Your Picture of a Character

I finally finished my picture of the cat spirit in Arrin's story. I'll post it soon.
I wonder how many writers actually draw out their characters. For strange creatures like the cat spirit, having an exact design has its drawbacks.
When someone reads a book, they get their own image of the characters. And if the book is ever made into a movie, the director will also come up with their own idea of what the character looks like. So I guess if the writer ever does draw their own characters, it will probably only ever be of benefit to the writer - not anyone else.



This one looke more like a comic strip. I hope it turns out big enough to see.
It's a guanaco (wild ancestors of the llamas) and a rhea (the South-American version of an ostrich).
During breeding season, the rhea will chase the guanacos around. And this guanaco will get up and spit in his face.

Naming

It takes me far too long to realize when my character names are similar.

For example, in Evva's story, her sister is named Alisi (who goes by Lisi).
And Evva's teacher is Asani.
And in another story I haven't started yet, the main character is named Alani.
I've since changed Alani's name. Of course.

And then in Arrin's story, Arrin is of course the main character. She'll often go by Rinn.
And another character is named Arjay. Though he mostly goes by Jay.
It's not quite as bad with just their nicknames. Nicknames are what I've been using as a band aid to patch it up.
But ugh. Why do I keep doing this to myself?
I guess I really like some sounds...

It's something I may have to fix in the future, but I'm not going to think about it now @_@



Black bear

New Movie Excitement

It's not common that I find a new movie I really like anymore. I've gotten pretty picky about them.
So when I do find a new movie I love, I seem to watch it several times XD
Like Coco, or the Steven Universe Movie.


I like to see how they're put together, and become familiar with them.
Of course then they don't feel new anymore though.

The Quickest Ways to Lose my Interest

There's a handful of things that consistently make me lose interest in a story. And it's usually during series that they show up - either book, manga, or TV series.
I'm not talking about bad endings (that's a whole other thing). The following things usually happen further on in the series when people are starting to look for other things to drag the story along.

1: An established story goes back in time and restarts with an alternate timeline.
And in the same vein, if a story skips back and forth around different timelines.
Examples are the X-Men movies, the new Star Trek movies, the Heroes TV series, and the Fringe TV series.
I first noticed this with the 3rd generation Star Trek movies. They essentially went back in time and wiped out all of the other Star Treks.
When a creator does this, they're telling us that everything that came before had no meaning. It just feels like someone new took over an old story line and didn't want to think about about any continuity.
For the Heroes show, it was a bit different. This time, they were always fighting to prevent these different horrible futures from coming true. They fixed one, and shortly after there was another horrible future they had to avoid. I stopped in the third season because I was sick of it (though I was tempted to continue if only to follow Hiro Nakamura. He's great. Definitely one of my favorite characters. Too bad his show fell apart).


There are a couple other variations on this.
I was reading a comic series called Agatha Heterodyne: Girl Genius. I started to get into it for a while. Then all of a sudden they had mysteriously skipped ahead a couple years? (Or maybe several years - I forget).
I quit reading right there. Everything I'd been following in the story seemed like it got left behind and that all we had was a new set of problems. Again, it felt like nothing before mattered.

A long time ago I found a book sequel to the movie Willow.

That was very exciting. Until I started reading it. In the book, some horrible event had wiped out the kingdom and most of the characters. And the characters that remained were so different that they might as well have been different people.
What was the point of even calling it a sequel to Willow? They may as well have just started a new book.
I quit that book early on too.



2: This next one has popped up in several books I've read in just the past few months. And in all of them, I quit reading the moment I saw how bad it was getting on this point.
Making characters extremely inept for absolutely no reason. The characters are even supposed to be very smart or strong or something, and they're just completely useless.
I started the second book from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. And I stopped about half way through. The students still have bodies of children, but they're all basically 80 years old. They've had decades to prepare to face the evil monsters that want to eat them. And they all have impressive powers.
And they can't do anything.
They spent all that time in hiding, and they haven't prepared at all. All the cool stuff they could do with their powers doesn't even occur to them. Miss Peregrine is a horrible teacher.

Then I read another sequel called Angelopolis. I read the first book a while ago and liked it. But I didn't get very far with this book. There was a battle between a seasoned angel hunter and a skilled angel assassin. And the angel ran away from the guy, who had no trouble running her down and knocking her over. She's an angel! Why the hell didn't she fly away? How did she let herself get taken down so easily?
Lame.


3: A person secretly has a twin.
This hasn't yet made me quit reading something, but it is extremely exasperating.
What, you couldn't come up with any other ideas? You're going to say this person secretly had a twin the entire time?
I've run across this in a couple manga. Most recently, Black Butler. It doesn't even feel like it fits in with the story.

