The Science of Morphing: Now with 60% More Emo Corner!

Yet another week of simultaneously accomplishing a lot and nothing at all.

After reworking at least the visualization of Pyro last week, I decided to work a bit on Devon's mom Mystique as well. It's hard to come up with a new look for a shapeshifter, though. So I focused more on her powers so that she could still morph, but the styling would be original.

Well, semi-original, I'll get to that in a moment.

I came up with a concept I really like - as do Hubby, Ronoxym, and Phyflburt - but it does have a lot of kinks to work out. I thought it would be neat if "Mystique" had to touch whomever she was trying to copy. I then wondered why that would be, and figured she'd need to actually absorb the DNA of the person. Then her cell structure could use the new DNA instead of the one she was born with, and THAT is how she morphs. This would also mean that her cells could "pick and choose" so she could customize her look.

For example, she could keep her body structure, but take the nose from Person A, and the ears and mouth of Person B, and the skin tone of Person C, and the hair and eyes of Person D, etc.

I was so excited about this idea. Then Hubby found an old 90s show on Netflix: Animorphs. For those who didn't grow up in the 90s and/or read the books, the concept is that a group of kids were gifted shape changing abilities by a dying alien. The way to use their ability? They must touch an animal in order to assimilate it's DNA. They can then morph in to that animal for no more than two hours; otherwise they can't revert back to their human form.

I had totally forgotten about Animorphs and how they used their power. I accidentally turned Neo-Mystique in to an evolved Animorph!

All that aside though, the real issue with my change is that Marvel Canon Mystique was simple. She could manipulate her body any way she wanted - in to a big, burly man, or a frail little girl, or a super model, or a hermit with only one good tooth, or even animals - as long as she could keep her body density. So, she could turn herself into a mouse or an elephant, she would still weigh 140lbs regardless. Matter could not be gained or lost while morphing. As long as she kept to that rule - which she HAD to, it was the physics of the comics - she could become whatever she imagined; whomever she imagined.

In putting the "Needs the DNA" restriction on my version of Mystique, I'm challenging her. If she never absorbed the DNA of a Chilean ballroom dancing champion with two different eye colors and a leaf-shaped birthmark on his left butt cheek, then she can't BECOME any of those things. She can use the DNA she does have to get close. If she has the DNA of a Latino, she can use that for the ethnic profile. She can use eye colors from two different DNA sets to get that look. She can use her own body structure to look like a dancer. Don't know how she'd be able to fake the leaf-shaped birthmark, though. Either way, she can't just imagine or see said Chilean dancer and then become an exact copy of him.

I was also thinking of putting time restrictions on to the absorption. Her cells can store DNA copies for, say, six months. It seems a bit long, but at the same time it's a lot shorter than Canon Mystique who would keep the same disguise for YEARS. In the comics, just to name a few, she was a super model, a senator's wife, a journalist for the Daily Bugle, and the deputy director of a government defense agency. Add in the X-Future board where, after abandoning Devon, she ran off to Chili or Peru and took on a non-mutant persona in order to start fresh. There she fell in love with a former X-Men and had a son with him. Mystique embraced her maternal role this time, confident that no one knew her true identity and that her new son Filipe wouldn't be in danger. Then Filipe's powers manifested and she feared it would out her as not only a mutant, but Mystique. She sent Filipe to the Xavier Institute and continued to live in her new identity.

So all that being said, six months may not be all that long for a shapeshifting spy/villain. Yet, it should also be more than enough time for most uses. This time restriction also gave me the idea of her keeping a collection of "DNA samples" such as locks of hair that she could touch to re-absorb the DNA she'd need to keep up a morphed disguise. Or maybe she just really likes having blue eyes and wants to keep that DNA around.

Another idea I had would be for her cells to have limits. In the above scenario Neo-Mystique could absorb HUNDREDS of people's DNA over the course of six months. It seems a bit too vast. So, with this new limits idea she'd have a cap. Having just one other person's DNA "saved" in her cell memory isn't much of a strain, and so she could "store" that DNA for years. However, add another two or three and it's starting to get a bit cramped in that cell. Now each DNA can only be remembered for about a year. Get her up to about six people and each bit of DNA can only be kept for a few months. And the pattern continues; maybe it's every 3 DNA strains, or maybe the numbers change depending how many there are. Similar to the idea I had with Neo-Multiple-Man and his duplicates so that doesn't get out of hand either. Anyway, the point is, if she gets too greedy with DNA absorption eventually she can only keep them for about an hour or two, or it could even be a strain for her to revert back to her original form; difficult to find her own DNA in the sea of others that she copied.

This is my personal favorite restriction. Probably because it is similar to what I came up with for Multiple Man, and so it just feels like they fit in the same universe.

But now comes the REAL trick when it comes to Neo-Mystique. She doesn't just look at and then copy someone like the original does. Canon Mystique likes the look of this man, but wants him to have an 8-pack ripped stomach instead of a beer belly? No problem. Boop, done. Neo-Mystique on the other hand, I don't know how to handle the weight thing. Yes, weight in some cases IS genetic, but your CURRENT weight isn't determined by DNA. It's neat that my version of Mystique never has to actually SEE the person she's mimicking as long as she has a DNA sample; like a glass he drank out of, for example. However, how would her body know what his weight is or how muscular he is or how long his hair is; if he still has any?

Would she be able to adjust the look of her weight to become burly or chubby? If her cells can only manipulate themselves by inserting new DNA where needed, how does that affect hair length or weight? And what if the person had plastic surgery? That's not in the DNA coding either.

Also, she might end up becoming way too powerful. If she's manipulating herself by inserting other people's DNA where needed, what's stopping her from being able to obtain mutant powers that way? The whole point of the story is that mutants have glitches IN THEIR DNA that gives them powers and/or physical deformities.

Sooooo, there's some bugs to work out. Honestly, I really want to get Mystique to work so I can have Devon actually using his morphing abilities in the comic. However, on the boards Ron almost NEVER has Devon use his shape changing, even though Hubby established it as the primary power over flame manipulation. I think Ron has had Devon use it four times over the last three years. Meanwhile, Devon's always playing with his fire powers. So, would it be THAT much of a loss to cut Devon down to just the flame manipulation like his dad, and cut out Mystique entirely?

I guess I'll leave that decision up to Ron since Devon is his character.

Ron might be a bit too busy to figure that out right now, though. He bravely went back to Please, Let Me Explain in order to see the edits I've done over the past month or so since he last checked in. Aaaaaaand this was his reaction....

Ronoxym: Oh, dear christ... I just pulled up PLME. The last time I looked at it we were only up to 19 pages. WTF!?

Uh, yeah.... it's now up to 27 pages. I suck at this whole editing thing.

Ronoxym: yeah. btw, did you know that it takes like 3 minutes to fully load the document right now?

I'm actually going to steal a Facebook sticker for this one since I haven't made a LycoRogue emote for it yet....

Sorry, Ron. I am HORRIBLE with this "brief story" thing! It bugs me too that it's nearly at 30pages already and we're not even done.

Worst part is I don't know if I'm about to make it shorter or another three pages longer. Followers of my blog might recall that I mentioned about a month ago that I discovered a major plot hole in our story. Reworking that plot hole may completely redo six full pages. We may be able to keep bits of it, or none of it, or almost all of it; I'm not sure yet. Then we have the separate section I wrote in an attempt to fix the plot hole. That is another three pages or so, but I hit a brick wall that Ron never meant for me to even get to. So, editing out that part might shorten this separate bit. Which means when we insert it in to the main file of PLME I don't know if it's going to be two pages, three pages, more, or less. And based on how the insert ends will determine how much of the plot holed six pages we can keep. At the very least, unless Ron changes or deletes a lot of what I added, we know the story is currently 20pages long.

