Currents of Time

I was thinking about writing and characters and fanfiction versus original fiction and all that sort of stuff this evening while waiting for the dishes to dry so I could cook dinner! And. I was going to go into some wordy back story here, but really it was only ever one person, wasn't it? I don't know. I know other people's original characters/universes are generally not that exciting! TOO BAD I'M TALKING ABOUT IT ANYWAY. Anyway. One or two people have, on occasion, asked something about Okame-verse (which still needs a better name) and the timeline and overall storyline and I... generally don't have an answer for it! And I (finally?) put the why behind that into words. A lot of the time when you've got characters that you write about, you write, you know, a story. And, the thing is, with those two, there isn't really one. There's no big, overreaching ... thing. I mean, when I write about them, it's just an incident in their lives. That's all.

I do have a universe or two with, you know, actual plots (I've pretty much never posted about them, though), but this isn't one of them.

And sometimes I feel kind of bad, or weird about that? I dunno. Like, how does Okame freaking out this time relate to wherever you're eventually going with this? And I'm not eventually going anywhere with any of it. I mean, yeah, sure, depending on when in their lives I write them, they act different, or stuff has changed, but they're (probably) never going to do anything special or, uh. Interesting, even, haha. I just like them. Even if they won't ever solve the world crisis of doom or save the whales or anything.

I was going to make an allcaps-y sentence about how they're both weird and dysfunctional and totally not girlfriends shut up Jade will kill you, but I feel like I've been seeing a lot of internet drama lately and don't want anyone to jump on me for accusing [x] group of people of being completely mad. Or socially inept. Or dysfunctional. Or ... whatever. So, uh, I guess I won't.


Good sign you've been spending too much time pounding away at a word doc (EVEN IF YOU AREN'T GETTING ANYWHERE ARGH RAGE): you keep reflexively hitting ctrl-s every paragraph or so. I've attempted to save the update page five or six times now. Good job, self!

( And now boring real life whining )

For your daily dose of is she really still talking about that?, San d'Oria took Sarutabaruta in conquest this week, which is pretty awesome! We've claimed Gustaberg quite a few times, but we've only rarely taken Saru[tab] and, to my unending frustration, those times have always been during weeks I haven't logged on for whatever reason. (Oh, yes, this is FFXI-talk now, if you didn't know what any of this was about.) BUT THIS WEEK - haha! So now I've run supplies to the outpost by Windurst and so now I have finally done the supplies quest for every outpost (on Hisime, and that I have access to, anyway. No Sky yet, but that's the only one, now). I took Aya and Ki out, too, since, you know, Windurst? FAR AWAY. And Ki can't airship it, so, uh, yeah. Long trip for her no matter how you go about it. (EXCEPT NOT ANYMORE i love op warp)

Also, it's been over a year and a half since my brother started trying for the m.kris and all it's got him so far is a couple hundred thousand gil down the drain. He's considering giving up and, since that would mean he can't go anywhere (or going to gt a Joyeuse, which he doesn't have time for), quitting. So right now he's trying to come up with a way to make 3.5 million, because the thought of fishing for more marlin (only for, again, absolutely none of them to give a chart, and even if they did, for the fight to them only give us another fuscina or piece of oxblood and a dwarf pugil) is too unbearable. Dear SE: it would not kill you to be just a little nicer to your playerbase on occasion!


To end on a random note, here's an amusing article on why the US Life on Mars was STUPID. Or at least not as good as the original. Reading that has had the perhaps unfortunate side effect of making me want to rewatch the original again.

Was talking to my brother last night, he was telling me about his current Knights of the Old Republic 2 files. He's playing through twice, side by side, one good and one evil file.

Today: "my evil kotor2 file got corrupted"


Well, naturally.

( Related IM convo silliness I am preserving here for my own amusement. )

Sooo. I have no idea how to conclude this post.

... part of me really wishes the tags appeared in the order I added them.

Edit:
CRAP. I just noticed that it's October. NOW I HAVE TO HURRY UP AND DECIDE IF I'M GOING TO TRY NaNo THIS YEAR. aaaaaaaaugh.

