Ramblings and Musings of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

I have been way too busy lately to come here for much. Plunnies have been flowing for the most part and it has been so delightful. I rarely ever have so many plunnies that keep coming and I just want to soak it in for as long as it will last. I've done nine stories for my 1987 Turtles series, with many more planned; I'm just starting the Christmas one. As soon as I finish one, plunnies bite for the next one and so on. Each story builds on the previous one, while at the same each one usually has a stand-alone plot. They also heavily study both Baxter and Barney. Baxter is going up and Barney is going down. I have hardly ever examined an antagonist in-depth while he's doing bad things, as I prefer to write for good guys/reforming bad guys in-depth. Barney is the antagonist of the stories (well, along with Shredder and Krang, etc.) and Baxter is the protagonist. It makes for some interesting compare and contrast between them. It is so fun!

I also finished the Baxter plushie. There are a few pictures of him in my Scrapbook posing with my Build-a-Bear Minty plushie. They released her just for the holidays and I was able to get her last week on a 30% off sale. Squeee.

This is a great time to become intrigued by 1987 Baxter, as they are finally releasing a human figure of him. It's the main thing I'd like for Christmas, but aside from a few that released early, he's not supposed to release until January. And since January releases usually seem to be late January, it might even be February before I can get him. Sigh. It's an interesting figure in a Mutations line. You can change him from fly to human. I had hoped he would be sold in human form, but he's apparently sold in fly form and you have to change him to human if you want that. I hope it won't be difficult to exchange the pieces; I remember some difficult struggles with my Japanese figures that had switchable parts.

There's a description on Toys R Us's website, and I don't know whether they wrote it or if Mega Bloks did, but they describe the human version of Baxter as a maniacal madman. That only happened, debatably, in season 2. (Then he cracked up all the way after being cross-fused.) They seem to be using the season 1 design for the figure, where he was sane and stable and a genuinely nice person. The figure also looks like a sad kicked puppy, just about the farthest thing from a maniacal madman there could be. So ... mismatched description much? LOL. I am probably going make a Tumblr post joking about the irony.

Miraculous Ladybug did their Christmas special and I loved it so much I watched it twice in the same day. Then I got the most bizarrely cracky idea that I should cross over my Ginger and Lou series with Miraculous Ladybug. I've tried to keep the more realistic series separate from the fantasy series, but somehow Ladybug seems different than, say, Sailor Moon or something like that. It feels more reality-based. And I can't seem to shake this nutty idea that Ginger and Lou go to Paris for a business trip and something happens that causes Papillon/Hawkmoth to decide Ginger would be a perfect candidate to be possessed by one of his dark butterflies/Akuma. If I actually decide to go ahead with the idea, I have to think what kind of design Akumanized Ginger would have. I know I would want him to still look human and just have a bizarre weapon-laden outfit or something. It's figuring out what kind of weaponry would work for Ginger and also work for a family-friendly series, because Ginger isn't very family-friendly when it comes to his weaponry. LOL.

The idea was on my mind so much that I dreamed about Luke Andreas. It was a really weird dream, too. It was one of those kind where I was wandering about town, yet at the same time I was watching things unfold like on TV. I was absolutely psyched because I was thinking, "Yay! Finally, here's something else that Luke has a lot of screentime in!"

I found this shop that had some stuff I wanted, including this pen thing with a figure thing of 1987 Baxter on it. I decided to get it, and Luke was/was playing the owner of the shop. We interacted for some time at length and there were other things going on, like a town meeting, that his character was involved with. Also, Luke was dressed like his secret agent character from The Bionic Woman. Epic.

I had another Once dream today. This time I wasn't even thinking about the show consciously, but I still dreamed of it. It was another season 2 dream, and it was set in a beautiful snowy, wintery scene similar to that one I documented some time back. It was supposed to be Storybrooke, but there was either a big house or a castle that was very prominent. I'm not sure whether that was Rumpel's place or someone else's, but there weren't any ominous feelings about it.

In the dream, I was introducing Mom to Once and I had decided for some reason that season 2 was the place to start. Of course, this wasn't the season 2 of reality. In this season 2, it seemed like the characters still hadn't figured out who they were in regards to their fairy tale counterparts. Episode 1 seemed to focus on Mary-Margaret trying to solve the mystery about herself. Also, Rumpel and David had both gotten injured somehow and were at the hospital, and for some bizarre reason, both of them had decided to sleep in the windowboxes under each of their respective windows. WTH. Rumpel was very mysterious, as he was in season 1, and someone was talking to him about what he knew and Rumpel seemed to want to make a deal. Or maybe the other person proposed the deal. Hmm.

Mom loved it and I wanted to show her more. But then Dad came up during a scene where The Evil Queen was onscreen and I flipped it off, because even in this different Once, I knew Dad probably wouldn't like what we were watching and I thought it better if it wasn't on when he was around. Heh. (In reality, I don't think I'd ever show Mom Once, although I've told her about it.)

There was some other influence from reality, as I remember thinking and longing for a plotline where Rumpel sacrifices himself for the townspeople and Belle is able to revive him a la Beauty and the Beast. I wanted to write the story if they didn't ever make it. In reality, of course, Rumpel already did sacrifice himself, the last time I really liked the series and not just a stray episode, and the townspeople really didn't care or appreciate it. And they're far worse now (using Belle to force Rumpel's hand in the Underworld arc is the most repulsive last straw; that is not the behavior of true "good guys", especially when Belle actually considers them friends! UGH), so I wouldn't even think they'd be worthy of Rumpel trying to make such a sacrifice for them now.

It's kind of both funny and sad, the deep impact this series made on me. I swear I wasn't even thinking of it yesterday (I even forgot to post the discussion post on Sunday, oh dear), and it still crept into my dreams. Subconsciously, I obviously feel extremely badly about what happened to it, even more than I do consciously.

And ... I don't know, I am seriously heartbroken that they decided to make Robert Carlyle's Trainspotting 2 haircut a plot point in the series instead of just giving him a wig until it grows out again. Maybe it's shallow, but the long hair was one of the first things that attracted me to Mr. Gold. I would have been fascinated by that mysterious, well-dressed man in season 1 no matter what he looked like, but the hair was the icing on the cake. And it made him stand out more from all the other men, since I don't recall any of the other regulars had long hair. After all the OOC changes they've heaped on the character since season 4, the hair was just about the only thing still the same about him. Stupid, but I think in the back of my mind that was always a slight comfort, like the one constant about the character that they wouldn't change. And now they've gone and done that too.

