Is It 2024 Yet?

Est. Read Time: 35 min

Hoo-boy! Why is it that I always seem to fall off the horse the last quarter of the year? My endeavor to post at least one blog entry every month was supposed to be easy! I dropped from weekly to monthly! Gone were 52 new entries each year! Now it was just a simple 12! I'm not sure how compelling the entries were this year (sorry if they weren't), and I know virtually none of them actually talked about writing, but I did still do them! I got them done. I had a goal and I made sure to reach it each month. I had a deadline and I stuck to it, even if I squeaked it in just under the wire (much like today).

And then I missed October due to my recovering from covid.

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And now I've also missed November, and nearly didn't update this month either! When I started this entry, I had NO idea that I wouldn't publish it until over half-way through the FINAL DAY OF THE YEAR!

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If you want a hint of how December has been going, I noticed that I missed my November update on December 6th. I've been periodically chipping away at this post - in an attempt to make it a belated November update, originally - since then. There should be NO reason this kept me virtually ALL MONTH to write, but here we are. So, uh, I guess, buckle up? Because I now have TWO months' worth of blog updating that I'm shoving all together in this epic close to my 2023 blogging year.

...

Why am I so disorganized?

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Speaking of disorganized. I never talked about my font choice for October's belated entry. I tried out Josefin Sans again, and I stuck with it for this update. Maybe I'll go through all of my 2023 posts this January and finally decide on a font. As of right now? I'm starting to feel like The Daily Show after Trevor Noah left... seemingly endless (and aimless) rotating of hosts until they find one that they want to stick with.

So, yet again, if you, dear reader, have a font preference or an opinion as to which of the ones that I've showcased this year is a happy compromise between "hand written" and "professional looking", I ask that you let me know in the comments section below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Getting back to the point of this blog in the first place.... Yeah.... I didn't do any writing.

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Well, that's not ENTIRELY true, but I'll circle back to that later.

I'm glad I didn't add extra stress to myself by signing up for NaNoWriMo. I barely found a spare moment to even put my annual Giving Thanks list together this year. When I did, most of my blessings were pathetically generic: I have a safe and secure home, I have food and clean running water, I don't live in a war zone, I have friends who care about me, I'm not struggling to pay bills, so on and so forth.... Yes, those are all important things to be grateful for, things to make sure I don't take for granted. I did also have some more specific blessings that I was able to call out, such as my sister's engagement, paying off my car loan, and both WGA and SAG-AFTRA winning their respective strikes. That all said, this definitely felt like a lean year in the "blessings" department. It just felt all the worse since my birthday with blessings seemingly harder to recognize. Hence defaulting to those more generic blessings.

Anyway, I had recovered from covid and I had a semi-normal work schedule at the beginning of November, but a lot of work projects were piled onto me. I also struggled to get the apartment ready for Thanksgiving and prepped for Hubby's birthday.

Speaking of, a belated Happy 40th to my amazing husband! Love you, Sweetness!

Shirt my sister-in-law got her brother

Basically, November was spent playing catch-up on Adulting, instead of playing catch-up on writing. As I already mentioned, I barely even had time to work on my Giving Thanks list, especially when it kept me so long to think of something to be grateful for each day.

So, having extra time/energy to work on writing? Yeah... nah.... Aurora Morgen and I ended up not finding any time to even meet up to talk about writing, let alone work on our respective writing projects together. I honestly can't recall if the two of us met up at all in November, actually. I hope ne did alright with nir writing, but we haven't really chatted about any of that since October. With everything I already had going on in November, and the weight of recovering from the chaos since my birthday, adding in the stress of trying to shoehorn in time to write, and then feeling like crap when I have to skip it or I'm too burnt out to think of anything creative???? Yeah. Last thing I needed.

Long and short? November was a bit of a mess.

"That's fine," I thought. "I'm on vacation the entire last week of November this year. I'll just relax, recover, and work on my blog post then."

Instead, I spent the first 3 days of my vacation visiting my mom and sister (no writing free time there). When we got home, Hubby and I hit up the movies and had a date day (didn't even think about writing that day). After, Hubby wanted us to take a day to just stay in bed and snuggle in our PJs. The next day, we needed to do our weekly errands, such as grocery shopping and laundry and paying bills, etc. (so, back to no free time to write). With my vacation over half-way done, it was a mad rush to finish cleaning up the apartment and prepping for Hubby's party (both writing and sleep kind of fell to the wayside here). Then it was finally Hubby's 40th and his party. The following day was more-or-less a wash as we ignored the mess and instead recovered from staying up until 3am celebrating. My final day of my vacation? Getting around to cleaning up from the party, and finally using some of my free time to play some long-neglected video games. Such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

With my vacation done and seemingly not accomplishing ANYTHING I wanted to do with my free time, I worked nine days straight so Biker-Coworker could take her mom to Disney World for Mom's birthday. That was when I noticed that I didn't actually work on my November update while I was on vacation. I had started this entry way back then, but kept getting distracted/interrupted. Manager had projects for me. Her boss, the GM, had projects for me. Fairly simple, but time-consuming, tedious projects. So, I didn't actually have the same long stretches of downtime at work that I'm used to.

Darn job, wanting me to actually WORK while I'm there.

