Dun Dun Dun...A Peal of Doom Rings Over Storyland?

Whatever happened to having the first draft of Storyland done by January? I don't know. All I know is, I am considering scrapping Storyland, and chalking it up as yet another failure. I have tried to write this draft three times already, and each time it's just failed. I feel like giving up on it, but that would be the fifth or sixth time I have failed to finish a novel. I want to start something completely new, but I am afraid that it's just going to fail again, the same way that everything else has. The trouble is that there are just too many possibilities for the way things can happen. Do character A and B already know each other, or are they going to meet? Is C the daughter of D, or the enemy of D? Are D and A the same person? Is E an important figure, the underling of Evil Enemy F, or is he a loser student? It's all stuff like that, which can end up completely changing a story. Sigh.

The worst part is that I have realized that Storyland really should be a graphic novel, because pictures tell it so much better, and the graphic format really lends itself to the metastory humor, besides the fact that the ideas I get for it are more in the form of serial short stories than a real novel.

Problems:

1. I can't ever create it, though, unless I can nail down the story first, even if I don't write it in novel form!

2. I can't draw well enough to do it justice, and I would much prefer to draw it myself! Oh, horror.

Now for some story-specific gripes: I was going to make Destiny and Margaretta the same person again, but although the character would be funnier and more well-developed, it just creates too many paradoxes. How can she be Althor's dead ex-wife Margaretta, and also be the single (and this bit is important) ALIVE Destiny? Also, (MAJOR SPOILER ahead!), if Destiny was Margaretta, I wouldn't really be able to hide the fact that Margaretta is Greta von Twisselhoft.

I was going to make Jason and Eddie the same person too. However, that also introduces too many paradoxes. The whole idea is that Jason starts off as an ordinary person, who thinks he's a complete loser, and only gradually starts discovering special secret powers, or if he already has them, finds that they actually mean something more than just a random talent. He couldn't exactly be Eddie (who has been a Reaper since the beginning of time) without having been so from birth, which would make him an established figure of supernatural power. That's not to say that Jason won't have awesome Reaper powers eventually. He'll just have them in his own right, rather than being Eddie, who I rather suspect is his master.

Before I get too confusing, let me explain. I don't know if I mentioned this already, but if I have, I apologize for the redundancy. There is another major spoiler ahead, by the way. I should say right now that this will be a rather frequent occurrence, so if you don't want spoilers for my stories, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog. XD

Jason starts off as an ordinary Joe…for a given definition of ordinary. I rather think that he is going to be an important underling for Wilhelm von Twisselhoft, who is…an antagonist, insofar as any of my characters are ever antagonists so much as they are all protagonists with alternate, conflicting points of view. There. However, he thinks that this is as far as he's ever going to get. He's set in his point of view. Then…something happens to overturn that view. I don't yet know what. Maybe he's been brainwashed, and starts to realize it. Not sure. However, he starts either to gain powers or develop powers already in existence. These consist of various versions of manipulating the world around him, in ways that should be impossible for any regular Character. I already knew that Jason was going to find out that he was the Narrator. It was my friend M who suggested that Jason and Eddie be the same person. For the reason mentioned above, that won't work. However, I am going to stick with the idea that the Narrator and the Reaper should be the same person, because the Narrator symbolizes Storyland: birth and death, The Beginning and The End. Part of the current instability of Storyland is due to the fact that the Narrator and the Reaper have so far been separate people, either Sundered at some point, or always separate, conflicting entities. It will be Jason who finally unifies them, as he realizes that not only must he uphold the legacy of the Narrator, but also the legacy of the Reaper. He will have not one, but two masters.

As for Destiny, I rather fancy the idea of turning her into a female version of Arthur Dent. The fact is, she hates quests and the idea of being a useless princess. She'd much rather go on adventures *after* she's had breakfast, thank you very much. But an accident happens at Madame Kiteroo's Institute for Damsels in Distress, and due to the nature of Storyland, of course it's a single student who goes out to save the world, rather than a team of trained professionals. I think that at the beginning of the story, Destiny and Jason do know each other very well, but Destiny thinks that Jason died a few years ago. It will make Jason and Destiny be apart for a while, so they can finally meet later in the way I wanted, as pseudo-strangers, but the basis of friendship that I needed would also be in place.

