POTC fanfiction + KHII
I’m not too happy with the progress I’ve made with Odessea thus far… I think I sorta lost interest in Norrington halfway through the POTC craze. I do want to finish it, and while I pretty much have the ending sketched out in mind, there seems to be a serious lack of motivation to go on. The third chapter can attest to that… it’s so incredibly boring.
After doing a short on Sri Sumbhajee, I’ve also been wanting to do backstories for each of the pirate lords. I currently have my eye on Gentleman Jocard or Capitaine Chevalle. I would’ve liked to do Villanueva if not for the fact he looked like a monkey, sounds like a gorilla, and me having a serious disinterest in Spanish history. But of course, these ideas are pretty much going nowhere because I am a big lazy piece of incompetent shit.
I’ve also been wanting to write more Calypso/Davy Jones, but I’m also fresh out of ideas. It seems like every aspect of their ZOMGtragic!love has already been stomped on and done to death… and I’m still waiting for a conclusion, Disney!
Speaking of Disney, I finally beat Kingdom Hearts I (by cheating; I found myself throwing the controller at the TV while wailing something along the lines of ‘NO, I WILL NOT WASTE ANOTHER 15 HOURS LEVELING UP TO DEFEAT THE FINAL BOSS’), so I’m now on KHII. KHII is infinitely better than the original. Most of the gripes I had with the first game were solved - the right analog stick finally has some purpose, the music isn’t blasting away, and the combat isn’t as grueling. Selecting magic isn’t as tough, and the items also have their own shortcuts. Also, the special commands look absolutely awesome to watch, and it’s great that you just have to hit triangle when the game invites you to, instead of scrolling all the way down on the menu to execute it.
The spacecraft shooting levels are now more dynamic and less technical, although I’m not too sure why now we have to mash X repeatedly to fire instead of holding the damn thing down. My thumbs hurt, and the ship still looks like something made in 1995. The graphics look much better instead of just giving us a big damn square to run around in, but there are still some levels that look like that.
Despite all that marvelous improvements, the storyline falls a bit short. I’ve only played for 12 hours, but first impressions of the story were not so great. Firstly, the player controls this new character named Roxas, and the storyline gave me to him for three hours before releasing Sora. For the first hour and a half I was yelling ‘WHERE IS SORA? WHY THE FUCK AM I CONTROLLING THIS ROXAS?!’ before finally accepting my fate (by that, I mean I didn’t dawdle around anymore and sped through the game so I could get to Sora quickly).
The game also gives you the overall storyline in bits and pieces. It seems like everyone around you knows what’s going on, but you haven’t got a clue. This really calls for some frustration, where you have long, LONG cutscenes that talk about things that you don’t get, and it just seems to be a call for ‘replay the game again and you’ll see everything makes sense!’ In the original KH (or any other Square-Enix game, actually), you always start out with everyone knowing nothing and revealing the plotline together. There aren’t any stupid flashforward/flashback sequences with characters you hardly know, talking in riddles that you’ll probably only get on the second replay.
Eh… But anyway, so far, I like KHII. I suppose the nicer combat system is this main driving point for me this time, instead of the storyline that did it for me in KHI. But we’ll see… that might change.
Blah blah blaaaahh
I’ve been suspecting that I have delayed sleep phase syndrome, where my body clock doesn’t exactly like to go to sleep at 11pm, but I instantly fall asleep during the afternoon. It’s a horrendously annoying thing, especially during schooltime, where afternoon classes are the norm. Without some caffeine I can’t function in the afternoon, and sometimes caffeine doesn’t work too.
I’ve been trying out chronotherapy, so I’m extending my bedtime by two hours every day until the 11pm desired bedtime is reached. As of now, my bedtime’s 12pm in the afternoon… I have another 11 hours to go. Hopefully this’ll get my body clock functioning on US time.
Some time ago I asked if winter was really that bad. The answer is a resounding YES. There is a maximum of 6 hours of daylight on any given day, and you can bet that 5 of those 6 hours will be cloudy. You don’t see any sun at all, and it is, surprisingly, rather depressing. I remember reading up on seasonal affective disorder in NUS, where it states that some people get depressed during the winter because there isn’t enough sunlight, and I thought it was a whole realm of weird. But HEY, it’s true! WAO.
I don’t think I’m actually seriously down or anything, but it does sullen your mood a little, and you don’t really have much motivation to go outside. Not to mention that since I’m trying to change my sleeping schedule, I wind up sleeping through the sunny bits of the day, and I’m faced with pitch black outside for the next 16 hours.
I’ve been wasting my time slugging away on Kingdom Hearts, hoping to finish that game as soon as possible. Oh right, and art update (CS3 performs so much better on my computer than CS2 did). I’m still not getting hair at all, and I haven’t finished detailing the waves… although I think they look kinda fake and nothing can save it. But still! IMPROVING. EVERYONE SAID SO.
I think it’s kinda awesome to see works in progress. It’s fun to see where you started and how you’ve been trodding along so far. ^^ Let me show you it.
Original, Sketch 1, Sketch 2, and Sketch 3.
And most recent WIP:
Whee!
As most of you know, I RP Calypso on raisethecolors. I don’t know how it popped into my head, but I visualized a scene that - in my mind - was just so incredibly inspiring and beautiful. So I wrote it down. And then finding that it didn’t describe enough and that image was still stuck in my head, I went to sketch it out. It’s still rough, and I’ll definitely add details and the like, but the current pose is exactly how I imagined it to be. And it’s 1 am, and I wanna sleep.
Plus, I needed to test out my new Wacom Intuos 3 anyway. 
A few observations:
1. I suck at color (LAURAAAAA ;____;)
2. I still can’t get hair, despite 2 years of attempting to paint it. Calypso’s hair is tied up most of the time, so I haven’t gotten any proper reference.
More nonsense from Pirates of the Caribbean
Among the other more major plotholes that I’ve griped with, this one is minor, but aggravating all the same:
Why is Sao Feng’s charts, made of bamboo, making a grinding stony sound when moved? It’s not a freaking Egyptian tomb, people!
Pirates of the Caribbean + Cinnamon buns
While I was baking cinnamon buns, the stupid smoke detector went off. I swear, that thing doesn’t warn people of smoke, it wants to make people go deaf warning them of the smoke. I took out the battery, and I promised I will air the apartment tomorrow morning.
There was no smoke, I swear it!
—
After watching At World’s End for the fifth time on my computer, I’ve just come to realize one thing:
OHGODTHEEXPOSITION
Not that I’m complaining…
It’s a little strange to see my Davy Jones/Calypso icons used on nearly every RP journal thus far. I mean… I’m flattered and all that, but is there really a lack of icons for the two? And also… I’m none too happy with the lack of crediting on some journals. That really gets me up in a bunch.
For some reason, I feel really bothered by this, and this feeling is strange. The whole point of posting icons and making them public is for them to be used, and that’s exactly what I want! It’s sharing! However, I don’t like this 2 millisecond adrenaline rush that has me going ‘DID THIS PERSON CREDIT ME???’ whenever I spot one of my icons and then still feel uncomfortable even when they do.
I seem to be extremely possessive of my icons, and I do not like this feeling at all. 
Any advice to get rid of this possessiveness?
