I still have to write up a master fic list (the library will soon be all fics listed in alphabetical order, but there will still be links to author’s pages)—unless we suddenly get a large amount of fic, which isn’t so likely. I will need contact information from willing authors and artists, in case the readers/viewers wish to contact them. Send your preferred methods (or none) to darknightdestiny@gmail.com.

As always, send your icons, fanfiction and fanart to darknightdestiny@gmail.com. I have a few private “wanted” lists, but you’ll know those when you get them, and then you can say “sure!” or shove them in my face! Oh, this is so exciting. =)

In other news, I won the Halloween writing contest on the Fantasy World Network. This means Sarah has been giving me interviews, which has been a BLAST. Those will be up later, both on the FWXD page and on mine. And now…

In Beneath the Stitching, the VincentxTifa Shrine:

• Aesthetics: Probably the biggest change on the page during this time is that I’ve exchanged the graphics more times than I care to count. The about page looks different now, as does the navigation strip and the links page, not to mention that there is a separate links page for banners those who want to link to the site can use.
• Fanfiction: I haven’t added much here—which is a shame, because I’m now remembering that I have a list to attend to. However, Asphyxiation by Tijuana Pirate has been up for a few weeks, and today I’ve added Return to Me, a oneshot by Confusednazgul, previously only accessible through her LiveJournal.
• Other Additions: The songs Sweet Child of Mine by Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Demons by Nyles Lannon. Must remind myself to add more icons tonight.

In Explosive, the VincentxVeld Shrine:

• Aesthetics: None, save that I switched most of the backgrounds to be a uniform black (save for a couple tables), and there’s a new linking banner, two more of which I should be adding soon. Once I remember where I put them.
• Fanfiction: Fiscal Year, a delightful oneshot collaboration by Cendri and Drakon.
• Other Additions: Not so much.

In Dark’s Studio:

• Aesthetics: I’ve re-sectioned my home page and changed the buttons around. I will probably shorten my links list, especially those links that could be connected to my fan shrines instead of my personal page. The writing section is one now, and divided into three smaller pages. I might divide the fanfiction subsection, depending on how reliable (or not) other servers are. If I ever do sell anything, I’ll throw up a store section with links. As it is, the writing consists of demo chapters, fanfiction and miscellaneous articles and reviews.
• Content: As I write and publish new fanfiction or articles, I’m copying them as I go along onto the home page. The rest is going to be a lot of backlogging, but the new writing is all consistent and in time. I added a screen shot of the October FF7 Citadel page, which features the custom Vincent Valentine banner I rendered for the event, to the fanart section. Other new features are the song Mating Game by Bitter-Sweet, and I’ve added my birthday story for Steph to the original selections in the fiction section. The articles section currently only contains my year-old review for Dirge of Cerberus, but there is more on the way.

Oh, and… this page and my LiveJournal now look different. So don’t be surprised if I decide on a whim to change other color schemes. I’m a nut.

In Beneath the Stitching, the VincentxTifa Shrine:

• Aesthetics: Moved the Official artwork to the About Page, and created thumbnails for the artist’s works, making space for a more varied selection from each contributor.
• Fanfiction: Added The Young Man Plays Piano, by Cendri, and Be Bold, But Not Too Bold, by Memoriam.
• Fanart: Added Apart Too Long and Forfeit, Part Two by The Tiramisu of Impending Doom.
• Other Additions: Calculation Theme mp3 by Metric.

In Explosive, the VincentxVerdot Shrine:

• Aesthetics: Moved the Official artwork to the About Page (the Capslock of Love FAQ), and redesigned that to resemble a comic book page.
• Fanfiction: Added The Alexandrite Cross, Grave-digging, Insanity Loves Company: Part One and Trained Liars by Cendri. Added Get Up and Use Me by Darknightdestiny. Added Passive (aggressive) and We All Fall Down by Tijuana Pirate.
• Fanart: Still none. Send to darknightdestiny@darknightdestiny.com.
• Other Additions: Got rid of the Bulletproof mp3 by Alabama State Penitentiary 3, and added Bad Sun by The Bravery and Battleflag by Lo-Fidelity All-stars.

