Shiny Bugs

For my own fun~
A few new shiny Pokémon stories.

I thought I'd try my hand at shiny hunting in Let's Go Eevee (through chain catching).
So I tried hunting for a Vulpix. But after a long time, there were no shinies. There was a wild Articuno, which I caught (thus breaking my streak and deleting my odds of finding a shiny Vulpix).
Then as I was strolling through Viridian forest, I saw something sparkle in the bushes.
I'd made a pact with myself to take a screenshot of any wild shiny I found before I encountered it. But that thought flew out of my head. I pounced and found a shiny Weedle.


After a few weeks, I went back and tried shiny hunting again. This time for Caterpie.
And I found three in a row.

I kept it going, because I was hoping a shiny Bulbasaur would pop up. And finally he did!
So five new shinies~

I'll probably evolve Weedle and two of the Caterpie all the way. And I may evolve Bulbasaur into an Ivysaur, because then you can see the pretty gold bud. Shiny Bulbasaur doesn't look very different.

Book Update

The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar
At first I was afraid this was just going to be a guy gushing about his pet owl, but I learned a lot! He had some good owl information in here.

Mythology: Timeless Tales of the Gods and Heroes
This was more of a summary of all the Greek myths. But it's excellent reference material.


Doctor Who: Beautiful Chaos
I guess there are a bunch of Doctor Who novels. That shouldn't be a surprise to me, though I was excited to see a book with The Doctor and Donna on the cover. The way they wrote it got the tone and pacing spot on. It felt just like one of the episodes.


The Mists of Avalon
I liked the first part of it. But after a while it just kind of felt like a story where everyone wants to sleep with people they can't. And the characters were so bad about helping each other emotionally? Like Lancelot gives a rather terrified confession to Morgaine and she just sits there and doesn't do anything to comfort him.
And they had this annoying way of repeating the same facts several times. I heard you the first two times!

In the Shadow of Man
The first Jane Goodall book I've read. It was fantastic!

Not a Poster Child
I know the author of this book!
I already wrote a whole post about it. It's a good perspective to understand.

Three Kindgoms
Okay, it's embarrassing how long it took me to finish this. I mean to be fair it's a huge chunk of literature.
It's one of the old Chinese classics. And it's like three large novels, except it's all one thing.

The Shepherd's Crown
These are the first Diskworld books I've read. I finally finished the series. I need to read more of them (because my friend told me the others are better XD ).

The Quest
Tom Brown Jr is amazing. I'm actually trying to space out his books, because they're so powerful. I don't want to finish them all at once. I want to make it last XD

Digital Fortress
This is the first Dan Brown book I've read that wasn't part of the Da Vinci Code.
The characters are different, but the feel is very much the same.
Oh my god, his books are so stressful to read!

Many Waters
I actually read the rest of this series many years ago (It's from A Wrinkle in Time). This book got left out. I finally went back and read it. And I liked it a lot! I think it was the most calming story in this whole post.
In this book, some of the characters go back in time and help build Noah's Ark.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
I'd heard of this book for a long time. It was good. Though I couldn't help thinking that it was very much like Bloody Jack. Except this came out way before Bloody Jack XD

The Casual Vacancy
I read it because it was by the author of Harry Potter. But I didn't like it.
I didn't care about any of the characters. You have to feel sympathetic to some of them, but almost everyone was repelling.

Endangered
This one was pretty good. It's an environmental fiction about a girl in Africa trying to help wild apes. It feels very real.


X-Men
I found a trio of novels based off of the X-Men movies.
I have so far read the first two. They're not very good. The first book kept talking about how unbelievably hairy Wolverine was. The second one spent two entire pages, I kid you not, on Wolverine and Jean kissing. STOP!
You may recall that I love the movie X-Men 2. The book elaborated on a few of the scenes, which was cool. But yeah. The books were not very well written.


Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
This book was awesome. All about animal behavior. It focused on wolves, elephants, and orcas. I thought the wolf section would be my favorite, but the orca section blew me out of the water. I learned a lot~

Zodiac
An environmental fiction book. I liked this more than the other book of his I read.

