Madness: Character Profiles

So I usually throw together character sketches or profiles when I start writing something. Just to have references and to make sure I have the characters in my head. Madness is interesting because I wrote the initial scene with another character in mind, changing some details about her and obviously the environment, but then that morphed into a full story. And then she went and matured on me. I looked over her old character profile a little while back and laughed at my young teenager self.

So here are some updated profiles for Madness:

75 Post check up

Here we are again. I'm still here and you are still reading. I'm a month out from moving to Chicago. I'll have my 100 post update before that happens so I'll talk more about that then. In the meanwhile, I've been bouncing around here enjoying the springtime weather (could do without the allergies however). I got to hang out with my brother for a while to play Gears of War: Judgement. We are a pretty good team in that game, fairly equal too. I've read some actual books (which is actually something I've been lacking with all of the internet stuff I've been reading and working on) and I've passed one series onto my brother (and I totally left the book that I mean to give Mom in the car, dang it).

Cities with Gardens on the Roofs

I've always been fascinated with the architecture that includes green space into the design. It started with Le Corbusier's Five Points of Architecture that were based on the new concrete and steel construction. The second point is a roof garden: "The flat roof can be utilized for a domestic purpose while also providing essential protection to the concrete roof." (Wikipedia) Only a handful of buildings have followed through with this bullet point. Having a garden on the roof of a building provides insulation in the winter and shade in the summer which will reduce HVAC costs. The footprint of the building won't just be a scar on the landscape but just an elevation of such. It would provide a relaxation/break area for employees/residents/occupants of the building. It can be built with flora that doesn't require more water than is provided with natural rain. It will improve the aesthetics of a city if more buildings had gardens on their roofs. 

Imagine flying into a city where green capped each tall building. Where the tall beams of stone and concrete rose from an actual urban jungle. Where the air was cleaner and fresher due to organic recycling of the plants. Where cities could start supporting themselves on the gardens on their roofs if they chose to grow vegetables and fruits. 

Beach Dude

Rough Sketch

Clean up outline with another color (red)

Not Shadows Part 1

Not-Shadows
I don't know if anyone else can see them.
I don't know if they are real.
I know I sound crazy when I describe them.
I know it sounds insane.
But the shadows....
Not all shadows. But there are particular ones that aren't quite just the absence of light. They aren't quite nothing. They aren't just a passing cloud blocking the sun or a plane flying overhead. I've seen some shadows that are more than just shadows. There is a mass inside that darkness. There is something else there.
When I first noticed there were only a couple examples. Under a park bench (I thought it was a squirrel until I looked harder). Against a building (I couldn't see the brick through the shadow). And odd beam of shadow from the clouds (it was slanted in the opposite direction from the sun).
But now, I've seen more. I don't know if I am just looking for them now or if there are truly more occurrences. But I have recorded more. I have a little journal just for these not-shadows.
The one that convinces me that I'm not just making it up is the one I saw from the plane. Above the clouds there shouldn't be any shadows, not like the dark mound that broke the white cloudscape. It was the most tangible not-shadow that I have seen so far.
They scare me. They shouldn't be possible.
Has anyone else seen them?
Posted - Jan 18 09:15:07 EST

Don't Buy Xbox

So I found a post on another blogging site about the new Xbox platform that is coming out. Now as a gamer, I go try to keep tabs on this. Personally I am a Playstation kind of gal and from the looks of things I will continue to do so until they do something like what Microsoft is doing with their Xbox. The 360 is probably the last one of that franchise I will play and it will still be limited to Fable, Portal, and Gears of War. Everything else, I will do without.

Now, I know I've mentioned dystopias before and apparently didn't go quite as in depth as I thought I did. I'll remedy that soon I guess. Anyways, one of the biggest ones that haunt me is 1984 and the concept of Big Brother. And you are totally wondering why I started out talking about video games and then suddenly switched to talking about 1984. Well the two are connected. Just take a look at this:

Airship Pirates

Inspired by this.

The captain stands proudly at the prow of her ship. The curved hull cuts through the sea of clouds, riding just above the wet cold mass of water droplets. The steady thrumming of the giant propellers drive them forward. The ropes holding the giant helium balloon creak as they are dragged through the air. The sky in front of her burns bright red with sunset. The land below will continue to be drenched in light even as the sun passes out of her view but that's perfectly alright with her. She's waiting for darkness anyways.

Her jacket is snug around her torso; the bronze buttons gleam in the fading light. The reflection on her goggles hide her golden eyes from her crew's glances and protects them from the cutting winds that whip her long blue-black hair around. Ruby red lips contrast with her richly dark skin but matches the scarf that is tightly wound around her neck. The leather of her gloves flexes as she adjusts her grip on the handle of the sword hanging at her waist. It's thin sheathed blade taps patiently against canvas-clad legs, shaped from her habit of climbing up the nets that hang from the lift above. Her tall dark leather boots hug her calves, held in place by bronze buckles. She exudes a sense of confidence and wears a mantle of authority that fits her position of captain of the airship.

