Taro > Recent Status Updates

White Snake, at least 7 months pregnant, takes up her swords with her maiden, and the denizens of the seas, and goes to the monk's mountain to save her hapless husband who's been kidnapped.

Oh. It’s okay. the princess didn’t want the Wazir to “go into her” so she kicked him in the balls

It would be great if they stopped using “come into her” as a euphemism for sex
🤢

Drag Queens at the King’s daughter’s wedding
Burton explains this in a footnote, these performers where preferred to women which wouldn’t be so halal

Remind me to not fk with Ali Baba’s slave girl

Ali Baba’s slave girl is clever and metal as fk

It's like 12 years later and I finally got to Alaeddin

“Yet a passionate action like that in Chūnagon’s mansion would be bad. What shall I do?”
How about, Saishō, you DON’T assault this woman and go back to taking care of the first two lives you ruined #allssishosarebastards

“[Saishō] felt sorry for Chūnagon and thought things ought not to be this way”
Well if you didn’t r—- your best friend’s wife and then your best friend, then pretend you loved them, maybe you wouldn’t be in this “mess”
#AllSaishōsAreBastards

He’s been guilted into carrying his assaulter’s child (his best friend), and while the ‘friend’ constantly misgenders him, the translation itself does not. He has no will to “live as a woman” but the baby, changes his guilt levels.
Though trans masc experience, wow is it emotional.

Well the author is really trying to make Chūnagon the new Genji and even called him a “shining light” and everyone weeping when he is gone

Man has to hide away with his assaulter and pretend to be a woman while he is pregnant but he is absolutely dysphoric about it and wants to quit the world
Is not something one would expect from a 900 year old book

“Chūnagon began to feel constrained by his pregnant condition…” 🫃

Saishō is a pos and I wish the story didn’t focus on him and his assaults—- Chūnagon you need a better friend

Ok the crossed genders are beautifully worked and Willig's translation convention to use their presenting pronouns is quite beneficial.

But I knew that SA was be coming and still some is and though it was .. 'appropriate' for the time of writing, it is still extremely unsettling, more than even in Genji. Especially since the entire act itself was skipped (also accurate to the time of writing)

Ugg so good
“I am a Princess-class [colossal mecha-suit] pilot”

Starts with giant space insects and people using mega suits built from their carcasses.
That’s a start

the sun is the proper size for Betelgeuse, and the planet is 70AU from its star. I could see them travelling to after the sun goes into red giant phase, but I'm pretty sure this is not earth. The moon is somewhat paler.
But Ape civilization has stagnated for 10,000 years - in an age like our 1960s. And at an archaeological Ulysses and Cornelius find at the 10000year strata... a talking, *human* doll.

<[Cornélius] was waiting for us beside some massive foliage. He was an alluring chimpanzee, certainly older than Zira, but extremely young for an academic savant >

"[That we are quadrumodal is one of the most important factors in our evolution. It allows us to climb in the trees and navigate the three dimensions, while man with his deformation of only two hands is limited to the plane. We can use tools while our hands are free. It is this ability that elevated apekind to sapience.]"
Also our hero is speaking French (he's learning Simian and Zira French)

When incarcerated on a planet where the locals don't believe your sapience, and don't understand French?
Pythagoras. Euclid. Draw out a triangle and the invalidity that proves validity!

He meets Mi Zaïus, an important prang-outan
Unlike the movie, these apes do not speak French/English, and our hero Ulyssées is having a hard time proving his intelligence. But I did learn the word « guenon », which in its use can best be translated into English as "she-monkey".
there is no separate word for monkey/ape in French, they are all singes. But I haven't found any monkeys yet, it could happen.

{ Waiting to confirm my success in showing all of my abilities, I said, stupidly, the first words that came to my head.
« Hello, how are you? I’m a human from earth. I’ve come a long way » . }
Also Ape society is about as advanced as (1960s) earth, including automobiles and standardized construction

Nous étions plongés dans une aventure mille fois plus extraordinaire que celle des premiers navigateurs terrestres et nous préparions notre esprit à affronter les étrangetés qui ont traversé l'imagination de plusieurs générations de poètes à propos des expéditions transsidérales.

Jinn and Phyllis are a couple sailing on solar sails through space, and they find a message in a bottle drifting in space (literally) and inside is a manuscript written in Earth language…
The story of an early earth superlight voyage, and Phyllis keeps on getting surprised at words like “human”

(Reading the original French)
Obvious prediction: Jinn and Phyllis are monkeys

“Countless ladders were suspended from the huge coin, and bodies and white skeletons were strewn across them, and piled up like a mountain beneath.”
Considering this coin is floating in air; he is supposed to be entering a city gate; and this is the fourth enchanted gate the army has faced, I’d call that a red flag

I’m reading by candlelight as Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor plays; guy walks into ensorcelled area…
He. He meets drunken cats. He goes to a bar and drinks thirty bowls of wine. He goes to another bar, drinks forty bowls.
He’s supposed to be leading a charge into battle.
He stumbles back to camp, and dies from alcohol intoxication. But the enemy didn’t directly hurt him, as promised. {Requiem crescendos}