schneefink

I'll just assume you know the feeling of having found a bright shiny new thing that you want to tell everyone about but somehow it's really hard to find the words, and also writing why you like it also takes away time from consuming more of it. I just finished watching the "Akatsuki no Yona" anime (+OVAs) and I'm taking a brief break for some barely organized notes before I go and read all the manga chapters. (Also I should eat dinner, that would probably be good.)

Where to start? It has so many of my favorite tropes, especially when it comes to loyalty&betrayal. (A premise is not really a spoiler, right?) The dynamic between Yona, Hak, and Soo-won is fantastic. Yona herself is pretty great, and so is the whole team she assembles. And it looks like things will only get more and more political, yay.

( With spoilers )

I caught up with the Noragami manga (instead of doing what I should be doing, i.e. editing my Yuletide fic and finalizing Christmas presents.) I started with chapter 40, since I read that's approximately where it continues from the story told in the anime, and read all of it in one afternoon/evening, and then I had emotional hangover. The cruel cliffhanger made it worse.

( chapter 71 )

( Thoughts about all of it – I don't even know where to start )

Monthly updates, this is going to be a long wait every time.

New episodes of Natsume Yuujinchou have become the highlight of my Fridays (together with D&D, but there was no session yesterday because too many people cancelled.) It's so nice.

( Spoilers )

The fifth season of Natsume Yuujinchou has started and I like it a lot :) It had some of everything so far: Tanuma and Taki, Nishimura and Kitamoto, the Fujiwaras, Reiko, Natori and the exorcists, youkai of the week. I hope we'll get to see some of the neighbour youkai again, Misuzu and Hinoe and the others.

( spoilers )

I forgot where I saw the rec, but I just finished watching all four seasons of "Natsume's Book of Friends", or "Natsume Yuujinchou." I loved it. It's about a boy who can see spirits, or youkai. He's moved in with a new foster family and is very lonely at first, but he acquires a youkai "bodyguard" and slowly makes human and youkai friends and becomes closer with his new family and it's all beautiful to see. There are a lot of "youkai of the week" storylines, and he eventually meets other people who know about youkai too. He also received a heavy legacy from his grandmother: a book with many youkais' true names, which he could use to control them, but instead he gives the names back.
The anime feels a bit slow at times (maybe just because I'm sometimes impatient), but it's very warm and nice.

( Spoilers, non-ordered thoughts about many characters )

I'm going to request this fandom for Yuletide, I already have fic prompts to use.

Season five comes out soon! I'm very much looking forward to it :)

The NHL season is over! In theory that means I have more time to watch other things now. I've already started rewatching a few episodes of Leverage.
Last year's Festivids had two "Great British Bake-Off" vids that I enjoyed, All Rise by cosmic_llin and Cake to Bake by ohvienna. I watched a few episodes on the flight back from the US to Europe and they were nice.
I have a sudden urge to check out more cooking shows, because the dishes look nice and maybe for inspiration and maybe just because. But there are many of them! Which ones are your favorites, any you would recommend?

Last D&D session I got 300 extra XP for creative problem-solving approaches, I'm quite proud of myself. Illusion spells really lend themselves to tricks quite nicely. Unfortunately none of my original plans worked because one party member didn't want to play along and we ended up in a fight, but luckily my estimation of levels was wrong: our DM said our opponents looked like elite soldiers, but apparently after almost two days of being animate our characters had already leveled up enough to defeat them. Both people we wanted to help died though, and the only surviving opponent escaped, so we don't even have more information about what the hell is going on than we did before. (We had to hurry in the end because one player had to leave and the DM ended with "yes okay it's obvious that you're going to kill the remaining two, here's your loot list"; only afterwards I realized it would have been smarter not to kill them and interrogate them instead. Missed opportunity.)
I'm very appreciative of the fact that we play living statues and therefore don't have to eat. Makes the question of supply a lot easier. I really liked how in the last two Temeraire books it was emphasized how much in warfare is about having sufficient supply (especially when it comes to dragons!)

It looks like the wisdom tooth surgery spot is infected again, nooo :( It's swollen and it hurts. Ugh. I've also been tired the whole day, this might be related.

I finished season 1 of "Underground" yesterday and it's amazing. So good. At times I was almost scared of watching the next episode because characters I liked kept dying and so many bad things happened, but it's so compelling that I never waited very long. So many fantastic characters.

( Spoilers )

The Pens won 7-2 against the Red Wings! Fun game to watch, especially because I missed the first period (I forgot it was an afternoon game) and only saw the good parts. Dumo and Kuni though :( This team and injuries, incredible.

Women's Ice Hockey World Championship Div1 Group A started! (overview) Last year Austria got its best result so far, second; the first place is promoted to the main group each year. Last year Germany was relegated, so it could come down to an Austria-Germany game for first place on the last day, wheee.
Austria won 4-3 against Denmark on a SH GWG with 45 seconds to go, and yesterday they won against Norway in the shootout after being down 0-3. They like to make things exciting!


I started watching "The Expanse" because I hoped it was as good as the concept had the potential to be and better than the trailer. I almost stopped watching after the first episode, then continued on a friend's rec until episode five and now decided to stop and only read the rest of the episode summaries on Wikipedia.

( Spoilers )

More fun! I already wrote some earlier episode reactions, under the cut reactions to the second half and the season as a whole.( Spoilers )

To sum up, I enjoyed the series a lot! If there's a third season that'd be fantastic, and if not there's a lot of fic I want to read and some I want to try to write.

I watched episode 4 of season 2 of "Agent Carter" tonight and it reminded me of a Tumblr post I saw today about heroes and villains. ( Includes spoilers )

In other character-related news, ( Spoilers )