Spring Cleaning

So I decided to go back and remove all the really personal entries (mostly whining, not all that interesting for anyone but me) in this blog and make it public again. Unlike before, this is now just a fandom blog and not a personal one. I have it set for 'adult content' for safety because I sometimes talk about fandom porn tropes, not because I have anything actually explicit here. I should also point out that my opinions are my own, and if people disagree with me that's fine. I have my own reasons for liking or disliking things, and I'm not trying to force my views on anyone else. That said, if someone has something interesting and non-offensive (no trolls!) to say than I am open to seeing other points of view.

Ha! Didn't wait a year to update!

Not much has changed since my last update actually. I'm still in the Homestuck fandom, though I've gotten to the point where I can read fic in other fandoms again and only check for new fic occasionally. I've also made progress on rereading Undocumented Features. I've been rereading it chronologically from the start and have made it to near the end of the year 2407 at this point. Incidentally, there's been some really great fics written earlier in the chronology that I had been missing by just rereading the SotS arc over and over, some of which are rewrites of old stories and other of which are just awesome additions. I've especially been fond of the fics that bring in the Mass Effect universe and various other game universes that, unlike earlier game universes, I've actually played. Also, the Skyrim mini-cross was awesome.

That said, I recently got Skyrim to work on my computer. Apparently all I needed to do is turn the graphics down to low. I still want to upgrade my computer (and need to since I've still several games that won't play properly) but I can at least play the game I really want to now. Yay.

The other things that have been distracting me lately are a) Tumblr, and b) trying to learn how to crochet.

Still Alive

It's been awhile since I last updated here. In fact, I think my last update was a rant about certain fandom tropes I hate. I'm pretty sure I was either still in the Avengers or Teen Wolf fandom... or in between fandoms.


On the fandom front...
Early on in April, for reasons I no longer remember, I decided to give the Homestuck fandom another try.

Now I'll admit that I'd been vaguely interested in the Homestuck fandom for a while, mostly because a) I kept seeing people mention it, and b) because it looked to have a fairly sizable fandom on AO3.  I vaguely recall skimming through the first two Acts on the MSPA wiki and even making a halfhearted attempt to read the first Act of the comic itself once. Needless to say I didn't get very far on either front since the first Act of Homestuck is both silly and slow paced, and there is a lot of unfamiliar terminology to keep track of for a newbie. The wiki helped a little, but I never really read far enough ahead on the summary pages to see any reason to continue reading back then. I bookmarked it, and then moved on. That was sometime in August last year according to the time-stamp on the bookmark.
 
So three months ago, in the early days of April, I decided to give Homestuck another try. I can't remember why, although it could be as simple as seeing the amount of fic on AO3 was enough that it would take more than a few days to read though the fandom completely, or it could be because I saw an interesting looking crossover. I can't remember. Wait. No. I do remember.

It did start with a crossover that looked really interesting- I think I was a Doctor Who crossover- but the important thing was that it specified that knowledge up to ACT 5 was essential to understand anything. And so, with a potentially good fic as incentive, I decided to actually sit down and read enough of the web comic that I could read the story I wanted to read. This time I made it though to the end of Act One, and with one small but awesome flash animation I was hooked.

According to my History, I was poking back into the DC comics fandom until the 6th of April, where my History starts early Act 2 and indicates that I read until mid Act 4until the 7th pretty much non-stop. I seem to have then taken a break to check on various fic and the like until the 11th, where I began reading Homestuck again from my 'saved game' in Act Four and continued reading until  I reached ACT 6 ACT 5 ACT 2: The Trickster Act, which I thought was a good stopping point. Incidentally, this was on April 15th, the day after it was announced that Homestuck was going on hiatus for 'months'. Said hiatus actually only turned out to be two months, but that still seemed like a good enough stopping point so as not to have to suffer any cliff hangers. Also, it was a good point at which to finally enter fandom.

Before I go on, however, I should point out that my original plan of spending a few days reading up to the end of ACT 5 to read a random crossover should have been completely impossible. I was basing this assumption on the general lengths of other web-comics, and expected to read it in maybe three days to a week at a fairly leisurely pace, maybe in between reading fic and doing other things. I was completely oblivious to Homestuck's status as one of the longest web-comics on the internet.
Here is a list containing the number of pages for each arc:

ACT 1 - 247
ACT 2 - 511
ACT 3 -  395
INTERMISSION -204
ACT 4 - 631
ACT 5 ACT 1 - 636
ACT 5 ACT 2 -  1483
INTERMISSION 2 - 2
ACT 6 ACT 1 - 182
ACT 6 INTERMISSION 1 - 125
ACT 6 ACT 2 -247
ACT 6 INTERMISSION 2 - 153
ACT 6 ACT 3 - 443
ACT 6 INTERMISSION 3 - 175
ACT 6 ACT 4 - 3
ACT 6 INTERMISSION 4 - 72
ACT 6 ACT 5 - 415 (ACT 1 - is 202 page and ACT 2 is 64 and ACT 1 X2 is 149)
ACT 6 INTERMISSION 5 - 309
ACT 6 ACT 6 ACT 1 - ongoing

This means that, from ACT 1 to ACT 6 ACT 1 , I read 5711 pages of comics in a bit under a week, the majority being in between April 11th and April 15th. That isn't counting the times spent playing the various awesome browser games and waiting for the flash animations to load. In that time I pretty much only slept very little. The following are timestamps for when I was on the MSPA site on those days according to my browser history.

April 11th - 9:06 PM -11:42 PM
April 12th 12:03AM- 7:02 AM,  11:48 AM- 11:58 PM
April 13th 12:01 AM - 6:27 AM, 6:48 PM- 11:53 PM
April 14th -  12:01 AM - 5:01 AM. 12:45 PM- 11:59 PM
April 15th   12:03 AM - 3:30 AM, 12:09 PM- 11:42 PM

I don't actually recall much of that week other than reading Homestuck. Apparently I was acting so obsessively that my family was concerned about me and my sister was starting to talk to me like I was a crazy person. I once freaked out because she was making the internet slow by downloading an update for her phone.

