The other day, I read the first post of a thread on Gaia. It was a pansexual who was writing about how hetero- and homosexuals are just as superficial as those who discriminate who they would have sex with based on weight. Yeah, there's a lot of threads about other threads on that forum.

Anyways, initially I found myself agreeing with the original post, but then I was browsing thread titles in that forum - as I've formed a habit of doing. Not a colloquial habit, but one that I can't seem to stop myself from doing, even though I really dislike that forum these days - and I noticed that thread's title again: "Superficiality about sexuality?" or something like that.

And when I read it, a thought flashed through my mind, not in words like thoughts usually are, just as an idea. And I will describe it below.

She's wrong. The original poster of that thread could not be more wrong. Technically, they are right in that discriminating who you'd fuck with based on gender is just as superficial as discriminating who you'd fuck with based on weight, but they're still wrong in the implication that it IS superficial.

For asexuals who like romance with any gender and pansexuals, it's not a big deal. Just fall in love with someone, if they fall in love with you then a relationship might ensue. Their sexuality doesn't prohibit a relationship; they're either not attracted to anyone, so it's not an issue, or they don't care about the other person's body, so it's not an issue.

For a lot, and I do mean a LOT of the rest of us, we enjoy sex. And unlike pansexuals and the asexuals who enjoy sex, we do care about the other person's body beyond practicality. We enjoy it with our partner or partners above others for that emotional bond it gives us with them. That act of trusting them with our kinks, our physical secrets, the things we learn we love, hate, or feel neutral about the other person that we learn during sex... These can enhance or destroy a relationship.

For those of us who need to have sex with our partner(s), it is crucial that we can look at them and enjoy even the thought of sleeping with them or visualizing them naked. If we can't, then we begin to avoid those thoughts. Sex with our partners is something we must enjoy. It's not a superficial matter for us. It's a very crucial thing toward our mutual happiness in a relationship, as much as a person's personality is for a pansexual.

This is not to say that we should ever expect to find a person with a mind or body that is perfect for us. Some of us will, but most of us will have to accept minor things which do not fit into our vision of perfection, pan- a- and hetero/bi/homosexuals alike.

It is important then that we learn to recognize what we can accept about a person, and what we cannot accept. If we cannot accept something about our partner, it is unlikely that our own personal happiness will continue. We all deserve to be happy, each and every one of us.

I think I'm done now. I'm starting to go off on tangents.

Oh, and this was not directed toward anyone in particular. : 3

No, I don't mean my art. I mean the schizophrenia.

For the first time in over a year and a half, I may have hallucinated.

I was having this really, REALLY nice and relaxing dream while sleeping on the couch. When I woke up all too soon - it was one of those dreams that if it were reality, it would be nice - I started to hear this needling ring, like from a cell phone. My dad was upstairs, and I heard him say, "Good morning," just after the ringing stopped.

Now, my dad does not have a cell phone. And none of our alarm clocks sound like that. So it had to have been a hallucination.

But, after he said good morning, I started to think about what might be going on. I began to believe that someone was calling him to warn him that I was awake. My thoughts then turned to who might be calling him, first I started to believe he was an alien - not the kind from the USA, the extraterrestrial kind - and then I switched from that to him being a military agent.

These thoughts lasted a few minutes. I then recognized the thoughts as similar to those delusional thoughts I was having back four to five years ago, before I was on medication and shortly after.

Fortunately, I was able to shake those thoughts away by screaming at myself - mentally, not verbally - that such things were not founded in reality.

So that ended those thoughts, fortunately.

But oh man, that dream...

I was a woman in a male-dominated society. I was dominant, and I started this whole wave of dominant women. Kurisu was there at my side, and we went to a Molten Core raid. Ohh, how the two of us slaughtered everything. But it wasn't all gorey, no. The violence was fake, faker than WoW violence. The characters and NPCs in the dream were like pieces from the World of Warcraft board game, but we fought like WoW characters.

