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mrghostrat · 7 months

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ok OK listen. here are my latest streamer au thoughts before i try to hop off for the day:

i love "married couple madly in love that no one realises are together because they're so different" but i am also terrible at fic planning for established relationships, and my favourite part about aziraphale/crowley is the lead up and the pining

so what if......... "streamers who no one realises are roommates because they're so different" AND "roommates who are secretly madly in love with each other but are so focused on keeping their own infatuation secret they don't notice it's reciprocated until thousands of online strangers start to point it out" ?????

fic concept: crowley and aziraphale are two full time streamers living together. they have their own spaces. but they mesh bizarrely well as roommates, and have come to really enjoy the routine of eating dinners, grocery shopping, and spending their days off together. there's still some distance between them, that shy sort of "i want to show him something– oh his door is closed, i better not bother him," invitations are actual invitations rather than "i'm doing this and you're coming with me," and they're not a CrowleyAndAziraphale unit yet.

both chats are going mad trying to figure out why crowley's roommate's voice is so familiar, and where they've seen that red hair in the corner of aziraphale's screen before. there's conspiracy theories and a subset of shippers (stoked by both crowley and aziraphale's occasional penchant to sigh and vent about a vague crush they haven't named, but is definitely their mysterious roommate if you watched every stream and collaborated on an elaborate google doc to connect all the dots together) but their mods are the only ones who know they live together. (and ship it. of course they know about the crushes and ship it to death and are just watching with popcorn waiting for these idiots to figure it out)

some people piece it together with all the off hand mentions and mid stream tea deliveries, and more start to believe them when crowley drags aziraphale to a twitchcon event and they're seen being friendly in photos together. they're also aware of people constantly asking and guessing about their illusive roommates, but when crowley finally pops up on an aziraphale stream, both streamers are startled at just how insanely their communities react to the innocuous reveal.

nothing changes for aziraphale and crowley. they were never intentionally hiding the fact, so they just continue referring to each other in their normal vague terms. but now when a new viewer is like "who's your roommate?" long time subs with the lore will fill them in. and it very quickly starts to sound like "crowley lives with aziraphale, that wholesome kitchen streamer. someone's made a clip comp, you should go watch. it's adorable they're so in love" and crowley sees these messages like what the FUCK are yall talking about in here on this day, and bans a message for the first time in six months.

aziraphale of course sees none of these messages because he's a fuckin luddite and can't keep up with chat.

or. maybe he's just choosing not to acknowledge them. because if chat can see he's in love with crowley, does that mean crowley can see it too? and that is just unacceptable and terrifying to him, so he smiles and quickly starts explaining how to saddle stitch a book spine even though literally nobody asked

(anathema, newt, and nina have worked their way through the flavoured popcorn seasonings anathema's aunt sent her for christmas, and are now experimenting with homemade seasoning recipes together) (if maggie knew about all this, she would have put her foot down and demanded they talk to aziraphale and crowley about having a conversation)

#ineffable streamers #good omens #listen someone asked me for a longfic and i want to provide it #streamer au could be PERFECT

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sunny-days-and-warm-mournings · 7 months

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It is finally finished!! I am done and is so happy!!!

This is an AU exploring the concept of Sūn Wùkōng/Dàshèng as a Yaksha and Tu Di Gong, rather than being a Yaoguai Warlord during his later years reigning as the Monkey King.

This AU follows the beginning (with some changes here and there) up until Wùkōng's shenanigans with Ao Guang, then he went on a separate path from Wu Cheng'en's novel.

In this iteration our favourite Monkey explored the realms as he burned up time, but then he took a particular interest in the humans' ways of producing food. Since Dàshèng was so used to the grandeur and bounties of Huagoushan (being surrounded by such lush forests and mountains that never withered nor died) he sort of took pity on them before deciding to help them grow their crops much better.

But this is just the very much shortened summary of the beginning of this AU, and I have compiled some research and even more lore in my Google Documents just to expand on this idea more.

This— Westward To Tathāgatagarbha Lore Google Documents

This is the Google Document of my AU, which I highly recommend for you to read! It explains all the other details and such on this story! I did my best on making them but there would be still mistakes that I have yet to find, but it should be decent!!

This is a more casual look for Dàshèng/Wùkōng for this AU as well as some brief pointers! I made this before the portrait so some things might have changed.

(Don't mind him holding a cup of beer it's fine.)

Taken from the server (with some hints for the next half of the archives/docs) which instantly kickstarted this whole thing haahahjjjss, but it really was so fun talking about it to others! They gave me more inspiration that I can handle.

And what is Tathāgatagarbha you ask? (Brief)

In Buddhist philosophy, Buddha-nature is the potential for all sentient beings to become a Buddha or the fact that all beings already have a pure buddha-essence within. "Buddha-nature" is the common English translation for several related Mahayana Buddhist terms, most notably tathāgatagarbha and buddhadhātu, but also sugatagarbha, and buddhagarbha. Tathāgatagarbha can mean "the womb" or "embryo" (garbha) of the "thus-gone one" (tathāgata), and can also mean "containing a tathāgata". Buddhadhātu can mean "buddha-element," "buddha-realm" or "buddha-substrate"

The Chinese translated the term tathāgatagarbha as rúláizàng (如来藏), or "Tathāgata's (rúlái) storehouse" (zàng). According to Brown, "storehouse" may indicate both "that which enfolds or contains something", or "that which is itself enfolded, hidden or contained by another." The Tibetan translation is de bzhin gshegs pa'i snying po, which cannot be translated as "womb" (mngal or lhums), but as "embryonic essence", "kernel" or "heart".

