31/03 Weekly Update: Lights, London and Fanfiction

Anyone wanna share this with me?


What’s happened this week:

- The main light went out in my bedroom. It’s not a normal bulb so I couldn’t do it myself. It took maintenance 4 days to come and do it and the only source of light I had was the reading light above my bed. It doesn’t give out nearly as much light. Usually, I like switching to it occasionally because I like the effect of less light; it makes it feel like the room is lit with candles or a fireplace. However, I don’t like it as an only light source. One thing I noticed was that it was a lot harder for me to focus on assignments or other work-type things I wanted to do in less light.
- I have new stuff! I ordered a new t-shirt with a picture of Cloud (FF7) on it, but it hasn’t come yet. I also ordered sea salt ice cream and paopu fruit (Kingdom Hearts) plushies. They came yesterday and are going to be great props for my Zexion cosplay hehe (example above).
- Had my last lessons for the year. Now I just have to focus on finishing the assignments. I actually have a really good feeling about it. I’ve also done the online thing to make my decisions for next year’s modules official. Hopefully I’ll be able to do all the ones I want.

Plans for next week:

I’m going to London for a week, between the 4th and 11th of April. It’s gonna be so good to be back home. There’s a meet up for my Kingdom Hearts roleplay group on the 7th which should be a lot of fun. One of my friends is coming over the day before (and I’ll be staying at hers the day before that) and we should have a lot of fun. She’s going to make me watch Bleach (I’m letting her make me but yeah). Honestly, I’ve seen the first series before and wasn’t that into it (all I even remember is two of the main characters’ names, what they looked like, and the basic storyline…) but we’ll see what happens.
The day I get back I’m also going to go to Tokyo Toys to get a new plushie and then I’m going to this game night thing they’ve started doing where I live.

Script Frenzy starts tomorrow and I have given up on my script idea and I’ve decided to just write a story instead, and I’m not the only one. I already have an idea for it, it’s gonna be a fanfiction (of at least 100 pages so I can still win hehe), and it’s gonna be a Kingdom Hearts/Naruto crossover (well, it’s gonna be an Organization 13/Akatsuki crossover, just because I love when people stick those groups together) and there’s also gonna be a few thousand zombies, just because a month or so ago that’s all I seemed to be dreaming about.
I also have some new writing related goals but I won’t mention them just yet, I want to know that I can actually stick with them first.
Apparently it’s also National Poem Writing Month (I umm… looked up a bunch of monthly writing challenges kinda like NaNoWriMo)… I’m trying to give myself as many projects as possible apparently. This one will be good for my poetry assignment at least…

So... that's the update for now... hopefully I will stop failing with my blog posts now, get one (At least) up every day, may try to have another one for later.
I did have a sort of schedule for what kind of post to do on what day but now I'm thinking I'll just do whatever comes to me... just hopefully be good.

So, bye for now!
Stacey xXx

My 9 Favourite Youtubers

I can't believe I didn't post anything yesterday, especially since I just remembred this morning I already had a post ready to go for it. So I'll just post two today.

Perhaps continuing a bit from Monday’s topic, today I’m going to list my favourite youtubers. I recommend them to anyone who hasn’t seen them yet. There’s probably a few more not on this list that I quite like but this is going to be out of the ones I’m subscribed to. I have a few of those but these are the ones I really, really like… this time in alphabetical order (because that’s how the list works on youtube and because I don’t actually want to try to get them into an actual favourite order).

1. collegehumor – I forgot to add these guys to my list of websites yesterday, but their website is great too and gets videos weeks before they upload them to the youtube channel. I sound like their ads now. Anyway they have some really funny stuff. They also have a few actual series’, my favourites being ‘Jake and Amir’ and ‘Hardly Working’, which update pretty regularly too so it makes me happy.

2. Epic Meal Time – I was introduced to this one in anime society. It’s not the best in my opinion but it is pretty cool. The food they make always makes me hungry, well almost always. A lot of people seem to get disgusted by it though… that to me makes it more funny.

3. FLuffeeTalks – This guy is just made of awesome. He basically takes weird or funny news stories (that I never would of heard of otherwise) and makes them even more funny.

4. gothlyfeshow – This is the channel for an animated webseries called Goth Lyfe, I found it a few years ago and it is really funny and awesome. The only sad thing is it takes a long time for new episodes to come out. I am going to do a favourite quotes post for this show at some point.

5. ImprovEverywhere – They have some really good videos. It’s basically what it says in the name, just really random stuff in public without the public’s knowledge, it’s really funny. Their musical ones are the best.

