Since I am all aflutter with fandom-y glamour right now, have a fandom-y meme.

Stole this from vampirenaomi.

Give me a character from any fandom, tv show, movie, book, or game you know that I know and I will tell you:

a. My favorite thing about that character.
b. My least favorite thing about that character.
c. One person I would ship them with in their own verse.
d. One crossover ship for them I think would be neat.
e. One crossover universe for them I think would be even neater.
f. Their ship from hell.
g. Their song.
h. The title of their biography or autobiography.
i. The last bad dream they had.
j. How they're gonna shuffle off the mortal coil, if they haven't already.

Monday Night Movie Night!

9
Showplace 12 West
9:20 PM

Bring your five buck club card!

Reason I need to win the lottery #16289: SO I can afford to play Laser Tag *all the time*. We went a playin' last night, and I had a blast. It's been years-- I think the last time was a school trip to MAdison when I was in high school-- and OMG it was fun. And what a work. I don't think I have ever been so sore from what must ahave been a combined 20 minutes of excercise in my life. Count me as highly tempted by their 20$ play-all-night deal, maybe a once a month or so. That, I couyld probably afford. Anyone else be interested?

Reason I love autumn #100billionty: my depression takes a break. Not to say it's not still lurking, but my little "incidents" happen once a week as opposed to every day, and a serious funk only two-three days, as oppossed to two weeks. I have the ability to calm myself to functional level most of the time, and I can find enjoyment in things. PLus, I don't want to sleep all day. For the most part. Heaven above only knows what does it, but some sort of chemical switch just flips in my brain, and I have some sort of respite where I can frantically gather my wits befoe the serious shit starts in December.

So I'm functional! Yay!

I can never remember what my tags are.

☞ Anyone who wants to, post this meme and their current wallpaper.
☞ Explain in no more than five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
☞ Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

( Under! )

Sketch Commissions, hooooo!

Massive image dump under cut, be warned.

( Here there be doodles )

Hey guys! I'm trying to make a little extra cash for a vet bill, so Im opening up 5 dollar commission slots. If you've ever wanted a picture of your character, favorite TV personality, or your character and favorite TV personalaity engaging in inappropriate shenanigans but didn't think you could afford it, now's the time. Limited amount I can do and all that, but if you know anyone wanting a sketch, send them my way. I also swear up and down they will be done by Sep. 1st.

Happy 31st to my sweet boy, whom I adore, and deserves all the well-wishes in the world today. I squee over your continued existence, I promise.

I cleared out my garden space, so that I could finally replant it with some pretty flowers. Weeds and dead plants everywhere, and rotten straw and all sorts of things. It felt good to get everything cleared out, to just have good black earth tilled and ready again. I moved the little outdoor table into the back and found an old tablecloth for it, and had breakfast outside that morning. I am eternally grateful for our little woody buffer zone between our place and the awful apartments behind us. At this time of year, all the brambles have bright white little flowers, and the leaves are thick enough I don't have to worry about feeling observed.

It was all done on a whim. I woke up, and I looked at my to-do list, and I went into my closet and looked at my well-ordered system for which clothes I am supposed to be waering oday, tommorrow, and onwards, and was just like "fuck-it". I ended up getting moredone that way than I ever would have just going by the list.

I am the messiest, least organized OCD person on earth. I can leave dishes in the sink for days, but god forbid I wear the same type of pants two days in a row. :p

Have some art.

Starreach
Fearmas

R.I.P Stinky-butt. You were a very good ferret.

In happier news, this is why our Exalted game is awesome: tonight, we travelled to New Orleans, where we decided to clear out the Black Spiral Dancer hive that had settled in the Ninth Ward. 74 BSDs. One round. Our Dawn caste and his combos rock so hardcore. Oh, we also found the tomb of The Lover Clad in the Raiments of Tears (Marie Laveau's grave, natch), made friends with a living house, and rescued 12 imprisoned fallen angels.

Busy. Generally hateful. I should post some art someday.

Also, there are adorable kittens. They like eating dice.

