I barely exist anymore. It's very tiring to perform all the roles other people see and put me in. There is rarely enough of me to do everything I should. What little is left of me is stretched thin and I long for the day I finally crack and fall to dust.

Just dropping by

It's been over a year.
Nothing noteworthy happened.
What did happen, and I am noting it only to toss some content out there (and avoid responsibilities), was that I am suffering through the third month of inexplicable itch everywhere on my body, and even more inexplicable affinity to burst into tears for no apparent reason more or less twice a month.
I also fell in love.
Not with a person, I don't think so, rather with the attention and affection they show me, which has me clinging rather desperately and very pathetically to them. Poor sod hasn't realized yet that I burn and the warmth he gets from me isn't scalding because I hide the embers deep, so very deep, and bury them under temperance and kindness.
Or maybe I simply overreact to my own emotions and the barest hint that a person finds my company remotely enjoyable.
In other news, I still talk little, do less, browse the Internet and somehow still got a scholarship, which rekindled my hopes to save enough money to build (have someone build) me a PC that will support new games for at least three years. Maybe even as soon as for Christmas.
Life is good, even if sometimes I have to fight tooth and nail to hide my crying.

Life is easier where the walls are red [excerpt]

   "Beautiful, isn't it," she said softly, her eyes locked on the horizon. He cast a glance that way, wondering what is it she saw in the familiar angles of the city he knew like the backs of his hands, worn with living and ordinary. The rain kept pounding down, flattening her short hair and meandering down her cheeks, washing tears away. Her eyes shone with a weary kind of wonder, strikingly vibrant grey in the first rays of sun casting horizontally across the steady downpour. Her eyelids quivered in the bright light and raindrops, and she blinked several times to shake them from her eyelashes, looking at him. "Light is the most beautiful thing in this world. It only ever boils down to this; nothing would amaze without light to play its games with shadow over edges and borders." She turns pensive for a moment. "Music must be the only exception; the only thing that can be beautiful without light, and what a world would it be without music? We all as well could be blind."   He kept watching her, unsure if what he heard was a revelation or nonsensical babbling.

Excerpt from a short story I wrote today, having half-dreamed, half-imagined it two nights ago when drifting off to sleep and fantasizing about meeting Woodkid. Full text posted here. 

Tirra's adventures in culture: Florence + the Machine

  Long ago I made it a major point on my bucket list to see Florence + the Machine live. First chance was in Berlin, on December 1st 2012, but I waited too long with buying the tickets and they sold out in early July. Learning from experience, I purchased my tickets for both Woodkid back in May and Florence this past Saturday well in advance, and I was right to do so - where normally it would be possible to come up to festival gates of Coke Live and buy a ticket on the spot, this year everything sold out shortly before the event.

  And what an event it was. Due to Wu-Tang Clan, another major star of the festival, being late by several hours, the crowd who came to CLMF just for F+TM started gathering in front of the Main Stage very early on rather than filter in through the dispersing audience of Wu-Tang the moment the hip-hop band finished playing an hour before Flo. As I arrived on site over two hours early, you couldn't squeeze a finger in within twenty meters from the barrier. To the day of my death I will be proud of the fact that when Florence walked up to her microphone and started singing I was deep into the Golden Circle, between me and the barriers only two outrageously tall men (whom I nicely asked to let me slip in between them, only to be bluntly refused this minimal courtesy) and some two or three meters away from the passage in the middle. I was lucky to be passed by a large group of determined people as I was trying meekly to worm my way closer from the outskirts of the throng while Tres.B were on stage, standing in for WTC; I grabbed on to them and let myself be pulled right into the heat of things, heedless of any and all risks that getting there in sandals involved. (Either way, my feet were better off in sandals than they were in Dr Marten's on Woodkid, though the pogo was comparable).

  On the downside, the closer we got, the more glitter was tossed around, and by the time we were within the tightest-packed part of the audience half my chest was covered in it. When Florence herself pulled out a pack of the golden dust and started generously sprinkling whoever she could reach, it just wasn't worth the fuss to avoid being lathered with it - apparently Golden Circle isn't called golden for nothing and when I caught up with my friend after the concert, it was blatantly obvious I'd been there, as illustrated. :) Even today, four days later, there's glitter under my eyes that no amount of scrubbing my face raw could remove, and later I just didn't bother, keeping it as a memoir of sorts.

