flo_nelja: A Dragon in the Family

[flemmings]

So here's a translation of flo_nelja's 100 Demons fic, kindly once-overed by her so I didn't reveal more of my woeful ignorance of French than is necessary, and dedicated to xsmoonshine for the many many hours she spent uploading the 100 Demons TV shows for our viewing pleasure.

A Dragon in the Family

And now of course I have a certain conflation in my mind between the peck on the cheek in this story and the slurp on the cheek in episode 7 there, and, well. Not canon. Not canon. Not not not canon oh hell what did canon ever do for *me*? (goes off to plan truly yaoirrific fic.)

Certain people here will be sad to learn that I went for a walk yesterday, and as I was walking story ideas came to me as they tend to when I'm in motion, and at one point I roused myself from my reverie to say, 'Am I really plotting a Kai x Ritsu story my heavens I do believe I am' and went on doing it in my reverie fashion until I got home and lay down for a bit to rest and then fell asleep, because I'd taken muscle relaxants earlier. And of course, like dreams, I remember nothing of the plot bunny beyond the fact that it existed. Alas.

Comments

[incandescens]

Thank you for translating that!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Not that you were in any need of a translation, of course. ^^;

[incandescens]

Yes, but you of all people know that translations are individual to the translator; I may be able to translate it myself, but I also get something new from reading your translation. :)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

In fact they're individual to the translation. I have half a dozen differing versions of several sentences there and am still not convinced that the choices I made are the best ones. Obviously the closer a language is to your own one the harder it becomes to translate, not easier.

[incandescens]

Or the better one _can_ translate, the harder it becomes to translate in a way that one sees as the right translation. It's the perspective that shifts.

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

Oooh, thank you! Very different experience from tooling around with Babblephish. ^__^

*is excited by the possibility of truly yaoirrific fic*

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Oh thank you for translating...it's lovely! ^__^ Regards to both author and translater.

Very lovely indeed. ^__^

[kickinpants.livejournal.com]

Another walk might revive that dream. :) Or possibly spool out another. Even unused but forgotten good ideas tend to imprint themselves on later used good ideas.

I'm a big fan of walk-plotting. Sometimes I will even walk past my house, I don't want to stop.

(You can always jot a note down when you get home as well.) ^_-

[flo-nelja.livejournal.com]

What happens in this episode 7 ? :-)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ep 7 is based on a story in vol 10, but the beginning is totally the scriptwriters' own idea. Aoarashi (waving two large phallic daikon radishes about, for no reason I can see) says he's going off on a trip to Mt Fuji to eat youkai and get some of his strength back before coming home to eat Ritsu. The TV series runs on the idea that Kagyuu put Ritsu under Aoarashi's protection only till he was 18, and then Aoarashi could eat him. Aoarashi has every intention of doing that: "You've inherited Kagyuu's blood stronger and thicker than anyone else. If I eat you I'll get all my strength back and become a youkai that can do whatever he wants." He tells Ritsu not to let anything dangerous come near him while Aoarashi's away (because it might eat Ritsu before A. can), puts his arm around Ritsu's shoulders and licks his cheek with a loud sluurp. The Japanese are always happy to give fangirls subtext to work with.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I can always jot a note down if I remember to do it. But walk-plotting is like falling asleep-plotting: I see it with a different part of the brain and it's not always an idea or connection that can survive the light of day.

In fact with the falling asleep version I've sometimes opened my eyes to try and fix the idea with my waking mind, and even that's enough to make the essence of the idea disappear. Walking- when I'm not drugged- at least gives me half a chance of transferring the information to the proper hemisphere.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

even that's enough to make the essence of the idea disappear

Isn't that the truth! It's why I adore 'sleeping in' when the house is quiet. It's not really sleeping, per se.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

And why I'm so annoyed I can't do it any more. These days, when I wake up I'm awake. A nuisance.

[incandescens]

Totally off the wall note: while checking up on the author of this and reading more of her stuff (she writes very nice Bleach), I find she's also written fanfic based on the French RPG In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas. This is significant to me because it was the American version of this game (In Nomine, severely toned down) that got me into rpg-freelance-writing. And it's a fun game anyhow: I own most of the French run of the game as well.

As people have been known to say, very incestuous. But such fun.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(sings) It's a small world aaaafter all.

Severely toned down...?

[incandescens]

The French original had a very vicious vein of black humour and frequently went into somewhat sacrilegious territory. I'm not just talking angels with faults fighting demons who weren't entirely bad, I'm talking hippy Jesus with a drug habit running a bar, and other darker stuff. One of the basic concepts that drove the game, as far as I could see, is that most of the people at the top of both Heaven and Hell were as ruthless as each other.

(And the Demon Prince Baal wore Mickey Mouse ties.)

The American rewrite was a lot more traditionally heroic and was more about issues of choice and fate and destiny, and the angels tended to be the good guys, and the demons the bad guys. It was a perfectly good RPG (says she who wrote several bits for it and ran a long campaign for it) but it didn't have the same edge.