Climb to the Shrine, Right What Is Wrong

You have to stare at the phrase "whoreadme" for several seconds before you realize that the division of words is NOT whore-ad-me.

What?!

It's getting to be that time of year when I feel at once moody and creative. (To be distinguished from the summer, when I feel creative, and the period up to now [and probably intermittently throughout the rest of the fall and the entirety of winter] , when I just feel moody.)

This summer has been... a fine example of the Ancient Chinese Curse. I really wish I had accomplished more, but oh well.

Current tasks:
-Work more on my research. It's at a difficult point right now, but there's no way to get through it but doing it.
-Place all Nuzlockes but STOP! THIEF! on hiatus and work on updating that one. It's my main one, and I don't have the mental energy to update PLAGUE BEARER. PERFECT WATER had its deadline expire, but I'll live. I can always restart it as a regular run if need be. Again - don't have the mental energy for either 'plot' run. I don't like doing this, but I don't even know if I'll update STOP! THIEF! at this point.
-Start JE NE PARLE PAS FRANCAIS: A Nuzlocke of Pokemon Version Rouge. No, hear me out. This HAS A REASON. For school, I need to understand French. What better way to learn than to subject myself immerse myself in a game entirely in French? *groan*
-Memorize my Driver's Manual in preparation for taking the appropriate tests.
-EXERCISE.

There's also a lot of junk with my various scattered ideas that I'd like to do, but those are the absolute core ones. I'm sorry - I haven't simultaneously had the inspiration and the free time to update Nuzlockes and sporkings for weeks.

So there we are. (Sorry I haven't been on Dreamwidth much. I've been on Tumblr slightly more, but not by much.)

Hope you're all doing well!

I can only conclude it's due to A) illness or B) lying around a lot and not doing much due to said illness.

Pleasant change, but couldn't it occur some other time?

(Either that, or I'm making an active effort to be friendlier and fluffier. I'm not sure which it is at this point.)

I don't have the time for {LJ/DW AND fanfiction} AND {Nuzlocke Forums} AND {Tumblr}. Hell, I barely have enough time for ONE of the above and Real Life.

I don't get it. I had more time at the very beginning of the summer... :\ I don't understand it, though I suppose I should be glad I have more going on in Real Life. Still - it unnerves me to notice that I have to either go days without updating Tumblr or without updating Nuzlockes. And of course I've unfortunately made a joke of LJ/DW.

Heck, I haven't even had much Tumblr interaction except at night...

Oh well. I've people on Tumblr with whom I need to stay in contact, but aside from that I need to cut back. *sigh* I also updated a Nuzlocke, which gives me leeway. (Silver Randomlocke is two updates away from completion! :D) And...

Blah.

( Cut rambling. )

Authentick Memoirs of the Life and Conduct of Her Grace, Sarah, Late Dutchess of Marlborough: Containing a Genuine Narrative of Her Grace's Conduct, from Her First Coming to Court, to the Death of Her Royal Mistress Queen Anne, and ... to Her Grace's Death. Likewise All Her Grace's Letters to the Queen, and Her Majesty's Answers. To which is Prefix'd, the Last Will and Testament of Her Grace, from a True Copy of the Original, Lodg'd in Doctor's Commons

Due to the Will and Testament, it actually begins only on page 70 or so. But it's hilarious. The woman is so full of herself and the points of sleight-of-hand are so obvious.
Screw ~realistic~ fiction, I prefer history.

For a woman who claimed that Queen Anne was a lesbian (with her replacement as the queen's favorite), the intro sure sounds like yuri. *snerk* 'Oh, our friendship was so great that she couldn't bear addressing me as a lesser, so we invented usernames pennames that were on the same level!'
(And should you say that 'well, they had very strong platonic relationships back then' - the Duchess of Marlborough prodded Queen Anne about the charge, not me.)

...Jeez, this is melodramatic and slashy. Admittedly Anne was dead at this point, so she couldn't gainsay anything she was claimed to have written, but, if it were made up, surely the Duchess of Marlborough grasped what this looked like.