The term tathagatagarbha first appears in the Tathāgatagarbha sūtras, which date to the 2nd and third centuries CE.

There will be more to this in the future when I'm finished researching more about it.

Also, speaking of people that inspire me, I'm calling my dear friends here who I think might like this: @digitalagepulao @kaijufluffs @sketching-shark @lavaflowe @sixteenthchapel @jttw-monkeybusiness and @hcdragoncat !!

Special thanks to Pardal and Grandpa Sun for getting me to write more of this too :D I had such great fun!

I have so much more to add to the docs and here but this is all for now :) and honestly this is one of the greatest projects I've started aside from the older ones. I'll come back again soon with more additions and art! And lore (And maybe some interactions with a few West Heaven occupants??)!!!

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earthstellar · 1 year

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what are some other nice moments from Rescue bots?

This show is loaded with them!!! :)

Here we go, some nice moments in Rescue Bots!!

I'm going to write this with the assumption that some people reading this may not have ever seen Rescue Bots or might only be somewhat familiar, as I realise the target audience skews much younger than most Transformers media does, so I'm not 100% sure how popular it was outside of that demographic in total.

Off the top of my head:

-There is an in-universe VR game called Element Quest that has a couple really good episodes, the design is cute and there are tons of meme references. Blades, at one point, goes "I used to like video games. Then I took an arrow to the knee." LOL

-I think it's cool how they actually do tie in their continuity with TFP's continuity. For example, "What Rises Above" (RB) canonically comes before "Nemesis Prime" (TFP), and this is directly referenced in the dialogue in TFP when Optimus says that he is late arriving to the base as he was exploring an underground energon deposit-- This is the deposit he explores with the Rescue Bots.

-THERE IS A MUSICAL EPISODE. IT IS EXTREMELY GOOD

-Woodrow Burns, the Chief's brother, is kind of an idiot asshole, although he's not actively malicious. But he is great with the kids and for whatever reason the only thing I can ever remember about this character is when he goes up to Cody after it's been a long time since he saw him last and says "You've grown a whole foot since the last time I saw you-- Now you'll need three socks!" IDK I just think that's a real cute dad joke thing to say to a little kid lol :')

-There is an episode where they explore the local folklore of Griffin Rock, and TL;DR the local lore is that their island is where literal griffins used to nest seasonally. So throughout the episode, there's this kind of vibe of "OK are these electrical magnetic pulses or whatever like a science problem or a magic problem" and it's actually a very cute and fun vibe, especially since Cody is talking about the lore in the first place as part of his work towards a Scouts badge and Blades is very cute in this episode, the bots are all like "okay magic isn't real but uhhh what if magic's real?" for a minute and it's great :')

-Doc Greene/Green creates a ton of fun science devices throughout the show, but the names of some are just so doofy and fun. I love the "Torna-Don't", which is a thing designed to dispel tornados. Of course. lmao

-All the weird small town local events are also very silly and cute, and weirdly realistic for those of us who are familiar with this kind of local event thing, lmao. One of my favourite concepts is one of what seems to be several crawdad-related festivals, in which there is apparently a televised crawdad race. It's a bunch of shrimps put on a tiny racetrack, like Olympic runners. LOL

-At one point, Blurr shows up, and when the Rescue Bots are trying to acclimate him to working with humans, Chase is like "Humans seem to have two genders, which are defined by how many cooties they have." This implies that as far as the Rescue Bots are aware, 1) cooties are real and 2) human gender is defined solely by how many cooties a person has, and not by anything else, thus leaving their understanding of human gender fairly open (and it is also clear they have solely learned about gender from young kids in a small town which is likely why they state there are two genders but then make it clear that gender is a cooties thing and not an inherently physical thing, which makes sense in context and is kind of great because it gives more leeway for gender diversity than I expected) and I love this a lot. What is human gender? Cooties. That's all. So someone with a particularly high number of cooties could be another gender altogether, because why not?

-There is a body swap episode, which treats us to Blades in Dani's body trying on dresses in her room. He picks an orange and white one, which matches his paint job. I also love this a lot.

-Heatwave is gruff as hell especially at the start of the series and constantly starts shit or perpetuates shit with Kade, which is super funny. Just this centuries old Cybertronian fucking with this doofus boy who keeps leaving donuts in his cab. God dammit Kade, lmao.

