ファシストになるより豚のほうがましさ

OP is a Mauritanian student based in Beijing, and she joined the first Across Latitudes cultural exchange festival at China University of Geosciences. Cnetizens say she rocked both her traditional Mauritanian attire and Chinese hanfu. (cr 艾米 Amy)

1 [シノン] これはこれは… 2 すっかり一人前の兵士きどりか？ 3 貧相なおまえは、 4 頭を使うのが仕事なんだから… 5 前線なんかにゃ出てこねえで 6 アイクの後ろに隠れてろよ。 7 なぁ、セネリオ。

1 [shinon] well, well, well... 2 look who's playing tin soldiers. 3 mangy little bastard, 4 what do they still keep you for? your brains? 5-6 just run back along to ike now, 7 alright, soren?

8 [セネリオ] …あなたは知性の欠片も 9 ないような人でしたが…… 10 弓の腕だけは一流だった。 11 それは認めます。 12 ですが…今の僕の実力も…… 13 あなたが知る程度のものだと、 14 思わないほうが身のためですよ？

8-9 [soren] ...you always were dumb as rocks. 10 and a first-rate archer once, 11 i admit it... 13-14 but that ego of yours is going to get you into trouble. 12 do you really think i haven't changed at all?

15 [シノン] へっ……相変わらず 16 かわいげのねえガキだぜ！

15 [shinon] not a chance. you're still 16 just an uppity little freak!

notes:

3 「貧相」 - this word literally means "scrawny" or "sparse", but i chose to translate it as "mangy" for the very-easy-to-reach analogue in english of mangy dog (or other animal). due to, you know...soren.

10 「だった」 - soren does in fact say shinon "was/used to be" a first-rate archer. i emphasized this more in english by adding "once", since i think it's really funny looking at shinon's stats after this chapter (if you recruit him) and seeing how absolutely garbage they are.

12-13 「ですが…ものだと」 - i took total artistic liberty here (including flipping the lines around). he says something much closer to the NOA version, which is "but my true power now / is not what you think it is".

14 「身のためですよ？」 - i'm obsessed with how mean this is. for one thing, soren literally says "it's for your own good", which is always so wonderfully condescending. for another, the tone of it: soren actually uses this flavor of sentence quite frequently, which combines the neutral-polite verb form, the "for your information" particle, and the bitchiest tone of voice he can muster. he might as well be batting his eyelashes and saying "assuming only makes an ass out of you and me". honestly he's my hero.

15 「相変わらず」 - shinon says "as always/predicted/expected", which i've translated from the other direction as "not a chance [that it's anything different]" in order to answer soren's question better.

16 「かわいげのねえガキ」 - this means something like "an unlikeable shitty little kid", which is obviously exactly what shinon means, but it's not very snappy in english. for unlikeable, i went with "uppity", which i think is a good intersection of matching shinon's speech style, incriminating his character, and actually describing soren. and for shitty little kid, i went with "freak" to match the tenor of "mangy" in line 3.

Time to start a new book! I've had this dinosaur book for a while so it's time I read it!

There's 173 pages so I can finish this in a year by only reading half a page a day! I'll try to go for two pages minimum but it's good to have some wiggle room.

Rather than go by learning a certain amount of words in a day I'm gonna go by page count so I don't burn myself out.

きっかけ chance; start

(りょうねいしょう) 遼寧省Liaoning Province (China)​

ミクロラプトル microraptor

(うもう) 羽毛 feather; plumage

(きょうつうてん) 共通点 common feature​

(きちょう) 貴重precious; valuable​

中国の遼寧省西部 で 見つかた [ミクロラプトルーぐい] という恐竜 の 化石 です。 この 恐竜 の 化石 には、 前あしだけでなく 後ろ あし にも 羽毛 の あと が 残っています。[ミクロラプトルーぐい] は, 現在知られている 恐竜 の 中 でも 鳥 と の 共通点 が 多く、恐竜 から 鳥 へ の 進化 を 考える 上で、とても 貴重な 化石です。

