hpapillon

It's been bad for a year. I've been having physio appointments for months. It's not terrible. But any improvement is mild at best.

How old are you?
40

Tattoos?
No

Ever hit a deer?
I do not drive, which makes that unlikely. I have seen deer while I was in a car.

Ridden in an ambulance?
No, even with the thing that happened last year we took a taxi.

Sang karaoke?
Not the bouncing ball kind. I may have had a backing track tape that I sang along with at some point in the 90s.

Ice skated?
Took lessons when I was very very small, long enough to learn to go forwards and back and stop.

Ridden a motorcycle?
No.

Stayed in hospital?
I don't recall whether I had to stay overnight when I had the eye operation, because I was tiny. The most recent incident you could technically say I stayed 'overnight' but only because it was night when we got there and the next morning when we left.

Skipped school?
Only by pulling a sickie (or once, a mental health day). I only missed school by being "home sick", not by physically wandering off. I'm not entirely sure whether they're counted separately, since my understanding of schools other than my own tiny one comes entirely from television.

Last phone call?
What's a phone? (We have a house phone. It rings sometimes. I don't answer it. I own a mobile. It's usually out of battery. If it rings, it's a spammer, I don't answer it either. As far as actually making a phone call goes, most likely it would have been to a taxi company.)

Last text from?
Seriously, what's a phone? (I do have a mobile! Texts received on it are either my phone company trying to get me to buy more minutes, the taxi saying it's arrived, two-factor authentication, or me telling someone I'm at an airport)

Watched someone die?
No.

Pepsi or Coke?
Coke. I have a sodastream and I buy the big syrup boxes so I no longer go through endless piles of bottles.

Favorite pie?
punkin

Favorite pizza?
Freschetta hawaiian. Or maybe the co-op's limited edition pastrami pizza with mustard drizzle? Or that macaroni-and-cheese pizza I only got to have once that was surprisingly good? I like a lot of pizza.

Favorite season?
Fall, probably. Leaves and spice.

Broken bones?
Not unless I've fractured something without knowing it.

Received a ticket?
There's that whole not driving thing.

Favorite color?
Rich dark purples.

Sunset or sunrise?
Sunset, I need to get to sleep before sunrise.

Okay, so, it was a test dream sort of, but not the old ‘you’re late and you forgot there was an exam and you haven’t studied’. This started out as supposedly a surprise test in a game design workshop (so not related to childhood). And it began with a bunch of weird instructions about how to fold and line our test papers because the downloadable templates were buggy. Then there were some 3d graphics floating in midair and the instructor said we’d be having to calculate their weight (?) but first we had to get up and move to the next testing point.

At this point it stops being about game design and starts moving towards more of a space academy type thing, because we're getting up and walking towards a shuttle. Except me, because as I start to leave the first room a mysterious figure in a cloak stands up and throws a cloak over me and restrains me. Just me. First I'm really confused and not sure if I'm being directed to a different test so I just quietly submit, but as everyone else is leaving I start to struggle and protest.

At this point my viewpoint cuts to somewhere else and I can see the rest of my class proceeding towards the shuttle. One or two of them hang back, confused, because they heard my cries for help and, uh, shouldn't they do something about that?

And the teacher says a bunch of confusing things about how they have to finance these trips somehow, implying that I'm being sold, and the rest of the class is just 'come on, get on board' so they give up and abandon me. Except "I'm" now controlling another body entirely (a sort of tall thin plant person) and watching them do this and tsking at them, and I think maybe we're actually all in some kind of simulation?

Some stuff happens that I can't remember and the shuttle gets into danger and the instructor ends up being injured and lying there bleeding out and he tries to explain to the class that the earlier kidnapping was part of the test (which they kind of failed) but "I" am now on board in a different form because the teachers set it up that way (I'm seeing this part in an omniscient view, not from my new body) and I have two keycode items on me that only I can activate, and the teacher tells the class which code is which, one is a sleeping gas that will knock me out and one is something that will give me superpowers which will be very useful for getting them out of the mess they're currently in (and for some reason this is called "the cuteknights", maybe it's pink power rings, maybe part of my brain vaguely recalled this was supposed to be game related).

So I suspect the real test for both them and me was going to be navigating the landscape of mistrust and betrayal to see if we could manage to work together, or something, since obviously "I" was a bit annoyed at them for abandoning me to the slavers, and they may or may not be willing to trust me with super powers, if they can even find me among the plant alien crew.

I keep a tag on my tumblr entirely for music that I heard while it was playing on one of my weird BBC radio programs and went "What IS that?" and had to look it up.

It doesn't necessarily encapsulate my taste in music, but it might be mildly interesting for someone to analyse.

If for some reason you have a perverse desire to read my live reactions to eurovision I did that on tumblr: http://hanakogames.tumblr.com/tagged/eurovision/page/4

Being kind of gothy does not actually leave me as well-prepared for funerals as you might expect.

Everything is too lacy, too frilly, too low-cut, too ragged...

I should really get the hang of using this someday. At the moment, however, trying to figure out how to set up the correct friends lists and filtering on the DW side as opposed to the LJ side is slightly beyond me.

So every now and then in recent years I hunt up books by authors that I first got to know through the uber-Xena fanfiction movement. I generally don't buy the paper versions of the stories that I've *already* read because I've already got them on my computer, I pick out other things by people I like.

Most such purchases have been a little disappointing. I'm not sure why - the first problem that comes to mind is that it's a little predictable watching a really obvious lesbian pairing deal with their differences and then get together, but uber-xena fic is even MORE predictable and I ate that stuff up, so... I dunno. Maybe I'm in a different frame of mind when I'm chewing on delicious candy fanfic online than when I've actually bought a book? I've also bought one other that's a mystery/ghost story sort of thing rather than pure romance but that particular author is extremely hit-and-miss for me (she goes deep into atmosphere for books but said atmosphere is sometimes too vulgar for my tastes... some of her works I love like crazy, others I can't stand)

So what all this comes down to is that I just finished reading The Strange Path, first book of D Jordan Redhawk's Sanguire trilogy, and despite myself I really enjoyed it. Enough wheels and characters spinning to keep things from being super-predictable, and our lesbian protagonist's love life is not that simple either.

Why despite myself? Vampires. Seattle. I have too much background there and it makes me automatically nitpicky of new flavors of Our Vampires Are Different, and I find myself a bit dubious that Seattle's homeless culture actually works like that, although it's not like I would know either. But those were just little niggles in my mind, not stopping me from eagerly turning pages.

Dear Vis:

It's been almost six years since the last glimmer of echoes that might once have been your words, and I have no way to know if you'll ever see this.

I still miss you.

It's funny after all this time, who I can still find and who I can't. Did I mention how long the rabbit was lost for before we found him again? And whose name I stole for my own nefarious purposes?

I hope all is well for you, even if I'm not quite who I once was.

- Synthea of Tremere

Once in a while I meet someone who actually saw the original show, and they tend to raise an eyebrow when they find out who I was named after. I _didn't_ see the show so I can only judge the character based on vague things I've read. I think there was a drunk-driving incident, but she got better, and she did nice things too! (I think.)

I do hope no one watching the recent series names their daughter Persephone. That would be rather wince-inducing.

(Of course, at least one newspaper article is comparing Lady Persie to Lady Georgina. Oh dear.)