Song in its Simplicity

Who's to say that songs has to have awesome lyrics, funny, witty, rhyming lyrics? Well, I'm here to say stop lyrics stop! Why? Because I've been currently stuck with figuring out what lyrics to put to my melodious unfinished song.

I'm not really a lyricist, I never claim or think that I am, I'm just lucky enough that sometimes I managed to come up with--what I think are--awesome lyrics. Currently though, I've done nothing but writing another set of love song or ... too emotional mellow lyrics that doesn't make enough sense even to me.

So, I'm scratching that whole lyrics and stayed simple: one word lyric. Yup. There you have it. My greatest problem solving for my lyrical problem!

In fact, I managed to make 2 songs with only word. It's pretty cool if I have to say so myself. *rubs nose boastfully*

Boom! What's the word? No, not mum, but POTATO(E). Not sure how you would like to spell it but let's say without an 'e'. POTATO. Yes. Simple. Like french fries.

What? Oh you want the other video as well? Why of course.

BAM! What? Whaat? Oh it's bringing tears to my eyes! This song! Why? 'Coz it's about ONIONS!

....I sound more excited than the expression of my face when typing this. Which is pretty much just T-T .. no, not crying. Just straight open eye with eyelids. I didn't want to do -_- just because I'm asian! I no have chinky eyes! They are wide open, people!

Anyways, thanks for watching my videos :) Why not subscribe for more simple things in life like this?

Cheers!

--Michelle

Challenges

I've been getting back into writing fiction and fanfiction lately. That's when I saw a forum offering a challenge on a Harvest Moon story. There is one where the challenge is to write 100 chapter with a given theme for each chapter, 100 words only revolving the life of 1 HM character.

I am so intrigued by this challenge and wanted to get on with it then and there. However, I've been busying myself with making music lately... It's been going pretty well. There are more listeners now mostly gained by the Sims 3 Seasons cover song I did recently. Now it's growing up to 200+ subscribers! Wow..

There's so many things I want to do yet I'm just here writing about what I want to do. Time is really the main decider.. Which large portion of my time would I be willing to offer for a certain project.

No, perhaps I should just divide it to which artistic ... action ... I'd like to do more. Surely I should do music more because it's what I do best. But sometimes I wish I can just spend the whole day writing, yet there's always something that would keep me from finishing a chapter..

Life is full of challenge...

You start off not know what you want to do.. experience a mid-life crisis.. then you began to know what you want to do.. and now not sure which one to do first..

Life in the Sims seems much simpler than real life. Perhaps that's why it became so big..

Pushing the Limits

When I was the Philippines, I get to talk with one of my friends about putting a band together. Well, it was mostly him that will be putting the band together while I was "booked" to be the singer. At that time I said yes. The next time he asked again, I said yes again. Only...this time I asked if my voice was right for the genre or not.

As far as I know, my voice was a soft and quiet one. I did sing some songs before that requires some slight "shouting" but never all the time. This time, his song influence are mostly J-rock bands where the girl had to kind of force her vocal chords to avoid using falsetto even though it's past her comfortable chest voice.

I was starting to worry because I did have problems with my own song when it was reaching a high note. I tend to always use the easy way out and use the falsetto. However, this time he said no. He told me to cover 3 song for him to listen and forced me to use my chest voice.

So I googled some "vocal training" posts online and found an exercise where I can blend my head voice and my chest voice. The guy even gave an example of himself doing a flawless scale where he blends the two voice without breaking.

In the end, I didn't really do any blending when doing the song but I did find some interesting facts about my vocal range. I never had to push myself to sing like that so I didn't know that I can actually reach the high parts. Of course, it hurts eventually and then I can't control my voice anymore but I find it comforting that the more I get to do it (with breaks in between), the easier and more comfortable I get to singing those parts.

It actually encourages me to start pushing myself to see how far I can go as a vocalist. Hopefully I get to train properly instead of slowly killing my vocal chords.

Kitchen Candy-Candy Princess

There's a manga that I recently read called Kitchen Princess.. It's a story about an orphaned girl who has the sense of taste that moved to Tokyo to fulfill her parents dream to become the best pastry chef. Her ability allows her to taste a food and always remember it forever along with identifying ingredients within it. The girl was soon acquainted herself with 2 attractive boys and becomes the school's talk because of her having such an "ordinary" talent --which they thought was eating.

This lead her to be bullied yet starting to have a closer bond with the 2 attractive boys which leads to even more bullying by a girl who secretly likes one of the boys she's close with. Of course, aside from her dream, she is secretly hoping to find this "flan prince" that saved her from drowning when she was younger.

For some reason, when I was reading this, I immediately thought of Candy-Candy. There were several similarities I noticed in both stories.

Candy-Candy

Najika

Hairstyle
This is just me nitpicking, but they both have blond pigtails. Though Candy-Candy's hair is curly, but.. the way it's tied, with ribbons on top, is similar.

