Kyoya

Yes, Ellen is so clever.
Though I doubt anyone is reading this who doesn't know, but Crystal and Panda are the same person. Ellen calls her Panda.
OK, so when you're reading manga online, often they don't have the specials from the back of the book. Sometimes these specials are really funny, and unless you read the actual books, you'd never seen them.
Now this is for Nicole, since my guess is that she read Ouran online. In payment, you have to post! I scanned this specifically for you.
If you don't know Ouran, this probably won't make too much sense. You need to know how Kyoya is. I don't even know a good way to describe him where it would make sense. Maybe Nicole can help us since Kyoya is her favorite Ouran character. Click to make it bigger. It's read in the "backwards" Japanese style.
I give you Kyoya and the TV remote.


I want to be able to write funny stuff. It's hard to do.

Revolution!

Ok the joke had to be done. It just had to! It was begging to be done.

In case you're wondering what I'm talking about or you just didnt get the joke. Tara's last post was Dance Dance, and now mine's Revolution!

Get it? Get it? getit getit getitgetitgetit? :D

Anyway, nothing to report on this front. I got a sword. It's shiny and made of metal. I tried lip-synching one of my fandubs to the actual clip and it took forever, and I lost some of the nuances of mean-ness in my voice but whatever. Um...I'm gonna read Panda's story she sent me whenever I get around to it. And if we're talking about short stories I gotta say, Panda is the queen of them. She only writes in snippets. Ok so they're not exactly short stories, but they're close enough.

Um...oh check out lackadaisycats.com if you're feeling bored and want to read an amazing webcomic about prohibition in the 1920's with mafia gangs, tommy guns, angry pig farmers, an angry guy with an eye patch, and cats. Lots and lots of cats, cause they're all cats. Every single one of them. And the artists/writer does an amazing job!!! It's freakin' fantastic!! So go read it. My favorites so far are Rocky, Freckle, and Viktor, not necessarily in that order, but they're funny XD

I feel like this post should be longer...hm...nope I got nothing.

Dance Dance

So, I rewatched Riverdance again.
You kinda forget how amazing it is. Watching the things they do with their feet is just amazing.
I'm glad I got to see the actual performance when it came around. It didn't have the two main dancers from the original show, but it was still fantastic.
Amazing music too.
This post feels short. What can I do to elongate it?

Say "Swedish fish" five times fast.
How about "toy boat?"
I can do Swedish Fish pretty good.

Short Stories

So recently I've written a few short stories. About 4, I think. I had some random ideas that didn't seem like they'd fit into anything else. They were too short to make into anything substantial. So I wrote them out as short stories. It's kinda fun. You have to write them really strongly in a really small amount of space. They're all less than 2 pages. There's still one I have to do. I keep forgetting to write it.

Squeak Squeak

I'm babysitting my aunt's sister's guinea pig. Her name's Miss Diamond. She's really sweet. She squeaks a lot. It's really cute. Rabbits don't make much sound, so it's fun to have a talkative animal around.
I actually had a guinea pig for a little while ago, back in middle school I think. I didn't keep her for long though. Which was kind of horrible of me. Nowadays, I would never get rid of an animal for a stupid reason. That's not right. They're not some old rag to be tossed around. They want a real home, and a good family.
I should get another guinea pig to make up for that. Sigh.

Avatar Campfire

And finally the one I've been working on for a freakishly long time.
I hand drew it, but I touched it up and made it look nicer on the computer. The blur took made the fire look so much cooler!
OK, in order, here we go.
Zuko's firebending his marshmallow.
Toph earthbended herself a chair and a stick to cook her marshmallow on. She's letting it burn till it's charcoal.
Aang is teasing Momo by holding a marshmallow just out of his reach.
Appa didn't really have enough space, so he's chilling in the background. He's a little too small, but I didn't want to cut off the top of his head.
Katara is laughing at Sokka, whose marshmallow caught on fire.

This one turned out surprisingly well. I've never really drawn multiple people in the same picture before, so I had to think a lot about their heights and stuff. Please tell me what you think of it!

