An Awful Lot Of Metaphorical Running

Well my life exploded epically recently, and mostly not in a good way, but I think we're back now. Mostly. I mean, I'm still just sort of standing in the middle of my mind staring around at the slightly smoking wreckage and wondering what the hell happened. I'm wishing life actually just had a pause button, so I could just hit that and wander off and make myself a sandwich or something and not have to worry about anything for half an hour.

God, I miss video games.

I miss a lot of things actually. I miss being able to stay up messing about on the internet 'til 5am with no consequences. I miss being able to sleep in 'til stupid times of the day and not feel vaguely guilty about it. I miss buying a book every Saturday and having it finished by that evening. I miss talking about stupid things that didn't matter well into the night because hell, we didn't have anything better to do. I miss things being easy. I miss the worst drama being your friend being late meeting you at the cinema and nearly missing the start of the movie. I miss just being able to go and wander around and just do things without having to weigh up what I need to do that day and how important it is that I do it now, or if I can put off whatever it is until tomorrow, or...

You get the point.

So what I'm going to do is, when my essays are over and done with and gone and I have some breathing space to play around with my shifts at work, I am going to buy an Xbox, and I am going to play video games, and I am going to periodically run away and have adventures and just not care every now and then. I'm going to write fantastic stories that may or may not be rooted in real-life things depending on my mood and I'm going to buy sugar mice every other week and enjoy them thoroughly. Because I can. Because if I don't, I'm going to go mad.

Well, more mad.

And Sometimes That's All It Takes

Today, I was waiting on a bus to get back to my flat, and as one pulled up, someone stopped me. He was a lecturer from the university, but, as he explained, he was heading for Glasgow. He then pressed a Plusbus ticket for Stirling into my hand and told me that he didn't need it anymore, so I should use it to get home.

This isn't important, I know, but today it was important for me.

We all come to terms with losing things. Losing people. Sometimes, this doesn't matter, and sometimes it matters more than anything. I'm bad at letting go myself. Whatever anyone might think of me, I get attached to people, and though I'm bad at showing it, I care about my friends more than anything. Although I know I'm situational at best, I'm easily forgotten and maybe no one will ever think of me first for anything, that's okay.

And I'm not fishing for sympathy. It really is okay.

Things have happened recently, and I've had to do a lot of thinking. When that man gave me his bus ticket today, I realised that sometimes it's okay to be miserable. Sometimes you have to be, and it's okay to run away to clear your head. Sometimes you lose friends that mean the world to you, and you have every right to be upset about that. But some good things still happen even before you can be happy again, even if it's something as simple as someone being nice enough to give you a free bus ride home.

At least, that's what I think.

Nervous Twitches and Justified Paranoia

So, it's that time of year again. That time of year when the weather has gotten slightly colder. That time of year when I start to live in a constant state of paranoia.

That time of year when bloody massive spiders start turning up inside the house. 

So yes, it may not surprise you to know that I am an arachnophobe. If a spider turns up in a room with me and I see it, people will know it is there. This is because if one turns up, I will make a small noise of alarm, freeze and stare fixedly at it. Unless it moves. If it moves then I become an incoherent tangle of limbs and choked noises of alarm moving very swiftly in the opposite direction.

I don't think this should be a surprise to anyone. I mean, have you seen those things? Look at them. They are fundamentally wrong. They have too many legs and they move too damn fast and they just turn up. Seriously, where do they come from? You're just sitting there, minding your own business and they just appear from nowhere. And then they disappear again. The damn things are ninjas on too many legs.

And of course, once one of them shows up, I can no longer relax. I go into permanent battle mode. Well, permanent ready-to-run-away-at-the-first-sign-of-even-the-tiniest-movement-mode. This is why I haven't got around to tidying my room. What if I moved something and there was one of those really effing big ones sitting there? And then what if it ran away and disappeared? I'd never be able to sleep in that room again. And this is my room is a complete mess. 

This would also be why I avoid being in the flat on my own as much as possible right now. Some people may call this cowardly and tell me I'm a wimp, but I beg to differ. To paraphrase Allie Brosh: I might be bigger than them, but I am also bigger than a grenade, and hell if I'm not gonna run away from one of those if a live one turns up in the same room as me.

Also, come on, spiders are freaking scary, okay?

You see?

I'm Still Not Dead! Also Stuff About Books and E-Readers

Woo, it's been a while. Yeah, basically I've going up and down and up and down and drowning myself in video games for the last month and a bit. While the latter part of this was (and still is) awesome, the fact that I haven't updated this blog in that month and a bit, even for webcomic reviews, has left me with a bad case of writing guilt. I blame the fact that I have almost no sense of routine during the holidays, and no looming deadlines to give me procrastination inspiration.

Anyway, this is just gonna be a short one, because I don't have the time to do a proper chunky post right now. I'll probably get working on a review or something soon, and since I'm back on a cartoon watching phase, that'll probably come up at some point too.

Anyway, there's one discussion that I've had several times with different people since last Christmas. This being on whether the existence of the Amazon Kindle and all the various other e-readers is a good thing. Opinions are mixed on this one, and for pretty good reason.

My parents surprised me with a Kindle as a Christmas present. Prior to this, I had never really considered getting one, since a) they were expensive and b) I have three bookcases worth of books in my house and see no reason to stop there. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised to receive one.

Now, bookshops are struggling a bit these days, what with books often being cheaper when bought online, and now even cheaper than that when bought on the Kindle. I get that, and I know I would be devastated if bookshops stopped being a thing. However, that's not to say that the Kindle and its ilk will be responsible for this.

Personally, I will always prefer books to the Kindle. There's just something about the physical presence of a book that trumps the nice slimline design of the technological version. On the other hand, I'm a student, and I live in a flat with very limited storage space, especially when you consider that I'm doing an English degree and therefore need a lot of books. Suddenly, the Kindle makes sense. I'm doing two English modules this coming semester, and I need a total of eleven books. That's a lot when you consider the space they take up, not to mention the cost of them. However, I managed to get seven on them on the Kindle for around £11 or so, which ain't too bad really.

