hecker

Amateur essayist, anime & manga fan

Resident of Howard County, Maryland, systems engineer, and amateur essayist and data scientist. Author of the book That Type of Girl: Notes on Takako Shimura's Sweet Blue Flowers. Staff writer for Okazu.


Twitter
@hecker
Mastodon
@hecker@mastodon.social
Bluesky
@hecker.bsky.social
Email
frank@frankhecker.com

posts from @hecker tagged #Mecha

also: #mech

[I’m doing something a bit awkward here, reviewing a work by someone whom I follow on cohost, and who follows me in turn. It’s overall a positive review, but I’ve tried to be objective about places where I think it comes up short.]

Anachronisms in a literary work are often held up as flaws, but they can have their own charm — for example, translations that introduce some modern vocabulary for dramatic effect (Maria Headley turning Beowulf’s initial “Hwæt!” into “Bro!”), ancient tales recast in wholly modern language (Christopher Lough’s reworking of the Iliad in War Music and All Day Permanent Red), or present-day stories that echo ancient ones (Derek Wolcott transplanting the Trojan War and the voyages of Odysseus into the Caribbean in his Omeros).

Or, in the case of Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright by @Thaliarchus, stories set in the far future that reuse and evoke elements and works of the distant past.