So today I cleaned up and encoded "Afterwards," my Kamen Rider Kuuga/Kamen Rider Agito fic of fifteen chapters and a smut side story, and posted it both to my website and ff.net. It should be noted that I now OWN the ff.net Kamen Rider category by sheer dint of word length. "Afterwards" is somewhere around 33,000 words (not counting the smut side story, which I didn't post there because it exceeds ff.net's ratings). There are twelve other stories in the category; the next closest is about 7,500 words. I'm not expecting to get many readers for it (they're both fairly obscure, if totally awesome, series to the English-speaking world), but I actually did get a PM saying the reader had enjoyed it and asking if I'd be interested in writing a crossover between Vandread and Kamen Rider Den-Ou. Um, I haven't seen either, so not really? I clicked on the person's profile and it seems they're not a writer at all, but love to give ideas to others. This makes me laugh slightly--the LAST thing I need is more ideas! I need more time and energy just to get all the ones I already have done with!

In the name of tidying things up and upgrading them slightly, I also did slight rewrites on my G1 Transformers fics "Primus" and "The Right Words," html'ized both and posted them to ff.net, along with finally html'izing "A Day in the Life." So, yay, the TFs section of my webpage is all clean and tidy. I even got the first scene of HBFS8 written (angst, Prime, angst!) but ended up too brain-fried from staring at html code all day to get any further. And that, in a nutshell, was my Sunday.

Well, this weekend has been... semi-productive. Probably would have been more so if I hadn't been pretty much dead to doing anything yesterday.

I'd cut out a Civil War chemise on Tuesday and I finished it today (Simplicity 7215), experimenting along the way with Guterman's 100% cotton thread. Nice stuff, if very fine. I used some lace I had (probably polyester, but at least not egregiously shiny) and an old card of celery-colored silk ribbon for trimming. It's currently in the dryer together with the last of the laundry. Unfortunately it looks like I took the corset pieces from the same pattern and cut them out of something, which means they're probably buried in the WIP pile on the futon. I also tightened the bolts on the fourth stair up today, which tends to come loose and rock every now and again; Wonderful Husband knocked off a rather goodly chunk of the shopping list (braving CostCo on the weekend in the process); and together we got the house cleaned up to near pre-Fanime levels of tidiness. I still need to run the vacuum over the floors before I go to bed, but otherwise I'm satisfied with the weekend's doings. Tomorrow (now that the table is clear) I lay out the fabric for Armida's wedding dress and start in on that.

I've also been poking this weekend at Afterwards 14.5. A word to the wise: sometimes when you tell your characters "Just give me the final chapter already and I'll go back and write you smut!" they take you up on it. I have no problem with writing smut: it's fun, and sometimes it can be very revealing of the characters. In more ways than one. ^^;; I'm slowly discovering that what goes on inside Godai's head during sex is very slightly different from what goes on in most characters' heads during sex. His mental place is an interesting visit....

Somewhat relatedly, my only purchases at Fanime were in the Artists' Alley. I picked up prints from two different booths, some of which I purchased specifically because they cast me in the mind of The Novel. I don't have them pinned on the wall by my desk yet, but they seem to be working because I've already realized that something that I thought was a throw-away line is in fact Incredibly Significant and it's all pieces of a puzzle starting to come together....

Arm still not 100% better, though I can feel it improving, so I am still not crafting. Much with the crankiness about that.

Got finally all caught up with everything at work yesterday except for making up new mailing packets. See above comment about arm not being 100% to understand why I didn't catch up with those. Repetitive motion is something I'm avoiding at the moment.

I decided to reward myself by finally hitting Book Off Costa Mesa and purchasing what they had of Kamen Rider Agito: five random discs from the TV series for $7 each, plus the Aratana Henshin special and the G4 movie (regular not directors cut) for $25 each. Not bad... plus I had $5 off on my points card and the amount of purchase put me up to another $5 off on my next purchase. So, relatively cheap. Getting Kuuga in Japan seems to have been a good idea, though, as while they had some Agito in stock, there wasn't any Kuuga that I could find.

Came home and finally started in on writing "Afterwards" chapter 15 (got a whole first scene done!) and Wonderful Husband and I went out to dinner at Claim Jumper with haamel who happens to be in town this weekend.

Wheee~!

On a run about of errands today, I picked up fabric for the kimono, hakama, and obi I'm making for swtjemz and yzo for Fanime, hit the Build-A-Bear workshop in Fashion Island for some spot-cleaner for plushies, and then went over the the formerly $.98 Marukai store, which is now mostly a Japanese furniture store but still has a food section. If anyone needs anything from futons to dishes to rice cookers to tansu to tatami to Japanese massage chairs, I know where you can get them~! Plus they have a used kimono section for $19 each. Some of them were not bad, but I kept myself to what I'd come for, which was snacky stuff, panko, and a sake set for part of my uncle's wedding present. So now I have munched my way through wasabi peas, which were yummy and spicy. I have dried baby crabs and dried baby octopus to try at some point too. Will let y'all know what they're like. And mango Pocky, which I expect to be rather pleasant. Alas, they did not have Clorets XP Blue gum. Fortunately, I still have several packs in reserve.

