Imperial Witch.

So first off, some more fulfilling of the "Top Five Lists" meme. This is for lafourchette, who has been busy busy busy working on her thesis and dealing with grad school woes, so I wanted to do a good job. Kate, I give you internet hearts: ♥ ♥ ♥ And my top five awkward moments in US History.



( Four more underneath the cut. )

MEANWHILE, IN REAL COMIC BOOKS:



Captain America came out last week and it contained this panel which I did not need to photoshop in any way. Most of the time, this comic is free of the usual Marvel one-liners, and everything is DEADLY SERIOUS but occasionally the surreal happens, and then I scan and post it to livejournal.

But really this is kind of in reference to a post on analogic's journal, where she talked about comics she liked and/or read and I thought I could be really nerdy and do that too.

( Reed Richards: Sexy? Unsexy? Horatio Hornblower?? )

Also, look! Over there! anonymous ◉ meme! I'm weak, and caved :/

First off, I got tagged by efters to do the handwriting meme.

Handwrite the following things and upload it so your friends can see what your handwriting looks like!
1) name/username
2) left or right handed?
3) favourite letters to write
4) least favourite characters to write
5) write "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
6) tag 5 people

( My handwriting is pretty, but illegible. )

Now for the meat of this post: crack Final Fantasy crossover fanart!! I've had some requests and, um, yeah, so you can either click or pretend this never happened.

( Kain/Legolas OTP!! Setzer's X-men cosplay!! )

And now for some audience participation: Comment with something (or a few somethings) that you would like me to make a "Top 5" list of. (Top 5 TV shows, etc, whatever) I'll post them in my next entry.. BE CRUEL.

Sooo, I found my tablet and downloaded a trial of this new painting program.

( Necromancer in progress. )

Everyone who saw me working on this went immediately to Harry Potter, which may or may not make this a successful Lezard sketch. I think I sounded pretty miffed when one of my friends asked "Are you drawing Harry Potter" because his response was something like, "You know, that's just as dorky."

No, I think a semi-obscure JRPG character is more dorky than a veritable pop-culture phenom, but Lezard is five million deeper shades of awesome. Like, duh.

Also, if you want to help out a friend of mine, you can take this survey for his thesis. I am sure he would appreciate it :)

Welcome new friends from ye olde Tales friending meme. One thing you should know about me: sometimes I fill my posts with links to crappy fanart from the Final Fantasys with pixels. And I haven't done it in a while, so here comes the art dump.

http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/celes1.jpg -- I never can figure out how to draw Celes.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/celes2.jpg -- But I sure like to try.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/edgeandrydia.jpg -- I got tired of Cecil/Rosa/Kain stuff.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/lezard.jpg -- Super quick Lezard doodle.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/locke.jpg -- The sketch that I colored in before.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/maria.jpg -- Opera Celes?
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/terra.jpg -- This one I will probably fix and color.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/terraandceles.jpg -- My pen ran out of ink halfway through this. It's supposed to be from pre-FFVI continuity-- when Terra is mind-controlled and Celes is evil
http://valiantknife.org/alex/sketches/zelda.jpg -- I can never decide on a facial expression with her. She's so stoic, but also compassionate...I never know how to get that across.
http://valiantknife.org/alex/lockewithknife.jpg -- It's Locke! But in color! And with a knife!
http://valiantknife.org/alex/lockesketch.png <-- More Locke!
http://valiantknife.org/alex/rosa.png <-- Rosa, who I like more and more lately.

Next time: stupid memes and oogling of fictional men. I'm sure you can't wait! ♥

Right, so last time a Harry Potter book came out, I made some assertions of what I think the plot should be in the last book. And I will be disappointed if one of the following does not happen.

- It turns out the Dark Lord is Lilly Potter
- Cloned Neville is the ultimate sleeper agent
- Her name is not Hermione Granger
- Voldemort uses Rambaldi to become immortal, only to be pwned by Jack Bristow
- Harry dies

(I uploaded the comics I made of the HP/Alias crossover, if people're curious: 1 2 3 4 5)

I wish I could say that this will be the last Harry Potter post I'll be making, but I'm pretty sure I'll get sucked into the whole OMFGWTFHPISDOINGSOMETHING!!1 general LJ craziness and the inevitable Valkyrie Profile crossover. Don't worry though, I'm sure it will be temporary, and we all know that my true children's fantasy loves lie elsewhere.

In other news, because I feel I always have to comment on fanlistings related drama! The secret is this: there can be more than one person perfectly deserving of a fanlisting. But only one can be TFL approved. This sucks. But it doesn't mean you have to be a jerkface.

