Well. Looks like this thing has been sitting on my desktop waiting for me to post it for quite a while now. It's probably about time I did something with it, so I could at least delete the file I saved it in.

This would be an icon meme. Specifically, it's a Livejournal roleplayer's icon meme, and it seems to me it's as good a way as any to show off my flashy roleplay icon set. Yes, I made special icons just to roleplay Ken with, none of the other ones would do because I needed textless expressive images. DON'T JUDGE ME. Anyway, I honestly can't remember whose journal I saw this on. I seem to recall that I got it from Grell-mun's character journal, but I'm not totally sure any more. It really has been a while, after all.

I was going to post the completed meme to my character journal, because it's really a character-journal kind of meme. But then I thought, no. It'd just get in the way there - somarium isn't one of those games where character journals are just useful so that you have something to post to the community from; you actually need to use the things over there - and it'd make a lot more sense to post over at my personal journal instead. So here I am, here it is, and here are my purpose-built roleplay icons. Oh what fun.


The Character Expression Meme
Character: Ken Hidaka
Journal: 1thingincommon
RPG: somarium

.happy.	.sad.	.angry.	.scared.
.disgusted.	.surprised.	.flirty.	.sexual.
.confused.	.shy.	.playful.	.rage.
.hurt.	.guilty.	.bored.	.laughing.
.sarcastic.	.tired.	.wtf.	.pride.
.sympathy.	.evil.	.innocent.	.in love.
YOUR	FOUR	FAVORITE	ICONS

WANT TO DO IT TOO?
Snag yourself the coding here.

Some of these were quite hard being as Kapitel-era Ken just plain isn't very good at looking like that in the first place. I don't for example have a specifically flirty icon because Ken looks intentionally flirtatious so damn rarely that it's just not an issue my icon set usually has to deal with. Far more important to have yet another variation on the theme of 'irritable', I get far more use out of those ones than I ever would out of an icon I made specifically for occasions when Ken's hitting on people, which he never does anyway - or not enough, anyway, that I can justify using one of thirty-five icon solots on it. Now maybe if I had a few more spaces free...

Yeah, so part of me wants to buy Ken extra icon slots, because I know I'd use them, too. On the other hand, committing myself to making yet more of these damn things because now I've started making him an actual set, I'd want to carry on that way? Maybe not.

... yeah, still locked out of my house. Can't get online at all at Richard's, because while they do have a net connection, they don't have anything like a net-capable computer that I can actually use. Richard's mother needs her laptop for work, a state which for her appears to be endless and unceasing, and Richard himself worships at the altar of the Mighty Apple, so none of my documents or programs would actually work on his machine.

I'm currently bumming a net connection - and computer, for that matter - off the endlessly patient rokesmith. For obvious reasons I can't stick around for hours (and I dearly wish I could) but I can at least update my LJ.

At this time of the year, of course, that means only one thing - my traditional yearly meme-style roundup of everything that's been going on, at least as far as it pertains to the first and last entries I made in every month so far - not including this one where December is counted, of course, because I haven't written it yet and it wouldn't be a true reflection of the randomness that this meme should consist of. I guess four years makes it a tradition and, for lack of any better ideas what I should do (in an LJ sense of the word) to usher in the new year, this seems as good as any. Here's hoping at least some of what I uncover is at last vaguely amusing.


LiveJournal Review of the Year Meme

Instructions:

Go into your lj calendar. For each month, post the first sentence of the first entry for each month, and the last sentence of the last entry for each month.
This will create a summary of your lj for the year 2008. Exclude quiz sentences.
January
2009 is off to an absolutely fucking abysmal start.
Cross-posted (eventually) to That Other Top-Sekrit Spork Journal of mine.

February
My website, for the three of you who like to visit it in all its pointlessness, is likely to be offline for a while.
Sadly, there's nowhere near as many of them about, so it's going to take a little time... You could watch this space, but I won't blame you if you decide not to.

March
According to Photobucket - or at least its annoying adolescent userbase - the way to prove you're a true friend is to act like a total, raving bitch to anyone who displeases your 'BFF', out of whose back passage the sun, of course, shines brighter than day because they're like your friend and you're both way more special and awesome than anyone else, like, ever and they all like totally deserve it.
All I'm asking for is a little proportion.

April
Okay, so this post and the entirely pointless graphics that can be found therein took a lot of time and effort I could have spent more productively on writing or icon-making or... well, practically anything else, but I've felt so tired and iffy the last few days it's probably better for all concerned that I just go with the (deeply stupid) flow.
Call me old-fashioned, but I can't help thinking some things are best done by actual detectives.

May
... I'm going to try and write a novel.
Shouldn't I be more mature than this?

June
It often seems to me that the truly worrying thing about Mary Sues isn't character rape or bad prose or even wish-fulfilment.
Hopefully of course it won't come to that, but better safe than sorry.

July
So, there was this girl who started a thread in Gaia Online's Picture Post forum, showing off a really, dramatically not very good doodle she had done 'in like three minuets' while she was at work.
Needless to say the Suethor deleted my review utterly unacknowledged within about a day of receiving it. Sigh.

August
In the wake of finally finishing Through a Glass Darkly I have decided to try, in the vernacular, to push my luck a little bit... at least as far as fanfiction goes.
Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

September
... but I just changed my LJ layout for the first time in over a year.
Bonus gems: comparison of the whole situation to faculty committees, a flouncing kitten icon and, just when you think it can't possibly get any wankier, furbashing.

October:
So, now to backdate some shit to make it look as if I actually use this thing from time to time.
AT LEAST I'M HONEST ABOUT MY FAILINGS and let it be hoped that I am a better author than HTML... webpage... coder thing, otherwise I am in serious trouble.

