It's been a good day. For the past month or so I've been so snowed under with work it could fill a swimming pool! But now I'm finally getting caught up again. Seems like today's been the day of randomly being helpful, too! Not only did I get my project kicked along, I helped out a couple of random strangers! There was a lovely old lady who asked me to walk her to her car, she was really sweet. ^_^ It was really windy, too. She said I was so delicate, it could blow me away to Oz! But thankfully, that didn't happen while she was leaning on me. :)

And now I'm going to run away again. But I am alive! Honest!

"*moves hand in an arc* Eh-d'beh-d'beh-d'beh-d'beh, *points as if at something up and left* eh *slightly lower and left* deh *slightly lower still and slightly less left* beh *angles finger between the two lower points* buh *firmly* no."

And this, my friends, is how I just worked out whether or not the sun was behind Link. Which it wasn't.

Welcome to my world.

I'm suddenly writing about Link again, because badfic_quotes just broke my brain and I needed to make it better. And here I was thinking I was immune... apparently not! Well, the best thing to do is make it all better by adding an extra tale to the semi-decent fic list, right? Particularly since I should have finished this one long ago.

I should really be doing problems right now, not browsing LJ (Dear Moons, the what?), but such is distractability, I guess. *is promptly sidetracked onto writing up the next in the Six Shades of Ruin series* ...See what I mean? ^^'

I've found a new website to laugh at, "Fundies Say the Darndest Things". It's amusing and mildly disturbing.

Also slightly offputting is that an acquaintance of mine also talks like the fundies, with the exact same lack of logic and absolute yet incompletely justified positions on things. The only difference is that said acquaintance is emphatically not a Christian (most of the material on the site comes from fundamentalist Christians).

It's odd, and slightly weird. It's one thing to know someone you know has a certain irrationality and lack of logic to their beliefs, it's another thing to see the exact same attitude exhibited in almost every post I'm quietly going 'wtf' and laughing at.

Oh well, such is life, I guess. Speaking of, I have some things I really should get done. I'm just dreading sorting them out. ^^'

( And now for complaining about something completely different! )

Ahem. I'll go back to being my normal sunny self now.

Hello, World! I'm doing Science and I'm still alive!

And Sparky had a thing. I like answering questions, so I'm stealing it.

The thing

1. What did you dream about last night?
Um... not sure. I remember vaguely going 'what?' at my mind when I woke up, so it must have been a bit weird. Oh, wait, I think I remember something. Rowboats! On the river. But made of plastic. People had just abandoned some of them and left them to float away. I swam around retrieving them for a bit, because things left floating in the river annoy me. Mm... something bad was happening, and then this old dude who was trying to help me turned out to be the bad guy. I just about made it away, I think. Hmm... next thing I remember was helping out in a hotel/old people's home, getting this mental old man to a big bathroom. Then I had to go outside and look for a cave entrance down an old well with Sparky, but my torch gave out and I had to go find a new battery. Still, it was probably as well that it did given that pheasant poachers came past while we were groping around in the dark, so we laid up against a fence and they didn't notice us. When I got my torch working again and we came back, we got the logs off the top of the old well and dropped down... and I don't remember what, if anything, happened after that.
That was, indeed, weird, and didn't make much sense. But I had an AWESOME dream a few nights ago! I was Avane - and I actually flew! I never get to fly in dreams, doubly not with wings that're mine! Okay, so they almost gave out and dropped me a ridiculous distance to the ground below (seriously, I was looking down from so high up that through the clouds the ground just looked like a really detailed map), but I flew!
Ahem. I'll get into that later.

2. There are so many memes about books and television shows. So, then, how many video games do you own?
Oooh. I have no idea. Let's check the ones I have with me. That's... 23 Gamecube and PC games here at uni. Way more PC games back at the other house. Plus I think five - no, six - games here for various Gameboy variants, then my 12 DS games, all the Wii games back home - I must have quite a few of those by now, say 10 or so. Hard going when you think about it - there's SO MUCH STUFF on the Wii that no matter what you like, you're probably only going to find a handful of that kind of game. Dreamcast games, of course, not a lot of those are specifically mine though, so call that 5, handful of Megadrive games, say another five.
If you count all the ones that my family owns as opposed to me and only me, literally hundreds. Big family, and all but my mum are big gamers.

