I'm just gonna start by saying... I never expected to get into Pokémon. They just didn't interest me, no matter how much stuff Darkrai and Broranges told me about them. The 1 also played it a lot, and I'm sure tons of my other friends did, too! But... just... no.
Until today.
We went to visit Brorange's house, and- unlike what we usually did- he showed me a bit of his new Pokémon game, as he'd recently bought a 2DS. I was kinda "eh" about it, and asked him if he also had other games, like Scribblenauts. He said yep, and passed over his old DS with his Scribblenauts game. I tried playing for a bit, but it only wanted to work for a few minutes, for some reason. He offered instead GameBoy games that went into the other slot, and the one that seemed most appealing was Pokémon: Emerald (which said a lot about my interest for the other choices). I was really skeptical about whether I'd actually enjoy the game, but... I actually did. Quite a bit.
What. Even.
It's really weird how I feel like I suddenly like something I never really liked. I doubt I'll ever get into the shows, or the card game, or the comparing-characters-to-Pokémon thing, but now I know that I don't mind the video game at all.
We ended up playing side-by-side on his bed for the majority of the visit, me making a lot of ridiculous commentary about the game (I felt like a gamer Youtuber with all the weird jokes I ended up making) and asking for help/advice occasionally. It didn't take very long for him to suggest that I just take his old DS home with me to borrow it for some time. I was hesitant, considering I was still digesting the fact that oh my gosh I think I like this game and... well... I already get distracted way too much with Facebook and TAU and FFN and who knows what else. But, by the end of the visit, I ended up agreeing to it.
And now the DS is staring at me. Taunting me. (And Carter did not help, texting back a Joker laugh and "One of us! One of us!" when I told him about this.)
Well, let's get on with the rest of the week.
Nothing particularly interesting happened in the first half; I practiced more drums on Tuesday, and we ate out at our fave Vietnamese restaurant on Wednesday (according to my mom, cuz I don't remember the day).
On Thursday, the Math Club did the final ASMA test for the school year. I think there was the smallest group of people this time. I had fun chatting with people afterwards, though, as we ate donuts, Popsicles, and Ruffles chips (instead of the usual pizza). I think I'll mention now, since I will likely forget to later, that there's a kid in Math Club I call Big Ian. It's an inside joke. Older Me will likely still remember it.
Oh! I believe Rubik met my mom the day before the test. He walked out with me at the end of school, and we chilled together for a bit until she arrived to pick me up. (It started finally feeling like spring from that day on! And today, Daylight Savings ended.) My mom could immediately tell that he's a sweetie.
Friday was a lot weirder. Its events actually started with my dad and I talking by phone the night previous, in which he left me feeling upset because he was saying that we should've fixed the seminary issues earlier, and you should do this and that or it'll be too late, and stuff like that. (It's not so much what he's saying, but the way he's saying it, that tends to hurt my and my sister's feelings.) He had a proper reason to do so- I still hadn't received my makeup work for seminary for the term, and considering how many times I ended up missing the class, we were scared it was going to be way too much work and I'd end up not being able to graduate seminary. Besides that being very disappointing, my dad pointed out that, if I ever ended up going to BYU, completing seminary is required to be admitted (as far as he knows, anyway).
My mom and I ended up going to the seminary building of the high school that is in charge of my seminary class (because my school isn't big enough for its own building and such), and talking to the principal there. (I realized that I actually recognized him, from the one or two times he visited my class. Surprisingly enough, he actually remembered my name! How even?!) He was super nice, and excused a ton of my absences (since I actually had a reason to not be in the class those times), leaving a relatively small amount of makeup work for me to do. He also said he'd try to work out what makeup work I'd have for the last term of school by Spring Break (which is halfway through next month), so I could make sure to get that done before the year ends and be able to graduate!
This week is the community college's Spring Break- meaning, I've got no classes besides seminary- so I'm hoping that I can get some of the makeup work done this week, along with get a little further ahead in my Chem homework and get started on my newest English paper.
I'm gonna go on a tangent, now, since I also hope to maybe, maybe, do some personal writing this week, as well. I actually started on a new project that may or may not actually come to fruition- I think the initial idea may have come to me on Tuesday. It's for a potential TAU fic- one that I can actually send to the official TAU page, since it wouldn't be a crossover. (Oh, and I did a bit of editing for a fic I'd finishing the first drafts of in January/early February. I think I'm really close to being happy enough with it to try sending it to the mods!) It would be composed of all OCs (except Dipper, if/when he shows up), and this is the main one:
I drew this yesterday morning. (I already have hard enough of a time making male characters look like guys, but it just gets worse when they have long hair.)
