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nagisasstunningpersonality · 2 years

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An analysis of Karma and Nagisa's conversations aged 18

Good translation of korotan D already exists. What hasn't really been delved into is the line by line dialogue directly from the Japanese and specific nuances between these two characters that I honestly find super interesting. So here, have stupidly long analysis of korotan d. All translations here are my own.

The text conversation

いま、ヒマっしょ？ Are you free right now?

Even to start with, this is interesting. Karma is specifically using kind of incorrect Japanese here, 'text speak' ish. Considering how he immediately reverts to something more grammatically correct, it seems like he was doing this on purpose for some reason.

今日、試験だよね？ Isn't it your exam today?

もちろん。いま昼休み Of course. Now's the lunch break. 三時に終わるからこのあと会おうよ I finish at three so let's meet after

This is actually not a very polite way to invite someone somewhere. The fact that he adds yo kind of makes it sound like he's made his mind up about this happening. The more correct way would have been to use the negative form of the verb, meaning more like "won't you meet me after?" As people with maybe a basic knowledge of Japanese will have picked up, his language has reverted to way more proper, and he's using kanji normally.

余裕だね I have time

It's interesting that Nagisa uses a different word for 'free time' here. Where 'hima' means free time more literally, 'yoyuu' is more like he has some sort of leeway or margin. It's almost like "well I have SOME time but I'm not totally free"

まあねー、で、四時にいつものファミレスでいい？ Well, then, is 4 at the family restaurant we always go to good?

So family restaurant is a bit of a weird one. It's basically just a very casual and cheap restaurant, simply put. Think Dennys. In fact, knowing Japan, it probably literally is Dennys. A slight upgrade from McDonald's, at least? It's interesting that they have a place they apparently always go to. 'Family restaurant' is a really broad term so they clearly have a regular date spot hang out place.

大雪だよね？ What about the heavy snow?

I hesitated about how to translate this. It's pretty close to "you know there's a blizzard, right?", he's just not overly questioning that. It's more like a prompt, like "are you thinking???"

こっちは大雪なのに試験受けてるんだっての I'm taking my entrance exams despite the heavy snow 渚も部屋でぬくぬくしてないで出てきなよ You can also come out rather than sit snuggly in your room

Good amount of localisation going on there, sorry folks. The way Karma's speaking here, you can kind of hear the whining. It's where people would maybe add a "~" to indicate his tone. He's basically saying "look at me suffering, get over yourself" lol. Of course, because Nagisa's a sucker, he takes the bait.

All in all, though, a pretty standard text conversation between two teenage boys.

More under the cut

Conversation at the restaurant

よー Yooo

(Nagisa gets lost in thought and doesn't respond)

どうしたの渚？俺の顔の位置、高すぎて見えない？ What's wrong, Nagisa? Am I so tall you can't see my face?

I think it comes across in the translation, but this is so condescending I don't even know. Classic Karma?

.......うるさいなあ ...shut up

This actually felt a little out of character for Nagisa, honestly. The naaa part at the end makes it sound really dragged out and whiney, like "oh my god be quiet". I love that he probably confirmed that yes, he can't see Karma's face.

今日の試験どうだったの？ How did the exam go today?

I should mention that in between these two lines, Nagisa internalises that he's been avoiding meeting up with Karma since the start of the year (I believe he means maybe for the last few weeks) due to worrying about him actually focusing on his exams. We really see his care for Karma in this.

別にどうってことないよ。想定内の問題が出ただけだから It was nothing special. All the problems were what I expected

Nagisa notes that Karma doesn't look particularly stressed even though the exams are meant to be super hard. Anyway, Karma continues.

試験はどうでもいいんだよ。呼び出したの相談があってさ。E組全員で卒業旅行、行こうよ。 The exams are whatever. I called you here to discuss something. Let's go on a graduation trip with all the members of the E Class.

Just like earlier, he's using the slightly impolite form of invitation here. Interesting that he wants to brush it off, though. Either it really is meaningless to him, or there are slight nerves making him want to not talk about it.

.......卒業旅行!? ... graduation trip?!

You don't need to have a good understanding of Japanese to get the surprise and confusion from Nagisa here. To explain, graduation trip is just a cultural 'thing', a kind of rite of passage. Not everyone does it, but there's a lot of people who go on a trip with their friends after they graduate high school.

俺ら、これから大学になったり実家の仕事継いだりするから、一緒に遊びに行くチャンスなんて滅多になくなるじゃん。三月中旬ならみんな余裕あるんじゃね? All of us, from now on we're going to university or taking over at our family businesses, so the chances to have good times together are decreasing. Everyone's free in the middle of March, right?

Honestly, I sense even more tone shifts here. It's like Karma starts to get into a deep thought, realises, and changes the subject.

.....三月中旬って、まだ入試終わってないよね。もし前期試験で落ちたら..... ...In the middle of March, entrance exams haven't finished yet. If anyone fails the first semester exam...

I find the use of 'ne' interesting here, similar to how Nagisa used it earlier. He's kind of speaking to him like a mother might gently speak to her child, trying to get him to come to the conclusion on his own (though with some prompting). It's almost like Nagisa is Karma's conscience here. It would make sense, since Karma could have done this on his own honestly. He needs Nagisa to ground him.

大丈夫だって。俺らE組だから It'll be fine. We're the E Class.

Karma smiles at this apparently. Considering this text is mostly from Nagisa's perspective, he seems to describe Karma smiling a LOT.

竹林は高校受験の失敗を繰り返さないように実力に見合った私立大学に絞ったし、磯貝はさっき試験会場ですれ違ったけど、問題なさそう。寺坂ですら滑り止めに受かったら生意気にも大学生だ。聞いてる限り、みんな大体なんとかなるよ。 Takebayashi narrowed down to the private universities that matched his ability so he wouldn't repeat the same blunder as his high school entrance exams, and Isogai brushed past me at the exam place earlier but he didn't seem to have having a problem. Even Terasaka will be a brash university student if he accepts his back up choice. As far as I've heard, everyone's generally okay.

A couple things in this. On what he says about Isogai, it's implied that they were close to each other and Isogai purposely avoided him or something. I mean, I wouldn't blame him under these conditions... More importantly, though, we can infer from this that Karma does actually talk to the rest of the class, clearly a lot more than Nagisa. At the very least, he reads the group chat.

そっかあ.... あっ. 茅野は行けないよ。そのころ、海外ロケだって言ってた Oh right... Ah. Kayano can't come. She said she'd be at an overseas movie shoot then.

マジで!? そっか残念... 茅野ちゃんは売れっ子女優だもんなー Seriously!? That's too bad... Kayano chan is an in demand actress huh...

So irrelevant to analysis, but I love how little it actually takes for Karma to lose his cool. He's such a nerd.

「ゴールドシティ」っていうアドベ��チャーアクション映画って言ってたよ。 She said it's an action adventure movie called "Golden City".

え、うそ、それって、「ソニックニンジャ」の監督の映画じゃん Huh, you're kidding, that's the Sonic Ninja's director's movie!

Folks, this is the moment where Akabane Karma loses his shit and blatantly fanboys. This is where your cool and edgy headcanons go to die. He starts saying "jan" too, rather than "ja nai" which leans into the Kanto dialect a bit. Basically, he's becoming noticeably less thoughtful about his words.

そうなの？ It is?

This sticks out to me, actually, since we usually talk about Nagisa being a huge fan too. I honestly think Nagisa just likes generic action movies (typical boy), and also the comic. It's Karma who's the real deep fan. Maybe Nagisa ended up leaning into it more when they were younger so he'd some sort of way to connect to him?

そうだよ！すっげーうらやましいじゃん。もう国際派女優になってるんだな。茅野ちゃんすげーな。 Yeah it is! I'm super jealous. She already became an international actress. Kayano chan is amazing.

The first bit is kind of like "yeah of course you idiot", but less insulting. Honestly, forget your nagikae, it sounds like Karma's in love with her in this section :') A point of the Japanese is that he's saying "na" on the end of his sentences. This basically gives a similar effect to dragging out the syllables. Imagine a kid saying "It's not fairrrr".

茅野ちゃんとダメに連絡取ってるんだ？ Have you been in contact with Kayano chan?

Once again, Karma changing the subject when he gets too deep into something. Maybe he realised how nerdy he was sounding.

うん、メッセージやり取りしてるだけだけど。向こうは忙しくなる一方だし、僕らの遊びで貴重な時間を奪うわけにはいかないよ Yeah, but we only exchanged messages. She's getting busy, so we can't snatch away her precious time with our fun.

Nagisa refers to Kayano as basically "the other party" here. I can't help but feel like this implies some kind of emotional distance.

渚は遠慮しすぎ。俺らにとっては「マセ榛名」じゃなくて、同じE組だった茅野ちゃんなんだから。時にはダメ元で強引に誘ってみるのも、新愛なる仲間ってもんじゃね？ You're too reluctant. For us it's not "Haruna Mase", but Kayano chan from the same E Class. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to directly try inviting her, isn't she our dear friend?

I feel like this bit needs like several asterisks. This COULD be read with a romantic implication. "Shinai" means like dear, or beloved, but as weird as it sounds in English, it's not explicitly romantic. "Nakama" is a weird one because it doesn't exactly mean friend. It's like... partner, ally, companion, comrade. In fact, I think the actual ass class subs did translate nakama as comrade once (I made a meme about it). I think you could read this as Karma digging for details on potential love life. However, this directly follows Karma saying "orera", which is "we", so it's more likely he does mean it in the collective sense here.

そうかもしれないけど.... I'm not sure about that....

For transparency, he probably means he's not sure it won't be harmful to bother her, not that Kayano isn't a dear friend.

でも、海外ロケ中じゃ卒業旅行に誘う無理か。ロケってどこに行くか聞いてる？ But, is it impossible to invite her to the graduation trip while she's filming overseas? Did you ask where the location is?

Changing the subject suddenly again Karma?

うん、東南アジアのプノン国。世界遺産の寺院群でロケだって Yeah, Phnom in South East Asia. They're filming at the world heritage temples.

卒業旅行の行き先、決まったわ。プノン国の世界遺産観に行こう。 The destination of the graduation trip is decided. Let's go see the world heritage temples in Phnom.

えっ!? Eh!?

ちょうどいいじゃん。卒業旅行、海外もアリだと思ってたからさ、茅野ちゃんのところに行っちゃおうよ。 Isn't it just about perfect? I'd thought about a graduation trip that was also over seas, so let's go to Kayano chan.

Yeah, it really seems like Karma had this all figured out already. He just forced Nagisa to witness the car crash.

そんな、無茶だよ。僕達が行ったら迷惑になるし That's... completely unreasonable. We'd be a nuisance if we went.

And for once Nagisa's quite right.

別に撮影邪魔しにいくわけじゃないからいいじゃん。たまたま一緒になっただけだよ。たまたま。 It's fine if we don't do anything to particularly disturb the shooting. We only just so happened to be together. By chance.

Basically, Karma is blatantly bullshitting here. He is talking shit and he knows it. He keeps ending his sentences with "jan", too, which is kind of like an additional "I'm in the right", it's basically making every statement rhetorical.

決まりだね It's concluded then

You can read the defeat in Nagisa's voice here. He, too, has reached the conclusion that Karma didn't seriously want his opinion on if this was a good idea or not.

At this point in the story, Karma starts messaging the group chat on LINE. I'm not going to translate all of that, but they basically affirm his bullshitting.

ほら、みんな行きたがってる。決定だね。 See, everyone wants to come. It's decided.

しょうがないなあ、もう。 There's nothing that can be done, already.

Shouganai is a bit of a weird one. It's a big thing in Japan. Basically there's no use fighting it, so may as well just go with the flow and get on with it. Clearly there is something that can be done in this situation, but essentially Nagisa knows it's not worth it to fight Karma.

The next context you need is that Isogai is worried about being able to go on the trip.

磯貝のやつ、なに弱気になってんだろ... あいつの実力ならぜったい受かってんのに What's with Isogai acting all weak-kneed? That guy will definitely pass the exam with his full strength

うーん.... 多分だけど... 磯貝君は旅行代のことも気にしてるんじゃないかな。 Well... but maybe... might Isogai kun also care about the travel cost?

あーそっか、相変わらず貧乏だもんな... 賞金も俺たちと同じ額しか受け取ろうとしなかったし。 Ah, that's right, he's still as poor as ever. He only accepted the same amount of prize money as the rest of us too.

I think this interaction is really interesting. Karma complains, Nagisa softly corrects him and leads him in the right direction, again with the "kana" like a parent speaking to a child. This leads Karma to re-evaluate and understand the situation better. It's a really great dynamic.

Nakamura messages in the group chat that she can use her contacts to find cheap accommodation.

さすが、中村は仕事早いなあ。これで磯貝も来れるよ。渚も文句ないっしょ？ As expected, Nakamura's early at work. With this, Isogai can also come. You also can't complain, right?

This definitely reads like a jab. Like "are you happy yet"? Lowkey seems like Karma gets a kick out of debating with him.

...僕が茅野のスケジュール言っちゃったからみんなで押しかけることになって、責任感じるよ。 ...We'll all be pushing Kayano's schedule because I told you, and I'll feel responsible.

Basically, Karma's a massive gossip.

そこ心配無用。茅野ちゃんのスケジュールは、今本人から直接もらったから。 There's no use worrying about that. Kayano herself just told me about her schedule directly.

え!? Eh!?

ほら、これで茅野ちゃんから直接ロケ地と時期確認したよ。渚がバラしたとか関係なくなったし、心置きなく旅行楽しもうよ。 See, here I confirmed the location and time directly with Kayano chan. It doesn't matter if you let out a secret or are involved in this plan, so let's enjoy the trip without worrying about it.

Today I learnt that "to rose" (as in the flower) means to spill secrets. So there, Karma canonically comparing Nagisa to a rose. Go nuts. I guess Karma's fine with taking the fall for him.

気を遣ってくれてありがたいけど、大人数で押しかけちゃってほんとに茅野喜んでくれるかなあ... Thanks for the concern, but I wonder if Kayano will really be happy with a big group of people showing up uninvited

This leads me to think I've been slightly incorrect about the characterisation of Nagisa's sass. This reallly reads as sarcastic to me, because I don't think Nagisa would genuinely give such a long winded thanks for what Karma said. King, basically.

もちろんだって。じゃあさ、茅野ちゃんに撮影スケジュールと宿泊先聞いといて。 Of course. So, can you ask Kayano chan about her filming schedule and her lodging?

AKA, Karma chooses to ignore the sass and run with it, making Nagisa regret even trying.

そんなの無理だって！ I can't do that!

あはは、だよねー。俺だってそこまでずうしくは聞けないわ~。みんなで押しかけること、茅野ちゃんにはサプライズにするから黙っといてよ。 Ahaha, that's right. Even I can't ask that much~. Let's push it together, and it will be a surprise for Kayano chan so keep it quiet.

I should point out that Karma, "smiling like a demon", straight up just leaves at this point. This man needs to be stopped. He's so annoying.

The end of the book

「カルマ、すごいうれしいよね？隠してもわかっちゃうよ」渚がカルマの心中を見透かした。「別にぃー」そう言いつつ、カルマはニヤリとした。

"Karma, you're super happy right? I can tell even though you're hiding it." Nagisa saw right through Karma's heart. "It's nothing special..." he said, but Karma grinned.

Why am I including this? There's nothing particular to add. It's just... it melts my heart every time, okay?

Okay so the actual content. This is right at the end, where Nagisa has run off to try and avoid watching Kayano's kiss scene.

渚、どこいくの？撮影現場はあっちだよ。 Nagisa, where are you going? They're filming the scene over there.

It's painfully obvious here that Karma really just wanted to tease him. I think we can infer that he thinks Nagisa's just jealous of Kayano kissing someone.

茅野の邪魔にならないようにと思って I thought I'd be a disturbance to Kayano

茅野ちゃんの刃はそんなに脆くないって言ってたの、渚じゃん。ここで信頼してあげなくてどうするんだよ。 You're not saying Kayano chan's blade is so weak? What will happen if you don't give her your faith here?

This has strong "tut tut" energy. He's certainly trying to get under Nagisa's skin.

...あと、茅野とジェロームのキスシーンを見たら、余計な心配しちゃいそうで。 I'll be even more worried after watching Kayano and Jerome's kissing scene

It seems like Nagisa's phrasing this extremely poorly. Like yeah, this does sound suggestive.

ほうほう、それはまたどうして？ Uh huh, and what do you mean by that?

Naturally, Karma responds to the suggestiveness. I can picture him grinning madly at this. He's purposely trying to push Nagisa's buttons. I think this is the most he's probably got out of him about his feelings towards Kayano.

茅野がいるのは、仕事を通して何が起きるかわからないような怖い世界でしょ。 Through the line of work Kayano's in, I don't know what kind of things occur but it's a scary world, right?

And then of course, Nagisa actually reveals the whole time he's just worried about the toxic showbiz industry. Which is just so painfully Nagisa of him. It sounds like the potential feelings thing went completely over his head, which aligns with what Kayano says at the end of the manga, where she makes clear that Nagisa doesn't have that kind of thing on his radar.

まー...かもね Well-... maybe

This line is actually kind of funny, because it's clear Karma doesn't know how to respond. I think he's just bewildered, honestly.

万がーああいう悪い虫がついて、彼女の女優の将来に悪影響が出ちゃったら。。。って想像すると、応援してる身としては複雑でさ。 When by any chance an undesirable boyfriend is attached, it has a negative impact on women actress's futures... If I imagine that, I have mixed feelings about giving my support.

I'm not fully sure what Nagisa means here. Support the industry she's a part of? Give the other actor a the wrong idea? This does kind of come off to me like he recognises what it looks like with Kayano, but that is the wrong idea. Or maybe I'm reading into it.

ハリウッドの新星を悪い虫呼ばわりす渚を見て、カルマは吹き出しそうになった。友情か、親心か、ファン心理か、はたまた別の感情か。どれが本音かは本人にもわからないけど、渚にとっても茅野は、特別大切な存在である事に変わりはないのだろう。 When he saw Nagisa call a rising Hollywood star an undesirable boyfriend, Karma felt like he was about to blow out. was it friendship, parental affection, fan psychology, or else some other kind of feeling? Nagisa himself probably didn't even know his true feelings, but for Nagisa, the fact that Kayano is an important existence hasn't changed.

I've been mostly skipping non dialogue, but this is very clearly Karma's internal thoughts, and I found it interesting. Yeah, he's clearly frustrated with him, but at least Karma acknowledges it's not like Nagisa's hiding anything from him. I find 'parental affection' honestly a super interesting point because yeah, that kind of does seem to be how Nagisa treats her a lot. In fact, it reflects back to what I said earlier about the way he speaks to Karma like a parent sometimes. It's a dynamic I don't think people talk about that often? Surprising what's noticeable in the Japanese.

ほら、ガタガタ言ってないで見に行くよ。応援してるんならちゃんと見届けなきゃ。 See, instead of grumbling about it go and see it. You have to see it with your own two eyes if you want to support her.

This seems less like Karma's dropping a topic because he doesn't want to talk about it. Instead, I think he's being genuinely helpful.

渚の肩を抱いて無理やる引っ張っていく。 He grabbed Nagisa by the shoulders and squeezed him impossibly tight (so he can't escape).

Well, this ended up being a monster post, and you've finally reached the end. I hope it was interesting to someone, at least? I hope this can maybe help writers with capturing characterisation in dialogue! It's hard to go wrong with the direct source text.

#assassination classroom #ass class #ansastu kyoushitsu #karmagisa #korotan d #translation

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farlynthordens · 3 years

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Is Gen gay-coded or just an entertainer? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ random thoughts/observations about his speech in Japanese

Warnings: LONG. mentions of gendered language and homophobic characterizations

The concept of “role language” is super important in Japanese fiction, because how a character talks can tell you a lot about their personality. Unfortunately, it’s often lost in translation because languages like English don’t have the ability to play around with formality levels, pronouns, etc as much.

Ever since I first watched the dcst anime like a year and a half ago, I’ve had no idea if Gen is intended to be the “gay friend” character or just the “quirky famous guy,” or maybe both? I figured that writing out my thoughts might be interesting for some people! Take everything with a grain of salt tho since I’m not a native speaker

1. Backwards speech

I want to first cover backwards speech (localized as pig latin in the English manga) because this used to confuse the fuck out of me. It felt like a quirky teen thing or internet slang, but it’s actually [zuuja-go] (“jazz” written backwards + “language”) which originated in the 40s-50s.

It was revived primarily by male TV stars and comedians in the 80s-90s, and to this day zuuja-go is regarded as a type of [entertainment industry-specific language]. However, it’s hardly used anymore. It’s kinda weird then that Gen, who’s too young to have lived in the revival period, would use zuuja-go, but my guess is that it’s a funny and somewhat original way to show his “popular entertainer” background. I personally don’t know any other characters who use it as regularly.

2. Choice of pronoun + speech patterns

Gen ends nearly every sentence with ~ne, ~yo ne, ~yo, or ~sa, or otherwise no particle at all. Questions almost never have an ending emphasis particle, putting the rise in intonation on the final word (the standard is to end with ~ka, ~no ka, etc). He also always contracts the verb ending ~te shimau into ~chau/jau (Senku always uses the contracted form too, but a more boyish derivative (chimau). It probably sounds crazy but trust me). There’s more I could list, but these are the most notable points lol

This kind of speech pattern is associated with teen girls/young women, so when it’s applied to a perceived male character, it’s used to indicate that they’re an “effeminate man”. In most cases, “effeminate” = gay/trans (yeah it’s shitty and outdated thinking). It’s also been applied to male characters who are idols or internet stars, possibly as a dig at their masculinity or making fun of their attempt to appeal to female audiences.

