Ramblings and Musings of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

So several months ago Kaze told me about an upcoming magical girl/superhero show called Miraculous Ladybug. Naturally she thought of me, since ladybugs are my mascots, and she thought I'd be interested.

I definitely was, and I've been waiting for it to come out. I was hoping it would stream on CrunchyRoll. But things have been so hectic around here (and I was so occupied re-watching Carmen) that I didn't get around to checking on the show's status until yesterday. CrunchyRoll doesn't have it, I don't think, and the U.S. dub doesn't begin for about a week and a half, so I'm not late for that, yay. Yesterday, when I thought to look, I found a few fan-subbed episodes on YouTube. If I'd been more on the ball, I could have watched each episode as it came, sigh. We have 13 now, I believe. There will be 26 for the first season and I hope they'll get renewed for more.

I've watched all the ones I can, which is about six. A seventh has the subs falling off the video, so I decided I'd better just wait for the English dub of that one. I plan to watch all the episodes in English as they come out (provided I can get Nickelodeon's website to cooperate; I assume they'll show each new episode there). I just hope the dub is good.

The show is so cute! There's a definite innocence and sweetness about it. While it uses many magical girl cliches, it also feels fresh and new.

Things I especially like:

- The characters all seem to dress very modestly. It's so nice not to see all the girls running around in midriff shirts like on Winx Club! They act more like kids instead of trying to grow up too soon and wearing revealing clothing.

- Instead of destroying the evil spirits possessing the characters and making them act out, Ladybug catches them and purifies them. They're little butterflies corrupted by the Big Bad, which then in turn corrupt the chosen victim of the day. It's really nice to see the butterflies caught and helped instead of being destroyed for possessing the people.

- Ladybug in her civilian identity has a really sweet friendship with another girl. Yay, friendship squee! And her friend is awesome; I totally love her.

- It rather amuses me that the main boy, who turns into Black Cat, oddly resembles Schrodinger from Hellsing in his wild blond hairstyle and cat ears headband. I don't really care much for the character now that Hellsing is out in full, but I am still amused.

(Truthfully, I never really liked Schrodinger that much.... I tried to like him because of being told that in some ways he was like an OC of mine, but the parallels were pretty slim overall. Then when more of the series came out and I didn't like how he was turning out, I felt too awkward to say I didn't really like him anymore after all. I think I was worried that my friend wouldn't like my reason, especially since she did like what they were doing with the character. Maybe she wouldn't have liked my reason for not liking him or maybe on the other hand I was worrying unnecessarily, but eh. I can definitely relate to that Steven Universe episode where he feels too shy/worried/awkward to tell Connie that he really likes how a book series turned out when Connie didn't like it and was ranting about it.)

- As much as I love Japanese culture, I kind of find it exciting to get a Western culture magical girl show, since I can understand and relate to that better. This one is set in Paris. The only other Western culture magical girl shows I can think of are Winx Club (which takes place on other planets for the most part, so it doesn't really feel like it counts) and W.I.T.C.H. (which I've never tried). Of course, Princess Tutu takes place in Germany, despite being made in Japan. And if we think about the superhero genre, then there's Wonder Woman and others. Amusing how I've never really thought of them as magical girls before, but technically, Wonder Woman was probably the beginning of the entire genre.

The Big Bad seems rather cartoonish, but since this is a magical girl show, I do sort of wonder if he'll get some depth later on.

I feel a little bad to be so enthusiastic about the series, though, as for months I've been trying to watch an anime that another friend recommended and over the past few months, I've advanced as far in it as I did in this show in less than 24 hours. I'm not quite sure what that says about the anime and/or me. But she did say the plot picks up right around where I am, so maybe I'll get more interested in it too.

I wonder if the problem is partially that while the anime is at a fillery spot, it's short and is supposed to have an intense overarching plot and I'm anxious to get going with unraveling the mysteries of that and not have the filler. But Miraculous Ladybug probably just is self-contained with each episode, so I don't expect anything more than that from it. They don't even have an "origin" episode as the first one, so things so far don't need to be watched in order. As much as I love arcs, I do kind of like being able to jump in anywhere with this show.

(I should note that I still love Sailor Moon filler episodes, though. I wonder if it's that I'm more invested in those characters than I am in this other anime, even though I like them.... With Sailor Moon, I guess I feel like it's similar with Miraculous Ladybug in that I expect filler from it. Plus there's a ton of episodes and somehow that makes filler seem more bearable than if it's a short anime, if that makes any sense.)

Or maybe it's just that Miraculous Ladybug is more the type of show I need right now: something light and cute without a darker plot looming somewhere, and something I can relate to better since it's the present-day. I really love this cute show and I'm so glad Kaze found out about it. I don't know if I would have learned about it otherwise.

I'm not sure whether to keep this icon or not. It's adorable and squeeable and so cute, but it stands out so colorfully from every other icon I'm using, even the other color ones. (There, in fact, I'm showing my Twilight side of liking things to be in order.) Still, I've wanted a Pony icon for a long time, and even though sometimes I feel like I'm a doormat like Fluttershy, in the end I really think I'm more like Twilight Sparkle (with some Applejack mixed in; once I got both of them on a Pony personality test). And regardless of which one I'm most like, I simply love Twilight the very most.

