“Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that’s who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under

a big skirt a grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration”
--from “Here” by Grace Paley

So you’ve stumbled on my little corner of the world, have you? Well welcome! I’m Elf, and this is my literary haven. Yes, I’m a Literature Deviant; I’m a rather prolific (obsessive?) writer, but no “visual” artist of any kind. Here you’ll find prose, poetry, the occasional rant, and once in a blue moon, a sketch or photo.

I know how easy it is to get lost browsing—I mean, you ended up HERE, after all. So just to give you a heads up: The Deviations titled as numbers (One through Twenty Five) are reposted from my old, dead deviantART account. Anything with a title was posted (but not necessarily composed) after this account’s inception.

I love comments. According to my stats, I give twice as many as I receive, so please, if you read through one of my pieces, let me know! Even a “hey, I read your thingie” would be lovely; that way I know that your page view wasn’t just a random click. Constructive criticism is even better! If you see something in my writing that you KNOW is off, don’t hesitate to say so! Even if we’re strangers, I absolutely do not mind. I don’t bite, I promise.

Again, thank you for visiting! Oh, and do watch your step. You wouldn’t want to get lost again, now would you? ~.^

Cheers,
Elf.



WARNING: This journal is heavy in colloquialisms. In other words, the majority of this journal is written more or less exactly how I talk. Beware. :3

*cracks knuckles* SO. I’ll bet ya’ll are wondering how I got the shiney new journal layout, EH? ~.^ Well there is this fellow named *roget, a wonderful wonderful fellow who GAVE ME A SUBSCRIPTION. *glomples Roget* Thank you so much! XD

So talk of Roget leads me into talk of Anime Expo, because I actually met this fine fellow right after AX’09 had ended. *nodnod* Yus. XD Um…oh my God, where to begin…! XD

I guess at the beginning? :\ XD Well I missed Day 1, like I mentioned in my previous journal, and that is AY OH KAY cause I got myself a freakin’ JOB that day, a job which I will ramble about later. So a few hours after I posted my most recent journal update, I hopped in my car and drove to LA. Which should have been eventful in itself, since it’s a bloody drive to LA, but it WASN’T. Eventful that is. Which was amazing, srsly. It only took me like what, not even an hour to get from here to there. When I drove up to downtown for EDC it took FIVE HOURS because of traffic. I got from my doorstep to the hotel lobby in about 50 minutes on Thursday night. O_o But hey, that’s why you DON’T DRIVE LA FREEWAYS DURING RUSH HOUR!! >.<

*ahem* Anyway. XD; So I met up with ~Zuni-chan (EEEEE! XD) and her dad, who I’d met before, and her older sister, who I had not. Us two and Zu’s dad checked in at around 11; her sister was AWOL till like, midnightish, which was interesting cause she comes into the room and was like *LAUNCHES IMMEDIATELY INTO CRAZY STORY* whilst I was standing on the sideline trying to introduce myself. XD;;; It ended up okay tho. Except we all didn’t get to sleep till like, TWO AM, cause we were all hyper as all hell. Which I was not expecting given my long drive and their jetlag, butyeah, hehe. Most interesting. Especially when Zu and the wall had brief but intimate relations with one another. ~.^ XD!

So we all three wake up both groggy and rarin’ to go on Day 2. Zu here proved once again that she is AN UTTER AND COMPLETE ANGEL, as she spent FORTY FIVE MINUTES painting Pride!Ed’s tattoos onto my body before tending to her own Sheizka cosplay. Which was after she spent like thirty minutes straightening my hair. That girl not only has talent, but the patience of a saint. I <33 you, Imouto-chan. XD

But it turns out the spray-dye I bought for the occasion was UTTER FAIL. I mean, after driving all the way to the other side of the valley to get it, I made the mistake of kind of NOT LOOKING at the can and NOT REALIZING that it wasn’t blonde, but FLORESCENT YELLOW. Yeeeeah, that was FFFFFAIL. XD;; *obviously still frustrated over that point* Thus, I went as Brunette!Pride!Ed that day. Which didn’t fail nearly as hard as one might think it might; I had the outfit right (besides the obvious mistakes I had made as a seamstress T_T but hey, I didn’t have the benefit of a sewing machine!) and the tattoos were AMAZING. I still got mistaken for Envy at least three times, though. T_T I just kept telling myself “hey, it’s okay, you’re cosplaying an obscure character, and a fan-created one at that. It’s bound to happen.” So it was chill.

