European History...The Beginning

So I think that I should have some sort of point to this thing, other than just babbling about my life (Because seriously, who wants to read narcissistic rants?). Now, I don't think that I'll ever quite give up my stories about the latest Doctor Who episode (I mean, seriously, no new episodes until next Christmas? MOFFAT!) or reviews about forty-some-year-old Science Fiction shows (That covers DW and Star Trek!), but I think I am going to introduce a little structure to this endeavor.

Namely, I want to do posts on European History. Now, I know it's kind of been in bad taste to focus on Europe alone for the past couple decades, but the fact remains that, if you are able to read this, you have been exposed and influenced to some degree by European culture. It's not an argument, it's a fact. And in my opinion, it's important to understand the history and cultures of the continent that has left such a profound impact on our planet and its people.

My information is going to be drawn mainly from my AP Euro notebook that I wrote last year, though I will try to verify information that seems a bit weird. No promises on regular updates, since I am busy/lazy, but hey, hopefully this will be entertaining.

I mean, come on, what's more fun than the Thirty Year's War? Am I right? No? If you said yes, you either don't know what the Thirty Year's War is or you need to receive some help. I am serious. The Thirty Year's war doesn't make WWI look mild, but it does lend quite a bit of perspective.

I will also try to recommend books and other works that are relevant to the time period discussed. I hope to do a good job on this.

Wiedersehen!

Kfroguar 

Fanfiction & Doctor Who

Hiya, Folks, as a certain cartoon mouse would say.
You know, I have recently discovered the wealth of Fanfiction that the internet contains. It is actually quite encouraging to note that, no matter how bad my fiction is, there is someone out there who has done worse, and someone who has done better. The thing that I notice as a recurring theme is that many, many people have creative, even brilliant ideas, but their writing doesn't do the idea justice. This isn't to say that all fanfic is of poor quality, but some (I would even dare to say lots) is written by people still developing their writing skills. It's not a bad way to develop them, I suppose. It's pretty risk-free, and enjoyable to work with one's favorite characters. Goodness knows I have made up complex plots that could never function in the actual stories of Star Wars or Harry Potter. Or Both. Whatever I'm obsessed with at the moment, I fanfic, although I rarely write it down.

This is one of the few fanfics that I've written and am actually comfortable sharing. It's from the point of view of Jenny from  The Doctor's Daughter from Doctor Who (I punctuated that incorrectly. Oh well).

 Hi.

My name is Jenny.

I lost my dad a few years ago.

Or rather, he lost me.

It’s complicated.

I’m looking for him now.

Here’s what he looks like, best I can find. <jpg.305>

I could only get security clips.

You see, I’ve got questions.

And they’re kind of important.

Like, about my body. (Not like that, silly.)

I don’t think I’m human.

Well, actually, I’m sure I’m not.

But I don’t know what I am.

And, frankly, I’m scared to tell anyone.

I don’t want to be a lab study.

I’ve never heard of anyone like me.

Except Dad.

He’s alone, too.

He said so.

He also said I could go with him, and he meant it.

I did too.

But then it all went wrong.

He travels a lot, from what I can tell.

There was a woman with him, not my mum.

I don’t have a mum.

Never have.

Anyway, this woman’s name was Donna.

She was ginger.

I get the feeling

Something awful was going to happen to her.

I don’t know why.

Sometimes I just know things.

I don’t even know—

Is this normal?

For people like me?

What are people like me?

How do I even know?

I’m alone.

It hurts.

Please

Help me.

