We have already covered that I don't like multi-fandom AU RPs. The hard way. I don't care if they need a Rufus and Samira's kind of gone under. No. Don't even think about it. You just want to play with Rufus because you can't play with Asher and Ally until one of the three different people holding those threads up actually post. Go think of good ideas for icons for Satsuki and Eva, their default ones kinda suck. Particularly Satsuki, as they'll get used, and I have plenty of source material.

Yes. I'm now posting at myself. Sanity...slipping away...

EDIT: I'm not sure which is worse - the fact that I'm vaguely upset I can't remember all the kekkai shapes from the X manga, or othat I actually can remember most of them.

Okay, I am hitting the point in the year where I am this close to snapping. I think the only reason I haven't yet is that it's been nice all week, and nice weather puts me in a good mood. Paper due Tuesday (yes, I've already started it), Sephiroth needs to be done by Friday-ish (goal for tonight: finish the boots entirely), I have to do fifty-six hours of community service by the first week of May (grad requirement), and to top it off, I've spent the entire afternoon being moody about RP stuff. No, nothing to do with anybody I'm currently playing with (although, uh, Asher would really like that cup of coffee sometime this century). No, this bit of moodiness can probably be summed up as follows:

Dear Leon Scott Kennedy,

I'm already writing you. Lots and lots. More than I've written anyone other than Rufus, and Rufus is an irritating, insistent little bastard (fun, though). I am not playing you, no matter how much it would give me yet more opportunities to get inside your head and play around with your backstory - for starters, I don't have anywhere to do so, nor anyone to play off of. So please, leave me alone for five minutes.

-Cocoa

PS: Claire, that goes for you too.

...Who's sleep deprived? I'm sleep deprived! And going to find food before more Sephiroth-work.

A few assorted thoughts as I force myself to work on this summary paper:

I really should just admit that I ship Leon/anyone. Well, except maybe Leon/Ashley, although that's more because of Ashley - my dislike of her and Caitlin feed off each other and makes me dislike both of them even more. Ada/Leon is my primary ship, with Dante/Leon as my utter crack ship, but the Claire/Leon is slowly growing me, and I could totally be there for some Leon/Luis, or Leon/Chris, or Leon/Krauser...hell, Wesker/Leon if it had any canon basis at all. Oh, and Claire/Ada/Leon, which I think I may have to try write seriously, just because.

And I like chicks with guns. Hawkeye, Eva (well, okay, my Eva, anyway), Ada, Claire, Ally...they are all so much win.

Also, "Feather Moon" is really good music to calm the fuck down to. All of Warm Strangers, really, but that one in particular. Although "Harbor" remains my favorite of her's (right now I'm going 'SO ADA/LEON.', but it works for Claire/Leon, too, and, hell, most of the pairings I ship.)

For people to actually read all the rambling, a little bit about fandom that is so, so true.

Pluses: My hair is now bright royal blue, and thus, totally awesome. There will be photos later. I also got smacked with a bit of inspiration for a little snippet of Claire-Leon post-C:V conversation, which will probably join the Ada-bit in my binder tomorrow during calc.

Minuses: Apparently we had a project summary due today. Needless to say, I haven't started that. I'm going to have to at least make myself begin it tonight, although I can finish it tomorrow morning. I also still haven't figured out how to import .m3u playlists to my mp3 player, argh.

And I totally can't concentrate on anything right now. Blargh.

Argh. I decided to upgrade Winamp and my mp3 player firmware, because the new version of Winamp has support for the Dell DJ. Upgrading the firmware is a pain in the ass - doing so deletes all your files, so I had to back up a bunch of stuff - but I thought 'Hey, it'll make adding playlists a lot easier!', as I've had a bunch I kept meaning to add but decided that it would be too much of a hassle.

So I spent two hours that I probably should have spent sleeping backing up assorted files and installing stuff, only to discover that while I can sync my music library and all that jazz, exporting playlists to portable devices isn't supported yet. I think I may kill something.

Oh, Claire/Leon. I want to love you, I really do. You're sweet, and fluffy, and have some sort of canon basis (more than any of the Leon yaoi-ships), and god knows they both deserve some shred of happiness - Leon in particular. I'm not sure what it is that makes me shy away, though. Maybe because it's a little too much like Asher/Ally (Asher has started bleeding over into my Leon, now...I need to make it stop), which Doesn't Work. Which is probably a topic for another day, because once I get started on those two, I can go for a while. Sigh. Maybe I just need a really, really good Claire/Leon story to win me over.

And Mara wins so much for being willing to edit fic for a fandom she has no part in at one am in the morning. So there will be Ada/Leon soon, once I finish beating it with the Editing Stick. She also gave me an idea for a silly little Ada-drabble, that'll probably get written during Calc tomorrow.

