A Full Circle

I've been thinking for hours now about what it is I want. What do I want to do? I've never had any sort of idea. No dream, no ambition. I always had the feeling I could do good things, but not what those things were, and not that it was the most important thing of my life to do them. What is the most important thing of my life really? And what I'm studying is ok, but it's not like I really care about it.

Could I be an author? I think about it sometimes, but I have no idea how or where to start.

Thinking too much but getting nowhere. I wish I had ambition. Something to drive me to get across those obstacles that life and society presents, and that have this far detoured me from everything I've found mildly interesting. It's never been interesting enough to seem worth the effort.

People seem to be a key word. Things happen around people. Bars, cafés, workplaces, schools, theatres... people. I don't know where I'm going with this except that I don't really want that much to do with people, not like that. I don't know how or where to start with that either.

There's so much crap to sort through in the world, to find the little diamonds. And I've never had much patience that way. I'm very unforgiving like that. I try though. I do my best, but most of the time I run out of energy. It might not seem like much. It really isn't either. But I try, on and off.

I was thinking that you people shouldn't talk to me about what I write here. Post a comment by all means, but don't talk to me about it in real time. Because here, and not here, are two separate things. I stand by what I write here with all my heart... it's more like I don't stand by who I am out in the real world. I am the Writer here.

I think sometimes that if I just got a trash job to keep me floating, I could try this writing thing for real. But I get distracted, and I hate myself for it. I do everything but write these days. Except here, from time to time. And I don't trust myself to be able to keep a trash job. I have motivation problems. Self-control problems. Actually, I don't even trust myself to be able to get one. So there.

Anyway. Writing is what keeps me sane and alive. Would be nice to make some money off it, but, as with faith, it's good enough to just have it there to anchor me. A corner of the world where I'm safe. I wouldn't say no to making money off my faith either, really, but I really don't think there is any conceivable way to do that. Though the stress of having to make a living, do I really want to connect that to one of those safe corners? Scary.

It would be so ironic, so completely... dumb, if after all this running around, what I really want to do is what my mother told me the first time I asked her what I should do, and that I then turned down firmly. Being a journalist. Writing articles. I understand now that there are more types of journalists and writers of articles than tabloid people, but still. Although irony is only a human construct. So I guess in terms of nature and spirit it would be... a full circle.

Mine.

What if marriage (or any other action or ritual or idea that symbolises monogamy) is sort of like that mantra that people learn in the military? (Do they, for real? I'm assuming so for this discussion.)

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I don't know why they have it exactly, but I can imagine there are strong psychological reasons. Pretty much the same as monogamy, no? Imagine:

This is my husband/wife. There are many like him/her but this one is mine.

The thought struck me and stayed, and you know what, I kind of like it. It makes me happy. ^^

There are many like him, but this one is Mine.

Course Discussion: The Story of Stuff

This is a blog post concerning the content of this flash-video for my participation of a course in English at Karlstad University.

While I watched the video I wrote down notes to keep thoughts that flew through my head. The little note looks like this:

corporation vs government - sweden vs US
consumers
burning itself up?
how to change this?
idealistic - is it possible?

And this will be my index.

1. Corporation vs government.
The thought came up because a couple of friends talked about it. In the US, the perceived image is that the government is your friend, and the large corporations are your enemies. In Sweden, at least this is my opinion, it's the other way around. We're quick to blame the government for things, and if large corporations get critizised it's usually the government-involved ones like SJ or Posten or one bank or another. I'm not convinced either is my friend, really, more like I'm Andorra and they're France and Spain.
Does this have some connection to the fact that many large corporations try out new trends in Sweden first, because Swedes are somehow very "fashion sensitive"? Det lilla landet lagom wants to fit in everywhere, which means the propaganda about shoes and computers really hits the right spot.

2. Consumers.
The video says "our main role in society these days is to be consumers". Is our value judged not from what we produce but what we consume? Transferred to the Arts, this would mean, it doesn't matter if you paint well as long as you have good taste in paintings. And wouldn't you say that in some ways this is true? That a lot of people live according to this? "Good taste". Such bullshit, just like fashion.

3. Burning itself up.
The dude who said "let's consume our heads off because it's good for the economy" apparantly never noticed as a child in the sandbox that if you keep digging the sand away and dump it on your mom's favorite flowers, it will eventually run out, and so will the fun.

