#should i get back to the haiku stories and one shots?

[fairy-tales-of-yesterday]

First ten lines

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway

Tagged to play by @mrsmungus

Tagging @loubbies @kayedium-writes @mikaharuka @the-least-tactful-writer idk anyone else to tag so...

This isn't ten because i was getting tired of copying and pasting but here you go.

Is It A Dream

Mulder wondered where he went wrong. He was alone like he had been in the start, after Samantha he had always been alone. Then the FBI happened, and then Scully happened, and he hadn’t been alone, he hadn’t been fully alone in so long. Scully had almost left though, and he couldn’t blame her, he understood that he wasn’t a good person to be with. He had never been. It was a miracle that she had stuck with him for as long as she had, and she was still here beside him.

Till The End

Apollo was a simple god. Really, he was, at least compared to his father and his uncles, and Hermes there were so many things Hermes had in his realm. Sure, he liked flashy things, hot girls, hot guys, the sun, poetry, and all that jazz. Ok on second thought he wasn’t that simple, however considering he wasn’t the love god he felt like he knew love well. This is how Apollo knew that he was completely and utterly in love with… and he knew he had to write him the most beautiful haiku.

Even Through The Storm

Ace missed Nancy it had been so long since he had seen her, talked to her. It was fine though completely fine. He missed having someone who got him, not that Bess didn’t get him, it just wasn’t the same. The type of relationship Nancy and he had wasn’t the same, their connection ran deeper. He had thought that things would go back to what they were once the curse was broken but Nancy was still pulling away from them all. Hopefully, the revival of their game nights would help somewhat. He was heading to one right now, sort of, George and Bess were still on shift at the Claw but a storm was coming in so they didn’t expect there to be a lot of customers.

Moral of The Story

Gibbs thought about when Ziva "died" when he was first introduced to Tali, she was cute, he had to admit, and he wasn't even mad about his rules having been broken. He was sad though for DiNozzo, for how he was left to raise his daughter without Ziva. He had hoped that they would have been able to work it out but apparently, they hadn't. That wasn't his first thought.

Midnight Cookies

Honestly, they all should have expected this. Seven ADHD demigods were trapped together on a ship for hours on end. However, none of them could ever dream up the situation, that they had found themselves in. It all started with blue cookies, his moms’ blue cookies, he had a sudden craving for them in the middle of the night and he ventured down to where he knew the plates that would make whatever he wanted were. Sneaking quietly through the halls, he was so focused on being quiet that he wasn’t paying attention, and he ran right into Leo. Like dead on with Leo ending up on the floor.

Healing Isn’t Easy

It was over. Finally, almost over and she didn’t know how to feel. Lucy knew that she should feel relieved that it was finally over and that Rosalind was finally dead, but she didn’t feel like it was over. It was too good to be true. To easy, she had just been there one moment and then dead the next. Shot by someone hidden in the trees. She was dead, and Lucy was still here and she didn’t know how to feel about that.

Insomniac Ghosts

It was Christmas Eve, and Mulder had been planning on spending it staked out in his car, because his apartment had to be fumigated again. He hated Christmas, because of how commercialized it was, hence why he locked himself in his house, or worked from the 24th to the 25th. This year he couldn’t though, he didn’t know what to do, he couldn’t go home, and he still didn’t have the X-Files, and there was no way that he was going to stay here.

I Can Change You Can Change Everyone Can Change

He couldn’t do this he couldn’t leave her behind it just wasn’t something he could do he couldn’t walk away he couldn’t. The last time he walked away and left her behind on a tarmac, she ended up getting tortured in a terrorist camp. He couldn’t risk something happening to her again.

#x-files #percy jackson #nancy drew #NCIS #the rookie

[tsuki-sennin]

Maaaaan, First Love Hero should never have been cancelled, Broken Heart Night sucks. ...I wonder if we'll get to meet the mangaka at this week's festival! ...to be clear, I want to meet Kiito-sensei, not the other one.

Anyways here's Donbrothers Episode 22! Spoilers, I guess...

-Ah yeah, manga fans. Very safe.

-Pitch Black Academy.

-Haruka.... Kanata.

-Homegirl really rode her self-insert to the top, we stan.

-Ew.

-...I mean, I can't blame Haruka entirely, this almost seems like an ideal writing environment for me personally.

-Ahhhhh, New Term, new arc!

-Yeah I'm with Sonoza here, what the hell?

-OH MY GOD HARUKA'S NEW STUDENTS ARE HER TEAMMATES

-...and Sonoi, but

-T

-Tsuyoshi, oh my god

-This is brilliant.

-...and to think I thought of Haruka as the braincell of the team at the start of the season.

-Oh my god, Sononi/Oni Sister Team Up.

-Oh yeah, Jirou.

-He's feral.

-"I'm sooooooooooorry, I have to go sicko mode!"

-Oh my god Tarou.

-"We need this man! He's very funny and st"

-My name is Don Dragoku!

-The Don clan...

-Brothers in arms.

-"Onii-chan! :D"

-"Ototo... :o"

-Cicada.

-"Noooooo :("

-Oh my God, Haruka.

-NOOO NOT TSUYOSHI LEAVE THE MAN ALONE

-I read a post on here, can't exactly remember from who, saying that Tarou felt like an analogue for neurodivergent children. ...I feel like everybody in the main cast is that to an extent, but I think Sonoza especially fits this mold right now. Think about it, he develops a hyperfixation on this otherwise extremely random short-runner manga that's been reduced to a punchline plagued with controversy, and he's using it as a method to learn how to sort out his own feelings. That tends to happen with autistic children, speaking from firsthand experience. He doesn't experience or understand emotions the same way allistic folk would expect or want him to, and because of that, he very easily alienates the people around him as he seeks guidance.

-Donbrothers makes me feel things, and feel them deeply.

-Humans fall in love for all sorts of reasons, Sonoza. Sometimes it even just kinda happens.

-We bonded!

-This rich dude... he looks familiar, where do I know him from?

-Ok, this man is apparently played by Tet Wada. Apparently he was in Sex and the City II and Royal Pains, which're all definitely things I've seen.

-Daaaaamn, he had dinner out.

-Wow, he's been winning all this time.

-"You're kinda boring, Goda-san."

-3-3-5! Oh, this guy's definitely Denji-ki.

-He's an epic gamer.

-Magical Girl Haruka!

-Oh my god, Bishoujo Kamen Onitrine.

-B

-Banana

-Baron da?

-It's a slump of a festival! We all just wanna go eating and fighting!

-Corporate bastard.

-OH FUCK SONOZA FOUND IT

-You could say "Once upon a time" to this man, I guess.

-"Haruka, where the FUCK have you been? Did you get kidnapped again?"

-OH MY GOD TAROU YOU NEARLY SHOT THAT OFFICE WOMAN

-H

-Haruka, you hjklh;hl.

-"Is that me?"

-Haruka, don't do that

-Oh god, Naoki Shiina real.

-B

-Bun

-I wanna hold off on cursing them out, but you've probably noticed that I have a rather low opinion on them.

-Rightfully so, I feel.

-Good luck, Haruka-san.

-They don't even speak, huh? Really dedicated to this gimmick.

-Wonder if thee's somehing bad.

-Sononiiiii!

-Oh nice, they're friends.

-"Yeah, this is pretty epic."

-Oh my god, beef stroganoff.

-"It tastes like fuck."

-Shinichi, I don't think CEO Man wants a Haiku.

-Oh

-Well, ok!

-AVATAR CHANGE YES

-Ooooooh, Fiveman! Five Guys, Burgers and Fries.

-Poor Jirou :(

-Hell yeah man, get up!

-Man, this action's so cool.

-"Cool Story Bro!"

-Our story reaches its climax, it seems!

-Wahahaha!

-We're back in cyberspace.

-Awoooooo!

-Tsuyoshi and Tarou confirmed non furry.

-Ooooooh, Kyoryu Gold! Hell yeah Jirou.

-You deed it!

-...where he at?

-Peachyyy!

-"GIVE ME ROBOT POWER!"

-I swear to god, if you don't give your employees massive raises...

-Shiina Naoki...

-Ohhh

-Oh no, Tsubasa's stuck.

-Dog man forever.

-Jirou robot confirmed :o?

-Okay, while we're still here, I have a theory about Naoki.

-It is my belief that Naoki is an entirely artificial entity created by whatever force is compelling the Donbrothers to fight, and their purpose is to anger and goad Haruka into doing what this force wants. Think about it, the rebranding of their doujin to ride off of Haruka's success, getting all the fame and fortune she wanted, being so far above Haruka's apparent skill level that they even predict how she throws tosses the manuscript in frustration... all of it seems deliberate in making her mad and forcing her to grow up as a character.

-When Haruka gave up her powers in Episode 10, Naoki Shiina was nowhere to be seen, perhaps suggesting that they were specifically part of her curse. There's also how little we see of them otherwise. Their secretive nature aside, we only see their one work, with nothing suggesting that they even did anything else, and thus have so little clout that it's a miracle this complete nobody took on a huge publishing company and won.

-Something else worth noting is that Shinichi called Haruka's OniSister form a rabbit all the way back in Episode 3, and now we have what's essentially an anti-Haruka represented as a rabbit... this is 5D chess on Inoue's part, I swear.

-Anyways, enough straining my brain, I'm going to destress by listening to Don't Boo for a few hours </3.

#don! don! it's a full force peachy festival! #donbrothers #donbrothers spoilers #avataro sentai donbrothers #super sentai

[moisummertime]

When I start this blog, I was thought about using this platform as a medium where I can pour the traffic inside my head into words, arrange them, and hopefully I make a good traffic police who can sort the detangle thoughts on my head.  2022 was an interesting year, well, of course it didn't go as what I expected but ending the year living in another country was definitely a highlight. Back in 2020, I talked about vacationing in Thailand with my significant other at that time, imagining of having a romantic getaway in Koh Phi Phi, just all the sweet imaginations. Little I know I’ll live in Chiang Mai, I was here for 2 weeks vacation and I ended up telling myself, “Let’s give it a shot.” My vacation back in September 2022 was just a total escape from a little heartbreak. As always I ended up again in failed situationship, of which I should have known better that person was not the one. I mean it’s situationship why I expected more? Lol but yea, that was a funny one tho. I think I can balance things out better now. I don’t force things or people to do the way I want things to operate.  Last year theme was to surrender of whatever the universe wanted me to learn and I continue the lesson in 2023. I made some plans, of course all personal plans. I don't plan to get married or having partner this year because... It’s not something I can plan. When it happens it happens. I have no capacity to force it or deny it. I will just focus on what I can achieve and what I can handle. I will welcome, receive and accept it when it knocks on my door.  This year I want to get closer to my spiritual side, balancing my heart and sacral chakra, to be a kinder person, and approach things with more love and compassion. I want to learn what is my purpose In this lifetime and what I can do better so that I can at least be a better person than my life in the past. This morning I received my past life reading messages. They said I was a man in my past life, I was a soldier, a young soul, and I obviously killed a lot of people. And my purpose in this lifetime is to connect with my creativity so I can help a lot of people. Imagine what kind of creativity I should do to save a lot of people’s life. *mindblown* But then again it linked to the chakra cleansing session that I had in Bali back in November. One of the message was to balancing my sacral chakra. That’s where creativity and flexibility placed. In my days as a teenager, I was very much into writing fiction. I created a huge base of reader through my story and I even neglected my study because of that. I don't know if I still have those creativity. I sometimes made stories and haikus, but the only one way for me to be inspired is by getting a heartbreak. lmao. what a way to get a muse :”D I don't place my own happiness in other person now. I do like to have a partner, but I don't want to be codependent. I learned it hard way. I mean when it comes to having a partner, I’d love to have him have his own goal, career and I will never be their blockage. Instead, I’ll be cheering on him all the way. Our relationship is important but I refuse to be a priority that should be put before personal goals. People needs to have their own goal in life, Whether it’s materially or spiritually. Relationship should be a base, a home, a support system. You can go on a war kill thousands of men out there, but when you’re back home, it’s place where you feel safe to be vulnerable, weak, and also place where you recharge. That is why, for me the idea of “Home” is never a place. It’s always a person. So it’s important that the person I call home is someone who is understand what is his role in my life. I can live in different cities, countries, idk, everywhere in the world as long as I have my person, as long as I have my home.  I think for that part Im pretty flexible eh? But yea, at work Im still a bossy bitch who micromanage. I still have to work on that part. Im also starting a side hustle of which I have to start building. I made a Youtube page and post meditation videos. I think I put some of my creativity there, I guess? I will also start my certification training next week. Dear God the Creator, bless me with strength and focus. I’d definitely get bored easily. 

[peace-coast-island]

Misc. Stuff - Writings Masterpost

Just a list of writings over the years. Feel free to read!

Note: I just realized while going through the list that some of them might not have been posted here (or they were but I can’t find it, which is most likely the case), but they’re on Wattpad. They’re pretty old but if anyone’s interested (I think you need an account to see them? I’m not sure it’s been forever since I’ve been on wattpad but I can cross post here)

Haikustories - Short haikus about individual HSS OCs The Beginning (MC - Delanie) Colors (Emo - Anne) I’ve Had Enough (Cheerleader - Layla) The Uninvited Guest (Musician - Michael) Abigail (Dancer - Liam)  Denial (Movie Star - Jeremy)  Sleepless Nights (Student Gov. - Emma)  In the Studio (Virtuoso - Indie) Prodigal Daughter (Hip Hop - Meadow)

Short Stories Storms (HSS - Student Gov. - Cassandra)

Misc. Shorts The Carnival is Over (HSS, Hacker - Amy) Broken and Burning (HSS, Rebel - Blaise)  The World Around Me (HSS/HWU MCs - Delanie and Jamie)  Someday We’ll Find a Way (Friends in Time - Sapphire, Steven and Spencer) Win Some, Lose Some (HSS, Earth Club -  Shannon)  Harsh Reality (HWU, Celeb Blogger - Paisley)  Paper Stars (HSS, Slacker - Penny)  One Year (HWU, Special FX - Judith)  Friends or Strangers? (HSS, Vampire - Mitchell) 

Camp HSS Prompts - Entries for the event Camp HSS featuring OC Hadley Roshni (Rock Climber) Day One: The Bunny Leaves the Cage  What Have They Done to the Rain?  The Early Bird Gets the Worm  Watch Your Step! (And Your Head!)  Message in a Pocketwatch All About Bunnies!

