Well it has been ages (once again) a really long time since I posted last. So here we go. I’m doing this cause I started getting bored with how I looked again. So I decided to do something nuts. I dyed half of my hair black. I’ve wanted half black half whatever coloured hair for a long time, but only sort of in a pipedream way. I’ve seen a few people with ‘Cruella’ style hair before, and recently saw some girl on youtube get red and black. Since my hair is already red and I’d only need to dye one half black to get a similar result, I decided “Screw it, if she can have it, I can have it.”. Soo, I did. And it looks great. I’m so stoked. I was terrified it would look bad and I did it at 3-4 in the morning, but my red hair is now 50% black, straight down the middle. Now I feel so much more versatile. I always liked having my earring or makeup different on both sides, now I have incentive do it so much more.

Anyway. Feeling all nice and fresh and interesting. So I thought I’d update as I change my looks. Photos below :)

Right side (black)

Left side (red)

Both together with a weird face because I didn't reel like smiling normally.

Change is good. Now I need to update my banner at the top. I want something better anyway.

~Raven

Regrets

Well, I’m back after my rather long absence. Though I doubt anyone noticed. But university and a severe lack of internet prevented me from getting all these horrible little thoughts out of my head.

Anyway. I return. A year older and none the wiser, though growingly bitter. It was my birthday on the 26^th of June. My 21^st actually. And though this birthday is usually monumental for most, for me it was yet another disappointment. The day passed like virtually any day my family gets together. We saw a movie, had some food and my family screamed at each other while I wished I was somewhere else and wondered why I thought being with them was a good idea. Honestly, the highlight of my day was when I returned home with Matt and he held me in bed and let me cry it all out. I don’t cry often, so doing it when I had spent all day holding it in felt really good. But this day of shit has filled me with a particular vigour now.

My family, love them as I do, are a mess and in no position to advise me. It is my life, my body, and being the youngest, I need to suffer the consequences of my older siblings actions. My brother’s alcoholism, for instance. Their children for another. Not that I don’t love my nephews and niece, I do. But when they are screaming and angry and making a scene, that’s suffering to me. So I figure, if I need to put up with their consequences, they can put up with those of me getting as many tattoos as I want. It isn’t really any of their business, but if they choose to make it theirs, that’s on them.

My sister wants me to think every single one through before I get it because she doesn’t want me to regret them. Well I figure, fuck that. I don’t believe in the ‘no regrets’. Every life, no matter how good, will have regrets. I already have massive regrets that I’ll die with. So I think a few spur of the moment tattoos aren’t going to really concern me that much. And if they do, they will be my concerns, nobody else’s.

I know what I want to do with my life and I’m set on it. If that changes, it’ll only be to something else I want to do. If I choose to do that with tattoos covering me, so be it.

I’m not sure what brought this on tonight. But I’m feeling good and fired up and wanting more tattoos. Tattoos I plan to get without consulting my family. They can get over it. So there will be more blogs with photos of my ink soon. Very soon.

Regrets

Well, I’m back after my rather long absence. Though I doubt anyone noticed. But university and a severe lack of internet prevented me from getting all these horrible little thoughts out of my head.

Anyway. I return. A year older and none the wiser, though growingly bitter. It was my birthday on the 26^th of June. My 21^st actually. And though this birthday is usually monumental for most, for me it was yet another disappointment. The day passed like virtually any day my family gets together. We saw a movie, had some food and my family screamed at each other while I wished I was somewhere else and wondered why I thought being with them was a good idea. Honestly, the highlight of my day was when I returned home with Matt and he held me in bed and let me cry it all out. I don’t cry often, so doing it when I had spent all day holding it in felt really good. But this day of shit has filled me with a particular vigour now.

My family, love them as I do, are a mess and in no position to advise me. It is my life, my body, and being the youngest, I need to suffer the consequences of my older siblings actions. My brother’s alcoholism, for instance. Their children for another. Not that I don’t love my nephews and niece, I do. But when they are screaming and angry and making a scene, that’s suffering to me. So I figure, if I need to put up with their consequences, they can put up with those of me getting as many tattoos as I want. It isn’t really any of their business, but if they choose to make it theirs, that’s on them.

My sister wants me to think every single one through before I get it because she doesn’t want me to regret them. Well I figure, fuck that. I don’t believe in the ‘no regrets’. Every life, no matter how good, will have regrets. I already have massive regrets that I’ll die with. So I think a few spur of the moment tattoos aren’t going to really concern me that much. And if they do, they will be my concerns, nobody else’s.

