Organization

Everybody knows that I am super organized. I even go as far as to organize my game boxes if I play them often enough. I still live with my parents and that means I have to share a bathroom for my younger sister, so I only get a drawer to myself and it constantly is getting stuff shoved into it. When I was looking for my tweezers today, I finally got fed up with it. This is the before:

Ick, right? So I pulled everything out and decided to measure the drawer and make an organizer. I pilfered the recycling and pulled out a couple cereal boxes, a pie box, and a few misc. boxes. I sat down and measured each of the boxes and how they were going to fit best into the drawer.

When I got them cut, taped back so they had square bottoms and stationed them where I wanted them to go. I put pretty paper in the interior of the boxes so that it looked nice, paper clipped the boxes together, taped over the paperclips and edges so they were sure to stay together and I ended up with this:

I have a place for my bobby pins (which I use frequently), hair ties, lipstick/eyeliner, teeth stuff, eye shadow, and the rest of the drawer was for things that I knew wouldn't fit in the nice little boxes like my foundation, hairbrushes, and deodorant. Overall I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Should I have taken the time away from homework to do this? Probably not, but I was able to concentrate on my homework again after this was done.

Happy Halloween

Today is Halloween, it is my favorite holiday and of course I am spending it studying. Taking on a 15 hr work load for classes, add in the fact that it's expected to put in 2 hours of study time per credit hour, there's another 30 for a grand total of 45 expected hours of school work. That's a full time job there, plus I work about 20 hours a week at Hobby Lobby and try to squeeze in time for my second job which is very much come when you can (which is hardly ever, I will admit). Needless to say, I am getting burnt out, but I have to keep pushing onward.

Not that I'm trying to complain, I am very lucky to have supportive parents who are helping me go to school instead of being pushed into working a full-time minimum wage job. And I have been able to find time to do festive Halloween stuff like my pumpkin above, my Batgirl costume, and Halloween hair bows.

Happy Halloween! I'm gonna try and finish my studying so maybe I can watch a spooky movie tonight.

Happy Fall!

It's officially fall! It's time for apple cider and pumpkin flavored things, it's time for hoodies and hats, and it's time for sitting out by the fire making s'mores.

Today I finished with my required speech stuff early and decided to make Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies.

I had a lot of fun making them and the taste testers will get to try them tonight at the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game. And I worked a little bit on my Twi'lek hat. Right now it's this:

But eventually I'll get it finished. I'm using lavender and a dark gray "I Love this Yarn!" from Hobby Lobby (hello employee discount). Eventually it will be finished and I'll have something like my Twi'lek in my Star Wars RPG: Dia Kairn:

I've also transferred my Star Wars EotE stuff from the folder that was provided to a binder. I prefer binders. So far I just have her complete character sheet, picture of her and of her gala dress because this happened: Tapani Noble Gala. Dia sat down with the house that Cid, her employer was a part of and talked to them about what it would take to get knighted. 10,000 credits and some favors. Lots of saving up to do. A knighted scholar would be awesome. Only 9,000 more to go.

Things That I Love

1. Ice Cream Cupcakes - These look super simple and delicious. Best part is that they can be transported without having to worry about keeping ice cream cold.

2. Crochet Ultramarine - One more thing to get me to hurry up and learn how to crochet.

3. Speaking of Warhammer 40,000 this Dark Eldar Jetbike is phenomenal and completely inspiring.

4. Back to crochet... this Twi'lek Lekku Crochet Hat is on my list of things to do. It's just awesome and I could wear it to my Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG.

And finally...

5. These Eevee Evolution Hoodies have me wanting to figure out how to make my own.

In short... Pinterest is terrible, it keeps adding things to my oh-my-God-I-have-to-make-this! list and on top of that, I've slowly been corrupting my friends and family with it. I've recently had another friend join Pinterest and her boards are growing.

Crafting & Cooking (New Recipe!)

It's been a while since I've posted so I think I should share what I have crafted lately as a jump back into blogging. I gave myself a sewing project in which I made rice hot/cold packs. One for my family, one for my guy, and one for myself.

 I also found time to make a very sad looking Captain America bow:

There were also projects given to me at work and I whipped up some deco mesh and burlap wreaths to sell and give inspiration to customers:

Then I sat down and did a quick painting in my World of Darkness notebook of my werewolf, Delilah in her Gauru (full) form.

