hello! my name is Mei Kat, and i use they/them/their pronouns. people around here back in the day mostly called me MKK. i joined GW with this account when i was 8 years old in 2003, tho i think i had used a different account for a couple years before. i was very active in the heyday of this place, reading posts and chatting on IRC just about every day, as well as playing online games with others here, like Animal Crossing and OpenTTD. i messed around in RPG Maker a lot as a kid, but throughout the decade or so when i was active, i mostly posted my visual art and participated in things like the art quilts and character battles and such.

i graduated college in August 2020 with two bachelor’s degrees in Asian Studies (Japanese) and Fine Arts (Digital Art). i will be beginning a master’s degree in Japanese translation in August 2024. i plan to translate as a day job (ideally, media like anime and videogames), but my ultimate career goal is to write, draw, and publish my own graphic novels, along with other multimedia creations like games. i'm also now 50k+ words into a novel after a successful NaNoWriMo challenge.

here are some of my identities that feel important to share: queer (nonbinary transgender, pansexual/panromantic, aceflux), syncretically religious (mostly Christian/Quaker), physically and mentally disabled (hEDS, autism, and OCPD, among others), therian (cat), and a leftist. i have been engaged in activism within many of these communities for over a decade. some of my interests include Japanese culture (traditional and contemporary), visual/literary arts, tabletop/video games, animals, psychology, history, music, swimming, American Sign Language, and tea. i love to spend time in nature, especially going on hikes with my partner (together 5+ years now). i have kept many pets in my life (with dogs and rats as favorites), and currently, i have a pet carpenter ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) colony of ~700 workers that i started from a single queen in 2019.

my partner is a programmer just finishing up his master's in machine learning, and we're hoping to make games together someday. we both have some hobby game dev experience, but there are some aspects like music and voice acting for which we would potentially want to team up with others, so i'm happy to see this collaborative space coming back together! the retro feel of the design and interface really makes me miss the time before the enshittification of the Internet. here's hoping for a resurgence of the cozy feel of forum community~

back in the ~Golden Age of Gaming World~, i used to post my art frequently in the Graphic (f)Arts Subforum, and i give GW members from that era major "Cred" with helping me to mature as an artist (and person in general) and improve my technical skillz. i dunno why i stopped posting art here... and yesterday, upon seeing maroonracoon's topic in this here Artistry area, i was highly inspired to draw, and i decided i'd start posting stuff more often!! i have done very little work in recent months due to depression and lack of motivation/energy... but i drew some stuff last night, and i hope it's a sign of more creative things to come!
 
the first thing i drew last night was this cute little icon for my girlfriend:
 

 
and then, inspired by maroonracoon, i goofed around with colors:
 

 
then i drew a dumb comic about anxiety and benzodiazepines
 

 
and finally i drew a baby girly skelly
 

 
so, those things were the result of my creative spree last night. i think i'm gonna try to draw small things like these every day, because i really need to get in the habit of regularly producing art. i'll post my future projects in this topic.
 
oh, also, i guess i'll post a couple more things which i made sorta recently (like, a few months ago). the first one is Constable Odo from Star Trek; i drew this for my brother:
 

 
and here is some Homestuck fanart, loolll-- it's a picture of the character Jade Harley:
 

 
and this is another thing i drew for my girlfriend; it's a picture of us together:
 

 
i haven't done more Serious Art in quite a while, but if anyone wants to see some of that stuff, i can post it.
 
thanks for looking at my arts!!! i would very much appreciate comments and critique and whatnot. :3

i think we used to have a topic like this and it was good and cute. so i'm bringin' it back!!
 
