#this is accurate on another level

[frankenfossil]

you're never going to be the most popular magical girl when your colour is orange

cassidy from sleepless domain

[erotetica]

Akasha, still mortal. Designing her was challenging given the lack of extant reference, but this is what I came up with:

Apparently she was turned in 4000 bce, so I based my research in the Uruk Period of Mesopotamia (which was named for the Sumerian city of Uruk, now Iraq, where Rice said Akasha is from). In 4000, Kaunakes we’re not yet in style for Sumerians, instead wearing more straight-fitting kilts/net-dresses. I believe those also conformed to the rule of higher status =ankle length, lower class = knee length, so that’s what I did

On the fabric color—I read a paper that posited the ‘net’ of the net dress shown on the cylinder seal linked above/attached below, was actually a dyed pattern. The cylinder seal is dated @ ~3000 bce, BUT there is evidence of ochre-dyed cloth from Çatalhöyük, in Anatolia, from at least 5700 bce, so I think fabric dyeing in a less complicated pattern sounds feasible for 4000 bce.

Given 4000 was also the Chalcolithic Age/Copper Age in Mesopotamia, I wanted to include something copper. While I couldn’t find extant copper jewelry-jewelry, I did find these pins, and iirc Sumerian wrap-clothing was held with pins anyway

Re: necklaces, Akasha’s is based on this one.

I went with Iraqi-Lebanese actress Zahraa Ghandour as (partial) facial reference

Some assorted refs I don’t think are included in the links:

[bonetrousledbones]

btw in case anybody's wondering what i've been working on as of late i've mostly been redesigning this guy for the 4th time because sometimes good ideas are bad

[kitnita]

the tnt panel on jake oettinger pregame   —   DAL vs COL;   game 3   —   05.11.24

liam mchugh: would it be difficult, for a goalie? i’m sure there are people at home like, alright hank —  henrik lundqvist: ‘he just stands there.’  liam mchugh: standing around all night long, you’re not really doing much —  [all laughing]  henrik lundqvist: okay, let me tell you, goalies — we don’t just stand there, okay, we actually work extremely hard. anson carter: hang on a second, hank was supposed to be in a single just now, we went to the game?  [all laughing]  paul bissonnette: to another good looking goalie, jake oettinger. another handsome cat. he’s been great though, boys, i mean, all playoffs long. he’s, uh, he’s been kicking strong.  anson carter: what’s dutchy calling him? matt duchene? uh, that walrus from that insurance commercial? is that what he is — duncan?  paul bissonnette: yeah. duncan. anson carter: i can’t unsee it now, he’s been awesome.  henrik lundqvist: he’s going to be very important, obviously, playing in colorado. and, again, the way they attack the net with their speed, but also how they get to the second and third opportunities. it’s always a challenge for goalies, the way colorado has been playing over the last couple of years with the lineup they have — for any goalie, that’s — you get ready. you buckle up.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Sometimes I get a bit ticked about the whole "invisible Canada" thing, but I went to a visiting scholar lecture about the Battle of the North Atlantic in WW2 from a British academic this morning, and he verbatim said: "Canada isn't involved enough it makes a difference." And the friend I went with pats my shoulder like, "I'm sure you guys did everything that you could do."

If that isn't the most concise summation of general opinions of Atlantic history I've ever seen, I'll never see a better one.

[crepuscularqueens]

miranda's green dress haters... perish.

