Solstice time

which means it's Nath's birthday today! Yaay - oh wait...

Trivia moment: why is Nath's eighteenth birthday a bad thing? Points and cookies if you know. Lol. He's just a couple weeks older than me this year, but I'll be older next year cuz he has his eighteenth birthday EVERY year. Muaaa.

I have a picture that I wanted done in honor of his birthday, but no. I'll put it up eventually, once I figure out Andra's dagger sheath and stuff. Yeah.

Anyway, everybody hug him, cuz his birthday is not going to be very fun. *huggles poor Nath*

On a completely different note, paintball on Saturday was epic as always, except that about half of us ran out of CO2 right in the middle of a major firefight. So then we ran around in the woods in the dark and did unsmart things. For example, I somehow got one of my contacts stabbed out of my eye by some tree branch or something while running from someone during a game of tag; that same guy cracked a rib jumping from one tree into another and didn't notice until like the next day... yeah. It was way awesome. And it wasn't even that muddy, although there were a billion stickerburrs all over the place. Yay.

Finally out of school for the year!! Woot!

Commander Kip who is very very mean to her characters
Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a ninety-pound girl. That's never getting old.
Normal is overrated!

12 days of awesome

Go listen to it NAOW. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kYEK-pxs_A It will make your day, I promise.

So remember Commaner Greene? She was in the army originally, which is where she got her title, but she quit after she lost her husband... but anyway, all these soldier types are popping up all over my brain now, and this whole other storyline following that private there, Keera Jenkins, and the rest of her squad. The leering guy with the ponytail and tattoo is Colonel Amos Jackson, who served in the force most of his life before joining Greene's crew as munitions expert. He has delightful manners, even when beating people to a pulp. Private Jenkins joined when she was fifteen, neatly sliding in under the age limit, and can't seem to advance in rank due to her inability to keep her temper in check. She's been court-martialed more times than everybody else on the team put together. Her brother Nathan is some important man who eventually gets kidnapped by the - hold on, I'm not there yet. The Corporal with the messy hair is John Faber, and he can haz no idear what he's doing. He's only there because his mommy made him. And Commander Andrew Crawford is in charge of the whole division, but when they're moving Nathan Jenkins to an outpost near the edge of the Static Zone in the dead of winter, the Green Knights ambush the caravan, leaving most of the division dead or wounded, and head into the Zone with Nathan. Keera, being young and stupid, decides to go after him, Faber volunteers to go with her, and Commander Crawford, trying to salvage the situation, says that he will lead the rescue attempt himself, since squad captain Daniel Bingham just died in the attack. So off the three of them go, tracking the Knights through a rather beasty blizzard, and then the Knights figure out they're being followed and circle back to hit the squad from behind. Keera gets torn up pretty bad, and getting out alive doesn't seem very promising, when a government transport drops down out of nowhere and swoops them up. Unfortunately, the transport is full of Miasma district agents funded directly by Nocturn, and they take the battered squad straight back to Legislation in Baustirion and turn them over to Rivenwick, who promptly locks them all up. She likes locking people up. Oh, if you're worried about what happened to Nathan Jenkins at this point, just know that he's probably better off with the Green Knights than he would have been in Legislation with his poor shot-up sister. The part where my real main characters come in is where Brackolt and his psycotic orphans, who have already joined Mahogany's crew, team up with Commander Green and her people to break Keera, Faber and Crawford out of Legislation. It's an epic breakout cuz they end up starting a massive slave revolt as a diversion, which totally wasn't in the plan. Gaah, I wanna write this thing SO BAD... can you tell? And completely switching gears now - some Portals stuff for you. Thaelen and Anabeth in the Renegad prison. Anabeth got thrown in there first, and Thaelen had actually gotten away with some of the other Irlican rebels, but then the Renegades caught them after all and chucked Thaelen in the separation chamber with her. I flippin' love their hands, but the rest of the picture came out so skewed that I could barely look at it straight. So you just get the top half.

And switching gears yet again... Lady Arin and I took more pictures than we thought. XD We always do. And then there were technical difficulties of epic proportions. No srsly, I thought the poor Lady was going to have a heart attack. Her laptop and camera were both misbehaving horribly. *huggles the Lady* Love you, dearest. YAY NAKED TREES! Ahahahaa. I love that ravine behind my piano teacher's house.

