So I finally get around to checking my school email, which I'm constantly forgetting, and I find an email from one of my classmates from two years concerning someone else from that class who I got along with really well.

hey guys!
You all probably know by now that our friend and TRW classmate Sheng has passed away. Simone and myself were thinking that we should send flowers to the family. I have a card that I have already purchased but if you guys would all be willing to pitch in it would greatly help. Let Simone or I know asap.
Thanks
Tiff _______


I had no fucking idea.

And she and I didn't really talk much last year, which was entirely my fault because I suspect that I was probably being a bitch to her-- it seems I was unintentionally bitchy towards pretty much everyone, probably in part because my meds were fucking with my head so much.... I don't think that's really an excuse, though, because she was so nice to me.

Anyway, over the summer I decided that one thing I would do over the fall was get back in touch with some of the people I had been ignoring last year... And then in the end I totally forgot to, and now she's dead.

Oh dear god what the fuck.

...You know when you feel weirdly okay and not upset, but you know you're going to be devastated later? Because that's me right now.

So I had Theology this semester. And it was actually really interesting, but it also really made me realize that I don't believe in Christianity. Like at all. But I feel like I ought to believe in something because... well, mainly because I have one of those sorts of personalities, I guess.

So now I'm looking for a new religion, and I keep coming back to New Age stuff as the thing I feel the most emotional connection to.

And then I'm like gdiaf, seriously, because I like New Age ideas but I hate most New Age people with a passion. (Not you, Amorra. But people I've known irl...)

All of the gross, overly ~*~sparkly and speshulful~*~ granola-crunchy type thing... I just can't stand it. Goddamn hippies.

I will now go scream at myself, okay bye.

My attempt to write Hetalia fic has met a terrible (?) and unforeseen obstacle.

Back when I was in high school, I couldn't write very well due to this peculiar problem I had: I couldn't stand writing peoples' names. Don't ask me why, but I just could not do it. I remember I once had an emotional breakdown while writing a school paper because I couldn't write the name of the person my paper was about.

Idk when exactly I got over this issue, but apparently some part of it still remains.

Because I just. Cannot. Bring myself. To write out. HRE's full name. As a character name. It's just too weird! I can't do it! For some reason, I can write "Italy did this, Italy did that" and not have it feel weird, but I can't write "HRE said this, HRE said that".

Why do you have to have such a ridiculous name, you stupid non-empire?

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

I really, really want to read the rest of the Twilight saga. Purely for mocking purposes, of course. (I read the first one over the summer....)

But I want to be able to understand what everyone's talking about when they're pissed off about things that happen in the later books! Because I gather that really wtf shit goes down in Breaking Dawn, so I need the delightful experience of reading that.

Actually, I've been wondering what I ought to bring along to read on vacation, but at the same time, I don't really want to be seen reading those in public. >D Even if I'm in the right age/gender group for it to look perfectly normal. (Actually, that's why I don't want to do it. I'm afraid that people will think that I'm reading them because I like them.)

Maybe I could read them before we go? Or after? Somebody who has already read them, tell if they're quick reads or not....

Fandom tends to be an extremely open-minded place-- especially when it comes to sex. Which I think is on the whole a good thing; so much of the time people irl disapprove of something just because of some notion of it being "inappropriate" that usually has no actual basis. (E.g. the perception that "kink" = "you are a weird and gross person.")

But you know what sucks? (Aside from the obvious part where people take shit that genuinely isn't okay and are all :D :D :D about it....) It sucks when otherwise intelligent people decide that because they write more slash/more kink/more something "edgy" it makes them somehow a better writer than all of THA NORMALZ!1 And I say "otherwise intelligent" because I'm not surprised when people who can't even be bothered to use spellcheck think that their nonsensical fic is automatically cool just because they put kink into it-- but for some reason, it seems like there are a lot of people in fandom who are genuinely smart who buy into this.

( Cut for me being pissy, tl;dr regarding an unidentified person, fic badness and woe )

Unloading this on all of y'all because I was going through the stuff on my computer and realized that this is never, ever going to evolve into anything actually coherent.

