Click....whirrrr...processing....
Eek. Lost of bloggage to do.
Okay. Shoujocon, to start with. I went to shoujocon last Friday. It's a great con, on the small side, which is nice and relaxing. I have the utmost respect for 40 year old men who sell yaoi doujinshi by hawking it and going 'get your red hot yaoi! Right here!' Utmost respect.
The high points of Shoujocon were 1) getting to meet the creater of Your Wings are Mine which is just this gorgeous online comic that I love very much.
Of course, this high point was shadowed by high points number 2 and 3 - getting to meet Skuld, which was great, and finally getting to meet Rose which was an incredible amount of fun. My friends got to eat dinner with her and her friend, and I haven't had so much fun for a long time. It's great when people are somehow so much cooler in person than on AIM.
Speaking of friends, high point number 4 was the fact that whileone of my friends knew what sort of stuff would be at Shoujocon, our other, male friend, didn't. He made the best faces. Ever.
Okay, moving on.
Have spoken with roomate, who seems very nice, and I move into college life this Sunday. Can't wait!
Finally saw Piratesof the Caribbean. Dear god, that movie was fantastic. Dear god, the stuff on the pit really sucks. It almost makes me want to write a realistic account of 'young girl gets taken aboard as a member of the crew of the Black Pearl'.
Jack: So you pull your weight up here, or you get the hell off my ship.
Annamaria: And don't worry about your teeth, everyone gets scurvy sooner or later.
Jack: Everyone smells like this, love, you'll get used to it.
Annamaria: Hold on - you can't shoot a gun, or fight, and you've no idea how to hold a sword or sail a sip - why the hell did we take her on, Captain?
Jack: She's a marysue, we're not given an option.
Enough of that, moving on.
Also went to Rennaissance Faire, the first time I've been. It was great, although the joust left me somewhat unimpressed (result of my riding experience) and when Queen Elizabeth picked up a sword and joined the battle I just got confused.
Of course, when I told my friend I went to the Ren Faire, he wanted to know if everyone smelled bad and had pickmarks on their faces from syphilis. A wise ass, my friend is.
Oooh. Neat bow, Velithya I've got one myself - shooting arrows into my poolhouse wall is something of a pastime. It's got about 35-ish pull, maybe more or less, I'm not really sure. It's fairly large though, and bright red.
Yes, bright red. Being a stealth elf is so much harder these days.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
The will of the mescaline
I don't normaly cut and paste AIM converse, but some things really need to shared. That, and it makes me laugh and I'm too lazy to save it to Word. A piecemeal conversation, on the Jedi. You rock, Twig. And gets props for 'bongsaber'.
----
asprosdrakos: And what is it with apprentices going bad? Is it some kind of union movement?
TwigBrnch: X D
TwigBrnch: chapter 13 in the How to Be a Jedi handbook
TwigBrnch: "when to go evil"
TwigBrnch: you may be asking yourself, is this the right time to go evil?
TwigBrnch: do you find yourself having a penchant for not getting your arse kicked every time you step outside?
TwigBrnch: are you tired of meditation being seen as a serious solution to said ass whoopings?
TwigBrnch: would you like to wear a color other than poo brown?
TwigBrnch: do you have aspirations above keeping the status quo?
asprosdrakos: The real question, is how are you using your powers? If you use your powers for trivial things, like:
asprosdrakos: - force lightning to fry chicken.
asprosdrakos: - Mind manipulation to get into movies free of charge
asprosdrakos: then you may not be ready to go evil.
TwigBrnch: I love how the good jedi have no problem with mind manipulation.
TwigBrnch: at all.
TwigBrnch: "do you not see the possible evil in having people do what you say, irregardless of your noble intentions?"
asprosdrakos: It's the will of the force.
asprosdrakos: The force is the best excuse for stupid actions ever.
asprosdrakos: "It is the will of the force that I leave your mother in a squalor of slavery and degradation."
TwigBrnch: anakin should try it
TwigBrnch: "it is the will of the force that I whoop your useless jedi ass from here to degobah."
TwigBrnch: "hey, that sounds pretty good actually."
asprosdrakos: "Hooray for the force! For with it I can justify stupid actions!"
TwigBrnch: and the jedi are so wise and so kind and so completely incapable of doing anything but taking care of their own
asprosdrakos: Well, the way I see it, following the force
asprosdrakos: Is like getting really, really drunk
asprosdrakos: and then doing idiot things for no apparent reason
asprosdrakos: but with justification
asprosdrakos: it's like if you blew up a local mini-mart, and then when the police questioned you, you just went 'oh, but I was drunk. It was the will of my ungodly blood alcohol level.'
asprosdrakos: and then they let you go.
asprosdrakos: I think it works for most major drugs.
TwigBrnch: "The Force or Mescaline"
TwigBrnch: "you be the judge"
asprosdrakos: The three typs of Jedi -
asprosdrakos: light, dark and druggie
asprosdrakos: They send the stoner Jedi to the backwater planets no one really cares about.
TwigBrnch: surprised there weren't some hanging out with the ewok
TwigBrnch: i mean they sort of look like grateful dead bears
TwigBrnch: if you scrunch your eyes
----
And now I want to know what the plural of Jedi is. Jedis? Jedies? This must be why it's always 'the Jedi.'
Thursday, August 21, 2003
W00t
Tora Chapter 6 is up at the pit: here.
I feel so accomplished, except for the fact I should really have had this out two months ago.
Well, there went that accomplished feeling.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
W00t
Tora Chapter 6 is up at the pit: here.
I feel so accomplished, except for the fact I should really have had this out two months ago.
Well, there went that accomplished feeling.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
This is monotony, go to your gate
The problem with me and journals is that my life isn't terribly interesting to other people. It involves lots of inside jokes and a distinct lack of public interaction. I'll hit the high points.
- Work is nice in that the people I work with are funny, and have taken to calling me Seabiscuit. No, I'm not kidding. I guess I was a bit too happy about seeing the movie, which I did really like, even if the historical interludes/voiceovers gave a documentary feel to parts of it.
- Got to see bunch of friends again. Was one fun experience, and took the ability to make funnel cake away with me. Don't ask.
- Massive buy-up of college supplies mostly complete. Holding pattern commencing.
And erm...well, more later. Tired now.
Friday, August 8, 2003
Umm...yay?
The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Damn you, pit.
After seeing the conjunction's layout, and talking about it with Twig and going over some info online, I really want it to be July 2, 2004, so that I can see Spiderman 2. Because Doc Oc looks so very cool.
Of course, following the movie there will doubtless be Spidey/Doc Oc tentacle slash somewhere on the pit. And it will likely be badly written and the very prospect frightens me.
In the meantime though, I can push such thoughts from my mind and reflect on just how damn hot the Doc is.
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Smells like routine
It's strange that summer has settled into a routine much like school. I work at Americorps, in what we refer to as the stream team. (read: we go around and pick garbage out of streams). At least it's outside.
I got back from Virginia a few days ago. Being from New York, everyone talks slowly there, and words like 'ya'll' scare me, for inane neurotic reasons. Still, a good trip. The horse show that I helped out at (Dressage at Lexington) was enormous and the horses there were absolutely gorgeous. Big warmbloods mostly, but still gorgeous.
Received AP scores, and was pleased to see I did well in everything, save Studio Art, for reasons that are beyond me. My teacher said they'd either get my concentration or not, and obviously the latter occured.
I would probably care a great deal more about this if I were going to major in art, instead of bio.
Other than writing, this summer had taken the feel of a holding pattern from high school to college. Which means, I suppose, that I am a 747 circling endlessly in the air above the airport.
That metaphor disturbs me, and I'm not sure why.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
I don't wanna eat the toasty souls of the damned!
So, a while ago, I went on this three day excursion, and while I was there, a guy there showed me this comic, with a great brand of sick humour and bizarre art. I've been trying to remember who is the writer, but I couldn't.
And then Twig tells me about how brainmeats comes from Invader Zim, and after watching a few episodes and noticing the styles are very similar, I looked him up, and yep, it's the same guy. Which explains more than it doesn't.
But look! The comic is called Squee. I only wish I could find a picture of the "Tickle-me Hellmo" comic I remember. Ah well, guess I'll have to buy the book.
"I thought we were having Stove Top? I want none of this soul toast." The son of Satan and he's made a friend. Brilliant.
Sunday, July 6, 2003
As a side note, Twig I'm fairly certain I've taken the term brainmeats from something you've said or written at one time or another.
Obviously, all the cool stuff I can say, I steal from other people. Go speed racer, go.
Thursday, July 3, 2003
Brainmeats!
It's official, Smallville has eaten my brain. I will never write anything for this show, and it's not even the show, although it's fun, in a wow-did-the-producers-know-how-gay-they-were-making-this-show sort of way that's currently consuming my brainmeats, in a hannibal lecter-ish sort of way. It's the fandom. I wish there were other fandoms that had so many good writers in one place. Although, this is probably because I've been moving only through rec pages, and haven't touched anything on the pit yet, but still. Wow.
Lest anyone think me dead, however, or lobotomized, Tora is also eating my brain. Pushing the chapter, for maybe next week? Likely won't happen, but a deadline will make me get closer than the lack of one will.
Should also work on RoD fic, so close to done, and yet so far. Grrr. Should also social blog. Things to do, relegated to later.
Brainmeats!
Thursday, July 3, 2003
...if I didn't need this brain
Strange things happen past midnight. This will not go anywhere. Seriously. Warnings for Order of Phoenix.
----
Two days after Sirius had died, Remus got himself completely and utterly drunk.
It really wasn't the best timing in the world, but Lupin found that after the first five shots or so, timing ceased to matter. And the beer wasn't all that great either, but it burned going down and hit his empty stomach hard, and that was all he really cared about. He'd never drunk much, left that to Sirius and James, although the former was a happy drunk, and the latter a philosphical drunk. James would wax poetic on physics and Lily's hair and the physics of Lily's hair, and Sirius would just sit there and laugh, too loud and for too long.
Peter didn't drink much at all, after he'd tried and fainted after three shots. Figures. The traitor always /was/ the one who couldn't hold his liquor.
Remus /could/ drink, but he didn't enjoy it as the others did. A werewolf spends too much of life out of control, in a mad moondaze that smells of blood and sweat. To voluntarily give up control was a concept he couldn't grasp.
So Remus had gotten very good at keeping control. It helped, because someone had to keep control, had to stop the rest of the Marauders from getting expelled, had to stop James from being too much of an ass for Lily to forgive him, had to stop Harry from falling further and further into grief.
But James was dead now, Peter would be better off dead, and Harry had to stand on his own, or he wouldn't be able to stand at all.
And Sirius was gone.
There was no one left to worry about. So Remus got drunk.
----
Yeah. Screw you too, brain.
Saturday, June 28, 2003
Wheee!
I graduated today. No more high school. This makes me both happy and sad, or it will, because right now all I care about is that:
I GRADUATED!
Whee.
Friday, June 20, 2003
All children are evil
Okay. So, my friend and I spent the year, in our free time, working on this mural. It came out great - a huge thing, on each side of a door, of two winged guys - anime style and greater than life size. One had a bat wing, one an angel. I'm really proud of it.
And the night we finish it, these six years olds from a dance studio that came to our school desecrate it. They scratch their names in it, and just ripped the paint off. The damage isn't massive, but it's still there and even though we're going to fix it...
I am so not amused.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
burn their exoskeleton
There are ants in one specific location of my house: my computer.
GAH.
Sunday, June 15, 2003
you can always go home
A peculiar and rather busy weekend happened.
On Saturday, my cousin had his graduation party. he's four years older than me, and thus graduates from college at the same time I graduate from high school. (which I get to do in about a week and a half) Anyway, we all got in the car and drove up. After two hours it bacame clear that the rain was not going to stop, so everyone was in the hunting lodge type place where they had the affair.
Sidenote: stuffed animal heads and party decorations make for an interesting contrast, especially when someone puts a gradutation hat on the moose head.
Had fun with my family, in the way that having fun with family always is - somewhat embarrassing because they know more about you then you'd like, but it stills feels like home. Cousin got up to play for us all, with his band. He's actually really good, plays guitar. Their bass player was late, so they had a limited selection, but it was still great.
Next day I got to hack a trail through woods and pray it wouldn't start raining on us as we did it. Go americorps!
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
eternal uke strikes back!
Me: WHY did you not tell me I was writing that entire passage in the wrong tense?
Cloud: It's introspection. I thought it was supposed to be in present tense.
Me: Yeah. Right.
Cloud: Stop trying to tell me how to think! I can't control that!
Me: You're damn well going to try.
Cloud: You're smothering me. I cannot work under these conditions!
Me: Is that a threat?
Seph: The ukes are revolting.
Cloud: Hey!
Seph: I meant it in the communist, 'my comrade, for the revolution' sense.
Cloud: Oh.
Zack1: Don't throw history references at him. He bruises easily.
Zack2: Do those references even apply to us? I mean, did our world ever have communist regimes?
Zack1: We got an evil corporation, doesn't that count?
Zack2: Yeah, but Shinra's not very obsessed with the color red.
Zack1: Waitaminute...red...red...or...scarlet - Scarlet! She must secretly be a leader of a communist regime!
Zack: We've uncovered her nefarious plot!
Seph: We should really keep a minimum distance of ten feet between you two at all times.
Zack1&2: Too late now.
Cloud: My head hurts.
Me: I couldn't bribe you to shut up, could I?
----
You see what happens when I let them come out? God alone knows how bad it'll be when Jenova!Seph starts.
Wednesday, June 4, 2003
Salsa in a skirt
The high point of Prom night was learning to Salsa. And getting them to play swing. I love swing music to point of an obsession, and I love dancing to it.
