adulbae

Why am I still awake?


/kind of sort of works on essay but not really

I made something similar on Facebook, but pffft notes, and besides, this will be an EXPANDED list of many and varied awesomeness encompassing my writing projects, cosplay projects, long term goals, and also the kitchen sink.

[WRITING SHIT I'M WRITING:]

- THAT THING THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MY NANOWRIMO BUT YOU KNOW, TURNED OUT TO BE NOT
- Teatime with the Watchmaker- I swear one day I'll top over a thousand words on it and it will sprout and take root in my brain. Until then, I need to decide between chimera babies or clockwork babies and it's a bit difficult in going.
...and going along those lines, An Act of Good Will by the Watchmaker, and The Final Tale of the Watchmaker (aka Sadfish).
- That story with lesbians and a necromancer with no title which needs to be KICKED INTO REVISION, and have another... two-three thousand words added to it after the cuts.
- I kind of suck with titles? The one I STILL refer to as 'that cat lady story' about the old lady and her magical cats
- NaNoWriMo from last year, wow. ._____.
- River, finish it. Find a better title.
- Moira. START IT. Find a better title.
- Probably more here? I can't remember...

[COSPLAY SHIT I'M DOING:]
- Goddamn you Tora, but Mai (Avatar, the Last Airbender) for ALA
- Kevin Regnard before ALA, maybe? That's pretty tentative, since I need the red contacts and then maybe a sword-- yeah, I'd like to get a sword. And fake blood. (Pandora Hearts)
- Wander before Fanime (Shadow of the Colossus)
- EVERYTHING FUCKING PANDORA HEARTS EVER
- Xerxes Break, Mad Hatter version that I still need to draft (Pandora Hearts)

[SHIT I NEED TO DO:]
- Yell at Bank of America
- Get money. Yell at Bank of American some more.
- Write my 8 page English Essay
- Write up my character essays
- Actually complete some of the art I have so much inspiration for right now
- In that same vein, color me some icons
- return books to the library-- oh yeah

This is Reinna wasting a good thirty minutes worth of her life to avoid MCD60 homework. XD

It will be entirely YOUR fault when I drop out of college and become a hobo with no life or desire except to pay my monthly internet bill.  You know who you are.  I joined Discedo... and it swallowed me.  Why am I applying for a second character when I can't seem to manage my internet time at all?

School starts in less than two weeks.  I have... less than that amount of time to start weaning myself off the Disco.  Roleplaying is great fun and all, but it can't and won't be my life, and I also won't let myself get sucked into the wank and whatever that tends to come along with it. 

Rehab starts now.

On a completely different note, that lesbian necromancer story.  It needs to be finished worked on.  RIVER needs to be finished.
Textbooks.  It's about time to order them.
Possible double-majoring in sociology needs to be figured out. 
Aaand I need to start packing.

Eff life.

It's been so long I can't even blow off the metaphorical dust off this thing.  That's when it's time to reach for the towel.  And so my days pass, kind of cleaning, kind of reading, kind of gaming and lazing and kind of doing nothing at all.

It's not even like I'm bored, exactly.  There are plenty of things I could do (*COUGH Write that scholarship thank you letter that was due over a YEAR ago holy shit I'll do it tomorrow no really I will COUGH*), and I end up making a list of things to do (art, game, sew, read, write, cook, do the laundry...) and somehow lose an hour or five in the time I spend deciding which one of these are most relevant to my interests.  So I end up doing NOTHING at all for five hours, and every day I look back and wonder how the heck it happened.

Useless Tina is useless, but still enjoying her summer vacation, by the gods.  I'll think about school (ugh) when September rolls around and reality decides to reassert itself.  Then I'll have to buy books and figure out expenses and start thinking about moving in(to a teeny tiny room with two other roommates).  Which reminds me, I hope one of them brings a TV.  I want to watch House, and how miracle!cable has managed to cancel itself.

On the plus side, I sort of cleaned my room today, read a book, and will continue with story revisions between RPing tonight.  I like this story too much to abandon it, but I haven't quite found the writing inspiration yet.  's all right though.  It's not too hard to force myself to write.

LIST OF THINGS TO DO:
Start doing art for Artist's Alley at Fanime, or at least planning it
Write that letter, because it's over a year overdue and that's just sad
Finish my commission
Complete financial aid information

Time to get my ass in gear. D:<

... I suddenly realize I haven't posted in like forever. XD  Or when I've posted, the entries are private or somesuch.  Let's see, what excuses do I have?  Er... November was NaNoWriMo, and I'm happy to say that I am has a winnar!  I'm not sure if I hit 61k or 50k (the NaNo website and Word, respectively, are in dispute), but regardless I've won.  And wrote pretty much half a novel.  I haven't touched it since, and I really feel like I should get back to it.  I don't hate it yet, even fifty thousand words later, I'm just... unmotivated to finish.  Even though it's a fun novel.  Or at least, writing it from a certain point of view has been a lot of fun.  C'mon, magickal cannibals!  It IS a lot of fun!  Now if only I can convince myself to keep writing.

December was break.  Lots of shopping.  Only a bit of reading, more Terry Pratchett, but since I could spend days rhapsodizing about him I'm going to stop before I go on reviewing Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith.  I also found a new book by an author I've never heard of:  Breath and Bone, by Carol Berg, which was really a good read and I'll have to review at some point, if only to be able to tell myself that I've written something down.  I don't know if she's written any more books, but I'm looking forward to finding another public library and digging around some until I find out.  But currently there are no fecking public libraries here, and the university libraries (ALL THIRTEEN OF THEM) have barely anything to read for the sake of reading, versus say... research.

