That doesn’t mean I love the cold, or the ice, or the ludicrously short days, but the snow at least makes it more tolerable.  I don’t even mind shovelling, for that matter.  I don’t like it, either, but I can shovel.  It’s good exercise, right?  And everyone needs more exercise, especially when you stay indoors all the time because it’s so cold outside your fingers go numb.

Last year I wrote a pseudo-religious story.  I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just started with a concept and ran with it.  The result is terrible: I don’t recommend anyone read it.  However, I did learn a lot.  Mainly, I learned that you need a lot of words to make action happen.  Yep.  That’s the gem I took away from last year.  Oh, and I also learned that I should have made an outline.

This year, I’m going to put what I learned to use!  Yep!  I have several pages worth of outline, and I have about a page and a half of character descriptions that I can refer back to, so I won’t waste time searching back through my manuscript for some itty bitty detail.  I even have a working title: The Traveller’s Pendant!  The story is actually centered around some old DnD characters I created.  Well, ok, I only used one character.  The second was a backup in case the first got killed.  Funny thing, is that The Traveller’s Pendant has nothing to do with the DnD campaign said character was in.

I’d like to tell you more about it, but I’m going to be a jerk and make you read the book!  (Once it’s out, of course!)

I planned on going to DragonCon this year and I wanted to dress up for it. Unfortunately, I can’t sew, so what should have been a simple costume became a major ordeal, and I think I ended up taking out more seams than I put into the darn thing. Sadly enough I didn’t even finish it to my liking. I got something that passed for “done” and wore it regardless. Anyway, the con is over now and I’m back home, just chilling. Check out some more shots of this frankenstein if you’d like:

My boyfriend made the tail and loaned me the belt, and another friend of mine made the cute bracelets and hairpin, though I don’t think you can see the hairpin very well. They’re supposed to be the Scentless Armlets and the Emperor Hairpin. Some of the sequins on the hairpin fell off on the trip home, too, which made me very sad. I wanted to make shoe covers to hide my sneakers, but I ran out of time.

I did attend several costuming panels at the con, and got some great tips on how to step up my game. I already have an idea for what I might do next year, too! Can’t wait to try out some of those tricks!

It is normally not the place of humans to inquire into the affairs of devils, but, as a former member of the latter party, I have developed quite an extensive knowledge of their inner workings.  Perhaps then, in sharing my experience, I can better help those of weaker flesh rebuke the evil of demons, should the Hellgate ever be opened again.  One can hope, at least.  Until such time, let my ramblings serve at least an amusement for those with the patience to listen.

To start with, let me explain the hierarchy of demons.  To the victor, go the spoils, so to speak, and with demons it is no different.  Only the strongest demon rises to the top of the pack, though not is it often that one can do so on its own.  Oft requires a demon a multitude of underlings; an army, so to speak.  Though, correctly, it is a legion of demons, just as a group of crows is called a murder, or a school of sharks, a shiver.  Within each legion there can only be one leader, one who is not only stronger than the rest, but one that differentiates itself as a cut above the common hellspawn.  Determining which devil is the leader can be bloody and epic, though this is the exception.  How, then, do demons choose their leaders?  Is it democracy?  No, for every demon would only vote for itself.  No, my friends, the selection of a leader hinges something far less tangible:  Style.

Most demons have measurable strengths; they are durable, powerful, magical, or agile in ways that can be tested in battle or expressed in grand displays.  But the one thing that cannot be quantitatively measured is, perhaps, the most important.  What is style, anyway?  Who decides what is stylish?  It cannot be measured on a scale, nor quantified.  Often, leaders of demons define their own style, yet it is those which follow it who assign such style a value.  The style of one demon is never quite the same as the style of another demon, yet there are similarities that repeatedly arise between demons of the same legion.  Just as people from one region of the Earth tend towards certain cultural definitions, demons of Hell do much the same.

In this way, style serves as not only an indication of personality, but also as a binding by which legions, usually made up of unrelated souls, define themselves.  The most stylish individual, as regarded by its peers and underlings, is most often, then, the one to rise to the top and assume the role of leader, provided it is indeed among the strongest, as well.  Exactly what is considered to be stylish is often open for interpretation, yet no demon, once it has beheld the presence of a stylish individual, would argue the point.  As such, style is a complex social measuring stick, though far be it from me to compare demonic hierarchy with civilized society as we know it.

Key to note, here, is that style, among demons at the least, is often not defined until it has been created.  There are, as with any culture, certain individuals who possess an inherit sense of style.  They do not view themselves through another’s eyes, for they are confident and certain of their own abilities that they have no concern regarding the opinions of others.  They make the impossible look easy:  Their sense of style clings to their every move and exudes an aura of effortlessness that would cow a lesser creature, and illicit respect and awe from anything remotely equal to it in power.  If one demon attains this level of style, it may be just stylish enough to unite the legions of Hell, and to once again unleash war on mankind.

-C. Python 

This really freaked some friends out during a game of Hong Kong Action Theater! when I wanted to do something but had a terrible feeling about it.  I was thinking “2″ in my head and knew that roll wouldn’t be good enough to succeed, so I, jokingly, announced, “Watch, I’ll roll a 2.”  Sure enough, I let the polyhedron fall, and astoundingly it landed on a 2.  I threw my hands up in that classic “It’s gooooood!” pose.  I mean, sure, I failed what I was attempting to do, but I still felt like I won, having guessed the number I rolled.  But it didn’t end there.  Another friend was about to roll for his turn, and I got a feeling of “7.”  Feeling pretty empowered by my earlier success, I shouted out, “Seven!”  To everyone’s enjoyment, and to my friend’s dismay, he rolled a 7.  I believe someone at the table then told me that I wasn’t allowed to predict numbers anymore.