I did lots of shopping on Day 2, dropping a good $120 in JUST Pokemon plushies. And here I went to AX telling myself that I’d ONLY be spending money on myself for a change and not dropping $300 on gifts like I did last year…*PFFT* Yeah, that worked out REALLY well. XD! I don’t regret it though, not a single penny. :3

One of my best investments turned out to be a blond wig, actually. I decided that Zu’s body art couldn’t afford to be effed up by my BEING BRUNETTE any longer, so I got myself a head of blond hair. That night, Zu gave the wig a cut and I feathered it to try to make it look like Pride’s split ends…it SORT of worked, I think. Zu said it was a lost cause and I think she was right…>.> That didn’t stop me from trying though. XD;;; So now I have a wig that will work for Pride!Ed OR Ed OR Lindsey Christianson! HAR HAR HAR. XD;;;;

Butyeah, anywho, Day 2, what panels did we go to…*brainfart* Oh yeah, we didn’t actually make it to any panels that day. XD;; WITH ONE EXCEPTON; we met ~Versk and her younger brother at the Origami panel just as it was ending; even though we didn’t participate, it was awesome to meet her! XD We ended up running into her like four times during the course of the con, too. It was lolz; I mean out of 44k people what were the chances?? XD

But we basically just kicked it around the Dealer’s Hall all day. It was really freakin’ sweet, actually. I got to meet up with my friend Jason, who’s been on his mission for the past two AX’s and who is the devious little deviant who actually inspired me to go to one of these things in the first place! XD We kicked it for a long while with ~Tirinka, ~mewmewichigo11, and their friend Jesse, all of whom I’d met at AX last year. Jess was cosplaying Mello again; Tirinka was doing Kitty!Ed (this time with an awesome-sauce wig! XD), and LOL KAITLYN, the maid’s outfit! XD Apparently she lost a bet with her sensei? Sempai? And was finally making good on it after like two years. *rolls* XD

At the end of the day Zu’s dad graciously took us all out to Ihop, where I had these AMAZING whole grain pancakes that I did not know even EXISTED, and thus their deliciousness saved me from the torture of drooling over Zu’s much more sweet and delicious-looking strawberry-covered concoction. Srsly, just staring at the thing made my blood sugar rise. XD

That night we TRIED to get more sleep, but with little success; we got about 6 hours as opposed to our previous night’s 4. @_@ Zu and I were BOTH blonds on Day 3—she’d bought the same wig as I, cut it, and braided it in Ed fashion. It looked AWESOME on her. XD Zu did my tattoos again ( <3 ), but it only took her like twenty minutes cause she had already gotten that good at it. :3 And thankfully she didn’t have to waste her time on my hair (even though she is effing epic at straightening and I’m still totally grateful for that <3). Day 3, Zu finally got to do the cosplay she’d been planning on for MONTHS—Boxer!Ed. XD She bound her chest with Ace bandages to try to look more male, and it worked! Total boyish front. XD She then donned a grey tank top and THE MOST EPIC PAIR OF BOXERS EVER. Palmtree boxers. Oh yes, there WERE jokes about what Ed does with his Saturday nights. XD! The final touch was easily the most brilliant—Zu made scar makeup by mixing my red body paint with coverup/foundation. She then painted the scars where Ed’s limbs would have been reattached, along with his fox bite scar. XD

So yeah, we tooled around the con as Pride!Ed and Ed. HOW AWESOME IS THAT. Sad part is that both of us weren’t as easily recognizable as we would have liked to be, and only got asked for one group picture. IT WAS STILL AWESOME THOUGH. *nodnodnodnod* XD

Day 3 was a total FMA day. We hit the con at about 9:30-ish (earlier than the previous day by about an hour) and tooled around the dealer’s hall for a bit, waiting for the FMA Cosplay Gathering Photoshoot at 10. We then mosey’d down to the front of the building and LO, THERE WERE FMA GEEKS. We were so at home. <3 Boxer!Ed wasn’t tremendously recognizable, again because of the wardrobe change (WHO CARES THOUGH; LOVE THE PALM TREE BOXERS PEOPLE, LOVE THEM!), and NO ONE knew who Pride!Ed was. I even got asked HERE if I was Envy. *cries inside* But again, I forgave it, cause I knew from the get-go what I was getting myself into. XD;; So we took about EIGHTEEN BILLION photos at the FMA photoshoot, including some awesome ones of Zu in with the Ed’s; let’s not forget to mention that she was the ONLY Ed bold enough to step up one step on the stairs and lean on a Roy for the boy’s picture. I LOL’d. XD Oddly enough, I was the ONLY Pride there…and I mean AT ALL. No anime!Pride, no manga!Pride, no trace of a King Bradley at all. So when the shoots came up for each individual character…I went solo. The Attention Whore in me REALLY liked that. XD;;

