gaignun | Reading

The top half of a model of Wing Gundam cradled in a hand wearing a black glove. It is mostly white, blue, and yellow, and is looking modestly into the camera.

I bought MG Wing Gundam ver.Ka back in April of 2018, which is several lifetimes ago now. Looking at that date, I momentarily wondered how I'd managed to get to a nerd convention. The Summer of the Doors, however, was a little closer to actually happening in summer; that ridiculousness started in May.

I don't think the Summer of the Doors, and by that I do mean actual physical doors not The Doors, had anything to do with not tackling Wing back then. It was more that Wing is a MG and at that point I'd never actually finished an MG. It took until this year to finish MG Infinite Justice and I'd started him back in what, 2010?

I've actually finished Wing, but I like this half-built photo best. He's got a lot of personality and while building went from rather morose to downright adorable and has settled into somewhat resigned. (I think he's cute though.)

Well, finished aside from waterslide decals, which I need both practice with and to make some decisions because like many MGs, Wing comes with a ridiculous amount of decals and the instructional photos and diagrams honestly look overdone. I also have a tiny Heero Yuy still on the runner and the urge to paint him as a youngster Gai Murakumo is intense.

The rest of my week involves getting the kitchen under control so I can keep cleaning up Monster High dolls for the nerd convention in a couple of weeks.

So much to sort through, so little time and energy.

harukami

Hello, friend! I didn't get a letter up before yuletide stuff closed but here it is now! If you started writing off the actual signups that is totally fine, though, that should have all the info you need.

( Yuletide Letter )

thawrecka

Reading:

DNF - The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - I've really liked most of this author's work that I've read (Strange Weather in Tokyo is beautiful, for example), but this turns out to be a boring mosaic novel about a sexual predator from the pov of the women he messes around. The back cover copy describes him as a [curious and complicated man whose great capacity for love may well be the course of his downfall] and like... that makes him sound interesting, and he's not. I assumed it meant tragic ill-advised love affairs and not, you know, straight up rapist. Not remotely what I'm in the mood for.

Watching:

Blood River:

Episode 22

Sword deities! Just hanging out, as they like to do. I like Bai Hehaui's red dress. I like her friendship with Su Muyu and absolutely do not ship them in the slightest.

Also, I love that she calls his umbrella (that Changhe made for him) his treasure.

Episode 24

They're like, look at this censors! This show is definitely sufficiently heterosexual! And meanwhile I do not believe Su Muyu has the slightest interest in seeing a naked woman. Also LOL they made a big fuss about how unclothed she would be during the procedure and she was still mostly clothed.

And how close Su Muyu and Su Changhe sit together at dinner! Ridiculously so!

Episode 26

is so cool! Baby Tang Lian! Mu Qingyang fanboying over Lei Yunhe! SMY and SCH and Mu Yumo looking so damn cool as they make plans together!

I also watched 10 episodes of Whispers of Fate. I thought the first few episodes were pretty rough, tbh, but I stuck it out until Xiao Shunyao showed up in episode 4. The overall show started to improve from that point. May just be on my TV, but the first bunch of episodes looked really cheap, and I do feel the sound stage-y ness of it all with the non-moving backgrounds. Also the beginning felt like a lukewarm rehash of many things, including but not limited to Mysterious Lotus Casebook and every past fantasy character Luo Yunxi has ever played. But I feel like it's gone sufficiently xianxia nonsense now that I'm drawn in and the visual flourishes seem to get more interesting as it goes on. And also, so much it's that guy! Like, it's that guy from Love Game in Eastern Fantasy! And Bai Shu is in this, too! & etc. etc.

Still don't love the older man-younger woman vibe they seem to be pushing, but that's just because that's my squick, and it's not like it takes up too much screen time. I also feel like a bunch of the actors are giving the most mediocre performances of their career (Riley Wang, you're usually better than this!), for which I blame the director, but I've seen worse, so...

I'm fully caught up on Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! and This Monster Wants to Eat Me as well. I would say the latter is kind of slow in a way that stretches my disbelief, but I am overall enjoying it, and the freak 4 freak nature of the main pairing of the former is A+.

thawrecka

I read: Salem's Lot by Stephen King for my book club, and I think everyone who claimed it was scarier than Twilight owes me $5. Though King does have it right in his introduction when he says it's a bit like Peyton Place; certainly enough of it was a soap opera with occasional appearance of vampires that I compared it to that time on Days of Our Lives when Marlena was possessed by the devil, but there continued to be non-demon possession storylines... Well, it was fine overall, I guess. (I can't truly comparee it to Peyton Place, the book, but I've watched the movie, which I had a better time with than with Salem's Lot.) And in comparison to Dracula, which I know partially inspired it... it is more sexist than Dracula, and has fewer interesting characters. I continue to be convinced that King is better when he writes short.

