Discover Top Posts Tagged with #processing thoughs

Beginning to think I should pick fortnight lily as my favorite flower. I have a lot of nostalgia attached to it anyway.

#flowers000 #today i learned #til #favorites #processing thoughs #personal fandom records

This past week, I finally got around to watching the Loki series.

It still bothers me how I could like WandaVision so much and enjoy Falcon and the Winter Soldier and What If, but I just couldn't connect with the Loki series, which everyone seems to be saying is a great series.

I think "connect" is the problem. After failing to enjoy the first Harry Potter movie, I realized that I can't enjoy the Mystery genre. I can't enjoy Mysteries because I am such an anxious person, that being mentally put into situations where everyone is suspect, is not enjoyable for me. I can't connect to characters when I'm too busy wondering if every attempt of theirs to be endearing, is a lie, a ruse meant to distract from them being the real culprit. And if I can't enjoy the company of fictional characters, then I can't enjoy a story (film, book, movie, fic, manga, comic, radio drama, etc.) at all. I can't enjoy the experience. I have to enjoy their company, enjoy the characters. It was back in the Ranma 1/2 fandom when I realized enjoying the company of characters was more important to me than plot. I will follow characters I like into any ridiculous plot and enjoy the experience. But a plot with characters I don't enjoy, is just a bunch of stuff happening. I was afraid this is why I couldn't enjoy Loki. Normally, failings in this were easy to recognize because some series just have jerk characters who I do not enjoy spending time with. But it's taken me from Harry Potter, all the way through today to realize that I can also fail to enjoy characters' company if the very structure of the genre disallows me from establishing a fun, endearing connection to them, through mental/emotional safety in their presence. I guess if characters aren't trustworthy, then I can't drop my guard enough to connect to them and find them endearing.

Which is so strange, because I thought I was able to do all that in other situations/series/fandoms. You should not trust Lelouch vi Britannia, but I love Code Geass. WandaVision is also a kind of mystery throughout most of the series, yet I loved WandaVision. Despite all that, I think it really does come down to those concepts of comfortability and connection again.

Lelouch may not be someone anyone from that world should trust, but we in the audience have seen most of his quiet, lone moments, and who his true self is when he's alone. He may be scheming and an increasingly less repentant murderer as the Code Geass series progresses, but we in the audience know that Lelouch is motivated by compassion, even behind his layer of indignant vengeance. I can drop my guard enough to connect to Lelouch and find him endearing, because the series has convinced me that he is worth trusting to be guided by compassion, at crucial moment(s). Plus also, all his schemes save everyone from the most dire, hopeless situations, so his presence literally provides safety. And he is enjoyable to be around in a straight-man type of humorous way. Even an "untrustworthy" character can be endearing to me.

WandaVision may have kept us on our toes, in our lack of knowledge about what is really going on here, but I never felt the type of tension that constantly needles at my anxiety. The tone was "happy go lucky sitcom" for 6 out of 9 episodes, for goodness sakes. Can I be surprised that a story which *might* qualify as a Mystery, was able to keep my anxiety feeling safe and able to enjoy the series as endearing, when the tone was mostly, old, cheesy sitcoms? What was happening may have always been a background question, but in the meantime, the experiences were nice, safe, and the characters we enjoyable to spend time with. WandaVision's mystery was never a question that disallowed connection to any characters for me. Even if I didn't know what was going on really, I liked spending time with these characters. ^_^ It didn't feel like a Mystery at all. It was just spending time with characters I liked, alongside a fun tone. ^_^

