Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons...

★ I've been called a Hikago BNF twice recently- once by someone I don't even know, but who apparently knows me. Can I tell you how weird that is? It's fucking weird. I'd ask if that meant that I need to start throwing random hissy fits and collecting minions to do my evil bidding, but the same things that probably make me a BNF also make at least half the of currently active fandom BNF's, so that probably won't fly. XD Guess I'll have to be a nice one. Come on, what fun is that?

(The minions would be nice, though, not gonna lie.)

★ Really regretting not asking for Hikaru/Waya for the Hikago exchange, because I've been hit by "ZOMG WANT THAT" really hard lately completely at random, and there's just not that much of it. Then again, asking for it wouldn't have necessarily meant I would've gotten it, either. Oh well.  Hopefully other people will write it and I'll be able to enjoy. ^_~ (Or, yanno, if people want to write it in the meantime, I certainly won't object. :P)

★ Speaking of the Hikago exchange: the good news is that I've reached the minimum word requirement, at least according to Open Office. The bad news is that it's nowhere close to done. What happened to my ability to write short fic? ARGH. (Well, okay, admittedly it would go faster if I wasn't going about it sideways, but that's what kind of has to happen with what was asked for, soooooo I'm doing my best to actually do what my recipient wants. ^_^;;; )

★ Pride was today. \o/ It was pretty fun, hung out with some people, though also overwhelming for someone as introverted as I am. I'm totally freaking EXHAUSTED now and it's honestly probably going to take me at least a week of avoiding IRL interaction to recover psychologically. (Notably, there was a table for a mental health organization or whatever- I grabbed a booklet on anxiety disorders. Heh. ^_^;;; ) On the upside, I got a really cute purple tank top with a rainbow butterfly on it. It's rainbowy but not in your face rainbowy. I'll have to try to remember to take a picture of it later. :D Also, Melissa Etheridge came over and did a song a cappella just for the hell of it since she was in the area for a concert anyway, which was awesome. In case you've ever wondered- she's amazing live. So now you know. ^_~ I also managed some free stuff, including a rainbow button with "Atheist" on it, some random stickers, and a few books. (For the curious-  Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, Two To Conquer by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence.) I actually left about a half hour early and didn't go to any of the after parties- I thought about it, but the bottom line was that I was totally fried. So were the people I was with, so I would've had to go solo, which I'm not comfortable with anyway. It's just as well.

★ It's been a very rainy June so far, so naturally, there have been lots of mosquitoes out and I've been getting freaking EATEN ALIVE. Seriously, there are 8 bites just on my right foot alone. ;~; I've been trying to keep benadryl on the worst places which helps, but it still sucks and I'm still a mess. SO ITCHY. And I've been growing out my nails a little bit, so I'm doing a lot more damage by scratching than I normally would. One of the reasons I hate summer- bugs love me. Ver blood is apparently delicious. (And no, before anybody asks, things like Off that are supposed to keep bugs away have never worked for me, even when I was a kid. I would be outside with my family after everyone was coated with the stuff and I would literally be the only one getting bitten. Ugh ugh ugh.

★ And in other news, my diploma arrived in the mail yesterday! Wee! So now that's safely tucked away in its folder. Pretty cool. ^_^

Sorry, guys. RL ate me. XD (And will continue to eat me for another few weeks, not gonna lie.) As always, you're better off checking tumblr (same name) these days if you want updates more than once every month or two. <_< I actually hadn't realize it had been that long. Anyway, so let's take care of the updatey stuff really quickly, shall we?

( A little rambly, but not too bad, considering )

(Edited because I forgot something.)

(Kept meaning to post this and then getting distracted by people/assignments/whatever. Oops. Anyway, for the December posting meme- degrees )

Talk about your writing process!
You mean besides that it's a mess? XD It's not so much a process as "Ver makes everything up as she goes along." Alright, well, I'll try and pull something together here.
 
When I get a bunny, regardless of whether it's something that was brought on by music or something else, usually it's just a small snippet of something. An idea for a part of a scene if I'm lucky, but usually I'm not and it's a line or two of dialogue. Unfortunately, what the bunny started out as gives no indication of how long it's going to end up being- "The Devil You Know," which is somewhere in the ballpark of 10k words and is my longest fic to date by FAR, started off in my head as just a scene of Hikaru and Akira seeing each other at a club. That's IT. Even the simple ones can grow completely out of control.  The bunnies just start multiplying on their own, I don't know how they do that when there's only one of them to begin with. Apparently plot bunnies reproduce asexually? I don't know.
 
As far as actual writing goes, I tend to write things as they come to me, which is usually not in any coherent order. The initial bunny is somewhere in the middle? Okay fine, I guess I'm writing that first. The next bit is the end? Alrighty then. I don't generally use filler text, either, unless there's something important I'm intending on putting there that I may forget about later. I mostly work in Notepad, so what this means is that if you looked at a story I'm working on, you probably wouldn't know what was happening half the time. It's just a jumble of seemingly random paragraphs, large spaces, and some short dialogue sequences. (The large spaces typically mean that I'm making a separation between what comes before it and after it- there's a scene change, but I'm not done writing the previous scene yet.) It's kind of a mess, to be honest. Sometimes I work in yWriter and that makes it a bit easier as far as keeping the bits separated. I tend to use Notepad because regardless of what kind of machine I'm on, everything can open a txt file. Even my phone. :P I know at this point it's outlived its usefulness, because everything I use will also open ODT/RTF files, but ehhhhhh.

So basically, what ends up happening is I have to figure out how all the pieces I have fit together. This happens along the way, it's not like I write all the pieces and am then staring at it trying to get it to go together like a puzzle. It's like... I'm making a quilt, and I have some of the squares made up already and know where I want them, but I'm also making things as I go. Often, I find that scenes naturally go together without a lot of effort on my part, but every once in a while I have to kind of nudge things along in the right direction. You can usually tell when I do this. XD

Also, I reblogged something on Tumblr yesterday that really applies to this post.

