Tuesday, March 26, 2019

The Conclusion of PfL and My Reading of Armada

Happy Spring, everyone!

Although... it still feels like winter here. There's bursts of nice, warm-ish weather, but it gets cut through by wicked-cold winds. As I'm writing this post, I'm huddled under a fleece blanket, a thick flannel one, and my.... well, I don't know if it's an official Snuggie, but it's a blanket with sleeves....

It would be reeeeeeaaaaaally nice if spring legit showed up sometime soon. I hate being cold all the time.

A comic book artist I follow - Linda Luksic Sejic - started up a side-project-that-is-soon-becoming-an-actual-comic-series called Punderworld a few months back. It's her take on the Greek myths centered around Hades and Persephone. With that mindset, she thinks she figured out why it's still cold all over the world, even though the northern hemisphere is SUPPOSED to be warming up.
I love that smug look on Hades' face. These two are adorable
when interpreted as actually having a mutual love between them.
Okay, so I tried to behave and not repost the picture, but Tumblr decided it wanted to be difficult and not let me share it properly. I tried embedding it, but then I lost the next few paragraphs of my blog post.... so I have to do it this way.

Anyway, Linda is awesome, and you should both support her and check out her work. So, here are her links: Sigeel's Tumblr and her DeviantArt account. She's working on creating a Patreon to fund turning Punderworld into a legit comic book series, so feel free to take a peek at that as well.

I need to check my own finances, but I'm hoping to at least become a $1 tier backer, or something along those lines. It may not be much, but at least I know I'm supporting an artist I enjoy for a work I LOVE.

Anyway, back to me!

As per usual for me lately, "life got in the way," and my chapters for "Prescription for Love" were delayed. Instead of an "every three days" schedule, I was on more of an "every four, five, maybe six days" schedule.

At least I still updated once - usually twice - a week.

Anyway, last Tuesday, I went to go see "Captain Marvel" with Skarabrae-stone, which meant I wasn't home to finish the 8th chapter of PfL. Why didn't I finish it between publishing last week's blog post and going to the movie?

Honestly? I don't remember. I have no clue what I did with my day, and I again slacked off with my time audits. Do we now know WHY I have to do them? If I keep wasting my days and forgetting what it is I even did? I need the calendar as much for accountability as I do for my pathetic memory.
Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Wednesday was generally a wash since I had work, then zumba, and then Hubby and I have TV shows we watch. I did get the chapter up just before midnight on Wednesday though. Close enough, right?

"Prescription for Love: Chapter 8"
On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

The story was technically up on the 20th, and so I was aiming to have the 9th and final chapter up 3 days later: on Saturday the 23rd. That didn't happen either.

I was distracted at work on Thursday, and after was the first official "Omnibladestrike Thursday Visits" meet-up. He has a new job, and it means he's not really available on weekends anymore. Over the past couple years, we've tried to have a weekly meet-up with him where we could watch some bizarre anime or play games together. It was originally on Sundays since I get out of work at 4, and it would give us the most time to hang out. Then football started up, so we shifted to post-6pm on Saturdays.

But Omni doesn't have weekends any longer, and we don't want to lose our weekly meet-ups, so we're trying for Thursday Evenings now. He really wants to get back into little "writing meet-ups" were we can pow-wow and discuss our WIPs; really help him brainstorm so he stays excited about his project. We also don't want to give up on our anime-watching since we have about four different series going. Omni has a character attached to our Switch version of Diablo III, so we HAVE to find time to still run around and kill demons... Plus, there's tons of board games Hubby wants to try out with Omni, and more games where Omni is part of a Legacy campaign.

So my Thursday nights are pretty booked up, and we'll probably cram as much in as possible until Omni feels like he has to drive home before he passes out.

Needless to say, I didn't do any writing on Thursday. Did a bunch of reading though. I'll get to that later.

Friday I had off, and could have easily worked on my chapter. However, it was a rare Friday that Hubby was also off, so it turned into Clean The Apartment day. I would rotate between cleaning for an hour or two and relaxing for an hour, that way I wouldn't feel overwhelmed.

One hour was for food and hanging out with Hubby, but most of those "relaxation" hours were used sprawled out on my bed reading. My lower back was really cramping up, and it helped to just sprawl.

Wolfhearted showed up that evening, and we watched the latest episode of ML. I loved it. Wolf was "meh" about it. Mainly because it was a good old "mind wipe" episode.



For those of you who didn't click, just know that I loved the episode, so after Wolfhearted left, I spent the next FOUR HOURS flipping through Tumblr for posts on this episode. Now, keep in mind that the episode came out on Monday, the 18th. I had waited five days to watch it. So that was roughly a week's worth of posts I've been avoiding so I wouldn't see spoilers. I didn't even go into the episode tag. I just scrolled through the people I follow.

There were about 12 or 13 people who had posted ML content in reference to the episode. Most were quick gif sets, short reactions, or fanart. Simple to see the post and move on.

IT.  STILL.  KEPT.  ME.  FOUR.  HOURS!!!!

A lot of people also enjoyed the episode it seems. From a fanfic writer's perspective, I loved it because it showed me so many new facets of Adrien's and Marinette's personalities, along with Tikki and Plagg. I found out more about the world ML takes place in. It showed me possibilities. It will be a great episode to go back to for reference material.

Anyway, that was my Friday night.... so no working on PfL. That is, until I went to bed. To try to calm my mind and lull myself to sleep, I mentally tell myself a story. It helps my mind focus on one insignificant thing until it can turn off.

