Every time I read it I think about snakes going hissss, so I kind of want to call them -san.
This sentence is also giving me trouble! Full quote for posterity:「君に似るなら優等生なんて糞食らえだよ」
According to goo.jisho, aside from meaning “eat shit”:
そのものの価値を認めず、強く否定する意でも用いられる。「こんな規則は—だ」
Used to strongly deny/negate the value of a thing. “This kind of rule is -----”
So the 優等生なんてand だ makes it seem like he’s saying that being an honor student is nonsense. Only… I can’t understand why he says it or what it means in context He’s insulting in a roundabout way I think, but the how is just not clicking.
My understanding: -san starts by saying that K-dog students are trouble, just like their master. (師によく似て不遜な生徒達だ)
So K-dog says “so if it was you they looked like, they would be honor students? nonsense!” (or Eat shit ). Basically なんて stops the sentence, like a よ, and 糞食らえだよ is the next sentence.
Ooooh, yes I see it now. I was stuck on thinking なら separated the sentence and that 糞食らえだ was only modifying 優等生なんて. Modifying the whole thing 君に似るなら優等生なんて makes much more sense! Thank you!
I really thought we were going to find a tattoo on Koko’s hands and that was going to be the big reveal of what the brim hats have done to her. Instead just ink staining and ペンだこ (callus on one’s middle finger from writing - Japanese seems to have a word for everything!).
The bottle of ink that stays full is interesting. The end seemed to imply the brim hat wizard may be refilling it somehow from his own blood? I’m sure more will be revealed.
K-dog spared Koko a memory wipe in chapter 1, but the magic police are still after the culprit. They have no evidence but maybe they can get her to confess…
Me too for the tattoo! I also suspect that the blood on her hands wasn’t from injuries but from the ink, which is revealed to be from the pointy-wizards hat! Which is why it had no special effect when she drew with the tools from -san
Coko mentioned that she expected the level to be lower because of the amount of ink she used during the dragon sequence (presumably while she was practicing while the others were working on the big spell as shown in that cooking chapter I believe) so it’s possible that the brim hat just filled her ink bottle when she was out of consciousness and that’s the “gift” he was hinting at.
But then if that’s what’s caused her magic to be so powerful, wouldn’t she have noticed while she practiced at the Atelier in the interval? Or maybe this bottle is only used “in the field” and the have other ink sources are home…
My interpretation was more along the lines of “well then if it were you training them they’d end up being stuck up teacher’s pets so eat shit” and then Allergio said “ow snap” in the background.
The more I think about it, the more unsure I get. At first, I thought it was two abbreviated sentences, like you sometimes get when listing things in textbooks with bullet points, and the first one was about the tip, with metal and rock being possible materials. But then again, is Allergio writing on a rock in the panel next to it? That would mean rock has to belong to the list of materials you can write on listed in the second part.
I considered that and I think it’s the most plausible expansion, after all we can do that in English too to make a sentence sound a little less dull (“w and x, y and z”) but I would have expected a comma then.
That being said Japanese punctuation seems a lot “looser” than ours so maybe I shouldn’t expect consistency.
Yeah, I’ve definitely read somewhere that punctuation is not taught like grammar the way it is in English, and that in grade school kids are told that they should be able to write their compositions without punctuation at all (other than the period I guess?). Wish I could remember my source tho.
-san.
He’s insulting 
). Basically なんて stops the sentence, like a よ, and 糞食らえだよ is the next sentence.