For now, I intend to find something non-wasabi-pea-like for dinner, toss fabric in the washer, maybe rewatch some Kuuga to make sure I have the characters' voices still correct in my head for the next-to-last chapter of "Always," and hopefully call it an early night.

Every once in a while I have to step back from my likes and hobbies and realize just how far out from the norm I am.

Okay, the eating raw fish thing isn't all that odd these days, and the efforts toward bilinguality can be laid at the feet of a college education. Heck, even the liking of anime is pretty mainstream in America now.

But as I sat there reading (1) black and white (2) fan comics and short stories (3) about a Japanese police detective and his boyfriend (in the story, if not actually quite canon for the original series) who transforms into an armored superhero (4) in Japanese (5) and not having much of a problem either with translating or the gay sex scenes, it occured to me... mama's baby has come a long way. And that's completely ignoring the fact that I'm writing fanfiction about the same couple myself and that my main problem with the doujinshi I picked up is that Ichijou is always the bottom when I personally think it'd be more of an equal footing relationship. Seriously. All the doujinshi I picked up (including the stuff I picked out of the Ichijou x Godai sections of the bookstores) is Godai x Ichijou. Um, I looked up the actors' heights... they're exactly the same height [my height, oddly], so the taller-is-on-top rule shouldn't be applying here... so what's the reasoning behind it?

Then, of course, there's the thought that I'm posting all this as a dilemma on my lj. Definitely slightly out of the usual statistics there.

Well, five of the six arrows are now drawn on the relationship triangle. The only one who's still clueless is Hikawa about Shouichi. Which is the one that I've been most eagerly anticipating. Hooray that Ryou is not dead! And is better! And that he and Shouichi are getting along so well! Compared to how things have been at points, this is great. I am intrigued at what's coming out about the Akatsuki. I'm trusting the writers of the show to eventually reveal why Ryou's got abilities too when he wasn't even on the ship and doesn't have them naturally like Mana. I think the tennis episode counts as this series' "curry" episode. IE, on crack. Playing tennis with a frying pan? Yet at the same time, it redeems itself by the psych-out setup for catching the thief guy. Totally freak him by pretending to be the Unknown after him to get him to confess... mwahaha! I'm with Shouichi on the "that was fun" front. It's good that Hikawa's total ineptitude at domestic things continues... I'll lay out money that he always eats out, has a service to clean his apartment, and all of his clothes go to the cleaners.

In looking up actor stats, I was amused to find that Godai and Ichijou are shorter than all three Riders from this show (alright, four, but I have the feeling Kino's not long for this world now that he's revealed to be evil... I'd say the black clothing was a give-away, but OTOH Godai was wearing all black by the end of Kuuga).

On unrelated matters, does anyone know how to clean non-washable stuffed toys? I have two plushies I don't want to launder (one has non-removeable interior electronics, and if the washer/dryer messes up the other, he's nigh-impossible to replace)....

Also, anyone know of any places to download torrents of Japanese dramas aside from D-Addicts? I'm looking for Kuuneru Tokoro Sumu Tokoro and they don't seem to have it. It's one of Igarashi's new dramas, and I caught the first episode while in Japan and liked it.

Yes, I have powered through fully half the series in two days. Plus a thorough cleaning of the downstairs half of the house, a reasonable first run at weeding the yard, and a hell of a lot of laundry. Why, therefore, do I not feel like I've accomplished anything today?

In any case, ha! Shouichi finds out G3's identity. Hikawa, OTOH, is as dense as a brick (maybe Shouichi wasn't the only one dropped on his head?) when Shouichi drops blatant hints that he's Agito. *smacks palm to forehead* I continue to adore their interaction. It really is the best part of the show for me. Unfortunately, I have to give grudging respect to Hojo now. I still don't like him, but I have to respect him. Ryou needs a good slap of common sense upside the head--hopefully he'll get one sooner or later?

I'm stalled on the Kuuga fic because I know I'm overwriting the next chapter. I think I need to take a step back and figure out what needs to happen in it. It'll probably mean excising the scene I wrote today, but maybe I can let readers have it as an omake? I went and paged through Wikipedia Japan's entry for Kamen Rider Agito because the entry on the English version is, shall we say, frustratingly incomplete. I'm amused that all three Agito Riders are 3-4 years younger than Godai and Ichijou are... sets a cute image in my head of chibi versions of any of them referring to a chibi Godai as "sempai." Shouichi probably would, come to think of it.

Will be interested to see what comes of matters now that Amnesia Boy has his memory back....