6. makemebad35 – Another awesome person with random funny videos. Some of the older videos are some of the most hilarious I’ve seen, not that the newer ones aren’t insanely funny too.

7. Marble Hornets – Another series, this one gets pretty creepy at times and I really love the storyline. And it’s based on slender man, which makes it even better, hehe.

8. MrCreepyPasta – This guy is awesome, he does really great readings of creepypastas. Uploads pretty often too and always makes me happy when I see a new video. He’s done some of my favourite creepypastas too, which are brilliant, hopefully he does more of my favourites in the future, I’ll be even more happy…

9. ShaneDawsonTV – Another awesome guy, and his other two channels are great too (I just didn’t wanna list them here because I didn’t see the point having three things for the same youtuber…). Again, really awesome and usually really funny vids too, and new videos every day.

Youtube, for me its main functions are music, comedy and fear. Occassionally with some other bits thrown in too.

Stacey xXx

My 15 Favourite Websites

Okay so this isn’t the original post I intended for today but it was supposed to be partly a picture post and the light in my room has been out for three days, maintenance taking their sweet time to get here (it’s not a normal light bulb so I couldn’t do it myself) so I decided to instead post something I had written for later this week so I don’t miss a day.

I thought an interesting, well sort of interesting, topic would be some of my favourite websites, or ones that I go on every or almost every day, not only getting to talk about what I like about them, but giving them some promotion, though most of them are really big already so they don’t need anything like that. So in no specific order, well the ones I know are really well known will be first.

1. Google. Yeah, it’s a pretty obvious one… best place to find stuff. Most of the time anyway. My homepage. I like Google, and I love the little images and stuff it does with its name, especially when they’re interactive.

2. Facebook. Another obvious one. I have it on most of the time even when I’m not actually using it just in case anything interesting comes up. Just a good way to be able to talk to friends and keep up with group stuff. Because my phone does not have enough minutes for that. And typing is better. I just like it a lot for all the usual reasons. I don’t like when it doesn’t send my messages, how often it seems to go bad, but whatever, free service.

3. Youtube. Of course, I don’t think I really need to go into details on that. Best place to listen to music and watch certain things. I have an account on it, nothing that good at the moment. I have new ideas for better videos but I don’t have a camera that works properly now. I hope to get one soon.

4. BBC iPlayer. I don’t have any channels on my TV (except my game one) and I avoid the one in the shared area, it’s in use most of the time anyway, so I watch things on this website pretty much every day. They tend to have some pretty good films most of the time and some great comedy shows and Doctor Who.
5. Watchseries. For the same reason as the above. I can find almost any series I want to watch on here and unlike most websites of its type there’s always a couple of links that work.

6. Yahoo Answers. I actually find it quite amusing answering questions on here. I mostly just look up questions for things that interest me at the time. Get pretty good answers for most of the questions I ask too.

7. DeviantArt. There’s just some really good stuff on there and I find it really fun looking up art for things I’m interested in and occasionally have found some pretty good webcomics on there too.

8. Blogger. I almost didn’t include this site, until I remembered why I’m writing this list to begin with. I like this site.

9. Amazon. A good, cheap online shop that’s always worked pretty well for me. And generally add here my other favourite shopping websites – HMV, CEX, etx… but amazon is my most visited.

10. Wikipedia. I know they say you can’t believe everything you read on there but it does have some good information. It’s good for looking up things like TV shows, games, and any random events I happen to hear about and want more information on. It’s almost always the first place I look when I want information on it just because it’s so easy.

11. Nanowrimo. I just love nanowrimo and I love hanging around the site because I always find interesting things on there. If you don’t know nanowrimo is basically writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days during September, but the site is open all year, even if it does become less active at times. They also have a summer version. Script Frenzy is also good, it’s the same thing but writing a script in April.

12. Creepypasta wiki. I love this site so much! I’m in the process of reading through every story on there. A few of the stories are really scary and it’s the only thing that really still scares me anymore. There are also some that I don’t really find scary but I like because they’re interesting and well written. Of course, there are also ones that aren’t that good or well written but that’s not a massive part of the site. They have images and stuff too, none of them have really scared me yet but they are interesting.

13. Gunnerkrigg Court. Webcomic, a really good one too. I always make sure I check it when it’s due to be updated.

14. Surlyqueen. Pretty much same as above, but this one has two webcomics, also both really good. I recommend all three webcomics to anyone interested in that kind of thing, just check them out.

