Blather, rinse, repeat

Last night was what we had been looking forward to for months: Distant Worlds! It was a little nerve-wracking with catching all the different trains, esp. the Atlantic Terminal which has a tendency to shut down at random times etc.

Jo-chan and I left at around 3:45 and were at Syosset train station around 5. SB wasn't far behind and we got some snacks and water from Dunkin Donuts, got our train tickets, and were on our way. (Note to self: That nice conductor was right: when in doubt, get off-peack tickets. DO NOT listen to the idiot woman on line in front of you and buy PEAK tickets when you're going west in the afternoon. *Kicks random woman*)

Train rides were pretty quick and went smoothly, and the BAM center was literally right around the corner from the Atlantic Terminal. It was a 3 minute walk, 5 at most. We got there, had a look around, and then had another snack upstairs at the BAM cafe, which was really cool. That done, we got our awesome orchestra seats by raound 7:30, and waited, chatting with the folks around us who were just as excited and geeked out as we were.

Jo-chan and I were the only ones in any sort of costume. I'm glad we went subtle. Actually, in the bathroom, two girls were like, "Oh my god, Raine! And Edea!" We were like, "Oh yeah, score. Someone got it, at least."

We all somehow expected Nobuo Uematsu to be the maestro, the MC, really anything. But instead, he came out on stage, took a bow to thunderous screaming and applause, and then took a seat in the audience next to some very lucky fans. He's so cool, with his musical note doo-rag and his long, floofy hair.

They opened the show with the general theme to Final Fantasy, and went right into Liberi Fatali. It wasn't the kind of show where you could be screaming and stomping and cheering, like Video Games Live, so reactions from the audience were limited to whispered "ahhs!" and "OMGs!" and quiet squees. I saw a lot of people hand-flailing just to contain their excitement during their favorite numbers. Personally, I would have gone for Liberi Fatali alone. As I mentioned in a past post that song and I have history.

( History. )

The live version is, of course, amazing.

The show went really heavy on FF7 and FF8, for which I was personally so thrilled. They did a little FF13 too, and some Chocobo stuff which was awesome. And the live version of JENOVA blows away about any version I've ever heard.

I have pics and videos of much of this, but they are mostly crap, since filming and photographs were prohibited, and everything was done on the sneak.

At the end, though, I just shamelessly started recording. I couldn't not, because Uematsu came on stage to sing One Winged Angel with the choir. I can't even tell you how epic that was. (Of note: The choir was singing the words "ira vehementus" when I'm sure the actual words are "ira vehementi. And I saw Uematsu singing "ira vehementi" also. I just thought that was weird.) I swear I also still hear "haryuu no hanekata the last two times, instead of "Gloriosa Generosa."

The ended the show with One Winged Angel, of course, because you can't follow that. It's impossible.

We had our meet+greet tickets, which was part of what the ridiculous extra cost was for. It was mad expensive, but we all thought, really, when else might we get a chance to talk to Nobuo Uematsu? Maybe even never. But we were concerned because the last train out of Brooklyn was 10:55 unless we wanted to either get a cab to Jamaica and wait until the 1:38 train (and if we missed that one, the next train out was 3:20. WTF. No one wants to sit in Jamaica station at 3 Am.)

So even as the orchestra started leaving, we jumped out of our seats and to the one, teeny tiny elevator. We were actually the first ones to the meet and greet. Uematsu came up at around 10:30. Well, I guess we all kind of lost our cool for a bit then. I wanted him to sign my soundtrack. It's the original, from ages ago, which you can't really find anymore, or so I'm told.

So I went up first, and I forgot the word for "sountrack." I just went, "Uematsu-san, thank you so much, could you sign my, my, my, my.... my thing, my soundtrack paper thing?" He was like, Sure, sure! And I was all "oh, thank you, thank you!" He asked if I spoke Japanese (I might have gotten totally ridiculous and stuttered out an "arigatou gozaimasu!") and I was trying to remember how to say "a tiny bit," (chiisai, chiisai!) but couldn't remember, so I just said, "a tiny bit. BUT I TRY VERY HARD."

