The Bad Choice Bears are having a FIELD DAY. I am like their new best friend!

orz

To elaborate on the subject of this post:

1. I had an idle, stray thought that AO3 has some fairly awesome uses, like that PDF download function, say. And the whole not going down when LJ dies thing, that's pretty awesome. Then I thought, maybe *I* should get a-- WHAT AM I SAYING, THAT IS A BONAFIDE TERRIBLE IDEA.

Then I mentioned it to littledust, who said "DOOOO IIIIIT" because she is a vile enabler. But there was a fairly significant waiting list, so I said, OH WELL, LOOKS LIKE I AM SAVED FROM MY OWN BAD CHOICES.

Kelsey: You could always enter an AO3-hosted fic exchange? :D?
Me: ... *side-eyes* YOU JUST WANT TO MAKE ME WRITE FIC, DON'T YOU.
Kelsey: Noooooooooo... >___>
Me: LIES, LIES! D:

Except then when I shared that exchange with Meg for her amusement, she pointed out that she had invites.

Kelsey: Problem solved!
Me: Yay! ... wait, did I even want to solve that problem?
Kelsey: XD

BUT WHETHER I DID OR NOT IT IS SOLVED NOW: http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammaiya

Viva la terrible life choices! Bring on the exceedingly long process of transferring all my fics that I do not want to disown (which even with that caveat is a surprisingly large number) and the guilt factor whenever I hit a WiP! -- oh god BB!X. *whimper*

2. Becky has been trying to wheedle me into getting into comics for, like, ever. We are talking literally YEARS. I have stalled on many, many occasions, for many, many reasons, mostly because comics are INSANE, Becky would have to put aside some serious time to figure out where I should even begin, and I wasn't all that keen on entering into that kind of time drain insanity on a laptop screen. In the past few months or so, the "eh, someday" excuse became "fine, when I one day get an iPad, I'll think about it." Then I started seriously thinking about buying an iPad for various reasons, so Becky seized her chance and put together a preliminary Marvel reading list for me. (and by preliminary I mean it is still very long and took Becky many hours, but if you compare it to the number of comics that exist, you get my drift.)

Then I got an iPad. And Becky was like, D: D: D: :D? Plus I guilted her into reading more PokeSP, so I was feeling generous. Which mostly manifested itself in reading the first two arcs of Sailor Moon, but also resulted in the existence of House of M on my iPad, where I slowly started reading it, although there were a lot of characters I didn't know which was a bit confusing.

However, then there were about a trillionty Marvel movies. Including Iron Man, which I hadn't actually watched until about two months ago. (What, okay.)

And then while I was reading Thor fic, I ended up in Avengers fandom. Which ended up in a much better concept of who people were and what was going on, and also a much stronger desire to pick the comics back up.

So now I have approximately a million Marvel comics on my iPad.

FUCK.

Becky has conceded that she now owes me YEARS of free passes for guilting her into stuff, because I'm sure YEARS is how long I will be feeling the effect of this particular moment of weakness. I HAVE THAT IN WRITING, BECKY. *YEARS*. There might be another upcoming post on my thoughts and impressions so far - some of which are actual serious critical Thinky Thoughts about storylines etc, and some of which are more along the lines of "so basically this is like Dragon Ball, only less predictable about when and how people will come back to life" or "Carol Danvers reminds me of Sailor Venus. It might just be the appearance. Although, I'm not the only one who thinks Starjammers sounds like a bizarre cross between Gem & The Holograms and the Starlights, right? Am I?" - but that will depend heavily on how bothered I can be.

