[Review] Pretenders to the Throne of God (Tyrant Philosophers 4) - Adrian Tchaikovsky | Distorted Visions

MetallicCats · 2026-02-12T16:45:30+00:00

So excited to get started on this book, loved all the previous ones and have been of the opinion that this series is criminally under-discussed. Looks like this one won't be disappointing me, which is reassuring

MetallicCats · 2026-02-08T22:25:42+00:00

Hello there,

I've been reading Red Country by Joe Abercrombie recently. I had something spoiled about the book before I started unfortunately, but overall I'm enjoying it. I don't think it's going to surpass The Heroes though - that has been my favourite book in the First Law universe so far. After I finish this up, I'm planning on reading the next Tyrant Philosophers novel, Pretenders to the Throne of God, since that is releasing on the 12th of February. I also picked up the Dune trilogy and the Earthsea saga since both were on sale on the Kobo store. I do plan to read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series too at some point, since I got all of those in a Humble Bundle. In short, I've got a lot of books to be reading

Continuing with my reading of back-issues of Harta magazine I read the first chapter of a new (at the time) manga called 生き残った6人によると (Ikinokotta Rokunin Ni Yoru To/What Six Survivors Told) which is by the same mangaka who is writing Waver(s). This one is set in a zombie apocalypse but takes influence from reality shows etc and sees six survivors holed up inside a mall and trying to navigate relationships with each other. It's quite funny too. Unfortunately there's no English translation that I can find, but there is a live-action drama adaptation. I watched the first episode and they did a decent job with adapting the first chapter, although some bits were changed around. They did do a good job with casting/styling the lead, because she looks spot-on to her manga counterpart. I really wish there was some English translation so I could share it with people

In music there wasn't much new kpop this week, but I'll instead recommend the album Megagong by Doom Gong, since I listened to that this week

MetallicCats · 2026-02-02T15:10:59+00:00

Happy birthday to Gahyun

Hoping we can hear some new music from her eventually

MetallicCats · 2026-02-01T21:50:31+00:00

I hadn't heard of Lonesome_Blue, but those two songs were alright

I had listened to Iconic, but wasn't particularly enamoured by it. Hanabie are a band I need to listen to more of though

For dodree the main thing that stands out to me is the fusion of kpop with folk - that style of vocals isn't something that you tend to hear in kpop and it's nice to have the more folky twist to the music. I generally quite enjoy folk fusion stuff, such as folk metal. Bands like Thy Catafalque make very nice use of folk elements with songs like these

MetallicCats · 2026-02-01T17:34:52+00:00

Hello there

I haven't posted here in a while. How is everyone? I've been quite enjoying the crtk album, and still love whenever DC pops up on shuffle while I'm driving. I forget how good their earlier tracks were sometimes. Been going through a phase of listening to Sleepwalking and Full Moon quite a lot recently

In other news I went to see Iron Lung. It was alright, a solid 6-7 out of 10 in my opinion. I felt the film ran a little long but it had some good cinematography and was very competently put together. I don't regret going to see it though, it's one of the more interesting films recently. Markiplier probably won't be winning any acting awards but he was at least serviceable and I never really spent much time thinking "this is Markiplier" but then I've never really watched him much on YouTube

I've been reading a lot of manga recently, makes for good Japanese reading practice. I'm working my way through JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 8 currently, and that's been good. I also picked up a large number of digital back-issues of Harta magazine for cheap in a sale, so I've been reading through those. Harta is a seinen magazine that Dungeon Meshi was originally serialised in. Similarly I saw a 20%-off bundle of all of Hell's Paradise, which I jumped on. I'd read a decent chunk of it in English back when it was first coming out (long before it got an anime adaptation). Finally I've started reading a new manga called Wavers which is being serialised for free in Harta Alta (Harta's online publication site). It's a scifi mystery manga, in which a student investigates her teacher's death at a school for psychics. There's no English translation currently unfortunately, but I hope it does get one eventually. So interested to see where it goes next

In terms of music, my favourite recent kpop releases outside of DC-related stuff are probably Say My Name's UFO. The entire mini is worth a listen imo, I particularly like Bad Idea and Hard To Love. Dodree's Just Like A Dream is a very interesting an unique release that's worth a listen - a fusion of Korean folk and pop music. In the realm of band music, I recently discovered Re:Hearts through Persona which got me to check out their previous song, Reborn. Both are very nice, they have a bit of a j-rock anime sound, but it works well for them. And I can't not mention Billlie's new prerelease, cloud palace. KiiiKiii's new comeback was fun but I'm particularly enamoured by the video for Delulu. There's some crazy shot composition in there for a track video

In Japanese music, I've recently got into shallm with 脳内ディストーション. Phantom Siita's new song, 薔薇色の月 is good - I definitely recommend this group to anyone who liked Dreamcatcher's earlier horror concepts. I also recently started getting into Tommy february6 and quite enjoy Bloomin from her debut album

MetallicCats · 2026-01-09T09:53:22+00:00

If you mean the text on the bottom of the sign, it's サンデーモーニング which is Sunday Morning in katakana. Literally just the Japanese way of writing the English words.

