Shards of Memory

Stolen from _chimoms  . Because I'm bored as heck and I don't have class until 6 pm tomorrow.

( I am an anime addict and proud of it! )

So, uh, I haven't written fic in (literally) years. But inspiration struck in the middle of the night (in the shower, no less) and I decided to sit down and actually write something. What came out reminded me that while I tend to avoid reading angst, I apparently have no qualms about inflicting it on others D:

Title: but you still have all of me
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Rating: PG
Summary: There's just too much that time cannot erase.
Disclaimer: Not mine, property of Marvel, etc. etc. Title, summary, inspiration, and a few lines of dialogue taken from the song My Immortal by Evanescence.
Warnings: Angst, mentions of canon character death, mentions of violence
Author’s note: I’ve only seen the movie once and I’ve never read the comics, so please feel free to point out any inaccuracies :) Also, I suck at chess. Also also, I changed some of the movie’s dialogue slightly for stylistic purposes.

( The night is pitch-black. )

 I have this sudden, insane urge to make a Twitter account just so I can follow @DarthVader *facepalm*

Someone, break my fingers or something. Oh wait, if I can't type, I can't read fic D:

Sitting in the office with nothing to do but read Yahoo! articles is clearly harmful to one's mental health.

ETA: A belated Happy Father's Day to Anakin Skywalker, Dark Lord of the Sith and loving father of twins, from his loyal employees at the (unfortunately vaporized) Death Star.

Okay, I literally just came home from watching X-Men: First Class. And I honestly do not know what people are bitching about, but then again I've never followed the comics. I know enough from browsing Wikipedia that the movie is waaaaay different from canon, but you know what? It was AWESOME anyway.

( Don't spoil this for me, Erik (i.e. SPOILER ALERT) )

tl;dr I am so, so glad that I finally understand what this graphic is about:

But most importantly, I CAN FINALLY READ FIC. HELLO NEW FANDOM :D

Still can't get over James McAvoy's pretty pretty eyes. Sooooooo blue *_*

Macbook Pro \o/

You win, Steve Jobs. Sorry, Bill Gates. When PCs can boot up in 10 seconds or less, we'll talk.

In short, why did I choose to move from one tropical country to an even more tropical country? That is the question. But I'm finally home after a 3.5-hour-long flight on a cramped airplane complete with crying babies and snoring adults, so that's something. Also, I'm sitting 2 feet away from an industrial-strength electric fan (which, although it does ward off the worst of the heat and humidity, does nothing for my low-grade headache). I can only thank whatever deity exists that I'll be leaving for the U.S. tomorrow. I shall soon be basking in lovely late spring temperatures of around 18-24 degrees Celsius, if the weather forecasts are correct, which they never are but I'll be happy with anything below 28 and above freezing.

I was trying to create a new administrator account on my work laptop and Windows decides to prove that it's as dumb as Apple fanboys say it is by giving this nugget of technological wisdom: "Cannot add user 'Admin' because 'Admin' does not exist."

I feel like this is some kind of catch-22, and it's too profound for me to grasp.

Fair warning: This entry contains spoilers for the first episode of Game of Thrones, the new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. That probably means spoilers for the books too, though I haven't read any of them.

As a self-proclaimed hardcore sci-fi and fantasy geek, I am probably a failure in the eyes of my fellow geeks for not having read A Song of Ice and Fire. In my defense, most of my years of geekdom have been consumed by Star Wars and it's only fairly recently that I've branched out to other series, with a few exceptions (Ender's Game, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time). I stumbled upon (via StumbleUpon, no less) a list of must-read sci-fi and fantasy novels and authors, and of course George R. R. Martin's books were there. I was fully intending on buying A Game of Thrones sometime in the near future. And then this TV series comes out, which seemed fortuitous; I could get a taste of the series before committing to buying the books. As you might have guessed, this didn't turn out as well as it could have.

My ignorance of what the books actually contain is probably to blame for my reaction to the first episode. The show starts out slow (which would normally not be an issue, but for a pilot episode it seems risky) but eventually escalates into a level of gore that blindsided me. Dismembered corpses, sudden decapitations, festering roadkill - and that's only in the first 10 minutes or so. The violence diminishes as the episode progresses, only to be replaced by nudity and sex. There are a whole lot of naked breasts and butts, but no penises (which could probably be construed as sexist but in this particular case, I'd rather not look a gift horse in the mouth). And this is a big spoiler, but it needs to be said: what the heck is with all the incest? Granted, there are only two instances, one of which is ambiguous, but that's two more than I expected to see outside of fanfics and porn. It's not called the "universal taboo" for nothing.