3. So I'm not sure how many people noticed or whatever, but there was an AU fic meme in my last post. I haven't 100% finished answering all of the prompts yet, although I'm reasonably close. When I'm in a writing mood again, I may resume it, although at this stage most of the numbers are now obvious so I'd have to reshuffle it. (Also, I think I wrote like half of the prompts for XMFC already so hmmm.) However, in the meantime, here is a list of the AU meme ficlets, spread between the body of the post and the comments:

* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Historical AU (Regency)
* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Lawyer AU (Criminal)
* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Political AU (Presidential)
* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Disney AU (Parent Trap)
* Thor + Loki, Thor, Lawyer AU (Corporate)
* Seishirou/Subaru, TB/X, Actor AU (Stage)
* Masamune/Ritsu, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, Harry Potter AU
* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Harry Potter AU
* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Writer AU
* Kyouya/Tamaki + Haruhi, Ouran Host Club, Superpowers AU
* Hisui/Shing/Kohak, Tales of Hearts, Spy/Assassin AU (Spies, Chuck-ish)
* Milhaust/Agarte, Tales of Rebirth, Myth/Legend AU (Aurora)
* Erik/Charles, XMFC, Music AU (Classical)
* Kagami/Tendou, KRK, Disney AU (Beauty & The Beast)
* Roy/Ed, FMA (original anime), Pirate AU
* Akiha/Umeda, Hanakimi, Space AU (Star Trek)

You might notice a theme here. I.e. that my flist is obsessed with XMFC. JUST SAYING, GUYS.

Yet to come: Luffy/Nami, One Piece, Cops AU; Yuki/Shuuichi, Gravitation, Discworld AU; Nowaki/Hiroki, JR, Fantasy AU. Also Meg is wheedling me for the XMFC Pokemon AU even though she didn't actually select that number, because she is crazy.

Anyway, because the theme of this post is apparently that I am insane and make bad life choices and I have the self-preservation instincts of a lemming, I am going to put this out there: which of the AU meme fics do you think I should continue? Not that I necessarily WILL, mind you. I just MIGHT. In which case it'd be helpful to know which ones people are most interested in. (It may or may not factor into my decision, depending on how interested *I* am in it.)

... On that note, on a scale of 1 to crazy, how terrible an idea would it be to sign up for Inception Big Bang with the shoujo manga AU fic?

I was totally going to update LJ the other day, you know. I was like 2/3 through the post. And then I turned off my iPad, and it turned out the LJ App doesn't save drafts. *bitter*

One of these days, I may actually resurrect that post, although it was mostly a life update, so on second thoughts, unlikely.

In summary:

1. I now have an iPad, which I'm sure you've all already assumed from the above. I also now have a PS3 and a TV, which I have moved onto my desk along with all my other consoles. As I'm sure you can imagine, it sees very little use now as a desk, but then again, it was always so messy that the last time it saw use as a desk was in about 2007 anyway. And, yes, I know I am a consumer whore. I find it hard to contain myself after a year with no disposable income. Also, one netbook actually started smoking, and the other netbook has serious crash/freeze issues, so the iPad wasn't COMPLETELY indulgent. I NEED THE INTERNET OKAY.

2. I continue to work. Work is generally good. I like being a lawyer. I also continue to study. Study is less good, but on the bright side I will at this rate be a fully admitted solicitor by the end of the year.

3. I am now occasionally writing stuff again. I am still not completely down with the idea of writing on an iPad, for some reason it stalls my thought processes and I'm certainly not ready to try dealing with BBX on it, but nevertheless, there has been some writing. Mostly ridiculous Arthur/Eames Inception AUs based on shoujo highschool manga and, even more alarmingly, on sekaiichi hatsukoi. I am basically a TERRIBLE PERSON, but I maintain that Kelsey is even more terrible, because she ENCOURAGES me when really she should know better, for the sake of humanity.

4. I play a lot of video games, read many books/manga, and watch much tv/movies. Recently these have included starting Assassin's Creed, replaying Tales of Destiny 2, finally reading His Dark Materials, finally watching Iron Man, watching Thor and XMFC (what is with all the Marvel?), watching a bunch of romcoms, rewatching X-Men: Evolution, starting Suits and continuing Pretty Little Liars. Am I the only person who is still bitter about Maya?

I thought about trying to make (4) sound productive, but then I laughed derisively at my own denial and resigned myself to squishing it into as small a space as possible to at least reduce it.