Anyway. After the 15th I dove into the fandom and pretty much stayed there for the rest of the month, starting with fic that was recommended on Television Tropes. By the end of April I had mostly read all the 'big name' fics in the fandom, minus one or two that were too angst ridden or contained subject matter that I find disturbing (ie. Hivefled and its predecessor, and one or two of the 'Helmsman' fics), and a bunch that I simply wasn't in the mood for at the time.

I spent almost the entirety of May really sick with the flu-from-hell, and thus spent that time re-reading favorite fic, reading though the entirety of the Homestuck kink-meme, and going through the AO3 Homestuck section reading a lot of the fic I missed the first time. This continued in through June, and although I still have a few on my 'pending' list  I've moved on to the the 'check every day for updates while poking into alternative mediums' stage. This means that I'm pretty much at that point where I'm 'in between' fandoms- not wanting to move on, but no longer having a surplus of unread fic.

However... as it happens, the Homestuck fandom has somehow reminded me of my old love of SPACE OPERA. There are some great Homestuck fics involving adventures and tragedies IN SPACE, but having been reminded how much I once loved that genre, I found myself strangely nostalgic for old favorite books and fics.

As it turns out, I somehow do not have e-book versions of the specific series I wanted to reread on my computer, and most of my actual books are still in storage and inaccessible... and I own the library money and a book that I lost almost two years ago now... but! It's been a long time since I read Undocumented Features, which has been my favorite SPACE OPERA universe for a long time. Okay, so admittedly, I tend to reread the Symphony of the Sword arc every few years, until I reach the unfinished arc and get annoyed by the time skip and the fact that the series isn't being updated as frequently as it used to. However, it's been a really long time since I reread UF from the start, and so that is what I am currently doing in between checking for updates, checking job postings for the illusive 'job I qualify for that isn't a cashier or server' and occasionally taking the time to watch various home improvement shows or play Kingdoms of Amalur.

So...

 I started playing Risen today. I have never died so quickly on 'easy' mode in any game in my life. I could just be wandering around and then suddenly! Wild boars attack! Or a bog monster, or a vulture! And one time I went too far out into the water and this giant appeared and threw me back onto the island. Its definitely a game where saving frequently is important. I hope the sequel is a bit easier.
Also, I saw the new trailer for FFXIII Lightning Returns. Looks like my original thought that everyone except for Lightning was dead was wrong, since Hope was narrating a bit and Noel was there and apparently someone who looked a bit like Serah.

Meh.

Some of my fondest memories growing up were of playing RPGs on whichever console we had at the time. We didn't always have every console and we couldn't afford many video-games so I rented them a lot, but my favorite games were always RPGs, and I considered Square-Enix games to be the best of the best when it came to stories, characters, and gameplay. In fact, Squeenix logo used to be all I'd need to see to want a game since at least early on the company tended to share things like magic systems and common items between the games even without being in the same 'series' and that was nice for me since I tended to play for the story and the characters more than the chance to have a completely new set up of battle screen, inventory, and leveling up every game. I mean, there were always some differences and there was some strategy and challenge to playing, but I always considered the random encounters to be a tedious but necessary evil, not something I wanted to be more challenging so it would take longer to get to the parts of the games I liked. Over the years though, even though the graphics have become absolutely amazing, games have been suffering from too much focus on the things I never really liked, story-lines that are too linear, and not enough focus on characters. Or maybe I've gotten picky. I hadn't realized how much had changed though, until I decided not to get a Squeenix game on sale super cheap after only seven minutes playing the demo and about ten browsing through the forums to see what other people thought about it. And I realize now that it isn't even just Squeenix but JRPGs in general that I've been becoming disenchanted from.

I think that the main issues are that: a) I don't have the patience for turn based or epically long battles anymore, b) most JRPGs feature main characters that are way too young for me to properly identify with anymore -and when you play a game and the first thing you think of is 'where the hell are these kids' parents and why the hell isn't anyone in the game concerned that these pre-teens are running around with dangerous weapons and without adult supervision?' than the characters are too young. c) I've become fond of actually fighting my enemies myself and not have a battle screen or a zillion menus- it's nice to just equip your weapons, set your party to fight the way you want and finish the battle right then and there instead of having to wait your turn and button mash for an hour. Final Fantasy 12 had the best battle system of all of Squeenix's games except maybe Kingdom Hearts (at least the KH games that didn't have those stupid card-game battles) in my opinion. If they'd done that with 13 I might have finished it. d) also JRPGs tend to have terrible voice acting.


Anyway. Nap time since I have to work tomorrow.

Sales are mean

So I was doing my usual poke into the Steam store to see if there was anything I wanted on sale last night... Well thity-five dollars later I found myself with Risen and the Ultimate version of Dragon Age Origins. I still have twelve dollars left. Must resist.

Coffee for the Win

So I got one of those Tassimo coffee machines a while back. I thought it would be a good investment considering how much I like expensive coffees and lattes, and how much cheaper it would be if I just made them myself instead of buying them, but I forgot to take into account a few details. Like the fact that I don't actually buy expensive coffee all that often now that I don't live in walking distance of a cafe, and that even if seven to twelve dollars for eight cups of coffee/tea/hot chocolate is a great deal compared to three to six dollars for one cup in a cafe, it is not all that great a deal if you are going to be drinking those fancy coffees frequently. Basically, I've been spending twice as much for a  few cups of (admittedly really good) chai tea latte as I would for a large can of Nabob which can make dozens of cups of coffee. Not my best investment, but still completely worth it for the taste and convenience.

In fandom news, I've been all over the place lately. I've been a bit flighty about finding a new main fandom since the last few I looked into were fairly small or dying off to the extent that they had been around long enough that most of the original fic writers for those fandoms have already moved on, leaving a trail of unfinished epics left behind due to lack of interest. That's one of the worst things when you go back to old fandoms: finding out that all of your old favorites that were unfinished when you left are still unfinished when you come back. Currently I'm poking around in the Supernatural fandom, but it probably won't last since that is a fandom that contains a lot of things I tend to avoid (like RPF -it's cannon even!- and for the longest time the main slash pairing was incest, which is so not my thing even in fiction). Also, I'm getting more and more annoyed with the Buffy Crossover fandom. I used to like Xander centered fic back in the old days, when his characterization actually matched what existed in canon.  These days though, it seems like no one remembers that there are any characters *other* than Xander and his characterization and motivations in fanon are so far away from his canon characterization these days that it isn't even funny. Seriously, part of what made him an interesting character was that he didn't have super-powers and still fought anyway. the most annoying thing though, is that these Xander-Stu fics have become so popular that it seems like that's almost all there is anymore. Other BtVS characters may as not even exist, or are killed off, made into the villains, or just so badly characterized that I wonder if the writer has ever even seen an episode of Buffy. I used to be able to find lots of great fic at Twisting the Hellmouth, but these days its getting harder and harder to find anything even moderately readable and at this point I think I'd be happy just for fic centered on someone other than Xander- even for a power-up fic. Meh.