Then again, this is the woman who thought it was a good idea to TELL THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND to shut up during a heated argument. Yes. Sarah Churchill in a nutshell.

*crying with laughter* And her excuse is 'I never did anything wrong, everyone's just mad that I bashed Abigail Masham!' Oh man, the chutzpah! Oh, this is GLORIOUS...

(This is a more readable version of the main part.)

What annoys me is that it wasn't as catty as I was led to believe. 'Tis a pity. Perhaps the catty parts were elsewhere?
(Apparently it was in a letter I can't track down through Google Books. Oh well.)
( Cut for some slashy screencaps. )

RESOLUTIONS
-Finish my Nuzlockes, dear gad. *sigh* Give myself a GBA emulator as a present if I do.
Finished Inverse Red. Red Mono-Poison, Silver Randomlocke, and Green Thieflocke still unfinished.
-Improve my art
Debatable, but I think I'm improving. Slowly.
-Do something valuable with math. Need to graduate already.
-_____________________________________________-
...Working on it. Improving, though.
-Improve my work ethic
Discovered that, as I became less depressed, I became more able to grasp what I was reading, work on non-brain-numbing things, and generally think and make plans for the future. :D So, even though my work ethic technically hasn't improved, I'm able to do more than I was!
-Chill out and start finishing up unfinished fics (I am going to become a Grown Up fanficcer)
Hasn't happened. At all.
...Matter of fact, I'm just not into fic right now. I... feel like my brain's developing too much for fic. I mean, that's a GREAT thing, but my worldview keeps changing too rapidly for me to really fix my brain on any fic idea. Literally, it's about half darkness, gloom, and cynicism, and half loving everything, trying to be optimistic, and setting out for a better world. Which is good, don't get me wrong, but... how am I going to come up with any model for a fic-world when I can't even decide upon my current psychological model for the real world? XD;;
-Devise a original fic plot that will actually sell
Urrrrrgh. I... KIND of have a few, but they either run into my emotional issues or have annoyingly unsympathetic characters as the protags. I'll work on this.
-Make more friends both IRL and online
I've made... maybe one or two more than I had at the start of the year. I'm just not that good at befriending people, I guess.
-Improve muscle tone
I... think this is getting better? I sprained my ankle for a week, so I wasn't able to do some of the exercise I wanted. At least my arms have some muscle tone now, I guess. :\
-Lose weight
I have no idea. I hope I've lost a little.
-Generally act like a sensible and intelligent human being I'LL FOOL THEM ALL
Meh. :P I'm actually improving on this front! I have my own motivations, mweh heh heh. I'm more shocked than any of you guys are. XD;; Seriously, I would never have guessed that it would actually WORK.

---

So that's the report.

Overall, I haven't improved as much as I would have liked by now, but... I really wasn't expecting the improvement in worldview to the extent that it has taken place, and that's slanted my plans a ton off of what I'd expected they'd be. My brain's developing. I'm feeling better. I'm looking forward to my future, even if it's going to be more chaotic than I'd like for a while to come.

The fine details... are being worked on. *sweatdrop* I'm trying to deal with my attentional issues through discipline, but it's an upwards battle. My emotional stability is... highly variable, but I'm at least in good enough shape to fix it up. (Provided I can prevent events that legitimately throw me off-course from happening or ameliorate their effects when they do.) I have trouble getting myself to do everything I should be doing, but I've ALWAYS had trouble with that, and at least the distractions are increasingly Other Things Getting Done rather than just mindless avoidance of work. I suppose I should make lists - with my brain more active, To-Do Lists might finally be more than commands to myself that I write down and forget to follow...

So, in summary, things have gotten better. It's just that... in getting better... I've realized how far I have to go. :\ Eesh. ...Well, I had to realize it sometime, I guess.

...It's good. I'm dissatisfied with how I am now, but... at the same time, I feel like I'm really living. And, when I say "dissatisfied", I mean that I'm going to CHANGE to become more satisfactory to myself (and am taking steps towards accomplishing that goal), rather than being convinced that I'm going to be a permanent failure and there's no hope for anything in the long-term, no matter what I do. And that change is... very pleasant. Believe me.

