“All this bickering, all the suspicion and the closed walls, it always seemed wrong to me but I could never find the words. I mean, we're not that different in the end, not things like decency and respect. But alone in that monster's lair – and you can't imagine what it's like to be alone, really alone, thinking this is all you'll ever know – when I was there it started to make sense to me. Those guards at the palace gates, those pointy fences, they don't protect us from anything, really. That's what the falling moon is really about. It's a message from the gods...From the guardian giants... but still, it's a message...It's – we could all be gone any minute, so there's no point hiding from the world. Enemies or friends, we all die together. Maybe not all at once, but... together."
- The Deku Princess, Insomnia (a retelling of Majora's Mask)
It's been so long since I've read good fan fiction, let alone a novelization, so I was truly amazed when I found Insomnia this summer. The author takes the original characters and ideas of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and makes it his own. Let's be clear, Majora's Mask is probably the most unique Zelda game to date, not only because of the three-day time limit, but also in its storyline and character interaction. The moon is falling on top of the city of Termina, and it's your duty to travel back into time and repeat the same three days in order to solve the mystery of the moon. The game's true strength lies in its ability to make you emotionally involved -- there's this deathly sense of impending doom that is always dwelling, and when you do all the sidequests and interract with the non-playable characters, you truly become anxious to save everyone. Now take all that and throw it into a story. This guy completely twists the concept of time travel, throws in some philosophy about existence and the end of all things, and gives a distinct voice to each of the characters, including the heroic mime that is Link. Seriously, he's done really, really well with his story, and has certainly demonstrated that he is a very talented writer.
Sorry, I just had to rant about that. He's just updated his story, and I am impressed with what he's done.
But you know what else it's been long time since? My last post. Yeah, the moment I said I need to get better at posting, I get worse. Go me! Even so, I feel like as of late, I haven't been extremely available to talk to, or I just haven't been keeping in touch with some people as well as I'd like, friends and family alike. So I'm going to try and make sure I definitely improve in that regard, because there are plenty of people whom I don't want to lose contact with.
Last week itself wasn't exciting, but the weekend was fun. We used the weekend as Robby's birthday weekend (his actually birthday was yesterday). In order to rest up for the next night, we stayed in Thursday and watched Amadeus (long but pretty interesting movie about Mozart). Friday night was the real party. We went out to a Discoteca again (God, I need to cut back on going to those...). Since we've been going to Joy so much, we went to Kapital this night, and yeah, definitely worth it. Like Joy the week before, Kapital's dance floor was emptier than usual by the time we'd gotten there, so we decided to scope out the rest of the discoteca. And of course, after failing to do it last time, we HAD to do Karaoke. I haven't done Karaoke in a while, but this was a blast. There were plenty of Spanish songs, the majority which we obviously didn't know, but they had a very nice assortment of American/English songs, so we picked our poisons. First up, myself and Trinity did NSync's (yeah, remember them?) "It's Gonna be me." To make the performance even better, I remember the beginning part of the dance to that song, so yeah, you can guess what I was doing...totally worth it though. After that, Robby and Kaitlyn did "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, which is by far one of the best songs to Karaoke to. Ever. Not to mention headbanging. Yeah, there were definitey some great pictures from that one. The last song we did was performed by Trinity, Robby, and myself to Pink's "Just Like A Pill." Kind of an older, whinier song, but still great to sing to. After that, we pretty much danced the rest of the night until the morning. It was a long but successful night.
