From your lips to God's ears !
RAMBLE TIMEEEEE
No sketches today folks, but I SUPER need to get this all out of my system. So if you feel like reading it, be my guest. I just hope you have fun.

These are all about three collaborations I'm doing with people I know. They're all basically bastardized from some sort of original idea in some way or another. But hopefully they're weird or thoughtful enough to be considered not horrible.

+ + + + +

First ramble about a collaboration is about:
Alar.

So, all of you know about this bastardized school my friend(s) and I have worked up. It's called Alar Fantasy School for Those Extraordinarily Gifted. And it's made up of four houses JUST LIKE HARRY POTTER, but they're based on magics which resemble the mutant powers JUST LIKE THOSE IN X-MEN.

Alar. Houses: Inferno (for fire-types with similar personalities), Gaia (for earth-type magics with sociable personalities), Boreal (for sense-oriented magics with weirdo artsy personalities), and Aurora (for water/ice/wind-based magics with broody studious personalities).

Overmagics & Vivil. Vivil is the secret house which once upon a time existed for purposes of kids with two magics. While the first one was something normal and X-men-y, their second was something creepy or extremely powerful or something people didn't know what to do with. Examples: raising the dead, controlling blood, writing the fates of people with blood, etc. While regular magics were more developed like any skill is developed, these were more classic Pheonix-Jean-Grey-kinda magics, which were uncontrollable and intimidating. So people would freak out. They gave the kids their own house for training(still four houses, there was Aurora Borealis instead of two separate ones). Then it was seen as a preferential treatment sort of thing, so the headmaster disbanded the house. But the kids still had crazy magic. So Mr. Tal Arav, a pretty weird old creepy Alchemy teacher, brought Vivil back. And he keeps it highly under wraps, even against the knowledge of the headmaster.

Main Characters. (mine) Myistain Holloway: 4th year Boreal & Vivil, sweats acid, illusionist. Csyran Sovereign: 4th year Inferno & Vivil, controls heat, 'captures' souls. Sanctus Cariello: 6th year Gaia & Vivil, controls glass, controls blood. Alchera Darling: 7th year Gaia & Vivil, controls fungi, has doors in her body leading somewhere mysterious.

I have other characters that are pretty important, too.

There's Eshin, who summons bees and wasps, and can sacrifice the life of a living thing in order to possess something inanimate, like paper or a doll. And then there's Alzax, a fishboy who controls water and stuff. There's Leinnet & Anirol, the twins, who have extremely strong light-oriented magics and they're both super super fashionable. There's Elke Sudden, the head of the Boreal House, and her best friend / worst enemy Edmund Pseudo, the head of the Gaia house. There's Tal Arav, who is a lot like Bill Cutting from Gangs of New York as I see him. And then I just have a lot of personal favorites like Catra, who is a throwback to a character I created in 5th grade. He has white-blond hair and metallic extendable fingernails. And also Morris Bytheway, who is some Bear Summoner. Antoine Alaric, a lot like Clopin from Hunchback of Notre Dame and he's a fire-eating French teacher. Clifford Hook, who is a character I originally had a dream about in 9th grade. And then there's Evander Csanc, a character I think I created in 8th grade who is a cyclops. He's the librarian.

I really adore all these characters. Really.

The school itself is beautiful. I came up with the design after my first visit to Pittsburgh and the university's campus. There's this beautiful building called the Cathedral of Learning, and the shape & size of Alar is based upon that. It appears to be a 30-something story building, towering over gardens and hedge-mazes and rolling hills, a lake or two, and some small buildings. Inside, because the thing is magicked, there is this infinite number of floors. The goal of Alar is to simulate a real town. There are levels that are completely classrooms, and then there are levels dedicated to theatres and things. Then there are levels dedicated to looking like towns and certain countries. There are levels that look like mountains or levels that look like regular castle hallways. It's all very ridiculous and goes on forever. At the top of the building, there is an actual courtyard where students can eat and hang out, do laundry, and so on. And on top of that there is a forbidden library and garden and probably classrooms completely dedicated to Vivil students.

Everything is very fake about Alar, however. Obviously, most of the environments are magicked and completely surreal. There are fake skies and fake grass. And in the four house dorms, there are a lot of weird environments too. But they're all magicked, so none of these other than the courtyard on top is actually real.