November:
Warning: There are TV Tropes links in this post.
I'm just dispirited enough by rampant fangirl misogyny that I'm not sure I want to subject myself to any more of it, no matter what the author's rationale behind it may be.

December:
... to borrow a title from Private Eye.
I plan to get online at least a couple of times in the interim, but don't expect to see that much of me until this shit sorts itself out.


So, the year starts with me wrestling with the benefits agency and ends with me locked out of my house. To say this year wasn't exactly the improvment on 2008 I hoped it would be would be... well, entirely accurate. It was, in fact, more of the same, just with me looking another year older. Good Christ. Something's got to give lest I end up giving up totally and going and becoming some kind of weird agnostic version of a nun. Are there such things as agnostic nuns? I feel like there should be, if only to get some of us religiously confused yet deeply charitable ladies off the streets, and I can be charitable if I actually have any damn money to do it with, CHRIST. Gah. Okay, next year will be better.

One thing I am grateful for, though, is that the festive season is drawing to a close. Nothing against the festive season, mind, but it does get to the point where it starts to feel like Sunday every day for about a week, if not slightly longer. Some kind of awareness of what day it actually was would be nice, and for that reason alone I'm eagerly awaiting the return of normal service.

So: anyone got a job they can give me? Go on, gissa job.

Oh, so once again I haven't been updating. I blame the Ken in a hole fic (26 pages, 20,000 words, still clamoring for attention like a bitch.) I'm going to have to take the time someday soon and not go online for a day or so, just sit down and write this little bastard so that I can say it's done. God damn it, and to think when I first had this idea it seemed like such a simple little angst fic... I'm not going to finish this thing, it's going to be abandoned. And it'll deserve it.

I'm hoping this post will be backdated sometime soon because I feel like I have lots of other things I should be putting in this space that aren't as tedious. Until then, well: I wanted to do this, so here: have another meme.

This is a pretty simple meme, all told: kind of an 'answer the question' deal that doesn't involve an mp3 player or going to memegen and looking for things about Mary Sues or uploading things to Photobucket, something I generally do with no provocation whatsoever, or all the usual general lunacy that memes involve. (It's also not the drabble meme which I would like to do but feel I'd suck at.) It's been a long time since I did a meme which was as outright simple as this which didn't involve fandom. That being the case, I guess at least some of this information might come as a surprise to some of you, which is why this isn't backdated. Yet.

Meme ganked from deathcomes4u.


1. Your Middle Name:
Is now my first name, because my original forename makes me sound like something fey in a lawn dress and a straw bonnet who sulks and pouts her way through an Anthony Trollope novel before ultimately marrying the local vicar. It just didn't suit me. I've been planning to start going by my middle name since I came to London, just didn't get round to it in college.

2. Age:
Just turned twenty-seven, and thank you to everyone who left me birthday wishes! ♥ Update on my birthday itself is probably coming as soon as I can be bothered to upload the pictures to Photobucket.

3. Single or Taken:
Ask rokesmith. Okay, taken.

4. Favorite Movie:
My favorite movie of the now is Star Trek XI. Not just a good Star Trek movie, but a fantastic film in its own right. Go and see it. My favorite movie of all time? Absolutely refuses to be narrowed down because I've seen rather too many movies, so here's the roll call of something resembling a Top Ten, in alphabetical order in an attempt to impose some kind of order on this anarchy, and leaving anime out of it because I'd never get anywhere that way: American Beauty, Bowling for Columbine, The Blue Angel, Chungking Express, Duck Soup, Downfall, the original Italian Job, Playtime, the three proper Star Wars movies especially The Empire Strikes Back, and The Truman Show. And just be thankful you didn't ask what my favorite book is.

5. Favorite Song or Album:
I don't have one. Music for me is so much about what kind of mood I'm in and what I'm doing at the time, so while I have a lot of songs I absolutely love - there are far too many to list, actually, because whatever I put down I know I'd be forgetting like, twenty more at least - I couldn't really call any of them my absolute favorite because too much depends on external influences. Well... except Moonflower, which is one of the most depressing cheerful-sounding songs I have ever heard and thus suits Ken down to the ground. Yeah.

6. Favorite Band/Artist:
GAAAAH GOD DAMMIT MEME. Stop asking me about favorites, this never ends well. You're getting Tomokazu Seki and liking it as anything else would require ten minutes of agonizing. So there.

7. Dirty or Clean:
I like being clean and clean things, but I absolutely despise the process of cleaning or getting things clean, so while in theory I love cleanliness, in practice I'm often rather more schmutzig than I would like. Including right now OH GOD DAMMIT I NEED A SHOWER LIKE IMMEDIATELY or my landlady will come back and put the sprinkler on and there'll be no water pressure asgfdsgh--

8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
No tattoos, though I did consider getting one a while back - the Chinese character for 'woman' on my shoulder - but decided not to because lol fat girls with tattoos. I do have three ear piercings on each side, though, all through the lobe. I want a cartilage piercing but not while job hunting and I'm getting a bit old anyway. I also used to have an eyebrow ring when I was 19, but it grew out. Also, wet hair. I told you I needed a shower.

9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?
Depends. If you're kay_cricketed we met briefly in London and it was awesome, if you're rokesmith you live about two miles away and you're dating me for some reason. For everyone else it's a big fat No.

10. What's your philosophy on life?
Ken Hidaka is adorable. No, I can't do that. Right, if it is made of meat that means it must be edible. No? Okay, if it's possible to get screwed over by an institution you're relying on, it will happen not just soon but immediately, and it will be me that it happens to. No, that doesn't work either. Uh... it is never too early to take a nap, and never too late either? Um, actually I don't think I have one. I might have done as an idealistic young thing but I've largely been reduced to muddling through and hoping it'll all make sense in hindsight, which right now it really doesn't. Which means I probably haven't managed to get shot of the optimism entirely. Wait, what about the more moving parts there are the more likely it is that something'll go wrong? That sounds about right.