Today on Fandom Quest

Okay, so before I say anything about my ongoing quest for a new fandom, I'd like to admit that I just bought myself an Iron Man costume for my sack-person on Little Big Planet. It is adorable, as all sack-person costumes are. I also finally bought the Pirates of the Caribbean level pack, which contains water that doesn't kill me. Yay.

And now back to my regularly scheduled blog.

So last time on Fandom Quest I mentioned I was going to look into Hawaii Five-0 as my next potential fandom or go back to Doctor Who. I didn't find much for new Doctor Who fic that I actually wanted to read, and Hawaii Five-0 has some good stuff, but its one of those fandoms where I'd prefer to have seen more of the show before digging into the fic so I've been a bit hesitant to grab onto that fandom just yet. Instead, I somehow just sucked into the Inception fandom, which has lots of great fics, and then the Suits fandom, and back into the White Collar fandom for a bit, and now I've found myself poking into the Star Trek AOS fandom... though I probably won't stay there since Star Trek has never really been a fandom I've enjoyed fic for- mostly because a lot of the good epic fic I've seen tends towards too many technical world-building details and not enough focus on the characters or plot. Although, there have been a few fic that I liked back in the day... who knows, maybe I might stay longer than I thought. We'll see. 

In other news, I was going to do NaNo this year, but signing up didn't actually make me any more inclined to write than usual. These days I can barely muster the energy to write in this blog. Meh. I did get some good ideas for a story though, so who knows, maybe something might come out of it after all.

Finding new fandoms...

So I somehow found myself at the crack_van LJ community poking at fic reccs and fandom overviews and after a little while I looked up and honestly couldn't remember how I got there or why I was there in the first place. Sure, it is a great place to go when looking into new fandoms or re-familiarizing myself with old ones, and yes, I have been in need to something new, but how did I get there? Finally, I found a link to the fic that originally sent me there for a fandom overview of Grimm, which I haven't seen but which was the other series in an Avengers crossover that I had been thinking of reading. There had been a link on the summary of the fic on AO3 but since this was a good three or four hours ago it isn't too surprising that I forgot. The point is that this tends to be how I find new fandoms: by doing research into the 'other' fandom in a crossover with a fandom I'm already in. I've found a lot of great fics this way but I very seldom recall the exact route I've taken to get there afterwards so I thought I'd write it down today. Not that this means I've found my next fandom, because I haven't, but I've got a few ideas on where I want to start.

For the record, the last few fandoms I've been in are the Avengers, BBC Merlin, and oddly enough Teen Wolf which I still don't know how I got into. All three are active fandoms, but I've either already read the good lengthy fic in them and am waiting for new chapters and new fic, or I've gotten bored or just not finding anything to my liking.

The Avengers fandom has a lot of great stuff and will likely continue to, but I'm really getting sick of the fandom trope of 'let's redeem Loki by making him suffer incredibly out of proportion punishments that only making him crazier/a woobie, having not been responsible for the events of the Avengers movie after all, and make Odin/ S.H.I.E.L.D. a zillion times more evil than Loki ever was to compensate'. Yes, its possible that Loki was crazy/brainwashed/misunderstood, etc. and its possible that Odin was an even worse father than shown in canon, and yes there have been some really good fics with this premise, but seriously, it does not need to be the plot of every Loki centered fic ever. Personally I'd like to see more fic where he has some sort of elaborate plot that showcases his status as a trickster god, not a cliche villain or misunderstood woobie. Basically the Avengers fandom has done the exact same thing with Loki as the Dragon Age fandom did with Anders: taken the 'lets turn so and so into a woobie by piling on amounts of abuse that are insane and ridiculously overkill in order for character x to rescue and comfort/heal with true love/sex. Never mind that said characters already have back-stories explaining their issues that are bad enough that adding more angst isn't going to help. Meh.

BBC Merlin is where I headed once I started getting annoyed with the Avengers fandom but it didn't really become my new shiny favorite. There are some great fics in this fandom- I'm especially fond of some of the modern-verse reincarnation fics- but there was nothing really drawing me to read every single fic ever and then look for more in other archives. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the earlier fic has since been Jossed and that tends to bother me sometimes, and the other part is that I find of really dislike the 'secret identity' trope. Anyway, I think this will be a fandom I poke into every once in a while but never stay in long term.

Teen Wolf seems to have come out of nowhere and it took me a while to figure out who some of the  the characters were, but once I got that down I found I really liked it. It is one of those series where the main character is regulated to side character in fandom- or at least the summaries I've read say that Scott is the main character and not Stiles, who may as well be according to fandom. I don't know, but there is something about a character who is allied with werewolves but stubbornly human and determined to help that is interesting. There is a bit more of the 'Mate' trope than I'd prefer in this fandom but at least they actually have the excuse of supernatural creatures and an overall genre assumption that werewolves are supposed to have mates- which is more than I can say for some fandoms.

The reason I dislike the 'mate' trope is that it is closely associated with the 'love at first sight' and 'soul-bond' tropes that I find to be poor excuses not to actually build up to or work on relationships- basically lazy if not outright terrible character building. Admittedly, I have seen one or two fic where 'mate' doesn't mean 'yay we were/are in love despite never giving the smallest indication we even knew or liked each-other as even friends five seconds ago' but they're uncommon and have a tendency of doing that romance novel trope where one of the characters are possessive and overbearing  and the other is attracted but in denial and resisting for stupid reasons while wallowing in denial or obliviousness. Meh.

