AQATSA Update, No April Fools' Joke!

[inverarity]

I feel like staying off the Internet tomorrow. I know this makes me sound like a humorless grumpy-pants, but I hate April Fools' Day. Yes, it's just so cute when every web site covers their home page with monkeys, tells us they've been bought out by the Russian mafia, changes their color scheme to pink and chartreuse, announces that they've sold your personal information to a finance start-up company in Nigeria, or whatever other clever idea they come up with. Hah hah. So I have to spend all day going "WTF?" and then remembering "Oh yeah, it's April 1."

So anyway, I guarantee this post is 100% April Fools Free.


Current word count: 186,392.

Below is preliminary line art for the cover of Alexandra Quick and the Stars Above. I made a few change requests (like holding her wand in her right hand, and pointing out that Alexandra should be a little bit skinnier), but I like it and am looking forward to the full color painted version.

Comments

[avsno26rocks.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, MNFF has re-sorted about half the members this year. It's far more entertaining than last year's.


Oh, and that cover art looks very nice. I look forward to the finished product.

[swissmarg]

Obviously a talented artist, but Alexandra looks at least 30. Maybe the wide hips have something to do with it, but I think the face looks too old as well. I really like the swoosh of faces up in the corner, especially the slightly different angles of the profiles.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The problem is that most fan artists learned to draw from fantasy, superhero or otherwise heroic genre artists, and they tend to know only one body shape and one age. It's a problem I haven't completely overcome yet, but at least I'm aware of it. I'm not saying this artist is not capable - proportions, anatomy, etc, are proper, and the posture is expressive and natural - but there is still that difficulty in thinking of different body shapes, proportions, ages and degrees of health and illness.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I think it's mostly the wide hips, which is why that was one of the changes I requested. The face may look a little old, but I think the final painted version will make her look younger. (I was quite clear that Alexandra is fourteen.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So... I take it you won't be looking at the post in which I declare my conversion to pacifism?

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

No, but I do wonder how long I could keep you going if I announced that I was converting to Catholicism. :P

[fpb.livejournal.com]

For about three seconds, unless of course you did it on a day other than April 1. Then it would be three minutes. Unless you had been born Catholic and then become a sceptic - and I see no sign of it in your writing or thinking - there is an instinctive set of assumptions and senses of balance that anyone who is or has been inside a group instinctively has (http://fpb.livejournal.com/138154.html), and that everyone who is not instinctively has not. That is why the former Orthodox seminarist Stalin instinctively understood Orthodox hierarchs, and why the convent school boy Fidel Castro can still get along with Catholics. I doubt you'd manage.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

But I wouldn't have to convince you I'm an ex-Catholic -- I'd only have to convince you I'm converting.

(I'd make a wager that I could do it, but I've already spoiled it -- plus I wouldn't really have the patience to keep it up for very long.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I;m tempted to ask you to try. You see, one does not become Catholic out of a general need, but out of a specific admiration of something basic about Catholicism. In many cases it is the shining rationalism of the likes of Thomas Aquinas (although you are allowed to be a Catholic and not like Aquinas; the current Pope, an outstanding thinker himself, does not); or it may be that the claims of the Church - one, apostolic, undivided - correspond to someone's idea of what a body emanating from God must be like (that was JH Newman's path, I think); you may become convinced by its historic claims (that was mine) or by a general sense of fitness to reality (GK Chesterton's), of suiting reality as a key suits a lock. But you have to believe that some fundamental feature of the Church is - not effective, not wise, not decent or even good - but RIGHT, correct, corresponding to reality; and that is something that nobody can fake.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Considering the nonsense you talk about the sword of Constantine, I think we would have to start from the basics. As a matter of fact, I am an expert in Hindu and Vedic religion and I have been introduced to Buddhism by Richard F.Gombrich - look him up. As for Notre Dame, I believe it had 88 Catholics jailed for protesting against the despicable law degree given to President Obama. That may be one way of being Catholic, but it is the way that leads to Hell.

[kerneyhead.livejournal.com]

It's funny. I live with someone with a Doctorate of Theology from Notre Dame (the American one) who has met the current Pope when he was a Cardinal. Like with you, we come at things from very different views based off very different views. But we respect each other and realize we cannot be experts on everything.