11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?
... I suffer from a depressive illness that never quite goes away. What do you damn well think?

12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
I was a student nurse, we get quite good at being closed-mouthed around people if we think they genuinely don't need to know something right now. I'm a compulsive confessor and generally not very good with secrets, especially not if they're about things I feel guilty over, but if I genuinely think there's a good reason to keep quiet about something I probably will.

13. What is your favorite memory of us?
Depends who 'us' is. Questions like this make me wonder who started this meme and if it wasn't meant to go further than their own friends list.

14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
Gaia Online. I have four accounts on a site for thirteen year olds and sign in daily. Also, Moonflower.

15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
I'm morbid and think quite frequently about suicide - but in the abstract. I myself am no suicide risk at all as I'm a coward and afraid of pain and death, but every single time I'm waiting for the Tube and the train's just pulling into the station, I think of the horribly telling phrase, 'services delayed due to passenger action', and think about what it must be like to throw yourself under a train, and how much it hurts and for how long, and am horribly aware that for a few brief seconds there is the possibility of doing this. And I think this every. Single. Time. I catch a Tube train.

16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the 'world peace etc' malarkey) - what are they?
I want money - I don't care whether it's from a job or because someone has given me it. Ideally there would be lots of it, but as long as there's enough for me to be financially secure and actually live a little on top of that it would do me, I'm sick to death of worrying about money and buying damn near everything secondhand. I also want to go back to college and qualify either as an Operating Department Practitioner or (if money was no object and I could do the degree) a Radiographer. After that, I want to write my book series and publish it and have people tell me that it's as fantastic and awesome on the page as it is in my head. The end.

17. Can we get together and make a cake?
As long as you buy the plane tickets and don't mind breathing in in order to fit in my postage-stamp-sized kitchen. And don't mind any of the following: 1. Ginger Sponge Cakes; 2. Fruit Cake, but not like really rich fruit cake where there's more fruit than cake, more like that Mr. Kipling Manor House stuff; 3. Anything with chocolate frosting.

18. Which country is your spiritual home?
Um, probably England. There are lots of countries I'd like to visit, but like it or not (and often I don't), I really am British to the core.

19. What is your big weakness?
Depression. It seriously gets in everywhere and colors everything and I wish to fuck it would go away.

20. Do you think I'm a good person?
Depends who 'you' are. Who wrote this? Because if it was Kim Jong-Il or someone then no. If you're on my friends list, though, chances are it's because I think there's at least some good in you. (That or you like Weiss Kreuz which could go either way, I guess.) Even if it's only because you're a funny Livejournal community about bad sex or are full of pretty photographs.

21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?
English, without a shadow of a doubt. I loved my English classed far more than I realized. If you'd asked me at the time, I'd probably have said my favorite classes were the 'piss about for no real reason' classes like art or design, but I knew I was going to take English at A-Level without even really having to think about it, which I guess says rather a lot about me. I sometimes wonder how differently my lifer would have worked out if I had gone to to English Literature at university instead of trying and failing to complete a Politics and Modern History degree. Probably not that different, actually; I'd still have been my unstable self.

22. Describe your accent:
Unplaceable. I've been told I sound Australian on several occasions, which is a bit odd given that I have the kind of accent most Americans think middle-class English people should have, though perhaps a little less plummy.

23. If you could change anything about me, would you?
Honestly? I'd change several things about a lot of the people I know, not least of whom would be myself.

24. What do you wear to sleep?
Um... honestly, more or less anything as I have the ability to sleep more or less any time and any place as long as it's quiet enough and there's somewhere for me to lie down. If nightwear is actually going to be involved (which at least half the time it isn't) then I wear pajamas unless it's really hot, in which case I might go with a nightshirt.

25. Trousers or skirts?
Both. I like wearing skirts - usually these are full and to just below the knee, because I happen to think I look a lot better in full 1950s-ish skirts than I do in shorter, tighter ones. I can be very girly and it makes me feel pretty and also I like to think I have good legs, but trousers are easier to bum around the place in without fearing upskirts, and also (weirdly) I find trousers much more comfortable to sleep in despite the fact that logically they should be a lot more restrictive. No, I don't get why either. Maybe it's because there's less fabric there.

26. Cigarettes or alcohol?
Alcohol; I only like fictional smoking (but I think fictional smoking looks aesthetically awesome, and it's a useful prop for a writer). I've never tried smoking due to my asthma and I don't drink often or to excess, but I like a drink with a meal every now and then.

27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? (If you have no idea, just say something crazy, it'll entertain me!):
That would depend on your personality, interests and temperament, and also which 'you' was being referred to. But if you looked amenable to it I'd probably do what I did for my birthday which is take you down the River Thames and go to Kew Gardens. I think there's something very special about London seen from the river, and everybody should go to Kew at least once before they die. Also, the London Eye. If anybody out there could be guilty of, in the words of Terry Pratchett, trying to gift-wrap a city it would be me, but it's not my fault London is awesome.

28. Will you repost this so I can fill it out for you?
Does this count?

Haven't been downstairs all day.

Haven't been feeling well all day, as well. The two things may be connected.

Oh God I am such a lazy ass regarding my writing. Also I need to work on my Manx post for wk_awakenings but have been feeling so crummy all day that I haven't wanted to inflict myself on her. I'll do it later, when I feel slightly less generally sick and shitty. Maybe eating will help? On the other hand, maybe it'll just make me feel even more sick and shitty.