There was fighting between the dominant males and the dominant females. It was a mixture of argument and violence.

We got through Molten Core, and at the end we were hopping from floating rock rock to floating rock, fighting everything on them and winning.

It's hard to express the images I remember, but I'll try.

The floating rocks were a light brown-grey, with cracks filled with magma.

At the end, the men fought four bosses: Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad, The Lich King, and one other that I cannot remember. The women then fought the same bosses.

Ohh, it was glorious, a nearly perfect dream that I am sad will fade from my memory...

I thought I'd make a birthday post today. : 3

I know, my birthday was on Monday this week - the 24th of August - but it was such a happy day for me. : 3

I woke up late, well, late for most people. It was actually at 9 AM. So I got downstairs, to find my mom still home, unusual for a Monday. Turned out she had just overslept. Anyways, she handed me a present bag - why bother wrapping when you can re-use the bag? : D - which, much to my delight, contained Call of Duty: World at War (WaW), for the PS3.

So I took it gratefully, put it aside for the moment, and did some other stuff for a while before going to take the dog for a walk. I think I played a bit of WoW.

One of my friends comes over before we leave for the walk, and he starts to play WaW as we leave. We come back, he's still playing and getting 20 points a kill. I was like, "Ooh, this could be fun." (It turns out that there was something special going on. Now I only get 10 points per kill)

So when he's finished, I start to play, do pretty well for myself in my first game on Mercenary Team Deathmatch, 14 kills, 1 assist, 14 deaths. Far from my worst game in my Call of Duty life. I play a little more, gain a bunch of levels, and by the time I'm done, it's about 2 or 3 PM. How the time flies when one is enjoying themselves. : 3

So I go play a little bit of World of Warcraft, before leaving to go pick up my brother from work. I don't drive, but my dad likes company in the car, and I like going for rides with him because we talk about interesting stuff - World of Warcraft, war, psychology, bunch of other stuff. He gets in the car when we get there, and he's got a poster for me. A nice one with a dragon... Which reminds me that I should probably put it up.

So we come home, making a stop to pick up pizza for supper. We get home, eat pizza, I get more presents - Futurama volume 3, Simpsons season 12, some money from my grandparents - and eat delicious ice cream cake whilst watching Futurama.

People start going to bed, and I play some more Call of Duty. I go to play some more World of Warcraft, eventually get too tired to do that. So then I just stay on MSN, Gaia, YIM, chatting with various people and feeling good. I also learn that at such late hours, my phalattus - snicker - to spell properly is reduced significantly. I can't remember what word I was trying to spell, but I just couldn't spell it correctly for a few minutes. I didn't even see what was wrong with it.

I go to bed at 4 AM, have a weird dream involving sitting at my computer, watching the clock jump forward by an hour every second. It was weird, it started at an hour after the last time I had ACTUALLY looked at the clock, and jumped forward by an hour until it was like quarter to one.

So, because of that, when I woke up in the morning, I couldn't remember if I'd stayed up till 4 or 5 AM. Eventually I did figure it out, because I remembered going to bed about an hour after my friend went to bed at 3 AM. : 3

All in all, a good birthday.

On Wednesday, I received my final three presents. A check from my third set of grandparents - my dad's parents got divorced, and his dad re-married. Every time I call him a bastard, he goes, "Hey now! I remember my parents' wedding!" to which I reply, "THAT'S MY POINT! : D" It's all very friendly from my perspective. : 3 - and a T-shirt from Blizzard, an Alliance one specifically, as well as that Tamuura action figure I mentioned in my last journal entry. : 3

And with the money I received for my birthday, I went online to FigurePrints and ordered myself a figurine of my character in World of Warcraft. : 3 I am looking forward to its safe arrival.

I will be re-uploading the stories I deleted over the next little bit, plus adding another, never-before-seen-on-FA, REALLY-short-but-intense one. Enjoy.

So here's how I do my shading these days.

First, I get the picture coloured, one colour per layer.

