residentpyromaniac

Somehow I've launched Too Far into the motivation zone

Sun, 09 Jun 2019 00:27:41 GMT

Whether or not that's going to be an issue remains to be seen, but I appear to have shot right out of the "only stick to what I feel I have the skills to accomplish" zone into the "FUCK IT I'm going to have to learn somehow, might as well try these several costumes I've been wanting to make for 10+ years"

and now I'm also in the "HOLY SHIT, this is a GREAT idea that is way out of my current skillset, but if I accept it being a multi-year project that will require several attempts and mock-ups, I'm DOING IT BABEY"

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A thought

Fri, 24 May 2019 22:49:07 GMT

Magical Girl show or comic where the girls transform into their fursonas.

In terms of thinking of characters with vaguely D&D framing because I find that super convenient for any "team of people fighting Evil" setup:

There's two heavy hitter/tank type characters on the team. The more barbarian/berserker style has a bear fursona (because you can't have berserkers without bears, that's got to be breaking some kind of rule). The paladin style is either an elephant or a rhino. The paladin in regular human girl form is small and unassuming. The barbarian (Bearbarian) is probably still pretty loud & brash even while regular girl form.

The rogue-type character's fursona is a mouse. Because I greatly enjoyed Narnia as a child and I will 100% be self-indulgent and find a way to include Basically Reepicheep in my story thoughts that may or may not ever find some kind of fruition.

Team Leader is probably a really common/expected fursona. Maybe a wolf - cats are popular too but it seems thematically fitting for the team leader to be a pack animal. That or the Elephant-Paladin is the team leader. But maybe not, I don't usually like putting Lawful Good in charge because I am not good at writing Lawful Good unless the villain is a Lawful Evil, which doesn't feel super fitting with a magical girl concept, especially not one that would probably have a monster of the week format.

There's one (1) scalie in the group. Not sure what kind of reptile, exactly, but I Gotta. Maybe a bearded dragon, those are cute. They're the wizard.

Well they're all kind of wizards, since it's MAGICAL girls, but in terms of what kind of magic they wield, I guess. Maybe the scalie is the only one that doesn't have some sort of elemental connection. Or something else.

hm.

I may actually put effort into developing this as a full story, but I would want it to be a very visual medium and I do not currently have the skills to do what's in my brain justice.

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I've started watching Kill La Kill

Tue, 21 May 2019 00:09:16 GMT

Keeping up with my chronic habit of being at least a few years late to the party with nearly every series I get into.

I'm about halfway into it right now and honestly, I'm loving this absurd over-the-top fanservice murderfight anime. Also, I had literally no idea it was a high school premise. Admittedly, Absurd Anime High School (tm) but still.

To the surprise of literally nobody who knows me, my current favorites are Mako and Gamagori (and Guts, but I'm not sure 'pug in a sweater, holy shit' really counts in this context). Akikuro and Tsumugu are very rapidly growing on me.

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Mon, 29 Apr 2019 23:30:22 GMT

Sometimes you just gotta unhinge your jaw and eat an unholy quantity of zucchini.

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Shocked Pikachu face

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 15:26:30 GMT

Today in "Realizations that should not have been nearly as groundbreaking to me as they were," it's a lot easier to eat healthy when you don't wait until you're downright ravenous before starting to make food, because doing that means you'll end up just slapping together something that can be done in ~3 minutes, and cooking a lot of healthier foods takes time.

Unless you're grabbing some fruit or vegetable that can be eaten raw, but that's not a meal.

So I guess main goal at this point is learning to recognize my own hunger before i'm half ready to murder someone.

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I CAN'T BELIEVE IT WAS GOOD

Sun, 14 Apr 2019 18:34:34 GMT

Shazam. Was. Good.

And not just good in the "This is one of the lesser-known characters I grew up reading and I would have been happy with any halfway decent adaptation" kind of way.

