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Seto wasn't finding much more in his half of the mail stack. Bills, coupons, a magazine that clearly hadn't bothered canceling her subscription when she stopped paying. Towards the end of the pile, however, he found a letter, addressed to he assumed Hirutani's mother. It was at the very least the woman getting all the mail. He opened it, re-opened it as it had clearly been read before, and paused. 'It's in Chinese,' he murmured, mostly to himself, after a quick scan he translated it aloud assuming nobody else would be able to read it:

I'm sorry to be getting back to you so late sis. If you're sure he's trying to summon...one...look I need to do more research. Grandpa kept most of his notes in Russian, though I don't know why. Probably because it was easier than code, what an awkward language but I'm trying. I think you should come stay with me. Your son...he's not right, and I think until we get this sorted it would be safer for you to keep away. Look, I don't want to say more, even if Hirutani can't read this it isn't safe. Just come here okay, I won't write again, and I won't call. If something should happen to you it'll be up to me to do something, he doesn't know what he's doing, of that much I'm sure. Please be safe sister, just come, you know were I'll be.

I love you.

((Things fall Apart, that's one of the books I read I could never remember the title. I didn't like it, but mostly because it upset me. But yea a lot of what we did related to Africa was around studying that book (and then in primary school we studied Egypt as well, but also Ghana in connection with this story about a trickster spider named Anansi, which was pretty cool) I can definitely see how science courses will get mixed up in primary school though I personally didn't have that problem. I think a more standardised curriculum per grade really should be in place so students don't miss out on huge chunks of things and repeat others.

If more female characters were in it and done well I wouldn't mind it but it's not necessarily something I personally feel to be missing. I usually don't mind all male things and resent series for not fleshing out more equal gender/ethnic diversity. I mean it's great that series do but it's not something I feel is lacking in series that don't so long as they don't go for token figures because that really is more bothersome. I mean many manga characters are Japanese (even if they have weird hair) and I don't mind that their isn't a token diversity character dropped into what is clearly a national setting. Similarly, I'm bothered when series mishandle shoving token women into roles (when it's clearly just token they are doing), but I don't mind if they just don't bother to go for diversity. Keiko and Shizuru weren't ever involved in the kind of things Yusuke and Kuwabara were involved in (even if pre-series it was thug activity rather than demon battles) so them not running up to go battle demons when they weren't the type to pick fights before doesn't bother me. I mean US news these days has had me pretty depressed, but it is a clear reminder that the real world has huge diversity issues with both race and gender. It's not unrealistic for series to reflect what is sadly a societal reality. So it would have been fine if they created 'more diverse' female characters in the first place, but I also don't mind that they aren't there. YYH still has better female characters that a lot of series I like. I can't think of another anime series where I like as many of the women as I do in this series, so as far as that goes I think they've done pretty well. Particularly given the age of this series. They do actually have a few good female characters in the final season (Mukuro, and this other one whose name I can't remember sadly) thinking about it. It's just a shame that season was so rushed as with more space there would have been further room to develop several interesting new characters (male and female) that there just wasn't much time for. It probably had more characters than the dark tournament, with more going on plot wise, but a third of the number of episodes to get through everything.

I do wish Yusuke had stuck more on the side of he'll fight a fight regardless of gender and had the trans reveal done in any other way than him being a creep and then kinda sounding like he was making it okay to fight her because she was not originally a her. Especially in the manga where his 'well I still say it doesn't matter if someone's a guy or girl' speech is cut and he just jumps to the reveal. As for Yusuke's strength, I never wondered about it. The series presented tons of strong 'human' characters throughout. Even the Tugoro brothers were originally human (and had to prove themselves better than hoards of very strong demons in order to win the privilege to be changed into demons). Sensui (first spirit detective) was never anything but human and as far as strength goes was entirely on S-class demon level. So I never once thought about Yusuke as 'too strong' for a human, so I wasn't disappointed when he wasn't. And to be fair, his demon ancestor is 40 generations away, it wasn't like we found out his absentee father was a demon. Though to be honest I probably would have found that interesting too.