I know what I want to do with my life and I’m set on it. If that changes, it’ll only be to something else I want to do. If I choose to do that with tattoos covering me, so be it.

I’m not sure what brought this on tonight. But I’m feeling good and fired up and wanting more tattoos. Tattoos I plan to get without consulting my family. They can get over it. So there will be more blogs with photos of my ink soon. Very soon.

Self-Love

I love not being normal. I love that I like dark make-up, chunky heals, black lace, heavy silver jewlery, tattoos, piercings, long nails, hairdye, fake fangs, contacts. I love that it makes me a freak and I get disapproving stares by people. Because I like being different. Because I'm different. And to me, that's just perfect.


Also, I. Fucking. LOVE. These. Shoes.

Don't be afraid to love yourself. No matter how freaky you are.

~Raven~

Second Ink -Outline-

Well, a day later and I'm finally ready to blog about my new tattoo. It took forever to finally get it started because my tattooist that day was running late on his other tattoos (was meant to be at 3.00, but didn't get to start talking about the design till 4.20. Good thing I'm patient.), so by the time we got started my adrenaline was running low, so I couldn't go another half hour for the shading. Just the outline. Anyway, here are the photos of my tattoo.

Virigin leg. Well, not inked yet at least.

The only clear photo of us I could get

I ended up waiting a total of and hour and twenty minutes for my tattoo. Trying to keep myself entertained, I started taking photos of my lovely friend, Hellen, who came to keep me company. Ended up with this happy snap, which is the only clear one and the only one where we weren't grinning like morons.

 We finally got going. I forgot to take photos during, so this is a pretty gritty still from the video I recorded. God damn it hurt on the ankle. I tried it more to the back of my leg, but it didn't look good. It was also twice as big as I inteded, but once I saw the design, I couldn't go any smaller or I'd lose the detail, of which there was a lot.

 

 Trying to look relaxed while in PAIN.

Owch. But worth it.

 A couple hours old and a bit swollen (though you can't tell from this), but here is my newest tatt. I'm unbelieveably happy and still quite sore at this point. But worth it. All the fine lines were painful, but worth it. And it'll look even better with shading, which will be in a few weeks.


The morning after, I'm still pretty tender (didn't help that the other half kept bumping it in our sleep), but it looks amazing. And matches with my first. I'm so very stoked and looking forward to seeing it completley finished.

The next morning, less swollen and a whole bunch prettier. They look damn good together if you ask me.

Yasmin the Raider. From Fallout New Vegas.

 

 This is totally seperate from the tattoo, but it's an exaple of what I want my ear to look like one day. Yes, I also draw. I like to model myself off a character I've had for a long time. Most people model characters off themselves, I do it the other way around.

Tattoo day!

Well, getting the next tattoo in a few hours. I'm all excited and bouncing around.It's 11.30 and I'm booked for 3.00. The waiting is gonna hurt me more than the tattoo itself. I love this feeling of anticipation and a little bit of fear. I'm not really that scared, cause I know what to expect, but it'll hurt more than the last, so there's a little bit of fear in there. But mostly I'm stoked. And I still have to shave my legs, clean the place for my visitor, do my hair, find something to wear, have some food so I don't pass out....And instead, here I am writing this thing. I'm off!

-Raven

Next tattoo and a lot about Dragon Age

Booked my next tattoo for this Saturday, the 16^th at 3pm. I’m really looking forward to it. This one shall be a small, gothic cross on my ankle. Starting small, working my way up. Though it’ll be hitting the bone a lot, so let’s see how good my pain threshold is. Once I start, I won’t back, but I’m interested  to see how much I can handle the pain. I think I’ll also get my next set of ear piercings on Monday. Though having to take care of a tattoo and two healing holes in my ears will be a bitch.

Anyway, this post is going to be about videogames. Dragon Age Awakening, to be specific.

First off, I love Dragon Age, both Origins and Awakening. They are fun, interesting, and visually pleasing. Not so much as some out there (Oblivion, you’re hot and you know it), but it’s good. Which makes me feel bad about the elements I disliked in this expansion, but hey, they need criticism to get it right.

