Tai Lung.

Oh, the things you discover when chillaxing after your walk home from school.

————————————————————————————————————-

Yes, people, it’s finally summer. My first real summer since… what was it? 2006. Last year we were on the opposite hemisphere, and the year before that I was incapacitated. But now, here it is: summertime. No cold weather, nothing but sun, and no homework to take over the majority of my week. Maybe now I’ll be updating more. This Thing (blog), my other Thing (Gallifrey Gazetteers blog), my other-other Thing (fanfiction), and my other-other-other Thing (my DeviantArt and personal art): all require attention after ages of neglect and a sunless existence.

It is definitely time to blow the dust off of my writing and my art and get back to work. I would love nothing more than to just sit back and let the Muse have free reign of my head for an uninterrupted couple of hours. I may very well get my wish, minus the ‘uninterrupted’ part. With a high-maintenance sister like my own, that’s nothing short of impossible. A complete improbability. But I can always hope, right?

I also aim to attack my accumulating pile of to-edits. Since I have burdened myself with editing other people’s writing (over the Internet, of course)…. well, I have more to do. I don’t regret it, though. I love it. It’s good practice for me and if it helps somebody, well that’s great. Benefits all around. Can’t beat that, can you? Prove me otherwise and I’ll give you a dollar. (An American dollar, just so we’re clear.)

Otherwise, I plan to relax.

Let’s all just take a short little moment to breathe a summer sigh. *let all your cares slip away*

*inhale* then……  Ahhhhhhhh.

And now all the cares rush back. The moment is gone.

Oh well.

It was nice while it lasted.

-D

ps. This is where you insert one of those maniacal laughs.

This was caught on April fourth, ’09. It was inspired by nothing in particular. Boredom, maybe. It was so completely random I almost scared myself at first, weirded out that this stuff had just sort of leaked out of my head. I think it’s a little strange, even now.

So here you go. This is the first to be put in the Archive, as well.

Utterly Random

Alone in the moonlight.

Where do I go?

What do I do?

Is anyone there?

I can’t tell.

But why?

I don’t know.

What DO I know?

I know I’m alone.

Or am I?

I know the night.

The silent blackness.

I’ve heard its secrets,

Listened to its whispers.

But now there’s just me

And the moon.

What now?

If I were old enough to drive, I’d drive somewhere. But I’m not, so I can’t. Thus, boredom reigns. Which is why I’m here, typing up a blog entry about absolutely nothing in particular.

I know that, in the length of time I’ve had this blog, this page hasn’t served much of a purpose. I think back and reflect that I’m not even sure why I made one. Am I the blogging type? I don’t know. Probably not. I guess I’m more of a fiction writer than one of news or blogging material.

Maybe the problem is that I don’t know what to blog about. I’m not exactly used to expressing my opinions on things. (That’s NOT to say that I don’t have them, NOR does  that mean that I allow myself to be pushed around by other people — I just happen to keep them to myself most of the time, thank you.) I’ll never blog about the celebrity  types — David Tennant excluded — because frankly I could hardly care less about why Whatserface is suing That Guy or what That Chick was wearing in public yesterday and that ‘Eh my God, I can’t believe she said that to His Face!’ DTennant is excluded because anything I’d happen to share regarding him would have to do with the RSC or Doctor Who. So I s’pose that leaves me with at least one small blogging category.

I won’t involve myself in politics because it’s so inflammatory a topic — I might be just a bit too much of a pacifist to engage in that kind of talk (although I could easily argue with someone for hours). I might have some solid opinions about all that, but so do a lot of other folk.

So what does that leave me? Not much. Well, I’m sure there’s a whole lot of stuff I could talk about, other than those things…. I just haven’t wrapped my mind around them yet.

Here, let me think…

“……….”

*is thinking*

“……….. ……….. ………… ………”

Gaming? I’m always too behind on game news… I guess I could review some that I’ve played and finished…

Movies? No, I’m always behind on those, too…..

…..

*still thinking*

I do know a lot about Doctor Who. However, the media has all the news covered, so the only purpose I would serve regarding DW would be acting as a public encyclopedia. Because that’s what my brain is. An encyclopedia. An encyclopedia that hasn’t been organised and is missing a bibliography/reference section. (Translation: my head is full of scattered information, but I can’t remember where it all came from; my sources were not stored.)

