Are You Kidding Me?

Yes, I know this is a fictitious work. I made it. -___-

Does the above argument sound ridiculous to you? It does to me. Yet someone was trying to make this kind of argument earlier. No, not about Skittles. About pants. That's right, pants.

There's a new type of jeans out there that show rainbow threads when they start to wear down. They've been labeled as "gay jeans", and so folks are kicking up a fuss. Saying that the brand shouldn't sell to such a small market as they won't keep in business. As if that wasn't bad enough, then people started going on about what a rainbow means in the bible and that it is something sacred, and that it needs to be "taken back".

This isn't okay people. They're jeans. It's rainbow. You are not the only people who need to wear clothes. Nor are you the only people who have the right to appreciate colorful things. There is no "taking back" of anything in this. People are allowed to like rainbows. They're allowed to incorporate them into their everyday life. Regardless of whether or not their straight, gay, bi, trans, pan, not interested, or somewhere in between. 

You aren't being harmed by this. You won't go to hell because of a pair of pants (though you should be careful if they're a mixed blend of materials). Just because a group associates with rainbow colors doesn't mean you cannot enjoy said colors. You have the right to enjoy them. BUT SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE.

I'm tired of the hatred. It's getting downright dumb. It's been dumb for quite some time. So the next time you see something that's aimed towards some other group other than straight people (which doesn't actually exclude you, it just means you weren't the main objective) try and look at it objectively. Is it really something you should get offended by? Truly? Or are they just Skittles?

Think about it.

Hogwarts House Pride

So my sister over at Tea Leaves and Tiny Hats made a blog post on house pride, and suggested I do the same. Well... not one to turn down such an interesting topic I decided to oblige. Thus this post. *cough*

Ahem, so without any further ado... let's get on with it!

I became aware of Harry Potter a little later than my sister did. It wasn't until the second movie came out that I really started paying attention to it. You see, I wasn't much of a reader as a child. However, after enough nagging from my sister to read them I finally relented, and quite frankly am glad I did. I would have missed out on so much.

I've taken plenty of tests on the house subject, most being obvious as to what house you'd get, and so for a while I kept getting Gryffindor. I mean who wouldn't want to be a Gryffindor? It seemed that all the really relevant, good characters came from that house. It was only later, when I took a "which house hybrid are you" that I actually began to see the appeal of other houses. In case you're wondering I got "Gryffinclaw", a hybrid of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.

See, I thought Ravenclaw was only for those who were really smart. That's not necessarily true though. It's actually just that those in Ravenclaw value intelligence. They also care for creativity and wit, thus drawing a lot of quirky characters. When I thought about it that way, Ravenclaw really was a good fit for me. So when I took the official Pottermore test I was pleased to find out that's where I was sorted.

I'm the only Ravenclaw in my family. My mother is Hufflepuff (though interestingly enough has several Slytherin tendencies as she almost was sorted there). My older sister and her husband are Slytherins, and my younger sister (the one I mentioned before) is a Gryffindor.

Anyway, part of the whole "show your house pride" thing is to design an outfit that would display said pride. Now I could have cheated, and just used a pre-made outfit already designed for this, but I wanted to be true to the spirit of the challenge. Besides, a lot of the outfits, while nice, didn't have my kind of flair. The thing is, I'm a bit more like Luna Lovegood when it comes to style. I like things quirky. So here's my go at a Ravenclaw outfit.

I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!

...

...

...

Just kidding! While bronze armor would be bad ass, it really isn't practical outside of a battlefield. Thing is it was rather difficult for me to find anything bronze as far as clothing was concerned. At least anything that wasn't leather, pleather, or covered in sequence *shudders*. I wasn't about to cop-out and just have bronze accessories. So I spent a while searching, and eventually came up with something that I would totally wear if I had the items.

Yes, I know I didn't use the one special site that usually makes these types of things. They didn't have a lot of bronze things so shut up.

Isn't it lovely!? I think so. It's obviously a fancier option, featuring the bronze dress of fabulousness, the blue cloak of warmth, the bronze hat of epic win, and the lace embellished long glovey-thingamabobs. For makeup I decided to go with bronze eye shadow (for that slightly mysterious look), and blue lipstick (because I can). Jewelry is a simple eagle necklace, and for footwear I decided to give myself two blue options depending on whether I wanted a long boot or a short boot.

All in all I think this is a great representation of Ravenclaw, and my style. I would proudly wear this outfit at a House Pride day. Now if only I could talk someone into buying me all of the items...

