I posted a couple of days ago that I haven't been sleeping well the past couple of weeks, mostly because my sleep schedule has been super off the past week especially. Last night I pulled the "in case of emergency" rip chord and took some Tylenol PM in order to force myself to go to sleep at a slightly more reasonable hour, but I still think it's gonna take some work to get fully back on track. With vacation and travel stuff starting on Thursday I need to be in better shape sooner rather than later.

I wish it wasn't so hot out? I normally don't mind the heat but its been so consistently hotter than normal that I haven't really left my apartment at all the past three weeks, and it's starting to feel like how it was during the thick of lockdown which hasn't been spectacular for my mental health (and might explain why my sleep schedule has been so off). Weirdly I'm still doing way better than I was in the winter, and I guess I just have to accept that I get seasonal depression now for the first three months of the year. So yeah... that's fun.

As far as fan stuff goes it's mostly been K-Pop for the past couple of months, but I've been trying to slowly wean myself off of it because as far as fandom goes its not a particularly great environment? Like even with the groups I "stan" being relatively low drama, it's still not great. Now that Queendom 2 is over and I went to my summer concerts, picking my other interests back up is something I'm making a concentrated effort on. If any kind of new Doctor Who news dropped that would certainly help matters a lot.

Overall though I'm excited to get into this last leg of summer and into the fall, which is my favorite time of the year. I woke up this morning actually brainstorming fall activities and I hope I can actually get some of my friends to do some of them with me.

So last year I bailed in a major way on Star Wars because in the fallout from The Rise of Skywalker, interacting with the property in any way was making me miserable and it got to the point I needed to divest for my own sanity. (And this was even before the pandemic lockdowns started!) However, the final season of The Clone Wars was also finally released last year, and so I decided that on May the 4th, when the final episode was released, I'd spend the day binging the whole thing (as well as the last string of episodes of Star Wars Resistance).

And I had a really good time.

At the time it had been four months since I'd touched Star Wars at that point and I think the time away did me good. I got to close out two Star Wars properties I was already invested in and they both had the added benefit of being really good. I decided that, when new content came around again, instead of getting tangled up in the day-to-day minutia, I'd save it for May the 4th and binge it then.

So yesterday on May the 4th, I sat down to watch season 2 of The Mandalorian, which I'd heard decidedly mixed things about (and that's even before taking into consideration all of Gina Carano's bullshit). And, I, uh, couldn't get into it. Like, I was never as into season 1 of The Mandalorian as other people were but I still enjoyed it, but I couldn't bring myself to care about anything that was happening in the episode or even continue on from there. The new show that premiered yesterday, The Bad Batch, is also a continuation of The Clone Wars and a prequel to Rebels, two shows I enjoyed, but I also couldn't muster up the motivation for that either.

And now a day later on "Revenge of the Fifth" I can't say I really care anymore.

So I think I'm gonna call 2021 as the year I've successfully divested from Star Wars. It had been a steady, positive presence in my life for four years (2016 - 2019) and pretty miserable presence on-and-off for another (2020) and I think it's served its purpose. I never watched it as a child so I don't have any baggage of that nature attached to it, so I'm pretty comfortable making a clean break. Now I just have to decide how much of the limited merchandise I have I'm gonna bother to keep and what I'm gonna give away.

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to." - Kylo Ren

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.

Bad, depressing stuff out of the way first:

I was going to make a New Year's post but I've been to preoccupied this week with all the bad things happening in the world and Star Wars fandom basically imploding in on itself. The latter was bad enough I changed my usernames on twitter, instagram, and pillowfort in order to distance myself from the property and spent part of yesterday running blockchains. Yet another reminder how the mainstreaming of fandom brings a lot of bad with the fringe benefits. Suffice to say all the stress has zapped all my productivity and creativity for the past three weeks and I'm only just now managing to claw my way back. So watch this space because hopefully I'll be in a much better headspace and talk about and create things for stuff I'm actually enjoying.

Onto the fun stuff:

People really seem to like The Witcher! I'm only a little ways into Sword of Destiny, which is the second of the two short story collections the first season is based off of. My plan is to finish all the books and then dig into the show, but I'm getting through them at a slower pace than I would like (partly because I'm alternating with the His Dark Materials books) so if I get really impatient I may start the show after I finish this book. But considering we aren't going to get a second season for at least another year (ditto for His Dark Materials) it might be better if I just stick to my guns and be all caught up in the order I want to consume them for the next go around.

