The writing in this actually isn't too bad, but I still need to work on making up actual plots. I debated posting this because it's kind of embarrassingly lame and my characterization didn't turn out very well. Oops. Next time, I promise to be as blindingly canon as possible!

Title: Dance
Author: Sage the Predictable
Series: Tales of the Abyss
Characters: Anise, Ion, + Jade with mention of others.
Rating: G
Warnings: It sounds like a Harlequiiiiin. *sobs forever* Slightly AU because I can't fit this into the game plot. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I destroyed Peony/Natalia/Tear's personalities, but we'll all get over it. :>
Summary: Peony has a formal party. Music, dancing, and Jade are included for the low, low price of your dignity. Anise/Ion.

For my fangirling buddy, aitherion, because it's very manly to be a fangirl.

( Stupid Cupid, you're a real mean guy... )

Finally I got my new journal CSS up after whining for help, so thank you neon_moment for making and installing it for me!

Anyway, if you know me in real life (or maybe on DeviantArt), you probably already know about Christmas Mode and that it activates after Remembrance Day. I love Christmas so much. It's pretty much one of my favorite things in the whole world, so we start celebrating it in November. We already have our Christmas tree up and it's awesome. :>

I'm in my second year of violin now, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Christmas music my teacher wrote out for me last year is a lot easier to read from now. I guess I read a lot faster than I did when I started, which is good to know. I feel like I read music so slowly!

I do a lot of Christmas art starting around now, most of which ends up getting posted on DA, but if there's anything else I don't post for whatever reason, I might stick it up here.

If you're one of my penpals, it's more than likely that I'll send you a Christmas card later on, so if that's not so good for any reason, please please warn me in advance! (Probably by PM, since I'm cool and I disable LJ comments.) I don't want to cause you a problem!

Ooh, and I saw the first episodes of the Soul Eater dub, as posted by Funimation on their site. I love Shinigami so much, even in dub form. He's so awesome. Originally, the name "Lord Death" kind of made me die a little, but it really does work somehow. I think it's just so goofy-sounding that it's endearing. I dunno. Either way, I'm really looking forward to those DVDs coming out.

Look what I just got in the mail!!!



You can't tell from the photo, but the cover has foil parts, so the background is shiny. It's beautiful!

Thank you Matcha!! ♥♥♥

I love Halloween!

More kids came by this year. As I recall, the weather last year was kind of sucky somehow (it rained until seven o'clock or something like that), but this year it was great. I watched a few Halloween movies on TV and tended the door. /o/

During my time watching Halloween specials, I discovered there are actually some very good (and thankfully very tame) children's movies for the occasion. I particularly liked The Halloween Tree.

I kind of destroyed my leg at Tae Kwon Do on Thursday, though, so having to sit down and get up so frequently friggin' hurt. Ow ow. We didn't finish the class properly because the grandmasters from the US Chungdo Kwan were here, and... yeah. Ow. Those muscles seem to be mostly okay today, but now different ones hurt just from having to walk a little differently to accommodate the injury. We had 86 trick-or-treaters this year.

Anyway, I wore my Norma cosplay all day and felt like a huge dork. It was pretty cool. I went downtown to do a couple of things (with my cape!) and I was easily the most noticeable thing for several blocks because of the yellow. Once I got down to the mall, I was no longer conspicuous, since they have trick-or-treating there and tons of kids went. There was even a kid dressed as Micheal Jackson.

Though I got a couple of compliments on my costume while I was manning the door in the evening, none of the kids actually knew what I was supposed to be. Later, I went out to a Halloween party with some friends. I had some full-size chocolate bars in my purse for anyone who openly recognized my outfit, but no one did, so I got to keep them, haha. I tried.

I'd really like to do a group thing for Halloween next year and have thought about convincing my friend and his wife to do a Batman-Robin-Batgirl trio with me. I'd get stuck being Robin, but I'll cope. Someone told me they've seen people dress up as The Penguin, and I had no idea anyone ever did that! That's so cool! There was this guy wearing clothes made of bubble wrap, and one of the people I was there with told me what the movie reference was, but I forget. Something about nerds and communicating with aliens. There was also a trio of Rainbow Brite characters. They were so colorful!

Long story short, Halloween was great and people make awesome costumes. I hope everyone had a good one!

I'm really excited for Halloween! \o/

But onto this post.

My friend, who is really, really amazing at coloring with markers, was drawing with me today and she offered to color the first lineart I managed to finish while I was there. I was pretty happy about that. I was going to have her color on this one, since I finished it first, but I'm a derp and didn't draw it on the right kind of paper. :'DDD

( Cut for image. )

Under the next cut, I'm going to draw some obvious parallels, which means vague Star Ocean 4 spoilers. To be honest, these are barely spoilers at all because I was so purposefully vague. Should be safe.

( Luke Mode is a Go. )

Remember how I said Star Ocean 4 was two discs long? Well, I was wrong.

It's three.

Wut.

I would have just told you all this in a letter back, but that takes like a week, so have some preliminary fangirling instead.

Eeeee, I got the best letter ever today!! Thank you, Azzy! It has Shinigami, brotherliness, Rhys, Angry Rita killing Karol, Estelle being pretty, Anise and Ion and a chainsaw, andandand just... just...

SQUEE.

How did you knowwwww.

Because it's not like Sage is not one of the most predictable people on earth or anything.

ANYWAY, EVERYONE CAN NOW CONFUSEDLY SHARE IN MY UNBRIDLED ENTHUSIASM. \o/

I moved up a tier in violin! \o/

I'm holding the bow the proper way now, and not the learner's way. It definitely feels different. The distribution of balance feels weird because now there is a long thin piece of wood between my fingers rather than the huge block of wood that is the frog. It seems lighter this way, though, which is probably a good thing. I think you get better control holding it like this.

Anyway, I said I got Star Ocean 4 (The Last Hope) for my birthday, right? Well, now I'm going to nerd about it. There's minimal talk of the plot, so I'm spoiling absolutely nothing that can't be found in the instruction manual.

( No Spoilers! )

I'm going to stop there because ow, I have a headache. OTL

This one is really long since I covered a lot of significant stuff since the last post.

( Wow, he really *is* crazy! (Al Bhed HOME to Mt. Gagazet) )

Next time, I'm going to talk about Star Ocean 4 because I got it for my birthday and I'm really enjoying it.