Umm, then I moved aside from SB who went, "Umm, wow, thank you for the music, umm, HAHAHA!" and shoved his ticket to be signed. Uematsu was very obliging and he was like, "Oh, you're welcome," and SB was like, "THANK YOU FOR COMING TO NEW YORK, HAHA."He couldn't stop grinning. Then he said hi to the conductor, Arnie Roth, who also signed his ticket.

Jo-chan came up next, and she had the presence of mind to actually FORM WORDS to him and have an actual conversation. She told him that Final Fantasy came out when she was five, and that his music had been a part of her life since childhood. He asked her, "Did Final Fantasy come out when you were five, because I doubt that," and she said, "No, Final Fantasy VII, my favorite." He asked her if she had played when she was a child and I jumped in and said, "They both played Final Fantasy since childhood, I insisted." Everyone got a laugh out of that.

We got our pics, thanked them both again, and then sort of floated euphorically out of the building.

Outside, Jo-chan said she'd been close enough to smell his hair, and we decided that he smelled like the Promised Land, or newly formed Materia.

When we got to Atlantic Terminal, they had a gate across the entrance. I pushed it aside and went inside anyway, where some guards were like, "No, no, you have to take the elevator, the stairs are closed!" I was like, "Umm, why are the stairs closed? And there had better be a train at the bottom of the elevator."

Fortunately there was, and we caught it in time. We made the 10:55 train by a ten minute margin; that's how quickly it was all over. We were laughing and ridiculous for the entire trip back.

We got back to Syosset at 12:15 AM. Jo-chan got a sandwich from Dunkin Donuts, while SB headed back to campus.

We were back at my house at 1:15 AM, which was such a relief, when my worry was that we wouldn't even catch the 1:38 train.

But anyway. Oh my gosh, what a beautiful concert, what a fantastic experience. We got to talk to Uematsu-san, and Jo-chan expressed for all of us what we wanted to say to him.

( Pics, of course! )

Too cool to cut!


Squee, squared. Pun more or less intended. :)

Today is much less awesome, but that doesn't belong in a post about things like this – I don't want to cheapen or lessen the thing that happened today by mixing it in with my fannish joy, because it's, sadly, too serious in nature for this stuff.

More later, but for now, I'm going to hold onto lsat night's joy for a while.

This week has been such a stupid amount of awesome, I'm actually concerned. There was a brief writing thingie-bit-of-awesomeness, and Kung Fu awesomeness, but I'll save them for another post.

This post is just for the awesomeness that was Video Games Live.

SB, Jo-chan and I have been planning this trip since around summer time. This was like, our BIG THING that we all got to do together. In the fall, SB wrote an email to Tommy Tallarico (VGL creator) saying that he was also a composer, and that he really hoped his future would be in video game music etc. Mr. Tallarico wrote him this really nice email back, giving him tons of links to work from. Eventually SB got a really sweet, short-term internship out of it. He did some voiceover work for an MMORPG (but I forgot which one.)

SO! Saturday comes along, and we're all peeing our pants because we've decided that we're going to show up to the venue early, stake it out a little, and maybe, if we're lucky, get to meet Mr. Tallarico.

Jo-chan got there around 3, and we left by 3:40. (She was Link. I was Raine from FFVIII again.) SB left from his school and was going to meet us there. Jo-chan and I had a ridiculous amount of fun driving there, singing along to J-pop video game music and generally acting like geeks. We got there at around 5, found a prime parking spot right directly in front of the venue, and headed on in.

As we were going inside, who walks by but Mr. Tallarico. I recognized him right away and I was like, "Jo-chan. Jo-chan!" And she got all, "OMG. No way." He came over to us, complimented her on her Link costume and told her to enter the contest, then he went on his way. She immediately called SB to tell him that we'd already met the dude. SB turned into Rage Guy for a few seconds on the phone there, and then he hurried on down.

