The Winter Court of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

So I haven't been happy with G5 of My Little Pony ever since the info came out about all the Pony races being separate. Totally depressing enough, but at least it was supposed to be a new verse. Now more info shows that it's the G4 verse way in the future. Twilight and company are still alive, apparently, as they're going to be in it in supporting roles or something, last I heard, and come on, you know they'd never stand for something like that happening. They must be missing or trapped or something and the new main characters will have to find them. Ugh. I most likely will refuse to accept G5 as canon unless I can think of it as AU. I already don't accept season nine of G4 as canon. The quality was really low, as seen especially in episodes like Cheese Sandwich's second one. I watched it back to back with his first episode and the quality difference was absolutely glaring. The first episode was him and Pinkie wanting to make people happy with special parties tailored to each Pony's interests. The second was just stupid, about him running a prank factory and mentioning very little about the special parties.

Thinking about anything Pony-related of course makes me think of JP and how I can't share these things with him anymore. I'm so upset about his death that I can't even deal with it; my mind has literally subconsciously locked the memories and the pain away. If I think about him too long, it breaks the seal and I usually end up crying again. I just can't comprehend that he's no longer here, that all the late-night conversations and him wanting to share his latest interests is all a thing of the past.

This year is horrible and the summer especially has been nightmare after nightmare. Mom and I came down sick for a month. I don't think it was Covid because we didn't seem to have the symptoms. I really think it was a normal flu. (Of course, I realize sometimes that cursed virus manifests itself as a flu-like thing. If we did have it, our experience must have been middle of the road. It wasn't mild like some lucky people had it, but it wasn't the most severe either.) I definitely remember feeling horrible like that sometimes as a kid. Then Dad falls right in the driveway and breaks his hip so badly he has to have a hip replacement. He's recovering amazingly well and is able to be home, but now our home has become a hospital ward and people think they can troup in day and night to visit, even when he's trying to sleep. Sometimes they want to rearrange things the way they want them, whether we want it done or not. I hope Dad was firm enough now that it won't happen anymore. Yesterday was a chaotic nightmare and I was so exhausted. It's hard to get things done that actually need doing when there's so many people in and out all the time.

A family tragedy happened where a cousin suddenly had a heart attack and died, leaving his wife and many kids, some of whom are still young. His mother was having so many health problems that she couldn't even be told for a while because her condition was too delicate and they thought she might have a heart attack too. They were finally able to tell her and the funeral was this past Sunday and Monday. No one was told until the last minute and of course we weren't in any position to go, even if someone invited us. I was so upset about the death that I couldn't even process it at first. It just seemed too unreal, too unfair and horrible. He always struggled so hard to provide for his family, sometimes working multiple jobs.

There are other things happening too that I don't want to talk about.

I would much rather deal with Covid lockdown stress than any of what's happened this year. And fandom hasn't always been the escape for me that it usually is because I've been having some problems there too.

Screw you, 2021.

Someone on YouTube is apparently familiar with me from years before and told me I'm a legend. They also used the goat emoticon, which I learned can be an acronym for "Greatest of All Time." That absolutely bowled me over. It's still so surreal and hard to believe that anyone could feel like that about me. It certainly gave me a much-needed emotional boost. I've been struggling a lot again lately with emotional stress and some bouts of self-hatred.

I finally got approved for Medicaid, thank God! I've been calling places to direct them to Medicaid for billing. I still have another I'll need to call on Monday. This is certainly an immense burden eased. It also looks like the hospital bill I racked up wasn't anywhere near $8,000 like we were told? But we still couldn't have afforded it.

I finished watching the first 64 episodes of YGO 5Ds, on YouTube. I don't normally tear through a show's episodes that quickly, but I was hooked and could hardly put it down. I decided I should watch the episodes before buying them, and they are officially available online. I probably will buy the DVD set, though, because Earthbound Immortals is so good and very rewatchable! I already want to see some of them again!

Most of it is good and rewatchable, anyway. For the life of me I don't understand why a wonderfully dark and serious arc was interrupted by Luna's extended trip to the Duel Monsters world. They could have done those episodes to better fit in with the tone of the arc, but instead it had to be ridiculous with stupid monkey lackeys of the villain, and the villain himself wasn't what I expected. Neither was the human villain in the real world, Devack. With all the other Dark Signers, we know who they are and what they're upset about. Then Devack comes along and we're never told anything about him and it's like "... Why do we care what happens to him?" It seems like a serious oversight when every other Dark Signer has a masterfully thought-out backstory. I do love the sibling squee in those episodes, but otherwise I feel like I went to kiddie land for four episodes. It's so out of place with the intensity of the arc. I was rather bored by that part in the Duel Links event version I encountered first, too. In the original YGO, weirdness like that would have only happened in virtual reality.

