Everything I Write Becomes An Epic

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(Can you tell that I enjoy using these Bitmojis a touch?)

It's been... an interesting week again... A touch frantic, if you couldn't tell from the above image. Seems the chaos of being 34 didn't want to leave me QUITE yet.

As I mentioned last week, I spent my birthday at work, and then I went home long enough to have some hot dogs - which I had been craving all day; not sure why - and then Hubby and I headed out to the movies with Rozsavaria and her hubby. I'll... talk about the movie at the end of this post.

After the movie, Roz and her hubby came back to our apartment to watch some YouTube videos and have the chocolate raspberry cheesecake Hubby made me as a birthday cake.

Yum!

Yes, it had bits of fresh raspberries in it. It was amazing.


Wednesday it was back to the grind, and I guess the new year of my life gave me a new level of motivation. A couple years back I created these "Customize Me" tags for some of the recliners, explaining to the customers exactly what kind of customization you can do: put in leather, upgrade to power, turn into a lift chair, add heat and massage, etc. Well, while I was putting these tags on some of the new recliners we got in I noticed that five recliners weren't customizable for... reasons. I wanted to group them together, and then I wanted to group together the few non-rocking recliners we had, and then I figured the remaining recliners should be organized by price point....

... the next thing I know, I'm spending close to 40minutes rearranging the whole dang group of recliners... Eh. Gave me something to do, and some exercise...

..and then I proceeded to roll my dang ankle as I walked down the stairs on my way back to the office.

So... no Zumba that night... and not much movement otherwise either. The rest of the work day was spent trying to figure out the finale of "One and the Same", which is now up to three chapters, possibly going on four. It is also roughly 25 combined pages; 13,600+ words! For most fanfic standards, my FINALE would be a full story in and of itself! I'll get more into that in a bit as well...

Once home, since I needed to elevate my ankle and bandage it, I spent the evening finally catching up on the episode of Fruits Basket I missed, worked on OatS a touch more, watched Hubby play more of his game "The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel", and finally cracked open a "new" manga series.

I say "new" because a) the series is from like 2007 or something, and b) I read a large portion of it already, back when it used to print in Shonen Jump magazine. I don't recall if Hubby and I just stopped having the money to buy new issues - because money was tight back then, or if we stopped because the manga stopped running in it for whatever reason. Whatever the reason, the point is I never got to finish the series. So, I finally bought the first few volumes off Amazon a month or so ago.

The series is called Psyren. The long and short of what I know/remember from the manga is that the main character Ageha tries to find out what happened to his missing classmate, the "ice queen" Sakurako. In doing so, he stumbles upon a red phone card with the word "Psyren" printed on it. As he tries to find Sakurako, he uses the phone card - despite being warned that any who do go missing themselves - and is teleported to a decimated land of nothing but sand, high cliffs, and monsters out to kill him and anyone else teleported there. If he can get to the "end point" on the other side of the valley, he would have "won" that "level" of Psyren and can go back home, only to be dragged back into Psyren the next time a "level" opens up. The challenge becomes to not only survive Psyren, but also find a way of avoiding going back, as well as preventing the devastating landscape from existing in the first place.

So, I got back into that story on Wednesday.

Thursday I FINALLY had a day off - it was supposed to be a three-day weekend, but my boss needed me to switch with her so she'd be around while maintenance was going on at work - and I proceeded to do virtually nothing. Hubby also had the day off, and we hadn't had a day off together in months. A full day off, that is. More often than not, he'd be at work while I write my Tuesday blogs, and then I'd pick him up. It works out well since I'm clearly not interacting with Hubby while I'm writing, but still...

I didn't really work on my writing at all on Thursday, since it was Bond With Hubby day. We caught up on TV shows, we played video games, we chatted, we cleaned the apartment, we vegged. It was a nice reconnect day.

