I am 16 going on 17...

Ok, so the most amazing thing happened and i am so excited and happy and omg

i worked really hard for the entire first semester to get our art club to get involved with the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards and so after months of waiting the list of winners was sent out and I GOT AN HONORABLE MENTION FOR MY POEM

after putting in so much work with the school and submitting for the past 3 years to finally win an award is the most amazing feeling! The Scholastic awards has always been a big deal for me, and so to get an honorable mention was the most fantastic way to conclude my 16th year :D

So now that i'm 17... i don't really know. I don't really know what to think of this- 16 went by so fast! And it's weird, having the most hyped-up teenage year end lol

I did some pretty cool things, though, being 16:

-My party was pretty rad
-My first major stage performance
-Kraken Con (twice :D )
-ATLA/LOK ended 
-Watched Stargate, which is now my favorite sci-fi show!
-Prom
-Mexico
-Got my license/car
-Started writing my book
-The Dickens Fair
-SCHOLASTIC AWARDS OMG


so, yeah, 16 was a pretty good year :)

And Now It's Over

Last night, the very last episode of the Avatar franchise aired. The very last episode of my absolute favorite series... ended. I was so excited and so sad and so not ready for it to be over. But all good things come to an end, I suppose. 

I had always intended to do a post about ATLA and LOK, but I never had the time or motivation. Well, now I do, and it's time to say goodbye. Perfect timing. 

Here's a little history of how I even got involved: back when I was younger I saw a promo for Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was showing for the first time that night. I thought it looked kind of cool, and a little while later I was watching it. I don't remember much, I don't think I even watched the whole thing. The point is, I saw it, and I remembered it enough so that when the movie came out it 2010 I wanted to go see it (also, judging by the preview, 12 year old me thought it would be awesome. I did think it was awesome).

Unfortunately, I liked the movie so much I had my dad buy the DVD. Whoops. Now that's sitting in a box somewhere and I will probably deny that I own it. I am kind of thankful for it though, because if I hadn't seen the movie, I probably wouldn't have watched the show. 

Now, fast-forward a few months. My brother was sick, we were trying to find something to watch, and so we checked out Nick... and there it was: ATLA- The Southern Raiders. Sure, my first episode of it wasn't from the first season, and I didn't even see the first half of the episode! But it became a weekly event where my brother and I would watch ATLA re-runs (which were not shown in any specific order that I know of) on Saturday mornings. 

I didn't watch it in order the first time I saw it. Or the second, or third. I started randomly picking them and eventually was able to piece together the whole show. Eventually Mom decided to watch it since Dante and I loved it so much, so we watched it as a family, in order. 

Never had I seen a show with such amazing characters, plot, depth, animation, emotion, or music.  

The characters felt like old friends once I finished the series. I loved them so, so much. If I was sad, I would watch it. If I was lonely, I would watch it. If I was happy, I would watch it. I would watch it and watch it and watch it, and these characters became real to me. Y'all know how much I love FMA, right? And how much I love the characters? Well, it's like that, but x10, or x20, or x100 (being in the fandom for 5 years probably has something to do with that haha).

The heroes were well rounded, the villains were well rounded, the random side characters got their share of development, too. It's rare to see such excellent characterization in any show, let alone an animated kids show!

My Azula costume... she's probably one of my most favorite characters ever!

There are so many layers in ATLA, and every time I watch it I get something new out of it. I'm not saying that kids shows can't be deep or have good meaning, but a lot of them don't, so it's refreshing to see something so amazing made so that kids can understand it and teens and adults can enjoy it, as well.

