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this journal is friends-only, comment to be added. I'm pretty cool about most things, so leave a comment and I'll almost certainly add you.

Why wouldn't I?

-You're a troll/sock puppet
-You don't appear to have even the barest attempt at a grasp of the English language.

Seriously, though.  I'm a nice person.  I won't bite you in half if you leave a comment.

Included in this post is the Fic Masterlist, since (oh yeah!) I am a writer.  For the record, this is not an all-inclusive list.  This is simply everything on LiveJournal, which generally means it's the work I actually like.  If you would like to see everything I've ever written, you'll need to go to my FF.Net pages (cupid-painted-blind and Touch of Gray).  Or, you know, my fictionpress page, andromeda311.  Most of my writing is public.

But who is andromeda3116?

I'm a teenager, currently barreling toward my second year at University, majoring in Biology and minoring in Chemistry, and completely at a loss as to where this is taking me. I've considered everything from becoming a Neurologist to NASA scientist to streetwalker and back, and haven't decided yet. I envy the people who can make up their minds easily, because this is a talent of which I know not.

I'm an anomaly -- I love language and the fine arts, I love physical sciences, I love philosophy. Boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada. I occasionally tolerate math, I adore history, and I love to learn in general. I love Space Operas and corny anime and dorky boys on dorky TV shows. I enjoy feeling like a know-it-all. I loathe vampire fiction, with the sole exception of Dracula (and the vague respect I hold for Vampire Hunter D). I loathe most "supernatural" fiction in general, actually. Yes, this includes Twilight. It's best simply to not bring the books up around me.

I'm a former theatre major, with some experience in set construction and stage makeup. I did not, do not, and will not act, ever. Actually that's a lie, but I choose to block out the memories of the few times I have set foot onstage as they were all heinous and made Uta Hagen roll in her grave. I was a pretty good makeup artist, though. If the whole "science" shtick falls through, I may revisit that. I am not a party girl. I am not a sporty girl. I am a nerd and a dork and I think more than I talk (except when I don't, and this always ends badly).

If I haven't scared you off yet, feel free to friend me. I promise I don't bite. I fangirl, I make an ass of myself, and I whine, but I don't bite.

( Fic Masterlist )

I apologize if this breaks your f-lists, but I must do this.

I HAVE A SPOT RESERVED ON THE TRIP TO PERU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, here's how it happened.

Back when my internet was all screwy and my computer was consumed with viruses and I had just gone off to college, I didn't have much to do. And I suck at minesweeper and I was hideously bored and all I had was Windows Media Player and Word Pad. So I wrote. And it's quite possibly the most ridiculous thing in the entire world, but it entertained me when I had no other entertainment, which I suppose is good because that's all I meant to do. However, having 12,000 words of a (currently unfinished) story hanging around on my computer collecting dust makes me sad.

Which is why I'm posting it here.

Title: That Sinking Feeling
Summary:
"Whatever you say, Lois Lane. I don't talk to reporters."
"You'll talk to me."
Which is how I ended up on an impromptu road trip around half the country, chasing the band [band] as they completed their longest tour to-date, with nothing to my name but a the entire Harry Potter book-on-tape series, more Pringles than anyone could ever want or need, and my boss's credit card.
This could not possibly be legal.

Note: Yeah, I couldn't come up with a good enough name for the band, which is why the word band is in brackets every time I have to refer to them. Like I said, this is majorly unpolished, just thrown out there for shits and giggles, so I don't much care. Also, don't look for realism here, honestly. It's a totally ridiculous story.

( Part One - The Crescent City )

I know I've sort of given up my right to find this amazingly amazing, but I am nothing if not hypocritical, so.

My mother has recently become enamored of crappy supernatural romance novels.  She knows they suck, but she finds them entertaining when things are slow at work, and it gives us something easy to tease her for that she won't get mad about, so it's all good.  I've been worried, though, that my mother might somehow stumble across Twilight and find it right up her alley and then I would be dealing with a Twihard for a mother.

So we go to the doctor today, and I wear my awesome Harry Potter t-shirt because I'm a nerd like that, and the nurse taking my blood pressure mentions it, and then says, "Well, you know, Twilight is the big thing going around nowadays" and I just kind of groaned, my mother made a noncommittal noise, and the nurse left.

My mother then proceeded to rant about how much she thinks Twilight sucks and how she cannot understand the obsession with these books.

And it was beautiful.

:D

Necessary post to show off happy new icon.  I said that I wasn't going to get any icons like this, because those macros are ridiculous, but those other icons didn't feature Chekov.  Or George Kirk, which is the other shiny new icon I ganked.

