Nonsequitophilia

I may or may not have mentioned in my last, crack-tastic post that there has been some news regarding Organization Nu and another club in the same ‘verse, Nu Hybrid.  Namely, each of these has undergone a change of ownership, more or less.  One of the Org.’s beloved creators, Savvy (obviously it’s not me) has been just so busy with school and real life that she has decided to step down in terms of her duties in the club.  Her character is still superior, and she’s not going anywhere in terms of being a member, but she no longer runs the club with me.  In her place, Will (who has been helping the two of us run for the past few months ANYWAY) has stepped up (this is also true for Keyblade Brigade).  And not only that, but the owner of Nu Hybrid (who I may have complained about before for a number of unrelated reason) decided that she was not able to run the club to her satisfaction, and after a torrent of frustrating discussions and confusing exchanges, she turned that over to Will.  You are free to notice that the entire Nuverse is essentially run by Will and I (with the exception of Nu-Heartless, the crazily non-canon Heartless club in the ‘verse).  With this shifting of powers, I have started to think about my involvement, and thus dredged up a few memories from back when I was making my newer Nu characters.

When I decided to join Hybrid, I started talking to the owner about the possibility of having a character from the original KH-verse Org. as my Hybrid member.  I had made Galixnil for Org. Infinity (a KH-verse club on deviantART) and since her story tied in to Thomas’ (my Keyblader’s) story, I figured it might be cool to use Gali in Hybrid.  Alas, she was not too keen on having a Nobody actually in the club (since it was for people who were not Keybladers/Nobodies/Heartless), so I just created an AU version where she never became a Nobody, remained just plain Lily, and ran off to join Hybrid.  This was fine and good.  My devious plot was to intertwine the plots of my characters between clubs.  I like stories like that, and Thomas and Lily were basically set up to serve this purpose.  Hooray, huzzah, etc., it sounded like things were going to work out.

However, after I vaguely explained my point for having Gali/Lily in Hybrid to the owner herself, she asked me something along the lines of “Are you just joining so you can do this story?  Do you even like the club?”  And I, naturally, was quick to say “of course I like the club” and things of that sort.  Because I did.  Do.  I still like it.  (Honestly I like it more now that it’s being run by Will and somewhat–no, much more organized.)

But I’m thinking about that question now…and I realize that that’s completely out of line.  First of all, why does it matter if I’m only joining your club to make this story happen?  Obviously I like it enough to join, else I would just make a side story for Thomas where his wife is involved.  And even if my ulterior motive IS to tie the two characters together, transcending the boundaries of clubs, why is that an issue?  Isn’t that something clubs can be used for?  You don’t dictate what I do with my characters, you just tell me what I have to do to join.  If I want my Nobody to have a fight with my Keyblader, maybe have an on-going rivalry whenever they encounter each other, who cares?  They’re in the same “universe”, that’s entirely possible.  Think of it like a big game–y’know, like Kingdom Hearts.  Characters from different groups are going to meet and interact.  We shouldn’t need you to tell us not to have that happen, that isn’t your business.

I like having involved stories with my characters.  Kingdom Hearts did it, it’s fun to pay homage (in my own, tiny way) to that kind of intertwining relationship action.  These ARE, in fact, Kingdom Hearts based clubs.  This should not be a problem for anyone.

And if it hurts your feelings that I’m “using” your club for my own purposes, then you really need to reevaluate what you consider a club and how you’re running it.  A club is meant as much for the members as it is for the owners.  If people want to have spin-off stories using your club as a jumping-off point, then you should allow it–I’m sure you want your members to have fun, and if that’s their idea of fun, it isn’t harming anyone.  If you don’t want people to interact with the other clubs, feel free to put that in your club description.  But Hybrid, as it was designed then and still is now, is meant to be sort of a go-between for all the groups in the Nuverse; spies, informants, double-crossers, whatever you call it, Hybrid members are going to interact with other clubs.

Long story short, that was out of line.  It shouldn’t have mattered at all if that’s what I wanted to do.  And honestly, I don’t actually care that much.  It isn’t even an issue anymore.  I wanted to write down my feelings on it because I like writing and there is little one can do to stop me from doing so on my own blog.  Plus I like proving to myself that I am right.  Hurr hurr.

More later, folks.  Keep it real.

A Miscellaneous Assortment of Content: See Below

I’ve been watching a lot of Zero Punctuation, so I am feeling particularly verbose this evening and need to let it all out, so to speak, in the form of a blog post.  My only requirements are that I must finish before midnight…and that’s really it, just one requirement.

