The world is, well, what it is currently. Trying to delve back more into stimulating/creative pursuits (actually being able to sit down and write more than a couple of paragraphs of fic still seems to evade me, but perhaps one day.)

☆ Television: I finished rewatching the first season of She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat - a very charming J-Drama about two women cooking together and then falling in love. I'm excited to start on season 2, especially since I think I can credit this show with pulling me out of the brain fog I've been in the past few months since the election. The series is based on a manga and I want to pick up physical copies of it from my local bookstore, especially since that version is still ongoing while I'm pretty sure the show has ended.

Last night I also (finally!) started watching Twin Peaks. Did a double take when I realized that the story was actually set on February 24th as well. I am kind of kicking myself for not watching this sooner, both because David Lynch passed earlier this year and because I'm pretty sure I got spoiled at some point for who "the killer" is and I'm 80% sure I know which character it is from the jump, which lowkey sucks. The pilot was fantastic though and I'm looking forward to diving more into it.

I've also been making my way through The Great North, and while I like it I think doing it right after watching all of Central Park and catching up on Bob's Burgers is burning me out on it a little. Keeping up with Drag Race like usual, and also currently watching Abbott Elementary, Happy's Place, and Mayfair Witches week-to-week. Doctor Who is coming back in April and I'm looking forward to it even as I'm nervous for the show's future.

☆ Anime: Started getting the itch to finally start watching more Anime again. Last year I really only watched the reboot of Spice and Wolf (along with a rewatch of the original, and reading the original source material). I somehow got it in my head that now's the time to watch Trigun and I'm not gonna fight it. The question now remains whether I'll watch it while doing cardio like I'm hoping or not.

☆ Gaming: Still doing the daily grind of Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Wuthering Waves. The other day I briefly flirted with redownloading Zenless Zone Zero but keeping up with four live service games is definitely too much especially if I wanna branch out and do other things with my free time. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is finally out on Nintendo Switch but I think I may wait for the physical version to release, especially with the weird flux state the Switch is in right now with it's successor on the horizon.

I'm gonna aim to do more periodic posts like this, especially as a way to keep my brain engaged with how I'm spending my time. As the weather gets better I'd also like to do more activities outside of media consumption and possible creation. Maybe this summer I'll achieve the romantic ideal of sitting in a park somewhere and writing.

Haven't posted in ages because for about a month and a half I was crazy busy and in the last couple of weeks I've been doing basically nothing. Though I'll probably have more to post in the coming months as I finally get into Wilderness Years Doctor Who content and the Centenary Special gets closer.

I'm in a weird mental headspace that's definitely not burnout. I experienced that in spades back in the winter. It's more like restlessness I guess? Like there's so much I want to do but can never seem to find the time to actually do it? It doesn't help that my sleep schedule is the worst its been in years the past couple of weeks, and try as I might I cannot seem to fix it.

☆ Television: I've been keeping up with Drag Race the past few weeks but that's really about it as far as Western TV goes. I'm also technically watching Roswell New Mexico but I'm very behind on it, though I do want to get caught up sooner rather than later because it is the final season. I managed to stay current with the final season of Legacies and it was definitely worth the investment.

☆ Anime: The tradeoff to not watching much regular TV is that I'm finally watching anime again! I go through phases where I watch I ton for a while and then none for months at a time, and it feels nice to get caught up with certain shows and get reminded how much I actually do love the medium. This current resurgence is definitely thanks to My Dress-Up Darling. Now I just need to do my rewatch of The Devil is a Part-Timer! so I can actually start watching season 2.

☆ Gaming: It's mostly still just been Animal Crossing and Fortnite, though I recently replayed all of the first Danganronpa game on the Switch, and I loved it but also forgot how long those games are. I was gonna replay the second game right after but I'm taking a bit of a break from it because it's a huge time suck. I have played some more of Wandersong as well and it is a delight, and I want to set aside a day this month in order to play though even more of it. Biggest serotonin boost I've had in a while.