#ChoicesCreates Quatervois (ROE, Nerdy Twin - Lotty)  Kintsukuroi (ES, MC - Kieran) Strikhedonia (TF, MC - Acacia) Saudade (THoBM, MC - Aminta)  Sankofa (LH, MC - Julie) Scripturient (ROE, MC - Rose) Eudaimonia (TF/THoBM -  Acacia and Aminta)  Trouvaille (LH, MC - Julie) Kalopsia (TF, MC - Acacia)  Aubade (TF, ES, ROE, THoBM, TRR, LH)  Quaquaversal (ES, MC - Kieran)  Quondam (THoBM. MC - Aminta)  Monochopsis (ES, MC - Kieran)  Anecdoche (ROE, MC - Rose)  Erlebnisse (TS, MC - Acacia)  Poudrerie (TRR, MC - Enid)  Advesperascit (ES, MC - Kieran)  Pábitel (ES, MC - Kieran)  Pareidolia (Hero, MC - Finley)  Eshajōri - Part 1 (LH - Julie, feat various OCs) Eshajōri - Part 2 (LH - Julie, feat various OCs)

Quaintrelle stories (TRR, MC - Enid) - Enid’s letters to her best friend Sera Quaintrelle  Mizpah Sillage

#other stuff #reference post #oh wow this list is longer than i thought #yeah like said i can post the wattpad stuff here if anyone's interested #been meaning to do this for a while #should i get back to the haiku stories and one shots? #it's been years wow and I've been meaning to go back to them #but i haven't had the time and energy #i also want to get back to choices creates but probs not until winter break #i should get back to writing more but college ugh #at least this isn't a master post for oc stuff like bios and 5 facts #or else it'll probs take days to complete and be a super log post #also should this be under a read more? idk just wodnering #anyway here's the list

[tl-notes]

Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 3 Notes

Sparrows! Specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow, known in Japan as the suzume. You can just about see them all over Japan, all year long—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a season word!

Depending on their depiction, they can be used as a season word for most times of the year, but a major one is “late spring,” as that’s when they’re out and about finding food for their baby birds. You can also see in the art they look a little floofy, indicative of the winter coat they haven’t fully shed yet; suzume in summer have a more sleek look. Here’s a shot of them from late summer last season:

And from closer to winter here↓. Quite fluffy.

As a quick refresher, 季語 kigo, or season words, are words/phrases/concepts used to give a sense of season to a haiku (or other poem/work of art), which is what part of what differentiates them from a senryuu. They were used pretty frequently in a lot of episodes last season, but a bit less so this time so far.

Where Lucoa and Ilulu are talking about a “right” here, the Japanese word is 資格 shikaku. While this usage is similar to “right” in English, the connotation is a little different as the word actually means more “qualification.” 

Whereas a “right” is generally something you have innately in some sense (e.g. if you make art you automatically have copyright over it, you have human rights just for being human, etc.), a shikaku is something you earn (e.g. if you study and take a test for certification program and pass, you’re rewarded with a shikaku.)

Ilulu’s response to the question here is 

そういうのは違う。小林がくれたあの言葉はなかったことにはできないから。

One way in which this differs from the English is that she’s not saying it would be right or wrong, but rather not the solution she’s looking for—because it would also mean undoing the words Kobayashi gave her, and that is something she doesn’t want to do, no matter what.

In contrast the English feels more like she thinks it would be wrong to do that, and even if she did it wouldn’t let her escape what Kobayashi said to her. (That would make more sense if Kobayashi had called her out on being evil, but that’s not really what went down.) An alternative wording might be something like:

“That wouldn’t solve anything. Besides, I don’t want to erase what Kobayashi gave me.”

This line is: 小林さんのようにはいかないなー

This is perhaps just my interpretation, but the English here sounds like Lucoa once convinced/helped Kobayashi in some fashion previously, is trying it again with Ilulu, but failing this time. (I don’t that’s ever happened though.)

In contrast, I think the Japanese is saying that Lucoa is trying to be like Kobayashi (e.g. when helping alleviate/solve Tohru’s various worries), and it’s not really working for her. I.e. “It’s not working like when Miss Kobayashi does it.” 

Ilulu’s line about “I don’t want to ask Kobayashi about it because she’d probably solve it too easily" seems to support that reading; the dragons know Kobayashi as worries-solver.

The English here has Lucoa saying she’ll go talk to Kanna/Saikawa, and casually telling Ilulu to wait in the bathroom. But Lucoa doesn’t actually talk to the kids, and even if she was planning to, why would Ilulu waiting in the toilet do anything?

The answer is that Lucoa is actually telling Ilulu to talk (to an unspecified subject, assumed to be Saikawa, since she’s a human and thus someone Ilulu feels guilty about interacting with; Kanna she’s more fine with, as a dragon). And instead of “Go ahead and wait in the bathroom,” it’s more of a “Go wait in the bathroom and see what happens,” with the implication Lucoa is going to set something up. 

And she does!

“I won’t lie about X, but Y is a different story.” This seems to imply she will still lie about Y? That seems a bit odd to me, especially when she just lied about X (those feelings) to Kanna/Saikawa minutes ago. 

The Japanese says something a bit different though.

The core of the middle line here is 気持ちに嘘をつかない kimochi ni uso wo tsukanai. Because the に, the particle indicating “direction,” is attached unadorned to "feelings,” it is saying not “lying about X” but “lying to X.” This construction, to say one is lying to a feeling, is fairly common in Japanese media. It’s basically equivalent in English to lying to yourself about those feelings.

(for “lying about X” you’d change the に into a について or similar)

So basically she’s saying she won’t pretend, to herself at least, that she doesn’t want to play. But that’s a separate issue to whether she has, as she said before, the “right” to play after what she did. 

You could maybe put it sort of like this:

“I won’t lie to myself about my feelings anymore. But that doesn’t mean I can act on them after what I did.”

I feel extremely silly even pointing this out, but the beam here is 尿意 nyoui, which is the urge to pee, not necessarily actually needing to pee. Hence why she seems to stop needing to as soon as she gets to the bathroom and walks straight back to the living room with Ilulu after they talk.

“Be deceived” here is not 騙される damasareru, lit. “be deceived,” but 騙し討ちにあう damashi-uchi ni au, which is like being hit by a sneak attack, being stabbed in the back, etc. In a fairly literal sense in this case too, as they’re talking about actual combat.

I mostly bring it up because it feels like there is not much difference between “being deceived” and “being tricked,” despite those being portrayed as polar opposites (deceived by hostile dragons, tricked by kind Kobayashi), so it might have been wise to differentiate them more in the translation.

E.g. perhaps “She had to change to avoid a knife in the back.” (though dragons don’t use knives, so maybe a claw?)

Another pretty minor point, but the “doesn’t know right from wrong” is 分別のない funbetsu no nai, where funbetsu means not so much “knowing right from wrong,” but a more encompassing sense of discretion and maturity.

I mostly bring this one up because it struck as me awkward to say Ilulu explicitly shouldn’t know right from wrong, since that would be going backward to her be okay destroying the city again. Instead it’s more that she shouldn’t need to feel weighed down by what’s “correct” or what she “should” do. One possible alt example:

“So go back to being a kid, and worry more about what you want to do than ought to do.”

(Lucoa also changes from a narrative tone to a more conversational tone at the end, in conjunction with the visual shift away from the flashback, so swapping the “she” to “you” might be appropriate.)

Note how Kanna shuffles the cards here. Depending on where you’re from, this may seem like an odd way of doing it (unless you watched Yugioh maybe). A lot of places with majority English speakers tend to use the overhand shuffle or riffle shuffle, but in Japan (and many other Asian countries) the most common shuffle is the one on display here, known as the Hindu shuffle. 

~The More You Know~

The act of handing over a piece of candy like this has been used as imagery in other places in the show as well, though I’ll leave thinking about what it represents to you.

“Blanket” is futon, which is used to refer to both the “mattress” part and “blanket” part of a full futon, the traditional Japanese bedding (not the same thing as the sofa/couch mattress you might hear called a futon in some places).

I mostly mention because just “a blanket” kind of sounds like they’re going to leave them on the floor, but they’re actually going to get the equivalent of a guest mattress (+blanket) to put them to sleep in, as it’s late enough for this to turn into a sleepover.

Just as a bit of trivia, the word she uses for “onlooker” here is the same term as the “spectator faction.” In the manga Tohru interjects with “Aww, come on, why not Chaos faction instead?” 

Also as a side note to this whole bit about Kobayashi wearing a maid outfit; recall this scene from early in season one, where Tohru found an outfit Kobayashi had bought and stuffed deep in a closet:

Relevant! Anyway, back to the actual episode now:

If you felt like this exchange felt a little disjointed, especially given Tohru’s tone of voice: the idea is that Lucoa is saying Tohru really goes to extremes when it comes to matters relating to Kobayashi, which is implying that it seems excessive to call so many people over for a relatively mild issue (not that she necessarily minds though). Tohru’s response is a slightly defensive “yeah I know, but thanks for coming over anyway.” 

(They’re saying it in ways such that you have to read between the lines a bit though, so it may not come across as easily in a translation.)

The word for “cold” here is 水くさい mizu-kusai, basically meaning “watered down” (like beer etc.), and used frequently to refer to a person/actions/words that the speaker considers too reserved for the relationship they have with the other person.

So it’s similar to cold, but cold in the context of already warm relationship. If talking about a stranger or someone you don’t get along with normally, you shouldn’t use 水くさい; you can just say 冷たい tsumetai (lit. “cold”) or similar.

In this context you could probably have her say “No need to apologize, Kobayashi-san.”

Also I like how they swap around the honorifics (Miss, Lady, -san, -sama, etc.) based on the speaker (I think differentiating between dragons and native-Japanese-speaking humans?). I would say it works given the setting, but that’s just me.

The text there says “Money Street.” It’s probably obvious, but it’s based primarily on Monopoly, which is semi-popular in Japan (though not to the extent as say in the US). 

Just some trivia, but the “sales pitch” for the game in the Japanese market is more that it’s an educational game that teaches investing and negotiation skills. (The origin of the game in general being an educational tool about exploitation of tenants by landlords, so not quite the same thing.)

Japan also has Momotarou Dentetsu (”Momotetsu”), which is a video game series that’s been around since the NES and is broadly similar to Monopoly rules-wise.

I just want to point out, amid all the riches, the bag of potato chips and other junk food in the back there.

Mini-trivia: the cardboard boxes in the background there seem to be a mix of the Amazon logo and the Seino Transportation logo, a Japanese shipping company with a kangaroo logo.

You probably noticed it without me pointing it out, but I enjoyed the fact Elma got corn starch* all around her mouth from the daifuku and then immediately got told to go play with the kids while the adults are talking.

*It may seem like powdered sugar if you’re used to donut holes, but daifuku, like most Japanese sweets (wagashi) generally, is not heavily sugared and not even particularly sweet by the standard of most “sweets” (which is part of the appeal for many). The skin of the daifuku is powdered with corn starch or similar simply to make it less sticky.

Kobayashi’s “do that” here is やろー yarou, which can mean “let’s do X” (which is a construction often used to tell/suggest someone to do something, without really including yourself in the “us”). 

However in this case—especially given Kobayashi’s pronunciation and tone of voice—I think it’s actually a homophone of that, a form of 野郎 yarou, a word for “guy” with often negative connotations, like saying “son of a” or “asshole” etc. 

The idea, I think, being that his immediate agreement of “Oooh, right I didn’t think about you wearing it,” comes with a heavy implication of “yeah you’re right, you couldn’t pull off something cute like that,” so she’s replying with a (mostly good-natured) “oh you fucker.”

This giant 完 kan means “the end,” used like “fin” at the end of a story or game etc. It’s also frequently used in “fake end” jokes. E.g. a show about a sentient zombie might start with the main character getting hit by a truck and dying immediately. The end! ...Except not, and they wake up as a zombie.

So here, the original goal was “make a maid outfit for Kobayashi to wear.” Then Georgie convinces Kobayashi that anything is a maid outfit as long as you are a maid at heart, so really, she’s already wearing one! The end! ...Except not.

Here’s some extra, probably needless, context on this “annoying”: it uses the word 面倒くさい mendokusai, which is basically used to describe something as annoying, a pain, etc. When used to describe a person like this, one of the ways it can be taken is specifically that the person is really fussy about details that others wouldn’t really care about—which describes Kobayashi about maids pretty well. 

So just for clarity, it’s not necessarily “I became an annoying person who is a maid otaku,” and can be more of a “within the context of my maid otaku-ness I became annoying.” Just to kind of shed some light on the extent of her self-deprecation here.

The word Kobayashi uses for “helping with the housework” is 家事手伝い kaji-tetsudai, which is a noun* that means “a housework helper”... here, basically a more bland way for a native Japanese speaker to say maid. 

Hence why Tohru reacts with “Oh, don’t call me that, call me a maid!”; Kobayashi went as far as to acknowledge her clothes as a maid outfit, but not quite as far as calling her maid outright. That’s our “annoying maid otaku” doing her thing. 

*It can also be verbed.

These neighborhood notices, 回覧板 kairan-ban, ~lit. circular notice, are a method used by local governing organizations to distribute information or forms etc. For example, about an upcoming neighborhood event to pick up litter.

