Things People Don’t Seem to Get About Me- A Primer

It seems like even the people who’ve known me for years don’t get why I do some things, so here are some of my attempts to explain.

Conflict Avoidance-

I avoid fights, conflict and general disagreement on principle. Simply put, I don’t care about much and if you feel like fighting about something, you go right ahead.

 I’ll be over here. With the camera.

If someone is rude to me, that’s their problem, not mine. Being polite often works far better than being angry back at someone, and as a bonus, sometimes it makes them even more pissed at you.

 Sometimes even saying nothing at all works.

How I Dress-

I dress like either like a hobo, or a guy, depending on who you ask. This occurs for several reasons.

1) I have no sense of fashion

 I don’t get it. 

 2)  I am permanently stuck in the grunge era, for whatever reason. 

3) I think outfits like this look freakin’ sweet: 

Why I’m So Damn Calm:

Mostly, it’s because of my dad.

See, most of my family is the calm, quiet type. We don’t talk about our feelings or problems unless it’s something really big that we think others can help with. My dad’s different. He’ll rant and rave about how the world is ending, how he’ll lose his job, how something terrible is going to happen.

 Like this, but in the living room.

Now that I’m older, I realize this was his way of dealing with stress. He vocalized the worst that could happen, got out his fear and anger, and moved on. When you’re a kid, however, you don’t know about those ‘coping mechanism’ things and instead think: “Oh god, what do we do? What if he’s right and we can’t pay the power bill? What if he loses his job and we have to move?’

 I’m going to be in here for a while.

Eventually I learned all the horrible things he worried about never happened. We got through any problems just fine, the world didn’t end, and eventually I just learned to tune his loud freak-outs out. I had basically become immune to both yelling and any problems that weren’t right in front of me.

 “When the explosion is a half-foot from me, then I’ll start caring.”

Another thing that helped is growing up around animals, and riding horses. One of the first things that you learn about horses is that it’s a bad idea to get scared, nervous, or generally panicky around them. Staying calm and rational is the best way to go.

 JUST STAY COOL MAN.

This basically reinforced the idea that staying calm and looking for a practical solution is the smart thing to do. Trail riding also exposed me to a whole bunch of random dangers that made other things look, well, unimportant. While other people were worried about that thing someone else said about them in gym class, I dealt with what to do if someone’s horse runs into a cactus patch on a midnight trail ride.

Sure it looks awesome, but what if your horse spooks?

So, basically, I have learned to just straight-up not give a fuck unless bears are literally attacking and forcing their way through the door.

And even then I’ll ask if someone has a shotgun handy. 

 Not like it’s a Kodiak or something.

Why I like Dogs so damn much-

Because dogs are awesome.

The Notebook Chronicles Pt.1

When I get bored, I doodle.
Any little space in the margins, on any handouts, and especially in my notebooks. I don't know why, but my brain can't just listen to someone talk-- it has to be doing something else as well. So I doodle because it allows me to pay more attention to the speaker than if I thought of something else while they were talking. This leads to a whole bunch of notebook comics and sketches, which I've decided to title 'The Notebook Chronicles'.
This little comic originally was in my notebook, but it smeared a whole bunch, so I tried to reproduce it via Paint.


It's entitled "One reason why humans need the ability to lie"--

  

  

 

 

 

...yeah, they would never let me have my degree. 

I am generally completely honest about most things, including how evil I would be with some super-powers and just whose side I would take in a fight. But you must be sure that you want to hear the truth before asking me.

I'll probably post some more of my notebook comics later, but for now it's spring break, bitches! I'll leave you with this image by Das Mervin to explain just how I'll be spending my days off:

My Favorite Game Coincidences

I love games where different actions at different times can lead to a pile-up of odd timing and strange happenings. My love of Oblivion is mainly because the game lends itself to odd occurrences, especially when you least expect it.  These are the moments that make you stop, wondering what just happened, or the things that make you yell at the screen, usually something like ‘what the hell?’, ‘bullshit’ or ‘that was…what?’.

This is a list of my favorite random things that have happened to me in games:

What are you doing in my room?

This happened way-back-when. I had played through Oblivion before and decided to fire it up again because I was bored and there were some neat mods out. During my last couple of games I had tried to get into the Dark Brotherhood and failed miserably. I just couldn’t seem to kill an ‘innocent’ NPC without half the guards in the game giving me the business end of a sword, and no killing= no Dark Brotherhood.

 You never let me have any fun.

So this for this play-through I had decided to say ‘screw it’ and just play the game.  No worrying about the Brotherhood or the Thieves Guild or anything.  There was plenty else to do and by the gods I was going to do it.

  Like killin’ things. Lots of things.

So imagine my surprise when Lucien Lachance, the guy who kicks off the Dark Brotherhood quest line, woke me from my slumber at an inn one night.