(Oh yeah, if you have a question/topic/whatever for me, the original post is here!)

It's been a while again since I've written, so I figured I'd check in and let those of you who don't follow me in other places know that yes, I'm still alive. See? Alive. :D So what's been happening? A lot of work, a lot of procrastination. I spent the morning sorting out the (admittedly, all over the place) fantasy section of my e-book folder instead of trying to write a story that's due Tuesday. You know, the normal. Oops. XD I also don't have internet at home right now, which complicates matters. This got really ridiculously long, mostly because of the school sections, so I'm just going to section the school stuff off for you guys by cuts. Which I don't normally bother with, but, well... you'll see. XD

☁ In case you're in Hikago fandom and didn't see my spamming, there's a new blind_go mini round out- GO SIGN UP. NOW.

☁ The new Phoenix Wright came out a couple of weeks ago. I feel so behind- I only just barely started case 4. I have Thoughts on it, which are partially good and partially ragey, but I'll hold off on getting too into those until I actually finish the game. So far... it's not that different from the others, concept wise. I can basically boil everything down to a short list of "things I've learned from the Ace Attorney games"
1. Prosecutors get away with EVERYTHING.
2. Don't become friends with a lawyer ever- you'll eventually end up dead or falsely accused of a crime, probably murder.
3. LGBTQ people are ridiculous/offensive/disgusting/only good for comedic relief/figments of your imagination/terrible people/any combination of the above, depending on the particular plot device service they're providing at the time.

☁ Midterms grades were fine- 4.0 for the semester so far. As usual, I just need to keep it there. ajdklsajd.

( Wibbling About the Future- Transfer Schools )

( Wibbling About the Future- Classes )

( Wibbling About the Future- Minors )

( Wibbling About the Future- Jobs )

( And last but not least... the Salem trip )

☁ ID's are out and fics are due for BG in about 2 weeks. Um. It might be time to think about writing something? XD To be honest, I do have an idea I've been kicking around, but it's something that I'm thinking about writing it as a short story for Creative Writing, since I have my first story due at the same time as BG. So I'm not sure if that's really a good idea. But I might not do it anyway, because the story is supposed to be 3-5 pages DOUBLE SPACED and that's basically nothing, so I don't know that I have enough space to do what I want with it for the assignment anyway. Meh. :/

☁ I actually did another one of those reviews! I recently replayed 400 Days to fix a couple of the stupid things I did in the first playthrough, so I wrote about that a bit. It is here. The cool/exciting but scary thing is that I've done two of these reviews and I already have two followers on that blog. O_o Oh. And by the way, if you've even sort of been thinking about trying The Walking Dead, it's on sale on Steam till tomorrow. It's normally $25 for the first five episodes and then $5 for the 400 Days DLC- right now it's 6.24 for the main game and 2.49 for 400 Days. I'm not actually sure how the PC version compares to the xbox version, but either way it's a steal. Just sayin'.

☁ We haven't even had a meeting for Pride Alliance yet and the drama is already starting. Ungh. First of all, we don't have a room yet. So not only do we not have a place to GO, I can't make any flyers to get new people in until that happens. Ungh. Shouldn't that have been done, I dunno, before the start of the semester? Maybe that's just me. THEN there's the logo stuff. I don't know if I ever talked to you guys about that, but basically, last year this guy made a logo for us. Not only was the file really low quality (seriously, anytime we used it at any size that was readable, it was all pixellated and it drove me up the WALL)... the guy who made it was a complete tool and there was drama there. Oh yeah, and Marcus made jokes about it looking like we were a gay communist group, so you can imagine what the logo looked like. XD It's also important to note that the logo had a rainbow gradient to it, we'll come back to that in a bit.

So this year I want a new logo for the flyers. I was like, okay, I'll mock up a couple of things and I'll show you guys what I've got. Meanwhile, The Tool is going, "I still have the logo from last year." Uh, no. So I posted two potential logos- one is a heart with a rainbow gradient, and the other is a standard rainbow with clouds. Nothing groundbreaking here, I wanted it to be fairly simple and recognizeable. Apparently people last year didn't know what the hell the logo was supposed to be, so. Anyway. I saw The Tool at lunch the other day and he was saying that the logos I made weren't inclusive. He felt excluded by the use of the rainbow. I'm like... what? YOU DID THE SAME FUCKING THING. So okay, it's fine if YOU use a rainbow, but if I do it, it's exclusionary? WHAT? I think part of it is that he has a gigantic ego and I'm not feeding it, so he's pissed. God forbid we not use the logo that HE made. But he's also kind of insane (for example, he's one of those Otherkin jerkoffs), so it's totally possible that he actually BELIEVES that as a pansexual genderqueer person, if he uses a rainbow it includes everyone, but since I'm a gay semi-androgynous person, I'm only talking to gay people. Funny how that works. The rainbow is an easily recognizeable LGBTQ symbol, so that's the best to use- and we can't POSSIBLY use the colors/symbols for all of the individual groups because there's a million of them. It's a flyer, not a packet, JFC. If nothing else, though, I know that Marcus is on my side. Partially because we're friends and partially because he really does like my logos over The Tool's. :)

It's going to be a long fucking year, you guys.