To make up for my slacking, and knowing that I wanted to post the next chapter by Saturday, I started mentally working out how to conclude my story... and then I drifted off to sleep.

Saturday I figuratively cracked my knuckles and focused on the story. I was doing fairly decently. I had the chapter written by about 10pm that day. I just couldn't stay focused enough to edit. Especially since Disney channel was airing "Moana." I really enjoy this movie, and that climactic scene between Moana and Te Kā? Gives me chills EVERY time I see it.

If you haven't watched Moana, I advise that you don't watch the below clip until you do, because you don't want to ruin the impact of the ending. However, if you HAVE watched it before, just re-watch the song "Know Who You Are" and tell me you don't get chills!


I just wish I could have found a clip that started a weeeee bit sooner so you also had that single flute intro and walk down to the ocean. That's the part that really gives me chills. And the line "they have stolen the heart from inside you" is so powerful I'm tearing up again just writing it out.

UGH! I just wish Frozen hadn't overpowered this movie. Moana is so underrated. The music is fantastic, the visuals are stunning, the comedy is great, and there is NO romantic love interest in the whole movie, for anyone.

Anyway, I'm going on a tangent here. My point is that Moana is amazing, and even the less-than-amazing scenes, like with Tamatoa, still give us fantastic cover songs....


I really enjoy this man's covers, and, honestly, I think this version sounds more on-brand with Lin-Manuel Miranda than the actual movie version. He also did this nice cover of "How Far I'll Go."
Yeah, just... go check out more from Jonathan Young. He has something for just about everyone. Have fun.


Sooooo, yeah, that was Saturday. I knew I should have focused. I knew I wanted to post that day. I knew I COULD post that day if I focused. I watched a movie and snuggled a husband instead....

Whoops....

SUNDAY! Sunday at work I could just do the edits. That's it. Easy. I could post the chapter around 4pm after I got home. I'd still be late, but it wouldn't be all that bad. I mean, I was almost two days late for the previous chapter. I had this!

Until I didn't.

I'm not sure why, but as I was unpacking my netbook at work so I could work on those edits, I also pulled out my red notebook I keep my Miraculous Ladybug notes in. I decided to update my notes in the back of the book. I keep a running list of akumatized supervillains and their motivation while akumatized. Things like Zombizou wanted to spread "love" like a zombie virus, or Dark Owl wanted to get rid of LB and CN so he was the only superhero for Paris, or Simon Says wanted to hypnotize Gabriel in order to humiliate him, or Despair Bear wanted to prove that he could control Chloe afterall. Stuff like that.

It kept me like five minutes to write down the seven akumatized supervillains shown thus far in season 3. However, when I got to Backwarder - the episode that spawned PfL - I had a lightning flash of inspiration. I'll talk a bit more about that later. The point now is that I worked on that side project - to my already side project of PfL instead of working on "One and the Same" - instead of editing my final chapter.

Whoops again.

So I tried to hide myself away when I got home, that way I could FINALLY get the story done and posted. Well, between grocery shopping, eating dinner, and realizing the chapter I had written Saturday needed more help than I originally thought.... I didn't post chapter 9 until nearly 11pm!

Oh well, at least it DID get posted. I also received reviews pretty much within the hour, so YAY for fans having my story on an alert of some sort.

If you haven't had a moment to finish off my story, you can get to the final chapter below.

"Prescription for Love: Chapter 9"
On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

Just a reminder that you can also use the above links to get to the story, and then use the chapter select, or "More From Lycorogue" to the right of the chapter on DA, in order to get to the first chapter if you've missed this story up until now.

Gladly, not many seemed to have missed this "little" story, at least, when looking at the grand scheme of my readership. As of this posting, here are my stats for this story as a whole.
FFN: 3,860 views, 20 faves, 30 followers, and 22 reviews
AO3: 1,742 hits, 97 kudos, 9 bookmarks, and 22 comments
DA: 78 views, 5 faves, but no comments on any chapter

Total Results: 5,680 views, 122 faves, 39 followers, and 44 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 86 total; 83 likes and 3 re-blogs
This is my 5th-most reviewed story on FFN, which has a total of 29 works posted there, starting as far back as Aug 2010. Comparatively, I have posted 21 stories over on AO3 since I started that up last year, and PfL is the second-most commented on story. “Peeping Tomcat” still has top billing. "Woven Heartstrings" is a close third: 47 comments on PfL and 46 on WH.

So, basically, my multi-chaptered Miraculous Ladybug stories are my main draw.

Now, sadly, I can't filter my works through any other categories on FFN, and I don't want to take the time to go through each story to manually calculate the order. Especially since this update is already half-a-day late. However, I CAN filter through other categories over on AO3....
  • KUDOS: PfL is in third, behind PT and WH, in that order, for most kudos on a story. 
  • BOOKMARKS: PT and WH are still the top two, but my "Hey, Arnold!" one-shot "I Thought You Liked Redheads" squeaks in at 3rd with 11 bookmarks, leaving PfL in 4th with 9.
  • HITS: Once again, PT is number 1 with 8826 hits. WH comes in 2nd with 3219. PfL falls into the number 3 slot again with 1739 hits.
Not too shabby for a plot bunny that was originally going to be a 1000-word one-shot exclusively posted to Tumblr a day after the episode aired, and grew into a nearly 20,000-word multi-chapter story on AO3, FFN, and DA.

You never know where inspiration comes from.

