So Things Change

Hi, all.

So if you've been paying attention, you'll know that I haven't posted in about two months.  Sorry about that.  And if you're here, you'll also know that about a month ago, I changed this blog's URL.  Sorry about that, too.  And if you've ever been in high school, you'll know that things change.

Let's talk about that.

On November 1, just after some of my friends had a heart-to-heart on Halloween night, they decided that it was necessary that we shut down the Role Play.  It had been causing some social, academic, and creative issues that I don't want to elaborate on on here, and in order to make things better, we thought it best to cut off all collaboration.  No more book.

So that sucks.  Obviously.  But you'll notice that this blog is still named Rousseaux, and its URL is still Anthony's birthday.  One of the conditions was that our individual characters are still ours, and we are free to do what we want with them.

So, since I'm not actively working on his development anymore, let's go ahead and post Anthony's character form here, for future reference.

So, I realize you have never been properly introduced: kids, meet Anthony; Anthony, meet the kids.

Anthony James Rousseaux

Gender:

Male

Born:

September 9th, 1992 (currently age 23, in the beginning of the story only 21)

Literary Status (Protagonist/Antagonist):

Uncertain

Shadow Ranking:

Was once Tier Nine Recruiter, now Tier Seven

Height:

6'4"

Appearance:

Tall and skinny, with narrow shoulders and a slightly lilting stride.  Really not incredibly strong.  (He has a knife, but in battle relies mostly on his cards.)  He has pale-gray hair trimmed just out of his eyes, which are a light brown.  He has a rather effeminate jawline and a thin nose. Anthony actually has lots of scars and a Shadow Mark on his left wrist, but he hides them with a Three of Clubs.

Sexuality:

Straight demisexual (needs to form emotional bonds before he can be interested in any-thing

sexual, kissing or otherwise)

Personality:  

Very quiet and very observant.  Not particularly light-hearted, but easygoing in most situations. He 's very private, and has to be pushed (or at times, negotiated with) in order to express his feelings because he's not sure they're critical to many situations, or his past because he's mostly ashamed of it.  

Flaws and Weaknesses:

Just because Anthony does not often acknowledge or act upon his emotions doesn't mean they don't trouble him regularly.  He spends a sizable amount of his time regretting things, and swallows every emotion he doesn't want to feel.  This is obviously unhealthy, and he has paid the price for it in many ways, on many occasions.

Skills:

Anthony is a card dealer; he has a magic deck of cards with a specific power each, categorized by suit ("Spade to Fight, Heart to Live, Club to Build, Diamond to Steal" - fighting, healing, illusion-casting and misc. cards, respectively).  He's also fast in a fight, if not particularly strong, and has good endurance.  He always has a diamond-made dagger on him for when he can't or won't fight with his cards.

Story/Backstory:

He had an English mother and an American father.  His father was a state representative for northern California, where Anthony lived on the family estate until he was old enough to go to school.  At that point, his parents began sending him away to a British boarding school every year, where he spent the holidays with his English grandparents, only coming home to California for the summers.  By the time he was ten, he really didn't have much of a relationship with his parents past maintaining social pretense.  

When Anthony's cousin Nathan's parents died, Nathan came to stay with them and became a fast family favorite, causing tensions to rise dramatically.  One day near the end of the summer, Anthony and Nathan had a fight that involved the Black Joker or Master Thief card tearing between them.  This killed Nathan, and Anthony received a jumble of all his interesting thoughts and memories which, as you can imagine, took a while to sort out.  Anthony's parents flipped and all social pretenses dropped, causing a huge fight.  

This was when Anthony ran away and was intercepted by the Shadows.

The Shadows recognized the potential in Anthony's card dealing power and made him a priority trainee, eventually turning him into a skilled Recruiter.

One of Anthony's first recruits was Dakota Black, when Anthony was thirteen and they both still believed in the Shadows.  They became fast friends, and Dakota's house became like Anthony's second (and at times, first) home.  

When Anthony was fourteen, he fell in love with a girl named Cassie Reed and couldn't bring himself to recruit her.  Dakota helped the couple to run away from the Shadows, and they tried to go into hiding, but did not succeed; thus, Anthony was forced to recruit Cassie.  She was immediately shipped off to another base, and he never saw her again.  A year later, another Shadow ratted out Dakota for helping them, and as punishment for their treason, Anthony had to kill him.  (At this time, Anthony was 15, Dakota was 14, and Raven - Dakota's little sister - was 11.)

