Dragon's Pen

Remembering the Miyazaki Interview

2012-02-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

While watching a video for homework, I found this!
I was sooo excited because I looked many times, but couldn't find a recording of the Miyazaki interview. But here's the entire thing!

Uh, Mewtwo Commission?

2012-01-30T22:47:00.000-08:00

So, a little while ago Apofiss opened quick Pokémon commissions for the first time. And they were cheap (this was only $3) so I got his very first commission (I think?). I asked him to draw Twilight. But he's not from America and I guess isn't great with English and somehow thought I said Mew even though I said Mewtwo twice. It's a little scary looking. But oh well. Weren't expensive or anything. And it's kinda a funny story too. Plus I do like Mew a lot also.

Polaris and Twilight Kiriban

2012-01-30T22:44:00.000-08:00

I didn't actually pay for this one! This was a 3rd place sketch for Rock-Bomber's kiriban. I asked her to draw my baby Mewtwo, Twilight, riding Polaris. And it's soooo cute! (Polaris's leg doesn't bend quite right but I still think it's adorable).

Sun Dragon Commission

2012-01-30T22:41:00.000-08:00

Ok. I've had these for a while but forgot to put them up. PearlEden is a beyond amazing artist on DA. She recently opened sketch commissions. I don't think I'll ever be able to afford a real piece from her, so I ordered a sketch of one of my sun dragons. Maybe I'll try coloring it as a few of my characters.

Tour de Nerdfighteria

2012-01-27T22:43:00.000-08:00

It was so FREAKING AWESOME!!
Ellen, Kelly, Nicole, I wish you could have come. TT^TT But you will not come out of this loss empty-handed. You'll figure out what that means eventually.
You know you're in the right place when the line outside of the theater starts singing. Heheh.
John read us part of his book and then Hank sang us some of his songs. Like Strange Charm, Book Eight, Anglerfish, and This Isn't Hogwarts.
The audience was so energetic that I completely forgot about Tiny Chicken Disease. I had an awesome.
I also filmed almost every single second of the thing. I had to miss part of a song to switch tapes. And then I missed something else because John asked everyone to turn off their cameras (and I think he pointed at me) but that turned out to be a hoax anyway.
My arm got incredibly tired holding my camera up for an hour and a half. So you guys better be grateful when I get the chance to show it to you! ^o^
And of course I went up to get my book signed. I could only get one of them signed though. And I gave John and Hank their plushies. I think they liked them, but it was hard to tell because they seemed kind of overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. There were a LOT. Apparently we were the biggest audience they ever performed for?
I passed a letter to them. I wonder if they'll email me back. I also said hi to Katherine. Wish I could have said hi to the Yeti too.
Phew. That was awesome! I hope they like their dolls!

I JUST GOT HOME FROM THE BIG TOUR DE NERDFIGHTERIA!!!!!!!

The Fault in Our Stars

2012-01-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

Finished reading The Fault in Our Stars. And I stayed up faar too late doing it.
The book was pretty brilliant. The first half was really thoughtful and the second half was reaalllly sad. TT^TT
As always, his books made me laugh. I don't laugh often when reading a book (that doesn't include manga). And they always get you to think too. This is probably now my favorite John book.
One of my favorite parts is where Hazel says that her oxygen machine is like her own dragon. A dragon that cares about her enough to match its breathing to hers. And I went "YESS!" If I were in Hazel's position, that is EXACTLY what I would think. I'd have my dragon sleeping next to my bed, protecting me.
So, like I said, it was really late when I finished reading. I turned off the lights, but then realized that I wanted another pillow. As I walked into the hall to get one out of the closet, I couldn't help thinking how freaking lucky I am to be able to do something as simple as climb out of my bed and grab a pillow from the closet...

KATANIIIIIII COMPLETE!

2012-01-21T02:25:00.000-08:00

So at 2:20 AM (right now) I finished writing Katani's story!!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTT!!
The first draft, at least. Not it needs lots of editing. Mainly with character stuff. More on that later. I gotta go to bed.
I shall celebrate in my sleep!
Awww, feel so excited!

SOPA + PIPA

2012-01-20T12:36:00.000-08:00

So, yes. This has been all over the place and everyone's talking about it. The SOPA and PIPA things. I'm not an expert on them, but I definitely want them killed.
There's so much about them out there that I don't really need to talk about them. But basically it lets companies shut down entire websites if they have any copyright infringements. And the way it's worded basically threatens every interesting wight on the internet.
So, yes. Bad.
I other words, I stayed up late working on Katani's story last night. I thought I might be able to finish it, but I underestimated it in my head. Playing through it in my head is a lot faster than writing it.
But I will do my best to finish it! I'm sooooo close! Right in the middle of the climax!

Patterns

2012-01-16T22:43:00.000-08:00

I don't think I ever posted the plushie pattern. And I'll post the one for the pony plushies as well. These obviously don't include the tweaks I've made to them.

Plushie Dump

2012-01-16T22:28:00.001-08:00

So, as happened last year during winter break, I made a whole bunch of plushies.
The first two I'm going to bring to the Tour de Nerdfighteria to give to John and Hank. But I'm gonna try to add some more "accessories" (Lemon and Cameo for Hank and Willie and a Yeti for John). I realize I forgot their eyebrows. I'm gonna go back and add them.

And Ellen made me two adorable pony plushies for Christmas, so I got the pattern and made a couple for myself. I made it a bit bigger cause Ellen said the legs were hard to flip on the small ones.
Fluttershy was my test run. She turned out pretty good though.

And then I made one of Polaris. I found some nice soft white felt to use for her (she has white fur instead of the usual tan coat, and blue eyes, and her fire looks different). Except the soft felt turned out to be really flimsy and I almost pulled it apart when I started flipping the legs. --_-- Besides that, I like how she turned out. I added a wire skeleton to her also.

And since I couldn't find the other half of Crystal's Christmas present, I made this for her (is he still your favorite character?) Anyway, I finished him last night and Crystal came and picked him up this morning. So I had less than 24 hours to spend with him. TT^TT Byee Zack! Take good care of him, Crystal! Do you like him? O-O
I like how his shirt and hair turned out. (Again, I forgot the eyebrows). I tried making the pattern a little bigger cause Ellen said it made the arms easier to flip. It does work better, but I want to make some further tweaks so it (I'd already changed several parts of the original pattern).

Fang Statue

2012-01-13T21:20:00.000-08:00

I actually ordered this about half a year ago, but had been putting off painting it forever. Partly because it seemed really daunting and I was afraid that I might have to invest in an expensive airbrush. But after I read the guidelines, it went pretty well.
I just finished him yesterday.
I ordered the unpainted statue from the ever-amazing Windstone company. She now has a Deviantart account too, and I'm gonna send her pictures of my completed Fang. ^-^
Anyway, I love the Windstone statues and have the good fortune to own a few of them (One I even found at a garage sale!). Problem is they're pretty darn expensive. So, as I tend to do, I decided to get something cheaper and then do it myself! Plus then I can customize it. And you can buy paint-your-owns! So, I saw the beautiful winged wolf and decided to turn it into Fang.
So, yes. Fang is pretty much a plain big black wolf with a little white around the mouth and brown eyes. He also has a twisted gold/silver.copper bangle on his right fore-wrist. I never really thought much about giving him wings, so I had to design what his wings would look like. I'm not sure the pictures do it justice. But his wings are deepest blue with a silvery sheen on the undersides on the lower layers of feathers. The tops of the wings appear solid dark, unless light hits them, when they gleam with a faint sheen of silver.

I liked doing this. I'd really like to do another one. Maybe a kirin and a dragon. I really like the kirins.

Sort of Kiriban

2012-01-13T10:42:00.001-08:00

Katani and Arith

2012-01-12T22:36:00.000-08:00

Ugh. Sorry Ellen. I really did work on the first chapter a lot. I never did finish though. And then we had that loooong talk about ripping our story apart and bringing it back up again, which made my head go all blurry. I know it definitely needs to be ripped up and put back together, but I think both of us should think some about where we want it to head before we start rewriting it. I know I want to finish writing Katani's story (at the very least, finish his rough draft, which will be pretty soon) before I throw my attentions at Arith and Saleera's story.
And my brain reallllly hurts now. I'm trying to get my textbooks and everything sorted out for school. I HATE the system. I want to MURDER it. and just when I thought it was done, I find out that I'm not. Ugh. I don't even want to talk about it because I'll just get frustrated and mad. And that's not even getting started on the scheduling system.
I need to find something to calm me down. What can I do... I want to write Katani but.... you know what? For the part I'm about to write Katani's all stressed, so that might fit. I'll go do that and share my stress with Katani. We can suffer together, bro.

You Lie!

2012-01-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

What lies are these?! You didn't send me anything! Pout

Anyway I've been going over my chapters too and I realized something...I absolutely hate Saleera. So one dimensional and bland and boring and so not interesting. Gah! I need to fix Zuben and Nex too. They're too...blah. Not much of a description but whatever.

I'll be fixing that sometime soon. Oh by the way...never mind I'll just call and ask you.

Genders

2012-01-06T20:54:00.001-08:00

Crystal finally posted! Yaay!
So I'll talk about the post about what would happen if your characters swapped genders.
Now, my main works right now are Katani's story, and Arith's story. Two days ago I finally started going over my first chapter in the Arith and Saleera story. It's kinda bad. I'm pretty much re-writing the whole thing to make the explanations of familiars and the world and Arith's appearance more natural. And it's taking longer than I would have hoped (because of many distractions), but I am making some progress... Maybe I can email Ellen my first chapter tonight.
So, anyway, Arith and Katani are who I'll write about. And maybe talking about them will trigger more ideas.
So. If Arith was a girl...... he wouldn't change hardly at all. Crystal calls him girly. I don't think I'd call him girly. He's just kinda shy. And awkward around most people.
Now Katani might be more interesting if he was a girl. His personality is more common (or at least more commonly used) for guys. It would probably be like the Toph-effect. (If you don't know, in Avatar, the character Toph was originally supposed to be a teenage boy, but they moved the character into the girl you all know. And now Toph is very popular, especially among teenage guys). I don't think much stuff would unfold differently in the story if Katani was a girl though. Though he would only like Lari as a friend.
Now, if someone like Melly were to swap genders... that would turn out really weird. Cause Melly is very girly. Dominic might be kinda an unusual girl. Tri would make a very rowdy girl. Saris would probably translate very well into a guy. Lari might make an interesting guy.
Now if I were to turn Ginger into a boy... that would be strange. I guess it might work. I'd have to think about that more. For some reason I can picture what she'd look like as a guy.
Fern turning into a guy wouldn't work very well. Personality-wise, maybe. But not really plot-wise or power-wise. Kinda hard to explain...
Ben might translate into a girl a little easier. A very techy girl.
I should do this some day. Take one of the stories I have planned, and swap the genders of all of the characters when I start writing.

Leopard Fern

2012-01-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

So, I finished this a while ago but the psd file got lost on my computer. I finally found it last night, so I can finally upload my picture.
Here's Fern as a clouded leopard, her totem animal. Now I need to draw a picture of the pattern on her other side and stuff. And probably better pictures of her face. Maybe I'll have that done when I finish the next leopard-related drawing.

Second Post: Something totally different (Kind of)

2012-01-04T22:43:00.000-08:00

I was reading a sort of 'how to write things' blog of sorts and it basically said: "Your characters should be the same whether they are females or males" or something along those lines. So I started to wonder: how would my characters be different had they been the opposite gender and viola, this blog post is born~

Amaranth: Amaranth's life would've been pretty similar to how it is now except gender would be added to the list of why (s)he's incapable of being king (might suffer from even more social isolation than he does as a guy but then again, he's pretty socially isolated anyway). (S)He probably would still try for the throne and would probably go as far as to crossdress as a man. Ultimately, (s)he would fail to become king and go on a journey to find the magic rock and yada yada ya. Veery similar to the original though some self-hate and loneliness might be ramped up a bit... as well as aggression. Aggression would definitely ramped up actually from a need to prove herself as an equal to males.

Saecaria: Hmmm, if he switched genders..well, much of the story would be very similar for her if she does manage to survive to the end of the war (her probability of survival would be a lot lower than the male Saecaria because of....circumstances regarding her ability as a female...yeah). (S)he'd probably a lot less psycho than her male counterpart but still pretty detached and lost in the world.

And I quit for now. They're not as different as expected though still different. More different in my head than what's written in here. I guess I might do the rest of the characters later....maybe...neh.

First Post: Ten pieces of Trivia for every (named) character

2012-01-03T23:50:00.000-08:00

First post! That's it for the intro. As the post says, I'm gonna post 10 pieces of trivia for every named character I have. Yay. Scratch that, main/POV characters only.

Third World (First Story)

Amaranth:
-Has a great fondness for most animals except for rats which he has a phobia of.
-Is extremely fond of savory foods and everything he cooks is very salty and...'healthy' (read: poisonous)
-Had a rather lonely childhood; he finds it hard to connect with other people though he desperately wants to.
-Is in love with his cousin Kymine though it's a very sort of chaste love.
-Admires his father greatly and strives to be like him though personality-wise, he's not very similar to him.
-Is an idealist.
-Kymine and Iris (his sister) are the most important people to him; their future well-being was half the reason he joined the war.
-Really really likes alcohol (If he hadn't had a goal in mind after the war he probably would have become an alcoholic).
- Joined the war at the age of 15
-Goals in life are to become king and, barring that, to save the country of Osaea.

