The Winter Court of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

It has been extremely stressful almost from the time I last wrote anything here. I discovered the worst pain I have ever had in my life, which seems to have been caused by rupturing ovarian cysts, and I'm still trying to get my body back to normal. There's other cysts that may or may not be cancerous, although the doctor doesn't really think they are. He didn't even see the ultrasound pictures, though! He just read the hospital's report! We're waiting to see if the blasted things shrink on their own while I try some natural remedies and foods that are supposed to help. The doctor doesn't think food has anything to do with it, but I've found that my problems and the pain seem to pivot around foods. I've mostly felt a lot better and I discovered standing and walking are very helpful. I racked up a horrific bill just from the tests they did and I'm trying to qualify for Medicaid. I just thought everything was okay and now they seem to be demanding I redo all the information again?! WTH?! Aurgh! I tried to call them on Friday but couldn't get anyone and I'll have to try again tomorrow.

My birthday was peaceful, at least, but low-key. I still haven't had my outing. We were hoping to try for this coming week, but now we have a new house problem to deal with, as our bathroom light fixture decided to bork and now we have to light it with nightlights. We've been having so many house problems the last few months, mostly plumbing but also some electric issues. Our water pressure is horrendous. It's been wrecked ever since the city forced new pipes on everyone last year, and it's gotten worse for us in the last several months.

To compensate for no outing, I bought a lot of things online to have for my birthday. It was fun, but it doesn't take the place of physically visiting a store. It's the whole experience that's so fun, not just buying things. Although the irony is that I likely wouldn't be able to find much of anything I want in a physical store. It seems like what I want is either cheaper online or only available online.

Some other, more minor stressful things happened the past week, but because of my emotional state dealing with my health problems they tipped me over the edge. It's ironic and frustrating that I really try so hard to control myself online, but the few times I just can't take it anymore I get branded as some kind of horrible thing. Also ironic is that while they're thinking how awful I am, I'm emotionally tearing myself to pieces for weeks afterward because I said or did something that hurt someone. I have a lot of problems with anxiety and have for years. I've never been officially diagnosed, but reading up on the symptoms certainly matches my states of mind when I go into those ways and I fully believe I have an anxiety disorder. I would love to talk to a therapist, but we can't afford that either. And I certainly can't think about that when we're not sure the Medicaid went through. If I can really qualify for ongoing Medicaid and not just temporary, maybe then I can consider a therapist. I only really realized how badly I needed one two and a half years ago when I sank into a really bad depression and self-loathing state. A friend who is a therapist in another state really helped me a lot to be able to pull out of it. If only she lived here. I had a small-scale setback into such a state this past week because of those stressful things and what happened because of them. That friend plus other friends have been helping me pull out of it again and helping me see that I'm not the scum of the earth, which is how I was feeling.

I also lapsed into another frantic "Buy, buy, buy!" mode this past week, like I did in April when the lockdown started. Apparently that's going to be a thing with me now and I've developed full-blown retail therapy problems when under extreme stress. Although at least I'm not buying up everything under the sun; I still study things out for days to get what I really want. This round I wanted YGO things and I bought an official YGO coloring book and one of the Scholastic character guides, this one focusing on the villains. I wish I'd known about all these wonderful YGO things Scholastic put out at the time. I was looking and looking for things like that and could never find them. Apparently they did a whole line of character guides in 2006. I wonder why they waited until then. That was when the show ended!

I wrote all of the Whumptober prompts into a connected storyline and am posting them. I was delayed for several days when the worst of my physical pains were happening, but I've got back on track and am posting on the correct days again. I'm trying to do the Comfortember ones too, but they aren't plunnying me as much, so I'm not sure I'll do all of them. But I don't have any other story ideas other than expanding one of Nesbitt's hallucinations into a full fic really happening and taking place in another verse, so I want to keep trying. I love to write and feel like to not be able to is to lock part of my soul away.

The hallucination I want to expand is for Dartz to trick Nesbitt into using the Orichalcos. For some reason I've been wanting to write a storyline similar to Mai's season 4 arc. I don't know why, really, because that was gut-wrenching. But I finally figured out how to work it in a way I like. Nesbitt is feeling horrible because of his weakness in almost abandoning the others in Noa's world, so Dartz preys on that and tells him the Orichalcos will make him strong. In Nesbitt's state of mind, he believes that and thinks it will help him be a better friend, so he accepts it and then it corrupts him. He has no idea about soul-stealing or swallowing the world with a giant sea snake until after it corrupts him, which seemed to be the same with Mai in canon. In the dub, at least, Dartz most certainly doesn't tell her any of those things until she agrees to accept it. You can see in her face that the corruption is instantaneous. Very chilling.

