You know, so many people I know offline and on have all these nicknames. Most people just call me 'Lyn' or 'Courtney.' (I've also been called Quatre, but, eh...) To be honest I really prefer being called Lyn. I probably could have gotten away with being called that instead of Courtney as well, since it's my middle name and a surprisingly large number of people go by that instead of their first name...

I don't know what it is about 'Courtney' that I dislike. Maybe it's because so many people have that name (boys AND girls, although Lynn is also a gender-neutral name). Or possibly I just like Lyn better...

'You're not a freak! YOU'RE JUST STUPID!'

It was the aliens from Squee!! XD Now every time I re-read Squee! I'll picture them with those accents.

I dreamt in CG the night before last. It was awesome. The dream was, as all my dreams are, very disjointed, and involved many things which have little or no relevancy to one another (breath of fire characters, random strangers, big scary buildings, nice cars), but mostly what's still in my brain is the perfect, beautiful image of the place where Donovan and Leliel are in the claris bit I posted. Not the world or the tree itself, mind you, but the location on the world and of the tree. Oh, it was so pretty. I wish I could dream like that more often.

Look, it is me in my highly inaccurate Ari costume! Look upon me and despair.

Remember how I said that yesterday was a long day? Take that, double it. As I was going to bed last night, I discovered a wasp in my room. If you know me, you know that there is little I fear more on this earth than wasps. They HURT. I still have a MARK on my leg from where one bit me LAST summer. They just send me in hysterics of fright, which is what I did when I saw it bzzzing towards me in my room. Mom came in, and whacked it, but she couldn't find the body. So I had to sleep with the thought of a wasp-at-large, and to understand how stressful that is for me, think of what you're most afraid of and imagine having to sleep knowing it is near to you. Then, at about three in the morning, the power went out. I knew this because my fan turned off, and when my fan is off in the summer it becomes unbearably hot in my room, and I couldn't sleep. So now I was hot, tired, and scared. The power flicked back on and off again, and again, until it flicked off and stayed off. This scared me EVEN MORE because if you know my computer, it tends to completely freak out if left off for an extended period of time. Freak out as in, suddenly decide the command.com doesn't exist. Which results in a reformat and reinstallation of Windows, usually.

The power finally returned at around six, giving me approximately ten minutes of relaxed sleep. I ran to check on the computer as soon as it returned and saw the screen I dreaded: it was asking me which mode to boot up in because it had failed normally. I chose normal, on faith, and it loaded! I was pleased, but internet wasn't working. This would have meant another restart. I decided to wait until I got home, which I did, and now it is OK and Malfactor is Not Dead Yet.

Actually.. things are okay right now. They will be Good if I didn't get a C in Adv Alg & Trig (I actually got a B in Physics this time... skin of my teeth, but I'll take what I can get..).


Yeah, I know, my greatest worries are my grades and so on... teenager worries.

Ugh, my eyes hurt. Today was/is a long day. Tomorrow is the last day of this marking period. The next marking period is the last. A little less than a month, people, and then it's all over. Please give me the strength to last that long, God... -_-

Hhhhmmm...Well, Angie, I can't draw architecture (not that I've seriously ever tried), I can't draw animals, can't draw poses (because I can't draw bodies..), can't even draw most household objects very well. But... I draw Karma (and draw in general) anyway. Don't think of this is as a backlash response because I do agree with you, somewhat. I think that if anyone does ANYTHING in the creative vein they should put their heart into it, and there ARE a lot of horrible online comics that obviously have no thought or time put into them at all. But I don't think being a wonderful artist automagically means you're either qualified to make comics or not qualified to make comics. Admittedly I'm mostly presenting this defense because I AM one of those people who thinks their art is poor (though I think mine is getting better..somewhat, slowly) and since you said that if the reader thought it was directed towards him/her, it was.

At first I was nervous about putting up Karma because I know that my skills were lacking (and they still are), but drawing Karma has really helped me learn to draw better. More importantly, it's helped me learn to draw on my own, even though I'm not very good yet and may not ever be. In terms of art, I'm definitely not qualified to be creating an online comic, but I do anyway, and I work hard on Karma--very hard. Each page is literally the result of hours of work on my part, even if looks bad to the viewer, it still took me a long time to create. Admittedly this is 70 percent because the pages are -always- in color and coloring takes a -long- time, but even so. Maybe I can't draw, and maybe I'm not qualified for a comic... but I'm not going to stop making Karma (because I don't like starting stories and not ending them, and because it is fun, if hard work sometimes) and I wouldn't discourage anyone who doesn't have megal33t art skillz to not draw comics either. I do feel that Karma suffers from my inability to draw backgrounds, as I try hard to create a sense of 'place' in my written stories that I can't create in Karma.