Friday I was back to figuring out why, for the life of me, won't "One and the Same" just come together! I came up with a few edits for one of the earlier chapters, and then I went back to my master outline to try to sort things out. From that outline, I jumped to editing the earlier chapter where Adrien recaps "Peeping Tomcat" - in a way - so anyone who either didn't read it, or forgot what happened in it is caught up. Still unsure as to what to do with this story, I tried to focus on my calendar of events for the story, and from there I tried redoing the chapter breakdown. ANYTHING to get me motivated again. ANYTHING for me to feel like I've got a grip on this plot!

While I'd proceed to spend the rest of the weekend figuring out the chapter breakdown, I spent most of post-work Friday rewatching the closing episodes of the Disney Channel show "Andi Mack" before watching the series finale... and then I spent the next two hours or so gushing about the finale - and other things - with ChibiSunnie. It was a good episode, okay!? And a monumental one for Disney Channel. I won't say more because I don't want to give out spoilers, but it was a Big Deal for the station.

I then had two days off in a row, so cleaning was done, as well as working more on that chapter breakdown, and a bunch of vegging to help with the burnout I've been feeling lately. Omnibladestrike also swung by Saturday evening - since I wanted our normal Thursday evening for Hubby and I to bond - and we did our normal Anime Night. Before THAT though... Hubby and I went to the local game store for a demo night.

Now I suspect I might be a robot... for full details, check out my Tumblr post about it: I Might Be A Robot...

The long and short is that we tried out two games from the company Stellar Factory, and I somehow ended up a robot nearly every game we played....

Sunday I spent most of the day napping, cleaning, or working on my chapter breakdowns. I also had a mini breakdown when I stumbled upon a short Tumblr fanfic that was published last year.

Adrien Is The First To Find Out by lousylark

I've been struggling this past year to write "One and the Same" in order to properly conclude "Peeping Tomcat", and here, in LESS THAN 2000 words, lousylark managed to tell pretty much BOTH stories. The story was GOOD too. So... it broke me slightly.

So, if you are itching for my conclusion to PT, and don't mind spoilers as to where I'm going with Oats - although, I'm sure everyone knows where I'm going with it - feel free to take off some of the edge with lousylark's short.

I already had Adrien be the one pulling the "sick day" trick to sort of figure out what to do with the reveal info, so Marinette WON'T be doing that. However, I do prefer my way of Marinette figuring it out better. Lousylark's was very creative, and showed Marinette's deductive and observational skill, which OatS will also showcase, but I still prefer my way. So there's that. ;) Also... fair warning, in my version things aren't quite as happy and clean as they ended up with lousylark's story. Chat Noir's start to his nightly balcony visits is also different, and I do kind of prefer mine (I guess I should, right?), but I love how lousylark's also sort of nods back to PT for me.

I think, on Sunday, I did figure out three of the reasons OatS has been giving me such trouble.

1. With the breakdown I currently have, the story will take THIRTY FRIGGEN CHAPTERS to tell!!!! PT had SEVENTEEN in comparison! And the chapters for OatS aren't any smaller than what they averaged in PT. Which means, if PT was 84,000+ words long, then OatS is probably pushing closer to 150,000 words! This story is a MUCH larger undertaking than I originally planned.
2. Part of that is because, while PT takes place over the course of a week or so, OatS will be covering roughly a month. In which case, I guess it makes sense for the story to be double in order to cover 4x the amount of time passage??? Also, a month-long story means LOTS of akuma attacks! I know I need at least 4, although one of them isn't much of a focus - much like Gremlin wasn't at the end of PT - so I can ease up a touch on THAT one, but I MAY need more to fill in space as well!
   
3. This whole tag-teaming characters is complicated as is, but with each character having roughly 15 chapters to tell their side of the over-all story? They each essentially have THEIR OWN ENTIRE BOOK! Also, there are times where I have back-to-back chapters that should be told from one POV, and I feel I need to insert the other character's POV in between those chapters, so it keeps bouncing back and forth evenly with Marinette having the odd chapters - since her POV starts the story - and Adrien has the even chapters.

I have to find a way to shave this down... 

