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god-of-a-thousand-demons · 3 years

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“Naoto’s arc is about sexism not being trans, nuance was lost in translation”

Ok but like… that’s not how that works because the trans experience and workplace sexism are two entirely different topics? Saying “nuance” is the missing link is saying that those two things are one in the same, and they’re absolutely not.

Also, Atlus are the ones that translated the game. They chose the words they wanted to get across what they were trying to say, so the likelihood of Naoto’s arc being “mistranslated” just doesn’t make sense.

It would be a very big translation error for that to be the case, and like I said “nuance” just isn’t that because wanting to be a boy and not wanting to be disregarded as a woman are two completely different messages.

And I’m not gonna take someone else’s translation, some one who has bias in either direction, over what Atlus themselves decided were the right words. At best if it’s “lack of nuance” like people say, than that will still be lost when someone else translate it because everyone understands language differently subconsciously, and at worst it would be others translating it in a specific way on purpose. Meanwhile Atlus wouldn’t have had such an approach immediately translating it after writing it because they wouldn’t have anything to gain or lose in doing so, it would be much more “natural” because they were just translating it to translate it, not to give it a specific meaning.

I think what a lot of people are missing about Naoto’s story is 1). It’s genuinely bad writing, and 2). Gender is a complicated thing. Naoto’s story is not set up to be a reveal or to hint at all about sexism until they suddenly say it’s so and if that was the original intent of his character, that is on Atlus for doing an extremely poor job of properly handing that storyline. Like, horrendously bad because like I said, not wanting to be treated poorly as a woman and not wanting to be a woman at all are nothing alike. There is overlap, but at their extremes there’s no similarity whatsoever.

To the second point, gender is complicated. Trans people go through this entire process of self examination, of viewing ourselves from others eyes, of considering our place in the world because of gender. Many trans man go through exactly what Naoto does at some point; “am I really trans or am I just faking it because of [insert quote-un-quote “benefit” of being trans]?”

But thing is, in modern societies, there is no benefit of being trans. Getting a sex change to move up in the societal hierarchy is not a thing. That puts way too much risk on Naoto’s current social standing and if being a woman was already undesirable, being a trans man when “she” isn’t actually a trans man would make things significantly worse.

When trying to figure ourselves out, trans people throughly debate our place in society and how pursing or letting go of our trans desires will impact that placement, because placement in society as we know it is inherently tied to survival. Cis people don’t have to think about that in a “am I cis or not?” way because gender is such a large part of survival that if they don’t have any such doubts about gender it will never cross their mind, because they are inherently safe as a cis person.

Women, however, do experience this to some degree. Except instead of thinking “am I a woman? Am I a man? If I become a man will that be better for me than being a woman?” They think “will being a man be better for other people? Will I be more accepted within society if I am male?”

A woman’s desire to be taken more seriously as a man as nothing to do with her wanting to be a man, it is about outward acceptance. Power. Influence. Strength. But gender, gender identity, expression, acceptance, that is entirely surrounded around the idea of making yourself happy for you and that’s why it is such an abhorrent concept to people. Because the society we live in is an extremely selfish one, one that demands and takes and steals from its people constantly, and when you decided to do something for yourself, only for yourself, something that lets you stand tall, be proud, say “no, I will not let you take from me, I am doing this not to give to your desires but to satisfy mine,” society hates that. You experience backlash and violence and you move down, down, down the social ladder because even if we don’t live in a collective society, society still takes collectively from all of us and doing something for yourself, especially regarding as sacred to society as gender, is “threatening” to the status of that society because it can no longer control you.

Is that complicated? Yes. Is that so much to think about and debate over just to be happy? Yes, god yes it’s far too much and a lot of o people actually because scared because of that. The loss you take by being transgender in society can be so frightening that people are willing to sacrifice their happiness in order to be safe. They cut off the euphoria of exploration and lock it up tight away because they’re told it’s wrong, it’s dangerous, no good will come of going down that road. But the society that takes from them is the one telling them that. So when someone stands up against it, they get put at even more risk, because they’re “erratic” and “rebellious” and “a threat to society as we know it,” because they are shaking the very laws of their society by being themselves and rejecting the status quo.

Now, there are many things that can influence and change this experience between person to person. Japan is a collective society, how Japan views gender, how Japan specifically views being a woman, being a man, and being trans, what it means to be any of those things in the first place. But even all these things considered, would Naoto still really risk this much just for a job? Would Naoto go through a sex change just to get a promotion? That is a lot of sacrifice for a career, beyond your time or happiness like everyone sacrifices to some extent to work but to genuine loss, like your identity and comfort.

And never once in his main arc does he himself ever desire to be a woman. His shadow certainly never claims such. After one of the other characters prompts him, “you never really wanted to be a girl, right?” He echoes the same words, and to me personally they just don’t sound sincere. Naoto just bared himself entirely to this group of people, his most personal desires and feelings, and they didn’t accept him. Humans are very sensitive creatures and we are also creatures of habit. Do you think it would really be possible for anyone who just experienced their Awakening to immediately accept those feelings they spent so long denying? Hiding? Being ashamed of? Of course when having something so personal revealed Naoto would go “you’re right, i never wanted to be a boy.” Can you imagine a group of strangers going into your heart and seeing your more personal thoughts and feelings? Ones you’ve never shared with anyone before, and they don’t accept them? Would you in turn be able to genuinely accept those feelings in front of people you hardly know, ones you definitely don’t know personally, especially for someone like Naoto who has very high walls up? To me, the way I take Awakenings isn’t that in that one meeting the Shadow fully accepts those feelings immediately because that isn’t how humans or feelings work. I see it more as them merely accepting that those feelings exist and being willing to take the first step of dealing with them, confronting them. Naoto will acknowledge the things he’s refuses to see and move forward with that intimate knowledge of himself.

This is what viewing that scene from a trans lens is like. It’s raw and emotional and uncomfortable and extremely personal and very different from Naoto being a girl who just wants to be taken seriously. Because why is there no exploitation of “her” age then? “She” was also upset over being treated like a kid and yet for some reason gender is the most important aspect of that. That isn’t the only factor in Naoto’s treatment from others and yet it’s one Naoto obsesses over. “Why couldn’t I be born a man?” “I want to be a big boy.” “Bodily altercation process!” “I can change from a kid to an adult but I will never be able to change from a woman to a man.”

Why would a cis woman who is happy to be a girl be so concerned with being a man even after “accepting she’s a girl?” It just doesn’t make sense. And that’s why if that was Atlus’ intention they did a horrible job because wanting to be taken seriously as a woman is not the same as wanting to be a man and that is actually a horrible misconception and transphobic stereotype about trans men, and it’s even misogynistic. “They’re doing it for attention.” “They’re just women who want to be taken seriously!” And Atlus perpetuating that shows just how little the writers understand about what being a woman or a trans person/man in society is like, that’s an entirely different kind of incompetence! How could you mix those two things up when they’re nothing alike? At the bottom line the writers were severely out of touch and did a lot of damage because of that.

You can take Naoto’s gender however you want, no one can stop you, but it’s undeniable that gender and how Naoto’s gender is expressed and handled is a very complicated thing. There are so many layers and intricacies and it’s upsetting that frankly Atlus just didn’t have the means for do a trans storyline or a sexism storyline justice, especially when they could’ve done both or avoided it entirely. If they had done a good job there wouldn’t be debate about which one it was but they fumbled this really hard and it personally affected, and even harmed, a lot of people. When writing something as grand and personal as gender you have to have intentionality in what you’re doing and honestly it doesn’t feel like Altus did. As a trans man or a sensitive woman Atlus did horribly with handling Naoto’s character and it’s such a shame because there was so much potential.

#this is messy and unorganized but I Had To Get It Out #also even tho I say all this even if you don’t think Naoto is a trans man naoto is absolutely not cis because why would a cis person do all #this for a job. like it just isn’t plausible. that’s the most fictional part of this story #cis people can’t live without gender why would they wanna change it!#og #persona series #p4 #p4 golden #naoto shirogane #gender analysis #character analysis #gender study #character study #lgbt #transgender #trans

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crossdressingdeath · 3 years

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have you seen this exchange on twitter? the official mdzs translator is blocking people for saying she mistranslated stuff and is having biases. (esp the replies too)

ngl very scared for the rest of the translation

https://twitter.com/evilsqq/status/1501749069869248514?t=kPEdj_Ld6myu8lOIq6GO1g&s=19

I'll be honest, I still don't want to accuse suika of deliberately inputting her own biases into the text and altering the meaning on purpose to suit her own, wildly inaccurate, views of the character and in so doing actively sabotaging the translation, but... I'm not gonna lie! I'm becoming increasingly suspicious that that is in fact exactly what she's doing!

Seriously, this is becoming Such A Thing. This is why you hire a fucking professional. A professional who is also a fan is the best option, but a good company will choose professional over fan every time. A professional who isn't a fan has no biases and no reason to alter the text; meanwhile a professional who is also a fan might have biases, yes, but as a professional they will set those biases aside in order to do the best work they can. That's what being a professional requires. Someone who's just a fan will let their biases get in the way of doing a good job. Also in cases like this they're just kind of a shit translator but that's not the point.

Basically... here's the thing. And it sucks that I even have to say this, because I was really looking forward to there being an official English translation. But... don't buy the second volume. The first volume has made it clear that 7S hired a shit translator who at best is too incompetent to translate properly (leaving entire sentences out, including some sentences that the fans pretty much immediately noticed were missing, is already Very Bad without even getting into the fact that it's just a very poor quality work in general) and at worst is more interested in warping the text so she can claim her own headcanons that the novel itself explicitly disproves are canon by cutting the parts that disprove what she's saying than she is interested in translating the fucking novel. Either way, this cannot be allowed to stand. And the best way to do something about it is to prove that it's not profitable to half-ass the translation. So... don't buy the second volume. If there's no evidence of improvement in it, don't buy the third volume either. Send complaints to 7S directly; I think they're active on Twitter. Make it clear to them that they will not make the profit they want if they don't bring the translation up to a professional standard. Hell, if you want to go all the way make it clear you won't buy any of their works until they improve the quality of the MDZS; if they're willing to half-ass this, how many other translations will they half-ass?

At the end of the day, all fandom drama aside, this is a professional production. 7S is a professional publishing house. Suika was hired as a professional translator. Everyone involved in this had a responsibility to do a good job. They did not. There have to be consequences for that. And the best consequence to dissuade a company from only doing the bare minimum at most is to ensure they realize that that's not profitable.

#mdzs #asks #anon

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nanami-says · 4 years

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Part V (2/3): chapters 58~60

Chapter 58

[About Sukuna’s fingers resonating with one another]

"The ones that possess an immense presence. The ones that are hiding. The ones that are already taken in by cursed spirits."

⇒ "1) The ones with too big presences. 2) The ones holding their breath. 3) The ones already absorbed by cursed spirits."

I added the numbers for explanation purposes, see below.

"One of Sukuna's fingers was hidden by a cursed spirit. When Itadori consumed the finger in June, it released its cursed energy"

⇒ "The Sukuna fingers that had been absorbed were holding back their power [while] inside cursed spirits. Then they unleashed their cursed energy with Itadori's incarnation [of Sukuna] in June serving as a trigger."

Whelp. On top of extremely simplifying the explanation, they mixed up the kind of Sukuna finger involved here - it was very explicitly stated in the text that it was number 3) "absorbed" (assimilated) fingers, and not 2) "hiding" fingers.

I guess saying that Itadori consumed the finger isn't wrong plot wise but it's actually referred to (here and many times more in the manga) as "incarnation"! The same word also gets used for the death painting brothers.

[Megumi remembering a conversation with Gojou]

"I was surprised you asked me to train you"

⇒ "It's rare for you to ask me for a practice, Megumi"

"To train you" wasn't wrong but Gojou saying "it's rare" here points to it either happening occasionally or having happened in the past and I'm not sure "I was surprised" quite conveys that.

"Are you feeling pressure because of Yuji's growth?"

⇒ "Did you get impatient after getting surpassed by Yuuji?"

Gojou actually says that Yuuji has surpassed Megumi here! Quite a different nuance from just "Yuji's growth".

"Megumi, your skill and potential are probably higher than Yuji's. All that’s left is the mental aspect"

⇒ “You know, Megumi, I think that both your real ability and potential are in no way inferior to Yuuji's. (...)"

Emphasis mine because pray tell, how does one reach the conclusion that "don't lose out to"/"aren't inferior to" equals to "are probably higher". “Skill” was fine btw but I’d probably go with “mindset” for the last line, personally.

[Gojou explaining why he thinks Megumi doesn’t know how to make a serious effort giving the baseball game as an example]

“Why did you bunt? You sacrificed yourself so that Nobara could advance. Well, good for you"

⇒ "Why did you make a sacrifice bunt? Did you want to advance Nobara to the next base even if it meant you'd be out yourself? That's commendable"

The nuance for the last line was just different - the word used there usually is just used as praise, either genuine or ironic but imo “good for you” has a different meaning. Also he says “out” but it’s written as “death” (although that is sometimes the case in baseball as well.)

“But no matter how many allies you have around you, you'll always die alone"

⇒ “(...) when you die, you’re alone”

I tried to phrase it a bit closer to the original because I feel like the nuance may just be different for this line but can’t quite put a finger on the how.

[Gojou to Megumi]

"To die and then win, and dying victoriously are two completely different things, Megumi"

⇒ "To win by dying and to win even if you die are completely different, Megumi"

Emphasis by Gege. Ngl, I had no clue what the English was trying to say here… This is most likely what the line actually meant.

[Megumi regaining his consciousness after he blacked out from getting hit]

"How long was I out? Was my divine dog destroyed? No, my technique's finished"

Actually "my technique got undone". Putting it as "has finished" is imo both unclear and misleading. Similar situation as in ch. 1 (refer to part I).

[Lead-up to Megumi using a domain expansion for the first time]

"A jujutsu sorcerer's growth never comes easy"

⇒ "The growth curve of a sorcerer isn’t always gentle"

Mostly, the line was more intricate in the original but also the grammatical construction used here that they mistranslated as "never" actually means "not always [necessarily]” instead.

"Here we go!!"

Not really incorrect but it's kinda generic and I guess something like "I'm gonna do it!" is closer nuance wise.

"With a firm base, skill and imagination, a person can change thanks to the slightest of events"

⇒ "A firm foundation, a handful of sense, and imagination. Then, [even] with a most insignificant opportunity, a person will change"

A pity they simplified "a handful of sense" into just "skill" here. Overall not really incorrect but I wanted to propose something that imo better conveys the original wording and vibe.

“Area expansion”

…”area”? What? Obviously this is actually “domain expansion”. I just don’t have words.

“Think bigger! My technique’s interpretation!”

First sentence actually referred to the second one, so it’s actually something like “Expand it!! The technique’s interpretation!!”

[Megumi to the cursed spirit after his shikigami deals it a finishing blow]

"Divine dog's claws even hurt it...You were no match!"

"(...) So something like piercing through you when you're not even paying attention was easy"

Less excitement, more dismissiveness, I’d say? Also, for the divine dog it’s actually specified that it’s “divine dog (totality)” and not just simply “divine dog”. The term appeared before in ch. 47.

Chapter 59

[Megumi talking about what he considers the basic rule for human interactions in a flashback to his middle school years]

"Basically, you shouldn't cross any line that violates another person's dignity. You should acknowledge each other's mutual existence. That's the rule. You ignored it and fed your stupid ego"

⇒ "In short, it's drawing a line in order not to jeopardise one another's dignity; [it’s] a process through which both parties can coexist. That's what the "rule" is”. You broke it, throwing your weight around and forcing everyone to walk on eggshells around you”

For the first sentence, Megumi says “it’s drawing a line”, so the nuance here was probably closer to “creating boundaries” rather than “crossing boundaries” like in the official English release. For the second sentence, the original literally says “the process through which one another’s existence is achieved”, so rather than acknowledging each other’s existence the sentiment is probably closer to live and let live? For the last sentence, they once again simplified it to the barest bones.

"I'll definitely tell Ikezawa and everyone today that we're not their lapdogs"

“You got this, Aida!”

"But we might be the next punching bags, so don't go overboard!"

Should be “Ikezawa and others'' and definitely “that I’m not their errand boy” for the smallest boy’s first line. If all of them were already being treated as errand boys like the way using the plural form here implies, the other student’s reply wouldn’t make sense.

[After Tsumiki sees Megumi has beaten up delinquents once again]

“You said you wouldn’t pick fights anymore”

“You’re not my mom”

⇒ (...) “Don’t act like you’re my guardian”

Imo the distinction is significant because there’s a possibility that Tsumiki as the older of the two probably did feel responsible for Megumi to an extent and acted accordingly, as if she was his guardian.

Also, he doesn’t actually say “mom” - this is not the first time where the official English release opts for a gendered phrase where the original uses a neutral form. (Like making Yuuji say his grandpa was like a dad to him when he actually said parent all the way back in ch. 2.)

[Megumi’s thoughts from back in the middle school]

"I hate bad guys with no brains and zero emotional capability. Walking around feeling proud. Disgusting."

