The tumblr of ? the platypus. I have chosen not to reveal my gender and accept any pronoun (They, Them, their, themself are slightly more acceptable but he, she, it and anything else you wish to use will not cause offence)
We (somewhat rightly) mock the 2000’s era fansub translation notes for their otaku fixations and privileging of trivia over the media, but they should be understood as serving their purpose for a bit of a different era in the anime fandom. Take this classic:
Like, its so obvious, right? Just say “pervert”, you don’t need the note! Which is true, for like a ‘normie’ audience member who just wants to watch A TV Show - but no one watching, uh *quick google* “Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne” in 1999 is that person. The audience is weebs, and for them the fact that show is Japanese is a huge selling point. They want it to feel as 'anime’ as possible; and in the west language was one of the core signifiers of anime-ness. 2004 con-goers calling their friends “-kun” and throwing in “nani?” into conversations was the way this was done, and alongside that a lexicon of western anime fandom terminology was born. Seeing “ecchi” on the screen is, to this person, a better viewing experience - it enhances their connection to otaku identity the show is providing, and reinforces their shared cultural lexicon (Ecchi is now a term one 'expects’ anime fans to know - a truth that translator notes like this simultaneously created and reflected).
But of course your audiences have different levels of otaku-dom, and so you can’t just say 'ecchi’ and call it a day - so for those who are only Level 2 on their anime journey, you give them a translation note. Most of the translation notes of the era are like this - terms the fansubber thought the audience might know well enough that they would understand it and want that pure Japanese cultural experience, but that not all of them would know, so you have to hedge. The Lucky Star one I posted is a great example of that:
Its Lucky Star, the otaku-crown of anime! You desperately want the core text to preserve as much anime vocab as possible, to give off that feeling, but you can’t assume everyone knows what a GALGE is - doing both is the only way to solve that dilemma.
This is often a good guideline when looking at old memetically bad fansubs by the way:
This isn’t real, no fansub had this - it was a meme that was posted on a wiki forum in 2007. Which makes sense, right? “Plan” isn’t a Japanese cultural or otaku term, so there is no reason not to translate it, it doesn’t deepen the ~otaku connection~.
Which, I know, I’m explaining the joke right now, but over time I think many have grown to believe that this (and others like it) is a real fansub, and that these sort of arbitrary untranslations just peppered fansub works of the time? It happened, sure, but they would be equally mocked back then as missteps - or were jokes themselves. Some groups even had a reputation for inserting jokes into their works, imo Commie Subs was most notable for this; part of the competitive & casual environment of the time. But they weren’t serious, they are not examples of “bad fansubs” in the same way.
This all faded for a bunch of reasons - primarily that the market for anime expanded dramatically. First, that lead to professionally released translations by centralized agencies that had universal standards for their subs and accountability to the original creators of the show. Second, the far larger audience is far less invested in anime-as-identity; they like it, but its not special the way its special when you are a bullied internet recluse in 2004. They just want to watch the show, and would find “caring” about translation nuances to be cringe. And since these centralized agencies release their product infinitely faster and more accessibly than fansubs ever did, their copies now dominate the space (including being the versions ripped to all illegal streaming sites), so fansubs died.
Though not totally - a lot of those fansub groups are still around! Commie Subs is still kicking for example. They either do the weird nuance stuff, or fansub unreleased-in-the-west old or niche anime, or even have pivoted to non-anime Japanese content that never gets international release. But they used to be the taste-makers of the community; now they are the fringe devotees in a culture that has moved beyond them. So fansubs remain something of a joke of the 90’s and 2000’s in the eyes of the anime culture of today, in a way that maybe they don’t deserve.
the korean fandom on twitter is, understandably, going scorched earth on project moon due to this. there’s a lot currently going on to protest the decision, so i’m posting a list here of what’s going on for those who want to limit their time on elon musk’s $44 billion midlife crisis impulse purchase website (if you are on twitter, domuk is a good person to follow, as they translate important updates to english). a lot of the links are in korean, but generally they play nicely with machine translators. this should be current as of 8/2.