Saecaria:
-Feels uncomfortable around animals and is rather paranoid around them.
-Likes extremely sweet and extremely bitter things though his favorite food would be oranges.
-Is sensitive to noise; he generally doesn't like loud sounds or continuous sounds.
-Believes that he is living in a 'dream' but doesn't want to wake up because that would be much worse.
-Is fine with just existing.
-Puts family above all else.
-Likes swimming
-Likes 'new' things like carbonated water and ice cream.
--Sanity tends to go up and down; sometimes he has good days where he can almost see everything clearly, sometimes he thinks his organs are melting because of his rotting soul.
-Goal in life is to grow old.

(Na)Neru:
-Has extremely bad luck in everyday situations though good luck overall (or at least a happy ending).
-Used to be a crybaby as a child but no longer cries as a teenager.
-Is extremely good and cooking and sewing.
-Tends to get excited over the prospect of encountering new things but usually gets disappointed in the end.
-Is considered the black sheep of his family and does not get along with them at all though he feels an obligation to care for them.
-Likes well cooked food (he's not picky at all) as well as trying new kinds of food.
-Is very emotionally honest and has a short temper (people find it amusing to rile him up).
-Is very honest in general and can be very trusting at times (paranoia is played for comedy).
-Is overwhelmingly idealistic, most likely the most idealistic out of all my characters.
-Has no defined goals in life besides getting away from his family for as much time as possible.

Polaris:
-Likes money and shiny things.
-Tends to overimagine things that don't really reflect reality at all though she is in touch with reality (she just finds it more fun that way).
-Always has a thing of wheat in her mouth.
-Has no problem scamming people or dragging other people down with her though she will help them out of she does.
-Can be rather thoughtful if the situation calls for it.
-Is rather cynical though she admires idealistic people.
-Knows magic tricks.
-Not exactly selfish but definitely not selfless; she's not a person who would give a beggar money.
-Likes eating corn.
-Has no solid goal in life; she's kind of just drifting.
(Polaris's character is subject to change. I haven't developed her very well yet. Technically, she has no real relevance to the story which is a really big problem. Then again, Neru's whole plotline when not directing relating to Saecaria is rather fuzzy.)

Kymine:
-Is hard of hearing from ringing the bell in the bell tower but not completely deaf.
-Has lived in the bell tower all her life and though there is physically stopping her from leaving the tower, she cannot bring herself to leave.
-Believes herself to be completely separate from the world below her until Amaranth and his sister came into the picture.
-Spends her days watching the people below her.
-Doesn't like or dislike any sort of food.
-Was educated by the previous bell ringer when she was younger.
-Deep inside, she's rather lonely and wishes to be someone else so that she could live outside the tower.
-Is in love with Amaranth but finds herself unable to help him through his problems.
-Hates Saecaria
-Goal is to be free of the tower forever.

Valerian:
-Is charismatic and arrogant. (A cold, distant sort of arrogance. Aloof?)
-Likes high class dishes.
-Doesn't believe in making friends, just followers.
-Becomes crown prince after proving himself in the war.
-Believes firmly in his religion and the right of his country.
-Becomes obsessed with 'fixing' the country of Osaea (he's too prideful to give up on the country).
-Is willing to make sacrifices for the 'greater good' (Kill one to save ten).
-Does not get along with Amaranth at all.
-Can be extremely stubborn and often gives into honor before reason.
-Goal is to be a good and successful king.

Fourth World (Second Story)

(Ferrum) Ferris:
-Likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bacon, and corn. Sometimes all together.
-Likes to pretend women don't exist. And when they do, he usually doesn't like them. There are exceptions though.
-Loves airplanes and has an obsession with flying. Everything he has done in his life since the age of eight or so was to move him closer to his goal of being a pilot.
-Hates raccoons and often fights with them.
-Has a difficult personality; he knows it too but is not willing to fix it.
-Loves to be as close to the sky as possible; he learned how to tightrope walk just for that.
-Doesn't know how to ride a bike without training wheels or swim.
-Likes to use toy vending machines outside convenience stores and ride in plane shaped kiddy rides (has gotten stuck once or twice but that hasn't stopped him).
-Likes cats.
-Goal in life is to own a plane and fly away

(Selenium) Selenus:
-Could not pronounce his name when he was younger which gave birth to his nickname.
-Has a fear of heights.
-Is bad at expressing and asserting himself. (Put simply: he's a doormat)
-Enjoys sleeping with the radio on or just sleeping in general.
-Likes clam chowder.
-Is rather cautious and law abiding though he subconsciously yearns for excitement.
-Likes cats and cute animals.
-Has extremely bad memory.
-Fears that he is extremely boring as a person.
-Goal in life is to do whatever his father decides for him?

Hahaha I give up for today. I'll finish the rest tomorrow but I plan to do this everyday...Maybe.

Drawing

2012-01-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

First post of the new year! My blog feels so ole now! Hahah! I still kinda want to go back and edit/delete some of my older, useless post. But there's a lot of other stuff I want to do also, as you may know if you've seen my recent to-do list.
During our traditional New Years party (Crystal joined Ellen, Kelly, Nicole and I for the first time this year) Nicole showed us some of the art she's been working on on her tablet with Sai. It's kinda mind-blowing. If I look at the thing she drew a month ago, and compare it to what she just showed us New Years, I just go @_@.
She says it's a lot due to tutorials on DA. I've seen them, but never paid any attention to them. Honestly I didn't think they'd be any help. But I tried one of the tutorials for drawing a face and this is what happened.

@_@
Where the heck did this come from? I never knew it was simple to do a face like this! I know it's not perfect (and obviously I haven't done the hair yet) but now I want to do a bunch more practice! I have a bunch of references I found, and some I got from Nicole too. I'm gonna practice a bunch more kinds of art, both on tablet and pencil.
Nicole, Nicole! Post those pictures you showed us! The eye one and the one you were working on!

Plushie Christmas Presents

2011-12-31T22:28:00.001-08:00

All the photos from the Christmas present my sister and I made for the gang.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

It's the end of another year. ^-^
A lot's happened, but it feels like it's gone by so fast.
I think I've improved in several areas. I've made a few more plushies, though not as many as last yer. O_O I just finished 2 of them as gifts, so I'll post pictures of them soon.
I think I've improved in drawing.
I've written a lot, but I wish I wrote more. How typical.
I'll try to get better at all of these next year. Especially writing and drawing (more on drawing on my next post).
But I have awesome friends and family as always. I love you guys! Thanks for everything! Can't wait to spend another awesome year with everyone!

Kenshin the Warrior

2011-12-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

I actually had this planned for a while (since before I decided he was my favorite character), but I finally made it.
I have another one of these planned once I can gather the pictures. I have to get them myself because there aren't as many online as there were for this one.

Hopefully you can see the full version. If it doesn't open, try doing the "full image" thing. Actually, it would probably be easiest to look at it on DA.
(There's one picture I put on twice, though it has different color schemes. I forgot to delete it even though I noticed it beforehand...)

Mekki

2011-12-21T23:53:00.000-08:00

Another one I got back a while ago.
This is a dragon from Katani's story. His name is Mekki, and he's Melly's partner. He's sort of a big baby, actually, but I thought he'd make a cute picture. And I was right! He's soooo adorable!!! This one might actually be my favorite now. But it's right at the top with the very first picture I got of Heyoa.
It's by Shivita.

And it seems like I didn't post the picture of Melly and Mekki on my blog. I thought I did, but I guess I only put it on DA.
So here's my picture of Melly and Mekki.
I realized after I finished that I forgot to make Melly's skin darker. --_-- Aren't I smart?

Polaris

2011-12-21T23:48:00.000-08:00

I've had these for a couple weeks, but I kept not posting them.
Here's Polaris! By Ninja-jamal. He's the one that made this freaking amazing poster of every Pokémon before generation 5. Actually, Polaris's eyes are supposed to be blue. But she looks really nice besides that! Soo cute!

Skyward Sword

2011-12-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

So, I had a party with my friends today which was fun as always.
And right afterward, I sat down and played the ending of Skyward Sword. I'd been at the point before the final battle for about a week, but I'd been so busy that I didn't want to risk starting it only to have to stop (I did that once as it is).
So, I finally finished! YAAAAAY!!
The final boss was shorter than I thought it would be. But the game itself was pretty long. I thought it was a good game. The flying and birds and stuff was especially awesome. But Twilight Princess remains my favorite game (and Midna remains my favorite Zelda character).
Except my file had to be deleted in order to do the replay of the game. --_-- Sigh. I wonder if there was a way to duplicate my file so I didn't have to delete it... too late now though.
I still think the Loftwings should have had names.
I liked Fi's songs and dances too.
Damn, the first silent realm was really stressful, but they got a little better each time as I started to understand them. --_--
Ghirahim was an interesting bad guy.
(I wonder if I should go back to my Shadow Link fanfic and add some Skyward stuff into it...)
(Minor spoilers)
I thought it was cool how Groose actually ended up being useful. For the part when he came down to the land, I stopped hating him, but I still kept thinking, "Okay, even though I don't hate you anymore, please stay away from me because you still kinda freak me out a bit with that face."
And if Ghirahim is a sword too, why does he actually have emotion? Fi doesn't really.
It's kinda annoying how they made that Demise guy the precursor to Ganondorf though...
But overall, I'd recommend it. I thought it was a good game. I was able to figure out almost everything without a guide (except I had to look up one thing about fighting Ghirahim for the final time, and I needed to look up some stuff about 2 of the Goddess Cubes). Since I've played almost every single other Zelda game, I've gotten pretty quick about figuring out the puzzles.

EBO ALERT!

2011-12-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, everyone! Right now I need all of you to go to fanfiction, click on the "help" link in the top right, and send an email to the address listed under "new categories/characters." In the email, ask them to add the Evil Baby Orphanage (or the EBO) to the miscellaneous category.
I'm going to try to rally support from other Nerdfighters too, but please help on this guys! I think it would be great to get this category up before the tour de Nerdfighteria!

Kenshin

2011-12-20T20:20:00.000-08:00

So, on my last Friday of school (I guess it must have been December 2nd) I was driving home with Dad, and we stopped at a Japanese store. They had those boxes that have a toy in them, except you're not sure which of the toys you'll get when you buy it. Those always bug me a lot because I tend to have abysmal luck with them.
This had a set of Kenshin figures. And since those are older and harder to come by, I decided to get one. I decided not to be picky and decided that I'd be happy as long as I didn't get one of the figures (I didn't really want Saito). Because I'm impatient, I opened it right there in the store and gave a sort of hushed victory cry when I found that for once I got the figure I wanted from one of these mystery boxes: Kenshin.
As usually happens, I started putting my toy together in the car on the way home.
This may seem like a random change in subject, but it links in. When I was playing Crisis Core, Crystal was telling me how Zack was probably her favorite character. Now, as you can tell from my list, I have a lot of characters that I like (you know, if they're animal-ish, funny, or if they need a hug). But I'd ever given any thought to which character was m favorite of my favorites.
So, as I was putting together the Kenshin model, I realized that Kenshin was probably my favorite character. And when I referred to my list, I realized that he was higher than all the others. Of course, when I told Crystal and Ellen this, the first thing they asked was "why."
Well, partly because he's really funny, especially the "oro" which still makes me laugh every time I see it. How can it not?!?!

He may be funny, but he's also a freaking awesome swordsman!
And as Crystal pointed out, in addition to fitting into the category of people that make me laugh, he could also fit into the category of people that need hugs. He does sometimes.
So, I finally discovered my favorite character (though FMA remains my favorite anime/manga).
Go Kenshin!

Yotsuba

2011-12-19T21:59:00.000-08:00

Still lots of posts I want to make, so I should probably do one.
A while ago, Crystal got me to read a manga about Yotsuba. It basically follows this silly little girl named Yotsuba. She manages to turn lots of ordinary evvents into very interesting experiences. It took me a while to get into it, but it's pretty funny and fun.
I feel like I should be writing more, but I want to go and try to work on my picture of Katani. And maybe write some. Ugh. I gotta get up early tomorrow though so I can't stay up much longer.
Anyway Yotsuba with a bunch of cats.

FREEEEEEEE!!

2011-12-16T22:48:00.000-08:00

My last final was yesterday, so I'm finally free! ^-^
There's a lot of blog posts I gotta make too, which I will do later because I'm behind on my fanfic again. Maybe I can catch up with it during break. Plus work on about 3 other stories... Yeah. There's still a lot of stuff I want to do over break. I don't think I'll finish all of it. But I'd really like to try to finish Katani's story, because I think I'm getting close to the climax!
And I need to get past the first 2 paragraphs of my EBO story also so I can try to get the EBO group on fanfic.
And I still haven't finished typing Briena's poor broken sequel story. --_-- It's too long. Typing it is a paiiin. I don't think I'll ever hand-write something this long again, if I'm only going to type it after. Blehhhh.
I should probably start editing the Arith and Saleera story with Ellen too...
Plus I haven't made my Yukata yet. And there's a couple doll I want to make along with a few other little crafty things I need to finish.
And there's all the anime and manga Ellen, Nicole, and Crystal assigned. The list seems endless... but I'm slowly working away at it!
And there's normal books I'm reading too.
And I gotta finish some of the games I'm playing.
Which reminds me, I gotta post about one of them.
Yep. This turned into a to-do list of my break. Heheh. I will never be bored. Especially since I don't seem to have any empty days before Christmas.