⇒ "I hate bad people. The way they act like they’re superior, with their complete lack of imagination or sensitivity. Disgusting”

I guess I really dislike the way they worded it here, especially the “no brains” part since Megumi wasn’t really talking about intellect or smarts here but about imagination (and sensitivity), which he literally describes as being akin to "vacant lot", "empty lot", "raw land”, which is much more evocative.

"I hate goody-goodies forgiving bad people, justifying mercy. Makes me wanna puke"

⇒ "I hate good people. The way they forgive such bad people and perceive that act of forgiveness as something noble. They make me sick"

Mhm, way to just simplify the heck out of the whole line. I’m extra bothered by their use of “goody-goodies” here since this is yet another appearance of a rather formal word for “good person” (善人/zennin) in the original and which I’ve observed to be a very important part of the world-building in jjk. I discuss it at length in various previous installments, with notable examples including: ch. 9 (Megumi about Yuuji and about the kind of people he wants to save - part I), ch. 31 (Nanami and Yuuji’s conversation in the aftermath of the Junpei incident - part III 2/2), ch. 36 (Panda about Yuuji - part IV 2/5).

“Tsumiki, you’re a perfect example of a good person.”

See, the word he uses here to describe Tsumiki is the same as in the line above (善人) but because back then it got translated as “goody-goodies”, you’d never guess it since the vibes are just that different.

[Megumi reminiscing about meeting Gojou for the first time]

"In the first grade, my dad and Tsumiki's mom got married and separated just as quickly"

⇒ "When I was in the first grade of elementary school my father and Tsumiki’s mother, our respective single parents, got together and disappeared into thin air"

The original doesn’t mention marriage OR separation. Heck, especially for the second one, it doesn’t even come close to mentioning it?? I have no clue where they got this from.

What I put as “got together” can also be translated as “to have a liaison with (a man or a woman)” (among others). Since Tsumiki’s surname is also “Fushiguro” in middle school, it’s possible that they were actually married and many Japanese fans seem to think that as well but it’s not explicitly stated, at least not here, so those are most likely speculations.

As for mysterious “separation”, the word used here actually means "disappearance (of people intentionally concealing their whereabouts); unexplained disappearance", so imo the whole section means their parents got together and at some point both disappeared. As we learn at one point in the manga Touji first and Tsumiki’s mum sometime later.

(Btw, one fan scanlation used “evaporation” here instead and while this is another possible translation of the word in question, imo from the context it’s clear that the intended meaning was the “unexplained disappearance” instead.)

Lastly, Megumi uses kind of formal expressions when referring to both his own dad and Tsumiki’s mum, which imo is indicative of the emotional distance.

[Tiny Megumi about teenager Gojou]

"A weirdo with white hair said"

⇒ "A suspicious man with white hair"

Needless to say, he doesn't actually call Gojou a weirdo.

[Gojou about Touji]

"But he's a loser that just works for me. He left the family and had you."

⇒ "He's enough of a good-for-nothing to take aback even me. Basically, he left home and then had you."

Emphasis mine. Again, I literally have no clue where they got the translation they went with for this. “Works for me” - just what?? (Btw, one of the fan scans available for this had the latter part of this line mistakenly imply that Gojou had Megumi leave his house. The bit definitely referred to Touji leaving the Zen’in family.)

"You're something your dad used against the Zen'in family. His trump card"

⇒ “You’re something your father kept as his strongest card against the Zen’in family”

A bit of a different nuance than “your dad used” suggests.

"The divorce money makes sense now. I was sold to this Zen'in family"

⇒ "The mystery behind the funds for their disappearance got solved. Apparently, I was sold to this Zen’in family or something"

Again, the word for “divorce” doesn’t make an appearance ANYWHERE in this chapter, least of all this page. ...How.

Once again - fan scans had this as money that also evaporated but neither it nor the official English release make sense, considering the line is followed up by “I was sold” as the explanation. So yeah, imo the first sentence definitely referred to the money Megumi considered necessary for Touji (and co’s) disappearance.

[Gojou referring to Touji basically selling Megumi off]

"Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it's annoying. Especially your attitude."

⇒ “It pisses you off, doesn’t it”

“Yeah, it does piss me off. Especially that lack of delicacy of yours”

I mentioned it multiple times but imo repetition in the original text tends to be done on purpose and as a device and imo this was another example where this was the case. Megumi borrows Gojou’s words here. (Which mean “to be irritated, “to be angry” and not “it sucks”.)

[Megumi continuing about Gojou]

"But that annoying guy wrote off the situation with the Zen'in family. He made a promise that we would work as sorcerers in the future. We would be collateral and receive financial support from Jujutsu High in exchange."

⇒"This man pisses me off, but it was him who cancelled the deal with the Zen'in family, and made it so we would receive financial support from the technical college with me working as a sorcerer in the future [serving] as collateral for it”

I don’t know why they’d translate it as “we would work” here since who the “we” would be supposed to even entail other than Megumi himself? Surely not Tsumiki. Or Gojou. Also, putting the next bit as “we would be collateral” makes it sound kind of dehumanising to me, ngl, whereas Megumi was talking about his labour here.

Also, the same phrase for “pisses off” as above got used once again, which makes it three times in a row, so imo that was definitely a deliberate stylistic choice on Gege’s part.

“Jujutsu sorcerers. How stupid.

⇒ "Sorcerers, what even. How nonsensical"

Just proposing an alternate wording.

[Megumi about the curse Tsumiki got hit by]

"All we knew was that we didn't know anything. Tsumiki still sleeps."

The word used to describe Tsumiki’s state literally means “became bedridden”, which imo heavily implies she fell into a coma. “Still sleeps” is most likely a misunderstanding on the translator’s part since the word sounds like it’d mean that (but it doesn’t.)

[Megumi about Tsumiki]

"Always smiling and saying nice things"

⇒ “Always smiling and spouting lip service”

Another case where the translator seems to have translated the word based on the way it’s written as opposed to checking the actual meaning. (The “nice things” phrase.)

"It's not a bad thing to not forgive people. Megumi, that's your way of showing kindness."

⇒ “Not being able to forgive people isn’t a bad thing. That’s your kindness, Megumi”

It wasn’t just “not to forgive” but “not being able to forgive”! Which imo would imply the next line’s nuance was something similar to Tsumiki considering Megumi’s inability to forgive people to be something that stems from his kindness (e.g. because he can’t stand seeing injustice).

"Even spinning my short-comings in a positive light."

⇒ “She would affirm even my nature"

Imo this line was more of Tsumiki accepting Megumi as he is or at least that’s what the line says - makes sense with what I proposed for the line above too. Translating it the way they did in the official release kind of feels like overinterpreting.

"But even she would get upset when I hurt somebody. I was annoyed by the hypocrisy"

⇒ "But even such Tsumiki would get genuinely angry (...). I would get annoyed thinking she was a stickler to the rules and a hypocrite"

Emphasis mine. The phrase that the translators seem to have skipped here and I translated as "stickler to the rules" literally means "to play it safe", "to avoid trouble at all cost".

"Yeah, I know. I was immature. I'm sorry so please wake up already"

“I’m sorry, I was a brat. I’ll apologise so just wake up already, stupid older sister”

Just a different nuance and tone for the whole line.

"All I did was get rid of the Yasohachi bridge curse. My sister's sleeping curse is a separate matter."

⇒ "This Yasohachi bridge curse was probably only overlapping with it, and the curse that caused Tsumiki to fall into a coma probably hasn't been lifted"

The official English release makes it sound like sleeping (or more correctly, the coma) was the nature of the curse that Tsumiki was put under, whereas imo the original indicates it just as its effect, which is an important distinction.

“As for the finger and Itadori…”

⇒ “What should I tell Itadori about the finger...”

The “tell”, “say” is only implied here but it’s pretty clear from the context that was the meaning. Also, he explicitly says “to Itadori” here.

[After the Yasohachi bridge curse got defeated by Megumi who then retrieved the Sukuna finger from it]

"All of sudden I feel a presence. Did the finger get out of the barrier? Whoever took out the finger bearer is quite formidable."

⇒ “The huge presence that appeared all of sudden... Did Sukuna's finger get out of the barrier? If it was a sorcerer that exorcised the finger's host, they must be quite good......."

Emphasis mine on bits that got cut out in the official release. Because Esou was facing off Nobara, he probably assumed it’s likely there may be other sorcerers present and imo that’s what this line also suggests.

"Even so... The finger... Even if they fought against a special-grade and won, They more than likely didn't come out of it unscathed. I hope they're okay."

Just to clarify that the word used for “they” in the original indicates the speaker knows the people in question, so those were Nobara’s thoughts here.

Chapter 60

[Esou to Yuuji and Nobara after he activates his wing king technique]

“Start running and turn your backs to me”

“Run. With your backs turned to me” would fit better nuance and mood wise. (Esou didn’t want to show his back to anyone so now he’s’ forcing them to show theirs.)

[Nobara to Yuuji after he scooped her up because she couldn’t run as fast as he could]

“I got your back”

“Okay”

“Okay” isn’t incorrect per se but the word has the nuance of “I’m counting on you”.

[Nobara to Yuuji after he speeded through the forest while carrying her, allowing them to escape from Esou's technique]

"Well done, you deserve some praise"

“Yeah, yeah”

“Just kidding. Thanks!”

⇒ "You have my praise." (...)

Actually a set phrase! Spoken from a rather elevated/superior POV, which is why Nobara later reiterates that she’s genuinely thankful. Also, I probably would just go with a period for “Thanks”, imo nuance wise it didn’t require an exclamation mark and it’s not there in the original either.

[Esou after Yuuji gets splashed with Kechizu’s blood]

"There's no need to worry. My younger brother's blood isn't the same quality as mine"

Actually "doesn't have the same properties like mine”.

"You wouldn't even die from mine unless you were drowned in it."

Much closer to something like "unless you were to bathe your whole body in it".

"But it does hurt like hell"

⇒ "But it does hurt to death"

Not really wrong meaning wise but in the original it was “to death” instead of “like hell”, which combined with a previous line was probably a wordplay. "You won't die but it does hurt to death"

[Esou explaining how his and Kechizu’s shared technique works]

"If you take in one of our brother's blood and if one brother activates a technique"

Idk if it's clear here but it most likely doesn't matter which brother does which (could even be the same one). Also, definitely should’ve been “the” or “this” for technique, since Esou has just stated on the same page he’s now going to start laying out how a specific technique of he and his brother’s functions.

[Esou replying to Yuuji]

"Yes, the result is essentially poison. Our technique is 'decomposition'"

Should be “but what our technique is, is actually ‘decomposition’” nuance wise.

"It's activated now. In reality they'll be dead faster than that”

⇒ “Done with technique disclosure, so in reality (...)”

Emphasis mine. You know, the rule in jujutsu where if you explain your technique to your opponent, it gets a buff? “Activation” is just wrong here.

While it’s not phrased as such, the phenomenon is first explained in ch. 20 during Nanami’s explanation to Yuuji (refer to part II 2/2). It also gets mentioned by name later in the manga but oftentimes the official release would either skip it or word it completely differently so it’s hard to tell, like in ch. 51, when Hanami realises Toudou has lied to him (part IV 5/5).

[The history of how cursed wombs came to be]

"[In the beginning of the Meiji era] there was a girl with special genetic makeup who bore a cursed-spirit child"

Actually “with an idiosyncrasy that allowed her to get pregnant with the child of a cursed spirit”! Imo an important distinction since it’s not certain whether her first child that gets discussed here was born prematurely or not and the following pregnancies were all aborted.

"A child born of mixed blood - both cursed spirit and human.”

Skipped “grotesque child” at the end.

“It was a mysterious pregnancy. She would be ostracized by family and friends.”

⇒ "Starting from a pregnancy she had no recollection of, [followed by] the oppression from her kith and kin, it made her go insane"

This latter part of this section is filled to the brim with complicated language so I’m not entirely sure but I think this might’ve been the intended meaning of the line. The official translators were probably struggling with the vocabulary too, so they cut out some stuff entirely, to be precise - the go insane part. It’s the bit I’m not certain about myself but I scoured Japanese dictionaries and that’s the meaning that seemed to be the best fit among the options.

Anyway, to reiterate - the bit about the pregnancy actually says that the girl herself didn’t even know (couldn’t remember) how it came to be. The part about the relatives doesn’t mention friends, it’s actually a set phrase that means “one's relatives by blood and marriage (in blood and law); one's kith and kin” - I went here with the latter since it’s shorter and fits the overall vibe of the line.

“She would hold the corpse of the child and flee to a temple in the mountains. The temple was run by jujutsu sorcerers. However, her luck had run out."

⇒ “(...) However, this was when her luck run out”

Other than the nuance in the last line, this isn’t mistranslated but the whole section just flowed differently in the original and felt less disjointed.

Also! One of the scanlations I’ve seen had it misspelled as “Noshitori” but the evil sorcerer’s name is actually “Kamo Noritoshi” (and yes, it’s the same as the young Kamo but the “toshi” is written with different characters).

"The child born from a cursed spirit and human would become a prisoner of intellectual curiosity"

⇒ "His [Kamo Noritoshi's] intellectual curiosity would be taken captive by children born between a cursed spirit and a human"

Very much the other way around. It's very clear in the original that the subject of the sentence was Kamo's intellectual curiosity and not the child.

"Death painting wombs: numbers 1-3. Cursed objects worthy of special grade."

Closer to "cursed objects powerful enough to be classified as special grade"

"Did cursed energy originate from a mother's hatred? No..."

It's specified here as "did their cursed energy" instead (emphasis mine), and the question is actually left unanswered......................................................... So yeah, congrats on getting rid of this very intended ambiguity. It's something like "or was it maybe--"

[About cursed wombs]

"For 150 years, with only the notion of one another's existence, they would survive, sealed away"

⇒ "For 150 years, they endured the seal, relying only on one another's existence"

"The notion" just doesn't capture the sentiment of the line at all, which imo is most likely the follow-up to the narrator's musings about the origin of the death painting's immense cursed energy. (See above.)

"We're siding with that cursed spirit."

Actually "siding with them", read as "them" but written as "the cursed spirits" - probably plural as the original literally says "the side of the cursed spirits", so it possibly means cursed spirits as a whole as well, aside of Mahito and co specifically. Remember, the brothers are actually half-humans too. I explain in depth the “written as but read as” device in part IV 4/5 (ch. 48, Toudou’s “my friend” phenomenon).

"The future that the cursed spirits have painted is more suited for us. But that's it. Forget about what we owe for our freedom"

Not incorrect per se but Chousou actually says “forget the debt we owe them of our incarnation”, which would make it yet another instance where the official English release has cut out the term entirely. (Emphasis mine.)

[Nobara after stating that a technique that assures a win as long as it hits an opponent is indeed powerful]

"I'm a bad match for you!!"

Actually “the worst match [possible]” - more confidence in the line!

[Nobara to the death painting brothers after using Resonance on herself thus redirecting their attack back at them]

"Let's play a game of chicken, shall we?"

The actual wording is “contest of endurance”, I’m not entirely sure if the two have the same connotation.

[part v (3/3)]

#JujutsuKaisen #jjk #Jujutsu Kaisen #jjk translation #jjktranslation

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adventuresoutsidethegenderbinary · 3 years

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As a queer Muslim, I 100% want to believe that it's permissible in Islam to...you know, be queer.

The thing is, majority of people say its not. Even Islamic scholars who I follow and respect, like Mufti Menk, and other Islamic pages run by straight people, say its wrong to act upon it. It upsets me, because why would Allah SWT love us, but not want us to love? Why would he want us to suffer alone? Why would he want us to feel restricted? Islam is not about restriction at all. Islam is the religion of peace, is it not?

Idk if IS the truth, or just my internalised homophobia talking, but I feel like queer Muslim pages say it's okay to be queer...because they're queer themselves. And they're trying to find ways bargain with themselves to say that its okay. And lots of (straight religious) people don't agree with them (like a scholar for example) I feel like there's just too much evidence on the opposing side for me to believe that it's not a sin.Idk what to do. I even tried to pray so that I could find out the truth or find out answers. Then the next morning I saw yet another person who said acting upon queerness is a sin. I know that it was just one opinion, but I feel like it just happened too soon for it to be a mere coincidence. I ask for signs to find out the truth, but then I don't like the signs.

What makes me even more angry is that all this questioning is happening to me during Ramadan - the time where you're supposed to become closer to Allah.

In the end, I'm just glad I like all genders and can marry a man, if being queer really is a ,,sin" 😔

Hello friend!

I have struggled with these same feelings myself. I often wonder if I am just interpreting the Quran in a certain way to make myself feel better. I don’t think these feelings will ever go away.

However, there is substantial evidence that homosexuality didn’t use to be such a haram concept in Islam, or at least, not homosexuality the way we think of it. For instance, there were many notable Muslim figures who practiced homosexuality or were thought to practice it, particularly from the 8th - 10th centuries. Such figures included Caliphs, and in later centuries, Ottoman sultans. However, this “homosexuality” often referred to men sleeping with young boys (typically too young to have a beard).

I can’t seem to find it right now, but I saw a post somewhere talking about an Old Testament verse (I believe it was Leviticus) which said, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, for it is an abomination”, but people later determined that this was a mistranslation and that it originally said “you shall not lie with young boys as with women”. This would make sense given how widespread such pedophilia was at the time, especially in the Greco-Roman world.