During the accident at the school, possibly Destiny gets a sign that he's alive, and this is what spurs her to go on a quest. The only thing is that while I do want them to fall in love and get together at the end (yes, I am a sappy sappy sap sack full of sappy sap), I don't want it to be one of those 'true love knew we were meant for each other since childhood' things. If it were, that would be enough to spur Destiny to go questing. However, it is not. She has no idea in her head of such a thing, and in fact, I want to make it seem like she'll fall for Althor first, especially according to the way such things are hinted at in books. I might go with the whole 'realistic relationship' angle, in which it is quite conceivable that in another universe, she might have chosen Althor instead, but I rather think that Althor trying to kill Destiny is enough of a reason that Destiny might break up with him…although she might have been falling out of love with him since even before. Why am I going on this whole rant?

Destiny, like Jason, is also going to have her world overturned. But while Jason starts off as a bit cynical, a bit questioning, and ends up being forced to accept the reality of a world of which he is the guardian, Destiny starts off as always playing by the rules, even if she hates them. To her, that's just the way the world works. Her comfort is short-lived, however. Slowly, the Ineffable Wizard starts to take over, and he breaks all the rules. This makes her *angry*. It also scares her, however, because things no longer work like they do in books. Slowly, those close to her start to betray her. Her "love interest" tries to kill her. The friend with whom she had a lot of childhood memories turns up alive, but also turns out to be evil (according to her). Plot bunnies die. In the greatest betrayal of all, the Narrator, who was supposed to be the source of all that was good in Storyland, turns out to have been orchestrating the chaos in collusion with the Wizard all along. It is true that part of it was under duress, but the fact is that he sort of wanted to do it, and all it needed was for the Wizard to push his buttons. The Narrator was the central pillar of Destiny's world, the one who held all their fates in the palm of his hand, and this last betrayal sends Destiny over the edge. While Jason learns to embrace his power, Destiny learns to hate what she once represented. They start off at completely opposite ends of the spectrum, but in the end, though their views go a complete 180, they are still at opposite ends of the spectrum. Along the way, however, they hopefully learn to find at least a little sliver in which the circles of the venn diagram that is their relationship cross, a little something they can agree on, and in the process, discover that they can still be friends, and perhaps something more. In the end I hope that they'll both discover that they can be people in their own right, rather than let themselves be defined by their sides.

I promise you this will not be romantic comedy.

Sorry for the long, long paragraphs. I started off with just a small update, and it turned into a whole long spiel of me getting my thoughts down. That's about the state that Storyland is in right now. I still don't know precisely what happens, but hopefully I'll figure it out soon. Otherwise come February, I am just going to pause and do something completely new. More on that later! :-D

So...

What is SOPA? See the link on Wikipeda. They pretty much say everything I wanted to say. :-D So...I had a whole post all written out, but blogger deleted it. Basically, the gist of it is that I have all the willpower of someone who doesn't have a whole lot of willpower. But instead of staying off the internet, I will just say...passing SOPA to prevent piracy will be like using an AK-47 to get someone's attention when just a tap on the shoulder will do. It's a threat to security, and it might prevent the pirates, but it will also unnecessarily punish a lot of innocent bystanders. We need to address the root of the problem, not chop off the whole tree! We'll end up killing the forest of the internet this way. I don't believe that suppressing the right to freedom of speech is the right way to go about addressing the problem of piracy. ...there. There was a lot more to rant about, but I think I'll keep it short. Most of this has been repeated ad nauseum all over the internet, and though I feel strongly about it, paranoia and anger will not help. The only thing we can do is speak out, and hope that "they" will hear our concerns. :-D

SOPA Strike

As many of you know, many people and groups are blacking out their websites and blogs to protest against SOPA.

I don't know how to do that for this blog, or I would. Le sigh. All I can do is refrain from using the internet, including facebook and twitter, as much as possible today, save for this post, which technically I should have made yesterday but did not get a chance to do.

Let me just say... STOP CENSORSHIP.

And goodbye until the 19th.

Happy New Year!

"Dad, how do you make nachos?"
"You keep saying, 'this is mine, this is mine, this is mine...'"