This weekend was exceptionally good!  Really, it was.  I loved seeing the boy, as I always do, and though most of the plans we made were tossed to the wayside due to partially unforeseen (albeit pleasant) events cropping up, I really did enjoy the time spent with him.  On top of that, Alan was present in Cedar Falls for something like the fourth time in a row, which meant campaigning campaigning oh God the campaigning whenever a) we were awake, b) David was around, and c) we weren’t distracted by trivial things like magazines and catching up and Cartoon Network and consuming sustenance.   Seriously, we were pretty much seated at David’s ridiculously large, dining room-appropriate table for the greater part of the weekend visit triumvirate.

I could go on about our adventures–a bit over a fortnight ago we convened for some of the fabled gaming and we had assorted hijinks involving spiders, nomads, and sacred yaks, but that’s a tale for another day perhaps.  And this weekend we tromped around in the deep, dank, abysmal caverns of the miserably racist dwarves (you’ll have to wade through my exaggerations on your own) trying to get their politics to stop ruining our much more important adventures.  Also a positively prolific number of kobolds were systematically destroyed-fled from-and destroyed.  But I think that’s a good enough summary for those reading this (those being few in number and mainly pared down to the boy himself, who already knows of these wacky jaunts into the wilderness, and Grace, who I am fairly certain does not read this often–pardon me if I am wrong, lady).

Instead I am going to run off-topic so fast it will be akin to a jeep slipping on a Mario Kart-esque banana only to slide off the road and hurtle straight into a guard rail, perhaps toppling neatly into a lake.  By this I mean I am going to go through my Twitter stalkees and in an orderly manner complain once about each of them (specifically how they post on Twitter).  More or less.  And as a bonus preface, let me say that most of these are joking or contrived on the spot so as to be fair to the people I am legitimately complaining about.  To translate, don’t take it too seriously unless I write enough to qualify for my high school sophomore English teacher’s admittedly muddy idea of what a paragraph consisted of.

To start, my own character Ez from a webcomic I am starting.  My number one complaint is her never posting, the ungrateful little creature.  I brought you into existence, the least you can do is (wait for me to log on so that you can) post something.

The next is my mother, and it’s really not fair to say anything too awful about her (she is my mom, after all).  She never posts.  Good?  Good.  Also get an icon.

Next is Maureen from the webcomic Girls With Slingshots.  Here’s a hint, she isn’t real.  She doesn’t post much, but she is allegedly still on her honeymoon, according to Twittertime (a phrase that I am making up that has probably already been made up by Twitter or some adjunct, you evil, phrase-hogging corporation), so I suppose a degree of forgiveness is necessary.

David and Finley’s former RA follows Maureen, and to him I say tweet about something I know about!  Stop being so community-driven and witty!  It frustrates me when you mention people and places at UNI and I don’t understand why it’s noteworthy.

Adam West!  Post something for God’s sake.

Webcomic artist John Allison is next, and to him I say your British wit and brilliance is too quirky for my tastes so please stop tweetlogging (can I keep this one?) my page with it. (p.s. please don’t stop being so quirky and amusing, I am following you for a reason).

Ditto mark ditto mark Rene Engstrom needs to post something about the comic she writes.  And by that I mean draw!  Draw your comic!  (also not fair she has been sick for something absurd like over a week)

Seamus of Youtube fame only earns a “stop posting the same thing over and over” criticism (that thing being what Trueachievement points he has recently earned), which is really not terribly bad.  Instead I say to him that on YOUTUBE, he should stop posting Borderlands videos as if your life depended on nothing but Borderlands in excess.

Webcomic artiste (you see that feminine there?) Danielle Corsetto…should…stop being so prompt with her comic updates!  How dare you?

Whitney of the friends from high school crowd should do say more things unrelated to Nicole and Ryan.  And when she does this, I say she should say more things related to Nicole and Ryan.  I never said my judgment was fair or sensible.

Tai–you know what, I give up on the fictional character accounts.  The rest are all Jeph Jacques’ doing and he has been pretty good about them lately so they can just sit pretty and revel in not being emasculated by my righteous (read: misplaced and pointless) fury.

Alan is up next and to him I say post something that I don’t talk to you about almost immediately on AIM!  CLEARLY you are not catering to me as everyone should.

To Marissa I say something like blurr har you don’t post very often gnorr.

