Welcome to the Jungle! 🐕 I have Far Too Many fandoms, it’s a grab-bag as to what I post. Follow at your own discretion~ Current Fixation: big ATLA/Zukka fixation rn 💥🪃
Sokka, Stating a Fact: My first girlfriend turned into The Moon. 🌕
Zuko, Drama King and Theatre Nerd: *thinks Sokka’s making a euphemism about his first girlfriend coming out as a Lesbian* That’s rough, Buddy.
Neither of them catch the Misunderstanding until the Ember Island Players. And only Then does Zuko understand. He pulls Sokka off to the side and explains why he had “brushed off” Sokka’s earlier attempt at being vulnerable. And offers to listen while Sokka explains the entire situation. Whenever Sokka is feeling particularly lonely and upset and missing Yue, he goes to Zuko, who lets him wax poetic about Yue and Moonlight without interrupting. Then he just starts going to Zuko whenever he feels Lonely, period. Pretty soon, Sokka’s (internal) poetic waxing shifts from Moonlight to Sunlight. He still loves the Moon, but sometimes it feels really nice to simply bask in Sunlight too.
….It takes a little while longer for him to make the Zuko-Sun connection.
Grace explaining sheepishly to Eridian linguists that the reason he uses different pronouns for Rocky than for the rest of the population is that he reflexively defaulted to assigning Rocky the same grammatical and social gender that he himself uses, in a way that has historical precedent but in modern English is considered somewhat chauvinistic and backward, and he's not proud of it but also the habit is pretty deeply ingrained now and unless Rocky objects it's probably easier to just keep on as he has been...
and immediately being informed lol. lmao. do not even worry about it. you have no idea what kind of buck wild grammatical constructs Rocky has invented for you. everyone else addresses you as foreigner/scholar. they're somehow managing to refer to you as their sibling, ward, and semidivine culture hero at the same time every time they talk about you.
Every single person I know who did football in high school, without exception, has a chronic injury. Many regret what it's done to their knees and back, even major organs like the brain.
There is no serious legislative push to ban high school football.
Also, like, if you want to talk about social pressure on minors to undertake activities that will result in regrettable, irreversible damage to their bodies:
No one, *ever*, tried to persuade me to transition.
My gym teacher tried to persuade me to try out for the football team almost every single day that I was in junior high.
#i firmly believe that the reason why concussions and brain damage in general#are not taken nearly as seriously as they should be#is because of football#if we take concussions and brain trauma seriously then we have to acknowledge the risks that children are undertaking at even#high school level football#but we can't do that#because the kids need to play football in high school so they can play football in college so they can join the NFL#This time I'm really gonna queue it.
Not a single one of my wife's fingers is completely straight. If you look at them closely -- which I have, many times, over the past 22 years -- you can see where they were broken, over and over, taped in place, and where she just kept fucking playing.
When I first met her, she used to joke about how her coach said, "I could get more than that out of a pig if I kicked it hard enough," and that was the nicest fucking thing he said. Two decades later, she's like, "Yeah, that man verbally and physically abused all of us for years."
There is at least one football game she played in high school that she simply doesn't remember, because she was a linebacker. She got a concussion. She got up and kept playing... or so she's told. She doesn't remember, because she had a fucking concussion and they let her keep playing.
I hate football so much. It ruined her back, her knees, fucked up her hands... everyone was so obsessed with how tall she was, how broad-shouldered. No one ever pushed her to transition, but I fucking wish someone had at least suggested it. That would have hurt her so much less than FUCKING FOOTBALL. Like, it would have been actually beneficial to her.
I heard that one of the actual reasons that organizations like the NFL have tried so hard to downplay CTE and other injuries like it is because they’re terrified that moms will refuse to let their children play football anymore and that entire massive industry will come collapsing down because of it.
In High School a classmate of mine snapped his femur in one of the early games of the year. I can’t remember if it was Fresh or Soph year (it’s been more than a decade since graduation) but I Do remember that they let him keep an “Honorary” spot on the team despite not being able to play at all. He wasn’t allowed to play Any sports again until our Senior year, but he pushed himself HARD to be able to achieve that. I often wander how bad his leg must ache now. It takes A Lot of force to snap a leg-bone, Especially the femur. I understand wanting kids to feel camaraderie and working as a team, but sports is Not the only way to achieve that.
In retrospect, it's hilarious that Stratt made everybody on the vat speak English in deference to Grace being monolingual
Because with how quickly Grace was able to pick up Eridian, even with literally NOTHING about it being familiar the way a human language would be, they probably could have chosen Mandarin as the universal language on Stratt's Vat and he would have just. Learned it.
