So at some point between my last post and now, I got to thinking as to why the most recent Zilllet set isn't really developed. I knew that at some point I had stopped thinking about ZV2, and started thinking about the future spirits of Alex and Lily, and later Bell, and then sometime later ZV3 was sort of haphazardly thrown into the mix of awesomeness. And I thought, well, why did I ever switch to Alex and Lily? and then I remembered: I switched to Alex and Lily because any chances of Luke and Alex (ZV2) existing had suddenly dissolved. That is, Joey no longer had a girlfriend, and because I'm lame and no one tells me anything, I was notified of this via facebook. I think it was right before a midterm too. Anyway, at that point I figured I should stop imagining crazy adventures of their kids, and so I did.
Problem was, that meant I didn't have any cool stuff to imagine anymore. And my brain likes imagining things. It seems to want to imagine crazy stuff. So for a few months it was alright, while I stuffed information into it like crazy. And then, at some point, probably one weekend when I was home, it seized on new material. Perhaps I was pondering the significance of lame ol' me managing to grab a boy while it seemed like every other hs couple was breaking up ("my god, the apocalypse must be near!") but somehow, in some way, I started wondering what my own kids would be like. I'd never had a boyfriend before, you see, so previously it had been more convenient to imagine kids of all my friends who were dating.
It's possible that the main reason I started putting things into more of a fantastical world was because I was uncomfortable imagining my own kids in the future of the real world. Sure, it was my own silly made-up future that included everyone I knew staying in Saline, but it was still sort of real in a way. Somehow it was okay to imagine them in a world that didn't actually exist, while imagining them in the actual future was weird...because what if it actually happened? So a lot of the first imaginings probably went like this:
hey...you've got a boy now...what if you stayed together...wha...hey, what about your kids?
nononononono we are not thinking about that.
why not?
cuz...cuz it's weird.
well I mean you imagined all those other kids.
that's different.
well yeah maybe but...still...you can't deny that your kids would be awesome...
shut up.
...cuz like, you're pretty smart, and he's pretty smart too...
shut up.
...and like, you've got all-around awesome looks...
pssh.
...and he's got totally awesome hair and eyes...
well, yeah...
...and he likes to dress all awesome, and at his best he's pretty sweet...
yeah...
...and you're both pretty musical...
well, yeah...
and he can clog. DUDE! what if your kids were kick-ass cloggers?!
...
no like what if they could do...like remember how you were imagining Luke and Alex with DDR? with strobe lights and flips and ridiculous awesome stuff? imagine that, but with clogging.
OMG. wait. whoawhoawhoa, there's multiple of them? I have multiple children?!
well duh! twins run in your family, so your mom says at least. and you're like, surrounded by them.
nonononononoNONONONO WE ARE NOT DOING TWINS AGAIN
but twins AWESOME! and you know it's gonna happen dude, I mean seriously.
no.
c'mon. ridiculously awesome kick-ass clogging impeccably dressed totally hot twins that are amazingly musical.
but...
a boy and a girl.
but...
and they're adorable as children.
curses. ...devious?
well of course! they're bloody twins, aren't they?
oh alright.
and so it began. and now you know the truth. Alex and Lily and Bell are my kids. If you want to be specific, mine and Kevin's kids. But of course as my relationship with Kevin changed over the months after he left for Michigan Tech (yes. Mich Tech's in enilas too. sooooooo freaking awesome.) their background changed...from legitimate biological children to illegitimate biological children to adopted children, and most recently, back to legitimate biological children. It's sort of funny though, because at first I wanted to distance myself from them so I made them as "future spirits". And the story was more focused on the RMF crew (RMF = random musical folk, the collective group of the Saline dorks I hung out with in hs + significant others + other awesome people), and the future spirits of all of our kids saving us in spectacularly awesome ways - because of course if we died then their "spirit" would die too. Then at some point I started thinking of a plotline based in the "future", where some dark menacing force had separated kids from parents. This is when the Talents (powers) started coming in.
And then Kevin broke up with me, completely shattering the plot. Eventually I settled on some setting where I was raising a bunch of Talented kids in a sort of orphanage/safe house, and Alex and Lily and Bell were included in these kids. And I think this is when things started to really develop in my mind. Now the "real" kids were in the "present" of the story. The idea of their "future spirits" faded away. By this point I was well into the whole Nerdfighter community, and those ideas of promoting "awesome" and decreasing "worldsuck" began to creep into my stories as I started making up this whole idea of a "past"...this idea of The Legends. When the RMF crew were Warriors using their Talents to protect the world of Enilas. When the faeries danced at the solstice, and when the Rose Prince and the Snowflower danced with them. When the musicians traveled the land freely, weapons discretely stashed within their instruments and uniforms, always ready for use against whatever might attack. The tales of the Rose Guard [kevin and mich tech peeps], of the Lord of Shadows and his pyromaniac minions [kevin, rusty, jack, tomas, possibly others], of Loki the Rogue [rusty], of the merry band of meandering bards [david, andrew b., andy b.r., jacob, casey, nat, possibly more], of the fiddlers and cloggers of fire and ice and their rivalry [saline/fiddlers/restrung]. yeah...I'm insane. but that's the "past". "Now" the world's not so awesome, the Warriors are no longer celebrated, Talents are practiced in secret as most people are frightened of them...but don't worry. the kids bring back the awesome. and by kids I mean alllllllll the kids. Alex, Lily, Bell, Olivia, Zilllets, Zilllettes, Kitty's kids, Rusty's kids, tehDa3m0nSpawn, David's kids, Grace's kids...good god, it's crazy! but yeah, it's pretty cool.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
There's just never enough Zills in this world...