Anthony shouldn't have killed Dakota because that's a really shitty thing to do to your best friend, but also because for the years to come, it gave the Shadows a hold on Anthony they hadn't had before.  They convinced him of how cowardly and unforgivable that was, among other things he'd done (recruiting Cassie, killing other people, etc.), and essentially used these things as blackmail to make him do even more shitty stuff.  (It was very important to them that he felt like he would never have an out.)

In order to deal with everything, Anthony made himself pretty much completely numb, and it worked until he was about nineteen (when he peaked and stopped climbing the Shadow ranks).  Then Raven ran away from home, and the Shadows assumed that it was because she'd found out about them or about Anthony killing her brother.  They immediately sent Anthony to either recruit her (despite her apparent lack of powers), or kill her.  He knew he could never recruit her, and at the thought of killing his friend's little sister, Anthony finally snapped.  He had a small mental breakdown because he couldn't manage to numb himself anymore, and he finally allowed his allegiances to drift from the Shadows.  For the next two years or so, he followed after Raven without actually catching her, and got demoted several times.

When our story starts, Anthony is on his way to recruit Raven to the Shadows, but sent on a detour to befriend and recruit the other characters.

Kill Count:

Unknown

I made this with an anime maker game;
I couldn't change the proportions so he
kinda looks like a twelve-year-old, but
it's supposed to be him after he leaves
the Shadows and joins the Army.

Same anime maker; this is him before
he peaked in the Shadow ranks, so probably
when he was eighteen or nineteen.  (He drank
very lightly then, but now doesn't drink at all;
it freaks him out.)

Sara made this Anthony dragon with
her mad drawing skillz.  (No, Anthony
cannot actually turn into a dragon.)

Bailey made this with an online
chibi-maker thing.

Again, chibi-maker thing.

This was made on Polyvore.

Siri made this for I think my
Christmas present last year.

This is the original inspiration picture of Anthony,
which I may or may not have posted here before.

I'm not sure I own any more than two of those pictures.  Moving on.

Because the roleplay is over, and I am without a project, I'm pretty freaking bored.  Right now, I'm floating around doing stuff like rereading Harry Potter (third time), rereading Hunger Games (second time), starting Divergent, watching lots and lots and lots of movies, basically looking for inspiration wherever I hope I can get it.  It's not working very well, but I'm not really sure what else to do.

Any ideas?

In Creative Writing, we've been doing lots of short projects, which are interesting and fun, but they really need revision.  (Once revised, I'll post them here.)  Mr. Parker (yes, last year's English teacher is this year's Creative Writing teacher) says that next year he'll be offering Creative Writing II, in which we'll work on just one project all year: a big project, like a screenplay or a novel or whatever it is we high schoolers each decide we've wanted to do for the past sixteen-to-eighteen years.  So I'll be working on a novel, then.  Yaaaaaay!  I really need a project now, though.  Something to work on consistently, and something that I can feel is meaningful and well-executed once I've finished.  And maybe next year I can fix it, or try a new one.  Either way, there's really no reason to wait around.

I need to finish something.  Mr. Parker told me I'm good, but I "lack discipline."  Sad, but true.

Get it together, Allie.

Do you guys ever get like this?  Project-less and under-stimulated, I mean.  And if so, what do you do?

Until next time (whenever that may be),

-Allie H-S

P.S: I do have one thing I've been poking at, a short story about a girl whose mother uproots her and her little sister to leave her father.  It's called Missoula because that's where they go, off to see her aunt.  So we'll see if that turns into anything.  Wish me luck.

Other Miscellaneous Updates: I never finished 1984; I hate Debate; you should read a webcomic called Namesake; I joined Pottermore as WombatRiver12772 and it put me in Slytherin; and HAPPY THANKSGIVING unless you're not American in which case HAPPY DAY YOU SHOULD HAVE SOMETHING NICE FOR DINNER!  That is all.

Let's Just Go Ahead and Update You on Everything

Hi, all!

I've been kinda busy lately, what with school (school sucks, but less so than the last two years), the roleplay (we've been redeveloping everything), and debate (I also joined the debate team, just by the way).  So sorry for not posting very often.  I was going to compare The Maze Runner (book) with The Maze Runner (movie), but I get kinda rambly when I review.  So maybe later.  (Long story short: the movie was better.  I know, I didn't believe it either.)

