CHAOS HAIR!

So, we each started designing characters based off of a fancy-colored wig.
And I decided to do this for a character that I'd already thought of, but had not yet given an appearance (or name) to.
And I came up with Mikeya.



She is actually on the team that represents chaos. The other main character in the story is on the team that represents order. They will be a very interesting pair to write, considering how poorly they get along. ^-^ It'll be fun though. Poor guy. Mikeya will probably drive him crazy. And he has to deal with her a lot too.
I have some very distinct scenes for this story, but not much beyond a very basic plot. It takes place on Magic-Earth, and will probably be a project for the far future. Although I occasionally come up with ideas for it (Like I did when I started thinking about Mikeya. I didn't really know anything about her before this).

Landmark #2

Whoo, so I finally wrote up to the second big landmark of the story - the event that forces Ashlyn to return to her old hometown.
And I just realized something. I've finished a large part of the story already (I don't know what percentage, but maybe at least 1/3) and I haven't even mentioned the two other main characters. And I have no idea how to do that until Ashlyn meets them...
Hmm. I could do some chapters from their POV, but it doesn't seem like that would fit.
Although I think I have to have one from Lucas.
Hmmmm.

Good Stress Bad Stress

So, I recently watched a bunch of Ted Talks. I definitely recommend looking through them, because they cover a lot of fascinating topics.

One of them got me thinking. (Though I haven't seen it in a while, so I'll try to fill it in as best as I can @_@ )
The woman was talking about exercise, and getting in shape. She talked about how stress can actually prevent you from getting in shape (which probably goes back to survival - your body doesn't want to lose too much weight if there's stressful stuff going on?). And building off of that, doing exercises that are stressful might not actually help you get in shape. For example, running if running isn't fun for you.
In contrast to that, doing relaxing stuff, such as tai chi, or yoga, can help you lose weight. I guess the lack of stress lets your body release extra weight that it might otherwise store during stressful times.

Then during another Ted Talk, they talked about stress. In one study, they found that STRESS IS ONLY DANGEROUS IF YOU THINK IT IS. If you believe that stress will make your body break down and lead to health problems, then it may do exactly that.
But, if you believe that stress just gives your body an extra burst of energy during tough situations, then it's not bad for you. For example, getting pumped during a stage performance (this is one I need to work on - I still freak out for flute solos).
Belief is incredibly powerful this way. I've been reading a lot about it recently. It's pretty awesome. You should try it~

So, I started thinking about these two things. And I came up with this theory.
If you really don't like running, or some exercise, but you do it anyway to get in shape, it might not help that much (because of the bad stress).
BUT if you run because you enjoy it, or you do activities that you enjoy, you will probably not be as stressed. If you enjoy yourself while exercising, it could be better for you.
So, either do stuff you find fun, or find ways to make exercise fun.
You could go the Yowamushi Pedal route, where you sing during the hardest parts of a race.

Sometimes you see people working out with a look of intense anguish on their face. I wouldn't recommend that. It probably makes you really unexcited about working out. Like how my flute teacher told me not to squint my eyes shut when I played weird high notes.
Or you could watch the other people walking around you and laugh at the cute kids (laughing and smiling can do a lot by itself).
Enjoy the scenery.
Or if you're running, pretend like you're Pocahontas, "Eagle help my feet to fly" or Dash, or Quicksilver (Don't stomp when you run, but be light and springy on your feet).
Let yourself relax while you're jogging along, or climbing a rock wall or biking up a steep hill.

So, go out and make sure to have fun~

The Epic Farewell to Candlestick Park

So, I'm finally writing about the Paul McCartney concert in greater detail.
I kept forgetting to come back to it. XD But now I get to remember it all over again~
So, the traffic was bad and it took a long time to get there. And Dad and I were seated in the very farthest back and highest row. But the wall gave us a wind buffer. Heheh. And we had a good view of the rest of the stadium. I took videos of a lot of the concert.
The concert started late. They had electric banners playing around the stage, and music too. Every time a song faded, people cheered, hoping that Paul was about to come out. But Paul finally entered with a few other people for his band. They started out with Eight Days a Week.



I recognized a lot of the songs, but there were some he wrote after the Beatles that I didn't know as much. Ones I knew were Paperback Writer, I love Her, Blackbird, ex. For Paperback Writer, he used the guitar that he used during the original album.
After a while, Dad and I went out to get nachos. And beyond the parking lot was a solid line of cars, stuck on the road and trying to park. Apparently most of them never even made it in (because a bunch of people camped out in the parking lot, to listen to the show outside even though they didn't have tickets. So there wasn't enough parking room for everyone who had actually paid for tickets). I'm so glad we got there really early.
(There was a lot of smoking - and I don't mean tobacco, and drinking too probably. But everyone inside the stadium was really happy).