i mean, this topic oughta get a good amount of activity solely from Vellfire postin' Quincy pics..... heheh
 
oh and also ruben or dada should post the photos of those cute puppies named after alcohol :3
 
post photos of your pets! it doesn't matter whether they're dogs, cats, rabbits, pterodactyls, fish, blodmontsers from HELL;.........etc

yo i love books but i especially love books in AUDIO format! it's often hard for me to find the time to Drop Everything And Read and so books that i'm reading in text-format often take me FOREVER to finish. i like audiobooks because i can listen to them bit-by-bit during the day while doing other things and also at night while i'm in bed, and i don't have to take time out of my day specifically to listen to them, like i would have to do if i were reading them. also i make a lot of art, and that is a time-consuming process which doesn't really require much mental attention-- i used to listen to music while working on art, but i've found that audiobooks are even better! recently, i've started listening to podcasts as well.
 
i've spent the past two years falling asleep to the 48-hour Complete Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes (BBC Dramatization) collection read by Clive Merrison (as Holmes) and Michael Williams (as Watson), and i just finished the entirety of the canon last night. (so now, with that finished, i feel a sense of loss... ;~;) i've also listened to free Librivox audiobooks of P.G. Wodehouse's short story collections The Man With Two Left Feet, And Other Stories as well as My Man Jeeves, and i do have the rest of the Wooster+Jeeves series downloaded and queued up for me to listen to in coming times. i've also listened to the Audible version of The Lost World (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) read by Paul Hecht. as for more modern books, i highly recommend the hilarious audiobooks The Areas of My Expertise written and read by John Hodgman (with frequent appearances by Jonathan Coulton), and The Great American Novel by comedian Keith Malley. my all-time favorite audiobook has to be Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, read by Jim Weiss-- i cannot recommend this audiobook enough; it is an amazing book and performance. soooo good 
 
i would recommend all the above audiobooks to others, and i can give a more in-depth review of any of them if anyone wants me to. i have many more audiobooks which i plan to listen to, as well, and i'm always looking for more. my biggest requirement for an audiobook is that it should be suitable for listening to, content-wise. generally, i wouldn't want to listen to translated books, old books (like, 1700s and earlier), or books of a very elevated reading level, because all of those are probably better suited to actual reading, since they might require some reference materials and extra thought. current books which i'm thinking would be good to listen to are The Stranger by Albert Camus, Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, and anything by Mark Twain (for example, i've recently started listening to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court).
 
as for podcasts, i've only recently started to get into them. i like Freakonomics Radio and the HowStuffWorks podcast Stuff You Should Know. there's also a lot of others i want to listen to someday... i'm including podcasts in this topic because they're similar to audibooks-- they share the feature of being good for idle listening. and i know that some people are reaaallly into podcasts, and that there are some excellent productions out there.
 
if you have any recommendations and favorites in the areas of audiobooks and podcasts, or if you just want to write out your thoughts about something you're currently listening to, please talk about all of that here~ 

ugh, i've got bad news. :<

apparently, doktormartini was in a car accident, and he passed away today. here's an article about what happened: http://www.nwherald.com/2012/12/06/johnsburg-man-critically-injured-in-rt-72-crash/a6eapli/ (you can see from the picture that it was a pretty horrible crash... :c )

dok has been involved in the GW/SW community for many many years, and i'm saddened to see that he's gone... he's always been a unique fixture on these forums, eager to talk about his interesting eating habits, his frequent work at a Jewish summer camp, his experiences with learning Chinese, etc... he was a very caring and entertaining guy. i've had many interesting debates with him, and he definitely influenced me growing up (as did all the regulars in this community). i'm glad for his involvement in my life, and it's so surreal and sad to learn that he's no longer going to be around. :(

dok wasn't friends with many GW/SW people on facebook, aside from me, and i only found out about his death through seeing people posting sympathetic messages on his timeline-- so, i thought i should let you all know about this unfortunate event, since doktormartini was a long-standing and valued member of our community.

