An Objective View of Characterization in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I grew up watching science fiction, mostly thanks to my dad. It was because of him that I was introduced to Star Wars and Star Trek at an early age and from there, I grew into the genre itself. It's half because of how wide the genre is and half because there is almost no limit to the breadth of the types of stories that can happen in space with various kinds of ships and peoples. Some stories within science fiction focus on one or two real staples of science fiction, being the unknown or the technology itself being the main two. But that was back in the 90's and since then, another piece that can make or break a story or set-up is brought into focus: the characters themselves.

What I'm not saying is that science fiction itself is devoid of characters, but what I am saying is that characters haven't been a large part of the spotlight in science fiction, not before the late 90's at least. Well, that I know of (even though I say I grew up on science fiction, I will mention now that my choices were rather limited up until I was a teenager and I can definitely say that my tastes have changed since my childhood and thankfully so, but different types of shows interest me and I'm more open to experiences. And even though my dad did like Star Trek, he didn't watch things like Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or even Babylon Five and I find myself working on quite a backlog.).

I will also warn you, dear reader, that this is an attempt at being objective and this is only my opinion. Please don't take what I say as an ad hominem attack on your favorite show or me just being "close minded". I give everything a good solid try before deciding on whether or not I like anything. And yes, that does include Twilight.

The catalyst for this little piece was a facebook rant at how science fiction shows have become infested: "with crappy dialog about love affairs, power struggles over whos the boss, and children disappointed with their parental figures." And that the studios are doing this to "draw in the female market."

This looks less of a failure or mismanagement in trying to aim for a specific demographic and more like a failure in characterization. In this current atmosphere in television, if one makes content that is based on the characters themselves, the characters must fulfill many requirements:

1. The characters must be able to stand on their own. 
2. The characters must be able to be likable in their own ways. 
3. There must be more to the characters than their archetype/stereotype to seem "more well-rounded." 
4. The characters must never cause the story to fall apart for no reason. 

For this list, I merely fell back to my own general rules for when I'm writing. As a writer, I do what I can to follow these rules and above all, write characters that appeal to some sliver of myself. Whether these rules are incomplete or completely incorrect, well, I'm not perfect. But I feel that this list, for all intents and purposes, is just my general opinion as a writer.

So now, I think I should give you all an idea of when each of the four rules are upheld and broken and cite examples of it from their own shows.

1. The characters must be able to stand on their own.

For this example, I have several examples, but the one that really comes to mind is Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation). This is a character who can stand on their own, even in times of loss (Nemesis, anyone?) and still finds a reason to keep going. He's made mistakes (as seen in Tapestry among others) and learns from these while sticking to his morals even as the Federation is exploring many ethical and moral dilemmas (see Measure of a Man). Heck, he even learns to overcome such things as his thirst for revenge (First Contact).

One of the biggest failures of this in my mind is Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell (Stargate SG-1). This poor character comes off as if he's written to be a clone of a pre-existing character who was promoted (in other words, put on a bus) away from the SGC. It goes about as well as you'd expect. The failure isn't with the actor, but the writers as they tried to keep a cannon character around but with a new coat of paint. In the end, he never truly fully became his own character, but just "Not-O'Neill". The problem was less of a focus on the differences between the characters on top of just trying too hard.

2. The characters must be able to be likable in their own ways.

So many real possibilities, but I think I'm going to just pick a character out of the pile forming in my mind. I'm going to go with Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Star Trek). This guy is your typical snarky, somewhat-jerkish medical doctor character. But darn it if the character isn't likable in his own way. Heck, I could just say "every character on Star Trek and TNG" but I randomly picked from my own random list. Even if he is typically sarcastic, snarky, and can come off as a bit of a jerk, but the character has a lot of heart to him and cares about others (sometimes even to his own annoyance as seen in the 2009 movie). That's really all I can say without repeating the same old stuff that everyone knows.

