Monday 29 December 2014

Zeus, am I right?

Zeus was doing his usual Zeus thing, chatting up a mortal priestess (ancient greek devouts were so much open to seduction) named Io, when Hera came along and was all like "Zeus, you better not be hitting on some human again?!"  and so Zeus, being that he was the king of the gods, was crafty and quick enough to change Io into a cow before his wife could catch them together. 

Hera though, being that she was the Queen of the gods and also, you know, knowing what Zeus was like, was suspicious when she found her husband with his arms wrapped around a cow and so, using her wit, proclaimed "Oh, what a fabulous gift you've got for me there, I've always wanted a cow!" and Zeus was forced to give over poor Io to Hera.

However, thinking quickly, Zeus burst out "Ah, but we live on Mount Olympus, can't take cows up a mountain, they're very terrestrial, scared of heights, don't you know."

Hera conceded the point but insisted that the cow be kept in her sacred olive grove (somehow not a euphemism) and watched over by her friend, Argos, who was a giant with like, so many eyes, just, freaking, so many, it was weird. Hera knew that loyal Argos would keep an eye (or two, or fifty, or a hundred) on Io at all times because he never closed them all at once.

However, she had not banked on Hermes, who Zeus sent to kill Argos because that's the logical reaction to being cockblocked by your wife. Send your son to kill her friend. Anyway, Hermes went there and tried to get Argos to leave the cow unattended, but no matter what he did he couldn't get the giant to close all his eyes at the same time. He tried spells and hexes, he tried playing soothing lullabies on his lyre, nothing would work until he started spouting on about the history of musical instruments ("Hey, did I ever tell you how I made the first lyre? First, I got this turtle right...." and on he goes, oy) which knocked the giant out. Then, Hermes lopped Argos' head off with a sickle because fucker was hardcore.

As it turns out, Zeus had kind of moved on by this point and didn't really care anymore. He went off to do Zeus things. Argos' eyes got put on peacock tails because they were Hera's favourite bird. Hermes got no comeuppance. And as for Io, well, she eventually got turned back into a human, after being cursed by Hera to madness by gadfly (just one, that couldn't be gotten rid of, just stinging her, all the time, to induce insanity you see), meeting the titan Prometheus and swimming across a whole fucking ocean (as a human that's tough, as a cow...yeah). But it was all worth it because in the end Zeus had his way and she ended up giving birth to some of Zeus' kids (sure, he had given up on her, but Zeus is Zeus), who then had kids of their own, who then had kids with other Zeus babies because looking at the family tree of ancient greeks myths is a lot like reading a rednecks family tree (oh my mother is my brother, is my fathers aunties uncle, is my grandpa, is my nephew is my son! and so on, seriously, zeus hit up his own grandchildren multiple times, who then procreated with each other, and don't even get me started on Herakles and the Danaids, 1 Zeus male descendant, 50 Zeus female descendants, and all 50 were impregnated, and then started marrying each other, and all the ancient greek rulers pointed at shit like this and was like "we is descended from this union, this is why we're more specialler than you!" and you know, they weren't wrong)....

....anyway, where was I...oh yes, the moral. I guess the moral of this story is don't trust Zeus. If you're a woman, he'll probably turn you into some kind of animal...and then fuck you....or turn himself into an animal...and fuck you...either way, he's going to fuck you. If you're a male, don't get in the way or he will have you killed...and then probably fuck you.  

Voices

When I was a kid I used to do these voice imitation things. Like, I'd put on different accents, imitate celebrity voices or whatever. One time, I went about a week or so changing my voice every day. I'd spend one day speaking in a cockney accent all day, the next, an Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation, the next I'd do a hoarse Glaswegian voice. Anyway, it got to the point where I forgot what my actual voice sounded like. Have you ever had that? It's a surreal moment of depersonalisation. It was kind of like that thing people get when they hear themselves on a recording, the "do I really sound like that?" moment where they're not entirely certain it's them because they're hearing their own voices without the differing timbre and such created by their own skulls. It was like that but taken to the extreme. "Do I really sound like that? Hang on, what do I actually sound like?" 

It was genuinely terrifying, like losing a piece of the self, or rather, not knowing it at all. Never told anyone about it either, never wrote it down anywhere, but people (randomers as well as family and friends of) would always say that I don't sound like I'm from Liverpool (sadly, I do sound more Scouse now, which is a shame as I cannot stand that fucking accent...thinking on it, probably some psychosomatic thing that caused the change in voice in the first place...hmm) and of course, that just fueled the fear that I had done something to my voice. That it wasn't *my* voice, if that makes sense.

Wednesday 10 December 2014

Lucky Chloe

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4O0UphHT6uE/maxresdefault.jpg

This is Lucky Chloe. She is a new character in the fighting series Tekken, joining the roster when Tekken 7 releases. Except maybe not (at least in America) because of the fans outraged at the idea of a cute character in their grimdark serious fighting game series (the same series that has characters such as:  http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120821020820/tekken/en/images/7/7d/Alisa_Bosconovitch_TTT2.png a literal robotic schoolgirl, http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110830171938/tekken/en/images/c/c4/Gon_-_Full-body_CG_Art_Image_-_Tekken_3.png a tie in promotion chibi dinosaur, and many more...I've also got to include this scene http://s1.dmcdn.net/UyHV.jpg because it's the badass main character of the series being made to wear a thong...serious bidness!).

Reading through the comment sections on various sites (listed at the end of this missive)the outrage runs the gamut from the aforementioned "you can't put this in my fighting game!" to "screw them for appealing to the popular vocaloid crowd" to "this character is oppressive to females and only reinforces stereotypes!" to which I say...fucking shut up! The arguments seem different but they all boil down to the same basic point, "I feel undue privilege, give me what I want or I will scream." 

Your fighting game? No sir/madam, it's the makers (Harada's) game. He could make the game's roster consist of nothing but Lucky Chloe reskins and it would be perfectly fine because it is "his" (well, his teams, but he's the boss so) game. 

'It's just to appeal to Vocaloid fans', yes, and? Vocaloids fairly big in Japan but, hmm, lets think about this, a Japanese game trying to appeal to a Japanese audience...there might actually be something in this one...except the outrage is justified because...what? It's not targeted at you? Get the fuck out.  

And lastly, my favourite, the "this character is oppressive to females" blather. This one I love most of all because it's so utterly hypocritical, basically "you can't tell women how to act or dress, only I (and people like me) can!". Add in some casual racism (as tends to be the case with these people commenting) along the lines of "Japan needs to start acting more like us civilised people in the West" and you have to laugh if only to curb the murderous rage now burning within.

Anyway, to end this (not really focussed tirade), here's a picture based on the Tekken character designer Harada's tweet saying he'd make a big, burly man character to appease the offended inclusionary folk.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4d63E6IAAARLeb.png:large

Bless that man.

- Outraged points of view were taken from Gamespot, Polygon, Ign and Eurogamer website comment sections. (The reports themselves were about the outrage)