Distraction & Excitement

Don't you just love how stuff can come up and throw your plans off track? My planned entry for last week was delayed because my friend Crash got me a late birthday present which totally distracted me from things. She got my Fossil Fighters for the DS. It's not a fairly complex game, it's pretty much simplified Pokemon only with prehistoric animals instead of cute little creatures. Still, it has it's charm and an addictive quality to it. Having grown up with a huge interest in dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals I find it even more compelling a game. When I was in high school still and could still be fairly active I was making plans about where to go to college wanting to become a paleontologist and help find their bones and footprints, even find their droppings and the like. It was when my fibromyalgia really kicked in I realize I'd have to give up on that (at least for the present) because there's a lot of hard work involved that would leave me so sore I'd be incapable of doing anything. Being able to dig up virtual dinosaurs makes me kind of nostalgic because of that. Add in the fact that some of the things you can dig up include creatures like Andrewsarchus, an ancient ungulate carnivore with an impressive set of jaws (which were likely more powerful than even a hyena's), and Pachycetus, a whale ancestor that was at home both in the water and on land, and I could almost squee with glee. I have a little bit of a passion for mesonychids like Andrewsarchus and mesonychid cousins like whale ancestors (whales were originally thought to have evolved from mesonychids but recent genetic testing shows they're descended from a cousin of them instead and their closest living cousins are hippopotamuses).

After managing to pull myself away from that for a bit I found I had quite a backlog of new anime to watch, too. I spent quite a bit of time working to catch up on Beast Player Erin, which just seems to get better and better to the point the fact the artwork, except the artwork of the tohdas and ohjus, is a little on the childish-looking side barely registers anymore. I've been giving Book of Bantorra and Sacred Blacksmith more of a chance despite the fact I wasn't too sure about them based on the first episodes. I think I like Sacred Blacksmith more than Book of Bantorra so far. The new Shugo Chara season is definitely disappointing, the live action segments are blah and the bits with the guardian characters seem like they're really kodomo instead of shojo in terms of demographic. Darker Than BLACK is great so far, the music is just as good as last season even without Yoko Kanno composing it and the plot is getting interesting. I'm kind of disappointed they abandoned the two episode arc format this time around, but I can live with that. I was also hoping Suou would remain a "mundane" instead of becoming a contractor just because of how it could affect the point of view, however, I'm VERY interested in what that meteor fragment she has can do. Kimi ni Todoke, to go to the opposite side of the anime spectrum, is also coming along well. The relationship between Sawako and Kazehaya is awkwardly sweet and at episode three we have our first bit of real drama coming our way with a jealous schoolgirl trying to break up Sawako's budding friendships with her classmates and budding romance with Kazehaya (which is where the jealousy comes from) by starting rumors and indicating Sawako started them. I'm really anxious to see more now.

And catching up on older titles I've yet to see I started watching Turn A Gundam. Sadly there's no way I can get it in English legally so I downloaded fansubs. After hearing how Tomino reacted to being told he couldn't have a female main character by making the male lead wind up in drag for a good chunk of the series I couldn't NOT watch it. So far it's something I regret not watching sooner as it has a nice solid story. It's got a lot of plot to it, with the mecha aspect not being too major, but not being overly shoved in the background either so far. I really recommend looking it up on TVtropes to see if it's something you may like and then giving it a chance if there's even a chance you think you may like it. I know it gets a lot of flack in the Gundam fandom for a few reasons, but it does look like a nice solid series that one may like if they set aside their prejudices and give it a chance.

Right now I'm getting completely excited. Thanks to my friend Mary and her parents I'm going to be able to make it to YoumaCon this year even tho my car needs to get worked on and I haven't had time to try and book a room there for myself. So far the only convention I've been to is JAFAX which is fairly small and based on a college campus (meaning they can't charge entry fees and thus have a smaller budget and can't many, if any, get big name industry members there) so this will be my first pay-for-entry convention. It's also going to have better panels than JAFAX and I can't wait to see the kind of things I can find dealers selling there, too. I'll probably be drooling over most everything there. And I can just imagine the number of cosplayers at a bigger con like that, meaning more chances to find good cosplayers to take pictures of AND a better chance of running into a Train Heartnet cosplayer. I may dig out stuff for a Rinslet Walker cosplay, I still have the wig and pendant for that and a nice top for that which is suited to autumn weather, all I'd have to do is find some halfway decent pants/capris to go with it. I really love Black Cat so it only seems right I cosplay one of my favorite characters from it. Rinslet is pretty much THE badass normal for the series. Sure, she doesn't measure up to many of the other characters, but those characters are all super-powerful elites with special weapons or superpowered. For someone who is basically a normal person she manages pretty well for being in a shonen action series.

Well, time to make a second go at trying to find what my dad did with my duffel bag so I have something decent to pack my YoumaCon stuff in instead of old, tattered suitcases.