Inside the Rewrite

My goodness, I hear you cry, she actually posted on time! Well, dear readers, I promised you a weekly spotlight for i Love to Read Month, and a weekly spotlight you shall have! All… three of you. Yeah. BUT MOVING ON.

This week’s spotlight is on Kevin Uzley, the main character of my 2008 NaNoNovel, Unit 39. Unit 39 is my one attempt at a science-fiction-y story (read: fantasy IN SPACE!), and it is actually a pretty interesting story. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in it, and am still trying to finish Chapter Three. Considering the fact that these 2.5 chapters span nearly 27 pages in Word (Times New Roman, 12pt font, single-spaced), I think that’s a pretty good achievement, for me. Uzley is one of my favorite MCs, and (unfortunately) he knows it. And so uses his preferential status to try and convince me not to let bad things happen to him in the story. Since I am contrary, however, this often leads to hilarity (ex. Uzley getting the crap beaten out of him by a training bot. That twelve-year-olds regularly beat).

Quick character description!
Uzley is a User – okay, this will take a bit of explaining. In the Unit 39-verse, about 1 percent of children born have the ability to control some aspect of an “elemental” force (Wind, Water, Earth, Fire, Light, Darkness) with a varying amount of power. Uzley is a Light User – specifically, he is able to create illusions with his miiiiiiind He is in theory only limited by his imagination and his own concentration, but this doesn’t always work out in reality. For example, it’s easier for him to make fifty small balls of light float in one place than to make them go off in random directions. It’s even harder for him to create something more complex, like a copy of himself, and make it move convincingly enough to fool a potential enemy. He’s had years of self-training and the limits of his power are making three copies of himself moving in different directions from him, making himself (or one other person) invisible for about five minutes, or making four people invisible for about thirty seconds.
Uzley is not particularly tall (5″9, a bit shorter than the male average of 5″11 on the ship), with straight black hair (worn slgihtly longer than the usual military buzz cut) and dark brown eyes (almost black). He has an athletic build and is fairly slim. A distinguishing characteristic is his skin colour, a rich medium-brown (after 2000 years in space with a Caucasian-dominated genepool, most people are pretty white), a product of his predominantly-Indian heritage.
Kevin is the group’s jokester, and he does his best to make light of almost any situation. He loves to tease his teammates, and more often than not ends up annoying them (*coughKaracough*) to the point of potential violence. He does, however, have a strong attachment to his Unit, and views them as his surrogate family. Uzley has some abandonment issues (this makes more sense when you read on), and generally likes to be around people whenever possible. He also hates conflict, and tries to defuse any potentially serious situation with a joke. He does the same in  order to avoid facing up to his own issues. He has a hidden store of resentment towards the government of the ship in general for making him a soldier and taking him away from his family without giving him a choice first. He also loves to watch movies – his dream is to one day be a film director.
Users in the Unit 39-verse are basically drafted into the army the second their powers first show (usually between the ages of 3 and 7), and trained in their powers until they are 12, at which point they are put into a Unit with other Users of similar age. A Unit is usually made up of two offensive Users, a Healer, and a Darkness or a Light User. Uzley goes by his last name because it’s army protocol.

And that marks the end of our second character spotlight! Hope you guys learned a bit more about Uzley, and found him a little less scary than Derek! Next week’s post might be a little late because of choir tour, but I’ll see you at some point! This is Daryth, signing off.

Well, after all these years, I seem to have actually acquired that elusive thing known as a “life”, if the number of parties/movies/hang-out-times I’ve gone to are any indication. This may damage my geek credentials…

However, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and for me this has proven true in several forms of new and wonderful geekiness entering my life. The main ones are listed below:

1. Dungeons and Dragons
   Yes, this is #1 because of the sheer geekiness of it, and yet it is easy to see why it’s still around. It’s a really interesting game, the rules are fairly easy to grasp (4.0 rules, no experience with earlier ones), and there’s just something so very awesome about the ability to create your own character and customize it however you want. Especially if said character is able to blow things up with their mind.
2. Magic: The Gathering
   Yeah, I finally gave in and played, and it’s actually pretty fun. The social component is a big part, and the rules aren’t too difficult. Also, it’s fun to be able to summon lots and lots of wolves (with Deathtouch) and see my opponent’s face just go ‘daaaaang’.
3. Comics
   The last (and arguably, best) thing on my list is my discovery of the awesome known as comics. Now, I’ve been into webcomics and manga for a while now, but I recently discovered four print comics that made me go WOAH.
   The first is WATCHMEN. It’s a classic, written my Alan Moore and recently made into a movie, which is how I heard about it. It’s an AMAZING comic, very well-written and suspenseful, and just generally awesome.
   Then I found SANDMAN, but Neil Gaiman, and by god I was hooked. I got into Sandman because I’d been reading some Neil Gaiman (<3) recently, I had been looking for more things he’d written. When I decided to try out Sandman, I had no idea how much it would BLOW MY MIND and reinforce my idea that Neil Gaiman is a minor deity of writing. It centers around Dream of the Endless (aka Morpheus, aka a million other things), but there are so many other characters who become important and interesting. There are even some stories in which Dream makes only a brief cameo, such as Dream of A Thousand Cats. My afvice to you is find this. Read it, even if you don’t like comics. YOU WILL BE AMAZED.
   Third, I found DEADPOOL. This was the fault of tvtropes.org, and I love them for it. Deadpool (aka the Merc with a Mouth) is a mercenary with a healing factor (he can heal injuries done to him) who is more than a little bit insane. He breaks the fourth wall very often, and  is also originally from Canada. You heard me.  Deadpool is made of sheer raw AWESOME, and is now tying for my favorite Marvel comic character with Nightcrawler.
   Lastly, and most recently, I picked up the first volume of FABLES on a whim. And man, was I glad I did. It’s a really well-written story of fairy-tale characters living in New York City because they were driven out of their ancestral homeland by an enemy referred to only as the Adversary. The first volume centers around the investigation into the death of one of the Fables, and I’m going to leave it there and not spoil anything else, suffice to say that it was pretty awesome.