The general idea is that one person gets the notice, reads it, signs it, then goes and passes it to the next household in line. It saves paper versus sending everyone a thing in the mail, encourages interaction between neighbors, and is more likely to be read than a flyer/email, though some people consider them a pain and they generally feel a little dated.

The phrase for “piercing noise” is  劈く金切り音, tsunzaku kanakiri-on, ~lit. “ear-piercing sound of tearing metal.”* 

“Was it that loud?” in the Japanese is a little different, そんな音してた?, meaning “was it making a sound like that?” 

I’m mostly just bringing it up to say that the “Sasakibe’s cooking isn’t just loud, the sounds don’t even make sense” gag is alive and well this season.

*The “sound of tearing metal” phrase can also used idiomatically for some types of high pitched sounds, but I imagine it was chosen very deliberately here.

It’s probably obvious, but this is a reference to the music video of the OP for season one. You can see it on the official channel for the band, fhána, here.

The season two music video is here, and it seems to have decent English subtitles for the lyrics if you’re curious what they are.

The adjective here is ニヒル nihiru, an abbreviation of nihilistic. It can be used as actually “nihilistic” like in English, but it can also be used more colloquially to describe a person with dark vibes. It can almost be a compliment!

“Sleeping” here is 惰眠をむさぼる damin wo musaboru. Damin is not just sleep, but “worthless” sleep—not like a nap because you’re tired. Musaboru is a verb for ~gorging upon on something (often metaphorically, not just food).

The two words are somewhat frequently used together for, basically, lying around the house doing nothing all day. And not in a particularly flattering way, so it’s pretty funny for her to just be like “yeah I do that as a hobby I guess.” 

It doesn’t mean the same thing, but it’d be like saying your hobby is loitering. Maybe could have translated as like “Hobbies? Vegetating.” or “Procrastinating?” or something, though I don’t know if those would have the right impact...

Kanna’s word for “idol” here is アイドル aidoru, i.e. idol in the pop culture sense.

Tohru’s word is 偶像 guuzou, or idol in the religious sense.

(Tohru swaps to the pop culture “idol” when she starts talking about Kobayashi though.)

Kanna’s “lost it” it here is 大変 taihen, a pretty common, almost generic word used as an intensifier (greatly, immensely, seriously, terribly, really, etc.) in both positive and negative ways. E.g. “thanks, you really saved me!” or “that was extremely rude.”

When used alone, like here, it usually implies something bad has happened, like something has befallen Tohru and/or she’s in some sort of trouble. Hence why Kobayashi immediately rushes home worried and bursts through the door like this—and loses her tension when she sees Tohru is fine, just... extreme(ly annoying to Kanna and Ilulu).

You could maybe say e.g. “Something’s wrong with Tohru!” to keep that double meaning open.

(”Lost it!” also makes sense for Kobayashi to be worried about, but the type of worry is somewhat different in that case; “oh god what is she going to do” vs. “oh god what happened to her.”)

The “lick” here is べろ bero, an onomatopoeia for licking that’s also used as slang for "tongue” (noun).

A bero chuu, as in the chorus here, is slang for a French kiss/deep kiss/tongue kiss.

~The More You Know~

The text here says “If your total assets are above one billion, proceed towards goal.” 

Only billionaires can win...

Here is 私のものはカンナのもの, lit. “What’s mine is Kanna’s!”

This line is a reference to a catchphrase of the bully/antagonist in Doraemon, Gian: “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine.” 

His line, and character, is so well known it’s spawned the term “Gianism” to represent that sort of self-centered philosophy: everything is rightfully mine to take, even if you think you lay some claim over it.

It’s interesting that the inversion of Gianism, i.e. “what’s mine is yours,” is the only way Kanna and Saikawa are able to overcome the rules, beat the billionaire, and win the game.

Solidarity forever.

#maidragon #Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid #kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon #translation notes #anime

[much-obliged-timothy]

So I was reading a fanfic for a different fandom where a character ends up the single father of an oops baby and...

Anyway, here’s a totally self-indulgent “what if Tim accidentally had a child” fic ft. Rhys accidentally befriending the kid and being very panicked about it (and yes I will be more than happy to write more of this weird AU if anyone wants to read it)

Rhys paced his office nervously. “Zer0, did I make a mistake? Oh my god. I can’t believe I agreed to employ a doppelganger of Handsome Jack.”

The vault hunters had contacted him with an absolutely bizarre story. While invading Handsome Jack’s casino, they’d found his sole surviving doppelganger, a man named Timothy Lawrence. Timothy had been all too eager to get out of the casino once they’d claimed it for themselves, but had nowhere to go and, they’d warned, was lacking a bit in his social skills after seven years of being locked in a casino where almost everyone wanted him dead. 

Still, the man had apparently proved highly adept at business when they needed help getting issues for the casino sorted. Moxxi thought he’d be an asset to Rhys, appearances aside.

Rhys had them send over a resume and some examples of Timothy’s work, and was surprised to find that Tim was actually highly skilled at business negotiations and research. He had experience helping Hyperion develop new weapons and other various tech, and had worked as a vault hunter for Jack at one point, giving him valuable combat experience.

So Rhys had agreed to take him on, at least on a trial period to see how things went. Today was the day Tim would arrive, and Rhys couldn’t stop fretting that Tim would be too similar to Jack to bear. 

“He helped Jack rise to power, they said,” Rhys babbled, his anxiety growing. “What if he’s just like Jack? I don’t think I can take that ego again. This is such a mistake!”

Zer0 watched him pace, but offered no comfort. He didn’t seem to have any concerns over the situation. 

There was a knock on the door and Rhys froze, shooting a look at Zer0. Zer0 touched his gun then gestured to the door, a silent assurance that he would handle it if things got out of hand.

Rhys didn’t enjoy the thought of anyone being shot in his office, but he enjoyed the thought of being protected from Handsome Jack 2.0. “Come in.”

The door swung open and in came Handsome Jack. Rhys stared at his face for a long moment before shaking himself. Tim’s hair was longer than Jack’s, the mask on his face cracked. He had a cybernetic hand that was fidgeting with the visitor badge pinned to his jacket. He certainly had Jack’s sense of how to dress for the job; he wore jeans and a hoodie with a jacket over it instead of anything dressy.

Tim noticed Rhys eyeing his clothes and shifted awkwardly. “Uh, sorry. No money to buy anything nicer right now. I’m Timothy Lawrence. I know the mask has to go, too, but I’m arranging to have these stupid clips removed with it.”

Rhys processed his words, but only distantly. When Tim had shifted, he’d revealed that he wasn’t alone.

Tim again noticed where Rhys’s gaze went, and fidgeted more with his pass. “So, the job? Moxxi got me set up with a place to live nearby for now. I just moved in yesterday, so I’m ready to start whenever you need me to.”

Rhys continued staring. He had not been informed that Tim wouldn’t be coming alone.

Tim sighed quietly and nudged the little boy out from behind his legs. The boy stared distrustfully at Rhys, clutching a tattered teddy bear with the Hyperion logo on its stomach to himself. 

“This is my son, Phoenix,” Tim explained. “I, uh, don’t exactly have a sitter. Hard to have contacts when you’ve been locked in a casino for seven years.”

Obviously Tim had found a way to pass the time. The boy couldn’t be any older than five or six, with skin a few shades darker than Tim’s, messy, ruddy hair, a splattering of freckles over his cheeks and nose, and hazel eyes. His left eye had a familiar strip of blue amongst the hazel.

“You said I get my own office? Can I see it?” Tim said, shooting Rhys a pleading look.

“Oh, um, right, yes,” Rhys said, fixing his already straight tie. 

“Hey, stay here. We’ll be right back,” Tim said.

The boy’s eyes widened in terror, but Tim smiled and ruffled his hair. Phoenix clutched at Tim’s jacket.

“I’ll be right back,” Tim repeated. “That guy there? He was a vault hunter, just like I was. He’ll keep an eye on you for a few minutes.”

Phoenix looked over his shoulder at Zer0. His curiosity seemed to win out over his distrust as he eyed Zer0.

Tim took the opportunity to slip out of the room, Rhys following. They walked in awkward silence until they reached the office Rhys had secured for Tim.

“Okay,” Tim said, shutting the door as soon as they were inside. “Look, I kinda had a, uh, thing with a friend named Ember. We’d been stuck in that casino for a while at that point and everyone was trying to kill me and we just- got careless a few times. Phoenix was born in that damned place. He lived his whole life in there, hidden between me, Ember, and a friend of Ember’s from the vice district. Ember told me to take him with me to Promethea so he could experience life in the real world. Not that this shithole planet is fancy living, but-” He stopped and groaned. “Sorry, injected with Jack’s DNA. Anyways, please, he’s scared to be alone.”

No one had warned Rhys that in addition to getting a traumatized employee, he’d be getting the man’s traumatized son as well. But what was he going to do? Turn him out onto the streets?

Rhys sighed quietly. He hated kids, mostly because he had no idea how to talk to them and they frightened him.

“He can’t go into meetings with you,” he said at last.

Tim looked so relieved that Rhys didn’t even regret the decision. “Thank you. Really, thank you. Oh, finally, a CEO who isn’t an absolute dick. He’s no trouble, really. He’ll stay in my office with me, and he thinks everyone wants to kill him so it’s not like he’ll go bothering anyone.”

At Rhys’s startled look, Tim grimaced. He touched his mask and shrugged.

“Look, I’m not going to lie. My kid is…” He cursed softly. “I didn’t want that for him. But I had no choice. I started teaching him about guns when he was three. We taught him how to hide, and not to trust anyone. It was the only way we could keep him safe. It’s going to take time to break him of all that. B-But I’m a good worker! I won’t make you regret this! Well, I mean, the occasional Jack moments probably will, but other than that, no regrets. I hope.”

This was too much to handle right now. “You need to go get fingerprinted downstairs. Then we’ll get you settled and go over your schedule and duties.”

Business. He could do business. He couldn’t do a traumatized Handsome Jack doppelganger with a paranoid son.

“Right, let me just go let Phoenix know,” Tim said, opening the office door.

“That’s a cool name,” Rhys said as they started along the hallway.

Tim shrugged again. “Ember wanted something with fire. I guess we thought it was fitting, since he was born in the wake of Jack’s death and my, uh, sort of freedom. I mean, I still had a bomb in my face and was trapped in a casino. But no more Jack ordering me about.”

He at least didn’t sound bothered by Jack’s death, so Rhys took some comfort in the fact that Tim appeared not to hold any loyalty to his former boss. Moxxi had claimed Timothy hated Jack, but Rhys was still worried after everything he’d been through with the AI Jack. 

They stepped back into Rhys’s office, and Phoenix was immediately back at his father’s side, clutching Tim’s jacket in one hand and his bear in the other. Tim squeezed his shoulder and gently pried his hand off.

“I need to go get fingerprinted, Phoenix,” he said. “I’m just going to be right downstairs.”

The kid looked torn. Rhys felt a flash of pity.

“It should only be fifteen minutes if they’re not busy,” he said. Maybe knowing how long Tim would be gone would calm the kid.

“Fifteen minutes,” Tim said, smiling. “That’s nothin’, pal. I take longer in the shower.”

“You take forever in the shower,” Phoenix said, but grabbed Tim’s jacket again. 

Once again, Tim gently pried his hand away. “Fifteen minutes, pal. Then I’ll be back.”

Phoenix watched his father leave the room and began to pace silently, keeping Rhys, Zer0, and the door in view as he did so. He was rubbing the band of a watch strapped to his wrist, far too big for him. Rhys realized it was a digistruct watch, and sat down in the hopes he wouldn’t spook the kid into summoning whatever was stored in there. 

Phoenix kept shooting a look to Rhys’s cybernetic arm, looking like he wanted to say something. He kept snapping his eyes back to the door, but his gaze would drift back to the arm.

Rhys finally held it up. “It’s, uh, it’s an Atlas cybernetic. State of the art.”

“Dad has one,” he said, holding up his hand. “He lost his hand in the casino.”

“That’s because Handsome Jack is a controlling asshole,” Rhys said, then snapped his mouth shut. Shit, could he swear in front of kids? Was that legal?

But Phoenix stared at him, slowing his pacing. “You knew him?”

“Sort of,” Rhys said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We...worked together? Sort of? He tried to kill me. Not a good time.”

The distrust on his face evaporated a little. “He locked my mom and dad in the casino. Dad said he’s a freaking asshole. But I’m not s’posed to call anyone else that word.” He pointed to his eye with the sliver of blue in it. “Dad said that was Jack’s last ‘screw you’.” 

Rhys stared at Zer0 for help. He hadn’t expected to shit talk Jack with a little kid today, and wasn’t sure what to do now that it had started.

“Much more lively now/He must like you a lot Rhys/You have made a friend,” Zer0 said.

“You talk funny,” Phoenix said.

“He speaks in haikus,” Rhys explained. “Well, mostly.”

Phoenix frowned. “I dunno that language. My mom speaks French.”

Rhys laughed in surprise. “Oh, no, it’s not a language. It’s a type of poetry.”

“Oh,” Phoenix said, then shrugged in a movement that perfectly mimicked Tim’s. 

Rhys couldn’t help but stare a little as the boy resumed his pacing. He wondered if any of his features had been inherited from Tim’s original appearance. He wondered if it was hard for Tim to look at his kid and see both himself and Jack in him. 

Rhys busied himself with paperwork to keep from staring any longer. However, as fifteen minutes passed, and then another five, and then even more, Phoenix’s pacing grew faster.

He rubbed at the band of his watch more, eyes locked on the door. He looked terrified, checking the time yet again and hugging his bear tighter.

“They were probably just busy,” Rhys said, because as much as he didn’t like kids, he felt bad seeing one break down right in front of him. “He’s okay.”

