Your Chance to Blow this Opportunity Comes Once in a Lifetime

Because it is awesome and win.

(For more, click on the image. Then hit f5 repeatedly.)

(Ladies and gentleman, the entertainment the bird is capable of creating. Or causing. Or something.)

Original Fiction

• Fourth Moon
  • A pack of outcasts finds their makeshift home under attack, and must decide between escaping with their lives or helping defend the land that's rejected them.
• Finding Fireflies
  • Two teens set out on a road trip to see how much of what they know online is reality and how much is merely imagination.
• Destruction of Property
  • Sick of the brainwashing he sees the system committing, a high school student commits a school shooting to get the country's attention.
• Free Wifi and a Ford Focus
  • In a not-so-distant era where the economy has all but collapsed and internet access is cheaper than a good meal, a young woman journals her time living out of her car.

Fan-Fiction

• Burning Leaves
  • Naruto streetracing AU
• Lazy Misogynistic Crybabies and the Women Who Love Them
  • Temari and Shikamaru's first few months together
• Habits
  • (technically can be done where it is, but should be finished for real) TemaShika/ChouIno in the days after Asuma's death
• Sanin Monogatari
  • Orochimaru's POV - growing up in their shadows all the time, when really, they needed him to be strong at all
• TemaIno random hotness
  • Temari. Ino. A shower. Need I say more?
• The Forwardness of Haruhi Suzumiya
  • Someone needs to remedy how short the list of good Kyon/Haruhi fic is
• Avatar continuation
  • (not like fifty other people aren't doing it, but there needs to be one out there that's NOT Zutara...)

RPG

• ShinoHina/Team 8 world (not my turn, so currently not my fault)
• Toph's "No Flakes Allowed"
• Lyra's "Bounty Hunting" and "Don't Take My Son"
• Rya's registration profile
• Ruleset for Avatar: Holocaust
• Lyra's tournament match (not my turn, so currently not my fault)

The official "Has Ly kept up on her writing?" counter

• Last Week: (Was thrown out because Kiwi was still here and I wrote about 15 pages of HTML)
• This Week:
  • Main Project: 0000/2050
  • Side Project: 0830/2000

(Since I keep getting yelled at by people for mixing up details, please fucking keep in mind that this is just my interpretation of what happened.)

Okay, so, over the last couple of months, the DM kept having to cancel DnD for assorted reasons, mostly that she was just plain too stressed out to DM properly. One night she chose her words poorly when explaining to Ko why we weren't playing that night, and he decided she was just making excuses and quit.

Mind you that some time in October, we arranged to have Thanksgiving dinner together, at the DM's house, which is rather small in comparison to our own since they don't need to cram nearly as many people into it as we do. Plus no offense to them but the place stinks of cat shit because of how many cats they have and the placement of litter boxes but I'm just uber-sensitive to that sort of thing D: But the decision to do it over there was primarily influenced by them having a huge, pretty TV, them cooking the turkey, and the fact our place was still a wreck at that time.

Well, when that got arranged, I thought I told Deb and Jer that we had been invited to dinner there so couldn't do Thanksgiving with them this year. I guess I didn't ._. either that or it's been forgotten, regardless, they didn't know until, oh, an hour ago.

In the mean time, we've been struggling to get Ko to join back into the group - hell, he doesn't even have to play, just he shouldn't be left alone on Thanksgiving. Roughly speaking, we're trying to just hang out with our friends instead of actually playing, and he still won't go - literally told us "you guys can go" and sort of snorted when we asked if he was coming.

I'm tired of having to pick sides. Ko's not trying to get us to cater to him in any form, he genuinely just doesn't want to go and doesn't give a shit if we go - but of course I'll feel like a bitch if I go without him, and Sekai may not go at all if we go without him.

Solution was proposed that we have dinner here instead; yeah, he may still just go pout in his room all night, or worse storm out of the house, but at least we tried, and hey, our house is bigger and has more room and a giant island to put the spread on and so on anyway so it'd be nice. We even got the place cleaned up and got a card table and stuff! But because they're cooking the turkey and some other things, the DMs aren't really a fan of that idea, and would rather not do it here.