I finished the U.N.C.L.E. fic and printed it. As usually happens, it turned out a little different from my initial idea. I had planned to have a silly subplot where Napoleon and Illya start spying on Ecks and Wye to try to figure out how they get along under the same roof when Napoleon and Illya have trouble doing the same thing. I eliminated that and pretty much focused the story completely around the mystery. I'm still amused by the idea, though, so maybe I'll write it sometime as a random stand-alone piece.

I'm not sure if in the end it moves too fast; I was thinking to myself how it's like the manga version of Sailor Moon in that it stays strictly to the plot and doesn't have fillery detours, except an occasional character-developing conversation. I think the Sailor Moon manga moves too fast; I prefer for there to be some filler, as it's both a nice diversion from the heavy stuff and it serves character-building purposes. But I was hesitant to do filler in the fic, knowing that a lot of people don't care for that. And it never seemed like there was a good place to insert it, either.

Towards the end of the story, I got the idea that Napoleon and Illya should meet David McCallum's meek and mild Perry Mason character. By the time I wrote the epilogue, I had decided to make that the next fic and also to have it continue from the one I was finishing, with them on the trail of a missing enemy spy from Ecks and Wye's organization. I'm going to call it The Fifty Millionth Frenchman Affair, in tribute to the Perry Mason episode, and also signaling for those in the know that it's going to bring in that character.

It's interesting writing in a way that leaves the time period completely vague. I managed to get through the story without encountering one issue where I'd have to reveal the truth, which is unusual. It will be even more interesting seeing if I can pull it off in the next story, since they'll be in Los Angeles and therefore probably crossing over with all of my L.A. shows. I'll probably drop a couple of small mentions to the WWW fic Deadly Codename, since Napoleon, Illya, and Mr. Waverly were in that and trying to stop THRUSH from destroying the world, along with WWW, Cannon, and The Fugitive characters.

And there's a challenge running soon to write fics showing Napoleon and Illya's first meetings. I'm toying with the idea of participating, probably just to the extent of showing a short, first conversation fic. That is probably going to be the most interesting experiment of all, trying to write that and show distrust between them and somehow not reveal that it's the approximate present-day (several years ago). I've even been doing some research of Russia in the 1990s to start crafting my own backstory for Illya in my timeline. Even though it's highly unlikely that I will actually write that backstory into the story, I think crafting it in private will still help me figure out how to write him in a first meeting piece with Napoleon.

As to why hiding the time period is even a thing, the explanation is fairly simple. Most people prefer U.N.C.L.E. to be a period piece, even though the episodes are really timeless and rarely ever show an indication that it's meant to be a period piece. There's not even consternation over a Russian being around in a law enforcement position; it's just accepted everywhere, by most all the characters they encounter. So to me, it only takes place in the 1960s because it was made then and was taking place in the present-day of its time. And I think it fits seamlessly into the present-day of this time. But since most people want it to be a period piece, I try to compromise by not revealing any time period at all. That way, everyone can picture it as they want and everyone's happy.

I do reveal it's the present-day in the Ecks and Wye solo pieces, though, since I figure I'm the only one who'd be reading those. Ecks seems to like the (1970s?) band Queen, as Wye mentions him listening to them once, Mr. Zed has a DVD collection as well as his actual vintage film collection, and Ecks uses a rock song as his ringtone (probably a Queen song, although I didn't specify that). It's also mentioned that he hacked into U.N.C.L.E.'s computers, whereas in the stories with Napoleon and Illya I just say he reprogrammed the computers and don't mention how.

... There was a slight place in the mystery story I just did where the time period was accidentally alluded to, now that I think of it. When Illya's communicator pen goes off in chapter 2, no one around him seems that confused. The reason is because they figure it's a cellphone going off, but I didn't mention that in the story. It wasn't a deliberate thing, but once Illya's pen went off, I realized that how the characters behaved about it would definitely indicate time period.

Another fic plan involves a Mannix story where Roger Bard shows up wanting Lew Wickersham's help because he's got some important documents and all kinds of people are after him. If I write that, Napoleon and Illya would be among the pursuers, as well as Ecks and Wye (and other characters from Roger's Mannix episode). It's based on a role-play I've been doing.

I also need to finish the two Mannix stories I've got going, the one showing how Joe and Lew first met and one where they're trapped in a town without pity. The latter is the shorter one, but I'm having trouble getting inspiration for it beyond some of the horrors Lew goes through. If I launch into those now, though, it's probably too soon and the story won't feel natural. That's how I ended up stalling on that one in the first place. After re-reading both, I have more inspiration for the other one, yet I really wish I could work on the town one since it's the shorter one.

Then there's two Mannix oneshots, an old idea and a new one. The old one involves Joe going to Lew's office around season 8, getting a drink from the decanter (as he really does multiple times in season 1), and flopping on Lew's couch for a tired rant. He's so sick of so many friends turning out to be crooks. Seriously, sooo many episodes have that plot twist. I think Joe really would be getting sick of it by season 8. And he wants to reassure himself that Lew is still the same honest, upright person he remembers.

