I wish I was boning vampires.

My uncle randomly messaged me to tell me that if I am every in Sherman Oaks, I should visit Harlan Ellison's house. I almost told him about Dan Foldberg's Llamas.

So..HI. Alive, but life has been eating me up lately. I've been more social this year which is good, but my work has made me incredibly paranoid about how I am perceived. I've was bullied and that's past now, but I keep expecting the person to backstab me, though I've stayed out of her way since then (I got moved to a cubicle after a near breakdown due to this and a manic episode). My dad got a second stint put in his heart last week and my bathroom is currently non-operational. Mom's firm got a death threat this week. Still living at home. Still no car. But...Yay for being an adult and being out of college and having income? I want to trade that all in and go back to school and do something with my life, but I don't know what. Hopefully I'll get out of here someday.

Wish my update was more pleasant. Sorry for downer post. :(

Well, it's been months since I have posted and life is going well. New job that's full time and I get benefits, though right now it's difficult. I am going through a manic cycle and they are moving me to someplace where I will be less stimulated. I am glad that they are accommodating my condition, but I'm still not doing a job I really want to do, but must in order to pay for things and hopeful move out of my parents house soon.

On the other side of life, HI, MY NAME IS RIN AND I AM A LARPER NOW! I play a mad French former-flapper ex-WWII spy vampire that is a lounge singer in Las Vegas in a local LARP group and no, it's not Vampire the Masquerade (thank gods). My PC is actually pretty popular though I have done only one game and has at least four or five werewolves interested in her (much to her estranged maker's and former lover's chagrin who is secretly the first Holy Roman Emperor turned demolition expert and mad scientist)! And she's a bitch and I love it. I'm finally making more friends outside of my normal friends group and I couldn't be happier with that. :D

It's been a while since I've updated, but I unexpectedly went to Comic Con this year due to having friends with professional passes put me down as their guest, but I only got to go two days due to the fact that I GOT A FULL TIME 9-5, 5 DAY A WEEK JOB NOW, Y'ALL. However, I DID get into the two big panels ("GRIMM" and "Doctor Who") I wanted to go to! It was especially great that both casts were so jazzed to be there. SO SHINY. Why can't the new seasons be out yet?!

I do have bunches of pics, but they're all on my camera phone so the quality is crap. :(

My two best friends since high school (over a decade! WOW!) are going to get married sometime in the near future once Prop 8 is ground to dust, but they are pretty strapped for cash. Bonnie a.k.a. Madame Dei (check out her DeviantArt here and her website here) is drawing commissions to help raise money and her prices are pretty affordable (Pricing Guide) and any little bit will help them. Her professional work includes illustrations for Krewe of Harpocrates, a budding tabletop game company and while she does draw a lot of fantasy character and creature illustrations as well as anime and game fanart, she can draw pretty much anything. I can think of no other women who are happier than these two and they deserve to have a great ceremony.

X-posted to fandom_lounge

Fellow citizens of the U.S.A. - This woman, Orly Taitz is running for U.S. senate in my state. BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID. Obama? A Muslim and a non-citizen! Why, she filed several court cases through out the nation to try to get him off the ballot in 2008 and more in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012! THAT IS DEDICATION! Obama isn't even his surname! He's also setting up internment camps for "Anti-Obama dissidents." Osama Bin Laden was killed long ago and kept on ice until Obama needed to use his body as a distraction to draw attention away from the court case she filed in Georgia against him! He hates her so much that he's made personal threats to her and has keyed her car. Did you know the House of Representatives is setting up labor camps, lead by a black representative named Alcee Hastings? Orly does! Hugo Chavez also controls our voting machines and Baxter International created a bird flu vaccine to kill people.

She's also promoted her theories in Isreal because Isreali people support her in e-mail.

I don't know about you, but I know who I'll be voting for come the primary!

She lives and works a city away from mine. Orange County is full of 100% concentrated crazy conservatives. D:

I'm going to start work on a new costume this week. There is a tight fitting bodice/jacket that, according to the pattern, requires 24 buttons. I don't want to use that many so I am wondering if I can alternate buttons with eyelets and hooks so I would only use twelve buttons and make the front look less cluttered. Would that work?

(Also, life has been alright. Just been too lazy to update.)