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Circling back to my tease earlier, though, I will admit that one of the first non-job distractions I had while working on this post WAS writing related! I was typing up the above bit about not joining Aurora for NaNoWriMo, which made me remember the Hailey's On It! one-shot I had talked about last update. I still hadn't touched it one lick despite how strong of a hold the idea had on me initially. See above for reasons why. However, thinking about that fic re-sparked my interest in it. I instantly stopped working on my blog - one of MANY interruptions and self-inflicted procrastinations - and whipped out the spiral notebook I started bringing with me to work. I had figured that maybe part of my writer's block problem was the medium I was using. Maybe I needed to kick it old school and physically write on paper instead of attempting to type up something.

It seems to have worked. I started on what I thought was a simple jotting down of the story premise and a bulleted outline for the story, complete with a couple of dialogue beats that I thought of between Hailey and Scott. This simple "two second distraction" turned into a semi-detailed three-page treatment for the one-shot! I haven't gone back to it since (so it's been about three weeks), and I'm probably still ages away from actually sitting down and writing the thing. Still. I wrote SOMETHING. I thought narratively about SOMETHING new. I used my imagination and creativity to come up with a story concept for a few brief moments. I thought of quick dialogue beats. It's more than what I've done for MONTHS. I'm proud of that.

Beyond my prose-written outline for the one-shot, I guess you could say that I also did some other semi-writing. Long-and-short, I beta-read for my mom, and that did result in me doing a lot of writing to help give her examples of how to adjust her work. That would count as me writing something this month, right?

Oh! You may not know what I'm even talking about, i.e. - my mom's writing. I forgot that I missed updating throughout the entirety of 2022, so I may have missed mentioning any of this. I guess it's Exposition Time.

Way back in 2020, my mom was encouraged by her networking group to write a nonfiction book. She never wrote a book before. She has always been told (mostly by her teachers) that she's not a great essayist or writer. She would frequently state that I was the writer in the family (excluding my deceased father), not her. And yet, here she was, facing the prospect of writing something.

As kind of a way to ease herself into it, in 2021 she agreed to write an essay that would be used as a chapter within a collaborative anthology, a la Chicken Soup for the Soul. The theme of the book was how each author shared their internal light with the world. May of 2022, the book launched.

Houses of Light: A Collaboration of Stories About Shining Our Light

Later that same year - we actually passed the year anniversary earlier this month - my mom published her solo writing attempt.

Serenity In Your Space: How I Found Mine

My mom was excited for her book. It's part-How To Organize; part-abridged autobiography. Publishing something 83 pages long - after people spent her childhood telling her she wasn't a skilled writer - was such a wonderful confidence boost. She had done it! She defied all of them! Including herself, who initially believed all the naysayers. It was quite the feather in her cap.

She claimed she was done: "I did the thing. I don't have to try that again."

She was like someone who had crossed off a bucket list item and was like, "Well, that was an experience. I do not wish to do that again!"

...

And yet!

The same woman who orchestrated the Houses of Light collab asked who wanted in on her latest book concept. This time, the anthology includes essays about how the authors ignored the "shoulds" people tried to put on them: "You should do X. You should avoid Y. You should look this way. You should act that way. You should think like this. You should believe that. Etc." My mom was like, "OH! I resonate well with this! Yeah! I can join in!"

The writing bug bit her again. (I totally understand)

She quickly remembered why last year she said that she was done with writing.

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Picture this: It's mid-November. I'm trying to prep for Thanksgiving and my vacation. My mom lets me know that she's done with her essay for the new collab, but she needs a beta reader. I proceed to spend a few hours reading through what she wrote and try to take notes for her. She struggled to hit the word minimum. It showed. She had a handful of completely separate examples of when she didn't follow a "should". There wasn't much connective tissue between them. The writing felt a bit cliché. Like she was writing what she thought people wanted her to say, instead of finding her own writing voice again.

Then, my last morning at my mom's before heading home post-Thanksgiving, she and I have a multi-hour workshop to help her improve and polish. We spent the time she needed to really understand what wasn't working with her first draft and how to revise. What was her authentic message for her essay? How can she re-find her voice after not writing for a year? Which of her many examples did she want to focus on as the central thread of her essay? How can she make the essay sound more like a dialogue with the reader and less like a school lesson?

Jump ahead about a week. It's now the beginning of December. I just realized I'd missed my November blog update. I figure I could do what I did at the start of November: write a belated post for the previous month, and then try to get a second entry in to be my official December update. I distract myself with the urge to work on that Hailey's On It! one-shot. THEN I get a text from my mom that she had completed her second draft.

Part of me gravitated to my mom's writing instead of working on my own because she has an honest-to-goodness deadline, and I wanted to make sure she had time to polish as much as needed before said deadline. Part of me went to beta read because I was curious as to how Mom used the advice I had given her. Part of me just wanted to procrastinate on my own writing a bit more since I had no clue what I even had to say!

So.... off to Google Docs I went to read my mom's second draft instead of working further on this update.

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My mom did improve a lot. I think she just didn't quite grasp the assignment before we talked. Everything was more focused and more emotional. You could tell she was no longer struggling to find enough to say. I'm excited for this anthology to come out next year.

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We'll see how far she gets this time before she's lured back in to write some more. (Mom, I can hear you screaming right now, "No! No more! I'm done!" Know that I don't believe you.)

