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Post by Tobey on Nov 16, 2005 11:20:39 GMT -5
This isn't a diary, but an artist's sketchbook, that, none the less, contains some diary entries. Mostly, however, Dakota uses it for sketches of dinosaurs. She's actually a pretty good artist, having spent many a bored afternoon in the lab, etching designs into the floor or furniture of her cell with her claws. Once she got her first and second Dinotopia books, she would study the pictures and learned to mimic them. However, now that she was at the House, drawing was just a hobby, something she did when there was nothing interesting going on. The front of the sketchbook is decorated with a pattern of dinosaur footprints that is actually dinotopian writing. You can tell she spent a lot of time on the cover, because she shaded the footprints so they would have depth, making them look like engravings in stone. Towards the top, if you could read dinotopian, you would read her name, Dakota Faulkner. More or less centered on the cover, again in dinotopian script, there is a quote from The World Beneath. It says, "Remember to take only what you can hold in your mind." Her diary entries are also in dinotopian script, which she has learned to read and write as easily as normal english.
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Post by Tobey on Nov 16, 2005 14:42:04 GMT -5
page 1 (writing)
I finally finished the cover of my sketchbook. I didn't want to start writing entries until I got that done. Well, I think I'm adjusting quite well to life at the House, although part of me doesn't quite trust Eric. I still think a lot about the lab, and about . . . that night. I'm still worried that he'll pick up those thoughts, even if he reassures me that he won't. I tell myself that if he's a friend of Zepher's, he can't be bad.
All the residents of the House remind me of dinotopians, so accepting of each others' differences, no matter how different they are. I've actually been thinking about what kinds of dinosaurs they would be. Adrian would be a Pteranodon, he seems to have a dark personality, likes to keep to himself. He even seems like the kind of person who's seen death, although maybe he just had a bad time at the lab. If Adrian's a Pteranodon, Kat would of course have to be a Skybax. They definitely have their differences. Skybaxes can be sort of playful sometimes, too, which Kat definitely seems to be. Danica seems friendly to everyone, and not scared of anyone, not even Adrian. So she'd be a Protoceratops, like Bix. Bix always made friends with everyone, even the big carnivorous dinosaurs, and she was never scared a bit of anyone. I had a tough time deciding what sort of dinosaur Zepher would be. I eventually decided on Brachiosaurus, in part because it was the Brachiosauruses who would be sent in convoys to the Rainy Basin, and Zepher and Danica are the only ones amoung us who can venture into the equally dangerous outside world. Another reason is that, because of her powers, I think Zepher can see things that we miss, just like a Brachiosaurus's long neck allows it to see things no-one else can.
Those are all the residents that struck me as having dinotopian personalities so far. I'm sure I'll be writing more entries like this once I get to know everyone better.
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Post by Tobey on Nov 28, 2005 21:20:17 GMT -5
page 2 (drawing)
This page is covered by a pencil sketch of a Brachiosaurus, covered in the armor typical of Dinotopian Rainy Basin convoys. It was rearing up, and looked both angry and scared. In front of it was a pack of Allosauruses, one of which had its mouth open in a roar, and another looked like it was seconds away from pouncing on the Brachiosaurus. Behind the Brachiosaurus, there was a small herd of prosauropods, and it was obvious that the Brachiosaurus was protecting them. The scene was surrounded by scattered trees; cycads, conifers, and some trees that looked like gigantic horsetail plants. Underneath the picture, in Dinotopian script (more or less as an afterthought or a joke), Dakota had written "Zepher."
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Post by Tobey on Dec 26, 2005 19:48:36 GMT -5
page 3 (drawing)
This page is covered by a pencil-sketched scene from a Cambrian seafloor. The scene is framed in the foreground by some things that look like sponges and flowers, but are actually only a very distant relation to either. In the center is a small swarm of otherworldly looking creatures. There's a trilobite, and a pair of creatures that look like trilobites except more delicate, and with several swept back spines coming from all corners of the head. There's an opabinia, a creature that looks like a segmented sausage with overlapping fins, five eyes atop its head, and a trunk with a claw at the end. There's a hallucigenia, like a worm with legs below its body and long spines in pairs above, such that it's hard to tell which side is the top. There's a pikaia, the ancestor of all vertebrates, looking like a tiny, ribbonlike eel with stalks on it's head like those of a snail. All are being chased by an anomalocaris, who can be seen coming over the horizon. It looks a little like an opabinia, with a sausage body and overlapping fins, but is far bigger, has two eyes on stalks, and has two spiny, jointed arms that it uses to grab its prey.
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Post by Tobey on Jan 19, 2006 14:30:16 GMT -5
page 4 (writing)
Wow, it's been a long time since I've written in my journal, hasn't it? I think I've given up on comparing everyone to dinosaurs. I mean, they aren't dinosaurs, after all. Christmas was great. I really love my Dinotopia poster I got from Zepher. It got me thinking where I'd want to live if I lived in Dinotopia. Probably either Waterfall City, where I could read all about Dinotopian History and maybe ride the cargo chutes, or Sauropolis, the capital of Dinotopia. Of course, if I lived in Dinotopia, I'd be somewhat of a celebrity, since half-human half-dinosaurs are like, deities or something. I'm not really sure, all I know is that the legendary King Ogthar was half human and half triceratops. Oh, and I watched the movie I got from Alan, and it was . . . interesting. I was scared for a minute there, thinking that /I/ might have frog DNA. But no, the scientists wouldn't have done that. Heck, they didn't even /need/ the whole genome for me. And I'm not really sure about that whole thing with T-rex not being able to see anything that doesn't move. Nanotyrannus and T-rex are pretty close, and my predator brain can definitely see things that don't move. True, it's far more interested in movement, but it can see inanimate objects, too. One last thing I almost forgot to mention that happened on Christmas was that Adrian got Kadraishi this little heart-shaped snake necklace. I didn't think anything of it until Adrian blushed when Kadraishi commented on it. I don't think that Adrian's actually . . . attracted to Kadraishi, but it still kinda weirded me out.
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