My eyes are doing that slow blinky thing that means 'Go to bed. You have no energy left.' but I do not want to.

I discovered today that my Gallery colored pencils are truly watercolor pencils, as that is what they turn into when water is applied. These pencils come in a very nice (and, according to the girls in my French class, very nice-smelling) box that snaps open and shut, and I brought them with me to use in Econ/Study hall and the box was a source of much interest to many who saw it. :3; It's incredibly fun to sit and color with them and then to take a paintbrush to the pencil and watch it get all watercolory, but as the set didn't include skintones, I can't color whole pictures this way. So I'm basically still using a mishmash of Prismacolors (which, being that they're not watercolors, don't respond at all when water is applied, they just take on a wet sheen that dries after a while :3;) and these pencils, and putting water on the hair and clothes and eyes and so on, but leaving the skin alone.

Now my eyes are just starting to hurt. I think I'm going to get some water and go to bed. n__n

but first, love to ali and laris, laris and ali, who make me laff and tell good stories. n_n Now bed.

I shamelessly copied off of Kendra and Jaz and made this. My lameness springs eternal. :3;

And, speaking of online tests, a continued thank-you to those that took the Claris one. n_n I'm sorry to those of who are getting Samael & Gabriel (surprising amount getting Sammy, actually), their descriptions (especially Gabby's) are purposely lame/undetailed, because to tell a lot about their characters would be shpoiling shtuff. I changed most everything around from how it originally was (because originally it sucked. it may still suck, but now it sucks less, I am confident in that at least), except for Samael's overall role as the antagonist (which technically, with how I'm writing it now, would be a spoiler, but most people basically know that anyway, so whatever ^^;). I'm also sorry there are no pictures of Shateiel. I'm trying to give him a visual design, but it's hard, because I can't draw the kind of hair I want to give him. -__-;

Interesting. The official Sailormoon site is also interesting, even though I of course cannot read a word of it (except, um, the little disclaimers and such in English).

"You don't hear the word 'No' very often, do you?"
"I hear it all the time, only it's more like 'No, please, no, no!'"

Analyze This is funny. :3;

I think that's why I write the way I do, Etoile. In real life, I'm full of angst (as anyone who reads this is aware). I cry a lot. I complain a lot. I'm sensitive. I'm hurt easily. I take things seriously.

This is going to sound like pretentious bullshit (I used to hate that word. I still don't like it much, but the desensitization has obviously begun), but the truth is that in my writing I can be free of that. Not to say that my writing lacks melodramatic angst; certainly it's there in spades, but I try to temper it with humor, with poking fun. I don't have to take everything so seriously, and I can't get hurt or upset because I'm the one in control (or at least, I tell myself this. XD The story really does drag me in all kinds of crazy directions). I think that if my writing were humorless--if they were really that full of sobbing and angst and everything--then I probably wouldn't like it so much. The stories I read in the Rhodes magazine either left me depressed or at least mildly bitter, and all of them--every last one--was realistic fiction. This is also why I don't write entirely realistic fiction, because reality sucks. Reading those stories would strengthen that belief. But I don't want to write about pure fantasy either, at least, that's not my favorite thing. I like twisted reality. Surreality, I guess. Stories that mix the mundane with the fantastic are my favorite to read and my favorite to write, and I really hope I get that across in Claris and Clarity--they're about fantastic things happening in an otherwise mundane world.

(now I will digress)

On the other hand, writing something like that can be cathartic for people, for a lot of people, which is why so much poetry is about broken hearts and suicide and rape and drugs and all that. Poetry is an easy way to let out emotions in a vague and crackfed manner (or, for some people, in an incredibly explicit and sometimes frightening manner). This is why so much of it (including my own) sucks. It's easy, so naturally everyone who wants to call themselves a writer engages in it, because besides being easy it's a release. Easy release. And there's nothing wrong with writing bad poetry. There really isn't. It's when you write poetry that's bad--that you know was written purely for the soothing of your aching heart and that you know no one would care to read but you--it's when you try to take that poetry and give it to someone, and then completely freak out when they don't think you're the next [insert poet you think is really good here, i.e., lord byron, sylvia plath, pablo neruda, maya angelou, lord tennyson, robert frost, anne sexton, etc]--when a problem exists.

Hm.. umm.... I hate Literary Magazine. Yes. At first, I liked it--dare I say, even, looked forward to it. It was a lot of fun when I was merely a poetry editor, but this year it's just... ugh. Okay, first of all, even though I'm an editor, no one ever tells me anything, which is why I'm rendered totally useless in the current crisis we are experiencing, which is that Kinko's doesn't have the magazines ready and they need to be ready so we can send a copy to Wordsmith. But I basically know nothing about anything, since Ms. Garrison had the other editor do it, so I don't know why she keeps asking me things that she knows I don't know, because I was never told them in the first place. This isn't the other editor's fault--like me, she's only following orders, the other thing I'm really hating. I thought that, if I were editor, I'd have some influence as to how things were done. Turns out I have none. Less than none, really. All that's changed is that I do a lot more work. I thought this would be easier this semester since the spring edition doesn't go to competition, and maybe it will, but so far it's been really annoying due to this crisis and due to the fact that, FOR SOME REASON, I'm being used to run Wordsmith errands as well (I'll get to why I hate Wordsmith now in a minute =P). So yesterday I literally walked over the entire school--we are talking every nook and cranny of this place, I even got to see the inside of the Shop room, very interesting o_o;--delivering Wordsmith nonsense.

