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| How at least the back half of 2019 treated me. Generated by Bitmoji |
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Such a bummer too, because it would have been a great "last post of the year" since New Year's Eve was on my normal posting day. Even a SINGLE day delay would have had this post go up on New Year's Day; equally fitting. The following weekend, though?
Meh. I still persevered and managed to not miss this week completely. I get points for that, right?
Alright, so this year we're breathing in good vibes. Exhaling poor thoughts. Expanding the mind to better embrace the views of others. Opening the heart for new blessings. Releasing the imagination to find springs of inspiration.
2020 will be a good year. The 2020s will be a good decade. Life is looking brighter going forward.
Everyone zen now?
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The main reason that didn't happen was because I want to go present a bunch of stats for the year as a way to reflect back on what blessings I DID get in 2019. I figured said stats would be easier to read within blockquotes. However, for whatever reason, the HTML coding fought me for a good 2hrs.
...
The HTML won the battle, and I ended up waving the white flag before I decided to just throw my laptop across the room, or, at the very least, waste more time. I DO still need to clean my apartment as well, and couldn't afford to take much more time on this blog. Ironic... right? Considering I ended up spending more-or-less a week working on it???
Anyway, I'm also on my last day of a 9-day work week, so I was working on both Tuesday and Wednesday, and all other days around those two. With my need to spend my post-work hours cleaning for my family visiting tomorrow, I have only had at-work hours to try to knock out this blog. Of COURSE this has also been one of the busiest weeks we've had in MONTHS, so I've barely had a moment at my desk. I've been able to chip away at this blog about an hour here and twenty minutes there and forty minutes over extended lunch breaks, etc, but I haven't been able to do much more than that.
Finally, I spent roughly two hours last night distracting myself by venting about Miraculous Ladybug and the poor treatment of Marinette's characterization in season 3. Poor Skarabrae-stone. She knew not what she did when she asked me questions about the show.... I don't think she's ever seen an episode either, so it was full dump while also trying to explain canonical events that proved my point and... whoo boy.
Point being, I was venting to poor Ska instead of either cleaning or working on this post. There's two hours neither of us will get back. At least she was polite enough to seem amused by my info-dumps, and perhaps she actually was entertained....
Sooooooo, yeah.... no significant writing time this week, which made this whole blog post update super tricky to finish.
All of this work, and my lack of writing free time, also relates to my other big reason I really need to zen myself out right now. My last functional day off was Tuesday, December 10th!
In theory, I COULD claim that it was the 13th, but I spent so much of that day off working on my writing that I didn't do too much of anything else. I mean, I guess you could count that since I was relaxing and recouping, but I wasn't able to attack any out-of-work stuff I needed to do beyond my self-appointed "need" to write something Plagg/Chat Noir related for Friday the 13th.
Now, I'll admit that I did have Sunday, December 15th, off as well, but with places like the post office and the bank closed on Sundays, my productivity was limited to cleaning and Christmas prep. Then my next day off to be "productive" - things like get an oil change, last-minute shopping, hit the bank, hit up the post office, etc - happened to be the last bad snow storm we had; so none of THAT was done as Hubby and I hid inside instead. The weather ended up causing the Writing Group meeting to be cancelled, so I didn't even leave my apartment to go to that.
Aside from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - where the store was closed, as were most other businesses - I really haven't had any other days off outside my vacation that first week of December. Also, of course I would be busy on Christmas Day; spending it with Hubby's family. I don't think that day counts as a "potentially productive" day off....
Needless to say, I am so glad December is DONE! January isn't going to be TOO much better, but at least I'll be back to two days off a week after today.
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Before I turned off my brain, however, I made sure to get my Miraculous Ladybug Secret Santa gift done. It was a trying journey, and I ended up staying up until 2am finishing it, formatting it, and then publishing it to Tumblr so my recipient - mouserzwuzhere, by the way - could hopefully find it Christmas morning.
Christmas day, after Hubby and I watched more movies, had breakfast, and opened our gifts - we are both nerds that bought each other D&D themed stuff - I then went to work on publishing my story on my other sites and re-promoting it.
In case you missed it, you can find it in my normal four spots.
"The Great Debate"
Much like with my Kyoru Week anthology Hearts Together, I'm not the biggest fan of my title. But it works, it kind of sets up the feel/theme of the story, and it was all I could come up with at 2am, so....Summary: When Ladybug agreed to meet up later with Chat Noir, she never imagined they would end up discussing the validity of Santa being real. It's funny the things you do for your loved ones.
