The Twilight Realms

I'm letting my inner Grammar Nazi out again. Prepare yourselves. Also including definitions at no extra charge. 1. Don't get "etc." and "and so on" mixed up. "Etc." (short for "et cetera", Latin for "and the rest") is used to imply a continuing list of different items. For example, "They had all different kinds of fruits: apples, pears, peaches, plums, etc." This implies that there were other, different kinds of fruits there other than the ones that were already mentioned. "And so on", on the other hand, implies repetition; e.g. "The song 'Around the World' by Daft Punk has lyrics that go 'Around the world, around the world, around the world, around the world' and so on". This means that the lyrics repeat the phrase "around the world" over and over. And for the love of all deities, it's "etc.", not "and etc." "Et" means "and". ...

Again, I'm writing a guide, mainly for myself, but others can use it if they want. This is how to get an all-S Rank Chaos Chao in Sonic Adventure 2 (this probably works in Battle too and in the PS3/Xbox 360 HD remake). Why would you want to go through with all this? Well, for one, Chaos Chao never die. That means you can spend as long as you like raising all their stats to level 99, so they can completely dominate all the Chao Races and Chao Karate. And with S Rank in all the stats, that means they'll get the maximum amount of points per stat too. Note: You might not actually be able to get Stamina to S Rank, but that's okay. As long as you get the other four up, you should be good. So, first off, we need to get a Chao from the shop, and make sure it has at least an A in one stat. I have tested and found out that a Chao's stats are determined right from the word go - that is, if you buy a Chao from the Black Market, hatch it, then reset and hatch it again, it will...

Things that will piss off Sonic fans: Referring to rings as "coins". Calling Super Shadow "Hyper Shadow" (one gaming magazine erroneously captioned a picture of Super Shadow as Hyper Shadow, causing fans to insist that that was the correct term even though the same magazine later claimed it was a mistake). Pluralising "Chao" as "Chaos" ("Chao" is both singular and plural, like "sheep" or "Pokémon". Not to mention that "Chaos" looks like another word entirely). Saying that "Chao" is pronounced "kay-o" (it's pronounced "chow", like "chow down" or "Chow Yun Fat") Calling Tails "Tails the Fox" (His name is Miles "Tails" Prower, or Tails for short. He's one of the few characters that don't have a "Character the Species" name, the others being Amy Rose and Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, although Amy was origin...

Pointless trivia about America's favourite dysfunctional family, The Simpsons. Matt Groening (whose name is pronounced "gray-ning", not "groaning", by the way) originally planned to make an animated series out of his comic strip Life in Hell, but realised when sitting in the waiting room of the animation studio that he didn't want to sign the rights to his characters away, so he came up with the idea of The Simpsons on the spot. At first, the Simpsons shorts were commercial break padding on The Tracy Ullman Show, but soon it became a full-fledged series. The first season has a lot of episodes aired out of production order. The first episode ever made was "Some Enchanted Evening"; it even opens with a scene introducing and establishing each member of the Simpson family. Despite this, it was the thirteenth episode aired and the season finale when it was broadcast, due to animation problems (the animation in the episode is very crude, even by firs...

Inspired by Dave Gorman, I decided to make a list of common eggcorns, including those I've actually encountered other people using in my daily life. What's an eggcorn, you may ask? An eggcorn is what happens when someone hears a phrase without ever seeing it written down, so when it comes time for them to write it down, they write it how they think it sounds, which is often different to what it actually is. The word itself comes from someone writing "acorn" as "eggcorn" - somehow they got through their whole life without ever seeing the word "acorn" written down. I'm going to split these into three categories - ones that people really need to stop using, ones that I can forgive people for still using (but not after learning the truth here), and ones that I actually find pretty funny. Eggcorns You Really Need to Stop Using "Paper view" for "pay-per-view". My ex girlfriend used to say this all the time, and even when I...