Feather Petals drawing

So, remember the sonnet I wrote for my creative writing class? Well, if you don't, I posted it again. I decided to draw a picture of it.



The branches of the tree alone at dawn
Stand covered in white flowers thick and soft
As downy cotton clouds the heavens don.
There is no breeze to touch the sky aloft,

Yet one white cluster flutters, puffing out.
As though a summons calling to the bud,
A ripple stirs, as sudden as a shout.
With every flower frothing in a flood

Of feathers, beaks, and softly coated wings
Awakened by the morning beams of light
As gentle as the coming of past springs
The roost of doves prepares to take its flight.

The winging flurry taking to the air
And leaves the tree behind, its branches bare.

Fires of Death

I thought of the phrase first, and drew the picture afterwards.
How to Train your Dragon.

"For you, my friend, I would fly into the fires of Death itself."

Ling Picture

I haven't scanned any of my pictures recently, so I'll put some of them up. It's kinda late, but I just finished touching them up and I want to get them on my blog.
This is a screenshot from the second FMA opening, I think. I drew it by hand, but I made the sky prettier on the computer.

Copyright

So, remember when I uploaded those Ling Videos? Yesterday one of them got removed because of copyright issues.
What the frack? It was just a couple spliced together clips! Tons of other people do that sort of stuff! It's not like I was making any money off of it! Those took a long time to figure out how to make! And the one they deleted was the most viewed.
And then it said if I put anymore up, my account's gonna be deactivated.
Geez! My account would be completely pointless anyway if I took those videos off, because the others I put up there are worthless little clips from the humane society or something. The only thing I'd be sad about losing if my account was deactivated is my favorite list.
What's the point of Youtube if you can't use it to put up videos?
Stupid freaking copyright stuff.
So, should I go and delete all my other good videos? It's be a hassle to re-find my favorites if my account was deleted.

OK. Since the dead video was about Ling, I'll let him chop up the people who did this.



And then just so I feel better, I wanna look at pretty pictures.

Types of Love

I was gonna do this post yesterday, but I ran out of time. Which turned out pretty well, actually ,since this post relates perfectly to Valentines Day! Ah, Mom got these amazingly delicious dark chocolate truffle hearts! I want to keep eating them... And Sees candy!!!
So, I'll try to finish this quickly so I can finish my fanfic chapter and my homework.
Types of love.
Now,you can't really go up to certain people and say "I love you" without facing some interesting consequences. That's cause there's lots of types of love, but most people only think of one.
The one associated with Valentines Day is when a guy and girl (usually but not always) like each other beyond friendship. There's lots of levels of this, ranging from a crush to a Romeo and Juliet... uh... obsession, I guess. And then you get this vague"true love" thing in a lot of stories. ...I never really write about romance, so I'm not really sure what to say! Haha! You get the point though.
Family love is a different thing. Moms, Dads, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, all are loved in a different way. I have a great family! ^-^
And another step is friends. You can love friends, but it might not be taken the right way if you tell them "I love you." (I'm reminded of Will Grayson Will Grayson - Will goes over something like that. I think John Green forced himself to tell Hank that he loved him once! Haha! Though that's a brother thing, not a friend thing).
And even another level that a lot of people might not think of is animals. I love my animals! Since I'm an only child, they're practically my siblings. And animals are much different than people. They don't judge you on appearances or anything. Plus you can cuddle with animals, but you can't always do that with people (although people aren't fluffy...)
Yaay for love! Where would we be without it?
Which is interesting. Both Ellen and Nicole have recently asked me questions about this. ^-^' I feel like some stupid anime character when my reply is only "I don't know."

Let me take this time to say thanks to everyone! I almost want to write "I love you." No one's gonna take that wrong, right?

Voice Acting

Yes the magic of delaying a post!!!

Anyway, so Nicole and I were talking on Skype and I convinced her to try reading a few lines from Avatar: The Last Airbender and she was doing awesome!!!! I think we should all do a fandub, be it avatar or something else!! That'd be awesome

Voice acting is really fun, kind of like acting for lazy people, cause you dont need to stand up and move around and memorize lines. You can just sit comfortably in your bed with some cookies and read your lines. It's great :D

For those of you who want to try fandubbing/voice acting check out avatarspirit.net
they've got all the transcripts, which is really handy. And download audacity. It's a really simple program to record and alter sound files. it'll be the first thing you see when you google audacity. Yeah give it a try. Try different voices, inflections, tones, and stuff. But remember speak slowly.