On that note, AU fic meme! This is a terrible idea that will no doubt end in tears, because we all know what I'm like about AUs, and yet I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Basically, I have come up with a list of 25 possible AUs. If you are willing to chance the risk of ending up with a HILARIOUSLY HORRIFYING outcome, you choose a number from 1 to 25 and a fandom (plus pairing if you so choose, knowing that I will probably make it about my own OTP if you don't). If you are lucky (or unlucky, depending), I might write you a comment fic based on the prompt.

Here are three that I prepared earlier over instant messenger with the assistance of Kelsey:

( X-Men First Class, Erik/Charles, Historical!AU )

( X-Men First Class, Erik/Charles, Lawyer!AU )

( X-Men First Class, Erik/Charles, Political!AU )

Plus... bonus extras to the political AU. Ugh, THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS. /o\

( Extras )

Huhn, I keep saying I'm going to update regularly! and properly! aaaaaaaaand then it doesn't happen. But I figured now was as good a time as any to at least make *A* post, to announce that I have finally caved under the mountain of beckerbell's evil and created a tumblr.

This is it: http://tammaiya.tumblr.com/

You will see from EVERYTHING ABOUT IT - including the title - that I have dedicated it to my revenge upon Becky.

So for the moment, I am spamming Pokemon Special art. Because I WILL make her finish reading it. Mwahaha. If it persuades anyone else to follow suit, then that is all for the better. Because PokeSP is filled with fierce ladies, dorky boys, fabulous fruits, delightful friendships and EPIC PLOT. Just so's you know.

... One day I will use my tumblr for something that is not PokeSP, but today is not that day.

In other news, I got Mari Tales of Graces f for her birthday and I have sat in with her on large chunks of the beginning, which was fun times. Otherwise, I work. Also, I study. Working and studying together are lame. I look forward to the day when I finish Workshop. It is probably sad that right now I am more looking forward to not having to worry about assignments than to being a fully fledged lawyer. Eh.

Yeah, I got nothin'. Mostly these days when I have free time I read Japanese light novels, which are sadly not so easily shared with an English-speaking audience. Oh, although, I finally finished Meg's v. belated birthday fic, which is here. It is a Steve/Danny Hawaii Five-0 fic, entitled Res Ipsa Loquitur.

Also, Kelsey and Becky may shortly be responsible for dragging me back into Glee. In which case I will haunt them to my grave. Rah.

... Thaaat pretty much covers it.

OH, and I'm going to China in January. :D

That is all.

So apparently I have an unfinished entry from when I finished Inception (some months ago now) comparing Eames/Arthur to Zoro/Sanji for the lulz. Huh.

Anyway, uh, moving on.

I've been meaning to update to say that I aten't dead, I've just been... well, originally I was too lazy to update. It was too much like work - I was in full on vegetation mode and even avoiding answering my emails, that is how lazy I am. *cough* So theoretically for the first month of this year I had loads of time, but I was dedicating that to watching as much TV and playing as many video games as I possibly could. Which is how I got through all of Chuck, all of Community, all of White Collar, most of Castle, all of Kimi ni Todoke to date, as well as starting Pretty Little Liars and Hawaii Five-0, not to mention ToS:Knights of Ratatosk... you get the picture. Actually I kind of got bored of it. Which is why it's a good thing I found a job. (That, and being broke really sucked.)

Which is the other reason my presence on the internet has been somewhat scarce: I started full-time work on 7 February as a graduate lawyer in a small firm. It's a job I lucked into via connections, but it's well-suited to me and I enjoy it. "Graduate lawyer" means I'm not actually a proper lawyer yet, I need to do some post-grad studies which I start as of next week, but I get to do a lot of the same stuff with supervision.

The upshot of this is that I work 8.30am to whenever I finish - which is occasionally five, once was four, is more often after 6 and sometimes closer to 8, but is usually 5.30. (Then there was that one time last week where clients took us out for dinner after work, so we worked until about 7.30 and I didn't get home until 11.30). Which I enjoy. But it does make me pretty tired. So most of the time I come home from work, I play Radiant Mythology 3 (which I unhacked my PSP for, but it was SO WORTH IT), watch tv, and go to sleep. Sometimes I read a little. Weekends are fairly similar, only with more sleep, more tv, more RM3, and social outings. Occasionally I translate or even write stuff.

