Glitter Princess Sparkleboots

sepiamagpie @ 2009-11-18T20:24:00

2009-11-19T02:25:19Z

As I set up my google calendar, I realize google owns just a little bit more of my soul than before.

I got new toys. There's jawas and storm troopers and... girl troopers. Exciting.

This post isn't about a videogame, actually

2009-11-12T14:01:12Z

I need someone better at hair physics than me to answer this question:

What would a similar cut to this, but unstraightened, look like?

QUESTION HAS BEEN ANSWERED TO MY SATISFACTION IN THAT APPARENTLY A HAIRCUT LIKE THAT WITHOUT THE STRAIGHTENING WOULD LOOK KIND OF AWESOME.

In other news! I'm reading The Discworld Graphic Novels which is the Colour of Magic and the Light Fantastic and it is fabulous to finally own legal copies of these comics.

They are basically how I picture Rincewind and Twoflower, explaining how the live action Colour of Magic was a tad bit jarring for me.

That is all.

Carry on.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-11-12T01:49:00

2009-11-12T07:51:12Z

Me: it's like trainwreck syndrome
Me: trainwreck syndrome I want to make out with

These CSI: Miami episodes and Horatio (Oh Hocaine, hold me) Caine are having a detrimental effect on my mental wellbeing.

Snacky says his name is 'Hocaine'

2009-11-11T03:50:33Z

I did something I'm not too proud of today, flist. I'm told confession is good for the soul, so here it is. Please don't judge me too harshly:

I was so desperate for science-type crime shows today to make up for my months long dry spell, I uh, I bought a season of CSI: Miami.

I'd make a pun here and take off my glasses, but I suck at those so let's just say I did and call it even.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-31T22:03:00

2009-11-01T03:04:08Z

Welcome to my Halloween. I was gonna be Sherlock (Well, She-rlock, long story), but my Watson, my beloved sister, got ill. Possibly the hamthrax. So like hell am I going within a mile of her. She can suffer in silence.

So instead me and my mom carved pumpkins no one but us would ever see (we live in the country) and watched The Colour Of Magic.

Zee first pumpkins! The big one behind is my mom's sheepish pumpkin, and the angry one up front is my pumpkin.

Mess!

Mom's working on the last pumpkin. I graciously let her do it. Because I'm nice. Not because I was still picking out chunks of pumpkin from my hair from the first one.

Nimbus comes to help.

Oswald is helping too! And is happy to.

My pumpkin is placed.

The other pumpkins and Nimbus don't like my pumpkin.

Mom's pumpkins lit up!

Mine! Still angry.

Group shot!

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-30T11:52:00

2009-10-30T16:54:35Z

Just a quick note for y'all.

My computers are like little vaults of mystery and wonders, in that I rarely remember what I did on them from hour to hour, possibly due to the fact I don't often do this thing called 'sleeping' you humans are so fond of.

Once in a while, while delving for a particular file, i will come across astounding things!

This is a long way to say, 'wtf, why are there 76 babysitter's club .lit files on my computer?'

Last one, folks. Thanks for bearing with me in my time of crisis

2009-10-21T00:09:43Z

There's probably a lesson in all this about flossing regularly, but damned if I'm going to learn it.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-20T19:03:00

2009-10-21T00:04:01Z

I CAN FEEL MY NOSE AGAIN!

I REPEAT, FEELING HAS RETURNED TO THE NOSE.

Maybe I don't have to die.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-20T17:04:00

2009-10-20T22:04:46Z

boy howdy would I like some feeling in my face

twitter may make it a little too easy to share my thoughts

2009-10-20T21:26:27Z

First post: Back from the dentist! My nose and upperlip are completely numb! I look like a sneering drunken cowboy. Kill me.

Pause. Wait six minutes.

Second post: KILL ME

Unrelated: I know I'm not gonna be able to blame this on whatever she used to numb my face later, but I realized I kinda have a gay crush on Thor from the Avengers. I don't know, man. These thoughts just come to me.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-18T02:13:00

2009-10-18T07:15:29Z

Oh, sorry guys. I forgot this part of the talk on insane characters:

The only time insanity can work for a character is when it's kept within safe bounds—minor eccentricities that can even be rather charming. And even then, an insane character is almost never viable as the main character in the story. The audience is rarely comfortable enough with insane characters to want to spend any length of time with them.

