Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: A very sacked out big orange boy on the couch.

I have not been doing a ton of reading of anything 'normal,' like a novel. But, I have read a bunch of manga. For some reason, I've been on a yuri kick and so I have read (or am in the middle of reading):

• Even If It Was Just Once, I Regret It  / Ichido Dake Demo, Koukai Shitemasu by Miyahara Miyakon (yuri)
• Today, We Continue Our Lives Together Under One Roof by Inui Ayu (yuri) 
• That Girl Through the Viewfinder / Fainda-goshi no ano ko by Kabocha (yuri)
• Super Cub by Kanitan (shounen, slice-of-life)

I have not finished the first one and some of the rest are still in the process of being scanlated by the various pirate sites that do such things, alas. I have written reviews of all of these over on my manga reviewing site, if anyone is actually curious what I thought of them. (You can find that site here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/)

On a side note, I started Mangakast when I thought Mason and I might record silly little podcasts together several years ago. (His voice hadn't dropped, so listening to it now is kind of a trip.) We never had any intention of having any kind of real production value, but we had a brief moment of fame when we came in second on a Bleach trivia contest run by a fairly popular (at the time) manga review vlogger, Tekking. We had one day of over two thousand hits. Beyond that one blip, however, I've never had much traffic. We gave up on the weekly podcast idea, but I continued to use the site to review anything manga related that I read.  Like, anything. If I read it, I wrote something about it. I've just kept that up over the last several years mostly imagining myself talking to myself, you know? Kind of like here, a reading journal of sorts.

Lo, I just crested 200 subscribers.

Which maybe still doesn't seem like a lot? But I really very much do this thing as an afterthought. I pander to no trend. I don't know why, but I find it kind of charming that this stupid little site has slowly gained even this much popularity. 

Anyway, the things I'm watching are probably more interesting.

• "Super Cub" (simulcast on Funimation). The ridiculously slice-of-life story of a "nothing" girl who discovers freedom and friendship after she spontaneously buys a scooter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Cub_(novel_series)  Possibly my current favorite thing.
• "Those Snow White Notes" (simulcast on Crunchyroll)  An anime I swear was invented to drum up interest in the traditional Japanese, three-stringed instrument called a 'shamisen,' only they accidentally made an AWESOME  story.  The music, in a surprise to no one, is pretty damn amazing. The opening song kills. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Snow_White_Notes
• "Odd Taxi," (simulcast on Crunchyroll). I don't even know how to tell you what this is, but remember, like, a hundred years ago, when there was a brief trend to take weird things people said and film animals who seemed to be saying them? "Odd Taxi" is kind of like that, only animated. It follows the life of a taxi driver who is a walrus for no apparent reason, and who picks up random passengers, and it shouldn't work but I am tuning in weekly, help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Taxi
• ."Tokyo Revengers," (simulcast on Crunchyroll). A fairly straight-forward time-travel crime solving anime with yakuza. For reasons I do not fully comprehend, insanely popular in Japan right now. It has a live-action TV show and anime running concurrently.  Why? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Revengers
• "Joran the Princess of Snow and Blood," (simulcast on Crunchyroll). A weird post-apocalyptic shifter assassin story? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joran:_The_Princess_of_Snow_and_Blood
• "Tsurune," an anime that is 'Free," except with Japanese archery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsurune

I am behind on a number of these because I did not intend to be watching so many things that were releasing weekly. 

Anything of interest that you're watching or reading or otherwise consuming lately?

 I spent a good deal of yesterday attempting to clean out the in-box of my AO3 account. (Archive of Our Own, for those don't know. It's a major warehouse for fan fic and is a recent Hugo award winning site.)

I should have been writing. I don't know if you're like me, but sometimes I get really stressed by a pile of unanswered e-mails.I start to get physically agitated to see them sitting there. And, there were a lot, because I had successfully ignored them for a long time... I just couldn't take it any more. I foolishly thought, however, that if I tackled everything in one day, that would be it. I would be done. There would be no comment left un-thanked, no query left unanswered.

NOPE.

I still have nearly 300 comments I have not replied to. JFC. I mean, this warms me? I'm really pleased that my fan writing inspires commentary and squee and fan theorizing, but LITERALLY WASTED A DAY and hardly made a dent.

It's a terrible thing to complain about, honestly. I mean, I know there are lots of people out there who anxiously await comments and kudos to come in... and then get very, very few or none at all. In fact, at least one of the commenters really, really wanted me to check out their writing because I'd inspired them and they admitted that no one seemed to have found it or commented on it.

So, i'm hyper-aware this is an embarrassment of riches that I should NOT complain about. And, I'm not, not really. (I mean, I am, but only because I hate leaving so many people unanswered and unread.)  I bring it up partly because I suspect that I'm probably a better loved fan writer than I am an original fiction writer.

