Magical Flowering Trees

The mage temple first appeared in one of my oldest stories. That particular story was the first one ever set in either of my worlds. Over the years, almost everything about it has changed. Except one thing. From the beginning, the temple was surrounded by a grove of plum trees. And when they all flowered, it was like walking through pink clouds.

When I reloacted the temple, I started to question that. After all, plum trees are not native to that area. They weren't native to the original location either. But that original location was in a forest. Trees wouldn't be too conspicuous there. The temple's new location is largely tree-free. I immediately thought that there should be a funny story behind the trees. It never really occurred to me until this moment that I could actually get rid of the trees, but I like the idea of giving them a strange origin story XD After all, there's gotta be a lot of strange tales in the history of that mage temple.

English is Weird

Another video about words

Shiny Pokémon Again

Okay, gonna do another frivolous video game post about shiny Pokémon! None of these are recent. It just took me this long to write about it.

Not long after I found my shiny Vullaby, I found two more shiny g-max Pokémon. I don’t remember if they were on my raids, or if they were from online raids.
Carnelian the Bonsly, and Rosso the Solrock

Then a nightmare. I came across a shiny gmax Machamp in an online raid. And I failed to catch it. I was so angry taht they only gave you one Pokeball to catch it. It was so easy to lose a shiny.
So I went to Let’s Go Eevee with the intent of chain shiny hunting a shiny Machop.
And a shiny Onix appeared before I even got started. I named her Riju, from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which I had been playing earlier.

And I finally found my shiny Machop. I named him Daruk – also a character from Breath of the Wild. (Though I had to give up on a shiny Charmander along the way! I already had one, so I let it go).

A buddy at work said he wanted a shiny Nidoran M. Since he helped me with some trade evolutions, I tried to shiny hunt one for him on Let’;s Go Eevee. I didn’t find one. But I did find a shiny Rattata! I named her Sweetpea.

I continued trying to hint for that shiny Nidoran, with no luck (I even gave up on two more shiny Rattata TT^TT)
Then as I was exploring the Pokémon Mansion, I went around a corner and practically stepped on a wild Pokémon. The moment the enouncter music started, I noticed a couple sparkles appearing from around the corner and realized what I must have. A shiny Raticate! I named her Bailey.

That same work buddy told me about a Facebook/Discord group that does shiny Pokémon giveaways. I joined, wanting to get that shiny Gmax Machamp (at the time there was no way to add Gmax to a regular Pokémon, and I was still determined to regain that one I lost). People found a fascinating bug in the games that let you find chains of shinies in the raid dens. I ended up joining several and catching a baunch:
Charjabug-Brix
Hattrem-Maple (for the witch in the Zelda oracle games)
Lampent-Kalahari (watching an Africa documentary that day)
Heatmor-Gobi (watching an Africa documentary that day)
Alcremie-Kirimi (after a character in Ouran High School Host Club)
Drakloak-Dundee (Watching Crocodile Dundee that day)
Turtonator-Darius (I’d been reading FMA earlier)
Hakamo-o-Aurelian (I’d been reading FMA earlier)
Espeon-Izumi (I’d been reading FMA earlier)
Sylveon-Orinoco
Pikachu-Tanji
Eevee-Anza
Machamp-Bruce (A name I’d had in mind for a while)
Togekiss-Alderaan (watching Star Wars that day)
Golisopod-Yavin (watching Star Wars that day)

Several of them were Gmax, including that sought-after Machamp!
After I finally got that g-max Machamp, I stopped joining the raids. Shiny Pokémon aren't as exciting when they're too easy to get. I punished myself by drawing all of them. That's a good motivation to stop catching easy shinies. (And of course, not long after this, they released the option to gmax normal Pokémon. So I could have made Daruk a G-max after all. Ah well) I still get the urge to shiny hunt a Vulpix or Squirtle on Let's Go Eevee. I tried for a Vulpix recently, but no luck. Maybe some day. I caught a surplus of shinies this year, so maybe it's good to wait.

Character Theme Songs

Now there are many songs I relate to. But sometimes I'll see somone compare a song to a character from a movie or series. I've always thought it was fascinating. After all, I love both music and good characters. But for some reason, I almost never find songs that remind me of specific characters.

For an example of linking a song to a character, there's the trailer to that horribly depressing Wolverine Movie, "Logan." The first time I saw that trailer the song struck me. And when I listened to it again, it really does strike Logan as he is in that movie.
(Linking the trailer here) (Sorry, random aside. When I first saw the trailer, I went, "Hey Logan and the Professor are going on an adventure together! Cool!" NO IT WASN'T )

As a matter of fact, there's only one song that ever stuck me as fitting a character.
The song is "Lemon Tree," by Peter, Pauil, and Mary (I wrote a post about them a little while ago).
And the character is Kvothe, from "The Name of the Wind."
Even so, the song feels like a silly comparison (after all, Kvothe has gone through far more than this song shows). Despite that, I still think of it as his song. 

And it may not be a specific character, but there's one episode of Steven Universe that really made a song pop into my head. It's the episode where Steven and Eyeball are stuck in the bubble together. 

The song I associate with that is "Space Oddity."

Actually, I found a couple other songs that relate to my own characters.
For example, Stronger Than You, for Fern. I totally want her to sing that while she's kicking butt during a fight. I have no idea who she'd be fighting that would fit that song though. Hmm.
(I love this song so freaking much)

And then Evva fits with "It's Over, isn't It?"
At least she does at the end of the story.

Hey, why are both of those songs from Steven Universe?

I should dig through my music and see if I can find any other song connections. At least for my own characters, if nothing else. (Except my computer problems persist - mostly with my music and photos. So I'll have to wait until I get those fixed. TT^TT )

The Tragedy:

When you write a poem on a scrap of paper an put it in your pocket.
And then days later, you put on pants that have just gone through the wash and find a little hardened pebble of paper that was once a poem.

Sumatran Tiger

Words

An interesting video about words!

Don't Take Blue Sky for Granted

This actually happened a few weeks ago, on Spetember 9th. I've been having trouble with photos on my computer, so I couldn't post it until now. (Let's hope my photos are fixed now! ) Anyway, due to a crazy thunder storm in the middle of the summer (unheard of around here) a bunch of forest fires started across California. MAny were small, but some went out of control. Mismanaging forests, drought from climate change, and crazy storms from climate change all combined to burn our forests and homes. It lead to weeks of awful air quality. Though there weren't any fires really close to my house, there were some days where the smoke was so bad that it was like a heavy fog. And then one day, the day never came.

This is a photo my mom took which shows the color of the sky (though it's a bit blurry). This is from the middle of the day. It got darker until noon. Then it got a little bit lighter in the afternoon, but we never saw sun or clouds or anything. These are a couple photos I took in the morning, at work. The picture of the sky does not capture it at all - my camera automatically adjusted to the light.

But here's a photo I took of the wolves - again, in the late morning - which shows how dark it was.

It was so freaky. People were walking around with flashlights. Apparently the fog was holding all of the smoke up above, which is how it covered the sun (Ironically, the air quality was not too bad on this day). Luckily the next day, the sun was back. OR at least, the sky wasn't orange. -shudders-