Then I create a new layer for shading. I use solid black on that layer until I'm satisfied with the shading, and then I reduce the opacity on that layer until it looks right. I do the same for highlighting on a new layer, but with white instead of black.

What I was thinking was to use multiple layers for shading and highlighting, and do what I described above, but only add more to the parts where I want it to be darker. Would something like that work?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide. : 3

Come round ye children, to hear of this tale, of a hero named Lexis, and a dragon named Raze....

The day followed the Day of the Dead. Our hero gathered a group of brave, strong lads and lasses, clad in mighty armour and armed with mighty weapons and spells.

They fought their way through Molten Core, slaughtering the fire elementals, great flaming beasts, and powerful monsters alike. The party members fell in battle in ones and twos, but were ressurrected each time by the survivors. Early into the afternoon, they came across a mighty challenge, a trio of massive core hounds, and were nearly vanquished. A brave paladin stood amongst the slain bodies of his fellows and fought off the remaining Core Hound until others could find him. More and more of the adventurers came, having ressurrected themselves, until finally the Core Hound lay dead, slain upon the black rock of this hellish place.

The adventurers fought on after ressurrecting their fallen fellows. Leader after leader of the monsters died, until they realized they could not continue because the items they needed to summon the final two leaders, were on cooldown.

So they left Molten Core to rot for a while, and went up, up toward the surface. They finally reached Blackwing Lair, and began to fight their way in.

The first leader was slain without much difficulty, but with much confusion amongst the group. The dragon lay dead. But still, something curious happened. The monsters would not cease coming. As they slew dozens upon dozens of monsters, soon their boots could not touch the ground through the sheer number of corpses. The party noob was slain quickly.

The party tried to press on, hoping the monsters would leave them alone if they continued, to no avail. They entered the next chamber, and the monsters continued to come, orc and dragonkin working together to slay their enemies. The foes were forced into a bottleneck, and the slaughter was great. Fire burned, ice froze, arcane energy annihilated. Axes fell, arrows and bullets flew. Still they kept coming. It seemed as though the battle would last 'till Judgement Day and beyond.

One of the party members, no one knows who, decided to go forth and explore the chamber. He discovered there a dragon, asleep. He woke the mighty dragon in the midst of this horrific slaughter of orc and dragonkin. The dragon, angered by this fool's interruption, tore him limb from limb.

The dragon then rushed the party in a furious rage! Together, between the dragon's powerful claws, scorching fire, and mighty strength, and the hordes upon hordes of orcs and dragonkin, the adventurers realized their peril. Still they fought. Quickly, the healers ran low of mana trying to keep everyone alive. The tanks perished in the crossfire. The DPS fell next, along with the healers And finally, the last adventurer lay dead on the ground. Peace returned to the lair.



This is a description of what transpired today in World of Warcraft. Lex, a friend of mine, put together a raid group for Onyxia's Lair. We went on to do Molten Core, and we tried to do Blackwing Lair once we realized the things we use to douse the flames in MC were on cooldown.

We wiped in BWL, but by then the items weren't on CD anymore, so we were able to go back to MC and finish up.

I got two pieces of T1 shaman gear and a five gold repair bill. Oh, and a green BoE ring.

The story is a description of the night's events, modified from an MSN conversation I had with a friend shortly afterward. I tried to write it like an epic story, but the ending was and still might be weak, so I decided to edit it.

I'll be turning 20 tomorrow. There shall be delicious food, lots of hugs, and much cuddling and possibly violations! : D

Pouncey's information:

Species: Usually dragon. Base form of an Eastern Canadian Wolf.

Sex: Usually herm or female.

Eye colour: Olive to emerald green.

Hair colour: Usually a complementary colour to hir scales, fur, or skin. (Or feathers, I suppose)

Clothing preference: Weather-appropriate attire when venturing outdoors, when indoors shi wears panties and a t-shirt, if any clothing at all. Sometimes jeans.

