(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role playing forums. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)
The player scrapbooks forum is literally a place for writers to warm-up, brainstorm, keep little scraps of notes, or just post things to encourage themselves and each other. Each player can feel free to create their own thread - one per account - and use them accordingly.
So, the past few days I have been craving something, but I don't know what it is I am craving. Every morning I wake up and find no desire to eat anything in my pantry for breakfast. I end up just fasting until dinner. I don't know if it's the morning "not hungry thing" or what, but I just am not interested in eating anything I have. However, the thing is, I don't know what to eat!
Does anyone have any nice ideas for recipes or meals for either breakfast, lunch or even dinner? I have been browsing the internet, stalking tumblr accounts for meal ideas or food plans, but I keep coming up empty. Being a vegetarian, you aren't deprived of many options, but there is still a limit, especially when you go out to public restaurants. Sometimes I wish they served hamburgers or chicken tenders made out of chickpeas and carrots and the like.
There are these things called Veggie Burgers. They are made out of every kind of vegetable you can image and they taste wonderful! They taste exactly like a pepperoni pizza or steak or any meat you could conjure up and I love eating them. However, lately I have been growing bored of eating the same thing over and over again and frankly, I think that is what has been getting me in the morning and during lunch time.
As I have digressed increasingly the past few paragraphs, I will not strange any longer. This post wasn’t meant to be a complaint and plead for new recipes but an inspirational, cause for craving post. I have posted sporadic images of yummy looking chocolaty goodness and although I do not currently have the ingredients and instructions on how to make these various foods, I still think they look good if not self-explanatory.
Food, food, food. It is such a strange necessity for people isn’t it? Sometimes I think it would be wonderful to not have to eat to survive. Like dogs pant to stay cool, we sweat. Well if there was an alternative… I’m getting more science fiction, futuristic here now aren’t I? I apologise. For now, enjoy the pictures and I hope you stay hungry full!
-Lenz
Last edited by Lenz on June 19th, 2014, 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well, since I haven't had any music in a while, I thought it would be acceptable to put something up. I have been craving music for a while as much as I have sweet things, so after listening to this song, I was most pleased. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Last edited by Lenz on June 19th, 2014, 6:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
So your scrap about food got me thinking about my go to meals. I am not a vegetarian, but I work in a little mom and pop health food store and have developed a healthy addiction to tofu and tried plenty of meat alternatives and what not. One of my favorite things to do is use these:
yummy :
in a stir fry, which ends up for me making an entirely vegetarian stir fry, usually with carrots, peas, tofu, and broccoli or brussel sprouts over rice. I like these strips because they do taste like meat, they also come in a chicken flavor as well. Also I'm not sure if you like seaweed, but making sushi rolls with just veggies is super easy as well!
And I am with you on the breakfast thing, I can almost never find something that I want to eat unless its on a weekend and I have lots of time to make a big heaping meal. Instead of going without I usually try to make myself shakes and eat a little fruit or yogurt to keep me going until my next meal.
Anyway those are my thoughts on the matter haha, I don't know if they help at all, but it was a good excuse to stop by your scrap!
It seems like I might have another dinner alternative! I haven't actually heard of these before and I don't know why. I'm sure there somewhere at my local grocery store if not somewhere online. I usually go with the veggie burgers from Morningstar Farms, but these- they are more steak like and I must say, I have been waiting for some brand name to come out with a meat alternative for steak! Thank you so much for this find! I shall certainly go out and try to hunt this down.
As for breakfast, I will definitely try some more yoghurt. I haven't been out to buy any in a while, but I'm sure when the time comes I will scrounge around in attempts of locating that Yoplait and whatnot. And shakes! I do have a blender, I just don't know why it's sitting there. I could easily blend up some strawberries and blueberries from the freezer and there we go! A fruit smoothie for the car ride.
Thanks for the help, Traverse! I will surly check these ideas out now that you've mentioned them!
Last edited by Lenz on June 19th, 2014, 6:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Okay everyone. I have been in the mood for some jokes, riddles and even... puns, yes! So here is a couple I found and couldn't resist not to post. They are both hilarious and had me doubled over laughing, slapping my knees and hacking until I couldn't breathe. Well, none of this really happened because they weren't really funny, but I liked to be overdramatic in terms of building suspense and all.
