Supernatural Season 1 Episodes 1-4

So I started watching Supernatural for the first time today, and I ended up writing down some of the thoughts I had while watching.
 
Episode 1.1: Pilot

• WHY IS EVERYONE ON FIRE?!
• Where are the British accents?

Episode 1.2: Wendigo

• OLD NDS! AHAH!
• Isn't that Cory Monteith?
• Yeah, a tent is no protection against a monster intent on eating you
• CARRIE REFERENCE (?)
• Dean, you smooth bastard
• Now for a fun game of 'How many of these fuckers are gonna come back alive?'
• ♪Following the leader♪
• M&Ms are always suitable hiking provisions
• Welp, it's been nice knowing him
• I think there was supposed to be a Wendigo in Alberta at one point
• I just really like Sam's hair
• Where in the USA is John Winchester
• ALWAYS WITH THE FIRE
• It leaves markings on the tree! Just like Balto! An evil, killer Balto.

Episode 1.3: Dead In the Water

• This scene seems too idyllic to last long
• Oh Blond Girl, we hardly knew ye
• That kid knows something! maybe... possibly...
• Suddenly, Dean feels
• Dead Winchester: Child Whisperer
• DO NOT STICK YOUR HAND IN THERE
• You moron
• IT'S A BASILISK!  /shot
• C-C-C-C-CONNECTION!
• Well fuck
• But what's behind Door #3?
• Well that's what you get for not turning the water off
• Well, I'll be seeing that in my nightmares

Episode 1.4: Phantom Traveler

• Those push tap sinks are shit, fuck 'em
• Demon! IT'S THE EYES!
• This makes for a good Cabin Pressure horror AU fic
• SUITS!
• Random buddy on a tractor
• Fuck you electricity!
• Nazareth?
• So the demon is a suicide bomber?
• Oh, we just thought you were in love with the car
• How did they get through with the holy water in their carry-on? This is post-9/11.
• Ah, well that's not good

More later.

Still

My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer today (well, lymphoma technically, but everyone knows what's going on here).

Nothing's happening. It's all very calm around here.

When I imagine scenarios like this on my own time I always pictured more emotionally charged conversations and tears and chaos, basically. Clearly I watch too many movies. (My Third Star DVD is mocking me... I really need to get out more.)

Nope. Nothing.

I'm assuming it's because this just happened. And it's treatable, therefore she apparently has a good prognosis.

But it's still fucking cancer.

When I think of people I personally know that have had cancer, four people immediately spring to mind. Three of them are dead now (one of them assured us that it was treatable).

And it's just so fucking quiet around here.

Surely something is supposed to be happening right now.

I'm not exactly sure what my emotions are doing right now. Or what they're supposed to be doing.

Surely there are instructions for this somewhere.

A Report

Holy shit it's taken me so long to write... anything really, especially about the convention.

Because I am a lazy, lazy bastard.

Anyway...

THE CONVENTION WAS FUCKING AWESOME!!  /screaming

A couple of friends and I went to Fredericton for Animaritime at the end of June. This was our first big convention and we were insanely excited. The only con we'd ever been to before was Animinitime, which only lasted a day. This time around was the full three-day experience.

Bloody brilliant.

We went up on the Thursday before, since we live nearly 6/7 hours away, and spent the night settling into the hotel room. We just nearly made it in time for early sign-up with minutes to spare. The convention started on Friday afternoon and we kicked things off by waiting in line to get into the vendor's room. Saturday was the only full day we had and we spent most of that day in panels and asking cosplayers if we could get their picture. Things were winding down for us on Sunday since it was the last day of the convention and we were leaving that day. We waited in (a long-ass) line to get into the garage sale (which really was worth the wait), and then left for home around noon or so.

And we had a really great time and really it was SO MUCH AWESOME AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Good times.

And now, the highlights:

• The hotel room: The hotel room was brilliant. I always complained (a bit) that the hotel we stayed in for the last con was too small and crowded, especially with five people in it. Although my mother thinks that the room we got this time was no bigger, I definitely think it was. It definitely wasn't nearly as crowded. We only had three people staying with us (me and my two friends), but my mother, aunt, and cousin came up Saturday evening for pizza and the room still didn't feel as small as it did the last time. We had enough space to move around freely and lounge around without bothering each other. It was great, also good for winding down after convention excitement.
• Being in the hotel: Staying in the hotel by ourselves was one of the best parts of the trip for me. My mother drove us up, but she didn't stay at the hotel with us. It was a bit like living on our own for a bit, much fun. We got up when we wanted, we went to bed when we wanted, we were in charge of our own activities. It was awesome.
• Vendor's room/garage sale: In things concerning merchandise for things I like I pretty much live in the middle of nowhere. So I was pretty excited to get into the vendor's room and garage sale and see all the awesome things they had for sale there. Prints, manga, DVDs, stuffies, hats, wigs, buttons, ALL THE FANDOM THINGS! Man, I spent way too much money there but OH WELL! (seriously I came home with, like, 30-something books) Gamezilla was there and they were selling talking Dalek plushies! Got right on that one. Another great thing about the vendor's room was that it had a lot of cosplayers wandering around in one place. Great photo oppertunities there.
• The cosplayers: Most of the people at the con were there in costume (including me, although my costume was lazy and crap) and most of the costumes I saw were AMAZING! I got quite a lot of pictures of brilliant cosplayers (when I could bring up the courage to ask for pictures because I suck).
• Ten: One of the most brilliant cosplayers I came across there was a man named Miguel Roy (I think) who was cosplaying the tenth Doctor. He was amazing! He had the suit, the shoes, the hair! He was also hilarious and charasmatic and everything! I think I heard that he won something there, the masquerade or the improv or something. Anyway, I'm pretty sure everyone who saw him there just loved him, he was great.
• Brad Swaile: Brad Swaile was there! He was awesome! We went to two of his panels and his autograph signing. He's a great guy, and very funny and talented. He's also really just a normal guy. We all enjoyed his panels. We were actually just going to go to one of them, but we liked it so much that we ended up going to his other one as well. We also managed to be first in line to get into his autograph signing, and me and my friends didn't have anything for him to sign so we ended up buying Death Notes for him to sign. So he joked a bit about that and that was fun. We also ended up running into him on the street at one point and talked with him and that was just epic.
• Saturday evening: We didn't have much going on Saturday night so the initial plan was to have an early night and just stay in the room. My mother, aunt, and cousin showed up in the early evening and stayed for pizza. They left around 7:30 or 8:00 or something and we just hung around the room for a bit before deciding to go over to the convention centre across the street to take more pictures of cosplayers. Hey, no point in just staying in the room when there were still things going on right next door, right? Anyway we headed on over, got some pictures, blew some more money in the vendor's room. We actually stayed in the vendor's room until it closed for the night (around 9 or so) and everyone was kicked out. We were waiting at the light to cross the street when we started talking to some of the people standing there with us. That was a lot of fun. And then tits happened. There was a car stopped at a red light in the street and a half-naked (we're assuming drunk) woman popped out of the sunroof. No top on or bra or anything. We laughed like maniacs. There was also a group of men (unrelated to the convention, they just happened to be there) there laughing as well. Then everyone still there, both convention-goers and the men, kinda entered one huge group conversation about that. Also one of the men kinda looked like Dara O'Briain, it was pretty amusing. We eventually made it back across the street when we ran into a few friends that Meaghan had made earlier, along with Brad Swaile. He stopped and talked with us for a while and we all got our pictures taken with him and it was brilliant. We had a great time.
• The people: There was a lot of people at the convention that weekend. Around 1700 or so, I heard. We talked with a lot of people that were there. The vendors were all very nice and spoke with a lot of the people there. There was Brad Swaile, of course, and the tenth Doctor. Meaghan ran into a group of Doctor Who cosplayers and fans and went around with them for a bit (apparently they went on a search for Rose Tyler, and found one). There was a Jack Frost we saw a few times and we spoke to her whenever we ran into her. And then there was a woman cosplaying as Severus Snape and a Doctor Who character I didn't know, and we spoke quite a bit with her a few times. There was also a Gas Mask Zombie we ran into who was great. Then we talked for a bit with a pair of Kira and Athrun cosplayers while waiting in line for Brad Swaile's autograph signing. Then there was the Dragonball guy who was wandering around with seven Dragonball pins on his shirt who noticed my t-shirt (a t-shirt that looked like the top half of Goku's gi) and said I should get some pins as well.

Adventures in Japanese Manga Magazines

Okay, so a manga version of BBC's Sherlock, called Sherlock - Pink Iro no Kenkyuu (A Study in Pink), came out around October/November 2012. It's being serialized in Young Ace magazine with two chapters out now and the third one coming out in March (or sometime close).

So far the story is basically a manga version of A Study in Pink, which I don't have a problem with.

Anyway I was insanely excited for it and was over the moon when people started scanlating it. I don't know if it will ever be released in English, so I decided to buy the magazine the first chapter ran in just so I could have a physical copy of it.

I ordered it online from Hobby Search and paid about 32$ for it (ouch). Anyway, I got it back in October and photo-documented the whole thing (because I am a massive nerd). And here's a post on it.

Here is the box it came in and the box once I opened it. As you can see, it was a bigger box than was needed. Also this issue of the magazine came with a free figurine. I have absolutely no idea who this character is, but now I have a figurine of her. Whoo?

Here is the magazine compared to my copy of Parade's End, which is 906 pages long and fucking huge. Now THIS is what size manga magazines that are sold in North America should look like. Make it worth the 8$ I'd have to pay for it. And here's a picture of the cover.

And here are some pictures of the inside. The gorgeous colour opening pages, and some panels of the scene where Sherlock formally introduces himself. Awesome art is awesome. Also, the characters look like the actors, it's great.

 

So that's my experience ordering a manga magazine from Japan. It cost 32$ and took about a month to come in, but it was totally worth it. I didn't buy the issue with the second chapter, but I'll most likely be getting the issue with the third chapter (as soon as I figure out when it's being released).

 

Also, as a bonus, Young Ace also runs Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service so I got to see the latest chapter of that (which I couldn't actually read, but the art was great and suitably creepy).

That time of year

I did a few days at the school recently... it's ski-pants season! Yay (boo!)!

Getting kids into their snow gear is quite the job, especially when I'm the only one there. Add that to the fact that most kids don't want to even bother with their ski-pants and things don't make my job any easier.

At least most of them do get outside at some point to play for a few minutes.

At least I don't have to be there for when they have to get dressed to get on the bus to go home. I've had to be there for that before and I remember it being a bit of a nightmare.

The threat of the bus leaving without them doesn't make them go any faster either, these kids have no fucks to give about that (unless they do miss the bus and then it's all tears).

If they all wore one piece snowsuits with the hats and mittens attached it would get them dressed quicker (and I wouldn't have to keep sending them back inside for their hats and mittens and what have you).