290112 The Fault in Our Stars

Yeah, this post contains a ton of spoilers. So, if you haven't read the book, stop reading this, go read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (you can even borrow mine if you'd like) then you can come back and read this.

Okay? Only people who have read the book here now? Then continue:





I don't really even know where to start with talking about this book. I mean, it touches me a lot, mostly because Hazel loses someone to a disease like I lost someone to a disease. While the characters are fundamentally different from my own experiences, the same emotions are there. Of course, there are two different sets of emotions here: Pre-Death and Post-Life

The Pre-Death ones are the emotions that are shown before someone who is expected to die, dies. Those are the feelings of fear of a future without that person in it. In TFiOS, Hazel's mother whispers (when she thinks Hazel can't hear) "I won't be a mother anymore." Her mom feels guilty for even thinking about a life after Hazel by secretly taking courses for a career in the future when she'll have all this time on her hands when she won't have Hazel to care for.

Even Hazel has these pre-death fears. She calls herself a grenade, which was a way that I never thought about it before. But I suppose terminally ill people are grenades; when they die, they leave behind a ton of people affected by his or her death. I'm stuck wondering right now if Connor had any thoughts like that. Did he ever think about his effect on us? Did it infuriate him like it infuriated Hazel?

The Post-Life emotions have to do with the feelings that are felt after someone dies. When Gus dies, Hazel is left with after math. I don't even know how to explain it. There's the feeling of the unfairness of his situation and the unwillingness to face what was his. Hazel doesn't want to eat or do anything.

There's also the quote that she says that funerals are for the living. So true, so true.

This was a Real Love Story. Not one of those mushy stories where, while the characters might undergo some hardship, the ending is always happy, or sort of open-ended. Not so in Hazel and Gus' case. He dies. There is no happy ending for a relationship in which one of the participants dies. None. It's twisted, it's cruel, it's unfair, but hey, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

The story isn't all sad stuff though. There's lots of laughter in it (seriously, with insults like 'douchepants' and 'assclown', who needs more?) and a lot of serious deep-stuff that I like to think about. Although, I was concerned that John was going to pull a Van Houten and leave the story mid-sentence. D: That would have been cruel.

Maybe I should ceasely email John asking about whether Hazel dies soon or if her life is prolonged even more, or whether Kaitlyn ever finds a guy that she truly falls in love with, or if Hazel's mom does a better job as a Patrick than Patrick can, or if Daniel and his kids love the swing set to death or something along those lines. XD

250112 Kickstarter: Amaranthine Project

I've got some digital friends who are looking for some help in starting up their comic, so they've created a Kickstarter for it. The following links explain the project and give you a taste of what these two are capable of producing. Their art is absolutely amazing and I can't wait to see what the rest of the book looks like!

And, as a bonus, Hunter (the girl in the video) is Calgarian! So you'd be helping out a local artist!

Kickstarter
Intro (preview of book)
Hunter's dA (lone-momo)
budgie's dA

250112 Extreme Ways - Moby

[NSFW warning: the video is extremely provocative]


Extreme ways are back again
Extreme places I didn't know
I broke everything new again
Everything that I'd owned
I threw it out the windows, came along
Extreme ways I know move apart
The colors of my sea
Perfect color me

Extreme ways that help me
That help me out late at night
Extreme places I had gone
But never seen any light
Dirty basements, dirty noise
Dirty places coming through
Extreme worlds alone
Did you ever like it then

I would stand in line for this
There's always room in life for this

Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Like it always does, always does

Extreme songs that told me
They helped me down every night
I didn't have much to say
I didn't get above the light
I closed my eyes and closed myself
And closed my world and never opened
Up to anything
That could get me along

I had to close down everything
I had to close down my mind
Too many things to cover me
Too much can make me blind
I've seen so much in so many places
So many heartaches, so many faces
So many dirty things
You couldn't even believe

I would stand in line for this
It's always good in life for this

Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Then it fell apart, it fell apart
Oh baby, oh baby
Like it always does, always does

220112 Ninja Kitty

There is a danger that lurks in my house
It is a streak of grey, hiding in the shadows
Staring out with a flash of the eyes
There is one thing
And one thing only
That can alert you to the presence of this danger:
The jangle of a bell
Securely fastened around the dangerous thing's neck

But a tragedy occurred late last night
As the danger took on another danger
And the bell was lost

We walk cautiously through the house now
On constant guard for the presence of that shadow
Lurking with sharpened claws
There is no warning
There is no bell
There is only a blur of grey fur
And a fresh scratch and puncture marks in your leg.

