Ree’s musings

http://ankh.diaryland.com/dreamvin.html

I am working myself into a solid migraine. Does anyone have any idea how long it took me to figure out the OLD SciFi Vine? I don't want to remember how hard it was. Enter "V2," the new Vine system. As my little brother Squirt would say, "Piece of a bitch!" I don't "get" any of it. Narg. And everyone else from the Vines is doing like I am and sticking mostly to the old and therefore familiar incarnation. Nobody's on the new system to ask for help, grumble grumble. Maybe I should just stick to websites.

Then again, I'm unimpressed with my own work on this diary layout. More importantly, my "main headquarters" website is hosted on the old SciFi Vine site. Luckily I'm friends with one of the higher-ups on SFV and got his adamant assurances that my website will not wave bye-bye when the new Vine becomes widely used. Both Vines will coexist for awhile. The old Vine will probably retire after awhile, but not anytime soon. This is a great big fluffy pillow o' comfort for me. Still, I want to move my website to a more stable hoster so my SFV webspace can be reserved for SFV purposes.

So I ask you, O readers of my diary: Will you name some good hosters for me? I'm shying away from the big names like Angelfire and GeoCities because those damn ads piss me off bigtime. SFV's webspace has no ads, but you're logged into instant messaging while you edit the site and that makes it easy to get sidetracked. I'm also big on free stuff, so I'd prefer some free webspace, still ad-free if possible. Tall order? Maybe. I'm confident that if I get ideas from a wide assortment of people, I'll have a bank of information large enough to make a good decision. I've already asked around a bit and located some possibilities on my own, but so far these are not particularly promising.

Gah, listen to me. I was going to write some poetry and maybe doodle lingually for a bit (meaning idly toss words into a text file until I feel inspired). I had my Robin Hood dream last night, something that has happened to me a few times over a wide span of time. Despite that fact that Robin makes no appearance, the setting has that Sherwood Forest feeling. I'm a peasant with a good deal of coins sewn into tiny pockets all over my dress. I keep getting captured by the authorities, who steal all of the money they can find. To stop them from hurting me, I hand over a small sum of the money of my own intent. They never get it all, and I escape with a fair portion each time. The last time they captured me, they barely got anything before I panicked and ran for the nearest door. It lead to a tiny balcony not far above the ground, close enough to leap from and land if I was careful. Except in my haste, I tripped on the balcony's edge and plummeted face down to the ground... and then of course I woke up, breathing laboured from the intense experience. Strange that everything was so vivid. I even know that I was wearing a bodice and sleeves of black-and-white pattern, uneven stripes.

There's got to be a story in there, a story unlike any other I have written in my short writing "career." The woman is was has to be the protaganist. I can't bring in another character to rescue this peasant woman...

Gah. I'm talking shop again. Apologies. I'll get on to my writing and perhaps give you my readers a plot summary if I ever get it done.

Such vibrant dreams lately... Normally I never have dreams that I remember when I wake up, but lately I've had epic dreams most every night. I wonder what caused the change. Security in my future for once?

Bweh, I'll type up a storm and get back to you later.

http://ankh.diaryland.com/authorsh.html

Yimminy and such words. I am in awe.

Part of my desperate struggle to keep up with Vine developments led to to idly enter the Elf family area. I'd had the good fortune to find Bamf, my personal favorite (and adoptive brother in roleplay) and we chatted until Squirt insisted he needed the computer. Little brothers. Oi. (Bamf's response to my exit? "Eat him!" Vintage elf, I'm telling you. *grin*)

Somewhere along the course of our conversation he mentioned that Lu was doing a great handling my villaness, a vampire running a dark elves' tavern in the Elf roleplay. After choking at the number of topics listed at Elf (and wondering how the center of attenion, the Green Heart Inn, got up to its 7th topic already!) I ducked into the dark tavern to see who was posting there. Recalling Bamf's comment, I chose one of Lu's posts at random and read.

By the time I finished reading that single post I had to pick my chin up from the floor.

Egads. And Lu had told me that she couldn't write a baddie for a character. You sure wouldn't know it from the way she handled my little fanged alter ego! I'm tempted to leave that character in Lu's more tham able and talented hands, but she has a bucketload of personae all her own and surely doesn't need one of mine clogging up the works. I'll have to reabsorb my old characters when I return to school this fall. People will of course scoff at my writing after they're used to Lu's finely crafted way with words, but they'll just have to suck it up. I rather miss writing my flirty little vixen.

And then there's my prime character. To this day I have no idea how something as complex as her ever came out of my addled head. I start her career by getting her stone cold drunk and she winds up being something of a martyr. Initally I had written this leatherclad Amazon (which term I use as defined by history professor, who used it in reference to my height of around six feet, as an example that a tall woman should politely be referred to as "statuesque" rather than an Amazon should the situation ever arise. Interestingly, the only Amazons I have encountered in group writing online have been... well... something short of six feet tall. *grin* Irony. Gotta love it. But anyway...)

Where was I? Geez, I use a term from mythology and I get all sidetracked. Narg on me. Well, I'd started making my characters as different angles of myself. One was good and one was bad. But then all these other characters entered the mix, and mine did things I'd never do. One has fairly obvious bisexual-to-lesbian leanings and has a psychotic temper that would spook Annie Wilkes of Stephen King's Misery. Just today I realized that my prime persona doesn't like the outdoors, a quality that has lain latent in her without my notice. She doesn't feel comfortable in wide open spaces since she grew up in cramped quarters. I never knew that about her before, and yet now it's so obvious, a trait special to her that I couldn't change if I tried. It is part of her, makes her who she is.