So. Friggen. Good. At. This.

That's my kinda-sorta-maybe-maybe not productive week. I came up with a new character rework; kinda. I ran my head in to the wall with PLME and grumbled about how I want to kill it with fire. Still kinda do. And then I spent the last three or four days off in the emo corner because.... writing funk.

I'm once again at the "do I even know what I'm doing" part of my writing roller coaster. We'll see how long this dip lasts this time.

This upcoming Monday, Ali Luke is starting this year's Summer Writing Challenge over on Writers’ Huddle. I want to participate, but I have no clue what my six-week writing goal should be; let alone the suggested "weekly goals to build up to the six-week goal."

AngelBlood666 suggested that I put all of my open projects on the back burner for the challenge. Start fresh in order to re-energize myself. It's a good idea, but I really can't think of anything other than X-Future or Gyateara right now. I'm afraid if I try to do something completely different I'm just going to be pissed that I can't think of anything during the whole challenge.

Then again, a new thought DID sort of pop in to my head while watching the nearly endless promos for Disney Pixar's "Inside Out" movie. Mostly, that I'm a bit bummed that I didn't think of that concept first since a very similar one keeps nudging me every time I see the promos. Instead of personified emotions running around in the main character's head, the main character is a writer and those "little voices" are actually her characters. I know it happens frequently with me and the X-Future Girls: Lia, Willow, and Trish. In fact, each girl almost acts like the emotions presented in "Inside Out": Willow is Joy, Trish is Anger, and Lia is Sadness.... sorta.

I don't know if I can come up with a full narrative with this concept since there isn't really an ongoing plot. Plus, as I mentioned, Pixar is JUST releasing a nearly-identical idea using emotions instead of book characters. Then there's a semi-similar live-action movie that came out years ago about an author accidentally writing a novel about an actual person: "Stranger Than Fiction."

It might be fun to try my hand at comic book writing again. Maybe come up with a new strip script every week during the challenge. Could be fun.

Then again, I COULD use the challenge as a real push to finish a major portion of X-Future world building.

For the reboot I have the following list of Marvel Canon Characters that I need to make original reworks of:

1. Kitty "Shadowcat" Pryde
2. James "Wolverine" Howlett, AKA Logan
3. Remy "Gambit" LeBeau
4. Jamie "Multiple Man" Madrox
5. Amara "Magma" Aquilla
6. St. John "Pyro" Allerdyce
7. Charles Xavier

And to a lesser extent:

Pietro "Quicksilver" Maximoff - mostly for the dynamic I had set up between him and Trish, but I could transfer that to a completely original character

Raven "Mystique" Darkholme - who is either a major character or not relevant at all; see above.

I already have Jamie more-or-less finished, which leaves six more canon characters that I need to really get cracking on finishing the rework of; some I didn't even start reworking yet. So, maybe I can use this challenge to force myself to rework one of the above characters each week so that they're all done by the end of July.

Which challenge should I choose? I have until Sunday to decide. If you guys think I should lean one way or another, please let me know in the comments.

Beautiful, Lovely Warmth!!!

The weather is finally super nice. Winter dragged on forever, and then it was spring for about three days before winter snuck back up. We still had SNOW at the end of APRIL. Granted, it didn't stick to anything besides the grass for a day, but still! Then it was Spring-like again, but still chilly with some high powered winds.

This past week, though. This week was fantastic. Well, for me. Hubby is already dying because 80-degrees is way too hot for him. It's just about perfect for me. I am seriously starting to think I'm actually cold blooded....

The warmth and light breezes are perfect "open the windows" weather. It's also great motivation weather. The sunlight, the warmth, the breeze; it just wakes me up and gets me excited to be productive. This is super awesome, except for what the weather was motivating me to do: clean.

Don't get me wrong, my place is in DESPERATE need to be organized. I have baskets of laundry, a sink of dishes, snacks stationed everywhere instead of confined to the kitchen, and paperwork for balancing the checkbook scattered across just about every surface...

So, I was super productive this week in cleaning. The problem there, though, is that I haven't really taken the time to WRITE this week. I keep meaning to, but then I get the drive to fold laundry or wash dishes. So I run with those...

The extent of my writing this week consisted of:

• Finally transferring the last of Please, Let Me Explain from Ronoxym's version to our shared one
• Checking in with Writers’ Huddle forum
• Listening to a 2-part seminar Ali Luke posted

Noooot. Really. Much.

I didn't really edit much on PLME; it was just a straight up transfer so we have the one file to work with. Instead of our former 3 or 4 we keep snagging things from and/or adding to.
Writers' Huddle was pretty quiet this week - as was X-Future yet again - but I did get a bit more advice on my problem coming up with titles. Still not sure what to call the X-Future reboot, but at least people are trying to help.

The real gem from WH this week was that Ali posted an audio seminar - about half-hour total if you listen to both parts - about finding time to write. Granted, I failed at listening to her advice this week, but that doesn't mean I didn't take it to heart. I'm going to try harder this upcoming week. We'll see how successful it will be.

I did have to chuckle that once again Ali seemed to have had her crystal ball aimed at me. She posted the seminar on Sunday, I believe, and she managed to touch upon something another friend of mine JUST introduced me to. This past Friday AngelBlood666 had posted about "Don't Break the Chain" on the Struggling Writers' Society FB page. It is a concept that the comedian Jerry Seinfeld uses - and one that Ali talked about in the seminar - where you buy a calendar that has the entire year on one page, so you can see January 1 all the way to December 31 all at once. Then, when you accomplish whatever goal you have - writing, filming, exercising, cleaning, painting, etc - you mark the calendar. The next day you accomplish the same goal you also mark the calendar. Soon you will have a line - or chain - of days where you completed the task. Now your motivation is to keep going; even if it's something small and simple that takes five minutes. You're going to want to do anything you can to continue that chain. And if you break it, you're motivated to make the next chain even longer and longer still, until you eventually get a full year without a broken chain.

It's essentially the same idea as the No Zero Days as well.

I'm a bit ashamed that I failed at keeping my resolution of having no more than 3 Zero Days in any given week, but I still have over half the year to make up for it. I just need to use this nice weather for motivation on more than just cleaning. In fact, maybe once the place IS clean I can keep it that way easier and be able to focus more on writing,

Ali also commented in her seminar that she finds she tends to get cranky and irritated easier when she hasn't written in a while. I have to say that I'm the same way. Don't know if it's true of all writers, but I find that a fun parallel.

It's like a Snickers commercial, but instead it's:

"Go write!"
"Why?"
"Because you're a cranky, whiny, irritable dingbat when you don't."
*Comes back after writing a few pages.*
"Better?"
"Better!"
Writing, because you're not you when you haven't.

To finish up, I'm going to talk more about Ron's writing progress. Because, apparently this blog is partially his too instead of him updating his own.

This past Sunday while talking to him I noticed that I had recently received an email. He had sent me a new Devon story he was working on based on what amnesiac Devon is currently doing on the forums. It's barely a page, and Ron claims he wasn't quite at the point of having me look at it - hence him not informing me of the story while we were talking. I still call shenanigans since he could have waited until he was done before sharing it with me. I think he DID want me to read it a bit early.

Anyway, this is kind of big. First, Hubby got him writing as Devon again last week. Then it inspired him enough that he decided to do some side prose using Devon. A few more steps and he might complete PLME. However, I'm sure he's going to finish his current story first. Don't worry! I don't have any characters in this one, so I won't be hijacking it from him. He'll actually be able to complete the story this time!

So, some on, people! Let's encourage him along! While you folks do that, I'll be over here and try to actually do some writing this time.