Also, scared about Friday. rokesmith knows why and no doubt thinks I'm a daft bitch for it, as he has assured me there is nothing to be worried about and after all it's not actually a job interview, but this doesn't really seem to help much when I am painfully aware that my wardrobe is as threadbare as someone who's been unemployed for as long as I have's tends to be, I look about as prospectless as I feel most days, I'm unwell and also I wish I could afford to do something about my hair which right now looks like crap, but I can't. I won't say anything more for fear of jinxing myself, but all the same: I Am Scared About Friday.

Ken in/out of a hole fic is progressing slowly. Am also feeling the urge to work on the one where he gets abducted by Powell for no reason other than Porn Can Happen This Way. Also, the Omi thing I did for the Kink Meme. In fact, I want to write a lot of things and wish I could clone myself to do so, but knowing me the clones would just sit around reading Fandom Wank, sleeping, eating junk and looking for stupid people on Gaia.

Oh well. Have another icon meme I stole off of __fantine.

I'm going to presume that I was supposed to be limited to icons I actually have uploaded, and not every single icon I have ever made like, ever. However, I spit on that presumption because that presumption is boring, and also I like having full priveliges to run around like an idiot over my entire icon collection. Because I like to make life difficult for myself, don'tyouknow.

1. How do you feel right now?

2. What's your favourite pastime?

3. Do you consider yourself a strange person?

4. What's your favourite fandom?

5. OTP?

6. How do you describe yourself?

7. How do others describe you?

8. Do you have an icon of your future husband/wife?

9. Do you have an LOLWHUT icon?

... no, I don't think I am going to marry an anime character. Or those girls with the cell phones. #8 works in a sort of 'in a way' kind of thing and I trust the person in question knows why it works. Yes, I know, I am a sappy idiot and I am going to run away now so that I don't inflict any more of my idiot sappiness on innocent and unwilling victims. Also, I want to try out this 'eating stuff makes you feel less crappy' theory I have going.

Apparently I'm a dreamy idealist. Who knew?

Yes, as if that button thing there didn't make it obvious, this post is for memes. I'm in a procrastinating-on-a-shower, listening-to-anime-image-songs, get-some-of-those-notepad-documents-you-saved-stuff-in-off-your-desktop mood.

... yeah. Having my own net-capable computer has me getting into bad desktop habits. I like having my desktop clear save for program icons, but it's slowly becoming cluttered with little notepad documents containing shiny things that have caught my attention and I've wanted to LJ about, but have put aside 'for later' and then ignored forthwith. For example, the image code for this cute green button thing has been sat on my desktop for months, in a little notepad document named 'button' which contained the HTML for the button and absolutely nothing else. I did the meme, filed the result there, and then forgot about it. It's high time I posted it.

There's also this, which is... well, I forget where I found it or what the context was any more. I just found it amusing enough to want to post at... some point, which might as well be today as any other day.

Haiku2 for quietladybirman
their teammates to break it up schwarz because crawford can tell you've been paying
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

No, I have no idea where the Hell that generator thinks it got that string of Schwarz-centric weird from. I just think it was amusing that even a random LJ haiku generator bows to my Weiss fangirlishness and, weirdly, what it came up with almost makes some kind of sense. One question: when did I talk about Schwarz recently? (I almost swear I did this recently, but I may be wrong - after all, I found the code for this meme in a little notepad document I had forgotten about despite it being right on my desktop.) I know I don't mention them much.

And finally:

That Grab-The-Nearest-Book Meme

Rules:
+ Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
+ Turn to page 56.
+ Find the fifth sentence.
+ Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal.
+ Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

"Actually, the promise Mrs. Haze had made was a fraudulent one: she had not told me that Mary Rose Hamilton (a dark little beauty in her own right) was to come too, and that the two nymphets would be whispering apart, and playing apart, and having a good time all by themselves, while Mrs. Haze and her handsome lodger conversed sedately in the seminude, far from prying eyes."

From Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

... actually, the very closest book to hand is a pocket German dictionary resting on top of my computer - comes with the territory for a Weiss Kreuz fanficcer - but that's not really a book in the traditional sense as it contains no sentences, so I decided it didn't count for the purposes of memeage. Nor did the Yann Michel pocket cat breed photobook (once again no Siberians, God damn it American cat fanciers: I guess they'd be in a newer book, though, as they've finally gotten registered breed status in the States) as page 56 just consists of a rather nice double page spread of a Cornish Rex doing its cat thing, and that doesn't count as an actual quotable sentence either.

So, Lolita. In terms of closeness, it was either this or Sense and Sensibility again and I swear I did that the last time I did this meme. Ah, the perils of having a book living on top of your TV. Which is broken anyway, so I might as well use it and its stand to store books on.

Well, here I am again waiting to be picked up - this time by John - so I can move on to the next stage: going back to London and getting on with my little existance.

Probably this is no bad thing. I'm sleep-deprived and desperate for a bit of privacy in a place that doesn't constantly have people wandering in and out of on their way to the freezer or to put coats and boots away, et cetera. The plan was to stay until the 5th, but... well, the last few posts probably explain why that's a bad idea. This should at least stop me bitching so much, which is something. I really wanted to stay longer, but - no. Bad idea for so many reasons.

Also, sleep. Sleeep. I need this quite badly. I'm really looking forward to being able to sleep for as long as I damn well want without anyone accusing me of being lazy. I haven't been able to nap at all for the last few days because my mother gets annoyed with me when I do, and it's really beginning to tell. I'm teary and frustrated and overreacting to every little problem, and I reckon it's because I'm so tired all the time. Sleeping on a zed-bed and constantly being woken up by heavy footfalls and Radio motherlovin' Four doesn't exactly help.

That said, though, I'm bored. Also, I can't settle. I don't want to get too into doing anything as chances are I'll have to put it down again when John arrives. I'm just waiting, that's all, and have nothing very much to fill said wait-time with.