On the upside, I really love how this show handles emotions and emotional trauma. At first I did not like Akiza, but then they slowly developed her and brought out her horrible past in a way that finally by episode 40, everything made sense and she was one of the most realistic and complex characters! She also had a setback then when her beloved mentor seemed to have been killed. (And ugggh, her mentor is a real piece of work. Horrible guy. He ranks among the few characters in anything I absolutely detest.) I wonder a bit if the writers took inspiration from Mai in season 4 of classic YGO. Some things seemed a little similar, like how Akiza lashed out at Yusei when he was not to blame for anything that happened to her. They also do this emotional exploration with Yusei, having him shaken for a long time about Kalin turning against him, and with Kalin himself when he comes back to himself and realizes all the horrible things he did unjustly. They even do some pretty great development with Officer Trudge when he finally starts to see the good things about Satellite and then gets thrown into a position where he has to protect kids. He starts out just being a creep who uses his badge to bully people, but then he somehow ends up lovable. I love it, I love these characters, I just still hate what happens to Domino City!

I don't like that Yusei's Satellite friends disappear from the show for the most part now, until they appear again at the ending. It's like Yusei doesn't be with them anymore now that he's part of team 5Ds.

Crow is awesome. Something about him reminds me of Zack Fair from FF7, and that really comes out even more during the Earthbound Immortals finale.

It's really a shame the dub didn't do all the episodes. I haven't decided yet what I'll do with the next arc, which is, I think, mostly filler. I probably will watch Kalin's redemption arc again. It has some kind of silly things in it too, like the guns that unfold into Duel Disks. LOL. It's obvious Crash Town is a Western parody from start to finish. But whatever's silly in it still isn't anywhere as bad as those Duel Monster world episodes.

Crash Town must be pretty close to Domino City, since Sector Security apparently has law enforcement jurisdiction. They seem to be exclusively a Domino police force. It's probably like with the LAPD, where their jurisdiction extends to some of the nearby rural and mountain areas. It's nice to think Kalin must still be close by. Also, I think the dub improved on not having people die in the mines, because if they died, that prompts the disturbing question as to whether Kalin caused anyone to get sent there who ended up dying from the horrible conditions. I think Kalin has enough to feel horrible about without adding something like that! I also prefer the dub having the idolizing kids' dad live. I really hate having him die in the original, when the kids were trying so hard to save him. I think I'm going to headcanon that he lived in the original too. He fell, but I don't think we saw him hit bottom. Maybe he landed on an outcropping and was later rescued, injured but alive, as in the dub. Maybe after I finish the fic I'm doing, I'll write one where he's talking to Kalin while he recovers.

EDIT: Another thing I meant to add was that Crash Town has nothing supernatural in it. Hence, the deaths (in the Japanese) are real. I prefer not having that kind of reality in an anime that usually has supernatural problems. I really loved in Earthbound Immortals that even Greiger's village was able to be restored because it was destroyed by supernatural means and the people taken to power up the Earthbound Immortals. Anyone taken for that can be restored when the things are defeated. That's so much nicer than reality. I'm sick of reality, I'm sick of real deaths ... bring on the supernatural anime problems, please!

I did finally get the YGO fic rolling where Lector encounters Kalin. Eventually it decided to become my original cross idea of seeing whether a dimensional rift could have opened during Zero Reverse and swallowed the YGO classic characters I figured disappeared. I also decided that if Mokuba was lost, Seto closed himself off and didn't care anymore about anything, and he wasn't responsible for the totalitarian mess Domino became. The fic has been catching some attention, even a reviewer on AO3 (a rare thing for me), so that's certainly been nice. I hope any 5Ds fans reading won't be disappointed. I want to highlight what I like about both series, but I have to point out the strange things about 5Ds that don't make sense and try to make sense of them.

I also started making the Kalin plushie. I probably got his hair too long, but it's a lot longer in his redemption arc. I haven't been able to get black cloth to make his clothes yet. No one's ever at the fabric counter and when I ring for them they don't come. And of course, the one time someone was around, there was no black cloth left for them to cut for me! Aurgh!

I wrote prompts for every day for Whumptober and Comfortember, making a huge, connected fic about the Big Five being tortured by Yami Marik and trying to recover from it. I'm really pleased with it. I'm especially pleased I actually wrote for each day in Comfortember, as some of those prompts weren't plunnying me so much. But somehow it all came together.

I got another tablet since the Amazon one has been bothering my eyes so much and the DigiLand has been acting weird and also couldn't update Duel Links anymore. Walmart had an amazing deal on their Onn tablet for $28, so I snapped that up. It's been great.

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

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.

