Some Characters I Like (and Some I Don't!)

Ok. I'm going to do the character thing from Chloe's post that I didn't do last week. Yay! But first, I have to tell you about these books because I'm so excited

*Happiness!* The author, Jill Williamson, spoke at Summer Workshop last summer and was absolutely fantastic and such a fun person. I read Captives after I found it at a Christian book store in Michigan, and then got Outcasts right after it came out last month and read it in two days. Amazing books. I wouldn't recommend them for younger readers (they do deal with some more mature topics) but they're so good. And I just found out the last one is supposed to come out this August! YES!

Anyway, now the real part of the post...

Characters (I seem to have a theme going on here...) I'm going to restrict myself to "fictional" characters just to make things simpler.

#1. The first character I fell in love with. 
I've never really had a crush on a fictional character, but I still love lots of characters! I just can't remember the first... Probably Bree from the Viking Quest series. That's the first series I remember designating as a favorite.

#2. The first character I never expected to love as much as I do now. 

Ooh. That one's hard... I don't know about the first, but I can name a few. Bilbo Baggins, from The Hobbit. Remus Lupin, from Harry Potter. Kai, from Story's End. Margaret, Mr. Thornton, and Mr. Higgins from North and South. Thor, from... the movies about him. Ohh, Eustace Scrubb, from Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The character change he goes through... wow. And how can I forget! Elrond. He's an amazing character.

#3. The character everyone else loves that I hate.

Hmm... I don't really hate any characters that tend to be lovable, but there are some that I got really annoyed with. Like Katniss, from The Hunger Games. And there are others that I don't understand why everyone loves them, like Sirius Black from Harry Potter. Iron Man/Tony Stark. He's funny sometimes, but I really don't like him most of the time. Ohh, yeah, and Galadriel from the LotR movies. She's just weird. I don't get it.

#4. The character everyone hates that I love.

I don't know if everyone hates her, but one of my favorite characters in North and South is Mrs. Thornton. I think it goes back to what I talked about with conflicted/complicated characters being so incredibly interesting. Oh, also, Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility. I don't know why people don't like him.

#5. The character I used to love but I don't anymore. 

Maybe Violet Travilla, from the Life of Faith series? I haven't read those in a long time...

#6. The character I'd want to be like.

Remus Lupin. Jane Bennet, from Pride and Prejudice (not necessarily the circumstances, but her personality, kind of). Lucy Pevensie, from The Chronicles of Narnia. Sam Gamgee, from LotR. And I know one character I think I'm already like: Elinor Dashwood, from Sense and Sensibility. It's crazy.

#7. The character I'd slap. 

Harry Potter in Order of the Pheonix. Oh. My. Goodness. So annoying! Mason Elias towards the end of Outcasts. The obvious baddies like Wormtongue and Umbridge. But I feel much more inclined to slap characters I like who are acting stupid. 

#8. A pairing that I love. 

Just one?! Never :P. Omar and Shaylinn from The Safe Lands Trilogy. Faramir and Eowyn from LotR. Margaret Hale and John Thornton. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. 

#9. A pairing I don't like. 

I have to agree with Chloe, I'm not much in favor of Tauriel and Kili. Mostly because it doesn't make sense and it doesn't fit. Harry and Ginny in the Harry Potter movies. The books are fine, but the movies make it look really stupid. 

And that's it! I'd love to hear about some of your favorite/least favorite characters too!

Pictures I've Found for my Sci-fi Novel

I was going to do a post like Chloe's because it looked super fun, but I decided it wouldn't be nice to copy her exactly :). So, this will not be a post like Chloe's post. I also thought about doing another post where I show you a bunch of random inspiring stuff from Pinterest, because there's so much awesome stuff on there. But I've done that a lot. So, this will be something different. Kind of.

I already showed you the picture I found for my Hero, but I'll put it here again to remind you.

Yup, that's her! And, she finally has a name! Everyone, this is Cambriel Scott. I spent awhile this morning starting to get to know her, and I plan to spend some more later! I like her already :).

This is Cambriel's best friend, Ainsley Cartland.

Yes, she does have rainbow hair. Ainsley was actually the first character in this novel to have a name, but I still don't know her super well. I do know that she's going to be a very fun character, though!

This next picture is one I found for Cambriel's mom.

She doesn't have a name yet. If you've read my earlier posts (this is probably the main one) or talked with me about my novel at all, you probably know that Cam's mom is sick. She has a disease caused by the element they use for power (see this post). It's kind of complicated, but basically the disease causes backwards mental development (like slowly becoming mentally younger.) The situation makes things very difficult for both Cambriel and her mom.