Well. Wish me luck? :);;
(And good luck to anyone else in their endeavors! Wishing you the very best of luck in all your achievements and actions!)

Le prix pour une année complète est la somme des prix de chaque volume - Frais de port non compris - Se renseigner auprès de la SMF
What even is that? "The price for one complete year is the sum of the price[s] for each volume - ???? not comprised - ???? of the SMF"?

*looks up on Google Translate*

The price for a full year is the sum of the price of each volume - Shipping not included - inquire at the SMF

Oh, "Frais de port" was an idiom for SHIPPING. :D ...I really need to work on my French. :\ At least I got the (really easy) opening sentence.

Actually, this French math site is really useful. It has French AND English versions of abstracts, so I can brush up on my French math vocabulary while I muddle around. :D Yaaay, today won't be totally wasted! Even if my brain is.

I had no idea Weezing had such a high BST. I mean, it's actually a reasonable Pokemon if you don't completely botch its use like the in-game trainers do. I never realized it could learn freaking THUNDERBOLT.

I didn't know Houndoom's Sp. Atk was that high, either.

This isn't going to be related to anything for a while - I just wanted to note that because I was actually looking at the stats. Huh.

For those interested in the details, it happens exactly one day a month, worsens in the evening, and often tires me out unusually early. And then I feel like crud warmed over for the morning after, but I'm fine after that. I honestly don't know if the tiredness is part of the [headache] or just that I have a low pain/frustration tolerance and get tired out by the stress of having it.

It's not even a headache so much as a stabbing pain around the back of my left eye. I am certain it's not a PHYSICAL issue because it only occurs ONE DAY a month, it doesn't affect vision at all, and the pain level varies depends upon light levels and such. And one-sided severe eyestrain would be awfully strange. (In context, I USED to have much better vision in my right eye than my left, but now I'm nearsighted to the same degree in both.)

I SUSPECT it's a mild, mild, mild migraine due to the eye-watering and nose-clogging side effects, plus the unilateral nature of the headache. And the monthly occurrence points towards a hormonal trigger.
(Also, if I can convince the nerves to stop being in pain for a short time, the sensation in that area is... weird. I don't know how to describe it. Like... it FEELS like I'm holding my left eye open wider than normal, even though, when I check it in the mirror or a quick selfie, my left eyelid is in fact slightly drooping.

This strange sensation is common to every instance of the monthly headache, and is in fact a precursor to the actual pain. I don't get it. If I have to physically pinpoint what's going on, I suppose it's that, when I raise my eyebrow with emphasis on the part to the side of the face, it's usually hooked up to the eyelid - you know, you raise your eyebrow and your eye gets wider? But on the left side, during these headaches, it's detached. If I want to widen the left eye, I have to use the muscles more towards the middle of the face. And, before you ask, the muscle that would ORDINARILY be involved in raising the eyelid when raising the eyebrow... is one of the ones that's hurting, yes. So it reeks of a neurological glitch fueled by a hormonal surge/drop rather than any intramuscular cause.

To articulate, I suppose THAT annoys me as badly as the actual pain, and doubly so when that area IS in pain. It just doesn't FEEL right, and it continues to monopolize some mental attention all through the duration of the irritating thing. Probably what tires me out, in the long-term...)

Anyway, I'm just complaining about it because it annoys me. Sympathies unneeded. Just trying to explain, in part, why I might be absent from my normal internet-addiction tonight. *grumbles and slouches off to do something productive while some mercifully small part of my neurology is malfunctioning on me*

I'm doing pretty well. Sorry if I haven't been active much, but Tumblr has been eating my brain. And only my mortal soul, fortunately - I have a couple of these buggers for safety reasons. ;) *points to immortal soul stashed away in a corner and quickly throws a tarp over it again*

Anyway, I have a reasonable amount on my plate. Research project, another research project (which I need to finish up), an in-class talk I need to give by the end of the semester...