“What if he’s dead?” His voice cracked a little and he paced even faster, clutching the bear so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

Rhys got up and slowly approached. “Hey. Hey, Phoenix. It’s safe here, okay? No one here will hurt him. I promise.”

“But he looks like that freaking asshole!” Phoenix said, pointing at his eye again.

“I know, but I warned my people he’d be coming today. They all know he isn’t really Jack. No one is going to hurt your dad,” Rhys assured. Phoenix still looked scared and frantic, so Rhys tried a different approach. He held his cybernetic hand out and let an image come up in his palm. “Have you ever seen a skag before?”

Phoenix nodded his head, looking torn between watching the door and looking at the holographic image. “Uh-huh. But just one.”

Rhys let the holograph play out. “Look how they run! I got stuck on Pandora years ago, and these things were scary.”

“Pandora?” He tugged at the ear of his bear. “Dad said it’s a shithole. I’m not s’posed to say that, though. Mom gets mad and says dad has a dirty mouth.”

“It kind of is a shithole,” Rhys agreed. “Promethea is much better. I think you’ll like it here. You and your dad can explore this weekend when he’s not working.”

His eyes shot to the door again. “But he’s not back!”

“He’ll come back,” Rhys said. “I won’t let anyone hurt him while he’s here. I promise.”

His eyes widened and he looked at Rhys. He seemed torn between distrust and hope.

The matter was settled as Tim reappeared in the room, looking out of breath. “Sorry. Some freaking idiot down there couldn’t find her ID and held up the whole line. I- Umph!”

Phoenix launched himself at Tim, wrapping his little arms around Tim’s waist tightly. There were tears silently rolling down his cheeks.

“Hey, hey.” Tim knelt down and hugged him, kissing his head. “I’m okay. I’m right here, pal. I’m okay. I’m sorry I took so long.”

He stood up with Phoenix in his arms, running gentle fingers through his messy hair. Phoenix nuzzled his head against Tim’s neck, wiping at his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Tim said, kissing him again. “I have shitty time management skills. Oops, don’t tell your mom I swore again.”

Phoenix put an arm around Tim’s neck to hold onto him. “Dad, this guy showed me a skag. On his hand!”

“‘This guy’ is my boss,” Tim said. “A skag, huh? Can’t say I missed Pandora’s brand of cannon fodder creatures.”

“You and me both,” Rhys said, standing up.

“Can you show dad?” Phoenix said, pointing to Rhys’s hand. “They look so stupid.”

Rhys brought up the image again. With his dad safely back with him, Phoenix was much more interested, peering at it with curious eyes.

Tim wiggled the fingers of his cybernetic hand. “Yea, mine doesn’t do that. Cool, though.”

“One of the vault hunters who saved us had a skag,” Phoenix said. “And a...a...something else.”

“Jabber. You saw their jabber,” Tim said. “Shit-flinging, obnoxious beasts.”

Phoenix tightened his hold on Tim. “You’re not s’posed to swear, dad.” He gave Tim the hint of a grin. “Gotta shut me up.”

“Ice cream it is,” Tim said with a long sigh. “After work, though. I’ve got to earn money to afford to bribe you, pal. So, let’s get on with it, Rhys.”

Rhys took Tim and showed him around a bit before bringing him back to his office. As Tim had assured, Phoenix was quiet the whole time, just clinging to Tim. When they reached the office, he sat in a chair in the corner, playing with his tattered bear and not bothering either man as they went over Tim’s schedule and duties.

“Well, I’ll leave you to get settled in and do the basic paperwork,” Rhys said, shaking Tim’s hand. “If you have any questions, you know where my office is. You’ll be primarily reporting to me.”

“Hey,” Phoenix said as Rhys headed for the door. He was clutching his bear tightly again, glancing from his dad to Rhys before blurting out, “Can you tell me about Pandora sometime?”

“Oh,” Rhys said in surprise. “Yea, sure. I mean, a lot of my experience involves me being in fear for my life. But, sure.”

“Hey, been there done that on Elpis, kiddo,” Tim said. “Phoenix, let him get back to work. You can help me get some papers organized, if you want.”

Phoenix hopped off the chair. “M’kay, dad. See ya, boss guy.”

Rhys left the office and stared at the door once he’d closed it. Today had not gone as he’d expected, not at all. And he had a sinking feeling he’d accidentally made the kid like him.

Great. He’d been so worried about dealing with a Handsome Jack doppelganger, and now his bigger problem was a small, curious child. Rhys wondered if life would ever let him catch a break.

Part 2

#borderlands #timothy lawrence #borderlands rhys #rhys strongfork #borderlands au #borderlands fic #My writing

[dokidokivisual]

Gochiusa BLOOM episode 9 impressions

Previously: 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1

That’s right, the long-awaited review of episode 9 is finally here! I haven’t managed to finish it last week and kind of lost motivation since almost nobody reads these anyway, but there we go. Not sure what I’m going to do with the remaining episodes at this point, maybe I’ll combine 10 and 11 together? 

The episode starts with a flashback from Chiya and Sharo’s childhood which shows the origin of Anko’s crown. The scene is “shot” in widescreen aspect ratio, a technique that I don’t remember being used before in Gochiusa anime, such as during the previous Chiya/Sharo flashback in Season 2 Episode 9.

I’d like to bring the attention to the opening shot of flowers, which are periwinkles (Vinca major). As you might know, Japanese media often uses the flower language, or hanakotoba which assigns specific meanings to various flowers. The meanings of greater periwinkle are “pleasant memories” and “childhood friends”, which seems to apply rather well here. In fact, if you see a shot of flowers in an anime, there’s a very high chance they have a relevant meaning in hanakotoba.

Of course I couldn’t help but look up chamomile as well, and its meaning seems to be “patience in the face of adversity”...

It seems that Chiya has now lost the crown, but it’s honestly surprising how it stayed on Anko all this time considering he has been carried away by crows and dropped from the sky more than once. Also, I feel like revealing the crown is lost so early in the episode deprives the viewers from being able to spot it on their own, just by seeing crownless Anko in various scenes (as has been done in the manga chapter).

In Chiya’s class there’s an election for picking the candidate from the class for the student council president position. The only two people competing are Chiya and the class president (who doesn’t have a name and referred to only as Iincho). In a surprising turn of events, Chiya gets 16 votes versus 14 votes for the prez (refer to the tally mark chart in episode 3 review), which means there are at least 30 people in the class.

Imagine losing a popularity poll to Chiya. The prez is a tragic character...

Cocoa volunteers to be Chiya’s “producer”, but Chiya calls her “First Lady” which totally means she wants to marry her. By the way, it was Cocoa who nominated Chiya for the election, which I don’t think is mentioned in the anime. In general, this particular chapter has been rearranged rather heavily for the adaptation with things happening in a completely different order, so it’s quite interesting to compare the two versions.

For example, when we see Chiya coming up with the names of various student committees, it seems like a completely natural and Chiya thing to do. It’s hard to believe that in the manga, it is Sharo who comes up with the idea of renaming all the committees. In fact this particular Chiya/Sharo tête-à-tête is not in the manga at all. However it’s an important scene to establish Sharo’s feelings towards Chiya’s presidential ambitions and she doesn’t seem too happy about them, in fact she doesn’t even congratulate Chiya.

Next we have another anime-original scene where Chiya goes to accessories store (from episode 6) to find a replacement for Anko’s crown. It should be pointed out that the design of the crown itself is not completely arbitrary. It features a moon crescent, which symbolizes night (the last character 夜 of Chiya’s name) but is also associated with Arabic world. The closest thing to Anko’s crown I could find is this heraldic crown of the King of Egypt. Anyway, this is also a reference to Chiya’s name, namely it being derived from Japanese name for 1001/Arabian Nights 千夜一夜物語 (Sen’ya Ichiya Monogatari).

Meanwhile Rize is trying to change image to be more like a college student, notices Chiya and asks to make her an adult (phrasing?). As a result, we get an appearance from Rize’s alter-ego Rose for the first time since season 1 episode 9.

The interesting thing about Rose is that despite being featured in only a small number of chapters, she gets a mention in Rize’s character blurb in Manga Time Kirara MAX until this day. It literally takes like a third of her character description!

Anyway, this scene is just a prelude for the adaptation of chapter 2 of volume 7 which is named after a Rize character song  鏡合わせのアンビバレット. In the song, Rize tries on outfits in front of a mirror and tries to convince herself that it’s still her. The illustration for this chapter also shows Rose as a mirror image of Rize.

We see Sharo looking through a bookstore window, which I think also appears in the following episode, and this is a foreshadowing that she works here too. The bookstore is named “Dreamy Books” which is seen later in the scene.

Chiya and “Rose” appear and at first Sharo doesn’t recognize Rize, and only does after Rize points a finger gun at her. Well, it’s not like there is anyone else in this town having purple hair or anything.

By the way you might notice that compared to the last episode the characters are dressed much more warmly, which reflects the fact that it’s already December. Looking back at the scene in episode 8 where Rize and Chimame cross the bridge at night, it’s quite shocking how lightly they’ve been dressed there.

Chino and Cocoa come by, and recognize Rize as Rose. It’s lampshaded that the last time they’ve seen Rose was more than a year ago, so it’s quite impressive that they still remember her, as well as her promise to visit Rabbit House (in s1e9 she only visits Ama Usa An). Rize thinks it’s a good chance to “infiltrate” Rabbit House to see what the others think of her when she’s gone.

Rize’s infiltration goes relatively smoothly until Maya and Megu barge in and immediately recognize her. Chiya manages to get them to play along in time, however Megu makes up a ridiculous backstory painting Rose as a ballet kempo practitioner who fights an evil organization.

Aoyama Blue Mountain also backs up Rose’s existence, by mentioning that she is in her literature club and also does food reviews. She gives Rize a cheat sheet which seems to parody the tendency of food reviews to describe food as “melting in your mouth” (for example wagyu beef).

Later Rize ends up having a conversation with Chino where she reveals that Rize’s been taking more days off than usual and it gets lonely without her. She has also started lazing about in the sun, just like Cocoa does, which wouldn’t have happened if Rize has been around upholding the discipline. In the anime Rize doesn’t really react to this, but in the manga she seems a bit disappointed in Chino.

This scene is a callback to the very first episode of the show, where Rize pretends she can’t easily carry these bags of coffee beans, because they’re too heavy for a “normal girl” according to Cocoa. Soon after, Rize’s cover is blown after she reacts to an intruder who is just Takahiro.

It turns out that Cocoa has already recognized it’s Rize. One thing that Cocoa and Rize have in common is that they change hairstyles a lot compared to the other characters, so it makes sense that Cocoa would not be fooled by a simple hairstyle change... or would she? Shortly after Cocoa has a realization that Rose has always been Rize, which makes her feel really stupid... until she finds that Chino is still completely in the dark about everything. Maybe Chino has propagnosia, or inability to recognize faces? Anyway, Rize is quite supportive about it and asks Chino if she’s ok if she does image change in the future.

But there’s still one more twist in this chapter, since Cocoa’s sister Mocha makes an appearance! Considering she appears in the opening, this season hasn’t really done anything with her yet. But it turns out it’s just Cocoa in a wig (why does she even have a Mocha wig???), nevertheless she successfully fools Rize and Chino for a second. Maybe the last episode of the season will have real Mocha (I’m assuming she won’t be in the Christmas arc).

And we’re back to the student council election storyline. The “sandwich” composition where one story “wraps” another seems to be used a lot this season. In this case the stories have almost zero relation to each other so I don’t know why the episode had to be structured like this.

Chiya’s election poster (aside from Cocoa’s scribbles) follows a traditional Japanese election poster design, featuring a closeup photo of a politician, her name and a slogan (which implores you to vote like a shiratama dumpling for some reason). I feel like a poster like this prioritizes the looks of a politician over their policies or whatever, but maybe there’s some sort of election law that these posters have to follow.

Cocoa and Chino also wrote letters of endorsement for Chiya, although Cocoa’s was mostly written by Aoyama and was basically a food review. Chino not only made Chiya almost explode from praise, but also presented a verbal takedown of Cocoa on the fly. Later, Chiya makes a passionate speech trying to emulate Rize, but maybe Chino should’ve written that too.

Next I’d like to point your attention to the name of the dish that Chiya made to celebrate the occasion:

Aki no sora (in the autumn sky) Todoroku oto wa (a thundering sound is) Omedetai (auspicious)

If you count the syllables, you’ll find that it is actually a haiku. and it even includes a kigo (season word, “autumn in this case”). The final line is a pun, as tai indicates the presence of taiyaki (a bean paste filled cake shaped like a bream fish) in the dish.

Another anime-original scene appears to flesh out the episode’s “moral” and show how Ama Usa is where Chiya really shines. A bunch of old ladies (who seem like they starred in a Kirara manga a long time ago) enter the teahouse to celebrate the birth of a 5th grandchild for one of them. Cocoa also helps Chiya, donning the Ama Usa uniform once again. 

Chiya sprinkles gold dust on her dish, doing her best “salt bae” expression. Pure gold is inert and as such can be safely eaten. In Japan, gold leaf is even added to tea, which might explain why Chiya has it.

As everyone is about to go home, Chiya’s grandma appears through a rarely-opened sliding window and offers some manju as a treat. In the anime this is how Sharo eventually discovers the lost Chiya’s crown, which her grandma uses as a hairpin (the hairpin functionality explains how this crown doesn’t fall off Anko). Surprisingly she doesn’t appear at all in the manga chapter, and Sharo just randomly finds the crown “outside”.

By the way, the text on the manju box says “congratulations on winning the election”, which might’ve been a bit premature.

Sharo goes to return the crown back to Chiya, and Chiya repeats Cocoa’s reaction from part A, which sounds like breakup song lyrics. This dialogue wasn’t in the manga in either scene and I think it was included to somehow tie the two parts together, and make the inability to notice something obvious that was around you the whole time the unifying concept of the episode.

