Friday, August 27, 2010

Brenna R. vs. The World

I have good news, great news, and more good news. But first, a quick rant.

To those who say Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was a good movie, please let me pick your brain apart because I MUST know what you saw that I didn't. The moment I found out it was a movie based on a comic book, I immediately stole the books from my mom and read them. They were stupidly hilarious. Really short, fun reads. I planned to be in the theatre Friday morning to see the movie. Then I remembered something: Michael Cera was going to play Scott Pilgrim!

First failure. Michael Cera is NOT Scott Pilgrim. Where Scott Pilgrim is a cool loser, Cera is just a plain loser. I give him credit for branching out from the ridiculous films he got caught up in as a type cast actor, but this was just wrong. However, I was very excited to see what these people would make of the comics apart from Cera, so I went anyway. Six bucks is not big deal.

The movie itself was the second failure. It tried to crush all six volumes of the comic books into one two hour movie. It switched up where certain things happened for NO reason whatsoever. Instead of using the scenes properly, they also decided to just add their own scenes instead of going by the comics. The characters didn't look the proper ages. Two years pass in the comic where as like, a week passes in the movie. Ramona was way too emo and not nearly enough cool. Kim Pine didn't look nearly cool enough for her character. Young Neil was rarely called "Young Neil" throughout the movie, which makes a failure of a great moment later on.

Do you see where I'm getting at? Maybe not if you haven't read the comics, which I highly recommend you do. But don't see the movie. It was bad. Plain and simple. I tried to enjoy it for a movie's sake. Could not. Even if I didn't read the novel, where they threw in a certain fight was just so random that my brain flinched. It's like that scene if you've seen The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jet Li where the epic final battle is about to ensue, and out of nowhere, the Chinese girl springs in for her own strike. Believe me, that isn't a spoiler. It's a heads up so your brain doesn't flinch too. See that movie. It's cute, and you'll understand what I mean by random scenes.

However, I will give the Scott Pilgrim cast and crew one thing. Some of their character portrayals were phenomenal. Julie Powers: Amazing! Wallace Wells: Fantastic! Kim Pine's attitude: Pretty great. The rest was basically crap. Period. The end.

Scott Pilgrim movie, if your life had a face, I would punch it. I would punch your life in the face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now for something completely different.

The good news: I was asked to sign on as stage manager after volunteering to just do backstage work for a friend's play. We worked together in a One Act Festival back in June and became friends on Facebook, so I saw his status asking for help. Now I'm very glad I didn't let shyness get the best of me. And the cast is so nice. And I get a little role! I'm expecting a great time.

The great news: Yesterday, I finished writing the next chapter of U:RS. It was so exciting! The chapter is awesome (for a first rough draft, of course), and I think it's well spaced with the action. And I got it under 10K words, which was the goal. Now there are approximately three chapters left. I'm on the final lap! Yes! I'm a little worried about the next chapter because it was probably originally more than one chapter, and I feel like there may be too much action. Crisis points are fine for one chapter. Build up is good. This may have a few too many big rises, steady falls, and then another big rise, you know? I guess we'll see how it goes.

And the last good news: I took a bad step off the stage last night, and I sprained my ankle.

"Did she just say spraining her ankle was...good news?" asked the reader, narrowing his/her eyes at the screen and feeling yet another need to back away and close the browser.

Yes, I did.

Yeah, it hurts, and yeah, it's annoying to limp around and worry that I may not get to keep the mini role I was appointed or if I'll be able to audition in a few weeks, but on the bright side, I now know what it feels like to sprain an ankle. I've never done it before, and I can now say I have. If I ever have to write about a character who has a sprain, I'll know exactly what to write. And wouldn't you know I have a character who just so happens to have sprained his ankle (in a fairly epic way, by the way. Haha!) so this information has come in handy.

Besides, it's better than moping about it, right? For a cynic such as myself, I think that's a pretty darn good outlook. And you know what else it means? It means I'll keep off my leg, trapping myself in my bedroom, and I won't be able to binge eat. Being forced out of the kitchen is NEVER a bad thing for me. ;)

Now that I got all that off my chest, it's back to the MSWord Futon. Thankfully I thought of a rather brilliant way to prop my leg up so I can stay near the desk. Sometimes my brilliance scares me. Haha! As if.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Blog Warming - It started with a fangirl

Uh oh. Here she goes again with the blog. But I justify it with, "Three time's the charm." Hah! Look how nicely that fits. What I'd have liked to do would be to transfer the few posts from my Wordpress and Live Journal here so they could all be even.