4. How to change this.
I wonder how much time and money and effort has been put down to get us where we are now? How much have the big corporations showered us in propaganda and "information"? Can we really turn it around without an opposite force of equal measure? Yes, I guess. With the right angle of application we can chance the course, and with a few smart wall-bounces we might turn it around. But the thought of it is overwhelming. Like the hobbits must have felt looking out over a sea of orcs. Or like the swedish hockey team watching russia play back in the day.

5. Idealistic.
Is it then possible to create a perfect cycle? I don't think nature does perfect cycles, it does cycles but not perfect ones. Things change, things end, things die and break and are lost. Our planet isn't a closed system, nothing is a closed system. But, at the risk of sounding cliché, I don't think that the fact that we'll never get it perfect is an excuse for not trying to make it better.

Final Reflections
It must be all the propaganda I've been force-fed, but this type of environmental/humanitarian/sensible reasoning always sound somewhat... wussy. Which is strange, considering I've grown up with the very particular dialogues of superhero comics. It takes all my strength to take it in and not brush it off as I did religion before, and tend to do feminism now.
I guess the inner cave animal screams in protest at the mere thought of having to give up 42" plasma TV so that starved orphans can have some extra rice a few times a week. And it's possibly the existance of that animal that makes all this so damned hard. If only it could realize that we should just start at recycling the boxes with microwave food in, and work from there, maybe it would see that it's not the end of the world.

The Value of a Good Story

I just finished inFamous and... wow.

Wow.

I did not see that coming.

I mean... yeah.

And... well, I suppose...

but...

Wow.

High on Reality and Darkness

I want to tell you something, a lot of things, you being used in its plural form in the meaning of "the people of the world". I just want to pour some things out of my head. I'm not drunk, although I've never before wanted to be as much as I do right now. I'm going to tell you why I'm not drunk in a bit.

This is going to be a long post.

It's the Uppsala International Short Film Festival, and I'm enjoying it as much as I can. Almost 6 hours of short films today makes for a lot of varying quality, and a lot of emotions. They're beginning to settle now because I've gotten home and am returning to my usual bubble, so I have to write quickly. This might turn out a bit without structure.

The last block of films I saw were under the theme of "gay/lesbian". They confirmed even more the growing suspicion of how heterosexual I am. Not that I believe anyone really is 100 % one or the other, but the percentile women who attract me is very, very small. Sadly. Sadly, because it limits my world. On the other hand women scares me, so that might be it. They really, really scare me. All defenses I have, every last bit of bubble and shield and sword, go up at the presence of a woman. Hanging out with guys is much easier. And this from someone who wants to break genders, make them not a factor to social life. Who am I to say "treat genders equally" when as soon as I see boobs I retract like a snail in a shell? No, actually, it's not the boobs. It's the face. The eyes, and the make-up. Women look so sneaky and seductive and mean.

I am coming to terms with that I am woman, and I am disabled. Generally I wanted to paint the former over with thick black paint, and hide the later under a pile of leaves. But the womanhood is still there under the paint, and the leaves blow away and scatter at the slightest gust of wind.

A disabled guy in one of the films compared being woman to being disabled. He wanted the disabled to gather as a people, like a race or ethnicity, and start war on the "healthy". He thought the reasons women are looked down on are the same as why disabled are looked down on. Because humanity fears weakness. He compared disability to Oden's sacrifice of one eye to get the power of the well, or Jesus' sacrifice on the cross; offering one thing to gain another. He cried at the mention of how children with one of those syndromes, I think it was Down's, are no longer born in Denmark because of screening of fetuses. They're selected away.

And I was thinking, if someone gave me the option to cut of my leg right now and replace it with cyborg parts, I would. And the thought have run through my mind more than once, that maybe I shouldn't have children on the off chance that whatever I have is inherited. Not that I have an overwhelming wish to get pregant or give birth anyway, it scares the shitfuck out of me. But still. And I was wondering, would that guy include me in his army of disabled people? Does mine count that far? How bad is it really? On the point scale of sucking, what is mine worth? Or am I stuck in between again.

There were a wide range of women at the showing of the gay/lesbian thing, everything from the femme fatale to the butchy butch. I looked at them and wondered if that was what people saw when they look at me? But I also felt how we overlapped and where we were different. And once again, how much I am a woman. I don't want to replace it, just stash it away in the corner marked "insignificant". Or I don't know what I want. Sometimes I think I know exactly what I want only there is no way to realize it, so I'm just dressing it up in "possible" words, when everything I feel is really "impossible".