Kindles are also handy when it comes to travelling. A lot of us like to take books on a long journey, but if you're flying, books can often be a pain when it comes to baggage allowances, and I know that I've often been forced to leave a book behind when I'm packing to get the train home. Books, however awesome, are often bulky and awkward to pack, especially if you're like me and my dad and are almost OCD about not creasing the pages or the spine. The Kindle, or indeed most e-readers, are much smaller and slimmer, and if you've got a half-decent cover on them, you've got less need to worry about damaging them. Not to mention that the Kindle can hold a lot of books, which can be organised however you want, bookmarked, annotated, whatever you need, all without damaging an actual book. It's surprisingly useful.

Again, I'm never going to say that the Kindle is better than having an actual book in your hands, but it is at least handy.

One other thing is the variety you can get with the Kindle store. I love reading, I love books. Unfortunately, the only book I've bought in months is the latest Dresden File, because unfortunately, the book industry has gone the same way as the video game industry. Or maybe that's the other way around. Anyway, the point is that publishers don't want to publish anything they don't know will sell, which is why the market has been flooded by a million different Twilight knock-offs, each as dire as the last. It's trash, but it's trash that sells.

One thing about the new e-book culture is that it is now incredibly easy to self-publish e-books. Sometimes, this isn't exactly a good thing, since many of these aren't edited, and so contain either a lot of mistakes, or are just plain bad. On the other hand, it has allowed a lot more original material to become available to readers through the likes of the Kindle store. I've found two novels that I actually got for free, written by new, unpublished authors, and you know, they were good. Free releases on the Kindle store is also a good way for them to advertise; the first of the two authors I read included a preview chapter for the second book they'd written, also on the Kindle store, but this time for a price. I haven't actually got around to buying that yet, but I'm considering it.

Again, this is now leading to an army of Twilight-clones flooding e-books as well, but if you take the time to sift through all of that, you can find some real gems. And if people read them on the Kindle, there's a much better chance of the author actually getting published later, since they can assure the publishers that 'hey, look; people are reading my stuff; it sells.'

In conclusion, I have no idea what the existence of Kindles and e-readers will do for bookshops. Maybe they will spell the end, in which case I'll be up in arms just as fast as anyone else. The Kindle and its kind do have their merits though; I don't see any reason why we should shun them entirely in favour of their paper-hearted older siblings.

It probably sounded better in my head

I don't know how many writers actually read this thing, but the ones that do may understand why I haven't been updating this for a while. You ever start writing something, and the plot just sort of eats you and you can't do anything else? That's basically what happened.

Anyway, in between writing chapters for that story and plugging away at my new job and .hack//Infection, I was desperately trying to come up with a topic for a new post. Someone (and you know who you are) suggested I do something on cheese, except that I don't like cheese, so it would either be an extremely short post or I'd wax lyrical about how cheese is the worst thing ever and then I would just alienate everyone and... I'll just stop rambling about cheese now, shall I?

Anyway, yesterday, someone over on the Genesis Awards started a thread asking whether anyone actually listens to song lyrics, and when I started thinking about that, I somehow ended up drifting on to TV Tropes, and from there I somehow came up with the concept for this post (yes, the process was exactly as non-sequitur as it sounds).

There is a trope known as Alternative Character Interpretation, which I find to be great fun. Basically, this trope boils down to: Character A appears to be fooling everyone into thinking that he's actually really stupid while being secretly very clever and making them underestimate him, however it could also be interpreted that he is actually genuinely stupid and just has an amazing aptitude for accidentally ending up with the right answers by accidentally annoying them out of people. The outcomes of both situations are the same, it's just that the character is slightly different in each case.

Why am I telling you this? Because this morning I got a Bruno Mars song in my head and suddenly realised that if you take bits of some of his songs out of context, they can actually be interpreted completely differently. Take his song 'Just The Way You Are' for example.

'When I see your face

There's not a thing that I would change

Cause you're amazing

Just the way you are

And when you smile,

The whole world stops and stares for awhile

Cause girl you're amazing

Just the way you are'

In the song, this is actually Bruno telling his girlfriend that she's far prettier than she thinks she is. It's all wonderfully romantic. However, it could also be interpreted as a stalker with a crush idolising this girl from afar. Think about it; overly romanticised descriptions of her, obsessive repetitions of these, that one line where he says that he tells her these things every day. The girl is never stated to be his girlfriend, so you have the fun twist where he's actually just phoning this poor girl up and breathing heavily down the phone for a few minutes before creepily telling her how amazing she is. Every single day.

Now I know that the song is implying no such thing, but it's kind of funny to think it is. In a morbid, really not all that funny at all sort of way because stalking is in no way funny...

*ahem* Moving on.

The other song is 'Grenade'. This one's about how Bruno really loves this girl, but she treats him like dirt and is basically just a bitch. However, when I was thinking about the chorus, this little imaginary exchange  popped into my head:

Girl: Hey Bruno, could you do the dishes for me please?

Bruno: I'd catch a grenade for ya

Girl: Uh... that's... sweet, I guess? But I really just need-

Bruno: Throw my hand on a blade for ya

Girl: Umm... no, I just need you to wash them, not-

Bruno: I'd jump in front of a train for ya

Girl: Bruno, you really don't have to try this hard to get out of doing the dishes. I can just-

Bruno: You know I'd do anything for ya

Girl: But not the dishes?

Bruno: I would go through all of this pain, take a bullet straight through my brain

Girl: Bruno, you're just being silly now.

Bruno: Yes, I would die for you baby

Girl: I really don't want you to do that Bruno. Just the dishes would be fine, really.

Bruno: But you won't do the same

Girl: Well, no; I don't think either of us being dead is exactly conducive to this relationship continuing. Oh, you know what? I'll just do the damn dishes myself, okay? You just sit there, being all melodramatic, like usual.

No, I don't know what Bruno Mars ever did to me either, but I do seem to like making him kind of a jerk, don't I? No idea what that says about me.

Anyway, despite the fact that all of this interpretation was pointless and silly, it was still really quite fun. Try it sometime; if nothing else, it'll give you something other than the weather to babble nervously about when trying desperately to fill an awkward silence.

