Shiny

Working on a piece for my friends' wedding:

The colors are still in progress, but as you can imagine there is a lot of PINK involved...

Lil' Scoobies' Joyful Days

I was feeling full of holiday spirit and nostalgia today.  Thus this:

Yes, I made the joke you think I did up there in the upper right corner.

(For those not as steeped in all things Buffy, I apologize.) (Not really.)

Doing the Best You Can With What's Been Broken

I think it is fairly well established that, in the Buffyverse, Willow is my favorite.  We have stuff in common.

Yesterday the new Willow miniseries hit shelves, and of course I scooped it up.  Thus today we have doodles like this:

(She's levitating, not just standing weird.)

Fray

Certain developments in Angel & Faith have got me re-reading Fray:

A girl and her Scythe.

I do so love a story that rewards the patient reader- and eleven years is a long damn time to be patient...

Freak

I have been watching a lot of Angel, lately- for the first time, if you can believe it (well, first time for the seasons beyond 2)- which means I've been encountering new and exciting characters:

Such as Gwen Raiden

I probably put waaay too much time into the color for this little rough-pen-doodle, but you know what?  I like it.  And nothing is so good for doing nifty art things as procrastinating the doing of other, more pressing things, sooo... it was sort of inevitable?

Hairy Situations

Today's WOD:

"My Buddy and Me"

4x
One person runs 200m while the other does a wall sit. One round is when each person has done each movement.  (penalty:  if you cannot hold the wall sit until your partner returns, you must do ten squats before starting your run- while your partner holds their wall sit)

-Then-

As a team, complete 200 Sit Ups. One person holds a plank position while the other does sit ups. Split them up however you like. (We chose to switch off every 25 sit ups)

 -Then-

5 Lengths of Burpee Leap Frogs  (This link gives you the basic idea, except we lay down instead of holding plank, and alternated leapers in a continuous activity kind of thing)

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Ah, team-mates.  By far the absolutely most-motivating thing for me-  I always find I have a little extra to give if I know someone is waiting for me (and doing something unpleasant while they wait).  It's definitely more effective than relying on my hit-or-miss competitive streak (some days it's there, some days not so much...)

Since there were only three of us this morning, we made a Super Team, which meant that for the first leg it was me and Girl #2 doing wall-sits together while our male partner did the running.  I will be honest with you- I was pretty sure I'd be the one to screw up the wall-sit.  It was an incredibly pleasant surprise when I was able to hold it the entire time- all four times.  There may have been some swearing and some pounding on the wall, but by stars I held it.  No comment, however, on whether or not I was the the slowest runner...

Sometime during my run one of my hair-ties jumped ship, and as I started my first round of plank I noticed that my left braid was rapidly becoming a cascade of free-flowing tresses.  Not optimal for sweaty-activities, but there was nothing to do about it but press on (have I mentioned our WODs are timed?).

Fortunately for me, the stars smiled and I just so happened to see my hair tie (which is about the circumference of a dime and made of clear plastic) laying in the sun as we were organizing our burpee leap frog.  So I stemmed the chaos of my unraveling hair and got to hopping.

I'm just glad I braid my hair so tightly...

And just in case my drawings don't properly convey the ridiculousness of that aesthetic:

Who had split-personality hair and two index fingers?

After that it was Farmer's Market time, and then?  Avengers!  We enjoyed that very much, and I look forward to seeing it again.  It fills me with glee that Joss Whedon can now pretty much do whatever the hell he likes, and no one (::coughcoughfoxcough::) can nay-say him.  You go, Joss.  You just go.

A Farmer Sort of Day

Today was an excellent day, and it started (as so many of my excellent Saturdays do) with Crossfit.

WOD (as done by me):

Team Relay

200m Farmer Carry (35lbs)
500m Row
20x Burpees
400m Run w/ medicine ball (14lbs) (I think)
30x Jumping Lunges
Move a stack of weights and a barbell 100m

So the way this one worked was that we had two teams of three, and at Go our first person started the farmer carry while the other two of us waiting.  Once he got back, the second person started the farmer carry while the first person went to row, and I continued to wait.  Once the second person got back, I did the farmer's carry while person two went to go wait until person one was done with rowing, at which point she took over rowing and person one went to burpees (except I think he did wall walks [this video calls them "wall climbs"], which I was not comfortable with, hence I did twice as many burpees) .  Get the idea?  I asked to be anchor because I knew my fitness level was the least advanced, and I didn't want to slow the whole team down.  The last part of the relay, the move-the-weights part, was the only part that multiple people were allowed to work on at the same time.

Anyway, when Jack got to the part of his explanation where he talked about the run, he said, "There is no non-awkward way to do this, so just carry it however you choose."

Readers, he was not kidding.  I tried at least eight different positions with that ball as I was "running", and do you know what I discovered?

True story.

Anyway my team did not come in last, which was awesome, and I did manage to help with the very last part of the "move the weights" leg, so I got to feel like I pulled my own weight (so to speak).

After that Nathan and I took Isis the the farmer's market (you're shocked, I know), and in the afternoon we met up with our friend Nick to watch Cabin in the Woods (a second time, in my case).  If you haven't seen that movie, you probably should.  It's awesome, and I can't tell you anything about it, but you should see it.  Unless you don't care anything at all about subverting genre, and then it may not be your thing... but chances are, if you get any sort of pleasure out of the voice that this blog comes to you in, you will derive some sort of joy from that movie.

