called Halloween, the people involved with the court in Japan decided to try it out themselves. Naturally Halloween is a big deal in England as well. So, which member of the DGS cast had the best celebration?"

Team Ryuunosuke and Asougi- Asougi got Naruhodo up on his shoulders and they draped a white sheet over themselves to make a ghost costume. They went out like that, but Naruhodo had such exaggerated reactions to the fear of the people who saw them and to bumping his head on tree branches that they ended up losing their balance and falling on top of each other?!

Sherlock Holmes- went wearing a horse’s head mask. Iris used her skills to make it a fancy horse covered in stars, but the eye holes weren’t well made and he had to wander around blindly. Because of that he tripped hard over a pile of coal! He ended up getting so dirty that the stars on his costume were covered up!

Van Zieks- took inspiration from his nickname and dressed up as the grim reaper. He covered himself up with a skeleton mask and hood figuring no one would know it was him. Unfortunately he got angry when he saw Megundal (McGilded) pass by and started throwing bottles and glasses and ended up giving himself away.

"November has arrived, and autumn is nearing its end. However, the DGS cast is still keeping busy, even on their days off. Which character chose the most interesting way to spend their late autumn day?"

Ryuunosuke- Thinking that he’d better learn more about British culture if he was going to be a defense attorney in Britain, he went down to the East End with Gina for a little observation. However, because an Asian like him stood out so much, he got mobbed by the other children. On top of it all, his arm band got stolen from him and he had to send a replacement request to Yumei University on the other side of the ocean.

Asougi- He went for a meal at La Quantas. The customer at a nearby table got a persimmon for dessert and scarfed it down, saying “Mm! This is it! This sweetness makes it worthy of being called a treasure among foods!” Asougi tried to comment on this by saying, “The customer at that table sure is enjoying his pershim--gak!” but he may or may not have accidentally bitten his tongue in the process and been unable to finish his sentence.

Iris- She accepted Ryuunosuke’s request to learn more about British culture and prepared a bagpipe and kilt costume for him. “This outfit sure is breezy,” Ryuunosuke said shyly upon trying it on. With Ryuunosuke now dressed, he, Iris, and the others from their office headed over to Gregson’s place to get him to treat them to some fish and chips.

Sherlock- He accepted Ryuunosuke’s request to learn more about British culture and cooked up some European style curry for dinner. Thanks to the fact that his secret ingredient was a large amount of Chinese herbal medicine style spice, it caused some strange side effects and Ryuunosuke, who’d eaten it, ended up passing out and falling over.

“Another taxing trial for Ryuunosuke has finished and now it’s December. As the year draws to a close, which character acts the strangest?”

Ryuunosuke- he was recruited to help with snow removal around Yumei University and the courthouse and he enthusiastically began his task with the help of a large shovel. He got a little carried away, though, and ended up accidentally burying his umbrella, which he’d left propped up against the side of the building, in the snow he’d just finished shoveling. He had no choice but to share Asougi’s umbrella on the way home.

Asougi- On the way home, he nods silently to Ryuunosuke’s question of whether he’d finished his travel preparations and changes the subject: “...Come to think of it, it seems that tomorrow is celebrated in the West as God’s birthday.” “I’ve heard that they eat chicken as part of the traditional celebration. Wanna try it?” Ryuunosuke asks invitingly. Asougi is strongly opposed to that particular menu item, however, and they end up going out for their usual beef stew that night instead.

Susato- in addition to her year-end travel preparations, she also was busy with straightening up the book room in her home. She managed to get the law books in order when she suddenly stumbled upon some old issues of Strand Magazine! She hurried through the rest of her cleaning, then began flipping through the magazines she’d found, trying to decide which to take with her on her trip. She accidentally lost herself in her reading and didn’t realize it until it was already the middle of the night.

Sherlock- he was in the middle of a long ship voyage when Christmas night came. His mind on his partner in a far-off country, he made a toast alone on deck, when suddenly the crew began shooting off fireworks with a cry of “Merry Christmas!” Sherlock had to dart back and forth across the deck to prevent the fireworks from hitting him and setting off the explosive chemicals he carries with him.

Main series edition

#dai gyakuten saiban #tgaa #naruhodo ryuunosuke #asougi kazuma #mikotoba susato #dgs sherlock holmes #hosonaga satoru #barok van zieks #iris watson #gina lestrade #translations #official content #my translation #mikotoba yuujin #ryunosuke naruhodo #kazuma asogi #susato mikotoba #iris wilson

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bluerosesburnblue · 3 years

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I don't suppose you could explain the ending for khux for me?? i've watched it and i've been following the translated storyline for it and this ending just. does not make a ton of sense to me. i can usually figure out kh endings no problem but this time i'm just lost.

Isn't that just the state of the writing for it, where even people familiar with the series are having trouble understanding it. And, of course, the game dies as it lived: screwing over Global so we can't even compare/contrast with an official English version yet to see if it's more clear

Anyway, sure, I'll try to break it down scene by scene (Note: these aren't the actual scene titles, I just needed a way to delineate them so I made titles up)

Scene 1: The Master and Luxu

The update begins with a continuation of the past flashbacks expanding on the Case of Luxu and the Master of Masters' instructions to him. He explains that he knew that Darkness could only truly be defeated in the future, and so he made sure that Keyblade wielders would exist to fight it by recruiting many Keyblade wielders in Daybreak Town (as per the start of KHx) and then using the Dandelions to stall Darkness's takeover and give them time to make sure that the Keyblade legacy would live on. As Luxu turns to leave, though, the Master stops him with one more bit of information that he feels Luxu needs to know

He explains that back when he was younger, the being known as Darkness tried to gain the advantage in their battle by becoming incorporeal and attacking people's hearts instead of their bodies. There were 13 of these original Darkness beings, and because they lack bodies they aim to win by quantity and so created the Heartless as lesser, but more physical versions of themselves. The original 13 still haven't given up their desire to regain a physical form, however, and so they target those with strong hearts to take their bodies for themselves

The Master of Masters, knowing this and knowing that something without a physical body can't be destroyed, came up with a plan. He took in six children, his apprentices, and raised them to be a prison for Darkness. To foster light so strongly within them that Darkness couldn't possibly taint it, and then seal the strongest 7 of the 13 Darknesses within himself and his students, trapping the Darknesses inside their impenetrable hearts of light. Then, he instigated the Keyblade War. This is only my interpretation of the line, but it sounds to me like the purpose was to get the Foretellers killed in the War and the Darkness sealed inside of them along with them. How this relates to them coming back in KH3 is unclear

When Luxu asks if the War and the idea of a traitor were necessary, the Master goes on to say that the purpose of making the Foretellers believe there was a traitor was to instill negative emotions like fear and doubt in them. Darkness feeds on those emotions, and so by making sure that his students would produce them and yet not have their light tainted, he would attract Darkness into their hearts by giving it something to eat, only for it to realize that it was trapped in light that couldn't be consumed. The infighting amongst the Foretellers was bait to lock Darkness in their hearts the entire time

After that, there's only six left and so the Master chose five individuals, the Union Leaders, to be the uncorruptable lights that would house the weaker Darknesses. The final one, he would simply trap in the Data Daybreak Town

At this, Luxu flies into a rage at his master, angrily shouting that he can't possibly accept a plan that sacrifices so many people, but the Master stands up and starts talking over him. He's made it clear that he doesn't see Darkness as human, and he's seen this inhuman thing take countless lives, including people he's cared about. He doesn't believe them to be heroes, and he doesn't care. The entire purpose is just to ensure that in the end, humanity is what survives the war. He knows it's a tragedy, but for one who believes that tragedy can't be fully avoided, this is a solution that will at least save some

Luxu accepts this answer and leaves, but behind his back the Master muses on what Luxu, the traitor, needs to do. Luxu was the traitor from the lost page the entire time, given a role to take him out of the infighting so that his identity as the traitor wouldn't be discovered (or at least, that's how it seems to me considering that he needed the Foretellers to fear and doubt to attract Darkness to them)

Scene 2: Fleeing Daybreak Town

We now cut to the real Daybreak Town in the present, where Lauriam, Elrena, Ventus, and Brain have just emerged from the Data Daybreak Town into the real-world version of the lifeboat room. Daybreak Town is breaking down around them, about to be fully consumed by the aftermath of the Keyblade War which had been temporarily staved off while the Data simulation was running

Brain is attempting to enact his plan to extract all of the Dandelions from Data Daybreak Town and bring them into the real world, but he's worried that there won't be enough time to actually do it before the simulation shuts down and the real Daybreak Town is destroyed. The only thing he has time to do is get their three remaining friends (Ephemer, Skuld, and Player) out to the real world, and the only way that he can think to do this is to send Lauriam, Elrena, and Ven away to the future and to safety and then send the remaining lifeboats back into the datascape so that there's enough for the three trapped in there to use

Brain is willing to stay behind to man this operation, but he wants to ensure that at least one of the true Union Leaders (Lauriam) manages to live on in case things go wrong and save as many of them as he can, so those going to the future must be sent first. Lauriam, etching his mission to finally find Strelitzia (or even just her data) into his heart, departs with Elrena and Ven. Once they're gone, however, Brain notices someone enter the room and turns to find Luxu approaching him

Scene 3: Those Trapped in Data

We now cut to Player, Ephemer, and Skuld in the data version of the lifeboat room, contemplating how the others are doing. Just as they muse about how quiet the end of this world feels, Player turns to find that four of the remaining six Darknesses have entered the room (presumably the other two are the one sealed in Ven and the one that Luxu was fighting in the real world and who helped Maleficent, who seems to be gone by the time Brain and the others end up back in the real world)

The Darknesses, it seems, have come to politely ask the gang to open up a way out of the Data Daybreak Town for them, so that they can spread to other worlds. They don't want to fight, and obviously even if they did they'd win, so just open a gate for them to escape with already. They could always just take over Ephemer's friends and force him to watch as they rip them away until he complies

Ephemer mocks this and moves in to attack, but before he fully commits he whispers his plan to Player: he and Skuld will hold them off to buy time for Player to get into the last pod and run. To his shock, however, Player begins mimicking Darkness's speaking patterns and then goes to attack their friends. It seems that Darkness has done to Player what they did to Ven, taking them over and forcing them to act out. Player is now their bargaining chip; they'll only give Player back if Ephemer opens the gate. And since Darkness can only be defeated if it has a body, their options are to give in or destroy the possessed Player

This initiates the final boss fight against Ephemer and Skuld, Player's dearest friends who have been with them since before the war

And the duo prove no match for the Darkness-possessed Player, who taunts them about not just leaving when they had the chance. Ephemer begs his friend to stop as Player goes in to finish off Skuld, and in his desperation to protect one friend, he opens up the portal to Game Central Station and forces his fallen friend though. As it closes, Ephemer breaks down in tears, muttering apologies to the friend that he was unable to save

Scene 4: Luxu and Brain

We cut back to where we left off in Scene 2, with Luxu confronting Brain in the real lifeboat room. He introduces himself, and Brain is taken aback that one of the missing masters has finally returned. Luxu asks Brain if he's a Union Leader, and when Brain confirms that he is, Luxu then gestures to the missing pods and asks where the others are. Brain tells him that one escaped, and the other two are still trapped in the data. Luxu's confused; there should be five Union Leaders, but Brain only listed four. He asks what happened to the fifth, and Brain confirms that they were struck down

Luxu assumes that Brain is going to make his escape, but Brain denies this. They have a friend who he calls a Dandelion (even though Player did not consider themself one) who is trapped alongside the other two Union Leaders, and he intends to get all three out no matter what. Furthermore, Brain has no intention of using one of the real lifeboats. Rather, he has resigned himself to staying behind in the past and finding some way to survive the end of the world to eventually extract the rest of the Dandelions from the data as well, and wake them from their data sleep

Luxu, however, has some bad news. While normally that would be true, the Data Daybreak Town was designed to lock Darkness away. Once it's locked up, nothing will ever be able to get out of it again. If anything could get out, then Darkness would as well. It was meant to be a grave for an intangible being

Not only that, but Luxu expresses doubt that Brain has properly prepared for his friends who use the lifeboats to awaken in the future. What does Brain plan to use for mediums? Who are the memories going to come from? Brain doesn't have an answer, but he has to do this and he's willing to put his life on the line for it

This seems to earn Luxu's respect

Scene 5: The Two Who Remain

We now resume with Ephemer and Skuld in the data lifeboat room, having just sealed Player away. The two real pods that weren't used yet are digitized and sent to Ephemer and Skuld to use for their escape. Ephemer picks up the weakened Skuld and places her in a lifeboat, then looks forlornly over to the one on the other side of the room. The one meant for Player. Then he reclines back into his own pod and the two leave the Data Daybreak Town

Scene 6: "You're So Gullible"

We now join Player inside of the familiar tunnel that joined the Data Daybreak Town to Game Central Station

The four Darknesses swarm around Player, commending them for goading Ephemer into being desperate enough to open up a gateway for them, implying that Player was at least partially in control by the end of the fight. In a bizarre way, they seem to be trying to help Player as they warn them they must cast off their body if they don't want to be destroyed by the simulation shutting down

Player laughs

They ask if Darkness is always this easy to trick. After all, it can't go anywhere without a Keyblade and without a body it can't use one, either, which is why it needed one of them to open a path for it. Player turns, and locks the end of the pathway that leads to Game Central Station. And since Ephemer sealed the Data Daybreak Town end when he cast Player and the Darknesses through the portal, all five of them are now trapped in this space between worlds on the cusp of shutting down along with Data Daybreak Town. This was Player's plan all along, opening their heart up just enough for the four Darknesses to try and use them as a host and then provoking their friends into sealing them away and taking Darkness with them

Darkness flies into an anger-fueled frenzy but is unable to do anything to escape. Player collapses, and Chirithy appears. Petting them much like they did during the Keyblade War, Player apologizes for forcing Chirithy to be sealed away with them since their hearts are bound. Chirithy shakes their head, signaling that they don't hold it against Player, and the two go in for a final hug and are bathed in light

Scene 7: The Destruction of Daybreak Town

Back in the real lifeboat room again, Ephemer and Skuld emerge and are met with blaring sirens signaling that the world is at its end. The other are gone, including Brain and Luxu, and the two have no idea what happened to them (or that Luxu was involved). They simply hope that they made it out safely, and decide to check outside just to see what's going on

They're met with the destruction of Daybreak Town. Smoke is everywhere, the sky is red, and pieces of debris are being drawn into a swirling dark orb in the sky not unlike the destruction of Destiny Islands from KH1. Ephemer decides that they need to leave, now, and Skuld muses about how it takes a lot of time and effort to build something, but none at all to destroy. The two retreat back into the lifeboat room to make their exit

Scene 8: The Master's Plans

We now cut to our final continuation of the flashback of Master of Masters' talk with Darkness from before he disappeared

Darkness muses that it truly does not understand the Master of Masters at all. The Master asks if it wants to, and Darkness replies with a very clinical, "Yes, understanding your enemy is important." The Master muses if it means all of the Darknesses or just the one who is speaking, and Darkness states that it's speaking for all of them

The Master muses for a bit about how small worlds are easy to control. If this small world simply expands gradually over time, then eventually there will become parts of it that the light can't reach, but Darkness will have free reign over anywhere it pleases (much like real light can only shine so far, and anywhere it doesn't reach is filled with shadow). This skews everything in Darkness's favor when vying for control and is precisely what would happen if the world of the Age of Fairtytales continued to expand

Darkness simply notes that of course it will always be around, that's what "friends" do, but the Master says that sometimes he'd like to be left alone. And so, to get away from Darkness, he plans to flee to a world that Darkness does not know about. One where neither Darkness nor Light can be controlled. Darkness asks what this world is, and the Master says that humanity, even if their lives end, want to believe in a world that exists for them in the future. For him, this is a world of fiction and imagination. This implies that he plans to flee into the world of Quadratum, the fictional world that we learned about in Melody of Memory that exists on the other side of the "real world"

Darkness is clearly lost as it asks if he's talking about the Data World. The Master simply says that even if it started out as fiction, you can make it real. But he won't explain any more. After all, the point is that this is a world that Darkness doesn't know about. It cannot reach it, even if it tried

Of note is that he mimics what the illusory Xehanort remarks about Sora in Melody of Memory by calling this a place where neither your "eyes nor voice" can reach, much like Sora's voice could not reach Kairi in The Final World from Quadratum. His final description of it is as "a world of [symbol]." It's unclear if this is an actual term that is unpronounceable and unspeakable in-universe, or if this is simply done to censor the word for the players

Scene 9: Goodbye

We once again return to the real lifeboat room amidst the destruction of Daybreak Town. As she gets into her pod, Skuld starts sobbing and thanks Ephemer through her tears for staying with her until the end. Ephemer tells her that she can't give up until it's all over. As he goes into his pod, he flashes back to all of the time that he spent with Player, and mutters their name through his tears as their pods close and the room caves in around them

(AND THIS IS WHERE IT SHOULD'VE ENDED BECAUSE IT WAS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD UP TO THIS POINT BUT HERE WE GO)

Scene 10: Where Do Dream Eaters Come From?

