The curse of the cat.

I think my cat Belle is somehow anti-gamer. I'll tell you why.

Belle, like many cats, likes to jump on things and be as big a nuisance as possible. She knows she can get away with it as she is fuzzy and adorable. The funny thing is that the only time she ever jumps on my computer desk is when I am playing WoW. I don't know how she knows, but she just does. I will venture once more into the world of Azeroth, dead-set on getting that one piece of gear I really, really need for my Death Knight and all of a sudden...

...cat. On the desk. Standing in front of the monitor and blocking my view. All I hear from my headphones are the sound of things hitting me and the odd, echoing yelps of my undead spacegoat. All anyone else in the room hears is me going "Ffffff Belle get down! Belle no! Bad cat! Come on Belle, get down. Get down. Get down!" and her meowing. This will eventually result in me just picking her up and putting her on the floor, followed by her jumping back on the desk.

Again. And again. And again.

Sooner or later, the furry little tyrant will take pity on me. "Pity" in her case means merely laying across the desk instead of standing on it. So, I will be able to see most of the screen, but not my skills at the bottom. Her back end is also always perfectly placed to prevent me from moving my mouse. Most people would probably think she's watching the game, but no. She's often looking up or back at me, staring at me with a cute little face as if to say "Hahaha, I am impeding your ability to play, and there is nothing you can do about it."

Treats, petting, and catnip only amuse her for so long before she once again returns to the desk, determined to hinder me in any way possible. If she wants to be exceptionally mean, she will wait until I'm in the middle of a dungeon, preferably during a tough boss fight, and then jump back in my way. Nothing like having to explain to the other four members of a party that the wipe or near-wipe we just had was caused by my cat's bad timing.

And sometimes she'll just go to the computer plug and rub her head against it until it comes loose, shutting the machine down entirely. She's done the same thing to the cords for the Wii and the PS3.

If she senses I'm getting annoyed with her, she'll go sit on the kitchen table and meow pitifully at the ceiling, as if to say "Meow meow. Oh I am so lonely. I am fuzzy and adorable, yet nobody will play with me. Oh why, oh why won't my human play with me and not that noisy tappy thing? Meow meow." This always works, and she knows it.

Right now, as I'm writing this, she's fast asleep on the loveseat. Or at least, she'd like me to think so. If I know Belle, she's waiting. Waiting for me to log on, just to do a few dungeons or level an alt. Just for a little bit. She'll give me a few minutes, just to lull me into a false sense of security. But soon enough, there she'll be once more, the fuzzy, adorable impediment to all game-related activities. 

Oh, for shame.

The first character I ever created was one I am now deeply ashamed of. But here I am, about to tell you all about it, internet. Don't you feel special?

You see, I had been an avid reader in my childhood but not, at the time, so much of an avid writer. I didn't really write fiction unless a homework assignment called for it. "Write a story using this week's vocabulary words" was a common assignment during my grade school years and the bane of my family's existence. Many long nights were spent at the kitchen table, arguing over those terrible, awful, ridiculously annoying to use words. It's a surprise I like to write at all, considering how much I hated those assignments. 

Anyway, when I was a teenager role-playing piqued my interest. AOL had a whole slew of chatrooms devoted to it, and a friend of mine and I thought it would be fun to try. She and I both made characters for the purpose; hers an ice-and-water-manipulating "mystic", and mine a blue-furred, purple-haired catgirl.

You can see how fun this is going to be already.

Now I would use the term "Mary Sue" to describe her; one of those powerful, special characters who are created solely to fulfill the wishes of their creator, to be all that they deem "cool". She wasn't beloved by all or sweet and gentle like most Sues, however. No, mine was an Angsty Sue. She had the requisite tragic background; orphaned at a young age by a rampaging army of Evil People who killed everyone she ever loved and a lot of people she probably didn't even know, and burned her entire village of peaceful catfolk to the ground for good measure. The lone survivor was, of course, my little blue-furred, purple-haired ragamuffin. How the Evil Army of Death and Hatred missed a child with sky-blue fur and deep purple hair is beyond me, but they did. They totally did because I was fourteen and didn't care about plausible backstories at the time.

Don't judge. This is even more painful for me than it is for you.

My newly-orphaned catgirl swore vengeance of course, and had the power of fire to help her achieve it. See, I picked fire because my friend always went with water. Also it was tragic and ironic in my little teenage mind that she should command the very element that destroyed her home. Sob sob, cry cry and all. Somehow, she ended up in the care of an ancient, powerful dragon. Since I was a rabid Final Fantasy fan at the time, that dragon was Bahamut. Go ahead and laugh.

Despite the fact that Bahamut is traditionally a non-elemental summoned beast and probably wouldn't have an interest in tiny blue catgirls beyond being a snack, he took her in and taught her how to master her fire magic. He also gave her a little red jewel which resembled a Summon Materia more than a little bit called the "Fire Stone". This was somehow magically unstealable. For some reason, this catgirl raised by an all-powerful dragon decided the next logical step was to become an assassin.