On the fandom side, I've essentially abandoned my other Nuzlocke runs while constantly updating STOP! THIEF! I... just haven't had the energy for everything else. Ditto for sporkings and other projects. Mostly, on the creative side, I've been trying to unscrew my own head. (Which is going really well, actually! I'm feeling so much better than I have for a long time. It's just rough going while it's going on, and I'm too busy trying to adjust to it to really have the brains to do anything working out from it. :D;;)

Anyway, when things are more together, I should be more active. Hope you're all doing well!

Dragons don't have that horde just for shits and giggles.

It's to pay off any knights who might come wandering around.

'All right, then, I know what the king's promised you, but I'm SURE you'll take a discount in light of the quite-likely possibility that I would reduce you to a smoldering pile of cooked meat inside your half-melted armor if we DID battle... come on, my good fellow, let's settle down to haggling...'

...of stimulus.

So I deaden myself because... I'm resigned to the world already being deadened, and so I choose not to disappoint myself.

It's also because I just couldn't take negative stimulus when I was younger. I'm getting more of an actual tolerance as I get older, as opposed to just blocking it out or having my emotions shut down, so I no longer need the coping mechanisms to the same extent... but I do need to remember they're there in order to switch them off.

(Also, now that I actually know the difference between true tolerance for pain and a faked "tolerance"? I am doubly convinced that "taking things in stride" is:
A) a learned skill;
B) a skill taking a surprising amount of time and directed effort to learn;
C) a skill that cannot be learned while one is in acute pain;
D) a skill that must derive from one's inner values and one's personal goals, motivations, and efforts;
E) not something one can spontaneously acquire just because a sanctimonious authority figure is lecturing one about it while one is sobbing one's guts out.
Not that I would know anything about E, now would I?
I'm sorry if I've gotten annoyingly petty about certain issues recently, and I know I have [on Tumblr, at least], but my self-righteousness increases as my amount of spine increases. Sorry, still not sure how to moderate that, guardians_song.exe is still in the debugging process.

To TL;DR the reason behind this proportionate increase in self-righteousness, I believe certain kinds of ignorance are malicious. Viewed objectively, I cannot forgive unrepentant, proud malice. And the more spine I get, the less I make excuses for myself and others.

I can be less tetchy about it, but I think that probably won't happen until I get through the first round of venting - at which point my discomfort with outright redundancy and going around in circles will take over. That may take a while. Sorry for being pissy in the meantime, guys. D:)

Anyway - yippee, it's a magical world out there, Hobbes, let's go exploring. Just need to figure out the correct way in which to phrase it.

And to figure out how I'll get my brain to shut off at night so I don't start up my computer because I can't sleep for hours on end after midnight. :P D| Well, that's how life goes...

(No, it's not electronic lighting. I have the occasional so-tired-but-can't-sleep fit even in the absence of electronics. Probable bad brain wiring. Just have to learn to circumvent it.)

Tumblr is useful for encouraging me to do something.

Anyway, it's fun enough once you stop expecting it to have features it simply doesn't have. Anyone want to date Abel the Overleveled Cavalier? Good prospects for promotion!

More seriously, it's fun enough. Nobody has personalities, but some of them do have good stats. :P (Also, I'm playing the easy difficulty, so I'm using the occasional terrible unit with no regrets. It's nice to play an FE without stats on your mind.)

Lena is awesome, Barst is awesome, Caeda is awesome, Merric and Julian are... eeeeeehhhh, Marth is... Eliwoodish, Knights are always good, and Abel is Highly Able. *dodges rotten tomatoes*

Actually, it's good that they have no personalities. I've been craving Dragon Warrior III, and went to the point of downloading the ROM, but this nicely satisfies my gaming-with-units-with-faces-but-no-brains-to-speak-of needs. :P

(I wish the units had more personality, though. Caeda/Marth or Caeda/Roger would be nice.
I also wish I had some talent at filling FE Kink prompts. So much potential, but... gah, writing's too hard...)

