So this journal is straight up defunct but i guess you all can check out what a nerd past me was. I'm too lazy to lock it down

Haha my icons are awesome though, I was really rocking the 'peering blankly' thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LILhai7IHI

Phoenix Wright in the next Marvel vs Capcom? IS THIS REAL LIFE

mood: derp

SO YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED MY PROLONGED ABSENCE.

It is because I moved and my new place will not have the internet until the fourteenth. I am in the middle of a soft detox from my internet addiction. It is painful and boring, and means that I can only go online in public computer labs because my stupid dumb laptop doesn't want to connect to the university's network, but this is actually pretty good for me, probably. SO MUCH FREE TIME.

Also, I did a thing.


Aside from the whole elegant thing, this is actually really weirdly accurate for a quiz as flighty-seeming as that one.

mood: derp tags: quiz

Huh. I don't know if any of you out there have a plurk, but since it seems to be the popular way for roleplayers to communicate and stuff, I made one. And also because I suck at being on AIM, so this is more convenient.

http://www.plurk.com/eibborn

Add me if you happen to have one! I would be delighted to regale you with mundane details of my life online and off. Or whatever's supposed to happen with that, I'm a little unclear.

mood: derp

So hey, quick state of the nation: I'm living at home for the summer, working the museum beat with filing at the clinic filling my free time. Looking forward to an election for the first time in my life, even though I'm betting that nothing will change. I will a little upset if the first Canadian government to ever be held in contempt of Parliament wins a majority only a few months later! And also I kind of think that Tory policies are generally pretty not awesome, especially when they have to do with going prorogue and putting the good of their party over the nation, their bizarre hatred of statistics, and being otherwise unpleasant in time-wasting ways.

Of course I don't really know which party I actually do support, so I guess I need to sort that out probably. I can't shake the belief that any other party would be just as bad in their own way, so we need a minority government in order for them to balance each other out (and also fail to accomplish anything in a timely manner, but no change is better than negative changes as far as I'm concerned).

Also hey, my sister bought me a paid LJ account, which is exciting! I promptly realized that I have no idea what real people use for icons. My first instinct was to just upload a big pile of super jittery gifs because I hate my eyes and everyone else's, but I guess I ended up just dumping neat icons all over the place and if I find something better I can always go ahead and change things up. I don't even know when this thing expires. I don't even know how to know when this thing expires. But that's cool, I am okay with a bit of unpredictability.

Joined entanglement_rp as Tavros. He is being adopted by a genetically modified robodolphin from a sci-fi novel, so that's pretty much every kind of awesome. I am lone canon warrioring it up in there, so uh if anyone feels like dumping a HS kid or troll in there, that would be pretty cool. It is not a big thing, either, though; playing him on his own is fun enough as it is so far. I think I am not very good at it yet, but I will get used to it eventually.

Elsewhere, I had a terrible rap-off, roleplayed a moving duet between Gamzee and Tavros, and somehow convinced a Karkat to tell Tavros a bedtime story. I will probably copy/paste some excerpts and things some time because it was kind of fun and hilarious.

mood: derp tags: homestuck, life, roleplaying

HEY couldbesunshine

( IS THIS YOU????Collapse )

mood: derp tags: homestuck, jen

Um. So I set out to put my understanding of Tavros' relationships with his fellow trolls down on paper since I'm planning on trying to RP him, and it got really, really long. Stupidly long.

So, ok. Let's do this from the top of the hemospectrum to the bottom.

( mY fRIENDS BY tAVROS nITRAM,Collapse )

mood: derp tags: homestuck, roleplaying

( Real life stupid stuff booooooooringCollapse )

Okay right, um, let's talk about the new Homestuck album instead! Or actually, just one song on it, which is actually a revamp of a different song, and that song is the one that I really wanted to talk about in the first place. So hey, okay, let's do this! The Alternia Theme did something that I thought was impossible: it broke through the thick callouses that have developed on my understanding of music. I mean, dang.

It's a melancholy piano theme, for christ's sake. It's such a desperate tug at the hearstrings. Melancholy piano themes are the sad child of music. If you want to make the viewers sad when they see your movie, you include a sad child with a speech impediment asking when daddy's coming home. If you want to make your listeners sad when they hear your song, you do a tinkly sad piano thing and suddenly everyone's weeping helplessly.

