So I did not find the Sunset Shimmer plush, as I was hoping to. The waiting gap for the Applejack and Octavia plushies two years ago was March to the end of July, and that's been about the same timeframe here; I think it was March when I first knew the plushie had been released somewhere in the nation. So I hoped for another end of July find here. Although it was later in the week when I found them; possibly I'll see Sunset later on. Or maybe she'll be like the Princess plushies and Wal-Mart won't even get her at all. Ugggh. Right now I know that there's only a very few stores across the nation that have her in stock, so as long as she isn't very plentiful anywhere, there's still some hope.

However, the dolls connected to the movie in a couple of months are starting to come in! I saw the new deluxe Applejack and Fluttershy, and oh my goodness. I must have them both, but especially Applejack. She looks so gorgeously autumny! And since autumn is my favorite season, I think just having her around would make me happy thinking of autumn all year. It was actually very difficult not to immediately buy her then, at the price Wal-Mart is charging. It's $5 less than someone else thought she was going to cost, much to my relief, but it's still a little pricey. I would certainly prefer a sale price, but I'd be willing to buy her at full-price.

I also saw some of the new Apple family playsets, and while I'm not sure why they're being spotlighted, I really liked the house playset and that is honestly tempting to get sometime. I wish I could have seen what the interior looks like, though. I'll have to see if anyone on the forum has one and took pictures.

I should be getting a gift card for Amazon in the next week or so, and when I do, I'll probably give in and get Octavia with it. I didn't want to buy any more dolls through Amazon, but I don't feel like paying an arm and a leg for shipping to have someone else get her for me, either. I'll just have to hope that Amazon will do a better job than they did with Rarity.

I am so excited for this upcoming movie! It's torture thinking of waiting two more months for it. I wonder when Hasbro is going to start releasing the pre-movie shorts. It seems like they should be getting going on that by now. They said there were going to be some.

I also saw the next Batman and Sailor Moon sets. I still need to finish getting season 1 of Sailor Moon. Maybe I'll do that through Amazon too, since Wal-Mart doesn't have that set right now and it would be nicer not paying tax on it anyway. It adds over $2 to the price.

Then at the grocery store I saw a magazine with some information on Gotham. I had a curious peek. I wasn't too happy with the information on season 2, but it wasn't anything I wasn't expecting, after the way season 1 turned out. ( Mild spoilers )

So I finally watched the Gotham episode. I decided it wasn't a good idea to watch it shortly before I go to bed, since sometimes I get really hyped up and can't sleep, so I just finished watching it now.

I'm glad I saw it. It was back to being the way it was when I loved it, so maybe they won't get really gross like that again. I'll stay on guard, though, at least since Fish is still in that awful place.

( Spoilers )

Overall, I'm very happy with the show again and next week's episode looks really good.

Finally got some sleep. It waited until around 3 AM to hit me like a ton of bricks. So I was able to enjoy The Lawyers and sooo much adorable, precious Joseph!

Today I recorded a Joseph movie (Meteor 1979, which I know has bad reviews, but it looks like a nice movie from my initial skim-through and it seems that Joseph survives, so that's all I care about) and am going to record a Simon one next hour. It's Tony Rome, which I didn't like four years ago or so, but I did like Simon in it and he has a big part, so it seems like a good idea to record the movie when it's on (and uncut, wheee).

And I am so totally hyped up from seeing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie trailer! It just came out today and is up on YouTube. Henry Cavill seems to be doing an excellent job capturing Robert Vaughn's speech pattern. He was definitely making me laugh, just like Robert always does. And the fellow playing Illya, Armie Hammer, seems to be doing a good job at pulling off that accent. I'm still really looking forward to this and am hopeful it's going to be good (even though it is billed as a comedy).

I'm very glad to still be excited for the movie, especially since I'm not as enthused with Gotham lately. I half-wondered if my distress over this week's episode resulted in the Insomnia Day of Doom, but I wasn't even consciously thinking about the episode and I did sleep for those 40 minutes instead of just lying awake thinking, which is what usually happens if something I've watched is keeping me awake.

