Bite Sized Chunks

I started off the morning sort of dreading today. Labor Day was this past Monday and so the past week in the deli was hell. I would come home exhausted, and would typically just collapse.

So. Many. Naps!!!!!

I swear, I slept through about half of the week when I wasn't at work....

Which meant not only did I not do any writing this week, but my inability to even remember yesterday means that any brainstorming I may have done over the week is completely gone. Can't recollect anything.

And then I woke up this morning, realizing I yet again had nothing to show for my week. I was ashamed to post one more "Excuses" update. "Oh man, guys, I didn't do anything, but I have this valid reason so that I don't feel like a loser!"

Yeah, because THAT truly shows dedication to a craft I wish to make in to a profession.

This guilt of letting another week slip by me actually kicked my butt in to gear. So I started my morning by FINALLY working on one of my in-queue snippets. Still not sure if it will end up in the official X-Future: Snippets, but it's at least some sort of writing.

It's the farewell conversation between Lia and Sasha. It's more for my own character-building knowledge than anything else. Better understand what Lia was up to over the summer time skip. Might even get back in to her head enough to work on the Lia In NYC snippet I need to legit write for the board.

Ironically, I wrote in Sasha's POV while trying to get in to Lia's head. Sasha isn't even my character! So the story is getting sent off to 2-feathers-and-a-stone to see if I kept the girl properly in character for this scene. Once I get approval on the snippet I may officially post it for you fine people to check out.

In the meantime, rejoice with me in the fact that I'm not as much of a bum as I thought! I can force myself to write! YAY!

Accountability and guilt does wonders for my motivation.

On a less formal note, Spink started role playing this past week. I couldn't find an organic reason for one of my girls to come across where she was, but Phfylburt sure as heck did. And it was fantastic! So her character Donna hid away in the laundry room, only for Hubby to have Deadpool find her. That interaction was fantastic as well.

After slacking off for a while, this morning I finally got Lia in on the action. Not nearly as fantastic as Deadpool or Nodya, but at least the girl is doing something. Sad to say, this was the first RPing I had her do since June!!! So stupid!

So, yay for finally having some roleplaying!

Hubby also set up a scene for Willow as well. She, Chayse, and another player who recently rejoined the board all stumbled upon a news report about the couple of students that went missing over the summer. Soooooo, there's that....

It also helps light a fire under me to write up what actually happened to those two. I've kind of been dragging my feet about it because the events are so epic I'm not entirely sure how I want it to officially go down. I sort of want to collab on it, but past events have proven that is sort of a bad idea. Either the other party is super excited and I drop the ball, or I'm super excited and the other party disappears from the internet.

Guess I just need to pull the trigger on that project.

In other Role Playing news, I'm back in moderately-regular contact with Neghya. We talked for a while last night about our respective online roleplaying groups. She added me to her Facebook-based group - I still need to try to catch up on that, but it's a bit of a daunting task with the FB formatting - and I in turn sent her X-Future: The Second Generation Begins as well as the link to X-Future. That way she can decide if she wanted to set up a "reading account" in order to see how things work there. She seems to love the concept behind X-Future, but sadly her two favorite characters - Beast and Storm - are already "taken". So I'm not too sure I can actually convince her to join. Still, if I can get her to read it, there will be one more person I can talk to about the board. That might get me excited enough to work on the next chapter of TSGB.

In fact, I was online specifically to work on said next chapter when Neghya and I started chatting last night. It's going to be a while before the chapter is ready for posting since I still have to sift through hundreds of posts, but at least I'm finally in motion again, right?

I focus too much on the end result sometimes. Then I see all the steps needed to get there and I become overwhelmed. I need to remember planning my wedding, and how I took things in bite-sized chunks in order to build up to such a major party/gathering. I was able to do so much with only my mom, sister, bestie, and fiance to really help me out. And even then I took the brunt of the work right up until a mental break down about 3 months before the wedding. That's when Mom called me a moron for not delegating more, and I truly let the others help me.

My point is that while I may not really have others to delegate to when it comes to my writing, I really need to start thinking the same way. Yes, it's a daunting task that seems too big and too overwhelming to tackle while looking at the big picture. That's what usually paralyzes me. That concept of time needed to accomplish such a massive undertaking. However, if I can change my POV to think in smaller bites, I may be able to conquer anything!