-There is an episode where Cody is aged up via Science Device, and we get to see an older Cody, who more closely resembles his father than his older brother does. It's cute that he'll look like his dad when he's older. :')

During this episode, he assists in a rescue, and the girl his brother has a crush on tries to hit on him, but he clearly doesn't get what's happening and thinks it's icky because of course he does, he's a kid. I just think this scene is handled well and it's cute that his reaction to being hit on is still "ewww girls" but his brother is still absolutely pissed off about it anyway LMAO like jesus Kade, relax

-Kade's mostly an asshole but he's shown to be a really good rescuer who genuinely cares about people, and he has moments where he really comes through for his family and realises on his own that he should shut up and back down on his bullshit, thus making him a better developed and more realistic asshole brother character than 99% of asshole brother characters in most shows. I think this is pretty solid because it does lead to effective character development here and there, and it makes his positive moments with his family and the bots that much nicer. :)

-Cody is such a good kid. He is often willing to give people or ideas a chance when nobody else will, and even though he's too young to actively participate in most missions, he stays involved by helping at their dispatch centre. He's a smart little dude, who has a lot of heart and a ton of potential. One of the few child characters in anything that I actually like, because I think they write him extremely well: He is young, but he is not stupid. He is not treated like an accessory or like the property of his family, he's his own person with a distinct personality within his family, with a reasonable amount of autonomy. And he's a person who is still learning and has valuable contributions while also needing guidance or support at times. 10/10

-Dani gradually gets better at helping Blades deal with his flight anxiety (and sticks up for him when the others might mock him a little for it), and this is not only inherently very nice and cute, but it also makes a lot of sense as she is a first responder/medic and we see her offer the same reassurances towards the people she helps to rescue.

-The writing for the Burns Family in general is some of the best family group character writing in anything tbh, they handle the family dynamic so well in this show, and it's extra cute as the Rescue Bots all learn a lot from observing how the family takes care of one another and the townspeople they rescue. :')

-Blades has anxiety. I also have anxiety, so I am biased and clearly love this dude, lmao. He's so fucking relatable and even though sometimes the others rip on him, it is clear that they're also very proud of him for trying his best to deal with a situation which for him is particularly difficult (he was forced to take a flight capable alt-mode when this is something he is explicitly not comfortable with) and his team mates do support him, even though Heatwave is a douche sometimes (although it is clear this is usually due to stress or something else and that the actual problem isn't Blades). Over the course of the series, Blades does develop a little more confidence, and it's very cute and nice to see him puffing himself up a little more. :)

-The overall attitudes the bots have towards humans in this show is sweet. It's clear they don't really understand humanity or humans as a whole, but it also doesn't really matter because they are so specifically oriented to their local population on the island and their focus is a relatively small community of humans. They take their duties seriously and will protect this population, even if they don't really understand the people outright. They gradually start to respect the locals (and the Burns Family) more and more as they work with them, and get acclimated to Earth. They love their dumbass weird little humans :')

This leads to a lot of fun shenanigans with the bots not understanding things, or only understanding things as they have been explained by the children, which is hilarious.

-There is an episode where local thieves steal Chase, and inspired by Cody's school drama project, he decides to go undercover after watching a bunch of old detective movies. This includes him narrating things to himself, which he is called on when Dani enters the garage and asks him "Why are the lights off? Are you talking to yourself?" lmao

-Although it isn't explicitly canonical, it's easy to interpret both Chase and Blades as being neurodivergent. Both of them display various behaviours and traits which can potentially be understood in this way, and I'm just glad that there's a show for kids where two of the main characters, who are rescue workers, are shown to be competent and skilled at their jobs and accepted by the community for who they are while also being neurodivergent. <3 It's such a good vibe when the other characters support or defend these two in particular, especially when Chase or Blades might be confused or upset about something. Chief Burns is especially great working with Chase.

-Any episode where Optimus shows up in Rescue Bots usually has some gems of cuteness/silliness. The Elvis line still takes me out, LMAO. "You're bigger than Elvis!" "I have not met this Elvis, and I am unaware of his size." 10/10 writing, I fucking love Rescue Bots

-The bots constantly call out a bunch of details that are entirely appropriate for robots from space to notice and recognise as somewhat weird, whereas a lot of the human characters are so used to 1) being human and 2) living on this incredibly weird little technologically advanced island that nothing really phases them anymore. So we can actually identify more with the bots at time, despite the fact that they are also providing an outsider point of view, which is really clever! :)

-The theme song is a fucking banger. It's so good. I love this song so much. I wish we got a full version of it, but this is the best extended version of it that I've been able to find. Enjoy!!!

-There's a lot of fairly adult stuff in the show, more than I think people realise! The tone can never get too dark outright as it is intended for young kids as the primary demographic, but there's a lot of situations, conversations, etc. that are genuinely engaging and interesting from an adult perspective, which is a large part of what makes it a great watch for all ages.

Some situational examples include scenarios where children are imperilled in natural disasters, accidents, even kidnapping at one point.

Non-kid related situations include risks and threat to civilians from AI development and the dangers that uncontrolled or poorly thought out technology can cause or exacerbate, which is significant in context and also interesting to think about given our current relationship IRL with rapid tech development and concerns around how that technology is being made and applied, either in reality or in theory.