Monthly Webcomic Review: Awkward Zombie/Aikonia

Well, I'm currently camped out in the university atrium trying to publicise a Zombie Apocalypse. I would also be trying to write an essay that's due for Thursday, but it's very hard to rewrite a short story when said short story is not currently in the immediate vicinity. I blame this on the fact that I was up far too early this morning and didn't get any coffee before I left the flat, and a small green book is very forgettable in that situation. And then we had to push the apocalypse back a week because the weather this week is dismal.

So yeah, today is going well.

I have had coffee by now though, so it could be worse. Anyway, it's time for another webcomic review! Yaaaaaaay! I'm actually reviewing two comics today, drawn by the same artist, Katie Tiedrich.

I actually stumbled across Awkward Zombie before it was Awkward Zombie, back when Katie was best known as Hail-Neko-Yasha on deviantArt. Mostly, her comics consisted (and still consist) of stand-alone video-game comics, usually pointing out strange plot holes or featuring various things she did while playing.

She does bring up good points, such as how the hell is Boo meant to play football? He has no legs.

 Mostly, the comics are geared towards gamers, but she often does slice-of-life strips about her current adventures at college. While usually featuring Nintendo games such as Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Brothers and Pokemon, World of Warcraft comics also feature heavily, supplemented with a healthy dose of random games from almost any genre, ranging from Shadow of the Colossus to Excite Truck to Portal 2.

It's always worth checking out Awkward Zombie simply for the comedy value and the pleasantly quirky art-style. The sharp sense of humour and usually very accurate pointing out of plot holes make for entertaining reading, even if you aren't familiar with the game she's featuring. Also, the artist comments she makes on them are usually worth reading as well.

Since Awkard Zombie is a set of mostly stand along comics, there isn't really a whole lot to say about it. So I thought I would talk about the other comic that Katie is currently working on. She's only doing the art for this one though, as part of a four-person team.

Aikonia is actually promotional material and a precursor for an upcoming browser-based game of the same name by MADSOFT Games. It's a fairly standard fantasy premise, with some similarities with both Trudi Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy and Maria V. Snyder's Yelena Zaltana trilogy.

The Setting

Click to see full-size, or alternatively, go read the comic.

Aikonia is set in a world where magic is accessed through a veil which requires training in order to use correctly. The actual setting of the comic mostly takes place in a magicians' academy, where this training takes place.

The academy is overseen by a council of elders, except that something shady is going on in the upper echelons, and no one is sure who can trust who anymore. After a strange discovery is made while a low-ranking magician is out on assignment, the council is suddenly divided even further, and then one of the council members mysteriously dies...

The Characters

The cast of Aikonia is fairly large, and no particular focus has been put on one character over another yet. However, the developing character relationships and twists have been interesting so far, and I would safely assume that they will continue to develop like that.

As this is a relatively new webcomic, the story's really only gearing up just now. But the plot seems interesting and the premise is pretty solid. If the game that follows is anything like the comic at all, it should be pretty good.

Both of these update every Monday.

The Easy Way to Annoy Fanfiction Writers

In my last post, I briefly mentioned my soft spot for the losing side of a love triangle. I also mentioned that this was not the case for Final Fantasy VII. Then I remembered an old post that I made on my Live Journal account back when I used the thing, and thought 'I could update that, and post it here! Who would know?'

And then I told you that, so now you all know I'm lazy, but I doubt that you're surprised.

Anyway, the post concerned the numerous 'shipping wars' that spring up in fandoms, particularly in the fanfiction aspect. An interesting minefield to navigate, I've been fortunate to only receive a few (poorly spelled) scathing reviews concerning my choices of pairing. Others... are not so lucky.

Shipping and the Snobbery, Snapping and Snarling Therein

I only really became familiar with the concept of shipping a couple of months after I started writing fanfiction. Even then, it was only after I joined the Genesis Awards that I learned exactly what it was. Now, thankfully GA is fairly neutral territory when it comes to shipping, but elsewhere, be prepared to be virtually mauled for even daring to suggest that X is in love with Y, or Y with Z, or even Z with X.

I. The 'You Don't Like It, You Suck' Problem

As I have mentioned, I'm secretly a bit of a squishy romantic type, and as a result, I do lean towards writing romances rather a lot. These days, they don't tend to be quite as mushy as they used to be (cos I can actually write emotions now), but still romances nevertheless. My favourite pairing to write has always been Tifa and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the victorious childhood friend relationship, I don't know, I just really liked those two together. However, I was aware that not everyone might want to read that, so I politely put a note in the summary saying what the pairing was. Then, I received this review:

'it sucks!!

cloti sucks y cant people know that!

gay...'

This was my first realisation that some fans, and in my experience, quite a lot VII fans, can be rather irrational about the pairings they support. The Cloud/Tifa/Aerith argument seems to me, at times, to be completely blown out of all proportion, and this attitude towards pairings seems to transcend into other fandoms also. Of course, I'm not saying the problem originated with VII; it's just the most prominent example I know of. In any case, I have my own reasons for supporting the Cloud/Tifa pairing, and I'm quite happy for someone to disagree with them as long as they're at least polite about it, unlike 'CLORITH' up there (yes, they named themselves after the portmaneu name of the rival couple, just to let me know how much they hated my pairing choice)

Another, much bigger example which I'm sure a lot of the older GA members would dearly love to forget is the lovely incident that led to us losing half of the admin staff back on our old board. Over a pairing row. About characters in a video game. Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as that, but a lot of it was caused by people who got so defensive over fictional characters and fictional relationships that they thought that it was perfectly acceptable to be extremely rude about it to everyone and anyone who so much as hinted at disagreeing with them. There's nothing wrong with a good debate, but I do not see the need to verbally abuse someone for not liking the same pairing as you do, and especially without any good justification for doing so.

There are numerous other examples of this problem, and I received a similar review to the one above for a Kingdom Hearts story I wrote, since apparently it was not acceptable for me to pair Sora with Kairi because 'she doesn't deserve him; she's always taking him away from Riku' This also leads us into the next problem.