I really loved the show before the hiatus. And I still love some things about it and will probably keep watching for a little while, anyway. But I haven't been as impressed ever since it came off of hiatus, and the last couple of episodes have been a lot more gory and graphic and gross than the show had been up to that point. I said before that I'd be okay with kids watching the show. But I wouldn't want kids to see the last couple of episodes, oh gosh.

I really don't like how the show seems to be following the comic book trend where every villain has to be downright disgusting. The recent comic book Riddler is homicidal, which I don't like one bit. The 1960's Riddler was sadistic, partially for laughs, but this is a whole other ballgame. 1960's Robin said that the Riddler wouldn't just murder people for the heck of it, and it seems like the recent comic book Riddler murders all over the place. He even apparently killed his own daughter. No, just no.

Thankfully, Gotham's Edward Nygma isn't anywhere like that yet, but I was repulsed by the way he decided to try to get the medical examiner out. ( Spoilers )

So for the last couple of weeks or so, I've been working on a picture of Scarecrow and Riddler fighting. I used the concept art of The Batman version of Scarecrow, since that's the verse the story takes place in. Man, that version of Scarecrow looks freaky. I think the picture is coming out pretty cool. I just finished the inking last night. I'll scan the inked version and then color it and scan that version.

I still haven't tried to get back on dA and post the inked version of the Riddler standing under the lamppost. Now I have the colorized version of that, too, only I lost my flesh-colored pencil (well, the smidgen of it I had left, anyway) and since the Riddler's skin is so pale in this verse, I currently haven't colored it in at all. Not sure whether I'll keep it like that or not, but I'm really not sure what to do without that pencil. The other possible colors I could use are too dark.

Also, the continuing nonsense on Once is making me retreat further into my little post-3A world and insist on imagining that it's what happened instead of 3B and 4A. I also started considering more seriously the idea of buying seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. Maybe season 3, even, when the price drops, to have the first half of the season. (One of the only times I ever wished for a season's release DVDs to be split up. I also wish that would happen with Gotham, so I could rewatch the first half of season 1 in the privacy of my room and not have to wait until fall for the whole season set.) I still don't know that I really will buy any of them, but more and more I'm missing how good the show used to be and I want to relive those times again.

I miss the good times so much that I actually sat down and starting drawing a picture of Mr. Gold from memory. I didn't quite get the hair right and I'll have to alter that, but I went for that gentle, sort of awed expression he gets around Belle and I really love how that came out. Then I tried putting Belle in the picture too. She came out awful at first and I had to try again. That time she came out pretty nice. I'm looking forward to touching up the sketch and scanning it in. Don't know if I'll color it; I tend to not color the stuff I draw of realistic people, because I want each soft strand of hair to be more visible than it would be colored.

Pondering on whether to buy anything at the store tonight. I need to start getting Christmas presents for people, and then I'm still considering getting volume 1 of Batman: The Animated Series. I could ask for it for Christmas, but there's so many Batman things at Wal-Mart that I wouldn't be surprised if Dad might get confused and get the wrong thing. Then I'm also considering season 1 of Once, if they still have any in stock. There's the DJ Pon-3 doll I wanted, and if the $9.98 sale is still going on, it's the perfect time to get her. There's a cool Batman charm necklace. I've even thought of getting their Hello Kitty plush. It's about the same size as Build-a-Bear's, but eight dollars cheaper and already dressed. I'm not really into Hello Kitty a whole lot, but I think she's cute and I kind of casually would like a plush.

Naturally, I would only pick one of those things, if I get anything.

Double-posting, and another Batman post, but my and a close friend's frustrations with Once Upon a Time this arc have caused me to muse on something interesting and curious.

Once Upon a Time, last I checked, is generally billed as a family-friendly show. It carries no viewer discretion warnings. Yet honestly, some of the goings-on are rather alarming and graphic and not something I would want young kids to see, like what the Queen of Hearts does to the Mad Hatter or this latest trend of people being frozen and then exploded. Come on, that's horrifying! Just because it's fantasy shouldn't make it alright to show it without at least giving some kind of viewer warning.

