Well who's this handsome devil?
Yep, that was me! I had my avatar dressed as DMC3 Dante for the month of October and a tiny bit beyond. This time the avatar at the top of the entry will actually be relevant to what I'm going to talk about toward the end. Keep it in mind. It shouldn't be that hard to do. I, for one, couldn't stop staring at it for a day after I put it all together.
In the time since I wrote my last entry I became completely consumed by school. Nothing at all worth reporting on a blog scale happened to me. I'm still in a bit of a hole as far as work is concerned, but I have enough wiggle room today to take care of all the stuff I need to write, for school and Gaia alike. My review of the last aired episode of Sanctuary took me a full week to get around to writing, just before the next one comes. It's ridiculous! I'm looking forward to next semester like one wouldn't believe just because all these paper projects will be off my back forever. Granted, one more on such a scale is coming, but I'll have far more time to do that one and I get a semester just to plan on the side while I focus on what's due the next day. I've pulled a few all-nighters and I've missed a few meals. I even got sick for a week and kept on working (it wasn't H1N1. Trust me, I checked). Tonight I get a bit of a reprieve while I edit drafts of paper chapters and write one shorty chapter, but tomorrow and Sunday will be back to the crack-down.
Things of note began happening in the real world again on the 30th of October. Things of Death Note, to be exact. It was part of an assignment in my anthropology class to come to class in costume and this year I dressed as Misa Amane for Halloween. I used the same costume I've shown in here before, so most who read this will know it. I even carried my Rem plushie around with me that day. I had no time between classes to change clothes and my anthro class was at the end of the day, so I had to go around all day in costume. It wasn't that big a deal, but I never wear Lolita clothes. I got a plethora of odd looks on the quad between classes and some loud reactions from people who know me. My professor in my first class seemed shocked enough to make a joke: "This assignment does belong to you, right?" My second class was the most awkward, though. I walked in and every man in the room who could see me shouted "WHOA!" Even my professor in that class had something to say to that effect, but it was directed more at my "weird" plushie. The class after that was the class I wore the outfit for, but then I went to lunch and got more flabbergasted comments from guy friends. Apparently they could never picture me in such clothing. I think it was the fishnets. The one great plus of the day was being recognized by a freshman girl and getting a big, con-style hug. This girl and the younger people she hangs out with are the ones I consider heirs to the geekdom throne of my friends and I.
My Halloween daylight hours weren't terribly exciting. I worked on school stuff until the sun went down and I donned my costume again. There was a contest at the student-run coffee house and while I participated, I mainly went to see my friends in their amazing costumes. The scariest costume was, for the second year in a row, The Joker from The Dark Knight. Different guy in the outfit, though. My friend and his girlfriend, who dressed as Bellatrix LeStrange from Harry Potter, won best in show. I didn't win anything, but I didn't care. My highlight of the night was all the candy I snagged and the fun game of Apples to Apples a bunch of us played right after the contest.
The next day was, of course, my birthday! Not just any birthday, either. It was my 21st! Nothing actually happened on the day, though. I did run around with my fox tail on, but that was as wild as it got. The tail even got taken off in the evening. The most birthday-ish things I did were passing out custom M&Ms my mom had made for me and sharing 2/3 of my birthday cookie cake (also provided by my family). I wasn't upset at all, either. In my situation, a slow day was welcome.
Then, two days later, I took that big step: I had beer in a pub for the first time. I ran into some people I knew from campus at the pub under the inn that nobody can tell whether or not it's on campus. My first sip of beer ever was from a friend's glass, since he's a year older than me and wanted to ease me into trying it. Lessons learned: I really, REALLY don't like any of the beers served at that pub (I got samplers of other kinds later) and India pale ale is the lesser of all the evils. I had about ten sips of that kind before calling it quits. It was the day following this and all the days for a week after where I felt sick. Listless, unable to stay awake, no will to eat and trouble breathing by the end of the day. No swollen glands, but for all I know it was mono via drink-sharing that one time. That or I could just not react well to beer. I'm never having it again either way unless I'm stuck in Europe for one reason or another, which is highly unlikely even in my chosen field. I want to study this continent.
That's it for real stuff. As for virtual things, life exploded into epicness as of October 28th and it didn't terminate until just yesterday. Because of all the work I put into my avatar's costume, I wanted to show it off and asked a friend I'd made during the summer event who ran a DMC thread if she'd made one for this event (the event was called Demonbusters, so I figured such a thread was merited). The answer was no, but also "With that outfit, you should make the thread." The event forums opened up a few days before the 28th when the event began, but I didn't open my thread until that day. It was my first time ever taking a serious stab at portraying a character I didn't make myself in an official roleplay thread (even if it was of my own creation). I got off to a rocky, shaky start playing Dante, but I started to watch cutscenes from DMC3 and 4 as models for how to act and by the second day something just clicked into place in my head. I started to model my actions after Dante's DMC4 incarnation (as played by Reuben Langdon, as in 3 4laugh ) and it started to flow out oddly naturally from there. It's very odd since I'm just now 21, a straight woman and very outwardly shy whereas DMC4 Dante is in his late 30s, a serious ladies' man and not shy about anything. Everyone I've talked to about it (saying "I can't believe it was me who wrote that!" ) told me that it was the result of loving the character so much. I can believe that. It still didn't shock me any less that others who I'd just met through making that thread called me the best Dante RPer they'd ever seen. It was a flattered kind of shock, though. By the time it was shut down with the rest of the event forum, my thread reached 160 pages of almost completely solid informal RP and hardly all of it was action. It was mostly just character interaction that got it so far. I also incorporated the Gaia event plot into the thread's plot, creating a plausible timeline of behind-the-scenes events that factored into the thread's story involving the Sentinel, one of the Gaia event characters. I even played as her in my thread, too. I imagine her speaking with Karen Dyer's Sheva Alomar voice from Resident Evil 5 (something else Reuben did mocap in!). Then I discovered the real task and/or burden that came from playing Dante: Not being able to turn it off. I made more dirty jokes in the past two weeks than most of this school year. sweatdrop
Now the event forum is locked, though, and my avatar has returned to the state it was in before the costume came. That costume, however, is still in use. I went ahead and made myself a Dante mule so that, once all this work finally ends in early December, I can contact all my thread regulars and resume. The best of them all made it onto my friends list here on this account, so contacting them all should be a breeze. I've already tested the system. Now I have even more reason to look forward to next semester. wink
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Season 2!
Micheal Bay!
I can't wait. It was real fun.