Sometimes I look at my life and I wonder what the hell it is that I'm up to. I'm in that no-man's land of childhood and maturity, and I have to wonder if my current state is just a product of my culture or if it's something that is actually unusual.

I'm twenty-six, and I live in a house with four friends. I have a job that supports me, and I'm not in debt to anyone. But I have no significant other, no desire for one, and no desire for family or children. When my parents were twenty-six...hm. Maybe it's not as bad as I thought. When my parents were twenty-six, I don't think that my older brother had even been born yet, so there's no pressure on that front.

Still, I've got plenty of friends who are parents now, to whom I'm "Auntie," and I know that my brother wants to be a father. But me? I'm comfortable in my bachelorette-hood (if that's at all a word), and I'm happy with my friends and my cat and my home. I just get the aching feeling every now and then that I'm "doing it wrong," like I shouldn't be happy living day-to-day and playing video games and reading fanfiction. Perhaps it's the feeling that there's something more that I could be doing, something more that I should be doing, and I'm instead just wasting my life away. I don't know what that something is, though, and whenever I start to make a move to seek it out, I'm instead caught up by the comfortable sensation of my current life and how there isn't really any effort to it, no drive to change what I've got for something harder.

The easy path leads to the Dark Side, right?

I've had plans before, and even now they sit in the back of my head waiting for me, and I keep promising myself, "Someday."

"Someday I'll go to grad school."
"Someday I'll apply to work for a better airline."
"Someday I'll finish writing a novel, or even a short story."
"Someday I'll..."

But it's always "someday" and I keep pushing it off with the dismissive words of, "Not today, not right now. I've got other things to do right now, I've got more things to focus on, more pressing matters to attend to."

Only...are they really that pressing, that important? Or am I just giving in to the easy path and letting myself fall down that slope again, and again, and again?

Giving in is so easy.

Taking the first step is hard...but taking the steps after it? Sometimes that's even harder.

I'm trying.

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted to LJ. I've been around the internet, and I even check my friend's list pretty much every day, I just...haven't posted. *coughs* But still! I live!

I am also in the process of moving. I moved out of my old house at the end of September, but two of my new housemates had a lease that didn't end until the beginning of December. So I stayed with my dad for free for the past two months! But as of yesterday I have begun to move down into our new house, and it's a great place.

( Picture of the outside! (big)Collapse )

I've got some pictures of the inside as well, but everything's all bare, so I'll wait until we get the house furnished. I also have a kitty that will be joining me! His name is Zack. I do not have pictures of him right now, but I will take several once I get him home.

Aside from that, there is work, work, and more work going on in my life, and working at keeping my mental health intact, and some role-playing games going on (two "table-top" via Skype, and a game on Dreamwidth where I'm playing Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII, and hopefully will soon be hauling out my Heero muse as well [yes, there's a Duo there already]). Ummm, what else? Ah! I've gotten into Plurk, so if anyone else is there, my Plurk can be found here. Feel free to friend me and watch me post about random stuff! Though mostly about bits of RL stuff and otherwise about Adstring (the DW game).

Actually, if anyone's looking for a pretty awesome DW game, you should come check out Adstringendum! =D

Utterly unrelated: Signal boost! There is a really, really awesome project being developed to help identify the presence of date rape drugs in drinks. You know, the stuff that is colorless, odorless, and tasteless in one's drink? Yeah. Drink Savvy is raising money to make their products and try to get them into places like bars, clubs, and colleges, and they need the money to finish developing and making these products in the first place. They accept donations as small as $1, and I personally think that it's just a really, really wonderful project.

Even if you don't have the time or money to donate, please signal boost this, and get information out there? This is something that can seriously change people's lives.

Drink Savvy

Otakon is this weekend, and it shall hopefully be a very fun time! I'm going to be staying at the Best Western that's relatively close to the convention (walking distance, though not close walking distance, from what I've been told). It's not one of those that's attached by the sky bridge, but still! Apparently it's about a ten minute walk. Part of what I'm getting at is that, if anyone on my FList needs a last-minute hotel room for the con, we've got room!

I'm gonna be spending a good amount of my time at the LARP, but I'm also planning on checking out all sorts of other things and meeting up with people if meetups happen.

On Friday I'll be cosplaying Cissnei of the Turks from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, and on Saturday I will hopefully be Jade Harley from Homestuck. (God Tier, even!) Sunday will either be one of the previous, or "throw on whatever I feel like" day.

Who else will be there?

Hello, all! I am safely back from Ireland, and I am working on a write-up (with pictures!) that will probably be mildly bandwidth-breaking.

But first, I have to sigh at the drama going on over at FF.N lately. Yes, I still go through the Pit of Voles.

It appears that, with the recent major updates to the site, the moderators decided to point out the fact that, "Hey, there's not supposed to be any explicit sex scenes in fics here. No MA/NC-17. This has been the rule since 2002." They've also apparently begun deleting fics that violate that rule, and I believe it's been done without notice.

While I think the fact that they've not been giving notice is a pretty shitty thing to do, I have to sigh at the uproar that all of these authors are getting themselves into. The time to protest was ten years ago, when they first dropped the NC-17 category and deleted sex fics. Yes, I was with FF.N when that happened. I'd been reading GW fics there since the show came out in the US. I got my account in 2001. There were a whole lot of pissed-off authors and readers, but the management went through with it anyway.

