Short story – ‘Interlude’

Firstly -- I went to the zoo on Saturday :D It was ridiculously hot and all of the animals were asleeps, lulz. Buut I have pictures if you find such things interesting. Which you probably don't. But I'm going to give you the link anyway. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045274&id=1482723860&l=eeb06993ef

Secondly - I know what I'm going to write for NaNoWriMo :) I decided on the one that I called 'Music = Life' (but I think I'll change the title.)

Thirdly - I changed my blog layout a bit so that the background of the post wouldn't be transparent. I don't know how I feel about it. I wish there was a way to make it just a little bit transparent, but not completely. If there is such I way, I do no know it. D:
Fourthly - I have a bit of writing to share :D I wrote it the other day while listening to 'Vampires Will Never Hurt You' by My Chemical Romance. I've read all kinds of stuff about how the song is a metaphor for society trying to change you and suck the life out of you. That's all well and good. I kinda like to think of it as a song about…vampires. >_> The non-sparkling kind, please. It was actually the middle of the night when I was listening to the song, and it really creeped me out quite a bit. Oh, the days when vampires were scary. I miss it so. *needs to re-read Dracula.* (Speaking of Dracula, I have actually talked to some teenies who were all "OMG VAMPIRES ARE SO SMEXIII<3 I LUV TWILIGHT!!!1!" I was like, "Oh yeah? I like vampires too. What are your favorite books? I'm personally a fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula." They said, and I quote, "Who's Bram Stoker?" I shit you not. I almost cried.)

So. This was inspired by that. I was trying to make it clear what was going on in the story without specifically stating what is hunting them. I don't know how well I did, because obviously I know what's going on. So, if you have any comments, please don't hesitate to share them :)
Oh, and another thing - despite this being a story inspired by a My Chemical Romance song, I did not name the character 'Frank' after Frank Iero. I actually did not even think about that until just now. Lulz.

Things I Like Thursday!

I did the most ridiculous amount of math today. You have no idea. I'm too pretty for this shit. D:
Oh, and I got my eyebrow pierced. It hurts a whole bunch (though it didn't hurt as bad as a wasp sting, as I discovered last night. that could just be because I have a very low tolerance for wasp stings. my foot swelled up to like, almost twice it's size o_o), but it's epiccccc. My Facebook profile picture has a good shot of it, but only in the large view. :P
--
Yeah. I totally spaced it out last week. >_> <_< Well. Things I Like is back. :D

Writer of the Week: Lixxle
A fanfiction writer in the Labyrinth fandom (which is the #1 coolest fandom ever, just so you know. We're all intellegent and like awesome things. We kick anime fandom's asses.) One of her stories, My Fine Feathered Friend, was inspired by some drawings that Pika-la-cynique did. It's all pure crack!fic, but in the best possible way - I dare you not to laugh out loud the whole way through all of her stories. Warning, quite a bit of 'adult-type touching', to quote Lixxle herself. But some of that is the funniest part.


Artist of the Week: Janey-jane
...There are no words. Just look at it. Especially these:
Sesshomaru,  The Goblin King, and Bioluminescence

Photographer of the Week: homedoggieo
A friend of mine from when I first joined deviantART...he doesn't get on too often anymore, but he still has some great stuff.

Band of the Week: Taking Back Sunday.
Omfg I love them. Listen to 'Swing', 'New Again', and 'Sink Into Me'. They're my favorites right now. :D

Recent faves on deviantART:

The Ghost of You by ~lizziedeviant on deviantART


Last of the Time Lords by =SheldonSands on deviantART


warmth by ~malo-bice on deviantART


Code Geass : Damn Regret by *ilaBarattolo on deviantART


The Hatter by =einlee on deviantART


Heroes - Gabriel Sylar by ~Petite-Madame on deviantART


Skull by ~BenDiAnna on deviantART


l i t t l e m o n s t e r by =gutterface on deviantART


Sin by ~noridomotomiriki on deviantART


Vladimir by *Id-Boomer on deviantART

lived too long.

lived too long. by ~x-VelvetChains-x on deviantART
CRITIQUE ENCOURAGED.
You guys.
I am so proud of this.
You have no idea.

I did this totally freehand, for one thing. No tracing, no grid, nothing like that. And it's the first time I've drawn something this big in that sketchy crosshatching style. And the hair/clothes don't look like complete shit (just a small amount of shit.)