Lunchtime Be Damned!

Willow Rosenberg is one of my all-time most favorite characters, Buffyverse or otherwise.  More than just liking her as a character, I really identified with her- as I've mentioned on several occasions (although maybe not in this blog, since I can't find the entry I was thinking of...)

Anyway, I was feeling a bit under the weather this Sunday, and as such I turned to Buffy for comfort.  In specific I turned to Willow-centric episodes for comfort, and thus ended up re-watching (for the umpteenth time) one of my all-time favorite episodes, Doppelgangland.  Doppelgangland, as we all know (and by "all" I mean all we Buffy nerds), features VampWillow.

Who is awesome.

"...and I think I'm kinda' gay..."

Making the Best of It

My plan for the evening was to head into Portland with my Katie and live it up at Drink and Draw Like a Lady.  As such, I spent last night doing a bunch of little drawings called "Jenny O Loves Joss W" with the intention of being able to trade them at the event.  Here, have a peak:

Now the bad news- with about an hour to go at work I started to feel ill... and by the time I got home it was to the point where being vertical was pretty much not a thing I could do without vomiting.  Sooo...  I stayed home.  I'm still home, not feeling as bad as I was earlier in the evening, but still not exactly awesome.  Anyway I decided that, lest my drawings go to waste (especially since I skipped swing dancing with a dear friend last night to do them), I will offer them up in trade to anyone who might want them.  Dr. Horrible, Wash, River, and Inara are already spoken for, but if you see one you want, speak up.

(PS see, I told you I'd eventually post some drawings...)

OMG Serenity Fanfic!!!11!1!one!!

!!!!!SPOILERS FOR SERENITY AND THE TIE IN COMIC FLOAT OUT!!!!!

(In other words, Mom, you're not allowed to read this one yet. I mean it.)



Okay, so what you need to know is that this highly unusual posting came about in a fit of rage. Wait- let me give you some background.

I am a huge Joss Whedon fan. This should come as a suprise to exactly zero percent of you. One of Whedon's best works is the show Firefly and it's follow-up movie, Serenity. If you haven't seen them, you should stop reading this at the end of this paragraph, go buy the dvds of everything (it's worth every penny and then some), watch them, and get back to me. I'll wait.

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Okay, so, now you understand my love, and also you know that Wash is dead (feel free to cry. A lot. I still do.) So you might also understand why I was more than a little excited to get my paws on the Wash-centered Float Out, which I managed to do today.

Man, what a load of steaming disapointment. The story was crap (moreover it was confusing crap- I had to keep going back to re-read to try to figure out what the hell was going on), and the art was whatever excrement crap produces. And it just... it just really pissed me off. And all I could think was, "Man, I could do so much better than this!" And then I couldn't stand it a moment longer- I whipped out my netbook and threw down a far more fitting tribute to Wash (one which included the same "big reveal" as the comic- which, come on- was not that big of a friggin' reveal).

I rewrote it and did the thumbnails, then came home and rewrote it a third time, and did thumbnails for that. And you, gentle readers, now get script and thumbnails, and will eventually get the finished product (which I don't expect to be longer than two pages- more likely one, because I was trying to write something I could finish in a reasonable span of time- and it will be b&w unless I get totally carried away) because hot damn Wash deserved better than that.

I'm just sayin'.

I don't have a title for it yet- feel free to suggest. And for those of you who love the Firefly universe as much as I do, please give me your honest feedback- was I true to the characters?

(note- you'll notice this is an exceptionally loose script- that's 'cos I don't have to worry about explaining the layout for another artist)

(obligatory disclaimer- all characters are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon, who doesn't even know I exist, let alone that I'm toying with his creation- in other words, this is done without knowledge or approval. Furthermore, I'm not doing this for money or glory or to infringe on anybody's copyanything- I'm just doing it because I'm pissed off about bad storytelling and worse art.) (please don't sue me, kthnxbye)

"Working Title: Better Than Float Out"

We begin with a field of stars, then pull back enough to reveal a woman’s profile- it’s Zoe, face turned upwards, eyes closed. A further pull back reveals that she is not outside- she’s in Serenity’s cockpit, specifically in Wash’s old chair. One hand rests on her flat stomach, the other holds a toy dinosaur. One more pull back reveals River, Kaylee, and Simon watching from the door.

“Why do you think she does that?” Simon asks. Kaylee give a little shrug.

“It makes her joyful…” says River, hand hovering near her abdomen.

“Zoe’s joyful?” asks Kylie, wrapping an arm around Simon’s. “Seems mighty unlikely, what with Wash so recently… well, what with Wash bein’ gone, and all.”

“Not Zoe. The baby.”

“What baby?” says Simon, looking sharply at River.

Kaylee looks at Zoe’s hand resting on her stomach. Her eyes go wide. “Ohhhh…”

“But, but…” stammers Simon.

“I wonder why it makes her joyful…” says River.

Kaylee looks at Zoe, then at the dinosaur. “I don’t,”

Full shot of Zoe smiling gently, still face-up to the stars, with ghostly Wash face smiling amongst them.

(Click to Embiggen) (Totally stole that phrase, yes I did.)

(PS don't hurt your brain trying to figure out what's in the third-to-last panel: it's a scribbled-out screw up)