Ali Luke uses this concept a lot in her advice. Sure, the idea of writing a full novel in a year seems out of reach, but when you break it down to x-number of words per season, per month, per week, per weekend, or even per day, it seems achievable. Ali even figured out how to finish a roughly 81,000 word draft every 3 months; basically one a season. With Rachel Aaron's ability to write 10,000 words a day, she's capable of writing a full draft in a week or two, and then rework said draft multiple times before actually cranking out the finished product roughly every season or so. Hell, her editor probably works slower than she does. Then you have the idea of NaNo. Fifty-thousand word novel in just one month? However, even without Aaron's insane writing speed/availability, it's still achievable by a lot of people.

It's all about breaking it down.

50,000 words. Seems daunting and impossible for one month. Roughly 1666 words a day? Still a bit much, but definitely more do-able as long as you don't slack off. 81,000 every three months? Not as mind-boggling as NaNo's task, but still a bit overwhelming. Break that down to about 27,000 a month or - as Ali put it - about 900 a day? That seems manageable - at least for her - even with a toddler.

Now let's take someone like me who isn't as ambitious quite yet. What if I want to give myself the full year to write a 90,000 word novel? That's only 7500 words a month, 1875 words per week, or about 268 words a day. Heck, if we just divide 90,000 by 365 - to avoid the messiness of some months having more or less days, or the ones that have five weeks instead of four - that's even less! A simple 247 words per day will get me MORE than a 90,000 word manuscript within a year's time.

Heck, this blog post up to this point is roughly 1300 words and it only kept me 2hrs to write; which also includes taking time-outs for breakfast breaks, potty breaks, researching, and chatting with both celestialTyrant and my sister.

Not even 250 words a day!? That's essentially me just taking a daily half-hour time-out in order to write SOMETHING that would further my manuscript. THAT'S IT! If I'm inspired - or at least have the next part properly plotted out - I could write my daily amount in just ten minutes! Even if there is some sort of holiday or family gathering that prevents me from taking that 30minute writing break, I can easily bump up the next day's writing to a simple 500 words. If I get in to a good enough writing flow I could get the entire week's worth of writing done in one long session!

The only thing holding me back is motivation to try!

Still not sure how to beat that hurdle, but I'm working on it.

Which I guess is the best thing about this blog. I'm openly working on probably one of the hardest roadblocks in writing. I'm just laying my struggle out for the world to work through with me. I'm pointing out all the tactics I'm trying, and explaining whether or not they work and why. I'm figuring it all out publicly. So that maybe you - or some future writer who has yet to find my blog - can feel like someone else has your struggle. That you're not alone. That you're not a failure for having this problem. And maybe you'll try out new methods of conquering this beast with me. Maybe something won't work for me and I'll have to move on to the next trick, but something in that gauntlet of things I try will show you a method that is your golden key to motivation.

I have such insanely high hopes for this blog, don't I?

Regardless, I guess my latest task is to try to think of writing the NaNo way year long: one day's word count at a time. Simple, small bites. Who cares if it's bad? As long as it's completed. It can be edited later.

Well, okay, maybe THAT is my biggest fault. I get too excited about my projects and post them In Progress, and so each section has to be PERFECT before I can move on since I can't go back and edit later; it's already out for the world to see.

Me thinks I need to first master patience - not posting things until they're complete - and the art of sketching out full plotlines so writing each chapter moves faster and smoother....

I just gave myself so much homework, didn't I? Good thing the school year started again this week. And I WAS commenting on how I miss college...

Revivals and Challenges

"The Year Flew By" by NaBHaN

Guess who's still alive!

Geez, have I really been gone for two months!? So sorry for that, folks. I do have to say that I appreciate the constant check-in views though. 12,799 hits since I started this blog. That's so exciting. Good to know that I'm not forgotten.

Life's been crazy, and I'm sorry you guys had to pay the price of no-updates. Thankfully, Ali Luke came to my Facebook page and gave me a swift kick in the butt, so here I am! I'll touch more on that in a few, but first how about a recap of my life since last post?

