My own take of a nutty redesign >:D

oh right hi i made alnst au stuff again

Dr. W. Afton stimboard for my personal challenge!

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I don’t speak Japanese so I’d LOVE to hear more about the differences between the English and Japanese Re:Zero fandoms

yeah sure its very interesting to me now that ive noticed it more lately :o !! though ok disclaimer - i dont speak japanese either hah so if anyone is seeing this and does speak japanese + is familiar with the japanese speaking side of this fandom please add info if youd like!! and of course ill be mainly speaking from the english side of things bc im more familiar with that yes (sorry anon again im not a japanese speaker T^TT so sorry if i tread on info you already know!!). but yeah im speaking from my own experiences given the Topic at hand. ive been in this fandom since... 2019?? which is so wild to me aljsdfljsd.

anyway so - i think the big difference is mainly that the english fandom and many english speaking people that engage with rezero are. to put it bluntly, misconception runs Rampant to a very Interesting degree. to the point where it seems like the english speaking side of the fandom is More. Aggressive. than the japanese fandom. not that the japanese speaking side of the fandom is perfect - also bc what fandom is ever perfect 100% of the time, tbh - but that the louder people in the english rezero fandom are. well its a Very low bar. Very low. and from what little ive seen and heard so far, the japanese fandom tends to understand rezero and its characters better than the english fandom. which ig makes sense bc you know, rezero is japanese media, and also im sure cultural differences come into play here as well (im not familiar enough on this to speak about it in depth but the cultural differences feel Pretty Clear even though i cant 100% put my finger on what they specifically are).

but also bc yeah. its not That hard to beat some of the english fandom when it comes to media comprehension. misreading rezero is unfortunately Extremely common, both in and out of the rezero community. its Everywhere - youtube, myanimelist, ao3, ff.net, reddit, twitter, various rezero discords - and from what ive experienced, rezero tumblr basically kind of feels like finding an oasis after crawling through the desert for days on end lajdslfjs. which is probs bc rezero tumblr is Smaller and also a lot of us seem to be lgbtq+ in some way or be allies, so you dodge a lot of the misogyny and homophobia that happens in other rezero english circles. its why you see a lot of openly queer rezero-related posts on here while its a bit more. barren. in other rezero english places yes. bc its more safe to post queer rezero things on rezero tumblr rather than rezero reddit for Sure.

im not sure how the japanese fandom is with that exactly but theres some interesting differences between whats popular in the english fandom vs the japanese fandom. i mean as an otto fan ive been noticing how hes more popular with the japanese fandom—and on top of that, ottosuba is Way More popular in the japanese fandom too. reinsuba and julisuba seem to usually be the most popular mlm subaru ships in both fandoms but ottosuba is like A Little Up There in the japanese fandom. not sure if its on the same level as a ship like reinsuba but ottosubas Definitely loved as a ship. from what little ive seen it also seems like ships like vichisha are more acknowledged by the japanese fandom? im not entirely sure on like—Complete differences regarding what the japanese fandom finds interesting that may differ from english fandom, so ill really have to look more into the japanese fandoms fanart and fanfic when i can bc im pretty curious too. in general though, it seems like the japanese fandom has a bit more variety…. you can find fanart on So Many characters in rezero (which already has a very Massive cast full of very fleshed out characters) there. not that you cant in the english fandom bc theres a Bit of variety too, but id more so contribute that a little more to the Big Cast and less to having actual variety in fancontent. and of course im not saying that the japanese fandom may be a bit barren in some areas of fancontent—bc inevitably when u have a big cast of characters, side character content is gonna be more sparse compared to the main characters, but to me it does feel like the english fandom lacks variety in comparison. (and also yeah. seems like the japanese fandom acknowledges gay ships more in general tbh.)

