The Winter Court of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

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.

So some jerk decided to make a virus to infect Fanfiction.net: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/9q5gob/alert_do_not_check_any_user_profiles_on_ffn/ Be careful out there, minna-san!

I still prefer FF.net to AO3, although I use both, but ugh. FF.net admins, do something!

Or half of it, anyway. After some more story-wrestling and additions, I put up the first half of the mask fic. More or less. Even after the additions, it's still shorter than the second half, so it's not really like a half at all. Now to see how people feel. Of course, the stuff I'm really worried about isn't until the second half.

I also randomly decided to join Instagram. I hate Facebook, so maybe Instagram will get me posting on Facebook more, since I can crosspost pictures to there. And to Tumblr, but I don't think the pictures I'd put on Instagram are the kind I'd put on Tumblr.

So now LJ is apparently making up tags for me? It stuck the number fifty in as a tag and claims there's one usage of it. Naturally, when I click, it goes nowhere since there is no such tag. I deleted it from the list. It had better not come back. Or be replaced by another. I really do not appreciate my journal being tinkered with in any way. I also hate how if you write a number in an entry, it will automatically get linked to a search for it. Maybe that's only if there's a hashtag with it, but ugh, this isn't Twitter! People I know use LJ because it isn't Twitter. Or Facebook, etc. And we liked it better before the changes that started to make it more like them.

But seriously, making up tags? That is inexcusable. Unless it's some kind of a glitch. And if it is, it had better be fixed quickly, unlike how they claimed the extra ads were a glitch yet they did nothing about them until apparently the last mass migration from the site in April.

So Facebook sent me one of its erratic notifications saying that someone posted a new picture. It was actually an album's worth of pictures, from a visit she made here a couple weeks ago for what looks like her sister's high school graduation. I looked through them all and ended up feeling pretty sad. So I guess that answers the question. I wasn't upset before just because of teetering emotions, even if that was part of it. Looks like I'm just going to continue being emotional for who knows why. Maybe the dam finally broke and stuff I bottled up for ages is just going to keep coming out.

I worked with this lady for a long time doing the church activities I still do for the 8-11 girls age group. She was probably the one I worked with the longest (three-ish years or more, I believe). I was so upset when I knew she was going to move, but eh, everyone I like always seems to do that sooner or later, so I think I tried to push back how much it hurt because I didn't know what to do and I didn't want to deal with it.

I don't know that we were really even that close. At least, it certainly wasn't like it ended up with the first girl I worked with, whom I still hang out with and will hopefully be seeing this week. This lady and I didn't really associate outside of working together. But there were friendly gestures, like she loaned me her brown permanent marker when I was making the Lou plushie and needed the brown for his eyes, and she took pictures of me holding the Ginger and Lou plushies when I had them to a point that I was ready to show them off.

There were planning meetings with just the two of us; for a while it was just us, and we'd have the activities at her house. (Funny story: the layout of her house is nearly identical to the current house of the girl I worked with first, the one I called my movie-going friend, so there's always that reminder of her when I'm over there.) And while I've had happy times all along and enjoy the company of every lady I've worked with, I think I was the happiest when it was just the two of us having cozy activities for the girls at her house. Another of my happiest activity memories is when the two of us and the only four girls who showed up to that particular activity played Capture the Flag in the church gym. There have been two other Capture the Flag activities since then, with a larger group, and honestly, they just don't come close to the happiness and fun of the time with the small group. Go figure.

Then there were a couple of misunderstandings that I feel terrible about. There was one time when we had activities planned for several months, and then she had to pull one of hers out, and naturally that moved the other activities up on the schedule. I was worried wondering how to work it because then ones that wouldn't have happened yet were coming up sooner and I needed to coordinate at least one of them and I wasn't prepared. I needed her help about something to do with it and somehow something I said gave her the impression that I was telling her that things were her fault. I felt awful. I was just trying to explain that since she'd had to pull the one activity, it moved the others up on the schedule and we needed to get going with planning those sooner than originally thought.

Then a mortifying incident when she was moving. I wanted to give her a card, but they'd already left the old house and I wasn't sure how to get it to her. She didn't offer an address to mail it to, but said they'd be checking the old house's mail a couple more times. And ugh, Facebook was being such a memory-hogging pain and wrecking the browser's performance, so I couldn't stand to be on it and I immediately closed it after asking the question of when to leave the card, and it didn't notify me of her reply, and I was mortified since it only came in a minute or two after I'd posted. I didn't think it would be easily understood how awful Facebook tends to act for me, and I was frustrated that I'd missed the chance to get the card to her. I asked if there would be any other chances and I also managed to miss that reply. Ugh, I hate Facebook so much. I felt like sinking through the floor that I'd missed that one too. And I also felt bad not to be able to get the card to her, but I wondered if I was just being a bother and she didn't even really want it since she didn't give me an address. I think she was staying with her parents at the time. She probably didn't feel she should give out their address, but eh, I felt awkward and didn't know what to do and I still have the card in my bag.

We haven't really interacted since then. We're both quiet, reserved people, which I suppose accounts for the misunderstandings and such. Probably neither of us wants to do anything to impose. Maybe she thought I was trying to give the card as a dutiful gesture or something and she didn't want to put me to any trouble if that was the reason I wrote it. I don't know.

There have been some slight interactions in the way of Liking posts and comments on Facebook. Maybe I should try seeing if her email still works and ask how things are going. Since there was some post Liking, maybe she's not still upset with me (if she ever was to begin with). If I remember right, I stopped using the email because she had to pay more for using email. But maybe she has a better set-up at the new home.

Bleh, I don't know what to do with myself. This is just stupid. Ever since I saw the picture post, I've been crying off and on missing her so flippin' much. I love the ladies I work with now, but I wish she was still here. I wasn't ready to let her go.