The Viking Wedding of My Dreams

Dear Bloggie,

  

    Christmas is almost over. How sad. Poo.

    I know I just posted earlier, but I was reading Wuthering Tights when I thought of something that I decided to post about it. So I was reading it (I’m around page 30 something since I didn’t have anytime to read until I got home from my great aunt’s) when Louise Rennison gives us a description of Tallulah Casey, the protagonist. She has brown green eyes, and dark drown hair. Oh, and she comes from Irish ancestry. Suddenly, just like that, I started to understand this character. Why you ask? Because the description reminds me of Cat!

    I just love it when writers create characters that remind me of people I know. I create characters off of people I know all the time, so when writes make characters that remind me of the people in my life, I feel a bond to them. Like maybe we have friends that are similar. Maybe one day my life will turn out as successful as theirs.  

    Of course, though Tallulah reminds me of Cat in looks, I don’t know yet about personality. I have to read more to find out. Besides, Cat will always remind me of Rosie, one of Georgia Nicholson’s friends. Rosie is the craziest of the group and very funny. In my heart, I will always hold out hope that Cat will find herself a Sven and have a Viking Wedding (the type of person, not the team). Reality wise, even if Cat ends up in England and finds herself a big, tall, Norwegian who has a love for furry shorts, blowing his horn (…), and crazy disco dancing (not to mention a semi-fetish with Vikings; but I was never clear if it was Rosie, Sven, or Georgia that really loved the Vikings thing), I don’t think she would ever have a Viking inspired wedding.

    Imagine if you will, Cat walking down the aisle in traditional white wedding attire, only to meet a fiancé at the altar who is wearing the whole Viking shebang. I don’t think Cat would go for that. But then again, there are women who get married in camouflage. Both the bride and the groom. So I’ll just hold out hope for now.  

    Now back to the story. I’m quite enjoying it. It’s not through diary entries like the Georgia Nicholson series, but it’s still funny. Tallulah is actually supposed to be Georgia Nicholson’s younger cousin. At then end of Georgia’s series, Georgia was supposed to be around 16. Tallulah is 14 and a half. MYAGE!

    I enjoy reading (and writing) books about fourteen-year-olds. At fourteen you think you’re mature, but you’re really not. I only came to this conclusion when I started writing C.O.A.O.P. I had received a comment on inkpop about how Angela (my protagonist) was a bit immature, but that was OK because the person remembered being like that at fourteen themselves. Well it’s no secret that I have given Angela Ellis many of my traits. The more I thought about it, I realized that maybe I wasn’t that mature, but that was OK. At fourteen, life should be fun and goofy. You don’t have much time left to be those things.

    I’m not really a fan of fifteen. You’re no longer in that in between phase of middle school and high school. More is expected of you, but you’re not quite old enough to do much. Can’t drive, can’t really get a job. It pretty much sounds like a poop year. I’m sorta dreading March 13^th, my fifteenth birthday. But oh well. I need to be fifteen before I can be sixteen. And that is another of my favorite years.

    It’s two minutes to midnight and I want to read more of Wuthering Tights. Cheers.

          ~XOXO,
                 Libby

P.S. According to my Blogger stats, my most popular post ever is this one. Mainly because the butt sex picture brings in traffic when people Google for things like that. Is it me, or do you think it's a bit odd that soooo many people are Googling "butt sex"? For the heck of it, I'll add two other funny butt sex pictures I found. Because that's just the type of blog I run.

Even Atheists Love Christmas

Dear Bloggie,
    Hope you're all having a great Christmas, I know I am. All my close family (plus my two aunts boyfriends) were over this morning to open up gifts at my grandfathers house (located two floors under mine, seeing as I love in a three story apartment/house). Good news: I received Photoshop and an iPod Touch from my mom. Bad News: I didn't receive Ellie Goulding's CD from my Godmother. Oh well, I'll buy it myself; I'll have to import it from the UK. Oh that reminds me. While I didn't get a British singers CD, I did get a British authors book! My mom imported Louise Rennison's (the author of my favorite series ever, Confessions of Georgia Nicholson) new book Withering Tights! All the way from England! I have a UK version of a book!

