Oh my God you can't be serious.

We interrupt the Crow/Aki posts (partly because part two is taking much longer than expected) for another half-rant.

Young Adult romance-like things.  The same genre as Twilight, basically.

They can be done right.  I hope to God they can be done right.

I just want to take these female protagonists involved in love triangles by the neck and shake some sense into them.  Oh my God.

Yes, there are two guys you are attracted to trying to woo you.  You pick one of them.  The other one backs off a little bit as to not cause a huge dramafest with your boyfriend but still doesn't give up, exactly.  Okay?  Okay.  That's perfectly reasonable.  (If you have a love triangle situation, at least.)

But when you've only been boyfriend/girlfriend for about a month, the world is not going to end if your boyfriend goes away or dies.  Holy shit, woman, you do not need your boyfriend in order to function enough to stay alive.  LOSING YOUR BOYFRIEND IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.  LIFE WILL GO ON.  I don't care how much you think you're ~soul mates, you're not going to die.

However (and this is a big however), I have never been in love, so I can't be certain if I would feel any different.  I can't even say this never happens to anyone (I'm sure it does!).

It just pisses me off to read.

Irrationally.

Especially if it hurts the feelings of the suitor I'm rooting for.  I MEAN...

Especially if the boyfriend is creating an unhealthy relationship and the other would create a balanced one.

You have no idea what you're doing, chiclet.  Okay, yeah, having a protector is pretty sweet (especially if you're a weakling like me), but if they're trying to control what you do under the guise of keeping you safe?  Yeah, not worth it.

Maybe that's just my bias against clingy guys showing.

Oh wow this entire post makes me sound like a raging bitch doesn't it.

ALL RIGHT HERE WE GO: Crow/Aki and Why it Should be Shipped, PART ONE

Template is from ship_manifesto, even though I have 1: never done this before and 2: have not made a claim.  Just because I'd sound like a spectacular scatterbrain without one.

Just as a warning, this post was only going to be one part, but it ended up ridiculously long (like, so long it made the preview scrollbar look like this and that is just insane for one post), so.  You have been warned.  This is only the beginning.

So, without further ado, here it is:

Black Bird / Black Rose

or, Why They Work: Crow/Aki

Now first, a disclaimer:  I do not think these two are canon.  I am not saying they are canon.  That's just silly.  However, I am saying they're plausible thanks to hints from canon.  Okay?  Okay.

Also if you have corrections for me, TELL ME SO I CAN FIX IT thank you.

The Characters:

Crow Hogan: Black Bird

Age: 18

Nickname:  鉄砲玉のクロウ (Crow the Bullet)

Deck:  Blackfeather [TCG: Black Wing]

D-Wheel:  Black Bird

Crow grew up as a Satellite kid with Yuusei and Jack at Martha's place.  He learned to read from Duel Monsters cards, and didn't have friends until he started playing.  Also, his parents died in Zero Reverse.  (Poor kid)

Later on, he took in other Satellite orphans and decided "hey, I'm going to raise them!" and joined Yuusei, Jack, and Kiryu in Team Satisfaction: a duelist gang with the goal of being the kings of Satellite in order to make it at least a marginally better place.  Crow was the first to leave TeamSat after Kiryu went bonkers.  I assume this is when he went to stay with Pearson, but I haven't watched that subbed and apparently it makes very little sense anyway.

Oh also, those marks on his face?  Each one stands for a time he's been arrested.

Personality:  Crow is very boisterous (read: something of a Large Ham) and excitable with a strong set of morals.  When it comes down to it, he's very skilled in the role of caretaker, what with stealing cards from Security to give to his pet orphans - like Robin Hood.  He likes fairness, even though he runs Blackfeathers.  Also, he has a bigger sense of responsibility than he lets on.

Ah, the one I could babble about forever.  Blame the RP.

Aki Izayoi: Black Rose

Age: 16 17 whoops

Nickname: 黒薔薇の魔女 (Black Rose Witch)

Deck:  Plant-type (rose theme)

D-Wheel: Bloody Kiss (what the hell were they smoking)

Aki grew up with her stay-at-home mom Setsuko and senator father Hideo in a suburb of Neo Domino City.  She wanted to duel so badly and finally got a deck for her 5th birthday.  However, her dad was barely ever around (thanks to being a senator and all) and she kind of resented him for it.  So when Hideo paused a duel to go back to work, she flipped out and slammed him against a wall with her new psychic powers and her signer mark appeared.  Her parents were then terrified of her, and Hideo called her a monster to her face.  AWESOME.

They eventually sent her to Duel Academia, where she remained an outcast because of her powers and she started hating everything.  She ran away at least twice, burned her schoolbooks at least once, then saw her parents laughing and happy at home and came to the conclusion that they were happier without her.  DOUBLE AWESOME.  So she started dueling people in the Daimon Area as the Black Rose Witch and became an urban legend just to scare the shit out of people.  After a while, she was taken in by Divine of the Arcadia Movement and lived there through the Arcadia Arc (~episode 66) and after a few go-throughs of battle therapy and the Dark Signer mess, was tamed and joined the Good Guys and made up with her parents.

Personality:  There are two sides to Aki: Early Series and Later Series.
Early:  Pushes everyone away because she is convinced nobody would be able to love her and didn't want to deal with the pain of losing those she cared about.  She hurts, and hurts other people to deal with it.  At first glance, she seems very together, but as soon as the surface is cracked, she goes berserk.  But in reality, she just wants friends who see beyond her psychic powers and can accept her for who she is, no matter what.  Even if she doesn't see herself as human.
Later:  VERY protective of her friends.  Still seemingly mature and actually not really underneath, but not anywhere near as cold as she used to be.  She takes on a playful attitude and reaches out to help others (mostly her friends).  Aki still remembers her past and uses it to her advantage.
One thing that stays the same?  Her soft spot for children.  Hurt them, and she hurts you.


