foxinthestars

Crane count: 240

And I've had the intent all along but finally drafted language for the wish: (being that I'm USian) "May this year's elections move my country toward democracy, compassion, and justice."

Having gone online-shopping and read Amazon reviews of 1000-sheet crane kits, it's a little humbling to see how often other people do this, like I could almost think it's fairly ordinary. But at the same time, I'm not aware of anyone I know personally who's done it. (Can't even think of anyone I personally know who's tried it, other than myself.)

I didn't actually get one of those kits myself; I'm making mine out of colored memo cubes from Staples. Tip if you do this, do get paper in a range of colors; getting each color-block done has been a nicely motivating mini-goal.

Crane count: 80 (I'm doing them in strings of 40)

I had an idea that I don't know if I'm up to acting on, but I enjoyed. It's to do a Trump-critical parody rendition of Dr. Seuss's story "I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today," but instead of wheedling down the number, the Trump character refuses to admit the tigers are even there, accuses a journalist of "Fake News" when they point out the tigers, and finally boasts about his tiger-licking prowess while the unacknowledged tigers terrorize the populace and possibly eat people. Maybe along the way he can reject or imprison an expert tiger-wrangler from another country who comes trying to help.

(Idea free to good home.)

I've got on an origami kick and decided to try again to make the traditional 1000 cranes. (I've tried twice before and not made it, so hopefully third time's the charm.)

At the risk of getting ahead of myself, though, a question for any Japan experts in my circle...

If you make the thousand cranes, what are you supposed to (or not supposed to) do with them when they're done? Keeping them forever might be impractical. Wikipedia says it's normal to hang them outdoors until they get tattered (and then discard them presumably, but how?). Is it acceptable to burn them or is that burning your wish?

I'm still scarce around these parts, but I'm stopping in for a little shameless shilling:

I am attempting to sell things on eBay for the first time in a long time! I feel like this is a good sign in combating my anxiety (also in decluttering and, you know, that green stuff).

And here’s my first offering: Link and Zelda plushies. I love the characters so much, but I feel connected to my faves even without toys and figures so I’m ready to let these go. Have a look if you want!

Today was my deadline and just in time, I finished my WIP Big Bang fic! This thing has like taken over my brain/life for months -- I'll have to figure out what to do with myself now.

Crossposting my brag post from the Bang comm:

Story Title: The Longest Night (I promise ~ I can't promise)
Fandom: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Link(s): at Ao3 (recommended); at FF.net
Summary: When Yona and her friends need shelter for the winter, Kija insists on bringing them to White Dragon Village for a traditional solstice festival honoring his ancestors. The ritual brings messages from the world of the dead, including a visit from the most honored white dragon ancestor of all — but what begins as a joyous meeting threatens to become a tragedy.
Warnings: Heavy Angst, Possible Character Death, Canonical Character Death, brief but intense violence
Characters: Kija, Ensemble, special appearance by Guen
When I Started: Not so long ago, only the beginning of this year. This grew out from my 2016 Yuletide story.
How I Lost My Shit: I don't remember if I did before signing up for the bang, although I did write a few other stories so it must have been back-burnered. Mostly, though, there were things I found challenging about this story so that I just knew I'd have trouble finishing it without some formal commitment. Embarassingly, I actually did lose my shit after posting had started; I went out of town for a weeklong family visit and really slacked off after I got back.
How I Finished My Shit: Sheer determination, but tempered with nonperfectionism. My completely-truthful mantra for this story was "I want to do this one no matter how messy it turns out." Also setting a bunch of personal deadlines way in advance of the actual deadline was helpful --- of course I ended up blowing through all of those, but each one pushed me to get a bit more done. ^_^;

And now it's finished! My beautiful rambly angsty hurty baby! I'm so proud!

Many thanks to my artist, too!

Reflected Light (7140 words) by foxinthestars
(FF.net mirror)
Chapters: 1/1 (Complete)
Fandom: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jae-Ha & Shin-Ah
Characters: Shin-Ah (Akatsuki no Yona), Jae-Ha (Akatsuki no Yona), Ensemble Cameos
Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, Mirrors, Shin-Ah POV, set before Yellow Dragon reveal, Blanket Permission

Summary: A mirror gives Shin-ah a new kind of sight, showing him the one thing usually hidden from him. He has a chance to see his own eyes, and to see them the way Yona sees them — but exploring the possibility means dealing with the mirror’s owner.

Excerpt:

As Shin-ah stared at the mirror, little Ao climbed up his arm until she reached it and gave an excited “P’kyuu!” at the image of a second squirrel. [...  S]he leaped into Shin-ah’s robe, retrieved a nut, and scampered over to make a friendly gift to the other squirrel. The two of them knocked their matching nuts together with a tiny tik, tik sound. Ao finally dropped her nut to make room — and the other nut vanished too.

As Ao blinked at the other squirrel, Shin-ah noticed that the other Shin-ah’s mouth had moved.

‘Let me see your smiling face, okay?’ He remembered Yona’s voice. ‘Lift the edges of your mouth and perk up a smile. I’m sure it will be lovely.’