Gotham, on the other hand, carries a viewer discretion warning for violence. But ... even though it's the more realistic show, and airs on FOX, which is notorious for being graphic, it seems to usually go out of its way to not be upsetting. The second episode was a bit of an exception with the scratching scene, and the opening scene of the balloon episode was cringe-worthy, but other than that, even when there's something going on that honestly could be very graphic, they either keep it off-screen altogether or else show it far enough away that you really can't see in detail what's going on.

Odd, isn't it?

I'd actually be more willing to let young kids see Gotham than Once Upon a Time. Of course, there's some stuff in Gotham I wouldn't want them to see, either, like some of Fish Mooney's scenes, and Penguin's flip-out scenes, and maybe the scene with Bruce's parents being killed because it's so heartbreaking, but overall I think Gotham is much less offensive than some of the stuff happening on Once. I can imagine myself watching Gotham as a kid, maybe because I liked the old Flash show when I was four. But I don't know that I would have dug Once. At least, not the way it is now. I might have liked season 1 ... and then got traumatized by the Mad Hatter episode.

And of course, this is just violence-wise. Character-wise, there's a whole other series of Once-related complaints, some of which I've gotten into before.

I have such absolutely beyond bizarre dreams. Sometimes they're rather frightening.

So since I finally got to see Rainbow Rocks very early this morning (and it deserves a post all to itself, but I must say I adore Sunset Shimmer much, much more than I even did before and she is such a deep character, unlike what both the series and the movies have done with Trixie), some of that crept into my dream. It started where I was at one of Human Pinkie Pie's sleepovers, although I'm not sure I stayed for the actual sleep part. But I was impressed by the size of the house and the number of bedrooms (Pinkie in the dream was apparently rich).

When I was leaving, Pinkie gave me this backpack with 101 Dalmatians on it. There was also a matching tote bag. I thought that was awesome and I thanked her and started out for home. I was walking, for some reason. Perhaps because I love to walk. But that set the stage for one of my "I'm lost walking and can't find my way back" dreams.

First, for some reason I needed to drop by a school. Cruella de Vil was getting out of a car and getting stuck in some red mud. I decided I didn't want to be seen by her and I ducked through the school and out another door.

Then I decided the perfect thing to do was to get a pizza. I knew there was a pizza place near the cemetery, a little diner-type place called Trixie's. (More Pony influence there, probably.) In the dream, the cemetery is farther away than in real-life, but not so far that I didn't think it conceivable to walk there and to the diner.

I think the diner was inspired by the location of a 99-cent shop that's over in the old neighborhood. It's the same basic location from our house that the diner was intended to be in the dreams. (Yes, it's a recurring locale.) Also, there are mountains very close, which is the case in the dreams too.

So I set out. And somehow I got on a block one over from the cemetery and got lost, ending up in a business park place that had a creek or something running through it and lakes for wading. And of course, the water from sprinkler systems came on and was getting me wet and I had to run for the building.

Then came some Gotham influence, as the building was owned by a local mobster and I knew it. Yet somehow he managed to convince me to come to work for him watching some scientist or something. I was wondering if I could back out if I ended up not liking the hours. I was also supposed to wear outrageous high heels and I was practicing in them and falling all over. Then I asked for directions back to downtown because I still wanted my pizza. One of his henchmen gave me directions.

For some reason, at one point I ended up in an apartment where someone else working for the mobster lived with her kid. I warned her about the guy and said they should stop working for him. I then left.

I ended up in a shopping center where the diner had moved to, but it had become a tiny little stand called Nick's and I was skeptical about getting anything there and prices were bad. And I was worried about getting back home because it was going to be dark soon.

So I climbed back over the brick wall surrounding the shopping center and went back on my way. I got lost again and ended up back in the business park again. I went back in the building and found that one of the legitimate fronts was an opera company or symphony company or something. The lady and her kid were there and the lady was going to perform. I remembered I had somehow forgotten my boots and asked the kid if I'd left them at the apartment. She thought I had and said they could bring them by later, in an hour, maybe. And I figured I'd have to go back to walking home anyway because it really was going to be dark soon.

I woke up around then and was very disturbed by the thought of actually going to work for a mobster.

Weird, weird dreams. Good grief.