The Winter Court of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

Got some survey cash-outs and the concert refund around the same time and ended up going a little berserk with most stores closed and not usually being able to find what I wanted around here anyway. I felt like having some fun online.

eStarland hasn't updated their site and it's left looking like they still have the old Final Fantasy VII figures in stock to buy. I stopped getting them because I got so discouraged when Zack showed up with legs that weren't the same length, but I was craving to get Tifa and Aerith. I fell for it until I looked closer and saw no Add to Cart buttons even though the listings said "ships within 24 hours." When I realized I couldn't get them, I kind of snapped. I started looking up many different things I'd wanted for years on eBay and debated for days on what I wanted most. I ended up deciding it was time to get more 12 inch Star Wars figures and proceeded to buy Luke, Lando, and Han. I also found classic trilogy Obi-Wan on Amazon for the same price as on eBay and bought him with a gift card. Now I'm trying to get Qui-Gon, young Obi-Wan, and Mace Windu. I also would like Boba Fett, of course, but of course he's one of the most expensive ones. I've had a gorgeous Leia for several years, part of Disney's Elite Series. She doesn't quite fit in scale with the guys, but I love her so much I can't quite think of getting another Leia that would fit better.

I'm thrilled with all of the purchases and that definitely calmed me down (although I've been getting restless to buy again and I wish the other Amazon gift card I earned would get here). I suppose my favorite is Lando, though, as I've especially longed to have a figure of him through the years. (I remember wanting to get a small one when I saw it at the antique mall some years back, but I didn't because I wasn't sure Dad had ever forgiven Lando for the betrayal thing and I thought he might complain for me to get him. Didn't know how to get it without him seeing.) They're all amazing, though! Luke especially blows me away. Such gorgeous facial sculpts for everybody!

I did a rewatch of Magic Knight Rayearth. I think after YGO and Sailor Moon, it's the next most special anime to me. I had thought I liked season 2 best because of the character development, and I still love that, but there are still those episodes where the story drags and it's mostly fighting, and season 1 has the most friendship squee. Season 2 mostly focuses on the girls interacting with other characters. So now I think I like season 1 best, lol. And I know CLAMP already extended season 1 compared to the manga, but I wish it had been extended even more. They could have had episodes of the girls traveling to villages and meeting people and having more friendship squee. It was just wonderful and made me want to levitate, hee. The girls have the special kind of friendship like I portray with the Big Five.

I wanted figures or dolls of the girls, but it's almost impossible to get all of them and always has been, so I decided I'd rather make plushies of them. I also still want Lumis and Umbra plushies. I realized fake fur would be good for Umbra's hair, so I'm trying to find some in the right color. It's very difficult, as the same shade will show up looking like multiple shades on eBay and Etsy. I wish I could find it locally, but I don't tend to see exotic fur colors like teal or turquoise in stores.

Still working on Big Five fics. I finally finished the fourth New Orleans fic and it was a 20 chapter mammoth fic. It felt good to do one of those again. I wrote some oneshots about them and about Lumis, Umbra, and Arkana, and now I'm contemplating a Duke hurt/comfort fic. Or maybe he should just get hurt in the next ensemble fic. Vivian Wong and the Paradox Brothers will be returning to find the missing medallion, if I can craft a whole story around that concept.

I also drew some more, but I had to mark a couple as Mature Content because of violence and apparently non-dA members can't see such pictures. http://meromeroyui.deviantart.com

Also, I hate Eclipse (the new dA site, not the supernatural mush book). Can't find my way around at all. I'm enjoying the last little bit of time with the old dA site and I eagerly await the website ArtSpacious, which unhappy dA users are developing.

ElfBean continues to be awesomely amazing. Squeee!

I also eagerly await things opening up again. It's become more normal shopping lately, except for no hand wipes.

I have a RedBubble store. http://LuckyLadybug.redbubble.com Text-only, YGO-only for now. But some people like text shirts, so why not. There's an official fanart program for a few categories there, and maybe I can try to draw something for Steven Universe or We Bare Bears to get in on that sometime, because that's awesome. I wish they'd add YGO, though. I would be absolutely over the moon to design official YGO shirts!