For Chiya the crown was the symbol of ambition, and her dream to become the director of Ama Usa An and conquer the world. Sharo has a lot of drive to work multiple jobs, but doesn’t seem to have a goal she aspires to. When she finally gets an opportunity to move up the ranks, by becoming a student council president, she declines it. Living side by side with Chiya forever (zutto issho) seems to be the extent of her ambitions. Sharo feels betrayed by Chiya being ready to “leave” her and spend more time with student council than at her own restaurant.

After the ED we see the conclusion of this conflict. Sharo sees the preparations for celebrating the winner of the election, and begrudgingly congratulates Chiya. We see Cocoa, Rize and Chino helping out, but Sharo wasn’t even invited...

But it turns out class prez was the winner, after Chiya has declined the nomination. She probably had all the posters and speeches at the ready just in case, and didn’t have to prepare at all. In the manga, this is also where she returns Sharo’s uniform that she borrowed back in episode 4.

Meanwhile Chiya and Sharo have a talk and agree that it was the best for them to decline their nominations and they should stick with what they have. Not sure if that applies to Sharo though, she wasn’t really shown to be “shining” but more like “barely getting by”. There was also another reason in the manga for Chiya to agree it was the right choice: Chiya’s classmates totally trashed her menu names, which means they probably wouldn’t like her committee names either. Most of the classmates dialogue was cut out in the anime though.

So that was episode 9 and all that’s left for this season is a 2-episode Christmas arc and the season finale. Hope you enjoyed this review and until next time!

#gochiusa #gochuumon wa usagi desu ka? #is the order a rabbit? #review

[meanderings0ul]

Writing Meme

Thanks for tagging me @sarabahama :)

Name: meanderingsoul

Fandoms: Right now I’m working on TNG and VOY fics, but I’ll also likely work on The Expanse, MFMM, and AOS projects this year. 

Most Popular One-Shot: By Kudos and hits: I’ll be Waiting Standby my cartinelli fic still wins.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter (COMPLETED): Welll this is a 34k oneshot really, but I’m going to say Option Three for aos.

Actual Worst Part of Writing: Transition sentences are tough, often one of the last things I write. And action sequences are so hard to make feel action-y for me?

How You Choose Your Titles: I’m a big fan of single overdramatic word from the fic’s theme, but I also use a lot of quotes from shows, poetry, or lyrics.

Do You Outline: Not really. I’ll take notes as I come up with parts of a fic, but it’s usually something that gets re-ordered later, not an actual outline.

Ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: I keep thinking I’d like to do a space and mission focused sequence of Voyager fic, framed by messages back and forth to Starfleet. It’s like they only knew the word ‘nebula’ for actual space things, but Voyager should have encountered rogue planets and globular clusters and dying solar systems. All the different planet classifications! Let alone all the cultures they never fleshed out... But I don’t have a list or a plan or anything at this point, so nobody get your hopes up!

Callouts @ me: Do not tell anyone you plan to finish anything ever. The hyperfixation Can and Will leave you. It will only come back years later uninvited. And you don’t comment enough.

Best Writing Traits: I feel like I am good about putting in the time to try and make everyone’s dialogue match their canon speaking patterns - who makes which word choices, who pauses or huffs or makes faces, etc. I want everyone to sound like themselves.

Spicy tangential opinion: Look. It has been said. Sooooooo many times and in soooo many ways at this point. A drabble is not some subjective fandom term. It is also a real, actual, regularly-used printed publications term. It means 100 words in the story. Period. 200 you have a double drabble. You can have a 300 word triple drabble. If you are doing anything that is not a small fic in 100 word increments you are not writing a damn drabble because you are not following the restrictions of the structure. It’s like calling any poem a haiku just cause it’s “close enough”. It’s obnoxious.

Tagging: @preux-chevalier @queen-of-love-and-beauty @agentmmayy @ussjellyfish

#tagged in a thing #ooooo boy this took way too long cause i keep watching the weather

[aithrauniverse]

Chapter 9-Aithne

We had bad news, and— actually, we just had bad news.

Great. Now we were trapped in a goddamn house. A creepy and ancient one at that. (And for the record, it wasn’t fun. At all.) Picking up the card from the table, I read out,

“Each riddle is related to

The others, like a smaller clue

You have minutes thirty to solve

The puzzle, and you must resolve

The problem, or you’re stuck inside

But still, push your worries aside

You’ll have an hourglass to know

When time’s up, now, ready, set, go!”

A holographic hourglass materialized and began counting the minutes down.

“What are we waiting for?” I exclaimed. “Chop chop! Let’s go find stuff! Time’s ticking!”

Astra picked up the first clue placed on the table. Reading it to herself, she mused,

“You’ll find me on the mantel shelf

I give off light all by myself

But nothing works the same way here

Look for the friend of puppeteers.”

“Seems easy,” Laila said, “Just look for a marionette.”

“Marry who now?” I raised both eyebrows.

“A puppet,” she sighed.

We hunted for that damn puppet for a good two minutes before Astra exclaimed, “I found it!” Hurrying over, we looked down. Sure enough, a Victorian-style doll lay in a sitting position, its beady eyes eerily staring up at us and its strings completely tangled.

“Yup. Creepy as I expected,” I remarked. “Now for the second clue. Where is it?”

“I think we’re missing something,” Laila muttered, “Ah!” She walked over to the mantel, grabbed an ordinary-looking flashlight and walked over.

“We don’t need a flashlight,” I objected. “It’s bright enough already.”

“This probably doesn’t release normal light,” she switched it on. A beam of dark violet, almost black light, shot out. “It’s UV light. Made to decode messages. And if I’m not wrong, there should be one somewhere...” she pointed it towards the puppet, “...here.” Words previously invisible bloomed onto the doll’s skirt, sprouting out like fresh ink.

Laila picked up the doll with one hand and held the flashlight steady with the other. She began to read out,

“Good job, you’re not dumb after all

But science will help you down the hall

Now think— what lives a thousand times?

And tells the tales of heinous crimes?”

We remained silent for a minute, wondering what it could be. Then it hit me. “Guys, I saw a Nancy Drew book on the shelf when we were looking for that puppet,” I realized. “This is what they could be talking about! It does talk about crimes, and the only thing that can live a thousand times is a story!” Dashing off to the living room, with Laila and Astra hot on my heels, I picked up the book. Dusting it off, I was about to open it, when Astra stopped me.

“Wait,” she pointed out. “There’s a note stuck in it.” Yanking the (ew, hot pink) Post-It out, she looked at it, clearly confused.

“4 1 53 60

90 –1

9 53 75?!”

“How’s that even a clue?” I was so confused and annoyed, I wanted to kick a hole in the stupid wall. But then Astra pointed something out.

“Look, there’s something else on the back,” she said. “There’s a picture of the Periodic Table. Maybe there’s some sort of pattern..."

Astra flipped the paper multiple times before exclaiming, “Gotcha! These numbers represent the atomic numbers on the table.”

“But what about the ‘-1’?” Laila asked.

“Uh...  about that...  oh! That could be used to stand for an anion. Anions have one less proton than electron, which has a symbol e. Now all we have to do is line them up with the symbols..." Astra trailed off.

“‘Behind The Fire’! The clue is behind the fire!” I burst out.

“But how are we going to put our hand through the fire?” Laila asked. She had a point there.

“Maybe it’s not a real fire,” Astra smiled, “Like the hourglass; it isn’t real, but we can still see it! A hologram, see?” She put her hand through the crackling fire, making Laila sputter in disbelief. She pulled out a note, her hand unscathed. Peering over her shoulder, I announced, “Oooh, a limerick! Here goes...  

“Great work, you’ve followed through

Now here, I present the fourth clue

It’s tossed up high

As the paddle flies

And bounces on the table blue.”

“What bounces high...?” Laila pondered for a while, “Oh! Of course! It’s a ball!”

“Which ball?”

“How many balls do you think a room has? Just find the ball!”

“What do you mean? This isn’t a real room!”

“Okay, fine, but it’s easy to find a bouncy ball, no? Just find the light ones – like a…”

“Uh, guys, one problem,” Astra laughed nervously, pointing towards the left. “There’s a whole bucket of ping-pong balls.”

“... ping-pong ball...” Laila trailed off.

“Well, then, we just find the one with a note in it, don’t we?” I smiled. “Time to smash some ping-pong balls.”

As I found out, smashing table tennis balls was incredibly time-consuming. And boring. CRAZY boring. Seven minutes had passed, and still no sign of the note. “Guys, we only have eighteen minutes left,” Astra urged. Then, as I stepped on another ball, I saw it. That elusive note. Yanking it out, I passed it to Laila, “Would you care to do the honors?”

She took it and smiled, “Finally, a haiku.

“Darkness swallows you

Then you hit the switch, hopeful

Where is light set free?”

“Alright, haikus are officially my least favorite type of poems,” Astra groaned. “So mind-boggling..."

“Wait, I think I’ve got this one,” I interrupted. “I think... it’s a lamp! I saw a ceiling lamp in the ‘kitchen’. But how are we going to get the note?”

“We stack,” Astra smirked.

Another assumption I had made was that stacking ourselves on top of one another was easy. Again, I was proven terribly wrong. Laila was the tallest and strongest, so she stood below. I climbed on top of her and Astra, being the smallest, scrambled on top of me. In theory, it should have been like climbing stairs. But oh no, it was not. It was much more awkward.

At one point, Laila grumbled, “Aithne, your foot is in my face!” And she did not take kindly to my suggestion:

“Then get your face off my foot!” (Hey, maybe she hadn’t read Aru Shah yet. Or she was grumpy that my foot was in her face. Yeah, probably the second one.) 

“It’s supposed to be on my shoulder!”

“I’m telling you, you should really take a look at what Astra is doing to my head!  Woah... wha— Laila, stand still! I’m falling!”

“Why are you guys constantly shifting your weight between my shoulders—?”

“Astra, how DOES your hair reach me? Cut it – Laila! What the h—”

“No cursing, Aithne!!” Astra scolded, waving her arms.

“Wait, don’t move!! I’m losing balance!” Laila leaned to one side, our human tower swaying.

“I’m moving because you are!! Agh—!”

One and a half minutes (and a lot of cursing that was probably just me) later, Astra neatly hopped off my back, the note in hand. I rather unceremoniously fell to the floor, wincing as I rubbed my sore butt. Laila stretched. “Aithne, lose some weight,” she joked. I stuck my tongue out at her in response,

“It isn’t just me! Astra is heavy too!”

“But—"

Astra shushed the both of us and read out the (hopefully) final note,

“Two doors lie ahead of you

They’re colored white and red

Pick the right one, and you’ll pass on

Wrong choice, restart instead.”

There was also a footnote that read: ‘Even if you restart, the timing will remain.’

“Well, we’d better make the right choice then,” I tried to lighten the pressure. However, it didn’t help. The pressure was so thick that, forget a knife, you couldn’t even cut it with a freaking sword.

Then I remembered something I had heard last time from a Hindu friend of mine. Apparently, white was an inauspicious color. It represented things like asceticism and death and was reserved for mourners and widows... It represented giving up worldly desires. However, red was considered lucky... it was believed to represent sensuality and purity... saffron powder was applied on their foreheads on auspicious occasions... so does that mean should we choose red?

“Guys, I think we should choose the red door,” I decided. “In Hindu myths, white stands for things like death and red, purity and luck-bringing. This may make me sound very superstitious, but I think we should open the red door.”

“Sounds like what I said in the first room. Still, we trust you,” Laila said and gripped the handle. I silently prayed and covered my face as the door swung open, not daring to open my eyes. Slowly, I cracked them open and shifted my hand.

“Guys, we— we did it!”

#fiction #fiction story #fictional #fictional story #storywriting #writing #stories #story #writer #writers of tumblr #writers #school project #aithnEeEeEEEeEeeEEeEEee

[mataglap]

"my prompts are always open!" EXCELLENT. Truth or dare fic! Truth or dare fic! !!!!11! !! You know, if/when you wanna.

*fetches a five gallon bucket*

*fills the bucket with fluff to the brim*

*sprinkles some crack on top*

*upends the bucket over your head*

“I still don’t see the point,” Hanzo murmurs into his comm. The windows across the street remain dark. “Why would I submit to a dare when I can just lie? You don’t have any means to verify that what I say is true.”

“That’s exactly the point.” The new, metallic timbre of Genji’s voice has not changed his ability to produce audible eye rolls, and it still makes Hanzo want to remain obstinate out of spite. “If you decide to play the game, you enter a gentleman’s agreement not to lie. There would really be no point otherwise.”

“So I’m not only expected to give true answers, but also to believe that the others aren’t lying?” he says, mildly incredulous.

“Hanzo ‘Trust Issues’ Shimada, playin’ truth or dare? You’d have more luck with strip poker.”

Hanzo gives McCree a flatly unimpressed stare. McCree smirks and pretends to keep looking through the binoculars.

“It’s a work in progress,” says Genji, unfazed. “If you prefer strip poker, I don’t mind either, I’m safely away from you two, so as long as you don’t try to send me photos —”

This time it’s Hanzo who rolls his eyes. “We’re on a stakeout. No poker.”

“Truth or dare it is, then. Who’s starting?”

“I don’t mind,” says McCree. “Not sure how you want to do dares when we’re stuck on a roof, though.”

“I have faith in you, Jesse. Truth or dare?”

“Truth. I’m feelin’ lucky.”

Hanzo reaches out and taps him on the shoulder, wordlessly extends a hand: someone needs to keep watch. McCree hands over the binoculars, rolls to lie on his back, folds his arms under his head.

“First crush,” says Genji.

