I had a huge post in my mind earlier but I’m kinda too worn out for it.  So, to keep it short and sweet, srs question r srs:

Moving back to LJ: aye or nay?

Yes, I want to know what you think!  I feel badly thinking about this so seriously after a number of you finally conquered/figured out the RSS feeds, but moving over to WordPress has only kept me one more unnecessary step removed from most of you, and it does look like LJ has stabilized as of late, and that was a large part of my reason for moving to begin with.  Either way, there’s a number of things that I need to rethink… or at least, it feels that way.

A friend mentioned the other day that I haven’t posted for awhile, so I thought I should make an effort and attempt to put up something this week!  Also, my little sister teased me about not having a Facebook account still, so… if you know me, I’m there!  I’m still fiddling with it, and trying not to do it at work, so you might want to give me some time to get used to it.

Also, a couple of friends let me know that they figured out the RSS feed for my blog here, so they can follow it more easily…  Thanks, loves.  Sorry to make you go out of your way–but thank you!

A bit about gaming and gradschool and all behind the cut…

I’ve been switching between playing FFIV and WEWY on the DS, and I’m still enjoying both.  I haven’t quite got a handle on controlling the character on the top screen (currently Shiki, still), but I’ve gotten pretty good with Neku.  I’m going to try to take off my training wheels slowly and see how it goes from there.  Fun game, though.  I’m not gaming as much, what with classes and all, but I definitely squeeze it in when I can.

Gradschool is… gradschool?  I dunno.  The class I have on Monday nights has approximately 146 students in it, even if only about 80 or so are actually there physically?  I don’t know how many of us actually fit into the classroom.  Either way, that’s far more students than I ever had to deal with in undergrad, and it would all be fine except we’re supposed to be participating online and doing all kinds of online things and, with that many people?  Confusing, daunting, and not altogether welcoming.  They’ve split us up into smaller groups to help facilitate a better learning environment, or such, but we’ll see.  The lecturing style is interesting since it’s being taught by two profs at once–kinda like tag-teaming the class.  They… could use a little bit of work with their slides.  Too much info on one slide + not enough time to read, write down what’s necessary from the slide before it’s gone again = not good for students who don’t want to grab slides from online because darn it, NOTE TAKING.  It’s what I do, otherwise I have a harder time internalizing some of this stuff, which is one of the reasons I’m in library school to begin with, right?  I’m going to do my best to avoid taking another “blended” class like this in the future, though with the core requirements that’s bound to be a trifle difficult.

My class on Tuesday nights is much more the norm, I think.  Far smaller, far comfier, and with a prof who enjoys opening discussion about the topics in class.  The prof is also trying to have our big project of the semester due at end of October/early November, so we don’t get slammed with all the big stuff for all of our classes at the end, which is nice… but I worry about trying to get that taken care of while dealing with all the work from the other class.

If nothing else, I’ve realized that now faced with the giant known as GRADSCHOOL, I’m probably making mountains out of molehills.  I don’t know how any of these profs grade, though, and even though it’s the degree that’s important so long as I keep my GPA up, I still want to do well.  >^^<;;  So we’ll see… hoping to relax about this more once I see that it’s not really something I have to worry about so much.  Right?  I get the feeling I’m actually worrying too much.

Getting together another poetry contest submission, and I’m pretty happy with the two I’ve already selected to send.  What’s left is deciding on a third, or if even to send a third at all, but I’m working on it.  Submission isn’t due until the middle of October, but I’ll feel better if I get it taken care of beforehand.  There’s also another submission I’m thinking about, but… well, we’ll see.

I think that’s the question most people are asking of the latest Batman movie, actually.  In any case, I finally saw it today with my Dad and the Mews.  I liked The Dark Knight, honestly, but I can understand why some have complained about it being too serious and not, well, comic-like enough.

I still want them to do Catwoman again, soon.  Do her right, j0.

There’s probably a lot I can say about it but I’m gonna refrain from doing it too much at the moment.  I mean, by now I think most people who wanted to see it have seen it, but honestly I’m kinda exhausted today.  ^^;;

I don’t think I mentioned it but briefly in the last post, but yesterday I got out of work early to head down to the airport to pick up my Dad, who’s visiting me this weekend.  There’s a mall just a few minutes away from the airport, so, since I was leaving far too early from work and I wasn’t really wanting to spend too many hours at the airport itself, I stopped by the mall.  I picked up their gaming store’s last copy of The World Ends With You, got a pair of Pants of Indestructibility +5, and had lunch, all before going to the airport’s baggage claim and sitting down to do homework.  I finally broke down and started playing WEWY in the last half hour or so–and then there was Dad!  So I had to stop.  Basically, though, from the whole first half hour that I played, I liked WEWY.

