#5000

[catystorm]

Wow. I have officially posted to this journal 5,000 entries. That's a lot of talk, a lot of mindless blather and fangirling and doujinshi and picspam. Here's to hoping for 5,000 more!

At any rate, Supernatural is on notice again. I was generally pissed off at the episode to start with; if you need a creepy creature of the night to eat brains, you don't first go to kitsune of all creatures. It bothers me a lot that kitsune are generally trickster characters and not, as a whole, malicious ... and the most fun part of their nature, the shape-shifting and the general tomfoolery is completely ignored to turn them into ... what. Something that sucks out parts of people's brains. Fox-demons.

Overall I liked the episode, though, despite my aggrievement over the misuse of kitsune ... until of course the last five minutes of it. Another dead female to add to the gallery, another dead (former) flame of Sam's. I can't even be angry about it any more. I'm just disappointed. I thought the writers had moved past this, I thought the show had moved past this.

I don't even know. I have found more interest and more excitement in the new episodes of The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle than I have in a show that actually got me to write fic for it. I think this is why I don't fall into Western fandoms that often, especially for ongoing shows ... I always wind up disappointed.

I would honestly rather a show be killed off in its prime than ran egregiously into the ground like this.

In other news, I am stealing a meme blatantly from zakai_, because it is relevant to my interests and I feel like rambling at length.

Day 1 - How were you exposed to the phenomenon that is Fullmetal Alchemist?

I never was much; it was not yet a phenomenon when I found it. I found some scans on my external hard drive dated from 2002; scanlations of the first few chapters of FMA that I must have downloaded when I went on missions of "download ALL THE MANGA" ... back in those days there weren't things like MangaFox to find chapters easily. One would stumble across direct downloads on websites, or you had to know what you were looking for. I would often download the first few chapters of the most random series, just looking for a gem here or there. I honestly don't recall if I read those first handful of chapters or not or what my thoughts were. I possibly never opened the .zip files.

I watched the first episode of the first anime almost completely by accident. I was on the hunt for the first episode of Peacemaker Kurogane - it was airing in the same Fall 2003 anime season. Long-time readers of this journal know how big a fan I am of Rurouni Kenshin, this Shinsengumi show piqued my interest so I wanted to get in on the ground-level. On the direct-download page I found for the first episode of PMK was a show labeled "Hagane no Renkinjutsushi 1: Raw." As direct download pages for full anime episodes were rare as hell in those days, I went ahead and downloaded that too. I was in Japanese 201 and full of bluster that I would be able to at least glean some understanding from the episode.

My roommate and I put the episode on. We had no idea what was going on, there were little kids and a magic circle and narration that was going too fast for either of us to hope to parse. They were doing something, and things went bad, really really bad - and then the episode cut to a short guy and a suit of armor flailing about in the desert. We were completely confused and stopped the episode, deciding to wait for the subtitles. I found the episode subtitled the next day.

That was in October of 2003, eight years ago.

I realize I've kind of answered the second question with the first one here; so I will leave off the more detailed thoughts I had once I was able to understand what was going on at the time for tomorrow. To be honest I kind of want to answer them all today in long form, but I will be patient. This is meant to make me actually post more often, after all.


Day 2- What was the first episode you saw of the series? What were your thoughts then?
Day 3- Your favorite character
Day 4- Did you read the manga? What did you think?
Day 5- Who's scarier? Izumi or Hawkeye? Why?
Day 6- Your favorite Homunculus
Day 7- Did you see Conqueror of Shambala? Your thoughts?
Day 8- Your favorite antagonist
Day 9- Your thoughts on the first anime
Day 10- Barry the Chopper: love him or hate him?
Day 11- Your favorite fight
Day 12- Your all-time favorite line(s)
Day 13- Would you ever take the risk and do human transmutation?
Day 14- Which artistic style did you prefer? The first anime or the manga/Brotherhood?
Day 15- Your favorite animal/chimera character
Day 16- Do you have a favorite episode and/or manga chapter? Why?
Day 17- Do you have a favorite ship or crack pairing?
Day 18- Your thoughts on Brotherhood
Day 19- What is your overall favorite moment in the series?
Day 20- Your favorite anime OP/end
Day 21- Do you think Maes Hughes is an adorable and loving father or just creepy?
Day 22- Your opinion on the anime: raw or dubbed?
Day 23- Do you have a favorite Elric brother? Why or why not?
Day 24- Do you have any opinions of the OST? What are they?
Day 25- Roy Mustang: What do you think?
Day 26- Has the series impacted your life in any way? How?
Day 27- What attracted you to the series overall?
Day 28- You know someone is an FMA fan when.
Day 29- What did you think of the series' end?
Day 30- What do you think happens to the characters after the series ended for good?