Situation gets more complicated by Deb popping up asking if we were all having Thanksgiving together. Uh-oh. I explain that no, we weren't planning on it because we were going over to the DMs, but that if we could get them to have it at our place instead, they'd be invited. Naturally I'm already feeling like the worst MIL in the universe when the "but you're the only family we have here" card is played. And I'm just thinking "I'm sorry, they invited us over there over a month ago, instead of popping up two days before... I can't take you guys with us to someone else's house, and even if I could, there's no room for two more, there's hardly room for the six of us... Plus when we made the plans, we couldn't trust you two and Xanny in the same building, so since he lives with us and you two don't you kind of got waysided just so there'd be no drama. But of course now there's drama ANYWAY, and we're trying to fix it right now... DX"

And yeah. The DMs say no to coming over here, and that they're going to try again to have Ko join us over there.

And now I've hurt the girls because they think I don't want them around, when really I just got invited some place else first and chose to accept because the rest of the household wanted to as well, and I was worried about them and their brother biting each others' heads off the whole night.

And now I have a nice (mostly) clean house and I can't even entertain in it because I'm being forced to pick sides again. Because it's too late to cancel with the DMs, it's probably impossible to convince Ko to come along, and the girls are being left with Niban's family instead.

...

Hey Inoli, whatcha say you and me just go hide in a closet somewhere and eat a cornish game hen while our respective drama patches blow over?

(I'm sorry everyone, but I was so close to breaking free of most of my own problems, finally. I have felt depression's hold loosen and it's beautiful - and I don't want to have to deal with all of this until I've finished pushing through. If I don't save myself this time, I may never get another chance.)

Further proof that my dog is just fucking stubborn, not actually an ignorant clown:

She has come to understand that sitting by her leash and staring at it will let us know she wants to go out.

Also, NaNo 34k get. I will catch up yet.

(btw, you can track my assinine progress here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/NanowrimoUtils/ProgressReport/113552.html )

Even though it's a couple days behind schedule, I'm still getting there!

This calls for a celebration!

So first of all, on Sunday, I ran out of gas as I pulled into the gas station. Fucking epic.

Then we had no power for basically a full day from Monday-Tuesday. I ate tuna on chips in the dark. During that time, the milk and eggs got put out on the patio, as there was snow, to keep them from going bad. An unnecessary move in my mind, as the freezer kept things froze and we put snow in pitchers in the fridge too.

Well, I kind of forgot the milk was out there, and didn't know the eggs were there at all.

The dog gets to go out on the patio for a couple hours each day.

Do the math.

Yeah, I don't think Shev's actually "needs to see the vet" sick, but she ain't feelin that hot from eating about 8 eggs and drinking a good two cups of milk from our estimation. @_@() ugh...

(And don't worry, if the symptoms haven't cleared up by this afternoon I plan to take her to the vet. Right now I'm just assuming she has an upset tummy; if it persists longer than the ~12 hours that'd make it, I'll go make sure there's nothing more severe like food poisoning going on. And yes I've got pretty of water for her.)

@_@ stupid puppy...

On the bright side, I watched Star Trek and have almost caught up on my word count. Yay~!

Paranoia, I don't love you. I don't feel like being sick again

And where the fuck is my word count D:

(Sekai may have job at SkullCandy and Dom may at Build-A-Bear with me. BE HOPING PLEASE.)

Or am I? Fuck if I know!

But oh yay, my characters have once again taken on a life of their own.

(If anyone's actually interested in reading all this, let me know so I can go post it up on Lyra Fiction?)

I don't know. I've always offended people no matter what I did, no matter if I opened my mouth or not.

It's as I've said before, I've spent a long, long time hiding my thoughts and stifling what I actually want to say.

I'm kind of through with caring what other people think on some level, if only because I'm through with molding myself according to what others want me to be. I've said it before and once I snapped out of my Kiwi-leaving-induced stupor, I actually started to mean it. If the things I say make people angry, then, those aren't people who should be my friends.

I do my best to be honest and say what's on my mind, but I also joke a lot. The line between the two is usually clear and the only thing I will apologize for is the times when it is not, and any feelings that were stepped on as a result.

I will also apologize on some level for my tendency to talk too much about myself right now. I don't know if it's something I've always done or a recent development; either way I wasn't aware of it until recently. I'm trying to tone it down a bit but I do rather enjoy talking and there's little enough going on and I watch few enough things lately that my choices for subject matter are a bit condensed. Give me a couple more months to get more involved in more things and to get more used to not needing to talk all day and it'll filter down - by then maybe I'll also finally be done figuring out who I, the individual, not the extra-limb-of-Kiwi, am, so that I can stop talking in a quest to learn more about myself. Until then, you're just going to have to bear with it or back up.