I am in Chicago Land being a good Maid of Honor and learning to navigate the strange, otherwordly driving that is the endless suburbs. What a foriegn place. I'm enjoying getting the tours around the southside, especially the areas that are actually up closer to the city proper. Lots of very proud Irish and friendly people, and pretty houses. I can understand the appeal of a place so closely knit, tied together by traditon and family for generations. It's a glittering prospect for someone trying to find a tribe-- you have a place, and a family, and evryone knows who you are an what you're up to.

I could never, ever live there. Living in such close emotional proximity to so many would drive me crazy. I don't place the importance on blood ties that living in neighborhood like the south side seems to require, and frankly, I don't think I could stand the racism and cloistered xenophobia of people who have never had to press their boundries of comfort to find those to care about them (I am generalizing, of course; I also recognize the irony as everything I'm writing is essentially about how foriegn that lifestyle is and how uncomfortable it would make me).

Mostly what we're doing up here is wedding stuff, wedding stuff, wedding stuff. We've met with the baker and the florist and called the limo company and looked into the location and planned the chair arrangements and tommorrow, there will be TWO showers, and, and, and . . .
this all further convinces me that in no uncertain terms, no way, no how, no shape and no form will my wedding be like this. Oh, I get that it will still drive me nuts, that I will still be foaming at the mouth by the end of the process, but the idea of relaxing on a boat for 4 days and letting my paid consultants take care of all those silly details is temptation too delectable to deny-- cranky mother and aunts be damned.

In other news, I have A Fabulous Hat (omgomgomg it is big and white and has a ribbon), I miss my Coconut, and HGTV makes me stupidly happy and ready to do spring cleaning.

The scent of sap is in the air. A couple of weeks ago, you could catch it if you were mindful, if the sun was on a grass. The rainstorm yesterday was the last little push it needed, and now the bushes behind my house are flush with the green glow. Soon, the garden will need planting and the patio put in order so that I can spend the days outside, sucking up delicious warmth. Sun: the best mood-enchancing drug I know.

Winter passed easier this year than some, until about mid-february, when The Crazy came home to roost. Every year, I pace nervously in my mental attic, waiting for it. "Maybe not this year." I'll think. "I've been good so far, this year. I've kept it together! There has been cheer! I've been productive!" Sometimes, there isn't much of a wait before it comes at my inner door with e sledgehammer (Heeeeeeerrrreee's CRAZY!). Some winters, however, it's sneakier, and waits in the bushes outside, watching me through the windows, *stalking*. I always know it is there; at night, it comes in and saps my energy and will to move. But when the strike happens, it's like Hobbes tackling Calvin: it is EXUBERENT in the hostile takeover. This time I only lost half a month, just a little over two weeks, despite the lurking beginning in November. I call that a win in general, the severity of the spell aside.

Spring has come, and I live again!

To post positive proof, I have art. Here are two pictures from what I worked on over the killing months. I'll let more trickle out later.

Belcraft
Verlayne, Orion, Keoffry

Southland Tales if you are not familiar with the mythology that it is working with = stuff happens.
Southland Tales if you are = stuff hapens-- and why, how, for what purpose, and what happens afterward.

I need to watch that again, several times, after doing some reading. I'm not sure how I feel about that as a movie-- I think, in some ways, a piece of art can fail if you have to know a "secret" language to interperate it. On the other hand, that might very well be the point.

Whatever the case may be, I now know what I can say myself at any point I feel like shattering is despair:

I am A Pimp. And Pimps don't commit suicide.

IU killed my email account at long last, so I desperately need people's email addresses back. My new addy (without spaces, of course) is a l i e l l k ok @ g m a i l . c o m. Leave addresses in the comments if you want. They're screened.

THHHBBBTTT, I say.

I have not updated my journal regularly since the summer before I left for Florence, and this displeases me. In the wake of the latest staff upheaval here on LJ, I read through some of my old entries, trying to decide if they were worth backing up. I was pleasently surprised by how comforting and engaging some of my entries are in retrospect; they are clear markers of times in my life that I don't remember very well any more, good or bad, and I really enjoyed browsing a snapshot of my (slightly) younger life. I started my journal at 17 when I was working on my grad project, and my only LJ friends at that point were people from the Jackie Chan Adventures fandom (citizenjess, you will always be my first!)

