Fanfiction and Heroes

So...
I'm supposed to be writing a mystery story, or drawing, or cross stitching, or something like that.

Instead, Trigun was like, "I OWN YOUR SOUL!"

I've been writing fanfiction. 

Oh, and, I might, maybe, kind of, might have started a tumblr... for Trigun.  Tumblr seems to be the only place that the fans are active at all (it is kind of an old show, after all), so I broke down and got an account in the name of fan interaction.  I won't bore you with the details of either venture, as it would only make me sound like the ridiculous fangirl that I am.

Writing fanfiction is kind of interesting, though.  For a long time, I always viewed it as cheating.  The characters, or the setting, or both, are already provided, so fanfiction was the "easy" way out.  I held nothing against those who wrote or read it, I just felt that if I was going to take the trouble to write something, I didn't want to "cheat."  I would, occassionally, write a little fanfiction myself, but it was always boredom writing and nothing that I took seriously.  Then I started coming up with fanfiction ideas that I thought were really pretty good.  They were good enough that I wanted to write them and do a good job.  I had to sit down and have a serious talk with myself about whether or not this was acceptable behavior.  I decided it was okay to have ideas, as long as I didn't take the ideas seriously enough to actually write them down.  Which is sort of like saying it's okay to keep a lit cigarette in your mouth as long as you don't inhale.  It's a ridiculous thing to say.  Last weekend I finally inhaled.

Geez, I feel like I'm confessing a terrible decline in morals!  It's only fanfiction!  It's not even the dirty kind!  The romance is heterosexual and G-rated, okay!?

But it feels weird to be writing something and thinking, "Is it okay that he said that?  Is that out of character?" and, "Wait, I think I need to double check that.  Which volume of the manga was that in?"

Once it's finished, I may post it online somewhere.  Don't know yet.

 ---

On a different note, I'm going to take a moment to write about something a bit cathartic.  It's been on my mind.

I wish when I was a kid, someone had told me that it was okay to pick fictional characters as your hero.

I always dreaded having to write about my hero in elementary school.  I didn't have one.  There was no single person that I idolized in any way.  I would make something up about my mom or dad being my hero.  I do love both of them, but I didn't idolize them.  I was jealous of the kids who could write things like, "I love basketball, so Micheal Jordan is my hero," or "My uncle is in the army, so he's my hero."  Maybe I've just lived a life that's too boring and sheltered to be attached to anyone cool enough to be my hero.  It didn't even occur to me that I was allowed to write "The Animorphs," or anything like that.  Real people listed real people as their hero.  Only the total dweebs ran around saying they wanted to be batman when they grew up.

Once I got into high school, though, I started doing this thing, occasionally, where I would try channeling a fictional character in order to get a confidence boost.  I remember walking through the high school and thinking about Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.  I would remember that he was called "Strider" because he was long-legged and took long steps.  I would lengthen my stride just a little, walking down the halls of the high school.  That was enough to give me a little boost.  There was one day, while I was working summers during college, when I was having a bad day at work.  I started pretending to myself that I was a Time Lord  (um, Time Lady?) who was just pretending to be a normal human.  Working at a retail store was just part of the guise.  I didn't even bother explaining to myself why I needed to pretend to be a human.  I was a Time Lord.  That was all that mattered.  And one of the reasons I'm so infatuated with Trigun is because some of the characters were the right thing at the right time for me.  That's a really long story, but I've definitely channeled Trigun before.

I recently read about a study which had some surprising results on how fictional characters effect self esteem.  You can read it here, but I'll summarize for you.  Some people wanted to know if men's self esteem was hurt by seeing buff guys in pop culture, similar to the way women's self esteem can be hurt by seeing skinny women on TV.  They showed pictures of comic book super heroes to college age men, and then asked them to rate their happiness, give their view of their body, and take a small strength test.  Guys who had an emotional attachment to the characters they were shown, outranked the rest in all three categories.  So, thinking about a fictional character that you love boosts your self confidence and can even make your physically stronger.

How awesome is that?

I admit, the results might be just the same if a person were shown a picture of a real life person that they looked up to, but that doesn't really matter.  What matters is that the dweeby kid running around saying he wants to be Batman when he grows up is doing himself just as much good as someone with a real person that they look up to, and probably more good than I did for myself, resigning myself to a hero-less childhood.

So if I were asked as an adult to write about someone who was my hero, I would probably end up writing about someone like Doctor Who.  And I would be totally okay with that.

Peace Out, gang!

Cross Stitching

I've been cross stitching for the past week or so.  Unfortunately, I'm only about a quarter of the way done with it, and I'm restless.  I knew it would be time consuming, but I underestimated just how time consuming it would be.  Or perhaps I overestimated my attention span.  I plan on keeping what I have in case I decide to come back to it later, but for now, I think I'm going to set it aside.

Here's the story, though.

I never would have considered cross stitching, since, to me anyway, it holds the stereotype of being an activity that is only done my one of two types of people: old ladies, and Victorian ladies.  Since I am neither, it wasn't an option.

But one day I stumbled on a little crafting niche of cross stitching geeky stuff, like these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22085563@N06/

http://miloceane.deviantart.com/art/Cross-stitch-Yellow-s-Pikachu-275035689

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stopsign/3282603064/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krupptastic/3487964783/in/set-72157614432044697/

I thought, "Hey!  That's cool!  Maybe if I'm cross stitching something that I really like, it could be fun."  I decided to give it a try.  After much pondering, I decided to cross stitch the four elemental symbols from the series "Avatar: The Last Airbender."  This was good because a) I'm in love with that show, and b) I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy cross stitching, so I could start with just one symbol, and if I liked it, I could do the rest.

I started with the air symbol.  I've a fondness for air out of the elements of the show, because air benders are pacifists and avoid direct conflict, and that's me in a nutshell.

Since airbenders wear orange, I grabbed orange thread for a background (and that left blue reserved for water, if I got that far).  The thread changes colors down it's length from orange to yellow and back, so I thought that would look cool.  For the symbol and a border, I grabbed a very dark brown, rather than black.  I don't like using straight black much in art.  I feel like true black is somehow sort of lifeless.  I'll frequently mix it with brown or dark blue to make it either a "warm" black or a "cool" black, and that feels more comfortable in an image to me.

Anywho, I had to make my own pattern, which was a bit of a task, and involved graph paper and drawing, erasing, and redrawing little X's over and over again until I was satisfied.

This is how far I got in a week.  It's about a quarter of the background, and you can see where I intend to put in the spirals when the background is complete.

(This is about three inches across, or about thirty stitches.)

I've learned a lot from this past week.  I learned about cross stitch fabrics, and how to secure the end of your thread without trying a knot.  I learned different ways of making your own cross stitch pattern, and that cross stitch thread comes in more colors than Skittles.  And I learned that cross stitching isn't really my thing, and that's okay.

I consider myself always in a bit of flux.  I'm always learning new things about myself, and about what I like and what I don't like, and how I feel about different things.  I tend to roam from one type of art or craft to another, and sometimes I think it would be better if I just picked one thing and stuck to it.  But then I would stop learning about myself.

Here's to hoping that someday I will actually finish this.

Peace out, guys!