 Florence was every bit the fairy and escapee from a Rosetti painting that I remembered her from live performances recorded and uploaded to YouTube and, to my utter bewilderment, proved that she is, indeed, capable of holding a tune for nearly twenty seconds without taking a breath. On our part, the audience didn't disappoint, either - half of the time I couldn't hear her over the horrible singing and general screaming we did. Though oxygen was scarce, notions like personal space and subtlety were left behind well out of the festival grounds, glitter entered my trachea and lungs in cancerous amounts and I very much felt like in a frenzied herd of cattle condensed like sardines in a tin, it was easily one of the best experiences of my life. Artists probably say that worldwide on every concert they give, but Florence spoke very warmly of performing for Polish audiences - that the reception is much more enthusiastic than anywhere else; that she will return gladly and loves singing for us. And I, for one thing, believe that; the cameras sweeping overhead never really capture the passion of the crowd on festivals, but what went down on Coke Live felt far more vibrant than what footage from other events, better suiting the burgeoning, all-consuming and pure energy of F+TM's songs. 

 I am now trying (and going to fail) to eloquently put to words my glee over one particular moment, when Isabella Summers, stationed almost right in front of me, had a while to pay some attention to us rather than her instruments, and, by some miracle, spotted me behind the two men over whose shoulders I was doing my best to look. My hands were high up, the red paisley bandana that had earlier slid from my head tied around my wrist, which probably caught her eye enough to see it when I playfully waved my fingers at her with a face-splitting grin, and she responded in kind. [insert my joyful squealing and a bit of flailing at the mere memory.] I don't know how much of it is my wishful thinking, but I choose to believe it was the way I just described rather than Isa greeting the crowd in general. :D

 After the concert I met up with a friend and we ambled towards the official festival shop, where a stroke of luck allowed me to purchase the last of Florence's Raise It Up t-shirts available - and what a stroke it was, for just as it was laid out in front of me and I was pulling my card back from the terminal two girls asked about it. Afterwards we tried to get something to drink, but to no avail - the queue to the coke stand resembled a concert audience, refusing to move in any direction, locking us out. By then exhaustion was catching up with me and I started cataloguing my many aches: ribs and shoulders from holding my hands up all the time, calves from standing on tiptoe, thighs from jumping; jaw from singing yelling at the top of my lungs, neck from craning my head up; sides from being elbowed by the ever-shifting crowd. On the bus ride back to the city I collapsed on the seat, boneless, realizing with a sort of dazed detachment that I'd been standing, walking and bouncing on my feet for close to five hours straight with no rest and no need for one, and not even a scratch was visible on my nearly-bare feet despite them being regularly stomped on. Someone next to me was dozing off standing. The city was alive with concertgoers coming back to wherever they were spending the night or straight to the station to catch a train home, or to a party if they had enough energy to dance and drink some more. I suppose such antics wouldn't be beyond me, either; I stayed up for nearly an hour after I got back to the hotel where I was staying with my mom, blogging excitedly, and couldn't fall asleep when I finally went to bed, getting maybe two hours' worth of sleep until mom roused me for breakfast at nine am. 

 I am incredibly glad I was there, and hope I get to see Florence + the Machine at least once more - and perhaps get into a meet&greet with the band, or sneak backstage to express my love for their music and performance personally. I just got news that Woodkid will be visiting Poland again in December, too, so maybe these dreams pertaining to him will come true - provided I buy tickets on time, that is. :)

Frances Ha

 

  Frances Ha speaks to me on a personal level, and it does so because I have every reason to believe that this is the story of my life, that I will wake up ten years from now and look back and see everything in those ten years that I saw in ninety minutes tonight. Whether I will be able to maintain the simple contentment with life, if not joy, that I am enjoying now and that Frances manages to eventually start finding, remains to be seen. I can easily imagine myself sharing life with one of my best friends on every level, living "like two lesbians that don't have sex anymore" and going out on weekends in a big city to make bad decisions, being "the same person, just with different hair" then suddenly finding that my other half has moved on and I am left hanging in my extended childhood, incapable of growing up and becoming the boring person following social code and making responsible decisions that I despised all my life; the black sheep that all of a sudden doesn't have her black mate to be black with, and her whole black herd is whiting up and there's not enough bleach for her.

  For one and a half hour tonight I sat in the theater and watched a more outspoken, sociable, spontaneous and blonde version of me in a surprisingly plausible scenario and in a wished-for scenery. I've read enough modern-day, big city AUs and listened to Woodkid's Brooklyn enough times to want to live there for at least a period in my life, yet I know if I brought my wanderlust dream of living in all or this world's biggest cities true, that in and of itself would be a huge accomplishment for me, with my piss poor skills of arranging my life to be liveable on some level and eternal fear of big changes and making them on my own.