A press conference at the Gyeonggido Assembly will occur on 8/3, with lawmakers of the Gyeonggi province (where Project Moon is based) in attendance. This appears driven by the leader of the Gyeonggi Youth Union.
The vice chairman of the IT union–who has a good amount of experience with labor negotiations like these–has expressed strong support for the artist and is working to get media coverage due to the ongoing feminist witch hunts in the gaming industry. Project Moon isn’t union to my knowledge, but he’s noted that he’s taken on nonunion companies such as Netmarble (largest mobile game dev in South Korea) by getting the issue in front of the National Assembly (Korea’s congress).
A full boycott of the Limbus Company app, on both mobile and PC (steam) platforms. Overseas fans are highly encouraged to participate, regardless if whether they’re F2P or not. Not opening the app at all is arguably the biggest thing any one person can do to protest the decision, as the app logs the number of accounts that log on daily. For a new gacha such as Limbus, a high number of F2P daily active users, but a small number of paying users is often preferable to having a smaller userbase but more paying users. If the company sees the number of daily users remain stable, they will likely decide to wait out any backlash rather than apologize.
Due to the firing, the Leviathan artist has posted about poor working conditions when making the story. As per a bilingual speaker, they were working on a storyboard revision, and thought ‘if I ran into the street right now and got hit by a car and died, I wouldn’t have to keep working.’ They contacted Project Moon because they didn’t want their work to be like that, and proposed changes to serialization/reduction in amount of work per picture/to build up a buffer of finished images (they did not have any buffer while working on Leviathan to my knowledge). They were shut out, and had to suck it up and accept the situation.
Hamhampangpang has a 'shrine’ section of the restaurant for fans to leave fan-created merch and other items. They also allow the fans to take this merch back if they can prove it’s theirs. Fans are now doing just that.
To boost all of the above, a large number of Korean fanartists with thousands of followers have deleted their works and/or converted their accounts from fanart accounts to accounts supporting the protests. Many of them are bilingual, and they’re where I got the majority of this information.
[note 1: there’s a targeted english-language disinformation campaign by the website that started the hate mob. i have read the artist’s tweets with machine translation, and they’re talked about in the second hankyoreh article linked above: nowhere does she express any transphobic or similarly awful beliefs. likewise, be wary of any claims that she supported anything whose description makes you raise eyebrows–those claims are likely in reference to megalia, a korean feminist movement. for information on that, i’d recommend the NPR/BBC articles below and this google drive link of english-language scholarly papers on them. for the love of god don’t get your information about a feminist movement from guys going on witch hunts for feminists.]
[note 2: i’ve seen a couple people argue that the firing was for the physical safety of the employees, citing the kyoani incident in japan. as per this korean fan, most fans there strongly do not believe this was the case. we have english-translated transcripts of the meeting between the mob and project moon; the threats the mob was making were to……brand project moon as a feminist company online. yes, really. male korean gamers aren’t normal about feminism, and there’s been an ongoing witch hunt for feminists in the industry since about 2016, something you see noted in both the labor union statements. both NPR and the BBC this phenomenon to gamergate, and i’d say it’s a pretty apt comparison.]
let me know if anything needs correction or if anything should be added.
alrighty so this broke containment so i’m going to add a bit of context: project moon is an indie game company that made lobotomy corporation (SCP management type game), library of ruina (deckbuilding RPG), and most recently limbus company (gacha).
here’s what’s happened as of 8/3:
I said yesterday that Project Moon filed a complaint against the protest truck—this turned out to be incorrect. Somebody filed a complaint, but who it was is unclear. Since the truck schedule and details are public, and the truck protest organizer noted that multiple complaints about the truck came in, it’s more likely to be from the forum that started the hate mob rather than Project Moon. Apologies; the correction was tweeted out while I was sleeping.
The provincial meeting happened, and the Youth Union put out a press statement more or less summing up what they said. They promised to get to the bottom of the issue via auditing.
This statement is hard to parse in English, but it makes more sense if you read a lot of translated Korean protest posts. A large part of the Korean reporting and protests invoke two phrases that pop up over and over again: ideological verification (firing based on personal beliefs) and unfair dismissal (firing that is in violation of Korean labor laws). Those two claims are central to many of the signage truck slogans and hashtag campaigns, are found in the various union condemnations, and are mentioned in several of the news articles. Those two terms, and those two terms only, are specifically called out in the statement.