Speaking of! As I mentioned above, on Sunday I tackled a plot-bunny that was brewing in my mind for a month now. It all actually started thanks to Taurus Pixie and her blog. About a month ago, Pixie posted her review of Backwarder, and within that review, Pixie had this paragraph.
However, this scene raised a lot more questions than it answered. When did Master Fu come to Paris? How did he meet Marianne? How did she come to know about the miraculous? She obviously isn't a guardian as it has been stated a few times that Master Fu is the only remaining one alive. So what made Master Fu trust Marianne with such an important secret? More importantly...just who was after the miraculous back then? We heard someone shout that they had to seize the miraculous. Who was it? Gaaah, so many new questions and possibilities have been opened up for us. I do love a good mystery. I always think the show does a really good job at teasing us and letting us catch glimpses of information to help solve everything that's going on. The lore of this show is always super exciting!
The Plot Bunny Alert went off in my head, and I instantly took a screen cap of that paragraph so I could look back at it and contemplate; brew the idea in my head.

What ARE the answers to those questions? I could have fun trying to figure them out. Then, on Sunday, instead of working on editing my final chapter of PfL, I started working on that plot bunny.

BEHOLD! My version of a (Conspiracy) Yard Board.... Just wait until I can find an empty wall somewhere...
Charlie Kelly from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The man, the meme, the legend...
As I was working on my notes for this Master Fu and Marianne Lenoir spin-off fanfic idea, I realized how much story needed to be unpacked. Marianne was a love interest for Fu, and she knew about the Miraculouses. There had to have been a build-up of trust there. It couldn't be a simple "love at first sight" sort of thing. And I wanted to take the time to explore how that trust and love grew.

There were also the questions of why Fu was in Paris just before the Nazi invasion in the first place, why Marianne wanted to stay and fight, why Fu returned to Paris but didn't seek her out right away, and when did Master Fu start wearing the Turtle Miraculous, along with other such questions.

That's when it hit me. This "story" could actually be a legit spin-off. It would be more dark and mature, given that the main characters - Fu and Marianne - were adults, and were dealing with the rise of the Nazi party and start of WWII. It could be part superhero story, part spy story, part romance, part mystery/suspense, the list goes on.

And as I cracked my tired knuckles about three hours into all of my writing and research and math - to figure out why Fu and Marianne didn't seem to age as fast as normal - I realized something about my idea. Well, I realized two things.
  1. It was way too much for me to do as a side project. I had already delayed OatS by two months because of "side projects" like WH and PfL. I would have to wait until OatS was done.
  2. I needed help for this massive undertaking, and who better than the woman who inspired me in the first place? A woman who is a wiz when it comes to historical knowledge, and is almost freakishly fast at writing, when she's at a good mental-health spot. 
So I messaged Pixie. She seems to love the concept, but has questions of her own. This is what I love about collabs; this back-and-forth. I come up with questions and some answers, my answers spark more questions from her, and she answers some of my questions. Her answers - and her questions - makes me wonder more about our world build, and it just keeps going. Eventually, we have a finely woven net, and we're good to go with our story, with little to no chance of someone catching a plot hole we didn't see.
NuaNia FB sticker
by PRANEAT
I just hope this collab goes better than my past ones... Life got in the way of the Jungle Movie script ChibiSunnie and I attempted to write for Script Frenzy once upon a time, and we only got through maybe half of it before our project died.... Then, when Ronoxym and I attempted our Devon/Willow collab, I sort of hijacked the project, and bloated it to the point where it was overwhelming to Ron, and that story also died.... Although, I'm still determined to edit it down again to a point where Ron and I could go back to working on it.

As much fun as building this concept will be with Pixie, I hope we can keep our steam and balance going long enough to actually complete it; even if it takes a year or so.

Regardless, I still need to finish OatS first, and Pixie needs a vacation from writing until she gets her affairs in better order, and her mind can properly and fully re-charge. We probably won't start it until May at the earliest. Maybe closer to June or July.

We'll probably casually throw What Ifs to each other in the meantime though.


But first! OatS while participating in Camp NaNo!

I had also said above that I had been doing some reading. Yes. It is true. Lots of reading, actually. I managed to read the last third or so of "Armada" by Ernest Cline over the past week. I had meant to read it January. I didn't start reading it until about half-way through February. I didn't finish it until the end of March.

I'm doing real well with this year's reading schedule....

I still haven't even really come up with a To Read list, even though I have a ROOM full of books waiting for me to crack them open. Instead, I've been reading fanfics, fanfics, more fanfics, and... oh hey! Fanfics!

So, new goal. No actual list of completed works. No count of 12 stories. Instead, I'm going for word-count, that way 2000-word fanfics also count, because it's still time spent reading.

Here are my rules:
  • I wrote an 80,000+ word novel, and most of the ones I read tend to range between 80,000 and 120,000 words. So I'm going to split the difference and round a novel to about 100,000 words.
  • I still want to read the equivalent of 12 novels by the end of the year.
  • That means I need to read 1,200,000 words of fiction by 11:59pm on December 31st.
I need to go back through the fanfics I've read the first 3 months, so my overall word count might actually err towards a low estimate, just to be safe and fair.

In the meantime, though, I checked on "Armada." It's harder for professionally published works, because they generally don't come with a word count like fanfics do. However, assuming the website ReadingLength.com is accurate, there are 102,950 words in "Armada." What's actually really cool about that site is that it can help you estimate how long it will take to read something. Neat bit of knowledge if you are trying to figure out if it's worth reading, or if you have the time to cram a book into your schedule. Or even if you want to make sure you're packing enough to read for a trip....