I have a new pair of jeans and I love them endlessly. I was waiting for a movie to start yesterday, and a guy and a girl walked by me, and then the guy said to the girl sort of low-key "I thought that was a dude", that's how awesome my jeans are.

I usually have a thingy made from the same stuff that's in hockey sticks to help me walk better, but it's broken so I've been without it for a while, and it sucks giant hairy monkey balls, is what it does. I stumble a lot. On the way home I actually stumbled so much I fell on the asphalt. My thoughts were, chronologically, "oh shit", "cool, I'll scrape my jeans", and "I hope I don't land on my bag and break stuff". Then, on the ground, I was just overwhelmed with anger. A little at me and my sucky leg, but mostly because I felt embarrassed and mortified about falling and it was everyone else's fault that I felt that way. If I'd been alone I wouldn't have. So I was angry at the world, and in an uncharacteristical display of emotion I cursed, flailed about a bit, got up and kicked the curb a few times for good measure. I really wanted to turn into a karate-master, go into a dark alley and kick the shit out of whatever random person I found there.

After that I felt dark. A friend was going to a club and I'd said no because it was reggae and because I wasn't in any way dressed for partying, but I decided I wanted to be drunk and get a hug, so I walked there. I stopped outside, and looked at all the people, and listened to them being drunk and happy, and looked at the girls and then at my jeans, and I turned around and walked home. Even dolphins want to be sea lions at the sea lion beach.

Where are all those butch women normally? I've never seen them before. I've never seen a gay couple on town either. Where are they all hiding? And why can't we all mix? Because sea lions are sea lions and dolphins are dolphins and neither want to admit there are mutant sea animals in between.

Who wants a girl who dresses like me? Boys seem to want women who aggressively declare they are women by the way they are and talk and walk and dress. There might be some evolutionary reason for this. I don't have any clear reason why I dress like I do except I think it looks good. I think skirts look stupid, most of the time on most people. I wish boys would agree with me. Can I has brainwashing power? Most of all I think, everyone want to display who they are through how they dress, in some way, more or less. And if I walked outside in whatever is today's fashion, and felt like I looked like everyone else, I would feel so stupid. Probably how they would feel in my clothes.

It's in my head. I am well aware that the only reason I didn't go inside the club is because I decided against it; I don't blame that on other people like I blame them for feeling stupid about falling. I don't regret or feel like I missed out on something big either. I shot a look at the sea lion beach and decided I wasn't up for it.

If you hug me right now, it'd better not be because of anything I've written in here. Spikes are out for tonight.

I came home and saw myself in the glass in the door to the building, and I thought "you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of". I look awesome. That's not the issue.

I'll make a pact with you. I won't delete this post in the morning when I realize how self-obsessive it is, and you... you handle me with care, ok? Respectful care.

And you might not realize it from reading this, but I am ok. I am so good. I am high on reality and darkness and the energy that random drunken people on town surround themselves with, and the anonymity of being stumbled into or yelled at a friday night. I feel like my edges are sharper. I feel photoshopped. I feel alone and stronger because of it. So no worries :)

Expressive Simplicity

Hey, still have some problems with the blog :/ hope I can sort out just why it decides to go all slow and laggy and bog down my entire internet as soon as I view it, does it do that to you too?

Anyway, I've just been poking around in the absense of sensible sleep and was going to try posting some crap just to see if it's gotten better.


This i a logo for something I don't remember anymore. I saved it along with several other funny/good/otherwise interesting logos a few days back. Tell me you didn't first have a flash thought of "hey, what do you mean eight" before you saw through it?










I remember someone writing that they thought the AXE logo was ingenious because the A was the spray can, the X was the spray, and the E was the upper body of someone lifting his arms. But when I look at it these days, all I see is two penises and a big X between them... as if it's selling itself as "man repellant".









It's the logo equivalent of O.O and :O! It's also the baby of a film roll and the Scream ^^









Dunno what this was for either... but awesome, in it's simplicity.










What were they called, those things with a vase and two faces...











