Smoke Reflection

SNOW! (Okay fine. It didn't accumulate at all, and they even said there would be 3 to 5 inches, but what do I see? NOTHING. A GIANT GREAT BIG NOTHING! It even stopped snowing...there go my hopes of building a snowman.) Of course, HISD refused to let us out of its clutches but screw them. Unfortunately, our tournament is canceled...on the plus side though, I can do all the homework/final review that I have to do NOW.

The Stanford decision looms, and although I really don't expect to get in (it'll require me being luckier than I have been my entire life), there's always that tiny sliver of a chance. (Sigh) SCREW THEM, if they don't take me, there are other colleges that really want me.

Hi, this is my first Sandman fanfiction, so I'm sorry if things are a little screwy with it.

Title: Dreams of Desire
Author - juurensha (also known as ice illuser on ff.net)
Rating - PG
Pairing - None really, unless you want to interpret it as Dream/Desire
Warnings - spoilers for The Kindly Ones and The Wake
Summary - Desire doesn’t dream. But if Desire were to dream which Desire doesn’t , perhaps he or she dreams of black hair, dark robes, and a solemn, grave voice that echoes with responsibility and infuriating stubbornness.
Disclaimer- I obviously don't own Sandman or else why would I be writing fanfiction?

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5542056/1/Dreams_of_Desire

We won 2nd! Yeah, okay so we could have really beat St. Johns A in the last round, but still, we did better than we've ever done better. (Although not getting that Ministry of Love question? THE SHAME.) Anyway, we swept the chemical symbols 60 second round (Wilkins really does come handy in moments like these), and I got all of the poems bonus because Ms. Seward let me memorize Hamlet's soliloquies and Invictus for extra credit (Thank you Ms. Seward!). It was really fun. Even if I am exhausted. And I have a giant tower of homework looming above me to do tomorrow. Ah well.

So it seems that my Ring girl impression was so good last year that they upgraded it to an entire room. I was once again the Ring/Grudge girl except this time I had to stay in a room and not at the entrance (which I thought was more fun, since my room was second to last, and all the easily terrified people have run away). They wanted me to act insane, so I ended up crawling on the ground on hands and knees with my legs moving in very weird motions (if I wasn't so flexible this wouldn't have worked at all. And my legs still hurt). There were MANY brats. People got punched in the stomach (okay, one person), and I got pummeled once. (I grabbed the kid and his friend was begging me not to hurt him. Oh, how I hate brats...and then there was this kid who told me to crawl. Like hell. I booted them out. I should have clawed and twisted their scrawny intestines out. ) If I somehow do this again, I'm going to need knee-pads because my knees are completely scraped up. On the plus side, I seemed to be one of the scariest things in the house. (People took pictures of me. I'm not sure why).

And Oni-con yesterday was loads of fun. I got one of those cute hats with a cat face and ears. But everything was so expensive...

I AM SO TIRED. We got to school at 7:20 in the morning and then came back at 7:00 pm because of the tournament running late and then the individual competition (that was fairly stupid). We won 8 rounds and lost 2 to St. Marks and LASA B. St. Johns A doesn't look too strong this year (they couldn't get Winston Smith), but I'm probably writing them off way too early since we never faced them. We nearly lost to our B team (at half time, 5 to 120), but managed to pull up in the end to win (165 to 160). At the very least, I didn't feel so inclined to drown myself anymore. There were some captainship issues, but oh well. I'm still happy I got all of the Jane Austen and Jane Eyre bonus right. It was pretty fun.

So I claimed another character because I was bored.

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School is alright, although Chinese 5 is probably what purgatory feels like. Made National Merit, so I'm pretty happy about that, although I'm still not sure how to order transcripts for college apps.

Due to looking over way too many college essay prompts and having set my mind basically a-whirl after writing the extended essay for U of Chicago (and I still have no idea how long the thing is supposed to be), I took this test again. It changed a little bit.


My personalDNA Report

Oh, and I managed to get 5's on all my AP's except for a 4 on Compsci. That makes 8, so hopefully National AP scholar?

