Hello world!
There's gotta be some brief mentions of things that happened last week, because some are important, but first...
WINTER BREAK BEGAN!!! *dance partaaay* I sure hope I'll use this break wisely- reading, writing, drawing, and actually being useful in helping my mom with preparing to move in the distant future. Ya know what, I've already done a bit of the first three on the checklist already, so I'll comment on those first.
Reading: Last week I finished The Thin Executioner by Darren Shan. I give it the Lileh seal of approval. *a-okay hand sign* I'm also working again on reading through all my FMA volumes, and plan to finish before New Year's. (Hehe. So a few days ago I'd brought the 5th volume to school, and when one guy saw I had it he winced and was like "Oooh..." I'd thought at first it was cuz he didn't like FMA, but it turned out it was cuz of the amount of feels this series has. He'd assumed it was my first time reading it and I was gonna be attacked and I wasn't prepared. I laughed and reassured him that I've already read it twice already plus watched multiple times all the other stuff so I knew the story perfectly well.)
Writing: I've gotten a few ideas for new stories, though I doubt they'll go far. One is so far called "The 7 Als of Justice" (for some reason I'm actually not entirely sure of, but I'm hoping it'll actually fit the story), where 6 other versions of Alphonse are somehow transported to another Alphonse's time and place. So, they're all trying to figure out how to get to their own times plus help the current Alphonse... and, well, during that, all the Alphonses and the current Ed will learn more about each other and themselves.
The 6 Alphonses all either come from the FMA or FMA:B/manga universe. So, there's two 9-year-old Als (one for each universe), then two 14-year-olds, and two 17-year-olds.
The Ed and Al they encounter are about 13 and 12, respectively, so they're already used to the State Alchemist business but haven't dealt with most of the things that occur in either series yet. And they're in the part of the story where there's few differences between 2003 and Brotherhood, so they're both somewhere in-between the series, or maybe even part of both at the same time. If I got serious about this story, I'd really have to work out their timeline.
I took some time figuring out what they'd all call themselves (because they obviously can't all be "Al") and came up with some... interesting results.
The current Alphonse is just gonna stick with Alphonse, because it's his own world and it would be weird to try to change his name.
The easiest to think of was the eldest on the FMA:B side of the family, cuz I'd immediately thought "Big Al"- you know, cuz he's the oldest and the tallest one out of everyone that is flesh and blood. (The eldest of FMA is a bit butthurt about it, since he's technically 17 too.)
The "second-eldest", the one that had come from the first series and CoS, I'd first thought "Pal", for "Ponytail Al", but he'd not deal with a stupid name like that. ("It's not even a real name!" he complained in my head.) So, I eventually thought that maybe he'd suggest a name he'd heard in Germany that he liked, and that ended up being Augustus (but shortened to August). I feel like I'm referencing to Wonder, but oh well! At least I'm not saying Auggie, cuz then that'd definitely be too close.
Next is 14-year-old Al from FMA:B. I knew that it was close to the Promised Day for him, so his "hair" would've already been chopped off at Briggs, so I thought "Cal" for his cut hair. (You can tell I first tried just adding prefixes to their names, right?) I realize that could be lengthened to a real name, Calvin, so there ya go.
14-year-old from 2003 got the same sort of treatment. When he realized he wasn't a Stone anymore (which realization and subsequent exclamation of surprise confused all the other Als), he ended up dubbed with Sal, for "Stone Al". It was also then that I realized a few of my Al names were sounding a bit mobster to me.
9-year-old Als were harder than most, because there weren't quite so many characteristics I could base a name off of. I eventually came up with the one from 2003 suggesting the name he'd given his favorite stuffed animal (and thus getting to use a name I like: Moe) and the one from FMA:B going by his "middle name", Van. People usually imagine Ed being the one with Van as his middle name, but whatever. Roll with it!
So, here's how they ended up, from eldest to youngest: Big Al and August, Calvin and Sal, Alphonse, Van and Moe.