This next one is kind of my idea for the mentor. (Chloe, I already know what you think :P)

He's another one with a name! Yay! This is Katrel Valerian. He's the youngest member of the council, which is the main governing group on the planet. You might notice that he's the only one of my characters so far who doesn't have blond hair (yes, I know Ainsley's is rainbow, but you didn't think that was natural, did you?) I'm thinking that's because he's half different race (I told you about how I made everything more complicated for myself in my last post. Remember I said I now have three/four planets and three/four races to develop now? Yeah, those don't have names.)

Ok, since I'm now on the topic of planets, I'll tell you a little more of what I have.

This is my inspiration for the smallest planet, which is also the one that the story happens on. It's a desert planet and not super easy to live on, but it's the only known source of the element I mentioned before. The native race is kind of based off Arabian nomads here on Earth. Kind of. But they have really long life-spans. Then there are settlers from this next planet:

This is kind of the 'capital city' planet of the system. They have advanced technology in transportation and communication. The people are also humanoid and have fair hair and blue eyes for the most part. (This is the race the hero's from). Also, the people have much shorter life-spans, which, along with the fact that they're just settling on the planet, causes some conflict with the people of the desert planet.

This is my idea for a planet I'm calling (for the moment) the medicine planet. Wanna guess what they specialize in? Medicine. The people are not humanoid, in fact, they're actually shape-shifters. Like, they can take on the form of another being. They're pretty reclusive and don't like to share all their research, but they do have really advanced medical technology and do help people, if somewhat reluctantly. I'm still figuring this one out, but one thing I do know is that this is where the villain comes from…

This last one is the one that I won't be developing as much because it's not as important to the story. It's the largest planet so it has the highest gravity. It specializes in weapons, so I kind of imagine it as a giant military base. That's about all I know about it.

Well, there you go! Now you know more what I'm thinking about for my novel. I had fun finding all these pictures, and I hope you enjoyed them too!

P.S. I guess I did end up showing you a bunch of stuff from Pinterest after all. At least it had a purpose, not just random stuff I found interesting :).

Updates, because it's high time I got back to this

It's been over a month since I posted! O_o It doesn't feel that long… Anyway, I'm back! Since it has been a month, I'll just start with a few updates and such.

Writing: Well, still working on it. I am getting somewhere (I'm just not exactly sure where…) When we started school a few weeks ago, I decided to get up 'early' every morning and get ready and then work on my novel stuff right away. It's worked pretty well, especially since I've had a lot of extra time since not everything has started back up yet. The main things I've been working on are character names (which I haven't gotten much farther in), outlining chapters (which I haven't gotten any farther in), and world-building (can you guess what I've been working on most?). World-building has been fun for the most part, but it's starting to get… harder? (Not sure if that's the right word. I'll try to explain.) Pretty early on in the world-building process, I changed up my overall world a little. Like, multiplied it. Originally, I was going to have just one planet, all by itself. Maybe it would trade with some neighboring planet(s) or something. Well, now I have four planets, all kind of connected and allied and stuff. It fits the ideas I've had for my plot and everything much better, but it means I now have four planets to develop instead of just one. Ok, three, one of them's not as important. But still. It doesn't sound like too big of a task until you get into the middle of it. Actually, the planets themselves have been fine and I have a pretty good idea of what each of them is like at least physically. It's the races that are causing me problems. Yup. I have three different races with three different appearances, cultures, mental attributes, languages, governments, histories, etc. And for one of them I have to develop two different groups. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of personal experience with alien races (if any of you do, we need to talk. For multiple reasons.) I've been reading and watching some more sci-fi, which has been helpful, but I'm still not getting super far in my own races. I'm not really sure what to do next.

Oh, that's right, I was going to tell you about other things in this post too. Moving on then…

College: I have decided! At this point, I'm planning on going to Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm definitely excited. God has really answered my prayers in this area in giving me direction and providing for me. I think he's been leading me to Cornerstone this whole time. :)

Other stuff that happened in the last month: Let's see… I got The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Version for Christmas (awesomeness!) as well as The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug soundtrack (double awesomeness!!). I saw DoS a second time. Our other computer's hard drive crashed and we lost like all our pictures from the last 2 years at least (but not my senior pictures!). Thankfully I had printed copies/other digital copies of all my writing stuff. At least, all that I could remember… It's very possible that I lost something and have no idea :P. Also, Deborah, a graduate student at K-State, moved in with us for the semester. We're all excited :). She's really sweet and awesome and fun, and I get a kind-of big sister for a few months! And she has the same birthday as me, which is crazy and fun and just kinda happy. I don't know. I think it's cool anyway :).