And look at this tragedy. My paternal grandparents sent this little grandfather clock in the mail after spending zillions of dollars fixing it up, and this is what it looked like when it got here.

Tragic, isn't it?

But the GEARS are pretteh...

Okay, you are officially crazy if you read all those gobs of words. Just saying. Love you all.

Finals this week. *dashes off to study*

Commander Kip

I got bits falling off my ship. I got a crew that ain't been paid, and, oh yeah - a powerful need to eat, sometime this month.

Normal is overrated!

merry almost, and other news

It's actually snowing right now, by the way. *stifles self* I would leap about squeeing as per usual, but it's two in the morning and people are trying to sleep, so no. Maybe later. XD It's also nineteen degrees or something retarded like that. *sigh* Gah, I love winter so much.

Speaking of which. There's your Christmas card for the year, out a day early too! The email's making the rounds tomorrow, if I remember. Ignore the fifty billion anatomy errors, because that's totally not the point. In case you can't tell, it's Nath and Andra and Alethia with the flopsy Santa hat. Yaay. And I'm finally working on the Showdown again, wootwoot, much luvz to teh Lady. There shall be blood and emotional trauma. Harharharr. Mine is an evil laugh.

I was working on this gun over Thanksgiving break, and now I can't decide whether it's done or not. Her name is Mother Goose, for now. I like the simple repaint on her, but then again, there's no such thing as too much shiny. I think the model is a Tek something or other, I painted over the sticker and now I disremember what it's called, but it's certainly not a Nerf gun because before I got my hands on it, it was several heinous shades of green. All better now. The design has a nice nouveauish flow, doncha think? Oh, and I badly want me a Nerf Firefly for Christmas, just so y'all know. BAAAADLY. And the bro wants a Recon, which bears a remarkable resemblence to my old best friend in COD - nice big drum barrel, double handgrip, makes plenty of noise... and if I were to get in there and dispose of the air restrictors, it'd be just like FMJ. Lawls. Nobody understood that.

So these:

... are a sneakety-sneak preview of that weird thing I was working on and still don't have good pictures of. Need me some serious natural light for that.

Christmas presents this year are gonna be somewhat mass-produced, because I have semester finals for the first time in my life and the spare time happens at... yeah, two in the morning. It's not even something I can post here. So no worries about keeping secretses, preciouss.

Saw Serenity again last night, all by myself because my mom bailed on me, and gaah, it's the funniest thing ever. Except for the decaying bodies. I have a problem with decaying bodies; not skeletons, or freshly-killed corpses or whatever, but when the skin starts falling off and you can see the full extent of the necrosis, as it were, that's the part where I start having a problem. *convulsive shudder* But other than that, it's a brilliant movie with BRILLIANT lines. I need to see it AGAIN. And then possibly AGAIN a third time. It's so freaking shiny.

Oh, and by the way, remember that violent thing with the bees I showed you a few weeks ago? Yeah, apparently my art teacher entered it in the school art showcase, and... it somehow got first place. O.o that was my face when I found out. Cuz people, I can haz no technical skillz when it comes to drawing. So it must have been because of the general screaming and freaking out that was clearly going on in my head when I drew it. Or something, I dunno. That last post was post number two hundred, by the way! *throws partay*

Commander Kip who has WAY too much going on

"This is your captain speaking; we're having some... problems with the reentry sequence, so we might experience some slight turbulence and then... explode."

Normal is overrated!

Thanksgiving artses

Happy tofurky day. Love you guys too.

This is the violent thing I was working on at school. And guess what? That giant mass of black stuff in the backrground there: those are bees.

This was kinda hard for me to draw, because you know I hate bees. So much. And wasps, and hornets, and yellowjackets, and pretty much any kind of flying stinging insect. I hate them. They stalk me. So it wasn't much fun to come to school and draw nothing but bees day after day. *epic shudder* Blaargh. So glad to have that one out of the way.

This is Fiera, scowling at something or other. She scowls a lot. She's some kind of feline alien, and I'm pretty sure the bad guys in the steampunk story like to enslave aliens and make them work the coal mines and all that crap. So she's a slave, probably, but somehow I don't think I'm gonna stick her in the mines. Maybe she serves the food or something, I dunno.

