[Kamen Rider Die]

Alright, I’ve got a few minutes, it might be fun to actually talk about this for real.

(I was going to watch a movie, but I decided to do some work stuff instead. There’s about fifteen minutes between tasks, so I can probably knock this out.)

My day job is selling comics, same as it’s been since I was twelve. There’s a lot of busywork to it, but the main thing is reading comics, understanding what they’re about, recognizing what’s good and bad about them, and then being able to describe that to people in ways that’d help them decide if they’ll enjoy it. Like, that’s what all of the busywork supports, that part of the job. So, in a way, all of that work has reshaped my brain to be able to watch Kamen Rider and then enjoy talking about it.

Beyond that, a lot of my “process” is just talking about the ways the episode(s) worked for me. I’m not really into doing a big recap, or trying to write down everything that happened in the episode. I don’t want to do a Wiki post, you know? (I'd do a shit job of it, is the biggest problem.) I mostly want to talk about how I felt watching these episodes, what I think they’re doing right and wrong, and hope that’s of enough interest to other fans that they’ll feel like sharing their feelings about the show.

The actual writing, and I don’t want to minimize the difficulties other people face, it’s not something I really slave over. I like it to feel conversational, so everything’s pretty much a first draft. I might tweak a sentence here or there, but most of this is just what I type, and that’s it. I need to get this, whatever “this” is, out of my head. This isn’t performance, it’s self-care, it’s therapy. Without an outlet to process this, to talk it over with other fans, it spills over into boring my friends and losing sleep. The flipside of training my brain to process narrative and form opinions is that I can’t exactly shut it off. There’s no one in my life who’d give a shit about my thoughts on Kamen Rider, so god bless you people for giving me a space to talk about it.

Even this part, the talking it over with fans, that's still what I've been trained to do in my job. It's not just answering questions or pitching stuff, it's having a dialogue, trying to get what someone's looking for, what they enjoy. If you don't care what people like, and why they like it, you'll do a terrible job of helping them find something they'll want to buy. This whole thing, it's like orienting all of my job training toward fun, toward escapism.

I really enjoy doing these posts, and getting to talk about this franchise with you all. It's a real treat. Thanks!