That means it's time for my traditional New Year meme. Well, I have to do it sometime and now, at a loose end, seems as good a time as any. I'm going to be mixing things up a little this year, though - Instead of taking only the first sentence, I think I'm going to take the first or last two or three, except where that one sentence forms one of my traditional very Short Paragraphs. I think that might make things look a little less bitty and rather more contextual, and also make it slightly more interesting to read. So, without further ado...

LiveJournal Review of the Year Meme

Instructions:

Go into your lj calendar. For each month, post the first sentence of the first entry for each month, and the last sentence of the last entry for each month.
This will create a summary of your lj for the year 2008. Exclude quiz sentences.
January
Everything I tried to do today took longer than it should.
Also, I did sign up for weissday after all. Wish me luck, I guess.

February
A revised, updated and expanded version of a comment from wk_fic_finds.
Also because I have a cold and am currently way too sleepy to write and not have it be total crap, and it seemed like a really good idea at the time.

March
Okay, I have had a cold this past week and sundry other RL things have been happening to me to the utter detriment of my actually managing to work on my weissday prompt. This is not good as I like my weissday prompt and really want to finish it, because I feel rightly or otherwise that it's a really strong idea that I'm actually managing to do justice to.
I'm quite massively grateful that my computer decided to die after the weissday deadline...

April
First, Do No Harm Part Two: Provings. I would have had this posted days ago if it hadn't been for the undeniable (one may even say incontestable) proof that copy-editing my own fanfic weeks after the fact is far, far less fun than plotting, world-building and RPing about catboys with pichi, who is of course made of imaginative awesome.
Which Weiss Kreuz Sue Are You meme ganked off pichi, who I am going to miss awfully over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll get a new computer before then, and that will help ease the pain somewhat.

May
We recently had an election over here. Local, but still an election.
I've only posted one log so far, though, so I don't feel I have much to say about it yet other than 'I joined a group RP'. Time will tell whether this was a good idea or the worst I have ever had. No doubt there will be more on this anon, too.

June
So, there's this webcomic I read.
... yeah. I think I'll let him have the last word on this one.

July
I was going to post this to a Gaia forum, but I realized that I was putting myself at risk of cries of 'TL;DR' and 'This should be a journal post' and 'there's not enough to discuss here' and I didn't know which forum I should have posted it in anyway, so I decided not to bother with the forums at all. But, as I'd spent a little while on the post, I didn't want to delete it and move on.
I'm so sick and tired of living like this right now it's untrue.

August
Oh. Oh, dear. It appears that I, in my capacity as 'one of those mean girls from high school who made life Hell for everyone else', have once again succeeded in making a stranger hate my guts. Meet Pissed-Off Reader.
All things considered, it could be a lot worse, but I still rather wish that I didn't have to sit up all night as a result of having no bedsheets and no quilt, either. Still, I guess you live and learn. At least I don't have anything on tomorrow or Tuesday and can sleep all I want afterwards.

September
People on Gaia Online are not only stupid, bad RPers and prone to oversharing about the most ridiculous personal crises ever, they also have no taste.
So, that's largely why I'm going to take an early night and won't actually be around for conversation. Sorry, but I am exhausted.

October:
You know (wow, one word into this LJ post and I have typoed, what does OyU mean?), being generically sick with the old nausea and vomiting and coming down with something involving a fever, dizziness, exhaustion (more of it?) and aches which I hope is a cold and not a winterish version of what I already got? It sucks. A lot. Don't do it.
Anyway, must now go kill more cute things because they're there and annoy me with their cuteness, and hope not to get mauled again. I'll be back sometime soon, no doubt covered in virtual fluff.

November:
... yes, I stayed up for this. Also to talk to kay_cricketed, but I know damn well I would have been up to watch the results come in even if I hadn't had anyone online to talk to.
Instant feedback is potent stuff, and praise for your creative endeavors is wonderful, but it shouldn't stop a writer or an artist from maintaining a reasonable sense of their own limitations. Slipping into complacency at an early age instead of striving to become better is going to do untold harm to young, creative people who could have been genuinely good, if only they hadn't stopped trying.

December:
Good Christ it's December already, where has this year gone and how can it be possible that I'm finishing it in exactly the same place I was last year - no job, no money, and not much hope of getting either any time soon? Am I really totally surplus to requirements?
... but first, I suppose, I need to get Ken out of his hole. Come on, Ken, there's Youji with a shovel!


If you're curious about what 'it' seemed like a good idea at the time in that post back in February: please enjoy this painstakingly edited and lovingly, if inexpertly, computer-colored picture of Ken in his pajamas. Yes, that really is what I was referring to back then, because it's pretty and I like it and, considering he wore them in canon for a scant two seconds which is clerarly nowhere near long enough, the world can never have too many pictures of Ken in his pajamas now, can it?

A Happy New Year to all our readers, and let's hope 2009 is considerably better than 2008 was.

There was going to be a rant in here, but then something happened that was in no way utterly goddamn predictable: I got sick. I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and now have a full-blown cold. Yup, I caught another of my Famous Summer Colds that, at a time when everyone else in the country is outside enjoying the warm weather, keeps me indoors and lying in bed feeling achy. Which, admittedly, isn't that different to what I'd do even if I wasn't ill because I HATE SUMMER. But I digress. There was meant to be a rant in here, but I'm sick, so I'm doing something else.

Namely, I am doing a Terror Meme.

I got this off pichi. Quite literally, as she found the meme then fed me the questions over AIM. The results were, I thought, funny enough that I wanted to keep them, so here is...

The 'You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet' Fandom Badfic Meme

... and actually, I have no idea what this meme is really called because it didn't come with an official title, so I made one up. As I'm not feeling my best and can think of nothing better to call it, thus it gets a Fail!Title which is horribly overdescriptive. Well, it results in a lot of crack-pairings and fic-related nonsense, so The 'You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet' Fandom Badfic Meme actually describes it pretty well. The instructions?