Thus, I think there’s substantial evidence that the Quran was actually banning pedophilia, especially since the word “homosexuality” was never in the book and people had to come up with one when translating it. When we also consider our Allah, most kind and most merciful, we know that he does things with a purpose. Saying that pedophilia, lust, and rape is a sin makes sense because these are all bad things that hurt others. I struggle to understand why Allah would ban relationships between people of the same gender when they pose no threat to others and can actually be quite beneficial in that same-gender couples often adopt or take care of children.

Currently, many Islamic leaders are quite conservative, and that has more to do with geopolitical forces than religious ones, so I think that also contributes to the fact that most of the people re-examining homosexuality in Islam are queer. Additionally, many Muslim-majority countries are very conservative and the leaders are very oppressive, and hence any major scholars who challenge the “traditional” interpretation of the text may be silenced.

Sorry for the long response - I’m still trying to figure all this out too. All I know is that I have a hard time imagining Allah casting someone down into Hell if they spent their whole life helping others but unapologetically loved someone of the same gender.

Peace be upon you,

River

#asks #answered #lgbtq #lgbtq muslim #lgbtq islam #islam #ramadan mubarak #queer muslim #long

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corpsekiller · 3 years

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if you could give your mutuals one thing out of your room, what would it be? i love all those mutual tag games, so why not?

yeah, i love those games too. this might get weird, so dear mutuals, you better buckle up before you read this 😀 no, i will not elaborate on any of this.

𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐒 𝐎𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐘 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐘 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐈'𝐌 𝐀 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐋𝐈𝐍

@heekissung — the small axe someone gave me as a gift for my 18th birthday. it's surprisingly sharp and i used it to cut a guy who refused to leave me and my friends alone. i don't know why i carried the axe with me on this evening, but i saw the chance to test it out, so i took a swing at him and made him bleed.

@hisvillainess — black plastic roses with eyeballs glued to the middle of them. an old man gave them to me when i was waiting at the train station in the middle of the night and i keep them in an empty coke bottle on my nightstand. the man didn't say anything, he just put them on the bench i was sitting on, mumbled something in a language i didn't understand and ran away. i'm pretty sure they're cursed, but nothing happened so far. sadly.

@waiting-for-motivation — the small plant pot that looks like baby groot. he's sitting on my shelf above my bed and he has seen too many things, so you might have to take him to a therapist to work through all the trauma he has. the sound of my vibrator and the porn images he's seen on my laptop still haunt him.

@sunascumdoll — a cute rabbit plushie my friend bought for the sole purpose of trying out silly summoning rituals. we hoped a demon would possess the stuffed animal and move it, but nothing happened. my friend took it back home, only to give it back a week later, claiming the rabbit moved while she was sleeping. i keep the rabbit in my bed now and i don't think it ever moved again.

@nokkusu — the silver necklace with a weird charm i bought in an antique shop in a small village in italy. the old lady didn't speak english, but a customer did. when i asked her about it, he translated her words and told me that the necklace is haunted by the spirit of a witch and it's a sign of bad luck. might have been a mistranslation though.

@dilfcifer — a photo of a victorian lady who has the barrel of a gun in her mouth with her fingers on the trigger and her chest exposed. i bought it in an antique store in berlin. the shop was run by an old gay man who was very friendly and asked me if i'm okay when i bought this photo. after that, we had a nice chat about love and he told me about his husband. it was lovely.

#✉ — the dead are writing #graveyard games

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tyk-tyk-tyk · 4 years

Text

🍁 Achievements + Analysis

I thought about making separate posts, but then I realized I could multitask and mash all of these into one. Lists all of the achievements in English and translated from Russian + some commentary. Behold, the Knock Knock Achievement Master Post. As always, long post under the cut.

“How’s Annie” was a fun tidbit that had a shallow rabbit hole to follow. Some of these are interesting, some of these are not. I used Yandex to help translate these, so take it with a grain of salt.

This was taken from a website that archives Steam achievements. I’ll be going through them all, just to tie up any loose ends.

🍁Fear of a blank page

English: Fear of a blank page - Found a diary page Russian: Unclean leaf - Found the diary page

The Russian translation is interesting because it references something that you don’t really figure out until you find the whole diary in one piece.

🍁Busy with paperwork

English: Busy with paperwork - Found five diary pages Russian: Paperwork - I found five pages of my diary

Not much to commentate on. Though it should be noted that in the Russian translations, typically it either refers to Lodger as a “he” or uses first person. Could be a translation issue, or it could have been used on purpose.

🍁Weaving the story

English: Weaving the story - Remembered the story of the Lost Child Russian: The fabric of the story - I learned the story of the invisible child

I also like this one for referencing the diary more specifically. I wish we had gotten more black and white info on when this happened, where they were and what happened to the other children.

🍁Something in the way

English: Something in the way - Entered a haunter Russian: I do not believe - Entered the pop-up window

Pretty sure the Russian description is a mistranslation. But I’m glad that The Lodger retained his key character trait through translation.

🍁They are legion

English: They are legion - Entered ten haunters Russian: Their name is Legion - Entered at ten o’clock

I’m ALMOST CERTAIN this is another wrong translation on Yandex’s part. I’m assuming the Russian description is the same as the English description. If it also isn’t a wrong translation, I like the title for the achievement in Russian. It sounds spookier.

🍁Open your mind

English: Open your mind - Saw a fragment of reality Russian: Window to the courtyard - I saw a fragment of reality

This could tie in to some theories that The Lodger was one of the children lost to The Program. ‘Courtyard’ is vague, but it could mean a school (like it’s referenced in the dream written in the diary) or some kind of asylum. Those are my best guesses. Cool nonetheless, could just be imagery of ‘looking outside’ that they were going for.

🍁Good things come in threes

English: Good things come in threes - Saw three fragments of reality Russian: In three pines - I saw three fragments of reality

Now I don’t know any symbolism with three pines, so I had to look it up. And according to this website post, this was based on a novel. Maybe. Some people claim that it may have been based off of real life events, someone planted pine trees to signify that refugees fleeing The Revolutionary War were safe in Quebec. Who knows though, another legend to throw on to the pile of growing mysteries.

🍁Knowing the flip side

English: Knowing the flip side - Saw all fragments of reality Russian: The flipside of being - I saw all the fragments of reality

Again, the translations are similar. Flipside could mean something like an alternate dimension, or if we’re being literal and are taking the textbook definition, could be a complicated roundabout way of saying “tomorrow.” So this is either a poke at seeing ghosts or seeing the future.

🍁I was ready

English: I was ready - Managed to hide successfully Russian: It’s not my fault - Hid and didn’t get caught

Woah, can we talk about this one for a second? “It’s not my fault.” This is definitely a reference to the diary, whether it’s The Lodger or his father or etc.

🍁I’m not there

English: I’m not there - Managed to hide successfully five times Russian: I’m not here - I hid five times and didn’t get caught

Unlike the previous achievement, uneventful here.

🍁Nobody home

English: Nobody home - Managed to hide successfully ten times Russian: No one’s home - Ten times I hid and didn’t get caught

Also uneventful. I will mention the perspective changes between languages again though. (I will also mention that this could be translated wrong... again)

🍁The enlightened

English: The enlightened - Turned the light on in every room Russian: Education - Lit up the whole house

I like the English title better, but I like the Russian description better. Feels more ominous and spooky.

🍁My name is Nobody

English: My name is Nobody - Turned the light on in a room before a breach opened Russian: My name is Nobody - Turned on the light in the room before opening the gap

Standard, similar translations, not really a theory to go off of. The breaches are weird on their own and could have many meanings, attachments or symbolism behind them, but who knows.

🍁Babysitter

English: Babysitter - Touched the weeping one Russian: Now don’t look - Touched the lost one

Not a lot to comment on this one. The translations are pretty similar, and the Russian version is a reference to gameplay (and maybe an in game line? My memory is hazy. Just like The Lodger’s har har)

🍁How’s Annie?

English: How’s Annie? - Turned into a doppelganger Russian: How’s Annie? - Changed into a double

If you’re new and/or haven’t checked out one of my earliest theories, you can check it out here. It goes over this particular achievement in whole.

🍁Through the looking glass

English: Through the looking glass - Entered a breach Russian: Sight unseen - Entered the breach

The English version of this achievement is actually extremely interesting. A “looking glass” can either mean a mirror, or according to Lewis Carroll, something opposite of what we expect. Kind of gives me doppelganger vibes. Please imagine The Lodger in an Alice in Wonderland dress

🍁Breaking the circle

English: Breaking the circle - Chose to go into the woods Russian: Don’t go in circles - Preferred to go into the woods

I liked the wording of this better in Russian. Otherwise, no comment.

🍁Pagurian

English: Pagurian - Chose to lock The Lodger inside the cabin and remain hidden Russian: Hermit - He chose to lock himself in the house

A final commentary and then farewell. In English, the game makes it sound like we chose to torture The Lodger. In Russian, it makes it sound like he chose to torture himself. Ominous, I like it.

If you made it to the bottom of this post, you deserve two brownie points. I feel bad for taking so long to put this out, but I figure it’s done and out of the way. I do this because I enjoy it, and I hope you guys are enjoying it too. Next up I’m going to be reblogging some things from @eyesofflora, offering my own commentary, and doing more research on fae and folklore.

#knock knock #knockknock #knock knock game #knockknockgame #achievement theories #archive #long post #man it felt good finally putting this together #Yandex keeps being a pain but I'm pretty much at a standstill with my Russian lessons because I'm lazy #I didn't wanna tag eyesofflora and fill their mentions wheeze #тук-тук-тук

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arisamsara · 5 years

Text

The change of relationship: breaking point of Yoo Jung

Cheese in the Trap Season 4, Ep. 30

WARNING: This post contains several spoilers of the story released up to this particular chapter. The selected plot points are needed for explanation of the chosen topic. If you haven't but plan to read Cheese in the Trap (much reccomended), please avoid this post or read at your own risk.

Cheese in the Trap (치즈인더트랩) is a Korean manhwa (aka comic) series created by Soonkki (story and artwork). It was published on online platform Naver Webtoon in 2010-2017. Later the story was published in print, translated into English on Webtoon app, made into a TV series and live action film. The English translation is in its last 4th season and still has around one year worth of material yet to be translated.

The story revolves around Hong Seol, a hardwoking and little overthinking 3rd year university student majoring business management who is suddenly approached by her same major sunbae, very rich, handsome and popular 4th year student Yoo Jung. It would seem Seol hit a jackpot, attracting attention of such a guy as Jung; however, there is no promise of typical romance in sight. Why?

Maybe because Seol knows that Jung is not as nice as he pretends to be in public?

Or maybe because the previous year Seol's university life was turned into hell and the main puppetmaster behind all those evil schemes seems to be... Yoo Jung?

Relationship that began shrouded in misunderstanding, antipathy and suspicion. Can it ever be turned into romance? Or is it just another Jung's masterplan to get back at Seol?

THE ANALYSIS

In this post I will:

1) do a quick recap of "Jung's attitude towards Seol" evolution (in approximate data graph form in interval -10 to 10 because they're business majors, duh);

2) explain what happened in this episode, what was mistranslated in Jung's monologue and what character details are hidden here;

3) clear the mistranslation of Jung's repeated "Seol" in this episode.

Important parts are highlighted with colour (setting/situation) or bolded (particular events). The words in "..." are actual quotations. The words in '...' are rephrased sentences. Lets begin!

[1st Part] RECAP

How Jung's attitude towards Seol changed since the beginning of previous year aka flashback year? Jung returned from military service to the 3rd year, Seol returned to the 2nd year; they first met during comeback drink party. Seol got wasted (she can't drink much), picked up thrown ciggarettes from the ground outside (for Bora) and kept side-eyeing Jung all evening (how he spilled drink on clingy girls). Jung's first impression of Seol was bad, around 0 to -1 (she's "pathetic"). Then Seol kept saying hello and smiling to him (he was sunbae and popular/respected as well) but Jung flat out ignored her (thought she's another leecher).

During Jaewoo's study group Seol was the only girl there (they thought she outsmarted other girls and came alone to be closer to Jung); Jung caught her laughing at him (he thought she was mocking him and saw through his "nice sunbae" mask; she was just laughing at her imagination of Jung as aloof prince) and his impression dropped to -5 as he really disliked her now. Seol tripped on waxed floor and Jung caught her saying "Be careful" (not about tripping but about her behaviour towards him).

Seol then badmouthed Jung in public (said he was distanced, chose with whom to mingle, acted a bit fake); he found out about it and started to hate Seol (drop to -8). Seol tripped again and dropped papers, Jung kicked them and said "You keep making mistakes. I told you to be careful" (again not about tripping but about making him seem WEIRD to others in public). So he began to act nice with Seol to make Juyeon (black-haired girl who crushed on Jung) jealous and ruin Seol's life (in study related matters)

Then Younggon badmouthed Jung during basketball game (something like 'Jung pities you clingy people', which was true). When everyone turned their backs on Younggon, who went to talk to him, comfort him with snacks? Seol. Jung saw that and likely thought 'So these Jung haters team up now, huh? They deserve each other'. Jung's hatred for Seol got even bigger (drop to -10). When Younggon came to Jung asking for forgiveness, Jung was tired of his sh*t and wanted to go home already (he sighed and ruffled his hair). Juyeon told Younggon he and Seol would be a great couple; they asked for Jung's opinion and he was like 'Yeah whatever you would look good' with a fake smile to be left alone and not involved in unnecessary rumours and drama. He also didn't stop Inha from taking his phone and writing Younggon (pretending to be Jung and advising to send Seol gifts etc.), because, well, he disliked Seol and couldn't be bothered thinking about her. However, Jung had no idea how far Younggon would go during summer break (stalking, threatening and assaulting Seol).

When Seol came straight to Jung and asked if he really told Younggon Seol liked him (and Jung found out how obsessed Younggon was) Jung was shocked and felt bad. Yes, he hated Seol but didn't wish her to be hurt/threatened. Then Juyeon sent homeless woman to the library where Seol was and Seol got cut with a glass. It was Jung (if I remember correctly) who secretly called security guard to save Seol (yet Seol thought Jung was there knowing what happened and did nothing). Jung was really mad with Juyeon for this.

More things have happened that I forgot a bit, but essentially Jung kept noticing he and Seol are somewhat similar. He overheard her phone call with her parents and learned she was also lonely and not fully appreciated by her family. They both were diligent and hardworking in studying (both often were the ones who were used in team projects and ended up doing most of the work, or even did all work alone so their grade would not be affected by other people's laziness). They disliked petty drama. And found it difficult to speak their worries to others (Seol was too self-conscious and afraid to burden her friends, Jung had no one to speak to at all). So Jung's hatred for Seol started to decrease and he occasionally found himself thinking about her and even smiling when doing that (which made him frustrated and confused).

Jung looked for opportunities to speak with Seol but she always ran away, avoided to be left with him alone. During festival Jung made her a part of his preparation group, assigned her an easy job (sort out boxes) so she wouldn't overwork herself as she usually does and so that they could have time to talk alone. Jung didn't know silverware arrived earlier than planned and those boxes were heavy instead of light (Seol thought Jung gave her that job on purpose, to get back at her and just make her more miserable). While working they kept glancing at each other (Seol saw Jung wipe his sweaty face and cough - he caught a cold and felt really sick, but kept working). As others ran home early avoiding work, finding ridiculous excuses, Jung said Seol will help him clean up, but when everyone left, he told her to go just home (no one will appreciate her sacrifice and hard work, he knew that from experience). Seol wanted to leave, but seeing how Jung was sick, she went into rain to place directions towards their bar space. As she got back to take her bag, she saw Jung cleaned the place and lied back on the sofa, mumbling with fever. She couldn't just leave him there, bought him medicine, placed a wet towel on his head and fell asleep on the other couch. Jung woke up feeling better and was surprised to see Seol who was also sick and grabbed his hand in her feverish sleep (Seol's habit). The way they both tended to each other as both were sick (such caring gesture) made them closer but still confused about each other.

Jung left umbrella to Seol (she didn't take one and got wet while placing directions outside) and next day didn't take it back immediately between lectures so they could speak in person when she returns it, but that plan failed (Seol was too sick to keep running after Jung; she didn't want to be alone with him; the students' pissed her off saying 'Poor Jung, got sick working all alone'). In episode 29 sick Seol mistook Jung as Euntaek and asked him for money (initially 10$, then changed her mind and said 2$ was enough). Jung was happy to help her (he knew Seol wasn't like other students who hanged out with Jung only because of his money; also she approached him first and he hoped now they could talk) and offered 40$ (possibly all the cash he had on him, as Jung seemed to favour his card for paying). However, Seol recognized him and ran away again thinking Jung was showing off his money and pity, humiliating her. He followed her and saw her crouched (she vomited), tried to approach her but couldn't (street between them was drawn as an abyss); during next break Jung bought a health drink for Seol but she collapsed and was carried to the infirmary.