whats focused in fancontent makes it easy to tell what may be popular in a fandom in terms of how fans perceive the source material and what fandoms want to do with the source material, if that makes sense. and its very easy to tell that with the english fandom if you just hop on rezero ao3–or even better, rezero reddit given theres a fanfic ideas thread thats usually pinned right at the top of the site. again i havent looked at japanese fanfic for rezero yet (bc i dont know where to look oops ajdndn) but when it comes to the english fandom you can tell that theyre generally more focused on the female cast both in fanart and in fanfic bc. theyre women and many fans on say, reddit or various rezero discords, are cis straight men, so inevitably… well lets just say you can tell when a man makes content for this fandom o.o theres also the. very weird reaction fic trends and trends following popular fics in the fandom, the two biggest being the watching him die again and again react fic and re:forgotten, the former of which includes a harem plot with subaru and the main girls of rezero while the latter is one of those subaru gets tortured by his ooc friends and then he gets revenge on them fics. which i suppose says something about the english fandom too.

of course on ao3 its dominated mainly by english fics (of course not all fics on there for rezero are in english— big shoutout to all the non english fics on rezero ao3 ur doing great <3 — but the majority are in english). and while yeah ur occasionally gonna find stuff like queer content or side character content or rarepair content, its definitely not that big in amount and also comes with the risk of. Hate. if anyones reading this and remembers the lone star stuff. (if u dont know—lone star was a julius x emilia fic where they NTR subaru or some shit and then it got bombed with hate bc of the ship? yeah.) so yeah english fandom is very cis straight oriented, ironically with the nastiest people being the very people that rezero criticizes. though this is also my personal experience, i do know several people personally whove been in this fandom for a while or were here for a while and yeah english fandom isnt very welcoming at times???? and it seems like at the very least the japanese fandom is A Little Less Aggressive than the english fandom is.

otherwise. yeah im very very curious about more of the differences in popular content between the japanese vs english fandom. i mean the english fandom’s main focus on the female cast for. Interesting Reasons other than their actual character depth is… interesting. and the astreas being popular in general vs otto + ottosubas popularity fluctuating is also very interesting to me (but i have several guesses as to Why that is), among other things. yeah id love to know what else the japanese fandom likes about rezero and see more of their content. i also have to wonder if characters like emilia and subaru are hated less by the japanese fandom…. T^T well that and the english fandom and many english speaking people engaging in rezero have this interesting pattern of either hating subaru No Matter What, wanting subaru to Not Be Subaru (ie using him as a self insert almost or attempting to change him into virtually another character), or putting subaru on a pedestal and ignoring his flaws and mistakes and that he Can do wrong. like theres Really not a lot of nuance there. so i wonder if the japanese fandom is. A Little more chill when it comes to character opinions like this too.

found out this year’s snow miku contest is happening yesterday while on call with my friend and then I blacked out and woke up to this being posted on the piapro site (it’s here btw)

Not to localizationpost but the reason Daigo's line sounds off is because it is <3 Not in that it's a mistranslation per se... He was saying he felt like he was the only coward among them, and "You're making me look like I have no balls." is One Way You Could Put That I Guess, but it loses his established character voice and is at odds with the delivery.

It's actually even more Kansai-like in the dub script, since dropping the G like this is near-exclusive to Kansai:

In Gaiden, I've noticed there's been a significant hemorrhaging of dialects that has at best been hastily cleaned-up. It's most evident with Nishitani III because he was, practically up until release day, localized like he's from Kansai even though he doesn't speak Kansai at all. I think I last talked about that before the game came out, but having experienced the game, there are still remnants of that in parts of the sub script and especially the dub script. You can also see it pop up with Kiryu using words like " 'bout" and " 'course," which He Would Not Say.

The introduction of slang where it doesn't really belong and the mixups with the dialects are relatively minor issues... until you have the accidental sexual abuse censorship fiasco on your hands because you decided to translate from Kanto rather than Kansai... lol...

In that instance and that instance only I feel entitled to monetary compensation from the localization team for all 60+ tweets I had to see questioning Shishido's abuse (yes I counted) (for this week's/tomorrow's video) because GODDDDD I can't even blame the players at that point... I just feel it fundamentally changes how you look at Shishido and Nishitani As Characters I will neverrrrr be over it I'm sorry...

On another note, while I'm talking about Shishido, setting aside the many actual mistranslations with his dialogue, I do kind of feel like they struggled with his character voice. He's notably much more polite than you'd expect, and I could tell the effect Yokoyama and Furuta were originally going for was something along the lines of the contrast between Mine and Jo's usual formality (depending on who they're addressing anyway Lol) and how vulgar and aggressive they get when they snap, just with the added layer of Shishido not looking as outwardly professional/put-together as those two.

