Time To Audit My Time

Happy Summer, everyone. Are you all melted to your couch too, or is that just me?

This week just kind of went by in a blur. I can still tell you two things though.
One: I did a fair amount of writing; only getting a "zero day" on the 5th. All that writing brought me up to 12,396 words, which is just shy of my quarter-way point. I'm also still shy of the 14,516 words I should have hit by yesterday's close, but all in all not a terrible start.

Look at all of those glorious smilies!

 I had actually spent a portion of that non-productive Thursday ironically driving about 40min in order to find this calendar. More on that later.

The second thing I could tell you about this blurry week is that not a single word I've written so far this month has gone towards "One and the Same."

Whoops.

The thing is... I STILL have to finish "Peeping Tomcat," and it doesn't look like that conclusion is happening any time soon. I made this story so involved that I can't tie everything up in a neat little bow like I thought I could.

Rewrites have been going slowly. I also had to finish the previous chapter. Thankfully, I was able to do that just before updating this blog last week, but that still meant 2+ days worth of writing was spent on that chapter instead of having it done on time.

And that created a slippery slope.

With everything else going on in my life right now, it is so great to have the push of "I NEED to finish this; I'm so close!" without the added stress of "OMG! I have HOW MANY hours left before it needs to publish!?"

I can take my time to make sure I do this right. My readers deserve that much.

At the same time, though, without a definitive publish date like I did have, I feel myself taking longer and longer and loooooonger to do anything productive. I was doing so well! Thirteen weeks of updates! It certainly was easier to just edit an existing chapter than it is to practically write a new one from scratch.

This is why I know I need to make sure to have a completed story before publishing even the first chapter. Otherwise my poor new readers will fall into the same waiting limbo my "Hey, Arnold!" readers suffered.

I did try to get the story done by Friday. This past Tuesday, after I posted both the previous chapter and blog update, I diligently wrote out rough outline notes so I knew I had all my ducks in a row before starting anything.

*WARNING* The below picture contains spoilers for the final chapter of PT

Please excuse the "I need to get this down
on paper STAT" hand scribblings.
And also the misspellings, I'm trash without
that red squiggly under my words. Q_Q

I even posted the above picture to Tumblr in hopes that doing so would hold me accountable enough to post on time. It didn't work, but not for lack of trying.

The strangest thing to me, however, is that while I appreciated the six likes about the notes, I am still curious as to why I also had one reblog. Why would that person think anyone else would care about me writing notes for my final chapter?

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

Meh? I appreciate the thought and the promotion. Don't know who it brought to my story, but I like the effort.

I also got a chuckle out of Cyhyr's reaction to my post.

Cyhyr: AHHHH my notes for chapters are NEVER this detailed! Go Girl! GET THAT STORY DONE!!! SHOW THOSE PLOT BUNNIES WHO’S BOSS!!!

Haha, thanks for the encouragement, Cy.

OH! And speaking of "brought to my story" apparently "A Plan Forms" did just that! The overall reception of this PT side story isn't staggering, but it's still decent for what it is.

FFN: 355 views, 12 faves, 12 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 150 views, 13 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 7 comments
DA: 5 views and 2 faves

Total Results: 510 views, 27 faves, 14 followers, and 9 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 3 likes

Reviews:
  1. Of Course I had to read this one too. I really enjoyed this short blip! (From cassy1994)
  2. so I read this without realizing its part of a bigger story. so now I will go read the main story. lol
  3. Nice job on this! It ties in very well to the original story, which is amazing!

Not bad for a little over a week. I also don't get the 14 followers. It's marked as a complete story, and I mention what main story it connects to. Still, I appreciate the love.

As for the rest of the reviews.... well.... three of them were from BFG, who will come up again later. They are incredibly lengthy reviews mostly fan theorizing. I think the reviews combined are as long as the story itself! So if you want to check them out, you can head straight to the reviews section here. The other three reviews are actually another fantheory debate between two readers. I HAVE FANTHEORY DEBATES IN MY REVIEWS!!!! And it's not debates and theorizing over the canonical show, it's about my story and how it will end! This is flippin' nuts! Well, okay, it's not so much a DEBATE as it is a second reader asking the first to clarify their theory. Still. NUTS!

