ZOMBIES

Today's A Softer World strikes so very close to home, though I know my "fake" diary is anything but happy. I have never once lied in my journal. I have, of course, on occasion, taken steps to hide or omit the truth but I feel as if that's no more than most people tend to do on any given day, in the presence of any given company. It's something that I rather dislike about humanity, really, the habit of softening the blow or cutting out the bits that might make someone uncomfortable or might even make you, yourself, uncomfortable as you admit it, no matter how important it might be.

I have never lied in my journal but I have not, for a very long time, told the whole truth. It's been years now since I've given most people anything but the most carefully edited version of everything. Some of my closest friends have gotten the honest answers and gory details when it's come to certain topics but, in reality, even they haven't gotten everything. In the long run, I suppose this stems from a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy that has been with me for a very long time, a feeling which itself stems from the fact that even most of those who have said that they loved me for me actually meant that they conditionally loved me for the me that they saw at that very moment and that they would turn their backs on me the instant that I became more like the me that they knew from the very beginning I felt the most comfortable while being. So why should I share the whole truth and go into every detail when there is absolutely no reason that anyone would ever even possibly care? Keep yourself to yourself, no one else thinks it matters.

Admittedly, this is a part of why I find myself making a bit of a very slow and quiet move over to Dreamwidth. I don't feel like I can be honest on my livejournal anymore because I don't feel like enough people with the ability to read it actually care about what's really going on. There are so many people on my flist who have friended me for fandom purposes - the roleplaying I used to do, the fanfics I used to write, the fanart I used to draw, etc. - none of which I have done any great deal of for some time. Then there are the people who have friended me for the sake of real-life, few of whom ever seem to pay my real-life posts any mind and none of whom I feel I am half as close to as I used to be. How many people in either of those groups would really care to read along and waste the effort on commenting at the end as I prattle on about my personal religion or issues with my gender identification? Possibly more than my habitually insecure ego would lead me to believe but how should I know? Too much of my life has been filled up with painful and otherwise uncomfortable topics for anyone to really want to follow along anymore and I'm not sure I can really blame them. I just wish that not blaming them didn't make me feel like I also had to be so very careful not to step on any toes.

Why this all bothers me so much, I have no idea. I read what other people write in their journals and I rarely see any more raw honesty there than I see in my own. People I know or have at some point in time known very personally make "tell-all" posts to their journals these days that I can see right through because they're so very watered down, made more family friendly, more palatable to the world outside. But I don't say anything to them. There is, after all, a certain level of dishonesty that is not only acceptable but expected in today's society.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

No. Not really. I'll pretend to, though, if that makes you feel any better.

I've never lied in my journal but I always feel like I'm lying. I'm not going to claim that my Dreamwidth is going to hold in candid detail all of the facts that would be like dirty, little secrets coming from me on other blogs - hell, I'm not even going to claim that I'm going to use my Dreamwidth any more if even quite as much as I do any other blog - but I will say that there may come to be a lot of things on my Dreamwidth that you wouldn't find anywhere else. Think of it as my personal atonement. I'm making amends with myself. Because I've spent far too much of my time putting a filter on Me for the sake of avoiding the discomfort of others. I'm making myself a place where I can stop.


- Crossposted from jsem to lyotto

Title: How To Stay Dead In Ten Simple Steps
Part: The Fifth
Words: 612
Note: This will be unlocked for at least a few weeks so feel free to share wherever you think there might be interest. Welcome to the end of my story. If you've missed anything, go back - part one, part two, part three, part four.

Just Another Day In The Life
He holds his knife under the faucet and watches the water circle around and around the drain. It has a weird sort of candycane effect, thin blood swirling against white porcelain, and he sighs. He always sighs – when he meets them, when he kills them, when he’s cleaning up the mess, he’s sighing – because it’s the only sound for it in his mind. Sighs can speak of so many things – boredom or annoyance, condescension or relief. His are always exhausted and resigned. Sometimes he wonders how they never seem to scare anyone away. It shouldn’t be so easy to reel people in like he does, after all, to make them like him, trust him. It doesn’t make sense. But someone once told him that he was just so weird and awkward that it was endearing. To the nicer people, anyway. So maybe there was something to that. And maybe the nastier ones just saw him as easy prey. That was a funny thought now, wasn’t it? It would explain why he felt so much less guilt over them than he did over the kind ones.