Still writing YGO/Big Five-centric fics and loving it. Just finished the latest and will be doing a fourth New Orleans fic. Looking for names for Lector's parents for this one. I didn't want to bother before, but now I think I'll need to show their names. I'm debating between Amelie and Desiree for Mrs. Leichter and I'm not sure at all for Mr. Leichter. I suppose, since most names have very positive meanings and he's a creep, I'll have to go with an ironic name. So far the only ones standing out to me are Gerard or Jean-Louis. Also not sure if I want to go with Desiree for Mrs. Leichter. It fits really well, but I knew someone by that name and I try not to name characters after people I know. It usually ends up feeling too awkward in the writing, especially if the character isn't very nice.

Yami Marik has finally met Zorc at the end of the current fic. Zorc, however, will convince him they should wait a while to start wreaking havoc together, since everyone will be tense and on guard and they should be caught off-guard. (Thanks, Crystal Rose of Pollux!) It makes sense character-wise and plot-wise and also for the fact that I'm not ready to tackle that dark story yet. I'm planning more strongly for it, though, and I probably will write it this year. It will start with Shadow Games and Neo-Orichalcos coming back in full force everywhere and the gang getting overwhelmed and trying to figure out what's with the influx of evil. Eventually they track it to its source and the battle will begin. I hope Yami Bakura will be ready, since this is the battle that will decide whether he gets a second chance. I of course plan to keep writing stories after this one, although this one probably will end up feeling like a changing of the status quo.

I'm already starting to do that, though. I introduced a little Azureshipping in the previous fic. Don't know how much it will advance at the current point in time; in the past the Azureshipping didn't happen until stories set further along in the timeline, but the ways things ended up going in the current timeline, it turned out that it made sense to introduce it in the present-day.

Still getting pictures from ElfBean, squeee. I have 12 now. I want to print them out in a binder. They're all just so beautiful and she captures the characters' expressions so well! http://www.elfbean.com I thoroughly recommend her if anyone wants to be blown away by quality commissions!

A friend sent me three Ponies! So excited. I haven't been able to get them here because they sell out too fast. She got Starflower, Pinwheel, and Trickles. I'm thrilled Starflower is really blue! So many times they look blue on the boxes and then they're green or turquoise in person. Seems like there actually aren't many Ponies that are outright blue. Pinwheel looks like a cake Pony, with the pinwheels as lighted candles and the deep pink the shade of cake frosting, so I think of her as a birthday Pony. Trickles is totally an April girl! Beautiful yellow with multi-colored hair and watering can symbols.

I went to the antique mall that has two buildings to hold everything and had fun browsing everything. I haven't been there in a long time and it was nice to catch up. Saw some things I was interested in, mainly Trolls, but didn't get anything yet because I'm not in a good place for money at the moment. (Plus I still like buying things new in box the most. I keep hoping I can get some Trolls that way online if I get in a better money position. I just don't care much for the Dreamworks versions and I want the Dam or Russ Trolls.)

Mom and I finally saw the LOTR films again and I kind of got the urge to make Hobbit plushies. But I don't know when that will happen; the latest plushie base I got I still want to use for Mokuba. Even though it will be weird for him to be the same size as everyone else, it's just too sad not to have Mokuba. I also want to make Lumis and Umbra. Still trying to figure out how to replicate Umbra's fun hair. I also want the LOTR figures I'm missing. I used Amazon gift cards to get Eomer and Eowyn (squeee), but most others I don't have I can get cheaper on eBay. I thought it was neat and squeeable to be able to get the siblings together. I'm amazed Amazon had good prices on them, since they're out of print.

Still drawing. http://meromeroyui.deviantart.com Mostly YGO, occasionally other things, especially if it's a giftpic or a request. I finally got commission info up. I forgot I hadn't put it on dA. Two people wanted requests and then I realized I didn't have commission info up, and since their requests were nice, I did both of them for free but said future requests would have to be commissions.

