The black Tarok wrapped her tail around the tree limb on which she crouched and stared down at the three massive carnivores that were scrabbling to reach her. Spittle flew from heavy, snapping jaws as they leapt upwards, crowding each other around the base of the tree, scraping at the soft bark with long claws.

The Tarok gritted her teeth and sighed. "This no-gun policy is suicidal," she growled to the empty air. "This is the third time I've been treed today."

"They're the native predators in this area," a voice replied in her ear. "We can't just wipe them out without severely imbalancing the local ecology."

"If you think the bloody food chain won't be disturbed at all as we continue colonizing this planet, you're an idiot," the black muttered. "I see zero reasons why we can't carry guns around here."

"Our children won't carry guns," the voice said, and drew breath to continue.

"Btsa, I'm not letting our cubs go out here without guns!" The black bared her teeth at the carnivores below. "Any adult who isn't an ETE specialist can't take one of these things, even if there's only one of them. We won't always have fences and shields around our settlements, Kylik. We've got to make the place safe for us."

Kylik sighed gustily into the microphone. "You're just an engineer, so I can't expect you to--"

( The black reached up a claw and turned her comunit off, ears flattening. )

Just spent a couple minutes cleaning up my friendslist. My intent was to remove journals that haven't posted in a very long time, journals that are no longer used (as in the person has a new journal entirely), and a few folks that I don't know at all and don't interact with.

If I've unfriended a journal that someone uses on a regular basis by mistake, tell me and I'll re-add it. Again, I did not intend to remove anyone who actively posts/comments/interacts with me via LJ. If I removed someone who still wishes to interact with me, please let me know and I'll re-add you. Seriously.

...yes, I am hyper-wary of stirring up the infamous LJ Dramaz that I've managed to so far avoid. ^_^;

Take care, folks.

Ohio to ban all pit bulls?

There's a proposal to ban all pit bulls currently before the Ohio State Gov & Elections Committee. This would, in effect, require all pit bull owners to "surrender" their dogs within 90 days, and the dogs would be euthanized within 10 days of their surrender. Any dog warden who suspects a dog may be a pit bull can become authorized to search the owner's home, potentially seize the dog, and have it euthanized.

Spread the word. Ohio residents have the most clout here, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can't do something. Contact friends who run well-known websites or blogs or webcomics and ask them to post about this and urge their readers to act against it.

This is bullshit, no pun intended, and we need to do what we can to keep dozens, hundreds, or thousands of dogs being killed just because of their heritage. The hell are we, Nazis?

Here's the actual bill.

le_gris turned me onto this paint program called ArtRage, which basically simulates oil painting and other real media very realistically.

Silly, silly Gris. Now I'm all "whee~ PAINT" and such. And since gods knows I'm never going to manage any semblance of realism, I'm messing with more stylized methods. (Okami style is so gorgeous... I might actually figure out how to mimic it one day!)

( This took me about 45 minutes. )

This program is so much fun to play with. =3

Come play.

terole

*grin*

Every once in a while, another old comrade pops up. marigold_tales was the most recent...

But another one found me. Anyone remember a human named Rikara, or a Canoid named Lyisa/Liisa? Rikara had two dogs and a horse, which is how I remembered her...

Go say hi if you want. ^_^ Or Rikara could always spot this post and come wave at everyone. We have a couple folks still around - Seleth (poetrywolf), The Five Deaths (tageera), Kain/Majhiik (vorpalmuse), Reeshinu/Tunder (collie_wing), and a few others.

*toasts to good memories and old comrades-in-arms*

EDIT:

I miss Terole. I'm really wanting to give the Renegades of Terole another shot - any RPers up for the challenge and have the time to spare? It'd be a small game, with plenty of creative license, and a bit dark in theme. Basically, a tiny guerilla force fighting legions of conquerors for revenge of their mutilated world. Any (sci-fi-ish) species goes. KEKKS? What say you?