15. Fanfiction.net. Yeah, I like fanfiction, and this seems to be one of the best websites for the ones I like. This is without talking about the more umm… sexual type websites for this kind of thing, because I try to keep the porn off of this blog. For now anyway.

So there it is, my 15 favourite websites. Hope you liked the list. And if you’ve read this far and feel like commenting, why not tell me your favourite websites? I’m always looking for more to do anyway.

Stacey xXx

Cosplay Plans for MCM Expo in May

So, MCM Expo is only a couple of months away and shockingly I haven’t even started getting to work on my costume yet. To be fair, I only have to buy simple things that should be quick and easy to get my hands on (and hopefully not too expensive). I’m not one of those super talented people who can make my own costumes (yet anyway… and possibly for always) and with this I don’t really need to so yeah.

So, for May I’m going to be going as Professor Hojo from Final Fantasy VII. Why, you ask?
1. It was one of my friends who suggested I do it. She said I’d be really good as him. I’m not sure if that was a complement or not, but I agree. I do have a mad scientist mode and I’ve RP’d as him before so I think I’ll get into character really well. Hehehe…
2. I love him. I know he’s an evil psycho who ruined the lives of all my other favourite FF7 characters… but I still think he’s pretty awesome. But then I usually think the evil psychos are awesome.

Now as for my costume plans… So far, I only have my wig, and that’s only because I got it from my friend for free. I don’t even have a hairband yet. Pretty sure he doesn’t use rubber bands for that purpose like I do… Also, the wig is very knotted. I did try brushing it; it would start to work only to get even more knotted than before. So I got my dad to agree to do it when I go back in April. When I was a little kid I wasn’t good at brushing my hair and it would get pretty bad, so he would have to deal with complicated knots like that, so I believe he can do it. My mum even said they’d get hair detangler for it, how nice!

Things I need/want to get:

Obviously, I need his entire outfit. Luckily, it’s nothing too complex, just basic shirt, trousers, tie (I hate ties!), shoes, and the most awesome part of all… lab coat!
I think that’s all he wears… I want to try to get these bits as accurate as I can. For that purpose and the fact no one will see this part, let’s assume he wears girl’s underwear. If you know who this guy is, I assume I’ve burnt your eyes out with that image. You’re welcome. I also don’t think I can get anything to hide my boobs before then so… that will be amusing if anyone points it out.

Okay, what lovely extras can I add? I’ve decided to have with me a bunch of ‘scientist stuff’, so I’m gonna get a couple of those pens that look like injections and act like they’re real, as well as a pack of test tubes that I’ll fill with either coloured water or some kind of coloured drink… I would have a gun or something too but… we’ll see about that one. Hmm… I’m sure I was going to have more than that but I can’t remember. Well, good enough for now.

Altogether I’m hoping I can get all this stuff for around £50 or less… I’m not sure how much money I’ll have for expo budget yet.

I said I’d do a bit about my plans for expo too but this post is gonna be getting long now and really I don’t have many plans yet. Just to hang around with a few friends, be completely crazy and maybe get some new stuff hehe… I’m sure there was more of a plan than that but again, I can’t remember.
So, I’ll wrap it up here… see ya tomorrow!

Stacey xXx

24/03 Weekly update: New Plans for this Blog

So last night I sat down and actually thought of (also) looked up on the internet and found) a whole bunch of fun blog topics for the future. My new plan, as it was in the past, is to finally be posting here regularly. The plan at the moment is to do at least one a day.
One of the things I’m going to do is an update each week on Saturday. Actually, it’s more like a journal post. It goes back to one of my old modules where they said we should be keeping journals. I’ve tried to do that a lot even before that module but it never really worked out. I think this blog helps me with that so I’ve decided to do a journal type post every Saturday basically summarising the week and any interesting things that happened, plans I have for the next week, etc. Of course, since I already did an update post yesterday, I don’t need to do as much in this one.

So…

Plans for the week:

- Go to the storage place and see if I can book storage for April now
- Do my last lessons for 1st year, celebrate that it’s over
- Try to finalise a plan for working on my assignments over the next month
- Try to start reading ‘No Sanctuary’ again (nothing wrong with the book, just haven’t been making time for it)
- Have fun… play lots of games, read lots of fun stuff, etc. (not going to use this as a plan again because this one is every week)

Hmm… what else can I do in a journal post? I’ll figure that one out properly for next week too. I guess, things I’m feeling, things I’ve learned, ideas I’ve had… but I’ll try to find a good way to put it. I guess I could put a list of blogs I plan to post during the next week, although there is a chance of them changing. What the hell, I’ll go ahead and do it:

Saturday: Cosplay plans for May Expo (with a little bit about plans for May Expo in general)
Sunday: My favourite quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (just so I have somewhere to say them all)
Monday: A tour of where I live, yay. (aka a look into my madness part 1)
Tuesday: Things I keep in my bag. (a look into my madness part 2)
Wednesday: List of my favourite websites
Thursday: List of my favourite youtubers
Friday: My thoughts on the Two and a Half Men Charlie Sheen vs. Ashton Kutcher debate

As you can see I’m going to be doing a few different things on here now, aside from my usual just talking about my life, including lists, quotes, things related to games and shows I like, etc. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun.