Player and Chirithy are floating in a white void alongside all of the other Dandelions that were trapped in the Data Daybreak Town and their Chirithies. Some of them are familiar faces, like the "My friends aren't my power" kid and the squad of four kids that Player had befriended and their ex-teammate. As Player awakens, they watch these sleeping Dandelions revert to the forms of hearts that are then eaten by those Chirithies, transforming them into the Spirits seen in Dream Drop Distance

Player's Chirithy explains that because Chirithies are bonded to their Keyblade wielder's heart, they take on a state to match their wielder. If the wielder dies, so do they. And if the wielder falls into a deep sleep, they take on a stronger form to protect it

Contrary to what the fandom is saying, NO, Spirits aren't dead Keykids. Rather, the Chirithies are simply taking their sleeping hearts into their bodies and transforming into a stronger form to keep them safe. This is only my assumption, but I would assume that this is possible since they don't technically have bodies anyway, having been digitized. Therefore, their body-less hearts would otherwise have been sent directly to sleep with no protection, hence the Chirithies moving in

Now, this still doesn't make sense regarding Dream Drop Distance by overriding the lore that all Dream Eaters are simply the form that Darkness takes in Sleeping Worlds, which made sense from a metaphorical perspective of "you sleep at night which is dark, so dreams are darkness and both good and bad dreams are made of the same stuff." And also you can totally craft Spirits and have them explode if they take too much damage, all with zero indication that a keykid heart was involved in the creation process or released on destruction, but whatever, let's just move on

Player asks if this is what will happen to them and their Chirithy, and Chirithy responds that they have a choice. If Player doesn't want to go to sleep, then their heart will be broken down and reconstructed as an entirely new heart to live a new life

Smash cut to an unfamiliar town where a woman in purple with black hair and silver eyes hand over what is obviously a baby Xehanort to a hunched figure in a blue cloak, holding a cane. She sobs. Cut again to the figure in blue holding baby Xehanort standing on Destiny Islands' play island. Cut once more and Xehanort is now his teenage self from Dark Road on the beach of the play island. The figure in blue is standing on the ledge behind him, and as Xehanort stands up to walk to the shoreline, the figure collapses onto the ground. Xehanort does not notice this. Two more cuts, this time to the day that Xehanort found himself in Scala ad Caelum and a chess match with Eraqus

We return to Player, who closes their eyes peacefully and decided to move on to another life. Chirithy is confused, but goes in for a final hug as both of them dissolve into light, Player's heart flying off into the white void

The implication of all of this being that not only did Player reincarnate as Xehanort, introducing reincarnation into a series that it has never been a part of and overcomplicating the lore even worse, but that Xehanort isn't even from Destiny Islands in the first place, invalidating nearly all of his character motivation from the series

This is so bad that it deserves its own post though, so we're moving on

Credits Roll: Scenes From the Game Play Over It

Post Credits: Aftermath

We find our scene in a vast expanse of water, littered with debris. A lone lifeboat floats amongst the rubble. Some houses from Daybreak Town can be seen partially submerged, setting this after its destruction. The lifeboat comes to a stop and opens up, revealing Ephemer's silhouette. He looks around

It's unclear why Ephemer seems to have landed so far back in the past compared to the others, though some people have noted that he also doesn't appear to have lost his body, so it could be that his pod simply didn't activate (note how we only saw it close, not disappear into light like Lauriam and crew's) and that Ephemer didn't time travel at all but simply rode out the destruction of Daybreak Town inside the lifeboat

We see a rendition of the scene from KH2 where Diablo the raven brings Maleficent's cloak to the three fairies and she revives, showing that this scene was, indeed, her coming back from her time travel adventure

Lauriam wakes up in the field of flowers from Dwarf Woodlands, and looks confused and startled as a white butterfly flits about him. The flowers clearly a nod to his element among the Organization

Elrena is shown still unconscious along the cliffs that lead to Maleficent's castle in Enchanted Dominion. Much like Lauriam, her element is represented in the thunderstorm that rages around her

Ventus is shown unconscious in the Keyblade Graveyard, and a silhouette approaches him. Many believe this to be Xehanort finding him, though as of now the figure's identity is unconfirmed

We cut to a scene of Luxu dragging the black box behind him in the Keyblade Graveyard, much like a certain scene from the end of Back Cover. However, this time the scene continues and he removes his hood to reveal Brain's face. The implication here is that after Scene 4 above, Luxu took Brain's body as the first of many that he would steal to prolong his own life. This is why neither of them are seen when Ephemer and Skuld emerge from the datascape; Luxu has already taken Brain's body for his own and made his escape to survive the destruction of the world with the black box

We get a title card, but are treated to one final scene. Brain wakes up (sans hat) in the same town that we saw baby Xehanort being given away in. A hooded figure in strange garb arrives, holding Brain's hat, and asks if he is Brain. At Brain's confirmation, the figure returns the hat and introduces themself as Sigurd (a Norse mythology name much like the other Scala ad Caelum characters so far). They seem to have been waiting for Brain and report that they found him into an earpiece of sorts

Brain is understandably confused, and Sigurd explains that they know of the Brain who escaped Daybreak Town's destruction and that he would appear in this spot on this day. Brain panics, realizing that he doesn't know where any of his seven other friends are and if they made it to safety. Sigurd tells Brain that he's the only one who made it to this spot. Brain, utterly crushed that all of his friends have seemingly perished, listlessly follows Sigurd as Sigurd leads him to their headquarters

On the way there, however, something catches Brain's eye. He sprints to the fountain and looks up at something that's not in the frame in shock. Sigurd explains that this is a statue of this town, Scala ad Caelum’s founder (so Xehanort's actually from Scala...) and the first ever Keyblade Master, Master Ephemer. The camera pans up to show the statue of Ephemer as we know him holding the Master Keeper Keyblade that he got from Brain

Brain is overcome with emotions, and through his tears states that he knows exactly who that is. That's his best friend, and he's so proud of him for rebuilding

This is just my speculation, but what I believe is going on in the final scene with Brain is that when Luxu took his body, he ejected Brain's heart from it. A lifeboat wasn't used up, so Luxu must have either used time travel on his own to send Brain's heart to the future or simply left Brain's heart stranded and waiting in the ruins of Daybreak Town. This would let Luxu have his body, but Brain's stranded heart could make a new one with the proper resources in the future like the other hearts sent via the pods. That's what I think the focus on the hat is about. Luxu is shown without it after he takes Brain's body, and Sigurd has it. So my assumption would be that the hat was the medium used to bring Brain's body back like Maleficent's cloak was for her. It’s possible that Luxu set this up, but I can’t confirm. As for the memories, I couldn't say

I would also speculate that this scene takes place a decent amount of time before Dark Road, since Eraqus has been implied to be a descendant of Brain due to their similar looks. If Brain is in Scala ad Caelum in the past, then he could easily be the grandfather that Eraqus mentioned

My final bit of speculation is that the reason Sigurd and crew know who Brain is is because Ephemer, the founder of Scala ad Caelum and the inheritor of the Book of Prophecies, likely saw when Brain would emerge and set up a system to take care of him, knowing that he wouldn't survive to see him again

Apologies for the length, the ending was 40 minutes long. But, hopefully, I've made it clear which scenes are connected to which and what is actually happening. If it wasn't actually clear, there's two flashback sequences involving the Master of Masters that take place before KHx, the scenes in the data and real lifeboat rooms are running concurrently with each other (Brain and Luxu are having their conversation at the same time as Player is being possessed by the Darknesses, etc.) and everything else is roughly chronological with the exception of the scenes where Maleficent, Lauriam, Elrena, and Ven are revived after time traveling. Lauriam, Elrena, and Ven's scenes all must take place sometime before or around BBS (Lauriam and Elrena for their ages to match up, Ven because he's in BBS). Maleficent's is at the beginning of KH2

#kingdom hearts #khux #khux spoilers #anon asks #liz answers #between the amount it cuts around and the entirety of scene 10 which is really my only problem area i can see why you'd be confused #i think this would actually be a decent ending without scene 10 but scene 10 is SO BAD #it leaves such a bad taste in your mouth for the ENTIRE FRANCHISE that it ends up bringing literally everything else down with it

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weirdmarioenemies · 3 years

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Name: F Boy (again)

Debut: Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins

It feels so strange to look back on my very first post for this blog! It’s so... dry! Where’s the passion? Back then I really had no idea what I was doing and was just kind of imitating Mod Chikako hoping nobody would notice... but thanks to all the love this blog has received, I think I can write with a lot more confidence now! Not to get all sappy on the first paragraph, but I really appreciate everyone who reads this blog with all of my heart. And that includes You!

But if I’d known I’d spend several years using the moniker “Mod F Boy”, I probably would’ve put more thought into the name I picked, huh? I’m not even sure I’m a boy anymore! I just thought the name was funny and that was that! But given how indecisive I can be, maybe it’s a good thing it was so spontaneous... Like it or not though, I am more attached to the concept of “F Boy” then I was three and a half years ago, so it’s only fair I give F Boy the post he deserves and write a whole lot more about him!

Believe it or not, F Boy is a fire enemy! A single flame with dot eyes, the classic design they’ve been using since Fire! I’ve expressed love for them in the past, but this little dude is a little different... it isn’t found in a lava or castle stage like you might expect, but the spoooky scaaary stages, AKA Pumpkin Zone! Why’s that?

Enter the hitodama! Literally using the characters for “human soul”, these ghostly wisps of fire from Japanese folklore are probably something you’re familiar with even if you don’t know it! The Litwick Pokémon line, the flames on Jibanyan’s tail, the little flames around the boy from the toilet anime, or even the Embers from Paper Mario... that’s really just a couple of specific examples off the top of my head, but they are in basically anything associated with Japanese ghosts!

Though... all this time I’ve always called them hitodama, but I should probably specify they aren’t the only kind of ghostly fireballs! Onibi (demon fire) are often described similarly, and I’m not totally sure what the difference is! I suppose they would be more demonic hence the name, and probably less of a good idea to get close to. Also, if they're made by fox demons, they’re kitsunebi (fox fire)! Isn’t that neat! But there are no foxes to be found here, so F Boy definitely isn’t that (Unless it stands for Fox Boy...?).

However, you might be more familiar with the concept of will-o’-the-wisps, a similiar kind of legend from Europe- in fact, a whole number of cultures around the world have stories of ghostly lights and flames! There’s two explanations for this, either that it is a misunderstanding caused by some chemical reaction (boring, lame) or that hitodama are real and really exist for real (fun, exciting)! I encourage everyone to go outside with a net and catch as many as they can.

Even though hitodama can be red or orange in some traditional accounts, they’re mostly described as blue and most modern media sticks with that! Which makes it quite weird that F Boy... isn’t! He is a rather fetching orange of course, and without the added context of spooky old Pumpkin Land you wouldn’t be mistaken for thinking he is a lava enemy that just got lost or something!

Now, moving on to a completely different topic, something else that is great about F Boy is his little cheeks. Have you seen them? Here is the picture one more time in case you forgot after all that. He doesn’t have one in the sprite, so isn’t it quite weird to give a fireball enemy such distinct little cheeks? I want to squeeze them, even if they are probably intangible.

And finally, we come to the part we’ve all been waiting for- the name! You were thinking it, I was thinking it, it’s probably the only reason I chose to write about him in the first place! Because F Boy is a funny name for an enemy! I think it’s just quite silly to describe a fireball as a “boy” in the first place, as a term of endearment. It is just a boy! A little guy! He’s not hurting anyone!

But then they add to that name- one letter. That one letter, F. It changes everything. All of a sudden, there’s a question floating in the air- what, pray tell, does the F in F Boy stand for?

If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you might remember we added an addendum to the original F Boy post, saying the mystery had finally been solved- the English version of the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia lists his name as Fireball Boy, which is a pretty definitive answer right?

But since then, it’s been more or less exposed that this translation took a bunch of unsourced and conjectural names from the Mario Wiki, leading to something of a controversy and a Mario Wiki page that is essentially just roasting the whole thing! If even the Wiki doesn’t accept this book as an official source, I wonder if there’s any merit to the name Fireball Boy at all! Either way it’s odd how this is the ONLY name they changed... do they know something we don’t? I dunno!

My next evidence to present to the court is something that isn’t really related to F Boy at all! Rather, in Super Paper Mario, the Lava Bubble enemy has a tattle that reads the following:

It's a Lava Bubble. This fiery magma boy loves the heat... Max HP is 1 and Attack is 4. Obviously, it's quite immune to fire... It pops out from below when people approach, so take care when jumping over lava...

Fiery magma boy! The chances of this bit of text being intended as a reference are very very slim, but what if, you see? What if? It’s still a fun coincidence, but what if though??

But of course, my favourite possibility is that it isn’t a word related to fire at all and is actually something completely different! I looked up a list of adjectives beginning with F and I’d like to highlight ones I want F Boy to have. Fabulous! Friendly! Faithful. Fantastic. Fascinating! French? Fresh! Fun, and Funky! Faultless. Fetching. Feminist! Festive. Formidable. All these and more describe the complex soul that is F Boy.

After all is said and done, that is F Boy! Who would’ve thought that a little monochrome fireball enemy from a Game Boy game could have kicked off so many months of writing for this blog? I said in the first paragraph that I would not get too sappy, but now we are in the last one I can be as sappy as I dang well please! This blog has brought me such incredible joy and friendship that you can’t even imagine, and my only hope is that I can convey these feelings to even one person who reads these silly posts. If you are reading this? I hope you have a wonderful day! I hope you have a wonderful life! I hope you never forget to be passionate about the things that really don’t matter at all, because no one else can decide for you what is worth caring about! Mwah! A kiss goodbye. I’m not sure how to end this post.

#mario #mario enemies #f boy #weird mario all-stars #mod f boy

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shihalyfie · 4 years

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“Digimon partner”

We all know this term. “Digimon partner” or “partner Digimon” (depending on your preferred language), a concept so well-established within franchise meta that any proper categorization system for Digimon human characters needs to involve it. Even in Digimon franchise works where characters work with more than one Digimon, generally fans understand that there’s probably still one that is their "partner”. Recently, Kizuna came around and decided to be a whole movie analyzing what a partner even is in the first place.

But one really interesting thing about this is that this term was never actually used very much within Adventure or 02, despite said series being integral to defining the concept of one as utilized by the rest of the franchise.

Why? Well, let’s talk about it.

Adventure

(All translations are by Ryuu-Rogue unless otherwise stated.)

One really important thing that needs to be put on the table is that, within the Japanese version of the franchise, the term “partner” (usually phrased as “Partner Digimon”) is in English, written in kana as パートナー. It is used as wasei eigo to refer to the general concept of a partner outside Digimon context, but the point is that it’s not really a “native” Japanese word you’d pull out often unless it’s an established position.