Word Count: 4032
Rating: General Audiences (fluffy goodness for everyone)
I ended up going with my original story idea of Ladybug and Chat Noir debating the validity of Santa actually being real, despite them meeting Santa during two different akuma attacks. It felt like such a flat story for most of December, but when Crunch Time hit, I managed to come up with a framing opening and closing to the story that felt like it gave their playful debate some weight and purpose. In the end, I was happy with what I came up with. As I said at the top of this post, perhaps those lapis lazuli beads truly do help open the mind and inspire creative thinking.
Anyway, if I knew mouserz at all, or could talk to them about the things about ML that they liked, the tropes they enjoyed, the ones they were tired of, and other such things - so I better understood them - then maybe I could have been more confident that I was writing something they liked. As is, though, with me just kind of blindly swinging, I must say that I'm a little proud that I feel like I at least connected with the ball. Jury is still kind of out as to how good of a hit it was, however.
Speaking of, I'm a bit of a moron.
So, I rushed to get my story written by Christmas Eve; failed, but still got it done before going to bed on Christmas morning. I then re-formatted and published to my other sites on Christmas itself. The story hadn't had much attention on Tumblr by that point, but that was to be expected. Everyone was enjoying the holidays in one way or another, I'm sure. People were busy. I doubt many were looking for fanfics that day. So I was able to (mostly) focus on my niece, nephew, and sister-in-law on our visit. My father-in-law, and Hubby's brother-in-law kind of disappeared to talk for most of the day, but it was still nice to hang with Hubby's sister and her kids. All-in-all, I think I was able to restrict my check-ins on my story to just the drive up, the drive back - Father-in-Law was driving - and possibly while transitioning from dinner to dessert???? Not TOO obsessive.... Right?????
I did note, however, that not even the ML Secret Santa blog had reblogged the story, which was part of the exchange process. Honestly, that was the main reason I signed up. Sure, it would be fun to get something, and it would be cool to "meet" someone new within the fandom, plus making someone's day with a gift from me is never a bad thing. All that aside, the real incentive for me to sign up was so that everyone looking through the exchanged gifts could potentially find my work: get my name out within the fandom more. Along those lines, I have to admit that part of me was also hoping that either an author/artist I admired received me as their giftee, or I would get one of them as mine and could try to show off my writing skills. Regardless, signing up would also remind to check the blog to find other artists/writers myself. I mean, I already did find amazing creators the first few days of posting.
I do still need to go back and look through everything that posted from about the 20th on, though. I had to stop myself from actually reading any of it, or I would never get my own writing done.
Back to my point: the ML Secret Santa hadn't reblogged my story, and I'm a moron.
First thing Christmas morning, after I had published The Great Debate on AO3, FFN, and DA, and I was editing my Tumblr version to include those links, I noticed that it wasn't reblogged yet. "It's still early, and the admins are probably celebrating Christmas themselves," I reminded myself, "Give it time."
Then, at the end of the day, while riding home with Hubby and his dad, I noticed that my story STILL wasn't reblogged, but there WAS new content on the page. "Maybe it's all in a queue," I told myself, "and mine just hasn't come up yet. Maybe a lot of people posted on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day, and I'm just backlogged."
So I waited again.
Then in the morning of the 26th, I saw even more new content on the blog, but my story wasn't one of them. I was getting views on my other sites, but not on Tumblr. Mouserzwuzhere hadn't reacted either. So I checked my links three different times to make sure I at-ed them properly, and that it was linked to them alright. Both links worked. They should have received notifications that someone mentioned them in a post. I started to panic a little, but I still gave it some time. "The queue," I reminded myself, "maybe I'm still in the queue."
I spent the surprisingly busy work day near-obsessively checking Tumblr whenever I had a few precious minutes of downtime. I just kept scrolling through the ML Secret Santa blog for a) my story finally getting reblogged, and b) the gift for me getting posted.
It wasn't until 4:30ish did I remember something crucial about the ML Secret Santa. Not only were you SUGGESTED to tag them and your gift recipient, but you were REQUIRED to fill out a form alerting the blog where you published your gift, and who it was for. That way they could better keep track of everything, and could make sure everyone who signed up did indeed receive a gift in return. They were juggling people asking for extensions, backup-writers/artists stepping in for original participants who had to drop out, and keeping up with the gifts that were being posted. I imagine it was a lot - especially since I don't know how many people work together for the blog, if it IS more than one person - and I completely get the need for the form.