Thanksgiving came and went with not much fanfare. Hubby and I had turkey sandwiches at home after working. Then we went down to my mom's to spend Saturday with her extended family - a family tradition of ours where her siblings all come together the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Hubby's 30th that following Monday was hardly as much of a blow-out as I had hoped. Maddog24, his wife 2 Feathers and their daughters, and a small handful of Hubby's friends made an appearance. Sadly, even with a little bit of a heads up most of The Gang couldn't make it to a party on a Monday. They periodically stopped by throughout December and wished him a happy birthday when they could, so that was nice.

December then flew by in a fury of work and my crocheting to frantically attempt to FINALLY finish up the baby blanket for my niece. Guess what! I actually completed it! Sure, I was literally finishing it at my sister-in-law's house on Christmas... but it's done and my niece seemed to enjoy it!

Crocheting all of this was such a pain, and I had to
custom design the owls, which is why they
look so goofy...

The owl pattern fabric I picked out for the
backing of the blanket.

Close-up of the owl fabric backing. Niece's bedroom is covered
in these owls.

The finished project on my sis-in-law's futon.
Yay, finishing it at her house! :-P

I flipped the backing over to make a boarder. I'm happy how it
came out, even if I did have to hand-stitch the whole thing.

Another close-up of the finished product.

I did manage to get another X-Future chapter done about mid-December. It's a fluffy one: dates between Chayse and Lia as well as Nix and Annika. If you haven't seen it yet, you can read the chapter on DeviantArt or on Fanfiction.

Random side note about December:
Just before Christmas my sister was talking to my eldest cousin who apparently told her that he reads this blog. D'aww, cool beans! <3
She continued to tell me that he finds my writing amazing even though "he doesn't quite understand it". I had to chuckle at that.

So, Cous', thanks for stopping by and reading my works, even if you don't quite follow all of my geeky references to Hey Arnold, X-Men, Legend of Zelda, or other video games/animes. The fact that you find my blog still interesting enough to read through means so much to me.

And now we're back....

New Years was quiet since both Hubby and I had to be at work at about 6am New Years day. We had the next day off though, so we celebrated by going to a local showing of Frozen. I'm obsessed with this movie! If you haven't seen it yet and have an opportunity... do so! I've listened to the soundtrack just about daily since. I also managed to watch a second showing with my sister and my very pregnant bestie!

I knew that the home stretch of 2013 was going to be rough. I had every intention of getting back in to gear once 2014 hit. I didn't really hit any of the resolutions I set for 2013. In fact, the year was sort of dismal when it comes to writing. I had the intention of making 2014 as good for writing as 2012 was.

Clearly, that hasn't happened yet. But Chinese New Year is this upcoming Friday, and I like to use that as a "take two" on the calendar new years. With Ali's help - as well as an equal amount of prodding from ChibiSunnie and DarkAngel1326 - I'm sure I can get back on track.

So let's backtrack to the 21st of this month. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Ali had stopped by my Facebook page.

Ali: *prod* Hey, we're missing you in the Huddle's Winter Challenge! No excuses -- I'll accept a teeny tiny weekly target if needs be...

How could I turn that down? So, for the first time since the summer challenge I made my way back to Writers’ Huddle. I decided that my weekly goal for the next six weeks is to get 8hrs of writing in a week, some of which would be used to start doing these weekly updates once again - the rest obviously used for fiction work. I think I aimed a touch too high though. This week I only managed about five hours. I'll have to try to rework my schedule for this upcoming week, I guess.

As with the summer challenge, the winter one also has weekly mini-challenges to try to help shake things up. This week's mini-challenge is to "get comfy". You guys know as well as anyone that I'm constantly complaining about just that. One of the main reasons my writing - and beta reading - took a nosedive last year was because my netbook died on me, and I'm just not comfortable writing at my desktop.

So this past Thursday when Hubby went to use my desktop to play a computer game that his laptop couldn't handle I decided we could just switch. I curled up on the couch with the intent to work on this blog - or any other sort of writing - on his laptop. Well, earlier in the week I had a dream based on X-Future. I'm obsessed, I know. Over the course of the week I was writing out what I remembered about the dream, and I wanted to finish that off first. I broke out the journal I was writing in during work breaks and about 2 1/2hrs later I had a completed one-shot based off of that dream. I ended up not using the laptop, but I was still comfy and I had over two hours of writing. The last time I did that was when I updated as Willow on January 8th: 3hr writing session on the forum! Yes!

