Evva and Haleth

I finally finished another picture of Evva!

She's with the draft horse, and one of the planet spirits.
This is a few years after the story. Her hair's a little longer. She's got the burn scar on her shoulder, and she has her two pendants (though one is hidden under her shirt, or it would have been too cluttered).
It turned out pretty good!
She's holding some star fire in her hand, which she drew from that star-shaped pendant.
Haleth, the horse, doesn't have a saddle, because I wanted to draw his pretty dapples. But it would probably be very hard to ride him without a saddle, because his back is so broad! I've ridden a draft mule once, but I had a saddle. I can't imagine trying to stay on without one.
Ooh, I'll try to find a picture of him!
...

Here he is! One of the mules from when I worked at Yosemite (He's not even as big as Haleth). I actually used his name for one of the mules at Evva's farm!
That's not me riding him. It's just one of the random guests. I have no idea who she actually is @_@

Alternate Me

I have two characters that I use to more or less represent meyself in stories. Fern, of course. Who can turn into animals and such. And who goes into movies and books to interfere, because it's fun to interfere!
And then in my Pokémon fanfic, I have Cara. I guess I named her middle school, and I was obviously very lazy about coming up with her name. As it's just my name with a different first letter.
Cara and Fern are essentially the same character in different worlds. One has magic, and the other trains Pokémon.

I don't actually write for Fern too much. I draw pictures of her, and I have a lot of notes for what she does. But there's very little actually written out for Fern's stories (except for an ancient X-Men fanfic, which never seemed worth posting even on fanfiction).
I wrote a little bit of her in Coco, mostly to blow off some steam for my Coco craze.


I have written a lot for Cara.
And I try to write her like me. If I had access to a roster of bad-ass magical creatures.

It's kind of interesting, because it makes me look into my own flaws and see how I can use them in magical worlds with anime and game characters.
I discovered a couple interesting things about myself during this. Like how Cara is very protective of her friend and her Pokémon. Which probably has to do with her being possessive of food and stuff (I once blew my stack when I went to a camp and someone ate almost all of my special chocolate. So I used that with Cara, hollering at her best friend for accidentally eating her donut). The protectiveness kind of runs into possessiveness. Don't eat my chocolate! Don't hurt my friends!
I've also tapped into some other problems I used to have. I used to have a bad temper when I was younger.

And since Cara is younger than me (she's fallen way behind my actual age) I figure I can still use those.

But hey. This gives me good opportunity to work on fixing those flaws! You can't fix them if you don't realize they're a problem.

Revision Three

Since I finished the first draft of Arrin's frustrating story, I'm now working on a different project.
I really need a break form Arrin's story XD
So I'm doing my third revision of Evva's story.
I thought it was in decent shape. Or at least, that the first two chapters were in decent shape because I've gone over them a few times. But I've already spent a lot of time tidying up sloppy paragraphs, making things clearer and more focused.

I don't have too many big edits I need to make. The only big thing is to bring out one of the characters.
I don't have any feedback on this story, so I don't have any directions to go for more fixes. I'll work on strengthening the writing and see if anything else pops up.

Animal pictures!
(I'm almost done sharing all the old ones, so I won't have to post as many once I'm done~ )

Miniature horse


Kune kune pig


Alpaca

Coming Back to Life

Sometimes when a character dies at the end of the movie, it doesn't feel like they've died.
Because when you watch the movie again, there they are just as they were before.
I only feel that way for characters that die at the end. And only if they're a character with a big role.
I guess because they spend more time alive?
Anyway, one example is in Van Helsing.


There's one instance of a character dying that I've only seen once. Or in this case, played. Zack Fair. Because I don't have the proper console to replay Crisis Core.

So maybe a character really does feel dead if I don't go back and rewatch them.
Though Zack's death is rather pivotal in following games, so that may be a factor?

There's even some of my own characters that don't feel dead. Or I guess, mostly just one character. He the only one so far that fits the categories I listed above.