EBO

2011-12-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

We just got the places that John Green's going to visit on is tour for The Fault in Our Stars. And one of them is near my house!!!
I'm trying to talk Ellen and Nicole into going, but their classes have started by then so they're not sure they can make it. I hope they can come! Nicole's the one that turned us into Nerdfighters, after all.
So, I'm planning to make some little gift items to give to John and Hank, since they seem to get a lot of cool stuff when they meet Nerdfighters.
Which brings me to another point. This is a post I've been putting off for a while. And I'll post about it in more depth tomorrow, probably.
The Evil Baby Orphanage (EBO). It's an idea created by a Nerdfighter. What if you could go back in time to when someone like Hitler was a baby? You could kidnap that baby and raise him in an orphanage so he wouldn't grow up to do all that horrible stuff.
The moment I heard that over a year ago, I developed a vague idea for an EBO story of my own, set on Magic-Earth with my own characters.
Recently I started developing the story a lot more. I know how it starts, though my idea for the middle is rather fuzzy.
I'm planning to put it onto fanfiction when I get started on it. Problem is there isn't a section for the EBO on fanfiction. I'm sure there's tons of nerdfighters who'd like to put their EBO stories on fanfic, so once I get my first chapter done, I'm gonna go to one of the Nerdfighter discussion forums and try to get people to spam fanfic to make an EBO section. When I finish my first chapter, I'm gonna ask for you guys to help with that too! I know Ellen has a fanfic account. And I know Nicole and Crystal read fanfictions, but I don't know if they have actual accounts. So, Ellen, I'm counting on you! (But not yet. I'm not ready yet).

Analyzing People

2011-12-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

So last night, Ellen, Nicole, Crystal and I spent a lot of time talking about people, and analyzing people and what people are like and what makes people like each other. It is interesting to talk about that stuff (especially for designing characters). Unfortunately I was working on a homework project at the same time and the water and electricity bills I had to interpret were kind of killing my brain cells so I wasn't able to hold a very intelligent conversation... And I was kinda doing this half-crazed laughing the whole time.
We should probably do it again when my brain is actually functioning. Heheh.
...
This is a random post. I could continue on but I'm tired and I'm gonna go to bed. Heheh.

Reducing Footprint

2011-12-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

So, for my climate change class, one of our projects was to reduce our ecological footprint (our impact on the environment) by trying to live differently for five days.
I already do a lot to try to reduce my footprint, like taking the train or carpooling, and taking care of a compost bin. Short of moving to a solar-powered apartment, I wasn't sure what I could do.
So I decided to make a bunch of smaller changes, or to do more of them.
I didn't buy any meat for the 5 days. I bullied Mom into turning the lights and computer off downstairs and to save some of the water she wastes while she's trying to heat it to wash her face. I went to the Farmer's Market to pick out a bunch of food. I only drove a couple very close places during the 5 days, and I took the train and carpooled to school. I did some other small things too.
But you guys should try that some time. See what you can do to reduce your footprint, even if it's only for a few days.
Find out what your ecological footprint is here.
And here's that list of changes you can make to reduce your footprint. This thing took me forever to write, so I'm gonna continue to link to is.
If everyone on the planet lived like I do, we'd need almost 4 earths to sustain us. And my footprint is a helluvalot lower than most Americans. A lot of my footprint is probably because I live i a house, not an apartment.
One of the reasons we'd need so many earths is because there's too many people...

Yes, that's Betsy

2011-12-05T20:33:00.001-08:00

No, that's not actually Betsy. That's Nick. I realized very belatedly that I never asked him to join my blog. So I finally did.
Now for an explanation.
Maybe a year ago, Brian brought over his Boom Blox game to my party and everyone had a character. Nick's character was Betsy, a cow (all the characters are block shaped). I found that amusing, so I kept going, "Betsy, it's your turn."
As a result, Angeles and her friend are convinced that Nick's name is Betsy.
On top of that, since Nick didn't have a Mii character on my Wii, he used my Ben Mii. So now Brian thinks his name is Ben.
And Ellen and Nicole have always known Nick as Squirrel Guy...

So, yeah. No one knows Nick by his name.
Which is probably kinda my fault come to think of it.

Introducing Betsy the Block Cow, aka Nick

2011-12-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

This is my first blog post ever, on any blog! I don't know what will happen when I press "Publish Post", although I have a good idea...Hi Ellen and Nicole and others whose names escape me!

Fang and Paintbrush Practice

2011-12-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

So, finally figured out how to download new paintbrushes to photoshop. I found some fur/feather/scale paintbrushes on DA from Tatchit and Sullivan.
I also did a bunch of sketches of Fang since I didn't really like my first picture of him. So I decided to play with some of the fur brushes. Actually, I really only ended up using one of them. And it worked best the first time I used it...
Anyway, these are a little better than that first one. The top corner was kinda supposed to be a chibi Fang, but it looks more like a plain puppy.

Here's Fang's torque bracelet thing again.

I've started working on a picture of Katani, Arith, and Ben. They're three of my main guy characters, and I don't draw then enough. None of them are in the same stories together, though theoretically Katani and Arith could meet since they live in the same time. They'd just have to fly across a couple continents to meet.
I finished coloring Arith today and he looks unexpectedly adorable, which isn't something I usually think about either my drawings or my characters. I've started working on Ben.

Avatar Opening!!!

2011-12-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

Hey hey! I just found the opening to the new Avatar series! Woot! Can't Wait!~

Photos

2011-11-30T23:03:00.001-08:00

Nick emailed asking for me to look at his flikr photos. I wanted to comment on a bunch of them, but I don't have an account. So I'll tell all of you to look at his photos too. He gets to go all these awesome places. TT^TT I'm so jealous.
He has some really cool wildlife shots too. I was with him when he took the zoo photos.
Come visit!

The Story of Ulysses

2011-11-29T00:41:00.000-08:00

I finished my comic! Actually, this isn't the end. I still need to do the interaction between Ulysses ad Mia, the Cubone. But I probably won't make that as a comic. I'll probably write that out, maybe with an illustration. But Mia will be fun to write.
I kinda ended up tying this into my Pokemon fanfic in my head. Like Ulysses is cloned from Cara's Braviary. Hence her showing up as an image when Ulysses is passed out. It's a memory overlap from Cara's Braviary. So after Mia decides to tag along with Ulysses, Ulysses decides to try to figure out where this memory came from. In the meanwhile, Cara knows that Team Rocket managed to clone her Braviary, and she wants to find the clone. But I really don't know what happens after Ulysses and Mia partner up (Ulysses doesn't want Mia around).
I hope you can understand what's going on!

...

2011-11-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

... Why did the picture become so small? Did it shrink for you guys too? How do I fix that?

Dragons Pen!!

2011-11-26T10:29:00.000-08:00

I finally did it! I finally redid the Dragons Pen picture! That thing at the top of the blog has been bugging me forever! I put it off because I figured I'd improve some more before I tried to redo it. But I finally did!
She took a long time. Especially because of the scales. She's almost all colored pencil, except for the sky. I probably would have screwed up the picture if I tried to do the sky with colored pencil. Since the sky kinda blurred out her scales, I had to place some clouds so you could actually see her. The clouds might look kinda forced... but I tried to make them look good.
Anyway, I shall go and change the picture right now!

Speed and Distance

2011-11-25T22:27:00.000-08:00

So, for a long time I'd been wanting to figure out the speeds my different dragon species. I knew which ones were faster and which were slower, but I wanted something a little more accurate than that.
So, finally a while ago I made Dad help me, since he used to work with birds of prey. I got tentative speeds for how fast each dragon species can fly at an easy cruise, a flying sprint, and a dive. I also tried to figure out how far each species could fly in one go.
I'm not gonna post them all here. But basically, the Moon Dragon is the fastest dragon. Frilled dragons are the best distance fliers. Sun dragons are pretty good at both. Titan and Lash dragons are the slowest.

Ulysses

2011-11-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

So, there is a sort of contest thing on DA for VengefulSpirits. Rules found here. It's a comic tryout thing. I thought it would be good practice for me even if I don't pass. Because I've never done a real comic before. Just those goofy practice things. And since it's a pokemon comic, it shouldn't be too hard because Pokemon are easy for me to draw.
So the plot is as follows:
Team Rocket is creating clones (known as 2nd Generation Clones) that have no emotions or anything and are like completely obedient machines. But there are also reject clones, which were experiments leading up to the perfect clones. These rejects often have problems with them, but have their emotions back and have escaped from Team Rocket. And Team Rocket's trying to hunt them down.
I'm using a Braviary named Ulysses. I asked Dad to give me names of a bunch of generals, and Ulysses seemed like a good name for him. Ulysses was almost to perfect clone level, but he's a reject because he escaped Team Rocket's influence. HEre's his reference page.
I've drawn out most of his comic and colored in part of it. I'll post the whole thing here when I finish. It's a lot longer than I thought it would be, but I want to finish this scene. Even if I don't pass, I might do the next scene also. Because I want to do something with the cute little Cubone that follows him around.
Here's his reference sheet, along with some of the info about him.

Skyward Sword

2011-11-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

Yaay! I picked up the new Zelda game today! I probably won't get a lot of time to spend on it until wednesday, but I did play some of it today. It's pretty cool so far. I love the birds, of course. ^-^ Except none of them seem to have names. The beginning made me laugh so hard with the delivery bird.
Can't wait to spend more time on it.
I watched the first episode of the animated Zelda series last night. It was bad. Really really REALLY bad. So, yeah. Don't watch it.
I've played almost every single Zelda game now. I'm most of the way done with Link's Awakening. The only one I haven't played at all is Oracle of Seasons. I wonder if they'll release it on the 3DS store like they did with Link's Awakening. I played through the original Legend of Zelda. It's hard. And then when you beat the game, you can replay it differently, and I haven't finished the second run yet. I actually haven't played that in a long time. And I beat the first dungeon in Legend of Link, but that game's FREAKING HARD. A real pain.
Oh yeah. I'm playing through OOT Master Quest on the 3DS. I've only beat the first dungeon so far because I've been working on other games too. The dungeons are quite a bit trickier, and I've died a lot. But so far I've been able to figure them out without going online. We'll see if that continues when I get to the Water Temple and stuff.
And I wanna play Wind Waker again too. And Minish Cap. And maybe Majora's Mask.

Kon and Thorn

2011-11-14T21:04:00.001-08:00

I actually finished this ages ago. So, this is Kon and Thorn, from Katani's story. I like these two stories. I need to find a way to get them more into the story. Especially Thorn, because so far I don't have a lot of ideas for her.
These started out as two concept sketches, and when I finally colored them, I decided just to stick them on a background together. I tried coloring Kon with colored pencil first, but I couldn't get his skin right, and he looks really ill... so I finally recolored him and colored Thorn (I didn't even try to use pencil to color her). But yeah. Kon looks to happy, and Thorn is just staring off into the distance. But you can get an idea of what they look like. I'm not quite sure Kon's head is right though...

So, yeah. Kon's the leader of the gang, and Thorn's his second in command.
I like how Thorn's shirt came out.

Heyoa

2011-11-11T00:24:00.001-08:00

So, I've been putting off drawing my dragon for ages, and the others I did a while ago were lame. So I FINALLY redid her.

Yep. Still obsessed with commissions. I like seeing my characters done by good artists, and I like supporting good artists. ^-^
I asked her to draw this about 2 days ago. @_@ That's gotta be a record.

She's so cute, chasing a bluejay. ^-^ Once again, torturing the artists with scales. Heheh.

Tablet and Shalia

2011-11-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Big news! Leaf is losing her baby teeth!
No, that's not the big news. Heheh. Although it's kinda funny. Her front canines are growing in next to her baby canines, and for a while there were double fangs there. Now she only has one set of double fangs, cause I guess the one baby fang fell out?
Anyhooow, I digress.
So, I did end up getting my tablet today. ^-^
This is the very first thing I drew. An attempt at Fern doing a happy dance. I probably could have made it neater by spending more time on it. Heheh.

Yeah, it's rather bad. I'm still getting used to the tablet. I'm not very good at drawing yet, but coloring's not too bad. Actually at the moment, it's slightly easier to color with a mouse. But only by a little. And I'm sure with a little practice, the tablet will be much easier than the mouse. I'm working on some little pictures of Fang.

I ordered another commission. Heheh. From Whiteweasel. She was having some financial trouble, and she had some nice art, so I got a commission from her. I gave her a choice of my characters to draw, and she chose Shalia.
She was working on this picture throughout a few livestreams, so I got to see it being worked on, and I chatted with her a lot. I'm amazed at how much time she spent on it. She probably put a lot more time and effort into this dragon that most of the artists who do commissions. She spent soooo long on the scales. I'm amazed she made them so small. Another amazing thing: she did it all with a mouse. She doesn't have a tablet. @_@
Shalia has a really cute expression. ^-^

Tablet

2011-11-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

Since I have to study for a test, I'll probably just cut and paste the journal entry I put on DA. Heheh.
I have some pictures I need to put on the blog also. Maybe I'll get some up tomorrow.

I'm still in my endless debate about whether or not to get a tablet.
It's only recently that I've actually wanted one. Mom pretty much gave me her nice new laptop since she never used it, so now I don't need to use the old one. And since I do a lot of my drawing while watching movies on the TV downstairs, using a tablet on my desk computer never felt really appealing. But when I realized that Mom's ex-laptop has photoshop, I started thinking about it.
But still, it wasn't until 2 weeks ago that I seriously considered it, because two weeks ago I suddenly got money.
But I can't help wondering... will a tablet make me draw by hand a lot less? Will I stop trying to improve with colored pencils? I know I won't stop drawing by hand altogether, but I'll probably color by hand a lot less.
But getting a tablet would be really interesting, and it would make some things a lot easier. For example, it's really hard to erase colored pencil, but on a computer you can easily fix a mistake.
I'm still torn. Sigh.
But since I don't have class Friday, I'm leaning heavily on stopping at the mall tomorrow after class, since the mall's right across the street from the train station. And then I can play with it over my long-ish weekend.
I guess we'll find out tomorrow what my decision was...

