Finally got this up and running. Will hopefully be updated as I finish it/come up with more to add to it.

( Project Master List: Fic, OrigiFic, Art )

If there's anything you'd like to see me attempt that isn't already on this list (or that you don't think is already on this list), you can fill out a request either on this post or over here. It says it's for a writing meme, but go ahead and make art requests there too, for now.

Also - doing a sketch-a-day challenge between September 1, 2009 and October 31, 2009. I'm offering two request weeks, so if you'd like to make a request feel free to mosey on over here and make one in the comments. Even if I don't get through all of them during the two request weeks, depending on how productive I remain for the rest of the year I'm going to try and get through them all.

This here is the eclectic meme post! I've been hit with a few of them over the past few weeks and figured I'd just dump them all into one post rather than stringing them out or something. Makes things faster, I think.

And I wanted to bump the emo down a bit. I never meant for this LJ to get bogged down in crazy IRL issues, anyway. This place was supposed to be about fandom and fun and connecting with people, and flailing about the negatives in my life isn't really conducive to all of that. (For the record, though: still not thrilled, but coping. Will probably have to give mother a piece of my mind before the fury gives me an ulcer. Not looking forward to the holidays, but I have generous friends that have offered me an escape, so it's all good.)

SO!

• Leave me a comment saying either "Bazinga" or "I don't know what that means" (your choice).
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

( My responses: )

Aand now for something a little different, from merrytook92:

→ List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
→ Tag seven people to do the same.
→ Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it." I'm tagging whoever wants to do it, rules be damned. XD

( Seven habits/quirks/facts Meme )

ALSO:

For my typography class, we're designing our own Psychedelic posters. We can do pretty much whatever we want as long as we include a few specific things. Nothing too crazy, right? It gets better.

One of my friends dared me to do a poster with Spock. Doing the Vulcan salute.

I HAVE SUCH HILARIOUS PLANS FOR THIS THING YOU GUYS.

So I haven't made a TV post in a while.

( In Which Erin Rambles about TV for a while. Here be spoilers for Stargate Universe, Flashforward, House, Bones, Monk, White Collar, and Glee )

( And Now for a Few Thoughts on Female Characters in Television )

In other news, I didn't really write anything last night. A little, but not a ton. I broke 13k this morning and still hope to hit 25k by the end of the weekend. However, I also have a few major assignments I need to work on for Graphic Design, Typography, and Medieval Art History, so I'm not totally optimistic at the moment.

So I figured I'd give a brief NaNoWriMo update for anyone interested.

Broke 11k tonight, which is the most I have written in four days in a loooooooong time. I might make another post here in a few minutes with a section of what I've got (some of the backstory, maybe, I don't really like enough of anything else I have to even admit I've written it), but I dunno. Might wait until later.

Also? This:

( Escape from City 17: A Half-Life Movie )

12:03 AM on November 1, 2009.

Here we go you guys.

On a random note (before I go flying off to write like the wind)? The Fifth Element remains one of the most awesome, crack films ever made.

And Event Horizon is still just as trippy and freaky as I remember.

I would normally wait to post this but I had a question and if I don't share it I'm going to forget it.

It's about writing. Well. Planning. Since we're in the last stretch before NaNoWriMo (and I've been planning backstory like the wind, because that's pretty much all I plan on going into it with this year), I wanted to ask:

How do you guys usually go about planning what you write?

( Follow-up questions under the cut, but feel free to skip these. That first one is the one I'm most curious about. )

( My answers to the above questions are under this cut. )

Whew, omg. If you read that you can have a gold star. XD;;;

And now to bed because I need sleeeeeeeep. Crossing my fingers RE: my logo here.

Reason I love my brother #265:

He has started an electronica band. Called Datalore.

The geek is as strong in him as it is in me.

I am no longer allowed to buy books, you guys. Not until I finish all of the books I currently have on my shelf. I'm serious.

It's a long list. Let me show you it:

( In which Erin lists her unread books. )

You know, just the other day I was talking to talekyn about how I twitch when I have over thirty unread books on my list. Apparently I broke that barrier some time ago and didn't even know it. Oops.

Then there are new ones I just bought today. Because, of course, that list? Just wasn't long enough:

1) Huntress, Black Dawn, and Witchlight by L.J. Smith (all contained in one nice, shiny volume! Meaning I now have copies of all nine of the Nightworld books. All that remains is the last one! I have also read all of these before, but had to borrow them from someone because until recently they were out of print.)
2) The Night My Sister Went Missing by Carol Plum-Ucci (who also wrote What Happened to Lani Garver and The Body of Christopher Creed, the latter of which is one I rabidly recommend to anyone and everyone I can. Seriously. Go read it. The former is also awesome, but the latter is my favorite.)
3) Runaways volume 1: Pride and Joy (my descent into the Fandom-I-Swore-I-Would-Never-Get-Involved-With has officially begun. Someone please help me.)