Year In Review Part 2: May-August

For those who missed what I'm doing here, I was super bummed out about my overall writing performance in 2014. I had hoped that I did better than my poor memory can recall, and so I went back through my 2014 blog posts. Must say, I was right. It WAS a better year than I remembered, but not as good as I had hoped. Either way, going back through all of those posts was a bit more of an undertaking than I had originally thought. So I ended up running out of time before I could make up for the dinky New Years post I published, then I failed to hit my first official Wednesday Blog Update of 2015. However, I DID manage to get my post up finally on Monday.

Major project, indeed. The post was becoming so long that I had no choice. Sure, you all have dealt with epically-long posts before, but this was a multi-page beast. I ended up breaking it down in to three four-month parts.

So, without further ado, here is part two of my recap of last year.

MAY
While the first four months of the year actually went a lot better than I recalled, May was definitely the point where I started sliding downhill. All, in part, due to Phfylburt. In 2013, most of my writing was focused on the X-Future boards. I was either obsessively on the boards roleplaying, or I was working on theX-Future: The Second Generation Begins, or I was writing another piece for X-Future: Snippets. Sure, the holiday season sort of killed role playing like it did in 2012, but I was still consistently on it; reading it; prodding people to continue to play. Then Phfyl became board one night and did a major thing with one of his characters. I shook me to the core for some reason. I was dumbfounded with disbelief. I actually wept. I also raged about the whole thing in my blog; making poor Phfyl feel way more guilty than he ever should. He apologized "in person" via Skype, and we've been better friends ever since.
What Phfyl did on the board became the main driving force for me to work on converting X-Future in to an original webcomic. This way I could have control of the story - for the most part; I took on Phfyl and Hubby as co-writers - and I could avoid the stunt Phfyl created on the boards. Given that Ronoxym has also been having writing troubles lately due to his inability to use Devon like he wants, I think including him on the X-Future reboot might help his inspiration as well. Either way, I've done a lot of world building and character development for the X-Future reboot over the past nine months, and it is all thanks to Phfyl just royally pissing me off.
That being said, I also haven't really been on the X-Future boards since... the roleplay itself is dying... so here's hoping Hubby has an idea of how to revive it now that the holidays are once again over.
Now, as I stated, May was largely spent trying to reimagine the world of X-Future. I started off wondering if we could just straight convert it in to comic form; similar to what I'm doing with TSGB. However, there seems to be a larger likelihood that Marvel finds X-Future and sends us a cease and desist, then it is likely that they take X-Future in as canon. Not to say the later wouldn't be flippin' awesome! Imagine, a dinky Play-by-post-role-play-turned-webcomic becomes accepted as Marvel canon: making the story universe of Earth 11616 a real thing!
Anyway, fearing the higher likelihood of the C&D - as well as people calling it out as glorified fanfiction - I decided to make it a completely original world. We barely involve the Marvel universe and characters anyway. At most there are about seven Marvel characters that I have to rewrite as originals. The trick was figuring out the world to tell the story in. Throughout the course of the month, I bounced between four different world concepts: near-future cyberpunk, fantasy, cyberpunk fantasy, and no-powers. Phfyl actually gave me the idea of "no powers" in July, and was really pulling for that concept, but Hubby and I decided we liked the Near-Future Cyberpunk setting best. The real drive for that setting was the categories and terms for the mutants that Hubby and I came up with.
The reboot wasn't the only good that came from a bad-place this month. I had hit a point where I questioned my writing talent. It seemed like everyone else could find inspiration within for their writing, but I needed some sort of outer catalyst: X-Future, working with Phfyl or Ron, fanfiction, even collabing with AngelBlood666 - something that only lasted for a week; need to get back to that. As I said though, even this downfall has a silver lining. When I bounced back, I ended up writing - in my opinion - a nice pep-talk post.

JUNE
Writing got even worse this month. My "No Zero Days" mantra fell to the wayside, leaving me with not much happening, writing wise. Well, aside from officially picking "Glitches" for my original term for mutants and "Hacked" for mutates.
I hadn't touched Trish since finishing up a session with her in January, and so I attempted to write a Trish/Devon fight scene. I got about a page or two in, but never finished it. Honestly, while I kept attempting to write shorts, I haven't done anything with Trish in about a year. I'm so upset about that; I loved this character.
I tried to respark something by writing up recaps of the X-Future board for ChibiSunnie. That way she could read the Snippets since she would have all the info she needed. I had hoped that it would also help bring back my drive to work on TSGB again. I didn't get very far with the recap, and haven't touched it since - a reoccurring trend in 2014, it seems.
I also fell in to a funk while world building Gyateara. I found some of my old notes from back when I first started building one of the countries in Gyateara; notes from about 2004. One of the things I included in with the notes were articles talking about pitfalls screenwriters and authors tend to fall in to while world building. Instead of using this info the way I originally intended when I printed out the articles - a means of warning of what to avoid - I instead stared at this pack of papers; terrified that if I hadn't already fallen in to those pitfalls, that I was going to. I once more lost faith and halted all writing.

JULY
My father-in-law had Frankensteined my netbook back to life, which allowed me to partially revive my desire to write. Especially now that I can sit on the couch or in the bedroom and write. Sadly, this didn't up my beta-reading or my visiting Writers’ Huddle at all last year. I need to fix that for this year... in the meantime, I officially decided to revive my failed attempt at a local writing group. I have a lot of online writing friends who may not have the spare cash to be able to join Writers' Huddle, and so I decided to go ahead and start up my own. We jointly decided on the new name for the group: Struggling Writers Society. I spent a lot of time - and even posted late one week - putting together a forum, but people seem to mostly stick with the FB group. We didn't do too much last year, but I'm trying to get people more active this year.
While I was working hard on my own writing group, I did go back to Writers' Huddle for help on the X-Future reboot. I was still struggling to figure things out at this point. The people at WH helped me realize that my passion was for the cyberpunk near-future setting, and they - well, mostly Ali Luke mostly for this part - helped me figure out how to rewrite the key part of the Xavier Institute. Phfyl and I then whittled down the cast of characters down to about twenty; quite a feat with a starting list of over forty.
Chibi started up her own blog, but, much like Ron, she didn't get too far in to it before her getting nervous about her writing halted her. So, please stop by her blog and give her your thoughts. Even if they're critiques, I'm sure they will help encourage her.

AUGUST
The world was rocked by the death of actor/comedian Robin Williams. I posted a blip after his death pleading for people with Depression - or any other mental health issue - to reach out for help. Suicide should never be an option.
I had a huge list of stories that I needed to work on; haven't even started any of them. They included a Trish/Devon story, an stories about what Lia, Willow, and Chayse did over the summer break time-skip on the forum. All on top of TSGB, rebooting X-Future, Gyateara world building, and trying to convince Ron to work on the Devon/Willow story more.
With my writing stopped for months, no one really doing anything on the X-Future boards, and stress from work just piling up I fell in to a mild depression that pretty much lasted the rest of the year, aside from a few Highlight Days. One such day resulted in a bit of an epiphany: Mental Arthritis.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A much shorter post compared to Monday's Part One. Sadly, this only means that I really didn't do much writing in this middle portion of the year. I had some breakthroughs in the X-Future webcomic idea, but that was pretty much all I did for four months. Not too bad if I was working on it consistently, but sadly I wasn't.

I know that the last part of this Year in Review series is going to be just about as short, and that saddens me. When I worked on the first part I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of work I had forgotten I had done in those first four months of 2014. Then the summer hit, and then the craziness of holidays - Halloween through Christmas - and I just couldn't get myself back on the horse.

I need to learn from this. I need to keep this drive going past April. I need to push myself to stay consistent with my writing year round. I hope I'm starting right by posting this at noon on a Wednesday, as I promised I'd do.