No, really, I swear that is not a lie! um. not completely. I haven't actually forgotten about BBX you know, my car stereo guilt-trips me almost every time I drive to work. *shifty*

---

Me time aside... what's going on in Japan isn't news to anybody, and I don't want to talk about it too much because it's still pretty hard for me to do. Everybody I know in Japan is safe, at least for now - I emailed everyone I could and rang everyone I either didn't have a current address for or hadn't received a response from. I got in touch with two friends I thought I no longer had a means of contacting, which was the very small, personal bright side to an otherwise horrible situation.

Part of me kind of wishes I were in Japan, even though I know that's stupid and wouldn't help anything - I'd be worrying my family and friends and just adding pressure on Japan's strained rations of food and power. But that didn't stop me feeling a little helpless being all the way across the ocean.

Anyway, all the workers on the ground are saying that what they need more than anything is cash donations, so I'm intending to donate to the Australian Red Cross as soon as I figure out the amount and the logistics. I had to look up the Japanese Embassy website to figure out the best way to donate - the only links and things I've seen about donating have all been American. Either way, I hope that anyone who can donate does, and that the nuclear problem is stabilised soon, because the last thing Japan needs is anything else going wrong.

As of Thursday, am officially graduated; as of today, officially 24; as of right now, in Sydney and needing to get up in the morning to commence a week of working as my brother's lackey a paralegal. (in all fairness tomorrow I'm working for the solicitor, not my brother.)

More detail, grad photos etc later.

(there's a silly hat! Lifelong aim: ACHIEVED.)

*lawyer icon*

*slinks back in* Okay, so all my good intentions and the various updating/writing rolls I was on got totally trashed by the wisdom teeth operation. Lying around on painkillers with an aching jaw didn't leave me particularly receptive to anything but watching a whole lot of tv, and then it formed into a bad habit. Seriously, I watched both seasons of Sports Night (well, rewatched, in the case of S1), all of Community to date, and 43/51 episodes of Soul Eater. (There have also been a few episodes of Bones, Castle, Pretty Little Liars, White Collar and NCIS:LA on tv.) On the bright side, I've been off painkillers for a while now and the gaping wounds at the back of my mouth no longer ache. On the less bright side, they still gape and food keeps getting caught down there. I am terrified of infection. Also, I think I can actually see my jawbone on the lower left side of my mouth. It's a bit disturbing.

Meanwhile, I am graduating in two days time - officially! I got my results back last Monday! I am getting First Class Honours! - which is good, and I have yet to find employment for next year, which is bad.

Also, it's my birthday next Monday. If anyone wants to write me Casey/Dan, Jeff/Annie, Zoro/Sanji or Stein/Spirit, I am totally down with that. Just sayin'. *stare* (In fact, I am not a picky person! I would totally accept fic from any of my fandoms. Or art!)

[No, I do not ACTUALLY expect people to do anything for my birthday. For a start, I'm not exactly giving fair warning. XD But I would be appropriately thankful and adoring should such a thing occur!]

Anyway, it seems like ancient history now, but I still feel like talking about my trip to Sydney, because it was fun and productive. I stayed with _leareth - well, for three nights out of four, I spent one night in an apartment with my mother - and we had a great time. Admittedly Leareth's writing advertures were much more productive than mine, but I did at least start the next chapter of Boyband!X. It took quite a while to get that ball rolling because I had to find my complete planning document - it wasn't on this computer, but I'd sent it to myself via gmail in 2008 - and reread old scenes to figure out wtf I was doing, but I'm making progress now. I also FINALLY finished the Meruvis/Asad fic, which clocks in at around 12,000 words and needs editing.

The trip was also productive in a number of non-fic-related ways. Leareth showed me Assassin's Creed on her PS3, and helped to reduce the cultural rock I've been living under for the past few years by showing me How To Tame Your Dragon and The Dark Knight. (We also MSTed the crap out of Spiderman 1 when it was on tv. I didn't remember it being that cheesey.) On the Saturday, we went over to my uncle's place for lunch with my mother and three of her siblings, then went shoe-shopping for me at Macquarie with my mum and Auntie Marie. (It was predictably futile, but at least we had fun.) Saturday night I went to my cousin's 21st, and saw most of my cousins on Mum's side for the first time since March last year. They've all grown so much! It was surreal! But I was really glad to catch up with them.