So yeah. It's as I've said before - there were so many of you who always complained that I stifled my opinions too much, that I never spoke up and that I had too much caution. I'm still waiting to see which of you actually believed that instead of just trying to make me feel better or trying to make yourselves feel like you'd done something to help me. I say I'm still waiting because now that I actually say those things, I've watched more and more of you grow to hate and resent me. And I laugh because I knew that was exactly what was going to happen. Everyone assured me it wouldn't and that they'd stand by me and be proud of me for finding the strength to step up and speak my mind, told me that I needed to overcome my fear that I'd be abandoned if I spoke up because those people obviously weren't really my friends if they had a problem with what I had to say.

I love how many of you turned out to be "those people" and either are gone already or who I can see scooting away.

I don't know where this road will take me, and while I certainly never want to become a rude person I also don't want to go back to fearing what people will think every time I open my mouth. Well, no, that's a lie - I want to go back to that, I want to just close my mouth and never speak again so that I don't have to hurt anyone or lose anyone, but I also don't want to hold on to people who don't actually care anymore. I want to push harder, mouth off for a while longer, and shove away those who only cared so long as I continuously showered them with kind words.

Having the strength to do this kind of sucks in some ways because of how many people I've already lost, but as my new favorite metaphor goes, sometimes you have to rebreak the bone before it can heal right.

There's still that ideal I've always held myself to - to put it bluntly, "not being like Rika", but specifically it was that I want to be sure I'm looking out for the long term good of those around me (and myself as well), not just what will make them happy at that moment. Sometimes making sure they'll be able to smile proudly a year in the future means wiping the smile off their face today.

Sigh

And that still brings me back to what I boiled it down to today...

I just want to have people who can make me smile in some form. The ones who understand that I'll be able to help them as long as I can get to my knees, let alone my feet, but that sometimes they're going to have to lend me a smile first.

How did I lose sight of how important that was, when that's all I've tried to do all along? Bring a bit of joy for now to overcome the pain it's going to take to get to that big joy waiting in the future.

Gah, I'm rambling. But I know now, at least, and hopefully I've laid down the truth here in front of me. I don't know how many times I've warned you all now but hopefully I won't have to again. The bitchy side of me that puts people in their place isn't going anywhere any time soon - she's been there all along and is tired of being squashed. The part of me that mouths off a little too much when she's just trying to be silly has been there all along too, and she's done with being told her sense of humor is off.

This change was permanent. Deal with it.

Plus the living room is now clean and organized.

I wanna go out and get one more small book case to better organize everything, but the posters are finally up and I completely rearranged the furniture with Sekai's help.

( All hail the nerd room! )

Sorry to everyone for not discussing it with you before I just dissapeared, but I'm gonna go live with my parents for a few days. I'm just way too stressed.

Taking Sheva with me, so roomies don't have to worry about her.

I'll still be at DnD.

Comcast should be paid and if not then have Xanny text me about it.

Don't call me outside of that or other emergencies. I just won't answer. My phone may not even be on.

I'll talk about it when I get back, but really, right now, this is about the only way I'm not going to be going beserk on people.

Well for me at least.

It's a slow, late start, but it's a start at least. It was at this point I broke off to decide the names of everything involved so that I'd have something to work from at the write-in tomorrow.

( I'm seriously novelizing my manga before it even gets drawn. )

So now that I've got Haku (the new car), I'm actually bothering to decorate it a bit. Because as Dom says, "there's no better way to express your opinions than on the ass end of your car!!"

(Yes, I know, my bumper stickers won't change a single person's mind. I don't care. Making someone somewhere smile and go "I'm not alone..." is enough for me I think.)

Right now I have two: "I'm not weird, I'm gifted" and a breast cancer "Save the Tatas" from Torrid.

I am, without a doubt, getting a "Wag More, Bark Less" because that's me in a nutshell.

I really really want to find a half red, half blue one that says "Divided we Fall", but that's oddly hard to find.

I also want to get ~2 of the following:
http://carryabigsticker.com/what_part_thou.htm
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/coexist_international.htm
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/coexist.htm (same as above but less cluttered)
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/creating_enemies.htm
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/church_hate.htm
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/telling_truth.htm
http://www.carryabigsticker.com/never_good_war.htm

Any thoughts?

(And I'm getting magnets all around because I may need to sell this car again some day...)

Okay, so the full costumes weren't really on, but, have a shot of me, Sekai, and Dom in Naruto costumes anyway:



The Hinata and Sakura ones are homemade by yours truly :D

Additionally, I got ahold of some bunny ears later in the night and decided it was fanart time:


XD

G'night all.