Want to see the fruit of my labor? It's spoiler-free and you don't really need to know much about X-Future to get the story! WIN! Anyway, you can check it out on DeviantArt here, or on FanFiction here.

I tried the "get comfy" again yesterday. I swiped Hubby's laptop and curled up in bed for about four hours. I managed to type up the handwritten dream-inspired story. I then sat un-inspired to write. I finally gave up and went over to the couch again. That's where I wrote this. I guess the "snuggle in bed to write" bit only worked with the netbook. The laptop is too big I guess.

With any luck I can use this winter challenge to get back in to that much needed rhythm and routine. Catch you guys next week. For Reals.

The Value of Blogging and Snuggling

Yup, did it again. I totally missed a week of updating. But, hey, at least I'm still updating relatively frequently. Neither DarkAngel1326 nor Cyhyr have updated their blogs in a while. So, at least my semi-frequent updates "count," right?

Although, DA1326 IS still in school and that's obviously a priority. So her infrequent updating is understandable. Cyhyr is also in school, plus she just blew through something like 15,000 words in a little over a week! So I guess she also gets a pass. It seems that Cyhyr's priorities are more on writing her fiction and less on writing her blog. If she's going to spend time at the computer writing SOMETHING; it seems she'd prefer that something to be her stories. I have to give her credit for her priorities. It seems that it should be more important for authors to care more about their manuscripts and less on their journalistic blog updates.

Even famous writers such as Rick Riordan - if they have blogs or other form of social networking at all - only update online every once in a while. Riordan's only been updating about once a week because he's in a holding pattern while his latest story is being edited. Since he can't do any further work anyway until his editor is done, Riordan uses that free time to finally catch up on his online presence. I haven't been following him long enough to know definitively, but I'm assuming his blog and Twitter accounts are barely touched when he's in the full swing of working on his manuscript; be it the first draft or one of his many revisions.

So, to bring this full circle, yes, I can give myself credit for updating at least bi-weekly, as opposed to the infrequency of the other authors I know who blog. However, they seem to prioritize so that the craft of writing their manuscripts trumps any work on their blogs. Perhaps I should focus more on this priority outline. Perhaps I'd be further than I am with my writings if I let this blog fall to the wayside, and instead use the two hours or so a week working on my stories.

Then again, I do seem to have faithful readers here, and I'd hate to disappoint you by just abandoning this blog. Plus, it is important for authors to have a fanbase; a platform; a gathering of faithful readers. I feel this blog does help me in that realm, even if it's just a slight bit. I'd hate to alienate my readers here that may not enjoy my Hey Arnold or X-Men fanfiction.

Besides, the fact that I missed last week DOES seem to display that I do - at least to some degree - have the priorities of "manuscript first; blog second". I could have easily wrote a blog post last week explaining why it kept me until the last minute to work on my chapter. I could have discussed why I didn't have the time to proofread the chapter prior to posting my update. I could have promised that it would be up before the end of the week - a promise I was able to complete, by the way.

However, I much rather prefer to have used the time I would have been blogging as time spent to complete my chapter and proofread it. I'd much rather have the chapter posted before putting a blog post up so that I had something to show for my week. Instead of telling you what I accomplished, and then showing you later, I'd rather just wait until the task was done.

At the same time, I didn't anticipate it taking so long for me to complete the proofreading process. I honestly thought I'd have everything completed by Tuesday, and therefore would have the blog post ready by then too; having me be only two days late instead of a full week.

Considering all of that, having this blog truly is beneficial to my writing; and proves that I really should never neglect it entirely. Even if I sometimes do fail at posting weekly, it helps train me to be in a regular writing rhythm. It gives me a reason and/or excuse to seclude myself and just write. It may be a completely different writing style or skill set, but I do practice - and hopefully improve - my writing each time I write a new post. The icing on this little cake is that it also holds me accountable.

I feel guilty whenever I go a week without posting. This therefore keeps me from forgetting about this blog. It holds me accountable for my weekly writings. If I miss a week - as I did last week - I feel even guiltier if I miss a second week. It truly, and honestly keeps me on the "regular writing" path. Now that I've been posting weekly chapter updates for the Writers' Huddle Summer Challenge, I feel obligated to keep up that rhythm. That way when I do my weekly blog updates I also have a new chapter for you to read.