Hm. Should probably figure out how to write fluff, given the amount of it that I read.

S'pose the issue is that I prefer to write fics motivated by Teh Dramaz, and fluff usually isn't very... dramatic.

Nonetheless, wrote a Kjelle/Severa S Support. ...Writing quality, what writing quality. >_> *insert tsunning noises in the distance* Might as well limber up the fic-writing muscles...

('S just that I've begun to notice that everyone and their electric rodent can write fluff and I have essentially... zero experience there. So! Time to widen my repertoire!)

Had a weird dream, which goes somewhat as follows:

( ...So apparently this one (fictional) game's plot was that Peter Parker's powers as Spiderman would awaken after he was beaten up by a giant mutant caterpillar-monster... )

They're dumb, structured activities based around relatively simple graphics that keep my brain working. Logic puzzles... just seem more mind-numbing than mind-activating, sad to say. Dunno why. :\

Wrote a bunch of silly Legend of Dragoon AU character-studies. They were something to do while I was running experiments in SAGE. Actually weren't that silly, since they were introspective angst with various characters stuffed into the role of the Black Monster (Shirley, Belzac, and a forcibly-humanized Michael), but the premises were just WTF. (If I ever posted them on AO3 or whatever, I'd have to fill them out with Zieg, Damia, and Syuveil also navel-gazing. Kanzas would enjoy the job too much, it would be redundant.)

Hm... Legend of Dragoon really has a lot of moving parts, doesn't it? It's hard to see, because the plot is wired so that it all seems to jangle along together, but there's many things that could be switched around while leaving the overall structure intact. Pity the damn thing essentially has no fandom, because it's a horribly underappreciated game. Horribly-translated too, which probably doesn't help, but horribly underappreciated.

If I ever get famous in anything resembling a creative capacity, remind me to obnoxiously advertise it on my homepage. That and Magi-Nation.

<would have posted this earlier, but had to take a nap; more on this in a moment>

Remoillent the Kabutops continues to be impressive. I'm never going to underestimate the Kabuto line again.

I had an interesting dream last night about zombies, but there's not much to say about that. The main unusual things were that the zombies could conspire, that they didn't look undead, and that there was a cult dedicated to worshiping the zombies and viewing their takeover as a good thing. The leader of said cult was a vampiric energy ball that could be drowned out by enough scorn and rejection, which was probably metaphorical. I read a lot of anti-Scientology stuff these days...

Anyway... yeah. Nothing much. It's been a 'productive' weekend, in that I've actually run some code (on the real-life side) and updated my Nuzlocke runs (on the online-life side), but I wish I'd gotten more done.

Sorry that I haven't been active much on the fandom side, but I've just had... no inspiration for fanfiction, pretty much. Zip. Nada. Zero. Wrote a bit of badfic, but not enough to post. Hormones have been hitting me over the head with alternate wangstbucketry and horniness, and I've been feeling tired due to a 72-hour bug or so, so my brain's just not feeling particularly productive. :P
(That, or I've been doing more thinking due to said wangstbucketry and horniness than the level to which my brain is accustomed. Entirely possible.)

At any rate, HabitRPG is useful for reminding me of things which I should be doing. So I have that to help me go about my daily tasks, at least.

...Oh, yeah, at some point I wanted to become ambidextrous. Hm. Even I don't remember half of what I schedule for myself on this thing. *perennially absent-minded*

You learn something new every day.

Doesn't stop me from using it as one...

(In all seriousness - I strongly dislike the post-an-entry layout and am exceedingly grateful I can base myself out of Dreamwidth and just check for LJ comments... but it's quite convenient for Nuzlocke runs. >_> *whistles innocently*)

I feel old.

______

Beginning to do checklists! I have a mental... glitch regarding completing things or doing things past a certain point, so I'm writing stuff out so as not to be such a coward any more.

( Rambling about life and such. )

Doublepost issues, y'know.

Anyway, I managed to defeat her despite her carrying literally the worst Pokemon possible for my team as her ace. Thank heavens for screwed-up AI.