Radioactive

Written to this.

The air is that soft perfect temperature that just glides over my skin without actually touching me. My arms and legs swirl through it, kicking up ashes and dust with my pirouettes and twirls. My bare feet pad along the barren ground. The tiny motes kiss my face and cling to my hair as my body sways and arches to the song only I can hear. Dip, bend, spin, step, leap. My laugh peals hollowly across the empty space. There is no laugh in return because there is nothing for the sound to bounce off of. There is nothing here but emptiness and myself.

So I dance.

I dance to fill the silent lonely emptiness. My smile is fixed to my face in remembrance of old times. The violin plays just for me in my mind. The drum of my heart gives me a beat to step to. The bright sun scorches my naked flesh as I cross the land beneath it. The heavens are clear now that the dust has settled, now that everything is quiet. The rolling thunder has faded and only the crystal clear blue expanse of heaven that stretches out to meet the curving horizon in all directions is left. I complete the circle, watching the faint curve of the earth meet itself in a perfectly flat disc around me. The dust and ash of a past world stick to the trails of wetness down my cheeks. The world looks brighter through the lens of tears in my eyes. I dance and laugh and cry silently for the world that has passed and gone by, destroyed by its people.

Strange Times, Bad Times

Is it just me or are things getting worse out there?

I mean, we have a huge natural disaster about every three months or so. The weather patterns are bizarre (and it is more than my family's influence on that). Politics no longer make sense to me; there is absolutely zero common sense in government any more. Then there are the human attacks like we've never seen before between the shootings and bombing. It feels like they are increasing in frequency. I don't know if its just my exposure and awareness to those events are coloring my perspective or if its that phenomena where time seems to accelerate when you get older so it just seems like things are happening quicker or if there is hard fact to back up these feelings.

Drawing Tutorial

Watch this if you are interested in drawing. I might be using this technique in future drawings because wow. If I don't and I do bad foreshortening, someone please smack me on the forehead and redirect me to this post/video.

Yea it's a short post today but I just gave you guys a 16 minute video. Be content. Or give me suggestions to draw. I'll take requests.

They Fought as Legends

          They fought as legends. Their blades flickered in constant movement around themselves, flashes of bright light against the encroaching darkness. They cut down soldier after enemy soldier but still the flood of darkness came. They fought back to back with a circle of death around them. But the enemy did not fear them. They simply moved their dead out of the way to make room for fresh combatants in a bid to wear the two warriors down until they finally made a fatal mistake.

Cheer Up, My Serut

Alke: Are you okay?

Aeacus: Course I am. Takes more than this to hurt me.

Alke: You are such a dork.

Aeacus: But you are smiling now aren't ya?

Canadian Pen Pal Part 9-11

I haven't written poetry in a while. So I've tried my hand at it again and yep, it's still as cheesy as before, but why not share it anyways.

Canadian Pen Pal Part 8

          "Tell me about Mother."
          "What exactly would you like me to tell?"
          "Everything."
          "Everything is a lot."
          "Everything!"
          "Alright, alright.
          "Your mother was the most beautiful person to me. Her long coal hair curled about her head like a lion's mane. Her blue eyes were as light as dawn but thrice as bright. She was tall and willowy, towering over many men, myself included. She carried herself like a warrior, eschewing the ways of a lady for the life led by the sword and shield. She was strong enough to wrestle a bear, skilled enough to disarm ten men, wise enough to know when to stand and when to fall, charming enough to win my heart, and brave enough to give her life to protect you.

How does one think?

I would like the chance to hear how someone else thinks. Just for like 15 minutes. I'd just like to be able to see how someone else's thoughts are put together. It wouldn't be like how it is usually portrayed in media as just a simple voice. Mine doesn't work that way. Yes sometimes I have a narrative where I am putting words together in something that resembles a sentence or a conversation but there are other ideas, connotations, meanings that lie underneath those words that narrow down your particular word into exactly what you mean to say or think. There are a lot of unthought thoughts that float around in my head that I brush past as I write, talk, listen, think to myself. There are the emotions, memories, background workings of a mind. It would be interesting to see how someone else worked. 

I've tried to describe how my thoughts work and some of the usual analogies are that thoughts are like clouds that materialize in my head, that they are like lily pads rising up from underwater to the surface of my conscious mind, that they are people who slip into the crowd unnoticed until they speak, that they are daisy chained trains that run all over the place, they are little packets of information that I have to open and then put together like a puzzle. These are all correct answers, but they don't fully explain it. But I have no reference to compare it to. I'd love to look into someone else's head and see how different or how similar our thoughts happen. 