Most of this entry is contained in the subject line. I got a summer internship that basically requires me to spend all day on the computer and internet, so when I get home it's much harder for me to get motivated about the computer/internet. So I've been taking a bit of an unannounced hiatus.

In the meantime, I've colored in this drawing! Vaguely for rydia!

In other news, half of my friends list did a friending meme that they didn't link.

My friends and I have been playing Final Fantasy Tactics obsessively. Basically, what we're doing is having each of us control one character and leveling them up as we please. It's a lot of fun and a pretty nice way to turn a singleplayer game multiplayer. But I explain this only for context of the next story.

So Saturday, we were on the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist. That is a dark, dark place, the sort where people post pictures of their own genitals and look for people to use in their incest-themed erotic roleplay. But we thought, what if when someone asked for roleplay, they meant Dungeons and Dragons? What if by playmate they just meant someone to beat at Mario Kart?

Long story short, we posted an ad.

( Want to watch me and my hot college friends sweatily... )

We got 15 responses before the ad was deleted.

Also, bonus scans from my doodle book.

This is why I'm not trying to draw FFT ever again.
Delita and Ovelia. And, okay, I probably will try to make better fanart, but like Suikoden, the style of the game and the style of how I draw are very different. Also, the scanner added way more contrast than there actually was in the picture. Ech.

Locke and Terra before Figaro Castle
Obviously unfinished, but I kinda like this one. I like the idea of drawing specific scenes rather than just drawing random pictures of characters. It'd be neat if someone set out to just illustrate the whole of a game.

Cecil and Rosa
I think I might have posted an earlier version of this picture, but I keep redrawing this one. Mostly in an attempt to make Cecil actually look male.

So, I've been watching a lot of Season 2 Buffy now, and I think maybe Xander/Cordelia is my favorite pairing on the show. Of course, I think that about every pairing on that show as I watch it, but I might mean it this time.

Somehow I think this is why Locke gets all the action.

For some reason I'm really bad at making fun of Final Fantasy VI. I find it easy to mock other video games, no matter how much I like them, but my FFVI humor ability is looow. Which is why the next stupid comics I draw will either feature Vagrant Story or Tales of Symphonia.

( Cut for fanart of the Terra variety. )

So, I finished off the Prydain Chronicles, which I read in the most bizzare order ever. (Also, my copy of the Castle of Llyr is missing. Huh.) So now I picked up The Fencing Master, but Arturo Perez-Reverte, and I'm thinking I might have to reread all of his books that I own next. If you like Alexandre Dumas or anything historic, adventurey, and page-turning, I highly recommend him. My favorites are The Fencing Master and The Seville Communion, but The Club Dumas is a murder mystery based on The Three Musketeers, so insert some fannish glee there. He's the sort of author who can reference Homer, Batman, and Master and Commander in one sentence.

And to think when I started this post I thought I was going to talk about summer movies.

Sorry I haven't been around much, I've been fiddling with my vox thing lately during my limited online time.

( Unfinished Locke drawing in order to placate you! )

Can I just emphatically reccomend the Prydain Chronicles to everyone? I know some of you tried to get into them a decade or so ago and found them slow going. But after a recent reread I'm really impressed with them. You miss so much when you're younger, but they really got to me this time.

Maybe I've just become more of a sap, though. It's a strong possiblity.

Also, I just read at a fansite that Final Fantasy was created by Nomura. Excuse me while I gauge my eye out with Edge's spoon.

Lightbringer has three new affiliates, as well as a new, mostly incoherent, section about Cecil's general importance to the Final Fantasy series.

Streaks of Day's link page has cheesily been updated so that Lightbringer is in the links section. Cleaned out the links a bit too.

Elements of Fantasy is now affiliated with the Mogget fanlisting. Also, it recently hit the 25 member milestone. Go go Garth Nix!

All new affiliates have shiny new linking buttons of some sort, as vaguely promised.

I spent a lot of the day trying to figure out how to work radio.blog again. This time I was sucessful. The bad news is all my music files are in the absolute wrong format and getting them out of said format will be really difficult. But one day I do hope to have music sections at some of my sites.

As a side effect of using my PC to work radio blog, I discovered a problem in the CSS at this livejournal, which I've since corrected. Sort of. I've been getting lazier and lazier with coding. Mmm, I also noticed some other things that I'm going to work on fixing around the domain.

And look! I drew Locke and colored him in all fancy-like. For some reason his handwriting is the same as Jane Austen's.