I kinda stayed up pretty late last night to binge-write an attempt at a flash fiction story (very short story), so I'm kinda tired right now. The fact that we were pretty active over the weekend isn't helping at all, most likely.
Since I've already mentioned it, I guess I'll just explain why I was attempting in the first place. I've started signing up for different scholarships and looking at ones that seem doable. So far, I've pretty much just done ones that require nothing but your name and address and winners are just chosen randomly, but I want to do a few that need a short essay or something. One I found is that you can submit a story- there's categories for different lengths and genres, so that's not an issue- and hope that it's good enough to win the money. My first attempt at the flash fiction category didn't really work out, since it came out to be over 6,000 words when the limit is 1,000... Oops. But I wanted to try again- not just to enter in that category (who knows if I'll be confident enough with any recet works to enter any categories at all), but to just try it out and practice writing works of different lengths. I tend to write stories that are a lot longer than originally intended, as is the case with many other writers, so I needed to try to do this. (Based on what I've got on my FFN profile, I can either write 300-word crack!drabble!Idon'tevenknow!fics, 2,000-word chapters, or 7,000-word one-shots. And the demon story, last time I checked, is gonna be about 20,000 words, which doesn't count as a short story or a novel. Insert deep sigh.
Anyways! I ended up signing up for Quora because of the scholarship rampage, and I found a question someone posted to tell a story in 5 words. The responses were very interesting, and have been giving me quite an amount of inspiration. I think I will be attempting to write flash fiction for some of them- or, if I just can't fit the whole idea in that, then a short story. Or, heck, maybe they'll actually inspire me for one of my longer stories! I've felt weird being away from WFAM for so long.
I plan to fix up the piece I wrote last night a little more- as of now, it's exactly 880 words- and then post it, and explaining what inspired me either before or after.
Alrighty, now onto other stuff that happened!
First off, I just wanna point out that one of our seminary subs taught the Maori people during his mission years ago, and likes to tell us about the language or culture or whatever. Last time he came, he told us that the Maori don't have actual swear words, but they do still have things they can say to insult others. The worst thing you could say there was "U poko ko hua!" which means "Go boil your head!" (It's one of those cultures that consider the head sacred due to being the highest part of the body, and probably the feet as the least sacred due to being the lowest. He didn't mention the feet, but I can assume, since that's how similar cultures are.) I haven't been into saying insulting things beyond "butthole", "pooface", and similar things for a very long time, but this is so fun to say! And I know it's not actual bad words!
I had appeared to be the only concurrent student in my specific Physics class, but last Wednesday, a familiar kid was sitting there looking nervous and confused. I think I'll call him... Isaiah. (It's close enough to a codename, so deal.) He's a student at my school who has awesome long, curly hair, and he had just entered into the class- maybe he was on the wait list or something. But he was 4 days late.
So the next few days, he's had to catch up on all our past assignments and chapters and try to cram all this info into his head in time for the test, which we turn in this Wednesday. I feel so bad for him.
I think it's kinda ironic that James's face structure and fabulous hair (though fab in a different way) had actually reminded me of Isaiah when I first met him, and now Isaiah's here too...
As far as I remember, we once went bowling with my little cousin in Mexico a few years ago, and after a few tries I proved to be decent at it. Maybe one or two strikes and a lot of almost-strikes. The YW went bowling this week, though, and I sucked. Like, even I myself was surprised by how bad I was doing. It was painful. Like I usually do when doing anything related to aim, I accomplished rather impossible things- I usually only got the pin that's all the way on the left or right side of the triangle- but not anything of worth. I was the worst player, even though I had the second-lowest score in both games. And that was because the girl with the lowest score literally didn't even wanna play, and so she wasn't trying.
So~ that was pathetic.
And just like that, we've reached the weekend! Not much interesting stuff happened during the normal week, honestly.
I had kinda just decided to not bother with Comic Con anymore, since I had no costume nor any desire to go around spending my nor my mom's money all willy-nilly. But my mom and sister convinced me to go. I knew they would.