    I hope your Christmas is going as good as mine is. I'm going to sync my new iPod then change so we (my family) can head off to my great aunt Madalena's house. That's were almost everyone in my family goes every year. Even though I basically consider myself an atheist, I have always and will always love Christmas. For me, Christmas isn't about gifts (though I do love them and couldn't imagine a Christmas without them), and Christmas isn't even really about celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. No, for me Christmas is about getting together with my family, eating good food, and having a good time. It's about being all around thankful for the people you have in your life and being glad that they are still there. Because trust me, as I learned with my grandmother about six years ago, you don't know how mush longer you'll have them for. Merry Christmas.
    ~Libby

Happy Birthday Neena!

Dear Bloggie,

    Today is Neena's birthday. She is the youngest of my friends so she just turned 14. Even though I don't have Photoshop right now (hopefully I'll get it for Christmas!), I decided to make her a picture like I made one for Cat back in June for her birthday. I had to use picnik, but I think it actually worked out better this way.

  
   Nee-Nee is one of her nicknames for Neena's real name. That's partially why I choose the name Neena to use on this blog. Even though the "Nee" in Nee-Nee does not make the same sound as the "Nee" makes in Neena.

    ~Libby

Mockingjay and War

Dear Bloggie,

  Sunday night I finished Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. Yes, I know, it came out MONTHS ago, but sadly I have had very limited time to read. Plus, I think there was a part of me that didn't want one of my favorite series to end. But life goes on so Saturday I sat myself down and continued (I had only read about 40 pages into the book prior) reading. Once I started, I could barely stop.

   SPOILER! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! TURN BACK NOW OR ELSE!

   I have heard a lot of mixed reviews, but personally I loved it. Though I must add, it was a lot older than the other two. The first book was more of the physical side of war (with the exception of Rue and the mutts with the other competitors eyes) which only took place in the arena. The second had hints of  psychological warfare, but still the true danger was in the arena. In Mockingjay, it was a big mixture. What will stay with you is the mental and emotional part of war. Those are the parts that will haunt you far past the last page. Still, the amount of death in this novel is so great that I can't say it's not as big. It's far from that. The book is just one big emotional, mental, and physical journey through hell that expresses what war really is like. Finishing this book, I felt devastated, hopeful, haunted by the ghosts of all who had died within it's pages, and physically drained.

   Still, I understand what people mean when they feel that Katniss was out of character in this book. In the past novels, though angry and resentful could describe her, she had also always been strong and brave. This novel, there were points in which I thought she would never be again.

   While normally you would think this is out of character, you have to take in consideration she is only a 17-year-old. Imagine yourself in her place, still young and already having seen more death and destruction then most will ever see in their life. Your enemy has discovered how to break you and is taking full advantage of it. Countless of people have died because they knew you. Others are being held hostage and beaten and broken for the same reason. All because you are the face of a revolution you never asked for. Both your enemies and your alleys have used/are using you. Besides your family and a select few friends, you don't know who you can trust. This is the reality Katniss lives with.

   This book deals greatly with the reality of war. We send our troops of into the field and expect them to be perfectly fine with killing others, with seeing their friends die. But they aren't OK. Many have PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) for years. Some never recover (take Vietnam for example; Google it is you don't know what I mean). Some take their lives for what they have done. You have to be pretty messed up not to feel sick after taking another's life. Still, we expect our service men and women to be all peachy.

   In Mockingjay, Katniss serves as a perfect example for what war can do to a person. She is broken to the point that she's numb. Then, when everything is all over, they expect her to move on like nothing happen. How can she when she has seen so many die because of her. She may have not had done it herself, but it makes no difference to her. These people knew her and now they are dead for it.

   Though I am fully aware of reality, I not-so-secretly expected her to win the war, return home to her family and friends, pick between Peeta or Gale (I was cheering for Peeta) and live happily ever after. Instead, what I found was a broken girl who had lost many of her friends, her beloved sister, and was quite happy if she died. Yes, in the end Katniss and Peeta ended up together, but there was a bitter-sweetness to it. After all that had happened beforehand, her finding love seemed insignificant. Still, at the same time, Katniss needed Peeta there. She couldn't rebuild her life alone. As Gale had predicted in one of the chapters, Katniss chose the person she needed to survive.