I also now know that I average at about 160 words per minute - I am quite the slow reader - and so my next tackling of "Atlas Shrugged" - a book that ReadingLength has listed at 455,300 words - should take me nearly 48hours to conquer. Once you add in that I'll be stopping to take notes so the story is a bit easier for me to sift out, it will probably be about double that length.... And I tend to only manage about 2hrs tops per day for reading, if I read at all.

Anyway, without adding in fanfic word counts, I'm nearly at 103,000 words. It's a start.

Also, while I was kinda close on what the "big twist" for the conclusion of "Armada" was, I was also wrong, and there were a couple other surprises I hadn't predicted. So, Cline did pull off a few "Oh. Neat!" moments within the story.

I don't know what it was, though. Aside from Lex, and another character I won't mention here due to spoilers, I didn't really connect with any of the characters. By the end of the book, the Two Mikes that were the main character's best friends were still indistinguishable for me. There were some moments where you were SUPPOSED to feel for the support characters, but was just kind of "oh. That sucks." I just couldn't empathize with anyone in this novel for whatever reason.

There were also some elements of the story - much like with "Ready Player One" - where you could tell that Cline doesn't quite understand the difference between telling a story via visual media vs. through print media. In other words, it's obvious, for me, at least, that Cline started off as a script writer. The main character Zack didn't have as much Plot Armor on him this go, but there was still a fair amount of Deus ex Machina. At least, what I would consider "well, THAT was convenient" moments. I mean, to be fair, some of it was done on purpose for the mystery of the story, but there are times where the "that was convenient" extended past where it should be; once I thought back on the story as a whole.

All-in-all? The story wasn't for me. I'll stick with "Ready Player One," and perhaps give "Armada" another read when the movie adaptation comes out.

Yup. Another movie adaptation. Like I said, the guy is a script writer by default, so his stories seem to always have a twin movie.

Okay, well, enough bellyaching about Cline's novels, and going on forever about why I don't have progress on my own. This blog post is now 5hrs late, I still have to eat, and I have writing group in less than an hour.

So, I'm waving the white flag here. I'll catch you guys next week. You'll probably just be finishing reading this post by then.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Picture Time!

Why, hello, fine folks! Welcome, welcome. I've got quite a bit of a treat for you.

Well... for some of you....

I don't know how involved/invested some of you might be when it comes to this, but back in chapter 4 of "Prescription for Love" I had designed outfits for the two Agreste men and two Tsurugi women to wear to the British Royal Wedding.

I had a couple of reviewers state that I did a wonderful job designing everyone's wedding outfits, and/or they also feel the pain of trying to design new outfits for their characters. It was so great to feel that camaraderie and praise that I figured I'd let you know exactly what I do to get these outfits figured out.

I meant to go over all of this last week, so it would be closer to when I posted the fourth chapter, but with everything else I talked about, and how long it kept me to finish the post, I just forgot. Which means you guys have the delight of learning my process this week instead.

Buckle up, there are a LOT of pictures to go through.... I probably use as many reference pictures as artists do. I just wish I could DRAW the finished product to show everyone... Oh well, my readers seem to have a decent mental image. We'll see now if I was able to describe the below in a good enough capacity that you, dear reader, were able to imagine what I did.

To start, sadly, I don't know why, but it seems I deleted the reference pics I had for Gabriel and Adrien's matching white tuxes, and I can't re-find the pictures I used via Google image. At least, I can't re-find them in a timely enough manner for it to be worth it.

Just know that I spent probably hours online flipping through pictures of tuxedos of varying degree of formalness. I saw some really sharp-looking white tuxedos with waistcoats, and, with both Gabriel and Adrien wearing white jackets/cover shirts normally, it seemed to fit them.
Gabriel, Adrien, Kagami, and her mother
from the "Miraculous Ladybug" episode Backwarder
Okay, so Gabriel wears more of a cream-colored jacket compared to everyone else in white, but you get the point.

Once I decided on a white tux, I wanted a bit of an accent. I'm not entirely sure how I stumbled upon silver paisley, but I did find a lovely picture and ran with it. Along those lines, I just pictured Gabriel in a top hat, and it worked for me. Same with Adrien in a trilby. I would love to show you what I envisioned, but I just spent the past 45 minutes trying to quickly edit a few clips from Style Queen with Marinette's derby hat replaced with a trilby. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a trilby image at the right angles for the edits to work, so they all look like these...
Last one is the best,
I think....
Trust me, in my head it worked....

The real problem, though, was trying to figure out what the Tsurugi women were wearing. I did a few internet searches, resulting in kimono-like dresses such as this one for Kagami's mother.

I still wasn't very satisfied, though. So I went to one of my mobile games. It's a fashion designer/dress-up game called Love, Nikki. In the game, the Cloud Empire has very Chinese-oriented clothing, but there are also kimonos, so I figured I'd flip through the Cloud Empire clothing to try to find something Kagami and her mother would wear.

For Mrs. Tsurugi, I put together this.
What I love is that the hair style and glasses almost match Kagami's mother's design.
It made it much easier to picture Mrs. Tsurugi wearing the above gown since I basically put it on her.

After an hour or so, and coming up with the above look for Mrs. Tsurugi, it was Kagami's turn. I knew I wanted her in red, and in a more modern look. My Love, Nikki take was this one.
It was decent, especially since I found a hair style close to Kagami's. It just didn't feel as fancy as everyone else's though. Ironic, since, while looking up images of guests of the Royal Weddings of Prince William and Prince Harry, this design for Kagami is probably closest to what real-world guests would wear....