Belen, you can just stop right there with the stealing of the phrase “the boy”.  It was I who originated this phrase at the beginning of time and I take GREAT OFFENSE at you snitching it and using it willy-nilly.  Granted, I don’t think you probably got it from me at all, and for that matter I don’t remember where I pilfered it from, but my point remains and my point is automatically right.

Michaela never ever posts.

Ryan, you rarely say anything outside of talking to Nicole and Whitney, but that is not my criticism!  My message to you is that you had best never mention me posting too much ever again or I shall inundate your cell phone inbox with so many messages that you won’t know what to do with the smoldering pile of goo that your phone once was.

Nicole.  More of the talking with Whitney and Ryan can be said, and as I need to save my steam, I am going to stop here.  Also I can’t think of anything else.

Rachel, of the dating Finley and we’ve only met once variety.  I don’t mind it when you post multiple times per day, bumping off anything I might actually be interested in, mainly because you are occasionally witty about something I do, in fact, understand and care about (or undercare, as the word was coined this weekend).  But if you mention how much you miss Michael/your bug/your button/Finley (in the common parlance of this blog) one more time per day, I will leap through the internet in a manner suitable to a certain godawful Scooby Doo villain and eat your keyboard.  I don’t need to hear you yammer on about how much you love him/miss him/can’t wait to see him when I’m certain you saw him very recently.  I miss my boy as well, but I have the restraint to only share it with the boy alone.  I give you a stern look and three Hail Marys as penance and you can go in peace to love and serve Finley in the numerous falsities of stories he sends my way.  I am stern because I care.

Finley needs to post more, post with longer phrases, and (in the real world) actually be around when he says he will be.  Perhaps talk with people, keep in touch.  It is difficult to harass you with our annoying little voices when you’re holed up in your room with sixteen guitars and a personal television set to cater to your viewing whim.  …On second thought, you are going to have to roll a nat 1 on that Will save for us to drag you away from your road to potential shredding glory.  It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it.

David!  Enough of the sports posts for Christ’s sake.  I don’t understand.  I don’t care.  70% of your posts looks like this to me: “INSERT ANY TEAM HERE rocked INSERT ANY OTHER TEAM HERE for ARBITRARY NUMBER on ARBITRARY NUMBER.  Some kind of phrase indicating my feeling about this aaaaaaand done.”

Morgan, my dearest roommate.  All this Nerdfighter business has beaten my brain around with a gaggle of names I will never, ever remember and some kind of acronym that may or may not stand for Do Find That Bread, Alohomora or some sort of meaningless drivel like that.  If you do not cease to cram this information into my ears via constant reminders, I will never take out the trash again, and we all know how many gnats congregated the last time we refrained from doing so.

Okay most of that slowly devolved into tiredness-onset sarcasm, but it was fun for me and that is clearly what matters most (more sarcasm, I hope it’s pretty transparent now).  Also, I magnificently failed my goal of stopping at midnight, and now it is midnight-30-ish, so I am going to hop-skip-jump off to bed before my eyes roll back into my head and I drool all over my expensive keyboard.  Shortly!  I will summarize this post in saying the following:

Weekend was awesome BULLET POINT enjoyed time spent with the boy BULLET POINT campaigning was epic-tastic, people on Twitter should keep doing what they are doing unless I honestly care in which case keep doing the same thing while I leer at your posts every time I sign on.  Love me.

(Less sarcastic post later.  I promise I am actually in a really good mood!  Look at these exclamation points, they indicate happiness!)

Caution I Am a Ranter Banzai Banzai

(Kudos to Xenosaga’s Captain Matthews and his famous hat for my title reference.)

Right, so I somehow managed to not get up in time for my math class this morning.  I seem to have slept through my second alarm.  I blame my subconscious–apparently, instead of making me dream more so I don’t wake up, it just makes me do things in reality (like turn off my alarm completely) so that I won’t get up.  Tricksy.

Anyway, obviously this meant I had some time to kill this morning.  I did not want to sleep anymore, so I got up and checked deviantART for a little while.  And I noticed a curious trend that I need to comment upon.

Apparently no one on dA knows what a straight couple even is.

Of course I am exaggerating, but–well, let me demonstrate.

There’s this meme going around on dA called the kissing meme, I think.  Basically it’s a little blank slate where you have the title at the top, then four rectangles arranged 2×2, each labelled with a type of kiss–or a location of a kiss, rather.  I think it’s ear, nose, neck, and lips, perhaps?  I could be wrong.  Anyway, I have seen a few of these pop up either on the main page or in my browsing of people’s favorites.  And I kid you not, I have seen one straight couple of the ones I have seen.  One.

