Okay, so my trip away to stay with my dad left me massively behind with Batwoman, so I trundled over to eBay and snapped up five, six and seven from two different sellers. I bought number one online as well, and my primary thought when it arrived was damn, I'm glad my postman is kind. The seller had stuffed it in a standard white paper envelope. I really don't understand that sort of complacency in packaging. Clearly if it arrives crumpled and wrecked I am going to pitch a fit and demand a refund, and they'll have an unsellable comic.

I bought from two different sellers this time 'cause one of them sells comics bagged but lacked issue five, so obv. I wanted the bagged comics where possible and had to make do with five. The bagged comics arrived together in a sort of epic cardboard lifecage. Someone meticulously cut apart a bigger box and cut it down, used a knife to make clean fold lines at the edges, and made this whole thing. It's actually folded over four times inside. The comics are so flat they coulda IRONED THEM, I swear.

I was more concerned about the un-bagged one, mind, because chafing! Danger! Augh!

It didn't show up wrapped in cardboard like the other two. They put it in a heavy-duty envelope instead, with a hard cardboard back to it. I was all hmm, acceptable I suppose. Then I opened that sucker up.

( WAT EVEN. )

I admit, as I'm looking at it all, YOU HAVE OUTDONE YOURSELF, SELLER, I was worrying that the newsprint might rub off on the comic...

BUT THAT SUCKER'S IN A BAG.

In a bag with a light-weight piece of white board to hold it steady!

Bwaaah. This is how to win a buyer to your side for life, o comic/paper-sellers on eBay. TAKE NOTE. And if anyone else tends to buy their stuff from eBay, these two sellers are Wolfcomics and Acecomics, and my comics arrived from them BEFORE the estimated arrival date.

I am so chuffed. So chuffed. :D

So I plugged in my scanner and did this. Hurrah! I have also hacked up a rose bush and sent off more job apps. Life is a tad repetitive at the moment.

Fixed bank stuff! Applied for more jobs! Drank a fekkin' Cola! Listened to this song, despite the fact that it is not my sort of song, and was happy in a weak sort of way, which isn't actually all that bad.



( Lyrics for the lazy-eared. )

So, been feeling a bit crap lately. Not in the ranty sort of way, just the grey mist sort of way, hence the lack of vent post here. It came to something of a head - in that it became too much for me to simply slog on through - today when I started to look more seriously for a job and realised a few things. One, I don't feel I have any talents or skills; two, I have allowed my social anxiety far too much elbow room lately, and it's taken over the damn sofa. Where the hell is my confidence meant to sit now?

So, having thoroughly upset myself looking through jobs that involve telephones and diplomacy and professionalism and feeling strong enough in myself to defend my decisions (and, let's face it, make them in the first place), I went off to have dinner, then came back upstairs, put on Deadmau's Raise Your Weapon, dragged out my graphics tablet and got drawing.

Raise your weapon:



( Sketch. )

Mused while I was at it. Recognised that I am not, and likely never will be, particularly good at art. I love the medium, I love looking at people's work, but I don't have the training, I don't put in the time, and I don't have any real passion for it. I enjoy it, but I don't feel compelled to do it.

That's... liberating. It's a hobby. I can be mediocre at it and enjoy it. But I can't tell if it's a good thing that my brain finds easiness in mediocrity to be liberating. On one hand - perfectionism is tiring as hell. On the other - sometimes, when I'm feeling exceptionally down, I start to want mediocrity. As in, I start to think, if only I could be happier being this crap. Which means I'm not thinking, how do I stop being this crap?

...I thought some more, mainly on how this all applies to my writing. Because I have noticed a tendency when I am looking through jobs to sight things that actually have to do with writing and thinking no, no, definitely not up for that. I find myself wanting a job that has nothing to do with what I'm good at. Presumably so I don't go from amateur writer from professional writer, as then I suppose my own benchmark for success will be higher, and therefore more difficult. Therefore further to plummet from. Perhaps also because I anticipate failure in employment, and when I know I can stomach failing as a shelf stacker in Sainsbury's, failure as a writer would be something else altogether.

But that's strange, because I love constructive criticism. In all my editing classes my heart would always drop at each negative comment to start with, but then about twenty seconds later my brain would be whirring with solutions and I'd be even more excited about the piece than I was initially. So perhaps I'm afraid of the drop before the surge. Or perhaps I recognise that university was a training ground and knew as much. I fear that, in a professional capacity, I will be expected to excel from the start. Which is stupid, but also possible - who knows who I might have as a boss, and what their demands might be.