  Yet I boldly hope to develop some people skills, and if I manage that, who knows if I won't be living my dreams in ten years instead of this scurrying about this strange thing they call life and stealing glances at it through the skewered lens of literature and cinema.

 text written with one eye open well past midnight, thus mistakes and errors in language may be present. ":]

Terror will strike her

  Też macie te piosenki, których w pewnej chwili macie potrzebę posłuchać, po czym odtwarzacie ją przez dwie godziny w kółko? Dziś taym utworem jest Kiedy stanie się noc, piosenka Rasputina z Anastazji, filmu notorycznie przypisywanego Disneyowi, a który Disneyowski nie jest. Nie wiem, czy gdzieś po youtube krążywersja polska, równie dobra zresztą; składa się jednak tak, że to wykonanie Iana Cummingsa dobiega z moich słuchawek dziś wieczór.

  Z innych wieści, AO3 posiada żenująco mały wybór fanfiction dla mojego ostatniego OTP z Deus Ex: Human Revolution; zaledwie 10 prac, z czego trzy pisane bukwami, a jeden (co zabawne, chyba ten najlepiej napisany) po polsku. I choć generalnie moje doświadczenie z fanfiction ograniczam niemal wyłącznie do tekstów angielskich, z niejaką satysfakcją przyznaję, że Deus ex Amor jest napisane świetnie, w soczystym, dynamicznym stylu nieco podobnym do Grzędowicza, jednak o niższym natężeniu testosteronu i większym skupieniu na emocjach postaci i wiarygodnym portrecie psychologicznym, co wydaje się łatwe w fanfiction - w końcu postaci już są, wystarczy je wziąć i wstawić w swoją historię - takie jednak nie jest. Co mnie frustruje, to to, że w połowie rozdziału czwartego utknęłam na dylemacie: czytać dalej, czy najpierw przejść grę? Narazić się na spoilery czy ponieść kolejne piętnaście porażek w pierwszej boss fight? (Czyj to był w ogóle genialny pomysł, umieścić tak trudnego bossa na niemal samym początku rozgrywki?)

  Mój problem chyba rozwiązał sam Steam, odmawiając uruchomienia gry pod pretekstem "skanowania w poszukiwaniu aktualizacji gier" która trwała bez końca.

  A spójrzcie, nie. Już działa. Przez dwa tygodnie odwlekałam ponowne próby pokonania Barretta, obmyślając strategie wykorzystujące mój żałosny ekwipunek - jeden granat, pistolet maszynowy i karabin snajperski, do tego mój chyba jedyny atut - wyrzutnia rakiet, po którą (po poniesieniu jakichs piętnastu śmierci w mniej niż pół minuty każda) wracałam przez cały budynek - i jeśli najnowsza zawiedzie, przełączam się z trybu Give me a Challenge do najprostszego jak ostatni noob. Assassin's Creed mnie nie przygotowało do takich wyzwań.

  I ja chcę projektować gry, a nie potrafię jednej przejść. //facepalm

Heatstroke

It's stiflingly hot again, the heat clinging to my skin and clogging my mind, quelling any motivation to do anything productive. The temperature is only bearable downstairs, where I holed myself up for the better part of the afternoon with a book and a cat. Descending the stairs feels like peeling a thick layer of wool off myself, finally hearing and seeing my surroundings with clarity. In this weather, I feel excused from being creative. However, reading Neil Gaiman's introductions to Smoke and Mirrors had my mind boiling with concepts; the brief descriptions of each of the texts' genesis proved to be an inspiration surge like few things these days. I didn't get through many of the actual short stories before I had to go water the garden, yet I was influenced by the visions he paints with his words already. Fun thing? Once I got out from the blessed chill of my basement, all of it fled my mind without trace or even a word of farewell. Ergo, it's high time I moved north from the polar circle; incessant daylight would only be a perk for someone with no regard for the time of day, anyways.
Two months ago I promised myself a NaNoWriMo and only got down five pages in my trusty notebook, out of which perhaps a half is of any literary worth. Words are assaulting me at times, but they dart about so erratically that I have little chance of capturing them and writing down, let alone incorporating into one of the pieces I'm currently working on. The closest I got to writing in recent days is this post, a sorry ass excuse for a text; here's to hoping it gets me back on track and making progress on any of my WIPs.
Cheers, everyone; cheers, my anonymous IE user from the USA, the apparently only visitor to my blog, if the stats Blogger provides me with are worth anything. [:

Oh mr Lemoine

Remember how I mentioned I'm a huge fan of Woodkid? Well, if the facts that a) I traveled halfway across the country alone in the midst of exam season to see his concert and b) actually finished a drawing of his stupid beard - which is a thing, I hardly ever finish anything - aren't proof enough, I don't know what is, save maybe stalking him, and ew man das creepy. (but here's an idea...)