But yeah, this blog is a bit behind.  I think it's time for an update post.  So now, in no particular order...

Update 1: Yeah, seriously, I joined the debate team.  I kind of regret it though, 'cause my most enthusiastic debate team friend (AKA: 70% of my motivation) has had to take a lengthy leave of absence.  But I already paid club fees, hotel fees, and an extra sweatshirt fee, so yeah, there's no going back.  Our first tournament is on the 11th, which is soon, so maybe I'll post about it after.

Update 2: School started a couple months ago, and my classes this year suck significantly less than they did last year.  Unfortunately, I allowed myself to get discouraged around registration time and did not sign myself up for Drawing, but hey man, I took Photography instead.  It quickly became my favorite class, so I call that a success.  But more on that later.  I'm also taking Creative Writing and Honors English, both of which should give me posting material (in the fullness of time).  P.E. is dumb and Honors Math is dumb, but that's just two of eight classes.  I got more than half-lucky this year!  Yessssssss.

Update 3: Right but so photography.  Photography is hard, so we're taking it slow(ly?), meaning we don't develop our first round of actual film until Monday.  But earlier, we made pinhole cameras (mine was unsuccessful), and photograms (mine were very successful).  So yeah, let's talk about those.

First thing's first: I have to explain how photo paper works.  Basically, a bunch of goddamn magicians came together and created a type of white paper that turns dark when exposed to light.  Well, okay, it doesn't turn dark until you put it in the developer chemicals, but the important thing is this: the parts that had light on them will be dark.  Shine light on one corner?  Dark.  A different corner?  Dark.  A tiny spot in the middle?  Dark.  Just how dark it really gets depends on how much light hits the paper and for how long.  If you shine a really dim light for a fraction of a second, it'll turn kinda grey.  A glaring bright light for a minute or so should turn it completely black.

So, a photogram is what you get when you cover up certain parts of the paper to prevent the light from reaching them.  In class, we stood in the dark room and laid a bunch of objects on our photo paper, put it under a light, and shined it on for a couple seconds, then put it in the developer chemicals.  (side note: do not get developer chemicals on your hands.  They won't hurt you, but you'll smell like old rubber and vinegar for the next two days, which makes you really sick really fast.  It's gross.)  My best four came out like this:

This one's fancy 'cause I mounted it.  (sorry the photo's not
the greatest.  I had to turn it in, so I took this one in class.)

Admire the doll arm.  (And wonder why the hell it has those
shadow objects reflected on it.  How does light work again?)

I am so sorry about the dust.  I tried to get it off,
but in my house, it's pretty much unavoidable.

b r o k e n   l o c k e t
(broken hearts)

Maybe I needed the change of medium from drawing to art.  I like this.  I really do.

Update 4: Like I said, we've all been working on the roleplay, and I'm really excited about this.  We've been doing this without actually roleplaying it though, which just means lots and lots of redevelopment with hardly any writing.  Which I love, actually!  It's satisfying and refreshing.  And remember Raven?  (I mentioned her briefly here.)  I kind of killed her off and deserted her, but now I'm fixing her!  I've been meaning to do this for months.  It only came off the ground now because Mr. Parker (yeah so last year's English teacher is this year's Creative Writing teacher - cool beans, right?) assigned a short narrative written about a Facebook status.  I don't have a Facebook, so I made a status up and ended up writing about Raven running away from home.  It was almost kind of enlightening, actually.  I always try and map out my character and storyline before I start writing, but this time I just kind of just let it go, and I learned things.  Like that Raven is gay, or at least bi.  Despite having a girlfriend myself (damn cutie she is), I am not usually prone to writing LGBT characters, so that was kinda surprising.

The real challenge here is going to be handling two developed characters in my head without getting more excited about one than the other.  And if I succeed to love them both, the next challenge will be to kill Raven off anyway.

Yay!

Update 5: Okay, I think this is the last thing.  Here, we have...webcomics!  God, do I love webcomics.