Also?  17 isn't jailbait when you're an 18-year-old female.  :D

New layout, and I think it's the most beautiful one I've ever had.  :)

More later.

I am in love with Anton Yelchin.

That is all.

The Trials and Tribulations of Finding Good Ouran Fic on the Pit, Round One

It's 2 AM. I can't sleep. So... Fanfiction! And boy is it looking good this time. I try to avoid doing these too often because I kind of feel like a bitch, but. Yeah.

( Dear Sweet Mother of God. )

The Star Trek movie. THE STAR TREK MOVIE.

LEONARD NIMOY. AS SPOCK PRIME. AND AND AND OMG. IT'S AMAZING. GO SEE IT. MULTIPLE TIMES. WITH EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

Um.  Well.  To tell the truth, I would probably stare blankly at the screen in shock, and by the time I realized that OH HOLY CRAP I CAN FIND OUT ANYTHING I WANT TO KNOW my minute would be up.  But assuming that my minute only kicks in after the epiphany, I would probably hunt down some popular conspiracy theories, like the Kennedy Assassination or 9/11 so I can, from my jail cell, have irrefutable proof one way or another because conspiracy theories tend to annoy the shit out of me.

On the other hand, I'm a major chicken, so if I really did find myself accessing the CIA database, I would probably just click the X button really really fast and look around like a deer caught in headlights, waiting for the helicopters to descend, then slowly back away from the computer and leave the country.  Because I would not live very long in jail.

So.  Megalodon Sharks were big enough to, if they were so inclined, eat a Tyrannosaurus Rex with little or no chewing.  They didn't eat T. Rex, instead choosing to feast on whales.

I am so glad these things went extinct.  I don't say things like that often, but if those guys were still swimming the oceans, I'd be living in Kentucky.  Just sayin'.

Leave me an anonymous comment pouring your heart out. Say anything. Tell me your stories, your secrets, those things no one ever asks but you wish to tell. Tell me about your love, your hate, your indifference, your joy. Tell me about what's inside of you when you're reading through these entries on your friends list, and tell me why you continue to come back here. Tell me anything. Tell me what you really think of me or yourself. Anything.

Post anonymously. Speak honestly. Post as many times as you like.

The word "spam" looks rather alien all of a sudden.

Title: Cipher
Rating: PG-13 to possible R, for cursing and twisted themes.
Word Count: Roughly 1000, give or take some change.
Characters/Pairings: Seifer, somewhat introspective, mentions of Squall/Rinoa.
Summary: There's something wrong with his head. (This place, these people, they don't need sorceresses to destroy them.)
A/N: Takes place several years post-game. Going in my same vein of "GF are creepy as fuuuuuuck, y'all." Seriously. Super-powerful beings that steal your memories. Scaaaaaary. Also, I'm taking the stand that Seifer never equipped GF. IGNORE THE FACT THAT HE WAS EVER ON YOUR PARTY. Ignore it!

Also: italics abuse.

( Ultimecia was just a catalyst. )

All right.  So, here is the (incredibly unpolished) first part of the story mentioned here (and you can still toss some ideas into the mix.  In fact, please do!)  I just started playing around here.  I haven't been writing in a long time, and so it's so very rough.  Very, very rough.  Extremely rough.

But still.  It's a start.  Concrit is desperately appreciated.  Like, seriously.

Title:  Currently Untitled, As Most of My Ideas Revolve Around Regina Spektor Or Radiohead Songs...
Genre:  Comedy/Drama/Fantasy
Summary:  The Chosen One doesn't have a prophecy to fulfill (though he thinks he does).  The Princess doesn't really mind the Foreign Prince she's betrothed to (except that he's kind of boring).  The Witch is neither old nor evil (just bitter, slightly manic, and obsessed with cleanliness).  The old, advice-spewing hermit died a few years ago, and the crone already moved out of the woods.  There are no fairies, and they have no tales to tell besides.  But still, there might be a story or two lingering somewhere...

(Also, this is kind of reading in my head like an RPG.  Um, trying to remedy that.  If it starts to resemble a Final Fantasy too much, y'all will smack me, right?)


( this was a most undignified position... )

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line [unless the first line reveals the song title/artist or if the first line is just an intro] from the first 25 -50 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!

( bwahahahahahahaha )

We as a culture have become utterly obsessed with love.