One example of the latter is Pyotr from Carole & Tuesday, who’s their universe’s equivalent of an Instagram celebrity. His sentence structure is almost identical to Gen’s, with the girlishness turned up to 11 because of the very high pitched, nasal-y voice given to him in the show. More on this later.

We also can’t forget how he calls everyone -chan. It’s diminutive and cute, but literally no one uses -chan that much. Even in fiction, female characters normally use it for female friends or children, and guys almost never use it except for children and maybe certain girls they’re close with. It’s definitely the most exaggerated cutesy trait he has. “Effeminate male” characters often address others - regardless of gender - with diminutive honorifics or cute nicknames even when not necessarily appropriate, so this is just gay-coded behavior from what I can tell lmao

One thing that’s different about Gen compared to other characters with the same "effeminate male” speech pattern (that I can recall, at least) is his pronoun. He uses the masculine “ore”, like Senku, Chrome, and most of the other young male characters. In text, his “ore” is even in kanji (俺) like theirs. Had it been written in hiragana or katakana, it would have given more of a casual or stylish vibe. Just as a sidenote, this is also why his name itself is written in mixed hiragana/katakana instead of kanji! It’s a typical thing for Japanese celebrities to do with their names to seem cool.

Anyway, characters who are meant to be portrayed as “effeminate men” will almost always use watashi or atashi, the standard “female” pronouns, or at least “boku” which is generally male-aligned but softer than “ore” (Pyotr uses boku, as an example).

Pronoun usage is way more nuanced in real life, but for fictional characters, it tends to be broken down into these kinds of stereotypes based on Tokyo-dialect Japanese.

He also is missing some other key points in his speech pattern that would more clearly identify him as gay/trans-coded, like using the feminine ~kashira (”I wonder...”) instead of ~kana.

3. Voice acting in the show

I love Gen’s Jpn voice honestly, but it does play into the “effeminate man” stereotype a little. His voice is a bit higher pitched than the other guys and somewhat nasal-y, which are both common traits of this stereotype when used with the speech patterns I talked about above. The way certain syllables are stressed also highlights his feminine speech pattern. However, he’s comparably tame to “effeminate” characters in other series. For example, his Jpn voice actor does raise the pitch of his natural voice for Gen, but it’s not a falsetto imo. It’s pretty common for male voice actors to do falsettos for “effeminate” characters.

Gen also doesn’t fall under a lot of the tropes that plague many gay/trans-coded characters and quirky celebrity types - such as being a “diva” or uncomfortably flirtatious - which tend to get amplified in voice acting.

---

This stuff combined with my previous post about his clothes makes me wonder even more about what was intended for his character. There’s a lot about him that is notably “feminine” without him leaning too hard into gay stereotype territory. And it’s just like, why did you do that.

If you survived reading this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts<3

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nanami-says · 3 years

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Part IV (4/5): chapters 45~49

Chapter 45

[About talismans put on curses released for students to hunt during the group event]

“But even when exorcised with non-registered energy, it’ll burn red”

Not incorrect here, just pointing this bit out since it was mistranslated in the original explanation by Ichiji in ch. 40. (They kind of skipped the info about pre-registering cursed energy altogether.)

U:“It must be an outsider. Maybe an intruder?”

M:“Does that mean Master Tengen’s protective barrier isn’t working?”

G:“Intruder or not, this is an unexpected situation”

⇒ U:“Somewhere from the outside… Do you mean an intruder?”

[Mei Mei’s line]

G:“Whether it’s [someone] from the outside or from the inside, it doesn’t change that fact that those are unforeseen circumstances”.

Utahime was more asking and not actually stating anything here. Could go with “outsider” too but I wanted to capture the nuance of her still musing here better. As for Gakuganji, he wasn’t actually reiterating the line about “intruder” but “from the outside”! I.e. that it doesn’t matter if they came from the outside (of the barrier, I’m assuming), or from the inside.

[Gojou talking about the curtain]

“We’ll just rip it apart once it’s complete”

⇒ “So all you have to do is just rip it apart after it’s gone down”

Not wrong but Gojou sounded cockier here haha.

“In exchange for denying Satoru Gojo entrance, it gives everyone else free access”

⇒ “This is a [protective] barrier that, in exchange for denying ‘Gojou Satoru’ entrance, allows ‘everyone else’ besides that to enter and leave freely”

The original included more technical information, like Gojou calling it a “barrier” (結界/kekkai) even though normally the term used is “curtain” (帳/tobari). I’m not really sure on the specifics but, for example, the Jujutsu High is protected by Master Tengen’s “barrier” and when sorcerers want to conceal their fights from civilians they use a “curtain”.

Also, the original has “Gojou Satoru” and “everyone else” put in quotation marks so imo they should’ve signaled that somehow in the official English release as well.

“Why is there a cursed spirit here?”

Actually specifies “at Jujutsu High”.

“And whose curtain is that?”

“It’s probably coming from whomever is working with the cursed spirit”

Again, Megumi actually specifies that it’s “the curse user working(...)”.

[After Megumi interprets Inumaki’s riceball language with Kamo present]

“You can understand what he’s saying?”

“Does that matter right now? It might use expansion on us. We need to contact Gojo-sensei”

Megumi only says “domain” here (and it’s put in quotation marks again to show it’s a term) and not “domain expansion”. Also, he sounds more dismissive because the first line is closer to, “Something like that doesn’t matter right now, does it”.

[About Hanami’s speech]

“What the-- I can understand the meaning behind the noises it makes”

⇒ “What’s that-- Even though I don’t get what it’s saying from the sound, I can still understand the meaning”

Not incorrect, just wanted to propose something closer to the original wording.

“The forest, the sea, the sky… They’re crying from the tragedies they’ve withstood. We can no longer live in peace with humans”

⇒ (...) They’re crying how they cannot bear any more. Continued coexistence with humans is no longer possible.”

Imo the “can no longer coexist” referred to the forest, sky etc. Also just a slightly different nuance for the whole line, I suppose.

“They know that there are humans who care for the planet. But how useful is mere compassion?”

Hanami doesn’t really call it “mere compassion”, just “that compassion”, or, literally, “kindness”, “affection”.

Chapter 46

“We’ll have Inumaki stop it so we can keep some distance between us after we attack. We gotta do this if we’re gonna have a chance of getting out of the curtain. We need to find the principals.”

⇒ “Have Inumaki stop it, then we attack, and gain distance. Through a repeat of this, we’ll aim to get outside of the curtain and regroup with the principals”

Not incorrect per se but it sounded more like Kamo just describing their strategy to me.

Cont. on the next page.

“But how long can we keep this up. Inumaki’s cursed speech is losing effect. We can’t get in touch with the teachers either. It may even figure out a way to counter cursed speech.”

⇒ “But we don’t know when the current equilibrium will crumble. The effectiveness of cursed speech is bad as it is and we can’t even try and get in touch with the teachers. If he realises how to counter cursed speech, then it’s over.”

Lots of nuance lost here. First off, Kamo seems to have been talking about cursed speech’s low effectiveness in general, rather than referring to Inumaki getting weaker. And the line about the teachers actually said they “don’t even have a chance/space to contact” rather than that they’d already tried and failed.

“Finding Todo is a priority. Even Miwa would do at this point.”

⇒ “I’d like to join up with Todo, or at the very least Miwa, as soon as possible but....”

“Even Miwa” makes it sound like Kamo doesn’t really value her but he’s actually ranking her quite high, as she seems to be his next option after Toudou.

”The cursed speech he used wasn’t particularly strong, but his throat gave out. The enemy is that much stronger”

⇒ “Even though he wasn’t using a powerful spirit of language, Inumaki-senpai’s throat still got crushed. The difference in levels is just that huge”

When speaking about Inumaki here, Megumi actually didn’t refer to “cursed speech”, i.e. the technique, but “kotodama”, which’s what the technique uses, its main component, you could say. (“The spirit of language”, please refer to ch. 33 part IV (1/5). Also, as the phrase used in the last sentence is literally “higher rank”, imo it wasn’t so much about difference in pure strength by itself, as difference in levels (which will obviously also translate to difference in strength).

“You can’t cut me with such sword”

He literally calls it “this blunt sword” here.

“Its eye branches are its weak point”

Closer to, “are more fragile/brittle than the rest [of him]”.

[Maki about the new weapon she just switched to]

“But using this doesn’t feel right”

Actually “is vexing” or even “disgusting”, “revolting” etc., as, you know, it’s a weapon that used to belong to Getou, who once almost killed her. (Vol. 0)

Chapter 47

[About Maki’s special grade weapon]

“Indeed, that is not bad”

Actually “this is a good one”, a different nuance.

“Jujutsu sorcerers are interesting. And so emotional too. Every time one of their allies gets hurt, they leave new openings.”

⇒ “[It seems] jujutsu sorcerers are exceptionally compassionate.(...)”

What they translated as “interesting” was actually a descriptor for “compassionate”, which too imo is different from just “emotional”. All the possible translations given by the dictionary I checked are adverbs (highly, extremely, outstandingly, unusually, remarkably, exceptionally etc.), so imo, despite of how it was spaced in the original, it was intended as a single sentence.

[After Hanami explains how the bud that’s gotten lodged in Megumi’s body works]

“How nice of you to explain! You’re planning on killing me anyway, right?”

“I hear it’s more effective once explained”

This bit is interesting because while it’d been stated before that explaining a technique can lend it more power, Hanami is actually talking about speed here. I guess you could argue regarding the actual differences between speed vs. effectiveness but he did only say that “it'll work faster” this way.

[Hanami praising Maki]

“You have some nice moves”

Actually just “you can move well”, which imo has a slightly different nuance.

“I need to use everything I’ve got! Even if I get ripped apart”

⇒ “{Got to] Muster all of my cursed energy, even if it means my stomach/guts will rip!”

“I get ripped apart” sounds more drastic than the original imo.

Cont. onto.

“I choose who I save, unlike the others. I’m bearing the least burden. That’s why it’s inexcusable that I be the first to go down!”

⇒ “I’m not like the others. I choose the people to protect. I’m not [the one] bearing the most burden. That’s why (...)”

Again some of the nuance of the original seems to have been altered imo. I’m not 100% sure re the line about bearing burden but I think the meaning was probably closer to what I suggested. I am sure that he said “people to protect” and not “people to save” here, though.

Chapter 48

[Nishimiya about Toudou]

“If nothing else, you’re strong”

The phrase used here actually means “redeeming feature”. So you know, in Nishimiya’s eyes Toudou may suck overall but being strong is his only saving grace.

[Toudou to Megumi about Yuuji seeming different]

“You see it too. He’s beginning to spread his wings. He must find his own way. That is where he stands now.”

⇒ “So you’ve realised it too. When a person is beginning to spread their wings, it’s unforgiven for others to interfere. Itadori is in such a state right now”

Toudou was speaking rather loftily here, so maybe that’s why they seem to have gotten it slightly wrong but imo phrasing it as “must find his own way” didn’t really capture the original nuance of “it’s unforgiven for anyone else to so much as touch them”, which is what the second part of the sentence literally says. So it’s less emphasis on what Yuuji himself must do and more on what others aren’t allowed to do.

[Hanami after judging Toudou as weaker than himself]

“But he’s got a strong presence.”

⇒ “But this mysterious brazenness…”

Could also go with “impudence”, “shamelessness”, “boldness” etc. here haha.

[Hanami about Yuuji]

“You’re smart to close the distance. [I’ll commend you for that]

⇒ "You don't rush in recklessly. (...)"

...Literally the opposite meaning for this one. Hanami was commenting on Yuuji having attacked from the distance first.

“More agile than the girl! But his strength is disappointing”

⇒ “His instantaneous force surpasses the girl from before! (...)”

The word also means “explosiveness”, “explosive power”, so imo it pointed to Yuuji being able to unleash a lot of power in a short amount of time (although the actual output still fell short in Hanami’s opinion). Idk why they made it “agile” instead...

“Anger is a valuable trigger for a jujutsu sorcerer. There’ve been instances where people have been put on their heels after provoking an inferior opponent. The opposite is not good either. Mishandling cursed energy when angered, wastes your skills, and the fight will end in defeat.”

⇒ “‘Anger’ is an important trigger for jujutsu sorcerers. There are times when you can be beaten by a lower rank just because you’ve angered your opponent. Of course, the opposite is true as well. There are also times when you lose, because you became unable to draw out your true strength, with your cursed energy disrupted by anger”

They seem to have conveyed the nuance of Toudou’s lines here being a broader explanation this time but a lot of nuance has been lost nevertheless. Most importantly: “there are times” and not “there have’ve been instances”, this would be a different grammatical construction if the latter was the case; “the opposite is not good either” is just off; “wastes your skills” was imo unclear, it was closer to “can’t unleash your true power”.

“Your friend Fushiguro is hurt. And worst of all, our bonding time as best friends got interrupted, so I understand better than anyone why you would lose your cool.”

⇒ “Your friend got hurt, and worst of all, the honeymoon with me, your best friend, got interrupted as well. So I can understand rea~~~~~lly well why you’d be boiling with rage”

Once again Toudou using a much more poetic/lofty language in the original was flattened down in the official English release. (“Are boiling with rage” becoming “lose control”, freaking “honeymoon” - and yes, he actually used that word lol - becoming “bonding time”.)

More importantly though, there have been several cases before, when I mentioned that something is written one way but read differently, but didn’t go into the details. (For example, Sukuna’s way of referring to Megumi and Nobara in chapter 7 (refer to part I), or Nobara speaking about the Kyoto principal in ch. 37 (part IV 2/5). This is where I finally explain this phenomenon a bit more in-depth, using Toudou, who’s probably the best example.

If you've ever studied Japanese, you're probably familiar with furigana used over/beside kanji characters to indicate pronunciation. For example, the word “shin’yuu” which means best friend, would be written in kanji 親友, and then have しんゆう written over it in hiragana. Here, the actual word and the way it’s read match.

But in manga it's a fairly common practice to use furigana to provide an alternate reading. So you have 1) the actual text and 2) the reading.

1) can sometimes supply additional information as well (e.g. written as “technique” but pronounced as “talent”) but mostly it’s included to provide context and specify something to the reader that the characters would be naturally aware of, and 2) is what the character is actually saying out loud in the scene.

So in this scene Toudou doesn’t really say Fushiguro’s name out loud and only calls him “[your] friend/comrade", because it’d be obvious to Yuuji from the context whom he means here.

The same also applies most of the time when Toudou addresses Yuuji, like in the line that got translated as “Itadori, my friend”. In this case, the text is “Itadori” (to indicate to the reader that Toudou truly addresses him here) but what he is saying out loud here is “my friend”, which, btw, is actually said in English even in the original. So he’s literally calling him “mai furendo” here, haha. (In general, Toudou seems to opt for English equivalents quite frequently in the manga.)

Whelp, this ended up very long but basically, whenever I say that “it’s written like XX, but he actually says YY”, this is what I mean!

“But that anger is not for you. Suppress it for now”

⇒ “But that anger is too much for you. (...)”

Not 100% sure but this is probably closer to the original meaning. Also I just found the English translation really vague/unclear.

“Any more distractions?”

“Nope”

⇒ ”Did they disappear? Distractions"

“Yeah, not a single cloud [left]”

Aww, this isn’t incorrect but the wording in the original is just so lovely.

“Thank you so much. My best friend - Todo”

⇒ “(...), best friend!”

What I said for Toudou re text vs. pronounciation, except now it’s spreading, down to gratuitous English.

“For those who have experienced black flash, as compared to those who have not, their understanding of the essence of cursed energy is immeasurable.

⇒ “(...) the gap between their distance to the core of cursed energy is like heaven and earth”

Not incorrect but I really like the ring and the descriptiveness of the original wording.

Chapter 49

“You got to taste a sample of your cursed energy”

⇒ “You’ve grasped the ‘taste’ of cursed energy”

Imo not Yuuji’s own but cursed energy as a whole, as in that Yuuji has glimpsed what cursed energy truly is.

Extended cooking metaphor cont. onto the next page

“Until now, it’s like you’ve been putting ingredients that you’re not familiar with into a pot and cooking haphazardly”

Not incorrect per se but the original wording for the line about ingredients is “ingredients you never tasted yourself” and imo there’s a distinction.

“But with black flash, you’ve gained the ingredient that is cursed energy. As a chef, or in this case, a jujutsu sorcerer, you’re on a different level than you were just three seconds ago”

⇒ “But now through ‘black flash’ you’ve grasped the ‘taste’ of the ingredient that is cursed energy. As a chef, you’re now standing in a completely different dimension than the you from 3 seconds ago”

It wasn’t the “ingredient” (cursed energy) itself that was emphasised here but the ingredient’s “taste” (essence of cursed energy). Also Toudou is actually extrapolating on what he said on the previous page and he even reiterates his line from there (that mistakenly got translated as “you got to taste a sample of your cursed energy”). Overall, the text on those two pages just flowed better originally and wasn’t as disjointed. Also, this was another instance of text (jujutsu sorcerer) vs. pronunciation (chef)!

“Congratulations brother. You will be strong”

Closer to “you will be able to grow strong”. Also, re “brother” - it’s written as "super best/close friend” and spoken out loud as “brother” and again, it’s actually pronounced in English (“brazaa”). Heck, Toudou also actually says “congratulations” in English too haha.

[After Hanami has healed his own limb]

“It can heal itself?!”

“Cursed spirits are made from cursed energy”

Actually specifies that it’s the “bodies of cursed spirits” here.

“But its cursed energy is undoubtedly weakened. If we get its head, then it’s game over.”

⇒ “But it [healing] will infallibly/certainly shave its cursed energy. And if you crush its head, it’s game over”

Again, imo a more general explanation on how self-healing works for cursed spirits.

“I need to try a little harder”

⇒ “It seems it’ll be better to get serious to an extent”

Just to make sure that the nuance here is that Hanami had been holding back before.

“What a heavy hit! It’s not quite as heavy as the black flash hit from earlier. However, individually they have enough power to hurt me”

⇒ “Heavy! Not to the extent of the previous black flash hit but each [hit] has enough power to deal damage to me with certainty”

Imo the official release was a bit unclear, so I tried to tweak the wording. Especially the “individually” bit - imo it was intended to mean “each”. In other words, the two’s attacks, while not as powerful as black flash, are still potent enough to actually hurt Hanami with each respective hit.

[After Hanami dissolves his technique and Yuuji and Toudou's footing disappears]

“Our footing! We underestimated it! With this amount of mass I thought it was manipulating physical branches with its cursed energy. But it’s the embodiment of cursed energy! It made the illusion real with just its cursed energy. That’s a special grade for you!”

⇒ ”(...) We let our guards down! (...) Everything was materialised and manifested just with his cursed energy!! (...)”

Like in the instance above, imo the way the official release translated it was really unclear, especially the line about “making illusion real”, which actually was just “manifest”. (Again, “materialisation” is actually “realisation” but I used the former to make it easier to understand.)

(jp)

“You should be more true to yourself, Hanami”

“I’m not trying to be anything else”

“I’m not saying you’re lying. I know why you fight. But as long as we’re fighting, why not try to enjoy it?”

⇒ ”Hanami, you know, you should be more honest”

“I don’t think I’m pretending”

“It’s not like I’m calling you a liar or anything and I know what’s the objective you fight for. But I think you should try to enjoy the process - the present called ‘fight’ - more”

The meaning was there but I wanted to propose something closer to the original wording because it’s interesting to me how Mahito switches between very simple phrases and more complicated thought processes (like here he explicitly compares “objective”/”goal” and “the process”).

[After Hanami asks whether Mahito enjoys fighting]

“The pleasure I feel while fighting didn’t motivate me much until recently”

⇒ “It’s not until recently that the joy, that the pleasure, I feel at the height of a fight have become my motive”

So it’s not like they didn’t motive him much but that they only recently became his motive/incentive to fight!! Quite a significant distinction imo.

“Before I realised, all the deceit, cheating and killing left me satiated. Just like humans eat, sleep and rape, curses manifest instinctive behaviors as well”

⇒ “When I realised - deceit, tricking, killing - I’ve already been filled/satisfied without being aware of it. The same way humans eat, sleep and transgress/violate - for curses those are probably their instincts”

Not 100% sure about the first sentence but it’s something similar. Emphasis mine for the second sentence. In other words, it’s precisely deceit, tricking and killing that Mahito sees as curses’ instincts. Also the word that they translated as “rape” does indeed mean that as well, but imo it could’ve just as well been pointing to one of its more broader meanings, like “to violate” or “commit [crimes]”.

“We might have gained reasoning, but that doesn’t mean we should deny our impulses”

Imo “reason” instead of “reasoning” and “fight against our instincts” (since the same word gets used) instead of “deny our impulses”. Especially since they translate it as “reason” in the next panel.

“A spirit is blend of impulse and reason”

⇒ “A soul is a blend of instinct and reason”

Emphasis mine. I genuinely have no clue why the official release suddenly translated it differently here... Everywhere else they’d also gone with “soul” whenever the word appeared before, which, needless to say, happened in almost every other instance of Mahito talking about his technique and/or philosophy.

“You all right, brother?”

“No problem!”

“There you go!” ⇒ “Splendid!”

Also means “excellent”, another example where in the original Toudou is using a lofty expression and which sadly got a cut in the official release. He’s so proud of everything that Yuuji does, okay. :”( The first two are fine.