However, I would agree that more thought and heart needs to put into comics, and that's what's needed. Thought put not only into art, but into story and characters. And I too dislike it when people with poor writing try to put their own text on their comics... I did that once or twice in Karma, but that was because I had no graphics program at the time and so had no choice. :3;

I'm not attacking you, Angiefluff.. just defending myself, because I know that I do, at least, fall under the category of people with art not 'ready' for comics, in the words of that opinion. ^_^;

GOOD LORD I have way too much to remember for my math test tomorrow. Argh, I don't want a C, but it seems almost inevitable. It's just not possible for my brain to hold all of that information, and even if it were, I just can't force myself to care enough to try to cram it all down. This is so stupid. I know most people who hate math say this, but I am NEVER going to need to know that tan A = 1/cot A and vice versa, or that cos A = 1/sec A and vice versa, or that sin A = 1/csc A and vice versa. Or the Pythagorean Identities. Or that tan = y/x and cot = x/y and sin = x/r and blah blah blah. That is, unless I wanted to enter a field that utilizes trig, and I DON'T. And it's the same for my whole class. Everyone tends to fail her tests: they're too long, and they're cumulative, meaning they include not only what we just learned, but everything from the beginning of the semester also. So you're going to fail, if you're like me and poor at math, it's just a question of how badly.

I have a sinking feeling that that 0 IS going to cause me a C. Damn it.

Gee, does no one read my notes after the Karma pages? :3; Yes, that's Sean and Claris in the latest page. Yes, Claris is smiling. I know it's weird. But Sean looks like he's thinking horrible thoughts, so it's half right anyway.

Claris has also made two cameos in Clarity: once in the cafe at the bookstore (that's what you meant when you said bar, right, Kefanii?), in Chapter 7, and then again in Chapter 9 when Sikari is taking over the school. I can do this because, in case you haven't noticed yet, all of my characters live in the same town. Claris attends Kaitlyn and them's school (and vice versa), and Frames (the name of the bookstore--an obvious rip of Borders) is the most popular bookstore (it's also where Etienne works). Sinclair lives in Vinton as well, not that I've ever mentioned that. He lives in one of the four mansions--one belongs to Kiera's family, another to Roan's, and the other one is the Cerberus Estate which technically belongs to Charon (though it's been officially condemned and he doesn't intend to move in or let anyone official know he's alive and it belongs to him). Vinton is based very loosely on the town I live in, not in layout or anything but most of the places I mention do exist.

For example, the school is laid out like my own high school. Obviously the bookstore is like the Borders shop here. The shed Sean lives in exists (as does the shed that is now a gaudy yellow barn), though I've never been inside it because it is old and scary and there really are a lot of snakes in the grass back behind there. I also found a cemetery upon which to base Sean's workplace. ^_^;

Cafe Apocalypse (the bar Pathos works at) doesn't exist to my knowledge (though I think there was a nightclub called that in Memphis at one time; I think it's closed now though), nor do any of the mansions. Kaitlyn's and Charon's apartment buildings are also not based on any particular place.

I have a fair idea of how Vinton looks in my mind, though I've never drawn a map, I know basically where everything is in relation to everything else. Nearly everything I write is set there--if it's not set there, then it's set in a different world altogether (of which I have several, and several characters in my stories are from there, with Reve/Peri/Harmatia being obvious examples. Sean was also born on a different world than Earth, but there's not really a big deal made about it since it's not crucial to the plotline).

Yeah, I have a lot of free time. (well.. actually I don't, but I waste a lot of time thinking about all this)

For once I actually did what I said I was going to do (posted Karma)

We have an in-class essay on Faulkner's Light in August tomorrow and I know hardly anything about the book except what I learned from the spark notes and what I gleaned from the in class discussions (which is to say, not much). I'm so dead, man.

I don't know which is weirder: seeing your blog link on the site of a person with whom you have not even a remote association, or checking back a while later and seeing that link disappeared. People are so strange sometimes.

Updated the blog lynks. You people move around like desert nomads, I swear.

There will be new Karma today... just not sure when... maybe not until late. Goddamn Dayling Savings Time.