I haven't been super inspired to write lately - bad things happening in the world will do that - but with how this summer has gone I'm hopeful for a creatively fulfilling trajectory this fall (and maybe even a concentrated effort this year to do NaNo and finish up some stuff). I also have stuff I want to say about the concerts I've gone to but I think I'll save that for a different post.

The past month has been pretty uneventful for me personal life-wise (which imo is fine because December was pretty much hell and my dad is mostly past his health issue). Mostly I've kind of been stuck in a holding pattern of wanting to create/not being able to, and running hot and cold with whatever it is I'm watching on TV. I made it through the end of season 9 of RPDR and now I'm back to toggling between The Crown and Leverage with some occasional Classic Who sprinkled in. I thought Quarantine would be easier in winter because I kind of spend this time of year cooped up inside anyway, but at least during the bulk of 2020 I could still go for walks and sit outside as a change of pace.

I've been getting back into Hetalia mostly because I'm back to tracking news/updating the wiki for it. I have some fic drafts for it I'd like to finish but I haven't really had the motivation to write even when putting myself under the pressure of fests or challenges. Even going full caveman horny brain hasn't really moved the needle on the two decidedly nsfw drafts I have (Weirdly both for Glee. I have no idea how I suddenly got re-energized for that fandom of all things this year.) It snowed today and it's supposed to snow again tomorrow, but I'm hopeful this week I can get back in the routine of regularly exercising and that might help jump start me mentally... assuming the hot water in my apartment starts working again and I don't have to drag the landlord down here to fix it.

Other random thoughts:

☆ Best Boys™: I've already fallen behind but I'm still watching a lot of anime this winter season, and it's been a reminder of past best boys and the introduction of new best boys. The fresh roster that's been living rent-free in my brain includes Yuji and Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen, Chrome from Dr. Stone, Keiichi from Higurashi When They Cry, and Reki and Langa from SK8 the Infinity. The boys from Jujutsu Kaisen especially are popular enough that I've hopeful there'll be some really fun merch I'll be able to buy of them in the future.

☆ Game Girls: I've been playing a lot of Love Live All Stars to the point I decided to pay for the monthly membership for the next month specifically, for the serotonin. My bias for the Nijigasaki girls aside, I just really like the gameplay style and story mode of this app more than the original (which I've barely touched this past year save for snagging some login bonuses). I just hope I don't overextend myself and end up burning myself out on this too.

☆ Music: If you told me a year ago that the album I'd have listened to the most at the start of 2021 was Miley Cyrus's I wouldn't have believed you. Between that, Machine Gun Kelly's album, everything Aly & AJ have done the past year and the upcoming Waterparks album I've been very happy. I wasn't a fan of the Waterparks live album though which bums me out since I actually have the bluray for that concert (which I haven't gotten around to watching yet oop). I've also been so used to listening to music by people several years older than me (or in the case of Lorde, several years younger), that it's actually kind of nice to listen to stuff by people roughly my own age (pushing 30).

We're still waiting on some of the news items to be confirmed outside of leaks, but it looks like Hetalia is going to be returning in 2021! (Both the manga serialization and the anime).

I'm so ridiculously hyped. I've been wanting to run laps around my apartment but I still have stuff everywhere from cleaning, so I've just been sitting and vibrating all morning. I also know I have some projects to wrap up before this return happens (mostly related to the Kitawiki). I also feel out of practice with staying on top of news and announcements because this hasn't been a regular occurrence since early 2016. At least now Himaruya has a twitter account.

Anyway, I now definitely need to finish those Hetalia fics I'd already planned on finishing this year. It's been too long.