II. The 'True Love' Problem

Now, going back to VII again, Cloud's feelings were initially left completely ambiguous and open to interpretation, unlike, say, Zidane and Garnet from IX or Tidus and Yuna from X. Square Enix only recently released material finally stating that Cloud and Tifa are the canon pairing of the VII compilation (along with Zack and Aerith). Of course, canon relationships mean nothing in fanfiction if you don't want them to, which isn't always a bad thing. However, this is one of the issues that just plain baffles me. Sometimes, pairings seem to come from nowhere, based on nothing, and yet they have an entire fanbase ready to defend it to the death, as it were, because it's totally true love and don't you dare say it isn't.

Now, for me, this includes many yaoi pairings, especially Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts based ones, and I'm not about to tell anyone that they shouldn't enjoy them, but they do not make the least bit of sense to me. From what I can identify, these seem to be the main causes for support of these pairings:

1. The Main Protagonist and the Main Antagonist (Cloud/Sephiroth etc.)

2. The Best Friends/The Bromantics (Roxas/Axel etc.)

3.The Hero and the Rival (Sora/Riku etc.)

4. TheTwo Hot Guys who Totally Looked At Each Other That One Time (any number of random pairings that make your head hurt)

There are probably others, but those are the ones I have seen the most often. And they don't just apply to yaoi either; heterosexual or yuri pairings often fall under these headings as well, with their own variations thrown in. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with supporting them, and I do know many yaoi fans who I get along with absolutely fine (you know who you are). In fact, this really all boils right back down to the whole 'you don't like it, you suck' thing. Some fans get snooty about it, and proceed to give you a swift tongue lashing about why you are wrong. This brings us on to...

III. The 'My Canon is Better than your Canon' Problem

This is the argument that nightmares are made of. I touched on it a couple of times already, but this is the big one and so it gets its own special section all to itself.

Anyway, this one comes up damn near everytime shipping gets mentioned. But of course it does; shipping is built on personal fanon. Where I see Cloud and Tifa as a canon pairing because a) I know that relationships based on friendships can work and b) Aerith is out of the running because she's a teensy bit dead (and I don't like her, but that's a whole other bag o' gerbils) and c) Square Enix have finally said so, other people think that they would be awful together, and Tifa doesn't deserve Cloud anyway, what were you thinking? (and other, much more reasonable arguments). In any case, pairings, and character interpretations by extension, are pretty much all subject to personal canon; 'fanon' in more casual terms. However, that's not where the problem really is.

The problem is that some people aren't content with fanon; they want their pairing proven, and will support it with whatever piece of evidence they can get from the subject matter, no matter how flimsy or insignificant. Now, the only real experience I have with this comes from FFVII, although I have seen it in Kingdom Hearts also. Anyway, since the FFVII Ultimania was published (and I have never read it by the way), it seems that there's even more of a scramble to grab what they can get. Cloud/Tifa fans jump on the 'Under the Highwind' scene and the cut 'Chocobo Stable' scene while Cloud/Aerith fans continually bring up the fact that Tifa 'lied to Cloud' and various other things (I'm not as familiar with this side of the argument). And then the yaoi fans jump in with the fact that Cloud is obviously just not interested in women. Or they just go another way altogether and say that the Ultimania/Compilation/whatever just doesn't count because it wasn't there to begin with shut up (again, there are more rational arguments).

I find it confusing, and all a bit silly. It's useful to have things you can interpret as support for a chosen pairing, yes. It's handy for fic writing if nothing else, but where is this idea that one must use all evidence possible to support one pairing and shoot down any opposing party? I can only really repeat my sentiment that they are fictional characters. There is no need to get so bloody worked up.

A Muse on Aesthetics and Character Archetypes

I think we all end up having a preferred 'type' when it comes to the opposite sex. Of course, it's not exactly a concrete thing; my mother admits that my dad is the complete opposite to her 'type'; but we do have our own preferences when it comes to looking for a relationship. I think it applies to friends as well. You're looking for specific things in people you become friends with. If you don't gel with them, the friendship ain't gonna work.

But this post isn't about that. As well as having preferences in people, I think a lot of writers have preferences in the characters that they write. In fanfiction especially, since you're not going to write a character you don't identify with or find appealing in some way. At least, I know I wouldn't.

Me? I'm fairly easy to please. And since I wanted to write a post today, but wasn't entirely sure on a subject, I decided to do a basic run-down of my favourite character types.

The Tsundere

Sort of like a bait and switch personality type deal.

When I'm writing female characters, I don't want them straightforward. A normal, well-adjusted character is all well and good, but where's the fun in that? Besides, I'm not exactly normal or well-adjusted myself, what with all my weird tendencies. And you know what they say; write what you know, and I have some notable tsundere traits.

The tsundere is the girl (occasionally a boy, but not often) that runs hot and cold, usually on the boy she likes. Naturally, this means that I get to have way too much fun stringing out relationship developments. She'll spend the whole time swinging wildly between bitching him out and acting all cute and shy because he did a nice thing. But it's not because she likes him or anything, okay?!

My favourite tsundere character to write is an aged-up Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls. I write her as extremely uptight, and constantly checking herself to make sure she's doing the right thing. And of course, I'm writing her opposite her Rowdyruff Boy counterpart Brick, who is clearly not the type of boy a good girl like her would ever go for, and it drives her nuts. As a result, she finds herself trying to be as cold as possible, but letting it slip when she forgets who she's dealing with and actually lets herself have fun. Ridiculously great fun to write.

The Jerkass Woobie

They annoy you, but you're sorry that their life sucks so much.

As much as I have great fun writing tsundere characters, I tend to drift back to these ones. Where the tsundere has a temper on them, but is still well suited to light-hearted pieces, these are better for darker stories. A woobie is meant to elicit sympathy, but the jerkass woobie is the one you want to punch in the face and then give a hug to. They try to be unlikeable, either because they don't like people because of whatever tragic backstory they have or because they're just broken in some way.

Again, the Powerpuff Girls is where I tend to write these. Buttercup is just this character all over, at least when I write her. Buttercup, for me, is a prickly, uncomfortable teenager, and as such, shoots her mouth off, swears like a sailor and is very prone to completely losing it, usually in a violent sort of way. She doesn't want sympathy, so she does everything she can to avoid getting it, but at the same time, I write her tragically broken. I'm awful to my favourite characters, I really am. I just abuse them mercilessly.