We have finally organized a complete course-list and everything. It's a combo of classes you'd find in both X-men and in Harry Potter and in a regular high school. And then classes we came up with ourselves. I'd imagine a rather block-schedule sort of organization. Probably with four classes on Monday and the other four classes on Tuesday and then back and fourth. That's what I would think. And then lots of free time to go to the library and have one of those crazy Faerie Owls tutor you in biochemistry or whatever.

So I think that's basically it for my Alar ramble. I just wanted to get that out. I might come back and ramble a bunch about the characters. But I feel unfair just talking and not posting up any pictures. But I figure those of you who want to read this will read this. And those of you that don't, won't. So I guess nobody's really losing anything here. That's cool.

+ + + + +

Second collaboration ramble is about:
"The Comic"

This is a world of complete possibilities. Me and two of my friends in art last year came up with two characters each that we'd use in a comic. We'd each draw three pages about then pass it to the next person in the cycle. It's awesome.

So my two characters are Orson and Sparreholm.

Orson, however, is a bit different in this incarnation. He goes back to how he was when I first created him, when he was supposed to be the savior for some obscure religion and had crazy magical powers and dressed in clothes similar to that of Max Fischer. He was born and raised by his parents, but his triplet brothers had been kidnapped. Lawrence had abilities in a sort of emotional magic, like the ability to influence emotions and feelings and things. And then Frederick had a very physical, chemistry sort of ability, where he could control elements and things in the physical world. Unfortunately, they had been abducted at birth by God Knows Who, and then split up so the three of them would never know they existed. Except, Orson still knew because his parents knew.

Since whenever the religion was founded, a castle was built in pure expectation of the triplets. Kind of like Beast's castle, really. And it had laboratories for Frederick, magical place things for Orson, and libraries and things for Lawrence. They were to have it when they reached 16. So now, being around 19, Orson lives there, with the occasional visitor and his parents. I can imagine him inviting anybody to live there because he'd be so damn lonely.

Sparreholm is a giant. He's one of the last of his kind. They're nicknamed Library-Crawlers, and they all have two thumbs and live for a really really long time. They create enormous libraries of legendary books, books found no where else on earth. And the libraries are so huge usually only Library-Crawlers can navigate them, because they can, quite literally, climb around on the bookshelves and up them and sit on the tops to read books. Sparreholm, being one of the last, has an established library in the same town that Orson grew up in. Orson, drawn to the library and its mystery, made friends with Sparry at an early age. Sparreholm has no relatives anywhere in about 1000 miles, and lives a rather lonely life where he constantly reads books and things. And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of nearly everything, as is his duty as a Library-Crawler.

As me and my friends arranged it, each of our two characters who already know each other are invited to a certain inn by a mysterious benefactor. We lovingly call him the "Rich Dude."

My friend's characters:

E - she has two angel characters. They are Lucifer (as in, THE Lucifer) and a woman named Gizelle, who, unlike ALL THE OTHER CHARACTERS, is actually cubby. The legend of Lucifer is still in development at this stage, where people believe he is evil, but he's still wandering around on the planet as a cursed angel. And Gizelle, for some reason I think I probably shouldn't reveal, is absent of a body. So she appears most often as a ghost from this little blue pokeball thing that Lucifer keeps around his waist. And when Lucifer is unconcious or just lets her, Gizelle takes over his body. They are good people. Lucifer is not bad.

J - One of her characters is a little girl named Eliana, who was raised as half angel / half human to be the Pope's predecessor. The Pope basically raised her to do his dirty work conquering wandering demons and so on and so forth. Then she met Lenus / Lumus, almost a split-personality human / demon kid. She was sent to kill him, but rebels against the Pope and runs away with Lenus. Lenus is the sweet one who is human, and Lumus is the demon side.

It's funny, because we finally realized that all our characters (except for Sparreholm and maybe Lenus) go together extremely well. At first it seemed REALLY random, but now we've figured out that our comic is turning out to be SUPER anti-Catholic if not anti-Christian (even though I think we were ALL raised Christian, hahahaha). As it turns out, the angels and the pope are evil and in cahoots with each other and are manipulating everyone through religion. Orson's religion is probably actually the REAL religion and Orson and his brothers basically really ARE the saviors.

