It was a short story that takes place in an original setting of mine. I started out by trying to make the original setting into a book. It was great at first, but the more of it I wrote, the more it deteriorated in quality, so I'm putting it on hold for now. In the meantime, I decided to write additional stuff in the same setting, possibly as an attempt to get a better idea of the flavor I was going for.

I wanted to submit it so I can apply to attend a forum for young writers that's happening this May, and I also passed it on to my school's literary magazine, which might give me a cash prize if I'm lucky. I doubt it.

Basically, vampires exist alongside humans and have done so for some time, but it was really only until World War I that they made themselves known on a large scale, when Italy turned out to be a vampire state, and only in the mid-1980s, during the American "Red Power" movement, were Western vampires supported by formal institutions such as nocturnal schools and welfare programs that donate small quantities of blood to vampires in poverty. I'm going for a sort of mix between differing ideas in the popular consciousness of what they're like; typically, they look, think, and behave just like humans, with only a fatal sunlight allergy and an addiction to blood, but if they go long enough without it, they snap and go nuts, mowing things down and clawing through anything that gets between them and their next meal.

The short story itself was just about this high-end restaurant that serves vampire customers.

Sorry for all the blather!

I'm not quite sure how I pushed through it, myself. Mostly, I just said to myself, "what the hell, just vomit words onto the paper." The editing came later. I wish I had a more concrete method of getting myself to write.

MapleStory, I've found, is a pretty cash-driven game unless you're on Reboot, the server where paying to win is inherently impossible (no Marketplace, no trading, a lot less in the Cash Shop) and the gameplay is more like pre-Big Bang MS. I spent $50 on pretty clothes to sell in the Marketplace one time to try and get money, and at the end, I wound up with one staff. Yep. One staff. I'm definitely going to start looking into Reboot... Player dissatisfaction with Nexon is as high as it's always been after the trend towards needing real money to succeed, and not even Reboot is immune. Also, FIFTH JOB IS HERE!

Thank you for the jar of kimchi! My father actually used to work as a Korean linguist in the US Army. He still semi-regularly buys these big jars of the stuff from overseas.

I've read all of TOS, although it has been a while, so I'll probably go back and read through it again. Come to think of it, it's been a while since I read through any of the spin-offs, so I'll be stuffing my face with writing in the near future. I do like the work that Trojie and Pads have done together.

Thank goodness! I want the spider to make informed and rational decisions.

I forgot to mention this in the initial post, but I love the Pokemon video games! I probably left that out because much of Pokemon fanfic is based on the anime. Oh, well. I actually tried doing stuff in the competitive scene once, and I was a Fairy-type gym leader in a league for about a month or so. Then Mega Mawile was banned. Sigh.

Do you listen to stuff that isn't... discordant?