Anyway, back to the internet I went. As I looked for "modernized kimonos" and "Japanese modern wedding outfits" I stumbled upon this article: Antique Kimonos Elegantly Transformed into Contemporary Wedding Dresses

The long and short of the article - which isn't long to begin with - is that designer dress company Watabe Wedding pioneered the trend of modernizing kimonos as colorful Japanese wedding gowns. Out of their collection of five gowns they rent out to brides, these are the three I combined to eventually design Kagami's dress for my story.
The Kanazuru (“gold crane”)
designed by Watabe Wedding
This one was my main inspiration. Something about it just screamed "Kagami" to me. The red and black. The subtle white accent. The ribbon around the high-waist of the gown. The delicate power that the golden cranes seemed to add to the dress. I just loved this gown, but it needed some tweaks. That's when I went with this gown:
The Tsurumomiji (“crane maple”)
by Watabe Wedding
This was the flowing silhouette I wanted for Kagami. It had grace and elegance and a daintiness she rarely shows canonically. Plus, it better matched Marinette's vision of what Kagami would be wearing.
Marinette, freaking out about Adrien and Kagami having a weekend away,
starts envisioning how Adrien would fall in love with Kagami after seeing her dolled up.
The dress from Watabe Wedding that really cinched it for me was this one.
The Botangiku
(“peony and chrysanthemum”)
by Watabe Wedding
I loved the idea of the dress having a corseted back, and I loved the flowers on this gown. It again had the flowiness I wanted Kagami to wear, and it had a nice elegant train to it.

The last bit was Kagami's sleeves. In truth, that idea came from my own wedding gown. It was an October wedding, so I wanted belled sleeves to wear during the ceremony, and then I could slip them back off for the reception. However, on top of that personal spring of inspiration, I also found images of looooooong sleeves like these, that kind of matched the look of a furisode kimono.
So I decided to add in the detached and belled sleeves to Kagami's outfit.

I wasn't QUITE done yet, though. Mrs. Tsurugi had her hair up in the elegant buns showcased in that Love, Nikki design, but Kagami just had her hair down. Even in Marinette's imagination, Kagami's hair was down with just an accent in it. I wasn't a fan. She needed a bit more as well. So back to the internet I went, searching for updos for bobbed hair. I eventually found this.
I loved it! Kagami's hair would look so cool woven together like this! And she's one of those annoyingly "good at anything she does" type of people, so I had faith she could figure out how to properly pin her hair to have it look like that basket weave. Throw in some Baby's Breath throughout her black/blue hair, and I was done.
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc
Whoo! That.... was a lot.... But for anyone curious about how I designed everyone for the wedding in chapter 4, now you know. In great length. With plenty of pictures. I gladly welcome fanart of their looks.

The above process kept me about three or four days to accomplish, so you can probably see (a) why I wasn't able to write at a fast enough pace to get the story done and up in a timely manner after Backwarder aired, and (b) why I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of designing outfits for characters....

This is why I gave up fashion designing, and why I'm sticking with writing.

But all of that was what I did back in February. What did I do THIS week?

Well, in part, I slacked off a little.

I didn't finish and post my blog update last week until Thursday, so you can read that post to see what I was doing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Friday was supposed to be when I would post chapter 7 of "Prescription for Love." That way I was still, kind of, keeping with my "every three days" posting schedule. As you could probably guess, I failed at that deadline.

I had the chapter written up, but part of it was Kagami's story tagged onto the tail end of chapter 6. I realized it didn't really work in her POV, so I gave it back to Adrien. Which meant I had to rework a few things so it fit his perspective better. The second part of the story was from Adrien's POV to begin with, but it was an awkward transition from Kagami's chapter, so THAT needed to be fixed. Once those opening parts of the chapter were polished, I realized I wasn't a fan of how I described Adrien FINALLY getting the medicine Marinette asked for, so that needed to be reworked as well. Lastly, I felt that, as the sort of culmination of the whole story, the drive to find the meds that has pushed Adrien throughout the plot, the chapter was kind of bland.

I zipped through their Sunday in London, got the pills for Marinette, and had the quartet on the train within 1800 words. That was too quick. I mean, it kept me 6 chapters, and roughly 9,000 words, to describe everything that happened during their Saturday, but only a fraction of that length was spent on Sunday? The day where everything kind of comes to a head? I couldn't rush this.

So I slowed things down. I showcased Kagami's attempt to help Adrien, and Adrien's frustration that they walked "all over London" - as he says in the episode - to find the medicine. The end result was an extra day needed to write and edit. Which meant the chapter was OF COURSE late and posted on Saturday instead of Friday.

Late Saturday as well. It posted at 10:30pm my time. I'm good at this deadline thing...

"Chapter 7"
On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

This chapter, after slowing things down, became MASSIVE, compared to my other chapters. Well... other chapters within PfL. This past chapter certainly isn't massive when compared to chapters in my other works.

Anyway, my point is, I was proud that this story had "bite-sized" chapters of only 1000 words or so. Then I inched closer to 2000 words. And then this chapter? Darn near 4000 words. Granted, that was the average size of a “Peeping Tomcat” chapter, but... well.... I wanted shorter chapters for this story. I mean, it was SUPPOSED to be a simple story inspired by a single episode. I wasn't expecting it to blow up to a 13,000+ word story! And I still have at least one more chapter to write, maybe two.