The statement uses weasel words to say that they don’t technically meet the definition of unfair dismissal because they never served her a dismissal. It’s not clear to me whether they’re trying to play lawyer with the exact definition of what a dismissal is, or if they haven’t actually given her paper documents saying she’ll be fired yet (Korean law requires documentation in writing, not over the phone).
Similarly, they claim that they didn’t fire her for her ideological beliefs, but “legal judgement and advice“. Note that the illustrator was fired in 3 hours at 11 pm at night, but took a whole 9 days of radio silence before responding to mass backlash against this, but then cited ‘needing legal consultation’ as the excuse for taking so long. I’m very doubtful that a lawyer was even consulted during the initial decision to fire the artist, given the timeframe and the fact the CEO was in Japan on a business trip.
They also warned against legal action to ‘disregarding the NDA’, which might be targeted towards either the Leviathan artist for speaking on unfair working conditions, or the fired artist herself, for speaking to Hankyoreh.
Today I introduced my sister to “the problem of Susan” and I had to explain to her that Susan was left out of Narnia cuz she liked boys and lipstick now and without missing a beat she said but what about Peter? Does Peter not like girls? And I knew she was pointing out the inherent misogyny at the center of the “the problem of Susan” but the implications of that question are a source of much hilarity to meeee LMFAO like Does Peter not like girls? Does he like boys? Is he Gay? Is Narnia really just a homo-utopia where Lucy is also a lesbian and Edmund is a bisexual disaster and Susan was kicked out cuz she was too straight??? Can I make CS Lewis turn over in his grave with this new reading?
…I mean they literally were in the closet…
THEY WERE LITERALLY IN THE CLOSET!!!
Reblog to make C.S. Lewis turn over in his grave
TBH, once the nuances were explained to him, I think he’d find it quite funny.
The book, iirc, doesn’t even say she likes BOYS. Jill complains of her being interested in nothing but “nylons and lipstick and invitations.” It’s Susan’s interest in fashion, beauty and socialising that damns her.
first rule of relationship club is if you see a pretty bird you have to point at it and say “pretty bird!”
second rule of relationship club is they also have to point at it and say “pretty bird! pretty bird!”
third rule of relationship club is you have to see pretty birds
Fourth rule of relationship club is you have to listen to me ID the pretty bird and tell you everything I know about its habitat and diet and behavior patterns
I love the x-men so much because that’s just what leftist infighting is like! that’s literally all it is! xavier is a sellout and they all hate him but he’s the only one with any money. everyone complains about “they keep switching sides and dating each other it’s so fucking confusing” like my dudes have you never been a part of any socialist organisation, ever. then people will go “magneto is so strong how has he not killed a bunch of teenagers” HE DOESN’T WANT TO KILL THEM! this started in a goddam basement over coffee he does not want to hurt them he just wants them to shut up and listen and will fling cars to do so
Magneto one drink in: I love Charles but hes such a kiss ass we don’t need to be FRIENDS we just need mutual aid communities and to be left alone
Professor X one drink in: what the fuck is his self sustaining mutant community going to do for all the mutants born to human parents, which is MOST OF THEM, he’s so gay he’s forgotten how babies are made and I want to kiss his stupid face
A far-right Irish political party says members of its organization stole a “considerable quantity in gold” from the party’s safe, money it was hoarding in case the economy collapsed.
In a statement posted to Twitter on Sunday, the leader of the minor nationalist National Party, Justin Barrett, accused two party members of stealing gold from the party’s safe vault in Dublin.
Barrett said the Party’s reserve of gold was kept “in case of a mishap in general or more particularly a collapse in the value of fiat currency” and had been “dearly gathered by the sacrifice of Party members and supporters, over these many years."
