IT'S FAR TOO COLD TO BE WRITING. I need to invest in some fingerless gloves.

Dear kink meme fic,

STOP TRYING TO GROW A PLOT. Your word count is going to be ridiculous if I don't rein you in soon. AND ALSO...

Dear SenBasa character (who cannot be named),

I have been struggling with this fill in which you feature prominently for a few weeks now, and writing it has at times been a forced effort. And in the end? All it took was a glass of red wine or two for me to fall back into that natural way of writing that I have missed so badly. I would ask WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT WAS ALL I NEEDED, but you wouldn't, would you? Yeah, you little bastard. But don't worry, I'm in control now. I'll finish this one in the end even if it takes me months.

INTERNET. Well, it's been a long time.

First update from the new apartment. I just got back from London, actually. We stayed with friends in this basement flat in central London, right under a laundrette. It was also right above a tube line; feeling the floor rumble under my feet with the trains was a novel experience but didn't make for much sleep, the first night at least. The second I was so tired that I only woke up when the place upstairs opened (the floorboards were insanely creaky) and the tubes must have been running for hours, not to mention buses and general pedestrian noise from outside. The actual reason for our trip was a combined visit with friends, musical event and a visit to the Natural History Museum. The band in question was The Decemberists and I've finally forgiven them for cancelling last time I had tickets.

I have more to update about but I feel I need to ease myself back into regular posting, LOL.

How have you all been?

WHY has nobody subbed Blue Literature yet? I really want to watch it.

I finally FINALLY started reading the Dark Tower series recently. It took until around halfway through the first book for me to settle into it and start enjoying it, but very quickly after that I began to love it, and I'm now somewhere in the region of the middle of the second book and relishing the fact that I have so many more volumes to go before the end. I took it into the bath with me this afternoon and two hours later when I hadn't emerged Tom came in and confiscated the book (sadly too late to save me from unpleasantly tepid bathwater).

First of all, I'd like to send a big fat FUCK YOUUU~ to all letting agencies with a blanket no pet policy. I personally think more letting agents/landlords should consider tenants with pets, and I can accept the decision of a landlord not to allow them, but what I find absolutely and utterly fucking ridiculous is for a letting agency to simply say that they don't even ASK individual landlords about pets. Yeah, I hate flat-hunting. It's looking better now and we do have several viewings lined up (and most did leave the decision about pets up to the landlord) but at the time I was infuriated and still needed to rant. It put me in a truly foul mood as there were some nice properties with that agency. Oh well.

(Yeah. This is why I'm not posting much about RL at the moment. It consists solely of STRESS.)

So, I marathoned through Koutetsu Sangokushi in all of three days and yeah, it ended up being one of those downright terrible series that I feel in love with despite everything. I hesitate to recommend it to ANYONE for fear of this resulting in utter bemusement over how such a series could actually be enjoyed or taken seriously (the key to the latter is DON'T), but I had fun. It's this awful rendering of the Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms with an all-male cast... It is BL but nothing really happens, and although it's based on RotTK as far as accuracy goes it's very much akin to the way SenBASA deals with history (there are several amusing stylistic similarities, too - although by no means would I say enjoying one series means you'll love the other as Koutetsu Sangokushi takes itself FAR TOO SERIOUSLY).

All my favourite characters keep getting killed off recently.

This is ( what happened in Koutetsu Sangokushi. )

And last night, we finished watching Last Exile. I rate that series very highly. It's the kind of series that is very accessible to even those who haven't seen any anime before. There's a rumoured live-action adaptation in the works, which I'm doubtful about the quality of as I think it would struggle to incorporate the scope of the series if it's just one film (not to mention the impossibilities of cramming all that character development into a couple of hours...). And now for more ( character death caps... )

I'm half-dead at the moment. Caught the plague from somewhere and did too many hours at work last week, will probably still drag myself in tomorrow because NO SICK PAY.

NO MORE SELF-PITY.



Kaiji is awesome. WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME. Although it is embarassing how I'll watch anime about things I hate and still end up getting into it yet would probably avoid those subjects in other mediums. I hate gambling, and especially card games. FAIL. I am also more tolerant of shitty anime than terrible films. Perhaps this is to do with episode length? Mediocre stuff in small doses is sometimes enough to keep me watching it. Anyway, I got hooked on Kaiji despite still holding a grudge against all card games (don't ask) and somehow got completely drawn in despite the fact that the first...six (?) episodes all take place in this one four-hours gambling session revolving around a form of rock paper scissors (yeah, it sounds terrible but it's really not, it's actually very tense).

I think I mainly like the emotion of it. I don't know who the voice actor for Kaiji himself is, but they did a great job conveying realistic emotion (I love that he cries a lot and also screams "I'LL KILL YOU!" at other characters). Also the art style is kind of ugly and distinctive and I like it.

The most recent subbed Shin Mazinger episode was ( also very good... )

LMAO SHIN MAZINGER Z. It's still ridiculous and awesome.