I'm watching a livestream of one of my commissions right now. ^-^ I've never got to watch one of them before. So, I'm not really studying for my test tomorrow... bad me!

Final Fantasy Crisis Core

2011-11-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

So as of a few minutes ago, I finished playing Final Fantasy Crisis Core.
NO WAAAY! THAT WAS SO FREAKING SAAAD!
WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! How could they do that???!!!
It's like the ending of Okamiden, except more people died in this game...
TT^TT
TT^TT
TT^TT
WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
Sniffle.

Trying to get over my sorrow so I can write about the game. I don't know if it's working. It was only a couple minutes ago that I finished...
Sob.
Yeah, I liked Zack. Crystal says he's her favorite character of all time. She's the one that lent the game to me, and the PSP. I'd never played a Final Fantasy game before. The people who played the other game probably wouldn't be as startled by the ending as I was. Actually, Ellen and Nicole and Crystal mentioned what happened. Those jerks. So I knew it would happen eventually, but I thought it would happen in a different game. Not this one. So not surprised as I would have been if people hadn't given me SPOILERS. Stop talking about this stuff in front of me when you know I haven't finished the game! Like when Ellen told me who Shiek was, and my cousin said that that one district in The Hunger Games gets blown up.
I was also confused by a lot of the game. Crystal helped me understand some of it.
Like what were they doing to Zack and Cloud after the Sephiroth incident? And why did they want to kill them when they escaped?
Why was Angeal acting all evil when he really wasn't?
What happened to Genesis?
I still don't really get why Sephiroth went all wacko. Yeah, he may have learned something weird, but wasn't he kinda... overreacting? Like trying to kill Zack and people who had nothing to do with the incident? I guess he's a bad guy in the other games.
What was with Genesis? Did he turn good at the end or something? And why'd those people take him away? hat happens to him?
Why'd they turn the director into a clone?
I'm not really used to this sort of game play. I did play the first Kingdom Hearts game, which was similar to this. But I play Pokémon, Zelda, and Okami. That's really different from these games. It took me until before the last boss to even try to play with all the items and materia and stuff. It probably would have made it easier for me if I'd looked at it sooner.
Plus they stole Arith's name. I thought Arith was an original name, but apparently not. Although Final Fantasy's Aerith is a girl...
So, yeah. I don't have the console to play any of the other Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts games (I think there might be a couple FF for the DS) but I may watch some playthroughs on Youtube. I do want to know what happens after, with the other characters.
...
Sob

7 Billion

2011-11-04T22:23:00.000-07:00

So, whether or not you know, some time in the last few days or the next few days, the 7 billionth person on the planet will be born.

It's something I really don't know what to say about. I mean, it's too many people. I don't know what anyone's gonna do about it, though. I would never think that killing off a bunch of people would be a solution to anything. Having fewer kids is really important. But tell that to people in developing countries whose children work to help the family survive.
And even if people start having only 1 or 2 kids, population will continue to grow for a while longer anyway. That's because right now there's a lot more young people than old people. It's hard to explain. I kind need a chart to explain. I think I'll wait until someone asks before I try to go into that (as if anyone will ^-^' )
When countries become more developed, and especially when they educate their women, population growth slows. It's something the whole world should be thinking about. All countries need to help each other. Easy to say. Not so easy to convince people of. 7 billion is a lot of people. That's not going to have a small impact on the planet. And it's going to effect everyone. And we need to make life as good as possible for all 7 billion of us.

Happy Halloween! Mwahahahahahahahahahaah!!

2011-10-31T21:47:00.000-07:00

Halloween!
Actually... it's the first year that no one's come over for Halloween. Neither of the people I asked could end up making it. Sigh. And our street, usually so busy for Halloween, was less crowded this year. Apparently they all go to a different street now.
So I harassed the neighbors instead. There's 4 of them. Triplets and an older girl. They're all in high school right now. They used to hang around all the time, but I don't see them around much anymore. I followed them around the block. Then when one of the boys and his friend were hiding in their front yard to scare trick-or-treaters, I snuck up and scared them. ^-^ That was cool.
I wore my red Ed jacket and threw on black pants, shirt, sand boots. My white gloves completed my half-ass costume. I don't usually end up cross-dressing, but my girl costumes are too much hassle. Plus I got a heckuvalot due next week . Why does everything have to be do right after HALLOWEEN!!??

Comic Practice

2011-10-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was gonna wait until I finished a few more of these, but Crystal bugged me to put them up.
During my classes, my teachers do a lot of talking. So I started drawing some of the comics I'd been wanting to do.
I find it kinda interesting how each one is better than the last. Though none of them are great. But you should see the ones I did a few years ago. Those ones are total garbage. These ones at least have some redeeming features.
I wonder if my writing is legible... Let me know if it's not.

Okay, here's the first one I did. Katani and Tri, from my story. And that's Melly that appears in at the end.

Here's Katani again. And Melly too.

Now I move into my Pokemon fanfic. That's Cara (the Pokemon world version of Fern) and Ben, and Hari. Hari is the wild boy they found. Hence his crazy hair. And he only wears Ben or Cara's shirts, which is why they're so big on him. In one chapter,
Cara called Hari her pet. Which is where this came from.

Cara and Hari again. And Polaris, her Ponyta. That's one of the new Pokemon. A rather ugly one.

Now this is where Fern visits InuYasha's world. Yes, that is Kagome even if it doesn't look like her. And that's Fern's wolf, Fang.

Tell me what you think, guys. Please!! These took lots of time. Time that I could have spent listening to my teachers.
I'll probably finish some more before long.

The Society After Society

2011-10-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of stories I want to write, many of which I've been working on longer and have more developed than this one. But this one seems the most important to me, which is why I want to work on it after I finish Katani (Katani was actually a relatively new idea when I started it, although I incroporated a lot of older ideas into it, like the whole prophecy thing.
That Aftermath episode only helped a little bit in developing my story, and it remained on the back burner for a while longer.
But then I started my climate change class this semester, and ideas came pouring in. I've been building up this society since the beginning of the semester, and I'm getting a pretty good idea about the 3 main characters and the world they're plunged into. I also discovered what will trigger the last breaking of society. And I recently realized that this will probably be the next story I work on.
The story takes place where I live, in the future by about 50 years, maybe? No doubt some countries have gotten off better than America, but some countries are in much worse shape also. I'm not sure what too do about them yet.
I'll start just before the collapse of society, following one girl. I'll go through the collapse, and some time after it. Then I'll skip about 10 years to what the society sort of solidified into given time.
There will be a few people who live in cities where they manage to live off the scant amount of renewable energy available, and they try to develop better energy sources. They can still use technology there. The cities are the only places that keep contact with other countries.
The majority of people will be stuck in the newly formed slums, which were once the suburbs of the old world. They scavenge on what's left of the old society and do their best to grow food and keep alive.
But then a few people will have taken to the woods. The first girl we meet in my story decided to move to the woods to try to protect them from the swarm of people who try to kill all the animals for food and cut down all the trees for fuel and shelter.
I'm going to have one main character from each of these 3 settings.
There's a man that lives relatively well in the city. A girl that lives in the slums, taking care of abandoned cats and growing her garden. The girl that took to the woods lives with a pack of abandoned dogs, trying to protect the wilderness. She also has some horses that were turned loose or escaped, which let her travel fairly well.
This girl was my original character idea. Being the nature fanatic that I am, I was worried that if society came to a messy end, people would swarm all over the forests and totally destroy them in their desperate attempt to get resources (Which in turn makes me feel equally bad for those people). So I thought what if some people decided to try to protect the forests? Good for the forests, but not so good for the people who want wood and game. Which means that the forest guardians are pretty much universally hated.

Last week I finished reading a book that gave me some more ideas for my story. The book was called Tracker, and it's the true story of this boy who learned to track and live in the woods from an old Native American man. There's some really amazing stuff in that book. But the part with the wild dogs is what I want to use in my story. Because the woods this boy hiked all over in had packs of wild dogs. These dogs had no qualms about attacking ad killing humans. Some of that stuff is terrifying. But the most amazing part of the book is when the boy and his friend actually help a pack of dogs out of a hole, and what happened after.
This is what gave me the ideas about the wild dogs that the woods girl has to deal with.
So, I won't go into any more detail here (I could talk about a lot of my stories for ages), but there ya go. the Pandora's box of the end of society has been opened. I did it all tonight after all, even though I have class tomorrow. ^-^'

After the Apocalypse

2011-10-24T23:13:00.000-07:00

I think this post deserves the record for how long it's been put off. I think I wrote this stuff down in the summer, and It's taken me until now to finally post about it.
So, for a while, I've been building up a story idea, which I think I might work on after Katani. I got the idea from some of Miyazaki's movies, like Nausicaa, that take place after the end of society. Actually, I think that "Origin: Spirits of the Past" is what made me decide to make my own story based in a world after society has broken down.
Since I'm an environmentalist, this society will have broken down because of our destroying the environment, especially our reliance on fossil fuels, which are severely depleting. It will also be suffering from other environmental and societal problems, like climate change and resource degradation and overpopulation.
Sounds nice and cheerful, huh?
So, I'd had this idea for just a little while, but I hadn't really done anything with it because I had no ideas about what such a society would be like.
Then I saw this TV show which I decided to watch (I watch random TV shows maybe 5 times a year, one of which was last night, which leads to a random digression: I watched the first episode of something called "Once Upon a Time" as I was working on a picture for DA. It's interesting. I may watch more).
Anyway, the TV series I saw that helped me with my story was called Aftermath. I'd seen one episode of it before about what would happen to the planet if all humans suddenly vanished. There's some interesting insights (basically at this point, the planet could heal itself almost totally in about 100 years or something like that). But I couldn't help wondering what would happen to all the nonnative species we've imported everywhere. Would the native species regain control? Or would the invasive species continue to spread and wreak havoc until something happened to control them?
So, this Aftermath series has some strange scenarios, like what would humans do if Earth suddenly stopped rotating?
But the episode I saw was what would happen if all of the fossil fuel wells suddenly went dry. It gave me the first ideas of what a society would have to do without if the fossil fuels we depend on so heavily were suddenly torn away. The planet continues to consume fossil fuels while making very little progress in developing renewable energy sources. The closer we get to running out of fossil fuels without developing alternatives, the harder it will be to make the big transition. Because as the amount of oil in the ground decreases, it's harder to get the last bits of it out. Unfortunately, it's already too late to make a smooth transition, but the longer we wait, the worse the change will become.
I'm just gonna list some of the effects of a sudden decrease in fossil fuels that they had in that TV episode (with some of my own notes).

Jobs would be slaughtered.
Energy would be severely regulated. Electricity, phones, ex, would be cut off. Only emergency services would be kept running on what little renewable energy there is.
Ships and trains would be stopped for lack of fuel. Airplanes? I don't think so. They use tons of fuel.
Gas for cars would be really hard to get.
Even the gas you save for emergencies would go bad before long.
You could still use diesel trucks though, and ethanol and electric cars (if you had somewhere to plug them in).
How would you get to a hospital if there was an emergency?
Disease would spread.
No garbage pickup.
Groceries wouldn't get delivered. People would have to start growing their own food.
Livestock wouldn't get fed.
A lot of stuff is made out of fossil fuels, like toothpaste, lipstick, and plastic. But pesticides and fertilizers we use for our crops include fossil fuels too.
Cities could get abandoned.
We'd use sugar cane, corn, and soybeans to make ethanol and diesel. Which means those plants aren't used as food.
Their given solution is that we'd used algae as our primary energy source, but that would take a while to implement. We'd probably have to use a mix of renewable energy sources though, not just rely on algae.

Actually, I thought this series was prong pretty generous. They didn't mention the millions of people on the planet that are only alive because of fossil fuels (remember what I said about agriculture? That's the food that keeps the billions-large population alive).

Does this sort of stuff scare you guys as much as it scares me?

I have another post about further development of this story which maybe I'll do tomorrow.

Get Good Teams

2011-10-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

So, I think I'll post again right after this, because I'm gonna whine in this one. I've put this justified complaint off since Friday. But it's about that big project I mentioned.
Okay. So take an entire semester course, put it into one big project, and make that project due last Friday instead of at the end of the semester. That project includes a full paper along with several smaller papers, a binder full of our sources (I had to print out about 300 pages - I kid you not), trips to our specific wetland, and interviews with at least 3 experts on the site. And then add two group partners who you're supposed to work with and split all of the "smaller"tasks with.
My partners didn't even start their interviews or anything until a week before the project was due. I had visited my site twice, done all my interviews, and foud most of my sources and even then I had to use all of my free time the last week to go through my sources and write my paper.
My group mates were supposed to get most of their stuff to me on Tuesday so I could start organizing it into a binder. They didn't. So I told them to get it to me Thursday evening. They didn't. So we had to meet before class to finish. I assumed we'd use that time to put all of our stuff together and for me to burn my CD, since my computer wouldn't do it for some reason.
Not so. They hadn't eve FINISHED their papers 3 hours before they were due. And they were working on those instead of all the organizing we still needed to do as a group! I know they did a totally sucky job, and they didn't even really finish their individual reports and CDs. So I couldn't even start putting the binder together until the last second.
I was concerned about the guy from the beginning, and he admitted that he might not have even DONE the project if he didn't have group mates. But I was hoping the girl would at least have her act together...
I was so busy trying to get them organized that I only got to go over my own paper once. I know I did freakishly better than them, but I still could have made my own paper neater.
I freaking hate group projects.
Never get stuck with bad group partners. I can't wait to burn them on our team evaluation sheet. They better not screw up my grade.
Still, I'm amazed at how I was able to communicate with them normally that last morning. No screaming, swearing, or even glaring evilly at them. Considering the circumstances and how I felt about their work, I was perfectly civil. I'm rather amazed I was able to do that in hindsight.