 My response? To yell at the screen: “Bullshit, I didn’t kill anyone!”  

  Although, since you’re here and all…

It took me a while to realize that I had installed a mod that upped arrow damage, and that most likely during the Kvatch quest (A quest where you, some monsters and some guards flounce around like idiots through a burning town) I had accidently killed a guard and didn’t realize it. That’s right. After several games and hours of trying, I got into the Dark Brotherhood, a guild of assassins, completely on accident. Go me.

  I’m sure this will work out just fine.

Bill the Unkillable

This was while playing Mount and Blade: Warband. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re basically a medieval mercenary who gathers followers and kills stuff for fun and profit. You can cycle through your basic followers, like knights and archers, pretty quickly if you’re not careful and even if you are it’s rare that someone lasts through several serious campaigns.

 Yeah, unnamed people dying in fights. Huge surprise.

But I had noticed that one Swadian Knight was with me for quite a while, since almost the beginning of the game. I separated him from his Swadian brothers and named him Bill, because I’m not very imaginative.  

I kept expecting Bill to die, but no matter how bad things got there was still one Swadian Knight hanging around. Even my husband would occasionally ask if Bill was still alive as I kept playing (he was playing the game as well at around the same time). Through burning deserts and sea raider attacks, Bill lived. Bill was unkillable.

This tree needs like two more tiers just for Bill.

Hello Officer, nice evening, isn’t it?

On the same game of Oblivion where I was accidentally let into the Dark Brotherhood (with a character named Kibbles, if you’re interested); I was just finishing up a rather fun quest for the assassins. The basic premise was that you were invited to a party and your goal was to be the last person out of that house left alive.  I had stabbed, coerced and poisoned my way into five dead bodies littering the place. 

  Kibbles: Moving up from accidental murderer one NPC at a time.

I left, giggling to myself at a job well done, until I saw who was waiting for me on the steps.

 Shit.

It was actually the guard Captain, and he was there to warn me about a crazy night-elf that I had been talking to way, way earlier in the game. If it had been a more real-life scenario, I probably would’ve said something along these lines: “Haha of course, Captain. I’ll stay away from him. There’s no need to look in the house behind me. Everything in there is completely fine.”

Instead he left, wishing me a good day. The Captain of the Guard was ten feet away from a multiple murder and I got away with it.

Thanks for nearly making me piss myself, Oblivion.

What are you…argbarglejabd!

Remember how I said there were some cool mods for Oblivion? See, my husband had tried out a few and loaded them on to my computer. Most of them were really awesome, but he had neglected to mention one in particular.

I found out about it, and it ate my horse.

 STOP BITING ME AND DIE ALREADY.

You wanna run that by me again?

The game after Kibbles, I rolled a new character and decided to do the Thieves Guild quests right from the start. Now, this isn’t so much as a coincidence as it is something that just surprised me.

I was walking by a guard when he uttered: “Something on your mind, furlicker?”

See, I always play as one of these guys, just because I think they’re fun-

My reputation wasn’t that great, but I had never had the guards actually hate me before. Kibbles, despite being one of the kitty-people and riding around on this-

 Shadowmere- aka ‘Cupcake’, the Best Horse Ever

And wearing this-

 Yeah that’s not evil at all.

And doing lots of this- 

-was loved by the guards. They had called Kibbles things like ‘champion’ and ‘hero’. 

I was just called a racial epithet by a guard, and I was honestly insulted. 

Bill the Terminator

During Warband, sometimes you have to participate in city fights. These are tough, but fun, and you can usually only bring two guys with you. I had forgotten to set who was coming with me and was disappointed to find a Swadian Knight, as they weren’t that great at hand-to-hand combat. I expected him not to make it, forgetting who numbered among my knights.

  No taking the tank-horses into castles, you understand.

During the fight I accidentally slipped off the stairs, landing into a group of enemy archers and swordsmen. I was doing pretty well and managed to take a few of them out, but there was no way I was going to win.

Until I saw something cut a bloody swathe through the archers, through the swordsmen, and right up to me.

It was the Swadian Knight, covered in blood, and he had just saved my ass.

 It was Bill.

Bill looked at me for just a second before running off to kill more punk-ass bitches. We took the castle, despite my complete screw-up earlier. It was then that I became convinced that Bill was a glitch, and he was the best glitch ever.

  Screw it, Bill is his own damn tree.

Note: All images are from- The Oblivion Wiki and The Mount and Blade:Warband Wiki

So yeah

Hey Zonie! How's school going?

I'll give you a hint:

Yes, this is actually written in my notebook.

Panic-induced and near-suicidal alternatives to staying in class.

That was the second week of class. One teacher I have is quite good. The other...well...

