Imperial Witch.

So I'm back at my apartment. Exciting! Except not really. Not really exciting at all.

( DRIVE BY LIFE UPDATES, now under a cut for extra skipability!! )

DILEMNA, FLIST: I just got a response to someone else's craigslist ad in my inbox. It seems that somewhere out there, there is an e-couple waiting to "hook up" by terms of modern parlance. Unfortunately, along the way the man misplaced a decimal in his would-be lover's email address, and now the conversation has fallen to ME. Should I forward it with a note? Just forward it and not say anything and hope no one notices? IGNORE IT AND PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED??

Also, hi new people. I don't have any newfangled introduction posts or comment criteria, I figure: it's a livejournal, you can figure it out. But I do encourage you to participate in this meme I just made up.

Comment with the name of a fictional character. I will reply with a haiku about that character. Example haiku can be found here. C'MON, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

This is a meme post. This is pretty much only a meme post. Next time: secret thoughts on Jimmy Olsen!!

analogic tagged me for this a while ago.

1. Think of 15 short bits of interesting stuff about yourself. And they've gotta be true.
2. Come up with 5 false statements regarding yourself, but for fun's sake keep them in the threshold of believability.
3. Jumble them all up together and list them in any order.
4. Post them on LJ and let people guess which the five false ones are!
5. Get 5 others to do the same.
6. AND DON'T CHEAT BY READING THROUGH THE COMMENTS EITHER. THAT'LL RUIN THE FUN. >:

( Fax of varying degrees of tru. )

( FFVII: Touching IGN fanboys in places they never knew they had. )

Random drive-by life updates: I am in Hawaii on vacation :D Time changes make it so I wake up early even when I sleep in! I signed up for two summer classes: one on historical novels, and one about comics that's taught by an editor at Dark Horse. So, a summer full of neeeeerd. I've been playing Wild Arms: ACF as of late, and I'm enjoying it-- I like the battle system and the amount of interaction you have with the dungeons. Could use more tight pants though.

Edit: Is anyone interested in betaing something FFVI for me? Short gen-type story.

First up, calamityqueen requested some Twilight top fiving, so here we go with that.



5. Pretty much any time Edward is like, "I'm going to eat you." Because that's creepy. Eating people is not a turn on. Neither is heroin, really. But I guess there are some weird kinks out there, I don't wanna judge.

( Four More Twilight WTF Moments )

I got tagged for a couple of other memes and I'll do that next time, but I don't really want to drown y'all in memes, so I'm waiting for next time. I kind of owed it to calamityqueen because I'm so late with her request.

I've been doing pretty well, I think: I got an internship at a local museum for the summer, so that should be fun, and I have my big summer trip coming up in a few days. I want to work more on my sites, but I find it really hard to do without internet at my apartment, so all those projects are sort of perpetually delayed. Ugh.

On the other hand I'm writing a lot more than I ever had, which is nice. Writing is something I've always done a little of but never really dedicated myself to-- which is strange because it's probably what I have the most natural aptitude for. I'm not a great artist but I work at it a lot, and get better. I don't really work at writing, and I'd like to. But ugh, it's still really nerve-wracking for me, and I still kind of shudder to post things publicly. Eeeeh.

Stealing this from angelamaria. I haven't done a book post in a while, and really guys I read more than Twilight and sixties Jimmy Olsen comics. Really.

Below are the top 106 books tagged “unread” in Librarything.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.

Mostly I'm using underline as books I own but haven't gotten to yet.
( Blah blah blah I can't remember any witty quotes about books. )

Mmmm, typing things out helps me keep track of them in my mind. So, To Do:

♠ Finish history paper about sheep.
♠ Iron Man: the recap. (avertuneiro, see icon.)
♠ Rewrite Chamillionaire lyrics to the tune of Edward Cullen.
♠ New layout a VK.org?
♠ Writing sample for summer internships? I don't know what to write!
♠ When finished writing all these things, have computer looked at.
♠ See every movie with Jeremy Irons in it, ever.
♠ Christian Bale.

( The marvels of the letter Y )

It was really hard not to write "your mom" for that.

I really shouldn't be flooding your friendslist with memes, but alas, this is what I am doing in the spirit of procrastination and crimefighting.

the superhero meme

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.

Okay, so first I'm posting the first few of the top five lists from the last entry. I think I'm gonna be doing these in parts-- some of them seem to demand illustrations.

( Top Five Duels )

( Five Favorite Dishes to Prepare )

In other news, Final Fantasy IV DS has an American release set for July 22, and the next Phoenix Wright game will feature a certain pink-suited prosecutor. My life is pretty much golden. Also, I went to the comic store yesterday and picked up the latest Green Lantern in addition to all the random titles I usually read, out of a desire to read at least one mainstream DC comic and also because karenjeane had good things to say. I liked it enough that I'm gonna pick up the next one and see what happens from there.

( The Guessing Game Meme Fan Thing )

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.

SHARE MY FRIENDS MEME

As I am a whore for internet popularity.

Also, I was GONNA work on my Final Fantasy IV webdesign project, but I got a few emails about an Enthusiast error and so have spent the last few hours DESTROYING that fanlisting script. I eventually fixed that error, but now I have to redo all my codes. Ugh. Congratulations, me.

Edit: Ordered the next two SPARKLY VAMPIREZ books, ++ Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. BUYING STUFF WILL FIX EVERYTHING.