Madly Singing in the Mountains

This burn-out phase has been going on for far too long. I lost my voice on December 17th, if my twitter feed serves me correctly, was beleaguered by coughing within the week, and still have the tail end of that same cough right now. When I talk, I sound like a toad. My energy is at an all-time low.

I slept through new year's because I was feeling under the weather.

But enough of me being miserable. I promised friends that I would be tackling Homestuck and One Piece simultaneously over holiday break. As it stands, I am 1000+ pages into Homestuck and 100+ chapters into One Piece.

One Piece owns my soul. I am resisting the urge to just spam &hearts and weepy emotes in an effort to muster up some coherent thought. But what can I say?? I literally love everybody. Luffy especially. I want to stretch his face sobbbb ok no this whole being coherent thing isn't working ;; Let me... let me just peel an orange and try to calm down.

Waugh. Anyway.

Unexpectedly got myself into Berserk over break as well. I want to have enough canon under my belt so I'll be able to properly appreciate the movies coming out this year. I'm falling a little behind though; my Berserk watching buddies currently have me outstripped by a good 4 episodes or so.

The last episode of Arakawa Under the Bridge is still sitting unwatched on my computer. I don't know what I'm planning at this point, maybe awaiting news of a 3rd season before watching what is currently "the end"? I really, really adore the cast of the anime and, as soppy as this may sound, the messages strike a chord with me through the nonsense.

But 2011 really has been the year of Gintama for me. Since I started it last January, I'm sure you're all worn out from hearing me talk about it haha~ Fandoms burn strong for about a year for me, is how it's always been. I can feel my obsession settling down to a healthy devotion alongside series that will always have my unabated love, like Digimon, Escaflowne, Inuyasha, Pet Shop of Horrors, Fullmetal Alchemist, Twelve Kingdoms... I will never be less than delighted to talk, write, draw, sing about any of these, with anyone, at anytime. These are the series that make it for me. There are those that don't quite make it (Bleach, in spite of having a claim on 8 years of my life, and I STILL cannot quit it) as well as those that die ugly (Hetalia). But Gintama is one of the ones that'll be a part of me forever.

For 2012, I am allocating my energy to my own writing and music, as well as promoting the Magatama trilogy again. I want to work on more collaborations this year, both personal projects and that of others. I still have my gintama hotpot fills to deliver on and birthdays to draw for, but outside of that I can safely promise that we're not to expect nearly as many fanworks as I rolled out in 2011.

What does this mean? Probably that I'll be losing all my twitter followers again lmfao. (Honestly, I felt sorry for the friends who followed me pre-April '11; they must have thought my account got hijacked by some gintama-tweeting bot.)

And now, what's a(n) end/beginning of the year post without a doodle dump. The good thing about not posting one of these in months is that we end up with a slightly more scrupulous selection, haha, and in actual chronological order this time...

( 33 pictures under the cut )

GDCrew was interviewed in the 12th issue of COSTOP magazine, which to my understanding is a fairly well-known fashion/cosplay magazine in mainland China. (You can see that Ukrainian cosplayer/cosplay photographer kirawinter was featured in this magazine too, doing an interview on cosplay culture in Ukraine.)

GDCrew's interview had a little more to do with their One Piece skit last year than their Gintama skit this year, I felt, but it also has a lot of insight into how the team works. Translated text with photos below the cut!

( Read more... )

Links you'll want to check out:

GDCrew's One Piece skit (unsubbed) on youtube.

kularock's flickr set has over a hundred high quality photos from GDCrew's One Piece performance at nationals last year!

My GDCrew appreciation post has ~70 photos from this year's Gintama skit. (I have saved over 700 photos of GDCrew, and I don't even know what to do with them, so if there's anything you'd like to see, I do take requests. I have sent countless pictures to ppl via email, skype, etc. So just let me know what you want!)

The #gdcrew tag on my tumblr is updated much more frequently with photos than my blog here.

I am back from my very first con (Youmacon 2011).

( photo-heavy post-con write-up below cut )

This is not a love letter but a thank you letter. I haven't written one in 3 years since Avatar: The Last Airbender ended its run....



( 'Weep and ask for help. Lean on me with your runny nose. Cry when you feel like crying. Laugh when you feel like laughing. When you're tearing up with an ugly face, I'll give you a good cry with an uglier face. When you're laughing so hard your stomach hurts, I'll laugh in a louder voice. That's how it should be.' — Gintoki )

I've just finished watching the first episode of Sket Dance in preparation for the Gintama x Sket Dance crossover episode next week.

( My impression based on episode 1 )

Anyway, I was wondering, for those on my flist who follow Sket Dance in anime or manga form, is the first episode sufficient to introduce me to the Sket Dance cast? Do I need to watch 4 more episodes by next week, or am I all set to go?



In other news, I dropped my glasses and broke them irreparably last Thursday morning, which led to discovering that having a twitlist comprised of 80% Gintama fans makes the world a much better place to be. So in spite of having held legless lenses up to my face in class, many failed attempts to glue the pieces together with sonicorca's hot glue gun, stumbling half-blind around campus, and getting bemused glances at work because these several layers of bright teal duct tape on my glasses match my camisole (thanks, I try!), I feel like a ninja assassin; I will think of these glasses as Gin-san, and I won't relinquish them for anything short of digivolving battle mecha magical shoujo frames!!



(which should be arriving sometime next week ahaha)

ETA. If you're not seeing photos in this post, it's because LiveJournal is down, again, what else is new. And I am an idiot for hosting anything on LJ in the first place, I apologize. -_-

G.D. who?