The music  THE MUSIC is just beautiful and amazing and sooo perfect. So much effort went into ATLA and it's been a HUGE part of my childhood :')

When I found out that there was going to be another Avatar series, I flipped. I was sooooo happy that we would be having 12 more episodes of Avatar awesomeness! Ha. Ha. Ha. Little did I know that this so called "fun mini-series" would become a 3 year ordeal that would become one of my favorite shows.

remember when this was 

all we had of Korra

You can imagine my excitement when Nick called for 3 more seasons! About half way through season two, I got a little disappointed with the writing and plot direction (which was something I could forgive for season 1, they only had 12 episodes to work with, after all), but I still loved it. Season three's writing proved to be a huge improvement from seasons 1 and 2. The writing was better, the villains were darker, the over-all plot was much more enjoyable and intense, and the characterization was fantastic. We got to see sides of character that we had never seen before, new and well developed characters entered the mix, and friendships developed between old characters. Something that I really enjoyed about seasons 3 and was the lack of romantic sub-plot between the Krew. I think that was a let-down for the fans during season 2.

Fan-made trailer for the finale

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, thank you Avatar, thank you Bryke, and most importantly, thank you Fandom for such an amazing 5 years. ATLA was a real treasure of my childhood, and LOK was a wonderful part of my high school experience. I'm sure our fandom will last for quite a while, it was still going strong between ATLA and LOK, so I don't doubt that there will be plenty of fanworks for the years to come, but it's still sad to see such an awesome series end,

Good bye, Avatar, goodbye.


*and then I sob for about 10,000 years*

March, April, and May Art!!

My camera charger is still lost, but my phone takes relatively decent pictures, so here you go... three months of my art.

Katniss '11 vs. Katniss '14

Mermaid

Winry ( I hate the rest of the pic so i'm not posting it :p)

Royai

Stargate Nails

Toph and Sokka being bros (for my BFF's b-day)

Stargate/FMA crossover stuff

Pirates

A unicorn-riding mermaid waving to wonder woman who is on a pegasus

totally legit

you can thank my aunt for this unique piece

INTERMISSION! 

look at my cool hair piece :P

random robot thing

Sam Carter, at the gate, giving me feels because SHE HAS LOST WAY TO MANY PEOPLE THROUGH THAT THING

Planets

 Oh, I guess i am posting the whole pic. nvm. (ed is supposed to be leaning over the rail, and it dosen't even look like him. forgive me)

an idea being formed

 Winry

 OCs from a story i never actually wrote out, but i will some day

Girls at a Convention

OC's for a story that is being written

So, yeah, not so great phone pics (and I was too lazy to edit them). Oh, well, here's my art from the last few months- hope you liked it!

I'M FREEEE!!!!!

So, now that I'm out of school, and summer is here, and life is good.

My last few weeks of school consisted of Prom (which was awesome!), Town Hall (my performing arts final, we all dressed as a character and had to spend an hour and a half being that character), scrificing my BFF in a rain dance (oh, the things you do on the last day of school ;p) and playing lots (and lots and lots and lots) of mafia!

Finals week was insane, and I'm not entirely sure what happened. I do know that on Thursday, after finishing our last exam, a bunch of friends and I went to the mall and hung out for a while. It was really fun and somewhat sad, since we won't be going to school together next year.

Oh, yeah, I'm going back next year! After a lot of indecision and weighing options, I decided to stay. I'm praying that I made the right choice... I'll be taking honers Chem and English, so that should be good. Yep.

On Friday my family packed up and went to my second house, where we stayed the weekend. My mom's side of the family came up on Sunday, it was so much fun! The tops of my hands got burned, though :p

Over all it was a great time :)

~Shaak Ti

Yooooooo

Look who's 16! Yay! I got my drivers permit a few days before my birthday, went to winter ball (and brought a picture of Sokka as my date :3) Had my birthday celebration on Sunday (lava cakes and Star Gate-SG1 FTW!) with my family. Monday my cat woke me up at 5:30, just before my alarm went off. When I got to school I tripped on my backpack and did a face-plant in the locker room (oh, what a wonderful way to start my 16th year :p). My friends had decorated my locker and wrote some really sweet notes! Natalia drew me a picture of Ed and Al! After school I did homework and then watched Stargate again. I love that show soooo much! On Tuesday Abby brought me to Farmers Market, and I bought a rock heart and some flowers.

