Vivat Libertas

Everything said about the prologue applies here, too. Enjoy! “So then, if the opponent feints like so , the correct stance to take up is like so ,” explained Neo, darting around the sunny palaestra and artfully avoiding the eleven students. He was pleased that so many of them were turning out to be good swordsmen. Of course, there was always Grisia...not that that could really be helped.  Meanwhile, the students were sweltering in the summer heat, their eyes drawn to the doors and windows. All the same, they followed Neo’s example to the last flick of the wrist, afraid of his temper. Or at least, they tried to follow Neo’s example to the last flick of the wrist.  With an almighty clanging and a stifled yelp, Grisia managed to trip over his own sword, flicking his legs out elegantly and pointing his delicate feet. Golden hair fell around him in a messy cloud as he splayed his hands wide and drew his legs underneath his trunk, looking up at Neo with innocent blue eyes. ...

Eee, I finally got round to posting this! I do not own the characters or setting, as they belong to Yu Wo. Any anachronisms, OOC-ness or just plain bad writing is, of course, entirely my own fault. Twelve men sat in darkness around a table. No-one so much as dared to breathe; the only sound came from the nervous rustling of papers.  “This isn’t good,” someone said. The others could hear the cracks of age and fear in his voice, much as he tried to hide them.  “I think we’ve already established that,” came a deep, ringing bass. “The question is what we should do.”  “Cover it up, of course!” somebody laughed.  “Are you crazy?! Are you insane?” One of the knights stood up quickly, knocking his chair to the ground with sheer force. “We’ll never manage! The truth will get out somehow!”  “I have to agree with Vaign,” a man purred. “There is no roof which does not leak and no floorboard which can’t be pried loose. People will find out about it somehow.”  “Are y...

I am not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read a bad rapefic. (If anyone's out there, links to good ones would be appreciated to restore my faith in humanity.) Usually, the only purpose that the rape serves in the fic is to highlight the purity and virtue of the Sue  OC before she (and it is usually a she, unless it's yaoi and the rapist then gets together with the victim) is ruined FOREVER by the eeeeeeebil man. And then, one way or another, romance and Magical Healing Sex ™  find their way into the plot. Sometimes, there is not even any logic, as when our OC is forced into slavery, then brought to a chamber and made to bathe, then to put on "nicer" clothes. This in itself is not bad - it's when the author forgets about things like underwear and period-appropriate  clothing. I'd just like to state right now that not everything is bad. A rapefic can, in theory, be done well; so can enslavement. So can OCs. I read a very, very good enslavement fic with no...

...Sigh. The really annoying thing is not being able to find sources for things, so you have to make stuff up and then you have no  idea whether it's accurate or not. If it is, good for you. If it isn't, which is more likely, then you've just turned your work into an anachronism stew - or worse, the characters behave in ways inappropriate for the setting. This is bad enough in fanfiction anyway, but if the characters aren't just OOC but don't behave in ways any normal person would, it's rather troublesome, to say the least. Forgive me my errors, for I looked all over for the information and couldn't find any. I tried hard, I really did, but if there are any medievalists out there reading this, I prefer advice to flames, 'kay?

I write way, way too much. The annoying thing about it is that some of the stuff I write is useful, some isn't, and either way I can't control the process. Anyway, this is more fanfic-y stuff. Skip over this post if you're not into LSK, geekery or fanwank. Being a retard, I forgot to put the names of the teachers up in my last post. (Names of the students are available all over the intarwebbles if you look hard enough, but since I don't speak Chinese or Thai I've had...ahem...problems finding the teachers' names.) Here they are now, to avoid people asking me questions when I put the fic itself up. A word of warning - I have sources for two of the names (Neo and Chasel) - the rest are, to varying degrees, based on whatever I could find and completely made up thereafter. The Names: Neo – Sun Knight Teppe – Storm Knight Tyron – Earth Knight Vaign – Fire/Blaze Knight Nuvol – Cloud Knight Elmyr – Leaf Knight Chasel – Judgement Knight Islé – Ice Knight Her...

...but I feel this is necessary. However, I'm not the ultimate authority on necessity, so your mileage may vary. Thankfully, I was brought up in a decent home, which means I'm not as screwed up as I could have been. I'm still pretty messed up in some ways, but they're not bad enough for me to have been diagnosed with some weird condition. Thankfully, most of the people around me are not complete bastards, and I have enough friends and family to support me when I'm down. I could write "thank you" on every single particle in the observable universe and I still wouldn't be showing enough gratitude to my loved ones for being there for me, but that's another story. No, my rant of the day is about how people act like they're genuinely depressed, when actually they're just trying to get attention. I would now like to state again that I have NOT studied any psychology and any corrections would be very, very welcome. I would also like to state...

