Journey into Mystery

Uuuuuuh, hey! How's it going?

Nothing much around here. It's freaking cold. My laptop overheats. I bought a second-hand iPod Touch to use iOS-only apps. I keep importing new Okami merchandising because I have a fucking collection. I continued with my German course. I'm also going to Madrid for a few days, in two weeks! Things I should be doing more of? Working on my final college project. Oops. Playing the games/apps I keep buying on Humble Bundle. Reading more stuff, watching more stuff. Obviously updating DW/LJ.

Okay, so, what should I talk about...

( Playing )

( Reading paragraphs )

( Watching )

( Reading panels )

I think that's about all I'm up to. Yeah.

soy sauce

Happy belated new year? Welp, there are still 360 days left counting today, so it's not like I'm too late. LJ wouldn't open to me on the 31st and 1st, and I didn't want to post without a crosspost.

Two things, then. I've seen people still doing yearly scrapbooks and lists to keep track of what they'll check on 2013. I always do that kind of post and I forget to edit them later, and then at end of year memes I'm like WAIT WHAT BUT I WATCHED MORE SHIT so I'll do a new approach this year. I'm keeping track of progress on shows and books and stuff with cloud apps. And since it's easier to make it look pretty there, I'm making a log of finished stuff in a sideblog :D

The other one is the yeeeeeeear in reviewwwwwww meeeeeeeeme.

( It's full of pain )

What am I looking forward to for 2013? Fuck if I know. There's Marvel stuff I'm interested in (and fearing it, in Young Avengers' case). Maybe I'll finish a video game or get a console; I think my brother is eying the Vita and P4G. There's a lot of stuff to catch up in my HDD and DVD collection too. So I have more to bite that I can chew, so it's just a matter of what and when to jump into. I need new fandoms urgently because I miss having an OTP.

It's been a while... ahem.

I think I've been more active in Plurk and Tumblr than here in the journals out of laziness. Plus, this month was a total festival of spammers in almost every post in every LJ community I've ever made, so that really threw me off.

I'll try to be more active. However, I'm going to try to think of the DW mirror as the main one from now on. Because of how gross LJ is (and will be) right now, I'll still crosspost and read my flist because of the comms and few people who aren't on DW; other than that, it's really hard for me to keep thinking about Livejournal as something serious anymore.

Anyway, I'm also:
→ taotrooper @ Plurk (there are a lot of Spanish posts because most of my friends there are my RP buddies.)
→ taotrooper @ Tumblr. That's the main one. I also have two fandom-centric blogs:
→→ celestialbrush (Okami)
→→ journey-into-mystery (Thor comics but mostly -obviously- Journey into Mystery)

I got really into the JiM fandom this year, which hangs out mostly at Tumblr. Hell, even the writer got really into the Tumblr JiM fandom and makes our lives miserable out of the pages. It's curious that there are fandoms now where the main thing is happening over there, while there's little to no presence on LJ/DW or AO3/FFnet/dA/Pixiv. Ghost Trick fandom was also like that, a lot of anime series and games and cartoons too. It seems, for obscure stories or little fandoms/subfandoms, it's just easier to hang around the tags and find coherent people there. Meanwhile, the huge fandoms are usually stupider on Tumblr. Just to keep in-topic, the comic!Loki fans (in either reincarnation, although I mostly chilled with the Kid Loki peeps) are most times much cooler than the majority of Hiddleston!Loki fanbrats on Tumblr (which tend to be noisy and sometimes cray-cray.) And you can say that about most fandoms that are big on Tumblr. And then there's the Percy Jackson fandom who isn't that huge but it's just mostly repulsive. So yeah... I think Tumblr fandoms works better, weirdly, with little stuff. I wish this wasn't the case because it's almost impossible to befriend and talk to these people normally in that site.

Anyway, some short reviews of stuff I've read and watched this Autumn.

( Journey into Mystery, Doctor Who, The Mark of Athena, Wreck-it Ralph, Brave )

So I was thinking about a post regarding a couple of Epic Mythology Romances~ where the man really pisses me off, but then I was talking to lepluvium and got a better idea.

Let's go Japanese today, and we're particularly going to talk about youkai. Yup, the folklore monsters on crack!

( They did the monster mash! )

In the end, I'm too much of a coward to post any of this on Tumblr. The Hiddleston fangirls would eat me alive! Plus it's awful etiquette to tag stuff that is not entirely positive/fannish.

So here we go.

( About movie Loki, assume there are spoilers of Thor and The Avengers )

Oh man, my paid LJ account is expiring soon!

Also, I promise I'll reply to your comments in other posts soon. I've been really lazy...

Not a lot to say, besides that I watched The Avengers the other day and had a blast! I'm not sure if I'll make a post about it, but it's really hard to move on with this movie because Tumblr won't shut up about it. And I don't even follow Avengers-centric blogs! This fandom is eating everything up, even the mythology tag. Which brings us to today's post, kinda.

Because I realized that if I start talking about Norse myths now, people who have no idea but watched Avengers and/or Thor will be confused as fuck. So I'm not going to make a long list of differences between mythology and Marvel movies, as you can google it if you want. But I'm bringing a graphic of relationship differences that will be useful.

( Not exactly family trees; you can google for those too )

Actual mythology post later today. I just have a lot of feels that Tumblr and Plurk aren't good for.