3. What's your favourite role-playing game?
Skies of Arcadia.
No, that really cannot be stressed enough. That game is AWESOME. You should play it. If you've already played it, you should play it again. XD Legends or the original, either is good. Legends has added awesome, but also added WTF - some of the bounties are stupid and so is that annoying bird. But the added awesome is worth it. Plus Legends plays on my GC and Wii, so I don't have to drag out the Dreamcast, which is getting steadily crankier the older it gets. Putting DC Skies into a CD player is funny, though.

4. What's your favourite action/adventure or platforming game?
Hm. Either Metroid or Zelda. Not sure which. Maybe Zelda - Ocarina of Time is pretty darn awesome.

5. What's a game you wish more people would play?
Skies of Arcadia! Play it, you know you want to. On second thoughts, hang on... then my tiny fandom would be flooded with crapfic. :( But also more goodfic! It would be happy! And people would know of the awesome!

6. What platforms do you own?
Personally? Dreamcast, Megadrive (I backbought it for Sonic. What?), Gamecube, Wii, DS.

7. So, thinking about your favourite games, have you written fanfiction/drawn fanart of any of them?
Hell yeah. I don't think there's a single game I love I haven't written or drawn something for, whether or not I've ever got around to putting it on the Internet.

8. Are there any you wish other people would write more fanfiction about?
Skies of Arcadia~! There's a lot about all the others.

9. How many of the games you own have been made into movies/were movies made into video games?
...Resident Evil... I've got some Star Wars... um... dunno.

10. If you could choose one video game in your collection to make into a (good) movie, which would it be?
*squeak* Do you have to guess? I think my fangirling has become all too obvious by now... Skies of Arcadia!

11. Who is your favourite video game character of any genre and platform?
Vyse~! <3 He's awesome. And then Fina and Aika and Ramirez (what? He's awesome too! Just... in a really different way!) and Enrique's pretty awesome...
And then Link and Samus and Shadow and Tails and Sonic...

12. A lot of video games (at least RPG's) have romance elements. What's your favourite video game relationship (if you don't want to choose something romantic, platonic is fine), that is canon?
Hm. Ooh. Tricky. Probably Vyse, Aika, and Fina. 'Cause they're all so awesome together. Read that how you will. :/

13. What game or gaming franchise have you always wanted to play but never have, and why?
...I keep looking at Revenant Wings for DS and thinking it looks cool, but every time, I also look at it and go 'and you're just going to play it and go "but Skies! *twitch*" - walk away, you idiot.'. ^^'

14. Which video game character has your favourite character design of any game or platform?
Ooooooh... tough one. Samus out of her armour in Metroid Prime was lovely - the one where she had the beautifully realistic face and actually looked really really awesome. She's one of those characters who looks better not anime'd up.
But, to be honest, it's probably the Blue Rogues. They're awesome and so are their outfits. I love crazy outfits, and the style they were drawn in.

15. What overseas-only video game do you wish would be released in English and in England?
Not sure I do. No, wait - Rune Factory. Because dammit they keep pushing the UK release date back and back and at this rate I'm giving up and buying an import from the US when I go shopping tomorrow. Nintendo, I love you greatly for you are responsible for half my favourite games, but for goodness' sake, I can't give you my money if you don't give me any games to spend it on!

16. If you're in any of the fandoms of the video games you own, which one is the biggest?
Hm. It'll be either Sonic or Zelda. I can't be bothered to kick FF.Net and find out which has the most stories written for it, though.

17. Which fandom is your favourite?
Skies. One, it's the most awesome game ever to awesome. Two, the fandom is small, which means that almost all of the stories are middling to high quality.

18. Do you own any published game guides for your games?
Yeah, I've got the Twilight Princess guide for the pretty, pretty arts. And one day I'll probably give up and use it to find those last few freaking ghosts that I just can't track down however hard I try. ^^'

19. Are many of your games multiplayer friendly?
No, not really. I'm not a massive multiplayer fan, to be honest. I only want to play with good friends who I know well, and I bore of deathmatch/capture the flag/etc. games VERY quickly. Strategy multiplayers are pretty fun, but I tend not to buy strategy games, and games where you can multiplay through the entire story are really fun, but there are very few of them. Except the war games, which I just don't like that much.