When you consider the circumstances of Adventure, it becomes understandable why the term never came up as a result. During the first half of Adventure, nobody was really explaining this whole thing well to them, and then it became increasingly clear that Gennai wasn’t really sure about the whole thing either, culminating in the reveal in episode 45 that even the one who chose them in the first place was still pretty new to it themself! (And if you believe Gennai and Koushirou’s testimony, plus director Kakudou’s notes, there were only 16 Chosen Children at the time of 1999 -- not a lot of precedent to work with.)

In other words...this simply wasn’t A Thing, and the fact that the concept of a “Digimon partner” even existed was one the kids and their Digimon had to come up with independently. So it’s understandable that everyone involved would start using their own words to describe the phenomenon going on. Naturally, everyone starts to intuitively understand that each kid is paired up to a specific partner, but this is not something that’s concretely referred to as A Thing for quite a while. In fact, while I wasn’t taking notes with a notepad or anything during my last rewatch of Adventure, I’m actually tentatively tempted to say that they never even brought up the word “partner” at all.

The concept of Digimon and human partnership is referred to in the following ways in Adventure:

In episode 13, Leomon mentions the legend of Chosen Children arriving to save the Digital World, and provides as proof the fact that they have “the power to enable Digimon to evolve”. The concept of explicit one-to-one human-to-Digimon partnership is not brought up at all.

When Tailmon reaffirms her identity as Hikari’s partner in episode 34, she’s referred to as “Hikari’s Digimon” (and, in fact, the entire eighth child arc is considered as involving “the eighth child’s Digimon” or “the eighth Digimon” and not “the eighth child’s partner”).

When Koushirou explains the difference between enemy and ally Digimon to Hiroaki in episode 37, he also doesn’t use the term “partner” at all -- simply saying that the ones with Yamato are on their side.

Gabumon does not bring up the concept of partnership when declaring his loyalty to Yamato in episode 44, only saying that he’ll be with him even if it makes the others into his enemy, nor in episode 51, when he agonizes that he’d waited for so long for Yamato only for this to happen.

When explaining the origin of how the Chosen Children were chosen in episode 45, “the one who wishes for stability” (Homeostasis) never refers to the concept of partnership as anything concrete, simply pointing out the identity of the Digimon’s eggs, and the ability for humans to help Digimon spontaneously evolve (which is not even exclusive to partnerships, since the example given is the Greymon from the Hikarigaoka incident, and we also see Leomon in episode 47).

So why does this term never really come up?

The answer is, simply, that Digimon partnership as a “specialized concept” doesn’t really have much of a place in Adventure’s story, and, in fact, leaning too much on the concept of a “Digimon partner” as A Thing would damage emotional resonance during such an important series that’s one of the first in demonstrating what a partnership even is. Digimon partners didn’t bond with the kids just because they were “partners”, and most certainly not because Homestosasis decreed it so! It’s like the difference between “because I love you” and “because it’s our job to love each other”; the latter really just doesn’t hit right at all, and moreover misses the point. (See below in the 02 section for further demonstration on how this distinction was actually made use of in a story context.)

In fact, the one major Adventure canon-related material that actually drops the mention of “partners” is Two-and-a-Half Year Break -- which is a drama CD from 2003 that’s explicitly made to help retroactively connect Adventure to 02 (again, see below on more elaboration). Every mention of a “partner”, with the English word, within the drama CD monologues comes from either Koushirou’s or Mimi’s tracks -- and they all have to do with a practically observable phenomenon. Or in other words, “partner” was used as shorthand to say “oh, these kids around the world seem to be experiencing something similar to what we are, and this is something that’s starting to happen to more and more people now,” and it’s part of building up background lore more than it’s meant to define a partner in itself.

But in terms of the emotional meaning of a Digimon partner, and what it actually means to someone, and why a partner is so important to one’s life...well, the best example comes from Taichi’s track:

The truth is… I thought of always keeping it at hand. But that actually made me feel even lonelier. I didn’t want to face the truth that Agumon wasn’t with me anymore. Because… we’d always been together. Even now, I’ve never spent such a long time with another person like I did with him. That was… Being in the Digital World only took three days in the human world. But… since the flow of time in the Digital World was much faster back then… the time I spent together with Agumon was… half a year? …a year? And… it’s already 3 months since I’ve been separated from him… (...) After all, I can’t lose to him! To Agumon. To the other me.

Taichi never uses the word “partner”, because that by itself doesn’t describe the reason it hurts so much to lose Agumon, and instead describes it in ways more relevant to what he means to him as a person -- that the two were “always together” in a way no other friend was with him before, that spending time with him integrated him into his life in ways that made the loss suddenly leave a hole...and that Agumon is, in his words, “the other [him]”. Even if it is true that the nature of a partner allows a human and their Digimon to have that kind of relationship, whether they’re partners or not isn’t really the substantial point, and being “partners” by itself isn’t really enough if the relationship isn’t that in practice.

And this is especially driven home further when 02 comes into play...

(All translations are by PositronCannon unless otherwise stated.)

If you happen to follow Kakudou’s theory of Digimon partners doubling every year since 1995, 2002 had something around 128 Digimon partners, which is a lot -- so it stands to reason that Digimon partnerships would become something “practically observable”. After all, if upwards of a hundred kids are starting to have contact with Digimon and forming relationships that seem to fall under a particular pattern, you might as well give that pattern a name. This of course leads to the natural conclusion in the epilogue, where they do, in fact, say concretely that everyone in the world has a “Digimon partner”.

Yet despite that, the word “partner” still shows up very rarely in the series -- even in settings where a practical application would be perfectly expected (see episode 14, where referring to Betamon as Michael’s partner to indicate his status as a fellow Chosen Child would have been expected, but instead is introduced as “[Palmon’s] friend”). And in fact, the first time the term actually has some pretty prominent usage in a serious context, in episode 10...it’s not actually pretty.

Wormmon: Forget about him! Use me for your experiments on evolution! I'll evolve, evolve and fight for you, Ken-chan! So use me... Ken: It was you who let him escape!? Wormmon: Well, I'm your partner! I should be able to evolve! So if you're going to do your tests, do your tests on me! Ken: (laughs) Wormmon: Ken-chan! Ken: What kind of splendid Digimon would you evolve into? And you're my partner? Heh. No chance. How could the Digimon Kaiser have a partner like you?

We, as the audience, know from a meta perspective that Wormmon is indeed Ken’s “true” partner, and that Ken is ignoring something very, very important...but from Ken’s perspective, deluded as he is, it is true that “well, I’m your partner!” actually means absolutely nothing. Observe that Wormmon is invoking the word “partner” not in an emotional sense, but a practical one -- he’s desperately trying to get Ken to acknowledge him as a loyal fighting machine, not to actually love him back. Even if Wormmon got what he ostensibly wanted in this scene and Ken somehow decided to entertain the idea of using him as a partner, it would just result in a lot of painful experimentation and torture on Wormmon’s part -- definitely not what the audience expects from how these relationships usually go.

And by the end of the episode, Ken does successfully evolve MetalGreymon using his own D-3! From his perspective, he did exactly what any other Chosen Child could do with their own partners (just a bit more forcefully). This is especially reinforced in episode 19, when the Kaiser finishes his work on Chimeramon and (seemingly) has it under control, and has this to say to Wormmon:

This is the perfect Digimon partner I was looking for...Unlike you.

As far as he’s concerned, the position of “partner” is one that can be swapped out like an internship or a salaried job. It means nothing by itself.

In fact, when it comes to scenes that actually go into partner relationships and what they mean emotionally to each other, similar language is used to that of Adventure:

In episode 11, when Daisuke agonizes over the idea of possibly killing Agumon in the process of saving him from the Kaiser’s clutches, he calls him “Taichi-san’s Digimon” (in a similar way to how Tailmon was referred to as “Hikari’s Digimon” in Adventure). (Recall that Daisuke is actually not all that familiar with Agumon at this point in the series, so it makes sense that he knows Agumon mainly by his relation to Taichi rather than via him personally.)

In Hurricane Touchdown, when identifying Chocomon as one of Wallace’s partners and having a bit of a breakdown at the idea of having to fight him, Daisuke never uses the word “partner” in relation to their relationship (nor is the word used at all in the course of the movie) -- he initially identifies Chocomon as “[Wallace’s] Digimon”, and then, when putting together why this hurts Wallace so much, recoils at the idea of fighting “[Wallace’s] most important friend”. This is after Wallace (who probably doesn’t have a very good concept of Digimon partnership as an established phenomenon, having only met any other Chosen Children earlier that same day) had described his relationship to Chocomon in terms of their childhood spent together, and how much his inability to forget him had impacted him throughout the years.

When Wormmon finally decides to “betray” the Kaiser in a bid to save him from himself in episodes 20-21, him being Ken’s “partner” is not brought into play, with Wormmon mainly saying that he believes in getting the “kind Ken-chan” back.

Once we reach episode 23 and Ken making amends with Wormmon, their partnership is once again not brought into play, with Ken describing Wormmon in significantly more detail -- as someone who could easily have been the only person in the world who would be sad if he’d died (not exactly true, but the sentiment is there), and yet someone Ken had lost to his own destructive ways. The concept is also not brought up again in explicit words in regards to Ken and Wormmon’s relationship thereafter through the rest of the series -- a symbol of Ken having learned better in that he learned to see Wormmon as the friend he actually is.

Even in episode 50, when a large number of Chosen Children end up newly partnered to Digimon, when the concept of partnership could have completely been permissible to bring up in a practical manner, it’s not -- the Dark Seed children initially complain that “you have the Digimon” (i.e. “you have something we don’t”), and the response is simply “if you want the Digimon to exist, they will, just like our feelings”, more directly correlating the Digimon’s existence to part of the heart.

At the end of said episode, Pipimon refers to himself as “Yukio’s Digimon partner”, but Oikawa himself still refers to him as “my Digimon”.

Spring 2003 also brings it up very rarely, and only in reference to the practically observable phenomenon, especially in terms of the growing number of Chosen Children (it mainly shows up in Hikari’s informational recording). Takeru’s track even alludes to how complicated the relationship actually is in practice: “the relationship between us and our partner Digimon is unique and other people probably wouldn’t understand that.“

The Door to Summer does drop the word quite a bit, mainly because it spends a bit of time examining what a partnership even is (much like Kizuna; see below), and it’s primarily used in reference to who gets to be Nat-chan’s partner, or the discussion of partnership itself. But when it really comes down to it, even when Daisuke’s relationship with Chibimon momentarily gets strained, what he eventually has to say is “ …But when I think about it, we’ve always been together,” and “you always fight to the teeth to save me,” describing what Chibimon means to him in more concrete sentiment.

What does this all mean?

When taken with Adventure, one latent sentiment that’s consistent in both Adventure and 02 is that, as fancy as the “Chosen Child” title is, it actually doesn’t mean that much in terms of being some prophecy-foretold hero like it is in most fantasy series. “The one who wishes for stability” even says straight-out in Adventure episode 45 that, despite being the one who chose them, they’re not necessarily sure of what the right thing is to do next, and left it in the hands of the children -- which thus led to the conclusion in Adventure episode 51 that they were never doing this because they had to, but because they wanted to, or, in other words, that they were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and that doing the best they could do was all that could be asked for. There may have been some degree of higher-powering in this, but Homeostasis isn’t omnipotent, and by the time of 02 they’re not even the only entity picking children -- Koushirou even says in Two-and-a-Half Year Break that “having a partner” and “being a Chosen Child given a Digimon to help the Digital World” aren’t necessarily synonymous. And the Kaiser even demonstrates that himself in 02 episode 3 -- he’s exactly the kind of person the series warns against, claiming himself to be a “Chosen Child” as if it’s some kind of divinely imbued title.

So in effect, 02 is basically taking that sentiment and applying it similarly to the concept of Digimon partnership. “Having a partner” by itself is not that special, and while the general expectation is that a partner, as something connected to your inner self, should be something that important to you, your own will could easily ruin that -- again, see the Kaiser, who very nearly drove his own partnership into the ground via his own actions. They’re all concepts that are set up for you, but ultimately, what you make out of it is what’s most important, especially since there isn’t any divine force stopping you from making it all go south.

Thus, “we’re partners!” is pretty abysmally bad justification by itself -- the Kaiser being basically the extreme proof of how much you can abuse that concept.

Appmon

(All translations are by L Subs unless otherwise stated.)

Before we get into Kizuna, let’s take a bit of a short detour into Appmon!

I don’t want to dwell too much on non-Adventureverse series because other Digimon series either have a very different concept anyway (Frontier, Xros Wars), or involve a lot more conscious choice in selecting partners (Tamers, Savers), so there’s not as much to discuss. (Tamers makes it clear that Digimon may seek out Tamers when they believe that partnership will make them stronger, like in Ruki’s case, and Savers delineates them as literal work partners.) But, interestingly, despite being a lot more sci-fi than fantasy -- especially when its major background powers aren’t fantasy powered entities at all, but rather explicitly AIs -- Appmon has generally been commented to have a concept of partnership closest to the Adventure/02 portrayal since Adventure/02 itself, especially with the “something else assigned you your partner” aspect.

Appmon fundamentally has a very different writing style from Adventure, and leaning on quirky terminology and acting a bit more stereotypically “over-the-top” is part of its schtick (which of course helps it hit harder as the actual content gets heavier and heavier, but that’s a digression). Phrases that involve “my Buddy” do actually show up with quite a lot of frequency in Appmon, and unlike in Adventure/02, it does often get used as justification for why the Appmon take certain actions. But there are still some interesting things to note -- firstly, the majority of these use cases come from the Appmon themselves, usually endearingly (in a “hey, that’s my human, get away from them!” sense), or as a reaffirmation of the “it’s my job to protect you and I’m not going to let you down!” sense. This is also very in line with the nature of Appmon as portrayed in the series -- every Appmon has a certain function they’re skilled at and take pride in fulfilling their skill and function well, so the context is that failing to protect their Buddy is not too far off from failing at their literal job. (Effectively, it’s a bit bodyguard-esque.)

But Appmon still remembers not to forget the substance when it counts. Episode 32 has Yuujin express insecurity over whether Offmon's rampage -- and Offmon not trusting him as a result -- has to do with his own inadequacy as a Buddy, and confronting his own insecurities with the help of Haru before going on to face Shutmon, as if to prove himself worthy of it. Episode 48 has a series of scenes dedicated to what actual bond and loyalty each pair of Buddies has in practice. And of course, there’s Gatchmon’s famous speech in episode 49, which serves as the ultimate definition of why Buddies are matched together, for reasons besides just “Minerva said so”:

Gatchmon: I'm the search engine Appmon, Gatchmon! I'm an Appmon who looks up the definition of words and things that are desired to be known! You think I'd be paired with a guy with no desire to find something?! If I was, I wouldn't be able to continue existing...You were looking for something. That's why we met. But we still haven't found any of the answers, have we?! That's why the two of us are here right now! That's why I'm your Buddy! Haru! All I can do is look things up. But the one with the power to look up what future there is, and to type in the search words is you! What is it you want to look for, Haru? What is it that you want?

In other words, that’s the relationship between a human and their Buddy, besides just being friends -- certainly a Buddy Appmon is there to execute the kind of job their human Buddy needs, but conversely, it’s the human who has the power to give them that purpose to begin with. Appmon is a series about “the relationship between humans and technology”, so this depiction is quite fitting in the grand scheme of things.

Kizuna

(All translations are by L Subs unless otherwise stated. Be warned that the following spoils Kizuna.)

Okay, now we’re at Kizuna!

Kizuna is, once again, about a practically observable phenomenon. In fact, it’s so about the practically observable phenomenon that it’d be kind of stupid to not drop the word at all. Menoa even says that it’s part of her research, so, naturally, a scientist like her would have a term for it. Thus, when discussing the concept of disappearing partners, the concept is formally referred to as “partnership dissolution” (partner kaishou), or, more informally, something along the lines of “separation from one’s partner” (partner to no wakare). The “dissolution” part is especially interesting considering that the phrase was first used by Menoa, who by all means had no idea that the 02 epilogue exists and that the disappearance phenomenon isn’t permanent (and is altogether kind of an unreliable source anyway), so all of this terminology is arguably not even accurate.