Argh.

I need to work on Lace.  But another story has bitten me in the buttock and refuses to let go.  At this rate I'm not going to finish anything at all... >>

Note to self:  Review Breath and Bone.  

After finding out that I hadn't read the Kushiel's series, my friend threw a minor hissy fit and made sure to rectify this as soon as possible.  So now, I have the first book of the series finished, and am beginning on the second book.  Considering that the books are several hundred pages each, and I've been reading them as fast as I can, this is really beginning to cut into my homework time. >.>

Trying my hand at a book-reviewish thing here.

Kushiel's Dart:  (Spoilers.  No shit.)
By: Jacqueline Carey

8/10

First impressions first.  I have not read a story in which a whore was the main character before.  At least, not without it being a tragic 'homg I was forced into slavery prostitution/but that was the past' story.  Phedre is actually quite an interesting character, and while I don't know if I got as much of a feel for her personality as I might have liked in a first person narrative, I understand why the language and 'punch' of the narration isn't as strong as say, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (I love that series.  Love.)  The narration is interesting, the world is intricate and well made, and I like the interplay of politics and Phedre's life as a spy and courtesan.  Oh, and Joscelin.  Joscelin, the arrogant and reserved Cassiel priest/bodyguard is absolutely adorable.  In contrast, I didn't like Phedre's other closer-than-friend Hyacinth, even if he plays a fairly integral part in the plot.  His character didn't interest me very much, and I found it annoying that Phedre kept on sneaking off to tell him things that (in my mind) shouldn't have been told to anyone not in her household or under the direct influence of her Lord Delauney.  I will admit that my prejudice is partially because I really like reserved characters like Joscelin, and because Joscelin is really really pretty. 

On that subject, I found it kind of odd that just about everyone Phedre met was beautiful in some way or another.  I understand that their blood and ancestry plays a big part in that, but EVERYONE in the country looks pretty in just about the same way?  No intermingling of blood, inbreeding, etc.etc.?  Jacqueline Carey, however, does do a good job in her descriptions and these little quirks are more just notes that I made, rather than actual complaints about the story.  I'm reading the second book now, and feeling very annoyed that I won't have the time to finish because I just have too much bloody work.  Argh.





Okay, and along with the good response to Kushiel's Dart, a semirant about yet another book.

Eragon (The Inheritance Trilogy):
By: Christopher Paolini

3/10

I think this sums the whole thing up fairly well.

"The novels feature the tale of a farmboy who discovers a Plot Coupon sent to a wise old mentor by a captured princess, and has his uncle who raised him killed by the impenetrably cowled servants of the Evil Empire. The two set off for revenge. The mentor is a former knight, who teaches the farmboy how to use his mystical powers in about five days and gives him a magical sword that belonged to his father before buying the farm. Luckily, the farmboy meets up with a badass Anti Hero, rescues a princess who also is a major player in the Rebel army, and joins the rebellion, becoming a key member before going to train with a half-mad old hermit in the forest. After this, he discovers that his father was the Empire's right-hand man and he's been betrayed by his own family.

Somehow, people think this sounds familiar...

Well, except for the dragon."

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheInheritanceTrilogy

What exactly, in this book, is not cliche?  And not even in a 'this is a cliche device but I am remaking it in my own model' way, but just reading the thing makes me wonder if I made a mistake and opened up The Fellowship of the Ring, or Star Wars instead.

By Stephanie Meyer.

2/10

Argh.

So I, like a number of other people, have read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.  (Incidentally, this was before its popularily swelled and spilled over the teen reading community.)  It's very popular, especially in some of the online forum sites I frequent.  

And if I read one more "homg edward culln is so cute!!!", "TWILIGHT IS TEH BST BOOK EVAR!!!", "Don't you love Stephanie Meyer?" thread, I'm going to stab someone.  Preferably in the face.  That's what this here butcher knife is for.

Now, don't get me wrong.  On the scale of books I've read in this lifetime (too many to name), Twilight is not one of the worst.  I even enjoyed it on some level, the wish-fulfillment part of my inner self satisfied for a quite some time afterwards, even if my future-English Major part kind of wanted to commit suicide.  The book itself is chock full of cliches up the wazoo, the prose was annoying and read like fanfiction, and the characters were flat and boring, but for me, Twilight was one of many junk food reads I've had, and those are generally not that great.  I read it, got the story, and move on to eventually forget it.


Which is why, I suppose, it's so annoying to find people treating it like gospel truth and an exemplar for all romance stories.  Or even worse, vampire romance stories.  For the love of the gods, can people just... fucking stop it with the whole 'a girl discovers the secret of the homg!vampire boy and they fall in forbidden angsty TRUELUFF'.  Notice how, in nearly every single case, aforementioned vampire boy is incredibly, scarily beautiful and abstains from drinking blood from some moral value or another.   And an even more common phenomena- werewolves finish last.  And there WILL be a werewolf/vampire conflict in the story.  Always.  Possibly the only creative thing I could see in Meyer's novel was that her vampires sparkled.

Really now.

[insert creative obscenities]

Twilight made me dislike Twilight.  The fangirls made me loathe it.

That said, I've been inspired to write my own vampire story.  Well.  Pseudovampire story, since the character is not really a vampire, just happens to drink blood for a time and gets mistaken for one.  But still.  Some of this is because well, the idea is there, and if there's an idea, why not?  But another part of this is because I want to create something that deviates from the norm, from sexy gorgeous male vampires full of ANGST and pretty human girls engaging in ANGSTY forbidden love with aforementioned vampires. 

And that's a good enough reason for me.

Note to self:  Get started on your second bloody story.