Detritus of the Mind

  Or: “Here, Montresor, lemme help you.” I was about 32 or 33 when I realized that I was asexual. There was no word for it in the 90s, when I was growing up, and the closest alignment was thinking of myself as bisexual (and even then, my conception of being bi was deeply flawed because 90s). But when I looked back at my life & experiences, from consuming media to dating, it all just… clicked. I was always asexual, and this was the first time I had a real name for it. It felt like a boulder had been lifted from my shoulders to have this realization. Only for another boulder to immediately be slammed down in its place - there is absolutely NO WAY that I would be able to share this revelation with anyone in my life. My family skews pretty conservative and can only kind of wrap their brains around being gay (and even then, only my mother is not openly hateful about it). There’s no one in my social circle or work circle that knows, because I know that reactions would be at best...

I wanted to put the old Toonami "Watch This Space" screen here, but Google has both failed me and insulted me with a bunch of Adult Swim crap. To say I do not like Adult Swim is an understatement. Anyway... You may have noticed that I haven't done squat here. I had plans, but here's what happened to them: - There are better nostalgia comic reviewers out there, the books I had planned either have gaps I can't fill or low interest rates, and frankly, lately the whole field of nostalgia comic reviewers attract people from a campaign that think having a character come out as gay is "character assassination". So between respect for people doing it better over more interesting titles and not wanting to have my comments filled with Comics Dudes, those aren't getting done. - The Legion essay and some of the points therein was permanently dropped, thanks to DC Comics devoting itself to wasting all of its best ideas, doubling down on its worst ones, and ...

Hi, I'm Mela, and (sigh) I like Magical Girl Raising Project . This is one of those magical girl series you aren't supposed to like if you're a fan of the genre. It's dark, it has a lot of violence, and to those who haven't watched or (preferably) read it, it seems like torture porn. But if you actually do read/watch, you learn that's not the case; none of the violence is glorified, the world is an interesting one filled with interesting characters on all sides, and it has a running theme about how bureaucratic apathy allows for terrible things to happen & good people have to push back against it to change things.  It also has some fairly creative powers and designs. So yeah, now that the books are available legally, I'd recommend them to anyone.  I'm still anxious to see how the cliffhanger at the end of the second book plays out, and since it's part of a murder mystery (a genre that's traditionally left me cold), I think that says some...

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Precure Leak Season! I have to admit, through not much fault of its own, I've kind of drifted away from Kira Kira Precure a la Mode ; the site I used decided to make like every other fansub site and align with some shady advertisers that every form of protection I have on my devices rebelled against me ever visiting.  I found some of what I could watch boring (I missed the fights & flashy attacks that weren't just glitter water), and thanks to my situation, I wound up missing really interesting developments with the characters (especially the villains). Because of this, I'm not too optimistic I'll be able to even watch Hugtto Precure  when it comes out, unless I find a safer place to do so.  Which kind of stinks cuz I really dig these designs. The theme this year apparently, according to a translation of the preview page on the official site, is "follow your dreams, you can do anything". So it seems prett...

I have a deep guilty fondness for Captain Planet . It's cheesy, super-simplified with how it handles major issues (especially the social ones), and it wears its intentions not so much on its sleeve as on its chest in day-glo neon. But there's something about it I always enjoyed. I don't know if it's the "international team" setup (which I've had a fondness for from reading years & years of X-books) or the sheer sincerity of it all in trying to teach complicated things at all. Or maybe I like a lot of the VAs they used to replace most of the celebrities once they got bored. But it's something I like, and its reputation as a cultural laughing stock even among those of us who agree with its messages kind of makes that embarrassing to admit. When I was trying to do MSTings (back when they were formatted like USENet conversations) back in college, I'd go through different fandoms that weren't being used as regular subjects by other writers, an...