artwork writer site

the writer

I always shy away from writing "about me" pages because I feel like I have nothing to say, but it's time to change that.

I go by the name Larissa online. It's not my real name (it was the name of an original character), but I've been using it so long it'd feel odd to change it. Just about everyone I meet decides to shorten it into a nickname, and rarely does anyone use the same one. I was born on August 13, and I'm currently 20 years old. I live on the East Coast of the United States, where it is humid and miserable in the summer and never snows in the winter. (Fall and spring I don't mind so much.)

I'm a college student with a part-time job, but I wouldn't really call myself typical. I've never been the social type, preferring my own company to hanging out with friends, which is probably why I found myself using the computer instead: it's easier for me to connect with other people through text than in person. It should come as no surprise that web development is my field of study.

On a personal level, I believe in saying what you mean, mostly because subtlety goes straight over my head. I'm also an endless optimist, because if you let everything get you down life just sucks, so why not smile? At the same time, I rarely talk about my own troubles.

Writing has long been my passion; I wrote my first novel, Orenji Pan, at age 12 and love escaping to faraway lands of my own creation. My dream is to be published, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. I also love to make art, and I'm finally getting back into doing it regularly after many years of doing only the rare piece.

A pretty big hobby of mine is to make websites, as this one should attest. I started out with a blog on Pitas that helped me learn HTML, and a couple of years later made a (rather terrible) Pokémon fansite. I eventually got into making fanlistings and more recently have found the love of making shrines. My collective of sites used to be hosted on this domain, but I've moved it to elenen.org.

I grew up reading nonstop, aided by the fact that I read incredibly fast. I'll try any genre, but my favorite by far is science fiction — I think I've read every scifi book my library has. My favorite author in the genre is Isaac Asimov, but Frank Herbert and Douglas Adams are close runners-up. There are still many books out in the world I have to read, though, so my list of loved books and authors will surely grow. There's nothing like getting lost in a great story.

I got into anime and manga when I was eight years old. The first anime I saw was Sailor Moon, of course, and I've loved finding new series to read and watch ever since. I own over 250 volumes of manga, though not nearly so much anime. Some (not all) of my favorite series include Liar Game, Black Lagoon, Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note, Bakuman, and Tokyo Babylon.

The first video game I played was Pokémon Red at the age of 8 when I got a Gameboy Color for my birthday. My parents never let consoles in the house, so it was handheld games I grew up with. I eventually discovered the Final Fantasy series and found the RPG genre, and through it a totally different way of playing games. My all-time favorites are Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Tales of Phantasia, though there many more I love.

I've never really been much of a TV watcher and rarely watch it live these days, but I still have shows I love. It was Lost that got me into watching American TV shows, and I now watch quite a few, albeit most after they come out on DVD. My favorites are Lost, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, Six Feet Under, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dexter, Mad Men, and The Office. The best TV show in my opinion is Whose Line Is It Anyway?.

I have a theory that people fall in love with a certain type of character. For me, it's villains and antiheroes: those who are pure evil or fight their dark side just appeal to me. I also go for the the old guy who's a smartass — actually, almost all of my favorite characters are males. Only rarely does the hero (or heroine) catch my interest. Some of my all-time favorite characters are Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI, Yagami Raito from Death Note, Sakurazuka Seishirou from Tokyo Babylon/X, Delita Heiral from Final Fantasy Tactics, and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace from Battlestar Galactica.

I also tend to fall for a certain type of pairing. Though I've never been big on Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, most of my favorite couples have a tragic aspect to them. Kind of ironic, considering I'm a sucker for happy endings. My favorite pairings tend to take a while to grow on me, but the ones I love most would have to be Mia Fey & Diego Armando from the Ace Attorney games, Sumeragi Subaru & Sakurazuka Seishirou from Tokyo Babylon/X, Ashe and Balthier from Final Fantasy XII, Oerba Yun Fang & Oerba Dia Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII, and Kara Thrace and Lee Adama from Battlestar Galactica.

One of my greatest loves in life is music — I never leave the house without my iPod (who I jokingly call Hikari Raito). My love for anime, manga, and Japanese video games got me into Japanese music, and I rarely listen to American music these days as a result. I listen to some J-pop, but my true love is J-rock. I also listen to some visual kei artists, but I have a hard time finding favorites there. More recently, I've fallen in love with post-rock and math rock and love finding new artists to enjoy. My favorite musician is Gackt, but I'm also very fond of Ayumi Hamasaki, Stereopony, ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, ONE OK ROCK, ayaka, school food punishment, and L'Arc~en~Ciel. I'm a huge fan of Nobuo Uematsu's compositions for the Final Fantasy series, as well as his band The Black Mages.