Teacup Essence and ECA 16-20

Hiya!
(This is late T_T)

Sorry for the week between updates; I was trying to use it to good use and only got a little bit of stuff done. Stuff like this:

(link to dA post)

I'm looking forward to (hopefully) posting some more stuff for Tea Essence in the upcoming month, definitely. This one I was rushing a little bit (still took me a decent 6-8 hours of concentrated work spread out over the two weeks) and actually borrowed color schemes from--you guessed it--my own OCs T_T

-----guess the ?-faced characters here if you want!------
The one with the question mark face in the back is Fiana, while the three in "front" are, very appropriately lined up: Elysia, Celestine, Arlin. ^_^ Yay pre-made color schemes that eliminate hours of meticulous color-switching!

I really blotched up the shading. No excuse. :( I really like how everything came out though. I did this all in the computer without a paper scan first, which means I'm getting better with my tablet! (FINALLY haha).

Now for the next 5 ECA posts! Since it's been a while, Parts 1-5 , Parts 6-10, Parts 11-15 are linked! I decided to just post the comment blurbs with the actual posts this time. Just skip the comment blurbs if you dislike reading my ranting! XD Please anticipate a lot more of ECA in the upcoming posts!


16. Excuses

Elysia was skimming another dark aisle of books in the deserted graduate section of the library to sate her curiosity of the supposed “Land of Dreams” when she ran into senior magic professor Vesper Aurigae Nox.

“What are you looking for?” 

Elysia held up the light-stick that doubled as the graduate-section’s pass. “Research for Dr. Alaur’s history project on the Angelic Gate. Are you researching a similar subject, professor?”

“Oh. Yes. Just some side-research on dream-magic. Good luck on your project.”

“Thank you.”

They parted ways, both relieved their excuses had worked. Or seemed to have.

17. Vengeance

“A good match,” Arlin complimented, shaking Rhys’s hand after their midterm sparring match. “That multi-elemental burst really threw Tagh and me off.”

“We had more damage output,” Celestine said quietly, shaking Fiana’s hand..

Fiana laughed good-naturedly. “Let’s practice together sometime.”

“Yea, good match,” Rhys commented, hiding her disappointment behind a smile. Even though their performance had earned everyone an S, both teams knew Arlin and Celestine would have beat Rhys and Fiana in that battle. Rhys wasn’t used to losing. 

Before they were dismissed, Celestine glimpsed Rhys glaring at Arlin, the bitter promise of revenge in her eyes.

18. Love

“Weekend, yay!” Arlin twirled and fell on her bed. “Dinner, check! Homework, then embroidering for the CBP.”

“Sure,” Celestine dropped her bag down.

They worked steadily. Some minutes passed quietly before Elysia arrived. “So diligent,” she commented. “I bought a cake.”

Arlin jumped. “Ooh! What for?”

“For us. Celestine, our project received a S…Plus.”

Celestine smiled nervously. “You did all the work though…”

“Nonsense. Take a piece,” Arlin invited.

“We’re not celebrating that anyways.” 

Celestine lit the candles with a touch, “Happy Birthday Arlin.”

Arlin stared at the little blue cake. “…I love you two…come on…”

“E.C.A. forever!”

19. Tears

Alone in a corner of the ice rink, Celestine shook with sobs.

Arlin had her daily moment of meditation at the gate. Elysia seemed to burn her negativity with her prayers. Celestine cried in the rink before lacing up her skates.

“Hello?” It was the boy Elysia had greeted in the library. Vesper Jinan Wisteria offered her a handkerchief. “Don’t cry,” he consoled. 

Why was he here? 

He twirled his baton around, pulling and shaping ice from the rink into a charm. “Ice elemental practice.” 

Celestine stared at the unmelting teardrop in her hand, a mockery of her self-pity.

20. My Inspiration

“Here. I’ve brought you back. Now go away.” 

She began to leave but the crystalline sword called her back. “Go back to your master, why don’t you? Stop calling to me. You’re not mine.”

She stared intently, wondering what exactly it was. The blade swirled with scenes that happened somewhere, sometime, to someone only the imagination knew. Elysia found herself searching for words. 

There. Sye’niar.

“What’s that supposed to be? Your name?”

She blinked, stood away, and the images stopped. 

“Well, if you’re going to be that way?”