Well, that’s one section of my brain, anyway. Another section is devoted to the Alternate Realm of my Imagination. Yes, it’s a proper noun. (Is ‘proper noun’ a proper noun? Is is supposed to be capitalised?) This portion of my cranium (the ARI) is constantly in use, often simultaneously with the practical, Encyclopedia Portion (the EP). The other section, aside from the ARI and EP, houses my strange, overdeveloped sense of logic and deduction (the OSLD?). It’s the ‘thinking’ part of my head. The very last portion is simply devoted to movement and bodily function. (Note that this is the smaller and least significant of the four.)

Cross-section of my thinking processes aside, I’m still lacking in blog topics. Maybe if I could keep myself from going off on tangents I might actually think of something helpful. Either that, or I could use the tangents to my advantage… Perhaps I should practice the art of meditation and learn to clear my mind of the chaotic mess of thought processing in my head. Then I might get somewhere. Kind of hard to say.

So, my options thus far:

-game reviewing

-being a Doctor Who public encyclopedia

-filling pages with Absolutely Nothing by going off on tangents

…It’s a meagre list.

But what about travel? I can do travel. I haven’t been to very many places, but I have lived in another country, in another hemisphere. And that’s actually almost a rarity among the American population, I think. Well, if the population of California and Oklahoma is anything to go by, anyway. I could certainly blog about my experience in Australia…

Okay, so that’s four options. I’m getting there.

Weather? Ew, no….

Music? No…..

Books. I can do books. That’s five. We’re making progress!

Poetry. Hmm. I’ll have to think about that one. Maybe Shakespeare…..

*is thinking again*

Complaining. I’ve done that once or twice, here, I think. Not a bad addition to a blog. Everyone has the right to complain once in a while. (With emphasis, of course, on ‘once in a while.’)

“………………………………..”

Wow, I really can’t think of anything else right now. I’m sure something will hit me tomorrow morning at seven am, or tonight at eleven. My brain is inconvenient like that.

Well…. it seems I’m out of things to say. Amazing. (Not really, but you know.) I guess that means I’m to stop for now. Go and do… something. There has to be something for me to busy myself with……….

(This goes to show that I have no life without homework.)

(Or maybe just proving that I have no life because of homework.)

(Most likely both.)

So farewell for now.

it would appear so.

Today, as I began my walk home from school, I couldn’t help but notice the hoards of butterflies zooming across the street, many of them nearly hitting me in the face. I tried to calculate which direcion they were all headed, and I guestimated that they were flying towards the west, maybe even the south. I’m no expert on butterflies, but that sounds like migration to me.

I wasn’t able to snap a picture of them, though. They were too small and too fast for my meagre camera phone, and I hadn’t exactly been equipped with a tripod. (Can you imagine? Lugging a tripod and camera uphill for two miles, with a backpack? And in spring, too. It’s dang hot here in spring.)

As of yet, I don’t know what kind of butterfly they were — they were all the same — and if I happen to bother myself with the effort of actually looking it up I migh’ post it ‘ere. Granted I can bother myself to do that either. All I can say is that their wings, when flattened, formed a triangle… and that they were orange and black. Otherwise my descriptions end there.

Alas, leftovers and water are calling my name, and I’ll be off. It’s Friday. I reserve the righ’ to be lazy on a Friday ev’nin’.

Allons-y!

Naturally, my mind set itself to work, and I was suddenly thinking about how the writers would go about the ending to everything. It was an extremely saddening thought, as you can imagine — I mean, come on — the Doctor’s regenerations are bad enough, but him being absolutely no more, never to regenerate again, the Last of the Time Lords gone forever, leaving one of the most intelligent and advanced races in the Universe extinct for eternity?

I was a little depressed.

But the other morning I had another thought. A thought that had to do with his death, a thought that made everything a tiny bit better. (With emphasis, of course, on tiny.) Overall, though, it was an interesting thought.

However, I’m not going to say what it was. Not here. Not yet, anyway. I have to find a way to express it — preferably artistically, and if not that way, then in a format similar to fanfictioning. I’ll try and get it done, eventually…. or started, at least. I would do it now, make some sort of rough sketch, but my current sketchbook is tucked in my school locker, probably very cold and a little damp because of the storm that came in last night. (Our school is outdoors…. rain is not common, but this winter was an anomaly.)

Anyway.

I thus conclude today’s entry.

The Doctor's Gallifrey

All Hail Shadow

(The link above is to a great youtube vid that’s been made using clips from Shadow the Hedgehog and the Sonic the Hedgehog PS3 game.)

So, Shadow.