I don't like dresses, at all, but I dealt with wearing one, and I even looked nice while doing it! Hah!
There are pictures somewhere, but I suck and don't have webspace to put them on.
After prom, we went to a comedy club, which was fun and amusing and only slightly dampened by one comedian's lack of intelligence.
Better write up later. Am tired.
Sunday, June 1, 2003
It's a Mary Sue! Kill it!
First and foremost, happy birthday Thorne! May it be filled with all sorts of neat things and...and...stuff that is not bad and annoying.
Secondly, a mini rant.
If anyone is ever feeling discouraged about getting their original work published, I direct you to this book:
Demon in my View by Amelia Atwater-rhodes...I'm not spelling that correctly and I don't care.
This girl has three - possibly more - books published. The first and third have some merit, and her writing is solid, but I don't care. The second book features the biggest self-insert I have ever seen.
Brain1: Oh wow, the main character's an author who happens to be an estranged high school student.
Brain2: Now, now, let's not start this.
B1: She wears nothing but black, and people think she's evil. The poor little social misfit.
B2: I need a sledgehammer.
B1: Insert gorgeous guy, who happens to look exactly like the character in her prevous book! Oh my stars and garters! The books couldn't be real, could they?
B2: The sarcasm, it burns us.
B1: And let's have the dangerous vampy and the misfit author be attracted to each other! Ooooh, can't forget to give her 'magic dream power'!
B2: Don't you need hallucinogenic mushrooms for those.
B1: No, you just need to be really lame.
In conclusion, the book is a giant self-insert. I felt nauseated while reading it. It should not exist. If it had bad grammer, it'd be in the pit of voles. Grrrrr.
Monday, May 26, 2003
This post is a figment of your imagination
The spaces that used to be occupied by things like Calc lab and other assorted fun stuff have become long stretches of void. You know, study hall.
I never know quite what to do with myself in study hall. I usually just grab a computer and type, which is what's occuring now. The bad thing about this is that I'm a neurotic freak, and am posessed of the notion that people are looking at what I'm doing on the computer.
That, and the fact that some of the school computers are so ancient that the mice that used to turn the gears are feebly twitching and nearly dead.
Heart of Darkness is one of my least favorite books, and the only saving grace of English class is my teacher's impeccable impression of a overturned railway car "waiting on its back for the metal vulturs to start to circle."
Trying to start a new chapter of Tora that begins with Seph perspective is a lot like pulling teeth.
Seph: You want me to do what?
Me: It's a meeting. It's short. Shut up and go, would you?
Seph: I hate meetings. Besides, all these people think I'm the anti-christ.
Me: Stop that. No christian references, please.
Seph: Grrr.
Friday, May 23, 2003
It should be noted that, having seen the Matrix: Reloaded and X2, I love them both. As a die-hard marvel fan, I am more than a little biased, but I honestly think X2 is the better movie.
And Thorne, regarding your Mystique comment, I drag out my full geek knowledge...and the big book of Marvel I got for christmas. Anyway, from what I recall, and what the book says on her, Mystique ages weirdly, ie, not much at all, prefers the forms of beautiful women, and it is tiring for her to take forms that are larger than her natural state.
And now that's giving /me/ odd ideas. Argh.
Monday, May 19, 2003
t-minus two days to Reloaded
Things of note:
- Tora 5 is finally up, here. I think my entire writing of this chapter revolves around getting Seph punched in the face. But don't tell him that, it'll blow my cover.
- I really want to see the second Matrix movie.
- AP's are over. This makes me happy. So very happy. Have so much more time to write.
- I am tired, and thus all further comments will be delayed until a later date. Night.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Grrr. Argh.
Blogging has been eaten by AP exams. I hope blogging gave AP's horrible indigestion.
Am not quite done, but after going through two AP (one being Calc BC) which means 6+ hours of test, am somewhat over halfway there. Now I've just got Euro (tomorrow) and then Bio after the weekend break.
As a side note, whoever came up with the brilliant idea of having students take the Art History exam in the frezzing auditorium, you can bite me.
Twig sorry to hear about nasty customers. Things like that always make me realize what a twit most X characters are. I mean, come on, if I had major telekinectic powers, you can bet a lot more people would be suddenly tripping. And falling down small flights of stairs. And...stuff.
And Sephiroth would like to add that, while I understand how annoying it is when you can't write because of writer's block or no time, he has no problem at all with me not writing.
Me: So, what I give you one bad dream in Tora and you lose your spine?
Seph: The chapter's not out yet, so it hasn't happened. And at your rate, it never will!
Me: If I didn't have to study for Euro you'd be in so much pain.
Seph: Ha-ha.
Me: You. Pain. Tomorrow. PAIN.
So, yes, sympathy all around, except from the twits in the peanut gallery.
Thorne, the wound sounded painful, and I'm glad to hear it's okay. Face wounds always bleed more than other wounds, but it still sounded like a serious cut.
There's a messy story involving my face and a small pickax that leads to my knowledge of how said wounds bleed a lot. It actually reminds me of your story, although it happened years ago, and my cousin dropped aforementioned pickax (my bad luck was that I was crouched below him). But it hit about a centimeter away from my eye, near my nose, and everyone mentioned how lucky I was that I didn't lose my eye. Over and over. And over.
And now that I think about it, that was my right eye, and I do not need to be able to draw the parallels between all the CLAMP idiots who lose their eye.
As a side note of general information, FFVIII has the best level up clause ever. See, I ran through most of the game, and needed to beef up the characters. If you stick Quistis in the yellow and go to the island of heaven/hell, and perform one of her limit breaks - which one I can't remember, although I think it kills them in one hit - the characters gain enormous experience. Almost two levels worth, sometimes.
Thursday, May 8, 2003
best thing ever
Got the Spirited Away DVD. Quite possibly the best 20 bucks I have ever spent, as I can relive the moments such as the hopping lampost that Chihiro meets when she goes to see Zeniba.
Not only does it hop, but it bows in greeting, and wraps itself around gates and waves goodbye.
I really want one, despite all the physical impossibilities. And the fact that an actual hopping lampost would creep me out to no end. Animated, it's still the best thing ever.
And yes, the rest of the movie is lovely and brilliant and gorgeous, but it's a lampost that hops. And does other stuff. Can't beat that.
Saturday, May 3, 2003
How can I say no?
The following in the rough draft of "stories" my Read or Die fic. I've never posted something like this, so quasi-complete, but I think I'll be able to work out what I need to add if I do.
Warning: massive tense problems, and overall pretty rough.
Still, enjoy, anyone who wants to. Especially you, since you've given me so much encouragment about this fic.
As a side note, I really should count how many times I write the word story/stories in this.
----
----
----
Sing me a lullaby,
Sing me the alphabet,
Sing me a story
I haven’t heard yet.
- Weakerthans, “My favorite chords.”
----
Yomiko knows many stories.
She knows stories of castles and their kings, of cities and stars shrouded by their smog, and of dark quests and their heroes and villains. She knows many stories, and they always change, and sometimes they end in joy and sometimes in sorrow, and sometimes they do not end at all.
Nancy remembers what life was like before she came to live with Yomiko, in this apartment-house over the city. She remembers the darkness of the big place, and the cold stares and above all else the silences.
When she came here, the noise was so strange that she couldn't sleep. And so Yomiko came to her and told her a story.
Yomiko never repeats stories, and appears to have a limitless supply of them. Nancy watches Yomiko's face when she tells them to her, sometimes late at night when the stars are out, sometimes in the morning before the dawn, and sometimes in the days when rain pelts the roof and they sit together to the sound of it. (It is a constant beat, like a pulse, but too fast, or perhaps too slow.)
Yomiko tells a story, and she tells herself. She pours herself into the story, and the first time she told Nancy a story, Nancy was worried that Yomiko would run out of herself before the story was finished. That there would be no ever after because she would be hollow from the telling before the party even met the wandering monk.
But Yomiko stopped telling that story, of the two women and the books with power in them, the story that was more than a story, that was somehow real. She has not yet returned to it, and Nancy wants to know how it ends.
Once, Nancy asked her what happened next, but it was late at night and Yomiko, with a teasing lilt in her voice, ordered Nancy to bed, lest she wake up as grumpy as Grendel.
Nancy wasn’t sure what a grendel was, or why it would be so unhappy, but she went to bed anyway, the story still in her mind. It would be a long time before she asked about it again.
When she had been there several months, and the stories showed no signs of repeating, she asked Yomiko where they all came from, and how she knew so many. Yomiko smiled at her, a secret smile, and told her to get her coat.
“We’re going to go on a quest, Nancy-san. A quest to find the stories!”
----
The city was noisy and busy and alive, moving to its own beat and tune. It didn’t just dance to its own drummer, it made its own drum, and added in the rest of the band for good measure.
Nancy, who was used to the rhythm of words and the beat of Yomiko’s breath as she told them, was always unnerved by the city. It was too big and too fast. Walking through, keeping close to Yomiko, Nancy always felt like she could sink through the sidewalk and no one would notice. People bumping into her was almost reassuring because she always expected, on some level, for them to pass right through her.
----
The quest began and ended at the library, a large, unassuming brick building that stood prominently between a bakery and a department store.
The library was another world, a land of books and paper and the dry, ancient smell that came from the stacks. Nancy couldn’t think of any words to describe it except words that didn’t describe smells. Old. Dry. Dusty. Ancient. Dark. The books smelled like knowledge, the information leaking from their pages to perfume the air around them.
Nancy loved the library at once, because there were stories here, and they lead so many different ways. The library was the beginning of everything, of every story, and she wondered if they were hiding the ones that had not been told yet somewhere in the stacks, between .
But for all the glory of the library stacks, all the beginnings and all the endings, that wasn't why she loved the place. It was the spirit of it, and that spirit reflected itself in the pure and vibrant joy shining in Yomiko's eyes as the woman rushed over to the new books section.
The new books didn’t smell like age, they smelled like adventure: daring tales of glory and love and hate and hope. Yomiko smelled like that sometimes, and Nancy was never quite sure why.
“Ah – Nancy-san! Look! I’ve been looking for this one!”
Shoved in her face, Nancy focused in on the cover. A faded image met her: a woman high on a cliff top, wrapped against the wind or the loneliness. Words scrawled along the edge in formulaic script.
I Should be Extremely Happy in Your Company.
It made sense, after all. She was happy in Yomiko’s company, and she’d always assumed Yomiko was happy in hers.
Closing her eyes, Nancy held the image on of the cover of the book, and gave the woman paper wings, ready to leap and fly. She opened them, and Yomiko was still looking at her, something bright and wonderful in her eyes. And seeing that joy, that happiness, Nancy felt like she could draw the beginnings from the books, that she could grow her own paper wings and fly away to find her story.
----
Sometimes, Yomiko works, and Nancy is left alone in the apartment-house. Without Yomiko and the stories to fill the spaces they seem to grow and stretch, until Nancy can wander the empty halls for days or hours.
She cleans in those empty hours, because it makes everything so much worse, the spaces magnified by the lack of clutter.
This is not to say she likes the emptiness, for she does not. She hates it, with a passion she didn’t think she could posses. But she’s drawn to it, by something strong and sure.
All the spaces remind her of the big place that grew on its own, the place of the gray building and the women who never smiled, the place of the grass and sky and sea and long lonely hours that stretched around both. She'd told the people there, with cold faces that told no stories, that she did not like it here, that she felt like she could fall through the emptiness and keep falling.
They wrote down what she said, as if she was telling a story, which she knows now is wrong, because only Yomiko can tell stories, and said nothing.
She dreamt of falling sometimes, when she was there, of falling but being in control, a sort of flying without wings.
It was after this dream that she began to watch the birds, and the cold people noted down the things she did, the glances outside and her own silences. They didn’t restrict her, still let her go outside and watch the passing of the wind over the water and the sky over the sea. But they watched her, and Nancy could feel their eyes always on her, always.
There are no eyes in the emptiness, and perhaps that is why she love-hates it.
When she cleaned the books off of the table in what approximated the kitchen, she found several pieces of paper, delicately folded with creases too precise for any other hands but Yomiko’s.
She remembers these birds, or ones that looked like them. The birds had flown away at her approach, so she tried to make a new bird, one from paper, because they wouldn’t let her have anything else. And the paper was hard to fold, and it wrinkled in all the wrong directions, rebelling against her wish to see it fly.
Yomiko had come, and she had taken the paper from her lap and folded with no effort. And then she had made it fly.
Nancy’s never asked Yomiko if she could make her paper wings so she could fly. She doesn’t really need them in the emptiness, because it love-hates her as much as she love-hates it.
In the end, Nancy decides that she too is empty space.
So when she went to the sink to turn on the water, she was not concentrating on her actions, not focusing on anything save the emptiness that pressing in around her.
And her hand went through the faucet, without pain or preamble. It passed through the metal with barely any feeling, a slight tingle, as if it had fallen asleep and was waking up. It was hole, there was no blood, and there was no damage to the faucet.
Nancy stared at the offending appendage for a long time after that. Things like this, events like these happened in different places, stories other than hers. That this happened now denies certainties that she needs to keep, and she is confused at their loss.
So when Yomiko returns, bedraggled and tired, she says the first thing that comes to mind.
“My hand went through the faucet today.”
There were, perhaps, better ways to phrase that, but Nancy had never been subtle. Even though she should be, because only assassins and magicians – people who lurked in the dark corners of the world with a mysterious and taciturn air – could possibly put their hand through a kitchen faucet. As Nancy is not mysterious or sly or silent, her character is not one who would possess that power in her story. That character doesn’t exist in her story.
Yomiko stops but does not turn, denial in her shoulders and back and the stiff and smooth fall of long back hair. It flickers through the muscles and cloth, and then is gone, like creases smooth out of a piece of blank, white paper.