1. Pick twelve characters from your fandom of choice. Number them from one to twelve. Do not look at the questions until you have picked your characters, because that's cheating.

2. Once you have a numbered list of characters, go and read the questions. Replace the numbers in the questions with the name of the corresponding character on your list - so, if the question asks about Three and Nine, it is not referring to the Third and Ninth Doctors, it's asking how the third and ninth characters on the list. Unless Character Three and Character Nine are the Third and Ninth Doctors, of course.

3. Repeat ad nauseam.

In an attempt to make things more interesting, I mixed things about a bit for the sake of having fun with some less commonly-known supporting characters. Sorry, Schwarz fangirls, but I really didn't want to answer random questions about Farfarello when I could have been talking about Yuriko. Anyway my twelve characters, in no particular order, were...

01. Schuldig
02. Aya
03. Youji
04. Ouka
05. Omi
06. Akira
07. Manx
08. Ken
09. Nagi
10. Neu
11. Crawford
12. Yuriko

... and, with a list like that, you know this is gonna be full of random crack. NOW READ ON.

( Twenty-One TOP-SEKRIT QUESTIONS Under Cut. )

So, bad though a lot of Weiss Kreuz fanfiction is, it appears it could comfortably stand to get a Hell of a lot worse.

Oooh, I have found a fandom meme! I must do it (and I bet you all know which fandom I must do it for; I love my mad gay florist assassins, I do) because fandom memes are almost as up my personal alley as MP3 player memes are and I haven't seen either of them for a while.

I got this particular flavor of fandom meme off pichi. I don't know if she's posted her version of it quite yet as I got it off her over MSN messenger, but I am doing it anyway and I did get if off pichi, so it still counts. Chances are she has anyway, as I always take far too long to fill these things in...

List 5 personal quirks you have about your fandom(s)-- such as your opinion about a certain character regardless of what anyone else says, or your argument about why/why not a couple would "work". That sort of thing.
Then list 5 things that ANNOY you about the fandom-- what other people do that irritates you. Even if it makes you sound like a hypocrite.

I might have done something like this before, if I'm not thinking of the ten unpopular fandom opinions thing I was working on a while back, but even if I have I don't care. On with the fangirl bitching!

Five Quirks

• I'm a unrepentant yaoi fangirl and suspect I always will be, but I think that Weiss Kreuz fans need more and better het. I've seen fans fall all over themselves to praise the most brazen of Mary Sues just because it's not yaoi: while some of the commenters seem brazenly homophobic, others are clearly just desperate for a change. Anything that means the Mary Sue crap gets seen for the exercise in fangirl masturbation that it is would be good for everyone (except the Suethors, but who cares what they think?), and much as I love yaoi, even I'll admit it gets tedious when Weiss and Schwarz all start channeling the cast of Queer as Folk.
  
  
• I believe that Youji Kudou is straight as a line despite unrepentantly slashing him with Ken - and I don't think that this is an untenable position to take on the subject. It's perfectly possible for Youji to be in love with Ken (or with anyone, male or female) and still retain his appreciation for female beauty. Flirting, for Youji, is as natural a process as standing upright and breathing oxygen, and without it he's simply not the same character. It's quite possible for him to flirt with girls without wanting to push it any further, and it's quite possible for him to fall in love with a man because he loves him, not because he's so hot for Teh Cawk. Personally, I think it's more romantic if Youji is utterly straight but loves Ken anyway than if he was just waiting for the right bishie so he could admit what a raging wooftah he was.
  
  
• I think Omi is a top. While I don't think he physically tops every single time, he is absolutely not a submissive little uber-uke by temperament. He may sometimes bottom in bed but even then he's almost always on top, and even when he isn't it's because he wants to be, not because he's a submissive little shrinking violent who couldn't dominate anybody if he tried all year. Omi has an uncertain side to him, sure, but that doesn't translate to 'helpless uberuke who can't function without a big strong boy holding his hand'.
  
  
• I like all the female characters except Sakura (and that is a matter of disliking her personality, not thinking she's the Spawn of Satan because she has breasts and crushes on Aya) and it distresses me to see them character-bashed or denigrated for supposedly getting in the way of Teh Hawt Mansexx, which they don't. Weiss Kreuz's female cast represent a huge well of untapped awesome and I dearly wish that more people out there would take the yaoi blinkers off for five seconds and realize this. Some day, I will write a fic where Schreient are the main antagonists and it will be FABULOUS. I have a plotbunny in cold storage already...
  
  
• I don't think Aya is all that wonderful, actually - a feeling I strongly suspect I share with Aya himself. Though he's not really my cup of tea, I'll admit he's a fascinating character... when he's actually in character, that is, which usually he isn't. Fanon!Aya - the perfectly perfectful hot and wonderful multi-talented Demi-God Ice Prince who can do no wrong and is lusted after by all - is frankly boring as shit. I can't understand why his so-called fans feel the need to turn him into something he isn't when he was far more interesting before.
  

Five Things That Just Piss Me Right Off, Thanks

• Fangirls who downplay, denigrate or utterly ignore the boys' canonical (heterosexual) romances for the sake of badly-written buttsex. Youji loved Asuka, Omi loved Ouka, Ken loved Yuriko, Nagi loved Tot... and this gets in the way of the mansex like how, exactly? The girls, without exception, either die or move on. They're not actually stopping anyone from writing slash because after a point they're no longer in the picture. That being the case, there is absolutely no reason to pretend that the girls in question were shrill, pushy bitches without a single redeeming feature who their so-called lovers felt nothing but contempt for or, in the case of Asuka, that they were the product of a desperate attempt on Youji's part to prove his heterosexuality (something he manages to do repeatedly in canon). Omi can love Ouka, lose her, mourn for her, and then fall for Ken. It's not an either/or thing. First loves aren't the only ones that are worth having.
  
