[Seven's Scrapbook!] Uncensored Aspersions

[Seven Xu]

I love that picture, haha.

Today I’d planned on writing a shitfuckton and here I am not doing that. Haters gonna hate.

[Naama]

Sounds like a day and a life of me.

[Seven Xu]

The good news is I got my tablet working.

The bad news :

Oh my god it's as if I've forgotten how to use it.

Real chibi Elhaym (and Naama) forthcoming ...

[Seven Xu]

[Overview]
A male human, age 20, born Winter 24, 491.

[Appearance]
His grey eyes, light olive skin, and soft edges are characteristic of the beautiful and hedonistic Lark family. His dark hair was cut to be styled, but it has lain flat and grown long since he left home. At 5’6”, he is shorter than most of his cousins, and the habit of compensating is seen in his unconscious posture. If he is not wearing a suit, he dresses in well-fitted button-downs and colored trousers, carefully fashionable but not remarkably so. The silver chain of a necklace can always be seen on the back of his neck from beneath his shirt. While his skin is smooth from a life of luxury, his face, which has often been described as feminine, is often wrinkled with some deliberate passion. Smiles quickly turn into frowns, but these expressions are never anything but echoes of what he has observed in others. (It should be noted that, unless otherwise specified, Victor’s face holds no expression.)

His recklessness has lead to a growing collection of scars. Victor sports a long mess of dark lines on his left leg, from the middle of his inner thigh to just below his knee; an arc of ten claw-marks across his chest; a pair of black circles on the inside of his bottom lip; and a thin line across each palm.

On the left side of his neck, Victor wears a chevas mark that depicts a bird in flight over a crescent moon. He shares the mark with Seven Xu.

[Concept]
Presumably from birth, Victor has been incapable of feeling profound emotion. He is familiar with frustration, envy, curiosity, and contentment, but is otherwise ignorant to the passions that drive even the simplest men. Because he cannot feel, he also has trouble observing the feelings of others. Nonetheless, he has begun to recognize that he lacks something, and has devoted himself to the impossible mission of discovering it. He watches others, their reactions and their expressions, seduces and irritates them if only to learn more about their thoughts. He mimics what he sees because he thinks that it is the face which makes the emotion, and not the other way around. He is reckless because he is entertained by pain and adrenaline, which can be felt stronger than any emotion. When it comes to ethics, he is simply selfish. His sense of morality is dependent on the people he is with, and it is arguable that he cannot personally fathom it. Every expression is a calculation and every action is a move in the game of emotion. Because he does not understand the extent of his handicap, none can be told what he is; if they did know, they might call him empty or psychopathic.

[History]

Chapter One: Comfort :

Victor was born and raised a single child to a wealthy woman of Ravok’s merchant elite, who spent her days entertaining with his grandfather’s wealth. She never spoke of his own father[/color][/color], a kelvic, who lived in a birdcage until he died when Victor was sixteen. Virtually abandoned by his mother in favor of her various indulgences, he has spent his life finding amusement at the expense[/color][/color] of others. But in the halls and canals of Ravok’s pseudo-court, this caused nothing but discomfort to the inhabitants of the Nobles’ District.

Rebellious since birth, Victor never really hated his mother as much as he loved to frustrate her. He would spend much of his time as a child playing slave-catchers[/color][/color][/color] and ruining his clothes, hiding valuables and asking for presents. As he grew older, he became tired of his cousins’ rowdy games, which he always seemed to lose. Whenever he could, he would sneak out into the streets, mingling with commoners[/color][/color] and foreigners[/color][/color] instead of with the same old high society. Still, at the end of the day he knew he had a plate of food and a warm bed, a safe place after a brief chastisement.

In recent years, his disenchantment with the constant parties and familial competition increased. The hormones of puberty left him feeling unwanted and ignored. Neither depressed nor worldly enough to consider introspection or suicide, he resorted to ruining family events instead of skipping them, playing childish pranks in an attempt to garner attention. When he began to realize that his sadness was just an interpretation of boredom, a new sense of romanticism[/color][/color] struck him. He needed to get out. He needed to explore.

So he left[/color][/color].