He’s one of those guys that’s been through hell and it shows on his face. He’s known for being dark and mysterious and very closed off, though I’m sure he was much happier back when Maria was around. After all, the only reason behind his anger and depression is that Maria, his only friend and creator’s granddaughter, was killed. Ever since he was ‘woken up’ by Dr Eggman (he’s Dr Robotnik’s great-great grandson, I believe, and he’s best known as Sonic’s arch nemesis) in Sonic Battle 2, he vowed to get revenge on the GUN soldier that had shot her, that had executed her when she was on the ARK.

(The ARK is a space station built by Dr/Professor Gerald Robotnik, which he used primarily for scientific research and development; this is where he created Shadow, and where Maria, his granddaughter, was raised. Whatever activities Gerald had been involved in on the ARK did not sit well with the government, with GUN. As a result, they demanded the ARK was shut down. Gerald refused, and GUN stormed the station, killing everyone inside or taking them prisoner. Gerald himself was arrested, but Maria was killed. She had locked Shadow in an escape pod and sent him back to Earth, leaving herself to die from lack of oxygen or to be killed by GUN. It was the last he ever saw of her, and after being awoken by Eggman fifty years later, he vowed to get revenge on the people of earth, every single one, just because Maria had been killed. That, my friends, is dedication. Perhaps even insanity.)

So maybe he’s a little unorthodox, a little violent…. hateful…. angry and volatile…. often depressed and black-hearted. But he isn’t always like that, you know. And he changed his mind about destroying the Earth near the end of Sonic Battle 2, when the ARK was plummeting towards the Earth, about to make a BOOM big enough to knock Earth off the face of the, well, Earth. He seemed to realise how he’d gone wrong and made a new agenda – to protect the people of Earth, thinking now that that’s what Maria would’ve wanted, not for him to get revenge. So he helps out, contributes majorly to stopping the ARK from falling and assisting Sonic in the defeat of what the game called ‘The Finalhazard,’ which was some Ultimate-Life-Form-Prototype OTHER than Shadow. A giant, ugly, red lizard thing that had attached itself to the ARK and was controlling it, making it plummet towards Earth. (We don’t know why it did this, exactly, maybe it had a death wish; maybe it was just insane, or mislead like Shadow had been. Either way, it is bye-bye now.)

Not all ended well though – Shadow supposedly dies in the end, using ‘Chaos Control’ to warp the ARK back into orbit around the Earth. But he doesn’t warp himself, and ends up falling back to Earth, plummeting through the atmosphere until he can be seen no more.

Now a lot of people flipped out at this point, seeing as how it was the end of the game and Shadow had just burnt up on reentry. We all sort of sunk into a temporary depression, had our imaginary Shadow-funerals, and moved on. But then Sonic Heroes came around and that all changed.

It turns out that he isn’t dead after all. Rouge the bat discovers him in some lab, I forget where, unconscious and in a preservation chamber full of that green liquid stuff he’d been in before, back at the very beginning of Sonic Battle 2. She lets him out, and soon discovers that he has complete amnesia and remembers nothing of what occurred in SB2. But all the same, the fact that he was alive was lightening enough to a lot of gamers, and no one really cared if he remembered or not. (Even though he did remember, by the end of the game, as it gradually came back to him as more and more things hit triggers in his memory. And he stayed with Omega and Rouge after the game, too, I believe, all the way into Sonic the Hedgehog, the PS3 game.)

Anyway, the legacy continues now, with Shadow, who’s not dead anymore. Which is a good thing – for gamers and for the industry, I think. Without Shadow, many of the Sonic games would have been bland and not very entertaining. He adds flair, almost; gives the games a darker side, a side with an actual past. You notice that Sonic doesn’t really have a past to speak of, other than his history with Eggman. Plus, Shadow’s really the only one that still calls Eggman ‘Doctor,’ and it’s hilarious to me, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s like an endearment, or a respect, that Eggman doesn’t even seem to get from himself. (Ah, Eggman, lucky to have such an almost-friend….)

So that’s that, really. Shadow, the Hedgehog That Went Through Hell, especially if you count the events of Shadow the Hedgehog. (I don’t remember when exactly this was set, regarding the Grand Scheme of Things. But it’s in there somewhere.)

Bottom line, the dude rocks.

All Hail Shadow!

A drawing by basta6, a member of DeviantArt

Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

But God, are they annoying.

… … …

I got a little turned around today. I was supposed to walk home from school and pick up my sister when her elementary school let out. (It’s Finals Week for me – we get let out early.) But I’ve never walked home from school in this town, and I admit that I zone out when we drive to and from school every day – which means I have a fuzzy memory regarding getting around. In any case, my brain cells had been drained when I left school (and they still are), having just taken two science-related finals, and I was sort of zoning again when I got to the light. I was tired, hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink for over four hours.