Science Fiction Recommendations Part 2

There is such a wide range of science fiction because of the vast multitude of what if scenarios. It's also why alternate histories or apocalyptic stories are so popular. Everyone wants to share their idea of what would happen. The reestablishment and/or rewriting of the rules that make up society based on a single change can fall an infinite time and the number of changes that are possible from a loss of electricity, the invasion of aliens, introduction of space travel, the use of technology that looks like magic, to a shift in society or government, a shift of biology, the threat of an asteroid coming to kill us all are also so very infinite. And infinity times infinity, well you get a lot of stories.

Science Fiction Recommedations Part 1

I love science fiction because of the escapism that it provides and the way that it can actually shape our growth as it looks to the future that we are all striving to. We don't ever quite get there because progress is not as fast as we can imagine but who would have thought that the cell phones that we carry around in our pocket would have more processing power and memory than the entire vessel that went to the moon. We have definitely made large strides into the future and our own improvement but we look ahead still through science fiction.

I was able to take a science fiction focused lit class my freshman year of college. I met one of my good friends there but I also met a lot of good books and authors. Some of them have stuck with me and will always rattle around in my head because of their timeless nature.

Sketch: Puppies

My puppies! Well actually they are about twelve years old. But they will always be puppies to me. The gray one is Buffy and the black one is Strider. This is from a photo that my grandmother took in the farm's front porch. Sketched in Photoshop like usual.

Canadian Pen Pal Part 7

This piece is several pages long (on the small steno pad) and covers the legend/history of the land in Not a Hero:

A long time ago, the world was different. The fae practiced majic without restraint. Dragons flew from city to city to share their knowledge and services. The other mythical creatures were not so mythical and were as common as the mute animals that we know now. Humans were well kept as well.

The fae don't know where the humans came from; apprently they were found on the shore in tattered ships that were not fit to sail in the first place. The fae took in the miserable remnants of the new, strange rance and decided to foster them. The humans were homely compared to the fae and without majic. They had no special talents like many of the mythicals. They had no history or skill like the dragons. They were only somewhat more intelligent than the mundane beasts, but capable of language and learning.

The fae collectively decided to take on the humans and their developments as their pet project.

Canadian Pen Pal 4-6

Here are some more pages that I will be sending to my pen pal:

Canadian Pen Pal 1-3

So apparently I have picked up a Canadian pen pal. Don't ask. I don't have a good story and I'm not sure myself. She wants to send stories back and forth but not electronically. She wants my terrible handwriting apparently. I've decided to fill up one of those memo books with thoughts and writings and send the entire thing to her. I'll post some of the pieces here.

First three pages:

Writing. Writing. You ask me to write but you give me a blank piece of paper. The pencil hovers over the virgin paper and all thoughts scatter out of my brain. No words push down my arm, no letters dribble out of my fingers to stain the naked page. What to write, what to write... I stare at the blank sheet and hope my fickle muse whispers something in my ear. But she is a flighty bitch, only giving me ideas when I am in the shower, driving, or other inopportune times. It's a true love-hate relationship but every once in a while she blesses me and magic happens. The words flow out on paper, the story builds, the characters are fleshed out and then bled out for my purposes, and a tale is spun out from my thoughts, my dreams, my imaginary world that I've built in my head. But right now, I'm just staring at the blank page.

Promoting!

So as much as you people like to hear me discuss my family's farm and all the crazy happenings there, I will be moving away from that soon. But don't fear, I have helped my mother, the farmer, set up a blog where she will record with better accuracy and with her own interesting style of story what happens with the farm and its chickens, ducks, trees, gardens, and giant carp. So I'd like those who are interested to go check out Country Dark and Contrary Chickens

colors

Green

The soft quiet of the forest sinks into you, calming your mind and making your body relax against the soft moss the lined the hollow of the log that fits you like a throne. The happy babbling of the brook as the water tumbled over well worn down rocks pairs with the playful songs of the birds that you catch flitting from branch to branch overhead to stave off silence. The brushing of branches and rustling of leaves that are pushed around by teasing breezes don't quite mask the bustling of the small forest creatures or the buzz of insects as they work on their homes. With closed eyes, you tilt your head back against the spongy green material. You stretch out your legs and dip your toes in the cool rushing water that makes a serpentine pattern through your paradise. You breathe in deeply, feeling the clean air fill your lungs with health and forest musk. You feel the spots of warming sun move over your skin as the branches shift above you and the dappled shadows dance on the ground. You purposefully relax all of your muscles, letting your now heavy limbs sink down against cushioning plant life. Everything is calm and peaceful in your forest glade.