Kizuna being a movie that’s basically supposed to unpack “what even is a partner anyway?”, and the Adventureverse entry that is most unsubtle about the “partner as part of the inner self” theme, plus the fact that there are more than 30,000 people with Digimon partners by the time of Kizuna (a far cry from 02′s 128!), it’s natural that they’re more liable to talk about a partner using the actual word than with oblique references.

But even then, Kizuna follows 02′s trend of only really using the word when dealing in practical matters (in this case, the dissolution phenomenon), because when it comes to dealing with the emotional impact of why losing a partner sucks? Menoa doesn’t hold back. Firstly, when it comes to describing why losing Morphomon left such a huge impact on her:

I met her when I was nine, and we'd been together ever since. I took her with me to school, even when we went traveling. No matter where I went or what I did, we were always together.

This is accompanied by a set of pictures that really do drive home the point that Morphomon was integrated into nearly every part of Menoa’s daily life, from her birthdays to her traveling to her happy and sad times, and is driven even further by the flashbacks later in the movie that depict Menoa as spilling all of her innermost feelings and worries to Morphomon as her closest confidant. It’s similar to Taichi’s statement in Two-and-a-Half Year Break that he’d been together with and closer to Agumon than any other friend he’d had in his life, or Wallace’s description and flashbacks of Chocomon having always been with him before he was taken away. When someone meshes with you in your life to that degree to the point even your day-to-day emotions entangle with them, then that loss is naturally going to be traumatic.

As if that weren’t enough, once Menoa drops her cheerful facade and reveals her true colors, her justifications for trapping everyone in Neverland start taking a turn for the emotional. Her arguments often refer to Digimon partners as one’s “very best friend”, and when she finally falls apart, she gives a pretty intimate description:

As long as you're here, you won't have to feel as if you've lost a part of yourself...

This is elaborated in the Shueisha Mirai novel as literal phantom pain -- because really, Morphomon is effectively like another part of herself, and losing a partner is like losing that part to the point it almost feels like it affects your own body.

And don’t forget Taichi’s thesis proposal at the end, where he does start off by introducing Agumon as his partner, but only in the sense of establishing that fact from the get-go, and quickly goes into detail into what Agumon actually is to him and what their relationship has given him, much akin to Two-and-a-Half Year Break:

...In coming closer to humans, [Digimon] are beings that can become bridges that connect people. I myself had a partner, Agumon, who could be said to be my other self, and the days I spent with him helped me grow into what I am now, and built upon my friendships with those around me.

So in other words, while Kizuna is much more forceful about the concept of a “Digimon partner” as a very concrete, defined thing (especially since it explicitly exists as an epilogue lead-up, one that very definitively had that concept set in stone for everyone on the planet), it still dedicates a lot of time to describing the emotional core behind what a partner is, saving the term generally for more practical observation-related matters.

What does all of this mean when put together? While the word “partner” is very useful for defining the concept as it applies practically, the truth is that it’s easy to imagine that the kids probably wouldn’t really find it sufficient of a term to describe what’s effectively their Best Friend Ever. It’s easy for us, as the audience, to default to “partner” as shorthand, but within the context of the series, when thinking about how the kids would approach their own partners and the complicated nature of how they bonded with them, a term that amounts to “what destiny handed to me” just doesn’t feel like the right thing to call what should probably be something like “my most important friend”. Even the most blunt and clinical alternative, “my/their Digimon”, has a bit of an affectionate bonding sentiment.

Ultimately, it’s honestly such a tiny thing to pick apart. But I do think that, especially when approaching things from an angle of meta analysis, or even fanwork like fanfic, it’s important to take into account how different our perception of things as an audience may differ from how the kids in the series themselves interact emotionally with what’s around them. And it also goes for writing in general, and why something like the concept of a Digimon partner managed to resonate with so many people so much despite often not having concrete words for it -- you can easily just say it’s the usual show-not-tell principle at play, being sure to elaborate on emotional nuance instead of just putting words down and calling it a day, but I also do feel that the series’s strengths best show because it was willing to be intimate about thoughts, relationships, and feelings even when it arguably didn’t need to.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #appmon #kizuna spoilers #shihameta

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Transcript Episode 49: How translators approach a text

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Lauren: I don’t think you’ve been this excited about a translated text since Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey. I’m pretty sure that’s what motivated our 18th episode on word translation.

Gretchen: You are not wrong about this. I think there’s a similar excitement that I have which is old texts – texts that are a thousand-plus years old that have been translated so many different times by so many different people – it feels like it’s hard for someone to do something new with a translation of them. And yet, here people are doing that, which is exciting to me. This is the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s done some really cool things with translating Beowulf as a feminist text. It’s a text that uses very modern style language in this thousand-year-old epic poem of Old English literature.

Lauren: I feel like when it comes to translating, before you even translate one single word, there’s all these decisions that a translator has to make. In Episode 18, we looked at translation, but we looked at word-to-word translation. And that’s definitely one part of a translator’s job, but they have so many more decisions to make. It is such an impressive job, and it’s why it’s as much an art form as it is a technical skill to translate something well. So, what are some of the big decisions that Headley made before even starting to translate Beowulf?

Gretchen: One of the things about Beowulf is, as an oral poem, it has this intricate rhyme scheme. The Old English rhyme scheme is based on half lines. Each line has two halves and there needs to be an alliterative bit in one half that is repeated in the second half.

Lauren: So, Old English is way more interested in alliteration compared to our modern English obsession with rhyming. That’s one of the stylistic features you find in Old English.

Gretchen: It’s all about the beginning of the words rather than the ends. Trying to figure out, okay, how much am I gonna use alliteration? How much am I gonna try to represent – because we can do alliteration in modern English – how much am I gonna try to represent the existing rhyme scheme? Where am I gonna try to put it in actual rhymes like you would do in modern English – if you’re writing a poem, you might rhyme it? What am I gonna do with the metre? She’s produced this really oral text that uses a certain amount of modern slang as well in ways that are really effective. One example is there’s a dragon in Beowulf, and the dragon at one point is described as “Putting the world on blast.”

Lauren: Nice.

Gretchen: To some extent, this is modern slang, but it’s also a very literal thing that a dragon can do. It’s not using modern slang for gratuitous – like, there’s no “lols” or “omgs” in this text. It’s not like here’s this facile text-speak version of Beowulf. It’s what are the bits here that actually work with the metre and the rhyme scheme but also not shying away from using a modern idiom where a modern idiom really works.

Lauren: It’s interesting to put this in contrast to the other most famous version of Beowulf in translation that I know of which is Seamus Heaney’s from somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century where I feel like he tried to capture the mythical grandeur of Old English and chose very stoic, solid sounding Old English words. I don’t think he would’ve had the dragon “putting the world on blast.”

Gretchen: Well, I don’t think he would’ve – I think it came out in 1999, this translation. In some ways his translation is fairly vernacular, but he tries to do that in a different sense. Can I read you the first bit of the Headley translation and the Heaney translation?

Lauren: Yeah. This is super fun.

Gretchen: Okay. A big thing about Beowulf translations is the first word which in Old English is “Hwaet.” That has gotten repurposed as a meme, which we’re not gonna get into much detail about. Some people translate that as like, “Lo!” or “Hark!” or “Listen!” or something like this. Heaney translates that as “So,” which has already got a certain level of vernacularity to it. His first three lines go, “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” This is very stately and like, “Here’s this thing you’re gonna do.” If you compare that with the first three lines of the Headley translation, the new one, she translates this “Hwaet” as “Bro.”

Lauren: Hm, that’s a very different tone.

Gretchen: It’s a very modern tone. I mean, you could pick a whole bunch of very modern things like “Yo” or “Hey all,” but specifically the reason she picks “Bro” is because she wants to highlight the bro culture-ness of this entire story. You can see that in the next couple lines which is, “Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were – brave, bold, glory bound. Only stories now, but all sound the Spear-Dane song, hoarded for hungry times.” It just leaps off the page in a way that really excites me.

Lauren: Yeah, no “princes” there.

Gretchen: Right. “Kings who ruled had courage and greatness” – “The men were bold.”

Lauren: The thing I always love about Beowulf is that it’s a millennium-old oral poem that happened to be written down, and a millennium ago people were like, “Let me tell you about the olden days.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: Right, it still takes place in this semi-mythic space, and it uses a certain stylised language that we even think was stylised at the time. You’re always picking between some kind of stylisation. There’s no neutral choice that exists. All of the choices are recreations at some level.

Lauren: I mean, it is kind of weird to think you’re translating from English into English, but it just shows how much the language has moved on because reading Beowulf if you don’t know Old English is an incredibly uncomfortable attempt to just guess some words that have retained some familiarity. I always find it interesting that you have to translate. And then because English went through enough changes by Shakespeare, we kind of put up with all of the features of Shakespeare that aren’t immediately obvious to us.

Gretchen: Right. But Beowulf is really this alien text. Like, “Hwaet. We Gardena” – and “Gardena” is “Spear-Danes,” but we don’t have “Spear-Danes,” and “Gardena” is not obviously related to those. There’s this great miniseries from The History of English Podcast that does a very in-depth line-by-line reading of Beowulf which I enjoyed a while back.

Lauren: My one semantic anecdote from that series is “Gar-Danes” as in “Spear-Danes” – garlic is the “spear-leek.”

Gretchen: Yes, it is!

Lauren: Because it’s like a little spear.

Gretchen: It’s like a little spear-leek. I love that anecdote. It’s interesting to be reading Beowulf at the same time that my book club is actually reading The Tale of Genji.

Lauren: Ah, from like a similar – Genji’s also a millennium old, yeah?

Gretchen: Yeah! In some sense it’s like Beowulf and Genji are kind of contemporaries.

Lauren: But they’re very much not contemporaries. Beowulf is about warrior bro culture in the Old English setting, whereas Genji is a Japanese court drama.

Gretchen: I don’t think they would’ve gotten along. I think they would’ve just found each other completely incomprehensible. Genji’s also one of those classic texts that’s been translated a whole bunch of different times in a whole bunch of different ways. For one thing, you’re translating from a much older version of Japanese. There are modern Japanese translations of The Tale of Genji as well. And then you’re also translating into a different cultural context. But the cultural context for Beowulf is also very weird. Like, I don’t do going and fighting monsters under lakes any more than I do writing haikus about the moon. In fact, I’m probably more likely to write a haiku about the moon than I am to go fight a monster under a lake if we wanna talk about relatability.

Lauren: Everything I know about Genji is because one of my colleagues in the Languages Department at La Trobe is a Genji studies scholar. It’s one of those pieces of work that is so big and so canonical that it has its own literary studies tradition associated with it. I also really love my colleague because the other part of her expertise is cosplay studies. I think it’s such a great combination of Japanese cultural experience there – Genji and cosplay.

Gretchen: I mean, what more do you want? The neat thing about reading Tale of Genji at the moment is because I’m reading it as part of a book club through Argo Bookshop – which is a bookstore that did the book launch party for Because Internet and I really like them – they’re having this Tale of Genji book club, and we’ve been reading it throughout the year a few chapters at a time because it’s over 1,000 pages. It’s huge. So, we’ve been reading it section by section, and different members of the book club have picked different translations into English of the same work.

Lauren: Ah, cool! Are there radical differences between the translations? Or do they all try and go for a literal approach?

Gretchen: They’re really different. One of the big things with Genji is at the time in 11th Century Japan it was considered very rude in the court to refer to people by their actual names. None of the characters in the original Tale of Genji manuscript have names, except for maybe Genji. So, you can imagine reading a thousand-page book where none of the characters have names is a bit of a feat of the imagination.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Different translations – and a lot of them have conventional names that literary scholars have used to talk about the characters. For example, Lady Fujitsubo lives in the Fujitsubo, which is the western pavilion, and so she gets called in the tradition “Fujitsubo” because that’s where she lives, and this kind of stuff. Or Murasaki gets called that after a flower, I think, the character. In some translations, they just use these conventional use names as if they’re the actual names of the characters. In some translations, they just use descriptions like the original text did, and they don’t really refer to characters by even pretend names or use names.

Lauren: So, one of them is trying to strive for cultural authenticity, and the other one is trying to just help the poor confused reader a little bit more, and that’s choices that each translator has decided to make.

Gretchen: Exactly. You also have other types of decisions like, “Are you going to try to” – because it’s a court drama, you have all these court positions. Are you going try to map those positions onto a western court so that people understand what a chancellor is? Or are you going to try to use those as a more direct translation of what the specific terms were at the time? That’s just different decisions that different translations can use.

Lauren: When you meet as a book club, is everyone following along, or is there a lot of clarifying across translations? Such an interesting little exercise.

Gretchen: Well, the nice thing is, is the division into different chapters is very constant, so we can be like, “Okay, we’re reading Chapters 6 to 10 now. We’re gonna talk about what happens in those.” But sometimes you do pull something up, and you’re like, “Okay, so this bit where this thing was said, do we think Genji is kinda misogynistic here?” And somebody will say, “Well, in my translation, it doesn’t actually seem like he’s misogynistic.” And here’s what’s going on in this particular translation versus that particular translation. And how much of it is the translator bringing their own preconceived notions of how people relate to each other? Because some of these translations are from the 1920s or something. People may have had different politics there. And how much of that is in the original text which was composed by a woman who we don’t know that much about? But it’s the first modern novel. It’s an interesting like, “How much are you going to try to westernise this book for a western audience?” Which some of the older translations do a bit more with the westernisation adaptation because people in the west hadn’t heard of Genji very much before. You do all this adaptation for your English-speaking readers. Whereas, more recent translators, people tend to have a higher degree of expectations of fidelity when it comes to a more modern translation. Sometimes they try to do that. And, you know, how many footnotes do you have? How much do you try to explain additionally? How much do you try to just make the text stand on its own as a story?

Lauren: So many choices to make as a translator. I’m eternally grateful to people who do this and make it appear so effortless while doing so much work bringing all of this context together.

Gretchen: It’s really neat. I’m not gonna read this 1,000-page book five different times in five different translations, but being able to experience portions of those translations vicariously through other people talking about, “Oh, here’s what happened in this one, here’s what happened in this one,” it does let you do this interesting comparative textual study.

Lauren: I’ve been thinking about translation in practice a lot lately because having worked with P. M. Freestone on their Shadowscent books, “The Darkets Bloom” and “Crown of Smoke,” these books have gone into translation in a whole bunch of languages, mostly European languages to date – Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Polish. I’m very excited about the upcoming Hungarian translation which will the first outside of the Indo-European language. But these translations involve a couple of things that are really interesting in that, in these books, I worked on creating the Aramteskan language, and for this language to work across different languages, sometimes it gets technically transliterated, or you need to add a different type of plural. For example, Russian has a different alphabet to English and so you need to fit this language into the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Gretchen: You’re not trying to pretend that Aramteskan is always written with the Latin alphabet. Even when the book itself is in Russian, you’re like, we’re gonna transliterate it into Cyrillic?

Lauren: No, translators have very much done what they think is most appropriate. I have a habit of buying these translations now and checking out what they’ve done because they’re not just translating from English into another language, they also have to translate this completely fictional language and this fictional world into that language as well. It’s one thing to maybe study in-depth Old English warrior culture or Japanese court culture and decide what to bring across, but with a fantasy world, there’s all kinds of choices you have to make as a translator as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, like what are you gonna do with the magic system? Or if you’ve invented all of these words for different scents or something, then they have to figure out some sort of equivalent of inventing those words for the other language.

