.: i'm sure the view from heaven :.

I am not sure what to make of the dream I had last night, but I am reasonably sure it is Ed's fault. Maybe I shouldn't be reading alchemy books before bed. I dunno.

Pernelle really does not want me to go to work today. She is laying across my throat and purring like a car motor.

I have a half-finished Sceptre of Flamel fic I am staring at right now. It needs to cooperate. I am going to beat all of these prompt lists into fucking submission and Win All Of The Things*. All of them. Considering I started at least half of them in 2009 this will be an adventure.

This piece of fanart currently owns my soul. Shoulders. Nnnghghghgh.

So I ran into my little brother's doppelganger at Carino's with my parents. That was completely surreal. He had the same hair, body shape, facial shape, manner of dress, stride, all of it. If you looked at his face dead-on you could tell it wasn't him, and his voice was different, but THAT WAS IT. It was CREEPY. I have dubbed him Heiderich.

I need to go to the grocery store for celery and soda after I get off of work. Wish me luck.

On one hand, I don't work tomorrow. On the other hand, I had planned the entire week around the assumption I would be working. So, I am making my own Thanksgiving and eating it while Writing Fic. I've got some (pre-made) turkey, gravy, mashed potatos, mac 'n'cheese, corn, and biscuits. I am GOOD TO GO. *thumbs up*

I cannot believe I've created a verse with vampires and werewolves. But Ed and Roy are so cute in it. And I adore my mythology. What the hell is wrong with me I am writing an angel war on one front, a zombie apocalypse on the other and vampires and werewolves on the third. I honestly don't think I'll ever get tired of FMA because I can KEEP CREATING ALTERNATE UNIVERSES.

Oh, the last day I did the 30 Days meme I said I probably have written hundreds of thousands of words of FMA fanfic. So, I tallied. Not including RPs; things written by hand, crossovers (muse'verse, stuff with Kenshin), or files not encoded as .rtf or .txt, I have ... 1.1 million words of FMA fanfic on my hard drive.

I am insane.

Edward you are making me insane.

Day 27- What attracted you to the series overall?

I think I answered this way back at the beginning of this meme but, curiosity. I downloaded the first episode back in 2003, raw, the week it aired and it blew my mind. I think we got to the point where Ed is chasing Al around in the desert screaming his head off and went "fuck, I need SUBTITLES."

And as for what kept me? Interesting characters, a compelling story, and the well-researched alchemy.


* there are no things to actually Be Won. Unless you count more prompt lists.

God, why is it so hot. It's November. It is so warm. I couldn't sleep. Ahhhh so fukkin hot.

Day 24- Do you have any opinions of the OST? What are they?

Ooshima Michiru >>>> Senju Akira

This might be first-anime bias coming into play here, though I really have no attachment to the Brotherhood OSTs. (Although they have absolutely gorgeous covers omfg.) I can pop them into my playlist and ... the music is pretty, but not memorable in the way Ooshima's is. I don't get goosebumps from the music of Brotherhood like I do when Kiro or Dante's theme comes up in my playlist. Or Bratja. Oh hell, Bratja.

( The Remaining Days )

Anyone want to come write my bigbang for me? I can tell you what's going to happen, I just can't seem to write it.

Day 22- Your opinion on the anime: raw or dubbed?

Raw. I prefer most everything in its native language; and that includes anime. Plus, I can't stand half of the dub voices - and I'm sorry, the dub!voice for Alphonse in Brotherhood just was not right.

( The Remaining Days )

I got a little tiny bit written last night to add to my cumulative word count, but NOTHING on Waterstone. I want these words out of my head, dammit. :(

4381 / 50000 words. 9% done!

OM NOM ED PUMPKIN WILL EAT YOUR FAAAACE.

Day 20- Your favorite anime OP/end

Well, I was going to do my favorite op/ed for each series, but for the sake of brevity I will narrow it down.



"Period", by Chemistry - the 4th Brotherhood opening. I can't even tell you why this one is my favorite, it just amazing. I get goosebumps. >3>

Honorable mention goes to Rewrite; the fourth original anime opening, for much the same reasons; and Ready Steady Go, the second original anime opening, for bringing the awesome (and foreshadowing the movie, holy crap).



