Birthday Bash

“Happy Birthday to you.(cha cha cha) Happy Birthday to you.(cha cha cha) Happy Birthday dear Weekly Rambles. Happy Birthday to you~ (cha cha cha~)”

Yay! Today is Weekly Rambles’ first Birthday! (Well, technically tomorrow, but I’m not going to postpone a ramble for the sake of posting it on its Birthday). And while I’m pretty happy that I’ve been able to stick to this for so long (this is #41) I’m even happier that “RE:Inspiration; Titan III” is nearing completion, but more on that later. Today’s ramble is going to be a bit short and mostly about Titan, but there will be (as always) a Song of the Week, chosen appropriately for today’s special occasion! Let’s get to it!

 

First off, some non-Titan news. Last week I rambled about a new project that I got involved in and since then it has -more or less- been decided that I will do most (if not all) of the writing. We’ve been slowly working on our details and I think we have a goal for our characters to work towards so we can start building the plot.

For the past couple of days I’ve been working on designing the city that our story takes place in. I even created our main character’s apartment in great detail, to which one of my co-creators laughed. I’m still having a lot of fun working on this and unless someone else decides to give-up first, I’m on this train until it reaches the station!

 

And last weekend I picked up another project to get involved with! Who knows why or when, but apparently my sister recently started writing a story of her own and last Sunday night she texted me out of the blue asking if I could look over it for her. So I agreed. It’s rough and needs some work, but her story (as a whole) isn’t bad.

 

And I left that last ramblegraph off sort of oddly because it continues into this one! So she asked me to help her and in return I asked her to help me with Titan. She agreed. So on Wednesday I sent her the finished version of “RE:Inspiration; Titan III”. She’ll look over it, edit it and help me work out any wonky details (I really hope there aren’t any, considering how much time I’ve spent on it) and hopefully we’ll be done with all the editing (which also means that T3 will be ready for you guys) by mid-March! Yay!

And while I rush to bring this Birthday Ramble to an end I turn to my trusty coin to see who I ramble about today. For the past few rambles I’ve been rambling a bit about some of the characters that appear in “RE:Inspiration; Titan” and today I’m torn between two characters, so I’ve decided to flip a coin to choose for me. Heads is Fen Mao or Kitty as some people call her. Tails is Geannina “Doll” Chatsworth. Let’s see who I get to ramble about today! (Flips coin off-screen)

Tails it is!

So today I’m going to ramble a bit about Geannina. Ever since I created her character, Geannina has played an important role in almost every story she’s been storycrafted into. It’s almost part of her nature to be the center of events. She is practically the definition of the word meek. In “Titan” she is seemingly-overly-concerned for Jacobi, but that’s really just the way she is. It may be a bit of a spoiler (not really considering the fact that I’ve already said that she plays a big part in any story she’s in) but you can expect to see quite a bit of story focused on Geannina in “Titan IV”. And for now I’ll leave the rest of her secrets just as they are: secrets.

For anyone who is interested in reading “Titan” you can download both parts 1 and 2 for free from Smashwords.com.

And finally a great big Happy Birthday to Weekly Rambles!

 

Anywho, as always if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Also, if you have a character that you’d like me to talk about in the next ramble you can tell me via any of the ways stated above. pyoro~n

Wise No More

Wise no more, yes, that I am. As you probably noticed, there was no Weekly Ramble last week, but fear not, it did not go missing or anything of the like. No, last week’s ramble was skipped because I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth pulled. I was going to say something in the previous ramble about my little trip to the dentist, but it completely slipped my mind once I started getting into it. But today it’s back to business as usual. So I’ve got a new project that I’m involved in with a few buddies of mine, and I’m going to ramble a bit about that today, then I’m going to share a few videos that I’ve come to like recently (MMD vids for those of you who know it) and before the end I’ll probably share some more information about another “Titan” character and there’ll be, as always, a new Song of the Week.

