Welcome back to the epic rewatch of the Pretty Guardian Sailormoon Live Action show! When last we left off, I discussed Act Zero and a general idea of what I was doing. This week, we’re into the series proper with the first episode, appropriately titled Act 1.
As it’s the first episode of the whole thing, there are technically no spoilers. Practically, there will be spoilers for Sailor Moon Classic, Sailor Moon Crystal and, of course, the manga. It’s kind of hard to avoid because I most likely will be drawing on what I know of all of them to go play Spot The Changes and have opinions on the matter.
This week’s post will be the last installment of Favourite Fictional Worlds answering the_rck’s question on what my favourite fictional world is. But only until I find a shiny new world to talk about! I’ve been having fun writing up these little comments and blurbs, so I reserve the right to randomly add new posts as I discover new worlds to talk about.
So before we get to this week’s post: what are some of your favourite fictional worlds?
And now, for this week’s post, I’ll be looking at Elizabeth Barrette’s Polychrome Heroics series. Again, there will be links rather than excerpts.
Welcome back to another day of Sailor Moon Crystal commentary! Today’s episode is number 18 and I still have nothing of particular interest to say in the introductory comments, unless you count “I have actual snacks while I watch, which I normally don’t” as a comment of particular interest. Someone might! But let’s just move on to the episode.
She warned of the pain. She did. But no warning can prepare you. Nothing can.
How could any of us have known what it is like on the dry sand? We just watched.
It’s hard, not being able to ask questions, though I have learned some speech with my hands. ˆ_ˆ
I miss my sisters. I love my prince.
I have made friends here. I have laughed with them, learned with them, played with them. I love them.
She said I would die if he loves someone else. Will I die? At the beginning I wanted to. It hurts so much. Life isn’t easy, will never be easy, but… I don’t want to become sea foam.
Soon, I’ll be releasing a new webserial! And I said I wouldn’t release any this year! A few years back, Dreamwidth user alee_grrl prompted a retelling of The Little Mermaid. It turned into a brief asexual retelling of the legend that I’ve wanted to rework into a novel ever since. The story had slightly different ideas and decided that it wanted to be a verse novel. Or at least connected verses. I wasn’t planning on doing another serial, but this structure could work so well with it. I really want to give it a try. (Plus, more asexual protagonists.)
I haven’t worked out all the details yet, such as “Do I post it only on Dovelet or do I post it to all my blogs? If the latter, how do I go about it?” or “How do I tackle inviting audience participation?” and the story is far, so far, from being finished.
I’m excited! I know it might not sound like I am, but I am! (If I don’t sound excited it’s because I spent much of the day trying to reorganise everything and realising that some of the blogging shinies I’d made for this blog… were made wrong because I am forgetful and now I have to redo them all again and so I am grumpy.) I’m not setting any dates yet because I’m still in the process of figuring stuff out.
And… Yes. That’s it for now. I’m tired and grumpy and trying to do ALL THE THINGS ALL AT ONCE. But what else is new, right? ^_^
This week, my answer to th_rck’s question on my favourite fictional worlds covers Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
As with most of the other settings by other people, I have no excerpts, but given how popular Discworld is and how many tributes have been posted in the past few weeks they shouldn’t be hard to find.
Elizabeth from Earl Grey Editing kindly let me do a guest post on my first experiences with serialised fiction in honour of publishing A Promise Broken last month.
(Meep! My first guest post that’s not solely about my own writing.)
I hope you’ll enjoy it! And if you’re new to Elizabeth’s blog, please do check it out. She’s awesome.
All this post’s art by Kimberly Kincaid, who graciously gave Carl permission to use it for this year’s banners.
In a couple of days, it’ll be time for Once Upon A Time again! WHOOT!
Once Upon A Time is a reading event (or challenge, depending on how you want to look at it) from March 21st to June 21st hosted by Carl from Stainless Steel Droppings. I’ve been participating since I learned of its existence and I’m excited to see it happening again this year.
Every year, I make an attempt to reach out to fellow readers and bloggers. Every year, I kind fail because social issues. Every year, I have a blast with the books I choose to read and/or the people I interact with.
Basically, the Once Upon A Time event is always loads of fun to participate in no matter how you participate. And this year there’s a new category to the ways that you can join in!
I should probably tell you about the ways to join in before discussing what’s new? Though Carl explains them much better than I can and you’re probably better off reading his official announcement post. But! I shall try anyway.
Once Upon A Time is an event dedicated to reading fantastical fiction: fairytales, folklore, mythology, and fantasy. As you can see, it’s quite broad in scope, but that should give you the general flavour of the kind of things that get discussed during the event.
There are a variety of official ways to participate: commit to reading one book, five books in any category, one in all, reading short stories, watching fantastical film or tv… And, new this year, playing fantastical games.
Last year, I spent some of Once Upon A Time talking about the fantastical games I’d played growing up. I’d planned to include film and tv as well, but that didn’t quite happen. We’ll see what does happen this year.
I thought, because I was actually having a fair bit of fun doing this for Sailor Moon Crystal, and because I’ve been meaning to rewatch Pretty Guardian Sailormoon to see whether my suspicions on some of the reasons why the storyline might differ so drastically from both the anime and the manga are in any way based on what the show actually does — I watched it when it came out; I have not had these suspicions until the broadcasting of Crystal, which means there’s a 10+ year gap between actually seeing the show and having my suspicions — I might as well offer episode by episode recaps of Pretty Guardian Sailormoon and discuss the rewatch as I go along.
Today we’re starting with one of the specials: Act Zero. It will surprise no one to find that Act Zero is set, chronologically, before Act 1. Hence why I’m starting with this one and not, say, Act 1. You’re probably better off watching the special after the main show, provided that you want to. Going into this series, I’m filled with a little trepidation because I remember that while there was plenty I liked there were also some things which… I didn’t like at all.
Some housekeeping notes: Yes, this does mean that Tuesdays are going to be Sailormoon Days for the foreseeable future. I’ll be sticking a biweekly schedule, just like with Crystal, so you’ll have a Crystal post one week and a PGSM post the next. That said, Crystal, to the best of my knowledge, is still only 10 episodes away from ending, so in five months or so things will change. If you’re not a Sailormoon fan, you may want to avoid the blog on Tuesdays. (PGSM is 49 acts, and 51 if I count the specials.)
If I’m still enjoying myself, I’ll try and switch over to other biweekly show commentary. It’ll hopefully motivate me to finally rewatch the shows I’ve been meaning to rewatch for ages. We’ll see. I promise to finish any series that I start (at least to the end of the season I’m in). If I’m not, I’ll be switching to weekly commentary as soon as I can.
And so! Onto Act Zero! Below the cut lie massive spoilers, etc, etc. (Basically, if you don’t know anything about Sailor Moon as a storyline, every post in this series will contain spoilers because knowledge of the franchise’s main storyline is assumed.)
For part 2 of the readalong, we’re reading chapters 8 through to 14. You may have noticed that I’d actually read chapter 8 last week. I’M SORRY! T_T But no harm seems to be done and I wasn’t the only one. I was glad about that. Anyway! Last week left us quite gently leading into the story? Will this week’s third do the same? Will there be answers to our many, many questions? Will I be able to hold of on reading the finale until the end of the week? (Spoiler: No. I answers the questions for this week, asked myself if I could wait and then zoomed through the rest. But I promise not to talk about what happens later on in the book until next week, so you don’t need to be afraid that I’ll give anything away.)
This week’s discussion is hosted by Susan from Dab of Darkness. You can find the overall schedule here. ^_^