Personality
"Different from other girls" and independent. Always want to make her friends smile. Cheerful, strong on the outside but is hurting on the inside.

Circumstances.
They're both orphaned since young. Living in a orphanage that is in the middle of nowhere with a nice old lady as the head of the orphanage with little children that thinks of her as the big sister.
Went to live in the city, and studied in a school of "rich" people, staying in its dormitory.

Romance

Candy's fake prince.

Are both looking for the "prince" who cheered them up when they were crying at a younger age. Najika's clue was a silver spoon, Candy-Candy's clue was a clothing accessories (that I dont know the english term of). They both found a guy that they thought was their prince and even fell in love with him and he with them.

Najika's fake prince

But he was actually not the prince, so the author killed him off in order for the girls to end up being with the actual prince, if she just moved hearts while he's alive she might be considered a slut, though killing them didn't really justify the idea.

Their destined loved ones, was not their first choice at first due to their first impression, (Najika's guy was cold and anti-her at the beginning, Candy's guy was a man that lived in the woods for so long he grew beard and could talk to animals.) They eventually changed and became a better gentleman before end up being with the girls.


I assume that the Kitchen Princess was somehow inspired by it or without realizing it wrote it similar to Candy-Candy because s/he once read the manga when s/he was younger.
There are a couple of differences, first of all, the book is about cooking which means competition and similar plot idea on several chapters.

The story had a nice idea, and I liked the titling of the chapters but soon it just gets tiring/annoying and it felt dragged so I skipped through a few chapters all the way till the end. The whole romance plot was easy to figure out. It's obvious who she'll end up being with and there was the overly used love square problem where, as usual, the main character always gets all the boys to like her.

Overall the drawing was well done, but I wouldn't continue buying Nakayoshi to keep reading it.. I'd rather just go online and read for free.. yet still think it wasted my time.

Mayzie Grobe, a Sims3 Song.

I always look forward to what Sims 3 expansion pack is going to be like. So far, I have the World Adventure, Ambitions, Late Night, and Pets; all of which are a fun addition to play. Recently, I found a new expansion pack that I like: Sims 3 Seasons. I didn't get to play this expansion pack back on Sims 2, but I sure like the idea of snow!

When looking for information about this expansion pack on wikia, I saw the trailer and they had a very very VERY catchy song playing as the main music. It was written in Simlish. It couldn't have been any more perfect than it was already is. It fits the theme so well and I find myself replaying it over and over again even as I'm writing this.

It actually took me awhile to realize that it was in Simlish, and soon I began to want to sing that song! So, at 5AM in the morning, I took my guitar and started recording. It went like this: strum strum, strum strum, strum strum for a couple of times.. I added in the vocals and had to go through the hard part: figuring out the lyrics.. dun dun duuun!

I tried googling it but didn't seem to find anything except the title which is "Mayzie Grobe" -- a totally awesome title! In the end I just used my headphones and listened to it closely..
I probably missed some "p" "b" "c" "k" and such.. but whatever..

This is the lyrics that I sang for the Mayzie Grobe song:
mayzie grobe, creypaaw (2x)
letsigo truplay
gon zebenay
mayzie grobe, creypaaw (2x)

neeve, menza neeve, nee vazoo bon ze zaycom
neen, zenza been, cobazy...o

mayzie grobe, creypaaw (2x)  
letsigo truplay
gon zibenay
mayzie grobe, creypaaw (5x)

I showed it to my dad and he told me to add some violins on it. I thought, why not? So I did.. and the end result is.. *drum rolls*

Dang, this song is catchy..

HM: A Fan of Fiction

Another post about Harvest Moon again?! Gasp! I must be into this lately!

... Which I am...

Since I joined the UNoT forum, I got pulled in to discussing more about the characters that I'm seeing in my Two Town game and I've fallen in love with them even more. Of course, there has been a lot of fan fiction done between the main characters and the different bacherlor/ettes available in the story. There are also those discussion about rival pairings. It's both fortunate and unfortunate that there is no rival marriage in this game so during these discussion, people are open to imagine their own pairs.

I even joined in and thought of some good pairings and why they were good with each other. However, there were more of the "who's your favorite bachelor/ette"discussion that made me think of how the "rivals" would feel when the main girl stole their love pair.

Soon enough I began to have ideas on a couple of pairings and I decided to try to write for my favorite bachelorette: Reina and who would better pair with her than Cam?

Because of this I made an account in fanfiction which was really the same deal with my current fictionpress profile and posted my first ever fanfiction! I decided to title it Dandelion because *spoiler alert!* that is the flower that will be a significant part of the story.

This is the summary of the story: Reina, the botanist, already accepted that no one would understand her passion for plants until she met Cam, the florist, and learned his passion for flowers. However, with the cheerful Lilian always hanging around Cam, will Reina have the chance to approach the quiet florist?