The live-TV interpreter who said "Sag mal, wie lange wollt ihr bei dem Scheiß bleiben?!" has made a statement. I admire him hugely for not apologizing for what he said, or even technically retracting it, at any point in this statement. Instead, he takes the opportunity to make a jab at Trump's inability to put a reasonable sentence together:
Jetzt reagiert auch Dolmetscher Frank Deja, der für den Fauxpas gesorgt hatte. "Ich war überzeugt, ich hätte mich stumm geschaltet. Ich habe aber im Eifer des Gefechts die falsche Taste gedrückt. Wir haben als Dolmetscher sogenannte Räusper-Tasten, mit denen wir uns stummschalten können. Dann geht das eben nicht über den Sender – und meine Aussage sollte natürlich auch nicht über den Sender gehen", erklärt er "n-tv".
Seinen Zwischenruf solle man nicht als politisches Statement deuten. "Nein, das wäre ganz verfehlt. Die politischen Inhalte sind nicht das Problem", meint Deja und fügt hinzu: "Ich dolmetsche ständig Leute, mit deren politischen Inhalten ich nicht einverstanden bin. Das Problem bei Trump war, dass er auf einmal anfing, frei zu assoziieren oder dreimal hintereinander dasselbe zu sagen. Diesen wirren Gedankensprüngen zu folgen, ist die Schwierigkeit beim Dolmetschen." Er erklärt: "Wenn ein Redner mit geordneten Gedanken redet, dann kann man, sobald der Satz angefangen hat, schon ungefähr erahnen, wie es weitergeht. Man kann auf dieser Welle weiter surfen. Aber bei Trump ist das unmöglich."
I didn't think I'd have the energy to make a translation, but what the heck, I guess I will.
Background for the non-Germans: a German professional interpreter was live-interpreting the TV broadcast of the Trump inauguration when he suddenly broke off in the middle of his interpreting and said loudly, "Tell me, how long do we have to watch this shit?!"
Of course they immediately cut his mic after that, but it was too late :D
Anyway here's my rough translation of the article excerpt above:
Interpreter Frank Deja, who committed this faux pas, has now made a statement. "I could have sworn I'd muted myself. However, in the heat of the moment, it appears I pressed the wrong button. We interpreters have what's known as a 'cough cut' button on the interpreter console, which we can use to briefly mute ourselves. Then, whatever we say next doesn't get broadcasted – and obviously that sentence wasn't supposed to be broadcasted," he explained to n-tv.
His exclamation is not intended to be understood as a political statement. "No, that's not it at all. The political content is not the problem," says Deja, adding, "I often interpret for people whose politics I don't agree with. The problem with Trump was that he suddenly started free-associating or saying the same thing three times in a row. Following these incoherent mental leaps is quite a challenge for an interpreter." He explains: "When a speaker presents their thoughts in an organized way, the interpreter can more or less guess where each new sentence is going as soon as it's begun. You can surf that wave. But with Trump, this is impossible."
Not to be rhe ten millionth person to say “USAmerican President Donald Trump Is An Incoherent Public Speaker Whose Train Of Thought Can Be Best Described As Scat Jazz” but I just remembered that when he talks at international events it is several dozen people’s job to translate what he’s saying and what he intends to say to world leaders in real time
If anyone reading this isn’t fluent enough in English to understand the sentences that man says, please know that he has essentially mixed a number of adjectives and topics together in a hat and is pulling them out at random like a horrible children’s game
Like that waxy jaundiced bitch will straight up be like “J'étais sur internet l'autre jour – internet, la plus grande invention américaine. Et la Chine a “internet aussi. Pas un bon internet, pas comme le mien, j'ai un internet formidable. Les gens me disent : « Donald, ton internet est génial ! » On adore l'internet de Donald. Mais la Chine… Chine, Chine, Chine… Vous savez qu'ils mangent des oiseaux ? C'est terrible. J'adore les oiseaux. La Chine mange des oiseaux. Pas comme nous. Pas comme mes oiseaux. Mais vous savez, c'est comme ça, et c'est terrible. Mais voilà ce que je vais faire : je vais sauver les oiseaux. Je vais sauver internet et sauver les oiseaux. Tous ces magnifiques oiseaux. Pour l'Amérique. Et la Chine va nous détester pour ça. Ils vont nous détester parce qu'on est les meilleurs sur oiseaux”. And people will lose their minds
International translators have had this problem for A While - if they *don't* clean up what he says to sound coherent, they look like they're doing a bad job.
Explore Trump translation challenges, tips for interpreters, and 2025 strategies for accurate political translation and Trumpslation success
There was a scandal in Poland because one translator decided to translate him accurately, tone, vocabulary level and word salad tangents and all. Polish conservatives who don't speak English and previously only heard smoothed out translations that sounded coherent and used big words were up in arms about how the translator was "inserting her political agenda", "mocking him", "exaggerating", "purposefully trying to make him look bad" and "incredibly unprofessional". I listened to the translation in question. It was literally just accurate.