Hulu has Yu Yu Hakusho. I only ever saw four episodes of that, but I remembered the show fondly, so I decided to watch. I'm to episode 12 now. Definitely enjoying it aside from Yusuke's disgusting perverted moments. Hoping he doesn't do that now that he's back. The episodes I saw years ago were still just as exciting and Kurama is still just as easy to like. Still don't like Hiei, but he must get a ton of character development since he ends up joining the good guys. I expect I'll end up liking him. Interesting that the anime was so old, 1992, but they only brought it to America ten years later. I remember the excitement of it coming out, and my friends seeing the new episodes. I couldn't because I didn't have access. I think the four episodes I saw were the only ones the library had. How things have changed.

Despite only having seen four episodes, I remember debating many times on getting figures. I especially wanted Botan and Kurama. Looking at them now, the prices on eBay for those old out of print figures aren't too unreasonable. Kuwabara, on the other hand, is apparently really hard to get hold of, which is frustrating because he's freaking adorable. I adored episode 3, with him being so protective of his friends, and he loves kitties, as shown in episode 5! Squeee. I also loved that he wouldn't steal when that possessed bully tried to make him do so, and he bought manga instead. Wow, though, I wonder how the voice actor ever managed to do his voice. Seems like he'd make himself hoarse by the end of every episode!

I absolutely love how anime has become more of a mainstream thing now and it's so easy to find so many series and merchandise for them officially! But on the other hand, I'm rather sad that it seems like there aren't a lot of new anime series to get excited about these days. I still need to try My Hero Academia, but aside from it, nothing that's currently out seems that exciting or interesting. I imagine there are niche gems out there, though. But I miss the excitement of everybody being into the different anime series and how fun it was being in on that. It kind of feels like those days are long past. I feel old remembering back to those years. I still long to recapture that excitement about the series I still love, like YGO, and there are still some who are enjoying it with me. Definitely happy about that! But I still miss everybody I used to hang with. There are a lot of people I'd like to look up and check in on, but I have no idea how to go about it.

Also thinking that the YGO dub, aside from changing or removing a line or two, actually seemed to take a lot more care with the Big Five in season 3 than the original did. (Which is ironic given what a train wreck the dub made of their Duelist Kingdom storyline, having them plot to murder Seto when that wasn't what they wanted to do at all!) I mean, Noa's arc doesn't even get its own opening in Japanese! They're stuck with the Battle City opening and song! The dub made a whole opening just for that arc, and each Big Five member got his own unique and thoughtfully written theme.... Lector's gets used many times after that arc, because it was just too awesome for them to give up, heh. Although I wish they wouldn't use it as background music when Yami Marik's up to no good sometimes. The Big Five also get mentioned one by one in the English character guide, and I'm not sure the Japanese character guide did likewise. I watched a video of a guy looking through it, and I only saw them in Duel Monster form. No human form pictures, no lineart.... I almost wonder if the animation was so inconsistent for some of them because the animators didn't bother to do lineart for them! I long so badly to see character sheets for them, full-body illustrations and practicing different expressions on them, that kind of thing. Then the dub eliminated Crump being a pervert, which certainly made him a nicer character in some ways. (Although he was still totally sadistic, ugh.) The dub also made Lector more justice-driven and added that lovely Southern accent, so I and Vivian Wong can both swoon, lol. (Yeah, Vivian is bothering Lector in the fics....) I find it very intriguing that the dub did so much with the characters like that.

Puzzle & Dragons did a YGO event last month and I was able to download the game and get in on it. I got several characters, even the one I wanted most, Yami Bakura! Also got Yami Marik, whom I didn't really want, heh. But I'm glad I got any of them, and I hope they'll hold the event again. I love the team I have with Yami Bakura, Tea, Kuriboh, Mystical Elf, and Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