Although it's okay to want to use them for sex, I guess, Orson*.

*See last post

Book Review or 'Wtf did I just read'

2009-10-18T05:58:20Z

So. I'm reading Characters & Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card because I figured it couldn't hurt, right?

And while I'll admit up front I have actually found some information of value in this book, I'm not exactly sure about the rest of his advice...

I'll get into it more in-depth after this quick example. First off, he offers us two scenes to establish a character with the use of stereotypes.

Here they are:

The old man was wearing a suit that might have been classy ten years ago when it was new, when it was worn by somebody with a body large enough to fill it. On this man it hung so long and loose that the pants bagged at the ankle and scuffed along the sidewalk, and the sleeves came down so low that his hands and the neck of his wine bottle were invisible.

and

She heard them before she saw them, laughing and talking jive behind her, shouting because the ghetto-blaster was rapping away at top volume. Just kids on the street in the evening, right? Walking around outside because finally the air was cooling off enough that you could stand to move. One of them jostled her as he passed. Was it the same one who laughed? A few yards on, they stopped as if they were waiting for her to catch up with them. The one with the boom box watched her approach, a wide toothy grin on his face. She clutched her purse tighter under her arm and looked straight ahead. If I don't see them, she thought, they won't bother me.

He then crows about how it was a wino and scary black kids and how we all knew from his stereotype words, even though he never specified it was either. He's very proud of his writing feat. Especially the jive talk bit. Then he says 'let's turn this on its head!'

Here is the 'turned on its head' scene:

"Hey, old man," Pete said. "You've lost some weight."
"It wasn't the cancer, Pete, it was the cure," he answered. "I'm glad you're here. Come on upstairs and help me finish this Chablis."

The 'damn scary black kids' paragraph is never touched.

MOVING ON

There are odd bits and pieces here and there. Here's one of them, where he revels at the sheer amazement of someone's amazing character idea (I'm not sure if this section is fail or just plain weirdness vibing):

For instance, Michael Bishop faced this problem in his brilliant 1988 novel Unicorn Mountain, in which one character, Bo, is a young homosexual who is dying of AIDS. Bo and another character are at a motel swimming pool when three muscular young men come to swim. Bo might have had any of several responses: envy at their health and strength; resentment that these boorish young heterosexual men don't have to pay a price like AIDS for their sexual activities. But what Bishop chose to show was simple lust. These three young swimmers had attractive, muscular bodies. Having AIDS hadn't stopped Bo from being a homosexual. He still looked at these young men with desire.
I believe that Bishop, who is not a homosexual, based this scene primarily on analogy. What is it like to be a homosexual with AIDS? This question surely came up again and again as he worked on Unicorn Mountain. I think it led him to this analogy: It is very much like being a heterosexual with a fatal disease that has cut you off from having sex with anyone, but hasn't yet made you impotent or weakened your desire.
Bishop knew what we all know, that swimsuits reveal people's bodies a great deal more than business suits do, and that nowadays swimsuits are designed to emphasize sexual attractiveness. It just happened that Bo was interested in and aroused by the men at the pool. Yet he was not affected the way a woman is usually affected when watching men in swimsuits. He was affected as heterosexual men are affected when they watch women in swimsuits.

I'm not so much criticizing this as being a little bemused by how amazed he sounds. Mostly because I have never been so sure that Orson Scott Card is so far in the closet he's wearing narnian shoes (thanks, Ann) than reading this page. "he was attracted? A homosexual? Attracted to men? God, that's brilliant."

Although he makes a good point that no, you don't lose your penis when you get sick.

BUT THE MEAT OF THIS POST is when we get to the 'what you can do to make sure the audience hates a character' section.

It is revealed that these things will make a character loathsome:

Being smart, because America hates smart people and will drag them down with hate. He really said dumb down what your character does, and a good idea for making a villain elitist and hateful is (see below)

Talking proper English. Seriously. That also pisses off Americans because you're placing yourself above them. With you English ways.