Okay, so that’s it for the moment, as it says, there’s going to be another post up later.
Bye for now

Stacey xXx

Plans So Far: 2nd Year at Uni (mostly module choice)

So on Thursday we had a meeting about modules for next year. We don’t have any core modules, and we have to choose five (and can only choose five) modules to do. So after half an hour of thought I decided and I’ve also decided to share my choice (and the reasons).

Firstly, we have to choose two categories to specialise in out of prose fiction, poetry and screenwriting. I am (and this will be obvious if you happened to read the post this is continued from) giving up poetry. There are two modules for each of these categories and four other modules to choose from. It is recommended that you do both modules for the two subjects you specialise in. I’m not going to do that. Originally I wasn’t going to do any screenwriting modules, even though I didn’t like the idea, because I was more interested in the other modules. But then, for a few reasons I’ve chosen not to talk about on here, I decided to do one screenwriting module and one prose module. I don’t actually know much about what is included in those yet.

The other modules I’m doing and why I love them:

Fantastic Worlds – Even when I signed up for this course I knew I would be doing this. They said it was for people who want to write science fiction, fantasy and horror. Those are my top three genres (though not necessarily in that order). I also love mixing all three. It involves creating your own world, which is just amazing as well as something I’ve been trying to do for years. I also heard that the teacher takes the class sword fighting. How can I not do it now?

Approaching Your Novel - Since my main goal in writing is to write novels, I thought it was only right that I should do this one. I imagine this, like Fantastic Worlds, will be very enjoyable.

Independent Study in Creative Writing – Basically, we get to do whatever we want, create our own project. I just think it’s a good idea, so many opportunities, and it’ll be good learning to manage my own project and stuff for the future. And it doesn’t have any classes, hehe.

The fun thing is, except the independent study one, the modules all take place between September and January, so unless the timetable changes I won’t have any classes after January next year.
I plan to do really well next year.

Other plans I have for next year include continuing to go to the anime society (and not having to miss a bunch of meets after Christmas) and maybe make some more friends. Other than that just having fun and doing whatever I want. And having more money to spend since I shouldn’t have as many things I need to pay back or spend for important things next year. I might even be able to spend more time in London. That’d be fun.

So yeah, that’s my plans so far for university year 2, hopefully I get all the modules I want.

So yeah, bye for now.
Stacey xXx

Finishing University for the Year: 1st Year Review

So… the time is here! I’m about to finish university for the year! Well, technically. Classes are about to end, but there’s still deadlines. But I only have a couple of classes left. So… enter quick review of this year’s classes.

Introduction to Writing: Pretty good, can’t remember half of it properly right now. There were some interesting writing tasks, and some that I really didn’t like. And I can write for most prompts. Hehe. I don’t like that I was seriously offended a couple of times… but whatever. People aside, writing, the story/prose version of it, still better than the other two.

Introduction to Poetry: I like poetry, well some poetry. I am not a poet. I can write ‘poetic’ scenes/stories/whatever. I cannot write poetry. I hate trying to write poetry unless it happens to just come to me… yeah, just not my thing, I think the hardest of the three, not sure what that says about me. Best part was the dalek poem one of the guys wrote.

Introduction to Screenwriting: Umm… I don’t know what to say about this one. It was pretty good, I liked getting to watch stuff in class, seeing other people’s scripts (which sometimes made me sad it wasn’t a real movie), and the structure of a screenplay is easy to do, unlike the various structures of poetry…

Observation and Discovery: Trip to Wales and running around in the forest, awesome. Mostly about how to get story ideas from whatever’s around you at the time and using senses, pretty easy stuff and actually pretty fun too.

Consuming Passions: Easily the best of all the classes. Mythology, fairy tales, the underworld, and other such subjects all parts of this class. All things I’ve studied previously in great detail and found very easy to do as well as very fun.

Exploring Contemporary Arts: It was pretty fun going to different exhibits and stuff. Still not sure I’ve got the whole review thing right yet… but hopefully it’ll be fine in time for the deadline.