Anyway, my purposefully-distracting-myself/procrastinating-via-my-mom's-writing carried me into more work projects that filled the remainder of my 9-day work week. I was therefore left with just a few minutes each day to re-read what I had already written (in order to refresh my memory), edit, and then add another paragraph or two before it was time to clock out for the day. Then, good luck finding time to write once I was home! It was clear that if I wasn't writing at work I just wasn't writing.

In part, that's because I've missed playing video games - especially ACNH - so I've actually used some of my downtime to play, if I'm being honest. (I'm still so painfully far behind. I try to "time-travel" so I don't go longer than a week off of my island. I'm currently up to October 28, 2022.....) In part, my lack of writing time was because Hubby wanted to play catch-up on shows and YouTube-streamer VODs we had missed, and my FOMO wouldn't let him watch those without me. The big problem there is that I'm not "ADHD enough" to be able to work on my blog post - or write in general - while also watching something. If there's ANY form of storytelling around me (including the stories told via songs on the radio), my brain laser-focuses on that, even if I'm not actively interested in the story being told. Maybe it's my FOMO again, but I just can't tune out a story that I can hear being told/performed. Even if it's so I could sleep or focus instead on my own storytelling/writing (which is another reason why my "only write at work" method hasn't been going too well for me lately.... work radio station plays acoustic versions of English-speaking pop music). I work best either with ambient white noise or with music that I can't sing along to, be it because the music is instrumental or because the song is in a foreign language. So, no writing while in the same room as the TV. Finally, my lack of at-home writing was, in part, due to being so burnt out that any quiet time at home where I'm not Adulting, or watching something with Hubby, or playing video games, I am instead just straight up napping. I passed out at least four times over the course of writing this month's update!

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UGH! Have I mentioned before how much I hate the back half of the work year? Between everyone's vacations and the holiday store-closures, my regular work schedule seems to fly right out the window from about my birthday until New Year's. Any sort of routine I might have vanishes, and with it, my productivity. Add in that my birthday is about a month after the summer solstice, which means I'm working with less and less sunlight per day. I am a bird person. If it's dark my bird-brain says "time for sleep" so all of my post-work productivity evaporates when the sun sets. My only consolation is that we've passed the winter solstice now, so we are technically to the point where days are getting longer again. Just not soon enough to give me back my energy for the final week of the year.... Still. There's literal light at the end of the tunnel. Sweet, sweet sunlight that will help perk me up and keep me awake and motivated.

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In the meantime, though? 39 has been rough, and EXHAUSTING. How does anyone make it to 40??? I'll have to ask Hubby....

Long story long... 2023 continues to just be a ball of chaos. Trying to find time to write (and not use it to play games, watch TV, or pass out instead) has been tough. Especially since NoPixel just did a reset.

All NoPixel players were warned that the reset meant the current 3.0 server was going to be trashed in favor of the new, updated 4.0 server. All roleplay storylines had to be wrapped up before 4.0's launch on December 15th, or the opportunity to close the storyline would be lost.

The new 4.0 server then jumped the roleplay storyline 5 years into the future. Ray__C had Raymond stay within the city for those 5 years, whereas most other players had their characters move away and then move back. A nice in-universe way for them to explain their surprise in how much the city has changed since they last saw it, and their confusion as they try to start from scratch again while also relearning how to do anything within the game (lots of new mechanics, after all). That said, Ray__C's storyline had Raymond watch the collapse of the entire city's economy, and all the major infrastructure collapse with it. I don't know if that's the canon reason for the complete redesign of Los Santos, and Ray__C is using it as a jumping point for his character's backstory. It seems like it might be official.

As far as I can tell, the canon story for NoPixel is that 2023 came to a close in Los Santos. Then, during the next five years, there was an economic collapse. Many of the residents moved away. Gangs disbanded after the turf wars bankrupted most of them. Even Los Santos Kingpin Lang Buddha's businesses weren't safe. His beloved Rooster's Rest ramen shop was overrun by the sewer rats (as explained by Rooster's former manager Penny Farthing). The legitimate restaurants such as Burger Shot and Lucky Plucker eventually closed as well. All of the big-name movers-and-shakers of the city, who could easily throw away millions without batting an eye, were ruined in the economic collapse of the city.

Then (as version 4.0 starts up), the economy finally started to bounce back in Los Santos. The city was rebuilt. Everything was gentrified. Buildings and parks were rebuilt to be gorgeous, appealing, and alluring. It worked, and a lot of the residents (the players) returned to the revitalized city. They still had little-to-nothing to their names, though, and no one owned property anymore. The fight was on to claw their way back out of their miniscule apartments, become property owners, and realize their criminal and/or financial dreams again.

As a way to conclude his 3.0 storyline, Raymond Romanov proposed to his girlfriend Kit. They planned their wedding for December 15th (conveniently the day 4.0 launched IRL, so that way their wedding was off-screen). Ray__C and Kit's player KateC came up with the following storyline for their relationship for the 5yr time skip: RUST was already hurting from all of the gang wars they had participated in throughout the final year of 3.0. With the economy collapse and more turf wars in an attempt to scoop up the failed properties, RUST barely balanced on the edge of bankruptcy. Trying to keep his gang afloat, Raymond did criminal "odd jobs" to try to infuse RUST with funds. When that no longer helped, Raymond became a hitman. Kit, being a cop, was already in a precarious situation; her husband being a known gang leader, and all. When she discovered that Raymond was also an assassin-for-hire it became too much. She couldn't turn a blind eye on him murdering for a living, but also couldn't bring herself to turn him in. She also knew there was no changing Raymond or stopping him from doing whatever shady thing he needed to do to keep his gang alive. She did the only thing she thought she could: she left him. This sent Raymond further into a spiral. All of the therapy he had gone through to help him squash his homicidal-manic tendencies flew out the window. The man was a loose canon yet again. RUST fully fell and disbanded. Raymond was left alone and unhinged.

