Characters Live Forever

 Sometimes when a character dies, they never feel like they're dead (at least to me). This has happened a few times, mostly when a character dies at the very end. I think that's the case because they're present through the whole story, and them being dead is such a tiny fraction of the screentime. And I don't want them to be dead, so maybe my brain conveniently forgets it.

I find this ironic considering my favorite character is kinda dead through the whole movie. 

But anyway, this phenomenon has also proved true in one of my latest stories. One of my favorite characters dies. I knew that would happen long before I actually started writing. And yet I never think of him as being dead. 

And I actively try to forget that one character dies at the end of Kipo. I think I've fully convinced myself that he comes through okay. Mostly because I used Fern to interfere.

Red ruffed lemur

Nostalgic Places That Aren't Real

Whenever I play some kind of Pokémon game remake, Viridian Forest and Mount Moon are so nostalgic to me.

I'm not sure why they would be more so than any other place. Maybe because they're the first big wild areas I encountered in Pokémon.

So, Happy 25th birthday, Pokemon! I've been thoroughly captivated.

Evva's Glossary

After I finished that last draft of Evva's story, I wrote the glossary to go along with it. I'd been gathering notes for it for a while, picking out the unusual words, making a list of characters, and taking note of a couple world-building things that needed to be mentioned. 

It also has the pronunciations for the character's names. Because EVERYONE says Evva's name as though it were Eva. They are not spelled the same. And they're not said the same. Yet everyone goes straight to Ee-vuh (They sound like Wall-E). Evva sounds like the word "ever." But with an "uh" at the end.  

I kind of rushed through the glossary, because my aunt had asked to read my story. So I still need to straighten it up (and try to make it fun to read), but I wanted her to have it. She was the first person to read beyond chapter two. She finished just a couple days ago, and gave me some comments on it. She really like it, and she had some good comments too.

And of course, a few days after I gave it to her, I thought of a few things I wanted to fix XD

Though that will always happen.

Outdated Characters

 Most of the big story ideas I have are very old - dating back to High School and college. I steadily build on them over the years until I actually get a chance to write them. 

But this has brought a strange problem along with it. Those ideas came about before my world was properly developed. What does that mean? None of those ideas were created to fit the cultures that came later. 

That's not a huge problem for the stories I haven't written yet. I just have to fix them when I start writing. It's more complicated for stories that I wrote a while ago, and plan to re-work. Even for these, I'm only planning to keep some of the plot points and characters.  Most of it will be trashed. But what really bugs me is the character designs. A huge number of my main characters I've designed and drawn before they fit into the culture. So they're not the correct race! That's how Katani ended up blonde. 

I'm going to have to completely redesign Clara (she needs a new name too) who was the main character of my wyvern story. I'm still trying to find out what to do with Arith and Ginger, since I have such a strong image of them in my head. I'll have to redesign Ginger. Since she's royalty, she really should be the race of her country. I need to reach a decision about Arith though. I may do a cheat I've used once or twice in the past, and make him mixed-race. I like doing this anyway, because my family is so mixed.

I'm leaning toward Arith's story as the next thing I write. It will have very little of the original story in left, but I have some good new ideas for it.  

I want to redo Clara's story too, but I don't think I can do it justice until I at least see Africa with my own eyes. 

 

 There's another story I've been thinking about recently. It's not the characters that have fallen behind in the world development, but the plot. I still like the characters and some of the minor story points. But I think I need a new angle on the whole story. The original idea came when we were learning about the Underground Railroad, and I really wanted to write something about that. But what I did with it back then no longer feels like it would work.

Sifaka lemurs

My Tastes Seem a Bit Skewed These Days

I seem to take varying amounts of time to get attached to my favorite characters.

I knew I liked Kenshin when I was reading the manga. He was the first time I ever had a "favorite character ever." But I didn't realize that until long after I had finished reading the series. Partly because I hadn't put much thought into my "favorite character ever." I actually realized it when I got one of those (infuriating) mystery box toys and Kenshin was in it.

Garnet I liked very early on (before I actually liked the series). In the "Together Breakfast" episode, there was one moment where I went, "ah, I like her!" And then"Stronger than You" sealed the deal. She took over as my favorite character. 

 

And finally came Hector. At that point, it had been a very long time since Pixar made a movie I loved. I didn't think I'd care about it. For literally a couple of days after my first viewing, I was surprised that I couldn't stop thinking of that movie. I was very slow to realize how much I loved both the film and Hector. Although in Hector's case, it's probably not surprising that it took so long. After all, his introduction is not the least bit heart-warming. 

 

 The newcomer is Scarlemagne. I knew that I would end up liking him long before I actually liked him. 

 

At the end of season one, we found out that Scarlemagne and Lio had a history. Which meant that Sarlemagne had some sort of tragic past. After all, how else would he go from being "pals" with Lio to being a crazy tyrant? That was the first time I knew I'd end up liking him. After all, I tend to love animal people with tragic back stories (going all the way back to Mewtwo. I just want to hug them and give them a good home TT^TT ). 

