Rizu

Yo! I'm Liz, a student in WA state. I've been watching anime for some time now, starting officially with Death Note, my favourite anime series (I have 5CM on top, as my favourite movie, and also because it's stylistically superior and more poignant, poetic, and downright lovely, but I'll probably never have the same emotional ties to it as Death Note), although it was probably something more like InuYasha or FMA-- some more commercialized series --that I first saw, on T.V. But Death Note was the one I first watched fully-- the one that really got me loving anime. And love it I do!

Additional (favourite) anime (In alphabetical order):

• Basilisk
• Bleach
• Bokura ga Ita
• Devil May Cry
• Fruits Basket
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Howl's Moving Castle
• Kuroshitsuji
• Lovely Complex
• Monster
• Princess Mononoke
• Skip Beat!
• Spice and Wolf
• The Place Promised in Our Early Days
• Vampire Knight (and Guilty)
• Voices of a Distant Star

My other interests:

Gaming: I've been playing World of Warcraft too much for awhile now, and am off my hiatus somewhat. Currently I am utterly obsessed with Devil May Cry 3 (Dante and Vergil for the definitive, all time win), and I also enjoyed Call of Duty 4. I used to play a lot of RuneScape, Age of Empires (II and III), Warcraft (II and III), Empire Earth, Soul Calibur (2 was my favourite, but 3 isn't half bad either), many others. Anyway, on WoW - Darkspear server, I play a 80 Night Elf Hunter and 73 Human Mage, and... a currently 71 Human Warlock, and an 80 Night Elf Priesty.  Aheh.

Creative Writing: Mostly poetry, but I try prose on occasion. As for styles of poetry, I used to write form more often than I do now (I mostly have been writing freestyle). I focus more on slant rhyme and alliteration now than I used to, and slightly less on metaphor. Which isn't saying much, because I used to be so metaphor obsessed, it was rather cheesy. I've tried a bit of experimental writing, and I like it, in moderation. Topics of my prose are almost always fantasy (though I've been experimenting with some slice-of-life short stories lately), and my poetry topics are varied; whatever I feel like. I've even written a few poems about anime that I was fairly satisfied with (normally I'm none too pleased with such poems).

Reading: I haven't read prose in a long time, short of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series, which I quite enjoyed. Much to my surprise, I found myself really liking Jacob, perhaps more than Edward. PERHAPS.

Anyway,hopefully I'll start up reading more again. Anyway, when I read, I mostly read fantasy. Terry Pratchett is likely my favourite prose author.

I read more poetry than prose, and my favourite authors are Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, and many that I am forgetting.

Manga: I'm, for whatever reason, not as into manga as I'd expect to be. Even so, I really enjoyed the Death Note manga, which was, in many ways, better than the anime. Mostly I've just read a small part of the manga for a lot series, though I'm working on Vampire Knight, Bleach, and Ouran at the moment. And I just read Sennen no Yuki, which I liked quite a bit.

Graphics design/image editing: I've created a few graphics and images from scratch, but since I'm a tad lazy (haha) and out of practice, I usually just work from an existing image and edit it from there. This varies from enhancement, to editing, as in the case of my avatar and signature, or more... extravagant changes.

Birdwatching: I've been an avid birdwatcher since I was 10 or 11 (it was my...life), although I've invested far less time in it lately than I ever could have imagined. I am not as practiced in it as I once was, but still am pretty good. At least in my area, where I've birded most of my life. Another state is another world-- I don't have the calls and songs of all the birds of America, or otherwise, memorized, that's for sure. Maybe one day...

Random other stuff I've dabbled in: I've tried a few different hobbies in the past, and loved some of them, but they're not really topics I can keep up with when I'm not actively engaged in them. While I still enjoy them, I don't have the ability to... practice these hobbies on my own time. The list would most notably be comprised of (this is what I spent the most time in) Bryology:

I spent a good amount of time doing undergraduate research in bryology, mostly keying out cryptogams in a lab, or occasionally doing field collections. Liverwort were definately my favourites. I still love them, but my ability to identify them has definately deteriorated... =-/

Microbial genetics: I did some undergraduate research in this as well. Incredibly fun! We were participating in a research program on the effects of dam removal on surrounding wildlife and ecosystems-- this was the preliminary stage, calculating the current populations before dam removal, etc. Mostly identifying the presence of certain microbes in soil and sediment. My favourites, for no overly convincing reason, were methane oxidizing bacteria. Unfortunately, I left the program due to health issues and...shockingly, oh the pressure! Haha. I miss the research a ton, but the things that went with it were.. more difficult.

But...yes, I am interested in various biological sciences.

Misc.

And I wouldn't exactly list cooking as a hobby, but I've taken a renewed interest in it lately (tried making omanju, onigiri, ichigo daifuki). I'm not exactly good at it anymore, but I'm trying once again (I used to cook a lot more when I was younger). Along with that, I've recently grown interested in learning Japanese. At first, I was mostly interested in order to watch raw anime, but now I've grown to enjoy the language itself. So I'm trying to learn it... just, very slowly. Hopefully I'll work a bit harder at it soon.

Anyway, I'm always on the look-out for new anime to watch, and new books to read, when I manage to make time. If you've any suggestions for me on shows to watch, please drop me a line!