The Broken Ace

Self-loathing and unrequited love issues ahoy.

The broken ace is my favourite for male characters. They're strong characters, but they have some sort of crippling issue or set of issues that have messed them up badly. Oddly enough, I don't write these often myself, but they're some of my favourites to read or watch.

Illidan Stormrage up there from the Warcraft series is a wonderful example of one of these. Exceptionally gifted at magic and an almost unrivalled demon hunter, he's obsessed with becoming strong in order to win the heart of his childhood friend Tyrande Whisperwind. Except that she's in love with his twin brother, and she's really not into the whole 'almighty displays of destructive magical power in order to prove my love' sort of thing. He... really doesn't take it well, and despite the fact that he's... well, he's evil by the end-up, there's no way around that, he's still exactly the kind of character I find appealing. He's awesome, but tragic, and there's a love triangle in there too. Not that he ever really had a chance there, but he likes to think he did.

Maybe it's just my innate romantic tendencies coming out. I just have a soft-spot for losing characters in love triangles I suppose. Except when it's Final Fantasy VII, but that's a whole other bag of gerbils that we won't go into right now.

Of course, I write character types other than these, and I'm not even scratching the surface of the many different character archetypes there are, but I'm also lazy and this post has taken long enough as is.

I'm not a very good blogger am I? :P

When Can I Have Fun Again?

You know, a lot of people tell my parents that I'm a real credit to them. Just a couple of weeks ago we ran into my old headmaster (who now runs a restaurant; go figure) and he couldn't stop telling my mother how well I'd grown up and how well-spoken and intelligent and charming I am.

Yes, I know. Rather hard to believe, isn't it?

The thing is, for all that I seem to come across as being all clever and what-not (which still confuses me, quite frankly, because I say some bloody stupid things sometimes), you'd think I'd be managing university without 50% of my coursework thoroughly kicking my ass. I guess I'm just really not cut out for this journalism lark. Not even this trusty bottle of Neuro Sonic I have next to me is helping, it's just that bad.

Not that it's really doing anything other than keeping my caffeine levels at the normal 'far too high' setting, but you know, it's still claiming the whole 'mental performance in a bottle' thing. Might as well humour it.

Also, no, there's not really a point to this post, but I'm meant to be writing a feature article, and since the ability to do so is eluding me (and has been for the past week and a half) I am procrastinating, and you're just going to have to suffer for it, okay? I don't even like this any more than you do, but it's either this or I dissolve into a wibbly puddle of goo in the middle of the library, and no one wants that.

Anyway, going back to my initial vague tangent, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has the feeling that their parents think that they're a lot more intelligent than they feel they are. I mean, I think my mother is fairly sure that I'm some sort of genius, especially in the creative writing department. I'm... really not.

And that isn't just self-deprecation by the way. I mean, I can write, yeah, but I'm not the next Tolkein or Pratchett or anything, and that's just on a technical level. As for entertainment value, I guess I like what I write (mostly), but I don't expect that many other people to. I just like writing.

I suppose parents just like to put their children on a pedestal, to push them to be special in some way. It's not all that surprising I guess. I mean, I'm sure we all want to be recognised for something. I know I'd like to at least be good at something that didn't involve me sitting in front of a computer screen, but since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, I'm not all that fussed about it. I suppose it carries over to children eventually, if you have them. You wanted to be special, now you want them to be special. I guess I understand that.

At least I can still go save the world in video games. That counts, right?

Oh, I don't know. Here's a picture of a hedgehog in an egg cup:

I think his expression perfectly sums up the expected reaction to this post.

Tuesdays are starting to feel a lot like Mondays...

So, it looks as though our D&D games are on hiatus for the time being, since we've got a 4th year tearing her hair out over her dissertation, as happens, me with a small pile of work I really should have done by now, and various other hang-ups and obstacles and to be quite honest we can just get back to it later anyway.

Anyway, this is yet another post where I don't actually have anything non-nebulous to say. I might have an idea for a post in the near future, but I'm warning you; it may contain Warcraft. Or possibly webcomics.

But while I'm here and babbling on anyway, I thought I'd mention that I started a new blog for reasons pertaining to the fact that I am unemployed and skint, and since my writing is the only thing resembling talent that I've got, I'm desperate enough to whore it out for money. Yeah, I do commissions now and if you commissioned me for something I would love you forever I really would. For evidence that I can actually write, you can look me up on fanfiction, fictionpress or deviantart.

Yes, I am basically shameless. And desperate. And also slightly pathetic.

So yeah, have a great day you guys!

Mint Gets Her Life Back

I'm not dead! I've also got so much caffeine currently running through my system that the world is slightly wibbly around the edges, so post coherance is probably at a minimum. The inevitable caffeine crash later on will no doubt be hilarious for my flatmates and any other witnesses.

Anyway, my incredibly, ridiculously long Christmas holiday came to an end today. Having three month long holidays seems amazing at first, but since I had no holiday work to tide me over, I lost my job and all my friends who go to other unis went back in early January, it all lost its shine very, very quickly. It didn't help that, despite all my attempts to chase my muse back to work with the customary big rubber brick, I had no writing inspiration whatsover. So I played Final Fantasy XIII and World of Warcraft, seasoned with a touch of Persona 3 and Shadow of Memories (which is awful, and you shouldn't play it. Or if you must, borrow it from someone, don't buy it).

So today, I was up at 8am, which is the earliest I've been out of bed in over a month and straight into three solid hours of lectures from 10 until 1. This needed two cups of coffee in rapid succession, one overloaded with far too much vanilla syrup, and thus the mad caffeine trip I'm on right now. That's also the reason why this post doesn't actually have a real topic; writing a blog post just seemed like a really good idea and I should go home and do it right now. So yeah, here we are. I apologise.

The closest thing you're getting as a point is that I am just super excited to be doing scholarly things again. This will have stopped by next week, when I will return to being a miserable bitch about the whole thing, and will return to writing irritatingly long posts about video games or something.

But until then, I'm gonna go bounce around the room and generally annoy the hell out of my flatmate :D

Mint's Waffliest of Waffles

Hi everyone, Warcraft has eaten my life. Here is a blog post.