Then, suddenly, the nostaglia stream is dammed, and there's only this sad, muddy thing that shows up once a month or so, up until now. I won't guarantee to myself that I will update regularly, because I'm bad at keeping promises if they don't invlove other people's expectations. I do want to try however, if for nothing more than the sake of my future self, whose memory will be undoubtably just as bad.

Then, there's the need for communication. I love my life right now, but I have a tendency to hermit out of habit, and working from home-- on my art, and my day job-- severely limits my human contact. If I wanted to, I could never leave my home save for a once-monthly game. It's a strange social place, because I still shun actual human contact for the most part. At this point in time, when I'm still learning my patterns and tweaking my discipline, directly interacting with people can be too easy an excuse for me to avoid the troublesome picture sitting on my desk. Alternatly, making frequent social plans leaves me feeling disrupted, without the focus for the work I want, need, to be doing.

The internet appeals to me, though-- I can talk and debate and learn, and when I need to, I can say no, which I find very difficult face to face. It's tough to say "I love your company, but I have to go home and draw. Like, right now."

I wonder who else is out there, who I haven't seen or don't yet know, who needs connection like that.

Cha$e, one of two new Sci-fi channel reality shows, is kind of bizarrely amusing. The concept is to have a bunch of players, called Runners in the game, spend an hour sprinting around various filming locations ("game boards") while dodging professionally trained Hunters-- fantastic athletes specializing in everything from stealth and sprinting to Parkour and endurance running. It's like the most souped up game of Tag ever. You can solve puzzles throughout the game to win extra money and protective gadgets that can be used against Hunters. At the end of the hour, the exit opens up, and the first one through wins the cash.

It's *fascinating*. It has the player tension of other reality shows, which I don't really like, but it also has the pyschological stress of constantly, constantly trying to run, hide, and stratgise.

Others shows of particular awesome note this week: Chuck, with a Casey episode (Adam Baldwin less-than-three!), and last week's Pushing Daisies. On the movie front, I watched Saving Face, a cute romantic comedy about innapropriate pregnancies and lesbianism with a strict chinese-american community. It was, well, cute. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't spend money on it.

I, bweh. I haven't anything else really to say. Just . . . talking about television. THIS IS WHAT I AM REDUCED TO WITHOUT MY SNARK SITES. :(:(:(

I will probably appear more frequently on LJ over the next few weeks, as it's one of the few places I am allowing myself to putter on the internet (and I feel bad for never updating-- not for other people, but I've always rather liked keeping my LiveJournal for my own memory recording purposes). My time spent on the interneet has passed from recreational into detrimental-- I don't just procrastinate, I lose hours to the great devouring black hole that is the world wide web.

It would be different if what I was finding was useful, inspirational or at all increased my happiness, knowledge, or well being. Unfortunately, the only things I'm seeing-- actively seeking out, even-- are the latest statisics on how much the world sucks. Oh, unjust rape cases, infuriating racist assholes, cruel examples of human malice. I don't know why I crave exampes of you so, but I am done. I have been caught in an outrage loop for monthes now, addicted to bad news and helpless rage-- so, I'm severing it, cold turkey. No Jezebel.com, no sf_drama, no Fox News, no checking the livejournals of people I hate, just to get me angry. My internet time is limited to work, LJ, email, and art.

Art is, in fact, the only thing I am allowing myself to actively explore the net for. Any kind of art will do, and any resource for it-- as long as it feeds my desire to LEAVE the computer and go do something creative, instead of sit and seethe (and then let that anger color the way I think of people outside the confines of the computer screen. It just ain't healthy to wonder if the guy across from me on the bus is A Bad Person, and what punishment he probably deserves).

So, LJland. Hello. I hope you have not spawned too many Llamas lately.

See you soon.

Fall finally seems to be meandering it's way into Bloomington, and I'm delighted. This is my favorite time of year on mnay counts: I love Halloween, the cooler weather is a great boon, the autumn colors, and, of course, the fashion. Fall is th time of year I get to pair my short skirts with my cute jackets and tights, scarves with peep-toe pumps, boots and jeans; when I can wear my hair up, down, in a ponytail; and when the swishiness of long skirts echo the windswept leaves. I am ignoring the fact that popular fashion includes so many ridiculous 80's silhouettes this year. Also, tiny vests: could be cool if they didn't cut curvy girls off at the waists and give the distinct impression that they been ravaged by a deranged seamstress.