I guess one thing that struck me while I was drawing was that, to get over my fear of making mistakes as a writer, I have to get back into the habit of admitting that I make mistakes as a writer. All the time. I have to apply for writer jobs and stomach the rejections. And if I ever get a writer job - I'll have to get used to looking over at other people's work and thinking, wow, that's much better than mine in x, y, and z areas. And I have to become as able to deal with that as I am with the same in my artwork, without giving up on myself. Because one thing I have realised lately, in moments when I'm working, when I'm procrastinating, and when I'm staring at the job listings in panic, is that I give up on myself very, very easily indeed. And that's certainly the thing I have to stop.

Which is totally rare and not what I strive to do every day or anything.

Hm.

I wrote this straight, anyway, with a five hour pause in the middle to sleep. I think that means it took me about six hours, though honestly? I have been writing for about six hours, mostly in the very early hours of the morning, so my brain is not happy for to do the maths!

TW for family nastiness. This is a first draft; it should stand alone; it's based in the WoW universe but it's not reliant on WoW knowledge to make sense. Basically Baelmyrr Alvantaris' backstory.
( Belves! )

News: Scroll of Resurrection, right. Missed that by about... two days by reactivating my account the standard way on, like, the sixth of this month. Jon did the same. We shared some extended ellipses over that.

Applying for jobs... sadly involves obtaining referees... I hate telephones, internet. This whole process is bad for those who hate telephones.

My novel is a stagnant piece of crap... as per usual. :D

I MISSED MY CATS SO MUCH.

Been doing quite a lot of drawing lately... even cleared my desk in aid of this...

Yeah. That's about it at the moment.

<3

So I've rediscovered something fairly bloody obvious: reading makes writing easier. My inspiration levels just hop on up if I read so much as ten pages of a good book. I really need to get back into the habit of reading during the day rather than just before bed. In fact, I need to get back into the habit of reading full-stop. It's far too easy to stick to internet articles and fanfiction and IMing. And then I wonder what's up when my brain runs dry and stupid.

In other news, I'm heading home on Saturday so I might actually have access to my money again soon. In the meantime I've been putzing about on a F2P account as a holy paladin. Now. I'd heard that F2P can be hard at the level cap because you're automatically stuck in the twink part of the battleground queue, so you're up against level 24s with all the kit in the world.

And, okay. I am up against level 24s with all the kit in the world. HOWEVER. I have level 24s with all the kit in the world on my side too, and now that I'm in the twink bracket... a lot of them know how to play. o.o That is to say... they cover my little healy butt! They help me out! They wait for me if they're the FC and I somehow fall behind!

That and, well, paladin is ridiculously good. I usually enter combat with three holy power. Hunters and rogues alike offload a craptonne of damage in the first few seconds, sure, but Word of Glory at three holy power rockets my health back up. I have a long stun. I have my human racial stun-breaker. I can heal for a substantial amount while on the move, with Holy Shock and Crusader Strike on the damn hunter pet that is probably chewing on my shield. Flash of Light is actually good at low level. Sure, it taps my mana, but it'll throw even the twinkiest butt back up to full health in a crazyshort cast.

I have to say, I do miss the domination that was going on prior to hitting level 20. I found that I was often the only healer on either side in most battlegrounds, and that essentially made me the tide-turner. Coming across other healers was quite fun too. Priests in particular can be depressing to fight one-on-one as a paladin healer because they put up that damn shield and it takes you ages to get through it. The only healer I encountered who outdid me, in fact, was a priest. Being a loving soul, I vowed revenge, ofc.

But this is pretty much how most of the pre-20 BGs turned out:



Farming the GY for great asshattery points. Feeling k about it because I needed all the honour I could get before (supposedly) becoming hunterchow in the 20-24 twink bracket. 8D

And now I should stop because apparently my typing speed is weirding out my father. Tro-lololol. olol. olol. Before I stop, I drew Lydon being happy (and took a picture with my webcam! Skills). As he often is. My art skill is at a pretty bumbling level, but I quite like that'un despite the various problems with it. That hair, at least, makes me happy. x)

Quite simply, everything is locked because small creatures have been creeping. She seems to have given up now, but I'm too lazy to go back through figuring out what I want to keep locked and what I want to open up, so boom. I am not going to bother.

Instead I went and made a thing, because my brain has been tangling in knots all day over fanfiction.net and how to manage a darker piece posted there. I know a lot of authors publish a cleaner version of their fic, but Obituary is more me toying around with the darker themes I would usually shy away from than an attempt at a strong story, so there doesn't seem to be a great deal of point. I may pull it down entirely later. As yet undecided.

But yes. Yes. here's the special cell I've built it. I'm toying with the idea of including my RP story pieces when I'm done with the body of Obituary itself, but that's a decision sitting faaaar in the future.