More recently, I had a strange feeling that I was going to see deer while driving my car.  It started yesterday, on Saturday, as I was driving to my parents’ place.  I just kept thinking “deer” as I drove, and I kept looking, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.  I didn’t think much of it at the time; I mean, come on, I live in suburban Illinois.  Stick around here long enough and you’re going to see a deer at some point.  Back to my story, I didn’t get the feeling when riding in anyone else’s car, and I thought it was just some subconscious wish.  I like deer; they’re pretty to look at.

I only started thinking “deer” again as I was driving home.  It was dark on the way back, so seeing a deer would not be uncommon, but what was freaky was how I saw the deer.  It was ahead of my headlights, such that I couldn’t get a good glimpse of what it was.  Really all I saw was a floating, roughly oval-shaped patch of air that was darker than the other surroundings and slowly moving from the oncoming lane into my line.  Immediately the feeling came back to me, saying, “Deer.”  I pressed the break and slowed down.  Sure enough, ambling across the street in no particular hurry, was a male white-tailed deer with two, maybe three points on each velvet-covered antler.  He just walked right into my lane and stopped.  I flashed my brights at him a few times, even as I was still slowing down, though he didn’t seem to be very intimidated by them at all.  After a couple of seconds of me sitting there, he seemed to realize that he shouldn’t be on the road, and hurried off.  He was very pretty, but I’m also very glad I saw him and stopped when I did.  I have no idea if I would have recognized or even seen him before I was right on top of him, and by then who knows how either of us would have responded.  I’m very happy I already had deer on the mind long before I met Mr. Velvet.

I have to say, I am actually surprised by how much I liked Dr. Who.  A lot of my college friends were fans of it, but I never got around to watching any of it, (maybe I was too busy with Stargate.)  In retrospect, and if only one episode represents an acceptable sample size, they were right.  It was awesome.  It was the kind of show that actually grabbed your attention (or at least my kind of attention.)  You couldn’t really turn it on while you do something else, only tuning in at certain points.  Why?  Because the whole episode was certain points.  Things happened quickly, and if you blinked you probably missed it.  There was a lot going on–character expositions and motivations as well as explosions and witty banter–and it all mattered somehow.  That’s not to say there weren’t any continuity errors, just that the ones you did find left you feeling like you missed something.  Granted, I might have; I missed the first few minutes of the episode.

Another thing I liked about Dr. Who was that it had that kind of campy, Star Trek-ian feel to it.  The special effects weren’t pathetic, but the robots were clearly people in costumes; that sort of thing.  Also, Dr. Who didn’t throw pointless made-up techno babble at me, which was awesome because I would have burst out laughing at it, the same way I do when it happens on Star Trek.  I’m not a Star Trek fan, personally, and frankly I think the similarities end at the special effects.  The world constructed for the characters to live in (after I did some reasearch, mind you; the episode assumed you all ready knew where they were) is actually very far-out.  It reminded me of the Stargate universe, with its amazing juxtaposition of a super technological power with people who are normal by our standards but primative in the grand scheme of things.  Heck, there was even some MacGuyvering thrown in to the episode as well!  It was a lot like Stargate!  No wonder I liked it so much!

And Cowboy really loved his ice cream, too.

Anyway, when she said that, I felt like the chair I was sitting on vanished.  I’ve never been dragged off stage by a shepherd’s crook Bugs-Bunny style, but that’s about the closest analogy I can think of.  It was like the conversation was going just fine in one direction, but then some random hand reached out from somewhere and yanked the steering wheel into a 90 degree turn.  Wait, what does that have to do with what we were just talking about?  Ok, yeah, she was weird, but 1) she admitted to that earlier in the evening when I first met her and 2) she (as I assured her on multiple occasions, after and before her remark,) was no more weird than anyone else in the world. Actually, her personality reminded me a great deal of one of my cousins, with whom I get along great.  I guess what I don’t understand is how the fact that she now knows my religion somehow affects the way I perceive her… So something she learns about me that I’ve been all along somehow suddenly changes my view of her…as if someone else coming to know about my religion alters my attitude, Jekyll-Hyde style?

Stop, back up; I’m just confusing myself more.  It just didn’t make any sense.  I think the problem I keep coming back to when I talk to people is that I take the Superman approach to dealing with them–I assume that people are inherently good and wise, and will, if given the opportunity, come to generally smart and logical conclusions about things. So when I am on the receiving end of something so blatantly idiotic, I’m caught off guard.

Perhaps what I should start doing is to see the world through Batman glasses:  Believe that people are inherently greedy, treacherous b*stards who will devolve the world into anarchy if left to their own devices.  That way, when someone pulls something utterly irrelevant to the conversation out of thin air, I will all ready be expecting them to want to change the topic to something that serves their own personal agenda/paradigm/aggrandizement, rather than actually contribute to the free and unbiased sharing of ideas.  Then, I will be able to respond with some quick-witted retort that either exposes the stupidity of their statement or rips it apart for the small-minded assumption that it is.

What I did learn from the exchange, though; is that, the next time someone tells me what they think I think of something, I’m going to throw it right back in their court:  “Well, you must think I’m pretty weird if you think that about me.“  Seriously, some people are just too quick to stereotype.

Of course, the Batman-Superman thing has absolutely no bearing on which superhero I like best.  Batman totally kicks Superman’s butt in that respect.

Not that anyone reads this blog, anyway.