“Nancy-san, do you want me to tell you a story that badly?”
Confusion, the kind that results from someone asking a question and getting an unrelated question in reply.
“I’ll start where we left off in about an hour or so, don’t worry. You don’t need to make up stories to make me start sooner.”
A story? Something made up, something not real? Nancy thinks that could be true, although everything seemed real about the feeling of the faucet going through her palm, and the soft, scratchy sensation, like pushing through cotton. But it didn’t fit in her story, so it had to be part of another story, a fake story.
But Yomiko knows stories, and Yomiko tells stories, and Nancy doesn’t really have a story to tell. She follows Yomiko’s story, as she follows Yomiko’s life. So Yomiko must be right, and Nancy must have made it up when she wasn’t looking.
Because Yomiko tells stories and her stories are always right and Yomiko is always right.
And that’s a story too.
----
The story that Yomiko told Nancy in the noise of the city on her first night in the apartment-house was not the first story.
The first story, appropriately enough, was in the place of silence and dead paper birds that flapped their wings weakly under her folding fingers.
Yomiko wasn't Yomiko then, but a dark-haired woman with glasses and a quiet voice and a shy smile. She carried wonders in her hands, hands that made the paper fly, and she carried miracles in her voice, a voice that gave stories wings.
Nancy wasn't sure then, but now she knows that she loved Yomiko from the moment her voice gave that first story life.
Mother. Friend. Savior. Maybe even more than that. Yomiko gave her a past with that story, something to keep her from falling into the sky, and Nancy loved her for that.
Sister.
"Your sister was a strong, yet gentle, person who saved the world."
But then the story stopped, and Nancy wants to know how it ends.
----
Sometimes, Yomiko wakes up in the might, not screaming but shaken, and when Nancy rushes to her room, she can hear the women say her name.
Somehow, Nancy knows that she isn't the one Yomiko is calling to from her nightmare.
The first time it happened, Nancy questioned Yomiko about it. It was a simple question, just an inquiry into the identity of the other Nancy. Nancy expected a light laugh, maybe even a story about this other Nancy, who had her name but wasn't her.
She might have even been connected to Nancy - some distant relative, lost and alone, a shadow in the dark. That happened in stories; it happened all the time, and Nancy had distinguished between the story and her life yet.
She wasn't sure if there was a distinction.
The expected reply wasn't the one she received. Instead, Yomiko hunched over slightly, as if trying to draw herself into herself, and something dark and dead passed over her eyes. Immediately worried, Nancy stayed up with the other woman, all night, telling her stories. She told them poorly, and Yomiko knew all of them, but it kept the dead look from spreading, and that was all either woman cared about.
In the morning, Yomiko apologized and proceeded to act like it had never happened.
Nancy never asked about the other Nancy again, even when Yomiko cried out her name in fear and terror the following night.
----(there’s insert here. It doesn’t segue. Need insert. Insertinsertinsert. Bah.)
Nancy stared at the picture in her hand, of the woman who was her, her twin, her double, her better half.
In stories, babies get switched at birth. The elves come in the night and switch the princess with the cowherd’s daughter, and they grow up and no one notices, because of course they look exactly the same, because this is a story, and it wouldn’t be a /good/ story if it wasn’t perfect.
Yomiko had said she had a sister. She’d never said that she was the reject of the two.
Reject. Failure. The child that disappears into the night, the one that grows up twisted and wrong, and the prince comes and overthrows the evil lord the child has become, and there is great rejoicing in the land and everyone lives happily ever after.
Forever and ever and ever.
Yomiko was telling a story, but she wasn’t telling anything, just words and for the first time Nancy can hear how they /were/ just words, nothing but consonants and syllables strung together, an animated beast.
The revelation makes her unreasonably and extremely angry.
“Stop.” She spat the word out, the inflection approximating a curse. Nancy wasn’t sure what beast had hold of her now, that she was saying this to Yomiko, /Yomiko/, who was everything she had.
Everything she had, and she knew she was tired of having to hold on, to keep her head so feebly above water.
“Just stop it, Yomiko-san.”
Yomiko’s looking at her now, and the puzzlement behind her eyes is building, the puzzlement and something that’s suspiciously akin to fear, because this is a story Yomiko knows, it’s a character Yomiko knows, but villains aren’t supposed to be resurrected.
“You’re not saying anything. You’ve never been saying anything! You won’t tell me anything and why won’t you /finish/ what you started!”
Nancy could feel the tears falling down, sadness and grief because she’s burning her wings, and she was so close to flying. But there’s so much anger now, so white-hot and burning brightly, like the sun. Clenching her fists, she whirled around, feeling her hair fly around her face – shoulder length, always shoulder length, Yomiko always cut it, always kept it this length, and she never knew why – and stared at Yomiko, her eyes too bright in her face, and holding Yomiko’s shocked and scared behind her glasses.
“You told me a story once. You started a story once. About who I was and who I am and where I came from. And I want you to /finish it/!”
Yomiko’s voice is soft and quivering without the thread of a story behind it.
“Nancy-san…”
Her words struck something deep inside Nancy, and for the first time, she didn’t calm at the velvet voice, because Yomiko was still telling stories, but not her story. She was still avoiding what she wanted to know.
The chair was well made, of a high quality wood and well finished. Nancy had fond memories of Yomiko sitting in that chair, her glasses perched proudly on her face and her eyes alight, reading from a book for Nancy.
Those memories weighed more than the chair, as she picked it up and hurled it against the wall, with all the force she could muster. The back broke off on the impact, knocking down a small wall mirror, which fell to the floor to fragment into many pieces that reflected different portions of the ceiling.
Nancy leaned over the fragments. Her face fractured in them, and she couldn’t see all of herself, only pieces that didn’t look like they would fit together they way she knew they would. She reached out a hand, wanting to touch them, and Yomiko made a soft sound of warning and worry in the back of her throat at the proximity of her hand to the piece of mirror, sharp edged and sleek.
“It doesn’t matter, does it, Yomiko-san?”
Picking up one of the larger shards carefully in her right hand, her writing hand, Nancy straightened to look Yomiko in the eyes again. And concentrating as hard as she could, and believing like never before, Nancy closed her hand firmly around the shard.
Yomiko gasped as her fingers passed completely threw it, the shard falling out of her hand to join the others on the floor with a soft tinkle of glass. There was no blood.
“You knew it didn’t matter. You knew I could do that. You knew when I told you the first time, and you /lied/ to /me/. You /lied/.”
For the first time in remembrance, Yomiko had nothing to say, and the silence hurt as much as the words had. The bed shifted as she moved forward, her arms reaching out slowly and cautiously, as once would approach a wounded hawk still struggling to reach the sky.
Her hands came close to Nancy’s face before the silence imploded, Nancy swinging her arm up to push Yomiko away, panicking as the arm went /through/ Yomiko and Yomiko gasped in pain.
Something in Nancy winced at the sound, but there was too much anger, and it burned too bright and hot. The subtler, gentler emotions were pushed aside as she reached to grab the lamp.
Or rather, tried to grab, as her hand passed through the lamp, her mind a confused ramble of this story and that one, this beginning and that ending, and there is no middle, and the two pieces don't connect where they should.
There's a gap in the bridge, and it's too far to jump.
Nancy stares at her hand then, stares at her hand and the lamp and Yomiko - sitting on the bed, stared now, stiff and white as a sheet of blank paper.
"Why won't this work?"
The yelling earlier has made her hoarse. Her voice is a bare rumble in her ribcage and her throat, a throaty growl. She reached for the lamp again, and her hand passed through again: reach and miss - except she's not missing, she just can't touch the goal. It's a horribly twisted world, where she's so close and everything’s out of focus. Everything's falling through and fading.
Maybe this is what Yomiko sees without glasses. Nancy would wear glasses, but her eyes aren't the problem. /She's/ the problem, her body's not doing what's its supposed to do, her world isn't doing what it's supposed to do. She had a story, and now the pages are ripped up and falling through the floor.
She sinks to the floor, unmindful of the shards of glass. They cannot hurt her, after all. The anger has faded, and what’s left is a dull, aching /nothing/, a feeling defined by the absence of any. Her voice is still rough but soft now as she speaks to Yomiko, or to the air, or to the ceiling, or to nothing at all.
"Everything's wrong, Yomiko-san. I'm wrong, and you're wrong, and /this/ is /wrong/. Everything's so wrong."
And still, her hand will not touch the lamp. The tears, somehow, manage to collect on it though, until they slide off to hit the floor.
“It’s all falling apart.” More tears, and she wiped her arm across her eyes to try to clear them away, glad that the limb had decided to be solid. The arm stayed there, to shift as her hand covered her face. She wept into that hand, her right hand, the sobs racking her frame.
And when Yomiko knelt next to her and drew her arms around her they were solid and warm and /real/. Her voice swept over Nancy, soft and smooth, but not sure, not her story-telling voice, and it wasn’t telling a story. It was telling truth, and sometimes that’s the same thing, but sometimes that’s a very different thing.
“Shhh…Nancy-san…it’s all right. It’s all right. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’m sorry.”
It was impossible that Yomiko apologize. It was a reversal of what should have been, and it shattered any control Nancy had left. The tears kept coming as she collapsed onto Yomiko, her body slipping down until it rested mostly in Yomiko’s lap, her head pressed to Yomiko’s stomach and her tears falling onto her skirt as she choked out words.
“Don’t…don’t say you’re sorry, Yomiko-san…don’t…I should apologize…I should say I’m sorry…to you, to the world, to /her/, to everything….I’m sorry…I’m sorry.”
Nancy felt Yomiko tense at those words, and felt her hand move, coming down on her head. She tensed instinctively, although she didn’t know where the instinct came from. Where had she learned to tense away from sudden movements? Where had she learned to move like she knew she did? All of that, her own self, and she had never questioned any of it.
She hated herself for questioning Yomiko now, as the her hand came down to smooth over her head, a calming motion. She felt Yomiko draw in breath, and Nancy stilled, listening to her speak, the sound of words beginning in her chest and traveling up her throat.
“She was your sister, and I knew her before she died. I shouldn’t call her your sister, not really, since she was more than that to you, and you were more than that to her, but it’s the only term I know to use.”
Nancy was not calm, but the astonishment stopped her tears as easily as serenity would have. Her breath caught in her throat, and she did not move.
“She was different from you…you were different, back then. She wanted me to take care of you…because….because she believed, and I know, that whatever you did before, who you are now makes up for it.” Nancy’s hand had stilled, and her voice had become distant, recalling some spectre of the past, some event long since dead and gone, faded away to fragments tossed about on the high breeze.
“She told me once, that it was her love, after all. You don’t understand what I mean, I know, Nancy-san, but...I believe in that love. I see it in you. You’ve redeemed yourself by /being/. So don’t cry Nancy-san. Please, /please/ don’t cry.”
There was pleading in those last words, and it suddenly occurred to Nancy that Yomiko did not know what to do, any more than she did. Yomiko did not know where this story went, did not know where the road went, or how many broken bridges and bandits and brigands would be along the way.
Nancy raised her eyes to Yomiko’s startled eyes, staring into her. And then, to Yomiko’s complete astonishment, Nancy smiled, a real smile that was content and overjoyed and full of the grief that comes with letting something go. “It’s not because I’m sad, Yomiko-san. That’s not it at all.”
She dropped her eyes, settling her arms around Yomiko, fitting herself to her, her head in the other woman’s lap, her dark hair lost in the folds of Yomiko’s skirt. Yomiko’s arms came around her again, the woman’s head dipping down, her hair spilling off of her back to frame them both.
They’d have to walk to road together, this story that was not Nancy’s and was not Yomiko’s but instead belonged to the two of them, and follow it where it led.
----
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
I really should change this layout. I don't think I will, at least not until after AP exams. So much time and so little to do. No wait, reverse that.
AP exams sound very foreboding, but I've reach teh critical point of not care. Perhaps it's senioritis, although I think the panic is just waiting to hit.
Showed a friend of mine Read or Die. Halfway through the first episode he commented that I looked like Yomiko. I know I do, with glasses and hair down and all, but geez, I think I should start taking a poll, or show the anime with a disclaimer.
Trying to finish Tora 5. Am way behind on writing, but sometimes it just doesn't want to be written. I'll have it out before AP (I hope) and after AP's I'll have much more time to write.
The fact that I think I know where I going helps. See Twig, only /half/ the stuff I tell you is made up on the spot....maybe two-thirds. It flucuates.
Decided Read or Die fic, while quasi-complete, needs definite fleshing out. A few pages worth, maybe. Am holding CLAMP figments at bay till after AP. Origfic figments have not allowed similar bindings. Grrrr.
Sunday, April 27, 2003
the power to cover the world in chipmunks
Overdue social blogging:
Twig, you are evil because now all I can think about is this LoTR spoof written in this book: Atropos of Nothing: the Woad to Wuin where the one Ring rules them all, but "them" is women and let's say it has effects Akio would enjoy. A lot.
Catt, I love your Utena snippet, but I'm with Thorne in that it breaks my brain. Actually, what it reminds me of (sometimes, and then sometimes it doesn't remind me of this at all) is if the Spicy curry incident occured, left Utena and Anthy switched, and the show blinked, nodded and carried on.
Oh, and Thorne, things do sound better with "in vengeance!" tacked on. I happen to like "for great justice!" myself. And using "is greater than all else in the worlds of men" is always good too.
Vel, you might have seen the link to pictures from fansview.com that's about two posts down. I didn't have a camera, but my friends did, so I should be able to snag pictures from them.
Comic book store interview? Glad it went well, Rose, and here's hoping.
Hugs the MD Feel better.
In other news: went to grappling, got rather peeved when I went to spar and one of the boys said "go easy on her, she's a girl" Okay, yes, I "lost". The man was much bigger, taller, heavier, and stronger than me. I still gave him a damned good fight, so there. I'm being petty and I'll stop now.