(There's another reason some characters may not feel dead. Because I like to use Fern to alter movies and books, and she saves some people XD )

Pokemon: Into the Unkown

I was going through some old files recently, and one popped out at me.
It was part of my Pokémon fanfic that I wrote for a contest on Deviantart. It included the Pokémon Unown. And it was titled "Into the Unown."
And of course, Frozen 2 now has that song "Into the Unknown."

Here it is-the first line in the text (it's old - don't judge it).

It's so bizarre when I see my ideas appear in very popular movies (like Avatar, Coco, and Frozen).

Anyway, let's have some more animals!


Chacoan peccary




Red Panda


Francois langur (babies are born bright orange, and darken in the first few months)

It's really weird watching movies and getting alarmed for a minute that people are getting near each other without wearing a mask.

Quick Characters

There have been a couple instances where I created a spur-of-the-moment character to fill a gap in a story. And I ended up really liking those character, even though they have very little screen time.
The first of these was Joaquin, Evva's adopted brother.
And now there's another. I created her at the end of Arrin's story. We need to see what direction Arrin is headed after the events of the story. I had decided beforehand what her animal partner was, and it's an African animal. So it would make sense for Arrin to spend some time in Africa. It's not common for a mage to apprentice on a different continent, but it can happen. And Arrin would be glad to get away for a while. So her new mage instructor is from Africa and Arrin goes there to train with her
I've been learning some about the Samburu through conservation groups, but I still have to learn a lot more about their culture before I can do the teacher proper justice. She doesn't even have a name yet, because I don't know how their naming works.
But she's really cool! I like her a lot.

I guess there must be an interesting reason for why I get so attached to spur-of-the-moment characters. Maybe they're more pure or something? Like they're based off of instinct, not thought (I have no idea. This is wild speculation). But I really want to write more with her and Joaquin. At the very least, some short stories.

Animal Picture time!

Grizzly Bear


Wolverine


Mexican Gray Wolf

Library

For many many years (like back to high school and middle school) I've had about three shelves worth of books I need to read.
This started because I had a really awesome bookstore nearby. We'd take books in and get credit, and buy more books. So I could always replenish my supply. Then my Grandma got rid of a ton of books, and I kept a full shelf worth that I wanted to read. From then on, the number of books never decreased for many years. Like ten, or something. I'd read books, get rid of them, and get new ones at about the same rate so I always had about 3 shelves to read.
Even when I didn't try to buy more, people would give me more.
Then my favorite bookstore moved away. I could do a day trip there, but I haven't gone yet. I do want to go though.
But anyway, my intake of books slowed way down after that.
This was still many years ago.
And within the last couple years, I've steadily whittled down my number of stockpiled books. I've got about 2 shelves now (I'd have a shelf less, but Grandma just got rid of a ton more books, and I kept half a shelf worth).

Anyway, all this is to say that I don't really need to check out books from the library. At least, not novels. I still check out tons of references books (and manga).

But now almost all of the books I have are nonfiction.
The number of really good books I've read in the last couple years have all been nonfiction. Though that's mostly because my standards for fiction are very high. It takes a lot to get me excited about fiction novels.
I have a general system where I read a nonfiction book, then two fiction books. And repeat.
But as I said, I'm running out of fiction. And the fiction I do have is not in the genre I write.
I need to read the genre I write, to keep up to date.
At the beginning of this year, I was just starting to check out novels from my library.

And now of course the library has been closed for a couple months because of the pandemic.
My reading list did not line up well with reality.
Sigh.
It's a very very minor problem, but I do hope libraries open soon. There's a bunch of reference books I want too, for Arrin's story.

Okay, some more zoo photos! Here's my favorite tall girls! (Tough one of these is the tall guy)





(I didn't see the bird until I I put this one on my computer. Perfect timing!)






These last three are of my favorite girl. The sassy teenager! The running one is her too. (Though I do also love the sweet granny. Not to say that I don't love all of the tall girls!)

Finished Arrin!

HAH!
I finally finished Arrin's story!
That took way way too long. Especially considering it's not long at all. It was such a hassle to write XD
The ending's a bit sloppy. But let's be real. Most of it is pretty sloppy at this point.
Hopefully the second draft will be a lot easier. It should.