☁ Also, I've started watching United States of Tara and LOVE it. I'm almost done with the first season and I just started it yesterday afternoon. (Of course, it helps that it's a half hour show and not hour long episodes, but still. XD)

Anyway. I have to see about fooding and then studying a bit for a Stats test I have tomorrow, and hopefully writing SOMETHING for a bit. Later~ ^_^

18. The meaning behind your blog name
I have this as a line in the sticky note on both journals, but whatever. So. This was around... senior year of high school or maybe the year after that? So I was 18 or 19, and trying to figure out a new username that my family didn't know. I know this is going to shock you all, but when I was a teenager I was an angst bunny. XD And being the angst bunny that I was, I took one of my most prominent feelings at the time- that I was lost- and put it into a translator to see what came up. I decided that the Dutch "verloren" sounded the coolest, so that was my new username (I discovered later that it also means the same in German). I've often had to add some version of my birth year to it because usually just verloren is taken.

Honestly? I've thought about changing it. I really have. But for one thing, it's too much work to change my username or get a new account EVERYWHERE, and also... this is the name everyone knows. I half suspect that even if I changed it, everyone would still call me "Ver" anyway. So then the point is what, exactly? XD


☁ Watched ParaNorman today. I wasn't really expecting to like it, but it was cute. ^_^

☁ The 1am thing yesterday didn't happen- I'm hoping for today- but it was in the interest of a good cause, hopefully. I uh, kind of realized yesterday that I have NO online presence as a writer, at least nothing that's semi-professional (and by semi-professional, I mean not fanfic or a personal journal like this, at least. My standards are not terribly high for "semi-professional." XD). So. I figured that I should probably work on that. It can't HURT, at any rate. I apparently made a Wordpress account at some point, so I used that to make a new blog and put up a post on it. Here we go. Mainly it's going to be video game reviews, I think, and gaming topics in general, because that's a pretty reliable source of material. And because my dream job basically involves me wearing jeans and a t-shirt to work and getting paid to play games and write about them. XD Not that there aren't a million gaming blogs already, BUT this will be a kind of online sample that I can use. Probably. If I don't stop poking at the writing, anyway. I'm hoping for a once a week schedule, but we'll see. I think by now we all know how things with me and planning go. XD

☁ Turned in BG. Managed to pull off two fics, somehow, I don't even know how that happened. It was originally all part of the same idea, sort of, but... eh, it's complicated. Anyway. I was Vanessa and wrote two Hikaru and Waya fics- one pointless gen and the other smut. *shrug* I was terribly obvious and didn't bother to hide it. I was hoping that the pairing would throw people off at least a little, but uh, I guess not. XD Guessing didn't turn out too bad, though! 5 out of a possible 8, which is my best showing BY FAR- I have been known to get zero right, after all. Of course, if I'd actually looked a little more closely at some of the hints posted later on, I would've realized that a couple of my guesses were obviously wrong, but whatever. XD

☁ Somehow got talked into trying Naruto again, but of course I was only 7 eps into it to begin with and that was ages ago, so I just started it over. It's. I dunno. Kind of obnoxious. I can see why I didn't really feel a push to continue it before.

☁ The book cataloging is getting ridiculous. I've been taking a break, so there's still everything on my bookshelf at this point plus what's in the closet and whatever else I find that I'm not seeing right now- but the manga should be done, anyway, minus the first 13 of Hikago. I'm up to a total of 174 books and not even close to done (we won't even discuss how much of that is manga). I think I have a problem, you guys. XD Also recently I had decided to try and organize my ebook folder, because that's a huge clusterfuck, and all I can really say about that is... holy GOD, why did I do that to myself? I don't even know how it got like that.

☁ Money stuff for school is mostly taken care of, I'm waiting for the last grant form to go through, but it's nothing that's a huge deal right this split second. Like I can pay my bill and stuff without it, anyway. Re: school stuff, now all I have to do is get my certificate of residence (I'd like to do that tomorrow, tbh), pay my bill (by the 15th, but would like to do it next week to get it done and over with), get my books, and figure out exactly where my classes are and how tight I'm pushing my transport time on a couple. So that's coming along nicely.

☁ As far as RL circumstances... not a lot has changed, for good or for bad, at this point. I've been taking a bit of a hiatus on the cleaning because I've basically felt like shit the last week (yay for being female- not), plus being distracted with other things, see next cloud bullet, but I'm hoping to get back on track in the next couple of days.

☁ So remember how my laptop was overheating and I wasn't sure if it was the heat or something else? It was something else. -_- After some investigation, I discovered that the fan was no longer working. I'm not comfortable taking apart the laptop, since I can't get to the fan without pulling apart the ENTIRE thing (which is stupid but whatever), and it's not worth paying Best Buy $200 bucks to put a new fan in a four year old laptop, soooooo as much as I didn't want to spend the money and didn't want Windows 8... I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. I bought a new one. XD I have named it Phoenix. :3 It was less than the previous one, under 400 before tax, so that wasn't bad. I've been super good about money over the summer, so I'm not going to beat myself up over spending the money or anything. Specs wise, I just wanted something that was at least as good as what I already had for relatively cheap, which was actually more difficult than you might think? Go figure. Sooooo I have another Toshiba- because fuck, I beat Haru all to hell and it still lasted four years, and above all else I did not want a Lenovo (very bad previous experience with IBM, and Kelly having to replace her Lenovo laptop TWICE since March does not help my opinion of them. I told her not to get a damn Lenovo. But nooooo, she didn't want to listen to me. Pfft.) Anyway. I still hate Windows 8, but I knew that already. Classic Shell makes it bearable, fyi if anybody on the flist ends up having to deal with this OS, though I still keep triggering stuff to pop up by accident. Grrr. The keyboard is pissing me off, at least until I get used to it. So there are minor frustrations with it, but that's true of any new device, especially with something like a laptop. Mostly I love it. It does what I need it to do (including connecting to the internet without a problem, which I was nervous about after the netbook), zips along speedily, and so far has handled everything I've thrown at it with grace. (It IS worth noting, though, that the "max temp" on Phoenix is significantly lower than it was on Haru- Haru's was 212, on Phoenix it's 194. Go figure.)

