Juno

Hullo, all! My name's Juno and I'm an 18 year old Wisconsinite who writes entirely in the original section. I'm cool with branching out into fandoms if pieces are recommended to me, but I usually like original works. I'm also an artist with specialties in installation, figure drawing and comics. I'm going to college for English and Art in the fall.

This is how I feel/look right about now:

One of my biggest problems is that when I think of stories, I usually think of the beginning and ending first. The middle is always the hardest for me to churn out. And then there are parts where I'm at one point in the story, and it's sooooo boring to write, even though it needs to be done. Afterward, there's usually this really exciting part I can't wait to write, but I need to dredge myself through the boring part first. Sometimes those "boring" parts overwhelm me so much that I just get stuck. It sucks.

I'm going to be honest here and say that I just don't like yaoi or yuri stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just that I'm not too interested in it. Gay sex just isn't a turn-on for me. I probably won't ever write M/M or F/F stuff, but if the story's good and focuses more on the plot and other things and not just the sex, then I would be fine with reading it. I think part of the reason is that I tend to not be able to relate with any of the characters in yaoi stories. I'm not a male nor am I gay, and since it's not a turn on, it just sort of... falls flat with me. Heck, there are a bunch of heterosexual stories that I don't like, just because I can't relate with any of the characters! I guess I'm just a picky reader when it comes to stories. I'm open to reading a bunch of things, sure, but if I don't like it, I usually won't review it. No use yelling at the author for my own personal tastes.

Augh, lucky! I'm one of those weird "normal" people that needs that 7 or 8 hours of sleep a day. Although I have found that my sleep cycles tend to only work on odd-number amount of hours. So I can function better on 5 hours of sleep a day rather than say, 8. Sometimes I crash, though, and then sleep half the day away.

One of my biggest sins, I believe, is Envy. Part of it may be that I was brought up in an environment where anyone who was successful or "rich" should be disregarded as a good human being and thought badly of. I am also constantly comparing myself to others, in looks, traits, and especially natural talent. Anyone with a natural talent in anything will generally drive me up a wall, but I've come leaps and in bounds in ways of controlling that and not being nasty or trying to punish them for "being better than me."

I drink a LOT of coffee, tea and sugarfree Rock Star. It's really the only kind of Rock Star I like. It tastes like liquefied Smarties. Original Monster is good too.

Luckily for me we only got around 4 inches or so. Not too bad, but my car handles terribly in the snow and cold. It has the tendency of not shutting the driver's side door (which I then have to hold shut with one hand and drive with the other...), not starting all the time, and has no ABS. Oh how I love sliding around...not.

I am ok at folding clothes, but that doesn't necessarily mean I like it. I always used to wonder how they make the clothes so absolutely perfect in stores, until I found out one day. They cheat. All of the employees get these little pieces of cardboard, and they stick them in the shirt, fold the im sides in, take out the cardboard and fold the bottom up. Viola! Perfectly folded clothes every time. I used to feel so lame because I am normally sort of dumb when folding clothes. My arch enemy:underwear. They usually end up in balls in my "intimates" drawer, along with the socks.

Well, it was just to take out my wisdom teeth, but surgery's still surgery I guess. Luckily for me I only had two wisdom teeth develop, which were the bottom ones, but they both were impacted and one of them was completely sideways! Eek. When they stuck the IV in, (augh, the worst part!) the doctor commemorated me on having "such nice veins" which I thought was a little weird, but whatever. Maybe that office sees a lot of heroin addicts? Afterward I came home and threw up some blood, both otherwise I'm ok. Sleep for nearly 7 or 8 hours and now I'm hopped up on some Vicodin so I'm doing fine. The experience wasn't so bad for being the only surgery I've ever had.

In my Current Issues class, the teacher has this ANCIENT podium from the Mesozoic Era, and it is just completely covered with all of these names of past students that did something nice for the teacher or something along those lines. All I have to do is stare at the podium for a while and I've got a grand resevoir of names to choose from! A few of my favorites are Luke Haddox, Bill Swan and Emily Lane. I also tend to use names I really like; i. e. Elijah Ritval for my most recent story, Winthrop Manor. Sometimes names just sort of pop into my head, usually while I'm writing out the introduction to the character. Even if they tend to be a little bizarre, it usually fits so well with the character that I can't really bring myself to change it to make the name more mainstream.