Then a few of my Wyches were finished and made table ready. I'll be happy with them until somebody says, "looks like you're almost done." Then I'll most likely go back over what I've done and be happy with it again for a little while.

As far as food goes? It's been relatively unexciting. A lot of eating out and a few instances of playing around with french toast. I made blueberry and cream cheese french toast and it is very simple.

Makes 1 serving.

2 slices bread
Cream Cheese
Blueberries
2-3 eggs

Heat up your griddle or in my case skillet.

 Start off with the 1 piece of bread and spread cream cheese on it, sprinkle on as many blueberries as will make you happy and put a second piece of bread on top of it making a sandwich.

Butter your griddle and give your cooking area a nonstick section.

Whisk your eggs to break up the yolk and dip your sandwich in one side at a time. Then you would put your sandwich on the griddle and cook until it is done. Usually about a few minutes on each side.

I like to cut the french toast sandwich in half. You can serve it with powdered sugar of syrup.

I also made my sister's favorite Pumpkin French Toast, but I'll save that recipe for another time. In the mean time enjoy the Blueberry Cream Cheese French Toast.

Slowing Things Down

So I haven't posted in awhile. Mostly due to stress and struggling with a period of depression, but I've had a tweak in medication and I'm determined to bounce back from this.

Usually after I get through periods like this, I take the time to reevaluate my life and how I'm living it. As hard as the periods are when my bpd gets out of control, they can be good for me because afterwards I look at my life and try and figure out what causes these periods to start. My thinking is that there has to be a trigger of some sort. The last couple times have been stress. So I need to learn how to handle my stress.

Most of my stress is self caused and I believe it gets to me because of the fast pace that I live my life. This is pretty typical of pretty much anyone at these period in history. We all do it. We hurry through things, always fill our time with a lot of things including smart phones where we're constantly checking our facebooks, twitters, and email. I'm guilty of this and I've seen many people around me do this.

So I think it's time to look at how I manage my time. I need to stop jam packing my schedule with things to do and instead just focus on the things that I already have in time. I have been doing a good job for the most part when I've been around friends, but even then I've been pulling my phone out to check things, and as someone who loves people this isn't a good thing.

So I think it's time to start taking my time with things, slow things down and not to jam pack my schedule with things to do. I need to enjoy the time that I spend with friends and loved ones and enjoy life. Stop and smell the roses more often.

Maybe with this new practice in place, I can avoid triggers.

Horimono - Marvel Heroic (June 19)

Not gonna write a letter this time, we left at a weird place so it will have to wait until this Wednesday when I get to play Horimono again. That Wednesday I was handed a tweaked Iron Man power set. The GM, knowing me so well, figured that a gold early version of Iron Man's costume was the shiniest thing in the room and the thing I would most likely go for. One of her distinctions is 'Ooo Shiny!' and I have been known to poke and/or take shiny things in this GMs games. The last of these games was a World of Darkness Hunter campaign.

So, having fulfilled my 10xp by deciding to "get back into the game" by stealing from S.H.I.E.L.D. I spent that xp to unlock the powerset, thereby making it work for my character. Now Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game is a story based game, you can get away with just about anything as long as you have a good explanation about it and roll really well, so I've been contemplating as to how exactly Horimono would power the Iron Man suit... which needs to be renamed soon because it's hers now. I added a limit to both the mutant power set and the Iron Man armor where I have to turn off one power set to use the other. Makes sense and I think it makes things fair to the other players. So that would leave her black magic tattoo. She is a mystic expert and so it would make sense that she could tap into her powerset some how to power it, but it can't be too draining to merit me having to buy a multi attack. The other option is that she took it to White Dwarf, the former super villain who is a rival to Stark Enterprises, and had him tweak it so that it would work for her but then I'm still stuck with the question of how it works. How does Warmachine power his armor?

Well, I still have a few days to contemplate this issue plus come up with a whole new milestone list for my super thief.

Redecorating!

So shortly after my brothers moved out, I moved into their room and out of the basement. I spent a few years just not caring about where I put my stuff because it really wasn't my room. It still had the boring white walls with ugly half painted red and blue trim and shelving. I hated it.

And here is where the red and blue comes in...

And the hideous ceiling...

In all honesty it was fine for a boys room, not fine for me. As much as I can be "one of the guys," I'm still very girly. I like my dresses, I like my fingernail polish, and I like styling my hair. This room did not emulate any of that. It was still the boy's room with my stuff in it.