I just up and decided to get on 'the Twitter'. (@Bobo_The_Bard, by the way). Yes, I did in fact call it The Twitter, because I've stayed off the bandwagon so long that I might as well be standing on my porch in a nightshirt with a shotgun yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn.

At this point, I had a whole long overly dramatic blog entry about how I'm going through a quarter life crisis, so to speak, right now. I started it yesterday, and continued picking away at it today, until the whole thing became a behemoth, getting uglier and more ungainly with every word edited. So I scrapped the whole thing, and I shall just summarize it by saying: man, I feel so old! Kids these days are such...children! Was I ever that stupid?

In other news, due to circumstances beyond my control, 100D2 ended up getting delayed, with neither M nor I making progress, so we moved the start date to today. I've already done Day 1, so I'm going to drop back in on Day 2 (tomorrow), and we'll go from there. As usual, I will be posting what I do on dA, so everyone can see my horribleness, and taunt me for the rest of my life.

Otherwise, milwordy started today, and so far I'm doing dismally. The only thing I've written so far is this blog. Kind of sad that I've already accumulated a word debt.

And yes, Happy New Year! Now I shall post this before midnight, so it still goes up on January 1st.

God of Ephemera in Name and Nature

Ephemera indeed. I have a monster blog post here, because several things happened, and like an idiot, I tried to lump them all together instead of writing them individually as they happened.

The Berber From Hell

Only my insane family would decide to embark on a week-long renovation project on Christmas Day. I can only shake my head and laugh, but I can't really blame them, after all. The carpet in our house is absolutely disgusting, but for most of the past ten years, it was covered with furniture.

Of course, once that was cleared away, and we actually saw the state of the putrid berber, our initial reaction was: O_O Kill it! Burn it with fire! Throw it into the fires of Mount Doom! I was there, Gandalf. I was there, three thousand years ago, when Isildur...

I seem to have migrated from carpets to Lord of the Rings. It is appropriate, however: unlike the One Ring, while the carpet is not inherently evil, nor does it possess people, it seems safe to say, that if the nice new laminate floors we have in other rooms is the Shire...our old carpet is Gollum. It has lived far too long and has gone a little senile.

As far as one can ever predict renovation projects, I know what I'm in for, since we've replaced the flooring in other rooms in our house. This is going to be a huge time suck, just when I was going to start 100D2 and milwordy! Oh, and class too, of course. :-D It will be worth it in the end, however: I wholeheartedly agree that that carpet needs to die!

And on that head, this in no way means that I am not doing 100D2 and milwordy. I've had those planned for far too long. I'll just have less time to do them in, which should not be too bad, as long as I remember not to spend my free time reading web comics, watching movies and TV shows, and idly surfing the internet. That's really what wastes the most time.

Sleep. Sleep. What is sleep.

The PLN

I finished the last two character sketches for the three NaNo people who requested them (a day earlier than my goal!), so that's good. :-D The result, however, is that now when I take a look at my own unfinished character & scene drawing that I was working on before, I just cringe at several glaring flaws that never bothered me before. I think I am just going to start over on that one...later. :-)

I finally broke out of the drawing binge. I am taking a break and not touching a pencil again before December 26th, when 100D2 starts. I have started outlining Storyland (...again) in anticipation of milwordy. So far, I have tried writing it twice, producing a crappy unfinished draft riddled with huge plot holes and stray scenes each time. However, I am not completely bummed. The plot solidifies a little more each time! At this point, I have had to force myself to admit that it's a trilogy, because there's just too much that happens to fit it all into one book. But now that I have accepted that, it makes things a lot clearer. I can focus on one book's worth of material, instead of panicking about three. Hopefully, by the end of January, I can have Draft 1 done, which is imperative! This, of course, brings me to my Milwordy PLN.