The new one would be Joe, Peggy, and Lew in a weird, creepy house, because there can never be too many weird, creepy house fics. I love figuring out how to make each house different from all the others.

I still want to do my idea of Della Street meeting Peggy, too. They could have an awesome friendship.

I also have some less distinctive plunnies that I nevertheless might like to do sometime, like another Sunset Shimmer fic, maybe with backstory for her from her time as a Pony, because I don't entirely agree with the comic's portrayal of her and I want to show my version. The comic had her portrayed as really nasty all the way along as a Pony, but to me that doesn't align with the movies. In the first movie, Celestia says she only became nasty when things didn't happen for her as soon as she wanted. And she's such a sweetheart in the second movie that I feel she must have been sweet as a Pony too, until her impatience got the better of her. I also kind of like an idea I saw in a fan-made video where she was bullied as a Pony. It could definitely help explain why she turns to bullying when she first arrives in the human world. She doesn't want to be anything less than the best, and by this point she thinks being cold and cruel is the only way to be the best. She doesn't change her mind on that until Twilight and the human counterparts of her Pony friends are able to defeat her when magic is activated by the power of Twilight's friends trying to protect Twilight.

I picture the fic opening with a nightmare, maybe with bullying going on, and then it zeroes in and shows that Sunset is being bullied by her bad self. Sunset awakens in horror. It would take place between the two movies and show how she's dealing with her actions and how she's trying to turn back to being good again after being so bad. Throughout the fic, there would be little flashbacks to her time in Equestria.

Writing about it, I'm getting really excited for it again. Maybe I'll start writing it soon and see how it starts coming out. I had wanted to finish the U.N.C.L.E. fic before I started it, and now I have, so maybe I should test it out before I start the next U.N.C.L.E. fic (even though I'm excited for that, too).

Another idea would be very surreal and have Sunset talking to Snakes, even though I generally have the show as fiction in my main verse and it's something Snakes knows about. I just have this urge to see what would happen if he and Sunset conversed, considering all the canon parallels of Sunset with my fanon version of Snakes. It's really interesting how that happened entirely by accident.

I also found someone on the Pony forum who likes The Batman, so I'm getting plunnied again for my idea where The Batman's Riddler meets The Animated Series Riddler. I looked over my notes for the story and hope to test that out soon.

So many stories, so little time.

So in the morning I watched a whole bunch more Care Bears clips, in preparation for probably going out today and maybe getting a plush. I was hoping to decide which one I'd like most, but that ain't happening. Like a plushie commercial I saw said, "How can you have just one?" Not only do I want quite a few, I can't decide who should be first. LOL.

I saw Cheer Bear actually being helpful and sweet, instead of making up dumb and unhelpful and discouraging "cheers", so maybe when she did the latter in that one episode, it was a one-time thing because she was so nervous herself about the imminent disaster. That's kind of amusing and in any case, I'm glad to see her behave mostly as I thought she would. I like her now.

I liked Share Bear (the lighter purple one) from the first round, and I like her even more now. She's nice and sweet (when she isn't being overcome by jealousy, which hopefully was just a onetime thing).

Wonderheart, the little girl bear, I liked on both rounds. She's little enough to be cute, but old enough and intelligent enough to have good conversations with and to know what's going on around town. I don't know; I usually tend to like the little kid characters. I always loved Chibiusa on Sailor Moon, even when a lot of dub fans were railing about her. I liked her in the dub (although I admit I did not like her in her very first episode) and then I liked her much more in the sub.

I wish I could have seen Wish Bear in some more stuff, but I was only able to find a clip where she said one line. I'll probably watch some of the older stuff with her, but since there may have been personality changes through the years, it might not tell me what she's like in her current incarnation. Since I loved her all through the years because of that little figure I have, it's tempting to get that small plush of hers despite the issue with her foot. Maybe I could clean it; it wasn't anything real big, just aggravating that it was there at all.

Harmony Bear, however, is honestly still getting on my nerves, much moreso than on the first round. I think that, like with Rainbow Dash on My Little Pony, she's one character I probably never will really warm up to. Now my annoyance isn't just because of her doing something silly like speaking in song; she seems to have some of Rainbow Dash's worst traits, like her arrogance and rudeness. I saw one clip where I kind of liked her, where she was encouraging a girl to stand up to a bully, but there are some times where I like Rainbow Dash too, yet never enough to make her a favorite overall.

I think the order I like the main characters is this:

Grumpy (male)
Share (female)
Wonderheart (female)
Cheer (female)
Tenderheart (male)
Funshine (male)
Harmony (female)

Funshine, oddly enough, reminds me a bit of Mikey of the Turtles. He's a goof-off who seems to have a hard time being serious. Not a favorite character type of mine.

Wish Bear, Bedtime Bear, Good Luck Bear, and others seem to mostly be background or oneshot characters. So far I haven't got too much of a handle on their personalities, other than Bedtime Bear. Ladyamberjo reminded me about Good Luck Bear and then I started wondering about getting the plush of him, to celebrate my Celtic roots. Ireland is the one place I haven't been able to pinpoint a direct connection through my ancestors, though. But I assume that when I have Welsh, Scottish, and English blood, it's probably not a stretch to assume that there could also be some Irish blood in there somewhere?

