Action! Books! Wednesday Comics!
Today, I played catch and did martial arts with my Dad. It's our usual thing.
I've been playing baseball when I was six. As a result, I can catch and throw stuff perfectly without even thinking about it. It's very weird and pretty awesome whenever I do it, because it's like, the one thing I do that runs entirely on instinct. And I feel all powerful. It makes all the yelling and screaming and baseball practices that end in tears kind of worth it. Though I could have done without the yelling and screaming. But Dad had major issues then. Today, he sees how natural playing catch is to me and is proud.
For some reason, though I've been doing martial arts just as long, it's not instinctive to me like catch. Maybe it's because one wrong punch could break your wrist, so you have to be constantly on your guard. Maybe because instead of two basic motions (catch, throw), it's multiple motions and commands you have to follow.
Anyway, I've been writing this book, The Library, forever. It's about this girl, who's name is Attie Hale, is always hanging out in her school library, and she meets this boy there, falls in love with him a little, and then finds out he's been dead for five years because he hung himself in the library closet. She has major issues with suicide, she inadvertantly helped her own dad commit suicide, so there's conflict blablabla, but then they have to work together to figure out why he's tied to the library and why he's still a ghost.
Um, it's not as stupid as it sounds, honest. I put a lot of me into the character of Attie, and a lot of my high school experiences and my own feelings of loneliness. So she's super prickly, and agressive, but very, very lonely. So despite the ghost aspect, it's very grounded in realism, making a weird dichotomy. I actually wrote the first half my junior year, when I was very frustrated with school. Then I quit. And then in January of this year I found my journal and reread it and was like "this isn't half bad-but wow, my character's depressed. I didn't realize it when I was writing it, but she is..." So it was kind of the perfect point in the book to bring that self awareness in, because Attie was starting to get happier as she went all puppy love over ghost boy, so she could see from how awkward her feelings of contentment were and people's reactions to her SMILING and stuff, that "Wow, I'm pretty down on myself most of the time, aren't I?"
So I picked up the story again from there. It's going slowly, I'm just at the point where Attie finds the truth about Bart (her ghost boyfriend) and there's this fight scene, because Attie's so mad about being betrayed she attacks Bart, and I remembered this choke hold Dad once taught me that was really effective I wanted to use, and I couldn't remember the name.
So I asked him today. It's the Rear Naked Choke. You kind of slide your left arm across the front of your opponent neck, grab your right bicep and place your right hand on the back of his head, so you create this constricting space that can choke someone to sleep in four seconds (supposedly). Only way to even hope to get out is to turn your head and try to bite their arm. Or kick and flail and see if that works.
He also retaught me a few other chokes, and some grappling that'll be handy to add in the scene.
BUT, onto comics.
This Wednesday comics thing DC's coming out with for their next weekly looks really cool. I am stoked. Teen looking Teen Titans with Cassie in a dorky outfit! Adorable out of continuity Wondy stories! Pretty Green Lantern art! Amanda Conner Supergirl! Catwoman! Out of continuity tales with huge formats and great writers and lots of FUN looking stuff!
It seems like such a great idea. I hope it works out, and they give it to people outside the comic shops. I did a write up on it for BSR: www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/4596
In other news, Supergirl was the only comic I got this week. It was good, as usual. It seems Superwoman might be Kryptonian after all, just with a special suit. And she's ruthless, too. Kara has issues with her Mom, and there were four pages by this artist who was NOT Jamal Ingle which was jarring (I wonder why Ingle couldn't finish?) but it was all good. 5/5 as usual.
Made some facepalmy icons for insanejournal scans_daily, because sadly, I imagine I'll find a use for them.
And this:
Tha-tha-that's all, folks!
I've been playing baseball when I was six. As a result, I can catch and throw stuff perfectly without even thinking about it. It's very weird and pretty awesome whenever I do it, because it's like, the one thing I do that runs entirely on instinct. And I feel all powerful. It makes all the yelling and screaming and baseball practices that end in tears kind of worth it. Though I could have done without the yelling and screaming. But Dad had major issues then. Today, he sees how natural playing catch is to me and is proud.
For some reason, though I've been doing martial arts just as long, it's not instinctive to me like catch. Maybe it's because one wrong punch could break your wrist, so you have to be constantly on your guard. Maybe because instead of two basic motions (catch, throw), it's multiple motions and commands you have to follow.
Anyway, I've been writing this book, The Library, forever. It's about this girl, who's name is Attie Hale, is always hanging out in her school library, and she meets this boy there, falls in love with him a little, and then finds out he's been dead for five years because he hung himself in the library closet. She has major issues with suicide, she inadvertantly helped her own dad commit suicide, so there's conflict blablabla, but then they have to work together to figure out why he's tied to the library and why he's still a ghost.
Um, it's not as stupid as it sounds, honest. I put a lot of me into the character of Attie, and a lot of my high school experiences and my own feelings of loneliness. So she's super prickly, and agressive, but very, very lonely. So despite the ghost aspect, it's very grounded in realism, making a weird dichotomy. I actually wrote the first half my junior year, when I was very frustrated with school. Then I quit. And then in January of this year I found my journal and reread it and was like "this isn't half bad-but wow, my character's depressed. I didn't realize it when I was writing it, but she is..." So it was kind of the perfect point in the book to bring that self awareness in, because Attie was starting to get happier as she went all puppy love over ghost boy, so she could see from how awkward her feelings of contentment were and people's reactions to her SMILING and stuff, that "Wow, I'm pretty down on myself most of the time, aren't I?"
So I picked up the story again from there. It's going slowly, I'm just at the point where Attie finds the truth about Bart (her ghost boyfriend) and there's this fight scene, because Attie's so mad about being betrayed she attacks Bart, and I remembered this choke hold Dad once taught me that was really effective I wanted to use, and I couldn't remember the name.
So I asked him today. It's the Rear Naked Choke. You kind of slide your left arm across the front of your opponent neck, grab your right bicep and place your right hand on the back of his head, so you create this constricting space that can choke someone to sleep in four seconds (supposedly). Only way to even hope to get out is to turn your head and try to bite their arm. Or kick and flail and see if that works.
He also retaught me a few other chokes, and some grappling that'll be handy to add in the scene.
BUT, onto comics.
This Wednesday comics thing DC's coming out with for their next weekly looks really cool. I am stoked. Teen looking Teen Titans with Cassie in a dorky outfit! Adorable out of continuity Wondy stories! Pretty Green Lantern art! Amanda Conner Supergirl! Catwoman! Out of continuity tales with huge formats and great writers and lots of FUN looking stuff!
It seems like such a great idea. I hope it works out, and they give it to people outside the comic shops. I did a write up on it for BSR: www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/4596
In other news, Supergirl was the only comic I got this week. It was good, as usual. It seems Superwoman might be Kryptonian after all, just with a special suit. And she's ruthless, too. Kara has issues with her Mom, and there were four pages by this artist who was NOT Jamal Ingle which was jarring (I wonder why Ingle couldn't finish?) but it was all good. 5/5 as usual.
Made some facepalmy icons for insanejournal scans_daily, because sadly, I imagine I'll find a use for them.
And this:
Tha-tha-that's all, folks!