Adventuring

Today my mother, younger sister, and I made plans to go to a store called Earth Lore. It's a really neat shop that has metaphysical stuff along with a lot of other nifty stuff. There is a cat there that roams the shop. Usually he's a tad antisocial, but today he came right up to me and demanded pets! It was adorable.

While there I picked up some herbs (some powdered, which make for excellent paint pigments), and had my eye on a set of wind chimes for our new place. Sadly the chimes there were a tad outside my price range. However, while in the store I came across something unexpected. It was a basket full of hand woven brightly colored bracelets! After staring at the wonderful array of prettiness I had a sudden vision of myself having several of them. Not as bracelets though, but as hair accessories. I asked my sister what she thought of the idea, and she liked it- even got one for herself to use. I, myself, ended up getting nine of them.

After there we went to eat. We got subs, and then after that went into two nearby candy stores, and a tea shop. The first candy store had a fifty-four inch gummy worm (they called it a boa instead though because of how large it was)! We did not purchase said gummy boa, but instead got giant pixie stix, and a few other items.

The tea shop was a lot more fun. They had all kinds of tea, and tea related items. One thing in particular that I found neat was they had princess teas. There was one for Sleeping Beauty, one for Snow White, and one for Cinderella. You could smell them and oddly enough the scents reminded me of said movies. It was really interesting. In the end I bought a gift for someone there.

After we left that area we ended up going to Lowes to look at riding lawn mowers. We didn't get one, but got a guide so we can do more research. We also got some plants: one for my room, one for my sisters room, and one that was on sale that my mom wants to rehabilitate. We also found a wind chime that is lovely and was the right price.

We'd only planned on going to one store today, but I'm glad we decided to go adventuring a little bit. We spent most of the day out, and it was a lot of fun. I hope we can go on more adventures in the near future.

The Many Sins of Fanfiction: Part 1

Have you ever liked a book, movie, or show so much that you were sad to see it end? Have you ever wanted to see more of those characters, perhaps in new and exciting situations? If so then fanfiction might be a good outlet for you.

Fanfiction is fiction written by fans of a movie, show, or book using existing characters and/or situations to develop new plot. These works can range from the mundane to the extraordinary, and anyone at any writing level can create them. Unfortunately, that means there comes a point where you will encounter bad fanfiction. 

I myself have had run-ins with it on many different occasions. So I decided it would be fun to make a "Many Sins" post about it. I labeled it as just the first part as I'm sure I will come back to this subject again in the future. And so, without further ado, here is the first batch...

Sin Numero Uno: Bad Writing

I personally feel you should have a basic grasp of whatever language you are writing in before you actually attempt to write. It is extremely irritating to click on something that has a decent premise only to find the story to be littered with errors. I'm not talking using the wrong tense occasionally, or the wrong two (to? too?). I meen righting lyke this, ohkay? It isn't hard to click the little spell check button. So PLEASE USE IT! Otherwise I'll get twitchy, and immediately stop reading.

Sin Number Two: Bad Dialogue

Similar to the first, but not the same. This one is easy enough to avoid. Just read your dialogue out loud. If it doesn't sound like someone would actually talk that way in real life then chances are you need to reword some things. Also use moderation. There's nothing worse than like hearing someone like speak like this like they're a freaking like ditsy like person! Like. *shudders*

Sin Number Three: Bad Plotting

So you've killed a character off. Good for you! That jerk deserved to die! But... you really liked writing his character. You miss being able to put him into situations where he gets to sass at everyone in a thirty mile radius. He was fun. So you decide to bring him back. Yay! Except bringing him back doesn't make sense in the story. But, like I said, you miss him. So you do it anyway. Sure you have to make up a convoluted reason as to why he was able to come back from the dead, but your fans won't mind. He's a fabulous character! Who cares if it seems forced! To hell with sense! 

Except... it does matter and people do care. It doesn't matter how awesome a character is, or how awesome a story is. If things start to teeter on the edge of what the frickity frack was that ridiculousness then you are in serious danger of losing your followers. The thing with any plot idea is that there has to be at least some semblance of believe-ability. Otherwise there is a disconnect, and the last thing you want is your followers to disconnect from you and your work.

...

Those first three deal with bigger structural issues of fanfiction. These next ones however are sins that I consider to happen out of pure laziness.