Worse yet is that I'm still not completely satisfied with my timing for Chapter 7. Upon doing further research for my upcoming chapter, I realized that Adrien and Kagami seem to be stopping to eat a LOT in this last chapter.
  • Kagami and Adrien had breakfast at about 8am, and it takes roughly 30min to eat.
  • Then lunch less than 4hrs later at noon, which again takes about 30 or 45 minutes to eat.
  • Then they had to try out the British tradition of Afternoon Tea at about 3pm, which meant only two/two-and-a-half hours between meals...
  • While Adrien and Kagami finished their tea early and went to go feed ducks and talk, Mrs. Tsurugi enjoyed a full hour for her tea, which means they went back to touring about 4pm.
  • I had the train leaving at 8pm to arrive in Paris at 10pm, but I forgot about time zones, so the train has to actually leave at 7pm. 
  • Which means, when they stopped for an early dinner before meeting up with Gabriel and boarding their train, they had to have stopped no later than 6pm. 
    • And that's based on the idea of them both getting, and eating, their meals in about 20min!
    • So, in truth, they probably stopped closer to 5:30. WAAAAY too soon after having Tea!
It's a good thing I didn't actually state any times in my chapter, but it's easy enough to break down. That is a LOT of food in a VERY short amount of time, especially for Europeans, who traditionally eat WAY less than Americans do.

Maybe I shouldn't have had poor Adrien try a "Full English" breakfast at the start of the chapter...


There were a couple of other things with the chapter that bugged me, like a distinct lack of location transition towards the end. Adrien is in the pharmacy, then there's internal monologue and contemplation, and then, suddenly, Adrien is at the train station and asking his father something.

No mention of reaching the hotel to gather their bags from the storage lockers, where their stuff was moved to after 11am check-out. No mention of meeting up with Gabriel after a day away sight-seeing. No mention of reaching the train station. Just a vague hand wave, and BOOM! They're in the train station!

So, I'll most likely go back and polish up Chapter 7 one more time in the future. For right now? It's at about 85%, so I need to focus on finishing the story first.

Which will be fun, since, while rewriting Chapter 7 in the first place, Adrien threw a curveball at me that I need to handle. I also never got around to actually finishing the story before I started posting. Remember a few posts ago, when I said I couldn't QUITE hit my goal of one new story per month because I couldn't finish PfL in February? Yeah, I was so focused on my sister's birthday and playing catch-up polishing off my first draft, that I never actually finished it.

A new chapter is SUPPOSED to go up today, and I have a decent chunk of the chapter written already. Who knows if the chapter will actually make it to being published though.... Wish me luck, fast fingers, a steady flow of inspiration, and a LOT of discipline to not distract myself.

Also, don't forget to check in on your favorite link to my story for that next chapter update:
"Prescription for Love"
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Keep in mind that if you follow the story on FFN, subscribe to the story on AO3, or follow me on DA, you'll get an email notification once I post the new chapter. That way you can be one of the first to read it! And you don't have to wait for the link in my post next Tuesday. Yay!

Alternatively, you could follow me on Tumblr to see me post a promo for the latest chapter once it's live. Lots of ways to find me, find the story, and find out when a new chapter or story is posted!
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by PRANEAT
I've got grocery shopping, laundry, and cleaning to do before hitting up "Captain Marvel" with Skarabrae-Stone tonight, so I better get cracking on that writing! Catch you guys next week.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Busy, busy, busy

Sorry about the delay, folks. I didn't have the time I normally do to work on my blog post this past week. I was too busy with family this weekend. Because my sister's birthday was Monday!
My sister is so magical and majestic...
Image is the cover art for a notebook by Black River Art

Anyway, Saturday Hubby and I drove down to visit her and my mom. I was also supposed to post the fifth chapter of "Prescription for Love" on Saturday, but things didn't really go as planned.... I didn't wake up early enough to post it in the morning as I originally wanted, which would have been a nice surprise for everyone, since I've been updating at about 11pm each time. When I missed my first-thing-in-the-morning posting, I figured I'd post after reaching my mom's house. However, she was throwing my sister a surprise party for her 30th, so when I got there I was recruited to help set up the party. It was a fun event, especially since I was able to surprise everyone with this!
My plates weren't put on the car yet.
It's actually a midnight blue, but it looks black here.
Presenting my new car! For the first time in my life I actually own a car that was built in the 2000's! It's a 2015 actually, so relatively new! Aaaaand it's from a dealer instead a private seller! I'm loving this thing. It's gorgeous. It's new. It's fun to drive. And Hubby and I are getting the biggest kick out of the XM radio stations.

I actually picked this baby out two weeks ago, on the 26th, and put a down payment on it. Then I officially signed the papers to buy it on the 28th. It was SOOOOOOO hard to not post about it until after I surprised my mom and sister with it.

Anyway, I surprised my mom with the car, since she thought I was borrowing from a friend, and then I was the distraction for my sister when she got home - so everyone could hide and she wouldn't notice oddities about the house - by showing off the car to her. Then the actual surprise party happened. My high school bestie was over to celebrate since she's basically another sister, and she stayed until 1am or so hanging out and chatting.

Originally, when the rest of the party died off around 10pm, I planned on hiding away to post a late update, as per usual, except I got caught up in catching up with the bestie. In the end, I didn't get a moment to update the story until Mom and Sis were at church the next morning. But at least it's available to read now!