5. Sensitive and Controversial Language
Trump’s speeches occasionally contain misogynistic, sexist, or inflammatory language. Japanese interpreter Tsuruta, for example, faced challenges when translating sexualized remarks, ultimately opting for standard terminology to maintain professionalism. Similarly, Chinese translator Kumiko Torikai found certain lewd expressions ethically challenging, ultimately leading to her retirement. Navigating these situations requires skillful balancing of accuracy, professionalism, and cultural sensitivity, ensuring that the translation is appropriate without distorting the original intent.
I don't know why the authors of PoliLingua act as if Trump's verbal misogyny and racism wasn't very much part of his "original intent".
it only now dawns on me that millions of people on this planet think Trump is way smarter than he is because translators have neglected to relate his violent speech accurately out of misunderstood politeness. Make the ape sound like a ape
We had a mini-scandal in the German translation/interpretation community last year about exactly this – the interpreter for the inauguration got sick of Trump's incoherence and made a remark into his mic that was not intended to be heard (here's my post on it).
as much as it tickles me to think of cas not aging at all and still looking like a semi-virginal mid 30s tax account in s15 i absolutely adore cas looking like a mid 40s columbo with eye bags that carry the weight of the world but still light up and crinkle at the corners when he looks at dean
Untitled snip, the end bit of a story idea I am unlikely to actually commit to fully because it would involve SO MANY moving pieces of political intrigue, but the base idea is this: omegaverse setting as flavor but not theme. Sokka, an omega, is snatched by a Fire Nation soldier during the Sea Raven's raid because watertribe brides are considered "exotic" and "taming" them a sporting challenge among Fire Nationals, and therefore valuable.
What then follows is Sokka attempting to survive being sold into servitude with other lower class workers, then singled out and "gifted" to the royal family, where he must navigate the increasingly hostile political maneuvering of the Fire Nation upper class while keeping himself alive, whole, and unbroken long enough to plan and execute his escape.
"They're not coming any closer," Kallik says. He shifts beside Bato, uneasy.
"No," Bato agrees.
"Think they really want to just talk?"
They both eye the flag requesting a parley. A flag the Fire Navy ship had struck the moment their own ship had come into view.
Bato snorts. "Sure. Ashmakers love to warm you up with their pretty words before they set you on fire."
"So what's their angle?"
"Could be a plague ship." While this ship was certainly not modern or pretty by any means, the boats they usually sent over loaded up with their unlucky dying tended to be a lot closer to derelict. Couldn't give the water barbarians anything potentially useful of course. But as he peeks again through his spyglass, Bato is pretty sure he sees movement on the deck.
"So, we're checking it out," Kallik says.
"Doesn't look like they'll leave until we make them."
"I'll signal the other boats."
****
A lowered ladder awaits them.
Bato hates how much this reeks of a trap.
"After you, Captain," Tâttuk sing-songs, and playfully shoves Bato's shoulder. His grin doesn't fully hide the nervous flicker of his eyes. Bato steels his resolve, and begins to scale the ladder.
Sure enough, there are Fire Nation soldiers waiting on the deck for them. They continue to wait, motionless and in perfect formation, none of them so much as making a sound until the rest of Bato's team has followed him onto the deck. It's unnerving. Then they bow, hands raised in what Bato assumes passes for some kind of salute. That's worse, somehow.
The front rank parts to reveal a portly old guy kneeling beside a low table and placing some kind of tiles into stacks.
He smiles at them, eyes crinkling. "Ah, I thank the kind warriors of the Southern watertribe for honoring this old man's request for an audience. Please! Sit. Have some tea."
There is in fact a teapot sitting at the corner of the table with a few tiny cups stacked beside it. Steam still wafts from the spout.
Fury hits Bato's nervous system like a punch. After all the pain, everything these marauding bastards had ripped away from them with no thought or remorse, now they wanted to play at civility? He grips the hilt of his sword as his blood reaches a boil, and he takes a threatening step forward. "The fuck kind of games are you murderers playing at here? You're all lucky we didn't just sink this rusty blight on the water when we spotted you."
"Bato?"
Bato freezes mid screed. That voice hadn't come from his men. It was soft, painfully small. Young.
"How did you—"
A small figure wiggles between the Fire Nation soldiers still standing in formation, squeezing past the protective line of bodies. They aren't wearing armor. Their coat is red like everything else on this spirits damned ship, but the conspicuous flame insignia is absent. As they approach Bato and his men, they push back their hood.
Bato sees a dead woman. His chest seizes.