McCree huffs. Hanzo resists the urge to check his expression, brings up the binoculars instead. The flat opposite remains annoyingly empty; shame, because it’s getting late, and the concrete roof is not the most comfortable of places to spend the night on.

“Gabriel,” McCree says. Genji makes a strange noise. “Not that Gabriel,” he adds, exasperated. “A buddy in Deadlock. Three years my senior and the biggest ‘no homo’ douchebag the world had ever seen. Got over him pretty quickly, and then he got himself shot. Hanzo: truth or dare?”

“Truth. I have nothing to hide.” Genji emits an obnoxious sound over the comm, which he elects to ignore.

“Really now.” In his peripheral vision, McCree’s head turns; Hanzo steels himself for the inevitable. “Same question, then. Your first crush.”

“Do fictional characters count?”

McCree’s eyebrows go up. “Sure.”

“No they don’t!” Genji protests immediately.

“Why not? A crush is a crush. I asked, so we’re goin’ by my rules. Go on, Hanzo.”

Hanzo chews his lip briefly, fighting an undignified smile. “There was a samurai manga that Genji once showed me —”

“You had a crush on Himura Kenshin?!” Genji exclaims, high-pitched. His tone is so incredulous that Hanzo has to bite the inside of his cheek to sound appropriately serious.

“No, Sagara Sanosuke. Have you never wondered why I was so obsessed with Rurouni Kenshin?”

“I thought it was because the story was cool!” whines Genji. “I can’t believe my brother was gay for my childhood heroes. I feel so dirty now.”

“I admit, Sanosuke did play a major part in my journey to discovering my sexuality,” Hanzo says, straight faced and dignified, and relishes the sounds of utter distress that come over the comm.

Next to him, McCree shakes with quiet laughter; when he sees Hanzo looking, he extends a fist with a grin. It would be rude to ignore it. Hanzo reaches out and delicately bumps his knuckles against McCree’s metal ones.

“Genji. Same question, unless you prefer a dare.”

Genji emits one last disgusted 'ugh’ before replying. “Haiji, our cook. She was amazing. Scarier than most of Father’s kobun, and cooked better than anyone I’ve ever met. I wonder what became of her. Hanzo: truth or dare?”

“I told you, I have nothing to hide—”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see about that. Your most recent crush.”

Hanzo’s ears become suddenly, uncomfortably warm. “That… is personal,” he manages, cursing himself for that little stammer.

“That’s the point,” his brother replies, voice oozing satisfaction and that special, Genji-only brand of cheerful cruelty.

Hanzo wonders if he knows — but no, he can’t, Hanzo’s pretty sure he’s been keeping this firmly under wraps. Genji is perceptive, but not this perceptive. If he managed to miss Hanzo’s incredibly obvious crush on Sagara Sanosuke, then there’s no possibility he’d somehow notice his weakness for a certain black-ops-turned-vigilante.

“I’ll take the dare instead, then” he says, willing his ears to stop burning.

Genji sighs. “Boring. Fine: sing a song.”

Of course he would choose the most humiliating of dares when McCree is right next to Hanzo and watching.

“You know I’m practically tone deaf,” he says flatly.

“Yes, and your vocal range is abysmal, I know. You deserve to suffer for bailing out.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be the one suffering.” Hanzo takes a deep breath, thinks for a moment. “Any song?”

“It has to have vocals,” Genji adds quickly. “No humming.”

“Cover your ears, McCree,” Hanzo says grimly, steeling himself. Unexpectedly, McCree does just that: he pulls the comm out and sticks both index fingers in his ears. Strangely, it makes Hanzo feel slightly better. He reminds himself that he survived actual torture in the past, takes a deep breath and begins.

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,Take a sad song and make it better…”

It’s one of about five songs in existence that he’s capable of singing without making a complete fool of himself. McCree’s smile widens — of course he cheated — but before Hanzo can choke on shame, McCree does the last thing he could have expected: he joins. His soft baritone is much better suited for the song than Hanzo’s raspy, sharp voice, not to mention that McCree can actually sing and has occasionally done so in the past; not singing alone helps a lot, and they go through two whole verses before McCree stops, chuckles and admits he doesn’t remember the rest.

“Good, because I can’t do the next verse with my voice,” says Hanzo, incredibly relieved.

McCree beams at him, sticking the comm back in his ear. “Love that song. Been ages since I heard it. And your voice ain’t that bad, you just need more practice.”

Genji’s being suspiciously quiet on the comms. Hanzo wonders if he chickened out of listening.

“McCree, truth or —”

“Dare,” says McCree immediately.

Hanzo has a challenge ready, and he can’t wait. “Compose a haiku.”

McCree makes a betrayed face. “I sang with you and that’s how you repay me?”

Hanzo suddenly remembers that this is supposed to be a stakeout and brings the binoculars to his eyes, mildly ashamed of himself. Fortunately, they managed not to miss anything, the windows are still dark and the flat is empty; it’s starting to look like their suspect might be spending the night somewhere else, which, considering it’s Friday, is not entirely impossible.

“The five-seven-five syllables thing is not a hard requirement, is it?” McCree asks slowly. Hanzo knows that tone well: McCree is planning something and he thinks it’s going to be hilarious.

“Haiku should be a short and elegant observation about a fleeting moment that involves nature in some manner. And yes, the syllable requirement is secondary when composing in English.”

“Alright. I got one, very elegant.” McCree clears his throat theatrically. Hanzo turns to look, sees the signature shit-eating grin, and can’t help an answering smirk in anticipation of something truly awful.

“Roses are red. Violets are blue. It’s snowin’ on Mount Fuji,” McCree recites in a voice as serious as he can manage through the grin.

Hanzo shudders with disgust and starts laughing, and in his ear, Genji snorts too.

“No laughin’ at my poetry! That was straight from the depths of my heart, you heathens. Genji! Truth again?”

“Sure,” says Genji. “My last crush is Lúcio, the suspect just arrived at my location, and you two are disgustingly hopeless. Go on a date or something, for god’s sake. I’ve got this covered. Over and out.”

Hanzo freezes with absolutely no idea what to say or do, and since remotely strangling Genji is out of the question, he busies himself with folding and pocketing the binoculars, instead.

“Well, it’s still early,” McCree says after a few seconds, carefully neutral. “Wouldn’t mind grabbin’ a bite. Wanna come?”

Hanzo turns towards him and hesitates, teetering on the precipice of the unknown.

McCree stands up, pulls out the comm, pockets it, reaches out. “C'mon,” he says, quieter, and winks. “I’ll sing you another song if you come.”

Hanzo looks at the outstretched hand and up, at the whiskey-brown eyes and the crow’s feet, the shaggy beard and the smile. “I don’t compose poetry until the third date,” he says, and McCree laughs and pulls him up.

On the way to the burger joint, McCree sings “I Want To Break Free,” complete with a partial reenactment of the music video.

Hanzo can’t help himself. He composes a poem about Jesse’s smile on the second date.

#writing #prompt fill #prompt fic #crack #fluff #robo-cryptid

[kelanfilms]

Cinehaiku Critique

Our first project of 3rd year was always going to be a challenge (it’s 3rd year, time to up our game), but unfortunately nobody could predict a pandemic throwing a massive spanner in the works. Our first pandemic project was made challenging due to ever-changing restrictions and schedule clashes, as well as a ban on household mixing. But, we managed, and our final Cine-haiku film was a success (to some extent).

Shooting

After challenges gaining an actor I eventually roped in my friend Robin to help us on the shoot. He has no previous acting experience, but is a lover of athletics and also recently appeared on National Television in China (so he had no excuse for not wanting to be in front of a camera!). Due to restrictions we decided on an outdoor shoot, and scouted a location for Arthurs Seat. Shoot day came and it was definitely not easy remembering the 2m social distancing rule. Not being able to look over Claire Gould’s shoulder to check shots was a pain, so instead she’d set the shots up move to the side, I’d sit in for a look, comment my thoughts, then we’d switch back. Meanwhile Klaudia sat at our “production camp” about 5 metres away from the path where we had all the bags, equipment, and everything scattered around. Each shot I’d shout the notes/comments (difficult to do so through a mask) to Klaudia to write into our shot-list record for Mairi (editor)- next time I’m bringing walkie-talkies to save me shouting from where we were shooting. Due to the size of Arthur’s Seat and the weekday shooting there wasn’t too much people going around, and for those that were using the path we always made sure to move. After we completed the shoot everyone was feeling confident after a surprisingly easy-going process, we also just felt happy to have gotten out and about on shoots again.

Editing

Postproduction was the most difficult process of our Haiku project. Following the shoot we uploaded all files to OneDrive where our editor Mairi downloaded them. From here she had 2 weeks to complete the project, but now she was pretty much on her own. We initially planned to book several days at the Studio, so the team could pop in when Mairi’s away to make changes or have a look. But Mairi felt more comfortable using DaVinci at home (understandable in a global pandemic) so from there it was a case of trying to get regular updates through the Facebook chat to see how she was doing (but after a while it’s hard not to feel like you’re pestering when you’re asking every 2 days, “how’s the edit going?”). The at-home process also prevented us colour-grading due to the time restraint, and the fact Mairi wasn’t feeling confident to do it herself (but the original shots were fine in the end). Unfortunately it did seem the edit process was going pretty slow, and the first draft shown at a tutorial (early October) was very worrying. So we had a team call for everyone to cement their ideas and issues, and after that the edit flowed more. Eventually after a couple of drafts Mairi had created a really solid visual edit, that all of us were extremely happy with.

We received the “finished” edit with audio the day before the crit, but unfortunately the original draft was nowhere close to what the group had come up with. So it was a few hours of messaging and trying to explain the changes we wanted down through texts to get it fixed. By the time it got to 11pm the night before, the audio was better so we called it and uploaded it for the crit.

Basically if there’s one thing that Covid’s ruined for our course, it’s not only shoots, it’s destroyed the (usually collaborative) process, and made it a lot more time consuming and restricting.

 Crit

The crit was a surprisingly enjoyable process for being online, luckily there were no major internet glitches on the day! The group seemed to enjoy our film, with some fairly constructive criticism as well as kind compliments.

Luke did comment at the Crit that he felt the story of our film was simple and he didn’t understand why we were watching this character, but to me that’s the point: our protagonist isn’t overly special, he’s just a regular guy who’s chuffed he won a race (relatable! We’re all proud of the wee achievements in life). To help create an understandable haiku we used a basic plot to aid our creative process, and I think it really helped us create an easy-watching film!

Euan also commented he felt he didn’t know if our runner had dreamed the race, as there were no people around him. Due to social distancing we couldn’t introduce extras or film with people around us, which led to this annoying emptiness. We could’ve filmed close up shots however they just didn’t give us the same effect. So we stuck with our guns on the wide shot of the finish line with nobody around him. Initially the plan was to create more of the story in sound, but we were struggling to get the basic SFX done to a good standard so decided not to overcomplicate things and leave it to a low wind noise and breathing during that shot. I suppose as filmmakers we can leave it up to audience interpretation, has he stayed behind after a race, or is he a nut-job imagining the whole thing? It’s up to you!

It was commented that there should be more shots than the straightforward feet in the middle section, but I didn’t really hate it just being feet, it gave the film more tempo. Unfortunately though we did have close-ups of the runner but on the shoot day Claire G wanted to shoot these with Robin standing rather than running, but these looked so off in the edit. The introduction of these shots also ruined the edit tempo and made it look messier, so we decided to ditch them for the feet. But otherwise everyone at the Crit seemed happy with our visuals (as they should because it was a really nice finished film to look at, Mairi did a brilliant job of the visual edit).

  My Thoughts

Watching the final product myself I feel our group did well in creating a “Cinehaiku”. The film was evenly paced with a clear structure, and the visuals were really nice. Also every criticism to the sound I respect and probably agree with, the audio to me let this project down. As a group we could’ve found and sent the SFX to Mairi to help her out, however she felt confident to take this job on herself. There were some changes we asked for that she couldn’t make either (like the changes to the breathing at the end), probably due to the short time left to complete the project, so when these problems were commented on at the Crit I wasn’t too upset or surprised because we knew there was something not working. But we will take another look at the project to make this even better.

I am quite surprised nobody commented on the right/left/right/left shot pattern to create the impression of running, cause this is something I felt helped keep tempo and make us feel like we were running. It was definitely a good idea from Claire Gould that aided our film, so just a shame nobody felt the need to comment on it!

I feel given another week or the chance to get our hands on the edit in the studio would’ve aided our group in creating a better final product, but I am happy with what we had. Minus the pandemic I think this project would’ve been a huge success, so I’m definitely taking on-board everything we learned from this experience to ensure the Performance Project is a bigger success.

[garecc]

The Hidden Oracle+1

Chapter 9.5 (Interlude 1)

Sorry Apollo, this is not technically a chapter. I don’t have to write a haiku.

The demigods rushed over, at out sides in moments. I stumbled forward, my eyes wide. “Please help.. He’s hurt..” Meg watched them grow closer, she looked nervous. I couldn’t imagine why.

“Your Artemis?” One of them asked quizzically.

“Yes!” THAT ISN’T IMPORTANT. HE’S HURT. I DONT MATTER RIGHT NOW HELP HIM. I wished I could have screamed that, but instead my voice came out shaky and terrified. “Apollo’s hurt- he, he has a fever-”

“I’ll get Will!” One of them ran off, presumably in the direction of “Will” Who I assumed was a son of my brother. A strange thought given our current predicament. The demigod who went to fetch him appeared to be a son of Hermes. His face looked terribly similar to his father’s. Another demigod took a step forward, by the look of her she was a daughter of Demeter.

“Lady Artemis, what’s going on? Why are you here?” Wow! Some respect! That’s new! First time anyone bothered to respect me all day! I’m a goddess! At least some of my dignity remained.

“In a long story short, We’re mortal,” I said quickly.