She has no idea how to explain things and gives an incredible amount of homework, leading to much flailing from me and my classmates. Keep in mind we're all seniors in college and this is our second-to-last semester. We're good at being in college by now. We can BS with the best of them and can write papers in our sleep, or in the hour before class, as the case may be. We can slap together projects and deal with demanding professors. What we can't do? Understand a single damn thing this woman wants us to do.

Here are some more excerpts/doodles about what this woman does to my brain:

Yes, this was inspired by this comic.

 I'm not trying to disparage my teacher or be all "OMG! Worst teacher evar!"- she's usually quite nice. She just doesn't seem to understand that our flailing means that we don't understand. I'm not quite sure what she thinks, or why she thinks everyone seems to be so exasperated. Even her attempts to clarify things make us go into a slight panic:
Her: "Oh, I want things in this format, except when I don't. No, I don't seem to have listed or written that anywhere in your syllabus or told you or put it on the course homepage, but you're in college now and I expect higher-caliber work."
Us: "But ma'am, every professor seems to want different things when we do papers, even when they say APA format. Some want a cover page, some don't. Most don't want an abstract either. Could you just write what you want down please?"
Her: "I want an abstract, a cover page and a heading- true APA format."
Us: "Oh...okay. On every paper?"
Her: "No."
Us: "On...the paper we just turned in?"
Her: "Yes."
Us: "But...it's a two-page opinion/reaction paper. An abstract/summary would either be half of the paper itself, or one line of text."
Her: "Like I said, I expect higher-caliber work from college students."
Us: *blank stare, shifting to looking at one another and shrugging* "Okay, what about the paper that's due next week?"
Her: "Oh, no APA for that. Now I'm going to read a story! Also there's a discussion due in two days that I put online!"
Us: "But...how are we...supposed to know...it's not written anywhere...how many things are due next week?"
Her: "It's about a squirrel! It's a metaphor for how you're all afraid to try new things!"
Me: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
 Her:"Now I'm going to write on the board! It has nothing to do with what I was previously talking about!"
Me: Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!



On the plus side I am writing again, so there's that.

I Think I'm Becoming Racist Against Vampires

I'm already pretty racist against High Elves (They think they're so damn perfect. Wood Elves are okay though. Usually.) but generally I like vampires. I get them. As other people have pointed out they're supposed to represent what happens when a person stops thinking of others as people and starts thinking of them like prey. They're powerful because they're willing to step on and/or kill people to get what they want.
Hey, I even get why people find them attractive. The bad boy/girl mojo usually wrapped up in a package that also contains supernatural abilities and generally comes with wealth. Score. Sure you might end up dead if you date a vampire but I suppose that's also part of the allure. It's dangerous, which makes it interesting and they'll change their ways for a person they like. It would make a person feel special to be involved with someone like that. It's the same reason people date absolute bastards sometimes- they feel special because they treat them differently than everyone else.
Smart, sexy, worldly, powerful- so why am I not liking vampires? Guess what, it's not because of Twilight, though that may account for some of it.

Real surprise.

It's because I like werewolves.
Yeah, say what you will about them, but I think werewolves are totally awesome, especially the White Wolf kind. I'm a canine kind of person. I have both a wolf and an Anubis tattoo. I think there's so much that could be done with werewolves and they're just not getting the kind of love that they should.

 This is the basis for my tattoo, if you're wondering how lame it is.

While werewolves are getting the shaft, vampires are becoming the coolest thing ever, to the point where no one's really surprised if a vampire shows up in a story.

If a werewolf shows up in a vampire story, the wolf gets to play second fiddle if he or she is lucky. Don't know what I'm talking about? Let's review. 

True Blood- All photos are from the True Blood Wiki.

The show, not the books.

To be fair, I really like this show, it's just one of the ones where it has stood out for me that werewolves are getting shafted.  Despite the fact that season three was promoted like this:

 

The aforementioned werewolves spend most of the season getting ordered around by this guy:

To be fair he is actually pretty threatening.

Now the story goes that Mr. White Horse has a group of werewolves following him around like a pack of hunting hounds because he feeds them addictive vampire blood. He's been doing this since vikings were roaming around and messing up the place. Maybe even before then.

The problem is that so far only one werewolf  isn't completely under a vampire's thumb (also maybe the hairdresser one?) and despite the warnings of how powerful they are, said weres have proven about as effective as a regular German Shepherd would be.

 Aww who's terrifying? You are! Yes, you are!

This might be because everyone else has a heavy dose of plot armor while the werewolves are red shirts. It might be because having werewolves more like the usual  kind (the kind that can turn into 8 foot death beasts) are too damn expensive to make for a TV show, but it just serves as another reminder that a werewolves just aren't as cool or smart as vampires. Heck they can't do anything unless a vampire is ordering them around, can they? They'd just be running around in the forest peeing on trees if it weren't for the blood-suckers.

Jerks.