Other background/minor characters I've seen are Secret Bear and Thanks A Lot Bear. I saw an amusing clip where Thanks and Share keep thanking each other. **snerk.** Birthday Bear was in another clip.... I remember him (?) from an old book I have. And Surprise Bear. Didn't really get a handle on their personalities either, though.

So the main plushies I'm considering now are the blue ones (including Wish, although she's more blue-green) and Good Luck Bear, but Share and Cheer are also possibilities. Harmony I might get sometime for aesthetic reasons, but I definitely wouldn't get her first.

So, it happened.

After a little over a week working on these 31_days prompts, not to mention several weeks before that of fiddling with other assorted, related U.N.C.L.E. fics ...

... I dreamed about those two rascals.

It was a convoluted dream of watching The Odd Man Affair episode, only somehow it had gained a lot more content than it had in actuality and there seemed to be a whole subplot with Ecks and Wye and some assignment they were on. I can't even fully put together what was happening well enough to recount the plot while awake, except I was thinking "... Chrissy has a lot more screentime than I remember," and something about Wye having a daughter and mentioning her to Ecks. And I believe somebody got punched. And they were driving old cars, like, 1940s-ish.

And I was dreaming in black-and-white.

The themes have been interesting to work with. I was having the hardest struggle figuring out what to do with Monday's, "want to pet every monster." It would be fine in a fantasy setting, but how on earth to adapt something like that to reality? And then at last, the plot slowly started coming to me. I wrote a piece where Wye is terrified of the vicious dogs, since he doesn't like being around something with a mind of its own that could turn on him, and Ecks is just calmly sitting with one of them.

That was a day when I went out shopping a bit. I was looking for Pony stuff, mainly, the Octavia doll and any clean G1 Ponies. I went all through both warehouses of the big antique mall, but couldn't find any Ponies except a dirty G3. I would have bought her had she been clean. Sigh. I'm just not up to cleaning dirty toys that I have no idea where they've been or what they've gotten into. More power to people who deal with that sort of thing with ease.

I wish the other branch of that antique mall still existed. There were a lot more 1980s toys in it. Clean ones, too.

So I was pretty exasperated by that shopping trip, all in all, but at least I was pleased with the prompt that day.

Also, I finally got through the three Star Wars: Legacy of the Force books written by Karen Traviss and I went on to the fourth one I had out. I was only doing the Boba Fett ones. And I knew I'd miss Karen as the writer, but I didn't realize just how much. Troy Denning not only clearly didn't like Boba Fett, he apparently disliked him so much that he wasn't willing to make his book fit in with Karen's previous one! Continuity got completely unhinged.

In Karen's third book, Han and Leia's daughter went to Boba Fett for help and he was training her to go against her brother, who'd gone to the dark side. In the process, it was canon within the story that she found that Boba Fett wasn't as horrible as she had always thought he was. And she also found out that the reason why his marriage broke up was a lot different than what she'd thought. But then in Troy's book, Jaina Solo seems to still have as bad an opinion of Boba Fett as she did to begin with. And Boba Fett is very far removed from the reader; there aren't any scenes from his POV so far, like there was with Karen's books. I was surprised when Troy included a paragraph about how being a stormtrooper didn't mean the person was flat-out evil and that they were likely fighting for what they believed was right. He seemed to see in black and white so much, not even following previous book continuity, that it was a real surprise to see him include a shade of gray like that. He also didn't capture Mirta, Boba Fett's granddaughter, with as much fire and personality as she has in the other books. I don't think I'll have too much trouble getting that book finished up by Monday evening, when they all have to go back.

Honestly, I fell so hard in love with Karen's books and how she brought the characters to life that I definitely want to purchase all three of her books from that series, as well as every other Star Wars book she wrote. She did some that I believe take place during the Clone Wars and are about the clones. She brings them to life and gives them personality, instead of just being robotically programmed to obey every order given. You can tell she really got into what she was writing about and she loved the verse she created.

And Venus came, a day before the estimated arrival dates started! She is the right size, thankfully, albeit the right size is slightly smaller than what I remembered from F.Y.E. I remembered the correct size when I first got home, but then I started visualizing her as bigger than that.

I'm a little puzzled as to why I wanted her, because I do not and never have liked chibi-deformed style. But she is really cute and most Sailor Moon plushies are in that style, so unless I want to shell out a lot of money for a Japanese plush with the right proportions, I pretty much have to consent to getting chibi-style. They seem a lot more huggable than those Japanese plushies, so that's always a plus, and Great Eastern plushies' eyes are just gorgeous and so full of life. And the hair is so soooooft....

I still want the giant Sailor Moon plush, too. She would be pretty well aligned with my small Chibiusa plush, which was my original reason for wanting her instead of the small size Sailor Moon. And if GE ever gets around to making Mercury in the large size, I'll definitely have to get her. Jupiter I might get, but I'm not crazy about getting Mars. Still, if I actually ended up getting all the rest, I'd probably feel bad not to get Mars.