So I found that season 4 of Monk is way better than season 6, although of course there were missteps there too. (Ugh, I'd totally forgotten how much I hate Mr. Monk Goes to the Office.) I think now that season 5 is probably where things really went wrong. Mr. Monk and the Actor was awful. I'd only remembered the hilarity of the movie casting a girl to play Randy, and how the real Randy and the Captain were just staring in slack-jawed disbelief over the movie Randi and Captain being romantically involved. ROTFLOL. And the nutty actor who got way too much into his parts. I'd forgotten that he went so completely nuts that he thought he was Monk and had to catch Trudy's killer, and stopping him caused Monk to have a horrible setback (which of course wasn't mentioned in any other episode). That wasn't funny in the least, but it felt like they were trying to play it as funny because he felt he had to see Dr. Kroger every day. That was heartbreaking, especially since at the beginning he actually felt ready to take a weekend vacation and by the end that was all shot! Ugh, that was just so cruel of the writers. I think it was also in season 5 where Harold and Monk had some dumb argument about who loved Dr. Kroger most, and then at the end Harold takes a bullet for Dr. Kroger and it's coming in at cheesy slow-motion and it was all so ridiculous. **rolls eyes.** Pretty much any time the show does slow-motion, I cringe.

We seem to have exhausted all Netflix discs that Dad and Mom would like to see, so since I don't like ordering discs if I'm the only one who wants to watch, we switched back to Streaming. Unfortunately, it's different than before; there's barely any classic TV anymore. We probably won't be keeping it for very long, so I'll have to soak up what I can of the wonderful kids' shows I want to see. With Streaming, I can definitely watch things that only I want to see.

First I watched a bunch of My Little Pony season 8, which I'd had trouble finding. I still have a little more of it to watch. Then I remembered they have The Real Ghostbusters, and I've been having a ball watching a lot of those. I've also watched some of the Miraculous Ladybug episodes I hadn't seen yet.

It didn't take long to remember about the Carmen Sandiego series, so I gave that a go. I was pretty lukewarm at the idea of reinventing her as a Saint-type character who only steals from the bad guys, but when I actually watched the show, I fell in love with said show. Now it's hard to think of going back to verses where Carmen is a cold-hearted criminal. (She is pretty one-dimensionally bad in World, honestly.) I still have three episodes to go on their very short season, but I love the show, the reinvention, and I want more. My only complaint is that the theme song is boring as heck.

Somehow I wandered into an anime Netflix dubbed called Glitter Force (or Smile PreCure in Japan) and decided to try it. I spotted so many things that were references to Sailor Moon (I assume in a love-letter way), but it was cute and sweet and fun and I've found myself watching quite a lot of it. I also might try to look up the eight episodes they cut for silly reasons (mostly that they couldn't figure out how to localize them, it seems). Honestly, I kind of love that it's localized, though, even with dumb episode removals. It makes me nostalgic, thinking of Saturday morning anime on broadcast channels. I miss those days so very much. Heh, even back then, I would far rather watch a cute magical girls show than something darker and depressing.

Of course, the irony is I am writing dark and depressing things sometimes. Did I mention the twisted abduction fic with Lector being taken by some nut who wants to get back at Gansley for firing him, and the nut then proceeds to send Gansley severed limbs claiming they're Lector's? Of course, they're not. Lector is physically alright, but he's being drugged and probably psychologically tormented. The Big Four, meanwhile, are going out of their minds. Eventually they find Lector safe, naturally. I wrote several scenes weeks ago when the bizarre urge first struck me, and in spite of worrying I'll traumatize whatever fanbase I have left, I have finally written a bare bones first draft of the whole story (minus epilogue stuff). I also want to insert scenes of the Big Four struggling to deal with this and maybe some flashbacks to when they each met Lector. If I really post this fic, I'm wondering if it should be rated M for thematic elements. I also wonder if I should have rated Taming the Darkness M.