Playing Massive Catch-up

Soooooooo, this week has been so crazy I legit lost track of what day of the week it was. Wednesday came and went without my notice....

I feel like I've been non-stop for over two weeks now. The days have flown by so quickly I didn't even really have time to write. Thankfully, I changed that yesterday, but I'll get to that later.

Obviously, I didn't manage to write a blog post to replace that placeholder. Which means I'll have more to talk about today, right?

Let's start with why I even had a placeholder last week: the concert and my work presentation.

Let's start with Hubby's early 30th birthday gift for me. We went to the Monumentour with Paramore and Fall Out Boy. It was fantastic. I had such a blast, but I also worked the morning of the concert so I was on the go from about 6am until 1:30 am the next day. CRAZINESS! I was so tired I was NOT in the mindset to write a post in time for my normal noon update. I debated writing later in the day - after I woke up - in order to get SOMETHING posted. However, I had work that evening and I was still zoned out, so the placeholder was written.

The other reason I had no time was that work presentation. Not entirely sure how well we did. The way these presentations work is that each year a group of employees spend an extra hour a week trying to find ways to improve their individual store, or come up with an idea that could help better the chain as a whole. The first year I was a part of this project, we created a safety video to show during job orientation. Last year I BSed my way through raising employee morale. This year we threw together a last-minute presentation about what I have done throughout the year to improve wellness in the store's employees. Things such as moving the employee smoking section further from the store to keep non-smoking employees/customers from second-hand smoke, providing sunscreen for the employees that spend the majority of their shifts outside, providing things such as puzzle/activity books in the break room to help destress employees, and talking to the new-hires about the wellness program so that they know it's available.

So what I was doing since that last actual update was figuring out how to present these changes: taking photos, making a power point, writing out a script for MadDog24 to read off at the presentation, making hand-outs, etc. All while working long days at the store. By the time last Wednesday hit I was - as mentioned - exhausted and still needed to put on the finishing touches on everything to make sure we were ready.

Thursday was the presentation. We had to get up fairly early so that we could make the hour-plus trek to the building where the presentation was being held. We then watched other presentations - which were unbelievably boring compared to the previous two years; it was insanity - before giving our own. Once all the stores gave their presentations the managers in the sectioned off zone - so this would be about 15 stores - would then vote on who they think did the best job both on the presentation itself and with the improvements they did for their store. The winner is announced and said winning store moves on to present to the region and then possibly move on further to present to corporate.

The safety video went on to present to corporate, but we didn't win over-all. It was nice to win our zone though. Last year's pulling-this-out-of-my-butt presentation ended up getting us second place in our zone. This year we weren't informed where we were in the standings; we just know we didn't win. Oh well, at least it's over, our manager is happy with what we did, and we can move on.

Hubby already has a fantastic idea for this upcoming year, and we're going full-steam right out of the gate. Considering the previous three years more-or-less consisted of "[Lyco] throws something together in about three days before the presentation while [Hubby] plays tech-support so she doesn't throw the computer out the window," we're already off to a great start.

Now, once we were done with the presentation and we knew we weren't moving on to the "next round" - as it were - I had every intention of writing my actual blog update for the week. However, it was also the first day I could just sit and mellow out. So I did. Total zone out.

Then came Friday, and the start of Hell Week as the store dealt with the chaos that is "Preparing for the Fourth of July" shopping craze. We were non-stop! My manager's favorite word was "brutal". Every time I turned around he'd be muttering that word. Heck, this past Wednesday I went in to work and literally the first thing he said to me was "Brutal" as he shook his head.

Work. Has not. Been fun.

Everyone's hot and cranky and overworked and the customers are rushed.... it's just bad all around.

So whenever I wasn't at work I was pretty much asleep, or staring blankly at whatever was in front of me. Even now, after having a two-day "vacation" from work, I still have to focus on keeping my eyes focused. It's pathetic.

Want to know what helps with the focusing?

I HAVE MY NETBOOK BACK!!!!!!

My father-in-law is awesome. He totally Frankensteined the thing back to life. Actually, he had it set for me a few months ago, but he needed money from us in order to buy a few more components. Eventually he gave up. He knew how much I needed this thing back and how hard-up we've been, so he used some of his own scratch and we'll pay him back. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough extra to buy a new battery for the darn thing, so I have to keep it plugged in at all times. I can't let it off charge for even a second without it instantly shutting down. It's like a teeny desktop that way.

Still, I have it back and that means I'm writing this while lounging on the couch! Whoot! Perhaps this means I can actually get my butt in gear and get back to things like Writers’ Huddle or beta reading.

OOOO speaking of which. I'm redoing the writing group thing. Originally I was trying to keep it local in order to keep it off-computer; save my eyes and all that. Plus, I already have an online writing community with the Writers' Huddle. However, the local group didn't last long for a handful of reasons. True, I still have the Writers' Huddle, and so having another online community seems a bit silly, but this is with all of my online besties; none of which really have the spare change to join in Writers' Huddle.

So we're off to start up our own mini-group. Obviously the local peeps are free to join in, but this go around it will be me right along side ChibiSunnie, DarkAngel1326, AngelBlood666, Chopfe, Delaroux, Phfylburt, and introducing my one buddy from high school. I haven't found an online-presence for her yet, so I'm gonna use her Girl Scouts nickname for the time being. Everyone wave to Stargazer!

She's so excited. As far as I know she never really thought about writing too much before, but she recently took a writing course and loved it. She enthusiastically sent me a message about how she's now thinking about attempting to write a novel. I instantly threw out that I was trying to start up this online group and asked if she wanted to join. She happily accepted.

Now, to get my butt in gear and start up the group.

The only other writing update I have is that after over a week of the board being stalled out, I finally got around to getting Willow to do something. It's not much, but at least it's SOMETHING, right? I also went a bit hard-core on world building the X-Future reboot. Still haven't locked on to a definite environment idea, but I'm still coming up with possibilities; seeing which one works best.

Forgive me if I've mentioned this before, but I don't recall touching upon my latest roadblock. Although the actual world that surrounds X-Future isn't all that important - as long as the teens can somehow have these powers in some shape or form it doesn't matter if it's fantasy, sci-fi, horror, historical, futuristic, etc - but what IS important is the Xavier Institute. The fact that these kids with powers are all together in one closed environment away from normal humans. The fact that there's a rival "gang" as the main antagonists, and the fact that each group wants to get to potential "new recruits" first.

However, I fear that even if we do call them "glitches" instead of mutants, having a boarding school for these glitches to voluntarily be at just screams "this is blatantly the Xavier Institute and these guys are clearly X-men-like mutants." Even with terms changed and not really using any of the Marvel-owned characters, there's that real fear that Marvel could pick up on the "rip-off" and try to shut the story down. Either that, or any readers will be turned off by the fact that this is "fake X-Men".

Will the fact that the most basic environment structure is more-or-less straight out of X-Men turn away readers, or bring more in due to the familiarity of it all? Will it be obvious that it started off as an X-Men fanstory/role play? Will that matter?

I mean, I got drawn in to Order of the Stick because it was obviously a D&D campaign. Rich Burlew still makes TONS of D&D references throughout the strip. Do I feel cheated that he didn't completely create his own world? No. However, he also isn't pretending that he did, where as us changing everything except for the basic concept of "a school for mutants and the rival group they battle" feels like we are trying to pass our story as entirely original when it isn't.

So I'm stumped, do I just go for it and re-name the institute and be done with it? Or do I try something different?

