Kat’s Pause 

I sent off Wedding yesterday, and I finished On Trains this morning after a mostly sleepless night. I’ll probably change a few words here and there before I submit it, but this is the gist.

Edit: Final version submitted.

I got another story idea last Monday on the train back home from Ning’s. I’ve been developing it slowly, and their are bits that I really like, but as a whole it’s not coming along as well as I want. The dialogue is weak, the characters are shallow, and everything is scattered.

It’s too tempting to slip into WoW, where accomplishments are easy and guaranteed, but provide no satisfaction once the power’s off. (I made an undead warlock on Shadow Council just for fun. In hindsight, I should have rolled on a friend’s server, but I would’ve had to choose between them, so meh. Roswyn’s almost level 11 now, about to get a voidwalker, and I don’t feel like expending the effort to reroll.)

The contest closes Monday. I’m at Ning’s house for the weekend again (my parents have stopped caring by now) so at least there’s no WoW to distract me, except in the morning before he wakes up. I’m easing up on Katarin anyway while I wait for him to level up Teraldin so that he can play with me on Shadow Council.

I don’t think I’ll miss WoW when I go away to school. Grinding my paladin is extremely boring, and I don’t intend to go far with my warlock even though playing her is a lot of fun. WoW still just passes the time, which is fine — I don’t want to be pining for a computer game at university.

I have rediscovered Stuff Sucks. This was mostly through several mentionings by Natalie as well as by various webcomic artists. Upon opening the page, I remembered being there before and liking the comic, so I’m not sure why I didn’t bookmark it and start following it then, but oh well. Reading through archives is more fun than waiting for weekly updates anyway.

[Added to and revised]

I hold your eyes and you squeeze my hand
as we speak our serpentine vows,
Weaving a web to wind us together
to bind us always and forever.

Inseparable as water,
Tacky thread has us stuck fast;
Driven by mistrust, we cling to shadows of commitment,
ideas now laughably archaic: love; honour, forever.
Bitterly we admit the inadequacy of one;
we are weak, suspicious creatures who cannot survive alone.

Some put on rose-coloured glasses
and comfort their minds with sweet ideals,
living off candy promises that rot their minds to reality.

But we know what we are.
We need no foolish phrases of affection;
we subsist on ugly truths –
“Don’t leave me� written on fang tips,
fiercely dependent,
embracing poison to survive.

We scowl at what we cannot understand:
That although we hate ourselves, we need each other.

On this day
our love is something damply organic;
We breathe in its oily scent,
bask in its twisted unity,
revelling in a thing so purely and repulsively human.

I’ve never felt more alive than with your fingers on my throat,
Wrapped up in the illusion of danger,
You keep me awake and aware
as we pledge with strangling vows
to love no one else.

My city’s teen writing contest closes at the end of July. Fortunately, I’ve been keeping up with my poetry somewhat this year, and I’ve narrowed it down to two choices. Passion or technique? Soul or structure?

Still more or less languishing on the short story side.

I’m still vaguely mystified that people look at my DA page at all, much less 1000 times. I am not an artist, but I can’t seem to stop from trying anyway. So, 60 pageviews late, I finally took a picture with a real camera. I took a few, actually, but this is what they led up to.

I’ve been resisting joining the ranks of the amateur artists, but it appears that time has come. Let the celebration begin.

I am not a casual gamer.

When I find a game, I play it until I win, and then some. I play closed-ended games three times over, like reading a good book. I play open-ended games voraciously; I have stayed up playing until the sun rose on far more than one occasion. Granted, I am less of a vg fiend than I used to be, and I lack the funds to rabidly consume every new title that comes out, but I still consider myself a Gamer in the obsessive sense of the word.

So I do not want to play a game that points its finger at me and yells, “Look, she has a life, she’s not dedicated!” …even if it’s true. It feels so accusatory, the way honour decays and you lose rank without constant play. It’s something I take personal offense at.

Of course, this is all vicarious — Ning is the one amassing honour, not me, and he doesn’t share my suspicion that Blizzard has become yet another evil, soulless corporate entity that considers themselves exempt from moral responsibility. All I know for sure is, I miss my boyfriend… but I’m loathe to become that whiny, controlling girlfriend who demands every minute of his time, and I fear asking him to cut back would be a step in that direction. Because it only takes one step to cross a line.