Somebody please watch it with me now? I have one episode left to go before I'm all caught up (will be watching episode 20 after posting this) and it's been upgraded from simply good fun to something I actually love with characters I was surprised to find I care a lot about. (May as well admit that I have a lot of affection for Baron Ashura, weird though he/she may be. How do you refer to a being that is literally half a man and half a woman fused together into one body, that regularly refers to itself as "we" and is referred to as "it" by all of the other characters?). I am LOVING this show and am not very sorry to admit that I totally ship Ashura and Pygman despite their sub-five minutes of screen time together. And I don't think either of them will reach the end of the series alive SOB SOB but as I have oft said CANON IS NO OBSTACLE TO LOVE. And if any of the series' characters needs some love, it's Baron Ashura.

At least this proves I am not always a shallow fangirl?

It's the same as all of my other pairings anyway OTL. It's that PROTECTION thing again. And so I shipped it from the first time the two of them were on screen together simply because of the fact that Ashura got saved by Pygman, who GOUGED OUT HIS OWN EYES in order to do so (and if that's not love, then...).

I wish I could find the OST because the background music is epic.

Back from holiday. BUT THIS ISN'T ABOUT THAT.

I've just watched the first episode of Shin Mazinger - I remember when it first aired I decided to give it a miss as everyone was responding to the first episode with WTF (although I should have learned by now not to trust the new season reviews on ANN as I believe they also slated BASARA and probably others that I adored) - for some reason the name came back to me and I downloaded it and watched it and asdkjashdfs I want more now. Uh. I need to see this series. I hope I'm not wrong about it, but it feels like it could truly be epic and it's so deliciously retro and full of unashamed attack calling (okay I admit it I love this even when it's done completely seriously), that I MUST WATCH MORE.

The days of working myself into the ground are at an end, finally. I managed to save enough to buy a shiny new laptop (which I'm using to write this entry) and as of tomorrow I am on holiday for two blissful weeks. Tomorrow morning we're heading to Bristol for one night, then catching a train to Carmarthen and being taken by my uncle to his smallholding in Lampeter, where we'll be staying for a week along with the rats. I'm told they have internet access there so I should be able to pop onto LJ from time to time and hopefully fail less at updating and checking my flist. I don't know what's happened to me recently; I miss this place and don't want to feel out of touch. So. Expect more posts/comments.

Bought two books to take with me on holiday; one is Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains which sounds violent and sexy and the other is The Modern World by Steph Swainston (third in a series that I adore) - honestly not sure which I am more excited about reading; something new and possibly fabulous or something that features characters I already know and love.

Um. Time for an anime paragraph. BEST THING ABOUT MY NEW LAPTOP? It has an HDMI port, meaning that we can now watch downloaded episodes of anime on our 39-inch TV. AND IT LOOKS AMAZING. I was worried about the quality but it looks incredibly, I'm never going back to watching it on anything else now (except for when I get lazy and curl up with my laptop). Already planning a SenBASA marathon which I have hopefully roped the boyfriend into with the promise of a lot of baking specially for the occasion. As far as currently airing anime goes, I'm still watching Umineko and enjoying it - best ED ever - and I keep laughing at inappropriate moments where grief causes characters to sob into the cleavage of their dead mothers. Is this supposed to be funny? I keep thinking it must be, it looked so intentional. Also still watching Bakemonogatari and enjoying it a lot; suitably surprised by the plot twist in the latest episode and also I love Senjougahara and laughing at Ara(ra)ragi.

Going to pack now, BRB.

Every time I've sat down to update my journal recently, I've stopped halfway through. Anyway. RL post coming later. For now, ( more rat abscess fun. )

Online shopping order hasn't arrived. No food in the house. I might die.

( Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive... )

This meme WAS basically for showcasing fandom obsessions, right? I don't have many other pictures to post, anyway. WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT ME.

I clearly cannot keep track of which day it is. Because I set my alarm and got up to go to work and realised halfway there that I wasn't due in for another hour and a half. WHY DO I FAIL SO MUCH. It's not Monday yet! It's Sunday, ugh.

If you're not already watching Bakemonogatari, you should be, and ( this is why... )

Amusingly, after deciding that I didn't want to watch any of the currently airing anime because it all looked dull/mediocre/cliched/whatever, I gave in very quickly and am not watching five series. It's because I hate the idea that I might miss something fantastic - could so easily not have picked up Bakemonogatari and of course only decided to watch Sengoku BASARA (SOB SOB I MISS IT) on a whim. Anyway, I'm also really liking Umineko no Naku Koro ni (finding it very unsettling and I love the OP and ED; way more into it than I was with Higurashi although I think art style/animation quality has a lot to do with that). Canaan is also intriguing but I hope it doesn't become too frivolous. I'm enjoying Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 because I have always been interested in disaster/survival type stories, and I'm also watching Aoi Hana because it's cute and lesbian. I'm not bothering with anything else because I'll never keep up.

Um, I am really failing at LJ right now. Sorry.