Thus, with my fatigue combined with fuzzy memory, I turned down the wrong street of our four-way intersection.

And didn’t realise I’d gone the wrong way until I’d walked about two miles.

Which was when I also realised I had no idea how to get to my house.

I called people. A bunch of people. No one was answering, and I sort of hung out at the large intersection I’d stopped at and called and called ’till I could get a hold of somebody. Eventually I did – I’d called my aunt, who was just leaving work. I asked her to get onto the computer to find me a map, and to also look up the number of my sister’s school so I could call the office and tell them I would be late picking her up. (My mom was at an interview, which was why I had been designated the task of walking home and picking up my sister in the first place.)

While I was trying to describe both my location and situation to my aunt, I randomly spotted a bus map  on the sidewalk and eventually figured out what I’d done wrong; so instead she just gave me the number to the school and I told her I would find my way back.

So I set off walking again – all the way back to my school.

(Excuse me a moment….. the ground is swaying beneath my computer chair…. Woo, dehydration… Alright, it’s gone.)

Of course, in my dehydrated, brainless state, I hadn’t once thought of calling the police, or even 411 for Information so I could get the number of the elementary school. I was operating solely on whatever happened to pop into the front of my mind, almost completely spontaneous, maybe even a little reckless.

But I walked on, travelling much faster than the leisurely pace I’d been going before.

I called the school office as I walked on, told them I would be late; afterwards, on a wim, I called my mom again, even though I knew her phone was off. I got her answering machine, listened to it, disconnected, and continued walking.

About five minutes later, I randomly had the idea of calling the house phone and leaving a message. It had occured to me that I didn’t know when, exactly, she would be arriving home, and I wondered what would happen if she got there before I did. So I called the house (by listening again to her cellphone answering machine because I didn’t know the house number and she’d given the number in her answering message) and I left a message.

After that, I walked and walked and walked some more until I again reached my high school. From there, I realised that, in my oblivious and brainless state, I hadn’t noticed that the street adjacent to my high school was the exact street I was supposed to have gone down before. I had literally turned my back on it and walked in the opposite direction. I wanted to kick myself.

So, having finally completed my sweaty, four-mile-trek to the Auto Centre and back, I trudged on up the other street and headed up the hill.

My mom called a few minutes into my uphill trudging, having gotten home and listened to my message. I explained to her what had happened, and she went to pick up my sister and then came and intercepted me, still on my way home.

~

Aaaaaand we all are still not living happily ever after. (I don’t really believe in happy endings. Besides – nothing really ends, does it?)

So here I am, fed, watered, still a little woozy from walking about five miles in the sun with no liquid. Yeah, I have a blister, too, but that’s my fault for not wearing socks with my Converse today. (I hadn’t exactly planned on walking to the Auto Centre and back, you know.) I can’t complain about anything, though. It really is all my fault – nothing to blame but my own, absentminded self. I can get one of the highest grades in my class on my science final, but yet I can’t find my way home.

This one takes first place on my Surprisingly Short List of Extreme Blond Moments.

At least I’ll never get lost again.

The whole idea came about one night while I was doing homework and my sister was playing  Xbox. We haven’t bought any games for it and only play the ones that were included with the console; she was playing a level of LEGO Indiana Jones; the Original Adventures.

And then, completely out of the blue, she announced to me that it would be “so cool” if there was a LEGO Doctor Who.

This, coming from the seven-year-old girl that doesn’t really even like the show.

It makes me think of how such a  game would go off in Britain, where the show has been a Big Thing for over forty-five years. (The show first aired in 1963, it’s currently 2009. Do the math.)

Upon this announcement, we both began thinking out loud, suggesting things that we could imagine being in a Doctor Who game. The LEGO Doctor, the TARDIS, the Daleks and Cybermen. Being able to run around as the Ninth or Tenth Doctor or Donna or Rose or Martha or Jack or whoever else you could think of. Gallivanting around, brandishing a LEGO sonic screwdriver and TARDIS keys. (Later on we thought of the LEGO K9, and that was an image too cute for me to pass up.)

Like the Indiana Jones game, it would have a plot based on the episodes or seasons. You’d be defeating the Sontarans, killing and re-killing the Daleks, telling the bad guys they need to get a life that doesn’t involve dominating poor little Earth. So the storyline would certainly play out well.