All words are from this Wikipedia page! 羽ばたく[はばたく] - to flap (wings); to spread one's wings, to go out into the world 分布 [ぶんぷ] - distribution 獲物 [えもの] - prey, catch, kill, game 接近 [せっきん] - getting closer, drawing nearer, approaching 視力 [しりょく] - eyesight, vision, visual acuity 感度 [かんど] - sensitivity (e.g. of a measuring instrument), reception (radio, TV, etc.) 頭部 [とうぶ] - head 網膜 [もうまく] - retina 色覚 [しきかく] - sense of colour 細胞 [さいぼう] - cell 暗所 [あんしょ] - dark place, unlit spot, darkness 立体的 [りったいてき] - three-dimensional 眼球 [がんきゅう] - eye-ball 周囲 [しゅうい] - surroundings, environs 頸部 [けいぶ] - neck 補う [おぎなう] - to supplement, to make up for, to compensate for, to cover (a shortage, loss, etc.), to fill (e.g. a vacancy) 異なる [ことなる] - to differ, to be different, to disagree, to vary, to diverge 聴覚 [ちょうかく] - (sense of) hearing, auditory perception 生態 [せいたい] - ecology; life and habits (of an animal) 生息 [せいそく] - inhabiting, living 生息地 [せいそくち] - habitat, home (e.g. of the tiger) 主に [おもに] - mainly, primarily, mostly, largely, chiefly 夜行性 [やこうせい] - nocturnality, nocturnal habits

食性 [しょくせい] - feeding habit (e.g. of an animal), feeding habitat 消化 [しょうか] - digestion ペリット - pellet, bird pelle, undigested food regurgitated by a bird​ 繁殖 [はんしょく] - breeding, propagation, reproduction, multiplication, increase 形態 [けいたい] - form, shape, figure 卵生 [らんせい] - oviparity, produced from eggs

樹洞 [じゅどう] - tree hollow, hollow in a tree 古巣 [ふるす] - old nest 抱卵 [ほうらん] - incubation 破壊 [はかい] - destruction, disruption

伴う [ともなう] - to accompany, to go hand in hand with, to be consequent upon​

Fill in the ______:

「今度の試験いつか知っている？」 「______来月の10日だったと思うけれど…。」

あ）確かに い）確か

* I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

*The King in Yellow

* The Lottery

* The Masque of the Red Death

* The Monkey’s Paw

* The Most Dangerous Game

* The Nameless City

* The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

* There Will Come Soft Rains

*The Yellow Wallpaper

* The Veldt

* “you think those were fucked up? What about [X]!”

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers*

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson**

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard O'Connell

The Nameless City by HP Lovecraft

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

Honorable Mention from the comments/reblogs:

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury

*note: this is actually a collection of short stories and clocks in at about 72k words

"No I'm a good person" why? Because you've gotten lucky and not seen propaganda yet that perfectly hit your buttons? Because you had people to correct you when you fucked up? Idk man I don't think we're all so different from the bad people. We're all just people.

Reminding ourselves of our shared humanity with terrible people does NOT serve to justify their actions. It serves to remind us that the seeds of what happened to them could get into us as well, or might already have. It reminds us to be vigilant and interrogate the hatred inside us.

If you convince yourself that you're just an Inherently Good Person who would never believe hateful things well. Now any little hateful thing that makes its way inside you undetected is never going to be interrogated. It will be left to grow undisturbed.

I also happen to specialise in gambling addiction (although I'm not practicing in that area right now), and all I could fucking think about was how these fucking apps were conditioning me in the same fucking way gambling apps do. To be constantly plugged in, consuming. To not even think about just picking it up and having a look. To feel bored when I wasn't watching them, to think about watching them when I wasn't watching them....

That shit is fucking evil.

I deleted it. I'm not exposing myself to that.

That shit will fry your dopamine/reward system so fucking bad you will never read a book or watching a movie again without it.

Love yourself and your potential enough to put that fucking shit away. Watch longer form things that require focus and engagement. Listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Read books. DO ANYTHING BUT CONSUME SHORT FORM CONTENT IN AN UNSTRUCTURED WAY.

If you MUST consume it (I'm sure people will be like 'but my classmates' or 'but my own channel'.... etc), do it in a siloed and structured way. 30 minutes between x time and x time on x day. Focus on it. Don't eat and do it. Watch each short form video to completion. Engage critically with the content. ANd never watch them first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

Dinnae - do not/don’t

Didnae - did not/didn’t

Disnae - does not/doesn’t

“I dinnae want to do that” means “I don’t want to do that.”

“They didnae find the loot” means “they didn’t find the loot”

“He disnae ken what he’s talking about” means “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

What I’ve noticed is that there is a tendency for non-Scots writers to always use “dinnae” regardless of context. I’m assuming that’s because it’s a quick shorthand to show the character is Scottish for the audience which is pretty much… you know. How media works.

Unfortunately, every time I hit a sentence like “he dinnae want it”, my brain goes ERROR ERROR ABORT OUT OF CHEESE.

吃錢〔钱〕