That's pretty much it. :D

Outsiders

Ellen did it again! She left the post as a draft! So, it showed up before my post even though it got published after my last post... It's a strange complicated blogging system. It seems like the post that was published first should show up first. But the post that was started first shows up first. That's how I missed one of her other blog posts-cause it showed up beneath mine. Which reminds me. There's a draft of yours sitting on the blog, about the short story you did in your writing class. I can see them before you publish. It's kinda like spying. Heheh. Beware! I know what you're writing!
Anyway, long, senseless moaning about blogs.
I wanted to reply to your anime post. I'd been thinking about this post for a while. Ellen actually touched on several of the things I wanted to say. I guess she can just read my mind that way.
As you probably know, I am quite new to Anime. I only really started getting into it a year and a half ago, right after my first fanime. Before that, I was utterly lost about the whole thing. In anime club, or at fanime, or when Ellen and Nicole were talking about anime.
One of the first anime I tried to watch was Ouran high School Host Club. I watched the first episode, and I had no idea what the hell was going on. It kinda freaked me out. It was a different kind of weird that I wasn't accustomed to. So, I didn't watch anymore. I think a couple of the first ones I saw were Fruits Basket And Fullmetal Alchemist. When I started getting used to the style, I started checking Ouran out from the library. And I actually enjoyed it. And the next time I tried the anime, I found it absolutely hilarious!
So, yeah. If you want to get someone into anime, ease them into it. Otherwise you'll probably just freak them out and distance them from anime even more.

So... the Weather?

I heard about that Zuko thing! I can't wait till the new Avatar comes out! (I also just learned that the Ghibli Borrowers isn't coming out until NEXT FREAKING YEAR! What's wrong with you people? It's out in the other countries!)
Oh, I was laughing at your dubs partly because I was remembering at how Aang freaked out when a girl played him in that play. And Now girls are auditioning for him too! Ellen, you're hurting Aang's pride!
Oh, and to answer a previous question, I don't have as much free time now that classes have started. Now I actually have homework... And chores too. Those 2 weeks were a blessing with Mom the Task Master gone.

I heard from a friend of mine in a different state that it's snowing. And I said ," that's strange. It's sunny and warm here." Strange but beautiful weather for early February... The plants are all confused too. All of the flowers are blooming. If a storm comes, those flowers will be blown away.
It's really nice out, but we do need rain. Hopefully it will come soon.
Global Warming?

Secret Society

Tara asked if I would post on anime and how it excludes people, and here it is!

Anime is just like any other activity, it just might be more exclusive than others. Why you ask? Because there's so many little subdivisions that make up anime/manga/videogames. Different shows, voice actors, animation, companies, plots, genres, and all that good stuff. It can be likened to film in a way, but I think that because people who watch anime are more...into it they go all out in terms of fanboy/fangirl -iness. What's more I think it's not as wide spread of a hobby as film. Films can be probably be argued to be much more public and casual than the swarms of people like me who can probably quote different anime, reference them in daily life, draw them, etc. (we don't need to hear more about my geekiness).

Basically this idea came up before Tara really got into anime. She'd come to the anime club with us and would have no idea what was going on, especially if we showed an episode right in the middle of a season. Now anime can get pretty weird sometimes, even for me. So I can understand why people wouldnt take to it right away. You need to gradually be introduced to anime and manga with ones you find interesting, then after a while the weirdness of it all will become normal.

Anyway back to the topic. Because anime/manga/videogames is more like a cult hobby (although it's coming out of the shadows, and videogames not as much as the other two), and there's just so much ground to cover, and that it changes constantly due to new episodes and chapters every week (for the current stuff), it's hard to catch up if you don't have ridiculous amounts of free time...unless you're like me, who has way too much free time :D

For example, at Tara's first fanime we went to the masquerades (a series of skits of fan's favorite shows made up by and done by said fans). Naturally when a popular show came on or was referenced everyone in the entire theater laughed or yelled or cheered, etc. but if you're not attuned to the goings on of certain things you just wont get it. It's the same for anything really, math, history, school stuff, sports, food, tv shows, books.