So this past day was real fun. **sarcasm.** I wanted to play Duel Links so badly that I fought for hours to get Steam to work so I could play the PC version. Steam never cooperated. I don't know whether something messed up in the download or if there were just too many people signed in at once, but I had a horrible time connecting to the servers to even just sign in, and then whenever I got in, I couldn't get it to connect to the servers to start a download of Duel Links. **headdesk.** I tried switching my download region several times, I made sure Avast and Windows Firewall weren't blocking anything, I tried again after booting the computer up fresh later in the day ... all to no avail. Finally I uninstalled out of disgust. I don't know whether to bother reinstalling and seeing whether I had a faulty installation the first time. Even if I get it to work right, there's no guarantee the game will work. Technically, it says it will only run starting on the next OS up from mine. But Steam itself said it will run on my OS, so that's why I tried installing it. I thought the game would probably play through the Steam app and therefore might possibly work. But I didn't even get the chance to try and see if it would. We do have computers in the house that run on Windows 10 instead, but those are Dad's computers and I'd rather have the game on a computer that's mine. But don't think I haven't been tempted to try anyway. UGH.

(I have wondered if the thing's inability to download the game has anything to do with the fact that for some bizarre reason, the computer switched to not allowing me to download updates from inside programs several months ago. I have to remember to go to the Flash website and download the full version of the update every time there is one, instead of just being able to click the little gray box when it pops up, like I used to. I have no idea what happened. I didn't change my antivirus or firewall programs around that time. Heh, I can't even update from within my antivirus program, so it would be hilariously ironic if it's the culprit. I think I tried disabling it and the problem still happened, though. But regardless, even if that's why it couldn't connect to the servers to get the game, that wouldn't explain why it also couldn't connect to the servers to sign in in the first place!)

Then I went back to the idea of maybe getting the $30 Smartphone from Walmart that Dad has and see if I could play the game on that. I've been considering the Smartphone for a while for several reasons, but right now, wanting the game so badly is the main one. It would be like buying a portable gaming system, heh. I don't need a Smartphone, since I have a working phone and my precious tablet, but the tablet can't play the game. Anyway, so I wanted to make sure the game was compatible with that phone before buying it, so I asked Dad to let me just check something a minute. Unfortunately, he wasn't signed in on his Google account and it wouldn't let me even see something so simple in the Play Store without being signed in. He doesn't really use Google and I figured he wouldn't remember his sign-in info, and he didn't deny that when I pointed it out after he offered to sign in, so I finally gave up and signed in, figuring I could easily sign out after checking. Oh brother, was I wrong. #(&$#(&$ Google wouldn't let me out once I was signed in! There were instructions on how to sign out of the Play Store and they didn't work. It was outrageous! Finally, the only way I could sign out was to sign in on the phone's browser and delete the phone from the recent devices on my account. UGH! I hate Google. Problem is, they operate several things I really like, from YouTube to Blogger to Google Sites. And my tablet has an Android OS. I can't get away from Google. And the game is compatible with the phone, so I seriously want it now. It doesn't look like anything else will work for me to be able to play it.

Then there's my longing of merchandise.... I still can't find the Yami Bakura Hexor or get the pin the rare times I see it, but I turned up a seller on eBay who has the Seto and Yami Bakura magnets, as well as magnets of other characters. There's enough of them to make me feel like the price is worth it. There are even doubles of some of them, so I might be able to do some gifting with the extras. And the price has just lowered! I think I'm the only one interested, so even though it's been turned into an auction instead of a Buy It Now, I'm hoping I can snag it. But I really shouldn't get both it and the phone right now, so now I'm stuck in another dilemma. I don't want to miss out on the magnets. I had previously sort of decided I couldn't afford the lot, but then I got a real good look at everything in it when I looked on the laptop. The app just doesn't magnify things as nicely as the website does. Once I really saw everything I'd be getting, I felt the price was worth it.

If only the PC version of Duel Links would work, that would solve everything. I could get the magnets and not worry about the phone right now.

Oh well, I guess at least I can feel relieved that my burning desire isn't to buy that Yami Bakura figure that's over $100. Gah. Making the plushie has soothed that urge. Plushie's certainly more cuddly than the figure anyway. But I love that dynamic pose....

You know what's kind of creepy/weird about the plushie? I noticed that there's a long pinkish-red mark on the left arm, right near where the knife wound was on the show/in the manga. I have no idea how it got there. I didn't put it there. I didn't bleed on the plushie (although I got needle-stabbed several times). And I don't remember it being there when I first got the plushie home (although it must have been). I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't show up well enough to be worth posting. Seriously, though, that is CREEPY.

Also creepy is that I watched Yami Bakura's duel against Bonz (again) and then the Arkana duel and got this really bizarre and weird plunnie of Yami Marik trapping Bakura as a Duel Monsters character in a duel (maybe other characters too) and then forcing Yami Bakura to play against him, Yami Marik. And eventually during the duel, Yami Marik gets hold of the Ectoplasmer card and wants to extract Bakura's soul and attack Yami Bakura with it. Yami Bakura is horrified and outraged. He tries to prevent that from happening, but fails. Only Bakura manages to fight back himself and instead of attacking Yami Bakura, he protects him and prevents another attack of Yami Marik's from getting through. Eventually Yami Bakura manages to win and Bakura's soul is restored, of course. They're both pretty badly shaken by the experience, although I think it affects Yami Bakura the most. I'll probably write that as a blurb. I doubt it will go into the current fic, although who knows what might happen. I'd kind of prefer it to be a oneshot unto itself, though. I really like having Yami Marik and Yami Bakura as arch-enemies. I really felt rather sad they never had another clash, especially after their intriguing parting words in the manga version of their duel.