Okay, so it's just toblerone right? I never looked at the logo, because it's a mountain. I figured they made the candy that shape because they're from somewhere with a mountan and whatever. But. The place they're from is apparantly named something that means "city of bears". I've known what a toblerone was since I grew teeth, but I never saw that before.







Another logo at least I have seen a thousand times. I never look at logos much, so this was just some random pattern I didn't give a crap about. It isn't so random though, obviously. I might be the only one amazed by this one...








Finally, this is an ad. A serious ad, with a very professional-looking home page. At first I thought it was just a funny word pun and they were some sort of business people like accountants or whatever. But no. These guys are litteral, as far as I can tell.







I hope this displays right on all different screen resolutions. With blogger's unsettling way of handling pictures I can't say I'm convinced it will. Cheers!

Course Discussion: Snooping Bosses

This is a blog post concerning the content of this article for my participation of a course in English at Karlstad University.

My first impressions from this article are heavily weighted since I studied Information Security this summer. Since companies are responsible for what their employees say and do, if not in court then still in the eye of the public, especially in such branches as security or medicine, obviously they must keep an eye on what these people do. Monitoring e-mail or web use shouldn’t be a foreign and scary concept; it’s no more unnatural than that your big brother keeps an eye on you to keep you from stealing apples because he knows he’ll get the blame.

We live in a society with constantly increasing access to information. Radio, TV, Internet and cell phones. It would be very naïve to think that we can reach all this information without simultaneously letting it reach us. Connecting to the Internet doesn’t just mean that you can access it, but also that it can access you. Similarly, not only can the employer access the employee’s blog, but the other way around.

The issue here isn’t privacy, I think. Things like mailing sensitive information or uploading stupid drunk pictures clearly associating to the company logo are obviously harmful to the company and should be monitored and punished.

The issue instead might be, ironically, information. Someone not informed of what information is sensitive might very well mail it. Someone not thinking of that millions can access his photobucket album might not consider the harm in publishing the pictures there. But does that make it ok? The Information Security course taught me that the company has a legal responsibility to inform employees of things like these, but it is very vague to what degree. Handing out papers is enough in most cases, and then it’s on the employee if he hasn’t read it. How often do we dismiss bureaucratic papers, like license agreements, because “they’re so boring” or “they all say the same thing”? And how many of those papers could we reasonably be expected to read?

And the issue is even more difficult. Should an employee get to call in sick when he isn’t, once in a while? How often is once in a while? Would you respect a boss who lets it go every time? Or just once? Is it too harsh to never give a warning, but just fire the person? These aren’t exact sciences with exact answers; it’s judgment, morals, respect and responsibility. Should your co-worker tell your spouse that you're cheating? Does it matter if he discovers it by accidentally walking into a room, or accidentally opening your e-mail? The same old things, with new technology.

The one thing I do know is that it scares me to let people see and know my weaknesses, and that’s, to me, what privacy is very much about. The freedom of doing stupid things without anyone pointing and telling you how stupid it was. An instinct to keep secret the things that could harm us. And instincts, are they outdated remnants of an uninformed past, or the very core of being human?

I wonder though... I imagine privacy means different things if you ask an American, a Swede and a Japanese.

Skillz

Hey, we begin with boring information, feel free to skip ahead:

something's up with my blog, or my internet, or my computer, or a combination of all three, because sometimes when I open the page it decides to take 5 minutes of chewing before it agrees to recognize that I'm pressing a button. (With the funny effect that the first time it happened I clicked the "comments" link a few dozen times because I thought my mouse was out of batteries, so that after those 5 minutes I got thirty-something new firefox windows in a second and a half and firefox crashed along with various other parts of my poor old 'puter. ) Anyway, thus blogging has become somewhat more of a hassle than it was before, and hence the regularity of posts may vary.

Then moving on to what I actually wanted to say:

Culture day in town last saturday, missed most of it because, well, dunno. But I did see some short movies, old ones that they show as a taste for the movie festival (film festival?) in october. Really made me want to see the new ones then. I loved most of them, and liked the rest. Thus I'm linking three of them I found on YouTube, belgian all three I think. (Belgian is such an absurd and fascinating language to anyone knowing/studying any of english, french, danish or german... like a mutant child of all four.) Don't read the comments before you've watched the movies, because spoilers really spoil at least the second and third, imo.

FLATLIFE
The Bloody Olive
Gridlock

Hard to pick a favorite really :P I am in favor of the last one. What do you guys think?