My favorite fic in the fandom is the one where Stiles and Lydia are a few years older than in cannon and are secret agents (ala X-Files but better funded and with more credibility) that deal with the supernatural sent to their old hometown to investigate the events of the first season. Its basically Teen Wolf from the perspective of competent adults who think the teen drama is ridiculous and that the teenage behavior of certain characters (ie, Scott putting his relationship with Allison above everything else including not killing people) is stupid beyond words. It is kind of a mirror of how when I was a teenager I was all apologist and 'we're not all that bad' and completely oblivious to the fact that half of the things I did or that were important to me then were genuinely stupid or just made no sense looking back. Now I'm one of those people who would be yelling at 'those kids to get off my lawn and turn down the damn music earphones were invented for a reason stop running around'. Of course I work in a supermarket and I hate everyone sometimes so teenagers are just an easy target since they aren't actually aware that they're crazy most of the time.


Anyway. New fandoms. I'm thinking of Hawaii Five-0 and poking back into the Doctor Who fandom now that enough time has passed since I was there last that there should be a bunch of new stuff. Also, I kind of want to see how fandom is reacting to how the Ponds were lost (*cries*). I've already read one good fix-it, but I kind of would like to see Amy and Rory being awesome in the past. Also I kind of want to see an Avengers/Doctor Who crossover focusing on that episode now. 


In non-fandom news I've been playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion lately. I started it because people kept reccing Skyrim to me but I didn't want to shell out that much money if I didn't like the games and I figured Oblivion would be a good way to see. I didn't take into account how addicting it would be. Admittedly, it isn't my usual- I normally prefer my games to be heavily story and character based with at least a moderately sized fandom so I can continue to enjoy the game after I've finished it- but I love the open world concept where I can go anywhere and do anything with having to be in a certain order or in a certain way. Also, I've always loved collecting piles of loot.  So, I'll probably get Skyrim when I can afford it, but meanwhile I'm having fun with Oblivion.

Nostalgia

So my Firefox Bookmarks contains a little more than half decade's worth of bookmarks. They are organized by year until 2007 and then by type and genre and original source afterwards. Some are  better organized than others, and most are kept for the sake of nostalgia rather than actual worth, since a good 75% of the pages no longer exist, or have moved. I hardly ever poke into my old bookmarks unless I'm looking for something old, but I didn't want to loose those old files either so I have kept them all these years, only occasionally going in to weed out the lost and dead pages that can no longer be found even with the Way Back Machine. Nevertheless, I recently discovered that Firefox seems to have issues with such a big Bookmarks file and has been freezing up every time I try to edit anything in it, so I finally had to delete some years- though first I poked in and had a looksie to see if there was anything I might want to move to a more permanent folder. There wasn't much, but I did decide to keep my 2007 folder, since it was the first year I had actually organized my bookmarks by more than date and archive, and in fact still had a comprehensive listing of archives and sites that may still by valid. Plus all my old Stargate fic links, which I do look for every once in a while. Hopefully, deleting 2003-2006 will be enough... and its not like I don't have backups for if I need to find an old link....

Anyway, during my look through my old bookmarks I found my old deadjournal blog- last updated in 2005 or so. I actually surprised me how much has and hasn't changed since then:
I had more hope for the future since I hadn't yet run into the financial stumbling blocks of today and hadn't even realistically thought about getting a real job since I seemed to think it was an automatic thing after graduating university. I was more enthusiastic about the little things and still writing and planning to write- and I still had a passion for learning that I've lately found hard to find. My fandoms of choice were almost entirely anime based- I had just been on the way out of the Naruto fandom for the first time and complaining about the badfic in one of my last entries. What strikes me the most though was that the language I used was still very young and enthusiastic and excited rather than matter-of-fact and vaguely disconnected as I feel my writing is now. I wonder what changed....

So... it has come to this.

So this blog is now attached to my Google+. I don't know if I like it yet.

Anyway. What have I done lately? Not much. I was trying to finish up my classes, but I got really sick and missed the exams, so that was a bust. Not fun, and will cause trouble later, but right now I'm completely burned out with school so I don't currently care that much.  Got in trouble at work too for calling in sick twice in as many weeks. Also not fun, but not much I could do about it without a time machine to warn my earlier self to save sick days for when I really can't work instead of days that working would be uncomfortable.

In fandom news... actually I'm between fandoms at the moment. I've read most of the good fic for Dragon Age, and a lot of the bad too, DRRR!!! was great while it lasted, but there is very little fic worth reading and most of it is crack. Assassin's Creed has a few good fic, but its fandom is mostly filled with self-insertions, Sues, and a surprising amount of slash between NPCs that I don't really care all that much about. Also, I suck at free-running, and walls are not easy to climb at all (though I heard that free-running is simplified in Assassin's Creed III due to all the trees.


Speaking of video-games, the ones I'm currently playing are the first Mass Effect game (I like to play things in order), Tales of Graces F for the Playstation 3, and the most awesome games ever: Angry Birds Space! I've been thinking about getting the Ultimate version of Dragon Age Origins for my computer, or just getting Dragon Age II for the Playstation, so I can actually try DA:II with my own saved file from DA:O to see if there are any differences myself, but I hate the idea of buying two copies of games I already own. I wish that buying a game bought the *game* and not just a *version* of the game, so I could at least transfer my save files between systems. I suppose that's what I get though, for deciding I want all the console systems instead of being 'loyal' to just one.

Speaking of which, out of all the consoles, my favorite is the Playstation 3 for prices and graphics. I like the Playstation Plus, since for a low price I get several free games each month and awesome discounts. Playstation Home is also pretty cool, since it makes the social aspect of gaming more interesting, and there are some really neat things and 'Spaces' you can get or visit- it does help if you have fast internet though, which I really don't.  Also, the PS3 is a BluRay player which is very handy. I also have a PSP which is nice, and hope to get the Vita as soon as I can justify spending that much money at once... and also once they have more apps and games I actually *want* to play. I'll probably get it when LittleBigPlanet Vita is released.