As much as I love and adore Lector and have given him some of my personality traits in how I write for him, I really went to town with Nesbitt and base him on me even more. His insecurities, his struggles with his weaknesses, blurting things out he shouldn't and beating himself up over it, his asexuality, is all based on me. In the Japanese he doesn't seem to have some of his issues, like wanting to pretend he's a machine, so I deliberately write him based on the dub version because I find his manias so interesting and a writing goldmine. I do, however, use his Japanese backstory in how Seto treats him, which was even more appalling than in the dub. He tells Nesbitt not to get underfoot when the new engineer arrives, aurgh. So cruel when Nesbitt was the top engineer! (And semi-related, I read a short fic on Crump based on the Japanese version where Seto said something horrible to him when he brought the idea of a penguin sanctuary and theme park, something about crushing Crump like a soda can if he didn't drop the idea?! If that was really what he said in the Japanese, horrible! And of course, Seto learned all that kind of behavior from Gozaburo. So sickening how Gozaburo poisoned that once-innocent mind.) Honestly, aside from them letting Pegasus take Mokuba, I'm more on the Big Five's side than Seto's, up to the point where they first start messing with virtual reality. As horrible as Seto treated them, that wasn't justified. I wish the dub hadn't inserted a murder plot in season 1 that didn't exist. I can't even watch that episode in the original dub anymore because that sickens me so. I always watch it in the uncut dub instead. I'm glad that was one of the few episodes that made it into the uncut dub.

I'm still getting pictures from ElfBean. Her latest is from my fic where Lector is a vigilante and I just adore it so much!

I feel like drawing a picture of Lector laying on his bed in his dress shirt and pants and tie, looking up at the ceiling. Usually it's Nesbitt I depict without his suitcoat, but after an RP scene I feel like I really want to show Lector like that too, squeee. He would look amazing! (Of course, he always looks amazing, heh.)

I had a really awesome and fun dream the other day about playing a video game where the player is interacting with the Big Five. Their memories have been mysteriously wiped and the goal is to help them find something they're looking for and restore their memories. It would work great as a visual novel type game, and apparently there are sites where people can make games like that without years of programming lessons! I definitely want to try it out! I have the sprites from the Nightmare Troubadour game that would be perfect to use in it! They looked so amazing in that game!

This is the checklist of everything I've bought for my birthday and a bit afterwards:

- Set of the first four Anna & Elsa chapter books set after the first Frozen
- The most recent Frozen 5 Minute Stories collection, the red cover one
- Frozen Blu-Ray and DVD combo (if we ever get a Blu-Ray, I can see all the cool bonus content!)
- Star Wars Qui-Gon Jinn 12 inch figure
- Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi from episode 1 12 inch figure
- Yu-Gi-Oh! Twisted Nightmares double deck set of Yami Bakura and Yami Marik (sooo awesome and perfect for my Yami Bakura memorabilia collection! There's a game mat with characters on it, and Skill cards with them on them, and cards at the beginning of the decks with them on them.)
- Halloween face mask that says Trick or Treat in an eerie font, perfect to use with my recycled Yami Bakura costume this year
- Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Chaos coloring book
- Yu-Gi-Oh! uncut dub volume 2, The Insector Combo (the only volume of uncut I don't have, and I finally decided I wanted it)
- Yu-Gi-Oh! character guide to villains
- Autumn socks

So thankfully, we didn't really need a new modem. Something was wrong outside. A technician came out and fixed it! Things have been fine since then.

I rented Frozen 2 on Amazon, as per Crystal's suggestion, and watched it three times during the rental period. My feelings are ... mixed. I still don't like the ending. I don't think it had to be that way. But ... aside from the ending, I found it a beautiful film and I loved the songs. It was a much higher quality film than the Wreck-It Ralph sequel, as I expected and hoped.

The reasons why I have problems with the ending are as follows.

1, Elsa's powers separated her and Anna for most of their lives. They had only had three years together finally bonding again before the Frozen 2 ending separated them again. At least they're going to visit, but it's not the same.

