Onward

 Hey, we made it through a crazy year!

Let's all work to make the next year better. If nothing else, hopefully 2020 will give us that vision to learn from the mistakes of our society.

Let's end it with some kitties

Accents

I just realized that all of my favorite characters have accents. 

Hector, Garnet, Kenshin (he doesn't speak English, but I'm going to count that as an accent).

Even my favorite villain has an accent.

Scarlemagne

And my obligatory unrelated animal photo: wallaroo

Don't Abandon Your Plants

This may sound strange, but in middle school, me and a friend had a fort in a nearby cemetery. You may question our choice of locations, but it was the only place near our house that wasn't houses. There were bushes and trees and cool places to explore that we could pretend were wilderness. 

They have since cleared out most of the bushes and trees, which sucks (they also blocked off our secret entrances). But I still go up to visit four graves.

Anyway, this is leading up to the topic of my post. Me and my friend would sometimes find potted plants that people had thrown in the trash. We would rescue those plants and take them back home for rehabilitation. 

To this day, I will rescue plants that I find in distress. 

So when my mom buys orchids, and then throws them away when they're done blooming, I get upset.

Several years ago, my aunt bought me a little anthurium with little purple flowers. When you buy these potted plants, they're usually covered in blossoms. I imagine they use greenhouses and some cocktail of chemicals to get that many blooms out of them. When it finished blooming, it didn't get flowers for a few years. But all that time, it lived in my room, along with a few other potted plants. I have a mini jungle on top of my printer.

Then last year, I started researching ways to get them to bloom again. It mentioned something about the time of year, so I decided to wait until then. Weeks later, it got a flower! I was thrilled. And ever since then, when one flower falls, another shortly takes its place. 

Here's the current flower. 

I feel bad for all the plants that get trashed, because people weren't patient enough to wait for them. 

A second example. Earlier this year, I bought one of those beautiful, yet cheap, chrysanthemums for Lunar new year. It bloomed, and then the flowers browned and the leaves started to die. But I noticed new leaves popping up around the base of the stalk, so I repotted it and moved it to the backyard. 

A couple months later, it started getting buds followed by about 20 beautiful blooms. It looked far better than when I'd bought it. 

I should have taken a photo. All the flowers are done now, except for a couple that are on the way out. Maybe it will come back for me again next year! 

Magellenic penguins in the middle of their annual molt. Look at that pile of feathers!

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas guys! 

I hope everyone found a way to have some fun on this year's Christmas. I enjoyed having a day off to just work on some art projects.

I also saw a beautiful new movie. I got a free subscription to Apple TV, which I was excited about because of a new movie called Wolfwalkers. 

My enthusiasm was a bit tampered when I discovered that there's nothing to watch on Apple TV. I can't figure out how to browse their selection, but from what I understand there are only two things I'm interested in. Their choices are smaller than if I were to go into the movie section of my library. 

Anyway, I started watching Wolfwalkers. I was hopeful because their other films are amazing. Like The Secret of Kells. Their animation is so beautiful and creative. 

And Wolfwalkers seemed to top them all. It was gorgeous.

Man, I hate when they have content that's exclusive to a streaming service. Let me buy this freaking movie! I don't want the useless subscription. I just want the movie. 

Same with Kipo. Let me buy the freaking show! 

It feels like it really limits how well the show/movie does too. They must get so much more exposure if they're not limited to one single subscription.  But this thing really deserves an Oscar.

Anyway, I definitely recommend all of their movies. Wolfwalkers was one of the films that made me feel super light and inspired at the end.

Premature Plotting

Frivolous post about Fern stories~

I just read a few of my notes for Fern stories.  Usually I'll jot down the basic ideas I ahve on scratch paper. And then when I have a fuller picture, I'll copy them down in my notebook. Some of my notes are written when I'm in the middle of a series. It's mostly so I don't forget the ideas I have. But it also means that a lot of the things I write about end up getting changed in the course of the show.

For example, the notes I read were for Steven Universe. I wrote Fern interacting with some of the characters, and helping fix some problems. Now that the full series has been released, pretty much everything that I had Fern help with got solved anyway. I mean, of course it did.

 

So I trashed most of those notes and started over. 

This is precisely why I don't write them down in my real "Fern notebook" until the series has been completed. Because I don't want to tear a bunch of pages out of my good notebook XD  

This is also why I haven't been able to write much in my Fern notebook for a while: Because the Fern story I started writing is not finished yet. And I'm afraid it won't be finished for a while. (The third book in "The Name of the Wind" series).

A couple days ago, I finished watching The Mandalorian. I had Fern notes for that, which were also rendered irrelevant. Except this time, I kind of expected that to happen. It was just fun planning some interactions. Fern would have a lot of fun playing with a certain character.

(Oh my god, I was horrified though when he was eating the eggs! That's terrible!)

I'm always a little embarrassed to write about Fern's stories. Considering I'm sending my character in to interfere with movies/books/series made by other people. I'm even more embarrassed to actually name those things that I send Fern into. But I'll make myself do it XD

The last place Fern has visited is "Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts." At first I just had her helping a certain lost character when he's a kid. And then giving him stuff to do when he's a prisoner. 

(Kipo spoilers below)

At first I told myself that Fern shouldn't mess with the ending, because I've also killed some of my favorite characters at the end of a story. It felt weird to interfere with a heroic sacrifice. But then I realized something. It doesn't matter about what I think about the end. Because if Fern went in there, there's no way in hell that she's going to just sit there and let him die. 

It's nice when you can turn tough decisions over to the characters. 

