Movie Review: Arthur Christmas

Hi!  I have three other post ideas that I started drafting for today, but then I had to stop (for various reasons), and because I'm a procrastinator, I didn't get back to posting until now.  And what, do you ask, was I doing with all that time in between?

I was watching "Arthur Christmas."

Other posts scrapped.  I'm doing a movie review.

"Arthur Christmas" is a British/American movie about this gawky kid, Arthur Clause, who's over-excitable and under-appreciated, with silly reindeer slippers to match his ridiculous Christmas sweaters.  Arthur just-so-happens to be the son of I think Santa the Twentieth, and his older brother, Steve is in line to be Santa the Twenty-First.  There'a also Grandsanta (Santa the Nineteenth) and Mrs. Santa (Santa the Twentieth's wife and Arthur and Steve's mom).  And there's an overabundance of fabulously short-haired elves.  All the characters have unique personalities and not one of them comes across as flat.  It's fabulous.

Arthur and Grandsanta watching Santa's run on their apparently Santa-special TV.
(image courtesy of: IMDb)

But so anyway, it's Christmas eve, and among all the amazing new technology of twenty-first-century Santa, something crazy happens, and one of the elves messes up and loses a present.  No one realizes that a child has been missed until hours after Santa comes back from his run.  No one really seems to care, but Arthur and Grandsanta (and a stowaway elf named Bryony) run off in the old-fashioned sleigh so they can drop off the present before sunrise.

Bryony is a masterfully dedicated elf from the gift-wrapping division.
(image courtesy of: SOSMoviers.com)

This movie is fabulous and exciting, flying at high speeds through cities and fighting off lions, but the storyline is not the only wonderful thing.  If you couldn't tell already, the main character, Arthur, is just absolutely adorable, and has a stupid laugh, and also a lot of silly phobias.  I love him on about just the same level that I love Jack Frost, which is impressive.  (But for different character traits, of course.)

This is Steve.  He likes espresso.  His goatee is shaped like a Christmas tree.
(image courtesy of: theepcgallery.com)

But so moving on.  What I was going to say in that last paragraph, before I got sidetracked, is that the most beautiful things about this movie are all the little Christmas story morals that clearly float around in the movie, but aren't actually said.  (You have no idea how much it bothers me when people in stories point out the morals to us unnecessarily.  It makes me want to get all the writers together for a nice game of Brick Roulette.)  But in "Arthur Christmas," you instead find yourself yelling the morals at the screen because you disagree with the other characters (like Steve; he tries hard and means well, but he's very mislead).

"Arthur Christmas" was made in 2011 and is rated PG.  I would recommend it to every lover of the Christmas spirit with 97 minutes on their hands.  It made me very happy.

Joyeux Noël!  (Merry Christmas!)
-Allie

Vital Vocab 14

Hello, my lovelies.
I made the heading more specific.
My only other note is that I am done making promises I can't keep.  The length will be how the length will be and I will post it when I post it.  I can't see the future, but I imagine I might have ulcers in it, and I really don't need my poor uploading habits to add to that stress.  Sorry, guys.

Prompt: --
Vocab: hierarchy (n), hypothetical (adj), immerse (v), harangue (n), haughty (adj)
Commonly Confused Words: are/hour/our
Grammar Focus: use a semicolon to separate items in a long list

Isaac Bade-
     I looked around and briefly got out of my chair to grab a book off the shelf; I'd been here for far over an hour and I needed something to immerse myself in.  ((A John Green book?  Why not!  Looking for Alaska?  Let's do it.))  Looking for Alaska.  The book was black with hypothetical cigarette smoke on the cover.  On the back cover flap, a brief bio of the author said that John Green had written other books: The Fault in Our Stars; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; An Abundance of Katherines; and Paper Towns.  He had also won several awards and, interestingly enough, had his own youtube channel.  Despite his apparent fame, he didn't seem too haughty.  I had a feeling he'd been kind of a nerd on the high school social hierarchy.
     The book started with a harangue of acknowledgements.  There are a lot of people who go into a book.  The novel itself was divided into two sections: before and after.  Our pages, they are many, I thought, and started reading.

Vital Vocab 13 | Vital Vocab 16

(Vital Vocab 15 does not exist.)

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Vital Vocab 13

(EDIT: oh my god, I submitted the assignment, but I forgot to post it!  I'm so sorry!  D: )

Um.  I'm a liar and a poor role model, so, um, speed-post!  (like last week.)
If you see this post, please yell at me in the comments for breaking my rolly-scrolly promise.  Thank you!

Prompt: --
Vocab: garish (adj), genial (adj), grandiose (adj), grievous (adj), guile (n)
Grammar Focus: whose/who's; use parallel structure to list phrases

Isaac Bade-
     After a while, my mind started drifting and I began to scan the titles around me.  Mostly for colors, garish greens, genial pinks, grievous blues with elegant, grandiose scripts implying gallantry and guile and...various other G-specific character traits.
     As a kid, I used to pretend I was one of those characters.  Mom's across the street?  Congratulations, you're in Gryffindor!  And quite suddenly friends with Harry Potter, whose magic is not as good as your own.  Who's to say you don't understand the movies yet?  ((A/N: this was actually me as a kid.))
     I missed being able to turn into other people so easily, that childhood kind of magic.  Maybe that's what I was looking for in the kid's section....

