The Winter Court of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

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.