Did I mention the whole placing yourself above thing? Don't seek responsibility or glory, America will hate that character. That damn elitist character. He implies it's America's fault for being an 'egalitarian society'

Being insane. I'm going to explain this one.

INSANITY: EVERYONE HATES AND WANTS TO KILL THE MENTALLY ILL (Thanks, Orson. I thought we were bros. Guess not.)

ZEE PAGE:

We are terrified of people who don't live in the same reality we do, who don't have the same definition of rational behavior. You can't talk to them, you can't reason with them; there is no common ground. However much mental health professionals might deplore it, the fact is that when the public is convinced someone is dangerously insane, all considerations go out the window except one: stopping this crazy person. Unless the storyteller works very hard to win sympathy for the insane character, the audience has no qualms about seeing him brutally subdued or killed. The world isn't safe as long as the madman has any chance of escaping. And if, like Charles Manson and his "family" or Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, the madman has succeeded in convincing others that his version of reality is the truth, the audience's fear and loathing is all the greater.
In film and on stage, insanity is easy to depict—a wide-eyed stare or darting eyes, nervous tics. But the best actors don't resort to such easy tricks, and neither do the best writers. It is far more effective to convince the audience that a character is insane by letting us see her strange perceptions of reality—her paranoia or delusions.

"Do you think I don't know what you're doing?" asked Nora softly. "I know why you brought me here."
"Yeah," said Pete, a little confused. "I brought you here for dinner."
"You just want to impress all your friends," she said. "You just want them to see me with you. But it won't work. I'm in disguise. That's why I wore this red scarf. Nobody ever recognizes me when I wear this red scarf." She leaned forward and whispered a secret. "I took it from my mother's coffin before they buried her."
Oh good, thought Pete. Not only is this the most expensive blind date I've ever gone on, not only did Steve and Gracie back out at the last minute so I had to go alone, but also this Nora turns out to be crazy. If she isn't at least OK in bed, Steve will not live to see another day.
"Don't eat any of the shrimp sauce," Nora said. "It's poisoned."

There is no chance that the audience will be hoping for Pete and Nora to end up with a long-term relationship. They will have no sympathy for Nora's character—unless the author goes to extraordinary lengths to make her sympathetic, either by showing the cause of her insanity or by convincing us, somehow, that she isn't insane at all.

Dude, it's not Nora I hated in that paragraph. Also... yeah. I'm a little afraid of America after reading the stuff above this, actually.

He made some comments I wasn't sure was bitching about feminists or agreeing with them, so I left them alone.

This post would be more in-depth but someone named little sister was chattering behind me the whole time. Something about leaving for five weeks and me having to 'pay attention to her' but guys, I'm on a mission. A mission.

I'm actually paring down all the stuff I found in the book.

It HAS, however, left me with an urge to talk to a deep south person so I can find out if my accent really does sound like jabbering to them. It was one of the things he said that sounded interesting, not stupid.

There really is some good stuff in the book, and I'm glad I've learned enough to be able to spot the off parts.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-07T09:47:00

2009-10-07T14:54:03Z

Well, another Call of Cthulhu aim game is winding down and I'm not exactly sure how many players I actually have. I think Snacky took her chance to run when she had it, my sister is eaten alive by school monsters on a daily basis, I think the school monsters also eye Bernie's tender meatbits, but I assume Ann and Sharon are my willing serfs.

BUT I THINK I SHOULD ROUND UP SOME NEW PLAYERS.

FUN FACTS ABOUT GAMETIME WITH JOHN

1. We call it Call of Cthulhu, but none of us have read the rules. This hasn't caused any impeding.
2. Once I let them blow up an entire small town that tried to hang them as witches. Shows them what happens if you accuse my players of being witches!
3. I've gmed two games now, which means I actually have learned by now to read the module/how to actually do it. Feel the burning rays of my experience.
4. It's played by meeting for two hours once a week on aim. A log is kept.
5. No one's actually been tentacle raped yet.
6. So far the only character creation I've denied is my sister's wish to play a dog. Screw you, sis!