Lauren: There’s a lot of scent vocabulary even in the English that P. M. Freestone has written in, so really taxing that part of the translator’s repertoire. One thing that’s been particularly interesting and that there’s been some discussion on how to manage is that in this world, both in the historical part of the world and the contemporary part of the world, the culture and the grammar allow for gender neutral third person like the English modern use of “they,” which Kirby Conrod gave a great interview about how that works in contemporary English. In fact, I did a little historical evolution of the pronoun system that fits with the story of the world where originally there was no gender distinction in the pronoun system, which fits with the old religious system of the world. And the religious system evolved younger gods that are all gendered, and the pronoun system evolved genders at the same time while still having that scope for gender neutral. Without spoiling too much, but a character that pops up in Book One and is much more a part of Book Two is gender fluid within the world. That works for current English because we have gender neutral singular they, but there are some languages like Czech or like Russian that the book’s being translated into where there isn’t that flexibility in the linguistic system. So, decisions have to be made about how that is negotiated in the translation.

Gretchen: Do you know what they did?

Lauren: I don’t know what they did for Russian yet, but I believe the solution in Czech is at various times this character is overtly identified using masculine and at other times using feminine – being much more flexible about the duality of their relationship with gender.

Gretchen: This reminds me of a thing that I heard Ada Palmer talk about at a conference panel with her book “Too Like the Lightning” and the sequels, which are set in this far future of English – well, far future and they’re written in English – in which singular they is used for everybody except when you’re writing in this faux-archaic style with “thous” and “thees” and “hes” and “shes.” It’s very marked at that point. Ada Palmer was talking about how this was translated into French where in modern English the progressive thing that people do is like, “Oh, we can use singular they. That’s very progressive.” In modern French, the progressive thing that people do is they make feminine versions of all of the professions.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: You have feminine versions of “professor” or “doctor” or these kinds of things to try and make the gender more visible. And so erase the gender in the French version wouldn’t have the same effect – where you’d end up using the default masculine or something in the French version – it wouldn’t have the same effect as using singular they all the time in the English version. There are modern French pronouns like “iel” that have been coined to solve this problem of using a gender neutral third person pronoun, but it wouldn’t work to use them in this particular case because the style is supposed to be faux-archaic. What the translator ended up doing was digging out this French pronoun “on,” which in the modern form “on” is used like “we” or like “one does this.” It’s related to like, “One does this.” There’s an older usage of “on” which is like a non-specific third person pronoun as well that – I speak French, but I didn’t know about this archaic form. And the translator went and looked for what other historic pronoun things could I do and ended up doing with “on” thing, which is a really interesting adaptation.

Lauren: The thing I find interesting is if you were – 50 years ago, you didn’t have the grammatical resources in English to use singular they for a specific person. It’s something that’s really only emerged in the last couple of decades. I think the translator has felt frustrated to not have – you know, you sometimes feel like you’ve got this road block because you don’t have resources in one language that you have in another and you have to innovate. I did have a colleague in Italian studies tell me that they read a whole novel once where the gender of one of the characters was deliberately written around and avoided in a way that was an incredibly artful, thoughtful translation. It is possible that you could maybe do this with this character in the Shadowscent books, but it would be such –

Gretchen: But you couldn’t do it with the whole world in the Terra Ignota books because all of the characters would have to have that.

Lauren: Yeah. And you could do that amount of heavy lifting at the cost of some other things, but when you’re doing an efficient translation for a commercial novel, you don’t have the resources to really max out your art and strategy in that way. It’s interesting that, you know, translation is a really resource-intensive activity even to just do a good translation, let alone an incredibly strategic and thoughtful translation.

Gretchen: Even translating one word, like that word at the beginning of Beowulf, involves thinking about, “Okay, what kind of relationship do I want this word to have to the rest of the text? What am I trying to set up here in relationship to the whole text? Where do I see this attention-getting word as going?” Like, what the text as a whole is doing, which is this interesting question. I should say, speaking of translation news, this is very hot off the presses, but I have received news that there are gonna be translations of Because Internet into Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. So, all – well, Persian is an Indo-European language, but it has a different writing system, and then two non-Indo-European languages. I don’t know anything else about the details yet.

Lauren: This is news that I didn’t even know. This is very exciting.

Gretchen: It’s very recent, yes. It’s not – I dunno. I will have official links when they exist. They won’t exist for, I dunno, probably a couple years. I dunno how long it’ll take them to do. I know nothing.

Gretchen: The surreal thing about translation means that you will see you work and not be able to read it. There’s something so amazing and magical about that, that words you have created are finding new audiences – you know, there’s a lot of trust in the translator in those contexts.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get to have any say in who they get to translate it and how much they know about the internet or things like that.

Lauren: Translating non-fiction is an entirely different process because you’re not translating an internal narrative world as much as you are potentially translating something that explains how this world that we live in right now exists, or how a set of historical realities existed. That also takes deftness and skill.

Gretchen: And you’re potentially trying to translate technical vocabulary between one language or another, which isn’t necessarily the same as, “Okay, we need to keep the characters’ names consistent. It’s like, “We need to use this word that has a technical meaning in its technical sense.” Speaking of non-fiction translation, I dunno if you’ve been following in translation news relatively recently, there’s been a lot of things going on with the Scots language Wikipedia.

Lauren: Yes, I did read about this. So, Scots language is a language in the same family as English. It has a lot of similarities with English but is considered its own “variety,” using that very deliberate linguist term where you don’t commit to just how much it’s a dialect or its mutual intelligibility with other varieties that its related to. And it has its own Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Scots is kind of like, as an English speaker, I’ve always been kind of jealous of people who speak Dutch or German or something because they can kind of understand each other a bit. Or Spanish and Portuguese and Italian because they can kind of approximate understanding each other to some extent even if they haven’t formally learned the languages. I’ve always been like, “Why doesn’t English have some closer neighbours?” But I hadn’t been thinking about Scots when I was thinking that. Scots is probably English’s closest neighbour but is still a distinct language and, especially, there are grammatical differences and there are a lot of political reasons as well why people consider it its own language. However, [laughs] the Scots language Wikipedia, which has all of these articles written in Scots, had apparently been being edited for the last seven years by an American teenager who didn’t know any Scots and was just looking up the English articles in a Scots-English dictionary word-by-word and just picking the first word of the translation and subbing that in for the Scots word.

Lauren: This has been such a difficult story to read because everyone throughout this process has acted in the best faith. This teenager wasn’t doing this for any reason other than a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and a passion for seeing the Scots Wikipedia grow but with a really uncritical approach to translation. You can see where translation really does require this understanding of vocabulary choice and style choice and how it can all go really, really wrong.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really painful because this person started when they were, like, 12, and we have all believed very foolish things about the world when we were 12. It’s just many of us didn’t write thousands of Wikipedia articles in a language that is just really not the way anybody who actually speaks this language actually writes because it’s cobbled together badly from a dictionary. It’s this very painful, “Oh, no! You thought you were helping.” And yet Wikipedia is used as the basis of a lot of machine translation, and language detection, various natural language processing tools, and so this has been potentially sabotaging the efforts to try to create other machine tools in Scots because they’ve all been in this weird dictionary-a-fied version of English.

Lauren: It’s been really heartening to see the Scots language community and the Scottish Wikipedia community come together to figure out a strategy for how to approach cleaning house – I guess it’s the biggest spring clean ever, right – how to approach this, like, thousands and thousands of articles with this very strange approach to translation.

Gretchen: It illuminates one of the issues with smaller language Wikipedias in general which is that they may only have a few active editors because to be a Wikipedia editor is to be a volunteer. It takes a long time to translate things or to write articles. If you’re a language like English, you can have tens of thousands of editors. But if you’re a language like Scots which has many fewer speakers, you may only have a dozen active editors of which maybe one of them is a well-meaning but very clueless American teenager.

Lauren: We’ve both done lots of Wikipedia editing. We have run LingWiki events to improve linguistics content on Wikipedia. It’s challenging enough to write these articles in one language that I am proficient in. I’m always in awe of people who choose to translate and support content in their second or third languages because it is a non-trivial task to translate really complicated information in a way that is really clear.

Gretchen: Translation is a technical task that is one of those things that looks at all of the different levels of language where you have some things at the individual word, or even sound, or if you’re trying to translate poetry and you wanna make it beautiful in a very aesthetic sense with the physical properties of language, all the way up to words and sentences and structure and these discourse-y particles like “Hwaet” at the beginning where you’re trying to picture a whole framing device for the structure of an entire tone of a narrative. Or if you’re trying to pick, “Okay, how are we going to treat technical vocabulary that maybe has been borrowed from English?” because its scientific vocabulary that was invented from English, how are you gonna treat that when it gets borrowed into Scots? Trying to figure out how to make these technical decisions is non-trivial. It’s this very interesting train wreck. It can go spectacularly right when you have this very clever decision for a dragon to put the world on blast, and it can also go spectacularly wrong when you just say, “Okay, I’m gonna look through a dictionary and then pick the first word I encounter.”

Lauren: One of the great things about appreciating a good translation is that language never takes a break. Culture continues to change, and we move further away from the era of Beowulf. We move into new cultural settings and new cultural expectations. It means that there is space for new translations that bring new approaches, or try something different, or aim for really capturing something about the language of the era it was created in, or set an old story in a radically new setting. Even when you find a really satisfying translation, you know there’s still possibilities for finding other interesting ways to engage with the text.

Gretchen: I think that’s a thing that’s exciting about both the translations of these thousand-year-old texts, whether Beowulf or Tale of Genji, where they go through lots of different authors who put their own spin on the translation. And also thinking of Wikipedia as a place for translation where you have multiple authors working together on the same shared text, and a bunch of different people – like Scots Wikipedia has been having these Wikipedia edit-a-thons to try to clean the place up. You have a whole bunch of contributors that are finding out about this need because of this story and coming in and working on the text together and contributing to the shared text. In many ways, even though each of these editions of the translations are published as their own book for book-length ones, it’s this very intimate relationship that you can have with a text when you’re trying to render it in a different language or in a different textual interpretation.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 44 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patron also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping to keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include pangrams, honorifics, and linguistics with kids. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life, especially as it’s the anniversary month.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #episode 49 #transcripts #translation #translations #beowulf #tale of genji #maria dahvana headley #shadowscent #p m freestone #wikipedia #scots #japanese #old english #scots wikipedia

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callistolivia · 3 years

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i also wanted to know how you feel about karmic things in astrology. a lot of people love to say 8h & 12h placements can have a lot of "karmic energy" but i feel like the concept of karma has been so white-washed. it's all about "if people do bad things to you, they'll get punished" but bad things happen to "good people" as well? i just think there's so many layers and factors to it. if it was that way, the world wouldn't be so fucked up yk?

Ahhh, this kind of question requires a really loooong discussion, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to fully put my thoughts down. I might end up rambling, idk, I’ll try to respond to this,

First things first, I don’t think the word or concept of “karma” has necessarily been “white-washed” (I will say that new age spirituality IS white-washed) as much as it has been westernized (maybe that means the same thing, I don’t know).

The word “karma” has a very different meaning now than it originally was intended to mean. We could argue that words can change meaning and their new meaning is valid, but obviously in the context of karma, we should look to the original meaning which derives from the Sanskrit word “do” or “to do.” Karma essentially means action with the purpose of result. It’s a very creative word, in my opinion, because as long as you create karma, you are seeking and manifesting results. From my understanding, this is essentially why Buddha stopped doing things, to completely separate himself from the creative nature that is living and existing on this material world consciously.

When things are “karmic” in the instance that something is created the way it is unknowingly, it implies one still did something to create its result. People like to observe karma act in a very meta way to help explain why their life is the way is it. For example, the family one is born into, one might imply it was their soul’s karmic choice to put themselves there. However, with this said, it also implies on some level that one deserves the karma they give themselves, even if its this meta, unconscious kind of karma. It’s kind of a terrible narrative when you think about people living in poverty or people who are born with a terminal illness. The person outside looking in has no place to say “well that’s just their karma, maybe their soul chose to live that life,” it’s completely up to the person actually living that life to say “my soul chose this very difficult path.” Whenever one is looking from outside in, it’s almost always from a judging perspective that lacks compassion. It also ignores the responsibility that we (privileged living people) must do better for this planet and no one truly deserves to live an impoverished or painful life. That karma lies within the governments, institutions, and corporations that made it that way and continue to keep it that way consciously.

When someone does something not so great and something bad happens to them as a result, then followed up by someone else saying “well that’s karma,” it more-so implies (or should imply) that the individual was seeking a result from their actions, whatever that result was bound to be.

The “do bad to others and bad will come to you” or alternatively “do good to others and good will come to you” is an ancient philosophy that has nothing to actually do with the word “karma” (but obviously, the Western world has made it synonymous with that). This philosophy is primarily about respect and there’s different versions of it written across religions and teachings. The most popular ones come from bible verses,

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” - “Golden Rule” Matthew 7:12

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” - Galatians 6:7

The bible takes from so many older religions that there is likely older versions of these exact sayings, it’s just the the bible is more well known because it’s been more widely translated. If you just google “the Golden Rule,” its wikipedia page discusses other religions interpretations of this proverb.

There is also the “Rule of Three” which is observed by Wiccan religion. What you put out, comes back threefold.

And of Buddhist origin, “This arises, that becomes.”

Bottomline is that it’s about respect. You shouldn’t go out of your way to create harm if you wouldn’t want harm to find its way to you. And do good to others if you deserve goodness as well, even if it doesn’t get reciprocated.

I think it is also worth mentioning the Hermetic proverb “As Above, So Below.” The mirroring synchronicity of our universe kind of gets tied into how “karma” is thought to work in the Western World. Wherever something exists, there is something opposite that reflects it. So perhaps when one creates on this world, good and bad actions, in an outward motion, the same good and bad actions return in an inward motion. When we meet our mirror, we classify it as very “karmic,” because what other word does the English language (or other modern languages) have that we can use to replace it?

With the 8th and 12th house (the 4th and 7th house are worth mentioning too), the experiences had within these houses tend to get very close or cross-over or interact with concepts related to “as above, so below.” Just taking the 8th house for example, it heavily deals with death which is the opposite of what is known to us, which is life. Then the 7th house; when we meet people that are very representative of our 7th house, it’s a mirror or opposite of who we are (1st house). Again, we classify this all as “karmic” because we don’t have another word to replace it.

I think that’s all I got to say for now. Maybe I’ll add onto this later, maybe I won’t idk

#ask #astrology #karma #hermeticism

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crispyapplepies · 4 years

Text

AkuRoku Defense pt 2

Axel and Roxas’s ship has had one of the most bizarre fandom journey’s i have ever come to witness. It has gone from being one of the most popular ships maybe ever, to being dead cancelled over a supposed age gap and I find that completely unfair, especially when it speaks to so many innocent people who emotionally depend on the ship, (yes innocent includes the spicy people because art literally is not a crime). So its time to defend it.

Brief Review on Nobodies vs Aging

First of all, l already explained in part 1 what the Nobodies Don’t Age thing means but I’ll go over it again briefly, since it can be confusing, though also many people seem to demand their hands be held rather than use their imaginations to understand. Even so, here’s the short version just for a review:

-A person in KH is made of a heart, body, and soul.

-The body reflects the heart in KH. (See: replica bodies taking on the appearance of the heart that’s inside them).

-A nobody lacks a heart, making them just a body and soul. They’re advanced zombies of sorts.

Nobodies do not age because they have no heart for the body to reflect. This is why they won’t change until they form one. Change includes age

-Ergo, you can imagine any age you like for Axel to be nobodied, cuz he was frozen at that age and did not change for 10 years. Not until he met Roxas.

We’ll come back to this again later.

Axel Loves Roxas Canonically

Second of all, Axel loves Roxas and you are allowed to interpret that as platonic, familial, or romantic, I don’t care as long as you’re not forcing that idea on others like the ship police. That said, people are allowed to explore how romantic this love potentially is.

And what you might like to know is that the canon is even open to this. Axel’s love for Roxas is canonically expressed, and if you would like, you can even interpret that love as romantic. See below:

We are going to look at the japanese translation because AS ALWAYS good old SENA is here for the straights and erases the gay, like clockwork.

In English, Axel says this:

Axel: I wanted to see Roxas. He...was the only one I liked... He made me feel...like I had a heart. It's kind of...funny... You make me feel...the same...