I've always felt guilty for liking the character at all, but I will continue to remember him as he was in the early seasons, especially when he was trying to turn his life around, before the creators deliberately had horrible things happen to him because he was trying to do the right thing (as they admitted they did).

... not to avoid something that everyone and their dog hates.

Over and over, I find that if I avoid something because of negative reviews, I almost always end up loving it. It happened with season 3 of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., with season 9 of Perry Mason, with TMNT 1987, with Equestria Girls, and with many other things. I also in general love things everyone hates, regardless of whether I initially avoided it myself or not. The Batman series is a good example of that. I enjoyed it from the start, compared to everyone who tears their hair out over it.

I finally got around to buying/seeing Ghostbusters 2, mainly because of the two cartoon episodes it comes with. One of them is a favorite. (The other was WTH territory and I sincerely hope that it isn't typical of the later seasons.) Honestly, I ... ended up loving the movie much more than the original. I think there were only four instances of swearing and a couple of naughty comments, compared to swearing practically every two minutes in the original (or it felt like it, anyway). It was creepy but wacky, had many more character-developing scenes, and Winston had a lot of good screentime. It felt much more like the series, and that may have been the point. They probably knew a lot of kids would be watching it because the series was running right then. Also, the plot point I really wasn't crazy about before I saw it, them being discredited and having gone their separate ways at the beginning, ended up in practice feeling a lot like TMNT, especially Ray and Winston at that birthday party. LOL. So I actually ended up not being too bothered by that after all. I can see myself rewatching this movie and enjoying it, whereas I'm honestly not sure I would rewatch the first movie, at least not in full. I have rewatched my favorite scenes from it.

I can't remember if I mentioned, but Build-a-Bear had a 30% off deal the weekend before this one and I was able to get Michelangelo with that. We were finally going to be in the area and I couldn't pass up a chance to get that much off of him. Then I discovered that the big Slimer plush was on clearance at a Wal-Mart other than ours. I couldn't get him then, but the other day I was able to go back and get one. Our Wal-Mart still isn't clearancing them. It was awesome to get him for $7 instead of $15!

It felt so good to get my 31_days challenge done last week. Some pieces I really enjoyed writing, but others were puzzling, and it was definitely frustrating to have to worry about the day's piece each day when I really wanted to be writing my Turtles fic. But I kept on because I wanted to do the challenge too; it was a story I'd wanted to tell for some time. I still think I'll also write the original Snakes and Chita story I was going to tell, though, which was a third-person narrative oneshot involving one of the last times Snakes put up with looking all over town for Chita when she deliberately ran out to make him find her after an argument. I have a very distinctive image of the opening lines of that fic and they have never gone away, so I need to write it.

I tried to basically keep to the prior versions of the Snakes and Chita tale that Snakes related in two earlier fics. When I realized I had some details wrong in a couple of pieces, I went back and redid those parts. For a couple of other parts, however, I decided that I wanted to tell it slightly differently and that would either make more sense or be closer to what I wanted, so on a couple of points I deliberately made it different from the earlier accounts. Like, I didn't have Snakes and Chita go gambling all night long the first night they met. I mean, they'd been beat up in the first casino when Snakes tried to defend her. It seemed much more likely that they'd go try to take care of their battle wounds. And then at the end, I changed the point where Snakes lost track of Chita's trail in 1910. I wanted Chita to turn up again, but not decades older. I drew inspiration from both a role-play where I'd used her and from the fact that she was always intended to be characterized as sort of a flapper wannabe, and had Snakes lose track of her trail in the 1870s. She found a portal to the 1920s, where she fit in and was happily staying for the most part. (I will speculate that the portal was another result of Dr. Faustina's experiments.) But then she returned to the 1870s once, heard that Snakes was alive, and found the portal to the present-day to see him again. They were able to converse and have some closure at last.

Chita was very interesting to characterize in that last piece. Unlike other versions of her, including the role-play version, this Chita actually did mature a little bit. She wasn't as superficial, was willing to touch the scar that she had always avoided before, and felt badly for how her past cruelty had negatively impacted Snakes. But she wasn't ready to settle down and she recognized it; she had finally opted to stay single. She wants parties and material objects and yet she knows they're not what truly bring happiness. Still, she can't make herself not want them. I drew some inspiration from my own feelings regarding her love of material things and not feeling ready to settle down.

She was never meant to really be a likeable character, so I am amused that I kind of got fond of her and developed her a little. Even some of her superficialty is endearing to me. But since she has plenty of negative characteristics, I would totally understand anyone not liking her. What she did to Snakes was horrible. Not that it was worse than things Snakes did canonically, of course, and so there is definitely the possibility of redeeming her. That was kind of where I was going with the final piece.

I would never have her and Snakes get together again, but they parted on civil terms, and this past night I ended up drawing a cute picture meant to take place around that point where Snakes is standing watching her dance as she whips her boa around him. I sketched the whole thing out very quickly and I quite love it. I might ink it before I scan it, though.

Apparently I had Snakes on the brain after that themeset, because yesterday I had a weird dream involving him. It seemed to take place in the Old West, before The Poisonous Posey episode, even though some things ended up not making sense. Dr. Loveless was there too, and Snakes seemed to be working for/with him and there was some explosion planned for Jim West. Snakes seemed all into that, the little weasel (despite the fact that he seemed to not know Jim in the episode, so there's where it doesn't make sense). Then the tables were turned when Jim escaped and Dr. Loveless chained Snakes to a bomb that was set to go off in a couple of minutes. He was begging and pleading to be set free, and finally someone did. His characterization felt very similar to what's seen in the actual episode: pretty much a pathetic coward who likes to set bombs as ways out of his problems and ends up digging his own grave by doing so.