Well. As usual, get me started on writing online and I don't shut up for quite some time. Here, have a thought that has brewed in my head for some weeks now:

An inspired author has many souls in their body, aching to be released into the world. This is the task of the author: to introduce these other souls into the world and to each other. Only when these souls have all been released can the author stop, for the many people within him will demand their due until they are set free, each in their own unique way.

A thought from your friendly neighborhood diarist.

http://ankh.diaryland.com/cutekurt.html

I missed my valued X-Men cartoon show today. I'd been taping them all but today I just didn't care. Luckily it wasn't either of my two favorite episodes, or I would have had to kick myself many times over.

I adore Nightcrawler, a German-speaking monk who grew up in a circus acrobatic family. By some standards, he is deformed because he had pointed ears and a light coat of deep indigo fur all over his body, including a prehensile tail. Each hand has only two fingers plus the thumb, and his feet are similarly tripodal beneath knees that bend opposite the usual way. His legal name is Kurt Wagner, and I mention Kurt because he's in my favorite X-Men eps.

Despite all the animosity society bears him, Kurt is a chivalrous gentleman, a paladin beseiged by antimutant terrorism. The village below his monastary thought he was a demon and wanted to kill this beautiful soul after God's own heart. This happens in the episode titled "Nightcrawler." In the sequel, Kurt learns his biological mother (who abandoned him at birth, presumably for his unique appearance) is being held hostage by another set of mutant-haters. He goes to rescue her, only to have his heart broken. In a heartwrenching scene, Kurt's mother screams at him: "I didn't want you! You just got in the way. Don't you get it? I don't love you! How can you ever forgive me?" or some such.

Kurt's choked reply (again approximated, as I haven't seen this in months): "God will forgive you. I will pray to God to help me forgive you, and then I will pray to God, so you may forgive yourself." His mother vanishes and is presumed dead in an explosion, but viewers see her climb out of up a riverbank, no worse for the wear. In her eyes are tears, and we see her memory of the night she left her son for dead. She sobbed then as well.

Isn't that beautiful? That Kurt could be so compassionate to a woman who had wronged him so deeply is an example to me. I wish I were as kind as he. His faith is so integral to his being that there's no seperation of religion and self for him. He's a spiritual person by nature and an endearing sample of an ideal Christian. Can you tell I'm in love? *grin* He allegedly had a girlfriend, a girl he was raised with named Amanda Sefton. She's a sorceress, an odd match for a monk (and since when do monks have girlfriends anyway?! Er, don't answer that... *blushes*).

Once again I am putting everything off in sullen refusal to accomplish anything worthwhile. My head is stuffed with cotton. Where's my pillow?

http://ankh.diaryland.com/earlyfun.html

It's waaaay too early in the day to have such fun!

I had fun today. Dragged my carcass out of bed at ten after seven and drove to my old high school to have breakfast with Lu. The look on her face made the effort worthwhile -- she was aghast! Ah, she thought when she invited me to come back to the old HS that I would sleep in. Heck no! I wanted breakfast, by thunder, and I had a very tasty chocolate chip cookie and some Kiwiberry Ruckus Fruitopia. Every time someone I thought might recognize me, I ducked my head away. Quite the little show, actually. I acted like such a baby about "oh, they're gonna tow my car," et cetera. (Only high school students are supposed to park in the parking lot, and visitors are supposed to check in with the main office before going anywhere. Oops. Heh and Buwahaha!)

Considering I got maybe one hour of sleep, tops, I had a grand time. I should make a habit of it... *impish grin* Right now my brain demands the sleep it denied me till six in the fricking morning. Damn terrorist brains! Next they'll make brainwashing mandatory, and I can't bear to think of all that grey matter getting wet. Ewwwww.

*takes her strangely amusing antics to Dreamland at last*

http://ankh.diaryland.com/bweebwee.html

Cold. So very, very cold. The temperature hung around 66 Farenheit today. Now the night plunges lower on the thermometer. Result? Cold... so very, very cold...

Well. This must be my week for thoughtless actions. Luckily I can blame it on a weeklong headache. As long as it's over before I go back to college, I give myself over to whatever lets me comport myself without thinking beforehand.

Today's bonehead move: I entered one of my previous arenas of online roleplay for the first time in two months. I'd left just as everything got scrambled messily. Upon my return, I choked. Literally. One single board looked familiar, no more.

Have you ever gone back to the town you grew up in, only to find a gas station where the ice cream shop used to be, or a parking lot instead of the old playground, or even your old house bulldozed to make way for a heartless business? (Happens where I live all too often.) I felt like that had happened when I poked around online today.

So then I have the brilliant idea of bemoaning "my" loss to one of the co-leaders of the group. He asked me to give the new style a try. I can't. The back of my brain, which has ached for days now, buzzes with the reminder that this roleplay has single-handedly collected all the people I can't stand. There aren't many, but they're all active members. None of these pests are at my other roleplay, which has always been my center anyway.

Thus my day has gone.

Back at the group where I fit in, I offered to help with some stuff. Behold, I get to help! Hurrah! I'm all warm inside (and cold outside, grr). Plus I bunged around the Internet at large and found this nifty website coding. You can see the effect if you hover your cursor over a link (and using IE, much to my chagrin). Coolness, no? Hurrah!

My list of "thing to do online after I'm back at school" keeps growing. Thus far, we're looking at a website restyling and possible new hoster (if I can pick one), finalizing membership in an online group, arranging my homesite in a more organized fashion, and so on and so forth.

Now if my head will permit me to sleep when I go offline, I shall have a spiffy day tomorrow, trip to campus to the contrary.

Bweeeeeeeeee!