10/11/08

I'm finding that college is great fun, but as I thought, I've got no real free time. So, further updates or new oneshots will have to wait. Ah well; such is life. Enriching my mind and experience is a little more important than satisfying my enjoyment for writing fanfiction, but I'll be around. Till next time, then.

New poll's up.

Percentage of Next Chapter Complete:

2000 words: 10 percent

Results of Last Poll:

What's your favorite Digimon season?

Tamers: 23, 58 percent

Adventure: 6, 15 percent

02: 4, 10 percent

Frontier: 4, 10 percent

Data Squad: 2, 5 percent

Forget the show, bring on the fan fics!: 0, 0 percent

Well, can't say I expected different results. Heh.

Here's a treat: it's Ren and Eric's D-Platforms! http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t310/nolaquen265/RensD-Platform7.jpg and http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t310/nolaquen265/RensD-Platform7-1.jpg and http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t310/nolaquen265/EricsD-Platform.jpg. Many thanks to Plasmasphere for making these; he's going off the descriptions from the DR chapters. They're rather close to my imagination, really.

Reading:

College stuff. Lots of it.

Watching:

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Prison Break

I've got to live a little, yeah? Two hours a week, anyway...

Playing:

Ha ha. Yeah, right.

I'm a fan of anything Tolkien in origin (i.e. The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, etc.), Digimon (Tamers was the best season by far), Harry Potter, and Star Wars. For games, it's Myst, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts.

Enjoy my fics, and please read the fics that my favorite authors have put up. I especially recommend Ultra Sonic 007; his is the best Digimon series I've read on fanfiction.net.

Special thanks go to 'plasmasphere'. He's one of my best friends, and my Beta for just about everything I write for fanfiction.net.

Check out Demotivators at http://www.despair.com/indem.html. Hilarious, with enough truth in them to make you think...or just laugh; that's fine, too.

The Evil Overlord List: www.sff.net/paradise/overlord.html If you can read this without cracking up, then you need your sense of humor checked out. Seriously. I mean it. Here are a few examples:

I will never utter the sentence "Before I kill you, you should know..."

I will occasionally listen to and follow my advisor's advice.

If my advisors ask, "Why are you risking everything on this mad scheme?" I will not proceed until I have an answer that satisfies them.

One of my chief advisors will be an average, every-day eight-year-old child. Any flaws in my Master Plan that he is able to spot will be corrected long before I put that plan into action.

If I am considering using a new code, I will instruct my eight-year old advisor to try to break it. If he can, the code will not be used. Note: the same policy applies to passwords.

Another of my closest advisors will be a prolific hack novelist. If any part of my Master Plan begins to resemble any of his work, it will be disregarded.

If my Trusted Lieutenant tells me that my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he is my Trusted Lieutenant.

I will not order my Trusted Lieutenant to kill the infant who is destined to overthrow me... I will do it myself. With my bare hands.

If I ever spend 30 years in cryogenic stasis, upon awakening I will defer any evil scheming until my Trusted Lieutenant can bring me up to speed on current events.

If I discover that the hero is the offspring of my Trusted Lieutenant, I will never allow the Trusted Lieutenant to try to turn the Hero to my service. The hero will just turn my Lieutenant against me, and a good second-in-command is hard to come by. Rather, I'll just accept the cost of training a new second-in-command and kill the Trusted Lieutenant. He's just trying to turn the hero to his side so he can overthrow me anyway. But if I temporarily lose my mind and allow my Trusted Lieutenant to try and turn the hero to my service, I will order the Trusted Lieutenant out of the room while I confront the hero. That way, I won't have to worry about the Trusted Lieutenant's pesky parental instinct when I kill the hero.

I will classify my lieutenants in three categories: untrusted, trusted, and completely trusted. Promotion to the last category is only done posthumously.

All guards (and other workers) will be entitled to three weeks paid vacation a year after one full year's employment, will be covered (after that same period) by comprehensive medical and dental insurance (paid by me, the Evil Overlord) for themselves and spouse/companion and all dependents. They will have regularly scheduled pay-raises for every five years with which they remain in my employ as well as annual, merit-based bonuses. Stock options and retirement plans will be made available after five years of employment along with favorably termed loans for home improvement, education and debt consolidation. Any employee disabled in my service will receive a lifetime pension. Every year, my organization will make a few sizable college scholarships available for the most qualified of the dependents of my employees. Upon leaving my employ they will be constrained from working for any competitor or adversary for a period of not less than five years. All dismissals (as opposed to termination on their part) will be accompanied by a payment of one month's salary as termination pay and an excellent recommendation (regardless of cause for dismissal). It is my firm opinion that generating loyalty toward me is more valuable in minions than generating terror toward me, even if it's less fun.