And that's how Yuno found him upon his return to Los Santos post-time-skip. It's been fun, the past two weeks, watching the OG interactions that got Hubby and me into NoPixel to begin with. Yuno and Benji and Raymond being the Chaotic Trio, as they are now called.

Left to right: Yuno, Raymond, and Benji
Ray__C promo Instagram story
Art by Nyze

Sprinkle in some Mickey, Marty, Jean Paul, Ash, Ramee, Officer Flop, Tony, Goofy, Tessa, Dundee, Ray Mond, April.... just... all of the old favorites that used to play together before their storylines had them drifting apart, and/or their players left the NoPixel roleplay entirely. It's like going back to when Hubby and I first got into NoPixel (and really watching Sykkuno and Ray__C) in 2021. Especially since the game reset has everyone poor, criminal jobs are hard to discover, and no gangs are established anymore. So there is a LOT of interaction between players as they talk amongst themselves in an attempt to rebuild those social networks and try to find the best paying jobs (as well as any insight on how to get started in criminal activities).

Naturally, Yuno and crew have already started up a criminal faction: Yuno, Jean Paul, Marty, Raymond, Mickey, and Benji call themselves "The Company", with associate members OTT, and Dexx.

If you can't tell, having such an exciting grouping of storylines to watch has made it real hard to will myself into hiding away to be active and work on my own writing (or even clean the apartment a bit). Especially when it's so much more comforting and enjoyable to passively watch someone else's story while snuggled against my husband. 

Speaking of, another passive consumption of story dropped on Disney+ this month. Two, in fact. First up (but 2nd to premiere) is the return of the show Marvel What If...? Hubby and I haven't found a moment to watch the new season yet (due to trying to play catch-up on NoPixel VODs), but it's on the short list. More importantly, though, was what premiered a few days prior. That's right, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV series finally launched! After Disney's first failure with this franchise (the 2 movies), I was cautiously hyped for the series. Author Rick Riordan made sure that he had better control of production this go, and it shows. The diverse cast may not remotely match Riordan's original description of his characters, but I think that was on purpose. As he grew as a writer he learned how important diversity and representation meant to others. After all, he created the series in the first place so his ADHD son with dyslexia could see himself as a hero. So, I can imagine Riordan regrets having an all-White cast of main characters in his first book. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why they went with a Black actor for Grover in the movies. The diverse cast for the series makes a lot of sense through that lens. I'm still curious about what they're going to do with Annabeth fighting against the "dumb blonde" stereotype, though. Perhaps they drop that character thread entirely. Or, perhaps they use the opportunity (having a Black actor playing Annabeth) to tackle the stereotype that Blacks are less educated/intelligent than Whites. I would actually love to see that racist stereotype addressed.

Either way, with the exception of Annabeth and Chiron (both actors feel a bit stiff, and I was acutely aware that they were reading off a script... and Chiron's CG was a bit rough), every actor understood the assignment and became their character. Percy had me tear up more than once during the two-episode premiere. I cannot wait for the next episode on Tuesday. Expect more gushing about this series next month too. It's probably the closest I'm getting to reading in the near future.... well, that and the webcomics I've become addicted to this fall.

Oh! Right! I missed November, so I didn't really talk about that! OK, Exposition Time part two.

Way back around 2013 or 2014, I discovered the comic book author and artist Stjepan Šejić on DeviantArt. He hooked me with the DC-comics fanart he did as warmup work. Then I became addicted to his original story Death Vigil. Via Stjepan, I discovered his wife and fellow comic book author/artist Linda. In 2017 or 2018, to try to work her way through writer's block, Linda started doodling an alternate retelling of the Greek Myth of the kidnapping of Persephone. In Linda's version, there was a misunderstanding as Persephone willingly went with Hades, but she tried to hide it from her overprotective mother. The more Linda worked on this retelling the more she fell in love with it. In 2019, she published Punderworld. One of the places she published it digitally was the webcomic app WEBTOON. I wanted to keep reading what Linda was doing with Punderworld, so I downloaded the app.

For years, I only used the app to read the latest Punderworld update. I also followed a Legend of Zelda fan comic called Growing Up Gerudo. It's a reimagining of the game Ocarina of Time. Instead of Link's mother dying within the Lost Woods and the Kokiri raising him, she had passed in the Gerudo Desert and Ganondorf had adopted him. The writers lace in elements of other franchise lore and bring in characters from the other games, but the core of the story more-or-less takes place within the universe/time of OoT.

I had subscribed to a couple of other webcomics that looked interesting on the app home page, but I never really got into reading them. Then Punderworld went on break as Linda focused on her main comic - the one she had writer's block for when she created Punderworld - Blood Stain. Liking Linda's work, I subscribed to Blood Stain, but never had the spoons to get into reading it.

The app went more-or-less dormant for me for a year.