Doorway to Darkness

2011-10-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

I just realized that this probably merits a post.
I finished a fanfic yesterday. The 3rd part of my Pokémon fanfic.
So as soon as I can, I'm gonna start part 4.
I say as soon as I can because I have a huge (really freaking monstrously huge) project due next week, and my two partners are less than desirable.
Ugh. As long as they give me their parts, I'll be happy.
I still have a lot to do. I've finally gone through the 200 page watershed management plan and picked out the information that will be helpful. That plan has most of what I need. But I need 20 other sources in addition to that. I've been to my site twice and done most of my interviews. Despite the sheer amount I still have left to do, I'm probably not in too bad shape.
My partners... not so much.

Opossum

2011-10-09T23:33:00.001-07:00

Bwahahahah! Three posts in one day!
This is because I meant to post both yesterday and the day before and I didn't.
So on Friday when I went to volunteer at the humane society, Marisa tells me, "Tara, you're releasing an opossum today."
I went O_O
After several years of volunteering there, I'd never been present at a release. And I got to do this one all myself! I put the young opossum in a box with a towel and drove home with it.
I went inside and said to Mom and Dad, "guess what I've got in the back of my car!"
It took them forever to guess opossum. Dad's been bugging me to ask about releases for ages, but I never remember when I'm there because there's usually a lot to do (except during winter). So, it just kind of happened without my asking.
So Dad came with me and I drove behind the cemetery near my house where there's kind of a creek. Dusk was just starting, which is when you're supposed to release opossums. I walked down the hill very slowly because it was a bit muddy. I open the box where the baby opossum is diligently playing dead with his mouth open and his teeth showing.
Then Dad calls for me to wait so he can get my picture and he starts jogging down the slope towards me. I look over at him and seem him run down the hill past me, and I sort of think to myself, "why is he still running down?" Then I realize that he can't stop because of the mud! Finally his feet slip out from under him and he ends up on his back.
After than interesting little distraction, I pull out the possum-playing opossum and set him in a small trough I'd pushed out of the leaves, sheltered beneath a tree. I set a couple larger leaves over him to shield him from view, and then we headed off.
It wasn't one of those things where you open the box and the animal scampers off to freedom. The little guy will probably lay there until it's nice and dark.

Do well, little opossum! Grow up big and healthy!

Fern and Ben Comission

2011-10-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

Instead of working on my terrifying project, I will procrastinate farther and post the commission picture I ordered a while ago. It's from the artist Jeneko, who I asked to do a picture of Fern and Ben. I told her a little about them and just let her do whatever she wanted.
She hasn't put it on DA yet, but I'll update this when she does.

So pretty ^-^ I love Fern's wings. And there's a sunset beach behind them. With birds. ^-^
There's only one commission I'm still waiting for.
I'm still a bit obsessed with commissions, but I kinda need to wait until I actually get some more money. @_@

Leaf occasionally sneaks up on me while I'm on the computer and jumps on my lap. It scares the hell out of me. She did it earlier tonight. I thought she was in Mom's room, so I wasn't even trying to keep my eyes out for her.

Katani Interview

2011-10-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

So, I was planning on starting Katani's interview tonight since I really need to work on my terrifyingly large wetlands project. But I got kinda hooked on it, and Katani and I finished the whole thing. With some help from Tyra.
So, yes. Tyra is Katani's dragon. Lari, Len, Garrett, Tri, Melly, and Dominic are the human friends that Katani works with. They're all Retrievers, spread across two different teams. Each of them has their own dragon partner and they fly around collecting certain things. Cause the interview makes more sense if you know that. And they talk to their dragons with telepathy.

Character interview

1) What gender are you?
Uh, a boy, I hope.

2) How old are you?
Well, during the book I’m 16 and 17. I’ll say 17.

3) What’s your favorite dessert?
I have to pick one? Chocolate cake. With good frosting.

4) What’s your favorite drink?
Katani: Hmmm…
Me: I’m waiting.
Katani: I can’t think of anything!
Me: Come on! What do you like to drink!
Katani: Well, you won’t let me say coke!
Me: Well, you don’t have coke on your world! Besides, it’s bad for you.
Katani: Jeez! Just put that rice drink, horchata, and leave me alone!

5) What is your favorite food?
Pizza

6) What is your favorite ice-cream flavor?
Strawberry

7) What is something you hate doing?
Almost getting killed by wild dragons and people.

8) Do you hate anyone?
Only people that have tried to kill me.

9) What’s your biggest fear?
Uh… that the rebellion would go haywire and everyone would die?

10) Do you have any secrets?
Not that I can think of.

11) What's your weakness?
Katani: I dunno. None?
Me: Don’t listen to him. He gets mad when people overreact about his eyes. And he’s deathly ticklish.
Katani: How is that a weakness!?
Me: Because you’ll do anything to make someone stop tickling you.
Tyra: It’s fun to poke him with the tip of my tail.
Katani: go away, Tyra! This is my interview!

12) When is your birthday?
October 12

13) What are your hobbies?
I like working with rope and stuff.

14) What is your favorite season?
Fall

15) What's your favorite color?
Dark red

16) Are you social or shy?
I don’t think I’m shy…

17) Are you nice or mean?
I don’t think I’m mean…

18) Do you consider yourself a happy or a down person?
Katani: I guess happy most of the time.
Me: Can’t you sound a little more certain about these?

19) What do you think of your parents?
They’re pretty cool. Dad a little more than Mom, maybe.

20) What do you think of your friends?
They’re all crazy.

21) Which of your friends is most annoying?
Katani: Tri, Garrett, and Melly are all pretty annoying. Melly in a different way. But if you want to go beyond humans, the gold medal goes to Tyra.
Tyra: After everything I’ve done for you?
Katani: And all of my food you steal!

22) Do you love someone?
Katani: Nah.
Me: realllllly?

23) Ever kissed anyone?
No

24) Would you like to get married some day?
Sure, I guess.

25) Would you ever like to have kids?
I suppose so, maybe.

26) Which friend do you trust most?
Lari, I guess. And Dominic.

27) Which friend do you trust least?
If you mean with secrets, Melly. She could never keep a secret.

28) Who is your best friend(s)?
Hmm. That’s kinda changed. I seem to have more than I used to. Mainly Lari, Tri, Garrett, and Dominic. I haven’t seen Len in a while, but him too.

29) What do you consider fun in the day-time?
Hanging out with friends and visiting the city.

30) At night?
Actually, hide-and-go-seek in the dark is pretty fun…

31) What’s your favorite place to hang out?
The beach.

32) What’s your favorite place to vacation?
Dunno. I fly all over the place with Tyra.

33) What place would you really like to visit?
One of the other countries, I guess. Telian, maybe. They seem to have the fewest big problems.

34) How often do you work out/exercise?
I have to every day, as long as I’m a Retriever.

35) What sporty activities do you like?
Sword fighting is pretty fun.

36) When was the last time you cried?
Katani: I don’t know?
Me: What about that time on the beach?
Katani: That wasn’t crying! I got sprayed in the face by a wave!
Me: Is that right?

37) Do you have a pet?
Katani: Does an obnoxious dragon count?
Tyra: What are you talking about? You’re my pet!

38) What do you do on a regular basis?
Train and fly and try to keep my dinner away from Tyra.

39) If you could buy anything, what would it be?
Katani: A muzzle for Tyra.
Tyra: Katani, you’re sooo mean!

40) Do you consider yourself a warrior?
I hope so, considering how much training I have to do.

41) What's your nickname?
Sometimes my friends call me Katana to bug me.

42) What does that mean?
It’s a Japanese sword.

43) What do you usually wear?
Katani: Pants and a shirt?
Me: Thank you for being so specific. What about your Retriever uniform?
Katani: If I’m on a mission, yeah.

44) If you were a superhero, you'd be...?
Uh, a kid that rides around on a lightning-spitting dragon?

45) What’s your favorite movie?
Katani: Avatar, I guess.
Me: Really? You like that dragon-ish stuff even when you have an obnoxious dragon like Tyra?
Katani: What’s that got to do with anything? It’s an awesome movie!
Tyra: I’m cooler than any of the dragons in that movie. And you don’t need to attach your hair to my head to hear my thoughts.
Katani: Do you know how weird that sounds?

46) What’s your favorite book?
Jeez, I dunno. Hunger Games was pretty good.

47) What's your favorite song?
I’m severely limited in my choices considering I can only pick songs you know. I like that Japanese one, On Your Mark.

48) Do you have a favorite band?
Again, severely limited. The only band you listen to consistently is the Beatles. So by process of elimination, I have to choose that one because it’s the only one I know.

49) What did you want to do as a kid?
Be a Retriever.

50) What are you doing with your life?
… Being a Retriever.

51)? What would you like to do with your life?
… Be a Retreiver.

52) What would you change about the world if you could?
Katani: About your world or mine?
Me: My world, because mine is the one with real problems.
Katani: How are my problems not real? Fine then. Stop screwing the planet up, people!
Me: Ah, yes. Thank you for putting it so delicately.

53) And finally… what is your favorite Pokémon?
Katani: Seriously! You’re gonna make me go through all 650 Pokemon! You’ve gotta be freaking kidding. Okay, fine. Let’s get this over with.
…
I like Garchomp and Ninetales.
Me: Not Flygon? It’s a green dragon, like Tyra.
Katani: Gah! Stop comparing things to Tyra!
Tyra: But Katani, you know you love me!

Matantei Loki Ragnarok

2011-10-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

Leaf's asleep on my lap right now. It's so different having a cat that actually sits on my lap. Midnight wasn't like this.
I haven't been posting enough on this blog about my actual stories. Two days ago, I had an idea that I should interview some of my characters, like Katani. That would be fun. But I didn't know what questions to ask. Then yesterday, a friend from fanfiction actually posted a fictional character interview. It was like, "holy cow. How did you know to post this the day after I had the idea to do it myself!
I've changed a lot of the questions, mainly deleting and adding some. But I haven't asked Katani most of them yet. So as I'm working on that, I'll do another random post.
Two days ago I finished watching an anime that Nicole recommended to me in high school that I never really watched until last month (Actually, I did watch maybe 2 episodes when she recommended it to me, but that was before I really watched anime, so I didn't really grasp a lot of it. This was the same time that she recommended Ouran to me, and it freaked me out when I saw it the first time even though I love it now). Anyway,this one is Matantei Loki Ragnarok (Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok).
It wasn't bad. The ending was kind of confusing. But there was some funny stuff in it. The puppy was really cute (to look at, at least). And when the guy turned into the giant snake, I went "YESSSS!!!! TOTALLY AWESOME!!!"
And I can't help laughing about Heimdell. Once again, the voice actor does the voice of a short, tough guy. Ed, Hitsugaya, and now Heimdell. Heheh.
So, not perfect, but fun in its own way. But I'd say it's worth watching.

Which reminds me. My Little Pony was actually quite good. I finished the first season about a week ago. It had fun characters.
I did have a few My Little Pony's as a kid. And I actually went back and watched a movie that I remembered about as a kid. The movie was very bad. Heheh. Oh well. The new series is fun at least.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

2011-10-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

Ok ok ok before you shoot me down, or tell me that watching kid's shows is fail, you have to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It's really well done, the art style and direction is really good, with a wide variety of character styles and personalities. While the lack of guy ponies is a little strange, they do have guy ponies, even if they don't play an important role in the actual storyline.

I had heard good things about this show and I felt that I had to watch, so somewhat begrudgingly I started on the first episode. So while the first arc is a little...silly and very cliche and basic, the variety of characters makes it interesting as well as their designs. Actually you should just watch this. It'll take four minutes compared to the hour of the first two episodes that make the first arc, and you can see someone's reaction of not wanting to watch and being super-skeptical to really liking it and wanting a figure of one of the ponies to sit on his desk.

Little Anime Convention

2011-10-01T23:32:00.001-07:00

There was actually an anime convention think today at UC Berkeley. Not really close, but I thought it would be worth checking out.
It was pretty small. A fraction of the size of one of the rooms at fanime. There were a few nice booths, though most of the artists aren't as good as the ones at fanime. They're probably students at the campus.
I actually found out about it through an artist on Deviantart (one of a couple hundred that I follow O_O ). Here she is. Anyway, she's really good, and she was there, so I got to talk to her and I got a couple prints from her. I would have gotten more... but I gotta use my money somewhere else. Sigh.
I got the Okami one and the Princess Mononoke one. I've loved the Mononoke one for a while, so it was cool to get a real copy for my room. I also wanted this one and this one too. Heheh. I like pretty pictures.
Her comic is really beautifully done too. I recommend it.

Characters

2011-09-29T01:36:00.000-07:00

Since Tara was feeling lonely I'll post :D
I've been working on making actual characters for once. And I mean characters with which I will have my conversations with. For the most part I eavesdrop or I just know the characters well enough after a while. Right now I've composed a list of traits, kind of like what you would find in a game of Dungeons and Dragons or an RPG.