Also, I want to go back and focus on that second review. It was by marauderluverz, and "go read the main story" she did! She went through and reviewed every. Single. Chapter!

1. omg! so I have no idea why I haven't read this fic before because that first chapter was amazing! now yo read the rest!
2. loved the second Chapter!
3. really loved chapter 3. excellent characterizations!
4. Yay for chapter 4! yay for awkward adrinette! lol
5. Yay! chapter 5 was awesome!
6. loved this chapter too! I can't wait for Adrien to figure out shes ladybug!
7. poor Adrien! seems like he nearly had a panic attack there. and now I'm gonna stay up half the night reading this fic. . .
8. another perfect chapter and why do I sense an akuma coming... lol
9. wow! that was a crazy intense akuma attack! I feel bad for Chat and poor ladybug is worried.
10. this is getting so sad! but i need to read more.
11. omg! he knows he knows!
12. awww! I loved your interpretation of the kwami relationships. now onto the next Chapter!
13. this was awesome! although I don't see how you could possibly wrap up such an amazing story with only 2 more chapters. let's see!
14. awwww! this was an amazing Chapter! I loved her video. poor chat but at least now he knows.

Whoo! What a ride! Sorry, marauderluverz for keeping you up all night, but I do appreciate the love! I opened my email Saturday morning and saw 15 review notifications from her - 14 for PT and the 1 for "A Plan Forms" - and I was dumbfounded. Add in the review from cassy, which also included this review for "Peeping Tomcat" itself: "This was really good. I look forward to the next one hopefully soon."

Finally, how can I forget Jowy's Pixie's weekly reviews?

Jowy's Pixie: I hope that you're feeling better now. I can relate to the seven re-writes and writers block a lot. But you really wouldn't think you had it reading this chapter because it was amazing. Awww Adrien. His insecurities really seem to be giving him a good beating lately. Ladybug's message to Chat Noir was so sweet and it made me smile so much when I was reading it. It's so nice that she wants all of Paris to dedicate a day to him. I kinda feel sometimes that Chat Noir doesn't get enough appreciation. So this day is well deserved in my opinion.
          I really hope that Chat Noir can get this mess sorted. Hopefully once all that's over with, it might make him feel a bit better about himself - especially once everything is off his chest. I'm still curious as to how Marinette/Ladybug is going to react to all of this. About Chat Noir spying on her and him accidentally finding out her identity. There's so many possible ways this story can conclude and it has me super excited to see which direction you're going to take it.
          Another awesome chapter as always. I'm always amazing at how well you always manage to capture emotion and inner turmoil and at how well you always keep them in character. You really are a super talented writer. I'll have to check out this one-shot of yours at some point. It should be interesting to see things from Marinette's perspective. Keep up the great work and I can't wait to see what happens next! Good luck!

I really do love that I have faithful readers who make sure to review every chapter and check in every week. I think that was the main reason PT didn't do as well as expected when chapter 14 officially went live. People have gotten accustomed to the Friday morning updates, and since I replaced an Author's Note with the actual chapter no notifications went out to everyone following my story.

Regardless, I appreciate that apparently all of my faithful followers, notification or no, checked in after 8:30am on Friday. There was nothing new for them to read, unless they missed chapter 14 officially posting, but still they came. Gaaah! Love it!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

I also hit a couple more milestones with the story. Ignoring the one review that was accidentally posted in two parts, and the random biblical spam, I'm at 70 reviews over on FFN. I've also hit 200 kudos over on AO3, which means I now officially get more love over there, as compared to the 113 faves I got on FFN. On the flipside though, I have 187 people following the story over on FFN, and only 34 on AO3. Soooo, I take the love where I get it.

Anyway, all the love in the world isn't going to mean anything if I can't finish this darn chapter! The main snafu for me this week was that I just could not get away from having to write another flipping akuma attack! I tried. I really did. These things take forever to think up. They take even longer to write; which is why the previous two had their own chapters dedicated to them.