It was straight up GOOD. The casting was absolutely perfect, the overall tone was exactly what I hoped for from my boy, and they didn't go too hogwild with cameos that only the huge-ass nerds would get to the point where it could distract from the whole thing - but boy howdy, those cameos were THERE and I was delighted.

Incidentally, this also means my fiance's artist owes him a free tattoo because they literally had a bet with those terms over whether a Shazam ~~Captain Marvel I don't CARE what Marvel's lawyers have to say, he existed first, fight me~~ movie would be good.

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Still trying to process that raise

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 14:29:00 GMT

I just did some math and, short version, if I take only bare expenses (regular bills, food, and gas) into the math, I'm going from having $17 a month for emergencies and fun to about $320.

I might be able to wrangle my credit back into place faster than I thought. And then I could actually start saving again.

...holy shit. I haven't been able to save since I was in school with parents paying my rent.

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At risk of sounding gross...

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 14:31:52 GMT

...Would buying owl pellets be a decent way of getting small animal bones? It's easy to get them with how often they're dissected in classrooms, and I could think of several projects where rodent/bird/whatever bones could be useful. I'm not sure where that would stand on the legality of reselling things using the bones, though...

...Heh. Owl pellets are basically blind boxes for bones.

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Disconnected griping

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 12:02:43 GMT

I try not to let myself get upset or annoyed by how other people react to media, because hey, it's a big world out there and different people like or dislike different things to different degrees, and as long as you're not going out of your way to be am ass to someone with a different interpretation who cares?

But on the other hand, if a show is dark and violent and viscerally disturbing, has been since episode one, and it's made clear from episode one that there are no real good guys (aside from arguably the protagonist and one side character who is in far too deep)

And then every episode is met with "wow this is very violent and viscerally disturbing and I don't like how these characters are acting"

Maybe it's time to look into a different show?

Because I'm familiar with the source material here and, trust me, it ain't going to get nicer. When the happiest part of the ending is the protagonist realizing just how badly he was being used, it's not going to be a feel-good story in any sense.

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I'm torn.

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 23:35:55 GMT

Right now, my laptop's at a point where if it's unplugged, it will IMMEDIATELY shut off completely with that angry 'beep' noise that computers do if you lean on the power button.

I suspect it's a problem with the battery just crapping out, but there's also a chance it's an issue with the battery connection and not the battery itself.

I'm trying to decide if I should take it to a computer repair place first to see if it's an issue with the connection, or if I should just buy a new battery and hope for the best.

Because right now, I can't exactly afford unexpected expenses since I'm trying to wrangle my credit, and I don't want to spend the money on a battery if it's the connection, but I also don't want to spend the money at a repair place if it's the battery and I could have guessed that, dammit.

I might just check with my man to see if he knows anyone in the area who knows how to handle computer hardware situations who could help me out. He knows a lot of people. It's helped me out with stuff in the past.

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Craft notes

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 23:20:07 GMT

It looks like I'm going to have a fair bit of fur left over when I finish this skirt, in a not-super-convenient to work with shape.

...Yeti plush? I'm thinking yeti plush.

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I am going to McFuckin' Scream

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:01:05 GMT

I hit a major slump with my FMVs over the past year or so, and I only just recently got my video workspace cleared up enough to actually use it.

Only to find out that 1) at some point in the past year, Premier has updated its codecs to the point where all of my WIPs have been nuked

and 2) at least 2 series' have been wiped from the drive and USB thingy I was keeping it on

Among the 2 series that were wiped was one I had an idea for that I'm still pretty hyped to do, but I literally need to get the footage by playing through the episodes normally with a screen capture program, because there is Absolutely no easy HQ download that isn't watermarked to hell and back out there.

Which is some bullshit, because last I heard it was a pretty popular series?

Either way. That's a lot of time that's been lost and needs to be redone.