There's a small size Pluto out now, too. I wish F.Y.E. would get her, because they would hopefully be a little cheaper than Amazon. I must have Pluto, and I don't know if or when they'll make a big one of her, so I have to get the small one. I just hope I won't have to resort to Amazon, unless their price comes down a bit.

So after reading the Sailor V manga, it seems really sad to see Venus so flat-out serious and sad in the Crystal anime. I really like her to know when to be serious, and the idea that she's a little more grown-up than the other Senshi, since she's been fighting longer, but for her to lose all of her fun-loving attitude is too sad. Suddenly she just seemed so bland in Crystal.

I ended up ordering the plushie tonight. I have two gift cards I'm waiting to get for Amazon, but those might not come until towards the end of the month and I really didn't think this plush would hang around that long, since there was only one left at the price I wanted. I wibbled a bit over whether I'd made the right choice anyway, but I've calmed down now and I think I'm pretty happy with my decision. I'm glad I got to see the plushie in F.Y.E. this week. I like to see in person what I'm getting, and it was the seeing that made me decide I definitely wanted that plush.

Also, I really like that by buying the plush from this person, I'll still have some money left over to put towards more stuff. If I'd bought the DVDs, with tax it probably would have drained every bit of the fun money for this month.

And after all that U.N.C.L.E. writing and coming up with three possibilities for the fanzine (the third of which I used for submission, as decided), I ended up with other ideas for online fics. I had to review the episode in order for any of the ideas to work, and while doing so, I discovered I'd completely forgotten that Mr. Wye just seems to completely lose it after he finds Mr. Ecks stabbed in the park. He flips out on the retired female agent working with U.N.C.L.E., even blaming her for what happened in the park despite knowing she was not the one who did the stabbing.

I hadn't even taken Mr. Wye into my equation when I wrote the drabbles with Ecks a couple of years ago, but after a review I did of the episode back then, I started thinking he needed to be involved. But I hadn't watched the episode straight through again at that point. Now that I have, I can't shake the idea that Mr. Wye and Mr. Ecks must be very close, and of course, that's the instant trigger for me to become fascinated.

The end result: I decided to do another month-long 31_days challenge of vignettes, focused around them. Right now I'm sticking to episode-based, fleshing out my ideas for them to both survive their ordeals. The piece I'm most proud of so far, I think, discusses their organization and its goals and how and why they decided to betray it with Mr. Zed. (Mr. Zed ... LOL. Why do the British hate saying Zee?)

At this point in the vignettes, they are separated and each is afraid the other is dead. And I successfully made myself sad with this past day's piece. (I also successfully grossed myself out by spending over an hour reading about the various possible consequences of being stabbed somewhere in the abdominal region.) I need to get to the reuniting vignette soon or I may burn out (especially since I honestly hate writing extended hospital stays). After I get to that point, I'm not sure where the rest of the pieces will go. Some may flash back to their time in the organization, while others may stick with the present. I may have them encounter Illya and/or Napoleon some more and exchange some unfriendly banter. Or I may just stick with fleshing out the interaction just between them. Naturally I will only post the pieces to 31_Days, unless there's one with Illya and/or Napoleon present as well. I wouldn't imagine anyone but me would be interested in reading/writing about these oneshot episodic characters.

I started the set on the 3rd, so I'll need to do the first two as make-up pieces on the 31st, when we're allowed to post pieces for any day. Hopefully I'll be able to get ahead enough in writing the vignettes that I won't be writing those pieces plus the 31st's prompt all on the same day. It takes me at least an hour to get a good vignette for this series. Currently I'm managing to write each piece on the day it's for. Usually when I do these theme sets I can write some pieces ahead of their time, so I want that to happen again, and it may, if I can get at least one other project done first. I'm thinking prompt #2, "eyes the color of water", will be at least partially about when they first meet. Chrissy has such beautiful blue eyes....

As I wailed on Tumblr, why can't I ever just stick with writing for the good guys for long?

I know the answer to that, really. It's because while friendships between good guys are squeeable, you'd expect good guys to have friendships. With bad guys, it's not always something you can expect. And when I see it, I'm intrigued. It's the same basic principle as to why I find certain antagonists endlessly fascinating, like Coley Rodman. If they show they still have some goodness despite unsavory things they're doing, I must know more about them and write about them and pick their minds apart.

And then sometimes my interest is a little more shallow, like if a favorite actor plays the character. But they still have to have some other reason to warrant me being interested enough to write about them. Being killed in the episode is often, but not always, one thing that will make me write about them, as I'm trying to fix the death. And I may not warm up to them fully for a while. It was that way with Snakes. After I wrote so many stories with him and let him develop as a character, however, I became very fond of him. That also started my crush on his actor. I have little doubt that before I'm done with this theme set, I will be quite fond of both Ecks and Wye.