But for all the little ideas we came up with and embellished, I did come across a glitch in the idea. One of the major attributes to the LEGO games is the collecting of studs, the little coin-like things that are used to buy and unlock other characters to be used in the game. The main way of collecting studs is breaking objects, hitting them or blasting them into little LEGO pieces; and, as it is often necessary, you have to kill your enemies, punching them so they collapse into pieces or shooting them or blowing them up. (Yes, it sounds very violent, but it doesn’t seem as gruesome when the baddies are made of LEGOs.)

So the flaw in the whole idea is the violence factor. One of the main characteristics of Doctor Who is that the good guy avoids violence unless it is absolutely necessary. The Doctor has a strong, automatic aversion to weapons, eliminating his use of guns or blasters. This not only makes it difficult to incorporate two clashing concepts – nonviolence and the necessity of studs – but also limits the activity of the player.Without the violence, there wouldn’t be enough for the gamer to actually do in the game. There would be very little thrill of achievement. Where’s the challenge? people would think.

However, I’ve given some thought to ways of ironing out this kink.

All that really needs to be done is to come  up with another way – a nonviolent way – to collect studs and get past enemies; this way, the continuity of the LEGO format would be preserved and the Doctor Who themes would stay intact. You could stall your enemies, find ways to outsmart them instead of killing them – something that often occurs in Doctor Who. Regarding studs, a player could solve puzzles and build things rather than destroy them – a concept also featured in the LEGO games, only not as often. There would simply need to be more puzzles, more challenges that required thinking, rather than destroying - it could be a LEGO revolution!

So maybe there might be a LEGO Doctor Who game in the future. Maybe it’ll be just like this. Maybe it’ll be different. Maybe it’ll suck so bad no one will play it and LEGO and Doctor Who will be disgraced for the rest of eternity. Or maybe it’ll make millions and become the new Big Thing in the youth gaming industry. Who knows?

It’s at least a possibility.

Unfortunately, we didn’t didn’t do much for New Years. We visited a *free* New Years celebration, found it lame, left, wandered around trying to find something else to do, and eventually went home to watch New York and Las Vegas ring in the New Year on telly. We were going to go to the beach, but this creepy fog rolled in and we could hardly see the signs above the freeway! We decided it was too dangerous and dark to drive all the way to the beach in the (thickening) fog, and turned for home. This is what happens when you’re new to a place and have little friends, and when freak weather decides to pop up to turn against you. (We almost never get fog or marine layer. Then again, maybe it’s a winter thing.)

Today, I shall be doing homework. Yes, ’tis New Years, and I have homework. I have to finish a book for English, and I think it’s depressing. A Separate Peace, it’s called. Set during WWII, takes place at a school based on Exeter, in New England. (Author calls it Devon.) I have to “close read” the rest of the book by the fifth. I have some vocabulary left, too…..

Anyway.

I am feeling a little put off by this year’s Christmas Special for Doctor Who. I haven’t actually seen it yet, but I saw the teaser and I read spoilers and synopses. My overall opinion can be summed up in a few words: it was lame.

I mean, really. Is that all Davies could come up with? And he brought in the Cybermen! Again! Just like he wants to bring back the Daleks in Season Five. I’m sorry, but can’t you come up with some other kind of villain? The Daleks have been ‘killed off’ more than a dozen times, and the Cybermen lost their luster a long time ago. Adding a few extra pieces to the costume is not going to change the fact that we are still dealing with monsters from AGES ago. I mean, can’t they just DIE? Can’t we move on?

And the plot…. Get everyone all wound up from the title – The Next Doctor – and then go and say Nah, he ain’t a Doctor, he jus’ thinks he is because of a memory mixup. Can you say, lame and anticlimactic? Although, I have to say, it was a bit of a breath of relief – Morrissey could not have been any less appealing as a choice for a future Doctor. I do not like him. At all. As a Time Lord, he is, in my opinion, a bit of an idiot. Maybe even a little pompous. He was fake. Almost as bad as that Russell Tovey guy that Davies wanted, before everyone sort of forgot about him. (Tovey was in Voyage of the Damned, playing the young man that got locked in the control room of the Titanic.)

I just severely hope that Moffat, who’ll be in charge of Season Five, will make the (good) decision to not bring Morrissey back. Or Tovey. Or at the very least try to not recycle any more actors!

Let’s face it. It will be nothing short of an act of God if the BBC can find an actor worthy enough to replace David Tennant. Or at least an actor with the guts to step up. He’s just too good of a Doctor. But he’s stepping down from a pedestal he raised himself, and now we must wait for another to jump high enough to reach it. If such a thing is even possible now… well, we will see, won’t we?

Happy New Year.

(Bah, Humbug.)