I decided enough was enough and immediately started planning how I was going to change this to make it mine. Picked out paint colors, started planning on where I'm going to move the stuff around to, etc. Getting to the point of actually getting the job done was a bit of a headache. But finally I am happy to say that I have painted my room and even started hanging pictures.

One of the walls I display all of my toys and collectibles and decided to get a painting of mine framed as well as hang up a few of my photographs that I had dry mounted onto mat boards.

And this wall, which is far from finished... and try to ignore my messy bookshelf and desk...

And the ceiling is now a tan color that compliments the green walls. Probably won't be here long enough to replace the ugly black fan, but I did give it a good cleaning.

I still have more pictures to frame to hang around the room and a bit more organizing to do, but the room is coming along and I couldn't be happier to spend time in it now.

Marvel Heroic - Horimono (June 5)

Dear Papa,

You know being registered sucks. We are at the beck and call of SHIELD, bunch of jerks. At least I've got some stuff from the President's desk to make it feel like last time they sent us on a milk run, I at least got "tipped". I can hear the "atta girl" now. So maybe it was just a few things, the fact that I was able to slip in take something and later be in the same room with not only the owner of said something but the rest of my "team" too. I say "team" because, well let's face it, the majority of my team are former "super villains," myself included. I know you're rolling your eyes now, with my powers I am totally considered a super villain. I am. Really.

So back to SHIELD... today they announced that we were going to apprehend Spider-Man. Supposedly he's a traitor. He's registered but he helped other supers avoid the forced registration. Basically I think he's running a Registration Underground Railroad and apparently this must be stopped. Whatever. I have nothing against Spidey but I can't really argue. Then they hand us these freaking guns that the bullets are designed to shut down his powers. They freaking have these? Apparently each bullet is worth half a mil but it's tailored specifically to Spider-Man. He's got SHIELD breathing down his neck, it doesn't seem fair to take off with this gun and sell it to somebody. The rich former super-villain in our group... his name escapes me right now, FedEx's his gun to his headquarters to reverse engineer it. Maybe I'll visit his place when he's done figuring it out and working out the government tweaks.

So Stonewall, our Nightcrawler look alike who always has a bad joke... kind of like Spidey, anyway he teleports us where we need to go. Arrive on a roof top and miraculously there is Spider-Man in his angsty black suit fighting Hydroman, Boomerang, and Shocker. It becomes an issue of do we just let them take each other out, do we wait until Spider-Man's won and then take him out, or shoot Spider-man now and watch? Hey, I know what you're thinking but again super-villains.

Anyway we make the right decision and decide to fight with Spider-man against the 3 goons. We each take a shot. I decide that I'm going to take on Shocker. I use my black magic tattoo and fire a dart that nearly knocks him out. He throws an attack at all of us and we avoid it, I do it so well that I counter-attack with another dart and he's down for the count. Booyah!

The others are made short work of. Sgt Spectre shoots Spidey with the gun but it only grazes him so him losing his powers will be slow. The Sgt. gets trapped in a web and let me say this now, Spidey can take quite a bit of punches... and dodge them too. It's unreal. Stonewall drops Hydroman onto of Spidey and then the elf in the group uses his magic to make an ice cage. The last villain in our group, the rich guy... oh yeah, White Dwarf, starts a freaking monologue! He's pretty good at it though and Spider-man just gives up. Just like that! Lame.

We go back to SHIELD and then nothing. We don't get handed anything to do. I get bored so I start poking around SHIELD. I kind of break into their Armory. Hey, it happens. Anyways, I gotta get going and send this before they try to screen it or something. They might make me return what I borrowed...

あなたを愛して 
Love You,

Yoko

Torn Up Character Sheet

I get really into the characters that I create and the longer I've played them the more I let myself sink into the story. This is a post about the Irraka from my World of Darkness: Forsaken pack, the one that was taken.

We went searching for him but not before I made those that work go to work since they had been neglecting to do so. Delilah went off to a meeting at a gallery who had been interested in her paintings. She was given a run around and left frustrated. Were they buying her paintings or were they just displaying them until they sold? When she got home she had no idea where to start, the two who did not work (Jayden and Mickey) were off looking for Cote and I didn't know where they were. Leila, her twin had arrived home at the same time after the courthouse had been closed due to a bomb threat (Mickey's anonymous phone call). That was when the howl was heard, it was a nervous excited howl that he had been found buy help was needed. I heard the answering howl of my beta, Jayden that he was on his way and I shifted into wolf form and sprinted in the direction of Mickey's howl with Leila following suite.