An assassin in a black leather dress and high heels. Carrying a broadsword with the requisite cool name, a bladed boomerang shamelessly cribbed from Rei-Ginsei of Vampire Hunter D, and a "three-bladed knife", which later on I realized was my own misinterpretation of a katar. The more I look back at this, the worse it gets.

My friend and I also thought it would be good to have her character be of the race that wiped out my character's home, and have them be friends anyway. Oh, and she was similarly trained and had a similar stone courtesy of Leviathan.

Sure we had fun with them at the time, but looking back on the character, I just cringe at how poorly developed she was. She was all anger, vengeance, typical "antisocial badass" behaviors and not much more. However, that first venture into creating characters is what got me to write. Since then, I've learned to produce better than that. Or so I hope, anyway.

Monsters: Part 2

Welcome to part two of me putting far too much thought into how a fictional creature would deal with daily inconveniences. Last time it was vampires, this time it's werewolves.

Instead of a bloodsucker, this time our poor, put-upon protagonist has been chomped on by a livid lycanthrope. Horror of horrors!

...I'm sorry. I had to. 

A werewolf might have an easier time of it than a vampire in some ways. First off in that the transformation is not instantaneous. I don't think I've ever seen or read anything in which the soon-to-be werewolf changes right after being bitten. It's usually the next full moon. The victim will usually believe themselves to have been attacked by a large dog, and seek treatment for such. After that they'll resume life as normal, maybe with a few "tells" like their senses of hearing and smell becoming much more sensitive, or increased strength and stamina. They'll know something's different about themselves, but not exactly what until the big night.

It goes without saying, but I'm ruling out the variety of werewolf that can change at will. I know they're becoming increasingly popular, but it makes things far too easy. It's also less of a curse for these guys, and more of a superpower. They don't count.

Anyway, a werewolf's only a werewolf on the night(s) of the full moon, right? Once the afflicted gets over the shock of abruptly transforming into a slavering hellbeast the first time, they have a full lunar cycle to prepare for the next. If you don't know when that'll be, a quick Google search will bring up a calendar of lunar phases for the year. Or, if this is a setting where computers and the internet are not available, they'll use whatever means are present to figure it out. The point is it's not really going to take our werewolf by surprise unless they're careless and forget when that all-important night is.

I always found that funny, you know? When a werewolf looks up fearfully at the sky and says "It's a full moon tonight." Like you didn't know? Full moons don't exactly sneak up on you; it's easy to determine when they'll occur. The moon doesn't just jump from waxing crescent one night to full the next. If it did...well, I'd think we all have bigger things to worry about than your problem, werewolf guy.

In the end, a werewolf knows when they are going to be a snarling monster, and can plan accordingly. Locking themselves up for the night in a sufficiently werewolf-escape-proof room  is common.

Usually it's wolfsbane that's the go-to plant for an aspiring werewolf hunter's garden, but I've heard tell that mistletoe drives them off too. If that's the case, Christmastime must be the most awkward holiday season ever for these guys. Just think about it: wherever mistletoe is hung, the lycanthrope cannot venture. They're repelled by it, cowering and growling, possibly bristling with fur as the hated plant forces them into their unnatural form. This is the sort of thing that can easily blow your cover. How exactly are you to explain your aversion to this simple plant? Allergies? In a more modern setting this might work (provided you're not revealed as a monster), but in a less-modern one, people will be looking at you funny at the very least. At worst they'll know what you are and start grabbing torches.

I've also come across a belief that rye will ward off werewolves. I don't know how common it is, but I'm not going to be the one who chucks rye bread at a snarling man-wolf in order to find out.

The werewolf's allergy to silver can also be a dangerous giveaway. Silver doesn't normally burn one's flesh as if it's a hot iron, now does it? So there goes all the silver jewelry one might possess, and what if someone who's wearing a silver ring offers a handshake? Or maybe a hug from someone wearing a silver necklace? Even the most skeptical skeptic is going to realize that something is amiss when our lycanthrope is burned by cold silver, and it won't be long before the silver bullets start flying. I suppose one could claim they had a silver allergy before coming in contact with it ("Oh, is that silver? Could you take it off? I'm allergic."), and that would have you covered. Who's going to dispute the fact that you're allergic? And technically it's not a lie, now is it?

A werewolf's feeding habits aren't exactly exclusive. Yes, the're known to kill and eat humans, but they go for animals too. Unlike the vampire, your food bill is probably only going to increase as you spend more of your budget on meat to satisfy that craving. It might not seem as "cool", but it'd certainly be easier on a guilty monster's conscience.

Also unlike the immortal vampire, a werewolf usually has a normal human life span. There's no need to worry about remaining static while everyone around you ages; you do too. In that, the werewolf could probably avoid the perpetual loneliness that plagues the vampire. With enough care and creative thought, lycanthropy really could be one of the easier supernatural afflictions to manage.

...well, provided you don't get loose on the night of a full moon, of course.