Another thing I mused on is that while I have one list of my "darlings", then there's a list of "actors I like by association". If they play off of a darling especially well, or even repeatedly, I tend to become fond of them on some level. I'm fond of Pippa Scott because of her playing against H.M. Wynant on I Spy, for instance, and Allison Hayes for being with him on Perry Mason and Shotgun Slade. I started out being fond of Luke Andreas because of him playing off of Chrissy on The Rockford Files. Luke is a unique case, as I ended up loving him so much, he became a darling too. I'm fond of Joe E. Tata for his association with both of them. And I'm fond of Hedley Mattingly for his playing off of Chrissy ... twice. Apparently it was either a weird coincidence or somebody thought they worked well together. About four years after U.N.C.L.E., they're teamed up again on Mannix. Neither of them die that time. Actually, that episode (All Around the Money Tree) is the only really humorous episode of Mannix and is also only one of two episodes out of 194 where nobody dies. That's ... kind of a sad track record, actually.

Ugggh. I had absolute killer insomnia yesterday. I was so eager for a shopping trip that I kept not being able to sleep and I'm not even sure I ever did. If I did, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 minutes. I definitely crashed when we got home. But I was only trying to have a nap at that point and I slept too long and now I can't seem to get any more sleep. **headdesk.**

The trip was a lot of fun, even though I couldn't find everything I wanted. But I found a surprise when I popped in at the comic book store: for once they actually had something I wanted! I got the sixth issue of the recent Six Million Dollar Man comic. That leaves #5 to get. I'm a little disappointed, though, as from #6 I can tell that there probably isn't any Oscar hurt/comfort in #5, and the alarming cover of #5, with him clutching a chest wound, made me think that there would be some really intense Oscar hurt/comfort going on. It seems like the covers of comic books often don't match the stories inside, intensity-wise.

I still don't like the utter bizarreness of the people being infected by an alien substance and turning into monsters. That is too weird even for that cheesy (but awesome) show. But at least it looked like Steve and Jaime have been able to help them recover.

Oliver Spencer's fate is now up in the air, though, as he tried to use his mind to lock into the rampaging robot's mind and force it to stop, and instead he was electrocuted and is unconscious and they're not sure if his consciousness is still linked to that blasted robot, which is still loose and will apparently play into a new arc, if there is one. Gah.

I love how the comic took a basically disliked character and really fleshed him out. Oliver still acts like a jerk sometimes, but we know at least part of his reason for his intensity (wanting to find a way to help his crippled daughter). And he has a heart for other people's suffering too and is horrified by the things the monster does when it goes out of control. Upset over his part in creating the beast, he risks his safety to try to stop it. Steve wants to help find a way to wake Oliver up and reunite the little family, even though he doesn't like Oliver.

I think Oliver is really unfairly demonized by a lot of the fanbase. I ranted about that recently on Tumblr. http://lucky-ladybugs-lovelies.tumblr.com One of my main annoyances is how everyone gets up in arms over his most infamous comment, that it's too bad Steve can't be put into hibernation and only wake up for missions, but they don't get that he really didn't even sound completely serious when he said it. It was a nasty comment and shouldn't have even been made in jest, but even in the comics they make it sound like it wasn't just an idle crack and was instead something he actually tried to enforce. In the movie, I don't recall any such thing. It was just a remark that I doubt he had any real intention of following up on.

Barney Hiller was operated on by a doctor and now has robotic parts. It looks like a whole exo-skeleton, really. And whatever happened in #5 apparently resulted in Steve's bionics being so damaged that they were forced to operate on him and give him the bionic limbs that the rampaging robot tore off of Barney. Steve doesn't know, and boy, is he going to be furious when he finds out. They really didn't have a choice, when they desperately need Steve to help with these problems and Barney is too mentally unstable to be an agent, but it's still unsettling. Rudy commented on that, and Oscar agreed, but he didn't see that they could have done anything else under the circumstances. It's not like they have spare bionic limbs and millions of dollars for expensive operations lying around. And I'm assuming Steve had to be operated on right then or he might have died.

I'm glad to finally know how the arc wrapped up, but they left so many things open-ended and the bionic program is still down, because apparently the Secretary of State has been replaced by a robot and won't green-light it going operational again. Uh oh. Oscar got to be awesome and yell at him about how they need Steve and Jaime as agents. It won't be pretty when he finds out the truth.

At Barnes and Noble, they didn't have the anthology book that I decided I wanted the most. And since I was saving money for Sailor Moon (which I found, squeee), I decided that since I'd bought the surprise comic, maybe I wouldn't buy a book too. After all, I want to save some money for next month.

I did look at the Legacy of the Force series, and while I take issue with the storyline of Han and Leia's son going bad and killing Luke's wife (!!!!), I am dying to read Boba Fett's storyline. After comparing some earlier stories written before episode II came out with some stories that came out after episode II, like Legacy, I determined that with Boba's backstory revealed, the writers more often than not portray him as a more human character instead of so completely cold. There are some earlier stories that depict him as showing kindnesses sometimes, including the awesome one in Tales From the New Republic, but overall, most of the stories like that came out after episode II. I already know how his storyline plays out in Legacy, and that he eventually gets a happy ending, but after peeking in some of the books, I'm more intrigued than ever and absolutely must read. In particular, I love that we learn about his family (he tried to get married and settle down once, although that didn't work out as he had hoped) and that Han and Leia's daughter goes to him for help when she wants to train in order to defeat her corrupted brother. Also, he talks to Jango a lot in his thoughts. This Boba Fett is very open to the readers, unlike the mysterious character of earlier novels that even the readers couldn't always figure out.