Jecca, driving to work. It's a beautiful day and there's not a cloud in the solid blue sky. The sun is somewhere overhead, completely out of her field of vision.


She thinks, genuinely confused: But I turned weather effects back on last night.



Then she nearly crashed the car in horror.




In FFXI, when you disable weather, you not only turn off actual weather - rain and snow and wind and the like - you turn off sky effects. No clouds, no stars at night. There's still a sun and a moon, but the sun's often directly overhead and not in your field of vision. I play with weather effects off most of the time, because some effects, especially dust storms, make my computer lag up. Lagging is not something I can afford, as timing is very important to a thief. I turn them on for short periods of time when I know I won't be in places with EXTREME WEATHER or if I'm not planning on partying. Reference shots of sky, 11 am (game time): weather on, weather off.

I cannot believe I actually thought that. I just... I've never done anything like that before, completely misplacing reality in such a manner. I am both mortified and appalled.

FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR DEITY HERE. NO.

I DO NOT NEED TO WRITE ANOTHER SILENT HILL CROSSOVER, AND IT MOST CERTAINLY DOESN'T NEED TO BE A DIRECT SEQUEL TO THE FIRST ONE. (NO ONE EVEN READ THAT. YOU'D THINK THIS WOULD DISCOURAGE ME.)



... MIRAGE, I SWEAR, IF YOU DON'T STOP SMIRKING AT ME SO SMUGLY, YOU'RE NEXT. YOU'LL GET STUCK IN THE HELLTOWN WITH SOMEONE NAMED JEREMIAH AND YOU'LL BE CHASED BY DEMON CAT-CARS OR SOMETHING. EVEN THOUGH THAT MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE WHY WOULD YOU BE ANGSTY ABOUT A CLOSE CALL WHEN YOU HAVE A MILLION AND TWO OTHER MORE REASONABLE THINGS TO ANGST ABOUT. SHUT UP AND GET IN THE BOX WITH ALL THE OTHER ALTERNATORS.

please dont it would be so lonely if you were all packed up

mirage why is there a spiderweb on you the spiders should all be dead or asleep or something by now and that wasnt there yesterday



There are Hanukkah songs stuck in my head. This would almost make sense if not for two very minor details:
- Hanukkah is over.
- I am not Jewish.


I have no sanity.

In which Jecca rambles an awful lot about mostly nothing.

( This is an entry. )

GOOD NIGHT.

I watched Top Gear 10x4 earlier today! It was fantastic. However, I have an exam tomorrow morning and am about to run to bed, so I really only have two things to say.

ONE: I was completely unsurprised both at Jeremy's car troubles and the fact that the Lancia came through in the end, but for a completely irrational reason: Wheeljack's a Lancia. No wonder it spontaneously burst into flames on occasion.

TWO: RICHARD HAMMOND AND OLIVER = CUTEST THING EVER. OH GOD. HEARTS. hearts hearts hearts hearts hearts ♥


And now for something completely different.

I'd written part of this a while back. It got sent in the mail, and I've no idea if it's arrived yet, but nor do I care. I have been working on it since then, but I am not sure why. This is rionaleonhart (and her writing VARCHET/MOOGLE OTP at me for like an entire page)'s fault entirely. Yes, I am revisiting this. (Varchet is back at his post, for the curious.) The following is not intended to be serious in the least.

( Men and Moogles )

YEAH, I DON'T KNOW. I've no idea how long this will go on, if it goes any further at all.

True to my word, I watched Top Gear clips on YouTube for much of the afternoon (one of them was the race from Italy to the restaurant in London. I love that one. I tried to inflict it on my brother, but I don't think he watched it. What a spoilsport). I think I successfully banished Gene, but now I am tired and must go to bed.

Aside from that, my day was mostly uneventful. ... Well, actually, ...no, I guess it wasn't. I came downstairs to find my mother shouting over the radio to mock whatever baseball team it was that lost a game last night (okay, "AND ATE IT!" was pretty unexpected and funny to suddenly hear that from her).

Besides that, I'm going through MORE BOXES of stuff, and one of them held binders full of things from about 1999 to 2004. All from school, so notes and random doodles and such.

( The contents made me happy! )


... So you'd think, all that considered, that today would have been a good day, yes? No. Despite all of this, I really feel a bit awful today.