I watched: Well, I'm continuing to watch episodes of Blood River as they come out, and as you can guess, I'm getting increasingly unhinged about it. Not only because Su Changhe and Su Muyu love each other very much, but also because they're bringing other people into lives and trying to establish a lovely domesticity with friends and sort-of-family, but I've seen The Blood of Youth and I know where this goes. The slow motion trainwreck of this all, where if you didn't know better you might think they're dragging themselves out of the muck, but you do know better, you know they'll never be able to escape the darkness they grew up in... Absolute killer, and the fight scenes are totally bomb.

Current Music: Hozier - First Light

thawrecka

Like Real People Do (607 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 暗河传 | Blood River (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Su Changhe/Su Muyu
Characters: Su Changhe (The Blood of Youth), Su Muyu (The Blood of Youth)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene
Summary:

A little extra moment set during the flashback in episode 14.

kalloway

I am signed up for WritingMonth and so can you! If you want to be buddies, I'm 'kalloway' there as well. ^_^ My goal is 100 stories but that is 100 very short stories. Last year I managed 80 despite my life being absolutely on fire so maybe I can manage the full 100 and I think a We Didn't Start The Fire joke goes here or something.

Did the pre-signup for a secret santa in the one little gunpla discord I'm in. Offered to subsidize a local friend for the next month if necessary. (probably necessary) Gonna try to toss some cash at the food pantry. (obstructed more by their hours being counter to mine than anything - obviously a me-problem) Still debating how much I want to do with

holiday_wishes, though I suspect the annual 'I can give more!' will envelop me at some point even if I want to humbug.

Comic-con is on the 22nd so I suppose I need to actually start sorting through things. I'm burning some vacation time the week before so at least I'll be mildly rested and hopefully so tired of looking at my stuff that I just toss it in the bags of whoever walks by our table. Or something.

Finished watching the quarter's JFF films and will, as always, aspire to watch the next batch before the last possible minute.

thawrecka

I keep meaning to post here and I keep not getting around to it! All I've been doing is watching things:

• Blood River - Gong Jun's latest - is finally airing, and it is so much fun. It's in the same universe as The Blood of Youth (which had great fight scenes and friendships and which I liked very much) and Dashing Youth (a poorly structured mess, that it occurs to me was probably trying to do something ambitious, but kept cutting away from the fight scenes I was more interested in). The fight scenes in Blood River are SO COOL OMG. It's also setting a cracking pace.

My expectations were for cool wuxia fights (FULLY SATISFIED!! THE FIGHTS ARE SO COOL!!) but uh also the level of homoeroticism is off the charts. Given how I know they end up in TBOY I'm mostly like 😭 about it, but I'm very much enjoying it. There could stand to be more female characters, but the ones that are there are very cool, and I'm also very much enjoying the selection of handsome middle aged men for someone of my age and tastes to appreciate.

But oh man, Su Muyu and Su Changhe sure love each other, and isn't that messed up.

• The great Gundam watch through... sort of continues. I had to admit I was just not vibing Gundam 0080 (it's fine, but I only had access to the dub and just could not stand the voices), and I'm moving on to the next on the list, which will be whichever of what comes next I have access to on Crunchyroll or Netflix, because I'm not signing up for yet another streaming service.

• What if I just... watched Kaiju no 8 again from the beginning. What if that. Well, I'm doing it, and it's honestly better than I remember. Still think it could stand to have more female characters, though.

• I don't know if I mentioned I watched all of season 1 of Chainsaw Man, but I did, because of course I did, it's about a guy who grows a chainsaw from his head. I also went to see the Reze Arc movie on the weekend, and I'm pleased that it had Mr Chainsaws himself riding a shark into a fight with the embodiment of the human fear of typhoons. I did not stay for any post-credits scene. I am too old for it. Apparently there is one, and I'll catch it when I rewatch the movie on Crunchy some day.

This series is like a fever dream someone had of merging 90s Tarantino films with cheap 90s VHS horror in a mad science experiment and animating it, and just for that reason I'm happy it exists.

Some more things I like about it

- It is a sleek 100 minutes. No time wasting, I didn't have to take a bathroom break even once. Get in, get the job done, go home. A+

- I knew I liked that 'everyone wants Chainsaw's heart, but what about Denji's heart' line from the trailer, but I didn't realise it happened WHILE DENJI IS STANDING ON TOP OF A CAR AKI IS WEAVING IN AND OUT OF BUSY TRAFFIC insane business

- Aki grabbing Angel Devil's hand to save his life even though he knows it will shorten his lifespan even more!!! All the Aki and Angel Devil scenes were so fucking good, they absolutely hit

- Honestly I wasn't sure I was vibing most of the film until Reze bit Denji's tongue and was about to gouge his heart out and Beem jumped up (seemingly out of nowhere) to rescue Denji from the scenario and kick things off

- THAT ENDING!!! Revealing Reze's tragic backstory, but of course she can't be allowed to live, and in come Makima and Angel Devil monstrously powerful to fix that problem

Chainsaw Man is certainly not without sexism, but I appreciate that it has characters like Himeno who gives cigarettes to underage boys and once accidentally threw up in Denji's mouth, and Power, who will sell you up the river to save her cat. Everyone of any gender is a ratbag and kind of charmingly shitty, and I love that. And I also love that sometimes it reminds you how truly horrific Denji's childhood of deprivation and poverty was, to really punch you in the face with a feeling when you just wanted to laugh at a dumb monster fight.