Also, David Tennant is quite pretty. This is a simple fact of life.

Took 4 or 5 hours to draw it, then I did the sepia tone in photoshop and make some of the highlights a bit brighter. All done with a HB mechanical pencil and a 2B regular pencil.
Expect to see more things in this style. I loves it.

The Doctor belongs to the BBC. David Tennant belongs to himself. no matter how much I wish I owned both of them.

patron saints of switchblade fights

saints of switchblade fights by ~x-VelvetChains-x on deviantART

I've been sketching. I spontaneously remembered just how cute the My Chemical Romance boys are, and felt like sketching 'em. I would have sketched Ray and Bob as well, except 1.) There wasn't room (that empty space there was un-draw-on-able because I erased a previous failed sketch of Gerard) and 2.) Toro's hair is intimidating. Oh well. Maybe someday.

Gee looks...odd. I drew him twice for no reason at all, and as always, his nose is IMPOSSIBLE. I think the one of Mikey turned out really well considering that it's a profile AND he's wearing glasses. It doesn't look that much like Mikey, but I'm okay with that.

All done with a HB mechanical pencil and a 2B regular pencil.

Sketch no longer looks like a word.

Brigid Is A Nerd

You probably already knew that, since, y'know, all I blab about is my current hopelessly nerdy obsessions. But it's OFFICIAL now. *nods*

They're just reading glasses, but they make me feel really intelligent and writer-ly :]. Plus they're helping me see up close even better than I expected. For example, I have this picture as my desktop background right now:

 and I can see every pore in his lovely face EVEN BETTER.  >_>   <_<.  

Speaking of his lovely face --- I watched The End Of Time Part 2 last night. And kinda cried myself to sleep.
I wish he could've lasted forever.
Bye, Tenth Doctor. <3

plotting and planning

As some of you may know, National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November.
If you do not know that, National Novel Writing Month (write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days) is coming up in November :D

I've done it and won the last couple of years, and this year I've managed to convince my mother and best friend to attempt it with me (yay!) The last couple years, I've known exactly what I'm going to write, but this year... I have a zillion and one ideas, but I don't know which to choose. Two are extremely angsty Young Adult/Lit Fic sort of things, one of them is a romance, one is pretty much the definition of YA drama, one was inspired by a plot prompt on the NaNoWriMo website ('autobiography of an imaginary friend') and the other is a steampunk vampire thing. I REALLY want to write the vampire one, but I don't know what the plot it. I have the ending, and two characters, but that's it. No setting, no plot.
So that's a bit of an issue.

I've never had this problem before! I want to write ALLL OF THEMM. I'm going to attempt to write a synopsis of them, and I want you guys to tell me what you think. Hopefully they'll be better than they sound, because I suck at at this. All titles are stupid working titles. XD

Chickadee:
After a young girl commits suicide, her best friend turns to everyone he knows that was connected to her to try to figure out why she did it.

That Summer:
Actually a rewrite of a story I was working on forever ago.
Amber's mother drags her to her aunt's house to stay there for the summer. There she meets Aidan, a foster child that her aunt has taken in. The boy is a mystery to her, and Amber loves a good mystery - but when she finds and reads his diary, she realizes that she might be in over her head.

Music = Life:
Brooke, Isaiah, Elena, and Robert - four teenagers from completely different walks of life, with nothing in common, except for one thing: their love of music. Can they overcome their differences enough to play in a band together?


Autobiography of an Imaginary Friend:
We've all had an imaginary friend at some point. We all got over it and realized how silly it was, realized that they weren't real. But what if they are real? Sam - the name a little girl gave to him - is one, invisible to everyone besides his human friend and other Imaginaries. But he wants more than anything to exist in more than a child's mind - he wants to be human.

The Nurse Who Loved Me:
Um. I don't know how to describe this one. It's inspired by the song The Nurse Who Loved Me by A Perfect Circle (the most gorgeous song in the WORLD.), and based on a short story I wrote years ago. So maybe you should read that. Be warned, it's old and crappy. http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2561863/1/The_Nurse_Who_Loved_Me

And then the vampire one. All I've got for that so far it that my two main characters are brothers, and neither of them can die - unless his brother is the one to kill him. So yeah. :P

What do you guys think? Would you read any of them? And what do you writerly folk do when you're stuck like this?

Comments are the rainbow to my unicorn. Wait what?

Things I Like Thursday!