[putridpride]

happy (not that stoked) Labor Day to all the mfs that work today. especially if y'all aren't getting time & a half or double time. Thank you for working because it's what u have to do to survive. Labor Day is only a blue collar worker/office job kinda holiday, so bless you all that are working like it's any other day, I promise we see ya and appreciate y'all <3

[un-pearable]

oh yeah saw blue beetle last night and one million thumbs up. going into having heard it’s very tokusatsu and comic booky made it one million times better. goofy and stupid in fun ways. i’m so glad we’ve looped back around to comic book movies being like comic books: confusing chronologically and catered to fans willing to put up with wildly specific nonsense. also heck of a great job making a movie about gentrification and colonization out of the chaos of blue beetle lore and corporate blandification i genuinely had fun

[always-a-joyful-note]

So I've read Bogie Time and Fist of Idol, as well as a few other stories (cannot for the life of me remember their names) thanks to the Sanctuary Event almost being out on Engstars = free stories to read and have realised that enstars also has

- cryptocurrencies (shoutout to the tags that said this) - vampires - literal war flashbacks - debates on the fluidity of morality (who was the philosopher who said that morals change as people evolve?) - censorship laws discourse - nonconsensual drugging - power rangers - questionable but compelling breakdowns of classic literature - did i mention the monologues? - urban fantasy characters - references to tax laws - a surprising amount of crossdressing - on that note, a surprising amount of flirting (you guys weren't kidding) - information wars - a concerning amount of teenagers with god(ish) complexes - totalitarianism

[lttleghost]

wait I said this in the tags of another post and have previously tried to express these thoughts but did so poorly; while I don't think canon compatibility necessarily has as much importance in fandom with lgbtq+ headcanons if there isn't a queer reading of a character that is canonically compatible, and I don't think that fandom having differing headcanons for characters not meant to be lgbtq+ can ever fully be categorized as erasure in general

I do think when there is a queer reading of a character that is completely compatible with canon and is relevant to the themes of the story yet is given significantly less attention or is all but ignored in a fandom for headcanons that require at least some suspension of disbelief and/or changes to the text to reach their full potential, that starts to tread somewhere at least adjacent to the territory of erasure. and while I think individually people can still prefer whatever headcanon they want, it can say something about a fandom as a whole if there isn't any thought to, or if there's even refusal to give visibility to the more canonically accurate queer reading

and I think it's also important to look out for situations where that reading might be ignored because it's "less palatable", either as an identity itself and/or the presentation of that identity, to those in the community that tend to not like nonconformity or look down on certain identities, like transmedicalists ect...

[sysig]

Me, looking at Charm: Mm, she’s not deranged enough Me, looking at [Purple Text]: Mm, they’re not deranged enough!

Ft. an old idea (Patreon)

[pricechecktranslations]

hi there! I just wanted to ask a question since I've been getting into song translation recently and I respect your translations a lot. take this more as a curiosity than anything :)

I notice how many different translators have their own "style" of translation, so i wanted to ask, what's your opinion in creative liberties in translations? I know obviously when dealing with something like Evillious where the little details matter you'd probably want to be as accurate to the source material as possible, but like, sometimes being literal can make something even less clear even when not dealing with idioms (something I feel like I remember you talking about before) and there are also plenty of songs that aren't as story heavy and are more about meaning. so I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on like, your philosophy with how much translators should stray in the name of keeping the same meaning/intent rather than the literal translation?

like, i was working on a translation where I write the line "また言いたいことを殺す" as "I'm holding my tongue again", because I feel like given the context of the song that conveys the same meaning as "I'm killing what I want to say again" in a more concise way, even though there are probably more direct ways to say "I'm holding my tongue" in Japanese. It does lose some of the nuance (言いたいことを殺す definitely sounds more visceral) but the actual meaning and intent conveyed (the singer has given up on saying something she wants to) is more immediately registered to an English speaker, and I've been wondering to myself how I should weigh those two.

Hazuki no Yume's translation of Iiya/118 is another translation that takes a lot of these types of creative liberties to convey intent I feel like. I honestly really enjoy their translation of that song, it's one of my favorites, but I get that some might prefer a more direct translation that only changes things when completely necessary. Personally I know there is a limit for me because I dislike when people add unnecessary extra words that were never present either in the actual text or through context just to add flavor, but I'm not the best at judging these things.