Also, I just realized that in the absence of canon-proof of siblings, I tend to write characters as being an only child. The only three exceptions to this are all OCs - Damien has a younger brother, unamed; Sam has multiple siblings, without ages or names (although as his family has kind of disowned him, they're not really relevent); and Julian, who had an older brother and sister - the brother was kind of important backstory-wise. Arguably, the whole Asher-Ally-Sam-Jey-Damien-Naomi thing is kind of a family dynamic, but it's not really the same. I'm not sure why I do this - maybe because it makes family relationships less complicated to figure out, and, in Asher and Leon's cases (also someone Ally's, but not so much), isolates them. Both of them are kind of lone wolf-type characters - a bit funny, as Asher's personality formed without the influence of Leon's. They are in some respects very, very different, but at the same time, they have certain similarities.

Random bit of amusement - I dug up Julian's character sheet - he was for an aborted VtM game - and his older brother's name was Albert. Actually, Albert Edward Delaval Astley, 21st Baron Hastings, because I decided to be neurotic and have Julian come from an actual aristocratic family. But the Albert bit is what's amusing me.

So, due to a minor mess, I don't have Nocturne yet. I do, however, have my b-day present from my little brother, which is the PS2 version of Psychonauts. And it is utter wonderful platforming crack-goodness. Now, as the majority of of people reading this are probably going '...Huh?', a brief summary - you play as this kid named Rasputin (Raz for short), who's at a summer camp for psychic kids (actually, he runs away from home - which is a circus - to go there), and someone is stealing the brains of his fellow campers. All the levels take place inside the minds of other characters, and reflect on what type of person they are - the mind of the possibly schizophrenic (think 'A Beautiful Mind' and the newspaper clippings on the wall) conspiracy theorist is a suburban neighborhood that twists back on itself, with black helicopters flying around and satellite dishes, and suspicious men in trenchcoats doing jobs and saying things like 'I am on the road crew. This is my stop sign' and 'I am trimming the hedges. My landscaping adds property value to the whole neighborhood.'

The artstyle is wonderfully wacky to match, and you do things like pick up figments of the imagination to level up, and sort emotional baggage to unlock little slide shows (emotional baggage looks so happy when you tag it). Typically, my favorite character so far is Agent Nein - the one in the suit and dark sunglasses. It helps that he has some great lines: "Is this where you give me a lecture and I learn another lesson." "No. Here's your merit badge, let us never speak of this again." I'll have to transcribe the 'A Victory For Good Taste' video clip, it's great.

On the real-life front, I have been totally exhausted for the last couple weeks, and I don't know why. It's really starting to get me down though, because I don't have energy to get anything done, and I'm grumpy and unhappy all the time. Ugh. I need it to be spring already, and I need to have Sephiroth done and have this year be finished.

I had a bit of a reminder the other day of exactly how much fandom is kind of a little world unto itself. One of my school-friends in my calc class asked what I had been doing instead of actually listening to the prof, and I said fic, and then added 'It's so weird having a canon het OTP.' To which he went '...What?' We practically speak another language, really.

It is weird, though - said canon het OTP is Ada/Leon, which as of late I've fallen completely and totally in love with, probably as a result of Ada being totally and completely effing awesome, and Leon being the epitome of dorky!cute, which I love. It's one of my few almost true OTPs, where either of the characters being with someone else is a great big 'no' - I was reading a bit of Leon/Claire earlier to give it a try, because I like both of them, and I like the hints of canon friendship, and I just...couldn't do it. My brain was just going 'Arghnonono'.

Tangentially related - damnit, Leon, stop trying to associate yourself with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in my head. Ada and Vienna Teng is bad enough. Or Asher. Trust me, you two wouldn't like each other (although they could knife-fight. Mmm, Leon-Asher knife-fight. That'd be hot.)

...Yes, I'm going to bed now before I do any more talking to the characters in my head, and thusly, myself.

(or 'Why My Brother Shouldn't Take Away the Gamecube and Thus RE4')

Cloud: *walks by Sora*
Sora: "HI DAD! :D"
Cloud: "..."

Hades: Let loose and have some fun!
Cloud: "...I don't have 'fun'."

Hercules: *throws Cloud over one shoulder*
Cloud: "...Could you take your hand off my ass, please?"

Oh, Kingdom Hearts. You're utter crack, but you let me smash things with bright pretty colors, and thus I'm appeased. It's like DMC's cousin that's perpetually high on LSD or something.

...Well, that might actually explain the 'Leon'.

So, I now have a Wesker-crack playlist on my mp3 player, which is very silly, but I couldn't help myself (actually, the greater irony is that I have a totally serious Dante playlist). I was listening to it this morning, and then had the Imperial March (more crack with that later) stuck in my head for all of my British History class. So the class more or less went like this:

Prof: Blah blah buy the books blah do the reading blah blah blah interpretation blah did I mention do the readings?
My Brain: Dum dum dum da-da dum da-da dum...