Okay, so last time, before my long waffle about why it's okay that I write fanfiction stop judging me! I mentioned that I was also going to write a post on video games. However, since most of my video game preferences lean heavily on the JRPG side of things, this post is pretty much just going to be about the various Final Fantasy games I've played. I'm sure I'll get around to doing one on Persona 3 and 4 at some point too.

This isn't going to be about gameplay, because I'm one of those people who'll pretty much play whatever Square Enix throws out, and I'll find something to like about it.

And so, without further ado (mostly because I have no idea what other general rubbish I can ramble on about right now) here is the post about the stuff.

Note: These aren't in order of me playing them, just in series order.



I'm gonna start off by saying I'm not a hardcore Final Fantasy fan. I enjoy the games, but I'm a relative newcomer to the series, and as such, didn't play the original games back on the SNES. And so, it was the new DS copy of FFIII that I picked up a few years back. Of course, being one of the earlier games, III followed the basic premise of 'there is evil, you are heroes, go get on that' and not much else, and all the DS version really did was to give the main characters actual names. That said, it was still very enjoyable, although naturally there was much level-grinding involved in between major storyline events.

Despite the plot being as basic as it was, the updated graphics, interesting bits of storyline and the challenges of some of the dungeons (ye gods I hated that damned volcano) got me through this pretty quickly. The world had enough interesting stuff going on in it to keep me occupied, and despite being rather bland overall, the characters had been given enough personality to at least let me connect with them a little. Although apprently they were also given enough to spawn a surprising amount of yaoi fanfiction in the fandom.

Lookin' at you there Arc...

Overall, I enjoyed playing the game, even though my paranoid levelling up before the endgame proceeded to make it far too easy (not that this is a bad thing, I usually like that, it was just too easy in places. Poor Xande...).

Again, this was the DS Version, and was one of the more recent ones that I played. The first FF game with plot, IV was really entertaining, until I hit a snag and stopped playing and still haven't got back to it...

In any case, I enjoyed what I did play of it. Along with the shiny graphics of the opening cinematic and the pretty good in-game graphics, the characters were entertaining and featured voice acting! Now, although I usually love Yuri Lowenthal as a voice actor, his little performance here was a bit... eh. On the other hand, I could marry Kain's voice actor (the other guy in that video, with the lovely deep voice. Yum). Anyway, aside from that, what I played of the storyline was enjoyable; political intrigue, betrayal, loyalties, little bit of  romance thrown in. Also an apparent vendetta against children.

Screw you kids.

The only bad point I ever came across (and this is really just me being biased here anyway) was the one that stopped me playing. One of the mid-game bosses is ridiculously difficult, so much so that I got stuck and so frustrated with it that I quit playing. Unfortunately, that's what I get for buying the DS release instead of the earlier GBA one; the original battle was much easier, and they kept that for the GBA version. Damn me and my need for pretty graphics!

Yup, here we are, the famous one. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm one of the fans that got pulled into the series by FFVII, although I was fantastically late to the party given that I didn't play this until... ooh, ten years after it had been released, and only after I'd watched Advent Children. Still, it's great, and I've played through it enough times to know it pretty well. Sure, I'm not one of those crazies who know everything about it (or think they do), but I can hold my own in a discussion on it, and there's plenty of material there.

Let's see, good characters, good storyline, a couple of plotholes but nothing too major, and enough background material and characters to choke even the best fanfiction writer, and you get a very good game. I mean, yeah, by today's standards the graphics are pretty bad, but the little lego figures with the cube hands did their darnedest to be heroic. And be terrorists, but they got over that.

Of course, VII is also the game with the largest number of fanbase divides. There's the general divide of old FF fans vs 'new' ones who only showed up because of VII, the various factions of the 'Cloud really loves X' debate and also the Jenova vs Sephiroth as the true villain debate. And that's not even going into all the other various quibbles this game has going on around it. But I still like it.

IX is another great game, largely because of the characters. After the rather depressing heroes of VII and VIII, we were suddenly presented with Zidane, in all his flirtatious, humourous glory. That, coupled with the adorableness that was Vivi was enough for me to like the game. I mean, yeah, it wasn't perfect; there was a lot more potential for character development with Freya and Amarant that was neglected, but overall, it was a good game.

As well as the solid protagonist cast, I enjoyed Kuja as the villain. He was just so flamboyant, but he carried it off very well. Plus, his motive was nice and simple. None of this 'I'm destroying the Planet because I'm a GOD' or 'I must  compress time so that I can live forever' nonsense. No, Kuja just got pissed off that he wasn't going to live forever and decided that he was taking the world with him. Plus, he gets extra points since he did destroy one world.

Although, his fashion sense is a bit...

I will say that the game has a minor annoyance in that there is a large section where our Princess becomes mute and selectively useless in battle, but beyond that, it's a pretty solid game on the character front. The only other niggle is that unlike the previous Limit Breaks, the characters' Trance states activated automatically, leading to them inevitably being triggered in the random battle before the big boss when you really wanted it. That was annoying.

X... isn't my favourite. I mean, I still like it, but it just didn't click for me as well some of the others. Characters like Lulu and Auron helped, but didn't make the problems with the main characters any better. Tidus, although he does have some merits, is still a whiny brat with daddy issues, and while he gets better, his voice actor just can't seem to be less annoying, which is a shame because James Arnold Taylor isn't a bad voice actor. Our leading lady, Yuna, also has problems. Sure, she's all sacrificing and noble and that's good in a heroine, but the girl is a doormat, and unfortunately, Hedy Burress, her voice actress, was a little too careful with her lip syncing, and as a result, Yuna's speech is very stilted in places.

Other than that, it's a good story, even if I never actually finished it. My only other gripe with it was the Sphere Grid. Sure, it was innovative and flexible but I wanted my good old-fashioned levelling system. I like knowing where my characters are, not trying to guess if they're around the right stage for the next big fight. Still, Spira is nice, bright and colourful and it has a nice feel to it, even if most of it is controlled by a bigoted, dogmatic religious regime.