I just forgot it existed....
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Still no notes from mouserzwuzhere, so I'm still unsure if they saw their story, and if they did, if they liked it. In the meantime, though, here are the other week-long stats for The Great Debate. These were all collected on the 1st, so when the story was indeed but a week old. I haven't gone back to see how much these numbers have changed since.
Thank you, yellow_14, CaptainMalcolmReynolds - formerly chubbyunicornmama - who is also MalcomReynolds on AO3, and thelunaticghost.FFN: 201 views, 10 faves, 4 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 214 hits, 32 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 3 comments
DA: 5 views, 2 faves, but no comments
Total Results: 420 views, 44 faves, 6 followers, and 5 reviews
Tumblr Notes: 19 notes; 15 likes and 4 reblogs
FFN reviews:
1. Very cute and entertaining. Keep writing and happy Christmas.
2. Oh... this is adorable! And I love that Chat still believes in Santa!
AO3 reviews:
1. This is an absolutely adorable story! But why can't Ladybug just let him believe!?!
2. ladynoir + snow = merry winter
And thank you to my first-ever comment on this story, which also happens to be my longest comment.
After wrestling for so long over this story - whether or not it felt flat, and whether or not people would like it - it did my heart good to see "this manages to have the best ladynoir stuff" and "perfect, amazing, glad to see this on my ao3 feed."HotelCoffee: omg this manages to have the best ladynoir stuff.. ladybug accepting chat’s silliness outside of akuma battles? exchanging xmas presents? chat complimenting tom & sabine’s bakery without knowing it’s ladybug’s parents? ladybug using lucky charm outside for something other than akumas?? (a painfully underrated trope) perfect, amazing, glad to see this on my ao3 feed
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I'm still curious if mouserz also enjoyed it - or has even seen it yet - but it is comforting that those who have read it seem to like it.
With my story written, published, and finally reblogged, I started my mental shut-down for the last week of the year. My only true goal was to mindlessly scroll through the ML Secret Santa Tumblr looking for my gift. The week kind of flew by, and I was getting nervous. Nothing was coming up. I even checked my notifications to see if maybe my Secret Santa did the same whoopsie as me and forgot to fill out the reblog form for the event's page. Still nothing. I had to keep reminding myself that the posting cycle lasted until the 31st, that my Secret Santa might have needed an extension, that there's always the backup Santas if my original one had to drop out, and that the event coordinator(s) would take pains to make sure everyone who participated would also receive a gift.
Still had me feeling a touch bummed at first: no gift for me, and no response from the person I gifted something to.
Then, on the 31st, as I hit up Tumblr to grab stats to use in this blog post, I saw that I had a mention in a post. IT WAS MY SECRET SANTA GIFT! YAY!
It's called The Lucky Ones and was written by Moonie. It is mostly a canonical Miraculous Ladybug story. They're both seemingly 14, Marinette is Ladybug and Adrien is Chat Noir, both superheroes are powered up by their kwamis, and neither knows the identity of the other. However, there's a slight fantasy twist to it: both Marinette and Adrien are insomniacs who can't sleep at night due to a mysterious and magical past. Chat Noir manages to figure it out, and patiently waits for the time to let Marinette know. Meanwhile, Chat Noir contents himself being Marinette's friend and companion as they both spend their long evenings together.
There's so many small elements of the story that makes it feel like Moonie somehow knows me personally - although, I don't recognize the handle - which was a pleasant surprise. I won't get into what those elements are here, because they are all vague spoilers. However, you can read the story, and then read my gushing about those "did you spy on me?" bits in my reblog. You can also catch Moonie's reaction to my review here.
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Now that you know what I've been doing since Christmas, I think it's time for the true Meat and Potatoes of this post, the reason why I wanted to fling my computer on Monday.
*~*~* End of Year Stats! *~*~*
I gathered all of these stats on Monday, and was a touch too crazed trying to write this blog on Tuesday to actually go back through and see if the numbers needed to be updated. I don't wish to update them now that it's 2020, so we'll call these close enough.
One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2019 was to again attempt to write one completed work of fiction per month. I know I missed November, and I think I missed one other month. However, with my participation in Kyoru Week in September, plus cranking out multiple gifted stories this past year, I managed to finish 2019 with a grand total of 21 completed stories, and one story that I have no clue where I'm going with it. These stories span four fandoms, as well as my first original story in years.
