eighthphase

I already suspected that my English class now is the same as the English class I took in eleventh grade, but now I'm sure. I also liked it better as my eleventh grade English class than I do as my first college English class. I mean, today we talked about MLA formatting and how to avoid clichés and redundancy in essays! Our final project for the class is a research paper; I don't know how long it is, but if it's shorter than 15 paged I'm going to scream.

Today in class "So what's this weird semi-colon thing do, anyway?" was an actual question asked of us by the teacher, and I was the only person to offer the correct answer. Everyone else was either wrong or just didn't know. Semi-colons!

I realise that my familiarity with the course material is because I've basically already taken the course, and that obviously I shouldn't expect that kind of knowledge from my classmates because I don't know if they have... except that I do know that there are at least two people in there who have taken the exact same English classes that I have, and there is absolutely no reason for them to not have volunteered the same answers I did, because they absolutely should have already known them.

It's like I'm turning into Hermione or something. I certainly raised my hand enough.

Anyway, enough about that. Today I actually finished arc four of Chasing A Starlight. Anybody remember that? I know I sure didn't.

Things What I Need To Do Today:
 - fill out a transcript request & turn it in
 - camp out in front of the 100 book room until somebody shows up so that I can turn in my damned precalculus book
 - get all my teachers to sign my yearbook
 - take a picture of everybody in the amphitheatre during break, if everyone's amenable
 - get my check-out form signed by my counsellor and the finance coordinator

The hardest part is probably actually the book thing. We were supposed to have them all in by Friday, but it's really hard to turn a book in when the room is locked and nobody's actually there all of the five times a day you stop by. So I'm going to go camp out over there this morning until the guy shows up, and then I'm going to get all my stuff signed, and if anybody complains I'll explain, but if they want to make a fuss over it, things aren't going to end well for anybody. So I hope nobody wants to make a fuss.

Also, after an adventure on my college's website, I found out that I do, actually, have to send in a high school transcript. I really wasn't sure, because the faculty were saying I did, but nobody I talked to at the college ever mentioned it, and the people I know who know more about the college than I do were saying how I didn't need to. Finally I went and looked, and after ten minutes of mindless googling I found that the answer was, in fact, yes.

Now, if that information had been posted on the website a little more obviously, that would have been nice.

Anyway, I've only got about half an hour left before I have to start getting ready, so it's back to mindless self-indulgent fanfic for me.

Happy Easter, everyone! This is not an introspective post because I am absolutely tired of writing introspective posts. Instead, this is something of a random things post.

For example! Without even trying I'm subconsciously picking out songs for characters of mine. I've got a Mao song (Starlight), a Haru song (Trade Mistakes), a Mao-and-Haru song (Star Gate Heaven), and a Noemi song (Bad Apple). (I don't think I've ever mentioned Noemi by name, although recently I've talked about the issues I've had actually writing her story. Part of this is probably because, while I know Noemi really well, I don't know Luke very well at all, and I'm supposed to be actually introducing him into the story.)

My nail polish is finally starting to chip off, after two weeks of nearly perfect nails. It's weird, because the stickers I put on are coming off, too, from underneath the topcoat. So then I have a petal-shaped hole in my topcoat. It's really weird.

Hopefully getting out to the craft store on Tuesday! I've planned to go with Shiki and Pinky but I don't know if their mum will let them. /: If not I might try asking Ruchia, and if that doesn't work then I'm just going to have to ask mum. /: I basically need a whole ton of stuff for making the keys: clay, paints, paintbrush, gloss, wire, pliers... I'm also after a new pair of earbuds, as well - I want some Skullcandies, but they're always "locked merchandise" and there's never ever anybody actually in the electronics section, so I'll probably end up with another pair of the Sony ones I have now. But really, I just want a pair of earbuds that doesn't hurt my ears and doesn't start doing weird staticky stuff after four months, is that really too much to ask?

Also, I really don't understand this. List of Apple Software I Want: iTunes.
List of Software Apple Apparently Thinks I Need: iTunes, Safari, MobileMe, Ping, Genius, VoiceOver Kit, GraceNote, and Kerbango.