One of my friends spent break in Japan (feel my undying hatred) should be coming back soon. She better have pictures.
Friday, April 25, 2003
you've got my chain
I hate pointless Euro homework. Very much.
Got dragged to the doctor to see about the persistant cough. It's a normal doctor's office, too clean and quiet to appear normal, and the doctor is a jovial man. He's greek, and thus I suppose my family feels more comfortable around him.
When I was younger, we used to go to what you could call the 'family doctor.' I don't remember much of him, except the fact that he was thin and tall (although everyone was tall when you're young and short) and gave big stickers after you got a shot.
So, there was a visit to the doctor, and pills given and a blood test ordered, just because, I suppose. He likes being thorough. Giving blood, or having blood drawn, never bothers me much. Well, I /can't/ give blood, because I show up anemic although I'm not (there is a long and convoluted story here that will bore many people an d thus is not being told) but the latter never bothers me much.
Anyway, off the medical discussion. To elucidate on the foremost comment (I hate pointless Euro homework) all my teachers are buckling down to finish the work because in two weeks it's AP time! I really just want them over with. I have four the first week, and one the week after, and then I have nothing! Mwahahaha!
And I'm very confused as to why my bio teacher did not give me a quarter grade. I don't like blank spots on my report card. It's not even an incomplete or anything. She probably forgot to fill something in, the git.
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
the road goes ever on and on
I return! *insert dramatic trumpet sounds here* And now, for the con report.
Thursday: Get up early and head over to Friend's house to get driven into Chinatown to get the Bus. The Fung Wah bus is an unusual bus that connects Chinatown in New York to Chinatown in Boston. It's as compfy as any Greyhound, but only costs twenty bucks round trip. So, we caught that (in a NYC Chinatown that was slightly empty because of SARS fear) and insert unevental four hour bus ride.
We got to the stop, and our Aoshi cosplayer picked us up. (note: from here on in, everyone's getting referred to by who they cosplayed.) So Aoshi was still sewing, and we rode the T and watched him sew. We got to the dorm house, where we'd stay. I stayed in Kaoru's room. Kaoru is a very nice person and I adore her for putting up with me coughing.
Yes coughing. I got very sick tuesday, and I thought it went away, but it didn't and there was much pain and anguish Friday night.
But anyway, so we get there, settle in, and start to sew. We have no sewing machine. My costume was mostly done, but I needed to hem most of it. I went to bed at four in the moring, others didn't sleep at all.
We got to the con Friday afternoon. Cruised around, got taken pictures of. lots of pictures. At one point, we didn't move for twenty minutes.
The dealers room was small, but I still got TB OVA, Utena movie and some random stuff. Got a gift for one of my friends, but couldn't find something for the other one. Still fun. Saw "whose line is it Anime" with the guests - english voice actors - as the contestants. Was so funny - Kirby Morrow in particular has a great sense of humour.
Then we went home. And I got massively ill again, to be cleared up with cough medicine. This was very not fun, I could barely breathe at one point. After that, it started to break up - it's just a cough now. An annoying, repetitive cough.
Saturday: Got up, felt much better, got dressed, went to con. Was packed with people. Lines everywhere. We cruised about, then got in line for the Masquerade. A very long line. A very long wait. We talked to the people next to us - Utena cosplayers who fenced - Jury and Ruka.
We were going to do a skit, but since my voice was shot, we still did a skit, but used subtitles in the form of posterboard with bad bootleg style subtitles. And we fought, Aoshi and I. Sorta. Our music didn't work either, but it still went well. The crowd seemed to enjoy it. Personally, the FFX the Musical group and the Guy dressed as a black chocobo who played the chocobo theme on an electric guitar were awesome.
Note: Pictures from our skit can be found here. You can see me, Aoshi and Kaoru.
Sunday: Not much. Went in normal clothes, cruised about. Went home. Am now here, typing this and watching TB OVA. And coughing.
Overall? Loads of fun. Will be there next year, as Yomiko no less. And since I remembered I promised to be Yomiko, I now have to think up a Shoujocon cosplay.
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Departure
Feel much better now. The cotton has vacated my head.
Sewing of costume today, still not quite done, but can finish it in Boston. Am leaving on Chinatown bus (depsite my mother's paranoia over SARS. In New York. Right.) and should be arriving afternoon in Boston.
Will return on Monday with a full AnimeBoston account and hopefully pictures.
Bye.
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
the spaces of the world are stuffed with cotton
Okay. Mount Holyoke was gorgeous and lovely and I can't wait to go there. I got to sit in on classes and one of them was Japanese 101, taught by a short japanese woman who sounds like a native speaker and was so nice. She asked if I was sure about coming here, and I said I was, and she got all happy and said "You'll take my class? I'll see you then!" Then there was discussion at length about the college's Kyoto Foreign study program, which sounds wonderful.
Warning: whining ahead.
So, that was Sunday/Monday. Come back, stay up late to do annoying Euro homework, woke up today and feel like absolute shit. I usually have a really strong immune system, so when I get knocked down by something, it's either nothing at all, or bad. This isn't the worst, but it's the first time i've been sick in over a year, still, and I absolutely loathe feeling all woozy and headachey and having the lymph nodes in my throat swollen so it hurts to turn my head.
Plus, I'll have to miss Karate, which means I'll have no practice before I test for the first time, since I'm going to Anime Boston on Thursday I'm missing Thursday/Friday/Saturday class.
Yes, I /am/ going to Anime Boston, I don't care if I'm half dead. After all the friggin sewing that went into Misao costume (which is still only half-done. Eeep)
And now, I am going to sleep, in the hopes that I'l feel better enough to study for a calc test tomorrow.
*whine* I haaate being siiiick.
Sorry about all the whining in this entry. Don't hate me.
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
I'm tired and I can't remember
Got less done on Tora than I thought. Bah. I will update before AnimeBoston (Thurs).
Also, I can a hell of a lot to do on my costume. Damn. Crunch time.
Small offering. Hokuto. Spoilers. Tokyo Babylon. 100 words.
----
I believe in love. The love that binds people together: husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister.
You’re my twin. My other half and we’ll always be together, even though I’m leaving.
But I believe.
I believe that you’re strong enough to overcome this. I believe that there’s no such thing as a person who can’t love.
Even Sei-chan.
(sakura petals, hand like a knife, and god it hurts. Is he smiling? There’s so much light and I can’t see.)
And because I love you, because you’re everything, because I want you to be happy...
I let go.
----
Hokuto frightens me sometimes. She's a lot like Zack in my head: cheerful and silly but really resolute, a great friend/sibling.
Friday, April 11, 2003
I am an anthropomorphic insect, how do you do?
Watched cartoons today, the weird stuff they stick on Cartoon Network that isn't badly dubbed anime. One moment sticks in my mind:
"A true warrior does not fight for pride or revenge, Buzzoff."
Why yes, I did start laughing. It's a bipedal insect with a mission!
Going up to visit Mt. Holyoke this weekend. One of those spend the night-go to classes sort of thing.
On a side note, the more I watch of Utena, the more of a prick Akio becomes. The same would go for Touga, but he was always a prick. I mean, he looks like Escaflowne's Allen with red hair! They're twins! And they're both pricks.
Obviously the animators with taking the same fate/revolution/massive hallucinogens.
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
RAWR
I return! Had fun with paintball and climbing tower and riding. Even if it was western and they called me the English Rider the entire time. And it was cold. So very very cold.
I return with fic recs, because I can find nothing intelligent to say.
Letters by Bara no Hitomi. A lovely Utena fic that centers on Ruka. Straightforward and still poetic.
Untouchable by Darkling. About Anthy and witches and brothers.
Conviction by Ophelia. Touja and Saionji, who duel with words and bokken. Borders on Yaoi.
Glompophilia by Laurie Gerholz. I have no words.
Sainan no Kekka Likely the best Gundam Wing fic I've read. No yaoi pairings, and it's the better for it. Backed by military research and a solid writing style. Very long and still ongoing.
Fanficiton by Lyn I didn't know what to rec, because it's all very well written. The Kasumi Karen fic is very good, and the Escaflowne stuff is simply gorgeous.
Threeby JC Sun. Kenshin fic, involving death and guilt.
Sunday, April 6, 2003
the ferrets will consume your eternal SOUL
I love it when people ask questions in reviews that are answered in the first two pages of the next chapter. My own fault for taking so long, I guess.
Nothing of great interest, save for the fact that my bio lab partner says cryptic remarks about fire ants at random intervals. He's rather fixated on them, and it's an interesting distraction, really.
Teacher: And when the allergen -
Boy: Like with fire ants! When they sting you and it gets all red and swollen. Watch out for them, they're coming. Fire ants!
Following this was a long aside on how they're taking over the lower eastern part of America. Evidently, they're moving in on Texas.
Am going away for weekend, to go on trail ride/paintball thingy. It sounds like fun, even if my decade or so of riding will definetely land me with the worst behaved horse. Meh. It's more fun that way.
Catt, I did indeed get the soundtrack from Amazon. The thing is, despite the fact the band is domestic, the soundtrack is only availiable when it's imported from Germany (the title is also in german - 'der something Eihorn') and thus I don't know where you'd be able to find it, if not online. If you can think of a way, I'd be more than happy to get you a copy of mine. I might be able to send you the songs somehow, but AIM usually tends to hate me that way.
AIM is to be feared by man and beast. Rawr.
Thursday, April 3, 2003
the voles, they eat my brainmeats
Quick note: Tora should be updated by mid-end next week. Would be sooner, but I'm going away on this weird trail-ride thingy for the weekend. And my apologies on delay. Things are hectic, but after AP's (first two weeks in may) I will have absolutely nothing to do. And it will be good.
So, I looked at a new Tora review and the said my writing 'sounded almost Twiggish' ^_^ I'm certainly taking it as a compliment, because you know I admire your writing a great deal, but I have to wonder...we have the noun form of Twig, (the standard use) and then we have the adjective/adverb form - Twiggish. Is there a verb form, or a gerund, or an appositive or something form floating around too?
That's like how, in my school, one teacher has this method of breaking students up into groups to cover a topic. Now the other teachers use his method and have named it after him.
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
You are a Dragon! Oh, but not the big fat European
version... Oh no no no you're a creature of
style and taste. You love the exotic foods of
other places and have a special place on your
pallete for arsenic, and bird's nest soup. You
are the symbol of royalty, good luck, and
enlightenment. Hey, if you're good enough, you
could even become a deity!
What Japanese Creature are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
strike under the cover of darkness
It is snowing. Oh, you weather and your wily ways. Yeah, well, screw you too. Messing with my head like this.
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven, is a lovely game, although my opinion is biased, since I love the Tenchu series. The dubbing is tolerable, and hilarious. Case in point: the guards say stuff, sometimes. Sometimes they even have whole conversations - like:
Guard1: So, did you have fun with that Geisha last night?
Guard2: Yes, we went out for dinner.
Guard1: Did you taste her Wasabi? *insert sneer*
Guard2: No, that would not be polite.
Ah, strange dubbing. How I love you.
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
Happiness is a warm mole
Had a really long post, but pitas just deleted it. To summarize, and I'm too tired to link again.
Catt, The last Unicorn is a very cool movie. I am a geek and own it, the book, and the soundtrack and love all three.
Twig, remember your war rant? I need to follow your advice and ship someone over. Immediately. Stupid idiot responds to everything with "bomb everyone."
Vel'ithya, (hoping I spelt correctly) your puppy pictures are adorable and they remind me of the puppies at my barn, who are bigger, being Saint Benard / Collie mixes.
Rackham Rose, a very happy birthday to you!
Friday, March 28, 2003
Not as good as FFVII's review, but still amusing.
Because it's making fun of FFVIII. Feel the love. And the plot summary is so accurate. In that it's not really there.
(For the record, I did like FFVIII. Sorta. Kinda. We have 'issues' okay? We're trying to work it out.)
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Compensation
Because I'm taking an ungodly amount of time with Tora % (which is relatively close to completion. Relatively.) I'm sharing Seph torture with everyone.
Take Jenova!Seph, Past!Seph, a dream sequence, massive doses of guilt, and a pinch of trippy hallucinogenics, and this is what you get:
----
Sephiroth wore black because it was tactically the most effective color to wear, allowing him to hide as a shadow in a shadow, and for symbolism. It was right, somehow, fitting, to wear a color that symbolized the death he brought.
Cloud had told him Nibelheim was ‘a quiet town. Boring really, that far up in the mountains. One of those places where everyone knows everyone else, and you’re either part of the family or you never will be.” He knew that had to be true, that even the apparent bitterness in Cloud’s voice couldn’t twist the truth that much, but seeing Nibelheim burning all around him, it reminded him of the greatest cities of Wutai during the war, where everyone was a faceless figure, waiting to die.
Symbols. He wore black, but looking at Nibelheim, Sephiroth knew he should have worn red.
“You don’t need to. Look, you make your own symbols.”
He /was/ wearing red, red that drank in the lights from the fires as it clung to his coat, warping the leather as it dried. Covered in blood, and it wasn’t the first time.
“I wonder…..if you even know where it all came from. Some of it is very old, after all, and from so many different people. Can you tell? Which part comes from Zack?”
There was something wrong in the way his other self smiled, something wrong in his eyes, a green too bright and too alien. He couldn’t ever remember tilting his head like that, at that foreign angle and degree of inclination.
“Which part comes from Cloud?”
----
Seph so hates me.
Monday, March 24, 2003
Compensation
Monday, March 24, 2003
Mount Holyoke is my first choice school.
I got my package today, and the question always was if they'd give me enough money.
They gave me enough money.
SO HAPPY. SOOO HAAAAAAAAAPPY.
