Kiriban

Ignore this. ^-^''

The Wind Rises

We saw the new Miyazaki movie today!
It was really good~
I could add this to the short list of romances I like.
There's something amazing about seeing a new Miyazaki movie for the first time. If this really is his last movie... That's soooo sad. It's hard to believe that there will be no more Miyazaki movies in the future...
As long as Studio Ghibli continues to be amazing though, I'll be happy.
Because these movies are good no matter how often you watch them, but the first viewing of any good movie is always like magic.

Let me reaaaaad

(I'm writing a blog post instead of writing my literature review. Heheh).
Now that I have class again, I'm reading through books much faster that I was before.
Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?
Not really. Because I have tons of time on the train, and a few very large gaps between classes. Since my laptop's too heavy to haul to school, and it's annoying having to sign up to use computers (and I don't know the password to Dad's new office computer) I generally fill most of that time by reading. And my eyes get very blurry after a couple hours of staring at little words.
I've been finishing nearly a book a week. O__O
Except for one problem. One of my teachers said I should read as many environmentlly-themed books as I can, as background for my big project.
So, instead of being able to read all the books living in my closet... I gotta go get new books from the library and read those instead, even if I don't particularly care about them.
Sigggghhhh.
Except I'm still sneaking in my own books here and there.

Maybe I should talk about books. Considering this is supposed to be a writing blog, I don't talk about books very often. Let's see.
The book I started the semester with was the second book in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. The first book was better. But the landscapes he described for Perelandra were fascinating. I'd love to go there. The first book in the series can actually be used as an example for my project, since it had a kind of evironmental theme.
I read the third book in the Bloody Jack series. It's a pretty good series. I used to think they were slow to read (I I must have been in the middle of Maximum Ride at the time). But some of the more recnet books I've read have been really truly slow. And now Bloody Jack doesn't seem slow at all. Heheh. At one point I read the book for 2 hours straight. I swear I thought I was her for about a minute after I stopped, feeling about as nervous as Jackie felt. Whoo, way to get sucked into a book. @_@ That hasnt' happened in a really long time. At least, not to that degree.
Then I read a true story about a dog named Skeezer that lived and "worked" at a facility with troubled children. There was some cool stuff in that book. I literally read the entire book in a single break between classes.
Hoot. I saw the movie a while ago, and I'll rent it again to compare it to the book. It's a fun book. Even more so since I got to see real burrowing owls in the wild. ^-^ It's the third one I've read from this author, Hiaasen. They're good for my project since they're young adult books with environmental themes. I have one more of his to read, which I'll probably do soon. It's one of the many living in my closet.
And the book I just finished on the train today, The Word for World is Forest by LeGuin. I think Avatar stole a ton of stuff from this book. I wish we got a better sense of what the furry green guys looked like. (I bet Reein's cuter XD )

False Start

So, I've been working on the beginning of my grad program story.
The beginning is reaaallly tricky. Much nastier to figure out than anything else I've written so far. I figured I'd just plow through, skimming over a bunch of stuff. Except now that's all I'm dong. Since I skimmed over so much beginning info, I haven't given myself the platform I need to jump into the rest of the story.
So, I think the only thing to do is go back and start all over again. I'll have to really focus and try to fill in the most important things as I go.
Ugh, this story is going to be soooooooooooo haaaard. TT^TT
What was I thinking, to say I'd use this as my master thesis?

I've been reading articles for class all day, so I think I'll abandon that for now and work on the beginning of my story.
(I also want to do more work on chapters 2 and 3 of Red Seeker too... but I want to get some sort of semi-solid base on this story soon).