Some dialogue examples include scenes where the bots mention their grief over being unable to save Cybertron, a sense of guilt that they were in stasis for so long even though this was beyond their control, awareness that they may be the last Rescue Bots team in operation on Earth or anywhere else in the universe (a sense of loneliness and a responsibility as the last upholders of their specific creed), struggles with their sense of duty and concerns around their ability to fulfil their expectations for themselves and meet the expectations of others while rising to the demands of their unique situation, and so on.

this is already pretty long lmao, there's a ton of stuff I really like about Rescue Bots, but I hope this might encourage others to check out the show if you haven't before, it's well worth a watch! :)

#maccadam #maccadams #reply #long post #rescue bots #tf rescue bots #tf heatwave #tf blades #burns family #chief burns #cody burns #kade burns #dani burns

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roe-and-memory · 5 months

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one of my favourite things about the cars fandom is how we all collectively agree on specific facts about the characters while also having our own lore to go around them. like those hcs are just cemented in stone and we build around them in our own ways.

doc got a permanent leg injury (or just a permanent injury of any kind) in his crash? hell yeah

doc is lightnings father figure? HELL YEAH

lightning has parental issues? hell yeah

cruz x natalie? FUCK YEAH

autistic or adhd lmq? hell YEAH

there are definitely more i cant think of off the top of my head right now but its so Fun like Yes!!! speak ur truth!!! and obviously some of us have different perceptions of HOW these things work, but the fact that we can all have such similar ideas and just agree that Yeah thats unspoken canon! is so fucking cool. i love u guys this is probably my favourite fandom ive ever been in

#cars 2006 #cars fandom #lightning mcqueen #pixar cars #cars 3 (2017)#doc hudson #this is so random and cheesy i just was thinking about it like #wow its so interesting how theres just stuff we unspokenly agree on #like yeah thats literally canon

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skimmeh · 1 year

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considering I'm a lil between stuff, here's some space au doodles:

Cleo!!!! with implied lore that I may or may not elaborate on

Concepts!!! Charaters, locations and creeper weapons (Doc is the guy who makes and sells them)

Grian doodles ...cos I'm very bias to my favourite (also I meant 'who' I'm unfortunately dylexic and a lil lazy)

Lil animation test (that I probably won't be finishing cos animating on procreate is hell)

#my doodles #space death game au #mcyt #grian #zombiecleo #jimmy solidarity #RRAAAWWRRRR #au art bbbbyyyyy #im a lil busy with the commission drawings to work onit right now ...my b qwq #sorty about starting a series to almost immediately put it on pause #stareater au

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purerae · 2 months

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Who’s your personal favourite yandere? I’m guessing it’s Kieran? seeing as he has the most content

NOOO OMG DONT MAKE ME CHOOSE.

ahhh this is such a hard question i personally love all of them in different ways!!

honestly you are right in thinking that it’s Kieran because i do have a soft spot for him seeing as he was my first OC on this blog — and he’s probably my most detailed yandere seeing that i have most of his lore and background story fleshed out on a doc somewhere ^^;

but if all of my characters came to life i think i’d like Alex (yandere!jock) the best seeing as he’s the nicest and the most extroverted. I would probably find silas and kieran too annoying, and reina too scary LOL.

#love hate relationship with this man #i do wanna write more content for my other yanderes !! but i mostly get asks on kieranLOL #purerae #yandere blog #delete later #male yandere #yandere headcanons #yandere #yandere oc #yandere x reader #yandere oc x reader #male yandere oc #yandere playboy #yandere jock #female yandere

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goodboyaudios · 3 months

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so i was rewatching/listening BVZ for GOD KNOWS HOW MANY TIMES and i think from a not-lore-not-story perspective one of my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE THINGS IS HOW THE CHARACTERS TRANSITION ON AND OFF SCREEN.

like in the first ep after albus busts the lab door down and doc comes running in he just SLOWLY RISES FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN. it’s like playing peakaboo with a toddler ITS SO FUNNY TO ME

and then in ep 2 when albus is about to kill jess but HS stops him how he just SLOWLY SLIDES OUT OF FRAME 😭😭

it’s the tiny stupid things like THIS that get me cacking istg 😭😭

I was aiming for the characters to be a lot more animated, but unfortunately, I never found the time to properly master After Effects. Adding visual elements to BvZ is crucial to me. Now more than ever since I got a copyright claim that was valid due to lacking visual elements recently.

Maybe when I do season 2 I'll have mastered it!

#good boy audios #goodboyaudios #youtube #asmr roleplay #asmr boyfriend

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antimony-medusa · 2 months

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Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers.

I was tagged by @regicidal-optimism

In no particular order:

A World Away (A Step Apart), (14,531 words) my OW superhero/supervillain romance with identity shenanigans, a dystopian world, and in-world supervillain RPF social media posts. This one was so fun to write. I've spent a lot of time on various social medias over the years and I delved into it for the fake discourse, and some of those social media jokes are some of my favourite things I've written. Plus I got to make up two guys that I love, OW is so fun.