Stay tuned. =)

Haha.

There are still boxes, and I still have to move some things around to make them fit better/look nicer, but at least everything is here. I have plants, too… although that one looks kind of wilted.

Over the past week, we had what I like to call the Big Effing Problem of Doom. Our breaker blew for the apartment, only I wouldn’t have known it so soon if I hadn’t called the power company. But when I looked outside and saw that all of the lights in the hallway were still on, I knew something was up, and I’m glad I didn’t wait for it to come on and waste who knows how long of a time.

So, guy on phone tells me to locate the electric room, which just so happens to be next door (I like living in a corner apartment with no one to my left). He tells me to trip the breaker, which I do. The power comes on.

For about five minutes.

I do it again. The power dies again, and I call him back. I get a different guy this time, one who tells me that if I keep tripping the breaker and the breaker is bad, that it will catch fire. I live on the third floor and don’t want to be caught in a fire with an infant, so I listen to him. He tells me that the breaker is probably bad and that our maintenance guy should take care of it. I thank him and hang up the phone, then I call the maintenance guy.

I explain to him exactly what happened, and he says he’ll get right on it in a couple minutes when he’s finished with what he’s doing. Cool, I think. His wife calls me not two minutes later to tell me that they can’t do it, it’s not something they take care of, they can call a guy first thing Monday morning (it’s Saturday), and they’ll make an appointment—like anyone else it could be for that day or four days from then.

I’m just… gah! How am I supposed to go from Saturday to Thursday with a one-year old in the Florida heat with no air conditioning, no stove, no refrigerator, no lights? I tell Joe and he says he’s going to call her back.

Finally we get them up here, show them that our switch is indeed very hot in comparison to all the others, and they say that even if they could replace it, that’s not the room they would do it from, and they don’t have access to the main room. They come inside, she calls the power company, he takes a look at our air and remembers something.

There may or may not be a problem with our wiring for the AC-unit, based on the fact that someone muttered something about it once before the last tenants were there. He has a book downstairs that he can read up on. Lovely.

Well, we figured out that if we turned off our air, the breaker wouldn’t blow again. It was still ridiculously hot, though. This meant that either it was the breaker, and turning off the air just kept that much energy from zapping it, or else it was the air, and the breaker was fine. Or both. So really, nothing got resolved, but we did have our stove, microwave and refrigerator.

The guy on the phone said he was sorry for telling me the wrong thing, yadda-yadda, an electrician would come out and look at it. We lived with two fans for a while, and then someone did come out, figured out with his handy-dandy tools that there was nothing wrong with the AC-wiring, and replaced that breaker.

Right in the room next door.

Okay, whatever. So he replaces the breaker and I can use my air, but he says he’ll come back in a couple days to do it again, because the warehouse (read: Home Depot) didn’t have the part he needed. So he comes back, and all is peachy.

But wait! Joe’s phone broke the other day. Had to get that replaced and activated, and stupid information transferred because Verizon’s online tech support is USELESS.

Since my Internet has also been acting up ever since I started using the service a week or two ago, I can provide you with an example.

My modem only lasts so long. If I leave it on overnight, even if my computer is off, when I go to turn on the Internet, it won’t boot up correctly. I have to reset it nearly every time I want to turn my computer back on, since I probably use it in twelve-hour cycles (or more, like last night. Whoops). Sometimes my connection goes in the middle of something I’m doing, and I lose information. This makes me want to strangle people things.

I call the service number, and here’s something funny: when they ask me to input my land-line (don’t have one) or data number (goody), and I don’t enter it, I have to follow a series of prompts in order to determine who I am. If I do know where the number is and I put it in, the automated machine… hangs up on me.

I figure this out and do the prompts instead, and they really should have the option of using the keypad OR voice prompts AT LEAST, because the damned thing didn’t register what I was saying half the time, kept interrupting me so of course it didn’t, and I KNOW how to enunciate properly like the good Canadian I most certainly am not. XD

When I finally get to the end of the line and am put on hold, the machine comes back on to tell me that due to the large volume of calls, they can’t handle my request at this time, and I can hang up and try back later. Not, “remain holding,” no! IT HUNG UP ON ME AGAIN.