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Tue, 26 Mar 2019 17:28:25 GMT

I want to go home and Do Something Productive but I have four hours of work to go so I'll just sit here and vibrate out of my skin

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Good Lord, I have So Much Stuff

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 00:18:27 GMT

Part of my "Let's clean up and organize my craft room so it's useable" plan has been to basically take an inventory of everything I have - props, materials, everything, with the idea that if I have a list of what I already have as far as crafts and costuming goes, I'm less likely to buy something I don't need, and I'd have a better shot at working out what I can do with what I have.

I have absolutely no idea how well that idea's going to work, but I'm also making notes of where I'm keeping things so even containers that aren't clearly labeled will have a convenient "what's in this?" list so I can find what I'm looking for and avoid issues like the last LARP I did where I ended up not bringing my character's delightful hat because I couldn't find it.

Which brings the question: Would anyone here be interested in seeing the list of stuff I have (even if it's just complete props and not all the materials) when it's done? I'm half tempted to share it out anyway, even if it's just to have someone corroborate my suspicion that I have a Metric Fucktonne of costuming stuff scattered wildly across genres.

I would learn how to do readmores on this site, of course, so anyone who doesn't care wouldn't have to scroll through miles upon miles of bullet points.

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Project planning for the weekend

Thu, 21 Mar 2019 23:17:42 GMT

Partly because I Want To Create, and partly becasue I suspect organizing my craft room will be easier if I manage to actually use some of the materials taking up a ton of space.

So, in terms of keeping things manageable, projects I want to start this weekend and finish before the end of April:

- Finish my cape (easy. All that's left is finishing the half-cape that goes over the rest of it and attaching)

- Some kind of waist-cincher-ey bodice nonsense, using some of the bajillion belts I've accumulated over time. (Less easy. I don't have a pattern to work from that would be at all feasible with the belts idea. This is going to be a lot of trial and error, methinks. Worst case scenario, I'll ruin a bunch of extremely cheap fake leather belts)

- CANNON. (I have a big tube. I have a lot of foam. I have paint. Why not?)

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Tue, 19 Mar 2019 22:00:01 GMT

Sometimes I wish I was better at words

Because once in a while, I'll be watching something where the visuals are so ASTOUNDINGLY my jam, and I want to lavish prasie on it

But then I'm just stuck going "I want to eat it"

...which doesn't make sense when it's, say, a tv show.

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Let's Marie Kondo this shit

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 16:58:50 GMT

Now that I seem likely to have some extra free time I the near future, I think it's Time to tackle the black hole that is my craft room. I've got tons of stuff that I've been hanging on to for??? Reasons?? And while I know I probably won't clear out a lot of stuff, I want to at least clear out anything I know won't be used.

Or to finally lay my Most Excellent Pirate Jacket to rest, at the very least. It's about 40 years old. It had a very good run. Its dying, and I need to find out if the "thank things you're throwing away" advice actually helps alleviate the sentimental part.

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Time to be Petty

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 22:46:28 GMT

A game I've rolled with for... a while recently had a pretty catastrophic Fiasco between a lot of the longer-running players/plot writers and other staff. Which basically all started, from what I can tell and what I've heard from people involved in said Fiasco, from a joking comment that fell flat due to tone being nigh impossible to read on the internet and accidentally hitting a touchy subject for the person being joked to*.

*A "Is this a thing that's allowed?" type of question, responded with a goofy "NOOOO" which was intended as a "No shit Sherlock, that was a very dumb question" but got interpreted by the asker as "No, we don't want you here". It snowballed from there. Especially because the asker's response to that, which was intended to be a "polite reference to an article that explains better how this felt than I can articulate" was then interpreted by the answer-er as "Passive Aggressive Public Post Of Why You Are Specifically The Worst Kind Of Asshole."

Which eventually exploded in a few different low-level peeves being brought up, because of COURSE when something happens every unrelated thing gets pulled up as well as evidence of how this side or that side is wrong.

Which snowballed even further into conflicts between people who like x kinds of plots and people who like y kinds of plots, the people who wanted PVP options and the people who held that PVP is Always Bad, this qualm about the disorganization inside the writer/NPC circle, how bad an idea it is to have one of the writers doing the plots for her own PC, so on and so forth.