Instead, I will now link an image of not-secret twins!


Heheh. Since I first started this draft, I keep thinking of more things that bug me.
4: Bringing people back from the dead (or pretending someone's dead and having everyone cry only to find that they're not dead. They're actually fine. I'm looking at you, Bambi sequel. Everyone who's seen the first movie knows that Bambi doesn't die). This may not make me quit something, but I'll definitely lose a lot of respect for it.
They started doing this in that Once Upon a Time TV show. And I'm told they keep doing this in the newer Marvel movies too.
If you're going to kill someone, don't take it back. Otherwise the death has no meaning.
There might be some cases where this works, but I'll have to think of a good one.
So yeah. There's a new trailer for Star Wars 9, and they seem to be leading up to Darth Sidious coming back. Jeez, they'd better not do that. It would be the worst thing a Star Wars sequel has done.

Don't Sing!

Dude, for about three months now it's hurt to speak. Literally. I got swollen vocal cords from talking too much at work.
I miss talking and singing. TT^TT I want to sing the new Steven Universe music!
I can't even play flute for too long.

I think it's finally getting better.
I feel so useless at work though. My job is to talk to people, and I can't talk.


Grizzly bears

To Translate or not to Translate

I've had a few American Indian names in my stories.
Several of my stories take place in America. And in my worlds, the American Indians weren't wiped out. They continue to live in their tribes, or in cities or towns. Whichever they prefer.

But I face a dilemma while naming them. Do I use the original American Indian word?
For example, in Arrin's story, Huyana means Falling Rain.
Or do I use the translation of the name? In Evva's story, there's a character called Striding Bear.
In Evva's story, I've used all translations.
But in Arrin's story, there's some of each. Is it better to use one over the other? For the American Indian words, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of languages and dialects. Which is overwhelming. But there are some lovely names too. Which is why I chose Huyana.
Is it dumb to use both?


Chilean flamingo

Spinel

So I saw the Steven Universe Movie a couple days after it came out.
(I just went back and rewatched the last season, because I wasn't as thrilled with the episodes starting when Greg got kidnapped. But I wanted to see how those episodes line up with the movie.

There are a lot of songs in the movie, to the point where it's kind of tacky. But when I went back and listened to the soundtrack, I really liked almost all of them.
I really liked the music and the emotions of the movie. The plot was probably pretty expected.
It's awesome to see a Steven Universe story that doesn't have to fit into 10 minute segments.


Spoilers from now on.


Steven's voice actor must be happy to be able to talk in his normal voice XD

Dude, he's good at singing high notes.

Shortly after the arc where Blue kidnaps Greg, I told my friend a theory I had. That Steven was getting so many gem allies that he could form his own army to fight the diamonds. In hindsight, that's ridiculous. Steven doesn't win by war. He wins with compassion.
That's what so great about him. He's not like almost all other male characters that have to prove their power to win - not their caring. Steven's plenty strong physically, but that's not his greatest strength.


The Diamonds used to be pretty evil. But they were funny in this movie. They're trying to be better but they still don't have a full grasp on how it works XD


I hope Steven and Lars have an understand about when Steven can come through his hair. I'm sure there's plenty of times Lars doesn't want someone popping up out of nowhere. You know, if he happens to be carrying a plate with a full cake on it.
In this case, Garnet may have given Lars a heads up about Steven's arrival. Hopefully.

It's cool to see all the little details in the background. The stuff in Steven's room includes the Sea Spire statue, the remnant's of Rose's sword, and that crazy painting of Garnet and Steven (there are times during the series where you can even see a bottle of Lon Lon milk in the house! I flipped when I noticed that).

Garnet has a great new song. And a sweet new song. She's awesome as always. (Still my second favorite character ever XD )



Oh my god, Spinel.
Her animation is great. And the voice actor is amazing at being cute and nasty. Spinel flip-flops back and forth between both, pretty dramatically. Maybe just because she's rather imbalanced (And Steven doesn't handle it very well when Spinel starts to get upset after disabling the injector. Which is understandable. He's confused and stressed and exhausted). Most of the changes in her personality are understandable. Though the last one could have been smoother. You can kind of see her resolve cracking during the battle, but it still seemed like an abrupt change.
Despite that, the moment where she stops wanting to fight is powerful.