Well, this big change in your life might have affected you more than you've really realized. I've recently gone through some pretty big emotional changes myself, and I found that the people I had hung out with before the change, I really didn't like as much as I initially thought. Maybe you're just developing into a different stage in your life, and you're just having a "falling out" with your friends. If, like you said, that they "are like the whiny bitches you used to be one of," well, then maybe it's time for you to just get up and move on. Not necessarily "dump" them as friends, but acknowledge that you're a different person now, and if they can't accept that, then your friendship will not be as close as it once was. Growing up is tough. :/

It's essentially been snowing all day for me, but the wind started to pick up around noon or so. Sucks, because I have to go driving around today in search of a job.

Ha ha, that's actually pretty funny, DarkInu. Luckily for me, I've never had the problem of being mistaken for a lesbian, even though I only have guy friends and generally don't get along with most of the girls in my school-area. Girls can be so retarded, at least in my area and my high school. :/ I also recently got a pixie-type cut, and my dad got a little freaked out, but that's about it. Granted, I've always had at least one boy after me for some reason or another since I was about 13. ...Damn. That makes me sound so full of myself, doesn't it?

Ha ha ha! That's hilarious! Although the armlessness of the sculptures freak me out a bit, though. Ah, modern installation.

What aboot dem uppers, der eh? Doncha jus' dink they've gotta craaaaazy sexy accent, eh? I don't think I've heard enough foreign-country accents in real life (aka, not movies or tv shows) to really have any opinion on "sexy accents." Sure, any accent can sound sexy with sexy, scripted words, but I want to hear just a normal conversation in that accent before I deem it "sexy." The only ones I know are the freaky Wisconsin dialects and people from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I also scare my friends with this awful British accent-imitation thing I periodically do.

Ha ha, Lore, I have your same fear, at times! I turned 18 last October, but it feels like I'm so much older. I think I was born a 20 year old or something.

Pewaukee, WI, USA. 4:31 PM. Snowy and fucking cold.

Hey, cu-kid! I got caught in that exact storm! The temperature dropped more than 20 degrees in like, two hours and then all of the wind and ice and sleet and snow and gaaaaah! Although I'm in Wisconsin, just outside of Milwaukee, so things were just a wee colder, but probably not by much. Today it was a high of -2 and windchill was -24. Needless to say, I did not go out. Just sat inside with my coffee, computer and drafting table.

I'm a Libra Snake. The only inanimate object in the Zodiac!

Like most people have been saying, I'd take this review with a grain of salt, and despite the fact that they don't know the other fandom, they're willing to read the story and review it. I admit that I used to just graze right over crossover fanfics, just because I didn't like them. Now I usually browse the Original section of AFF, but at least this person was willing to try the crossover, especially with something they have no knowledge about. My thing about Author's Notes: I always stick mine at the beginning of each chapter, albeit I only have two chapters up in my one story that's online here, but I always felt that having it at the beginning of a chapter didn't disrupt the flow quite as much. The webpage for the new chapter has to load anyway (and for us dial-up users, that can be a while sometimes...) and there is usually a chapter title and number. In my eyes, the story is already "disrupted" at that point, so it would be a logical place for the readers to see it. The reader can browse through to see if I responded, and then move on to the story. In that way, the end feeling of the chapter is kept intact and the reader isn't jolted back to the real world with a "OMG THANK YOUUUUUU FOR ALL THE VIEWS!!!!" type of thing.