I think my favorite thing about it, though, is that it's a definite upgrade. I've said before that my laptop was hardly state of the art when I got it (and neither is this)- but you know that rating system Windows has? Old lappy was something like 3.3 or 3.5. This is 4.8. In both cases, the score is based off of the graphics card and everything else is AT LEAST a full point higher. When I turned on the Sims to double check that my saves would work, I was like, holy shit, they look like that? O_O It runs so much smoother now, without all the jerkiness and lag, and there's so much more detail. Like wow. Amazing.


Okay, I need to shut up and just post this already, so. Next time~!

Okay. So I know I owe you guys a legit update entry at some point, but I did want to make sure that I documented this one thing before I inevitably forgot to.  ^_^; So when I got that e-mail that said I'd won that writing award, it came with an invitation to a ceremony for the people being published where everyone would read their stories.  I said I would, because really, how often am I really going to be able to do that? In the moment, I thought it was pretty cool. I didn't consider my social phobia until later. Whoops?

( This got longer than I planned... )

...you know, I keep trying to post more, and I'll type something up, but then I don't post it and I wait so long that I have to rewrite half of it because it's no longer valid. Whoops. XD

( Blah blah blah )

So basically, things are generally going pretty well at the moment. I'll probably be singing another tune in a month when I'm trying to write four different research papers, but eh. XD

Okay, first things first- I did post something yesterday. It wasn't for NaBloPoMo like I've been doing, I forgot to do that, but I did post something privately, and that's what counts to me. I'm not doing it for a prize or anything, just for me, so basically you're just going to have to trust me. ^_~ Actually, for the curious, it was fic. I've been doing that lately- when I'm too lazy to go get my flash drive, I'll put stuff on livejournal so I can access it from a different computer later, edit it as I please, come back home and have the latest version right there for me. It's usually fic, but sometimes school stuff- I have notes on William Faulkner for short story, for example. Which I need to stop doing, really, because my LJ is getting ridiculous with all this extra stuff. Anyway. So what's up there for yesterday is actually the fic I ended up finishing off and posting today. Yes, I finished fic! Amazing, right? It's not the best thing I've ever written, that's for damn sure, but it's something. It even works for cottoncandy_bingo , which I've been neglecting and just realized that it's due at the end of December. Whoops. ^_^;;;

Not a whole lot happened today, just art history, short story, and pride alliance. Only one person showed up to pride alliance that wasn't in the executive committee. Which makes me nervous because we have the information table for Transgender Day of Remembrance next week. Sigh. Oh, and Treasurer and Co-Chair fought for half of it. They butt heads, because they're both attention whores that can't shut up. It was a long meeting. -_- At least Secretary wasn't there. He's a nice enough kid, don't get me wrong- he has Asperger's, and I think he has a mild mental retardation on top of that. So he just talks A LOT, and very loudly, and takes ages making any sort of point (if there even is one), and I just... does it make me a terrible person to admit that I don't have the patience for that? I think it does. XD I could never be a special ed teacher. I have all the respect in the world for that, but I just can't deal. Ungh. Oh, and have I mentioned that we keep getting kicked out of our club room by another club? The other advisor is SUPER RUDE and is always like, "We've been in this room for 20 years! blahblahblah." Yeah, well, they didn't reserve the room, so it's ours this year. Go away. Only problem is that OUR advisor is never there when this goes down, so we always end up folding, because what else are we supposed to do when this woman is being a complete bitch to us? It's going to be a looooooooong year, you guys.

I'm so tired. Definitely have to go to bed earlier than I did last night- I did laundry yesterday and my clothes just didn't want to dry, so I ended up going to bed around 1am. Waaaaaay too late for me. I'm a zombie. x_x

I did NOT forget about posting again. <_<

....somehow I feel like this is going to be a pattern. XD

So today was actually not that bad. I had a test in Sociology, but it was no big deal at all- since most of us were sitting there before the start of class, he handed out tests early, and it only took a couple of minutes- note that on test days, when you're done with the test, you leave. The class starts at 3. I was literally done and on my way out the door at 2:58, no lie. So I was able to get home around 4:30 instead of the usual 5:30 for Fridays, which was pretty nice. :D

Also, I get the most awful bunnies on the bus. Just saying.

I feel like there was something else to talk about, but I'm toast at this point, so I will try and remember tomorrow. :P Night all!

Apparently "soon-ish" means a month later. Whoops. ^_^;

( Blah blah blah )

Real entry coming eventually, but in the meantime, I have seven topics from troisroyaumes  to talk about, so here we go!

( Seven Topics Meme! )

Comment if you want topics and I'll try to come up with things that aren't totally stupid. :D

☁ First things first- late, I know, but...



Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Merry Yule, Happy birth of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever floats your boat. :D

☁ Scott, my immediate supervisor at work, always gets us chocolate for Christmas- one of those assorted mixes that you actually only eat a couple out of, but that's not the point- so Mary and I decided to get him something this year. It's only fair, after all, and he's had a rough year. I'm sure he's glad to see 2011 go- both of his parents passed (separately) AND he's getting a divorce. Anyway. We made him a card and gave him a $25 Barnes and Noble card, since we know he loves to read. I thought he was going to cry. ;~; It was pretty cool though, have to say. I love giving presents. :D