Saturday we were exhausted, and like one time before, we took a Burger King run, which is just as good as I remember it! They don't put nearly enough ketchup on their sandwiches though...but that's a common problem in Spain. Ha. After that, Trinity and I (later joined by Robby) had a miniature movie marathon. We'd been aching to watch Mulan all week, since both of us could quote the entire thing and sing all the songs. So we go back and turn on Mulan via YouTube, and it was probably a good thing we were the only ones home for a while, because we were being pretty loud and obnoxious. Still, Mulan's a great Disney movie, and it has one of the, if not the best Disney song ever made in "I'll Make a Man Out of You." We continued our Disney movie marathon with The Fox and the Hound (we concluded that every character should have died) and Tarzan. In between Fox and the Hound and Tarzan, we made us some good egg sandwiches, as well as some fantastic mashed potatoes! Trinity makes them really well, with garlic, ranch, salt...so good! I'll have to remember that when I go home. After Tarzan, we threw in Life Is Beautiful, which is an Italian film about a family during in the Holocaust of World War II. Obviously, anything related to the Holocaust is going to be heavy and hard to take. For me, the beginning of the movie didn't really seem like it could be related to anything so tragic, but once it hit a certain part (when the "No Jews" sign is on the door of one of the shops), I was anticipating the worst to come. But actually, I didn't find this movie to be as emotionally draining as I was expecting, which is a good thing -- the fact that it's WWII is enough to make you sad and understand the suffering that all too many endured, and then throwing in this family's story and makinf it that much more violent may have made it worse and hard to handle. But they balanced it well, and the movie turned out to be quite excellent. And the ending puts a smile on.
Sunday, after a mini-fiasco about Daylights Savings Time (we went back an hour in Spain), we went into Toledo for the day. Like Segovia, it's about a half hour outside of Madrid, and it had its own beauty to behold. It's a pretty hilly city, and it was a bit bigger than Segovia, as well as more complex -- there were plenty of times where we didn't know which way we were heading, and then there was one time where we literally went in a giant circle (thanks, Mr. GPS =P), and we passed by many, many familiar shops. Some of these accidental wanderings turned out to be nice photo shots, though. And overall, it was a good trip. We went to the Alcazar (which was closed, but still gorgeous from the outside) and to the edge of the city and got some good shots of el rio Taja (with el puente going over it) as well as another nice castle in the background.
Then we hit up couple of chapels (which were a bit on the disappointing side, but still had some neat artwork), the Monasterio (also sadly a bit smaller than expected, but had some cool stuff as well, like orange trees!), and of course, La Catedral de Toledo, which I am infuriated that we could not take pictures inside. Not that I don't understand, but seriously, it was SO pretty, definitely the highlight of Toledo, and we can't take pictures of that?! Not fair. But like the other cathedrals, this one was fantastic with its architecture, stained-glass windows (it had more than the others), beautiful carvings, powerful organs, and so on. What this one had over the others, though, was the famous obra "El Expolio de Cristo" por El Greco, a famous Spanish artist who was born and raised in Toledo. There were lots of other works by El Greco (and other artists) there, too, but this one was the most well known, and the room they'd made to display was simply breath-taking. The heavens painted on the ceiling, the golden frame, surrounded by other fantastic paintings, it was truly amazing. Once again, I WISH I could have taken pictures, but they're awfully picky about those photo snaps. I did get a couple nice shots from the outside, though (which was still beautiful). Heading back into Toledo, we took a walk around the city until resting in a park and playing cards until it was time to catch the train. The city was also well known for its craftsmanship and making swords and armor. Many a time, I wanted to buy a sword...but yeah, first of all, I don't have the money for that, and second, getting it back to the United States could be problematic...so it's a good thing I resisted.
Overall, Toledo in my opinion was not as impressive as Segovia, but it was still great to see! After walking up and down hills for a while, though, my legs were kind of sore...I need to get back into shape. Once again, pictures will be coming a bit later (maybe tomorrow).
Other things:
We want to go to Barcelona this weekend, but we'll see how that goes. We've been putting off booking tickets, so who knows what's available?
Wednesday, they have this thing called anti-karaoke, which is basically classic 80s, hard rock karaoke (sin las televisiones). Since we had a successful Karaoke night on Friday, we're pretty thrilled to try this out. Plus, you get to dress up in ridiculous outfits, which it makes sense since Halloween is coming up.
Oh yeah, I miss those American holidays. I hope you all are getting into the spirit! I can't believe it's the end of October already. Like seriously, where the hell does time go? Pretty soon, it'll be Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. *gasp*
Like I said, sorry about my lack of communication as of late. Hopefully I'll be around to be able to catch some of you and have a chat on Skype or something. Hope all is well!
Adios!
~ LSquared
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