...and another just for the fun of it!
What does this look like to you?
It looks IllEAGLE to me, but that might just be me- the weird introverted outcast and all. An ill eagle, but there was something on a website that said something about something being illegal... or something.
Last edited by Lenz on June 19th, 2014, 6:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
A few days ago I happened to come across a few errors with my computer when I logged onto Mizahar. Firstly, the little icon/logo on the bottom that states the years Mizahar has been running, what it is and who it's powered by- I find it positioned up much higher than where it is supposed to be located.
Secondly, all of my templates have changed their formats. Most of my boxcodes are supposed to have rounded corners to the 60th radius, but instead, they are all in box format. The fonts for some have been sent back to default and some of the images placed on top or in boxcodes have been either cut off or repositioned. I found this even stranger when I asked a friend to check my templates page for me to see if she saw the same issues.
She said to me that nothing looked out of the ordinary apart from a few minor things, things I wasn't concerned about in the least. After thanking her I sat at my computer screen and pondered what the problems could truly be and how they ended up occurring when I did nothing, changed nothing to or on my computer.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that as long as others see my posts how I wish for them to see it, I'm fine with just leaving them as they are. I cannot go in and change them back to how they were because my computer won't let me.
It was more of a worrisome mystery to me than anything, but after checking the site on my mobile device (my Kindle) I found that everything was how I initially posted it as. It's weird, but there's nothing I can really do about it. I'm not a computer geek. I only know a few things here and there, but I'm not too concerned about it because again, others see it how I wished for them to and that's fine and dandy with me.
Just a little update on my whereabouts and thoughts and feelings! I hope no one else is suffering from these problems as I am. Just, one day I woke up, went online and noticed these changes. Everything and the font switch on all the forums. It's just.... bizarre.
Thanks for reading as always and if anyone has a clue about what has happened or what is happening, I'd appreciate the feedback and advice!
-Lenz
Last edited by Lenz on June 19th, 2014, 6:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Hm... I've encountered a slightly similar problem before, though mine was a little more explainable XD
I was looking at my CS, which used webfonts for titles. Except... it just turned up as normal font. I asked people in chat, and they said it was normal. However, I was using another computer at the time, and a particularly old one at that... so the explanation came rather easily. It was also on an old version of windows XD
Have you changed anything recently? Tried editing your posts? Do recent ones still look like this? That's all I can think of, for the moment.
Okay, so I went in chat recently and was stopped by Matthew who said he could help me out if he knew what was really going on. I told him what internet browser I was using, which happens to be Internet Explorer. Yeah, I know, not many use this browser any more because of the Chrome and things like Firefox, but my father likes it, therefore I'm stuck with it. Well, apparently this site doesn't work well with that browser so problems were certain to arise.
I have gone back into my posts and tried to edit them but nothing really works. I have been dabbling a little with my updates and am trying to reverse them so that I can have my regular display back again. As I have said before, when I look at my kindle everything looks fine so I'm not very concerned about it. As long as others see it the right way!
Thanks for your advice and I will be sure to experiment and shortly I will post templates in my design thread to see if newly posted templates look the same- incorrect and problematic.
Thank you so much though Abs!
-Lenz
P.S This post has rounded edges, right?
Last edited by Lenz on June 19th, 2014, 6:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
So I have done some deep thoughtful introspection to some extent over the past few days. I have been through so much over the past few months and even more so the many months before. I have been through academic and future problems and social issues. I have been under stress so such extremes that I have literally locked myself in the bathroom for over three hours only to have my father bust down the door.
There comes a time when you simply want to stomp your foot on the ground and shout, “enough!” I don’t know if any of you know much about me, for I don’t truly know much about myself, but from a recent post I made a while ago there is a big explanation on some of things I go through.
Now, I don’t want to get into a huge rant or hissy fit about my life. I hate it when people do that. So, instead I just want to focus on the present and even a little more into the future and neglect to give the past any attention.
This ‘stomping’ and ‘putting my foot down’ I am referring to happens to be the change in not only my outlook and disposition but also my activity and writing style. I have grown over the past year I have been on Mizahar and sometimes it has been in a good way and in others it has been poor. But overall, the two cancel each other and even the playing field rather nicely.