A Hundred Things You Have Not Dreamed Of, (27,743 words), a DSMP emduo au in a vaguely superhero au about coming back from dehumanization. This fic was the one where I had to go holy shit I really do keep writing about food as healing I need to start tagging that on my fic, but also I just had a great deal of fun delving into, on the one hand, the hurt/comfort of expecting pain and not getting it, and on the other hand, the actual legitimate joys you can find in the small good things of a life you're choosing to live, even if baldly speaking it's not a great life. Like these guys don't know how to cook, and they live in a shitty apartment, and they have minimum wage food service jobs and don't have internet, but they also have friendship and community and 3 meals a day, and a laptop that can play videos, and that can also be something to appreciate. Plus it was a really fun challenge to take characters who basically don't act like the characters at all, because of trauma, and show them gradually growing into themselves. I still love this one a lot.

three deaths, no burials, one sunrise, (804 words). Oh boy. This one. DSMP, and c!wilbur focused, and second person, and inspired by a richard silken poem and a ursula vernon speech and a post about how wilbur didn't get a grave. At this point I don't even know if that's true canon, but I love this fic for how completely it took over my brain, I sat down and wrote it in one setting. Fuckin' pulled out of me like unspooling rope hand over hand. Having complicated feelings about your death and how it was marked or unmarked by the people around you, and exploring that through video game statistics, is something that can be so personal.

The Totem Of Undying Job, (62,696 words), DSMP, the syndicate heist Las Nevadas. So oh man, this was written in the era of the prison arc and you can probably tell, but I am still proud of how much I went into existing lore for the characterizations, not to mention proud of pulling off a long-fic. I keep thinking of it and going "man I should write more prey duo", or "I should write more tntduo", or "dang, beeduo slaps", or what have you. The first full and complete novel-length thing I had written in almost a decade, and I still think it hangs together, concepted and written entirely just me with myself in a google doc. The way I approach writing is very different nowdays, but I still love this one and I'm proud of pulling it off.

And honestly there's a lot of fics jockeying for this final spot, but I will give it to Soothing Natural Energies by Rebalancing External Wealth, Today, At Rekindled Flames Marriage Therapy Conference, (4,482 words), my origins sneegza marriage fraud shenanigans heist. I wrote this one in 24 hours for an exchange, and I was absolutely digesting my own stomach with anxiety the whole time, but I got it done, and then I posted and people said it was funny! And it had good worldbuilding! They liked it! And I drank some coffee and sat down to read it and went what do you know, I also like this, I think it's funny. Sometimes when I go oh god can I actually write comedy I go back to this one and I remind myself that yes, I can feel out how punchlines work. Also that I should write more origins, it's delightful.

tagging: @chrysalizzm, @imperialkatwala, @creetchure, @lennjamin-o7, @droidofmay

(don't feel obligated, any of you, I was just mentally paging through the people I follow trying to find people who hadn't already been tagged.)

#my writing

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insomniaruler · 4 months

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Yk how the hermits are taking it slow (slow as in their slow)(-doc obv) this season. I like to think that all the winged hybrids have their wings out.

My headcanon is that the code/lore mechanics restricts their wings until either they receive the elytra advancement OR all other server members have gotten the advancement. So either Xisuma got rid of that or they just passed around an elytra.

Why they did this? My favourite idea is that skizz was super nervous about not having his wings, or they really just wanted to relax and take a moment to stop and breathe with their friends.

#hermitcraft #mcyt #headcannon #headcanon #also can I have a moment for Joel’s base? MMMM DELICOUS

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kellycataclysm · 18 days

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How many children do harvey and lyra have?

Thank you for this lovely question! My long fic features their first child Evie. Evie was conceived not long after they were married, was unplanned (Flower dance anyone, or maybe more likely just a little bit of forgetfulness on Lyra’s part?) and born in winter of Lyra’s second year in the valley (just over a year after they became a couple). They both love her deeply.

She has Harvey’s wavy brown hair and green eyes but has Lyra’s freckles. Lyra chose her name. She is called Evanora Juniper. She is named Evie after the character in the movie The Mummy. Just after Lyra found out they were expecting, they had a weekend in the city to celebrate her birthday. During that weekend, they saw the movie at a vintage cinema that Lyra used to go to when she worked at the university. The name Juniper refers to Harvey’s favourite colour green.

Evie is curious and adventurous, albeit a little shy at times, and looks up to Jas as a surrogate big sister. Her favourite colour is purple which I made as a reference to the magic in the valley. The version of SDV that I write is very ‘real world’ and I thought an interesting way to introduce some of those more magical aspects would be through childhood imagination. I wrote a fic about this glimpse of magic called The Fairy Garden, and just the other day had another idea that I may explore. I also wanted her birthday to be tied to a holiday with a little magic, so she is their Winter Star gift. I imagine that her fascination with the environment will carry through her life and when she grows up she will become something like a biologist or environmental scientist, always out in the field, breathing the fresh air with the sun on her skin. As a four year old, she loves colouring, collecting rocks and shells, going head first down the slide in the Community Centre garden, and their dog Jack follows her around endlessly, sleeping in her bedroom at night.

Now for a spoiler for their future. As I approach the end of my long fic and with only one WIP left to write from Lyra and Harvey’s first year together, I start to think about what I could do next. Do I write more shorts and one-shots OR do I put my energies into a cosy (yes of course spicy) sequel of sorts? I haven’t decided. However, I can tell you that my lore doc introduces another child. Evie gets to be a big sister when Amelia Scarlet is born. Her name was chosen by Harvey and refers to the famous aviator, Amelia Earhart, and to Lyra’s red hair. She is born close to the magical holiday of Spirit’s Eve. She has Harvey’s wavy brown hair but inherits Lyra’s freckles and blue-grey eyes. If I were to guess, I’d see Amelia following in Harvey’s footsteps somewhat and becoming a doctor or veterinarian perhaps.