Her eyes widened. “How..? How could you be mortal? Your gods!”

“Not important right now,” I responded

“Of course it’s important!” She screeched, I flinched away from her loud voice. Why did I flinch away? She wasn’t going to hurt me..

“Who’re you?” Meg asked, pulling away from us. That left me to hold Apollo on my own. A horrible idea honestly, Meg is the one out of the two of us with the least reason to not want to support his weight. Pain shot up my leg again, radiating out from my ankle. Did I sprain it? If it weren’t for the daughter of Demeter’s quick response time, I would have both fallen and dropped Apollo. She dashed over and caught him before he hit the ground, she audibly winced at his burning fever. Yes, demigod. He has a burning fever. Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? As she caught him, I, in a glorious, graceful manner, crumpled over to the ground like a sack of potatoes. My injured leg giving out beneath me like that one time my moon chariot fell out of the sky because SOMEONE (cough*HERMES*cough) send a BIRD to scare MY DEER.

Meg’s eyes widened. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to-”

My ankle throbbed but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was just glad Apollo was alright. “Meg. Meg its fine.” I said assured her, staggering to my feet. Pain spiraled up my leg and up my spine. I stumbled over to a convenient tree and leaned on it. I could hear frantic shouting from nearby, AT LEAST SOMEONE SEEMED TO CARE. a blond teen was running over. The demigod I assumed to be Will was here.

Apollo was rushed to his cabin, While I was helped along by Meg, unable to put any weight on my ankle. Great going Artemis! You sprained your ankle! It’s not like you’ve spent hundreds of years hunting without so much as a stumble ! I assumed I hadn’t realized It was twisted because of adrenaline or something. I don’t know, I’m not Apollo. I don’t know why human bodies do what they do.

I watched as Will went about treating Apollo, bandaging the cuts and scrapes he had gotten as I and Meg dragged him out of the woods. We hadn’t exactly been careful as we ran. He checked Apollo’s ribs for more severe breaks, I had given a brief overview of the possible injuries he could have. Glazing over the details of our encounter with the thugs. (I would not start crying in front of my brother’s son.)

“Let me try the nectar first.” I insisted right before he gave it to Apollo. “There is no way to tell if it will make him spontaneously combust. A mere drop shouldn’t destroy me if it does harm us.” Will frowned, but handed me the cup of nectar. I put my finger in the drink and put it to my lips, immediately I jerked it away as violent burning sensation assaulted my mouth, steam started rising from my lips as they started bleeding. Will jumped up and grabbed a tissue from across the cabin and handed it to me. I held it to my bleeding lips. Not fun. Gods unable to consume the food of the gods. Oh how far we’ve fallen. My lip after a few minutes of burning grew numb and swollen. Fun.

“Welp. No Nectar or Ambrosia then.” He murmured. “Apollo’s stable, why don’t you let me wrap your ankle”

“No, tend to Apollo. I’m fine.” I refused to let him wrap my ankle until he was certain Apollo was alright. Certain he didn’t have a plague. Certain that he was going to wake up.

“He isn’t sick. Or contagious.” Will quickly said, once again I wondered if what I was thinking was that obvious. Can demigods read minds or something? Do they have a secret power? He glances in my direction momentarily before turning back to his father. That thought made me uncomfortable in this 15-16 year old body. Will looked about as old as our bodies. Strange. I didn’t know what to think of that. My nephew was as old as me. I shuddered, but I was relieved that he wasn’t going to die from some fatal plague. I fell back onto the bunk bed, my ribs throbbed and I exhaled slowly.

“Thank the gods…” I closed my eyes for a moment.

“I probably have broken ribs too.” I murmured. “But he’s worse off than I am, when we landed in the dumpster I landed on top of him”

He glanced at me quickly. “Why didn’t you say anything?!’ he demanded, stepping away from Apollo and over to me. “If your hurt you should lay down.”  

“I’m fine,” I said stiffly. “Apollo had a fever, he hallucinated in the forest, I’m fine”

“But you’re not fine.” He says slowly. Like he’s talking to a child.

I glared at him but relented. “Fine. Get a cot.”

He walked over to a bunk and pulled a cot out from under it. He set it up flawlessly. “Come, I’ll help you over.” He helped me over to the cot, I laid down all while grumbling under my breath about how I was fine and how unnecessary this is. His mouth twitched up. I didn’t bother commenting. He started wrapping my ankle in a bandage and propped.it up on a pillow. I closed my eyes, suddenly aware of how exhausted I was. Sleep sounded good. “Wake me up if Apollo wakes up, alright?”

“Alright,” He said. I fell asleep in moments.

[FIRST]

[PREVIOUS]

[NEXT]

I am Artemis. / Sprained my ankle… Great job me! / I am a disgrace...

#the hidden oracle #the hidden oracle+1 #trials of apollo #lester papadopoulos #apollo #artemis #hahahahahHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA #Help me

[drink-n-watch]

This is a post that first appeared on Bloodthristy Little Beasts as part of a collaboration with Jordanne. However, as Jordanne has recently made her blog private I figured I would repost this top 5 on my blog since I did enjoy writing it

I hope you guys enjoy it too. It’s exactly what it says on the tin, The 5 first mangas I remember reading. You should know that I read all of these in French so I can’t vouch for their English translations but I assume they’re EVEN BETTER!

5) Gunnm – Battle Angel Alita

This steampunk despotian high action adventure with heavy religious overtones and a badass female cyborg heroin was my first manga and my favorite for a long time. Yukito Kishiro has said in interviews to have been strongly inspired by Frank Miller’s work and it shows. There’s this sense of foreboding and classic “noir” aesthetic that seeps out of every page. I must say, as a dorky teenager with occasional goth tendencies, it really spoke to me.

The narrative can get suffocatingly bleak at times. Even in its brightest moments, the story aims for the lesser evil rather than anything close to good. You may see hints of Madoka or Yuki Yuna in there. I would call it a precursor to the magical girl narrative and Alita certainly fits the tragic heroin trope. This manga is a classic for a reason.

I must admit, that I did try to reread it recently and just couldn’t quite get into it like I use to. I’m not sure which one of us hasn’t aged well. It could also have been a question of timing. This said, I still smile whenever anyone mentions loving this manga and if you are interested in brutal dystopian sci fi, you will certainly find something to enjoy in this manga.

4) Blame

Blame was amazing. It’s another dystopian sci fi…I guess I have a type. I’m gonna recommend Evangelion next!

I still love Blame. Not necessarily for the story or characters, but for the presentation. Blame is brilliantly executed in manga form. You see, the story is somewhat nebulous. We are thrown in the middle of an ongoing quest (if you will) with no establishing narration or exposition. In fact, there is little to no exposition at all throughout the series. Most of the story has to be inferred through the images and dialogue. Also…there’s almost no dialogue! You can go through entire volumes with roughly 3 pages worth of text.

To top it off, the images look like this:

Dark line art, with fluid detailing and heavy emphasis on shadows….

Blame is an experience. There is absolutely no way to explain the impact of reading this manga to another person and no way to capture it through anime. It’s one of a kind. This series opened my eyes to the potential of the medium. I had never seen anything like it before and suddenly, possibilities seemed endless.

I enjoy comic books in general – and find that they allow for experimenting with narrative styles more readily than in conventional formats. However, even in comic books, I had not encountered anything quite like blame. Even the black and white (by necessity) images and smaller manga page size seem to add something to the narrative.

When I was recently asked to pick the manga that describes me best – this is the one I picked. I also have to be experienced first hand!

3) L’Homme qui Marche – The Walking Man

The Walking Man is a one shot manga that you should read… OK so what it really is, is a haiku in manga form. At least it is to me.

This is a simple story, almost a non story really, that follows a businessman as he goes for a walk through his neighbourhood and just contemplates on life and existence. It’s basically a simple plea to stop and smell the roses. A love letter to all the little miracles that we take for granted. Most of it is one again conveyed through images…

Look it’s not that I don’t like reading words or anything but if you’re going to have a manga, might as well take full advantage of the visual aspect, right? No listen…I said I can read!!!

Honestly, if you’re having one of *those* days at work, you should find this book. I was perhaps a bit too young to fully appreciate it at the time but I could still tell that it was something special. A little compact shard of serenity and peaceful contentment to carry around with you through those harsher times.

2) Naruto

Yup, one of the first manga I read was Naruto. And I still like never ending shonen with genki male protagonists. I have since moved on to other titles in the genre (HxH being my favourite) but Naruto is what opened my eyes to one of the most prolific and popular manga and anime types.

I loved it. It’s what you think about when you think stereotypical Japanese comic. Super powers with weird names that get shouted out in battles. Occasionally awkward translations. Huge casts of characters. Never ending story line. Ninjas!!! The straightforward format, happy go lucky mood and slapstick comedy felt light and easy to digest for my younger self. It was a much brighter and more lighter counterpart to those american superhero comics. And much funnier too.

Then things got real… Naruto mixes in some truly brutal scenes and unthinkable betrayals with it’s lighter moments, in a way that american comics hadn’t quite caught up with at the time. I remembered being floored and staring at pages in disbelief. By now, this is somewhat par for the course. HxH or FMA take it much further. However, back then it felt novel.

Sure you could probably pick up Fairy Tail or One Piece for a very similar experience nowadays. For me though, it was the young Hokage wannabe that started it all. In fact, as I’m writing this, I’ve convinced myself to go reread them. See you all in 6 months!

1) Akira

Akira was one of the very first animes I ever saw. This is probably a common experience for a lot of cough, older, cough fans. I did like it. I liked it quite a bit but also…I kinda felt like I had to like it. It was a bit odd and not that easy to follow, but I was afraid that admitting it had some serious plot holes would simply prove that I “didn’t get it”. And I desperately wanted to get it. At the time, in my neck of the woods, there weren’t really any alternatives. You had a handful of animes to choose from and Akira was the gold standard. If you didn’t like that, you just didn’t like anime. For some reason, little me had firmly decided to like anime.

It wasn’t until some time later that I stumbled across the full collection of large bound full colour volumes at the library and decided to give it another go.

It changed everything! Of course, trying to condense 6 very large volumes into a single movie was going to be difficult no matter what but the experience was simply not the same. The rich story (um…dystopian sci fi….) the layered and complex characters, the intricate political background and mesmerizing plot twists, all of it had completely been lost in my viewing of the movie. I had to go through these manga to finally get it but once I did… I never looked back. 

Extra mention

Natsume’s book of Friends

I actually finished Natsume’s book of friends volume 21 yesterday – sigh…… so it’s hardly one of the first I’ve read. I just want to mention it because, well I love Natsume and mention it whenever I can. Please read Natsume – it’s beautiful. Also, it is NOT dystopian sci fi. It will give you a new appreciation of the little miracles all around us. 

There you have it. These five series managed to capture my imagination and kept me reading manga for years to come. I don’t know that they are my favorites but I certainly did enjoy all of them. Maybe you will as well.

Actually, I also once found a hardcore eroge mange on a bus… It was clean (as in not soiled…) – don’t worry. I didn’t include it here. Maybe I will next time.

Irina’s First Five Mangas This is a post that first appeared on Bloodthristy Little Beasts as part of a collaboration with Jordanne.

#anime #List #manga

[instapicsil1]

I was going thru my rooms of boxes and piles of my years of color slides and prints and magazines sentimental paraphernalia and yea some just junk but I came across this spread in a nicely done photo book about portraits that I’d forgotten about misplaced buried yet happy to find. I loved this cool as it gets story when I went back to a Maya village high in the mountains of Guatemala and re met a man from 14 years prior whose picture was published in NatGeo full page and I was simply bringing the magazine back for him to see. Only 14 years late. He didn’t seem even slightly surprised to see me again and said he was waiting for me and still had the Polaroid I’d shot of him which got it all rolling in the first place .. So I photograph him again 14 years later holding NatGeo up and standing against same wall and I swear to God almighty he was dressed just as you see both times.. So now here he is getting his photo in NatGeo twice! He didn’t know the first time and didn’t care the second. We could only speak by eye contact. The color shift is only because I shot the first picture with Kodachrome II and the second with Kodachrome 64.. My formal education looks ok on paper .. but I was a terrible student I think ..yet SAVED by photography... pure luck.. my education my world view comes from photographing amazing people from every continent and culture and not simply photographing them but hanging with them deep learning exciting as hell so visceral ..and then I’d take a picture!! I’ll have a new book coming this fall .. it’s taken me forever to get it done but I kept taking things out .. my Japanese best lifetime friend Masaaki Okada whose ashes are on my mantle from art school taught me to cut cut cut ... so I’m taking a theoretically very long story and trying to make it a visual haiku.. it could be one of those really embarrassing late in career belly flops...I should just play it safe .. ha! yet if I’d played it safe I never wda met my Maya friend nor gone back on a whim 14 years later ..@magnumphotos https://ift.tt/2MaguX1

#Insta New #Insta All #All Extra #Everything #Track 1

[cheddarjacked-blog]

Blue Eyes shoot day

So we shot the film. Holy crap that was awesome. 

But first some catch up blog backstory. So I think some things I’ve learnt in this process start with a scenario that happened after a script-reading we did. Susie came up to me after class and asked if Micah could join our group because she wasn’t in another group, it was on the spot and I didn’t really have time to consider, I would have liked to talk to Micah first and discover her a bit before getting her to produce the film. It turned out that she really didn’t know her roles, which was fine, I asked Milo to fill her in because I saw his excellent producing skills in the autism documentary. The main issues that I clashed on with Micah was her drive to do everything by the book, I’m personally a low key renegade and try my best to bend the rules, I mean 3rd years aren’t allowed on exchange and here I am. So we shouldn’t have been working together. 