☆ I had planned to do some serious writing this past weekend, but those plans got derailed and I ended up not writing anything, so as a result I've resigned to defaulting on seasonofkink for this year and trunk a couple of summer-themed fics I've been working on until next year. Considering the amount of stress from current world events this isn't a huge shock, but I'm hopeful I'll still be able to finish up those additional nordipalooza fill chapters at some point since they're mostly done. I also still have time left to finish buffyversebingo, which I can focus more on since I guess spooktoberchallenge is not happening this year. I also have a couple of autumn/halloween-themed drafts from the last couple of years I can try to finish too.

☆ The Q3 anime season is ending this week, along with my rewatches/completions of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Higurashi When They Cry. I've been collecting some brief thoughts on a running twitter thread, but suffice to say I was very surprised and impressed by the bits I hadn't seen before. In a lot of ways I actually think I enjoyed The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan more than the original show, and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is an actual masterpiece. And aside from the very fanservicey first episode, Higurashi When They Cry Kira was actually really solid, and Outbreak was fantastic and it bums me out that they decided to not to further explore the storyline it had set up. The remake of Higurashi is one of the shows airing next season though, and I'm excited to see what changes/improvements they make to this version.

☆ As far as other TV goes, I've been slowly making my way through Classic Who season 19. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely a mixed bag, and the show is clearly trying to figure out what its strengths are now that Tom Baker isn't in the role anymore. I'm planning on taking a break once I'm done with the season in order to focus more on Halloween/Spooky fare for October, and it feels appropriate to watch The Five Doctors for the first time in November. (Plus, I suspect November is going to be a waking nightmare, so it'll be nice to have something to distract me from it). I've also been binge-watching Sister, Sister, and depending on how I pace it out I should be finished pretty soon. I watched the Twitches movies over Kast with some friends so I've been getting a lot of Tia and Tamera lately.

☆ My finger has basically healed completely, though its still sometimes stuff when I wake up. My depression has also come and gone in waves, and I think is less because of quarantine now and mostly because of all the terrible things happening in the world. Not forcing myself to adhere to any real specific watch/writing schedule has probably helped a little. I'm hoping that diving full force into Halloween will be what salvages my mental health for at least the next five weeks.

The newest promo, along with a release date for the newest Higurashi When They Cry anime just dropped and I am hype.

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The art style is very different from the original anime from back in 2006 but I actually really like it? It feels like a melding of that style and the one from the original visual novels. It would've been cool to get this during summer (since it is an extremely summer series) but I watched the original when I was in the midst of a depression isolation ten years ago, so I guess it's only appropriate that this is dropping during quarantine.

I never watched some of the (apparently awful) fanservice OVAs that were released back in, like, 2012, and ever since this new adaption was announced I've been meaning to tackle them, but now I might end up rewatching the entire original anime since I have access to it and it feels like it would be a nice break from the monotony of my other self-imposed binge watches. Feels good feels organic.

Here's hoping that Umineko will get the same treatment eventually too. The anime for that one really beefed it and it would be nice to get it right on a second attempt.

Some random updates about quarantine and media consumption:

( The obligatory cut... )

Also, as far as writing goes, I've made outlines for my nordipalooza fills and starting either tomorrow or Monday I'm gonna sit down and really jump into writing those as posting closes on May 24th. I also have some drafts I'd like to finally finish up and post, particularly those Doctor Who drabbles that I talked about last month. I also really want to finish the final chapter of my Hetalia fic Personal Chaos at some point over the next couple of months since it's ninth anniversary is July 25th and I just posted the penultimate chapter last November after a four year hiatus.

Health-wise I'm doing okay. Nothing in terms of what's going on in the wider world, but I need to think of ways to manage my eating and exercise better since over the past couple of weeks have been not great in that regard. I've been making more of an effort to cook stuff that's not frozen or prepackaged meals and only ordered take-out once (for a salad) so I feel like I'm on the right track, I just need to commit to it. For the record, a citrus glaze works really well as a marinade for pork.