☁ Needless to say, I worked for Christmas, but it wasn't TOO bad overall. I'd stayed up WAY too late reading a longfic though, so I was working on like... three hours sleep. Whoops. ^_^;;; I crashed when I got home, but I need to go back to bed soon to avoid a repeat performance. Woke up, microwaved some Christmas dinner I'd gotten previously (ham steak, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and I made some rolls the night before.). There's even still a whole plate full for tomorrow, plus a slice of pecan pie that I decided was in my best interest to not eat. :D As far as other holiday plans go, I will meet up with Stef at some point and we will exchange gift cards. I also got her a mini pillow pet in the bumblebee version. (Her nickname in junior high was Bee, so it's a little inside joke thing. Plus, how freaking cute is this thing, seriously? I'm half considering getting a different animal for myself. SO ADORABLE.). Kelly and I are planning on doing a "sister day" sometime soon, which is in lieu of presents, depending on when we can coordinate our schedules. I'm not sure what we're doing exactly, aside from  DEFINITELY seeing the new Sherlock Holmes movie, but eh. :P

☁ Speaking of fic, I've been reminded of a holiday bunny that I keep avoiding. Someone should probably tell me to not write it. XD

☁ Mario nails- HOW COOL IS THAT? :D :D :D

Okay, I just got hit with "ZOMG NEED SLEEP NAO", so I'm going to call it a night. Later, all! \o

☁ Urgh LJ. >_< Issues. Though it seems better now than it did earlier today- it's loading, at least.

☁ There's a netflix-like site for video games. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS?! It's called Gamefly. I predict that this will be either the stupidest thing I've ever done or the most brilliant thing I've ever done. Probably the former. On the upside, it means I can try out a whole bunch of stuff without spending a fortune. ^_^; And when I feel like it's not worth it anymore, I can just cancel it, no problem. The subscription is kind of expensive ($16 a month), so probably I'm going to have the account active off and on as it's warranted.

[For anyone who might be curious- Epic Mickey seems interesting, but the camera and controls are frustrating as hell. You can't tell where the hell you're going (or supposed to be going) half the time. You'll be in the middle of trying to jump and the camera will whirl around with no warning, making you fall to your death. Not cool. I put it in the mailbox this afternoon, entirely glad I didn't buy it. Good in theory, bad in execution.]

☁ I somehow managed to squeak blind_go in at the last minute. (Literally. I sent the e-mail at 11:59pm, no lie.) I really should've defaulted. It's pointless and all over the freaking place and just. UGH. Haaaaate. I procrastinated until just before and you can tell (and not just by the typos). I'm honestly kind of afraid to look at the comments on it. There are three other fics in various stages of "incomplete" sitting on my desktop, too, but those just weren't going anywhere or had no hope of being done in time. One in particular wanted to be a long thing. Meh.

Haven't actually decided whether or not to put up a guessing post this time, as I'm probably horrifically obvious and I already owe SO MUCH CRAP from previous rounds and various other things it's ridiculous. Hmm. :/ Also I've read a few things, but certainly not the entire list. I just haven't felt like it. Maybe tomorrow. Or something. It's not like I don't read quickly, so it's not a huge deal.

☁ I ended up going to both Saturday festivals, the more local one in the morning. There was a vendor there who makes his own candles and this shit was SO GOOD, I swear to god. I wanted almost everything. I did limit myself to two votives and a big one. I also got a pack of 15 yummy incense sticks for $1 at another vendor. Probably would've bought more but the guy was kind of rude. I went to Irish Fest a bit later. Honestly? It was lame. ^_^;;; It seems SMALLER now, which sucks. I did get a cool dreamcatcher from a sweet Spanish lady (Irish Fest. Go figure.) and her adorable 5-ish year old daughter, and a pair of earrings. Also over the course of the day there were fried dough sticks and ribbon chips and hot dogs, none of which I should've had, but eh. I probably won't bother going next year. Too bad.

☁ Birthday was fun. Got entirely too drunk, but I was able to sleep and recover without having to haul my ass into work, so it's all good. I had dinner with Stef- apparently Olive Garden does carry out? It cut what would've been a 40 minute wait in half and we just ate at my place. Good to know. You still get salad (with their amaaaaaazing Italian dressing in a container) and bread sticks and everything. :D :D :D :D :D

I do need to start spending some money here, though... I still have $50 in gift cards for Barnes and Noble from CHRISTMAS, got another $25 for my birthday, and then Erin sent me a $50 e-gift card for Amazon (I didn't even know you could do that. O_o). Uh. Yeah. How did that even happen?

☁ Via Lish: A very well written article that explains why throwing out religious platitudes to an Atheist while they're grieving can be offensive to them. Before I get into any of this, I should possibly clarify for some of you, since I don't generally talk about religion- I'm an Atheist. Well. More accurately, I'm an odd Atheist/Agnostic mix, meaning that while I absolutely don't believe in God or Heaven or Hell or any of that, I'm also willing to admit that there's really no way of knowing for sure, one way or another. I'm cool with other religions as long as someone's not trying to convert me or it's not being shoved down my throat. It's not something I make a big deal of because it's not something that affects my life on a daily basis. Anyway. This was so not the point. Onward!

I had a conversation with Lish about this, which I'm not going to totally rehash, but to me it basically boils down to respecting other people's beliefs. A lot of people don't understand Atheism, and for many of these, it's just not on their radar at all. It's a thoughtlessness. They assume, well, it would be comforting to ME, so it must be to THEM. Nevermind that "I'm sorry for your loss" is just as easy to say, and offering whatever assistance you can will mean more. Personally, I'm in the "it doesn't bother me that much" camp, in general, unless they go on about it forever or I hear it a thousand times in ten minutes. I get the meaning behind it, and I appreciate it, even though it doesn't help. Though the whole "god's will" thing is an exception- that IS hurtful and offensive, and I seem to remember walking away from people who have said that to me. The bottom line here: be considerate and respectful of the person grieving. That's all. And isn't that true regardless of who they pray to (or don't pray to)? (*cough* I just totally wrote "prey" instead of "pray". Nice Freudian slip there, Ver. XD)

☁ This is too cute. I don't even like kids, and this made me want to hug him. The parents, too. He's a lucky kid to have such accepting and open-minded parents. That being said, assuming it's not something he ends up growing out of later- knowing you're gay at six? Just. Wow. O_o

☁ I read this book yesterday that is, for some reason I have yet to figure out, bringing a couple of original muses back to the foreground of my mind. I haven't thought about them, or their story, in ages. The book isn't even related to the story in any way, except one character's tendency to overthink things. WTF brain?