Reader base, practice, writer discipline, and accountability. These are the things this blog brings to me and teaches me about. These are the four reasons I will keep working on my blog. These are the four reasons I'm not fixated on the "Manuscript first; blog second" priority ranking. These are the reasons why I'm working on an update now instead of working on my next chapter.

So, please forgive the delays.

Now that all of THAT is out of the way, how about something fun? How about a new chapter update?

I had the darn thing written by Sunday, as I have been for the past month. However, between picking Hubby up from work, passing out, and going to work myself I only barely had the time to finish writing; much like the week before. I didn't want to post a non-proofread chapter for a second time, and so I opted to just wait until I was done proofreading before posting the chapter and this blog update.

Monday I had a full work day; nine long hours that completely drained me.

There was no chance that I was going to do anything that required thinking at the end of that day.

So, I set out to proofread after work on Tuesday; especially since it was my shortest work day this week. Instead, I ended up doing all the backed-up chores that have been piling up over the past week or so. That, and Hubby convinced me to rewatch Trigun with him after he completed his half of the chores.

Wednesday I was determined to get the chapter finished. After Hubby distracted me with more Trigun, I finally accomplished my goal, and posted the chapter both on FanFiction and DeviantArt that evening. It was too late for me to work on my blog post though.

Thursday I had every intention to finally get the blog update done, and to start work on the next chapter; maybe finally concluding the events that occurred on the forum all on June 22, 2012. However, Hubby informed me that  2-Feathers-And-A-Stone wanted to boot Maddog24 and Duchess over to our apartment for a few hours. She had finally had their second daughter - a few weeks early - and she wanted some time alone in the house to clean and finish getting the place ready for their new baby girl. Duchess usually gets in the way of cleaning, and sometimes MD24 does too. I welcomed the visit, and so I didn't really get too involved in things like my writing or finishing off my chores as I expected MD24 to show up at any moment.

The minutes ticked in to hours and next thing I knew it was close to six, we still needed to do laundry, and so MD24 decided to just stay at home. He then asked if they could maybe swing by on Friday. He never showed up then either. At least this time I was in "screw it" mode and just did what I needed to do around the apartment. My sister is visiting this weekend and I wanted to at least have all my chores done.

Sadly, the working 9days straight - plus not feeling 100% to begin with - took a toll. Instead of using the hours between me and then Hubby getting off work to clean or at least write.... I.... passed out.

Apparently I was so tired that I completely slept through my alarm. Hubby ended up waking me up by calling to see if I was going pick him up; since I had the car. I was already a half-hour late. WHOOPS! He understood and we laughed about it when I got there to pick him up.

So late on a Friday evening I gave up on the blog post. It was so close to my normal Sunday update anyway that I just allowed the week to pass. I did the same for the next chapter. Since I would be posting the links to the chapter I completed this Wednesday I decided to just go for the "vacation" from writing and not worry about the next chapter until this upcoming week. It also gave me the free time yesterday and today to just hang out with my sister during her visit.

Besides, allowing Hubby to distract me with Trigun also allowed us to do something that we haven't really done in a little bit. Something I desperately missed. We just ignored the world and snuggled on the couch for hours. It was a great stress reliever.

The only problem now is that I have the one song from Trigun stuck in my head. It's a "folk song" that was written for the show/manga that is periodically sung as a nod to the "old days" and the main character's lost companion. The song was released as part of a Japanese soundtrack to the series, but since only the first two lines are ever sung in the anime, only the first two lines were ever translated. So a normally five-minute-long song is stuck in my head as two lines that take about thirty-seconds to sing. So I have 30sec looping in my head and I'm singing it at work.

Worse yet? Hubby finds it amusing to sing the opening two notes to get the song stuck in my head again.... Thanks, Babe...

Bah, anyway, if you want it stuck in your head too - for some crazy reason - then here's the song.

Otherwise, here's the chapter I completed this past week. It consists of Chayse's attempt at the Danger Room at a higher difficulty level than recommended for him.

Rescues and Robots on FanFiction
And over on DeviantArt

I'm excited to say that I actually have two people who have faved the story on FanFiction. I also have good old ChibiSunnie devouring the chapters. She's a bit confused now and again because she doesn't know anything about the X-Men fandom, but she still seems to be greatly enjoying these chapters. So... YAY! Maybe I can convert her in to the fandom before I'm done. Muahahahahaha.

