Procrastination Mark IISo... The rest of this Ghosts fic is just not happening. It's not coming out of me. I haven't written any fic at all in months aside from a few contextless scenes in a different, dead fandom over discord with a friend. In the time I've been trying to finish this fic I have instead:
...and I'm also seriously considering starting up a playthrough of FF7. I think I have a problem. If I had to make a serious guess, I'd say it's that I've made finishing this fic into a chore for myself. Like I said in my previous blog entry, "I promised myself that on my next rewatch [of Ghosts] I'd take notes for the meta and ship manifestos I'd like to write", and now it really has just become a chore... Plus, with how much IRL stuff I've got going on, I can't really devote myself to activities that require uninterrupted concentration--- For the moment, I kind of have to be able to get up at a moment's notice. (I know I'm being extremely vague about my RL, but anyone who knows me well enough to be reading this blog probably already knows what my current circumstances are anyway...) Anyway, Scum Villain is great. I already knew this from book one, but man, this series really is tailored to the fujoshi of taste... It's so good that I almost feel like I don't even need to go read fic for it. Yeah. That's how satisfying it is with the canon ship. (Though I do need more of Sha Hualing and Liu Mingyan... Frieren is also really good. Definitely the best new and current anime I've watched in years. It scores a zero on the Anime Bullshit scale, so it's a good choice if you hate fanservice and the like (though I have a high tolerance for Anime Bullshit, and often actually enjoy Anime Bullshit, it's sometimes nice to be able to watch something family friendly on a warm afternoon rather than my usual otaku trash at dusk). It's sooo yuriful, and there's definitely good potential for m/m ships, too. I shipped Heiter/Himmel from the beginning, and there's some nice art on Pixiv. ...There's also some nice art on Pixiv of Frieren/Fern*, but I'll let you go discover that for yourself. Aside from that, I definitely ship Sein/Gorilla (Duh. Separated childhood friends where one's journey is because of a promise to the other), Lawine/Kanne (Duh. Bickering yet codependent girl best friends), Wirbel/Scharf (I just think Sharf is kind of pathetic and I think Wirbel's protection instinct is fun), (also maybe Denken/Richter? I could see it...) and in a shocking turn of events, I actually ship Ubel/Land! Yeah, I know! I was also shocked! I haven't genuinely cared about an anime het ship since Franky/Robin*, and I started shipping that literally over a decade ago! But their relationship is so interesting. She's obviously a manipulative, mouthy, bloodthirsty person, and paring her up with someone so closed off is fascinating, especially when him being closed off is also encouraged because of her ability to copy others' spells based on empathizing with them. I like the concept that in the process of trying to empathize with him so she can steal his ability, she actually ends up wanting to empathize with him for real, and when he eventually lets his guard down, he's no longer concerned about her just trying to use him. It's a very fun element to a romance with many obstacles to overcome. A devilish chatty smug murderous girl and a guy who pretends to be cold, uncaring, calculated, and underhanded but actually wants to avoid killing people... An interesting dynamic for sure. It goes to show, Frieren is so good it made me care about canon hetbait. A serious accomplishment.
Sein seemed like a promising match at first--- Him already thinking of Stark and Fern as a young couple made it an interesting dynamic from the get-go, and then I considered the potential of him being so upset about missing his chance to adventure with Gorilla that in a moment of emotion something would happen with Stark, but in the end I think he's too devoted to finding Gorilla (and a hot onee-san, I guess) to consider being with any other guy, especially one as young as Stark... Then, I considered shipping Stark with Wirbel, but they barely talked to each other for five seconds, and Wirbel's interactions with Scharf have a much bigger moe factor, so that was out too... I'm considering starting the manga, so perhaps later on there'll be a suitable match for him. Other than having great characters, the animation itself is gorgeous. The scenes where they're out in nature are so beautiful and cozy-feeling. I'm a big fan in general of anime nature backdrops, but this anime really stands out. The world doesn't feel generic or cookie-cutter at all--- it makes you believe it's a real fantasy world. The fight scenes are also great. They don't get boring or feel drawn-out. I never felt like I wanted the fight to be over sooner so we could get back to character interactions, which is fairly uncommon for me. On to Master and Commander, I've only gotten to chapter 4 since I feel compelled to highlight everything even mildly interesting as I read, and I end up going back and re-reading my favorite parts, so progress is a little slower than it was when I was reading, say, Scum Villain. The prose is just so much more dense with information, it really makes me want to pour over every sentence. I've already got several colors of highlights for bits that reveal character traits, bits that reveal information about the world and time period, bits that made me laugh, and, of course, highlighted in pink, bits I can twist to be shippy. I'll definitely be making a page soon with my favorite quotes from the series... Finally, I've seen the ninth and tenth Doctors' seasons of Doctor Who before, but it was a very casual watchthrough. I ended up losing interest by 11, so we'll see if that happens again or not, but I haven't actually ever watched Torchwood. Many jokes aged extremely terribly, but that's to be expected for any show from the 2000s, tbh. It's also a little exhausting with how edgy and dark and adult it's trying to be, but hopefuly that's just the growing pains of the first season. ...But I'm still powering through because I want to experience the legendary aura of Jack/Ianto.* It is kind of amazing how a majority of the cast is just outwardly bisexual, right there on the screen for you to see. It kind of feels like it's lulling me into a false sense of security before the next randomly inserted unneccesary queerphobic (more specifically transphobic and lesbophobic) bit. As far as New Who goes, Nine was always my favorite. I love Tennant's characterization of The Doctor too, of course, (I mean, who doesn't?) but now I'm trying to watch things in chronological order, or at least release date. And I got a little ahead with Doctor Who, so it's mandatory for me to now watch up until episode 11 or so of these fucks who can't work together. See, usually while watching Ten I end up occasionally wishing there were more Nine episodes, or just wanting to see how Nine would react differently in some of the situations Ten was put into. However... Now that I'm watching in order, I instead find myself increasingly desperate to get back to watching Ten's adventures instead of scraping along through each episode of Torchwood... ...I really, really miss Ten, now. As much as I do like Jack and Tosh and have grown to like the (implied) complexity of Ianto despite his previous shitty decisions, Gwen and Owen's whole thing grates on me pretty badly. They're just awful for each other, but the show really wants me to believe they're madly in Gwen's okay, I guess, but she's kind of boring as she is the entrypoint sort of character--- created to allow us, the viewer, to learn alongside her. Hopefully she gets more characterization of her own later on in the show? Right now she's sort of terminally "The Newbie" with not much else, similarly to how owen is basically just "The Jerk". I made a joke to a friend that, especially given the time period the shows were made in, Owen reminds me a lot of Rodney from Stargate Atlantis, except he's way more of a letch and way, way less lovable. Which is saying kind of a lot, considering how many times Rodney has to learn the exact same lesson of "Don't be a raging asshole to people just because you're probably smarter than them." ...At least Rodney never used alien tech to trick people into sleeping with him... I also keep finding myself skeptical about who the team chooses to spare and who they choose to execute without sympathy. Shows with multiple episode writers tend to grate on me for this kind of stuff. I really would like to get back to writing for Ghosts soon, though, so maybe I can figure out a way to just watch it on my computer with a text file of notes right beside the window playing the show. I dunno. Maybe it's that I've been engaging with too much British media and I need a break from it with some anime/manga...* We'll see, I guess... (Though, to be honest, I'd be more likely to use any free time I get for the Riku story campaign I finally got to in Chain of Memories... Whoops...)
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I wanna see if I can go through and translate some of the shorter fan manga for myself.