• It turns out I never gave my actual thoughts on Kimetsu no Yaiba after watching the entire anime (including the Mugen Train and Infinity Castle movies) in a week. Here it is: Kimetsu no Yaiba is equal parts (1) Wow, this sword fight looks so insanely cool! (2) but the sexism is not great (3) wow, this awkwardly placed flashback just keeps going and going and going (4) this fight has gone on so long it's no longer cool; when will this demon fucking die already.

And yet? I watched the whole thing in a week?

I think the thing is it starts off so good. I watched the first four episodes at a New Year's Eve party several years ago and was really impressed, so when I heard about the good reviews the Infinity Castle movie was getting I figured I should start again from the beginning. And it does really hit the ground running - the beginning and middle of season 1 are paced so well. And then it's never well paced again HAHAHA. It's good at making clear the stakes and has great tension; a lot of the series has fights and conflicts where if things go one way one horrible thing could happen, and if they go another another horrible thing could happen, and it threads that needle of making you believe that most of the time it comes out in the middle just fine because it works at it. And the fights are brutal! Tanjiro's loss of most of his family and his codependent relationship with Nezuko, and the people who give him a chance in the beginning, and how hard he works to train - all that works well.

But oh man, the awkwardly placed long flashbacks. The worst is in the show when the Love Hashira has that long flashback about trying to change to be marriageable and learning it's okay if instead of finding romance she has friendship & etc. etc. and that's great, I support that arc, but it came in the middle of a fight that had nothing to do with that. And I swear the flashback in the Infinity Castle movie was 40 minutes long - I went for a long bathroom break in the middle of it and missed nothing.

I'm still going to see the next movie when it comes out, though.

kalloway

Alas, gonna be AO3 links for most of this, sorry. ^^;; But I've seen this going around and sure why not?

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

A — Aches & Pains, The Third Magic (Arddu/Morgan)
B — Book Fair and Apocalypse, Rage of Bahamut (Mino, Fighter, Lucifer, Azazel, etc.)
C — Candlefire, The Book of Life (Joaquín Mondragón/Adelita Sánchez/Scardelita Sánchez)
D — Dark Stormy Knight, Kingdom of Heroes (Osric/Arthur)
E — End of the Sofa, Saint Seiya (Ikki/Mime)
F — Faraway Ever After, Seven Princes of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth (Zan/Gideon)
G — Geometry, Machine City Knights (Surya/Astri)
H — Hands Firmly Together, The Wrong Bridegroom (Dannette/Gisele)
I — Internet Famous, 11'8" Bridge (The Bridge)
J — Just the Other Day, Ys (Feena, Reah)
K — Knit to Be Tied, Fire Emblem: Awakening (Arvis/Cordelia)
L — Lefts, Cars (Lightning, Mater)
M — Medicine, Atelier Online (Rose Hip, Netl)
N — Now, Ar tonelico (Lyner/Ayatane)
O — One More Curse, Brave Nine (Vermont/Dwen)
P — Perfect Storm, UTAU (Teto)
Q — Quiet Worry Triskelion (Rose, Eternity)
R — Raindrops, Soul Calibur (Sophitia/Taki)
S — Scales, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (Darc/Kharg)
T — Tempt, Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 (Ribbons)
U — Unbroken, Here is Greenwood (Hasukawa)
V — Verse, Dance in the Vampire Bund (Akira/Mina)
W — Wondrous and Beautiful, Alice in the Country of Clover (Alice/Vivaldi)
X — Xialen, Tales of Xillia (Jude)
Y — You Owe Me, Kiddy Grade (Viola, Cesario)
Z — Zippers, Gundam SEED Astray (Gai/Elijah)
Symbol - (sur)Prizes, Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Felix/Lysithea)
Numbers - 3-2-1, Infinite Undiscovery (Capell, Edward)

28/26, 2497 fics on AO3 not counting any original fic because fuck AO3, man, and I stopped archiving there like two and a half years ago so idek, 3000 fics?

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

Profile

Tara

FRANS

Reading

Several Summers Later

Yuletide Letter 2025

(no subject)

(no subject)

Blood River fic

I'm not even doing a roundup this month.

A very long post apparently

Alphabet Fic Meme

Database maintenance

Profile