"Tobira no Mukou e" by Yellow Generation - the 2nd original anime ending. Goodness, I love this song. (Also, it was covered by Paku Romi, which makes me lul.)

Honorable mention goes to "Let it Out" by Miho Fukuhara, the 2nd Brotherhood ending.

Oddly, my favorites between the two series occur at the same time - favorite opening being the fourth, favorite ending being the second. That amuses me.

( The Remaining Days )

I don't even know how I heard it through my headphones and my entirely-too-anachronistic-writing-music but the TV said something about the Philosopher's Stone and my head SHOT up. I don't even KNOW how I heard it. Maybe I hallucinated it. I mean, I was playing AC/DC ENTIRELY too loud - so I rewound the TV. (God bless DVR, I tell ya...)

Nope, it's something about Merlin and alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone. Uh, scary. Still don't know how I heard that.

Seems I had a break in ye olde Writer's Block. HUZZAH. Alphonse is cooperating now! Yes, it's all Al's fault because it's his and Sofie's scene ffs. But I knocked out 2500 words - I might yet add more today but I'm not gonna sweat it since Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle are on in like, an hour. Plus, I want to work on one of my unfinished fics. I've found a lot of them while sorting. Ah ha ha. T___T;

I should do a poll for NaNo to see what I should do this year. I'm waffling; I will either retool Revenant as one large zombie-fic of a story (highly likely, I've got an entire outline laid done from start to finish); or maybe do the original Sceptre of Flamel fic. Or I have two large-scale reverse'verse fics that would be nice to flesh out and make good. I don't know. I might still be flailing my arms up and down about Waterstone, I've made the partial draft deadline because I'm at 11k right now, but the story hasn't even started. I'm scared of this fic, It's going to crush my last BB entry in terms of size.

Day 18- Your thoughts on Brotherhood

Hm, where to begin. I am insanely happy that Brotherhood exists. The animation, the story, the fact that it revived a flagging fandom ... how many series get a complete reboot a little over four years after the show ends? I enjoy it. I can't say I don't like it because hell I turn into a pile of gibbering mush over bits. But I don't love it the way I do the first series. Brotherhood has a lot of faults; some that carry over from the manga itself (but that's not to say that the first anime didn't have faults either! It had plenty as well). My biggest complain is how average-shounen the end of the series felt, but I don't think that there was any way to escape that or do it better. Also, the very-rushed HERE EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THIS BIT of the first ten or twelve episodes. The presentation there turned a lot of people off the show, and it could have been handled better.

The fact that they recast a lot of the characters, too. I was not pleased at Shinichiro Miki being cast as Roy initially; but he proved his worth. I liked his Roy a lot, and like I have stated previously Brotherhood's Roy is what allowed me to get into Roy's head and write him properly.

And of course there are a lot of pluses. The animation of Ed, for instance. He very clearly progresses from child to adult during the course of the series, and, gih. HE GOT TALL. Oh that will never cease to make me flail around on the ground. TALL.

In conclusion, uh. I love Brotherhood a lot, but not as much as the first anime. But certainly a lot more than other anime. Definitely more than Supernatural, but we all know that Supernatural is On Notice right now anyway.

( The Remaining Days )

My god, today feels like Sunday. It's not, it's THURSDAY. I still have FOUR WHOLE DAYS OFF. This is insanity, I tell you, SHEER INSANITY.

Also, my parents are insane but I think everyone knows this already. I saw my mother yesterday when she and a friend drove through on their way to Gatlinburg - and my mom had DVDs for me. Danger Man set one, woo~. Old spy shows make me glee; three guesses who I got that from and the first two don't count. Also there is some Nic Cage 9/11 movie I hadn't heard of because my father brilliantly bought himself two copies. Dunno what I'm going to do with THAT, but. Whatever. Patrick McGoohan~. Of course now I have to collect the rest because I hate owning incomplete series hahaha. The Prisoner is the "sequel" to Danger Man/Secret Agent Man, if that explains anything.

I still need to decide what to do for a Halloween pic/fic this year. Hrm hrm.

Day 16- Do you have a favorite episode and/or manga chapter? Why?

Not... really. I mean, I enjoy MOMENTS, or arcs and stuff but I can't pick out a single episode or chapter and being all OH GOD THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER.