I never at all intended to become intrigued by him with that characterization, and yet it happened when I was fleshing out his character out of necessity in The Night of the Deadly Codename. And of course, that also led to Christopher rightfully taking his place as one of the darlings when I studied the episode more. I wonder if there's any chance at all that I could have seen that episode when I was very young. Mom insists that Dad used to watch WWW in reruns, so I wonder if there's any chance I saw it back then. That would be hilarious. And it would mean I did encounter Christopher years ago, just like all the other darlings. I want to say I have a vague memory of watching that episode in bits and pieces when I was a kid, but I'm probably just inventing something in my mind because I want so badly for there to be a time when I saw Christopher years ago. Still, wouldn't it be interesting? Snakes is one of my favorite characters to flesh out and develop, and if I actually saw him many years ago and just don't remember it now, that would be rather intriguing.

I also started thinking again about maybe making a Snakes plushie. I'd have to learn some basic embroidery so I could make the scar raised up, but that would be an interesting challenge. Now that the weather's cooled down, I feel like working on my other projects too. Maybe I can finish Barry's clothes at last and also make Mike's jacket!

I just love autumn so much. As always, I celebrate meteorological seasons and not calendar seasons, so for me Fall started on Thursday. It was a beautiful cloudy day too, perfect for the first day of Fall. When the sweltering heat of summer fades, my sewing creativity seems to wake up again. I am excited for what this autumn will bring and hope that it will be happy and enjoyable.

I think I'm almost done with the Turtles fic. I have the climax largely written, or all written, unless I add more to it. Then I just need the epilogue stuff. The story will definitely end where I decided it should. And I may or may not continue it in oneshots or other multi-chapters. We'll have to see. One thing I do know is that while I'm totally cool with watching the series in all its formulaic glory, I don't think I could make myself write stories that are all so formulaic like the series' nonsense, with Shredder's crazy plans failing, etc. I think I could only do a handful before it wouldn't feel believable to me any more. It's easy to watch nonsense; not so easy to create it yourself time and time again.

I kind of have a vague idea of the alien computer still being around after all and discovering that Baxter is finally human again. That would be kind of cute. And it would be interesting to see how Baxter would react to the computer while sane, and whether the computer would want to help him like before. That might be one of my oneshots. And if I do continue things, Baxter and Barney need to have a proper conversation again. Maybe Baxter can finally tell him that Krang was trying to murder him when the cross-fusion happened.

One problem I discovered while writing is trying to keep Barney from feeling too much like a Kylo Ren trope of wanting to go to the dark side/not caring if he has to kill a family member to do so. I fleshed out some of his scenes in chapters before I put them up and had him monologue and have doubts and wonder if he's just acting tough to impress Shredder when he appears as though it doesn't bother him, what he might have to do. I don't really want Barney to be sympathetic, exactly, because really, how much sympathy can you have for someone who willingly joins a megalomaniac while sane because he wants power and recognition? But when he's only in one episode and we just don't know much about him, I don't think it would be fair to paint him as irredeemably evil just to contrast him with Baxter being redeemable because of wanting to be honest at first and then having gone nuts. (Seriously, compare him in season 1 with the season 2 opener. He is sane in season 1 and just wants to invent something that would be helpful to the city's population. He really doesn't know what Shredder's up to. He thinks the guy just really hates rats in the city. He doesn't know Shredder is marketing the Mousers in order to murder someone, nor that Shredder is stamping Baxter's name on them so he'll take the blame. And Shredder is going to kill him just because he saw Shredder and could say that Shredder offered to market the Mousers and was using an old house as a hideout. By season 2, after he's been framed for attempted murder, blamed for the damage the Mousers caused, and thrown in the insane asylum for talking about the Turtles, Baxter is cackling madly about giant talking Turtles and is clearly insane. It is very sad, actually.)

So anyway, this story already inadvertently inverts pretty much all the angles of the other Baxter fix-it fic. I also hope to invert the Kylo Ren trope when it actually comes time for Barney to follow through on his vow to kill Baxter if he interferes. I really like how I've written the climax.

Then I drew Leonardo for the first time since my childhood, and this time he actually looks pretty good! I think I'll be able to draw those Turtles pictures for my "opening" clips that I wanted.

And I always meant to muse on this thought: Coming back to things I like that everyone hates, I actually liked when there was a girl who was part of The A-Team. She seemed to be a reporter if I recall correctly, so I kind of equated the situation as April O'Neil and the Turtles. Heh. The girl seemed to fit just fine into the A-Team's plans and it was nice to have someone around that I could more easily relate to.

Along those lines, I also tried comparing members of The A-Team to the Turtles, but that didn't go so well. Naturally I got B.A. and Raphael, but then I kind of stalled on drawing any other logical parallels. I guess Murdock could be equated with Michelangelo, since they're both the most out there members of their teams. But Hannibal and Leonardo and Face and Donatello don't seem to make very good parallels. And I keep wanting to equate Murdock with Donatello because of their mechanical know-how. So ... heh.

I was sure I never watched the Real Ghostbusters cartoon growing up, because 99% of the time I wasn't interested in people cartoons and preferred animal cartoons instead. But there was that exception with Peter Pan and the Pirates (and oh, Beetlejuice too; that's ... technically a people show), and oy, the more I watch the Real Ghostbusters now, the more the opening and ending both look familiar. It's possible on the one hand that I saw the opening on YouTube when I was just fooling around, but that wouldn't explain the ending. I know I must have seen the show coming and going; perhaps it came right before something I was trying to catch. The big question, whether I actually watched the show itself, I honestly can't answer. It ended the year I turned five and the memories are patchy at best. I'm sure enjoying it now, though. It's just perfect for me: friendship stuff and ghosties and creepy situations.... I don't suppose Mom would remember if I watched it if I asked her. Couldn't hurt to try, though. It would be kind of cool if I actually did watch it and liked it and that's why I was given the pinball game. But on the other hand, Dad sometimes just picked up stuff if it was a cartoon, whether I watched it or not. LOL. Like, I have some toy walkie-talkies from the short-lived Fish Police, which I definitely never watched. But since he's not into supernatural creepy stuff and usually doesn't like my interest in it, it's kind of surprising either way about him getting the Ghostbusters pinball game. Still, he sometimes indulged my love of Turtles stuff even though he didn't really like that. So hmm. A puzzle.