  
• Weiss-on-Weiss rapefics. I can safely say these are the dumbest things ever. Not only is suggesting that any Weiss member would rape another without being forced into it (meaning that the physical top was also a rape victim) an utter bastardization of the characters of every last one of them, it's also deeply, deeply stupid to rape a trained killer you're later going to rely on to watch your back in combat. An IC Weiss-on-Weiss rapefic should end up with either or both parties dead and no sex whatsoever. ASSASSINS, fandom. Thanks.
  
  
• Lighting up Aya at the expense of his teammates, or by pasting other characters' canon traits onto him to make him look cooler, more talented, or angstier, or to try and make him look massively self-sacrificing or noble or whatever the Hell else his fangirls feel they need him to be in order to legitimize his actions. Look. Aya is not Weiss's leader, Omi is. (Aya wouldn't want to be Weiss's leader, anyway.) Aya is not Youji's closest friend, Ken is. (And Aya's quite content to let Ken have him.) The guy doesn't have to be the handsome, noble and wonderful Sir Gary of Stuland to be an interesting character who's worthy of fangirl adulation. Why do so many Aya fangirls seem so deeply insecure, anyway? Aya doesn't make excuses for himself; why do the fangirls feel they have to?
  
  
• Youji being turned into Big Gay Al. Do I even have to explain why this is daft? I do not buy the idea Youji is closeted and in denial - unless, of course, he has to keep having enthusiastic sex with many beautiful women just to make sure he hates it. (And then, of course, he's still not totally sure, so he has to do it again just to be certain.) Youji Kudou genuinely appreciates the female form, and genuinely enjoys female company. Falling in love with a male won't stop him finding women gorgeous, sexy and fascinating or enjoying being round them.
  
  
• Ficcers who seem to have no conception of the fact that these guys are assassins and then write stories in which Weiss utterly forget they have actual jobs. Stories which make no mention of the darker side of their lives almost always utterly fail as Weiss Kreuz fanfics. Weiss are not four florists of ambiguous sexuality who happen to share an apartment and have nothing better to do with their time than sit around scheming about how to get one another into bed. They are assassins, and they therefore have to occasionally climb out of each other's beds and go and kill something. If people don't want to write about blood, death and gore, there are plenty of other bishounen-heavy shows for them to write fic for, most of which are absolutely not about trained killers who murder for money.
  

Or five things you never wanted to know about laila but have been forced to find out anyway. This is not an average question-and-answer session - if only because the questions put to me in this entry were not set by Anderson Cooper or Oprah Winfrey but one kay_cricketed, who is of course made of win, awesome, and rape cupcakes.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.


1. What's the most alluring outfit you can think of on Ken? >D Accessories and bruising allowed to be included.

Ooh. This is a tricky one. Do I really have to choose just one? Uh... well, I have a lot of decidedly NWS ideas for this one, but the all-time Utterly Awesome award has to go to Ken's pajamas. You know, the ones he wears for all of about two seconds for no reason whatsoever and is never seen in again, ever. There's just something about the way Ken looks in oversized clothes - and for some reason when those oversized clothes are pajamas then the OH HELL YEAH factor hits Warp Factor 10.

... of course, if he could conspire to be a bit damaged at the same time, that would be cool too. Ken in pajamas with bandages beneath them? Ohyesplease. (Oooh, could he have a high temperature too? I think that would be pretty awesome as well.) God damn my fondness for hurt/comfort scenes.

I should probably force my scanner to work for another feew minutes so I can get a copy of the part of his model sheet where he is wearing the pajamas. I could then color the picture in for great justice and post it to my journal for all to see. Yes, I should probably try and do this because it would be awesome. Until I do, I'll just have to make do with my two terrible quality screencaps. Thetre's not much to see but it's Ken in pajamas.

As for the NWS ideas - well. If Miss Kay wants details, I'll happily give them the next time I get her alone...


2. What's something you've always wanted to see addressed in WK, but never really was? What would you have them do with it?

Youji and Ken having hot sex.

Ken getting molested.

... NO, BRAIN. Okay. Serious answers only please. My fangirl desires are of course fangirl desires and should not be taken totally seriously, though they do have a tendency to leap to mind when asked questions of this nature. Actually seeing any of this stuff would just have ruined it, but it sure as Hell would have been nice if only as a sort of DVD extra. We all know Youji and Ken were At It offscreen anyway.

Right. I'd rather have liked it if there weren't as many inconsistencies and plotholes, but that isn't so much something I'd like to have seen added personally as just a general fangirl desire, much like the desire for better animation. The thing I would really have loved to see explored - and which, of course, never will be given who created the series and his fondness for his self-insert Stu Aya - was Weiss's early days: its formation and how it functioned as a three-man team. The brief glimpse we get of their dynamic in An Assassin and White Shaman just wasn't enough, dammit!

I suspect before Aya entered the picture things were rather different for Weiss, and I'd really like to have at least some canon addressing that. It's two whole years of their lives; it should at least have been good for a couple of OAVs or a brief TV series. I can't believe nothing remotely interesting (still less story-worthy) happened to Weiss before Aya joined. They're assassins. Interesting is pretty much there in the job description. More to the point, the dynamic really does seem to have been different. There's just something kind of - relaxed about the way Omi, Ken and Youji handle themselves in that brief scene in the manga. It might also have dispelled a lot of the bad Leader!Aya fanon and the myth of his total indispensibility to Weiss if there was more proof of Weiss handling themselves perfectly fine before he was even thought of than a throwaway line about their having existed as a three-man team for two years.

Some day, she says, I really will reactivate that prequel fic. I just don't feel I can move on it until Seuche is done.