( 'Black Mirrors and the Nightingale' -- Sakura +/ a really creepy Sasuke )

---

...And there it ended, because I had no idea what to do after that. This was written last fall at about this time, btw, and it really hasn't been edited since then, so I can't vouch much for the quality. I was going to revise it and have it end in creepy dubcon, but then I realized that idk how to write creepy dubcon. And so now it will never be finished. Eh, to be honest I don't really care about this pairing anymore anyway. :/

+ Crit on why this turned so unmanageable is awesome (because I don't think it's just the ending... there's something irritating about the writing itself).

Fuck this, I'm changing my major to history.

God, I'm such a retard. I've been trying this whole semester to convince myself that I like physics, but the truth is... I really don't. I think that the reason why I liked it when I was a little kid was that my parents would teach me stuff and it was all really low-key and fun and it made me feel smart and wanted. Dammit, now I'm crying again. /shoots self in face.

Now I just need to find a way to get through the rest of this semester without flipping out.

You probably shouldn't worry; I only unfriended you if:

A. You friended me out of the blue and yet don't seem very interested in me (i.e. we've never talked), or
B. I friended you but you never friended me back-- because I don't want to be a creepy stalker person at you and you should get to decide who you want friending you.

...However, I do tend to be spectacularly inept, so if you think it's weird that I unfriended you, tell me because it was probably me clicking the wrong thing again. D:

1. Happy birthday, halflight007 and indira14!

Wah, Halflight, I know that your birthday was actually yesterday. Forgive me for sucking so much!

2. I only just read the latest chapter of Bleach. Oh dear God, I'm so sick of Ichigo's supah-speshulfulawesumness, which seems to only be getting more and more profoundly irritating as the series goes on. And I really wish that Kishi KT, derp would at least get on with a more clear explanation of why Ichi's so ~*~amazing~*~. There's nothing I hate more than when people just refuse to explain things.

3. I rearranged my to-write list for fic... Took off a lot of things I realized there was no way in hell I was ever going to get around to, and added some for new fandoms. Well, I think there's going to be a lot more for Hetalia than that, but my brain is basically dead lately, so I'm not coming up with much. It is rather unfortunate that I have such an insanely extensive list when I'm so incredibly slow when it comes to actually getting things written down....

I don't want to be a bitch and rain on everyone's parade(?) so I'm not actually going to comment on the post. But.

Re: comments to this post: not that I'm not guilty of it too (I totally am, like 110%; I won't try to deny it), but DEAR GOD anime/manga fans are really fucking paranoid. We seem to have an extremely heightened awareness of the idea that somewhere, someone (usually some far-right group) is plotting to deprive us of some unspecified manga-related human rights.

And then we, without fail, BLOW SHIT OUT OF ALL PROPORTION.

Look, I'm not going to say that if Glenn Beck got his little paws on a copy of Hetalia that there wouldn't be a shitstorm, because yeah, we all know that there would. But the chances of that actually happening are v. slim. (And are also most likely us over-estimating our importance.)

...Also, call me stupid, but even if that did happen... what would it actually affect? (Okay, I get that if somebody was a minor and had idiot parents who flew off the handle about stuff like this that it would be a problem for them. --But I refuse to believe that everyone who freaks out like this is in that boat.)

Worst case scenario: Glenn Beck discovers Hetalia. Glenn Beck has an emotional meltdown and goes into a fit of rage. And then... nothing actually proceeds to happen in 90% of the real, sane-people world. No one is actually at risk of anything seriously bad happening here and we really ought to be able to take a step back and realize that. Dude, plenty of people got really upset about Pokemon. A classmate once told me that she didn't like them because they were demons. But nothing actually happened because of it.

Tl;dr -- I'm not entirely sure why, but anime/manga fandom has an extreme case of paranoia. And yeah, I totally have it too, but at the same time... people need to learn to deal at some point, because it's getting really annoying.

Title: In the Evening
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Ulquiorra +/ Orihime
Genre: Introspective
Rating: PG? Someday, I'm going to develop a method for determining ratings.
Wordcount: 4299
Warnings: AU for Ch. 353 and after; mentions of suicide.
Summary: It's not until he returns to the world of the living that Ulquiorra begins to remember pieces of his own past and the problems of being human.
A/N: So I was all like, "I'm going to write something shorter and simpler this time." And then, this happened instead.