I was trying to map some things out to make myself less confused.

It failed. Actually, it might have made things worse.

But it's a funny looking chart at least.



(Surely, OTV is the only answer!)

And I won't apologize for what I did or said, because I feel it needed to be done.

I'm sorry that I had to hurt you, but I've finally learned that sometimes when a bone has healed wrong, you have to break it again before it can be set straight.

So I'm sorry for the pain I've caused you, and you can rip me open as much as you want for it, especially for the hypocrisy contained within what I said and for the fact I likely said things I wasn't supposed to.

But I won't apologize for trying to help you or defend you. I won't apologize for loving you and doing what I felt was right in my heart. You're the one who told me not to compromise my morals or let what other people think stand in my way, anyway.

I try to be she who cares about everyone. My love is there unconditionally for most; I'm Momma, aren't I?

But I know tough love is part of the love too, and that means sometimes I need to say those ugly things no one wants to hear.

But I can't let it out. They'll hate me. They'll turn away. If they heard those words...

But those words are my feelings. They're what I honestly think. They need to be brought up.

What if they aren't, and they're just the product of bottling up the little annoyances for so long that I'm ready to snap? You saw what happened...

All the more reason to let them out. Before they get that strong that they may actually hurt them.

They'll be hurt anyway, by me saying something cruel to them...

But you have to grow up, snap out of it, and speak your mind, fully. You can't keep hiding such a large part of yourself.

But it's an ugly, horrible part of me... and they'll all run away if they see it...

Then do you really want them as friends, if they only cared about you as long as you didn't criticize them?

...Yes, because I fear I'd only be left with those two people if I lost everyone who didn't want me to criticize them. I don't know how I could handle being that alone...



... I'm tired of feeling couped up, of feeling like I have to keep my mouth shut... of thinking I'll piss people off the next moment I open my mouth.

But I'm tired of slowly turning into something beyond Hinata in "can't speak my mind" territory. But I can't let myself be the opposite extreme either, just spouting off whatever I think whenever... But as always, I don't know how to be the middle ground.

God, and people wonder how I became bipolar...


...I really want to try... I just know I'm about to get very lonely very quickly... *sigh*

Um. So wow. My iTunes hates me.

I'm sitting there the other night with all 22GB of music I have playing on random.

What chooses to come up in a fit of Nostalgia Bomb?

Misty's Song.

For the first few seconds I just roll my eyes and chuckle at the nostalgia and the "oh geez, I have this?" of it all.

Then the chorus hits me and I nearly cry. Life is trying to kick me in the pants, really. I'm stuck in a rut of "of all the OTPs to come back and haunt me and gnaw at my life" combined with "Must 5th grade haunt all aspects of my life forever?" mixed with "Oh, is that where my complexes came from?" combined with a hearty round of "HAHAHA YEAH THAT'S FUNNY UNIVERSE. I GET IT. KNOCK IT OFF."

Ugh.

Once again I lament my inability to speak my mind. Me of all people. Geesh.

So, anyone feel like moving in with me, Sekai, and Xanny by the first of December? If not, we have to move.

It's pretty clear Ko is moving out from a combination of not being able to stand the clutter and not being able to handle how "weak" everyone is. I don't know the exact reasons behind it because apparently it's not worth the Great God Ko's time to explain himself to us mortals beyond that he's "sick of all the shit". Given that it's increasingly rare for Sheva to decide to shit in the house and when she does I clean it up as soon as I know about it, then clearly he means the (in my opinion mild) drama.

So yeah. Knowing what you know about us, does anyone feel like moving in by year's end? If not, anyone feel like helping us move over thanksgiving or possibly sooner?

I'm so tired. but I'm so not.

So I'm gonna go try and sleep and then get back up and try to write.

I have ideas for Burning Leaves but I'm kind of side tracked on something genuinely important at the moment, so for the sake of that project I ask:

What are some slang/other words from today or the forseeable future that you think will permeate society and actually be words we use for ages to come? The way "cool" survived and "tubular" did not, what do you see our grandchildren still saying? What will persist even longer? What words do you wish would come into common society? What ones do you think/hope will die out? And what internet/techy terms do you think will become parts of our oral vocabulary the way "lol" has started to? AKA, apply some techy words to non-techy life, why doncha.

Additionally, what do you think would be a kickass monument/structure/building/etc to get made some time in the next century?

Edit: This has already inspired, in the last five minutes, a need for me to perpetuate the word "wiki" as a new term for "nerd".