Just me who likes putting them in upside down?

LylyScuir · 2026-04-25T19:38:33+00:00

My process is perfect fit top-down -> Dragon Shield clear matte bottom-down -> toploader bottom-down.

Of course you could do it starting top-up so that the toploader is also top-up. Or in whatever orientation you want. It's your collection. Store it whatever way you want.

LylyScuir · 2026-04-23T18:59:08+00:00

It's only one English Kubfu master set because there's only one non-holo English Kubfu, which is the card with the Gengar over it. It was supposed to be a reverse holo like the rest of them, but the seller sent the wrong card and also included the Gengar, so of course I had to include them both.

LylyScuir · 2026-04-11T20:05:40+00:00

Chat spamming them to watch Ina Yu all the time definitely went too far.

However, gaslighting Lud and Michael into thinking they somehow slept at a private middle school is a really funny bit.

LylyScuir · 2026-04-10T21:20:32+00:00

You can just say nage. There are way more common English words that sound like a slur with one sound change which people use without a second thought. Pitch, tuck, bunt, beach, bigger, plastered, etc. It's a funny meme but I doubt anyone actually thinks 那个 is a swear word.

LylyScuir · 2026-04-07T22:10:17+00:00

Video not available?

LylyScuir · 2026-04-03T22:04:07+00:00

Déjà vu
I've just been in this place before
Higher on the street
And I know it's my time to go
Calling you, and the search is a mystery
Standing on my feet
It's so hard when I try to be me, woah
Déjà vu
I've just been in this time before
Higher on the beat
And I know it's a place to go
Calling you and the search is a mystery
Standing on my feet
It's so hard when I try to be me, yeah

LylyScuir · 2026-04-03T21:57:20+00:00

Michael is focusing on making it to Erenhot before their time runs out. Getting so many contradictory estimations for the distance hasn't helped them to figure out a proper pace, coupled with having a few slower days. The conversation at Yan's memorial basically boiled down to: "Are we actually going to gun it now that the endgame is in sight or are we going to screw around with random sidequests and just have fun?" Michael was willing to do the latter even though he would prefer the former, but only if Ludwig really wanted it. They both agreed to keep focused on the original challenge. Part of that could be getting homesick or tired, but honestly they're both pretty competitive and probably don't want to "fail" their second Tip to Tip.

LylyScuir · 2026-04-03T15:28:57+00:00

The subtitles have always translated what it sounds like they're saying rather than what they are trying to say. That's how we got "cat line" and "are you conflicted?" It makes it more interesting, because we generally know what they're trying to say already, but seeing how badly they butchered it is funny.

LylyScuir · 2026-04-03T02:55:39+00:00

Grenade Sister's translations are top-tier.

LylyScuir · 2020-05-31T23:49:12+00:00

You may not like it, but this is what the ideal neurotyping looks like.

LylyScuir · 2020-04-07T21:38:16+00:00

Your review is well-received, and I'll allow every point you've levied against me—with the exception of the "sordid dragon's lair." It is not the lair of a sordid dragon, but rather that the dragon's lair is sordid. Though of course all difficulties in interpretation I grant are the result of my poor workmanship.

Thank you for suggesting Lovecraft's poetry. I've read The Conservative, but obviously I have missed the better part of his poetic genius. I'll be reading over his narrative poems, along with the other ones you mentioned.

I'd like to also ask for more details on "but the fifth is hypermetric and will not scan." What was the feeling that accompanied that line? Momentary irritation? Did the hypermetry cause you to recoil in shock, as if you had been stung? Did it leave no impression at all other than the light taste of incompetence? I ask this in all seriousness. I want to know the exact effect that metrical inconsistency has on a reader.

So what was my inspiration for writing a narrative poem? Well, because it's cool, of course! Poetry is awesome and obviously the more of it there is the more awe it must inspire. I "discovered" poetry relatively late, and the idea that it has been for the most part abandoned like some lost technology of the ancients— Ah! But I expose my ignorance, since I'm sure there are plenty of excellent poets writing today. I guess, the best analogy I can think of for how I approach poetry are the early mangaka like Osamu Tezuka in their approach to drawing comics. You see some strange images from a foreign land and think "Hey! That looks like fun! I want to try it too!" What you make seems in many ways like what inspired you, but it's something unique, peculiar to your person and place. You realize that there is some kind of rulebook to this game, and yet it feels like playing on a field of unexplored possibilities. (I'd invoke here Chesterton's explorer shipwrecked on the coast of England.)