[to part iv (5/5)]

#jujutsu kaisen #jjktranslation #jjk #jjk translation #jujutsukaisen

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mx08z7kz6gqrs · 3 years

Text

好想爱这个世界啊 - Translation Notes

For my translation of this song, see this post. Listen to the live version of the song here. Below are some translation notes on the song.

This was one of my earlier translations, and one that I’ve felt like I should revisit but never had time to. It’s a particularly beautiful song, and the lyrics aren’t complicated, but they are written in a deliberately vague way that isn’t easily conveyed in English. It also has a lot of short phrases that work as individual sentences in Chinese, but that I’ve chosen to link together so that it flows better in English.

As usual, these notes are formatted with the original lyrics, followed by the most literal possible translation, and then an explanation for how I decided to translated it in the final version, including my interpretations and any nuances that I maybe have decided to drop.

Note that anything in brackets [like so] means that this word did not exist in the line, but I had to insert it for grammatical reasons. Usually it’s a subject pronoun that wasn’t specified.

---

Line by Line Translation Notes

抱着沙发睡眼昏花凌乱头发 // Hugging the sofa, sleepy eyes blurry, messy hair 却渴望像电影主角一样潇洒 // Yet long to be confident and free like the lead role in a movie

These two lines were fairly literal, and I’ve kept them as is while appending the first person pronoun so that it was grammatically consistent in English.

The most interesting notes here are “渴望”, “to long for.” In Chinese, this phrase is actually a combination of the character “渴” for thirst, and “望” for hope [for the future]. There is a desperation to this particular word choice that is somewhat capture in the English “longing.”

I’ve also chosen to translate “主角”, literally “main role” (ie, protagonist/leading role) to “hero” just for it to flow a little more naturally.

屋檐角下排着乌鸦密密麻麻 // Under the corners of the roof, crows line up, packed close together 被压抑的情绪不知如何表达 // The repressed feelings, [I] don’t know how to express

I took a lot of liberty in my translation of these lines, because they evoke a very specific sense of confusion and entrapment that I don’t think the literal translation captures well.

Crows in modern Chinese culture, like the west, can be seen as bad omens (ex when someone says something unlucky they are called “乌鸦嘴”, literally a crow’s beak). “密密麻麻” is an expression referring to things being very densely packed together- “密” refers to being “close together” while “麻” is the character for a hemp/sesame. The image it evokes is numerous things being packed so close together that they are like tiny dots against one another.

In this way, you can interpret the crows as a reflection for those feelings that the singer cannot express, trapping them without any gaps for escape.

无论我在这里在那里 // No matter if I’m here or there 仿佛失魂的虫鸣 // As if [I’m] a panicking bug cries 却明白此刻应该做些努力 // But understanding that right now, should make some effort to try harder

Not too many notes for this section. One thing that I’ve seen a lot of different translations around is the second line though, “失魂的虫鸣.” The word “失魂” literally translates to “lost soul.” But generally speaking, this term isn’t referring to the desolate feeling that the literal English translation evokes. Rather, it’s more like “lost wits” or “at wit’s end”, referring to a sort of indecisive and panicked state of mind.

In this case, it’s describing “虫鸣”, literally “cries of bugs.” The sound in my head is something like cicada chirps, or the eclectic noises of bugs in the evening on a hot day. In English, we’d more commonly describing the noises that bugs make as “buzzing”, and for the sort of restless feeling, a specific reference to “flies” made more sense and felt more natural that the more vague “bugs/insects” in the original lyric.

There’s a sense of aimlessness, confusion, and helplessness to this line that I wanted to capture.

无论我在这里在那里 // No matter if I’m here or there 不能弥补的过去 // The past that can’t be mended 每当想起 // Every time [I] think of it...

Simple lines- the one word of note here is “弥补”, a term that can mean to mend or to make up for any deficiencies. It’s formed with the character “弥”, “to fill in” or “complete” and the character “补” for “fix/mend.” In my translation, I’ve chosen to use “irreparable”, but what it really conveys is the speaker’s understanding and sense of regret that they cannot make up for the past, whether it’s the things they’ve done or the things they’ve missed.

想过离开 // Thought of leaving 以这种方式存在 // Existing in this way 是因为那些旁白 // It was because of those narratives/asides 那些姿态那些伤害 // Those attitudes/postures, those hurts

The chorus is definitely where I took the biggest liberty in my translation. The most important point here is that I have removed the likely intentional ambiguity in the subject. Before I dive into that though, I’ll cover the two terms here that have no clear English equivalent.

“旁白” is a word that roughly refers to “an aside”- it combines the character “旁“ for “to the side” and “白”, in this context referring to a use of language, or expression. It is the term used to describe things like a voice-over narration in movies, dramas, etc (for example, think of times when the character is thinking something and we, the audience, hears it as a voice on top of a montage on-screen).

“姿态” can be most literally translated as “attitude” or “posture”, and it refers to a combination of physical appearance and expression. It’s close to the English use of “air” and it’s what you are changing when you are “posturing” to someone.

Note that “those narratives”/”those attitudes”/”those hurts” do not actually have a subject associated with who is the one “dealing” them. It can be interpreted as the singer’s own thoughts and self-loathing, others judgement of them, or both. I think this ambiguity is intentional- the themes of the song revolve around the struggles of depression, and often these mix together.

In this way, “那些旁白” can refer to a narrative that the singer is telling themselves, or a narrative that is forced upon them from the words that others have spoken about them. “那些姿态” can refer to the type of posture or stance that the singer feels forced into, or the attitudes of the people around them. “那些伤害” can refer to pain that is inflicted upon the singer either by themselves or by the others.

For readability sake, I chose to go with the interpretation that slightly more folks on the Chinese net seemed to favor. Hua Chenyu, the original artist, has also emphasized the fear that those with depression face when they meet other people who may not understand them, so it seemed like a good compromise.

不想离开 // Don’t want to leave 当你说还有你在 // When you said you were still here 忽然我开始莫名期待 // Suddenly I began inexplicably hope

This half of the chorus translates much more straightforwardly. The only real word of note here is the final one, “期待.” It can be translated as “hope”, but it’s really a type of hope that leans towards anticipation, or “to look forward to/expect something.”

Unfortunately, both of those translations require some type of object (unlike the Chinese term), and while I could insert one (”the future”, “life”, etc) that would be pure conjecture on my part and I’d prefer to keep it as ambiguous as possible while still making sense.

夕阳西下翻着电话无人拨打 // The sun sets to the west, flipping the phone, no one calls 是习惯孤独的我该得到的吧 // This is what I, who am used to being alone, deserve to get right?

These lines were neat to translate. One subtlety that’s lost in English is the first phrase, “夕阳西下”, an idiom literally meaning “evening sun sets west” and usually used to describe a scene of sunset. However, it can also be used more figuratively to describe things going downhill as years go by and they age, so there’s a little bit of melancholy inherent in the idiom.

独木桥呀把谁推下才算赢家 // A single log bridge, pushing someone over, counts as a winner 我无声的反抗何时能战胜它 // When will my soundless rebellion prevail over it

This part of the song actually confused me a little when I first heard it. The “独木桥”, literally “single log/plank bridge” is a phrase that figuratively describes a very difficult path (ie, like trying to cross a single log bridge).

Overall, there’s a resentment of the perceived competition in life- often, it feels that for one person to succeed, they have to take down someone else. The singer thus is trying to stage their own resistance against this.

无论我在这里在那里 // No matter if I’m here or there 不能弥补的过去 // The past that can’t be mended 每当想起 // Every time [I] think of it...

This section is an exact repeat from the end of the first verse.

This is a repeat of the first section in the first chorus.

不想离开 // Don’t want to leave 也许尝试过被爱 // Maybe after [I’ve] tried [the feeling of] being loved 会开始仰望未来 // [I’ll] start to look up hopefully towards the future

The subtlety of this part is in the second line. “尝试” literally means “to try” or “to attempt”, and it is modifying “被爱”, “to be loved.” The correct way to understand this line in English is “After I’ve tasted the feeling of being loved by another.” Overall that sounds awkward though, which is why I didn’t use that particular phrasing in my translation.

The third line here uses a particularly yearning word to express hope- “仰望” or “to look up hopefully” combines the character “仰” for “looking up towards” or “admiring” and “望” for hope. Compare this to “期待” from the end of the last chorus, which was more of a tentative feeling of anticipation.

伤疤就丢给回忆吧 // Scars, just throw them to the memories 放下才得到更好啊 // Let go, to get something better

别怕别怕 // Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid

These lines forming the bridge are fairly straightforward. For my translation, I just linked the ideas to make it flow better in English (ie, “getting something better” reads quite awkwardly even though in Chinese it’s a perfectly natural way to express the idea).

想过离开 // Thought of leaving 当阳光败给阴霾 // When the sunlight is defeated by dark haze 没想到你会拼命为我拨开 // Didn’t think you would be trying your hardest to clear it for me

In the second line here, I dropped the “defeat” from my translation in favor of “faded” to make it flow better/sound a little more poetic. However, it's worth noting that in the original, the verb “败” is to be defeated/lose, with the implication of some type of struggle.

In the third line, “拼命” can be literally understood as “using one’s life” and translates to doing something “at all costs” or “as if your life depends on it.” It’s a very desperate term.

Overall the feeling here is one where the singer has already given up, the “sunlight defeated”, but unexpectedly, someone else continues to fight on for them, desperately so.

曾想过离开 // Once thought of leaving 却又坚持到现在 // But held on until now 熬过了那些旁白 // Endured past those narratives/asides 那些姿态那些伤害 // Those attitudes/postures, those hurts

This part of the last chorus echoes the previous ones, with some significant changes. The addition of “曾” for “once”, places the first line explicitly in the past tense. “熬过了” in the third line is also an explicit reference to the past, conveying that the singer has “already endured past” the things mentioned in previous choruses.

不想离开 // Don’t want to leave 当你的笑容绽开 // When your smile breaks outs 这世界突然填满色彩喔~ // The world is suddenly filled to the brim with color, woah~

In the second line here, the verb describing the smile is “绽开”, or to “burst forth”, basically suddenly appearing and with a very large presence. My choice of words here was “bloom” in English since that is a way we describe smiles.

In the third line, “填满” literally means “to fill/cram in” and is formed with the characters “填”, for “to fill [in a missing/empty space]” and “满” for “full.” In this case, there’s also a sense of something that was previously missing being returned in full.

抱着沙发睡眼昏花凌乱头发 // Hugging the sofa, sleepy eyes blurry, messy hair 夕阳西下接通电话是你呀 // The sun sets to the west, connected through the phone, it’s you

These last lines echo the first line from each verse. In the second one, “接通” means “to connect” but specifically in the context of a call connected, or a call picked up.

---

And that concludes my notes for this song. It’s a really beautiful song, and I saw more folks reading this translation than I first expected so I wanted to break it down and clarify all the liberties that I took while translating it. The language here is simple, but contains a lot of subtlety and intentional ambiguity.

#好想爱这个世界啊 #华晨宇 #hua chenyu #notes #chinese music #somehow took me 7 months to revisit this one #also took the chance to reword a few minor things in the original translation

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dishonoredrpg · 4 years

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Congratulations, NAY! You’ve been accepted for the role of THE LOVERS with the faceclaim of ASHLEY MOORE. Admin Cas: I think we can all agree that The Lovers is a difficult concept to pin down. It’s a task in itself to balance the devotion they have for The World, her world, while not sacrificing who they are at their core. But, Nay, you were certainly up to the task. There’s something so lovely about Prudence, so beautiful and admirable, but something hungry. So much of her life revolves around The World, but that does not mean that Prudence doesn’t have a story of her own to live out. I particularly enjoyed the way you likened her story unfolding to a caterpillar grows into its chrysalis; to become a butterfly or moth, either is possible. I can’t wait to see what you do with her!

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Out-of-Character.

NAME: nay

PRONOUNS: she / her

AGE: twenty-two

TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL: gmt + 5 ; and i’d say my activity ( especially with quarantine, still ) is at a 7/10. lately, i have been trying to write every day, and that means at least a reply every day – even if posted through queue after being written on a better writing day.

ANYTHING ELSE?: i wrote this way too quickly, because i suck at being patient and didn’t want to wait a week to turn in an app, so forgive me for the sinful typos committed in my haste! this definitely isn’t as polished as i wish it were. also? there are possibly too many insect-facts in this and if that shit squicks you, i am so sorry.

In-Character.

SKELETON: the lovers

K E Y W O R D S

UPRIGHT: love, harmony, relationships, values alignment, choices

REVERSED: self-love, disharmony, imbalance, misalignment of values

| source: x

NAME: prudence “prue” luna lockhart

→ ETYMOLOGY ;

P R U D E N C E / “intelligence; discretion, foresight; wisdom to see what is suitable or profitable;” also one of the four cardinal virtues, "wisdom to see what is virtuous;" from Old French prudence (13th Century) and directly from Latin prudentia “a foreseeing, foresight, sagacity, practical judgment,” contraction of providentia “foresight” (see providence). Secondary sense of “wisdom” (late 14th Century) is preserved in jurisprudence.

L U N A / “the moon,” especially personified in the Roman goddess answered to Greek Selene; also, an alchemical name for “silver”; from Latin luna “moon, goddess of the moon,” from PIE *leuksna- (source, also: of Old Church Slavonic luna “moon,” Old Prussian lauxnos “stars,” Middle Irish luan “light, moon”), suffixed form of root *leuk- “light, brightness.” The luna moth (1841, American English) so-called for the crescent-shaped eye-spots on its wings.

L O C K H A R T / Scottish: of uncertain origin, probably from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements loc 'lock', 'bolt' + hard 'hardy', 'brave', 'strong'. English: occupational name for a herdsman in charge of a sheep or cattlefold, from Old English loc 'enclosure', 'fold' + hierde 'herd(er)'.

| sources: x & x

FACECLAIM: zendaya coleman ( or ashley moore or natali litvinova — in order of preference! )

AGE: three-&-twenty for zendaya / four-&-twenty for ashley or natali

→ BIRTHDATE: fantasy-equivalent of july 8th; the most cancer baby there ever was!

DETAILS: it took me forever to find a skeleton that made me feel the enduring love i’ve been searching for beyond the ability to see a story, and as it always, unfailingly, tends to happen for the rare occasion where i opt for a softer character, it caught me completely off-guard. initially, surveying the tags, i was leaning towards the skeletons of the wheel of fortune, the hierophant, the devil, the hermit – all of whom, in my opinion, are characters who have been shaped by a darkness, be it inherent or inflicted, that’s rendered them with shadows or edges. with the lovers, that’s not the case. they are tender: like a paramour’s kiss, or a bruise, or an overripe peach you can sink your fingers into. and maybe it’s my unflinching desire to subvert the stereotypical presumption of what it is to be soft, the fragility noted in their skeleton does not translate to weakness or meekness to me; i enjoy that they are both tender, and possess the ability to be chaotic, and manipulative, and impulsive and desperate and vindictive and defensive. what i love most about this particular skeleton is the sheer humanness of them.

that, and their love for THE WORLD. for a moment there, that was definitely what drew me to them; this idea of love as religion had my mind reeling like a siken poem, rhapsodising about a love so powerful, it can alter a person. this is partially because i am the most hopeful and shameless of romantics, and partially because love, its nuances, and its powers and vulnerabilities genuinely, deeply interest me. however, working my way deeper into this application-form, that changed.

it is the love that the lovers — or prue, to me, now — holds for THE WORLD is one that attracted me. it is her own potential for growth that’s kept me in her clutches, besotted, wishing to tell her story. hers is a tale, i believe, of metamorphosis: a question i posed in a later section, as well as what lurks in my mind, is whether that metamorphosis is one that leads to a moth or a butterfly. did you know it is moths who come from cocoons, but butterflies who come from a chrysalis? moths, who are drawn to light. butterflies, who drink nectar, also help spread the seeds to grow more of the flowers. both which come from a caterpillar, whose first meal is typically the egg they come from. what i enjoy is the ambivalence that presents itself — or, as i like to call it: potential. there are several directions that prue’s story could go in, several choices that could define her, and it’s all up in the air until it isn’t anymore.

i wish i could tell you that my EUREKA! moment wasn’t insect-research, but i can’t, because that would be a lie. i’m not even sorry.

BACKGROUND:

☉ CONTENT WARNING(s): infant death, stillbirth, body horror imagery, insects

come, dear reader, won’t you settle in? let me spin you a tale—a tangled web of one, indeed—about a girl who smells sweet as white roses and is as satiny to touch as her gossamer-thin garments. this girl is just a girl; she has never been the girl. even so, this story is her story, and though she is not equipped to be the heroine of a story, or so she believes, she is the heart of this one. like a heart, she is swollen with the fullness of blood: thus, let me etch this tale into parchment with the blood of love, in crimson-ink of metallic-reek.

it comes in three parts: a beginning, a middle, an ending; it is for you, dear reader, to decide which is which.

let us anoint this tale the title of METAMORPHOSIS –

✧✧✧

i. THE EGG ;

before there is the girl, there is a man and a woman who live in faerûn by the sahrnian sea, bound together by a contract that is decidedly not the forest-fire love faerie-tales herald. yet that is not to say that love never comes, just because love comes after. when it does, it is a calm love, a steady one; a love that has never cost one to lose one’s mind, and has been grown, meticulously, over the passage of time and the trials and tribulations have littered the path of a match made by those who are older and have witnessed so much more life than them. it is not for years that the woman feels nature stirring within her body’s vessel, and when it does, it is with the undying bestowing upon her a gift that makes up lost time.

when the girl comes, she comes from a belly more full than most. it makes sense that it is so, for there were meant to be two of them: a boy, and a girl. one might suppose that, in the end, there still were, yet only one in the way it mattered.

( you decide, dear reader: which is which? )

she is born — and it is days, and days, before her time. no matter, a name still awaits her. prudence, they call her. pierce, he would have been.

from the beginning, she emerges from the ruddy cave of her mother’s womb incomplete. a greyish pallor remains where life ought to be warming her skin; it is as if he leeched enough life from her for him to choke on, and she siphoned her brother’s death through the connection only womb-mates share – and this is what she will hear in later years, when she asks about him.

she will wish she hadn’t.

✧✧✧

ii. THE CATERPILLAR ;

( when you feel unforgiving, dear reader, remember: it is a caterpillar’s job to eat; without an abundance of consumption, it cannot survive. it is this abundance of consumption that allows for the production of silk. it is this same abundance of consumption that is its undoing. )

years do not care if one is ready to bear them; they come, when they must, as they must. and so comes to pass the childhood that tries to swallow prudence lockhart whole, over and over and over –

as an infant, blood is filtered out of her body and fresh blood poured into her veins. it helps, some. it does not help enough, yet there is nothing more to be done; her parents must take her home, and pray to the undying god for the rest. they pray, and pray, and pray, as two people of noble blood and lucrative business-dealings rarely stoop to, for lack of need to need it.

as a child, prue is still a frail slip of a thing, with bones jutting out against taut bronze flesh in protest. fill yourself up, her mother pleads. you must survive, beloved. she offers her savory meals and sweet decadence twice, and anything she takes a suggestion of a liking to just as many times more — and it works; it takes time, but work it does, and prue’s cheeks round some and at times flush rosily, some weakness giving way to the minute miracles that are her tardy signs of life. it is not much, but it is enough, isn’t it? it is to the mother who has warred for her existence. who still combats for prue’s survival.

when does the girl begin to feel that it might be her that her mother is fighting, when every frustration about her lessness, her inherent lessness, begins to steal the breath from prue’s lungs – for is it not her who is all poetry & rot, wisp-thin & about as flimsy? her heart fills with hot, vital blood then: it beats loud and clear as a belltower’s toll, cutting through all else with the potency of its truth. this is as much as i am, she beseeches in turn, as her mother had once done, except not, for graceless tears roll down her cheeks in impassioned rivulets and the voice that thickens with feeling.

how will you survive the world, beloved? her mother implores.

i might not, prue knows. i might not, she accepts.

it is the caterpillar’s destiny to unbecome –

✧✧✧

iii. THE CHRYSALIS ;

– unbecoming takes time.

it takes long enough that both mother and daughter grow used to it, initially, and then around it, ultimately.

there is, after-all, the distraction of warfare engrained in the backbone of their precious faerûn. there is the journey to tyrholm, the settling into the dregs of hightown – not quite lowtown-bound, and not-quite-not. it fazes her parents to not be profound upper-echelons of society; her father, a man used to running the business inherited by the men in the lockhart family, and her mother, who had spent all of her time worrying for prudence and never had to about wealth. but prue, for her part, is accustomed to the notion of not-quite-right / not-quite-enough; the feeling might not be home, per se, and yet she recognises the walls of the house all the same – could walk its rooms in the dark, if she had to.

it is circumstance that calls the lockharts to castle tyrholm.

it tears at her parents: her father believes in not squandering opportunity, and her mother would rather squander anything but prudence. even THE EMPRESS sees it, does she not, when she cants prudence’s head and observes her fragility? the king’s reputation precedes itself; would a heart as true and innocent as hers survive a court like his? within minutes, it is too late to ponder it any longer. within minutes, it is no longer a choice, but a deal already struck. just like a match: it cannot be unstruck. one can endeavour to douse a fire, but it is not the same as un-starting it.

for a time, the castle is one more place prue does not feel she belongs; it is alright, she tells herself. you are alright, she says – because her mother is no longer by her side telling her anymore, is she? silken thread ensnares the girl when THE WORLD knocks on her door one evening; it is lilly-white, the radiance of their smile. prue does not understand why, then; she is nothing exceptional, she flounders for the right thing to do, and even then, she gets it wrong so much more often than she ever gets it right. perhaps, she will never understand why – why they are so kind, why they make her feel seen, why…

and still, this once, there is no question of whether it is enough. they are more than enough.

for the first time in her life, prue discovers what it is to be warm.

