squeezing in a quickie

real fast before I leave - got most of the stuff packed, and this oughta be said before I forget.

Hokay, so we have to revise four pages from four different chapters of our novels for the OYAN workshop critique groups. My issue is this: I have almost one whole first (very rough) draft of my book, and when I go back and look at it, I see a lot of things I want to change. Like, fundamentally change, not just sentence structure and word choice. I'm trying not to think about most of that right now, but the one thing I felt like I absolutely had to do was make it so that Andra always knew who her real parents were. It works out so much better and is a lot less cliche; this way, she can be a bitter, angry adopted child the entire time, and have more of a reason to hate Mourn for what he did. I like this. However, that messes majorly with everything. So now, I've revised the first four pages of my novel, and implied that she already knows how she got her scar and why she has a black streak in her hair, rather than having her be all vague and clueless. I haven't done the rest of Chapter One because I'm behind and I need to just do each of the four sets of four pages, but I imagine that the rest of Chapter One will be quite different than it is now, as will be all of Chapter Two and most of Chapter Three. The next set of pages I'm gonna tackle is at the end of Chapter Three, so now I'm trying to fill in the blanks in my head and figure out what allegedly happened between the first four pages and these four pages, keeping in mind that Andra knows what's going on. It's hurting my brain a little. And then I'll have to do the same thing between this set of four and the next set of four and the next set of four. So at this point, most of the rewriting is going on hypothetically, and I'm working around it sorta. Does that make sense? Not really? Okay, nevermind.

In any case, I am behind, and I still haven't written Chapter 13. But that will have to wait until after.

Commander Kip
"You know why?" "Because you're Batma-" "BECAUSE I'M BATMAN!!"
Normal is overrated!

HORNS, and Batman

I has them. Although, they are a lot closer to done as of now than they were when I took this picture several weeks ago. But anyway, they're gonna be awesome. The actual point of this post is that I'm leaving tomorrow for Minnesota again, for the piano camp this time, and therefore no can has internets until next Monday. Woot. And then I have two days when I get back to finish preparations for the OYAN workshop (!!!!!freaking out) and then I'm off to that for the rest of June. Wow, June's almost gone already? How did that even happen?

I decided, rather suddenly, that it would be fun to dress up as Andra at the workshop. Problem being, I have two days to get a costume together, so it'll only be a rough approximation of the character. Need to see if I can borrow a dagger from Brenticus, perhaps. Also, horns, for a different costume, but you knew that. Can you tell I'm excited?!!!!!!!

Um, in other news, I got an awesome new Batman shirt. And also, Brenticus has cool friends who took pity on me and showed me this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seBpXt8_6xs

and it blew my mind into little tiny pieces. And also this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM-JQzUkWww

which made me love Robin even more. "Holy Catch-22, Batman!" And there was another one but now I can't find it... you know, the "with SCIENCE" one? They showed me that. And the whole reason I was over there was because my mom and Brenticus's mom wanted to start a teen book club thingy, and we voted and decided to read Mistborn as one of our summer books. HECK YEAH, SANDERSON FTW. Seriously.

Commander Kip
"What, are you like, gargling marbles or something? I can barely understand you-"
"Ablughubehbaahghaa!" *stomps off*
Normal is overrated!

Did they send me daughters...

... when I asked for sons?

Oh, Shang, if you had just glanced DOWN when you had her by the collar there, wow, that would have been one heck of a short Disney movie.

LOVE MULAN. SO MUCH.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egQy0wKVRtM&feature=player_detailpage#t=147s


I love it cuz the main charater is a friggen beast instead of a princess with an abnormally high voice (coughSNOWWHITEcough) and the love interest is also a beasty ninja with an actual personality instead of a cardboard cutout that just happens to be extremely handsome. Also, shirtless. That might have something to do with it. Maybe.

You know what else I love SO MUCH? Anastasia. Which is weird, because I positively hated it when I was like six years old.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9oFczH6Sg


Probably because of that creepy undead priest guy with his bug armies and detachable body parts and general necrosis/creepifaction. Whatever, I'm good with undead priests now. Season of the Witch took care of that little phobia, yay-hoo! Plus, y'know, Dimitri. He's such a jerk. I love him to death. And he gets knocked unconscious at the end, which makes me go squee.


As you can probably tell, the week I was kicked out of school was spent watching Disney and Don Bluth movies on Netflix/Youtube. Made it through Pocahontas, Mulan, Anastasia, The Adventures of Robin Hood (with the foxes, you know?) and the beginning of Rock-a-Doodle before they let me back in school. And I feel like I need to see Titans A.E. now, but there's very little chance of my parents ordering it from Netflix, so that might not happen anytime soon.


All those drawings were heavily referenced from screenshots, by the way. YAAY, HOTKEYS. YAY.