I am mostly blaming work; at the moment we're overbooked and short-staffed and it's been very busy and quite stressful. I'm working a lot of shifts doing relatively physical work in buildings with too many staircases for my liking. Also, I wasn't built for 6:15 am alarms. (It doesn't help that I'm more than a little sleep deprived at the moment due to hating the idea of going to bed at 10:00 pm like I should be. I also went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince last night and didn't get out of the cinema until 1:30 am.) I feel tired and sore and almost like I'm getting ill (but that's probably just from working too much.)

A better update to come tomorrow. I need to catch up on here.

Every time I vanish from LJ I come back to SenBASA news (good news, so I suppose I should be pleased LOL). I'm thrilled to see it licensed and will definitely be buying it. I'm not even going to wait for a UK release; we've got a multi-region DVD player and I want to own those DVDS as soon as I can get them. Being able to watch it one our huge TV is going to be amazing.

I've recently become a moderator for a very large online game that has roughly (checking now) 2,800,000 players, so that's taking up my time at the moment, partly because it's new and there's a lot to learn. I'm going to endeavour to be a little better at managing my time, though; although I probably won't catch up with all the posts I've missed in the last few days (please tell me if I missed something important) I'm definitely going to make time to sign in and post and keep up with everyone, because I really miss it if I don't. To complicate things further, my social life has undergone a bit of a revival in recent days. I'm still feeling quite antisocial at times but nowhere near the way I was feeling a week ago, which is a positive thing.

Only got about four hours sleep last night as I spent most of it writhing around in bed feeling nauseous, who knows why. I'm okay now, at least.

Anyway, the main purpose of this post is something that might be of interest to Sengoku era fans (and especially Masamune and Kojuro fans, LOL). I can't take credit for this as that goes entirely to chibiko721 for discovering and scanning it, but basically it's a scan showing some characters from an upcoming anime. They look different from their BASARA incarnations (as in pretty rather than gar, LOL) but it's already safe to say that I'll be watching this whenever it comes out. So yeah, ( click to see. )

Okay, it's late and I need sleep. But.

I know this might be a bit of a long shot, but does anyone have an idea what the song used in this fanvid is? I absolutely adore it and recently I've had it playing in the background just so I can listen to it, but I'd love to know what it's called and who it's by. (In this case I genuinely like the song as well as the video; I will admit, though, that I often enjoy music because I associate it with other things I love.) Oh, and also, I have something to share as well - today I finally tracked down the song used in one of my other favourite SenBASA fanvids, so here it is (song is Hekkushun by RADWIMPS). I guess I didn't look very hard for it before.

I feel pathetically ill today.

But in more exciting (and of course BASARA-related) news... Could we be getting a new game? It's not like I've played the others but anything new is good. And 1560, eh? Prequel? (This is what happened in 1560; possibly bodes well for hot young Nobunaga, amos_hunter! I will LOL FOREVER if that turns out to be the case and WTF WHY AM I SPECULATING with practically no basis. Um.) Definitely looks like a teaser pic for something, though.

Also, yesterday I was flicking through some of the episodes, and (I don't know how I missed this first time round) noticed a horse that puts Masamune's to shame. It's only in shot for a fraction of a second, and I think it shows up again in the background at a later point in the series, but wow. As an aside, I wonder why there are so many fabulous horses in this series and yet Keiji's historical awesome horse Matsukaze does not feature at all. Hm. It's an interest of mine to see how well different series animate horses (or avoid having to animate them); it seems to be quite a difficult thing to do well. SenBASA is actually pretty respectable; most other series tend to either avoid animating the legs of galloping horses by either cutting them out of the shot or hiding them behind something (I seem to remember the Berserk anime did this skilfully enough that it didn't feel disruptive) or using crappy CG (the carriage horses in Kuroshitsuji just looked so artificial).

I did read a bit more Vinland Saga yesterday and am planning on marathoning my way through the volumes that I have left today. (The horses in Vinland Saga are incredibly and refreshingly well-drawn. I am used to seeing manga/anime horses that are horse-shaped but somehow lacking the essence of a horse, especially in their faces, but these are beautiful.)

I have the world's most miserable rat. The abscess came to a head this morning and so was summarily flushed out with saline solution. I think he hates me. It must have been incredibly uncomfortable for him and now there's just this sore-looking hole and ugh. My poor thing. I think I flushed most of the gunk out of it for now, will have another go later.

Going to console myself with some Vinland Saga.

Oh, Tabris...

His wound (which I am pretty convinced was indeed a bite wound) healed fine; all that remains are a couple of small pink patches where the hair hasn't yet grown back. However, yesterday I felt a small lump that I think is likely to be an abscess. It's still there today, with no sign of it coming to a head. It's only about the size of a pea, but it's right beneath where the lower bite mark was. Thoughts? I'm currently planning on keeping an eye on him, as he's not bothered even when I prod at him. If it is an abscess, he'll be going back to the vets when it bursts or starts looking sore. Should I take him to the vets sooner?