"Prescription for Love: Chapter 5"
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On Sunday I also did laundry, and did some running around while I was visiting my hometown. Eventually, I went to the bestie's to celebrate my godson's fifth birthday!
Artwork is the cover of a greeting card
I ended up spending more time visiting the godson than expected, and by the time I got back to my mom's it was time for dinner, and my sister had a game night set up for us. So, no time to work on the blog post that night.

Monday, I slept in a touch, and then there was minor chaos trying to get all four of us ready before heading out at 11:30 for an early lunch reservation at a local hibachi grill. We had a fun time. It was the third time I've done hibachi, but a first for Mom and Hubby. Mom was probably more entertaining to watch than the chef. She's so jumpy and gets wonderfully amazed by so many things. Love her!
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.
Right after we were done with the long lunch we headed across the street to the movie theater to watch "How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World." Again, my mom is fantastic to watch such movies with.

With the movie done, we headed back to my mom's, along with my sister's boyfriend and best friend, and the six of us played games for the rest of the day. We got in some Mario Kart, Uno - of which we had some of the longest rounds I've ever played in my life - and the new Mario Kart themed Monopoly Gamer. Around 10pm or so, everyone started to crash, so my sister's boyfriend and best friend each headed home before Sis also called it a night.

I was going to use the rest of the evening to work on the blog post, or edit the sixth chapter of PfL I wanted to post on Tuesday. Instead, my mom needed an assist on computer things. So I helped walk her through organizing old thumb drives and new photos off her memory card. Once it passed midnight, it got too late to stay up longer, so I crashed.

Tuesday morning I started working on this blog, but then Mom greeted me, we talked, Hubby woke up, we had breakfast, and then it was just about time to start packing up to head home.

We managed to get home with barely an hour to spare before my writing group meeting, and we used that hour to unpack and quickly pick up things like milk from the grocery store.

At the meeting, I read chapters 2 and 3 of "Prescription for Love" since these were actually fairly short. As per usual, most of the group sort of nodded their heads and commented about how much fun it was to hear. The only other member remotely close to my age, Skarabrae-stone, really got into my story, asking for follow-ups and the like.

Before I had read my story, Skarabrae read a bit of fanfic of her own. She has a Captain America AU series on AO3 called "And the Fall to Doom a Long Way Away" that is, as she put it, "a barely passing glance at canon." In her AU Steve "Captain America" Rogers and Peggy Carter were born in the 80s, along with other Avengers such as Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff, instead of their canonical birth years. James "Bucky" Barnes is also now "Becky Barnes" and has a potential relationship with Steve. As far as I can tell, she's still the Winter Soldier.

Anyway, the piece Ska read Tuesday night was from a WIP she hasn't posted yet for that series. I really enjoyed it. I was a bit confused, but I enjoyed it. Once I realized it was an AU that mostly resembled canon in name alone, I enjoyed the story all the more, the confusion all cleared up. I also asked for follow-up information, mostly about the changes she made for her AU, and chatted about how much I liked the changes she made. Then the two of us bantered back and forth a bit about fanfiction writing in general: keeping to canon versus changing it up for an AU - which means "Alternate Universe" by the way, for any who might not know - how the word 'incredulous' seems to consistently pop up in fanfiction, the debate between writing a fanfic AU that barely relates to canon versus just writing it as an original story, and other such 'trade trials'. During those ten minutes or so, the rest of the poor group probably felt like they were watching a friendly tennis match as we lobbed comments back and forth to each other.

Eventually, we passed the floor over to Jack Nanuq, who read a sample of his sequel to "Parabellum." We discussed that for a little bit, and joked about his "taking a break" after publishing "Parabellum" since he's "only" about three chapters into the sequel.

By the way, quick side tangent as I remind everyone that "Parabellum" is now available as both an e-book and a paperback. Seriously, folks. This story is really intriguing, and it's so much fun to learn Nana's backstory while Carson deals with hitmen and military refugees.

One more time, here's the link: "Parabellum: When you live in peace, prepare for war"

Now back to the Tuesday night writing group meeting. After I read my bits from PfL, Ska and I kind of went back and forth again, as I mentioned above. I also had some insight chipped in from two more members of the group, but I've been reading Miraculous Ladybug stuff for so long they at least have a semi-basic feel for the fandom by now. Whereas, only one other member knew who Captain America really was, and it was largely due to the Marvel movies. My point being, it was nice to hear someone else's fanfiction writing, and for someone to be a bit more engaged in mine; knowing the wonderful pains of writing fanfiction herself.

After the meeting broke, I went straight home, where Wolfhearted was still visiting with Hubby. Originally, his plan was to have some "guy time" with Hubby while I was at my meeting, and then watch ML with me once I got home. However, almost as soon as I greeted him, he said goodbye to me. He claimed he was super busy, and sadly couldn't stick around any later, but then Hubby started up the latest episode of the SYFY channel series Deadly Class. Wolfhearted caught some of the opening, loved the concept of a secret academy to train assassins, and was hooked. He sank back onto our loveseat, and stuck around for an extra hour to watch the episode with us.

So much for "no time to watch Ladybug"... oh well... I guess I'm waiting until tomorrow for us to watch the latest episode together....

Wolfhearted ended up not leaving until around 9:30 Tuesday night. At that point, I thought Hubby and I had a show to watch at 10pm, and I didn't believe a half-hour before our show would be enough time to really get my writing done. I suggested instead that we spend that thirty minute block watching the latest episode of the DuckTales reboot, which had aired on Saturday. Might as well get one of our other shows out of the way, right?

