The year's end, at last

[davetheanalyzer]

The end of the apparent first year of a new decade and it wasn’t a fun one with covid and anxieties over the election. I did make some progress though. After some personal struggles, I decided to go to therapy and eventually also decide to take some anxiety medication. It led to some solutions to current worries, like only taking in an hour of bad news a day whether from news sites or on social media. For social media, this sometimes meant withdrawing from a few accounts altogether, whether because I barely used them anyway or some people being disappointing in a bigoted manner gave me the impetus to do so. This included livejournal. I was already having trouble with double-posting there and I don’t post anything unique at livejournal anyway and since I already copy posted everything there to dreamwidth, I thought I might as well delete it. I also learned and got taught various calming techniques. Even if they don’t always work, they have helped with some of the stresses I have. There is still a lot more progress to make but I’m getting there. And at least Trump was voted out of office. Biden will need to be pushed into a more progressive direction but at least that fascist wannabe will be out of power.

I also made some progress on fiction in the fanfic and original context. Surprise, I wasn’t done posting We Will Hold On Forever chapters. I finished arc 3 and have started the arc 4 chapters. As I said before, it might be awhile before I post them but I do plan to finish this fic. I need to focus on how things have changed and the emotional aftermath on the leads. The fic writing might be again delayed in January and onward as I want to finish the last 55 or so pages of my Master Project in my MFA program and I don’t know when I’m supposed to start the 60 page story for Readings in Fiction II. At the very least, I hope to be able to continue writing the fic at least once a week, so I’d make at least some incremental progress.

I have also finally finished Zone Fighter. The format didn’t change too much, though there was a bit more of an absence of human ally Takeru Jou near the end. There are a few monsters that caught my attention but not as much as the first time. One that comes to mind is Bakugon – yes, really, one transliterated letter off to the Bakugan Mon franchise. He looked vaguely like a furry anteater and could shoot fire out of his snout and conjure illusions. Since mammal monsters are so few, he automatically caught my attention. I would only make him less grey and at least explicitly mechanical.

The other is Gandarguirus, only through sheer force of personality. That he was willing to play Zone Fighter’s games and threw tantrums when he lost does show he has some…unique priorities that entertainingly stand out from the rest. On the second to last episode, there was Kabutogira, whose debut appearance was overshadowed by the return of so many previous foes. I had to look it up to realize he didn’t appear in a previous episode. He’s not quite as memorable but I do like the leaf-like projections from his head and his eyes surrounded by metal. He made some impression which was interesting since he didn’t last long in the episode itself. Zone Fighter didn’t survive long but I’m glad it exists and hope the monsters can return on way or another, maybe in future Godzilla entries.

Speaking of Bakugan…I’m thinking of changing my watching schedule. Though Goranger and Jakq were interesting, it was a bit of a chore to watch them and I was unsure about moving on to Battle Fever J. After watching Bakugan and being a bigger fan of Mon shows, I decided to switch to watching Bakugan and eventually other Mon shows, as dubious the quality I hear Bakugan can sometimes be. I knew the first few Sentai in the 70s had different priorities then but it didn’t click with me. Maybe I might watch Battle Fever J or later 80s Sentai shows sometime later but for now, I’m going for where my heart says “Does this spark joy.” Ultraman and giant monsters in general still spark it, so I’ll be watching Ultraman Ace.

That's all for now. At last this cruddy year is over. Until the conclusion of January, see you!