   Gale, like her, was fire. Though he cared for her and undoubtedly loved her, he had as much fight is not more than her. After all, she had first been recognized as The Girl On Fire. Fight and fire were some of the last things she needed after war. Add in that she would never be able to think of him without remembering the way that Prim had died, it was easy to see that they would never be.

   On the other hand, what Katniss needed was a calm baker. He soothed her, was there to reassure that the nightmares were over -- or at least they were over in the conscious world. They would never be over in her dreams. Like our own soldiers, the war would never be truly over for her. But life didn't need to be all bad, she would live on and move on as much as possible, it would just take some time.

                ~ Libby

Let The Self Loathing Begin....

I've gained three pounds.

Follow The Yellow Brick Road…

Dear Bloggie,

   Yeah, I know, it’s been a while. Life has been “interesting”, as Cat calls it. I don’t see it that way, but I will NOT stop blogging, so I might as well update. Lets start with NaNoWriMo -- or the lack of it.  I know, I was so excited to start the project. I have a good idea how it’s going, I made an awesome cover, and I want to write it, but the first chapter isn’t going well. I’ve re-written the beginning of chapter one twice now (I only have 655 words by now, not including the prologue which is actually my a short story my 5th grade teacher had told me in, well, 5th grade; don’t worry, I make it clear that it’s not my story bit one that is a moral, be nice to others one that we all hear some sort of during our life) and can’t decided what to do. I want it to be perfect. My old English teacher, Mr. Marino, instilled this want to do well in me. I’m glad he did, but sometimes it gets annoying since I tend to over edit myself in my writing. I know writing needs a lot of editing, but when you’re writing your first draft you’re just supposed to just write. Like I do with my blog. But I can’t with my stories.

   On equally not-happy news, things between me and Zach will not work out any time soon. My closest friend at GHAA (we shall call her Annie-May on my blog, not her real name) really likes him. I never told him OR her of my feelings for Zach, so I don’t blame her, but of course I’m jealous and upset. Except I can’t tell her that because I’m scared how she will react. If I had told her before, she probably wouldn’t have minded, but I didn’t. She had asked if I liked anyone and i had told her know. I lied, and now I’m going to have to deal.

  Thankfully I do have other parts to my life. For example, on Monday we had our auditions. With all three rotations over (I can’t believe I’ve been in high school for ten and a half weeks now!) we chose our top two and auditioned for them. I was super nervous. I was sure I was going to fail my audition and be forced to take Visual Arts for the year. I could of course audition again in the spring for next school year, but by then I would be behind everyone. All I could imagine was failing and being so behind that no college would take me and I would end up living in the streets of New York, in the heart if Times Square, in a cardboard box begging for pennies and slowly dying from the toxic fumes of taxis/cars/buses and the sewer. I know, I’m over dramatic. But still, it seemed sorta rational at the time. Sorta.

  The point is that I sat near Zach in the beginning, but after the auditions, while people were finishing up and we were all just sitting around, Zach and Annie-May were talking and I didn’t really feel like joining the conversation. So instead I hung out with my dear friend Marty. He showed me some more of his animations and we talked about them and listened to this music until we were all told to go to out advisory groups. Marty is really good at animations. He was explaining some of it for me, and God, it’s a long and complicated process. You can see his work here. My favorites are the Dumpster Baby and the Playground one. Hope you check them out. They’re really funny. Or at least I think so.

Too bad he’s not only a visual artist, but also a half-day student so I won’t see him much anymore. We’re in two completely different buildings, even after the move in January (when our new school building will complete, making it possible for all morning students, grades 9-12, to be under one roof, and providing housing for the Creative Writing, Inter Arts, and Musical Theater departments). Still, at least I have Sierra. Remember how I mentioned her a while ago, on my lonely post? At the time she wanted to be a visual artist, but after doing a rotation through creative writing she decide she loved it and liked how she got the feeling of being a family in this department.