Egon was pretty much immediately my favorite watching it now and that hasn't changed. Not surprising, since he seems to be the most logically-minded of the group and I almost always go for that type in shows. My first (recent) episode was the Boogieman one and I really loved Winston in it too. He was also adorable in another episode, when he was excited about a blueberry fudge cake (yuuuum) and Slimer ate the whole flippin' thing. **headdesk.** Winston was such a good sport about it and it was very endearing. I like the whole group, though. Slimer is still cute, but it is exasperating that he keeps eating everything and not leaving any for anyone else, even when he promises to. Oy, in life he must have been like Sergei on WWW, always wanting to eat. But I love when he manages to do something to help.

I'm going to get to see the new Ghostbusters movie in a week. I went to see my movie-going friend this past day and she gave me a cool mini-poster for the film. At home, I was still tired and took a nap and I had a weirdo dream about watching the film because of looking at the poster. Naturally, in the dream the movie wasn't anywhere as exciting as it probably will actually be. Earlier, I was reading one of my Batman fics, the one where The Riddler comes back alive after they thought he was dead, and I had a dream about that too. It was one of those kind of "run/evade/don't be seen" dreams and he was trying not to let someone in particular know that he was alive. He had to go through a series of ten mazes without being spotted by them. Naturally, he was eventually seen and the chase was on.

On Tuesday I went out to see if I could find the Donatello plush locally for a good price. I couldn't find any at the Wal-Marts we visited, which wasn't surprising. But I finally found the Lyra Pony plush! I've been looking for her for a year and a half, so I didn't want to leave without her. I decided on the best one and brought her home with me. I also got Sweetie Drops. She appeared at our Wal-Mart recently, but I didn't have the money to get her and I'd kind of hoped to find a better one of her. Two were understuffed and a third had a slightly crinkled nose. And I wasn't sure I wanted to get her at all if I didn't know I could get Lyra too, since they're best friends. But once I got Lyra, I immediately wanted to get Sweetie Drops too. Wal-Mart still had one of her and oddly enough, it was the one I felt was the best of the three. I don't know why she wasn't snapped up but the other two were. But that was good for me!

I finally broke down and decided to do the Amazon Prime trial, since they at last got some more Donnies in and I really couldn't afford to add $29 cash to the $25 gift card to get free shipping right now. The two-day shipping certainly was lovely! I got some Turtles DVDs (two season 3 sets and the season 2 one) and Donnie and they showed up this past day. But Donnie is a bit understuffed compared to Leo, which is really frustrating since what I like about these plushies is that they're not understuffed, and gah, it looks like maybe part of his left arm is loose and I'll need to go over it with stitches to make sure it's secure. I already found a small hole near his wrist and had to sew that up. That sort of thing is why I hate buying plushies sight unseen, sigh. But overall he's great and it looks so good to see another splash of Turtle mask color. Now to get Mikey and complete the team.

Also, I went back over my Six Million Dollar Man entries and saw that the previous Dynamite comic arc left a whole slew of loose ends. That makes this new arc even more maddening, because I don't think it's in the same continuity. It doesn't sound like it addressed even one of those loose ends. WTH. They had a bunch of unresolved stuff there and the series really couldn't continue based on that arc without addressing most of it. They should have focused on those things for their second arc instead of starting something completely unrelated. That definitely makes me even less enthusiastic about trying this new arc, sigh.

I am totally in a hurt/comfort mood too, and have been for the past few days. But instead of wanting to write hurt/comfort, I seem to want to watch and read it, and about a random assortment of subjects. I wanted to see some Dying Informant segments (which I finally got around to now). I wanted some Turtles h/c and delighted in re-watching one of my favorite episodes of the 2003 series, Tales of Leo. I also delighted in more Leo h/c in one of the 1987 episodes I watched today. I wanted Riddler h/c and re-read some stuff in my fics. I watched most of my music videos and want to re-read some of my Princess Tutu stuff and get a helping of Autor h/c. I crave Napoleon h/c too, and that I might actually write. I'll have to see; I really don't think I'm much good at U.N.C.L.E. hurt/comfort. At any rate, it doesn't come easily for me when I try to write it, unless it's about Ecks and Wye.

Recurring locations are one of the weird but cool things I experience in dreams. Another is recurring characters/ideas/fan products.

Yes, fan products.

For the second time I dreamed about reading through a fanfic someone else wrote about Ginger, Lou, and Mike. I received an email from the person in the dream, thanking me for my interest in their fic and mentioning they liked my characterization of Ginger. Then I got out their fic, which I'd printed, and was flipping through it.

There were some scattered comic pages in it, including at the beginning, where Ginger was awakened in the middle of the night by some weird sound and was irritated by it. Lou and Mike also had a sister, around Lou's age or maybe a little older, named Donna. She lived with Lou and apparently Ginger did not live there too, but was visiting. He lived nearby, though.

The main plot of the fic concerned someone who was always being nasty to Mike and involved Lou and even Ginger being annoyed with said person and trying to help Mike not take things to heart. By the end of it, he was able to feel better about things.

It was the same basic fic as the one from the first dream, so the dreams were definitely connected. I don't recall for sure whether Ginger really didn't live there in the first dream, though. It seemed a bit like the fic I read in the second dream was a revised version of the original.

Weird dream, kind of weird but nice fic (aside from Ginger not living there), and I woke up thinking that it would be kind of nice if someone else wrote about/drew the characters too and we could share that fun. But on the other hand, sometimes it's nice being the only one, since I have a particular verse and vision for them and probably wouldn't like reading fics where some key things are different (like Ginger's residence). I have to admit that if someone either had a vision similar to mine and/or wanted to write a fic set in my verse, I would be totally thrilled.

Along those lines, it was pretty fun when I found other people who liked writing about Baby Face and his gang. I guess with The Monkees being a cult favorite show and not having many episodes, it allowed for oneshot character love more than some other series. Number of episodes doesn't necessarily mean that will happen, though; The Andy Griffith Show has 249 episodes and the fans are pretty fond of anyone who stops in for so much as one episode or even one scene in one episode.

Anyway, even though I'm the only one who writes about those Rockford characters (and am honestly one of only a handful of people who write about The Rockford Files at all), I do love that I can talk about those characters with Ladyamberjo, who watched the episode so she would understand what I was talking about. Of course, I enjoy talking about them with other people too, but it is particularly nice when the person fully knows what you're talking about.

