The World Has It Shine

Aside from my internet horribly failing the past two days I've been trying to figure out what to blog about aside from the epic post that I am going to post in maybe a week.

And I thought I'd blog about this one song that I love; it's the first song I always play when I turn on my ipod these days and it's because of a few lines.

Before I met you
I used to dream you up and make you up in my mind (up in my mind)
Woah-oh.
And all I ever wanted
Was to be understood.
You've been the only one who could.
I could never turn my back on you.

More specifically, I like the first two lines the most. I don't really know why. I guess it reminds me a lot of the one short story I worked on in 2006. The one named 'The Other Voice Inside My Head'. I think one of these days I'm going to re-write it because I don't really think I gave it the full attention that it needed.



Anyways, that's about this for this blog. Really I just wanted to have others listen to the song, lol.

In Their Own World

ZOMG! TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY??!? SO UNPRECEDENTED! Well technically the Saturday post was on Sunday but somehow my layout breaks if I have two posts in the same day. I don't know how, but it does.

Anyways, I thought I'd blog about this really quick because it's something I put some serious thought into the past day or so. There's this part in Sky's Content I've been thinking about a lot lately and last night I sort of realized something. When Yuri and Shikamaru are together, they're sort of in their own world. Everyone else around them doesn't really matter.

And because I was thinking about this last night (or this morning, I can't remember) before I went to sleep I had a dream which was similar to this idea.

Basically the dream was about this guy I used to really like, and how when he was with this one girl, him and her were sort of in their own world. And I was watching them as they gave each other this sort of look, the one that really says 'I'm in love with you'. Then some other stuff happened in the dream which involved me running away, plotting their breakup and eating this ice cream that was WAY too big to eat and have it melting in my hands...

The weirdest thing about this, is when I woke up it sort of really bothered me how jealous I got from it. But oh well, the dream helped to turn a 2D character from Sky's Content to a 3D one for me. So now some chapters will probably be a little different. Yay for a continually changing story!

Also, for the small amount of readers I have, do you like that I've been doing smaller, more frequent blogs? Or preferred it when my blogs were longer?

Conversations

Earlier this week I realized something about myself. I have never had a deep and meaningful conversation with someone in person. That's not to say I haven't had deep conversations, but they've all been online or on the phone. And if I'm in a conversation in person that could get deep I tend to duck out of the conversation somehow, coming up with any excuse. That or I just keep quiet and avoid eye contact.

I guess this is a part of the 'meh'-ness that I typically exude in person. But I just find it odd that after so many years, MSN is still my main line of communication with people. If I want to have a serious conversation with someone, I go to MSN to talk to them. Even now. Perhaps that's why I don't really go on MSN anymore. To avoid the deep conversations...

I want to say I'm like this because of my writing, and that I can more easily express myself on paper/on the computer. But I was like this even before I started writing, so I don't really know why I'm like this. I guess I'm just a victim of the internet?

It's just really odd. Especially since I've had multiple people tell me I'm a lot more open on my blog then real life... When did writing become my main form of communication? Gosh, the conundrums.

Anyways, so on Thursday I bought the cutest thing ever. Gizmo from Gremlins <3 Omg. SO CUTE!

Oh and that epic post is still pending. But I don't really know how epic it will be... Ok. I'm going to go edit Sky's Content 16 some more. BYE.

Working Space

After two weeks of being away from home I realized something. When I am at home I am very, very unproductive. In fact, I do so little that I probably can do more in two hours at my apartment then I can do in one weekend at home. Then again, I sort of attribute this to the fact that my room hasn't been fully clean since about... well... since I got my TV last May.

So in preparation for next school term I plan to make my room a place where I can come and study with ease. I am going to clean it thoroughly and get rid of any junk I do not use. This includes cleaning out my closet, a feat that hasn't been done in about 5+ years. I'm going to try to move around/remove furniture so I can fit another desk in here, if not then remove enough junk that I'll have lots of shelf space. And lastly, I am going to remove about 3/4 of the posters off my walls to help the transition into a 'work' environment.