So when I left work on Thursday I took my laptop and other parts of my desk home with me, and yesterday I worked remotely from home. It looks like that's the setup I'll be working with for the forseeable future, and I've stopped by the grocery store a handful of times this week so I'm all stocked up on food (including fresh fruit and vegetables) that'll comfortably last a couple of weeks at least. The only thing I'm really short on is coffee, since I don't have a coffee maker and the local grocers stopped carrying the gallon bottles of cold brew, so I had to just grab a handful of the smaller bottles to ration.

I have tickets to the screening of Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna on March 25 that has inexplicably not been cancelled yet, but I'm almost certainly not going even if it isn't. My original plan, as I detailed in my last entry, was to binge the other Digimon seasons before I went to see it, but I think I'm gonna put a pin in that for now. I'm going to finish Digimon Savers over the weekend, and then I think I'm going to switch gears and start watching the Fourth Doctor era of Classic Doctor Who in earnest. I'm especially eager to watch the serial that was directly referenced in the most recent finale of the revival, and I'm curious to see how that twist impacts my viewing of this era of the show. And, hey, I need something to binge while I'm working remotely!

Part of me is bummed I didn't go see Onward last weekend like I wanted to, since it looks like I'll never see it in a movie theater at this rate, but it's also not a movie I was really anticipating in any major way. I have tickets to see a screening of the first three episodes of the new season of Fruits Basket in theaters, which also has yet to be cancelled, but I can just watch those week to week on streaming.

Really, I'm just trying to channel my energy into things to keep my mind off of everything. My dad is working remotely now which removes a lot of stress, and I've been playing an obscene amount of both Love Live! School Idol Project and Love Live! All Stars. I've even made a separate twitter account just to talk about Love Live! I'm honestly really happy I got into it, because a rhythm game is definitely a better use of my time than other mobile games I've sunk time into.

Maybe I'll finally get off my ass and finish The Sword of Destiny audiobook so I can finally watch The Witcher too! Ditto His Dark Materials. I think channeling my energy into clearing out my backlog is what's gonna keep me sane.

So while I have yet to watch the season finale for Doctor Who (and subsequently kickstart my long-awaited Fourth Doctor watch), I have decided to pull the trigger on perhaps my most ambitious content binge ever: The rest of Digimon. I've already watched the first four seasons subbed in Japanese (Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure 02, Digimon Tamers, and Digimon Frontier) along with their corresponding movies, including Digimon Adventure tri and Digimon X-Evolution. Ever since tri was announced, my tentative goal had been to do one season of Digimon per year, but I slacked in 2019, and on March 25th I'll be attending a theatrical screening of Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna, which serves as a finale of sorts for that subfranchise.

So my aim now is to binge the rest of Digimon before I see that film, which includes Digimon Savers (48 episodes + 1 film), Digimon Xros Wars (79 episodes), and Digimon Universe: App Monsters (52 episodes). In the past two days alone I've managed to do 14 episodes of Savers, which is by far the hardest to do as its the only one of the three that's not streaming anywhere, so I'm actually pretty optimistic that I'll hit my goal. Of course, this means I won't be resuming Classic Doctor Who until the end of the month, but that just means I can savor it for longer.

These three series are also interesting territory in that they're the seasons I never watched dubbed as a child. Xros Wars was dubbed as Fusion when I was already an adult, and Savers was dubbed as Data Squad when I was in high school so I'm not sure why I never got around to watching that one specifically. I have to say that I'm really enjoying it though, despite the tonal change that's inherent in every incarnation of Digimon. I'm really looking forward to all three, to be honest. The only part I'm nervous about is the final portion of Xros Wars (the last 25 episodes which essentially function as a next gen sequel to the first 54) which is apparently supposed to be really bad... but it also features cameos from the protagonists of the other seasons. So there's that at least.

I will say, though I know that Digimon fandom is full of hot takes and drama like all others, the property is one that has brought me immense joy over the last twenty years, and it's exactly what I needed after the recent Star Wars fallout. Even if people have quibbles about the quality or certain characterization/storytelling choices, it's one where I can sit back and relax and just have fun taking it all in. Like, I even loved tri, flaws and all, which is apparently the hottest of hot takes, so I think I'm in for a good time the next few weeks.