I finally got around to watching the other Orange Islands episode not included on the DVD set, which was presumably removed for the ridiculous reason of a non-purple Jynx being present for one minute. Seriously? Color her purple in those few frames if it's going to be such a problem! The Prima character was really interesting and I basically liked her, although I thought she was rather rude to Misty and Tracey at the beginning and I did not like how she decided to deal with Team Rocket. Encasing them in ice and then blasting them off like that? At least you saw the ice was melting so they weren't trapped like that, but that seemed pretty brutal. Not that all the electric shocks aren't brutal, but at least I'm more used to that method of getting rid of them and I know they can seem to deal with it pretty well. Encasing them in ice ... ugh.

Of the two episodes absent from the set, Stage Fight! is definitely the better one. It was sweet seeing the Trainer trying and finally succeeding in bonding with her Raichu, and I loved that when one of the Pokemon hurts James, Jessie goes ballistic and gets protective. "How dare you hit my friend?!?!!!"

I also finally got around to watching the Sabrina episodes again. I've put them off since I really wasn't fond of them due to so many tropes I hate. But they were among the last Indigo episodes I hadn't re-watched, so I finally decided to see them. I'd already watched the Tower of Terror one before, but it's sort of the middle part of the Sabrina trilogy even though she's not in it. I'm not crazy about it because Team Rocket seemed to be treated especially bad in it by the writers. It felt like a Warner Brothers cartoon with all the times Ash accidentally hurt them without even realizing they were in there. That doesn't generally happen. If it did, there's no way I'd watch the show.

Sabrina is one disturbing person. On the one hand, I guess I feel a little sad for her being lonely and wanting friends, because I think her bottled-up feelings were mostly sorrow and regret over missed opportunities, and that's always sad. But mostly I think, "Hey, you chose that path yourself, Honey. Deal with it." I mean, she deliberately pushed everyone away because she wanted to hone her psychic powers. She hurt people with her powers over and over. And she freaking turned her mother into a doll. And both her parents are all, "Oh, she's really not a bad girl." **headdesk.** Well, it would have been nice to have seen some indication of that. At least with Team Rocket, we're shown their good sides very often. If we weren't, they wouldn't mean anything to me. With Sabrina, you just don't see it. She's just this cold-hearted brat who apparently has a split personality, but the other personality, who looks maybe ten years younger, isn't very glowing either. It looks like she only helped Ash and company because she wanted to entrap them. Little kid antagonists are just really really creepy. And the older personality finally laughs and that breaks the spells over the people she hurt and that somehow makes everything okay. She should have at least showed regret or sorrow for all the pain she caused to so many people. There was no indication she felt bad at all. Even Team Rocket shows sorrow and regret for some of their plots.

Haunter was quite a jerk too, really. He promised Ash repeatedly that he would help, and then he kept disappearing. When he finally showed up to make Sabrina laugh, I definitely had the feeling that he was doing it for kicks and not to help Ash. It's debatable if he stopped Team Rocket's Pikachu plot to help Ash or if that was also just for kicks. But honestly, he could have just stopped when he foiled their plans. He didn't have to deliberately make them fall, especially when they were all afraid the drop was too much to survive. (And ugh, Jessie wanting James and Meowth to let go so at least she would survive.... I wonder if she says that in the Japanese. Regardless, I doubt she really meant it, since we do see that when they're hurt, she's upset. But it was a nasty thing to say.) Haunter is sadistic. He likes seeing people get hurt. He laughed when Ash and Pikachu got electrocuted and trapped under a chandelier! Ugh.

And then Ash's naivete ... oh gosh. I'd forgotten how stupid he came across in those episodes. I don't get it, either, because while yes, he has small moments of not knowing this or that in other episodes, it's not as bad as the Sabrina episodes make him seem. Just ... ugggh. If he'd been like that in every episode ... oh the horror.

And poor Team Rocket.... I guess they didn't fare too badly in the first of the three episodes, but the other two.... All the enhanced slapstick crud in the second one, and then in addition to the Haunter problem in the third one, some idiot comes to fill up the hole they made by crashing through the sidewalk and doesn't even check to see if anyone's in there first. So they're calling for help and Ash thinks he hears them, but no one else seems to (a running gag, but worse here). Ash doesn't hear them calling for help, but he's sure he hears them. Had he not been influenced to not worry about it, he would have come to investigate, seen the problem, and tried to get them out of the hole before they were cemented. He's shown that when he is aware that there's life-threatening danger, he will help them in spite of their constant stalking of him and trying to get Pikachu. The problem is, he usually isn't aware of it. They do thankfully manage to get out of the hole before the cement sets, and hopefully they find some way to get the cement off of them before it hardens, but seriously, ugggh. They probably could have sued the moron who was filling the obviously person-shaped hole without even looking in it first.