The Steampunk Style Test

You are the Scientist, the embodiment of steampunk’s academic side. Where other technological styles might emphasize the gadgets of the genre, you realize there is more to science than doohickeys and gears. Your accessories are medical bags, test tubes, measuring instruments, and academic papers. You are more likely to carry a compass, quadrant, or ether-attuned spectrometer than a wrench or welding torch. You probably carry a timepiece, and your prolific reading gives you every right to wear spectacles. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of your style is that it combines the frock coats and bustle gowns of the 19th century with the trappings of Victorian science.

Finished planning my costume for this years events. I'll at least be attending one in the summer. I hope to attend the Steampunk Gala in San Diego, but that depends on if I have money. I'm basing it on this dress. It's overly ambitious but I'm finishing my costume from last year first as a back up plan and because I already ave the material.

My Evil Guide Plan

Congratulations on being the creator of a new Evil Plan (tm)!

Your objective is simple: criminal activities.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: to show them all

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first incapacitate a chosen one. This will cause the world to slaughter a sacred calf to appease the gods, bewildered by your arrival. Who is this Threat to our Children? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in a Supervillain Costume with Gimmicks?

Stage Two

Next, you must desecrate the internet. This will all be done from a obsidian citadel, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will fall into catatonic trances, as countless hordes of animal minions (rats, birds, etc...) hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must tauntingly wave your needlessly big weather machine, bringing about Something That's Really Metal. Your name shall become synonymous with the Spice Girls, and no man will ever again dare refuse to be your prom date. Everyone will bow before your Extraordinary Charisma, and the world will have no choice but to fall madly in love with you.

I'm watching the "Wizard of Oz" when it occurred to me:

Glinda is a troll. She makes this "little girl" go on a journey to see the Wizard-- a journey where she was almost killed multiple times and which leads her to committing involuntary witch-slaughter. Then she laughs when she makes the big reveal after Dorothy has gone through all this shit and the Wizard takes off in the balloon without her that she "could have gone back to Kansas all along." What a total bitch.

I like her in the book better since Dorothy only meets her in the second half. The book is also the reason why I own a pair of silver flats which are kid's Hannah Montana shoes but they were $3.50 so who cares!

I also want to make a Tin Woman costume, but I have other projects planned already.

ETA: Having a one-person movie-viewing after party by listening to the "WICKED" musical soundtrack.

I have been reading MODELLAND. IT IS HORRIBLE. IT IS BAD. IT IS A HOT MESS. IT IS EXTREMELY ENTERTAININGLY BAD.

Expect summaries in the future.

I will probably set up a separate journal for reviewing bad and banned books at some point.

Since I finally have time, I want to try writing again. I've been musing on doing something involving a lady detective in San Francisco during the Late Victorian/Edwardian/Gilded Age period. I've basically fallen in love with steampunk, have always read primarily 19th c. literature, and am reading through the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories for the first time. I have been doing some research regarding historical crime (I have a pretty good memory for remembering cases)and social history. Problem is that the only writing I have been doing since sophomore college English class is in RPs. I was a pretty good short story and poetry writer back in high school and I've never been good at keeping my attention span long enough to write anything longer than a one-shot fanfic when it comes to fandom. Anyone know some good exercises or prompts to help me warm up?

X-posted to deathwatch

Lucian Freud died aged 88

Lucian Freud obituary
Lucian Michael Freud, artist, born 8 December 1922; died 20 July 2011

British realist artist whose later portraits drew comparisons with works by Courbet, Titian and Picasso

It was one of those moments where you don't know how much someone you never met affected your life. Hole punched in my chest right now.

This pretty much summarizes my thoughts on turmiel. Her second journal entry finally made me lose it. I probably overdid it but ARGHHHHHHHHH.

Maybe I should put whiskey in my coffee before work.

HAPPY EGG AND BUNNY/THAT MIRACLE-PERFORMING DEAD GUY WHO CAME BACK/FERTILITY SPRING FESTIVAL/WEEKEND DAY, YOU FINE PEOPLE!

I have a tiny folder on my comp with vintage images I pull off the web. I thought I'd share some to torture sandglass of the more hilarious/ohgodwhy sexist advertisements of days of yore in my collection:

( Large post is large, Lysol saves your marriage, and Midol makes you gay! )

It is National Book Week. Grab the closest book to you. Turn to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the book. (Post these rules as well.)

"Have you seen them, magician? They are wild and sea-white, like me."

I’ve started reading a manga called “Hourou Musuko” or “The Wandering Son.” It’s well-written and explores gender identity and sexuality issues in high school in a sensitive manner which I haven’t seen in most literature or film. The main protagonists are a transgendered girl and a transgendered boy.