Self-promotion:

I did a photoshoot with my best friend the other day. This is the result. :D

---
*sings* It's that time again!

Writer of the Week:
 Audrey is writing a Doctor Who fanfic, and the first two chapters - as well as a couple other awesome Who-related writings - are on her deviantART page :D Take a looksie!

Artist of the Week:
 Pika-la-Cynique
Do you like Labyrinth? Or Phantom of the Opera? Or Good Omens, or practically any other fandom that is made of AWESOME?
Then go read Pika's Girls Next Door comics. They're amazing. Plus she's a great artist, so look at her other stuff too!

Photographer of the week:
dotdashscore
Rinny is one of my favorite people ever. <3

Band of the Week:
My Chemical Romance, of course.

Some recent fave on deviantART:

Raistlin by ~Myar on deviantART

fireflies by ~julkusiowa on deviantART

Vomit by =alterlier on deviantART

Still Waiting by *VhPhoto on deviantART

green suspenders by *tobiee on deviantART

Spiderweb by ~asyenka on deviantART

Fill my heart with Colors by =mibou on deviantART

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIP by *HamletMachine on deviantART

Salvatore .Film. by ~Juanikiki on deviantART

Chucks

Of Nostalgia and Sexy Evil Wizards

He seems really nonchalant about that dragon in the background. >_>.

Alternate title, "In Which Brigid Tries To Write An Intelligent Book Review But Instead Starts Ranting Like A Crazy Person." Has a nice ring to it.

Every once in a while I get a very strong urge to re-read Dragonlance.

Don't lie, all you nerds out there remember Dragonlance. If you don't, let me refresh your memory. Dragonlance is a series of fantasy novels, probably one of the better known ones, beginning with Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first book in the Chronicles trilogy. The most recent book, from The Lost Chronicles, is called Dragons of the Hourglass Mage, which I have yet to read. (It's a really long series, actually - according to Wikipedia there are over 100 books set in the Dragonlance universe. That's just absurd. Don't read ones that aren't by the original writers, it's not worth it.)  Along with R.A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt series, they were my favorite thing in the world during my early teenage years - I spent more time in the fantasy section of my library than anywhere else. In fact, reading all of those fantasy books is what made me want to be a writer in the first place.  Originally a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, there are far-too-frequent moments where you can practically hear the d20 dice rolling on the table as you read, which, for someone as dorky as me, can be kind of fun sometimes.

I love to re-read books - to me it's really comforting, and I get even more out out of the book the second time around. But when I actually break down and re-read Dragonlance, I usually get through a chapter or two before I end up staring at the page, going "What the hell was I thinking?

The thing is, I wish I'd never re-read them in the first place. The first time, they were some of the best books I'd ever read. I was enthralled by the world, and the magic, and the characters. Since I love re-reading, I read them again. The second time, I could see every flaw. The writers, Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman, don't seem to understand the concept of continuity (which is a huge issue when the sequel trilogy, Legends, deals largely with time travel. Seriously, I have no idea what was going on through those books), so that's  pretty confusing. I also realized that I can't stand most of the characters. Tanis Half-Elven, the half-elf (there's a shocker), is the definition of angsty, and not in a good way. His thought process through the entire book goes something like this: "Oh no! I'm a half-elf and no one accepts me! And I can't choose between the gorgeous elf who is totally in love with me and the psycho-bitch totally evil Dragon Highlord who doesn't give a shit if I die or not! I HAVE TO GO WRITE ANGSTY POEMS." (No, really, he does. They're in the book. It's a sickening amount of angst.) Also, the cover art is stupid because no matter how many times they describe the Staff of Magius as 'a crystal ball held by a dragon's claw' or something along those lines, the artist(s) can't seem to draw it that way. In the official art. Yeah.

The rest of the characters... Well, they don't exactly do anything that offends me, they just...don't do anything. They're completely two-dimensional. Caramon is an idiot, and will always be an idiot. Kitiara is a psychobitch and you can tell that from the first scene she appears in, Sturm and Flint have no purpose, Goldmoon and Riverwind only have a purpose through the first book, Crysania should never have existed...and so on. There are only three characters in the book that I like, but they are all so amazing that I can't stop reading these books even though I mostly can't stand it.

