Okay. So. Vitas. Fucken amazing Latvian-born Russian pop opera singer. Attempting to sing his Opera #2 is how I discovered that I have a separate head range in the whistle register that upsets my dogs when I sing it. This is a dude who can reach notes that sound like dolphins would use them to echolate, or as I said when I first watched the linked video: "My god, that man is a a walking, piano-playing whistling kettle".

Anyway, as pigtail87 and I were discussing Allelujah's combined Russian/Chinese heritage the other day, I confessed that ever since I decided that Sergei was Alle's father somewhere early season 1, I've been wanting to do fanart of Alle in a hat and a scarf, standing one of the domes of St. Basil's Cathedral, singing Opera #2 (because in my head, Alle is a Russian countertenor who can totally sing operatic notes that would shatter glass in a hundred-foot radius).

Several digs on YouTube later, she found this amazing, hilarious video and showed it to me: a Taiwanese professional singer covering Opera #2 by dubbing it in a mixture of gibberish, Chinese, and Hokkien:



I COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING. Especially when he started singing "OMG cannot hear lyrics" in Hokkien.

(See, if you want to make a Singaporean laugh until their sides ache, all you'd have to do is to dub over everything in Hokkien. I found this out after thurisaz83 and I were discussing Gundam dubbed in Cantonese, and I said, "Screw Cantonese, I want to hear b00bies dubbed in Hokkien." And then we tried translating a few choice phrases into Hokkien *coughIAMGUNDAMcough*. We took several minutes to catch our breaths after that.)

Anyway, fucking amazing video, as I said. I am incredibly impressed that he not only managed to hit every single note on key, he managed to do so while playing the acoustic guitar accompaniment. Fuck. Watch it and be wowed too.

While we're at it, here's the original live performance of Opera #2 that introduced me to the wonder that is Vitas back in 2006. This time with Russian and Chinese subs (not the nuclear sort).

The Chinese subs aren't all that accurate, though. I was under the impression that "Plachet opyat nado mnoy" means "it cries once again about me", and not "I cry once again", Jesus Christ, cases, people, cases.

Also: Il dolce suono. You know the opera song featured in the Fifth Element, one of my favorite cinematic sequences ever? Yes. That song. He covered it, which is something I only discovered the day before. Although the techno arrangement is different and sounds a bit like something Sarah Brightman would do. (I still prefer the version in the Fifth Element, though. The sopranista had a lot better control of her voice.)


...aaaaand that's your dose of utter randomness from yours truly for today.

I don't know what came over me.

Maybe I was looking for ways to torture myself, maybe I was tired and not thinking straight, maybe my dog had been abusing substances and it got to me after she peed all over my trousers (true story). Whatever the cause, I crawled online, typed "www.fanfiction.net" into my browser, and started looking for a good, porny Kyou Kara Maou! read.

My eyes.

They're bleeding.

I'm not talking about things like plot, characterization, or any one of the other little details that, when done wrong, put the 'bad' in 'badfic'. I'm talking about things like proper punctuation. Things like knowing the difference between past tense and present tense. Things like knowing the difference between "WAILS" and "WALES". Dear fantard, I get that you probably think Prince Charles is a whiny bitch, based on the fact that he has a whiny-bitch sort of face and name, but-- no. Wails. Wales. DIFFERENT WORDS.

How hard can it be?

Fanfiction.net, I'm not even going to touch your DEATH NOTE section. I'm not even going within a moon's orbital distance of it in a hazmat suit. If your little budding authors can tear apart a farcial series that was pretty damned retarded to begin with, I can't even imagine the sort of travesties they might inflict on a series that has, you know, a modicum of intelligence.

I now know the reason why fanficrants exists. Seriously, beforehand I thought all those posters were either being anal, or making it up.

Now I know. I know the terrible truth.

This has officially been the worst experience of my day. And yes. The bit where my crazyass Pomeranian decided to take a piddle on me while I was carrying her was taken into that tally.


[1] And this, this officially wins the award for Worst Ever Entry Title, with bonus nods for Most Uneccessary Reference to Bodily Functions.
[2] Also, I should make myself an icon that reads "Fanfiction.net: It's more fun getting peed on by a dog. Trust me, I've tried."
[3] Dammit, now I feel like writing horribly, horribly, horribly lurid fic just to make up for the torture. And to teach the ffnet-ers the fine tenets of punctuation and grammar. Yuurixeverybody mass orgies, anyone?

...[4] While we're on the topic of Kyou Kara Maou!, why do the light novels have the weirdest-ass references ever? Yuuri mentions Narnia, compares Wolfram to a boyband member, assigns the Godfather theme to Gwendal, mashes Star Wars, Star Trek and Red Dwarf into one sentence... and has a random dream in which he's singing Poljusko Polje. POLJUSKO POLJE. What? Only my favorite Rohirrim Slavic folksong ever? That's about as random as the theme song for the Ghost In The Shell anime being in fucken' RUSSIAN. ПОЛЮШКО ПОЛЕ, ПОЛЮШКО ШИРОКО ПОЛЕ, ЕДУТ, ЭЙ, НО ПОЛЮ ГЕРО-О-О-И, ЭХ, ДА КРАСНОИ АРМИИ ГЕРОИ....