And speaking of revising fics, I really should go through my multi-chapter Rockford fic and alter it so Ginger always says "Michael." That is the one thing I most love about the script version of the episode, because it feels so right. When I wrote that fic, I hadn't read the script and I knew it didn't sound right for Ginger to say "Mike," but for some idiotic reason it never occurred to me to have him say "Michael" instead. I also want to change where I intimated that Ginger and Lou were still crooked; being the first thing I wrote about them publicly, characterization is raw and a little different. After that fic, I determined they were definitely going completely straight (aside from Ginger's feeling that he needs to still have guns around for protection, even though as an ex-con he isn't supposed to have them). And I also definitely need to alter an actual screw-up with the episode, where I said that Donny Waugh had never been caught. He was, as mentioned by Mr. Wrongko in the episode's tag. So I need to change it that he was caught and served time and now is out, as opposed to still being on the lam.

I had previously thought I needed to alter that Dennis is still a sergeant in the fic instead of a lieutenant, but maybe I can leave that one alone. If we assume that each season is approximately a year, then perhaps I can say that my fic took place near the start of season 5, shortly before Dennis was made a lieutenant. Then that fits pretty well with my Hawaiian fic taking place shortly after a season 6 episode and taking place after that first fic. I had already kind of determined that Ginger and Lou probably only served a year or so in prison before their company approached the warden with the idea of letting them out early on the condition that they would be re-hired and build up the Los Angeles branch of the company, since they were advanced and skilled graphics designers with over twenty years experience in their field.

A couple of weeks ago in Wal-Mart I saw the most awesome playset: a Scooby-Doo haunted mansion! There were trapdoors and ghosties everywhere and a falling chandelier.... I don't have any place to put something like that, but I sure want it. That is epically awesome. It's one of the most creative playsets I've seen in a long time.

There's also a new line of Scooby-Doo figures. For some reason, there's two Scoobies in the line instead of there being a Fred. They'd better still make Fred! All the other original characters were there. Each one comes packaged with one of the supernatural creatures they unmasked on the show. And even though there's two figures and they're around 6 inches tall, they only cost around $7! I so want those, too. So do lots of others; there were three full pegs of those figures two weeks ago, and last week there were only two figures left.

So I had a very interesting and odd Once dream today. It was similar in nature to some LOTR dreams I had years ago, in which I and Mom and other people were acting out the character roles. And there was snow on the ground. I'm not sure why that's a feature of those dreams, but there you go.

I was playing Rumpel (and Regina, apparently, as there weren't enough people for each to take one character). It was around season 2, and the entire cast had been sent to some weird, snowy place with a huge castle. Rumpel was walking with Belle and they were talking about the problems in their relationship. They seemed to be at a rocky stage. One gave the other some kind of native little white flower before they separated. I was having a blast figuring out how to talk with a Scottish accent.

Belle was then walking with one of the girls, and I think I narrowed it down to Ruby. They were talking and seemed to be upset with Mary-Margaret about something, but the details of that conversation have faded. They were climbing up snowy hillsides that were like steps and heading for the castle. Everyone seemed to be going to a funeral, but I don't know who was dead. They walked along the outside of the castle, which weirdly seemed to have different entrances with numbers corresponding to season 2 episodes. Most were bizarre crooked stairs that were at unclimbable angles. They finally found a way up via the stairs marked for episode 2.

Regina was walking down the corridor, heading for the room with the funeral. For some reason, she ended up casting a spell on herself that made her appear as Rumpel to everyone else she passed in the corridor. It was not shape-shifting, like Cora could do, but it was expressly just a spell that warped how everyone else saw her. She got to the room and ... apparently laid down on a low table/slab in front of a row of people. Then she was ... either faking being unconscious or there was some other spell. Everyone thought it was Rumpel and was confused as to why they couldn't wake "him" up. Rumpel was supposed to appear in the doorway and be all "WTH is going on here," and I think he arrived and was trying and failing to get people's attention, and I woke up around then.

A very weird dream. But actually rather enjoyable while it was being had. I woke up missing the good times on Once before the writers decided that Rumpel wasn't allowed to continue his progress being a good guy. I should write some more in my vignette series again.

I wonder if another reason I'm worried about posting it on FF.net is that I'm afraid some people won't like that I'm unhappy with the direction the show took starting with 3B. But there's quite a lot of us who feel the same way, so that probably wouldn't really be much of a problem.

Recently I re-watched the season 3 Mannix episode with Don Knight, another British actor with lovely blond hair. He reminded me a little bit of Christopher, while at the same time definitely being his own person. He played the only survivor of a shipwreck, and he knew the truth about the wreck, that it had been hijacked and everyone else deliberately murdered by being thrown overboard to the sharks. He himself had been permanently mutilated; his left arm was gone and he had a limp. He was being sought after by the bad guys to kill him, but he refused to come forward and tell the police what he knew because they were threatening to kill a girl he loved. In the climax, he discovered that the girl was actually one of the bad guys. Heartbroken, in a moment of rage he started choking her, but Mannix rushed in and stopped him. When he calmed down, he insisted that the girl must have been coerced into being a part of things, because she was just too sweet to really be bad. The girl told him that she hadn't been coerced, that she wanted to be there because the Big Bad saw her as she really was instead of putting her on a pedestal. It was heartbreaking, gah. The guy didn't have anyone else in the world and he lost the one person he thought cared about him. Mom wondered if he might end up committing suicide, feeling like he had nothing left, but I hope not. Maybe I will write something about him and see what he's up to.

I remember liking that character and the actor before, but I didn't follow up on it. I wanted to this time, but I didn't get around to it until I discovered him in a Hawaii 5-O episode quite by accident over the weekend. That time the character was a bad guy, but he was in danger being kidnapped by the psycho Big Bad of the episode and I hoped the taskforce would save him in time. They did, and I decided to look up the actor. He had turned out an amazing performance and had broke down in hysteria because he was terrified of heights. So very different from the Mannix character. Like all good character actors, he really slips into whatever part he's got.

I found a list of credits and saw that I have one of his Virginian episodes, so I watched that this morning. He was a bad guy again, but he survived the episode. It was a pretty depressing episode, though, called The Mustangers. I don't think I want to get into it right now, but it seems like many season 7 Virginian episodes are depressing. I remember that while many season 6 episodes were high drama, they generally seemed to end well. I'm not sure what was up with the seeming change.