Here's the thing. The only ongoing American comics I'm following right -thanks to DC- now are the Marvel Thorverse. I know, I know. I had this on-and-off fling with the current continuity that has nothing to do with the movieverse and more with me considering Asgard(ia) a character of her own. Plus mythology bitchery, you know how I am. The interesting thing about the Thor comics is them tending to be more fantasy action than superhero action most of the times, in later decades having more inner supernatural baddies and cosmic menaces than rich men with a lot of power -except when Doctor Doom comes to troll.

I started with the JMS run, and I'm still reading the two ongoing series (Journey Into Mystery is my favorite thing ever, adorbs baby trickster ♥) So I slowly want to read the old stuff, and I wanted to start from the very Silver Age beginning. It was... very different, a little hard to swallow too, and the original myth butchery by Stan Lee was very painful. So after a few issues (as in comic issues, not mental issues), I decided to jump into the Walterson run because it's universally accepted as the best. But then suddenly Balder had just recovered from ded and was white-haired, and I hadn't seen Sif becoming an actual character; I wanted more context here, so I guess I'll be back to it afterwards. So I haven't taken Simonson yet.

BUT I'M MISSING THE POINT WITH BACKSTORY HERE. Since the modern Thor comics mention the last Ragnarok a lot, I decided to read the Thor: Disassembled/Ragnarok arc to understand exactly how it happened.

OH GOD. JESUS CHRIST ON A ROLLER COASTER. IT WAS LIKE SOMEONE PUT THOR COMICS, A REAL BOOK OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY, AND A BUNCH OF MANGA VOLUMES BY CLAMP ON A BLENDER.

I mean. I know it is Ragnarok, and I knew that rocks fell and everyone died, and I knew it was really tragic. I just didn't expect it to be written by Nanase Ohkawa!! I don't know how to feel! Because the thing was well-written but it was so frustrating and CLAMPish it felt like a kick on the stomach.

Hnnnnnngggggg. When I said that Marvel is the CLAMP of superhero fandoms, I didn't mean it so literally :(((((( TWO LOST EYEBALLS.

Don't get scared, I'll try not to only make that kind of posts!

So. I tried anime of genres I usually don't care for. Except zombies. Fuck overrated rotting zombies, especially with moe bishoujo plots.

→ Jormungand (1 episode)
Come on, with that title! So this is about a gun dealer lady who has a little army of bodyguards, and how she avoids getting killed off. The other main character is a former child-soldier boy from Africa (except he looks 100% like a Ishvalan from Fullmetal Alchemist...) who hates guns, just hired by said dealer. I'm not really into pew-pew-pew kind of mafia-like stories, but Coco -the dealer- is kinda delightful (half badass, half dork) so I'll try to give one or two more episodes a go. Even if it's just to add more cool females in my watch list like a boss.

→ Lupin the Third: Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna (2 episodes)
I've watched loose Lupin III episodes of a couple of series, and I like the fun cheese it is. So a prequel series about the only recurrent female character, having sexy thief adventures, should be fun, right? Yeaaaaah, I didn't took into count that she's the femme fatale type, and they play it a little heavier than I expected. I was hoping for a more empowering kind of seduction, but it all comes off a bit skeevy male gaze as she's half naked a la sexism is over!1! for most screentime. A real pity. Also, the entirety of the opening is so NSFW it's pretty much soft porn, so don't watch this anime on the bus or near anyone else.

→ Sakamichi no Apollon (1 episode)
This season's cool josei with the cool music. I liked the three characters and all (yes, including the sweet class rep, who gets ignored because girly bits), but I can never get into this particular kind of series and... I really should get into it because everyone loves it, but if I couldn't get attached to others in the genre (Nodame, Honey and Clover, etc) I doubt this one will do the trick. It is very cute, though. I'd also feel out of place because instead of seeing Teh Gay, I just see a goddamn threesome. Megane is clearly "doki doki" at both Class Rep and Jazzy Thug, and viceversa. And mind you, I normally don't get OT3, but this time... just share the pretty prissy transfer student, kids.

→ Uchuu Kyoudai (2 episodes)
Two brothers saw an UFO once and decided to become astronauts when they grew up. While the little brother makes it and is about to be on the moon, the big brother was fired from his successful job designing cars for punching his boss. Then Hirota reminds Muuta of their promise, so now big bro is studying to become an astronaut too. This one should be really boring and yet, I suddenly had the need to know if Muuta will pass his exams. I think it's because he's a well written character and it's easy to root for him. So far I'm following it although I'm still baffled.

→ Tsuritama (1 episode)
I watched on a whim because I couldn't make tails of the summary (is it high school slice of life? is it sports shounen? is it sci-fi action?) And you know what, I still can't. I have no idea what's gonna be. But the intro! They gave me a random legend in cute quirky art and that's something I ADORE seeing in my video games. So I had to keep watching after that. And then they gave me a spazzy sparkly blond alien boy. Well shit, my weakness. Plus the art is looking nice in a slightly Mamoru Hosoda-movie kind of way. So yeah, I'm intrigued as fucked and enjoying the visuals and the characters so far, so this might be my favorite "watched randomly" one this season.

Yeah, so I still haven't a clue of what shows I'll even try this season except for a couple that are a MUST. Which ones? You'll see below, although this is mostly a GIF review of things from last season (or a previous season, period).

Inside:
- Oh right, Persona 4: The Animation ended... kinda.
- Polar bears, pandas, and penguins! Oh my!
- And a lot of baths were given that da-- I mean, century.
- My lesbian crush on King Arthur, in the middle of political magic duels.

( I question my anime taste sometimes, but not today )