There are times when I want to pull out my hair or grind my teeth into powder and others were I just want to be alone and listen to the tranquility of soft playing music or pick flowers from out of the field in my backyard. Overall, there is a subtle difference in how I am today than how I was yesterday.
When I say all this, I am meaning to direct it towards my scrapbook. Instead of random music posts or food posts I somewhat want to make my posts more interesting and even, maybe a little personal. Recollection is one of my enemies, but also one of my friends and because of that I have much to share with everyone willing to listen. Who knows? Maybe even someone will come up to me and relate to me in every possible way.
I think I just want to clarify on a few things as I do this. I don’t like long and boring, ever insisting posts that describe endless and repetitive summaries about things even I wouldn’t care about. I want to intrigue those who read my scrapbook and although my scrapbook I have at home contains nothing but pictures and snip-its of times from adventure land or beyond, I think something online should be a bit different.
I will mention that Lenz’s new personality change was made on impulse. I tried to make it work with her protective, calm and inspiring sensitive side, but things just didn’t pan out as I had predicted. Anticipatory change isn’t always fun, so I did things on a whim and revoked her motherly nature only to have it transform into something naughtier, and maybe even a little demonic.
In truth, I kind of used bits and pieces of my own personality and mentality to influence her demeanour and perspectives towards life in Mizahar. She’s dark and as I am with my writing, I liked to portray that when she not only thinks but speaks to those around her. I added a dash of mystery, for I am also mysterious and a sprinkle of fear for I am always fearful.
I have never made a character that truly mimics that of myself because frankly, I never really liked myself. I always wanted to change who I am because I always loathed who I truly was. I found myself weak, unimportant, easily forgettable and always regrettable and therefore there was no way in hell I was going to make a character based solely off of myself. I have had characters in the past and all of which have failed miserably. But when it came to Lenz, there was just this spark of inspiration that lit a match someone deep inside my mind. I took my curious side and followed that bright light deeper and deeper into the cave only to find her sitting there with a creepy smile on her face.
Now, I’m not saying that I’m a satanic little devil trying to witness the pain of others and enjoy it as I do. That was a completely “go with the flow” and “see where it goes” kind of style. No, I’m not that cruel, but I will say that it is easier for me to write when I see those basics depicted in threads. It’s more fun for me and somehow it is also much easier for me to relate.
After I have been writing this one post for several minutes now, I realise that I have completely jumped from tangent to tangent and I apologise for that. What I mean for all this to say to you is that there comes a time when someone needs a change. I have made recent changes in my life and I would like to explain some of those changes to you whilst I still have the means to.
I am currently fifteen years old, but I am soon to turn to the savage age of sixteen. I was frightened out of my mind of public school and after an unfortunate turn of events and some blood shed on my part, I reacted with tears. Begging my mother to take me out of school, I pushed myself to strive for an average education privately. Homeschool became the norm for me my freshmen year of high school.
Now, however, I realise that I am struggling just with being alone. By myself my thoughts are always there and I feel that things have gotten worse (maybe, maybe not) ever since I took myself out of public school and tutored myself at my own house. Next year, my sophomore year of high school I will be transferring over to a public school to test out my emotional and mental state once more.
I was never bullied (at least not during my junior high years), I was never threatened or hurt and I wasn’t a failing student. I simply disliked those around me. I couldn’t connect with those my own age and that made me feel alone and even incredibly sad. I had no friends and I couldn’t focus very well because of it. Usually this would make people work better because there are no distractions, but that is not the case.
Hopefully next year will be a fresh start for me.
There are things inside of each and every one of us that drive us to certain limits. Tolerant levels are different for all of us and sometimes we can’t change them. We can’t change the entirety of who we are- but we can still try to tweak the little things until there is a noticeable improvement.
More introspection and more flashbacks of my past and where has it lead me? Has it made me more fearful than I already am? You could say that. But has that fear pressured me to try new things and to just shut my eyes and jump over the edge of the cliff? I guess you could say that as well.
Everyone strives to achieve something, so why should we run away like a screaming child when there is something we despise wishing to achieve? Why is fear trapped inside our brain like some sort of infection festering in our bodies? Why can’t we lure it out and trample on it with our boots? How did it become and why does it rule over us when we are the rulers of ourselves?