The other two are from yesterday, actually. One was an idea that would kinda borrow from the 2003 series plus two fanfics I've read, "Mother" and "Substitute Soul" (the latter which I'll actually mention later!). So it'd be that Ed and Al actually made their mom, but she came back as a Homunculus... BUT a soul was stolen from somewhere else to fill in (preferably a guy's). So, three days later she shows up at the Rockbell doorstep. I was thinking it'd be interesting if it followed a lot of things that happened in Substitute Soul, but I later realized that it wouldn't be the same because it would be a lot weirder for Ed and Al to be like "yeah, my mom's following us around" rather than just another brother, no matter how boss she ended up. It could be an interesting one-shot, at least. *shrug*
The last idea is for one of those angst fics where it's after Ed's been tortured. (I've read way too many torture fics, geez.) It'd be that they'd been searching for Ed for a year or something and could never find any clues and were this close to giving up when he suddenly showed up out of the blue at the door (probably either Winry's house or Mustang's office), acting exactly as he always had, and thus being really weirded out at how everyone acted upon his apparent return. All his memories of whatever he'd gone through were... um... gone. Or, at least, they were hidden deep inside his brain where they wouldn't see the light of day.
But so, even though he looks perfectly fine at first (it was when he took off his long-sleeved shirt to go to bed later that he realized that no, he was definitely not fine according to the horrible scars and bruises on him), it is quickly decided he is actually affected by severe PTSD, since the most random things act as triggers to suddenly cause him to be paranoid, or terrified, or filled with pain, but he doesn't quite know why. Eventually, he starts getting actual flashbacks, which clue him and everyone else in a little at a time as to what happened while he was MIA and piece together the puzzle. And, well, they hope they can see the whole picture soon, so they'd know how best to help him recover, and be able to capture whoever did this to him... you know, before they come back to finish the job.
I'd definitely not be the one to write this, but I'd consider suggesting it to someone on FFN who is good at angst. Though, then again, angst fics kill me and everyone else who reads them inside, so maybe that's not such a good idea.
[Addition: I forgot to mention another from a few days ago! I noted in the manga that Ed said that Truth could take anything- his arm, leg, both, whatever!- including his heart, as long as it brought his brother back. So... I've had a similar idea before, but what if instead of losing his arm to seal Al's soul in armor, it took away his ability to feel emotions (which is ironically the only thing Al can feel), or at least feel love (thus "losing his heart")? Again, it'd probably just be a one-shot, but from the perspective of Al, who slowly clues in the reader as to what exactly is wrong with Ed. The idea that I'd had earlier I'd only written something small for for my archives, where when Ed sacrificed his limbs for Al, he actually managed to bring a whole lot more of him back, including flesh and blood, but he was missing a heart. Like, you literally couldn't even hear a heartbeat. (I don't know if that would mean he's now a Homunculus or this is just hugely AU.) So Al actually became very dangerous, because he didn't care about other people's emotions anymore and either felt nothing or felt anger against things, including Ed. Ed left Al behind in Resembool because who know what horrible things would happen with him around. Poor Winry must have to deal with Heartless!Al 24/7...]
Drawing: I got more drawing stuff done! Yey!
So, as a Christmas present, I sent a friend an attempt at drawing her favorite character. This is why I hadn't done a post last week; I spent most of the Sunday figuring it out. That's cuz it turns out her favorite anime has that art style where everyone has TONS of hair and they do a lot of hair strands and it's pretty impossible to draw. I decreased the amount of separate hair strands in my drawing, but otherwise did my best to keep true to how the character looks. It was then colored with colored pencils and eyeshadow. I actually did this thing that Scout had told me she does at girl's camp where she sprays her final drafts with hairspray so the pencil doesn't rub off. In this case, I was concerned about the eyeshadow going everywhere on my friend's fingers, but I think the hairspray thing actually worked. The thing is that, since hairspray has alcohol rather than a bunch of water, it dried a lot faster and didn't make the paper dry wonky like I'd been worried would happen. So even though I accidentally put the paper a little too close to the bottle while spraying, in the end the paper came out fine. Yay Scout!