Gonna throw out some more animal photos to celebrate.
Since the end of the story talks about African animals (though I may scrap that and instead do this part as a short story) I'll do African animals this time.


Zebra


Western lowland gorilla (she's posing like a painting model)


Black rhino, eating his Halloween pumpkin treat


Baby kudu! (He's got little horns now! They grow so fast @_@


Can we all agree that baby meerkats should be called meer-kittens? Just like baby prarie dogs should be prarie puppies.

Drift Away

I started this post a long time ago. I've only written a little at a time, since it's hard to write about Ellen.
But something happened at the beginning of the year. I think I finally got over it. I can't pin an exact instance, but I think it was a combination of a book I read and a talk I listened to. Since then, I haven't had any of those days where I feel rotten or useless. And I haven't any of those days where I want to scream horrible things at her, and make her feel as bad as she made me feel.
So it's good to get away from that. I don't want her to turn me into a horrible person. She did enough damage already.
This isn't to say that I don't still get mad at her. But it's manageable. And I still hope I never have to see her again.
But I wrote the rest of this post before I "got over it." I'm kind of uncomfortable sharing it, but I think it needs to be done, in case it can help anyone else.

...

I thought I'd write a bit more about Spinel (after my first post). How parts of her story hit so close to what happened to me, with Ellen and Crystal too.
It's partially a vent, and partially for anyone who's felt something similar.

At the end, Spinel refers to the "old Spinel" as innocent, loving, and stupid.

"Innocent"


"Loving"


"Stupid"

I wonder if that's how they saw me. Was I just some stupid toy to them? Something they outgrew?
I sure felt "innocent and stupid" to have never noticed when things were going wrong. To put up with it for so long, thinking things would go back to the way they were.

The song Drift Away his me so hard. There were so many lines in it that struck home.
"That's what I'm after, the smile in her eyes, the sound of her laughter."
I always want to help my friends feel better when they're low. Whenever I feel bad, being with my friends made me happy. I wanted to do the same for them.


"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"


I kept trying to fix things long after she'd decided to throw me away. I went through so much more pain trying to make things go back. I threw so much of myself out there, trying to make her understand. But it just hurt all the more that baring my soul meant nothing to her.
She never even had the guts to tell me that she was throwing me out. I found out when I saw them blatantly leave me out from something they knew I loved. Neither of them contacted me after that, and I have no desire to interact with either of them ever again.

"Finally something, finally news
About how the story ends.
...with all of her friends.
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 stay
Happily watching her drift away"

There was nothing happy about me listening to her. But seeing her there with those other friends that had excluded me is how I knew she'd trashed me.
And I felt like such an idiot for baring my soul out to someone who'd already decided I was useless. For putting up with it for so long. Even when she said from the very first that she wasn't sure we would be friends anymore. Because she decided I was hiding secret evil messages in my blog about her. And because I asked her to not be so harsh in critiquing my stories.

A couple years ago when I tried to tell a friend how Ellen made me feel, she asked me if I was depressed. I said no. But I have since seen a video about depression. And I guess I actually was depressed for a while.
Isn't that a great gift to get from one of your so-called "best friends?" Almost a years subscription to depression?

And interestingly enough, it was Steven Universe that helped start to knock me out of it.
I wrote about this some when it happened. But I'll mention it again now that I have better context in hindsight.
During that time, I didn't get excited about anything (hence the depression). I got sort of obsessed about some things (like Breath of the Wild, which was an excellent distraction). But even the Steven Universe episodes that were coming out then weren't of interest to me (starting from when Blue Diamond arrives). Steven was suddenly all angsty XD
Then came the episodes where Steven and Lars go to Homeworld. And that brought some excitement back to me.

Anyway, it's okay guys. It may be hard for a while. But find people to love. Find things to love about the world. Read or listen to the words of good or wise people. They're what eventually helped me out of this.
Life is change. And some changes are inevitable painful.
(Here's a post I made during the thick of it all, using Steven Universe lyrics - and Strange Mgic Lyrics - to help try to dig myself out of the hole).

And once again, Steven has a good line for this.
"Someday, somewhere, somehow, you'll love again.
Someday, somewhere, somehow you're gonna feel found."