Well, I think that's about it. I'll be back soon consistently, and I have a few other post ideas that I've been thinking about recently, so you'll definitely get those in the near future!

Another Hobbit Poster

As a tag-along to my last post, I also found this poster. It's probably my favorite so far of the Desolation of Smaug posters. (And it's now on my Christmas list...) Enjoy!

Isn't it awesome? Anyway, that's it. I'm done (for now).

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Just a heads up, this isn't really a review. It's just some of my thoughts, what I liked or didn't like, and hopefully no big spoilers (similar to what I did with the first Hobbit movie). Now...

I just found this new poster. :) I showed you the other one before, but I think I'll still put it here because it's epic.

Anyway, now for my thoughts on the movie. Like the first one, I really liked it over all. There were some (ok, several) discrepancies from the book which was a bit disappointing, but I try not to have too high of an expectation so it's harder to be disappointed. Usually works pretty well.

I'll start out with what I didn't like as much just to get it over with. First, there were times (especially at the beginning) where I felt like they were speeding over the stuff that was actually in the book so they had time for the extra stuff they added. Seems kind of backwards. But it was some of the extra stuff that wasn't my favorite. Like Tauriel. (Just for background, Tauriel is a female elf they made up and added because they felt like there were too many male characters... or something.) She's interesting on her own, and helps create some conflict, but other than that... you can just tell she doesn't really fit in the story. At least, that's how I feel. And the whole thing with her and Kili... *shudder*. Not sure why they did that.

Well, that about covers what I didn't like. This movie was kind of the opposite of the first in closeness to the book--the first one was closer at the beginning, but I think this one was closer at the end (kind of...) So more of my favorite stuff was later in the movie. Anyway, I liked the part with Gandalf in Dol Guldur, which, although it isn't in the book, is still consistent with the story over all (as in it actually happened). Also, I did like how they extended Bard the Bowman's character so you have a chance to get to know him a little better before... well, I can't spoil that for you! Read the book.

Probably my very favorite part of the movie was when Bilbo and the dwarves are at the mountain. And SMAUG! Oh my goodness. He was incredible. And gigantic. It was amazing. He's such an intelligent villain (and unlike the Pale Orc and his helpers, Smaug actually speaks English). I can't even describe it, and certainly not without giving spoilers.

Kind of along with that part, I really liked how they showed Thorin starting to change. He starts to think more about the treasure and especially the Arkenstone, which would give him the right to be king. And he demonstrates how valuable it is to him, kind of. I'm sorry, I'm really trying not to spoil anything, but it's hard to describe without that... but they really did fantastic with that, I thought.

And then Bilbo. He is probably my favorite character in both Hobbit movies, but definitely in this one. You can see him kind of 'coming into himself' so to speak. You see he's gotten a lot braver over this journey. And maybe a little smarter too. His conversation with Smaug... wow. Probably my favorite part of the movie. Oh, and something a little interesting they did in this movie: in the first one (and in the book) he found the Ring in the goblin tunnels. He doesn't know what it is, and it's not super important to the story other than that he can now turn invisible. But in this movie, they show a little bit of how protective he is of the ring already and how he can hardly keep his eyes off it. It's not in the book, but I really like it. It kind of foreshadows what's to come (many years later in the Lord of the Rings, but still.) Well done.

One thing I'm not sure how to feel about is Thranduil, the king of the elves in Mirkwood (and Legolas' father). He wasn't what I expected, but at the same time I'm not sure what I expected. I think he's a little more... reckless or temperamental than Elrond, and it's good that he's different, but I'm not sure what to think. Also, the fact that there's supposed to be a bit of enmity between the dwarves and the elves (and the movie is focused more on the dwarves) gives him a kind of sinister feeling. (Actually, I'm not sure if that's really there or if I just imagined it in because for some reason he reminds me of Lucius Malfoy.) He is certainly not wanting to get involved in anything that doesn't concern him, but most elves are like that to some degree. Maybe it is just the slight recklessness and that I don't know how to handle a reckless elf. Anyway, didn't mean to confuse you or anything there, just something I was thinking about.