Thank you so much for this question! I really enjoyed answering this one! <3

#stardew valley #stardew harvey #stardew stardust #stardew lyra #lyra and harvey #stardust and harvey #stardew valley fanfic #stardew valley harvey

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vashtijoy · 1 year

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Today I want to rant at length about highlight a plot-relevant but otherwise rather dry line from Shido's Palace, simply because it's been living rent-free in my head for days and I'll die if I don't.

And up front I want to say: this is not intended as translator bashing, shit like this is rarely on the translator, though I will possibly get a little aerated at times. More about that at the end.

This is really long, and probably very boring. So to summarise quickly:

Ooe's "diplomat" and "president of some company" are the Minister for Transport and the railway company president from the 4/10 cinematic with Sae and the SIU director;

Shido wasn't "specially appointed", he's the Minister of State for Special Missions, likely with oversight for either the PTs or the psychotic breakdowns;

being a pro translator sucks;

something about a well.

my least favourite line so far

Shadow Politician 春先に地下鉄事故があっただろう?狙ったのは、あの運転士だからな。 harusaki ni chikatetsu jiko ga atta darou? neratta no wa, ano untenshu da kara na Do you recall the subway accident early last spring? The one I had targeted was that engineer.

nb—this "engineer" is the train driver. I didn't get this at all, but apparently train drivers are called engineers in the US? This is a good example of how something you think is a mistranslation may not be.

There is an occasion where the guy is referred to as a "driver", but this is actually 車掌 shashou—in Japanese, a conductor in the British sense, the member of staff who is not the driver, but walks up and down checking tickets. This is meant to hint to us, I suspect, that the NPC saying this may not be a reliable source—he's making some spooky claims, after all. Yet again, in America, the conductor can be the driver of the train...? IDK, confusion abounds.

But on to the important bit:

Shadow Politician 目障りな国交大臣と、現政権派の社長のクビを取るためだった。mezawarina kokkou daijin to, genseiken-ha no shachou no kubi o toru tame datta It was to take out the president of some company and a diplomat who sided with current government.

Full disclosure: I have never liked this line. It screamed of being mistranslated. "The president of some company"? Ooe had this guy destroyed, and he can't be specific? And "a diplomat"? This has come from nowhere—I can't think of another diplomat in P5. It just all seems so random. And it is random. Because this was meant to close up a background plot element from the start of the game, and it just... doesn't any more.

So, for this one, I'm just going to break out the big red DENIED stamp again:

The hell of it all is that I can see what they did here, so I'm going to go through it at excessive length, as like... an object lesson in what not to do. Not just for you, but for me.

And I need to be clear up front that I'm not an authoritative source on the Japanese language. I'm not fluent, my Japanese is barely passable (which is why asks, comments and discussion on my language posts are all always super welcome, btw, just like for everything else I post). I'm just a weeb on the Internet, who constantly posts assertions and theories that future me will hate. Bring your salt shaker.

Quick glimpse behind the curtain: this is from my Google doc for Shido's Palace. You have the textbox code, the speaker, then the text in Japanese, romaji and the localisation. Usually these days I don't add the romaji (it's not good for your reading), but lines that go into posts get it temporarily.

Words I don't know, or had to verify (like shachou, where I wanted to know if it was always a company president or if it could be a role within a political faction), or lore/grammar notes, all get comments, which are highlighted in yellow.

the peril of dictionaries

I'm bilingual English/Welsh-speaking; until I was fifteen, I was educated through the medium of Welsh. So I got taught very early on about the correct use of dictionaries. The exact example I remember is that a past pupil (probably apocryphal) wanted to put "Well, Dad was angry!" into Welsh. And they had looked up "well"....

ffynnon, roedd Dad yn grac! Well, Dad was angry!

This is a ffynnon:

It's a funny story. The point is that you should always flip to the other half of the dictionary to verify the meaning you found. Or these days, with the Internet and all, we get to check multiple dictionaries, corpuses and sources! And a riotously good time it is.

part one: who was that mysterious diplomat

The main phrase I want to focus on is 国交大臣 kokkou daijin. This is what has been rendered "a diplomat" in the localisation. On first glance, that's a string of kanji I don't know: country, the right-hand side of the second half of 学校 gakkou (school), something about a big man... is that read daijin?...

Maybe it's a yojijukugo—a fixed four-kanji phrase with an often-idiomatic meaning? Let's put the whole thing into Jisho and see what we get.

(Incidentally, I bash Jisho constantly, but it's still my first stop because it's fast and often good enough. You just shouldn't rely on it for anything critical; trust, but verify.)

Well, there's no yojijukugo. But one glance at that tells us that Ooe's "diplomat" is not a diplomat at all. Ooe's "diplomat" is the Minister for Transport who was brought down as a result of this subway crash in April. You might have thought Shido had this guy taken out, but no. He did it for Ooe. He crashed a subway train, injuring 80 people, as nothing but a favour to Ooe.

