Camp Nano April 2015 Reflection

I won again this time! Even though I bumped my word count down 5k pretty early on, I still made the 25k mark by the end of the month! ( ᐛ )و

Yeah man, look at all that productivity at the end of the month B)

I reached the 20k mark on the 23rd (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

I didn't get as much written as I wanted to, and all but three days that I wrote were for Aperture, but it's still progress! I got some good ideas going and I decided that the first couple chapters I have of Aperture need re-written in order to be stronger. 

Part of the reason I worked almost exclusively on Aperture was the fact that I'm really stuck in Quinn's narration. Her narration is very close to how I think and speak to make it easier for me to write, but I've been developing her voice over the past year and a half and I find it hard to switch into a different perspective. The stuff I have for Eigengrau is kind of stiff so far, but I just haven't found Hanne's voice yet. 

I also reached the 100k mark for the year on April 30th! It's a little overwhelming to think about how many words I've written that won't make it into the final version of Aperture, but all of them are necessary to develop it in my mind. I often have to write scenes upwards of five times before I find the version that I like and that works seamlessly with the plot. 

Still, I'm super happy with my progress so far ♥ 

Earthbound by Aprilynne Pike

TL;DR entirely stereotypical paranormal romance complete with a stupid love V and a heroine with a questionable sanity

(finished 5/1/15)

So normally I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but there are some really frustrating things with Earthbound I'd like to get out of my system, so I'm breaking my rule and talking about the spoilers under the cut. 

If you don't want to see the spoilers, I'm sticking my final TL;DR up here: Earthbound was really underwhelming compared to what I expected. I don't think I'll keep my copy. 

Spring Photos

Our latest photography assignment was about nature, so I decided to share the pictures I took for it! All of these were taken in our yard. I took all of these with my HTC, and I'm still really amazed at how nice the quality is! I'm not gonna leave descriptions of the photos, but I'm gonna put most of them under a cut. 

Lack of Ace Representation in YA

I've been planning this post for a while. A couple months, at least, though it sat as a draft for about 98% of that time because I was trying to figure out how to get my thoughts together. This is gonna be a little long, but I feel like this needs to be said, so I'm not gonna hide it under a cut.

I have a scarf made to resemble the ace flag. It's my favorite thing.

A big part of YA is the romance. I understand that. I really love fluffy, summer-y romance books and I've gotta say that Percy and Annabeth from the Percy Jackson series trump my OTP list even higher than Usagi and Mamoru from Sailor Moon do. And that's really saying something.

Picking up book blogging and learning from the queer community has taught me something: I have found NO ace representation in the books I've read.

(If you want to know what asexuality is, try this website. It helped me realize that my "ew, physical aspects of romance" outlook wasn't just me being childish.)

The prevalence of queer books has grown even since I joined Goodreads back in my freshman year, and that's great! I love seeing less heteronormativity. We need more of it.

Unfortunately, I still don't see myself reflected in any books yet. Don't get me wrong, with the right book *cough* Cinder *cough* I can totally see why the love interests are perfect. Prince Kai and Captain Thorne are probably my most favorite love interests ever. Aside from Percy, of course. I think he and Kai are tied for first place.

But for the amount of times I've read The Lunar Chronicles books or any of the other series I consider "fluffy", I've seen three times as many books where all the female characters can think about is making out (or hell, going even further) with the guy they like.

And I don't understand that.

Let's talk about Life in Outer Space for a little bit. If I remember correctly, Sam didn't even realize he had a crush on Camilla until after halfway through the book, and I loved that! I got to see their relationship build up with them as friends first, so by the time he realized it, I was like "Yes!!"

And the Percy Jackson series though! Percy and Annabeth had so much room to grow together as friends, and seeing them written as a couple in the Heroes of Olympus half of the series is just like:

Like, why can't every romance be like theirs? 