SHORT VERSION, a lot of the people from my personal friends group ended up saying "Fuck this" and leaving that particular game. Which means I'm probably going to be bailing on the game too, since the number of personal friends was one of the main things anchoring me there, because it's a roughly 3 hour drive each way to that one and that shit gets 1) tiring and 2) expensive.

I didn't do the big "I'm leaving" announcement because I wasn't involved at all in the underlying Fiasco and I've got people I'm good friends with on both sides of it, so I don't want to burn any bridges.

...But man, it's pretty damn funny to me to see the group of people who stayed (which was largely the "Knee-jerk read bad faith into every comment, PVP options should NEVER HAPPEN because it's BAD, What do you mean there might be an issue with writing your own plot?" section) suddenly panicking about next month's game because about 2/3 of their usual NPC group left.

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Fri, 22 Feb 2019 12:27:11 GMT

I seem to have slipped into a minor depressive spiral again. I suspect it's related to the fact that I've fallen off the gym wagon for about a week and a half now, despite telling myself I'd stay on top of it this time, for real, I promise. Oh well.

I also suspect it has a fair bit to do with there being so much I want to do, but the problem is that my peak motivation time appears to be halfway through work, and by the time I get home my motivation is shot as far as anything remotely complicated is involved.

On the upside, my pay raise did go through as of the week I was told about it, so as long as I don't get stupid about it I should have my finances under control in a few months. And I'm not going to let myself skip the gym after work, so here's hoping I stay with that for a longer stretch this time.

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They DO exist...

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:43:17 GMT

Welp. Yesterday I found out raised are indeed a real thing that can happen in the world. I don't know when it's going to be implemented (our payroll goes Wednesday to Wednesday, so finding out on a Wednesday could mean in this next cycle, or it could mean nothing and it'll happen in March when I've been here a full year) but still, right now that is a Huge load off my shoulders.

I'm definitely going to spend the first month or several getting my credit card account back under control, but from there I can focus on saving for down payment on a house...

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Lousy Rotten Healtcare System

Fri, 08 Feb 2019 12:25:47 GMT

For god's sake, I just want to find a primary care doctor covered by my office's insurance, but the insurance company's main search function is utterly useless. Literally, an entire week of trying to search and it just kept getting stuck on the search function.

At least going into the option to change my PCP (where trying to search by zip code turned up nothing. I had to go look up the state's capital to have any chance) gave me a chance to find a list of options.

I guess when I get back from work I'll be checking out doctor review sites and so on to see if I have any shot of finding a doctor who doesn't make me massively uncomfortable and/or doesn't immediately launch into the "You are Fat and Dying" speech.

This is still some bullshit.

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Tue, 05 Feb 2019 23:56:37 GMT

Well, on one hand, my tax return is Very Little this year.

On the other hand, unlike LAST year, my former employer didn't fuck up so hard that I owed about $200 by the time I was done filing.

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ALL HANDS ON DECK for a buddy

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 23:17:25 GMT

One of my friends has recently been given instructions to go gluten and dairy free and he needs some recipe kind of advice because he has been living on altogether too much avocado chicken salad lately. Please comment so I can chuck him this link and Be Helpful.

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Work griping

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 18:03:43 GMT

I am, right now, the ONLY secretary/assistant type person in at work.

It feels like a bad time to ask about when I can expect my review to come in, but. I'm tired and doing four people's worth of job and I am a little too Done to care about timing.

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Wed, 16 Jan 2019 23:53:40 GMT

I sort of want to use my Comic Nerdery to go on a huge analysis of why I feel basically all of the Fantastic Four adaptations have fallen completely flat. But on the other hand, I don't want to jump straight into the trend of "long, half-cocked 'analyses' of why things suck" that's been going around the past few years.

...Also, there's a very good chance it would devolve into a long rant about the Ideal Victor von Doom, because that is a character that I have very strong feelings about.

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