You'll notice there's only one thing common to both lists. The really ridiculous part? With the exception of Safari and MobileMe, the rest of that all comes with iTunes. But I don't want any of it. I don't even need any of it! I never use it! So why do I have to have all of it just to get freaking iTunes?

Which reminds me, I've got about four months' worth of Grammar Girl and Are We Alone? to listen to, as well as those three audiobooks I never finished. Who wants to listen to Tim Curry read Sabriel? I do! :D (Plus I've had a raging headache for three hours. I think getting off the computer and indulging in some awesome Skullcrushers might help.)

New classes! They really aren't that interesting, to be perfectly honest - first block is fun, second block is maths, third block is journalism, and fourth block is rage. Nothing to write home about, really! I had fun making a cover for the binder that's apparently required for second block, though - plus it works out since I apparently need a folder for journalism, and now have a free one since I don't need it for precal.

Um. What else? Let's see... I'm up to level 31 in Latale! Naturally I need to be 32 to equip the last piece of the armour set I'm on. |: S-so much grinding... and most of the quests that are popping up are for monsters that can kill me, uh, pretty easily. 99 Privarings! I don't think I've even killed ten yet, and that was after fifteen minutes of farming them while trying not to die horribly (after dying horribly trying to slay Great Monkeys, which I actually can kill okay, just not when five of them swarm the area portal). It's really monotonous.

Lately I've been working on this story thing that somehow randomly popped into my head. See, I made up this clan idea once (okay it was a guild idea, but now they're clans) and was writing something that didn't pan out too well. Then the idea for this other thing came up, and I figured they would probably mesh pretty well, so I stuck them together. It's a weird sort-of-crossover between FFT and SO3 with some FF8 ideas crammed in there, and it's really weird. /: It's kinda fun, though.

Speaking of really weird, I feel the urge to stick an amnesiac Mao into the Dangerverse and see what comes out. Nothing good can come from it, and I know that, but I still want to do it anyway, just to say that I did. (This, when I can barely even tell the Killjoys apart... right, it's totally a good idea.)

I'll write something yet tonight, I just haven't figured out what it should be yet! I'd... probably better work on that.

Slept in for half an hour and... I'm still stupidly tired. D: And then my brain hit me with plotbunnies in the form of dreams I actually remember, and it's like... no. I have three arcs left to outline and college applications to finish before November, I don't have time to write a Final Fantasy VII AU. (I don't even write FF7.)

At least I don't have fourth today! I do need to talk to my English teacher about helping her out during fourth, though... but not today. Maybe tomorrow; I need something to do during fourth so I can go to the swing club meeting after school, anyway.

Okay, English homework and then food. Maybe I'll feel more awake after that x_x;

I've been enjoying BBS so far! I think I'm like halfway through Terra's story already, and I've only been playing for five hours (and I've spent at least one of those dicking around on the Command Board). I'm also playing on beginner mode, though, so... that might have something to do with it, haha.(I'm already thinking I might want to delete that file and start over again in standard mode... it can't be that much harder, right? And if I check the guide for each world I can make sure I get 100% completion.)

Almost finished outlining arc two of Inoue Chronicle (actual story's alternate title: "I Will Be Chasing a Starlight" but Inoue Chronicle is shorter so... yeah). It's turned out to be a lot less action-y than I was initially thinking, but for where it comes in the story that's probably better. With luck I can finish the outline by the end of this month, then I can spend next month working on my Heartless doll (for Halloween) and college apps (so I don't have to do them in November), and then I can spend more of November writing. I know that I'll need to write about 1700 words a day to meet the goal... but I cheated a little! I already have the first chapter written, the last chapter (sort of) written, and some of my interludes are also already sort of written, so I've already got about 3500 words, so I actually only have to write about 1550 words a day. I just have to... not write any more of that story until November! /awkward laugh But I'll probably have my hands full with outlining and essays and college apps and sewing, so I guess I shouldn't have to worry.

And speaking of essays, I get to write two of them over the weekend! :D <-- that emoticon is sarcastic. One about Macbeth, since I'm not going to the play (well, the people who are going have to write a review comparing it to the play in written form, and I think I'd rather write the essay, even though I don't know the prompt yet). And the other for college apps. I'm not sure which ones to write, though; 1000 words for the UC prompts (between the both of them, so that's cool) or the two (or maybe three) prompts for the University of Chicago - I don't actually plan on attending either school, at least not right out of high school, but since I actually need to write one of them for my AP English class, I should just kind of pick one. Or two, really, because I need to write two for either school...