Vital Vocab 12 | Vital Vocab 14

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Vital Vocab 12

You may or may not have noticed by now, but my story has no plot.  (*coughcough* yet *cough*)

I wrote this too close to deadline.  Something will actually happen in the next one, I promise.  (Also, I'll promise a post that requires scrolling.  Those are better, honestly.)

Prompt: --
Vocab: fallacy (n), fabricate (v), forum (n), fastidious (adj), frivolous (adj)
Grammar Focus: use parallel structure to organize a list of verbs, who's/whose

Isaac Bade-
     And there I was, once doodling, now fabricating.  The page was quickly covered in rough, seemingly frivolous outlines.  I didn't really know what I was drawing, but...it was something.  I guess.
     I'd never been very fastidious when I drew.  Usually it was in pen, and when I made a mistake, I just hatched and scribbled and drew over it.  I'd only ever been to one art show, and in their forum, all the art had been...well...perfect.  And for some reason...it felt flimsy.  Like there was some sort of hidden fallacy, concealed in its perceived flawlessness.  Whose are these? I'd wondered.  And who's buying?  The pieces didn't seem...real.

Vital Vocab 11 | Vital Vocab 13

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The Origins of Anthony Rousseaux (Part One?)

I realized last night at about 11:50 that I had a blog post due in nine minutes.

Needless to say, I did not make the deadline.

So anyways!

In my very first post, I promised to explain to you all what a Shadow Mark is (and probably Anthony, too).  That was back in September.  Welp, here we go.

     A little more than a year ago, four of my friends started this collaborative story thing on a Google Doc.  I'm not gonna go into detail about all of it because it's really long and most isn't mine (maybe I'll talk about it later), but I will explain my part of the story.  

     So this story, "the RolePlay," was kind of insane, and really just awful in the beginning, but most things are, no?  There were four high school girls of varying ages who lived "in the city of Townsville!"  (Nobody was very inspired that day.)  They had a slumber party and they went out in the woods and it was suddenly revealed that one girl was a werewolf (Lizzie), one an animal shape-shifter (Shade), another was a waterbender (Skyler), and the last girl (Bea) had a slight variation on Geass (I've never actually watched "Code Geass," but basically it's a form of mind control).

     Then another of our friends joined in and a ninja girl, Shizuka, came out of the trees.  Then I joined and brought in my character, who...actually, was not Anthony.  Her name was Raven Black, she had no powers, she was sixteen, and she was on the run.  Actually, they were all secretly on the run.

Raven Black
(image source: nobody knows.)

     From an evil magical secret society called the Shadows!  The Shadows hated people with magical powers even though they also all had magical powers, so they went around finding everybody who was magic and either recruited or killed them.

       This is roughly where Anthony comes in.

     So there were a lot of other over-complicated and under-polished things, but basically Anthony was Dakota's (Raven's older brother's) best friend when they were fourteen.  They were both Shadows together, but then Dakota realized the Shadows were evil and tried to leave.  Anthony was one of the recruit-or-kill people, and the Shadow leader ordered him to kill Dakota.  

     Anthony was practically a part of their family, so nobody knew or suspected what had happened to Dakota until Raven found out a few years later.  Anthony had since climbed to the top of the Shadow ranks, but when Raven learned what had happened, she freaked out and ran away from home.  Because it was Anthony's responsibility to make sure no one learned about Dakota (and to keep track of his family), when Raven ran away, Anthony lost everything.  He'd had a reputation to uphold, but when she disappeared, his house of cards collapsed.  (Eh?  Eh?)

     So Raven came barreling into the back-forests of Townsville, but with really horrible timing so everybody started trying to kill her all of a sudden.  (They were really irritable that day.  Especially Lizzie and Shade.)  THEN Anthony came in, and was a bad guy Shadow recruiter person.

So...um...yeah.  This is getting pretty long, so I'll probably continue on in other posts, later.  I did, however, promise to explain the Shadow mark to you all.  The Shadow mark is basically a magical brand burned onto someone when they join the Shadows.  Anthony has one on his left wrist.  It's inky black, a picture of a snake holding a sword between its fangs.  On the blade, there is the Shadow motto, "Show no Kindness, Show no Mercy, Show no Weakness."  

UPDATE: Here's a picture I drew of the Shadow mark a few weeks ago.  The snake should actually be more S-like and its fangs...should look like fangs...but you get the gist of it.  (There has been some debate as to whether it's supposed to be coiled or not, but I think coiled is cooler.)

Thanks for reading!

-Allie

P.S: all the Shadow-parts of our story were technically Sara's idea.
P.P.S: except for the internal conflict of the Shadow (to be addressed in a later post), which we all copied off of Siri.

Vital Vocab 11

Hello all.

Should I switch back to Eliza soon?  A day in the life of Isaac is not all that inspiring yet.

Honestly, Eliza is sort of daunting to me.  I feel like, since I have a better hold on Isaac's character, his posts are better.  But I'll have to deal with that girl at some point, no?