Elysia stared thoughtfully.

“…fine. Let’s see what we can do with you.”

Comment Blurbs

16. Excuses

This one took me a really long time to come up with a concept for and I ended up writing this prompt three times (the other versions will be posted with the other bonus posts later on!

I swear every time I write or think the word “restricted” I think of Harry Potter. Originally I had Elysia browsing the restricted section of the library, but could not get over how like HP it sounded; thus I edited to a side of the library, which, for whatever reason, is reserved for graduates only, who know what they’re messing with in these tomes of intense secret knowledge. How Elysia got a pass…is up to anyone’s guess. 

I think this is the first time Vesper Nox has shown up! I think I refer to him by his full name every time in every writing bit I write him in. I have no idea why XD

17. Vengeance

This piece I also had to rewrite to my satisfaction. I was happy with the original version for a long time, but upon rereading/checking before posting I decided it didn’t work in terms of the story very well as it seemed to imply something that I had scrapped. I also wanted to give Rhys a little more early screen/page-time and turned it into a fun—midterm I guess— sparring match. I don’t know how time flows in this story. It’s more like a collection of scenes that happen to ECA at school anyways. XD

Allow me to be weird and explain away my characters now: 

To adopt some MOBA terminology, Rhys (magic/ summoning class) is a bit like a “carry” with relatively low health and very high damage output. As the commissioner of magic, she focuses a lot on elemental magic and summoning elemental spirits.  Fiana (summoning/ healing class) is definitely a “support”, hanging back and healing her teammates and maybe throwing out an occasional arrow. Her summons are mainly supportive and defensive moon rabbits. 

Arlin (magic/ summoning class) focuses her summoning on one summon: Murantagh “Tagh”, a silver dragon with little blue and green accents and whiskers. He does most of the actual fighting via tooth and claw and [some still undetermined magic type]. Elemental-wise she focuses on air-based spells to move and position her opponents to advantageous follow up locations. She and Celestine are probably both “bruisers” that have good health/sustaining abilities and a decent amount of damage output though not as much as a “carry”. (Though I don’t think of them as tank-amounts of health (very high health)) Celestine (magic/ weaponry class) is an archer who uses non-elemental magic for close-range fighting to hold opponents off until she can pick them off from a distance with her bow. 

My brother (who is much better at gaming than I could ever hope to be) says that this battle is actually decently fair, as so long as Rhys/ Fiana didn’t majorly mess up somewhere in the early battle, Rhys’s damage output should be more than enough to cream Arlin/ Celestine. Personally I think Rhys/ Fiana would win too, but I needed someone that would be resentful to get the vengeance theme point >.<“

Ok. Done ranting XD. I would like to write a fighting scene (separate from the 100 theme challenge) with some of these characters. Ahaha. Maybe. Sometime.

18. Love

There’s an alternate to this as well. But I prefer this, where I get to write a cute little scene showing the love in friendship. Dedicated to 3TMAJ’C.

19. Tears

Another of those I-liked-it-until-I-read-it-for-submittion-and-then-changed-my-mind entries. But I’m really happy I changed it because I think this is a lot stronger as an entry. It also provides a scene showing how Celestine and Vesper meet and a way to go into his personality a bit. 

Whenever I cry, my mom always gets mad and says to “stop pitying [myself]”; she equates crying with a shrill tantrum of “pity me pity me PITY ME D:!!!!” (I always get annoyed at her reaction, but I also get irritated at myself for crying in the first place.) 

So the idea in this scene is Celestine feels like she’s in the shadow of the perpetually peppy Arlin and the even-faced Elysia. So before lacing up her ice skates for practice, she hides in a corner of the stands and cries to herself, thinking of everything that’s going on and everything that’s wrong with her. And then one day Vesper comes along. Cue scene.

20. My Inspiration

Elysia brings the sword—the “last blade” from entry 12, “Dead Wrong”— back to the field from where she found it. Ahaha! Didn’t see that, did ya? Yea it’s ok I didn’t see the “blade of grass” interpretation until I was editing before posting. And I liked the pun so much I had to keep it. 

I took this theme prompt literally and answered it as my inspiration: just words. The simple little things that people say and the simple words that pop into my head throughout the day inspire stories and adventures. All I want to do is share some of these fantastical dreams, and maybe inspire someone else while I’m at it.