On the other hand, the Xbox 360 is a little more user friendly, its graphics and store are nice, and since you use your Windows Live account it is cross-compatible with a lot of things that people tend to have even without an Xbox, so it is a lot easier for the average user to figure out. It also has the Kinect, which is better than both a Wii and the PlayStation Move because it is hands-free and actually has a really good camera. The games for it are really fun too.The Xbox player Avatars are also pretty cool, and there are a lot of cool game-based clothing in the Avatar Market, but there aren't enough Avatar Games and nothing quite like PS Home, which is a real shame. Also, to buy anything in the Xbox market except for some of the newer games you need Xbox Points, which are expensive and *not* easily equatable to real money, you you sometimes *think* you are getting a great deal, when in reality you are paying twice as much as you would elsewhere.It would be nice if they put a translation to real money so you knew how much you were really spending. Speaking of spending, the downside of the Xbox 360 is that most of the really cool social and media aspects of the Xbox 360 require you to have an Xbox Gold account. This is more expensive than the PlayStation Plus, doesn't give you any free games, but does give you access to some sales and 'exclusives'. It also allows you access to several apps that are normally *free* to use. Admittedly, many of these apps are not available on other consoles, and they *have* been adding more content lately, but originally you had to pay a bit less than ten dollars a month to use Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix- as well as play any online multiplayer games you might have, not including subscription prices for said games or Netflix. Now included are several other media apps including YouTube and Crackle, which makes the price a little more bearable, and I will also admit that at least the Netflix app was superior to the one on the PlayStation in that it loaded a movie *before* trying to play it, which is very nice if you have slow internet. Still, I don't like having to pay for things that are free elsewhere. Also, I think there should be more compatibility between Xbox console and your computer- especially regarding Achievements. Oh, and it would be cool if there were more games released directly to the Xbox Marketplace, for those of us who live too far away from an EB Games or even a mall to buy things when they first come out.

As for the Wii.... actually, I only use it to play Mario Cart. I'm not the biggest Nintendo fan anymore- though I am tempted to pick up a 3DS one of these days since there're a few games for it I'd like to play.


and... that's about it for today.

So much for more frequent updates...

---
Anyway, onto fandom. I don't remember what I was doing last time I updated, but my most recent fandoms were Dragon Age and Durarara!!!! with some brief forays into the Assassin's Creed fandom.
I've mostly left the Dragon Age fandom except for poking at certain authors and checking for news on any new DLCs, novels, comics, or the new anime movie that is coming out. And yes, that does mean that for once I actually played and beat both games- although I want to replay the first again on my computer since I couldn't import my characters for my PS3 saved games for DA2 even though they're both registered on the Bioware site (stupid lack of cross-system compatability- if I want to share my saved games between devices I should be able to). In the meantime I've decided to check out the Mass Effect series- I just started the first game yesterday.

DRRR!!! is great anime but the fandom is a bit odd and there are only a few fics that actually get everyone in character and are not completely AU or based on weird alternate character interpretations based off of album art and character song names. There *are* a few fics that are worth it if one has the time to find them though. One of theses days when I get the time I want to look up the manga.

Lastly, Assassin's Creed is a fandom that I've randomly poked into a bit over the past few years, but have been avoiding lately since I decided to actually play the games instead of just looking up spoilers on the wiki. Unfortunately I suck at climbing walls, but I hope to get better soon.

Oh yeah, another thing that has changed since my last update is my new computer. I finally got sick of my old one and updated to one I actually *can* play games on. I have updated my version on Microsoft Office from the free version though, since for some reason it doesn't allow for putting in footnotes- I nearly had a nervous breakdown on my last essay trying to find the option to put in footnotes until I googled the free version and found out it simply didn't *have* that option. Good thing I was able to find a freeware word program that *did* let me put in footnotes or I'd've been in trouble.

Re: Old Favorite Fandoms

It sure would be nice if people would stop pulling their fic from the internet when they leave fandom. There have been so many times that I've gone to find an old favorite only to discover that the author has since decided to pretend that they never wrote it by taking it down from all archives, and trying to delete their presence from the internet altogether. It wouldn't kill them to leave the fic up and simply post that it will never be finished and they prefer not to be contacted about it. Actually, there should be a permanent archive just for retired fanfic writers, or for posting work that may be unfinished but still has fans.

Fandom update

As usual I have been through a bazillion different fandoms since last time I updated my blog. The closest thing I've had to a 'main' fandom lately has been the new BBC Sherlock series, which is awesome and which also has a lot of great fic written for it out there for something that has been out there only a year and which only had three episodes its first 'season'. I'm greatly looking forward to the new three episodes this fall. Other than that I'm currently lurking in several different fandoms and am waiting on a few others until I've seen/played/read more of the source material.

Some of the other fandoms I lurk in are: Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age, Doctor Who and Torchwood, Hetalia, Leverage, White Collar, Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Fate: Stay/Night, Nanoha, Girl Genius, DC comics, the Tales series, the Final Fantasy series (though I'm not too fond of 13 on account of the complete lack of RPGness in it), and probably a thousand other little fandoms that I've meandered though and will probably wander though again.

Basically even though I tend to mostly focus on one fandom at a time I tend to take breaks and go poke into new fandoms and back into old ones whenever I feel like it. As of right now, having either read or archived most of the Sherlock fanfic I've found that looks good, I'm poking back into the Stargate fandom to see if I've missed anything interesting in the few years since I focused on it, and to look up old favorites and series I was waiting for more on.

So much for consistant updating....

So it's been almost a complete year since my last update. How many things have I done in that time? What's different about what I'm doing now than what I was doing then? Hmm.



Fandom:

This year has been mostly focused on the Hetalia fandom and the Doctor Who/Torchwood fandoms. I've also poked into the Assassin's Creed fandom and probably a bunch of other small fandoms that I can't recall right now. Currently, as I'm pretty much up to date on all my recent fandoms, I'm both in the process of shopping for a new fandom and revisiting old ones right now. Actually, right now I'm poking back into the DC comics universe to see if anything good has been written in the three years since I left it (apparently most of my favorite characters who were killed are alive again, but they've really done a number on the the Arrow clan so I'm a little unsure if I want to actually go back to the comic *books*).


... and that's really all I have to say right now. Maybe later I'll go into better detail.