Sunday Leareth and I went to the Glebe street fair with my brother and sister. Leareth and Rohan enabled me into buying Watchmen for $20, and Rohan gave me a graduation bear called Frankie (it's on his tag) who is ADORABLE. <3 Monday I went into the city to meet my sister, Marie and Uncle Chas for more shoe-shopping. Finally, success! We got shoes for my graduation/potential future office work and identified sandles which they didn't have in my size in the colour I wanted, but Marie and I picked those up from Parramatta on our way home the next day. Then Ceilidh had to go back to work, and Marie and Chas and I went to JBs and Kinokuniya. While we were in JBs, I obtained a birthday present in the form of Star Trek special edition dvd. *beams* Deleted scenes, you are miiiiine, precioussss.

Then at Kinokuniya, they totally didn't have One Piece Green, the new data book, which was lame, or an entire consecutive plot arc of Pokemon Special, also lame.(On the note of both of those things, I have since acquired One Piece Green and PokeSP 37 off bk1.) They did however have the novelisations of Uragiri wa Boku no Namae o Shitteiru - which I forgot was originally a manga, not a novel, but am enjoying anyway - and Tales of the Tempest - yay, now I can find out the plot without having to play the game! Which I cannot do, because it is unplayably bad. It's not the plot or the characters; the gameplay and graphics make me WEEP. I just can't do it. But Tempest characters keep showing up in the crossover games, and the CD drama is set after the game ends. Novel, you are my saviour!

So that was my trip in Sydney, which I should have blogged about much sooner and saved us all this really long post. :|b Although I haven't really done all that much since then, beyond watching the aforementioned copious amounts of tv. I went over to Mari's on Saturday, which was fun. I finished the Moses/Jay pic I'd been working on last time I was over and we MSTed Dragon Ball movies. You know, with love. It was hilarious times. "How do you get run over by a hovercar?" "No, Trunks, don't do it! LISTEN TO THE OMINOUS BGM!" "Why are there still flowers growing in a post-apocalyptic world? ... Maybe No. 17 likes them? No. 18 likes clothes, 17 likes flowers?"

My personal favourite, however:

S:  How come Vegeta decided to name his children after undergarments instead of vegetables, anyway?
M: Maybe it's 'cause he's marrying into a rich family. He had to adopt Bulma's family's naming scheme.
S: That should mean he has another name too, then. Like Goku. He could be called "Pants".
Both: ............................................
Both: LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
S: HENCEFORTH, VEGETA SHALL BE KNOWN AS "PANTS".

Other than that, I have played video games a bit - I finished Radiant Mythology 2, and then accidentally started a new game + over my existing save file instead of a continued save, although on the bright side my characters all retain their levelling; got further in Okamiden; played a bit of Prof Layton 3; grew disgruntled by Lost Oddyssey and gave up on it - and continue to mull upon my DS dilemma. Namely the fact that while I can still play it, in a manner of speaking, it is very broken and held together with sticky tape and there's no closing the lid. I need to replace it. The question is, do I replace it with another DS Lite? It has the advantage of the status quo and the best battery life. Or do I go to DSi? Crap battery life, but better screens and audio. Alternatively, what about the DSi XL? It might be more comfortable for me to hold, since I sometimes get cramps in my hands from the DS Lite, it's got much better sound, and the battery life is better than the DSi, but on the other hand, it's the most expensive and the 93% extra screen size means bigger pixels and I don't know how bad the pixelisation would be. DECISION-
MAKING IS HARD OKAY. And if anybody has any opinions on the comparative merits of various types of DS, please, I'd love to hear them.

But whatever, have some pictures.

( Graduation shoes, dress and bear; sandals; hair )

On a final note, I haven't actually forgotten about the video game meme yet.