Oddly enough, I got into Cable and Deadpool (based on the shipping manifesto. That makes two, with Eyeshield 21 with Hiruma/Mamori as the first), and even managed to find a site with scans: http://comic-skulled.blogspot.com/2009/06/cable-deadpool-006.html

It's pretty good in a kind of twisted way. (Eyeshield 21 ended...but Hiruma/Mamori looks kind of cannon, so yay).

AC meeting was pretty fun.

Hm...this seemed interesting, so let's see if it actually works.





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There's supposed to be a dragon...or an egg? Not too sure...

So, I got made AC captain. Although the shock has worn off a bit (I think I had a deer in the headlights look the entire time for the rest of dinner), it's still just sinking in. It's really different from being made news editor because while I was sort of expecting to become editor, captainship was pretty unexpected (I thought it was going to be Arronowitz or Randi, since she is editor-in-chief already). However, this opens up a whole new can of worms because Jimmy was pretty pissed off. But if he was talking to me by the end of the day yesterday, that's a good thing right? (Unless he's secretly plotting a coup...but that wouldn't even work). Either ways, now I have this fancy looking red tie that's way too big for me (it comes with the captain position much like the clue-by-four came with being news editor, except you can't kill people with it that easily), a banquet to plan, summer practice to somehow work out, and a possible movie night. And I have no idea what C team (soon to be B team) is going to think about me, and I suck at giving speeches. Not to say I'm not kind of excited at the exact same time, because it is AC captain after all. After going through hell with PACE, the local tournaments and teams look a bit like a breeze. I think we can beat them, but we still have gigantic shoes to fill (A team, ranked 24 or something like that out of all the teams at PACE, and there were some really hard teams there. I have no idea what we ranked, and I'm not sure I want to know.). (Sigh) We're really going to miss all of our seniors...

Okay, the more I type the more convoluted it's getting, so I think I'll just stop now. D.C. was loads of fun though!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AP'S ARE FINALLY DONE! I CAN GO TO THE NEWS BANQUET, THE ANIME CLUB PARTY, AND THEN GO WATCH STAR TREK THE MOVIE! AND THEN I CAN GO READ MORE MERLIN FANFICS AND ATTEMPT TO FIND SEASON 1 HOUSE EPISODES! And then I'll have to go study pre-cal, finish up a Chinese project, and do god knows what for chem...oh well. At least I'm News editor and anime club treasurer now. And the D.C. trip is in just one week!

So...4 AP's down, 2 to go. Along with a nuclear chem test and a pre-cal test, and god knows what else. Compsci wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be, Chinese was pretty easy (and I got to read Sandman during the break), English Lit was fairly easy except for the two rhetorical essays (and I lost count of how many seniors asked me what I was doing there. I've been getting so many strange looks...), and APUSH was pretty easy (although I could have written better essays with more time). Also, I became news editor (yay), and my co-editor seems pretty nice. We'll see how NHS elections go, but I probably don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting an officer position. So tired...but I'm not as badly off as some people who decided to double up on APUSH and Euro, am I? (And I still maintain Monster smells, and probably tastes like what would happen if you took that disgustingly sweet smell in a candy store, solidified it, and then melted it down into a liquid. Disgusting).

Long story short, we didn't qualify for nationals, but we did beat St. Johns B and St. Johns A. Can I please repeat that again just to savor the taste of victory again? We, Bellaire B, beat St. Johns A. (We didn't even realize it at first. We had the idea that it was pretty close, and so when they got the last question, we thought we had lost. So we were shaking hands in a resigned fashion, when I asked for the score, and it turned out it was St. Johns A 250, Bellaire B 310. We probably incourteously squealed, but can you honestly blame us?) Unfortunately we lost to St. Johns C after lunch. ....I don't really understand either. We lost it by one question too...but Mr. Peek said that was the first he could remember that a Bellaire B team has ever beat a St. Johns A team. Anyway, Bellaire A won first against Kinkaid in a match that was basically a slaughtering. Bellaire C did great in the JV division as well.

I watched Watchmen again with Linlin, and now I bring fanfiction. ...somehow it's a bit sad. Oh well. Spring Break is nice.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4929474/1/Five_Minutes_To_Midnight

Oh, and here's an article I found. I think it's interesting....