Dear fandom,

What is *up* with all the gender-swap fics lately? And not the occasionally fun and amusing so-and-so gets turned into a girl (or a guy, though that's actually very uncommon) and wacky-hijinks ensue kind, but the 'so-and-so main character was born a girl' kind. I mean, the 'gets-turned-into' kind is usually either hilarious or a horrifying study in anti-feminism (because, clearly the first thing any guy is going to do upon becoming the opposite gender is to become the ultimate cliche girly-girl, acquire a new personality (or lack thereof), and either a new sexual preference or discover that their usual love-interest is a closeted lesbian). Very rarely is the gender-swap thing done in a way that is either believable or realistic (I've seen a few Stargate fics that actually are both, yay for cannon wacky Ancient tech insanity) and most of the time it's just an excuse to have a yaoi relationship without it technically being 'yaoi' by squemish newbie fangirls who think they're being clever.
This 'main character is *born* female' thing that seems to be all over fandom (I've seen it in Naruto, HP, DGM, and a few other places as well) appears to be both a 'lets have a yaoi couple without the gay' thing and a 'lets insert my oh-so-very-cool original character in the place of the main character, keep some of said characters background angst or give said character *more* angst because angst is the most attractive and fun to read thing ever and pair said character up with so-and-so male character because he's so awesome' thing, aka a not so very cleverly disguised Mary Sue. I mean, I *suppose* that it might be possible that one or two of these fics may be a valid AU whereupon said main character genuinely was born female and is still essentially the same character with minor differences (because realistically there would be some character differences if born a different gender, but not to the point where the character is completely unrecognizable and suspiciously is 'so-much-cooler' than cannon) but it's very unlikely except in the case of dimensional travel whereupon the MC travels to a universe where he was born female- because those ones are usually done well, or at least aren't Mary Sues.

Still, if you're going to write yaoi or a Mary Sue, then just do so- don't try to get around or hide it by destroying perfectly good cannon characters (though considering how OOC all the other characters usually are in said fics, maybe it's a mercy for said characters to be 'killed' and replaced by a defective wrong-gender quasi-clone (because usually appearance, name, and most defining characteristics are erased as well, other than a few physical points such as a scar or tattoo, or seal of some sort). If only people would stop spamming fandom with this new trend... if I want to read a fic staring Naruto, or Allen, or Harry, then I *don't* want to read a fic staring Naruko, Alanna, or Harietta - or Kelly, Melissa, and Chrysanthemum, because half the time they don't even bother to keep the 'new' names anything close to the old, and in the case of anime, the names are either mysteriously western or clearly borrowed form another popular anime (you can tell, because said names are usually uncommon or unique in Japanese to begin with). You aren't as clever as you think you are fangirls and boys.

I can has an update?

As for fandom, well I finally got around to the D.Grey-Man fandom a while back, and boy was I disappointed. Why was I disappointed? Well mostly because I sat down and read the entirety of the manga that has been published and found it to be *made* of awesome to the extent that I was really looking forward to seeing what fandom could have done with all that potential. However, what I found instead was a bazillion bad high school AUs, too many bad vampire AUs, a tonn of pointless and OOC pairing fics (mostly yaoi, which I wouldn't mind if not for the fact that the characters were almost never IC, actual plot was almost non-existent, and most of them were AUs to boot). I won't deny the existence of a few good one-shots, nor that there *was* a few good fics here and there, but there was *nothing* in the fandom that truly *shined* like the manga itself. Usually there is at least something in fandom that is as good as (or in some cases better than) the source material, but here I was disappointed. Thus, the manga was awesome, the fandom not so much (unless you're in it for the Pr0nz, because there *are* a few good fics in that category with some interesting psychological insights on certain characters).

After that fandom disappointment I've mostly been drifting in and out of old fandoms again, rereading old favorites, looking for updates, and occasionally finding a good new fic. I've also been playing Crisis Core and reading ahead in two of my classes. Occassionally, when I'm up to driving myself insane with frustration, I go and play Mario Kart Wii (my sister bought a Wii last month, and a few months prior to that we got an Xbox 360, so now all we need is the PS3 and then collectively our family will finally have all the latest game systems for the first time in years, instead of just one).

And that's about it for my life now.

Also

Come to think of it, now I want an X/Stargate crossover where they realize just how pointless it would be to end the world since humanity exists throughout the whole damn universe and are not anywhere near as ultimately damaging as some of the other races. Or a fic where several years after humanity is 'wiped out' an Ancient device automatically repopulates the world, or people start coming back through the stargate (with the presumption that the apocolypse wasn't instantanious and that enough people knew the world was ending to evacuate). There: that's my new X/TB apoco-fic canon.

Update

Wow, I haven't updated this in ages. Probably since everything started to look up since my last post and the only things I had left to whine about was my own laziness and tendency to procrastinate. That said, I have a month and a half to finish my three courses- I'm way behind schedule because I'm the laziest essay-writer ever and because the classes are so painfully easy that I could have finished them months ago if I'd really wanted to. I *so* need to stop being so lazy.

So- what have I been doing if not what I should be doing?

Yeah, I've been doing that obsessive compulsive fandom thing I do. Since January I've done the usual 'go back to old fandoms' and look for new fandoms thing I do, looking for a new shiny. I spent a great deal of time in the Naruto-fandom reading a lot of the fic that's been written since the last time I was there- I found a few good fics, one or two great fics, and a lot of average fic. The usual. After/during that I also poked into the Bleach fandom a bit, various other 'on-going' fandoms such as KH and FF, and read everything (nearly) there was to read in the KHR! fandom. There were probably a few others in there too, but my most recent 'obsession' was the Death Note fandom- which is weird, since its one of those fandoms where practically everyone ends up dead in cannon, and there are surprisingly few amount of AU fics where said characters survive. I still looked for them though.

Anyway, about a week or so ago I decided enough was enough. I'd read nearly everything that looked even a little bit interesting in the DN fandom and I was getting sick of the angst (and the badfic) so it was about time to find something new. This wasn't so much a conscious decision as something that just happened. I'd already been beginning to pull out, since the DN fandom isn't prolific enough to support me now that I've read all the good finished stuff, but I hadn't fully done so until I chanced upon the fact that the website of some of my old favorite authors had been updated.

And that's how I suddenly got all nostalgic for the TB/X/1999 fandom and decided to go on a quest to find some of my old favorite fics and see if anything new had been written in the years since I was so obsessed with it. Great way to get rid of the angst right? *L*

Interestingly enough there seem to have been something of a small revival of the fandom, and I'm not the only one who's been feeling nostalgic lately. Not only have a few old favorites been updated, but there are a few LJ communities and people who've been writing new fic lately- possibly because of the X/2009 challenge.