The one that really stinks at this is Dr. Nicholas Rush (Stargate Universe). He does a lot of selfish things throughout the show (the whole list would take up most of a page and that's only of what I remember from the first season alone). And what's worse is that he causes a lot of people to lose their life directly or indirectly because of his selfish actions and motivations and what makes him really lose at this is the fact that the writers seem to not be able to make up their minds with this guy. They write him as a completely heartless monster yet shows that he still is human and in the end, they make him a confused character. It wouldn't bother me if they either made him more of a main character or more of an out-and-out villain. What I mean by this is that antagonists don't get as much focus as main characters for a reason, especially if they're of the Snidely Whiplash variety- because there's nothing else to them than the evil acts of evil. But even in shows where the villains are part of the focus (Dr. Horrible, Death Note), there's at least something about them that keeps the viewer interested/entertained. Heck, even the Goa'uld were entertaining because of how over-the-top they were. But this guy... he's just a complete monster of a human being who shows nothing but glee at everything and to me, he's just not likable at all.

3. There must be more to the characters than their archetype/stereotype to seem "more well-rounded."

There's a lot of characters again that I can choose from, but this time, I think I'll go with Dr. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1). He began in SG-1 as literally the sole civilian on the team who serves as one of two scientifically-minded characters and the interpreter. However, he does more on the show than just that. He's also the moral/ethical voice of the team and in later seasons, really comes into his character, even being able to shoot as well as any member of the team, showing a nice evolution of his character.

And then there's Eli (Stargate Universe). He's literally there to explain math and to literally act out parts of old science fiction movies (mostly just the classic Planet of the Apes which to me, does get old and fast!) while babbling on and on about World of Warcraft. The way this guy is written, he is just about the kind of nerd that even the geeks would hit up for lunch money. And worse is that he just keeps being annoying. And in a lot of ways, he reminds me of the bad parts of Wesley Crusher on top of the general annoying-ness, which I guess is almost likable, but he doesn't evolve past the whole "I'm just here to spout math, Planet of the Apes quotes, and babble about WoW" stereotype. He almost makes me feel bad for being a geek.

4. The characters must never cause the story to fall apart for no reason.

This is something I can't exactly cite a specific character on this because it's more of something where if the characters don't do this, no one notices, but if the characters fail in this, it's obvious. Kind of like sound editing- no one notices when it's done good, but heaven help you if you are off even a tad.

By "for no reason", I mean by "for no reason that the viewer can find which doesn't ruin the suspension of disbelief." If it shatters the viewer's suspension of disbelief, you royally screwed up and good luck stitching it back together. If the story falls apart or segues into another subplot in a way which doesn't shatter the fragile suspension of disbelief, you should be more careful. After all, each episode should be at most an "A story" and a "B story" that overlap in some way, typically not one after the other. When you finish the "A story" and go straight to the "B story", sometimes viewers get annoyed that you didn't just flesh out the two stories and have two separate but tenably linked episodes.

Outside of these rules, there's still a few things that can be found as annoying bits of characterization. One of which is when a character comes off overly emotional/depressed. This gets annoying because of such characters get old fast and when they get old, they become very cliched. What helps is if that's not one of the character's defining characteristic. It's completely fine for characters to be depressed or sad for a reason. But not for no reason other than to make the series seem "edgy and dark". When that happens, it's a sign of pandering to a specific demographic who doesn't understand what fine entertainment is. Kind of like Twilight. (I'm being serious. Twilight was specifically written AND advertised to pre-teen and teen girls. Why else would such a book which has many writers like Stephen King calling it not nice things while being hugely popular?)

Another thing to keep in mind, especially if writing for a novelization that can or is connected to Role Playing Games in general, what may be a very awesome character to readers and writers alike can become a bad thing. Case in point is Drizz't. For all accounts, I've heard that he's a good character who faces his own demons just by being a non-evil Drow. For us gamers, he's hellspawn because of his popularity spawning noobs and powergamers playing non-evil Drow en masse. Those of us who play DnD and similar games are still recovering from the ordeal. The message is "if a character is from a typically evil race of evil people, tread lightly. A whole community will thank you."