( She tilted her head up every now and then to gaze into the gold lamé of the leaves and at the sky between them. The geese were already beginning their annual flight southward. )

---

(Longest end notes ever!)
-- This fic went through so many different ideas of what it was going to be about that I have no clue what's even going on in it anymore.
-- I wanted to write something cute, because this icon is so cute. I wanted to write a sweet, happy 'Ulquiorra lives and goes to school and so forth' fic... Apparently even when I try to write something happy, it turns out to be depressing. There may be cause for concern there, lol.
-- The book they're reading here doesn't actually exist. ...Which is probably fortunate, since it sounds incredibly boring. :p
-- I wanted to leave the question where/when Ulquiorra actually lived sort of vague, because... I guess because I always end up in the trap of trying to over-explain things, which only makes everything much longer and more tedious.
-- ...Um, can I say that I seriously hate the ending of this and I don't think that it fits with the rest of the fic very well? But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to end it.
-- So much dialogue! I'm sorry; I've always been really bad at dialogue!
-- You know, I used to really like this pairing/ I think I had a good feel for it. Idk why I didn't actually write it at that time, then....
-- Hm, this will probably be the last I write until winter break starts and I don't have so much coursework. helike, I feel really bad that I turned out to be so stressed out and therefore fail at writing coherently right now! Idk, if you're unhappy you can request me again during break when I'll be more sane. ;__;

1. Hello, everyone from the Hetalia friending meme~! Which so far is halflight007, colour_silks, and lindensphinx. How are your days going?

2. Midterm grades are in, finally. Not as good as I'd hoped, but better than I'd expected, I guess:

Physics -- B-
Theology -- A
Calc II -- C

Btw, I am happy as hell to have that C, I'm not even kidding. I feel like I ought to be failing right now. I had no idea Calc II would be that hard, and I suck at integration big time. Oh well, I'm hoping to get the Physics and the Calc up to solid B's or B+'s; I probably can't really hope for anything better at this point.

3. I went to talk to the other physics research professor guy I AM VERY ARTICULATE STFU today. God I hate doing things like that; I was so nervous I couldn't see straight. When it comes to anything even remotely approaching social interaction, I have to admit that I'm a horribly poor excuse for a human being. But anyway, he said that because of a lot of delays and such that have been going on, nothing much will be likely to get started until next semester-- but when it does get started, I would probably get $10/hr., which is nothing to sniff at, especially since I have practically no marketable skills. Idk man, when you can't get a job at McDonald's, I think that's when you know you're screwed as far as careers go.

4. You guys, I really miss History classes. Do you think there's any way I could justify to myself the expense and extra time of double-majoring or minoring in History again? Physics/History is a damn weird combination, though... It's weird; even though English was my actual major, I really don't miss it at all. But I miss History like a bitch.

5. My period is back. Again. OH DEAR GOD. You have no idea how happy I am that I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday; having your period for a month and a half, then having only a week off before it starts again is not normal. D: D: D:

Happy birthday, Sasori-tan goldengrimoire!

Stfu, you're Sasori-tan to me. Because in my fucked-up universe, everyone has to correspond to some fictional character.

...Uh, also happy birthday to anyone whose birthday I missed? I'm pretty sure that a couple of birthdays just went by and I totally forgot about them. =.=

Ah, not much else to say right now. Longer and less fail post later... maybe... something....

Fffffffff I have two midterms tomorrow and it's scary. D: This semester is turning out to be so much harder than I expected... I kind of miss it when I was taking a lot of history classes because for some reason that subject's always been very easy for me. Calc II and Physics, on the other hand... are killing me dead. Oh well, at least Theology's pretty easy. And my teacher was nice and gave us candy during our exam.

I just got done with my period. After having it for literally a month and a half, I'm not even fucking kidding. I fucking hate my girly bits; I want to tear them out. It's not like I'm ever going to use them for much of anything anyway.

Reading Hetalia makes me miss my teacher from 20th Century History. And it's really pathetic because I seriously can't even remember what her name was and yet I miss her super-bad and it's really wtf. Also, I now fucking love Poland. Poland, you're the best country ever! You too, Hungary.

Mm, I think maybe I'll take a bath, go to be early, and do my studying in the early morning tomorrow.

Anyway.

Flist, I'm sorry I haven't been paying much attention to you. How are your lives going right now?

Title: Interlude
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Ryuuken, Yoruichi, Uryuu, theoretical members of Uryuu's mother's side of the family
Genre: Gen, some angst
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 4004
Warnings: Mentions of character death
Summary: Yoruichi makes a late-night visit to discuss plans for an uncertain future, and Ryuuken realizes that time is shorter than he thought.
A/N: I meant for this to be set sometime after Orihime's abduction but before the "fake Karakura" is installed. Also, dear God I'm sorry for how late this is. Gah.

