Nothing like a fictional character's birthday...

...to get one back to one's blog.

Today is Mello's birthday. Happy birthday love. Yesterday I wrote you a fanfiction with "experimental" grammar. It's on the USB stick which is currently in the other computer which is in use. So I'll copy-paste that tomorrow morning or something.
It's filled with angst because Mello is almost never happy. Also that's practically all crazy WOI writes.

I don't really have anything interesting to say, I suppose. Oh! But you should all read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. It's the last book of the "American Experience" unit we're doing in English and it's about the Vietnam War. COME BACK. I lied. That's what I thought it was about, and I wasn't looking forward to it at all. But it's about people (who were in the Vietnam War, yes, but... that's the point and at the same time it's not the point) and it's amazing. I love the writing style and it's amazing. Read it.

I shall try to have more for you to say tomorrow.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I have taken up coloring things with paint.NET, seriously. Some things I've colored are in this facebook album.

Mello's happy birthday fic... which isn't happy and doesn't happen on his birthday, but whatever. Please ignore the formatting, because I have no time to fix it right now.
--

“It’s my fault those gang members died.”

He was sitting on her couch and staring up at the ceiling, eyes narrowed very slightly as if in thought, when the words fell from his mouth. No tone in his voice, no regret or scorn or anything else. Just the cold hard facts.

Halle turned her face towards him and said what came to mind: “Kira would have gotten them eventually, anyway.”

It was true and it should have displaced some of the guilt. But it wasn’t comforting.

“They were terrible people. Murderers, rapists, thieves, druggies. But I knew them.” Mello said to the ceiling. “And then they died.”

Halle ventured a question. “You chose them for that reason, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Mello confessed. “I did.” He looked at Halle, inquisitive. “Is that worse?”

She gave a shrug. How was she to know? She had lost her sense of ethics, of morals, when she’d first gotten involved in this insane game. She was always telling herself that sacrifices were necessary, but how many sacrifices did she mean?

“Yagami’s death, too.” The ceiling was Mello’s priest again. “Was my fault.”

Halle was the one who had told him of Soichiro Yagami’s death. She had just given him the information, back then, and he had just taken another bite of his chocolate bar. Now, he said:

“I regret that.” And he gave a sigh, deep and sincere, and he tilted his head back so that he could only see the ceiling, pure and white, without seeing the limits of it. “He was an admirable old man.”

It was just short of admitting that he had admired Yagami.

“Of course, he was a fool.” And so easy to manipulate. “But a fool with ideals. The purest kind of person.”

The kind of person who should never have gotten involved in this filthy game.

They were both thinking it.

They were both filthy with sin and neither had any intention of stopping until the game was over, if then. They told themselves it was necessary, and on good days they believed themselves. On good days, Soichiro Yagami’s death was convincing evidence that fools with ideals could achieve nothing in this game.

On bad days, they remembered that Yagami had fought Kira for six whole years and had caught one of the people who had played that role.

“He had never killed anyone, you know,” Mello told Halle, sitting up then and reaching for a chocolate bar.

Halle watched his inscrutable face. “Really?”

“Yeah.”