I honestly hope that I was objective in this (I really tried). If such pieces like this was entertaining/interesting, just let me know and I'll see about writing more on such topics that interest me. See ya later!

Airship Pirates Post-Game post

This session inspired me to put up another post-game post because it was a fun session and I feel like sharing.

At the previous session, the party heard through a Neobedouin shaman contact that there were two tribes ready to go to war with each other near Isla Aether. So the party decided to go to Isla Aether to grab some information before heading to deal with the tribes. They figured that the best place to get information was a random tavern near the docks where those going through would drop in.

So the new Captain (long story short, the previous captain, a misbegotten had to die because the player quit the group due to preparing to move) and the new first mate (also ship's medic) goes into the bar and notices a wizened man who is clearly far older than any human they've ever seen (about mid 60's to early 70's) wearing clothing that doesn't identify him as either Skyfolk, Neobedoin, or Neovictorian. Because he stands out pretty good in the tavern, they approached him. They introduce themselves to the elderly man who just smiles a bit and replies "I already have met you. More times than you know as of yet."

Seeing that there's only one group of people that the PCs know actually have a method of jumping through time, they came to the conclusion that the elderly man is a much older Captain Robert. They continue to talk and the elderly Captain Robert tells them that the Ophelia had a run-in with someone testing out a much newer version of the time-travel device and when he gave up his position of Captain of the Ophelia to one of his daughters, he took the original Chrononautilus with him. They wound up making a deal with the old man- that since he misses being an airship Captain, that they'd give him one last chance at being Captain in return for the Chrononautilus. He took up the offer and we ended there.

This week, we started where we left off and the old man Robert was given permission to be acting Captain unless it would endanger the ship or crew. He left with the First Mate to tour the ship to see the ship and get acquainted with the crew. Said First Mate/Medic wound up becoming friends with him as he made his rounds around the ship.

Long story short, they eventually arrived at the closest of the two tribes, the Sacramento (the pilot was still allowed to be the pilot) and learned that the other tribe, the Western Camelops had been raiding them and taking whatever wasn't nailed down or too big, including women and children. They were clearly set up in the Wiccan tradition and were peaceful and all that jazz. They celebrated that the fact that they had someone willing to help them with a grand ceremony followed by a feast (glazing over it because it could really be too much). After the feast, the religious leaders told the landing party of their plight and that their daughter was missing during the last raid.

They had a night to rest and the Medic caught old man Robert coughing a bit and played it down. He tried to convince him to go to the infirmary for a check up and Robert told him that he would go to the ship's infirmary when he gets the chance. That night, the PCs got together to plot a way how they could get the old man to get into the infirmary without killing him. (which caused a deviation with a song reference and some humming)

They then got to the Western Camelops who claimed that they were being attacked by the Sacramento who would steal everything that wasn't nailed down- the exact story that the Sacramento had told them. The official Captain (Automaton Doll) decided to have the pilot/engineer build what would amount to signal flares, and gave one to each tribe to fire off when the next raid is.

During that day while waiting for the flare to go off, the Medic stuck around old man Robert who was mostly doing paperwork and writing something in a leather-bound book. He told the medic his plans that he doesn't trust the official captain after the deal is done so he's going to ensure that they get to Isla Aether in the dead of night and jump ship after leaving a note of where their payment will be as well as a key to unlock the door. (funny that they'll be heading towards what was once the Seattle area) He coughs again and the medic is unsure if the ship even has the equipment he needs to make a diagnosis.

The flares go off at the same time, a while after nightfall. They head towards the Western Camelops since they control an oil refinery half the year and they see outriders on horses leaving the area. They finally get to three of the outriders, one of which was holding a little girl hostage. Old Man Robert managed to hobble to the Captain's quarters he was temporarily given and took out a pistol and was ready to shoot that guy himself when everyone fired at them. Once he was down before he could shoot the little girl, the two burly men who were accompanying him were fired on- one to the point of exhaustion and the remaining one was shot and killed by a man on a pre-apocalypse motorcycle before said man took off into the ruins and ducked into a garage there.

