SK8 NEWS?????? WE FINALLY GOT A RELEASE DATE!!!

i think my key issue with the sanitization of death eater characters is that it feels like people do not see their stories as tragic or empathize with the characters until we have a hc that's like "actually they were morally good the whole time!"

regulus black and severus snape are tragic characters and child soldiers no matter what side they were "really" on. even barty crouch jr, who may not have been groomed into being a death eater, is tragic when you spend a second to consider his relationship with his father. there are plenty of death eaters who we know are taking after their fathers in joining the cult. lucius malfoy, who was a prefect when the marauders enter hogwarts, most likely spread the death eater ideology, since the ideology is just a more extreme version/logical endpoint of what already existed in the wizarding world.

to me, these ideas are not headcanons, because they are heavily implied by the text. when jkr mentions malfoy in the deathly hallows that is not for no reason.

mallfoy's acceptance of snape and position of power are both highlighted in this sentence. we can infer that snape felt a sense of community for the first time in Slytherin. with malfoy as a prefect we can infer that the culture of Slytherin house lifted up bigots and those with an important family name.

this is a culture that breeds more bigotry. we know that Dumbledore did not step in to stop this cultural development in the 90s, after already seeing what it could do!!! so we can infer that he did not in the 70s. so a bunch of children were left alone in an echo chamber of hate. of course some of them became fanatics!!!

this doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable. but we cannot expect children to overcome cultural and political hegemony all alone. like.... that's just not how the world works. and it's tragic that children are fodder for fascist's wars, especially when the fact that the children were abused or neglected makes them more vulnerable to be fodder.

regulus and severus weren't treated as people, their humanity was denied by the fascist they served, bc that's how fascism works. exploring their characters as they are in canon, with full humanity, without needing to change their stories to see that humanity, is much more interesting to me. it is much more in the spirit of redemption and restoration.

the reason Edgeworth takes off his glasses during the trial in AA5 is because he can’t focus on court if he’s distracted by seeing Phoenix Wright clearly

a bit of severitus, little harry.

AHHHHH I LOVE THE IDEA OF SEVERUS WHO IS HARRY'S FATHER! (not biological)

I know the harry x Hermione ship is not liked by most, but i ship it, i don't have a dislike for harry x Ginny ship and i like ginny but i think Harry and Hermione would have been great together then with Ron and hermione. You may argue with me about it, we all have our dislikes and likes about ships.

we r nearly finished replaying aa3

I’m tired of people acting like Zhongli is a serious and chill guy who would never cause problems on purpose as if he isn’t one of the biggest menaces out of the Seven. He used to throw mountains at Venti for annoying him. He, the god of history, starts fights among historians for shits and giggles. He tried to gaslight the Traveler into thinking he was totally not at the Chasm guys really Aether/Lumine you must be seeing things maybe you should go see Baizhu. When Qiqi wanted “Cocogoat” milk he was like “Oh yeah sure totally let’s go look for it” knowing damn well it was a wild goose chase. He made the Traveler sing to a flower and then was like “Oh would you look at that” when a Whooperflower jumped out to maul them. I love him. He’s like a cat pushing things off the counter to see how people react. I would pay to see him interact directly with Neuvillette because I know for a fact he’d get on that man’s nerves and argue about water tasting just to feel something. Furina used freedom from godhood to take a nap and Zhongli used it to give psychic damage to anyone who talks to him longer than 5 minutes. Iconic.

The Japanese Version of Deltarune

about a week ago i decided to translate japanese deltarune because i was curious and bored. i found a lot of stuff that i haven’t heard anyone talk about before!

i only translated chapter 2 because i got to the cliffs and remembered that watching/playing chapter 1 over and over again is really boring to me. might do it when/if i finish writing the post.

uhhh a few warnings. i’m not fluent in japanese whatsoever (i’m like n4 level? i think?), and i might not explain this very well to people who don’t know anything about the language. if you’re confused about anything i say, just ask and i’ll explain it in better detail.

i got all of the gameplay from tsuwahasu’s playthroughs of chapter 2 (pacifist and weird route), so all of the screenshots will be from his vods. i picked his vod to watch somewhat randomly so i was very surprised when he not only got all the easter eggs/secrets on a blind playthrough besides the egg room, but also beat spamton neo in one try, god damn

also i’m not the first person to look at the jp version of deltarune. please look at these posts/videos if you want to see stuff that’s already known in better detail:

skellfamily (light/dark world writing, characters’ pronouns and speech patterns) | suzyundertale (ch2 character names, some jokes) suzyundertale again (the gonermaker sequence) | duxarcana and halfbreadchaos (character in the code) | kazarinn (comments from the translators)

reblogs highly appreciated—this took a ton of time!!!