Whitethorn Woods
I've read other stuff by this author which I was not as excited about (they felt like they were 90% affairs). But I liked this one.

Kitchen Table Wisdom
I'm writing a whole blog post about this book. It was really good. It's written by a doctor about some of the perspectives and wisdom she's gained from the people she's worked with.

Why I Bring my Own Water Bottle

I saw this great graphic about the real cost of water bottles. How much oil it takes to make them and get them to you.



And here's the close-ups.

Friendship

I've turned into such a sap about friendship cartoons.
There was a My Little Pony season where all of the old heroes, like Starswirl the Bearded, return. They'd gotten into a war with someone who used to be their friend. And when they made up, I started crying. I was going, "you ponies have it so easy. If only humans were as forgiving as you."

Yeah, I guess I've gotten kind of messed up.

There's also this Pokémon game called Pokémon Masters, where you befriend all these different gym leaders and trainers from all the different games. They have all this sappy friendship stuff in there too. And As I play, I'm just going, "you guys are all so innocent and sweet! Stay like that forever!"

Gym Leader Grant (I've gotten surprisingly attached to him. In the X and Y games, he looks too chibi. It wasn't until I spent more time looking at his proper art that I realized how cute he is XD Though to be fair, it sometimes takes me a reallllly long time to realize that someone's cute).

And I've already told you a little about how I reacted to Spinel.

Newt Scamander

Okay, normally Newt Scamander would be my favorite kind of character. I relate to him a lot.
And the Thunderbird is beautiful.

I loved his book back in grade school and tried to draw the creatures. But despite two entire movies based around the magical creatures of Harry Potter, I don't really have any feelings for "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.".
I liked the two main guys, and the mind-reading sister. But the main lady didn't seem to have any real role in the movie?

And the second movie was a train wreck. The pacing was horrible. They had about four stories smashed into one.
I feel like I've seen this a lot lately. People try to shove a million ideas into a single movie. And it pretty well destroys it.

Yeah, I'd like Newt Scamander to have a better movie.
I liked the kelpie and the zouwu though.

Power-less

So, because the electric company has been severely neglecting maintenance of the power grid, they've turned off electricity for a huge chink of the state. Because they don't want their power lines to start fires.
So nothing works in my house for a few days.

I'm currently at my aunt and uncle's house, since they're nice enough to let me mooch off their internet and charge my speakers (so I can listen to music tonight).
Let me see if I can throw out a few blog posts while I'm here @_@
The Florida travelogue will have to wait until my computer works again.


Black swan

Nor

While I'm trying to sort all my piles of stuff that have built up while I was away, here's a picture of the cat spirit from my story!
Her name's Nor. She's a Cait Sith - a Celtic Cat spirit. It's actually pronounced Ket Shee. I write it out as "Ket Shee" in the story, because I don't want everyone to think of Final Fantasy.
The smoke on her tail is filled with her strongest magic.
The slightly paler markings on her body shift and flow when she moves.
Since she's a spirit, she doesn't have a normal physical body. She appears kind of seamless, like solid ink.

Florida Homecoming

Just got back from Florida!
I'll do a full travelogue once I finish getting at least some of my stuff in order @_@
But I had a freaking awesome time!


Ring-tailed lemur munching on sourgrass

Well, I'm going on vacation tomorrow. It's a friend's wedding. The first wedding I've been to as an adult (Am I really an adult?).
I'm getting up just after 4 AM to fly into an area with a possible tornado warning @_@
Wish me luck. I hope the wedding is okay.

A new Ponyta! I'm so excited!
I can't wait to see clear pictures of it~
It's like Ponyta mixed with Pinkie Pie mixed with Cotton Candy Garnet.
Will there be an awesome new Rapidash? It better be good (Better than Mega Mewtwo).

Okay, there's now better pictures~

(I'll have to change my preorder, because this is a version exclusive @_@ )