What convinced me the most was when my sister came up with an idea of what we could cosplay as- Wednesday and Pugsley Addams. We pretty much had everything for Wednesday already, so we just needed to get the shirt and shorts for Pugsley (and black knee-high socks for both of us, since they'd work better than tights and whatever socks I already have). Surprisingly, finding a striped shirt that would work for the costume was more difficult than we imagined, but we finally found it in the boys' section in Walmart. And it fit me pretty well, considering it was for 8-year-olds. So, that's where I am in my life right now.
The signs hadn't been very clear on where we were supposed to go to register, so my sis and I seriously walked a circle around the entire building until someone finally told us which door to go to. Thanks, Comic Con. Especially because my sister was wearing heels.
Once we were inside, though, we were delighted to see all of the cosplayers. We actually found another Wednesday and Pugsley, which was awesome! My sis said that just that moment alone made her entire day. (And her day at work had already been really sucky before the whole walking-outside-the-building-for-forever thing.)
We saw two panels, one right after the other in the same room: the first was about creating characters, which she basically demanded for me to go to. (Apparently, besides the fact that now we all know I like writing, she was interested by the specific subject, too, even though she isn't into writing for fun.) We took lots of notes, so I hope that will help me in my stories- specifically, WFAM.
The one after that was a psychologist talking about serial killers. What turned them into killers, what their mindset is, etc. it was rather grim, but we also learned a lot in that one. I didn't want to take notes, but I did give Coatrack a rundown of some of the most important information a while after, so it seems it stuck in my brain pretty good anyways.
After that, it turned out vendors were already starting to close up shop, but my sis and I stopped at one that had steampunk goggles, and chose to buy one that just covered one eye, just like in sci-fi movies (I think my sister had mentioned a character called Mad Max?), for my dad. (He loved it, by the way.) Once she had paid for it, I realized the same stall was selling pocket watches. I went on a mad search through them, and guess what I found~
THAT'S RIGHT! I'd almost gotten one of these babies my first time to Comic Con, but the stall had run out before we got there! But this one did! And it's not just one of the cheap plastic ones from the Internet, either, but actual metal! For $12! That's how much my poorly-made Alphonse chibi keychain cost! (I still love that thing, though- ooh, and guess what! I finally showed him to one of my friends, so she's now the first I have shared my secret Alphonse with since I put him in my backpack!)
(Even better, my sis actually agreed that this was the best watch they had, and she practically hates anime! She didn't even know whether it was a reference to something or not, but she thought it looked sick. Getting my sister's approval when I least expect it just... I guess it boosts my self-esteem a little.)
Here's a closer pic that looks so professional I can't even:
Note that it has Ed's name at the bottom, and it also has "Fullmetal Alchemist" written at the top on the same fashion. Unlike other versions I've seen, the lid has cutouts in it, so the clock face peeks through. Of course, that means they weren't able to put "Remember 08.03.11" on the inside, but I am perfectly fine with that, since the watch just looks so freakin' nice!
Even though it's on a necklace chain rather than a normal pocket watch chain, it's easy to use like a normal chain, and so I did just that the next day, when it turned out we were going there for a little longer. Since we didn't have a second costume prepared, my sis just wore a Harry Potter shirt and I got decked out in my Adventure Time merch. Ever since I wrote a bit for one of those cliche Ed-stranded-in-the-middle-of-an-anime-convention fics (from my perspective, so obviously it wa just or my own eyes only), I've wanted to do that. In the story, I wore this outfit- putting on my AT shirt, placing my BMO headphones around my neck, and carrying my little Finn doll around- but, now that I got to do it in real life, I could also add the dark blue jeans (colored solid, not like normal denim) my mom had gotten me a little before the 4th of July, since the color is pretty close to Finn's shorts. I felt so cool. (And I think I also enjoyed carrying around the little doll, since there's something so comforting about stuffed animals...)
Upon getting there, we went to another panel, which was about urban legends. It was fun to listen to the stories, and one of them actually has given me yet another idea for a possible story... But more like one for a novel, not a short story. I really don't think I can work on yet another big project right now, so I hope I can just write down all the details I can think of for it right now and be able to use them in the future...
My sister had to leave soon, and so we just wandered around for a bit, and then I was left on my own to fulfill a mission: get autographs.
