Zelda: A [tenuous] Link to the Past

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Hate my life, hate my life, fucking village, fucking villagers, fucking village square, fucking castle, fucking king, I hate it, hate it, hate my life, fuck you mum, fuck you

‘Dad?’

I wake up, pixeled vision, and see the woodchopper packing his stuff and heading out to the castle.

‘Wait up, I wanna come too.’

‘Cannot.’

‘But I wanna.’

‘Back to bed. It’s not your story.’

‘The hell it isn’t,’ mumbles Link, getting back under the blanket long enough for the front and only door to close and his dad to get out of earshot.

Five seconds in all.

‘I’ve got your back, pa,’ Link shouts, throwing off the duvet and quickly putting on his Lincoln green costume. Before leaving, he grabs the wooden sword too, just in case dad’s staging a coup.

***

Outside the castle, it’s dark and thunderous and polystyrene like a star trek set. Luckily there are only four guards and they have no peripheral vision so, after slashing leaves off a few bushes, Link slips through a hole in the wall and into the castle. There’s no one about so he wanders around a bit until a street performer appears, throws some cheap smoke and warns Link that he will take over the whole kingdom unless three items are found and connected and, even then, it won’t be over cos he’s got the dark world concept up his sleeve.

‘Do what?’

‘You’ve got as long as you need though. No rush.’ Continue reading →

DS9 Redux: His Way

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NOTE: This one’s quite long, quite sleazy and turns most Trek characters into pervs. Don’t read if the idea of Odo having sex upsets you.

——

Vic Fontaine stands on the same set used for Federation sex parties, singing slowly to a tedious beat. The musicians in the background look tired, as if they’ve been playing since Season 1.

Dax, Worf, Bashir, O’Brien, Kira, Odo, Worf, Dax, Worf, Bashir, Odo, Kira, Worf, O’Brien and Worf stand at the bar watching him.

Worf checks his watch, grimaces then leans over to Jadzia. ‘When does it end?’

Dax puts a finger to her mouth.

‘It’s been an hour already…’

‘Worf…quiet.’

‘How can one man sing for so long?’

Vic seems to notice the Klingon turning against him, and the song ends. He walks over and lets Bashir introduce him to everyone.

‘This is Dax and Worf…’

‘Hey…how long have you guys been married?’

Dax and Worf look surprised. ‘How did you know we were married?’ asks Worf.

‘Easy, when you’ve been around as long as I have, you notice things.’

Vic notices the Chief staring at a pretty extra nearby. ‘Hey, buddy, don’t worry…’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s okay to touch, just don’t let the wife catch you.’

The Chief nods. ‘I’ve waited so long for someone to say that…you know, I’ve been poking the same woman for eight seasons now.’ Continue reading →

Jin Yong invades heritage museum in Hong Kong

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The martial arts fiction author known by every Chinese person across the world, Jin Yong, is in the Heritage Museum in Tai Wai right now, a museum that is about half an hour down the road from my flat.

If you don’t know this guy, it’s not surprising. Only a few of his novels have been translated into English, though I saw at the exhibition some Spanish + French extracts of his work, so maybe French and Spanish people know about him.

It’s weird, one of the translated novels I read [The Book and the Sword] lost about 750 pages in the move from Chinese to English, and the only reason I can get from anyone for this loss is that Jin Yong’s work is very dense in terms of history and kung fu methodology.

i.e. just like Chinese food in the UK, they tried to adapt it for the market they were translating into, instead of keeping the parts that made it unique in the first place and trusting that people would still be able to follow despite not knowing any of the names. Or trusting them to look those names up. Strange plan overall, as I would’ve thought most people bothering to chase down translations would be doing it to read something different, not something that’s been altered to try and cater for their own culture.

People in HK seem okay with this as they believe Western people would be lost when reading Jin Yong. I asked them if they’d ever seen a Robin Hood film. Or a film about Ancient Egypt. Or Throne of Blood. Did they feel lost watching them? Continue reading →

Cuban V // Tyson Bley

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I
At once separated land that’s a sweet yellow-
moonlight and mollusk’s arms sleep and
hang loose, like say what is wrong with
that, maybe… Hot air betrays one’s shirt at
the highest level since animal testing and
“it surprised”, whom_normally_at once you
want fine spazz as influx settles down –
huge amount of your brain on spiritually
rejected egg proves journey rigorous,
mistakenly.
II
He’d bought from this previous one, pushed
every sound into a horror-alley, this month out of
trade referring to a mall with calls of need; wholesale
no matter what awaits them, comes this disgusting
person across the wilderness rough day to girl at
the Daily Planet, then violence suspended turmoil
swamped smart cello mane, and cast online Bohr just
with hips not swivelable with smoke he plans to break
electric car’s baby brain FREE of burger made more
beautiful set to music!
III
Though he’s hella anti-constellation, therefore condensed
will never be shaped like RoboCop in style wanting –
old violence from seeing it on television – it is so popular e.g.
frenzied human, urban hologram’s grip on carcass recurring
had a dick repeatedly, veiny shits heavy aquamarine.
Getting CGI breakfast coldness in UFO have a slight
aversion… To say the problem of time is rounded history, well
in the coach jacket it is so good it hurts his dungeon craft
where wholesale prescription drugs do not, is slightly

inaccurate.