RIP Marty Baureis :(

---
edit by dada, link to a second article: http://www.nwherald.com/2012/12/07/johnsburg-man-succumbs-to-injuries-from-thursday-crash/ag2ue19/

hey there, salt bros! i've missed you D:

see, i'm currently entering the second semester of my senior year in high school, and i've been so busy preparing for college that i haven't really posted here (or even lurked) in many moons. but salt flows incessantly through my veins, so i could never willingly, permanently leave this community.

so now i come to you to ask for wise words regarding my future. as in, tell me about your experiences with college/university! i am quite anxious about such things, and would like to hear some advice and stories. i remember a topic about college/uni that was popular many years ago (when GWers were of the average age to think about such things) but i didn't pay much attention to it because i was still a preteen. :P

as for me now, i have just finished applying to college, since the standard deadline was February 1st. i actually only applied to one place, which i know is not usually advisable. i sent an app+portfolio to the University of Michigan, applying for dual enrollment in the Residential College of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and in the School of Art and Design. so i'll be getting a dual degree-- a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the art school and also a Bachelors in something else (probably either psychology, English, or Japanese) from the other school.

i'm not really worried about getting in. i got a 34 on the ACT and have a cumulative GPA of about 3.8 (on a 4.0 scale). plus i submitted essays and a portfolio that i'm confident about. (after all, i have been writing posts and getting critiqued on my digital art since i was 6 years old! thanks, GW/SW~)

what i AM worried about is college itself. i've never been on my own in the way that college will force me to. growing up in a big family, i have never been home alone much and i haven't had to cook much either. i still rely on my mom in a lot of ways, including for waking me up for school. i'm worried about college because of those things. also, i have severe anxiety disorders, and that's a concern... blehh.

tl;dr: give me advice about how to survive college/uni! tell me of your own experiences. let's talk about this stuff, gogogo

 

Scribblenauts, the game where you can spawn pretty much ANYTHING, has leaked! i've been playing it nonstop since yesterday. officially, it comes out September 15 in North America, and i will be sure to buy it also when it comes out. anyways, it's really awesome.
basically, the point of the game is to collect these little stars by spawning objects to help you. you write the name of any noun you can think of, and it appears. there are ~22,800 different objects that can be spawned. you can also combine objects, like gluing a baby to a steak so a lion will eat it (this fact has gotten the game a rating of E10+). check out the wikipedia page for more information.
this game is for the Nintendo DS, and i would highly recommend that you get it. it's the ultimate sandbox game!
so, use this topic to discuss your Scribblenauts escapades~

so i went and saw Ponyo today and i thought it was fantastic



Ponyo is the story of a young fish-girl who desperately wants to become human so she can live with the boy she's fallen in love with. (wait, wasn't there another Disney movie like this? something about a Little Mermaid... :P ) However, she can't be a creature of both magic and humanity, and she disrupts the balance of nature by trying to do so. it's up to the boy, Sousuke, to find a way to make them both happy.
it's a very cute story. :3


it's not quite as awesome (or dark) as other Miyazaki movies, but it is top-notch cute. the underwater scenes are beautiful, too. it's up there as one of my favorite anime movies, along with Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and Paprika (seems like a lot of favorites but it's really not when you consider how many i've seen).

discuss! :]

i was looking through some old pictures i have and i realized the ridiculous amount of stuff i have from gw (as in, 300-something pictures). so i thought it'd be nice to have a trip down memory lane and see these old things. some are avatars or signatures, others are things like gope pictures. some are probably just pictures that appeared all over the internet but i can guarantee that all of these pictures have been posted on gw at one time or another and thus they are memories for me. maybe some of you will get a laugh out of these like i did. i dunno, maybe it's a dumb idea but it's not like the activity is bad for gw or anything

anyways, feel free to post some pictures here or reminisce or whatever. bonus game: try to guess where these are from! i know the origins of pretty much every image here so if you want to know just ask.

this is a long post but it's a crazy awesome story so you should read it.

so, well i posted a little about this in the steel cancer thread; here's what i posted there:

i think that, for me at least, the most convincing evidence for god's existence is the stories of people recovering from awful situations and feeling themselves that it was god who restored them. this past weekend, i also experienced a "lifting" feeling from god, you know.