So for this I used a random number generator, for age I picked an age group. For example, 18-30 and used the resulting numbers and assigned them to a 'character' slot. Then I used a random name generator to find interesting words to make names. I put those words into google translate from English to Latin, then I take the Latin to Japanese, then Japanese to English, then English to Latin. You might say "Well what's the point of that? You'll just get the same thing." And I'd say, "WRONG"

Because Google translate fails so terribly at translating, you'll get different words as you switch them between the languages, so you'll be able to find synonyms and other interesting sounding words. If you stumble across one you like, great! If not keep going. Eventually you will hit a wall of repetition, just pick another word to go by in the results and continue.

Then I used a random number generator between 1-1000 and assign the number to the following categories with no discrimination or number tweaking. This will create the little quirks and flaws that make your character seem real. For the Jung-Meyer-Brigg part and the role, use a random number generator of 1-16 and find the complete list with descriptions of the personality types. Then go through the list with the random number pointing to the location of the personality. For example, if the number was 4, you'd go to the fourth personality in the list and use that. The 'Role' is just an additional thing that you can find in the Jung-Meyer-Brigg personality description. You may have to do some hunting to find it, but it can be helpful to get an overall feel for the character and what their role is amongst other people.

For the birthday, find a random day generator and get some days. Then find their astrological sign and attach that to the character. Then compare the characters astrological signs and compatibility to see who gets along with whom.

Role
Jung-Meyer-Brigg
Birthdate
Sign
Name Last First Middle
Gender
Age
Level
Strength Health Points (1-1000) Attack power Max carry weight

Constitution Stamina (1-1000) Endurance Vitality

Dexterity Agility (1-1000) Reflexes (1-1000) Speed (1-1000)

Intelligence Intellect Mind Wits

Charisma Presence Charm Social

Wisdom Spirit Psyche Sense

Willpower Sanity Personality Ego

Perception Alertness Awareness Cautiousness

Luck

Education

Size Mass Height

Appearance

Social standing

And then you're done! Woot!

Imaginary Friends

2011-09-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many authors have imaginary friends. I think in a way all characters are sort of like imaginary friends. Though I don't know how many writers consider their characters to be so.
Take it another step. I wonder how many writers talk to their characters.
I actually find it really helpful to do that. If I can't think what'll happen next in a story, or how someone will react to something, I ask my character. It's actually pretty fun to hold a conversation with my characters (in my head - I don't talk to them out loud).
I think Nicole thinks I'm weird for doing this.
But at least I know I'm not the only one! Crystal says her characters like to ignore her.
I'm feeling lonely on the blog, so you guys should post your thoughts on the subject!

Fang

2011-09-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

So I tried to draw Fang, Fern's wolf. He didn't turn out very good. But anyway, here he is.

Since Fang is a rather plain black wolf with brown eyes, I was trying to figure out a way to make him recognizable. Maybe he could wear something. Like a collar. But Fang gets a lot of action, and a collar could get caught on something. Then an idea clicked into my head. A wristband sort of thing. One that fits snug enough to not get caught. It's made of thick wires of gold, silver, and copper (I think the last is copper). They're all twisted together. Here's a picture of it.

And here's a random picture of Fern. Just experimenting with different expressions, ex.

KITTTTEEEEYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-09-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY GOT A KITTEN!!!
I've been trying to talk Mom into letting us get another one for THREE YEARS. And she finally gave in.
Here she is!!! Her name is Leaf. She's such a sweetheart! She's such a purr machine. She loves to cuddle and play.
As much as I loved Midnight, she was not a lap cat. Leaf is much more of a lap cat.
Here's some of my first pictures of her.

Ben Sketch

2011-09-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

The lines look funny because I darkened them on the computer and didn't try to make them look fancy. Anyway, I sketched this during class. It's Ben from the front, because I don't have any good pictures of him from the front.

Recycle

2011-09-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

Guess who's never gonna recycle again?
^-^

Snuggle

2011-09-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

So, I recently wrote my first attempt at anything remotely like romance. Come to think of it, I haven't gone back to edit the corrections Ellen and Nicole made on it. It's only a page long. Anyway, it's for Fern and Ben. For a long time, they go on as best friends, though they kind of like each other. But they've never mentioned it to the other, so they keep on being friends. Except they're happy being really good friends, so that's not too bad. So, my story takes place when they sort of "Get together."
I guess I'll post the short story when I edit it. Though probably anyone who reads it on the blog will have already read it to edit it for me. ^-^'
Actually, it made Nicole go "aww," so that was cool! At least it brought out an "aww."

So, a friend of ours that did one of the plushie days with us last year, is a good artist on deviantart. I sort of did an art trade with her. I drew her cute little Umbreon-person, and she drew Fern and Ben for me. She just put it up today.

^-^
Aww!
I love how Fern has commandeered Ben's jacket. She loves his jacket, so she's always stealing it. Though occasionally he lends it to her (Ben's hair is browner than that, FYI).
(I'm also drawing one of Crystal's characters as a thank-you for her drawing Katani, and she also drew Fern a while ago. Though they're better artists than me. Heheh. Oh well. It's fun trying something along the lines of Crystal's style. I just have to color the background of her picture and then I'll put it up)

Kenshin

2011-09-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

So, I finally finished reading Rurouni Kenshin!
As you may be able to tell, I really like the characters. Especially Kenshin. The plot isn't bad. The reason I say it's "not bad" instead of "very good" is because I'm very picky about my plots and I'm not as excited about fight-centered manga as I am about others. It's very good though and I recommend it.

In other words, I have a small collection of cards and postcards and stuff that I've gathered over the years. If I see a card with a picture I'm drawn to, I buy it. I recently looked up some of the artists online. Here's the links to three artists of whose cards I seem to have several.
One
Two
Three

Baby Mewtwo and Distances

2011-09-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

So, today I finally got around to a project I've been meaning to do.
On Soreina, my dragon planet, I've been wondering how large the continents and oceans are. A while ago, I looked up the circumference of Earth and the width of America and the Pacific Ocean, ex. So today I wrote rough estimates for the width of the three Soreina continents as well as the oceans between the continents. It's kind of nice to have that down finally.

I've been trying to intersperse stuff about my stories in with all these other random posts I've been putting up.
So, I finally painted the baby Mewtwo I made earlier this summer. Here he is.
Awww. Baby Mewtwo. I'll have to include him in my fanfic eventually because I looves him. And I have it all set up also.
^-^

Fairs and Repairs

2011-09-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday Ellen, Nicole, Kelly, Crystal and I went to the Scottish games. Dad and his friend Carter came too. Everyone stayed the night since we had to leave early in the morning, so we had 8 people sleeping in our house at once. That was a record. We could actually fit several more people in the living room, which was interesting.
The games were awesome, as usual. I love looking at the different booths. I got some kunai knives in honor of May and Lanfan. Heheh. I realllly wanted to get the master sword, but I got a reverse katana earlier this summer so I guess one sword is enough for the year... That booth is there every year though, so hopefully they'll have that one again (this was the nicest cheap one I've found so far). And Dad got me a distant Christmas present there too.
And today there was an Asian fair thing near my house, so I went there. I saw one guy there that wasn't asian. I felt sooo out of place. I wanted Ellen, Kelly, Crystal, or Jenny as a guide. But there was one booth with a lot of cheap anime stuff. I spent $23 and got a tone of things to keep and give as gifts. I got this amaaazing figure of Alphonse that moves at the joints. You can even open him up and take his head off like they do in the anime. And he comes with a kitten, so you can put it in his armor!
Ahh, I like figures, as long as they're good.

In other news, here's some pictures I've been meaning to put up. When we went up to Virginia City over the summer, a lady at one of the shops had some broken figures that she gave me. The dragon was missing some toes and his horns. The horse was missing some of the feathers. So I used air-dry clay to recreate them. As a note, never use air-dry clay to mold small delicate stuff. The poor dragon's horns have broken several times. I'll use the fimo or sculpey next time I want to do something like this. Use air-dry clay for bigger, tougher stuff.
The Pegasus is ammmazing. It's so beautiful!

Here's the feathers I painted.

Here's the dragon.

Here's the horns.

And the fore-feet.

And here's a little deer from my grandparents house who was missing a leg.

Tyra and "Fern"

2011-09-03T21:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, first a brief explanation.
I blame Ellen and Crystal entirely because they're amazing artists and when I asked them to draw my characters, they did amaaazingly.
As you know, around the beginning of summer I discovered what a kiriban was and won 2 pictures from wonderful artists on Deviantart, one of which did the lovely picture of my dragon Heyoa (the other is still pending).
And a few weeks ago, I got a paypal account, which has a significant contributing factor in the following events.
So now I've actually bought a couple commissions from artists. And two of them came in todayyyy!!!!!
I asked the artist Sunimo to draw one of my dragons for me. The dragon that's the mascot of my blog. Basically, if Fern were ever to transform into a dragon, this is what she would look like.
Admittedly, it's very different from what I expected, but it's very good.

And then I asked Griffsnuff to draw a chibi of Tyra for me. It's sooooo adorable! I looves her!

I shall most certainly post the next one when it comes on.

Midna Plushie

2011-08-31T22:14:00.000-07:00

So, I finally finished my latest plushie. Ellen, Nicole, and Crystal came over Monday and I did most of it then. But I finished her these last two days. For once, I actually timed how long it took. Between 6 and 7 hours.
I stitched the turquoise lines in, but some of them ended up kind of sloppy.
I might make her Fused Shadow helmet eventually.
I love how she turned out. ^-^

Dominic's Song

2011-08-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Currently suffering from Tiny Chicken Disease. If you don't know what that is, then here ya go.

Anyway, I hope it goes away soon.
Continuing on the Nerdfighters thread, I wore my giraffe shirt shirt to school today, and it introduced me to two fellow Nerdfighters at my college. First time it happened, and it happened twice in one day. So, that was fun.
So, I've been working on writing a song for Katani's story. Cause one of his friends, Dominic, is a singer. And they make him sing a song for them, so I've been thinking about it for a while. I was stuck on the second line for several days, and then today his song just came pouring out. So now I got the lyrics pretty much down, though I might tweak them. And I have a general idea for the melody too.
This is the second song I've written for a story. I wonder if it sounds as awesome as I was hoping it would. I need to get a really awesome guy singer to sing it...

Pokéventure Complete

2011-08-29T21:18:00.001-07:00

Oh well. I wanted to post today but I couldn't really think of anything. But I guess it warrants mention that 2 days ago I finished the last round of the Pokéventure contest on deviantart. One of the other contestants (who did my favorite entry) introduced the characters from a bunch of other entries in his comic. He put my Ponyta, Polaris, in several of them also. ^-^
I'll link to that one, I suppose.
Here's his first page. And here's where Polaris appears. I returned the favor by including other characters (including his) in my last chapter as well. It's kinda fun to have other people's Pokémon in there, actually.
Oh, yeah. Here's the first chapter of my entry just because.

The End of the WORLD... Or at Least Summer

2011-08-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

So, yeah. School started on Thursday. So much stuff I didn't finish.
Anyway, Jenny came over tonight and I showed her how to make a plushie. I made her a base for Yellow a while ago, so she finally got to make her. I'm giong to try to make a Midna plushie. I started making the pattern this evening. She's going to be very hard.
Week before last, Lauren came to visit. She was my friend in middle school, but I haven't seen her in 7 years since she moved to Pennsylvania right before high school. We've kept in touch, and it was good to see her again. She's very different than the people I hang out with now. We had a lot of fun.
One more thing from the program I did this summer.
Seems recently all these people have been claiming that the apocalypse is coming. Like for 2000, and 6-6-6 or something, and then one a few months ago, and there's supposed to be one in 2012. I never believed any of them, but at the program, someone I trust talked about cycles of the world. About how every few thousand years or something the planet goes through dramatic shifts. And that some society-changing thing might be happening soon.
Which got me thinking about the massive problems facing out planet. About how we rely so heavily on the diminishing fossil fuels and about how out population is so out of control and we don't take care of our resources and we destroy habitats and fragile systems.
And a scary as it seems, it seems inevitable that things are going to change dramatically in the next few decades.
How will they change?
I want to be a writer. If things really change, writers really won't have any use. Same with people who do creative amazing stuff for a living.
A while ago I actually started planning a post-apocalyptic (or post-society) story. The classes I'm taking me now are going to help me build up that society. I 'll write more about that in a later post.
I suppose it could easily all change in my lifetime. Sigh. What can I do to help...

Building houses

2011-08-27T21:48:00.001-07:00

A long-delayed post from the program I as at this summer.
One day of the program, we learned to build a house. Though not the kind of house you're thinking of. It's made of a material called cobb, rather like adobe. It's a mud-like mixture of sand, clay, straw, and water. You blend it all up (with your feet). Part of the house was already made. The earth beneath had been prepared beforehand, with a trench dug beneath where the walls would be built (in a large circle). The clay in the soil goes directly into the cobb to build the house. Then the ditch is filled with gravel to allow water to drain out. The floor is spread with gravel too (though it's gonna be covered with a different mud mix later).
The cobb wall is made incredibly thick. You make big balls of cobb and sort of smooth them into the wall. There's a certain pattern to it. It's hard to explain. But it was very cool. Everyone said how neat it is to feel the earth in your hands (or under your feet), and those who'd built houses with wood say this is so much better.
And it's incredibly cheap to make a room out of cobb. Plus you can do it in one summer, and then add more rooms every year. And they're really earthquake-resistant. Unlike wood beams, which pull apart, a cobb building just wobbles. It might crack a tiny bit, but it's easy to patch up.
Awesome house, right? Guess what? They're illegal to build.
What the frack!!!!!
Even with a permit, you're not allowed to make this kind of house in America!
The real reason is because if everyone made cheap houses of cobb, no one would be buying their lumber. Gee. What a tragedy.
Another reason our government can be so stupid. We should petition for cobb houses to be made legal.
Speakign of stupid rules, I hate youtube. They took another of my Ling videos off and say if I put up one more video that breaks copyright, they're gonna deactivate my account. Jeez! Those were the only videos I had up that were worth anything! Everyone else does stuff like that! It's not like I make any money off of them! So I had to take them all off. Not there's nothing good up there anyway. Grumble. I don't want to lose my account cause I have lots of cool favorites that I don't want to have to track down again.
So... pictures.