A dance crew turned competitive cosplay team without leaving their dancing roots. Still fairly new on the scene, GDCrew's first notably big production was a One Piece skit in 2010 (pictured above, returning cosplayers labeled — to the best of my ability — with their Gintama roles).

This year, GDCrew decided on a Gintama production. And forgive my fangirl opinion, but that was like the best decision of the year, period. For the subtitled video and HD video download, refer to my earlier post. A picspam from both regionals, nationals, and offstage shenanigans lies below the cut so as not to break all your layouts.

( 2011银魂：跌倒了即使能哭着爬起来的也是纯爷们！ )

Eeehyup. That's all I got for ya here.


Truth be told, I've got 400+ pics of GDC saved and my collection grows every day because I am a major creep. This picspam was only like ~70. So if you've got any requests, feel free to ask because if it's out there, I've probably got it. orz (And of course that means a slew of new pics being added in the original Dreamwidth comments.)

/collapses

Every year I get all sadface around August 8. (On the other hand I ride a wave of euphoria around March 29.) It's probably just a coincidence.


10 minute speedpaint revisit of an old concept from 2007 /chokes I was 16 my god that was a long time ago

Come to think of it, Escaflowne has been with me for nearly half of my life. Since I was 12 years old (it was my first anime).

Man, I really intend to draw some more answers for the Kamui ask blog tonight but now all I can think of is various scenarios in which Abuto dies. gdi too many Escaflowne parallels. and I always become invested in the characters who don't get cut any slack Q__Q

Mini doodle dump under the cut.

( probably mostly things you've already seen if you're on tumblr/deviantart )

Trudged back in the rain after morning tea and got rained on trying to keep the umbrella over my little cousin Gary. The whole time I was thinking, if only I had a massive umbrella like Night King Hosen (who always made me think of Phoenix King Ozai because 鳳仙 means "phoenix immortal" — which now that I think of it is rather ironic considering that he burned to death in the sun — and their two characters do resemble each other in more ways than one).

Then we watched some Jackie Chan Adventures while I tried to pick up an unsecured wireless signal from another apartment building. Katsura totally watches Jackie Chan Adventures in my Gintama headcanon.

Dreamed last night that I was driving (or being driven) through a strange city where all the road systems were underground and the tunnel walls were completely covered in ivy with phosphorescent blue and purple flowers. Somehow I think this was brought on by the drive back from the airport yesterday during which I noticed how my mom's side of the family has skin like paper; you can see their veins so clearly, blue and purple.

I'll be flying back across the Atlantic on the 24th and won't make it in time for artemis_elric's birthday party. I was flying the other way this time last month on nota_lone's birthday. Why is it that every year I always seem to be up in the air, missing my friends' birthdays? At least I'm bringing presents. #sakamoto #forever alone

Thanks for all the info about your laptops! I ended up buying a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge, and I'm running both Win7 and Ubuntu 11.04 on it. I'm pleased with the machine so far, but I've only just gotten it. So we'll see. I won't be bringing it with me to Hangzhou though because it's rather large, and I'll only be gone a month this time (as opposed to 3 months like last year).

Artdump under the cut (April-June).

( Forgot that I draw? Haha don't worry. I forgot how to draw. )

À bientôt~

It's been far too long to make a cohesive post, so bullet points away~

• I haven't been on lately. But to cut to the chase I am so done being an emotional wreck, so I'm going to put myself back together and spend the rest of the month doing all the things I've been saying I would do.


• I am currently taking a self-imposed break from Gintama as punishment for reading ahead in the manga. In a few weeks I plan on watching the entire Kabuki Town/Four Heavenly Kings arc in one go and ideally locked in a padded room where no one can hear me scream.


• I have been procrastinating with regards to website updates since I finished reading Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince. Starting Monday I'm going to be recording chapter one (split into how many parts, I'm not sure yet) and making sketches for the illustrations to go along with said podcast.


• Ordered the first three (or was it four?) volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire as a present for the small brother person; it should be here in a couple of days. I've just finished watching 2 eps of the HBO series and I'm not sure if I want to read the books, because I know they're long, and I'm afraid that at some point long series of long books will turn into hours of my life that I want back, a la The Wheel of Time.


• I read a good 7 volumes of WoT in my formative years (elementary-middle school), and while I ended up dropping the series with no intention of picking it back up, I still retain a certain fondness for a few characters whom I don't think were treated fairly. (Moiraine, for instance. Also, I'm apparently the only person on the planet who ships Elayne/Birgitte.) In short, Rand is Ichigo and WoT is Bleach and Jordan is Kubo except dead.


• Speaking of hours of my life I'd like to have back, why did I start watching Tiger & Bunny? Sunrise production and cool premise. Right. But so much cringe-worthy dialog, shoddy pacing, lazy set-ups and cop-out transitions, missed opportunities for character development, negative chemistry between the leads, Bunny is such a reticent little pita, the villains are like Bleach filler arc rejects and AUGH are the writers even being paid because they either won't or can't decide what they're trying to do here. I think the question I should be asking at this point is why I'm still watching it. Maybe because complaining about it on twitter with pseudo_tsuga is so much fun? :'D


• After much wrestling with my hipster layout, I've finally gotten infinite scrolling to work on my tumblr page! 8D I'm more excited than I should be about a silly little thing like that, I know.


• Talking with pseudo_tsuga has reminded me how much I want a second season of the Twelve Kingdoms anime. /sigh