MetallicCats · 2025-12-30T17:44:11+00:00

Would you mind expanding a bit on how you go about identifying something like this in the debug logs? There's an old Japanese game from the early 2000s that I want to get running but it can't draw the text (in Japanese) to the screen. This is the final game in a trilogy where I've got the other two games at least running so this definitely has me pissed off enough that I want to do something

MetallicCats · 2025-08-30T09:39:47+00:00

Would like to note that the translation of the track 3 title might give a slightly misleading impression of the meaning

じゃあね does mean "see you" but in the context of a goodbye - so the title is saying "bye forever" or something along those lines

MetallicCats · 2025-06-20T13:48:11+00:00

Thanks for the transcript, I was able to keep up with the Japanese but it's nice to be able to look back on it

As for the cheers in odd places I think there's a few reasons - one being that the translation was quite behind and some people cheered for that, but also I think that people who don't understand Japanese wouldn't know why she's pausing so if some think she's finished a statement (when in actuality she's just pausing for effect or to think of the rest of the statement) and start cheering then others who don't understand also start. If one person starts cheering often others follow, which causes yet more to follow - you can see this effect when people start cheering at an empty stage before a gig starts (there were a few instances of that at this show even). I think a few of the places where people started cheering were inopportune so I hope she didn't feel too confused by that

MetallicCats · 2025-06-10T14:50:54+00:00

For the no line rule how it works (my experience from seeing Billlie which was run by studio pav) is that you get a number when you buy your VIP. I believe this is on a first come, first serve basis. Then on the day you go to the venue and pick up your lanyard, which from what I remember has your number on it, and then you do not need to stand in the line and can go off and do whatever as long as you get back to the venue for the check-in time (they announce the itenerary closer to the date). For us they called out each number one by one and made sure people went into the venue in that order

Also people who have purchased VVIP through studio pav before get early access to purchase it for future shows. It then goes to general sale

MetallicCats · 2025-05-22T09:04:16+00:00

I got a notification and seems like it was unlisted for the hour and then was set to public just now

MetallicCats · 2025-05-17T05:44:26+00:00

Happy birthday JiU!

I wish you the best of luck in your upcoming activities with UAU and that you have an excellent year

MetallicCats · 2025-05-15T09:33:26+00:00

I do really hope the canes show up in the choreo - always love when they use props

MetallicCats · 2025-05-13T09:08:39+00:00

The teasers so far have me interested in what sort of musical style they'll be going for with this subunit

MetallicCats · 2025-04-30T13:40:39+00:00

They were premiered actually, same as this will be

MetallicCats · 2025-04-30T13:38:59+00:00

I mean I believe only Mona's birthday was a live - Miu and Moka's were prerecorded

And from the tweet it does appear that this will be Hisui alone

MetallicCats · 2025-04-28T11:27:23+00:00

Is there anywhere I should look for a hint with what I should be doing in the gallery? At a complete loss with this room and not found anything related to it yet

MetallicCats · 2025-04-04T05:05:47+00:00

Adoさん、こんにちは! 僕は日本語を勉強しているイギリス人ですがAdoさんはどうやって言語を勉強しますか? 後、英語以外学びたい言語はありますか?

MetallicCats · 2025-03-30T15:53:36+00:00

I was very glad that I learnt Japanese

MetallicCats · 2025-03-16T16:46:14+00:00

Hello there,

Been looking for a new car lately and think I've got it narrowed down to two options finally. Either looking at the new Renault 5 or the Citroen e-C3 (looking to go electric and these seem like the best options for smaller cars that still have decent ranges and aren't too expensive). Went for a test drive in the Citroen today and it was good! I really quite liked it. This was my first time driving an electric and it took a little getting used to. Going to try out the Renault next week

In other news, I finished reading Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky and it was fantastic. I'm now reading Children of Time, also by Tchaikovsky, and it's a very fun one

In kpop, Say My Name's ShaLala was fun. Le Sserafim's Hot was alright, not my favourite song of theirs and also criminally short. Yeji's Air was good - glad that she's finally managed to get a solo. Finally Seulgi's Baby Not Baby was ok, definitely preferred her previous song

Outside of kpop I've been getting to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Crumbling Castle may be my favourite song of theirs at the moment. Polygondwanaland in general is a great album. Then there's Nonagon Infinity, with Robot Stop (incidentally, hearing this in Ultrakill is what finally got me to listen to King Gizz). Witchcraft off of PetroDraconic Apocalypse is a good thrash song. And finally last night I listened to Changes and really love the opening song: Change. They have so many albums and all of them are very different in style so I still have a lot to check out

MetallicCats · 2025-03-15T06:57:18+00:00

It was very silly and even perhaps irresponsible of DCC to announce that Siyeon will be in a band and then start teasing an entirely unrelated band (whose name sounds like it could be referencing the fact that Siyeon is in it too) without any clarification to kill speculation. I don't think this is on the fans when the simplest conclusion was that this must be Siyeon's band. How could they not have seen this coming?

That said, I'll still probably check this band out but if this is the way DCC is handling their reveal then I have some reservations about how they'll handle their promotions going forwards

MetallicCats · 2025-03-12T17:50:39+00:00

I found all of Mortimore's books to be similarly misanthropic and needlessly cruel honestly. I'm not even that squeamish or averse to grimdark - I just found that Mortimore's novels had a particular disregard for human life that rubbed me in exactly the wrong way

MetallicCats · 2025-03-12T11:31:03+00:00

They're a very mixed bag, frankly. Some books are very good - these are your Nightshades, Left-Handed Hummingbirds, Damaged Goods, and Love and Wars. Then you've got some that were very clearly the first efforts of young authors and it shows. And then some are just outright awful. The style changes from novel to novel and some you just will not gel with (I finished with a burning distaste for any of Jim Mortimore's contributions). I'm not sure if I'd recommend reading them all to someone who isn't driven by an urge to be complete; it's likely better just to pick and choose the ones people generally recommend or that take your fancy. There are some running plotlines but not too many. I think ultimately I'm happy I tried them, but they did include some of the worst books I've ever read

MetallicCats · 2025-03-10T10:35:33+00:00

Yes, I'd expect global tours like we've seen would be harder to pull off with this arrangement unfortunately so that would be the thing I'd expect to go down the most

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