Since I don't like some of the plot of Legacy, I wasn't sure I wanted to actually spend money on any of that series. The library has three of them, including the first one, so I'm hoping to try at least that one from there and if I decide that I adore it in spite of the plot elements I detest, I'll probably go ahead and buy the others that Boba Fett plays a part in. I'll have to buy some of them, since the library only has those three. Oh, if only there was a county system....

And I've seen three Sailor Moon episodes on my set so far. It feels so good to see the classic anime again. The pace is really much better than in the manga/Crystal. I prefer it to not be so frenetic, especially since character-developing stuff often happens in the filler episodes.

(Also, after peeking in some of the manga, I don't quite understand why people complain about Minako's ditziness in the anime. She really seems pretty ditzy in the manga, too. It's only in Crystal and the live-action where she's more serious. And the first season of the classic anime.)

I'm happy to say that the frame-ghosting isn't really an issue when watching, as I hoped. It probably only becomes a problem if you're taking screengrabs. However, I am irritated that it can't be full-screened. It's a picture in the center of giant, thick black lines on all four sides. But it's a big enough size that I don't have to be right up by the computer to read the subs, so that's okay. It's about the size of the screen on Hulu.com.

I'm just so happy to have more Sailor Moon that's all my own. Aside from this set, I only have two dub DVDs and four subbed: two S and two SuperS. I'll probably never be able to afford the older, better season sets, so these new ones will have to do in spite of the flaws. I'm very excited for the next release in February! I hope they'll keep being steady like this and there won't be big gaps between releases.

So the Dark Kingdom arc is officially concluded and we are moving into the Black Moon/Chibiusa arc. Final thoughts on Dark Kingdom below, and a bit of thought on Black Moon (with a slight spoiler or two from the manga).

( First arc end )

Sometimes I get way too wrapped up in certain shows. There was a time when I actually wanted to be a Sailor Senshi (of course at the same time knowing they don't exist). It seemed fun and glamorous. I was finally pulled back to Earth by reading a friend's post where he was musing how they had no lives to themselves and had to jump up at a moment's notice to fight horrible monsters and evil people and eventually, realistically, they would likely burn out.

But I'm having the same sort of thing happen again, thinking it would be fun to be in the Batman world and/or if there were really similar things going on in the real world/vigilantes like Batman/etc. Yet at the same time, I know it wouldn't be fun at all; people would live in terror of the next horrific scheme of the Joker's or the next bizarre experiment by Dr. Langstrom or Scarecrow or Hugo Strange.

I watch Batman and Robin and Batgirl swinging on buildings with their Bathooks and it looks fun and exciting, but I know in reality I would be utterly terrified. And in reality, I doubt such feats as theirs could even be performed safely.

I would make a horrible vigilante and it would be absolutely horrifying if supervillains really existed.

But ... I still think it would be fun to visit Gotham, or fun if there was really a Batman, or fun to help him stop at least one crime, etc.

I suppose a lot of kids have fantasized with those types of thoughts. But I'm an adult; I should know better.

I am hopeless.

I'm still torn between the two DVD sets.... My money will hopefully be available on Monday, and both sets will hopefully still be available then, too. I have established that our local Wal-Mart carries them. But Sailor Moon is selling so quickly that there might not be any by Monday. And I really wanted the Batman set first and wait to get the Sailor Moon one until my Amazon gift card comes in....

The Crystal episode today did not help me decide. I have more hope that the Generals/Kings may live in Crystal-verse, because I get the feeling that Crystal is aiming for an ultimately happy ending for everyone. It feels so hopeful in the mood it sets. However, the catch is that ( Spoiler! )

Even with their sad fates in the original anime, I still want that set. I just wish I could feel confident that it wouldn't completely sell out if I get Batman first and wait for the gift card for Sailor Moon. Then I start thinking that I'd really like to see the Nephrite/Naru stuff in the original anime right away and that I want that first. But they don't even have the whole Nephrite/Naru arc on this new set; the final episode is delayed to the second set. Ugh. They did that so each set could be evenly split into 23 episodes, but that is still way frustrating to be left hanging like that.

And I watched The Batman vs. Dracula again and suddenly realized that the most obvious time period for it is season 1, not 2. Yin wouldn't be Batman's ally in season 1. Ethan supports Batman, but he doesn't have access to him like Yin does later. They wouldn't have agreed with the SWAT team's actions, but probably wouldn't have had any power to stop it. I always figured it was season 2 because that was when they started making the film, but it just doesn't make sense for Yin not to be there if it's season 2. And if it's after season 2, it doesn't make sense for Commissioner Gordon not to be there. So season 1 is what's left.

Also, I determined that Kevin Michael Richardson's interpretation of The Joker can actually be lovable at times. He's deadly dangerous, make no mistake about that, and he's nasty and only cares about himself, yet he can be genuinely funny and somehow, Kevin plays him so well that he's somehow lovable in spite of all this. That takes talent! And I, at least, am left wanting more. A lot of people hated that Joker because of his wild redesign (giant floppy spikes, like Yami Marik's, only longer, and no shoes, ROTFLOL), but that's such a shame. I was stunned by the redesign, I'll admit, but it didn't take me long to warm up. I was more interested in personality than design, and he was such fun that I focused on that. And eventually I became very fond of the redesign, too.