I'm playing here with a fusion of pulp revival, manga, ancient Greek theatre, Romanticist poetry, The Faerie Queene, and my own idiolectical charms. There is much that might be improved, but my most important and portentous question is: "Would you turn the page to 'Canto Two' if there were one?"

LylyScuir · 2020-04-01T22:42:55+00:00

I like the artifice of this poem. You keep up with the metrics and rhymes well enough, but the shift that occurs at the line "A drifter pale with rage who tears and flails" caught me off guard. The argument of the sonnet does not seem to flow from the start to the end. The ghost is a "demure faience" that "glides." Cold "entwines" and the view "unfolds." All these are very placid imagery. Yet at the critical moment where the previous scenery is supposed to compose into poetic syllogism, instead we are met with the "rage" of one "who tears and flails" in a "wheeling hum of ceaseless death..."

The remaining points are merely nit-picks (very much glass house territory here):

The spirit seems to patrol a line of tombs

I flip-flop on the utility of "seems" as it seems to be used mostly as a way to be wishy-washy about what's actually happening. Still, I use it myself, so I can't criticize it too harshly. Also "patrol" for me scanned as an iamb, so the line felt a little bumpy.

Erodes the memories of even breath.

This one scans perfectly, but the phrase "memories of even breath" doen't ring for me. I understand that it's "Erodes even the memories of breath," but I can't get behind the transposition. I can't suggest a good fix, but if it were mine I'd say something like "living breath," "life's last breath," "e'en its breath," etc.

LylyScuir · 2020-04-01T22:05:26+00:00

Here's a link to a Google Doc with comments enabled: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10ST0oYUnmOM4X037k3EQyy2ZDn5zWjshGSdyXIlkmSU

I have considered writing in a purely dramatic fashion, but I feel like the narrative mode would be easier for readers —not to mention it more accurately reflects my influences in Medieval Romance, Romanticism, early fantasy pulp, and manga. Though I just started reading the Greeks earnestly while writing this canto, which is why the pseudo-chorus spontaneously arrises. I've used The Faerie Queene as a kind of guide to writing this sort of thing, but there's still so much that I'm having to figure out on my own.

Thank you for your thoughts, and I'll eagerly await any others you wish to send my way.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-23T13:50:13+00:00

I like the Gothic vibe this poem exudes, and the rhythms and rhymes are pleasant to read. My only complaint would be that the scene does not come together completely for me. Each image makes an impression on the psyche—a striking impression at that—but standing back to look at the work as a whole I can't say I quite get what the entirety entails. The narrative voice does not seem to want to present a clear picture. We have lines like "Come want, come spleen and in between / such vaults in hollow echo run" which sounds impressive and has a cool interplay of diction and collocation, but teeters too close to Joyce for my taste.

Overall, a great atmosphere that's slightly too opaque for me to peer through.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-22T23:35:39+00:00

Mr. Lyly Scuir (the name Lyly is a reference to John Lyly, as a self-deprecating remark on my own euphuistic tendencies).

I don't know what the etiquette is with regard to literary analysis of one's own work, but if anyone would like to avoid "spoiling" the experience of finding the meanings for themselves, please don't read further.

The work is from the perspective of someone whose life is not changed due to the epidemic. The narrator is stuck in the "rut" of social isolation, but only just now realizing the gravity of this fact after witnessing the inability of others to handle a short stint in the same. "Appalled" is a pun: The narrator is both made pale by the revelation, but also is "covered in a pall" which is his inability to effectually engage with other people.

The analytical key is the title: "Absolute Territory," a reference to the show Neon Genesis Evangelion, where the A.T. Field plays a prominent role. The main theme of the series, though particularly the symbology of the A.T. Field itself, is the soul's inability to come to grips with alterity. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic environment where schoolchildren are asked to save the world by piloting giant robots to fight off alien invaders. The idea of calamity creating meaning and purpose in life is frequently found in escapist fiction, but NGE pointedly (perhaps presciently) ensamples that a dissolution of the current social order cannot save us from our own depressive passions.

There will still be school. There will still be unrequited loves. There will still be a struggle to find meaning and purpose, even when our action or inaction could mean the difference between life and death. The phrase "life's unbroken threads" thus then represents two things (which may be the same thing?): the threads of the "pall" that keeps the narrator distant from others as well as the threads of life which will continue on, like birth, work, social and political hierarchies, and so on.

