Entry tags:
Journal period of time...again
So...I feel like I've been complaining a lot lately, but I also feel like there is a lot to complain about. I think maybe me complaining about the stuff to complain about is worse than the fact that there is a lot going on in my life right now, but all the same, this is kind of therapy for me right now (still haven't found time in that schedule of mine to go to health services...I need to look up their schedule). I am also highly doubtful that I'm going to an upswing in my schedule until after reading day--scratch that, untill after I finished my last final. Which means that I should have all of that Saturday and then most of the Sunday to pack!! Yay... Can I just black out for the next couple of weeks and wake up and have everything perfectly finished? Please? No...not speculative enough I suppose.
I do have a speculative phrase I came up with today that I would like to ponder before I go into some of the same things I've been talking about for a while. I would like to present to you: battle ready combat nerds... I really rather like this phrase. I think these nerds may be involved in some sort of high school club that combats some supernatural occurances, but are still seen as just plain old nerds to the rest of their high school (due to some clever clark kenting). I think the battle ready, combat nerds will have to wait until after at least the first season of Atalanta: Superwoman is finished.
And yes, I am refering to the parts of her story as seasons rather than as books because, well, it feels more like a tv show season than anything else. I wouldn't want to spoil anything for my non-existant readers (oh rats, no writing non-linearly...fiddle sticks) but I do have a second season planned for after Atalanta (and now Strike) find the Superhero Collective, and I also have many other heroes planned to show up in the series. I'm not telling you whether Natalie lives and dies though...I think the answer however might surprise you. Oh, and I also know where the story ends as well! So now it's just a matter of how we end up there.
I don't think I've talked enough on the journey about how I got the idea for Atalanta. As I mentioned, I read Ink Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors some weeks ago and I think that was the last part of a perfect storm culminating in my mind. I had really been wanting to write a new hero story (I will go back and finish my old hero story, because I believe that one is of merit as well, but it's just on the back burner until I can figure out how it wants to be told), but I just wasn't sure what the permesis was going to be. As a sort of rule, I try to stay away from super strength as the power for my primary characters and protagonists, because I feel like that's been hacked and rehacked a lot.
Then in got to me, and I realized that I had yet to rehack it. More importantly, there has never been a central, focal, superwoman. Now let me explain what I mean by that, because this idea is really at the core of the thesis in Ink Stained Amazons. What I mean by that is that many of the female characters who have super strength some how are never the focus in group comic books. On their own and with the right writers, they do pretty well for themselves, but together in a co-sexual group? The focus is usually on the superman. And look at the examples of superwomen that we have from DC comics (my prime catidate for satire and hacking): Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Superwoman.
Wonder Woman is probably one of the best examples DC has to offer, as she has been, mostly found to be a strong, independant woman who can make her own decisions and hold her own with the boys. But even she has been used as a device on occations and portrayed as a simpering girl who want to be rescued.
Then there is Supergirl, for the sake of this, let's refer to Kara Zor-El's character. While not exactly derogatory, Kara often and almost always plays second fiddle to Superman. While this isn't a bad thing, and she has had her own run in comics, she is often pictured as the lesser super person, probably not just for being a girl (age and experience often factor in, but the comparison in my mind still has some validity).
And then there's the actual character called Superwoman. While this sometimes refers to Lois Lane and other, good characters, the one who sticks out most in my mind is the Crime Syndicate superwoman (who is in some contiuities Lois Lane, but also very, very evil). She's psychotic, and quite frankily just a bad representation of women. Especially superwoman (though she is well written along side her evil cohorts...). But even then she still bows, in a way to Ultraman, and in someways Owlman.
And please, do not get me started on their outfits. Boob windows not necessary, but some pants might help ladies.
So I wanted to write the central, super powered character as a female and see what happened. I think Atalanta is coming along nicely, and I feel like I'm really invested and interested in seeing the way the journey unfolds as I take it.