Monday, March 24, 2003
w00t
Spirited Away won the Academy Award for best animated feature film.
My day is complete now, thank you.
Sunday, March 23, 2003
Bun-Bun Ac-tion!
Jem from a review on the Pit:
People who are in shounen-ai and yaoi...They don't consider themselves as exactly, well...Gay.
Of course not. They're really a strange breed of mutant rabbit. Shh, it's a secret.
Bunny Action!
Saturday, March 22, 2003
happiness is a warm mole
Happiness is also having a great sparring session in grappling class. And less than two weeks until college-ness.
Still have an enormous amount to do on the Misao costume. Grrr. Not good.
Need an anime series to watch. Should finish Inuyasha, but is daunting. Using random Kenshin episodes to fill the gap. Staying up late to work on Tora seems very appealing right now.
Saturday, March 22, 2003
Update: The revelation that my not sending in of certain crucial forms (remedied by the frantic sending in of said forms) has /not/ fucked over all chances of getting financial aid makes me feel signifigantly better.
Well, that and hauling wood. Manual labor does that to me.
Am still an idiot.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Delete that happy mood.
I am a pointless, blundering idiot, and should likely be shot.
Fuck.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
w00t!
College count: Binghamton and UMass Amherst (honors program) accepted.
They were my safety schools, so not too much doubt about getting in there.
In the mail today: Cornell. One of my top three, vying with Mt. Holyoke and Dartmouth.
I got in.
So very happy. I wish my happiness on everyone.
Now, to settle down and wait for Mt. Holyoke and Dartmouth.
And I hope your job interview went well, Twig.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
You know, Twig, every time you write grasshopper which is a fic I /do/ like, despite my mixed feelings about the game..but then again, I like /all/ your stuff...anyway, everytime you write that fic, you're writing for area that you previously (or still do) despise.
By this logic, you'll write X one day.
Don't hurt me.
Monday, March 17, 2003
for the salt in your bed
There's a broken path to follow
To a place I used to know
Forgotten, empty memories
I said to you, don't go
There's rain leaking through the hole
Where the ceiling used to hang
I told myself I wouldn't cry
So that must be the rain
There's a break in the wall
The morter's cracked and cold
My voice echoes through the halls
Now so quiet, once so bold
We've built up this structure
And we're tearing it down
This confetti of wishes
This paper crown
Stick a fork in, it's done.
Monday, March 17, 2003
I'm a senior, I want to be able to slack off, and damn the teachers for not letting me.
In that vein, cornell, I sent the damn letter twice. Don't you be saying you didn't get it, now, y'hear?
Writing and other such stuff. The RoD fic is technically done, but it's missing scenes that need to be there. The catch is, I don't know what they are.
Bah. Off to do work. And MD I keep trying to catch you on AIM but never manage to. When are you on?
Sunday, March 16, 2003
if I cry in your shower
On reflection (read: listening the song you are thinking of Rose, I'd definetely say post, with snippets of pre spread about. I'll try to catch you on AIM tonight to elucidate.
Should have gone to Honors class at Columbia, but wandered around the city with friends instead. Got stuff from a cafe. Went in a bookstore. Normal stuff.
Saturday, March 15, 2003
On the CLAMPesque ML, there' s athread running around on whether or not you think you'd be a Dragon of Heaven (save Humanity) or a DRagon of Earth (save Earth, kill humanity).
And (as one who sided with the DoH) I'll confess I don't really understand why there are so many DoE. I mean, maybe people don't really understand that that means you're going to kill people. In very large amounts. Your mother, your siblings, that guy in class who said hi, and the girl who always waves to you on the street. They're all going to die, and it'll be your fault.
And if I'm wrong, and if people really do realize this and still sign up for the DoE, then, well, that's a little frightening.
After all, Seishirou, for all his CLAMP seme allure, is still a mass murderer. Muraki from YnM has killed how many people in the series? How many has he raped?
Hannibal Lecter /eats people/ and yet he still manages to become an anti-hero by the end of the third book.
Sure, they're books and anime and manga, and they're not real. But the action's are still there, even if it's just on paper.
I dunno, I'm just confused, I guess.
Friday, March 14, 2003
no black and white
A quick note: while I love the Harry Potter books, and there are several fanfictions of said books I also adore, for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom scares me.
Especially the slash fandom. I mean, I like Remus/Sirius but some of the other pairings...
Dramatic Reinactment:
Me: Oh look, it's Mirror of Maybe. I remember this as being well written...
Brain: No! Go back before it's too late!
Me: AUUUUUUUGH!
So, in conclusion, while I may enjoy Harry/Snape fanfiction when it is very very very well done (The Familiar being about the only story) is still makes my brain melt.
Oh, and the same goes for Harry/Draco, Harry/Ron, Draco/Ron, Snape/Neville (AUGH!), hell Snape/anyone male, Draco/anyone male, Voldemort/anything that moves,and most of what doesn't. I'm not mentioning Crabbe, Goyle, Percy and the twincest. (AUGH!)
Thank you.
Thursday, March 13, 2003
shake the foundations
Meme stolen from a bunch of different livejounals, and Thorne, I think.
----
I'm sorry.
Zack: I'm sorry I bring you back only to make you deal with two Sephiroths and another of you. I gave you Aeris, doesn't that make up for it?
Jenova!Seph: I'm sorry I got you posessed in Tora. I'm sorry you're so lame when you're evil, and I'm sorry that you have to fight Cloud again.
Past!Seph: I'm sorry you get to find out you're so lame when you're evil.
Cloud: Meep. I'm really sorry about putting you through all those visitations in Ghosts, and I'm sorry about everything I do to you in Tora. Including the headache you got from time travel. And dealing with two Zacks. And having you fight Seph again. And everything, okay?
Enishi: I'm sorry I wrote a character introspective piece that did nothing but reflect on all the nasty moment sin your life, but you made me dammit!
DBZ and Ranma crew: No, I'm not sorry I will probably never finish your stupid story. Get the hell out of my head.
Dirty Pair Flash crew: See above. Except I am kinda sorry about that.
Kakyou: I'm sorry I wrote you in a shoddy first person pov where you did nothing but angst and brood. Well, that's all you do in X anyway, but it still doesn't make it right.
Fuuma: I'm not sorry yet, but I will be. Well, I'm sorry for the parody fic, but you enjoyed it.
Kamui: I'm sorry that I made you into a whiny uke...oh wait, nevermind, CLAMP did it first. I'm sorry I'm turning you into a Dragon of Earth in foreordained and making you kill people. Oh and for the whole Fuuma bit with the halloween and the molestation.
Seishirou: You're a twit. I'm not sorry for anything with you. I'm especially not sorry for having Yomiko beat you down in my blog.
Subaru: Oh god. I'm sorry for Dream of Love, and making you live in a dream and kill little children. I'm sorry for making you reflect on everything between you and Seishirou to the tune of a Lisa Loeb song. I'm sorry that I'm going to give you all sorts of hell in "Last Rites." I'm just really sorry. Especially about the eye in last rites.
Nancy: I'm sorry for making you wigg out on Yomiko, but you got to cuddle.
Yomiko: I'm sorry for....for...not finishing up "stories" by now? You're so nice I haven't done anything to you.
And now, original. not that anyone will know who I'm talking about, but it's covering myself for when I mess around with them.
Jareth: I'm sorry for making you such a twit when you grow up. And the whole bit with your dad and your mom and the immense family screwups.
Riane: I'm sorry for making you Jareth's little sister. He can't be pleasant. And, that whole end of the world bit, I'm sorry about that too.
Socyl: I'm sorry about making you have past history with Jareth. I'm sorry about the fact that if I ever get Wake on the net, everyone will see you two as a couple, even though you'd like to strangle him. And the end of the world, too. But mostly Jareth and the couple bit. If you two would only let me write you some other way...
Jae: I'm sorry for the fact you're nothing more than a figment at this point.
Jaren: I'm sorry for making you Jareth's father, even if he wasn't annoying at that point.
Elsbeth: See above, except with insert mother.
Riore: I'm just sorry. Same for you, Elaine.
Whee. That was catharthic.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
he threw a bomb at me...oh, nevermind
Girl Genius is brilliant and wonderful and funny and I love it so very very much.
Thank you, Twig. *Glomp*
"You murder one of the greatest scientists in Europe and you're treating it like a kitchen accident?!"
I love this comic.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Hit of the day: "uruk-hai" slash
All together now:
You will taste man-flesh!
Sunday, March 9, 2003
categories
The Yaoi Selector: Which Uke are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Me: You know Cloud, there's a good reason why you're in that category...
Cloud: Shut up.
Me: Well, you're in good uke company...Kamui and Subaru are there. You get along with them, right?
Cloud: Shut up.
Me: Your other half, on the other hand....
Cloud: Shut up.
Me: Just because Seph's in the seme selector and you're not is no reason to get so defensive.
Cloud: Shut up is just a difficult concept for you, isn't it?
Me: *Cough*eternaluke*cough*
Sunday, March 9, 2003
Sociopathic
I am nuts.
You see, I've had an idea for an X series fic for a very long time. And I wrote the prologue.
This means I will have to write more than the prologue. I am so nuts to stick another fic to write on me. I did it anyway. Probably because I realized that two of my other seires fics - not Tora - but the other two, are going to go on a very very very long hiatus. I don't drop stuff, but I do forget about that for a while.
And before you raise hell, Seph, I would never do that to you. I enjoy writing FFVII too much, despite all the twits. With that in mind, I'll think I'll write some Tora tonight, and maybe some orig fic.
Whee.
Saturday, March 8, 2003
w00t
I've just found out that - given Shoujocon's close proximity to me - unless whatever college I go to starts really early (ie, before the 25 of August) I will most likely probably be going to shojocon. W00t.
Of course, this means I have to plan a costume for that con too, as well as finish the Misao one. I am so leaning toward Yomiko. Not even funny.
And as April 1 and 2 and whenever steadily approaches I become more and more of a nervous wreck. Whee! Fun with college anticipation.
Saturday, March 8, 2003
white and furry
There is no God.
I'd like to blame you but it's really all my fault. So I can't.
Friday, March 7, 2003
oro...
I'm not sure how I got into a topic on commericial horse breeding on AIM, but oh well. Still, it makes me wonder about the weird information people have. I should make a list of my weird topics and put it somewhere, if anyone ever needs to know about said topics.
I should also stop putting off my Euro homework.
Wednesday, March 5, 2003
poor little psychopath
Warning: Kenshin anime whining ahead.
D'you think if I ask really, really, REALLY nicely, the nice japanese animation company will re-animate the third arc of Kenshin to match up with the manga? I'm well aware that this is impossible since they made the idiotic second OVA which is so depressing that you'd think it's the ending to a CLAMP series, I swear.
But...the manga...it's such a /nice/ story arc and it ends so pleasantly and...god, Enishi. He's as good a villian as Shishio, and that takes some effort.
It should be noted that my liking of Enishi is probably completely because of my writing "Colors" and thus he's been in my head too long for me not to like him. But damn it, he's adorable and angsty and has one of the most f*cked up pasts and I like him and he gets almost no screen time.
And pertaining to Vol. 5 of Harry Potter, everyone knows Rowling said it's one of Harry's biggest fans that bites it, right? So, of course I went through my top choices of Hagrid and Dumbledore and Colin Creevy, but then it came to me.
Hedwig
Harry has this incredibly devoted owl with a pretty big fan following, so it'll upset a lot of people if she gets knocked off? Right? Right? This is not just me rationalizing because I'm horribly afraid she's going to kill off Sirius. Really. Honest.
And damn it, if the stupid sophomores bring up their malformed, badly delivered and infantile 'is-there-a-God" debate on the bus one more time, I'll do something I might regret. Except without the regretting part. I have nothing against other people's beliefs, but do not make me listen to them when they are poorly formed and you're remembering /wrong/ biology facts from a ninth grade textbook to back them up. Please. Thank you.
Speaking of God, we're reading the Inferno in AP Lit. It's an enjoyable process, made much better by my English teachers pantomimes of the people in the various circles of Hell. His impression of Charon whacking souls into his boat with his oar will remain dear to my heart.
"And then he takes his oar to the ones that don't want to go and /whacks/ them, like this!"
I love English class. It's as good as my old english teacher. I had her for two years, through two levels of English, and she kept on threatening to castrate the boys in my class. And had (still does) the entire school in mortal fear of her.
Of course, nothing compares to the time my chemistry teacher had the chmistry classes celebrate "100 days of chemistry" by having the classes do a 20-something person legged race up the big hill behind our school. The AP class military marched up it, chanting "1-2-1-2" and moving in synch. We won, needless to say. It was great. Almost made up for how impossibly difficult that class was.
And this was one weird tangent. Ah well. Good times, good times.
Wednesday, March 5, 2003
Mary Horse Sue
So, I been riding horses for a long time, and thus have read many of the classics horse stories - Black Beauty, National Velvet or whatever it's called, and my favorite, the Black Stallion Series.
And I've realized something. In all these stories (with the possible exception of Black Beauty) the horse is a Mary Sue. Or the male, horse equivalent, since they're usually stallions. Of course, this does not diminish my enjoyment of the books (well, I never really liked National Velvet all that much anyway) but it's still disturbing.
Damn Pits of Voles and the Mary Sues that populate it. My childhood perceptions of the lovable underdog horse coming from behind to win the race and set the new world record time is ruined.
And I read Rose Daughter, and while I'm not sure if I like it better than Beauty or not, I'm enjoying it so far..