Speaking of the hot new property, I watched the first episode of the BBC/Netflix's new version of Dracula created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and... I honestly have no idea how I feel about it? It was easily one of the most bizarre viewing experiences of my entire life, and there's still two more episodes for me to watch. Like, I definitely didn't hate it? But I don't know if I'd go so far as to say I like it? All I know is that the opening credits look like a pretty blatant ripoff of Hannibal's and it's honestly kind of funny.

I haven't watched the Doctor Who premiere yet because tomorrow (or I guess today since I'm writing this post at 3:30 AM) I'm going to go see the first two episodes together as a complete serial in a movie theater! I'm really excited, and I hope it's worth it since it's going to take me an hour drive to get to the AMC theater where I bought my ticket. I've already been spoiled for one major element because Doctor Who social media is relentless even with muting and blacklisting, but I don't know the context so I'm interested to see how this all unfolds.

I'm also making a concentrated effort to get back into watching anime. I restarted Golden Kamuy from the beginning because I originally took a stab at it all the way back in 2018, and I absolutely adore it. If all goes according to plan I'll be done with season 1 tomorrow night!

Basically, a lot of things in the world and in fandom suck right now (and, to be honest, 2019 was pretty terrible for fandom in general) so in 2020 I'm going to channel as much energy into creating and positive fandom experiences as I can.

So since my last entry, my lofty goals for NaNo largely fell apart due to being busier socially than I thought I'd be toward the end of the month (which I'm pretty happy about? I also did a lot of driving and managed to finally finish The Subtle Knife audiobook which I LOVED. All the His Dark Materials audiobooks are bangers with full voice casts and I highly recommend checking them out even if you've already read them.)

Well, I also got kind of sick, and then after the Holiday I got VERY sick. Like, today is the first day this week were I haven't been a delirious mess. I went through an entire bottle of Dayquil and half a bottle of Nyquil in addition to half a box of green tea.

As far as writing goes, I finished another chapter of the Hetalia fic I'd been writing since 2011 which was my main goal going into NaNo so I'm happy with that at least. (The chapter ended up being twice the length I expected which is probably part of the reason it was so damn hard to write). I failed to complete my buffyversebingo square though which I'm kind of bummed about, but hopefully I can get the two fills I have made serious headway on up during the amnesty period.

My writing goals for this month are much more lax, since I'm not working to complete any sort of challenge, but here's what I'd like to get done time permitting:

- Final Chapter of Personal Chaos (APH) - Outline done, draft started
- Finish off those two Buffyverse Bingo fills (BtVS) - Drafts partially complete
- Jamie/Victoria Xmas Fic (DW) - Outline done
- Mike Yates & Liz Shaw/Sarah Jane Smith-centric Xmas Party Fic (DW) - Outline in flux
- Prussia/Hungary Airport Holiday Travel Fic (APH) - Idea I've wanted to write for years
- At least one Genremixer Meme Prompt (DW)

Stretch Goals:

- Finish Seychelles/England/France School Holiday Draft from NaNo (APH)
- Finish Chapter 4 of The Apartment Upstairs (APH)
- The world's most depressing Supernatural AU One-shot (SPN)
- Taking a Stab at any of my other unfinished Fictober/NaNo Drafts

Aside from writing, I did see a bunch of movies in the days following Frozen II and I liked/loved all of them (Knives Out, Last Christmas, Jojo Rabbit, Parasite - I recommend all of them but go into them blind.). When I was sick I also took advantage of Disney+ and watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio for the first time since I was a child. I was honestly amazed at how much of the latter I'd forgotten/blocked out so it was a very interesting/intense experience for me and I think I loved it? Like there were a couple of parts that really freaked me out as a full grown adult. I'm excited to check out the other two Disney films of that period (Dumbo, which I probably remember the best of that bunch, and Bambi, which I'm not altogether certain I've seen completely) and see what I think.

I also saw Waterparks in concert last week and they were great! Awsten brought up that infamous fanfic where he fucks a toaster but it's written so you think it's actually a necrophilia fic until the end twist (and it is weirdly well written). It kind of makes me want to break my no RPF rule just for the shitpost of it all but I wouldn't know where to start.

As for my Thanksgiving itself, it was probably the most fun one I've had in years since I spent it with friends instead of family. I also went shopping on Black Friday for the first time in my life. But at like, noon on Black Friday. I wasn't crazy enough to go early in the morning, and I'm not one of those sociopaths who goes shopping on Thanksgiving itself.