Like. Y'know. It's not that Kansai is casual in and of itself, it's that many Kansai characters speak more casually and there's a higher ceiling for how colorful their language can get, but you still have to keep the individual character's voice in mind... Shishido also slips into the Kanto dialect on occasion, which has interesting implications for his character, and it's somewhat disappointing to not see that noted when the team for K2 did note when Sayama switched accents lol...

Anyway none of that matters what does matter is that in the scene you were referencing, in spite of making Daigo's line more vulgar than it is, they replaced Shishido calling everyone "dickcheeses" with "pricks" LIKE C'MOOONNNN YOU'RE TELLING ME JO CAN TALK ABOUT TEATS BUT SHISHI CAN'T GET PROPER NARSHTY... I get that it's kind of an unwieldy phrase but c'mooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn it's his birthdayyyyy

i woulda just bout lost every marble i had left if they really let shishido get away with callin everyone smegma liiiikkkeee i wouldn't have survived LOL

WSBH chara q’s: (you don’t have to answer all the numbers, just whatever you want to 𖢘)

16/35/51 for Scotch

1/6/55 for Atlas

I LOVE YOU

16. What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head?

okay i truly think scotch argues with seraph in his head all the time. ALL the time. scotch largely ignores them, and vice versa, because he dislikes them and they know it. seraph is very conflict avoidant lol, and as long as hes not a "threat" they dont care to talk to him about their problems. he probably argues with atlas and jacob (his older brother) too, atlas about more stupid small stuff, and jacob about childhood and life stuff :p

im trying to think of more general groups he would argue with but i cant come up with anything BAHAH. hes not exactly conflict avoidant in the annoying libra way that seraph is, he more just ignores conflict for his friends’ (mostly atlas’) sake. idk if that makes sense LOL

35. What is the smallest, morally questionable choice they’ve made?

hmmm.. smallest? i mean scotch strings eloise along for most of the time pre timeskip. its not a main focus but its definitely important in order to understand scotch as a whole. she and scotch go out for a while, and mid way through that he realizes hes GAY gay. lol. and obviously lying to her about that is pretty questionable after a while. especially since he and atlas have been 👉👌 like the whole time. but she kind of knows. well

something a little bigger would be him encouraging or otherwise turning a blind eye to all the weird stuff atlas is up to. he doesn't know what it's like to be a werewolf, he can't say anything, right? lol.... murder is okay if its a talking dog doing it. scotch enabler supreme. actually when seraph is introduced, he and atlas have a 'joke' (kind of starts being real) about luring seraph somewhere to kill them. obviously doesnt happen and gets abandoned. but i think its important to know about their dynamic LOL

51. What’s a phrase they say a lot?

this guy is kind of goofy. i cant think of phrases rn but he has a specific way of speaking.. you could watch pretty much any old pop punk band interview and kind of get the idea. HAHAH

1. What’s the lie your character says most often?

atlas is a big fan of saying 'its fine' for all situations ever. family in mortal danger? its fine. completely splitting? its fine. arthritis excruciating? its fine. hes one of those people that dont like to deal with the fawning of others unless hes feeling real special. Ends up putting people in more danger a lot of the time. i think eloise is the only fan of communication in this friend group to be honest. i should have made her the main character

he tends to make promises he cant keep as well, but thats more general..

6. What’s their favorite [insert anything] that they’ve never recommended to anyone before?

i have NO idea. i feel like atlas would be a music snob, so maybe his favorite 'super underground' bands. otherwise he'd probably never recommend raw human meat to another human (no matter how much scotch asks -__-).. (he would chicken out anyway)

55. What’s something they’re expected to enjoy based on their hobbies / profession that they actually dislike / hate?

um. so atlas hates working out. he especially hates running, you know, the thing that wolves are known for doing a lot of? unfortunately the lycanthropy came with a side effect of pretty bad arthritis, so that doesnt exactly encourage him. he DOES exercise, a lot since hes pretty much required for his ermm "side job", but he hates it 😸 besides the arthritis it’s mostly because I think it’s silly that he hates it. yay

and J and T 👀

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

OK so you know these guys

Tim and Moby from Brainpop. I didn't know they had a fandom until I saw someone making a dating sim and there was a good amount of people hyped and i was like

Wait

Yeah! HELL yeah!!