( Day 7: Favourite game couple )

Day 1 - Very first video game.
Day 2 - Your favorite character.
Day 3 - A game that is underrated.
Day 4 - Your guilty pleasure game.
Day 5 - Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were).
Day 6 - Most annoying character.
Day 7 - Favorite game couple.
Day 8 - Best soundtrack.
Day 9 - Saddest game scene.
Day 10 - Best gameplay.
Day 11 - Gaming system of choice.
Day 12 - A game everyone should play.
Day 13 - A game you’ve played more than five times.
Day 14 - Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.
Day 15 - Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now.
Day 16 - Game with the best cut scenes.
Day 17 - Favorite antagonist.
Day 18 - Favorite protagonist.
Day 19 - Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in.
Day 20 - Favorite genre.
Day 21 - Game with the best story.
Day 22 - A game sequel which disappointed you.
Day 23 - Game you think had the best graphics or art style.
Day 24 - Favorite classic game.
Day 25 - A game you plan on playing.
Day 26 - Best voice acting.
Day 27 - Most epic scene ever.
Day 28 - Favorite game developer.
Day 29 - A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.
Day 30 - Your favorite game of all time.

So I am feeling a little tender and sorry for myself, having had surgery to remove my wisdom teeth this morning. It's not as bad as it could be, but it's not exactly pleasant, either. My tongue has had pins & needles for hours, and I still can't feel my lower lip or chin. I'm afraid I'll bite my lip off by accident or something. :( Also, my face is very puffy, like a chipmunk, and my cheeks ache, although this is actually less annoying than the bits of my face I can't feel. It's probably better than feeling them, at least in parts, but I'm not sure I'm a fan of this whole local anaesthetic bizzo. (The general anaesthetic was kind amazing, though. I was out in less than a minute! As an insomniac, I was quite impressed. Hilariously, when I woke up I could only remember Japanese for a few minutes; I really had to struggle to find English to answer the nurses when they spoke to me. So bizarre.

................ oh I take back what I said about the aching, suddenly it hurts a lot and it's at least an hour until I can have more drugs, ow ow OW.

Was going to update about Sydney but it's going to have to wait until I'm less busy feeling sorry for myself. *slinks off to eat an iceblock, slap on an icepack and read more MaruMa*

Hmm, so much for that faithful meme-driven updating of LJ. My big problem is that I keep thinking - as I do with many things in my life - "oh, I'll do it before I go to bed". Of course, by that time, it is ridiculously late (or early, depending on your point of view) and I have devolved into something about one step up from primordial sludge. Updating LJ is too much effort. orz

But it's the middle of the afternoon - well, okay, it's 5pm. but it's still very sunny - and I just got home from the hair dressers and haven't actually gotten distracted by anything else yet, so now seems like a good time to update LJ. Particularly since I'm going to Sydney tomorrow morning.

Anyhoo, in the past few days I have been moderately more active than usual. I had a check-up with the podiatrist on Tuesday (oh the joys of being a diabetic with flat feet) and then went to hang out at Mari's place, which was as always a lot of fun. Yesterday my mum decided we HAD to go clothes shopping, slightly disrupting my plans for the afternoon. I achieved a graduation dress out of it - it's lovely, navy blue and form fitting to about the knee with white trimming and a white bow around the waist - but not shoes. Either shoes to go with the dress, or sandals, which we started looking for after I complained that my right knee ached and the rest of the leg was going numb (orthotics do not fit in my current, VERY FLAT sandals).

Basically, I hate shoes because shoes hate me. I get shoe envy, not because I want the shoes other women are wearing, but because they can wear them. On top of having big feet - which is actually getting to be much less of an issue these days - I have very narrow feet, particularly around the ankles. Much as I wouldn't want big wide feet, this rules out a lot of shoes in terms of fit. Then, on top of having long, narrow feet, they are flat. Even better; this leads to the problem described above with sore legs, back, etc. Ideally for comfort my orthotics should fit.