I don't know, maybe I should look at it again. I stopped due to a nasty case of writer's block- I got two characters in a particular situation and couldn't figure out how to get them out of it- but maybe if I approach it from a different angle? The other problem was that I found that the more I wrote, the more I -despised- my main character. The different angle I'm thinking of would solve that as well, because it would shift the main focus from the annoying little brat to someone I actually like. The only problem is that originally, the POV shifted between four different main-ish characters, with the one I call the main as the hub basically. Changing this causes a whole bunch of other issues as far as things being shown. I guess I'll have to try and figure it out at some point.

☁ I read a lot of m/m fiction. (I know that comes as a shock to you all.) It's a genre that's very hit or miss, from my experience. I've read some wonderful things. I've also read things that never should've seen the light of day. Quality of writing is all over the place- not just with things like characters, but with basics like GRAMMAR and PUNCTUATION. I swear to god, some of these editors need to be fired. Anyway. While, obviously, mistakes happen regardless of genre (nobody's perfect), I've NEVER seen this kind of lack of editing or grasp of the basics in ANY other genre.

This does have a point, I swear. I wrote a review on Goodreads of a book recently- the novel was fabulous, by the way, and I said as much- where I mentioned that my expectations had not been terribly high, due to previous experience. Another reader asked me why, and after I explained, she pretty much jumped all over me. Uh... OBVIOUSLY the quality of the book is going to depend on the quality of editing and the ability of the author, regardless of genre. I know that, I'm not a moron. It just seems that there are lesser quality editors at m/m publishers. Or, also possible, is that certain m/m publishers put quantity over quality. I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE MY OPINION, LEAVE ME ALONE, WOMAN! The best part? She hasn't even read the book in question. So now, according to her, she's going to have to read it because I held up up as an example of good writing. Great. Now if she doesn't like it (And there's a good chance she won't. Looking at the handful of books we have in common, we have VERY different tastes.), then she's going to be up my ass about how I don't know what I'm talking about or whatever. Wonderful. Why do people have to pick fights over stupid shit?

☁ Is it just me or is LJ being really super slow today?

☁ I was remixed for Remix Madness. TWICE. They are also both better than the original fics, which is both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. So. We have Natural (The 'People Put Their Mouths There?!' Remix) and Dignity, or Lack Thereof (The Everybody Loses Remix). Both are awesome. I sadly didn't write anything for it because I've been trying to BG and failing as it is, so. Heh. ^_^;;;

☁ A word of advice: don't be an asshole to the person developing your pictures. There was this guy yesterday that insisted on using the hour machine even though he wanted his prints ZOMGRITENAO, as opposed to the instant machine that I was trying to steer him to- and then had a cow because I kept emphasizing HOUR MACHINE. "But you can do them in ten minutes!" Um, it depends on how many pictures you've got, size, and the orders that are in front of you (because obviously if I have 500 pictures that are printing for someone else, you're gonna be waiting a while. Doesn't matter if you 'only have one.' Nothing I can do about that.) And, yes, how much of a dick you are to me. If you're a gigantic asshole? You better believe I'm going to make you wait the whole hour even if you have one 4 inch print (takes about five minutes if there's nothing else in queue). DO NOT FUCK WITH ME.

He kept arguing with me about how long HE thought it should take. So guess who got to wait the whole god damned hour for his 20-something pictures? >D

(I'd like to point out here that it is well within my right to tell him the extra time. Part of my job is time management and making sure that things are done when I tell the customer that they'll be done. Expecting him to wait an hour for prints when he used the machine that is clearly labeled as a "one hour" machine is certainly not unreasonable- and in fact if I had reason, like the previous 500 print example, I could've pushed it back further. If he hadn't been an asshole, I probably would've told him 20 minutes. Getting pics printed and packaged takes extra time when it's just me, myself, and I manning the entire front store. ^_^;;; But then, since he WAS a dick, he probably would've had a cow about the 20 minutes, too.)

☁ Got invited to a walking/running 5k in June that's part of the local Pride thing. I haven't decided whether I'm going to go or not. On one hand, it would be cool, especially since I didn't end up doing the April 5k. On the other hand, I'd have to get up at 6:30am at the absolute latest to take the bus, and that STILL wouldn't get me to registration on time (it's the earliest bus, btw). I don't think I have to be there exactly at 8 though. Or I'd have to call a cab and spend god knows how much for a ride downtown. I don't know. I have a couple of weeks to decide, registration is due at the end of the month.

The parade and PrideFest are the following day... I've always wanted to go and have never been able to because I always find out about the dates too late to ask for it off... I don't know how comfortable I am going to all of that by myself though. It's not like I can beg Erin to go with me. :/ But I dunno, I still want to. It's kind of pathetic that I've never been. And at least that way I don't have to worry about losing anybody and I can take my time doing whatever I feel like. I think my biggest concern is getting lost- I have a TERRIBLE sense of direction. I could probably get lost in a paper bag. But... I could probably just print off a map and the bus schedules I would need. Worst case scenario, I have my cell phone and I call a cab to go home. Right? Could be fun. I'm actually kind of reminded of a LOLcat pic here. ^_^;;;

☁ Watching Shuffle, which a coworker keeps suggesting to me. I'm four episodes into it. It's... pretty much a typical harem type anime? The main guy is kind of a dick and I'm really trying to figure out why in hell he's got all these girls in love with him... but again, that's typical of that genre. It has its moments, though. I also watched a few episodes of the new My Little Pony show for reasons I have yet to figure out. It is, frighteningly enough, not completely terrible. O_o So we shall see.