So there you have it! Poll: Do my new geeky interests completely destroy any chance I have of keeping this newly acquired “life”? I’ll see you in the comments.

Welp, blog is back online. Mostly because all my friends aare posting and I felt guilty. SO. UPDATES.

I won NaNoWriMo (yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), with a grand total of 50,062 words. And it really only finished part 1 of the story, which I am really to lazy to figure out the rest of, so the story will likely go and die in some forgotten corner. Ah well, that’s how it goes. I already have two new stories trying to get started up (which would be a bad idea, since I already have 3 I need to finish), only one of which is likely to actually be decent.

Homecoming was great fun, involving much dancing as well as much getting cold from having to go outside for a fire drill… the current theory is that it was triggered by a terrorist attack by the french.
Kidding. It was probably the fault of the smoke machines. And it happened during Evacuate the Dance Floor, which met our irony quotient for the month. Also, the first song they played when we got back in? Fire Burning on the Dance Floor. >_<

Break was mostly uneventful, though a few fun parties were had, and now school has resumed, with ENGLISH PROVINCIAL EXAM taking up the majority of last week. Stupid six-hour exams. And now we hear that some idiot teacher leaked the topic beforehand. Rumours have been flying that we will have to rewrite the exam, but that’s not happening. Riots would occur. Still, if it does, I move that the teacher responsible be put in a locked room with all of the students who have to rewrite the exam. If he’s still alive an hour later, he can keep his job.

That’s all for now, folks! Tune in some other time for MORE RANDOM CRAP from my life. I am now being summoned to go to Starbucks, so fare thee well!

Well, tomorrow’s Homecoming. That should be a yay.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m excited for the dance, but not as excited as I feel I should be. Dances just aren’t my thing, I guess. I’m mostly excited for the pre-party at a good friend of mine’s, and of course I want to see what everyone else looks like all cleaned up and shiny XD Hopefully the dance will go well (and by ‘go well’ I mean ‘involve me actually dancing/having fun/dancing well/all of the above), and be a great kick off for the weekend!

Unfortunately, the rest of the weekend isn’t looking quite so good… there’s choir practice on Saturday, which would normally be fine, but this week I’ve got a killer sore throat, and the prospect of having to use my vocal chords is not a pleasant one. Also, I’ve got the Major Paper to work on, AND my NaNoWriMo novel (which I am behind on, yet again), AND a certain event which was going to occur has been postponed until who knows when, so… yeah.

Oh well. Happy weekend, all!

Alrighty. Well, I’m no longer sick (which is good), and behind on NaNo by about 2k words (which is bad).

The main things currently occupying most of my time and thought-space are, in order of how i decided to put them down, NaNo, English major paper, and Homecoming. Which is funny, because it probably should be the other way around, seeing as Homecoming is NEXT FRIDAY (i.e. less than a week from now), the major paper is important to my overall English mark and due Nov. 30th, and NaNo is important to basically nothing except my own insane delusions, and also happens to be due Nov. 30th. So, let’s talk about them, and use up more space on this blog!

NaNo: Well, I’m trying to get to 25k words by the end of this weekend, and if today is any indication, I might not make it. But hey, I’m about 6k past where I got to last year, so I’m pretty happy. However, my competitive spirit is annoyed by the fact that so many of the people I recruited are beating me. >.> Interestingly, even if I do make it to 50k (which I will! I will! If I say it enough times I will!), I have this feeling the story won’t be done… but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.

English major paper: Actually, I feel pretty good about this. I know what I’m writing about, my outline is about 4.5 pages (and the actual essay only has to be 10). I just have to actually, you know, write those pages. So moving on.

Homecoming: Well, I’ve finally decided to wear the same dress I wore last year (THE HORROR /sarcasm), with different accessories. Woohoo. And I now have shiny silver shoes. YAAAY!

END

PS Cookies to anyone who gets the post title (because it’s cheesy).

Well, in light of certain other people’s blogs actually being updated, I was beginning to feel left out. That and the sheer weight of peer pressure. So here it is: Daryth’s Blog of Grade Twelve. It is sure to be filled with very (un-)exciting trivia concerning my existance. Let’s see how long it takes for me to abandon it this time!

So, as you will probably know, grade twelve is a time when a young student’s mind turns to thoughts of… university. Of course, I have been completely on top of this (read: FREAKING OUT OH MY GAAAAAAAWD) and know exactly what I’m going to do with my life after high school.
Aheh.
But in all seriousness, I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. SO. Yeah. On to other things.

It’s NOVEMBER! And that means NANOWRIMO! Yes folks, you heard correctly, this gal is going to try and write 50,000 (that is not a typo) words of original fiction over the month of November! And posting my intent on here just means I have more people to cheer me on (read: laugh at me if I happen to fail horribly). Currently around 15.5 thousand words, so woohoo!

And, finally. I might have H1-N1. But it seems to be going away now. Yay.

Until the next time I post,
Daryth

PS Check out my NaNo progress at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/461617 (username daryth.lei)

EDIT: Also, the blog’s had a name change. Woo!

I had a rant all planned out for today, but I realized that I don’t want to publish it.

Because this isn’t a diary.

It’s a blog.