(no subject)
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I
know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
"The colony still had air, but humidity had fallen so low that, eight months after the Battle of Loum, Texas had become a near desert. The livestock had all been seized by Zeon forces, and the former residents had either escaped to Federation territory or surrendered to Zeon. The colony was now totally deserted."
(Note: This excerpt is much more amusing if you imagine the narration occurring as Char and Lalah ride through Texas colony in an old west covered wagon.)
Anyway, this brings me to the fact that I recently started reading Tomino's Gundam novelization again. I picked it up a while back but only made it through the parts that cover the events in the original series. Thus it is now time for....
Already on the fifth page of the first chapter we have a slapping scene. Just in case some of the readers weren't sure they'd picked up a Gundam novel. Amuro (who's a cadet rather than a civilian here) gets smacked around for vague reasons by the punctuation-abusing, one-handed Lt. (jg) Ralv:
"'Not a bad dodge for an idiot with his head in the clouds... But not good enough! You two on either side of mister Amuro! Restrain him!!'
As ordered, Chief Petty Officers Ryu and Kai reluctantly held Amuro's arms. Ralv then grabbed him by the collar with his right hand, and slapped him across the face four times in a row with his left"
The cadet things helps the plot make slightly more sense than it does in the series, where a bunch of civilian kids get shanghaied. For one thing, Amuro actually receives some flight training, rather than just reading the Gundam manual on the fly. Of course, other issues are raised, like why the hell did Kai volunteer for the military? And why hasn't he been court marshaled and kicked out yet?
Anyway... White Base Pegasus pulls into Side Seven and things go from there exactly as they do in the movies/series as Char's Musai attacks. Random Federation Cadet #5, Sean Crane, buys the farm (SEAAAAN NOOOOO!!!), resulting in this deeply icky passage on page 34: "...what appeared to be a long cloth belt stream[ed] out of the suit, apparently dyed bright red by blood. A piece of the exploding Core Fighter must have hit his friend, Amuro surmised, only to realize a moment later that the 'cloth belt' was his friend's intestines, unraveling before him."
Hardcore.
Amuro and friends then run around ducking machine gunfire and flying body parts and generally being totally, completely useless. That is, until Amuro finds a functioning Gundam and promptly Gundamjacks it. Hey, don't act like you wouldn't have done the same.
Amuro slashes up one of the Zakus running amuck in the colony and accidentally sets off a nuclear explosion. Oops. Thus comes the end of Zeon Ensign Gene. (GEEEEEENE NOOOOOOOOO!!) And also the end of chapter one.
In total
Death count: Two named characters, enough unnamed backgrounders to fill a colony
Slap count: Four for Amuro. You think it's bad now, kid? Just wait till Bright gets his hands on you.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I
know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
"The colony still had air, but humidity had fallen so low that, eight months after the Battle of Loum, Texas had become a near desert. The livestock had all been seized by Zeon forces, and the former residents had either escaped to Federation territory or surrendered to Zeon. The colony was now totally deserted."
(Note: This excerpt is much more amusing if you imagine the narration occurring as Char and Lalah ride through Texas colony in an old west covered wagon.)
Anyway, this brings me to the fact that I recently started reading Tomino's Gundam novelization again. I picked it up a while back but only made it through the parts that cover the events in the original series. Thus it is now time for....
Already on the fifth page of the first chapter we have a slapping scene. Just in case some of the readers weren't sure they'd picked up a Gundam novel. Amuro (who's a cadet rather than a civilian here) gets smacked around for vague reasons by the punctuation-abusing, one-handed Lt. (jg) Ralv:
"'Not a bad dodge for an idiot with his head in the clouds... But not good enough! You two on either side of mister Amuro! Restrain him!!'
As ordered, Chief Petty Officers Ryu and Kai reluctantly held Amuro's arms. Ralv then grabbed him by the collar with his right hand, and slapped him across the face four times in a row with his left"
The cadet things helps the plot make slightly more sense than it does in the series, where a bunch of civilian kids get shanghaied. For one thing, Amuro actually receives some flight training, rather than just reading the Gundam manual on the fly. Of course, other issues are raised, like why the hell did Kai volunteer for the military? And why hasn't he been court marshaled and kicked out yet?
Anyway... White Base Pegasus pulls into Side Seven and things go from there exactly as they do in the movies/series as Char's Musai attacks. Random Federation Cadet #5, Sean Crane, buys the farm (SEAAAAN NOOOOO!!!), resulting in this deeply icky passage on page 34: "...what appeared to be a long cloth belt stream[ed] out of the suit, apparently dyed bright red by blood. A piece of the exploding Core Fighter must have hit his friend, Amuro surmised, only to realize a moment later that the 'cloth belt' was his friend's intestines, unraveling before him."
Hardcore.
Amuro and friends then run around ducking machine gunfire and flying body parts and generally being totally, completely useless. That is, until Amuro finds a functioning Gundam and promptly Gundamjacks it. Hey, don't act like you wouldn't have done the same.
Amuro slashes up one of the Zakus running amuck in the colony and accidentally sets off a nuclear explosion. Oops. Thus comes the end of Zeon Ensign Gene. (GEEEEEENE NOOOOOOOOO!!) And also the end of chapter one.
In total
Death count: Two named characters, enough unnamed backgrounders to fill a colony
Slap count: Four for Amuro. You think it's bad now, kid? Just wait till Bright gets his hands on you.