So, yes, awesomeness and more!  Or perhaps I really am just that easy to please.  Meh.

Tired like crazy, but tomorrow should be an easier day because the only real running around I’ll be doing is between the house and apartment, doing laundry.  The rest of it will be collegework until I feel satisfied that I’m done and ready for my next round of classes, at which point I’ll start playing around with stuff again.

So, who knows?  Maybe I’ll get some writing done.

Have survived first week of classes, essentially.  I mean, there’s the homework to do, but the actual physically required presence in class, including orientation last Friday: survived.  Did not embarrass myself too mightily throughout orientation or in either of my classes, so yay.  I guess it really is official now.  I have returned to academia.

Am going to go through the syllabi tomorrow and start homework for the class I’ll have next week, and then go from there.

Also, Dad’s coming up to visit this weekend, which is exciting, but makes me glad I only have to really fret over a single class’s worth of work this week.  I’ll try to get the work done for both, but we’ll just have to see how things go at work.

Speaking of work, boss lady is going to drive me insane, I swear.

…though I’m going to post it on my WordPress, too–so I apologize in advance if you see this twice.  I’ll keep it short, though.

Via teh Webmonkeys: Why You Should Turn Gmail’s SSL Feature On Now

It appears to be legit, and if you’re like me and you like keeping your email (and any private information) all to yourself, then you’ll want to follow their quick tip to get the SSL option on all the time.

…which is probably as it should be, what with me working at a library.

I went with Changeling this weekend on a little sidetrip to one of the used bookstores in the area, and found some rather unexpected bounties.  I also found one that I should have expected, and it was one of those things I always wanted and the book was in good condition and it would have been more expensive to buy it new at the store anyway… so I finally picked up Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.

I want to put up some choice quotes, but then I’d wind up quoting the whole thing.  I read through it all this weekend, snickering and learning the whole way, and I have to admit that it’s as good as everyone says it is.  So yes, hearty recommendations all around, and if you’ve ever found yourself confused about what to do with punctuation, you should try it.  I would consider getting an extra copy for the director here, but I know she’d never actually read it.  Le sigh.

If I ever do wind up getting a MFA or PhD and teaching English classes of any kind, I will likely make it required reading for the first week in class.  No matter what class I teach.

Anyway, this week at lunch I should flip through the Politically Correct boxed set that my coworker left for me so I can hand them back to her guilt-free, and then I start to read/devour Gilgamesh.  I’m reading a translation recommended to me by Morgan, which means it’s bound to be good.  I expect I’ll get through my first read pretty quickly–so I’ll follow it up with another quick read to see if I pick up on new things the second time around… and then move on!

One of the other books I picked up this weekend is Kokoro by Souseki Natsume.  Purrrt, I say.  Between that and The Well of Loneliness, and the books I’ll be reading for class–which will mostly be theory- and application-type books for library/info science–I should have plenty to keep me busy.

Speaking of libraries, orientation is this Friday, and a week from now I will be headed for my first class in the evening.  I think I’d be more nervous if I weren’t so tired, but I’m sure that’ll change soon enough.

In the meantime, the way of comfort chocolate and beverages (with chocolate in them) I go, pausing from time to time to consider the lamentable state of my uterus, and wonder why, oh why, it had to hit me now.

Update a la FFIV: Have airship.  Still loving it.

EDIT: Finished Gilgamesh.  …Still loving it.  XD  And now I know where Phumbaba in FFVI came from!

See?  Something good did come out of Crisis Core:

ZACK ACTION FIGURE.

Okay, and a lot of other cool figures (EEEEE TROOPER!CLOUD!) but still.  For all of you who thought it would never happen… there’s the man himself, and d00d.  …d00d!

Thanks to Sher for pointing this out to me~

Home on Sunday, with overall good traffic on the way back, just a crazy storm.  Cali is shmuzzing me and nearly kneading her way through my thighs and knees.  There’s also rather more signs of stress upon returning home than I expected, but other than that, all is well.