I haven't even said how we got the tickets in the first place, I believe. See, A, B, and C had wanted to go to Comic Com when they were here, and so they actually bought multipasses. But, as you know, they decided to move away even though this state is awesome. (Just saying.) And they weren't able to return the tickets, so... They gave them to us. And those thangs are worth a lotta moolah.
So, at the very least, C had asked us to get her an autograph from the guy she'd wanted one from so badly: Ian Somerhalder, who was the lead in Vampire Diaries. (Did I even spell his name right?) I'd also learned that it was possible I could get an autograph from Vic Mignogna (KYAAAAA!!!) and Jeremy Shada (voice of Finn the Human)! There's very few people I'd bother getting a signature from, but those two are within that group of people.
Unfortunately, they weren't there that day... And I turned out getting an autograph from Ian cost $70. No. No way, dude.
So, when that didn't work out, I texted my sis, wondering what to do. She told me to try to find at least a souvenir from the show to give to C. I frantically searched for quite a while, and I only found one stall with anything from Vampire Diaries, and... The only things they had left weren't very convincing. I pretty much gave up soon after that.
I couldn't really find much I wanted to buy for myself, either. The pocket watch was what I wanted the most and had the most decent price compared to, say, the T-shirts and stuff like that. A few of them were cool, but not $25 worth of cool, ya know?
I did get $5 worth of little buttons, though. I was really picky, so I'm pretty pleased with my selection. I pinned them all onto Finn the Doll's little backpack.
I had originally intended to buy all four Avatar elements, but they didn't have the round buttons for all of them anymore. (There were all four in square buttons, but they cost more.) So, I just got air, since that's the element I like the most anyway. I then found the AT buttons, but I liked the Finn button the most. Since it seemed I was going to run with a theme of just one button per fandom, I kept that going, and just got the one I liked the most for Gravity Falls, and ended by taking the Doge button. I still Doge. Doge is forever.
I kinda wished there were anime buttons, too, but they had only stuck with American pop culture in that booth. What a shame.
In case you noticed the chain by his backpack strap: Finn's currently wearing the pocket watch, and lookin' oh so cool.
(And look! My dad combined all the drums together, since they'd just been lying around in my room for a few weeks. I'd been kinda mad about my dad buying more drums in the first place, but I actually really love the result. I am so excited to try out the new set tomorrow. Sorry I ever doubted you, Dad.)
After that, I went to a panel about horror books and movies, even though horror is definitely more my sister's thing than mine. (I like creepy and suspense, but rarely horror.) We'd agreed it'd be interesting and filled with potentially useful info, anyways, even though she wouldn't be able to go. (After all, it's pretty difficult to truly scare people through fiction and film, and they'd be talking about how to accomplish that.)
Unlike the panel about creating characters, I'm pretty sure I was the only one taking notes. They probably thought I was texting someone during the panel or something.
After that, I was only able to go watch a little bit of the cosplay contest going on... There were some pretty cool costumes, but I, of course, got the most excited for the FMA:B group cosplay. There was an armor!Alphonse (I've only seen one other in person, but they'd just barely been leaving the con the day before with the rest of the group they were cosplaying with, so I couldn't get a picture with them! That FMA cosplay group was sooo cool, though! *tear*), an Envy (who I'd spotted several times in the halls over the past few days), a Scar, and a little kid dressed as Ed! Like, he was probably only about 7 years old! It was so awesome and adorable, especially because they did a short battle choreography once they got onstage. The little Ed just made me so happy. (He did a rather impressive front flip at the end, except for the fact that it made his wig fly off. I'm pretty sure Scar also did the splits...?)
I guess I'll just mention that it appears I will be performing a dance with the Relief Society a few weeks from now. I've seen the dance being practiced and performed several times over the years, so it didn't take too long to catch up, but I'm still nervous about doing it right. I don't want to let the hermanas down!
I think that's everything. Have a nice Labor Day tomorrow, and I hope life is okay for you! (That goes for you, too, Merm! ...Wherever you are... Seriously, Mirror and I have been freaked out the past few months since we haven't heard from you at all. We just need to know if you're okay! Please?)
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