There's Dalamar, the dark elf, an evil mage and Raistlin's apprentice. He was exiled from Silvanesti because he's so evil. Or something like that.
And Tasslehoff Burrfoot, the kender (pretty much a halfling, but cooler). He's kinda the most adorable thing in the world. <3. Oh, and he's friends with Paladine/God. So there.
And of course...Raistlin.

Google Images, I love you. Creeper!Raistlin makes me LOL so much. See that slutbitchwhore right there? Yeah, she really needs to just die. Painfully.

Here is where the obsessive fangirl ranting comes in. May I just say, I am so in love with this man. LOL. I talked about Raistlin a bit in my Love Letters To Fictional Characters post, but I could actually rant about him for hours. I can't explain to you what I, and so many other Dragonlance fans love so much about him, exactly, because I don't know myself. (what is it with me falling for evil characters?) He's not very nice; in fact, he's selfish and a bit whiny and crazy... And he looks pretty nasty, honestly, except in this amazing picture right here.

 There are very few likeable qualities about him except that he's relateable - even if you didn't have a shitty childhood like he did, I think everyone can understand how he feels to some extent. He's power-hungry because power is the only thing he has. He doesn't love anyone because he's never been shown love, except from his twin brother Caramon, who he despises. He's pretty heartbreaking, honestly.
Or maybe we love him because he's completely badass.

I can't really tell if I can still call myself a Dragonlance fan anymore. I guess I wish I hadn't re-read them because I still want to be as amazed as I was when I was thirteen. I'm feeling all nostalgic right now. I guess I'll just curl up with my copy of The Soulforge (a whole book. all about Raistlin. *happysigh*) and reminisce about the good ol' days.

If anyone has found good fanart and/or fanfiction of/about Raistlin that doesn't pair him with Crysania, you would get bonus points for linking me to it. Bonus to what, I don't know yet.

On a completely unrelated note, my Chuck Taylors are sexy now. I'mma post pics tomorrow. Also, I just heard a loud THUMP outside of my window and now I'm sure someone is about to murder me. If you never hear from me again, assume that I was killed tonight :]  
thanks for reading<3comments are a beautiful thing.

Things I Like Thursday! + a few photos :].

FIRSTLY, I'mma pimp my own stuff.


DRUMROLL PLZ.

Things I Like Thursday [which I just realized can be shortened to TILT, which amused me way too much] has RETURNED. *waits for people to clap* *crickets chirp in the background*

Well then, without further ado:

Writer of the Week:
fallenidle.

By far one of the best writers I've come across on deviantART. In particular, you should read these: Safe Word, Before It Falls Undone, and The Night Is Waiting.


Artist of the Week:
NineInjections

One of the first artists I started watching when I joined deviantART. She is incredible. There's a significant amount of yaoi [boy love] in her gallery, so if that offends you, go away. Also, buy her manga when it's published. :]. Look at these: Mirror, Cold Night [this one made me cry the first time I looked at it], A Sunday Morning, and Ambre and Rei.

Photographer of the Week:
t0x1c-d0lly

It was extremely hard to pick just a few to link to, because I love almost EVERY PHOTO IN HER GALLERY. But here you go anyway: Help, I'm Alive, Oh, Romeo, Blue and Green, and Thunders.

and a new addition [i almost spelled it 'edition', durr hurr], Band of the Week:
Flyleaf 

iTunes labels them as Alternative. I'm not sure what that means, but whatevs. They kick ass. They are a Christian band, which I normally don't like to listen to, but they are an exception. Listen to 'Treasure', 'Fully Alive', Circle' [makes me cry almost every time I listen to it], 'Cassie', 'Beautiful Bride', 'So I Thought' [not everyone likes this one, but it has very special meaning to me], 'Swept Away'... actually, you know what? Listen to EVERYTHING THEY'VE RELEASED. Honestly. 

Some recent faves on deviantART:


Pirat's Girl by ~yelou on deviantART


Dead by ~Naoto-Otusbo on deviantART


Snow White and Boy Blue by *AdamHughes on deviantART


Back in the 18-1900's by =escaped-emotions on deviantART


BW P5 by ~masateru on deviantART


lady gaga by ~chemcial23 on deviantART


we need shine by *Valioza on deviantART


here is gone by =theluckynine on deviantART


Joker: The Last Laugh by =IsaiahS on deviantART


Void Stuff by ~tanglehymn on deviantART


In other news, it's 111 degrees farenheit here in Indiana, and I am sweating in places I shouldn't be able to sweat.
Have a good day :)