Axel’s line here in Japanese:

Axel: I wanted to see Roxas... I loved him. Being with him... it made me feel like I had a heart. I feel it from you, too... the same kind of....

You may notice that as romantic as the line “he made me feel like I had a heart” sounds, the original can be read as wAY gooier, specifically cuz of this word:

好き: "suki"

Now here’s the thing. Japanese is a pretty vague language which is why context is so important for these things, as well as what you say, and what you don’t say.

“Suki” is a very key word here because it is often used in romantic confession scenes.

(I have no idea what this panel is from, I apologize lol)

It CAN mean something casual, like “I love video games”, but considering Axel is saying this with his dying breath, I don’t think we should be treating it as some hyperbole. He is referring to a person and it is meaningful. However. It is still a word with plausible deniability. Japanese has several words for love, “ai” for example being one of the most inarguable means of referring to romantic love. So choosing “suki” still leaves room for the homophobes to disregard it as something not romantic. Which makes it objectively inconclusive. Here is the thing though… they specifically chose that word, suki, a word which IS so often used in a romantic context in many anime and manga.

They also chose to use that word rather than something objectively platonic. Which means you also cannot conclude Axel did NOT mean it romantically. Given his devotion to Roxas, and the fact that they chose this word of all words for him to say… I’m personally going to assume it’s romantic. You are free not to interpret it that way. But I am because I am considering the fact that they did not choose something strictly platonic.

(My translator friend actually freaked out when I showed her this, she’s translated and seen enough confession scenes to know what connotations that particular word comes with lol).

If you’ve read my queer coding doc, you may recall I also go over how this is one of the most important tricks with queer coding. You write something that CAN be viewed as queer but with plausible deniability for straight people to ignore it. It’s a means of protecting oneself and the text from homophobic oppression. It is a legitimate practice. So even though it can be denied as a queer text, it can also very very well be viewed as a definite queer text. We are choosing to queer it here. It is not as explicit as it could be, but it is still very bold, suggestive coding considering the homophobic world we live in, and especially with KH2 being released in 2004.

“But Age Gap!” (ughhhhh)

We’re back to this cuz I also finally have the Japanese version of that infamous page in the Day’s novel to look at.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a little bit salty but I don’t like to repeat myself lol so I’m gonna try to keep this section short and to the point.

In this interview with Nomura, he expresses that nobodies do not age, and they exist as they were at the time of becoming a nobody. He then suggests Xemnas seems 30 ish.

Now I truly do not care to hold your hand through the process of thinking creatively because you should be using your own imagination, if you have one, to think critically and creatively about what this idea means.

Kingdom Hearts is a FANTASY game. Nobodies are a FANTASY concept. They can break ALL the rules about real life that you want them to. But I will go ahead and explain this for you even though I’ve already done it many times, in this very document even and in other meta posts.

The body reflects the heart. Nobodies are frozen as they are from the moment they are “born”, which is to say the moment they are created. Glorified zombies. They aren’t going to age unless they form a heart. Why does Xemnas look 30? He has a heart! Or he was formed 10 years after TerraNort defected. You tell me. Why did Ienzo age? I dunno, you tell me! Either he formed a heart and didn’t know it, (he’s passionate about his work, he loves Ansem the Wise, any number of things could’ve made him form a new heart), or he was nobodied later in life. Axel is frozen at whatever age he was when he was nobodied, all the while Ienzo could’ve been nobodied 10 years later. It’s a fantasy, and these are fantasy rules. That scenario can happen. YOU decide. Until the canon tells us for sure, your imaginations can run wild with explanations. Even if the canon does tell us, you can still imagine whatever you want for your own headcanons. Freedom is amazing, it’s salty and sweet.

Now let’s talk about that annoying page in the Days novel people keep shoving in my face.

This one right here. The official english translation is this:

That’s not the worst translation I’ve seen them put out there. But let’s look closer at the Japanese:

Here, Axel says he thinks Roxas is about 10 years separate from himself, but things like age don't exist for nobodies.

Already that’s making a lot more sense to me for nobodies since we are told nobodies do not age. As such Axel speaking like he is 10 years older would feels almost contradictory when he has no heart and cannot change.

This wording is important. Recall me saying that Japanese is very vague so all of the context matters. No one is denying that 10 years passed between Birth By Sleep and Axel meeting Roxas. However. Nobodies don’t age.

(please dont make me explain that a third time in this essay alone)

The Japanese and English both express that age does not apply to nobodies, (as discussed above^^^^) and the Japanese furthers this with its wording. They have 10 years of separation between Axel being nobodied, and Roxas existing.

Axel saying in English that Roxas is simply 10 years younger than himself is rather misleading considering the ambiguity of the original. I can’t fault the translators too much for not understanding this nobody concept so well because it is obviously confusing. However, I do not think Axel was saying Roxas is literally, in real life human somebody terms, 10 literal physical years younger than him. He is expressing that he became a nobody 10 years ago whereas this guy became a nobody very recently, and it shows with how little he can even function right now. A zombie who has been wandering around with no heart for 10 years meets a fresh zombie wandering around with no heart for 1 day.

I know antis are gonna use it against us no matter what, but at least know that akuroku is not inherently pedophilia nor is it inherently an adult/minor ship.

In many of our headcanons, Axel was frozen at age 18 or 19, with Roxas being 16. Absolutely no one is required to view them with a big age gap because imagination is free and you literally have no right to police it, but also because the canon expresses these nobodies as beings outside of the realm of age. They do not operate under real life rules or somebody rules. Think of Steven Universe where Rose was thousands of years old but only “grew up” as a person when she fell in love with Greg, a human in his 20s-30s who asked her to consider other people’s feelings. Consider the mind of a nobody as a state of Neverland. You aren’t gonna age unless you step out of it and change. Mature. Isn’t it sad that Axel did not feel like he had a heart until Roxas? No wonder people ship it!

Coding is Obvious

Finally I wanna conclude on a simple thought. This interview right here? I’d be curious what the original Japanese actually says lol but the english translation of it says that romantic akuroku was not Nomura’s intent.

Here’s the thing though. If you know anything about queer coding, you know that using romantic coding between 2 male characters is signaling something. It is not something you should ignore. It would not be there if the characters were meant to be viewed as objectively straight. And for something “unintentional”... there sure is a lot of coding at work here.

From Axel pinning Roxas down and asking him to come home in a very sexually suggestive pose,

to watching the sunset in sheer bliss together just enjoying the peace of reunion,

to watching the sunset together while talking about what LOVE is, specifICALLY romantic love,

To this. And I already told you what this was in Japanese.

I’m not saying Nomura lied…

But I am saying that a whole staff worked together to create these games, and it is very difficult for me to believe that no one thought to say “these characters appear to be romantic, let us change the scene to be more platonic” if the characters were not meant to be romantically suggestive.

Tl;Dr I wanna live in the timeline where people let you ship akuroku lol

#akuroku #akrk #axel kh #roxas kh #kingdom hearts

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okayto · 4 years

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Mini-Review: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!

I’m so glad @littlestartopaz recommended this to me, because it was SO GOOD.

Yuta wants to start high school afresh: new school far from home, new classmates who don’t know he spent middle school acting out the fantasy of being the mysterious and magic “Dark Flame Master,” new him. But one of his classmates has delusions of her own, and after she accidentally discovers his embarrassing past, Yuta is unwillingly drawn into her life and a growing circle of friends with their own quirks.

The “chunibyo” of the title basically means “8th grade syndrome;” a phase in middle school where some kids inhabit and act out their own fantasy stories, positing themselves as dark magicians, magical girls, and other wielders of magical powers.

I had avoided this for a while, until it was specifically recommended to me, because honestly, it sounds embarrassing, right? It sounds like it’s gonna be an embarrassing manic pixie dream girl scenario. But what it actually contains is the story of how a mixed bag of students--some actively chunibyo, others not--become friends and develop very endearing close relationships, while arguing and frustrating each other because that’s what friends do.

Now, the idea of being the star of what’s essentially your own fantasy-action anime is embarrassing, but what’s notable is that the show doesn’t really hold the chunibyo characters up for mockery. Sure we might laugh at them, but hey--it’s funny to watch friends be silly together. And most viewers, just like some of the characters who have moved on from their chunibyo phases, probably easily understand the mix of soul-wrenching embarrassment and (mild?) fond sentiment that comes with remembering our middle school selves.

But let’s be real: the reactions the two former chunibyo students, Yuta and Shinka have to being reminded of middle school, are #RELATABLE

Rikka, our title chunibyo, in particular uses her fantasy in part to cope with grief, coming from an extended family that (without getting spoilery) didn’t help a young girl to deal with a very hard and life-changing time. Now that she’s in high school, her older sister blackmails Yuta (using an a voice recording of one of his chunibyo speeches) into helping deal with Rikka and things (like the cat she wants to adopt) that pop up.

One thing the show is very good at, though, is not making a single thing the reason behind a character’s chunibyo. One may have started their fantasy inspired by another person, or prompted by an event, but it’s also (while active) part of their personal narrative that influences how they spent their free time, how they see the world and keep blogs or diaries, etc.

But at the same time, they’re still teenagers, and their inner view of themselves...doesn’t always translate skills.

I said the show is primarily about friendship. A lot of that friendship is between Yuta and Rikka, but they accumulate a little group, mainly through Rikka’s attempt to start a magic club. Recruit 1: Kumin, a polite, quiet senpai with no chunibyo history or aspirations.

Kumin starts off seeming like a background character, but by the second season it’s clear she’s not just there for jokes about how she’ll take a nap anywhere. She’s perceptive, and genuinely enjoys watching the others act out their scenarios.

Compared to the other characters who are boisterous in their chunibyo activities (Rikka, Deko, Satone), or vociferously trying not to get drawn in to chunibyo activities (Yuta, Shinka), Kumin is happy to watch and offer encouragement, but she’s also willing to participate if a chunibyo scenario calls for a group.

Incidentally, the show does a really interesting thing where occasionally, we’ll be drawn “inside” the chunibyo world, seeing what Rikka/Deko/whoever see: a fantasy land, big magical weapons, anime-grade magical attacks. Occasionally we’ll also see what this “really” looks like--a couple people running around waving umbrellas at each other--but often we only get the fantasy version. It’s clear that Rikka and co. are legitimately on some level engaging in a shared imagination, and the times when a reluctant character (particularly Yuta or Shinka) willing steps in to the shared illusion are genuinely sweet.

Speaking of, Shinka (aka Morisummer) became one of my favorite characters. Like Yuta, she was chunibyo (”Morisummer the magician”); like Yuta, she chose a high school where she didn’t know anyone expressly so she could reinvent herself as a normal teen. And like Yuta, she’s getting dragged kicking and screaming into chunibyo again.

It would’ve been so easy to make her a bad character. She’s pretty, puts a lot of effort into being popular and likable at school, trying to keep up a good teen girl image, despite being fairly sarcastic at her core. And as loathe as she is to admit it, she likes her friends (even if she won’t admit they’re friends, even if half of them are actively chunibyo, even if she says she’s only hanging around so she can make sure all traces of chunibyo-Morisummer are erased from the internet).

Shinka gets drawn in to the group through Rikka’s apparently only pre-existing friend: Deko, a fellow chunibyo who follows Rikka (or “Eye of the Wicked Lord Shingan”) as her master, and is extremely devoted to the great magician Morisummer. So devoted, in fact, that she has several physical copies of Morisummer’s book containing all her wisdom...aka Shinka-Morisummer’s blog, which Shinka has tried to erase all trace of.

Needless to say, the two don’t seem to get along great.

Deko’s dedication to chunibyo and Morisummer irks Shinka; Shinka’s claim to be Morisummer irks Deko, who refuses to believe the great magician could ever be this sarcastic, mundane girl. Deko’s refusal irks Shinka, bringing out the sarcasm and bluntness Shinka tries to hide from the school at large.

Obviously, they actually become close friends, but heaven help you if you actually say so.

The entire series is an exploration of relationships, and Yuta’s developing closeness with Rikka (hey, we knew it was going to happen) is also sweet. He’s a genuinely likable boy, embarrassed by the vestiges of his former self he sees in Rikka, but often willing to meet her on her level, and both of them also learn/reaffirm the importance of doing things their way, and keeping both of them comfortable, rather than acting a certain way or performing specific acts just because their classmates think their relationship status mandates it.

Speaking of classmates--and I know this is getting long but I CAN’T HELP IT, I LIKED SO MANY ASPECTS OF THIS SERIES--the characters aren’t ridiculed at school. Sure, some people think they’re weird, but there’s no shunning, no arc involving teasing or bullies. Rikka’s often content as a loner, but when she attempts to join in a social circle, she’s welcomed. Shinka’s obsessed with reinventing herself and appearing normal and seems to think that otherwise she’ll be cast out, but multiple characters mention that others at the school notice how she behaves (oddly, on occasion) and there are no social repercussions. Truly nice for a show that has characters spending quite a lot of time in school.

Verdict

English dub? Yes, and it’s got strong performances. Rikka’s voice actor in particular does a fantastic job capturing the difference between chunibyo!Rikka’s confidence and command, and regular!Rikka’s, well, normal awkward teenageness. (Plus, I also found her lower-than animegirl-average voice enjoyable.) (Double plus, I honestly think her English voice is better than her original Japanese voice at showing the difference between her emotions and chunibyo/reality.) Deko’s VA is fantastic showing the enthusiasm of the 9th grader (and what enthusiasm, Deko is like the Energizer Bunny), and Shinka’s VA manages to show her alternating annoyance, cheerfully sweet ideal self, and organizized leader voices.

Visuals: Fine, and I really liked the chunibyo designs for each character’s chunibyo phase. The contrast between chunibyo-vision (giant magic weapons; mysterious lights, fantasy landscapes) and reality (an umbrella or soup ladle; a strip of lights taped to the floor; a local park) was really well done.

Worth watching? Yessss. It’s very manageable--two 12-episode seasons--and while each season contains its own arc (you could stop after the first one, but why), together they make an excellent story. Heck, I think the second season is equal to, if not better than, the first, because the friend group is well-established and even more fun to watch.