Prompt: --
Vocab: epitome (n), eloquent (adj), emulate (v), eclectic (adj), etymology (n)
Grammar Focus: loose/lose; use a dash to connect two independent adjectives

Eliza Ben
Isaac Bade- [is more fun and less thought, and let's face it, I am on a deadline here.]
     After breakfast, I paid my aunt a kiss on the cheek ((A/N: is that a thing people do?  people do that...right?)), grabbed my backpack (with notebook), took one glance at my aunt's car, then grabbed my bike.
     I was not exactly the epitome of a good driver.
     Clearly it had rained the night before, as the rainwater tried to emulate a small river in the gutter, bringing with it an eclectic mass of sticks, leaves, and mud.  I biked slowly, watching it flow, looking for cars out of the corner of my eye.  Eventually I reached the edge of the neighborhood, and from there I biked aimlessly until I reached the town library.  I locked my bike loosely on the rack outside (wouldn't want to lose it), and in moments I was wandering through the shelves, just scanning titles.
     Pretty soon, I found myself in the kid's section, looking at one book in particular that was colorfully alliterative.  The elephant eloquently explains etymology to the emu.  The illustration featured a ton of other stuff starting with E; Easter eggs, eagles, a man we could assume was an earl (who happened to have exceptionally large ears and eyes), earthworms, et cetera.  After a minute I put the book back, finding myself wishing I could be a little kid again.
     I went and settled into a cushy chair in the young-adult section and started to doodle in my notebook, fully intending to waste the day away.

Vital Vocab 10 | Vital Vocab 12

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Vital Vocab 10

Hullo.

Prompt: --
Vocab: deft (adj), discretion (n), dynamic (adj), discern (v), dubious (adj)
Grammar Focus: lose/loose; use a hyphen to connect two dependent adjectives

Isaac Bade-
     Hallway, stairs, banister, kitchen.  I smiled a good-morning at Aunt Gaile.  
     "Quite the bedhead, dear."  
     She was cooking pancakes, and a plate full of bacon sat on the countertop next to her.  There was too much food for only two people, but that didn't matter.  What we didn't eat would go into the fridge.  This was what we did every Saturday.  (Note that it was Aunt Gaile's idea, and was done with complete discretion.  I think she thought it would be good to have one thing that wasn't so dynamic at that point.  Regardless, I appreciated it more than she could know.)
     I stepped around her, snatching a piece of bacon as she deftly flipped a pancake.  Opening the fridge, I took some milk and poured it out into a small soup bowl, then stepped around to the back door.  
     "You know Isaac," she said, "keep feeding that cat and it'll keep coming back."  I smirked; we both knew that that was absolutely the point.  
     Sure enough, as soon as I set the milk on the back step, an old black cat slunk out from under the porch, took one seemingly dubious sniff at the dish, then began lapping it up.  It was easy to discern that this was one cliché neither of us wanted to lose.  I sat on the rickety boards of the porch, against the back wall of the house, and looked out at my forest-y backyard.  When the cat finished, it came and curled up next to me, loose fur coming off in the breeze as it began its winter coat.  It pressed itself against my leg and I scratched it behind the ears.  The cat immediately started purring.  I grinned.  Wuss-Puss.
     Wuss-Puss was the nickname I gave the cat a few years ago, just before the Disaster.  I'd just seen the movie "Coraline" (which was beautiful, by the way) and couldn't resist making the reference.  
     After a few minutes, I collected the bowl and left Wuss-Puss outside.  (He sat and meowed at the door, clearly smelling the bacon.)  
     "Sixteen-year-old cat, sixteen-year-old kid," Aunt Gaile said.  "You two are a perfect match."

Vital Vocab 9 | Vital Vocab 11

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How Toys Become Real

"...once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Hi, guys!  Lately this has been pretty much just a writing blog, but according to my tagline, I'm obliged to post multimedia stuff, too.  So, something I do other than writing and art is reading aloud.  It's fun, 'cause to me it's kinda like singing, but less tone-deaf.  For this post, I read The Velveteen Rabbit.



There aren't many readings I feel comfortable posting due to copyright stuff, but since The Velveteen Rabbit's copyright ran out ages ago, it's public domain.  (By the way, I recently made a Wix site about copyright in Comp Tech, so if ya want, you can find it here.)  If you'd like an online copy of The Velveteen Rabbit, I found one here.

That said, here is a video of me reading!  Enjoy!  (Er, enjoy if you have time; it's 25 minutes long.  The story doesn't even start for three.)

And since Blogger won't let me post videos directly (or I would have posted this ages ago), you can find the youtube video here.

One last thing: though I may sound British, I feel I should point out that I'm not actually British.  I read this in an accent because, well, the story just seemed to call for it.  That's all.

Until next post!
-Allie

--
"The Velveteen Rabbit." The Velveteen Rabbit. Ed. John M. Ockerbloom and Mary M. Ockerbloom. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. <http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html>.

Vital Vocab 9 - I Owe You A Post

Hi all.