2, It's Anna's mother and culture too, and she should also get to explore and learn about the past. Of course, somebody has to watch Arendelle, but I think it would have been much more satisfying if Elsa and Anna stayed a bit to learn about their mother and mother's family and Elsa learned more about her powers and then they both went back to Arendelle. Maybe Anna could still be queen so Elsa could be "free," but Elsa would mostly live in Arendelle and travel to the forest when she felt like it or if there was trouble. The four spirits are the guardians of the forest, so it doesn't seem like Elsa has to be there. Elsa does seem to have an adventurous side, understandable when she was cooped up so long, afraid of her powers. But that shouldn't have to equate living apart from Anna.

3, One reviewer on YouTube commented that she thought Elsa had to live in the forest so she could unleash her full powers without hurting anyone. That would just be sad if that's the reason. And it goes back to what I said about her learning to control them even better while there, but not having to stay there. Elsa does love the forest and seems more at home there than in the city, but then that's because the writers wanted it that way. Maybe some of the fans would have different images of Elsa or feel like she would be happy in the city getting to be with Anna and not be afraid of harming her. Or maybe everyone decides to move Arendelle closer to the forest so everyone can be more connected to each other. That would have been satisfying too. But basically, Elsa learning the full scope of her powers should really make her feel free, and how would it make her feel free if she has to live apart from the city for fear of harming them with said powers? That is not a happy ending. Of course, it's just that reviewer's opinion that that's why Elsa decides to live in the forest. I don't think that was what Disney intended.

Really, though, the original Frozen had the perfect ending already: Elsa learning how to start controlling her powers and the kingdom realizing she isn't a monster and them all being accepting and happy together.

All that said, the Show Yourself sequence is just incredible and my favorite part of the sequel. And I thought Olaf's sequel song was better and funnier than In Summer. I liked that they toned down Olaf falling apart. Waaay too overdone in the first film. I think I loved all the songs in Frozen 2, whereas in the original I was enthusiastic about maybe three or four. Frozen 2 was also less crude. So ... a mixed bag. But definitely worth seeing. I'll probably want to own it someday. I definitely want the soundtrack.

I've thought a lot lately about how much I can relate to Elsa on some things. I love both girls, but I definitely find Elsa the most relatable, struggling with herself and what she is and worrying about concealing her true self. (And also relating to having a bit of an adventurous side, although at the same time I wouldn't be comfortable doing anything risky, heh.) I know a lot of lesbians gravitate to her and wish that Disney would make her a lesbian, but I wish Disney would make her asexual. :) Oh, one of my favorite lines in Frozen 2 is in the childhood flashback. Anna is obsessed with romance and Elsa's reaction is, "Anna, kissing won't save the forest!" ROTFLOL. I love it. I would love to have a Show Yourself moment and finally feel free to reveal my complete self to everyone.

Gansley did indeed come on the day I was thinking he would! It's pretty awesome to have all five members of the Big 5 in G. I. Joe form now. I wish I could think of stories to act out with them, heh. Mostly I play with them by picking them up and moving them around. There are lots of cute hugs with Lector and Nesbitt.

(Also on that day, which was Dad's birthday, my brother wanted to get him a birthday dinner. He ordered KFC. Yuuum! I'm having a lot of trouble with tomato intolerance, which is really frustrating me lately. Of course, the most upsetting thing is when it affects my pizza intake. I'm considering having fried chicken for my birthday this year.)

The price of the Wreck-It Ralph Elsa and Anna dolls finally came down on Amazon, so I bought them with a gift card. They came on Monday. They're slightly disproportionate, sadly, and hollow plastic instead of solid, but they're very cute and I'm happy to get them at last. It's fun seeing them in modern clothes. LOL, Anna's shirt has a sandwich.

And my three-foot Elsa arrived on Friday! It was an amazing day and really felt like Christmas, heee. I woke up just before the delivery and was able to immediately get her inside. I needed more sleep, so I got her out of the mailing box and brought her into my room. I thought I'd be too excited to sleep, but I finally dozed off, and I had an amazing dream, one of the haunted house dreams I have such fun with. And it plunnied me for a fic at last! I hope I'll be able to develop a whole plot from it. I'm thinking that Noa buys a house because he wants a big one for him and his mother to live in. But weird things start happening and they end up calling the Big Five and Yugi and company for help. Then they have to try to solve the mystery of what happened in the house and why the ghosts are angry. I suppose that unlike Evangeline's house, which will always have some mysteries, I'll need to try to solve this one. My house dreams never do solve the mysteries, though. Lol. There's lots of wandering through all the rooms, and there's bedrooms with all of the past tenants' stuff and the feeling of ghosts lingering and being angry. In the dreams I always want to take some of the neat stuff and use it myself, but I never feel free to because of the eerie feeling. This dream had a huge bathroom with spa and a room with a stage, and rooms filled with stored furniture that felt haunted. And all of this stuff was on the basement level. Usually it's higher levels.