Where to watch (USA, as of October 2020): Netflix (dub, sub); Crunchyroll (sub), HIDIVE (sub & dub, plus OVAs and film)

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

#love chunibyo & other delusions #chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai #Rikka Takanashi #Shinka Nibutani #Sanae Dekomori #anime #brb just going into withdrawal from the lack of Shinka and Deko snarking in my life now #not sure if Rikka was supposed to read as non-neurotypical but I think it's a possible interpretation & I want more #reviews #recommendation

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gayregis · 4 years

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tbh as a polish person genuinely vibing with any kind of mostly english speaking witcher fandom is kinda hard bc theres just. so many small mistakes and just a feeling of Wrongness in the translation that couldve been fully avoided? like using womanizer instead of whoremonger for dandelion or saying comrade instead of friend etc and like im mad bc with some more effort it couldve been done way better and actually carried over more of the og atmosphere for international readers And It Didnt

i agree with you from the ‘can only read the english translations’ side. i feel like definitely the official UK translations shifted a lot of the meanings, of course i do not know how it is in every single scene, but from the lengthy posts i’ve read on reddit, some posts i’ve read on tumblr, and conversations i’ve had with mutuals over discord, plus just generally reading the books and saying to myself “wait, this doesn’t sound... cohesive?” i agree that are are a lot of changes that shift the perspective.

one part of this is the deliberate mistranslation of general vocabulary used with the intention (i think) to give a more “medieval-ish fantasy” vibe to the work. i feel like david and danusia really went for some british slang that gives it a more “english medieval” feel (or at least, how medieval england is conceived of in the modern english-speaking imagination), when more widely-known words without such specific connotations (for the speaker and for the subject) would be more appropriate.

for example, i have heard that a lot of the translations of “maiden” or “wench” are more akin to “girl/woman” in the original text. another example is “comely lad” VS “pretty boy,” two translations (the former official, the latter fan-translated) that mean the same thing essentially but the former one is “brit-ified” (to me, at least). and i know that sometimes the translators chose specific words to keep a “peasant-speak” vibe with the usage of specific language, for example, with milva, but instead of being confined to peasantry, it extends across a lot of characters.

another part is figures of speech that don’t translate over due to being polish-specific idioms, or being reliant on the polish grammar structure. imo the translators are too eager to replace these with english figures of speech/idioms. a lot of the time when polish fans have pointed this out and said, this is different in the original text, the original idiom is so-and-so, which basically means this-and-this, i am able to understand the translated idiom, when it is in context.

for example, i believe that in the english version of baptism of fire dandelion says to regis, “was it just you and your shadow?” and regis replies, “worse, i don’t even cast one.” but in the original text, the exchange goes something more like “were you drinking to the mirror?” “worse, i don’t even show up in mirrors.” the idiom “drinking to the mirror” meaning drinking alone does not exist in english, but it would have been at least a little obvious to me as a reader what the meaning of the idiom is. i suppose it is up to preference, but i would prefer to have the original figures of speech kept intact, with a little footnote at the bottom included for explaining context / what its meaning is.

another part is cultural references and history that end up getting lost. references to other works, etc.

an example is in the edge of the world when torque says “good night” at the end to geralt and dandelion. without knowing the phrase, “where the devil says goodnight,” this is completely meaningless. and context about polish/broader european history is mostly also lost on a non-polish audience, because it is not something that is basic knowledge.

it doesn’t just extend to polish references, for example, regis quotes cicero quoting one of the seven sages, “omnia mea mecum porto,” basically “all that’s mine i carry with me,” which ig is a nod to how regis is a philosopher and lives simply, is a humanist, etc.

and this isn’t even beginning to touch all of the arthurian stuff he put in there.

mostly, i end up being clueless because i do not know what the original text was, and i know that if i could see the original text, i would not understand it and would need it explained to me.

i guess a positive side of this is that i like uncovering what was originally said and hearing it explained, scouring the internet for someone who has addressed a specific passage or something... it helps foster some conversation, kind of like two kids comparing christmas presents - what’s in your translation? what’s in your translation? what’s in the original text? - it is fun to see everyone start posting pictures and screenshots of their books, like trying to unravel a mystery as a group, and i enjoy that, especially when there are more international translations than just polish original and english translation, i like seeing the czech, russian, spanish, french translations and then learning things from these languages/cultures/countries because they showed up in the text.

on the other hand, it hinders discussion because if people are operating on different translations, they will have widely different perspectives of the characters based upon what the characters said or how they were described. you are not the only person i’ve heard express this sentiment, and agreed that it’s difficult to “genuinely vibe” across language barriers regarding the series. polish geralt is a totally different character from english geralt, from what i’ve heard, to summarize it.

and even if you do research as an english-speaking person to find out the mistranslations, the meanings behind certain phrases or references, etc., you still will probably never understand it fully, nor will you uncover everything there is to uncover.

i dislike leaving it like this, but it kind of “is what it is” with the language barriers and translations. a lot of the original atmosphere wasn’t and possibly will never be fully translated over (in some cases, it may be impossible). i would say don’t feel like you “have” to engage with every fan of the witcher books, if you feel you don’t vibe with english speaking witcher fandom that is okay and i hope that no one would judge you for it, everyone should hang out and talk with who they want to hang out and talk with. but i also get the disappointment because you want to connect, but there is just a lack of understanding. it shouldn’t be the burden to fall on you to be like, hey guys actually in the original text this scene is different / you’re misinterpreting this-- but if you ever want to say or make posts like this, i think this would be great and a contribution to the community. i would also say idk if it is possible if the interpretations are extremely different, but some broader themes like family, love, humanity, etc. imo do join the fans of the books in some way or another, big or small, despite how wonky the translations get. and finally, i want to say i am not here to give advice or consolation, because i certanly don’t know what can be done about this, i just want to respond to this and say that you’re not alone.

#it must be extremely frustrating and i think a lot of eng-speaking fans come into the fandom thinking the official translations are translat #(if they are not already familiar with how translations work and that they are usually not perfect or 1:1 translation)#i think a degree of humility is needed but that is difficult to find among many eng-speakers in the us/uk/canada/aus lmao #the witcher #anon #ask

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rwby-redux · 3 years

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Transcribed from a video uploaded by Talks at Google, of a presentation given by David J. Peterson on his book, “The Art of Language Invention.”

The following transcription is from part of the Q&A segment, where David Peterson addresses an audience member’s question of whether or not TV shows should use endangered minority languages in place of constructed languages. Because of how this issue pertains to both RWBY’s canon and the Redux, I chose to reference his answer in Worldbuilding: Languages, and provide readers with a written version of their exchange for ease-of-access.

Audience Member: So, every year, you know, we lose dozens, maybe hundreds, of human languages to extinction, and we lose the cultural payload with them. How do you feel about the ethics of conlangs going into—people running around, geeking out on Klingon, when we’re losing real human languages that they could be learning. And why do you not consider using obscure human languages for some of these shows? Bring them back a little bit. Give them a new life. Make people aware of them, rather than artificial languages.

David Peterson: Let me ask you this—how do you feel about people getting really, really excited about novels like The Hunger Games, which are stories about fake people, when we’re losing the stories of real people every day that are dying?

Audience Member: Honestly, I think that’s sort of false analogy. We have—and I admit I come from a very specific basis on this. But I guess I would say, how do you feel about ISIS destroying antiquities when we could make new stuff?

David Peterson: I’m sorry, say the last part?

Audience Member: How do you feel about ISIS destroying antiquities when we could make new stuff? That’s equivalent to yours. Is it—and I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong—

David Peterson: [laughing] You’re saying that I’m destroying natural languages in order to produce—

Audience Member: I’m not saying you’re destroying natural languages. I’m saying, could we not use some of the energies that people go into learning conlanguages, geeking out about conlanguages, going to Klingon conventions. I’ll tell you, I got very annoyed when I see—I saw even here at Google recently, people talking about looking for Klingon resources to do something in Klingon, and it’s like great, but let’s put that effort to saving a real language because when we lose those languages—when the last speaker dies—it’s never coming back as a living language.

David Peterson: Yeah, so, of course—and in fact, if they weren’t going to be doing Klingon they would be doing the other thing, right?

Audience Member: That’s how it ends.

David Peterson: So let’s stop—

Audience Member: You could use real human languages for some of these—

David Peterson: You certainly could. Yeah. We could have found a—for example, we could have found some very rarely spoken language and given it to the barbaric Dothraki, who are ripping people’s tongues out. How would that have been?

Audience Member: I wasn’t necessarily saying Dothraki.

David Peterson: Okay. Okay, but that’s actually the issue that comes up. For example, there are a lot of languages that are dying out right now. Not the majority of them, but certainly a minority of them, that are dying because the speakers don’t want other people to use their language. They don’t want people to write it down. They don’t want foreigners speaking them. Do we respect that? Do we just kind of sigh and let the language die out and respect the wishes of these people who don’t want contact with the outside world? It’s a different kind of ethical question. But personally, there are two ways of looking at it. One, artistically, if you’re talking about a totally fictional reality, it breaks the reality to use a language that actually is spoken by other people on Earth. It’s kind of an odd thing. I always find it odd when people are speaking English when they oughtn’t to be, like Amadeus. I mean, it was a fantastic movie. It was a fantastic movie, but honestly why were they speaking English? Especially like, I don’t know. Well, it’s actually kind of a bizarre thing of movies that we think British English would have been better than American English.

[Audience laughs.]

David Peterson: I mean it wouldn’t, it’s the same thing, but I don’t know. So artistically, it simply breaks [the immersion], and honestly, there’s no alternative here. The alternative to using creative language in Defiance was English. They were never, ever going to consider using any other natural language, or the expense involved in finding somebody to translate into those languages. And then furthermore if you think about, especially some very—some minority languages that aren’t spoken very well—by very many people—and you start to translate some of the dialogue in Defiance. For example, this sentence that I showed you about the chlorine gas [from earlier during the presentation]. Odds are that Pirahã doesn’t have a word for chlorine. So then it’s a question of what you do. It seems doubtful that you could get a speaker up there [to a studio] who would have to learn and understand English well enough and perform on a deadline to be able to translate into it, so you need somebody else. And undoubtedly they would have to create words. They would have to create words either by working with native roots, or have a whole load of English borrowings in there, or worse, create words—they kind of look like the real language—and use them in those scripts. Which to me seems really offensive. Essentially you’re creating words to plunk down into somebody’s actually-existing language. You’re not a part of the culture, and you’re saying, “Well, we’re going to represent this as a word in your language for the purposes of this television show.” I just can’t see that being a good idea.

[Pause.]

David Peterson: On a separate note, if you just kind of remove the created language aspect entirely—the fact, of course, that there are dying languages is terrible. It’s a question of what can you do as an outsider in order to either prevent it, or to preserve those languages. I’m not sure how a lot of speakers of minority languages would feel if there were, say, a bunch of teenagers from southern California who started to learn their language just because they thought it was cool, and funky, and it was for these quirky people in this show. That, at least for me, would make me feel a little uncomfortable. So I think that the sentiment is well-founded. I don’t think that the solution you presented is a good one, or feasible, or necessarily respectful. I also think that for standard preservation of languages there are people that are trained to do that. It’s not an easy thing. And of course I know them, and in fact have studied under them coming through linguistics. It’s not just something that anybody can do. And it takes a lot of work with the culture, and having worked with Hollywood a bunch, it’s a lot of work that I know that nobody would be interested in doing. They wouldn’t be interested in paying for it, they wouldn’t be interested in taking the time with it, because they have deadlines and they’re doing what they’re going to do. I’m not sure if that answered every single aspect of your question, but if not, I’m happy to talk about it further because this is an issue that comes up every single time created languages are discussed. So thanks.

Talks at Google. “The Art of Language Invention | David Peterson | Talks at Google.” YouTube video. August 24, 2015. 47:59 - 54:32. [https://youtu.be/Z50T-tslrgs?t=2869]

#languages #conlang #racism #cultural appropriation #transcription #david peterson

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Investigating Digimon’s Biggest Unanswered Question

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On June 25, 2000 on Fuji TV in Japan and October 21, 2000 on Fox Kids in the U.S. an episode of Digimon aired that over 20 years later continues to haunt fans and the franchise itself alike. This was an episode that opened up a world of possibility and a plotline darker than anything else seen in the series – an episode that ended with a gigantic cliffhanger that has never been directly dealt with since.

The installment was season 2 of Digimon, episode 13. ‘The Call of Dragomon’ a.k.a. ‘His Master’s Voice.’ This episode introduced the Dark Ocean.

After all these years it continues to spark debate and analysis from fans. Why? It’s not like Digimon didn’t have its fair share of dropped plots. Why does the Dark Ocean stand out and why was its mystery never resolved? To try and answer that, we have to take a deep dive into the episode that introduced it all.

It begins when Kari Kamiya experiences bad dreams and visions of an ocean swallowing her up. Dark creatures follow her in the hallways. She flickers out of existence and appears in the Dark Ocean. It’s a greyscale world. A lighthouse shines darkness instead of light. Kari attempts to find a way out and stumbles across the dark creatures from earlier, glowing red eyes their only feature. They painfully cry out for help, desperately hoping Kari will free them from the power of the evil Digimon Emperor.

It’s all a trick however and important differences between the Japanese and English versions of the episode occur at this point. In the English version the dark creatures attempt to kidnap Kari, hauntingly telling her, “you’ll be our new queen. We need you.”

In the Japanese version it’s much more unsettling. They tell her, “you are worthy of being our bride. In order to fight the new god (the Digimon Emperor, it’s implied), we must create new offspring.”

In both versions Kari is saved by her Digimon partner Gatomon and the dark creatures retreat into the ocean. In the English version they woefully explain their foiled plan,

“We thought you would love to be our queen. With your power you could lead us in the battle against our undersea master. I guess we were wrong. Beware, our master can sense your power too and he will come for you.”

In the Japanese version they leave Kari with this parting message.

“Chosen one… we believed you would be glad to be our bride. Very well. We shall return to the depths, to our former god, and wait for the time.”

Kari escapes from the Dark Ocean but a giant Digimon, named Dragomon in the Japanese version, rises from the ocean. The master the dark creatures spoke of. Its eyes glow red. END OF EPISODE. What does it all mean? This seemed like it was going to be a major storyline. The end of the English episode even teases, “who is this evil dark undersea master? Don’t miss the upcoming Digimon!” But that question would never be answered.

The master/god would never be seen again and Kari never crossed paths with the dark creatures. It’s a massive cliffhanger that the franchise has never resolved and no one from the production has given any answers to. The Dark Ocean does show up again but only for brief appearances.

A flashback in episode 23, ‘Genesis of Evil,’ shows a young Ken dipping his digivice into the Dark Ocean’s waters, transforming it into a Dark D3 digivice which would later give Ken the power to inhibit digivolution. Ken, as the Digimon Emperor, also draws on the power of the Dark Ocean to power his base.

Why Wasn’t T.K. The Leader of Digimon Season 2?

By Shamus Kelley

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Kari, Ken Ichijouji, and Yolei Inoue stumble into the Dark Ocean through a “phase warp” in episode 31, ‘Opposites Attract.’ Yolei is unable to see the Dark Ocean until her frustration at that somehow makes it so she can. This seems to indicate that one’s emotions when entering the Dark Ocean can have a major impact on what happens to you there. Ken and Kari both have their share of trauma which may have influenced the Dark Ocean’s hold over them. Ken was originally pulled into the Dark Ocean after his brother died, a brother Ken had previously wished would “just disappear.” Kari watched Wizardmon, a kind Digimon that she’d grown close to, jump in front of an attack meant for her. She held him in her arms as he died. Yolei, her life comparatively easier, wasn’t affected by the Dark Ocean as much as them.

In the Japanese version of the episode Kari worriedly states, “they called me here… again.” It seems the master/god still wants Kari’s power. The three manage to escape through a “hole in space” and never return.

Later in episode 45, ‘The Dark Gate,’ Ken banishes the evil Digimon Daemon to the Dark Ocean. He opens a portal there by facing his darkest fears and with a little team friendship power. Curiously Daemon indicates he already knows what the Dark Ocean is, calling it Dragomon’s Ocean in the Japanese version.

It’s briefly mentioned in episode 48, ‘Oikawa’s Shame’ when evil mastermind Oikawa reveals the Control Spire’s that plagued the team in the first half of the season and prevented regular digivolution are a “present” from the Dark Ocean.

The Dark Ocean also gets a few fleeting moments in the Digimon Adventure tri. films. Previously unknown Digi Destined Himekawa becomes stranded in the Dark Ocean after her Digimon partner, Taprimon, couldn’t remember her. She fought back against the dark creatures there but was pulled into the ocean never to be seen again. The films also address the Daemon cliffhanger by hinting he could return as a villain but this never went anywhere. With the Digimon franchise well into a reboot of the original first season, it’s doubtful this or any other Dark Ocean plots will ever get resolved.

That leaves fans (including us) to try to make sense of it all. First off, let’s look at those key differences between the motivations of the dark creatures in the Japanese and English version of episode 13.

In the English version, the creatures seemingly tricked Kari into helping them by using the dark spirals. They knew this would make her sympathetic and hoped she would join them as their queen in a battle against their old undersea master. Why did they need Kari for this? They mention she has power they need but it isn’t clear what that power is. Previously in the series she had a connection to the crest of light so maybe they were hoping her light would be able to wipe out their master. There’s no clear answer to any of that question but it seems Kari, more than any other Digi Destined, has some special role to play in this conflict.

The Japanese version’s motivation for the dark creatures is much clearer. They aren’t fighting against their god; they’re working for him to fight the Digimon Emperor. They chose Kari because she was worthy of being their bride, a bride who would create new offspring to aid in the fight. This leads us to speculate that these dark creatures, which certainly aren’t Digimon, are offspring of some other bride.The horror of all that is off the charts and deeply uncomfortable, especially since Kari is a middle schooler. It’s no wonder this was changed for the English version and rightly so.