 

It was a few weeks back when my pals and I were joking around in the chatroom that we frequent, we somehow got on the subject of making our own story. At first it started out whimsical and whatnot, a joke of sorts, but as we continued playing with the idea it somehow occurred to us that this might actually happen. This could really become a thing! And so for the past couple of weeks we’ve been slowly building our story from the ground up. We’ve got a few characters developed, a simple setting that we are working on expanding and something that could possibly be turned into a plot, if handled with enough care. At times it is a bit difficult for us to get stuff done seriously, we do seem to get sidetracked a lot, but I think that in time we just might get something we can work with.

And I’ve got to say, working on a group project like this is a ton of fun! Discussing how our characters act, what they look like and what they provide for the story is a blast. There’s something about bouncing ideas off of other people and making stuff work that isn’t there in solo writing. As I’ve said before, we’re still working on the big details so we’re miles away from anything solid yet, heck, we don’t even know what roles we’re going to play in creating this thing, other than coming up with ideas.

 

And now for some videos, yay! First up is a MikuMikuDance video of Ahri (and a few other LoL characters) dancing along to the ever-so-famous “Gangnam Style”

Next we’ve got Miku Append singing and dancing along with GLaDOS to “Still Alive”

 

And finally this is a song I just heard for the first time last night. This one is called “Perfume” and features the Append models of Hatsune Miku, Akita Neru and Kasane Teto.

 

 

Yes, yes. MMD can look so awesome if done well. But enough of that! Now I’m going to introduce/talk about another character from the “RE:Inspiration; Titan” series. Today’s character doesn’t play a very large role in the happenings of “Titan” but he is someone that I’ve wanted to talk about for a while because he was used as the basis for a character of mine who goes by the name of Allen Maxwell. If you’ve been a long-time reader you might remember Allen from the little Christmas story I threw together back in 2011 (WHAT!?!? It was that long ago?). When I created Allen, who was next in line to inherit the title of Santa Claus, I decided that he should have a special skill (he was a Wizard after all). And while I was thinking of skills that a Santa Claus might wield I somehow found myself looking at an old character of mine: Devon Hastings. Devon has always been part of my cast for the story called “Eleven” and ever since I came up with him he’s had the same special ability, the power to warp space around him. Devon, or Slick as he’s more commonly referred to, can warp the space around his body, which allows him to move around with ease, even in a crowded place. He can even fit through small passages that people might otherwise not be able to fit.

And so I decided to “borrow” Slick’s ability for Allen, after all, Santa can somehow squeeze through chimneys and stuff. I had planned to continue Allen’s story as he traveled the world, but he somehow how put on the back-burner. But Slick’s story is just beginning, or will be just beginning when I start the “NEw” series. For now though, I need to focus on what is on my plate at the moment, namely “Titan III”. T3 is on the final stretch of its writing phase, one or two more scenes and it’ll be ready for revisions, edits and finally: publishing. But until it is finished all I can do is thank any and all of you who have read either of the first two “Titan” short stories and ask that you wait just a bit longer for the next part.

 

For anyone who is interested in reading “Titan” you can download both parts 1 and 2 for free from Smashwords.com.

You can just click on that link to go straight to my profile ^.

 

And that’s the end of the road for this ramble. Before I get out of here, I’ll leave you with this week’s Song of the Week: “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons

 

Anywho, as always if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Also, if you have a character that you’d like me to talk about in the next ramble you can tell me via any of the ways stated above. pyoro~n

Late But Not Forgotten

Somehow Friday snuck up on me this week. But that’s not such a bad thing. Part of why the week seemed to fly by is because I’ve been hard at work, both with work and with “RE:Inspiration; Titan III”. It could be due to last week’s normal-size ramble or because of the Archive project that I started, but either way my productivity on “Titan III” sky-rocketed compared to the past few weeks. But enough about that for now, let’s get to rambling, shall we? Today I think I’ll ramble about a few random things, like World of Warcraft Pet Battles and up-coming anime releases and then I want to ramble about “Titan” because it’s still a work in progress but I don’t want people to forget about it. So let’s hop to it:

 

Last weekend I spent most of my freetime playing World of Warcraft, which is something that I don’t really do anymore (play for long periods of time, that is). Over said weekend I accomplished quite a bit in the way of Pet Battles. For one, I got my 500th pet. 500! Wow! I also unlocked the Pristine Pet Trap by leveling 25 pets to level 25. And while I no longer need to catch pets for quantity, I still need to catch them for quality. You see, the pets are ranked in three different ways: Family, Breed and Quality. The family is based on the type of pet. For instance, my Fox Kit, Elsie, is a Beast because foxes are large animals. My Darkmoon Rabbit, Fluffeh, is a critter because rabbits are smaller animals. In total there are ten pet families: Beast, Critter, Humanoid, Dragonkin, Flying, Aquatic, Magic, Mechanical, Undead and Elemental.

The second way the Battle Pets are sorted is by quality. Quality determines how many points your pet has to spend between the three Pet Battle stats: Health, Power and Speed. The higher quality a pet is (Poor, Common, Uncommon or Rare) the more points they have to allocate between the three stats. This leads to the third way that the Battle Pets can be ranked and that is by breed. I only recently started learning about the breed system, but basically each different pet type (i.e. Fox Kit, Darkmoon Rabbit, Fluxfire Feline, etc.) has certain breeds that they can come in. The Darkmoon Rabbit, for example, can come in three different breeds: H/S, S/S and B/B. These stand for, respectively, Health/Speed, Speed/Speed and Balanced/Balanced. What this means is that even though my opponent and I both have the same pet, the Darkmoon Rabbit in this instance, our pets aren’t necessarily evenly matched because they can have different breeds.

The breed of the pets is determined by how their stat-points are allocated. A pet with an S/S/ breed will be really fast, which means your pet attacks first, but will have lower than average health and power. A Power/Power (P/P) pet will hit like a truck, but is also potentially squishy when it comes to taking damage. Health/Health pets are good for taking damage, but when it comes to dealing damage they don’t excel. And finally (even though there are many breeds it’s mostly self-explanatory) the Balanced/Balanced pets have their stats all equally allocated, meaning they are like a jack-of-all-trades in pet battles.

 

Anime! Last time I rambled about the currently airing anime and now I’m going to ramble about anime that will soon be released on DVD and/or Blu-ray in North America. As any long-time readers would know, I like to collect anime (evidence in the old feature called Semajj’s Bookshelf) and that hasn’t changed. In these up-coming months there are quite a few series coming out that I’m pretty excited for. Later this month the sequel to Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, will be released and, even though it’s quite expensive, I’ll be picking it up when it comes out. There’s also the Sora no Otoshimono movie and Tiger and Bunny (part 1) that will be released this month, both of which I’m happy to finally add to my collection. Further in the future I’m really looking forward to the K-ON! movie, Acchi Kocchi (woot!), Kids on the Slope and the second parts of Penguindrum, Fate/Stay Night and Bodacious Space Pirates. I’m especially happy for Acchi Kocchi (Place to Place) getting a release; it’s such an awesome show!

 

Okay, okay let’s talk “Titan”. While “Titan III” is taking quite a while to get finished (which is really an understatement “Hurry the heck up, Semajj!”) but it’s quite a bit longer than “Titan II” which was twice as long as “Titan”. But just because “Titan III” will be more than three times as long as the original, it’s not really an excuse to be taking this long. So I figured I’d talk about some of my characters while I make you guys wait for the real deal.

Today I’m going to talk about the little furry member of Jacobi Myles’ crew: Charlie. Charlie is a unique character, not only because he’s a monkey, but also because he is the only known biological artificial intelligence in the “Titan” universe. And while his A.I. technology is far less-superior than that of the A.I.s on the Windsor (Avast, Bolt and Jolt), he is still far better at computing than people are. Another thing that separates Charlie from the likes of normal A.I.s is the fact that Charlie has a personality, whereas most other A.I.s operate just like a computer would.

