It's been awhile, Ladies and Gentlemen! First things first. Hello and welcome to all my new watchers; it's nice to have you aboard and I hope you're here because you like what you see. Maybe you'll even give me some feedback. Who knows? Secondly, yet another thank you to the most gracious *MandaNyght, who surprise gifted me with another 3 months on my premium membership when really, I'm just the merest of passing  acquaintences. Now let's get down to the nuts and bolts! I'll divide my journal into "areas", I think.



You may have noticed this spiffy new journal skin I've coded. If you're a fan of George R. R. Martin's books, then you might recognise it's been done a la Dance with Dragons chapter page. You see, I'd known about the Song of Ice and Fire series for a few years (thanks to Dwyn! You know who you are), but never got around to reading them. Now there's a TV show, and people kept comparing my main RP char to a certain Jaime Lannister, so I thought it was high time I picked up the books, then watched the show. I was given some of them last Christmas and bought the rest, and now I'm firmly addicted and following the TV program. As a reader of the books, I must say I also love what they've done for the show, but there are a few discrepancies between television and text that are annoying me. No I won't give away any spoilers here, but if you've read and watched, especially with the latest episode (2x06), you'll see what I mean. If you're not watching GoT, start. If you haven't read the books, read them.
     What else have I been up to since January? Well, Uni, RP, Video games, family stuff, friends blah blah boring RL.



I've got a shit ton of unfinished work floating about that I plan to bump off so I can start experimenting with new techniques and methods and just really get back into 'playing' with what I'm doing. I think I've fallen into a routine rut with art production, and while it's sound and seems to produce decent works, I feel like I'm not improving. I don't want to be one of those artists who finds something that's comfortable and easy and who just keeps making the same shit over and over again because they get fucktons of faves and comments that really mean nothing (You know the ones. "Beautiful work" "Lol this is cute" "Hahaha, nice work!" and shit) because they just like the attention. That's not what I want to be. I want to improve. I want to surpass what I'm already capable of and astound myself that I'm the one painting at such a level. This is difficult since I just about never practice drawing and painting, am hardly motivated, am distracted, and don't have much formal training under my belt, but I'm determined.
I've also been offered a few chances to do some commission work for a tabletop game developer, but holy shit I'm so lazy I haven't bothered to get in touch with the dude. I don't really need the money with my scholarships keeping me peachy, but I'm sort of curious to see if some twit is actually willing to pay me for this (yeah, I've done paid stuff before, but I'm always surprised when people offer me money), how much, and for what. I'm also interested in the collaboration process involved, and want to see just how well I can make what someone else wants.
Stay tuned. I do have new art in the works, which I want to finish and not think about soon.



I was on a short break from RP, which some of you know is the reason I got into digital art at all, but now I'm back. I had a potentially negative experience a few months ago with someone I thought was a good player, but turned out not to be. See, this person decided they didn't want to play with me anymore because I used to call them out when they'd play badly (which they did often and before you think I was an asshole about it, I wasn't), and would get shitty at me whenever I diverted the OOC chit chat from their whiny problems (they were telling me about how some dude they liked wasn't texting them back once, and I swerved off on a tangent about a grammatical error they made, and WOW, raging bitchfit) so I decided I didn't want to be this person's friend/person they only talk to to whine to/annoy when they want attention because without RP, that's how they treated me. So, I cut them off. Now I honestly thought I'd be upset and depressed about this hiccup in RP and the consequent rejection/defriending, but I'm not. I'm surprisingly happy, and dare I say relieved. I think it's a sign that I'm totally over drama like that and will no longer let it affect my RP joy in the future. The last time I had a bad experience with RP, I quit it and sulked for months, but now I'm bouncing back without even messing up my hair. I've learned to accept that some people are just happy being mediocre players, the big fish in the small pond, and just aren't interested in getting better or moving out of their comfort zone, which is fine for them, but not for me because I want something better. That's been my problem all along, I think. I just expect people to match my standards, and end up disappointed when they don't due to incapability or complacency, because this ALWAYS happens to me. People present like they're intelligent, competent, and dare I say "just as good as me", and then later down the track they reveal their true colours, and poor little me ends up unhappy because of my impossible standards that very few to date have met. I refuse to settle! I just don't understand why people are content being lazy, passive, and average. If you're going to do something, why not do it well?
So! RP is grand! I've got my bestest most awesome gorgeous and talented RP BFF (who knows who she is), I've had offers from other communities to join them, and now that I've quit the most recent site I joined, I'll scope them out if I feel like it, or go and establish my own crew somewhere like I've done in the past. Which leads to me to my next topic!



Video games! Diablo 3 is out soon! I'm so stoked! Battle.net is where I first began RP, and with the release of D3, I'll be going back there and possibly sniffing about to see if any of the folk from the "good old days" return too. But the game, THE GAME! I can see hours of my life devoted to it. I bought a copy of the Book of Cain from EB games, and have the collector's edition of D3 preordered! I tried to play during the recent open beta weekend, but the servers were down, and I had RL shit to do, so I missed it.  LESS THAN A WEEK TO GO THOUGH! Well, maybe a little longer for me since my copy is coming in the mail. I'll be ambushing mailmen every day after the 15th to see if they've got the game for me.
At the moment, I'm playing Minecraft (as always) and Mass Effect 3. Skyrim got tossed on the backburner after New Year, and I still have so many games waiting for me to start them! I've recently shoved an extra 4 gig of RAM into this computer, and everything runs like a dream (including photoshop), so I'm eager to see what it can do! Minecraft keeps calling me back though, and I have these phases where I madly retexture things to keep what I'm seeing fresh, and build things. That game is a serious creative trap on so many levels. I've been having fun on my non-serious dA account too, posting some Minecraft related silliness, so check it out at ~Llamarey



Llamas, you say? Well, I'm on an epic quest to upgrade my llama badge, so if you guys haven't given me a llama, PLEASE DO SO! If I haven't given you one, let me know, and I'll fix this. PLEASE GIVE ME LLAMAS, OK? TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO GIVE ME LLAMAS TOO! I RETURN LLAMAS AS WELL!

I think that about covers everything.

- Lancerey

Thanks to [link] for the CSS help.