I have no idea what you are talking about with the Koenma thing. When I said 'going off' after Yusuke comes back I mean how they defy that guard unit Koenma's dad sends to kill Yusuke and run off to demon world where they go after Sensui. So I'm not sure what you mean by training trope? Unless in the manga he does that (I'm only at the very beginning of dark tournament in the manga) but that's not anything that happens in the manga. After Yusuke comes back with long hair, but not any stronger. And during he was kinda possessed by his 'ancestral father' rather than doing anything on his own/having learned any great new tricks (he still goes through like a year of training in demon world with what I'm calling monks, demon monks, before he can wield that power in his own right). So I just meant I liked the humour of them defying the guard squad (I guess I should have specifically said that last time but I can't remember what they are called and still can't be bothered to go look it up) and just the sheer amusement Hiei and Kuarama have finding out Yusuke is a demon, and of course Kuwabara's absolute horror and confusion. Also, when Yusuke comes back from the dead and pretends to be evil and the guard squad are shitting themselves, that was pretty amusing too. So I assume you are referring to when he goes back to demon world which is several months later (and Koenma doesn't go with him)? Though again, doesn't come back all amazing, still loses the final tournament, and basically comes back and promises to stay with Keiko and they fool around and everyone laughs. Whatever he learned he doesn't come back and show it off or have it as a relevant feature to coming back home. So I don't think it really in anyway fits with the trope you are mentioning, which I agree isn't a very interesting one.

Kuwabara's voice probably isn't one of my favourites but while his film voice wasn't one of the most offensive I did like it less. Again down to I feel that the film voice actors were lacking the personality of the characters, so I just couldn't get used to the changes. Well let me know if you do watch SAO. I'm on episode 11 now I think. The entire first series (25 episodes I think) is currently on Netflix, at least in the UK (though US usually has everything UK has and more). Mostly slow going as I've had a lot of work and can't read subtitles and work at the same time.

Yea I'm not going to have a console or TV anytime soon so I may have to give Origin a go. If I do maybe at some point I'll give Sims 4 a go too then. Although all of Sims 3 is on Steam so maybe I'll just put off Sims 4 for a few years and play that. I've still just been on Sims 2 as I felt 3 was a graphics upgrade but not much else. Let me know if you play Origins. I kind of had fallen out of gaming and Dragon Age sucked me back in. I love the world, love the story and loved the characters. The DLC was also very good too, particularly Awakening which was quite a sizable game in itself. But yea, I recommend giving it a go. I wanted to get it for a friend for Xmas but she's a Mac person AND a Nintendo person. So hard to shop for. xd Just got her L4D, L4D2 and Killing Floor on Steam (as they are all Mac available and compatible with her specs). Not sure how much she'll like them but she wanted to play more games together so a very zombified Christmas it is. smile

She looks pretty good with the mohawk. I wanna see film-verse Storm with one.))

'No,' Seto said, frowning, 'she's clearly afraid of her nephew, I think she anticipated he'd intercept the letter. Maybe that's what got her sister killed, well, assuming Hirutani murdered his mother. I can search for her, I assume it'll take some work. If she's going to just pop up on Google even her brain-damaged nephew could find her and what would have been the point of all the secrecy. That I can do at the hospital, or after. This aunt is either alive and well now or already dead. This might be our only opportunity to comb the house, after which we probably need to stop by the hospital. Is there anything else down here to look through, or anything else that's been of use? Otherwise let's search quickly search upstairs and get out of here.

((I definitely agree, I just personally don't on the female thing necessarily feel the main characters fall into 'good enough'. I think they are very good characters even if they are clearly gender divided. I feel the divides were in many ways realistic divides rather than contrived divides or shoehorning women into a specific role like in several other series (including much more recent series). In terms of what I'd want to see in a future re-doing would have more to do with minor characters, both the transgendered character as well as the other minor women (and potentially lack of women). Of the three 'head demons' in the final season it's probably the female that gets the most development (in the anime at any rate), but there are also several other introduced characters, some old minor characters brought back that they try to develop further and then the massive plot. So nothing is really as developed as it could be. I was at first equally uninterested about them not getting enough development. A few of them got just enough development at the very end for me to actually be interested but then it was over.