on thursday at 4 in the morning, my parents were called by the hospital saying that my sister had a drug overdose and that she was in very bad condition. she had taken heroin, cocaine, marijuana, adderall, and xanax. she was having heart arrhythmias and not breathing. luckily, her friend (whom she had been with at the time she passed out from her overdose) was able to give her CPR and  get her to the ER quickly. but by the time my parents got to the emergency room to see her, she was already declared medically dead. the doctors and nurses expressed their sympathy and went around muttering about what a shame it was, etc...

and then when my sister's friend was standing next to her, petting her hand and talking to her, my sister suddenly opened her eyes wide and "woke up" from being dead. the doctor called it a miracle and he had no idea how it was possible that she was alive. she had been "dead" for 40 minutes. my sister has made a full recovery in the past few days, and may be coming home from the hospital as soon as tomorrow. i had thought my sister was dead, and i was completely depressed. i prayed to god, wondering why this would happen. and then suddenly i felt god lifting me up and i knew everything was alright. it was a weird feeling. that was before i even knew that my sister was alive. so this past week has been an experience for me that i won't forget. and my sister won't either, i'm sure. she felt like it was god who brought her back, even though she hasn't really been a christian or a believer or whatever, not since she was little.

(if you've been keeping up with steel, you know that he had an experience where all his despair just went away after he prayed, and he was confused as to why. i was just posting what a possible explanation from my viewpoint would be, which is that god is working to reach steel through his experiences. so i gave that story to show how god has been working in my life through my sister to make me realize his existence more.)

so yeah, that's the basic story. i don't think i've mentioned it here before, but my sister is a drug addict and she's been using them since she was 14. she's 21 now. however, nobody in my family even knew she did drugs until about 7 months ago, when she got arrested for doing heroin in a mcdonald's bathroom.

see, back in may of 2008, she left our home with 2,000 dollars on a train to Portland, Oregon. she kept us up to date back then on how she was doing. she spent the next few months traveling around the country with people she met along the way. she came back in august, when my dad had a heart attack (he had to get a quadruple bypass) and also the dog we had for 14 years died. my sister decided to stay in michigan, at least for a while. then she got arrested a few months later, and she ended up having to spend the night in jail, go to rehab, spend time on probation, etc... luckily, she ended up getting sentenced with only a misdemeanor for marijuana posession (which she had in her bag along with the heroin and needles and whatnot). i guess the court decided to go easy on her. so she has been on probation now, getting drug tests frequently (she had to get 3 of them on st. patty's day, even though she doesn't even drink. it's because we're irish, those darn racists......). my sister should have seen her arrest coming, though. twice before, she had been caught doing heroin. once was in portland, where she had to call an ambulance when her friend stopped breathing when they were shooting up together. they told her that they wouldn't get her in trouble, but that she really needed to clean up or she'd end up like her friend (who died in the hospital later). and then once when my sister was back here, she had to go to the emergency room for an infection on the inner side of her elbow where she had stuck the needle. and yet nobody in my family knew about any of this until she was finally arrested.

my sister was clean for months. she went to rehab and to NA, narcotic's anonymous. but then at 4am last thursday (well technically friday), she had that overdose. she was really stressed out and worried and she had been hanging out with some old friends (from back in her druggie days) earlier in the week. apparently she got some drugs (heroin, cocaine) from them at that time, just for reassurance for herself i guess. so she ended up in the emergency room. my sister was totally dead when i first heard about all this, too. i didn't worry too much, because (as i said before) i felt that god was telling me not to, and that everything would be okay. and my sister did end up getting better over this past weekend. she could talk and walk, and she doesn't seem to have any brain damage at all (which is the most amazing thing, since she had been deprived of oxygen for a long time).