So yeah, I still don't like those episodes and having re-watched them once, I don't think I'm likely to get them out again at all. I like the basic plot idea of "Hey, let's have Ash go up against a psychic." But it could have been handled sooo much better.

(Also, since when does a psychic have the ability to do horrifying magic things like turning people into objects? Makes no sense. For my crossover, since I did not want that kind of thing to be possible, I had Misty say that the anime did that but in real-life, Sabrina could only hypnotize people into thinking things like that had happened to them.)

Then I was fooling around on Google Search looking for a picture of Jessie and James pretending to be Hawaiian girls from the first Sabrina episode and it showed me an XY episode where they pretend to be Ash and Serena. WTH. So I watched some of that. It looks like after the experiment in having them darker and serious in Best Wishes (why did the U.S. version call it Black and White?), XY went back to the old standard formula of silly plans and defeats. Gotta say, though, dressing up as Ash and company and getting everyone mad at them seems like the slimiest trick they've ever pulled. And I think that in past seasons, James wouldn't have liked the idea. Chalk another one up for Classic Era.

Then my book arrived and it seemed like it had been seriously misnamed. Team Rocket, honestly, isn't even in the book that much, which is a total WTH, and they're not able to come to the rescue. They hold their own at first, but then get blasted off by Team Flare, who takes the Pokemon. I may change my mind and return it, but for now my mindset is that I suppose I will keep it for the pretty pictures, and since I didn't have to pay that much for it, but it's one of those cases of "Had I been able to see it first, I probably wouldn't have bought it." But at least I was skeptical from the beginning, although I was definitely expecting more than I got. I was thinking Team Rocket would be the main characters throughout and that they would indeed get to save the day, even if they ended up blasting off at the end.

The shirt also arrived and it looks great! It's sealed in plastic and I don't think I'll open it up until Christmas, but the design is very big and it looks like it's ingrained into the shirt instead of being a lame iron-on that can crack and peel off. Awesome! I can't for the life of me imagine why that lady at the local T-Shirt shop would tell me that their new, more expensive process was so much better. All it was was making a raised design that can peel and crack. In what universe is that better than their old way, which ingrained the design in the shirt so that won't happen?!

It's really confusing when characters can frustrate you so much and yet you can have sympathy for them.

It seems like all three Team Rocket members get chances to both be real jerks and to be nice. I suppose that's realistic, good and bad qualities, but it's frustrating both as a writer and as a fan. It makes it hard to know how to write for them. It also makes hard to understand why I even like them, considering that the bad traits tend to press all the wrong buttons for me.

While Jessie is definitely the most abusive, James and Meowth can be that way too. I hate it when James or Jessie beats up on Meowth. But I don't like when Meowth scratches them just because they've said something he thinks is stupid. I can't decide whether James always had an abusive streak or if he just picked it up from Jessie, but it upsets me whenever he hurts a Pokemon. The only time I felt slightly more forgiving for that was in Pokemon Shipwreck, since they were all half-crazed and starved being stuck on that raft after nearly dying and finding out Magikarp was pretty much useless for everything just pushed him over the edge. And even at that, I was still upset.

Anyway, since I just can't stand abusive behavior in a character, I wonder if I should even try to write James as being a relatively nice person. Yet canon supports that side of things too, in many episodes. And he is overall less abusive than Jessie. Usually he's the punching bag. I wonder if James beats up on Meowth and occasionally other Pokemon to let off his frustration over Jessie abusing him. (That, and maybe also, he's trying to look tougher than she might think he is.) He doesn't dare strike her, and he hardly ever verbally expresses how upset he is at being abused, so maybe going after something smaller than him is his solution. That's sadly realistic. And it doesn't make me feel much better about the situation, but it is something to ponder.

Of course, with Jessie one assumes her rotten early life is why she's so abusive. And then canon sometimes shows that she does care about James and Meowth. But I still don't like it, and since she's the most abusive I can't deny I've always had thoughts that maybe James should get away from her. But that's too sad because they're a team and a weird family. I feel the same about characters such as Kaoru on Rurouni Kenshin. I just can't seem to like her, yet since she's part of the team and the characters love her in spite of her abuse, I wouldn't want to split up the team.

I wonder if the abusiveness goes away for all three of them as the show goes on. That would certainly be one plus about the later stuff. It's hard to picture James in some of those later episodes as being that way. But then you have to deal with things like Noodles Roamin' Off, which I found really OOC, at least in Jessie abandoning James and telling him to go back to Jessiebelle.

