EleCivil
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Posts posted by EleCivil
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Ele, but I put that answer there JUST for you.
Guess I'll have to give it a try, then. But, really, my feet are tough and furry, like a hobbit's.
I only use socks to protect my shoes from my feet. -
"Totally nude except socks"? If I'm skinnin' down, the socks are the first things to go. I was born in the south, after all - being non-barefoot just doesn't come naturally.
Usually fully clothed. Today? Jeans, a "Dunder Mifflin, Inc: Paper Company" t-shirt, and a macaroni necklace.
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I got the idea to first start writing when I was fresh out of high school. I discovered Nifty, read a few stories, and thought "Hey, I could do that." At the time, I was fresh out of highschool, jobless, and broke, and spent most of the day hanging out by some train tracks in the woods, juggling. From there, I got the idea to write L&L - a story involving a gay kid who hangs out by some train tracks in the woods, juggling. I know, it was quite a stretch.
I got the idea for Laika after going to Plan-It-X Fest and being in the mosh pit while Defiance Ohio played. It was such an intense experience - the best pit I've ever been in. Everybody would throw their arms around each other and lean on each other for support during the slow parts, and then take swings and throw elbows at each other during the fast parts. I was loving every minute of it, but at the same time, thinking about how strange this would look to someone on the outside. I figured that a story about a geeky guy getting thrown into the weirdness of the punk scene would make a pretty good story, and just went from there.
Usually, when inspiration strikes, it's either short enough to be a poem or long enough to be a novel. I can never seem to get anything in between. That's why I've only ever written one short story.
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Justin Timberlake is the voice to this new character. Talk about wanting to do questionable things with someone........ Had a chubby during parts of the movie.
Haha, interesting - Justin Timberlake's voice has the exact opposite effect on me. That guy's like...the Antiboner.
As far as hot animated characters...um...Murdoc, I guess?
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Lovely, Des.
Well, I can't believe that whilst relieving yourself, you thought of (Ele)Civil and his mis-matched socks.It's no "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day", but "Whilst urinating, my mind thou cross'd " is still pretty good. Either way, I'm in a poem, so I'm happy.
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Intellectous
When you try to speak
Your words squirm in my ear.
Even before your meaning hits me
I?m afraid that it?s clear:
Though you?re not bad enough
To make my mind itself shrink
When I wake tomorrow morning,
It?ll burn when I think.
But you?re still chatting me up,
This is a bad situation;
Who knows what I?ll catch from
Unprotected conversation.
This is risky behavior
But you think you?re profound;
I wish you?d hold your tongue
But still you wag it around.
I don?t know where you got it
But the outcome?s the same:
You just gave me a terrible
Rash on my brain.
Listening to you has left
Its mark on my mind
That?s not a compliment ?
Your words are like parasites.
I hope that there?s an injection
Or a topical cream
That can cure this infection
That you?ve given to me.
It makes me think things
That I know just aren?t true
It makes me do crazy things
Like keep talking to you
It makes me want to pry open
The top of my head
And claw at the grey matter
?Till the symptoms are dead
I don?t know how to cure it
But the outcome?s the same:
You just gave me a terrible
Rash on my brain.
Now, I dream of a day
When Earth is idiot-free
And in preventing the spread,
Education?s the key.
So the moral of the story
If you?ll allow for suggestions:
Don?t talk to strangers without
Some kind of protection.
The surest way to avoid
The pain of stupidity
Is to avoid it?s prime source:
You know, humanity.
But for those that must converse,
Please be safe. Like, for starters,
Get your IQs tested,
Both yourself and your partners.
I know we can prevent it
But for now it?s a shame:
You just gave me a terrible
Rash on my brain.
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10/10 here, but I'll admit that abstruse was a guess.
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I always like it when people tell me where they're from when they leave comments. Italy, Africa, France, Germany, the UK, Australia, India, Japan, Iceland...it surprised me how many Icelanders are reading Laika. All I need is somebody from Antarctica and I'll have a full collection as far as continents go.
I once got an email from someone who wanted to set me up with his "son." He even included a picture. Kind of creepy. It was, I believe, the only feedback I've ever left entirely unanswered.
My most common comment that always makes me smile is "I've started wearing mismatched socks." Heh.
The best comment I ever got was from a guy who started out by talking about how he's always depressed, that the world is such a "dark, nasty place", and that he "feels completely helpless all the time." Then he said that, lately, he's been bursting out laughing at random times (sitting in class, waking up in the middle of the night, etc.) because scenes from Laika would pop into his head, and it was really cheering him up.
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Peanut butter straight from the jar? Eh...I might lick the knife/spoon afterwards, but that's mostly for cleaning purposes (note: don't use knives at my house, no matter how clean they appear).
One tablespoon of peanut butter mixed into a blender full of post-workout whey protein, though, can change it from gag-inducingly awful to quite eatable.