Happy Hearts Day~

Happy Valentines day, all!
I got chocolate from my family~ Yaay chocolate! I managed to not eat it all today.
I spent the afternoon sifting meal worms from the meal they live in, so we could move them to a new home. It wouldn't have been too hard a task, except that they were all little babies.
I also sang "romantic songs" in the car, like "As Long as You're Mine," "Love is an Open Door," "In My Life," and "Come What May."
We watched the new Star Trek movie this evening after I got home from meal worm sifting. It was a disappointing movie. These new ones are annoying. The Wrath of Khan was better. I bet they had a lot of fun casting Khan though. They got to turn Sherlock into the evil genius (I am going to complain about the first episode or season 3 of Sherlock, but I'll do that later).
That movie didn't set a very nice valentines mood though, so we watched Kate and Leopold after. Just finished, actually. Aww, it's a sweet movie. ^-^
"You light up a room simply by leaving it"~

Dance Dance

Ugh. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays (usually Sundays too) are packed beginning to end and I don't get a chance to write anything or do anything besides homework. So now I can finally write this post from Monday.

I like taking some random fun classes among all my work classes. I'm always rather limited in what I can take, as to what actually fits in my schedule.
This semester, I tried to do soemthing completely different and signed up for social dance. I've only ever taken martial arts, so it's an interesting change.
It's a lot more fun than I thought it'd be.
Until mind-term, we're doing the hussle and the walts.
So far we've been rotating between partners (sometimes they have really sweaty or cold hands XP ). Eventually we'll need someone do out midterm with. I keep wondering who I'll end up with. It's hard remembering everyone's name. TT^TT And I feel really bad, because several of the guys remember my name already.
I've been trying to get over my instinct to lead. I'm getting better, as long as the guy is good at leading.
The spins are fun~

As homework for the class, we need to take 3 outside dance classes. I signed up for 3 salsa classes. I went to the first one on Monday.
Ellen's coming with me too. It was the 4th lesson in the set, so we had to catch up with everyone else. It wasn't too hard though, since it was similar to the other dances we've been learning.
I wish Nicole would have come with us. It's a lot of fun.
Nicoooole, why don't you cooooome? TT^TT

It's funny. In both classes, I'm the only fair0skinned female. Maybe only people from Asia and Mexico like dancing now?

Hey, Ellen, write a blog post about dancing! (Usually these requests fail though).

Garrett + Nase

You know, I don't think I ever put up my picture of Garrett and Nase.

Moving along with my Retriever pairs, now we have Garrett and Nase, from the Green Team. Nase is a Frilled dragon.
I kinda messed up some details on Nase. I think I can fix a few of them (like the lack of frills on her arms and legs, which I might be able to add on photoshop). Her neck's too short too.
Next I'm going to work on Tuan and Tivoli.

Realism vs. Fun

I've done many random little posts recently. I'll put some actual effort into this one. It's been sitting on my list for ages.

When reading a book or watching a movie, it's nice for there to be some level of realism. I'm not talking about magic and talking animals and sci-fi. I mean rules that the world follows, logical science, magic that has some guidelines, ex.
There are exceptions were total insanity and lack of rules is fun. But only if the creator is incredibly skilled to pull it off.
But readers will take stories with a grain of salt. If there's a few little things that don't make 100% sense, people will accept that. Those little innacuracies might be part of the deeper meaning of the piece. For example, one author said that he didn't have all of his medical information in the book completely accurate. But he did that because it helped the symbolism and such.
There's plenty of reasons why a story might not be compeltely realistic.
The whole point of fiction is that it isn't real. And just because something happens in real life doesn't mean it should happen in your book. If it doesn't add to your story, it doesn't belong there. "It happened in real life" is not an excuse to add something to your book.

If there are little things that are innacurate, peopel will notice. People always notice stuff. Heheh. That may be okay, under some circumstances.
But don't set up unbreakable rules, and then break them. And don't ignore really important points and think that the reader doesn't notice. (It's different if a character forgtets something important, and then is punished for it or comes back to it.)
There are plenty of bad books that just don't pay attention to what they're doing.
For example, I just read the last Maximum Ride book. I liked the first part of the series. But when it got to the Max, Angel, Fang, and Nevermore books, it lost the cohesiveness that it needed. The books were already pretty crazy, so that was a bad thing. They kept ignoring stuff. I swear, Total was nonexistent for 3/4 of the book. They once mentioned that they left him behind. But what about the rest? He just shows up when he's convenient?
And then when the fake Ari showed up, they magically forgot how Ari was their friend the last time they met.
That's not getting into that Dylan guy...I don't understand his purpose, except to have some "perfect guy" to mess with Max and Fang.
Sigh.