Dad and I moved a little closer for a while, until someone came and took the seats we were "borrowing."
Lady Madonna, All Together Now, Lovely Rita Meter Maid, All the Lonely People, Benefit of Mr. Kite.
He got out a Ukulele and played Something.
Everyone started singing Ob La Di-Ob La Da. Dad did too. He enjoyed himself a lot. So did I, of course.
Before playing Back in the USSR, he talked about how they were the first rock band that was allowed to perform in Russia. And how they got to meet some of the Russin government.
For Let It Be, everyone got out their phones and waved them overhead.
Live and Let Die was awesome. They shot fireworks and fireballs out of the stage. Everyone went wild. That was probably my favorite part of the concert.
The stage was so smoky after. Heheh.



And of course everyone sang along with Hey Jude. There were a lot of happy people repeating the "Na na na nanananaaaa Hey Juuude~"
That was theoretically the end of the concert.
Then came the enccores. For the first one, they sang Day Tripper.
Then they left again. And came back for a second encore. And they played Yesterday. Paul tried to leave again, but they didn't let him. He said that we all had to go home eventually. And they did their final songs and departded for the night.

Amazingly Dad and I managed to escape the worst of the exiting traffic. We were both so pumped though. It was awesome.

For lack of a better title

Hm... well it's been a while since I've posted on here. But as per usual, I feel like I must post at least once every now and again. Usually I have nothing to talk about, but I figured that the blog would be a good place to discuss story things.

I've been trying to inhabit the mindspace of a character -specifically Ginger. Here's what I've got so far.

_________________________________________________________

It’s hard knowing I’ll never be the favorite. 

I’ve always known that, but there are times when it hits me harder than most.  Knowing the things I say don’t get through no matter how many times I say it; it’s hard. Trying every day to be something that I’m just not and hoping that maybe it might make me a little better is even harder. 

What I do, what I say, what I think and feel, whenever it’s wrong there’s always someone there to witness it. My efforts go unnoticed, my triumphs are brushed aside or others take the credit. And my failures are enshrined in the temple of things not to do. 

But those very same triumphs are given high praise, and the very same failures are swept away whenever their someone else's. 

I’m capable. I am. I know I am. Others tell me so. I can see it for myself. I am capable. 

But others tell me it’s a lie. And I believe them. I know it's not true, but I believe them. It's easy to believe them. It’s hard to fight it. 

It drains my energy to convince myself that I can do it. It’s exhausting to remind people who I am. That I am me and not my sister. It’s been a long and hard fight every day of my life. And I’m getting tired of it.

 _________________________________________________________

That was my interpretation of Ginger, concerning palace life and always being one-upped by her younger sister. Personally, I think her view of herself and those around her has the potential to be really skewed. It seems like she's making herself the victim, or that she is in fact not very capable even though she thinks she is. 

I suppose you could take her word on the way the castle people treat her, but it seems very one-sided since it's just the one character's point of view. Maybe I need more background info on her to make a convincing map of her thought process. That or she's just really depressed at this particular moment.

Thoughts?

Now I have to get Saleera down on paper.

Today's Reading

So, during my creative writing class (at my main college) we did a workshop with my story today. It was our first workshop, and another guy went too.
It seems that every time I submit a piece to this class (this is the same class I audited a few semesters ago) there is some big misunderstanding that takes up all of the comments. So people are basically just saying everything that I know already...
For example, when I turned in my story about the shadow boy a couple years ago, I accidentally used the word "medieval" instead of "fantasy" during my introduction paragraph (it wasn't part of the story, but just a brief explanation about something that I'd pasted at the beginning of my pages. Half of the comments in class were about how this didn't seem like a medieval world. to the point where the teacher said that people should stop mentioning it over and over... And even more of the written comments talked about it.
Then I turned in my very first pilot chapter of my Ashes story that semester. Since my last description paragraph didn't go too well, I didn't include one this time. And thus I got a million questions about how the disaster occurred, and that this seemed like it was part of something bigger.
I could have negated all of that by saying that this way part of a much bigger story, and that a lack of fuel an energy created the disaster.

So this time I tried to do the explanation paragraph well.
I wrote a piece from another story I have planned. It basically takes one of the main characters and retells the beginning of the story through his POV. Since we were doing a first person story, I thought it would be fun to experiment with his voice and view of things. It parallels the beginning, but is not the entire beginning. And indeed, most people liked his voice and character and everything.
In my explanation paragraph, I mentioned that it was part of a larger story. Except everyone took that to mean that this must be the first chapter of the story. So everyone thought that the narrator was going to change, and that seemed odd. Or they thought that more could be done to set up the beginning of the story.
Except all of those details will be covered in the stupid longer version... Which is why I left out those details. Because I don't want to have everything repeated (Though admittedly that probably wasn't the best idea, regarding this class).
There were only a couple comments that I actually found helpful. Because all the rest of the discussion was about stuff I knew.
Ugh. I should stop submitting pieces based off of other stuff. But those are the only short stories I can think of... all my other ideas are too long. TT^TT

And then I was reading all the comments on the train home. It was basically the same stuff we talked about in class.
But this one guy said that my story was bad because it sounded like it was being told by a kid, and it jumped around.
Well... yeah. It IS told by a kid. And it's SUPPOSED to jump around, because it's told by a kid. Did you even read more than half of it?
Sigh.

