Hey! Sorry I haven't been around much lately--or rather, I've been around but I haven't been updating, but things have been so freaking busy here that I haven't had any time to do...well, anything lately. I've been working full-time at this new job (and it's been wonderful and I love it and I have a post half-finished about it) and then these past two weekends I've gone home to Huntsville (and they've been wonderful and I took Jasper last weekend and we went bridesmaid-dress-shopping for Jade and I need to make a post about it).

And then this morning I got in a wreck on the way to work (not so wonderful), so I have to go back to Huntsville for the third time in three weekends to exchange cars so I can get mine fixed. And of course, this is on top of a speeding ticket I got from the trip to Huntsville two weekends ago (infuriating), and I am just really, really, really sick of making that drive and paying for that gas right now.

And I guess to sandwich that suckiness in a bun of awesome, I am really enjoying Korra and I also blew through Mass Effects 1 and 2 from...April 26th - May 10th? And I need to make a post about that too, but in what little time I've had between work and bedtime I've been slowly working my way through the glut of FShep/Garrus on ff.net WHICH BY THE WAY, RECS WELCOME, but between that and the kmeme fill I'm trying to finish and these stupid car things and having to leave every weekend I'm just getting nothing done, and I am really, really looking forward to Memorial Day weekend if for nothing else but the ability it'll give me to close my bedroom door and talk to absolutely nobody for more than fifteen minutes.

Yeah. That'll be good.

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, my roommate just googled "romance fan fiction" for the first time after a discussion of the kmeme fill I'm working on. WHAT HAVE I DONE WHAT HAVE I UNLEASHED

(I already asked Hikki this, but I wanted to get y'all's opinions too: what's the etiquette on posting fills concurrently with another A!A? They just posted the first part, and I haven't posted anything yet. Should I ask first, or should I just go ahead and jump in?)

EDIT: "They have a fanfiction site for couples on TV shows! Look at this! Mulder and Scully!" help me i love her what do i do

Does anybody know if it's canon that the Tranquil see only in black and white? Or is that fanon? The wiki doesn't say, and I can't remember if I saw it in-game or read it in a fanfic.

HEY.

GUESS WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND IS EMPLOYED AT (ANOTHER) EYECARE ASSOCIATES.

AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA I BROKE 50K WORDS IN THE TEVINTER FIC. It may have taken me four months but whatever take THAT NANOWRIMO, YOU AND YOUR 3200 WORDS A DAY OR WHATEVER. What's still really daunting, though, is that although I knew it was going to be long, I didn't really know it was going to be this long. I just finished chapter five out of 9/10, depending on how the last chapter goes, and it's right at 51k words as if to mock me and my inability to write quickly.

What's wild to me though is that Deathsong, my IchiRuki fic (and for now the longest thing I've ever written), is only 53,499 words total, and that fic had twelve chapters. Admittedly, my style's changed a bit since then--as well as how I actually physically write these things--but still. That seems like a gigantic discrepancy to me.

(Have I mentioned this fic before here? I don't think I have. It's basically your standard magister/slave Tevinter AU with a twist: when Danarius dies in Act III, Hawke inherits his estate & all his slaves--including Fenris. Plot macguffin means she has to go to Minrathous to take care of it in person; Fenris goes along, naturally, and hijinks ensue. It's so dramariffic but WHATEVER, I LOVE IT. I'd love more to be finished with it, but hey, let's not get greedy.)


In other news, not a whole lot has changed since my last post job-wise (still looking, still being not hired). The school has been infuriatingly unhelpful considering their promises and I'm pretty sure the academic advisory office is completely ignoring me at this point. One of the staff members there was originally very generous, telling me to call him anytime and he'd be happy to help and oh, there are so many private practices affiliated with the school that we can get you a job with--PAH. I've called him four times and emailed him twice in the last week and haven't heard so much as a PEEP. I'm basically on my own.

