Rangers

There's a very important occupation I use in my stories.
Rangers.
No, it's not like RPG rangers that go out into the wilderness with bows and arrows and do tracking and stuff.


It's more like park rangers. They they have more authority and respect than they do in our world, and they are active in many more places.

Some of their many duties include:
Helping take care of orphaned/injured animals
Preventing humans from harassing animals
Stopping poachers
Preventing people from building in certain areas (sacred areas, nesting areas, etc)
Preventing people from cutting down trees or taking plants (some harvesting is fine - it's when people get greedy that it becomes damaging)
Restoring damaged wilderness areas
Making sure new development is the least destructive possible
Educating people
Helping people in trouble
And a number of other strange things that come up, which can vary widely in popular areas.

Or course they have whole teams of people in charge of these. They aren't usually as understaffed as many places in our world are (all the poaching sneaking in some parks, for example in Africa to kill elephants, because it's hard to protect such huge tracts of land).


Katani actually becomes a ranger after his story. He and Tyra help stop illegal fishing.
And there's a ranger that helps a lot in Arrin's story as well.

Names

I need to think of a name for the horse in Arrin's story. Her appearance is mostly based off of the horse I rode when I was working in Yosemite. But I made this horse a girl instead. Sandy was a boy.

I've also been going back and forth about one of the character names. She only appears in the first part of the story, but she is important for getting everything going. There are two names I keep debating about. One is a traditional name, and the other is a more subtle-themed name.

This is hardly a new thing. I changed so many names in Katani's story. Up through several drafts, in some cases.


Prarie dog

There's been so much crazy extra stuff this month that I can't even think of topics to write about @_@

The Full Pokémon Team

May as well post this. After all, most of these are characters from my ancient fanfictions XP (And also videogames).

I just finished a project this week that I literally started years ago: Drawing all of the Pokémon I used in my games (including some special event Pokémon, and a couple from my fanfic that don't exist in my games).
I actually have no idea when I started. I drew a few of them, and then started over because a lot of them were really bad.
It was my Unova (Black and White) team that I first drew in full. Then I worked my way backwards, to Sinnoh (Diamond and Pearl), then Hoenn (Ruby and Sapphire), Johto (Gold and Silver), and Kanto (Red, Blue, and Yellow). My Kanto team is by far the largest since they've been around the longest, they're one of the largest generations, and it's what I grew up with. And then from there I added on Kalos (X and Y) and finally Alola (Sun and Moon).
And of course a couple months ago, the new Sword and Shield games were announced. So eventually I'll have to do my team from those games.

It's pretty obvious if you look at any single page that some of the drawings vary massively in quality. I do add new Pokémon to old entries, so some Pokémon in the Unova entry, for example, may have been drawn many years apart. And for the most part, my new ones are much better XD

So without further ado, here are all of them, in the order of their generations.

Kanto Part 1


Kanto Part 2
Mostly from my fanfic, based off of the Pokémon First Movie clones. Except I gave each of the clones some sort of strange marking, because I love the weird markings on the Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur clones.


Kanto part 3
Secondary entry, just showing my herd of fanfic Ponyta.


Kanto part 4
Another secondary entry with a couple Pokemon Rescue Team characters.


Johto


Hoenn


Sinnoh


Unova


Kalos


Alola


And finally a compliation of all my non-event shinies (except Red Gyarados). Probably about half of them are from the ultra wormhole @_@

I mentioned ages ago that I need to add an entirely new chapter to Evva's story.
I've finally done most of the research I need to make that chapter believable. So I should be able to write that fairly soon.
Man this month has been so busy. My writing time has been horrible because of all the crazy extra stuff going on. I finally have some evenings off coming up, which is a relief because I have a pile of stuff on my desk I've been trying to put away/get done.



Mexican gray wolf

Use your Library

I don't think I mention libraries much here.
But I use them all the time. I've always got an audio book checked out, plus a couple manga and a movie. Maybe a season of a TV show, and sometimes a few research books.
I use my library vey heavily. It's a free resource for entertainment, research, music, and much more.
You can order movies, books, etc from nearby libraries if they don't have exactly what you're looking for. And some libraries have an even larger network the can draw from. It's not always obvious, so make sure you ask someone who works at the library. When I discivered my library's inter-database system, I got access to a bunch of stuff I couldn't find before. They'll even borrow books from neighboring states!

Remember, not everything is on the internet XD


Bald eagle taking a bath

Fanime 2019

Got to go to Fanime a couple days this week!
I worked Wednesday and Thursday, went to Fanime on Friday, worked Saturday, went to Fanime on Sunday, and worked today.
It's been a long, chaotic week. But fun too.
Hopefully I'll be able to get a grip on reality on my day off.

I wore my Yellow costume and bought a bunch of old Pokémon toys at the swap meet.