Or do I? It IS fanfiction, and people DO seem to love long serial stories if they get into them early enough that the current word-count doesn't seem daunting. Also, there are plenty of fanfics out there with 200,000+ words and/or 50+ chapters in them....

I... I don't really know what to do at this point....

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But I'll keep chugging along with these chapter breakdowns. Maybe something will shake loose and I'll have my "ah-ha moment."

I did spend more of yesterday trying to sort through the chapter breakdown a bit to see if I can simplify and/or combine. I need to make sure to weed out duplicate things being expressed. With such a large story I'm bound to repeat myself, and I think I already have, especially in the finale. The characters have thought to THEMSELVES about how they feel about the other, and reasons why they love the other, but they haven't said those things TO the other person. So I have them doing so in the finale and.... I feel like everything is moving in large circles instead of actually going in a forward direction.

Writing is hard, guys!

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But I'm going to stick to it. I am so determined to figure this story out. Even if it takes me another five years to do so!

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While all of this "back to pre-production" sort of stuff of organizing chapters and reworking the master outline IS work towards my end goal, and therefore still totally counts against writing zero days...

Faces are better than no faces...

...The fact that I haven't written anything narrative for a week did NOT help with my Camp NaNo word count.

A previously sold (read: old) word count tracker for Camp NaNoWriMo
Designed by Miss Write
You can find other amazing (and really cheap!) trackers,
calendars, and planner stickers on her etsy: WriteMissWrite

That's.... that's quite the pathetic word count there... full week and I STILL didn't even hit what I should have written in ONE DAY....

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc
(Yes, I still like using these too)

On a positive writing note, though... I neglected to mention this last week, but two weeks ago, at writing group, one of our writers announced that she wrote the final words for her fantasy novel. It is her first time writing in the genre, and she's completely pantsing it, and it's coming out fantastically! All of it was inspired by a single picture, as well!

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She has to go back through with edits and fill in plot holes and the like, but her first draft is DONE! It kept her roughly 2 years? Once I have more details of when she's done and publishing I'll be sure to share them with you, because I'm LOVING this story as she reads it at group.

We're actually celebrating her by hitting up the local gastropub for group tonight. Which is probably for the best, because as of right now I only have two more things to read: June's Fruits Basket fanfic, and the smut I wrote the first week of this month! Both require explaining of yet ANOTHER fandom, and the smut also means editing it down to at least PG-13 so people are comfortable with my reading it - including ME being comfortable reading it.

Getting another 2 weeks to try to come up with something could be helpful....

Another bit of exciting news is that ChibiSunnie JUST completed her Dummy Book - a mock up of what her picture book layout should be - for her story "The Pumpkin Prince" that she's been working on for over a year. By "just" I mean she messaged me at like 6am this morning to let me know!

You guys should at least check out the art she's done for this children's book!

The Pumpkin Prince Artwork

Her next step is to go through one last round of line-edits, and then off to publishers it goes! Who's excited, because I'm super excited! Chibi, you best be autographing a copy of it for me once it's published!

So... yay that other writers are finishing their books at least...

Now that we're all warm and fuzzy, how about that mini-review of "The Lion King" remake?

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

I was angry with everyone hating on the movie before it was even out. I wanted to give it a chance. Aaaaaand... well????

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(I'm probably going to use this sticker A LOT)

I'm going into this review assuming you've already watched the original "The Lion King" so there will be spoilers if you know NOTHING about this movie... somehow....

The hyper-realism was GORGEOUS! If I hadn't known better, I would have thought they filmed actual animals in the actual jungles and plains of Africa. Things like ear twitches and tail swats made everything feel even MORE real. However, that's also a major pitfall for the movie. The original was over-the-top with human-like emoting on the characters' faces, in their eyes, and with their body language. Scenes like "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" were stylized with pyramids of singing animals and unnatural colors showing off Simba's imagination and fantasy of the future. Hyper-realism can't have stuff like that. Sad to say this also means Timon did NOT "dress in drag and do the Hula," although, their "realistic" alternative was indeed a treat. So bravo for that.