Then, back to earlier ventures, you have things like Meowth nearly being abandoned when he's sick in The Problem With Paras, yet on the other hand, James and Jessie helping Meowth in Go West, Young Meowth or worrying about Meowth in Meowth Rules! (And Meowth abandoning them in the latter, yet feeling bad about it, unlike them in the Paras episode.) The characterization just seems so inconsistent. One episode they're ready to abandon each other. The next, they're worrying about each other. What are you supposed to do with characters like that?! How do you write for them?! I would like to just think about the things that made me like them and still make me like them, namely, when they show their good sides. But it's hard to ignore these traits that I detest so much. In fact, it's impossible. And it makes me wonder if I should give up the whole idea of even trying to tell these stories. I feel like the characters aren't worth my time or my love. Yet the part of me that still cares about them and the good that's in them wants to tell these stories. Usually when I get upset like this, I try to watch one of the episodes where I really liked them and it helps.

I really think that my story needs more content and should be fleshed out more and maybe deal with these problems more than it did. Yet it's hard to know exactly how to approach them in detail. I had the spirit pointing out to James that he was making excuses for Jessie and that's something abuse victims often do. And Jessie later acknowledges that she isn't very nice sometimes and she doesn't like the part of herself that hurts James and Meowth, but that's about as far as it went. Well, that and her later saying she'll try to be a better person. I should probably also acknowledge more that James and Meowth have been abusive at times too. I wasn't thinking about that as much until this week.

And I am aware that the show is largely slapstick humor with the abuse and the blasting off, yadda yadda, but I've never been able to approach things like that as being normal, even if it apparently is in the verse. A few people complained in the past that I was taking the blasting off too seriously, but a lot of Team Rocket fans feel similar to me on that point. And abuse, honestly, should never be played for laughs. I liked how Holy Matrimony! showed that it really wasn't funny at all and that yes, Jessiebelle was worse than Jessie, abuse-wise. I just wish it would have made Jessie shape up seeing what Jessiebelle was like.

Another problem with fleshing things out in the story is that I was trying to save most of the fleshing out for the big story, if I'm able to put it together. I didn't have too much of a hurt/comfort scene for that reason too. But I'm sure I could do better than I did.

I'm also mostly done with my Pokemon episodes. I crave more, yet I wonder whether to get into the Johto seasons or not. By Johto, any episodes with team-ups or other nice Team Rocket moments always seemed to end with cheap betrayals. That seriously bugged me, especially since it didn't tend to happen in the first two seasons (A Chansey Operation being an exception). Ignorance is Blissey is different, but it's so heartbreaking, gah. Probably Jessie's finest moment, though. And I finally saw the second movie again (and own it at last) and find it the pinnacle of Pokemon entertainment, just as before. I'd forgotten Jessie and James and Meowth were so prominent all the way through it, and their sacrifice was just the icing on the cake. It's hard to think of things going back to the status quo after that amazing movie. I like to think of it being more meaningful than that.

Then I also keep worrying about the big fic and the sacrifice bit again. I think I figured out, maybe, what that Megaman fan's problem with sacrifice stories was. If so, it's also a problem I have. I think I ranted once about the movie Paratroop Command and how it seemed to bring out the idea that the bad luck main character was only good at being a hero if he died. I hated that. I don't want it to look like I'm bringing out a similar idea in this fic. I was hoping to do a scene at some point with Father Joe (yes, I really did that thing with bringing in the Invaders priest) talking to James and telling him he has the potential to be a hero. But if I do that, having the sacrifice bit really might look like I'm saying he can only be a hero if he dies for something instead of living for something. If I could just figure out a way so it won't look like that....

I think I've figured out what I need to do. Since for the first time my audience is divided, I believe the only right thing to do, at least for the time being, is cross-posting. I will probably post from DW and cross-post to LJ from there, and then go to LJ and edit the posts with different icons, since I assume it will only cross-post with the default icon? We'll see. (Hey, look, it posted with the same icon both places! Awesome.) Some entries will still be DW-specific, like if I want to post more silly song lyrics like I was doing earlier, but otherwise they will most likely be cross-posted for now.

It is so surprising to discover that while Leonardo remains my favorite Turtle for the 1987 series (as he is in all branches of the franchise), I believe Michelangelo is my second favorite for the 1987 series. He always irritated me through the years, even as a kid. I didn't remember the 1987 series too well, but he irritated me in my sole Archie Comic. I don't recall if he irritated me in the 1990 movie, however. But then he drove me nuts in the 2003 series.

I don't know if I mellowed out or what, because he didn't irritate me when I watched TMNT, nor in the Platinum Dunes movies (yes, I actually like those). And last summer when I watched the few season 1 episodes of the 2003 series that I have on DVD, he wasn't too much of a pain. Not a favorite, but he didn't absolutely grate on my nerves. Although I think most of my aggravation with him came from season 2 and beyond.