Underworld

I hate this movie, so if you like it, I'm sorry.

Someone told me that this movie is kind of like the White Wolf story but really, I don't like it. Werewolves were once slaves to the vampires. Werewolves rebel (with the help of a vampire) and become hobos.

Let's pull something from wikipedia on the werewolf leader, Lucian:

 "Lucian is portrayed as being significantly more sophisticated than his fellow Lycans. He usually makes a point of being polite and rarely gets angry. His calm and cautious demeanour contrasts with other Lycans. His species are not always civilized; an early scene in the first movie shows a pair of Lycans fighting while being cheered on by a group of other Lycans. Lucian berates them for acting like a pack of rabid dogs and it appears his leadership is what keeps them disciplined. Ironically Lucian's former life as a servant to Viktor [an f'ing slave-owning vampire] is probably the reason for his greater sophistication."

(italics and small rant mine)

Lesson: vampires are twats and you'd be much better off if only you'd just behave like a good doggy.

Being Human (North American Remake)

This show is, as of now, only into it's third or so episode but already the poor werewolf (Josh) is getting kicked around by vampires. Now he's the traditional form of werewolf- meaning he changes unwillingly during the full moon and has no control during that time, so I can forgive some things.

This show is notable in that I realized I automatically despised every vampire except for the main one (Aidan), because he seems like a pretty cool guy and doesn't give the werewolf any crap.

 You can live, vampire guy on the right, you can live.

What really irked me- a fledgling vampire (maybe a week old?) kicks Josh around and kills one of his friends. EAT HER ALREADY MAN.

Twilight
Do I even need to say it? The werewolf hits on the vampire's girlfriend and protects her sorry bum when the vampire isn't around. Of course he doesn't get the girl. There are vampires around, man!
 

Conclusion

Think about it. If someone said to you "Oh they're just animals really. Without our help they wouldn't be much more than savages" about another section of humanity, you'd probably rip their tits off for it.

But vampires get away with it. All. The. Time.

 I think if there ever comes a time when we can all change into werewolves and vampires, I'm going to the wolves and leading a revolution against the long-toothed oppressors. 

 Berets optional.

Maybe the humans will attempt to drive us out and both species will band together and learn something but I doubt it. The vampires will probably try and blame everything on us. Damn socialites.

 

I'm supposed to do what now?

XKCD has hit on this before- the feeling that people shouldn't be trusting me with nice things or responsibilities because deep down, I'm pretty sure that I'm nowhere near ready to handle that yet. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my maturity level has gone down as I've aged.

 

You can always test the deadness of things by poking it with a stick.

In a way this is a good thing. I’m not longer the terrified wreck I was as an adolescent, too scared to talk for fear of saying something wrong. I’ve learned that things just go wrong sometimes and that I’ll probably never understand fashion, along with a few other key truths. The need to just survive the day without doing anything embarrassing was worn down in the days where I just had to survive long enough to pay the rent.

Sleep was for the weak.

And for those that valued their sanity, but they worked somewhere else.

But despite all I’ve learned, I keep having the nagging feeling that I really don’t know enough yet. I don’t understand stocks, bonds or any of that (what the devil is a mutual fund?). I’ve been in school for years and keep running into things I don’t understand (though I suspect financial aid is unclear on purpose). I don’t really know how a car works or how to take care of it properly.

I get the feeling that I’m not really as advanced as I should be.

I probably would’ve been good at that whole hunter/gatherer thing. I could have made a fire. Heck I probably could’ve been the person who drew animals on cave walls and made stone cairns. 

My one area of pseudo-expertise, knowing monsters and how to combat them, probably would’ve landed me a cool cave-man job. 

Right now I’m just the person who sits on the couch thinking of how vampire/werewolf prejudice would play itself out in a realistic setting (damn fangs are always keepin’ a brother down) instead of one of those awesome people who are good at responsibility and time management. You know, those people who actually know how to invest money and can hold down two jobs while taking classes. The people who can start businesses and show up at 8 am looking polished and professional.

Damn them and their bar-raising.

Despite clearly not being one of those people and the fact that I’m probably not cut out for this advanced a society, people keep handing me responsibilities. They ask me to watch their children, houses and pets. They give me grants and loans. They come to me for advice like I actually know what I’m doing. There has to be some kind of explanation for this.

Is it all an elaborate ruse? Are we all still five years old inside, wanting nothing more than to blow off what we’re doing and pretend to be Batman instead?  Are there only a few real adults on the planet, getting things done while we just make it up as we go along, hoping no one will notice?

I kind of hope so. I mean at least then if I get caught doing something really goofy people will understand.

 Reason #332 of why I should not be a teacher.

Plus it makes the world seem less boring. I mean, should my hypothesis prove correct, you could potentially talk your co-workers into a giant game of hide and go seek.

Or a water balloon fight.