Something like that.. I'm having my friend work on the cover artwork for it. Hopefully I'll be able to post it when I finished with the next chapter.

Eek! I'm so excited!

Typical Manga Story

My sister is a manga collector.. or at least she has TONS of manga in our house and when I'm bored I ended up reading some of the books.. However, it seems like most of the books I chose to read at random has a similar story / character personality and ending..

1. Girl always gets the boy.
No matter how stupid / "ugly" / silly / mean / uninterested the girl is or no matter how anti-girl / uninterested / anti-social the guy is, the girl for whatever reason, always gets the guy.. No matter if the guy is engaged, or married.. somehow, the guy would end up falling for her.

If the guy is one of those loners, the girl would always "charm" the guy and be something different so that the guy will fall in love with her. Even if the guy is a common playboy and the girl is the exact opposite of his type, he would end up liking her and stop being playboy.

It comes to the point that the story becomes stupid that EVERY MALE CHARACTER falls in love with the main girl (if the story has multiple guy characters) even if the other guy was only pretending to be a rival.

2. Guys have stupid reasons not to be with her.
I once read a manga where the guy decides not to be with the main girl (that likes him so much she follows him around like a stalker yet it's considered sweet and cute because.. y'know it's a manga) because he wasn't able to "protect her". He came to that conclusion because she was kissed by another guy -- which was her own fault for wanting to follow him to a middle of an all boys dormitory -- and this, of course hurts the girl's heart etc.. and when confronted, he just said that he couldn't protect her and that she found another protector that is better than him (who is the guy that kissed her in the first place.) WTH!?

Usually, guys rejects the girl because they think they're not good enough for the girl.. it's a common reason.. which is stupid. If they think they're horrible then .. stop feeding her love soul and move away or something (which is probably a stupid solution but I was pretty pissed at the guy being all nice to the girl in the first place anyway). I mean, you never know if you're perfect for each other or not if you don't try, right? And it's not like good relationships means zero problems. Fighting is common in relationships, just learn how to deal with them properly.

3. The guy is always smart / hot / attractive.
Even if the main guy is a glasses nerd looking man, he'd be portrayed as a cute boy and would still get votes from girls. Unless it's a boy manga, I've never seen a chubby guy that gets chased around by lots of girl.. I mean, I've read a few short romance stories.. but then sometimes they end up being skinny in the end..
The girls are also pretty much skinny and proportional.. there are that are slightly chubby but not super obese and even if they are obese, they will try to diet.

4. Debts is cleared by engagement.
When the girl is deep in her debt, suddenly out of nowhere, she is now engaged to this rich young man and her debt is cleared! Sometimes she has no other choice, and sometimes her parents are the ones that insisted.. Of course the guy isn't interested in her because she's still a "kid" or not sexy enough to be taken advantage of.. and for some reason, this pisses off the girl because in the end, despite hating him, she'll fall in love with him. Surprise!

5. Overused personality.
Typically, the girl is always the bubbly type.. or she's a clutz.. often gets her skirt hiked up by the guy and gets all embarrassed yet she's cool about chasing the guy all around. Or the girl is quiet and gets misunderstood by the people but she's able to open up to this one guy and they end up falling in love, she gets stronger with his help and be more confident etc..

If the guy is bubbly, the girl is usually anti-social and the guy will drag her into doing silly things that'll open up her heart and make her see how fun the world can be..
If the guy is anti-social, it's somewhat the other way around.. and the guy will be paired with a clutz girl.

6. Over-reacting!
Girl characters often have stupid reasons to be heartbroken by their past.

They were rejected because they were ugly -- so they do a 180 personality and look change yet still scarred by the memory when she sees the rejecting guy..
They were double played by a playboy -- so they don't trust guys anymore, or they hurt guys and gets revenge.
They often misunderstood situation and end up thinking that the guy cheated on her / likes another girl just by seeing him walking with another girl. How shallow / stupid can they be?! Do they really not trust the guy that they'll run away and cry after seeing such a horrible scene. "Why is he together with that girl?" Well, she's his sister. Or they work together. Stop being stupid!

And sometimes they're not even together! She just has a crush on him so she gets heartbroken since all this time, she thinks he belongs to her. Well, no! You haven't confessed to him so why the hell do you think you're the only special one?
Of course, the guy will then clear up the whole mess and confess that he actually likes her too, etc, happy ending.

See, these overreacting is what caused people to kill themselves over a break-up or cheating bf/gf. It's not worth it and mangas aren't teaching any different. Nor movies. Nor media.


Overall, there are still a few good romance manga with an interesting plot: Kare Kano, Beyond the Blindfold, (and if you're into classic manga) Pop corn, etc. Some even have a fantasy theme to it like From Far Away.
With the price of manga going up compared to the old days, why isn't the quality of the stories increasing either? It seems a waste to buy a manga that has a predictable ending where the girl gets the guy.