And...that's all for Part One.

Next Post ⇒ That Stuff I Call Evidence

Cardfight!! Vanguard: A review of sorts

...First episode's out.

I don't really like judging a series off of one episode because there isn't enough there to judge on.  I mean, really, it's the first episode, they have to world-build and character-build and whatnot, you can't get a good feel for it yet.  That's just how first episodes are.

That's probably one reason why I waited seven episodes to try out 5D's.  Anyway.

First impression:  Pretty okay, actually.

It seems to have a lot of throwbacks to YGO DM, but that's pretty much to be expected from a card game anime created by one of Takahashi's cohorts (I don't even know the right word, okay.  I just know Vanguard was created by the person who did YGO R [which I also love] with Takahashi's supervision)

Throwbacks like:  really shy kid gets something important stolen, they seem to become friends later on judging by the OP/ED.  And, you know, the card games.

Except Main Character has never played said Card Game.

And it really seems like Main Character and Anti-Hero are in love or something.  Okay?  Just watch it and you'll see what I mean.  I don't even ship boylove and I picked up on it.

Anyway, the plot is as follows:

The protagonist of this story, Sendo Aichi, is a timid boy in his third year of middle school. He had been living his life looking backward rather than forward, trying not to stand out. However, he had one thing that kept him going - the "Blaster Blade," a card from a card game that was given to him when he was little. That card is the reason why he begins to engage in Card Fights, something that changes his life drastically.
The name of the card game is "Vanguard." The game takes place in a different planet called "Klay," and due to a never before seen play system, it becomes popular throughout the world.

Aichi, immediately attracted by Vanguard, meets friends such as Togura Misaki and Katsuragi Kamui, along with other rivals. Through friendly rivalry with them, Aichi begins to enjoy a fulfilling life. Aichi, however, has a goal: to once again battle with a Vanguard Fighter by the name of Kai Toshiki. Kai Toshiki is an aloof and cold-hearted high schooler who has outstanding abilities in the world of Vanguard. He is also the reason why Aichi started playing the game. For him, Toshiki is the person who saved him from his boring life and introduced him to Vanguard. In order to get better at Vanguard, Aichi puts his soul into it every day. He wishes that someday, he'll be able to battle Toshiki and have him recognize his worth.

(From Crunchyroll)

To be completely honest, I was way more accepting of this than the announcement for the fourth Yu-Gi-Oh series, zeXal.  Probably because Vanguard doesn't mean my beloved 5D's is ending.  (oh god too emotionally attached)

But I'll be giving ZX a try too, just because that's how I roll.  Probably after a few episodes air, like I did with 5D's.  Yeah.

Anyway, if you like YGO and aren't that kind of fan (i.e. purist who HATES EVERYTHING other than DM), this seems like it could shape up to a good parallel.  A good, modern/newly-airing parallel.

And the card game's rules are different.  So different that I'll probably have to watch a ton of junk to even have an inkling at the rules, because I'm by default terrible at card games unless it's a hands-on learning experience.  Seriously, I didn't understand Duel Monsters until I played a video game or two.  Or three.

Happy New Year!

2010 is dead!  Finally.

HERE, HAVE A BABBLE ABOUT THINGS THAT PISS ME OFF


Editing errors in published works.  They're bound to happen, especially in draft after draft after draft, but mostly caught after going through an editor.

Editors are human.  They make mistakes, sure, but they're hired to fix the mistakes of others.

Some don't do a very good job at it.

I've seen fanfiction writers who have better grammatical skills than professional writers, while the pros get editors, fanfiction authors either use a beta (editor) or go through it themselves.

But some mistakes are just plain unacceptable.

Since getting my Kindle, I've done a lot more reading.  A lot more reading.  And, to my disappointment, a few of them have errors that should never have gotten through in the first place.  It makes me wonder whether these people are self-published and don't have a good enough grasp on the English language to edit their own work completely or their editors really...suck.

One book kept using 'enduring' in place of 'endearing' - I'm not completely sure how anyone could make that mistake.  When talking about children, enduring usually takes on a negative connotation (for me, at least) because it means putting up with something.  Endearing, on the other hand, means sweet and you just have to love them because of how cute they are.

Enduring should never be mixed up with endearing.  It doesn't even make sense to do that.

A series, however, is riddled with mistakes.  But I read it, because it's interesting to me.  They've mixed up their/there/they're a few times, have continuity errors, overuse the dash - not that it's not okay to do that sometimes, but when you have it more than twice in a sentence (like parentheses), something tells me you shouldn't be using that many.  Use a semicolon, comma, don't; I don't care, just don't use dashes that often!

They also overuse "___ said" or "said ___" a bit, which I learned was bad in elementary school.  Hell, "said" was practically forbidden from use (use 'explained' or 'questioned' or something, they told us).

If I were the editor?  There would be red pen all over it.  Everywhere.  Punctuation errors, wording errors, continuity.  Nothing gets past me when I read other people's work.  I nitpick.  I reread.  I am, admittedly, a Grammar Nazi.

I edit my own work.  Print it out, take a red pen to it, fix it, and repeat until I am satisfied.  And because I do this, I have gotten better at writing.  I had a college reading level when I was ten, for God's sake.  I think I'd know a thing or two about grammar and vocabulary.

Maybe I should be an editor.  I'd get to read a bunch of stuff and never let an obvious error such as their/they're/there and the like get past me.

I'd be good at it, but my clients might hate me, ahaha.  I'm pretty strict with this stuff, you know.

...Plus I could probably work from home.  SCORE