Other Stuff That I Survey

...So I guess the previous one wasn't "all". Oh well. Random thoughts.

• You know Toujou, in Beelzebub? Yeah, his first name is Hidetora, i.e. one kanji different from Toujou Hideki. It's like if they went to school with Rudolf Hitler.
  
  Also, that doctor who looks like a grim-faced Wobbuffet in a fedora? Yeah, his name is Furcas. Furcas is actually one of the demons listed in the Lesser Key of Solomon. Why are mangaka always such nerds?


• I had thought that this post's number was prime. But no, as it turns out, 297 is 3³×11.
  
  Yes, I know I just said mangaka were nerds. I am aware of the irony, thank you.


• The "mass effect" in, uh, Mass Effect. It's the thing that gives them their artificial gravity, runs their guns, and lets them do FTL.
  
  Only, gentlemen, did you know you didn't have to invent a nonsensoleum-handwavium alloy to get all those effects? Repeat after me: "Casimir-induced exotic matter". Exotic matter has (or, uh, is theoretically predicted to have) negative mass, and it's fundamental to every version of Alcubierre warp as well as to David Waite's inertia-control by stress energy tensor metric-patching.
  
  But then again, what do you want from pretty-lights space opera that thinks sex and violence makes them mature?


• Speaking of space opera, you people who like Dr. Who need to get the hell off the internet. I refer to how I can't go a whole page on any of the Cheezburger sites without some reference to that crap.
  
  Again, Dr. Who makes Star Trek look like hard science fiction. It's basically Lost in Space but with a body count and slightly fewer obnoxious bratlings at any one time.
  
  Oh and by the way, remember that line somewhere about how most species pray to lesser beings than the Time Lords? Snerk. Uh, no, dude, the Time Lords went extinct because of bad luck. Not even Fate, not the Norns or the Moirae, who weave even the golden threads of the gods into their tapestry, but luck. Also, dude, Time Lords can die. Gods don't do that, except under extremely unusual circumstances (Ragnarok, Loki's curse on Balder, hind's blood, picking a fight with Shiva), and even then, they can be reborn...more than twelve times. I mean, dude, Vishnu has at least sixteen, some sources say thirty-nine, and probably actually innumerable, avatars.


• It suddenly occurs to me, are Time Lords just qhal with delusions of grandeur? That'd explain a lot, though it puts the Doctor's rebirths in a gruesome light.


• I noticed that the people who subtitle Beelzebub don't know their bad haircuts. Himekawa does not have a ducktail/duck's ass, he has a pompadour. A terrifying pompadour.
  
  Also, the Japanese invented something dorkier than a pompadour (terrifying thought!). It's called a punch perm. Basically you perm your hair so it's real kinky, and then you put it in a pompadour. I guess their thinking is "People will know I'm a badass because dude, I look like this and I'm still alive."


• Should you decide to watch the Beelzebub anime (nowhere near as good as the manga), I'll do you a favor and warn you off the fillers. Episodes 4, 6, 10 through 14 (!), 17, 27, and 28 are all filler.
  
  Remember when you used to be able to get a fair way into an anime before they'd hand you fillers? Nope, Beelzebub is marbled all through with filler-episode gristle.


• Kamisama Dolls continues to rock, but that flashback raised an unfortunate question. Namely, "Since Aki had his kakashi taken away for using it to kill small animals, why would you be fool enough to kidnap his girlfriend? There's no good can come of antagonizing a homicidal maniac."
  
  Then again, I think it's remotely justifiable on the basis of the seki's arrogance, and that specific one being a spoiled waka. Not terribly justified, but they had already established the dude as being a complete moron. So I think I'll allow it.


• Is it really that hard to write fight scenes? I mean, I suppose most writers don't really know that much about fighting (and when they do they often fall for the bullshit that's endemic to martial arts), but I think I can pass along a few tricks that'll help.
  1. Unarmed fights very frequently come down to grappling/throws, rather than blows; don't believe me, watch an MMA fight sometime. Indeed, most of the world's military fighting methods are almost entirely throws, and that includes jujutsu and most pre-modern European fighting, not just stuff like Krav Maga—throws were much more important in the heyday of full armor than now.
     
     Anyway, the key to understanding a fight is to understand the leverage, balance, and weight of the principals, and how they'll have to move to affect it. Their hips and footwork are more important than their hands. That even goes for fighting with strikes, since how someone shifts his weight will tell you how he's going to move.
  2. In fiction, fight-scene dialogue is at least as important as the fight itself. I have a scene in one of my SF books where an assassin 'droid takes down the creepy Foucaultian official. As he's bludgeoning him, he says, "Your" (wham) "kink" (wham) "is" (wham) "not" (wham) "okay!" (wham).
  3. Finally, the two most important things for swordfights is to plot out the spacing and to keep track of how the moves flow into each other. How do the fighters approach each other? Especially with single-edged swords (or more, with spears), getting inside the swing of your opponent's weapon is an excellent way to bring threat to bear on him. Turning the line of attack is always useful, as is one combatant shifting out of synch with the other, so that they are (for instance) standing side-by-side with their swords locked together (at that point, they should start elbowing or punching each other—if there are weapons involved at all, nothing, except betrayal of trust, is forbidden).
     
     When they pull their swords back from each other, they should very seldom just shift their weapons' position. Every change of stance, footing, or spacing in unarmed fighting should incorporate an attack, and the same is true of swordfighting. Consider the shape of the blades, the way they flow against each other, and how the fighters will maneuver them in and out of each other's influence.
  You're on your own in the matter of gunfights, though I will say study up on it. Also, I really need to use the line "Happy Explosion Day, gorgeous!" in something.