Divided

Above is my life approximately separated into 4 parts.
I wanted to draw each quarter in my art style at that phase, but I really only have 2 art styles (the ones one the bottom) so I just tried something different.
Sadly my scanner did a rather poor job when transferring this image, so my brown hair looks black, and some colours don't even show! But I will upload it again at a better quality later.

Elementary Enthusiasm — Between the ages of 1 and 7 I was a rather quiet and stubborn child, as far as I know. I was obedient but terribly shy. I don't remember too much of it, but one memory that really stuck to me is how once I got yelled at in kindergarden for not finishing my food, and the teacher seemed to be sitting on a giant throne. I guess I was aware of most adults' 'superiority' at quite a young age. I was in the gymnastics team in elementary school, and dropping out is one of my biggest regrets now. I remember I was always the game maker in the way that I created an entire universe of characters and concepts so my friends and I could play something interesting every time. My favorite colour was dark navy because I really liked Sonic the Hedgehog and he happened to be the same colour.

Challenging Changes — In 3rd grade I changed schools to BLIS (or BUPS, as it used to be called). This was quite difficult for me because my English wasn't so good, and I wasn't so good at making friends. But I studied hard with a teacher I still treasure now and we read books and wrote stories using new words I'd learnt. I guess she was who got me interested in writing, and for that I'm grateful. This part of my life, up to 7th grade, was full of changes in my personality and my interests. By the end of this phase I had a stable friend group and a set personality.

Foolish Fiascos — I made quite a lot of mistakes and bad choices here, but I do not regret them as they helped me become who I am now. In 7th grade I started making more friends, and had a quite happy life going (excluding the constant arguments I had with one of my good friends over silly things). We loved to go outside and run around forests playing capture the flag with wooden swords. Though this pretty much fell apart in 8th grade. I made new friends, but near the end of the year I made a huge mistake by pushing them away. 9th grade was a part of my life I really treasure because I made so many mistakes, but had so many learning opportunities from these. I was friends with the wrong person, I was a weak and gullible girl who still hoped to see the good in people. This caused me to be a bitter and angry person, and although I can dim these feelings down I am still a little resentful. The real fiasco in this 'era' made me push myself away from everybody and everything else. Though this alone time allowed me to truly understand myself, and be my own best friend. I also felt like relying on others would only end in disappointment, so if I did not trust somebody fully I would never, ever depend on them again.

Standing Up — This title does not have an alliteration, and I am not standing up in the picture, I'm crouching. But that's the whole point. This part of my life breaks away from the others. It's different, because I am much more aware of my actions and their effects. I have taken up art as my passion in life, and always found peace in it. This phase is called Standing Up because I am standing up for myself. I'm doing what I want to do (for the most part) and being honest with people. I am standing up for my opinions, my emotions, my personality, and everything else about me. I have accepted myself as a person with my good traits and my flaws, and made peace with everything. Yet one thing I can never stop doing is bottling things up, which is why I have a bottle of darkness, and probably will always carry one around.

The World is Full of Lies

The biggest lie I've been told until today:

I went to see 47 Ronin with Ezgi last Friday... and boy was it a disappointment.
So here are a few photos of the reason I wanted to watch this movie:

This photo above is of him removing make up put on him to hide his tattoos. 

This man, Rick Genest, has tattoos all over his body. He is a cancer survivor, and rather epic.
When I saw him on the promotional posters of the movie, I knew he'd be an interesting character.
There were four posters featuring different characters. This man was on one of them, so you'd think he's a rather main character.
I thought this movie would be epic, with superb character design and an interesting plot.
Now I won't say it was a disappointment all together (the female villain was awesome, and the story wasn't so cliche), but... this man, this man on the posters, had less than 1 minute of screen time. We saw him only once, and he said something I really don't recall in a cool accent, but that was it.
This is a terrible lie. Please don't do this again.

Update (I suppose)

Currently my life seems to be slipping out of my hands, too fast for me to grasp. I feel like my mind is being bombarded with peoples opinions, emotions, and many facts (most of them useless).
I did not make a post on New Year because it seems to have lost its value for me. Another year. So what? It is only a measure of time.
Time. Everybody is clawing at me, trying to take my time. Because they don't have enough themselves. All I want is time for myself. Not time for homework that shouldn't even be homework (seriously, what is class time for? I've noticed teachers aren't using classes that effectively this year...), not time for cleaning my room or doing chores, not time for yelling at adults because they do not understand me (and they can never understand me, because we belong in different timelines, and they cannot accept the fact that the world has moved on). I want time for myself. I want so much time that it's stupid to even try to measure it.
I don't want deadlines. I want to be able to relax when doing a task, and do my best instead of rushing it and doing a mediocre job.

Something interesting:
The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
This is basically a personality test which describes your personality in 4 words.
Mine (depending on a test I took online) is INFJ. My 4 words are:

• Introverted (quite extremely)
• Intuitive
• Feeling
• Judging

A description I liked of this personality type is "They like poetic justice." which is quite true. Also, they are artistic ( ;) ). INFJ is known as 'The Protector'. 

As I enjoy horoscopes (though I don't believe them) I enjoy personality tests as well, and this one is rather accurate, so I recommend people to take a free test just for the fun of it. 

I don't have much more to say. I'm sorry this was quite a random blog entry.

I will be posting much more content related to class next week. I did not post much in the holiday because I was angrily working on my comic (painting takes a long, long time) and oversleeping to waste half my day. 

Clinging to the Impossible

Here is my essay about the poem below and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. I finally typed it up, and didn't change anything except a spelling error near the end. 