Said challenge was to show 'ten years later', either if the apocalypse had been diverted, it had happened and there were survivors (typical post-apocofic), or in one notable case if the apocalypse had been postponed ten years in order for Kamui to be able to make an 'informed decision' about the end of the world. It was this last fic that I just put aside, having realized that it was not going to end well at all. Essentially, by making the characters ten years older and putting them into 'now' things only got worse. Especially since several of the characters already had issues, and giving them more time to dwell on them with the knowledge that the world might still end wasn't a good one. Especially since ten years can change a person a lot, and if nothing gets resolved, if those ten years are just bidding time, or if the issues get worse, the decisions made my a cynical twenty-five year old, or someone in their thirties or forties, will be drastically different than those of a teenager or young adult.
The story itself is brilliant and chilling, and it *works* in the realistic context- but it isn't what I want to read at all- or think about. I had been hoping for something else when I found it. So even though the story is quite possibly one of the better pieces of fandom literature in any fandom, I don't think I'll be finishing it any time soon. I think that what bothers me the most about it is that it's written by a well-informed, academic type person who's realist views clash with my own hopeful views that things (and by things I mean life, the planet, society in general...) are not anywhere near as 'doomed' as people seem to think, and that we can and will fix things- even if we delay it until the last possible moment, it *is* going to be fixed. Or everything we see as needing to be fixed will fix itself and everything will balance out in the end. Or everything we think needs to be fixed doesn't and isn't as much of a long-term problem as we seem to think.

Anyway, my point is that my view of humanity isn't as cynical as hers and I hate apoco-fic in any fandom (though at least in the Stargate fandom the destruction of the Earth isn't necessarily the end of everything).

So *why* did I ever go back to the X/TB fandom?! Probably because I'd liked the characters and I love AUs where they either live happily ever after, sensibly decide to veto the apocalypse, or at least survive it. Actually, I'm kind of fond of fic where the characters get over their issues and realize that they don't *need* to follow destiny's path. Meh.

Well at least there's Tsubasa... though really, turning Kamui and Subaru into vampires... was it *absolutely* necessary? *L* Speaking of Tsubasa, I do believe that's my next fandom- even though CLAMP hands out angst by the buckets, and from what I've read of the plot there are are more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at... well at least its pretty.

And so, there I go.

Days of Yore

It has been a good thirteen (if not more) years now since I first officially became an an anime fan, and about twelve since I acquired the internet and discovered fandom. Even before then my favorite kind of video games were RPGs and I had read a good three quarters of the fantasy/sci-fi section at the local library. Though I didn't know it back then, I was writing fanfic back in primary school. I just kind of think it's funny that even though the precise focus of my interest has changed (evolved) over time, the basic core of my interests has always remained the same.

What I'm getting to is that in the past few weeks I've encountered a few remnants of 'the good old days' of fandom and the internet that have got me feeling nostalgic.

The first thing I ever looked up on the internet (willingly) was information about the anime 'Slayers'. That was the series that got me hooked on anime, a good year before I ever even knew about the internet as anything more than a pricey computer thing that I didn't know anything about. I rented nearly every anime in the video store back then- though that isn't really saying much since this was back before anime was 'cool'- back during the first run of Sailor Moon (I think, if not before then) when even the networks refused to even use the word 'anime'. I can't help but wonder now though, if my obsession would have lasted all that long if I hadn't moved to a town that actually taught students how to use the internet in school as part of the curriculum and allowed them to use the computer labs and the library for non-school based activities. Possibly my interest could have been renewed when anime became more mainstream, but it's hard to say.

Anyway, even with a specific series to obsess over and nearly unlimited internet access at school I didn't actually really encounter fanfic until a few months later when we had gotten dial-up (which was all that was available for home-internet then- at least where I lived) and was looking up info on Final Fantasy VII- namely, I believe, a rumor of a possible way to make it so Aeris didn't die (heh, those were all over the place back then). I'd seen links for 'fan fiction' before then, but had for some reason been under the impression that this mysterious category had something to do with gossip or some such trivial thing and had thus avoided it before then. It hadn't even occurred to me before I clicked on that link that people were writing *stories* about my favorite characters and worlds. And so a new era began for me.

Back in those days there weren't any automated archives or blog communities- in fact, though my memory isn't too precise, those didn't start popping up until a year or so later, and when they did they weren't anything to write home about. No, in those days if you wanted fanfic (at least anime fanfic- I never looked for book or TV or movie based fanfic until years and years later) you had to look for personal web-pages, hosted archives and collections made by people who often (though not always) screened the submissions, and places like the old FTP 'public archive of anime fanworks' site. It was a hit and miss process, and there wasn't really all that much available for a while, unless you were into Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball- which I wasn't really- or Ranma 1/2, which I was.

I can honestly say that the Ranma fandom is one that I've always been able to fall back on. A lot of the old story archives are still out there (at least they were last I checked) and although fans aren't as prolific for it as they used to be, the fandom hasn't *died* like a lot of the older anime fandoms have.

Anyway, I think I'm loosing focus on my original point, so I'll finish up with a list of things I recall with fondness from the 'good old days' both *way* back in the day and more recently (as in lost or forgotten within the past 5 years):


Random List of Fandom Nostalgia:

- I remember the old Anipike site, before it became a crappy wanna-be search engine and was just a pretty definitive list of nearly every anime-based site online sorted by series, type, and a few other things. I occasionally use the Wayback Machine to find old favorites or places I know once existed through the Old Anipike. I never liked the new one, and haven't been there in years, if it's even still there.

- The Slayers Trilogy by Twoflower. It's been a while since I re-read it, but I still believe that it is the single best Slayers fanfic epic ever. The website still exists too, though last I checked the author was writing original fic and hilarious Neverwinter Nights modules.

- Ranma fanfic in general. I read nearly all the great old Ranma epics, didn't particularly care about the 'Fiance Wars', and was sad to have lost my old favorite archive for it.

- The day I accidentally downloaded my first mp3, thinking it was a midi and was just downloading very slowly- it didn't hurt that the site I got it from was entirely in Japanese except for the song titles. I believe the song was either 'Get Along' or 'Give a Reason' from Slayers. Before then it had never even occured to me that mp3s could exist. Back then my computer was so tiny I could only fit three songs on it before deleting things.