Now, I’m not saying yaoi isn’t cool by me.  I mean, I am not particularly a fan (the only time I am okay with it is FIRSTLY when it is a canon couple in a show or something…or someone’s fancharacters and SECONDLY when they are cute–which are more or less my specifications for liking straight couples, too, funny how that works, right?).  I think it is great that people have gay characters, just like I think it’s great if people are gay.  But I do not go around making all of my characters gay.  I do not have an obsession with boys making out like seemingly the population of girls on dA.

I’m not gonna go off and say “EUGH STOP DRAWING THAT GROSS YOU LOSERS” because that is not what I really want.  Do what you like, I don’t care, but SOMEONE for the LOVE OF GOD, draw a straight couple SOMEWHERE ON DEVIANTART.  I’m not joking, I don’t see them NEARLY as much as I see yaoi couples.  Hell, even in Org. Nu, half of the characters are gay.  It’s cool to be gay, guys, but how did the organization collect such a large percentage of the lgbt community?  That’s downright remarkable.

If I have to fill my gallery with drawings of straight couples just to balance this out, I very well might.  Come on guys.  Diversity is cool, too.

(Which reminds me that I need some characters who aren’t straight.  I’m kinda being hypocritical now.)

And yes, of course I’m exaggerating a bit.  I have seen straight couples drawn on dA before.  I’m just growing a bit weary of seeing yaoi almost everywhere I turn.  You’re entitled to what you like, I guess, but why is there so MUCH of it?  I don’t get the OBSESSION with it, really.

Anyway.  I should get ready for Maya now.  Enjoy my rant.  Don’t be offended, I’m just annoyed about yaoi art taking over dA, haw.

Ha-HA!

Nothing new, writing-wise.  I just realized, though, that I forgot a vlog from back in September.  HURR I AM AWESOME.

Anyway, here is today’s vloggery thing.

Gruesome Details

Today I got my ear flushed. Or ears, I should say. Despite the fact that nothing was wrong with my right ear, it was deemed necessary to flush THAT one, too. Now, for those of you who are not in the know, this “ear flushing” is the worst possible thing ever.  True story.  Allow me to elaborate in graphically sarcastic terms.  If you do not want to read about the gross-ness of ears, you ought to turn back now.

First, prepare yourself to be put in my shoes.  Your first step?  Plug your left ear.  Just close it off.  Now pretend that you ear is like that for three days with nothing actually plugging it.  You have tried cleaning it.  You have had someone else look at it.  As far as YOU can tell, there is nothing keeping you from hearing.  And yet you cannot hear.  Your directional hearing is now destroyed.  Anything anyone says into your left ear becomes muffled, meaning you get to ask people to “speak into your good ear”.  It is rather like being partially deaf.

Now, imagine that every time you yawn or stifle some sort of air escaping from you your ear hurts.  A sharp, almost stabbing-like pain.  In your ear.  Imagine you are tired.

You decide to break down and call the health center on campus.  You make an appointment, suffer through the day until you tromp over to the building and await their call.  You follow a nice lady to a nice little room with a nice little couch and a nice little computer where she sits and asks you questions about what’s wrong, and you are free to explain that this is not the first time you have had to suffer through your ear being plugged by a mysterious force.  Those of us who have had this before know, of course, that this “mysterious force” is probably a build-up of ear wax.  Yes, ear wax.  And you already know what the procedure is for fixing this problem.  You are desperately hoping you just have an ear infection.

Instead, you are informed that you were right the first time around, and you indeed have a build-up of earwax.  Hooray for you!  You get to have some strange, unidentifiable liquid put in your ears, held in by cotton balls, while the nurse leaves and you are allowed to flip through the People magazine tossed forlornly at your side.  Look at all of the celebrities who have started dating other celebrities.  Look at how they can probably hear of out their ears.

The nurse comes back and tells you she will more or less be blasting ear wax out of your ears with a jet of high-powered water.  In your ear.  High powered water jets in your ears.  Your job is to sit patiently, inform her of when she is hurting you, and hold a cup under your ear so you don’t get drenched in nasty ear wet.

Since your right ear has nothing wrong with it, that ear flushing is rather easy.  You are stuck with the feeling that you just went swimming and there is water stuck in your ears, but there isn’t much suffering and you remain completely dry.  Now you are left to dread the effect on your left ear.  You know.  The one you actually can’t hear out of.