I decide, “Fuck it!” And lo and behold, my Internet is working again. For a bit.

The ‘net goes down again, so I call back. This guy walks me through the basics even though I am speaking to him in technical terms, and even I have trouble understanding him, and I speak perfect gibberish, ask anyone. He tells me—get this—to switch the ends of my phone cable. To take the same cord, in the same ports, but switch it around.

Tch.

I do that, and still nothing. Since that is apparently all he could hand me, he sends my “ticket number” to the central office, where they will run some very important, all-knowing tests. Sometimes they can fix the problem from the main office (since his diagnostics told him I was having a problem with my connection), and sometimes if they really have to, they’ll send a tech support guy out by appointment. If that happens, they’ll call me, but in the meantime I have this nifty little number should I wish to call back.

“How long should I wait before I call back?” I ask.

“Oh… forty-eight hours.”

…

Okay, what the hell is wrong with this picture? If I were going to wait that long, I DON’T NEED THE DAMNED NUMBER! If they can’t run tests in two days, there is something clearly wrong! I am paying for this service, dammit. I am under contract. I paid for this shitty equipment.

I hang up and fight with my modem, because now the stupid wire and its stupid clip are stuck. Finally after much tugging, I find the Magic Spot of Applied Pressure, and it’s out. I realize that dumb thing Joe brought home for me from my dad’s place is just a router. So I put the wires back into the modem.

Lo and behold, it worked!

You know what this means, don’t you? It means no one is going to bother with my ticket now. Which sucks, because it went out again this morning, and has been going out like this EVER SINCE I GOT IT!!

…

On a brighter side, Johnny is toddling around now. I’m going to call him Johnny Walker.

On Darknightdestiny.com:

• Aesthetics: A new layout with new graphics. The formatting has changed to that of the Shrines; the navigation is on the left along with an mp3 player which will not be affected during the visit by anything other than the viewer’s actions. Also a new color scheme and some neatly laid-out tables that are easy on the eyes.
• Content: I’ve added and deleted some of the sites to which Darknightdestiny.com was linked (ex. check out The Final Fantasy Fanlisting), fixed the link to the Fantasy World Net web-page, and added the fanfiction archive of which I was speaking. My stories currently link out to other sources, but as I get the time I will be replacing them with my own pages. Best to have everything in one place and secondary copies elsewhere, just in case. I’ve also added a fanart section, though it is currently void of content. I am waiting until I can finish a few of my newer pieces, which I’m not so ashamed of posting. Also, five new tunes (one is familiar to those who visit the VinxTifa Shrine).
• P.S. I like guest-book entries. Also, if anything does not show properly in your browser, or the color scheme is hard to see on your screen, leave me a message using the e-mail address provided.

On Beneath the Stitching, the VincentxTifa Shrine:

• Aesthetics: I’ve changed the color scheme for the authors pages, and the stories themselves are within more colorful tables. Now that I’m looking at it, I think I will do the same for the indexes. With the grey there was not a chance of anything clashing, but it’s so dull. Also, removed the banners from the links section. Banners are nice and pretty, but they were throwing off my placement horribly. Maybe one day when I have the time, I’ll figure something out.
• Fanfiction: Added Allegory by Ayezur, Café Noir by Jess Angel, and Asphyxiation and Nightmares by Tijuana Pirate. Because this is the first newsletter, be sure to check for anything else you missed inbetween—I’d been adding little things here and there for a while.
• Fanart: Tender Greetings by The Tiramisu of Impending Doom. Because the “About” section of the site looks a bit dull, I’ll be sending the official Square-Enix art to that page, and eventually creating pages for the artists. I had not done this, because we only have three artists so far, and each of them have only one picture on the Shrine. Since then, I have received a second from one of them, so I will have to think up a proper layout for the Images section.
• Other Additions: Added Breathless, a VxT Shrine and ShinRa Electric Co. to the links list. Added ten new VinTifa lyric-icons by Cendri to the Iconic/Graphics section.