The ship's actual captain took up command and talked old man Robert into going with her and she interrogated the man to learn that the group the man belonged to were mercenaries and that this was tied into some job (the PCs were mercenaries and are trying to change schticks) and that they use the garage as a repair depot. The man was then slowly killed through being hung upside down from the main deck.

While on their way elsewhere, the captain and old man Robert had a discussion. Old man Robert admitted that he's going to die soon by something that the future has no real cure for- old age. Captain Annika claimed that old age is just a scapegoat. This was followed by a fun set of dialogue:

Annika: Call it...professional curiosity. I want to know what will finally do in the great Captain Robert.

Robert: I'm not that great.

Annika: Fine, the famous Captain Robert.

Robert: More like infamous.

Annika: They're one and the same.

He then told her that even if he did tell her his afflictions, there is no real cure for them, even with her insisting that she must know in order to try to prevent the younger Captain Robert from getting the afflictions.

This led to Robert telling Annika that his actions shaped the world through manipulating the past and how he failed completely, giving Annika ammo and the chance to tell him that she wants to ensure his long life so that he can help her "make things right again." He told her how everything's better due to the fact that there's no large amount of nuclear weapons, no wars constantly being started somewhere in the world at any given time, and that he feels that there's less of a danger to mankind by itself. Annika then started to try to wheedle some information about the future before (through getting a success at a conversation roll) actually asking about the Emperor to which he tells her that the Emperor will be killed in six months by a jealous wife after killing the other wife and before she kills herself. (I apologized for spoiling Wrath of Fate which Annika's player borrowed from me after I had finished it who is still in the second or third chapter)

We left off about at that point where the PCs are preparing to enter the garage and seeing what the future has in store.

My future plans:

-Since it took so long for the PCs to get to the part of entering the garage, the man escaped through a bolt hole (ancient sewers)

-The deal between old man Robert and Annika is completely a test of character to see if he could trust her with the Chrononautilus and to form who she will become since the younger him will see her personality transform and shape since she had been planning to kill the old man after getting payment and now she wants to help him.

-The Chrononautilus, when received is missing bulbs since they all broke or were taken (if the old man is with them, he'll mutter about someone obviously having a need for them.)

-There is always a chance that old man Robert, being of a highly advanced age may not live to see the end of the escapade. (wow, that will really be a downer)

- The missing son and daughter left in the chaos of the raids to be together.

- The man on the motorcycle is the brother of the leader of the Western Camelops who had planned for the son to abandon the tribe for the daughter of the Sacramento and paid the mercenaries to attack both tribes dressed as the other tribe in order to instigate a fight which he knows that the Sacramento can't fully defend themselves from (since they're mostly pacifistic in nature) with the idea that a stray bullet will kill his brother and he will become the leader of the tribe.

Yeah, I mixed a ton of references and call-backs and lampshades all over the place. I dunno if I played an old man Robert well but I still had fun doing so since I figured that he would become a bit craftier in old age and far more knowledgeable of things since he had been around the block more than a few times.

Updates and Airship Pirates

Wow, it's been over a year since I last done anything with this. Wow. I guess starting college does make a person forget the things they did out of boredom. Well, I'll try to post more since I think I'll be using this to do write-ups of gaming sessions. I'm currently running Airship Pirates and Pathfinder on the Fridays that haven't been claimed by the Camarilla (Vampire the Masquerade LARP [Live Action Role Playing] group).

Last Night, I ran Airship Pirates, the tabletop RPG based on the songs of Abney Park. Here's the low-down:

The Characters:

We have the Doll, Annika Sesentay Nueve (translation: Annika Seven of Nine...yeah), who is the First Mate. Then we have Rune, a Neobedoiun Beastdancer and the short Skyfolk Gadgeteer Madgizmo. During last night's session, my elder stepsister who plays Teddy the Misbegotten Cap'n of this crew of Mercenaries had already informed me of her absence beforehand, so I told everyone that the character is still there even if her player wasn't. (I told the group that Teddy will be a “Mark the Red” since everyone has seen “The Gamers”.) Before I go on, their ship is called the Dragon Seeker.

