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I just read through the Battle of Red Cliff in the Three Kingdoms.
So basically Cao Cao has rolled his massive troops down to the big rivery place and gotten these two Southerner Generals to train his troops to use boats and stuff. On the other side is Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, who are incredibly cunning military geniuses that hate and try to kill each other constantly. So first of all, Cao Cao tries to subvert Zhou Yu by sending an old friend to his house to convince him to switch sides. This guy is welcomed heartily by Zhou Yu and they drink and crash in Zhou Yu's tent. The old friend discovers a letter while the other guy is passed out written by the two Southerner Generals, saying how they want to defect and betray Cao Cao. When the old friend returns Cao Cao is enraged and beheads the generals, only then realizing Zhou Yu had planned this shit all along. Cao Cao had basically screwed over his military tactics. Meanwhile, Zhou Yu says to Zhuge Liang "I'm the commander, and I say go and gather a few thousand arrows in ten days." "Do I get any supplies to make them or money to buy them?" "Nope." "Okay, then I can do it in three days." Zhou Yu laughs at this, but then Zhuge Liang does absolutely nothing for two days. Then on the third day, he gets a bunch of boats, wraps them in straw and fabric, gets the boatmen to float up the river, make some noise around the enemy camp, and then happily floats back to his base with the boats covered in arrows sticking out of the straw bundles and shit, thanking Cao Cao for the free arrows as he goes. So then Cao Cao is pissed, but then he gets two captains in his armies, relatives of the guys he had executed, and pays them with money to go and fake-defect to the enemy. Of course, Zhou Yu an Zhuge Liang suspect this. They then meet with one of their most loyal and longest-serving commanders, and plan for him to speak out at them during the next battle planning session. He does, and Zhou Yu has him beaten for it. Then, his other commanders voice their misgivings about the beatings in a tent, when the two spys from Cao Cao walk in and mention to them that they're spies. Next time Cao Cao sees them, their heads are on sticks outside the base. Finally, Cao Cao accepts a message of defection from the commander that was beaten, but also sends the old friend of Zhou Yu to try and scope out what's going on. Zhou Yu then condemns the guy and sends him away with an armed escort to this inn "for his own protection", but there he runs into one of Zhou Yu's commanders, the brilliant strategist Tong who expresses his disappointment and disgust at the way Zhou Yu runs an army. So the old friend convinces Tong to come along with him to Cao Cao's base. There, Cao Cao heaps gifts on Tong and offers to spare his people. Tong gratefully accepts this offer and tells Cao Cao how he can compensate for his ground-pounding soldiers' lack of military training simply by connecting his boats with rope and iron chains as well as wooden planks. The river is calm enough that this wouldn't affect the boats, and his soldiers would have a larger, more stable platform to fight on. Cao Cao happily accepts this and sends Tong back to make sure the plan isn't leaked. He then drinks his guts out with his much larger army. The next day as Cao Cao's massive fleet comes down the river, Zhuge Liang casts a spell that changes the wind, allowing Zhou Yu's boats to rocket down the river and shoot flaming arrows into the ships. Tong never betrayed Zhou Yu, the advice of joining the ships meant that the fire would literally spread over every damn ship in the fleet. Cao Cao suffered a grievous defeat, and Zhuge Liang got away without getting killed by Zhou Yu. Fuck Yeah. |
I finished American Gods about a week ago. I really liked it. Going to have to look for that short story sequel thing.
It inspired me to start reading Sandman. WHAT HAVE I BEEN MISSING OUT ON |
Neil Gaiman is a brilliant old chap and a half.
~have you read Coraline, or seen the movie? Enchilado |
I finished Demian about two weeks ago. I think that and To Kill a Mockingbird are my two favorite novels now.
I think I'll start The Handmaid's Tale soon. It's like I'm back in 11th grade English. |
I'm going to start reading Peter & Max soon, it looks pretty interesting although I only read the first few pages a little bit ago. Soon I'll start to read the book seriously though.
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The nerd-o-meter is going off the charts!
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Are they any good?
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Holy crap.. Is that real?
What's it about o.o |
gotta say the one thing i nerd the fuck out to is the elder scrolls. love that shit so fucking much.
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A Elders Schlols fan I know said they looked to be shit.
Are they? |
Look out for Knuckles!
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All EU stuff is crap to a given value of crap.
I still read Warcraft EU books, mind. |
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Oh I recognize that they're bad, I won't try to justify reading them.
Kinda like how I still read the Naruto manga, even though the resolution of the last major fight made me cringe. |
Could someone explain why Naruto in the original Japanese language anime ends every sentence with what sounds like "Watta bai-oh"? What is that? Is that phrase all fucking encompassing or something?
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It's a mis-translation of 'What a bee-otch'. Sasuke says it when Sakura pisses him off.
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Datta boy-o or something I believe, in English it's 'Believe it' which is even worse.
Thank fuck he stopped with it soon enough. |
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...You watch Naruto, OANST?
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I get very bored. Very, very bored.
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This is why I switched to the manga.
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'Dattebayo' is a Japanese vocal quirk. Japanese people have several accents, one of the most famous being the Kansai accent which is often translated to a Southern accent when localized. The difference between our concept of accents is that Japanese accents often mean changed ending words or sentence finishers. It also complicates things when individuals often change their own sentences depending on how they want to sound.
For example, a manly person might use "-ze", a person from Chubu might us "-Yaea", etc. Of course because the way you speak can show what kind of character you are, Japanese writers and manga-artists and film directors use vocal quirks to help audiences understand a character more. So for example, a rich snob might end their sentences with "desu-wa", a foreigner might use "desu" way too much or not at all, And stupid monster characters often had some nonsense word or word vaguely-related-to-what-they-look-like tacked on the end, to make them sound silly to Japanese children. Dattebayo is one of these, it's basically "You know?" and is there to show what a childish and stupid guy Naruto is. |
Which totally doesn't explain why he uses it post-time skip.
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Eh, it's to remind the audience that deep down, he's still just that kid that picked his nose back in school.
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Strike Witch just gave me information that I was interested in knowing.
Hheegh. |
I'd hope he stops doing in the anime by the time he reaches THE FUCKING AVATAR OF NINJUTSU AND DEFEATS HIM otherwise that'd be kinda stupid.
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My personal favourite is "de arimasu~" which is basically "Yes, Sah!" |
the book is enjoyable enough (from super eldergeek over here), though pretty badly written. "here is a place. place description. people go through place, into a new place. new place description." basically if it were a text adventure that'd be awesome.
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and leto that book looks like shit Might be because it's an Oblivion book and fuck I hated Oblivion. |
tentatively bridges gap between tesiv and tesv. so fu lern2love.
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There's a Tesvuh?
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tentatively. it hasn't been ruled out but it hasn't been confirmed.
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Oh.
So what happened after the Jesus-like monk turned into a dragon and killed Mechashiva? |
The firey vaginas closed up and the gremlins went home.
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It went exactly like that. Then you went to the realm of crazies and became king of the crazies and danced around in your little suit.
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I read Cruddy again. I adore that book. Now I'm reading the second Artemis Fowl book because BOOKS FOR TWELVE YEAR OLDS YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH
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