There was another howl for anyone to help and I answered this time, telling them that I was on my way. When we arrived Jayden was digging, avoiding swinging branches of a tree. He informed me that Cote was down in the hole with Mickey who was trying to pull him out. Leila and Jayden took to grabbing a large root and managed to pull it back. I shifted into near human form and started to help Mickey pull Cote out. It took awhile and we finally did. It was terrible what Dark Reaches did to him and I immediately jumped into tending the wounds. Mickey ran off to hunt rabbits for Cote to eat. As I tended to him I realized that if Cote was going to get out of this, he was going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life. Then I finally understood what he had been trying to say through his pain. "End it."

My heart sank, Delilah started crying, I started crying for real. Delilah said that there was no other choice and that I was going to do what Cote asked. She said that Mickey cannot be here when this happens to protect him. Jayden went off to stop him from coming back until Delilah said it was okay. Cote smiled at me, "Challenge." She couldn't bring herself to do it, she didn't have the will power to do this. Leila stepped up, she could bring herself to do it. "1 Rule," he said. "Rabbit is awesome," Delilah sobbed as he closed his eyes and relaxed so that it would be quick. The "rule" of the pack had been in place since Cote, who was going by the name of Rabbit then, saved Delilah's life two times in one night. Leila killed him, Delilah started hugging him and crying as Jayden and Mickey came back.

Mickey saw the blood on Leila's hands, saw Delilah broken down. He shifted into full form and destroyed the tree that had helped Dark Reaches hide Cote. We all carried him home and laid him to rest there. "Number 1 Rule," Delilah reminded the pack as she sprinkled dirt over the body.

When we had finished Mickey ran inside and started turning all the lights on as it had grown quite dark. Then we saw headlights pull up and two people get out. Jayden moved to stand between the grave and the car, Delilah walked towards the car. We knew they were werewolves too, we could sense it. "What are you doing here?" Delilah demanded. They didn't answer the question, instead the old man asked what we had been doing. Mickey came out with his rifle telling them to get off of this land. The old man stood up straight and became intimidating, Delilah ordered Mickey to stand down and he did as he was told. "Again, why are you on our land?" Delilah asked.

"What are you guilty about?" the old man asked and that sparked anger in Delilah.

"This is not a good time for you guys to be here," she stated, eyes narrowing.

"Why?"

"We lost a pack mate tonight," Jayden told them. The old man turned to Mickey and put his hands on his shoulders.

"You're going to get the one who did this and you're going to make him pay, that's what you're going to do," the old man told him. Then we noticed it got unnaturally dark, Dark Reaches was coming. We were not in any shape to be facing him. Cote's death probably fed him so he would probably be stronger.

"If you want to be safe you will get in the trailer," Mickey said before turning and walking away. We followed inside and they did as well. Night had come and we had reached the end of game time so we called it a night. There was the tearing of Cote's character sheet that night upon his death, the player tears up the sheets instead of keeps them. I however am the type of person to keep mine for sentimental value.

Delilah has proven to be quite the medic, this is the second time she has had to make rolls tending to another's wounds and has done phenomenally. I think the dice are trying to tell me something, maybe Delilah should start training to be an EMT... she has the smarts for it, she just needs to medicine to back it up.

D20 Flower Hair Clip

I try to craft as often as I can. Doing something crafty gives me something creative to do, it gives me something that I can focus on for a little while and I have a finished product by the end of it. Totally beats surfing the Internet. So this past week has been D20 Flower Hair Clips. I came across the project and knew I wanted to create one.

The one on the left was my first run though. Armored Gopher Games was out of D20s so I had to pull some out of my bag. I settled on my blue with white numbering one. For the second one, which was a request from a friend of mine she wanted a red D20, but the moment she saw my black D20 with red lettering she said she had to have that one. So I made a black and red flower to go with it. By second run through was by far superior to my first. I can't wait until the Gopher gets more D20s in so I can make more of these hair clips.

Here is a the walk through I used to get these flowers completed from Swords & Stitchery on Youtube. For the 2 color flower, I added another layer of petals, stepping those squares down to 3/4".

Happy Crafting!