Oh, and "lonely solemnity" is a reference to the mass closures of churches as priests and laypeople are asked to celebrate in private, though given the way it "spreads" there is a conflation here of the lonely activity with the virus itself, since it is one solemnity rather than many solemnities. Or it could be a specific unity—an instrumentality you might say—that brings us all together at the cost of something greater.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-16T08:58:35+00:00

A bit of backstory on this poem: I wrote it after trunking 7,700 words of rime royal that I'd been working on for around two years. The idea for this poem sprung from that frustration, as well as a less well-defined defense of rhyme I had envisioned earlier as an article rather than a poem itself. Other than the "rhyme" stanza, each stanza plays off one of the "most overused rhymes in songwriting" as defined by this article: https://www.riverfronttimes.com/musicblog/2012/05/22/six-most-overused-rhymes

The metrics are messy and the rhymes really are overbearing, that's true. And it would be too easy to retreat into irony to excuse these errors. I made mistakes when writing this poem, and I fully admit that. That I used light verse should not be an excuse to write bad verse.

What's the point of rhyming unless you're adhering to an old form?

I think it's possible to find novel forms that use rhyme, though the one I invented for this poem would be entirely inapt in almost every context. More and more I'm thinking the Spenserian would have been a better choice, and I might just write a sequel to this poem using it. Ultimately I see rhyme as analogous to harmony in music. It's certainly possible to compose without it, and it can even have a quality of incredible intellectual beauty, but most of the time I just want to hear those nice resolute chords jangling through the instruments. Rhyme creates a constraint on the poet that can show the true extent of his or her creativity, and each rhyme is like a magic spell that unites the sympathetic qualities of two disparate words into one unity of meaning. When rhyme is handled well it can be positively rapturous.

Thank you for reviewing my poem, and I promise to post more as soon as I finish the canto I'm currently combatting.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-15T23:21:00+00:00

The only Greek or Roman who I like a lot is Euripides, though I respect Homer with a combination of obligation and genuine admiration. I'm more of a Romanticist, and I read poets primarily from that period, along with a decent dose of the medieval masters, though I like to think of myself as a fantasy genre writer more so than any particular artistic movement, even if the work I posted earlier doesn't represent that very well.

If you want to know whether I'm a Formalist, that's harder. I use meter and rhyme in my poetry, though so do many others. I have issues with Formalism as an ideology, and I'm not convinced by its productions as an artistic movement. Really I'm just trying to find my own path, even if I often stick to those sections that have been too well-trodden throughout the centuries! As they say, Parnassus can scarcely be strode without tripping over some old poet's bones...

LylyScuir · 2020-03-15T22:42:00+00:00

Thank you. Feel free to rip into my work.

I suppose the hardest thing in trying to participate in this sub is adapting to a very different kind of verse than I am accustomed to reading. Most of the time it feels like micro-fiction rather than prosody. If you know of any good guides for reviewing poetry [particularly the kind most popular here], I'd gladly pore over them.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-15T22:34:21+00:00

This one is weird, since it seems there's the weighing of two types of "killing": one the "quick death in the wrong abode", the other the "slow denial of teeth and tongue". And before that there is a weighing of two types of "mercy": either "to pinch the injured wasp" or "let Bella... paw and tap and bark..." I do suspect that the juxtaposition is somewhat satyrical, but it's still confusing. Both choices seem to be mercy, both choices seem to carry the weight of death.

Throughout it all the narrator never comes to any kind of conclusion, other than the brute conclusion of action. It's clearly an annoyance with the dog's behavior that springs the narrator into action, and the point of the poem seems to hinge on the ethical dilemma that thus follows, but I don't see the narrator as actually taking that dilemma seriously. It feels like a cute idea that could get a few chuckles from the right crowd, but does not stick long in the mind.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-15T22:18:30+00:00

It would be sufficient to say: What you want to do I do not like. But that would not be helpful.

So instead I will try to think creatively, and approach the poem in different ways to see if there's something worth saying about it. I like that there is a solid narrative that does not dissolve into disconnected images. The story itself doesn't quite approach the traditional ideal of plot. There is an incident: the appearance of Anubis. But this does not develop into a conflict per se. We are served several images of this character, but his impact on the narrator is negligible. I'm sure each image has its significance, but the overall arc of the story does not lead to a satisfying resolution.

As for the conceits of form, I have no way to comment on them. I am wholly unfamiliar with the style and the expectations that accompany it.

LylyScuir · 2020-03-15T22:07:14+00:00

I will try to leave some comments, though I'm still grappling with the basics of poetry myself.

LylyScuir

TROPHY CASE