Obviously I know every translator is different, and I'm the type to make a ton of translator notes anyways so I'll probably include the more literal meaning in there regardless. I was just curious about your own thoughts and I thought it'd make an interesting question :)

My thought on that is…it's really a case by case basis. There's no right answer (though there's certainly a wrong answer, that being "I just made something up because I don't care about the original work"), because ultimately translation is a frankenstein craft that requires as much creative writing skills as it does language knowledge. It varies by work, and it varies by person. So, I can share my opinion, and how I personally do things, but as long as no one is outright misrepresenting another's work, either intentionally or through lack of skill, I try not to quibble too much.

Personally, I trend more towards the literal. There's two different attitudes that I think people go into translations with--to make something as appealing a creative work in English, or to just report what the Japanese means for others to understand. I see myself as doing the second one. I'll take liberties sometimes, especially when translating novels, but these are done mostly to keep the reading experience from being obtrusive or distracting. If I were an official translator, I think I would be more comfortable with doing more "localization" type things (like changing character titles, using more colorful language, for example), but because everything I'm doing is unofficial, without permission, I've thought of my role as a translator to be more like a language patch than someone making an "English version" of the works I translate.

There's also the fact that I often enjoy the way the Japanese text phrases things, so I like to share it with other people. And, my cultural knowledge can be a little lacking at times, so there are instances where I'm not confident I understand the sensibilities behind it enough to make a "localization" without misconstruing the words.

So, to discuss your example, I would not choose to change the wording that way. However, I can't call you wrong for doing so because every translator has their own view of what makes an accurate translation of tone and intent, and what you've done preserves the meaning with that in mind. I'm reminded of a (possibly apocryphal) anecdote about Japanese author Natsume Souseki, who supposedly encouraged an English student to translate "I love you" as the phrase "The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?", because he felt a direct translation into Japanese was not in line with Meiji cultural norms (where open declarations of affection are pretty much unheard of). This is not something I would have ever come up with, nor would I do so myself, but he also had a perfectly valid point that the phrase would not at all have the same tone and intention in Japanese that it did in English.

To try and put my stance in brief--cultural translation is definitely a valid approach, but because I am working unofficially, and because I often enjoy the way things are phrased in the original work, I personally prefer not to do it unless I feel it will cause a significant amount of confusion/disruption for the reader otherwise (such as in the case of idioms, metaphors, common phrases that aren't common in English, etc).

There's a song called Slow Motion that has a popular translation by wingarea. I do not like this translation, not because I think it's bad (it's a perfectly fine translation), but because I would have chosen to stick more closely to the original wording choices. Meanwhile, there's a translation of Delusion Girl by damesukekun that I think snips out a lot of the evocative tone of the song in how bluntly it's translated. So--again. Case by case.

[vvussyboy]

To people whose natural reaction it is to get angry/irritated at something before they hear the whole story: shut the fuck up, you’re fucking annoying

[roaringheat]

RDR2 has been an insanely long hyperfix like literally only comparable to my fo4 hyperfix. I'm a little sad to feel that high fading but given that my fo4 hyperfix comes back strong like at least every 2 years, I have no doubt that RDR2 is gonna jump me again

[inafieldofdaisies]

OC quiz | Tragic horror character trope | Tagged by @fourlittleseedlings | tysm <3

I wasn't ready for Brin to get a herald-esc result.

Also, the fact I can so picture her saying this to John regarding sins:

the harbinger

the harbingers have been through fire. you've got the scars to show for it. some people say harbingers are jaded- scary, even, to people who don't understand that the harbinger has seen the edge of the world and survived it. but being the harbinger means you're cursed to watch younger, brighter eyes fall for the same traps you did. trying to help isn't enough for you; you know what they're getting themselves into, and you want to protect them the way no one ever protected you, so why won't they just listen? it's frustrating. it's terrifying. no one should have to live through what you did, and i hope you know that you can't protect everyone but it's damn noble of you to try. it's not your job to save the world but i hope you know you've already made a difference to everyone who has taken your words to heart.

Leaving the tag open, because I have no idea who's done it already. <3