Removing the anime/videogame/movie posters on my walls and door is a pretty deal for me, considering they've been up for years (at least 6 years for some). But after last school term I know that I need to change in so many ways, and I feel like removing the posters will have a big hand in that. I really just want to let go of the past Karol who these posters represent, and allow room for the new Karol who I hope I will slowly transition into as these next few months pass by.

Once I finally get a working space I just have to concentrate on not getting distracted by the beauty that is cable TV. But I'll worry about that later. Right now all I'm really concerned about is getting this room clean for the first time in almost a year! (And the fact that my room at my apartment also needs cleaning... -_-)

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's weird saying Happy Valentine's Day and actually meaning it since I'm usually so indifferent to the holiday. Even on years when I did happen to have a boyfriend it didn't really have much meaning to me. But now I feel like Valentine's day is more about your stance on the holiday as opposed to anything else. Everyone needs to either hate it, love it, or in most people's cases refuse to even acknowledge it.

I'm trying to think of this like if instead of Valentine's day, people felt this way about Mother's Day (or Father's Day). And it all just seems silly after that. It's like saying just because Mother's Day only applies to mothers you should boycott it. That it makes all the people without mothers feel horrible and the people with mothers have to go through the trouble to getting them gifts and planning out this whole day because they're there. Like, these holidays aren't mean to single anyone out, it's to show your appreciation for them if you have them.

So those who have someone to spend Valentine's day with, enjoy it! Not because it's Valentine's Day, but because you would be bored otherwise if your significant other wasn't there. And for those who don't have anyone like myself... Well... WRITE BLOG POSTS! Haha, no, but just enjoy it like it was any other day. There's no reason to get stressed out about not being in a relationship. Like honestly, who wants to get into a relationship with someone just so they're not alone on Valentine's Day? If you're going to get into a relationship with someone, it should be so you wouldn't need to feel the need to celebrate it just on Valentine's Day, but on any day.

Staying In Character

One of the things I've been struggling the most with the past couple of days is trying to figure out what would be the 'Shikamaru' thing to do. Now that the first draft of Sky's Content 16 is nearing completion I started to think more in depth about what happens in the later chapters.

My main concern is that I've concentrated too much on the story I want to tell and not the story that would happen if Shikamaru were to be placed in these events. This is something I've always struggled within the story, especially the chapters in Shikamaru's perspective.

Usually when I try to get into Shikamaru's head I go online and re-read all his profiles on any wiki I can find. And even though I've probably read those same profiles about 15-20 times by now I'm always learning something new about him I didn't know before. Like this time when I went through the profiles, I picked up a little bit on how he feels about female ninjas. As one of the profiles stated, "He feels that men, like him, should be the ones protecting [women] and not the other way around."

Potential 'spoiler' below, if you want to read, highlight the text. (It doesn't give any plot away though, so I wouldn't really count it as a spoiler.)

Now learning this I learned one key thing that actually affects the story: if a girl (aka Yuri) were to refuse being protected he would wonder why and still try to protect her. Sure it seems minor but it sort of changes the way some parts of the story will progress.

And then this got me thinking about the latest Naruto chapter and how Sasuke sacrifices Karin because the second she was taken hostage she was a 'burden'. When I read that it really stuck out to me because of the numerous times I've used the word 'burden' in Sky's Content. Then I realized just how different Shikamaru and Sasuke's characters are. Like, right now Sasuke wants nothing more than to destroy Kohona, and Shikamaru would easily give his life up to protect the village.

Anyways, enough of my ramblings. I know probably in a few weeks/months I'll be looking up Shikamaru's character again, trying to get into his head. Sky's Content is so much mental effort. Omg -_-

D.N. Angel

About an hour ago I finished the D.N. Angel anime for the second time. Originally, I watched D.N. Angel in 2004 when the series came out. And I've been meaning to watch it again for a while now because there were only two things I could remember about it: episode 6 was my favourite, and the anime seemed too short. (And I'm serious that was all I could remember. I didn't even remember that Dark stole pieces of art.)

Surprisingly after watching again those two things still hold true. I guess that's why they stuck with me so much. But there were a lot of things I noticed this time that I didn't before.

