The Character Behind the Character

I've kind of known this for a while, but today was the first time I'd really thought about it.
I've mentioned before that Hugh Jackman is my favorite actor, because when you see the behind the scenes footage, he seems like an awesome guy.
And at one point I was wondering if Idina Menzel might be my favorite actress (because I love her voice). But I was never able to find enough behind-the-scenes footage to really decide.
Perhaps some day I will.

I recently re-watched some episodes of Once upon a Time, season 2 because I was looking for a couple specific scenes.
Captain Hook isn't an ally in season 2, though he does become one. I like him because he's funny (I just realized this, but he's a bit like Tamaki, with the "aren't I fabulous" thing).
The actor for Hook had an interview (ooh, I actually found it):


I'll admit right off the bat that I like accents. Especially Irish accents, since you don't seem to hear them that often (David Tennant has one - my favorite Doctor so far).
But I also decided that I liked the actor for Hook.
And when I decided that, I suddenly liked Captain Hook better too.


Apparently the people who act out characters influence how much I like the character. And I don't mean their acting skill, but what they seem to be like in real life.
Luckily the reverse hasn't happened yet. I don't know of any actor who's destroyed a character for me. Though that may be because I'd detach a loved character from a nasty actor... it's not the character's fault if they get stuck with a mean actor. TT^TT

Waiting Game

Still working on re-writing my story.
At this point, I can only go so far. I keep waiting on my teachers to get me more information about what to do next. I never go full comments from any of them. I'm just going by what I heard from the meeting. So that's one thing I'm waiting on (One thing from 3 different people).
I've been trying to plan my exams for two weeks now. I want to have them this week, but I've gotten no word about it.
Which is frustrating. I keep sending out emails, tryign to figure out who knows what and if it will be ready. It's hard to keep everyone in communication.

I have a lot of other homework this week too.
One of my homework assignments this week is a literary analysis essay.
Remember how much I used to hate those? Well, this time I have a good book to review. I'm doing Thirteen Reasons Why. It shouldn't be too bad. I've got the intro mostly done, and I have a bunch of ideas for the rest of it.
It's amazing how much difference there is about writing a literature analysis between something you hate and soethign you enjoy. Especially when you ocassionally pick apart books/movies/anime you like, to see what makes it tick. Or when you write about them on a blog.

Not in a Sharing Mood

I've been taking this one creative writing class for several semesters. I've made several friends there, and run across a couple old friends too. This is the fifth full semester I've gone.
But this is the first time that I haven't known what to turn in.
I have plenty of stuff I could turn in, actually. What I really should turn in are chapters of my Ashes story, so I can get more feedback from my grad project.
Except I don't really want to turn in the next chapter...
There are a few reasons.
First of all, since the last chapter, it is a dramatic shift in the story (the start of part two - there are three distinct parts). And it's a part that I've always thought might be the most touchy.
For example, one of my friends in the class told me she liked my writing, but that she hated Ashlyn. Which I can understand, because Ashlyn's "job," though very important, affects a lot of people. But it made me even more reluctant to turn in the next chapter. (I wonder, if she had seen Princess Mononoke if she would still hate Ashlyn...)
Plus the other chapters I've read have been over the past two semesters. Now there are a lot of new students. Only a fraction of the class has read the other chapters of my story. So they have no context for what's going on.

I think despite my attempts to explain, some people can't understand the angle I'm getting at.
"Just let people cut down the trees! Sheesh!"
"Yeah.... and then if everyone did that, there wouldn't be anything left and everyone would die. Is that really a solution?"

I knew from the beginning that this book would be touchy. But I've been working really hard to make it relatable. I guess that's just not possible for some people.
So, I don't know what to do. Should I just turn in the next chapter? Should I turn in something else? (I have plenty of stuff, but I'm not certain about turning any of that in either).
Any suggestions?

Flop

I tried to have a garage sale today.
It's rotten timing for it, but I'd signed up for a neighborhood garage sale this weekend before I knew I'd be on a constant grind to finish my graduate project.
(I'm currently trying to get three other people on the same page for what to do with my exams, which is proving quite a bit more stressful than I imagined, in more than one way).

So, the last thing I did that was like a garage sale was the Fanime swap meet. That went very well. While I have plenty of stuff (too much stuff, actually) for a swap meet, apparently I don't have enough for a garage sale. It was still a ton of stuff, but I guess it wasn't nearly as much as the piles of crud other people try to get rid of. And though my prices were not high, I could tell that a lot of people thought they were. And sometimes they were pretty obvious about it.
Not that many people even showed up. I think someone ripped most of my signs down... What kind of jerk does that? They were up less than a day! And on nice paper, and I planned the layout of them and everything.

When I was little, I tried to do these embarrassingly bad garage sales. This one was better than that. But that's not saying much. I don't think it was worth it. I only got rid of a few things. I closed early, and I don't think I'll do another garage sale.
Bleh.

Back to work (work that's actually important).