Milwordy PLN:

January: Finish Draft 1 of Storyland.
February: Leave Storyland alone completely. Write paranormal romance novel. I am sick of recycling old plot bunnies. I am going to do something completely new for this one, which means that I am not even going to think about what it might be for a few more weeks.
March: NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month. And that's why I want Draft 1 finished in January, so that I can approach March with a fresh mind. Editing right after writing doesn't help as much, because it's still all in your head, so you're still wearing your writer hat. For editing, you want to see it as your reader would. Also, this is the month in which I am going to write a few short stories, to keep my word count up.
April: Script Frenzy. I am going to rebel, and write a novel instead of a script, however. If I haven't finished February's novel, I might work on that, or I might write Draft 2 of Storyland Book 1, or Draft 1 of Storyland Book 2, or...yeah.
May: Nothing yet, but again, this would be a good time to lay in a stock of short stories, of which there is a dearth.
June: Camp NaNoWriMo! I don't know what I'm going to write yet.
July: JulNoWriMo! I don't know what I'm going to write here either.
August: Camp NaNoWriMo again! Don't know what I'll write here either.
September: Empty month. Nothing planned.
October: Empty month. Nothing planned.
November: NaNoWriMo 2012! Gotta think of a novel idea.
Decmeber: Another empty month. Nothing planned.

...Well, I never said that my Milwordy PLN was completed. :-D But while I haven't decided what I will work on during those unallocated months, and during the wrimos, I have a bunch of unwritten ideas. Amber of Time (the name for the set of books spawned during NaNo10) still has to be written and planned. I have to write Raven too. I also have Fireline (code name for crappy novel I wrote in high school, and which will probably be a set of books) to rewrite. There's also the virtual fantasy novel that's really a science fiction novel in disguise. Then there's the one about the steampunk actor who looks like Matt Smith who gets kidnapped by a mad homeless princess. You know what, I am not going to list all my plot bunnies here. I have way too many. Suffice it to say that they're all waking up slowly, and sniffing the horizon hopefully, because they smell Intent to Write. The muses smile and nod. Oh goodness. I am scared now. When the muses smile and nod, I know my brain will be in for one hell of a ride.

Where Have You Been, My Beloved?

This will be of absolutely no interest to anyone else but myself, but I am in love again. Those who are accustomed to me falling in love know enough to roll their eyes and ask, 'What inanimate object is it this time?'

Color pencils, my friends.

So far I have just stuck to graphite, because I am deathly afraid of color. If black and white is a scientifically defined universe, then color is a whole other crazy howling hyperspatial dimension that I would rather not enter. Not only do you then have to pay attention to tone and value, but you have to pay attention to color shifts too. When I have to look at all that, I usually end up with a royal mess on my hands. A kindergartener could probably do better.

However, my mom took a look at what I have been drawing recently, and then suggested that it might be worth it to invest in some good quality blendable color pencils. Now, she is not one who is prone to suggesting needless methods of expenditure, so I know that if she feels it's worth it, then it probably is, especially since I have no intention of giving up drawing anytime soon. I really want to improve. Long story short, I did my research, and found my soulmate in Prismacolor pencils, which just about blow everything else out of the water. I headed to Michael's, and bought the smallest pack available, after swallowing the sticker shock. They later went back to the store, for that very reason. However, I was not at all dissatisfied with the product. Those things are amazing. I actually found that they are less than half the price on Amazon.com, so I ordered some from there instead. The picture below is what I am getting, and they are well worth it. These are magic pencils. I can't wait for them to arrive!

Image from amazon.com

Prismacolor pencils are blendable! You can create any shade, even if you don't have it. Moreover, there are multiple ways of blending. I tried them out with tortillions (rolled up pieces of paper that blend), and also with alcohol. These pencils are alcohol soluble, so when you apply it, it makes the colors really bright, giving them an almost luminous quality. And because the pencil colors can be both opaque and translucent, you can also color very lightly, and sort of delicately layer colors, so that you can see the colors below. Lastly, you also get a colorless blending pencil, which is basically a Prismacolor pencil with no pigment. I have one, but haven't tried it out yet, but that gives a different effect, which works for small areas.

Oh, and did I mention that these things are erasable? 


Sorry if I sound like an advertisement. I have found my soul mate.

Crayola can eat it.


Life is Funny Like That

One of my writing buddies found this picture, which is so uncannily appropriate for NaNo11's Novel 2, a.k.a. Raven, that it's downright eerie.