Then this episode happened (explained in detail in 2nd part). After that, Jung found out Seol was taking a study break. He was desperate to keep her at university so he could finally get close to her (it was going to be Jung's last year, so if she took a break, they would likely never meet again). Having no other idea how to do that, Jung blackmailed Assistant Seo to make his research paper dissapear (Assistand Seo had stolen and used Jung's credit card, so Jung gave him a chance to be forgiven; once research paper was gone, Jung's grade would drop, Seol would become first in business department, get the scholarship instead of Jung and stay for another year). Then the first chapter of CITT happens when Jung approaches Seol all smiles and offers to buy her dinner (bomb food and triangle rice). So during this 'realization' period which started after Younggon's assault, Jung's like/dislike bar towards Seol jumped from -10 to a decent 8.

[2nd Part] EPISODE EXPLANATION + JUNG'S MONOLOGUE MISTRANSLATION + CHARACTER DETAILS

This whole chapter is from Jung's POV, so it's a rare opportunity not only to see him behave but also hear what he's thinking. Infirmary part is the breaking point is Seol-Jung relationship: it's Jung's last effort to stop being bothered and confused by his feelings towards Seol; and his utter defeat as his opinion of Seol changed completely. Jung was getting worried of her and her health before, but here we see the extent of it. Jung is super diligent when it comes to studying (a bit later, during their first movie date at the cinema Jung was hangover and asked Seol to wake him up if he falls asleep; but it was Jung who stayed up watching boring historical film without breaking attention because it was homework; while Seol quickly fell asleep). It is absolutely outrageous to see Jung deliberately skip important lecture (which has attendance marks) in the middle of it just to go and see Seol. It shows how much he worried about her without even realizing.

Then Jung quietly stared at Seol for a long time with a serious, cynical face as if criticizing, evaluating. Although Jung has dated many girls before (they asked him out and he said ok), he has never had any romantic feelings for them and had no experience with love. So here Jung tried to rationalize whatever newly experienced softness he was feeling towards Seol, remembering past incidents (how she fell several times and got her hand cut). But his concentration broke as soon as Seol moved and Jung was controlled by the unconscious desire to touch her HAND. Seol woke up (delirious) so Jung put his HAND over her eyes to make her sleep (it mirrors how Seol put her HAND over Jung's eyes to calm his rage after Sangcheol pushed them and Jung hurt his HAND). Seol grabbed Jung's HAND half asleep, thanked he was still there and told him to go already. Since she spoke in banmal (informal language), she must have mistaken Jung for Euntaek again, as she never spoke informally with Jung before. Obviously a HAND motif is extremely important in the story. Seol keeps grabbing people's hands (usually Jung's after they became close, ex. when he asked her to become his girlfriend, during volunteering etc.) because she pushed away grandmother's hand; Seol had her hand cut by homeless woman; Inho got his hand hurt during assault; Jung's habit to tap his fingers when he's thinking. I can say this hand grabbing was one of the deciding elements that defeated Jung and last effort of resistance, but why exactly this gesture has such an impact on him is revealed only at the end of the story.

The part time job paper he found in her pocket softened him more. Jung's monologue is MISTRANSLATED in English version on Webtoon app; in essence Jung said he was frustrated about his feelings towards Seol but now feels better (weird), it means he changed (that's weirder). Seol caused a chaos of emotions inside him and she was the only one who could contain that chaos and bring back peace to his heart. He had no proof they could get along as their relationship was dissapointing so far but he wanted to try once more and make sure of it. He admitted he had never regretted his actions so much as he did now (things he did to Seol). Jung realized he couldn't run away from Seol, was fascinated by her, worried (her call with parents), touched by her kindness (she cared for him at festival), apologetic (she crouched after asking for 2$). Suddenly realization hit Jung like a lightning - he lost the battle and got taken over by affection and crush towards Seol. Jung fell in love for the first time. And here started his obsession with food and having dinner with Seol.

[3rd Part] MISTRANSLATION OF "SEOL"

Why Jung kept repeating "Seol" like crazy? The way it's translated in English on Webtoon app, there is no difference between Jung addressing Seol as he first got into the infirmary and at the end of the chapter. In original Korean version there is a huge difference. For ex. Seol never adressed Jung as Jung; he was Yoo Jung or Sunbae (the latter even after they started dating). Titles of hierarchy or full names are used between people who are not very close and are in official respectful relationship, mostly professional. Family members, close friends and lovers use banmal (informal speech) and address each other using each other's name (there are exceptions; also Bora and Euntaek also often called Seol as Hong/Hong Seol but it may have been a tease). So people who are very close would usually add ending -ah to other person's name as a form of endearment.

When Jung first entered the infirmary, he adressed Seol formally as "Hong Seol" (a fellow student and hoohae of the same major). But after Jung realized he fell in love with Seol, he smiled and called her name softly as "Seol-ah", suggesting she became a close person to him, a dear friend and a possible future lover. Being first time in love, Jung was fascinated by how lovely it sounds and kept happily repeating it.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

CITT emphasizes the importance of subjectivity of one's point of view. This post was written explaining Jung's point of view, how he saw Seol and judged her behaviour. However the story is written mainly from Seol's point of view, so the reader identifies with her and can clearly understand only her actions and thoughts. Most of the time Jung looks weird, unreadable and suspicious to the reader because Seol sees him like that, affected by her past experiences which were caused by misunderstanding between them (and also because Jung is a complex person in general who on top of that is inexperienced in expressing himself clearly).

Nothing like that would have happened if Jung and Seol had sat down and talked everything out in the beginning. But these two do not openly speak about things. Instead they observe, overthink and internalize, judging people by subjective patterns of their own experience. Seol and Jung are similar in this appproach, only their patterns differ.

Seol grew up nice, diligent, disliked troubles and drama, smiled at sunbaes and was often underappreciated. And Jung was always at the center of attention. Seol thoght it was unfair, but she didn't know that people hanged out with Jung only for his status, money and connections, looking for personal gain. When Seol tried to be nice to Jung because she was just raised like that, Jung thought she was another leecher as he only knew such people.

Money was a touchy issue in Seol's family and she had to work several part time jobs to earn for tuition. Jung never thought about money at all or give it much importance. He was collecting expensive watches because he hd nothing better to do (habit came from the childhood as he was lonely and wanted to have a hobby). His issue was not using money for other people (paying for team dinners; Jung is generous) but for people using him only for money. So when Seol paid for her dinner (like she was raised to do) she thought Jung considered her a fool. Actually, he was impressed and surprised (sge's a first who did that) and even felt a little mocked. So he had no issue to give her more cash than she asked - 'I have money, you need it as you're sick, take it all'. She felt humiliated as if Jung was showing off.

Jung made her part of his festival preparation group only to have a chance to speak with her. She thought he did it to make her life hard. Whatever nice Jung did later, he was misunderstood by Seol as having evil intentions. Even when he "lost his paper" and gave up his scholarship so that she would stay at University, he avoided telling her the truth as Seol could (and eventually did) misunderstand and judge him resorting to blackmail (Seol is very righteous). But she would not open to him or ask him for help otherwise, so Jung had to repeatedly help her from behind the scenes and later get scolded.

Also, I wanted to clarify Jung's line "I'm all you got" from episode 27 that generated a lot of discussions about his 'inappropriate, sketchy and manipulative' behaviour. The sentence does sound creepy, but it was partly the fault of translation. Actually this sentence does not mean Seol has no family or friends and has to rely solely on Jung. It is a mistake to take this one sentence out of context, as the sentence was a continuation of Jung's train of thought about unconditional love and trust; about putting someone always first.

Read the colour coded dialogue below:

Jung Seol

"Next time tell me anything. Even if it's just a suspicion. Didn't we agree to share everything? That night, at my house... We talked about it."

"Yes we did, that conversation. Well, I was suspicious of him (Sangcheol) for being a thief so I had to be cautious."

"Seol, when you get suspicious, you had a good reason to be. You can tell me."

"What? How can you be so sure? Aren't you trusting me a little too much?"

"Of course. Who else would believe you and take your side if not me? See? I'm all you got."

Jung never experienced unconditional love and trust; his father never put Jung, his son, first above everything else. Jung was told to give beloved picture frame (mom's treasure) to a boy who simply liked it. Father told Jung to stop whining and be nice - apparently how other people saw Jung was more important than what Jung wanted. Jung's father considered him weird and the lack of trust was expressed by making Baek twins spy on Jung and report back (twins were manipulated too). Father even seemed to like twins' company better than Jung's as father was always smiling and laughing around them, but giving Jung a cold shoulder and scorned face. In Jung's mind, he was never first to Inho too although they were best friends. Jung went to see Inho's favourite musician and get autograph in Inho's name. And Inho kept reporting to Jung's father about Jung, laughed about father liking him more than Jung and caused a scandal about being a second son in the family. People at work and University also don't care about Jung as a person, only about his status in society.

Seol's life is different, she has family and friends yet she can relate to Jung a lot too. In episode 29 Seol said: "No matter how hard I try, there is someone else who's on a whole different level from the beginning. Do I really need to feel this way even at school?" and a picture of Seol's brother Joon appeared. Seol was never put first too - her brother as the only son in the family was the most important. Grandma used to favour Joon and bring him more snacks. Parents sent him to USA to study (Seol also wanted that) and sent him money frequently but Joon stopped his studies and went home. Meanwhile, Seol took a break and had several jobs to earn money for her tuition. No one at home asked how she felt, what she wanted; no one noticed how sick she was (father said no one around the house was useful). Seol had Bora and Euntaek but they had their own problems at home and Seol couldn't find strength to tell them everything thst bothered her. This lead Seol to keep stuff to herself and just brace through it alone.

For Jung, Seol is his girlfriend, the girl he loves and by far the closest person he has. Despite rocky start she eventually tried to know him behind the façade. She bought him a watch (he collects them) with her scarce savings when her time, interest and honesty were more than enough for him. After arguing she would still come and try to work it out and understand him (the night they talked at Jung's house). She often worried about him to the point where she thought she would trouble him with her "small" problems. So that's what Jung talked about - he wanted Seol to share even the smallest worries with him, not bottle everything inside. When friends can be very close, they both are a couple. For Jung couple means people who are ultimate, the most important for each other. "I'm all you got" means "the ultimate/the last one/ the only one to remain with you when everyone turns their backs on you and leaves". It means that as her boyfriend, Jung is the only one who ALWAYS puts Seol first above others, supports her and is on her side no matter what, even if she is wrong or mistaken. That is unconditional love and trust they haven't experienced from their family and friends, so have to give to each other instead.

END

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

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lunawings · 5 years

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King of Prism SSS episode 4 commentary (Kakeru)

Ahhhh.... finally seeing this episode again after a long time was really good. You may think I’m just being over-dramatic, but I honestly think I felt normal again for the first time since seeing SSS Part 4 while I was watching the stream with you guys. Like halfway through I was like WOAH IM SMILING... ahah....... ha......... Part 4 messed me up even more than I thought holy s--

Thanks for always coming to the streams! And thank you Kakeru, for reminding me about love.....

*deep breath* Now, let’s get to it...

So like I mentioned last time, we’re now on what I know as the “Part 2″ episodes.

My experience seeing Part 2 in the theater was like night and day compared to seeing Part 1. For Part 1 I got to go to the midnight showing, and it was super emotional and exciting seeing it with an entire theater-worth of people also seeing it for the first time.

But for Part 2 I had to work until 1am and thus couldn’t make the midnight showing. Instead I slept for about 2-3 hours, went all the way to Nagoya, saw this at 8am, went all the way home, and went back to bed before waking up again to go to work at 4pm wondering if it was all a weird dream. So needless to say I was super out of it. I got about two minutes into Kakeru’s episode when I was like... wha... huh..... wait wha....... and comical sweat-beads started rolling down my forehead when I realized I had NO idea what was going on. I felt like the entire theater was just as out of it as I was since they were really quiet. Probably because most of them went to the midnight showing and got just about as much sleep as I did....

The whole what is going onnnnnnnn feeling never quite left me. Especially with this episode in particular. But.

My favorite feature of Kakeru has always been his eyes....

So seeing him go through 8 stages of acceptance in this opening always gives me chills....

OH MY FUCKING G..............

So in the past I have railed on Crunchyroll for their wonky wording, but this is the first outright mistranslation I think. (Unless “solid style” wasn’t on purpose, but that one was so ridiculous I kinda feel like it may have been....)

If you have seen Pride the Hero, you’ll know Kakeru doesn’t leak the Prism System to his friends. He leaks it to the Itsutomo Group.

To be fair Sadana doesn’t say Itsutomo Group here. Just Itsutomo. But still, what did the translator think the “Itsu” part meant? They leave so many things as-is, but this... THIS they decide to attempt to translate into something.

Okay. OKAY...................................

I really, really like Kakeru’s dad. But not for anything he does in the movies/anime. He’s a super boring pushover here. But if you take Young of Prism and layer it on top of all that..... he’s fucking great.

I was so out of it when I first saw this the entire natural gas plot went over my head. I was just like “Episode 5: Kakeru goes to Madagascar. Does a prism show. Then he comes back for some reason. The end?????”

I also missed the earlier reference as well. To think when Kakeru looks at the newspaper in episode 1 and is like “Natural gas is expensive!!” that was foreshadowing ahah.

So this is the most controversial part of the episode I think. Globalization/colonization/industrialism has done damage lot of nations which were just fine beforehand, and I think paving over all of Africa’s natural habitats would likely cause.... various problems.

Do I really have any right to be commentating on this? No. But I don’t think King of Prism does either. I just don’t think it’s really the time/place for it.

But all-in-all I suppose Merina’s opinion isn’t too unusual for someone who works for Juuouin Group. I just wish they made it more clearer that his opinion and not the general opinion of Madagascar.

But then again what do I know. I really don’t even want to be talking about this!! It was just such a weird choice to take this episode to Madagascar at all.

This brought me so much joy. Please go read Young of Prism if you haven’t yet.

NNghkdhgkdhg baby Kakeru................. face......... uuuUUUgfh and his cute little voice...........

I also often wonder what Kakeru was doing in Kodama’s office in the first place. He’s not actually his uncle I believe.

My headcanon is that his mother dropped him off there one day when she was busy with something and needed someone to watch him quickly, then Kodama-san’s office just gradually became Kakeru’s daycare.

In cheering people will point up one concert light shaking with increasing intensity. Usually orange because nobody knows what other color to use.

.......GGDGDGDGdksl;fl;sgs.......... AHHHHHHHHHH.....HHH........hhhhhhhhh.. K.....

Crunchyroll agrees with me that Kakeru’s father is “Momojiro”. I know that’s the most likely reading, I’m just really bothered and concerned that there is just no furigana for it anywhere.

And behold, my favorite Kakeru face of all time.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh poor baby you were so pure back then

And behold my second favorite Kakeru face of all time aahaha

Okay now is as good a time as ever to bring it up, but.

I’m a bit disappointed that young Kakeru doesn’t wear glasses.

Because most kids get glasses before middle school if they are going to get them, don’t they? It makes me worry Kakeru’s glasses are just an image thing.

I mean he’s certainly frikkin adorable without them, but I dunno.... It made me weirdly happy to learn that Hiro wears contacts in episode 1.

I just want visually impaired comrades in my anime I guess!!!

Or maybe he just went without for longer than he should have by memorizing the eye test by listening to the kid in front of him like I did.

Kakeru can you see I’m worried about you.

Okay I’ll move on......

So someone pointed this out in the stream, but he doesn’t really say “mood” here. He says “kao iro” which would translate more into like... health? I don’t know. I honestly have no idea what he was getting at and it’s always puzzled me.

Oh the controversy.....

Okay so, that whole non-issue aside. About the rest of this scene.

I am not particularly offended by it for two reasons.

First...

Kakeru’s grandfather is giving him important life advice while his face is IN A BOOB

YOU CANT TAKE THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY COME ON

King of Prism has a tenancy to pair serious moments with ridiculous visuals that nearly ruin them on purpose and it’s a whole other level of humor ahah. There is an even better example of this in the next episode.......

Secondly...

KEI-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN

In the theater people hold up two light blue lights as soon as she rises up and then go nuts. It’s the best.

While most of the other characters were inspired by watching male prism stars like Hijiri or Rei, Kakeru watched mostly the girls and I get a kick out of that. We have already known he’s their fan for a while due to his Blowin’ in the Mind ringtone and side materials saying he has their magazines in his room, etc.

“What” - cheering audience

So if you look up “kakeru” in a Japanese-English dictionary, you’ll know it has.... a lot of meanings. And since they always write the boys’ names in katakana (to make it ambiguous I guess) you can never know for sure.

Here we confirmed for the first time it is intended to be 翔 = to fly/soar

This is a theme throughout SSS. How much Shin changed things for everyone............(I’ll come back to this)............

LOVE

So I guess when Kakeru got back from Madagascar Leo was like “So what do you want for your Prism One outfit?” and he was like “Make me a flamingo” and Leo was like “......You got it.”

Or maybe Leo was already like half done with Kakeru’s outfit and then he just burst in the door like “LEO I NEED TO BE A FLAMINGO--”

I only have one bad thing to say about Kakeru’s prism show and it has nothing to do with Kakeru’s prism show. I noticed that his legwork is really similar to Taiga’s, which was when I realized for the first time that it’s the same person doing all the motion capture. So that kind of brought me back to reality a little bit. But oh well. That person is really fucking talented.