I thought that maybe humanity forced these kids in to mutant-only schools; getting back to the X-Men social commentary roots about segregation. Phfyl threw out the idea that they're all together because of refugee/internment camps or reservations; again creating a social commentary on the American treatment of Japanese Americans in WWII or Native Americans throughout our country's history. The only real problem with these segregation/racism concepts is the idea of recruitments. There wouldn't be any X-Men vs Brotherhood recruitments. Everyone would be forced to go to these places, so a nice chunk of story would be lost, while a whole new one would emerge. Said new story would mostly have people rooting for the Brotherhood over the X-Men. The Brotherhood would be the group fighting back against this oppression while the X-Men would patiently bide their time while trying to show normal humans that not all of them are dangerous; that they can be just as productive parts of society as anyone else. I would think more people would cheer on the Brotherhood for trying to stand up for their kins' rights, and get irritated with the X-Men for not doing anything; content with their lot in life.

No go.

I then thought back to recruitment. If I wasn't going to use a school because it would be too obvious, what other options would I have for children to have a choice in whether or not they wanted to join one group or another; or any at all? Where else do children come together in groups?

That's when I looked to Rick Riordan and the Percy Jackson universe. He used "summer camps." Most of the demi-gods in his stories would still live at home and go to school like a normal teen; spending their school year trying to stay under the radar, but also knowing enough to fend off monsters if need be. Then they would all come back to Camp Halfblood for more survival training over the summers. There were even some demi-gods who either had no place else to go or were so powerful they couldn't go a day without a monster harassing them. These teens just stayed at camp year-round.

It was a fantastic idea and a great twist on the Xavier Institute problem. However, it would still be a blatant rip-off if we turned the institute in to a summer camp. Sure, it may not be AS noticeable with the rest of the world having a vague X-Men feel, but you still have teens with specific powers and facing daily dangers all gathered at a camp. Anyone NOT thinking X-Men going in to the story will most likely think Demi-gods. We now have the same issue as we did with the school idea.

But how else do teens gather in one place and live together? I was thinking "mutant slums; they all just live near each other" but this then goes back to the segregation issue.

I bounced back to the fantasy idea that Phfyl had a little while back. As much as I love the cyberpunk world we were creating - and I loved the idea of mutants being called glitches, and they were each categorized in a pseudo-cyberpunk category - the fantasy world just seemed like a better fit.

We could go back to the idea of the schools, but have it be mage guilds instead. It was enough of a trope inside magical stories for it to just feel natural instead of stolen. Teens going to a guild/school to learn how to master their birth-given powers? That could be any number of things. That could be D&D. It could be the animes Fairy Tail or The Familiar of Zero. It could be Harry Potter. It could be the video game Fable. The list goes on, but those are the things that first pop in to my head when I think "school for mages".

Sure, since it's a trope it's a bit played out and "safe"/"expected", but at least it won't jar our readers by having them go "wait a minute... isn't this like...?"

I could just save the "glitches" and categories idea for the world Hubby thought up a little while ago.

Yesterday I pitched the following idea to Hubby and Phfyl as a way to have a fantasy/steam/cyberpunk world where the "mutants" are now all mages.

The mages started off as a small few for whatever reason (TBD) and were praised as heroes and saviors against the dangerous creatures (insert generic fantasy creature here; ie - dragon, goblin, ogre, etc). Citadels were built as homes for these mages and the cities sprung up around them so that the mages were at the center of the communities and capable of saving the city at a moment's notice.

As the threat of creatures waned and the reliance of the mages simply became a generational norm, the mages became power hungry. They became tyrannical rulers over the non-magic citizens and warred among themselves.

An industrial revolution became necessary for the non-magics to be able to compete at all with the mages. In the end, they were able to dethrone their magical dictators.

Mages were cast out of society and they created communal homes for themselves by way of guilds hidden in wooded areas surrounded by the few remaining creatures that they once saved the non-magics from.

Humanity still feared mages, but more and more were being born among them. Some were slaughtered instantly when their powers were discovered. Some were cast away, letting fate decide if they could survive the creatures of the woods in order to get to the mage guilds. Some were found out by wandering mages; undercover and unknown to be magical among their neighbors. These sleeper mages were tasked to whisk the newly discovered mages safely away to the guilds.

Some mage guilds were embittered by how their ancestors were cast out, and how their kind is currently treated. Their goal is to make mages the supreme rulers once more. (Brotherhood)

Other guilds wish to just be left alone; to live in peace away from the humans. (Morlocks)

Then there is at least one guild who wishes to show non-magics that mages are the same as them. Just as some humans are just "evil" and do things like kill and fall to corruption, so do mages. However, just as most humans are NOT inherently cruel and evil, neither are mages. Therefore, mages should be treated just as non-magics (I really need to think of a muggle-like term). Most are decent human beings, but discipline and punish those who deserve it. (Obviously this is the X-Men)

Finally, you have the guild that just wants to see the world burn. (Challengers of Heaven)

The actual world will be based as a fantasy world. However, instead of the typical medieval England atmosphere that most fantasy takes place in, the world will have a cyberpunk look. Now, I'd like to still restrict human technological advancement a touch, so this fantasy cyberpunk world has one more twist: Steampunk technology.

So, this is a fantasy world with Steampunk technology but a Cyberpunk look.

These tightly packed cities around abandoned mage citadels are dark, gritty, and filled with corruption in order to fill the power vacuum.

However, this overpopulated environment just screams out to the youth to not just become another number. They struggle to show that they're still an individual, not just a member of the human herd. So they wear bright, vibrant colors to stand out against the dark, gritty environment. They stylize their hair and dye it bright, unnatural colors. The advertisements are the same. Businesses struggle just as much to stand out against their competition, and so the billboards and other advertisements are just as bright, and vibrant.

Hubby's a bit hesitant on the cyberpunk still sneaking in. He thinks just the fantasy/steampunk will be enough. Phfyl hasn't commented yet.

If we do decide to go this route, it changes the way Devon does a crucial bit of research before setting off on his own. Plus I still need to figure out the rough mechanics of the magic. So I'm still trying to figure out the whole "teens grouped together" thing in order to keep them mutants instead of mages.

If you have any advice on the subject, feel free to drop it in the comments below.

And now to conclude I'd like to throw out that Chibi has started up her own blog a few weeks ago! She's still nervous about her writing, so I'm sure I'm going to get a response along the lines of "How sweet of you to promote my blog, but now I'm super nervous about what I post..."

Fret not, dear Chibi. My readers are kind, and I'm sure they'll enjoy your work as much as I do.

So, go ahead and check out her work. Don't forget to let her know what you think of it. Even if it's constructive criticism, us writers love the feedback so we know how to improve.

You can find her here on blogger at Philothea Ponderings.

Now, if I can get some of my OTHER writing buddies to update their blogs. Yes, there are four of you I'm staring down right now.

Here's to a calmer week and some actual writing! Catch ya next week.

The Equivalents Between Exercising and Writing

Had another “What is my life” breakdown last night. But you folks are forced to read my “woe is me” tales far too much already for me to really get in to that yet again. Just know that I’m struggling to get past it, but I am getting past it. I’m hitting the world with more determination in fact.

First up, I broke out the good old Wii Fit and synced it with our WiiU. I used to do this thing all the time leading up to my wedding. Even though it was a family gift from my mom for all three of us – me, her, and my sister – since I seemed to be the only one that ever used the Wii Fit relatively regularly my mother told me to take it with me when I moved away. I used it a bit during the half-year that I was unemployed right after the wedding. Then I finally got a job, the house fell in to disarray, and I stopped using the Wii Fit under the excuses of “There’s no room for me to really move in order to properly use it” that lead to “Since there’s no room I should use the time cleaning instead of trying to work out” which usually lead to “It’s way too late at night now for me to exercise, plus if I do after going to work and then cleaning I won’t have any time left to write.” Not that I ever really did write. I usually just plopped next to Hubby on the couch, watched some well-deserved TV, and messed around on Facebook.