After the photoshoot we meandered back into the Dealer’s Hall for a bit and bought a bunch more stuff. XD; Zu had scored a bunch of Touch markers the previous day (Copic knockoffs, but hey, when they’re at half price who’s complaining? XD) so she bought like three more boxes of those, while I bought…what did I buy that day? :\ *eyeballs her loot* Oh yeah, I picked up the other half of my Pokemon plushies. XD;

It was about this point that Zu informed me that the Ace bandages turning her into a boy were also cutting off her circulation to… pretty much everything. >.> So we hailed a cab to take us up the street back to the hotel, seeing as we were too lazy to wait for the bus (that had JUST driven away when we walked up to the station >.< ). It was eight bucks well spent, lemme tellya. The moment we got into the hotel room Zu enabled her breathing again, and I got all ansty, wanting to do something else with the day after taking a breather…only to realize how REDICULOUSLY EXHAUSTED I was. My knee apparently decided to give out too; walking was so painful that Zu wrapped it in an Ace bandage for me, which really helped. I remembered at that point that I’d whacked it or done something do it whilst traipsing around Las Vegas two weeks previous, and then promptly proceeded to curse my immobility and lack of ability to go out and seize the day.

But it was far from a wasted day. I mean, of course I was ansty at first; sometimes I won’t wake up on normal weekends till 1 and not get out the door till 3, and that’s about the time we hit the hotel room. But the downtime allowed Zu and I time to just…chill. You know, talk and catch up. That is NOT a waste of time. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

We also played a crapload of FMA: Curse of the Crimson Elixer (WHICH I’D BEEN DYING TO DO FOR YEARS ANYWAY) and she showed off her leet coloring skillz with her new markers. :3 It was pretty boss, all in all. XD

Oh, and here’s another fun part: Right as we were about to go to sleep, we hear this massive BA-BOOM rattling our window. We go to the window and look outside and remember—OH YEAH, IT’S THE FOURTH OF JULY!! XD But this was…a sight I have NEVER seen before, and probably will never see again. Okay, well there were fireworks—close, too. Right downtown, and ALL different colors, kinds, shapes and sizes; this wasn’t just explosions, this was SKY ART. The kind of fireworks that pyrotechnics spend ALL YEAR making. But no, it wasn’t just the show close to us…it’s the fact that we were on the 8th floor of our hotel…and the horizon was on fire. Zu counted—and I kid you not—20 fireworks shows visible from our window. Twenty. Simultaneous. Shows. It was spectacularly beautiful. And OH yeah, was the Pyromaniac in me happy as a clam. XD!

But…the next day, Zu and her family had to fly back to the Midwest…so we all had to go to bed and wake up EARLY. I had to leave too cause the hotel reservation was in her dad’s name, and hell if I was gonna squat in a hotel room I would no longer be paying for. X_X AND let’s not forget that I was cosplaying that day too—not Pride!Ed, but Aeris. Which was a HELL of a lot easier; not only did I do it last year, but no wig was involved and no body makeup to smear over everything. (OH YEAH, did I mention how everything I touched turned RED, THE WHOLE WEEKEND?? >.>;;;;; XD;;;;; )

Soyeah, I got up at 4 am, showered quickly, did my hair, got dressed. Zu woke up a little later—flying across the country requires the extra sleep—and did my makeup for me. <3 We got our stuff downstairs (somehow…God I brought WAY TOO MUCH STUFF XD; ), and then…then I had to say goodbye to Zu. IT HAPPENED SO FAST. Way too damn fast. *moment of silence for the sad emoness inside*

*sigh* Anywho…So then, it was Day 4, I was in LA with just me, myself, I, my car named Shoe, and a hatchback full of STUFF. And it was 5 in the morning. So what did I do? I…drove around in circles downtown looking for a Starbucks, refusing to drive any place that looked even REMOTELY run-down. I’M SUCH A DAMN SUBURBANITE. XD;;;;;

I didn’t find a Starbucks with ample parking nearby (cause parking in downtown LA is always an adventure) but I DID find a Denny’s with parking nearby. For CHEAP, too; parking at the convention center is 12 bucks and this place was 5 for the WHOLE DAY. And 8th and Flower isn’t THAT far from the con, even WITH the craptastical cosplay shoes I was wearing. XD; So yeah, I ate at Denny’s, like most people would at 5 am…and guess what. I did something I’d never done before. I mean, I’m no stranger to sitting alone at a table, be it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or just a quick pick-me-up snack.