They have been talking about Kakeru doing a prism jump where he’s naked with a pile of money for YEARS. HE DID IT. I’ve seen it in manga, I’ve seen it on Prism Rush... BUT THIS

Also how similar this is to the Prism Rush version amazes me...

CYALUME CH--

.....So I guess the translators haven’t watched PriPara either huh.

Wait is this even supposed to be for “Cyalume Change” because the subtitle is at such weird timing.

Also I felt bad afterwards about putting “CYALUME CHANGE” as one of my shitty out of context spoilers ahah. I hope I didn’t ruin it for anyone. At least I didn’t say what episode it was. My hope is that anyone who read it has been waiting to be blindsided by CYALUME CHANGE and it came at the best possible moment.

The first couple times I saw this episode I really wondered how cheering would go since so much of this episode is just business mumbo jumbo and if a lot of people would even show up for Part 2 cheering at all.

But then after about a week in I found myself waiting in the lobby before a sold out cheering show and saw a girl whip out a giant pink feathery fan.

Then the girl next to her was like hold my beer and took out a giant (fake) money fan.

Never underestimate Kakeru fangirls is a lesson I have learned over and over and over again.

A lot of people will also have three or four pink concert lights in one hand and an orange one or a color changing one in the other for this part ahah.

PAINT IT ORANGE PAINT IT ORANGE

(The lyrics to this song are nonsense. But it’s Kakeru, you can’t expect anything less.)

Prism shows with jungle animals are always a good time. (I can’t help but think of Shi Yoon.)

And there you have it, Kakeru saved the entire country of Madagascar.... with his prism show........ let’s not..... let’s not think too hard about this........

I suppose there are multiple ways this could be true so I shouldn’t be thinking too hard about this either. But.

The debut of the Leo pigtails.

Well actually I think he had them earlier in the episode too, but this was the first time I noticed.

Nothing warms my heart more than the few times Taiga throws Kakeru a bone by showing him the tiniest bit of affection. Even if it’s tsundere. Look at him. He’s just so happy. Aw Kakeru. Good for you.

I think this moment was kinda ruined by the new ending music though. In the theater it’s more quiet.

So I have always kinda felt like the Part 2 episodes are a bit weak compared with Part 1 and Part 3, but that’s probably a bit unfair considering how I experienced them. All of them grew on me more with time. It was also kind of hard coming down off of Taiga’s episode. After Taiga’s was so high tension I kinda expected the same for Kakeru too, but they went in a totally different direction. It was nothing like I thought it would be.

Before it aired I wondered if it would be about Kakeru trying to decide if spending his life in the Juuouin Group was right for him or not. And he did question it at one point when he was younger, but unless I misinterpreted it this episode was more about him loosing what he had and trying to get it back? He had doubts in his mind at one time about whether love exists, but he already came to believe it does before the events of this episode. So I guess Kakeru really has no doubt in his mind about what he wants for his future. You know, I think I like that better. I worry about him burning out with all the stuff he does, but it really does seem to be his true calling.

I find it rather sad that the Edel Rose boys never found out Kakeru’s backstory though. Instead he shares it with Merina. He couldn’t even tell them he was leaving. But then again, Minato quickly interpreted that it was probably too difficult for him, I’m sure he was right. The other boys seemed to understand and support him regardless. Kakeruuuuuuuuu...............

In side materials it’s kinda of hinted at here and there that Kakeru really wants to be more like Minato. He wants to be someone strong who supports everyone. He also really seems to not want to show any weakness to anyone, especially his friends....? (As I’m typing this I’m thinking back to the White Day event on Prism Rush when he was trying so hard to organize everything while also trying his hardest to hide that he was falling apart......) I guess he picked this up in the business world as well. Because of this I still feel there is a lot to Kakeru we still don’t know.

Well. Since I remembered this time and I liked this one: The special video for this episode that they show in the theaters has a voice over describing Kakeru’s intense schedule on a normal day.

But apparently on weekends he does no work at all. He gets caught up on manga and then plays with his friends. They showed a lot of stills of him hanging out with the Edel Rose boys, but my favorite and the one I remember the most was him playing arcade games with Shin (on a mysteriously PriPara-looking cabinet.... I think it was a fighting game though?)

Also Kakeru has a secret trunk in his room which must never be opened.

#king of prism #king of prism sss #king of prism shiny seven stars #kinpri #kakeru juuouin

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sleepyymp3 · 5 years

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okja (2017)

it may be two years too late but i recently (a few minutes ago) watched the film Okja. for those who are unsure of the plot, okja follows the path of a young girl who raised okja, a pig bred for a competition. when the pig is taken away for the competition, Mija, the girl, goes after her. she meets a rebel group of animal lovers and they attempt to take the pig back.

im about to spoil the film so if you haven’t seen it and wanna, bye!

okay. spoilers below. it’s been two years though so unless you’re me, you should be aware of the plot. they’re not major spoilers though.

firstly, my initial thoughts. i loved it. the cinematography was fantastic, striking visuals and contrast of light and dark when approaching different parts of the film were perfect and beautiful, the emotions they evoked from me when watching it was unforgettable. when the shot of all the manufactured pigs panned out to show thousands of them, i had chills everywhere.

the fact that it was a korean-american film in terms of actors, language and setting--and done so WELL, director Bong Joon-ho impressed me to no ends, is important in so many ways. the representation it brings, as well as the importance of steven yeun (the walking dead, voltron: legendary defender, mayhem) in the role of the korean-american character ‘k’. i am not a korean speaker, so i did limited research on his portrayal of k in the film, and according to an interview, he played k as a character that was dancing in between the roles of korean and american, and spoke slightly broken korean on purpose. read this article for a well articulated version of what im trying to say: https://slate.com/culture/2017/06/there-s-a-translation-joke-for-korean-americans-in-the-subtitles-of-okja.html

the acting was fantastic. Seo-Hyeon Ahn, mija, was phenomenal. i was truly and completely invested because of her. incredible. the entire cast floored me. everyone was so perfect in their roles i couldn’t believe what a dream cast it was. tilda swinton and jake gyllenhaal astounded me, they were absolutely unforgettable as the ‘antagonists’, and i even felt disgustingly sympathetic for them, especially jake when dr. johnny has the breakdown in the factory.

carrying on, the characters were amazingly written. the movie okja was portrayed so that there was no black and white, right and wrong--every character was in the grey area, it portrayed everyone in a harsh light. the ‘good’ characters did bad things and it was a refreshing take on protag vs antag. the main characters were so likeable and i loved their chemistry and interactions. paul dano (jay) and steven yeun (k) thrived in their scenes together (k is a primary example of the “good character does bad thing” style i just mentioned when he mistranslates. jay is also a bit iffy in terms of his morals in some scenes. in fact, the whole alf is). i lowkey shipped them together throughout the film, especially in the post credit scene. other main characters included red, played by lily collins, blond, played by daniel henshall, and silver, played by devon bostick (aka jasper from the 100).

blond and silver, i would like to point out, are portrayed as boyfriends in the film. lgbt characters. they did not kiss on screen, nor did they in any way verbally state that they were in a homosexual relationship. they were dating though. through body language (holding each other, burying faces in necks/shoulders, sacrificing themselves for the other, etc) it was explicitly shown. the fact that lgbt characters were shown in Okja without anybody mentioning or playing a large amount of attention to was amazing. it showed that lgbt characters don’t have to be a ‘big deal’ or that they are in a film just to be an lgbt character. they were animal lovers part of the alf who played crucial roles in the film, who just happened to be dating. it was fine. wonderful.

finally, okja the film was NOT an anti-meat statement. i can see how it could be interpreted as such but it was NOT AN ANTI-MEAT FILM. mija is shown explicitly eating meat, she collects fish in the stream for dinner and her grandfather makes her chicken stew. this film was promoting ETHICAL PRODUCTION. the conditions of which the bred bigs were put through were an attempt to show the horrors of manufactured creatures such as okja. though they are not real creatures and this is a fictional setting, it is a representation of real meat manufacturing and production. okja is chosen as the Biggest, Best, most Beautiful pig, and she has been raised by just roaming the country, fed and raised naturally. this is a representation of natural, ethical means of meat production. it showed corporate greed, activism and ETHICAL PRODUCTION.

tldr; OKJA IS AN INCREDIBLE FILM WITH PHENOMENAL ACTING AND AN AMAZING MESSAGE THAT STAYS WITH YOU LONG AFTER WATCHING. PLEASE GO WATCH IT. IT IS WORTH THE TIME I PROMISE YOU.

also: i have absolutely no experience nor professional critiquing in terms of film studies or the history of meat production. or ethnicity representation or anything that i have spoken about. take my opinions with a grain of salt. i am literally fifteen years old.

if you made it this far, thanks for reading! i hope this film changes/changed you as much as it did me.

#okja #bong joon-ho #film #netflix

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the-nysh · 7 years

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Whats your opinon of kiri//baku and todo//deku?

!!!!! 👀 Oooh, *takes deep breath* so I’ve finally been askedthe big question. (Thank you for courteously using the /s to block the ship names out of the tags) Because I DO have opinionsabout them. I’ve mostly kept them to myself, but since I’ve been prompted, Iwill try to be as honest and thorough as I can. :’)

Disclaimer: If you high-key shipeither of the two, please proceed with caution!

To preface:

If it wasn’t already obvious from the content I reblog (and rave about in thetags), my decisive fav character of the series is Kacchan, and similarly, my otp of the series is with him and Deku(as bakudeku, aka bkdk for short – which is how it’scommonly called on twitter). So going in, that’s my given stance already.

But it wasn’t always this way! :O When I first started theseries I went in pretty cautious, wary, and undecided; I actually never plannedto fall so hard for either the character or the ship (and I rarely ship things tobegin with). That is, until Hori repeatedly bludgeoned me in the face and heartwith all the reoccurring and carefully consistent character development, to thepoint ch120 became the final, decisive nail in the coffin - the point of noreturn for me. :’3 So now, I’m fully invested in seeing how their story pulls through to the end, nomatter what it might become (it doesn’t even need to be shippy). With them thematically established as two sidesof the same coin – on opposite ends of the same spectrum of heroism – the twohalves of All Might who both win and rescue:I want to see how they push each other towards greatness and mature into a pairof the best heroes. It’s a long-term investment of hope and a case of slowburn positive development, in direct (and on purpose!) contrast to its rockyand strained foundations (they ARE immature and emotionally constipated teensafter all), but it’s all been carefully laid out through a steady path ofnarrative foreshadowing. Where the prospects at the end of that path – of mutualsupport, understanding, reconciliation, cooperation, teamwork, trust – arebeautiful and rewarding things that make their ongoing journey of growth worthit. So…for Hori to smash any original expectations I might have had, and makeme fall hard for something I never intended to happen, are examples of whatI consider GOOD writing.

After I realized this, I went and did my research. Which inmy case, is reading up on countless character/relationship meta and fanfics togauge how the fandom sees their potential too. So I am very aware of the multiple sides of existing arguments and the dramathat’s already happened in the fandom (from across both tumblr and twitter). Iknow the western fandom considerably favors kr/bk and td/dk (at least for now), BUT in the eastern fandom,it’s actually bkdk that’s more popular. Hmm, curious why that is?

One of the reasons is partly thanks to the widespread availabilityof fan mistranslations (FA group) that have greatly exaggerated certain characterizations(ie Kacchan), leading to fandom fearmongering and the perpetuation of stigmasagainst the canon development of certain relationships (ie bkdk), which in theoriginal text, were never nearly thatflanderized or as offensive in context to begin with. Include also, adifference in cultural expectations/values, and we get a prickly concoction ofmisunderstandings ready to brew. It’s a poor and unfortunate case of important subtleties/complexitiesgetting lost in translation, while the bad things are blown way out ofproportion, to the point the story’s original intent is sidelined, or worse, canonis deliberately obstructed by translators who already dislike seeing suchcontent (because it’s ‘not their ship’) – so they prevent and hurt othersfrom fully enjoying the progression of the series as the author intended. Peoplecan like what they like (that’s perfectly fine), but in all of my lurking, Ihave SEEN examples of these things (andworse) actively happen, and quite frankly, the spread of this blatant toxicityand compulsive collective ignorance sickens me. So, I choose not to getinvolved with it, and instead focus on the positive.

Because of my preference for meta and faithfulinterpretations of the text (making sure available translations are reliablefor analyzing, for instance), I’ve gathered enough information (andacknowledged enough counterarguments) to make an educated decision for myself onwhat I value most and want to see from the series. Unless Hori veers offotherwise, I’ll stick by that conclusion and enjoy following the series throughto fruition (regardless of what the rest of the opposing fandom might say).

For example, one of the first dedicated and respectful metawriters – back when only the FA scans were available, but who ALSO providedcorrections from the Japanese text where necessary, came to this conclusionabout Deku and Kacchan’s characterizations:

From ryokure:

“Deku is such a super special case that if a fanfichas him and Kacchan in it - no matter the parings - and they don’t have somecase of mutual obsession, I actually consider that OOC.”

Which, after everything I’ve seen of the characters, I can fully concur withthat statement.

MEANING, if the fandom portrays them off alone, together, or involvedin relationships with other characters and they lack this intrinsic magnetism that binds them together (for betteror worse) – if they can somehowfunction completely normal without being influenced by the presence of anotherand magically not even care about each other anymore, then my suspension of disbeliefbreaks. They’re too OOC. (Unless it’s a fic au where they never met or grew uptogether.) These two are TOO canonically wrapped up in their mutual complexesto simply cut ties, wrap up all their unresolved issues with a band-aid,and essentially ignore a core issue of the series for the sake of ‘shipconvenience’ with others. Their canon relationship is too complex to make such simplifiedportrayals of them believable, or even such flimsy ‘solutions’ for their issuesfeasible. Thankfully, we have Hori actively doing all the hard work for us sowe don’t have to worry about such transgressions like that happening in canon. (InHori’s consistent characterizations we trust!)

Now then, with all of THISestablished, I can finally answer your main question: my opinion on kiri/bakuand todo/deku.

Let’s start with todo/deku:

Because believe it or not, when I was still new to the fandom and in my earlyresearch stages, I actually lowkey shipped them and read plenty of fics aboutthem too! I was open to them as a pair, but still undecided and wary because I didn’t know who to ship withDeku: either Todoroki or Bakugou. I saw all the widespread (western) fandomcontent for td/dk, with the apparent foundations for the ship based on eventsfrom the Sports Festival, where Deku ‘saves’ Todoroki and acts as the catalystto allow him to defrost his issues with his father and realize his true power.I thought, ‘ooh there’s something interesting in there worth looking forwardto; I’ll keep an eye on how canon develops their relationship from here.’

Unfortunately…canon didn’t give me anything else substantial to build on. Andin my case, those are foundations I NEED to be fully on board and convinced fora ship. It was the equivalent of fandom hyping me up for something to lookforward to, with me sitting there with a huge smile and my arms raised inanticipation…only for the rest of the manga to leave me dry. It was a hugedisappointment. Because except for a few scattered incidents, like from theStain arc and maybe the recent ‘it’s ok for heroes to cry sometimes too’moment, canon progress for their relationship has been severely underwhelmingand virtually nonexistent. Todoroki has chilled into becoming a supportive (yetstill socially awkward) friend for Deku yes, but even Iida has had more canon incidents of concern for Deku’s wellbeing,and challenges Deku into becoming a better person/hero with their interactions.(And yet, fandom support for Deku and Iida is virtually nonexistent incomparison, because their friendship resembles the camaraderie between bros, Iguess??)

So then I was like, ‘wait, am I missing something here? WHY does the fandomlove td/dk so much, when their canon interactions are so limited, and the onlybig thing that’s happened between them was all the way back in the SportsFestival??’ So, I went and investigated the potential of their relationshipfurther in fanfics (which are quite numerous and popular on a03 I might add).

After taking a look, I began to see trends. Most td/dk fics are heavily skewed in Todoroki’s favor, tothe point of being practically one-sided in character development. The mainconflict in almost all their ficnarratives revolves around solving Todoroki’s issues with his father and comingto terms with HIS powers, leaving Deku as a passive, supporting participant inhelping Todoroki out with his problems. Which, while the two of them could bondtogether over their missing/difficult father issues, after a while this same familyconflict gets old and stale. What else is there? What about Deku’s problems for equality’s sake?He’s the main protagonist! How abouthis difficulties in learning how to make One for All his own too? Ah nope, hecan’t canonically confide in Todorokiabout the secrets of his quirk, now can he. ;) Oh wait. What about his problems with Bakugou? Is the biggest elephant in the room going to be ignored for the sakeof typical couple melodrama, or is my fav character going to be demonized so that Todoroki, the ‘prince’on a white horse, can ‘save’ Deku, the ‘damsel’ in distress, from him?! No way. And THAT is another hugeproblem I have with the ship.