It's a very strange thing to be on the outside of the circle when everyone else is on the inside. There is no actual initiation that otakus (as anime and manga and videogame nerds will be referred to as henceforth, even if it's not quite the right word for most people) force onto others, like hazing for a fraternity. Everything is self-motivated. If you want to join the otakus, you can. It takes a while, but once you're in the circle everything becomes way more funny and interesting and you get stuff!

So there's my whole random dissertation on the otaku social group and how to join. I'd post a list on what you should be reading/watching/playing but it's way too extensive and I havent even read/watched/played most things. All things considered I'm a pretty low key otaku (partially cause I dont like to read things if they get popular). I'll make a makeshift list basked on genre. Keep in mind I'm just typing this straight out, no editing, so dont kill me.

First I have to explain genres...ugh...Oh you can stop reading now if you dont want to be (or already are) in our little secret society. :D

Ok so shounen is manga/anime geared toward young boys 'shou' little 'nen' years = young. Why it only refers to boys is another long winded post about inequality but I'm not gonna go into that.

Shoujo is geared toward young girls 'shou' little 'jo' girl

Seinen is geared toward older boys 18+ give or take a few years

Josei is geared toward older girls 18+ give or take

Now a lot of manga (not all) is kind of...over the top when it comes to romance-y stuff. And I dont mean overly fluffy and cute and happy(although this is also true)
I mean really graphic, and weird, and too much fanservice (fanservice is when the author/artist draws really explicit poses/people/actions/etc.) Smut, ecchi, yaoi, and yuri all fall into this category.

Yaoi and yuri are strictly gay/lesbian relationships that are all overly...graphic. This isnt to say that gay/lesbian relationships in all manga/anime are. For example, shounenai= 'boy love' which is manga/anime about gay men. I've read a few and some of them are actually really...sweet and cute. Although it took me a while to realize they were shounenai cause I'm slow like that ^_^" Shojoai is the same thing, only with girls.

And everything else is pretty much the same as genres for movies, books, etc.

So here's a list of stuff that's popular right now (doesnt mean I've read them all, or that you have to). Also most popular manga are animes and vice versa (sometimes animes start up and then mangas come about). There are cases of light novels being turned into anime/manga such as Durarara! (great show by the way)

I just realized making a list based on genres is hard and stupid. why? because they're online! Arent I smart?

Check out the popular manga on mangareader.net, mangafox.com, and mangastream.com (only has the most recent chapters)

Now i'm just gonna list random stuff not on the list that I really really liked just alphabetically cause I'm lazy

