the wombatcave

Noodling about with some possible research/apopheny. This originally started as part of a thread on the Okamiworld forums, but I'm gradually disengaging from the site out of despair wrt lack of wiki spamproofing.

The bssic question is whether the color-coded musician Imps in the original "Okami" game have any systematic connection to the traditional Asian elemental framework(s).

Very messy list format as I type/paste in notes; may attempt to summarize into table form later.( Read more... )

Gone back to investigating the eight kanji in the Reflector sub-block circle. Best bet so far is that they're related to the hakke trigrams, although the kanji aren't the same-- similar to the traditional zodiac kanji not matching the normal animals, the hakke seem to use a set of kanji that don't match the standard ones for those elements.( Read more... )

...then again, someone on the Okamiworld forum has suggested that the kanji are randomly chosen from the brushstroke display pool, which in some ways would be much more elegant.

Mostly working notes as I try to hash out the whole COE thing.( Read more... )

My main collaborator on the Keōpūolani article just provided me with another generation of ancestors. Yikes.

This is a relatively temporary draft, since the file is unlinked and may get deleted, but behold:


She had 3 grandparents (instead of the usual 4), 5 great-grandparents (vs. 8), 7 great-grandparents (vs. 16), 13 great-great-grandparents (vs. 32), and 17 great-great-great-grandparents (vs. 64).

The movie version of Possession falls into my category of major disappointments in media adaptations-- not epic fail as such, but one of those prestige projects with respected directors/actors and good source material whose sum total (imho) didn't live up to any of those parts. (The main other example that comes to mind is Les Miserables with Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, and Claire Danes.)

I was re-reading the book over the weekend and started jotting down notes about the characters' names and various other elements. I'm still mystified about a few names which may either cause me to klonk myself with obviousness when I finally get them, or which I just don't have the requisite familiarity with Victorian literature to pick up (frex, I can't remember whether I've read all of the epic poems associated with the modern leads), but hey.( Read more... )

Other "Girl Genius" readers are likely to've tried this already, but here's my stab at identifying Van Rijn's muses as seen from left to right, with brief rationales:( Read more... )

Mediterranean/Near East "royal purple": 6, 6-dibromoindigo
Japanese murasaki/shikon purple: shikonin.

More general list of trad. Asian dye chromophores here, including Japanese color terminology.

Currently bouncing off another attempt to appreciate John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting, and am heading into a tangent to chase down one cryptic reference that still baffles the book's fan concordance:

p94:

"My son thought you were a witch. Are you?"
"No, my lord."
"But you know the power of the crocus." [Federigo] pointed to Cynthia's pendant. "Guidobaldo doesn't know it, but his grandmother was a witch. She healed me with the crocus..."

( Read more... )

Tablesplat, carried over from another fit of geekage on the Okami wiki. I still want to find/integrate some other info, so this may be an ongoing project. Then again, I may wander off and get distracted by something else instead.

Quick overview: the 12-year cycle of the Asian "lunar" zodiac seems to be originally based on the apparent circuit of the planet Jupiter around the solar ecliptic. The "lunar" label derives from the lunar determination of the new-year date (usually the 2nd new moon after winter solstice). The 12-critter sequence (Rat to Pig) is fused onto a different tradition of the "Twelve Earthly Branches"; the result has been applied onto several different systems in addition to the yearly calendar cycle. (Bonus randomness: Onmark has a nifty chart here syncretically assigning eight Japanese Buddhist protectors among the critters.)

It reminded me of a factoid that I can't remember if I've previously mentioned here, though it may've come up in an old discussion on RKDreams-- according to the RK chronology, Tomoe's birthdate was in a Year of the Fire Horse. In Japan, Fire Horse women are thought to be dangerous and nearly unmarriageable; if they do marry, there's a superstition that they'll kill their husbands. As recently as 1966, the last Fire Horse year, there was an uncharacteristic plunge in births in Japan because apparently/supposedly no one wanted to have Fire Horse children. NYT article here.( Read more... )

226-year-old koi?

debunking? (refcite)