Then, Jo and I went to search out some kind of sustenance. We ended up crossing behind the truck with all the orchestra's gear in it. We joked for a minute that if this was a video game, there would be an item in the truck that we'd have to retrieve to unlock a side quest. We stood there staring into the truck, doing sound effects and music for various "YOU GOT THE ITEM" scenes. Some guy saw us lurking around and asked, "Are you with Video Games Live?" We were like, "Umm. Well we're here to see it," and other babbling suggesting that we were not, in fact, trying to get back stage or take something out of the truck; we were just looking for a restaurant or cafe or something. He told us where the cafe was, and off we went. We paid $25 for two sandwiches. O_O

SB showed up at around 6, and we went to meet him, and then went back to the cafe so he could get a sandwich too. On our way back to the venue, we went around the backstage area again. And who was hanging around out there but Mr. Tallarico himself. I had to restrain myself from shoving SB in front of him and going, "And this is my cousin, and he's a composer, and he's really awesome, and, and, and..."

So we went up to him and SB thanked him for his email, and said he'd gotten a sweet internship out of it. Mr. Tallarico actually remembered him, and they spent a few minutes talking about the internship. Then some other guy was hanging around with us, and he joined in the conversation which veered off to things like Hot Topic and how Twilight had ruined everything. Yup, we totally hung out with Tommy Tallarico for a good fifteen minutes talking about how awful Twilight is.

Then I asked if I could get a pic of him with the two kids, and we thanked him and went on our way.

Jo-chan and SB were so freaking happy, it honestly made my night more than anything else.

Some other folks started following us around too. I have no idea why. People kept coming to us and saying, "Can I hang with you? My friends aren't here yet." We got the heads-up that there was a free dinner in with our ticket to the show (hi, thanks for telling us after we spent over $30+ on sandwiches?) and by the time we got to the dinner, a group of people pulled an entire table over to where we were sitting so that they could hang with us.

I kind of started to think that maybe we literally felt like good luck, and people wanted in on that.

After dinner it was time for the concert, which was its usual geeky awesomeness. It touched me, like it did last time, with its reverence for gaming, and for gamers. This concert makes a point of how relevant video games are, and how the music that goes to games has become the kind of music that used to be odes to gods. It's not 8-bit bleeps and bloops. Characters get their own choirs. Video game music can stand alone as brilliant pieces of art. And video games themselves are as artistic, thoughtful, and relevant as movies, as theater, as great novels. They're stories – just interactive ones.

VGL has moments of irreverence and it doesn't take itself seriously either. (Little side-segments on big screens, about the Top Ten Worst Voiceovers Ever, the Top Ten Worst Titles ever etc. [A game called "Irritating Stick" and one called "Touch Dic". O_O ] ) There's a Guitar Hero playoff, like there usually is, a costume contest, audience participation, and retrospectives on gaming history. All sorts of games are included. Big, huge titles like Mario, Zelda, God of War, Halo, WoW; lesser known ones such as Afrika, and older ones like Pac Man, Space Invaders, Tetris, and yes, Tank and Pong.

And again, they did One Winged Angel. ^_^

Oh, and of course, acting as conductor this time around was Wataru Hokoyama, the composer for Resident Evil 5 and Afrika. He was adorable and amazing.

So, yes, this was just a day and evening made of awesome and win and success and geekery.

Next up?

DISTANT WORLDS, THE MUSIC OF FINAL FANTASY, WITH COMPOSER NOBUO UEMATSU. MEET AND GREET AFTERWARDS. April 1st, Brooklyn.

There's so much I can say about Uematsu and what his music means to me, and also to SB and Jo-chan. I could talk about how in '00 we all discovered Final Fantasy VIII and the song Liberi Fatali, and all the memories that go with that. How it led to an admittedly ridiculous and unrelenting Final Fantasy fandom, and all of the things that it brought to me. How, when they were little kids, 8 and 11, I'd set up the video camera in the back yard and let them have sword fights with Uematsu's music blasting in the background. They were my wee little fankidlets back then, growing up with Uematsu as their number one composer, and now they're brilliant young adults still just as smitten with the games and the music that goes to them. There is so much I could say, but it wouldn't even begin to cover it. We always swore that if we ever got the chance, we'd have to go and see a concert where they would perform our music, and if we ever got to meet Nobuo Uematsu, it would be A Very Big Deal. They actually are performing Liberi Fatali that night, so yeah. I grabbed the tickets yesterday. :)

I know this is all really geeky and I don't expect most people to understand. I can't even put it into a perspective that a non-gamer would get. I get judged a lot for being a gamer, people thinking that games are some sort of time vampire, that you get nothing at the end of a game, and that everything you win is meaningless. Just, how is that any different from reading a novel, watching a play, or a movie? You don't "win" anything after that either, except for the memories of something well-enjoyed. What, honestly, is the difference? If anyone can tell me, I'd love to know.