Because in all the fics I’ve read of them, I never once was convinced ofDeku’s feelings for Todoroki. I can understand Todoroki gaining a passing crushon Deku thanks to their fight in the Sports Festival. But Deku? How does heeven fall for him? Just becauseTodoroki is nice and considerate and listens to him? Like a friend? (Deku has Uraraka and Iida forthat too, what makes Todoroki any more special than them in Deku’s life?) Thisties in to my previously mentioned suspension of disbelief and ooc territorynow. Because Deku is not some haplessdamsel in distress ready to be swept off his feet and easily charmed by somepotential suitor; he’s a BAMF with a heroic spirt that’s even feared byBakugou. And these traits are so rarely utilized to their full potential intd/dk fics - Todoroki’s influence rarely even challenges or inspires Deku toBECOME the best he can be to draw out his latent potential. (Iida’s canonicallydone more in that regard thanTodoroki’s ever done.) Again, it feels too one-sided in Todoroki’s favor toimprove as a better person/hero.

Oh yeah, and since Deku became one of Todoroki’s first ‘true friends,’ forTodoroki to fall for him feels like putting too many eggs in one basket,without giving Todoroki the chance tobranch out and make normal/healthy relationships with OTHERS first beforesettling down. He’s a socially awkward kid emotionally repressed by domesticabuse; for him to latch onto Deku, the ‘first’ person he’s finally (andliterally) warmed up to, feels like the budding symptoms of unhealthy copingmechanisms and compensating for Todoroki’s deeper emotional issues. Where it thenbecomes Deku’s ‘responsibility’ to care for the turnout of his wellbeing, whenNO - Deku’s got plenty of his OWN issues to become burdened with someone else’s on top of those. Plus in canon,Todoroki’s doing just fine and is perfectly capable of handling his personal problems onhis own without having to depend on Deku.

Again, it’s all touchy territory that feels like it sidelines the mainintent of the series itself – by branching off into the deep end of Todoroki’sangst at the expense of Deku’s, or worse: simply wrapping everything up with afluffy bow called ‘the power of love.’ Nuh-uh, not only is that immenselyidealistic and unrealistic, but it’s totally not the kind of content I signedup for when I started the series. I’m frankly not interested in delving into thoseoff-tangent topics in opposition to canon, where Deku’s problems are oftensidelined, his characterization compromised, and my fav character (Kacchan) eitherbecomes an exaggerated, antagonizing impediment to their ship or is simplytreated like he doesn’t even exist. (My patience and willing suspension of disbeliefonly go so far.)

In the end, Todoroki’s a supportingcharacter. In a tertiary tier after the protagonist (Deku) and the deuteragonist(Bakugou). Yet in td/dk fics he’s almost always turned into a main protagonistsomehow. I can understand his appeal and why he’s so popular in the fandom, yes(and I like him too!), but there’s a point where this exposure becomes TOO much,the limit to his available canon issues becomes saturated and repetitive, and itultimately becomes so tiring to keepcoming back and addressing the same topics in fanon when canon has alreadymarched on to focus on more pressing issues. I’m more interested in exploring those other things.

So nowadays, whenever I see td/dk content, I go ‘ayy that’s nice (or cute),’and keep on scrolling. It doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t interest meanymore either. I probably won’t touch anymore fics of them together either;I’ve seen and had enough. I’m actually more receptive to seeing Todorokiinteract and develop friendships with other characters, like Inasa (the wind guy from the rival school)or even Momo for instance. Either of those ships I see around, I’m cool withtoo.

The final line: I don’t ship them (anymore), because canon swayed me over with the more pressing and compelling developments of bkdk.

NOW, it’s time to talk about kiri/baku:

To start, I actually LOVE Kirishima as a character. And I’ve alreadyestablished upfront that my fav character in the series is Kacchan. So whatgives? It turns out their ship has neverbeen on my radar.

Kirishima is a great character, but I’ve only ever seen him as a supportive bro. To EVERYONE in their class. Whichis precisely how Hori designed him: to be a compassionate/empathetic nice guywho bridges the gaps between the class with his vigorous enthusiasm and support(same role that Denki shares, by the way). And he fulfils this role splendidly.But he ALSO has his own insecurities and developing friendships with manyothers in the class – Denki, Mina, and Deku included. All of those people areimportant to him (and I’m cool with all their ships with him too). Kirishimadoes not solely revolve aroundBakugou.

It’s true that near the beginning of the series, Bakugou was an angry loner,Kirishima trailed after him on his own accord, and after seeing his version of‘manliness’, decided to stick by him and support him, because Kiri saw thepositives of his character that ‘no one’ else bothered to see. (NOT true; Dekuhas always seen and admired Kacchan’spositive traits since they were children.)And so what’s canonically established is a budding friendship where Kirishimafulfils his given role to bridge gaps (whenever Bakugou strays away from theclass), essentially working as a rubber band plot device, and as a secondperspective – aka a fresh lens, for the audience to view Bakugou’s positivequalities.

All of this I’m cool with. I actually enjoyseeing their canon interactions and the kind of fun, slapstick way they bounceoff each other. (I even like the concept of Dragon!Kiri too!) BUT, it’s whenfanon starts twisting their canon relationship into shippy territory, that’swhere things start getting…ugly, at least for me.

Remember, I’ve always only seen Kirishima as a supportive bro, and I MEAN that. They have the samered eyes. The same style of spikey hair. The same pumped up mannerisms whenthey get going. Too many similarities that rub me the wrong way when put in aromantic context. (The only difference is that one of them is the soft-hearted ‘niceguy,’ and the other is the outwardly prickly ‘asshole.’) To me, to ship them feels like the equivalentof taking the parallel ends of two polarized magnets: you can manually forcethem close together, but in the end, they cannot touch because the same ends ofmagnets naturally repel. Now, flip one of those magnets around (aka turn it intoDeku), and boom, the opposite ends attract with explosive force. And THAT ishow bkdk feels to me in comparison.

However, the kr/bk fandom doesn’t stop there. I know there exists plenty of fics about them, but I’ve never read any, and frankly, I never will, not even for curiosity’ssake. Because from the overabundance of otherfandom content, I already know what their ship dynamic is about. And it doesnot appeal to me at all.

Remember how I said Kacchan is my favorite. I do not appreciate when thefandom warps him into either a demonized or castrated caricature of himself –aka when they turn him into someone he most definitely is NOT, all for the sakeof a ship. Or worse: when they use Kiri’s relationship as a means of changingBakugou into a character they findmore appealing. NO. Even more worse: when they treat Kiri’s whole character as awalking plot device for ALL of Bakugou’s positive character development. Fuckno! Kirishima doesn’t deserve this dehumanizing treatment by the fans, andneither does my fav, getting subjected to this…betrayal to his whole character.

What am I talking about? When fans insist that Kiri is the ONLY personBakugou can be ‘nice’ to, outright forsaking or ignoring the canon developmentseither of them have with other characters – what about Denki, the rest of the‘Bakusquad’? Or Deku? Remember my dislike for ignoring the elephant in the room back in my spiel about td/dk?Well here, it’s infinitely times worse.

Because Kiri does not become aconvenient narrative replacement to ‘solve’ all of Bakugou’s problems or themeans to correct his bad behavior. It’s not even Kiri’s business orresponsibility to do so! (Same deal if Uraraka is shipped in Kiri’s place.) Hispresence doesn’t challenge Bakugou’s current conduct or world views to improvehimself as a better person, OR actively affect his drive to become the best hero.At most, Kiri endures the brunt of Bakugou’s outbursts when they happen(because he can harden with his quirk, he can ‘take’ it, and their banterbecomes ‘humorous’ and ‘harmless’…no, it absolutely does not) and amicably slides off any further implications with a ‘heyman, that’s not cool’, or excuses/accepts it with a ‘it’s fine because he’s justbeing himself.’ Now we have a situation where Kiri becomes a passive ‘butt-monkey’to Bakugou’s whims and actually enableshis unacceptable behavior to persist. And Bakugou somehow becomes fully invested in a single confidant who babies andpicks up after him (how the heck? no way would he allow himself to get ropedinto a relationship like that, if any at all. He’s strong and independent enoughto handle himself fine.). Even when it’s portrayed where Kiri is the ‘only’ oneBakugou’s nice to, they’d exist in a vacuum tunnel, sealed off from the influenceof others, and become a spiraling fester-hole of static development. None ofthese prospects are the ‘healthy’ long-term results that fandom seems to claimthey are. Tell me, if Bakugou was reallyan abusive character, would his behavior magically ‘fix’ itself simply thanksto Kiri’s passive influence or ‘the power of his understanding kindness and love’?The answer is a resounding and definite NO. The only person who can canonically stand up to Bakugou’s behavior (andnot brush it off), fundamentally challengehis world views and complexes, match him in equal and opposite intensity with themutual drive to be the best, and receivethe full extent of his turbulent feelings, is Deku.

This is what I’m referring to when I say fandom often ‘ignores the elephantin the room,’ because THIS (Deku and Kacchan’s relationship) is an established,ongoing and important core issue of the series itself, that many shippers wouldrather sideline for the priority, current gratification, and fluffy convenienceof an opposing ship. Aka, simply slap them together with the first nice friend theymeet (in both Todo and Baku’s cases, it’s the ‘too many eggs in one basket’problem again…), who will solve all their problems and work to ‘change’ theminto better people…somehow? No, that’s the case of unrealistic, wishful thinking bad writing andtaking the easy way out when something -the elephant in the room- is too challengingand complex to tackle head on. Thankfully, Hori IS tackling their story head onas purposely intended, so I don’t have to worry about canon jumping the sharkon the progress of their relationship.

So, instead of Kiri being shipped with Bakugou, I much prefer him as a supportingcharacter (a supportive bro!!) who helps ease Bakugou into social/emotionalsituations that he’d normally avoid (which is how Hori originally designedhim??? to bridge those gaps -aka Bakugou’s loner distance - in the class) I’veread plenty of bkdk fics where Kiri becomes the mvp BECAUSE of his natural abilityto do this! With him as a much-needed wingman, voice of empathetic reason, and trustedsecond opinion who Bakugou can confide in to help confront his chronicemotional constipation over Deku. Shipperscan claim that Kiri helps Baku come to terms and become receptive to ‘softer,’ affectionatefeelings when they’re together, when it’s actually the opposite: Kiri becomes astepping stone for Bakugou to learn how to ‘make friends’ with other people whenthey’re apart. ‘Other people’ meaning: Denki, the ‘squad’, Todoroki, the restof the class…and most importantly, Deku.Let my son -Kacchan- learn how to form healthy, genuine relationships withpeople again, so he can gain the necessary experience and maturity to reproach hislifelong treatment of Deku and decide to patch up their relationship on his own terms. This, I feel, is a much more satisfyingoutcome and effective use of Kiri’s character, both in his involvement withBakugou and for the long-run benefit of the series itself.

But instead of seeing it this way, much of the (western) fandom overexaggerates the importance of Kiri and Baku’s relationship, to the point it notonly overshadows the content of other ships, but obfuscates the actual translated GEN contentof canon itself. (WHY!?!) I’m not even going to touch the propensity, hypocrisy, and irony of their shippers to harassand bully others for their opposing shipping preferences (that’s a whole other can of worms). Overall,it’s gotten so bad and obnoxiously rampant that I’ve been forced to block the ship tag for my own sanity and enjoyment of theseries. The ONLY time it’s ever beenrequired for me to use the blacklist function here, and that’s saying something.

Therefore: I support their friendship as supportive bros, but kr/bk as a ship was never on myradar. I’ve never shipped it, and I will notbecome interested in their potential as a pair. I used to be ok with seeing fan content of them around…until thefandom essentially and unfortunately soured it into a notp for me. Welp!

And there we have it, my full opinion on both ships. I hope that satiatesanyone’s curiosity on the matter, as so far I’ve had plenty of personal reasonsto stay in my own lane and only show my avid support for bkdk. This I’ve confidently decided and I will continue todo so, for as long as I’m invested in the series.

For some further reading and similar informed opinions:

http://explodo-smash.tumblr.com/post/165154054112/not-to-pit-ships-against-one-another-but-i

http://explodo-smash.tumblr.com/post/163895267877/why-do-you-ship-bakugou-and-deku-if-its-abusive

http://tinyshinysylveon.tumblr.com/post/168731953134

https://punkbakugo.tumblr.com/post/170514358890/do-you-think-that-the-fandom-over-exaggerates

Also related: my opinions about Kac/chako. And Izu/Ocha.

Edit: now cross-posted on a03

#Anonymous #replies #bnha #bkdk #meta #shipping #rom it’s time to bring out our salt shakers because it’s PARTY TIME 8D #(whoever makes it thru the nearly 4000 words gets a cookie :'D)#honestly i never expected to get an ask about this but time makes it inevitable i suppose :')#therefore i put in both the time and honesty to speak for myself and other bkdk supporters #my opm followers are welcome to check this monster out too #just to see how much salt i’m packing and normally hold back #(this will not become a regular occurrence - unless i'm explicitly asked for more of my opinions on the matter)#anyway for those with similar solidarity: enjoy! :)

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izzyovercoffee · 7 years

Text

@hattahightopp replied to your post:“whispers softly idk why people still insist mandalorians would think...”:

Starwarsbucketheads here on my main blog. I've never heard Cin Vhetin described that way before. I did not realize that we were speaking of sexual purity, or of the Mando religion that appears to have been almost forgotten by the time of the main story. I thought we were just talking about blank slates and new beginnings, which is how I have always heard Cin Vhetin described before.

This is going to be super long. My bad. I’ll separate the sections for easier reading, hopefully. I apologize in advance if my tone is off as it’s been a while since I did a long post and I have some time to shoot one out before I have to run, but not like ... a whole lot of time.

the tl;dr

I’m gonna summarize it.

“white = pure” comes from a very specific christian cultural context that does not in any way translate to mandalorians, and imposing this color association on mandalorians is a mistake for multiple reasons.

One, mandalorians don’t particularly punish sexual behavior. Regardless of whatever you’re aware of, “white = pure” is a color association deeply tied throughout history to policing sexual behavior.

It needs to be mentioned, as while mandalorians ... don’t do any of that, the historical use and motivation behind “white = pure” is almost entirely inescapably tied with policing sexual behavior, particularly with regards to women.

Two, mandalorians are SUPER ambivalent about morality, which is another pillar that “purity” as a concept embodies. Mandalorian morality has sliding scales that push goalposts because “they must have their reasons” is often the first thought and defense when faced with someone who has a history of extreme violence.

Mandalorians literally do not even have a word for moral, but they DO have a word for immoral, which translates to “really extreme, even for mandalorian standards.” That’s not ... something that describes a people that would look at “pure” and think positive things about it.

Three, cin vhetin does not directly translate to clean slate, and so making up color association based on a mistranslation is not a sensible course of action. Cin vhetin means snow field, or white field. It literally has to do with an actual, physical, field as understood in agricultural terms.

Also, Mandalorians are an agriculture-dependent people. Agriculture dependent people do not associate the color white, or the color of snow, with purity or cleanliness. They associate it with winter, and death, and eventual rebirth when spring comes. These things are not the same.

Four, white is the color of bone. Of death. And even if you wanted to use clean slate as a point of reference, no slate is ever truly clean once used, no matter how you clean it. Mandalorians embrace the damage and dirt of life, not abhor it in order to strive to a “purity” ideal that is not actually nor actively achievable --- which is yet another thing pure and purity means and stands for.

Mandalorians even deride and view with suspicion people who are too clean, too pure, too moral. They do not trust people like that. Why would they then even care enough to associate a color with it?

Five, mandalorian fandom has a history of racism, and even if it’s not intentionally racist to say “white = pure,” there are still cultural biases that become very clearly evident when it comes to imposing nonsensical concepts onto a fictional culture that in no way, shape, or form, would independently come to this association on their own when you actually look at the context of their culture and belief systems in-universe.

And, generally, it would behoove fans to take extra care in not supporting nor promoting concepts which have a history based in racism, or one that has been used to defend and enforce racism, even indirectly.

That done, I’m gonna stick all the details under the cut because this reply got LONG.

Sexual Purity

Listen. I am addressing purity as a concept, which also means touching on all of its meanings. Sexual behavior? Has a huge influence on what the concept of purity even means, even embodies, in the world today. You can’t just separate pure and purity politics from sexual behavior, because those two concepts are deeply entwined at the roots. I brought it up as a sidenote, so the “I did not realize” statement is like ... weird, dude.

It’s in absolute ignorance of what “pure” and “purity” even is and what it means --- and it does, actually, matter in this discussion, because white = purity is a color association that is deeply entwined with a very long and detailed history bent on punishing sexual behavior of any kind.

And it’s usually agreed that mandalorians wouldn’t have a reason to acknowledge the concept of pure in association with sexual behavior, as mandalorians don’t give a shit about any of that. It’s simply one of the more straightforward reasons to shoot down white = purity.

Blank Slates and Snow Fields

WRT “blank slate” ... the thing is that I’ve already touched on in a previous post and someone elaborated further on, and I really do implore you read it, the “blank slate” phrase is a close approximation of a definition, but it is not a direct translation of cin vhetin --- cin vhetin translates to snow field, or white field, not blank slate. You’ve seen people use it that way, and it’s meant to be close in meaning, but if they’ve said that it translates to blank slate, they are straight up wrong. Probably not on purpose, but still wrong.