While others were praising the voice acting... it was... lackluster for me. Bravo to Disney for trying to gather a Black cast for their "African characters" but they didn't take into consideration if any of these actors are good VOICE actors. It's hard when you can't use your facial expressions and body language to convey the character and bring them to life. Harder still when even the CHARACTERS don't have those benefits. James Earl Jones did an amazing job reprising his role of Mufasa, because he knows how to voice act, and had a character who COULDN'T express himself facially - Darth Vader - and was even so stoic that physical emoting was minimal as well. So he knew how to make Mufasa still emotionally capturing. Although, part of that might have been because of Nostalgia Glasses. Still, I feel his lion was the most expressive out of all of them. John Oliver actually did a FANTASTIC job as Zazu, and I love that the remake gave Zazu more agency. He was a touch more crucial to the overall story instead of simply comic relief. This better showcased John Oliver's voice acting, and that alone was worth the $7-per-ticket that Hubby spent for our local one-screen theater.

Another note on the voice acting is the singing. If you are lucky enough - like we were - to still have a theater crowded to the teeth, hope that the audience will sing the songs, because the renditions in this movie are just.... no.

As I mentioned before, "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" and "Be Prepared" couldn't be as over-the-top theatrical as it was in the original. While that already leaves the songs as lackluster, "Be Prepared" disappoints further by being more slam poetry than an actual song, and it's cut insanely short on top of that. Not sure if that's a good thing, though, considering how underwhelming it was. Also, "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" was done well thanks to Nala's voice actor Beyonce, however, the whole scene took place IN THE AFTERNOON???? so there's a disconnect with the song right off the bat, the imagery isn't as romantic and magical as it was in the original, and Timon and Pumba couldn't be as over-the-top emotional.

Oh... and Hakuna Matata? Eeeeeh... yeah.... Cover your ears, because Pumba's voice actor Seth Rogen CANNOT sing, and Timon's voice actor Billy Eichner can't make up for the horrible off-key tone. Anyone complaining about Dwayne Johnson's singing of "You're Welcome" in Moana? Go back after listening to this version of "Hakuna Matata" and tell me again that The Rock can't sing...

Finally, fair warning for anyone who suffers from Uncanny Valley - the point where things are ALMOST real-to-life but juuuuuust off enough that it's unsettling - I hear that this movie throws you hard into it. The Uncanny Valley never bothered me, so I was just engrossed with how pretty the movie was and how amazing the CG turned out. However, I have seen reviews and comments that the emoting, human voices coming out of unexpressive animals caused an Uncanny Valley disconnect.

There WERE some highlights though. I DID like that Scar's motivation was the usual "I should be king/I want to rule" but it ALSO had the added layer of being jealous of Mufasa that Sarabi chose him over Scar. Nala also has more agency and is more than a plot device and/or Simba's love interest. As I mentioned, Zazu was elevated from simple comedic relief. Same with the hyenas. They became more of a threat, and Whoopi Goldberg's Shenzi, now voiced by Florence Kasumba, became a fierce leader of the hyenas, and a nice rival for Nala. Rafiki even made it to the final battle between lions and hyenas, which was nice. However, he was quite lackluster the rest of the movie. In part, it was because he was much more subdued, alternatively, it was because John Kani just couldn't gift Rafiki the same energy and charm that the late Robert Guillaume was able to provide in the original.

Also... Simba's "emotional" flashback to Mufasa's death was more comical than emotional for me... whoops. Stupid hyper-realism!

Aaaand those are my thoughts. It's gorgeous, and there are some nice new elements, so if you can find a cheap showing, I say go for it. I wouldn't bother with a fully immersive 3D screening or anything like that though. I don't think the movie warrants the extra cash. That's just my opinion, though.

Did you see it? Do you prefer the hyper-realism? Did you love the remake? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section. Or, you can use the comments section to give your own congrats to Chibi and my writing group co-member.

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It's past noon... AGAIN... so I'm off to have more of a writing existential crisis about OatS. Catch you guys next week!