After her, it's the Elite Four, and then I can opt into Kanto or opt out of it as I please.

I should probably do Mono-Poison. It's not that the run itself is hard, it's that typing up all the dialogue wears on my nerves. Meh...

At least I beat Clair. After these two runs, if I do ANYTHING in Gens I+II, it will be a Yellow Rocketlocke (with Pikachu allowed) -> a Gold Rocketlocke [-> an Emerald Rocketlocke?], a MonoPoison Silver [->MonoPoison Sapphire], and a Vietnamese Crystal run. (For the Rocketlockes, I'll be playing with Absolute Promotion Clause on, so no Meowths for me in Gen II - so I lose nothing by playing in Gold.)

For the Rocketlockes, I'll be catching whatever comes up first on the route and using whatever's allowed, so I don't need to check locations. I know I'll get loads of Rattatas (/Poochyenas for Emerald), so I'll at least be able to start the game. (And heaven help me if I end up doing a Rattata (/Poochyena)-only run...)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to compile Poison-type locations from these two FAQs.

( Of glitches and dummied-out areas... )

*laughing my head off* It is like Babelfish gone horribly wrong. I think I read something about catching Bella's rear end with her hair.

...Oh, that was "hidden behind an easel", according to Google Translate. See, that is all you need to know about my French vocabulary.

There is also a lot of face-touching, so Twilight is really the same in every language.

This is really quite educational, but oh dear. Now I'm feeling very sympathetic towards people who don't have English as their first language. :D;;

(Seriously, it... does take a lot of mental energy. The clearest sentence I can make out with my minimal knowledge is "Ah," responded simply the vampire. That, and -

Summary: Alice paints Bella. Bella is not with Edward and Alice is not with Jasper.
NDA 1: Nothing is mine about the characters of Twilight... What a pity about Alice. ^_^
NDA 2: To my beautiful lover who seduced me by not drawing me (???). This is for you.)

I mean, WITHOUT looking at Google Translate, I look at the following sentence and see:
Le premier jour, Alice avait été frappée par l'odeur de Bella.
The first day, Alice was being a frappé for the odor of Bella.
Google says... The first day, Alice was struck by Bella's scent.
That's it, I REALLY need to work on my French vocabulary.

( Rambling. )

Also, jiggle up a random number and check out these get-a-prompt memes!
HC Meme
Angst Meme
Three Types of Love Meme

Hope you're all doing well!

So there is a meaning to that 'Gym Badges increase stats' stuff in the earlier generations. Who knew?

Interesting tips on drawing.
How Does It Feel to Be in Flow?

Completely involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
Knowing that the activity is doable – that skills are adequate to the task.
A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, our sin to pass by in minutes.
Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.

( And now for whining. Slight TMI warning. )

And... uuuuuh. Um. Soooo, this is a famous Christian poem, and...

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!—
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me—
A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

-St. John of the Cross

...no one noticed it was a gay love poem?

People were really rather... denser back in the 16th century, weren't they?

(Yes, yes, symbolism and spiritualism and so on and so forth... but no one ever spoke up and said 'Uh, the Captain Obvious interpretation is St. John of the Cross/Unknown Male'? Really? Dang...)

I've just been on the Nuzlocke Forums for a bit. I'm doing a Nuzlocke of a randomization of Pokemon Silver and a Nuzlocke of a type-effectiveness-reversal hack of Pokemon Red.

Emotionally, I'm mildly erratic but shaping up. Priorities, priorities. Priorities include... not writing right now, figuring out what's going on in this bloody paper, running the code, and squeezing in the Nuzlockes when I have time. I've begun to think that strategic gaming boosts my brain temporarily, if only because I'm engaging in an analytical task with a guaranteed reward loop.

Oh well. Off to continue working.


( Oneword.com:  )

Character Interests Generator
Random Outfit Creator
First Name Generator / Surname Generator
Teen Generator - Anime Edition
Town Generator

( Cut for results. )

Interesting results, eh?