Future Monogatari

Image result for naruto episode 216

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Google translate ga yoku nata

It’s true, two years ago it couldn’t handle idioms, now it changes ‘raining cats and dogs’ to ‘heavy rain.’

It speaks too

in a train tannoy voice

but it’s better than nothing.

Okay, I typed too soon. Google translate is still weak. I just tried something more difficult, an idiomatic phrasal verb, and it did not go well.

‘The killer took him out’ became ‘the killer brought him [somewhere].’

A bit harsh as there’s not much context to that phrasal verb. The killer could’ve taken him out somewhere, it’s not impossible and, far as I know, google translate is the sum of its programmed database, not intuitive AI, so I gave it a bit more to work with:

‘The killer took him out with one bullet.’

Again, it translated as:

‘The killer, with one bullet, brought him [somewhere].’

It’s interesting, how would you programme common sense into an online translator that has no experience of our perceived reality? To google translate, it might be completely normal for killers to take people somewhere while carrying a bullet.

Maybe the only answer is AI?

That or the elimination of all idioms from every language?

The next problem: how to understand an episode of Naruto. I tried last week, Episode 216, but the first scene was insanely fast. Even when I slowed the speed down to half, it was difficult to pick anything up. Or you can pick it up, but you don’t know what it means. Do children really understand this? Continue reading →

The Expanse season 1 [Spoilers]

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Plot: a group of ice haulers from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter go from ship destruction to ship destruction, pinballing themselves into a conspiracy, possibly a web of it, to start an inter-planetary war.

War between?

Mars, Earth and the Belt, which are all probably representative of specific nations on Earth, not sure which ones.

I suppose Earth might be the US, Mars might be China/Asia and the Belters are the entire third world.

Or it might be real world politics simplified into three groups.

Though what does that make Russia?

The OPA [Outer Planetary Alliance]?

Characters:

Holden the unofficial ship captain [Does most of the talking, so much of it that other characters just start looking towards him whenever they need to make a decision]

Naomi the vice captain/possible former OPA operative. Has a British accent, but is not from the usual crop of rich kids e.g. Daisy Ridley, Keira Knightley, Felicity Jones.

Amos the muscular, pragmatic grunt. Not homophobic and at home in sleazy bars cos that’s where he grew up.

Alex the pilot, who flew for Mars and gets a costume out of it in episode 3.

Chrisjen the UN rep who will defend Earth and deliver lines badly at all costs.

Miller the working class cop who has only ever killed one person before episode 8, and about 23 people two episodes later. Continue reading →

Uesugi Kenshin vs Takeda Shingen

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Two of the most well-known samurai daimyo of Sengoku Era Japan [the historical period between 1477-1600 when everyone bullied peasants and stabbed each other in the back] were

Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo Province

And

Takeda Shingen of Kai.

If you’re a human being, as soon as you start reading about any two rivals then you’re probably gonna pick a side. In this case, both Kenshin and Shingen were strategic thinkers and decent warriors, though it’s debatable how often they actually had to fight in any battles, and their overall record against each other in direct battle was either a no score draw or a Kenshin victory, depending on the sources. I think some historians give the 4th battle of K River to Shingen due to the fact that he lost fewer men, but this omits the point that the men he did lose included most of his generals, whereas Kenshin only lost ashigaru and a few stray tourists.

Tourists?

Some locals would grab a good seat on a nearby hill and watch the battle, which could backfire fatally if one of the daimyo was a creative thinker and decided to shift the battle to that hill

or if one of the archers was drunk.

Kenshin or Shingen?

If it were a film about the two of them, I would side with Uesugi Kenshin for several reasons.

He trained to be a monk,

He didn’t want to be a leader

He gave salt to Shingen when no one else would

And

He was the god of battle.

Shingen, on the other hand, was a bit of a twat.

Didn’t he have a secret group of women ninja spies?

Allegedly, yes. They were led by Mochizuki Chiyome and would embed themselves in towns and castles that Shingen wanted to attack at some point, usually acting as shrine maidens, prostitutes or talent agents to get the info their boss needed. Continue reading →