✧✧✧

tell me, dear reader – is this a butterfly’s or moth’s metamorphosis?

PLOT IDEAS:

❂ “love, for you, / is larger than the usual romantic love. it’s like religion. it’s terrifying.” – richard siken

see, i told you: siken’s poetry reeling through my mind. religion is a really interesting ideology to link the notion of love to, because there are so many boundaries one crosses in the name of faith. at times, we call it the lesser evil. other times, we say it’s letting the end justify the means. we’re all trying to be holy.

this is where i want to start discussing potential plots for prue — but i want to, first, preface it by saying that though THE WORLD is very much at the centre of her story, it is because prue’s unparalleled love for them is central to her life-story; i treat it like an experiment, where prue is the dependent variable and her love for THE WORLD is the independent variable that incites action & reaction, placed in different situations. it is, that said, the most potent of variables, and can hardly be called controlled, despite how desperately prue herself attempts to keep it to the corner-alcove they hide the truth of their love in. this love is not a selfish love; it is strong, and all-consuming, and maddening – more than a soldier’s swearing fealty to a kingdom, it is the most devout of prophets bowing their head at the altar of the divine deity they put their faith in. that’s pretty intense stuff, right? i want to see what it elicits.

this can be a double-edged sword, and in fact, i’d be rooting for it to be. on one hand, i want to explore how this love has made prue strong. i want to see how it has made her braver, and more resilient. i want to explore that she took THE EMPRESS deeming her fragile-seeming, and how she’s donned it as armour, because it is that same delicacy that has made THE WORLD love them. i want to explore it through interactions with the royal family foremost — THE WORLD, of course, but THE EMPRESS, THE EMPEROR, THE CHARIOT, and if it works out, maybe even septimus himself. it’s rare for prue to not let things slip, and roll off her back, but that is when it comes to her. her love for THE WORLD makes her want to protect them, fiercely; it lights a fire in her soul that has never been lit before. and fire? yes, it warms – but oh, it burns, too, doesn’t it? it has the power to ruin. and i don’t want to limit that exploration to just the royal family; i want to explore it with the animosity-potential between her and TEMPERANCE as well, but that’s one plot i’ll talk more about further down.

there are little ideas floating around in my head that i would love to explore with the respective players, but i could imagine a friendship between prue ( probably due to her sweet-tooth luring her, too often, to the kitchens ) with THE HANGED MAN – and to explore a bond, that could further be complicated, potentially, by prue not being able to talk about what she and THE WORLD share. or, more chaotically: for her to share it, and for THE HANGED MAN to let it slip to THE DEVIL? how far would prue go to protect this? and would she, if it presented the opportunity for the future where she and her love get to be together is pushed closer by it? how selfless is her love? how powerful would fear be against it?

i’m honestly just a firm believer that, when our backs are against the wall, that’s when we find out who we really are. and that’s the main storyline i want to explore with prue, more than anything else, because i think that she has never been pushed to that edge and, because of it, she’s never copped up to her own identity. she met and fell in love with THE WORLD at such a young age, so quickly and wholly, that it has shaped so much of what her ideal self is. i want to see how her ideal self would differ from the reality of her. and i want to see her confront it.

❂ “you are going to break your promise. i understand. and i hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that i will not hate you.” – catherynne m. valente

very recently, someone put forth an idea to me: love is a promise. that’s what i want to talk about here. there’s a sense i got — both from the lovers’ skeleton, and THE WORLD’s — that both of them know that there is a time-limit on their relationship. or, at the very least, whatever room there is for prue in their future, it isn’t a room where they share the bed. but i also get a sense that they know it, and neither of them talk about it. i think a part of prue feels like the amount of good that THE WORLD has brought her will last her a lifetime, and i think that isn’t true, so much as she’s hoping it is? i want to see the two of them talk about it. i want to see prue wanting them to fight her love. i want prue to admit she wants to be chosen over duty, or a marriage with someone who isn’t her, or fear, and i want to see what something like that would do to their relationship. or hell, i want someone who has power over THE WORLD, like THE EMPEROR, or THE EMPRESS, or THE CHARIOT or THE HIGH PRIESTESS to find out about the true nature of their relationship and force that choice once they even start talking about, so the situation can force their hands even if they don’t force one another’s.

there’s so much between the two of them i want to dissect and play with, it apparently needed to separate quotations. oops?

❂ “all things truly wicked start from innocence.” – ernest hemingway

we all have the occasional ( or perhaps more, no judgement! ) propensity for wickedness. i feel really passionately about softer people not being safe from cravings for chaotic behaviour, even if they might, in prue’s case, justify it through the innocence of intention. a lot of her initial effusion is of a heady amalgamation of sweetness and delicacy; i want to see her display a dash of something that takes leave from that, and surprises even herself. now, though not at all set-in-stone and totally up to be discussed with the respective player, i could easily see it rearing its head in the dynamic between herself and TEMPERANCE. how many times will she be shooed away from a room with a beautiful woman and the love of prue’s life? it terrifies prue, the idea that THE WORLD will slip out of her fingers like the sands of time, so much sooner than she is ready for. i’m curious: would there be a moment where she would not leave? where she would make the nature of their relationship known? would she ever snap back, or continue to smile tenderly, bow her head, and listen?

i’m also dying to explore the potential plot brewing between the lovers and DEATH. part of this is a total shot in the dark, so bear with me, but – imagine this: there is a darkness in them that tugs at the darkness in her; they are hungry, and she is a starving-thing, and what a pairing they could make. imagine prue venturing into lowtown with them, and for the alternative reality DEATH’s hunger dangles that could open a door to an actual future with THE WORLD? i want there to be temptation — towards darkness and chaos, yes, because i am a sucker for moral ambiguity, but also for the loyalist that prue is to be lured by the revolt.

❂ “you cut up a thing that’s alive and beautiful to find out how it’s alive and why it’s beautiful, and before you know it, it’s neither of those things, and you’re standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.” – clive barker

it is difficult for even me, as i delve into prue’s psyche, to be a wordsmith adept enough to encapsulate the sheer magnitude of her love for her lover. let me tell you this, though: it is love that is devout enough that prue would sacrifice herself before it. she would shirk what she believes she knows of herself to fight for THE WORLD. but there is little in the universe free of the shackles of consequence. it feels inevitable to me that, at some point, sooner or later, prue will commit an action or reaction in the name of love — and then, she will have to live with it. it’s even better to me for her to go beyond her limits for this love that is everything to her, and then find herself turning to them to sacrifice for her as freely as she does them… and for them to, perhaps, not be able to. or perhaps, for it to turn prue into a person she herself can no longer recognise. there was a part of me that wanted to already cook something up, and to toss it into the writing sample portion, but i decided otherwise. if i get to write this character, i want to start in a place that is different, and develop my way towards a darker pasture, so to speak.

a darker pasture, however, is where i want her to at least visit. in a setting such as this one, i don’t think it can be helped, truthfully.

❂ “each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” – anaïs nin

while i was trying to knit this application together into one whole piece, a recurring concern for me has been that i want this character to have its own story, and the lines of that can get awfully blurry when the character is one the feels as intensely as prue lockhart does. she is such a hypersensitive creature; more than anything, it is her interactions that penetrate her, and alter her, and cause the discord between the sides that are wont to tug at her, who stands in the most Lawful Neutral of spots. i’ve decided to lean into it, though, because i genuinely believe that it poses an intriguing dichotomy between her inherent nature and the nurture that moulds it beyond the obvious, magnitudinal parental hand in it. that said, there are actual several different potential connections i want to toy with here. ( one of which is THE HANGED MAN, but i already mentioned that above, and didn’t want to be repetitive! )

THE MAGICIAN / listen, prue is so used to being the Softest. but this little baby is even softer than her, and every time they flinch, she just wants to help. she tries, at every turn, to be kind and i really want to see her become a friend / confidant for them? maybe learn about their magic. to maybe give them a secret of her own back ;) gal pals, gimme. i need something wholesome; it can’t all be agony & ecstasy, god damn it.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE / it is pure coincidence that throws the two of them together as often as it does. but prue is the sort to believe the best in people, and is never too arrogant to admit where she’s been wrong. this bond is where her feelings towards magic first begins to see development, and i am so, so, so interested in toying with it. even more so when you throw in their bond with THE EMPEROR — does faze prue a little — and his relationship with THE WORLD in there. such potential for growth and drama.

DEVIL / for years, every time prue has seen them, she has walked in the other direction. otherworldliness is unnatural enough as it is, but the proof of what they can do scars them with evidence of it – and so, out of genuine fear, she’s evaded them. and yet, coincidental interactions with the WHEEL OF FORTUNE has made prue think twice. a look at the haunting in their eyes has made her think thrice. i want to play with that dynamic!!!

THE MOON / hers is the only magic that does not scare prue, i think. it is the only one she is not too intimidated to ask questions about, because she truly is extremely curious when she takes an interest in something, and a lifetime of listening in the background has given prue a taste for stories. i feel like she could bring out something adventurous and wild within prue? a part which prue never got to explore, because she grew up with a very, very cautious mother who kept a very close eye on her and treated her like glass because prue really does look fragile. i want a bond to make her feel stronger!

THE STAR / if there is one thing that prue has grown up to be, it is a true romantic. it makes him something of a kindred spirit; something in her could reach out to something in him, creating a kindred bond that makes her feel seen in a way that only THE WORLD has ever given her.

THE TOWER / because she was raised right by it, the sea is where prue feels most at home, and she always has. i could see there being something about THE TOWER’s stories making her feel warm inside, and thus, her braving a friendship with them. i think she could use the wisdom of someone older? and there’s just something about them that made prue shyly scuff her toe at the ground, like – an oliver twist moment of, “can i have more, please?”

THE FOOL / stories talk about princes and princesses. the dragon’s fire, the nobel steed. prue looks at him, and she wonders: where are the stories about them? the princess’ lover, and the king’s soldier – those who fight for the crown, without wearing it. it could make for such an unlikely bond, but such an intriguing one, i think? i got the idea, and i just could not shake it. humour me!

and 0f course, there is potential with literally every other character, too, but i honestly ran out of time before i could come up with something for them too. i’m down to flesh it out~

❂ “we grow. it hurts at first.” – sylvia plath

at the start of her story, prue starts off as a fragile underdog. she turns blossoms into a lover, and it turns her fiercer – which is not the same thing as being fierce, but it’s a start. what i want for her — what any writer wants for their muses, i reckon — is growth. i want prue, who has grown up sheltered and protected, to experience pain and hardship. i want her experiences to call into question what she thinks she knows, flip it on its head, and make her think. i want her to think, and to change her mind, and to change it again. i want her to confront her fears, and her uncomfortable truths, and to experience all the tempestuous emotions she’s spent her entire life keeping at bay, having convinced herself they could shatter her. i want her to unearth her endurance, to test its limits. i want to explore her undoings and remakings. what i enjoy most about her is the volatility of her that most would not see coming, because volatile and tempestuous and emotional is what she is. she is all heart, all the time, everywhere. can you imagine how visceral that has to make every experience?

imagine the potential for growth if she let herself just feel all of it. if she opened herself up, and let the universe rush in, instead of walking on eggshells as she does. just imagine. that’s what i want for her.

CHARACTER DEATH: i could, of course, see prue meeting an end. in fact, there are a couple of circumstances that could make it deliciously poetic, even.

Writing Sample.

They match each other: step for step; right, then left –

Hardly anyone turns to look at the two of them anymore. The two of them, making their way down the hall, with their dark heads leaned close together, like two plants growing towards one another when the sun leaves them for too long. It might be more peculiar to see them apart. There is a strange pride that twists a corner of Prue’s mouth at the unshakeable knowledge of the fact – a hint of tremendous pride at the small, precious claim THE WORLD makes with the statement of their proximity. It is everything to her, and perhaps it is what lends to the smoothness of her gait as they move past the portrait-eyes that scrutinise it, as if they await another of the many stumbles they’ve already witnessed. Prue floats beside them.

Her heart is gone, long-since pressed into the palm of their hand. Does it weigh them down? She could pretend it is why she keeps their fingers curled into the crook of her elbow, helping them carry the heaviness of the heart she’s given away to them; Prue holds fast to that touch with her own hand covering their fingers, unwilling to give up those four pressure-points that burn her flesh through the silk of her sleeve for anything, enough to shield it with the dome of her palm.

“ – Prudence?”

Their hand flinches at the same time as Prue’s grip on their fingers tightens. As if a chill blew in, and froze the marrow in her bones, the girl stills in place. It is not because she recognises the voice. It is because she ought to have done, for what the cant of her head finds is a woman whose gaze mirrors her own: amber-warm, almond-shaped. It is her same mouth that speaks the syllables of a variation of her names that does not belong to her, not as Prue does.

“Mama –” she says, her voice so quiet, she fears it might not reach her.

She is too far away now. Even mere footsteps away, she is too far.

Extras.

✦ INSPIRATIONS → anne shirley cuthbert – from anne of green gables; tiana – from princess & the frog; missandei of naath – from game of thrones; margaery tyrell / house tyrell – from a song of ice & fire; madame lebedeva – from deathless; effie trinket – from the hunger games series; jack pearson – from this is us; patroclus – from the song of achilles;

✦ INSPIRATION TAG → here;

✦ PINTEREST BOARD → here.

#accepted #accepted: the lovers

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tarajenkins · 5 years

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Given what you've said of Vauthry, about how we're never given any chance to even try and redeem him, help him become a better person, I'd like to ask: how would you go about "saving" him? When he transforms into that Lucifer/Archangel Michael-looking guy, he seems permanently lost, but how would you write out a redemption narrative for him?

I love this ask, I hate the answer I have to give. But it’s gonna be a long response anyway, because context and because you already know I don’t know when to shut up about characters, lmao.

SO I HOPE YOU LOVE HEARING ME RAMBLE UNDER THIS CUT (but I won’t blame you if you don’t)

I don’t think the in-game narrative allows Vauthry any chance at redemption in the current time, even if he had the agency to take it. I don’t think we ever saw what he actually could have been. I think what we saw in Shadowbringers was the Lightwarden he’d been carrying finally “awakening”, as Innocence’s Triple Triad card put it. Or, as the X-Files put it in their eighth ep: “We are not who we are”.

Even if that Lightwarden could be driven out of him (I know an “Aethertech” who would do anything to make that possible cough), I don’t know if he’d regain clarity he may never have had to start. I’d love to think that he did, a long time ago. The Minstreling Wanderer tells us he can’t say whether or not Vauthry was a monster as a child, when you unlock Crown Of The Immaculate EX.

I believe the Lightwarden’s influence was driving a lot of his brutal acts of “justice”, because that is kinda their whole thing. As for the man inside the monster? I have a hunch he was desperate to not be seen as unnatural, and was trying to make sense out of what was happening to him in a way that would not make him a hybrid abomination. Because if he wasn’t a God, if he wasn’t this divine thing he was told he was – then what was he? The way he worded it, “this is why I was born…as man and Sin Eater both…” – it makes me feel he had, at some point in his life, at least once, ASKED why he was born as he was. That he had perceived it was wrong. He needed it to be right. And that was just fuel to the corruption fire.

The talk of godhood actually seemed to be a recent phenomenon, as no other NPC mentions a thing about it – they refer to him as “Lord Vauthry”, and speak of him in mortal terms, apart from his miraculous ability to keep the Sin Eaters at bay. He freely boasted of being a God to the Crystal Exarch, yet we’re to believe he didn’t say a word to his own people, all this time? Or that no one, in turn, would mention to us “Yyyyeah, about this guy….” Mayor Punchable Face may have told him he was a God, but it doesn’t sound like Vauthry bought into it enough to spread the good word for at least twenty years.

Also consider he called his transformation into Innocence a “trial”. Why would a god need to be tested? And by whom?

By the time we see him in-game, it seemed he was in a rapid decline of sanity, or at least the ability to keep up appearances, and whatever was left of him was fervently clinging to the only purpose he was ever apparently given – which is exactly what that Lightwarden (and Emet-Selch) would want.

He was really cynical about the rest of humanity. Given his father, I can see where he’d get that from. Not that daddy told him people suck, it’s that Vauthry probably learned that by his father’s example. Maybe by the rest of Eulmore, too, but I got the impression he was kept seriously isolated from society before his inauguration. He seems to prefer being alone – he only leaves that room when he moves the Sin Eaters against Lakeland. He gives no indication he knows how to socialize, period. You either come to him, or you don’t see him. (He may be keenly aware humes don’t typically reach at least fifteen feet tall. Seriously, look at Cruelty’s size compared to player characters, now look how Cruelty makes a comfy couch for him.)

Cynical, and yet, he wanted to see the people of Eulmore’s “dreams fulfilled, their wishes granted”. Just so long as he was the one responsible, and he was the one recognized for it. He needed their acceptance.

ANYHOO. On to stuff I still have zero idea what to make of.

I should preface the rest of this infodump with the fact I found the Eulmore arc to be the weakest of the expansion, between Vauthry and Ran'jit. Most of the MSQ was given nuance. Eulmore was given a Saturday Morning Cartoon sledge. A -lot- of questions, with no answers, unless Squeenix decides to be generous in a fifty-buck lore book later. (something I hated Warcraft for. I should not have to pony up for a book to understand the main story quest chain in a game.) So, here are some of the questions I’ve got:

- FOOL! THAT WILL NEVER WORK!

They don’t really explain why Emet-Selch thought corrupting an infant was a good plan, as the Sin Eaters seemed guaranteed a win on The First, if only by outlasting the survivors of the Flood. Impatience, maybe? Why not give it to the mayor? That dickpickle would’ve said yes. Maybe we’ll get more answers with the Eden raid. IT’D BE NICE *COUGH*

- The meol thing.

It’s using Sin Eater’s non-existant flesh to make a bread, and through that bit of Sin Eater, Vauthry could control whoever ate it. The fanbase loves the “soylent green is people” angle, but it’s done pretty haphazardly, when you think about it like that? Sin Eaters have no lasting corporeal body. They are Light, mixed with a bit of the lingering essence of whatever they originally were – and what they originally were did not have to be humanoid. They dissolve into sparklies in the air upon death – and arguably, they would not have to die to contribute sparklies to somehow mix into food. Forgiven Cruelty lost a whole wing to Thancred when Thancred first took Ryne from Eulmore, and it seemed to have grown back just fine by the time we see Cruelty again. Killing Sin Eaters also would be entirely counterproductive to a nation that devoted themselves to NOT killing them. Also – we are shown the Afflicted, people who are falling to corruption from a SIn Eater attack they’d survived. How is it people who eat meol don’t become corrupted themselves?

Where did the idea for meol even begin? Vauthry’s father was ousted by the people as mayor before Emet-Selch said hey there, friend, you have a punchable face, let’s make a deal – and Vauthry only took control of Eulmore 20 years ago. He looks a LOT older than 20, or even 40. So his father must’ve rode his child’s coattails before then. Did Mayor Punchable Face think that was a wise countermeasure against future insurrection? In any case, Vauthry did not exert that control until the WoL and allies were coming to kill the Lightwarden of Kholusia (him), so it did not seem to be a priority of his. Alphinaud confirmed the people were of a free mind until they were made to fight the WoL and allies. (and dialogue stressed it was very noticeable when someone was not of a free mind.) Squeenix: *throws meol into purse* I have to go plotholes came up

- The “Perverted Paradise”. (I at least giggle every time Alphinaud says this.)

Vauthry is presented as the pinnacle of vice, yet the game does not really show this well – in some cases, not at all.

Gluttony: He isn’t shown to indulge in drink, let alone overindulge. Apart from the meol scene at the end, which was related to controlling the Eater-corrupted citizenry, not gluttony, he was not shown to have so much as a snack. There’s food in his chamber, all of it untouched. But! In the Shadowbringers trailer, Squeenix thought the best example to showcase Eulmore’s decadence was – three thicc'qotes. Having pleasant conversation ‘round a table. Eating fresh fruit.

Not the creepy-ass old patron who thinks that since his pretty servant can’t sing anymore, she should be “Ascended” as a kindness, although it was implied she could have recovered her health, just not her voice. Not the guy who tossed his servant from a balcony because reasons and wanted us to bring him back. Not even the noblewoman trying to have her servant killed because her lecherous husband put designs on the poor girl.

Three thicc'qotes. Having pleasant conversation ‘round a table. Eating fresh fruit.

We get it, Square, we’re supposed to see he’s fat and think that is bad. Moving on.

Lust: He doesn’t visit the adult nightclub downstairs (the adult nightclub that is shown practically empty and behind closed doors, the lewdness of it all – I clutch my pearls.) He doesn’t creep on your player character like Magnai did in Stormblood – he doesn’t creep on anyone. He doesn’t want you to be his steed. No interest is shown in the Sin Eaters apart from them fighting for him, as much as some people in the fanbase theorize he is fucking them. (They probably think that Spirited Away is about the sex industry and My Neighbor Totoro is about dead girls, too.) This game is pretty blatant when they intend that sort of thing, see: Yotsuyu, Sastasha, any number of things in Ishgard or Ul'dah. I’ve found nothing here, except the German translation for “Consort Of Sin: Forgiven Obscenity” is “Purified Fornication: Playmate Of The Redeemer”. Since this is not implied in any other translation, I put my trust in Koji Fox and the fact Obscenity’s job seems to be Official Nose Petter to Forgiven Cruelty.