On Explosive: The VincentxVeld Shrine:

• Aesthetics: This is the big one. This Shrine has also taken on the layout of the other two sites, complete with navigation sidebar and music. The Index tables have kept their blue on blue color scheme, and the author pages have changed a small bit as well. The background of the site however, will remain black, as I find that works best with a wide variety of content; there are tables for that sort of thing. Also took out the banners for the sites to which the Shrine is linked, just to keep things neat.
• Fanfiction: Added And the Radio Plays… and The Love Song of V. Michael Dragoon by Cendri, and Gomen Nasai and Killing Mrs. ShinRa by Drakonlily. I have plans to add more stories tonight. Ladies, I’ve got your lists right here. But I also have a wanted list, which I need to talk to you about. This includes a collaboration done between Drakon and TP, and an old duet between Cendri and Drakon featuring Vineld and Cid. I will try to be on chat tonight.
• Fanart: Still no fanart. I need to talk to Cendri about getting me some cool graphic to represent herself, or a doll that Drak’s made up, to put on the “Capslock of Love” section. I want to lay that out like a comic book, and I also want to move any official art to that page, like with the other Shrine. The only problem is that I’ve got nothing else to fill the Fanart section with until someone sends me a submission or I finish my own! If you have any Vineld fanart, send it to vxv@darknightdestiny.com!!
• Other Additions: Added The Veld Fanlisting, The Jenova Project and ShinRa Electric Co. to the links section.

It’s a start, but I’m not nearly done.

I don’t watch much television. It’s on much of the time in my house, but usually behind me while Joe is watching it, and I’m here, typing away. But when I’m winding down from the day, and Johnny is tuckering himself out on the floor with his toys, I can stand to turn it on for a bit. It’s usually food or travel, or science, or satire. Yes, I get my news from Comedy Central. Don’t look down on me, asshole.

Tonight, on The Colbert Report, I saw something I didn’t believe at first. How someone could be so audacious, so blathering and miseducated, yet dispensing ill talk with a smile on his face… and I’m not talking about the host.

Andrew Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur, joined the show to plug his book, and, apparently, bash the Internet and all who upload information onto it.

He claims that the Internet is destroying our culture. It is, according to him, full of amateurs who are stealing information, average joes who type away at their blogs spreading nothing but hearsay and lies and misleading the public. Keen thinks that media coverage is better left in the hands of the “objective journalists” who are aware of the facts and can relay them properly to the public, rather than the bloggers who are “much of them being paid by foreign governments”.

…WHAT?

So, the newspaper journalists are the honest ones, and we Internet users are the conspirators? There may be a lot of useless information out there, but here’s the thing about the Internet: we get to choose what to believe and what to disregard. Blogs are rated by users, open to public opinion, objective comments, visible criticism, linking, etc. If that liberty is taken away, we have only Big Media and what they choose to tell us.

The bottom line when it comes to Internet information is this: smart people do the research for themselves. His assumption that most of us are cavemen and do not know this is horribly pompous. This is what the Internet is: a database of many millions of diverse opinions, which give us an overall view of the big picture, a well-rounded look at a situation from every angle. He is talking about censorship and control of information. Education is in a sad state these days; and the most intelligent people I know are those who read, on and off the Internet, and who are continually making it a point to educate themselves daily. A lot of people think that once they have their degrees, the little piece of paper buys them out of having to account for their ideas or keep an open mind. These people are wrong. An education is a life-long accomplishment.

Keen apparently also thinks he knows more than the average Internet user, is more educated than the rest of us. Colbert said, “You sir, are an elitist,” to which Keen responded, “But what would you define an elitist as?” Meanwhile, I’m screaming at my television set, “Asshole with a phony accent! PHONY ACCENT!”

He seemed, to me, to be unaware of a lot of things. Like how he contradicted himself a few times and fumbled through that interview pretty badly. All with his nose up in the air.

People like that think the attitude fools others into thinking they’re more intelligent or better than those who don’t carry themselves that way. It just makes them look stupid when someone calls them out on it.

Colbert joked that Keen inasmuch said that the Internet was worse than the Nazis. Keen’s response? “The Nazis never put any artists out of business.”