Any and all RPers would be welcome, of course, but I'd be loathe to give the place a kickstart without at least most of the core group. (For those who don't know, KEKKS is Kay/The Five Deaths, El/Reeshinu, Kitty/Seleth, Kain/...Kain XD, and Sushi/Redwood. Needless to say, I'm in, and so is Kay so far...)

Yes, I'm supporting this. I have a paid account, but all the same, LJ management keeps fking with people.

...



For those of you who don't already know, there has been a strike scheduled for Friday, March 21st, 2008, during which we hope to have many members of LiveJournal provide LJ with absolutely no content for twenty-four hours. This means no posting and no commenting. If you post elsewhere and have it set up to be posted through a feed on LiveJournal, don't do it. Stay away from LiveJournal for twenty-four hours. That can't be too hard, can it? I know some of you are probably quite active on LiveJournal and will find it hard to stay away for an entire day, just as I will, but this is something that needs to be done, to show the people running LiveJournal that we're watching the changes they are making, that we're paying attention, that we're discontent, and that we want to be heard and taken in to consideration. We are not simply users who can be tossed to the side and ignored. We are the people who make up LiveJournal. Without us, without the content we create, without our words, our voices, our creativity, our participation, there would be no LiveJournal. This is a fact, and it needs to be realized and understood and then taken in to consideration when making decisions regarding the way that LiveJournal is run. The strike is only a few days away, so there isn't all too much time to prepare. While this is unfortunate, it isn't enough to keep this strike from taking place. It will take place, the second it is meant to, and it would be best to have as many people take part as possible. Please, spread the word. Spread it fast. There are only a few days to organize this. If you find that you care about LiveJournal or care about the people you interact with on LiveJournal or simply want it to remain a place where you can entertain yourself without constant censorship and money-hungry practices being thrown in without the consideration of those who use the service, act now. If you don't wish to spread the word, that is fine, but please: refrain from using LiveJournal on Friday, March 21st. Do something else for a change. It's for a good cause. (:

For background on this strike and why it is being held, please read the following posts:
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/394838.html
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395310.html

To find out exactly when the strike begins and ends, depending on where you are located, please see this:
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395125.html

What's this about?

* It's about free and ad-free LiveJournal accounts being abolished for new members, ignoring the advice from the newly-formed Advisory Board.
* It's about LJ staff trying to sneak this decision in under the radar, and when people found out, telling the users it was done 'to make the signup process less confusing'.
* It's about LJ staff failing to apologize for trying to hide the facts from view and for lying about the actual reasons for their actions.
* And finally, it's about the latest decision to hide certain user interests from the list of Most Popular Interests, some of them being fanfiction, bisexuality, sex and depression. This decision was not announced or explained in any way. Users found out for themselves.

-Taken from the journal of m03m

AND ICONS TO SUPPORT THIS:


(Icons not made by me.)

Copy and repost this in your journal and spread the word as much as possible. (There's a copy and paste bit HERE.)

...

I love livejournal, and despite its management screwing up like this, I don't want to leave. Nor do I want to be pushed around. I'm in - are you?

Title-- Hazrun C-6 (part three)
Rating and Warnings-- PG-13; hunting.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator) and VetDef. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- (Part One, Part Two.) After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.

( To a rural, a few hours' trot is nothing. To a spacer, it's a bleeding marathon. )

Title-- Hazrun C-6 (part two)
Rating and Warnings-- G; no warnings.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator), Pilot, Eng, Am, and VetDef. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- (Part One.) After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.

( We didn't get any more hails. )

Title-- Hazrun C-6
Rating and Warnings-- G; no warnings.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator), Pilot, and Eng. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.

( 'Hazrun C-6? Reading me?' )

Hi, guys. Can you help me out?