Greed: I am not going to hold his rings and his robes against him, as Urianger has just as much bling (more, actually), The wealthy are made to give up ALL their fortune to be permitted to stay in Eulmore – but that wealth is then used to provide everything for free to those who live there, and the free citizenry are apparently given funds for private use to boot. If they intended to show that Vauthry was using all that for hookers and blow for himself, it did not convey well.

Wrath: If one has broken the rules of the city (or has thrown shade that takes him a full two minutes to catch), Vauthry definitely has this in spades, with a temper tantrum a lot like Philia’s Fierce Beating attack. But again, the writers don’t really show the extent of the wrath they are trying to tell . Because if you don’t break the rules? Nothing happens, apparently. Trouble seems to have to be brought forward to him, he doesn’t go looking for it. It didn’t feel any different to me than the Grand Companies, yet this is the one that finally makes Alphinaud do the *GAAAAASP*.

The populace does not seem afraid of Vauthry. In fact, they feel free to pop ‘round to have a word if they think something needs doing. Chai-Nuzz did not seem distressed by his wife’s suggestion she would have a word with Vauthry to soothe the “hard feelings” stirred up in the quest “Emergent Splendor”.

Pride: He has great pride in his ability to keep the SIn eaters under control, but doesn’t really display any vanity in himself. No portraits, statues, etc. When Alphinaud interfered with Kai-Shirr’s punishment, Alphinaud was told he’d be permitted to stay in the city if he made a painting – not a portrait of Vauthry, but of the city itself.

Sloth: We get it, Square, he’s fat and he sits down, moving the FUCK on. No actually, hold up, to be honest? As tired and :| as he looked all the time, he struck me as depressed. What guy in Paradise looks that haggard?

NOW moving on.

Envy: If my theory holds, probably plenty of unresolved envy for folks who are not “half Sin Eater”. Otherwise, I can’t think of an example here.

- “Ascension” (Sure thing, Jan)

This is only made reference to in the Weeping Warbler quest chain. “As all know, the sin eaters exist to devour the sinful. But also do they serve to gather the souls of the innocent, and shepherd them unto celestial paradise.”

Sin eaters ate a meal that represents the sins of a household you fool oh wait this is The First

The thing I don’t get here is - why are there obviously limitations on who can be ascended, and when? If the idea is strictly to feed the Sin Eaters, or make meol, or just be an asshole, why is this the only time we hear of it?

It’s like if there are no more mortals, Vauthry wouldn’t have that reassurance he is doing good anymore. Either that, or since he’s never worked in retail, he doesn’t know how to push features.

But I’m betting on the former.

- LASTLY: the hypocrisy of the writer’s narrative (and the fanbase).

Tesleen was our first and horrifying sample of what Sin Eater corruption can do to a human. No matter how strong her will may have been, she was just lost to it. She scratches madly at her face when she uses one of her attacks in Holminster Switch, as though trying to stop herself, or punish herself. But she can’t help it. And we know this.

Titania was a tragedy, had to be stopped. But, a TRAGEDY. Whatever was left of the benevolent ruler was corrupted. There was never a moment where our heroes went “dis binch just evil, they gotta go down”. ( I had many choice words for Titania when I wiped enough times to them, but no actual game dialogue really says it. )

We, the Warrior Of Light, came this close to becoming a Warden ourselves. Somehow it was stalled (convenience!), but there was never a question corruption = bad and out of our control.

Vauthry, on the other hand, is treated as though he is in full control of his faculties, although the corruption before birth makes that questionable at best and he pretty clearly is not? Even as he did that Exorcist neck-twist, no one was like “oh fuck, the Sin Eaters got to another one, damn that poor man”. (Which would seem a logical conclusion to me, I hate we have like zero real say in our characters’ reactions) Not even a “ahaha okay no seriously what the fuck is going on guys”. Nope. Their reaction was “EVIL”. Trying to help somehow was never on the table. Watching him die slowly at our feet was.

We saw the Echo of the real circumstance of his birth. It had to come from the Sin Eater that corrupted him, because he wasn’t out of the womb to see that scene play out. Or Emet-Selch. Either way, we saw it, yet at no time afterward do we try to bring the truth out. We just let everyone believe he was evil by choice, and not another casualty of this mess.

And remember earlier, how I said Alphinaud confirmed the free citizenry were not under Vauthry’s control until the fight? Remember the noblewoman whose husband went after their bonded servant, and so she tried to get the girl murdered?

Yeah, we catch up to that noblewoman who tried to murder her servant. She feels really bad about that now. And what is an option we get to tell her ex-bonded servant when she wonders how she could possibly trust the woman who tried to kill her?

“Vauthry’s society brought out the worst in people…”

Fffffffuck you Square lmao

TL;DR:

In private RP land? In private RP land, where we can back the fuck up in the timeline at will? You are damn skippy that Lightwarden got purged before it took complete hold. (an Aethertech did it with SCIENCE.) And Vauthry is cynical and scarred and bitter and broken and betrayed, but he’s not evil. If anything, he’s actually pretty relatably human. And he’s actually pretty damn glad his father’s shitty legacy is over.

#FFXIV #Vauthry #LONG ASS POST #Shadowbringers #I am so sorry Unna

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Spider-Man: Fake Red Chapters 1-3 Thoughts

Well this is new, in more ways than one.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted thoughts on a manga before, Spider-Man or otherwise.

I’ve read precious little of the medium so I’m not overly familiar with a lot of it’s tropes and mannerisms, thus my post here is coming at it from a mostly Western perspective. For instance I can’t honestly say if the art is good or bad or mediocre. It seemed fine to me. Apart from one action scene I could always tell what was going on and even in the action scene in question I simply might not have been experienced enough reading right to left to follow it all.

And of course we need to account for stuff being lost in translation. I am uncertain if the intention was truly to have as many F-bombs in this manga as wound up being there.

The highly serialized nature of manga can make doing posts like this difficult as you are so often seeing a tiny slice of the story. Truth be told I’m not sure if I will be doing more posts like this in the future at all, though I do intend to keep up with this manga when I get the chance, but it’s lower on the reading list after current 616 stuff.

Anyway how about the story.

The story is interesting.

Basically rather than being about Peter Parker it’s about this teenager called Yuu. He got into a good school but struggles to keep up with the work and also has no friends, as such he skips school at times to hang out at a bouldering gym where he can practice climbing which makes him feel like Spider-Man. One day after refraining from helping a fellow student getting beaten up in an alley he finds a discarded Spider-Man costume and upon examining it at home learns it is the real Spider-Man’s costume complete with web-shooters.

Whilst wearing it in public one time citizens mistake him for the real thing and direct him towards a burning building where he helps save a young boy. Later on after seeing a classmate called Emma (whom he has a crush on) perform a particularly difficult climb at his gym (and crashing hard when talking to her) Yuu again dons the costume when Emma is kidnapped by a group of criminals. He barely survives and the next day at school Emma notices Yuu has cuts on his arm just like Spider-Man did.

Whilst all this is going on Yuu is wondering where Spider-Man has gone and Mary Jane is doing the same about Peter Parker. Her worries are alleviated after getting a phone call from a mysterious individual who seems to be pretending to Peter whilst watching the real McCoy on a video screen. Peter is in fact wandering the sewers as Venom!

I found the story pretty interesting as an AU goes. A lot of that has to do with seeing a Japanese spin on Spider-Man but one that isn’t really reinventing the wheel for the character.

Spider-Man of course has a history of Japanese interpretations. The most famous is the 1970s TV version (referred to as Supaidāman) who beyond the suit and powers bore little resemblance to the canon character. But there was also Spider-Man from the Mangaverse (a 2000s imprint that tried to capitalize on the anime and manga boom of the early-mid 2000s) and even an older 1970s Spider-Man manga which I hear was pretty bad.

I’m only vaguely familiar with all three I must admit, but from what little I know what makes Spidey Fake Red stand out is that it is not attempting to portray the world of Spider-Man from Spider-Man’s own POV and reinventing who he is as a result.

Instead by having the protagonist be an original character (with certain vague similarities to early days 616 Spider-Man) the author Yusuke Osawa can present for us a version of Spider-Man that cuts closer to the 616 version whilst still allowing himself the freedom of embellishing the story however he wants.

In a sense Fake Red is more about the broad idea of Spider-Man as opposed to specific nuances of Peter Parker but it still uses those elements to add some sparkle and intrigue to the story.

This makes a lot of sense as, and maybe I’m wrong on this, the primary audience for this manga is Japanese people and their access to translated Spider-Man comic stories I imagine isn’t that great. I mean even in America and other primarily English speaking territories we don’t have legal access to the majority of Spider-Man issues, whether they be in trade or digital format. So I’d guess the average person likely to check out this comic in Japan probably doesn’t have just general knowledge about stuff like One More Day or Superior Spider-Man.

Jump back to the 1970s though and that state of affairs would be even worse. No internet, probably no translated Marvel comics at all and with Spidey being less than 20 years old and not yet the icon he is today you can see why the original manga and TV show opted to make something mostly different from the canon to essentially introduce the character to Japanese audiences.

In 2019 though that’s not the case. Thanks chiefly to the movies Spidey is a global icon to the degree that everyone has SOME knowledge about his lore even if it is via osmosis alone.

That’s the smart thing about how the manga plays with Spider-Man lore, it has some subtle winks to deeper lore for fans but mostly it uses stuff that just about everyone knows.

Peter Parker, Aunt May, her house, Mary Jane, Jameson, the Bugle, Venom. There is even a reference to the Life Foundation and the first shot seems to be evoking the famous Spider-Man 3 image of Spidey crying on the church.

All that stuff is either present in the majority of Spider-Man media, present in recent Spidey media (the Life Foundation was in Venom 2018) or present in famous enough Spidey media. The latter would be the Spider-Man 3 reference and not for nothing but Spider-Man 3 both broke box office records and had it’s premiere in Japan so maybe it was something Japanese audiences could be relied upon to remember well enough.

In a sense by being about the idea of being Spider-Man this manga is sort of similar to Into the Spider-Verse but still very, very distinct. Yuu lacks powers, Peter Parker isn’t dead but rather missing and is set up as at least one of the major antagonists of the story.

It’s all quite different and very interesting to most AUs...and it bears mentioning much more interesting than Abramazing Spider-Man has been thus far.

I think what’s most compelling to me is that we’re seeing in a sense a typical Spider-Man status quo but with the focus shifted onto a stranger. This isn’t reinventing Spider-Man as having a giant robot or as a kind of douchebag or as a sort of ninja. Spider-Man is mostly Spider-Man, he might not live in New York (it’s unclear where this is set) and the city might generally love him (which is a situation more to make Yuu’s journey dramatic) but it’s really not a million miles away from current Spidey or 1970s Spidey or Raimi movie Spidey even.

As such the drama I think lies less in just enjoying the insanity of something so far away from canon Spider-Man or seeing how the canon will be reinterpreted and more in the tension of knowing what Yuu is going to go up against.

And I don’t just mean Venom, because there is that mysterious guy impersonating Peter. I suspect it’s Mysterio, not just because he was in FFH but also because a street sign referenced ASM 13 which was his first appearance. And this would fit in with his abilities and M.O.

So yeah this was fun and I’d recommend checking it out.

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man: Fake Red #Peter Parker #venom #venom symbiote #venom 2018 #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #aunt may #may parker #mj watson #Mysterio #Spider-man 3 #Sam Raimi #Raimi Spider-Man

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chibivesicle · 5 years

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Golden Kamuy chapter 203. If only we could go back to the way it was before. . . .

. . . that is the way it was before Abashiri, before Karafuto, before chapter 137. I don’t have some cute tagline or phrase for this chapter instead it seems to call back a time in the story before things changed. Not that things drastically changed, just that a lot of the recent events had results that will impact several of the main cast members. The color cover for this week’s chapter really captures the idea of earlier times.

The color cover has Sugimoto, Asirpa and Shiraishi all running forward together and the only person with a current winter outfit is Asirpa with her hood that she’s been wearing since getting to Karafuto. Sugimoto’s facial scars are pre-Abashiri and Shiraishi is not wearing mittens or a hat etc. Everything about this cover gives the readers a sense of nostalgia about these three lovable [idiots] when their powers of silliness combine.

Since they’ve been reunited their powers of silliness have been lost. Too many things have happened to them and they have not talked about their feelings as a group either. I’ll get into that in a bit.

The chapter picks up with team Tsukishima pinned down by Vasily’s sniping skills. It is clear it must be early-ish in the day b/c an old man with a sled comes by and Tsukishima and Koito both yell at him to stop so he doesn’t get shot by a sniper.

But he’s able to slide on by and Tsukishima finally raises his cap again only for it to not get shot at this time. He simply states that Sugimoto managed to make it there. And by this point Tsukishima’s leadership of Sugimoto is pretty much shown to be let him run wild. And with that Asirpa is off to see if Sugimoto is okay. What is most interesting is that Tanigaki is still sweating and nervous but Asirpa is peeking over him just like when she was watching Ogata in 169. I love how Asirpa runs off, ignoring Tanigaki’s cry of “Asirpa!!” with her bow and arrows ready for action.

She’s sweating a little and a bit nervous but this is all out of concern for Sugimoto. The action turns to Sugimoto holding his bayonet towards Vasily while he inspects his artwork. He asks Vasily if he knows Ogata, did he tell him to attack them and impatiently asks were he is. But all we know so far is that Vasily is a very talented sniper and artist. With his various drawings of Ogata. Ogata wearing his cloak looking menacing, Ogata wearing the ushanka smiling, Ogata aiming his rifle to snipe, Ogata in profile looking pensive . . . I personally want to know how he got references for all of these Ogata poses? Does he have a photographic memory?

I also suspect that Vasily’s drawings of Ogata are a bit of word play since the kanji for cat and draw look almost similar. . . . I just put in the phrase draw a cat and this is what it looks like.

Sugimoto tries to question him in Japanese, but it is clear that Vasily does not understand, him so he uses his self portrait and the Ogata with the rifle sketch to demonstrate that they shot at each other and he got shot in the chin.

Vasily then reveals the rest of his sketches of the group, Shiraishi, Asirpa and Kiro so this means he got a good enough look at them with his binoculars to sketch them out. Sugimoto separates Shiraishi and Asirpa away from Kiro and Ogata to try to explain that they aren’t the problem that Ogata and Kiro are/were the problem. Ogata is the “bad one” as it results in some Ogata fist smashing camaraderie and Sugimoto very poorly tries to explain that Ogata shot him in the head, but Vasily thinks he’s drawing a spider (a reference likely to the Spiderman X Golden Kamuy thing). Sugimoto’s art skills really would even leave Bob Ross at a loss of a nice thing to say . . . Note that Sugimoto says that Ogata was working with Kiro and he shot Sugimoto and Nopperabou (not Wilk) which means Wilk never earned Sugimoto’s respect to be called by his given name. . ..

Sugimoto also tries to draw Ogata’s dramatic escape from the Russian hospital, with him naked on the horse with an arrow still stuck in his eye and the extra text of “ Ogata nigeta = Ogata escaped/fled”. It is interesting that he wrote this in kana for Vasily, who can’t understand what he’s saying anyways.

Sugimoto boldly declares that Asirpa shot Ogata with a poison arrow and he he doesn’t think she ment to do it so it ws his job to cut out the eye and save him. Things get more serious as he says he didn’twant her to be tainted by his death.

What I find to be the most important page of this chapter is this one where Asirpa almost enters the room. Sugimoto is explaining in Japanese to Vasily (who can’t understand a damn thing he’s saying) about Asirpa. Asirpa’s shadow is seen through the partially open sliding doors. She’s got her bow and it is clear she can hear what he’s saying and just a touch of her is visible her hair, fur cloak and shoe.

Sugimoto then goes on to explain that by Asirpa including him in the world with her, he feels that her seeing him is cleansing him in some way. Even though Sugimoto is sure he’s going to hell, he states he feels like he’s been saved.

Those are some mightly strong words and expectations to place on Asirpa. Therefore, he needs to protect her from doing bad things, like killing others (which she was doing a pretty good job of not killing others before he got involved) and that he feels like she has saved him.

The bottom part of the panel with the closeup on Asirpa’s face is so emotional. Some sunlight dramatically shines through but she does not look happy at hearing these words at all.

There is a sadness to this scene; her lips are turned down, her eyes look soft and disappointed. She’s gazing down at him from a distance. Even more so, she does not announce her presence to him, she does not run to him screaming “Sugimoto!”, she silently is watching him. Sugimoto’s facial expression is partially covered and it looks like his eyes are likely closed or barely open and he has a soft smile while he says these things. He’s okay with this arrangement but Asirpa is not. I may be as bold to state that Sugimoto has shown that their partnership is not equal, he will continue to sin and do bad things but it is okay b/c Asirpa is there to remain pure and save him. Asirpa has become his own religious idol to protect and worship.

The next page shows that the rest of the boys rushed after her as indicated by the little puffs (except for Koito, we know he’s a good sprinter). Asirpa then recognizes at him as one of the men from the border who were actively waiting to attack Kiro. Tsukishima is then able to take the lead in communicating with Vasily and explains that Kiro is death and Ogata has fled.

Tsukishima is trying to make it clear to Vasily that they are not involved with the apparent partisan activities and that their job was to rescue Asirpa. Some time later, they leave the place where Vasily was sniping from and the run into Shiraishi out on the street near their dogsleds.

Shiraishi is - pissed. He’s on crutches; this means that all alone he dragged himself to a doctor or hospital on his own to get treatment. He has much to say to Vasily, that he should confirm if a person is around before shooting someone in the leg. I find it very interesting here that Shiraishi does not tell Vasily to have confirmed that Ogata was around before shooting him, just that a person is around. Maybe this is a nuance in Japanese and the context that they are referring to Ogata is implied, but really, Tsukishima, Tanigaki, Koito and Sugimoto were all quick to put Ogata’s name to Vasily. Shiraishi does not do that. I wonder if Shiraishi was suspicious that the shooter was not Ogata? He has a pretty good read on people due to his friendly nature.

He also wants an apology from Vasily in Russian at least for shooting him. Tsukishima translates for Vasily. But Vasily reveals his wound implying that he’s unable to speak.

Based on Vasily’s removal of his facial shield/scarf and Shiraishi’s reaction it looks pretty bad. Shiraishi gives Vasily some good advice. He tells him to head back to Russia quickly and double insults him by calling him a “baka aho”. So double idiot, with the kanto baka for idiot and the kansai aho also for idiot. I wonder where Shiraishi is from? Did he pick this up from moving around in the prison system? Or does he just want to insult him double?

They leave Shisuka along a frozen river with lumber ready to be driven down the river in spring. I’m curious who the log drivers would be in this time period, local Japanese on Karafuto or other groups doing it? I’ve included an handy NFB video of log drivers in Canada. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8

Completely ignoring Shiraishi’s advice to give up on Ogata and head back to Russia, Vasily is following them at a distance on horseback. Shiraishi is nervous and concerned, we see him sweating. And Shiraishi has every right to be upset and concerned b/c the man fucking shot him. Now Vasily has stolen a horse to follow them in hope of running into Ogata.

Shiraishi wonders if he thinks they are still associated with the assassins who killed the Tsar (Sofia, Kiro, Wilk) and he wonders if Vasily thinks that they are lying. These are vaild questions for Shiraishi to ask since he knows more about Wilk, Kiro and Sofia than Sugimoto does.

Asirpa then takes command of the conversation as she thinks back to all of Vasily’s drawings that included all of them. She mentions that the pictures oft them were drawn on the back of the wanted poster for Kiro. She believes that this means that he’s no longer interested in Kiro.

Does this really imply that Vasily understands that Kiro is dead in the first place? - how the hell would he have known, Shiraishi is the one who buried him. I think drawing on the back of Kiro’s wanted poster just implies how obsessed Vasily is about Ogata and this beats his duty to kill Kiro (if they are lying).

What is the significance of her making this observation? Finding out that they were all drawn on Kiro’s wanted poster? Or is she curious about who made the original wanted poster or passed it along to the the border guards?

Shiraishi then chimes in to mention that what will happen if they are all together when/if they meet Ogata again will this help Vasily meet him as well.

Sugimoto thinks that Vasily will pursue Ogata until one of them is dead, b/c the idea is that “If I’m not dead, then I haven’t lost . . .” [the sniper battle]. Geez, who else seems to work with that very idea in mind? Sugimoto. Does Sugimoto have more in common with Vasily than he’d like to admit?

Interestingly, the page is split by a view of the tall conifers that they are traveling between in a clear cut area. This is a nice indication of a pause in the conversation as they continue to move. Asirpa finally speaks again but we can’t see her face. She wonders if Ogata will comes back?

Sugimoto is quick to reply that because she is the key to finding the gold it is quite possible Ogata will show up again. Asirpa’s first speech bubble is “. . . .” indicating that the really wants to say something but seems hesitant. She finally mentions that if she were the key to the gold, why would Ogata have pulled his rifle on her during their stand off? That implies he wanted to kill her.

Asirpa is beginning to wonder what Ogata’s reasoning for those actions were. Sugimoto has no reply and stoically looks forward with a bit of a frown.

On the next page he finally speaks, wondering if Ogata is just messing around with everyone. This is such a dramatic panel. A single text bubble surrounded by a clear cut path through the forest. With a single lynx crossing the trail in front of them leaving paw prints in the snow.

I first looked at this panel to decide if the lynx was behind them or in front of them. I’m reading it so that the lynx is in front of them. First off, there are no sled marks and husky paw prints in the snow before them, the lynx is leaving a clear path on fresh snow. In this very chapter we saw sled marks here:

The entire conversation between Asirpa, Sugimoto and Shiraishi revolves around meeting Ogata again - it does not make sense for him to be following them, instead with the language of meeting again, the lynx crossing their future path makes a lot more sense. Note that the lynx is completely perpendicular to their path, does this imply that he truly has a different goal than everyone else that intersects with them?