Edit: I got really uncertain if it's Belgian or the Netherlands or... whatever. I'm not going to change the post anyway. I'll have to live with the humiliation ;)

Dissidia - First Impression

Well, this was a promised post, so here it is. I've played Dissidia for approximately 3-4 hours in one sitting (exactly as long as my psp battery lasts me :P) and I have to say I'm impressed. It's not just a fighting game, it has a load of smaller features, and it seems well worth playing again and again.

To begin with: Chaos vs Cosmos, a concept as old as storytelling is probably. Both sides gathered some warriors and the balance was... well, balanced. Then the chaos side did something odd and things went out of shape, and well, I dunno if I'll get a better explanation down the road but Cosmos went poof and now the ten heroes have to save the day. The story is kind of vague, but I realized it could really be seen as if all the final fantasy games were their own world's version of Chaos vs Cosmos and that they all ended exactly simultaneously at the point where Dissidia begins, in a sort of dimension-spanning timeline. Deep shit.

Centerpiece: This is a fanservice game, there is absolutely zero doubt about that. There's dozens and dozens of references to different ff games and characters and items and summons and... yada yada yada. The more ff games you've played, the more you'll like Dissidia, but that's not to say that someone not interested in ff would get nothing from it.

On to the fleshy part: The gameplay is actually very good. There's tons of equipment and bonuses and shit all around, but when it comes down to one-on-one on the battlefield it really feels as if it's you, the player, that makes the biggest differece; your skills and how well you know to use all that crap you've gathered. It also pays a lot to take a step back, think, and be a bit tactical about when to strike, and not just charge straight in. But! and here's the beauty of it, that also varies a bit between characters. Some make better for charging, some should rather stop and think. There is a real difference between how they play. Cloud has some fast, small attacks to keep enemies busy and then a few real close-range nukes to take them down quickly. Cecil is harder to handle and deals less damage but has more ranged attacks and a few tricks up his sleeve. Terra and Ultimecia are spellcasters. There's also several modes and lots of reasons to play stages over again to collect better stuff, but not in the sense of grinding. In story mode the heroes have a story each, and I've played two so far and liked the way they've built individual storylines too.

And of course the most important: Characters. But what do I need to say, it's Square. If it's one thing Square knows how to do, it's to make excellent jrpg characters. They've done an very nice job bringing characters from NES games into modern technology and graphics.

Final points: Music from the ff games, excellent, and the voiceovers are agreeable. Although... Cecil, from ff IV, who I liked in that game, has for some reason earned the voiceactor of ultimate emo that made the emo Prince of Persia... which ruined some. I also discovered that in contrast to the other, older characters (or from older games and more fantasy settings), Cloud's sometimes drawling american accent suddenly seemed very appropriate.

Complaints: mainly towards Cecil so far. Aside from emo-actor no1, there's also the strange fact that because he's an jrpg hero his Dark Knight armor has to be skin-tight and ugly instead of the massive impressice Dark Knight armor his evil brother sports. Strange. Because the hero line-up might have benefited from not being quite that effeminate... especially since they outfitted Bartz like a teenage gay escort. And why the hell did you steal fashion tips from Cloud's Advent Children outfit, Squall? As if broody lonewolf 1 and 2 needed to look like each other too... Anyway, gameplay-wise, not much.

I think that's it...

Yes, and also: I love that chocobo! <3

Fanfiction

I just realized the new look makes it kind of look like a fanfiction site...

"He climbed down the cellar stairs and peeked into the darkness. Behind some crates he found the sword, just where his mother's letter had said it would be. It was truly enormous. Impressive, despite the rust and the smell of mold and dust. No normal man would be able to lift it. And these days there was no Mako energy, and the Lifestream had settled back beneath the earth's surface. It all felt like a legend where he stood, the sword so large only half of the blade fit inside the beam of his flashlight.
But if it was a legend, then he was the son of that legend, and with the rising problems he had a legacy to live up to and bring the kind of rescue only legends could produce. Trembling slightly he set the flashlight aside on a crate and gripped the handle of the Buster Sword. This would never work."

Aaanyway. I respect FF7 too much to produce this kind of crap :) I remember I made an attempt long ago, choosing like this to write about their children, because it's damned hard to take someone else's character and try to keep to their personality. But I came to the same conclusion then as I will always adhere to: that FF7 is above all this >.<

So no. This is not a fanfiction site.