     It's probably safe to assume that my posting dates will get messed up at the end of each quarter.  Every post the past couple weeks has been late, and a couple didn't even make it up.  My reasoning for the most part was due dates; since I didn't have a Vital Vocab post due last week (we just had the Q1 vocab test), I wouldn't have to post one, and I wasn't otherwise obligated to post because I'd just posted a seven page short story for you guys.  However, it doesn't take an extra week to read seven pages, so in retrospect, I think my logic was a little bit flawed.  Sorry 'bout that.  
     Fortunately, I took my short interlude to consider things I've been meaning to explore with Isaac, and I think my mind really needed the rest (I realize I only write Vital Vocabs once every Monday, but after a few weeks of writer's block, it starts to seem much more frequent than that).  So, let's hope something good has come of this.  Here we go!

P.S: sorry if my writing style's slightly altered.  I've been dedicating all my free time today to finishing The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Charlie doesn't sound just like Isaac....

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): disclose (v), derivative (adj), dearth (n), defer (v), denounce (v)
Grammar Focus: use a colon to introduce a list; its/it's

Isaac Bade-
     I woke up to the sun shining in my eyes.  Bleh.  Rolling over to face the wall, my first instinct was to go back to sleep (I often tried to defer waking up fully).  Sleep sounded nice.  Sleep and its repose.  But then my mind began swimming in what I'd dreamed of.  
     No.  Sleep was clearly not an option.
     I sighed and rolled back over, picking up my phone from the bedside table to check the time.  The small, digital clock disclosed that it was only 7:35 on a Saturday morning.  I closed my eyes for a minute, slightly irritated.  Then, I sat up.  
     What did I have to do today?  Something?  Anything?  Everything?  Math homework?
     Ahh, maybe later.
     I looked out the window, watching oak leaves brush the panes.  My bedroom really had the classic sneaking out setup: rooftop, oak tree, backyard.  Clearly, it was derivative of old family movies.  It had occurred to me several times in the past that it's good there was no dearth of hugs when Aunt Gaile first came to stay with me, or I'd probably have left through this window and never come back.  But then, she'd been close with my family even before, and in the months after, when slowly everyone began to denounce me, she was one of the few who never did.  
     I rubbed the back of my neck.  Anyway.... I sighed and straightened my t-shirt, smelling breakfast downstairs.

Vital Vocab 8 | Vital Vocab 10

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My Abridged Short Story (late post, augh!)

Hello, my friends.  As you may have noticed, I have a general routine of weekly Monday posts with Vital Vocab, and then an assignment post every other Friday.  But now...a weekend post?  What's this?

Yeah, I didn't do my assignment post last night.  I knew I was supposed to, but I was really sick yesterday and just sort of...went to sleep.  Now normally, district policy would say that because I was sick, I have an extra day to turn it in, but I technically had a week to do this.  So that's fun.  Anyway, even though I won't actually get any credit, I feel sort of obligated to Rousseaux itself to post, even if it's a bit late.  So here it is.

Remember that one guy I write, Anthony?  Well when I was first creating him, I gave him kind of a jam-packed backstory (I mean seriously, it probably shouldn't be so complex).  A couple weeks ago in H. English, we had a short story assignment and I thought that would be a pretty good opportunity to write it out.  However, I do call this an abridged account, because I was on a bit of a deadline and had to cut a few details out of the end (like how Anthony ran away and stuff).  Also, because ah, I'm silly, and still couldn't cut it down enough, it's like seven pages.  (Maybe eight?)  This is why, instead of copy/pasting it into my post like a normal person, I'm gonna be an Allie and link you to Google Drive.  Here!

Another thing I left out was a description of Anthony.  Here's a picture I stole from a puzzle game on Gaia Online (and edited slightly for colors, back when I had a vague idea of how Photoshop works).

Don't ask me about the onions.  I have no idea.

-Allie

Vital Vocab 8

Hello!

Sorry for the late upload, guys.  This wasn't actually due until tonight this week (for whatever reason), which I totally took advantage of because last night I had to finish The Book Thief for English and study for a map test for geography, which took a while.  But so, happy Tuesday, and my upload will be better (and more punctual) next week.  I promise.

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): cursory, cogent, chronological, cerebral, complacent
Grammar Focus: its/it's, colon

Isaac Bade-
     When I got up to my room, I did a cursory think-through of my to do list and collapsed into bed, fully clothed.  It was Friday, and whatever homework still needed doing could be done over the weekend.  As complacent as I knew I could be with that, I turned out the light and faced the wall.
     When I fall asleep, it usually happens over the course of several minutes, like any other person.  But sometimes, it happens so quickly that it startles me.  Whenever I get sucked into a dream like this, there's always something else slightly off: instead of a regular dream, it's always a slightly warped memory.  These dreams, if more emotionally-driven than cerebrally, always seem to have events come and go in chronological order.  It doesn't take an expert to know that my brain's a bit messed up, but often when I wake, it's so cogent that I wonder if its stories were true.

Vital Vocab 7 | Vital Vocab 9

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Vital Vocab 7

It's hard to bring yourself to write a vital vocab when your mind is swimming with ideas for a short story (ahh, something else for class, which I'll post later).  It's especially hard when your blog is named after that short story's main character.  But this is an assignment too, and I rather like Isaac so...let's get to it.