In chapter 169 he chose to follow Asirpa, Kiro and Shiraishi and separated from the lone lynx path.

I think it is safe to say that the lynx crossing the path before them implies that he will be back and it will be driven not by him following them but by choosing his own path that will reconnect with them.

On their way south, they stop by the lighthouse of the Russian couple who saved them during the snow squall/whiteout conditions.

Sugimoto is chatting with Asirpa while narrating the events. He states how the only person who knows the trush is Sofia, and he’d like to go to the mainland to talk to her . . . For some odd reason Sugimoto doesn’t ask Shiraishi or Asirpa about what they know about the plan . . . or about her. I wonder if this would be an excuse to keep running away for him. How would he even talk to her?

He states that Tsukishima had his own orders and he will follow them - bring Asirpa back to Hokkaido.

Tsukishima succeeds in delivering the letter from Svetlana to her parents as well as her photo. Her parents cry as they read it but they clearly appreciate Tsukishima’s actions going to the extent to make sure that Svetlana explained her actions to her parents. Her mother hugs Tsukishima in thanks and he responds in the most Tsukishima fashion possible; he looks awkward as she hugs him and he does not hug her back. But based on what we know about his own personal life and background he wouldn’t be much of a hugger to begin with. I think this is a good depiction of how he’d react.

Sugimoto then also states Tanigaki joined them to bring Asirpa back to Huci (no mention of Inkarmat or his revenge since that was between Kiro and Tanigaki only). Tanigaki is blushing a little and looks proud of what they’ve done so far as the woman hugs Tsukishima - is he thinking of his own family?

Oddly, he does not even mention Koito who blankly looks at them. Asirpa is speaking with Sugimoto up with the lighthouse lamp. She tells him that Kiro and Sofia were going to gather comrades on the continent and then come to Japan. She also makes it clear that Sofia is not the type of person to flee. She looks contimplative as she says this looking out and not facing Sugimoto.

The chapter then goes to a port town in Russia on the Sea of Japan. Some of Sofia’s men are getting beat up by Gansoku. She then steps in as their boss but he refuses to fight a woman. She proceeds to punch him several times and he loves it, so he agrees to duke it out with her. To show she’s serious she rips her dress open and the two of them begin to box, landing blows on each other. Again, she’s introduced to someone in part through her very large breasts - which I’m beginning to wonder if they are symbolic of the fact that she’s an incredibly strong woman. I’ve seen a lot of manga breasts over the years (oh so many manga boobs -_-) and hers, well, I read them as less sexual and more that they signify of her gender in society. It could just be that Sofia is a strong leader, but the focus on her breasts indicate that she has nothing to hide and she shows it all. I get this feminist “I am woman hear me roar” vibe from her. Hell, her breasts cover the ending text for the chapter.

When Sofia was introduced in chapter 169 her breasts were key to the reader learning that she mastermind of the Tsar’s assassination was a woman, not a man. The only other bare female breasts that have been shown in the entire series are: O-gin’s during her sex scene with Kei (which by the way, she’s topping him) and are normal looking; and the Uilta woman breast feeding a child (leading to a Shiraishi leering joke). But that’s about it for the bare breast related scenes (there are minor ones with coal miners and a few sex workers but really). . . I guess there is the scene in Yubari when Inkarmat is tied up and Cikapasi is making the odd breast comments but I’d prefer to ignore that instance since thankfully the Inkarmat related boob jokes decreased over time.

I hypothesize that Sofia’s breasts are symbolic as her role as a mother figure and a leader of others. Asirpa lost her mother young, Ogata as well, many of these characters need a mother, someone to take care of them and to love and accept them for who they are. It is clear in this manga that fathers expect their children to become something, but I’d say the role of a mother is to accept children.

Back to the chapter, Sofia has proven that she’s one tough woman and with all the rest of the men with her, she’s proving that she still has the support of her fellow men. This is critical, it indicates that Sofia will become more important as the story progresses. And at the very end she makes is clear that unlike Gansoku and Svetlana heading to St. Petersburg to make it big as crazy radicals running around - Sofia is heading to Hokkaido. Why? For her hopes for her revenge. The men who killed Kiro are going to be heading back to Hokkaido. Looks like she will be in search of the 27th and it will lead her to Tsurumi which will be more than interesting if they cross paths.

She visited the grave that Shiraishi made for Kiro here.

She tells him good bye, which is just so touching. The entire scene is so well done, her emotion is so evident that she’s upset that she lost him.

I think the focus on the makkiri is that I think she added an additional mark to it, there was one on the sheath but there is an additional one on the handle now. I need to go back and double check but, I think she’d be polite enough the make sure it is damaged for him. I know people had previously noted that the makkiri was already damaged during the story but it has more marks on it now.

Time for crazy theories and observations.

1.) The Golden Trio has changed and cannot go back to the way they once were.

Ever since Sugimoto, Shiraishi and Asirpa have reunited their interactions have felt forced, awkward or they aren’t being honest with each other. Shiraishi never abandoned Asirpa as Sugimoto asked, he did save Shiraishi on the drift ice but he never thanked him for staying with her. Asirpa almost gave Ogata the trust and acceptance he wanted via the code. Since reuniting, Sugimoto is bent on protecting her purity, she would not be the one to kill Ogata, she must keep her hands clean etc.

Shiraishi is a good friend to Sugimoto even though he was terrified he would kill him over being forced to work for Hijikata, but Sugimoto saved him from the 27th and that was when Sugimoto first told him to not abandon Asirpa.

Shiraishi is now in mourning over Kiro’s death. The only person who likely feels the same as him is Asirpa but she was in total shock about Kiro dying and shooting Ogata. He didn’t quite understand Kiro’s reasons or his cause but he was friends with him. Even though he was suspicious of Wilk’s death and Sugimoto’s “death” he went with Kiro b/c he was his friend and he trusted him. Even with Kiro and Ogata told him he could go, he stayed. By going with them, he did lead to Kiro’s death . . .

Add into this fact that no one let Asirpa try to save Shiraishi, and he had to take himself to the hospital to get treated while Sugimoto’s playing pictionary with Vasily totally cool with the fact that man sniped Shiraishi and now they are drawing together?

Asirpa is finally starting to look alive and she’s thinking. She’s no longer in shock, she was eating with the other kids with the Karafuto Ainu grandma, she was separted from the adults and is likely keeping her distance trying to figure out where she fits in. This chapter really highlights her awareness coming back, she recognizes Vasily as one of the border guards who shot at them and knew who they were. She also wonders what Ogata’s goal is, he pulled his rifle on her, but I think she knows it was more than just about her calling him a liar and untrusthworthy. Asirpa is smart, she likely finds Sugimoto’s answers do not give her what she’s looking for.

This chapter made me feel so sad about Asirpa. I think she disapproves of Sugimoto’s little monologue to Vasily about her staying clean even if it makes his hands dirtier. She doesn’t want him to do that.

This flashback/dream sequence in chapter 167 always made me wonder what it meant. It starts with Toraji wanting to go home, him a crybaby as a child leaving Umeko and their child behind. Did he actually tell Sugimoto he wanted to go home as he was dying on the sled?

It continues on to showing him brutally killing Russian soliders here. Dead Japanese lay before him, his boots move forward next to a single hand. A man aims his bayonet at him. A house is on fire, with dead horses and other bodies on the ground (is this referring to his own family home? Did he slaughter their animals when he burnt the house down and abandon it?) Or is this something he did during the war? He bayonets a man, he beats another man with a brick. Everything here is violence and fury.

The sequence continues with him stabbing another man up close. He looks like a monster, his eyes are white with a streak as blooed is everywhere. Then a voice says “Sugimoto” surrounded by light as Asirpa’s right hand touches his shoulder. Turns to face her, tears pouring out of his eyes before he thinks, “Asirpa” over only light.

Here it looks like Asirpa is Sugimoto’s savior, reaching out to quell his violence and calm him down with his bloody hands. When reading chapter 203, I immediately tied these two things together with this scene in the chapter. She has the light streaming down around her, but she looks so sad upon hearing that.

Asirpa appears both separated and above Sugimoto here, she looks down upon him with some disappointment and detachment. I think she doesn’t want him to sacrifice himself for her. I wonder if she begins to think about what Ogata said here in 187. This entire page serves as a soapbox for Ogata to question his view of pure people. Individuals that he believes were trained by their fathers to have a higher place in the world to lead the rest of them due to their purity. Until Ogata corrects me, I am under the feeling that Ogata believes that Wilk was raising her to be like his brother, just like Hanazawa. An individual who remains pure to wash away the sins of the rest in battle. He points out the hypocrisy of this, (if it is truly what Wilk intended). Now, of course she’s confused, he’s given her no context for his reasoning, the readers know that, but she doesn’t. Instead, in this moment Ogata is asking her if the Ainu icon must remain pure? He father taught her to do everything else but kill.

To test her purity he tells her to kill him b/c pure people do not exist and that she should kill him. She hesitates so he tells her that he shot her father. When she refuses to kill him after he makes his confession, he has no choice but to respond and he give it one last try to convince her to shot him, to threaten her back (which I don’t think he wanted to get it to this point, but he’s desperate).

Is he talking to Asirpa? Or Yuusaku? Or just to the universe in general? Maybe all three? Maybe none. Only Ogata knows who he is talking to. Now with things settling down and Sugimoto’s statements about Asirpa - I think it has started to get her to reflect on Ogata’s meltdown on ice. That shows here in this chapter . . . she doesn’t come out and say things exactly, but she suspects Ogata may have motivations besides the gold, personal motivations. I don’t think she’s realized he was upset by her rejecting him and choosing Sugimoto over him. But she knows that he was facing something else as well that day.

Sugimoto tries to keep it simple, if he wants the gold he needs her. But he threatened her which goes against him wanting the gold, so Sugimoto’s only answer is that he’s just messing around with everyone.

Based on Ogata’s personality that doesn’t make sense. He’s far too rational to just be like “Hey guys, I’m a wildcat so I need to stir some shit up! Nya!” Keep in mind just b/c Ogata’s motivations are still unclear, this chapter doesn’t mean he lacks motivations. If Ogata truly had no motivation he would have died by this point; he’s had enough close calls if he wanted to give up he could. Sugimoto’s statement about Ogata is through the filter of Sugimoto, who isn’t the best judge of Ogata to begin with.

I can’t shake the feeling that Sugimoto has more to his dislike of Ogata than we know yet. And myself among many others want to know about his backstory with Toraji - it has changed over time. The flashback/dream in 167 gave us more information than what Sugimoto starts out with in the beginning. I can’t shake the feeling that Sugimoto felt like he betrayed Toraji or something so now he gets his knickers in a bunch over Ogata betraying specifically but no one else.

There is so much tension between these three characters. I have a bad feeling about things. I can’t get it out of the back of my mind that Asirpa will separate from the group looking for answers or Sofia. Asirpa is back to being more proactive, showing more emotion and she’s thinking about things now with some distance from events. Really, the “Golden Trio” as many people call them is a giant mess. . .

2. Sofia is the mother all of these lost children are looking for.

Yep, I’m back to Sofia’s breasts and the fact that I think they symbolize that she is the mother many of these characters are missing. The fact that she called Kiro a kid more than once, when he sent her the letter in prison with the milk ink and when she was at his ice grave. This casual language that she uses with him to me implies that Sofia and Wilk were older than Kiro and saw them as such. Even though his death revealed to us that he loved her, Wilk was the one she was romantically interested in. When the Siberian tiger attacks the men, she’s the one who is able to ride it yet she gives it the space it needs. Yes, people consider it bad luck to kill one but she also took a much more soft stance on the tiger - live and let live. Her approaches thus far from what little we’ve seen are much more similar to Ogata - don’t waste effort killing when it is not necessary. Lastly, even her name implies she has more on the rest of the cast, her name literally means “wisdom”. She has to lead others with her wisdom then.

Asirpa - She needs to talk to Sofia more. Being raised by Wilk and her Huci meant she has some female love but not her mother’s love. Asirpa has been raised like a boy for the most part; going back to the idea that the fathers in this manga raise their “sons” to fulfill roles; e.g. Koito’s older brother and Koito himself now, Hanazawa with Yuusaku, Asirpa etc. The problem is talking to Sofia, her Japanese is terrible, we know she can speak Russian and French.

Who will be the translator for her? For Russian it could be Ogata or Tsukishima. Since Tsukishima is one of the men who shot Kiro and based on his dramatic escape, I think Ogata would be the likely candidate. For French, I’m hedging my bets on Koito - @goldenkamuyhunting brought up a long time ago that all officers could speak a foreign language. We know he doesn’t speak Russian, English wasn’t popular enough yet, so the likely options are French or Chinese. Since Koito’s motorbike was a gift to him from his father’s acquaintance in France, I’d bet they are French and he can speak French. We still have the problem of Koito killing Kiro as well, but now that Koito is suspicious of Tsukishima, maybe he’ll go to her in search of answers. . .

Ogata - This man needs a “real” mother to care and accept him as is. His own mother ignored him in the hopes Hanazawa would come for her. He got his mental wires crossed with Asirpa; sometimes he let her mother him but she’s not a mother, she’s a child.

They can easily speak Russian together and he may want to seek revenge for Kiro. Ogata may have disagreed with some of Kiro’s methods and end goals but I think he respected the guy. Keep in mind that when Ogata thought Tanigaki killed Tamai and Co. he was very very upset about this. He pursued this twice, first when he tried to snipe Tanigaki and then when he followed him in the swamp. Ogata put a lot of emotion and effort into things, he clearly cared about Tamai at least and resolving things.

Yes, Ogata shot Wilk, but clearly Kiro gave him a reason that would lead him to do it in the first place. I think this will be a discussion between him and Sofia. Ogata has a lot of information. Information about Tsurumi, about the 27th, the people the locations. If he teams up with Sofia, she will have a greater advantage, one that Sugimoto lacks since Tsukishima and Koito aren’t going to give him intel he needs about the 27th.

Koito - If Sofia can reconcile her differences with Koito in regards to killing Kiro, I think they can have many important discussions. Koito’s a good solder and loyal to a fault. She may see that he’s become disillusioned b/c he spent all these years in awe of Tsurumi, willing to do anything for him only to realise he’s the man who resulted in his kidnapping and childhood trauma. If she accepts that he did what he did following Tsurumi’s orders she may give him a pass. He’s a rich kid like her, the kidnapping may have given him trauma, but it did not change his attitude towards others e.g. commoners. Koito has yet to really understand why Ogata would have called him a rich brat in the first place (twice!!).

Koito has struggled with leadership since he was first introduced being pushy and impulsive. I think Sofia could be a steady hand to guide him. He needs someone who went from being an elite to working with anyone and everyone. Right now that is where he’s stuck. He can order people to do things but he always thinks about how it will impact him and what Tsurumi would think of him. Sofia doesn’t just think about herself, she thinks of others. I really really hope she can talk to him.

I also hope she can bring resolution between Ogata and Koito. Those two need to get over their dislike of each other - I wish Ogata would at least see that Koito wasn’t groomed to do exactly what father says without question. Now that he’s planted a seed of doubt about Tsurumi, I think if Koito does turn on him, Ogata needs to let go and accept that Koito got there on his own.

Tsurumi used his fatherly charm on Koito to be his savior and reconnect with his own father. But Tsurumi’s fatherly mentorship is all about shaping these men into what they become for him; Ogata, Tsukishima, Koito, Usami etc. I want more of Ogata’s backstory to see how he worked his fatherly magic on him. All of these men changed b/c of Tsurumi’s influence on them. He didn’t accept them and love them as is, he changed them for his own needs and goals.

Shiraishi - the next time Sofia sees him, I want her to give him a big hug. When he comes into contact with her large womanly chest, he will go into bliss and reach a new level as he becomes catonic. She would not have escaped if it were for his skills. He’s been a good ally to her and he buried Kiro. Shiraishi is a good guy. I think she would be able to give him that respect.

Sugimoto and Tanigaki - With Sugimoto’s strength as shown through his encounters with Ushiyama and Gansoku, I think Sugimoto will want to brawl with her. I want her to kick his ass. Tanigaki’s entire reason for going to Karafuto was to pursue Kiro to kill him over Inkarmat for revenge. If she finds out he was there for revenge for a woman he loved and didn’t stay with her when she was in critical condition . . . Sofia can seek revenge for Kiro, she has no one to leave behind, and alone with Tsurumi like Tanigaki left Inkarmat.

I see only one option for these two men. Sofia gets a wooden spoon. She proceeds to spank them with it.

Sugimoto and Tanigaki are both acting on the behalf of women/girls; Umeko and Asirpa and Inkarmat. None of these women asked them to do the things they are doing. Sofia enlighten them please!

Tsukishima - I don’t know what I want Sofia to do with him. Sometimes I’m afraid he’s too far gone and accepting of his role in Tsurumi’s plans. Unless she’s able to tell him her role wiht Hasegawa and he figures out he was Tsurumi. Again, if she can get over the fact he shot Kiro maybe? I’m worried about Tsukishima again - I was hoping he’d be more questioning of Tsurumi but maybe he’s just too far set in his resignation to his fate?

#golden kamuy #golden kamuy meta #gk meta #chapter 203 #asirpa #sugimoto saichi #ogata hyakunosuke #tsukishima hajime #tsurumi tokushirou #tanigaki genjirou #koito otonoshin #vasily #Shiraishi Yoshitake #sofia #kiroranke

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necropsittacus · 4 years

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fuckoff long post about my skeksis language thoughts below the cut. i ought to do more with this but it’s been sitting in my files for a couple months now and i want to Show People

-i've talked about this hc on here before, but i like it enough to repeat. the existence of names like skekmal and skekvar indicate that they have some means of producing labial consonants with a beak (presumably the skeksis can pronounce their own names. also, while i am very fond of assuming the same "this is translated from what they're actually saying" conceit tolkien uses applies to tdc, it seems unnecessary and overly complicated to assume anything of the sort about *character names,* especially ones that don't sound like real-world names to start with. i am going to assume unless told otherwise that those are their actual in-universe names and not "translated" for human benefit). my favored solution is that they have syrinxes like a parrot’s rather than humanoid vocal apparatus.

-there are separate extant skeksis and gelfling languages. (evidence for this: the skeksis were straight up originally supposed to speak their own language in the movie. "shadows of the dark crystal" has a comment about how well skekso speaks gelfling. also, "shadows of the dark crystal" does some things with speech patterns for the skeksis, which i will get into below and which, with the possible exception of chamberlain and novels!hunter, make most sense to me to treat as second language difficulties--i have a hard time seeing, say, emperor deliberately speaking ""wrongly"")

one might expect that the skeksis, being the way they are, would install their own language as the official or state language. given that "shadows of the dark crystal" specifies that skekso's accent in the Gelfling language is pretty good, in a scene taking place in the castle ("his voice sounded almost cultured, his accent in the gelfling tongue much more perfected than the stilted broken phrases of the Chamberlain" (*shadows of the dark crystal* 202)), i'm assuming that *isn't* the situation, and for whatever reason they're using Gelfling for state business. given the skeksis in general, that sure isn't out of a sense of benevolence.

one option: the skeksis treat their language as a Special In-Group Thing that they don't want to use with or maybe teach to outsiders. it's become essentially a ritual thing (which might in itself warrant an explanation as to how that came about, tbh), or they do use it for casual purposes but only among themselves, something like that.

another option: there's some specific reason the skeksis lang would be impractical as a state language--i think the most likely thing for this is that there's some aspect(s) of the skeksis lang that are just anatomically difficult or impossible for gelflings to produce, perceive, or both (my initial thought was just "they might have sounds a gelfling doesn't have the right anatomy to make," influenced by the syrinx idea, but tbh going with that same idea i think like, crows, have fairly nuanced signals that we might just hear as "caw" across the board, so a species with both that sort of vocal anatomy and their own language could conceivably have nuances of sound difference a different species wouldn't Pick Up On, either?)

and these aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, either

-name vs title: (this is as much my friend skye's (@deerpunk) idea as mine, so i don't want to take full credit for it) using a skeksis's personal name vs their title is a formality distinction pretty similar to the T-V distinction, except that, due to the skeksis being How They Are, the more positive familiarity/intimacy sense has been lost in most contexts, for most skeksis, and most of what's left is the insult sense. (there are some exceptions to this: skekvar to skeksil, when he's decided he trusts him, maybe skeklach and skekok (although that strikes me as half-jokingly rude friendship, so it could be both tbh), skekmal's death--and that could be a breaking down of formality expectations because the situation is so dire.) because strength, respect, ornamentation, dignity are so important to the skeksis, using someone's title to refer to them is the default, and using a personal name is specifically marking something. this is also why we very rarely see anyone call emperor "skekso" (with the exception of, to the point i’ve gotten to in the novels at the time of writing, skeksa and skekmal--and those two seem more likely to talk back to skekso anyway tbh)--it would just be rude as hell and there might be consequences

it's also of immense interest to me that at one point in "shadows of the dark crystal," skekmal refers to emperor as "so." i have not seen this kind of shortening anywhere else. it's either a peculiarity of skekmal, which would check out, given how weird his speech patterns generally are in that book, or an additional level of informality, which presumably no one but skekmal has the guts to *use* (especially for skekso holy shit).