( He uses the gag cloth... )


HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Title: How To Stay Dead In Ten Simple Steps
Part: The Fourth
Words: 1591
Note: This will be unlocked for at least a few weeks so feel free to share wherever you think there might be interest. If you've missed anything, go back - part one, part two, part three.

Someone Has To Tell The Story
It’s a sickening sight, the convulsions. Leland is sprawled out on the floor one moment, only to be standing on his head and his toes, back arched and eyes rolled back a second later. The sounds that he makes are horrific and Missy just wishes that she could plug up her ears but the rope that keeps her wrists locked together is as secure as the best knots taught to any boy scout and, as queasy as she feels, there’s no sign of a dead faint on the horizon. So she watches him, instead, eyes wide and jaw slack, as spectral creatures leap in and out of him like a headline show at the devil’s own aquarium, their tanks made out of flesh and bone, water made of blood. On the foot of the bed, the dog she has now discovered to be named Austin has curled up with his eyes closed and, beside him, tiny Twain is rolled into a ferret ball with his paws pressing his ears down to the sides of his head. She finds herself wondering how many times they must have seen this. If killing her is the only way for him to end it, then no wonder they’re both so eager to see her dead.

( The sounds quiet down... )

Title: How To Stay Dead In Ten Simple Steps
Part: The Third
Words: 1115
Note: This will be unlocked for at least a few weeks so feel free to share wherever you think there might be interest. If you've missed anything, go back to part one and part two.

Mommy, I Don’t Wanna Wake Up
There’s an odd skittering sound like claws on wood beside her head.

Uh oh. Aussie? Hey, Aussie!

Skitter, skitter.

Aussie, I think she’s waking up!

( Farther away... )

Title: How To Stay Dead In Ten Simple Steps
Part: The Second
Words: 825
Note: This will be unlocked for at least a few weeks so feel free to share wherever you think there might be interest. Part one can be found here.

Maybe Your Gift Horse Has Trust Issues
Missy hadn’t intended to be alone at the bar that night. In fact, she hadn’t intended to be at the bar at all. But calling your boyfriend to be sure that you were still on for that big anniversary dinner you’d planned a full month ago only to hear the voice of your supposed best friend telling him to get back into bed— Well, it was funny the effect that such a thing could have upon your plans for an evening.

( So she had gone to the bar... )

Title: How To Stay Dead In Ten Simple Steps
Part: The First
Words: 870
Note: This will be unlocked for at least a few weeks so feel free to share wherever you think there might be interest.

Speak Not of Death Before Breakfast
It’s always a strange feeling, taking that first breath. Every oxygen-deprived cell in his body screams a biological chorus of hallelujahs, which rings through the once silent chambers and corridors of his gradually warming corpse. Meanwhile, that grand muscle in his chest shudders back into motion and the finer functions of his brain, the normal ones that require a beating heart and a working set of lungs, click and whirl into gear like a computer turning on. There’s still some time after his full awareness returns before he can move but he savors those moments and sighs as he releases the ever elusive freedom known as death.

( From the door by his head comes the familiar whining and scratching... )

My best friend just got turned into a fucking zombie.

Shell just managed to get home through the rising horde. Mum and Da are yet to be heard from. We're mostly barricaded into the house and I'm trying to figure out how to get to the mountains from here without hitting any makeshift road blocks. If we can hit the Appalachains, we can stick the trail northward. Raid little towns on the way. I'd think I'd prefer taking my chances in the woods with the bears and the occasional zombie woodsman over sitting here with things shambling around my lawn. I mean, the safe zone down the road sounds like a bloodbath from here and I'm just tired of sitting still.

Go or stay. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. What's the difference? It's the end of the world as we know it.

I kept saying I needed to do this so I decided to follow my braintwin's lead and finally get a flist cut done and out of the way. It's not a major one but still. If you've been cut, it means one of many things - you neither post nor comment (both, not either-or), I very rarely read what you post (or am bothered by/uninterested in whatever I do read), I don't feel comfortable talking to you, etc. The decision to cut is not meant to be mean, no matter what the reason. In fact, most of the reasons go back to the fact that I'm not currently in a comfortable position life-wise and need to cut some ties or start from scratch in certain places.