(and now for the deep/thoughtful part of my post)

Last year my parents gave me a pocket-watch for my birthday, and so every night I hear it ticking by my bed. Every time I'm in my room I hear the 'tick-tick-tick'... sometimes I love it, sometimes I can't stand it and have to shove it in a drawer. But, you know what? That thing has been ticking since the day I turned 15. That is about 31,557,600 seconds. That's a lot of seconds... 

So my deep thought is that there are a heck of a lot of seconds of one year. Not so deep or thoughtful...

But I could say "live every second to it's fullest", and I intend to do just that. For the 31,557,600 seconds of my 16 year. Yep.

Oh, man, I'm so tired. I don't even know what this post is, I wrote it over three days and have it scheduled to post on Friday and when I have extra time I add random sentences, because, hey, it wont be posted until 1am Friday morning!

Ok, I'm going to shut up now.

It's been a great week so far :) (And that FMA review /should/ be my next post. And then I'm combining January and February art, simply because I haven't had that much time to draw)

Something Rather Funny

So I was going through some documents on my google drive, right? Who knows how old they were, who knows what was saved in there, so I decided to go through and look.

I came across an old folder.

I came across an old doc.

On this paper was a list of links.

No joke, one of these links had the heading of "Damn Sexy Man Walks By".

What on earth is this?

I was already laughing at the title, so when I opened it  I nearly died. Here's what I found:

WHAT

I don't ship Murther. Arthur isn't a "damn sexy man" (in my opinion). I'm not even the type of person to say "damn sexy"... what on earth is this!? When did I put this in my drive? I was laughing for a good 5 minuits after I saw this. I still am!

Oh, the joys of looking at old documents

What on earth did I write?

"She wasn’t like other girls. In fact, she was rather unusual. She was pretty, sure, but not a Hollywood star. She didn’t walk with grace, but with a strong, determined, steady gate. She preferred off-brand classic lolita, instead of the major trends that most girls followed, and her tail was...

Well, I guess it was rather unusual, isn't it? That’s what made her different from other girls. She had a tail. And claws instead of fingernails and padded feet. And if you ever got a chance to see her back, you would notice that the skin was rather green and scaly.

Reading and fashion and choosing tea over coffee are all regarded as normal, especially when you are comparing it to somebody who has a tail.

Fortunately for our extra-appendaged girl, she had good friends who didn’t mind, and her peculiar sense in classic and gothic fashion covered her up enough to be considered... normal.

Well, that is until the black dye comes out of her beautiful mane of hair and it is revealed that it’s natural color is a dark forest green. Still beautiful, strangely unusual."

I found this in my google drive while clearing it out today... I'm not too sure what it is, but I vaguely remember writing it while I was sick. Haha, I could probably turn this into a story at some point. Or some art. That would be fun :).

Other than finding random partial-stories, I've been getting all caught up on the work that I missed from being sick, and getting ready for homecoming! I'm super excited for the dance, the theme is "to infinity and beyond", and I'm wearing a black and white dress. I'm going over to my friends house to get ready!

AND AND AND AND OMG So there's an anime convention near us on October 5, and my mom said we might be able to go! I'm super excited, and praying that it all works out. And I'm almost done with the next anime review, so that should be up soon... maybe.

Alright you lovely people, have a great week!

When people are talking about being in a relationship

and I'm just sitting there like

 

Yep. Pretty much. But I might want to get married. Idk. Just don't really want a relationship right now. So yeah. random stuff. Oh, the reason why im thinking about this is because a whole lot of my friends are just soooooo in "love"

And it can be pretty annoying having to listen to them talk about hot teachers and guys and people in general im just tired of it. 

Meh, im not making sense. sorry. im sich rit now and cant think straight, but I havent posted in a while so i figured i would post now