Generally being a ditz, I forgot to mention the name of the 'fic I'm writing in my last post. It's called Summer Holiday , and all posts about it will henceforth be tagged with that.

I have been obsessed with a certain series for quite a long time. It's called The Legend of Sun Knight  (or just LSK for short) and can be read  here . It's well worth a look, by the way - basically, it's about the adventures of the thirty-eighth generation Sun Knight, supposedly the most perfect and closest to God...well, supposedly at least. In fact, he's a closet pervert, a drink fiend and very much not  perfect. He also has an unusual propensity for getting himself into troublesome situations...when it's not being funny, it's being interesting, and while it's not great literature, it's certainly worth a look if you like a laugh or if you just like to see fantasy turned upside-down. There's also a manhua scanlated by  Odd Squad Scanlations , which can be read  here . First three chapters are sparkly to the point of ridiculousness, second two are better, but it's recommended that you read the novel otherwise the manhua is a little hard to fol...

Yeah, I'm bored. RULE 1. You can only say Guilty or Innocent. RULE 2. You are not allowed to explain anything unless someone messages you and asks! Now, here’s what you're supposed to do... And please do not spoil the fun. Copy and paste this into your journal, delete my answers, then type in your answers. Then see what happens. 1. Asked someone to marry you? Innocent 2. Kissed one of your friends? Innocent 3. Danced on a table in a bar? Innocent 4. Ever told a lie? Guilty 5. Had feelings for someone whom you can't have back? Guilty 6. Ever kissed someone of the same sex? Innocent 7. Kissed a picture? Innocent 8. Slept in until 5 PM? Innocent 9. Fallen asleep at work/school? Guilty 10. Held a snake? Guilty 11. Been suspended from school? Innocent 12. Worked at a fast food chain/restaurant? Innocent 13. Stolen something? Guilty 14. Been fired from a job? Innocent 15. Done something you regret? Guilty 16. Laughed until something you were drinking came out...

Ah, Facebook. I won't call it the most pointless site on earth, because that would actually be a compliment. Instead, I'll try and describe it as it really is: a place where people baww about their lives, post crappy song lyrics, tell you pointless shit that nobody needs to know, make up passive-aggressive statuses to get desperately needed attention, and indulge themselves in clichés that were already pretty tired about 65 million years ago. It's also incredibly addictive and actually has useful shit mixed in with all the crap, which is what makes it so frustrating. I've just been on it and, as you can see, it's caused a severe drop in my IQ and a bad mood to match - hence the profanity. This was only caused by ONE thing (if it had been caused by more, I think my head would have exploded out of sheer rage - is that a good or a bad thing? Take my speculation as you will). I shall now analyse this one thing in detail and, hopefully, come up with an awesome rebu...

I learnt about 2 cool things today. (Please note that my definition of "cool" is "interesting, unique and enthralling". The things I find interesting and enthralling tend to be quite academic. Therefore, if you're coming here expecting generous helpings of sunglasses, preppy models and general dickery, I suggest you skip over this entire post.) The first was Bruckner's Locus iste . If you haven't heard it, please YouTube it or (better) go listen to a choir perform it. (If you are  in a choir performing it, you're a lucky devil.) I'm doing it with the choir I'm in (a small school choir of about 16-20 people, all pretty good) in 4 days (eep!) and for a candlelit recital we're holding in about a month off (phew). I personally don't find it very grand or enthralling - it's not one of those big and quite magnificent pieces, rather it's a smaller affair - but I do find it...well...cute, in an odd way. I admire the way it's sel...

First of all...whew! Long time no see. This post might be a bit rambling because I'm tired and slightly ill, and really should clear this up, but can't be bothered. The web is a big place. You can find almost anything you want on it, and if it's not there yet, you can rest assured it will be.A lot of people - including me - take the internet as an opportunity to reinvent themselves, to be a brand new and interesting person rather than the boring schmoe stuck in a boring job that they probably are in real life. Some use it as an excuse to get attention and be famous somewhere, anywhere. Apparently this is a bad thing. I can understand where these people come from: I myself am not particularly impressed by people making shitty sites dedicated to photos of them getting drunk on Saturday nights. (If you have  in fact made a site like that and are reading this now, you had better be good at logical argument, because I'm not changing my opinion without a good reason to....