If anyone's interested, comment here for talkin'! Or email me at crantz at lj dot com.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-04T08:48:00

2009-10-04T13:51:07Z

From Jeeves In The Springtime.

Our hero, Bertie, has just met up with his friend Bingo Little who earlier told Jeeves he had a matter of great importance to speak with Bertie on, but has suddenly shown reluctance to explain what said matter is:

I waited for him to unleash the topic of the day, but he didn't seem to want to get going. Conversation languished. He stared straight ahead of him in a glassy sort of manner.

"I say, Bertie," he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.

"Hallo!"

"Do you like the name Mabel?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?"

"No."

He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.

"Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fatheaded worm without any soul, weren't you?"

"Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all."

I hope one day my own writing delights me as much as just a snippet of Wodehouse's does.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-10-01T22:28:00

2009-10-02T03:29:02Z

This is one of my favourite set of responses to a whiner ever, but mostly I mean what tofuknight is saying.

Incidentally, this came to mind because they're back.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-09-27T15:28:00

2009-09-27T20:29:08Z

I thought we knew eachother well enough by now I can post my baby picture without fear.

Without further adieu, here is Baby Sep:

My sepia-tude came after an unfortunate bleach accident.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-09-22T14:00:00

2009-09-22T19:03:07Z

Recently being filled with rejection by my dog, who will fling herself around with wild abandon no matter who comes in the door, except me. She won't even get off the sofa to say hi. Or look at me.

After a bout of bitching on twitter, because it is the World's Most Trivial Concern, I decided to set up some new Wii stuff. Then my grandma called.

So I'm laying on the floor talking to her and the dog decides 'Enough is enough! I shall not let my human feel this way any longer!' and comes to attack my face, starting with licking my ear and then going for my mouth.

Grandma: "Why are you screaming?"

sepiamagpie @ 2009-09-20T06:02:00

2009-09-20T11:04:34Z

I also choose to believe Batman and Commissioner Gordon kinda like eachother in that way

2009-09-17T05:28:46Z

You know how everyone has personal canons, or whatever? Here's one of mine:

I like to believe Buffy Summers is Scott Summers' cousin.

Pretty sure I've just posted that on twitter and this isn't a repost.

ZOO

2009-09-05T06:14:34Z

Okay, I am off to become incommunicado for my birthday and a day or two after it. Treat me as if dead, thank you.

Leave all messages after the beep:

*BEEEEEEEEeeeep*

sepiamagpie @ 2009-09-01T01:53:00

2009-09-01T06:55:08Z

5 days to the most holy of days!

Everybody partay.

I shall be spending it at the zoo with my entourage. There will be, dare I say it, zebras.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-08-26T23:06:00

2009-08-27T04:06:52Z

I will not be surprised to see this person in a future dogpile.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-08-20T12:40:00

2009-08-20T17:41:39Z

"It's not like we could just shoot a flock of flamingos!"

"Of course not. You pick up one flamingo and use it as a club on the others, until it's too slippery with blood. Then you get another one."

Dean looked at her.

"What?" said Sara.

annlarimer gives her suggestion for a modification of a scene in the SPN/CSI crossover me and snacky are working on.

Meanwhile, work has begun on another SPN crossover, this time with Buffy (sort of), tentatively titled: Dawn, The Littlest Winchester.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-08-18T22:16:00

2009-08-19T03:18:56Z

Time Traveler's Wife and District 9 as possible messages for bisexuality, except it mostly comes off as insane crazy talk. I'm still leery over the first part, which sounds an awful lot like bisexuals=cheaters.

Meanwhile, District 9's camerawork and subject matter made me nearly throw up and I spent the last hour in the parking lot talking to annlarimer on the phone while my viewing companions finished it.

An ant climbed on me.

Then it rained.

sepiamagpie @ 2009-08-18T09:17:00

2009-08-18T14:18:11Z

From a never ever to be finished Supernatural fic:

Once upon a time John Winchester decided it was time to shoot the hell out of a unicorn.

"Sam," he said to young Sam. "I have a task for you. Put on this white dress."

"This is going to be the best hunt ever," said young Dean.

Sam punched young Dean.

"BOYS!" Yelled John Winchester.