The Sin That Comes After Number Three, Also Known As Number Four: Extreme OOCness

 OOC means out of character. The reason why I say extreme OOCness instead of just plain OOCness is because as a fan writer you will always, ALWAYS make the characters from your fandom a little out of character. After all you were not the one to originally create said characters so it's not something you can help. The characters are also going into situations that you can only guess as to how they might react.

The key here is that you have to try. Mind you the rules are a bit more bendy in an AU (alternate universe), but you have to at least get a basic grasp of what the character is like, and then try to figure out how that character would react in certain situations. If you are making a fanfiction where the main guy character is the strong and silent type then it is not okay for you to suddenly break character for him and make him into a gigantic crybaby just because he stubbed his toe. Just like with bad plotting, if your rendition of a character is not in some way believe-able then your followers won't buy it, and they certainly won't continue on with your story.

The Fifth Sin: Gender-swapping

There is a right, and a wrong way to gender-swap. It all depends on your reasons for doing the swap in the first place. Unfortunately the main reason people use this idea is because they are uncomfortable writing the character(s) with their normal gender identities. You usually see this with people who want to write romance between two characters who are of the same gender normally, but are uncomfortable with the idea of writing two guys or gals getting together. So they switch one so that there is only one guy and one girl.

I could rant for a long time about why this one bothers me, but I'll spare you the dramatics. Hopefully it's obvious why this one gets people into loads of trouble, and if not... well whatever. On to the next one.

Sin Number Six (The Last Sin... For Now): Nicknames

I can't stand this one. It just. Uhg! So annoying. Now I'm not talking about using nicknames that sound good and would make sense for a character, nor am I talking about using a nickname as a tool to be irritating to said character. I'm talking about a continual use of a nickname instead of a character's given name that makes very little if no sense what so ever. Want some examples? Well let's see... in the Avenger's fandom I have personally seen Tone for Tony Stark, and Lokes for Loki. As you can see both character have four letter names so what is even the point of nicknaming them? I've also seen in the Merlin fandom, people using Arty for Arthur, which no. And the worst I've seen so far (again from the Merlin fandom) is Merls for Merlin.

Again, it's obvious as to why this one is a sin, and if you don't see as to why it is then I'm afraid there is no hope for you.

And so ends The Many Sins of Fanfiction: Part 1

I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Be on the lookout for another part in the future.

Oversights Lead to Ouch! That Hurts!

Today I relearned a lesson I should have already known in full. It is a lesson that involves cats, though this time it was the cat above specifically. The lesson? Don't give a cat the opportunity to use your neck as a spring board.

I learned this when I was younger. One of our cats had wanted out of my arms and up onto something, and as a result I got my neck gouged pretty good. I still have a scar from it. Well today the same thing happened. I was holding October with the intent of putting him on a bookshelf. However, I forgot that the plant on said bookshelf was cat grass, and in his rush to get at it I was used as a spring board. It would have been fine if it'd been my chest; I was wearing a robe. Unfortunately though his back legs landed on my throat, and double unfortunately we haven't clipped his back claws recently.

He got me in a few places on my neck, and at first it didn't look bad at all. But then a minute went by and the suckers started bleeding, quite a lot actually. I knew it wasn't anything too bad though, it just looked bad. I bleed rather easily you see. So I cleaned it up, got a gauze pad, taped that on, and then to keep pressure on it wrapped a scarf around the area. Then I went right back to organizing the books (which was what I'd been doing previously to this incident).

It's a pain in the butt, and I have to be careful with it otherwise the tape will come off. It also aches somewhat. Hopefully it'll heal quickly, though I am curious as to whether or not it'll scar. That might look cool. Anyway, to those of you who own pets, BEWARE! DON'T DO WHAT I DID! PROTECT YOUR NECK!

You have been warned.

Analyse This: New Bed

Wow. Okay. Did you know that analyse can also be spelled analyze? 

I look at both and they both seem wrong! Gah! 

Anyway, onto the subject of this post: I am getting a new bed.

I bet you're wondering what the big deal is. I mean it's just a bed, right?

WRONG!

You silly sausages, do you honestly think if it was that simple I'd be talking about it?

Well... maybe I would. But that's not the point! Perhaps I should get to the point you say?

Great idea!

This is no ordinary bed. It's not simply a mattress replacement deal here. 

I am getting a brand new bed. A bigger bed. 

I'm talking with a head board and foot board here!

*flails around like a crazy person*

Still confused? Wondering why I'm nervous about it... 

maybe even freaking out a little, tiny bit?