On that topic, I disliked the ending to the Disney movie. I was all of ten or somtething, but I still thought the Prince was ugly compared to the Beast. I wanted the Beast back. He was so much cooler. And hugable. In a I-can-rip-your-arms-off kind of way. So anyway, I can remember watching the movie and dreading the final battle with Gauston (Gueston? You know, the Annoying Villian Prick - who is also ugly. Why is it that the 'beautiful' men are ugly in that movie. Although, Gauston has a chin that would send America into Orange alert, so that may be it.) because it meant that it was bye-bye Beast. And dammit, I liked him. Stupid happy ending.
Disney ruins all the endings. The little mermaid: loses the prince's love and her sister's cut off their hair to buy a knife from a witch so that she can kill him and become a mermaid again - she rufuses and becomes sea foam, but she has a soul.
Let's see...in Cinderella, the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to try to fit into the slippers. With a butcher knife.
Everyone dies at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Damn. EVERYONE.
Pochahontas was 11. I think she later died of smallpox or some other assorted disease.
I actually had my AP lit teacher go into a rant of sorts on how, by naming the dwarfs in Snow White, Disney ruined the meaning of 'dwarf'. Supossedly - and this man knows everything, I swear. He's like Hannibal Lecter without the psychoanalysis and the evil and the eating people - a dwarf is something that cannot feel joy or sorrow. They simply exist. So what they did with Snow White was merely a business transacation, nothing more.
All of this isn't to say that I don't like a happy ending, after all. I /like/ it when everything works out in the end. I suppose I just like the original version as well.
You hear that, Cloud. I /like happy endings/. Keep that in mind with Tora.
Cloud: I don't believe you. Go away.
He's such a gloomy little pessimist.
Monday, March 3, 2003
no, I am not being sarcastic. Really.
I am easily amused.
Sunday, March 2, 2003
snuggles
I don't know if anyone else's day is gray and rainy, but mine is, so I'm posting cuddles. And possibly ruining the end of the RoD fic, but it doesn't really have an end, just a realization that acts like one. Besides, it's Nancy and Yomiko snuggles.
----
"Why won't this work?"
The yelling earlier has made her hoarse. Her voice is a bare rumble in her ribcage and her throat, a throaty growl. She reached for the lamp again, and her hand passed through again: reach and miss - except she's not missing, she just can't touch the goal. It's a horribly twisted world, where she's so close and everything’s out of focus. Everything's falling through and fading.
Maybe this is what Yomiko sees without glasses. Nancy would wear glasses, but her eyes aren't the problem. /She's/ the problem, her body's not doing what's its supposed to do, her world isn't doing what it's supposed to do. She had a story, and now the pages are ripped up and falling through the floor.
She sinks to the floor, unmindful of the shards of glass. They cannot hurt her, after all. The anger has faded, and what’s left is a dull, aching /nothing/, a feeling defined by the absence of any. Her voice is still rough but soft now as she speaks to Yomiko, or to the air, or to the ceiling, or to nothing at all.
"Everything's wrong, Yomiko-san. I'm wrong, and you're wrong, and /this/ is /wrong/. Everything's so wrong."
And still, her hand will not touch the lamp. The tears, somehow, manage to collect on it though, until they slide off to hit the floor.
“It’s all falling apart.” More tears, and she wiped her arm across her eyes to try to clear them away, glad that the limb had decided to be solid. The arm stayed there, to shift as her hand covered her face. She wept into that hand, her right hand, the sobs racking her frame.
And when Yomiko knelt next to her, and drew her arms around her they were solid and warm and /real/. Her voice swept over Nancy, soft and smooth, but not sure, her story-telling voice, but it wasn’t telling a story. It was telling truth, and sometimes that’s the same thing, but sometimes that’s a very different thing.
“Shhh…Nancy-san…it’s all right. It’s all right. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’m sorry.”
It was impossible that Yomiko apologize. It was a reversal of what should have been, and it shattered any control Nancy had left. The tears kept coming as she collapsed onto Yomiko, her body slipping down until it rested mostly in Yomiko’s lap, her head pressed to Yomiko’s stomach and her tears falling onto her skirt as she choked out words.
“Don’t…don’t say you’re sorry, Yomiko-san…don’t…I should apologize…I should say I’m sorry…to you, to the world, to /her/, to everything….I’m sorry…I’m sorry.”
Nancy felt Yomiko tense at those words, and felt her hand move, coming down on her head. She tensed instinctively, although she didn’t know where the instinct came from. Where had she learned to tense away from sudden movements? Where had she learned to more like she knew she did? All of that, her own self, and she had never questioned any of it.
She hated herself for questioning Yomiko now, as the her hand came down to smooth over her head, a calming motion. She felt Yomiko draw in breath.
“She was your sister, and I knew her before she died. I shouldn’t call her your sister, not really, since she was more than that to you, and you were more than that to her, but it’s the only term I know to use.”
----
Whee. Snuggles. And secrets and lies and shards of broken glass.
Sunday, March 2, 2003
deconstruction
Irritating is having one stanza of a poem stuck in my head and not being able to come up with other halfway decent stanzas to complete the poem.
We've built this structure
And we're tearing it down
This confetti of wishes
This paper crown
If I can just think of other stanzas, then that's one promise done. There's just a short story left, and all my promises to the editors of my school's literary maganize will be complete. Yay.
Went to saturday class at Columbia today, just like every other saturday, but the gaggle of friends and I decided to skip class and wander about the city. Despite the fact I'm much much more of a country person, I love New York City. I'd hate to live there, I'm sure, because there are so many people, but NYC is great when you go there enough to mesh with the city, to not be a tourist, so to speak.
It's huge and dirty and grungy and beautiful. Everyone moves off in their own little world, milions and millions of little worlds that sometimes interact and sometimes don't.
The best place to make observations like this has got to be from the roof of the Pupin Science building. 10 stories up and one hell of a view.
Saturday, March 1, 2003
Goals
So here's a goal: to finish the RoD fic by the weekend. It probably won't happen...actually, I'm pretty much fairly certain it won't happen...but anyway.
The important point is that if I get a rough draft done, I can decide where to flesh it out. But I'm at the cuddling part and it makes me optimistic. Damn, writing this series is so therapeutic.
Friday, February 28, 2003
ho hum...
Well, that's a good point Thorne, I suppose I always wondered why there was no moogle sex on the pit of voes because they did make the moogle dating game in FFVII.
Then again, a part of me is very happy that there's no moogle sex, because it'd be like a Red XIII story where he gets lonely and there's no Li from LHR around...and I stop there. Brain has hit the auto-shutdown. Convient things, those.
I really should have been more considerate when I picked this handle and realized that I'm probably the only one used to names that are long and greek and weird. I go by Drakos, usually, as everyone finds it easier to type. And I do post at the Pit of Voles, and I believe I've reviewed a story or two of yours, so that may be where you remember me from. I tend to use silly things like spelling and grammar, so the review may have stuck out.
The heat in my house is fixed and back on. This makes me happy.
Friday, February 28, 2003
dehydrated H2O: just add water
Having an old house is cool in that it's old and the floorboards creak in familiar places and the doors fade into the barn wood. Having an ol dhouse is bad when the heat refuses to kick on. Here's hoping it's a false alarm.
Praying for snow - enough to cancel/delay school. It may or may not happen, but here's hoping. Brain is fried from Calculus studying. Must study more later.
And Thorne, it has come to my attention, that while you /do/ have one of the sickest foursomes I have ever seen (and I have a friend who often suggests fruit as partners in squick pairings) you're leaving out a vital member.
The moogle. They're short and furry and white and the other white meat - can't they have some lovin' too? I say, make it a fivesome (if such a term exists) and let all laws of squick be damned.
My brain would regret saying this, but Calculus has made it all weak and syrupy, and its defenses are down.
Thursday, February 27, 2003
falling through
More Nancy wiggage. Because I can.
----
The chair hits the wall and the and Nancy grabs the lamp in an effort to make it follow it.
Or rather, tries to grab, as her hand passes through the lamp, he mind a confused ramble of this story and that one, this beginning and that ending, and there is no middle, and the two peices don't connect where they should.
There's a gap in the bridge, and it's too far to jump.
Nancy stares at her hand then, stares at her hand and the lamp and Yomiko - sitting on the bed, stared now, stiff and white as a sheet of blank paper.
"Why won't this work?"
She'd been yelling earlier, and now's she's hoarse. Her voice rumbles in her ribcage and out her throat, a bare growl. She reaches for the lamp again, and her hand passes through again.
Reach and miss - except she's not missing, she just can't reach the goal. It's a horribly twisted world, where she's so close and everythings out of focus. Everything's falling through and fading. Maybe this is what Yomiko sees without glasses.
Nancy would wear glasses, but her eyes aren't the problem. /She's/ the problem, her body's not doing what's its supposed to do, her world isn't doing what it's supposed to do. She had a story, and now the pages are ripped up and falling through the floor.
"Everything's wrong, Yomiko-san. I'm wrong, and you're wrong, and /this/ is /wrong/. Everything's so wrong."
And still, her hand will not touch the lamp. The tears, somehow, manage to collect on it though, until they slide off to hit the floor.
----
And after this, we have cuddling. I promise.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Lord of the Dance!
So here' sweird: my latest dream was that FFX world, instead of Blitzball, did copetitive dancing. Like, Riverdance style dancing. So Jecht was really really good at this, instead of blitzball.
It should be noted that none of the others FFX characters where there, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, because there are two ways that Lulu doing competitive dancing could end, and one of them's disaster.
And then I realized that I was somehow there, and I had to perform and I didn't know any of the moves. It was like one of those horrible I'm-singing-on-stage in front of everyone dreams, when you really can't sing? Like the one Willow has in the Fear episode of First or Second season Buffy? Except, well, with dancing.
And somehow, my music was the battle or blitzball music /from/ FFX, and no one thought this was odd. Like BGM in real time.
And then I woke up. Good thing too, since it was beginning to remind me of those dreams where I'd not have the paper I had to hand in the next day, or I fail a huge test, or I feel the slobbery breath of some monster approaching me from behind.
Well, really only the first two of the three, but I don't want to sound like a total geek, now do I?
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
ABCD
I just spent an evening watching the one of the oddest movies with my friends. I think that the basic premise is that this Indian guy, raised 'american' goes to UPenn and is unable to mesh with the indian culture.
There was the usual romance, but the best part had to be him whining about the hindi movies. India puts out an extraordinary amount of movies, and from what my friends tell me they're all very much the same.
guy meets girl, girl likes guy, guy likes girl, girl and guy overcome obstacles to be with one another...etc...but with singing and dancing routines every ten minutes.
It's like some weird hindi version of Chicago, I guess. Except, without the whole killing people bit. And the scantily dressed jazz dancer people.
Monday, February 24, 2003
how much further do I have to go?
Was doing orig fic backstory today, when I realized that I have far too much backstory and I'll confuse myself if I don't write it all out properly. That means two orig fics at once. Although, in all fairness, writing the chronological first one (which seems to have named itself Thanatos) will make the other one (which seems to have named itself Wake of Wings, the only positive point in that title is the ability to abbreviate it as Wake or WoW.)
So, I soppose I should be distraught that I've shoveled two huge stories onto myself, but I think I knew it was going to happen. With that said, have a (very small) snippet of Thanatos, when Jareth is little and not nearly as annoying as he is in Wake. Involves a bunch of people that have had no introduction.
----
Mother and Father were fighting again, and the voices echoed through the thick stone of the floor of Jareth's room. Jareth can't remember what set them off - Father had been so tired when he came home, after all.
Everything in the Haven is stone, from the walls to the floors to the ceilings - everything. It feels, sometimes, like a hand of the mountain has wrapped around them and is slowly squeezing the life out of all of them. He wonders if, maybe, that's what is wrong with Father.
Father came home today, and from the first step Jareth knew soemthing was wrong. Jaren wore his weariness like a shroud, concealing his other emotions, too tired to do much else other than wearily rub a hand through Jareth's hair and place a careless kiss on Elsbeth's cheek. The war dragged at him, after all, the constant stream of souls and slaughter to be maintained and watched over.
And Jaren was a kind man, and the death pulled at him as much as his weariness did. He'd never enjoyed his job.
Before the war, Jareth could remember Father coming home to swing him about inhis arms, rembered how his laughter sounded when it hit the air. The walls of the Haven seemed farther apart then and the ceilings not so close, with a father who was so alive.
He'd told that to Riore once, that things were bigger then, and Rio laughed and toussled his hair, saying that it was because he was bigger now, so of course everything looked smaller.
That's true, but that isn't it. That isn't it at all, and Jareth knows that Rio knows that. He knows that Rio knows that he knows that. Maybe that's why Riore's eyes seem guarded these days, the Dragon of Light shadowed, stepping closer to his sister's domain of Darkness than his own.
Everything's shaded and muddled and Jareth wants to be able to escape into the sky, where things are still clear and sharp.
But he's still young. He doesn't have his wings yet.
----
Whee. He's so cute when he's young at not a prick. So is Socyl, for that matter. Ah well.
Great giant goobers of that made no sense to anyone, but I can't do anything about that, sorry.
Sunday, February 23, 2003
night's still a permanent stain...
By far the most annoying thing of school returning is that I won't be able to do this "my most productive writing time is midnight" because I'd be dead with our stupid 'let's start at 7:25 in the morning kids' school. My bus comes at the ungodly hour of 6:50. And yes, I'm whining and I'm done.
Anyway, Nancy whigged out in the RoD fic. Some very nice whiggage indeed. And Tabitha's doing plot exposition like no body's business, except she's done and we can move on with Tora now, thank you. Jareth and Scoyl share tea and armageddon and having them converse is quite possibly the most annoying thing ever, since they don't like each other and are determined to show it. By Jareth being a prick. Subaru and Kamui and Fuuma are off in a corner, because I'm ignoring them for the time being. It's so much less depressing without them around.