Fast-forward to about mid-April. I had the livingroom spotless and had an urge to make sure the Wii Fit board would still work with the WiiU – I had forgotten that the WiiU has a backwards compatibility mode that allowed you to revert to the original Wii format. Well, after about an hour of both researching online how to clean out battery corrosion and then successfully saving the Wii Fit board, I used the game for the first time in over a year. I set up my Mii and did the initial Body Test to see my BMI, my weight, and test my balance. Then I put it away.

Jump ahead again to about mid-May and you’ll find Hubby and me participating in a new health-incentive program I’m running at work. The concept is that you earn points – max 6 per day – for eating fruits/vegetables as well as working out. You also earn either one point at the end of the week for maintaining your weight, or two points for losing weight. These points are then accumulated for one of three charities: American Cancer Society, AmericanRed Cross, or Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I chose my personal favorite charity: American Cancer Society. Therefore, the points I earn go towards that charity’s net amount. At the end of the program all of the points earned by every participant across the whole company are added up. Then the points earned for each charity are divided by the number of participants who chose that charity in order to figure out the average amount of points each charity collected. The charity that earns the highest average points receives a $5000 donation from the company. The second-place charity receives $2000, and even the final charity will have $1000 donated. It really is a great way to help others while helping yourself.

Well, over the past two weeks since the program started Hubby and I have been kicking butt in the fruits/veggies department – which in and of itself is impressive since we rarely had any over the winter – but I’ve been slacking in the exercise department. The only time I earned any exercise points was when I was running around to the point of sweating at work. I would go “eh, that counts” and call it a day.

Today I changed that! Today I actually took out the Wii Fit board and used it for more than a glorified scale; since my bathroom one and the one in the breakroom at work are 10pounds off from each other, and I’m not sure which one to trust. Today I actually spent about an hour working out. About 30min with aerobics and another with yoga. Go me!

Each activity in Wii Fit is only about a minute or two long. Most are no more than 4min, unless you do something like “free running” in which you set how long you want to run for and then just jog in place for that long. My point is that I can do essentially the same thing as the push-up scenario in the No More Zero Days concept. “Heck, I could just get on the ground and do one push-up so I don’t have a Zero Day,” turned in to “Well, heck, I can start up the Wii Fit and just do the Body Test.” The hardest part about using the Wii Fit is having to dig the board out of the drawer I keep it tucked away in, and then starting up the program. It takes about five minutes. After those five minutes of starting the darn thing up it seems a waste to just do the Body Test. So I do one game under the Aerobics category. None of them are all that challenging. You only burn about 20calories with each game. Then you think “that wasn’t so hard. That was actually kind of fun” so then another game is played, and another. I switched over to Yoga as a cool-down, and went through each pose even though I really only wanted to do the ones to work out the tension in my shoulders. Next thing I know I’m doing the free run for 10min and chugging a glass of water after a nice workout.

Now here’s the part you’ll care about: I did the same with my writing.

Just like with the Wii Fit, the hardest part is taking the time to just start the darn thing up. Especially since I’m doing a lot more writing in Google Docs, so that I can share my work and get feedback. Now I have to start up my computer, and then the internet, and then Google Docs, and then a new file – or bring up an old one to fix/continue. It takes about five minutes, and so once I push myself to put in the effort to “just write for a little so I don’t have a Zero Day” I suddenly feel like the set up would be a waste of time if I didn’t put in x-minutes in to writing. Next thing I know I’m doing the 10min free run – or in writing terms: I’m working on a fight scene.

I suck at fight scenes.

Like, majorly. Just as I need to train in running because I have absolutely no endurance – like, I can get winded going up stairs if they’re steep enough, even if there’s only about 20 of them – I need to work on fight scenes. Again, just like running, I have the basics and I can do alright when I need to, but certainly nothing to really brag about. “Oh man, I was able to jog in place for 10min.” Ignore the fact that while I wasn’t exactly winded, it did take about three minutes for my breathing to go back to normal once I was done…. “Oh man, I wrote a fight scene.” Ignore the fact that everyone just dodged everyone else’s attacks until the hero finally got the winning blow in.

Exercising and Writing. They go hand-in-hand and I can certainly apply the same tricks to both activities. Something that I need to do more often in fact. More exercising. More writing. More motivation to do something productive both on my days off and on days where I have a short shift.

That being said, I’m proud of my pathetic fight scene, just as I’m proud of my “almost-two-miles” jog. Because they both mean that I pushed myself, and did so after actually getting my lazy butt in gear and doing something I should every day.

Bet you’re curious about the fight scene, huh? Well, like I said, it was pathetic, and it was mostly dialogue. It’s not even done yet. It’s going to be another X-Future: Snippets once I have it to a point that is publishable, and it’s – surprise, surprise – a Trish snippet. Her confronting Devon. A woman who can only stab things and create fire is going up against a man who can manipulate fire and is just as skilled as stabbing things. She’s not going to really get much headway there. Likewise, Devon is trying to use fire against someone who both controls it and is completely fireproof. No dice there either. Both parties need to rethink their strategy. Right now it’s “whomever can Stabby-stabby first wins.”

I’ve also been slowly working on the collab with AngelBlood666. I had a grand old time last week when I created the joint Google Doc file. We would essentially IM each other by writing in the file, and because it’s all in real-time you can watch the other person type. It’s amusing to watch how fast someone else can type and how quickly they pick up on their typos.

Plus, AB666 is a nutjob who had me in stitches most of the time. His online persona may seem dark, and some of his stories may be too, but don’t let that fool you. AB666 himself is a riot.

It seems a bit silly to admit this since it’s a play that takes about 3hrs to perform, but it’s taken me about that long to “convert” the story in to modern language since I write out the gist of what is happening and how people are reacting. Oh yeah, did I mention that I’ve only managed to “convert” two scenes?

It would have been faster if I literally set it up as a script and “translated” the dialogue in to modern language. Instead I have passages such as “Theseus tells [Hermia] that she must either die or become a nun. If she won’t marry Demetrius she won’t be allowed to marry anyone.”

Oh! And speaking of Demetrius…. I never before picked up on how much of a jerk he is! Either that, or I completely forgot that part of the story. He’s just this major… well, I’ll use “jerk” again even though I could use more colorful language. Although the idea of a love-square works wonderfully for the Helga > Arnold > Lila > Arnie > Back to Helga dynamic, having Arnold as Demetrius might not be the best idea. AB666 and I are going to have to take a few artistic licenses with the original story so that Arnold as Demetrius is still his lovable “underdog” self. That being said, Lysander is a fantastic character that you can really sympathize with, which isn’t really Arnie at all. So more liberties will be taken so that Arnie actually has a personality…

We’re still trying to figure out the exact format of the story as well. Do we want a straight cross-over? Leave the story-more-or-less the same, just with Hey Arnold characters instead? Did we want to change the names to the Hey Arnold equivalents, or do we want to do the same thing as in the “What’s Opera, Arnold?” episode and make strange name mashes, i.e. – CarmHelga or Ruth McCarmen for Carmen, Don Arnold for Don José, or Curlmillo for Escamillo? Do we have it set up very much like "What's Opera, Arnold?" and have the characters dream/imagine they're in that play? Or do we create our own story loosely based off of  the concept of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? I mean they sort of had love potions in the show before in the episode "Helga's Love Potion", but that turned out to be a grape soda placebo. Since everyone under the love spell had no clue what was going on a placebo effect won't really do much.

Eh, we'll figure it out.

