Of Swords and Parasols

I woke up this morning all eager for my 3 day weekend, went to Wal-Mart, started getting the chills, got back home and barely managed to take care of perishable before collapsing. Got up about an hour later and had a 102.2f temperature. Whee! At least I didn't have to call in sick to work? It went up to a littler over 103 but has gone down a bit since, and I've managed to stay mobile for about 15 minutes, so maybe I'll get lucky and whatever it is will pass as quickly as I came down with it.

Anyway, I typed this up a couple days ago and hadn't gotten around to posting, so I'll post it now before collapsing again.

1. Flight Rising is having another open registration window next Monday. I guess it's officially a monthly thing now. As always, I will be giving dragons to friends who join, though possibly not until later in the week, as site competitions this week might wipe me out of all dragons that aren't permanent residents in my lair.

2. Related, your pet dragons can now have PET ROBOTS. Though they were created for the highest difficulty level (so far) in the coliseum, but there are other ways to get them. But I repeat YOUR PET PIXEL DRAGONS CAN HAVE PET PIXEL ROBOTS.

3. The newest version of Return of the Condor Heroes is apparently as awful as one would expect a series advertising itself as choosing to make a rapist adorable to be. (I mean, the rape plot in ROCH has problems all over the place, but at least it doesn't think the rapist is sympathetic or likable or fassscinating, so it has that over quite a few rape plots. And also the bit where the person who was rapes finds out who really raped her and hunts him across half of China and kills him. Which probably won't happen with an "adorable" rapist.) It's ok, my backlog of shows to watch is enormous as it is.

4. Kevin Kostner's comments on racism may not be as blatantly horrific as Kevin Sorbo's, but maybe Hollywood needs to make a rule about past-their-professional-prime actors named Kevin aren't allowed to talk about race in public without someone there to kick them in the shin when they go wrong.

5. I started watching the Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic anime on Netflix a couple weeks ago out of boredom, and really enjoyed it. It's a shounen adventure series very, very loosely based on 1001 Nights (loosely=It uses some names and the settings sometimes look vaguely right). The main characters are Aladdin, a child magician, Ali Baba, a wanderer with A Secret Angsty Past, and Morgianna, a former slave girl with super strength and speed. It does a better job than a lot of shounen with the grander scope of things and handling a coming war between three major countries. Unfortunately, season 2, Magi: The Kingdom of Magic splits up the 3 main characters and separates them from their other friends. Ali Baba and Morgianna are MIA for most of the season (Morgianna is considerably more MIA that Ali Baba, or course...) and most of it is Aladdin learning more about magic in another country. Unfortunately, while I like Aladdin, he's way, way less interesting than Morgianna and Ali Baba (and the other supporting characters who are also mostly MIA), and the 2 friends he makes are nice and all, but the actual kingdom is BORING, as is the characters who (as of ep 20, where I am) appears to be the main antagonist. I mean, I'm still enjoying it, just a lot less than the first season, and hoping that if there's a third season, it'll be better. There are some events that are making things more interesting going on, but it's in conjunction with my caring even less about the magic kingdom and being more annoyed by the antagonist.


6. Madame Secretary is on hiatus, but at least it was given a full season. Maybe State of Affairs will seem less horrible when I'm not also watching a far superior female-lead political thriller show? (I mean Madam Secretary's politics and conspiracy plot are just as awful, but the show itself is much better written, as are the characters and their relationships.

7. I've been reading "cozy mysteries" lately, and I'd really like to know how a genre about multiple murders in a small town over a relatively brief period of time not only came to be called "cozy," but also gained a reputation for being comfort reading. I mean, they are comfort reading, and I should write up my thoughts about why some time, but you have to admit, it's a bit odd. (I suspect Agatha Christie and Rex Stout having had dozens and dozens of such books consistently in print for decades contributes some there. I mean, not just them, but they're the big ones that immediately spring to mind.