Two words I never refuse

Beads and Babbles

 I got to visit with a friend today and show off my beading, which was fun and very refreshing. I love designing things, but my execution can be a bit choppy. My knots tend to slip, my string has a habit of breaking--you get the idea. I also have the bad habit of buying beads that I never use. But in my defense, a lot of the beads I do use only come in sets of far too many for the projects I do. I fixed a rosary that I made and secured it with superglue (which is now all over my fingers, probably for a long while). It's gone through some pretty vigorous testing and I think that it's secure enough to have blessed. I get to go to Adoration and Mass tonight and I think I'll bring it there and see if I can stalk a priest, in the words of my old youth minister.
I finally told my Mom something I'd been holding in for a long while, and that's been a relief, even though I for whatever reason feel a little sick thinking about it. She reacted really well. Now onto Dad!
Back to beading, I have a lot of beads that I love so much in potential that I don't want to use them. Do you know that feeling? It's kind of like Christmas morning, when the anticipation is better or almost better than the gifts themselves. Tomorrow I'm going to look at beads and spend a fun day with, oddly enough, the friend I saw today. I'm really looking forward to it and I hope that it goes well and neither of us gets hit by fatigue halfway through. I got wiped at around 10:45 this morning and came home to rest.
I have a book to recommend, For the Love of God by Lucy Kaylin. It is a non-fiction book about American Nuns and sisters and is quite frankly a fascinating book. While it is by no means from a Catholic perspective, it was a really fascinating study of an often-stereotyped group of women.
I tried to teach myself to tie a Chotki, but I think I'll just have to make a beaded one if that's something I decide to do. Frankly I wasn't going to use it for the Jesus Prayer but for the Chaplet of the Blessed Sacrament. But I think you heard a lot about prayer in the last post and I won't go on about that.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading!

Kfroguar

Favorite Prayer-y Stuff

OK, here are a couple of promises. In this post, I'm not going to try and make religion seem like a fun thing that you should try out. But I'm also not going to lie. I love my religion, even when staying awake in Mass is hard and praying the Rosary is entirely unappealing. I love the Eucharist, even when I take it for granted, and I love the Blessed Mother. Or at least I try to love all these things. 

I used to pray the Rosary every day, but it began to stress me out because I was not making enough time to pray and I didn't (still don't) know how to meditate on a single topic. The anxiety over it got really bad, so I stopped, though without the best of reasons. I am trying to pick up prayer similar to the Rosary this Lent, so I'm trying to pray a chaplet every day. The one that I'm most familiar with is the Chaplet of Divine Mercy from Blessed Faustina Kowalska. It gives me such a sense of peace. 

One of my favorite forms of prayer is Adoration. Even when the Blessed Sacrament is not displayed, I love to sit in an empty church with Him and just think I am sitting in the same room as God. The concreteness of God's presence in the Eucharist is so incredible and critical to my personal faith. I understand that God is with us in Spirit all the time, but it is much easier for me to grasp on to God in prayer when he is there in such a physical way. 

Something that I also do is I write down many of my prayers. In a certain sense this is a vanity, hoping that others will look at what I wrote and find it to be valuable spiritually, but it also helps me make my prayer real, not just ramblings in my head. It gives them direction. 

I'm not all that crazy about studying Scripture. I mean, I do it and I find it to be valuable, it's just not my favorite type of prayer. 

If you happen to be interested in Chaplets, here's a website with a whole bunch of them, many of which are prayed on ordinary Rosary beads: http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/chaplets.htm

Yeah...so.
Isn't that how all great literary endeavors begin? Not to be pretentious, or anything.
I've tried to do diaries and journals before, but blogs are a new thing for me. Hopefully I'll remain committed to this one. The thought that I might have an audience will hopefully keep me moving. I like writing to an audience. Even as a little kid I always imagined my writing being read by some future historian perusing the few surviving documents from the Apocalypse. Despite this, it rarely occurred to me that I would be long dead before anyone would care about what I wrote. I suppose I thought that I'd be able to look down from Heaven (for when you are five there is no Hell) and peer over the shoulder of my great-great-grandchild, laughing as he made terrible errors interpreting my chicken scratch.
I'm trying to write a short story for my school's literary magazine, and I'm having a really hard time. My idea, I believe, is good, but I can't get the words right. I can get them out, just not right. I've been experimenting with a lot of ideas, and some have turned out OK, some not so much. The joys of being a writer are not these. My favorite part of writing, actually, is making up stuff and then going back later and rereading it. Is that egotistical? I dunno.
I suppose that this would be a good time to mention that I write. Clearly, I do, since you're reading this someone must have written it (Unless I'm Cleverbot in disguise or something), but I write a lot of fiction. Not as much as some, of course, but still plenty. I write scifi, mostly, and I've taken a few cracks at "literature." Maybe I'll post some of that stuff later on, see where it gets me. That will ruin any chances of getting it published though, so you'll probably only see the stuff I write "on the side." I don't write professionally, but some of the stuff I make I take more seriously than others. Some of it is private and I doubt I will ever share it.
So, that's the introduction to Kfroguar's blog. I hope you liked it, and let's hope together that this will not be the only post I ever submit.