It's hard to know. Because of the way I structured my fan writing, one or two fans can generate a massive amount of comments. My most in/famous piece of fan fiction actually a work-in-progress that is broken up into literally hundreds of small chapters/installments and so a determined reader who comments on every piece can end up leaving me a PILE of comments. All that mail, then, often really only represents a single, enthusiastic reader.

Still, I probably should have done something more productive with my day, especially with the deadline looming.

I did, at least, put some nearly-finishing touches on the stairs. As you know, I patched the giant holes. Shawn also wanted me to skim coat the tops, which I did and then (much more difficult) somehow coat over some of the cracked bits of the sides of steps. This, it turned out, was a bit more clumsy. I managed it, but it looks the least professional of all the unprofessional concrete work I've done. Happily, it's the least important, as no one WALKS on the up-and-down bits of the stairs. I think the VERY LAST thing I'm going to do to the stairs is look into exterior concrete paint, just to give the steps a nice, even look to them. I will browse the paint/concrete section of the hardware store and see if such a thing is available. I suspect it is.

Yesterday, I thought I lost our big orange cat, Buttercup, for good. I think I have reported here that when Buttercup gets out, sometimes he gets very hissy and scratchy with me, acting very PTSD when I try to pick him up, like he somehow imagines that I will do him real harm. (I can only suspect that he has some kind of muscle memory/lizard brain from the people he used to live with/times he experienced out-of-doors,) Once, he clawed up my FACE in an effort to get away and it's the kind of experience I'd really not like to have a repeat of, so, these days, if he gets out when the rest of my family is around, I get one of them to pick him up. Most of the time he is fine with them for whatever reason, so it works out. 

No one but me was home yesterday. 

Luckily, Shawn reminded me that humans are persistence hunters. We can't outrun gazelles, but we can wait them out. So, I mostly just watched and waited until my giant (overweight) cat exhausted himself and was literally panting from having over-excited himself by being OUTSIDE for nearly an hour. He still hissed at me when I picked him up, but he had no fight left. He basically slept the rest of the afternoon.

Persistence hunting.

It's my new thing. :-)

How's by you?

I've been reading a lot of people's blogs lately. I don't know if this is a product of my pen-palling, but I find myself more and more drawn to the stories of people's lives and their various takes on things. This morning I ended up reading a mini-rant someone posted about a ship war in the Tokyo Ghoul fandom, and that inspired me to write my own mini-rant about the Trials and Tribulations of Being a Queer Otaku. I don't have anything particularly brilliant to say, but, what the heck, this is what blogs are for, right?

When I posted it to Facebook, a friend of mine came on and poked at the open wound that is my relationship to the ending of Bleach. She didn't do so intentionally, she just casually mentioned that she was find with Renji ending up with Rukia at the end because, for her, "it felt right." I don't even necessarily disagree, but in going back and forth with her, I realized that I might have been a lot better with that particular pairing (which absolutely had a foundation in canon, at least on Renji's part,) IF ANY queer couples had survived in tact. ( Read more... )

So, yeah, I might be less bitter about RenRuki--which I have always supported, even in my super gay fan fic--(I always make Renji bi), if the other queer characters in Bleach had not been so poorly treated.

But no one cares about that, but me.

In other, non-fannish news, Mason is expected home late tonight. I'm looking forward to hearing all the stories of Anaheim.  I did find out that their team did NOT place at the competition, but Mason had not expected them to, so he didn't seem the least bit disappointed. In fact, he kept say, "It was so much fun!"  I'm super-glad that we have somehow instilled in him this attitude.  It will serve him well all his life, IMHO.

We're packing to head off to LaCrosse tomorrow early.  Poor Mason will land sometime around midnight and then be bundled into a car around 7 or 8 am the next morning (or same morning, if it's after midnight, eh?)  But, as I told him, he can sleep in the car.

It's nice enough out that I mowed. I have to say that--knock on wood--the yard is looking half-decent this year.  Now I just have to keep it up, which is always the struggle, isn't it?

It's my birthday. I've turned twice 23. The best thing? Shawn is still buying me basically the same things she bought me half my life ago. She bought me art supplies! Only, because Shawn LOVES me, she bought me, very specifically, manga art pens. These are made in Japan and are sold to tourists artist like me who want the mangaka experience.

First thing I drew? Renji.




And there was cranberry-upside down cake with too many candles. Shawn only put on HALF, but that's still twenty-three.



So far it's been a pretty good birthday. I'm getting to feel old as I struggle to understand the new Mac, but we're going to head out to the bookstore in a little bit and see just how many manga I can buy with the money I got (thanks Mom and Dad!). I'm thinking more than one (fingers crossed.) Then, I may spend the day either cursing the new machine and/or drawing some fan art. Either way, it's bound to be fun.