Now. Off to make the lasagna I've been putting off for weeks because I'm lazy, WRITE, clean, at some point check whatever homework I've accumulated while I haven't been paying attention to it (ugh, this online thing is SO not working for me so far), watch some more stuff, and maybe go for a walk later if I'm feeling up to that. Since I really need to start doing that again. Oh, and I need to go to the store because apparently the second bag of broccoli I bought for previously mentioned lasagna has conveniently disappeared. And apparently the tomato sauce as well. *GROWL* Salady things probably wouldn't hurt either. Mmm. Leaves. :3

☁ I was asked to post these, so to my absolute mortification, here you go. These icons are totally Lish's fault. Just... don't even ask. Seriously. Though I need to mess around more with the first one because I still don't like it.

       

☁ Been re-reading some old Harry/Draco fic. Hell, I missed these two. <3 It's totally not helping me write blind_go , though. Pffft. I've also been DL-ing a lot of PoT doujin lately. XDDD

☁ Also fandom related: people have been posting to the kink meme, which is hysterical since it's three years old. I generally still get posts on it every once in a while, but the sudden interest is amusing. :P

☁ And speaking of Harry Potter, couple of annoyances about the new release of Deathly Hallows Part 1. The first is that Walmart had an exclusive on the special edition DVD. Really, WB? I know the studios are trying to push the Bluray, but honestly. I don't have a Bluray player. I have no intention of purchasing one- if I'm going to spend the money, I might as well save a bit more and buy a PS3 so I can play games on the damn thing. STOP TRYING TO SHOVE THE FUCKING BLURAY DOWN MY THROAT.

*ahem*

The other thing that pissed me off was actually in the deleted scenes. Now... when I saw DH1 in the theater, I was incredibly disappointed that it didn't have the scene with Harry and Dudley when the Dursley's were leaving. It was a big moment for the both of them. But guess what? It was in the special features. What the ever loving hell. I think it's WORSE, knowing that they filmed it and decided that it WASN'T IMPORTANT, as opposed to not shooting it (there could've been a number of reasons why they didn't end up shooting it, after all). Seriously. What the fuck, WB.

☁ WHAT THE HELL IS IT WITH RANDOM PEOPLE INSTANT MESSAGING ME LATELY? It's getting ridiculous.

☁ Dear Mother Nature: We had about 50 thousand feet of snow this winter- I promise you, the ground doesn't need anymore water for a while. Possibly the entire summer. You don't need to rain all freaking week. No love, Ver

☁ Class started today. So as part of my first assignment, I'm supposed to be reading at least one book about writing and/or creativity. I have a bunch on my laptop that I have yet to read (in addition to one or two physical ones whose whereabouts are currently unknown), so I decided to look through. Just on the lappy, I have enough that I could read two books a week for almost the entire length of the course. O_o And only three of the 20 are grammar centered. *headdesk* Although on the other hand, it's as good of an excuse as any to get some of those under my belt?

The other part of the assignment is to get a "writer's journal", which isn't a problem because I have a zillion empty notebooks. Unofficial assignments through the course include writing for 10 minutes a day NO MATTER WHAT and to spend at least an hour a week doing something creative besides writing (I'm thinking scrapbooking/playing in photoshop. :D)

( Possibly triggery/TMI, who knows. Cut just in case. )

☁ Stuck in Suikoden II. Stupid Neclord Abomination monster thing keeps killing me. >( Doesn't help that Freed Y is freaking USELESS and you're forced to have him in your party. *growls* I'm actually half considering going around and leveling up some and coming back to it... it's really, really early in the game for that already. GROAN.

☁ Got bunnied at work. The good news is that it'll work for BG and I'm positive I can get it over the 1k word minimum. The bad news is. Um. All I can really say without giving it away is that I'm not sure I want to go there. *kicks bunny* It's an idea I would LOVE to mess around with, but... :/ I guess we'll see. So far it's the best idea I've got, but hopefully something else will come up.

☁ I was going through some music trying to come up with a BG playlist (which is incredibly difficult this time, urgh), and this song came up. As always with songs, not 100% accurate, but mostly. Appropriate song is appropriate. I'm working on it. :)

-Taxes: Done and sent. They didn't seem to take as long this year, which is a good thing. I'm getting back $1065 between state and federal, which is getting transferred to my savings account as soon as it hits checking and is going to almost double what's in savings by the time I get it. Yaaaaaay!

-I'm more behind on the writing journal than I thought I was. I was looking everywhere I could think of and making up a list of stuff that needs to be posted, and I found a bunch on the external hard drive that's never seen the light of day. A lot of unfinished fics and bunnies, but some finished and ready-to-go stuff, too. Weird. On that note, I'm going to be trying to update that... obviously not all at once. Maybe one or two a day or something, to make it as painless on that flist as possible. On the upside, some of it's going to be new to you guys? :D

-Found out today that Hulu has Kuroshitsuji- subbed- yay! It's been forever since I actually watched something new, anime-wise. That being said, I did watch the first episode... this one's kind of creepy, isn't it? :/

-I'm gathering up a list of fic that I owe, too. Which, sadly, apparently doesn't look that much different from the last time I posted an owed list. Guh. I NEED TO WORK ON THIS STUFF! I know I have bits and pieces of some of these somewhere- like I seem to remember having Phoenix's half written. It's just a matter of figuring out where they ARE.

( What I still owe, which is entirely depressing considering how old some of these are. D: )

And on that note, it's bed time for me. Night all!