Knowing that Mysteries disallow me from connecting to characters, when the Loki series began to feel like "just a bunch of stuff happening" and I bemoaned trudging through to the series end, I defaulted to my usual explanations from Harry Potter: I must have not been able to connect to the characters. I didn't come to care about them. But why? I mean, was the series built specifically for people who were already big time Loki fans? I liked him fine as a character from the movies, but I was never the "squee at the top of my lungs" obsessed with him, the way the rest of the internet was. I could never explain why, but it didn't seem like an important question to answer anyway. But now, I MUST KNOW WHY. I mean, you can't tell me I dislike the Trickster archetype. My past 2 fandoms' favorite characters have been the Trickster archetype: Persona 5's Joker, FE3H's Claude. And you can't tell me I don't like an untrustworthy, even villainous schemer, because I love Lelouch. So is it because Loki's schemes often fail? If there's one thing I like about a scheming Trickster, it's when their plans come together in unforeseen, clever ways. Has Loki ever done that for me? Like on Lelouch levels? Hell, I will even take Claude and Joker levels! But has Loki...? I remember watching the Loki series and constantly thinking that maybe everything he was doing was part of some bigger plan that hadn't been revealed to the audience yet. I kept waiting for him to pull off something clever. But so many times, that was not the case. I felt like he was always scrambling to adapt and foolishly failing many times. Maybe people wanted to see him look foolish because they knew him as a villain. I know that was fun for me during Thor Ragnarok. But this was supposed to be a Loki series. Please convince me he's a cool protagonist. And yes, there were some scenes with nice acting and character-building bits, peppered throughout the series. Which is why I'm so confused why I wasn't enjoy it. Why wasn't I having a good time? I thought all I needed to do was enjoy spending time with a character? ...So if I wasn't enjoying spending time in this series, does that mean I wasn't enjoying this character? o_o???? I had to presume so. I mean, Harry Potter proved that very concretely to me. I mean, if a character is up to something, I can't trust them, I can't drop my guard enough to find them endearing, and then I can't connect with them, but that's apparently if their schemes are more dire or ominous, than clever. Or maybe "clever" schemes solve the story's point of conflict, resolve the tension, and/or turn disastrous stakes into safety. Whereas a villain's plotting schemes raise the tension by increasing the "disaster" (from the audience's point of view). Well, that explains a "clever scheme" versus a "villain's plot". But how does that explain why I couldn't enjoy Loki? Because Loki didn't have any clever schemes,--But also, he didn't feel threatening enough to have a "villain's plot" that would've prevented me from trusting/connecting with finding him endearing. I was fine with following him as a protagonist. I began to think that maybe my problem was being unable to trust any of the other characters. Even if I began to become willing to follow Loki as a protagonist, if he couldn't connect to anyone, he was just tossing around in the wind. But that doesn't sound right, because I've enjoyed series with "lone wolf" wandering protagonists before. Maybe it's because the supporting cast building around Loki in this series was meant to be endearing too. And I know I couldn't connect with them, because I couldn't trust any of them. I found Mobius endearing though. So endearing, that I gasped when he was Pruned. Heck, I even felt bad when old Classic Loki (as the subtitles named him) disappeared. ;~;! (Really, I needed time to grip with that sadness! ;o; ) So was the problem Sylvie? I couldn't trust her because she was the antagonist for the first half of the series, too dangerous and untrustworthy for Loki (and

others) for the middle part of the series, then the last part of the series required you to care about her connection to Loki for the emotional stakes/tension/drama to be effective. It was not effective on me. WHYYYYYYYYYYY??????????????????? I felt like I had no anchor throughout the series. Even though I say I became okay with Loki, I didn't exactly care about his character. He just wasn't annoying enough to make me drop the series. I don't even know if I continued watching the series out of any enjoyment. I just knew that I had to finish it, because everyone was talking about spoilers, references to the series, and I was a little curious about what the heck was going on. But unlike WandaVision, I didn't enjoy the time before finding those answers. I was in a waiting room with a bunch of people, plus Loki, who were just doing stuff. Whereas WandaVision had me in a waiting room with people I cared about and enjoyed the company of. I wasn't specifically a fan of Wanda or Vision before that series. Maybe I expected the Loki series to preform that same type of endearment for anyone who walked in. But it couldn't be that the Loki series wasn't trying to be endearing with it's characters... I think that maybe it's version of the "characters being endearing" revolved around a technique that didn't effect me? The audience's enjoyment of watching a character be silly, maybe unpredictable...and maybe show some occasional pathos? I don't know. But whatever it was, it obviously didn't work on me. Maybe for me, their attempts at endearment were overshadowed by my suspicions, my anxiety over who was going to double cross who, what was everyone's real goals, etc. o_o? Maybe I just couldn't get any footing. Maybe without a clear sense of characters' motives, I couldn't get a clear sense of who characters were, before even starting to decide if they were characters whom I enjoyed the company of. o_o? I remember feeling like the series was just a bunch of stuff happening. Maybe because I couldn't trust characters, couldn't get a sense of their goals (and thus stakes), and so I couldn't feel what new events really meant to them? Maybe? Like Ravonna Renslayer: Whose side is she on? What is she up to? Where did she go at the end? Who is she trying to help? What is she going to do from now on? Even during her courtroom fight scene with Sylvie, she went back and forth so much, I didn't know what side she was trying to land on. So how am I supposed to feel bad for her being pushed into corners? Is she being pushed into corners, or is this all working for her plans? Beyond Mobius and Classic Loki, it seems I couldn't find anyone else endearing. Maybe the others, I couldn't sympathize with, because I couldn't understand? But by the end, they pretty much explained the characters. Maybe I needed such explanations sooner? I feel like I couldn't grasp who characters really were, so whenever they did things, it didn't make sense to any understanding I had of them, it didn't contradict my images of them; I couldn't get a sense if they were getting closer or farther to their goals, because "who they are" could have all been a lie/act anyway---And now I'm back to the explanation of "I can't enjoy Mysteries because I'm too busy being suspicious of everyone (preforming an untruthful act) to be able to know who they are or find them endearing and enjoy their presence". But is that what happened with me and the Loki series?

