erika_nightingale

Saw Captain America today with my husband and his family. It was quite good. I've liked every Captain movie though so I shouldn't be that surprised. I was worried about the movie having too many characters but the movie used them all well. I actually enjoyed the villain because he fit with the theme of the movie so well. He won't be memorable or anything, I don't even remember his name, but he worked really well in the film unlike other villains which didn't add much to the film.

The standout characters besides Cap, Iron Man, and Bucky were Scarlet Witch and Black Panther. Black Panther especially had one of the most compelling stories in the movie (why is him movie coming out in 2018). All of the rest had their moments to shine, some more serious than others. I'm impressed by how well everyone was put into this movie. Like I'm just really impressed that each of the characters got at least one scene to shine.

I do want to mention Black Widow and say that she's more enjoyable here than she was in Ultron. The Russo Bros know how to write her character better than Whedon and I've been hearing that Black Widow is most likely going to get a movie. Finally, I'm super happy about that. I know there are people who don't want it because how dare a b-list superheroine get a movie when there are A-list superheriones to choose from like Wasp. I get that, I do, but I think we need accept that Black Widow is the A-list superheorine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So I really hope she gets to have her own film. There are apparently talks of giving her three films but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Is this my favorite Marvel film? No, Winter Soldier is still my favorite, but I do thin the Captain America's films are the strongest of the trilogy films for individual characters. It certainly was better than Ultron which disappointed me a lot.

Oh and we saw the Doctor Strange trailer. It looks good but I'm bothered by some of the casting choices. I'm burnt out on Cumberbatch but he looks like he'll do well in the role. Tilda Swinton is playing a character that's clearly supposed to be Asian and it's difficult to not get past that. We'll see, I think it will be visually interesting to watch at the very least.

Not been very good about writing these last few days. Steam decided to release Final Fantasy 9 so I've been playing that. I've finished what would have been disc 1 of the PS1 version. Still FF9 has shown me that I don't just suck at jump roping in real life but in the virtual world as well...I gave up on it.

So this week I'm going to try and up my word count so that I can catch up with my Nanowrimo writing goal which is 30,000. Still in the planning stages for the serial book series I want to release on Wattpad. I think I may push the May the release goal back to June since I got behind on the story I'm working for on Nanowrimo. I also have a shipping manifesto to finish this coming week so I can have my friend beta it. So lots of writing to do these next couple weeks.

Started this National Novel Writing Month with a bang at 1839 words so far today and probably more tonight. Tomorrow I won't have the opportunity to write as I'll be going to dance practice, jogging/walking 3 miles with a friend and then going to my D&D game. But we'll see. I don't usually start off this well but this a novel I've been wanting to write for some time now. I kind of rushed through this scene so I definitely will be going back and adjusting it. There are things I know I need to add.

Feeling good about this month. I have stuff in the later half of April but if I can keep going with this pace I should be able weather the second half of the month. Last November I had so much going on; two vacations and my dog dying that I only got like 8,000 words written. While I'm going 50,000 again this time around I'll be happy if I just write most of the days in April.

I still haven't decided if I'll do the camp portion of Camp Nanowrimo. We'll see.

Okay, so a lot of things have happened while I was away from the internet, which always seems to happen, so I'm like three days behind. I just found out that JKR is releasing/has released (I'm no longer on Pottermore so I don't really know) a history on witches/wizards in America. This, of course, included a pretty historically inaccurate summary of Native American witches and wizards and you can tell from the snippet that I read that either she hadn't really done that much research or she did and chose to do what she wanted to do. My main issue isn't that she cherry picked, although that definitely can come with it's own problems if you aren't careful, but I think it's more insidious because JKR is acting like what she wrote is actual history but with HP wizards and witches in it. It obviously isn't.

I don't know, I think JKR's attempts at inclusion have been clumsy. I also think her attempts have gotten progressively worse.

1) Dumbledore being gay- There were some hints of this within Book 7 that were a bit too subtle then they should have been. Enough that a lot of people didn't think it was Dumbledore who was gay. Now the argument is not whether Dumbledore is gay or not but whether he can count for positive representation of the LGBT community when the text barely mentions his sexuality. Personally, in this case I think JKR wanted to portray a gay character without him being defined by his sexuality. Unfortunately in the process I think in Dumbledore's sexuality was erased either by her or her publishers.

2) Black Hermione- I don't have a problem with black Hermione in general. I can see why people see her that way. However, JKR never intended for Hermione to be anything other than white and I think JKR hasn't explained her thought process with Hermione well (duh this is all on twitter). JKR never mentions Hermione's skin color once in text, but she allowed for the interpretation of Hermione to be exclusively white until the play. She could have said something to the artist if Hermione was always meant to be white or to her publishers. If she wanted Hermione to be black she would have made a stink about it long ago. I can't fathom why she wouldn't, she's very particular about her canon. So in my mind no one can say black Hermione is canon, you can only say its your interpretation of the character which is only marginally better than making white Hermione canon (which is now no longer canon for the books which is fine). I don't think she gave the black community anything but a bone here and I think she did it because she didn't want to be seen as racist.