I also found a website run by Don Knight's son, which is awesome. I'm going to go back there and see if there's a way to contact the son. And I'll probably keep looking up his father's credits; I think one of his Charlie's Angels episodes is already on one of the discs I put on the queue.

Don Knight sounds like a sweet man in reality and I know I definitely loved his Mannix character. Apparently he also played a beloved character on Little House on the Prairie, so if I end up deciding I like him enough to make him one of my darlings, finally there will actually be one of them who has appeared on that show. Heh. I've always wondered why none of them ever guest-starred on that. Or at least if any have, IMDB doesn't have a record of it (which is possible).

His character on that has a very famous and tragic death. He works with dynamite, and he's watching some contest that includes his friends Charles and another guy. When they win, he's so excited for them that he doesn't remember he has a lit dynamite fuse that he was dealing with.

They invited Don Knight back for another episode as a different character, but when he got there they paid him and then fired him. They felt that his character's death had been so poignant that the audience would not accept him as another character.

...

Is it just me or was that a really lame and jerky thing to do? Once they hired him for the episode, they should have followed through with it. And isn't it just a little bit arrogant to think that their show's character death is so powerful that he could never return as someone else? I've watched lots of shows with powerful oneshot character deaths, and very often the actor will be allowed to return later as another character. I never see any problem with that.

Also, speaking of his character's death, it just sounds so pointless and needless that to me it almost seems like they killed off the character for the sheer shock and tragedy factor. Unless the episode was based on something Laura Ingalls Wilder really wrote about as having happened, it seems to me it should not have been done that way. I don't like character deaths that are pointless and needless and exist just so they can point to their show and say, "Look how dark and gritty we made it! It's some kind of artistic achievement!"

And as a closing note, eerily enough, Don Knight follows the pattern of being someone I saw in something many years ago. Apparently he was in The Apple Dumpling Gang. I actually wasn't crazy about that movie; I'd gone in looking for a hysterical comedy and it honestly didn't strike me as being very funny in most parts. The big funny scene seemed to be where Don Knotts' character was being accidentally choked by a rope up the side of a building, which ... really isn't very funny. But maybe if I go back to it and watch it not looking for anything specific, I'd like it.

I know it's stupid, but it still kind of troubles me that I can't think of anything I saw Christopher Cary in many years ago. He's the one darling that doesn't fit the pattern. I did see him on Rockford before I was interested in him, and I did like him, so I figure I've got to accept that as the time I saw him years ago. But it wasn't in the long-ago past, like all the others. I keep thinking there must be something I saw him in years ago and that someday I'll pinpoint what it was.

The last time I was asleep, I spent most of it dreaming about Roger Moore's James Bond. Which ... sounds highly embarrassing out of context, since it sounds like I'm swooning over the character.

The truth is just that I've had the character on the brain for the last couple of days. We had a family thing up at the gorgeous place of one of my paternal aunt's and then I got to go to the big F.Y.E. afterwards. They were clearancing certain stuff and I'm afraid I spent over an hour going through everything.

But first things first. My aunt's house. Gah, I loved it! Cute entryway room, giant living room and dining room, a kitchen with counter space, a hallway with a bathroom for each bedroom and an awesome alcove in the hall for DVDs and collector's dolls to be displayed.... My aunt apparently collects them; they're also all over her room, along with other fascinating old things like old vinyl records. (I know vinyl is popular again, but I'm pretty sure the records I saw were from when it was popular before.) I was in love with the house and the way she styled it. I felt a little like I was in an antique shop. I didn't go in the basement, but I imagine it was pretty amazing too.

Then the big F.Y.E. It's always so nice to go there. I'm there maybe once or twice a year, if I'm lucky; usually I can only go to the small F.Y.E. in a mall closer to home. There's always so many fascinating pop culture collectibles. I'll admit my main purpose in going was on the off-chance that maybe I could find a figure based on Roger Moore's James Bond or some other such memorabilia. No luck there, but I did see all of the movies, naturally. I got scared away from the first one due to the pictures on the case and wasn't sure what to make of any of the others. I decided to take 1bigbeatlesfan up on her offer of the Moonraker DVD. Reading the summaries again, as I previously did some time ago, it sounded like it might be the one I'd be the most comfortable with and a good one to start with. Then my brother has the last three of Roger's James Bond movies among the video collection he let us have, but the problem with that is that our only working VCR is in the living room, where there's a high chance of being interrupted while watching....

I also wanted to see if I could find either The King's Thief or Gold of the Seven Saints. No luck there, although I was told they actually do carry the latter and were just out. It'd probably be pretty expensive there anyway, though. And then I sort of hoped maybe a few Ivanhoe episodes had been released to DVD. No apparent luck there, either. I wish Columbia would release that. And Circus Boy, if they've never put that on DVD. I'm still missing a few episodes from Antenna TV's run, and I'm not sure which ones.

Regarding Gold of the Seven Saints, it has one of those rather irritating plots where they're trying to keep the gold but of course lose it in the end. But on the upside, there's tons of friendship squee and hurt/comfort, according to the summary. Roger's character is hurt and some of the plot is taken up with getting him to a doctor. Then later, the bad guys kidnap and torture him and his friend has to save him. Gah! And it sounds like they're always loyal to each other and don't betray each other for the gold, which is a breath of fresh air in movies like that.

(Then I heard Roger sing again, on The Persuaders!, and it was pretty awesome. Squeeee.)

I was also thinking about an amusing James Bond-related moment, although I think this was based on Daniel Craig's Bond rather than Roger's. There's this silly, nutty sketch comedy show called Studio C. Mom doesn't like it and I haven't seen enough to judge, but one time the TV was on to the channel and we came home from getting groceries and I was taking care of them while watching the show and there was this hilarious James Bond parody where he comes to get the new gadgets for his case. I don't even remember now what most of them were, except I remember the girl tried to give him this bizarre gun that would only fire if he wasn't stressed. And he was in disbelief and exclaiming, "My life is filled with stress! People are shooting at me every day!" ROTFLOL. I wonder if I could find that on YouTube....

EDIT: Found it! ROTFLOL.