20. Last question! If you were in a video game, what type would it be, and what would be the general story?
Oooh! It would be an RPG/adventure game! Hm, the story would be about developing awesome powers and setting out to save the world! I already have a little in the way of swordfighting and archery skills, I'm officially the local forest ninja and can disappear even when someone is looking right at me, I have a knack of finding things I need or will need at some point in the future... (The spanner is the most blatant, but about half a year ago I found this little cog on the ground and hung on to it because I thought it was cool. Then a few weeks ago I got into a tabletop game, and one of my friends really wanted a little cog for her tick counter. All I had to do was hunt through the stuff in my room until I found it again! I also found a black bead for another of us on the floor of the Physics department just the other day, and my current tick counter is something I found on the floor as well.) I can climb, I like exploring strange places, I've always got a torch, penknife, and length of string I found in a castle...
I just don't know whether it would be magic or tech-based. Or magitech! Magitech is pretty awesome. Either way, I would have to discover or invent something awesome, and then either some bad guys would try and get hold of it/me or I'd also uncover some information about something terrible going on - and it's off to save the world! And make shiny awesome things. Along with a character/support party composed of all my friends! Probably it'd wind up being one of those where we split up and the story followed both parties, because there would always be a lot of interesting stuff to be going on!

I shouldn't be allowed up this late. For look, I have fashioned a new icon, and I really really should not have done this. : )p

I has a room! All to myself, nearly! I have a room in the Physics building and I share it with a couple other 4th years! The corridor is full of cool stuff! It's like being back at Milton Keynes, only instead of being paid to work there, I'm paying to work there. I'm sure there's something odd about that. : )p But yes! Has a room! Also, successfully quested for strimmer, which shall be used to beat back Entlings tomorrow. Hehehe...

Why, yes, my house has found a most funny site. Earn XPs for cleaning! This is my auto-updating character record!

Some friends and I went into Newcastle to get stuff. We succeeded at this... we also got a whole load of other stuff that we didn't go for. ^^' I got shinies! Shinies! Also when we got back, I finally got my ears pierced, which is awesome.

But yes. Shiny new outfit. Apparently I'm secretly a goth? Who knew!

I can't keep appearing in my scratty old running shoes any more if I'm going to keep this up. Hmm, shoes...

This is not a normal train of thought for me! I feel strange! Hehehe... we had loads of fun, though, it was an awesome trip. Yay!

So. One housemate is back in town, or has been briefly and will be again soon, which is great, and now there's only one still missing. Awesome! :) Anyway, I gatecrashed a conversation earlier that wound up on how annoying the local Christian Union is to foreign-looking students. It always targets them during its big conversion week ("One Truth" week, I think). Just in case they haven't heard of Jesus, I guess? (Their abbreviation, by the way, is DICCU. Pronounced Dick-You. It is amusing. ^^') They've never approached me, although I have stopped to chat to the local Jehovah's Witnesses some Fridays. (They're out every Friday, a nice man and a couple of sweet old ladies talking religion and handing out leaflets.) However, I do see their really annoying tops all over the place. They wear these clothes with random quotes from the Bible pasted on in big letters, or 'Jesus died for YOU' type slogans. I've wanted to retaliate with silly quotes of my own, like the one I had as an icon somewhere: "There is only One Truth. Sadly, yours isn't it." for a while, but I never do. However, I'm now kind of tempted to grab an evangeliser... and then evangelise right back at them.

"Have I heard of Jesus? Yes, yes I have. As a matter of fact, he's currently teamed up with Lucifer and God and a bunch of others to save reality. By the way, I wouldn't worship that God guy if I were you. I mean seriously, 'worship me or DIE HORRIBLY FOR ETERNITY', what's with that? Anyway, like I said, this is the real version. So, God, also known as Lord G or any one of a billion other names, is basically a bad guy and he's trying to rule the entire Multiverse. Luckily people are fighting him. He didn't create it, either, he's just trying to take all the credit. Oh, by the way, Jesus? Yeah, his right-hand man and all that. You have the whole desert thing wrong, by the way. Lucifer was in the desert, for at this point he was on Lord G's side and was being punished for being a pain in the ass, and lo, when he got back he did tempt Jesus, and the bit they don't mention is that Jesus did give in to the temptation and did teach him magic so that he wouldn't die quite so horribly again. And lo. And so on and so forth. Blah. Anyway, eventually, Jesus did decide that lo, God did really suck, and so he chose to leave his service. And God did get quite pissed about this and did kill him most horribly and broadcast this as an example of what would happen to anyone else who tried it. And then he did dump poor Jesus, and lo, Lucifer did promptly find him, so now Jesus and Lucifer are travelling around. They've been working together for a long time now. It's adorable! And God is still pissed. But he deserves it 'cause he sucks. Hee hee.