Chapter Two: Rebellion :

Victor entered the Syliran wilderness a fool with a tent. He struggled[/color][/color] for days with the city in sight, neither willing to admit defeat or stray too far from safety. He had since developed a newfound devotion to a brief knowledge of Ionu[/color][/color], left to fester and grow in those days of solitude. With no experience with worship, even basic attempts at meditation proved fruitless. He eventually taught himself to pitch a tent and make a campfire, but his ignorance of the land might have killed him if it were not for a wild Kelvic named Sophia, who almost immediately bonded[/color][/color] to the first human she had encountered in years.

Despite his countless[/color][/color] cruelties[/color][/color], Victor convinced her to feed him, protect him, and lead him south. By the time the city was in sight, he had grown weary of her incessant adoration and bestial tendencies. He killed[/color][/color][/color] her in trying to frighten her, but not before witnessing the strength of the fear and despair in her dying eyes; in the heat of the moment, he mistook recognition for empathy. Victor spent the next few days between delirious ecstasy and hopeless fatigue, trying desperately to remember what it felt like to feel[/color][/color].

He arrived at the great gate of Syliras alone and haggard, barely able to walk or speak. A guard with a sensitive nose directed him to a bathhouse[/color][/color], where a stranger named Seven found him, took him in, and cared for him until he was well again. As the days passed and Victor’s health returned, their careful friendship[/color][/color] became a series of flirtatious games[/color][/color] until it bloomed into violent[/color][/color] obsession. Between witnessing first-hand the force of Syliran law[/color][/color] and suffering an offended ethaefal’s bloody retribution[/color][/color], Victor returned every night to the refuge of Seven’s bed.

Even with undying infatuation to distract him, he grew restless[/color][/color] inside that stone cage of peace and order. Ionu’s city waited so close, and Victor never ceased his makeshift worship. He prayed; he meditated; he briefly discovered the power[/color][/color] of his own djed. And with his greatest passions in tow, he set sail on the Suvan.

Chapter Three: Purpose :

The moment he set foot in Alvadas, Victor embraced the city and its illusions, let it lead him and betray him and trust him. He lost a gamble[/color][/color], a tournament[/color][/color], and the freedom[/color][/color][/color] of his evenings, but at every turn, he took defeat for another challenge; he felt unstoppable and unbreakable. He deceived, eluded, and made mischief wherever he went, claiming to act in the name of Ionu. He dared the Trickster God to make him suffer, and relished in the illusion of victory.

With Seven, he forgot his emptiness. Their mutual dependence[/color][/color] filled him with a sense of belonging; with every passing day, every glance from a candid face, he learned a little more about expression and emotion. For a while, it made him feel whole[/color][/color] to think that he could empathize, but the space Seven filled way fraying. Eventually, he would need something more to sate his growing thirst, but the future felt so far away.

Together with an ethaefal named Laszlo, Seven and Victor invested[/color][/color] in a tavern called the Sun[/color][/color] and Stars[/color][/color]. His newfound ambition might have turned Victor into the business[/color][/color]man[/color][/color] his absent father might have wanted him to be, but this Lark was distracted by other motivations. Both subtle[/color][/color] and enchantingly conflicted[/color][/color], Laszlo became a pet project for Victor and his incessant investigations; he prodded at the man’s psyche with every chance he got, finding amusement with his misery and making an enemy[/color][/color] out of a friend.

In the meantime, Victor was forcefully employed at Ionu’s Wager, where he learned how to deal[/color][/color] cards and work[/color][/color] for a living. In his absence, Seven met a Kelvic named Palla; though he resented[/color][/color]the girl for her bond to his lover, she showed him the fear[/color][/color] which he had not seen since Sophia had died. Inspired by her fear and his jealousy, he found another Kelvic girl at the Wager: Roxanne[/color][/color]. He brought her home to Seven, to test his loyalty and glimpse his rage, and to see if he could see fear in another Kelvic. At Victor’s request, Seven killed Roxanne, but he was not angry and she was not afraid; Victor saw only a dead girl and a delirious lover, but in Laszlo’s interruption, he saw something close to what he desired, and was temporarily satisfied.

[Seven Xu]

Dear everyone in or around my city,

Stop romanticising and profiting off of a tragedy's 100th anniversary. It's sick; dead children's graves should never be a tourist attraction.

Sincerely,
Shut up about the Titanic I'm serious

[Seven Xu]

Thread goals to be done before spring is over: finish slave thing; fight with Victor and get lost in the woods; manage seasonal xp goals with another solo.

