At least the syfy miniseries dared to adapt Children of Dune.

I actually like it. We finally get an Irulan with agency and see Alia as a full character. And Leto 2 getting sandy.

Not sure how I feel about the Baron narrating in rhyming couplets though. Maybe just a tad too strange, even for Dune.

German must have its own share of disappointing terms.

Pferd comes to mind as an example. I really expected something more metal like horzdraken or comical like hoofenstreider. But no, just a boring Roman loan word.

Gah what a fucking tool.

Well at least he isn’t getting paid when I rewatch Ace Ventura 2 on plex 😎

FWIW, Moorcock discusses often in his forewords living the hellscape of post blitz London as a preteen. I highly doubt he would ever co-sign on another nazi regime.

Haha so right. My original draft lamented how the psychedelic, pansexual, spy with a little gun Jerry Cornelius only lives on in the pale echo of Austin Powers. But then I thought it was too niche.

But ya The Final Programme was my first literary introduction to homosexuality. The weird psychotropic defense towers on the Cornelius estate may have been my first introduction to mind altering states too.

The original velvet suited dandy from swinging London (imo):

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe.

I must say this recommendation is delightfully on theme, nicely done 😎

This caught my attention

A Wizard of Earthsea is one of the most beautifully written books in the English language.

I’m a total sucker for beautiful prose, especially Gormenghast.

Do you have any memorable lines that stuck with you?

Stormbringer is Elric’s famous sword. You can hear someone shout it in GoT when Joffrey is about to name his sword. It’s evil and drinks the souls of those it kills, passing some of the energy to Elric.

Anyways. Elric is a sickly inbred albino prince of a an ancient , evil, and decaying empire (aka Fantasy Britain). Without his evil sword he is a total weakling pushover.

And people think this is a white power character/symbol? Blows my mind.

That’s way harder.

There’s always his iconic anthihero Elric, or the modern incarnation Geralt of Rivia. I like The Vanishing Tower (Elric IV I think) as a standalone in-media-res story.

I personally enjoy the really weird stuff in Blood: A Southern Fantasy.

Behold the Man won him an award and I thought it was a thought provoking novella, at least for its time.

What’s a good place to start? I only really know her for invoking the divine right of kings like a boss 😎

Reminds me of Absolution Gap and its insistence on brane cosmology theory. Most of the book is a side quest for a transmitter to an adjacent “brane” having the deus ex machina. I haven’t seen “brane” used instead of dimension/timeline since.

That’s cool sure.

But on the other side: Reddit betrayed the social contract and deserves to rot in consequence.

One droplet of lost engagement becomes an ocean; just stop showing up 🤷‍♀️

Where now the horse and the rider?

and all distros jumped into the honeypot

As a filthy casual this is the most distressing part.

I’ve observed the situation shift in just a few years from

“Winter Systemd is coming”

To

“Winter Systemd is here, it’s everywhere, and i hate it”

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy Tactics with the translation-so-bad-it’s-might-be-a-masterpiece.

Actually interesting and novel ability names

Japanese: Dance with knives

1997 Localization: Wiznaibus

WotL Localization: Mincing Minuet

Dialog that pulls no punches

Japanese: My bad, but it’s between you and your god

1997 Localization: Tough luck…Don’t blame me. Blame yourself or God.

WoTL Localization: Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I.

Other gems lost in the improved localization:

• “heavens wish to destroy all minds”
• “the doom of a planet”
• “evanescence, such a sad word”
• “time, save your kindness for the worthy”

All that being said, the final fantasy gang is generally spectacular with English mastery. It’s like you can tell which books they like to read when they choose obscure words like Eidolon.

Hey I’m actually growing a black sapote!

Here’s a blurry pic of the fruit forming

Maybe you’ll like https://peterraleigh.substack.com/p/the-tell-of-us-all

We might think here, as perhaps Miller and his cowriters did, of a Viking army, threatening an established kingdom with devastation, transformed into that kingdom’s nominal protectors by the grant of a duchy. Rulership means negotiation, the management of a coalition, the constant reinforcement of a power base. It is never simple, and the work is never done.

Watching the two on the left go from hardnosed atheist commandos to saying “Praise Sol” with conviction, what a wild fucking trip of a show.

Every time

cut and tr are like the wonder twins of text munging

Form of truncated whitespace! Shape of single whitespace! 😂