I actually take it a step further; I adopt the Lifestream as a model, a representation, of what I actually believe in and present it as my religion. (Yes, I've made FF7 my religion... in a sense.) Thus the Lifestream chronicles is the history of the world, and this blog my perception of it.

This post got a lot longer than I meant... but it was a lot of fun to write :)

Schoolstuff

I'm studying a distance course this term that will require me to blog thrice about subjects brought up, in english since it's an english course. After a tad of consideration I've decided to not start a new blog only for this purpose, but to post those here, which means I'll also channel my teacher and class this direction, for better and worse. I'll name and tag these posts as "EFT reflections" and other stuff, so it'll be clear which are for school and not. Of course anyone's still welcome to comment on them.

Public letter to Disney

Dear Disney.

I apologize for all the crap I've spewed on you for sucking in comparison to Squaresoft, being sexist pigs with no imagination, being hopeless at making games and being solely focused on making money rather than produce good stories, and a number of other failures.

In respect of the chokehold you now have on my childhood idols and standards of heroism, I will not make violent, vulgar, exaggerated threats, nor ironic, bitter and bitchy jokes. I lay down my sword and my spear at your feet and I kneel in horror at the damage you could do to my fragile inner child. I will beg. That you in aquiring Marvel, and all that it stands for, do not make it into the regular mainstream, mindless, kiddy crap you usually produce in the name of income. That you do not stand in the way of what could be great, violent, gory movies of characters that are indeed great, violent and gory. That you do not reduce such imminent figures as Thor or Wolverine or Deadpool to the shallow pastell-colored idiots that frequent your productions.

I beg of those at Marvel to not give in to such attempts at brainwashing, should this my humble request be denied.

Together with the giants of Marvel we are standing at the threshold to a dawning new age, and it is you, Disney, who will decide whether it will be an age of conquest and glory or a heart-tearing, pathetic disaster.

I await your answer with greatest humility.

// Not a fan of yours, but clearly of Marvel

Deeper

Without darkness there would be no light.

I paint my walls black, I pull down the blinds. Speak to the demons inside my head, but I see no light, I find no light. Maybe there is no light. I never wanted it anyway, I forget why I was looking for it in the first place. I let the darkness gulp me down and I slide down its throat, spreading my palms and my fingers against its silky flesh. I wish I could keep my eyes open and let it crawl in through my pupils and settle against the back of my eye sockets, but I can't. And when I let myself relax, when my eyelids fall, then I see it.

Darkness, light. Like seeing two sides of the same coin at the same time through some twisted trick of fate, it only flickers by an instant but that instant is enough for darkness to cough me back up and I break the surface gasping for air. My blood and bones shiver with fear, having stared into the abyss and let the light shoot up through them, into them. Let us never do that again, they conspire around me, let us let up the blinds and never speak of this again. I do, but I know the story. My blood and my bones both have only patience that lasts until their cells have been exchanged and a new bustling generation perk up at my simple nudge. The old are gone, but I remain. I have the most exciting thing, I tell them, that I want to show you. If you only paint the walls black and pull down the blinds. And off we go again, for me to catch another glimpse of night eternal and get another chance at letting it gauge my eyes out and replace them with its own. For blood and bones to once again be pierced by light and live another generation fearing that which lives beyond darkness. Both asking ourselves the last and vital question;

like that which we fear and seek, would we survive without each other?

Dissidia - does that mean anything btw?

The new PSP game Dissidia: Final Fantasy from Square-Enix is something as awkward as a Square-Enix fighting game starring characters from Final Fantasy, the key word in awkward being fighting game. Considering that Enix is a pure rpg company and the first thing that comes to mind in terms of fighting and Square is The Bouncer and Ehrgeiz, hardly any technical knockouts, I looked at this game as pure marketing fluff that might amuse FF fans but mostly just abuse the fame.

However, now it's been released in Japan and the US, and it's getting pretty decent reveiws. Especially as a fighting game with an actual story (can always rely on Square for that) no matter how haphazard one would expect a game combining twelve different sets of characters would be stitched together. It also appears Square has learned from more action oriented games such as Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core and the fighting is both easy to pick up and with some depth for those who like to learn timing and supercombos. I also get the impression the fighting is very intense, with a lot of things happening at once. I'm hoping for battles in the spirit of the Sephiroth battle in Kingdom Hearts II; fast, difficult, all over the place, but quite obviously within reach of victory with a little bit of effort and skill, and of course with the burning determination to beat the bastard dead.