I feel like there’s a necessary counterpoint to the “torment nexus” problem, namely that science fiction itself isn’t free from the political and cultural biases of its creators or the capitalist incentive structure of media production. Like, every time there’s an article about research into cloning extinct species, there are a bunch of comments to the effect that “There’s an entire series of movies explaining why that’s a bad idea.” And that’s true: there’s an entire series of blockbuster monster movies (that very much make their money off of the spectacle of prehistoric monsters running amok), based on a thriller novel written by a reactionary, that hold that if you develop this technology, you will get the plot of a monster movie.
Like, the Cybermen were partially inspired by Kit Pedler getting squicked-out by the then-new technologies of pacemakers and organ transplantation. It’s not a good argument.
absolutely simmering with rage cause I was gonna make this exact post. it woulda been funny too. it woulda been like “I like the torment nexus meme as much as the next guy but like, a guy wrote a whole entire book about how you shouldn’t put dinosaurs in a zoo. sometimes it’s the sci-fi writers who are wrong” and it woulda gotten 50-60 notes. maybe even reposted to reddit. but I didn’t. I let the idea roll around in my head too long, and the opportunity passed me by. now I sit here, nary a note to my name, watching someone else live the dream that could have been mine. let my tragedy be to you a cautionary tale. sieze the day, my friends. there is no greater a curse than a life unlived. i love you.
Sad update everyone, Tama recently passed away… An estimated 3,000 people, including railway officials, attended Tama the cat’s funeral on Sunday, days after she died of heart failure aged 16. [x]
For those who haven’t read articles about it, the local shrine elevated her to a god. She’s now the Eternal Stationmaster and patron god of the station.
Beautiful.
Now I’m crying thanks
and a new cat was hired right?
yep! her name is Nitama (essentially ”second tama” or “tama II”) and she served under Tama as an apprentice before being appointed her deputy
she works very hard
Everytime this crosses my dash, I reblog. It is the law.
Law
I’m crying at 11pm over train cats
Nitama, already now a mature cat (born 2010), has a protege named Yontama (fourth Tama, b. 2016). There is no information available for either the physical befellment or tragic self-disgrace which has removed Santama from contention.
^Nitama majestic, and below with Yontama
Yontama.
a legacy
okay but actually what happened to santama (or sun-tama-tama, which is her name because it’s a pun on santama) was that she was basically sent to train for the position in okayama and they liked her so much they refused to send her back
“Sun-tama-tama” (a pun off of “Santama”, lit. “third Tama”) was a calico cat sent for training in Okayama. Sun-tama-tama was considered as a candidate for Tama’s successor, but the Okayama Public Relations representative who had been caring for Sun-tama-tama refused to give the cat up writing, “I will not let go of this child, she will stay in Okayama.” [25]
As of September 2018, Sun-tama-tama is working as the stationmaster in Naka-ku, Okayama and appears occasionally on Tama’s Twitter account.
Every time I see this post there’s new info and it gets better
You are only allowed to scroll pass this after you pay tribute to the great Tama Station masters.
The shrine of Tama Daimyōjin (Great gracious deity Tama), next to the Kishi station where she worked.
Nitama presenting her yearly offerings to Tama
Daimyōjin on the anniversary of Tama’s Death, June 23 (The offerings are presented by the company president, as Nitama is a cat and thus can’t hold the offerings herself) (Not pictured, but also present, Yontama)
you cannot pass without reblogging guys. i’m sorry, i don’t make the rules.
You can’t not reblog a goddess. It’s just what’s so. :)
So, fun fact- the manga Noragami has an arc where the main character, Yato (a minor kami/God that is down on his luck but trying to make it big time) goes to a council/conference for all the Gods in Japan.
And they are announcing the winner of the “up and coming god” award, and of course, Yato thinks it’s him.
But no-
ITS TAMA!
Always reblogging this.
BEST THING ON TUMBLR EVER.
Shintoism is such a neat belief structure to me - I was raised Catholic and there’s this constant sense that it’s functionally a solved system; the dogma is established and except for a new saint now and then it’s done growing.
The idea that you can elevate a new god is really nice, there’s something vital and living within that concept; that belief can and will grow with the world around it.
Genuinely bless any religion in which “we promoted this very nice cat to the status of god” is a thing that not only can theoretically happen, but isn’t even controversial or weird when it does