I get it now. I wonder how that fandom is doing. Hope they're well.

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

Not really strong headcanons 🤔 maybe it is actually

Hmmmmm

- wwx is close to jiang siblings but still only adopted into the clan (despite everything jfm wanted)

- lsz is not adopted by lwj, just taken in to be adopted into the clan

Anything that's approximately those kind of cases, I have the same ideas about

WAIT JUST KIDDING

I HAVE ONE

I cannot believe at all

That nmj didn't die a virgin. In Canon. I badly want him to be a virgin and not only that. The type that never learned because he wasn't told to do it and by the time the elders wanted him to marry and reproduce, he has too much of a backlog with nhs to focus on that. He'll do it after nhs becomes independent

This one

Come on. Please. Someone who became sect leader young and in an environment like the nie clan? Duty must be at his core. Also it's funny. Nmj learn sex Ed with nhs. I'm saying a lot of words but saying nothing. But you gotta hear me. Call it too much projection but when you're the first born son, right? AND the heir to the sect? AND an older brother. You've got all these roles to fulfill. And then you're now upgraded to SECT LEADER? HELP-- now you've got like 600 new main quests added and they're all time bound. Like no way there's nobody trying to usurp a wholeass child. So he gotta stop all these crackass adults from finessing him while running a sect finances, social instability, political instability. He's got a baby brother at home. He himself has to develop for like 5 different roles too and uphold sect image and keep relations with other sects. It's like taking a college entrance exam in 5th grade suddenly.

I'm not able to explain what I mean. But you feel the vibes?

Ehhhh I'm lying I don't have any die hard headcanons. I don't think so. This is the strongest one tho.

he deserves to get hit by a car ,, as a treat

also he asked a kinda personal question and i was talking abt it but felt very embarrassed and it also took me a long time to articulate when I cld have said it more succinctly w less pauses and such...felt kind of embarrassed after bc im like why am I not normal abt anything. but idk a little vulnerability is good I suppose. 😕

“You've been hoping to get something dramatic out of this storyline.”

DRAMATURGY FITS PANDORA HEARTS REALLY WELL IMO ??? sooo much about it ,,

Love that you had to specify in that post that girl Mikey was cis. What a magical world you live in

Hell yeah. It's a once in a blue moon scenario that I'm actively posting about girl Mikey, and much much less likely that I'm posting about cis girl Mikey. Need to specify the state of her genitals in cases they matter <3

If I were to get Fired after Disappointing a customer (who hasn't paid and the worst thing happened to them is their orders late for a day and we cancelled his orders because he couldnt Wait any longer- DEMANDING us to finish the thing and said "I dont care I /want/ my orders Now" after we told him it will take us until midnights to work for it?? YOU HAVENT EVEN PAID), then I would gladly Leave. Certainly they didnt appreciate me at all

“who’s afraid of little old me” is giving “if ava makes you feel bad thats a you problem”

Reading your tags about how people miss the very obvious "there's some fucked up shit boiling underneath" regarding Otto, just gave me a sudden realization. Otto is the only character I know in fiction where they act all innocent and drive up the "clumsy", "just in the side-lines" and "straight-man (heh)" persona. When. Like no one's in the EMT camp is buying it. They know he's way more capable than he let's on. Meanwhile, the tomfoolery is completely brought on by the Western audience.

Like Otto is failing miserably to make other characters believe that he's not up to mischief, Roswaal even thinks it can bring his downfall. But the audience, who even sometimes *sees* his fucked up thought process, is buying it.