Truth is... I don't really know. I mean I am excited for it. I am. 

I get bouts of giddiness. But then I hesitate. I feel... apprehensive. 

The question is why though? Why does something as

small as a bed freak me out, even just a little?

I have a couple of possibilities for you.

1. It's, le gasp! Change.

2. I don't get to have nice things.

Now I think my problem is a combination of both of these things. 

There might be more to it,  I'm not sure but let's just roll with these at the moment. 

We shall start with the first one. The dreaded change.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of change in my life and consider myself decent at

rolling with the punches. However, I think it's precisely because I've had a crap ton

of change in my life that the small changes are what trip me up.

Also, if I think about it, the size of my bed has been a constant in my life. 

I've always, always had a twin bed, and I'm getting into the thick of my twenties. 

That's a long time to have a certain type of bed. Also I've only really had two frames in my life. The first I had for forever; it was the top bunk of a set of bunk beds. 

The only reason we got rid of it was because it died and could no longer be put back together.  The second is currently sitting in our garage, still wrapped up in plastic from the move. It wouldn't fit up the stairs, and if we were to take it apart it wouldn't be able to be put back together. Thus, the need for a new bed.

But it bothers me that I can't use my still perfectly good bed. It's not dead yet, so why should I get a new one? This brings me to the second issue.

I don't get to have nice things. This could also be interpreted as new things. I get stuck in this way of thinking that if something works then I should keep it. I shouldn't trade up for something better, I should just wait until it falls apart. This applies to big things and small alike.

I think it's a self-esteem thing? Maybe? Or maybe it could be the fact that these things,

though not as good as they once were, are mine and so I don't want to give them up? Oh!

I think that one is true. Let's add it to the list.

3. I'm somewhat possessive of objects already established as mine.

I think I feel sorry for the objects I'm letting go. 

Like I'm saying they're no longer good enough or something, and so I feel bad. 

Wow. Giving yourself a guilt trip over an object. *shakes head*

Anyway, back to number two. No, not that number two. Anyway (again), I don't

get this way when other people need things. Only when I do, which further suggests

the self-esteem thing. I worry that if I get something new/better, that that means someone

else won't be able to get something when they need it. So then I feel bad.

Yay guilt trips! *rolls eyes*

The good news? I know that my feelings are a tad irrational. I can reason out

why certain things are necessary, and that me having things is, in fact, a good thing. 

I'm a lot better at this then I once was. The other two numbers are something that

I can handle with perhaps a bit of a pep talk, and if that doesn't work then a swift

kick in the rear should do the trick.

Because in the end this is just a bed. I will probably have many other beds in the

future. And that's okay. It's no big deal. It's normal. It's so normal it's mundane and boring. Therefore there's no need to get stressed out over little rediculousnesses (totally not a word) that won't matter in the long run anyway.

And with that said, I need to go organize the library.

Does anyone have any other theories about this subject? 

Comments? Rude gestures? Sparkly pinatas?

Let me know in a response.

It's Okay... Just Be Yourself

Picture this: Your doing something. This thing is something you enjoy. However, every now and again you pause. You get self conscious. You get embarrassed. You feel the need to justify liking whatever it is. Not anyone else, but to yourself. You remind yourself that it's okay to like things. That because you like them you aren't somehow some strange, abnormal thing that should be shunned away. It's fine. You're fine.

Maybe you haven't experienced this. Maybe you have. All I know is that this is something that I deal with a fair amount. Not all the time, but enough to be annoying. Enough to keep me on edge. I don't like those moments. I don't like checking myself, doubting myself like that. I know in part where it comes from.

My past, for one thing. As a child I felt that there were expectations I had to meet, and that no matter what I did I could never meet said expectations. Some of them were from my family (a few real, but most imagined) while others came from peers, teachers, or religious folks. It was really rough for me, and took me a long time to realize that what some people said didn't matter in the long run. It took me even longer to realize that in some instances I'd been brainwashed, or indoctrinated if you prefer.

I'm still a work in progress. I know more pauses will come in the future, and that sometimes I'll have setbacks. Sometimes I'll breakdown and freak out, wonder what the hell is wrong with me. But I also know that those times won't be the majority, and that when they happen they won't last. I won't be beaten by fear, by doubt. I will be myself. With all my wonders. With all my flaws. Everything.

I encourage you all to do the same. 

May your own journeys be filled with more ups than downs, 

more joy than sorrow, more tenderness than pain, and plenty

of whatever it is that makes life worth living for you.