And switching gears to talk about a character played by my other favorite British-born actor.... I finally got unstuck on the Maverick story where Bret tells of how he and Snakes met. I finished that, wrote the one where he meets Snakes in a saloon, and then started my fic idea of Beau meeting Jack Vandergelt. Snakes features into that one too. It will be another multi-chapter and I look forward to seeing how it will come out. I'm thrilled to have finally been able to pick up my Maverick stories again! I also want to write the one where the Mavericks react to Snakes' death, gah. That is going to be a bittersweet and sad one. And then I naturally won't be able to refrain from writing the story where Snakes comes back through the portal after his revival to find Beau and tell him he's okay. I'm just wondering how to handle that one without getting into the sci-fi elements of being brought back from the dead by a mad scientist, since I'm not sure the Maverick fans would react too well to that strangeness. Maybe Snakes can just say he's alive and let Beau see that he's alive and not get into the details. We'll have to see.

So I had a dream where one part of it involved Ecks and Wye trying to trip up some bad guys. Ecks pretended to be stabbed (he was wearing heavy protection under his coat or something and got fixed up with blood so it would look authentic) and Wye pretended to flip out on the one "responsible." I believe the idea was that when the bad guys were occupied with Wye, Ecks would spring into action and join the battle and catch the bad guys off-guard. But something went wrong and Wye ended up hurt and missing. Ecks was panicking and trying to figure out how to find him. I don't think the dream ever did reach a solution. It seems like most dreams don't. Man, I have such weird ones. And when they're like that, I wanna write fics of them.

And ... help, I think I might be getting interested/intrigued again by the Thomas franchise.... When I was at Toys R Us earlier this month, I saw an entire blue aisle devoted to the franchise, but I didn't pause to examine it; I never have. I grew up on Shining Time Station and loved it, but didn't have any exposure to the franchise beyond that. I felt like it just wouldn't feel right to me to not have Shining Time Station characters around. However, I was curious as to what the franchise was like beyond that and how it was still going strong, so the other day I finally took time to look it up and read about it. I'm curious enough now that I'd like to see what some of the new episodes are like. I'm wondering about the female engine they've introduced; I hope she's awesome!

I always like to watch the Shining Time Station Christmas special each year, even moreso now that I know Lloyd Bridges plays the Santa character. I did that the other day, lapped it up, kind of want to watch it again, and maybe look at some other old episodes. I remember one time as a kid, I got on a kick where I watched the Christmas special every night for a while. That's one thing I still have my VHS copy of, recorded on TV the last year I remember them rebroadcasting the special (1994). I have happy memories of watching it with Mom while recording it and how that was one of the last times I was small enough to fit in the big chair with her.

I remember when they came out with that Thomas movie in 2000. I was curious, and somewhat surprised, but didn't make any effort to look up more information on it. I figured it was strictly train-world-only, and I liked both worlds. Now I've learned the movie brought in Shining Time Station elements, particularly Stacy and Mr. Conductor. Tasha and Billy Twofeathers, too (albeit played by different people, as is Mr. Conductor again). I must see that movie now. The train-world adventures sound pretty intense, too. The movie is generally disliked, and maybe I wouldn't like it either, but I'd like to give it a chance.

Also, I don't know whether to laugh or be very, very disturbed by the thought of Susan Roman voicing James. Susan was one of the original Sailor Moon dub voice actresses. I want to say she was Jupiter, but she might have been Mars. Either way, she was really good, one of the best in that cast, but I'm not sure what to think of her playing the male engine who was, as I remember him, rather conceited/boastful and kind of a jerk sometimes. It's a source of aggravation among fans that she played him; they felt she made him sound too young and feminine. I'll withhold judgment until I hear it for myself.

And I knew nothing of the details of this Ant-Man thing until I was reading that part of the climax is fought on a toy Thomas. Um, LOL. Also, apparently the toy Thomas grows huge at one point. **snarks.** But shrinking to the size of an ant, whether that's the character's superpower in general or whether it was just something weird done solely for the climatic battle ... I think I'll pass, thanks.

This has been a long week of pain, merchandising dilemmas, and mice.

For almost two years, as I've recorded here off and on, I've been trying to find a Belle doll with removable clothing. I don't know why it's so hard to find her that way when some of the other Disney girls are fairly accessible with more than partially molded clothing. I usually only see Belle with removable clothes in expensive sets. There was one with another girl for $25, and that wasn't too bad for two, so I considered that, but then Wal-Mart stopped selling it before too long. Sigh.

A couple weeks ago, when they got in their new Fall stuff, I actually saw a Belle with removable clothes that was an acceptable price! She's part of a new line, I guess. I struggled with wanting to buy her right then, but my plan was to buy her on my shopping spree on my birthday next month, so I didn't. But then I had a random Once dream on Tuesday and woke up worrying that maybe they'd sell out of her by next month and I wouldn't be able to find her, etc. And I decided to get her that day when we needed to go get some stuff for mouse battle.

Crystal suggested maybe I could refrain from de-boxing her until my birthday, since my original intention had been to get her as a birthday present to myself. I decided maybe I would try that. Then I got her home and kind of wanted to de-box, but I ended up in so much pain almost immediately that I decided not to do anything until that was over. I make a big deal out of de-boxing and love to do it when I can really enjoy it.

So all this week I've gone back and forth on should I or shouldn't I. There's always other things to get on the shopping spree; typically I like to get several things. I don't know how much money I'll be able to gather by then, though, since finding stuff I can write has been slow and I'm still paying off some money I owe my church. And I don't know whether I'll be able to do the shopping spree right on my birthday, since it falls on a Saturday this year and that generally isn't a good day for us to go out. So I thought it would be nice to have Belle here to enjoy de-boxing then, especially if I couldn't get out right on that day.

(I'm also debating whether to do the shopping spree before or after my birthday. Usually if we can't make it on the actual day we do it after, but I don't know if I feel like waiting the whole weekend to do it Monday or Tuesday, so we might do it Friday. Still thinking about that. There's also the high probability that I might be cramping on both Friday and Saturday. Ugh.)

I lean more towards trying to hold out and save her for my birthday, but I don't know if that will work in the long run. Today, when I heard that another mouse was loose in the basement stealing bait, in addition to Mom and Dad hearing weird noises in the living room and not being sure whether it was the mouse in Dad's room with the sound carrying through the wall or whether it was a new living room mouse, my willpower just about broke.