Guess what? I discovered that I have another arkload to worry about: my new English teacher for next year is giving us so much summer homework, I'm not even going to GET a summer this year. Yeah, you bet I'm excited. Howevah, next year's summer is looking pretty free, which at least makes me feel better.


Hey, guess what else? (You'd better sit down for this one, or risk serious cranial injury when you keel over in shock...)




I FINISHED CHAPTER FREAKING TWELVE.


TAKE THAT, FABLE.




SO THERE.




Got a few grammatical tweaks to make, then it's off to Mr. S and whoever else wants to read it, and then I gotta dig into the last chapter and get that outta the way so I can actually revise some things before the workshop. Speaking of the workshop: SO EXCITED GAAAH YOU DON'T EVEN. Working on costumbery for that, and weapons, and whatnot.


Commander Kip

I'll get that arrow. And I'll do it with my shirt ON.

Normal is overrated!

largely unscathed

and wading through a giant stack of pictures to show you guys from Lady Arin's house. Looky: She has a creek, and I am jealous. Oh look, and dark and blurry picture of me dabbling about in said creek. In my period clothing. Lol, Milady gets it.

This after I lent her my scarf, and I found a nice log to stand on:

Oh, the sidekick switched skirts with Her Ladyship while standing in the water so that we could take this picture. It was so boss, you don't even know. And look, the sidekick's shiny new camera adds these horrid red numbers to everything. Gaah.

Oh, we finally sawed that heinous stock-thing off my flintlock sidearm! And sanded down the jagged edges with the belt sander and everything, and we still have all our fingers. And look there, a feather in my ear. Whoa, whose camera was this, anyway?

And there I am, being deceased. The sidekick had a friend over that night as well, so we all went out and took extremely violent pictures in the middle of the night. It was fabulous.

Wait a minute, what's that there? (Besides more period clothing on teh Kippeh.)

Why, I do believe it's a path. Milady's most excellent father apparently mowed a path through the forest for no discernable reason. When I discovered this, I took off running down it immediately, not bothering with shoes or any of that nonsense. Milady made me run down it about twenty times again, trying to get a good picture. All of them are blurry.

This is the dreaded Witch's Villa. Just look at that bright red trim. Clearly unnatural and sinister. Psh, NOT. I love that freaking cabin.

The maiden, like all clever maidens eventually do at some point in their lives, decides to spy upon the witch, in order to discern if there is any method by which the she-monster might be slain.

Wooden stake through the gut. Yep, that generally does the trick. Now for this blasted door...

Whoops, the maiden got a little distracted. Yay for multiple layers of skirts.

Um, yes. Winning much.

Oh yes, I remember, there was smiting to be done! Back to that now.

I love the fact that there's a doorway in the middle of the forest there for no particular reason whatsoever. Totally makes my day.

The sidekick invented these little guys. They're called squidges, and they are the best thing ever. You can throw them back and forth, and squeeze them and cuddle them and splatter them all over the ground. Multipurpose squidges.

Also, delightful cupcakes were had.

So there is my epic four-day weekend with Her Ladyship. As a side note, we watched The Princess Bride because neither Milady nor the sidekick had seen it previously, and the sidekick's associate and I were mortified. But they've seen it now, so it's okay. YAY TEAM WESTLEY because it's the pirate/ninja alliance in disguise! LOLWIN. We also watched Proof, which has Jake Gyllenhaal in it and is quite brilliant, although sort of depressing. Couple of great lines though. And by the way, I gave the Lady her REAL birthday present, not just the little temporary one, and I think she liked it, so yay. It was fun to make, in any case.

Which reminds me - Arin had a fabulous idea while I was there. She suggested we draw a completely random picture of whatever, and then write whatever comes to mind about it, curving the words around the actual drawing. We ended up with a biker fairy who's muttering grouchily about this girl who won't have him. It's pretty hilarious. Anyway, I was inspired to try something similar with this boring sketch of my new character Thomas, who sprouted right out of a video we watched in history class about the Vietnam War last month.

Oh, you know what sucks? My parents' scanner, that's freaking what. But in any case, the text reads thusly (don't be too frightened):

"Go back!" I screamed, waving an arm, but the thunder of mortars drowned me out. Thomas kept on coming, and I watched the others fall: first Wizard, then Beans and Trigger, then the world went swirling off to black.

(there ought to have been a paragraph break there, but no room)

When I woke up later, everybody was screaming at everybody else.

"I can't believe you, Private! We lost three great guys because of that stunt you pulled back there. Dangit, Thomas, what were you thinking, just running out onto the no man's land like that?" Sarge was beet red in the face, going on fuschia. "Never do anything like that again, you hear? Never again!"

"What was I supposed to do?" Thomas shouted back. "Leave Russel out there to bleed to death? I mean, hello! He's part of the team too, isn't he?"

