What is Aperture?

I talk about Aperture a lot, and I've managed to go almost three years without ever really explaining what it is. (Aperture turns three this year. Holy crap.) Today would be Nate's 19th birthday, so I figured it would be a good day to post something like this.

(If you landed on this page because of a photography-related Google search, sorry. This isn't what you're looking for.)

Short version: Aperture is a story about four kids with magical abilities that get themselves into trouble.

Of course, that doesn't really cover much, so I'm gonna talk a little bit more in depth underneath the cut.

Writing Goals: March / April

I feel like I'm talking about my writing a lot. I think that's a good thing. I hope.

I picked the background thinking, "Oh, it's spring soon." Which means even more thunderstorms like we had yesterday. Thunderstorms in February are surreal. 

I've been doing really well with my writing goals so far this year, and I really want to keep up the momentum.

My January goal was to write at least 500 words every day. In February I added onto it by making at least 100 of those words be towards Casanova. It was a really good move! I'm starting to learn that challenges like NaNo (or even little self-motivated ones like this) are really good at forcing myself to be accountable.

In March, though, I'm considering dropping the Casanova word count goal in order to gear up to do the story for Camp NaNo in April. I'm afraid I might burn myself out by the time Camp NaNo comes by, and I really want to make it a success this year.

I'm hoping that dropping the pressure to write for Casanova every day will force me to do some behind-the-scenes building. I've collected a lot of sticky notes in my school notebooks of things I know I need to work on, but I've never gotten around to actually doing anything. I've had a list of things to research since NaNo that I've never gotten around to.

Of course, there's no way for me to quantitatively track my backstage work, so this plan might not go as well as I'm hoping. And I haven't thought of a plan B yet.

I'm planning to do another 25,000 word goal for this Camp NaNo, which is definitely going to be a challenge based on this month's progress. It's not going to be as insane as NaNo, which will be good, but it's going to require even more motivation. Which is good! I want to make more progress with Casanova than I'm making now.

I'm also going to use the same game plan I used during NaNo -- I'm going to let myself write for more than just Casanova during April, but the other stories don't get to count towards my Camp NaNo progress. Those are extra. This worked really well for me in November and I'm hoping it'll keep me going if I hit roadblocks. (Which is very likely.)

Hopefully by the end of April I'll have something resembling a readable first draft of Casanova! (Well, second draft, I guess.) Right now I'm working towards having a draft that can be read beginning to end, however rough it is. I might need to make a really comprehensive outline between now and the end of March to get there. I don't know.

I'm hoping to make another post about my May / June writing goals as Camp NaNo ends, which I may tack on to a April reflection post. We'll see. Anyway, these next two months should be an adventure. If anyone else is planning on doing Camp NaNo, let me know! I'd love some competition company ♥

8 Song Challenge: Aperture

I'm finally trying out a new post series I came up with!

My writing playlists tend to get kind of long, so I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and limit myself to eight songs and still encompass the feeling of the whole playlist.

I don't have many posts about Aperture so far, but I do have an old post about character playlists and a more recent post about the quartet. Aperture is my "sandbox" story that I worked on for the majority of high school and it's definitely the story I work on the most.

You can click the embedded video below to play all the songs in the playlist, or you can head to the playlist's page on YouTube, or you can continue below the cut to see a little bit more about the songs I picked!

Library Books >>>

I haven't been to the library since, like, October, and it's finally starting to catch up with me big time. I said I kicked my reading slump, but honestly I still have been reading much less than I'd like to.

I'm ready to finally break my library ban, but I don't know when I'll get the chance to go to the library, so I figured I'd at least talk a little bit about why this feeling suddenly hit me in the face earlier this afternoon.

Katsucon 2016

I'm back from my 6th Katsucon!! I almost didn't go this year, but I'm really glad I did!

(This post feels like it makes no sense to me. I think I'm sleep deprived. Please forgive me. Hopefully I'll come back to this tomorrow and fix it up.) 

I almost backed out of going this year because none of my con-going friends from school were going. I went to AUSA despite that, but I knew then that I would have Twitter / con friends that I could meet up with. Luckily I was able to borrow one of my friends for the weekend, so I wasn't alone!

This was the first time I put no effort into getting ready for Katsu. It's a little pitiful. This is probably the most chill Katsu I've had, but I still had a lot of fun! I only took ten pictures this year ;; The first couple years I went I took well over a hundred pictures, so this is really strange for me. 

I decided to skip Friday since it lowered the cost for me by $20. My parents told me not to buy my badge ahead of time in case we got a huge snowstorm like last year. We actually did get some snow Friday night into Saturday morning, but luckily nothing like last year. Unfortunately Saturday was freezing cold. 

This year was also unique in the fact this was the first time in six years of con-going that I experienced my first "disaster" of sorts. Jessica and I were out at lunch when we heard about the Gaylord being evacuated, so we luckily missed a lot of the chaos. 