Okay, I know this is controversial, but I actually like this game. I mean yeah, the story isn't a patch on the original, the concept is really quite shallow, but the game knows this. It plays up the fanservice aspect as much as it can and it has fun with it. And the story isn't terrible. In a lot of ways, it's really quite believable; a power vacuum being filled by different factions who are unsure of what exactly they want to acheive. And it's nice that Yuna has grown up a bit, got herself a spine and has had it up to here with people being idiots. I can respect that.

Also, the traditional levels reappeared, and the dresspheres are a bit of silly fun. And, in a surprising twist, Tidus and Yuna's respective voice actors (the same as before) don't suck!

Ah XII. I really do love this game. Not particularly for the characters or the storyline, although it's nice to see political intrigue taking the fore over the usual  supernatural evil malarkey. For me, the best thing about XII was the world. Ivalice is a wonderful cluster of nations where everyone hates everyone else and is perfectly happy to bitch and snark about it to anyone who'll listen. Walking around the cities and even just the landscape, it feels real, even if no one is ever going to explain how Golmore jungle connects to Paramina Rift; the climates just seem to meet each other with no temperate zone in the middle.

A lot of people complain about how the game is really about Ashe and why are Vaan and Penelo even there? But I like Vaan and Penelo. Not enough to play the sequel where they're the main characters, but I like them, and they serve their purpose. Every other one of the playable characters knows what the political situation in Ivalice is. Ashe and Basch have to know, and Fran and Balthier travel around enough to have picked it all up. Vaan and Penelo, however, have very little idea of what's going on, and so they serve as the excuse for the game to explain it to the player. All in all, it's quite a refreshing game, and the line between hero and villain is extremely blurry. I just really enjoyed it, if I'm honest.

Oh this game. This game seemed to want me to hate it at points. The characters start out as being either annoying or bland, with Lightning's badassery and Vanille's quirkiness only serving to highlight the annoying and the bland. That, coupled with the annoying mechanics of the Eidolon battles makes it hard to like it, but I persevered. I still can't say a lot for the game, but the character development was solid enough, and it was very pretty. I just felt that there was a lot of potential that they just ignored, such as Hope's supposed daddy issues, which could have been much better fleshed out and put to good plot use since his father worked for the government the party are on the run from. But no, Hope's just 14 and hates his dad... just sort of because he does a bit.

I'll also say that I liked the Crystarium and the Paradigm Shifts. It was like they took the best bits of the Sphere Grid and the Gambit system from X and XII, and then made them work better. And I have and will continue to grind away until I've finished all the missions, but I'm a gaming masochist, so ignore me.

So yeah, I should shut up now. Yes, I'll do that.

On Writing, As Fueled by Gingerbread Lattes

Well apparently I suck so far this year. I promised myself that I was going to keep regular bi-weekly updates on this thing and now look at me. However, it looks as though holiday updates will be limited to one post per week since inspiration appears to be sorely lacking. Monday and Tuesday of this week in particular were a lather-rinse-repeat of 'go to work, wait patiently for customers, get no customers, wait less patiently for customers, get no pay, go home, sit on couch playing video games and feel as though brain is dribbling out of ears.'

However, today I have had a lie-in, made myself a gingerbread latte and now I am going to attempt to write a blog post.

So far in my previous blog entries, I have mentioned my love for cartoons. This is one of my three main passions in life, the other two being video games (mostly of the Square Enix and Atlus variety) and creative writing, and as I sat there at work doodling Sickness from Jhonen Vasquez's I Feel Sick yesterday, I suddenly thought 'hey, there's two more blog posts right there!' We're starting with the latter today, as my video games post is probably going to contain a very long ramble on various different Final Fantasy games, possibly with some Persona thrown in, and also because maybe if I write about writing, my erstwhile muse will get her sorry arse back to work.

Anyway, I'm going to hold my hands up and admit it right now; yes, I write fanfiction. I have an account on fanfiction.net and one of my pet projects is my ongoing 28-chapter epic written for the Powerpuff Girls (yes, you did just read that right). I do write my own fiction too, of course, but fanfiction is where I really started developing my own style.

A lot of people dismiss fanfiction as stupid, and I will be the first to say that there is a lot of utterly terrible stuff out there, as well as downright terrifyingly awful stuff, which I'll discuss in a later post, because quite frankly, you can get some good laughs out of it and there is a lot of it, but right now, I'll cover some of the good points of it all.

The Security Blanket Effect

Fanfiction, as implied by the name, is all about writing for something you're a fan of. As well as being a way of expressing this, it's also a fantastic way to develop your own skills in characterisation. I was always worried that I created weak characters in my own fiction, but in writing fanfiction, you have the security of the fact that the people reading it already know the characters from the original work. However, this doesn't mean you can be lazy about writing them. As well as having that comfort, you also have the added challenge of keeping the characters recognisable.

There are lots of different genres within fanficton, including Alternate Universe (AU), which is very prevalent in such fandoms as Kingdom Hearts, normally involving the notorious High School AU. However, even if you do put the characters into another world, they are still the same characters, and you still have to put the work in to keep them believable. In this way, fanfiction can act as a good springboard to writing stronger characters of your own. You have the base character in fanfiction, and it's then up to you to develop them in your own way in your story, while still maintaining the feel of the character.

I started off writing for Danny Phantom and Final Fantasy VII, which were easy enough since I felt I knew the characters pretty well. For these stories, it was more about building on my ability to come up with good storylines and working on how exactly I wanted the characters to develop. Later, I started on the Powerpuff Girls, and as stupid as it sounds, this fandom has done wonders for my characterisation skills.

The Powerpuff Girls cartoon featured the three girls as five year olds, but for my stories, I aged them up until they were around sixteen. The challenge here was making sure that I kept their stock traits, while adding in the little changes and quirks that we all develop as we grow up. All in all, it's a lot of fun to give yourself a little lee-way with the characters like that, while at the same time challenging to make the characters the same as the ones everyone knows and loves.

The Feedback

I've made some of my best friends through writing fanfiction, due to the fact that it, as neurotic and sometimes war-mongering as its inhabitants are, fanfiction.net is still a network of different communities. For me, it was The Genesis Awards that really made me appreciate both good fanfiction and the friends you can make online.