This is a great example of what happens when you are translating one language to another, and one phrase does not actually have a direct translation. (This is known as an idiom.) You’re then stuck with using the next closest phrase that can mean something similar, as similar as humanly possible, despite there being no direct translation that exists.

The issue, here, is that people take what is an idiomatic phrase (cin vhetin) and impose the connotations that come with “wiping the slate clean” onto a phrase that actually has nothing to do with making things clean. Cin vhetin is, quite literally, snow field. It does not have anything to do with cleanliness, or purity, or all the other associations that fandom places on cin vhetin because they don’t actually look at the phrase itself and try to understand what it means in mando’a, in a mandalorian context.

Myself and another go into greater detail on what cin vhetin translates to in that above link, using the actual mando’a to explain the translation, instead of an indirect idiomatic phrase which, when taken at face value, brings us to the very problem we’re having with resulting people thinking white = pure. It doesn’t and it can’t, because that’s based on an english translation, and not on the mando’a involved, and not considering context within mandalorian culture.

So, when fandom “decides” that mandalorians would think color white = purity, this isn’t only about deciding that the color white should mean to mandalorians what it means to human christian earth people (because white = purity is not universal), but this is also about how this is not a decision made in a vacuum but rather from a very specific cultural context that mandalorians could not and would not replicate. Hence, it doesn’t make sense.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that if you have ever written on a slate, it is never actually truly clean once it’s been used. There will always be some remaining mark or blemish or residue persisting, no matter how thoroughly it’s cleaned. The only time a slate is truly clean is before it’s ever been used. It will never be “clean” (or “pure”) again.

Clean and Pure isn’t something Mandalorians respect

And I, truly, cannot see mandalorians ignoring the significance of damage, or blemish, or injury, persisting in order to suggest that an ideal meant to be striven for (because that is, ultimately, what purity is) is untouched by the realities of living. Mandalorians actively deride people who avoid reality, who have shiny armor untouched by battle, and consider those squeaky clean as suspect.

Mandalorians, as a people, have never been afraid of facing the realities of life, and of hard living. Mandalorians, as a people, have never been afraid of facing the more shocking, and terrifying, and dirty, and disgusting, parts of life and of war. Why, then, would they, independently, care about purity and then liken it to a color that takes other colors on easily at the slightest disturbance?

and ‘white = pure’ is uniquely christian

Honestly, white = purity is quite specific to a christian, catholic, cultural perspective. It is not a universal understanding of the color white, nor is it one that makes any modicum of sense in a mandalorian context. It’s echoing the Christian idea that by default, humanity is dirty, and you can try for the goodness and pure grace of God, but know it's impossible, because humans are inherently unclean. And this, at its very core, is directly contrary to mandalorians. It is directly contradicting who mandalorians are and how they live, and how they view the universe.

If mandalorians ever conceptualized purity, it would not be in the same way it’s conceptualized in a western, christian society. It simply isn’t, because mandalorians are not disgusted by the inevitable damages of living. The inevitable dirt of life. They actively seek these things out and show them off. They actively look for these things on others. They actively view those who are too clean with active suspicion. It is the opposite of what “white = pure” would ever hope to achieve.

It’s a great example of how an individual might impose their cultural biases onto a fictional people whose culture would never, could never, independently come to these same conclusions. The cultures are too different.

color theory varies depending on cultural perspective

When it comes to color theory, color meanings vary from culture to culture, and there are specific reasons within specific cultures for colors to take on certain meanings. There is no case within mando’a where white could ever mean purity, for multiple reasons, but first and foremost because mandalorians would not independently come to associate purity as an idea with the color of snow.

They might, and very likely would, associate purity with material mechanics, as someone brought up here, and the explanation is more inline with mandalorians and taking in-universe cultural context to make that point.

and mandalorian cultural perspective is an agriculture society that associates white with winter and snow

But in association with white? With snow? No, and the reason is simple: mandalorians are a culture that depends, heavily, on agriculture to survive. It simply does not make sense for mandalorians to view snow as a cleanser or a symbol of cleanliness, because that’s not something that a culture who depends heavily on agriculture would look at and associate with a winter frost.

They can’t, and they wouldn’t, because that’s not what snow, what winter, means. That’s not what snow, what winter, represents. Not to a society who holds a healthy respect for winter against their needs to grow their own food and survive off the land --- which is where they would see white the most.

and death, and bone

White, it also stands to mention, is the color of bone --- or, at least, for humans, if not most sapients in the galaxy. It is evidence of death, and what survives death. Bone also used to be what the mask of mandalore had been made of, in the early, early days. Kyr’bes stands both for crown and skull (the Mythosaur skull), associating the symbol of leadership with the remains of an extinct creature.

Why, given that understanding and symbolism, would mandalorians then associate white with pure? Or even clean? There is no such thing as a clean death, and mandalorians for a long time practiced leaving the bodies behind, to rot in exposure, and take only the armor home. That is not clean, nor is it pure.

and then we come to purity as a moral quality

Furthermore, mandalorians don’t care about morality in a very broad sense of the word. Morality, to mandalorians, has always been presented as flexible in most places (except when it comes to the mistreatment of children). For a culture that is widely ambivalent to a strict or rigid moral system, purity from a moral standpoint is not a concept that would then carry any kind of serious meaning.

Sarcastic meaning? Sure, probably. Serious? Highly unlikely.

TBH Mandalorians don’t even have a word for moral. They have a word for immoral, but it’s ori’suumyc, which is just ori, big or extreme, and suum, beyond, brought together. Essentially, immoral is simply someone who’s acting extreme, even by mandalorian standards.

Does that, in all actuality, sound like a people that would care about purity as a moral concept, much less take it seriously? At all?

Mandalorians are more likely to deride someone who seems like they’re “morally superior” than look to them as a figurative goal to achieve.

It’s just not something that makes sense, from its very foundation. To argue that white = pure has to do with cin vhetin is to misunderstand what cin vhetin means in mando’a, or how mandalorians as a pragmatic people would functionally treat these ceremonies in practice.

and what’s this about religion

Also, I don’t really appreciate the statement: “Mando religion that appears to have been almost forgotten by the time of the main story” as ... they still are integral to the cultural foundations of mandalorian society. Regardless of mandalorians possibly being all agnostic or atheist to a degree, it doesn’t change that those very specific cultural values both formed the entire foundation of the culture and people and society of mandalorians, but that they still embody those values. That practice shaped mandalorian society, and placed them in a very specific direction in history, and is still relevant even four thousand years later.

No matter how disbelieving some pretend to be. This is also in total ignorance of the mandalorians - a culture overview article which suggests that such things are still discussed in a mandalorian academic context, and continue to be relevant despite worship or hard religion no longer being a thing for the majority of mandalorians. Just because a specific subset of mandalorians are atheist doesn’t actually mean they all are --- that doesn’t even make sense, really, especially if you’re coming from a Legends perspective in which mandalorians actively adopt people into the culture ... because nothing about being mandalorian means giving up spiritual traditions. At all.

And anyway, if you’re going to make or posit arguments for understanding mandalorians, particularly when it comes to something like color theory and the associations a society might make with colors, you need to at least take into the overall history and foundation from which that society was built, because regardless of how much history stands between when there was hard religious practice to “modern day,” that cultural foundation is still relevant to understanding who mandalorians are as a people.

But, you know, all of that excessive detail and wider understanding actually matters to me. Making sense of things in-context, in-universe, is important.

and finally we come to racism

I am, of course, also beating around the bush of the other major problem with white = purity: the racism.

Whether or not you like it, or whether or not you care, mandalorian fandom does have a history of and a swathe of members who believe in white supremacy. Death Watch fans, even long before TCW ever aired and legitimized them further, have always been very uncomfortably close to if not outright associated with white supremacists and blatant racism. Star Wars fandom, at large, is often overtly racist, and blows the fuck up every time it’s even mentioned.

Racism, as a larger institutionalized system of oppression, is engendered through many and multiple, numerous, avenues, from the outright and overt to the covert and subtle --- including the manipulation of language. Including the way the colors black vs white have been historically juxtaposed against each other, and specifically how the color white has come to be associated with purity. It is an association that is, again, not universal, and is one that has been ingrained from and within a specific cultural context of earth human history.

No matter how “original” whoever thought white = purity is, they still come from a biased society, with a biased history, and are imposing their biases onto a culture that would not replicate those exact same biases. It was not, and it is not, a decision made in a vacuum without the influences of the culture and society around us.

Just because white means pure to you (general you, not you you) does not mean mandalorians would think or feel that way, regardless of how “of course” it may seem. And it’s important when it comes to worldbuilding to actually take a step back and go “does it mean this because it also means that to me, or does it make sense in universe?”

Ultimately, it is an assumption that isn’t supported by the culture nor the language. It’s an imposition from a conflicting culture (western, christian) onto one that exists in space developed in a completely different context with a complex and unique history, and if you actually looked at mandalorians from a larger perspective, taking in their entire history and heart of the people, from the very worst to the very best of them, then there’s no way you’d come naturally to this color association.

#Starwarsbucketheads #hattahightopp #izzy talks mando'a #izzy talks mandalorians #the cin vhetin problem #mando'a #i apologize for my tone if it's off or condescending #I am still working on it but it's hard to gauge tone through text #also this is really long so i apologize again for that #long post for ts #frankly even though i argue again and again against it you dont actually have to agree with me #I just feel very strongly about this particular color association #and how inherently anti-mandalorian it ends up being

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sds-mod · 7 years

Text

I refuse to be one of your regrets

They were playing back to back, each of them with a headset on but facing away from each other. When their screens were side-by-side it was too easy to get distracted. Like this, they could still be close without compromising their skills.

Bibi’s mic was muted, as it usually was when they were in played competitions. For some unfathomable reason, despite the fact that she was one of the top rated players globally, when most people heard her speak over voice chat they had a hard time listening to her.

Greyson thought excluding people based on their gender was stupid, but he didn’t care enough to argue with every moron they ended up on team with. Instead, Bibi muted her mic, and Greyson relayed what she had to say in her place. It was a bit complicated, but they were the highest rated tank/healer duo and people put up with a surprising amount of shit to keep them from changing teams.

They hadn’t lost a single match since starting, despite the fact that neither of them had gotten much sleep. Bibi didn’t sleep well on planes, and when she didn’t sleep Greyson didn’t either. Their current match was going so well that they had left the dps to camp the payload while the two of them camped the respawn point. Or rather, Bibi decided to camp the respawn point to terrorize the other team and Greyson had pretended it was a legitimate strategy and gotten the team organized.

Subtle, his murder girlfriend was not.

Sighing, she tipped her head back against his, while they both listened to their teammates argue about which kebab shop in a specific neighborhood was better. Normally Greyson would have muted his mic and talked with Bibi, considering it looked like the game was basically over unless somehow one of the two of them were knocked off the spawn point. But when they played tournaments they spoke English, and Bibi liked to listen in for practice.

English was her fourth language, and despite Greyson’s offer to help her with it, she was dead set on figuring it out on her own. Even though she didn’t speak most of the time, she had to understand the instructions from the other players without the lag of Greyson translating for her. Difficult, but other than a rare mistranslation, she was doing fine.

The argument about the kebabs had devolved into petty insults that made Bibi giggle. Learning creative insults was one of her favorite things. He pulled one earphone off and heard her repeating some of the more interesting phrases under her breath. Her accent was a mix of Korean and French. George couldn’t stand it which made Greyson love it all the more. It was less intense when his brother wasn’t around to be annoying when she wanted to she could amp it up on purpose to get under his skin.

Bibi let out a sudden battle cry that made Greyson thankful her mic was still muted because it would have hurt before her character charged forward at full speed, knocking three (3) enemy players off the edge of the map in one go. Her gleeful cackle nearly drowned out the sound of one of their dps calling for them to return to the payload, and Greyson had little warning before Bibi charged him and began pushing his character towards the center of the map.

When the match ended officially, and Bibi once again celebrated getting player of the game, Greyson pulled them out of the queue and made the executive decision they were going to get some rest before they continued qualifying. However, his proposition of sleep and food had not gone down well with a certain party.

Bibi was not sleeping.

She was being quiet about it, head tucked against his chest like she usually did when they slept together. She wasn’t squirming around or making lots of noise. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t awake, it just meant she was a good faker. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that Bibi was very good at faking it.

Greyson was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a soft person. Not physically, not emotionally, not morally. Everyone knew this, including him. It wasn’t like he tried to hide it. So why, then, Bibi insisted on using him as a pillow he did not understand.

Not that he minded in the slightest when his girlfriend treated him like a glorified teddy bear. Hell, he didn’t even mind after she left and George drummed up the spine to tease him about it. If it made his Bibi happy, he was willing to do just about anything.

This policy did not happen to extend to letting her exhaust herself for no reason.

“We agreed on sleep first,” he told her, still using English rather than their usual French.

“Did not,” Bibi replied immediately. “I need food.”

“You need sleep,” Greyson countered gently.

“I will become hangry Bibi.” Hangry was a word Sam had taught her. Greyson didn’t know when she had spoken to Sam, or even how Sam knew what hangry was, but it was definitely his fault. “I like food,” Bibi continued, interrupting herself with a yawn. “I want take away food. Not Elenore’s.”

“We can order food,” Greyson agreed amiably. “After you get some sleep.”

“I don’t want sleep,” Bibi argued petulantly. “I want to eat hamberger.”

“Hamburger,” he corrected.

“Hemburger,” she repeated distractedly, and Greyson saw her wiggling her fingers in an imitation of the way she danced them across her keyboard when getting impatient. Playing asleep for so long had clearly left her with an excess of energy.

“Ham. Burger.”

“’amburgah,” she said firmly, in an accurate mockery of George’s posh accent.

“Now you’re just doing it on purpose,” Greyson complained, despite his mouth being turned up in a grin.

“Hambargar!” she declared loudly, causing him to jump slightly and sending her into a fit of giggles. Greyson tried shushing her but it didn’t work. The lack of sleep fueled her giggling fit until she started coughing, and Greyson had to retrieve a bottle of water for her.

“Why do they call it hamberger?” she asked him once she had calmed herself down. “It is not made of ham.”

“No, hamburgers are made of beef.” If it had been anyone else, the inane conversation would have driven him to leave the room. Bibi spoke about random things to test her understanding of the language, and also because she liked to see how far she could push Greyson before he swore.

Cheeky little giggler.

“Beef,” Bibi repeated. “Beef is not an animal.”

“Beef is the meat of an animal.”

“Beef comes from moos, yes?”

“Moose?” Greyson raised an eyebrow, but Bibi couldn’t see him with the lights out. Her eyes never really adjusted to the dark. Not like his. “No, beef does not come from moose.”

“Not a moose.” She elbowed him gently. “It goes moooooo. I don’t remember the name.”

“Cow?” he offered, but he felt her shake her head.

“Not cow.” She made an annoyed sound. “It was a long one.”

“A long cow?” Greyson couldn’t keep the grin off his face. He figured at the very least that getting to the end of her thoughts would get them closer to napping than letting her lay there and stew in it.

Bibi bolted upright suddenly, startling him. “Caddle!” she declared proudly.

“Cattle,” Greyson repeated. “Yes, that’s another word for cow.”

“Caddle.” She didn’t bother changing her pronunciation in the slightest, and ignored Greyson’s persistent hands that tried to get her to lie back down. “Why not call it after them?”

“Because beefburger doesn’t sound as good,” Greyson told her, and Bibi finally laid back down next to him.

“Cowburger?” she mused, and Greyson could barely make out her scrunching her nose.

“Still not as good,” Greyson lamented.

“Just burger would have worked.” Bibi yawned again, and nestled back into the nest of blankets they’d pulled together. “Don’t have to bring the other into it.”

“The other what?”

“Meat.” Bibi poked at Greyson’s chin until he reached up and trapped her hand in one of his. “They called it after the ham but it’s not a ham.”

“Ham comes from pigs.”

“Pig?”

“You know.” Greyson wiggled a bit to get more comfortable. “Like George.”

“That’s offensive to piggy,” Bibi admonished. “George is a little shit.”

Greyson couldn’t keep from laughing at that. “Yeah, but he’s my little shit.”

“Sucks to be you,” Bibi told him with a sincerity that made him laugh again.

“I don’t know about that,” he mused. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m Bibi,” she said as though she were introducing herself.

Greyson reached up to pat her on the head, but misjudged and patted her face instead. Bibi stuck her tongue out in retaliation and licked him.

“Gross.”

“You taste bad,” she told him seriously.

“Shh.” Greyson rolled over, pulling her more firmly against him. “Sleep. Then bergers.”

Bibi snorted. “You said berger.”

lies down and dies GUYS PLEASE-

L-LOOK AT MY OTP PLEASE GOD……………………………….