The Session:

We began the session in High Tortuga a few in-game hours after the last session (which included a Pirate Council trial and getting tickets to the huge event that was going to be held that night.) and the crew were heading to the event that was scheduled after sun-down (I reasoned about 8pm or so) at one of the docks since the performers were going to perform on the main deck of their airship. Said airship's gangplank was withdrawn and there were security to check for tickets and to keep those without tickets out of the cordoned area.

I had everyone roll perception, especially the ship's Engineer to detect the small bits that was specific to the performer's airship. They all passed the check and I described the small details of the airship that included the glass bulbs on the outer hull that were filled with pink-ish swirling gasses that were interweaved with small colored lights (I said that out of character, the lights would be Xmas lights that were strewn on the outer hull to make it look less conspicious).

During the event (read: concert [like no one reading this couldn't figure that detail out.]), the performers had a song in which they selected a random member of the crowd to hold a violin. During the announcement, Annika had grabbed the short Engineer and set said guy on her shoulders and jumped around (which they did each and everytime something temporarily broke) and I got annoyed enough at the insistance of Annika's player that I had them be selected to hold the violin and everything.

Since I kept rolling crappily that night (yes, I'm blaming the dice and going off of the Rule of Funny [meaning that if something hits me as funny, I'm likely to just run with it]), Annika sneaked into the darkness and hid below decks and onto the crew decks (I goofed up and thought crew decks was the first deck below the main deck). I had Annika roll a perception and described a sound that sounded like a door opening before I had Annika roll a Hide and Sneak check, which she passed. What followed was a little girl peering out from her door and going “huh...” before going back into her room.

A few songs later, the band goes below decks, talking about which song they'll be ending with and deliberating as the crowd of fans shouted for an encore. When the band got back up on the main deck, Annika decided to find a better hiding spot (she was hiding under the stairs leading to the main deck) and she once again, heard a door opening. This time, said little girl actually spotted Annika, who decided to act as if she was deactivated. The little girl bought the act and started to play with Annika as if she was a life-sized doll (ironically enough), including such activities as playing tea party, “borrowing” Jody's makeup to make Annika up, before I told Annika's player that the little girl returns with a permanent marker (apparently, the player had plans so he reversed time half because of his plans and half because I said the words “permanent marker”), so time got reversed and Annika ran into the second closest room (which I decided was Jody's room where said little girl is putting back the borrowed makeup back). Annika decided to reverse her decision and let the little girl return with the permanent markers (she would have gone overboard otherwise).

At random intervals, I weaved in what the main group were seeing/doing. My group has a habit of calling off actions and taking a long time to think about what they were going to do except for Annika's player. So a lot of the random intervals involved my asking them what they're doing and saying or if they decided. At this point, Annika decided to scare the little girl by suddenly moving and say "boo!". While the little girl is poking the Automaton that just suddenly moved, the funniest thing happened.

The band were heading to their rum storage area (bottom deck since I screwed up) and the first one who had gone down the stairs was Kristina who stopped suddenly at the bottom of the steps and the person behind her wasn't aware of her stopping (it was too funny in my mind) and the two round up on a tangled heap at the bottom of the stairs. The third person down (Nathaniel) noticed two things: the tangled heap at the bottom of the steps (and probably said something like “get a room, guys!”) and saw Annika leaping over the little girl and the heap of two people with the intention of running below decks. I got an awesome roll so Nathaniel wound up leaping over the railing of the steps and chased after Annika, just two yards behind her at the end of initiative.