Romance novels are one of the largest genres of writing.  The "Romance" section of FictionPress.com is the second largest.  Romantic Comedies almost always make craploads of money.  We're saturated with love and love stories.  What girl doesn't sigh upon hearing a sweet, romantic story of how the boy proposed to his girl in the romantic place at the romantic time?  It's practically what we live on as a culture.  We sell it, we buy it, we dream of it.  Little girls play he loves me, he loves me not, while older girls dissect and analyze every word a guy says to her.  We're warned of the dangers of falling too fast, but everything society tells us proclaims that someone who doesn't fall madly in love is somehow defective.

And yet, with all this analysis and discussion and with all the movies and sweet kiss scenes and hot sex scenes -- even after all the novels telling us how to fall in love, all the parents warning us and all the songs waxing poetic about how love feels -- fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.

Somewhere, in all this mess of romance, we forgot how to love.  We forgot that love is more than just Romance.  There are so many kinds of love and so many different ways to feel it.  I may love someone, but that doesn't mean I want to spend the rest of my life with him.  Alternatively, a guy may have done everything right, he may fit perfectly with you, he may be interested in most of the things you're interested in (but have enough differences to make things interesting), he may be cute, he may be sweet, he may be absolutely smitten with you -- but you just don't.

Our hearts don't fit into these pretty little compartments the way society claims they do.  People are so complex, and we forget that sometimes.  Just because a person is all wrong for you doesn't mean you won't fall madly in love with them.  Love doesn't always make sense.  Sometimes, it just happens and you can't explain why and you can't make sense of it.  People look at you like you're crazy, or stupid, or totally screwed up because you fell for Obnoxious Twit A, but that's just how it happened.

And more than that, just because you fell in love with someone doesn't mean it's necessarily meant to be.  People fall in and out of love all the time, and often for the same silly reasons they fell in love.  It doesn't make sense -- and like before, people may look at you like you're insane or messed up because you don't love Perfect Boy B, but that's just the way it is.

These things don't translate to fiction.  In stories, we like Perfect Girl A and Perfect Boy B to get together.  We like to see the Unresolved Sexual Tension evolve into a relationship.  We love watching people fall madly in love and we love to imagine them living happily ever after, whether it's likely or not.  We like to imagine the ways that the impossible relationships can happen.  In stories, we like to think that anything is possible -- and in stories, this mentality is great.

However, too often we think that this somehow should translate over to reality and it doesn't.  Impossible relationships are impossible -- and sometimes, loving someone just isn't enough.  When love does work out, it's as beautiful as the movies say it is, but the idea that all first loves will end in marriage-kids-old-age-together... This doesn't always happen.  And it's frustrating and painful and sad when it doesn't, and we have no one to blame, because after all, it's just a movie.  It's just a book.  It's just a show.  It's fiction -- we all know this.

But, to wrap back around to the original point, that kind of love isn't the only kind, and that kind of love isn't perfect anyway.  There are so many types of love -- filial love, fraternal love, platonic love -- and all of these are worth celebration.  This is why I hate the term "Singles Awareness Day" for Valentine's Day.  I'm not bitter over being single.  I'm too busy being happy with the love I have elsewhere.  My parents love me, my brothers love me, my friends love me.  I'd love to have a boyfriend, but just because I don't doesn't mean I can't celebrate a day dedicated to love.

So, with all that said...

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.  To all the people we love, and in all the ways we love them.

Title: if nothing else
Characters/Pairings: Rinoa, introspective, Squall/Rinoa?
Summary: All she can remember is static. A year after the events of the game, the GF begin to take their toll.
A/N: It's not happy. The one huge, gigantic, dangling string that FF8 left out there was this bit -- and when you think about it, it makes the entire game a tragedy.
Also? Unpolished, unedited, rough. Possibly incomprehensible.

( don't let this go )

To fully grasp the fear and respect I have for science, I present to you:

Chlorine Trifluoride.  If that article alone doesn't scare you at the prospect of this stuff, here's another:

For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.

Listen to this.  A one-ton spill of ClF3 once burned through 30 centimeters of concrete and another meter of sand and gravel beneath the concrete.  (For those who don't know the Metric system, that's almost a foot of concrete and another three of sand and gravel.)  It reacts explosively with water, releasing the ever-wonderful Hydrofluoric Acid, which is a fairly weak acid, but which will seep through your skin and melt your bones.  Leaving the skin intact.

THERE IS NO EMOTICON TO ACCURATELY DESCRIBE THE LOOK ON MY FACE.

This, folks, is why rocket scientists are, by definition, badasses.  ClF3 is a rocket fuel.  They deal with this stuff, which is harder to handle than fluorine gas -- a gas which will react with damn near anything.  Chuck Norris cries to his mother when confronted with this stuff.  Therefore, NASA wins my vote for most awesome people ever.