Because I do this every year!

In 2009, I:
-Got a credit card
-Got a smartphone
-Failed a class
-Finished a JRPG in under six months!
-Got back into LJ RP (and how)
-Made a suit from scratch

...Not a very eventful year for new experiences, haha.

Hm, Christmas Eve already? It seems to have snuck up on me this year - although I suppose it's a testament to how entertaining this place is, that it distracted me that much. I suppose last-minute decorating will have to suffice. It may be difficult to find a real tree this late, though. We shall see~

And Crowley, I quite enjoyed our conversation the other day. Feel free to drop by.

I suppose the fastest way to find out what this thing is is to follow it.

Rufus, Reno, I'm going out. I'll call if it turns out to be trouble.

- Actual CBC news broadcaster ticker seen yesterday while I ate cheeseburgers in McDonald's: "Its Way Way Too Cold Out"
- We got an inch of snow! Which means everyone was driving like an idiot yesterday, and today it's all melted again into the occasional puddle of slush on the grass
- Daiso is a magical land of small, cheap, useful, Japanese things that you didn't know you needed until you saw them. I had to talk myself down to twenty dollars worth of stuff (everything is $2 each, so :<)
-Corollary to above - I now have the perfect case for my BPAL imps! it's a bit plain, but it has little perfectly sized compartments.
-The Delly has a new culinary invention - the potato chop. It's an inner core of ground beef, onions, peas, and carrots, surrounded by mashed potatoes, rolled in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried. It's delicious.
-Apparently sleep-dep makes me poetic. I ended my eight and a half page 20th century lit final (a discussion of how Watchmen and The Matrix represent fears of technology current to their time periods) with "Scientific progress moves forward while the the ethical debate surrounding its use lags behind, and we are left in uncertain territory apt to breed nightmares."
-Eleven page paper of doom netted me a B+/A- and and admonishment to proofread. I did skim it once, but I was a bit tripped out on the clonazepam and really sick of looking at it, so there's a few word switches, half the 'it's' should be 'its', and I stopped editing a line mid-sentance.

I think that was perhaps a little more excitement than my life needed right now.

[locked to Sheska | medium security]
I know you're probably eager to actually get training after that little escapade, but with Yuffie and Reno gone, I don't have anyone else to pair you with, and I need a few days to recover, I think. Sorry about that.

[voice]
[Braska is breathing heavily, and sounds on edge. There's the rush of heavy gusts of wind in the background]

There are fiends out here, in the storm - they look almost like people, but they're incredibly fast and- [there's some shouted words of a spell in another language, and then an inhuman shriek] -and fire seems to be the only thing that touches them. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up - I've never bee much good with black magic...

Minato, Yoite, Yuna? Are you three somewhere safe? Stay inside, keep the doors locked and the curtains drawn. Don't come out looking for me. I'll be alright.

My, that's an awful lot of snow out there. I haven't seen a storn this bad in a long time. And all this talk of demons, too - it's all a bit ominious, isn't it~?

I do have a spare bedroom or two if those from across the city find themselves stuck, though~

[Private|voice|minimal security]

The apartment seems so quiet now - Auron never said much, but his presence was...reassuring. And now he and Jecht have both left. Yoite hasn't come by recently, and now with Minato missing... [he sighs] I hope he's alright. It's just been too much, all at once. I'm not sure how much more of this I can handle...
[/Private]

That was an...interesting experience. Not one I'd like to repeat, I think.

A brief digression away from uploading things (mostly of the musical variety), term papers (Friday's paper - 7/8 pages, 1 secondary source out of 5; Tuesday's - 0/6, but at least I have a topic), and maple brown sugar bacon (still delicious), because omg, I bought stuff this week.

First and foremost was replacing broken electronics - the DS cost me $85, but it was a Triforce one and came with a one year warranty, so I can't complain too much (apparently my old one was fried past the point of fixing? Hooray for Nintendo's guaranteed repair, though). Headphones cost me a half hour of my time while things were deliberated over, and having to take a slight downgrade (oh no, they don't fold up any more, I am so put out /sarcasm).

I also bought new screen protectors for the DS, and 358/2 Days because Squeenix owns my soul :( I haven't actually gotten past the introduction, though, because my gametime lately has been devoted to Persona 4. And then I went to IKEA and bought a full-length mirror, and carried it home on the bus in the rain. This would have been okay if my house wasn't three blocks from the bus stop. Mirror is fine, but arms were definitely sore.

And finally! I bought these a few weeks ago, but just got to pick them up on Saturday, but new glasses! (And why is that that I can look way more intense and evil in a random one-off shot I took on my phone at the bus than I can in cosplay photos? Sigh). These were my old pair, for reference. If it is sunny again tomorrow and I remember I will try to get an ~action shot~, because they are Transition lenses and are seriously awesome. My glasses are like, from the future, guys.

I love you even as you break my heart over and over. Seriously, only game to actually outright make me cry, because while the ending is 'good', it's also very bittersweet - you are keenly aware of all the sacrifices that are made to get there. I know FF7 has Aeris, but somehow her death doesn't have the scope, the impact that seeing Yuna perform the Sending for a row of bodies in a half-destroyed village does. Death is more present in Spira, and while the game may have it's little romance plot (I don't really want to say subplot, because while it's subtle it's very important to the story), the focus is really on the balance of life and death, of sorrow and hope.

Part of me wants to like, write a super-long post about Braska and Yuna and why I love them both so so so much, but I don't think I could adequately capture it in words. They're both such complex characters - even though yeah, Braska is in the game for like all of ten minutes total. I don't think I could ever really write FFX fic for the same reason - I could never narrow the focus enough. I can handle Braska in RP, though I don't think I could pull of the hint of uncertainty in herself that Yuna still has through much of the game. I guess I will say this much - I'm pretty much an avowed atheist, but writing Braska gives me a glimpse of the strength and power of belief. And yeah, I am not totally unaware of the irony that my dad's belief system is in some ways very similar to Braska's, although their personalities are, uh. Definitely a bit different. And some of it is that I am kind of a snarky asshole and I play a lot of snarky assholes, and they're all great fun, but there's something both calming and cleansing about writing someone so kind and so certain of himself as Braska.

(Guess who spent like two hours tonight watching FFX clips as a refresher for a Braska app, and then followed it up with horribly depressing FFX fanfic. I feel like I need to do a scene of Braska being totally fluffy with his pet ninja boy or having tea with Minato or something now, to make up for it.)