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): concise, construe, cumulative, coalesce, caustic (adj.)
Grammar Focus: to/too/two, properly use a colon

Isaac Bade-
     That night at dinner, I picked at my food while Aunt Gaile went on about this, that and the other thing, mostly news pieces she'd found vaguely interesting and stories she'd already told.  She was many things, but she wasn't concise.
     "Anyway," she said for perhaps the two-millionth time, "it all just seemed sort of silly to me."  She fell silent for a moment and watched as I quietly prodded my peas.  "Too many?" she asked.  I shook my head and we were quiet.
     "Oh Isaac," she murmured, and I glanced up.  "What I wouldn't give..."  I rubbed my neck uncomfortably, avoiding her eyes.  Give to what? I wondered.  To see my notebook?  To bring them back?  God, if you could just finish your sentences for once...  I cut myself short, before my thoughts got too caustic.  I couldn't afford to be mad at my aunt Gaile.  Besides, she didn't deserve it; the woman wouldn't hurt a fly.
     I spread out my peas, then had them coalesce in the center of my plate, forming a cumulative pile.  Status: stereotypical ten-year-old.  Finally, I started to scoop up and eat them; Aunt Gaile clearly wasn't in the cheeriest mood, and though I hated to leave her, I had to escape the room before she started talking about how she worried about me.  To her, it probably would be construed as fleeing, but there wasn't much I could do about that, really.  When I had to go, I had to go.  ((01/08/14 EDIT: Oh god, I only just realized what a mistake that sentence was.  I am so sorry.))
     She folded her hands in front of her and watched as I gathered my dishes to deposit them in the kitchen sink.
     "Goodnight, Isaac."
     I nodded.

Vital Vocab 6 | Vital Vocab 8

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The Beginnings of a Beautiful Art Portfolio

Hey, guys.  I know I've been posting a lot of vital vocab lately (it actually makes up the vast majority of this blog), and it occurred to me that this isn't just a vital vocab blog.  It's a reading, writing, and art blog.  So why not make an art portfolio, eh?  Now, on Tumblr I'm SeptemberNinth92, and I was going to do this there, but in reality, I don't really go on Tumblr.  (Sorry guys, I know I should.)  So I decided I'll do it on here.  An put a photo gallery on the bottom of the home page, if I can.  Yup.

Unfortunately, none of the pieces here are very recent.  I'll add more pieces later under the label/tag "my art."  (Old pieces and new ones.)

One last thing: sorry for the horrible photo quality.  If I had a pro scanner, or even just a handheld camera available, I would use that instead of my sucky MacBook's cam.  (Sorry, Roy. - Yes, its name is Roy.)  In the future, I'll try to find a better way to upload pictures.  But so anyway.

Medium: Sharpie

An umbrella.  (I like umbrellas.)

Medium: Sharpie

A "Spiraling Square" we did in Op and Pop art last year.

Medium: Mechanical Pencil

I constantly, constantly draw eyes.  Usually just in black pen, but also in other colors when I have them.  This is in mechanical pencil, and also blue mechanical pencil (don't ask me where it came from).  And I usually draw just the right eye, but this time I went ahead to draw the other one and a nose.  Farthest I've ever gotten on those faces, I think.

Medium: Ballpoint Pen

Unfortunately, this isn't signed or dated, probably because you can see I never quite finished it.  I can tell you however, judging my the spiral that it was in, that it's probably from sometime last year.  And I bet I have a photo reference of the shoe on my old phone.

Medium: Number 2 Pencil

This one actually has nothing to do with my small obsession of drawing eyes.  It's an idea from a book I was/am kinda writing.  You can't tell, but it's dated 2/6/12, and the title is "Window," basing on the concept that the eyes are the window to the soul.  (Wow, my signature was tall back then.)

Thanks for reading (and looking)!

-Allie

Vital Vocab 6

Prompt: --
Vocab (underlined): compelling, criteria, coherent, concede, contradict
Grammar Focus: to/too/two, properly use a colon

Eliza Benjamin-
     A few days later, I caught myself staring out the window again.  This was a habit of mine, and I mean, no big deal, right?  Just staring, no harm there.  The problem was, I didn't always realize I was doing it, and often enough, it happened just when I had something else to do.  Like, my mom would call me to dinner, and I'd be just about to go when I noticed something interesting out the window.  Next thing I knew, two or fifteen or twenty minutes had passed, I had no idea where they'd gone to, and my meal was cold.  And I couldn't even remember any coherent thoughts I'd had while zoned out.  They were all little fragments of things that seemed to contradict each other, then later concede.  It was confusing, like a dream that got fainter and fainter the longer you stayed awake.
     So, when I caught myself this time, I wanted to know what was so compelling to my subconscious to make everything in my head just stop like that.  I looked out my bedroom window to see what was there.  Criteria for my bedroom view:

1. a long-ish, slightly windy driveway
2. a thin, too-gravelly street
3. a lot of old trees
4. a tall kid with white-blond hair, looking out the neighbor's window (optional)

     I looked at the kid, wondering who he was.  I'd seen him a couple other times, but never really.  He wasn't in any of my classes at school.  I didn't know why I cared really, I just...wanted to know his name.  Just a name.