To sum that all up, I feel kind of similar to how I did about the first movie. I love seeing the characters on screen and I really love the parts of the movie that are close to the book or just really well done. I still like the book better and wish they could have stuck closer to it, but I'm content to think of them as similar but separate stories and continue liking both book and movie. I'd certainly recommend the Desolation of Smaug, but only if you've read the book ;).

More Pinterest Fun

Let's do another 'cool things from Pinterest' post! I had fun with the last one, but I've found some more fun stuff since then.

She's so cute. I really like different colored hair (sometimes), and bright red is so fun. I think it's actually supposed to be a costume of a real-life Ariel (The Little Mermaid), but I still like it as any other character.

I really like this picture. It's a cool setting, and the dragon really fits in with the snowy place. And he's feathery. Then we have all these greys and blacks and muted colors, and then the dragon's holding something reddish and glowing. Now that doesn't fit with what we expected. And it's interesting. It makes me wonder, what is the dragon doing? What is that thing? I kind of get the idea that he's sacrificing something of himself in order to help... something or someone. Fire and ice don't mix too well.

This is just plain cool. I mean, a city made to look like a desert from the top. I have no idea what I'd use it for, but it's a fascinating setting.

This is a fantastic drawing, not to mention really cute. But it's also from the Pixar short 'The Blue Umbrella' that plays before Monsters University. It is an adorable short. And incredible animation. I can't find the video anywhere online, but you should still watch it. Oh, and Monsters University is good too. :)

YES. I would watch that. You know, we should do this. Like just get together and nominate books for different 'awards' and then vote/have people vote. Wouldn't that be fun? And we could make special labels and put them in our copies of the winning/nominated books: 'Winner of the Best Antagonist Award 2013' '2013 Runner-Up Best Plot Twist' 'Nominated for 2013 Hardest Thrown Across the Room Award'. Maybe I'll just do this with all my books anyway. It is fun!

This compass. I love it. It looks so cool! It has kind of an old-fashioned look, but in a different way. It's unusual, but still has some 'classic compass' to it. Anyway...

This is the last one. It just makes me laugh. I hadn't really thought about it until I saw this, but it's true. The recent Disney (princess) movies are all just named with adjectives! Anyway, just thought it was cool.

Thoughts on Writing

I've been thinking a lot about writing today. Partially because it's always in the back of my mind and partially because I was trying to formulate my thoughts into something to blog about. Whether or not this attempted formulation was productive remains to be seen.

I don't have any updates to share on my Other Worlds novel. I've updated stuff, of course, but I don't feel like any of it's clear enough to share here. It's all incredibly complicated. I knew that already, but it became super obvious when I tried to explain things about the story goal to my mom at lunch. I think she got the basic picture, but... I guess I hadn't realized how many details I'd put into just the small things even! One thing I did recognize in that conversation was that my hero and my villain have very distinct goals. Part of the problem I still have is that they don't seem to connect super well, but it's good that they're distinct characters and not just there to oppose each other.

Probably the reason I realized that was because I'd just been reading this blog's posts about villainy (which is what the link should go to). Not only are they super fun and creative, they're also informative on how to make (or be) a better villain. It's also where these came from:

This one accompanied my post on villains

I like this one. A lot. :)

This is what I was talking about with my characters.

Anyway, great stuff.

I've also been reading the OYAN blog, which has a bunch of excellent posts from Mr. S, other OYAN staff, and some older OYANers. The latest one:

Which I also just read today. It's about how writing hurts a ton because you're putting a part of yourself into it. Your story won't mean as much if you don't have to give something up, I guess. It's a wonderful part of writing (and makes reading better too!) but it's so, so hard. I think it's probably the biggest reason I avoid writing. It feels unnatural to make myself vulnerable through my writing, not to mention it's not easy. In the end, I suppose it comes down to whether or not I think it's worth it. Giving up is a whole lot easier, but it doesn't have as much reward. Deep down I think I realize that, which is why I still keep trying to write. And keep thinking about the other stories I've worked on.

Like Aubrinn's story. My first OYAN. Which I've never finished. I still think about it a ton, way more than I think about Bryllen's. It kind of surprises me, since the first had (has) WAY more problems, but maybe that's just because I was willing to risk not getting it right the first time. Or I just had no idea how wrong it could go. Ah, the innocence of inexperience. Maybe I just think about it more because I know it better. I never really got too far into Bryllen's story (although I do know the characters pretty well!) I'd really like to work on and finish both of those stories someday. And finish the one I'm working on now. I just have to be willing to take the risk of it hurting. I haven't given up yet!