Well, that was a nice talk about writing. I feel a little more focused now. Well, let's talk about a little reading to balance it out.
So a couple of weeks ago Emily and I got left at breakfast together. This is not a bad thing, nor does this story have a punch line. But we got to talking and Emily asked if she could bounce an idea off of me. I said sure, because my friends and I are all fairly bounce and like helping each other out with ideas. Well, Emily's idea was a little different. She had noticed how there were books that she felt were essential to any reading diet that many of her friends had not read.
In fact, she noticed that many of us were of the same opinion about a lot of our favorite books. I could think of a few of my favorites that my friends hadn't read and became intrigued by the thought of it. So, Emily continued and told me about an idea she had about a reading "contest" that we could do between all of our first year writing and reading buddies (some seniors got mixed in there...'cause we love them). In this contest, we each suggest five books that we feel our friends have not read. Then, from the list of books the participate has not read, she tries to get the highest percentage of reads in.
We spent some time working out some kinks and are debating a points system, and are thinking of moving the whole thing from Facebook to a hosting forum, just for viewing purposes.
Now this is a really good idea. I like this idea, and it will help me with Summer reading ideas and things, because I was just planning to go through the library and pick out books to read and simply read them (which has worked well for me so far at college), but the thing is, I think we have too many books for me to do that. So I'm wondering if I should up my per day page count to something higher, or simply try and get through half a book a day. There are also problems with this as it takes away some of the fun and I might not be able to do this, being that I will probably start working and all this summer. So...I'm just wondering how the two projects are going to overlap I guess. ooo...just had a thought, be right back!
Okay, just added a comment to our facebook group asking when we were thinking about ending this. Anyway. I'm also wondering if I should count them seperately and read two books at once, which would be...interesting to say the least. I think I might get made fun of a little for being a book nerd, but that's okay, in fact it's better than okay. I like books and I like reading. I'm a book nerd.
Moving on.
I shall tell you about my diet plans. Not diet in a scary way, just how I plan to change a lot of my eating habits. I want to start trying to loose one or two pounds every week. That means that over summer I'm going to try and loose twenty pounds of fat and I want to keep doing this in the coming fall. To do this, I am implementing several steps of a plan. 1: begin to eat healthily during the summer so I get used to it and like it, 1b: get my parents on board with this, really really on board with it, so they can help, 2: exercise like dickesonian literature, that is to say, a lot 2b: control my exercise habits and work up to things, hopefully to something like parkour (though that is in a very far distance), 3: get off of my meal plan, because it's the biggest reason why I've gained forty to fifty pounds in nine months 4(though more like .5): talk to my PCM to see what are good ideas and good ways to go about them (and to get off of that whole meal plan thing). 5: Get a bike with a large basket to ride to Kroger for groceries when I should return to school, 6: continue built up habits when I return to school. 7: Ween myself off of chocolate, because I think that has gone far enough.
Yes, so this is my general plan. I want to take things slow, but at the same time I just want to jump in. And I don't want to jump into a whole lot. Seriously, it has to do with that whole fear of falling thing that I have going on (8: get over fear of falling, it's bad for the whole exercise thing). Hopefully job will help me maybe loose some weight, but I kind of want a books job, which could be useful as weight lifting....
Writing is good for me. Ideas are good for me, because I just feel so relaxed right now and I don't want to complain anymore. I don't want to do anything right now, but I'm also looking a little ahead to tomorrow, planning out my week as I go, deciding which big thing and which little things to fit where and well, it's just looking up. Let's hope tomorrow I don't burn and die in a panic and things continue to look up a little bit. Thank you, Lord, for these gifts you give me and peace, as always.
I'll leave you with one final idea, one that I've been thinking about writing my thesis on (though that is sometime away). This story takes place in a traditional fantasy setting, and was actually inspired by Eragon (don't stop reading there). I have this idea of how the society which is supposed to be good and equal is actually corrupt in that they control who becomes powerful, and to a degree who lives and who dies. In the time in which the whole story begins, that scoiety has been long conquered by a woman who found out their secrets and she tells the story to the resistors of her empire in which she tries to create equality but finds it difficult not to fall into the same traps her predecesors did.