Training with Genkai in season 1 (and beginning of 2 briefly) or training in demon world? I find in terms of being 'irritated with trope' that actually the season 1 and 2 training would be more bothersome. Season 1 had 6 months you see bits of in flashbacks (same with season 2 only it was 2 months and even fewer flashbacks). In the final season he was training over a year, and you watch a lot of it. Which actually I dislike, because it was dull and that season was so massive I would have rather had more character development and less training. So I guess to that end I appreciate the training trope where they are stronger and you saw no progression. Because watching training is not fun. xd And yes I meant Kurama (I had to search for awhile to find the typo to figure out where it was and thus who I meant). The campus computers for some reason don't do spell check and while I haven't added Kurama or Kuwabara to my dictionary at home the red squiggle lines make it more obvious if I screw up. It would be a good a slash name for them.

EA is pretty much the embodiment of corporate evil, so most stuff taken away will probably end up in DLC. Of the big two, pools and toddlers, I only mind one. Pools. Frankly I think they could have made it very easy if they had just combined the baby/toddler stage into one and sold it on the basis that the infant stage (where it lies there and isn't a controllable character that can do things) is dull. If they are taking out toddler I'd probably want baby gone too. But pools, that's an aesthetic I don't want to do without. My rich people need to have pools, my gym needs to have a pool. That's just, un-SimMurican! But yea, for now I'm still okay with 2, I don't have tons of time to play anyhow. I got Sims 2 before I was bored with Sims 1 (I even had a few expansions I only played a couple of times) and claimed I'd still 'finish' Sims 1 eventually, but no I never went back. So I put off Sims 3 until I was bored with Sims 2, but that time never came. The big thing I'm interested in with Sims 4 is that my favourite thing has always been building and its supposedly the game that's finally gotten that more in line with what I've dreamed of doing (character progression I'm less interested in, which is why I've said 3 was only a graphics improvement b/c all the other changes were things I wasn't looking for). But not enough to pay a fortune and be spoon-fed DLC.))

Seto glanced at the bowl warily, he didn't like the idea of trying to summon anything, particularly if they needed blood. However, if it might even slightly be useful it would be worth taking it. Besides, they didn't really need to leave Hirutani with it, thinking about that further he asked, 'is this a bowl he happened to use or is this a specific bowl that is required to summon a Shikigami? Of course we can take it either way, but if it's the latter I was just wondering if there was anything else we should be looking for in this house that we perhaps don't want remaining in the hands of a guy whose shown himself prone to summoning death spirits?'

((Yea, I guess I just don't agree on the boxes thing. I was talking to the bf walking home about kids toys and I had all kinds of things between me and my brother and while I played with them all - and if I was playing with my brother my favourite things to play with were Godzilla toys or this castle with two medieval army sets, on my own I always preferred Barbies and they were hands down my favourite toys. I think kids definitely should have the freedom to make their own choices about toys, clothes, etc. At the end of the day however, Barbie was my preference. My sports preferences have also always been more gender neutral ones (swimming, tennis). I picked playing the flute even though in retrospect I might have picked something else to not be around so many women, but my choices weren't gender but about reeds were gross, I had no interest in strings interest and my primary school didn't have much of a brass programme. Long story aside, I don't ever feel I was put in any boxes but that is who I am. I preferred to play with boys, but hobby and item preferences were more traditionally female or gender neutral. That probably still holds true. So I don't really get the feeling watching YYH that these women are put into boxes to be women, but that they are like me. I feel like they are realistic women, who realistically chose the things they did/do/like/etc, not that decisions were forced onto them. I guess that's why it bothers me more to shoehorn diversity. I feel it's equally offensive to try and restrict people to not act gendered as it is to force them to act gendered. So yea, the main women in YYH for me are realistic women, not forced into box women. Not making decisions and basing their interests on fitting with their gender role, but in fitting with who they are. For me I feel the series is delivering women who weren't forced into a role but choose the roles and life paths they take. And I have no problem with that.

