Edit:

Okay, I think I've slipped into something I can actually write about. Hopefully this will last through the rest of the story XD

Damn, this is so hard to write!
I suck at romances. Even though this isn't an actual romance. So far I've just been writing out a vague account of this romance-ish part, with the intent to fill it out later. Since I'll have a basic skeleton, I should be able to fill it in as time passes.
But what I have now still kinda feels like cheating XD

Usually when I'm writing a story, I won't know a lot of the details until I sit down and am writing. But this is eluding me almost entirely.
It's never been this bad XD

Eeeeh, I thought it would be okay since this isn't a real romance. But it seems I suck at anything that even approaches it @_@

Shiny Week

Random fun update.
A couple weeks ago, I was playing Pokémon Sun, and a blue Pinsir appeared in my Poké Pelago.


I was excited. Shiny Pinsir! Awesome! I hadn't run into a shiny on Poké Pelago yet. Although I had been dreading it, because only half of those Pokémon decide to stay.
And this guy was gone the next day, despite my attempts to bribe him into staying.
I wasn't going to accept this. What kind of evil game shows you a shiny, makes you drool over it, and then lets it leave without ever giving you a chance to keep it? (I hear it's decided by random number generator whether they go or stay).
So I went to my Alpha Sapphire game and cracked out my Poké Radar. I've had luck with that before (to hunt down a shiny Girafarig, which I'd lost way back in the Gold and Silver games). While I took a break to watch a movie, I hunted Pinsir in the Safari Zone. And by the second day, I'd found my blue beetle.

I named him Buck, because I'd stopped at Starbucks earlier that day XD

Less than a week later, I was exploring a mirage spot on Omega Ruby. The Poké Radar reacted. I almost always follow those, since there's a higher chance of a shiny.
A shiny Petilil popped out of the grass.
I'd just set the game down to grab something. I heard that telltale flash and dashed back to the game. I'm glad I did, because her shiny colors aren't too different than her normal colors. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't heard it.
I evolved her, and now she's part of my Nuzlocke team XD


Her name is Rain. Not because it was raining, but because I was thinking of geraniums (ran-rain) which grow at my Grandma's house. I was at her house earlier that day.

The very next day (the day before Thanksgiving), I was playing Ultra Sun in the car.
And a shiny Igglybuff popped out of the grass. My first shiny in any of the Sun and Moon games.
She's a Jigglypuff now, and I'll evolve her into a Wigglytuff as soon as I've progressed enough to get a Moon Stone.


Her name is Moon, after the town we'd just passed through. It's a very appropriate name for the round gal.

Family Movie Time

Watching a movie or series with my parents is incredibly different than watching something with friends.

For example, I played a bit of Steven Universe for Dad a while ago. And he decided he wanted to watch the series with me. He had a lot of fun watching it. But he had no grasp of story and character progress (admittedly the overall plot is rather slow through the series, but he generally sucks at following plots).
He also doesn't notice anything that happens under the surface. For this example, I'll use The Last Unicorn, which we just watched a couple days ago. I grew up with that movie, and he's seen it a couple dozen times (he loves it too). (SPOILERS) But a couple days ago, I asked if he know why the last unicorn was able to stand up to the red bull, when hundreds of other unicorns failed to do so. He didn't know. So I explained how she was the first unicorn to ever know what love was, and that gave her what she needed to fight back. And he goes "How do you know this stuff?"
(Edit - I told mom the thing about the unicorn's love leading her to victory, and she said she'd never realized that either XP )


Mom is different. I'm usually pretty good about figuring out what she'll like, but her tastes fly all over the place. She's good at following plots and such. But she also doesn't seem to grasp what kind of stuff I'd like.
She asked me if I wanted to listen to a book on tape she had. I asked if I'd like it. She said she didn't know.
It ended up being very bland, and I had zero interest in it XD

(Neither of them are great at critiquing my story stuff. Heh)

Also, a funny side note. My cousin said that no matter how many times she sees a movie, the next time she's watching it it will be like a new movie all over again. Because she doesn't remember what they're about XD

I guess a viewing experience is different with every person.
That's not even getting into movie theaters (like when the Crowd started Chanting "YODA, YODA!" The very first time he pulled out a lightsaber in episode 2. Or when a little girl started crying during Zootopia, when Nick gets shot with the savage stuff. Or when everyone was weeping during Les Miserables).


And it's a beautiful thing when you watch a friend see a big plot twist for the first time.

Can't Help Falling In Love

It really snuck up on me, but I've finally reached the part of Evva's story where "someone" falls in love.

I've tried to drop hints that it was starting to happen, but now I actually have to show it getting a lot stronger.
The problem is I've never been in a relationship. And I have no idea how to write someone falling in love. @_@

Well, this is a first draft. I'll just have to do my best, but also keep it simple. In later drafts, I'll have a better idea of pacing and timeline, and I can fix it up.

Environmental Plots: Over-Harvesting

Our next environmental plots post is over-harvesting.
This can refer to any way that humans take too many of the Earth's natural resources.