See, since I proved to myself that I can actually finish a novel (or a trilogy, as the case may be) by completing The Demon-God of Jubagh, I'm looking to up the ante this year. I have a list of projects that I want to finish. Genres range from high fantasy to sci-fantasy to science fiction. Though I set reasonable goals for myself, it's still waaay more than I've ever done before; even if I fall short, I'll still have done a lot.

When I finish these projects, I am going to need people to thoroughly review and critique them, because my goal is to self-publish them through Lulu.com (much like I'm doing with Jubagh right now!). Critiquing takes a lot of patience, a love of reading, a great eye for detail, a solid knowledge of the English language, and the ability to constructively criticize something you may either hate or love - and remain objective. You'll need to tell me if I leave loose ends, if I don't explain something enough, if I have too much unnecessary detail, if my characterization is too flat or too cliche or too complicated, if the pacing is too slow or too fast, if I've gotten something entirely incorrect (as I might well do when trying to be technical with sci-fi; I am no engineer!), if something is confusing, and, of course, what you feel is good and original and doesn't need changed.

It's a tall order. I'm picky and will have flea-combed the manuscript(s) before I ever send it/them to you, so hopefully the really obvious stuff, as well as the grammatical things, will all be taken care of well before you open the file. It's up to you to catch the subtle things that I can't. And each manuscript will probably be anywhere from 50-70k, with one in particular tending towards 90-100k.

It's also worthy of noting that any and all reviewers get a free copy of the published manuscript, if/when I finish revising it post-reviews and publish it through Lulu.com... as well as a mention in the book itself under "dude, you rock, thank you so much."

Interested? Speak up! And please, mention which genres you'd feel comfortable tackling; be as specific as you'd like. ("I can critique steampunk fantasy, but not technical science fiction" would be useful to know, for example! Yes, there will be steampunk, and yes, there will be tech scifi. No, they aren't in the same story. ^_^)

On that note, for your reference, a tentative list of my projects includes:

• an expanded (unabridged) version of The Demon-God of Jubagh
  
• a second trilogy set in the Jubagh 'verse*; there will be steampunk, magic, critters/aliens, disc-shaped worlds, and intersun travel in giant freaking boats
  
• an action-packed science fiction story that involves Terole and Drakka
  
• the first in The Panthera Walkers trilogy; this is the high fantasy one, folks - shapeshifting, magic systems, nature gods, and culture-clash galore
  
• a mostly-fantasy werewolf/shapeshifter novel with references to a parallel but modern-day Earth; it's ... kinda sci-fantasy, mostly beastie-based

*Yes, I could not leave well enough alone. You know you couldn't get enough of your favorite characters from Jubagh, anyways! The fun starts in February, if all goes well; keep an eye on jubagh! Oh, and for those going, "What do you mean, a second trilogy...?", keep in mind that The Demon-God of Jubagh was split into three Books ... and since I'm doing the "unabridged" version, each of those Books will be made into a more complete, mostly-stand-alone novel with a lot more flesh and depth, hence forming a trilogy, rather than an inherently omnibus novel.

[disclaimer] In all honesty, life is crazy, and I fully expect something to come up and bring my head outta the clouds. All the same, I will do my best to get these done before 1-15-2009, and even if I don't manage all of them... I will finish some or most of them. (I also reserve the right to exchange projects if some new plotbeasts snatches my jugular and demands to be written. It does happen, you know. *points at Jubagh and grins*) So, while it's entirely possible you might volunteer to critique a story that I don't finish, please realize that I'm going to do my best, and that at least some of these will need folks willing to help out. [/disclaimer]

Thanks in advance for your comments, guys. It'd be awesome to have at least three folks critiquing each manuscript; and, of course, the more the merrier! If I have to send out ten free copies of each book because that many people pitched in, I'd be so delighted.

...and now, since it's 1h20 AM here, I might want to sleep. G'night!

I'm going to make a good effort at reviving and enlivening pern_fic, so if anyone of you is a Dragonriders of Pern fan and would be interested in writing/reading some good fanfiction, as well as participating in some discussions and etc, feel free to wander over!