Anyway, for my last two classes, which I didn't talk about last time. I think I love Microbiology already - the professor has a wonderfuly dry sense of humor and has already make jokes about both STDs and bioterrorism, and mentioned Robert Hooke. Calc 4 will be...okay. The professor is tall and loud (although not quite unpleasantly so) and tends to write everything on the board six inches high, and all the homework is optional. So I'll survive it.

There will be more RE later, particulary as I'm almost done with RE0 and haven't talked about it at all, but for now - I've decided what I'm going to do for Halloween this year. Zombie-scientist, complete with a little Umbrella id badge. And possibly a sign that says '4 Itchy Tasty' just to see if anyone else will get the reference. Yeah, I'm a huge geek, I know.

So, as of 10:28 this past Sunday, I'm legally an adult in the US. Which means I can finally have bank accounts and things in my own name, and buy porn. I should probably be more excited about this than I am, which I think is due to the fact that my insomnia has kicked in big time over the last few days. However, my official apologies to everyone whose pr0n I looked at/read underage. Had a little party Saturday - mostly just some video games and cooking and movies. Comfortably low-key, really. Grace brought a cake from work which was delicious.

Anyway, spring break is now over, unfortunately, and classes have begun again. All I've had so far is my history class for the term, Industry and Empire in British History. It looks pretty interesting, although I don't know how long I'll be able to stand the prof's voice - he has a really strong New England accent and at nine am, it could be a bit grating. Microbiology is next, at eleven, and then Calc 4 which will probably be hideously boring.

RE rantings and ramblings to come! Because I've been playing RE0 and squeeing about Wesker at Jo, who is trying to corrupt me to the Wesker/Chris side of the Force and mostly succeding. And I'm attempting to apply logic to RE in hopes of extrapolating backstory stuff for Krauser and thus Leon. Yeah, I know, I'm going to give myself a headache. At least I'm not trying to apply science, which is probably a good recipe for frying my brain in frustration.

Inspired by some comments on Jo's latest game-rant - I can't stand PC gamers with superiority complexes. The fact that your PC costs more than my PS2 does not make you a better person than me, nor does it automatically mean your games are better. There are good games for the PC, and there are bad, just as there are for all the consoles, and all the handhelds out there. And different systems have different sets of good games - this is why I don't play our Xbox at all - from what I've seen, the vast majority of excellent Xbox games are first-person shooters, which hold basically no appeal to me. However, I don't spend my time more or less calling people who do like those - or, hell, PC gamers, for that matter - idiots. And no, this isn't directed at anyone probably actually reading this - I'm mostly just venting so I don't bite anyone's head off over there.

On to fun things! I finished Code: Veronica tonight, so some final assorted thoughts on that, which I will cut this time for spoilers - there are one or two people reading this that haven't played C:V and might. In no particular order...

Read More?

Yeah, I refound my layout groove the other day, so, a new layout, finally! I was going to make a Midgar layout, but I had trouble getting the image I wanted - a screencap from the game - off my brother's old computer. And by 'trouble' I mean a blue screen of death every time I tried to write the file to floppy.

So you all get sexy, sexy Ada Wong in her RE4 dress. Which does have butterflies on it, you just can't quite see them there. She is utterly awesome, as are most of the rest of the Resident Evil gals. Which means this is probably time for another RE mini-rant - what is Capcom's obession with Leon's middle initial? It's never 'Leon Kennedy', it's always 'Leon S. Kennedy'.

So, last night proved that staying up way too late does weird things, although in the best way possible. Fell alseep around seven after staying up talking to Anna for a few hours, and had a dream of this city. There was a big plaza, with shops around it - I don't remember other people being there. Overheard, there was a low, solid cover of light grey clouds - it almost looked like a very high ceiling. In amoung the clouds, I could see the silhouette of a giant archway - it looked liked it was probably stone. The ends were all smooth, but the center portion of the arch was all rubbley. It was rather awe-inspiring, if hard to properly describe.

And now, for the daily Resident Evil ramble. Alfred is now in contention with Steve for the title of 'Ultimate RE n00b', mostly because Ben and I learned today that he does what we refer to as the n00b laugh. It's this really obnoxious, mocking laugh that Ben and his friends do a lot - you kind of have to hear it to understand XD; But Alfred does it. And wow, is he crazy. Also, Wesker showed up! Finally. Although, I have to admit that I like his voice in remake better. The British accent isn't bad, but I really loved the more accentless-but-perfect-enunciation he had going in remake. He is still a snappy dresser, though. And I am willing to accept the hair because Jo pointed out that unlike basically every single Final Fantasy character ever, his hair actually makes sense - he was a research scientist before becoming the leader of S.T.A.R.S. and then moving on to, as far as I can tell, found and run his own evil megacorporation (although he still found time to experiment on himself along the way - go, Wesker-superpowers!). And hair that stays out of your face is good in such situations.

