The Twilight Realms

 Time for another pointless trivia about Final Fantasy VII , where I focus on translation issues and oddities that caused misunderstandings about the game and certain plot points, as well as just anything else interesting. There's a point in the Temple of the Ancients where Cloud and Aerith have a very weird exchange, where Aerith reads out the words "Black Materia" one letter at a time, Cloud says "Black Materia!" and Aerith replies "Hey! ...Black Materia." The reason for this surreal dialogue is that it's an attempt by the localisers at translating a kind of joke that only really works in Japanese. Written Japanese doesn't use spaces, so it can sometimes be ambiguous as to where one word ends and the next begins. What happened was that Aerith read the phrase correctly, but inserted the space in the wrong place, so instead of "Kuro Materia" (Black Materia), she came up with "Kuroma Teria" (black-magic terrier). Cloud then c...

 Time for some more pointless trivia about Ace Attorney to celebrate the release of the  Ace Attorney Investigations Collection . Edgeworth never said "You are not a clown. You are the entire circus." at any point in the series. The quote came from an unrelated tweet, which someone edited onto a screencap of Edgeworth because they thought it sounded like something he would say. It doesn't help that one case in the second game does revolve around a circus, and one of the witnesses is indeed a clown, but Edgeworth isn't the prosecutor in that case, Franziska von Karma is. One phrase people often associate with the series is "You're lying, goddammit, and I can prove it!" when in fact this phrase is only ever said once, in the second game, and it's just "dammit", not "goddammit". The line became a meme after appearing in the trailer for the first game, but never appearing in the actual game. It was included in the second game as a no...

 A guide to inclusive LGBTQ+ vocabulary for all the corporations out there during Pride Month. "Is", not "identifies as". For example, "is transgender" or "is asexual", not "identifies as transgender" or "identifies as asexual". The same applies when speaking about a transgender person's gender identity - a trans woman is a woman, she does not "identify as" a woman. "LGBTQIA+" is preferred over "LGBT". The letters stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Aromantic. The A does not stand for Ally. "Transgender" (or trans), not "transgendered" or "transsexual". And not "trans*", either. "Ladies, gentlemen and others" is preferred to simply "Ladies and gentlemen". Include non-binary people. ALL pronouns are valid and should be respected. This includes they/them and neopronouns such as xe/xyr and...

Thought I’d list and clear up some misconceptions about the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Sonic's speed does not come from his shoes. The English manual for the first game does say that Sonic's shoes make him go faster (a fact which was not mentioned at all in the Japanese manual), but this is most likely referring to the High Speed power-up (known as Power Sneakers in English), which makes Sonic temporarily go even faster than normal. Notably, Sonic wears different shoes in Sonic Adventure 2 (as part of a sponsorship deal by SEGA with Soap grinding shoes, hence why Sonic gained the ability to grind on rails in that game) and he's still just as fast as usual. Sonic's speed is just an innate ability he has, not tied to his shoes. And by the way, they're not even shoes. Naoto Ohshima, the designer of Sonic, confirmed on Twitter that Sonic actually wears boots, and the white part that was assumed to be his socks is actually just the top of the boot. No, Shadow the Hedge...

 This is kind of me resurrecting a really old post from my DeviantArt journal (don't go looking for it). Who remembers StarCraft ? Probably a lot of people. One of my favourite parts of it was the cheat codes. Basically, if you typed certain phrases into the in-game chat, it would unlock things or change things for you. So I'm going to list them for you now, as well as explain some of the references behind them. Note: All these phrases must be typed in lowercase, with no punctuation or anything else in the line, in order for the cheat to activate. power overwhelming - Makes your units invincible Reference: "Power overwhelming" is one of the lines used by the Archon unit in the game, which became something of a meme. the gathering - Makes abilities not consume any energy Reference: To the card game Magic: The Gathering  (because it gives you infinite "magic"). game over man - Causes you to instantly lose. Reference: To Hudson's line "Game over, man! ...

 Hey how about some pointless trivia about Pokémon ? Yes, again. Shh. The actual phrase used in the games for when a wild Pokémon encounter starts is "A wild [Pokémon name] appeared !" (emphasis mine), or simply "Wild [Pokémon name] appeared!" in the Gen 1 games. On the internet, it's often misquoted in jokes and memes as "A wild X appears" or "A wild X has appeared". With the exception of "It's super effective!" and "It's not very effective...", battle messages in the series have always been written in past tense (so it would say "Pikachu used Thundershock!" rather than "Pikachu uses Thundershock!", or in the early games it would be written as "PIKACHU used THUNDERSHOCK!"). Similarly, jokes and memes often misuse the phrases "It's super effective!" and "It's not very effective..." In the games, these messages indicate when a move does more or less damage th...