I probably won't try buying much of anything for a while, except a picture here and there by ElfBean. I'm pretty happy right now and want to play with all the lovely things, hee. I feel like I've been having my birthday shopping spree since April.

I finally finished my interview fic and got it all posted. I hope it looks alright. Johnson's was the hardest for me. He's my least favorite member and it's the most difficult to get into his mind.

I also kept being pestered by my original Purple Avenger plunnie, where Lector becomes a vigilante because he feels betrayed and abandoned by his friends. I finally had to pen it, and I wrote it as taking place in another verse. But it's a misunderstanding created by Dartz, who was hoping someone would give into their inner darkness. Everything gets resolved and there is squee.

Frozen 2 also provided plunnies. I love the line in Kristoff's song "You're my True North, because without you I am lost in the woods." I had to adapt the line for a squee scene with Lector and Nesbitt. It may or may not be part of my next mystery fic. It looks fine as a stand-alone, but I know I get a bigger audience for the ensemble fics. I'm not sure it fits the tone of this upcoming house fic, though. So I'm still thinking about placement for that.

Then Anna's heartbreaking song The Next Right Thing, where she thinks Elsa is dead, provided inspiration and I had to draw a heartbreaking picture: http://meromeroyui.deviantart.com I'm planning to color it, but haven't yet.

I also want to draw Lector swinging on his grappling hook as the Purple Avenger. I love that concept of Lector as a vigilante way too much.

Just like with October, many things went wrong during the Christmas season. Seriously, WTH? Most of it I don't feel like talking about or it's too private to talk about, but one thing (more minor than other things) was the Rockapella concert being postponed at the last minute because they got snowed in. And even though they were supposed to reschedule the next week, nothing has been done yet. I don't blame the band, but I am angry at whoever is delaying this. We paid for a Christmas concert, and now we can't have it. I've never seen their full Christmas concert, but I've seen several of their regular concerts. I still want to go, but this is very disappointing. I thought I would finally get to see their full Christmas concert. Both I and others have wanted them to make it a Christmas concert no matter what month it gets rescheduled to, since that's what we paid for, but I know very well that won't happen. Probably the most we could hope for is that they'll sing one Christmas song to be good sports. And of course I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to miss their Christmas concerts, but I can't help feeling angry and bitter that our concert was the only one that got cancelled because of the snow-in, even though another state's concert was the very next day. I know it's one of those things, but I'm mad anyway. It feels like a personal slap in the face by whatever likes to mess things up.

I'd rather talk about more positive things. I finally got on the Frozen bandwagon, because of all things, Dad saw part of it while baby-sitting great-grandchildren and he liked it and wanted to see it all. LOL. I think he was mostly fascinated by the CGI, because advances in technology like that have always intrigued him. Me too. But so we all saw it and I think he liked it. Mom and I loved it. So lovely to see a movie that turns tropes like love at first sight on their heads and sibling squee saving the day! Walmart had a gigantic 2 foot Olaf plush for only $15, and later $10! I wanted it, and got that for Christmas, as well as dolls of Elsa and Anna from Disney. I like the faces Disney did better than Hasbro's, although I'm surprised by the rubbery legs. While at Disney, I saw they also had plushies that are about 18 or 20 inches for only $12 each, so I got those since I didn't feel like I could ask for them after asking for dolls. I love how soft they are!

I haven't seen the sequel yet, but ( Read more... )

I actually liked Once Upon a Time's explanation for Elsa's powers better, where her aunt had the powers too and she apparently inherited them. Yes, I finally watched Once's Frozen arc, as Netflix got Once and after seeing Frozen, I couldn't resist seeing the characters live-action. Olaf was a glaring omission, though. I don't remember what I read of why they didn't include him. And of course, some things in the Once version were horrifying and traumatizing material, both for the characters and the viewers! It's so understandable why Ingrid got so messed-up in the head, after accidentally killing one sister and then the other sister immediately turning against her instead of realizing no one would be hurting more than Ingrid herself. I was happy that the arc ended with Ingrid getting a happy ending too.