8. Taraji Henson's new series starts soon! I deliberately have not watched the preview for Empire, but based on what I've read, I'm hoping that her character is on an epic revenge quest and steal her ex-husband's music empire. *hopes*

9. I watched the pilot of The Librarians (or rather, the first 2 episodes, which were aired together because networks don't like 2 hours pilots anymore and air episodes together and confuse everyone about episode numbering). It was entertaining. Christian Kane looked very confused every time he didn't beat up 10 guys at once and Noah Wylie looked very tired thanks to his day job of fighting off alien invasions (though I'm sure he's happy that he has this lined up if it lasts, since Falling Skies's next season will be the last) And Rebecca Romjin made "WTF?" faces a lot. And, I mean, of course Matt Frewer and John Larroquette are running around being...well, themselves. It VERY much felt like a pilot for a series based on a franchise most people forgot exists, and as others have noted, it seems to want to appeal to Warehouse 13 fans, so it was a bit...off, but I'll watch more.

10. Star Wars: Rebels is on midseason hiatus, and I'm not sure who else is watching, but a few comments:
( spoilery )

 1.  Flight Rising is having another registration window next Monday.  Which seems to be very close to the last one, given how long the wait was between the window I enrolled under, and the last one.  Once again, if you join (and you should) I will give you a dragon and STUFF.  And be available to you for questions.

2.  Two of my shows in as many weeks have had a woman who is a main character falsely accuse a man of assault to further her own ends.  Because, I mean, we don't have enough problems with society and the law judging and condemning abused women as it is without acclaimed media actively enforcing the idea that women fake assault charges.

If you don't know which shows I'm talking about, I can tell you in comments.

3.  Neither show, though was The 100, which I binged on last week and really like, despite a lukewarm start.  I should blather at you about it, except that I have an episode to watch as soon as I post this...

As I mentioned the other day, I'm giving a dragon to any of my friends who join Flight Rising in tomorrow's registration window, so I'm going ahead and posting the dragons ahead of time.

( here ) :





Female Skydancer:





Male Spiral:





Female Imperial:





Female Skydancer:





I will give Sakura and Syaoran's first baby to a Clamp fan who understands why it was only natural that it's taken me months to find the right mate for Sakura. (And that she's an exact copy of her mother.) Claimed by laceblade :

Female Coatl:



There's also these nests which will produce cute babies over the next few days.  You can also look at any of my pairs on the first 5 1/2 pages of my lair if you see a pair that you think would make a baby dragon you want in the future. Most of my pairs are named after Disney and animanga pairs, with plenty of Ghibli mixed in, along with a few wuxia and childhood nostalgia pairings, so they're pretty easy to spot.

Also, if you're planning on joining, I recommend checking out this list of helpful links.

1. I finally got around to watching Belle and Maleficent yesterday. These are the only two movies I've really anticipated this year, and they both lived up to expectations, though i'm late enough to the party that I think everything I'd say has been said multiple times by most who are reading this and would care. I wish Maleficent had had a little more subtlety and nuance at times, though (my one real beef with it is the characterization of the three fairies, who were largely thrown under a bus, characterization-wise, for Maleficent's arc, and unlike Stefan's characterization, I don't think doing so strengthened what the movie was doing), but it did a good job of saying and doing what it wanted to. Belle was just extra lovely, though yet another movie about a historical woman that's promoted as a romance but which has the romance as a secondary aspect.

2. Until 2 days ago, I did not know that flight rising had a piece of apparel that would let you have literal swarms of pixies floating around your dragon's head. The end result of that discovery was this:





(She has been named Kyoko. If you've read Skip-Beat, then you know it is the most perfect of all possible names for her.)

Now to resist buying pixies for ALL my dragons.

3. I am horrifyingly behind on TV. I haven't watched any of season 2 of Witches of East End or Devious Maids, or past episode 9 of season 2 of Beauty and the Beast. This is not disinterest at all, I just...haven't. I also haven't watched more of Ja Myung Go or Queen Seon Deuk since WisCon, much less any of the latest kdramas, and have only seen the first couple episodes of all the anime from this season that I intend to watch. These, at least, are mostly because I haven't felt up to subtitles the last few months, except for a couple very brief spurts.