General likes: Getting to write all the time. And I suppose it’s been good to have to do different types of writing instead of just stories, although that’s still almost all I ever write for myself.

General dislikes: Really hate how low the word limits on assignments were. For me 1000 words is just not enough to ‘fully realise’ a setting or character and 2000 is not enough for a whole story. I think the shortest I’ve written outside of university work is between 3000 and 5000. And I think I mentioned in a previous blog post what else I don’t like. I also don't like that I didn't make as many friends as I thought I would, well I actually kinda did just not in Liverpool. I guess being a loner is still my thing.

Huh, I only intended this to be a short part of this post and I was going to talk about my plans for the next university year. I think I’ll do that separately now.

See you soon,
Stacey xXx

PS: This was my 50th post! ...I feel like it should have been something more special.

23/03/12 Update: Injuries, New Games and Films

Again, it has been a few weeks. Again, I promise myself I’ll post more often. As I type this, BBC iPlayer has just failed on me. Back to youtube I go. I have not slept properly in weeks. I do not know why, and attempts to fix it have failed. So… any interesting things happen in the last three weeks?

I got my hands cut up pretty bad the other day. Okay, not that badly. Got a few cuts from some broken glass, there were about ten of them, only two on the left hand though. None were serious in fact half of them were fully healed the next night. The one on my right thumb took about five minutes to stop bleeding though. I wasn’t really bothered; I found it all really amusing. Even more amusing when I called my mum to tell her and she said ‘if it isn’t stopping, go to the hospital’. It was a tiny cut. What did I do next? I cooked some chicken goujons and ate them with my hands. Stupid? Perhaps, it stung quite a bit. I’m not entirely stupid though, at least I forgot salt. And last night I burnt my thumb, but it's fine.

I spent over £200 on new games. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it was totally worth it. I bought a PS3 and Wii for myself. Only have a few games on each at the moment, but I’m sure that number will increase soon enough. I immediately became addicted to Skyrim and Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3… I also got some new games for the PS2, though that was before this so it’s not included in the whole £200 thing, and I made a vow to my PS2 that I would not love it any less now. If it had thoughts, I’m sure it would think I was lying, considering how much time I’ve been spending on the newer console lately.

I finally watched The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the first time. It made me question why it was the first time. I seriously love that film, it’s so funny and has so many great quotes that I just have to memorise and use at random moments… Seriously, if you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it. I’m watching it again now.

I made a presentation for one of my favourite films, A Scanner Darkly, for my Exploring Contemporary Arts class at university. Watching it again, it inspired me to make animated pictures in the same sort of style – getting a real photo and then drawing and colouring over it. Here’s the first one I did, I call it Camouflage Cat. Sonny comes out on camera in some weird colours. Although I don’t know, maybe he is a bit green. I’m making a sequel, it looks weirder. I want to do more pictures like this, but maybe in a slightly different style. Of course, I often do the same thing with my own drawings, scanning them onto the computer to go over and colour them.





I’m also about to finish university for the year, but I’m going to make a separate post for that. So… these are basically the most interesting moments of the last few weeks (yes, I live a student’s life that to most would not be very interesting at all hehe).

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Stacey xXx

I can has procrastination medal now?

Yup, all day I've been procrastinating. Even right now, while I'm writing this. This is my new procrastination method.

Of course, I'm going to be quite busy tomorrow, getting up and ready and eating and getting money out and buying food for the trip, then going to class hoping it finishes on time, then getting back as soon as I can, grabbing my suitcase (and ticket hopefully) and getting as soon as possible to the coach stop. So there really won't be time to do this then.

What I have to do right now is pack the stuff I need to take tomorrow. Because my other bag is used for uni stuff also, I need to have the stuff I'll be replacing it with for the trip organised and waiting for me.

But wait, there's more! Accommodation just sprung room inspections on us. Seriously, the message didn't come until between 6:30 and 9pm (I was out so I don't know exactly when it appeared but that still seems late in the day). Okay, our block's being done Tuesday, most people have the weekend. I'm going to be gone until nearly 11pm Monday night. Which means I have to get this place cleaned now. The floor is mostly cleared because I had already started cleaning but now it's essential.

So yeah, here's my post about how I'm procrastinating simply so I can do so for a little longer. I should go now. Watching new stuff is so distracting so I'm gonna stick on Snakes on a Plane, my current obsession and 'watch this while I do stuff' film, then maybe Final Fantasy Advent Children if I'm really working for that long, and try to get it done now.

Stacey xXx