On an unrelated note, I've also fallen deep into Love Live! hell the last couple of weeks, and even attended a screening of the concert they held in Japan last week (and I had an ABSOLUTE BLAST). I'm still taking a break from writing, but I think once the weather warms up and I can sit outside again and just ~flow~, I'll wanna take a crack and writing for both that and for Digimon, since I'm feeling pretty inspired by both lately. I just hope that I'll have the same feelings about Doctor Who when I watch the finale tonight, but if not there's always Classic Who to look forward to!

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because there isn't all that much to talk about. Mostly, I've fallen back into Anime in a big way. As of this morning, I've watched 180 episodes of it in 2020 so far. On Twitter I've been keeping a running tab of the shows I've finished/caught up on, and the tally so far includes Ascendance of a Bookworm, Golden Kamuy, Fruits Basket, Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Banana Fish, and Given, and this week I've been making my way through Dr. Stone. It's been actual years since I've consumed it in this volume where I didn't have to schedule it and make myself watch it. There's an element of it this time around as I make a point to watch it while exercising, but it doesn't feel like I'm making myself do it as a chore. I'm really excited to knock out some shows I've been putting off for actual years. I've yet to see Weathering with You though, which is a massive personal failure on all fronts tbh.

I've tapered back on picking up new live action shows for the most part, but I have been slowly binging the new season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and keeping up week-to-week with my usual shows like Doctor Who, Supernatural, Legacies, and The Good Place. Doctor Who in particular has been a journey this season as it's ranged from the mediocre (Orphan 55) to the fantastic (Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror) to the "they're throwing so much stuff at us I can't keep up (Fugitive of the Judoon). I think this'll be a pretty definitive season for the Thirteenth Doctor's era, and I'm really excited to see how it all ultimately shakes out. I have my theories but I'm not married or beholden to them in a way that could really disappoint me, but I am holding out a sliver of hope that this could be setting the stage for the circumstances that the Valeyard emerges from (even though I haven't gotten to the Sixth Doctor yet, I have a cursory understanding of that lore). I also think if we're ever going to get another season of a spinoff I will not name here, it'll be announced within the next couple of months. Because actors age and there are only so many opportunities in this franchise that sometimes feels like a ticking clock.

As an aside, I started watching The Outpost as well on a whim. It's one of those syndicated fantasy shows produced for international audiences and hidden away somewhere obscure in American broadcasting - in this case, summers on The CW. I'd always been kind of curious about it since the premise seemed kind of fun, and I have to say I've really been enjoying it. I'd been a while since I indulged in low budget scifi/fantasy outside of Doctor Who, and it kind of makes me feel nostalgic. It also really makes me want to play Dungeons and Dragons again, since it kind of has the vibe of a lovingly created solo campaign. There's definitely a layer of cheese, but none of the actors feel like they're above it and the enthusiasm really translates on screen. I'm only pissed I got into it right as the CW seems to have yanked the free streams of season 2 off their website, which means I'm probably going to have to pay money to watch it on Amazon Prime (which is where I've been watching the first season for free through IMDb TV).

I haven't done any writing this month, and I'm content to take a break for a little while longer to fully recharge. I've been making my way through Sword of Destiny, the second short story collection for The Witcher, at a slower pace than I would like since I really want to watch the show. Hopefully I'll be able to have it done this week and I'll have watched it before I'm surrounded by other nerds at Katsucon. (And speaking of cons, I found this nifty website tool where I've been able to catalog every con I've ever attended, which is super neat and useful.)

But yeah, I've been able to keep myself busy that's been pretty effective in starving off bad vibes from a certain franchise fall-out and the dreariness of winter. Hoping I can keep this energy going for February as well.