-"shadow of the dark crystal" gives several skeksis specific fucky speech patterns (presumably in the gelfling language), *besides* what's going on with chamberlain, which i think can mostly be attributed to like. Chamberlain. chamberlain has multiple scenes in AOR where there are only other skeksis present (so i think it’s a fair guess that they’d be using the Skeksis language), and his speech patterns are just as weird, in the same ways, as when he’s talking to gelfling.

so what i'm saying about this is mostly discounting chamberlain, although i will say that the “using the same weird speech patterns in sentences that are in-universe presumably in skeksis and gelfling” thing, to me, suggests maybe that he actually has a different kind of fucked up speech pattern across languages, and it’s being “translated” as the same for the benefit of the viewers (i would guess the skeksis and gelfling languages don’t have exactly the same grammar; i would also guess that chamberlain talking kind of weird is, as iirc the wiki suggests, a deliberate choice meant to project a certain image). it’s also interesting that from the very little information i have just from “shadows of the dark crystal,” chamberlain does not make the same errors as emperor (possibly he actually speaks gelfling fairly well and is playing up “oh look at poor harmless chamberlain, i don’t speak your language too good, be nice to me :)” ?)

i'm going to talk about *shadows of the dark crystal*!skekmal separately, since his speech patterns, as mentioned above, are kind of wild and have some commonalities with both chamberlain and the other skeksis in the book. i feel it necessary to distinguish novels skekmal from aor skekmal, who talks normally if a bit melodramatically. (also i'm getting the impression they have slightly different personalities, from what i've seen so far, but that's not relevant to this monstrosity of a post)

i am going to list the weird sentences individually in a bit here. the most notable oddities (discounting chamberlain and hunter) are copula omission, verb number agreement (possibly person, too, but english has so little verb agreement that that's hard to judge); "gelfling" being pluralized as "gelfling," which i think is common enough in tdc but in combination with the previous point made me wonder about pluralization errors? the omission of definite articles, and some odd word order stuff that could also be taken as sheer pretentiousness

copula omission:

"gelfling the ones that do the fixing" (202)

"gelfling causing problems for us, lord skeksis (202) ("lord skeksis" there also feels odd to me; i think i would have expected a definite article, and maybe a different word order)

"all gelfling traitors" (211)

verb agreement:

"we love gelfling, we do, we loves them" (203)

"after all skeksis does for you! gelfling came here just to tell such lies!" (211)

misc:

“daughter-soldier” (202) is not egregious but a bit odd

“yes?” to end a wh-question (202)

"silverling is sounding like a traitor herself" (212)

"see the crystal herself" (214) is not terrible but feels a Little weird

“we care not”

hunter: (not sure whether to even count this for Skeksis Speech Oddities because his speech patterns are SO wild)

"skeksis tower"

also drops first person subject pronoun (222)

"end this now, skekMal will do" (222) -- third person for himself, weird word order

omission of third person subject pronoun also

consistent omission of articles, except "skekTek the Scientist"

"not if skekMal make and take it for *himself*" - verbal agreement error

"what we does with Gelfling" - verbal agreement error

more subject pronoun omission and verb agreement errors- "silverling wanted to know what we does with gelfling. wanted to see for itself...got what it deserves" (222)

"hard to fight while carrying stone" (225) - this is okay but feels kind of weird (at least personally i’d probably say “it’s hard to fight…” in this context)

skektek also omits subject pronouns (238)--"gets to see the crystal *now*"

we don't see skektek omit first person, which is interesting; i’m taking that as essentially a characterization thing--it makes sense to have skektek in particular emphasizing his own presence and relevance

"skeksis taking care of it, taking care of gelfling" - past progressive expressed as simple progressive with no copula (243)

"how's skeksis to protect little gelfling when crystal cracked?" - agreement error, article omission (243)

"when growing old? growing weak?" (243) - omission of both subject pronoun and copula

negative concord--"not one with nothing"--(245)

"where the one with wings" (248) - copula omission

"skekmal smells 'em" (248)--is this the first place we get a potentially animate pronoun used for a gelfling by a skeksis? and it's plural?

"what says gelfling"

"gelfling wings comes fluttering out to save it" (248)--with "it" being gurjin, presumably, since skekMal would be unable to grab naia since he doesn't know exactly where she is. so this would be "gelfling wings comes fluttering out to save gurjin;" "gelfling wings" could be interpreted as "gelfling with wings" or "gelfling's wings" with about equal workability in this sentence--"gelfling with wings comes fluttering out to save gurjin" or "gelfling's wings come fluttering out to save gurjin"--Gurjin takes it as the second ("gelfling wings fly her to ha'rar")

"skekMal kills this one, then it kills the others" (249)--skekMal using not only third person, but inanimate third person, to refer to himself. skekMal using third person like this could be taken as meaning that referring to yourself in the third person either has a different connotation than in english (i tend to think of it as sort of childlike or cutesy, and skekMal is REALLY not that), and most likely different connotations for skekMal doing it than chamberlain doing it, or this is just a really weird take on him.

also, I’ve mostly been assuming the skeksis using “it” for gelfling is just a “they don’t see gelflings as fully sentient” thing, but that can’t really apply to skekMal; i wonder if the skeksis language doesn’t have a pronoun animacy distinction, or it doesn’t work the same way as in english, and they’re just Worse about remembering to use the right ones for gelfling, because of the “not seeing gelflings as people” problem?

you could take that farther and say the skeksis language, or maybe the urskeks? don't have third person pronouns at *all;* (at any rate, my personal headcanon has always been that they didn't originally have gendered pronouns, or really gender at all per se, and skeksa and (probably) skeklach (and by extension presumably their urru counterparts) just heard this "she" and "woman" thing from non-skeksis and went "yeah i want that")

also this could have relevance to chamberlain and novels!skekmal using third person for themselves so much

my friend skye, mentioned above, took this and suggested the skeksis lang is grammatically similar to japanese, in connection with the urskeks being super collectivist, which i like. It would also jive with the verbal agreement and pluralization errors, inconsistent use of articles, and copula omission.

this post may be updated with more novels stuff later on, because This Is What I’m Doing With My Major I Guess.

#txt #tdc #long post

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ohmystarsy · 4 years

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marsza

replied to your post

“I’ve just downloaded “Baptism of Fire” in English, half of curiosity,…”

That is SO interesting to hear- translation really is an art and a talent of its own. I’m always so curious about the nuances that are lost when things are translated. I’d love to learn more about what differences you find!!

translation really is an art!

(this is going to be REALLY long, sorry; I’m hiding this under read more)

I know nothing about linguistics, but what I noticed so far in English translation is that while it almost literally translates the meaning of each sentence (and it does it pretty well I must admit, and the story is still fun and enjoyable), it is using only modern vocabulary. What I really like about Sapkowski’s style - and I’ve already written about it - is that it kinda reminds me of our great writer Sienkiewicz who wrote epic historical fiction in 19th century. Sapkowski combines modern, archaic and colloquial Polish words, grammar and way of telling the story and he does it masterfully in my opinion. It’s a really weird, unique mix; some characters (like Geralt or sorceresses) speak like modern people would, while others (like Milva I mentioned) speak this rather archaic language that we associate with countryside and - let’s say - folklore. Also there are times where he just drops such a bomb in the middle of a sentence, just a word or two that you just wouldn’t EXPECT in fantasy genre (my fave from this book - and that one actually works in English almost as well as in Polish - is “[The witcher] was looking at the cormorants sitting on the shit-covered tree.” which is funny as hell - especially in context bc Geralt is brooding romantically again - and if you ever saw cormorants they ALWAYS sit on the shit-covered trees, it’s just that mental image that is just right. But then the word used in Polish for “shit-covered” is much cruder than that and for some reason it makes that sentence even funnier idk). And surprisingly all those three types of words coexists very well!

So when I read English translation it just misses this additional level. For example there is a dialogue where Milva says in English “Go to hell”. In Polish we say “Go to devil” (”Idź do diabła”), and normally I would be ok with not translating an idiom literally, BUT additionally Milva uses archaic word for the devil, which is “bies” (”Idź do biesa”) and that has just completely different feeling than English “Go to hell”!

Or let’s take the very first sentence of the book. In English it’s “Birds were chirping loudly in the undergrowth.” Nice. Poetic almost? In Polish it’s much shorter and to the point and the word that is translated as “chirping loudly” is 1) one word (no adjective), 2) a colloquial one which makes the sentence much stronger (in my opinion). Also the structure of the sentence is reversed - in English it’d be literally “In the undergrowth were chirping loudly birds” - but I guess you just can’t do that in English (Polish has rather loose sentence structure and depending on the effect you want to have, you just move words around - so that reversed structure here also makes the sentence stronger).

I’ve only skimmed through my favourite scenes tbh (at this point I know this book almost by memory lmao, it’s my favourite one), and mostly it’s what I mentioned above (lack of archaic or colloquial language), but also what I found curious is the translation of some Polish idioms and sayings (and I haven’t realised till now that Sapkowski uses so many of them!). My fave one is the scene with higher vampire who talks about his addiction to blood and how he overcame it, quite like an alcoholic. In English the dialogue goes like this: “I noticed I could manage without them [parties and company]. Blood was all I needed, was all that mattered, even when it was…” “Just you and your shadow?” “Worse than that. I don’t even cast one.” And ok that’s maybe funny (is that some idiom in English?), BUT in Polish we have this saying of “drinking to the mirror” which is just euphemism of drinking heavy liquor alone (it's considered bad taste even in Poland hence the mirror so you at least have your own reflection for company). So in Polish the dialogue goes like “I noticed I could manage without them [parties and company]. Blood was all I needed, was all that mattered, even if I was…” “Drinking to the mirror?” “Worse that that. I don’t reflect in mirrors.” which is HILARIOUS idk it’s like this saying was just created specifically to exclude vampires from it, poor creatures!!!

Again, I don’t want to criticise the translation of this book (or at least… not so much, I wish they did better job on speach mannerisms though) and I KNOW there’s no way all that meaning and feel could be translated 1:1 especially as English and Polish are from different language families and Polish is much more poetic than English in my opinion. It’s just always interesting to compare the original and the translation and I’ve never done this with Polish-to-other-language ones, so… sorry for writing so much.

#marsza #im sorry i wrote this post and now i dont even know whats the point #but i hope you will find it at least a little interesting!#also hope that you are all doing okay over there!!!#reply #kasia talks about the witcher

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breabroad · 6 years

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How I talked to my Japanese students about gun control

Japan is famous for its near lack of guns. Gun culture doesn’t exist; gun control isn’t a debate but a fully-realized set of laws. In fact, my coworkers were disproportionately fascinated by my dad’s 3D printer because in Japan 3D printers are regulated—or else someone could 3D-print a functioning gun and bullets. That’s how serious these guys are that no one should be armed.

So, when I covered my unit on American politics with my advanced English class and needed a topic for next lesson, my mind leapt to guns. My students knew of the shootings in the US—hell, they had their own famous incident a decade or two back, where a Japanese student was shot and killed in an American suburb while trying to trick-or-treat—but I correctly assumed that not one of them would understand why gun ownership was even tolerated in America.

I spent a couple of days brainstorming lesson ideas. I was dreading the idea of the classic “should gun control happen” debate, knowing fully well what every student would argue for. I wanted them to get a sense of how urgent the debate was, and to give them at least an inkling of both sides.

In my googlings about gun control pros and cons, I stumbled on an article about shooter drills. I knew immediately what I needed to do.

My advanced class normally has fifth period in the computer room and sixth period in an adjacent classroom, because the computer teacher teaches sixth period. On the day of the gun control lesson, I shepherded my students directly into the sixth period classroom.

“There’s a reason we’re here,” I explained by way of introduction, “but I’ll tell you later.”

We set about discussing the homework. Here was the question I asked them:

Person A thinks that if she wants, she can own a gun; the government can’t take the gun away from her. Person B thinks that guns are dangerous, and everyone should take a test before they buy a gun. Which person do you agree more with? Why?

I asked my students to compare answers in partners and groups, and after a few minutes I asked for a show of hands. Every student in my class of nineteen agreed with Person B.

I nodded. “I thought so,” I said. “So today, we’re going to talk about why Person A exists.”

In our previous class on American politics, I’d had to simplify things a lot. Teaching complex topics in a foreign language doesn’t allow for much nuance. I mostly stuck to the political parties and their demographics. One of the key takeaways was that Democrats tended to live in the city (not unlike my suburban Tokyo students) while Republicans often lived in the countryside. From that point—after a quick run-through of new vocabulary and terms—I launched off.

“Meet Dave,” I said, showing the first name and photo of a conservative author I’d read from while preparing my lesson. “Dave lives in the countryside. Do you think he’s Democrat or Republican?”

“Republican,” a student muttered after realizing I was actually going to use last lesson’s material today.

“You’re probably right. So let’s think about Dave’s life. His neighbors are maybe a kilometer away. The police are very far away. If something bad happens to Dave’s house, the police can’t come quickly. So, Dave needs a gun.”

I changed my powerpoint slide to show a can being shot, an enormous elk and the hunter who shot him, and a bear trying to break into a cabin’s kitchen. I talked about how guns are used for protection, hunting, and even fun.

“But there’s a problem,” I said with a new slide. “Dave moved to the city. In the city, guns don’t protect you. You can’t hunt in the city. In the city, guns are only for killing people. So, why should Dave keep his gun?”

I went over a few conservative counterarguments to gun control, and I think I lost my students a bit there. But that was okay—this was only the first part of my lesson.

I set my students at ease with a few fun facts and stories—like how my brother accidentally shot our TV with a beebee gun—before getting into the part I was most nervous to pull off.

“Our school has fire drills,” I explained. “When I was in high school, we had fire drills too. But we also had shooter drills.”

I showed them a one-minute segment from a news special on high school shooter drills. They saw how it was to huddle with the lights off, and they saw a glimpse of the administrator with a fake gun screaming in the halls. Then I walked them through what I remembered: close the windows, cover and lock the doors, turn out the lights, huddle against the wall, be silent. A few students put it together before I said it, but a ripple of murmurs still went out when I told them:

“Today we’re not in the computer room. We’re in this classroom—because we’re going to practice a shooter drill.”

I couldn’t quite place the expression on their faces. Some of them looked nervous, some of them shocked to the point of laughter. Some of them, I could have sworn, were excited—at the very least to get out of their seats.

I relayed instructions: the six students closest to the window would help me close the curtains, my co-teacher K-sensei would get the lights and lock the doors, and together we would crouch against the wall and keep quiet until I gave them a signal.

When I said “go”, I could only hear the sound of scraping chairs. I helped the students with the curtains and checked the doors, and made a show of placing K-sensei next to one door and myself next to the other. It wasn’t until I was huddled with my students that I realized how little giggling there’d really been, and how utterly silent they were. I counted down from ten with my fingers, all the while hoping I hadn’t scared them too badly.

I murmured “okay”, and that broke the spell. The students began chatting with expressions of intrigue and relief. I showed them a quick video of some teacher training—in the news special, teachers were learning to throw items at attackers and disable them with wrestling moves—and then gave them an early break. I spent the whole break talking with K-sensei, who wanted to know all the logistical details of the drills I’d had in school.

We spent the second half of class talking in groups and then as a class. With the shooter drill out of the way, I was free to ask them more specific questions. Here was the set I used:

How did you feel when you did the shooter drill?

After this drill, what do you think about America?

Do you think this drill will help you, if there’s a shooter in the school?

Should American schools have shooter drills? (Are they too scary, or are they useful?)

Should teachers be given guns to protect students?

I prefaced the last question by saying that Trump had proposed it.

After fifteen or so minutes of preparation, I began drawing names from a hat—three or four names per question, so everyone in the class would speak at some point. Most students reported that they were nervous about the shooter drill, but some recognized that it was only fake. Nearly all of them said having the drill was better than not having it.

But the real fun was in the last question, where I set aside a full seven student names to gauge opinions. Three students were all for arming teachers—fascinating, given the Japanese stance on guns that they’d been raised with—but three others raised the argument that the teachers’ gun might fall into the wrong hands. I hadn’t given them that idea, although plenty of articles raised the same point; they came up with that concern by themselves. The tiebreaker was a girl who’d worked with one of the pro-gun students and therefore written exactly the same opinion.

I was remarkably pleased with the lesson. Not only had I seemed not to scar my students, I’d gotten some of them to disagree with others on a topic that Japan is famously agreed upon. There was so much more I could have done—not least of all trying for more nuance or debate—but I still ended that lesson grinning.

An hour or two later, I ran into two English club students, one of whom had been in my class that day. Her friend was complaining that she doesn’t get to be in our lessons, and to dissuade her, I turned to the girl who was in my class.

“Today’s lesson was serious, wasn’t it?” I asked. “It wasn’t all fun.”

“Fun,” she countered immediately. She struggled a bit and turned to her friend, who translated.

“She says it’s the most interesting lesson you guys have ever had.”

#anecdote #lesson plan #june 2018

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woodworkingpastor · 4 years

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O Come, O Come, Immanuel Isaiah 26:1-8 First Sunday of Advent, 2019

Lighting the first Advent candle Dan Lubbs, Isaac Hernandez

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer

our spirits by thine advent here.

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadow put to flight.

We light this first Advent candle as a sign of our persistent hope that Jesus the Messiah has come and will come again!

We rejoice—even as we wait and work—in anticipation of Godly things yet to be revealed.

Hope when there seems to be no hope

In 1977, the world was introduced to Star Wars, a film which brought us some of the most popular movie characters of all time: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader and others have captured people’s imaginations for 42 years now, and many are eagerly awaiting the release of Star Wars Episode IX where the storyline of the Skywalker family will be completed.

One of the strange things about Star Wars: A New Hope is its beginning; we are obviously picking up the story in the middle. The film begins with a little ship being fired upon by a bigger ship; then Darth Vader boards the little ship to search for the plans to the Death Star, while Princess Leia hurriedly hides those plans inside R2D2, before putting the droid and C3PO in an escape pod and launching them to the desert planet of Tatooine, where the droids almost immediately head off in separate directions and are soon captured by Jawas, to be sold to the local moisture farmers.

Star Wars is a great story, but it always felt like it was missing something. On December 16, 2016, that something was provided in the movie Rogue One. In the Star Wars universe, this movie is set in the days and then moments leading up to A New Hope. We’re introduced to a new set of characters and the necessary backstory: Galen Erso was one of the leading engineers in the design and construction of the Death Star, but his heart is with the rebellion. So he makes a choice: he works for the Empire but designs a flaw deep within the Death Star. He gets word of this flaw out to his long-lost daughter, Jyn, who leads a team to capture the plans to the Death Star.

You realize something very early on in Rogue One: none of these characters will make it out alive. On one level, that was an inevitable choice; as none of them were in the movies 40 years ago, their story lines had to end. The writers literally had no choice. But it also makes sense within the story itself. The Empire is so powerful, and the Rebellion so fragile, that the attempt to capture the Death Star plans really has no chance of succeeding; all the rebels have is hope. One of the most powerful quotes from the movie comes right before the final battle begins, when Jyn tells her team: “If we can make it to the ground, we’ll take the next chance. And the next, on and on until we win, or until the chances are spent.” They knew that the only thing they had on their side was hope, and so the band of rebels, against all odds, steal the plans to the Death Star, paying for that hope with their lives.

That investment makes this scene from Star Wars: A New Hope all that more significant.

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Rogue One gives the context to understand this scene; it is one of the most hope-less points of the entire Star Wars story. The Empire has ruled ruthlessly for 20 years; several major battles were fought just days before to have a chance at destroying the Death Star. And here, the fate of the rebellion turns on a small red and white droid whose malfunction enabled R2D2 to go home with Luke Skywalker. Of course, we know the rest of the story: Luke and R2D2 find Obi-wan Kenobi, the Death Star is destroyed, and hope shined a bit brighter. But in this moment, there is as close to no reason to find hope as could be imagined.

The nerve of that preacher

All of that is to help us have a chance at grasping the significance of today’s Scripture: “On that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah:” (Isaiah 26:1a). Isaiah had some nerve with this message, standing up in front of a group of people and encouraging them to live by the expectations of another day, even while others are dictating the terms for how we are to live on this day.

Isaiah had nerve preaching this sermon because his congregation had eyes and ears and minds of their own. They had eyes to look out the windows of their homes and see that their world looked nothing like what God had promised their ancestors. They had ears to listen to the news when it came to them and hear the tidings of suffering and loss and separation. They had minds that could remember what it was like when Jerusalem was destroyed; memories of family members that were now either dead or separated from them in exile; memories to remember what they had been taught about being the people of God.

But here stands Isaiah, telling them about “that day;” asking them to hope for a day which they will never see, but to live their lives as if it’s coming anyway, a day when God will ultimately set things right, when the righteous will enter into God’s presence. And so Isaiah says for the people, “In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you” (Isaiah 26:8).

God’s people in this portion of the Old Testament know a lot about waiting. So much so, in fact, that Old Testament Hebrew has twelve different words that can be translated “wait,” with a whole host of nuance in their meaning. Some of these words simply mean to “wait,” with no other real context. It’s the kind waiting we do at the doctor’s office or the DMV. But other words—and especially the Hebrew word here in verse 8—refers to waiting that has a purpose. We are waiting, because something better is coming, or is at least possible. Maybe we’re waiting for a piece of news, maybe we’re waiting for someone’s arrival; maybe we’re waiting for an event. We may not be sure of will happen or if it will happen, but for Isaiah the invitation to wait begins to transform into hope. We have reasons to invest ourselves in a certain promise.