Goals for summer: have less goals.

Time for a mini-rant. A bit of whining, really.

I find myself with a lot of spare time this week, working crapshoot half-shifts basically every day, but I don't know what it'll do for my productivity, writing wise. A job hunt is looming on the horizon. Despite how much I love my job, the security in the company as a whole is no longer there: stores are closing, hours are cut beyond functionality. I am given 20 hours a week to do a job that requires no less than 35-40 of hard, non stop work--AND we're in the middle of a busy spell, where the closing stores are dumping their merchandise on us to liquidate it. Weekly, I get to deal with my district supervisors telling me that the store's standards are sub-par and struggle with delegating tasks to assistant managers who resent me for it.

I like what I do. I'm damned good at what I do, when I'm allotted a reasonable amount of time in which to do it. Unfortunately, with things on the horizon not looking any better, I feel like I've mentally checked out. It's time to move on.

My writing's taken a dive because of the idiotic amount of stress in my work life. I just don't feel creative.

I'd like to thank everyone I thread with for being super great people that never ever nag me for things. Seriously, I don't know how some of you do it. If I logged into chat and so-and-so leapt on my back with a "why aren't you writing for me?!" I'd face-punch them through my screen.

[Seven Xu]

Found this today. Been there, can't decide what's more unsettling. It made me smile, anyway.

[Seven Xu]

I found this today as well. Sometimes we all need a little grammar refresher. I, for one, had my last English course during my first year of university in early 2006. I didn't really start recreational writing until last year with Mizahar. You tend to forget things. Easy things. Things that make you want to go and edit all of your posts ever.

This wasn't written by me. Find the original author (and his other articles) at chrishibbard.hubpages.com. The fact that he uses asterisks to emphasize words bothers me on a deeply personal level, but, he did teach me something today and for that I thank him.

Em dash, en dash, hyphen. . . what's the difference?
from Grammar Mishaps by Chris Hibbard

This is another commonly misunderstood grammar rule. What is most commonly referred to as a "dash" is more accurately called an "em dash" and is used in a very different way than the hyphen. You type an em dash on a standard keyboard by striking two hyphens in a row, with no spaces on either side--that's right, just like this. It is used to indicate a break in syntax: for a clarification on the previous portion of the sentence, or in the place of parenthesis. It should *not* be used simply to indicate a pause in the sentence (that job is reserved for commas and ellipsis--see below).

The "en dash" is a confusing beastie indeed. Is it so confused with the hyphen (even by experts) that there is little point in distinguishing between the two. It is typed on a standard keyboard as a single hyphen. It is used in showing a numerical or chronological range. You can find the en dash showcased somewhere in paragraph 1-3 in this article. You may also see this displayed from 12 a.m.-5 p.m. at this website (or any other time you choose to read it).

The en dash can also replace the hyphen to add clarification, as in mid-day or post-war era. The hyphen is similarly used to attach compound words, and is falling out of use in recent times. Any further distinguishing between en dashes and hyphens are fruitless: they look and smell the same, why don't they share the same name?

The ellipsis is also misused quite a lot . . . don't you think? Technically, you would use a standard keyboard to create an ellipsis by typing three periods with spaces between each of them . . . and before and after the ellipsis. This is a moot point unless you are using a typewriter and typing papyrus. Most document programs (like MS Word) will suck up your dots, nicely framed in spaces with care, and replace them with a single *special character* ellipsis (also called a *coded* ellipsis). With modern fonts and document programs, it's hard to tell who's following this silly *extra spaces* rule and who isn't.

You should use an ellipsis for showing a missing piece of text, or a pause in speech. When you put an ellipsis at the *end* of a sentence, skip a space and then add your period. If you have skipped one or more sentences from a quote *before* a new sentence, leave your period from the previous sentence, type a space, then make your ellipsis, and begin your new sentence (after the skipped sentences). If you only skip part of the beginning of a sentence, it is considered incorrect to begin the sentence with an ellipsis . . . but I won't tell if you don't. Most readers won't know this obscure rule . . . or the even lesser known rule that you *can* use an ellipsis to begin a sentence if the sentence is in a blockquoted fragment of text.

[Seven Xu]

[Seven Xu]

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