Annika tried to use her epic social-abilities to convince Nathaniel to hide her right when everyone got to the scene. Annika announced that she knew their secret (aka, she deduced from the lyrics of the songs (perception check) and compared it to the version of history she knew (General Knowledge check) and saw some things not matching up (in hindsight, Post-Apocalypse Punk may have been a wrong song to have them do...). Jody was the only one who saw through the bluff and there was a lot of arguing and Jody trying (and failing) to bull Annika. In the end, the Captain had Annika be turned off and had their two guitarists (Josh and Nathaniel) drag her out onto the decks with Dan making sure nothing happened (he had a pistol in his hands just in case).

So they get Annika turned on and the first thing that Annika says was “they have a time machine! We need it!” They have a long conversation about how Annika would know and such. My crew decides to keep as much of an eye on the Ophelia with the intention of following them. The rest of the session was just one long chase scene, including through a mountainous pass. It got to the point that the Ophelia had to make the pre-planned jump or waste a whole week (or more) of calculating. The Ophelia was 5 seconds from making the jump when the Dragon Seeker hit one of the Chrononautilus bulbs with the lightning gun, shattering the aft bulb.

The session ended with both airships leaving the thunderstorm, the Ophelia having noticed that their persuers couldn't see them and took a hard left turn in the storm. When the ships left the storm, the distance was too great for the Dragon Seeker to continue. No one knows where or when they are (including their GM). We ended because the group wanted to do the light post-dice-rolling roleplaying.

The Result:
Since I've only been running games for about a year with lots of breaks in between, I know I still have a lot to learn. The first thing I learned was to be more patient and learn better ways of describing events (so that maybe Annika would have gotten permanent marker on her). It also helps that when there's a group of NPCs that would appear every so often, to not come up with a random number between 5 and 8 for rolling for said NPCs. But now, I have to scrap every plot thread I had planned on. (this group's doing to me what the gaming group in Darths and Droids did to their GM, but I'm getting better at improvisation!) In the end, I can't wait until I run this game again.

My gaming schedule is looking like I'm not running anything next Friday and on the 28th would be Pathfinder with the next session of Airship Pirates being on the 4th unless the Camarilla schedule changes next month.

Apologies

I apologize for not doing a post in such a long time that I really feel bad about it. But really, I've been having quite a bit on my plate lately. Last month, I had to go back to sharing the laptop with my roommate because his had to go to the shop and then the stylus for my DSi XL disappeared so now, I can't post using it. :( Much sadness.

Still, things are going good and I plan on doing more posts and more content, but seeing that I've got no followers, I'm pretty sure I'm blogging to empty space. But I intend to change that.

You see, I've been having an idea to do some reviews on things that fit with what I like: Science Fiction, Anime, and Video Games, so I figure I'll start writing up reviews in my own style about something that fits into one of these three subjects.

The thing is, I'll probably start a new blog solely for the reviews and keep this as a personal blog. This way, people don't get confused why my character keeps changing back and forth. And I can use this to announce things too and lead up to the next review. Assuming that anyone would really read this and actually follow me.

Or it could be my cynical nature acting up.

My life's slipping back to normalcy. I spent most of my money on MTG cards due to the fact that I was lured into Scars of Mirrodin. Of course, I now have several decks using fun cards from that set, including a Myr deck and a Proliferate deck. Of course, I doubt that everyone really understands what I'm talking about.

Also, I recently got into an anime called Ouran High School Host Club and I kinda liked it. A lot of it felt rushed and stuff. Like for example, the whole plot involves a tomboy dressing up as a guy without anyone knowing she's a she due to her appearance and style of clothing she wears and then is stuck in a group of guys who assumes she's a guy too. You would think such a thing would be a major plotpoint and something that wouldn't be let out until the last few episodes, right?

Wrong. The guys finds out in the first or second episode. However, them covering up her gender does become such a large portion of the series that I didn't feel completely cheated.

Then you have the random times in a few episodes where the fourth wall gets steamrolled into submission. Almost like the characters all know that they're in a show. But I'm glad it's not more than four times in 26 episodes and not every five minutes like Duel Masters. They never used that gag to the extent that it stops being funny and starts being annoying.