But yeah, I'm glad I'm feeling better again and can actively enjoy the holiday season/write/be actively hyped for The Rise of Skywalker on 12/19. ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS.

So I've finally reached the end of the road with the Third Doctor. Early last week as I was nearing the end, I'd lamented that I haven't gotten as far in Classic Who as I'd originally wanted to. However, I realized that i was roughly 380 episodes into a 700 episode show - more than halfway done! - it just doesn't feel that way because the first six seasons are twice as long as the subsequent one. It's more like I'm at the end of season 17 of a 32 season show.

That said, I'm glad I have another couple of years worth of Classic Who left, especially since a lot of the other shows I've been watching in my 20s are coming to an end. I'm gonna state a tentative goal of finishing all of Classic Who before I turn 30 years old in June 2021, but I guess we'll see how realistic a goal that is. It's entirely possible that future me will look back on this declaration and laugh derisively at my hubris. I am the same guy who wanted to get through all of the Third and Fourth Doctor eras this year.

This season feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of Three's era mostly because of the absence of Jo Grant and the introduction of Sarah Jane Smith. The dynamic is so different that it alters the feel of the show, though not in a way that's bad. I'm glad that UNIT got a couple of stories here, but I'm disappointed that the Brigadier and Benton largely faded to the back. The trade off is that the arc with Mike Yates is one of my favorite things the Classic series has done so far. Overall, I can definitely feel the show existing in a state of transition into the format of what a typical "Fourth Doctor" story would be, even though I haven't seen any of the Fourth Doctor so I can't say that definitively.

Like the previous ten seasons, the serials are available to watch via streaming on Britbox. This season had five stories, and due to the irregular way I watched this season over the course of nearly two months, I had some trouble making a truly informed call in creating my ranking.

( I had to face my fear, Sarah. I had to face my fear. That was more important than just going on living. )

I officially finished the Third Doctor era yesterday and it already feels so bittersweet. I know many elements of that era carry over into the first season of the Fourth Doctor's run, but I know it won't quite be the same. I'm honestly glad I'm taking a break from it for a couple of months, since it'll allow it all to sink in even more. In the meantime, reflecting on all of it has given me some writing ideas for that era, and I'm gonna try writing a Christmas fic for it as well as the Second Doctor's era. Like, I really just want to write a story where the Brigadier is saddled with throwing this Christmas party and Liz Shaw shows up for the first time in ages and Jo returns from her trip and Sarah Jane is stressed out because she keeps walking in on Mike Yates snogging someone different. And maybe there's some kind of festive cookies?

Finishing this chapter of the show has also helped me zero in on a preference I have with Doctor Who: I enjoy eras more when they feel cozy. Like, there's a setting to them where all the characters could just settle down together and hang out without there being a major source of internal strife looming over their heads. Thirteen's era hasn't quite landed that for me because part of Series 11's structure involved Graham and Ryan avoiding dealing directly with Grace's death, so whenever the show touched down in the modern day setting that just kind of looms over everything in a way that's not particularly fun (and the one story that didn't deal with it - Arachnids in the UK - just sucked). Series 8 had a similar problem for me because the Clara-Danny relationship always had this sense of doom even before that big finale twist, to the point where all the characters seemed pretty on edge whenever they were just hanging out in 2015 London. Series 9 was able to shed this, even with Clara dying towards the end of the season, so I'm hopeful Series 12 won't continue dragging that baggage along. But knowing Chibnall's writing from Torchwood and Broadchurch I'm not overly optimistic about it.

Writing is going okay. I finished a draft I originally churned out for a Fictober fill yesterday but looking back at it now I'm realizing I'm gonna have to rewrite chunks of it and I'm not thrilled. Unless Disney+ somehow swallows my whole evening I'm hopeful I'll have a handful of things ready to post tonight, including the first Buffyverse Bingo square. I'm going to a con this weekend, Anime NYC, and even though its anime themed I'm hopefully it'll put me in the mood to write some more nuts-and-bolts Buffy stuff.

Classic Doctor Who season 11 review will be up at some point this week. I really spaced out my viewing so there are a couple of serials I don't remember quite as well as I would like, so I suspect it'll take me a bit longer than usual to turn it out.

The title of this post would probably look better without the Oxford comma, but I'm keeping it in on principle.

