mDuo13

Thoughts, Words, Works

Fate Crusade Side Story 02: Dramatis Personae @

In the grim dark present of roleplaying, there is Only Grail War. Stormshrug's Fate/Crusade is the second campaign following the events of Fate/stay night using rules adapted from Fantasy Flight's Warhammer 40k RPG systems. I'm not in this campaign, but I'm playing a role from the sidelines. His story has already begun...

Salvador's Command Seals

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Tsukihime 'Talk.' Ebook @

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I like Tsukihime, the Type-Moon visual novel. (Hell, I've got Arcueid in my page template.) I've read the whole original game, seen the anime, and followed some side material, but until a couple days ago, I had never read "Talk.", which is a short little story that was published in one of the artbooks. As it turns out, there's an unofficial translation that's been floating around the web for a while, surviving on bulletin boards and the like.

Since I felt like reading it but I wanted to do so from the comfort of an e-reader program (my favorite is FBReader) rather than a bunch of forum posts, I compiled the story into a .epub file that's compatible with lots of e-readers and looks a little nicer. What little formatting I added, I based on the original book, which I happen to own. While I was at it, I also cleaned up a few typos as I found them and added a cover based on a scan of the book it was published in.

The story's only a few pages but it addresses some interesting stuff, a vampire forest, Ciel's retirement, and (most importantly for me) introduces "Satsujinki", the degenerately evolved form of Tohno Shiki. Anyway, I don't have the copyright to the original story nor am I responsible for the translation. In fact, I wasn't able to even find out the name of the person responsible for translating it. I did compare the translation to the original and I'm pretty confident that it's a very direct translation, probably to a fault, but that's par for the course.

If you, too, are interested in setting aside a few minutes of your life to read a little more in the Tsukihime universe and you, too, like the epub format, your download awaits:

tsukihime-talk.epub (245kb)

 

Fate Crusade Side Story 01: Arrival @

In the grim dark present of roleplaying, there is Only Grail War. Stormshrug's Fate/Crusade is the second campaign following the events of Fate/stay night using rules adapted from Fantasy Flight's Warhammer 40k RPG systems. I'm not in this campaign, but I'm playing a role from the sidelines. His story has already begun...

Pieter's Command Seals

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2012 Anime Mini-Review Rampage @

I did one last year; why not do it again? Even if I am a month late, here are a few words on everything I finished in the year 2012. Once again, scores are biased a little towards being higher because I don't always finish things I don't like. Sadly, this year looks like the year of sequels, with at most of half of the items not being derived from an existing property, but it's hard to argue with more of a good thing, so here we go:

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Fate Crusade Side Story: Prologue @

In the grim dark present of roleplaying, there is Only Grail War. Stormshrug's Fate/Crusade is the second campaign following the events of Fate/stay night using rules adapted from Fantasy Flight's Warhammer 40k RPG systems. I'm not in this campaign, but I'm playing a role from the sidelines. His story starts here...

Ishmael's Command Seals

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A bit about Monster @

It's been some years since I watched the show originally, but I recently introduced a few friends to an excellent anime called Monster, based on the manga of the same name by acclaimed artist Naoki Urasawa. Monster is generally considered one of the best anime ever made (ANN #22, AniDB #48, AnimeNfo #24, MyAnimeList #27 -- and many of those ratings have fallen off its peak). Strangely, Viz only printed the first 15 episodes as a hardcopy box set, despite the show being a rather lengthy 74 eps long. I guess being 4 years late to the party and offering a small portion of the episodes didn't work out for them. I'd love to own a hardcopy, but it seems that's not in the cards. I hear you can at least buy the episodes in digital format on PSN and iTunes.

On a related note, I came up with a limerick inspired by the show. It contains big spoilers for the first 4 episodes only. See the full article to read it.

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