Man, the only thing this meme is doing to me is making me want to sit and watch the first anime and then Brotherhood back to back.

You all are NOT allowed to let me do this. TRUST ME. IT WILL BE BAD.

( The Remaining Days )

I've noticed that lately the morning news has been mining all their interesting stories that are not local from the reddit front page. Today they did a story about a recent AMA. This ... bothers me. Not that they do the stories, but that they don't cite their sources.

Day 14- Which artistic style did you prefer? The first anime or the manga/Brotherhood?

In this vein, I actually prefer the animation of Brotherhood. The animation for the first anime is beautiful and consistent; and it was very subtle the changes as Edward grew up. But I particularly like Edward's hair in Brotherhood, especially the Xerxes connotation and it gave both Ed and Al a very visual link to their past that was lacking in both the first anime and the manga. I also liked Roy's slightly-younger-looking character design as well, he was far more expressive in Brotherhood.

( The remaining days. )

God I cannot wake up in the mornings when it is dark and rainy. I can. Not. I wonder if I can invest in a sun-lamp and a timer, noise I can ignore and turn off without waking up, actual light means I would flail out of bed.

Day 12- Your all-time favorite line(s)

I'm not one much for favorite lines in the show itself; mostly because I 100% prefer the Japanese to the English; but any line that would stick with me would be in English because my Japanese is poor. There, but poor. I am particularly fond of "I'm not going to die before you, you morally bankrupt Colonel with a god complex."

Or "It's hotter in here than two chimeras mating in a boiler room."

( The Remaining Days )

My cat is being Clingy McClingerson right now. She doesn't want me to go to work. I don't want to go to work. I want to sleeeeep.Nine more days until vacation. At least I got something written, woo hoo. (Ed's not a soldier, he doesn't react well to death. T__T; Why am I writing this fic again? BECAUSE I'M INSANE, THAT'S WHY.) I'm not writing zombie fic, what are you talking about.

Day 10- Barry the Chopper: love him or hate him?

Indifferent, mostly. He served a larger purpose in Brotherhood than he did in the first anime - and while his purpose in the story is important I really can't find myself to care all that much about his character.

Holy crap I had the weirdest coherent dream last night - weird and coherent enough that I might be able to mine it for fic. (Well, if I cut out a lot of the weird stuff and the modern-day tech I could mine it for fic.) It was one of those rare ones where half the time I was watching what Ed was doing and half the time I *was* Ed and it was first-person. No fighting this time, but there were cameos from Mira and Issac flailing around (good lord, when was the last time I thought about Baccano!?), and for a while Ed was sitting next to Gajeel. (Of all the Fairy Tail characters...) There was this sub-plot about pigs and piglets or something, as an aside for the main plot. And also, a competition pushing ridiculously stupid heavy book-carts up a hill that somehow Russell won. So, so weird.

It's been quite a while since I had a vivid dream like that!

Day 8- Your favorite antagonist

Hm, this is a tough one for me. I'm not largely sympathetic to villains, but antagonists =/= villains. I know for a long while I was sympathetic to the first anime's Envy because - yeah, he was dicked around a bit but that wasn't enough an excuses for his psychosis. I attach to a small handful of characters to the exclusion of just about everyone else so I didn't pursue that interest.

I think probably I might go with the first anime's Wrath. I say that because I was fascinated by his back-story; but also because he was a child and a blank enough slate that I could mould him into any sort of character I wanted. (See: a large chunk of fandom's early obsession with Heiderich, who was one of the few elements of CoS that I could care less about.) In fact I did use his character in my samurai!AU as one of the few created obakémono who went against type and he actually bummed around the countryside with Hagane for a while. Did a lot of fanart of him, actually. Ah, memories.

As for Brotherhood, I never felt any real sympathy for the villains. To me they just read as a typical shounen adversary that needed to be overcome. If anything, Brotherhod made me sympathize with Hohenheim - which to long-time readers might come as a shock considering my epic and vitriolic hatred of the man. So I will leave my choice at Wrath, and disregard the capability of antagonist to also mean just someone opposed to the main character, because then I would wax on about characters that are antagonistic but not necessarily antagonists.

In conclusion, I'm gonna do my laundry, play with the dogs and devote today to writing. Wish me luck!

( The Other Days )