Pointless trivia about the Persona games. Mostly Persona 3, since that's what I've been playing recently, but I'll touch on the other games too. The first game was initially translated as the heavily Americanised "Revelations: Persona" series. Most of the names were changed and all the Japanese cultural references were removed or replaced with American ones. Fortunately, Atlus realised the error of their ways and kept the subsequent games' translations as faithful to the original as possible, in many cases even leaving in the Japanese honouriffics untranslated in the dialogue. Future remakes of Megami Ibunroku Persona had more faithful translations, though the line "Mark danced crazy!" (Mark was called Masao in the Japanese version) was kept due to its popularity (similar to Square Enix keeping the line "You spoony bard!" in better-translated remakes of Final Fantasy IV). The changing of names actually made a certain plot point make no ...

More pointless trivia about the Mario games. I've probably said most of this stuff before, but no one reads this blog anyway so I'm sure no one will notice. Shigeru Miyamoto seems to go back and forth on whether or not Mario and Luigi have a last name. Currently, the answer is yes, and it's "Mario", which means their names ARE actually Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Which means the movie was right all along. The Super Mushrooms in the Mario games are modelled after a real life toadstool called amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric. These toadstools have hallucinogenic properties when consumed, causing people to feel like they're growing in size. The same concept was also used in the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is where Miyamoto got the inspiration from. While it's often believed and shown in parodies that Mario breaks blocks by hitting them with his head, this isn't actually the case. If you watch closely, when Mario jumps...

Nitpicks and headscratchers about Sonic the Hedgehog games. In Sonic R, why was Amy Rose in a car and the others on foot (with the exception of Eggman, who rides in his hovercraft)? Sure, she may not be as fast as Sonic, but neither are Tails and Knuckles, and they go on foot. How come Amy gets a car and they don't? The Sonic Advance games show that Amy is at least as fast as those two, so it doesn't really make sense for her to need a vehicle. How the heck can Eggman (or Robotnik, whatever) run faster than Sonic in the classic games? I get that from a gameplay perspective, it's to stop us skipping the final boss, but from a story perspective it makes no sense. Sonic being able to walk on the bottom of a body of water makes absolutely no sense. Even if Sonic can't swim, he still shouldn't be able to sink to the bottom like that unless he was INCREDIBLY dense. And if he is that dense then he shouldn't also be able to run across the surface of water, no matt...

How to apologise and (at least sound like you) mean it Apologising is a finer art than most people think, and it can be tricky to deliver an apology that doesn't sound subversive or insincere. Basic Instructions has done a few strips on this, but here's my take on how to deliver a genuine apology. First off, it helps a lot if you specify why you're apologising. Don't just say "I'm sorry", say "I'm sorry for..." It lets the other person (or people) know that you're actually putting thought into your apology. Don't apologise for how they felt, apologise for what you did. For instance, if you offend someone, don't say "I'm sorry you were offended", say "I'm sorry that I offended you". It doesn't matter whether or not you "meant" to do something, the fact is that you still did it. Saying "I didn't mean it" or something similar is just an excuse and doesn't help anythi...

More Undertale pointless trivia, because apparently I can't get enough of it. Spoilers. There are many anagrams hidden in the game. "Undertale" itself is an anagram of "Delta Rune", a symbol that appears in the game and is tied to the backstory. The True Pacifist final boss, Asriel Dreemurr, is an anagram of Serial Murderer. Alphys's name can be rearranged to spell Shy Pal, which describes her perfectly. The song "MEGALOVANIA", which plays during the battle against Sans in the Genocide run, was first used in an EarthBound ROM hack that Toby Fox made. It was then used in Homestuck before finally being used in Undertale. Undyne is based on Vriska from Homestuck in both appearance and personality. The Mad Dummy was very clearly inspired by Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. During its battle, it says "Foolish! Foolish! FOOLISH!" and "Feeble! Feeble! FEEBLE!", which could be translations of ...