Vital Vocab 5 | Vital Vocab 7

Vital Vocab Dictionary

Vital Vocab 5

Vital Vocab, week five!  I like Isaac.  Eliza needs some serious character development, though.  (Sorry if she's drastically different in the next Eliza update than she was in the last one.)

Prompt: --
Vocab Words (underlined): bias (n), beguile, benign, behemoth (n), bane (n)
Grammer Focus: their/they're/there, use a colon to introduce a list

Isaac Bade-
     Eventually, Aunt Gaile woke up from the thunder, realized what time it was, and brought me inside to beguile me with "I'm sorry" hot chocolate and elephantine cookies.  As I sat at the kitchen counter, she started to lecture me in her own benign way about things; how I should wear a better coat and better shoes; how I should and carry a small umbrella when there's not even rain; how I should try to find ways to always be prepared.  (One stupid thunderstorm and I was suddenly a Boy Scout.)  I stared into my hot chocolate, nodding at regular intervals, mostly just to lead her through the silences.
    "And out there drawing, of all things," she continued.  "Always drawing.  What's even in that notebook of yours?"  She reached for it, but I held it firmly to the counter.  "And why won't you ever let me see it?"
     Because you have a bias against black pen?  I shook still-wet hair out of my eyes and munched on a cookie.  My notebook?  She wouldn't like what was in there.  Anything vaguely dark seemed to be the bane of her existence.  Well, that and behemoth food companies.  ("They're dishonest," she said.  "Their food's hardly even real!")  I just knew if she looked at my notebook, it would fall open to exactly the wrong page.  Something in there would send her concern levels through the roof.
     I didn't want her to be through-the-roof concerned for me.  Through-the-roof concern was my worst-case scenario.

Vital Vocab 4 | Vital Vocab 6

Vital Vocab Dictionary

OFFICIAL Blog Post 1 (Mr. Parker, look here!)

Okay, so last class in English, it was called to my attention that our first blog post actually had some criteria to follow.  Because yes, in the end, this blog is an assignment.  Whoops.  Well, I already have, what, five posts?  (Nerd, right?)  So here's what we're gonna do.  My first five posts remain my first five posts.  But my first assignment post is this one.  (Don't worry, there won't be a lot of these.  In fact, according to Mr. Parker, this is the only post we'll have criteria for)

So, I am now to show you three blogs that I like.  Such as...

The Oatmeal
(Note: the author swears a little.  Sorry, guys.)
     I actually didn't know about The Oatmeal until about a week ago, when we started looking at sample blogs in English.  Basically the author, Matthew Inman, just has general thoughts about things, and he makes them into comics, which often turn out to be pretty awesome.  And though a lot of them are just sort of weird and random, a few are actually useful, like his comic on how to use "whom."  ("Do it for the bourbon.  Do it for the mustaches.  Do it for the steeds.")  He also has a few comics on how to use other writer-y word tool grammar things (like that dreaded semicolon).  So, um, that's useful.

ZenPencils
     ZenPencils is another comic bloggy website thing I like.  The author, Gavin Aung Than, takes quotes he finds to be inspirational and illustrates them.  Most of the quotes are from famous people, and a lot from people I respect, like this one.  (Nerdfighters?  Anyone, anyone?)  And in illustrating them, he generally uses everyday characters, making them seem more relatable and applicable to everyday life.

Writer's Mafia

     Okay, so this is actually an old blog of my own.  Is that cheating, to use your own blog?  The thing is, it wasn't just my blog.  It was my blog, but also fifteen other people's.  We all met through a writing camp at the "U" a couple of summers ago (Sieze the Story 2012), all became friends, and all decided to create a blog so we wouldn't lose touch immediately after the last day of class.  It was great for a while, and we had our own little critique group, but then we had some technical difficulties and a lot of our posts got deleted.  After that, people just sort of forgot about it.  But I still really like the blog, and it has a lot of great pieces of writing on it.  (Wow, I forgot about some of those kids....)

So anyway, that's that.  Sorry that my first few posts have been just these big blocks of text.  In the future, I'm gonna try to post less wordy-word-wordness and more...well, more cool-looking stuff.  Like art.  (Notice how my first two blogs are comics?  Visually enticing, my friends.)  And also poems.  Those are cool-looking, right?

Anyway, thanks for reading.

'Til then,
-Allie H-S

Vital Vocab 4

Sorry.  I was actually meaning to post this the same day as the other Vital Vocab uploads, but uhh, then the writer's block hit.  Whoops.  :/  So now, I get us up to date with Vital Vocab (until next class, that is).

Note on the prompt: we're reading The Book Thief in class, by Markus Zusak.  For those who don't know, The Book Thief has a very unique quality about it: the book's narrator is Death himself.  It's actually really interesting but ahh, more on this later.  I have an assignment to do.