Number one, it had glitches. Usually I’m ok with the odd bug, but because as far as I saw DA Origins was glitch free, these really irked me. Lagging, getting jumpy, all pisses you off when you’re used to virtually the same game which runs smooth. Though it only did it after I played the Darkspawn Chronicles (a lot during that campaign, a little in my Awakenings quest afterward). Though that can be forgiven (there were I think two others, but I forget them). The worst, the one that really made me annoyed was during a mission for some guards called ‘Law and Order’. You can work for the guards, or the smugglers. Now, being the good guy I am (in my first play through, at least), I was a good guy. So I agreed to eradicate the smugglers. Now I can’t remember when, but I stopped to talk to one of the baddies before bringing fiery justice, thanks to my rune of +10 fire damage, on them. Because I had even talked to one, after I killed them all, it registered as helping them, turning the guards cold to me and stopping any further quests from the captain. This is infuriating! I didn’t find out until over 3 hours of gameplay later, and even if I had, I’d still be pissed because it’s a crap glitch. I checked online and everybody else had the same thing. Frustrating. I’m unsure if there has been a patch to fix this available (I’d hope they did), but it is a seriously bad glitch.

The second thing that had me scowling was the lack of romantic options. You couldn’t get involved and sleep with any of the people you could recruit. In Origins there was four (well, three each play through since two were bisexual, the other two hetro), these ones you can flirt a little bit, but that’s it. Again, wouldn’t be an issue if they hadn’t been able to do it in the original.

 Guess it is like Awakening is the less impressive younger brother, since you can’t do as much stuff with it and it still has issues. But regardless of the bits that make my growl, it’s good fun. Like a brilliant string of side quests you get from a noticeboard for ‘Blight Orphans’. It is obviously some of the local drunk patrons pretending to be orphans, but the tasks they give you are hilarious and fun to do. Like getting a knife and a scarecrow and placing it outside the door of a woman they don’t like, to scare her. Though it’s sweet in the end, as they make you put some flowers on her doorstep to apologise (they couldn’t do it themselves, since she chased them off with a rake last time). And it  also gives you big decisions. Like with this big, final battle, you have the choice to stay and save a city overrun with baddies and risk the Vigil, your home, getting destroyed (unless you take the proper precautions to prepare it) and your party members you left there getting killed. I burnt the city (to kill it) instead of saving it cause I didn’t want to lose my home. It felt bad, but it’s good that this game could make me feel it for letting those people die. Though I saved before hand, so once I finish off the final bad guy behind all the bad stuff, I’ll load again and save the city, see if my Vigil can survive without me.  That’s another great thing about the Dragon Age games. Multiple saves.

Ok, well I think that’s enough for now, I’ll try to keep it short. Looking forward to the last fight. Then after that, I’ll buy Dragon age 2. The graphics are even better and I imagine the story will be too. Really exciting.

Alright, must go before I start ranting again.

-Raven

Greeting, all!

Not that I expect anybody to be reading this yet. Or ever. But oh well. This’ll just be a little introduction to the inner workings of me.

On the internet, I’m called Raven. Love the name, love the animal, and I used to have black hair. The hair thing has changed, but I retain the name.

I’m a 20 year old University student who is a few courses shy of completing their Bachelor of Arts. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally decided what I want to do with my life now that I’m almost a grown up. My ideal would be to be a University tutor of creative writing, while also writing for a video game magazine, and being a qualified librarian. What can I say, I have a love affair with the written word. It’ll be a long, hard road, but I really hope to achieve it one day.

I also love body modifications. Now to me, this includes, but is not limited to: piercings, scarification (though I’d never do it), tattoos, implants, dental fangs and hair dying/styling (but only the radical stuff, like dying to deep blue and shaving half of it off). Currently I have 4 piercings (two in each lobe) and plan to get more in the next few weeks, one tattoo on my wrist that is almost fully healed (tattoos are my newest love and I NEED more), and my hair is currently magenta/blood red, reaches my butt, and curly (not naturally, I’ve just discovered the rag method for curling hair). I’m putting all this here as a starting point, because I expect this list to grow by the end of the year. I like looking alternative to what’s normal, as I find this beautiful and fascinating. I believe in the ‘your body is a canvas’ theory, and I don’t want to be plain.

Other things I am passionate about is writing (hence the dream career), videogames (of which I started this blog for), drawing (which I’m not so great at. Need practise), and all things nerdy. Sci-Fi, comic books, I love it all. I love photography and am training my skills up, hopefully to one day be good enough to have a model that isn’t myself as it really limits me in what I can do, though I’ve also modelled a few times. I love costumes and dressing up, so I plan to model some more, just for the costumes. I love photography that looks like it’s from another world.

Also, hairless cats. I love those ugly, beautiful little things and when I eventually upgrade from an apartment to a house, I intend to get one. Her name shall be Gremlin.

Well, that’s about everything. I think I’ve summed myself up as much as possible. If you are reading this, I hope you enjoyed it and any future blogs I write. If not, it’s ok, won’t make you read them. They’ll mostly be about mods, videogames, and maybe the odd recipe every now and then.

Write again soon,

Raven