Is there a general dislike about trans if I use that? I don't want to be offensive but I also am going to have a hard time remembering that because I have a problem with verbs in English. With your explanation in front of me I can see the difference between the two words and what you mean, but when that explanation is gone I'm going to get confused. I'm going to remember one isn't okay but I'm not going to remember which so I would probably end up avoiding all conversations just to not run the risk of making the mistake. If trans is not offensive then I will use that because it'll be easier for me to not make a mistake with it, one that's not going to be about trying to be offensive but about just having issues with grammar. I'm an English Literature student who has grammar issues, at least in English. I have difficulty with English as a first language I don't know how people handle it as a second. So yes, definitely thanks for bringing that up as I wouldn't want to make that mistake if I ever met a person who identified in that way, but now I'm trying to figure out how I can best avoid accidental offense.

I definitely would hate the 'oh he's so amazing' if I felt the series did that. I mean with Yusuke sleeping Kurama and Hiei did let him sleep (though I felt it was in a more disinterested way than an aww poor baby way), but Kuwabara kept throwing a fit and it was kind of funny. And then again Yusuke always comes back but it's never easy to see vast improvement at first. He struggles a lot for all his training montages. I felt in the Dark Tournament he still wasn't much stronger than before his two extra months of training, and kinda developed his skills further throughout (and yes in a massive way from magic power ball - I think that would be more of a trope push for me than the trainings, except you do get to watch quite a detailed struggle with it). I think I might also be taking the show a lot less seriously in regards to things like that, so for me it seems like these scenarios are more about being funny rather than cutting corners on development.))

'Fine, let's check upstairs for any spells or directions and then get out of here, with the basin,' Seto agreed, heading for the staircase.

((Absolutely okay, I understand that retail + life during the holidays is a crazy time. I am back in CA! Got back Monday night. Thus far have enjoyed sushi and an impromptu game night with a few friends after bumping into one while on my way to said sushi. Trying to enjoy 'relaxing' though even though I've sworn these three weeks will be work free it's still a bit in the back of my mind wondering what work I can do. xd

I guess part of that as it is a shonen series and technically aimed at boys it does seem to make sense for the characters to be 'relatable' to the main audience, even if shonen series tend to attract male and female audiences more than shouju series (I'm sorry I'm spelling everything wrong probably as I'm dashing this off while food is in the oven. It's weird to look at my clock, see that it is 1pm and see that you are online. razz I think what I would like to see is more female-orientated series that create main female characters that are more diverse. I tend to like more shonen-ai series than series aimed at women because I tend to have more complaints about women in those series. But I don't want to just eradicate female characters from either side roles and/or more feminine roles, it'd just be nice to have a more realistic mix. I also think I've learned to appreciate a more diverse definition of feminine during my PhD. A friend told me a few weeks ago that she admired how I seemed to have more male characteristics. I felt a bit offended and while a few years I would have agreed I just now feel that I'm still very feminine, even if it's a stronger, blunter more confident feminine. So I guess in the way I felt offended that my friend boxed me as masculine because I'm too strong or too confident, I don't want to box well-developed characters as 'stereotypically' feminine. I'm aiming to be more open minded with roles and the series I like are the ones where the character is developed rather than performing a function I feel it should or shouldn't be performing.

Great, I will use trans, I will try to remember transgender (I seriously almost did it again and added the -ed, geez I should have stuck with maths). To be fair I probably need a crash course in a lot of identities atm as I probably don't know the differences between terms as well as I should. Part of it is a personally do not know anyone who is trans (gender, sexual, etc) so don't perfectly know the difference. I will probably just avoid using any terminology and ask someone how they would like to be referred to in the event that changes. A comic I read has introduced a transgender character (do you read questionable content?) and I'm still not sure what to think about how it's being handled because yea, I feel very uninformed. I feel the comic is not informing me further and maybe it's not the comics job but yea, I just can't get a sense of what he's doing with the character.))

'His aunt used Chinese in her letter assuming he couldn't read it, so either she was wrong - and possibly got her sister killed - or he did need a translator. Just wonder if he would have hired someone random for the job or if there is potentially someone else out there we might want to talk to,' Seto mostly pondered his thoughts to himself, though loud enough that everyone could hear them.

((Merry Christmas!