I know how just about everyone who writes for TAU has very liberal values, and likes to embrace gender issues and gender fluidity in their characters, so I decided to try dipping a little into that myself. Just a leetle. His name is Azul (which, as far as I know, is pretty much just used for girls, except for the Spanish dub of The Smurfs movie), which I figured could work, considering this is set further into the future, and name trends could totally allow for such a name to become acceptable for males. As seen above, he also likes having longer hair (which I originally imagined to somewhat radiate away from his face like a lion's mane) and wears penguin hats and other apparel shamelessly. And it's not just because he studies penguins.
Yes, the winter clothing (I think it might not look like it, considering I basically didn't color anything in, but it's a turtleneck sweater he's wearing) is because he resides in Antarctica, investigating the magical nature of the continent and/or its inhabitants. The idea came about when I suddenly had a moment of contemplation as to what affect the Transcendence could have had on the most barren places in the world. I mean, would they be as alive with magic as any other place, or even more-so, or would it continue to be barren of even that? I've sent the mods an ask of exactly that, but meanwhile have been thinking more on the characters and potential situations.
There's a few different directions Azul's story can take, based on their answer. (I know people are allowed to use whatever ideas they have in TAU, even if it contradicts other established canon/fanon, but I seriously just have no idea what the most realistic possibility is, and would prefer to leave that to the experts before adding onto the idea.) One is that he likes his choice of occupation not just because of penguins (he loves the little guys), but because he's extremely sensitive to magic, and the frozen land at the bottom of the Earth is very quiet and relaxing compared to the rest of the world. Another is that he encounters the most important character in TAU by mere coincidence. (I think to have R!Stan and R!Ford as fellow scientists in his base as part of the reason for why this happens. And also penguins.) Another is that he discovers that Antarctica kinda has magical creatures, after all- the Ningen, which roam the ocean surrounding this continent. (I'd never even heard of this cryptid until I did a bit of research for where I could take this story.) Finally, I thought that maybe he had some sort of acquaintanceship with Mizar- more specifically, the Mizar for the suggestion I sent to the mods of a potential Mizar personality, where I basically imagined her being a lot like Louise from Bob's Burgers. (They understood it more like she's just super active and hyper, which also works.) I don't know, maybe I end up somehow using all of these (though likely in different installments, all under Azul's name). Man, how insane would it be if I became one of the people who started something as big as RRR, or RB, or Bentley, or Brian?! (I doubt it'd actually happen, but it's something worth daydreaming about.)
Oh, and my first thought was to have him be from Chile- a pretty dang decent amount of cultures have been represented in TAU's characters so far, but Latino/Hispanic hasn't appeared much. If I actually get somewhere with Azul, I'll have to check up on Chilean culture so I don't accidentally make him Mexican instead. (Regardless, I'm really hoping tamales or something similar are a thing in Chile, because I've been wanting pineapple tamales lately, and so I want Azul and his friends to eat a lot of tamales.)
If the drawing ended up getting inked and colored in, he'd likely have a skin tone either in the medium or light-medium parts of the spectrum for Latinos, black or really dark-brown hair, dark brown eyes (though I'd probably just leave them looking black in the pic, to make it easier on me), dark blue sweater that may have a ribbed texture, and usual colors for a penguin beanie.
Since this tangent relates to stories, I'll just insert now that Liz and I did a bit of writing in the newest QQ chapter last night. We hadn't touched it in over a month because I had the move and homework and everything to deal with. It was nice to do that with her again- and I even enjoyed the phone-call part of it. (I tend to prefer just messaging with her on the doc or Hangouts instead of calling.)
And, with wrapping up the seminary topic this tangent had originated from, I had a mind-blowing idea that's probably partly influenced by TAU. There's a part in the scriptures where it talks about how the souls that make it into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom in the second life will becomes gods and goddesses themselves, and will be able to create worlds of their own, and awesome stuff like that. (The teacher and a friend mentioned another part that apparently says everyone else will become angels that help the gods and goddesses, which, honestly, sounds pretty dang cool to me too.) Realizing, though, that it could potentially turn into a cycle (God sets up universe and plan for his children, helps them become gods themselves, then they set up worlds/universes and plans for their children, and they could become gods themselves, and on and on and on...), I thought- wait a minute, could this have started before our Heavenly Father? Like, is he the son of a previous God, and went through what we're experiencing now? And that God might've gone through the cycle too? Is this something that's happened over and over since the beginning of the existence of anything? This is definitely a stretch, and don't even think to call this doctrine, but... I don't know, I thought it was a really interesting concept to think about- that we're not really the first ones to have gone on such a journey. If nothing else, it could be the starting point of an incredible fictional story. Juuuuust in case I ever return to this concept later, know that I'll refer to it as the "God Cycle".