The thing that gets me is reading several notes by authors who claim, "So apparently FF.N doesn't allow sex scenes in fics now!" All I can think is, "Uh...yeah. That's been a thing for a while."

Perhaps my lack of surprise is only because I was around for the first Great Sex Scene Purge, but I thought that people knew that they weren't supposed to post sex scenes on FF.N anymore. Yeah, it's annoying, but I thought that the people who went ahead and did it were just taking their chances, figuring that they'd at least get the fic read for a while.

Now I'm seeing petitions going around to introduce an MA category, as if this was something that had never existed on FF.N, and all I can think is, "Good luck with that." Because FF.N made their decision ten years ago to get rid of that category, and with liability issues the way that they are nowadays, I just can't see them reversing their decision without putting some sort of checks and balances in place to try and keep those under legal age without getting access to the material. And I don't think that they'd want to spend that much time and effort just to allow sexytime fics to be posted.

This is one of the major reasons that AdultFanfiction.Net came to exist in the first place, people! That's why it's so big, because people weren't supposed to be posting the sex fics at FF.N!

Geeze, I suddenly feel old...

Who wants a post card from Ireland? Comment here with your address (and preferred name), and I shall send one your way!

Comment screening is on!

I'm about to board up to head off for Ireland for ten days! Much fun will be had, pictures will be taken, souveniers will be bought. I'm going with my Mom, so this is gonna be a whole lot of fun.

To bring myself back to life on LJ in a fun way, I shall be attempting something in honor of the day. I shall attempt to put my hair into proper Princess Leia buns. I'll post pictures of the results if they are at all effective.

Really, I wanted to work today so that I could do this on the plane and introduce myself as Leia, with Captain Han and First Officer Luke (Chewie couldn't fit on the plane).


[Edit]

Hair accomplished! There are plenty of things that I'd do differently if I were doing this for, say, a cosplay (like gelling/hairspraying my hair so that I don't have a ridiculous amount of flyaways), but for something that didn't take me very long to accomplish, I'm pretty pleased!

( Two photos behind the cut!Collapse )

I Aten't Dead.

I have a new laptop, and this shit is BANANAS! I mean seriously, it's at least twice the laptop that I really wanted, which probably works out to three times the laptop that I actually need. A link to what makes it all up is forthcoming. Right now I just got all of my bookmarks transferred over, so I am very proud of myself for that. It's weird, leaving my old lappy behind. I'm not quite sure that I'm gonna do with it. I'll figure out something.

In the meantime, my new lappy has a number pad! How absolutely ridiculous is that?!

Must think up appropriate name for the new lappy. Currently she's called Lielyn (after my belf warlock on WoW), but I'm not quite sure if that's what I want. I mean, my computers suck enough of my soul out without giving them a name that encourages that...

So I think that I dreamed an entire Fire Emblem campaign last night. Not an existing game, but one that my brain cobbled together out of the others. There were two heroes: one the blue-haired male General, one the blue-haired female General/Princess. They weren't related, though. The male General was very much influenced by Ike, but there was a lot of Ephriam in him, too. The female General/Princess was sort of a combination of Lyn, Elincia, and the Herons? Something like that. She was an elf, and her kingdom had been destroyed by humans long ago, and all of her people were either dead, in hiding, or sealed away by a magic spell/the dark god that always shows up in FE games.

I don't remember most of it, but the plot was pretty standard FE, with lots of combats and recruiting of various types of characters (including a couple of winged characters who also happened to be archers, now that I think about it - I think they were a kind of elf? But that would nicely solve some of the issue of "flying units are generally painfully vulnerable to bows") and plot twists and the two heros slowly falling in love.

I remember dreaming the aftermath of the final battle, where this light deity that was apparently helping them temporarily transported away the Princess and her most loyal retainers (you know, her starting group, essentially), and the other characters headed up the underground path into what had formerly been her ruined castle...only to find that the castle had been restored, fully and completely. The loyal retainers were waiting in the front entryway, but the Princess wasn't, so the General went up to them and before he could ask they were all like, "The spell has been broken! The Kingdom has been restored, and now it is time for the Princess's coronation so that all of her people may be returned. She is asking for you now. Will you go to her?"

The General, of course, says yes and they give him directions to the...royal quarters? Room where she is right now? Whatever. He goes and starts heading through the keep, and all of the characters that they've recruited throughout the game are standing at attention throughout it, just sort of an array of all of the characters sort of being an honor guard, and sort of a show for the player of, "These are all the characters that you've gained, and these are the levels that they've achieved."

Upon entering the room where the Princess is, the General is sort of taken aback to find that she's put aside her armor (because hell yes, she was an awesome unit to fight with) and is wearing a fancy gown, with her hair finally pulled back so that it isn't covering her pointed ears to hide them. They stare at each other, the memories of the past few months of traveling and fighting together building up all around them...

...and then I woke up. Dammit.

I'm not sure what the titular Fire Emblem was in this game. Maybe the Princess' royal seal that could unlock the seal that held almost all of her people.