I present to you Youko from Yu Yu Hakusho:
I didn't even know I could actually draw like that! I mean, I know I'm copying a picture (more like multiple pictures...) but still. I might practice drawing eyes more like that, but otherwise I have a feeling I won't draw like this much. So... much... effort... She better like it!!! (And she better not be reading this, since it spoils everything...)
Also, around the time I thought of that second story idea, I'd been reading a lot of Substitute Soul, and I'd actually had felt motivation to draw the main character, Alex. I'd always kinda been like "I kinda wanna draw that" when I could imagine a scene easily or something, but now I actually wanted to pick up a pencil and try it out.
The hardest part about this character is that it's technically a guy, but has parts of his personality and appearance that are kinda girly, like having a dangly earring. So... I didn't quite succeed at the whole "looking like an actual guy" thing that well, but otherwise I'm pretty happy by how they came out.
I think this is the most successful drawing at making Alex look male despite the hair and jewelry. I'm just seriously unhappy with the earring, though. That thing's a mess.
This one's about twice as big as the previous and the one after, so the earring and eyes have better detail, but the eyebrows are ugh. And his hairdo is Trisha-esque, so I'm not sure how to feel about that.
The eyes are too girly, I'm sorry! I regret drawing them like that! And the eyebrows are too dark! They look like mine! The rest of it looks pretty nice, though... I like the messy bun and jewelry.
Nevertheless my complaints to myself, I sent them to the author of Substitute Soul, who apparently really liked them! Though, again, they pointed out he wasn't quite boy-ish enough. I just am incapable of drawing more masculine boys. That's part of why Youko's drawing coming out decent surprised me, since he's a guy and I managed to keep him looking like one.
Now some stuff I've watched. Since the latest Star Wars movie came out last Friday (and I knew some people flipping out over that, including Coatrack) and I felt bad about having only seen about 2 of the movies, I ended up watching a few of the other ones with my dad. I'd seen the 1st and most of the 4th, I believe, so I saw part of the 2nd and all of the 3rd yesterday. So I guess we'll complete more my Star Wars knowledge by watching the 5th and 6th tomorrow, and then I'll decide if I'll actually go with my dad the watch the newest one... He'll go watch it regardless, but I'm not entirely sure I like Star Wars enough to go pay money to watch it in the theater rather than wait till it's available at home.
I'd watched a few movies last week, too, when Coatrack had come over. I was quite surprised that actually happened, since I'd only had one friend over so far, and that time hadn't actually been planned. But it happened, and apparently he had fun. ...When he wasn't close to falling asleep. Poor kid is always tired. I hope he gets lots of naps in during the break.
We watched The Italian Job and Treasure Planet, then I showed him a bit of DJ Hero 2 and Wii Music, though I don't think that worked out as well for us as it did when I played them with Beka. *nervous laugh* I'll try a different kind of game of he comes over some other time.
When he left, I saw in the suggestions in Netflix The Rugrats Movie, and... I actually thought "Why the heck not?" and watched it. It wasn't quite what I thought it'd be, but there were some things I liked regardless.
One of the biggest things for me was the pocket watch. (I know, I'm so predictable.) But lookit, it had similar symbolism to Ed's! Yes, they attained them by different ways- Tommy was given his by his dad, Ed earned his with his smarts, skills, and determination- but both ended up having the same meaning to them: their responsibility to their little brother. Deep, huh? (This caused me to wonder if Arakawa ripped off the pocket watch idea from Rugrats...)
Also, this movie made me realize just how smart and responsible Tommy is. He knew perfectly well how to feed and change his little brother's diaper when he was still in a diaper himself. If that's not advanced, I don't know what is.
All that's left for me to talk about is spiritual stuff, which I think would fit better in a separate post (especially since I think this post is already pretty long...), so hopefully I'll remember to do that one sometime this week. So, until then- Merry Christmas, guys, and remember to keep Christ in the celebrations!