"If by 'part of the team' you mean 'degenerate freak', then sure," snapped Bunny, crossing his arms.

Saigon elbowed him in the ribs. "Hey, man, Rachel saved your sorry butt at least a dozen times on that last patrol."

You probably think I'm going to explain what's going on here. Well. Too bad. I'm not. All I will say is that I had fun thinking of nicknames for the other army guys. And by the way, Rachel and Russel are the same guy, in case that was way too confusing. And there was very little good writing going on here, because word choice had a lot to do with what I could fit on the page. So yeah, never mind. Thomas is supposed to have dark hair, by the way, but I didn't want to chew through an entire stick of mechanical pencil lead just to color his hair in, so no.

You know what made me laugh? I showed this picture to one of my brother's friends (an eleven-year-old) and the first thing he said was, "So, is that a guy, or..." Haaaa, yes, dear. It is. Despite the eyelashes, I promise you, Thomas is very much a boy. And may I remind you all that my own darling brother wore just as many dresses as shorts up until about the age of six, and the rest of the time he went naked. So there.

Mmkay, madre gave me the day off in return for babysitting the bro and his cohorts all afternoon, so I'm gonna go sit down and write the rest of that freaking Showdown. I know exactly what needs to happen; now I just gotta make myself gak up some words.

Long enough post for you?

Commander Kip

*scary raspy voice* THE PIT OF DE - ack, choke - *regular voice* The Pit of Despair.

Normal is overrated!

giving the all clear

... through the kitchen floor. No, through a rug that's actually a portal that happens to be sitting on the kitchen floor. I had some cool ideas concerning Portals the other day. For one, I'm calling them Gates now, because everybody else on the planet uses the word "portal" and it's way overdone. So like, an object that can be used as a Gate has to be created by someone who's actually seen Irlica and can reproduce a scene of it well enough to have it magically linked to the regular world. So these objects can be anything from paintings to tapestries to rugs to murals, and they're always being fought over by those select few humans who know of Irlica's existence and are trying to get in. This changes the story slightly, because now I can have various normal humans stealing different Gates and entering Irlica through them and making life difficult for the Irlicans. And and and, maybe Anabeth and her little rebel group are actually dedicated to keeping humans from discovering Irlica, which means they have to keep a careful inventory of every known Gate and watch all of them for unwanted intruders. They don't want more Gates being created all the time, because that makes more work for them. This way, I can have more tension between Earth and Irlica and the story can move back and forth more between each, and I can have humans running around in Irlica and Irlicans running around in our world. (Just had a rather disturbing image of Prince Brennan in a biker jacket, like whoa.) I'm really excited about this now. Yay.

Clearly, Ellian had no idea all the time she was growing up that their kitchen rug, stitched with a picture of a cobblestone terrace, was actually a Gate leading to another dimension. Surprise. And of course, Anabeth has known about that one for a long time, and uses it often, because it leads straight to the rebels' base of operations on the Zraelish border. The actual picture came about because I was thinking about a conversation I had with Lady Arin over the phone like a million years ago, something about a bunch of Irlicans climbing through Ellian's bedroom window. I thought there might be regular Irlican traffic through that house, especially after Ellian discovers her own Gate, and for this scene I imagine that there's a whole crowd of them waiting in the Morgans' kitchen for someone to wave them back through the Gate linked with the rug so that they can return to their base. Fun stuff.

Oh, and that little red streak in the corner? Yeah, there was a little red bug crawling across the paper, and I tried to very gently brush him off, and instead he burst and smeared bright red bug guts all across that corner of the page. Augh.

Um, in other news, just got back from Lady Arin's house, and there's probably some pictures I can post from that, but I have to dig through a huuuuuge pile to find them, because we took more pictures this time than we ever have before, and I had to delete almost everything off my flash drive to make them all fit. Woot.

And part of the reason I was thinking about Portals was because we found the first version of Lady Arin's Esperian Trilogy on her old computer and read through all sixteen pages of it. It was thrilling and incredible. So funny how much of it we'd forgotten about, and how it all came rushing back once we started reading it. *mobs Her Ladyship*

'Kay, gotta go do something productive now. Not that any of that Portals brainstorming session wasn't productive; I needed to get that down in writing before I forgot it all. And I should really start thinking of a different name for it now, since I'm not even calling the Gates "portals" anymore. Anyway.

Oh, and Facebook is making me mad right now. Even though I don't have a Facebook. Actually, it's a really good thing I don't have one, because I would more than likely say some rather rude things to certain people and make a fool of myself, and then feel extremely sorry for it later. Never mind; let's not go into all that. Cheerio.

Commander Kip
I want to spend the DAY with you, if at all possible. I want to spend as much time with you as I can, unless I'm coming on way too strong right now and scaring you, in which case I will begin backpedaling immediately.
Normal is overrated!