Well, I've gone around too much in circles and I'm still unsure what happened. I just couldn't get into the Loki series and I'm not looking forward to trudging through a 2nd season, just so I could keep up with MCU worldbuilding spoilers. Is this how people sick of watching all the MCU movies, so they can understand 1 MCU movie, feel like? O_o???

Me being unable to enjoy the Loki series is especially crazy to me, because I've loved interdimensional themes since I was in grade school!!!!!!! ;o;!!!!!!!!!!!! This is nuts! I LOVE this stuff. Parallel universes? Altering timelines? Alternate universe versions of people? This has been my bread and butter since before I was 10 years old. ...But is it because I've already made my own decisions about "Determinism vs Free will" themes, that I'm easily tired of watching people run around, acting like such a discussion is going to make them lose their minds? Calm down people. All things exist everywhere, all the time. It's always been like that. No need to have an existential crisis freak out over it. Am I even unwilling to act like it's a thing of gravitas, at this point? Everyone spends all this time coming to grips with the enormity of Space and Time and the Astral Plane, giving lengthy speeches with grandiose pauses...And I'm the Rumiko Takahashi character with a deadpanned expression in the corner, waiting for them to finish. lol Maybe. ^.^;

#confused with myself #processing thoughs #mystery genre #anxiety #americomi #mcu #loki disney+ series #what the mystery genre is like for someone with anxiety

Only a few more days left of Good Smile Company’s Stay Home Campaign 2 sale. These are the things I’m considering getting. Of course I don’t plan to get them all. In fact, they’re all figures I’ve previously passed up several times before, because I had already determined to save my money for all the Persona 5 Nendoroids and Figmas instead (except Akechi). Even if I have most of the P5 figures already, that’s still a big chunk out of my budget that I’ll have to give time to heal. So I think from the above selection, I’ll have to focus in on Beam Kirby, and maybe Platelet. And maybe maybe Haruna Kai Ni and Saratoga. I know I shouldn’t get Haruna Kai Ni, since I’m not that obsessed with KanColle and I already have the original Haruna. And I already passed up Gambier Bay to save money, so I shouldn’t get Saratoga either, since it’ll still be an incomplete set of US ships---even though I really love Saratoga’s modest elegant look! ;o;!!! If I start piling on the KanColle, then I’ll lose reasons to save my money from the rest of this list. So I really have to focus on just Beam Kirby and maybe Platelet. ...This is gonna take some will power. ^^;;;;

Hey @scaloy If you see this before I message you, let me know if you’re going to place an order.

#figure collecting #wallet dying #processing thoughs #confused with myself #good smile company #special sale #stay home campaign 2 #wishlist #get out of here akechi

“ぬ〜すと出した☺☺☺”

AAAAAHHHHH!!!! People are already getting their Furyu Joker noodle stopper figures! *o*! I was counting on getting one at Anime Expo 2020, since Toys Logic was going to be there and their website implies they’re going to stock it by then. But with the coronavirus, AX2020 might get cancelled. So maybe I should go ahead and order from their website right now? Preorders don’t close until 4/30/2020. But even though Toys Logic was one of the first stores I bought figures from online, they’re not completely reliable. I ordered a Date Masamune plushie from them years ago, and they never filled that order. Not sure what happened. But ever since then, I’ve been wary about ordering from them again. But they are fairly local, in my same state (though on the opposite side of the state from me)...and I do like to buy from stores close to me, for cheaper shipping and less hassle reporting taxes... Or maybe I’ll just forget about this figure and absentmindedly lose track of it ever existing. ...But it just looks so good! And yeah, I have Joker Figma and I preordered his Pop Up Parade, but they’re not sitting cross-legged like this! Even Figma articulation can’t do this pose! And this pose is just SO Joker! I’ve gotta have my sassy Akira. ;o;