The Marvels of Procrastination

It's amazing how much you can get done when you're procrastinating.
Ooh, I'd better finish reading my homework. Gotta write a blog post. I should sort that out. Aah, I can get rid of some of this stuff.
Hey, if I do all this stuff, then it will be out of the way when I actually start working.
But does the list of stuff to do never end?
Can you guess what I'm procrastinating on?
(Not to say that I haven't started, but I do have a helluvalot to do...)

Young Adult Fiction

So I'll talk about one of my classes this semester.
Young Adult Fiction. For this class, we read a full book every week or every two weeks. During class, we discuss the readings and have 20 minutes of silent writing. We also have a blog to post on for homework.
The first two books were interesting. While I didn't fully love them, I liked them, especially certain parts of them (I liked them more than most of stuff I had to read in high school, at least). But I really liked the third one. It's called Thirteen Reasons Why. I just finished reading it today.
The format was fascinating. The author did a really great job of blending the tapes into reality. How they alternated the contents of the tapes with the thoughts they triggered in Clay. And it really made you think about how things that seem so pointless to you can have a deep effect on others.
I kind of wish Clay's role in the tapes was more intense. Though I guess I'm not really disappointed about it. There was plenty of suspense as it was.
I know I've heard of this book before. Did they make a movie of it? I'll have to check. Either way, I added it to the list of books that I think are worth reading.

In the Next Month

Belated post. XP
Mostly I've been trying to gather the energy to write it.
On Wednesday, I met with my two main advisers, to figure out what I'll need to do to graduate this semester.
Here's the scoop.

By the second week of October, I need to:
1. Complete my graduate exams, which other students don't have to do, but I do because I'm doing a project instead of a research paper.
2. Address all the comments of my teachers on my project so they'll sign off on it. In addition to my grad story, I also need to review environmental literature in a separate paper.
3. And finally last of all, plan and do my thesis defense. (It's not a thesis, but I still need to talk about my genre and give a reading as a final presentation).

So, there are a couple things which will be most frustrating.
1. The main thing they want me to change about my Ashes story so far is that they want me to pack it full of environmental facts and descriptions. I've always learned to not do info-dumps, but I guess I'll have to ignore that temporarily. Plus, all of that will make my story a lot less of a young-adult book. Teenagers aren't usually going to be interested in reading big hunks of scientific info. That's something I see in adult environmental fiction, but not YA environmental fiction.
2. There's one book in particular that one of my teachers wants me to read (He brought it up during the meeting, and in a separate email this evening, so I guess he's serious about it). It's called The Road, and he says that it's like my story. Now I've seen the movie. And I hated it.
I'm not one to jump to conclusions, but I'm 95% sure I'll hate the book even more than the movie. I haven't seen very many similarities to my Ashes story. No more than a lot of other books, at least. And it's very very different than what I'm trying to do. I actually want to have some positive stuff in my story, and some hope. There doesn't seem to be any of that in The Road.
(I might not feel this strongly about The Road usually, but I am currently reading two books which I thought would be really helpful for my project, and I thought I'd like them because I liked another book by the same author. But not so. Both of these books are completely dark and depressing and gruesome too...)

(I seem to have gotten into lists today. I don't know why).

Anyway, the next month will have me very busy. Tomorrow I will have to devote mostly to it.
Wish me luck!

But I also have some really cool news! I'll write about it when I have more to show you~

Huang and Kakao

Here's the next installment of my Retriever series.
Katani's mentor Bai Huang, and the Sun dragon Kakao.



This was going to be the last dragon/human pair of my series (for Katanis's story at least). But I thought of one more. I've drawn it alread. I just need to color it (She doesnt' actually get a dragon in the story, but she does after it's over). And then once I do her, I want to draw all of the Betas. I'd like to do a group picture, but maybe I'll draw them separately and use photoshop to put them all together.
I might draw a couple of the other dragons too. Like Tyra's Storm dragon teacher. And the other Imperial Loong who lives at the palace.

Specials

I just finished reading the third book of the Uglies series.
It wasn't quite as exciting as the other two, but it still had good stuff in it.
I'm amazed at how the author puts Tally in three totally different mindsets through the books, and has you empathize with each one of them.

The ending got me on this one, because Tally ended up choosing exactly the same path as Ashlyn from my grad story. Wow.
I guess I'm on the same page as Scott Westerfeld.
In a couple weeks, I'm going to do a book presentation on Uglies, for my young adult fiction class. That should be fun~
So, this book I actually got to read as part of my homework. (I wonder how the 4th book will be. It's got a separate story and characters, but is in the same world, so that'll be cool to see).
I still have to read another entire book by Wednesday though...

Classes

I haven't posted about my classes this semester.
There are two main ones - young adult fiction, and science fiction and fantasy.
Since my grad project is a young adult sci-fi, I thought these would be helpful.

And these classes mean that I have a ton of reading... This week I need to read 1 1/2 full books. Plus I should technically be reading the full length of a third book, though it's a lot longer than it looks, so I'm not sure how far I'll get.
And there's another extra book I need to finish pretty soon.

I'll write more about my classes after I've gone through more of the class meetings.
I'm also in band, and my creative writing class. And I have a class that gives me credit for working on my project.
I've been crazy busy so far. I don't know if it will calm down at all, or if it will continue like this.
I hope I can finish this semester.