Well, then, I'll leave you with that and return tomorrow, hopefully with a little bit of fiction. And tomorrow will be a new day.
I do have a speculative phrase I came up with today that I would like to ponder before I go into some of the same things I've been talking about for a while. I would like to present to you: battle ready combat nerds... I really rather like this phrase. I think these nerds may be involved in some sort of high school club that combats some supernatural occurances, but are still seen as just plain old nerds to the rest of their high school (due to some clever clark kenting). I think the battle ready, combat nerds will have to wait until after at least the first season of Atalanta: Superwoman is finished.
And yes, I am refering to the parts of her story as seasons rather than as books because, well, it feels more like a tv show season than anything else. I wouldn't want to spoil anything for my non-existant readers (oh rats, no writing non-linearly...fiddle sticks) but I do have a second season planned for after Atalanta (and now Strike) find the Superhero Collective, and I also have many other heroes planned to show up in the series. I'm not telling you whether Natalie lives and dies though...I think the answer however might surprise you. Oh, and I also know where the story ends as well! So now it's just a matter of how we end up there.
I don't think I've talked enough on the journey about how I got the idea for Atalanta. As I mentioned, I read Ink Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors some weeks ago and I think that was the last part of a perfect storm culminating in my mind. I had really been wanting to write a new hero story (I will go back and finish my old hero story, because I believe that one is of merit as well, but it's just on the back burner until I can figure out how it wants to be told), but I just wasn't sure what the permesis was going to be. As a sort of rule, I try to stay away from super strength as the power for my primary characters and protagonists, because I feel like that's been hacked and rehacked a lot.
Then in got to me, and I realized that I had yet to rehack it. More importantly, there has never been a central, focal, superwoman. Now let me explain what I mean by that, because this idea is really at the core of the thesis in Ink Stained Amazons. What I mean by that is that many of the female characters who have super strength some how are never the focus in group comic books. On their own and with the right writers, they do pretty well for themselves, but together in a co-sexual group? The focus is usually on the superman. And look at the examples of superwomen that we have from DC comics (my prime catidate for satire and hacking): Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Superwoman.
Wonder Woman is probably one of the best examples DC has to offer, as she has been, mostly found to be a strong, independant woman who can make her own decisions and hold her own with the boys. But even she has been used as a device on occations and portrayed as a simpering girl who want to be rescued.
Then there is Supergirl, for the sake of this, let's refer to Kara Zor-El's character. While not exactly derogatory, Kara often and almost always plays second fiddle to Superman. While this isn't a bad thing, and she has had her own run in comics, she is often pictured as the lesser super person, probably not just for being a girl (age and experience often factor in, but the comparison in my mind still has some validity).
And then there's the actual character called Superwoman. While this sometimes refers to Lois Lane and other, good characters, the one who sticks out most in my mind is the Crime Syndicate superwoman (who is in some contiuities Lois Lane, but also very, very evil). She's psychotic, and quite frankily just a bad representation of women. Especially superwoman (though she is well written along side her evil cohorts...). But even then she still bows, in a way to Ultraman, and in someways Owlman.
And please, do not get me started on their outfits. Boob windows not necessary, but some pants might help ladies.
So I wanted to write the central, super powered character as a female and see what happened. I think Atalanta is coming along nicely, and I feel like I'm really invested and interested in seeing the way the journey unfolds as I take it.
Well, that was a nice talk about writing. I feel a little more focused now. Well, let's talk about a little reading to balance it out.
So a couple of weeks ago Emily and I got left at breakfast together. This is not a bad thing, nor does this story have a punch line. But we got to talking and Emily asked if she could bounce an idea off of me. I said sure, because my friends and I are all fairly bounce and like helping each other out with ideas. Well, Emily's idea was a little different. She had noticed how there were books that she felt were essential to any reading diet that many of her friends had not read.