- Finding the occasional full anime episode, then more, and realizing how much *better* they were in Japanese with subtitles.

- How before auto-archives and the centralization of fandoms into LJ and auto archives everything was connected by Web-Rings.

- How nearly everything used to be free for real, even if it wasn't as shiny as it is now, and how the internet used to feel (to me at least) a lot more close and friendlier when there wasn't everyone and their cat online.

- How people in fandom used to be more respectful towards the source material and how people wouldn't *dare* to do anything so crass as show their porny fanfic/art to the actors/creators. It makes me feel old when I see how the newbies act sometimes. I mean, if random people decided I was sleeping with a co-worker because we argued, or were friends, or even just looked 'pretty' together and started writing graphic porn about it, well I certainly wouldn't want it shoved in my face. That is one of the things that I regret about fandom entering mainstream- technically a lot of what we are doing is if not outright illegal, certainly objectionable to some people- and unless a creator or actor says outright that they don't care or that they approve, it isn't wise to do anything that would *make* them object. People used to know that, but I'm not sure as many do anymore.

- I remember the old list of RPG cliches and the Evil Overlord list. They both still exist, though the formor was really out of date last I saw it and the later has become infamous enough that it will likely never be forgotten.

- I miss the Gaming Intelligence Agency, which was the best site for online RPG news in it's day. RPGamer isn't so bad now, but the GIA will always hold a special place in my memories.

- There was a huge epic crossover fic called the 'Dance of Shiva' that I really need to track down again someday.

- The Gundam Wing fandom before it started to fail. I got into it by accident, about a year or so after it started to become so popular (I'd downloaded the first episode way before then and nearly died of boredom, and so avoided it and it's fandom when it started airing on TV) because I wanted to add in some cameos that my friends, who were huge fans, would recognize in the crossover I was writing. My research involved reading a few fic to see how the characters were generally portrayed, and it didn't take long for me to get sucked in- especially since much of the fandom way more character driven then boring political/action/war-is-bad stuff. This was also where I first seriously started to encounter the yaoi/shounen ai genre- again, by accident. Before then I had mostly avoided anything 'adult' rated out of habit and since most yaoi labled fics I'd seen before then (without a lable of what it *was* since I wasn't looking for it) were also accompanied with the 'lemon' lable, I just never really read any until then. As it happens, around that time I was a huge Mercedes Lackey fan, and anyone who's read her books (at least her earlier ones, at any rate: she's gotten a lot less 'controversial' in the few books of hers I've read in the past few years) knows that she is (was) one of the few fantasy authors who made sure to have at least one canon gay/lesbian/bi couple in each book. Suffice it to say I wasn't disturbed in the slightest by the yaoi genre, and since I finally knew what it was I stopped avoiding it- and occasionally followed it. (I won't get into why I like it, as my answers will likely match that of any other yaoi-fangirl.)


Hmm. It's difficult to recall exactly which anime fandoms I pursued in the early years, and I can't quite recall exactly how I left the anime fandom- or rather, branched out from it, since I still linger there, though not as much as I used to. I think it might have been a combination of changes in my real life and new leanings towards original fiction written by non-anime fans which started to open my eyes to how unrealistic and immature a lot of the anime fandom was becoming (this was about the time when auto archives had begun to really take off, anime was becoming popular among more and more people, most of whom were younger then me and prone to all sorts of newbie-ish behavior that I just didn't find as amusing or cute as I would have back when I was a newbie myself). Actually, come to think of it, everything started to change near the end of my CLAMP obsession (aka, overload on the angst of X/TB) which also coincides with me reading more and more original fic, branching out more to TV fandoms (like Xena/Hercules, Highlander, Buffy, and some X-Files I think), and my decision to stop writing fanfic since reading too many bad anime fanfics were accepting my writing (and also that I sucked at writing fanfic. I tended to want to write SIs and put in way too many original characters in combination with making AUs in several attempts at 'fixing the angst'- to the point of Mary-Suism in one story, much to my disgust. Although, if I'd written more of that fic it might have evened out, since that character had a lot more depth planned but not shown in what little I'd posted- maybe someday I'll re-write it). Anyway, I think the real thing that got me completely out of my anime rut was my brief but absolutely obsessive fling with the Marvel-comics verse- specifically X-Men and directly associated comics (I was never a Spiderman or Fantastic Four or Iron Man fan). The general style was so different then what I usually found in anime fandom that, after getting over how uncomfortable the 'directness', for lack of a better term, in comparison to that found in anime-fic (especially in slash- which, though technically the same thing, is *way* different than yaoi) I was able to move into TV/mainstream based fandoms a lot easier. And so, there I was.

Eventually I did go back to anime/game fandom, but no longer to the exclusion of everything else. Except Real Person based fandom, which frankly squicks me so *very* much- it's one thing to write fiction about characters who are fictional (or long-dead and unable to complain), and another altogether to write fiction about *real* people who might someday read what you've written about them- I'm not too fond of gossip-magazines for the same purpose.



---
So what is my current fandom? Well, I've mostly left Kingdom Hearts, I have a few on my list of 'to-read' fics for FFVII (like the Ranma fandom, it lives on!), I'm hoping the new anime will encourage people to write more Tales of the Abyss fic- but have otherwise moved on from the Tales series and Zelda (except to read updates of old fics and look for potentially good new ones every once in a while) and am in limbo. I've mostly been dipping into the waters of various new small fandoms in lately- or into old ones. I've found a Tekken fic that looks promising, and there's a few good Jak and Daxter fics- the Vampire Knight and YuGiOh GX fandoms looked promising, but only had one or two fic worth reading. There've also been a few good Buffy crossovers, and one or two Naruto AU and Timetravel fics. Occasionally I find a Harry Potter fic that doesn't want to make me strangle someone (very AU, because canon irks me). I poked briefly into the Silent Hill fandom- was horrified and squicked, and left. Nothing but pointless drivel in the Devil May Cry or Resident Evil fandoms (as usual, though sometimes there's something good there). Mostly, I'm currently fandomless- though I'm thinking of trying out D-Greyman and subscribing to another original fic site.

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