Let's look back at those nine Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction stories:Fandoms:
Miraculous Ladybug (9)
Fruits Basket (10 one-shots)
D&D OC (1)
Graceling Realm (1)
Original Story (1)
Gifted Stories:
Miraculous Ladybug (1 multi-chapter story; 2 one-shots)
Fruits Basket (1 long one-shot)
Original Story (1 semi-long one-shot)
- Woven Heartstrings - Chaptered 2018 Christmas gift for Taurus Pixie that kept until the end of January to finish. Chat Noir goes to Marinette for help on a Christmas gift for Ladybug, only to have second thoughts about actually gifting his homemade scarf to his partner.
- Prescription for Love - Chaptered story. My headcanon about how Adrien spent his weekend in London during the season 3 episode "Backwarder"
- I Was Thinking of You - One-shot birthday gift for Taurus Pixie. After watching a Chick Flick with her friends, Marinette realizes the romantic lead of the movie reminded her of someone other than Adrien.
- Acting Weird - An originally unplanned one-shot sequel to I Was Thinking of You. Adrien has noticed that everyone has been strange around him lately, and wonders if it has anything to do with Marinette's new beau.
- Painfully Close - One-shot story retelling the season 3 episode "Puppeteer 2" through Tikki's point of view.
- I Don't Care - An unintended continuation of my Tumblr Exclusive story Stranger in a White Dress. A currently 2-chaptered love story about Gabriel and Emilie Agreste's courtship.
- Breaking Monotony - My first Plagg Appreciation Day story. A one-shot Day in the Life of Plagg tale.
- Forever in Darkness - My second Plagg Appreciation Day story. My headcanon of what Plagg's life was like the last millennium before meeting Adrien.
- The Great Debate - My ML Secret Santa story for mouserzwuzhere that I posted above.
Total FFN, AO3, and DA stats among all stories:
31,603 views/hits
1281 likes/kudos/faves
357 follows/bookmarks
212 comments/reviews
Total Tumblr Notes for all stories:
367 notes; 312 likes, 53 reblogs, and 2 comments
- I Was Thinking of You is the most popular on Tumblr with 99 notes: 81 likes, 17 reblogs, and 1 comment.
Let us now compare with my Fruits Basket fanfiction:
- Love Taps - My first Furuba story. A one-shot telling different key moments in Tohru and Kyo's long married life.
- Unsent Letter - My shortest story of the year at 476 words. A one-shot written as a letter of remorse and longing from Kyo to Tohru.
- Is She Your Mama Too? - A long one-shot birthday gift for ChibiSunnie. A post-manga Momiji story where he gets to reunite with his family.
- Hearts Together - An anthology of my 7 Kyoru Week one-shot stories: Small Talk, Experience It All, A Greedy Night Under the Stars, GLOMP, A Crumpled Momento, The Greatest Gift, and Meet, Remember, and Love Again.
Total FFN, AO3, and DA stats among all stories:
4279 views/hits
184 likes/kudos/faves
25 follows/bookmarks
49 comments/reviews
Total Tumblr Notes for all stories:
293 notes; 230 likes, 60 reblogs, and 3 comments
- My final entry for Kyoru Week - Meet, Remember, and Love Again - was the most popular on Tumblr with 63 notes: 50 likes, 11 reblogs, and 2 comments.
Next up is my mostly original story about my D&D OC Emerald Gaze. The Tabaxi are a D&D species/race of cat people, and I used the rules established in the D&D rule books to define a pact to create a new warlock. Because of those facts, technically this would be a D&D fanfiction story:
Sigil's Pact - A one-shot telling the backstory of my Tabaxi warlock, and how she managed to create a magical pact with a unicorn.
Total FFN, AO3, DA, and FictionPress stats:
131 views/hits
4 likes/kudos/faves
1 follower
3 comments/reviews
Total Tumblr Notes for all stories:
I haven't received any notes on this story yet.
The last of my fanfiction stories is one I'm equal parts embarrassed and proud of. Let's check the stats on my Graceling Realm story:
Sparks for the Moment - My one and only attempt (thus far) at writing fanfiction for this book series, specifically the book Bitterblue. It's also my first ever published smut. It's my take on Bitterblue and Sapphire's evening together. Due to the nature of the story, I only published it on AO3 and Tumblr.
AO3 stats:
200 hits
13 kudos
no bookmarks
1 comment
Total Tumblr Notes for all stories:
I haven't received any notes on this story yet.