This by the book mentality lead to a break down in communication. She only sent emails, using students uni email addresses, but people wouldn’t check them. So I had to take over and call people, start facebook groups and maintain contact with the actors and crew to make sure it all fell into place. So in the spirit of COLAB, next time I think a little Swedish Fika should come into play, get a coffee with your collaborators and find common ground before moving into the creative. I met a girl at Mariams flat while we were shooting the Cine-Haiku, Christy, we got on very well and decided to start work on a music video together in Glasgow. Me and Luca spent some time in E block eating lunch while talking before we did any work on the shots. These bases are essential for when we get into the creative process, I have reference points for how people make decisions. 

Changing the script was something me and Luca started doing in the days leading up to the shoot. We realised that we didn’t have enough extras to pull off that it was a party, this was Micah’s job, but it wasn’t communicated to her and she unfortunately lacks initiative. I had tried to grab some extras from the drama society but only got 3. We decided if we dropped the extras it would make Noah far more creepy, hosting a party where nobody comes. We amended the script, send it to Susie (the writer) and the actors. We will see in the edit how odd the change is. 

A mistake that me and Luca made was not doing a recky on the location. We were drawing blueprints for shots and we didn’t have the space in our minds laid out properly. When we arrived on set the night before the shoot we were boggled at how small it was, it spawned from Micah pushing Erin into letting us use her flat, she didn’t ask her if it was okay and I didn’t understand this until the night before. After dropping the equipment at Erin’s we left and walked through Leith, Luca burst out, why don’t we shoot it at my place! So that’s what we did. 

As a team I feel we had a relative good communication, it could have been better with more regular face to face meetings. Me and Luca did some excellent work together in the last week, working all day together at uni. Messenger and a google plus community can only get you so far. On set we did exceptionally well, everyone was very much specialised and professional. The two 2nd years who came on to help camera department were outstanding. Alison and Callum, I really take my hat off to your intuition and vocabulary within the cinematic art. Emma was working diligently on schedules, marking how fast we were working and trying to make up time, Erin came in and made Luca’s bedroom a bodacious bohemian den, Mariam suffered with a faulty Tascam microphone/recorder but was very patient and took my direction very well. Micah did nicely as script supervisor and really surprised me by letting me direct, she had interrupted a few of the auditions so I hadn’t brought her to the rehearsals but during filming it was quite a different story and I really appreciated it. The actors themselves were very patient, Elliot did a great performance as Noah and I’m so glad I didn’t play the part and direct, I really enjoyed giving direction to him and Amy and Helena. Amy was fabulous as Jess and I can’t wait to see the rushes, Helena also put on an excellent performance. It’s very true what they say, the directors job is over after casting.

Luca was excellent as his first time being a DOP. We worked very closely and I really hope I get to work with him again, I kept thinking about Werner Herzog when he wrote about his experiences in the Amazon filming, he talks about his right hand man Walter Saxter and I felt this bond with Luca during the filming that took me right back to Herzog’s words. I think something that was great on this set was comedy, we knew it was a bit silly and we all had some laughs during the shoot, I’d seen a crew like this on Ash vs Evil Dead, departments and the director worked so well and laughed while they worked and I aspired to work in a team like that one day. As I rode my bike home in the wee hours of Sunday morning I hoped to repeat the fantastic days shoot as soon as possible. 

#filmaking #film craft disciplines

[jeneelestrange]

How Death Note *MIGHT* Still Pull This Off

*deep breath*

Okay.

Here’s the thing.

I think some of ya’ll discussing this in general are…..leaving some stuff out of the discussion, and I don’t know whether or not its intentional, but here it goes. Have any of you tried to translate anything? Because for any sufficiently complicated piece of work(what people would consider Literature™), a perfect translation does not exist. Period.

Death Note stopped being Authentically Japanese™ the minute your Western eyes saw it. A lot of the meaning a work has is brought there by the viewer. And I’m not even talking about the more nitty-gritty details, I’m talking about the very PREMISE. The idea of a teenage boy with a notebook that can kill people is just plain not going to have the same impact on an American that it does on a Japanese person. Japanese has a next-to-nonexistent crime rate. Americans are constantly surrounded by teenage boys with access to literal death machines. Every month, there’s a new random shooting in my country. I am CONSTANTLY SURROUNDED by teenage boys who could indiscriminately kill me and everyone I love, AT ALL TIMES. I live in an ENTIRE COUNTRY of Light Yagami’s. If it wasn’t for all the other squeeing weebs around me who gave me a recommendation, I would not be that interested in that premise. I LIVE that premise.

And some of ya’ll are not realizing that, by your logic, we shouldn’t translate anything ever. You may think I’m exaggerating, but muddle over the fact that JAPANESE TRANSLATIONS for SHAKESPEARE exist. HOW DO YOU EVEN HOPE TO DO THAT??? There are works for which the original meaning is UNSALVAGEABLE(a good example is in The Inferno with the famous “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” line. Italian has gender, and “hope” in Italian is gendered female–calling back to Beatrice in heaven in the first part. What do you do? Put in a note and interrupt the flow of the reader in the story? Try to cram in a reference to women somewhere else? There literally is no perfect solution). And NO, the solution is not to annotate every goddamn thing! They interrupt the flow of the story! Dyslexic people often can’t read them! And sometimes people just want to Enjoy A Thing, not take an entire course on a country’s culture(this is rich coming from me, but still)! Not to mention trying to translate a COMEDY word-for-word is the worst idea imaginable if you’ve ever had a joke explained to you–if you weebs don’t believe me, watch “Nerima Daikon Brothers” and read the essays upon essays on its jokes and tell me you find that shit funny.

So how can you make it actually have the same punch to someone who has never heard of Death Note? You’re either going to have to give up and make something shot for shot the same–which audiences AND fans don’t like because WHAT’S THE POINT–or you’re going to have to change something.

LET ME STOP HERE FOR A MOMENT TO SAY, that I *completely* agree that whitewashing is a problem. That we need more movies with characters of color. That it is simplistic and stupid and wrong what they did in Avatar, Gods of Egypt, Pan, Prince of Persia, Ghost In The Shell, basically everything else. But I am going to speak up and say it might be different for THIS MOVIE IN PARTICULAR. Why?

Because Light Yagami, from the eyes of an American like me, acts like every typical overprivileged white dude I know. I’m not even kidding, he reminds me of every single guy I went to school with in IB–full of himself, full of ennui, convinced with how smart and great he is just because he happens to get A’s with a stacked life deck. Then when he gets the Death Note, it takes him like a couple of seconds of thought to get to God Mode™ because he’s had everything come easy to him his whole life, right, so of course he must just be smarter and all around better than everyone else. Light is the dominant race in his country. He is not Ainu, he is not Ryukyu Island Native, he is not Burakumin, he is not one of the other Asian minorities in Japan. Remember, the Japanese do not have the same racial dichotomy that America does. The Japanese are the dominant race there.

If you tell me, “Imagine Death Note happened, but in America,” I would immediately switch Light to white. Because while yes, that character flaw and personality can technically happen to anyone, I see it faaaaar and away more commonly with white men. In basically all the other examples of movies I listed above? They didn’t have that issue. Their main characters didn’t act like a privileged white shit.

NOW AT THE SAME TIME, the writers have to confront that they must change SOMETHING about the narrative. It’s either going to seem like “who cares” to an American audience that is desensitized to everyone carrying around death machines, or it’s going to seem like the movie is making commentary directly on this fact–which it originally never meant to. And when a movie accidentally ignores an elephant in the room, that normally sinks the entire story because your audience can’t stop thinking about it. So as I see it, the show’s only possibility of it not sucking is to confront the problem head on. It will inevitably be compared to white terrorism. This is simply the life we’re living in the West, and it is not at all early 2000s Japan. It has to dig the knife deeper and make it a commentary directly on it, otherwise it will be guaranteed to be tonedeaf as all fuck.

“But I don’t want to watch a commentary on our shitty current events in this movie!” THAT’S TOTALLY FAIR. I would like to not be reminded of this shit either. But please acknowledge that deciding to release THIS PARTICULAR FRANCHISE in THIS PARTICULAR COUNTRY at THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT puts the writers between a rock and a hard place. There is NO WAY you can have the internet erupting in love for Kira like it does in the original and *NOT* think of how similar that is to life on the internet with the altright at this moment. It’s options are this, doing an exacting replica which will inevitably make it SUCK, or not doing it at all. And like I said, if not for people making transliterating compromises, we wouldn’t have Japanese Shakespeare. We wouldn’t have haiku in English. We wouldn’t have anime at all. So please don’t say the last option and not expect me to call you out on it. Stop implying that a fucking anime is Uniquely Untranslateable™ and we must treat it like a heavily indexed, dry-as-dirt work that we all study like goddamn Beowulf in a literature class, because that’s problematic as fuck.

Now, I didn’t think it would actually have the balls to do this possibility UNTIL I heard they had cast both Light and L. And L was played by a black man. That perfectly sets up the dichotomy for this–white terrorist shithead who thinks he should rule the world, black man protecting the good and the interests of everyone else. That could be why they were not accepting Asian actors for the two leads–they intentionally went with white for Light and black for L to make a point that specifically ties into the narrative(also this just so happens to both play into AND subvert the black-and-white aesthetic that Death Notes has going on).

That, and the fact that this is a Netflix series, NOT a movie. And not only does that give us more narrative room for depth than a movie, but Netflix can sometimes get it really right sometimes(and sometimes not, but like I said, I’m just giving it a shot–not saying it will be good).

This is important because relevant example: In the very back of my mind, I did admit to myself that it *might* be possible to make a Ghost In The Shell movie with a white actress work if you actually made the movie a critique of Whiteness and our technology–that she was originally Asian, but only white cyborg bodies exist because of the usual marketing speak that justifies racism in media, of just not testing and test-marketing on anyone who wasn’t white because they forgot other people exist, etc. But I didn’t even BOTHER to say that because I knew that the suits would rather strangle themselves with their own ties than allow precious run time in a big budget action movie to go to EMOTION and DEPTH and BACKSTORY. Ghost In The Shell was doomed the minute it was decided to be a big budget action movie–the suits won’t allow any risk to occur lest they lose money, so it inevitably ends up being a mediocre, paint-by-numbers story. Whitewashed!ScarJo was just adding dirt on top of the coffin. And SPOILER ALERT, Hollywood scrambled and got someone who actually knew what the fuck they were doing and ended up shoving JUST THAT TWIST into the movie, but because they had no run-time to actually devote to it and don’t actually give a damn about trying, it fell flat and failed, no shit. This interview with prominent Asian-American agrees–if Ghost went with its addition in a way that was genuine, it might have worked and been poignant, but it was the slapjob quickfix that would be expected so of course it wasn’t:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ghost-shell-4-japanese-actresses-dissect-movie-whitewashing-twist-990956?utm_source=twitter Netflix has the ROOM and ABILITY to go to the depth it needs to in order to make an effective cultural critique. And taking the “exacting translation” path, as I earlier went into, will only end in failure.

Now, WHETHER IT’S ACTUALLY GOING TO DO THIS *AND* DO IT EFFECTIVELY, I have no idea. It could do it for the same ol’ moneymaking reasons that made all the others shitty. It could do it exactly as I’ve laid out but do it inexpertly and ham-fisted, and so I will hate it. I don’t know. But because I see the possibility of it actually trying to salvage new meaning out of the situation, I will actually give it a shot. Also, please give a little bit more thought to people whose job it is to actually translate a work into another culture for everyone, holy shit, some of ya’ll act like everyone should have access and ability to subtitles and cultural research and that’s just not true. And they have to take that into account when they write. You can make the movie work with a white lead *if* it ties into a movie’s specific critique of whiteness. But that takes the stars aligning in the right ways, and we have at least a couple of them actually doing so. All of the technical details that could stop it from doing so have been taken away, as far as an outsider like me can see. Now I just have to cross my fingers the writers know what they’re doing and pray.

ALSO, THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE IN THIS GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THIS MOVIE THAT I NEED TO CALL THE FUCK OUT: If Light’s actions suddenly become disgusting to you because “ew now he’s just like every other white fuckboy” whereas before he WASN’T, you just might be fetishizing Asian men!!!! Light was always an absolute horrible human being and swooning over him meant you have always been swooning over a serial killer! If changing someone’s race suddenly makes someone killing a bunch of people and playing god easy to ignore for you, HOLY SHIT, you’re a fetishistic piece of shit! I’ve seen so many things going around saying x Asian actor could play Light, and the only reasons listed were Asianness and “how hot they are!!!!!” And absolutely no mention of past roles, acting ability, ANYTHING ELSE. JEEEEEEEESUS. Examine your actions! Also, as an aside, I threw this idea out there with some POC friends of mine, who overall said, “Okay, good point actually.” But they know me personally and that I’m not a Total White Shithead™, so your mileage may vary. Still, I welcome polite points and critiques. If there’s something I have overlooked addressing, hey, let me know, I want to learn.

TL;DR - I finally get to use both my majors in Sociology and English AND my minor in East Asian Studies on an opinion, hooray! Edit: Shit, I almost forgot--YA’LL! STOP ACTING LIKE JAPAN DOESN’T HAVE RACE ISSUES. Yeah, Light’s actions look pretty eugenics-y in an American setting, but that’s because you’re FAMILIAR with Western history of eugenics and not Japan’s. PEEP THIS SHIT OKAY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_Japan GUESS WHAT, THERE ARE MINORITY GROUPS IN JAPAN THAT ARE OFTEN ALSO FUNNELED INTO ORGANIZED CRIME BECAUSE OF RACIST LACK OF OPPORTUNITY ELSEWHERE AND POLICE PREJUDICE--THE YAKUZA ARE SERIOUSLY MOSTLY BURAKUMIN AND ETHNIC KOREANS AT THIS POINT! IT’S JUST THAT JAPAN DOESN’T LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE FUCKING ANYTHING EVER

#death note #ghost in the shell #whitewashing #translation