Then there's me actually getting interested in an AU scenario that doesn't involve bringing back dead characters, which is a pretty rare thing, honestly. AU normally doesn't interest me in the least. But I started thinking of how Crump and Tea were both being frozen in their duel, and hence, it seemed like when Crump lost, he should have been frozen. Of course, that would have complicated things too much, and it might have seemed too dark for the good guys to leave him like that, but I started wondering what would happen if Noa insisted on enforcing it after Yugi and Tea left. He would probably make Crump freeze while in human form too, so he'd really suffer. Then the others would try to rescue him upon realizing he was missing, and Noa would tell them that if they won the Merger duel, he would free Crump and let them take the kids' bodies. But they lost, and Noa refused, and they tried to free Crump anyway, so he froze all of them as punishment. Then he went to duel Seto, and the duel with Yami Yugi happened too, and while Noa was trying to possess him, Yami Yugi saw the Big Fives' fates in Noa's mind, and why it had happened, and he wanted them free. Noa initially refuses, but when Gozaburo likes what Noa did and then promptly abandons Noa again to go blow up the world, Noa snaps and frees them to spite Gozaburo. And I'll be rewriting some of the last three Noa's Arc episodes. I want Lector to help Mokuba somehow, but I'm not sure how, because of course I still want Noa to possess Mokuba and Mokuba to resist and for that to be what gets Noa to try to save everyone instead of blowing them up. And I want someone to rewrite the program so Tristan will realize he still has his human form, instead of continuing to be tricked into thinking he's a robot monkey. I always hated that twist, and for some time I didn't want to re-watch the arc beyond Nesbitt's duel because of it. I've mellowed enough that I can tolerate it due to wanting to see other things that are going on, but I still don't like it. I had thought Noa or Nesbitt should give Tristan his body back, but maybe it should be Lector, or Lector and Nesbitt together, considering how Lector refused to give back the body after losing the Merger duel. That was probably his lowest moment.

I also got intrigued by the thought of What if Lector had found out that Gozaburo was abusing Seto, and Lector adopted both Seto and Mokuba to keep them safe? I probably wouldn't write that AU, as I kind of have my usual idea of "What's the point? Why should I work with AU when I could work with canon?" But on the other hand, it's so adorable to me that I might have to tinker with it a little bit. It makes me squee all over just thinking about it.

Back in my main timeline, I think I'm going ahead with my idea of Manga Yami Bakura falling into anime verse and putting some of the characters in a life-size Mario game. I'll probably do it as the next big fic after I finish posting the New Orleans one. Just one more full chapter and the epilogue left.

We have awesome movie gift cards given by my aunt and we decided to try seeing Mary Poppins Returns last month. There wasn't anything else in the theatres that sounded safe/like something we could all enjoy. I was lukewarm, since I rarely like musicals and wasn't particularly crazy about the first Mary Poppins film, but I ended up loving it. I keep playing the soundtrack over and over on my Amazon Music trial, and I'll want to buy it once the trial runs out.

I got two more plushies on that outing so I could make Crump and Johnson. I also got the Sabrina doll from Charlie's Angels and a Chachi doll from Happy Days. Squeee! I'm not big on Happy Days, but I love Scott Baio, so Scott Baio merchandise must be mine!

I have the Big Four plushies semi-made by now; I have everything done but their shirts (and suitcoats and ties, if I feel like going all the way making suits). I used the black velvety material I used for Duke's scalp on both Crump and Johnson, and a scrap of leftover black fake fur for Crump's mustache. I gave them clothing scrap ponchos so they can be around, especially since I'm really dragging my feet on the shirts. I really hate sewing anything with sleeves. I have Gansley's shirt largely done, though, so I need to finish it and move on to the next one.

I also finally found a giant ladybug plushie at Walmart again! They only come out for Valentine's, and I haven't seen them in years. We tried so hard to get one the last time they did it, but they sold out within days. This time around, there have always been some there since they first showed up. But I didn't think there'd be money for that, and I didn't have money to spare to buy it, only I woke up Tuesday morning thinking, "What am I thinking? I don't want to pass that up when they finally have them again!" So I went to Walmart to try to get one ... only the only two I could find left were both torn, WTH. I was about to give up when I remembered that I'd seen some getting randomly put where they didn't belong, in some big basket bins and boxes of animals. I started looking through those and finally saw a flash of red in one. To my delight, it was another ladybug, and one that wasn't torn anywhere! I bought it. Then to my further surprise, Dad noticed and suggested that he buy it from me and give it to me on Valentine's Day. LOL. That was great with me, since I really couldn't afford to spend the money.