OH NO, they only BLACKLISTED works of literature and BURNED THEM. I really don’t think Keen is up on his material. What does he do, complain for a living?

He also said that something is not art unless one is paying for it.

But wait! Doesn’t that exclude architecture, public murals, the Sistine Chapel, works that were paid for one time only and then left for many generations to enjoy thereafter? I’d pay to see Michaelangelo pummel this guy with his chisel and call it art.

And wait! Didn’t he accuse us bloggers of being paid by outside parties? Which we most obviously are not! Otherwise, we could afford to be the Big Media! Doesn’t take an Internet degree to figure that one out! Does that make what we do art, then?

Mr. Keen, I have never heard of you until now. I wonder why?

The Internet has helped me to get my work out there. When I do have my original works published, the only reason I will already know my target audience is because of the Internet. Many professionals put free works out for use and also set aside works for business. This is why I have demo chapters. It’s called sampling, and often provides publicity for someone who would otherwise have none. Without this, only those who could afford publishing packages would be able to publicize their work.

This guy wants to privatize culture! He wants to hide it. If we cannot speculate, if we cannot talk about culture, comment on it, share our opinions and learn from each other, then how long will our culture live? How can it be our culture, if we cannot be a part of it?

That is not my culture. The things for which we will be remembered are the things that are widespread amongst the common folk. The best way to have an accurate record is to put it in the hands of the people. History books can be changed; ideas can be rewritten. This is post-diction, and unethical. There’s nothing special about post-diction. Now, widely scattered information databases? Cannot be completely extinguished.

Art is about community—and the Internet is the widest medium. Creation is about communicating thoughts and ideas, about making an impact. His position that the results of that impact only belong to a certain level of society… well, it’s an argument that hurts itself. This will be the end of our culture, many things will be lost.

To be perfectly honest, this does remind me of Nazi-ism. Their book-burnings were the “purging of unwanted materials” which didn’t fit in with their narrow scope of what a society should be. They tried to erase an entire culture. This is what Keen would like to see.

This man is simply on a Hollywood band-wagon. This is the same band-wagon that demands a director okay every single prop in his arsenal, down to the rickety chair in the corner, with a lawyer before he shoots a scene. It is full of those who have a problem with people who think for themselves. They’ve all forgotten what it was like before they were borrowing someone else’s platform, and had no power of their own. They would do wisely not to forget from whence they came.

This stifles creativity. It limits knowledge of its potential uses. It’s regression.

You know who I think is being paid? Keen. Go to www.savetheinternet.com to learn about the problems Free Culture is facing. Link this article elsewhere. Spread the word.

Here are some good resources: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity and The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in the Connected World, both by Lawrence Lessig (an educated and highly published lawyer for Free Culture).

(ps. I went to ColbertNation.com. He has a fanfiction section. That cracked me up in a good way.)

There was a lot of bickering, lots of, “Don’t touch that! I’ll kill you if you break that! Stay the hell away from those, you don’t get to decide what should be important to me!” With all the pressure coming from every side—being told that it would be hard for us to get into an apartment of any kind at all, having the sudden rush near the end to have to get out, downsizing our belongings, forwarding mail in the midst of packages received, a myriad of bills and just the general workload that Joe has every day (and the frustration he brings home with him)—we almost didn’t make it through this as a couple family.

Also, while we can probably make it by with only Joe’s income, I will be needing to go back to work if I want to pay my internet bill, save money for Johnny’s future, maintain some sort of savings and retirement plan, and generally support all of my hobbies and hideouts here on the World Wide Web. That lady from the grocery deli who always asks about the baby when Joe goes to buy meat lives in our apartment complex. Joe is going to ask her if she’ll refer me, if they need people to work at the store. I wouldn’t mind working there, and while it wouldn’t bring in nearly as much as waiting tables, it beats the interaction.

