Cast Down, with Desire

Wrap--yourself in plumes of silver smoke
And breathe the cinders of your plight.
Bleed--yourself where the water dressed the skin
In red, it'll be hurt...you'll leave behind.

Forgiveness is for those of us
Who resign to cowardice
And restrain the longings
Of the flesh
In bleak black eloquence
Once the chains are placed
The bondage of on our wills are crawling in
Lash the need, dissolve restriction
From the eighth deadly sin.

Drink--yourself in that lost and weary way
And forget the nights that were your last.
Feel--yourself in Pleasure's passion Pain
And don't forget the role that you were cast.

In shame covered distrust
All the life, that once was spoken
(That once was spoken...)
Has all but faded into the past...

...Towards the bottom of the glass
(The bottom of the glass...)

New YouTube + FileFront sites

Hey folks, just wanted to make everyone aware that I am beginning to gradually put videos up of my adventures in Vana'diel and otherwise on the web for your viewing pleasure. You can find NQ streaming versions at youtube.com/lilithslave, and HQ versions of FFXI vids at http://hosted.filefront.com/SoLissy61

Thanks and enjoy what I have up there for now. At FileFront I recently put a rather large file documenting the Sarameya ZNM fight. It wasn't nearly as difficult as people made it out to be. lolwiki.

Forgive and Always Forget

It's often hard to inspect the thoughts
Or intentions of the Seas
Deep and vast between the Minds
Of all who live to be
The Dreamers of the cosmic Dreams
The Weavers of the Weave
Who sail upon the Ships of Stars
Beyond the Shores of the
Once sane and always bustling Ports
Where trade once always played
And peddled Lies to those who spoke
Of Truth as Hope once slain.

The Secret to Life: Whole People Live by Stereotypes (even if they don't admit it)

You know I noticed that it’s not often that I discuss my transexuality on this blog much at all, and for good reason, if I talked about it all day long until my face was blue it would become boring and my blog would be branded as being static, at least in my eyes. So anyway, I was thinking maybe I should change it up, and talk about it a little bit. I hope this ends up to be an entertaining read.

My whole life, I have adored music because there is nothing quite like it. Music evokes feeling and turns it into sonic energy, at least the good music does. I’ve gone through various stages of growth in my taste for music just as a child grows to like tomatoes or something as they get older. Despite all the changes one thing remained the same about my outlook on music. Epic and depressing music always struck a chord with me, in particularly the kind of music termed Metal nowadays (and not this shitty American hard core stuff either REAL METAL like Ronnie James Dio). I remember sitting in the back of my Dad’s 1971 RS Camaro (omg beautiful car btw), listening to Black Sabbath’s “Heaven and Hell” and Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell.” I couldn’t get enough of these two tapes, not to mention they both had epic and depressing qualities to the architecture of the actual music. During my Freshmen year of High School my thirst for music with these qualities grew to an all-time high and by the time I had discovered bands like Cradle of Filth, Darkthrone, and Emperor. My life was never quite the same after that, I was so inspired I even had a short 4 year stint playing guitar in a fairly well known group of musicians. This was all before I started my transition. Back when I was a guy, back before all the problems I’ve had with my family and everything in general. This was even before FFXI if you believe that!

After I began my transition, I was still more/less the same person, I mean, it’s not like I had a hormonal lobotomy removing any memory of my past and likes or dislikes. I had stopped writing and performing music, but my tastes still remained the same. Which left everyone that knew me before pretty confused. “Girls don’t like Metal wtf, and girls definitely don’t play this kind of Metal! How can we honestly believe this, how can we accept this after the lifestyle you lived in the past…” (etc., etc., etc. into the infinities of the second proto-star system of Proxima Centauri) This whole dialogue still goes on today among my once trusted family, and it comes to no surprise since they already have their own preconceptions of which qualities make and do not make a female. Hell, everyone does, same goes for how people preconceive behavior for men. I can’t remember the number of times that I heard that stereotypes don’t exist yadda yadda yadda, but the fact is that they do exist. The media is mainly to fault here. Why do you think some women have image problems? Because there are certain hallmarks or stereotypes that they feel they MUST fulfill to be a whole person. Let’s go through the list of what the media expects a female to be.