Picking up from where I left off last time!
So, Saturday morning, after much discussion and having breakfast and all, we decided it would be best to break out the kimono for me and Changeling.  Changeling got dressed first, in a stunning ensemble featuring a purple omeshi kimono decorated with turquoise, gold, and silver buddhist wheels, a black nagoya obi decorated with circular dragons, a pale pink obiage with cute red/pink dots, and a gold obijime cord, along with her authentic!tabi and some cute pseudo-zori that had sparkly thongs.  The entire ensemble was lovely.  With Changeling’s permission, I’ll be posting some pics as soon as I’ve had time to actually go through them and resize them and all.

I wore my second furisode ensemble, as illustrated in the other post, and all the practice we’ve had lately paid off.  Sheraton did a majority of the dressing work (though I got to help out a little bit this time!), including all of the obi-tying, and Rissi helped out a lot and took photos as (in)appropriate.  As such, we got a lot of great shots, and even some compliments as we wandered the artist’s room and then the dealer’s room again.  (We wanted to check out Sasuga and Kinokuniya bookstores again, as well as show one of the kimono dealers–who had been very nice to us the previous day–the ensembles.  Also, Sheraton got some awesome shoes from Onmyodo, who told us about some of their upcoming shoes that sound wonderful, so I’m waiting before I get a pair of my own from them.  Myan.)  The artist’s room, which is where both the art show and the artist’s alleys were set up–we drifted about mainly artist’s alley, keeping an eye out for good cosplayers and stuff that we liked that we might purchase later.

By the point we left the dealer’s room, we were all kinda tired and in need of heightened blood sugar, among other things, so we went back to the room, disrobed (at least, Changeling and I did), relaxed for awhile and read manga, and then ventured off for food.  Eventually we found it again, then went back to the artist’s room.

Okay, so I was good (bad?) and spent a little bit of money at the artist’s room Saturday.  I saw a lot of good artwork but you know, had very little money to spend.  So, I got an original piece from one artist, who does a lot of adorable and awesome FF artwork–yes this means you should go check it out.  And then, being unable to find artwork that was quite right for a lot of my favorite characters, I perved out and got some smexy artwork of Samus Aran and Princess Zelda from this artist.

Then we headed back after picking up some cool drinks and some cool shots of more cosplayers, and on the way encountered a group of some charming young ladies and their guy friend.  Now, as it happens at cons, you encounter a lot of people, which means you run into a bunch of nice people and some not-so-nice people.  It winds up that this leads me into my next point, which is a bit of a feminist rant, so please pardon me as I pull out a soapbox.

Said girls had been offended because someone had either individually or collectively called them “sluts,” and were ranting rather loudly about it… and of course apologized when they encountered us at the crosswalk, which is one of the reasons we knew they were good peoples.  The ladies were wearing outfits that revealed a lot of leg and were playful–but they certainly weren’t whorish.  (As Sheraton pointed out, their skirts were too long, their tops didn’t reveal enough cleavage, and their faces certainly weren’t hardened enough.)

This is what gets me…  Guys can basically walk around shirtless or what have you and not get called on it.  They don’t get called bad names for it, typically.  I say typically because yeah, there are some people who notice and may criticize them, but it’s not typically to the men’s faces and it’s certainly not to the same extent.  They may be objectified, but it’s not in the same way or manner.  They become manly or studs or what have you, but they’re not instantly labeled or insulted as male prostitutes.  There’s a difference, j0.

It was the same thing when wandering the artist’s room.  There are all of these fanservice shots of characters being “sexy,” but I honestly didn’t like a lot of the ones I saw.  Part of the reason why I got the ones of Samus and Zelda from that one artist is because they were sexy without being vulgar.  There was some objectification, to be sure, but it was all pretty respectful, honestly.  (It’s probably no surprise that the artist was in fact a woman.)  We even ducked into the 18+ only area of the art gallery and saw a pic of Zelda and (presumably) Link… but Zelda was splayed out for all to see and Link was beneath and behind, so like I said, we can only presume that that was him.  I mean, you could definitely see a lot of Little Link, just not Link himself, if you know what I mean.  Which is the thing… erotic objectification that focuses primarily on the female as the object.  In all of the yaoi artwork that was there, I think it’s very clear on who the two guys are–the women are almost always posed alone or with the man’s face hidden.  (Of course, I can’t think of any pics of just guys being sexy.  Not even having sex, just being, you know, erotic.  Plenty of ladies alone and sexy, just no men being alone and sexy.)