The only saving grace in this scenario is that my parents have offered their financial support if I still don't have a job by the time my savings run dry. Hooray, cocktail of gratitude and horrible guilt. I thought at this point I'd be a little more financially independent, to be honest.

ANYWAY. There's not really a point to this, I guess, but I wanted to drop in and say hello and...I don't know I JUST MISS Y'ALL, OKAY.


Edit: OH AND THESE THINGS. THEY ARE ADDICTING.

ONE:



Trentus42: Not bad, not bad. Your tone is still a bit too full though. Really tighten up that throat and be sure to breathe from the chest. And don't be afraid to bite down on the reed every now and then.

ChapmaniacPictures: @Trentus42 Feedback from master ear-drum splitters is always appreciated. I have regressed in leaps and bounds since uploading this video. For example, I now exclusively use broken reeds and play them back to front.

(i think i laughed harder at this one, tbh; there's something about the end that kills me every time)


TWO:
THIS COMIC OMG how have i never seen this before



( MORE nsfw COMICS )

When I was in fourth or fifth grade (about ten years old), I spent a lot of time in my elementary school's library. I'm sure it would be almost comically tiny now—formative memories always seem to shrink a bit with age—but back then, that library might as well have been four stories high for how many worlds as it introduced me to. I found Redwall there, and Narnia, and Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, and a hundred other places and heroes that stayed with me and shaped me, becoming as much a part of my world as some school friends I had for how real they were.

And if you went in through the main doors and turned left, past the check-out desk and the miniscule reference section that nobody ever used, there was a single floor-to-ceiling bookcase set cattycorner to the others that had that month's featured books in it, and that was where I found The Riddle-Master of Hed. It wasn't even supposed to be there—that bookcase was for new additions to the school's collection and for required reading, and the library's copy of Riddle-Master was obviously old, made of that weird waxy binding that all those old library books seem to be covered in, the stuff that cracked the first time you picked it up and after a few months became so discolored that you couldn't even tell what the picture on the front was supposed to be. But I could read the title—The Riddle-Master of Hed, by Patricia McKillip—and I liked the first page well enough, and even then I was so desperate for any kind of fantasy that I would have tried it even if it'd been missing every third page.

I don't remember most of my reactions to the book, or to its two sequels that I found properly shelved in the dusty fantasy section they belonged in. I do remember loving the series, even then, and adoring Raederle and Morgon and Deth, and finding the prose a bit difficult to get through—I distinctly remember not understanding some scenes altogether—but pretty. But the Internet didn't exist back then, and it wasn't Riddle-Master I found in the major bookstores when I went in clutching my allowance, so when I moved on to middle school I took Redwall and Narnia with me, and somehow Morgon of Hed just got...left behind.

( Read more... )

BIOWARE FIC CONTEST ENTRY FINISHED. I really like how it came out! Too bad it utterly fails to adhere to the prompt, sob. Also, it turns out that the spirits and demons of the Fade are basically angels in my head, at least as far as their relationship to the Maker is concerned and how they view humans/elves. IT WORKS I SWEAR.

Also, class starts tomorrow, and it feels really weird not getting ready for another semester. I have a meeting with my academic advisor this week to determine what I'm going to do for the spring; once summer starts, I'll be auditing the classes the next class down are taking, and pharm starts again in the fall. Goodness, I'm tired of school.

and HERE is a POST about the Christmas party Jasper and I threw!


WE HAD ONE.
ft. a roommate, JASPER; a hostess, QUARK; a puppy, HAMLET.
also ft. JASPER'S PARENTS; JASPER'S FIANCE; QUARK'S PARENTS; QUARK'S BROTHER & his FIANCEE

THE DECORATIONS WERE FESTIVE
    

THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS
        
and sorry, I apparently did not take a single picture of anything we actually served, but the menu from start to finish was:

( menu )
the apartment was PACKED
(seriously it was, we fed nine (9) people and a puppy in our two-person apartment)
        

THE PUPPY WAS ADORABLE and bitey
        

And as all good Christmas parties should end, we finished with a wreck of an apartment and guests so stuffed that they had to waddle out to their cars.
        