So many books I've picked up have romance that builds up so quickly, especially with guys the narrators just met. Earthbound has a love triangle established within the first 50 pages -- one of the guys she's only known for less than a year, and the other one she hadn't even talked to at the point she thought she had a crush on him. This isn't something unique to Earthbound, either. I'm pretty sick of this trend at this point.

And the Lux series. I read the first two books because my friend loves the series, and I tried to give it a decent chance, but all those makeout scenes honestly put me off. I would've ditched the book at the first sign of their "romance" if it wasn't for my friend. (Honestly, I don't even know if their relationship can be defined by actual love, since they seem to hate each other's guts and are really only together because of their idiocy and mistakes they can't seem to fix because they're at--or in--each other's throats.)

I get that I'm not gonna see much representation of myself in books. Asexuals are only about 1% of the world's population, if I remember correctly. Honestly, I'm more than happy with books I've put on my fluffy shelf on Goodreads -- some of them are more chaste, some of them not, but it's not overflowing with unneeded sexual tension like the Lux series. The Lunar Chronicles and the Percy Jackson series have given me so much more than the standalone books on my fluffy shelf have, and I could probably write a blog post in and of itself just talking about those two couples. All the couples in both The Lunar Chronicles and Percy Jackson series focus more on the characters' relationships rather than how they interact physically with each other, and I love that to no end.

I just want to find more books that focus on the characters and the relationship itself rather than "His lips look so kissable. I want to eliminate the space between us." I'm not kidding, quite a few books I've read have used those lines. (Not together. I condensed the narrators' inner monologues.)

I want more books that focus on the fluffy parts of dating someone, whether it's being happy to see their face in the morning or sassing them in the form of sarcasm or however else they show their affection.

I know the chances of me finding actual ace representation is slim to none, but I want more books where I can feel the same feelings as the narrator and not make faces at the page because all they do when they're together is make out. Or think about making out.

And I have made faces at books (while I'm in class!) because the characters got physical.

I just want more books where I don't have to make faces at them for that.

Maryland Day 2015

Last Saturday was Maryland Day, which is basically a huge open campus day at UMD where they show off a whole bunch of cool stuff. Mom said this was our 16th year going to it, which is kind of impressive.

We didn't do much this year that was different than the previous years except for going to see the science and tech stuff. I was more interested in the robotics stuff because that's our current unit in Computer Science, though I've missed a couple days of the lessons and am completely lost on what's going on;; Still, I keep saying I want to be the next Honey Lemon, so I capitalized on my chance to look at some stuff hands-on. (One of the guys that led the tour for the engineering building even looked like Tadashi.) My cousins and I got to do a laser obstacle course, which was actually really fun. They set it up to be exactly like you would expect, complete with the Mission Impossible theme playing on loop and a warning buzzer if you touched one of the laser beams.

Somehow the line for ice cream was never that long! I ended up getting ice cream twice since the line was down to nothing the second time I passed by it;; (My family talked me into it. I wouldn't have gotten a second serving otherwise.)

I usually just get strawberry, but I decided to try the vanilla one, too. I grabbed the strawberry one the first time because it was almost overfilled, and then I regretted having basically just ice cream in my stomach;; And then I ended up eating more! Not the best decision. 

We did a paper airplane contest from the portico of one of the libraries and I won somehow! My airplane went like twice the distance of everyone else's, and I almost hit someone;; A guy walking by ended up hitting my paper airplane out of the air, and I think they kept it ;o; I kind of wanted to keep it ...

 

I was on the far right of the balcony with the sign on it, and I took the picture from about where it had landed. I think the perspective got a little skewed with the camera, but it went so much further than I expected it to. I also took a picture of the directions they gave us if you guys wanna try it at all!

I ended up not really getting any free stuff. All I came home with was an origami bookmark, a pair of sunglasses, and the "Official Terp Get It Done Guide", all of which I'm pretty sure I own already from last year. And I think maybe a pencil. I think it balances out all those years I came home with twenty million pens and flyers.