Well, at 10pm, we ended up not having our normal show. I had forgotten that this past Tuesday night a sort of "adult content" version of "America's Funniest Home Videos" had a special on, and the show we normally watched would have its finale NEXT Tuesday.

Whoops. Guess I did have time to work on writing, huh?

Worse yet, instead of shrugging off the lost time and knuckling down to work on my story or blog post, I got suckered into a news promo teasing about an American football player trade. Hubby and I hopped over to ESPN, and I spent a good half-hour or so watching the news reports about the trade.

I might be a bit too invested in this sport sometimes....

Content that I learned all I was going to, and realizing how late it was in the day, I popped in my headphones, and FINALLY focused on editing and posting the latest chapter of PfL. Unfortunately, by the time I was done with edits and had formatted for posting, it was about 12:30am. It was Wednesday morning. Once again, I was a day late on my posting schedule.

I'm so glad my readers are patient.

Speaking of, if you wanted to check out the latest chapter and haven't yet, you can find chapter six at the normal three sites.

"Prescription for Love: Chapter 6"
On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

And also speaking of readers, have I ever mentioned how amazing mine are? I almost always get such lovely and excited reviews, and this silly little story is no exception. I even got Taurus Pixie a little riled up, in a playful sense, by not being 100% accurate in describing a British royal wedding.

I was trying to, Pixie! I did my research! It just didn't match up with the facts the show gave us, and all of the royals were already married off by the time the show aired!


Nah, I'm just teasing. I did legitimately try to be as close to 100% accurate as possible, but I knew Pixie's critiques were all in good fun. I enjoyed seeing them.


To be honest, it WAS difficult to figure out how to handle the wedding. In then end, I sort of went with "this is an alternate Earth where superheroes are real thanks to magical jewelry, so maybe it's a different set of British Royalty." I mean, it happens all the time for the United States. We always get some fictitious president instead of using the actual president at the time, unless said Real World president is important to the overall plot.

So, in the end, I picked Westminster Abbey since Prince William and Catherine were married there. I also took a few elements - such as a garden party reception - from Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding. Then I observed some of the more formal garb worn at such weddings as Prince Harry's, Prince William's, and both of Prince Charles', in order to get a feel for what Adrien, Gabriel, Kagami, and her mother should all wear. Finally, I researched the vows Prince William and Prince Harry each used for their weddings, added my own take via a generic "unique wedding vows" search, and threw in the Archbishop of Canterbury, since he seemed to officiate royal weddings.

In the end, I'm glad Pixie enjoyed my sort of unofficial AU of the Royal Wedding. Plus, it was fun seeing her get worked up about the details.

Again. I have amazing readers.
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by Birdman, Inc.
Along with Pixie, I've also had routine reviews by two people: ChubbyUnicornMama on FFN and siriuslyrandom8 on AO3. These two have commented on every chapter of PfL, and it always makes me smile to see their names in my mailbox.

This weekend though, I had a sort of out-of-body experience. I had to stare at a name over on AO3 for quite some time to fully register it. One of my reviewers for the third and sixth chapters of PfL was Yunyin!

A little context. See, once upon a time, before I caved and re-joined Tumblr, I would just Google Image fanart for ML. It was when the second season started posting online. I would watch an episode, want to look for ML content about said episode, and would just search via Google. More often than not, I'd find pictures on Pinterest. One of two main artists I found, who created content I consistently enjoyed, was Yunyin. The other was the amazing EdenDaphne.

Anyway, after roughly four months of following Pinterest finds back to the original Tumblr posts - along with a lot of poking from ChibiSunnie - I eventually caved and re-joined Tumblr. Along with Chibi and a couple other IRL friends, Eden and Yunyin were among the first people I followed.

I just love her artwork and the fancomics she creates. I've adored her content for at least a year, and I don't recall her ever finding my content previously.

I'm not sure if she just stumbled upon my story on AO3, if she was specifically looking for content about the episode Backwarder - mine is one of 13 stories on AO3 based on that episode - if someone suggested the story to her, or if she saw one of my Tumblr posts promoting it. Regardless of how she found it, she did, and seems to enjoy it.
Yunyin (about chpt 3): Aaaaaw. Luka's Marinette song! And Adrien likes it!
I also like him worrying about Ladybug being alone. It adds a nice touch!
Yunyin (about chpt 6): I think the scene with the stars was nice! I could just see Adrien spinning to take them all in.
I'm still trying to get over the fact that someone I've followed for so long is reading MY content!

Readers, I love you all! You are my life-blood! Between someone I've followed reading my stuff, consistent readers letting me know their thoughts, and Pixie engaging so much in my story....

This was supposed to be a stupid little story, and it's getting such love! You guys rock!
Natsuo Maki from Love Lab
Manga by Ruri Miyahara
Now to buckle down and finish editing the next chapter - which was originally going to be the last one, but I think I now have two more to follow - so it is ready for Friday. MAAAAAYBE I can get it posted before 11pm this time. I can at least have it posted on the day it's supposed to be.... right?

As for "One and the Same"? Clearly, it's not posting this month like I teased forever ago. However, I'm all signed up for Camp NaNo, and have OatS as my goal project again. I only got about 12,000 words in during NaNoWriMo, but I'm hoping to actually finish my project in April. We'll see how that goes.

Feel free to join me, or follow my progress.

But, for now, I really need to end this post so I can get to working on my fanfiction. It's no wonder I didn't have the time to finish this up yesterday... Darn lack of free time!

I'll catch everyone at my normal noon update on Tuesday!