A quick tangential exposition drop before I continue. Way back when I first got into Miraculous Ladybug I was excitedly waiting for the new season 2 episodes to be uploaded to YouTube for me to watch. While I waited for the next episode upload, I'd fill the time by  searching Google Images and Pinterest for fanart. Frustrated with never knowing who to credit with the awesome artwork, I would then spend hours backtracking to the original upload by the artist. More often than not, I'd trace the fanart to Tumblr. I wasn't on Tumblr at the time, but this - plus ChibiSunnie routinely sending me Tumblr links to check out - really pushed me to officially join. Once I finally bit the bullet and joined Tumblr in The Year of Our Lord 2018, the first people I followed were Chibi, the always amazing EdenDaphne, as well as fellow fanartists leecheedoodles and ceejles. While I was on Pinterest looking for ML fanart it was regularly EdenDaphne, leecheedoodles, and ceejles that caught my eye. How could I not follow them instantly once I got onto Tumblr?

Even when they left the ML fandom, I was still amazed by their artwork. A lot of times I was intrigued by a new bit of media purely because these ladies had drawn fanart for it. Ceejles' comic about Loid and Yor (from SpyxFamily) kissing even inspired my story Tell Me You Want Me When You're Sober earlier this year. I have the opening panels of that Loid/Yor kiss as my phone wallpaper (yes, I'm THAT person). This past August or September, after glancing at my phone, I wondered what ceejles had been working on. I didn't notice any updates from her in a while on my dash (but I'm on Tumblr fairly infrequently now anyway), so I figured I would just hit up her blog directly. That's when I saw this upload of a tweet.

Original tweet

Oooo. A web comic! On WEBTOON? An app I already had and was neglecting anyway? I was intrigued and decided to give it a look.

I was instantly hooked. It's a dumb little low-stakes teenage summer drama romance. Ceejles' visual comedy is perfect for the story. The main character Waverly is endearingly awkward and goofy. She doesn't see any value in herself and doesn't understand how anyone could ever like her - either romantically or as a friend - but the audience instantly gets what's so lovely about her. Then there's broody love-interest Blake. He's a jerk, but not soooo much that you hate him. He's more, annoyingly antagonistic.... He's also handsome and has his kind, goofy, and helpful moments that lets the reader understand why Waverly is growing a crush on him.

The way WEBTOON is set up, you can spend money to buy coins. You can then use the coins to unlock "episodes" (comic updates) early. Otherwise, they unlock for free once per week. So, as of this posting, I am mere hours away from episode 32 of Float unlocking for free, a week from episode 33, fortnight from episode 34, 21 days from episode 35, and 28 away from reading last week's upload (episode 36) for free. If you get into a series late you have all of the earlier episodes (usually anything older than the latest 5 or so) already unlocked, so you can binge your way to being relatively caught up. I'm doing so currently with another series, which I'll talk about in a moment.

Anyway, I got mayyyyybe 21 episodes into Float before going, "Nope! I can't wait every week to know what happens next!" It's currently $0.99 for 10 coins. Each episode requires 7 coins to unlock. Just to catch up would be roughly $4. I also don't know if the latest episode would then be auto-unlocked for me since I was fully caught up, or if I'd have to spend more coins to unlock THAT one too... and I don't know how long the series will last... What if the latest one is still locked from me for roughly a month if I don't pay the coins? But now I don't have ANY weekly unlocks to look forward to? Do I keep spending money until the series is over? Do I just not read any new updates for that month?

Nope! I decided on "secret third thing": go to the source! November 6th, I bought the book by Kate Marchant that the comic is adapting.

Gang? I DEVOURED this novel! I got it on the 10th. I cracked it open on the 11th. I then read through it while re-reading through the comic to see how close the adaptation was. There were some bits that were edited out and added in, but it was largely a faithful adaptation. But, keep in mind that I'm a moderately slow reader to begin with, and that reading the novel while re-reading the corresponding comic episodes did stretch out my overall reading time. Even so, I STILL managed to finish the novel by November 16th!

I have now tried and failed to participate in Dracula Daily two years in a row. Both years I was doing great all through May, June, July, and the front half of August. This year, I got as far as the first week of September before falling off the wagon. It's been literal YEARS (probably pre-2020) since I've actually completed reading either a novel or a novel-length fanfic. Even back when I WOULD read novels, I was never the type to finish off a significant-sized novel in, say, a weekend. It would typically take me the better part of a month to finish them.

I COMPLETED FLOAT IN JUST SIX DAYS!

Yes, this was one of the blessings I included in my Giving Thanks list this year. Yes, if you like idiot teenagers stumbling their way into a relationship, I do highly recommend both the novel and the comic adaptation. Yes, I was riding that high and wanted to do more novel reading! Yes, I tried giving Ready Player Two a second chance. Yes, I did stop reading only about 4 chapters in again. I blamed it on the fact that it was Thanksgiving and I just haven't taken the time to read since. However, if I was still trying to get to the ending of Float I know I would have FOUND time by now. I took that book everywhere. I read at work. I read before bed. I read while waiting for the laundry to finish. (That's it... that's all the places I went in those 6 days....)

So, to circle back to what brought me down this rabbit hole in the first place, the chaos of the past month (plus my poor choice in follow-up novel to read) has even killed my briefly re-sparked desire to just sit and read. How am I supposed to motivate myself to do the very active thing of writing a story when I can't even motivate myself to participate in the semi-passive activity of reading what someone else already wrote? How could I complain about others not reading my writing when I can't be bothered to read someone else's works?

