We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Over-Soul"

...If you've ever felt like that, sensed that "universal beauty" even for one moment in your life, I think you can safely say that you've lived.

And yeah, that icon is my lousy self-portrait. I didn't put a lot of effort into it... I need to make something a little better, I know, but my art skills are a bit limited when it comes to drawing people. Give me a landscape or an animal or a bowl of fruit, and I can handle that, but not people. Go figure.

Anyway... I've been reading the stories on this site for a little over four years now, though I lurked for a long time before I bothered to register an account. I'd already written fanfics of my own, but I had never really considered sharing them before because I wrote them for my own amusement -- they haven't been polished and revised the way I would "clean up" my original work before sharing. Reading all the great fics on here has made me want to take the time to flesh out some of my own tales and post them, so I've been working on that in my spare time.

My interests as far as reading on this site go are pretty much limited to games and anime -- particularly Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII, Metropolis, Valkyrie Profile, and Vampire: the Masquerade, with Kingdom Hearts being the far and away favorite. I've recently broadened my horizons to include Fallout, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Oblivion, Dynasty Warriors, and Hotel Dusk.

Within the KH universe, I like the members of Organization XIII the best, especially Vexen, Xigbar, Luxord, and Xaldin. I try to feel sympathetic to Kairi, but Sora just annoys me. In fact, he annoys me so much that if I did own Kingdom Hearts, Organization XIII would have won and the Keybearer would have slunk back to Destiny Islands with his proverbial tail between his legs... not trying to get off on a tangent here, but personally I found the Nobodies, with their supposed lack of emotion, to be far more interesting than Sora.

As far as what I'm like in real life... I'm older than I look and younger than I (usually) act. 'Nuff said, for now anyways.

Saille

UPDATES

2/09: I can't believe I actually got around to publishing a story... and I'm even more amazed that it wasn't the Kingdom Hearts story that's been bouncing around in my head since just after Chain of Memories came out, it's a Fallout 3 story that I just started working on only a few weeks ago. I swear I'll finish the KH story one of these days, but for now I'm going to focus on posting new chapters for "Braid." I promise I'll keep reviewing for all the wonderful authors in the KH fandom, though.

11/08: Unfortunately for me (though I hope fortunately for my eventual readers) my first and favorite Kingdom Hearts fic has decided it doesn't want to be told without the main character's backstory being fleshed out a bit more first... well, actually, a lot more. As in, the backstory has now evolved into its own separate story, which is working out nicely from a storytelling standpoint, but is taking more time than I wanted. I've been following a dozen or so stories on here, and eagerly working toward the day when I can finally post one of my own, but that backstory is just determined to come out at its own pace.

In case anyone cares, this "main character" happens to be an original character, and the backstory is the tale of how she became a Nobody... and though I know that angle has been beat to death on this site, I think I've managed to put a fresh interpretation on the bigger picture (while managing, I hope, to avoid both the dreaded curse of Mary Sue-dom and the bane of all OCs, shameless self-insertion) ...but I don't want to go into a lot of detail yet, since that might spoil the pace of information revelation in the stories. I should have the first chapter out within the next two weeks; I just want to make sure that I'm well into chapter three or so before I publish, so I won't get behind on updates. Thanks for being patient with me!