There has been lots of art. Some of it can be seen here, here and here, if you wish. There's been the general weirdness of being out of school when everyone else is returning, though less of that than I thought there would be.

Also, I appear to have secured a job that A. pays my bills and then some, B. Doesn't interfere with art time, C. does not include me leaving the house. I am pleased with this development.

July slithered by, I swear to god. It was just the beginning of the month, like, two days ago, and now I've got overdraft fees because I blinked and August is almost here. Bills, like time, are slippery things.

This ate a lot of my time, what with my love of nitpicky details. I'm not exuberently proud of it, but I *am* proud of what it represents: My first piece of art for a gaming book, with contract and EVRYTHING. (I am allowed to display it-- see, see, I have to worry about copyright! Squee!) It's for Silvervine games, a start up company run by some really, really cool guys whom I know through Impossible Dream. I am going to be doing a bunch of landscape and scenery art for them, which is *fantastic*, because that's a place where my portfolio really needs to grow.

Outside of that, life is mrrrr. I have a garden that has so far produced two peppers, lots of herbs, and two tiny, shriveled green beans, but the tomatoes are finally showing up, and the Marigolds are exploding. it smells really good, too. I have not so much been out of the house this summer, which is a shame, because I'd like to be out in the woods more-- but art has a tendency to eat your life, and inertia keeps me in front of the TV or computer when I've finally worn my fingers out. I also haven't been swimming once, but that has a lot more to do with embarrassment over my wobbly thighs than anything else.

Thursday, I leave for two weeks for a trip, and then Gen Con. In the mean time, I have dishes to wash, laundry to do, and motivation for both to ferret out.

There seems to be a theme running through almost all of the recent essays I see, on or off LJ, that tackle either writing or art: that the act of growing, learning, and expanding in either is an inherently painful experience. Lots of adjectives like "shredding", "tearing", "agonizing" and "depressing" are used to describe the experience. It seems like there's this miasma around the act of creating, as if to grow to the next stage, to get better at what we do, is an excerise akin to flaying the skin off our forearms and gleefully rubbing lemon juice in, all the while chanting "It's for the art, baby!"

Don't get me wrong . . . I do believe that the act of growing as a creator and as a crafter has rough patches, that there are pains, and that sometimes, suffering is good for us. I used to be *all* about growth through pain. But now, I question: How much of that creative pain is actually born of the process, and how much of it is self-flagellation?

I'm guilty of it. When I know I'm having a tough time of it, when I know that I need to work on my discipline or that I'm on the verge of something breaking through, my thought process is always the same-- it sounds like my muse is giving birth. "Come on! You can do better! You can BE better! Just push, push, push harder! Shove it through, rend yourself to pieces, make it WORK . . . and if you can't, well, you just weren't made to be one of the greats. It doesn't matter if it's good enough, it should be PERFECT."

Here's the catch: it never, ever works for me. Maybe it does others, but . . . any baby my muse bears under that duress turns out premature or missing its proverbial brain pan. Technically, it won't be bad, but burbling life that could be in it has been left behind somewhere in the grinder of my subconcious. I'm left exausted, self hating, and drained of any desire to continue save for one: do it again. Make it better. NOW.

How much of that could I strip away by just . . . letting go? Letting it be?

And I notice this in other creative types around me, all the time. Not everyone, but enough that it piques me. Where is that line between natural pain, and the agony and angst we project onto the process?

I think it happens for a lot of reasons. Many creative types are also "outcast" types in other ways. Some of us never really fit in; maybe that's why we still can't feel comfortable even doing something we love. Perhaps it's the cultural myth of the artist or writer as crazy, depressed, or tortured. A big part of it for me is feeling *unworthy* of what I'm creating, or that to make something magnificent, there's a price to be paid. My suffering is the blood tithe to my muse (which is inherently unfair and counter productive-- my muse is NOT a vampire, thanks, and she becomes hurt when I try to pretend she's one, and tends to go away).

Whatever the cause, the effect is the same. My breakthroughs, the pieces that really stand out, the writing that connects best with my audience, are always the ones that are created in joy and inspiration. So why do I, why do we creators, hurt ourselves so much for what we do?