3) Native Americans in the history- Skipping the part where JKR clearly did no research on American (specifically the US history). JKR's portrayal of Native Americans is downright insensitive and plainly wrong. You can tell by reading it that she has little grasp of American history and clearly only knows one Native American tribe and used that to describe all of them. No wonder Native American fans are pissed. She has little grasp of the history of these people and therefore her own twists and interpretations fall extremely flat and can been seen as offensive.

My main issue with JKR right now is that she keeps talking about her canon on twitter and Pottermore. I think Harry Potter is slowly losing it's magic. At first I was excited about more Harry Potter, but now I'm extremely worried. Fantastic Beasts is going to incorporate JKR's interpretation of US/American history which is full of errors. Cursed Child the book is coming out but I'm not sure if I even want to read it. I mean it's a sequel. I'm really only interested in her writing books on the Founding Fathers of Hogwarts (be in Helga's POV please), McGonagall, Merlin or some other witch or wizard in the past not connected with Harry at all, or Lily Evans (Potter) POV. I just wish she'd write books instead of making vague twitter posts and snippets on Pottermore. This is why I think creators need to step away from social media (coughtwittercough) and focus on telling their stories. But at the end of the day it's her work and she can run it into the ground George Lucas style if she wants.

Feeling better, I think my sickness is now just a normal cold. Weird thing happened this evening. I was watching TV and eating dinner and when I looked up from my plate my vision went wonky. It was like if you look at the sun too long and you get those spots, that's what I had. I rubbed my eyes and the spots moved from the center of my left eye to the edge. My right eye was similar but less extreme. Five minutes later it was gone, but I had this curtain effect for a good 15 minutes. It was like everything was covered by a thin curtain making everything dim. I have a small headache from it now. My husband thinks it was a migraine but I've never had a migraine before and I'm 28. Can migraines start happening at anytime?

I was going to write tonight, but since that weird vision problem I'm really tired. I don't know if I have the energy to do that. I shouldn't be tired. I took two naps today. Ugh, being sick sucks even when it's just a cold.

Pre-ordered my Fire Emblem new 3DS just now. If anyone here is interested here are the links to the two sites that have it. I'm surprised because in the article I read they said it was sold out on Gamestop but I was able to preorder no problem. I think it gets glitchy when a lot of people are on it at once. I pre-ordered on Gamestop because that's usually where I go. I got my confirmation order so I should get it no problem. :)

http://www.gamestop.com/nintendo-3ds/consoles/nintendo-new-3ds-xl-fire-emblem-fates-edition/128251

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nintendo-new-3ds-xl-fire-emblem-fates-edition/4773200.p?id=1219817779057&skuId=4773200

I can't help it. I've got to master all the jobs in this game for every character. It's a bit addicting for me because grinding is my stress release and I've had a lot of stress recently. I'm doing pretty well at this game now because of my need to do this though. I breezed through chapter 5, no problems, thanks to my freelancer/vampire combo plus spiritmaster/white mage. Mimic is a beautiful thing to have this early in the game.

Also this game is seriously beautiful and the soundtrack is amazing. The story is typical JRPG nonsense but still enjoyable. I think it's probably for the best that I know pretty much what's going to happen in this game otherwise I'll be frustrated.

Before moving on from chapter 5 I need to make sure I get all the vampire genomes. Vampire is basically a blue mage which makes it the best mage class in my opinion. Just like Valkyrie is the best melee class because dragoon. You may think dragoon's are lame but you are wrong, jumping is the coolest thing (and I love Kain Highwind...).

I should put the game down and go to bed soon. It's 2:30am!

I'm going to do my second longest fandom second. That seems like a good idea to me. Sailor Moon was my first anime that I got into the fandom for. I remember when fanfiction.net had like 12 max anime on their list. Sailor Moon was one of them and I was obsessed with it from the very start. So without further ado my shipping preferences in Sailor Moon.

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After nearly two years of absence I find myself wishing to be back on LJ. I have a lot of work to do trying to find the active parts of the LJ community and finding new friends since all of my friends are gone. It's really sad to be honest. I wish that I knew where exactly to begin.

Well, I'll be posting more stuff here in the coming weeks. I'm hoping to be more active here but who knows how long that will last this time. After years of being gone the site seems like a ghost town (a ghost site).

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When I was little, Thin Mints were my favorite. I can thank Thin Mints for my love of chocolate and mint. However, I think the recipe changed (or my taste buds) because I don't like them as much. Today my favorite Girl Scout cookies are Caramel de Lites which I'm eating right now.