*head in hands*

no u bring up so many good points bc ive been really thinking about this for a while T^T its such an interesting phenomenon in the difference in perception otto has between the japanese speaking half of the fandom vs the english speaking half which can be explained by—yeah. media illiteracy mainly. im also putting my head in my hands anon T^T

because—okay sorry wkdndn im gonna get into meta again but hear me out bc this pattern of the fandom underestimating otto is interesting bc i kind of sort of i cracked the code maybe??? o.o i think the nature of otto is a character is that youre SUPPOSED to underestimate him at first, just like what happens sometimes in universe. i mean wayyy back then i definitely wasnt expecting him to get more depth added to him in arc 4–which was a pleasant surprise—which is also the reaction the vast majority of people have to reading/watching arc 4, along with the other vast majority reaction which is being a bit endeared to ottosubas friendship and respecting otto for being a good friend. and then its easy to underestimate otto bc of 1. all the chaos going on in rezero at any given moment and 2. hes almost always overshadowed by other characters doing worse shit or being more insane than he is and 3. otto of course damn well knows hes easy to underestimate and counts on that. thats what he did against roswaal in arc 4. plus—i mean even aesthetics-wise hes 100% DESIGNED to be easy to underestimate. his outfit and physical features make him look either friendly or frazzled or soft. so i think that the point is that we were supposed to be kind of fooled—at first.

because yeah, we’re endeared to otto. we respect him for helping subaru the way he did. we think that hes a nice person and we now support his actions especially after feeling sympathetic towards him after learning his backstory. (or at least the average audience member will think this wjdndn.) but like—you dont even NEED to look at any side content at all for it to dawn on you that theres something Wrong. with him. like all you need is main route arcs 3-8 aka ottos entire screentime thus far, because at arc 4 its so easy to overlook otto unless youre thinking a bit deeper (for example—he gets violent with subaru. like yeah its entertaining, its played for laughs a bit, yeah subaru needed to be snapped out of his own head, but was it 100% necessary??? why did otto have this response??? bc if you just look at the main timeline otto really decided to beat up subaru first. and bc this tendency is now Less Funny in arc 8).

but even if youre just looking at rezero face value, when you get to arc 5 its starting to get even more clear that ottos weird in the head. like we already saw him being very good at scheming and planning in arc 4–in arc 5, we find out about otto hiding the tome for a year. we find out WHY hes been hiding the tome for a year. the tome then leads the witch cult into priestella, so like—in the sense, otto is RESPONSIBLE for arc 5. but theres STILL a tendency sometimes for the audience to continue underestimating him even though by this point we’re getting more clues and many characters around otto, like you said anon, KNOW hes very capable. i keep wondering why this is, but arc 5 is, again, FULL of chaos and different storylines happening at once, so its so easy to almost kind of forget otto there in the background until he occasionally pops up again. plus otto serves an additional role as comedic relief sometimes—he spends all of arc 5 being bitchy and whiny (i say this affectionately HAH) about his camp being full of disasters, for example, so i think the natural response from the audience tends to be “aw otto!! what a silly guy!!” sometimes. you know? so its like. i think at this point some people tend to be like “yeah fair that otto was wary of roswaal and thats why he saved the tome…. anyway ooooh whats going on with these other plot points” wobsbss. its so fascinating bc—ok this might be my own personal experience but anyone reading this pls tell me if you agree or not—i dont think ive seen a lot of people actually even MENTION otto bringing the tome into priestella attracting witch cultists. and the english speaking fandom LOVES to go into certain characters’ wrongdoings so why gloss over otto????

the only explanation i have for this is that from arcs 3-4 underestimating otto is. kind of the point of his character UNTIL you get to arc 5 and the clues in the main story start seeping in even more. and also the western audience DOES have media illiteracy a lot. theres that too. just look at rezero content on youtube or reddit or fanfic sites or other things of that sort T^T but no yeah i think ottos nature as a character exacerbates it. youre supposed to start asking questions about him. youre supposed to start connecting the dots and then SUDDENLY its now EXTREMELY obvious in arc 7-8 and even while theres so much chaos going on its basically shoved in your face. arc 7-8 is just delivering on all the leadup that was arcs 3-5.

and i think that youve gotta be media illiterate for sure to NOT get that otto is not squeaky clean and innocent BY ARC 8. i think that ottos the deconstruction of the loyal best friend trope, and also a mirror into what subaru couldve been like if he decided to be more ruthless instead of jumping right to forgiveness and saving everyone, except sometimes that flies right over the audience’s head wkdndnd. it confuses me bc ive seen some people completely miss the point or completely agree with otto and overlook the Bad Parts of it or, you know, STILL think ottos perfectly sane—like T^T please.