I found him less annoying but still kind of a pain in the 1987 series, and I'm still a little irritated with him in some episodes (like where he blasts the radio really loud while the others are trying to sleep, WTH), but a combination of writing for him in my stories and interacting every day with ThickerThanLove, a huge Michelangelo fan who brought new perspectives to the table, has seemed to result in my seeing him with new eyes. I didn't find him so annoying anymore in some episodes, like Nightmare in the Lair. When I like a character enough, I tend to forgive their faults/be amused by them/be exasperated but not turned off by them. And I seem to have mostly reached that point with Michelangelo. I never in my life thought that would happen. But considering that he's the friendliest/most forgiving of the Turtles, he's the one who ended up bonding with Baxter the most, so he's ironically the Turtle I write for the most in my stories. It's hard to keep disliking him under those circumstances. I was already starting to feel differently about him from that, and then it happened even moreso with the daily new perspectives on his character from my Michelangelo fan friend.

I owe a lot of important things in the stories to her, too. Like when Barney was so obsessive about not failing in The Golden Goose story and that led to him doing some things that have haunted him ever since, she noted how his attitude set him on a path that could definitely lead to him snapping and going psychotic someday. I thought about that and realized that while I certainly could do that, it wasn't what I wanted for him. And that story became a turning point in the opposite direction. He hit rock bottom from what he did in that story (encasing Michelangelo in gold with the goose's powers) and from that point gradually improved instead of spiraling out further. He believed more than ever that he deserved to be with villains and that he absolutely was one, but ever so slowly, his conscience and Vincent and Baxter worked on him and he started to turn his life around. And there's so many other things, little suggestions for dialogue or plot twists, or sometimes big plot twists; some stories would absolutely have not come together without her. I don't think I could list all the ways she's made my stories so much better.

The other day we were musing on our "rules" for writing stories set in 1987 verse. I said that I figured my only rules were things I would not do to the characters, similar to how I feel about pretty much every fandom. But since TMNT 87 is so wacky, there are a couple of things slightly different for it, rule-wise.

Like, I think my main things are something as follows:

- Absolutely under no circumstances will the characters unnaturally change ages, either younger or older. I think this honestly upsets me more than any other trope the series did. And it's not just a matter of how the series did it; I just really have a thing about characters being forced to be other ages than what they are, either physically or mentally or both. (That said, I have got a giggle from how both TMNT 87 and Get Smart handled characters behaving like kids while not looking like them. But I still wouldn't write even that much into the trope.)

- Likewise, no shrinking/miniaturization.

- I'm actually not as repulsed by growing big (50-foot Irma, etc.), but that said, I don't want to write it regardless.

- No broken bones or stomach wounds. I always cite having watched that Sesame Street arc about Telly's broken arm as the reason why I won't break bones. And my research on stomach wounds when I was trying to save the canonically stabbed Mr. Ecks is the reason why I say No to stomach wounds. (So probably, if I did research on other things, I might end up with a lot of other scenarios I would say No to as well. Heh. Or else decide, "Screw reality; I'm doing it the way I want it!" if it's something like a knockout, but it's pretty common in fiction not to treat knockouts like reality anyway, so I don't feel as weird for that.

- No loss of senses. Especially vision, but any sense-loss is a big no-no. (Characters can become shellshocked/not talk after something traumatic, but the ability to speak will never be removed from them.)

- While Channel 6 characters were often collectively the victims of weird stuff, Baxter likely will never be part of that if it would mean he'd be out of commission/needing to be helped for the entire story. Like when I did the Relaxatron fic and the Channel 6 crew ended up super relaxed and funny and unhelpful, Baxter escaped that fate (because Barney didn't want to do that to him). The stories are largely to develop Baxter and Barney's characters, which wouldn't be accomplished by Baxter being in weird states for the duration. And then it wouldn't be as much fun for me, heh.

- On the same lines, while it is totally encouraged to make fun of Shredder-tachi, Barney is exempt from this aside from some amusement over some of his temper tantrums. (Even that seemed to lessen, however, and the temper became a more serious issue for the most part. Which wasn't how I planned it; it just happened that way.) When Barney worked for Shredder, weird things didn't happen to him even if they happened to some or all of the rest of the group.

- In other words, Baxter and Barney are both to be treated as serious characters.

- Characters turning into animals is a necessary evil for watching this series, but I will not do it unless I'm fixing a mess canon made and didn't fully clean up (like Irma and Vernon's rat transformations lying dormant and still being able to be triggered).

- That said, characters will only ever be anthropomorphic/mutant animals. No "real-life" type animals are acceptable. Donatello Trashes Slash is one episode I've only watched once, mainly because I can't stomach Vernon and Burne turtles. The designs were really ugly and that only made it worse. (And probably now that I've brought it up, I'll end up trying to brave the episode one more time....) Bye, Bye, Fly I avoided re-watching for ages. I only feel better about watching it for Z/Vincent. Otherwise, I doubt I would.

- Characters don't die for real. (Of course.)