I started the Third Doctor's final serial, Planet of the Spiders, during lunch today and I wasn't expecting the Jo Grant scene and it kind of knocked me flat even though she didn't actually appear. I know that, with a couple of exceptions, UNIT largely becomes a non-presence in the series after the Third Doctor regenerates so I'm really glad they seem to be honoring this part of the show's history (except for Liz Shaw... and the Master for obvious reasons.) One of the handful of new fics I was planning to write during NaNo was a Second Doctor-centric Christmas fic where he, Jamie, and Zoe find a way to visit Victoria for the Holiday (with some not-so-subtle Jamie/Victoria content) but now I kind of want to write a Christmas fic for Three's ensemble as well. It wouldn't be that hard logistically and it would help fill the Doctor Who void since I think if we do get a special this year it'll be another New Year's one. Which is... fine. But I really want to see Jodie Whittaker in character wearing a Santa hat.

As far as NaNo itself goes, I'm using it to finish incomplete works from the 2010s so I can start off 2020 with a clean slate, but so far I'm mostly beefing it because I spent last week finishing up some Fictober overrun and recovering from one of the worst work weeks I've ever had. I have a couple of mostly-finished works that I'm hopeful I can polish off today and get posted just to give myself a shot in the arm, and in the end it's not a huge deal since I'm not officially signed up with NaNo or the mini version. But hitting my (revised) Fictober goal of 13 fills really felt good and I'd like to keep that momentum going.

The other project I have going is Buffyverse Bingo, which I've started two fills on... only they're not on the same line. However, they both fall on lines that contain the free space, so I just have to choose which line I want to do and stick with it. One of them is a Willow/Tara fic that I've very excited about, especially since I haven't written a ton of F/F fic, and the other is a Xander/Oz fic that's a homage of sorts to a fic I really liked as a teenager... when I definitely wasn't gay nope I just read it for the art. A challenge I've run into that I wasn't really expecting was dealing with the "Buffyspeak" of it all, especially with Xander (who has a sizable speaking role in the Willow/Tara fic as well). I rewatched a handful of season 3 episodes last week which definitely helped, but I think I'm just gonna have to resign myself to the fact that some of the dialogue is not gonna be up to the standard I want.

Also, speaking to that Xander/Oz fic - it made me really happy that the author chose to archive and preserve their old writing from *checks notes* 1999 so that it was still accessible for fans like me. It motivated me to archive my own, very shitty fanfic that I wrote when I was a teenager on a dedicated AO3 account. One in particular I got very emotional about because I assumed it was gone forever since I wrote it exclusively for a forum that later banned me (and no longer exists) and never posted it to Fanfiction.Net... but it turns out I did mirror it on an old, forgotten deviantART account. Like, it's still very bad in that crappy OC, vaguely self-insert kind of way. But I remember working very, very hard on it at the time so it's nice to be able to have something to show for it.

As an aside, I've been tempted to start my free trial of Apple TV+ so I can binge Dickinson, but I've been holding off because Disney+ debuts tomorrow and I'm already watching too much TV. Once I finished the Third Doctor's run tonight, I'll also be putting Classic Doctor Who on hold for a while - theoretically until after season 12 ends if it's gonna come back in "very early 2020" as has been reported, but I may tweak those plans if that's changed. I'm looking forward to the premiere of The Mandalorian as much as I really can be, since the trailers don't really give away much for what the show is actually about. His Dark Materials premiered last week, but I'm still only halfway through reading The Subtle Knife, so I'm probably gonna hold off watching it until I'm at least finished with The Amber Spyglass. I fear I'm gonna run into the same issue with The Witcher, but I do want to make a concentrated effort to give these books their due rather than simply diving right into the show. And it's not like there isn't gonna be a huge gap between seasons I'll have time to get caught up during.

So much to do, so much to read, so much to write. Thank god Buffyverse Bingo has an Amnesty period in December.

Last week, the Pokémon Sun & Moon anime aired it's final episode. It's the first series of Pokémon I've watched it's entirety (unless you count the Kanto and Johto portions of the original series as separate), and it's the first I've watched subtitled rather than dubbed.

In 2016, when they first announced the series, they presented it as a reset of sorts. Not that they were resetting continuity, but rather that it would be an easier entry point for viewers, like Best Wishes a few years earlier, than some of the other series. At the encouragement of a friend, I decided to jump in when the first episode premiered on November 17, 2016. And it was one of the best media consumption decisions I ever made. Honestly, I'm struggling to express how much I adore this show, and this post is inevitably going to come up short.

( Thank You, Alola! Respective Departures!! )