But why is it using kokkou, "diplomatic relations"? Well, Jisho gives us a convenient "see also" link. Let's take a look:

You see what they did there? The full phrase is 国土交通相 kokudo koutsuu-shou, "Minister for (National) Land and Transport". But nobody wants to say that. So you strike out some of the kanji. The word becomes kokkoushou—but everyone still knows who you mean.

Let's do a bit of that verification I mentioned. Here's Wikipedia:

HmmMM. Notice how the Minister and the Ministry are read the same; only the last kanji changes. But we're still on track.

Let's click over to Japanese Wikipedia. What do they have to say?

And there it is again, highlighted: our old friend 国交 kokkou, "diplomatic relations". "In Japanese, this is commonly abbreviated as kokkoushou".

daijin

How about 大臣 daijin? It looks like it just means "big man" or "important man", but what does it actually mean? Again, let's start with Jisho:

... B|

Jisho offers us a bunch of "further reference" links, so I'm going to go straight to Japanese Wikipedia for this one—which sends you to an old revision of the page, by the way; be sure to go to the latest one:

大臣（だいじん）は、本来は皇帝や国王などを輔弼して国政を司る重要官職だが、今日では一般的に君主制か共和制かにかかわらず、政府を構成し、各行政部門の長に位置する官職を指す。閣僚ともいう。 Historically, 大臣 daijin referred to the high position of those responsible for matters of state, who advised emperors and kings on those matters. However, today it generally refers, regardless of whether the government in question is a monarchy or republic, to an official who leads a division of government.

... ... B|

In other words, a cabinet minister. Seems to sum it up pretty well, but let's just look at the invaluable ALC corpus on this:

So we have it. A daijin is unquestionably a cabinet minister. And Ooe is unquestionably talking about the Minister for Transport.

last-minute edit: I actually wrote this entire post, preened for completing it, then closed it in my drafts and forgot all about it. Until I opened my grammar text to a random page and found this:

EVEN MY GRAMMAR BOOK KNOWS.

Actual grammar books are a bit obsolete in 2023, but that is a great one if you're in the market. Just don't get the Kindle edition, it's illegible on Kindle which is probably not what you want.

Incidentally, yes, a Diet member is sensei—you can often hear people refer to Shido that way.

but we can also backreference this one

Another cool thing we can do is get context-relevant examples. That is, we can search the P5 script itself to see how it uses daijin and kokkou daijin.

Two lines use kokkou daijin. One is this line of Ooe's. The other is a news story, which gets it right:

Newscaster 国交大臣の辞任に伴い、与党への批判が高まっており⋯ kokkou daijin no jinin ni tomanai, yotou e no hihan ga takamatte ori... Criticism of the ruling party has surged, following the resignation of the Minister of Transport.

But people talk about the Minister quite a bit. What phrases do they use? Well, sometimes he's simply the daijin—"the Minister"; this usually becomes "Minister of Transport" for context. Sometimes he's the kokkoushou, as we discussed above. And often, on the news, he gets his full title—he's the kokudo koutsuu daijin.

Usually, daijin by itself in P5 is part of 総理大臣 souri daijin—the prime minister.

meanwhile in shidoland

In passing, the MoT is not the only one who gets translated out of the script. You might remember from the calling card cinematic that Shido is the "Minister of State for Special Missions".

Makoto tries to tell us this at one point:

Makoto 特命担当大臣現職の閣僚よ tokumei tantou daijin genshoku no kanryou yo He was specially appointed to the position. That's his current title. He's the current Minister of State for Special Missions.

(What is that, exactly? I'm not gonna do a huge research effort on this one right now, this post is already longer than the Nile and dry as sand, but they appear to be appointed to deal with things that are a big deal—the link gives you examples of some of the issues they've been appointed for. It's not inconceivable that Shido was appointed to the Cabinet to deal with the national crisis of psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns that he started. Either that, or the PTs themselves—he does talk about them an awful lot.)

and that's not all

There is, of course, a real Japanese Minister for Transport. We can put kokkou daijin into Google (with a little は on the end to filter Chinese-language sites), and what do we get back? The first hit is the Wikipedia page for the Minister for Transport.

My guess would be that the translator knew the word kokkou, but they didn't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Japanese politics. So they read kokkou daijin as some kind of important diplomat.

part two: in which we invent time travel

And that was only the first of the two things that made me hate my life about that textbox. Let's bring the line back:

The second thing that got under my skin was this:

現政権派の社長 genseiken-ha no shachou

This means, in the terms of the localisation, "a company president who sided with current government". But... what is even going on here?

In Japanese, modifiers go before the things they modify, right? Like ... always. I'm going to cite the slightly-tongue-in-cheek but also inestimable Jay Rubin (probably best known as Haruki Murakami's English translator) on this:

... by about the middle of the seventh century, the Emperor, who still wielded actual power then, made a rule, maybe the one rule that really works in the language and never gets broken: “From this day forward, subjects will always come before their verbs. And, just to keep things neat, modifiers will always come before what they modify.” Never in all these centuries have there been any exceptions—at least not in normal syntax....

Shōmetsu shita zō is “The elephant that vanished”—a fragment, just a noun with a modifier in front of it. By putting it before the zō, we’ve changed the shōmetsu shita into a modifier. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and call anything that modifies a noun an adjective. Shōmetsu shita zō (literally, “vanished elephant”) works exactly the same way as utsukushii zō (“beautiful elephant”).