In fact, she noticed that many of us were of the same opinion about a lot of our favorite books. I could think of a few of my favorites that my friends hadn't read and became intrigued by the thought of it. So, Emily continued and told me about an idea she had about a reading "contest" that we could do between all of our first year writing and reading buddies (some seniors got mixed in there...'cause we love them). In this contest, we each suggest five books that we feel our friends have not read. Then, from the list of books the participate has not read, she tries to get the highest percentage of reads in.
We spent some time working out some kinks and are debating a points system, and are thinking of moving the whole thing from Facebook to a hosting forum, just for viewing purposes.
Now this is a really good idea. I like this idea, and it will help me with Summer reading ideas and things, because I was just planning to go through the library and pick out books to read and simply read them (which has worked well for me so far at college), but the thing is, I think we have too many books for me to do that. So I'm wondering if I should up my per day page count to something higher, or simply try and get through half a book a day. There are also problems with this as it takes away some of the fun and I might not be able to do this, being that I will probably start working and all this summer. So...I'm just wondering how the two projects are going to overlap I guess. ooo...just had a thought, be right back!
Okay, just added a comment to our facebook group asking when we were thinking about ending this. Anyway. I'm also wondering if I should count them seperately and read two books at once, which would be...interesting to say the least. I think I might get made fun of a little for being a book nerd, but that's okay, in fact it's better than okay. I like books and I like reading. I'm a book nerd.
Moving on.
I shall tell you about my diet plans. Not diet in a scary way, just how I plan to change a lot of my eating habits. I want to start trying to loose one or two pounds every week. That means that over summer I'm going to try and loose twenty pounds of fat and I want to keep doing this in the coming fall. To do this, I am implementing several steps of a plan. 1: begin to eat healthily during the summer so I get used to it and like it, 1b: get my parents on board with this, really really on board with it, so they can help, 2: exercise like dickesonian literature, that is to say, a lot 2b: control my exercise habits and work up to things, hopefully to something like parkour (though that is in a very far distance), 3: get off of my meal plan, because it's the biggest reason why I've gained forty to fifty pounds in nine months 4(though more like .5): talk to my PCM to see what are good ideas and good ways to go about them (and to get off of that whole meal plan thing). 5: Get a bike with a large basket to ride to Kroger for groceries when I should return to school, 6: continue built up habits when I return to school. 7: Ween myself off of chocolate, because I think that has gone far enough.
Yes, so this is my general plan. I want to take things slow, but at the same time I just want to jump in. And I don't want to jump into a whole lot. Seriously, it has to do with that whole fear of falling thing that I have going on (8: get over fear of falling, it's bad for the whole exercise thing). Hopefully job will help me maybe loose some weight, but I kind of want a books job, which could be useful as weight lifting....
Writing is good for me. Ideas are good for me, because I just feel so relaxed right now and I don't want to complain anymore. I don't want to do anything right now, but I'm also looking a little ahead to tomorrow, planning out my week as I go, deciding which big thing and which little things to fit where and well, it's just looking up. Let's hope tomorrow I don't burn and die in a panic and things continue to look up a little bit. Thank you, Lord, for these gifts you give me and peace, as always.
I'll leave you with one final idea, one that I've been thinking about writing my thesis on (though that is sometime away). This story takes place in a traditional fantasy setting, and was actually inspired by Eragon (don't stop reading there). I have this idea of how the society which is supposed to be good and equal is actually corrupt in that they control who becomes powerful, and to a degree who lives and who dies. In the time in which the whole story begins, that scoiety has been long conquered by a woman who found out their secrets and she tells the story to the resistors of her empire in which she tries to create equality but finds it difficult not to fall into the same traps her predecesors did.
Well, then, I'll leave you with that and return tomorrow, hopefully with a little bit of fiction. And tomorrow will be a new day.