Pretty much lifted from i-m’s topic, partly because when I was writing it I realized I had more to say about it than I thought, but mostly because I’m lazy.

My current opinion of WoW: it passes the time. I’m positive it would be more fun if I played with friends, but the only person I play with on Shadow Council is Ren, and that “life” she spends her time “living” detracts from her WoW-with-Kat time. Maybe someday Ning will remember why he wanted to play with me in the first place and take a few minutes away from his rabid honour-grinding to do so… but not likely.

The different environments are cool to find at first, but gosh if Astranaar doesn’t look exactly like Auberdine. Also, the guards in Hordelande scare me… I was only just barely able to run past them into Stonetalon after dying twice trying to get to Ashenvale from the Barrens.

The biggest thing is, I just don’t enjoy killing things. I never have; fighting bores me. Once I learn how to not suck at it, I get impatient if it takes longer than a few seconds to be done with combat. It’s the same with any game: in Prince of Persia, fighting was interesting while it was a struggle to survive, but after that I looked for every oppotunity to avoid it. I like some other aspects of WoW, but because that one is by far predominant, I don’t have the most enthusiastic opinion of the game in general. That and its horribly evilly brilliant way of decaying honour which takes my dear boy away from me.

I remember the good old days when he didn’t like WoW… and before that, the days we played Guild Wars together. Even though his crazy l33t vg skillz make me feel comparitively incompetent, I like playing with him, if only for a way to spend time together when we’re far apart.

Stolen from Ren. Html clumsily modified by me.

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

Basement flooded from a rainstorm. I cleaned it up just in time for it to flood again.

Later, I spent far too long searching for hippogryphon masters in elf territory. It was dark and foreign-looking and some miscommunication between Ning and me meant I couldn’t find anything I was looking for — gryphon, mailbox, nothing. Guards who don’t give directions are utterly useless. Eventually I wandered in big enough circles to find things, and got to Darnassus to up my alchemy skills. If anybody needs moderately newbish potions (I just learned free action), let me know, they’re taking up space in my bags.

I find xp grinding extremely boring, so I spend too much time on my professions. I haven’t cooked anything in ages because I’m not high enough level for useful recipes. All I do now is fish for deviates and sell them on the auction house.

In conclusion, many parts of WoW annoy and bore me, but it passes the time.

Some webcomics I’ve begun reading:

Girly: I enjoyed it more than I expected to. The story revolves around two girls who fall in love and have adventures. It ranges from bizarre to touching, and frequently both at once.
Housd: I find it astonishing that someone my age could amass well over 1000 entertaining strips, updating daily all while dealing with school and friends and life in general. Housd is a happily random comic in which even the plot holes don’t disappoint.

Panda Express: Adorable. So charming, but not for children. The art is gorgeous. Check it out.

My blog is not the only thing that’s been neglected of late — you can add laundry, my job hunt, and my sad little houseplant to the list. It’s mostly plain old procrastination, but with regards to job searching at least, there’s some justified hesitation. Since I spent Canada Day weekend with Ning and his family at their new Oakville place, he’s been asking me to move in with them. According to him, his parents are fine with it… mine are a different story.

I didn’t exactly have permission to stay the weekend there. In fact, I left with suitcases in hand while my mother yelled threats from the front porch. As a consequence, she’s no longer paying half of my university tuition. Thanks to OSAP, I won’t really notice until I graduate, but the action and result both signify independence, which even if rashly obtained is something I increasingly crave.

I had a lovely time at Ning’s, of course — it was wonderful spending nearly all my time with him for those three days. His parents extended an open invitation for future visits. I’d love to go again this weekend, but my cousin’s wedding will take up all of Saturday.

Anyhow, about that job search. I put it on temporary hold for a few days while I seriously considered moving in with Ning. I love his family, the house, the city, and it’s an extremely tempting offer, but they’re still getting unpacked and have yet to finish renovating the place, plus I have to think about serious things like what impact this will have on my OSAP loan, especially if I took my mother’s desperately Christian suggestion and married him first. (Very, very, very unlikely to happen anytime soon.) So I’m back to looking for work in Hamilton, as well as in Oakville — just in case. Hamilton has shown no interest in employing me, so a good job offer there could be one more reason to move.