Finally, I made some - not much, but still better than none - progress in my pantheon building for Gyateara. Namely, I've come up with a list of the most commonly used "Godly Domains" that appear in both D&D and Greco-Roman faith. Domains such as "Sky" or "Wildlife" or "Roads/Travel" or "War", etc. My next task is to try to figure out what gods I create will be in charge of what domain(s), and if they are in charge of multiple domains, how are they connected. I also have to be sure that all of the "Cleric Domains" in D&D are represented by the "Godly Domains" so that the cleric-specific spells in D&D can still be used if/when I run Gyateara as a campaign setting.

Well, I think I've sat for enough. Time to get my lazy butt back in gear. To writing and exercise and productivity!

Moving Forward with Collaborative Writings

Once again I find myself with no motivation to write. Normally I have all of these ideas, and I'm just geared up first thing in the morning. That's the main reason I chose to shift my updating to Wednesdays - a day which I can write in the morning. However, I'm just so drained and sore from work lately. All I want to do is curl up in bed and forget there's anything outside of it. No dishes. No laundry. No cooking. No cleaning. No bills. No work. And, sadly, no writing either. Mainly because that requires sitting at the desktop, which is killing my back right now.

Yet, here I am. Once again using the "just write a little" method to push me along. Using that drive of having SOMETHING posted every week for you fine folks to get my butt moving. Now, to do the same with my non-blog writing.

To be fair. I DID do so yesterday. After literally two full months of not knowing what to do with her, I FINALLY role played as Lia. I didn't do anything major, but I did get the girl out of her damn room finally! No one is really on the boards anymore, and so who knows if I'll actually have anyone besides Hubby to interact with, but it's out there. We can start to move on.

Speaking of which, Ronoxym finally moved on with our collab - sorta. As I had mentioned last week, I had finished re-reading the first two-thirds of our story and had tons of notes. So many that I felt it would just be easier to restart the story with the typos and missed punctuation fixed, and then reposted up on Google Docs as something we could both edit.

Although, honestly, I think it would be better if we just mailed the file back and forth to each other so we could actually SEE what we each other edited, and decide if we thought it was a good idea or not. This way we don't have all these notes back and forth debating if we should use this word over that word, or whether or not there should be a comma somewhere. I'll have to check if the "track edits" feature in Microsoft Word is also in Google Docs. The closest thing I could find - which is only available for those who can edit - is a revision history.

By the way, quick shout out to ChibiSunnie for showing me the editing feature in Word in the first place. Made my work as a beta-reader so much easier!

Alright, back to the collab.

So, I'm in the midst of updating the 13-page story, but I take long breaks due to how tedious a task it is. Plus, the whole sitting at my computer thing. Well, in the meantime, Ron finally decides to go through my epic amounts of notes on our Doc file - which isn't even all of them, all of my notes in the middle I never typed up - and edits the document to fix my concerns.

Surprised the crap out of me, actually. I was even excited Saturday night to see him logged in to the story and editing. I figured I'd have more to read during my normal Sunday insomnia.

Well, seems editing was indeed a daunting task, because he didn't update the story after working on editing the second draft. So now I have the version I was editing merged with his edited version. I have notes EVERYWHERE of portions deleted or inserted between the two. My fun task is to now go through all those edits and have a coherent draft to post up for us both to edit from now on.

Maybe Ron editing what we did so far has resparked his interest in the project that had taken such a strong hold of him back in January. Perhaps within the next week or so he'll move the story forward. That would be awesome, and might even kickstart my own drive to once again write.

Although, I do have another collab story in the works. Well, in the very beginning, researching stages. Way back in 2012 I had the fantastic idea of doing a Hey Arnold parody of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This idea must have struck a cord with AngelBlood666, because this past week he asked me if I wanted to work together in actually writing that parody. It's a story I keep absentmindedly drifting back to, but haven't done anything with in over two years. Perhaps having a co-writer on the project is just the push I need.

So we're both re-reading the play and taking notes so that we know what we wish to do with the concept. Heck, I spent an hour this morning just jotting down plot notes on the FIRST SCENE OF THE PLAY! Act one. Scene one. I ended up with TWO looseleaf pages filled FRONT AND BACK with notes. Now to type them up so that AB666 can see them too.

This could prove so much fun!

I've also been casually working on more research for world building both Gyateara and the X-Future reworking. Not too much advancement with either one, but it's better than completely forgetting about them.

Speaking of which, as much as it's grown on me, the placeholder name of Gyateara does seem a bit heavy-handed and lazy: "Eh, I'll just mesh Gaia and Terra together, tweak the spelling, and voila, a planet name!" I'm still not 100% convinced I'll be keeping it when I eventually get to officially writing stories about it; although I might keep the name for D&D sessions. So I'm thinking of using Hubby's suggestion of rearranging the letters until I get something a bit more original, but also keeping the basis of "my planet's name is based off of Greco-Roman terms for Earth". We'll see if I can come up with anything better.

Yay, naming things....


Honestly, if I'm not at work I'm either crashed on the couch or frantically cleaning the otherwise neglected apartment. So I'm not entirely sure I'll be making much progress in writing until either a) the apartment is actually clean and I just need to do maintainence every day, or b) work becomes less frantic. I'll try though.

Until next week... let's just focus on the "try a little and hope for a lot" mode of productivity every day.

World Building and Inspiration Striking (for others)

Wow. This has felt like such a loooooong week. I legit had to read back through last week's post to even remember what I last talked about. Weird to think how slow this month has been going. Bombarding poor Phfylburt as well as Mother's Day both feel like weeks away instead of just a few days.

Actually, I haven't talked to Phfyl at all this week aside from sending him more brainstorming on Thursday. I'll get to that in a bit.

Honestly, aside from bouncing more ideas off of Hubby and having the gears grinding, I haven't done terribly too much with writing this past week. I was finishing up this little fella:

Sorry for the blurry pictures. My camera broke a few years back and I haven't had the money to fix/replace it. Anyway, that little guy up there is supposed to look like a toy version of this dude:

That would be George, my best friend's pet rabbit. The crocheted version of him is a toy I made for Bestie's first-born son. Picking out what I would make for him was part of her baby-shower gift, much like what I did with my sister-in-law and the blanket I made for my niece. It's been so long since I last saw my bestie - and it kept me so long to get down to business and make the silly toy - that the bunny also became the kid's baptism gift.

So my week was spent frantically trying to finish up the toy while working my now-normal insane hours and getting ready to trek home for the kid's baptism. Oh yeah, and be surprised by Bestie that I'm one of the kid's godmothers! YEAH! I have a niece and now I have a godson! About a month ago Hubby and I even got a hand-me-down frame for our mattress and we've been sleeping off the floor. Look at who's growing up and junk!

Alright, back to writing.

So, my time was obviously spent on slightly-higher priority stuff this past week: work, finishing the kid's toy, becoming a godmother, visiting my mom and sis, etc. Oh, and, Mom, if you're reading this I put those in order of what I did for the week. I'm not saying visiting you was on the bottom of the list....

*Ahem*

During my work breaks, however, I was able to FINALLY finish editing the collab Ronoxym and I started back in February. There were a lot more edits - mostly typos - than I initially realized, and Ron has the collab word doc set up so that only he can edit and I can only make comments on it. So, I think I'm going to have to redo it as a new word doc, set it up so that both of us can edit, and send him that as a replacement. Hopefully if he re-reads the whole thing like I did it will respark his inspiration and he can finally advance the story.

Yes, I'm trying to guilt trip you in to writing, Ron!

So, that project is done and the project of actually typing up the second draft shouldn't be too daunting, I hope. The only other thing I really worked on this week - as I mentioned - was using my husband as a sounding board.

Which brings us back to my statement at the start of this blog: the brainstorm with Phfyl this past Thursday.