He had helped bury what was left of Kya two years ago. He had buried her, and set a marker over the spot, and a second, smaller one beside it, and then had tried to hold the remains of his family and watched it shatter apart around the emptiness left behind.
Now her serious eyes confront him again. The same dubious line of her mouth frowns with uncertainty, and that caution-tempered-hope paints a painfully familiar crease between the specter's brows. But the face that wears them is both younger than he remembers and older than he has ever seen. It stares him down, terribly nervous, but he can't speak around the stone of grief suddenly lodged in his throat.
"Is that…" Kallik begins to ask.
"There's no way, it's some kind of trick," Tâttuk growls low, too quiet for anyone but Bato and his men to hear.
"But it looks just like—"
"Sokka," Bato wheezes.
The the boy— his boy, Hakoda and Kya's very alive and not dead boy— throws himself at Bato with a cry. Bato's arms are abruptly full of a shaking teen.
"Wonderful, you two know each other," the old man sitting at the table says. He starts setting out the tea cups. "This will be much easier."
****
The metal rings hollow under his boots as Sokka leads him up the stairs. Every instinct Bato has screams against leaving the safety of a quick retreat and plunging deeper into the heart of this ravening behemoth, especially now, with one of their own returned to him. He wants nothing more than to scoop Sokka into his arms, set this ship, and it's soldiers and the old fat general on a collision course with some icebergs, and sail back to Wolf Cove.
But Sokka won't leave.
Bato is not convinced there is anything his boy could say or show to him that will change his mind. He's willing to entertain not drowning these particular ashmakers since they did bring Sokka back to them, but the Fire Nation stole him away in the first place and killed his mother.
Spirits, the boy hadn't even known. The way Sokka's face shuttered and emptied of color when Bato told him… No, Bato isn't feeling inclined to do the Fire Nation any favors.
"Not for them," Sokka says, as if he's reading Bato's mind. Likely doesn't have to, Bato isn't exactly trying to hide the resentment no doubt radiating off of him. "I need your help. You, and dad, and. Everyone."
They reach the top of the stairs. The short hallway is lined with four hatches, heavy metal doors with wheel shaped latches that seal them closed against damp and draft. All stand ajar save one at the farthest end. Sokka humming beelines for it without stopping, so Bato follows on his heels.
Sokka knocks when he reaches the door, but he doesn't wait for a response before turning the wheel and opening it, offering a courtesy rather than making a request. The room beyond is one Bato would call the epitome of the Fire Nation's sense of style if he had ever seen their living quarters before; all red, and fire, and more red, and more fire. An obnoxiously large tapestry emblazoned with the nation's insignia takes up most of one wall. Against another, there's a squat shrine set below the visage of some kind of grotesque, draconic creature. But there's other touches too, evidence of more personality. A pair of oxtail sabers and a jian hang above the dragon head. A battered trunk sits on the floor with clothes haphazardly discarded around it. Scattered scrolls and books collect on nearly every flat surface. There's a large seashell weighing down a sheet of paper on which the inked strokes depicting a hillside are still drying. Its a picture of something intimately human.
The room also reeks of burn salve, and sweat, and infection.
Bato freezes in the doorway and watches Sokka cross the floor to the bed. He practically climbs into the bed to lean over and gently— so gently, his face and body tense with anxiety—shake the lump in the middle. The Lump that is actually a person stirs. Pale skin emerges ghostlike from the covers. The dark hair is tangled and matted with sweat. The only owlcat eye that Bato can see is half closed and almost certainly not focusing on anything properly from how shrunk down the pupil is. The other is covered in bandages. The entire half of his face is covered in bandages, and they circle down his throat, cross tight over one shoulder.
The boy is larger than Sokka, but not by much. If not the same age then very close. He's not old enough to have passed any rites of adulthood, much less to have seen open combat, but here he lies, carrying wounds Bato has only seen on veteran warriors. Sokka tucks himself around the fire child, with a slowness that speaks more of care than unfamiliarity, pets his hair and murmurs until the other boy drops back into something less restless, slumped boneless against his chest.
The tableau is far too familiar. Bato aches with his own memories of cradling their wounded and walking dead through their last hours. His people owe nothing to the Fire Nation, not even for this single moment of decency in bringing their lost child back. But their boy has suffered loss enough already.
"Our medicine is limited," he tells Sokka quietly, careful not to disturb the boys, "but we'll do what we can to help your friend."
"That's… Okay." Sokka nods. He tugs the blanket back up around the other boy's shoulders. "Thank you. That's not what I need help with, though."
"What is it then?"
"I need you to help me kill the man who did this." The steel in Sokka's voice is his mother's, too. He looks up then, pinning Bato in place with just how serene his expression is. Certain beyond doubt.
"I'm going to kill the Fire Lord."
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