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/71192-psycho-smackdown-watchmens-rorschach-vs.-the-dark-knights-joker/

So I saw the movie last night with Aveline, Joy, Joy's friend, and Patch (who I wanted to disembowel for being late and making me miss out on ordering a cold coffee instead of getting Joy to buy a hot one for me), and it was fairly good. Not good enough to make me want to buy it, but most likely good enough that I wouldn't mind having an illegal copy of it (hinthint Aveline). The rest of this section will have spoilers, so don't read if you don't want to.

Let's begin with my favorite character, Rorschach (who I actually like to call Mr. Inkblot, but I won't in this review out out of respect and the fact that I actually know how to pronounce his name now). Psychotic? Yes. Maybe a split-personality disorder? Yes. Borderline delusional? Oh yes, but we all love him for it anyway. (This is the point where we're perhaps carted off to the loony bin, whoopee.) To me, it's refreshing to see a character that sticks to his values, no matter how brutal they might actually be. I don't like his interrogation methods, but it's brilliant how he can use anything as a weapon (toilet). I wasn't watching the part where he "became Rorschach" though. (I was wincing at the squelchy noises, while Aveline was beaming at the screen, weren't you Aveline?) Plus, he's the only one to go against the evil plot in the end. What can I say, I have a really big weakness for antiheroes.

Next, Niite Owl II (who I will call Owlman, you Batman rip-off). His romance with the girl? Cradle-robbing and sap. Those two set off defiling every place possible, and if the movie just skipped or cut those parts I would have been able to see the ending...oh well. Also, he's pretty lame with the whole announcer "Please remain calm" sort of thing. And he goes along with the evil plot. The one redeeming quality of him to me is the fact that him and Rorschach act like a squabbling married couple (off to find fics...).

Third, Silk Spectre II (or the girl as I will call her). I don't care if your boyfriend is detached from all of humanity (why were you dating him in the first place anyway?), you still shouldn't rebound that fast with the whole "Oh, but John will understand." No. And the costume? Yellow latex doesn't look good on anyone, sorry to say. And she goes along with the evil plot.

Fourth, Dr. Manhattan (or Mr. Blue Glowy Guy as I will call him because it's so much fun to say). Let the idea of clothes enter our life once again please for god's sake. (My eyes were always focused at a corner of the screen during those points.) And he's a bit of a cradle-robber himself. Although, it was interesting to see how he viewed the world. (But his reason to come back to Earth too late was lame.) But I can't forgive him for killing Rorschach.

Last, Ozymandias (who I will call Alexander the Great because what sort of name is Ozymandias anyway?). I will admit, the actor is very good-looking, but the clothes? You're not supposed to run around wearing armor molded precisely to show off muscles (even if it's black and gold) or purple and gold suits (shudder). And I completely disagree with his idea to sacrifice millions to save possible billions. Ends do not justify the means. And he pretty much killed Rorschach, so I detest him.

Who else? Well, there's the Comedian (no nickname because I just don't have one for him) whose murder drives the story. I really think he was more sadistic than Rorschach in the end though. I liked the flashbacks to some degree. All in all, it was very interesting.

Since during my birthday I didn't bother to post anything special, I will just post this poem called Kate I found by Lord Tennyson.

I know her by her angry air,
Her bright black eyes, her bright black hair,
Her rapid laughters wild and shrill,
As laughters of the woodpecker
From the bosom of a hill.
’Tis Kate–she sayeth what she will;
For Kate hath an unbridled tongue,
Clear as the twanging of a harp.
Her heart is like a throbbing star.
Kate hath a spirit ever strung
Like a new bow, and bright and sharp
As edges of the scimitar.
Whence shall she take a fitting mate?
For Kate no common love will feel;
My woman-soldier, gallant Kate,
As pure and true as blades of steel.

Kate saith ‘the world is void of might.’
Kate saith ‘the men are gilded flies.’
Kate snaps her fingers at my vows;
Kate will not hear of lovers’ sighs.
I would I were an armed knight,
Far-famed for well-won enterprise,
And wearing on my swarthy brows
The garland of new-wreathed emprise;
For in a moment I would pierce
The blackest files of clanging fight,
And strongly strike to left and right,
In dreaming of my lady’s eyes.
O, Kate loves well the bold and fierce;
But none are bold enough for Kate,
She cannot find a fitting mate.