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'I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon'

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

"It is futile," I said,

"You can never—"

"You lie," he cried,

And ran on.

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

   Stephen Crane's poem, "I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon", talks about a man trying to reach the horizon, ignoring the fact that it is an impossible task. The man accuses the narrator/poet of lying to him  when he is told that his mission is in vain. He truly believes he can reach the horizon, and this belief clouds his mind from the unfortunate, scientific truth. The world is round, and the man will run after his goal forever, never being satisfied.

   The first thing that I think of when I try to link this poem to the Bridge of San Luis Rey, is the Marquesa. Like the man in the poem, the Marquesa has a dream that makes everything else in her life lose importance. She pursues the love of her daughter. She is so obsessed with this imaginary bond she wants to have with her daughter that she ignores every single thing around her. She does not notice Pepita, how the public teases her, or how her maids steal from her house. And until she learns about Pepita's letter, she cannot be convinced that all she believes in is impossible, and she has to observe other things around her other than her daughter.

   Secondly, Uncle Pio comes to mind. His impossible dream revolves around the elegant Camila Perichole. Although their relationship is very complicated, Uncle Pio loves her in some way. He believes he has made Camila who she is, and I think he likes having control over such a great woman. He wants to please her, and be loved and respected by her, and have some sort of effect on her life at all times. He does not only run after her, but also what he thinks she could become. Even after the Perichole leaves to live in her own house far away from everything, he finds her and tries to talk to her, no matter how often she rejects him. He is worried because his connection with her is cut off. He cannot accept the fact that Camila wants to be her own person and make her own decisions, and therefore keeps running after her like a lost puppy.

   The poem could also relate to Esteban and Manuel. When Manuel's leg is infected, and Esteban has to apply the painful treatment procedure, they are both chasing the weak hope that Manuel will be alright. I don't think any patient would want to go through such pain, and no man would want to cause a loved one the torture, unless they truly believed the patient would make it through. This incident made them forget their bickering about Camila Perichole, and really concentrate on each other; two halves of a whole. And yet it was all a happy dream. The light of their hope was put out by the closing of Manuel's eyes, his eyelids like curtains being pulled across a stage at the end of a play named "Life and All My Dreams". 

   The biggest example of this is Brother Juniper. He believes that the people who died on the accident on the Bridge of San Luis Rey, were all meant to be there. He thinks it was done on purpose by God, and they were all fated to die there on that day. He believes in this so much that he spends years of his life researching the incident, writing a book about it, and later on being killed for his belief.

   All the characters in the book have this false hope, this "futile" goal they pursue, which corrupts them and their vision of the world. They are so obsessed with one light, that they can only see the starts after it is extinguished. They can never be satisfied as long as their faith in their ideas continues to block their view. They will forever run after their purposes unless they gain another one, like how the man in the poem will run on and on until his legs will not carry him. 

Review of the Desolation of Smaug

Dwarves, little men with hairy feet, rings, precious things, and dragons. Yes, I’m talking about Middle Earth. With the release of The Desolation of Smaug, we were brought back into this world of wonders once again.  

The Hobbit (aka. There and Back Again) is a novel by J.R.R. Tolkien published in 1937. Although it is a prologue of the famous The Lord of the Rings series, its first movie came out only last year. Though this was not a problem, because The Lord of the Rings really set the stage and introduced the audience to the vast universe of Middle Earth and gave us plenty of background information, while The Hobbit was much more specific as it concentrated on dwarves and hobbits.

The Desolation of Smaug was the second movie of the planned trilogy. It is an adaption of chapters 7 to 13.

The movie was impressive with all the beautiful and sometimes terrifying scenery, realistic make up and props, and how the mass of characters was handled (although I have to say I cannot possibly identify all the dwarves by name).

The Hobbit was originally going to be adapted into 2 movies, but it was later on decided that it would be another trilogy. Now this… created a slight problem. Does The Hobbit have enough content to make all of these 3 movies enjoyable? The Lord of the Rings was made into 3 movies, because the long story of 6 parts was separated into 3 books, each book being approximately 300-400 pages. But The Hobbit is only 1 book of 350 pages. The length of these movie adaptations might be a little too much for only one book, and even with extra stories added from Middle Earth lore, can seem forced. I think this was the biggest problem with The Desolation of Smaug. I was not satisfied at the end of the movie, and felt like someone had offered me a million dollars and then taken it back, saying “Sorry, you have to wait one year to get this!”. It was almost painful to exit the theatre knowing the exciting plot I hadn’t gotten to see. Also, The Hobbit is a book for children. It’s a mystery if it was ever meant to match the greatness of The Lord of the Rings.

The changes to the plot affected the movie for both the better and the worse. Sometimes I found I was extremely confused about things going on. The insertion of many side plots may make the last movie complicated and unclear, as it’s inevitable for the audience to forget many details in following year. The viewers might get distracted with all the different characters who weren’t originally in the book, and actually forget about one of the main characters: Thorin Oakenshield. Thorin’s personality didn’t seem to be a big focus, and this was quite disappointing. Though I quite enjoyed the events involving the female elf, Tauriel. I was quite happy to see a female hero saving all these bearded men and I believe many others are pleased to have a character they can relate to.

Something that was missing in the movie was all the poetry in the books. Bilbo and the dwarves sang plenty of songs that helped explain more of the story, and is a defining feature of Tolkien’s writing.

Overall, the movie was well paced and fun to watch. Although the end was a slight disappointment for people who had read the books, it was a clever cliffhanger that will keep everybody waiting eagerly for December 2014. I recommend it to anybody who likes fantasy and dragons. Especially dragons. Because Smaug was probably why I went to see the movie in the first place.