First of all, let's talk about hunting.
There have been some impressive accounts of humans hunting species to extinction. For example, flocks of passenger pigeons used to be so massive that they darkened the sky from horizon to horizon. And yet today, there isn't a single one left. Humans killed all of them.

Here's a quick topic to think about. A keystone species is a species that is essential to its habitat. If that species disappears, the entire area will be drastically changed. For example, when sea otters almost disappeared along the California coast, it dramatically changed the kelp forests. Otters eat sea urchins. When otters disappeared, sea urchins multiplied like crazy and ate all of the kelp. No kelp, no kelp forests.


Sometimes people hunt for meat. Sometimes they hunt for trophies. And sometimes it's for some medicinal property that may or may not actually be effective.
If people hunt for meat, that is understandable. But even that can be damaging depending on what animals people are hunting, how they hunt, and how many people are hunting.

Humans can act as predators, but we don't usually hunt in a way that promotes natural selection. A hunter who's going out to shoot a buck usually wants the biggest stag with the fanciest horns. Whereas a mountain lion will go after the sicker looking animals. So, humans are more likely to kill off the biggest and strongest animals, which can lead to an imbalance in a species.
Some hunting is legal. But when people hunt animals that are protected, or they hunt in areas where no hunting is allowed, it's called poaching. There is little danger of humans hunting deer to extinction (at least at current rates). But when it comes to elephants or rhinos or any other rare species, every individual that's killed puts the species at greater risk. Large animals like elephants reproduce very slowly. It's harder for them to bounce back when their numbers are low.
And a species that has a low population also has a lower genetic diversity. This means that if a disease comes along, they are less likely to have individuals that are resistant to it.
Despite measures to protect endangered species, people still kill elephants to make ivory carvings, or rhinos to grind up the horn into so-called medicine. These are only a couple examples.
Eastern medicine is especially notorious for this, because many of these "medicines" call for parts of rare animals. Many animals are being pushed to the brink of extinction for fake medicines.
Some animals, like bears whose bile is prized for medicinal reasons, are kept alive so their internal fluids can be harvested through tubes. I don't know if that's better or worse than being killed outright, but it's terrible either way.


Poachers can be extremely dangerous and have been known to kill rangers.
But on the positive side, people that used to be poachers can actually turn around and become rangers. Some of the best rangers are poachers, because they understand how poachers think.
Most people don't poach because they hate animals and want them to all disappear. They're just trying to provide for their families. If they're given a different way to do that, they won't have to poach anymore.
Helping local communities support themselves is an excellent way of protecting the wildlife that live around them.
Many native people used to live in perfect balance with nature until "modern humans" screwed everything up for them.

A different kind of poaching doesn't have to do with killing animals, but with capturing them. There is a fierce exotic pet trade in some parts of the world. It exists in plenty areas of the united states. A lot of states don't really have restrictions on owning something like a lion. Some of them don't even have many guidelines for it (It's bad in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas, for example).
It's one thing if a person can provide for the full needs of an adult lion throughout its entire life. Including space and enrichment. But most zoos don't even do that, let alone individual owners.
When animals are caught from the wild, it is usually very destructive and inhumane. About 90% of wild caught pets die before they are even sold. And then many more die because people have no idea how to care for them.

Here's a different one. Buddhists will sometimes buy and release animals. The idea is of course to save an animal from captivity or consumption. But this has become horribly twisted in some places.
There are people that go out and catch wild animals specifically to sell to people who will release them again. And many of those animals are harmed or killed in the process. Some animals are simply caught again once they've been set free.
And many of these animals are set free in places that they can't survive in, so they die soon after their "release."
And in some cases, released animals can take over and destroy the habitat.

It's not just animals that suffer from poaching. People will strip moss and lichen from wet forests, to sell as decorations.
And they will hack up ancient redwood trees to harvest the beautiful knotted bruls that grow on the trunks.

Do you think that ancient tree will survive something like this?

War is another terrible thing for wildlife. For example, some parts of Africa are hit hard by multiple civil wars. And the armies will go out and kill all of the wildlife to feed their soldiers. War can spell doom for wildlife preserves.


Then of course there's deforestation, which leads to countless other problems. Trees regulate our climate. They remove carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) from the air and store it in their wood and leaves. They also pull water up through their trunks and out through their leaves, which adds moisture to the air. When we cut down huge stretches of forests, we are making a drier climate with more carbon dioxide.

We are still clearing massive amounts of rain forest every day. A lot of it is to make way for farmland. And rainforests have very poor soil, which means they are terrible for growing crops.

What is there to do?
After all, I don't think you're out there chopping down trees or poaching animals.
For this, it's very important that we're aware of where our products come from. Try not to buy stuff with palm oil, which is a major crop that is planted where there used to be rain forest.
The problem is these ingredients are in everything, and they go by many different names It's very difficult to avoid them, and it takes some research. Some markets try to offer products that avoid harmful products like palm oil.
Palm oil is one of many things to avoid. I won't list all of those here though. That will require more research than I have time for at the moment.