Wordsmith (which I've poorly explained here before; if you want something better then go here), which used to be controlled by a freshman english teacher, is now controlled by a junior english teacher. This teacher is an intelligent man, to be sure, but he plays favorites like no other teacher I have seen before (excepting an art teacher), and I've never had him. This is not to say that he would like me even if I'd been a member of his class, but me not being a member of his class puts me at an immediate disadvantage. Not to say that I was chosen as an alternate twice solely because of his favortism (or even -largely-, as the two that are picked are -excellent- writers from what I've read), but when he chooses the exact same team two years in a row... -__-; I don't know. I'm just inclined to think it's a bit of favortism because of the way he acts.

Besides that.. Wordsmith, once the novelty of writing about objects and photographs and so on wears off... isn't all that enjoyable. It was for the first two years, and I was kind of looking forward to it last year (which is why I was pretty crushed when I was only the alternate) but this year I realize that I would have thought it was a pain in the ass even if I had been selected.

And even the Creative Writing class I took (with Ms. G, who is a good teacher but is more into poems than stories, which is my preferred modus operandi) wasn't all that geared towards the stories I like to write--in fact, Ms. G basically uses it as an auxiliary source for gathering lit mag submissions, it seems. -_- I guess this is what I fear the most about college, although since Rhodes has courses specifically designated as 'fiction' and 'poetry', I don't think it'll be too much of a problem.

So yeah. I do not like the way fiction/creative writing is handled at my school, is what it boils down to. But I did enjoy the CW class, actually (and we did actually get to write a short story near the end, which was great, although I've lost mine which is too bad because I liked it n_n), and since we were usually prompted, it being mainly about poetry and/or incredibly short prose wasn't that big of a deal. It's really Literary Mag that I just hate, because I thought when I was editor I could change the things I disliked (the elitism that happens in the selection of art and writing, for example), but I couldn't and I can't, and it sucks.

Yeah, okay... whatever....

I don't really know why I haven't been posting lately... I guess I just haven't had anything to say.

Mom and Dad took my C for Physics well. Scarily well. I guess they realize that everything is getting to be sort of moot now. I handed in all the extraneous parts of my Rhodes app--recommendations from teachers and the counselor--today (that is to say, I gave them what they need in order to write those recommendations), so now all that's left is the actual application and the (gulp) essay. I hope to God that I'm accepted to this school. I don't care if I have to get a job AND do work-study. I am a little nervous, though, because I'm afraid for two things. First, I'm afraid that there won't be anyone like me there and by that I don't mean people who aren't into anime/fantasy/other geeky things (no doubt Rhodes is crawling with geeks), I mean people who write like I do. I picked up a copy of their lit mag, and the short stories in it were nothing like the stuff I write. It's not neccessarily that they were so much better (although a few of them were excellent, way above me), they just dealt with very different topics than I like to deal with--more realistic fiction, mostly humorless kind of thing. I could write that if I tried--I have--but that's not what I really like. So I fear.

Second, I'm afraid that I'll be in with a bunch of people who are overachieving hardworkers, and while I know I can and do work hard when I have to, it's not a frame of mind I'm usually in (usually I am deterred by procrastination). So I'm worried I'll be amongst all these highly competent people who get everything done weeks before the deadline (or even days, as opposed to the night before, like I usually do) and that I will feel very stupid and outclassed. This is rather minor compared to the first fear, but it could still make things unpleasant. I don't know, I could just be being irrational, but.. -__-

I am pleased, because I got Microsoft Word back. It kicks WordPad's ass all over the place in everything, plus it has the mighty word count function, which I love to death. Unfortunately it sucks in memory like a black hole, so I can't have too many other windows open when I'm working in it. n_n

It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to see that people are actually taking the Claris selector... my efforts at work evasion were not in vain. XD If you're not happy with your results, then know that the test is, at best, only semi-accurate. I say semi- because I answered all the questions, honestly, and got Claris, who is of course myself (or started out like that anyway). But the only way for true accuracy (as I was telling Ali yesterday x_x) would be to create one of those neat little tests with a script, with each answer specifically tailored towards a certain result, but I don't know how to write one of those and am too lazy to learn. So I do the best I can with a yes/no format.

New and improved Claris character selector.. complete with those fun little paragraphs and buttons to post in one's blog/journal if one desires. Ah, the things I do to avoid real work.

"What if the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train?"