Also, peanut butter will stick to a stucco ceiling FOREVER. I threw some up there when I was ten, and there it remains to this day. It was near a light fixture, so it's kind of...baked on. I'm sure there's a use for it in the construction industry, somewhere.
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Wow. I didn't know Dr. D. James Kennedy had died. Along with Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy was one of my Dad's heroes.
Good article.
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[Nowherebound]
We left our homes in the name of discovery
That the eyes of far-off traffic lights
Might gaze upon our faces
To see us glaring back, unafraid,
Grins challenging with whatever truths were pulled
From the bleeding gums of our hometowns.
Under cover of darkness and with false alibis
We took to seeking truths on the back of our own lies,
With windows deeply tinted to invite all observers
To taste the unknown and lust for answers,
To cup their hands around their eyes
And press their faces against our outlines.
We were of the age
That most would call “impressionable”
And true, we craved impressions
For what greater offense than emptiness
Exists for three blank pages
Once told the traits of ink?
We planned to vandalize our tongues
With all the words they marked unworthy,
Planned to stay up late and think of ways
To make them disapprove.
We planned to carry our own minds so far
We'd find them of no use.
And when they came across us,
We pounded fists against the sidewalk
Beat our chests, sang of ideals
And tore hearts to the ground
For the fact that we still registered visible
Proved to us our failures.
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Hmm...good question.
First, I'd say the familiar setting (school) with the familiar problems that the characters face (homework, boring/strict teachers, tests, dating, disagreements with friends, sibling rivalry, etc.). The main thrust of the books seems to be the day-to-day life of kids in school, accented by things like magic powers and unicorns and such. That makes it much more..."concrete", I guess, than fairy-tale-esque hero stories, where all the hero has to conquer is the villain. In Harry Potter, the heroes have to conquer adolescence. And when you read the books, they always seem to put the Big Evil Guy of the Year on the back burner, focusing first on the characters interacting in school.
Of course, that wouldn't work without the characters. You have to care about them, or you're not going to want to read 300+ pages about their ordinary school days before you get to the action. Rowling did a great job with this - you instantly feel connected to the friendly ones, and you feel instantly annoyed by the annoying ones. Not just the obvious ones, like, say, not liking Harry's abusive adoptive parents and liking the kind-hearted giant who takes Harry away from them. The less-major characters like Neville and Luna, for instance, just have a feel about them that makes you think "Oh, yeah, I knew somebody JUST like that!" after their first scenes.
The combination of the familiar setting and the familiar-before-they're-even-introduced characters rings so true to life that you start to believe that maybe the dragons and broomsticks and patronus charms aren't that far off, either, especially since it's all set up as an underground modern-day culture. It's suspension of disbelief in the best way - it feels less like fantasy, and more like..."exaggerated reality."
Third, I'd say the element of mystery and inter-connectedness. You want to keep reading just to find out what was meant by something you read earlier. This really picks up in the last few books. Any series that can make you feel like a detective without being a mystery novel is doing a great job. It's a great feeling when you think "Oh! I bet that THIS character was actually...and THIS item was used for...and THIS proves it!", even if you turn out to be dead wrong. The last few novels took this even further, to the point were there were TONS of questions that needed to be answered, and tons of different possible outcomes that could have worked. This element probably wouldn't have worked as well if it had been a shorter series, or a stand-alone novel. I think it's quite likely that this was fueled by the fans - Rowling saw how much the readers liked throwing around theories about what would happen, so she wrote in a couple big, open-ended questions ("What are the Horcruxes?" "What's Snape really up to?"). The only other series to get me this deep into guessing about the future is George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
Anyway, that's why it worked for me. It's probably different for others.
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Steven King wrote a pretty good article about the Deathly Hollows, here (spoilers within): http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20044270_2...0050689,00.html
I like the way we find out about Tonks and Lupin's deaths - it made the whole giant battle seem a lot more realistic, I thought. Just kind of reminding us that a lot of people, even important ones, are getting hurt/killed, even when Harry's not around to witness it.
Snape's story was, to me, the saddest point in the series. It was fitting, though, pulling back into the main theme of the entire book: sacrifice for the sake of love.
Dumbledore's past and hidden agendas were a great touch. Showed a humanizing amount of deceptiveness in the one person who had, up until that point, seemed to be morally perfect.
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But I don't think I could survive as a child with a summer birthday. The inability to bring cupcakes to class and show off would've killed the 10-year-old me.
You guys didn't do half-birthdays for the summer kids? They always let us bring in cupcakes six months early if we were outside of the school year. Sure, it wasn't our real birthday...but then again, we didn't have to spend our real birthdays in school, so we were happy.
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Cool new chapter! Can't wait to see where this story goes, now that I'm not writing any of it.