I attribute the rise of Christianity more to the sword of Constantine and Charlemgne and the Teutonic Knights rather than the rationalism of Aquinas. I believe the history books here are clearly on my side but I will concede that we read different history books.

We take each others point seriously and respond respectfully. This is something I've never seen you do, going about attacking the education and avoiding addressing the points of the person you are speaking to.

That, rather then anything else is the core of my lack of respect for you.

SO, HERE IS MY QUESTIONS.

You claim to have a religous studies background. So do you actually know anything about any religion other then Catholic Christianity with any sort of depth, whether it be
Confucianism, Buddhism, Shinto, Islam (a faith I have little respect for) any tribal faiths or mythologies past or present.
Have you cared to learn or can you have a conversation in terms of those faiths or a history outside your own (say pre columbian American, East Asian or Islamic).

My suspicion is no, but I hope you can prove me wrong. Please answer yes or no. I will respect your answer in either case.

[anyareine.livejournal.com]

Who is the artist that drew that?

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Not one of your friends, unfortunately -- though a couple of them did say they might be able to do some work for me in the future.

[(Anonymous)]

The picture I'm getting here is of a stylish, mature (mentally and physically) woman. Problem is, I don't see her as any of these. She doesn't really care about clothes, so I don't know why she would be dressed in anything other than jeans and, at most, a blouse. Really...and this makes me sad to say...I'd expect her to look more like...BELLA SWAN. Ugh. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

http://static.thehollywoodgossip.com/images/gallery/as-bella-swan.jpg

Aside from the seductive gaze and confusing obsession with someone who should by all rights want to eat her, I honestly think of her like this. Not someone who dresses to impress, or is 100% confident and assured, but someone still growing into themselves, and concerned with far more weightier matters than her clothing. In this drawing, she seems too much like the prototypical female protagonist in most yawn-inspiring literature these days.

~DarkSov

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Really?? Dude, that is so not what Alexandra looks like. Leaving aside the whole Bella!Gag thing, the girl in the picture you linked is a couple years older than Alexandra, much prettier, and definitely more physically mature.

I see what you're saying, but aside from the rather fashionable jacket and belt (which I admit, is probably not really Alexandra's style), she isn't really dressing up in this picture -- she's pretty much just wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a jacket. Which is what I told the artist to draw, since in this scene, she's meant to be outside in the cold, looking up at the sky.

(FYI: Your comment got automatically screened, I guess because of the link. I guess it's nice that LiveJournal is finally doing something about spammers, but it would be nice if they screened the posts containing embedded Russian porn spam.)

[(Anonymous)]

But...porn spam is all I go to livejournal FOR!

Yeah, I didn't mean BELLA SWAN, so much as I did the actress. I can never remember her name. She did a movie adaptation of the book Speak for Lifetime some time ago, and I thought she was very good. It's really more that image that I meant, I probably should have been a bit clearer.

~DarkSov

re:

[(Anonymous)]

I'd have to say that this concept it pretty good. I like it.

--wodcdre

[ascot-gavotte.livejournal.com]

Alexandra looks pregnant here :/ maybe it's because her back looks swayed.

[kerneyhead.livejournal.com]

That would be about the worst spoiler I could think of.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Damn, that would have been a great April Fools' joke...

[kerneyhead.livejournal.com]

Use next year. By then everyone will have forgotten about this thread. For what it's worth, Brian would make a great father, eventually.

It would be lovely to see Alexandra succeed in something her parents tried and failed to do.

[(Anonymous)]

I would love to see Alexandra figure out a way to get out of the thing with the Generous Ones. Oooooh, what if she got pregnant and then gave them the unborn child???

O.o

Think about it.

~DarkSov

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always hide inside my house on April first. I really don't enjoy getting pranked--still holdover from being made fun of as a kid, I guess.

Rhemus

[(Anonymous)]

The picture is fine. She is prepared and competent. It is a mood-setter. I would of course prefer a picture of Alex in a black leather long-coat cursing whole Universes into oblivion, but she ain't mighty enough for that yet.