Charlie’s character originated years back, he was originally a side-kick to the hero of the jungle, Monkey Man. As a side note, Monkey Man wasn’t an ape-like-man like Tarzan; he was just a talking monkey. The “man” part came from conventional super-hero naming; Spiderman, Batman, Superman, etc…man. The Charlie of the “Monkey Man” universe wasn’t a cyborg/A.I. like the new Charlie, but the concept of the character remains the same. Due to time constraints (and laziness) I won’t set a link, but if you’ve got the time and are interested, you can Google or wiki the Golden Lion Tamarin to see, more-or-less, what Charlie is based off of.

I don’t really know what else to say here, without spoiling stuff, but hey you now know more about Charlie than you did!

 

And that’s it. I’m out of here!

Song of the Week: “Sonna Koto Ura no Mata Urabanashi Deshou?” by Megumi Nakajima.

 

Anywho, as always if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Also, if you have a character that you’d like me to ramble about next time you can tell me via any of the ways stated above. *happyface*

Go, Go Ramble-Rangers!

It’s been decided! Today I will try to do a full-size ramble. Just like the old days. I say try because as of late not only have I been lacking motivation to write these, I’ve also been lacking in topics to ramble about. I always feel that I ramble about the same things over and over again, which is probably true, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing. No one has complained to me yet. Anywho, today I’ll ramble about anime, games, real life events and my own creative writing (including, but not limited to Titan). I’ll also have a new song of the week for you to listen to!

 

Okay, okay! First thing is first: anime! It’s about four weeks into the Winter 2013 season so I decided I’d take some time to ramble about some of the awesomer shows that I’m watching. For the continuing shows, as in shows that were running before the start of this season, I’d have to say that Fairy Tail is still on top. But there are quite a few other shows that never seem to disappoint either, such as Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyodai) and Hunter x Hunter, both of which have been running for a while now too. There’s also Shirokuma Café, but that kinda feels like a “fluff” show for me. Then we have shows like Robotic’s;Notes, Psycho Pass and Zetsuen no Tempest, which are continuing from last season. All of which are great shows.

The winter 2013 season has a couple sequel series that I’m pretty excited about too. Probably the best show, and the one I’m most excited about this season, is Chihayafuru 2, a continuation of Chihayafuru. And then there’s Haganai (Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai) NEXT, which is another series that I’m happy to see more of.

And then there are the new shows. The list is quite long, so I’ll only talk about a few. GJ-bu just might be my favorite show this season, especially since Kirara is probably my favorite character this season. (I don’t generally play the “favorites” game, but Kirara is just plain awesome). Another good one is Mondaiji tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru soudesuyo? (which is quite a mouthful, so I just call it bunnies). Kuro Usagi, one of the main characters of Bunnies, is a close second for awesomest character of the season. You know, there just aren’t that many bunny-people out there, I think we could use more characters like Kuro Usagi, don’t you?

Maoyu and Kotoura-san are the last two that I’m going to ramble about. Maoyu reminds me of Spice and Wolf, and to be honest, it’s a nice change of pace compared to a lot of the shows that have been coming out recently. I think it’s funny how none of the characters have names, just titles. “Maou” or “Hero” or “Mage” heh. And finally Kotoura-san. This show, I just don’t know how to classify it. It’s cute, it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s… it’s I don’t know. It’s just a good show!

 

Games. Hmm, I still play games, aye. But not so much as I used to, I don’t think. I only log into World of Warcraft to tend to my farm and to train my Battle Pets, although I’m going to have to level a character on a different server in order to obtain two rare pets, so that’ll be a big time-sink. In related news, I’ve been able to catch every wild Battle Pet currently available in the game! There is one pet that only spawns in the summer, so I have to wait for that to get my “Zookeeper” title, and I’m sure that there will be a few new wild pets in the up-coming patch. But right now, at this moment, I have every wild Battle Pet. Yay me!