and then UPDATE from today! this morning when i was getting ready for school, we got a call that my sister had coded, which apparently means that her heart and her lungs had stopped working. luckily she was already in the hospital and a nurse saw her collapse in the hallway (she had gotten up to go to the bathroom because she wasn't feeling well). the people on the phone said that they were working on her as we spoke, using an AED to get her heart going again. they put a ventilator back in her throat to get her breathing (it had been taken out on Saturday because she was doing better). anyways, my mom rushed out the door to get to the hospital. i was panicking and shaking at this point, unsure whether my sister would live or not. my mom told me i should probably stay home from school, but i ended up still going (it was only a half day today anyway). i hate missing school and i knew if i stayed home, i would just be worrying about my sister. my dad drove me to school before he left for the hospital. on the way to school, i was praying. i felt god tell me once again that everything would be okay, and that my sister would live. almost immediately, i felt a strange calm come over me. i could tell my dad was worried too, so i turned to him and said, "dad, i feel like god is saying that Lisz will be fine. don't worry, because his will is going to be done, and he loves Lisz, and our whole family. he'll take care of all of us." and my dad thanked me and he tried to calm down too.

i started worrying again at school, even though i still felt that my sister would end up alright. it's just that i didn't hear anything from my mom for a while. i couldn't stop myself from crying while thinking about my sister and all that we have gone through since she got back from her trip across the country. i asked my gym teacher, whose class i was in at the time, if i could use his phone to call my mom.

(he already knew about my sister. the day after the overdose, i told him about how he indirectly saved my sister's life. her friend had gone to the same high school that i'm at, and she had the same gym teacher. in my school, we're required to learn CPR and get certified for it. so, my gym teacher had taught CPR to my sister's friend, who went on to use it to save my sister's life. another weird coincidence that makes me further feel that all of this is planned by god: the day before the overdose (Thursday) was the day that everyone (well, those that passed the test) in my gym class received their CPR certification. i was talking to my friends about it, and we were all saying stuff like "when am i ever going to use this? i'll probably never even use CPR." strange that it ended up being a skill that saved my sister the very next night.)

so anyways, i called my mom and she said she wasn't at the hospital yet. i borrowed my best friend's phone for the day and i told my mom to call me back on that and leave me voicemail messages keeping me up to date on my sister's condition once my mom found out how she was. so in 3rd hour, my mom called and left a message that my sister was breathing again thanks to the ventilator. (man, i am so thankful for the advancements in medicine and machinery that have been keeping my sister alive.) i felt a kind of "i told you so" feeling inside me, as if i realized that there was no reason to worry anyway because god had already been telling me for days that my sister would be okay.

anyway, my sister is recovering again now. it turns out that the reason she had coded was because of the mucus in her lungs. she has a case of pneumonia, and the junk in her lungs made her stop breathing. she's doing better now, and she's off the ventilator. she is resting a lot and coughing stuff up. she won't be coming home for a while, just because we want to be absolutely sure she is okay. but to any of you here who might be so inclined, feel free to pray for her quick recovery. :]

as for what we'll be doing with her after she gets home, hmm... well, we might have to send her to in-patient rehab, where she'll just live there for a while with other addicts. she'll start seeing a therapist again too. besides that stuff, we're going to work extra hard to give her a stress-free environment for times when she is at home with me and my family. i don't know what this will mean for her probation, but i'm hoping that her previous success with rehab and whatnot will show that she is not like she used to be. see, she's not a normal case of an addict. she's not like those people on shows like Intervention and Celebrity Rehab or whatever... my sister doesn't want to disappoint my family. she cares more about us than about drugs, which is why she has made such an effort to get clean. the problem is just a mental thing. my sister has ADD and she can't deal with stress (those are the reasons why she's never been able to drive or get a job). when she is in a stressful situation, she just does whatever she can to make herself feel better. she didn't mean to overdose, and she didn't want to upset the family either. so i know she will try hard to learn to deal with stress better, and she will not do drugs again. and that's all we can really hope for too.

so yeah, crazy stuff. anyone else had experiences like this? feel free to post about any medical miracles or whatnot that you have heard of or seen. and i'll use this topic to post about my sister's progress too, for those who are curious to know how things turn out. craaaazy stuff.