What stories have used the theme of over-harvesting? (Or related topics I've discussed)
Well, this is a popular topic.

Princess Mononoke
Fern Gully
Bambi
Avatar
The Lorax
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
The Rescuers Down Under
The Tiger Rising, by DiCamillo
The Jungle Book, by Kipling (specifically the Kotik story)
The Two Towers, by Tolkein
Endangered, by Schrefer


How would you use this theme in a book?
There are plenty of examples to draw from.
There are plenty of stories about deforestation, like Princess Mononoke, Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Fern Gully, and The Lorax. They usually end up being a fight between people who want to cut down trees, and people that want to protect trees. Princess Mononoke is one of the few that brings out the complexities of the battle. It's satisfying to have evil people want to destroy nature, but that's not usually how it works in real life.
Movies like The Rescuers Down Under take on poaching.

The Tiger Rising looks at people who keep big animals, like tigers. Spoilers: Most people who want a pet tiger just want to look macho, and they have no business taking care of an animals like that.
Bambi, of course, is one of the iconic works against hunting. Honestly, I don't see hunting as a bad thing. At least, no worse than killing a cow for a hamburger. If people are against hunting deer, then they should also be against raising animals for meat (brief digression - in my opinion there's nothing wrong with eating some meat, since it does have some important nutrients. The problem is that we eat way too much meat).
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home takes on the extreme end of over-harvesting: Extinction. In this movie, it turns out that humpback whales have some friends that live off-planet. So when humpback whales go extinct, those off-planet friends bring havoc to the Earth.
What other ideas can you come up with?

I Don't Want to Murder My Darlings @_@

Oh heck, I just realized something as I was writing Evva's story.
There's a character that I really love. But I just noticed that if he were gone, it wouldn't really affect the story.
Which puts me at a crossroads. I could just cut him out right now before I get any farther on the story. Or I could keep writing and hope that I'll find a way to make him essential (beyond some symbolic stuff about relationships). But then what if I end up having to delete him anyway? @_@
And though I love this character, he's kind of hard for me to write. Maybe that's why he seems kind of buried.

I've been writing Evva's story again. I really need a break from editing Katani, though I do need to go through it at least once more to address a couple final things (things that are important throughout the entire book, and will be complicated to fix).
I'd been away from Evva's story for so long that I'd lost track of what I'd done and where I was going. Not entirely, but enough that it was tricky to pick up the threads.


I'm still flailing a bit, but I'm getting steadier each time I write.

Mailman

Every now and then I help my dad deliver neighborhood watch flyers around the block.
It gives me a surge of pity for the poor mailmen in the world.



There's only a single house on my block that has a mailbox out near the street. Which I understand, since people don't want to walk out to the sidewalk to get their mail. Though it means a lot of extra walking for the mailmen.
There are three or four houses in a row where the mailbox is at the top of a steep flight of steps.
And there are a couple houses where the mailbox is very well hidden. A couple houses don't even seem to have mailboxes at all.

Plus every time I deliver the fliers I feel super awkward. Whenever a stranger comes up to my door, I want them to go away since they're usually trying to sell something. I don't like being the stranger that comes to the door XD


Also, I freaking stabbed my hand this morning with a screwdriver. Which did a lot more damage than I would have expected, considering I wasn't trying to use it as a weapon. I just wanted to take the blade off a pencil sharpener in an attempt to fix it @_@
The dangers of fixing old stuff instead of getting new stuff.

It huuurts! And usually these kinds of things don't bother me. But the thought of grinding a screwdriver into my knuckle bone has me rather freaked out at the moment. I'll feel better when I wake up and it's not infected, I think. And hopefully tomorrow I'll actually be able to form a fist. Hopefully.

Sticking Around

It makes me disproportionately happy to find that some of my old fanfic followers are happy to see me post a new fanfic XD

Part 6

Well, I finally did it. I've been thinking about it for months. Maybe more, actually.
Over the past week, I threw together the first chapter of my next Pokémon fanfic.
I don't have too many ideas for this one, but I'll just roll with whatever comes up.
It'll probably go pretty slowly too. This is a very low priority project. Mostly just a break from tedious editing XP
Anyway, it was amazingly fun to write. I wonder if any old readers will show up to look at it XD

Losing Names

I spent quite a bit of time finding names for all of the characters in Katani's story. I went through websites that had names from different countries, as well as their meanings. And when I found a name that worked for the character, I wrote it down on my character chart.

The problem is, I didn't always write down where the name was from, or what it meant.
So, once of my recent projects was to try to dig up the origins and meanings of the names I chose.
The problem is, some of the names in my story are also words that I make up (and claim that those made-up names are local to their world, not necessarily our world). Katani himself is an excellent example of a name I made up.

While I did manage to re-discover a lot of the names I'd chosen, I don't think I managed to get all of them.
Heh.
So, I guess the moral of this story is to keep records as you go, if it's something that could have meaning for your story.