You know, I hate to jump on this thread so late in the game, but... well, my friend is essentially going through the exact same situation as yours, and I've helped him through that. Let me begin by stating that I am young, at 18 years old, but even I can say for certain that things this girl has done is unacceptable. As a girl, I can say that, at one point in my life, I was naive too, and I even had once thought that having a boy interested in me and my body was flattering. Now I'm a bit more knowledgeable and find incidents, like your girlfriend's "shirt one" decidedly pathetic and appears to be an attempt at gaining attention, with no offense to you or your girlfriend. My friend, let's say his name is Matt (which is isn't, but for anonymity purposes, it is), and he's dating this girl, let's call her Jane. They had been dating for a little over two years, and seemed like the perfect couple; they just sort of fit, or so it seemed. Talk had even gone on about them getting married after they graduated high school. However, at the beginning of this year, Matt told him Jane had started to get... weird. She seemed a little more standoffish, and began hanging out with people to do pot, but forbade Matt to go with her. Even well before this incident, Matt's friend, Joe, had moved to Georgia, and when he moved back after a year, Jane told Joe he was only allowed to see Matt for up to a maximum of 2 times a week. If we jump to the present, Jane had forbid Matt from hanging out with anyone nearly throughout the entire relationship, although he "disobeyed" her and began hanging out with me, Joe, and our friends. Matt had said that it wasn't Jane's fault he never hung out with anyone; it was his, because he didn't want to. Bullshit, I said. Anytime I went over to Matt's house with friends, including Jane, she would always have to "have a talk" with him, which would last well over 45 minutes to an hour. Fastforward a few months, and suddenly comes Christmas, where I went to Denny's with a few friends. Matt had declined coming with us because he was going to hang out with Jane. My friends and I found her at Denny's, with a guy she and Matt worked with. I only knew who he was because I met him at a Christmas Party a few days earlier. When I later talked to Matt, he told me Jane had blown him off three times during the course of the day, and he later found out it was so she could hang out with this guy. A few days later, Jane told Matt she wanted to "take a break." Matt was devastated, because he was completely devoted to this girl, in very much the same way you sound like you are devoted to your girlfriend, Dark. A couple days later, Jane came out and said she had no intentions of getting back together with Matt, and that she was dating this co-worker of theirs. A week later, Jane came back to Matt, saying she had dumped this co-worker boyfriend and that she wasn't quite sure if she wanted him back or not; she "didn't know what she wanted," he told me. Now, Jane is a fairly nice girl. She has always been polite and nice to me, and I would never have any qualms with her if I did not know what was going on behind closed doors with her and Matt. But her behavior is utter bullshit, and not acceptable in any relationship; she was controlling, jealous, paranoid and desperate for attention. Matt continuously made excuses like, "well, her home-life is bad, and she said she has some psychological problems, so I can't blame her." Well, ok, don't blame her. But I told Matt that all of those things may be true, but it is not his responsibility to "cure" her. That should be done by professionals, if her problems are really that severe. That goes to you too, Dark. To me, it sounds like you are making excuses for her behavior, even when they are hurting you so bad and you know they are morally wrong. What also strikes me, Dark, is that it sounds like this relationship is defining who you are, your identity. I don't mean to sound so harsh in what I say, but I just came out of the same situation. I was dating a boy who I completely was devoted to--he was my first love, I believe. I, too, had visions of spending the rest of my life with him, and even though there were things that bugged me about him or he did things I didn't necessarily like, I made excuses to myself; "Oh, I must be setting my bar way too high." Eventually my own indentity was enveloped by his own, by the state of the relationship. When he dumped me, I was absolutely devastated. And yet I found, in time, that it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. It finally made me realize that I need to get my own basic emotional needs down first, before I start looking for a serious relationship with someone else. Besides, it's funny to look back on myself in my prior relationship, in thinking on how happy I was, when really, I wasn't. I am so much happier now, being alone, because I have a sense of identity and self that I didn't before. It's enabled me to weed out guys who I would normally latch on to, just for the sake of dating someone. So, my long-winded advice to you, Dark, is that I know you may be so completely devoted to this girl, but it really sounds like she is taking advantage of you, which is not a good thing. Even though it may hurt at first, taking a break from the relationship and being alone for a while is a great way to self-reflect and emotionally learn about yourself. If it really is "true love," then she will understand, and come back to you in time. Please also note that I don't know either of you, and although my comments may seem very opinionated and judgemental, I'm just sort of recalling how I felt about my friend's plight, which is similar to yours. I don't mean to offend or hurt you or your girlfriend.

Right now I'm quite enamored with anything done by cu-kid or Gatsby. Also, the Nomads of Trilos (as Kanashii already mentioned) is another good one. However, since I'm pretty new around here I'm hoping to look around for some more stories. I'll more than likely be checking out a bunch of these stories. This thread was a great idea.

Those are fantastic, I must say! However, that's because I love the snow and I love pictures of snow. It almost looks like my house! Where I live we've been under about two feet of snow since the beginning of December. Today it was really warm: it was actually above freezing!

Chapter Two: The Arrivals is up.