I don't really have much to ramble about, since I have no school and thus am hermit-Drakos. Ummmm...we have snow. Lots of it. Ummm...let's see...oh! I got locked /in/ my house, because my deadbolt stopped working, so friends and I had to dismantle the deadbolt, fix it, put it back together, and then we could leave to get fabric for cosplay costumes.
Come on, getting locked /inside/ your own house is a feat.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Teatime and the end of the world
Really I was - still am, I suppose - a fanfiction writer first. But after playing in fandoms, I've decided to make my own. Have a snippet.
----
Socyl glanced over to the man again: he was now engrossed in reading the newspaper, the business section, second page. He seemed like the type to be involved in that area. Socyl could easily imagine him obsessing over the power plays and business deals between the two monopoly companies that more or less ran all of Terre.
“So, he hasn’t gone to the doctor. He’s simply tried to ease up work a bit, hoping that it’ll go away. It’s kind of sad, in a way, that it won’t. When he leaves this café, he’ll get in his car and drive to work. The pain will hit him as soon as he walks through the front door. Maybe the healers will revive him, and then again, maybe they won’t.”
Socyl’s expression did not change, but his hands tightened their grip on his cup, and the glass strained, threatening to break.
“And your point? Or was that little story just for my own amusement, omnipotent one?”
Amazingly, Jareth laughed, a bare chuckle, but a laugh nevertheless. Socyl wanted to strangle him. “That’s the point, that’s /exactly/ the point! I’m /not/ omnipotent, because I can’t even interfere in the affairs of these poor slabs of meat. I can’t stop that man from dying – and it would be so easy to stop that man from dying. I can’t do anything to interfere. I'm helpless."
The rage that Socyl felt flickered across his face as he lifted his upper lip in a snarl that showed his true nature. “Don’t give me that crap. You’ve got loopholes. The lot of you have nothing /but/ loopholes.”
----
A shadow of forced gaiety appeared on Jareth’s face. “And for the record, I /do/ lie, but never concerning matters of Armageddon. And never to you.”
----
And there you go. Still in its infancy, and it'll mature into a full blown monster, I assure you. Ah well. Not like I know where to put it, since fictionpress.net gives me hives. Maybe I should give in and make my own website after all.
I'd bemoan my lack of website prowess, but I think I'll write more of this and Tora instead. And no, the orig fic doesn't have a title. Anyone got any ideas? Please?
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
tumbling down...
And we stop at two feet of snow. Two feet. Now, it just needs to freeze on top and then I can walk on top of it and feel really tall.
And my entry foryour contest is done and has been sent. Yell at me if you don't get it.
The package had been delivered, yo. I repeat, the package has been delivered.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
...losing my religion...
Something that Catt said on her blog got me to thinking about religion in FFVII.
Squaresoft makes vague references to religion in the game, and then never follows through with them. Obviously, we have reference to the concept of a god, since I believe Hojo and others mention that Sephiroth is trying to become 'a god.'
Let's see...there's a reference to Christianity/Catholicism, mainly because of Aeris - the Church in the Slums follows a very Christian design, although I've looked at screenshots and can't find a cross anywhere.
In Wutai, where a much more Asian setting prevails, the Pagoda is called the Pagoda of the Five Mighty Gods. There are god-images carved into the cliffs, the Da-Chao.
What's fun is picking out the symbolism in the game. While it nowhere approaches some games *coughxenogearscough* there's still a hell of a lot.
Sephiroth's name is from the Hebrew tree of life, composed of the Sephira (or Sefira, I forget which spelling works. That ties in with the Kabalistic system of 'magic'. There's also a great deal of numerology in the game, which is described in depth on some site that I can't find anymore.
A lot of the game can be taken from Revelations in the bible, especially after Meteor is summoned.
There are references in Revelations to 'the moon will turn red as blood.' Meteor hangs in the sky, like an awful, blood-red moon. There are four beasts - the beast of the sea, the beast of the earth, the dragon, the scarlet beast (the last two of which appear with a woman.) There are four forms of Jenova. Parallels can be drwan between Babylon, the city destroyed in the apocalypse, and Midgar. Both are great cities that are corrupted, and both are the first to be destroyed.
Interesting is the marking of numbers. All of the projects are marked with numbers, save Cloud, and all of the followers of the beast are marked with 666. If Jenova is considered to the dragon/beast (Satan) then all those altered by her are marked with her number(s). This includes Sephiroth, marked with the number 1.
Also neat is in the beginning of the destruction of the seven seals, there arises a woman and the dragon. The woman "was about to bring forth, that when she had brought forth he [dragon] might devour her son. And she brought forth a male child, who is to rule all nations wth a rod of iron...and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God." Lucrezia gives birth to Sephiroth, who is consumed by Jenova. Lucrezia then retreats behind her waterfall and remains there.
Of course, this is all interpretation, and is probably batshit, but it was fun.
Monday, February 17, 2003
calm before the storm
And here on the north-eastern seaboard, we hunker down and wait for the storm. Brutally cold this morning, and the snow's supposed to reach us soon and not let up for a day/
It should be noted that if this brings down my interent and keeps me from sending you stuff when its soclose to being done by when it's due, I will be incrediblyannoyed.
Sunday, February 16, 2003
the production line goes ever on and on...
Okay, so here's a thought. Considering my (lack) of Buffy knowledge, since after the second/third season, I didn't have time to watch, it may be a bad thought.
But anyway...if the Watcher's Guild/leadership/whatever really wanted to win the war against vampirism, why don't they take one of the slayers (say Faith) and kill her. And then bring her back. Doing so would generate another Slayer.
Then they could do it again. Just 'shock' her to death for a few seconds. Another slayer. Take the new slayers and 'kill' them. It's an exponential effect!
Like chernobyl, the lack of any control can result in the standard exponential growth curve. Soon, you could have hundreds of slayers! The war against tyranny could be won! There would be no reason to have Dawn in the series at all...oops, wonder how that got in there...
Anyway, my point stands. It worked with getting Kendra there, and getting Faith there. They'll multiply like rabbits, and the vampires won't stand a chance.
And then, they can take over the world or something equally important, like seize control of the cheese market from France.
Saturday, February 15, 2003
just waiting to stab me in the back again
When Sephiroth plots, he never goes by halves. His plans are huge and convoluted and always manage to work perfectly. Zack remembers one that involved a bucket of water, a bag of marble, yards of string, candles, lighter fluid, and a very wet looking Cloud.
Cloud, however, is much more the type to take the bucket of water and throw it at the person face.
He's direct. Zack likes that. Even if it did hit Sephiroth because they both were laughing too hard, and then Seph promptly doused him because "you are not going to be the dry one present, Zackery."
Direct. Cloud's direct, in planning, in life, in everything. When he schemes, his blue gaze grows blank and against his will a furrow forms between his eyebrows. It's always easy to tell when Cloud is planning something.
Seph, on the other hand, has the greatest poker face in the world, which completely goes to waste considering how the man refuses to play strip poker. Even when Zack roped Cloud into it.
Zack would say that Sephiroth acts like he's got a stick up his ass when he's plotting, but Zack thinks that the stick was there since birth.
//For the General Almightly of SOLDIER, only a mako-enhanced stick will do.//
So perhaps it lodges uncomfortably when he plans, but with Seph it's difficult to tell. So Zack cannot anticipate, only wait. And pray.
----
Zack's got a fun voice to write. And I have no idea where that came from.
In other news, if they wanted to, the French could take over the world using their stronghold on the cheese market alone.
Behold...the power of cheese!
Thursday, February 13, 2003
empty space
More Read or Die, because there needs to be more Read or Die fanfiction in the world.
----
Nancy’s never asked Yomiko if she could make her paper wings so she could fly. She doesn’t really need them in the emptiness, because it love-hates her as much as she love-hates it.
In the end, Nancy decides that she too is empty space.
So when she went to the sink to turn on the water, she was not concentrating on her actions, not focusing on anything save the emptiness that pressed in and around her.
And her hand went through the faucet, without pain or preamble. It passed through the metal with barely any feeling, a slight tingle, as if it had fallen asleep and was waking up. It was hole, there was no blood, and there was no damage to the faucet.
Nancy stared at the offending appendage for a long time after that. Things like this, events like these happened in different places, stories other than hers. That this happened now denies certainties that she needs to keep, and she is confused at their loss.
So when Yomiko returns, bedraggled and tired, she says the first thing that comes to mind.
“My hand went through the faucet today.”
There were, perhaps, better ways to phrase that, but Nancy had never been subtle. Even though she should be, because only assassins and magicians – people who lurked in the dark corners of the world with a mysterious and taciturn air – could possibly put their hand through a kitchen faucet. As Nancy is not mysterious or sly or silent, her character is not one who would possess that power in her story. That character doesn’t exist in her story.
Yomiko stops but does not turn, a denial in her shoulder and back and the stiff and smooth fall of long back hair. It flickers through the muscles and cloth, and then is gone, like creases smooth out of a piece of blank, white paper.
“Nancy-san, do you want me to tell you a story that badly?”
Confusion, the kind that results from someone asking a question and getting an unrelated question in reply.
“I’ll start where we left off in about an hour or so, don’t worry. You don’t need to make up stories to make me start sooner.”
A story? Something made up, something not real? Nancy thinks that could be true, although everything seemed real about the feeling of the faucet going through her palm, and the soft, scratchy sensation, like pushing through cotton. But it didn’t fit in her story, so it had to be part of another story, a fake story.
But Yomiko knows stories, and Yomiko tells stories, and Nancy doesn’t really have a story to tell. She follows Yomiko’s story, as she follows Yomiko’s life. So Yomiko must be right, and Nancy must have made it up when she wasn’t looking.
Because Yomiko tells stories and her stories are always right and Yomiko is always right.
And that’s a story too.
----
And now I'll get to re-read and obsess over this snippet until I fix it to the way I want. And then, two weeks later, I'll still find something wrong with it. But such is life.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
things seem nearer somehow
More F/K, continuation of down below, because they wanted to come out and play. After the X come some Read or Die.
Fuuma: And I do mean /play/.
Me: Don't make me pull ficauthor rank, boyo.
----
The small storm had come up without warning, and the winds whipped across the campus. The lightning is suitably dramatic for the scene Kamui knows he sets: the wounded protagonist contemplating his scars by the window, by the rain. All he needs now is ominous music.
There was no music when Kotori died, there was no speech or sound, save that of his own harsh, stricken breathing and the words of Fuuma who was /kamui/ who was Fuuma.
Those words hurt worse then the wounds, not because of what they meant, but because of who said them. Fuuma has never lied to him, except he has, because he said he'd protect Kamui, and that was a promise and he broke it.
So he lied. But Kamui broke his promise too, and Kamui lied too, and that knowledge is somehow worse than eveything else.
These marks are real. The scars on his heart are real. But the look in Fuuma's eyes when he gave Kamui both wasn't.
A lie, but the marks are true, and Kamui can't hide that fact. He's marked to Fuuma, bound and tethered.
They learned about Western Mythology in class today. Kamui doesn't remember much of the lesson, save that the gods bound the ragnarok with a fetter. The fetter was made of impossible things, and woven together in impossible ways.
That's not a lie, but it's a waste of effort. Kamui could have told those gods that a Shinken and love works all the same.
----
Sometimes, Yomiko wakes up in the might, not screaming but shaken, and when Nancy rushes to her room, she can hear the women say her name.
Somehow, Nancy knows that she isn't the one Yomiko is calling to from her nightmare.
The first time it happened, Nancy questioned Yomiko about it. It was a simple question, just an inquiry into the identity of the other Nancy. Nancy expected a light laugh, maybe even a story about this other Nancy, who had her name but wasn't her.
She might have even been connected to Nancy - some distant relative, lost and alone, a shadow in the dark. That happened in stories; it happened all the time, and Nancy had distinguished between the story and her life yet.
She wasn't sure if there was a distinction.
The expected reply wasn't the one she received. Instead, Yomiko hunched over slightly, as if trying to draw herself into herself, and something dark and dead passed over her eyes. Immediately worried, Nancy stayed up with the other woman, all night, telling her stories. She told them poorly, and Yomiko knew all of them, but it kept the dead look from spreading, and that was all either woman cared about.
In the morning, Yomiko apologized and proceeded to act like it had never happened.
Nancy never asked about the other Nancy again, even when Yomiko cried out her name in fear and terror the following night.
----
There you go. Fic bits, straight off the grill. Get 'em while they're hot.
Monday, February 10, 2003
I live. And I'm sure it took the cable company all of three minutes to fix the damn thing.
More writing later on, but I'll have that fic for you soon, I think (well, certainly before the 20th, but sooner than that).
And now I've jinxed it and it will take forever, I'm sure.
And finally got a gold chocobo in FFVII, which means I got Knights of the Round, but I've decided to try not to use it. It was fun kicking the almighty hell out of Proud Clod without it anyway.
Cloud: And amazingly, Scarlet, the fact that the machine is a mass of smoldering metal has only improved the color scheme.
Vincent: Well, there /was/ no where to go but up.
Sunday, February 9, 2003
eastern europe subdivided again today...
...which is an outdated joke, but still, it's somewhat applicable considering that the pit of voles has now split into pit of voles the original (fanfiction.net) and pit of voles the sequel, for the archiving of original fiction only.
Without being pompous, which is going to happen in a few sentences anyway, so I apologize, I wonder if this is good or not. I like the idea of encouraging writing, but considering the overall quality of writing that is being encouraged....
If only fanfiction.net and its related sites were small enough to beta stuff that came in, or outright reject the drivel, like www.sugarquill.net, a nice Harry Potter fanfiction archive. Oh well.
Still no internet. Definetely no internet until Sunday. I am not amused. Grrrrr.
Thursday, February 6, 2003
it burns us! it freezes!
Watch me write about Mission Possible in ten minutes at the school computer. Watch.