Week 1 Challenge Complete: The Epic Prologue

Wanted to start off with a belated Happy First to Duchess.
Sorry Hubby and I missed your party. 

Another reason to celebrate this week? I've surpassed 10,000 views of my blog! I have absolutely NO clue how many of those views were people actually READING my blog, but still. A fine achievement.

Want one more cause for elation? How about me kinda-sorta achieving my week 1 goal for the Writer’s Huddle Summer Challenge run by Ali Luke.

OH! And before I forget, did you guys catch that last week's Sunday update got delayed until my birthday on Tuesday? If you missed out, go back and check in on that. Also, be sure to find your favorite way to follow me - through Blogger, emails, RSS feed, Twitter, or Facebook - so you don't miss out on non-Sunday blog updates!

Ok, now back to the Summer Challenge.

My weekly goal for the challenge is to create recaps of at least two major events that occurred in X-Future. Even though enough has happened on the board for me to be able to create twelve recaps based on just the game alone, I felt the need to start off with a prologue.

I had been meaning to create a prologue to set up the universe continuity for my individual stories about Willow, Lia, and Trish. However, it always seemed such a huge undertaking that I never got started on it. Using the challenge as motivation, I finally started!

Yes, you read that right: Started. As in, I'm not done yet! I was right, it WAS a huge undertaking! I have the happenings of a dozen or so characters over the course of 30yrs to recap! I'm maybe a little over half-way through and I'm already at 8pgs and over 5000 words! Dear lord, I didn't realize our game had so much history!

It works out well though. For people who aren't part of the game, but are reading my stories about it over on Fanfiction, this long prologue helps set up the world so the reader better understands how everyone interacts and the skeletons in everyone's closets. For the new players, it's a handy way to figure out what has and hasn't happened in our continuity versus the main X-Men comic book storyline. It also helps them figure out their own backstories based on what else happened around them. Finally, it's a helpful refresher for the current players as to how our continuity differs from the Marvel canon, as well as how our characters' histories intertwine.

I just wish I could find a way to cut back on some of it so it isn't so insanely long! Also, there's a lot of time jumping. I'll start with this character, follow them for about three years, and then jump back those three years for that character. Then a third character's history directly follows that character's backstory and so I'm now backtracking seven years to start up the fourth character.

I use main points in time as hubs to help distinguish where I am in the overall timeline, and so I hope I'm not going to be terribly too confusing for anyone. Once I do have the prologue done and posted - and I'll of course let you fine folks know where you can read it - I'd be so grateful if someone would let me know whether or not all the time jumping is indeed confusing.

I also debated a whole bunch of mini-posts where I just follow Character A throughout the 30 yrs, and then start over with Character B for the 30yrs, and then backtrack for Character C, etc. The problem there would be the interlacing of the characters' histories. Still, if that ends up making things less confusing I might go back and rework the prologue like that. As of right now it's more of "Here's what Character A did for five years, and what Character B did, and then what Character C did. Now, let's go back to Character A and see what they did the NEXT five years, etc."

Excuse the tangent, what I mean to say is that I technically didn't hit my challenge goal this week. I wanted to do two recaps and I have yet to finish one. However, I did start off with the prologue instead of the intended first recap of the Student Mixer that kicked off the game. So I took on something extra to begin with. Also, I planned on each recap being maybe a thousand or two words long at most; not 5000 words!

Which leads me to why I believe I actually DID reach my first week's goal. I've written what would be deemed about a dozen mini-recaps under my normal standard; one for each character that had a major impact on the current game's history. Also, I've written FIVE-FREAKING-THOUSAND WORDS for this recap. That's probably going to be the same amount, if not more, that I'm going to write for my two recaps combined during the remaining weeks. On top of all that, it's already a success simply by me actually writing! I've been meaning to work on this prologue and these recaps for a few months now, but it kept the Summer Challenge for me to actually sit down and work on it! Challenges: My Motivators.

And thus my page views jump simply because of people
searching for this meme picture...