Before putting my Master Plan into action, I will hire a board-certified team of architects and surveyors to examine my headquarters closely and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about. This team will then be paid ludicrous amounts of money and relocated to the Caribbean Island of their choice, where they will live out their lives in luxury.

My stronghold will have ventilation ducts that are too small to crawl through.

My main computer will use a custom operating system incompatible with all of the more common PowerBook and laptop computer models commercially available today.

The entrance to my stronghold will have doors that are normal sized. While twenty-foot tall doors do impress the masses, they are difficult to close quickly in an emergency.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports that intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

In my headquarters, incinerators, not compactors will dispose of bulk trash, and they will be kept hot, with none of this nonsense about flames shooting through accessible tunnels at intervals.

My stronghold won't have a self-destruct device unless it is absolutely necessary. If a self-destruct device turns out to be necessary, a big red button marked "Danger! Do not push!" will not activate it. The big red button marked "Danger! Do not push!" will instead trigger a spray of bullets onto anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, no on/off switches in my control room will be labeled as such.

If my stronghold is attacked, I will immediately use my prepared escape pod to escape to my auxiliary HQ, from which I will direct the defense of my primary headquarters. I will not wait until my enemies are breaking down the doors of my inner sanctum before attempting to leave.

If I am forced to make my escape, I will not pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner before leaving.

I will not employ devious schemes that involve the band of heroes actually making it into my inner sanctum before the trap is sprung.

I will not interrogate my enemies in my inner sanctum. A small hotel room located well outside the borders of my kingdom works just as well and has the benefits of privacy and intimacy. After the interrogation, I will shoot them.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament to show my superiority. I will shoot them.

If one of my enemies says, "Look, before you kill us, will you at least tell us what this is all about?" I will say "No." And then I will shoot them. Better yet, I will shoot them, then say "No."

When the rebel leader challenges me to a one-on-one fight, and asks "Or are you afraid to face me without your goons to back you up?" My reply will be "No, I’m not afraid... Just sensible." And then I will shoot him.

My enemies are not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or a last anything. They are entitled to get shot.

Any enemies that survive being shot are entitled to be shot again.

If my enemies are important to my scheme and thus cannot be shot immediately, I will not keep them together in the same cellblock, much less the same cell. The only keys to their cells will be kept on my person at all times; copies of them will not be handed out to every guard in my headquarters. And they will be shot as soon as it is feasible to do so.

The list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on...

"For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.

"Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you." Matthew 11:28.

"That's the exploration that awaits you...not mapping stars or studying nebulae...but charting the unkown possibilites of existence." Q (All Good Things; final Star Trek: Next Generation episode)

"Never run with scissors or other sharp, pointy objects."

"Ignorance is never a good excuse...but sometimes it's the only one you've got."

"One of the greatest pieces of evidence we have that God has a sense of humor is the duck-billed platypus."

"Sanity is a prerequisite for discovering one is insane."

"'A little' crazy is better than 'a lot'. It's also better than 'not at all'."

"There's a method to madness, but often more madness than method."

"Being paranoid means knowing all the facts."

"It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you."

"Dogs, God, and math don't lie."

"Committees are where all good ideas go to die."

"If you can't beat the system, break it."

"There's an oddball in every group, and if you can't figure out who it is, it's you."

"It's easy to resist peer pressure when half the people in the group agree with you." Plasmasphere, my Beta.

"He who laughs last, thinks slowest."

"Anything you can do, I can do better, and look good while doing it."

"Being a stuck-up snob who knows everything is better than being a stuck-up snob who knows nothing."

"Public schoolers have social skills. Social skills do not help on tests. Ergo, home schoolers ace tests."

"What goes up must come down, and when it does, it can often be heard a mile away if it's heavy enough."

"There's no 'I' in 'team', but there is a 'me' if you rearrange the letters." Rooster Teeth Productions' The Strangerhood machinima series.