That all said, as I mentioned above, I HAVE still read this month. Just... more webcomics.

Now that I've been back on WEBTOON, my phone has picked up the algorithm (damn snitch!) and more and more WEBTOON ads have been popping up when I play a game on my phone or tablet. The way that WEBTOON generally advertises is by picking one of its newer and/or more popular comics and advertises THAT. Peeps, this advertising has worked on me at least four times. Way back when I first started using the app to read Punderworld I got an ad promoting Never Follow the Wispfinch! The artwork and premise were intriguing enough to me to at least hit it with a subscribe, but I've never really got very far in it. But then I got an ad for Mythic Item Obtained.

It's kind of a weird isekai-light? The premise is that Yggdrasil, the Norse Life Tree, grew out of the Pacific ocean, and brought with it a population of monsters to invade Earth. In this AU-Earth where monsters and magic are real, Korean man Jaehyeon is a brawler-class dungeon raider on the verge of starving to death. When Jaehyeon first became a professional raider, melee-focused Brawlers were all the rage. They were considered heroes for willingly being on the front line against monsters. In the years since Jaehyeon officially became a raider, however, employers are far more likely to hire range-fighting mages instead; lower risk, higher reward. Jaehyeon regrets letting his prodigious magical talent atrophy. On his latest dungeon dive, he stumbles upon the Mythic Item: Odin's Lost Eye, a one-of-a-kind item that becomes soul-bound when equipped (meaning it can never become unequipped without the user dying). Jaehyeon plans on selling it on the black market to become rich and be able to retire from raiding. He's forced to equip it, however, to save his life from an assassination attempt. In doing so, he's able to teleport back in time. He chooses November 2020, the week when his teenage self decided to become a brawler instead of a mage; a time before his mother's murder and his childhood friend's death. Jaehyeon's new goal? Become a mage instead of a brawler in order to better his life, stop his mother's murder, and save his friend's life. The Norse gods have another task for Jaehyeon. Specifically, the Nornir plan to groom Jaehyeon into their champion, tasked to take down Odin and end the Aesir. The isekai-like qualities of the story are that Jaehyeon has knowledge from his past life that he can use to assist him in his new journey. He's also entirely out of his element as he follows a contrasting life path than the one he originally took, all while having the Nornir and Hel, the Norse goddess of death, threaten him with death if he doesn't become strong enough to successfully be their champion.

While I've been subscribed to this comic for the better part of a year (thanks to that WEBTOON ad), I just didn't have the motivation to actually start reading it in earnest until I was on WEBTOON anyway to read Float. Since I got to it so late, the first 74 episodes out of its current 83 available are free to read. Which is what I was referencing before. I could binge this thing for HOURS/DAYS before I got caught up. I'm taking this one slow though. The story is action-packed and a bit intense, so I've been keeping myself limited to just read an arc at a time. Which usually translates to between 3 and 6 episodes.

The most recent comic that the WEBTOON ads suckered me into reading is another Korean-based, action-packed series: Rental Hero. This one reminds me a bit of My Hero Academia (aka Boku no Hīrō Akademia). Much like the main character Midoriya from MHA, the main character of RH Juwon kind of got the short end of the genetic stick. Much like MHA, the world of Rental Hero is an alternate Earth where people are born with superpowers. You then naturally have Heroism as a career choice that many aspire to. You also, inevitably, have supervillains that prefer to use their powers to bully their way into wealth and power. In MHA, Midoriya is born without superpowers but still wants to become a hero. The current #1 Hero All-Might sees Midoriya's potential and gifts him his powers. Now Midoriya has to learn how to handle the incredible strength and plethora of other powers that slowly develop while he's learning to become a certified hero. Likewise, in RH, Juwon didn't get an objectively offensive power that he could use to save others. He can morph himself into a doppelganger of someone. He can mimic their looks and voice, but nothing else. He uses his power best he can: he pimps himself out as a doppelganger to pose as a hero's alter-ego, and fills in for them socially while the hero is participating in their heroic duties. The hero and their alter-ego can be seen at the same time, helping to throw off anyone trying to discover the hero's identity. One day, Korea's #1 hero Justice requests Juwon's services. Problem is, when Juwon goes to meet up with Justice in the hero's penthouse, he discovers the world's strongest hero has been murdered! In trying to check on the hero, Juwon's powers glitch (or possibly evolve?) and he not only manages to (unintentionally) mimic Justice's looks, but also his powers! He's found out by fellow hero Chrome who hires Juwon to continue to pose as Justice, fooling the world into thinking the hero is still alive. They're now on the hunt for Justice's murderer before Juwon is either found out or targeted by Justice's assassin, assuming they failed their mission the first time. All while Juwon tries to not only master having offensive powers for the first time, but mastering the powers of the world's strongest hero!

This is another action-packed and intense series. I'd probably take it as slow as I do Mythic Item Obtained, except I jumped on board too close to its premiere. It only has 11 free episodes right now. I easily breezed through the first 7 episodes in about a week, and then had to wait for the weekly updates more-or-less all month. Unfortunately, unlike Float, this comic doesn't appear to be an adaptation. Which means either paying to unlock episodes early or just being patient.