For one, as I said in a previous post. Dark and Risa's age differences is a little weird. Like Bella/Edward weird.

Another thing, in episode 18 when Riku and Daisuke told each other that they liked each other, all I could keep thinking was 'they're too young to be dating'. I guess I didn't notice it before because I was their age when I first watched it, but now, 5 years later it just seems odd watching two 14 yearolds date. And ironically enough, I was 14 when I started dating. Sort of makes me feel old...

Also, does anyone else think it's odd that Daisuke's father was gone for 12 years and when he came back it like he was gone a day? I don't know, it just feels like they should have been more 'Wtf were you doing all this time? We sort of needed you.' and less of 'Welcome back! Want some coffee?' But I guess when you only have 26 episodes you sort of have no choice but to leave some plot holes.

When I think of the series overall, the first half of it was a big mess of introductions and random crap, while the second half seemed to be all plot and story. Which is why I still think the anime ended too soon as it feels like they were planning on going for more than 26 episodes but were cut off and had to conclude the series in 2 episodes. I just don't see why they would go into so much detail about Freedert and the Second Hand of Time if they weren't planning on have the series go longer.

But I'm sort of glad they went into all that detail with Freedert because it was probably the most meaningful part of the series. When Elliot's sword stabbed Freedert I had to stop for a moment and just think. The sword stabbing her would have finally killed her but it allowed her to be with Elliot. The symbolism in that was very striking.

In the end, all I'm left thinking is that I want the story to continue. I want more of the phantom thief Dark and I want to actually hear the full story. So I'm reading the manga! Which I guess this is a good time to start reading now that the hiatus is over, but it means I have a lot of reading ahead of me.

Overall, D.N. Angel was an okay series. Not as good as I thought it was simply because they didn't have enough episodes to get the full story in.

Epic Post...

...To Come at an Undisclosed Date in the Very Near Future.

So there's been something that I've been dying to blog about. But I don't really want to blog about it until it's official and there is absolutely no turning back. Which should be very soon. Approximately 2 weeks.

In the meantime I'm going to talk about three things: 1.) Blogging. 2.) Programmming. and 3.) Sky's Content.

For the longest time I was the only one I knew who blogged. I know others who posted once or twice on their blog and gave up. Or people who post once every few months with some random thing they just learned to make themselves sound more intelligent. But now it's like every one is blogging about anything and everything -_- The ratio between my friend's blog posts and mine is about 4:1 in any given week. I feel like I should be blogging more even though I've done it consistently for 9 months now. But I'm going to try to stick to my 2 - 3 posts a weeks. I don't think I could possibly come up with enough interesting topics to blog more than that.

Otherwise I've been planning the site overhauls. Right now the next thing on my list is redo-ing skys-content.com. The first thing I need to do for that is to create a new layout. And I'm not looking forward to it. The more php and programming I learn, the harder designing seems to become. The layout on this page took about 5 tries before it turned out like this. I can't even begin to imagine how long the Sky's Content layout is going to take me... Blah...

But also I've been planning the EOE redo. I've pretty much got the database stuff down, I just need to learn how to code SQL queries and how to create a proper login. Oh and I need to learn how to set up registration. I'm really itching to start that.

In the meantime I'm working through a PHP book I bought that's supposed to run you through making your own blogging system/web applications. Unfortunately, the only thing I've been able to do so far is set up LAMP due to my slow internet connection... Le Sigh.

AND LASTLY, Sky's Content.

Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I went through and thought out the rest of chapter 16. I thought it was going to be painful and annoying to think through but it actually flowed quite nicely in my brain. So much so I'm beginning to wonder how much I actually know about plants that my subconscious isn't telling me...

I would divulge more but people who read Sky's Content are reading this blog and I can't spoil anything like I used to in this blog. Well I didn't really spoil, but I would give hints like how in chapter 15 there is one paragraph that I'm so proud of because it actually sounds like it's something that Shikamaru would say. Something that embodies his character so much there's no denying that given he were in that situation, he would say that.

Anyways, *traditional exit to blog where I say I'm going to do something*