Also, for the 'Cocoa Is An Idiot' file - I decided to do some more wood-carving on the Masamune. In my room. And then my vacuum decided it didn't like wood-shavings, and it took me almost as long to clean up the mess as it took to make it.

So, I went out shopping with my mom today, mostly because she was going to Michael's, and I needed some stuff for various costumes. Of course, as this is my mom, we ended up stopping at roughly four other stores along the way. As a result, I had a rather tasty box of marshmallow Peeps (already consumed), and two new pairs of shoes - one set of four-inch stiletto heels which are going to be either covered or colored black for Ada (The style is perfect, but they're a slightly unattractive print), and a pair of super comfortable dark-brown slip-ons that will work nicely for FF7!Rufus, if/when I get around to it. It probably says something about me that that was the deciding factor - otherwise I would have gone 'Eh, my black shoes still have have some wear left in them', despite the fact that they really are on the verge of falling apart. And then I got some fabric paint for Ada, clip-on earring backs for Yuna, and a new box for letters because my first one is over-full. Oh, and I finally ordered my wig for Sephiroth, and on a whim, got a bottle of Special Effects Blue Velvet hair dye. Because white was a bit of a failure, and I'm tired of blonde. So, dark blue it is.

And for the daily dose of Resident Evil babbling - Ben agrees with me that Steve is the ultimate RE n00b, and shared this with me, which is utterly hilarious. And in the realm of things I meant to post weeks ago but forgot - as frightening as it may be, Leon is stylish and up-to-date on fashion. That sheepskin coat I've mentioned before that he has in RE4? Over the last two months or so, I think I've seen roughly half of the people on campus walking around with that style of coat on.

Before I go to bed, a

Happy Birthday!

Wow. Steve is such a n00b. Cute, but a total n00b. And argh, Capcom, you were doing so well when you let Jill climb stairs without having to press X in RE3. Why'd you idiots have to switch it back in REC:V?

This entry will probably be updated as I play tonight. Along with a bit of babbling about the end bits of RE Remake for the GC, which I finished the other day.

EDIT: Oh my god, Alfred Ashford is insane. Also the most wonderfully over the top collection of snotty English nobility stereotypes I've heard in a long time (and from that looks of that little video clip, in love with his sister, but who am I to judge?).

EDIT THE SECOND: Okay, enough Code: Veronica for the evening. Which means time for RE rantings. Jill (and assumably Chris, I was playing as Jill) seems like a fairly intelligent person through most of the game. Get near the end, though, and she turns into a total idiot. She grabs Barry's custom magnum and points it at him, demanding explanations, and then five minutes later, she seems to have totally forgotten about all of this. And then, exploring the labs, you find a document of Umbrella security procedures that has Wesker's name in it, and see him in a photo labelled as being an Umbrella research team. He's hard to miss, because he still has those sunglasses on. Harder to identify are Birkin and his wife, but they're there too. And Jill doesn't go 'Hey, why the hell is my boss there?'

And Capcom really needs to get their script writers to cut down on the cheese. 'Jill and Barry, together... in hell!'? WTF, Wesker? Although I think Steve's lines are the worst in terms of making me want to go bang my head against a wall for a while. Yes, even more so than Dante and Leon's oneliners. Because everything that comes out of that boy's mouth is that level of awful.

Just checked Bishounen Ink on a whim, to find there was some new Turks-fic for Valentine's Day. A rather nice end to an otherwise shitty day. And that, of course, reminded me of something that I meant to post the other day, and then forgot about in the mess of school and life and my bad mood. I was re-reading Burning Chrome (which I will once again highly recommend to everybody reading this - it's awesome), and I realized part way through 'Johnny Mnemonic' that Asher would totally fit in with the Lo Teks. And would absolutely the Killing Floor - hell, even I think it's a neat idea. But it captures an aspect of his personality that hasn't really come out in the game, or even any of the backstory stuff I've schemed up, yet. And yeah...Sprawl-verse is so beautifully, perfectly Midgar.

...I suppose this is a good time to pimp out Shinra's Lobby again. Because more stuff for that RP is fun - if nothing else, poke Ally. Ally likes everybody (Also, Hadrian - Seung and Ally are waiting on you in the main comm).

Why are the Turks so fucking awesome? Because they are. And it looks like they may be keeping up later than I should be up. Oh well, Caitlin will get exactly what she asked for tomorrow, getting me up at seven am on my day off. Fucking Caitlin.

EDIT: Argh, I have '40FT' by Franz Ferdinand stuck in my head, which makes it impossible to fall asleep, because I want to get up and dance around the house. Also, there will definately be cosplay babblings later, as I am scheming again, and Mara and I were being big dorks about it on AIM.