The Genesis Awards is all about finding and sharing good fanfiction, mostly from Final Fantasy (VII and X, with some Kingdom Hearts thrown in too), and as implied by the name, there is an awards scheme, although the prize is really just bragging rights for you and your winning story. In any case, being part of the forum showed me the importance of both giving and receiving good solid critiques on writing. Through getting reviews on my stories online, I've been able to hone my skills little-by-little, and by giving it, I'm both developing my own analytical skills as well as helping someone else to develop their writing.

So yeah, there are some really great upsides to being part of a writing community. Even if fanfiction isn't your cup of tea, there is fictionpress.com, which is the original fiction community in the same vein.

Evolution

No, I'm not talking about Pokemon again, don't worry. When I first started out writing fanfiction, I'm almost ashamed to say that much of it consisted of mushy romantic fluff, because anyone who knows me pretty well will probably know that underneath my cynical, sarcastic shell, I'm one of the biggest goopy romantics ever, and it showed. However, as I got more comfortable in my ability to write, my stories started evolving into much darker, more mature romances. To the point that one of my English teachers in school made the mistake of asking to read some of it, and the next day, she gave me a very odd look and a strained 'you write some very... dark things, don't you?'

Later, my reportoire expanded again, growing to include some more neutral writing that focused more on character conflict and development, and a few misguided attempts at humour which may or may not have been a complete disaster (my friend from the GA said it was funny, but she may have just been being nice).

Basically, it's got to the point now where I look back at my oldest pieces of writing, and promptly feel like I want to delete them from my account (I have done this in a lot of cases), simply because the change in my writing has been so massive that my older stuff seems barely recognisable as being mine. This change, in my opinion, is a fantastic thing. It shows me that however much my crippling self-esteem issues want to moan about it, my writing is always getting better. Every new story or chapter is another chance to get good reviews, so I keep trying harder each time.

Coming up with new scenarios and new styles is all part of the fun, and you can get the inspiration from anywhere. Sometimes one storyline won't suit certain characters, so you match it to different ones, or maybe even come up with characters of your own. Your writing style changes naturally as you keep writing, and looking back on the evolution's always good to see how you're advancing.

So yeah, that's my own dorky take on why it's okay to write fanfiction. Usually. There are a few people who really probably shouldn't, but, as I said earlier, we'll save that for another post.

This has been Mint, being her usual dorky self.

A Month for Mint

Okay, so I was short one post last week, and I have an idea for a post that will make up for failtastic one I made last time, but that awesome post is not this one, because I don't have the time to write the epic post right now. So instead, I'm going to write a simplified rundown of my life over the past month in order to show you why I don't have time for epic posting.

Events may be slightly out of order, since this is going to be written in the way that my brain is currently functioning, which is not very chronologically. In any case, this has been my December.

WARNING: This post contains multiple and flagrant cases of CAPSLOCK ABUSE.

STIRLING: *ker-snowed!*
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: AW HELL NO

ESSAY DEADLINES: *appear on horizon*
MINT: *procrastinates*
DEADLINES: *loom*
MINT: *plays video games*
DEADLINES: *LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*
MINT: OMGWTF *spazflail*

AWESOME AMERICAN FRIEND: Hey, so I have to go back to America in a couple of weeks.
MINT:  ):
AWESOME CANADIAN FRIEND: Hey, so I have to go back to Canada in a few weeks
MINT:  D:

EXAM DATE: *appears on horizon*
MINT: *studyflail*

11TH OF DECEMBER: Hey, it's your birthday today!
MINT: *procrastinates, with SUSHI and FLATMATES*
EXAM DATE: *taps MINT on shoulder*
MINT: Well, shit *more studyflail*

EXAM PAPER: So all that studying you did? Yeah, so not gonna help.
MINT: WTF IS THIS I DON'T EVEN-! *examflail*

FLATMATES: We have exams tomorrow! *studyflail*
MINT: I HAVE NO MORE EXAMS I AM FREE
FLATMATES: *glaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare*
MINT: I'll be good...

COWORKER: We are having a leaving party for AAF where we work tomorrow. You'll work it right?
MINT: Yeah, okay.
COWORKER: And you'll work the day after that even though it'll be a late night? And Sunday? And Saturday too? Great!
MINT: Wait, what?!

AAF: Thanks for doing this, this party's pretty awesome.
MINT: That's okay, we're-
COWORKER: *DRUNKEN RAAAAAAAAAGE*
MINT: O_O OH MY GOD WHAT

ACF: I'm really drunk. Can I have hugs?
MINT: Of course ACF
ACF: I'm going to miss you when I go back to Canada.
MINT: T_T
ACF: DRINKS ON MONDAY!
MINT: Okay!

BOSS' NOTE: THIS PLACE IS A MESS WHAT WERE YOU DOING LAST NIGHT?!
MINT: *whimper*

WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK

MINT:  I can fold up flat packed giftboxes in my sleep. Speaking of sleep, I'm going to do that.

BOYFRIEND: I have to go home now.

MINT: D: BUT NOW MY BED WILL BE COLD.

SECRET SANTA DEADLINE: Sooo...

MINT: ARGH *plotscramble*

SCOTLAND: *ker-snowed!*

GODFATHER: Come have lunch with us in Glasgow!

MINT: Awesome!

TRAINS: Fiiiiiiiiine, but you are standing on that platform in the cold for an hour before we take you anywhere.

MINT: D:

GLASGOW: *ker-freeze!*

MINT: OH COME ON NOW

GODFATHER: Happy late birthday!

MINT: Yay! *ker-lunched*

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TIME!

MINT: I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO GET ANYONE AND CHRISTMAS IS THIS WEEK AAAAAAH!

RED5: Hey, we have some pretty cool stuff!

MINT: Neat!

SHOP SHOP SHOP SHOP

SSD: *ahem*

MINT: OH CRAP! TO STIRLING!

TRAINS: NOT SO FAST! *delayed!*

MINT: T_T

MINT: I MADE IT!

SSD: *AHEM*

MINT: IN A MINUTE *failure to giftwrap*

ACF: TO THE PUB!

SSD: *facepalm*

So yeah, that's why I'm lame and wrote a lame post last time and it was lame again this time and I'm going to go finish writing that secret santa now...