4. Netflix now has season 9 of Bones and series 3 of Call the Midwife streaming, and Amazon Prime has season 5 of The Good Wife. I watched CtM on DVD a couple weeks ago and have been switching back and forth between the other two, both of which I still quite enjoy, despite not having much to say about them.

5. It seems there's going to be a sequel to Dae Jang Geum. This was apparently announced a while back, but I only recently heard about it. Reports seem a bit mixed about whether or not Lee Young Ae will be back as Jang Geum, though.

1. I finally got around to watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I'm probably more likely to rewatch it independently than other MCU movies. I mean, I've enjoyed them all well enough, some more than others, and am fine with rewatching them when someone else wants to, but don't feel a need to just rewatch them just to rewatch. This was probably worse than Iron Man 3 in the "But where is everyone?" department, but at least this seemed to take place over a shorter period of time and not be as...publicized. I alos can't help but note that, when it comes to Steve-shipping, fandom's interest levels are directly inverse to in-movie interaction levels and relationship developments.

2. Speaking of movies, I actually encountered a movie that I'm embarassed to admit i watched, Tales of an Ancient Empire. Admittedly, I was mostly interested because I'd heard Kevin Sorbo was playing a character that was pretty much the anti-Hercules, but this movie...

Ok, so it's a Swords and Sorcery movie. The basic setup is that ancient evil put down by a hero 20 years ago wakes up and invades the kingdom. The princess of the kingdom learns that her father was actually said hero, and sets off to find him and get his help. (I mean, heaven forbid she try to take care of things herself, despite being one of only 2 competent people in the entire movie. Moving on...) Instead she finds her half brother (Sorbo) who is a relatively useless conartist, and they go off to collect their OTHER half-sisters to get their help in finding their father. Up to this point, it's entertainingly bad despite the healthy doses of misogyny. But this is, really, a pretty straightforward, 3-part story.

Part 1: Find your siblings and go off to finding missing heroic father.
Part 2: Locate said father, yell at him for being a deadbeat manslut, have family bonding adventures, get back to kingdom.
Part 3: Defeat evil, win back kingdom.

Except Part one takes up 3/4s of the movie. After that, either the writers realized how incredibly awful the movie was, or they decided to make an odd stylistic choice, because the rest of the plot is mostly narrative voiceovers, with only a few scenes actually being filmed. IDK.

3. Flight Rising remains my happy internet place. The July festival was kind of frustrating because I only got about 1/3 the currency and 1/2 the chests I did in the June festival, but I did get enough currency to buy a bunch of golems, and went all in for building apparel for a few dragons around them. Most of said dragons are named for shounen heroines. Bonus fandom points if you recognize all of them.

( cut for dragons )
4. Still on the subject of Flight Rising, I've been donating a lot of dragons to Light's dominance raffle. I'm rather curious to see how the approach to the raffle works. Instead of lumping the dragon prizes and prizepacks together, they're listing the dragons separately, so that you can buy them with raffle tickets. On Sunday, I was vowing to NOT buy the dragons and to build up tickets for the prizepacks, intending to use the raffle to clear out my lair a bit, but by last night, i'd purchased a dragon and now have 3.

But, I mean, look at the cuties:

( cut for more dragons )


I do think that the guaranteed return (I mean, on top of getting paid for the exalt dragons, of course) makes me more inclined to just buy dragons off AH and train them, even though I only end up a few kT richer for it.

5. I haven't watched much of this season's anime yet because I haven't been in the mood for subtitles. I have, however, watched and liked the first few episodes of Ao Haru Ride, Barakamon, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, and Glasslip, as well as the first episodes of Sabagebu! and Sailor Moon Crystal. There are a couple others I still intend too check out. BTW, is there actually new material in the Psycho Pass: Extended Edition, or is it just the original series repackaged?

Flight Rising folks, does anyone feel SWAMPED BY GUILT when they let dragons they plan to keep (at least for a while) go unnamed?



( poor unnamed dragons )

For a bit of reference, while some of the dragons I have came to me with names, aside from Magenta and Solidarity, all the dragons I've named myself are named after characters from Fairy Tail, the Condor Heroes Trilogy, A Certain Magical Index, Queen Seon Deuk, and Legend of Basara.