  As you can tell, I got into Creative Writing! I’m officially a creative writer! I still can’t believe it, but yeah, it’s true. I’m really excited. I’m trying to get into this Shakespeare class Sierra is taking. It requires a lot of reading and right now she’s the only freshman in it (i.e. it’s difficult), but it sounds interesting so I’m up for the challenge. as for now, It’s a minute to 1am and I have no school tomorrow because of veterans day. Until next time, keep following that yellow brick road and all your dreams will come true. 

~ XOXO,
       Libby

P.S. Yes, I know. I should become a greeting card writer for Hallmarks.

P.P.S. Actually, Hallmarks in one of my top five favorites stores (not sure which spot in my top five,  I just know that Borders, Torrid, and Temptations -- a hair accessory and jewelry store they have in the mall near my house -- beats it for sure) so I wouldn’t mind writing greeting cards for while. As long as that isn’t my only job in the writing world.

P.P.P.S I’m going to post the beginning of chapter one for your opinion. Am I on the right track or not? If you picked up a book in a store that began like this, would you read it? Criticism much needed, please don’t sugar coat please, that gets me nowhere. Thanks. :)

Chapter One

  “Adèle Baudelaire.” The woman behind the table smiled, searching for me on her list. She handed me a name tag, my name written in large but neat print with sharpie. A nine stood in its upper left corner.

    “The number is your group; they will be called together shortly. Find a seat and get comfortable for now. Welcome to the Academy!”

    “Thanks.” I smiled back. She seemed genuinely happy to see me. I turned away as another girl took my place. Her hair was three different shades at least, only one of them being a natural hair color. Addie, we’re definitely not in Catholic school anymore. 

    I searched the room of faces, looking for one person who wasn’t preoccupied in a conversation. It seemed that I was the only freshman at GHAA (what the school website used to refer to this school, George Harte Academy of the Arts; it was named after its first sponsor) who had come here alone, all their friends attending other schools. For the first time since I had received my acceptance letter, I was doubling thinking my choice.

    It’s too late now, I reminded myself. I turned down Northeast Catholic months ago and public school wasn’t an option. Sink or swim, I was here for the year. I just hoped it was the later.

    I found a seat towards the back out the auditorium. A girl a couple seats down let out a loud laugh. I cringed, wishing I had someone to laugh with. I don’t know how long I spaced out, but when I came back to attention a tall brunette was standing on the stage where I had just checked in. Like the other, she had a big smile on her face. Her hair was tied into two braids despite the fact that she appeared to be around my mother’s age. Still, her bright turquoise top and flower printed skirt made her seem younger.

    “Good morning! Can I have your attention, please?” The girls to my left continued laughing. It seemed that I was the only one paying attention.

    “OK everyone, I know you’re all excited, but can you please settle down so we may begin?” The talking continued.

    A woman in a tan dress ran on stage, kitten heels clicking. Unlike every other adult I had seen, she looked as if she meant business. She took the microphone out of the other woman’s hand and yelled, “SETTLE DOWN NOW! IF YOU’RE A FRESHMAN, THEN TURN YOUR ATTENTION HERE. IF YOU’RE NOT A FRESHMAN, THEN YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE!”

    The room went silent.

    “Thank you Jen.” Happy Woman took the microphone back. “Now, I’m Jillian Oliver but you can call me Jill. I’m the head of the musical theater department and as well as the coordinator for freshman arts classes. I would like to welcome you to the Academy. We are very happy to have you here. I know your all excited to begin so I’ll make this quick. Can the teachers--”

    “Freshman!” A male screamed from the door way. He had to be around sixteen at least. His light brown hair almost touched his shoulders in a hairstyle that could only be a cross between a skater and Justin Bieber. His clothes, like his hair, was a mash-up of two styles – wannabe white gangster and skater; typical teen male fashion. He just strolled in as if he owned the place, eyeing the crowed in search for his prize horse. When his gaze reached me end of the auditorium I saw it falter for a second.