Finally, we have my first fully original story in... goodness... I can't even really say. Two years, I think? All of my other "original" stories are D&D stories like Sigil's Pact, or they are fanfiction written so vaguely it might as well be original work, such as One Last Hope, or the "original" story is reworked fanfiction, such as all of "Glitches".
Ronoxym, whether he know it or not, or even means to, always seems to push my writing, push me out of my comfort zone, and helps me evolve as a writer. Yet another reason he's my Wonder Twin. So, I shook off the dust and tried my hand at original work again. It hasn't had much love, but I'm still proud of it, and I hope that Ron enjoyed it.
Blame Fate for This - A one-shot birthday gift for Ronoxym. Colton is thrown into the world of the supernatural when he confronts his stalker, and discovers that banshees, grim reapers, and other such harbingers of Death are all real.
FictionPress and DA stats:
101 hits
1 like
no bookmarks/faves
no comments/reviews
Total Tumblr Notes for all stories:
I haven't received any notes on this story yet.
It's fairly obvious to see that my ML stuff is the most popular simply due to volume of content I put out, as well as how massive the fandom is. I was surprised my Furuba stuff did so well comparatively, but that fandom is fairly large too.
For my smut, I'm torn between being glad not too many people have experienced it and being a bit bummed it's lost in obscurity. To be fair, though, it is a fairly dead fandom at this point, and it's smut, which thins out the overall readership.
My D&D stuff might as well be original, and I'm apparently not quite established enough with my limited repeat readers for them to venture out of the ML fandom, let alone try out wholly original content from me. It's to be expected. It stings, but I'm alright, because it IS about what I expect. Plus, they have gotten SOME love. Also, I have to also remember that there just aren't that many people on DA looking for reading material, and who knows how thriving FictionPress even is?
I don't even know where to begin when it comes to tracking down any new repeat-readers I've received this year, and no one has the time for me to go and try to physically count every last kudos/like/reblog/comment/fave/bookmark in order to figure it out. I have noticed more and more readers, though, and I'm beginning to recognize more and more handles.
Same with Tumblr. I've blossomed over there. I haven't checked to see if I need to weed out bots in a couple of months, so take this number with a grain of salt, but I am up to 243 followers on Tumblr. I know that's barely a drop in the hat for most Tumblr blogs, but I'm proud of it. I also don't know how may followed me due to the content I reblog, and how many followed for my original content - including posting my stories - so there's also that to think about. Still, it's the only gauge I have.
The other sites - excluding AO3 - are even trickier since I've had them for so long, and I don't know who had followed me back when I would post Hey, Arnold! stuff, and just never stopped. For all four of them though - including FictionPress - I can't figure out stats for just 2019, so also take these stats with a grain of salt. Keep in mind, this is of all time; not just this year. I really can't say how many found me and decided they liked me based on what I posted this year. Either way, though, here are my stats for the other sites:
FanFiction.net:
Author Favorites: 129
Author/Story Alerts: 140
Archive of Our Own:
User Subscriptions: 43
Story Subscriptions: 268
DeviantArt: 52 Watchers (subscribers)
FictionPress:
Author Favorites: 1
Author/Story Alerts: 2
This past year I also participated in all three NaNo months: the April and July Camp NaNos, and the original November NaNoWriMo. I... did not succeed with any of them. It just wasn't my year for structured, "forced" daily writing - although, I did fairly well with writing most days outside of those months, ironically. Or, more accurately, perhaps, it just wasn't my year to complete One and the Same. I did make progress on it, and it has surpassed 50,000 words in its current draft, but there's still SO much work I need to do this year. I want this story done while the show is on seasonal break.
I could go through and also talk about how I did on my New Year's Resolutions, as I normally do at the end/beginning of the year. However, this post is already epic and 3+ days late. So instead I'll state that I did alright with them, and didn't give up on any of them all year long, regardless of how many times I was thrown off the horse. The only one I really failed at was reading. I read a LOT, but I feel like I barely read anything at all because I didn't track any of it. I don't know how many fanfics I've read, and I can only recall reading.... three professionally published works? Maybe four? Five at the most. I'm going to try to crack down on that this year.
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First, let's fully get rid of that rotten 2019...
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I am always amazed at how quickly (and voluminously) you write. If my mind and fingers ever worked that fast, I don't remember it. Glad you finally heard from your Secret Santa.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how "quick" I truly write. These blog posts are basically an all-day event to write at this point. But thanks for the kind words. :)
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