They even warned us about the tragic back story. That episode is called "Sympathy for the Mandrill." And sure enough, from that episode on, I loved him more and more. I was disappointed that he was so evil in the season 2 finale. But the ending gave me hope. After all, he was Kipo's prisoner. I was certain that Kipo would reform him. He could no longer escape her influence. 

That's why I was so shocked when season 3 started. It had been months and Scarlemagne was still a jerk locked in a box. I couldn't believe that Kipo hadn't tried to rehabilitate him in all that time. Sure, she was tracking down Emilia, but she could have made an effort. Especially since she's so casual about letting him out when she finally does give him a second chance. 

Though in the end, I was right. Hugo became a good guy. And his happy ending was so short-lived. TT^TT

 

Scarlemagne is the first time that a character has entered my "top favorites" without taking the top spot. 

The ranking is something like this: 

1st: Hector

2nd: Garnet

3rd: Scarlemagne

4th: Kenshin

 

Kenshin and Garnet are good choices for favorite characters. They're cool, very strong, and very caring. Then my tastes seemed to skew a bit. Hector is not in the least charming when we first meet him. 

It's a long time before you get down to the good center.  To prove my point, I asked Nick to guess which character I liked the most from Coco. He literally listed every main character and many of the minor characters, without mentioning Hector at all. When he finally realized who it was, he thought I was joking!

Scarlemagne is even weirder. He starts out as a crazy tyrant that mind-controls every human he catches, and wants to rule all of the non-humans.

But even for him, there's a good person deep, very deep inside. Deep. 

And yeah, I'll forgive an animal for almost anything.

Keeping Old Movies Alive

 I love it when I see kids that still like old movies. (Old is a relative term - here I'm referring to movies that were made before I was born XD )

I found a cool replica on Etsy. I'm a sucker for movie replicas. I love holding things and thinking, "Yeah, I've got my own Tomorrowland pin!" or alethiometer or something. So when I saw a beautiful Auryn on an Etsy shop, I couldn't resist for long. I do like the movie, but it's also such a cool design.

Here's a photo shoot I took with Lan. He's got his cute little snoot poking out next to the pendant. 

(It's not full size, but I think that would have been too expensive @_@ )

Anyway, I wore it to work one day and a little girl said, "hey, that's from the Neverending Story!"

(Pause while I go look up what year this movie was released)

Okay, this movie came out in 1984. So I was kind of excited to see that kids are still watching and loving this movie. And then a couple weeks later, one of the staff also recognized it. I didn't know it was that recognizable, but that's great!

Circling Straight Back to the Beginning

Normally when I finish an edit of a story, I switch to a different story for a while. That way when I return to the first story, I can see it with fresher eyes.

But this time I'm tried something else. I finished a big edit a few ago. I would spend half an hour on a few paragraphs, or one very tricky paragraph. Then I immediately started from the beginning. I had spent so much time on the details that the next time I could read it pretty quickly! I just needed to do some minor smoothing. It would take about half an hour per chapter, instead of per paragraph. 

Mostly I wanted to do this so I could read my story while it was all still fresh in my mind. It let me test the continuity.

But I actually enjoyed just reading the story, for a change!

I just finished a few days ago. Cool!

Kudu. Dad is at the top. And the bottom is mom nursing two of the calves. Only one of those is her baby. The other is mooching. She kept trying to push em away, and eventually she gave up. She seemed so annoyed though XD

Fine Polish

It took maybe 12+ drafts to make Katani's story really  polished. 

Evva's story is that polished on the 4th draft. 

Progress!

Black bear eating a carrot

Patchwork Plot

Sometimes I'll be fascinated by a story's characters, theme, or world, except the plot doesn't leave any impact on me. I have a theory for why this happens. And I developed the following theory because the same thing has happened to a couple of my older stories.

A writer has a really good idea for a world, or they make really good characters. But they didn't have any inspiration for the plot, so they picked one that's typical, or just kinda strange. 

This doesn't always prevent me from liking something. If I really love the characters, I'm willing to put up with an average plot. Especially if those good characters come with a fascinating world, or a fascinating theme.

I think this is a big problem with sequels though. The writers have established characters, but there was never any original "second story" planned for them. For example, Frozen 2. 

 

I loved the characters and the music. And I really enjoyed watching it. But the plot felt cobbled together. I watched the Disney Plus special on the making of Frozen 2, and they showed some of their previous drafts for the story. They even pointed out a bunch of those confusing things. They fixed some, but they did not fix all of them. 

But yeah. If there are other redeeming features, I will willingly ignore a few sloppy or unoriginal things in the plot.

The Coincidences Keep Piling Up

Okay, this is bizarre. In the past month, I keep noticing little specific details from my stories popping up in random places. 

For example, I was listening to the audio book of "Tortall: A Spy's Guide." They were referring to a couple spies by their code names. And one of those code names was Red Seeker. How the hell did they steal the title of Katani's story? 

A couple weeks later, I was listening to another audio book - "Spirit Animals: Wild born." and one of the side characters has a clouded leopard spirit animal. Just like Fern! I never see clouded leopards in books. @_@

That same week, I saw that one of the zoo members has almost exactly the same name as a character in one of my short stories.It was pronounced the same, but was spelled 1 letter different.

Spooky.

Anyway, have a lion