CUCUMBER QUEST is really fuckin' cute, guys!  These four hero people (er, *bunnies) have to travel all through these crazy kingdoms to collect some silly stuff and fight some ridiculous villains, and I won't lie to you, the whole quest thing is really just kind of inane (even to them).  The heroes are all really adorable though, and like - I mean, can I be your friend, Cucumber?  Pleeeaaase?? - and the villains are all really compelling, actually, with really interesting dynamics.  (Like Nightmare Knight and Rosemaster.  I really want to know what's going on there.)  I mean, their quest is kind of frustrating, and a million times harder than it needs to be just because some of the characters are just stubborn, but the webcomic itself is so cute.  Read it.  You must.

BLINDSPRINGS is...ahh...I'm not sure how to explain Blindsprings.  It's kind of involved, or at least, the whole story hasn't been revealed to us yet.  As I understand it, a kingdom was ruled by a group of people known as Orphics, who were born with magical abilities that came from the spirits.  But the Orphics were too oppressive of their people and the Academists (scholars who managed to invent their own, artificial magic) revolted, quickly taking over the kingdom.  The Academists developed a way to seal Orphic powers, and quickly became distrustful and oppressive of all community members who were of the Orphic line.  Now (about a hundred years later?), Orphic community members are beginning to revolt again.  I think.  Despite it being kind of complicated, the story is told with such incredible charm (and such a different and lovely range of characters) that it immediately keeps you reading.  It's not very long, and updates relatively often, so if you're looking for something elegant and new, I recommend this one-hundred percent.

BFF COMIC is something I was only introduced to a couple days ago, but it is damn freaking adorable!  I'm not far enough in to write my own description of it, so here's the author's: "Best Friends Forever is a (b)romantic dramedy about a dirt-poor quarterback and the nerd-chic president of the student council trying to hold their unlikely friendship together - despite the suspicions & meddling of their frustrating classmates."  Honestly, I'm still early enough in the comic (chapter seven) that I technically shouldn't be reviewing yet, but it is so cute.  Teddy (the nerdy kid) is adorable, and Vincent (the quarterback) is beautiful, and they're just...aw.  You should read it.  Please.
(UPDATE: okay so I caught up on it and it starts out adorable, but then it gets really angsty really fast.  I'm not saying you shouldn't read it, but ahh, be warned.  That's all.)

Oh Yeah and Also Update 6: I'm about 20 pages into 1984 right now.  You know, that old dystopian classic by George Orwell?  Yeah.  It's scaring me.

Alright, so that's the last of my updates.  I hope you guys are all doing wonderfully, and I myself have been doing pretty okay.  I'll talk to you later!

-Allie H-S

Pageviews, Concern for Ava's Demon, and 2002's "Spider-Man" (Respectively)

Hi, all.

So, first thing's first.  You got me...

EIGHT EXTRA VIEWS!  YOU WIN!  WHICH MEANS I WIN!  WHICH MEANS I LOVE YOU!  Just to be clear, I loved you anyway.  BUT NOW WE WIN!  Thaaaaaank youuuuuuuuu!  ^.^  *gives you virtual cake*  Caaaaaaaake!  (Next time you can, go buy yourself some actual cake.  Because you deserve it.)

Second thing - I realize I talk about Ava's Demon kind of a lot on this blog, but I'm actually a little concerned because it stopped updating recently (I don't have the exact date) completely without notice. Maybe it hasn't been as long as I think (my memory is just shot lately), but the author's usually pretty good about that, so I hope she didn't die or anything?  Also, I think she has a tumblr, but I don't know what it is, so if anybody has that info, I would like it very much.  ((UPDATE: nevermind, it's here, and also she was just sick for a while.  it's all good.))

Now.  Let's get down to business [to defeat the Huns].  Because Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, every now and then I go on a Spider-Man media binge.  This time, as I'm sure you can guess, the binge was brought on by The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  So after watching that and its precursor movie, I grabbed the slightly older series, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (AKA Tobey Maguire/that-kid-from-Gatsby/early 2000's Spider-Man.  That one).  Because IMDb is the very greatest movie reference site ever, I have its Spider-Man page here.

I feel I need to point out that Spider-Man is in no way a prequel for The Amazing Spider-Man.  I think people make this mistake because both came out so recently (in the same ten years, at least), but no, these renditions are in no way related other than that they were both based off of the original comic series.  In other words, trying match up and then make sense of the storylines is like trying to match up Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises with 1995's Batman Forever.  Both are great individually (Batman Forever has a special place in my heart), but make absolutely no sense put together, I assure you.

That said, let's review a movie, shall we?