There have been so many questions that have been raised and continue to rise inside my head and whilst some are answerable, others are not. Sometimes there comes a time, as I have been saying for the past several sentences, where we just need to slam our foot to the ground and halt whatever is in front of us. Bringing battle axes won’t work, bringing flashlights to blind the dark won’t suffice either. It’s time to bring out the big guns and work with just your mind and your mind alone.
Alone.
How many times have you felt alone before? And why do I continue to wander off with more and more and even constantly more tangents? There is even a part of me who wishes I could just redact this scrapbook and start all over again. But then there is the other half that says that would be a stupid idea.
Why erase everything when you could look back and say ‘look how far I made it’ or ‘look at the wonderful improvement I made’. I try and try and try not to look back and say, ‘why did I do something so stupid?’ or ‘why can’t I just forget about something so terrible?’ but why do that? It’s because it’s drilled into our brains. Those that say we should just buck up and move on are struggling themselves. Nothing is that easy no matter who says it might be. Things take time and with time comes mistakes and failures and as I try to see that with a new set of eyes it just gets harder, but with that harder it gets easier. Does that make sense or am I just talking to myself here?
Here is what I said at the way beginning just so I can get us all back on track: So I have done some deep thoughtful introspection to some extent over the past few days. And with this time to inspect myself and all that I have done, I have opened my mind to different possibilities. Sure, there will be relapses, and sure there will continue to be days where I just want to curl and die, but as long as I break out of that sullen mentality and move on, I will continue to strengthen myself internally. Mental and emotion stability is the only kind of stability anyone really needs.
Stability.
If you go back to the first post I made in this scrapbook, you will see a tremendously dramatic change in my tone of voice and I apologise for this. I don’t mean to dim the mood with sordid clarification on how I’m doing and I don’t mean to bore you by this change. I don’t want that at all. All I really want to is to make something clear. Instead of what I said in the beginning:
I think I'm a pretty creative person who has an interest in various things, everywhere from art to environmental field science to astronomy back to art again. I have a passion for writing, but sometimes you just don't have the time. But in joining Mizahar my imagination has been broaden and I have progressed in how I write and my writing style has improved, making more time in the day for me to do what I like.
And
I will be posting things along the lines of different recipes to cute pictures found on Tumblr that give me an idea for a rant or discussion I wish to talk about. I could also post inspiring poems or sayings I found to be funny. The list of things is endless, but I just hope whoever is interested in looking through my scrapbook will stay around to see everything I do post! But just be forewarned that whatever I do post is going to be random at times and serious at others.
Instead of that I would like to start things over again.
Hi, I’m Lenz. I created this character out of the sole purpose of expression. She shows many different sides of the human personality. Fear, emotional tearing, romantic interest, embarrassment, joy and even intense bouts of anger. With these emotions, she becomes a well-rounded individual if not a little crazy at times, but aren’t we all? As her player, I feel that I represent much of my character and that makes me unique as a whole.
Now, to start things off on a better foot, I'd like to present to all of you a movie review about a book I admired as I was reading it. Now, I probably did the most terrible thing anyone could have ever done when it comes to reading a book and watching the movie. I mixed the two up! Yes, I watched the movie first and then read the book, but that doesn’t make my personal review that less true.
The two I keep referring to are none other than the first book to the Divergent trilogy. Veronica Roth did a tremendous job writing these books and personally, I feel she did a much better job writing these books that Suzanne Collins did when she wrote the Hunger Games. Roth excelled at portraying the emotions every character went through and the way she used her words made me feel as if I was personally in the book as it was being told to me. Before I continue any further, I suppose it would due everyone good if I included both a passage and the summary of the first book, Divergent.
Here is the summary:
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, Tris also learns that her secret might help her save the ones she loves . . . or it might destroy her.
During the entire book Tris struggles with trying to figure out who she is and why she does what she does. She becomes this completely different person during the novel and with her newfound demeanour she figures out that her life has been nothing but a life. Problems are arising everywhere and she can’t help not doing something to assist all those she sees hurt. Once she chooses a faction things become even more extreme and even too challenging for her, but different emotions collide with one another as fear converges with love. The emotions that are brought together in both the film and the novel are beautifully written in my perspective. I feel that this story could be real one day, that the world will divide into alternative factions and with those factions will be order for a certain amount of time before the control cannot be kept for much longer. The system will fall, but there will be those who stand up and try to fix the problems that arose from the ‘government’ that made them.