And I think that's it's really overdone! I was pretty sure that I was at the point where my immersion would be completely broken in the same way that sad children in movies do. Being aware that it's a shallow emotional grab effectively detaches me from the scene instead of drawing me in. Entertainment is all about emotional manipulation, but it stops working when you use the same tricks over and over!

So why is this song a punch in the gut to me? I'm not really sure! Maybe because it was composed without that agenda in mind, well before anyone knew how sad and involved the associated characters were going to be. Maybe because some wise guy copy/pasted Karkat's moment of helplessness into the comments below it, and I guess it's kind of sad thinking that he hasn't been really happy since his guardian died, even if he is ridiculously hyperbolic all the time and probably even there. Or I don't know, I guess that it might just be the ultimate fate of all the trolls. They've been through a lot, and not just in SGRUB. It doesn't matter, I guess! Whatever the reason, that's the only sad piano piece in years that has actually slipped through and gouged at my emotions.

So I was really excited to see it on the newest album, Alterniabound! Unfortunately, despite the fact that Alternia expands on its previous iteration beautifully, it sacrificed the simplicity that I guess really got to me. Maybe the reason it had a lesser effect on me is that the original didn't make use of the same emotional crescendos and decrescendos, it wasn't slow and hesitating, either. Maybe that's why it slipped under my radar, it didn't use as many of the usual tricks? But the point is that the new version didn't hit me all that hard at all until right near the end. For just a moment, it was beautiful, and it blew me away... and then the song continued. Dangit. If they'd ended it on the rest after the fermata just a few measures before the end, I'd have been in love. The chord would have been heartbreakingly and perfectly unresolved, and it would make me insane. Oh well, it's still a very nice song along with the rest of the album.

I'm especially pleased with the existence of Trollcops and She's A Sp8der! The former because hahaha Cop!Sollux is hilarious and the latter because I had no idea how much I wanted Vriska to have a Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired song until it actually happened. Arisen Anew is awfully -EXCITING, too, with its Dr. Who and Megane Luka samples! And, hehe, FIDUSPAWN, GO! gets special mention because of the Pokemon references.

Really, just go listen to this thing, gosh.
http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/album/alterniabound
http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/album/alterniabound
http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/album/alterniabound


---
Hehe, in other news, a friend of mine is apparently reading webcomics! Some good, some less good. I showed her Homestuck and Basic Instructions, which I consider to be waaaay better than anything Tim B^Uckly could hope to produce. I didn't realize that I am kind of a webcomics snob until she said she'd been reading CAD and my automatic response was "oh no, but it's kind of bad compared to all these! :O " Which I guess makes me kind of a huge prick, but I didn't say it aloud, I just recommended things that I thought were better in a manner which I hope was appropriately mannerly.

That was a joke because I am always mannerly. Hoo hoo hoo.

mood: derp tags: homestuck, parents

Guhhh, what kind of incredibly shitty biologist can't even keep his venus flytrap alive for one stupid year. Some kind of white mould got it while it was hibernating in my stupid fridge, and I am stupid, stupid, stupid for not noticing until it was too late. And by "too late" I mean probably at least a week and a half after all hope of effectively dealing with the problem had passed.

On the bright side, I now have
uh
a jar of mould, which is pretty cool even though it makes my room smell kind of musty. Which I don't find unpleasant, actually, but which people who don't spend time up to their elbows in worse than it might find kind of gross. WHATEVER. Will it produce sclerotia? Can I diagnose it with my limited experience? There are a lot of white moulds out there, and it could be anything from anywhere! ...It's probably just boring Penicillium,, though, and even though I don't have any kind of propensity for breathing problems or allergic reactions to moulds, it might not be. um. strictly healthy. To keep around, just pumping out those spores into the air.

It's possible--just possible--that I have problems with admitting when I need to throw things out. Um. Cool as fungi are. And relevant. Or maybe I just want to keep it around as a transparent and humiliating vehicle for self-punishment because I'm mad at myself for killing an awesome plant, but that would be just plain unlike me, gosh. Much more probable that I just love fungus.

Yeah, umm, I'll throw it out tomorrow.

mood: derp