Thanks, and sorry I immediately vanished. Been running around trying to see people, do stuff and unfortunately deal with drama. But whatever to that. I will try and avoid a holiday essay and only add further that I tend to find I have fewer male friends who are aware of authors than females. I also tend to have a lot of fantasy friends and there are tons of fantasy female author's, Tom's even currently reading a book by an author who has my name (first name). razz

Thank you for the crash course, I'm going to save it until I can get all this down. I've never heard the term ******** before. And yes the comic is called Questionable Content, I wouldn't even have to ask if it was the latter. Heh, but I used to really like it and I liked that he updated regularly but I feel content wise and character development wise it's really gone downhill and he's just going for motifs and themes that interest him in moments than ongoing progression, but I'm not sure.))

'Why was his family making him keep it secret?' Seto asked curiously. It could be nothing, just bad race relations, but given the situation and the weird Chinese connections cropping up he wondered if maybe it would be something more.

((Congrats surviving the commercial holidays, hope the non-commercial aspects were good too. Drama has mostly resolved, but I guess in short I am engaged now (I've told some people but not really posting it up until I get back to the UK as I haven't told any UK people yet save for we told Tom's family) though a certain friend kind of freaked out and made it about her. You can probably guess who. But yea we talked through it but it was a bit upsetting and I guess the first major problem since we've started talking again. I never had a personal life while we were friends and honestly she was probably a lot of why so hopefully this isn't going to turn into an issue that makes the friendship impossible. Guess we'll see, but yea don't want to bug you with the nonsense anymore. But yea, engaged. It's weird I guess only in telling people, because Tom and I have kind of decided on the whole life together thing quite awhile ago.

I've read quite a lot of female fantasy, and in terms of what I own what takes up the most space are my Anne McCaffery books. And my favourite series is by Wynne Jones (she wrote Howl's moving castle, but I love her for the Dalemark Quartet). Thinking about it I think both McCaffery and Jones are British too. But yea save for a few names a lot of my friends don't all tend to have the same books on their shelves so their is a greater variation in authors, though if I think about it there are more mainstream male authors in the fantasy genre (Sanderson, Martin, etc). I guess as I have a lot of fantasy friends I don't always think of the mainstream authors first but I suppose if you stick with them then it's true a lot are male. Even Rowling said she wrote under J.K as she was advised she'd sell better as an unknown if gender neutral, which is a bit sad.

I haven't, will probably catch up when I go back to the UK. However I am not on Tumblr, the Wordpress sites I manage and follow are all academic, same with Twitter. Not too many of my friends on FB watch it so I don't think I'm going to hit spoilers there so I'm probably okay for awhile actually as the only regular sites I follow are a sex column, a customer fails meme site and fmylife which are all unlikely candidates to come across Korra spoilers. Will let you know when I get to it though. I don't 100% recommend Questionable Content, especially recently, but if you do ever read it let me know what you think. I definitely would backlog it though.))

'Well if that's all it probably isn't important then, but another person to potentially keep in mind as anyone who translated for Hirutani would at least know something...assuming he left them alive,' Seto said, giving the small upstairs room one last cursory glance before leaving the place.

((Thanks. The plan has been US for awhile and while we are hoping Tom will be able to have a job before we move back a marriage visa is easier in the US than in the UK - which tells you how tight the UK has gotten. They can't keep the EU out (yet) so they are just really strict on trying to keep everyone else out. I definitely want a long engagement and always have. So many of my friends plan the wedding for a year from the engagement date and then they never enjoy the engagement as that's high stress. Though not necessarily decided on wanting a wedding but I know my mom does so we'll see. Advantage of the long engagement. So at earliest we are thinking end of 2017, but definitely post-PhD and with a better idea of where we are locating our lives.

High fantasy is my favourite for everything, I tend to like more medieval/fantastical words than futuristic/modern worlds in RPGs and table top games. Though space and space/horror are my favourite film genres. I guess I have different interests in the worlds I want to have shown to me and the worlds I want to involve myself in. Books and games I feel more involved in than film/TV, though I do like high fantasy there too but not as much.

Will let you know. I think part of why I fell off is Avatar and Korra are series I prefer more to binge than to come back to week after week. So when I got current with Korra was when I started to get bored. Now I can binge the end so maybe I'll have more fun with it again.))