The Twilight Realms

Osu! I'm kind of remaking a post from my deviantART journal I made years ago here, letting my inner Grammar Nazi out (although when is it not out?) to dedicate a journal post to some common grammar mistakes. Hopefully you'll find it educational and informative (as opposed to the more likely reactions of "pretentious" and "nerdy"). So let's get started! First, one that trips up even the most literate of English speakers - affect vs. effect. The two words are pronounced almost identically (unless you stress the pronunciation, of course), so they naturally get confused. To sum it up: Affect is a verb, and effect is a noun. There ARE, however, obscure meanings of "affect" as a noun (one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is a "blunt affect", for instance) and "effect" as a verb (meaning "to bring about", e.g. "The smoking ban effected a change in the nature of pubs across the country), but these are very rarely ...

Attention, peoples of the WMM and elsewhere, I have an important message to give to you. As you may or may not be aware, irc.bondage.com - where #warpmymind, #hypnoSeduction and various other awesome places originated - is (however slowly) dying. We moved to Cuff-Link (formerly known as Zerogummi) when this was first announced, but now it seems THAT server is having problems too. Which brings me to my point: #warpmymind AND #hypnoSeduction CAN NOW BE FOUND ON irc.justtrance.us. Got that? The room names are all the same (except for #warpmymind - the room still exists, but the actual WMM room is called #Trance on that server. Confusing, I know. Just join #Trance and you'll be fine). Spread the word! Love and peace!

I know I kind of already made a blog post about this, but I just love translation errors, especially in video games. I find them hilarious and fascinating sometimes. So, I'm gonna list a few more of them here for no one to read. In the indie game Cave Story, a password given late in the game is rendered in the initial translation by Aeon Genesis as Litagano Motscoud. This was supposed to be the game's name backwards - Ritaganomo Tsukūdo (as it would be written in katakana), when the kana are reversed, spells Dōkutsu Monogatari, the Japanese name for the game (which literally translates as "Cave Story"). When Nicalis translated the game for its WiiWare port, they caught this mistake and translated the password as "Yrots Evac", which is "Cave Story" spelt backwards. The iconic item "Kuribo's Shoe" in Super Mario Bros. 3 has a name that seems just like a generic item name unless you know that "Kuribo" is the Japanese name f...

I just made this on a whim and think it turned out pretty well. http://youtubedoubler.com/cqUX For best results, mute and fullscreen the video on the right. It's not a PERFECT synch, but some things do end up synching up quite well (for instance, the spotlight coming on on the "streetlight" lyric). In all, I think it's pretty entertaining. What do you guys think? Love and peace!

More random trivia that no one will read. This time, I'm focussing on the Final Fantasy series. The series' title comes from a reflection of Sakaguchi Hironobu's feelings at the time. Back then, his company (then known as Square Company, Limited or simply Square) was on the verge of bankruptcy, and if the company went under as was predicted, Hironobu would have to go back to college and repeat a year of study, where he would be surrounded by strangers. Before the company died, he decided that he would make one final game, and that it would be a fantasy game, so naturally, he titled it "Final Fantasy". Cloud Strife, protagonist of Final Fantasy VII, is known for his iconic spiky blond hair (among other things), but initial designs were quite the opposite. Early designs of Cloud depicted him with slicked-back black hair, in contrast with main villain Sephiroth, whose hair was white/silver and free-flowing. This hair design was later used for the design of Zack F...