Meme Has Taken Several Days to Finish
From chibi_trillian:
Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
1. HEROES IN A HALF SHELL!
NINJA TURTLES!!!!! Mwahaha... My greatest love. I became a fan not too long after the release of the 2003 cartoon, so about six years now. You can't not know anything about them because of how ingrained they've become in pop culture, but I'd never actually watched the movies or the old cartoon at that point. The 2003 cartoon was my first formal introduction and the experience was glorious in it's awesomeness. :D
Seriously, the first four seasons of the show was bliss. The ones following weren't awful (yes, I have seen much, much worse), but they are definitely lacking in comparison. Compared to the Old Toon, the New Toon was a lot darker. Some people who were old fans didn't like that, but the truth is that NT is a lot truer to the comics. Actually... the original comics are even darker than it is!
Getting off topic here- the New Toon is totally responsible for my TMNT love. It has a lovely blend of comedy with serious issues and lots of action. The characters have depth to them, and they develop throughout the series even. People get injured even. Le gasp! Back when I was able to watch this on Saturday mornings? I think it was pretty much the only show that had that (since 4kids raped One Piece as it did *weeps*). All of this amounts to things Pi loves to see in her cartoons, and I was addicted.
...Hmm, so it may have also have had a lot to do with The Shredder Strikes Back episodes. I have to admit to being a sadist, but hey! Anyone seeing that episode would be one too after seeing that. (huggles Leo... who is also completely awesome and my total fave :D)
Ah, I didn't mean for this to be essay length! ;_; But yeah, TMNT is bascially the sole reason why I got into any fandom. In a search for related links on the webz, I stumbled upon fanfiction and got seriously addicted. That eventually led to me writing fic myself, which lead to me meeting everyone that I have today. And that only lead to me searching out other fandoms as well!
2. Bleeding shoplifter XD
Bwahaha! Wow, I don't know if I can elaborate any more on the subject than I did making my case in this post. But boy was that a lot of fun. Back in January, we had a case at the store where a trail of blood was found running through the Toys department leading back to Automotive. I spent a good portion of my remaining work day theorizing just how it happened and why and how many people were there and everything. The next day, after security checked the cameras, I found I was right on everything but like two points. That's the totally exciting fun stuff we need to have more of back there. Also? I think Wal*Mart should have a CSI Department and that I should transfer once it's made. XD
3. Icons
Let's face it- icons are total love. They're pretty, and you can typically find one for anything that interests you. I adore them, and have actually spent hours looking through icon posts and journals for cool ones. So much awesome. :3
But sometimes, you'll want something sorta specific, and that can be hard to find. Thus making it yourself becomes a kinda teasing option. The first time, I wanted an icon with Baxter Stockman (a TMNT villain) that had an 'ohshit' theme, or something similar to it. Found nothing, so I boldly decided to make it myself. I still have the icon today, even though it's kinda crappy. I made the text with Microsoft WordArt and copied it to an art program and then the picture. I removed the white space around the words and ended up with that.
Mwaha... my skills are evolving now, though! Thanks to saidancer, I now have Photoshop. Man, that's a dream come true for icon making. In this time I've learned about texures and playing around with images to get a certain effect. I've learned how to warp text and outline it and give it all the neat little details to make it eye-catching. I've found out how to make interesting and creative looking borders too. I'm even learning how to make animated icons now, which is a lot more difficult than it seems. My first attempts have been kinda shoddy, but my newest effort is much more pleasing (...though I'm going back to play with it some more later), and can be seen above. It's so much fun to do. ^_^
4. Justice League
Holy crap, what an awesome show XD. I was a fan of it a few years ago, and only just recently went back to watching it for kicks. Even though it's over and done, it's still great. And still fun on the second time around (though that is also largely due to ivy_chan's participation. XD
Thing is, I suffer from superheroes-are-freaking-awesome disorder. No cure, thank God. And Justice League is probably my favorite cartoon out of all of the comic inspired ones (with the exception of TMNT, naturally). The characters are well-developed, the storylines interesting, and the two combine well. The humor is awesome (besides the typical funny stuff, there's so much innuendo), but it can be really dark too. It's one of those shows that, for an American cartoon, seems to be less of a kids show even though the networks try to pass it off as such.
And of course there's badass actions scenes. They equals love. <3
...As do Flash, Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, The Question, Huntress, Joker, Lex Luthor and a million other of my faves. XD
5. Writing
Ah, writing! Well, ever since my early teens, I'd wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Coolest thing ever. My first experience with it though was at fourteen, where I began writing TMNT fanfic. Looking back on that, my stories were nothing special then. The only reason why I don't take them down is because they'd gotten quite a bit of attention, still do, and some people like them.
Every year I wrote, I got better; I could even see this as it happened. My one-shots became a lot more interesting, and my multi-chapters far more developed. Year 2007 was my big one- I had a lot of good stuff then.
Year 2008, though... not so much. At first I thought it was writer's block. But it soon became apparent that this wasn't the case--I have tons of ideas in my head. It's just when I try to actually write them out, either nothing happens or I start only to not like how it's going and abandon it. And when I attempt to continue my three multichaptered fics, I find I'm only still interested in one of them.
Writer's block turned out to be burnout. Now I'm just out of practice and attempting to get back into the swing of things. I think it's going to have to be a slow process though, much to my displeasure. I'd love to get back to my longer fic or start some new ones, but as I'm having trouble just with my ficlets, it seems as if it's just going to be the short stuff for the time being.
Though that's probably not a bad thing. :)
Man, I've been working on that for days. Every time I seemed to remember it was right before work, so I'd only be able to finish parts. My bad. >.>
Anyways, my Avatar fic didn't win this weeks avatar_contest, but ivy_chan's did. And as Ivy is awesome and her fic awesome, I am in no way disappointed.
Oh. And I wrote a drabble thingy for my anniversary fic.
Title: Shelf Space
Rating: PG
Word Count: 105
Fandom: TMNT
Characters: Leo
Summary: It's a drabble. A summary would leave nearly nothing to read. >.<
There’s a book read for nearly every moment in his life stored in his room. Looking at their spines is like viewing the marks on its timeline--from Green Eggs and Ham to The Art of War.
Some he looks back on with more pleasure than others. Some he understands better after a second time gone through, and he likes to think that he learns something new with each return.
He chooses them with care and tries to enjoy them all; sometimes he’s disappointed, but he generally does.
Overall, he’s satisfied with his collection. There’s just not much space left on that shelf to fill.
I so totally cheated. The fifty sentence prompts I've been doing now hates me for stealing one of the sentences (and breaking it into two) and making a drabble out of it. Alas, now I shall have to change it.