Anyway. Pictures and videos.

( Video Games Live! )

I can't wait to see what pics and videos I'll have after the Uematsu one. April can't come soon enough! ^_^

I've been spending some time on DA lately, looking for fanart of my new favorite, Lord of Light. Being on there so often has made me go back and look at all of my old favorites.

I think about art a lot. I suck at it, totally, but it's often on my mind. Obviously there is art that I fall in love with that is not fanart, if it has some meaning to me or I just find it beautiful or inspiring for whatever reason. But right now I'm thinking mostly about the fan aspect of it. A few months ago I posited that "...with fanfic you've already got an audience who cares about your characters. So you hit the ground running and you take them with you. The character-adoration is already there; a good fanfic writer knows the buttons to press to exploit the fanpoodling love. And that is a skill.

The same goes for fanart, I think. Though, I'm a little less stringent with my "rules" of what constitutes good fanart and what doesn't. That's because—as I've also mentioned before—visual art is a skill that not everyone possesses. We're all taught to write in school, at least the basics. Very few of us are asked to draw. If a drawing or painting is somewhat shoddy or rushed, I can still love it if it embodies something about the work that resonates with me.

Although most of what's on my Deviant Art Favorites list is stellar, I won't lie.

I have three criteria for falling in love with a piece of fanart. 1) It has to be pretty. The look has to appeal to me. I'm not saying that the character has to be attractive, but there has to be something about it that is attractive to me I see a lot of fanart where the characters are too pretty, and it takes away from the soul of the piece, I think. 2) It has to be unexpected. I don't often favorite pieces that show characters in a well-known pose. If I want to see that, I'll just take a look at the canon pictures. (Exemption: fanart for a novel, in which I expect to see the character in a familiar scene – because I never have before, outside of my own head.) 3) Speaking of canon, yeah, it has to be canon. I don't like out of character art. Even if it's AU I'll sometimes love it, as long as it retains the canon characterization.

So I've been going through my favorites, and I feel like sharing a few here which I think demonstrate these criteria in a fantastic way.

CLICK ON LINKS FOR THE BIGGER VERSIONS. :)

As much as I always have, and always will, find real person fanfiction sort of repulsive, and the height of creepdom, I do like real person fanart as long as it doesn't cross any boundaries or turn invasive. Subject matter is everything to me, in art. People have drawn portraits of other people since forever. Here are some of my favorite real people pieces:

( Leonard Cohen )
This one seemed to capture his spirit.

( Jared Leto )
I realize this is referenced almost line for line from an actual photograph of him, but still. Nice work.

( Shannon Leto )
I HAVE NO WORDS.

Okay, now back to fictional people art. :D

FFVII
( Two FFVII ones, because they are tremendous in their hilarity. )
I LOLled, super hard.

( Cloud Strife )
Really unexpected style.

( Reeve from FFVII )
This is different from the usual Reeve / Cait fanart you see anywhere else, as it includes an actual kitty-cat. I think Reeve's face is pretty. This works for me. It's one of my favorite Reeve pieces ever.

( Vincent Valentine by Hwei )
Beautiful rich red, the deep color associated with Vincent Valentine. Every line flows into the next, and like with the one I linked above this, I love his face.

( The Turks, by Hwei )
The symbolism, and the arrogant smirk on Rufus's face. Love the inclusion of Dark Nation.

( No, I don't care to know your thoughts on yaoi. )

( Sephiroth )
Again, because it was different enough to get my attention, and I love the change of costume.

Kenshin

( Some Kenshin ones, for different reasons. )




Lord of Light ones

( Sam as: Lord Kalkin, Siddhartha, Tathagatha )
This is a scene from the battle at Keenset. The artist didn't even have to specify that; I immediately recognized what I had already seen in my head as I read it. Sketchy lines—I love that hurried feel--with beautiful details in the armor.
Sam as Siddhartha:

Prince Siddhartha and Ratri by ~jubjubjedi on deviantART
The rich colors, and the trickster smirk. Of course, and the frigging GORGEOUS DETAILS.