I guess, it basically comes down to, do I want to write about how my world has shaped my dreams and aspirations, and about a personal something that makes me proud and how it relates to who I am, or do I want to write about why I want to go to the University of Chicago, and about the two types of people in the world (totally those who use the Oxford comma and those who don't - or, I could write about how to find x, or what I would dissolve, if I could dissolve anything in the world, and what I would use to dissolve it). (That was a terrible sentence and I should feel terrible for writing it.) I think I should ask around, I guess, before deciding what to do - I have a day before I have to start writing, after all.

And in the meantime, I'll read Macbeth. And outline more, because I want to get through Albert's Legacy so that I can get to Christian's Inferno, because I like writing Damien and I like writing crazy, so writing crazy!Damien should be awesome.

Okay, so having listened to 21st Century Breakdown (I finally bought the CD! It only took me going to another concert on that tour to do it...) I can say this with some certainty: there is a story there, and I kind of want to write it. I doubt I'm going to, because once I actually decide I'm going to do something I usually... never do it, but. I'm a sucker for stories of desperation, of last chances. As much as I like happy endings, I also like stories where things don't turn out okay in the end, where there's no way to make things better. This album has that (though there still is hope at the end) and I kind of want to borrow from this album and just write. Nobody's going to interpret Christian and Gloria's story in the same way, but I think I want to put my interpretation out there.

(Maybe I should write this for NaNoWriMo. ...haha, and then ask my English teacher, "Hey, can I get extra credit for doing this?" Haha.)

21st Century Breakdown's story also strikes me as coming after American Idiot's. Not just because it was, you know, released after, but also because the themes I'm picking up seem to be American Idiot, but more; I guess because the album as a whole feels more desperate ("Desperate, but not hopeless; desperate, but not helpless"). Hell, maybe I should do, like, a two-part epic - the story of the American Idiots, with their desperation giving birth to the Jesus of Suburbia and their anger bringing forth Saint Jimmy; and the rise and fall of the both of them, as the people who believed in them "grow up" and decide that the world can't be changed after all; which sets up the 21st Century Breakdown, where Christian and Gloria, undeterred by the failures of our previous protagonists, set out to change things for real, through action, and we follow them as they learn that the world doesn't work that way. (That was a bad sentence and I don't even care, because I like where it went.)

Minor gripe: the "class of '13" comes up a couple times in the lyrics, and I know full well that it's meant to represent the current generation, and I know full well why they chose '13, but it still bugs me because I'm class of '11 and feel unrepresented |:<

I had another post sort of like this in mind; I meant to post it last night, but it's a companion to something else that I need to finish first. So today: finish that, get up both posts, register for my Ohlone class, finish my English homework, and draw Damien for my bestest concert buddy ever who is finally seventeen.

I just wanted to find a picture of Terra; I was not expecting massive Birth By Sleep spoilers! At least on other websites there are spoiler warnings!

Terra, you have blindsided me for the last time! I will no longer tolerate your existence as a walking spoiler! (And by no longer tolerate I mean completely avoid.)

I guess this means that I'm not going to get to hardcore work on my Hearts Connected fic until after I've beaten BBS, if only because I basically can't google Terra (or certain other characters that it should not be that difficult to google) without getting smacked in the face by spoilers.

Also, for max amusement: Luke Skywalker would never have imagined it while training under Obi Wan, but now he is the Master. Master Eraquas, that is. (Voice acting joke. I am so lame.)

Also, I was at my dad's for the fourth of July, watching Spike's Star Wars marathon. Which is all well and good, until you realise that the prequel trilogy took nine hours - that's almost three hours of commercials. (And at least half of them were fast food commercials; I was ridiculously craving fast food after all that, no lie.) But, hey, it was Star Wars, and that's pretty awesome.

Except for the part where the third film is stupidly dull. Naturally, I got bored - and after the last three hours of bad acting and bad special effects (half of the third film looked like the animated series - special effects in live action are not supposed to look like cartoons), who could blame me? But I had no notebook, and the nearest computer was on the other side of the house, far too far away from the TV to consider using - and far too slow, as well. So I used the only thing I had on hand to write anything down - my phone.