(That's from the book "Making Sense of Japanese", by the way, which y'all should totally read if you can find a copy. It's one of Kodansha's little books, which are all worth at least a glance; they published tons of them, with titles like "All About Particles" and "How To Sound Intelligent In Japanese" and etc etc etc.)

back to our sentence

So how is this translation breaking that rule? Let's look at it again, with the problematic parts bolded:

目障りな国交大臣と、現政権派の社長のクビを取るためだった。mezawarina kokkou daijin to, genseiken-ha no shachou no kubi o toru tame datta It was to take out the president of some company and a diplomat who sided with current government.

現政権派 genseiken-ha is the current government; the current administration. No problems there. It's just in the wrong place.

kokkou daijin, we established, is the localisation's "diplomat". genseiken-ha no translates as "aligned with the current government". But genseiken-ha is after kokkou daijin. It cannot be modifying it. It can't have been taken for a relative clause—what Jay Rubin framed as an adjective in the quote up there—because we still have the two people the sentence describes, the "diplomat" and the businessman; the sentence has not been read as talking about a diplomat who is also a government-boosting company president.

We should have, literally, "an eyesore of a minister for transport" and "a company president who sides with current government". But we just... don't.

Is it possible it doesn't make sense that a company president would be aligned with the government? Has the sentence been rearranged for that reason? But this is essentially what Okumura does: he's a company boss aligned with a powerful politician. So are the TV and IT Execs whose shadows we meet, for that matter. They are not in politics themselves, but they network with politicians. Big business and politics are always hand-in-hand.

All of this gives us the following working version of the translation:

It was to take down that intolerable Minister of Transport and a company president who supported the government.

And on that note....

who is that mysterious company president

"the president of some company", the localisation says. This seems a bit vagued up. Are there any company presidents we should be aware of here?

The answer is yes:

On 4/10, in the cinematic after the crash, the SIU Director talks at length about how this is the fault of "the company and the government". Of course he does—he knows very well what's happened, and he knows where the blame is to be assigned:

SIU Director: It's less of an operating accident and more of a crime of the company and the government. SIU Director: Site inspectors apparently reported all of this six months ago—the deterioration of the tracks and the ATC.

And the last two lines in full, since they diverge:

SIU Director それを会社が隠ぺい…国交省も故意に見逃したフツがある。 sore o kaisha ga inpei... kokkoushou mo koi ni minogashita futsu ga aru Seems the railway company and the Ministry of Transport both turned a blind eye to the truth. So the railway company covered it up... and the Ministry of Transport did what they do best: they turned a blind eye to it..

This is just a slight difference in emphasis: the railway company allegedly performed a deliberate coverup, and it was the Ministry that did their normal thing, and chose to overlook that coverup....

But note that "railway company" here is just 会社 kaisha, "company". Originally, it was obvious from context; the localisation clarifies it. But when Ooe later mentions a 社交 shachou, a "company president", in the same obvious-from-context way, it has not been picked up on—our very personal railway company president has become "the president of some company". Who was important enough for Ooe to personally destroy, but not important enough for him to remember where he worked.

SIU Director 隠し通せんよ。大臣の進退まで行くだろう。 kakushitoosen yo. daijin no shintai made iku darou There's no way they can hide. This will go all the way to the top. They can't keep this hushed up forever. By the end of this, the transport minister's job will be on the line.

... but here's the first real appearance of the Minister for Transport, with the SIU Director—who, again let's not forget, knows this crash was engineered in part to get that minister—not just saying this incident will "go all the way to the top", but that it will specifically end with them coming for the minister's job.

where did we come from, where did we go

Where does that leave us with the sentence?

It was to take out the president of some company and a diplomat who sided with current government. It was to take down that intolerable Minister of Transport, and the president of the railway company. He supported the government, after all.

We've broken that little genseiken-ha out into its own little explaining sentence, since it's hard to phrase as one sentence in natural English. And now you know.

btw, leave the translators alone

Look, this is far from the best translation I've ever seen. We should be mad about this, right? Well... no.

As a hobbyist, I have the luxury of focusing on a single fandom, spending hours, days, or weeks thinking about single scenes, researching context, language and concepts, confirming I've understood things to the best of my ability. Your average animanga/JRPG translator is not being paid well enough, or given nearly enough time, to do this. They cannot be expected to do this.

This is not, not, NOT on the translator. Read that ten times. We are supposed to go from our second language to our native tongue; that's how translation works best. So there will always be areas of confusion like this, things that need clarification and research. Japanese media translation requires a vast knowledge of differently arcane terms depending on the work; nobody will know them all.

Who is this on? It's on Atlus, for skimping on and rushing not only the translation but the editing; they did the English localisation of a massive property on the cheap. Something like this should have been caught by the editor, but honestly P5's editing (including the way things are finalised in English, and the overall polishing of the script) tends to come in for more criticism than the translation per se.

tl;dr: blame the company, not the poor translator who was most likely just one of us trying to make a shitty living with something they love, and a skill they worked their ass off for.

#persona 5 #p5 meta #japanese language #translation #long post #very long #very boring #you have been warned

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