Then, of course, the crowning glory is this: I have incredibly sensitive skin, especially on my feet. For example, I cannot wear thongs (flip-flops for you Americans) if I actually expect to walk more than a few steps, because even when they are a brand that everyone says is incredibly soft leather, comfortable shoes, even when I keep wearing them again and again hoping they'll wear in or I'll build up calluses or something, every time they will rub the skin raw between my toes. Or the sandals I had in highschool - I loved them to death, literally wore them out, but despite hoping eventually my feet would adjust, the strap around the ankle never failed to leave open wounds on the backs of my ankles. It's like the Princess and the Pea, only despite what fairytales may have you believe, this is not in any way a good thing. I am doomed to a lifetime of only ever finding sneakers and maryjanes comfortable, and even then only to a certain extent!! So basically I've just resigned myself to the idea that if I want to wear nice shoes I have to also accept that pain will follow and try not to move too much in them, but I'm not sure how this is going to fly once I start work. I can't wear sneakers in an office. D:

But anyway, after the semi-successful shopping trip, I went to uni to meet up with this year's negotiation/arbitration team to see how they were faring. I don't envy them their problem, ours was much more interesting and better drafted. I said I'd look over their finished memorandums for them, though I'm not sure how much help I'll be.

As for today, this afternoon I went out to get my hair done for the first time in months. It's pretty long at the moment, as previously mentioned, but the colour was growing out a lot (and every time I think maybe I should let my hair be its natural colour, then I get roots and remember what a horrible mousy brown it turned when I hit puberty. Used to be a much nicer chestnut-ish colour) and I had a lot of split ends so it was a bit straw-like. Now it's actually kind of fabulous, or at least I think so. My parents are less convinced, especially my dad, but he never likes it when the colour is darker. I kept the length and didn't cut in a fringe this time - I'm going to think more seriously about the cut next time, maybe find some reference pictures - but the colour is a dark reddy-brown, more reddish on top where it was my natural colour before, and the hairdresser curled it for me, since I'm going to a party tonight. :) Photos further down, below the cut!

Further plans of course involve the party tonight and Sydney tomorrow, where I'm staying with Leareth on Friday night, then with my parents on Saturday night - the original purpose of this trip was my cousin's 21st birthday party that night - and back with Leareth until the Tuesday, in time to have my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday at the crack of dawn, joy of joys.

In fannish news, there have been a number of fic posts since I last updated, all One Piece, all spoilery for recent chapters (lightly so in the case of the first two). These are FML, gen humour fic poking fun at Sanji's life sucking; Life On Venus, a porntastic Zoro/Sanji sequel to FML; and Chaos Theory, an ensemble time-travelling hijinks fic where they go back in time to Roger's ship. I've also been playing a bit of Lost Odyssey... which brings me to an odd phenomenon I've noticed with Xbox360 games, namely that the more discs they have, the shorter they paradoxically seem to be? I mean, I know it relates to the power taken up by graphics, but you'd think they'd at least be the same length as a one disc game. ToV was an 80+ (definitely plus in my case, I clocked like 100 hours) game; Last Remnant's second disc was incredibly short, and even with 4 total discs, when I'm hitting disc 2 at 10.5 hours in on Lost Odyssey (seriously? SERIOUSLY? disc changes in PS-era FF never came that quickly!) I have to wonder. Assuming every disc took around the same amount of time, that's still less than 50 hours total. Hmmmm.

Meanwhile, going over to Mari's always reawakens my drawing impulses. This time I tried to tackle one of my greatest achilles heels in drawing: colour. Usually I take either a slapdash paintbucket approach or a colour-by-hand/scan approach, neither of which work very well. This time I bothered to look up a tutorial on the internet, and found some very useful functions in Photoshop I'd never noticed before. It was surprisingly successful. I may have semi-overcome this problem! Although I still need to figure out how to get a more watercolour look, I don't always want bold lines and colours.

Unfortunately my other achilles heel, backgrounds, will not be so easily overcome. The problem is not so much that I can't draw backgrounds; that's something I could improve with practice. It doesn't even reach that stage. When I image whatever I want to draw, positions, colour, light and shade, they all come automatically. But I almost never envision the background. It's like it's not important to my mental landscape, although I certainly appreciate pictures with elaborate backgrounds far more than blank nothing. I never really think about where they are. Even if the position necessarily involves some kind of furniture, I don't think of the detail of it. And it's incredibly hard to draw something when I have no mental image of it. orz

Oh well. Moving on, meme is below the cut, as is the picture of Chloe from Tales of Legendia. [Editorial: I know I promised photos of the hair, pics or it didn't happen etc, but I'm going to have to upload some other Sydney-related photos and it's late and if I don't post this now, I never will, SO.]