I should be studying for two exams next week, I really should, but I just can't concentrate with it being a Friday night and the guy across the hall playing music and damnit, I'm so SICK of studying and homework and all that crap -- yes, I know I just got back from a week of doing nothing but...still... >.<
So I feel like I should do something vaguely productive and by vaguely productive I mean, well, it's something I should do. it may not be academic but at least it has some purpose. whether that's entertainment or convincing you I'm insane, I'm not sure, but...here we go.
Zilllets. You can call them little Zills, you can call them ZTNG (Zills: The Next Generation), but I've always called them Zilllets - yes, with a triple l. I've told you I have a bit of an obsession with twins, and I've told you I like making up stories about my friends and their kids, and you might figure that because of that they feature in my stories, but here's the complete truth of it. Most of the crazy stories I thought up in high school were about my friends in the future, about Saline in the future. But they were really more about my friends' kids. And...a lot of them featured Zilllets.
And now is the time when I should probably warn the only person that I know for sure reads this occasionally that the specific Zill I seemed to focus on more in this regard was the one she's dating. I don't know why. And honestly it's possible he's already told her all about this whole crazy dealio. Of course it's also possible he has no idea I'm writing this blog. So.
Version 1.0 of the Zilllets (yes, there were versions. of course there were versions. a different major number indicates a different girlfriend, a different minor number might indicate a different age, different setting or something, not sure. Don't worry, I'll get to Version 3 eventually.) was sort of like...almost a demo. There was no plot. Actually, there was, but it was very simple. Parents get distracted, zilllets run away like the mischievous twin boys they were, run into a building, find a fun chem lab, I stop them, talk with them for a bit, realize who they are (try not to crack up), return them to their parents...using, I think, the method of leaving a cryptic and amusing message on their cell phones to get in touch with the parents in the first place. ZV1.0 was your basic set of seemingly innocent, angelic-looking, actually crazily mischievous, easily distracted, incredibly curious twin boys who just couldn't keep still. They had curly blond hair, blue eyes, and a good bit of musical talent already despite the fact that they were like 7 years old. And that's about it.
Version 2 of the Zilllets is probably the most detailed set of Zilllets to date. By most detailed, I mean, well, I spent a lot of time imagining them, so by the end of their run I had figured out lots of stuff. Lots of little stories. And one epic story. Oh, and in version 2 they have a little sister. I mean...they had names. Which are moot, now, of course, because everything about them is moot now, but it takes me a while to come up with names and actually stick to them. Actually in this case I interviewed people and picked the names I liked best for the twins but still. I'd love to get into the many adventures they had (the epic adventure, band camp, the crazy DDR madness, how they and their little sister (and Katy's daughter, too) all saved the band at different points) but that in itself would take up many posts. Perhaps another time, if you like. The twin boys Luke and Alex both had curly black hair and blue eyes, were really good at trumpet and clarinet, and were marching and DDR prodigies. Whereas their little sister Beka (odd, eh?) had sort of reddish hair and blue eyes and was also good at trumpet and clarinet.
Oh yeah. Version 2 of the Zilllets is when I actually started thinking about future Saline and it was the first time I thought of a super-awesome, casual but very skilled, famous and perhaps mildly secretive musical group composed of me and all my friends and whomever we thought was awesome enough to join us. Back then I called it "the Random Musical Folk" and we basically just got together at someone's house and rehearsed whatever music we wanted to for whatever gigs we could get. It was cool. Oh god it's all coming back now. We actually had a uniform, too. Black suit, white shirt, bright red bowtie. if you can figure out why, you're a dork. if you know why I picked that, and you'd need some knowledge of shs extra-curricular music options to do so, well then, you get major points. dork points, but points nonetheless. (to help you out, at some times I also imagined us having baseball caps with black caps and orange brims, and orange high-top sneakers. but I often thought that was going a bit over the top.)
Version 3 is actually not very well developed, simply because I've been concentrating more on Alex and Lily and Bell, the main characters of Enilas which are *gasp!* not zills! altho Lily manages to capture one of their hearts. I know that much. (note: Alex here is completely different from Alex above. note to joey: don't worry, Lily has no relation to David) I can tell you that like other versions, ZV3 is a set of twin boys who are awesome in many ways. They are of course musically talented. I think this is the first set that I've imagined developing in a fantastical world as opposed to a fairly real world. So all I know right now is that they've got straightish blond hair, blue eyes, a good deal of musical talent, a great deal of awesomeness, and some pretty cool powers since like, they're in a world of magic and all.