I haven't played in the mud in ages. I don't know if I ever really did, actually. But it was fun. I kinda wanted to have a mud fight, though I kind of didn't want to.
However, I did get to lob gobs of cobb at people (gently, so they could catch them).

Chibi Practice

2011-08-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

Bleh. First day of class today.
Some day I'll write something interesting on the blog. I promise. -_-
Anyway, here's a couple pictures.
So, I send Fern to a bunch of universes to do cool stuff and help people. I thought it would be a good thing if Fern learned how to use swords for emergency purposes. She's fair at archery, but only okay with swords. But she learns some of her sword stuff from Kenshin. Yeah, I know what your thinking. Kenshin doesn't teach. Actually, he just doesn't teach his style. But he does give Yahiko some basic sword lessons. So, he teaches Fern the basics. She's not good enough to do his style anyway.
But as Fern was learning swordsmanship from kenshin, she picked up a couple other habits from him.

Also about two weeks ago, I finally discovered Fern's animal totem. A clouded leopard. So now that's her official tail. And her bird totem is a sort of golden eagle, hence the gold wings.
Then Crystal gave Nicole and I some chibi pointers. So I did a bunch of chibi fern pictures. ^-^ I like doing it. I should do more. And I got a ton more ideas of pictures of Fern, so I'll get around to those eventually too.

One final note. Someone actually requested a picture on my blog. From one of the dragon books I mentioned ages ago. The picture was along the crease though, so this was the best I could do without killing the binding. Sorry that it's not perfect.
So, you who requested the picture, leave another comment if you get this! Just so I know you found it.

Reein is adorable

2011-08-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

So, a little while ago, I paid for a chibi pic of one of my characters. I figured Reein would look most adorable in the style, so I went with him. I just got him today!
So, this is the artist that drew him, and this is where the picture is currently located.

^-^
He's soo cute and fluffy!
It's the best $2.13 I've spent in a long long time.

Free Time

2011-08-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

So, things have been crazy around here. I have some posts I want to make about the program that I got home from last week, and I will get to them eventually... though I wanted to do them last week. -_-
You know, it used to bug me when people said they had no free time to read or write, or do stuff like that. That always bugged me. I always said to myself, "if there's something you really want to do, then MAKE time to do it!"
And now my summer vacation is almost over, and it's been so busy that I've hardly gotten any of my planned projects done. I hardly have any time, and I despise myself for thinking it. >_< And I HAVE made time to do the stuff I want, but not as much time as I wanted to. Sigh. I'm trying not to neglect my blog either.
Hey guys! Keep posting! Help me out!
But that is important. Make sure to make time to do what's important. Like you should never give up reading. Always have at least one book going, even if you're slow to get through it.
I really want to finish Katani's story (And I have to finish a Final Fantasy game Crystal lent me, since I've never played FF before. Zack is funny.)
Lots of stuff to do for mom, and we've had some family stuff planned, and we've still been helping out at my grandparents house a lot. Their hot water heater burst. One of the seams split, or something. It's a good thing it happened when we were there. We managed to suction out some of the water and bucket out the rest. I guess they have good guardian spirits for the heater to have broken while we were there to help.
Dad and I chopped some wood for them last week, and I've been stacking their wood in their woodshed. Grandma said my wood piles are beautiful. But.. I just thought that's how you were supposed to stack wood. (Like, I had to go to the dentist and orthodontist within the last few weeks, and they both said I have beautiful teeth. Which makes me think... do they say that to everyone who had braces?) Anyway, Grandma said that some of her neighbors want me to do their wood pile for them.
-_-
Actually, that's kind of cool. Stacking wood is rather meditative. I never would have thought of earning money that way... Just gotta make sure that the wood pile hasn't been sitting around so long that black widows have made their homes in it. O_O

Audio Books

2011-08-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

So, it seems like there's hundreds of books I want to read, but I'm not reading as fast as I sometimes do. So, I stopped by this nice library bear my aunt's house and went inside. They had a great collection of audio books, and I thought, "I could listen to a bunch of books as I do other stuff!"
I have the Harry potter audio books (which I listened to all the time when books 1-4 were out), but I'd never really listened to any others.
I've read the first Eragon book, and I started the second one, but didn't finish it. So, that's what I'm listening to now.
I guess I'll get through more books now.

O_O

2011-08-16T20:15:00.001-07:00

There's so many things I want to post about, but I'm currently running around during my "end of summer panic."
I get home from my vacation, and Mom says "Well, you've only got about 2 weeks of school left" (1 week now).
O_O
Nooo! It can't end!
So, I'll do a short post, and try to get my others done later.
I decided to take part in a John Green birthday calendar. So I need to upload the picture somewhere. It's a photo I took about a month ago. And The thing was just something I wrote for the occasion.
Anyway, here it is.

Parkour

2011-08-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

So Tara's away for the next week and a half or so, and she asked me to post on the blog. I dont really know what to post about but I guess I'll do one on parkour.

I've been doing some training for parkour (haven't kept up with it though). In any case, parkour is a more efficient version of free running. For those of you who dont know what either of them are. Parkour and free running are when you find the most efficient (in the case of parkour) or the most 'fancy' (for free running) way of getting over obstacles.

Here's a guy from Latvia doing some parkour He's on the extreme end of parkour, I'm still way at the beginning. I'm not even as good as this dog from Ukraine.

First things first, what to wear. Comfortable clothes, something you can move in. And sneakers, something with traction and grip. Converse arent such a good idea for this. Long pants, no jeans. Long pants are essential to minimize scrapes. T-shirts are fine, just nothing excessively baggy or it'll just get in the way.

Anyway, there's a lot of things you can do to train. But first make sure you stretch. Stretch every muscle so you dont hurt yourself. Make sure you work your neck, arms, shoulder, hips, thighs, calves, everything. Dont forget wrists and ankles, super important. For wrists and ankles start by rotating them in both directions. Wrist stretches are hard to explain without being there, but for ankles write your name with your foot a few times, then switch feet.

Building up stamina is an important part of...well anything. I personally have zero stamina, if not negative stamina. So before training do a quick ten minute jog or so. Up and down stairs is also good.

After that do jumps. I'm not saying start jumping from buildings, just small jumps. Find a short ledge, maybe ankle height. If not that's fine, just do small jumps. Our bodies have three cushions of protection when we jump, the first is our feet, the next is ankles, then knees. So land on the balls of your feet, both feet. Make sure that you use dont over exert yourself. Also try to land as softly/quietly as possible. This will make your jumps lighter and lessen the impact with which you hit the ground.

Jump up and down from your ledge or back and forth from two spots. Then when you feel comfortable try jumping to different points. Set markers for yourself. This is called precision jumping. It's used to practice well...precision, so you'll be able to jump on top of poles or something if need be.

Oh another important thing about jumping, down be afraid to use your arms for extra momentum. And also jump feet first. You dont want to jump head first because your feet wont make the jump, and then you'll have nothing to land on. If it helps, think of moving with your center/waist. So move your whole lower torso first and the rest will follow.

Another type of jumping is distance jumping. Set a starting point. You can run up to the starting point and jump, or just jump from the starting point. Try to jump as far as you can. Keep increasing the distance and soon you'll be able to jump pretty far.

After you're done with your training, stretch. Do the same stretches you did at the beginning if not more. Have a cool down period and thank the people you trained with.

This is by no means a perfect guide and I'm not very good nor aware of everything you need to do to learn parkour. But dont go watching youtube videos and trying to copy them. Maybe next time I'll post something on swords or staffs or spears or maybe bubbles. i dunno :D

Harry Potter Grande Finale

2011-07-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do this post after the last one, to calm me down.
I finally saw the last Harry Potter movie today.
There's been a lot of stuff gong around about how people are so sad that the last Harry Potter movie come out, because it means the end of it all.
Well, it may be over, but so what! It was amazing, and exciting, and funny, and sweet. Good things can't last forever without becoming... not good.
It was a good movie. But sad too. TT^TT
Oh yeah. Spoiler alert.
Who'd think that I'd have to watch Lupin, Tonks, Fred, and Bambi's mom die all in one day! (I watched Bambi when I got home).
And one thing that's always bugged me. Snape spent about 7 years watching over Harry for the sake of Lily. And Snape died thinking that Harry was going to end up dead. It's not fair that he never knows that Harry gets to live. TT^TT It's sad.
But one there were a couple things could have made the movie better.
Mainly for the epic end battle.
I liked the battle in the book more. The way it moved from everyone seeing Harry dead, to Neville killing the snake, and then everyone running inside for the final fight, still thinking Harry was dead. And then a bunch of witches and wizards from outside of Hogwarts arrive to help (I like dramatic arrivals when the situation is most dire, assuming it's done well). And Mrs. Weasley killing Bellatrix was cooler in the book. And the way Harry killed Voldemort in the book was cooler too. Although I'm just being nitpicky.
CRACK!
"GAAHH!!!"
SLAM, BANG, WHUMP!
"Take that! Broke into the wrong house, didn't you? Didn't realize you'd have to fight off a flock of dragons, did you!"
Okay. Sorry about that. Had to fight off a band of snatchers.

And while I'm at it, I stumbled across this a few days ago.

Cancer Cure

2011-07-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

I started watching this

It's like a cure for cancer, right? It has a pretty good success percentage rate, and makes tumors disappear. It has saved a lot of lives, and doesn't have all of the horrible side effects of chemotherapy.
So... why don't people know about it as an alternative treatment?
See, the thing was, these Antineoplastons were discovered by an individual, a man named Burxynski, not a big company. So, the FDA spent several YEARS trying to discredit him. They never denied that the Antineoplastons actually helped cancer patients. Instead they tried to put him put in prison for using his cure on patients, even though he had permission to do so! And even after that blew mostly over, other companies tried to change the cure he spent 20 years perfecting. And not only that, but 11 patents were filed to steal his cure!
That's not all. This would have stopped a cure that was saving hundreds of lives.
The movie is about 2 hours long, so I can't go into all the details here...
But it really disgusts me and makes me loathe the government. How can our seemingly brilliant and free America allow people to do such things? To punish someone for saving lives, and to threaten death to everyone that was saved by his medicine?
If it was a single person responsible for this... I would strangle them.
Goddamn you, government people (or at least the sleazy corrupt ones).

My Favorites

2011-07-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

I realized something last week (and as usual, didn't post about it until a few days later).
My favorite characters fall into 3 distinct categories.

The first and largest is characters that have something to do with animals.
For example:
Mewtwo
Haku (dragon!!!)
Link (especially when he turns into a wolf!)
Inuyasha (fluffy ears!)
Shippo (Fluffy tail!)
Koga (He's a wolf!)
Oki (Another wolf!)
Yoruichi (CAAT!)
Momiji (Bunny!)
Nel (Well, she turns into a cool goat thing, but she's cute when she's little when they're not going overboard with her chest... Why does Bleach obsess over that stuff?)
Sirius + Lupin
Wolverine + Nightcrawler
Does Midna count since she's not technically human?

Even my favorite characters from my own stories seem to fall into this category.
Reein
Pinyon
Naethem

Next category: Characters that make me laugh.
Ling
Waka + Kurow
Tamaki
Kenshin

And finally, characters that need hugs.
Zuko
Ed and Al
N
August Rush

Forever Post

2011-07-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

Gasp gasp.
Remember that post I started on the first of the year? One about little things you can do to help the environment? Well, I finally finished it. It took FOREVER. I just finished finalizing the organization.
Now come appreciate all my hard work.

Borrower Arrietty

2011-07-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

I finally found a version of the new Ghibli borrowers movie with subtitles! I watched it last night.
Although it's not exactly an exciting movie, it is good. It's sweet and interesting, and the backgrounds are absolutely amazing.
Here's how I found it. You can scroll down to find links to places that have it.
The version I watched had excellent image quality, though it was a bit choppy. Can't wait till it comes out in America. It was out in France ages ago! Why is America waiting so long?!?!? Stupid America.

Heyoa

2011-07-12T23:34:00.000-07:00

Yaaay yaay YAAAAAAYYY!!!
I got one of my kiriban pictures! Loook! Here she is! My dragon!

Yaay! I loves her! She's so pretty!
Oh yeah. Here's the picture Ellen drew of her a while ago.
I drew her once, but it was a rather lame picture. I need to redraw her. But I'm drawing Fang right now.

Shiny!