Knowing me, this may take a while.

Let's start with a synopsis.  In Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire plays high school senior Peter Parker, who is fairly smart but painfully awkward, has been in love with his neighbor Mary Jane Watson (MJ) since the fourth grade, and lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City.  Here, dear Peter goes on a high school field trip and is bitten by a genetically modified spider that somehow got out of its container (which is never revisited or explained).  He wakes up the next morning with spider-like abilities, such as that to climb and stick to walls and that to shoot webbing directly from his wrists.  Additionally, his eyesight is now perfect (he previously wore glasses), and he has super-strength (he was a total wimp).
     Meanwhile, Dr. Norman Osborn, father of Peter's best friend Harry Osborn, is the owner of Oscorp, the city's largest science research lab.  Dr. Osborn has been working on a human performance-enhancer for quite some time, but his higher-ups threaten to pull his funding, so he skips through the process to human testing - the human being himself.  A possible side effect of the performance enhancer was insanity, and thus it drives him insane, turning him into the Green Goblin.
     Peter has a fight with his Uncle Ben, who tells him "with great power comes great responsibility" and is killed shortly thereafter by a street thug in a car robbery.  Peter then decides to become a superhero and fulfill his responsibility to rid the streets of crime.  You know, basically.

This movie is great because it's lighthearted and Tobey Maguire constitues a very likable Peter Parker because he's cute and socially inept and just completely lost for MJ.  So if you're into that, go for it.  Go see this movie for its cuteness, and to broaden your experiences of Spider-Man.  It was fun to watch.  (Particularly in a group.)  But if you really break movies down like I tend to, um...be warned, I guess.  There are a few kinks in the plan.

So when I watch or read things, I tend to put writers into two categories: those better at plot and those better at characterization.  These were plot writers.  To say the least.  The most glaring example of this is MJ.

(courtesy of: nyctalking.com)

Mary Jane Watson is a perky redhead with subtly accentuated boobs who wants to be an actrice and
speaks in a softly sweet voice.  She'd never hurt a soul, says things you'd sooner expect from a sugary romance novel, and must wait ten minutes for Spider-Man to save her from the crumbling ledge instead of just crawling off it herself.  Mind you, I am being perfectly objective; even though no one beats Emma Stone, and my official OTP is Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy (which I am fairly, if not completely invested in), I actually quite like MJ.  In other versions, she's been this sexy, green-eyed redhead with a sharp wit and a little black dress, a character who knows what she wants and always stands up for the little guy.  But in this, MJ was basically the epitome of a weak female character.  I am a bit influenced from also watching Spider-Man 2, in which this problem is I think exponentially worse, but still.

(courtesy of: comicbookmovie.com)

The other painful character is, I think, Dr. Osborn.  One of the greatest things you can do for a movie is develop the villain, but they did not take that opportunity.  His entire characterization is that he's a rich, uptight father turned crazy, bipolar scientist.  His only reason for becoming a villain is that an experiment went wrong and made him a villain, which I think is a bit of a characterization cop-out.  It started as just a conflict of interests - Dr. Osborn originally just wanted control of Oscorp back because the board kicked him off (because he's crazy), but Spider-Man fundamentally disagreed with killing the board members one-by-one, but he went after Spider-Man vendetta-style, like it was personal.  Which is completely irrational.  It's as if the writers couldn't think of a legitimate reason to make him want to kill Peter, so they just drove him insane instead.

My main dispute with stories is usually poor characterization because it's really important to me that characters - and by extension, people - are imagined complexly.

(courtesy of: splashpage.mtv.com)

However, to end this on a good not, I should point out that there is a character in this movie that I particularly like, and that is John Jonah Jameson!  JJJ is the cheap-ass, no-bullshit, always-talking-never-listening, fast-paced head editor of the newspaper The Daily Bugle, which Peter is a freelance photographer for.  He's not particularly nice, as you might imagine, but he's completely hilarious in his own blunt brutality (and doesn't mean half of what he says).  And though I've been trying not to compare the two because bias, JJJ is the main aspect I'd pick of the Spider-Man series that's actually better than The Amazing Spider-Man series.  The latter is seriously lacking, but JJJ in this is fabulous, and all in all, he makes me happy.

So that's it, I guess.  A fair post with which to end the year.

Thanks for reading,

-Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
  (not really, though.  it's just me.)