Initially I meant to log on to like LJ or something and save it as a private post until I could fix all the typos, because text boxes in my phone's browser really really hate things like making capitalisation work properly. And then I remembered that I can write stupidly long text messages on my phone - 2295 characters, or 15 texts, at one time - so I could just do that and save it as a draft. Which actually turned out to be a bad idea, for one reason: I text way faster than my phone can keep up. Normally this isn't a problem, because I never write really long texts, and usually I remember to slow down a little bit anyway (though I shouldn't have to, because I really don't text all that fast). So sometimes my phone misses a letter or two. Big deal; I can just go back and fix it. Except that I learned something that day.

The longer the text message, the slower the key recognition is.

I can compose a text that's up to fifteen actual messages in length. But by the time I get to seven or eight messages, if I actually want all my keystrokes to be recorded, I have to hit one key about every two seconds. Which, when you're trying to write something? Is stupidly slow. I ended up giving up right as it hit eight, I think, and went back to watching the film. /: (I actually totally forgot about it until just now.)

Also, The Sorcerer's Apprentice looks cool and I want to see it, even though my dad got all annoyed at "I just know they're going to put the mops in it and that stupid music too" and they did, but it still looks cool and magic and Arthurian legend even if it's just namedropping Merlin but I hope it's more than that and seriously, if the choice is between that and Eclipse, I'm so choosing that.

As an aside, my film choices this weekend were between Eclipse and The Last Airbender. I didn't go to the cinema this weekend. I'd rather save the money for P3P

The garage sale actually went pretty well! The weather wasn't as good as it could have been, so we didn't have as many people buying as we'd hoped, but we made about $370 or so. It's not as much as last year, but it's still nothing to sneeze at.

Went out to dad's today. I did more baking, 'cause he wanted chocolate cookies and we did still have a tub of cool whip left, so I made a batch (they're really good) and then I made the cinnamon streusel muffins I've been wanting to make for a month. We also watched Sherlock Holmes, though I slept through most of it ^_^;

Yesterday I picked up A Wizard of Mars and I'm almost finished with it now. I'm not so sure it was worth the three year wait, but it's definitely really really good. And Mamvish is in this one! (I remembered reading something about abstainees on the wiki, and about how there was one wizard for whose Ordeal the Lone Power didn't show up, because "It said It had a headache." I couldn't remember the wizard's name, but the line stuck in my head - and then it showed up again in this book, lol.) Dairine is eleven. I completely forgot! It feels like way more time has passed in the books than really has, and she's also really matured in the last few books, so it was kind of a shock to read that line.

I'm also working out some original stuff. I'm thinking I should probably make Mao's story completely original, since it's not like I don't have enough snippets of different original worlds to do that; there's Camarilla and Delaria and the Broken Bridge and Exanimare verses, for starters, and both Mao's world and Haru's world (among others) are original, after all. There's a slight snag as to how she gets her key, and the whole Algol thing, but I don't think they'll be too difficult to work around; I already have one for the key, anyway. Of course, that's not going to stop me from writing crossover fanfic with her... haha. But she's the perfect solution to an issue I was having with the Delaria-verse; there's a rather major plot point in it, and the way I was dealing with it was... ridiculous, to say the least. If I use Mao there instead, it solves that problem, and opens the world up for the story I really want to write.

I think that, as I mature as both a person and a writer, my characters are maturing as well. I believe that's a good thing.

I want to build a small-scale, portable model of GLaDOS over the summer, so I can be an Aperture Scientist for Halloween. The model would actually be the hardest part; after that, all I'd really have to do is buy a lab coat and make an Aperture Labs employee ID, which should be really easy. It would be kind of like cosplay, but also accessible to the general public. I'm a scientist, and this is my invention! And then anyone in the know would recognize the Aperture Labs ID, and possibly also the mini-GLaDOS, and that would be cool, too. (Granted, I did promise that I'd be like a sprite or something, and make use of my ocarina as a prop... two years ago. I like this idea much better.)

Google Images lists, as a related search to GLaDOS, "the cake is a lie." I think I'll end this post on that note, lol.