The final product: deviantart, tumblr

aw yiss moar cat pycchurs

The little demon I introduced last week alters between dozing in my lap for hours and being all over the place; taking a non-blurred picture of him (?) is nigh impossible when that happens.

A Gaming To-Do List before Ubi's candy shop opens in November + What Tirra hopes to study this coming school year

As a potential SPRINT-WRITE* student and recently self-discovered video game enthusiast, I took it upon myself to broaden my gaming horizons, because let's face it, a grand total of one film-based game and one franchise topped with one or two MMORPGs at which I sucked is nothing impressive. For the sake of order (and because I forget lists easily) here's what I have or want to lay my hands on before the two games I'm awaiting impatiently enough to have dreams with the protagonists come out. They are more-or-less in order according to how much I want to play them or, in Hitman's case, how easy access to them I have. 

• Deus Ex: Human Revolution | currently playing
• Hitman (1, 2, Contracts, Blood Money) | obtained
• Devil May Cry (4 and any of the earlier if I can get them) | in spe
• Bioshock Infinite (and 1 if possible) | in spe
• Dragon Age (??? whichever I find first) | in spe
• Mass Effect 3 | promised
• Witcher | promised

The list is going to expand, shrink, or alter as I go. The games I'm waiting for you can guess easily enough. If the post title and one of my previous entries to this blog weren't an obvious clue, I am talking Assassin's Creed 4 and Watch Dogs (and boy am I anxious to try and save for one of the extended editions of either... or both?).

  *SPRINT stands in Polish for Studies of Interactive Entertainment Design, the -WRITE part is pretty self-explanatory. It's combined with English language studies, thus encompassing my main interests: lingual studies, writing, films and games. From what I gather, I'll be learning the usual spiel of other philologies: translation, language, culture and history of the English-speaking countries with focus on USA and UK, but with the addition of courses on various aspects of modern culture, virtual environments, ethnology and sociology, game studies, leisure studies, and gender studies, and that's not even a quarter of what the programme comprises of. 

  No shit, right now I am literally reading through the programme overview and hyperventilating with excitement. These three years are going to be hard work, big words, and - hopefully - endless enthusiasm. There'll be lectures on Star Trek and Star Wars, Tolkien, writing a scenario for different media, creating characters, designing HUDs and GUIs, preparing storyboards, directing and scenography; I am about two sentences away from keysmashing in glee, borne from the fact that these things will be taught to me and in three years' time I'll possess the skills to work in game and/or film industry while writing a SF novel on my days off. 

  I never really had a clear image of what I want to be when I grow up. Even as a kid, my dream wasn't to become an actress or singer, or doctor, or mother, or whatever; I can't recall making any plans that weren't changed or dismissed before the week was over. I knew I liked books, and I knew I wanted to write one someday, but I don't think there was a time I thought that would be how I'd earn my living. Later I discovered I liked films, too, and as years passed I developed a lukewarm enthusiasm for games, never growing hotter because I was convinced I just wasn't a gamer material (and I never had the hardware to play on; not that I do now - my laptop gives a passable gameplay, but with painstakingly low fps, especially on cutscenes). These things never changed, and I kept growing up with the knowledge that unless I write a bestseller, I'll never be able to tie my career to the things I love. Then I actually started playing and saw how impossibly long end credits after games are, and found out about the SPRINT. And I thought, for fuck's sake, there's gona be flocks of people educated to be lawyers and translators and doctors and accoutants; if I study THAT, I'll surely find myself a place on a game developer's payroll and crawl my way up until I'll be making the next Marvel movie and Assassin's Creed game. And someone finally has to replace Bowden, for the greater good of game fans worldwide! That's also when I realized that there are options beyond the obvious and that there actually are ways to get paid for fangirling (and earning fangirls and fanboys in the long run) if only I take a look around and try. 

  Now, here's to hoping I qualify for these studies; if I don't get to study it, I sure as hell will be trying next year, no matter if I get recruited for a different course.

The boy and his box

  With several projects going on simultaneously, it's hard to focus and finish something, but I'm actually immensely proud that I've done this today from scratch and now it's about 70% done.
  Based on the ending of "The Doctor's Wife", an episode of Doctor Who (one of the few I've watched, and one of those I loved most) because the lighting is beautiful and because steampunk goggles. :D
  Will need a bit of tinkering after I'm done with the painting itself, but despite numerous mistakes I'll regret in two years I am really satisfied with the outcome so far.
  Done in Paint Tool Sai, about three hours or so.
  Doctor Who © BBC; artwork © me.