"Being wrong isn't a democracy." Rooster Teeth Productions' Red vs Blue: Reconstruction machinima series.

"Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again." A sign I once saw hanging up in a room. While one of the things that amuses me the most is irony, I also have a streak of appreciation for dark humor. I think this qualifies.;)

"Comments, like hands, should often be kept to oneself, else they be cut off abruptly."

"What you don't know might kill you."

"Hypocrisy doesn't stop bullets."

"Those who failed History are doomed to repeat it."

"Your ignorance puts bread on my table. That doesn't mean you need to be too ignorant." My Latin professor. He's a riot in class.

"Will money buy happiness? No, but abject poverty won't either."

"In the jock's dorm, you don't get a lot of higher thinking. In (my) dorm, you get a lot of Pinky and the Brain plots to take over the world." My History professor, who has a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor. He's also a riot.

"I can teach you how to take over the modern world, not fit in it, if you're not using gunpowder." History.

"The only people who work in the dark are thieves, lovers, and art historians." History.

"It's a depressing society to live in when you know the gods are crazy." With regards to the Greek pantheon. Seriously, talk about dysfunctional...

"If at first you don't succeed, vote yourself emergency powers."

"The future rests with the ones who tend the future." Sophocles' Antigone."

"It is an outrageous abuse both of time and literature for a man to commit his thoughts to writing without having the ability either to arrange them or elucidate them, or attract readers by some charm of style." Cicero.

"I never said it wouldn't hurt you. I said it wouldn't kill you." C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce.

"Any fool can learn from his own mistakes...but only an idiot refuses to learn from the mistakes of others."

"Being aware of a problem is the first step to eliminating it."

"Justification is often used as an extravagant, twisted form of denial."

"Pride leaves the body twenty-four hours after death."

"If you do your best, whatever happens will be for the best."

"To wonder is to ask a question, but not necessarily to seek an answer."

"The dreams of youth can become the reality of the future."

"Hope is general. Faith is specific."

"Deceivers deceive themselves last of all."

"Most people don't realize how messy something is until they start to clean it up. This goes for both dirty rooms and lives."

"The more we know about a subject, the higher the value of our opinion."

"All the good advice in the world is worth very little if it is ignored."

"Don't confuse the term 'weak' with the idea of 'not dangerous'." My chemistry curriculum. It doesn't just apply to acids, though...

"One who mistakes poison for medicine may be sincere, but he remains sincerely wrong."

"The simplest explanation is often the best/Never complicate things needlessly." Occam's Razor.

"Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." Hanlon's Razor.

"Now, bring me that horizon." Captain Jack Sparrow; Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

"The world used to be bigger." "The world's the same. There's just...less in it." Barbossa and Jack Sparrow; Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

"Every man dies. Not every man truly lives." William Wallace; Braveheart.

"Blind pursuit of power is a meaningless vice." Amarant, from Final Fantasy IX.

"The best intentions invite the worst sort of trouble." Balthier, from Final Fantasy XII.

"After all...hearts are unpredictable." Ansem the Wise, from Kingdom Hearts II.

"Not all who wander are lost." J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Even the very wise cannot see all ends." Gandalf; The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

"Failure...the greater the magnitude, the greater it crushes you." Ultra Sonic 007. Yes, the Digimon author here at fanfiction.net.

"What has happened...has happened...and what will happen...will happen." Ultra Sonic 007's 'Zero Two: A Revision'.

"A new story awaits the awakening..." Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix+ Extended Secret Ending.

"The paths we walk in dreams reflect those we walk in life."

"Love is not an emotion. It is not the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you like someone. Love is the conscious decision to care for someone; the decision to put that person's interests ahead of yours, to care for that person in every way you can. Love is not an feeling. It is a decision."

"A lot of people are confused when it comes to the phrase 'in love'. To be in love does not necessarily mean you actually love someone. It is the desire to love someone. You have to make the decision in order for it to be real."

"The mind creates love. The heart makes it romantic."

"Love, in all its forms, is sacrifice."

"'We'll talk about it'. The most dire words a woman can say short of 'I'm going to kill you.'" Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams, eleventh book of the Wheel of Time.

"Dovie'andi se tovya sagain. It's time to toss the dice." Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series.

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart." Stephen King's The Wastelands.

"There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time".

Endings are heartless.

Ending is just another word for goodbye." Stephen King's The Dark Tower. So true, so sad.