This was the registration line when we got there around 9am Saturday morning. This was insane. The lines are usually long, and last year I was amazed that we got our badges in under an hour. This year we got them in under 20 minutes. Major props to the staff tbh

Jessica and I cosplayed Camp Half-Blood kids, and we managed to find a Camp Jupiter cosplayer, which was :OO

All the other cosplayers I got pictures of were from Miraculous Ladybug! I was so happy to see so many ♥ ML has become my life recently lol

I'm pretty sure this Cat Noir is @thealchemicfox

I saw very few Adrien cosplayers, which I was kind of sad about, since he's probably my favorite character. I'm upset this picture turned out kind of blurry since these two were really cute

I really love the designs of these cosplays! The Ladybug cosplayer complimented my Sailor Moon hoodie after I got their picture, which was really ♥o♥

I owe a lot to Jessica for being willing to come to Katsu with me this year ♥ She was very patient with me while I fangirled about ML and even let me get her into the fandom, which means a lot to me lol She's willing to come to other conventions in the future so I'm hoping it'll work out for us!

I also owe a lot to my parents for spending another Valentine's weekend at the con so I could attend ♥ I really appreciate that they're supportive of my hobby, and that they enjoy the convention enough to continue to come back. (Hopefully they'll start cosplaying next year P: )

This haul is tiny compared to previous years lol I'm getting better about not buying everything I see, since I don't have enough room on my walls to hang all of my posters up anymore :c This year's AA also felt really tiny. Dealer's felt huge this year, and surprisingly I didn't buy anything out of it. 

(I just realized I left out the things I bought on Sunday since I left them in my backpack OTL) 

I'm going to update this post once I can find links to the cosplayers and the artists I bought from! Hopefully it won't take me more than a few days.

I didn't spend as much time at the convention this year from being worn-out from school and not wanting to bore Jessica. I didn't go to any panels or photoshoots, which I'm a little sad about, but I didn't look into any beforehand to know which ones were at the con this year. I also didn't get a schedule of the panels in the booklet :c I don't know if they didn't give any out or if I managed to get a bag without one.

I got to see almost all of my con friends! It was all by chance, too ♥ It means a lot to me that I've made friends through cons and through Twitter that I can look forward to meeting, since that wasn't something I expected to happen when I started going to Katsu back in 8th grade.

My next anime event will be the DC Cherry Blossom Festival! I'm looking forward to it c: After that will be Otakon during my birthday weekend! :D

Writing Progress: Jan - mid-Feb

Happy Katsucon weekend! 

I had some ideas for posts this weekend, but I didn't get any of them ready in time. Sorry. Instead, I'm going to talk about how my writing has gone the past month and a half or so! I'm really proud of how I've been doing since the new year and I wanted to take some time to show it off ヽ( ᐛ )ノ♪♬

This post is gonna be more about numbers than what I've been focusing on writing. The numbers are what I'm more excited about, tbh

Omakase Box Review: January

This year, Otakon partnered with Omakase with an amazing deal: register for Omakase between Jan 11th and the 23rd, and get your Otakon badge at a 100% discount! (In other words, for free. They worded it just about every way but calling it free.) 

Considering my Otakon badge last year was $90 including shipping, I was all for this deal. I'm very depressed with the thought of having to pay adult badge rates now that I'm 18, so this was a good way to trick myself into thinking that I didn't have to deal with it yet.

(Katsucon is going to kill me OTL) 

Anyway, I figured this was a good opportunity to review Omakase! I've been curious about a couple different subscription boxes, but I've never had an excuse to try one out before. 

As a disclaimer: I don't watch Naruto. I went into this with the intention of passing on the contents of the box to friends who did. I have very little background knowledge about Naruto. 

So let's begin!

Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

TL;DR I'm still not ready to move on from The Lunar Chronicles

finished 2/4/16

AKA "Thank god Marissa Meyer announced the comic books because this probably would have killed me". 

As Stars Above contained some short stories that had already been published, I got through the book in about 24 hours. I still read the book end-to-end, but there were at least four short stories that I was already familiar with. 

I'm really glad to have Stars Above since I only have Cinder in paperback, meaning I didn't have copies to The Queen's Army or Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky (or The Little Android, but I don't know if that was included in one of the books or only released online). Now I don't have to worry about getting my hands on a paperback if I ever want to read them!

The new short stories are all so cute. And the prequel ones were slightly heartbreaking, since none of these kids ever managed to catch a break, even before the whole fiasco with Levana really started. Seeing everyone as small children was great and I wish that they all could've had bright and shiny childhoods, but y'know, they still turned out to be great adults. 

The epilogue was perfect. It was a really great way to wrap up the entire series, and I'm very content that the characters have all gotten happy endings after Winter. Even though I'm not personally ready to leave TLC behind, I have to admit that it couldn't have been wrapped up any better. 

I would like to see their lives after the epilogue, but I'm also content with knowing that they're moving on with their lives, and I'm hoping the comic books will give me a glimpse of it. 

I'm really excited for these comic books. This is the first series I've been actively interested in that's gotten a comic adaptation. (The Legend series got at least one, I think, but I've only encountered it once if that.) I'm really excited to see more of Iko in the spotlight. 