Anyway, I do foresee myself finishing up the prologue soonish, but I want Hubby to look it over and correct anything that doesn't quite fit the universe history he had in mind. He most likely will be too exhausted from working the overnight to go through this epic tale today, but perhaps tomorrow or Tuesday I'll be able to post it.
Just enough time to get to work on the next week's challenge.

Meanwhile, the story in X-Future marches on. I forget if I mentioned this in a previous post, but we FINALLY finished off prom, the after party, and the attack on the after party. We're now going through the next day where a whole bunch of new crap went down.

• Crystal and Tyler are having interesting conversations in her high-security recovery room. Hooray for their miscommunication problems still going on.
• Trish being interrogated by Deadpool - which is pretty funny.
• Lincoln meeting his new roommate: new board member and character Alister. The two already have a great chemistry going that is hilarious. Both players already commented on how awesome the other was.
• Colette's decent in to madness has already started. It may have been a month or two since her character was created, but in-game she's only been at the institute for a week! Oh nos!
• Liam becomes a squad leader and goes on his own information hunt to try to better prepare all the students in case another raid like the after party attack occurs.
• Finally, Willow has to deal with finding out who Screw Driver truly is while also being dragged in to a secret meeting. What's the meeting about?
• Lucas has returned from the future with one of the two displaced students, but he also brought along another time traveler. Poor Willow is commenting on how hot this guy is and hoping Chayse ends up just as hot.... only to find out that said time traveler is one of Willow's relatives! Awkward! Thus leaving Lucas' player in hysterics as he read Willow's thoughts on the traveler.

So all of that will be fun to recap about a month from now....

The new time traveling character also makes me wonder if maybe these characters ARE real in some alternate universe and we're truly just channeling them to our world via the Forum. Why? Well, when Hubby created the new character he thought about maybe having him and the displaced student hooking up. He only told me about this and I didn't say anything to anyone.

And yet, Lucas' player took control of the new character when they arrived from the future. He then had Sebastian and Brianne embrace and give each other a kiss before parting ways! He had NO WAY of knowing that Hubby has shipping those two together. At no time when he relayed over Sebastian's backstory, nor when he corrected Lucas' thoughts on how the future would be, did Hubby ever mention any sort of romance for Sebastian. For all Lucas' player knew, Sebastian could have been gay. But there he was, writing Sebastian and Brianne as a couple! Almost as if the characters themselves were telling us that they wanted to be together.

Ya know, kind of like how Nys and Devon clearly want to hook up even though Ronoxym swears up and down that they have a platonic relationship.

OH! Speaking of Ron! I meant to comment on this last week, but he's gotten in to the habit of shanghaiing my Facebook statuses by speaking as if he IS Devon messing with Trish.

Out of nowhere I'd get a comment that would keep me a minute to figure out that it's not Ron talking to me, but Devon trying to instigate Trish! Although he hasn't done so this past week, the week before it was nearly a daily occurrence. It's fantastic that these characters are completely leaving the boards and becoming more and more involved in our daily lives.

In fact, I have clothes all set up for me to dress up as either Trish or Willow for Halloween this year! I even splurged $8 on myself as a birthday gift and bought a white wig that matches Willow's hairstyle. Now, to get clip-on nose and eyebrow piercings to finish off my Trish costume, or to get clip-on blue hair streaks to add to the Willow Wig!

We all may be losing our grip on reality....

One last thing that I noticed this week. Remember how I commented on Tuesday about how the update would have been Monday except I couldn't figure out what to call Hot Hands or Chimera? The main reason because the two of them claimed they didn't have on-line personas....

Well, due to car troubles, Hot Hands spent a great deal of time hanging out at our house after work, and throughout these visits we eventually began talking about the Naruto fanfics that he and his wife write. He then had me go to Fanfiction.net and lo and behold.... both he and Chimera have accounts with FF.

Which means they DO have online personas.

Which means I didn't have to spend almost 48hrs racking my brain over what nicknames I'd give them for this blog.

So, officially, Hot Hands is actually MadDog24 and his wife Chimera is actually 2-Feathers-And-A-Stone.

I think I prefer Chimera for it's simpleness, but I might switch over to MadDog24 because Hot Hands just makes him sound like a retired porn star...

Any thoughts, guys?

HH? Chimera? If either of you are reading this and have a preference, just let me know.

In the meantime, I'm off to work on my epic prologue some more.