I wanted to try karaoke. I've never done that in public, and I started to get nervous as I walked toward the stage. Then I found out the wait was over 4 hours... guess I'll have to get there earlier next year @_@
I saw my first Coco cosplays!


I walked through Artist Alley again on Saturday. There was a guy with a speaker in his backpack that was playing an endless look of the "Breath of the Wild" Kakariko theme.
And somehow we ended up traveling through the hall at a near identical pace, so I was listening to that song for a couple hours straight. I didn't mind. It's a soothing song.
At one point I sat down because my backpack was super heavy with dance shoes and stuff. Plus between work and Fanime my feet were walked to pieces, and my shoes decided they wanted to fall apart. A few minutes later the Kakariko music guy caught up with me and I took that as my cue to get up and start walking again.
Yeah, I had the song in my head most of the rest of the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oxz-LmklV4&feature=youtu.be

I wanted to wear my Elsa costume to the Black and White Ball. But for some bizarre reasons my wrists no longer fit through the sleeves. Of all the parts of a dress to stop fitting, how is it my wrists no longer fit?
Argh, I wonder if I just have to remake that part of the dress...

Well, at least I finally got back to the dance. It took four years. One year I was out of the country, once a staff person lied to me about the shoes I was allowed to wear, and once I was at work. I still haven't been able to wear my Elsa costume to the dance, but it was still a fun night.

It always seems to take me a while to warm up to any kind of performance, even if it's a dance. But eventually I forgot to be self conscious and had a few good dances. It's awesome when you get a partner who knows what he's doing. And while I'm not a great dancer, I can follow some dances decently. A couple of them felt so smooth.

I headed out after a couple hours. I had work the next morning, after all. And as I was walking back to my car, I saw a boba place was still open at 9:30 so I ran in to grab a drink to celebrate the end of my Fanime weekend.
I spent the whole ride home singing loudly in my car (We light it up we wont' come down, and the sun can't stop us now!"). And most of the rest of the night singing quietly in my room, full of energy.
I went to bed at a decent time, considering I had to get up early the next morning for a special tour.
After 1:00 AM, I still wasn't asleep and it suddenly occurred to me that the boba I had was jasmine tea, probably packed with caffeine.
Oops.
Well, I spent all morning yawning, but I made it. My legs got a major workout this week, but hopefully I can rest some tomorrow XD

Shy Boy!

Whoops, I forgot to post this XD
Last week I went on a mini vacation. And I got to meet Shy Boy!
He's a famous mustang. I don't think I'll try to explain him here, but if you check out books or documentaries about Monty Roberts, you can learn all about him (Monty Roberts is pretty much the original horse whisperer. He revolutionized non-violent horse training).

Shy Boy even has a Breyer horse model XD Which I have.


He's 24, but still spry. He was doing gymnastics to stick his head under the fence to grab grass.

Here he is craning his neck over to eat a nearby tree.


I've been a fan since middle school, so this was pretty cool.

Animal Characters

Something that I find so dull is when there are animal characters in stories that don't act remotely like animals. They might as well be a human mind stuffed into a fur-covered body.
Actually, I will tolerate quite a lot of this. There are numerous cartoon animals I love, but there's always some kind of animal quality to them. In Bambi, the animals may not behave like real wild animals (an owl being all friendly with a little bunny, etc) but they do have at least some of that animal-ness. Like Bambi's mom alert and watching for danger in the meadow.


I just read the beginning of a book called "The Familiars." It's about a trio of animals that are partnered to some young wizards. But the animals didn't have a trace of animal-ness to them. It was so dull that I didn't get far in that book (it's meant for younger readers, but I never consider that an excuse for a total lack of depth).

Animals are amazing, weird, and confusing. That's great stuff for a story! Learn it! Use it!
Giraffes are the tallest animals in the world, and they can kill a lion if they kick it right. But they are extremely shy. They will bolt at the drop of a hat.
Zebras are super cute, and much loved. But they are extreme brats. And for good reason! Everything out on the African savanna wants to eat them. They have to be tough to survive.
When you see lions in nature documentaries, they're hunting or fighting or raising cubs. But in reality, lions sleep most of the day. They don't know when their next meal is going to come so they need to conserve energy to chase down prey next time an opportunity presents itself. If you visit them in a zoo or something, they'll probably be passed out.


They're all different, and a lot of what they do doesn't make sense for a human. But it makes total sense considering where they evolved.

I totally support some types of anthropomorphism. But it should be clear that your characters are animals, not scaly or hairy people.
Animals think and feel, but they do not think and feel the way humans do.

Viewed to Pieces

This is something strange I noticed a few months ago.
I've watched Coco so many times that I don't seem to even watch it even more. I've analyzed the scenes apart and taken down just about every detail. And now even when I'm staring at the movie, I hardly seem to be seeing what's on the screen because I've already downloaded the whole thing into my brain.
But it still makes me really happy to watch a bit of it every now and then.
So yeah. That's new.



Snow leopard baby