It was such a beautiful day when I got Belle on Tuesday evening; it was September 1st, and since I celebrate meteorological seasons, that was my first day of Fall. I saw leaves all over the ground at the cemetery. It was beautiful. And even though nothing has really changed regarding our problems, it felt so liberating to finally have summer behind us. I want to keep hoping that Fall will be better, even though the logical part of me strongly doubts it.

I did finally solve my Amazon problem; I got Octavia, Vega$, and both season 3 Perry sets, as the prices were way down. I only had to pay $4 in cash after the gift cards paid the rest. The package came yesterday and it was wonderful. It was a little like a mini-birthday, getting all of that. It was a mini-respite from all the horrible things happening in our house right now.

Christopher does have some more screentime in his Vega$ episode than in what I saw on YouTube! I was absolutely thrilled! I must take pictures from that soon; he just looked gorgeous. I swear, he grew more and more handsome the older he got. And his hair! Ohmygosh, that beautiful, thick, fluffy, curling at the ends hair....

I really like that show in general, too; the main character seems to have very high morals and it's just very nice and refreshing to watch. I'm anxious to see the other episodes on the set. I introduced Mom to the show via Joseph's episode last night and she liked it too. And Greg Morris is the police lieutenant in it! I love the friendship between his character and the main character.

And it was so exciting to finally have Octavia! The doll Octavia is with my DJ doll, of course; I love the fanon concept that they are friends in an Odd Couple way, and that's become canon recently. The Pony Octavia is with Sunset Shimmer and some other Pony girls. I need to get the Pony DJ now to go with her. I also have Funrise plushies of them both. Build-a-Bear is making a DJ plushie that will come out this month, and I might buy her, but I hope they'd make Octavia too.

(Ugh, I was looking so forward to Build-a-Bear's Ditzy/Derpy/Bubblecup/Muffins plushie, and now they just make her an online exclusive and randomly up her price by $5 more, for no apparent reason. I am so bummed. I might try to get her anyway, because I really wanted that one. DJ will be in stores, so I'll be able to see her in person before buying. I'm not as sure I'll get her, since I have Funrises of both her and Octavia and I don't know if Build-a-Bear will make Octavia, but DJ has one of my most favorite color schemes ever, white and blue, so I might get her regardless. And I love that Build-a-Bear made a unique, original cape just for her, even though I probably won't buy that.)

I'm thrilled to have season 3 of Perry now, too. There's so many of those I haven't seen uncut before, and the ones I have seen uncut I wanted to own. There's lots of Sergeant Brice in season 3; I remember several episodes where Lieutenant Tragg is teaching him things about investigating. I'm anxious to see those again. Sergeant Brice is adorable!

I finally started writing the necklace Perry story, too. It's going to have the Decadent Dean characters in it and the masquerade ball and Tobin Wade laying low but trying to do what he can to help. I do not excuse the character's action in the episode at all; I think he was probably the biggest slimeball in the series. Or one of the top five, at least. But I have always been curious as to whether he might regret what he did to his friends, since it was heavily implied that he was once a genuine friend. Hence how that LJ blurb happened years ago and why my story is going to feature him now. I hope no one will think I'm trying to excuse him when all I'm trying to do is explore a possibility. And when the story will feature themes of repentance and restitution. I don't know that I will have him and Aaron Stuart being able to fully mend things, though. The LJ blurb is more that way because it was self-indulgent, as many LJ-only things I write are, but I am totally skeptical that they could ever have a friendship again after what Tobin did. I guess I'll see how I feel after I've written the story out. While I usually only have a overarching outline for a story in my mind, I generally do try to plan each chapter in detail as I come to it. I think I know what will be in chapter 3 now, so maybe I'll start writing it soon.

Also, today I had another of those "wandering around a place trying to avoid being found, but in a low-key, no danger way" dreams. Those kind seem to often take place at the church, for some reason. This one did, too. I was trying to avoid being found by some dream "friends" whom I didn't really think of as friends. I wandered through empty classrooms, paused to watch a performance on the stage and try to sneak a few chips from the snack table, and then randomly wandered down to the basement and into a cold room? I was almost caught in the cold room and it turned into a sort of hide-and-seek. I think dreams like that are manifestations of my repressed loves of exploring houses and buildings and playfully hiding from people. That was followed up by another Once dream. I barely think about the show in reality these days, but it keeps entering my dreams. I wonder if I'm going to keep dreaming about it with increasing frequency as long as I'm trying to resist de-boxing Belle before my birthday....

Speaking of Once, though, I also noticed a new line of Disney Prince dolls. I'm kind of excited hoping Prince Adam will be in the line and I can get him and maybe figure out how to touch him up a bit to look like Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin.

Somehow I don't think I'll have the fic done for Richard's birthday tomorrow. I'm throwing in a lot of deliberate noir cliches and the plot doesn't seem close to being done yet. Now I'm even considering the cliche of the vengeful hero and have Sergeant Brice get hurt and Steve make the case personal. Then again, I might not do that, since the story has a bit of a lighter nature. But I don't know how long the story will be overall and if I want to break it into several parts for posting, so more than likely, none of it will go up tomorrow, but we'll see.

And earlier I had some trippy dreams. One could be plunnie-inducing. It involved a ballet class that I was apparently taking (nooot happening in real-life, even though I enjoy ballet; the dancers have to keep to a much-too-strict regimen for me). Ginger and Lou were also attending (which would also never happen, although curiously enough, Christopher Cary did attend dance classes with his sisters when they were kids). They had gone missing and the ballet teacher was up in arms.

Apparently he held the classes in his house, a huge four-story mansion. Ginger and Lou were somewhere on a higher floor, having gotten into trouble. Suddenly Ginger fell down some of the stairs, maybe a flight or so, and crashed at the bottom. I don't think he was badly hurt, but he was knocked out, and then Columbo randomly wandered in to examine him.

I could definitely do something with that plot, although Ginger and Lou most certainly would not be taking dance classes. **headdesk.** Maybe the little girl Amanda would be and they'd be investigating weird things happening in the house. And I don't know if I'd have Columbo in there, as I'm not sure I can write for him very well. I've only tried once, and I couldn't ever find a place in the ficlet to insert his classic "One more thing" line.