NEXT SET (21-25)

Freighting story

Hi! Late Sunday post XD

I was actually going to post the next five entries for ECA, but I read over them and decided I could improve on entries 16 and 17. So for now I've put those in the bonus/deleted pile and will be rewriting them. That, thus, left me no choice but to quickly write something for today's post. So after a late start (aka woke up at 13:00 XD) and some chores/ errands, I came up with a short little exercise.

The following idea was inspired from a similar exercise in a high school english class. The premise of the freighting story is to start with a simple sentence and keep adding details a certain number of times or until it's one really long sentence that tells a simple/ short story/scene. Bonus: start from something innocent and make it into something dark. Sure, you're probably going to end up with a run-on sentence, even using semicolons, dashes, parentheticals, and a plethora of commas,  but for the purposes of this exercise, that is more or less ok, so long as the meaning remained clear.

I did my best to maintain that clear meaning while achieving great detail. I'm actually pretty surprised I didn't use any semicolons, because I am an avid fan of the comma with a floating hat. ;) I decided to expand 11 times from the initial sentence because there are 11 yordles currently in the League of Teemo.

Enjoy!

1. The dog ran down the road.

2. The dog chased a cat down the road.

3. The spotted dog chased the gray cat down the winding road. 

4. The spotted wolf with tufts of fur missing in places chased the sleek, gray cat down the winding road shadowed by ancient trees.

5. In the dead of the night, the spotted werewolf missing tufts of fur chased the sleek, gray cait sith through a rotting log and down the winding road shadowed by ancient oaks.

6. In the dead of of the night, with the full moon hanging over the forest, the spotted werewolf--missing tufts of fur where its prey had attacked it--chased the sleek, gray cait sith through a rotting log and down the winding, poorly-marked road shadowed by ancient oaks. 

7. In the dead of the night, with the full moon hanging hauntingly over the forest, the spotted, salivating werewolf--missing tufts of fur where its prey had attacked it--chased the sleek, skinny, gray cait sith through the rotting log the wolf used to live in and down the winding, poorly-marked dirt road shadowed by ancient oaks.

8. In the dead of the night, with the full moon hanging hauntingly over the war-torn forest, the salivating, snarling werewolf-- his eyes narrowed at the prey that had ripped tufts of fur from his spotted coat--chased the sleek, skinny, gray cait sith through the rotting log the wolf used to live in and down the winding, poorly-marked, dirt road shadowed by ancient oaks and littered by corpses.

9. In the dead of the winter night, with a full moon hanging hauntingly over the war-torn forest, the salivating werewolf--his yellow eyes narrowed menacingly at the prey that had ripped tufts of fur from his spotted coat--chased the sleek but skinny, gray and grizzled cait sith--who bounded over the corpses littered everywhere--through the rotting log the wolf used to live in and down the winding, poorly-marked, dirt road shadowed by overgrown ancient oaks that led to the caves. 

10. In the dead of the winter night, with a full blood moon hanging hauntingly over the war-torn forest, the salivating werewolf--his yellow eyes narrowed menacingly and his razor-teeth bared at the nimble prey that had ripped tufts of fur from his spotted coat--chased the sleek but skinny, gray and grizzled cait sith-- who, desperate to remain just a tail-length from the wretched killer behind her, bounded lightly over the corpses of cats and wolves littered everywhere--through the rotting log reeking of dried blood where the wolf used to live in and down the winding, poorly-marked, dirt road shadowed by overgrown ancient oaks that led to the caves.

11. In the dead of the snowy winter night, with a full blood moon hanging hauntingly over the war-torn forest, the salivating, snarling werewolf--his bloodthirsty yellow eyes narrowed menacingly and his razor-teeth bared challengingly at the nimble prey that had ripped tufts of fur from his spotted coat--chased the sleek but skinny, gray and grizzled cait sith--who, desperate to remain just a tail-length from the wretched killer behind her, bounded lightly over the corpses of cats and wolves littered everywhere--through the rotting log reeking of dried blood where the wolf used to live and down the winding, poorly-marked, dirt road shadowed by overgrown ancient oaks that led to the caves where the rest of the cait sith population lurked in ambush.

Status update!

Hiya!