The Rich Dude, we don't really know yet. We can't decide if he's evil or good or just neutral. He basically arranged all our characters to get together to transport this mysterious cargo that nobody is allowed to look at. The fact that he gathered probably three of the most important characters in religion (Lucifer, Orson, and Eliana) suggests he knows their places and importance with the Pope and the Angels. But we don't really know what we're doing and we're really only within the first week of the story, even though this has been going on for a year. Hahahhahaa

So that's that. The world is whatever we make it to be. But it's so much fun to write because I secretly really love the idea of Orson with magic.

+ + + + +

Third collaboration ramble is about:
Steampunk Pokemon

This collaboration idea is with Selly, the same girl I'm doing Alar with. And I don't really know much about her character / her character's Pokemon. But I'll tell you what I know about the world, her character, and then my character.

Okay, so it's exactly as it sounds. It's steampunk. It's very Victorian with a lot of high-class and low-class and industry. And then there's the technological side of it, with extremely advanced technology that just so happens to be a million times more intricate and fancy than the way we have our technology. Instead of having a simple keyboard, it's all silly and decorated and metallic and whatever and completely ridiculous.

Then you have the Pokemon aspect. A lot of labor is taken by Pokemon, but there are still humans working in factories too. There are few actual trainers, which act more like, I don't know, I suppose army things or just travelers or something. There are gym leaders of sorts, but I hate the title "gym leader" so it might be something different. There are official ones and there are unofficial ones who just train you and help you out. And each official one gives you, instead of a badge, a piece of an intricate puzzle which helps you find the floating island of the elite four.

There are other floating island towns too, but they don't move around like the Elite Four one does. So yeah.

I think Her character is going to be mostly a poor traveler, a girl with a little Farfetch'd and lots of bird pokemon and ice types. She also has an Articuno.

And then there's my character.
My character, I don't know her name, is a sort of unofficial gym leader. Her father and father before him worked in heavy industry, I'm thinking probably power plants and electric plants and stuff. And because this is steampunk and gender discrimination doesn't exist as much, my girl is the inheritress of the power plant.

I'd imagine the family to be a pretty high-class family. But they're less from noble status and more from a blue-collar background, as they have to manage power plants. But the fact that they come from such a high-profiting industry leads them to be rather well-to-do. So her family would be millionaires, but also have an air of hard-working no-nonsense.

When she came of age, which I assume meaning she trained pokemon and got all her badges orsomething, her father gave her the power plant to oversee (for the most part).

Her Pokemon team is this:
Blastoise, Torterra, Doduo, Tropius, Zapdos, and Slowpoke.
Slowpoke is more of a pet than anything, but he can come in handy in battles. And Zapdos is definitely a family heirloom that came with the power plant when she inherited it. Her grandfather first found him when he started the plant, and so now she has him, as it was passed down. That kind of thing.

I imagine her as a girl who is dainty but isn't dainty. She'd wear intricate silly little goggles on her forehead with an aviator's cap, probably have a typical Victorian bun when her hair wasn't covered, and smoke cigars when she felt like. Her best friend would be her Blastoise, who she would smoke with and talk at when she was nervous or busy managing her plant. She'd probably be a huge go-getter and be obsessed with some librarian or playwrite orsomething (as is typical for all my characters), and she'd live on a villa that her family built when she was relaxing. And she'd ride around on her Blastoise on the water, or her Doduo on land, or her Tropius in the air. And she'd carry around lots of useless little gadgets and go to high-class parties in crazy fancy dresses but get sick of all the richpeople prattle.

She'd take in trainers to work at her factory if they wanted experiences with electric-types or something. And then she'd probably give them an elekid or electabuzz or some kind of electric-type pokemon (maybe a thunderstone) and some money for their hard-earned work. Because she wouldn't be an official "gym leader." She couldn't give out the map. Maybe just a badge. Some cute little electrical badge. She would have defeated all gym leaders herself, but wouldn't have beaten the Elite Four. I'd imagine defeating a gym leader would be a LOT HARDER than in the games. And it would probably be nearly impossible for a normal trainer to defeat the Elite Four. At least, the gym leaders would be specialized in the types they used, but the Elite Four would be like any normal trainer and use a varied team that would be REALLY HARD to beat.

So yeah. I think that's it. Just talking.
I like the idea of my character a lot.

+ + + + +

This post is so ridiculously lame.
Hahahhahahahahha
HECKYES.

(PS Sorry for all the terrible grammar and spelling mistakes. I wrote this in a fit of inspiration, so it's terrible)