Putting that real life horror aside, the biggest lingering question at the end of the Japanese episode is what the dark creatures meant when they told Kari to, “wait for the time.” The time of what? What did this god want with her?

In all this we also need to ask what the Dark Ocean itself even is. It’s implied to be a dimension or world that isn’t the Digital World, especially since Kari can get there without using one of the Digi-World gates. We only see a small section of the world. The ocean, a beach, the lighthouse, an abandoned town, and a tunnel.

The only other clues we have to try and decipher what the hell the Dark Ocean is comes from its clear influence, H.P. Lovecraft. Dragomon might as well be called Cthullumon given his appearance and the way he rises from the sea. A clear connection is drawn in the Japanese episode when a text card appears just before the title card, written in “digicode.” This is basically the Digimon alphabet and thanks to TMS over on the Digimon With the Will forums we know it translates to “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

In Lovecraft’s “The Call fo Cthulhu” story this translate to “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” This would imply that Dagmon is actually Cthulhu! This could mean any number of things for the multiverse of Digimon but just reading it on the tin, it matches up with the dark creatures statement in the Japanese episode that they’d “wait for the time.” We can now reasonably extrapolate that they’re waiting for the time Dragomon aka their god will wake. Most likely to aid in their fight against the Digimon Emperor… or perhaps something bigger.

With all this information, fragmented as it is, what can we reasonably guess the Dark Ocean is? Perhaps, since the Digital World is made of data, the Dark Ocean is the black screen in-between the 1’s and 0’s in the Digital World’s code. A place that has to exist for more “code” to be written but that’s barren of any life. Dragomon and the dark creatures could have been banished there long ago but before that it was an empty world, only carrying fragments of the code around it (the town, the lighthouse, etc.) That also lines up with the Digital World, which also contains fragments of real world machines and structures (trains, buildings, etc.) This proximity to the code of the Digital World is further supported by the fact that people or Digimon could fall through “phase warps” into it like Kari, Ken, and Yolei did. The Dark Ocean is a world between a world. A world that needs to exist for the sake of another world but is not truly a world of its own. A world you almost never see but if you do… it’s nothingness.

It’s no surprise why the Dark Ocean continues to captivate and frustrate Digimon fans all these years later. A gigantic story was hinted at, one that held particular importance to fan favorite characters Kari and Ken. It could have expanded the scope of Digimon’s world, bringing in a power beyond anything else the team had ever faced. The “what if?” of it all holds great power over fans. It’s a shame the show abandoned something that could have been so compelling.

However, perhaps its lack of resolution isn’t a completely bad thing. It makes the world of Digimon more mysterious. There’s more going on than just the battles the kids are having. There are other forces at work. Powerful forces that have their own goals outside of simple destruction or desire for power.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The more you get of a franchise like Digimon the more likely you are for its fantasy world to get overcomplicated or over explained. Things get too tidy, too neat, everything is related to each other or a small group of characters (looking at you, Star Wars.) The Dark Ocean breaks all that up. Sure our characters’ stories intersect with it but they’re only a small part of the mystery of the Dark Ocean. If it’s a mystery that’s even solvable. As much as fans want it solved, there’s something powerful about a mysterious force lurking at the edge of the Digimon universe.

The post Investigating Digimon’s Biggest Unanswered Question appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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spn-headcanons-daily · 4 years

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Hello people of the crazy spn fandom, how are we doing? (not well)

Wanna read some headcanons?

Since the finale, which brought me a new flavour of disappointment, I started to create a list of made up facts/headcanons (don't know how to call it better) of what should in my opinion happen to characters instead. Points about Dean and Cas from this list are slowly turning into my first actual fanfic, but points about Sam and Eileen are more difficult to write into a short story, so for now they are just staying as facts in a list. And I decided to post them here.

Will anyone ever read it? - Probably not.

Will that logical fact stop me? - Definitely not.

I'm going to post these ideas in order, one in each post. They can't count as actual fanfics, but they are long

Side note: I do not accept 15×20 as canon. Nope. It doesn't exist. I chose to completely ignore it, and by now I successfully erased it from my memory. Except for the part that in a few years Sam has a son named Dean (actually not really, but I'm going to call him that for simpler understanding, if you read it you will later find out why). And also Miracle the dog stays, he is a good boy and deserves the best.

I also should mention that in my imaginary world they saved Cas. And I have an idea how, and I think it's a good idea, but that's for another time, 'cause for that part I'm actually writing a fic (and it's becoming longer and longer, I don't know how to stop, it's out of control, please send help)

So they all know now that Cas is alive and he is okay.

Also you should keep in mind that English is my second language which I didn't study properly like a normal person but instead learned purely by watching tv shows, so feel free to kick my ass for any mistakes, there's probably a lot here.

If you read this shit below and liked it at least a little bit, please live something in the notes to make me feel less lonely and useless. Thanks :з

So, too much words, huh? Here is the first headcanon idea:

SAM WRITES A BOOK

After their big victory brothers still hunt monsters, of course, but now, when they are finally not constantly forced to save the whole world, their days are far less busy. They even have free time. And Sam makes a decision to do something useful with it.

Sam pulls together all his previous research, goes through hundreds of books from the library, adds other sources, and he writes and publishes a book. A really long book. It takes him almost a year from the first idea to the completion of it. This book is sort of a database, a full encyclopedia of all supernatural things that the Winchesters and the other hunters they know encountered over the years, with an accurate description of how those things look, what they do, what they want, where you can find them. And, of course, how to stop them, kill them, or protect yourself from them. The content is quite impressive, Sam put all his time and soul into it, checking and double-checking all information, comparing sources and trying to grasp the essence of each part of the lore and put it on the pages as short and simple as possible.

The book is called "The hunter's manual". Eileen insisted on that title - both Sam and Dean (who didn't help that much but nevertheless felt invested) right until the publishing kept offering something different. Sam wanted a long and self-explanatory name for his beloved creation, Dean wished for something more "pretentious and catchy".

It was supposed to be just a wiki-style website at first, but halfway through work Sam got excited about creating an actual book, so through some acquaintances they found a publisher, who knew about monsters and other stuff after his encounter with some vampires and another hunter, and agreed to publish a book in exchange for a right to sell its copies.

Eileen fully supported the idea of the book, but after a few weeks she gets quite annoyed by the fact that sometimes she literally can't pull Sam away from the book writing process. Dean jokes that his brother got married to book before he married Eileen, which somehow leads to a long serious conversation about marriage and love and life in general. But actually Eileen understands the importance of Sam's book for him way more than Dean, who thinks about it only from the practical point of view.

Sometimes Eileen is also worried for Sam, because he spends too much personal resources on his project, and she is the one who reminds him when he forgets to eat in time or not sleeping enough, and makes him remember to take care of himself. Eventually she becomes quite invested in the process, and she helps Sam with a lot of research and gaining information from other hunters across the country. She gets an honourable mention in the book's authors' information page, under a fake name, of course, but it still counts for them.

In a few years Sam's book becomes a handbook for almost every hunter in the US, and it even gets translated into a few other languages, because turns out it considerably eases your life to have one source for all basic material for the hunts, instead of going through the whole libraries of controversial information.

A few people got their book signed by Sam and Dean: the Winchesters at this point became sort of legendary figures in hunters' world. Dean complains that this is not the way he planned to become famous. Sam objects that his brother has no right to sign the book and therefore shouldn't be complaining when he lets him be part of his fame.

The hunters now often give a link to a digital version of the book to all ordinary people who had to face something supernatural and now know that it's all real - because if they are already aware of the nightmares of this world, this book's instructions will help them to be safer in the future. This digital version is also heavily redacted, to contain only information for protection: no summoning rituals, for example, as well as no any other things and information that could potentially hurt anybody. This version was created after some dumb teenagers, who encountered a ghost before, got their hands on an unedited book and decided that summoning a demon could be a good idea for a party entertainment. It definitely wasn't.

Ironically, some time later this book accidentally becomes fairly popular among the general public, as a book in the fantasy genre, and now passionate fans of the "supernatural" books in the long internet discussions are accusing mysterious author of "The hunter's manual" of ripping off their favourite series. Sam finds it amusing and sometimes when he is bored anonymously goes into some forums to argue with fans.

#supernatural #spn #spn fic #spn fandom #sam winchester #eileen supernatural #saileen #sam deserves better #spn fanfiction #spn headcanon

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yourlocalenglishmajor · 4 years

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Commonplace Book

Hello everyone! This is my first post on this blog, and it is going to be a project for my college English course! Feel free to read through it if you’re interested; if not, that’s okay, this is really just for my professor ^^

Piece 1: “Big Guns, Small Dicks”

Unfortunately, this piece does not have a specific author or creator; I found it on State Street in Madison last summer. It is an anonymous piece of graffiti that speaks to the movement it was created during. For those who may be less familiar with Madison, Wisconsin, it is considered a very liberal and even leftist city, especially with how frequent and powerful the Black Lives Matter protests were. This was created during those protests, as well as hundreds of other works all along historic State Street. As ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards - protests went hand in hand (usually) with BLM protests, the phrase “Big guns, small dicks” is a jibe at the police and its racist foundations and use of excessive force.

It best relates to class through the conversations about race and equity we’ve had. Our readings have been centered around a diverse cast of authors instead of the one viewpoint of the cisgender, heterosexual white man, which is something the BLM movement also aimed to achieve. In addition, although it has not been a focal topic yet, we have talked about police brutality and how it impacts POC most; another key point of the BLM movement. Lastly, we talked about what mythic America, or the American Dream, really is, and why it is never realized for so many people. The Black Lives Matter movement is all about how the American Dream is something almost no one can truly achieve, and how it leads to othering and a sense of disillusionment with the effectiveness of our society.

Piece 2: Vonnegut’s Slapstick

For my second piece, I chose to utilize a work of a famous satire writer to draw comparisons to our coursework. As for the image, I took a picture of the copy I own and edited it. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick centers around two twins who are geniuses together, but entirely stupid on their own; they are neglected by their parents, who are a family of renown and ashamed of having deformed children. Their parents look at them as if they are to be pitied for the very nature of their existence. They use this to sneak around and live lives of luxury, continuing this ruse of being entirely stupid so that they may live as freely as possible in their circumstances.

In this work, the children are quite literally tossed in a house and locked away to prevent others from seeing them; this is something I personally connect to the concept of silencing, which happened frequently during the BLM movement. Protesters, peaceful or not, were arrested; protests were escalated by cops far more often than by protesters, but that was generally ignored and used as a way to disregard the protests as nothing more than “riots”; large platforms such as Twitter and Instagram incorrectly labelled some posts as “misinformation”. Voices were silenced all over the internet. In addition, some white allies were not using their platforms to actually help/spread information, but were using them to spew white guilt and accomplish very little. As L. Ayu Saraswati says in her textbook Introduction to Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, “Guilt as a response to...racism...does very little to contribute to efforts toward social change as it recenters whiteness” (page 15), basically saying yes, these folks are speaking their mind and are at least partially aware of their privilege, but their feelings of guilt without taking action are not actually doing anything to help what they feel guilty for.

Piece 3: The Hymn to Demeter

My last selection will be an ancient work known as the Hymn to Demeter, and the version I am using is translated by Gregory Nagy. I am using this statue of Demeter and Persephone as the visual accompaniment to this analysis. This piece was originally written to be performed orally by a poet/performer as praise to Demeter. It details the kidnapping of Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, and the subsequent founding of the Cult of Demeter in the city Eleusis.

When Persephone is first kidnapped, it is said that “she cried with a piercing voice, / Calling upon her father, the son of Kronos, the highest and the best. / But not one of the immortal ones, or of human mortals, / heard her voice” (lines 20-23). To me, this draws clear parallels with the silencing of victims of police brutality and their families. Public outrage did nothing to bring accountability to Breonna Taylor’s killers or the flawed justice system that let them get away with it. The victim’s family was silenced and the movement to convict her killers has died down since it happened almost a year ago.

Additionally, it is later revealed to Demeter through Rhea that this kidnapping was not only endorsed by but planned by Zeus himself. As Greek households were patriarchal, it was not uncommon for a father to arrange a relationship/marriage without informing the daughter or allowing the daughter to meet her betrothed first. This endorsed act of violence can also be paralleled to the actions of the police; their brutality is actively supported by a flawed, racist justice system, just as the actions of Hades were actively supported by the all-powerful Zeus. What’s more, nobody stood up to Zeus or questioned his actions because of all the power he has, which is another perfect example of how this parallel functions.

Lastly, Demeter’s pure rage and grief is reminiscent of the rage and grief of the black mothers who lost their children to police brutality. Last semester, I attended a Theater of War performance known as “Antigone in Ferguson”, and after the performance was over, there was a discussion led by a panel of educators and victims of police brutality. Several of them were mothers who told painful stories of how their children, usually sons, were murdered and how they are still trying to find a way to keep living. Their powerful grief is parallel to Demeter’s; the only difference is that Demeter gets her child back.

A Meta-Commentary

My process in finding these works and deciding which would draw the best parallels was to find a bunch of subjects I thought would work well and then cut down on them. I knew the “big guns, small dicks” would be included for sure, as it was an image I took myself and had good parallels to draw right off the bat. It’s a good way to catch someone’s attention! And the message is powerful. Seeing all the graffiti on State Street last summer was impactful, but this simple phrase stood out to me and was (I believe) the only picture I took out of all the graffiti down there. The Kurt Vonnegut work I included because I like the comparison between how the twins are treated in the book and how folks who were active and open about their opinions were silenced; also, I’d be lying if I failed to mention that part of the reason is because I adore Kurt Vonnegut and wanted to find a way to bring a work of his into this. My third choice, the Hymn to Demeter, was chosen because it’s a cool way to connect one of my other classes to this one. In addition, it’s a good piece to reinterpret as an allegory for how the justice system enables the wrong people and fails the right ones.

Also, although I did not choose many direct quotes, I think the parallels I drew between the content of these works is substantial! I put a lot of thought into how I worded things and what content actually related best to the works of this class, specifically the themes we’ve discovered so far in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. The heaviness of the book relates well to the power behind each of these pieces, especially the first one, as the message is plain and simple but impactful. The prose and structure of Rankine’s work is incredibly unique and not directly paralleled in any of the pieces I chose; however, the Hymn to Demeter is written in a very specific structure that is almost poetry? It’s a very confusing structure, because it does not seem to have any meter or consistency, but is still patterned in a specific way. This may be a result of translation, it may have been intentionally created this way by the original writer (who is not known; the transcript of this hymn was found in a stable in Moscow in 1777), or it could be a byproduct of the format itself as a hymn. The repetition Rankine takes advantage of in Citizen is actually something Vonnegut is known for as well. Several of his works have anaphoric phrases; Slaughterhouse V has both “po-tee-weet” and “and so it goes”, and Slapstick has the comedic “hi-ho”, used as a way to break the tension of the work, as it is supposed to be satire. This repetition and the more casual grammar these authors both share give their works a heavy feeling (cut far more frequently in Vonnegut’s than in Rankine’s) that also works as a conversational element, making both of the works feel like the audience is also in the narrative itself.

Commonplacing is a valuable step in making powerful literature more accessible to people! Providing unique and interesting analysis of a work makes it much easier for people to casually consume! Additionally, using platforms like Tumblr for this analysis makes things even more accessible, as anyone can see it and Tumblr allows posts to be any length! Opening thoughtful literature and analysis to the public like this also allows for good, guided conversation on a variety of subjects, and creates interest for the works in their entirety. This can easily inspire people to pick up a copy of their own of any of these works if someone is interested enough in how these can be interpreted! (If any of you are interested in the Hymn to Demeter, I used the one found at this website , it’s free ^-^)

A big thank you to any of you who read this all the way through (including you, professor)! I’ll be doing more fun and less serious literary analysis on this account as well, so if that’s something you’re interested in, stay tuned!

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