( Too late even for sleep and weary beyond weariness )

---

-- Dude, the writing on the later part of this is so much worse than the writing on the early part that it's not even funny. Well, the beginning was written earlier in the semester when I was less stressed out....
-- Btw, anyone who feels like it: critique the hell out of this if you want to. You guys, I feel really bad that I'm trying to write fic for you and I know it's not very good fic and I don't have enough time to make it good fic.... Anyway, this definitely didn't turn out the way I wanted, so you can feel free to tell me what's wrong with it.
-- helike! I didn't forget about you either! Your fic should be up by the end of the week. If it's not, seriously, feel free to poke me or something to remind me, k?

General disclaimer for all my fanfic:

Most of what's on this journal as far as writing, art, etc. goes is fanworks of one sort or another. Meaning that I don't own the vast majority of the characters, worlds, etc. involved. I don't claim copyright to anything I don't explicitly identify as my own, and no copyright infringement is intended when I use the characters that don't belong to me. --In other words, everyone belongs to their particular creators.

Ps- Just because I write it, that doesn't mean I agree with it and/or support it.

There, now that's done. I can't stand trying to come up with a new disclaimer every time I write a fic.

So apparently a fic I wrote that I didn't particularly like placed third in a contest on a website I've never been to...



I think this is a definite case of knowing that something ought to make me happy, but in actuality just feeling completely indifferent about it.

Like, I'm really proud of how much my writing has improved in the past few years, so I'm really glad that people liked it! But I don't think I liked that particular fic much even when I first wrote it; S/S wasn't really a pairing I ever cared about, and furthermore, I just feel like the prose was really... prosaic, I guess?

SO. TO THE POINT. Does anybody else here who writes also have that thing where you feel like the fics of yours that get really popular are just sort of the okay ones, and the ones that you're actually proud of go unnoticed? Maybe it's just that what I would consider good writing doesn't mesh with what most people would think of that as?

ETA: btw, I'm not trying to be a OMG THIS IS SO BELOW ME type bitch. But it does irritate me somewhat.

FUCK YEAH...?

YES I DO LIKE THE PONIES. THEY ARE PONIES AND I LIKE THEM.

So a while back... like a week ago now, I got an email from one of the only other physics majors at St. Kate's asking if I was interested in this student research thing they have. So of course I was, and I emailed back and forth with the professor in charge of it, and then I met with him last Friday and it's pretty much decided that I'm going to do that. Which is great. Like, it's fantastic.

The problem is: I AM SCARED SHITLESS OF THIS FR SRS. Because my unfortunate problem-- and the thing that's going to make this major drive me insane-- is that I get super super emotional about math and science stuff. I'm always thinking that I'm not smart enough, etc. etc. And so now I'm convinced that there's no way I'm going to be able to do this, and I should have just stayed as an English major because I'm so stupid that that's the only thing that I'm good at, and-- GAH!

[/going insane]

Title: The Monarch
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Ichigo +/ Rukia; mentions of Byakuya and the Shiba family.
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 472
Warnings: Soul Society spoilers, rather vague character death, I guess.
Summary: It doesn't matter what he said at the time: leaving Rukia in Soul Society was a hard thing to do.
Disclaimer: KT owns Bleach; I am a fanwriter only.
A/N: Set just after the Soul Society arc.

( Ichigo had always known where he stood; she was on unsteady ground. )

---

Waah! smiles1777 and helike, I haven't forgotten about you! It's just that I already had this fic mostly written a week or so ago and I've been super busy. But I do still intend to write yours soon.

You guys, my tags are depressing me. They're not nearly cracky enough; I think I need to fix them so that they're more cracky, don't you agree? Tonight I think I'll delete all of them and make new ones.

Also, I just spent $140.00 on a textbook for a class I'm scared of and wouldn't be taking at all if it weren't a requirement for my major. FFFFFFFFFFFuck you, college.

Maybe I'll go and get lunch since I'm hemorrhaging money anyway right now.

I woke up at three in the morning for no reason and was convinced I had swine flu. Why do I always think I'm about to die?

(Comments locked because I know there isn't actually anything coherent in this post to reply to.)