+Anima (Animal-human hybrids who are hated by people)
20th Century Boys (great psychological manga, long, but good, there's also a liveaction movie)
21st Century Boys (the continuation of the one above)
Akumetsu (kind of dark, guy kills bad politicians who're destroying the economy, and then kills himself, but he keeps coming back to life)
Alice 19th (it was...ok...but I'm not a big fan of shoujo)
Alive-The Final Evolution (Good stuff about psychic powers)
Amatsuki (Historical manga, but sci-fi at the same time)
Angel Desetsu (You will never find another manga as funny as this!!!!)
Apple (good oneshot)
Azumanga Daioh (funny short stories about a bunch of high school girls just...being themselves)
Bakuman (a manga about manga)
Bamboo Blade (manga about fighting, I like those :D)
Bartender (manga about alcohol and bartending, it's really good!)
Beck (AKA Mongolian Chop Squad, manga about music, specifically rock)
Bitter Virgin (Kind of explicit, but at the same time it's not...well towards the end it kind of got weird, but very dramatic possibly overly so)
Black Cat (it's ok. The first episode of the anime was really good then it kinda went meh)
Bloody Monday (Great psychological manga about terrorists and the hacker who's trying to stop them)
Bloody Monday 2( continuation of the previous)
Busou Renkin (by the author of the popular Ruroni Kenshin, about alchemy and homonculus, but very different from the popular Fullmetal Alchemist, interesting nonetheless)
Chii's Sweet Home (an adorable manga about a kitten so funny!!!)
Claymore (a popular one, but by the same person who did Angel Densetsu so I had to put it on here)
Code Breaker (pretty good with some good characters, although most of them are cliche)
DN Angel (shoujo action/adv, a boy can transform into a famous art theif because that's just how his family's DNA works and something something only changes back with love more shoujo mumbo jumbo)
Doubt (psychological, dark, lots of blood and guts, good stuff)
Durarara (popular, but really good nonetheless, go find the anime, it's farther than any manga chapters that I've found)
Fruits basket (shoujo, but a good start to introduce yourself into the crazy world of shoujo)
Full Contact (great manga about karate :D)
Full Metal Alchemist (really popular, but love it anyway. go read)
Ga-Rei (about spirits and fighting them, shounen)
Gakuen Alice (about psychic abilities and the school that trains kids with said powers, shoujo and pretty typical and predictable story line, not bad though)
Gamaran (martial arts/swordfighting, kid with the best(?) fighting style, trying ot be the strongest, some historical-ness to it...kinda)
Gintama (act/adv martial arts, about a guy who is a jack of all trades and fights people, funny sci-fi/ancient japan setting, popular)
Haruka 17 (really good manga about acting, and a girl who has the potential to be a great actress, sometimes it's really fan-service-y for guys, but it's pretty good)
Hellsing (popular, vampires, killing, blood, guts, and gore, really really dark)
High School of the Dead (popular, really fanservice-y, psychological, dark, blood, gore, but really goes into the psychological of a zombie attack)
Higurashi no naku koro ni (this series is popular and dark and gory, and mind bending, and awesome)
Hikaru no Go (was popular in its day, a manga about Go a japanese game)
Hunter x Hunter (awesome, same author as Yu Yu Hakusho, action/battle/psychic powers(?))
Koukou debut (shoujo, a girl wants to become 'cute' and recruits the help of a boy, it's pretty good)
Liar Game (psychological manga about an organization that forces people to play a series of mental games or else they'll be in huge debt, better than it sounds)
Lucky Star (kind of like Azumanga Daioh, bunch of high school girls and just their lives)
Ludwig Kakumei (a dark spin on fairytales)
MAR (shounen, alternate world, battle, it was...ok....)
Meteodo (shounen, scifi, short, great manga about a meteor that crash landed and started affecting life on earth, even humans, good stuff)
Mirai Nikki (The god of time holds a game where the players have to kill each other to decide who takes his place, really dark and psychological, slightly fanservice-y for guys)
Moyashimon (about a kid who can see bacteria and microscopic organisms, pretty interesting)
Mushihi (about a guy who travels all over to help people plagued by invisible bug-like things, it's really good)
Mx0 (school of magic and a guy who somehow is able to attend even though he doesnt have magic. Really funny stuff)
Natsume yuujinchou (pretty popular, a kid who can see ghosts and has inheirted a book of ghost's names has to return the names. Read the summary it does a better job)
Piano no Mori (kind of weird at times, manga about kids with awesome piano skills, really good)
Pluto (same author as 20th century boys, really good psychological manga about robots and artificial intelligence)
Psyren (popular, psychic powers, battle manga, pretty good)
Saijou no Meii (great medical manga, just so awesome)
School Rumble (so freakin' funny and so many love triangles that arent really triangles after a while)
Shut Hell (historical manga, battles, pretty good so far)
Souten no Koumori (great oneshot by the person who did Fullmetal Alchemist)
Spice and Wolf (about a fox god who leaves the place she protects and travels with a travelling merchant)
Spiral -Suiri no Kizuna (pretty good psychological manga, lots of mental battles)
Suicide Island (really dark, psychological, people who commit suicide but fail are sent to this island. Most commit suicide again, but the others try and survive)
Stray dog (another one shot by the author of Fullmetal Alchemist, it was great)
The Changelings (pretty good story about a brother and sister who live as the other, due to their personalities, the ending was really lame though)
Tiji-kun (martial arts manga pretty good)
Umineko no naku koro ni (same people who did higurashi no naku koro ni, psychological, dark, gory, mystery)
Uzumaki (really strange horror story, you wont like spirals after reading this)

and i'm gonna stop here cause i'm lazy

Zuko?