The other game I’ve recently picked up is League of Legends. I’m still not that great at it, but recently my skills as Sona seem to have increased quite a bit. I’m also not too bad with Ahri, but if I’m looking to do awesome, I tend to choose Sona.

 

Let’s see here, real life events, huh? Well the first thing that comes to mind is a Superbowl party that I’m going to this weekend. I’m not an American Football fan (or a normal Football fan, heck I’m not a sports fan at all), but my sister invited me over to watch the game, have pizza and partake in all those “game-day” activities.

Thinking farther into the future though, all I can really see is Anime Expo. Anime Expo! It’s still six months away, but I’m still pretty excited for it. I’ve already started saving up money for this year’s convention and I’m going to start looking for suitable room-mates soon, seeing as the Housing just opened on the AX website last night.

I don’t think that any Anime Expo will be able to trump my first Anime Expo, heck I got to see Hatsune Miku live! But that doesn’t mean that going to an Anime Expo without being able to see Miku live isn’t any fun. It’s still a blast! Hmm, I wonder what kind of stuff I’m going to buy this year. Ah, I’m so excited~

 

Lastly (but not quite last, because there’s still the closing statements and whatnot) is me rambling about my writing. Sure I can tell you that the final draft of “Titan III” is over half-way finished (content wise) but that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today I want to ramble about a new project that I started yesterday. Up until recently whenever I got an idea (be it an expansion of an existing idea, or a new idea) I’d open a document that I called “Story Info” and jot the idea down.

While reading though this giant list (over 20 pages long, single spaced, size 11 Arial) I found quite a few inconsistencies between old info and new info. So I decided to make a super-organized spread-sheet for all of my ideas. I’m still not too familiar with how Excel works, but I’ve created pages for characters, races, abilities and a few other categories. I’d like to find out how to have each cell, when clicked, redirect to a detailed explanation of whatever it was that the cell contained, but I’m not quite sure if that is possible with Excel.

Another, not-unrelated, thing that I’ve ran into is names of some of my characters. Mainly a character who was once named Semajj. I’ve decided to change his name because I’ve been using the name Semajj as an online alias for quite some time now and having his name be the same as my online alias just seemed…odd. So now I’ve got to find a suitable replacement name for him, which might be tough because he’s been a character of mine for quite some time. Oh well, I’ll worry about that when he show up, which isn’t for quite some time.

 

And now we’re at the end. But before we go (and before I forget) here’s this week’s Song of the Week:

 

That was “Kitty” by The Presidents Of The United States Of America. Anywho, as always if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow-meow~

Lots of Hellos

Hello, hello, hello. Today's going to be another short ramble, but it's still a ramble and that's a good sign! So let's just get to it, yes?

Concerning my motivation game: I haven't set the rules and whatnot in stone yet, so not too much to report on that. Well, other than the fact that it's still a work in progress.

Concerning my actual motivation: It seems that I was somehow able to rid myself of the ickyness that was hangin' around last week and I've been able to make progress in several different areas in my life where I seemed to have been stuck for the past few weeks.

Concerning "RE:Inspiration; Titan III": It is also a work in progress, but the final draft is coming along nicely. I've often thought about going back on my word and making "Titan" a three parter again, thus making "Titan III" much easier to end, but I'm not going to do that. I like what I have planned for "Titan IV" even if that's all we're going to see of "Titan" and its characters for a while. If you recall, I once said that after I finish the "Titan" stories I'm going to start working on "NEw". I'll probably start with a fun little story, just to get used to writing the main character a bit more, but the full thing is here (in my head) and I do plan on getting it done sooner rather than later.

Concerning this ramble: I think I'm about done with my report for this week (lol) so I'm probably going to wrap things up for now (I've got stories to tell elsewhere!). Let's see... How about "Hello" by Martin Solveig and Dragonette (at least I think that's the correct band/group name) accompanied by a K-On! amv:

Anywho, this is as far as this train will be going so, as always, if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. "I found it on the twitters!"