Well, the process is similar to the right ear.  Except that it sounds different.  And you have to repeat the process 8 times, each pause between attempts accompanied by the nurse looking in your ear and muttering about how DEEP the wax is jammed down there, sounding just as surprised as can be.  Each attempt to chip away at your horrid ear blockage hurts more and more because the water is irritating your pansy earflesh, and guess what.  You still can’t hear.

Finally she decides to put peroxide in your ear.  After two more attempts that are coupled with a sound like popcorn going off in your head, she finally is pleased to inform you that you can hear again.  And you can!  Fancy that.  The doctor waltzes in, tells you you probably don’t have an ear infection, then you may leave.  The nice nurse thanks you for putting up with the pain.  Which really wasn’t that bad now that you can hear.  Looking back, the experience wasn’t that bad.  Plus everything is so loud and clear, and you don’t have to hear yourself three times louder than everyone else when you speak.

But it was fun to write about it and tell everyone else about your suffering, right?

Of course right.

Remember When I Used to Post?

I do.  Those were good times.

Wellp, just a quick update for those who are probably already in the know.  Classes are fine, I’ve been truckin’ along with very little homework so far.  My room is a mess right now, but I blame the weekend for that (a weekend that was, by the way, the best ever–the heat was sucky, and cramps and a messed up ear were somewhat unfortunate, but I had the best time ever so it really evens out).  Cans and bottles and plastic bags EVERWHERE.

Art has been…ehhhhhhh.  I’ve been doing a lot of sketching, which is good practice.  However, my scanner is, for lack of a better word, screwed.  I left the power cord at home–all 3-ish hours and a lot of road away–which means I have no way of POSTING these things I draw.  So I rely on my BRAND NEW PHOTOSHOP CS4 and my beloved, battered tablet as a drawing medium if I am working on something I would like to post at some point between now and the middle of October MAYBE.  Such is the life of a college student I suppose.

As for the club, Savvy-dear has started college like the rest of us, so a serious constraint has been placed on the club and the management thereof.  We have switched to a method of Will and I reviewing apps then sending what we think of them to Savvy for her later approval/disapproval.  It’s a bit slower, but it’s pretty consistent.  And since Will and I are much less busy, we are perfectly free to be checking the club regularly.  Slick business.

I could babble about the weekend ad nauseum like I did last time, but I will keep this as brief as it was in the first (ish) paragraph.  It was the best ever.  Hot as hell, and various parts of my body decided to rebel against me to CAUSE ME PAIN AND SUFFERING, but they could not deter my happiness, I mean it.  Hooray!  Four day weekends make everything better, and now it’s one day closer to the next weekend I will ramble about.

I realize I am much more proud of my writing when I have something to complain about.  Mayhaps I will begin writing pointlessly argumentative blog posts just for the lulz!

That’s all for now, folks.  I am off to draw a new character sheet for Xalna.  I shall catch y’all when I next post (which will hopefully be sooner rather than later).

BONUS:

Really, it speaks for itself.  I decided to play Portal.  This is pretty much how I am when I play video games (though I usually swear a lot more–a LOT more, it’s like a sailor wandered into my room and decided to make commentary on my great failures by possessing me).  It may become a series!  We will see.

Protected: An Interesting Phenomenon

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Protected: AnimeIowa ‘09 – Part I

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Good Employee

Since my boss is not here yet, and I have been killing time for about a half an hour, I decided to go steal his computer and babble on my blog until he arrives.  Clearly I am the epitome of a good employee.

So!  Today is my second-to-last day working here.  I must say, it has been a good run.  Granted, I am an unpaid intern, so my major duty was to distract my boss from doing any actual work by talking about video games, complaining about my club, explaining cosplay, and showing him YouTube videos.  My secondary task was to create web banners, and I have to say I am proud of my work.  I am in fact so proud that I have been harassing said boss about an actual paying job next year.  Granted, I would have to do more work than distraction next time, but I am pretty okay with that if I get money out of it.  Right now my only form of income is doing chores around the house and wheedling my mother into paying for things.  Or her just offering.  It sounds much more daring to say I wheedled her into it, but usually she is kind enough to offer her money for my purposes (might I take this moment to give her credit for paying for most of my costume this year…).

Well, he just got here and shook some chocolate covered coffee beans or some such nonsense in my face.  I am off to actual work!