Mission Possible is the psycho exhibit at the Science Olympiad. It's a Rube Goldberg - (energy transfer) machine where you build it to transfer chem to mech to elec to heat to Emag and so on and so forth.
At t-minus 14 hours, we began to construct. Well, we played with chemicals first, then we bagan to construct. My room looked like something Hojo would have been proud of. Wires, two generators, a thermistor, a photocell (and I apologize for the people hitting me for science terms right now. Ask nicely and I'll describe a photocell circuit to make up for it.) Speaking of circuits and photocells, my friend spent four hours in a corner of my room trying to construct something with a relay.
After those four hours, he spent three minutes with a transistor and made it work.
When we were done, the thing looked like the miracle of popsicle stick construction. 14 straight hours of work.
At the competition, we ran into problems (read: me going spastic when I set the entire thing off by accident with two minutes to go and having to reset it) and more problems (read: not having goggles and having to sprint down the hall for them) and more problems (read: 12 molar HCl is very very strong. We had to pour it. We breathed it in. It hurt. A lot. I coughed halfway across the room. The judges told us that we should have been disqualified thrice over. But they were nice and let us stay in.)
Finally, after touching it three times and not getting our two 100 point bonuses, we were done. And placed sixth out of fourteenth, which is rather spiffy since quite a few of those groups spent months on what we did in 14 straight hours.
My best memory of the experience? 2 am, and my two guyfriends and whining how they won't have time to shave their faces. My response was "Hah! I don't have to worry about that! I only have to bleed every month."
They responded with dead silence followed with "that conversation did not just happen!" "Nothing was said. Nothing."
At 2 am, people are easy to fluster. ^_^
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
urgh....
I have no internet. (And haven't had any for the past two/three days) I am posting from school, because I have no internet. My school has blocked AIM express. Thus, I cannot get on AIM. At all. The cable company will not fix my cable connection until Sunday, because they SUCK.
I have no internet. When I find time, I'll tell everyone about the joys of building a Rube Goldberg device and 12 molar HCL. My lungs still hurt. Well, no, they don't, but bah.
I have no internet.
Wah.
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
worth a thousand lies
I suck at life. Well, just Calculus BC. Which isn't life by a long shot, but....... bahbahbahbahstupidpanicreactiononthetestBAH.
And remarkably, I feel better.
And now, the first official Fumma/Kamui ficcage by me on the net. Watch the suckage spew forth and multiply!
----
There are truths and there are lies.
This is truth.
Fuuma's hand is soft for all the blood that has been spilled on it, white and unmarked. It's huge, but everything about Fuuma is huge to Kamui: the massive spread of shoulders mantling above him, the legs which easily pin his own, the hand that rests, soft and sure, around his throat.
And because this is truth, the moment stretches between them and Fuuma's eyes are golden and deep as he moves the his other hand to trap Kamui's own.
Kamui wants to speak, but he can't. He knows that the word to leave his lips would be Fuuma and then the hand would tighten to allow no further transgressions.
This is a lie: that the person before him is Fuuma. This is also a lie: that the person before him is /Kamui/.
So Kamui makes no sound and tells no lies and truth grows and spreads to encompass them both.
----
This is a lie, but it's also true.
The wings are white and glorius, constructions of feather and fury that burst from Fuuma's shoulders. He beats them, and the air buffets Kamui, and he feels something within him respond to the music of the air disturbed by that long, powerful movement.
The pain comes swiftly, without deception. It brings him to his knees as he feels his skin rip and reality shift.
Kamui's wings are expanses of arching, acheing blackness. They swallow him, and the darkness swallows the light from Fuuma's white wings, as the moon swallows the light from the sun.
But this is a lie, because Kamui is the Kamui of the Dragons of Heaven, the seven seals that fight for the continuation of humanity, for the good of all.
And he is a demon. He who has tried to protect so much and has watched it all crumble into brimstone and flame.
Fuuma's eyes shine gold in the light of his wings, and Kamui understands what they mean.
All the evil I have done is no less than the evil you have done, the crimes you have committed byexisting, the crimes of a race you are trying to defend.
Sometimes, people build their lives on lies. And when the truth is ripped into life, they cannot survive the lack of support.
I am not human, Kamui, and that is my saving grace.
If Fuuma's eyes lie or if Kamui lies or if fate lies - it doesn't matter. One of them is lying, and those lies are bringing the structure down.
Monday, February 3, 2003
and the ducks shall devour us all
Revelation 1: There is just no way to ask one of your male friends to take off his shirt and pose for you so that you can draw his back. Without the situation becoming horribly, horribly awkward. Stupid AP studio. Stupid painting.
However, everyone watch as my brain tries to correct this!
Brain: Beach? Some swimming related thingy? No shirts there.
Logic: January? Cold snap? Twit?
Brain: Magazine?
Logic: Which magazines? Natural History?
Brain: Oh, shut up and get out a copy of Gray's Anatomy.
Logic: That's just /asking/ people to think that your evil.
Brain: I think that's a foregone conculsion.
These are the arguments that you just let happen and try not to get in the way of.
Friday, January 31, 2003
it's all in the loopholes
Alright, so it's about 11:30, but it's still tonight, and "Ghosts" is still up on the pit of voles - here in all its creepy glory.
In retrospect, it's kinda shorter than I'd like...but...bah.
And now, to finish Brendan angst, and then finally off this death and dead people kick.
Subaru: *Ahem*
Me: Oh, shut up.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
dismantle this morning
Nothing smells like happiness like the end of midterms. And a four day weekend ahead of me, with no homework.
And a very happy un-un-birthday to Twig. May it be filled with happiness and a noticible lack of people annoying enough to commit thermonuclear war over.
And I swear, to anyone who cares, that I will have "Ghosts" up on the pit by tonight. In all its pseudo-creepy, Cloud-quasi-angst creepiness. I just need to beat a tense into it.
Cloud: I see dead people.
Me: That you do, boyo.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Once upon a time...
This is the story of a brain. It was a good brain, and was well prized by its owner.
And then the Calculus BC midterm ate it.
OWWW MY BRAIN.
Thank you. That is all.
Monday, January 27, 2003
And the electric guitar descended from the heavens...
That's an abolutely gorgeous layout, Twig. And it's FLCL. FLCL rocks with all its obscure Gainax symbolism and on-crack-ness.
Yes, I love FLCL. No, I will probably never write fanfiction for it. Because a) I do not need those characters in my head and b) the severe hallucinogens I would need to properly write that series correctly are nowhere near legal.
Well...maybe in Canada.
They grow super-pot in Canada.
Saturday, January 25, 2003
Woot
Have discovered that TokyoPop is bringing over Petshop of Horrors. That makes me happy, I've always wanted to read the manga.
I am finding that my respect for Tokyopop is currently very high. But then again, I always hated Viz. (16$ a book! Come here and let me show you what to do with 16 dollars...)
And Tokyopop has a nifty little survey where you can tell them what manga you'd like to see brought over. My first choice? Tokyo Babylon. Come on people, they've got Gravitation and FAKE and PoH and Wish is...sorta. Let's see how much gay we can squeeze into Tokyopop
In completely unreleted news, I've decided that one thing that really annoys me and it's people ignoring the fact that a character is married or invovled in fanfiction because they want to hook him/her up with another character.
This is probably why S+K irks me. You can't ignore Seishirou. And while I love Karen to little bitses, Aoki's married in the manga, and he's almost married in the TV series. He's not going to suddenly knock up Karen, I don't care how good the soapgirl is.
Hmmm...where else does this happen? Oh yes. The Bitch Tifa Syndrome, not to be confused with Aeris the Rampant Alpha Female Effect. I like Tifa. I like her a lot. She's one of my favorite female characters and it annoys me when people make her a bitch to get her out of the way to hook Cloud up with someone else. And I adore youfor many reasons, your fantastic Tifa merely being one of them.
I have no idea where this opinionated post came out of, but what the hell. Calculus will have my brain soon enough.
Midterms BAD. In the meantime, I am completely addicted to the song "Sandalwood" by Lisa Loeb. Thank you, Twig, for it is indeed very nice.
Friday, January 24, 2003
MD made the picture work! MD made the picture work!
GLOMP.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
"Stay" which was posted on CLAMPesque, is now up on fanfiction.net here. In a slightly edited and cleaned up version.
And I actually made it format quasi-well. Take that, pit of voles.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Resolve failing....
I may very well not go anywhere with this, seeing as how I haven't finished the damn series yet, and if i do go anywhere, it won't be for a while.
Anyway, Witch hunter Robin, pre-series. When she's still in the nunnery (convent? abbey? Damned if I know.) In the series, from what I've seen (ie creepy crow girl episode) religion is routine to robin. I wonder if thee was a point where it wasn't.
Should not even be posting this because it sucks so bad it pains.
----
Being so close to God is akin to being close to the sun. Everything is harsh and sharp in the light that reflects, blindingly, off the cross.
This is black and this is white. This is evil and this is good. Witches are evil, witches are black, witches are abominations that hide from the light of day. And God.
There is no gray, and it's absence makes Robin's job easier. There is little to question when you know where the knife cuts.
----
Black and white is a routine. The routine of the nunnery is black and white: actions done in the day and actions done at night. And although the actions in the night are not evil, they are in darkness and they are to be treated with caution.
There is mass in the morning, to welcome the light of God, and mass at night, to call it back.
And at night, sometimes, the routine shifts to a different one.
-----
The nunnery is closer to the world that it hides from than Robin would like, but without that close-seculsion, the routine would be harder to maintain.
When the Father wakes her in the middle of the night, Robin shifts routines, comforted by knowing that it is only a short distance to the beginning of this one.
----
At times, Robin likes to think her skill with the Craft comes from God. He gave her the skill to call the fire, and fire and witches and god have a long history.
As the ashes of the body burn, let the soul find redemption and freedom from the fires of hell.
Amen.
----
Things are blurry.
At some level, Robin thinks that calling flame frightens her. She would never admit it, and she probably doesn't even consciously acknowledge the fear.
Her ability with the Craft comes from God, and as it is from God it can do no harm. She can do no harm.
But when she calls the flame, as now, and holds the fire on a frantic, struggling witch and it screams as it burns, everything gets blurry, and the lines start to shift. The flame jumps off the witch and the creature bolts off and is swallowed by darkness.
When she calls fire, the world blurs. The lines blur and the black and the white dribble grey into each other, declaring war on opposing territory with battles of blurred edges.
Grey is not black or white but a merling of both. Grey is distance from God, and it scares Robin because God is an absolute. God is /the/ absolute, and nothing of God can change.
So if God cannot change, then god is not rising away fro her, but she is falling farther from God.
----
Bah-ed-ness.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
starts with shin and ends with obi
Got Shinobi, very fun game, very hard game, but very fun. Hotsuma controls like a dream, and the camera is god in that game.
And the scarf, man, the scarf. The scarf makes that game. Moves so beautifully.
I mean, hotsuma is damn cool, and the action is fun, and the pits suck but that's okay...but...but...
It's the scarf. You can't beat the scarf.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Bah
I have the sinking feeling that the layout picture isn't showing up to anyone.
Or I would, if I actually cared.
Bah. Let's see if I can fix this...
Monday, January 20, 2003
Look, I'm being productive!
With any luck, I can finish "Ghosts" sometime soon (read: anywhere from the next few days to next two weeks. Hopefully the former, but well...midterms). Have a great deal of it finished, it really just seeing if I can connect all the bits.
And in writing Tora 5, all I can say is that Tabitha's happy she's getting screen time.
Tabitha: Look, I can do plot exposition too!
Me: Wait, is it plot expostion if you're telling everyone stuff they already know?
Tabitha: But I use big words.
Me: Oh really? How big?
Tabitha: Well, I'll give you pretty good odds that W. Bush would have a fair bit of trouble with a few of them.
This is officially the last time I argue with the original characters. Damn scientist.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
should you chose to accept this mission...
In a short time, I will embark on the start of my dangerous sewing adventure. It will be perilous, and I may not return. Should I fail, do not worry, for I shall return, in some manner similar to how people in FFX didn't stay dead.
In other words, I'm going to be attending AnimeBoston in April, and am starting now to work on my costume. I'm going in a big group of six and staying with a friend up in his BU dorm. (Five people in one doubles room. Fun time!)
Since we're going as a group, we've decided to cosplay as a group, and we're all pulling Kenshin characters. I (being short and with dark long hair and a girl) had be elected into the Misao cosplay role. Which is interesting, since I act, personality-wise, a great deal like Aoshi, which means that I will need so much sugar to be 'in character' for Misao.
So yeah, we've got a group of Misao, Aoshi, Sanosuke, Yahiko, Kaoru, and Megumi. Note the lack of Kenshin. Oh well. Nothing we can do about that. Next year though, if we go, I'm pushing for a Final Fantasy themed cosplay, since I can pull a decent Tifa. And the Yahiko player (a girl) can pull a Yuffie. And the Sanosuke a possible Barret. We'll see.
It should be noted that I have no idea how to sew.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
This is why....
...I don't ski.
sitzmark: /sits-mark/ noun: a depression left in the snow by a skier falling backwards.
People who ski are cool. Not only in that they can ski, but also in that they get a cool word for their screwups.
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Woo-hoo!
There's tweaking to do, but it's my first real layout and I'm proud of it.
Image comes from...somewhere. I think an official game site. Found it on the drive and tweaked it. Words read: "Could you let down your hair/ Be Transparent for a while/ to see if you're human after all" It's from "trying" by Lighthouse.
Yes, I am a geek, but I'm a geek who pulled off a layout with no html skills to speak off!
Friday, January 17, 2003
This is a test.
This is only a test.
Coincidentally, there is no spoon.
Friday, January 17, 2003