*dodges rotten fruit*

Ahahah I realize I haven't made an update for another .....[insert large number] weeks months >.<" Last quarter was a little more hectic than I thought it would be. I'd try to write up a list of all the excuses I could, but I figure you'd prefer I just write something and continue on with one of the stories. I have some stuff to update on first. If you'd rather skip it, the writing bit is at the end.

So...cool stuff to note! This quarter I completed my first entire sketchbook! It's about 100 pages long, and took a little more than 2 months to complete, but it's complete! I feel like I have improved, but unfortunately I've nothing to post to show for it at the moment. Maybe soon.

In gaming news, I have started playing Smite with some college friends! :) But as Smite is not very dependable on my computer, I usually substitute that with League of Legends. Ahaha yes, I have been sucked into the MOBA community XD.



In writing news, I realize that ECA and Sun Dagger have (as a result of my unintentional hiatuses), been on hiatus themselves. Here's what's going to happen (at least in my head):

1. ECA: This is my primary active project. I hope to finish it by the end of July at this point. And once complete, you can definitely expect consistent updates of it!

2. [Collab]: I'm writing a collab with another friend. It won't be posted here unless she wants it to, but that's another active project we're "pushing" (to adopt some gaming terminology).

3. Dream's Edge: I am going to be cleaning this up a little and prepping it for a rewrite later in the year. Basically it is on hiatus until NaNoWriMo 2013. At least, so is the plan right now.

4. Sun Dagger: I'm eager to get back to Sun Dagger as well, but there are a few projects (not only those mentioned) between ECA's and Kaza's story. At present, consider this officially on hiatus. 
edit: I just noticed I never posted the fourth/final part of "Slate 1" or the second part of Ani's Cheat Sheet! T_T! Dunno when I'll update those.

This summer should be better off in terms of creative productivity. I'm trying my best to get a job, and I feel like a little creative spark has returned! (At least compared to the school year).

And now, for all you lovely, patient, little bunnies, a random scene.

"I am a twisted person."

"You are. You're definitely twisted."

The grass grew tall here, green petals splayed lazily out in the eternal sunshine. He was lying deep in this green glade, the grass pillars stretching into the sky a hands-length from eyes of the same clear color. Beyond that was endless blue sky, clear without a cloud or bird to mar its continuity. 

He sat up, breathing in the sweet scent of flowers carried by a light breeze that tousled his golden hair as it did the field of grass. The hills of tall grass--tall, but not so much as to be a nuisance--ran to the end of his sight, interrupted only by a scintillating lake that threw crystal reflections back wherever a sunbeam danced on its surface.  Pouring into the lake from his right side was a healthily bubbling line of a creek that followed a curving path that resembled the long scar from his right hip to left neck.

Elias could sit here forever, watching the grassy hills roll endlessly into the distance, watching the creek chase the sun, scrutinizing the thin line where the land touched the sky. He was warm, comfortable, peaceful here. This was Heaven.

But somehow he always became lonely, or sought to search for the origin of the creek. He would turn around, knowing he wouldn't like what he would find, yet unable to resist looking anyways. 

Behind him the land was dead. On one side of the creek the grass was green and bright and on the other side the earth dropped away into a monotone expanse. Rifts stretched jaggedly across the wasteland, searching for a horizon past the cragged peaks that loomed, even from this distance. The creek that divided meadow and desert slowed, meandering sluggishly through a crack.There was no sun, yet devious mirages played his worst moments on repeat. No warm, gentle wind comforted the cold.

A bolt of lighting flashed up to storm clouds that leered perpetually in the air, and with it followed a snippet of a life his, yet not his: a past life. These delusions were not just illusions of his mind's insanity. They were reflections of another world, a world now gone but a world that could still be. And this was what gnawed at the hallow of himself that lived now: knowing he made these mistakes, and knowing he could make them again.

But the most painful realization was that once he turned around to see this bleak desert of memories, he couldn't turn back to the peaceful hills. This was Hell, and Heaven was lost to him forever. 

"I am a twisted person."

"You are. You're definitely twisted. But I think everyone's twisted. Everyone's a bit of a paradox."

(Sounds familiar? In my attempt to motivate myself out of an inspirational slump, I rewrote the beginning from a songfiction from a few years back, keeping a lot of the phrases but expanding it a bit. Hopefully there's improvement!

And yes, there'll be a serious update...Sunday?)