-Attractive

-Slender (i.e perfect body)

-Well-endowed (breast wise)

-Sensitive

-Strong and/or Strong-Willed (only prevalent in recent memory…uh go Wimmin Power?!)

-Seductive

-Stylish

-Vegetarian or Vegan

-Smart to an extent

-Timid

-Savvy

-Caring

-Sex object or a walking Vagina

-A baby factory

These are just a few things that I notice personally from the media that I have seen younger females especially try to emulate. I mean gosh, all I see nowadays is walking Vaginas and Penises, it’s terrible in my point of view. It seems sex is all that comes to this life. But I definitely would have to disagree, just as I disagree with all the stereotypes filling everyone’s head to the brim with images of these stereotypes.

I get it. I think. In the REAL world women aren’t allowed to be interested by war, politics, METAL, eating a nice juicy steak (even though I hate steak, some women like steak!), video games, speaking their minds when they have a strong opinion about something, females aren’t allowed to be anything a man is. Omg did I just say that? If a female has any male personality qualities, I think men and their staunch supporters view it as further demeaning what it means to have a penis inside of your trousers. Idk, the gender gap is pretty, well, loose at this particular point in time so I really don’t know what the big deal is, I guess some people are still old fashioned even if they are twenty years old. The internet makes a lot of subjects seem less impacting than they really are. Some people STILL think homosexuals are bad or evil people. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there are some bad and evil homosexuals somewhere, for other reasons entirely, like killing 75,843,985,734 people, but most couldn’t be anywhere close to that amount of sheer iniquity. We might as well come out at this point and say any person of either gender that does not live under the stereotypes brought on by the media isn’t a person at all. The world is actually becoming this too. People that color outside the lines are blackballed by the normal folk for not following their ideas. The anti-culture of the 60s has become that movement. But anyway, I’m rambling quite a bit. I guess the point of this is, I’m a weirdo girl, I like Heavy Fuckin’ Metal, video games, and politics among other things. I won’t lie, I do have some aspects physically and mentally in the stereotypes I listed above, but don’t live up to every single one. It doesn’t make me any less of a person or any less a female.

Oh man oh man oh man...

This Presidential election just heated up. I can't believe everything that's going on with it. There was word not too long ago that John McCain choose the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin for his veep pick. I'm not too shocked since her name was in the group of people rumored to be on his list for veep but I really think this is going to throw the Democrats for a loop! I think McCain has a legit chance of winning now. He made the right veep choice in my eyes where Obama made the incorrect choice. Joe Biden? Laughable. LAUGHABLE. Hillary would've been the better veep pick but she wasn't even vetted. What a slap in the face to the Clinton camp. Don't get me wrong the main DNC speeches from Hillary, the former President Bill, and Obama himself were very good but I'm really beginning to think the chance for the Dems to take back the White House in the name of "HOPE" and "CHANGE" is getting a big kick in the ass right about now. I hate McCain and some of the things he stands for, but his choice for veep only furthered my resolve to vote for him as the lesser of two evils between him and Obama. lolJoeBiden. What the hell. And POOR HILLARY if McCain gets elected as Mrs. Palin will be the first woman to reach an office so high in the U.S. McCain, I'm glad you didn't pick Joe Lieberman it would've been a fatal mistake, but I think you have a shot now. DON'T BLOW IT.

On Being a Leader - What it Means to Me

Being a leader doesn't mean you have to be friends with everyone you are in charge of.

It also doesn't mean that every decision you might make won't have opposition.

That's not to say you won't make an occasional bad decision--hey, it happens.

A leader isn't invincible.

They need help just like any other person.

A leader should do everything and nothing by them self.

A leader takes responsibility for themselves and others.

When things get tough, showing weakness means failure.