It's kind of exciting to be patient, though. Gives the same vibes as waiting for a new TV show episode to premiere weekly on broadcast cable. Probably why the weekly updates are called "episodes." Now, if only I could find the fandom for these comics so I can have some water-cooler talk.

The final big comic that those WEBTOON ads hooked me with? The Dragon King's Bride. This one started this August and is currently up to 37 episodes, with the 29th episode unlocking to read for free this upcoming Tuesday night. This one is another romance, and so it has me as hooked as Float does. However, much like Rental Hero, I have no way to skip ahead to read the whole story ahead of the weekly updates, like I did with Float.

For anyone who has either read the manga My Happy Marriage or watched its new anime adaptation on Netflix, The Dragon King's Bride has very much the same vibe, mixed with Game of Thrones season 1 Daenerys navigating life with the Dothraki. The Dragon King's Bride follows meek, 20yo Lucina. She is the illegitimate daughter of a baron of the fictictious kingdom of Brion. The baron forced his wife to take in and raise Lucina, but the baroness was not kind to this reminder of her husband's infidelity. Lucina was physically and emotionally abused, and forced to stay silent. So much so that she has a speech impediment due to not being allowed to practice speaking while learning the language as a child. She was also never taught how to read.

The story starts off with the baroness selling Lucina to the king of Brion as a new concubine. To make sure the king wouldn't reject Lucina, her half-brother had grave-robbed the sacred ancestral burial site of the Tayar Tribe in order to enhance Lucina's dowry. The Tayar Tribe and Kingdom of Brion had been at war for decades. The baroness was rightfully worried about the Tayar seeking revenge for disturbing their sacred lands, and, right on cue, dragons began attacking the estate. When the Dragon King Hakan refused to accept their surrender, the baroness instead offered up Lucina. She hoped that Hakan would be lured by the prospect of denying the king of Brion something. She was correct. Hakan had a priest marry himself and Lucina on the spot. He then spared only the baroness and her son because they were technically his in-laws now. Then he and his army left with Lucina.

So, much like Miyo in My Happy Marriage, Lucina is from a prestigious family who are in financial decline, and whose stepmother is cruel to her in favor of her own child. Like Miyo, despite the abuse, Lucina has a kind heart and is simply looking for peace and an escape from her cruel family. Much like both Miyo and Daenerys, Lucina is promised in marriage to a man believed to be cruel, cold, and a vicious militant. Like Daenerys' husband Khal Drogo, Lucina's husband King Hakan is the leader of a strong, militant people believed to be barbaric savages. Also like Drogo (as well as Miyo's betrothed Kudou), Hakan proves to be a devoted and smitten husband. Hakan also has a kind heart, and only withholds mercy because he was taught it was the only way to show strength and authority; the only way to keep his enemies at bay and protect his people.

Brion is stylized like your standard Western-Europe-inspired fantasy setting. Tayar, on the other hand, is stylized more like India/South Asia/Middle East (I know those are distinctly different aesthetics, but my white American butt couldn't tell you what those differences are. Sorry. If you could help point me in the correct direction, please let me know below). When Lucina makes it to Tayar it is presented as this gorgeous, thriving, richly-cultured kingdom. She does her best to try to learn the customs and language, all while in awe of her new environment. Much like the fictitious African nation of Wakanda, Tayar is made up of multiple werebeast tribes, and Hakan rules over them all. It was actually his older brother Raikan who had united the tribes in the first place.

That's the true trick of this comic. Tayar is populated by werebeasts, people who can shapeshift into werecreatures (think werewolves). The strongest of these werebeasts are the draconians, who can shapeshift into dragons. The strongest of the draconians are the Guardian Dragon bloodline; the royal bloodline. Despite Tayar being the wealthiest nation on the continent, in true "western colonialist" fashion, Brionians use the fact that the people of Tayar aren't human as proof that they are just the savage, bloodthirsty beasts they can transform into. Hence the long-standing war between the nations. This war actually resulted in Raikan's death ten years prior as he tried (and, sadly, failed) to protect the hatchlings (children) from slaughter by Brionian dragon slayers. During that raid, and in a grief-stricken rage, Hakan tried to avenge his older brother and nephew, only to be mortally wounded outside of the baron's estate. That very night, a 10yo Lucina was trying to run away from home after a beating from the baroness. As she was fleeing, she spotted a wounded red dragon (17yo Hakan in beast form).

Lucina was born with healing magic. She hid that fact from her family for obvious exploitative reasons. She was also advised by the fairy Pooka to keep her powers hidden from the Tayar, for fear that they would also exploit her magic now that she was Hakan's bride. Back when 10yo Lucina spotted a wounded dragon, however? All she could think of was how much she understood what it was like to be in pain, and couldn't bear to see the dragon suffer. She healed him, but ended up passing out from the exhaustion of mending such grievous wounds. Hakan was only able to survive thanks to her, but thought it would be wrong to kidnap his savior, so he instead brought her to what he thought was safety and left her in Brion before returning to Tayar to finish recovering. Ten years later, and he still remembers the little, brave Brionian girl with silver eyes and hair that had saved his life. He just can't seem to put two-and-two together that his silver haired and eyed bride is that same girl. Lucina's spirit was so badly broken by the baroness that she seems like a distinctly different person than that girl (although, Hakan has been getting hints that the two are indeed one and the same). Likewise, Lucina never saw the dragon transform back into his human form, nor has she ever seen her husband Hakan transform into his dragon form. So she never put two-and-two together that Hakan was the dragon she saved as a girl.