However, the show does have its annoyances. Like Renge, the otaku girl with a laugh that can compete with Naga's laugh from Slayers. Oh god, I hate Naga's laugh and hearing Renge's insane laughter nearly made me go crazy. And to make Renge even more annoying (if that's even possible), right after you hear her laugh, you're treated to five to ten seconds of seeing machinery start to operate and a rig that's a mechanical podium raises from any point in the floor and on it would be that annoying otaku.

Why is she even in this series beyond her episode? I mean, she contributes nothing but background information, annoying/useless advice, and a few cheap jokes. That doesn't outweigh the annoyance that is Renge. I'd have been happier if they had put her character on a bus right after her episode where she torments the Host Club. But no...they had to have her believe that she was their manager.

Yet, she is nowhere to be seen the last few episodes when the Host Club is really in trouble. What a nice "manager", no? In short, she would be much bearable if she served more a point than she did.

<_<

I just went into a review, didn't I? I haven't even done my first review and I barely showed any character...Consider this a lapse since it is one in the effing morning and I've just now started getting tired after burning off my post-LARP energy off. Or it could be the Mountain Dew I guzzled all day wearing off...Or both.

Well, I've got to go and have fun in sleepyland.

~Laters!

Late Night Rant

I feel like an utter heel. Like I'm the world's biggest jerk. And I'm annoyed enough to go looking for something hard enough to bash my skull open. I guess I'm just having the start of a crappy day. But what do you expect when you're woken up after three hours of sleep?

In short, Roommate has me all tied up in an emotional knot.

I woke up at midnight by the sounds of Star Trek: The Next Generation after three hours of sleep. My friends know that it's one of my favorite shows, so normally, I don't mind hearing it play in the background. I do mind when it interferes with my regular scheduled shut-eye. And having high-pitched beeping from IM programs mixed in (which even in a good mood might as well be nails on a chalkboard), it seemed that the Universe was conspiring against me.

Whigh brings me to my emotional knot. I feel like a jerk for feeling hurt/annoyed because Roommate refuses to return the amount of respect that I choose to show him. When he's asleep and I'm on the laptop, I wear headphones or mute the speakers. He claims that the speakers are turned as far down as a notch above off. Yet, noise from whatever he's doing wakes me up and any shows he watches, I can hear as if the speakers are on full blast. Including when I'm doing my darndest to ignore the sounds. I got pillows clamped to my head and I can still hear stuff clearly.

And yet, I spent almost 4 whole hours trying to sleep, only to lose patience and have a mental breakdown (which happens once a blue moon). And I feel like the worst roommate on the face of this planet for letting it all out. And Roommate had done the worst things one can possibly do in regards to my breakdown: he interrupted me and pushed me away by telling me that he's too tired to deal with my emotions. The first made me angry and the second still hurts.

It just bothers me still that I try to respect him and I get disrespected and pushed away when I let out my frustration.

Am on DSi. Can't post more.

~Later!

One Person's Bad Day is Another Person's Good Day

I just came to the realization that I'm having a rather nasty day. I went to my appointment and found out that what I really want to take is at a college that I didn't register at. Why? Because they're not taking any more people. And to top it all off, I won't get any classes until January which doesn't bother me. But what got me was that I was halfway to the bus stop and I saw the bus and I booked it.

The result? Both of my knees and ankles are rebelling against me and the water bottle and Pokewalker I had on me (literally on me) disappeared. I don't remember when and I really don't care cause neither of those are irreplaceable. I just rather liked the black sport bottle (the one that soaked me yesterday) if only because it's cleaner than the red duplicate one (because I had milk in it a few days ago and failed to clean it). I went back to the College just to look for it, looking like an idiot the whole time.

Roommate, however, is having a much better day. He didn't sleep past 12:30 and he even found the debit card that he was missing. And tore up the apartment in the process. Through the entire time it was missing, I kept telling him that if he just simply cleaned his half of the studio apartment, he'd find it a lot faster. I still think he would have found it the day he noticed that it was missing but he found it anyways.