Because I Can

Last week's ramble was short, this is true, but I fear that this week's ramble will be even shorter! I seem to be stuck in a rut. I don't know why but lately I've been feeling very unmotivated and thus my motivation to ramble is very, very low. So here's the deal: I'm going to ramble on for just a bit longer today and next week we'll know if I've found my motivation again. How? Well if I've found my motivation I'll write a ramble, but if I haven't found it I don't think the chances of my rambling are very high.

Do you remember the "game" that I used to play? The one where I gave myself tasks to complete each day? Well I'm bringing it back (for reals this time). The rules will be different and the tasks will have changed, but the game itself will be based on the same idea. I haven't completed my list of tasks, nor my list of rewards, but I have started doing certain tasks just to help get this game off the ground. One big thing is spending, I'm really going to limit how much money I allow myself to spend freely, instead I'll gain money through successfully completing tasks every week. (I'm greedy and money is motivation for me!)
I'll ramble about the whole set of rules and the reward system when I get there and hopefully that'll be next week, but only time can tell.

And that's that. I'm signing off here. Oh wait, here, listen to this:

Good song... good song, aye. Anywho: as always if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Pyon~ pyon~ pyon~

The New Year "Bleh"s

Hello and welcome to the first Weekly Ramble in 2013. I should start off by saying two things: “Happy New Year” and “I’m not in a rambly mood today”. There are various reasons that contribute to the “bleh” mood that I am in, one of the greatest reasons is my continued procrastination (and other troubles) with “RE:Inspiration; Titan III” but I’ll save that for later. Other than more excuses about why “Titan III” isn’t finished yet, I’ll tell you a story about a story that I wrote and I’ll probably keep it short. So let’s get to it:

 

As you probably already know: “RE:Inspiration; Titan III” is still a work-in-progress. I planned on using my time off of work to put on the finishing touches over the holidays, but a surprise visit from my sister turned those plans upside down. In other words, I’m still workin’ on it. It’ll be done when it’s done. I’m sure if you’ve read both parts one and two you’d agree with me when I say: “I’m fine with this taking as long as it needs to become a good story, part one was rushed and I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

In other, other words I don’t have an ETA for “Titan III”. It’ll be done when it’s done. No sooner and, hopefully, no later.

 

And while you all agree with each other that you aren’t surprised that I’m taking forever and a day finishing this, I can point you to an old story (or fan-fic mash-up thing) that I wrote when I was in middle school: Ninja Chronicles. The reason I bring up Ninja Chronicles is because last season there was an anime called “Chunibyo demo Koi ga Shitai!” and a main theme throughout the show is a “disease” that they call “chunibyo” or “adolescent delusions”. And just like Yuta once believed himself to be the Dark Flame Master, I once had the delusion that being a ninja was possible (without years of training from an actual dojo and whatnot). Sure it is largely based on Naruto because Naruto was a big thing back then, but it is set in a future world where my friends and I are the main characters. As a side note I think it’s pretty funny that the last arc that I wrote in Ninja Chronicles consisted of an army of zombies (hint-hint nudge-nudge).

Anywho, when I was in middle school I was a ninja, my friends were ninjas and I kept track of our adventures. I wrote Ninja Chronicles as a weekly e-mail story and after 16 chapters I decided to re-do the entire thing to make it an actual story and blah blah blah, it got shelved.

So just for fun, if you don’t mind middle-school writing-level writing, I welcome you to see who I was when reality was a bit too difficult to deal with.

 

 

And now it’s time for a song and a farewell. This week’s Song of the Week, the first Song of the Week in 2013, is “Midlife Crisis” by Disturbed. Enjoy:

 

Once again, that was “Midlife Crisis” by Disturbed. That’s all I’ve got for you today, so as always if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Pyon~ pyon~ pyon~