Sam as Tathagatha:

Yama and Sam-colored by ~jubjubjedi on deviantART
With Deathgod Yama stalking him all evil-like. I love the light here, I love the fact that you can't see Tathagatha's face, I love the angle and the atmosphere.


( Leon Kennedy )

( Iron Man by Mel, 2 pieces )
Because she is so mind-blowing with the details, and though you can't find most of her FFVII fanart online any more, I, err, have most of it in a special folder. Mel owns a little piece of my soul. The naughty piece. ;D

Raistlin Majere (a link, not a cut.)
Not gonna lie, I like Pretty!Raistlin, and I like him in red robes instead of black.

X Files

( Scully, and again, no, I don't care to know your thoughts on yaoi. )

So there was my fun little romp through the mind of a fanpoodle who has always had such a ridiculous appreciation for fanart.

If anyone out there has any favorites that they'd like to direct me to, or any thoughts or "OH YEAH, I love that piece too!" comments, please feel encouraged to add them!

People, you don't even realize! Now skitty_kitty tells me this has been out for a few years, and I'm only just learning about it now? WTF, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN OUTO F THIS LOOP.

Starting with part two, because OMG, Tifa doing drunken stances:



She owns it, but Rinoa has the best entrance. Not certain what she's doing with Squall's gunblade however. Rinoa wasn't much of a fighter.

Part four. Summoner Yuna, and Cloud, what the actual hell.


Five, quite bloody. Links to all the rest.



I am amazed at how gorgeously he animates Tifa's Kung Fu. That's a real staff form!

Dude, I don't even know! How did I miss this awesomeness? What the actual frig?

I dreamed last night that the guy I'm Z-targeting ("Chocolate," let's call him - was: Anime Lazzara but that's way too unwieldy,) decided to move out west. I hope that isn't one of those stupid prescient dreams of mine, but it does quite fit in with the way these things usually go. Well, we'll see, eh? Also, spatterdash was in the dream. We were staying at some kind of campus and couldn't find our way around.

I'm not sure if my toe is broken. And I realize that this was just on failblog this morning, which is kind of odd, but I really can't tell. It's all swollen and I can only move it a little. It woke me up this morning by hurting like a bitch. Hmm. *ignores it*

It's gonna rain tonight, of course, since I watered the dry, brown grass. The other way I can make it rain is by releasing birds. That actually brings huge, epic storms. I've never tried washing my car; I wonder if that counts as a rain-dance, too. I hear it does.

Here is an epic, hilarious manga-nization of FFVII that I need to share with you all. It made my day. :)

Aaaaand that's it for now.

So I just, for the first time, saw the episode of Family Guy where Brian comes out as an athiest. There was one part where Meg (who has found god,) tries to get him to accept a crucifix, and he won't, until she throws it for him to fetch. I always laugh pretty hard when Brian barks, but then he started chewing on the crucifix and growled every time she reached for it. Maybe I'm overtired and it's Stupid O'Clock, but I laughed until I had tears.

It's also got this whole big Star Trek subplot. I've never seen Star Trek, but my good pal and brain-mate skitty_kitty is a fan and I thought of her the entire time. The cast actually came and did their own voices. Hearing Patrick Stewart, whom I know from things aside from ST, say the line "I've got girl-boobies" also got some good LOLs out of me. GIRL BOOBIES:


LMAO.

Special announcement! I promised Skitty Kitty that I'd Rickroll her, and now I have. After much LJ dickery and what feels like an hour of nitrous oxide or something, it actually worked!

Here's the actual clip with the interview with Seth MacFarlane (who is STRANGELY HOT.)


MOVING ON.

Note to self: When you've got three treatments to do, do not play PSP for two hours straight prior, fool. Oh man, my thumbs were dead by the third treatment. I still think I did all right, and my client booked me for the rest of the term. :) But dude, that was painful.

So, I started playing Dissidia. Man, what the hell. I'm so bad at this. I don't get that "move the character around the board" game thing. So I played arcade mode and kept getting Cloud killed by some midget. The graphics in the opening scene are GORGE, but I didn't know who most of the characters were (well, I knew, but haven't played all the games) and it went on way too long. Eventually I was like "Am I gonna play this beeotch or am I watching a movie?" Oh Squeenix.