Growing as an Alpha

Saturday night was World of Darkness and I should have realized it was going to be one of those sessions when the first thing that happens is that Delilah gets challenged. After stress, trying to come up with something to do, and finally saying that now is not the time for this Cote, my Irraka drops out.

What he wanted was for Delilah to show control, say something and mean it, and show her dominance. This was a lesson that Delilah needed. After this Delilah and Cote got together and restructured the pack. While before we had stuck with the typical hierarchy of Delilah (alpha), Leila (beta), then down the list to Turtle (omega). The new structuring breaks the pack into groups that will eventually become natural.

First, there's the pack, everyone. When I say something it gets done. Then we can break into two groups with the two Cahaliths (Delilah and Turtle), a Rahu (Jimmy) and our Itheur (our newest addition Mickey). Delilah is the brains, Jimmy the muscle, and Mickey our stealthy. The second group would be our Elodoth (Leila, Delilah's twin sister and former beta), our second Rahu (Jayden my new beta), our Irraka (Cote), and our "short-hair-werewolf-in-training-who-is-really-a-mage" (Delta). This group has 2 brainy members Delta and Leila and 2 who can handle themselves in combat Jayden and Cote. From there the groups can be broken off into twos. Delilah and Turtle will stick together, we are the Cahaliths we need to know each other better and discuss our dreams and the muscle is covered with Turtle. Jimmy and Mickey are together and they can work on their own easily and move from group to group based on need. Leila and Jayden covering sneaky and brains. Finally Delta and Cote who also can break apart and work alone or go to a different group based on need.

The move to make Jayden my beta was well thought out. I had made my negative opinion of Jayden known but after hearing Cote out and giving him another chance I had started to warm up to him. Making him my beta would not only strengthen that relationship that was budding and offer an opposing view point when plans were being made but it would also give the rest of the pack the chance to give him another look. He had been not accepted by a good number of the pack and I take responsibility for fueling that fire.

With that in place it was decided that we had to take care of a ridden who was in our new territory, Dark Reaches. He had murdered Mickey's parents and been hunting Mickey ever since. It was suggested to us that Dark Reaches who is a death spirit would need an area of death to feed it most likely in our own territory. We began the hunt but we spotted a spirit, a hawk. It told us that this was not our land and that it had a message for us to leave. We sent a message back that this was our land, then proceeded to declare it with that oh so special rite that would make this land recognized by the spirits and other werewolves that this was our land and any werewolf that contested were to meet us and fight for it. 4 howls were the answer and we knew we had to deal with 4 Pure packs.

We waited, most of the pack went into hiding, Jayden and Delilah stayed out in the open. We heard then surround us.

Then the alpha of the alphas arrived in his Lincoln. He got out of the back seat and offered a deal. I realized that we were seriously out numbered, we suspected 19 werewolves surrounding us, their totems, and the spirits that Edmund had doing his bidding and agreed to a private talk with him.

I got in the car and while I was nervous, I sat tall with my head up. I was offered the choice of accept his deal or my pack would not leave these woods alive. We had to kill his omega pack, make it so Dark Reaches never came back, and later down the road Delilah had to do him a personal favor. My pack was in jeopardy... I accepted.

We got out of the car, he got out whistled then climbed back in and drove off. The other werewolves around us began to leave, leaving 3 behind and the fight began. One fell and I heard, don't kill them and I gave the order that we had to end this. My orders were followed as I fought alongside my pack. We killed the three with darkness growing thicker and thicker around us... then Dark Reaches began to attack. Mickey panicked and ran for the only source of light there was out there, the light at the barn. Turtle was hit first. Thrown through trees and I began to run in his direction following his smell. He was thrown into the barn and Mickey latched on to him. I heard Turtle get hit again and I continued running, desperate to help him. Delilah was hit next. A slash across the chest before being thrown into the barn too. Cote was the next one to be attacked. He was already suffering severe wounds from the omega pack and being thrown into the trailer that we were living in caused him to black out. Turtle told me he was down and we rushed towards him only to find that Dark Reaches had dragged him away.

Cote is gone. Dark Reaches is nowhere to be seen. We don't know what is going to happen now or even if we can find Cote.

Meet Horimono

So last night was game 2 of one of my friend's Marvel Heroic RPG. I spent the day before game putting the finishing touches on Horimono my super thief/super hero. (She's a bit of a klepto).