Something else that is likely to sound mean, even though I don't particularly intend it to, is the fact that I know that I have not made any mistakes with this cut. If you've been defriended, it's been done on purpose. I say this flat-out because I did some serious debating over almost every single one of the people I decided to cut and over a few people who were ultimately kept for various reasons. Some people who were defriended might find themselves being refriended, should they have any interest by then, as I get a little more settled and my triggers grow fewer and farther in between.

Until then, I don't mean to hurt or offend anyone. If I do, I'm sorry. But this is just how things have to be at this point in time.

So I have these two old, old friends of mine from way back in my original online RP days. Days which are torturous to recall at times but what can you do? Anyway, I've still been talking to one of them off and on since we met. In fact, Tikki's even subjected her complete lack of attention span upon some of the other games I've played in more recently so her name may not look entirely foreign to some. But, back in the day, we were sort of a triad, which is also sort of where my whole Patchwork Angel thing originally came from. I was the Patchwork, Tikki was the Woodwork and then there was the Clockwork, better known as Tok.

The point of this little rambling is just to explain the following doodles. See, Tikki and Tok were the recipients of my very first attempt at putting some of my original NPCs up for adoption in a game. It was a fairly successful attempt, even though the game completely crashed and burned, and I've left the characters in Tikki and Tok's hands ever since. I still adore them, though, no matter how silly their original incarnations were, so when Tok suddenly popped up out of the blue and said she wanted to get back into RP and use the guy she picked up from me elsewhere, I made no arguments. Much like Matthew in emptyidols started out as my NPC but is now completely in the possession of one pooklet, I couldn't take Dane back from Tok if I wanted to.

I can, however, love on him much as I love on his typist. So today he got a doodle. Along with a couple others, also for Tok, who hasn't stopped regailing me with tales of her return to Role-play Land since she refound me.

( That said, I'll stop babbling and give you the sketches already. )

Anyway, I'm sure there are other things I could talk about here but I don't really have the energy. I've got some picspam planned for later, though. Possibly some other time this week.

ETA: Post temporarily unlocked for sharing purposes.

I don't advertise much but I'll advertise for this.





Click me, kids. You know you want to. It's a little less dangerous than taking candy from strangers.











P.S. Hush up, I'm street teaming here. If you want the selfish note, I'm just after the rep points. It'd take a good 400 individual impressions (one click per computer per day) just to make the bottom of the barrel. I'm too late onto the wagon to make the 200,000-some-odd impressions it'd take to win this bitch so tralala.

My two cents: Yes it all sucks. Yes it is a giant witch hunt, when you really get down to it. Just consider the fact, though, that, as bzzinglikeneon said, we all agreed to the Terms of Service here. The TOS states that you will not use LJ to promote any illegal activity. Hell, she said it better than I could possibly paraphrase.

My point is, the way LJ is going about all of this is probably one of the dumbest conflict management moves I have ever seen in my life because hunting by interests does result in striking down the innocent as much as if not more than the guilty. As pointed out, even support groups are suffering because people aren't looking at the content of the communities and journals, they're just deleting them. But it's LJ's right to be paranoid, lovelies. This is their playground and they let us play. This is just a vigilante group lighting a bonfire under their ass where normally it's only individuals demanding their temporary attention with a spluttering match.

Anyway, Anita has a good list going up there for the commentary that's useful and makes sense. Last night, my friends and I cleaned out any interests on the journal we were most worried about. Best I can tell you is to do a sweep for anything vaguely questionable connected to any journals you don't want to lose. Protect yourself the best you can. Sit back. Relax. Let the fire burn itself out. Also, if you're at all worried and haven't done so already? Make sure you've got a back-up of anything and everything you've ever drawn or written and don't want to lose. I personally don't understand not keeping copies of your own work anyway but, hey, some people are not quite as compulsive about this sort of thing as I am.

So now that I've said my piece, it's back to your regularly scheduled f-locking and ignoring of the universe. I've got a trip to prepare for. Let's all try to be reasonable and admittedly fallible human beings around here, mmkay?