But then there's the opposite end of things. If you focus too much on making things super realistic, then a lot of the fun of a story can be lost.
A while ago Ellen, Nicole and I were teasing the movie Atlantis. Now, we love that movie. It's an awesome movie. Though there are a few things that don't hold up really strong when you think about them a lot. But it makes up for it in a lot of ways, like awesoem characters.
Same with Rise of the Guardians. There's a few things that don't make sense with thought, but it's a fun movie and it makes me happy.

In Avatar: The Last Airbender there is some of this too. Like how the Gaang are able to make friends so easily with peopel they just met. But again, it's awesome and makese up for that in many ways.
Unfortunately in Legend of Korra, they lost a lot of their fun. Part of that seems like they spent too much time working on their city and making everything as realistic as they could. (That's not the only reason, but it's part of it).

And the author Tamora Pierce has done a similar thing. I loved her earlier books. But her more recent books have been too realistic. They spend so much time on details and general stuff. There isn't as much action and fun.

Sigh.
Realistic is good. But don't let it take everything over. Especially if you have a good thing to begin with.

Out of Sight

This is too awesome not to share.



Do you get what's happening? ^-^

And then I started clicking on the other short animations in the side bar.
Maaan, there's some pretty amazing ones. It's amazing what people can do. I had to drag myself away from watching all of them.
I still think this is the best one though.
I wish it was easy to do animations. Heheh. That would be awesome to animate some scened from my stories and such.
I kinda have some vague ideas of trying to do really simple animation things to a couple songs. And I played around with scenes to do a Fern animation thign. We'll see how long it takes me to do anything with them.

Names --_--

I swear, the stupid names in my stories. Every time I think I'm done changing them I find another one that I'm not happy with.
This time it's Penny that got a name change.

And I'm still trying to find a better name for the girl who was once known as Evva. And I'm failing. I thought I had one that worked, but now it just doesn't feel right.
Maybe I'll go look again...
Okay, I've found a couple others that may work. There's one I like more than the others, though I'm not really sure how to spell it in a pronounceable way.
Ugh. I spent all night looking through naming websites (since my name list failed me) instead of doing any real work...

Dream Hugs

I had a dream about Tyra last night. Heheh.
Thank you for your help last night, Tyra. She's so good at dealing with other dragons. ^-^
My dreams let me hug my dragon~ Yaay~

I try to write down dreams if I remember them. They come in waves, and I've been having a bit of a dream wave recently.
I rarely go back and read them, but I flipped back and read through a couple of them.
And I noticed something amusing.
My subconscious must think that hugs cure all.
Because one of my recent dreams involved hugs. Two of them. I think it was farewell hugs. And then one of the dreams I wrote down a long time ago had hugs too.
Maan. I must like hugging things... I know that annoys my cat. But she's so warm and snuggly!

School Memories

I thought I'd mention a writing exercise we did when I went to visit my creative writing class. (During which I drew another comic about a wolf guy telling a girl that he isn't human).

So, start the year that you started school (grade school). And for every year of school, write down one thing that you remember. Just one sentence about an event, because otherwise it might get a bit crazy.
You can stop at the end of high school (but I didn't).
So, it helps to think of little ideas to fit into your stories. Parts of a character's past or present that add depth to the story.
There were a couple years in elementary school that I couldn't recall anything solid for. I'm sure I'd remember parts of it, but I can't associate them with a specific year. And then after I finished, I started thinking of a bunch of stuff I could have mentioned.

Maan, it's so weird having to worry about homework deadlines again. @_@ I gotta remember that I can't spend all weekend working on my own projects.