She is a shape-shifting mutant who found a horimono katana. She had to leave it behind, having almost been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She remembered the design, it was the reason she wanted the blade. She had it tattooed onto her person and then weird stuff started to happen. It didn't take her long to realize that it was dark magic, from the beautifully named oni (demon). The only thing she knew about it was the name and that it was a hannya, her Japanese background told her that much. She buried herself in books of the occult trying to find answers to who this hannya was and how she could increase these powers. "The more powerful you are the more stuff you can take, y'know?" Here's what she looks like:

The snow white hair doesn't make it easy to blend in to the shadows, but she is all about flash. She does things with style and she likes shiny things. (One of her distinctions is Ooo Shiny). While she is better at working alone, she loves the team play. She gets an audience and potential tools to get her what she wants, purely selfish reasons. This is a character that I did a complete 180 from my World of Darkness Werewolf, Delilah, so it's a little jarring. I haven't quite figured out the game system either so I'm hoping once I get that down I can submerge myself into the character. Hopefully I can start coming up with more creative things instead of listening to the other players. I do have to admit, I was more comfortable with my Hunter character which required a lot of detective work, but that could also be because the World of Darkness system is easier than Marvel Heroic RPG, which is more story-based. You define your powers then you have to explain how you do it. I'm not much of a combat thinker, I've learned that from playing Delilah.

I don't know, I felt like I was holding the rest of the team back with my uncertainty. I haven't heard any complaints but that could just be people being nice. I think some more work on Horimono needs to be done before I can jump into this character's personality by next game. Maybe some short stories are in order, that is highly likely now that classes are over and I can start using my free time for game prep and fun stuff.

Goddess of Spring

So not long ago I finished book 2 of P.C. Cast's Goddess series, "Goddess of Spring." The book is about a baker who finds a cookbook and with it calls upon Demeter who in order to save the bakery switches her with her daughter Persephone, Goddess of Spring. Lina, in Persephone's body makes the journey to Hades to complete her part of the deal and unwittingly falls for the Lord of the Underworld.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a sucker for stories involving Hades and I'm a girl who likes smut on occasion. Of course when Hades is compared to Batman, I was hooked. So I devoured the book and moved on, but I still find my mind going back to it on occasion, such as tonight. I couldn't very well make a 11pm run to the library seeing as it's closed, so I opted to have a night of girly fun (especially after the hard day I've had today). Soak in the bath, pjs, and finally painting of the fingernails. I came up with something that was inspired by Hades and Persephone.

I chose to put gold coins on my pinky (Hades is the god of wealth and fortune), a flower on my ring finger, the Lapis Lazuli precious stone on the middle finger, a white flower a quick version of the Narcissus flower mentioned in the book on the ring finger, and finally on the thumb the Amethyst precious stone. I chose the stones because in the book Hades was fond of precious stones and used them in his palace.

So that was my night. I don't pretend to be good at painting my nails but I enjoy doing it on occasion and having nail designs inspired by books is never a bad thing.

Role-Play Games According to Caillous?

So I have been working on a paper for some time on table-top rpgs and it was suggested by the professor that I pick up and use Roger Caillous' "Man, Play, and Games." I am reading through it and I have reached a bit of a pickle.

Caillous divides games into 4 categories: Agon, Alea, Mimicry, and Ilinx and he goes on to explain what they mean.

Agon is always a question of rivalry which hinges on a single quality such as speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, ingenuity, and so on. This is exercised within defined limits and without outside assistance. There is a winner and a loser in which the winner is better than the loser (go figure). These types of games can be found in sports and board games such as checkers or chess, and can also be found in acts of courtly war such as a duel or tournament (yay jousting!). These presuppose sustained attention, appropriate training, assiduous application, and of course a desire to win.

Alea is a latin word for a game of dice. This is up to chance. This negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications. You either have total disgrace or absolute favor. Some games combine both agon and alea such as dominoes, backgammon, or cards.

Next is Mimicry in which you become an illusory character yourself. You make believe or make others believe that you are someone other than yourself. But then he goes on to say that this has hardly any relationship to alea and that a competitive mimicry is born in the public at a sporting even or such (agon).

Finally, is Ilinx, and it is based on the pursuit of vertigo and consists of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflicts a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. This can be found with rollercoasters and the like.

Now obviously ilinx has nothing to do with table-top role-playing games, but I believe that the other three do. You are pretending to be another person, a character of your own or someone's creation, it is agon in that you compete with others (a lot of the time non-player characters) using the skills of your character on your character sheet. The results of those actions are alea in that it is up to the rolling of dice.