But never before have I invited a total stranger to come sit with me. Never before last Sunday, that is. I totally decided on it, too; the moment I sat down, I said to myself, “Self, the moment you see a person wearing an AX lanyard who makes eye contact with you, invite them to join you. You shouldn’t have to eat breakfast alone, not at Anime Expo, not at the place that is just MADE for making random friends.” And the first person who made eye contact with me actually was complimenting me on my cosplay. Obviously I asked him to sit. XD

So breakfast was cool! I chilled with that dude and his buddy John for a few hours, basically just picking at my hashbrowns and killing time till the con would be open. :3 John went back to the hotel to get his lanyard cause he’d forgotten it like a dork (j/k, you’re awesome John XD), so other dude (I can’t believe I actually forgot his name @_@) and I went to the con together. We hit the arcade first; it was like 8:30 am and I was playing DDR. THAT, my friends, is the virtue of four cups of coffee! XD Yes, four. Two in the hotel and two at Denny’s. I WAS BOUNCING. LITERALLY. XD So yeah, I ended up starting that day by breaking a sweat by playing DDR barefoot in a dress! Who knew. XD!

And even though there was the least going on that day, it turned out to be plain AWESOME. It was probably because I got up so ridiculously early; I made a full day out of a half day, essentially. XD I made it to all of one panel; there weren’t that many panels anyway, so that’s actually kind of good. XD; The panel was The Problem With Otaku, which was a presentation given by a graduate student who’d been STUDYING SCHOLASTICALLY the cultural phenomenon that is Otaku, both in Japan and America. It was really fascinating, and all the clips from Lucky Star and Welcome to the NHK made it feel less like a lecture and more like a panel. Not that I minded the whole lecture feel; I learned a lot. :3 I do always like to be the biggest know-it-all around, especially when it comes to thinks I’m obsessed with, so I think I really benefited from the information. XD

And theeen, I made one or two more last stops to the Dealer’s Hall…in the morning after I met Nick and Pat, I stopped by *FerioWind’s booth and FINALLY commissioned something from her: a watercolor of Pride!Ed. IT. IS. GORGEOUS. Go over to her gallery to see how it turned out. I’M GOING TO FRAME IT. <333

Oh yeah, Nick and Pat! XD I met them randomly when my arcade/Denny’s buddy and I were passing by the viewing rooms (I lost said buddy when we went into the dealer’s hall shortly thereafter T_T). Nick and Pat are cousins, and stuck with me MOST of Sunday; till 3 when they met up with their party and ride. They’re these two random/awesome Asian dudes who DID NOT MIND my hyperness ONE BIT and laughed with me at all my stupid jokes. I even convinced them to do the DBZ fusion dance—and get it on video! Props to you, Nick and Pat! XD

So Nick and Pat and I also ventured over to the foyer in front of the Registration Hall, where we THOUGHT there was going to be a Final Fantasy cosplay gathering. What we found instead….was the start of a CARAMELL DANSEN TRAIN. I got into the train as soon as it started, and followed it till it circled around the convention hall and ended. A full circuit of the hall, plus a trip up and down the escalators, took us JUST UNDER TWO MINUTES. YES. WE RAN. A LOT. MY ARMS WERE TIRED FROM HOLDING BAGS AND MY FLOWERBASKET AND DOING THE EARS AT THE SAME TIME BUT IT WAS SO WORTH IT. *huff huff huff* XD So yeah, my inner Attention Whore was pretty happy about that too, being that during the circuit I got on picture and video…a lot. XD

BUT there WAS something akin to a gathering, despite/even with the Caramell Dansen train. (Which was started by a Sephiroth, by the way. XD) There was a picture of the like, six initial Caramell Dansen people (they called me over to join them XD) and there was this funny moment…oh Lordy…I was looking up at the camera and smiling and trying to be cute, and someone is like, “Hey Aeris, look up,” and Sephiroth is RIGHT NEXT TO ME LEERING DOWN AT ME LIKE HE GON’ KILL ME AND I SHRINK STRAIGHT AWAY EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE STILL TAKING PICTURES. I didn’t realize how tall that guy was. T_T XD;;