Pink Diamond has obviously done some not-so-great stuff in the past. She seemed like she was trying to act for the greater good, which required some big sacrifices.
But what she did to Spinel is dropped my opinion of her more than anything else.
If I 'm attached to something, I always try to justify or explain the stuff that is off. So I'm going to try to look at this from Pink's point of view. Here's my speculation:
Spinel was basically made as a toy for Pink. Pink really wanted a colony, and instead the other Diamonds just gave her a "little playmate" to keep her entertained. Since Pink was lonely, she played with Spinel. Maybe she liked her at first and ended up getting bored of her. To Pink, Spinel may have seemed like an insult from the other Diamonds. They gave her something not remotely close to what she wanted - a seemingly empty-headed little gem toy. You can see during the flashbacks that Pink looks reluctant about Spinel.
And if you go by the Jungle Moon episode, Pink looks like she was a bit bratty before she got her own colony (it seems like the colony helped her grow in many ways).
When Pink finally got her colony, she was relieved to leave behind the "little playmate" (even the way they call Spinel a "little playmate" shows how childish a toy Spinel was thought to be). Spinel is kind of annoying too.
Maybe Pink thought someone would come and get Spinel later.
But I think this is more likely. When Pink first got her colony, she didn't care as much about bringing out the full potential of other gems. By the time she realized that Spinel deserved to have more of a chance, it was too late to go back. Just like they were never able to go back to help the people in the human zoo.
So yeah. That's the only way I can justify what Pink did to Spinel.

Oh man. That Drift Away song. That hit hard. When I first watched it, something in the back of my head thought it felt familiar. But I kind of pushed it away, saying that it affected me because it was so sad.
Then I realized that it is familiar. It's like what happened a couple years ago.


You keep on turning pages
For people who don't care
People who don't care about you

And still it takes you ages
To see that no one's there
See that no one's there
See that no one's there
Everyone's gone on without you
--
Isn't that lovely
Isn't that cool
And isn't that cruel
And aren't I a fool
To have Happily listened
Happy to stayed
Happily watching her drift drift drift away

Yeah, it took me far too long to realize that nothing I did was going to let me keep one of my best friends. That I'd drawn out that torture for no reason at all.
It's not like I want to destroy her and her home, but I sometimes want to make her feel as bad as I felt. And then I have to tell myself that I can't let her make me that nasty.

So yeah. I get how Spinel feels.
I like her a lot. And I did cry along with her a couple times.

It's so great that she ended up with the diamonds. They were exactly what the other needed.


Okay, one more thing. Did Rebecca Sugar play Undertale? Because there are so many things that feel similar between this series and the game.
For example, "your best friend Flowey."
And "Your new best friend Spinel."

They Have Everything they Need

Here's a weird one.
I told you that I went back and added another chapter to the middle of Evva's story.
The main team has the opportunity to speak to someone who can tell part of the future. Which is a great opportunity for Evva to get some kind of hint to help her through the last half of the book.
Except that the characters kind of have access to everything they need. They have to team up and use their brains and all of their resources, but they make it work. Mostly. I've been digging through the ending, and it's hard to find some kind of advice they can use that's not tacky and doesn't make the characters seem imept.
I've got this wise woman, and all her advice is just vague and basically says, "you can to it!"
So yeah. I'm still trying to fix that.
The new chapter helps with world and culture development, but it should give them something tangible too.


Mom and son playing

Into the Ashes

The story I wrote for my graduate project was called "Into the Ashes." I was proud of that title, and it was quite easy to come up with compared to other story names.
So when I went to a movie store a couple days ago and saw a movie on the counter, I flipped out. Because the name of the movie was "Into the Ashes."


I've no idea what the movie is about. But I guess I'm going to have to change my title somehow.
Sigh.

Birds

I'm having too much fun with birds in Arrin's story.
First I have a character-Ana- with wings of a white-tailed kits. She even hovers like a kite.

And for a while, I've been thinking about giving some character from some story a tiny flock of swifts. Swifts fly beautifully. And we had a nest of them at the wildlife center one year. They're cliff-nesting birds, so they hang off of vertical surfaces. To feed the baby swifts, we'd take them out and hook them on our shirts. They'd hang there like a row of feathery badges while we fed them.
Ever since, I've wanted to have them in a story.
Plus a couple months ago, some white-throated swifts flew overhead at the zoo. It's so nice watching them move.

It occurred to me that I could slip some of these birds in Arrin's story. But then I thought it might not fit. Then I said to myself, "well, would Ana have five swifts?" And I told myself, "yes. She definitely would."
So now I get five little swifts to write about. They'll just be a minor role. Ana isn't even there for about half of the story. But I think the swifts will serve a purpose. They're not just decorations.


Mom and son playing