Of course, I did not like seeing Rumpel in that arc. The writers really messed him up after how far he'd come in the first half of season 3, and I will never not be upset at that. I had to watch his season 3 sacrifice after I finished the arc to get the bad taste out of my mouth. I still consider that all of the show I consider canon ends there, although I love Elsa and Emma's friendship and would like to picture that a different version of the Frozen arc happens after my headcanon for the show diverges after Rumpel's sacrifice.

Along those lines, I had my usual thing of being sad to think that the characters would be dead now and wanted to bring them into the present to live, lol. I thought of a storyline similar to Twilight and Dawn, where Hans decides to embrace magical things to help him get what he wants and finds a spell that takes all of Arendelle to the present-day, and then there are big companies instead of kingdoms. LOL. But unlike Twilight and Dawn (or Once, which came afterwards ... hmmm, I really wonder if the creators read my stories ...), the characters show up with their memories intact, because it would be amusing to see them suddenly faced with modern technology and try to figure out how to use it. LOL. I don't know that I would really write the story, but I like picturing it as my headcanon after the shorts, anyway. I doubt I'll want Frozen II to be canon to me. I had a funny idea of Anna learning to drive and freaking Elsa out. I might buy the Wreck-It Ralph II dolls of Elsa and Anna in modern pajamas, because I definitely get a kick out of the characters in modern clothes. I already wanted the Belle from that line. I don't know if Walmart will reduce the price of the Frozen dolls, though. Some of the other sets in that line have got lowered prices now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Frozen ones stay full-price.

I also wonder when Frozen actually does take place. I had developed this whole headcanon that it's around 1910 or 1920, because the characters from other lands are dressed similarly to the clothes in The Student Prince, which takes place around 1915. But I was watching a video on YouTube where the person thinks it's 1840 and seemed to be claiming that it's officially shown to be that in Frozen Fever. That's depressing to me because I was pretty set on my headcanon where it's more recent than that, lol.

Also, since 2017 I've been amazed by this resurgence of interest in Bob Ross. I used to watch The Joy of Painting all the time as a kid, and I think I still have an episode or two recorded, but I'd forgotten all about it and Bob Ross and couldn't remember who he was when I saw the parent of one of my church activity girls happy that she had chosen to do a school report on Bob Ross. Then I saw the Art of Chill game at Target and started seeing Bob everywhere. I finally looked him up and then I remembered! Lately I've been watching some episodes on Netflix. It's very relaxing and calming, and the pictures are just gorgeous. As an artist myself, I'm thoroughly fascinated by his techniques and how he paints such beautiful things in thirty minutes! I just love how cute he is about animals and saying things like he wants to paint more than one tree so the tree will have a friend. I almost wonder if that's where I got my obsession about nothing being alone, at least to some extent. I still have that; if I take the second to last can from a case, I often move the one remaining can to another case so it won't be alone. **headdesk.** I know it's illogical behavior, but I feel better to engage in it and it's harmless. I also love Bob ending each episode saying "God bless."

I've been toying with getting a plush of him that Walmart has. I probably will. And I just learned that there's another plush, more expensive, that Funko made. I am not a Funko fan, honestly, but this plush actually looks cute to me. They have one of Mr. Rogers in the same line, too.

I'm also watching Mystery, Inc. on Netflix. I really feel like it's too dark for Scooby-Doo, and I can't stand Velma's behavior of trying to force a relationship with Shaggy and unfairly bossing him around. If she really loved him, she'd love him for who he is. I can't imagine any other Velma being interested in him that way, though. And I think any other Velma would denounce the illogical behavior the Mystery, Inc. Velma displays. She barely has the traits that make Velma awesome. I don't really like Daphne being so ga-ga over Fred, either, and Fred being such an idiot. Shaggy and Scooby are the only ones who act like they're supposed to. I think characterization gets better later, though, and that these romantic messes don't persist through the whole series, so I want to keep watching because I'm intrigued by the overarching mystery. I might get some nice YGO plunnies from it.

I'm still writing Big Five fics and enjoying it. I'm doing a hurt/comfort one right now of Lector missing in a snowstorm.