180112

Hey, if you catch my 8,888th page view, screencap it and upload it to tinypic (or some other photo sharing site) and I will write/draw something of your choice for you. X3

170112 SOPA/PIPA-related Thoughts

Here's something I've been thinking about in the wake of several sites announcing that they will go into black-out mode to protest the SOPA/PIPA legislature in front of the US government. First off, I do believe stealing is wrong. But I'm a little confused as to what we define stealing as.

The big thing that SOPA/PIPA is trying to attack is the downloading of music and movies for free (aka, internet piracy). But isn't the act of internet piracy akin to Robin Hood's 'steal from the rich to feed the poor'? I guess my beef with this is movies mostly, not music. I go to watch a movie in the theatres and it costs me $13 if the movie is 2D and $16+ for a movie in 3D (which, 99.9% of the time, sucks). The actors in these movies are drowning in money that they have to have designer everything in order to just spend a fraction of the money that they have.

Do they even feel the effects of downloaded movies? Not likely. Do I feel the effects of movie ticket prices going up? Yes, I do. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Hollywood seems to be surviving just fine without these laws that are being proposed. If the acts were to go through, just imagine how much ticket prices would go up because there would be more control given to the producing side of the movie industry instead of the consumer side.

I don't know the details of the acts. I don't really plan to look into the details because I'm sure it's all in jargon that I won't understand anyway.

Will these blackouts affect any decision made on these acts? Not likely. It's a day of inconvenience for a lot of people, but not a major driving factor.

150112 Superpowers

I just realized that I haven't posted anything in about a week. That is so not like me. D:

Anyway, the subject of superpowers came up this past Friday at youth. One person asked what superpower everyone would choose and I did not have an answer. There's so many choices in the world of super human abilities that it was hard to narrow it down to one such thing.

Today, that one such thing came to mind. The power to heal. Not myself, but others. I have done a little research (wikipedia, go!) and found two superheroes who had this power, which is listed as 'biological manipulation': Elixir (A Marvel creation) and Shawn Farrell (from The 4400, which I am not familiar with).

Of course, as soon as that answer had arisen, other questions and issues swamped me. Such a power in a world like this one carries a huge burden of responsibility. I had to think about what I would be able to heal; would it just be the physical injuries of broken bones or cancer or would it be other diseases too, like physical and mental disabilities? (I am, of course, thinking about children such as Connor and Melania) And if my healing power did cover those disabilities, what would the affects on the physical appearance of those people be? Would it remain as the telltale physical presence of a disability, or would those features change also, giving birth to a completely different person?

And then I had to consider wider things that are other health problems, such as starvation and aging. Would these things fall under my jurisdiction to heal? If so, what complications would come with it? I don't believe that I would be able to 'cure' starvation, as creating nourishment is impossible, and even if it were possible, how would I be able to maintain it?

Then of course is the matter of time. If I developed that power right now and lived until my 85th birthday (which is average) and it took five minutes to cure each person I saw, I would be able to cure 6,685,344 people, assuming I didn't need to eat or sleep and everyone came to me so I didn't have to spend any time traveling. But it turns out I do need to eat and sleep so if I allot myself 9 hours a day to regain strength through eating and sleeping, I would be reducing the amount of people I could help to 4,178,340.

That's not a lot of people, considering the population of the world is over 7,000,000,000. How would I decide who gets my help and who doesn't? I would have to perform the art of triage with every case, deciding whether it was worth curing. And that would make me feel horrid about myself, turning away someone I could have helped.

All in all, as wonderful as the idea of having the power to heal would be, I have decided that it would be more trouble than help, as my triage practices would start fights and people would hate me because I wouldn't heal their relative/friend/hero/politician/celebrity/neighbour/pet, etc. So I'm perfectly happy having no super power at all.