To believe in hope, however, means to accept a risk. We again see Isaiah’s nerve in preaching this sermon because hope can be so easily dashed. One of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve been told comes from a friend whose parents divorced when she was a little girl, and how after the divorce her father would promise to come pick her up and take her places. She would eagerly await his arrival, but so many times he simply didn’t show up. No warning, no expectation. He just didn’t come, and her mother would have to try to bind up her broken heart. It’s only been as she honestly dealt with the pain of that as an adult that she’s begun to find healing.

For hope to have any value in our lives, we must recognize that we only have reason to hope when our circumstances seem so unhopeful. Hope has little meaning in certainty. That is what must be understood if hope is to be anything that’s real. We’re not interested in unrealistic hope like those who believe they’ll win the Power Ball lottery; we’re not interested in false hope—the sort that wants to believe those emails offering us money from widows in the Ivory Coast; and we’re not even talking about a bargainers hope that says “If this happens, then I’ll do that.”

Isaiah describes a mature hope. This is a hope that recognizes there is spiritual value in waiting, spiritual value in investing in a particular promise, even if things might not turn out the way we wish, or if we never live to see the outcome we’re working toward. This is the hope of the rebels who stole the plans to the Death Star; they knew they wouldn’t live to get off the planet, but they made the attempt anyway.

Learning hope

Where do we go to learn to wait in hope? Advent teaches us to find value in our investment of waiting and hoping for Jesus’ way to be realized. It’s no great secret that most of us would rather sing about Christmas, but true Biblical faith is filled with examples of hope. And in today’s featured hymn—O Come, O Come, Immanuel—we have a song that uses both lyrics and tempo to teach us hope.

The lyrics of this hymn are some of the oldest in our hymnal, and both lyrics and tune have a somewhat complicated and confused story on how they came to exist in this form. What is known is that many of these lyrics are adapted from a sixth or seventh century poem that was used in worship. Not quite a “long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” but it ought to be enough to appreciate that Christians have a long history of valuing hope.

One early use of this hymn comes from the monasteries of the middle ages, where one verse of this hymn would be sung in worship each day from December 17 – 23. Life in the monasteries was very routine, with virtually nothing special to separate one day from the next. There were no Christmas carols being broadcast the week before Thanksgiving; no Christmas TV ads starting the day after Halloween. Nothing but the unceasing sameness of solitary monastic life. But beginning on December 17, the senior abbot in the monastery would sing one verse of this hymn each day in worship, and then give a small gift to each of the monks—perhaps as small as fresh walnuts—as a taste of something different, something special to build anticipation for the celebration of Jesus’ birth.

I also find it interesting that although our arrangement of verses is not the original, each verse in this arrangement does seem to be just a bit more hopeful than the one before, beginning in complete lostness and ending in a hope that God’s vision of the peaceable kingdom will be realized.

Do we have the patience to slow down long enough to begin to hope?

Conclusion

How do we react to Isaiah’s nerve as he looked out over his congregation, knowing what they knew, seeing what they saw, and then told them to wait, because there is more to come? What about when we look at the world around us—or perhaps look no farther than our own lives—and see that it does not comfort either to our expectation or to our understanding of God’s promises? What do we do then?

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dannofaust · 5 years

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Yep, I’m still reading, so here’s what I’ve been reading lately.

You know the drill by now. These are just my thoughts. I’m not a critic, but I’m going to share my opinions with you anyway. I am not affiliated with any of the books, products, or web sites mentioned here. I am not compensated by anyone in any way for this blog. This is just for my own amusement. Your enjoyment may vary.

“Over the Hill – Grandpa Hikes the PCT” by Jim & Zhita Rea

This is the story of Jim Rea, a sixty something retiree from Los Angeles, California who wants to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, and his wife Zhita who is a retired educator with a unique background.

I had a difficult time reading this book. Some of my difficulty stemmed from the fact that parts of the book were written by Jim, and parts were written by Zhita, who was acting as Jim’s support crew. The two different perspectives were interesting, but at times it was confusing to me and a bit hard to follow. I think my other difficulty was that Jim was section hiking the PCT and jumping around a bit from one section to another from year to year. Maybe I’m just getting too old to follow anything more complicated than a simple through hike.

I don’t have any criticism of the writing in this book. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. I only got about one third of the way through the book before I gave up. Maybe I’ll come back to this one and finish it someday.

“RiverGator” web site by John Rusky

https://www.rivergator.org

RiverGator is an amazing resource. It’s not a book. It’s web site that contains just about every piece of information anyone would ever want to know about the Mississippi River below St. Louis, Missouri. The amount of information on this web site is overwhelming. I have not read all of it, but I have read a lot of it.

For me, the most important part of the website is the mile by mile river guide. It is very helpful to have this kind of a resource. The guide even includes a description of the Atchafalaya River, which is the route I will take to the Gulf.

My difficulty with this web site is that a lot of the mile by mile descriptions of the river are interrupted by a plethora of other information. I would much rather the river description continued mile by mile uninterrupted from beginning to end. I must be getting old, because it took me awhile to navigate through the myriad of menus and hyperlinks to find the information I was looking for. The more I read and use the RiverGator.org website, the better I get at finding what I want. For me, the site navigation and layout is not intuitive.

My pet peeves aside, this is by far the most comprehensive collection of information about the Mississippi River written for people traveling the river in canoes and kayaks. If you are interested in paddling the Big Muddy, this is a “must read” web site. Some of the topics discussed are Safety, navigation, camping, locks & dams, weather, river gages, hazards, history, and much more.

“A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson

I tried for some time to get my hands on this book. The first time I ordered “A Walk in the Woods” all I got was a piece of the envelope that it had been shipped in. When I contacted the company that had sold me the book they said that they would ship another copy out ASAP, but eventually they issued me a refund because they didn’t have another copy. Subsequently, I found the book for sale on eBay and ordered it. This time the book actually arrived.

In the mean time, I also bought a DVD copy of the movie by the same name. That was a mistake. It stars Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. I figured that if I couldn’t read the book at least I could watch the movie. They’re probably about the same, right? Well, the movie sucks in my humble opinion. I hadn’t even laid eyes on the book yet and I knew that the movie wasn’t half as good as the book. I have read enough stories about the Appalachian Trail to know that the movie should have been much better. Clearly the acting was not the problem. They had a great book to start with. How could they screw this up? I don’t know if it was the writing, the directing, the editing, or all of the above; but somewhere along the line the movie did not live up to its potential or my expectations. I was disappointed, to say the least.

About a week after I watched the movie, my book arrived. The movie did do one good thing for me. As I began reading the book I envisioned Robert Redford as Bryson and Nick Nolte as Katz. Even though Redford and Nolte are quite a bit older than Bryson and Katz were in the book, I think the casting was brilliant. In my minds eye I could see and hear the two of them starting out on this ridiculous adventure together. I began laughing out loud almost immediately. Bill Bryson is a marvelous writer and story teller. My hat’s off to you sir. I wish I could write that well.

I delighted in Bryson’s in depth description of how agonizingly boring the Appalachian Trail can be. I have read accounts referring to the AT as the “green tunnel”, but Bryson’s rich, textured vocabulary goes way beyond any thing I have read before in relating the mind numbing activity of backpacking the AT. Several times I have read accounts of accomplished backpackers who paddled the Mississippi. Invariably they referred to it as boring and monotonous. One author even referred to the upper section of the river as “the green hell”. I felt offended by those remarks. I love the river. Pretty much any river I’ve ever been on. How could they be so inconsiderate and rude? Well, their beloved AT is pretty boring and monotonous too I guess … at least in some people’s opinions. Any way, I thought that Bryson kind of evened up that score. Thanks Bryson!

As I was reading a short passage near the middle of the book, I realized that much of what Bryson wrote did not transfer to the movie. Had I been making this book into a movie I believe I would have employed a narration ( Redford would have been awesome at this ) to fill in some of the gaps and include more of the subtle nuances that Bryson so expertly relates. Too bad. Some of the best parts of the book were lost in translation. I suppose that’s the way things go all too often.

One thing I did not appreciate was Bryson’s treatment of Emma Gatewood. He was more than rude. It was completely unnecessary and unacceptable in my humble opinion. Bryson couldn’t complete the AT once. Emma did the whole thing three times and she was older than him. I think Bill Bryson was out of his depth to criticize Emma Gatewood so harshly.

The second half of the book does slow down a good bit in my humble opinion. Bryson set off on his own to explore parts of the AT by car. He goes into a lot of detail about the history and geology of the AT as it passes through Pennsylvania. Most of that stuff is pretty boring, but I did manager to push through it and finish the book. Throughout this book Bryson is telling the story of the Appalachian Trail. It’s history. It’s politics. It’s flora and fauna. Its culture. It’s future and more. The part about Bryson and Katz backpacking the AT just adds some fun and makes the whole thing more enjoyable to read.

“Two Coots in a Canoe” by David Morine

This is one of my favorite books so far. Probably the only thing that could have made it any better for me is if it had taken place in the Midwest rather than the Northeast, but then I’m prejudiced.

Author David Morine teams up with a college friend Ramsay Peard, whom he hasn’t seen in twenty years, to paddle the Connecticut River from the Canadian border to the Long Island Sound. A distance of just over 400 miles. But that’s not enough for these two sixty something retirees. They’ve got a gimmick. They aren’t going to camp along the way. They are going to rely on the generosity of “strangers” to be their hosts ( cook, chauffeur, laundry mat, party planner, and local guide ) each night.

As you have probably gathered by now, this is not your typical story of two people canoeing down a river. There’s nothing typical about this story at all. Two Coots in a Canoe is witty, well written, funny, irreverent, and enlightening, but unexpectedly delves deeper into the human condition than some people may be comfortable with. One moment heart warming and the next heartbreaking, this book is hard to describe. There’s a little bit of everything included in Morine’s tale. It has history, drama, romance, mystery, murder, social commentary, and a few surprises along the way. This story is “The Odd Couple” meets “A Walk in the Woods” crossed with “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn”.

David Morine is an accomplished author who had written several other books, including “Good Dirt: Confessions of a Conservationist”, “Vacationland: A Half Century Summering in Maine”, and “Small Claims: My Little Trials in Life”.

If someone ever had the good judgment to make this story into a movie, I would buy a ticket to see it quicker than the blink of an eye. The world needs more stories like this and more people like Dave Morine and Ramsay Peard.

“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” – A. A. Milne

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inkedangelhaz · 7 years

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Harry Styles Vanity Fair

The Vanity Fair interview is only available to read in Italian right now, so I decided to translate it so others (and myself) can read it too! I did change some of the wording to make it more understandable, because Google Translate isn’t always the best, but I didn’t change the meaning of anything that was said. You can read the original (in Italian) here !

Harry Styles: Vanity Fair Interview 2017

Harry Styles has grown, does not drink, and wants to become pescatarian. The only mystery: For whom did he write the songs? “For a woman in particular”, and he hopes she understands the dedication. All clear, Kendall?

The last thing that Harry Styles does before going to sleep every night is send an email with a list of what he needs to do the next day. “Even if it’s boring stuff, like 9 o'clock: coffee. If you don’t have a schedule sometimes you feel lost. I do find it a little hard to laze.” Perhaps it’s one of the side effects of the past six years with one of the most famous boybands of all time, One Direction, where every minute of their lives on tour was planned in detail. The world tours could last almost a year, and did not include only concerts in the stadiums: there was endless promo to be done during the day and recording in their “free time”.

One Direction: This Is Us – the documentary behind the scenes by Super Size Me director, Morgan Spurlock – had shown another member of the band, Zayn Malik, who was ripped mercilessly from his bed in the tour bus after only ten minutes of naptime to record a new song.

Instead it seems that Styles wallows in the discipline. “I adore routine,” he explains. “When you’re small it’s all programmed: waking up at a certain time, breakfast, school. And when it ends it’s hard to figure out what to do with yourself.” Maybe for him it was a way of keeping that part of youth tight. He was 16 years old when he had moved from Cheshire to London as one of many who hoped to succeed with X Factor. In 2010, Simon Cowell had chosen five teenagers who had failed to pass the solo audition to create a super group. Harry was soon to become the sexiest and most famous component of a group that in a short time had turned into the sexiest and most famous boyband in the world. According to the ranking of the richest people in the world this year, Styles has a heritage of 40 million pounds.

Today, at the age of 23, he is trying to become master of his universe. One Direction took an “indefinite break” last year and he spent the following months writing and recording his first solo album, and to play in his first film, Dunkirk, the epic war film of Christopher Nolan that will be released this summer. The album is titled ‘Harry Styles’ and was perhaps the most anticipated solo album since Robbie left Take That. The first single, Sign of the Times, a ballad of five and a half minutes, arrived at the top of the charts in 84 countries on the day of launch. And Harry Styles is number one in the United States, England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Holland and Belgium, and second in Italy. It is the debut album of an English artist who sold more in America since Fimi/Nielsen began recording sales in 1991.

But I really figured out what made this guy when he called me out of nowhere, on a Friday afternoon, to arrange our interview.

“Hi, I’m Harry,” chirping a young voice. “Harry Chi?”, I say, thinking he’s a kid trying to sell me something from a call center. “Harry Styles. Do you have time to have lunch together next week?“ The “personal touch” is the brand of every true global superstar. Bono, Chris Martin and Taylor Swift know well what it means to bypass the bureaucracy of manager and PR to send a personal invitation. It is a gesture that sends many messages, from the most obvious – I am normal and approachable, and obviously I know how to use the phone – to the deepest: I am giving my time. After understanding that my agenda is quite empty, Harry proposes a date and one of his favorite downtown restaurants. Book him.

Three days later, I arrive at the restaurant and find that there are no reservations on behalf of Harry Styles (of course not, which megastar would book in his own name?). There is a table for someone with a similar name, but since I do not know, the waiter is reluctant to sit just me. Five minutes later, “Harry Spring” enters, and not only looks much like Harry Styles, but guarantees it for me. Harry proves adorable. Affectionate hugs and handshakes, thank you and please after every word. We sit down and after a second he stands up to help the waiter to bring water bottles.

He wears jeans, brown ankle boots, and a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned enough to take a look at his well-groomed chest and the endless tattoos he has on his breast and left arm. A pair of sunglasses on top of his head keeps his hair back. He has a crucifix on his neck and big silver rings on his fingers. Yes, he’s just beautiful: boyish face, expressive, gentle attitude, impeccable manners. But, without absolutely wanting to affect his reputation as a heartthrob, I am not sure that the desire to take him home is a wish. Rather, I wish he was my son. He has two phones: one is for private use (with the newborn goddaughter on the screensaver), the other is pink and he uses it to let me listen to his new album, which still had not come out when I met him. Although he is only 23 years old, he is already godfather of three children. Almost all his best friends, he explains, are older than him. “When I moved to London, I wanted to learn from people who could give me good advice.” At first his friendship with Radio 1 DJ, Nick Grimshaw, had unleashed gossip, although Styles denied being bisexual. Today, however, the assumptions about his private life revolve mainly around famous women.

He orders a Chicken Paillard and contemplates aloud the idea of becoming Pescatarian. “I did it for two weeks, as an experiment, but I think at some point I’ll try for more time.” Because? He thinks maybe “some discipline does well”. He is never critical of life with One Direction. “It is very difficult to complain, it was an incredible thing.” While he and the other members of the band are “on hiatus”, Malik is the only one who has officially left the group. Since then he has released to the press comments denigrating the band’s music and has also recorded a piece with Taylor Swift, the former girlfriend of Styles, for the soundtrack of the film Fifty Shades of Gray. Have you seen him lately? Silence. “Mmm, not much.” Have the reports cooled down? “No, I’m OK. I think we are happy for each other, the fact that we are doing things that we like and we get it.”

The smile emerges again as soon as I ask about others of the band. “We all work a lot, but we go out together.” When did you last talk to Simon Cowell? “Oh, recently.” He called after hearing the anticipated Sign of the Times. “He said he loved it and he was proud of me.” He stops. “Not that the last calls were not pleasant, but this time they did not have that nuance of, ‘this is the boss calling’, and it was beautiful.” He can’t wait to make me feel the album, but first I ask him why he wanted to try to work solo. “Sometimes you write songs where you want to tell the whole story,” he says. “In short, if you write a very personal song, it is difficult to give it in the hands of a band.”

What stories did he want to tell? He makes a grimace. He spent the last seven years revealing as little as possible of himself. The press interviews with One Direction rarely lasted more than ten minutes, with other members of the band behind which to hide. The current level of personal analysis is a novelty for him. “I really wanted it to be sincere, without changing words. Recording this album gave me one of the most beautiful times of my life. But when it came out I felt vulnerable, and that had never happened.”

Let’s go to the album: blatantly inspired by the rock years ’ 60-70, psychedelic, glam and alternative country, it is light years away from the dance pieces and acute voices of One Direction. He wrote it and recorded it last summer in two months, in Jamaica. Styles says he was inspired by the singer and songwriter of the 1970s, Harry Nilsson, and the bands he listened to when he was small: his father adored Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, while his mother liked to hear Norah Jones and Shania Twain. Of course, they were not so fashionable influences, but maybe the point is just that. Despite the huge commercial success of One Direction, I honestly struggle to hum their songs, they do not remain in my head. Styles has replaced the ephemeral light pop with something more lasting, and it works. The lyrics are saturated with sex, nostalgia and broken hearts, a rare glimpse of his personal life. The last song is titled From the Dining Table and begins with: “Woke up alone in this hotel room, played with myself, where were you? Fell back to sleep, I got drunk by noon, I’ve never felt less cool.” You play with yourself? “I play with my thoughts!”, he immediately corrects.

In April he gave an interview to the magazine Rolling Stone in which he claimed that a woman in particular had a key role in the album. “Sometimes you just want to make a nod to someone, sometimes a real bow, and hope she understands it’s for her.“ The commentary was seen as evidence that the album was about Kendall Jenner, the model, television reality star, and Kim Kardashian’s half-sister with which Styles had been in a turbulent relationship with for two years. Are you interested in clarifying things? Obviously not. "It doesn’t seem to me that the record is a romantic tribute to a person. It’s more about me than anyone else. I think it’s all too easy to say, oh look, it’s about this person, that’s the most interesting thing. I never felt the need to talk about things like that.” And who can blame him? His sentimental life has always been in the spotlight. In 2012, he and Taylor Swift had been on the front page of the tabloids when they had been caught on their second date walking around Central Park. They had left a short time later, but the interest in their relationship had reignited when it was known that Swift had written at least two songs for him in her next album (Out of the Woods and Style).

Does always being in the spotlight make the natural development of relationships more difficult? “Relationships are difficult anyway. You don’t always understand just how a relationship goes, it’s not like you can say: in a week I will know. You are often told what it is before you really understand it. However, all that stuff happened when I was even younger, and you’re very confused when you’ve only had a few relationships.” Did you have to give up that sphere of private life or manage to have a little more confidentiality? “Not lately, because I made the album and a lot of things… I don’t know. No, I feel like I’ve worked a lot with the band. Too many things happened.” How many times has he been in love? “I don’t know. I don’t know how you could tell, so it’s hard to answer, right?” "One realizes, when it happens”, I fight. "Well, so they say.” He makes an embarrassed giggle and then takes the pink phone. “Um, you want to hear another song?”

He’s always been a seducer. His elder sister, Gemma (writes about technology and trends of the Millennium), recently wrote an article for the journal Another Man in which she remembered a family vacation in Cyprus. Harry was seven years old. “He was sitting on a bench near the pool, with people who were triple his age. When we returned to the airport, there was a crowd of girls of all ages who came to greet him.”

He and Gemma grew up in Cheshire. Their father was a financial advisor, now working in insurance. Styles was seven years old when his parents divorced. He is grateful that his parents have maintained a friendly relationship, even after his mother has remarried. "I’m lucky I didn’t have to take sides when they separated. I have always felt loved and encouraged by both.” He calls his mother most days. “A lot of friends say to me, ‘Your mom is really great.’ She never made me feel obliged to prove what I’m worth. Many grow up without ever showing what they feel, instead at our house there has always been much love.”

At the age of 14 he had started working in the local bakery, and he got up at 5 every Saturday. He had always thought of becoming a physiotherapist, but then “we did a workshop at school, to talk about what we wanted to do, and someone told me that there were no job opportunities in that field, so I had to choose something else. I was hurt.” Shortly thereafter he formed a group with some school mates, White Eskimo, and participated in a local band contest. “I was nervous before I got on stage, but that feeling of having all eyes on you doing something you like was exciting.”

Now we are waiting for hectic times, with a world tour of three months, alone, starting in September. The Dunkirk film will be released on August 31st. He hasn’t seen it yet, so he doesn’t know what weight he will play as an English soldier. Rumor has it that he also impersonates Mick Jagger in a biopic, but he denies it, although the look he chose for his solo album resembles the elaborate, androgynous, 70s look of Jagger. Despite having 30 million followers on Twitter and 20 million on Instagram, he is oddly cautious about social media. “Once I heard someone say: If Twitter was a party where you know that 30 percent of people are great, but you also know that the rest will hate you, you are just not going to go,” he explains.

I must admit that he is much more serious and sensitive than what I thought by watching him in the videos of the One Direction era. After three hours in his company, I can’t find any defect, he doesn’t even drink. “In the last two years of touring I discovered that I liked to go run in the morning. When I work I don’t like to drink. I do it when I go out with friends, but then maybe I don’t touch even a drop for more than a month.”

It’s time to say goodbye. I ask him what he wrote in the email that he sent last night, what he must remember to do. "I have to go and cut my hair.” Just a good guy.

(cover from Vanity Fair No. 24. Text by Kristi Murison. Translation of Gioia Guerzoni)

#Harry styles #vanity fair #Harry #styles #Harry styles vanity fair #English #translated #Harry interview #Harry styles update

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