TS Claudette is headed straight for us lolz so I won't be on much longer. But I had to post about this because I was amused by it.

At one point in the movie when Ponyo uses her magic there's this big epic music cue called "Flight of Ponyo". The violin motif behind the horns in it was somehow extremely familiar to me, and the whole time I was listening to it I just knew I'd heard something like it before. Came home, got the soundtrack just to listen to that track again... and I realize it's a take-off of "The Ride of the Valkyries", with cheerier horns.

This is funny because, while the little boy named the goldfish girl Ponyo, her father had already given her a name: "Brunhilde", the name of a Valkyrie. I choose to assume this means that Fujimoto, who was already awesome, is also into opera.

Gotta say I didn't expect a Wagner reference in this film, so that was cool.

Drew some pictars

Crap sketch of Sydney

Lahrun for Cathy

I have quite a block right now. Want to draw my own characters but as usual I'm not feeling it. So I did these, instead, then vacuumed the hell out of my room and the living room and cleaned up a bunch of my school junk that was still laying around, including enough papers from writing class to build a small house. I have extra copies of my stories, but I don't want to throw them away because I'm paranoid.

Other than that, I'm still basically living in Lea Monde even when the console is shut off. Second play is so easy with all my awesome weapons but I'm missing 2% of the map and I don't know where it is... sob

Playing this game is a life-altering event

If you're reading a piece of fiction written in first person and the narrator of the story dies at the end, do you buy into it, or just roll your eyes?

What if it's written in present tense?

Is it all about execution?

Help me out, here.

My short story is due next Monday. Noooo

I keep writing about three paragraphs and then getting stuck and I am starting to PANIC NOW.

This always happens to me and it always strikes me as ridiculous. The sheer volume of characters I have to write about is so huge, and a good deal of their life stories are clearly delineated already. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to write about them.

Oh, and about Watchmen. I really enjoyed it while watching it in spite of the excessive (and I mean excessive) gore. But after I got out of the theatre I started thinking that there were lots of things I didn't like about it so much. The soundtrack was sometimes awkward, the actual score was mostly garbage, and holy shit, the violence is so absurd. I mean, the graphic novel was plenty violent already, but now Dr. Manhattan kills people by exploding them into entrails and blood and bones that stick to the ceiling instead of vaporizing them like he did originally? It does drive home his complete detachment from humanity, but that was obvious enough to begin with and there's a point when violence just becomes as silly and pointless as it is in anime (which also reminds me that I'm very, very tired of anime physics in live action film, end tangent).

And there was nothing interesting or artistic about the sex scenes; they were just soft core porn.

And Rorschach seemed more "just" and sympathetic than he probably ought to be.

But it was good, and I'll go see it again.

Edit: Time to leave the Disgaea info communities again it seems! Goddamn RP advertisements.

I have never played Pokemon, and I come to you with a question:

Which Pokemon game for the GBA is the most fun?


P.S. Here is a WIP. His arm is too long, argh

Fuckin' amateurs.

( Cut for super-opinionated music post )

Also I am hating Eminence and Blizzard for today, Echoes of War has NOTHING from the original Diablo or Warcraft II, it's all stuff from these games I haven't played. Whyyyy

Probably not going to get more paid time here unless I end up seeing ads all over, it's just silly at this point.

Painting class is weird. Oh yeah and here's an image I did for a big KofK contest.



Classwork

• Painting - viewfinder image sketches; assign color schemes
• VBasic.NET - Chapters one and two + exercises, programming assignment 1
• Comp. Imaging - 12 geometric design thumbnails
• CRW - free verse poem draft (work ahead if possible)

• Contest entry concept for Song
• Laundry and cleaning
• Set up commissions at dA

fgsfds so busy

I need to stop drawing other people's characters all the time.

It's not like I lack concepts for my own characters or something...

Stolen from ishicat.

( Gaming Meme )

I've done quite a number of drawings since the last post, but I am not finished with them yet. I'll go into more detail about them later; for now, the WIPs are all on Photobucket here. (The character is not mine, just so you know.)

For some reason I am little depressed about my art lately, but when I look at it objectively the amount of improvement I see from even last year is very encouraging to me. It may be that drawing anime crap doesn't make me more technically skilled as an artist, but drawing inane commissions of other people's characters is still far better than not drawing at all. For so long, I spent too much time agonizing over how important it is that I make these complicated, epic hi-res paintings that I never even start working on out of pure creative terror, instead of just working. The fact is, when it comes to staying "in shape", art is no different from writing; if a writer doesn't actually write, he'll never get any better. In both professions, even if what you're producing is garbage, you're still taking the steps, which is sometimes the only thing you can do. The leaps, I have found, tend to occur on their own.

But I am paralyzed by a blank page. I want the thing I place upon it to be perfect right away, and that's not how it works with this stuff. It's a process. I need to learn this-- not just know it intellectually, but learn it instinctively, so that the moment my evil inner perfectionist starts mumbling about how it needs to be just so, I can tell it to can it, move over and let me work.

( Obligatory gaming ramble )

I can't even remember what I asked for as a Christmas present, and there is a present for me beneath the tree. It will be a surprise, I suppose. And those are nice, sometimes.

( Cut for bigass image )

I beat Disgaea 3 the other day but it turns out I got one of the extra endings instead of the normal one, so I'm going to play through it again. Also kind of stuck since I can't find the pirates I need or the ticket vendor and my equipment can't stand up to Baal, who killed my level 9999 characters decked out with three level 180 Testaments each in one hit.