Left: Gol the cybernetic raven | Right: His mentor/friend/creator Sadre the Nocharen

I should perhaps explain a little background here. Gol is a cybernetic raven construct, and essentially a slave. He actually has multiple bodies, like a flock of birds with a single mind. His mind, however, is capable of processing things in parallel, so he really can be in two places at the same time, or he can bring his bodies together and act like a coordinated flock of birds. Gol's masters are the Nocharen Sideas (plural, alternate form Noch), an "alien" race who are biological time travelers and shape shifters. They naturally live in four or five dimensions at a time, and they often travel up and down the space-time continuum, and enter any universe they please, usually by disguising themselves as one of the indigenous species. They are pretty adaptable that way, but although they can change themselves into any species (as long as they know about it already), they cannot control what they look like any more than humans. They cannot control things like beauty, for instance, and if they get injured, that injury will persist to their other forms. Gender is another such thing, although that one's tricky. It is possible for a Nocharen (singular form of Noch, or Nocharen Sideas) to manifest themselves as different genders, but only in different species. That is, when they change into one specific species, their gender will always be the same. However, it could be different for another species. These tendencies are different for each Nocharen.

However, it's also what sets the Noch (short for Nocharen Sideas) apart from their slaves. While the Noch can biologically travel time and space, and change shape, their slaves do not have this power, or if they do, it is due to technology, and not biological.

Gol's particular creator is Magahakasadre (Sadre for short). The funny part is, when my NaNo buddy sent this picture to me, she didn't even know that Sadre habitually changes into cats, and that it was one of his favorite shapes. Neither did she know that Gol and Sadre often take walks like this. A nice coincidence, I think!

Sadre is a bit of a child prodigy (though he is analogous to a teenager at the time of the book), who is a genius at producing biological constructs. But though he is gifted, he has a disability in that he is unable to shape shift into any form that has wings. Therefore, when he got left behind on expeditions that involved flying, Sadre channeled his energies into developing his gift. Gol is his masterpiece, as well as his 'child'. Gol is unusual for a slave, because of his superhuman intelligence, the complexity of his biological build, and also because Sadre contravened Noch tradition by illegally installing tech in his brain that allows him to make rudimentary changes to his appearance, and to make short spatial and temporal jumps. The tech helps Gol to communicate, because he's mute, but the rest of it is what attracts attention and causes trouble amongst the other Nocharen Sideas.

 From Sadre's point of view, their relationship is more like friendship, or father to son, whereas from Gol's point of view, their relationship is more like master and slave. Sadre loves experiencing new worlds while pretending to be a part of them. Gol doesn't at first, but he later learns to, especially when he loses Sadre. In any case, it is quite common for Gol and Sadre to walk together exactly in the manner shown in the picture, having many a complex discussion about life, the universe, and everything, which would shock the elder Nocharen Sideas, if they ever found out that Gol could understand...

This is the short version of the background. It went on for far longer than I had intended. I don't even want to think about how long of a post this is. I really should have split it up, but which is more ridiculous? One long post in one day, or multiple short posts in the same day?

I really don't know.

Nobody Knows, it's Just a Phase

Don't worry. This intensely singleminded pursuit of one particular subject area will not last forever.

With that said...

December 26th is almost upon me, and with that, so is 100 Days, 100 Drawings, my upcoming competition with my friend M. Before then, I have a lot to finish if I want it ever to get done. I have three character sketch requests from NaNo people, and the first one is finished and up on dA. Still, I also have two digital pieces to refurbish, two pencil sketches going on, as well as the other two sketch requests.

The end result is that I have been drawing like mad, until I think I really have gone mad. A little.

Bottom right says "(very bad weeping angel)"

Just a little.

More Adventures in Drawing!

Well, I've been completely neglecting my writing, and this is why. A few sketches that weren't good enough to put up on dA...

Another manga head. I really have to work on the eyes. I just can never get them the same size and shape on both sides.

Just a head. It looks better in real life. For some reason the cross hatching shows up more than on the paper.

Robot woman. Again, looks better in real life. The shading is off in the digital copy. 

That's about it for now. I've got a digital painting in the works (another old piece which I'm finally going to finish), and a sketch on which I'm spending forever. I'll link to those when they're done. 

I think I should stop being lazy and just use the damn scanner...