...it's actually probably very, very self-centered of me to post that, but I do like that poem.

Oh, and this. It's Silky Heart, the 2nd opening to Toradora (which is such an adorable show).

とらどラ! 『Silky Heart』♡ It seems my silky heart will break

Isn't it nice?

So, finally finished something.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4895425/1/VirtueVice

Azula's part is really long...as in longer than all the other parts combined...oh well. My fic, I can do what I want. (Besides, this one isn't half as cracky as some of the things I've written out.)

I think I'll do an Ouran fic next...probably Haruhi/Tamaki

-When you only notice that your birthday is coming up because you scribbled it in your planner as an afterthought
-When you look up different types of mental disorders on Wikipedia when you're bored (and actually have time) because you're certain there has to be some reason you're putting yourself through this
-When you happily memorize pages of Hamlet for extra credit, because it's the most enjoyable homework assignment you have
-When you scoff at the SAT word list because you know them all
-When you're worrying about whether or not your GPA dropping 0.03 points really does bump back you back 10 places
-When you obsessively play Sporcle
-When you're deliriously happy to watch a movie in a class
-When you can grind out a Chinese essay and oral from pure b.s. and words that you asked your parents
-When your handwriting is too small to be legible
-When you start coming up with conspiracy theories in everything
-When you have a sadistic sense of humor that you cackle at the thought of messing up the lab equipment for the sophomores
-When any day that actually doesn't have a test/quiz is a miracle
-When your labs never come out right and all the numbers have to be somehow "fixed"
-When you feel like eviscerating the idiot who complains although he's only taking 2 AP classes daily
-When you sign up to take 6 AP exams (including English Lit even though that's actually for seniors)
-When you want to somehow vivisection the person who said sophomore year was the hardest
-When you come to school no matter how miserably ill you are, even if you're on the verge of dying
-When you want to scream at the sophomores/freshmen complaining about how hard their classes are when they don't have the Demon Lord of Chem

....hm, I can't think of any more (although most of those were just me ranting...). Ah well. That's basically life right now.

Just a question: when someone says to make a sentence out of the word lucid, which means sane, what's the first thing you think of? Because in my head it seems that the only time you'd be talking about sanity would be when someone is unfortunately lacking it. Hence the following sentence written for the English Ziplock bag assignment: During one lucid and sane moment, the woman found to horror that she was locked in a grimy, padded cell before laughing manically and tearing at her hair once more. (It might have been a little different, but that is the general gist of it.)

Was that really so strange?

Oh, and I took the SAT Lit test. It was alright I suppose...but the Pygmalion Galatea poem was just weird.

...hm, I haven't posted at all in 3 weeks... (and 2 of those weeks were Winter Break...I get really lazy...) Well, anyway it's the new semester (and there's already homework piling on, go figure, and a pop chem quiz the 1st day we got back) and at least I scraped by with an A in chem last semester (yay). I only managed to post one fic during the winter break...(and there's not many reviews since it's a Catwoman fic in the Dark Knight section whose fandom from the fics at least seem to be made mostly up of people who ship Joker/Batman which I still think is so disturbing. SO VERY DISTURBING, and this is coming from someone who watched all of Higurashi.) I'm working on an Avatar fic right now (and somehow Katara is the hardest to write for me. Considering how much screen time she had, this is frankly ridiculous. ...but she's just not as interesting as Toph or Azula...) and I think the 7 deadly sins idea is overused, but this is my first time writing one of those, so does that count as okay? (I even managed to work in the 7 heavenly virtues as well...) Well, I'll post something eventually (...watch it be a month later. My Bleach fic hasn't been updated in a long, long time...but at least they can't find ice illuser in person. Or else I would be yelled at...although I do get random PM's anyway.)

On another (less drabbly, scatterbrained) note, when we went to Starbucks, Newland and Mazzoni were sitting there drinking coffee as well. (Thank God Mazzoni doesn't remember yelling at Randi and me when we went to go interview National Merit people during his class last year...too many Asian girls. They weren't doing anything that day anyway.) It was kind of awkward. And Dillon nearly got us kicked off the 2nd floor in Borders (I think you can hear him yelling through walls.)