( Artz )

( Day 6 - Most annoying character. )


PS: Okay so I didn't finish this post and it is now after the party, which was very enjoyable, and I have to pack. But I just had two very worrying thoughts/realisations:

1. I have apparently not updated BBX since APRIL LAST YEAR? oh my god, kill me now. orz NEED TO GET ON THAT STAT.

2. Have I called a fic Chaos Theory before? I have that sudden feeling and I don't know whether or not I'm just being paranoid. This is tragic, I don't even remember my own fics. <-- I subsequently had a moment of paranoia and went through the entirety of insaneidiot. Somewhat miraculously given my propensity for one-word titles (especially starting with i, it seems?), I have not ONCE doubled up, not even with the drabbles. I am kind of amazed and impressed by this.

ETA WITHOUT ACTUALLY POSTING: So I didn't get this posted before going to Sydney, where I currently still am, and I haven't had much in the way of time to update LJ and finish the entry, but it was practically all written, and it's too long and will take forever if I try to add to it now, so fuck it, I'm posting it as would have been complete originally. <___< It is an accurate reflection as of last Friday? *hides*

Hooray, hooray, I finally fucking finished that fucking Zoro/Sanji fic! 4000 words of genderswap porn! Which I haven't posted yet because it is a sequel to another fic I haven't posted - it's finished but I want to edit it some more - and also it's 5 in the morning.

I did, however, post a bunch of highschool AU ficlets from a meme I did in May last year and never got around to uploading earlier this evening, to try and cheer myself up about the fact the ZoSan fic (and the Tierkries WiP) was taking so long to finish: http://insaneidiot.livejournal.com/74503.html. Fandoms include Tales of the Abyss, Kamen Rider Kabuto, Phoenix Wright, Stargate Atlantis, Torchwood, Odin Sphere, Dragon Quest V, Hanakimi, FFIV, X, Mirage of Blaze, Merlin, Due South and Arashi.

In other writing news, I'm going to stay at _leareth's place for a few days this coming weekend, and we've got writing sessions planned. I will make headway on boyband!X, dammit.

This assumes, of course, that I do not end up in hospital with mum's horrible ailment. *literally knocks on wood* She's getting better now and apparently is no longer contagious, but these things have an incubation period. I have bitter memories of the last time I thought I was in the clear.

As for RL, it would not stop raining in Canberra today. This was a little unfortunate, because I had to do the grocery shopping for mum. At least my car could use a wash; it gets filthy where I park it because the oak trees drop sappy twigs all over, and then the dirt sticks. Less brilliantly, not even constant heavy rain will clean it. I need to go to the carwash, but it feels like such a waste when I know it'll only get dirty again...

Anyway, meme time!

( Day 5 - Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were). )


Day 1 - Very first video game.
Day 2 - Your favorite character.
Day 3 - A game that is underrated.
Day 4 - Your guilty pleasure game.
Day 5 - Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were).
Day 6 - Most annoying character.
Day 7 - Favorite game couple.
Day 8 - Best soundtrack.
Day 9 - Saddest game scene.
Day 10 - Best gameplay.
Day 11 - Gaming system of choice.
Day 12 - A game everyone should play.
Day 13 - A game you’ve played more than five times.
Day 14 - Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.
Day 15 - Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now.
Day 16 - Game with the best cut scenes.
Day 17 - Favorite antagonist.
Day 18 - Favorite protagonist.
Day 19 - Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in.
Day 20 - Favorite genre.
Day 21 - Game with the best story.
Day 22 - A game sequel which disappointed you.
Day 23 - Game you think had the best graphics or art style.
Day 24 - Favorite classic game.
Day 25 - A game you plan on playing.
Day 26 - Best voice acting.
Day 27 - Most epic scene ever.
Day 28 - Favorite game developer.
Day 29 - A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.
Day 30 - Your favorite game of all time.