Unfortunately, I'm despicably lazy. In fact, to reach the mighty paradise of Microsoft Word so I can snuggle into my MSWord futon and get some writing done, I must wage an epic battle against the forces of evil and my long time nemesis, Laziness. Oh yes. It is an epic battle indeed.

So my BlogSpot will start with its own welcoming post and introduction.

The book cover of my life
Hello! I'm Brenna, and most of the bland information can be found in the side bar About Me section. The end. :)

Okay, I can do better than that. Well, I'm a college undergrad in my junior year of a theatre education major. Why do I not do something more theatre related like everyone else in my major? Because I'm an introvert cramming herself in the extroverts' universe. I love performing and watching plays, but I'm no good in the social scene, and GOD do I hate auditioning! I'm not a hermit or anything. Just quiet, which clashes with the theatre world. Still love it, though.

I consciously began writing when I was about thirteen. It all started with a Harry Potter obsession, and my yearning to be part of that world. I wrote a fanfiction with an OC named Amelia Nayclear, a pureblood who hated the blood ties and stiff society and blah blah blah. And she was a cousin of my all time favorite character Sirius Black. Yes, I'm a nerd! I've accepted it. Then I wrote about Amelia's and Harry's daughter Renee and her adventures in Hogwarts. While posting that on Fanfiction.net, the founder of a Harry Potter RPG noticed and invited me to join her new game. It was so much fun! The world ignored the canon characters and let the players have free reign with their own characters in this American wizardry school. I met some great new people all over the world, and I had a blast!

Summer lovin'!
My original fiction writing began one fateful summer in 2005 I believe, when I picked up a book with a neat cover in the library. One might say the book snagged me. It was called, So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane. I read it, I paused, I screamed, I babbled, I screamed more, I fell in love, and I read the rest of the books available that summer. I think it was up to the seventh, Wizard's Holiday. That was when I knew I just had to write something as mind blowing and spectacular and magical as what Diane Duane created.

The Agents of Alcarion: Academy was born. You'll easily notice the similarities between the novels because I began writing in a copy cat phase. Character names didn't get copied (despite how close Nita and Ita are), it was the magic system that got slight tweaks and the setting that jumped over the Hudson, and the plot that is clearly the one night stand love child of the books I adore. I remember my first draft of Academy. It was BAAAAAD! But you have to start somewhere, right? I began with emulating my literary heroine, and I grew from there with reviews from Fictionpress friends over the course of a year or so when I joined the Review Game.

Sweet, sweet adverbs...too sweet!
In just that short time, I got a hardcore wake up call, and my writing got a serious kick in the pants. I learned about adverb twinkies, showing and not telling, and the dreaded said-bookisms. I learned about passive and active voice. I found my own style of writing that seems to be developing and drastically changing every week! That means a lot of rewrites for my WIP. But it's worth it because I've come such a long way with something I love so much. I feel like I've blossomed from a totally suckish fangirl to a less suckish aspiring writer. And it feels really good.

After my great disappointment with the Harry Potter series, (Please don't beat me up. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, right?) I can't be completely resentful to it or J.K.Rowling. In the end, she kind of got me started. She led me to the diving board, and Diane Duane encouraged me to jump. So thank you to both of them, to all of the people who have read my writing and gave feedback from the origins to my current style, and to anyone and everyone in the future who will help push me to achieve my dreams whether he or she knows it or not--that's you, bloggers of the world who don't know me from the other hundred of followers, and that's you, authors who don't know I exist at all as I stalk your stories both online and on paper.

I break for cake!
Thank you for letting me get to where I am now! Go grab yourselves some cookies and cake!

Brenna in a mutant nutshell, folks. Now it's back to the MSWord futon because I've made a huge breakthrough in my WIP the other day, and I'm still running on the adrenalin. I wrote a huge chunk of this story a while back, and I rewrote what I had gotten to, fixing the writing and incorporating a much better plot. Now I'm past the part where I had the old writing as a crutch, and I'm only facing blank MSWord documents from here on out. It's all brand new! Excitement!

Byebye!