Far be it for me to judge people's sexual proclivities, but it's not like this show is porn. All of these things are mundane and probably even vanilla in the context of porn, but not on a network show. Or am I being naive? Does True Blood showcase the same (or an even greater) level of depravity? I wouldn't know. My point is that, questions of morality aside, are all those things essential to the story? I'm referring to not only the plot, but also character development, setting, mood, etc. Looking back, it seems like the people engaging in lurid sexual acts were the same people we're being led to think are evil or villainous, but that seems like such a cheap way of portraying antagonists. For the most part, all the sex and violence just distracted me from the plot. Unfortunately, they could not completely distract me from what was, in my humble opinion, sub-par acting, but I won't go there.

I'm not sure if I'm going to watch the second episode. Maybe it's unfair to judge the entire series based on the first hour of content. But that's exactly why pilot episodes have no room for error; more often than not, your viewers won't give you the benefit of the doubt nor a chance to redeem yourself. That said, I probably will give the next episode a chance. People who have actually read the books are raving about the first episode, so maybe now that I actually know what I'm getting into, I won't be so scandalized next time.

Livejournal seems to be imploding gradually as the days pass so it occurred to me to move my blatherings elsewhere, ignoring the fact that I have not blogged in at least a year. I would be more exact, but I can't exactly check LJ due to their aforementioned epic fail. To be perfectly frank, I am only here now because I am depressed and I don't want to actually tell anyone I know because they would either overreact or not react at all. You might think it odd that there'd be such a significant disparity in people's reactions, so I should be more specific. Specifically, my mother and close friends who live oceans and continents away will overreact and fear for my sanity (I'm not even exaggerating; my mother called me five times last Saturday in a sudden fit of paranoia that I'd gone and killed myself). In contrast, my not-so-close friends who live here (and, possibly, my father) will, at best, say well-meaning but ultimately trite things about how I have nothing to worry about and everything will work out in the end. At worst, they'll steer the conversation towards their own life crises, which they sincerely believe to be worse and more urgent than mine. I will not dispute the validity of their beliefs because I honestly do not believe that my problems are worse than anyone else's. That is a vanity I hope never to cultivate. And I am probably being extremely unfair to this subset of friends, but it must be made clear that I am not impugning their characters so much as I am being realistic about the how close our relationships are. By some stroke of misfortune, the companions I grew most attached to for the past few years are the ones who chose to leave for greener pastures and I am left with people who know me but never got to know who I am. With options such as these, my only recourse now is to simply put my thoughts down on (virtual? metaphorical?) paper and hope that it will provide some modicum of comfort.

I used to keep old-fashioned journals as a child and teenager (and how times have changed so drastically that paper and pen are now considered by many to be quaint and almost obsolete). I don't remember why I bothered to take one with me when I moved away from home, considering that I already had an LJ at the time. I'll sidetrack a bit and say that if I had to make up a reason, it would be because I love writing - not just in the sense of stringing words together into coherent units, but also the act of drawing letters with ink. And I will be completely honest by saying that I love writing with pen and paper because I love my penmanship. It's one of the few things I am genuinely proud of, as strange as that sounds. I tend to deflect praise and compliments given about anything, but I gleefully accept comments about how my handwriting could pass for computerized font. Going back to my point, I still keep one old journal around even though I haven't written anything in it in years. In fact, I have always kept it out of sight, though I don't think it was ever a conscious decision on my part. This might be because I can never stop myself from crying when I read it. It probably says something about my childhood and life so far that the entries in that journal are by and large distressing.

This brings me (finally, circuitously) to my point: I don't want this journal to end up like that. I realize this is not the most auspicious of beginnings but who knows? Perhaps this will act as a catharsis of sorts, like sterilizing a festering wound. I don't even know how often I'll be inclined to air my thoughts out in the open. But maybe it will be enough to know that this journal will be here, listening when no one else can or will.

This made me realize how few classic Disney films I've actually seen, and how partial I am to Pixar (though Kung Fu Panda remains my favorite by a wide margin). Apparently, I watch more cartoons now than when I was a kid :))

EDIT: Added the meme instructions (my memory is failing meeee)

Stolen from stellareclipses

( long incubation = boredom = meme time! )