NOW.

LET US BEGIN.

first things first. the gonermaker sequence is one of the most well-known differences in the japanese language among lore fanatics like myself.

in japanese, the first character speaking to you (gaster/Geoff) speaks in kanji (normal) and katakana instead of hiragana (not normal, incredibly strange sounding). the character who hijacks the gonermaker at the end speaks differently, with kanji and hiragana (normal). as suzyundertale mentions in their post, the patterns are extremely similar to a certain fallen child from the end of the undertale genocide route.

another well-known lore Thing in the japanese version is that the hidden “scrapped” lines (AKA the person trapped in the code) use very feminine and childlike speaking mannerisms. this makes it very likely that the person is dess holiday

i’m not going to be going over much personal pronoun stuff, because other people have already covered most of that, though i haven’t seen one thing mentioned by anyone else:

seam uses the pronoun “atashi” (あたし), which is normally a very girly pronoun but in this case it’s meant to make them seem old and wise, since it was a more common pronoun in olden times. their other mannerisms are gender neutral and not feminine, but their name is localized to “nui” (ヌイ)— the word for “seam” in japanese, as well as an actual feminine given name.

does the use of “atashi” combined with having a fem name confirm that they are female? i’m 95% sure the answer is no. do those two things lead native japanese speakers to believe that they are female? i have no idea.

light and dark world

skellfamily mentioned all of this in the post i linked, but i have something small to add

undertale uses mainly hiragana in its text for the japanese version, with some small exceptions for when the fourth wall is broken. this is referencing earthbound, which also did this. this carries over to the light world of deltarune, but kanji is used liberally in the dark world. this is explained by toby fox wanting the light world to make the player think deltarune would be like undertale.

that’s all

small jokes and stuff in the localization

the “librarby” misspelling joke carries over, with it being named “toshonka” (the japanese word for library is “toshokan”).

the AGREE2ALL puzzle was changed to say “YEEES20!!”. this can be read as “yes ni maru” (with the number 2 being read as “ni” in jp and “maru” being the word for a circle), meaning “yes to all” just like in english!

the “apple” keyboard puzzle still says “apple” though ralsei mentions that apple means “ringo” (the japanese word for apple) if you talk to him for a hint.

funnily enough, this joke was kept as is! (“kris, type as i say. f…” “…un!”)

the tasque’s battle lines in english are binary codes, with “me” being 0 and “ow” being 1. this is similar in jp. “nyan” is the equivalent of “meow” in that language, so “ny”=0 and “an”=1. cute!

the “bosom” joke is about the same, if anyone was curious

“breasts / annihilation”

“b…breast?”

“it means tity”

probably my favorite joke in the entire japanese version: in english, before the berdly fight on the roller coaster, he incorrectly refers to lightners as “Light Nerds” . in japanese this is changed to make him use ateji (a combination of kanji that doesn’t mean anything but sounds like an already existing word with their combined readings), calling the lightners 雷斗奈悪 (raitonaa, phonetically similar to the transliteration raitonā which the translation uses). it has the exact same effect (of berdly trying to sound smart but actually being very incorrect), but it’s localized in an outstanding way

“you are filled with the power of not knowing what sugarplums are” is changed to “you are filled with the power of not knowing what christmas pudding is”.

when berdly incorrectly calls susie “susan”, she says “who’s susan?” instead of “my name isn’t susan”. japanese people likely don’t know that “susie” is usually short for “susan”, so it makes sense for her to be even more confused in this version.

the spelling contest in berdly’s flashback is still an english spelling contest, with berdly specifying that it’s english.

instead of saying “susie… a real dragon blazers reference?!” when susie references dragon blazers 2, berdly says, “susie… you’re… a serious dragon blazers player…?!”

on that topic, dragon blazers is instead called dragon blader in japanese. was it called that the whole time? am i misremembering? i legitimately don’t know

the ice-e keysmash puzzle is changed so that you can type it out in japanese as すふぎおろてにぺけなも. it still does not mean anything.

right after susie referenced godzilla with the susiezilla line on the ferris wheel, she references ANOTHER tokusatsu. i think. here (while about to fall on ralsei) she says “ore, sanjou!!!!” (i arrive!), which is a famous catchphrase from kamen rider den-o. i’m like 85% sure it was an intentional reference. den-o is one of my favorite rider shows so this is amazing to me

and lastly. the name of minecrap is changed to マインクシャット (mainkushatto), which seems to be a play on some word plus “minecraft” like in english. i’m not sure what the wordplay is. i’ll get back to you on this

lore-y important stuff

about dess

in japanese, the december typing puzzle still spells out “december” in english.