Stars Above also included a preview of Heartless, which is definitely helping me ignore the "my favorite series is over" feeling and dunking me straight into "NEW STORY!!" I'm really looking forward to how Marissa Meyer approaches an Alice in Wonderland prequel after TLC. I'm hoping for less "impending apocalypse" and more "internal struggles", but we'll see. I'm not gonna complain either way; I liked how TLC handled an impending apocalypse. 

TL;DR Stars Above made me realize that the TLC cast is ready to live their "happily ever after" and that I'm ready to see how Cath will handle what Meyer throws at her. I just gotta manage waiting until November. 

Dark Star by Bethany Frenette

TL;DR demons and superheroes in Minneapolis

TBR: <#100; added Jan 11, 2013

finished 2/1/15

My parents and I went on a trip to Alaska the week before I started junior year in 2013. This was our first major trip that I had my iPod Touch for, so I made as much of it as I could and got a few audiobooks and ebooks from my library. The only one I really ever touched was Dark Star. 

Unfortunately, I never got to finish the audiobook. I loved listening to it on the trip, but I struggle with being read to, and I fell asleep more than once and lost my place. My copy expired after two weeks and I had to wait well over a month to get it back--and by the time that had happened, school had started and I had no reason to sit still and try to focus to a disembodied voice. Our library didn't have a physical copy of the book and I was resigned to the fact I'd probably have to buy it.

But, of course, I couldn't find Dark Star at any bookstore by the time I figured I'd have to buy it for myself. I ended up waiting until after my 18th birthday and using a Visa gift card I'd gotten to order it off B&N's website. 

And then it sat for another four months before I picked it up. 

Amy Rubinate was a wonderful narrator. Her voice stuck with me even through those two years of waiting. I could hear her voice as I started reading Dark Star from the beginning. I actually made it to around the 200 page mark in the book over the course of our Alaska trip, which is about halfway through. I was really surprised by that! I had a hard time judging how much audiobook time converted to how many pages, and I figured I was still around the 30% mark by the time I conceded. 

I think listening to the audiobook first gave me a good impression of Audrey's voice in the book. I'm not sure I would have liked the narration as much had it not been for Amy Rubinate; I remembered enough of her voice that I was able to hear her voice and rhythm even after I passed the point I stopped listening. It was a nice experience to have an actual voice to match a character's narration to, instead of them sounding like my own inner voice. 

On to the book itself!

I don't think I've read anything with a similar concept to Dark Star before. I loved learning about the Kin and the Guardians and Harrowers and I feel like there's still so much that can be uncovered about them. The plot took a different route than what I expected, both when I started the audiobook and when I read past how far I'd listened. (This was probably because I only read the blurb once. There are some things I would tweak about the blurb having read the book now, but it functions well as it is.) 

I liked the fact that all the characters had human flaws--that Audrey was reckless in her good-intention attempts to save the day, that her mom Lucy had her reasons for keeping the truth from her, and that Iris and Elspeth had a bigger role than I anticipated at the point I stopped the audiobook. I wish that Gideon and Tink could have played bigger roles than they did, but the blurb for the next book suggests that Gideon's gonna catch up on the attention, so I'm looking forward to that. 

Part of the reason I like Audrey is that she had to face some consequences for her reckless decisions. I think she probably should've had a little more, but the adults around her (Lucy and Leon, really) called her out on her stupid moves, and like Lucy said, grounding Audrey didn't keep her from making the same decision again.  

I am also really grateful about how the romance played out! It was very subtle and had no influence on the plot whatsoever. I don't want to say too much but I'm so happy about this aspect. I feel like I'm too jaded from watching plots being overtaken by the romances and the heroines making stupid decisions out of love. Audrey never did that. I'm hoping that continues into the next book as well. 

 My only real complaint with Dark Star is mostly to do with a problem I created myself. Because I listened to Dark Star and the first Welcome to Night Vale podcasts while watching the Alaskan scenery, I associate Amy Rubinate and Cecil Baldwin's voices with mountains and pine trees and fog. And neither series has a setting like that. This association kept me from getting a good sense of Minneapolis as the setting of Dark Star. 

(I probably could have fixed this by looking at Google Maps while I was reading the paperback. That just now occurred to me. Whoops. I'm not sure if any of the locations that Audrey mentions are real or not.) 

TL;DR I'm really glad that I was finally able to finish this book! I've had a pretty long history with it and I'm honestly very glad to associate it with our trip to Alaska. Dark Star means a lot to me because of that. 

I listened to Dark Star's audiobook through the OverDrive app for iOS. I found the interface hard to use, but that might have been because of my library and having an iPod that Apple's forsaken for new ones. If you try it out, let me know what you think! I'm considering giving it a second chance now that I have a newer Android device that can support it. 

Blogging is Hard

I don't know what I did, but I threw myself out of my blogging groove in the past few weeks or so. This is the second time I remembered last-minute that I was supposed to have a post go up today.

So I figured I'd turn my complaining into the post that would go up, because I'm nowhere near done with any of the drafts I have saved.

And so is graphic design, but I think that deserves its own post someday.

I'm not promising this is going to make any sense. I'm tired and it's dreary outside and I'm trying to get this post up asap considering I started writing this post five hours after I was supposed to post something.