Technically I wasn't really brainstorming with Phfyl as much as I was relaying over an awesome concept that Hubby came up with. See, last Wednesday Hubby and I went to go watch the second Amazing Spider-Man movie. While we were waiting for the movie to start I relayed over Phfyl's thought of a cyberpunk fantasy setting for our X-Future original reboot. After some discussion, Hubby came up with the following:

In the near-future groups of hacktivists - such as Anonymous or The Rising Tide from Agents of SHIELD - succeed in taking down the corrupt governments of the world. Not sure if it's more of a domino effect or a simultaneous attack. Either way, this results in a massive power void. The hacktivist groups decide to take control since they feel they understand what works best for the people.

After a bit of a power struggle between the groups and the previous government officials and supporters the hacktavists manage to become the new government. They aren't numerous enough for a different person to be in charge of each country in the world, and so they break down the modern borders and restructure the world in to kingdoms. This will give us the "fantasy"/medieval setting.

Over the generations - Hubby was thinking our story would take place in like 2250 or something - the Cyber Lords become more and more corrupt and power hungry. Eventually they become just like the governments the original hacktivists overthrew. During those same generations, citizens have become more and more dependent and trusting of their devices, and so most are easily manipulated by the Cyber Lords' "approved" information. The Cyber Lords are the best hackers in the world and can manipulate any information that goes online.

Soon, people begin to age out of the knowledge of how the world was before the rise of the Cyber Lords. They only know of the existence of the Kingdoms.

Meanwhile, due to food additives, genetic manipulation, "unclean" power sources, and pollution, mutation has switched from a strange phenomenon to an almost every-day occurrence. And the mutations become more and more extreme; such as fur, wings, high healing factor, etc.

The mutations also become more and more genetic, so if your dad had wings you have 1/2 chance of having some as well.

Because of the Cyber Lords the worlds' dialects have become more internet/gamer oriented: text/tweet shorthand and leet-speak. Due to the new modern dialect, the mutants were typically described as something similarly found in games. For instance, mutants with wings would be angels, demons, or fairies depending on how the wings looked. Mutants with super-human strength and/or fast healing would be berserkers. So on and so forth.

Along with the information distortion that all but erased the pre-cyber-world, the idea of mutants gave way to just "new races".

Technology became more and more impressive, but the average citizen became less and less knowledgeable of how it worked. They just took for granted that it did. Only the Cyber Lords and the other nobility knew how technology truly functioned any more.

Because of this, citizens began believing in magic again. This gave way to elemental-kinetics, psychics, and other "physics" manipulators to be thought of as "mages" instead of "mutants".

Thus is the setting of our Brave New World of cyberpunk fantasy while still holding on to the original concept of mutants.

Now, I embellished a bit on his initial idea; adding in things like how the mutations kick-started and why technology was considered "magic" in the future. However, the core of the above was from the mind of my husband. Man, I miss having him as a Dungeon Master...

Anyway, the concept is amazing, but there's one downside. It's TOO good. X-Future works so well and is able to be converted in to an original tale so easily because the background universe it takes place in barely affects anything at all. We can put these characters in to virtually any setting, and as long as they're able to still have the normal teenage-high-school-drama and powers/magic the story works.

The above setting is too intriguing for X-Future. You don't want to watch an ensemble cast play around in this universe without really acknowledging it. You want to explore this new world. You want to explore how it came to be and determine if it will stay as is. You want to maybe watch a Cyber Lord as he ruled. Or you want to watch a citizen become disillusioned and try to start a coup. Maybe you just want to watch a woman struggle as she's declared an outlaw simply because she wants to become an archaeologist; discovering how the world once was and how it came to be. There could even be a really cool tale if the citizens of this new world decided to rename Earth - or never refer to their planet by name - and so the reader thinks it's a tale on an alien planet. Then someone discovers the history of the world and BAM! The reader is shocked to discover that they're still on Earth!

That's what happened in one of the mangas I used to read. I won't say what manga so that I don't give away spoilers, but the basic concept is that teenagers were magically teleported in to this barren, hostile, desert-like planet with ruins that vaguely resembled modern buildings. Then, one of the teens discovered his uncle's house perfectly preserved. That's when they realized they weren't being sent to a different world, they were being sent to the future! Dun Dun Duuuuuun!!!!!

My point is that the setting Hubby came up with is almost a character in and of itself. However, the focus of X-Future is definitely on the interesting characters we all came up with. It would be way too complicated if we tried to run a story where the reader is torn between wanting to know more about a cast of at least seven people or learn more about the setting.

I am planning on slotting that idea away for some future project, though. I just need to figure out who will be the character that gets to play in that playground. ONE interesting character running around an intriguing world is a much better fit.

So.... still trying to figure out the world behind the X-Future reboot. Wonder if Phfyl has thought of anything over the past week.

In the meantime, I'll brainstorm some more with Hubby. I may even take up world building Gyateara more. Silly Hubby actually told me on Sunday "If you ever need help with naming things, I'm pretty good at it."

First of all... I KNOW he's really good at it! I love all the names he comes up with for his characters and settings. I tell him that a lot, actually! Heck, there was a month or two where he had me convinced that we should name our son - if we were to ever have one - after one of his D&D characters. Would have been a really cool name too....

Secondly: DOES HE NOT KNOW ME BY NOW!? Of COURSE I need help naming things! I frequently lament how horrible I am at naming things! Where has he been!?

That being said, he's now going to help me with coming up with names for my world building.

Before I jet for the week I do want to do a couple shout-outs!

Seems a trio of my online writing buddies are finally back in to the groove of things, plus Omnibladestrike has been chugging along with his own world-building for about two weeks now.

Friday I had a message posted on my Facebook wall:
"All right, I'm doing the '5 minute writing' that you talked about in a blog. Let's break my hiatus."

AngelBlood666 later commented that his "five minute writing" turned in to a half-hour; easily. He has since written for "five minutes" every day and is ready to do his first update in a long time. Should be up sometime today! Mad props, AB666!

Same day I also received a message from AB666's beta and the mutual friend that got us to meet: DarkAngel1326.
"You better be writing! I'm writing tonight too. Rose (my princess/undercover knight) has some stuff to say."

So glad she's getting back in to Of Blood and Honor! So YAY for her too!

The real shocker was when I received this message yesterday morning just before running off to work:
"I want to write a story, but I need someone to be my sounding board. Up for it?"

Heck yeah, I'm up for it! Especially since that message was from someone I haven't mentioned here in AGES. Good old Delaroux! I honestly have no clue how much writing she's been doing over the past year or so since I stopped frequenting the Facebook group she started up for her original characters. It was a fun time and I loved both her and the other girls I met in that group, but they would be up at about 2am role-playing. I'd spend HOURS just going back through and reading everything they've posted while I was sleeping, like the old broad that I am.

I kept telling Delaroux that she needed to create a forum - much like X-Future - for her and the girls to role play on. I'd be able to read more at my leisure that way. Instead of scrolling on endlessly in the group set-up Facebook switched to a few years back. I still can't stand that. The old groups where everything was organized in threads was so much easier to navigate; especially when you aren't on the group 24/7.

Anyway, I'm off topic.

My point is that I'm so proud of all four of you!

Omni! I'm excited to hear what progress you've made with your world building. Perhaps we'll make a day to draw maps together.

AB666, I'm so proud that you've tried out the 5-minute writing challenge, that you've stuck with it, and that you have something to show for it. Doing better than me, haha! I can't wait to read the end result.

DA1326, I'm just amazingly excited that school let out - or is soon? - for you and that you finally have writing time again! I want to know everything Rose told you Friday night.

Delaroux, I still need to go back and read everything you sent me - probably my next task after posting this - but I'm elated that you're writing again! Your characters are always so intriguing to me. I can't wait to see what you have in store this time.