Also, happy belated fake birthday, Ryan!
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I went to a midnight release - stood in line for about two hours, got my copy around 12:08. I finished it last night. Sadly...(spoiler - highlight below to read)...
Ron and Neville never hooked up.
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I shave my head...does that mean I'm in the closet? Or just "confused"?
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When I lived in Kentucky, the church that my dad was preaching at was in a dry county - meaning, no sales of alcohol on Sundays. This meant that the superconservative Southern Baptists who helped put that law in place had to smuggle wine in across county lines to do communion services. I thought it was pretty funny - the attitude was "Absolutely no booze on Sundays...unless WE want some."
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Thanks for the heads-up. I never noticed the trackbacks before, but I had a bunch of 'em. Killed them, though.
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I suggest a capital letter. A capitol letter would be "DC" which is actually TWO letters.
It seems you've caught me committing a Capital offense. Ye have run afoul of me again, writebythyself! I'd challenge you to a bout of internet fisticuffs, but...I can't be bothered.
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When I glanced at the topic list, I read the title to this thread as "Punkenschwarzen," and assumed that it was about some German punk band. Naturally, I was quite disappointed to discover that it was, instead, a thread about one of my own habits. That's right - I'm a double-spacer. And nothing short of a broken right thumb is going to stop me! It's just so satisfying.
IInfact, maybe I should start adding an extra capitol letter to the beginnings of sentences, too. SSeems like it'd be a fun transition from the double-space.
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Whoa, this is weird. I was reading "Tao: The Watercourse Way" by Allan Watts today. Just ten minutes ago, in fact. And then I came on and saw this.
One of the main points in the section I just finished was about "mutual arising" - "I exist because the universe exists, the universe exists because I exist."
But if...i change meand no one else
the world around meis an extension of myself
...then wouldn't that imply that by changing yourself, you change the world around you, rather than "no one else"? And if changing yourself, and, in turn, the world around you, doesn't it follow that the changes of those around you would trigger some change in you, even if only in their own perceptions of you?
Or maybe that's the point - that you, being secure in self-identification, are strong enough to maintain your own self-perception despite the forces of outside views acting on you - impressive, considering how many people tend to act differently depending on how they believe the people they're with are seeing them.
Yeah...you just got two paragraphs of reaction out of me with eight lines. I think that means I liked it.
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Hahaha. It's true, though I'm glad you're the one to announce it first, because otherwise, the board wouldn't have been able to see your astounding ability to work Justin Berfield into ANY analogy.He, as well as I, could see that getting EleCivil to write good noir was like getting Justin Berfield to not be gorgeous: no chance in hell.the story is now under my command, but not without the lingering overtones of our weird little buddy and his dancing mandolin.Scrub as hard as you like, but my fingerprints are indelible.
Anyway, just to clarify, I decided to leave the Ragnarok project because I'm really not into sci-fi/noir. It's just not my thing. That, and because my current schedule barely leaves me very little time to write, and I don't want to hold back production on a team effort with my take-forever-between-chapters-ish tendencies. No, this wasn't because of "creative differences" or a pirate/ninja blood feud (though there is such a blood feud, it is completely unrelated to this decision).
So it goes.
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I agree with the one narrator rule. From what I've seen, multiple first-person narrators are USUALLY impossible to tell apart. I've been reading stories with just two different narrators, and had to do double-takes when I noticed that the narrator was talking to the person who I thought was narrating. Their thought processes and word choices were so similar that, if you accidentally skipped the "Joe's POV" line, it was impossible to tell them apart.
There's only one book I own with multiple first-person narrators - Joey Goebel's The Anomalies (see: signature quote). It doesn't just switch POV between the five main characters, but also a bunch of minor and walk-on characters, like "Punk in the Front Row", "Guy at the Restaurant", "Hippie", and, briefly, "God". Some of these last for only one paragraph, and are never seen again. God's POV, for instance, is simply a memo written in reply to a prayer by one of the other characters.
I think it works in this case, because the main theme of the book is how the five main characters stand out from "normal" society - we get to see how they view themselves, how they view each other, how they view the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world views them. The narrations are also vastly different - one character thinks and speaks in abstract poetry, one is an Iraqi and has trouble understanding certain cultural and linguistic differences, one is 8 years old, etc.
It's a little confusing at first, but that's kind of the point - the reader, being "normal", is supposed to be confused by these characters.
I only use socks to protect my shoes from my feet.
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Hot animated characters
in The Raccoon's Den
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I'd read it. But only if you included button-combo diagrams for all the characters' movements.
↓↘→P Ryu rose from his crouching position and reached for Dhalsim, his hands glowing with an unearthly power. The power...of love.
Yeah...he sort of embodies everything I can't stand, all at once, and then sets it to a repetitive beat. But that's just me. Diff'rent strokes and so forth.