Downloaded the Megaten MMO but it's kinda laggy on this computer, which probably needs a graphics card to run it properly. I'm not sure how much I'd be playing it anyway, though, since it looks pretty damn confusing. And I suck at playing RPGs in real time.

I also bought Eternal Sonata a while ago. Played it for about forty minutes the other day and I can already tell it's going to be like Xenosaga. They should call it Eternal Cutscene instead. (Not that it's actively bad, it's just boring when you get massive philosophical cutscenes before you even know anything about the characters.)

I want to go back to school.

Uh, wow. Sorry. Been gone for a while, unintentionally.

( New computer, failure to draw, dumb Malice Mizer drawing from a long time ago )

I registered for classes at GCCC, but the only class I really needed that was available was painting. I had to take 12 hours anyway though for my scholarship to work, so I signed up for creative writing parte dos, a computer art class and something else I can't remember right now.

I am playing Disgaea 3 a lot; the first half of the story is so random and strange it's like a dream. Mao is an odd main character because he's extremely creepy and gross, and initially, he's probably impossible for any mentally healthy person to identify with. There are a lot of lighthearted sexual jokes in the series as a whole but I think this game gets a bit kinky with them. (Example: Mao finds tapes of his ancient, male butler conducting experiments on him exciting. LOLWTF.)

I was also playing a certain MMO on a certain universally despised website but then the clan chat broke and it wasn't fun anymore having to play with random people who were rude in addition to not knowing what the fuck they were doing.

My feelings about the results of my scan:

To Amber: I have to be rescanned for tumors tomorrow. If they find anything I will probably have to go back for more chemo; in that case, I won't be able to go to the wedding. I'll try to e-mail you or post an update here either way. I'm really sorry about this.

( Finished Mother 3 last night. )

My nerves are so frayed from the past few days, even though I've been trying to distract myself.

Maybe if this scan turns out okay I'll be able to relax a little bit.

Poll #1243116 Feel free to discuss in comments.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

Villains. How do you like 'em?

So, when we were told that I qualified for Medicaid everyone asked me why I wasn't more excited about it. Here's why: When I went to my general practitioner yesterday for a Medicaid-mandated appointment, Medicaid refused to pay for the visit. Today, I received a hospital bill in the mail, requesting my prompt cooperation in the payment of about thirty thousand dollars.

I was not excited about my qualification because I know that the government does not like to pay insane amounts of money on the behalf of individual citizens. When we were trying to get qualified, they did nothing but give us trouble at every step of the way, so I was certainly not expecting them to suddenly stop just because I finally did qualify.

I may have to file medical bankruptcy, because it turns out today's bill is just a drop in the bucket of things Medicaid is refusing to pay for. Then, of course, my financial life really will be over.

MEME: Pick your 6 favorite fandoms and answer the questions, but don't look at the questions beforehand.

Fandoms (as they came to mind):

1. Final Fantasy XII
2. Genso Suikoden II
3. Disgaea
4. Final Fantasy VII
5. Escaflowne
6. Digital Devil Saga

( Long and geeky responses )

I have been playing Mahjongg solitaire a lot these days.

I was going to post some pictures, but this entry became too long. Next time!

There is a difference between worrying and being afraid. Until recently I was equipped to argue with you solely about the contrasting denotations, but now I know what the difference feels like. I have memories of my treatment that make me shudder, as if I have wandered into a dark and haunted place.

What that means, basically, is that I decided not to bother with writing about my time in the hospital. Sorry.

I tried P-chat this morning, but I left before working out all the tools and stuff since there were so many people in the room I was using. It was fun, though.

( Painting I'm working on right now )

I recently broke down and watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, mainly to see what the big deal was. Now I know! Fucking awesome series. I was annoyed by its early-nineties NOA-like habit of never saying the word "die", but it's on Nickelodeon so I was expecting that. I just forgot how irritating it was.

At any rate, I now understand all the Avatar fanart that was baffling me before. The environments all reminded me of Zelda: TP, though, so I was having horrible flashbacks almost constantly and thinking about how I might just disembowel myself if I had to play a video game based on Avatar.

Oh man, I can hardly wait for the Mother 3 fan translation/ROM hack to be finished. Project at 90%! My Japanese is way too rusty to play the original, sad face. That is why I say that nice hackers are awesome.

Disgaea 3 will be released soon, as well, and since my brother recently bought a barely-used PS3 off a friend of his I am set. Hopefully it will be better than Disgaea 2.

I also found a site that gives you a free fancypants natal chart if you know the time of your birth. It generates an image file so you can even save it to your computer! You'll have to interpret it yourself, though. LAME

Apparently having an overgrown yard is grounds for a court summons in this neighborhood now. Fuck you people, we have had A FEW SMALL PROBLEMS lately, okay.

I am home, and it is almost magical how much better I feel.

( Just cut for length )

The fact that I can look at a blank Notepad document without being overcome by a desperate urge to pour out my feelings of terror and misery into the world is an incredibly encouraging sign. I have things to say again, about stuff I've read or seen, or games I have played. I may even go so far as to say that my deranged Sephiroth icon is no longer the perfect visual counterpart to my mental condition, and I am awake at this absurd hour not because I am nervous or fearful but because I ate a boatload of chocolate a few hours ago. THAT is progress.

Remission.

Tomorrow my one-man jury will read his verdict.

( When people try to console me, I sometimes wonder if they aren't unconciously trying to console themselves. )