The other sticky wicket with this relationship is the secret Hakan is keeping from Lucina. Despite his flirting and sensual advancements with her, Hakan is both a virgin and wary of having sex. For good reason. It is quite difficult for someone to bear a child of the Guardian Dragon bloodline (Hakan's bloodline). So difficult, in fact, that most end up dying in the process. Essentially, becoming pregnant with a Guardian Dragon child overwhelms the mother with a fire aura, due to the bloodline's ability to transform into powerful dragons. As much as I'd hate to use this parallel, think Bella Swan from the Twilight saga being overwhelmed by the vampiric energy of her unborn child. Sadly, in most cases, a woman would succumb to the aura at the time of conception, barely even surviving her night with the king. Those that do survive that initial hurtle could very well wither and die during the pregnancy. Those that survive long enough to give birth could finally succumb to their pain and energy loss shortly after. Which is why, if someone is able to survive giving birth to the next generation of Guardian Dragons, she is instantly wed to the king and becomes his queen. Even so, we find out that the process of essentially being burned alive by your unborn child during pregnancy becomes a chronic pain that you never fully heal from.

Hakan was traumatized as he both watched deceased women being carted out of his older brother's room, and hearing Raikan lament his need to produce an heir and how much psychological damage it was doing to him since he was basically killing all of the women he slept with. Hakan saw the relief, joy, and love Raikan felt when he fell for Giaret and she was able to bear him a son. Raikan was madly in love with his queen and she was his final thought as he died in Hakan's arms. Because of this, Hakan refuses to follow through with the tradition of a widowed queen marrying the late-king's brother. A Guardian Dragon queen, having already survived one birth, is highly likely to be able to survive subsequent pregnancies, and so, as far as Tayar culture is concerned, is an easy choice for the new king's bride. Hakan can't do that to his brother's memory, though. He wants what his brother thought he had: a bride who truly loves him, not just trying to seduce him to become queen.

Hakan thinks he might have that in Lucina, but now he fears losing her. Either because she will refuse him once she knows the dangers (she was sold to him, after all), or because she's not strong enough to survive conceiving his child. However, because it's not a romantic drama if you don't have miscommunication, Lucina had spent her whole life being told she was ugly and unlovable and undesirable, so Hakan's hesitation with Lucina makes her think he doesn't actually want her; that he, instead, has an unrequited love for his widowed sister-in-law Giaret. Meanwhile, Lucina HAS been vaguely warned by the maids and Giaret herself that she's too slender to survive sleeping with Hakan, so she's also worried (since she doesn't think he actually cares for her, and because she was beaten her whole life) that he's into rough sex and THAT is why he'll possibly kill her when they sleep together. So, while she wants him and wants to be with him, she's nervous about getting hurt, and he misinterprets her shaking and hesitation as her hating him for spiriting her away from her family.

So, you have these two idiots just kind of dancing around each other. Lucina fears that Hakan discovering that she's an illegitimate daughter instead of an actual noble (and that she was abused her whole life) will cause him to no longer want her as his wife. Hakan fears that Lucina will leave him if she finds out that bearing his child (and officially becoming the Tayar queen) could kill her. Which means, instead of just talking with each other and having open communication, they're spiraling.

Oh, and also, Giaret does want to bear Hakan's child and become his queen, so she's trying to sabotage Hakan's relationship with Lucina. And Hakan's mother Ada is mentally unstable from the grief of losing her first-born and grandson, as well as nearly losing her surviving child. So Hakan's also trying to handle his violently confused mother suffering from grief-driven dementia.

Clearly, I'm obsessed with this story. Tuesday nights don't come around often enough. Especially because Tuesday nights are when The Dragon King's Bride, Renal Hero, AND Percy Jackson all update around 9pm!

Sooooooooo, yeah! I'm struggling with more traditional reading, but, boy-howdy, every Sunday and Tuesday evening I'm TEARING through these comic updates! So.... there's that. I actually added "read for 15min" to my Finch App daily goals. I hope it will ease me back into reading more and more, and for longer stretches.

Maybe that's what I'll have as a New Year's Resolution. I should probably come up with mine, huh? Well, OK. Here's what I think I can do.

1. Take another run at posting at least one blog update every month; 12 updates in total before the close of 2024.
2. Read an average of 7.5hrs per month (that's the equivalent of 15min per day for a 30-day month)
3. Write Plagg-centric stories for the two Friday 13ths this year: September and December
4. Publish at least one narrative each quarter of the year: 4 stories total; once every 3 months.

Those last two feel like stretch-goals since the pandemic hit in 2020, but I need to learn to gently push myself towards goals I want to accomplish. Baby steps. Let's see if I can make them.

Okay. It's now getting into the "evening" portion of New Year's Eve, and I'm sure everyone has celebrations they want to get to. In which case, thank you so much for dedicating a half-hour of your day to this update. Knowing you're there reading what I send out into the aether of the internet truly means a lot to me.

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Anyway, I've already taken up enough of your time. I hope that 2024 is kinder to all of us, and that each one of us finds the time and motivation to accomplish at least some of our more ambitious goals.

A toast to 2023 heading out the door, and another to warmly welcome in 2024.

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