Aaaaand I'm almost embarrassed to put these, BUT MY INNER FANGIRL HAS NO SHAME SO WHATEVER (and I've already listed their predecessors, orz).
4) Wolverine: Lifeblood by Hugh Matthews
5) Wolverine: Violent Tendencies Marc Cerasini

*hangs head*


Also - the bars have good tastes in music tonight. The Talking Heads ("Once in a Lifetime), The Specials ("Pressure Drop"), the Black-Eyed Peas ("Don't Phunk with My Heart"), the Cure ("Just Like Heaven")...it's a good mix. They seem to have a soft spot for Death Cab For Cutie and "Soul Meets Body" though. I've probably heard twice tonight already and swear I hear at least once a week. Good thing I like the song and don't listen to it on iTunes often.

Still working on going through comments (I fail at accomplishing anything when I go home, orz). Should hopefully be all caught up by tomorrow afternoon (meaning that is what I resolve to spend my time doing.)

( But first, a quick update on life. Includes references to books, movies, and NaNoWriMo. )

And now I should probably get off to bed, and pretend like I care about classes tomorrow.

I'm not dead, just flailing - got a mid-term test and Typography critique tomorrow, so I'm studying like crazy right now. Then, immediately after class, I gotta scoot on home (yay fall break) so I can make a doctor's appointment early Friday morning. Then, hopefully, I'll be meeting up with onijutsu and we'll be hitting up the bookstore for some comics. Whoo~!

Birthday went okay - the family celebration went over a lot better than my actual birthday for reasons I'll probably get to in my next post, in which I plan to post pictures of my cake (Star Trek themed!) and the goods I got this year (all of which were completely, totally, and utterly awesome).

Thank you to everyone for all of the good wishes, you all seriously brightened my day up so much. &hearts!


I'm also behind on answering comments/posts - I'm sorry, I've just been a little frantic and stressed this week. I'll be getting to it all this weekend, I promise.

Snow? This early in October? It's more likely than you think!

Oh God Nebraska, why do you have to do this, whyyyyy

There is a 70% chance of snow showers on Saturday.

It's October.

We don't GET snow in October.

I do not want to have to turn the heat on so early in the season, sob. I also don't want to spend my 22nd birthday freezing my butt off because the weather has decided to misbehave again. But rumor has it my father and my brother are going to come up and have dinner with me on Sunday, so that is a win.

( Linkspam! )

And last but not least: In lieu of a Friday Meta Post, I have this:

( Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Rules for Writing Fiction )

So. I have a doctor's appointment on Friday, thank heavens. Here's to hoping the body screw-ups are all the fault of fluxing hormones or something else not life-threatening (why, yes, I do have a hypochondriac streak) and can be treated pretty easily. *crosses fingers*

And then I get to celebrate my birthday with my family (a week early, but my cousin is getting married on the tenth and my mother will be flying back on the eleventh, my actual birthday), so yay! My dad hinted at a Star Trek themed cake (complete with Vulcan ears!) which made me laugh but I think he was just kidding. XD;;

(How awesome would it be if he weren't joking, though?!)

What else...

Got frustrated and fed up with my art homework today and ended up giving up on it for the evening. We'll see how things go tomorrow. None of the projects I've got are due till next week, so I have time, I just wanted to have a clear slate this weekend. Also made plans to party hard over Fall Break with onijutsu at least - we're gonna watch a ton of comic book movies, because X-Men: Evolution has me in its clutches right now. XD

Will probably have to hold off on the linkspams till this weekend. I'm turning back into the crankypants I was earlier this month and don't feel like doing squat right now. D;

Well. Except, apparently, for memes:

( Seven Habits/Quirks/Facts meme! )

ALSO:

NAME A FANDOM AND I'LL TELL YOU MY:
- OTP
- Runner-up
- Honorable mention(s)
- Crack pairing(s)
- Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't

So it's premiere season. Which means I've been doing a lot of TV watching around classes and homework.

( In which Erin writes a sentence or two about the TV she's watched lately; may include spoilers )

On the Resident Evil side of things -- Oh, God, Steve's Twitter. All those little posts about needing to impress Claire and show her how awesome he is? I don't know whether to roll around laughing or die of sheer squee. Steve, you nutty little seventeen year old you. Don't ever change.

Also thinking I might venture down to the used bookstore this weekend and see if there's anything there I want to adopt (yes you can adopt books in Erin-land, don't burst my happy bubble). I just spent the last two days skimming back over my two collections of LJ Smith's Nightworld series (which you should check out if you want YA urban fantasy that is full of vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, and witches, has an awesome developed universe, romance, and an actual plot) and I have the itch for even more books.