( In which Jecca is a whiny brat with emotional problems. )

BUT OKAY! We are done with that. Moving on with life!

Probably about time, anyway.


Tomorrow I will work on "GT" more. Really need to get going on that, since I've made absolutely no progress the last few days.

Edit:
More things that make Jecca happy: this YouTube video. She grins every time she ends up following a link to this video, because the text in the video cracks her up every time. And, of course, the sound-clip from the original cartoon at the very end will never not be hilarious. ("I lactate geometry"! XD)

But I may be going to hell. I cannot believe I wrote this.


The Trans-Fan's Prayer

Transformers, who art of HasTak, hallowed be thy canon.
Thy warriors come. Thy battles be fought, on Earth as they are on Cybertron.
Give us this day our daily finds.
And forgive us our fanworks, as we forgive those whose fanworks offend us.
And lead us not into snipe bidding, but deliver us from scalpers.
For thine is the franchise, and the retcon, and the robots, for ever and ever.
Roll out.




YES I AM AWARE THERE ARE PLACES WHERE THE SYLLABLES DON'T MATCH UP.

Those of you not familiar with The Lord's Prayer may want to take a crash course, but I suspect this was inspired by the FFXI-based parody of it I saw on Allakhazam back when I frequented the forums there. Though the Intro Survey I've had sitting filled-out on my desktop for the last two months wherein I answered TRANSFORMERS FOREVER? with AND EVER, AMEN could not have helped.

I keep telling myself I will post that tomorrow. The problem is that I am a total wuss and also that today always has a tomorrow. What will happen, you see, is I will die horribly some day without having ever delurked, and then people will write tragic poems about it and send them around as internet chain mail.

Also, "And forgive us our fanworks, as we forgive those whose fanworks offend us" is like my new favorite line ever. And should perhaps be applied to every member of every fandom everywhere.

Was I thinking too much, or not enough? Either way, the ridiculously high levels of emo that had started to take over have been driven back out. Victory!

I really do hate it when that happens. Someday I will figure out what triggers it, and then I will not have to deal with it anymore. (And someday we will all have flying unicorns. gaaah)


More GT may finally be coming around! (Yes, that appears to have become its working title, if only because I am the worst person in the world at titling things.) There also appears to be a very odd off-shoot of it crawling around in my head. We're blaming Aniko (again) for that branch, but it was my own Brain that decided the two were connected, so, eh. This is quickly turning into a very bizarre alternate universe. ... In which other alternate universe versions of some of the characters in it have cameos. (No, really. I've already written some of it and it is... bizarre.)

Can I chalk this up to sleep deprivation? I've got about six hours for the last three or four days and it has to be affecting me by this point.

My laptop's almost completely full. Time to back-up and delete a load of files. This is, I suspect, going to hurt. A lot. I think a lot of it is screenshots saved from Final Fantasy XI and those are my memories! yes, yes, I know I am pathetic. I think I can lose most of the random party screenshots, but I am keeping the Linkshell adventures.

Now we talk about television that we watch on our computer!

( Only two episodes left. )

Because I am a firm believer in abrupt and nonsensical changes in the topic of conversation, I am now going to talk about one of my original characters.

( Because, really, why not? )

I actually put Okame through Silent Endtil Hill once. It suited her well (she is so crazy), but I don't think she'll ever forgive me for it. (Though the few people who've read it seem to think the story itself was fairly decent, which is very surprising to me. I have low self esteem. Can you tell? ^__^ ...I'm not asking for praise or comfort or reassurance or anything, I'm just putting it out there. I'm aware of it and I try to ignore it. Sometimes it even works, somehow.


Anyway, so. My department's assistant manager seems to have come to the conclusion that I have no idea how to close the bakery, despite having been there for ten months and closing by myself for nine and a half of those. I should like to think that, were I forgetting something, someone would mention it. One does not need to leave me a note telling me to put the muffins in the case. Really. I know. Maybe she secretly hates me and wants me to know but doesn't want to get in trouble with the store managers for it. Oh, yeah? WELL, IT WON'T WORK! I HATE YOU, TOO!

... SO THERE!