*notices person has fled in fear after not being able to get a word in edgeways* ...I've been talking to myself for the last five minutes. Evangelising is hilarious, I should do it more often! *walks off*"

I have written all of that. Amazingly. Although the identification of characters with mythical figures came last rather than first, so none of them have those names. Although Lucifer rather likes the nickname Lucifer. ^_^

Hello! I'm mindlessly burbling. Don't mind me!

( Something about America. Don't read if easily worried? )

( And now I'm just being rude about religion. If you read it and get offended it's your own stupid fault. )

On TV about a self-driving car: 'if it caused an accident,' "they wouldn't know who to sue. And Americans don't like that." *snigger* And now James May is talking about teleportation. And now the recorder has missed the end of the programme! :-( Oh well. It was cool. There were many cool flying things, and flying things are awesome, and a self-driving car, and that was awesome too. ^_^

I haven't posted in forever. o.o Well, now's as good a time as any and maybe better than some!

As sparky_ld has already said, I've just spent the past three weeks dragging her around some of the parts of my country I consider "Home" and/or "Mine" (see the impromptu litterpick because nobody leaves that much rubbish on my forest floor, Moons damn it!) And lo, it was awesome, and there was Epic, Crack, Epic Crack, and a flood of epic proportions. Although not as bad as those ones you hear about now and again in areas of the country where I don't live, where people have gone and built all over floodplains. And then, surprise surprise, been flooded out again. (I'm, er, less sympathetic than I probably should be.)

Oh yes. And socks on fire. In the microwave. It was kinda funny. ^^' They weren't ours, though.

I think Aika's now wondering what would happen if you microwaved gunpowder. Typical. Stick to the fireplace, will ya?!

A lot of what we did was sit back and write stuff, including the Depressing AU of Doom in which Everybody Breaks, although that mostly happened towards the end. Also, we were mostly in my uni house apart from a few days either side, so I spent probably entirely too much time dragging the Sparky all over Durham. I am, apparently, more hyper than I realised. Or maybe having the friend around to show everything off to just kept me permanently hopped up.

And Sparky found the first Ace Attorney game, which I have been searching for for ages, so I got that, and it was awesome. Is awesome, I should say, as I haven't finished it yet, Edgeworth is on trial of all people. Poor old Edgeworth, he actually seems kind of okay. Oooh, but Karma gets on my nerves. I swear if I was a witness in that courtroom I would just sit there and refuse to do anything until he said 'please'. Also possibly stop to eat biscuits, because I think playing the stubbornness game against that guy would take a long time, and suddenly deciding on a ten minute biscuit break might help to annoy him faster. But it will work eventually, because I NEVER LOSE. >: ) (Now where have we heard that before?) I also swear that if I was in half the situations poor old Phoenix has been in, I would just carry a dictaphone in my pocket the whole time. You said what, you say? Oh, but this is your voice, isn't it? How odd... (And yes, somewhere in my collection of random stuff I do actually own a dictaphone. Not for that purpose, though, oddly enough!)

And I did show her the Dragonforce, and much other awesome music, and she did show me hers, and there was awesome and also insanity. And we did decide that "Body Breakdown" fits the current state of the Twisted Cute absolutely perfectly. Which it does. They're now out to save the Multiverse, I might add, or will be once they've completed this part of their arc in the Epic Quest Mode section. *should stop talking like a game* Though it is kind of ominous, the ending there. Kind of implies they're going down. Actually, I'm suspecting there's going to be a Lunar Light point somewhere in there, before they get things fixed. But enough about this!

So. I don't have anything exciting to say about home. It was home, and therefore normal. Except for the bit where the river went up by what must have been at least a metre after it rained three days straight on us and goodness knows how much in the catchment area. All the riverside paths were underwater! I'd have needed wellies to navigate around there! So we went up and down to and from various points on the riverbank instead, and I took a silly number of photos. I may post some here later, when I get them off my phone.