The Twilight Realms

Ahoy, mateys! In honour of Talk Like a Pirate Day, I've decided to put together this little "pirate dictionary", so now you too can learn how to talk like a true freebooter*. *A real pirate. Ahoy = Used to greet people. Avast! = Technically means "Stop!", but is often used as an interjection to mean "Hey", as in "Stop what you're doing, I want to tell you something". Not to be confused with "ahoy", which is just a general greeting. Matey/mate = A friend. Shiver me timbers! = An expression of shock or disbelief. Batten down the hatches = Prepare the ship for an upcoming storm. Battens are long strips of wood, metal, fibreglass etc., used for various purposes aboard ship, and the hatches are the openings in the deck of a ship or submarine, so "batten down the hatches" means "put strips of wood/metal etc. over the hatches to prevent water from getting in and flooding the ship". Landlubber = Basically ...

Myths You Will Never Be Able to Get Parents to Stop Believing 1. Sugar causes hyperactivity in children. Truth: There is no evidence of a direct link between sugar consumption and hyperactivity in children. Experiments have been done where one group of children was given sugary drinks and another were given sugar-free drinks, for instance, and no difference in their hyperactivity levels was noticed (the children were not told whether their drinks were sugary or sugar-free). Children are just naturally hyperactive, sugar or no sugar. The reason for this myth is mostly likely a combination of confirmation bias on the part of the parents and psychological conditioning on the part of the children - parents who believe this rumour are more likely to notice their children being hyperactive after having sugar, and children aware of this rumour may subconsciously (or even consciously) act more hyper after having sugar because of it, but there is no direct correlation between amount of sugar...

Pointless trivia, Devil May Cry edition. The concept for Devil May Cry grew out of one of several rejected ideas for Resident Evil 4. It was rejected because the ability to juggle zombies in the air wasn't very scary, but Capcom wanted to use the mechanic anyway, so a few things were reworked here and there and Devil May Cry was born. The main character of the failed Resident Evil 4 was a bionically-enhanced human named Tony - in Devil May Cry, Dante commissioned his handguns, Ebony & Ivory, under the pseudonym "Tony Redgrave". The ability to juggle enemies actually originated from a patched-out glitch in Onimusha: Warlords (simply titled Onimusha in Japan) whereby an enemy could be "juggled" by hitting it in midair. While Capcom removed the glitch before the game was released, as mentioned above, they thought the mechanic was too cool to just scrap entirely, and worked it into what would eventually become Devil May Cry. Many of the characters in the D...

Pointless trivia about Persona 4. A few of the party members went through some changes in the development of the game. Rise was originally going to be an actual party member, rather than support, and would have been remarkably different - her original incarnation was an "ice queen"-type delinquent who wielded a chain. In the final game, the delinquent role went to Kanji, and Rise was reworked into an idol when her appearance was changed to look more like her Japanese voice actor. Kanji was originally going to be a middle-aged man, and Naoto would have been straight up male, as opposed to a female crossdresser. (Which makes you wonder what her Shadow encounter would have been like if that had happened...) Speaking of Kanji, his sexuality (whether he's attracted to men, women, or both) is deliberately left ambiguous throughout the game. Troy Baker, his English voice actor, revealed in an interview that he was instructed to portray Kanji as if he were gay, and firmly bel...

Welcome to another episode of "Twilight Blogs About Stuff You Don't Care About". I've decided to title this one "Misquotes, Misrememberings and Mandela Effects", just for the alliteration bonus. If you want to know what a Mandela Effect is, ask your mum. Or Google it. And yes, I know it should be "misquotations", but "misquotes" flows better. In the Batman & Robin movie, Mr. Freeze (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) makes a lot of ice- and snow-related puns. However, one line he didn't actually say, despite many claiming or remembering that he did, was "Ice to meet you". People are most likely thinking of Rainier Wolfcastle on The Simpsons, a caricature of Schwarzenegger, whose character McBain uses the line "Ice to see you" in one of his movies. The adverts for Mr Bucket never said "I'm Mr. Bucket, put your balls in my mouth". One of the ads said "Put your balls in my top" and "...

I'm trying again, with improved knowledge and smartness, to explain the English names of the 151 original Pokémon (including Mew), using only what I know without looking anything up. So here we go. Bulbasaur - "Bulb" (as in a plant bulb, not a lightbulb) + "dinosaur". Ivysaur - Ivy + dinosaur. Venusaur - Venus (as in a Venus flytrap) + dinosaur. Charmander - Char (meaning to scorch or burn something) + salamander (a mythical creature associated with fire). Charmeleon - Char + chameleon. Charizard - Char + lizard. Squirtle - Squirt + turtle. Wartortle - "Wartor" sounds like "water", and "tle" is from "turtle". The "tor" might also come from "tortoise". Blastoise - "Blast" (a jet of powerful water) + "tortoise". Caterpie - It's basically "caterpillar" without the "llar", and an "e" on the end for some reason. Metapod - Meta from metamorphos...

Pokémon Red Glitch Guide - How to Get a Level 100 Gengar Before Fighting Brock Note: This trick only works in the original Red and Blue versions, not the remakes. This works on both a normal game cartridge and a ROM, and doesn't require any external cheat devices. Also, unlike the Missingno. glitch, there's no danger of messing up your cartridge with this glitch, so rest easy. Here are the steps to perform this glitch. 1. Make sure you only have one Pokémon in your party. If you have any others, put them in the PC. Pick Charmander as your starter (yes, this is actually necessary). 2. Play through the game normally until you get to Viridian Forest. DO NOT GO TO VICTORY ROAD. (Optional but highly recommended: Level up your Charmander to around level 10.) Also, buy a bunch of Poké Balls at the Pokémon Mart. 3. Once you're at Viridian Forest, go to the last trainer (a Bug Catcher) just before the exit to Pewter City. Don't fight him yet. Get your sole Pokémon poisoned...