I think I know what I want to turn in for my second story. I wonder if I'll run into these same problems though...
Since we're discouraged from talking during the workshop it makes things hard to explain.

Rishi and Menth

I finally finished my lastt Retriever pair!

Rishi and his Earth dragon, Menth.

Whoo, that took a very long time. I'm not quite done though, because I still want to draw the two main teachers with their dragons.

A Still Pond

This is about one of the activities we did in that nature program I went to over the summer.

The first evening, our group went down to the Lotus Lake, and we all sat on the bank with some distance between us. We each had seven pebbles in our hands. Our orders were to focus on the lake. And every time we found our mind wandering, we threw a pebble into the water. The ripples are supposed to symbolize the disturbance in our thoughts.

(This is the pond, near where we were sitting. The really big lotuses were across the lake from us).

Admittedly, I'm not sure if I had the right idea. I did focus on the lake the whole time. I looked at the water, the minnows, the frogs, the lotus flowers, the grass, the bug shells clinging to the grass, and so on. I looked close enough that everything me was fascinating. So, my mind wasn't exactly still, but it didn't go off topic. And I did think about the rocks in my hand a few times, because it's hard to not think of something you're holding. I'm not actually sure if that counted, since the pebbles were from the lake bank.
I'm not positive, but I think I may have been the only person in the group to have not lost any stones. One person seemed surprised that anyone could have any stones left.

In one of Joseph Cornell (Bharat)'s books, they talked about some teachers who were part of a similar program. They were told to look at a tree and raise their hands if their mind strayed. Within a matter of seconds, all of their hands were up.

It's kind of strange how our society seems to make it so difficult for us to focus on things. We can't stay concentrated on what's in front of us without worrying about homework, a meeting, lunch, or a TV show.
And like I said, my mind is hardly calm. My thoughts are all over the place most of the time. I still rather suck at meditating. XP
And I doodle during class a lot. If I didn't have an entire lake to visually explore, I probably wouldn't have kept my stones for very long.
But quieting our mind can really help to let us find solutions to a lot of problems. And get rid of stress and anxiety and such. That's one reason why meditation is supposed to be so helpful. Though for me, meditation just helped me improve my posture a lot...

Beauty and the Beast

I've been watching through some of the Disney Movies recently, and picking out some animals to practice sketching. I want to practice poses and cartoonish stuff. I'm going in alphabetical order, to help me keep track, and I just did Beauty and the Beast.
So, Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite Disney musicals (Along with Lion King and Pocahontas).
I never had a really strong reason as to why Beauty and the Beast was up there. Except that I knew I liked it. And unsurprisingly, I like Beast a lot. Animal people!! Aren't I predictable?

I wish he had an actual name though...
And it's always bugged me how all those happy people during the "Bonjour" song become so evil at the end...
And I just discovered! That big waltz scene during "Beauty and the Beast" isn't a waltz. Because the music isn't in 3/4 time. Therefore it's not a real walts. They seem to change dances a lot in movies. Like that fake tango you see all over.
Anyway, I was debating about whether or not to do a sketch of Beast, since he's less an animal and more a person, so I figured I'd do a bigger drawing of him eventually.
But I wasn't sure if I would do that bigger drawing, so I decided to do a quick sketch (although now I think maybe I should do a bigger drawing...).
It was hard finding a pose I wanted to draw him in, and I kept going over a couple scenes in slow mo to find a shot I liked. For example, the scene where he's waiting for Belle to come to dinner, and she doesn't so he gets mad and charges upstairs.
And I really started noticing the animation of how he moved. Aaaah! he's such a dog! It's awesome! I never noticed the animation of that scene before, until I went slowly. And I'm also probably desensitized to it since I've seen it so many times.
So, now for some reason I like Beast even more.
And I realized that I would probably make a very horrible "Belle" roll. For one good point, he probably wouldn't scare me with all his roaring. But I wouldn't want him to change back into a human (although I love that transformation scene). Although I guess that' not entirely true. I'd want him to change back into a human if he really wanted to. XP I'm so weird, getting sad because he loses his fur and his tail.
When I was little, was always a bit weirded out by his human form. I like it more now though.

Actually, I've been developing my own version of Beauty and the Beast. Until recently I only had a vague idea of it. But I got some more ideas recently.
I want to go more of the Frozen/Maleficent/Once Upon a Time Route, regarding the "love breaks a curse." It's not romantic love that breaks the curse. Except I probably won't make it as sweet as the aforementioned movies. Because the "Beast" will probably really be in love with the girl. But the girl just loves this beast that she's been with for a while, who watches over her. Poor Beast.
I would say that I don't have very happy romances (Especially with my star character), except I've had this scene in my head for a few days now - where Kazuhi proposes to Fei Yen. I really need to write that. If I pull it off, it will be the only decent romantic thing I've ever written. XP

The Black Rabbit

Since I love Watership Down (book and movie) I drew this.

Watership Down is the reason I got Alaska in the first place.

I think my new drawing pencil is magic though. Ever since I started my new sketchbook (this is the first page of it) I feel a lot better at drawing. XP