i basically have this laptop: http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668179.php except with a dual core processor and not core 2 duo. (although mine was only $750 because i didn't purchase it with all the extra crappy programs they'll put on it like Norton anti-virus and stuff like that; i just pirated better versions of those things once i got it )

so i was just browsing GW and whatnot one day and i clicked to go to a new page and suddenly firefox stopped working! :O it gave me the old grey-screen-with-a-white-box-and-a- [/size​ -page, saying that the server couldn't be reached or whatever. it was weird though, because the page didnt even attempt to load. any site i tried to go to just immediately came up as the error page. it was like firefox wasnt even trying. i opened up internet explorer to see if that would work. it loaded for a while, came up with the title of the page i tried to go to, and then ended up going to the error page anyway. i wasn't able to log on to Pidgin (instant messenger) either. However, i WAS able to get on mIRC, where i explained my predicament to some people in #gamingw already.
i've tried all the usual things like restarting and stuff. i've tried a lot of other things too, like creating a new user profile to see if that would be able to get online (it didn't). i tried plugging in the laptop directly to the cord from my desktop computer, but it still wouldn't let me use any more things than without it. my brother (who works for a computer company, assisting people with computer problems) worked for a long time to get my internet working, but he couldn't figure it out, even though he tried pretty much everything he could think of.
in the network and sharing center, it says that i'm connected to the network, local and internet. however, when i run network diagnostics, it says that i have a problem that can't be fixed. (and to check my DNS and a few other things.)
so basically, i'm really confused and i wish i could get my internet working again. :< i can't transfer anything over the network to it (if you have a program for me to run on the laptop) but if you think it might work then i'll put it onto a cd and get it to the laptop that way. so yeah, please help get my Baby (as it's named on the network) working again. :<

AND IT WAS AWESOME

i have never been to an anime convention before, nor have i cosplayed. but today, i went to Youmacon (and i had to get up at 6:30am! xO ) and i cosplayed (well, crossplayed) as L from Death Note! it was awesoooooome~! yeah i suppose i am a total nerd and all, haha. but i am a closet nerd; you'd never be able to tell that i am the kind of person who goes to anime conventions and dresses up.

anyways, i got pictures:



i met Hyper Strike, who was in the final 3 (i think) of "Who Wants to be a Superhero?" season 2! he is an acrobat and martial artist and all that good stuff. he came to Youmacon as a guest and i got to take a picture with him. he was like super muscular and awesome.




Pac-Man! I got a hug from him, too.




Hehe, Master Chief. (and that "desu" person...)




chopper from One Piece! haha



Pants Man. he was at Youmacon last year, too.



DOMO-KUN!



Pizza Gundam. (he was later seen dancing to The Spoony Bards in the lobby.)





OBJECTION!



Hamburgler...? xD



some Lolita girls (they had a lolita panel that i went to).


so yeah. it was a fun time. there were plenty of weird people there, haha. and i of course got to pose with some of them. :P these are the most interesting photos i got. i also got a bunch of videos that i am in the process of uploading to the youtubes.

so, GW, i shall leave you with this:

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1YerSNkCiq8&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1YerSNkCiq8&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>



P.S. more Youmacon 2007 videos: http://youtube.com/user/YENonline

Hot dog!
i'm a big fan of Death Note. apparently, it is premiering tonight, October 20th, 2007, at midnight! Adult Swim (Same channel as Cartoon Network; channel 47 on comcast cable) is going to show the American version. if you go to http://www.adultswim.com, it shows a splash-page type thing with Light on it, hehe ​  so yeah, i'm pumped for this! and as you can see here, other people are too~! just thought i'd let you guys know, since i know there are some death note fans on GW. :]

Yes, it's true! Comedian Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report is running for President of the United States of America. He announced on the Daily Show a few days ago, this statement: "tonight, i, stephen colbert, am officially announcing that i have decided to officially consider whether or not i will announce that i am running for President of the United States." And then, on his own show, he officially said that he will be running.

Videos and information can be found here. More stuff is here, here, etc...

Discuss

EDIT: yeah i'm sure this isn't relevant for many of you dirty foreigneres but Stephen Colbert is pretty well known in the USA for his show, The Colbert Report.