BIBI IS SUCH A DORK AND GREYSON IS SO SOFT LOOK AT HIM HE LOVES HER SO MUCH I’M GONNA DIE

kdjfhkjds this random discussion and jumpiness is so perfectly tiredness oh my god WHY IS EVERYTHING SO PERFECT THE WAY HE MAKES SURE SHE GETS SOME SLEEP AND HUMOURS HER UNTIL SHE GETS TIRED AND OH MY GOD SHE CALLS COWS MOOS THAT’S THE PUREST THING IN THE WORLD I LOVE EVERYTHING I LOVE BIBI I LOVE THEM I LOVE YOU SWEET WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

I’VE ALREADY READ THIS LIKE 7 TIMES AND I CAN’T STOP READING IT IT’S SO GOOD IT’S SO GOOOODDDDDD

#GIFT ART #AMAZING WRITING SKILLS #GREYSON #BIBI #BETA SET #AKJDHAJKH #LOOK AT THESE NERDS #PLEASE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH #CANNOT BELIIIIIEEEVEE!!#submission #long post

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ruffsficstuffplace · 7 years

Text

And The AWRD Goes To... (Part 14)

“There are those who say you must simply accept what you are given and make the best of it, but we here at Atlas reject that notion,” one of the speakers at Atlas Primary Combat Academy had said—Diana couldn’t remember who, there had been so many of them. “When faced with adversity, with grim prospects, with danger that threatens our very existence, be it from without or from within,…

“We survive. We adapt. We rise.

“Because there are those who say we should all be content, being at the mercy of Fate and the Gods, but here at Atlas we leave nothing to chance, we leave behind outdated and ignorant ideas and beliefs, we leave behind the boundaries of what everyone else once thought was possible.

“Here at Atlas, we shape our destiny with our own hands.”

Diana supposed that they would have been so deeply disappointed in her for simply leaving Nick’s office like that, for not letting Blake have her turn before she marched straight back in, retracted her earlier agreement, and put forth a new, much more powerful and convincing argument, going back and forth with Nick for as long as she needed to till he conceded the leadership position to her.

But then again, she supposed they would have been even more deeply disappointed to learn that she had enrolled in Haven, not Atlas Academy.

Diana had made her decision, however, and she was just going to have to live with it—or more immediately, live with her new teammates, in their new dorm. She stood in front of the door, her scroll in one hand, and the power core in the other, staring at the well-worn and ancient wood, the bronze plaque with their room number.

“Hey there, Diana!” Amanda called out. “Lock yourself out of your room on your first night?”

Diana turned to her, her expression turning concerned as she saw Yang and Jaune with Amanda. The two ladies had suspect smiles on their faces, while trapped in-between with both his arms locked with his teammates, Jaune had the expression of a man being carried off to the firing squad, a rabid pack of Grimm waiting to tear him to pieces, or perhaps even disapproving in-laws.

“… No, no I did not, actually...” Diana replied. “I’m just… hesitant to enter.”

“Well, we’re off to go have some New Team Bonding down in the lower levels, and since Sucy’s not allowed out, you want to be our fourth instead?” Yang asked.

Jaune looked at her with the shocked but delighted face of a man who had just been hit with a small ray of hope in what was once pitch-black darkness.

As Diana looked at him and considered his predicament, Beatrix’s words came echoing in her head: “Sometimes, you will see someone in great and dire need, someone you will want to drop everything and rush to aid, but you must stop yourself, for they are beyond saving, and any attempt at rescue will only doom yourself along with them.”

“… I appreciate the offer, but no thank you,” Diana said.

You could almost hear the shattering sound of Jaune’s hopes getting crushed.

“Eh, suit yourself!” Amanda said. “Guess we’ll just find a fourth once we’re there anyway!”

Jaune looked at Diana as he was carried past her, the face of a man who did not blame you, but dearly wished you had acted anyway. Diana mouthed “I’m sorry,” before she swiped her scroll over the lock, stepped in through the door, and closed it behind her.

She stopped as she noticed Ruby and Akko sitting in the center of the still undecorated room, the latter holding the Shiny Rod in her hands and staring at it with such incredible intensity, as if she were trying to unearth its deepest, most guarded secrets...

“Umeboshi!” Akko cried. “It’s pickled plums, isn’t it?!”

Ruby shook her head. “Nope! Strawberries.”

Akko frowned. “Are you sure it’s not pickled plums?”

“Nope, definitely strawberries.”

Akko groaned as she laid the Shiny Rod across her lap, Ruby took out her scroll and started taking notes with her “quill” stylus.

“What in the world are you two doing…?” Diana asked.

“Oh, Diana, hi!” Akko said, waving and smiling. “Ruby here was just trying to teach me how to talk with the Shiny Rod, like she can!”

“It’s a really good way to both teach her the skill, improve my own understanding of it, and try to figure out the exact mechanics of its communication!” Ruby added as she wrote. “Well, in a very subjective, topical sort of way, but it’s better than nothing, and you don’t need to fully understand the mechanics of something to apply it.”

Diana nodded slowly. “And how’s progress…?”

“Terrible!” Ruby chirped. “The Shiny Rod seems to be incapable of the abstraction and symbolism involved in written and spoken language, and can’t comprehend words or even just single letters when we tried to go through the alphabet. Now we’re just testing for images, ideas, and emotions associated with certain objects, but it seems something’s lost in translation within the Shiny Rod, as it’s accurately replicating the signals and sensations it gave me but Akko is misinterpreting them, it’s heavily reliant on the mind and knowledge of its current wielder in its attempts to communicate, or some combination of one or more of those theories!

“I think this mistranslation happened because I was banking on strong emotional associations—strawberries are my absolute favourite—and it seems that it either brought up pickled plums for Akko because that’s her favourite food; its attempts at replicating the concept of small, reddish fruits frequently had for snacks here in Mistral was misinterpreted by Akko as pickled plums; it’s incapable of understand the concept of sweet vs salty and sour for its own lack of taste buds, or again, a combination of any of the above!

“It’s all really confusing, and hard to make sense of.”

“It’s okay to tune out when Ruby’s explaining so your head doesn’t hurt, by the way!” Akko said. “She doesn’t mind.”

Diana nodded again. “Thank you for the advice… I can’t help but notice you still seem to be in great spirits, however.”

Ruby chuckled. “Why wouldn’t I be? We’re potentially breaking new ground in weapons engineering here! Or is this more a subset of archaeology considering that the Shiny Rod is a pre-War artifact? Or is this both, as this could potentially be an artifact reforged or modified using modern day equipment and techniques, seeing as Shiny Chariot wasn’t exactly shy in using a LOT of tech for her shows, before she stopped performing?” she looked deep in thought, before she she started scribbling and writing in her scroll, the world around her clearly completely tuned out.

“It’s a real shame that she took that break from performing,” Akko said as she held up the Shiny Rod. “Maybe we could have asked her about it...”

Diana sighed softly, her expression falling. “Akko, I understand that your love for Shiny Chariot is probably beyond words, but for the sake of having a peaceful four years together as a team, I ask you to please keep the fawning and the adoration to a minimum, at least when I’m around,” she said as she headed to their shared closet, where Weiss’ luggage and Diana’s own bags were waiting.

Akko blinked. “You don’t like Shiny Chariot?” she asked, putting a hand on the floor as she turned look at Diana.

“No, no I do not!” Diana said as she slid open their closet, noted the unclaimed shelves and overall space. “Fair warning: keep pressing the subject at your own peril,” she said as she laid out one of her two suitcases, the “click-click” of the locks audible for how silent it had suddenly gotten.

Ruby put her scroll and quill down on the side. “Hey Akko, you want try talking to the Shiny Rod again?” she asked, oblivious. “I’ve got a new idea that might...” she trailed off as she watched Akko suddenly get up, walk over to the closet, and sit beside Diana.

Diana noticed her, slowly put her neatly folded clothes back in her suitcase, closed the lid, before she turned to her, her expression serious.

“Why don’t you like Shiny Chariot?” Akko asked.

“Many reasons, but chief among them is her irreverence, turning the sacred institution of Huntsmen into a gimmick for entertainment. About the only festivity that should be tolerated are the regional tournaments and the Vytal Festival, and aside from the fact that they’re only once or twice a year, they serve the purposes of fostering unity among the kingdom’s peoples, and driving huntsmen and huntresses to always better themselves and never rest on their laurels.

“In other words, they have a practical, useful purposes.”

(“Girls…?” Ruby asked weakly, watching them with a worried frown.)

“Oh, and making people happy isn’t something worth doing in your eyes?!” Akko cried as she threw her arms up into the air. “Grimm are literally attracted to despair and misery—Shiny Chariot was giving people hope and happiness, how is that a bad thing?!”

“It’s not! I would have enrolled in Atlas if I thought the arts and culture were mere frivolities, and the fact that I’m here in Haven arguing with you already proves my point! What I’m trying to say, is that there are things and acts you may commodify and make circuses out of all you like, but your being a huntress is not one of them!”

(“Girls!” Ruby called out, nervously clutching her cape. “Akko…? Diana…?”)

“Shiny Chariot was the reason I became a huntress, too!” Akko cried. “She’s why I enrolled in combat school, suffered through training and the curriculum no matter how hard it got or how much it sucked, why I fight as hard as I do and keep on going in spite of what happens!”

“Oh, and are you going to follow exactly in her footsteps, too?” Diana snapped. “Graduate, and instead of slaying Grimm and helping people out in there in the real world, you’re going to spend your days destroying mechanical constructs for the delight of people safely holed up in the major cities?!”

“Why was is it so wrong that she did what she did?!” Akko screeched, tearing up now.

“I could explain it to you, but seeing as you obviously will just be arguing with me until one or the both of us die, why don’t you ask the Shiny Rod? Did it EVER occur to you that the reason you’re holding it right now, why we found it deep inside that cave out in the Celestial Hills of all places might be related to why exactly she mysteriously dropped off the face of Remnant a decade ago?!”

Akko looked like she had been just been slapped across the face, her tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks.

Diana saw, and looked horrified, before she turned away, got up and made for the door in a hurry. “… I’m leaving now…” she muttered, barely audible.

Diana slammed the door on her way out for her rush; the sound echoed in the room for a few moments, no other noise but Akko’s sobbing.

Then, she turned to the Shiny Rod. “… Shiny Rod…?” she asked as she held it up. “Why were you in that cave, and why am I holding you instead of Chariot…? What happened a decade ago, before she stopped performing…?”

Nothing.

“Ruby…?” Akko asked. “Can you… can you ask the Shiny Rod for me…?”

Ruby hesitated. “Uh… I can try! But, uh… are you sure you really want to know…?”

Akko opened her mouth, closed it, before she sniffed, and looked down. “… I… I think…” she frowned, and shook her head. “No: I need to know.” She looked up at Ruby with a determined expression, thrust the Shiny Rod out to her. “Ruby, ask it for me.” She sniffed, still crying. “Please.”

Ruby hesitated for a moment, before she took it, held it in her hands as she closed her eyes. “Shiny Rod, why are you here with us right now?” she asked quietly. “Why did we find you in that cave? And what happened between you and Shiny Chariot so many years ago, why did she stop performing, and why did she disappear…?”

Akko waited, until the silence kept on dragging on, and her fidgeting grew worse and worse, until she could finally take no more. “Well?!” she asked frantically.

Ruby opened her eyes. “Two theories: one, the Shiny Rod is trying to communicate with me right now in a new, incredibly complex and unfamiliar way unlike all my earlier attempts at talking to it, because of how much more information it has to transmit to me. Or two, it’s giving me the silent treatment.”

“What kind of silent treatment?”

“The ‘You’re better off not asking ever again and just forgetting the question entirely’ sort of silent treatment, I think—kind of like when I asked Yang what an Inappropriate Steamboat was!”

Akko groaned.

“Want to go back to trying to figure out basic communication again…?” Ruby offered.

“No...” Akko muttered.

“Do you need a hug?”

“Yes.”

The Haven Library.

Diana’s mother, and indeed, Beatrix herself just couldn’t say enough good things about it, one of the largest, most extensive, and diverse collections of almost every piece of culture in Remnant, stretching from ancient times to the present day.

Possibly even more than that, however, they loved the atmosphere: hard wood floors and walls, delicate carvings in the moulding and the bases of the columns, antique gas lamps providing a warm light that was perfect for reading and relaxing; luxurious rugs, antique wooden chairs with overstuffed cushions, lovingly woven fabrics providing hammocks or hanging perches; and of course, pieces of art on display everywhere, portraits and landscapes, sculptures, installations, relics, and what have you, modern or ancient, all of them protected by the expansive and extensive security system.

“There’s just something so comforting about being around so many old books and things, so lovingly taken care of, most of them still allowed to be touched and enjoyed by just about anyone,” Bernadette said.

Diana could have pulled out any number of those texts students were allowed access to; continued to catch up on the lessons she was missing; or even just wandered and gotten lost in the stacks, see where the winding and branching paths and stairs took her, as her mother loved to do.

But still, she just could not get the Shiny Rod out of her head.

Why did Shiny Chariot wield such an immense, great power mostly just for shows and entertaining people…? Why was its manifestation with Akko so different? Why was it so picky with its wielders, choosing her and Ruby alone? Why was it so violent and clear with its rejecting people it deemed unfit? Why be able to “talk” with just Ruby, and not Akko, even if the latter had possession of it the most? Why the vehemence that it not be taken to the Forge and examined properly? Why did Shiny Chariot lose it, and how did it find its way to that cave?

And most importantly of all: just what was it, why was it here, and why was it letting Akko and Ruby use it…?

Diana frowned, found the nearest information terminal—one of the few modern amenities allowed to “blemish” the ambiance—and started searching for the “Shiny Rod.” As she scrolled and scrolled, finding only news pieces about Shiny Chariot, declassified school records back when she was just Chariot du Nord, and not much else, she sighed, and started changed her search term:

“Ancient Weapons and Legends.”

It was unscientific, like Ruby had said, but it seemed Diana’s only real lead, too. And really, if myths and ancient texts alluding to direct dust infusion and ancient medical prostheses lead to her mother’s greatest work, it wasn’t entirely without merit.

She wasn’t surprised to see students at the appropriate section—many of the professors were infamous for insisting their students take advantage of Haven’s library, CCT research only for checking if the information was outdated or corrected. She was, however, surprised to find one of the professors there, several books and scrolls already stacked in her arms, the look on her face telling that she wasn’t particularly looking forward to reading them.

“Professor Ursula, may I help you with that?” Diana asked as she came over, already reaching out.

Ursula smiled. “Oh, that will be much appreciated, Cavendish, thank you!” she said as she unloaded off some of the lighter tomes. “May I ask if you’re here for school, or just pleasure?”

“Neither, actually,” Diana replied as she took them into her hands. “I’m here to see if I can’t find anything about the Shiny Rod.”

Ursula’s eyes widened, before she chuckled. “Ah, what a coincidence—that’s what I’m here for, too.”

“Would you mind if I join you in your research, then?” Diana asked as she gazed at the shelves and all the leather-bound books, paper scrolls, and the odd stone tablet.

“The offer is appreciated, but you really don’t need to,” Ursula replied cheerfully. “Dr. Schnee insists that I be as thorough as possible with any leads that may be even remotely connected to it, which makes me thankful the cafe here is open 24/7...” she muttered as she pulled out a new book, began to add it to her stack.

“Oh, but Professor Ursula, I insist,” Diana said as took it from her, took note of the title and the cover. “I feel like I won’t be able to get any sleep until I get at least some inkling of understanding about the Shiny Rod—perhaps even just what it’s really called, as I doubt that it’s true name...”

Professor Ursula chuckled. “Well, alright—I wouldn’t want to contribute to my student’s sleep deprivation; you’re already going to have quite a lot of that from all your reading assignments alone.”

“I’m well aware of, and prepared for that,” Diana replied.

They spent a while collecting more books and scrolls, until Professor Ursula thought that they’d had enough: two stacks of assorted texts that tested their respective upper body strengths.

“Still sure you want to help?” Ursula asked. “I won’t mind if you change your mind, and just help me bring all these books to a table.”

“I’m still sure, thank you for asking,” Diana said, feeling a bit of sweat begin form on her brow.

“Do you want to go call the rest of your team to help?” Ursula asked as they walked. “I’m sure Akko and Ruby would be interested.”

Diana frowned, hesitating for a moment before she replied, “No, no thank you; they’re busy with their own research with the Shiny Rod, actually. Ruby’s trying to teach Akko how to talk with it, you see.”

Ursula noticed. “I wish them luck in that endeavour, then.”

They walked and scanned the tables in silence for a few moments, before Diana broke it. “Professor Ursula, may I ask you a question about Shiny Chariot and the Shiny Rod?”

“Go on ahead,” Ursula replied as she slowed down.

“It’s just… I’ve been wondering, Akko managed to demonstrate the sheer extent of its power… why do you think Shiny Chariot used it mostly for shows, instead of keeping to the field, fighting Grimm? It seems the latter was a much better purpose for such a weapon, especially since it’s picky but not entirely exclusive with its wielders.”

Ursula got a thoughtful look. “I don’t know, Diana. Clearly there’s a lot we don’t know about the Shiny Rod… maybe its power was incredibly limited, it was more Akko’s power than it back in the Celestial Hills, or some other reason we can only guess at.

“Here’s to hoping our research turns something up!” she said as she finally found a suitably empty table, set all her books down.

Diana followed suit. “Here’s to hoping...” she muttered as she rubbed her arms, before they both got straight to work.

#little witch academia #rwby #and the awrd goes to #fanfic #dianakko #white rose #au

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