So I'm painting another gun this weekend, because I can. XD My lovely amazing wonderful Spanish teacher gave us NO HOMEWORK over the break, which made me very happeh, since the history teacher positively loaded us down. Gak. Anyway, pics of that when I get it done.

LADY ARIN'S COMING OVER TOMORROW BWAAAAAAAH *leaps about squeeing* And my room is CLEAN and you can see the FLOOR and everything...

Commander Kip

"Hey, Georgie, how d'y'feel?" "Saint-like."

Normal is overrated!

the glow of a dying sun

My posts ought to all have such interesting titles, I think. Anyway, Thalassa changed her dress.

I was in the tree during all this, by the way, terrified that I was going to drop the camera. But I've always wanted some close-ups of the awesome.

Looking straight down. This picture does not accurately convey how high up I was - well above the roof of my house at this point.

Then I came down.

BWAHHH the tree's on fiiiiiiire! No, actually not.

Taken out the back windshield of the van on the way to Kirksville. Stupid line thingies.

Just getting that out of my system. Poor Thalassa's all bald now - these pics are from several weeks ago.

Oh, dude, THIS SONG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2M0GQOgYGg I'm comandeering it for Anabeth and the Irlican rebels. Because it's their job to fix thousands of years of bad blood between the Zraelanders and Farshoreans, and I think they're gonna need a theme song to do it.

GAAH, SO MUCH HISTORY HOMEWORK... *dies in agony* I'm epically procrastinating right now, in case you couldn't tell.

Commander Kip

Yes, I will pat you with my thumb and everything will be all better. Cuz I'm just magic like that.

Normal is overrated!

mostly the Commander

but some other unrelated stuffs tooooo. Oh, and it's supposed to snow tonight. Just throwin' that out thare.

So I keep sprouting more people for the new steampunk thingy. This is Commander Benathy Greene, and she is an epic ninja. And Benathy is not a misspelling.

I lent her my boots, because they are epic and manly and she likes them. She is such a manly man. It's pretty funny. Sir Beast is her gun, by the way. XD *loves the Beast*

My history teacher's gonna have no idea what to make of this. Ben's a weirdo. She collects thumbprints in a little tiny book and wears it around her neck like a locket. Also, that tiny scar by her left eye is from a piece of shrapnel from the explosion that killed her husband. Yeah.

She smokes like a chimney, swears like a man, and wears trousers and a cravat to the opera. But she knows what she's doing and sticks by her crew and all that. Currently she's leading an expedition into the Static Zone along with her cousin India and some other learned gents, partly for the good of science, partly to escape the Hounds, which I shall explain at a later date.

I just discovered that there are strange and unearthly creatures called the Green Knights living in seclusion in the Static Zone. Apparently, they're in cahoots with Rebellion himself and their job is to make sure that no one who ventures into the Static Zone will ever return to civilization. MUAAAAAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!! *epic cackle* So, that there is one of their generals, I dunno his name. More of these guys later, I think.

And here we have one of the most celebrated inventions of recent exploration history: Brackolt & Fain's Aethernautical Escape Pod. With improvements. And stuff. This particular model appears to have seen better times. No doubt Sprocket crashed it into the side of the factory while taking it for a test drive. 'Able to withstand the immense and deadly pressures of Space', says the advertisement, but of course, steel walls are something else entirely.

This stuff is for real. I saw all of them while walking around the Renfest earlier this fall. I wish I could have found out where people were getting this stuff, especially the sparkly green antennae.

Booooooring sketch of Kimie from history class, while she was listening and I was not. Normally, nose rings creep me out, but hers suits her.

And lastly but not leastly, I saw Legend of the Guardians on Halloween with Reedfrost and Blondie - oh, have I told you this already? Whatever, it was pretty gorgeous. So here I present you my exceedingly lame rendition of the Great Tree and the awesome floaty light-bulb things. Of doom. I don't know when I'll have time to get pics of my mistcloak. Hopefully sometime before my birthday. I hope.

Oh, I read Dorian Gray last night, kind of in one sitting, because I couldn't really put it down, or bad things were sure to happen when I wasn't looking. And sure enough, they happened, but I saw them all so it's all good. CREEPY BOOK, YOU GAIZ. MUCHO CREEPIFACTION THARE. I'm kind of shocked I didn't have dreadful nightmares last night. Whatevah. Dorian reminded me of a much less Stu-y Edward Cullen, just a little.