noelle refers to dess as “onee-chan” (older sis)— it’s common for japanese people to refer to their older siblings like this, and it would be extremely weird if noelle called her “dess”. she could have called her “dess-neechan” or some variation of that, but i highly doubt that the name “dess” is being obscured, especially because “dess” transliterated would sound extremely close, if not alike to “desu” as well as the transliteration of “death”.

the knight

(i took the screenshot and forgot to turn auto captions off, sorry)

this line from a swatchling says something like “it captures the moment where the ‘knight’ creates a ‘fountain’ themself, with their own hands”, but the word for “themself” (みずから/mizukara) is written in hiragana, and “mizukara” could also technically be read as “from water”. was this a deliberate water-darkness parallel? i have no idea.

speaking of water!

the roaring knight is referred to as “咆哮の騎士” (houkou no kishi), the knight of the roaring. the word for the roaring itself, 咆哮, means roar or scream. which eliminates the alternate meaning of roaring (also being possibly defined as the sound of rushing water), but that probably doesn’t solidify “roaring” as solely meaning that. there are a lot of terms in undertale that had multiple meanings, but had to be changed to have only one in the japanese localization. “roaring” might be similar to those instances.

angel

spamton calls noelle an angel just like in english, referring to her as “angel-chan”. if there’s somehow anyone out there that didn’t think that line was important, i am here to prove you wrong!!!

more interesting:

this is the line where noelle says that if this was a dream, she would grow wings and fly away— but in this version, she says “big angel wings” specifically. very interesting!

the two (2) other notable changes in weird route

the infamous “you whispered noelle’s name…” line is slightly different. slightly.

the “kris called for help” lines still say that kris is the one doing it, but this one does not say the subject at all. this is normal for japanese, regardless, it’s still very interesting that it doesn’t say “you”. it is still differentiated from the “kris” lines, but not specifically referring to you (the player).

the other difference is so minor that i’m not even sure what it is or if it’s different from the english version.

translation

EVEN IF YOU [Shout] AT THE [Receiver]

YOUR [Voice] WILL EVENTUALLY WITHER

YOUR [Voice]

THEIR [Voice]

AND YOU WILL realize you’re alone.

i do not know who “THEY” is that spamton’s referring to. the term he uses is gender-neutral and singular. is he talking about the player? idfk probably not

miscellaneous spamton-related stuff

spamton’s speech patterns are entirely different in the japanese translation, but they get the same message across. they include:

switching between formal and informal language

using weird mixtures of hiragana, katakana, english letters and kanji

using katakana re (レ) instead of hiragana shi (し)

cutting off words

random spacing

and occasionally using “die” and “death” as homophones for “dai” and “desu”

it’s so wacky and unnerving and strange, i love it :D

other spamton lore bits:

mike’s name is the same (マイク maiku). i somehow forgot to translate the mike-related dialogue. i will get back to you all if there’s anything of note.

the word for “garbage noise” is 雑音, with about the same meaning. unsurprisingly, the same word (the exact same phrase, in fact) is used for both the addison’s line and the gaster phone call line.

the last thing (i think)

in the roaring cutscene, the japanese word for “chaos” is said (in the “all will be plunged into chaos” line), but then says the transliterated version of the word (カオス) in parentheses. tsuwahasu noted that it’s “keyword-like” in the playthrough i watched. is this important? i have no idea

i’m sure there are things that i missed here, so (again) if you want to know about something, don’t be afraid to ask!! the jp version of deltarune should be looked at a lot more—not just for the lesser-known lore tidbits, but also for the cool stuff that was changed to fit the language. it’s a really cool localization!

“He’ll wake up, he always does.” - Snape has an unfortunate habit of passing out after arriving home from a DE meeting and ensuring Potter was safe.

The cruciatus curse doesn’t leave physical marks. A mouth filled with blood from biting his tongue was always a tell tale sign to Harry that Snape was gonna be on the floor for awhile and would have shaky hands for a few days to come.

-holds out my mug to collect tears-

The phrase that Judas said after Jesus's death. A little comic experiment for me!

Do you think that Zak was under the impression that Valant would adopt Trucy? That that was the plan all along? Because despite everything they’ve been through, despite the allegations, despite the framing, despite the competition, in spite of all of it— Valant really did love Thalassa, so he must love her only daughter? He must love Trucy enough to not throw her to the wolves, to take her in when Zak disappears?

And then he doesn’t. She’s all alone now because Zak chose to trust him one last time