and yeah so back to what you said about otto Not being underestimated In Universe—its such an interesting detail bc hes ALWAYS been simultaneously pathetic and Very Competent wjdndnd. but yeah no all of his friends have seen various hints and clues and evidence of what hes capable of. like even though he hid the tome from them successfully and even though hes hiding info now its INEVITABLE that its gonna blow up in his face one day. like you got characters like garfiel who literally saw otto punch the wall and break his hand in an unhinged fit of rage, julius who got snapped at by otto and while julius is a Bit naive definitely knows somethings off there, anastasia whos smart as hell and definitely knows not to underestimate otto, and roswaal who, like you said anon, literally went out of his way to stop otto from breaking his hand in another unhinged fit of rage and warned otto that he will literally be destroying himself if he keeps going on like this. its this fascinating dichotomy bc otto is NOT fooling anyone around him but at the same time his current schemes are mostly unnoticed—for now—which yeah i havent seen that in a lot of media!!! its an interesting balancing act bc people around him realistically know hes competent after seeing the Proof of that for the past couple arcs, but otto is still finding ways to try and Win…

which—again, the anger and violence is an extension of arc 4 otto!! this is the same guy!! hes always been like this!! ottos kind of stayed the same, deep down, this whole time and as an audience its ONLY shoved in our face with a big gigantic spotlight on it FOUR ARCS LATER, but it was hinted to all this time. and like you said anon—we LITERALLY see ottos fucked up thought processes. literally what sane person thinks any of that shit. its spelled right out for the reader HAH T^T which—yeah. media illiteracy…. and also this whole ask was a longer way of just saying that otto is VERY easy to see at surface level if youre media illiterate. but at the same time it should be very easy to figure out otto is A Bit Fucked Up bc tappei underlines it in bright red print!!! i think people sometimes just hang onto soft awkward silly otto and forget about the rest T^T either that or they dont think he cares about subaru at all. which. that phenomenon of thinking characters that do care about subaru Dont Care is also interesting to me bc why????? we’re at arc 8 and you STILL dont get it??? o.ooooo

but yeah apart from that….. i said this earlier but yeah sometimes some people agree with ottos realism in arc 8 which is. understandable, but the whole point is that he is EXTREME. with it. hes Not in the right here, but the same crowd that wants wanton revenge in rezero is gonna agree with that kind of stuff T^T ottos been lurking in the background so much so that tappei made it meta by doing the whole “walking in darkness” part of his character, so i guess people just. dont see ottos ACTUAL worst traits and instead think he would ditch subaru at the first opportunity or something. but at the point we are now, arc 8 ottos problem isnt that hed ditch subaru. his problem is that he would sacrifice the world for subaru. his problem is that he gets extremely angry at subaru for trying to do good. his problem is that hes trying to micromanage everything around him and is willing to sacrifice anything necessary to get what he wants. but sometimes people dont get that bc otto doesnt look sound or seem like a character thatd do that. the Underestimation part of his character is doing too well on. certain audiences. please T^T the soft and awkward and silly parts ARE part of his character just like all the Darker parts are!!!

additionally im also wondering if western audience perception of otto is also clouded by the fact that otto looks and sounds more feminine / androgynous and he doesnt have the appeal of Overt Power either……. he cant Really be waifu-ified… and he cant be used as a weird self insert like subaru…. and you Have to look at him closer to understand him…. and for some reason people dont tend to hate on him so aggressively, if anything people cant even see his actual canonical flaws half the time wkdndn so if youre not paying attention otto CANT be aggressively hated on bc theres nothing there if ur not looking at it….. and if youre not paying attention otto seems more “boring” compared to the others…… (not that people arent allowed to not have otto as a favorite character bc thats totally fair but im talking about the tendency to think hes Saner than he actually is.) but yeah these are just my guesses. i have no clue the western fandom is a little T^T some people unfortunately cannot read.

anyway. big thank you to the japanese fanbase for understanding ottos character more and making so much wonderful fancontent for him T^T also i think that we as a collective fanbase should stop underestimating otto in general bc its exactly what he wouldnt want and i think itd be really hilarious. <3333 make him explode with rage please

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