I went to bed and got back up again, so I figured I'd post this entry that's been sitting in notepad since yesterday. ^_^;;;

-Ugh. The first thing I've written since blind_go , and guess what came out? *headdesks repeatedly* No,  not one of the more serious bunnies I have sitting on my desktop. Of course not. Of COURSE I had to be pinged by a smutty suggestion. I don't think it's something I want to inflict on the internet- it's not just smut, but it's bad smut. Fandom really HAS twisted my brain, hasn't it? I swear to God I wasn't this dirty originally. D:

I did get another idea for original fic (brought on by a local news story, of all things), but it's another one of those "I'm not sure I want to write it" bits. God. Everything my brain comes up with lately is either porn or totally fucking morbid. GAH. >_<

-So cool! The fireworks one is neat too. There's a link somewhere to download a free fireplace screensaver, which I totally downloaded. It is the awesomest. :3

-Also, this was recently brought to my attention... I'm not a big fan of Kurt's character overall, but the kid that plays him seems really sweet, and his reaction to winning this award is just too cute. The cast had to prod him to get up, because he was in utter shock, and then after that it was like he kept waiting for someone to go, "Where are you going? That's not you, sit down." He's very sweet and naive. Hollywood is going to eat him alive.

-Have I ever mentioned that I hate snow? Yes? Well, then, I'm mentioning it again. I HATE SNOW. It wouldn't be so bad except we've been getting slammed this month... just storm after storm after storm. Plus it's been cold as all holy fuck up until yesterday. Seriously, guys? The low was -13 (-25 in Celcius) the other day. At least it's warmer for now- around 20 degrees. It's like a heatwave. What we've had is the kind of cold where you go outside and you can't BREATHE. The cold just steals all of the oxygen out of you. It's like your lungs suddenly shrink or something. Is it spring yet?

-Playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village finally. It's... humbling. Puzzles like this are not my strongest point, certainly, so it makes me feel a little dumb. ^_^;;; I've had to look up answers for puzzles more than I care to admit, and I figured out the "secret" of the village WAY before they told me, but it's interesting.

-I keep trying to get into The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan- I liked the Percy Jackson books, and I thought this would be like Percy Jackson with Egyptian mythology... oh how wrong I was. I can't even quite put my finger on what's wrong, aside from the little things that bother me, I just find myself drifting off to do something else all the time while I'm reading because I'm BORED. Bah. I'm determined to finish it, I'm just not sure how long it's going to take.

-Purchased a slow cooker and a cheap hand mixer in the past few weeks. Yep, definitely getting old. I figure I'd rather make little purchases here and there, rather than having to spend an obscene amount of money on all this stuff I need once I move out. Especially this one place that's in consideration- it's a lot more expensive than I'd like, which is why I haven't jumped all over it... however, it has no kitchen. Hence the slow cooker. I have an electric griddle that I purchased about a month ago, too, and of course I've had my rice cooker for a couple of years. Electric appliances that allow me to not require the use of a stove/oven are gooooooood. ^_^

That being said, I tried a recipe that was supposed to let me make cake in the crock pot- do not try this at home, kids. It was a complete disaster. The bottom burned and the top was still all cake batter. I ended up trying to pour the useable portions into a pan and sticking it in the oven. The cake is... passable. Not great. Might try it again sometime with just the oven and see if it's any better. On the upside, I can get decent macaroni and cheese out of the slow cooker. :D

-A friend that I haven't seen in some time, but am friends with on Facebook, sent me an invite to a gay ladies speed dating thing on Saturday. It's too short notice for me- if I'm to get a day off of work, I need to ask for it more than two days in advance- but it was nice that she thought of me, anyway. Although let's be honest, even if I didn't work weekends, I probably wouldn't go. I'm way too much of a social reject for that kind of thing. ^_^;;; Besides. There's trying to push myself a little out of my comfort zone and then there's throwing myself out of it completely.

Wow, 8am. Back to bed with me. <_<

Day 9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

I wouldn't say there's a singular process, really. I've said before that songs ping me for plot ideas- that applies to characters too. Like I'll get plot bunny A that involves character B and character C, but I don't really know anything about B and C at first. It's after the original bunny that I'll sit down and develop the characters, decide what their names are, their backgrounds, who they are. Even then- some of that happens as I actually write them, you know? Characters develop all the time, and sometimes they'll tell you, "Hey, I like --" and things like that. It's nice when that does happen, though. Less work for me. ^_^;;;



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Day 7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

Assuming I'm at home, yes, I generally listen to music. I try to have a playlist put together that reflects the character I'm writing or the mood I'm trying to set. If I'm looking for something more generic, classical is a nice thing to have in the background. Music is just... it helps me write, it helps with IDEAS to write about. Music pings me so hard for bunnies it's not even funny... whether it's original or fanfiction. If I'm having a hard time coming up with something, usually listening to some music helps.

As far as specific songs, it's honestly been a long time for many of them and I don't remember. Brian is definitely "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, I'm not even sure how that happened. I have a couple of boys who I think about any time either "Face Down" by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus or "Do You Remember" by The Summer Obsession come up. Other than that, I can't really think of anything at the moment.


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Could've sworn I posted this last night, but apparently not. Whoops! ^_^;;; At least it's before midnight, right?

Day 5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

By age, it's going to be Brian and crew. They're at the onset. However, they're also (minus Brian) the oldest  MAIN characters, because I have them at a few different ages in my head: 12, 13, 15, and then again at 28. If that makes any sense.

As far as when I created them... youngest would be Lauren, who's in actuality 13. Oldest would be... people I don't even remember, I'm sure, but the ones I remember are from that Civil War story I told you about in one of the other meme questions. ^_^;;;


( The rest of the meme! )