Madness: Angel

Angel Evora from my original work Madness. She is the Death Runner known as the Devil. She is proficient in guns and knives with Logan as her Watcher, weapons handler, weapon designer, and hacker. She is the highest ranked 19 year old and fourth highest ranked woman.
It's been a while since I have drawn her. And both her character design and my drawing skills have matured. I'll be drawing more of her. I hope.

Creation

          Some people have the creation in their head. It springs like Athena fully formed out through their hands. All the artist has to do is the work to bring it forth for the rest of us be it onto paper or canvas, from marble or metal, as a book or as a song, any was an idea can manifest. It's incredible to watch when you can catch that process such as this kid. They are called geniuses, and rightfully so. They are the Beethovens, the Michelangelos, the Di Vincis, the ones who work magic. But the trick is that they can already see the painting even before the brush touches paper, they can see the sculpture trapped inside the marble, they can hear the song without writing a note. It's brilliant and breathtaking. And they let us into their vision of the world whenever they successfully manage to finish one of those pieces. I wonder how many ideas they didn't get to because of the physical and mortal limitations they were restricted to.

Consciousness After Death Discussion

I came across this article and wanted to share it with you guys.

Consciousness After Death

Go ahead and read it first and then come back here.

          So I really like this article because it speaks to how I see science and religion. A lot of the world thinks that you are either believe in religion or you believe in science. I find this incredibly stupid. I don't care if you lean towards one or the other but just don't discount the others' beliefs. I believe there is a scientific explanation for everything but that science was set up by some powerful being (aka God). Intelligent design just makes sense to me. It solves the argument of entropy. (Which is explained via science fiction here. I love Asimov.)

50th post check up

Haha! Fifty posts in and I'm still going. This is kinda cool. Okay update on me. I'm less than two months out from moving up to Chicago. It will be the first time in 20 years that I will not have lived in Georgia. I am excited beyond belief. Like bouncing off the walls with a sugar high excited. Yea, I'm going to be away from family, but it's maximum for a year before I return to Georgia and I get to see if I like being else where.

Madness Video Game?

Warning crazy idea here.
          So I have a science fiction story called Madness (working title (probably won't change until like publication)). In Madness there is mention of the Death Runner structure. It's not super important to the story, just enough to outline some of the interactions between the Devil and the former Black Knight. But I can see it being deeper than that.

Cities

          I like to travel. Going out and exploring novel places is exciting to me. I've been able to travel to some pretty cool places within the past year and I have gathered some experiences that I cherish.
          Last summer my mom and I took a large road trip as part of a graduation celebration. We started in Atlanta and then drove down to St. Augustine, FL to visit family down there. We then made our way up the east coast with a plan to stop at anything that looked interesting with only a couple cities as destination points. We stopped in Savannah, Charleston, Beaumont, Virginia Beach, Atlantic City, New York City, Portland, Dorset, Buffalo, Charlottesville, Charlotte, and then back to Atlanta. I've also had a couple company trips that have taken me to places like Burnside, KY, Brampton, Ontario, San Francisco, Chicago, Durham, NC, and soon to Rogers, AR. I've also visited my friend up in Washington DC. My family is split between Rome, GA, Atlanta, and Phoenix, AZ. So I get around the country.

The Cake is a Lie

This is a redraw from a pretty iconic scene from a nearly perfect game. If you don't recognize it then you are missing out and need to go find yourself a copy of Portal. Anyways, I drew this as a birthday gift to Em (yes I'm being cheap this year but I bet she'll find it cool). 

But I really enjoyed it because I had fun creating the textures of the different surfaces. Like the rough stippling on the end of the portal gun or the rusty patches on the barrels or the edges of the strokes on the chocolate. The shading style is pretty basic and I used outlines instead of making it flushed shapes of color but I think it brings an interesting look to the scene. Almost comicky. I didn't just want a copy of the scene but to take it and play with it. I'm happy with the results.

Conversation is more than just words

There is just so much more to conversation than just words. There is the full sentence structure with direct and indirect nouns, verbs, adjectives, phrases, and clauses. There is intonation and selected emphasis on the different parts of the word or different words in the statement. There's inflection. There's emotion. There's context, inside the sentence, inside the conversation, between participants, with the environment and situation. There is body language both voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious. There is mindset and motivation. There is intent. There is perception and reception. There is conflict.

Conversation is more than just words despite how important vocabulary and connotation are. There is the delivery of the words. The choice to say them. There is what is said aloud and what is not said. There are drafts created, revised, discarded. There are the omissions and distractions. There is a human behind the words and with that comes our complexities, our dreams and hopes, our faults and failures, our history and backgrounds, our futures and plans, our ambitions, our fears, our personalities, ourselves. We stand behind our words, claiming them as they fall out of our mouths, are written by hand, or typed through machine. Words are a human construct and we construct humans from them. Words are power, intense and strong and carelessly tossed away without a second thought.

We rely on them to communicate ideas to each other because conversations are more than just words.