Now, for versions 2 and 3 there were also not-nearly-as-well-developed corresponding Zilllettes, which were Kyle's daughters. But all I really know about them is that they're a pair of awesome confident beautiful percussionist chicks, with curly or wavy shiny brown hair and blue eyes. So yeah.
So I feel like I should do something vaguely productive and by vaguely productive I mean, well, it's something I should do. it may not be academic but at least it has some purpose. whether that's entertainment or convincing you I'm insane, I'm not sure, but...here we go.
Zilllets. You can call them little Zills, you can call them ZTNG (Zills: The Next Generation), but I've always called them Zilllets - yes, with a triple l. I've told you I have a bit of an obsession with twins, and I've told you I like making up stories about my friends and their kids, and you might figure that because of that they feature in my stories, but here's the complete truth of it. Most of the crazy stories I thought up in high school were about my friends in the future, about Saline in the future. But they were really more about my friends' kids. And...a lot of them featured Zilllets.
And now is the time when I should probably warn the only person that I know for sure reads this occasionally that the specific Zill I seemed to focus on more in this regard was the one she's dating. I don't know why. And honestly it's possible he's already told her all about this whole crazy dealio. Of course it's also possible he has no idea I'm writing this blog. So.
Version 1.0 of the Zilllets (yes, there were versions. of course there were versions. a different major number indicates a different girlfriend, a different minor number might indicate a different age, different setting or something, not sure. Don't worry, I'll get to Version 3 eventually.) was sort of like...almost a demo. There was no plot. Actually, there was, but it was very simple. Parents get distracted, zilllets run away like the mischievous twin boys they were, run into a building, find a fun chem lab, I stop them, talk with them for a bit, realize who they are (try not to crack up), return them to their parents...using, I think, the method of leaving a cryptic and amusing message on their cell phones to get in touch with the parents in the first place. ZV1.0 was your basic set of seemingly innocent, angelic-looking, actually crazily mischievous, easily distracted, incredibly curious twin boys who just couldn't keep still. They had curly blond hair, blue eyes, and a good bit of musical talent already despite the fact that they were like 7 years old. And that's about it.
Version 2 of the Zilllets is probably the most detailed set of Zilllets to date. By most detailed, I mean, well, I spent a lot of time imagining them, so by the end of their run I had figured out lots of stuff. Lots of little stories. And one epic story. Oh, and in version 2 they have a little sister. I mean...they had names. Which are moot, now, of course, because everything about them is moot now, but it takes me a while to come up with names and actually stick to them. Actually in this case I interviewed people and picked the names I liked best for the twins but still. I'd love to get into the many adventures they had (the epic adventure, band camp, the crazy DDR madness, how they and their little sister (and Katy's daughter, too) all saved the band at different points) but that in itself would take up many posts. Perhaps another time, if you like. The twin boys Luke and Alex both had curly black hair and blue eyes, were really good at trumpet and clarinet, and were marching and DDR prodigies. Whereas their little sister Beka (odd, eh?) had sort of reddish hair and blue eyes and was also good at trumpet and clarinet.
Oh yeah. Version 2 of the Zilllets is when I actually started thinking about future Saline and it was the first time I thought of a super-awesome, casual but very skilled, famous and perhaps mildly secretive musical group composed of me and all my friends and whomever we thought was awesome enough to join us. Back then I called it "the Random Musical Folk" and we basically just got together at someone's house and rehearsed whatever music we wanted to for whatever gigs we could get. It was cool. Oh god it's all coming back now. We actually had a uniform, too. Black suit, white shirt, bright red bowtie. if you can figure out why, you're a dork. if you know why I picked that, and you'd need some knowledge of shs extra-curricular music options to do so, well then, you get major points. dork points, but points nonetheless. (to help you out, at some times I also imagined us having baseball caps with black caps and orange brims, and orange high-top sneakers. but I often thought that was going a bit over the top.)
Version 3 is actually not very well developed, simply because I've been concentrating more on Alex and Lily and Bell, the main characters of Enilas which are *gasp!* not zills! altho Lily manages to capture one of their hearts. I know that much. (note: Alex here is completely different from Alex above. note to joey: don't worry, Lily has no relation to David) I can tell you that like other versions, ZV3 is a set of twin boys who are awesome in many ways. They are of course musically talented. I think this is the first set that I've imagined developing in a fantastical world as opposed to a fairly real world. So all I know right now is that they've got straightish blond hair, blue eyes, a good deal of musical talent, a great deal of awesomeness, and some pretty cool powers since like, they're in a world of magic and all.
Now, for versions 2 and 3 there were also not-nearly-as-well-developed corresponding Zilllettes, which were Kyle's daughters. But all I really know about them is that they're a pair of awesome confident beautiful percussionist chicks, with curly or wavy shiny brown hair and blue eyes. So yeah.
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