There I think I've got that figured out for the paper, but I keep second guessing myself on this based on one thing Caillous said. "Mimicry has hardly any relationship to alea." Does mimicry play a part in the classification of role-playing games?

The book was first published in 1913, so there was no way that he could have known about role-playing games seeing as it wasn't until 61 years later that Dungeons and Dragons first came out. Lord of the Rings, arguably the inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons hadn't even been thought of, let alone the Hobbit. So it is dated, yet it is still highly regarded within the community of those who study games.

Many things have happened since 1913, many reprints of this book moving from publisher to publisher. While many things that I have read in this book hold true today, there is one small hiccup when it comes to role-playing games. It isn't the first time these games have been looked over by sociologists and anthropologists alike, most of the studies I have been able to find on the topic skip over the table and go straight for the computer. I have found many World of Warcraft studies, a few on role-playing games that I have had to adapt to work with my paper, and very few on the table games. I knew this paper was going to be a challenge, but I wasn't expecting it quite like this.

Books, Books, Books

Went to a comic book convention today. Spent 2 hours going through books, and left with 75 books when I hit my budget limit for comics. I picked up some Dragonball Z (which I want to send to my brother), Ranma 1/2, X-Men, Star Wars, and a lot of Catwoman. I have been on the hunt for old Catwoman books, not only to collect, but I would like to use some to make comic book heels.

I then went to the game store and picked up the Marvel RPG game book so that I can finish building my super hero/super villain (she does what she wants). I have already decided to make her a Crime Master, this will help her know the ins and outs of the crime world. We should finally get to play this Wednesday, I am so excited.

I then wandered down to my favorite used book store where I decided I needed more cook books. I found The Absolute Beginner's Cookbook, and Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. I can't wait to start cooking, maybe I'll blog about that as I do it. When I told my boyfriend about the cookbooks his question was "Comic book cookbooks?" That prompted me to go on a hunt on amazon and sure enough I found one and ordered that and multiple books from my wishlist. It truly was a day for books and it was glorious.

So I bought more books, but my bookshelves are not ready for now books. I'm still in the process of cleaning and organizing my room. So I decided it was time to tackle my bookshelves. I gathered up all of my books that were not shelved and shelved them (by author for the fiction books, the non-fiction still needs work). Then it was time to tackle the taller shelf. I pulled books out and stacked and went through them. I pulled a huge stack that weren't even mine but my dad's, so that promptly left my room. By the end of it I had narrowed 3 shelves of books down to two, leaving me with a new shelf for my gaming stuff. I used the top shelf for my rpg books and cookbooks, and the second shelf for my board games, the bottom two shelves were my non-fiction books. I don't plan on leaving the book shelf there when I start moving furniture, but it works for now.

Deadpool

Comic books and gaming have found their place in my life, that I cannot lie about... but it has been the cause of inside jokes between myself and my friends (my little sister included). I was at the Gopher one night and my sister called me, she was at home and I thought "perfect opportunity." I had been wanting to do Deadpool inspired nails for awhile so I asked her if I had Deadpool red in with my fingernail polish.

 She was clueless. I told her to Google it, just Google it. She heard Google Google and she relayed that to me. When I finally got my point across she informed me that I had a similar shade. Yet when Deadpool comes up now between us she says "Google Google?" and I immediately lose it, laughing so hard. Yes, it's stupid but it is something we share and it's because of my love for comic books.

There are also jokes concerning the Marvel RPG game, my first game even got myself mentioned in a blog (how exciting!). I played Magma that game and my boyfriend (henceforth known as Superman) played Warlock. He changed into R2D2 and the Deathstar at different points of the game. It was a blast. My second time playing the game with a different ST, I played Susan Storm (Invisible Woman). Leave it to the ST to find a way for all of us to wake up naked. (Spiderman was upset that Susan went invisible before he could see anything.) I'm working on an original super hero for the next Marvel game, taking milestones from my first Marvel ST, a friend of mine. I took a milestone list inspired by Deadpool (go figure) and the other list works well with her side job being a super thief (can't be too good, now can we?). As for her powers, I'm unsure as of now. I had played with the idea of a plant manipulator but when Superman said "So, you're playing Poison Ivy?" I knew that wasn't going to work. I have until Wednesday to come up with something. Here's to hoping.