I guess this is the place where I should post the picture I drew. First, some context. Fern loves animals, and talks to animals, and can turn into animals. And animals usually like her, because she cares about them (and they also like her magic). Fern also loves to snuggle with animals of all sizes. And usually that's fine. In her mind, she thinks that you can snuggle with animals, but you can't snuggle with random humans. But then you have animals that speak English and wear fancy clothes. She doesn't differentiate between them and normal animals. So when she hugs animals that have human traits, sometimes they think she's pretty weird. 

 

In this picture, she's going, "Hey, Scarlemagne! Look, we have matching scars!" (They don't really match, but she thinks it's close enough)

(This would obviously be after he's started to act a little nicer).

Remember how I said I'm embarrassed to talk about Fern stories? Well, the same goes for Fern pictures. At least the pictures where she's interacting with other characters. I was nervous when I posted the picture of Hector and Fern. Now I've been agonizing about whether or not I should post this one on my art website XD  People will look at it and wonder who that weird girl is, and they won't read the description. 

But basically I'm over thinking things. I doubt more than a handful of people will look at it XD

Okay, now that I've vented, I'm going post it on my deviantart right now. Before I wimp out again.

Reuse Before you Recycle

I try to get the maximum use out of everything. It comes down to being sustainable. We live in an incredibly wasteful society, and it needs to stop. 

But sometimes it's hard to know whether it's better or worse to replace old things with new. For example, vehicles and appliances. Newer ones are far more efficient with energy and such. But it also takes a lot of energy and resources to build that new appliance, so it may actually be better to keep that old one instead of replacing it with something new. 

Anyway, that was a bigger buildup than I intended. Here's what I was getting at. I've been using calendar pictures as wrapping paper. If it's a small gift, I can just use one photo. But my dad had a big gift this year, so I plastered it with a bunch of calendar pictures. And that's when I started wondering. Paper is recyclable and biodegradable. But now I'm covering the paper in tape, which is not compostable. Is it better to use less tape, even if it means not reusing some pretty pieces of paper? 

This is an almost insignificant step in being sustainable. But it's the weird kind of things I think about XD

Anyway, the take-away is try not to be wasteful. Even if you're not as bizarre about it as I am.

Juvenile wallaroo

Skipping out on Editing

I've been writing a lot of poems recently. I'll jot them down in my notebook, and when I type them on my computer, I'm supposed to refine them.

Except I've been super lazy about editing my poems lately. I'm not sure why. I just type what I originally wrote, with only a few changes.

At some point, I'll need to give them a proper polish. Heh.

Peahen with her two peachicks, demonstrating some of the safety measures at the zoo.

Sometimes Characters Act Bratty

I just edited the part of Evva's story where she's being a brat. 

That part has always made me cringe. But when someone feels hurt or upset, they can definitely act like a brat. And even though she gets slapped with reality, I still feel a little guilty for making her so annoying in that scene. 

Also, when I write scenes where a character is upset or gets in a fight with someone, it puts the idea in my head that I also got in a fight with someone. I gotta shake myself back to my senses after @_@

Koala

Gotta Love the Coincidences

 Okay, this is just too bizarre, and hilarious.

I just checked out an audio book. It wasn't a book I'd ever sought out- it was just in a box of books Grandma was getting rid of, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It's called Boy. And it's stories from Roald Dahl's childhood. Since I've read some of his books (Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and other classics) I thought I'd read some of his true stories.

When I turned it on during my morning commute, the narrator's name caught my eye. I wasn't certain, but I had my suspicions. And I looked it up when I got home. 

The narrator is freaking Scarlemagne! 

I started laughing very hard. What are the odds that I randomly check out an audio book and he's the narrator? 

It turns out that I listened to another book he narrated: War Horse. That was a while ago, and probably the first time I came across him. His Scarlemagne voice is very different than his normal voice. I can only hear it when he growls.

Whenever I come across a character I like, I seek out other stuff they've done (like Gael Garcia Bernal, after I saw Coco). It was only last week that I rewatched the live action Beauty and the Beast so I could see Scarlemagne play Beast. The animated Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite Disney movies. I only saw the live action one a couple times, because I like the cartoon better (Beast looks so much cooler when he's animated). Scarlemagne looks a little like Beast during the dance scene, with his fangs, mane, outfit, and ponytail. Plus both Scarlemagne and Beast dance, and go from bad to good. 

(Still angry that they didn't give Beast a proper name. All the little things they changed, but they left him nameless?)

Ah, no the War Horse audio book was not the first time I saw him! I actually have Nicole to thank for this too (She recommended Kipo in the first place). A while ago, she sent me a clip from one of the "Night at the Museum" sequels ((I only saw the first one). The scene had my favorite actor, Hugh Jackman. And I just now found that that same scene also has Scarlemagne. What do you know? That scene's even funnier now.

I'm back to my bad habit of referring to actors as if they were their characters. His name is Dan Stevens.

Avatar- I want to touch it

I'm having fun pointing out parallels and weird stuff in movies. So I thought I'd do another.

 

I just watched Avatar again (The blue people one. Not the Airbender series, though I need to watch that again. It's been a while).

 

I like the parallel of touching Jake. That sounds weird, but let me explain. 

The first time Jake comes to Home Tree, some of the Na'vi touch him. It's like a "ooh, what a creepy thing. I dare you to touch it!" 

And then at the end when Jake flies in on Toruk, the Na'vi reach out to touch him in awe. 

Parallels are fun. 

Also, it's always bugged me at the end about Norm. His avatar got killed, so he was left with his comparatively fragile human body. He masked up and grabbed a gun and hiked out into the forest to fight. I know why they did that. They needed to get Norm out of the way for the last fight scene. And I'm sure Norm did not want to be sitting alone in that trailer while the war is going on.

But think about it! Every creature on Pandora is in "KILL THE HUMANS" mode. No animal or Na'vi knows not to shoot Norm. How does he not die?