I also got back last week's midterm on Ethics and I got 100.

Oh, but of course, before that, I took my MedMass2 midterm. I had left the house early, so I could catch a few extra minutes to study, but then it took me almost two mothereffing hours to get there. I was actually late for the test, but she (a sub, since our professor is out for surgery,) handed me the paper. It was tough, but fair. Though she does have a way of obfuscating her meaning so you have to sort of think around the words. Well, I guess the correct term is "trick questions," yes, she's got them in spades. The sub offered a practical review when everyone was finished with the written. But I finished first and opted to go for a treatment instead of waiting around. I later found out that she graded the tests and everyone got their grade. I should have gone back to check! But nah. Guess I can wait another week to find out.

Currently I am on FB having a LOLsome banter with Sehing Matt Damon about him being "on the market" and consequently going in the crisper drawer. Man, what? I don't even know.

I should stop eating chocolate chips this close to bed.

Ahh, I have that show Saturday and they cannot download my music! I'm only performing the one dance. But I guess I'll have to bring my iPod and hook it up and hope for the best. I might chicken out of doing La Toere. I want to do a good performance, so maybe this isn't the time to be daring and screw up a beautiful traditional, cultural dance. I should maybe play it safe and do a dance that I already know.

And tomorrow I have to work on my costume, hopefully create a hip hei, and get directions to the effing thing. So much to do! Then Sunday, studying for pathology2 midterm, and possibly going to the movies with The Lady Chrysanthemum. I'm off work this weekend, whoop whoop!

Once again I want to say "aloha" to the many new hits I've gotten in the last few days. Wow, y'all, I don't care where or from whom you found my LJ; please don't be shy, come and say hello. :)

I'm still searching for a good Leon story, it doesn't have to be sexytimes, I just want to read a fun ficromp to take my everwhirling mind off junk. Anyone may hook me up.

Stupid frigging fish tank plants came out of the gravel and are floating around. I have to change my water tomorrow. And finish my laundry too. And vacuum and shop. Yeah right, all that is going to happen.

BED.

But maybe trolling youtube for Dissidia videos first.

Man, what?!

Right, so I'm finally, after all these thousands of years, watching the third season of Rurouni Kenshin. It is as bad as everyone has said it would be. Kenshin has turned into this boring, badly animated generic character, (yeah, even the animation is bad in these!) Kaoru does nothing but stand around, and the other characters are just about unrecognizable. I just finished the arc with the kid Yutaro, some doctor, a ridiculous, unexplained elixir in an Indiana Jones cave, some douchebags who are supposed to be German, a guy with a kind of prosthetic ear, and a bunch of ninjas or something and I don't care about any of these people.

In the first season I was always eager to get the filler episodes out of the way and get to the real juicy stuff, but in this season the filler episodes are the only ones worth watching.

Then it comes to episode 89 and, dude, what? I mean, it was sort of funny in some places, but honestly, did Kenshin and Aoshi just turn gay, because aside from all the obviously air-quoted "doing things" they alluded to, they were, like, having a tea ceremony and staring meaningfully and massaging each other, for real. Which, hey, HoYay and all of that, but I mean dude.

Meanwhile, Megumi tries to teach Misao how to massage herself in the bathtub in order to have bigger boobs. Then the girls beat up a bunch of pickpockets while Sanosuke and Yahiko behave pointlessly.

I realize they'll never animate the real ending of the books, but shoot, it's a nice thought, isn't it?

In other fandom news, I ordered Dissidia Final Fantasy. I've had it in the back of my head for a long time, but I've also had this weird, admittedly stupid and pointless neurotic hang up about playing PSP, because I was playing a game on PSP before Gran died, then I put it down for a while, and then was playing it again right before Dad died. So, that's weird of me I know. And then today I was reading something about Dissidia and I thought, well, I should play it. Cloud's in it.

So, completely unrelated to any of that:

( A series of drawings. )

So, yeah. :)

Yesterday was one of those days that you just can't wait to be finished with. My normally long-ass day was even longer because I signed up for an extra mandatory class that went until 9 PM. I get up at 6 to get there on time, with like ten minutes left over to study for a test at 8:30 AM. I got there, studied, and then found out that the test was canceled. I hate pop non-quizzes more than I hate pop-quizzes.