(With the Riddler, I'll admit that I was instantly attracted to his redesign. I thought it was awesommmme. But personality-wise, I was disgusted by him until it was revealed halfway through his first episode that there weren't real bombs throughout the city at all, just lime Jell-O. Suddenly he was extremely intriguing and I was fond of him in every way. He really isn't like most of the other members of the rogue's gallery.)

You know, it's kind of scary to think that a nutcase like The Joker must be really smart where chemistry and biology are concerned. He couldn't just throw a bunch of random stuff together; he'd have to really know how everything worked in order to make things that would do what he wanted, like the Joker Gas and the Joker Putty. I think that might be the most frightening thing about him: he's really capable of making dangerous stuff and has no qualms about using it everywhere, on everyone.

And Tom Kenny took more from Burgess Meredith's Penguin than just the laugh. While watching a couple of 1960s Batman clips, I was amused by the familiar, gravelly voice. That may be one reason why I ended up loving the 1960s series so much, because the Penguin there was like the one I was used to from The Batman. I think it's way cool that Tom Kenny copied the voice and laugh on Burgess Meredith's. The 1960s Penguin isn't crude, at least, not that I remember, but otherwise, Tom Kenny's is very similar to him.

I watched a couple of clips from The Animated Series too, and I kind of winced at their Penguin's voice. He's interesting in personality, but the voice just really ... lacks something. It seems so bland compared to the colorful tones of Burgess and Tom's Penguins.

Also, the new and popular Arkham series of video games.... Wow, a Cockney Penguin. That's something I thought I'd never hear. And the graphics .... oh my goodness. The graphics are incredible.

I wonder why it's becoming a trend for the Riddler to wear glasses? I think it started in Batman Forever, but then stopped; the cartoon versions did not wear glasses. Then Young Justice's did, and Arkham's did, and Gotham's does. Huh.

I like the Riddler's voice in the Arkham games, too. And the voice actor is actually on the message board for the 1960s Batman series! Sweet. I love accessible celebrities. I wish some people from The Batman would wander in too, and I could ask them the questions I'm dying to about the Riddler redesign and Robert Englund playing him.

Note the icon of my beloved, serious, Marilyn Manson Riddler from The Batman. When I talk about The Riddler, unless otherwise specified, this is the one I mean.

Had to get my I.D. renewed today, and that took us out by some of my favorite stores, so I browsed for a bit and weighed how much I wanted certain things.

Spent the longest amount of time in Barnes and Noble, looking at some of the Batman graphic novels. Found Hush and read the part where Batman pieces together that the Riddler is behind everything. Unlike what Wikipedia said, it seems like the Riddler was only in the scheme to prove he was capable of masterminding something so intricate and ingenious. He didn't have it in for Batman so thoroughly that he went through the whole thing just to torture him. That's good to know. I could certainly picture The Batman's Riddler orchestrating the scheme just to prove he could. So if that's how they would have done a version of Hush in The Batman, I wish now that the project had been green-lit after all.

I still think it was too cruel of him to taunt Batman about Jason Todd, though. Gah. Of course, Jason Todd isn't part of The Batman continuity (it's before his time), so there wouldn't be that problem in the proposed and failed Hush movie for The Batman.

Also looked for 1960s Batman stuff at Toys R Us and was horrified that they're selling the 6-inch figures for $22.99. And Wal-Mart had them for $15.99! The Batmobile Toys R Us has as an exclusive is way awesome, though.

Found season 1 of 1960s Batman and the new Sailor Moon season 1 set at a Wal-Mart. Squeee. I hope our local one will have them too. I have money in transit, so I will likely buy one or the other in a few days. I lean towards the Batman set for now, although I want both eventually. But as much as I adore the original Sailor Moon anime, the Generals certainly didn't have good fates in it and I'm still desperately hoping for happier outcomes for them in Crystal.

I'm almost done with my fic for The Batman. But I think I might write another one after it's done. I've had this image in my mind of a scene where Yin comes and finds the Riddler lying beaten on the sidewalk outside his private detective office. She helps him up and asks what on earth happened. He tells her his father showed up and went berserk, beating him as he had done years ago.

I haven't been able to figure out why it happened, though, and then tonight it clicked. There was never a Scarecrow in The Batman verse, albeit they did have a design for one. Maybe I could write a fic about a The Batman version of Scarecrow, and he either caused the father to flip out and attack the Riddler, or else the attack didn't really happen and the Riddler was hit by the fear gas and imagined it.

This would also enable me to tie things in with my Dr. Portman character, who is currently head of psychiatry at Arkham. She's basically a female Hugo Strange, but her true colors haven't yet been revealed. She would be fascinated by Scarecrow and his experiments, and I could definitely see them working together to cause mayhem.

Also, Scarecrow is seriously creepy. Living scarecrows are freaky things (except in The Wizard of Oz), and his get-up definitely invokes fear. It would have been cool to have seen him on The Batman.