        

AND if anybody's interested, I do have pictures from when we took Hamlet to the Christmas tree farm and stuck him in those photo op face-cut-out things for kids. If, you know, the internet wants puppy photos of all things.

Merry Christmas!

Oh, you guys, you guys. You all are just--the most amazing people, and I love you so much. I can't thank you enough for that wonderful post y'all left me and as soon as I can, I'm going to go through and comment properly but first, I wanted to let you know why I haven't been around much lately.

For those of y'all who are newer and might not know (welcome, by the way! I promise I am not usually this...dolorous), I'm a second year in optometry school. This past semester I had a class called Ocular Pharmacology, and it was, without hyperbole, the most difficult class I have ever taken. And the long and short of it is--I failed the class.

I didn't mean to go so long without posting either, honestly--it just ended up that that class pretty much took over my life, and every time I sat down to type anything it always came out "I'm really worried about this one class" and it just never seemed worth detailing how hard it was (really freakin hard) until I had a final grade. Which, as I mentioned before, ended up being an F. The worst part is that I actually passed the final! I just did so badly on the midterm and two of her Quests ("not a quiz, not a test--quest!" urgh) that it was unrecoverable.

And it's just...really, really frustrating. I went to study groups; I went to the extra sessions she offered at 7:00 in the morning; I emailed her multiple times for meetings and every time there was some reason she couldn't meet. And in the end, I still failed the damn class.

Basically, what this means that I'm going to have to repeat second year. Not all of it, thank God, but I'm required to pass pharm before advancing to year three, and it's not offered again until next August. So I have to sit on my heels until then, and at that point I'll drop back and join the class of 2015.

HOWEVER. I have been doing my level best to find bright sides to this situation since I found out about it Tuesday morning. What I've come up with so far is:

• I get to be in class with my friend Rachel again
• I have been feeling pretty burnt out lately, and maybe this break will give me a chance to get my head back into the whole school mindset
• maybe the failing grade will inspire me to do better in my other classes
• I'm still not as bad as another girl I know who's failed out of two years and is now with the class of 2015 instead of 2013

those--those are legit goals, right

Anyway, I'm better now than I've been this week, but that's because aside from all this pharm stuff, this week has been one of the worst of my life. Not only was it finals week, which always carries its own stress, here are the other things that have happened:

had to make up two failing portions of my final practical, nearly failed the CEVS final, found out I failed one of the makeup portions of my practical and therefore had to make it up again, burst into tears during the makeup makeup because I'd just found out about pharm and the professor grading me asked how my other classes were going, had to tell two of my closest friends in the class that I wouldn't be coming back to join them in the spring, got pulled over for speeding after a study group the night before my last practical (65 in a 40, 1:00 in the morning, nobody was around and I'd nearly missed my turn onto my street because they turn off the stoplights at night and I wasn't used to the blinking yellow even though I've lived here for over a year), and the next day, got stuck behind an accident on my way home from school and took almost an hour to go a little over two miles.

It...look, it has just not been a good week.

THAT SAID, here are some good things that I am trying to focus on!

• the officer who pulled me over was kind enough to let me go with only a warning, although that might have been due in part to the utterly uncontrollable tears I burst into when he came back with my license and insurance card;
• my roommate and I are hosting a legit Christmas dinner party tomorrow for nine people, and even though I have no idea where we're going to put everyone we've got a ham in the fridge and a crockpot full of hot chocolate, and if you've got those things I figure it can't go too badly;
• my shopping is done and the presents are all wrapped and under the tree, and my roommate and I are going to sit down and watch It's A Wonderful Life together here as soon as I post this;
• there's a puppy sitting on my feet and I'm healthy, warm, and surrounded by people who love me.

Yeah, this sucks. But life could be a whole lot worse.