Then to make it worse, I got an 83 on last week's test. 83. WTH? She gives us ten questions; you get three wrong you fail. (70 is failing in this school.) I got a few extra credit points. The thing is that I feel like I really know this material – it's med massage 2 and I never got less than 100 in med massage 1. It's the same kind of stuff. But her questions confuse me. I feel like I understand the question and I know the answer, only to find out that the answer I'm thinking of isn't even an option. I'm still getting the highest grade and other people are complaining about getting 30 and 40 on the tests. I'm not happy with these tests in general; it's little comfort to know I'm not the only one.

Between classes, my water bottle leaked all over my books and papers. I had to throw away a bunch of my tutor evaluation papers (I'll get new ones once someone decides to hire me again,) and air-dry my damn notebooks. :/

The test in my next class went much better and I got 100.

Then I went for a free massage, which was really nice.

Clinic was pretty good for the most part; those four hours do go fast, now that I feel like I know what I'm doing a little more. I have some nice clients, and a regular who ranks really high in the school. She's the authority in the field, and she likes my treatments. So that's pretty cool.

Then I just waited around outside for that last class. Actually now that I'm thinking of it, the class was really neat. I could hardly think because I was so effing tired and wanted to go home, but the class itself was pretty cool.

While I was waiting between classes I read some more of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This is mostly a great book, hard to put down after the first hundred pages or so. I like the guy's straightforward writing style – he is not afraid to say "was" and "is." Once in a while his voice does get a little repetitive, but that's okay because his characters and plot are intriguing enough that I don't mind so much. I really do love the feminism of the book too. I feel like the entire thing is really, at the core, about misogyny, but maybe I'm just looking at it through vagina colored glasses. But maybe not. It has the absolute best revenge scene ever.

I have only one major beef with this book: The commercials. No, really. At one point he talks about the software the character is using to write his book, and he's like, "It really was the best shareware software for writers, and he got it on the internet, (www.webpage.etc)"... He seriously included the web page for this shareware. I think it's for real but I'm not going to check because goddamnit, just on principal. I wrote a note in my Kindle: "Product placement in a novel? Seriously? With an actual website?" And the 4th wall comes crumbling down. And then later on he describes in detail the computer that another character needs, all the hardware, software that goes into it, and why it's the best one on the market. I really resent that intrusion.

Anyway. Aside from that annoyance and the fact that I'd cut the beginning back about a billion words, and sometimes the backstory is also a bit intrusive, I'm enjoying it and will probably read the last two books in the series. I understand the writer has recently died, which, yeah, that blows.

Back to yesterday, mostly it sucked because I couldn't go a single second without thinking about Dad. I told my Mom about that later and she said she had a similar kind of day, and in fact so had my cousin. My cousin was really having a hard time yesterday too. No one could really figure out why.

That was yesterday.

Oh, how could I forget Wednesday? Hot as hell (it has been all week,) and we did Kung Fu outside like always. After a long absence, and at the end of class, the Gold Dragon showed up. Apparently he's moved to Guam and that's why he hasn't been around and no one's heard from him. His whole family just up and moved. So it looks like he won't be training at this one local school anymore. He'll still stay with the school (the same lineage, same Sifu etc.) but will be training at the bigger school closer to where he now lives.

And that really, really sucks. I hate change. Like, a lot. And I really hate when people go away.

The other thing that happened Wednesday night was that one of my training brothers—let's call him Tsuka—fixed my sword. It's been busted and steadily getting worse for a few years, and last summer I told my Dad about it and he said he would fix it for me. So we were outside practicing and my sword kept rattling like crazy, so that I thought the blade was going to go flying off, and I was getting upset. Tsuka asked what was going on and I told him, and I had mentioned that Dad was supposed to fix it and all. He said, "Well, I have a pair of pliers in my car. Let's see if it just needs to be tightened." Then he unscrewed the handle and noticed that the screw inside that holds the blade on was way loose. So he fixed it all up and reattached the handle. Now, it swings as good as new. It's a little rusty but no longer in danger of flying apart.