Commander Kip

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.

Normal is overrated!

Winter's Coming Home

Such a lovely Tom Jacobs song, which is probably nowhere to be found on Youtube, but feel free to look anyway.

Reminds me of this strange thing I found in one of my folders just now. What is it? A ninja with a flowery scarf? Um. It looks old. I can't remember. I DO know what this is; a strange sorceryful lady with claws and stripes and horns and very odd clothes. I was drawing without thinking, obviously.

And these peeps are from Portals. I've never drawn either of them before. The cutie mouthing off at the top there is Anabeth Walker, Ellian's younger sister's daughter from the new prologue I've been toying with. The younger sister, Ingrid Morgan, was born just after the Portals storyline ends and grew up without ever meeting her sister Anabeth, for reasons I can't explain without giving away some very painful plot twists. In the new prologue, Ellian visits Ingrid and her family and discovers that little Anabeth knows nothing about Irlica or her namesake's disappearance. Ellian explains. The other guy on the paper is Cairbre Faileas, Thaelen's father and the previous Inkmaster. Pre-Blight, obviously. Muaa. Shiny, isn't he?

And here we haz the planz I drew up for mah loverly Spatler a while back when I was bored in art class and had nothing more productive to do.

Psh, I dunno who it is. Some random small person. Something appears to be wrong with her head. I was listening to Rachmaninoff preludes and my hand just kept throwing down lines while I wasn't paying attention.
If you crazy people still haven't read Larklight by Phillip Reeve, there might be some imminent smitation coming your way. Possibly. I'm serious, this book is a fount of steampunky epicness. And it has Jack Havock in it.

Gaw, that book was gross and depressing. But so masterfully written. NIGHT by Elie Wesel, you guys. Read it and weep. My art teacher said this was 'a very powerful image', thanks very much.

And this is my buddy DJ on the bus on the way to the Kemper a few weeks ago. He does actually wear his hair like that, for realz. It's pretty beasty.

I'm making something rather violent in art class right now. Once it gets done, I'll have to take it out of doors to get a good picture, because it's about three times the size of my scanner glass. I also have two more faerie doors to take picsies of, and another cool thingy that is sort of hard to explain. I'll just take some pictures and show you sometime.

Stuck on Chapter Twelve again, surprise surprise...

Commander Kip

"LUKE, IT'S A TRAP!!" No rly? I think the hordes of stormtroopers kind of gave that one away just a little bit...

Normal is overrated!

NEWSFLAAAAASH

Guess what, peopleses? Some of you already know this. If you missed it, pay attention this time. If you didn't, happy birthday, you get to hear it again, because I'm announcing it all official-like this time.

I am now the freakin' STATE CHAMPION pianist in Missouri for my age group. (!!!) And to that I say, WHUT NAOW. So there. XD I also somehow managed to take third place in the regional Young Artist's piano competition this weekend, which was also awesome. Plus, that one paid monies. Yay.

Hokay, just had to get that out of my system really quick.

Commander Kip
Zombies and pizza. Pizza... zombies. How did we get on this topic?
Normal is overrated!

Renfest 2010

It rocketh, as it does every year. I think I've been every year of my life so far.

Just look at it. Look!

Just look at the llama!

The gypsies were like my favorite part this year. The dude gypsy in the middle - see him? - he was hilarious, and suitably hawt besides. He and a few other dudes did this fire-twirling thing where they had these flaming staves and they were swinging 'em round and blowing fire out of their mouths and awesome stuff like that. *epic squeeface*

I have art, but no pictures of it, so you get the Renfest piccydump instead. I saw a hobbit there, by the way. And an elf dude with long pretty hair in a black leather trenchcoat. Not to mention the aforementioned hawt gypsy dude, who was also funny and also played with fire. Epic much.

And on a completely different note, I had my Yamaha state piano competition this weekend, and I... won. O.o I am the FREAKIN' STATE CHAMPION THANK YOU VERY MUCH HAVE A NICE DAY.

Commander Kip

I know you think it's stupid, but it's good for ya. Like vitamins. And... vegetables.

Normal is overrated!