The thing is I started reading it on Mangafox at first. I was halfway through the archive before I realized that the main protagonist FTM (Takatsuki) was NOT a boy dressing like a girl though still gendered male as I thought (even though I briefly skimmed the manga summary before reading). I initially thought BOTH protagonists were born male. I double-checked Wikipedia and accessed that I was indeed wrong, but looking back at the archive I realized that with good reason (despite a few anvil sized hints) it wasn’t my fault.

A lot of chapters were missing, including volumes one through four. A lot of chapters which concerned the main plot for Takatsuki were missing and I believe it to be deliberate on someone’s part, primarily from the first half of the manga which would have made this clearer. I started reading it over at Mangareader.net which had a more complete archive. It should have been clear from the get go. In addition, the ones up on Mangafox portray two other female characters named Chiba (a girl who likes Shuichi, MTF character, but dislikes Takatsuki and is a bit cold-hearted and mean at times) and Maho (Shuichi’s sister who is disgusted by his cross-dressing and is mean to him on occasion) in a very unflattering light, though these characters are not always cruel or unsupportive as rereading a fuller archive has shown me. The ones that are up focus on Shuichi’s independent and main plot points entirely. Some chapters which concern Takatsuki’s independent plot ARE there, but not many. I could probably count them on one hand. The ones that concern Chiba’s are, but it seems clearly because they relate to Shuichi’s and due to shipping.

I don’t know who did this, but I am very, very disheartened and upset about the intentional misogynist and transphobia. Whoever is removing the chapters or not uploading them intentionally is OKAY with Shuichi’s exploration of her sexuality and her gender because she was born male, but not of Takatsuki’s self-exploration and it disgusts me. However, anime fandom is not without people who have LGBTphobia, are misogynists and have other isms and I already knew that.

This manga is INCREDIBLE. Even if you aren’t into manga, it is worth a read. I’m aware there is an anime series, but I’m a manga reader at heart and haven’t decided if I will watch it yet. I’ve barely begun to reread and I’ll update if I notice any other major things were left out at Mangafox. Apologies in advance if I have mussed terminology or pronouns anywhere.

ETA: And I got linked on animanga_news. Never been meta before. :)

I've been looking at knitting/crochet patterns to decide what gloves to make for my potential proper lady costume since I am in love with knitting and crochet at the moment. I also don't really like leather gloves because they're either too big for me or snug and sort of sweaty.

Here are the one's I like from ravelry. I guess fingerless is okay because they were back then and earlier (I saw some lace ones when I was watching Emma last week). I don't know how period these are and most of them I know clearly aren't but still are cute IMO:

Option one
Option two
Option three
Option four
Option five
Option six
Option seven (would be finished shorter than shown)
Option eight

They'll be in white, black, pearl gray, or a light brown. I've never made gloves so this should be a challenge!

I am seriously thinking of getting into cosplay again. I did it briefly when I was younger with some pretty shoddy costumes, the pictures of which will never see the light of day again. I just would like to learn more things about making knit and crochet things (I'm a bit obsessed at this point I think) and some decent costumes. I also love dressing up and I admit I love attention when I do dress up. I don't know if I'll do any characters, but I really, REALLY love Victorian and Edwardian clothing and steampunk. I do like some things that are steampunk-esque like Miyazaki films, "Vampire Hunter D," "Stardust" and other things, though I just really love looking at the clothes and am far more into 19th c. lit than those things.

Also I REALLY miss being a part of larger fandoms. I was basically scared away from anime fandom for a while due to past differences with ex-friends that caused anxiety. I also want to one-up them since I know that they do still go to cons and cosplay and stuff. I am bitter and petty.

I'm not going to any cons this summer so I'd have over a year and a half to do something decent, despite knowing very little about sewing. I'd like to do a full on "proper lady" outfit with a polonaise, walking skirt etc. I'm taking under garments and everything. I also have a really, really crap sewing machine so I'd probably have to sew everything by hand (I miss our old, ancient Singer that was older than me).

So, possible costumes:

Historical/Quasi-Historical:
Proper lady with polonaise and walking skirt and a HAT
Aviator lady

Characters:
Sophie from "Howl's Moving Castle" (THE DRESS IS PRETTY SWEET AND HISTORICAL, YES?)
Nausicaa from "Nausicaa"
Harley Quinn from "Arkam Asylum" (video game, not comic)
Stephanie Brown as Batgirl
Slytherin student (since I already made a scarf)

This is obviously a potentially crazy, laborious and expensive plan! Of course, all this would have to wait until after I finish a renaissance costume for faire and do not plan on making all these.