I’ve had a couple nightmares about serving tables, the kind I used to have when I did it on the regular (i.e., I’d dream that I got seated four to seven tables at once and didn’t have anything I needed, or couldn’t find where anything was on the menu, or forgot an order after I didn’t put it in and didn’t have it written down—because I used to do everything from memory). I’ve had a dream where I simply couldn’t handle the pressure and another one where I spaced out uncontrollably when approaching a table and also didn’t know the menu and they got mad and asked for someone else and I quit right there on the spot!

Since becoming a mom, my multi-tasking skills are highly enviable, but my short-term memory is shit! Bleu and I had this conversation last night over AIM: “How am I supposed to juggle a thousand things when I can’t remember where any of them are?”

So yes. Me going back to work = scary. Also, aren’t I supposed to go back to school at some point and finish a degree of some sort? Oh, right—I don’t know what I want to be labeled as for the rest of my life. My mom only used her degree for a short time before having a family, ending up divorced and having to go back to school all over again to be trained for something else while she worked and supported and took care of two kids; my dad has his degree and uses it to teach at the college, but he has like four or more other jobs that don’t even require one (in the same field that he loves; both of my parents got music degrees). I know I should have something to fall back on if the whole authoring thing doesn’t pan out, but there’s nothing out there I want to do. And I find that once you have a degree, it’s still hard to get a job in the field you want, and often it gets put on hold and stuck on the shelf like everything else.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to get one. I’m just saying it will probably be something ridiculous like creative writing (which often only gets you the jobs for which you don’t need a degree, since you need a teaching degree to, you know, teach), or something else I will probably not use. People still look more favorably upon those who have them. I think this is unfair and a flaw in our system. It would be helpful if keeping people in school for as long as possible were as beneficial to all as it is to a select few self-motivated students, but with education in its current state, I tend to think that most people are educating themselves. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to learn with just a little bit of help and guidance, but I already know how to do that. Education is built on networking, on keeping an open mind and an open eye out. University was originally only for the rich who could afford to rub elbows and gain fellowship with those in high-class networks. It was for that very purpose—that’s why fraternities were conceived. Everyone else was born into their professions, recruited by someone who was amazed by their general knowledge of some topic, or chose them based on their natural talent. Poorer people learned by reading, and by listening to those who knew better than they. Why should the C+ student who barely listens, but has a piece of paper and a handful of buddies, get the job I was born to do?

Enough ranting. Since I got into this new place, I’ve been able to spend more time doing enjoyable things (when I’m not trying to get my life in order, be it real or online). We have a pool, which Johnny loves. I have a lovely view and lots of green things outside. Most people want to spend less time in the kitchen, but I feel like experimenting. It feels like home. It’s a good feeling.

I gave the homepage a facelift last night, and I also gave Explosive a facelift. Of course I have some color scheme things to work out with the changed Vineld shrine, and I still have to fill in the archives on the home page and add things to the shrines, but… I like the new image. And I love my new blogging tool. And my bloglines list.

Feels good to start some things over. Fall cleaning!

This all started when LiveJournal began randomly deleting fandom archives. I just feel better knowing that I have everything of mine stored on my own site, because it’s really been scattered for long enough, and I should have been doing this a long time ago. Kind of a waste of money paying for the domain when I’m only just now beginning to use it to it’s fullest, but oh well.

I am going to start off tonight by creating buttons and framework. I will compile that story archive I’ve been meaning to draw up for my writing Livejournal, and put it on its own page on the main domain. At first it will only be a list of links to where my stories are hosted elsewhere, but I’ll be replacing them with my own pages as I find the time to make and beautify them.

I’ve been thinking that I might create a message board for the home page and for each of the shrines, just so that people can discuss the stories, the fandoms, what’s coming next, etc. It all depends on whether or not I have the time to monitor them (although if I am successful in moving everything to one location, this might not be as hard as it could be). I cannot say whether or not many would be interested in registering or continuing long-lasting conversation about either shrine or their pairings, or if anyone is interested in discussing my original works at all. If I do create message boards for the sites, they will most likely replace the guestbooks.

Either way, I’ve a lot of work to do. Many things to catch up on and manage, much to throw away and much to back up and store. I’ve got to look for appropriate graphics and music, think up the best navigation scheme possible, and get started coding it before I can actually put it up on the site.

Wish me luck!