Ha ha ha ha this is what happens on those random night where I just cant sleep! I search random crud on the internet!!!! But I was bored and looking up stuff on Avatar (the last airbender). So I was looking at Dante Basco's filmography and voice acting work. Dante is the guy who does Zuko's voice. Anyway while I was looking down the list I saw that under year 2011-TBA "Avatar: The Legend of Korra" was listed! Unfortunately it didnt list what role he might be playing, just 'TBA'...but this might mean that Zuko will still be alive for the new series of avatar.

Or it might not :D

And I checked under the other voice actors but none of them seem to have it listed. So for now it's just Zuko.

Yay random info!!!!!

No wait scratch that. Wikipedia has just informed me he wont be voicing Zuko. Yes yes everyone go 'awwwww' in disappointment. But he did say that the person he's voicing is related to Zuko in some way. Spoilers? I think so! :D

Anime

Yay more manga/anime! speaking of which i just finished a really good series called Kaze no Sylphid, it's about horse racing and horses and stuff. Really good, really sad ending though...and then it got too happy...which i didnt like. Felt too forced. Oh and this one called Animal Sense (AKA A.S.) about a girl who can possess animals and uses her power to solve crimes...not exactly as superhero-y as it sounds, but it was good, really short.

So yeah go check those out Tara. I think you'll like the horse racing one, lot of cute moments.

Ah and why were you laughing during my dubs?! >_< were they that funny? Yeah my Toph voice is easily the best, but I figured 'Hey why not go for variety'
There's also some english dubs of Ouran High School Host Club (AKA OHSHC) so go watch one of those and see how my Hani voice compares XD

Oh and that trailer that I did the dub for came out today. My recording was really loud in comparison to everyone elses. So the first like three people's are really quiet, and I had my volume turned down really low. Then mine came on and was screaming at me. Freaked me out so much that I yelled -___- so a word of caution if you choose to watch it here

I'm actually a little disappointed in the overall...ness of it all, well just watch it and see what I mean

Go

I was laughing so hard during those! I still like the Toph one best though. Since I saw Ouran in Japanese, it's hard for me to compare the voices.
There's a ton of things I want to post about, but I haven't posted any of them yet. So I'll go with the most recent one.
Same story-went to the library, and they didn't have the book I wanted. So I started checking out Hikaru no Go. It's really good and interesting in a completely different way, because it's about a board game and the amateurs and professionals who play it. I first heard about it in high school during the anime club. That was back before I knew anything about anime. I only went because all of my friends were there. I didn't pay attention to most of the anime that were playing. But I remembered it so I decided to try it out.
So, two days ago, I asked Dad if he knew what Go was, and he said yeah. A friend of the family who lives in Hawaii started a Go club. I'd never played it before, so yesterday we bought a little Go kit at the toy store. Heheh. It was fun reading the rules because I'd gotten the general idea of it after reading some of Hikaru no Go.
I still really have no idea what I'm doing when I'm putting down the pieces. Neither does Dad. Oh well. We've only had time to play 2 games so far. The rules are pretty straightforward though.

Fandub stuff

Awesome masks!! And plushies!!! Someone has too much free time on their hands, but then again I guess I cant really talk ^__^

So I've been waiting for that Avatar the Last Airbender trailer to come out that I did the voice of Toph for. And since I was bored, I did some more auditions for different ones too.

Tell me what you think, cause I think they sound a little to similar to each other, but meh.

So far I've done Aang, Azula, Ty Lee, and Toph. Although I cheated and just reused the Toph audition from before and tacked it on the end...

Oh and Haninozuka from Ouran High School Host Club, but does that ever hurt to do... -__-

Here's some links

Many Avatar people

Hani