The movie did a good job representing the book, although there were many parts that were left out that would have been exceptionally helpful to know. Now, I know because books are very long and movies can only be one and half plus hours long that they can’t fit everything into it, but there were certain scenes in the movie that weren’t even in the book! They changed things to make it seem better. For me, I found certain changes actually pleasing compared to in the book. When I watched the movie and then went to the novel, I was glad that those changes were fixed, but for the other changes I was a little heartbroken. Why change this or fix that when it was perfect in the book? How does this make sense when they never even mentioned it before then?
Every book has its flaws and every movie does and because I don’t want to ruin it with spoilers for all of you, I won’t continue with my rant. I’m not saying the issues were huge, just that they were noticeable as all book lovers and movie lovers will find.
Now let us move on to the cast that was chosen to star in this film. Personally I felt that Shailene Woodley was a wonderful pick to be Tris. She was wrought with emotion and she was very beautiful. In the story it mentions Tris as very short, but in the film it is clear that Shailene is infact not short but average size. In picking a cast I feel that size is very important. There were many times in the story where Tris’s size came into importance and in the film her appearance was never really taken into consideration. Okay. Here is a small fanatic moment when I talk about Four. Theo James played him exactly as how I captured him upon reading the novel. He was dark, mysterious, sexy and even a little tempered. Sure, in the book his eyes were a dark blue and sure he reacted to her in different ways, but in the end, when things changed and feelings were exchanged, the two really connected to their characters and I felt the emotions that were writhing through their bodies. It was all exceptional. For the characters that weren’t huge in the film but still important: I felt that Peter was depicted just as well as he was in the story, but for those such as Christina and Will and Al, I felt that they were dimmed down a bit in the film. They weren’t as adorable and problematic and friendly as they were in the book which kind of took me by surprise. It’s a huge thing, the way people act around other people, so when they act differently from novel to film, it kind of puts stress on me to watch or read it!
Here is a small portion of what Kate Erbland from Summit Entertainment says about Divergent:
The film is problematically faithful to its source material, meticulously depicting nearly every beat of the novel, an initially happy attribute that will please hardcore fans but could likely alienate plenty of potential new initiates (and, yes, even big fans might find long stretches of repeated material too tedious for their own tastes). Some of the elements of the world that Roth creates on the page are woefully weird when portrayed on screen, simple stuff that’s easy to forget when lost inside a book that doesn’t rely on visually portraying things, and basic questions like who is making these snazzy clothes? Where do the Erudite get their new cars? Why does every faction area look shiny and new while the rest of Chicago lays in ruin? Reverberate throughout the film – and their appearance proves distracting.
There also appears to be a major disconnect when it comes to the repercussive meaning of choosing a faction – within the action of the film, the factions seem to frequently blend together on screen, from walking the streets together to all procuring supplies at the same massive depot, which makes the shock and awe of the choosing ceremony and the repeated warning that no one can ever go back to their old faction or see their parents again lose all power. In Roth’s books, the division between the factions is intense and absolute, though those messages are mixed in the film world.
Overall, both were splendid and I didn’t have many issues with either. I hope to those that have either read the book, watched the movie or both- you guys enjoyed it as well. I saw it three times within a two week time span and every time was just as spectacular. The soundtrack was brilliant as well!
More to come including Maleficent, (which I freaking loved) Adult World and Need for Speed!
So, the past few days I have been craving something, but I don't know what it is I am craving. Every morning I wake up and find no desire to eat anything in my pantry for breakfast. I end up just fasting until dinner. I don't know if it's the morning "not hungry thing" or what, but I just am not interested in eating anything I have. However, the thing is, I don't know what to eat!
Being a vegetarian, you aren't deprived of many options, but there is still a limit, especially when you go out to public restaurants. Sometimes I wish they served hamburgers or chicken tenders made out of chickpeas and carrots and the like.
As I have digressed increasingly the past few paragraphs, I will not strange any longer. This post wasn’t meant to be a complaint and plead for new recipes but an inspirational, cause for craving post. I have posted sporadic images of yummy looking chocolaty goodness and although I do not currently have the ingredients and instructions on how to make these various foods, I still think they look good if not self-explanatory.