Prompt: How does the stereotypical concept of death differ from Zusak's character, Death?
Vocab Words (underlined): arbitrary, antithesis, aesthetic (adj), accentuate, abridge
Gramar Focus: their/there/they're, semicolon

Isaac Bade-
     I sat there, watching rain run down the window pane.  No, not run.  Not just run.  It flew; it hurtled; it cascaded down the window like lemmings off their cliffs.  Like the raindrops were frightened of the thunder.  Go, they screamed.  Hurry!  We've gotta get out of here!  And that would have been a sight to behold.  From the inside.
     I was locked out.
     I was drenched to the core.
     I was noticing a pattern.
     My dear Aunt Gaile was indoors in her chair, dead to the world, crossword and [barely] abridged dictionary in her lap.  She said her naps were completely arbitrary, so why did she always take them right when I was coming home?  Whenever I was out, she was alone in the house, and insisted on locking the door; I just had to wonder why she couldn't find me a freaking house key.  I knew there was a drawer of them somewhere.
     I sat on the front steps, a wet wind blowing just to accentuate the frigidity of the air.  Lightning flared in the sky and I pulled a notebook and pen out of my backpack, starting to sketch the storm on lined paper.  Wet lined paper.  I didn't mind, so long as I could make it aesthetic (and of course, I knew I could; I could draw a cartoon of a crushed beer can beside a highway and give it class).  So, pen quickly but gently to paper, I started to draw.
     There I was, locked out of the house, trying not to tear through soggy notebook paper, when I saw her: my polar opposite.  My antithesis.
     Erica Wells.  We'd been best friends through elementary school.  She lived just up the street; in summer, we were inseparable.  But when middle school came, she branched out, and I branched...in.  And then came the Disaster, and I just branched in more.  She came to try and talk to me about it, and I completely exploded at her.  I hadn't spoken to her since.  They're all looking at you.  For years, I hadn't been able to shake the thought.
     Erica disappeared up the street without looking at me.  I had trouble looking at her, too.
     I read a book once from the point of view of Death.  Not death the event, like when someone dies, but Death the person, the character, he who collects departed souls.  "It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible," he said.  "Your soul will be in my arms.  A color will be perched on my shoulder.  I will carry you gently away."  He claimed he wasn't painful or violent, like the event of death.  He said he was but the result.
     I think I like it better that way.

Vital Vocab 3 | Vital Vocab 5

Vital Vocab Dictionary

Vital Vocab 3

Hi people.  Here's my Vital Vocab 3.  It's not great, so I promise I'll work harder on the next one.

Prompt: What in your life would you make sacrifices to protect?
Vocab Words (underlined): acumen, advocate (v), ambiguity, ascertain, alleged
Grammar Focus: its/it's, semicolon

Eliza Benjamin-

     That night, I sat on my bed and stared around my new room.  Gosh, this was weird.  Nothing felt real yet; it was like we were on vacation or something.  I wondered how long it would take for the move to sink in.  And as I looked around the house, I'd seen maybe four spiders in it today.  I flopped back on the bed as my mom came in.

     "I see a giant, hairy monster," she said slowly.  I glanced at the wall next to my head.

     Make that five spiders.

     Without hesitation, I grabbed my shoe off the floor and clapped it over the creature, leaving its tiny legs twitching.  I had a certain acumen for bug-killing in my household, particularly because nobody else around could get up the guts to do it.  Actually, my family generally advocated to not kill the giant, bed-infesting spiders, but I just had no tolerance for that.

     "A giant hairy monster," I said to my mom.  "Really.  You couldn't just call it a spider?"

     She smiled.  "I was hoping you'd catch the ambiguity," she said.

     "Oh.  Oho!  Thaaaaanks."  I disposed of the spider and flopped back on my bed.  "It's nice to see you care, mom.  Especially after all the sacrifices I make to save the world from these eight-legged beasts!"

     She just laughed.  "It's difficult to ascertain whether we really need saving," she said.  "Besides, what if that spider had a family?"

     "What if everyone hated that spider and I've done their buggy little world a huge favor just by killing it?" I asked.

     "What do you think it was, a warlord?"

     I paused.  "Yes," I said slowly.  "Yes, I just took out one of the most feared warlords of the arachnid world."

     "Without the lead of this alleged warlord, their world shall descend into an anarchy of power grabs," she said.

     "Yes."  Solemnly, I looked over at the trash can I'd dropped the spider in.  "So it shall."

Vital Vocab 2 | Vital Vocab 4

Vital Vocab Dictionary

Vital Vocab 2

So, last post I introduced my Vital Vocab assignment.  Here's the second entry of that, which I think is ever more all-over the place than the first, so please excuse me.  But here it is.

Prompt: --
Vocab Words (underlined): archaic, amiable, anecdotal, audacious, abhorred
Grammar Focus: your/you're, semicolon

A/N: I’m actually changing her name from Emilia Keye (my default character name) to Eliza Benjamin - I found some old prewriting docs from a writing camp I did this summer and decided I’d model this after them.  This is the same character, however, as in last week’s Vital Vocab installment.  Also, next week’s entry will be longer.  ((EDIT: ha, I tried.))

Eliza Benjamin-

I finished my assignments and looked at the cat that had settled next to me.  Good Lord, the thing was archaic.  Grey streaks permeated its fur.  I scratched it behind a delicate ear and it opened a pair of yellow eyes, purring immediately.  

“Well aren’t you an amiable little thing,” I murmured.  That was when my mom came out.  