It’s not that I necessarily have a problem with erotic artwork or whatnot.  Heck, I have doujinshi that are pretty graphic.  And I know artwork that’s targeting males rather than females are bound to be different–but still.  There’s still quite a ways for us to go before we hold everyone in equal standing, even at an anime con, where we like to think of ourselves as being more open-minded.

And with that said, I really do wish people would be more open-minded regarding cosplayers and people who run around in alternative outfits.  You know what?  They aren’t hurting you–some of them might be offending you, but you’ve got to expect to get offended once or twice in your lifetime or else you’ve got something else coming to you–and so long as they’re not hurting you, leave them the hell alone.  They haven’t done anything to you, they’re not forcing you to wear their clothing, and they aren’t exactly forcing you to look at it either.  If you don’t like it, don’t look; if they put themselves in your way and you can’t help but look, then think of it as a mind-opening experience.  Go ahead and stretch your perceptions a little bit.  It’s as simple as that.

There’s something to be said in being polite, and agreeing to disagree, unless they ask for your opinion openly.  And to clarify, yes, you may certainly have your own opinion about them and their clothing, but there’s no need to be mean about it.  It might come as a shock, but they have ears, and hearts, too, you know.

Car trip was mostly good, save for an unintentional longer-than-expected trip to find lunch, and a completely unexpected sinus headache.  Remember - take decongestant BEFORE leaving on Sunday.  Yeah.

Successfully maneuvered through registration–much easier when pre-registered!–and ran through the Dealer’s Room and gotten most of the goods I was expecting/looking for, and even those I wasn’t.  This was helped by finding Kinokuniya, and the fact that they were selling their FFVII Play Arts figures cheaper than anyone else.  (Except for Sephiroth, who I didn’t see available there at all.  Good thing I grabbed him earlier from another booth.)  …I really like these versions of the charas — and shall I just go ahead and say that Red XIII and Cait Sith are awesome and ADORABLE, respectively.  I also supported Yuricon, and got a chance to be Extremely Shy at the esteemed Peter S. Beagle.

Man: He likes to meet his fans!

Me: *squeaks*

Man: It’s okay!  …no, really, are you okay?

Me: *squeaks, signs up for email newsletter, and runs away*

I also got Square Enix’s “Cloud” mook, which includes two nummy pics of Zack as well as other things that are equally nummy, and also an issue of Arena37 that I’ve always lusted after because it features a gorgeous photo shoot of Gackt in kimono and such, and tends to go for much more on eBay than what it was selling for at Kinokuniya.

All and all, happy for a first day, considering Cali didn’t want me to go AT ALL and therefore didn’t let me sleep last night.  And really, I don’t know if I want to maneuver the Dealer’s Room while sporting my furisode tomorrow.

Also tomorrow…!  Probably attending panels, and hopefully meeting a Thorne!  *SQUEEEE*

I’m probably going to lose internet connectivity until Sunday evening, so you all be good children until I get back, all right?  Don’t burn the internet down!

…Squeenix kept “You spoony bard!” in the DS version of FFIV.

LOVE.

…However, not a single Monk of Fabul has used “AHHH-CHOOOOO!” as his warcry.

That is not so much love.  Even more so because I can’t understand why one wouldn’t include it.  I mean, it’s hilarious.  Am I misremembering the original game?  Granted, the original was horribly censored and such, but I thought the “Ahhh-choooo!” of the monks was kinda classic.  Especially considering Yang’s bright red nose.

Ah, well.

So far the game continues to be awesome, though I have never remembered the Fiend of Earth being so hard and I was horribly worried that they had changed the rules about the fight between the Dark Knight (no, not Batman) and the Paladin.  But they hadn’t, so it was all good.

I would be very happy if they gave FFVI the same treatment as they did FFIV.

Perhaps even more telling, I would be very happy if they gave FFVII the same treatment they did FFIV.  None of this overly additional crap… just clean up the original translation a bit, pretty it up, and let it go.  That method definitely seems to have worked for FFIV.

Of course, I say this now, and I only just now got the Paladin, so who knows whether or not I’ll still be saying this by the end of the game?