And when things are easy...well, things are never easy.

Being a leader means there is no "try."

It's only "do" and when you "do," you "do" it well.

Being a leader means putting trust into those who follow you.

And giving dissidents enough rope to hang.

On RDM/DRK, Part II (Three-headed Dogs, and Lion-faced Beasties)

It’s been awhile since I made my last post on RDM/DRK and some of the things I wrote then while not entirely wrong by any means could be optimized. First off, it’s very important to note that with the exception of Khimaira, Dynamis Lord, and Bahamut v2 Stun’s rate of resistance is pretty much nil. And even then they aren’t THAT resistant. As long as Stun serves it’s purpose it really doesn’t matter how you do it as long as it actually gets off.

The biggest thing you can do to improve your Stunning on anything is the following:

1. Open up your menu and go to “Config.” DO NOT filter any damage manually it will seriously fuck you up.
2. Go to “Misc.”
3. At the top of the “Misc.” menu you will see “On-screen damage display.” It will give you three options in this order: “Log,” “Both,” “Screen.” Set it to “Screen.” This will REALLY clean your log up quite a bit.

The biggest point of contention I have with stunning as a RDM/DRK on the Cerberus and Khimaira fights is that there is no room for any error. Fulmination and Gates of Hades respectively are very fast and are fairly difficult to Stun for somebody inexperienced with these NMs. Don’t get me wrong Tiamat’s Firaga 3 is fast (and VERY easy to Stun), but any spell an NM might cast is exponentially slower than a TP move which both of these are.

On Khimaira and Stunning Fulmination

At 35% HP Khimaira enters it’s so-called “rage” mode which grants him an additional TP move called Fulmination. The damage from this is MASSIVE without Shell 5 and a good chunk with it on. It also gives a pretty potent Paralyze effect to go with it so it’s not pleasant for anyone which is why most LSes opt to stunning it.

Unlike most HNMs Khim builds resistance to Stun after five or six uses so it’s very important that you’re actually stunning the right thing. Another thing to note is that after you actually Stun a Fulmination it might use it again, having a pair of RDM/DRKs works best on this but I have also done this solo enlisting the help of Shield Bash on the part of keeping Fulmination at bay. Like most time sensitive actions in FFXI, you should be Stunning from the menu, ALWAYS. Macros with equip swaps and just in general are bad new bears. Stun will go off in an Terra’s Staff if you wore it…it’s that accurate on landing so don’t bother with “Stun” gears. I recommend sub targeting Khimaira and taking your hand away from whatever button you use to initiate specific actions so you don’t get trigger finger and jump the gun too early on something that didn’t need to be stunned.

On Cerberus and Gates of Hades

Cerberus does not build any resistance to Stun whatsoever. You can free Stun throughout the fight to help the tanks out until it’s “rage” mode which goes into effect at 25% HP. At 25% Cerberus uses what I think is one of the most devastating TP moves out there, Gates of Hades. This move does MASSIVE fire damage and gives a burn effect to anyone blessed with getting hit by it. You cannot not let many of these get through otherwise you will wipe your LS which I did once way back in FM. Gates of Hades can be used back to back to back to back until he feels like he’s had enough. It’s very important to keep a Stun order and abide by it (should do this on Khimmy too btw). Stunning out of order can result in GoH getting through so don’t play hero, wait your turn. Again like Khimaira, this TP move is FAST so it’s very helpful to sub target Cerberus and prep for Stunning it.

Things That Piss Me Off About Stunning TP moves

First of all, the number one thing I hate is missing a TP move because either LS chat is filled up and/or party chat. If people expect you to Stun without fail it’s VERY important to keep any conversation to a minimum so you don’t Stun too late from the TP move’s message in your log.

Stunning in a large crowd too is ridiculous if you have a crappy connection. It’s pretty important to kindly ask any spectators on either of these fights to back the fuck up. I often reposition myself in a less congested area and that usually helps, but not always. 120 people at Khimaira and trying to Stun doesn’t mix.