“Well hello!” she said.  I laughed a little, the tone of her voice making it apparent that she was talking to the cat.  “You know Eliza, once as a kid, I broke my ankle from tripping over a cat on my stoop.”  She proceeded to go off on an anecdotal tangent.  Her stories always involved audacious brothers and unlikely accidents, and every time she made me wonder if I’d ever have that kind of story to tell.  So far, well, my seventeenth year and I hardly had any stories at all.  I abhorred the thought that maybe, I never would....

Vital Vocab 1 | Vital Vocab 3

Vital Vocab Dictionary

Vital Vocab Intro

My blog is pretty and I like it, so I'm gonna post some more today.

     Alright, so there's a thing we do in my English class called Vital Vocab.  It's a weekly assignment, due Mondays at midnight (alliteration!), in which we have to write at least a paragraph, using five given vocabulary words.  Sometimes, we have a prompt to follow (if Mr. Parker's feeling the vibe, I guess).
     But since there isn't always a prompt, I decided I'd take an idea I'd half-worked out over the summer and write an ongoing story with my Vital Vocab.
     Unfortunately, I'm kind of procrastinate-y and tend to cut it close on writing these, meaning...well, meaning my first three submissions kind of suck.  They're all over the place, seriously.  It's awful.  So I've decided to start posting them here, to prompt myself to procrastinate less, suck less, and to pre-write a little more.  So...Vital Vocab 1.  Here it is.

Now, don't judge me.  It was sort of the middle of the night.

Prompt: What are your goals and expectations for English this year?
Vocab Words (underlined): vernacular, context, figurative, literal, subtext
Grammar Focus (we have those, too): your/you're, and properly use a semicolon to connect clauses

Emilia Keye-

     The old house towered over me.  I stared up, eyes transfixed upon its sage green, shuttered windows, the old paint peeling slightly, the siding not quite straight.  It looked like something I’d draw up in a notebook, sort of quaintly ramshackle (if that was even possible).  We’d moved in almost a month ago, and the utter character of the place - not just of the house itself, but of the old willow in the front yard, the still pond in the back, the stray cat we kept finding on our doorstep - it still shocked me every time I came home.  I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it.

     I closed the car door behind me and helped my mom bring in the groceries before going back outside and settling on the stoop.  School here had started only a week ago and the work load was just beginning to build.  So, I pulled out my laptop so I could start on my English homework.  What are your goals and expectations for English this year?  

     How dry, I thought.  That was always the worst part of the beginning of the year: boring intro assignments.  My goals for most classes were just to get good grades, but for a select few courses, like English and art, I actually aimed to learn.  But how does one put that into a paragraph?  I sighed, thinking.  Maybe if I just started writing...

     One sentence completed.  You’re boring, I thought, and deleted it.  

     Another, more interesting sentence.  Where’s your vocab?  Deleted.

     That was the problem: I had to follow a prompt and use the fancy writing vernacular.  Those two things didn’t balance easily.  So, I did what I usually did in times of doubt, and took the instructions as far out of context as possible.  Oh context, I thought.  You leave your prompt friends no room to breathe!

     Personification was my favorite figurative language.

     I started thinking about poetry, and if I could write my assignment like that.  I could do an acrostic poem, or maybe concrete.  (Was that what those were called?  I hoped we did a good poetry unit this year.)  But poetry was tricky and I was running out of time.  Besides, if I wrote a poem, I’d want to make it good, fancy.  Literal or subtext?  You decide!  I wasn’t sure I had the energy for that.  

     In the end, I just started writing a nonfiction story kinda thing, sort of obnoxiously mirroring myself in the main character.  (Was that cheating?)  It was sort of long and unedited, but I had to finish soon, so I did my best to wrap it up and hoped for the best.  

     Besides, I could always come back to it later.

Vital Vocab 2

Vital Vocab Dictionary

And So it Begins.

Hi.
     I'd like to say my name is Anthony James Rousseaux (classy, right?) but of course, my display name will give me away.  It's actually Allie.  meh.  Can I put a "de" in there, just to mix it up a little?  Allie de Park City (and Park City de Utah).
     I enjoy writing, art (I'mna post some drawings here), and reading.  That is, regular reading, but also out-loud readings.  I make Audiobooks, and post them, when I can get the rights.  But those are just hobbies, right?  What do I like?
     I like edgy things.  I like banned books and Banksy art.  Things that are real, and also things that are elegant.
     Also pretentious things.  I can be pretty pretentious.  For this, I apologize in advance (and feel free to call me on it).

So that's my intro.  Now, I should probably explain why this blog is called "Rousseaux."  Anthony Rousseaux is actually a character in a story my friends and I wrote/are writing (it's sort of a work in progress).  Maybe someday I'll draw or cosplay as Anthony, and then you can get a photo or drawing.  And for now...
He's 22 (his birthday is September ninth).
He's classy.
He wears a top hat.
He wears a suit.
He sometimes has white gloves.
There's a Shadow mark on the inside of his left wrist (for those who know him, I edited; for those who don't...more on this later).
He has silver-gray hair.
He has light brown eyes.
He always carries a deck of cards in his pocket, a select few on a chain around his neck.
He has a dagger made of diamond.

And now.  Y'all have fun with that.  :::;)
-Allie