3. What's your favorite snack food? :D

Mm, snacks. I need to cut down on snacking for both the sake of my weight and the sake of my finances, both of which are in a rather dodgy state, and when I think about the things I'm actually going to miss as a result of said cutting-back, my mind is automatically drawn to paprika-flavored Pringles. Not that they're particularly easy to get hold of, but... they're pringles, which are awesome, and they taste of paprika. I've had a thing for paprika chips ever since I went to Germany at age sixteen. They sound weirdk, but they are delicious. In fact, a lot of European food is delicious. Sometimes, I honestly wish I was German.

I'll have to cut myself a deal where I'm allowed paprika-flavored Pringles every so often, because otherwise I suspect I will go into a decline. The fortunate thing is that it's quite difficult to find paprika Pringles if you stick to the supermarkets, and if I just refuse all Pringles save the paprika ones I should be okay.

Now I just need to forget that the drugstore near the bookshop sells them.


4. Do you listen to music when you write ever, or do you need silence?

Both.

Okay, there is a logic behind this. If writing is flowing easily or I'm transcribing from one of my notebooks, I can listen to music while I work with no problem whatsoever. On the other hand, if I actually have to concentrate om something - a tricky phrase, say, or something that just isn't coming right, then I have to turn the music off and concentrate. When I do have music, it tends to be bizarrely inapproriate. I remember quite clearly writing Die Fürsprache to The Corrs and the Pet Shop Boys. I now can't listen to those albums without thinking of Schuldig x Ken non-con. Whatever music does for me when I write, clearly I don't particularly need it to set the mood. I just need it to kind of be there and not be too obtrusive.

Of course, I also tend to try and write when I take long bus or train journeys (emphasis on try to. The odd thing is, I think I write best on public transport) and there music is an absolute necessity if I'm to get enough peace and quiet to work on my fics without the rest of the world intruding. Of course, it always helps if the music I'm listening to is the aural equivalent of wallpaper, and my current fondness for the Scissor Sisters doesn't sit so well with that. Though I did manage to finish Just Another Day while listening to the Scissor Sisters on the London train, so it is doable.


5. Right now, what's your favorite book? <3
If I restrict myself to actual books (those being papery things with prose in) and refrain from adding the inevitable complications of manga and Youji/Ken doujinshi to the picture I... well, can I have two? I think it's probably a tie between Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I have an awful lot of 'favorite books', but if I really, absolutely had to pick one and stick with it, these would be the two I would go for. I'm way overdue to reread both of them. Oh woe, I have to read Lolita again, what a pain.

Of course, I can't just pick one and stick with it. There are lots of other books I really, really love, so much so that I would definitely consider them favorites, if not my absolute favorite. In no particular order, just for the Hell of it, they include The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (I've worn out two copies of that book); The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night, both by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler's Marlowe novels, especially The Big Sleep and The Long Good-Bye, though my favorite passage in all the Marlowe novels is actually from The Little Sister; Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle; Apollo 13 by Jeff Kluger and Jim Lovell; The Princess Bride by William Goldman; Money by Martin Amis; Night Watch by Terry Pratchett; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson; Brave New World; Brideshead Revisited; The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Heroes and Villains... I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting.

I guess there's no way I could really pick a favorite for any length of time at all.

Stole an MP3 Player Meme from cards_slash.

... yes, yes, I know that my habit of backdating memes makes it look like I found the meme first. I didn't, she did. I'm just backdating this because I just updated my Powell x Ken fic and I don't want to push it down the queue, as it were, courtesy of wanting to do a meme. I updated my fanfic, dammit!

Here's how it works. Put your iPod, MP3 Player, Media Player, etc. On shuffle. Write out the first line of the first 20 songs that come on and see how well your friends know your music. Sound simple enough? Good.

Each time someone gets a song right, make sure you cross it off and put the song, artist and who got it right.

I'm not doing this exactly as advertised, due to the fact a lot of the songs on my MP3 player are in Japanese, and I don't expect anyone out there to be able to get those. So, these are the first 20 songs with English lyrics that come on.


01. I'll take a nicotine, caffeine, sugar fix, Jesus don't ya git tired of turnin' tricks.

Right Next Door to Hell, Guns n' Roses - cards_slash

02. Everyone has AIDS!

03. We've been broken down to the lowest turn.

04. Adore you, I do I do.

05. I pack my case, I check my face, I look a little bit older.

For Reasons Unknown, The Killers - cards_slash

06. If the sky opened up for me and the mountain disappeared.

07. Now I will tell you what I've done for you.

08. Sometimes is never quite enough.

09. Slightly bemused by his lack of direction, hey you, hey you.

Burger Queen, Placebo - staubundsterne

10. You let me violate you, you let me desecrate you.

Closer, Nine Inch Nails - cards_slash

11. I would like to visit you for a while, get away, out of this city.

12. I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone.

You Learn, Alanis Morisette - pichi

13. I travel all around the city, go in and out of locomotives all alone.

14. I hear a lot of stories, I suppose they could be true.

15. It's a slow day and the sun was beating on the soldiers by the side of the road.

16. A friend in need's a friend indeed.

Pure Morning, Placebo - staubundsterne

17. We step through London, the streets holding onto us.

18. Lost in the high street where the dogs run.

19. See them walking hand in hand across the bridge at midnight.

20. Hakuna Matata, what a wonderful phrase!

Hakuna Matata, Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella - pichi


Now, is there anyone out there who won't get number twenty? Seriously, it's a giveaway. Still, it amuses me, so it's staying in.

This would have taken about half the time it did if only the Weiss Kreuz TV Animation OST hadn't kept drawing itself to my attention. I need English songs with English lyrics. I get around ten tracks from the WK OST, which is not only Japanese but instrumental, which I then feel obliged to listen to in full, because hey, it's Weiss.

Including the Ken theme.