I. I'm four minutes into "The Western Air Temple," and I can't resist posting--how did I forget how good this show was during my breaks from it? How beautifully it handled story-telling in general? I may have to get the DVDs and rewatch the whole damn thing. Despite all the other things I want to watch.

II. Speaking of those other things...I have discovered another reason TVTropes is bad for me. It makes me go, "ooh! This is so my kind of thing! *DOWNLOADS*" Acquired so far for this reason: Red Garden (twenty-two episodes) and Murder Princess (six episodes). I may watch the latter soon, since...it has an ass-kicking princess and lesbian subtext. How can I resist? I also have Mnemosyne, which is similarly short and also has lesbian subtext.

I tried to watch another episode of Princess Tutu last night, but I couldn't get sound from my DVD player. Dammit.

III. Am I the only one who genuinely ships Kureha/Shinbashi (in that order)? I made the mistake of venturing into fandom while looking for scanlations, and it seems like most of fandom either ignores Kureha, hates on her, or sideships her with Shinbashi (even though he's "creepy" according to them...and Sou isn't?) to get her out of the way of the glorious, perfect Sou/Mashiro.

( Spoilerish bits. )

IV. I recently discovered my old copy of Garth Nix's Sabriel, which I read as a kid and really liked. I barely remember any of it, though, and I've heard lots of good things about the whole trilogy, so I'm considering rereading it and then picking up...the others are Lirael and Abhorsen, right? I haven't actually read those; by the time I even heard they existed, I'd long since forgotten most of Sabriel.

V. I was deeply weirded out by today's Penny Arcade. For a while I thought I actually had the same birthday as Gabe, but then I looked it up and realized that his is actually the 25th. So I guess I'm safe.

I'll be getting chocolate from the fancy place after dinner, too!

VI. And now I'd better get back to watching "The Western Air Temple" before I get any more distracted. It's just too good.

ALPHABET MEME: Name a character you love for every letter of the alphabet!

A: Allison Cameron (House M.D.)
B: Balthier (Final Fantasy XII)
C: Cagalli Yula Athha (Gundam SEED)
D: Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
E: Elim Garak (Star Trek: Deep Space 9)
F: Fllay Allster (Gundam SEED)
G: Griffith (Berserk)
H: Hatake Kakashi (Naruto)
I: Inoue Orihime (Bleach)
J: Jiraiya (Naruto)
K: Kurosaki Karin (Bleach)
L: Laguna Loire (Final Fantasy VIII)
M: Mwu la Fllaga (Gundam SEED)
N: Nel Zelpher (Star Ocean: Till the End of Time)
O: Omar Little (The Wire)
P: Perry Cox (Scrubs)
Q: Q (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
R: Ravi (D.Gray-man)
S: Stringer Bell (The Wire)
T: Temari (Naruto)
U: Urahara Kisuke (Bleach)
V: Vincent Valentine (Final Fantasy VII)
W: William (Romeo x Juliet)
X: ...whut. OKAY I FAIL.
Y: Yamanaka Ino (Naruto)
Z: Zechs Merquise (Gundam Wing)

I almost got them all, too. Damn.

In other news, I am still slightly hypomanic, but I think it's winding down. I still reallyreally want Nexus City and/or sandboxing, though. Especially since I'm almost finished watching what I have of the Wire, and season 4 won't be coming out on DVD anytime soon. I mean, I could torrent it off the internets and watch that, but I want to watch it on my nice big TV.

I'm also slacking off on writing the ficlets I've promised people. I WILL WORK ON THAT. Srsly.

I have a bunch of icons I need to make, but really I just want to make simple Wire icons. Sigh. However, I do need to open Photoshop soon so that I can make some entries for fandomsecret. Apparently I have no shame. Okay, I admit it: I just want to make some entries for that place that don't look butt-ugly.

Also, this and this are ridiculously adorable and I want them. Especially the Rin one.

Here's the important part of this post, though:

♥ happy belated birthday, thenowhere ♥

I hope you get your new computer soon! And not just because I miss RPing with you and would totally sandbox with you. Only partially because of that.

♥ happy birthday, a_white_rain ♥

I am, as usual, not up to writing an entire full-sized fic as a present. Instead, though, I have decided to write five ficlets in response to a prompt.

a_white_rain gets to provide the prompt and character, group, or pairing for three of them. She gets to nominate two others to provide the prompts and characters, groups, or pairings for the other two.

Go go go!

♥ ♥ HAPPY BIRTHDAY caltan ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ HAPPY BIRTHDAY autophanous ♥ ♥

autophanous has also reminded us that today is Caturday. She requests that we post some fucking cats.