The final word remains to be said; the game is released Sept 4 in Europe, and I will return then with the verdict. Do expect that I might be a bit more inclined to hail it to the skies then; having Cloud visibly present does tend to put me in a very agreeable mood.

Hooray

I've written more lately than you might think. Sadly there's no updates to Kirya yet, and The Island still needs that inspired rewrite that I'll give it someday, I promise. What I've been doing lately instead is to just write. Sit down with no pressure, no purpose, and no aspirations and just write what comes naturally. If the story makes no sense or it all seems unlikely, it doesn't matter. I've removed all outside pressures of "how should a good book be written" or "this sells" or "the reader must understand what's going on" and all that crap. Sure, that's important, when writing as a skill or a job. But just writing, this wonderous thing that I discovered as a child and that allows me access to a world beyond this, it doesn't need all that. Just writing, which is what I really love and not the make-sense-commercial-writing.

Since I've gotten stuck with several of my serious projects because of those things, because all the formalities robbed me of the passion, I decided I'd start over. So yes. Lately I've been writing random shit, sometimes what just comes to mind like a diary, sometimes stories from a random thought or a dream I had and just let them develop as they will, with barely any editing, often writing the whole thing in one sitting without rereading anything until I've finished. Most of all; they don't have a deliberate point or moral to them.

Vanity, that I've already uploaded, was halfway such a thing. Not quite as pure, and definitively not refined enough in my opinion. But I finished one today that could possibly survive as a text even outside the protective love of my computer. So I'm uploading it. It's also in swedish, for a change. 6 pages, called Vandraren (for now at least). Do let me know what you think. I say that all the time, but no one ever does XD I'll just keep trying.

Sancrified Ground

I visited the church here a few days ago... or more, it was a while, but I've been thinking to write about it a while, I just forgot, but almost every night I've thought, tomorrow I'll write it down.

It's not about the church per se. Churches are churches, no matter what religion or how big or where in the world. I have one solid idea, or opinion, or thought about churches, so they're all the same in that way. So I don't have a lot to say about the church.

But they have corpses in there. Remains. In sealed coffins on display for so many years. Hundreds of years. It was strange to me, because my faith says that the dead return to the Lifestream and move on, and it was odd, near absurd, to have the bodies of men and women dead hundreds of years ago still here. There was no good or bad to it. Just strangeness. Like watching a man turning himself inside out. Not obscene or facinating or gross. Strange.

And in one of those "rooms", I walked in and around the coffin, and this thought came pounding through in that way I really honestly only read about before. Otherwise I'm all too often aware of how I myself form the thoughts and then present them to myself, but this one was unprovoked. It just came, like someone else speaking. I was wearing my cap, and the thought said, "Take off your hat in the presence of a king!" Exactly those words. In english too.

I debated it for a second or two, because kings are really just men, and if the king cared, so what, and if he actually has some power because he was king, he's still dead, and if he still retains some kind of influence, he probably understands that it's just the modern ways to keep the cap on... and so on. A second or two. And then I took off my cap.

And now when I try to write something that makes sense about it, I keep coming back to; forget it. Thers is no need to explain. And also how representative of my personality the whole thing is.

I wouldn't recognize my mother if she walked past me on the street...

I had a mental breakdown a day or two ago because I watched one of those tv-shows where they find people for other people who have lost them. They helped a taiwanese guy adopted to sweden find his birthmother. Those shows are really tear-tweaking and I tend to avoid them. But it was decent, and they found her of course, and whatever. Then, when it ended, I realized that the guy had had a picture. Someone had given him a picture of his mother when they sent him off to Sweden. And my head started raving about why the fuck didn't I have a picture, who the hell sends a kid off to the other side of the world without one single line back to their home?

Why didn't they give me a picture?

But I think it's healthy. This is the first time I'm really, really angry at the whole thing; the country, my parents, the people working these things both there and in sweden, even in part my adoptive parents. I think being angry is good. Because I should be. It's the first time I'm thinking; I was damned well worth a picture. I'm damned well worth to be really, really angry.