...Will finish catching up on comments and things tomorrow, I think, because I shouldn't have a lot of homework to do (just a paper and part two of a milk carton, joy). I'm also going to try and write for the first time in weeks, because NaNo is just around the corner and I don't want to be completely out of practice by then.

So I crashed into bed last night around eleven, was out cold by eleven thirty. Woke up sporadically after having some strange dreams (including one that basically translated to "this is what you get for spending a day reading creepypasta and thinking about action movies while you have a miserable headache" and was about as creepy and crackish as that implies. I woke up terrified and convinced there was going to be a gelatinous blob of nearly invisible, very angry slime peeking at me from under my bed, and I haven't had that problem since I had nightmares about the Borg Queen when I was eight).

Whatever it's been that's been screwing me up seems to be hightailing it out of my system, though, thank heavens. I was getting really tired of being a terror to all who crossed my path.

And now for a few memes~!

( Icon meme! )

( Handwriting meme - this gets a little wide on the page, but otherwise it'd be practically illegible )

( And another little meme (for you!) )

Also, the roommate and I are looking for recipes for food to actually, you know, cook. But as we are college students, we have very few recipes stored in our brains (mine is mostly full of fandom and technical artist jargon, like 'tracking' and 'kern' and 'font family' and hers is full of...biology and chemistry and other awesome things.)

SO! If you have any - favorite family things, stuff you whipped up, food you love and want to force others to love just as much share, please send them my way. Preferably things that can be made on a stove, as our oven is little and evil and prefers to turn all things placed inside black and inedible while lying about whether or not it's on and threatening to take away fingers in a fiery burning rage.

...I have nightmares about our oven.

Dearest body:

Shape up or ship out. I'm serious. If I didn't need your malfunctioning parts to live I'd rip them out with my bare hands and feed them to the pigeons. The only part of you that is fully cooperative right now is the part that is appropriately dying, and I don't think I need to point out how sad that is.

No love whatsoever right now,

Me.

Ugh, and I was hoping to accomplish something today, now that I seem to have thrown off the icky funk that's been making me a terror to be around for the past few weeks. Apparently my head has other plans, though, and I might toddle off to bed, at least to lie down.

( Linkspam! )

( And now for a little bit of meta )

...You guys, this is why I'm only going to do this once a week. I started this at nine. It's now 12:32 and I'm still not sure I'd call this a well-written essay.

I'm definitely going to apply for that internship. I realized as soon as I made that post that I've got nothing to lose by trying and so much to gain. So I'm crossing my fingers, getting my resume written up, and I'm planning on having everything sent in no later than the 14th, the day before the final due date.

In other news, been feeling very...bleh for the past two weeks. I dunno if it's hormones or the weather or home-stress threatening to bubble over (or a combination of all three), but I'm already ready to throw my computer and all my school work at the wall, skip class, and just do whatever I want every day of the week. I'm restless and antsy and that's not good. I'd hoped that the long weekend would have helped me reset things a little, but I think that might have been overly optimistic on my part.

Going home tomorrow after class, got a doctor's appointment in the morning. Not gonna lie, I'm praying I don't have to get another round of thirteen shots (to my foot) this time. I'm not thinking I'll be spared any shots at all, though. D:

Otherwise, just got a small linkspam for you:

( Linkspam! )

Gonna try and get the first sketch-a-day dump up over the weekend-ish, but it'll depend on what they do to my foot on Friday and whether or not I'm stuck at home or make it back here.

Ahhhhhh!

YOU GUYS. io9 is hiring interns for the fall, from people who are interested in science, science fiction, and want more experience with blogging! And graphic design and photoshop skills are a plus.

I KIND OF WANT TO APPLY.

But I don't have a resume written up, the only real writing I've done lately is fanfiction (and they ask for writing samples), the deadline is September 15th, it's unpaid, and I'd have to contact sources (which might not always be possible via email and I hate hate hate using phones).

Augh, f'list, what do you think? Should I be insane and at least try, or should I count my present blessing, cut my losses (which...there aren't any?) and wait till next year?

I suppose what I should be asking is: would you even be interested in seeing what I could do if I went down this path?

Title: Down the Line
Chapter: 1
Characters: Eventually Billy and Rebecca will be in here.
Rating: T/PG-13, mostly for mild swearing.
Summary: It's amazing who you can run into a little down the line.
Author's Note: This actually contains a minor character spoiler for Estimated Life Expectancy, but I didn't want to assume everyone who read that fic would read this one and vice versa, so I mentally slapped myself and decided to post it anyway. This is also unbeta'd, so any typos are purely my fault and if someone would point them out to me I'd be glad to fix them.

Also - this seems like it's going in a very different direction in the beginning than it does by the end of the chapter. I simply ask that you, dear readers, bear with me (and if you really, really, really need to know how all of this is relevant, you can skip to the end. I don't recommend it, but if you must...).

( Down the Line: Chapter 1 )