( more fucking cats )

Finished rereading and catching up on D.Gray-man. Let me tell you, the scan quality has been pretty shitty throughout, and the translation goes through some real rough patches. It doesn't help that Hoshino isn't that great at writing readable fight scenes. Or at maintaining continuity outside of them, for that matter. ( Snip for 69th night spoilers. )

This time around I really noticed Rinali's driving need to protect people--which is interesting because the protector role is usually assigned to male characters. I am loving her. ( Snip for brief spoilers. )

Am also digging on Allen's tortured soul and urge for martyrdom. He needs to start fighting to protect his precious people (blah blah theme of every Jump manga ever apparently) instead of to save the world, or he'll die. I'm honestly not sure whether Hoshino will kill him at the end or not. I've always cracked jokes about him being a Christ figure, but lately, what with ( spoiler ) it's become even more obvious. I'd rather he and Rinali live happily ever after, though. D:

My real question, though--is Hoshino winding this thing up? The other manga I follow (well...really only Bleach and Naruto) are huge, and I'd assumed D.Gray-man would be the same way, but it's starting to look like she's aiming for a finish soon. Does anyone have more information on that?

Anyway. At this point, I'm too exhausted to do anything productive, so I'll go hunt for some more Allen/Rinali art on the Japanweb. It's got to be out there. When I'm sane again (you know, if I ever am), I'll try to work on fic stuff. The ByakuRuki idea is sort of turning into ByakuRukiRen. But with ByakuRuki sex. Maybe I will have to give in and admit that I am shamefully compelled to write Kuchikicest.

Edit: Oh yeah. Happy birthday, feralknights! If you read fic I'd offer to write some for you, but since I don't know if you do, I'll settle for making rape eyes at you. 8)

If you want, though, since I'm replaying SO3, I'll bump up one of my Clair/Nel ideas to top priority (whatever that means) and try to do it for a September theme at 31_days.

Uhhh. If I'd taken my pills again I'd be asleep by now, but I'm going to try to avoid them until I can get a lower dose. :/ Unless I'm really struggling.

Anyway, dragonsquee is doing this amusing meme. Give me something entertaining to write a top five list for. Not "your top five favorite anime characters" or "your top five favorite Kakashi moments," but "Five Novel Ways For Kunoichi To Use Ropes" or, to give examples of requests made of dragonsquee when she did this meme: "Five Unseemly Incidents The Second Division's Captain Has Provoked Involving Innocent Stray Cats" (mine, of course) or "Five Things Athrun Zala Really Thinks About When Staring At The Sea. (Or Sky. Or Insert Emo Object Here.)"

Now, even though it's totally not mine to do, I'm going to do a joke version of that last one.
( Five Things Athrun Zala Really Thinks About When Staring At The Sea. (Or Sky. Or Insert Emo Object Here.) )
There, that's it.

Meanwhile: happy birthday, nimriye! Since I seem to be on some kind of roll fic-wise, if you ask me for birthday ficness I will attempt to give you something in the next few days, although it probably won't be very long. :<

I will also work on the horrifying SasuSaku angst. Then the next chapter of "Spiral Out." And then I will consider where to go from there.

guh. Orihime should just be everybody's girlfriend. I would have no problem with that.

Meanwhile, happy birthday, animarelic & spacehyena ♥

I would offer birthday fic but I'm so very backlogged on that. D:

Edit: Dude, Kuukaku is so totally Yoruichi's ex.

There was much fandom love last night *_* Oh happiness.

Today: happy birthday, ahvia! I would offer my usual fic request token to you, but I don't write for any of your fandoms...the only FFVII stuff I do is for Vincent. :< So instead:
( Totally appropriate picture beneath the cut! Um. Probably worksafe, I guess. Big, though. )
:D

What the hell is wrong with me? Normal healthy people do not need ten to eleven hours of sleep every day. This is pissing me off.

However, on a less disgruntled note: happy birthday, qara_isuke! I issue you One Ficbunny Token; you can ask me for a giftfic based on a character or pairing and a phrase or concept of your choice. You can redeem it now or wait until I get around to seeing Destiny.

Moving on: I made some requests over at fst, since this month is another request month. Included: Naruto, Bleach, SEED, FFX-2, and Spooks.

I would like to get some RP on ineffablegame tonight. qara_isuke, let me know if you're feeling up to having Stellar and Mwu go poking around Winterheart to find a McGuffin; I'd like to move that along. selphish, it is high time I did an intro scene for Kon (I've only had him approved for months), and he approves of meeting Robin's boobs ♥

Other than that, I will probably play Xenogears and/or watch House tonight. And I nabbed the icon meme that's going around again, and of course I can't resist that sort of thing, so I'll do that later.

happy birthday feralknights, may you sing into many forks

(and a belated one to nimriye, who I forgot to wish a happy birthday on hers, because I suck)