2011-07-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah!
Caught a shiny Krabby in the HG Safari Zone last night. Got to brag about it somewhere! I've always dreaded finding a shiny in the Safari Zone since they inevitably run away, but I was lucky. I caught her on my first try. ^-^ Oh, I forgot to name her... I always name my shinies after the thing I was doing when I caught them.
Like my shiny Trapinch was named Tahoe since we were in Tahoe.
Pelipper is named Hunter, because I caught him while I was staying at a family friend's house, and he reminded me of Hunter.
Bibarel is Gingrbread since I made a gingerbread house just before finding him (and I left the e out cause names can only be 10 characters long).
Geodude... was named nugget because he's gold. He's the exception. And the red Gyarados, which isn't, uh, very rare. I named her Peliroja, which means redhead.
I got a few other shinies from events and from the trade center, but I obviously can't name those, and I didn't catch them myself, so they're not quite as special.
So, now for Krabby. I was watching Natsume when I caught Krabby. So maybe I'll name her after one of the characters I liked. Most of the cute characters I liked were boys though. Like the fox boy, the snow bunny, and the baby dragon with antlers (Tama). Oh, the gullible boy was cute too. Maybe after the mermaid. That would be appropriate. She had a pretty design. I gotta look up her name though cause I forget it.
...
It's Sasafune.
Say hello to Sasafune, my shiny Krabby!

Kenshin and Hari

2011-07-11T20:49:00.001-07:00

Okay, time for more random stuff.
Here's Hari, from my Pokémon fanfic. He's my hyperactive wild boy. I like him though.

And then a while ago, I tried once more to draw a chibi Fern. It's hardly a masterpiece, but it's infinitely better than my first attempt... which was incredibly horrible. I drew a couple from the front, but they're not too great.

And I finished my Kenshin plushie! Didn't turn out quite right, but it's not bad.
Ahh, I still love the oro. Makes me laugh every time.

And then just because.

Kyu

2011-07-10T12:13:00.001-07:00

Ok, here's a post I've been putting off for a while. ^-^'
This is Kyu. He's a character I created a little while ago. He's caterpillar-like creature that lives on Soreina. His species is called caterpede. They will eat anything plant-related. They're about as long as a human hand. They come in many colors, but Kyu is red. Kyu and the caterpedes are gonna have a big part in one of my stories.

Some concept sketches I did during class. The side view just shows you what he looks like. But the front view is the cute one.

Here's Kyu eating a cherry. So... just pretend like it's a giant cherry. ^-^'
I stole the picture off the internet. Heheh.

I tried making a life-size sculpture of him, but it was too big. His legs and neck squished down a bit.

I really want a caterpede... It's like a pet you can keep in your pocket or on your shoulder, and you feed it leaves.

Oh Yeah

2011-07-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

As a note, for that WISP contest thing, they lowered the number accepted to 16. 16 out of 50. >_<
So, we didn't even make it to the first round. Sigh.
I'll have to try that much harder on my other contest. I think the third round is going to start soon.

Toothless

2011-07-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my Toothless plushie last week!
I loves him! He's so cuddly!
He took forever to make, but he was worth it!
Someone on Deviantart actually posted a pattern and instructions, and I am eternally greatful. ^-^
Here's the original.
There's amazing detail. She thought of everything.
I tweaked it very slightly, making the wings and tail a hair longer. And I used fabric for the eyes instead of fimo, because it always bugs me how Haku's eyes bug out (I made his out of clay).
And for the pattern, the wings really didn't need 3 separate pattern pieces. It would have been much easier to start out with one whole wing, and then just sewed the arm into it.
For some reason, his tail is twisted. I guess it has to do with how I cut or sewed the fabric.

Katani and Tyra

2011-06-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

So, I finally finished the picture of Katani and Tyra.
Tyra is being tugging at Katani's hair, and he's just looking at her like "what are you doing?"
Spent all evening coloring it. Gasp gasp.
I think Katani and Tyra turned out pretty good. Though the background could have been better. The water feels lacking. The sand is... decent at least.
I hadn't drawn Tyra before, so it was good to get her on paper. And my other picture of Katani was kinda lame. His legs were too short.
I only used the computer for one thing on this picture: to accentuate the lock of hair that Tyra's tugging at. It got a bit smudged.

There's still lots of manga pictures I want to draw, but I also want to draw a lot of my own characters.
SOOOO MUCH STUFF TO DO. How can people ever be bored?
And with 2 contests on Deviatart, and my Pokémon fanfic, and Katnai's story... plus I was planning to edit my Midna fanfic, and there's Briena's old story that's on paper that I still need to finish typing, and I wanted to edit that Under the Masks thing, which really needs help, and Ellen and I need to go over Arith and Saleera's story again...
GASP GASP.
But today I drew my picture for my second Pokéventure paragraph. I just gotta color it. And Crystal's working on the illustrations for out Wisp entry. It's due in just a couple days.
Ellen and Nicole! Post on the blog about your chapter! I don't know what you're doing! Nicole! You still owe a blog post!

Random Crafty Stuff

2011-06-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

Heheh. More stuff form meeee.
I wanted to try making a figurine, and Drifloon looked easy, so I made a Drifloon. Note to self, next time bake the head before trying to put on the details. I had to be really careful not to smoosh him up as I did the face and hair. The legs are yarn.

And Ellen has this awesome book about how to make cake and cookies and stuff out of felt. The problem is that it's in Japanese. So I got her to translate one of them for me. It looks soo delicious! Though I probably could have done better at positioning the strawberries and stuff.

And Nicole told me that the second season of Natsume was up, so I started watching it. The snow bunny was really cute. So Crystal told me to make one. (I really love the fox boy and the little kid with antlers also. ^-^ )
And then Nicole wasn't feeling too good on Thursday, so I made a snow bunny for her. A nd since it only took 20 minutes, I made one for Ellen too. And then Crystal (though I haven't had a chance to give her hers yet). And I just made one for me too. Heheh.

And then because you know you wanted to do it:

Wisp OCT

2011-06-20T22:58:00.000-07:00

So, a couple things.
A few days ago, the first round of Pokéventure ended. I earned a decent score (3 people got top scores, and most people got passing scores, and a few people got lame scores. I got passing. I 'll have to up my game). And we got our partners from the first round. I'm partnered with a Pichu.
So, Crystal got Ellen, Nicole, and I involved in an original character contest on Deviantart. You're allowed to enter as pairs, and Crystal thought that would be fun. So, we decided partners by flipping coins. I'm with Crystal. She's using her established character, Ferris, and I'm going to use a dog.
Here's the homepage for the contest.
The premise is that you wake up in a strange place and are told that you've been entered in a contest. If you can bring a coat to Death, he will return someone to life. But to do so, you must defeat or kill the other people you meet.
So, I gotta finish my character reference sheet. I'm going to do most of the writing, and Crystal's gonna illustrate. We started already, and we're trying to figure out how our characters will agree to cooperate, since they're both rather... unyielding.
I'll post links to it when we finish the first round.

A couple other random notes.
Mom took me to a Picasso exhibit last week. He's a pretty strange artist, although you certainly can't say that he's not interesting.
And after that, Ellen and I went to the county fair. It was really good this year!! There were so many cute animals! And there was an anime booth too, but I didn't get anything there, because I used my money to buy a katana sword. I've been wanting one for a while, and they actually had a booth there with some swords from anime. And Ellen knows katanas pretty well, and she said the Kenshin-based sakabato sword (the blade is on the back side of the blade curve, so you can fight without killing someone) was a good quality and good price. So I got it. And Ellen gave me some sword lessons. It's awesome! I want to learn moooooore!

Side Characters

2011-06-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Now on to actual writing stuff. I've been putting this post off forever.
Actually, in the first semester of college, Nick said something in a speech he gave during class that I've thought about a lot since. He said that side characters are often a lot more interesting than main characters.
Which is often true, mainly in the books and movies that are popular in America. The characters that support the main character are often less normal and more interesting. Somehow that doesn't seem right.
It's very hard to get me to dislike characters. Unless they're blatantly unlikeable, I usually don't dislike them. Even if they're not that interesting, or they're "too nice" or something. I know Nicole has some characters that she really loathes that weren't intended to be loathed by the author. Nicole, I don't think it's good for you to hate a fictional character so much, considering they're not characters that want to take over the world or eat someone's heart or anything weird like that.
And another thing. This speech was before Ellen and Nicole got me into a bunch of anime. This was still back when I only knew Ghibli, Pokémon, and Zelda. And in the list of my absolute favorite characters, they're pretty much from anime/manga. Anime seem to have a lot richer characters than most books or movies you get around here. There are good ones, don't get me wrong. But anime have really interesting ones. And all my favorites too. Like Midna, Ling, InuYasha, and Kenshin. Even Zuko is anime-inspired.
But Anime do a good job of making the main characters interesting. And a lot of manga show the popularity polls. Sometimes the main character is the most popular. I think that's true for Ichigo.
So, make good side characters. But don't make your main character normal.
I need to fix Katani in this respect. I haven't a very good job of portraying him so far.

Wing Sweatshirt

2011-06-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

So, I fell like all my recent posts have just been to show stuff off. I haven't done too much recently that actually relates to writing. Except I still have stuff I want to show off. ^-^
So I'll do both.
Actually, this actually has something to do with my stories.

So, a while ago I saw this awesome sweatshirt with a beautiful pair of wings on the back. I asked the person where they got it, and I looked it up. It was over $100. I didn't want to pay that much for a stupid shirt. So, as is often the case, I decided to make my own. I drew a (rather less fancy, but still nice) pair of wings and we took it to a place that can get things printed on shirts. They had to put it on a light colored shirt so it would show up (cause the guy didn't have one of the really expensive machines that lets you print it on darker fabric.
Actually, the wings are a touch low . If I ever get another one, I'll have them be higher.
But I finally have my own pair of wings! Hahahah!
And they're gold, like Fern's wings. Though I only made them one shade of gold instead of 3 shades, like hers are.
Come to think of it, Maximum Ride is the reason I got so obsessed with wings. And that's why Fern makes heavy use of her wings now.

I've been working on Katani. He's finally on his first mission (A practice mission, actually). It seems most of my writing time goes to fanfics. Once I finish a chapter, I have to start another one (cause it's been taking me longer than usual to finish them, and I keep publishing them later than I used to. Strange, considering I'm on summer break. Where does all my time actually go? Actually, to crafty stuff and chores, and jobs for mom, and stuff like that).

Just so this post isn't too confusing, I'm gonna start a new post to finish the rest of what I wanted to write.

Dragon Collection

2011-06-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

So, someone on Deviantart (actually one of the people whose kiriban I won) asked to see collections that people had. I... have a lot of collections. But I thought it'd be fun to pick one to take a picture of. So I picked dragons. I collect good dragons. This picture doesn't have all of my dragons, but it does have most of them. The others are too hard to get too, and I wasn't feeling like that tonight. Even so, it wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it'd be. Taking the dragons off of my shelves and walls wasn't too bad. But I went into one of the display cabinets in a different room. I knocked a tiny baby dragon onto the floor and Dad and I looked around for over 5 minutes before I found it buried in the carpet right beneath where I was sitting.
Then one of the legs of a little glass dragon broke off. It won't be hard to fix though.
And then the dragon with blue glass wings (the smaller one) lost its horn. That thing has lost both its horns, its wing, and then its tail last week. Even though it's metal I keep having to glue it back together. Freaking piece of garbage. It wasn't cheap either.
Most of these dragons have a story.
Of course you know I made Haku (Both the big and little ones).
There's some little dragon Pokemon.
There's Toruk (AKA Great Leonoptryx) from Avatar. Close enough to being a dragon, I suppose. I have a banshee/Ikran too, but that one was too hard to take down.
Most of the beautiful Windstone dragons (check out their website - she has AMAZING stuff) were gifts (They're really expensive). The little one that's hatching I found at a garage sale.
There's a dragon kite in the back.
The sea serpent that's behind Haku is a puppet.
Oh, this is funny. I just discovered this a couple days ago. See the dragon skull? Remember that old movie I mentioned in my last post? In one very short scene, there's a dragon skull on a stake that's the exact same as the one in my picture! Haha!

Dragon's Pen

Remembering the Miyazaki Interview

Uh, Mewtwo Commission?

Polaris and Twilight Kiriban

Sun Dragon Commission

Tour de Nerdfighteria

The Fault in Our Stars

KATANIIIIIII COMPLETE!

SOPA + PIPA

Patterns

Plushie Dump

Fang Statue

Sort of Kiriban

Katani and Arith

You Lie!

Genders

Leopard Fern

Second Post: Something totally different (Kind of)

First Post: Ten pieces of Trivia for every (named) character

Drawing

Plushie Christmas Presents

Happy New Year!

Kenshin the Warrior

Mekki

Polaris

Skyward Sword

EBO ALERT!

Kenshin

Yotsuba

FREEEEEEEE!!

EBO

Analyzing People

Reducing Footprint

Yes, that's Betsy

Introducing Betsy the Block Cow, aka Nick

Fang and Paintbrush Practice

Avatar Opening~~!!!~~

Photos

The Story of Ulysses

...

Dragons Pen!!

Speed and Distance

Ulysses

Skyward Sword

Kon and Thorn

Heyoa

Tablet and Shalia

Tablet

Final Fantasy Crisis Core

7 Billion

Happy Halloween! Mwahahahahahahahahahaah!!

Comic Practice

The Society After Society

After the Apocalypse

Get Good Teams

Doorway to Darkness

Opossum

Fern and Ben Comission

Katani Interview

Matantei Loki Ragnarok

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Little Anime Convention

Characters

Imaginary Friends

Fang

KITTTTEEEEYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ben Sketch

Recycle

Snuggle

Kenshin

Baby Mewtwo and Distances

Fairs and Repairs

Tyra and "Fern"

Midna Plushie

Dominic's Song

Pokéventure Complete

The End of the WORLD... Or at Least Summer

Building houses

Chibi Practice

Reein is adorable

Avatar Opening!!!