And I still feel like I'll die if I stand up. Which I just might even if it hurts when Sylvester (my black and white "tuxedo" cat) decides that my feet = cat toys.

Also just to make my day worse, I'm going through the worst PMS ever. Headache, cramping, deadly mood swings... yeah. Oh and exhaustion. Rather crappy time to have a bad day.

Annoyances, Feline Antics, and my Misadventures

Well, I finally just got to be able to be on my laptop. It's rather annoying since roommate closed out all of the stuff on firefox (which doesn't bother me since I usually just re-open it and voila! everything I was looking at is there), but then he looked stuff up on firefox and I could only find half of what I was doing. :( But that's just a tiny annoyance compared to that I swear he was trying to suffocate my laptop. I realize he was asleep and didn't mean to cover the laptop with layers of blankets but it's annoying because I can feel the skin of my fingers melt every time I touch a key (no not really).

I finally got to cook something last night and it was okay. I got to make meatloaf and I should've used a smaller pan because it was spread out to the point that the outside was singed a little. But it was still tasty and edible. It's still nowhere close to how my dad made his meatloaf though. :( I know this for a fact because there's leftovers. My dad's meatloaf never had leftovers. Ever. I'm just glad that this time I didn't forget the eggs. And I managed to eye up the proper amount of ketchup too. ^_^ Cooking is fun, especially cooking with meat because then my hands look like I just murdered someone and if I ever walk out into society with the hands or if someone came to visit, I'd be thought of as a murderer. When in real life, all I'm guilty of is cooking.

It's this reason that I wear capris in the summer. I own a very hyper and rambunctious feline so I have scratches on my hands, arms, and legs and I swear when emos look at me, they think I cut myself too. In reality, it's just that I've yet to get my cat's claws trimmed. I've tried buying him toys to play with but he's quite hard on his toys. A few months ago, I got him a cat toy which looks like a fishing rod but has felt strips connecting the plastic pole with a catnip-filled mouse. Within a month, the strips of felt were destroyed and the mouse was properly gutted and was buried in the sink by said cat. It was quite funny when roommate was cleaning out the sink and he found the destroyed toy mouse.

About the same time, I got him this toy which connects to door frames and has a toy bird dangling from an elastic cord. I don't know where the toy bird is but that cord's been chewed up in several places. If only I could find a toy for that cat that he wouldn't completely destroy within a month. Of course, this cat is also quite odd. He has a habit that when all of the humans are asleep, he drops one of his toys into the toilet bowl. Really. I don't understand why or anything, he just does that.

As for what else happened yesterday, I did something completely stupid. I mean I graduated from High School and yet I did something so incredibly stupid that people from the school system should drop by my apartment and rescind my High School diploma kinda stupid.

Now to explain the object with which I did the stupid action with. Last week, my mom dropped off yet another box of things she didn't want and it was filled with these strange cups I never seen before. They have a lid that twists on and off and on top of the lid is a reclosable opening. But instead of closing it by pushing down, these things have a tab that you press into place. Roommate called these things "sports cups". I googled that and found everything but pictures of said cups.

And now for the stupid thing that I did. I was making cold tea in it and I had put the tea bag and sugar in it and I just got done filling it with tap water. After screwing it on, I started to shake it to mix up the contents. If I was the intelligent person I should have been, especially seeing that I was a star science student, I would have remembered the physics of doing so before actually proceeding. Especially the bits concerning Newton's Third Law of Motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) and gravity. But I didn't. Not only did I fail to realize that the rubber part of the closing tabs would not keep the water inside the cup, but I also failed to realize that it might be an intelligent idea to put a finger on the tab to keep it from opening.

So not only did I shake the cup and its contents, but I turned it upside down and on the first downward motion, the liquid escaped from its prison in which it would have been easily devoured and covered my legs, feet, floor and a bit of the stove. My cat was, not surprisingly, nowhere to be seen.

As for today, I've got an intake appointment with a DSS (Disability Support Services) counselor for College in a few hours and with all these detours, this is going to be fun.

~Until Later!