Butyeah, it was awesome. MY DREAM CAME TRUE BTW. A couple people took pictures of me getting killed by the two Sephiroths that showed—which was understandable and predicable XD;--BUT. I GOT A PICTURE OF ME KILLING SEPHIROTH!! I’m the one behind holding the sword, and Sephi is kneeling with hands folded, and it is FOR GREAT JUSTICE!! I feel like I’ve struck an item off the Bucket List every time I look at that picture, srsly. <333 XD

So yeah, there was that, then I picked up my comissh from *FerioWind <3, then I bought one of those AMAZING LEATHER JOURNAL COVERS *total journal otaku* <3 XD. And then, Closing Ceremonies.

They were late. I walked in later than the scheduled time and sat through the majority of the Charity Auction, which was supposed to be beforehand, but whatever. It was REALLY interesting seeing how much people were willing to pay for autographed shirts, sketches, posters, and other stuff. I think the highest was 5k, for a SKETCH of one of the mechs of Gundam 00 (signed of course). ALL the 00 stuff went for OUT THERE prices, as did this shirt that had been signed by the cast of Robot Chicken and WORN by Seth Green. It was WACKY. O_o But hey, I didn’t mind, cause all the money went to Orange County Children’s Hospital anyway. XD!

I’m SO GLAD I went to Closing Ceremonies. I know Opening Ceremonies would have been a waste, as there’s always a billion and a half people and I’d have gotten a crappy seat like last year >.<, but with Closing half the con has already gone home and you can get a decent seat. :3 So I got to see all the Guests of Honor, including Moi dis Mois and FREAKIN’ YASUHIRO NIGHTOW. <3333 Poor Nightow-sama. He was all, “I had nightmares about holding a Trigun panel and only five people showing up because no one remembered it.” To which the hall cheers their support and a bunch of people give him a standing ovation, one of which being the Wolfwood cosplayer right in front of me. NOOO, WE DIDN’T FORGET, NIGHTOW-SAMA! LOVE AND PEACE!! Oh my GOD I am SO UNBELIEVABLY STOKED for the Trigun movie coming out! My guts squirm in happiness at the very thought. XD Cheering for the Guests of Honor and getting to hear them speak was awesome-sauce. YAY JAPAN! WE LOVE YOU!! <3

And then…Anime Expo was over! *SOB!* Too soon! T_T Us fans didn’t let that stop us from having fun, though…A bunch of us played Ninja outside the main foyer and I took a bunch more pictures and FINALLY shot some video. XD; It was awesome...even though I got out on Ninja on the second round. XD

I knew that it would have to all end eventually so I grudgingly said goodbye to the con and trudged up Figueroa towards my car…which is when I met *roget. <3 We were just walking together and randomly chatting about dA, and suddenly we come to Flower and lo and behold, a CPK! I LOVE California Pizza Kitchen, being that there are two near my house, so I accepted Roget’s casual offer of dinner. (Lol. XD)

So Roget and I turned out to be peas in a pod, loving the same things (good art and a good debate) and hating the same things (TERRIBLE art, particularly terrible dA art. Oh and Furries too. T_T). So even though the con ended around 6 or 7, it wasn’t till 8:30 that I got back to my car because I was having so much fun chatting with Roget over four-cheese ravioli. XD

So I got in my car (with immense relief that it hadn’t been stolen), paid my 5-dollar parking fee (with some difficulty since my driver-side window doesn’t roll down), drove around downtown looking for the freeway entrance (while getting the crap scared out of me by nearly driving into the Fashion District, i.e. the BAD part of town, as the sun was setting), finally got on the freeway, and breathed easier once I was on the 5 South. I zipped home in an hour and a half, again with much surprise.

And my trip to Anime Expo concluded with me walking through the door, suitcase in hand, smile on my face, greeted by a warm “Hello!” and a sad, sad shaking of the head from my father as he realized what he was seeing.

My response, “What, you don’t like my goofy outfit?” *GRINS*
My dad: *shakes his head some more*
Me: “Hey, at least it’s feminine! You should have seen what I wore YESTERDAY!” *cackles and heads upstairs*

Oh yeah. It. Was. AWESOME. XD!!!

Misc. Updates:
- - >Job is going well. It’s exhausting working on my feet but I really love my coworkers, boss, customers, tasks, PAYCHECK…everything. XD
- - >School starts on Aug. 25th. Too close. T_T

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