As he looked at it directly and tried to catch it, it slipped away, but for a moment, the edges of his mouth had lifted up all on their own.

I… smiled.

Yay, more AkaYona fic!  Now I need to turn to that WIP Big Bang story, I need a draft within a month...

Well, my anime season is, for the moment, shot. First the new MST season hit, then Nyaa died (which I can work around but yes, it's a disruption for me), so I just kind of decided to let it slide. If I go back and catch up on anything, it'll be Uchouten Kazoku.

But in the meantime, I was having a craving to watch Kdrama, so I decided to indulge that instead.

( Watching Kdramas as an AkaYona fan, especially The Legend )

I had a sleep-dream last night.  It was vaguely Star Wars-themed, which is odd because I'm not big into Star Wars and haven't even seen Rogue One, but anyway, we were smuggling a surprisingly pulpy old book that was a historical artifact that the Empire feared and wanted to destroy...

But the thing that struck me was what we called the anti-Empire, the good government that we wanted to work for and restore.  We called it "The Great Resource."

And I'm like, yeah, socialist that I am, that is what my brain would call the ideal government, isn't it?

Some discursive ramblings on a whim...

I hear a lot about the role of shame in East Asian cultures, so it strikes me as ironic* that after marinating myself in a bunch of East Asian media and then going back to the American stuff, shame is like the first thing I notice in the American stuff.  American media thinks shame/embarrassment is a great way to teach and a go-to way to be funny.  As someone with an embarrassment squick it trips me up constantly.  (At this very moment I'm pausing my mostly-fun first-ever viewing of Kung Fu Panda for the Xth time to process tripping over vicarious embarrassment again.)  I wonder if this is possibly WHY I'm so drawn to East Asian media --- I mean it's not like it never does it but it feels like it's less?

(*Note this doesn't prove or disprove the broader cultural observation.  It's totally conceivable that a culture where shame is serious business would deal it out less glibly in media [EDIT: or that it is there but not in the forms my own culture has conditioned me to react to/be squicked by].  I'm not qualified to say whether that's the answer but it's possible.)

Looking at shame from another, representation-y angle is how I ended up watching Kung Fu Panda actually.  Y'all might have noticed I'm head over heels for Akatsuki no Yona right now, and I still absolutely adore it, but the thought "could I cosplay this?" gave me a big ol' faceful of body image dysphoria**.  That was where I was earlier today when I got around to sampling Voltron: Legendary Defender on my Netflix trial*** and I was NOT ready for its treatment of Hunk.  ("Okay, if he's stuck in this garbage can, I'm leaving. ...  Okay, so he is stuck and I lied, I'll stick it out to the end of the pilot, but you're on probation, show.")  Between that and throwing in crass "humor" indiscriminately, I rated the pilot "not a keeper."

And then I was like "goddammit, I need something with a fat hero."  (I also may need to re-read the Jes Baker book, having finally bought myself a copy.)   So I started watching Kung Fu Panda.  I'm not to that part quite yet, but it's been credibly promised, and the other heroes have been called out for their fat-shaming and are starting to see the light.  It helps some.  (But even here, to take one detail, Netflix’ summary of the movie refers to Po as “lazy” and I see no actual evidence in the film that he’s lazy.)


(**I did cosplay for Halloween last year --- as Link.  I could slip that one through because Link can be incarnated as anybody.  Not gonna work this time.)
(***BTW, the binge kind of petered out before completing and I'm still working on the new MST3K eps.)

I did indeed sign up for wipbigbang.  Signups are now closed and the first check-in is this coming Sunday, so I need to get cracking now!  (This is actually my first big bang, so I'll have to see how it goes.)

Also this week is the premiere of the return of MST3K!  Yesterday, I got to see a preview of the first new episode and, well, it's MST3K.  The initial scenes at Gizmonic didn't quite click for me as a narrative hook, but the new Mads and their skull helmet band are already charming me (I swear the band was riffing on the Wild Rebels Cereal jingle at some point).  Jonah and the bots are --- well, they're an MST crew.  They haven't wowed me yet but they're doing fine, and this show has had cast changes before.  They always take a bit to settle but they've always been great.  It's nice to see Gypsy actually performed by a woman and possibly being a bit more free to act (what was with the cooler she brought into the theater?), and I did enjoy the international monster rap and got it stuck in my head.  The first movie, Reptilicus, was almost too cheesy to really shine, but the commentary was good.  So far, well, this is MST3K --- nothing more, nothing less.  And in my book, that's awesome.

The new season premieres for real this Friday on Netflix, so I signed up for a free trial to see if it would work, and miracle of miracles it actually did, despite my crappy ISP!  (I also get downloads as a backer bonus, but I'll watch it on Netflix first for convenience and to show my support.)  The good news is that it works; the bad news is that, browsing around, I had the feeling my tastes were too niche for it to be worth the money on an ongoing basis.  So like, I'll watch the new MST season and maybe try Voltron: Legendary Defender and then probably cancel because I'd rather be watching niche anime and trying period/costume Kdramas.

Between the Big Bang starting and the MST squee, though, I may have to be more ruthless with the new anime season and set a higher bar for sampling and watching so I don't get overstretched.