A Home At The End Of The World

I slept badly tonight, think it had something to do with the overwhelming feeling I got just before going to bed... I was watching Korean gameshows again, getting absorbed like usual beyond the world, and when I turned the computer off the world came crashing down on me. These people and this culture and this country... it's not mine. It'll never be mine. I can go there and I can talk to them, and I could meet them. In the realm of inconceivable improbabilities that are still possible, I could actually marry that cute guy in that boyband and move over there and have children and raise them in their native surroundings. But the country would never really be mine, and, for some reason, the feeling I got was that the guy would never relly be mine either. That world is like a different dimension hidden within the bend of light; I can know it, learn it, but never actually be there. I could see it and interact with it but when I reach out and try to touch it my hand would just move right through. It wasn't the kind of heart-stopping fear or pain or sadness that it should be, when I think about it, just some kind of huge, gigantic realization that sank down on my shoulders like a rock sinking in deep water. When I went to bed I tried to think of other things, resorting to WoW tactics eventually, but when I fell asleep I slept badly and dreamt strange dreams.

I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling desperately low on oxygen and got up and opened the door. And I don't quite remember what I dreamt, but I had strong emotions left from it. I remember I thought as I got back into bed, that if I had one wish, and it counted as one wish, I would wish to become that cute guy's perfect match and live happily with him ever after.

Someone closed my door this morning. It was out of consideration, to let me sleep, but it woke me up and hazed from sleep I thought angrily that their damned kindness would suffocate me in my bed. Then I ignored it. And I had dreamt something strange again, something about saving children from something and almost succeeding but not quite, and I remembered what I'd thought about the wish and got angry with myself. I'm a grown, independant, modern woman with goals and aspirations, and right there being able to wish for infinite money or success for my writings or happiness and health for my friends and relatives... I wished, selfishly, sheepishly, for a guy I don't know and can't speak to and have only ever seen the fancy media-made-up side of.

I could blame the tiredness and the realization and all that. It could be that what I'm really wishing for is a home, or belonging somewhere, or a simple and predetermined fate. But I wonder.

Funeral Day

There was a funeral today for someone I somewhat knew. And it's odd, because there's a lot of people I know better than him, but there's also many among them that I wouldn't care this much about on the day of their funeral.

If attention and honors and all that on a funeral day really do earn you kudos in God's big book, then he should have lots. So I'm writing this because while you read it, you did think about him although you don't know who he is, and maybe that earned him at least a little extra kudos.

Peaceful Return to the Lifestream, old man.

Unorthodox and politically incorrect dating ad.

Information:
Race: Korean. Class: Undetermined. Guild: Flying Horse on Fire. Time Played: 21 years. Current Hearthstone in: Sweden. High scores in Int and Wits, low Str. Not involved in any organized events or religions. Teetotaller. Flaws: Lazy, sometimes Self-Righteous. Favored skills: Computer, Language (any), Empathy. Unfavored skills: Socialize, Athletics.

LF:
Local Arena Team 2v2, requiring long term committment. Team members will be expected to join the guild; casual guild with no more than 2-3 events/week, be nice or you will be kicked. No power leveling. No cheating (unless you're good enough to get away with it).
Equipment: no req, but set bonuses add to final score.
System requirements: minimum 12 Int, 12 Wits, 10 Cha. Skill points in Computers, Animal Ken, and Empathy much appreciated, as well as Language (Swedish)/Language (English) or equivalent. A few skill points in Socialize and Streetwise could be good to complement the team. Anyone focusing on a physical build are welcome but should know that this is not the general focus of the team, nor the guild.
Talents: Maxed Honor and Respect. Any points in Sexism results in immediate disqualification (no, calling it a joke will not make it ok).

Personal Message:
Hai. Seeking someone to be my evil lair and base of operations. Neither sanity nor sex are required to fill the spot, as long as your insanity does not resort to violece to animals. Will not provide weapons of mass destruction; bring your own. No churches or villas or anything of the horrid sort, only an oath to break each other out of jail if one of us would sink as low as to get caught. You'll have to get along with my minions; can't get rid of them even if I for some stupid reason would want to. (They will claim to not be my minions, btw, but you'll know them by how we all sometimes get together to coordinate our secret plans.) For my evil image and self-respect you cannot be more than 20cm taller than me or you'll need surgery.

Tips:
Blondes get a +1 on Charisma checks, afro-american people a -1.

Application information:
Running interviews and hiring.