Okay, now to something else that happened on Friday. I may have mentioned before the gaming club at my school? They did an event where kids brought their own games from home for other people to play. It lasted longer than their usual meetings- it was about 3.5 hours long!- and... actually didn't have as many people as I expected. I wanted to go, though, and I ended up making my down with a girl from seminary. (We've been talking more outside of the class lately.) I'll call her... Finn. She's super cool.
We played a couple of the available card games together for a while. We started with Sushi Go! (which has adorable illustrations, and we said "SUSHI GO!" really ridiculously during the game), then went to one called Exploding Kittens. We both took quite a liking to the second, and played that one for longer. It was really fun to hang out with her, and I also seriously considered buying that game for myself, considering how much we enjoyed it.
They'd said there'd be food, and it turned out they meant the cheapest stuff off McDonald's menu. Finn and I got a small burger each (dumping our respective choices of sauces in them first) and shared a small box of fries. We had to hold our cards really weirdly to try to not touch our food-handling fingers to them.
After she had to leave, I wandered over to the other end of the event, where some kids were playing the usual Super Smash Bros. that the gaming club plays every Friday. It made me happy when I was immediately invited to join in by one of the regular club members. Considering I'd only ever played this game against Cam and Ash once when we were a little younger, though (see the posts from December 2014)... Yeah, I never got close to winning any of the rounds. Though that was a bit frustrating and disappointing, of course, it didn't prevent me from having fun. (Also, I used the moniker "TACOCAT" for my character the majority of the time. Despite how much I prefer authentic tacos over that thing Americans call tacos, I love the word "tacocat". Exploding Kittens definitely influenced my decision to actually make it my gaming name that day. Who knows? I'd probably use it again in the future, especially if said future includes going to another meeting in the gaming club.)
I went to KF for the first time in over 2 weeks on Saturday. We were fully prepared to tell the teacher/master that I just wouldn't be able to go anymore (not just because being a higher belt typically means spending a lot more time there, time I don't know I'll always be able to spend, but we'd rather use the money for tuition on something else, like my sister's wedding or tickets to visit Mexico). He told us then, though, that the extra helping out some of the higher belts do actually counts as credit off of tuition and fees and other stuff that they'd otherwise pay full price for. Every time they helped out with teaching in lower belt was the equivalent of $5 credit, for example. (And I'd been planning to go to lower belt to help out whenever possible, anyways!) So, if we helped out enough with teaching and upkeep and such, we could basically work to pay off the tuition!
I'm still a bit worried about whether the fact that we'd be there longer than I used to be as a lower belt would be difficult to deal with alongside schoolwork and the wedding and such, but my mom wants to try it out.
(Once he'd finished informing us as to this program we could take full advantage of, I had my first brown-belt level class. I've been pretty sore all day today. Dropkicks do that to you, apparently.)
The torture's almost over! I just wanted to add in a final thought about how, during our time working on QQ, I ended up occasionally scrolling through fanart of Alphonse Elric. (This happened because, a long while ago, she'd wanted to look for which version of him would fit better for QQ. I noticed the pics she'd copied-and-pasted at the bottom of the doc from that, and I wanted to save one of them on my computer. It escalated quickly from there. Very quickly.) Can I just say... there's some really great art, but I just don't like the very large percentage of yaoi pairings represented in the art that is more specifically Conqueror of Shamballa? Especially considering CoS shippings mostly consist of the more disturbing shippings in this fandom? I'm glad I ended up mostly seeing more like fluff/subtle hints to those relationships, but still! Ugh, people! (I end up keeping a few of the ones that are more like "they're just holding hands" anyways, since it's easier to pretend it isn't most likely representing a romantic relationship and sometimes a picture is just too adorable and/or beautifully drawn to not be kept, but it's incredibly difficult to not feel a little squeamish about the implications.)
That's everything, finally! Have a wonderful day/week/life, and hope that these next few days include something good to write about! Bye!
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