Imperial Witch.

Firstly: I've been on kind of a serial adding rampage, so hello new people, welcome to my hell :D I don't have an intro post or anything, but it's a livejournal, you know how this works. Also, shogunate, I was going to comment something about my deep secret love of Tokugawa Japan and how this relates to your new username, but it said I was banned from commenting? Which might be a good idea, really, I'm just not sure how intentional it was!

Moving right along with that Top 5 Meme, here are my Top Five Ridiculous RPG Outfits as requested by in_solis. The number one is kind of obvious, but really, there can be only one.

( Top Five Ridiculous RPG Outfits )

On a slightly more serious note, I was really busy last afternoon not studying for an exam, and so I found myself at TVTropes in the vicinity of the Valkyrie Profile. Somewhere around Misaimed Fandom I stumbled upon this little gem:

Lezard Valeth from Valkyrie Profile was written to be as repulsive as possible, a sexually deviant stalker and violator of natural laws; like Harry Potter grown up terribly, terribly wrong. Some fans eat his character up, and pair him with the heroine of the first game.

Now, as someone with this icon, I think it's pretty obvious that Tri-Ace intended Lezard to be a popular character-- after all, he's a super-special Seraphic Gate party member, with his partners in badass Freya and Brahams. His lechery is played for humor as much as it is for creepiness, and he is a genuinely brilliant free agent in a world overly concerned with destiny. Lezard also has an entire series of official manga to his credit, as well as a prominent role in Valkyrie Profile 2, which may has well have been subtitled Lezard for all Silmeria showed up in that thing. Yes, he is a horrible, horrible person-- but horrible people? In my Valkyrie Profile? When did that one happen?

But it did get me thinking: how does one fangirl evil? I love Lezard because he's such a fascinating character, because in a game full of gods his motivations are supremely human, in a game full of the dead he remains so triumphantly alive. To love, to aspire-- these are passionate, red things, things the gods do not do with any vibrancy, and watching Lezard's quest for knowledge and kindness unmake him is weirdly poignant. His actions are pretty reprehensible, but his worth as character isn't the same as his worth as a person.

Still, I have to admit the appeal of fictional evil. The characters I like in books are almost never the characters I like in life, and vice versa. I don't think this is so unusual; even the good guys can be too brightly colored and brooding to tolerate for periods of more than thirty minutes per week plus commercial breaks.

And yet, the love of villains is so often accompanied by a desire to change them, to make them better. We give them happy endings instead of downfalls. Does erasing fictional sins cheapen the real ones? Probably, eventually, if you decide that Satan is really the hero of Paradise Lost or make Tom Riddle your private pink squishy bear. At the very least, it's hard to make Sephiroth the good guy without insulting Aeris. But more than that, really, by writing off a character's faults we make them less than what they are, not more. I'm not sure what to do with the moral question, or the question of authorial intent versus popular interpretation, but if you take away the worst parts of a character, you usually take away the most interesting.

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.

That's right kids, it's meme time again!! But first because it occurs to me many people are unfamiliar with the First Church of Lezard Valeth and this particular subject of my fangirl self. Who is Lezard? Why is his RPG religion better than any other RPG religion? Well, I think I can help explain. With SCIENCE.




Notice how his positioning on the graph gives Lezard a win level of over 9000.

(But seriously, Lezard is a recurring Valkyrie Profile character. He's like Harry Potter, but if Harry Potter majored in CREEPY STALKING and BECOMING A GOD instead of World Saving or Dropping Out.)

( ICONS ICONS ICONS!! Or: Emma hates me and likes to see me suffer!! )

( I did the interest meme again, in SERVICE OF PROCRASTINATION )

( In which I summarize recent events in Captain America )

Edit: From, like, everyone: Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll respond via comments. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on fannish stuff, favorite type of underwear, the less touched-upon aspects of my life, etc. And then, repost this on your journal so that I can start asking too.

I just got an email from someone who runs a deathmetal e-zine that they had linked my frothing at the mouth and totally incoherent Nash site at their webpage. Because I'm so sure that when people are looking for updates on Alabama Thunderpussy the next thing they think is "Gee, I'd like to hear someone's thoughts on Nash Latkje's shoes."

This is almost as strange as when mugglenet tried to recruit me. Why don't I ever get internet-propositioned by things I like?