- The power of love is awesome. I still love to use it to redeem characters/get them out of places like Nightmare Land/get hysterical characters to calm down, etc. Barney is a neuropsychologist, but I can't see myself doing a whole lot with his knowledge of legal drugs as I've never used that as a way to calm hysterical characters down, etc. (Hysterical characters can be calmed down by the love of a family member/friend in my verse.) Of course, I've also never written problems that pretty much only could be solved by legal drugs in reality. Naturally, the power of love can't fix everything, like Shredder's brother will never manage to redeem him, but for characters who are good at heart, yeah, it works on at least some important things, like breaking through mind-control/possession and/or getting characters to fight to live.

- No magic, please, unless it's absolutely necessary. Let's use science instead. Even The Golden Goose in my verse is supposed to be science-based and not magic-based. One thing I love about the 87 series is that magic really wasn't a factor. Yeah, I still don't like magic and only use it as the means to an end if I have to. But for this series, I can use science to that end instead, so yay.

(I know/(knew?) someone who was always really exasperated/frustrated by my love of "The power of love" and preferred magic to fix things. But meanwhile, I was exasperated/frustrated by that, so I'd say it all evens out. Heh. Anyway, I eventually got so I was hesitant/wary/leery/worried to use the trope, but these days I'm encouraged to use it rather than discouraged. LOL. Go figure. I love that.)

- Even though we're using science, let's also not try to apply real-life science to situations that just can't happen in real-life (unless somehow it amazingly would work in theory).

- And since TMNT 87 pretty much said "Screw the rules!," let's hardly ever bring real-world logic in in the first place. LOL. Like, characters can be frozen in blocks of ice and then unthawed without the need for hospital stays or extreme methods of warming up. Gradually increasing the heat and burrowing into blankets works fine, LOL. (And loved ones holding them close.) Since I've expressed before that I like "instant gratification hurt/comfort" rather than recoveries that drag on and on for ages, the attitude of TMNT 87 works really well for me and I can do pretty much whatever I want without worry over not doing what's realistic.

It's funny how for years I avoided the series both because it's funny and because it has tropes I don't like, and now I totally embrace it while instead being more leery of revisiting the 2003 series. On the one hand, I'm pretty much burned out on dark things and prefer things that make me laugh. Of course, on the other hand, I was always upset by what was happening to the 2003 Baxter, even though I didn't particularly like that version of the character since he was sane but evil. I still thought he didn't deserve the horrifying things that kept happening to him, and by this point I'm so horrified/repulsed/disgusted/appalled by that that I honestly don't know if I could ever feel like revisiting most of the episodes after the worst stuff starts happening to him.

I've heard it said in some places that 2003 Baxter is 1987 Baxter done right. As far as making him a major player through the series, I'll agree. As far as what happens to them, I completely disagree, except for the fact that 2003 Baxter actually has some hope of a decent body by the end. As sickened as I am by the fly cross-fusion, 2003 Baxter's fates are physically far worse. And as far as personality, I don't think one can compare too far, since while yes, they're both arrogant/think they're awesome, 2003 Baxter is sane but evil and 1987 Baxter started out trying to be honest, as far as we can tell, and his life turned upsidedown when he trusted the wrong man. He didn't know what Shredder really wanted the Mousers for, as shown when he commented "That guy must really have a thing about rats," and I'm pretty sure Shredder was the one who stamped Baxter's name on them so he would get blamed when the city got torn apart. Baxter was just trying to start out, after all; he was living in a broken-down factory with shattered windows. I highly doubt he really had a company called "Baxter Stockman Inventions." Shredder probably made it up. I don't think Baxter was completely nuts during the early season 2 episodes, but his sanity was clearly teetering on the brink judging from the first episode of such. (And Curse of the Evil Eye showed him finally snapping and not putting up with the abuse anymore.) And then his sanity was completely gone after the cross-fusion. No, being nuts doesn't make the horrible things he did right, but I do think it gives him more sympathy. Plus, one has to remember that he was cross-fused with a fly and the fly's brain was clearly taking over more and more with each episode. That was obvious even without anything being said, but Baxter said as much in Bye, Bye, Fly. So he had both cracked up in general and another mind was eclipsing his. He just couldn't win.

(Also, is it a little immature of me that when I saw someone giggling over the fact that Z's energy-generated body looked naked, my response was to laugh back with basically, "Of course he's naked; that's obvious. But he didn't design it to be anatomically correct, LOL." That is to say, that person found it amusing he was naked, I found it amusing that said person was so amused since there wasn't anything that needed to be censored. And I don't mean I said anything to the person; I've never interacted with said person. But that was my mental response from afar, shall we say. And the point is briefly brought up in the stories when he decides to wear clothes.)

And wow, I went off on a tangent. That's what happens when one doesn't update for a while, I guess.

(Also, yay, DW does have a Saved Draft feature! Didn't realize that.)