Appearance: Slightly daemonic features reflecting hir pseudo-succubus side. When draconic, has blue or shiny silver scales with white underbelly. When night elf, has purple skin. When human, has light tan skin. When wolf, has tan fur with white underbelly and face.

Weapons: Stormbolter, powersword.

Defensive gear: Powered armour, combat shield.

Magical powers: Can use fire breath, lightning breath, moderate healing spells, arcane missiles, polymorph (shapeshifting), teleport. Hir irises glow green when using magic.

Just a thing I'd like to talk about. 'Cause I'm bored.

Basically, I draw Pouncey in most of my drawings, instead of other peoples' characters, because I'm still improving my skills. I've come a long way since I started in 2005, but I'm still nowhere near confident in my skills to draw things I haven't practised to the nth degree. I know I'm exaggerating there, but whatever.

Anyways.

I'll draw Kuri sometimes. But when I practice drawing, it's always of Pouncey. And the results vary wildly. Shi rarely looks the same in two different pictures, and not just because shi can change what shi looks like.

The reason shi looks so wildly different is because... Well, I don't know. That's what I hope to find out in this journal.

It could be because I no longer have the ability to keep one image fixed in my mind. I used to be able to do that, and focus in on parts mentally to get a better view. But now, when I focus in, it gets more muddled; the lines blur and morph.

God damn, I don't even know what Pouncey looks like. I can describe hir, but shi... Well, it's hard to fix an image in my mind, as I said before.

Probably another part of the reason shi looks so different, is because I'm no longer willing to spend weeks on a single image, perfecting it, as I was as recently as three and a half years ago.

Which reminds me, I should probably upload some things I'm ashamed of. Maybe later.

So, as my closer friends may know, I have schizophrenia.

Back when I was diagnosed, I was drawing a beautiful piece of art every couple of months. My copy-by-eye's were especially well-done, and they continue to be, although I generally no longer have the patience to continue them.

More than that, I'd only taken art lessons at school. I had no further training with art. Not meaning to brag, but I could draw quite well three to four years ago, even with nothing but my thoughts to guide my pencil.

Then, when I joined the fandom, back in 2005, I drew my first fursona. As drawings go, it was recognizable, but not really all that good. I'd apparently lost my skill.

In 2007, I was reading a book about schizophrenia, because I was curious. I seem to recall the book mentioning that schizophrenics tend to be quite decent at artistic skills, or some of them are. It was mentioned in the context of schizophrenics wanting to stay off medication to keep their artistic skill, I think, although that may have been a random thought of mine at the time.

2005 was the year I started going on my new medication after my old medication didn't seem to be helping much.

Back before 2005, and after the time I started getting sick, I could draw well from memory, or even just thoughts in my head. Afterwards, it's like I just couldn't transmit my thoughts to paper. Like I couldn't convert my thoughts to lines on a page.

I've noticed that now I have a lot more thoughts, and yet, they're very brief, much like flashes. It's difficult for me to stay on one particular thought, or even focus on a particular part of a mental image, like a nose or eye. When I mentally zoom in, the part I zoom in on goes blank; it loses detail and becomes a solid mass of colour.

Given all this, would I go off my medication? No. My art does not define my life, and even if it did, I can still find art instruction books that will help me draw, and take art lessons from Master Synx to help me draw furries.

Even if my art doesn't improve, which is impossible given the amount that it has improved to this point, I still wouldn't go off my meds. Things are much better in my life now than they were four years ago.

~Pouncey/Andreyis/Chris

I have decided, with the coming of cooler temperatures, that it's seasonally inappropriate to clothe Pouncey in things like the five piece pink leather outfit. It's just not warm enough.

So, from now on, I'm going to draw hir, and also request that anyone who draws hir, draws hir in warmer clothing such as jeans, t-shirt or sweater (if indoors) or winter jacket (if outdoors). I'm not going to whine about other clothing, but I would just kinda prefer it that way. I'll upload an example (kinda) or two.