Today I slept semi-late (9:30) and then I managed to clean the sunroom, make baby bird food, go grocery shopping, clean the fish tanks, (the small tank is a little foggy again, EFF,) take both dogs for a jog with me, practice Hula for about a half an hour, get another chapter posted to the workshop, and start dinner. Yeah, I think that's about it. Now, I'm going to play a little FF7 and eat some cherries I bought today.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO FFVII MUSIC?! WTFFFFFF What is going on here? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. In the name of Uematsu all that is holy, WTF, WTF, WTMFF?

To begin with, gacked as usual from skitty_kitty:



Kung Fu was its usual awesome release tonight. Don't know what I did to make my left hand feel tight and weak but it does, so please disregard and excuse any typos. It just can't seem to keep up. Maybe I kept my fist too tight.

After work on both days this past weekend, I sat down with my entire novel in hopes of tightening the pace and striking as many passive phrases as I could find. (There are a few. I still have some bad habits.) I also re-did the entire first and third chapter. I swear, I feel like I'm back at square one every few months, and this novel has been with me since forever. The good thing is that every time I make a huge change like that, I like it even more. It feels daring, to shake it up like that, and I have a better time re-reading it.

Is a novel ever complete?

Ummmm fangirling out for a few paragraphs here, this is a good example of what I love about FFVII and its fandom. FFVII fandom is conspicuously low on wank—or maybe I just missed most of it over the years—and I wonder if that's because the story is so damn complicated, subtle and full-on creepy that we're all just too caught up in it (thirteen years later) to start plastering the ceiling about who's banging whom or whatever. For the link-wary, it's a post from ff7_oldschool in which a fan pulled apart one of fandom's favorite scenes to pull apart, the Wall Market arc:

The first half of the game spends its time building Cloud up into the cocky, aloof hero we later find out he isn't, and while we do see cracks showing through very early on and they serve to make Cloud immediately interesting and mysterious, it's not really until Wall Market that Cloud gets blatantly humiliated.

( Here there be fanpoodling, and I say that with love... )

I adored that, so I replied:

All very interesting! Let's not forget that other room, where you can watch Reeve's parents trying to get it on (or not trying,) in the room their son rented for them, while their son's freaky ass catbot watches them from the corner. WTMFF?
...

This whole scene struck me as really taking the piss, because Cloud does come across (finally) as the emotionally stunted adolescent that he is, fundamentally misunderstanding human relations and being overwhelmed by sexuality. His reaction to peeking into the keyholes is a 12- year-old, "WOOOOOW."

It's a safe bet at this point that Cloud, having been kidnapped at 16 and having spent his formative years as a test subject up until the beginning of the game, has never seen any kind of female hoo-haa (all manner of fanfic aside.) Homeboy gets out of captivity, girls throw themselves at him, and his first real sexual experience comes from about ten dudes in a tub with him. ("Not to be rude or anything, but could you go do someone else?") What goes on in that goddamn tub? Why does he complain that it hurts? O_o And why is it played for giggles?

I've also always found it really intriguing that this is our boy's first real collapse, and, like you mentioned, the music. (Depending on which room you chose, you can choose Cloud's collapse and the participants' various reactions.) The scene gets some laughs out of you, then forces you to re-evaluate the hero as a total effing psycho an unreliable narrator, and asks you to pity him and mistrust him at the same time.

This is why I love Cloud and why I love this fandom. ^_^

Seriously, I should just get the entire game tattooed on my back. It's too bad they can't tattoo entire games. You know what's funny too, speaking of tattoos, I keep having this weird reality-slip in which, while listening to a favorite song, for a moment I'll think, "What a perfect tattoo idea! This song means so much to me, I'll tattoo it on my shoulder!" Then it takes me a full second to remember that you can't tattoo songs.

And I believe I've babbled enough nonsense for tonight.

Tomorrow: Doing an Asian Bodywork massage for high School Homeboy (my friend from Kung Fu who went to HS with me,) then taking Sano and probably Haku as well to the animal dermatologist (this rash of his won't quit, and now Haku is itchy, too,) studying for a little while, then the Gold Dragon is coming by after dinner for a bit.

Wednesday, longass school day and HUGE TEST.

Presently: Going to Mom's to watch TV and probably Dexter DVD. ^_^