Despite my best efforts though, I just couldn't avoid needing another akuma. The last chapter covered four days, and I couldn't justify Hawk Moth not sending out at least one akuma that whole time. Especially when one of his enemies was being celebrated.

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, inc

Another day was then spent on figuring out my akuma. I needed something simple that wouldn't warrant a full chapter like my other two did. Something like in the episode "Anti-bug" where Sabrina turning into Vanisher was used as a plot point instead of a full episode villain. My akuma needed to be like that. Something the duo could defeat easily and quickly so we could get back to the main plot.

I was also going to just vaguely mention that they fought an akuma or two, but Chat Noir and Ladybug really need a discussion after what happened with Terravenger. I couldn't breeze past it. I needed to SHOW the akuma.

I went to the drawing board and jotted down a bunch of notes again as I tried to build a simple and quick but still believable akuma supervillain.

And now we know why I don't draw....

It took a day away from my regularly scheduled writing, but I did what I had done with my other akumas: I wrote the story of them becoming akumatized so I better understood what their trigger was.

I know it wasn't the Friday update everyone was expecting, but I hoped it would appease the masses.

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

Not only did I promote the story posting on Tumblr, but it was small enough that I went ahead and posted the story there too.

It was just this little rinky-dink story I used to work out my main one, but it still got a little bit of love.

FFN: 90 views, 4 faves, 2 followers, and 1 review
AO3: 57 views, 2 kudos, and 1 comment
DA: 15 views and 1 fave

Total Results: 162 views, 6 faves, 2 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 1 like

Reviews:
  1. OMG YAHOOOOO YAY YAY YAY YAY
  2. Review from AO3 follower BFG was a bit lengthy; see below

BFG: A plot twist! I thought ladybug was just going to have Alya put up a video but getting it to over the top Chloe and ending like this is interesting. and a little ironic. this day is supposed to be for chat noir but it most likely is only this big because LADYBUG asked and people are big fans of ladybug and want to please her. I also like how ladybug may have sped it up accidentally and didn't think about how much work it would be. suits their age group and since mari usually does things above and beyond by herself by choice it seems she didn't think about other people doing that. Poor Enzo. and the Mayor accidentally causing this by thoughtlessness rather than outright meanness like Chloe is a nice touch

Like I said, I wasn't expecting much, but I felt my readers deserved SOMETHING for their patience, and I wrote it out anyway to try to better understand what I was doing with the concept. Once I was done I got to work on the actual story. And whooo boy!

Once more this week I was irritated that I had days where I wasn't sure what I did. So I decided, especially with Camp NaNo going on, that I had to go back to auditing my time. See where I've been wasting it.

Thus started the hunt for the elusive daily planner. You just can't find these things anymore. People use their phones, or they don't organize their days by hour, or both, I don't know. The local Walmart and odds and ends store didn't have one. They had weekly and monthly planners, but no daily. I vaguely recalled having to buy my previous one from a Staples or OfficeMax or Office Depot; some office supply store like that. So I looked them up online to see where the closest was. Sadly, the options were all about a 40min drive from me, at least. Sometimes I hate living in a rural town.

I drove to the only one of the options I had already been to, which meant I knew exactly where it was. I had hoped to find something closer. I didn't want to waste the time and gas to drive all the way out there and back for just a $20 planner, but it didn't look like I had a choice unless I wanted to wait for a delivery from Amazon or something.

So, on the 5th I sucked it up and did the drive. The whole day was a bit of a shambles that I won't get into because it doesn't have to do with my writing, but it was why I didn't write anything that day.

At least, after literally a 35min long hunt through the aisles to find a friggen calendar that didn't start in 2019 already, I finally got the planner. It's good until June 2019, so I need to remember to buy a replacement before then. Should probably write a note about it in my calendar....

Anyway, I've been trying to be diligent with my time auditing, and I think I've become at least mildly more productive since. I feel accountable. I don't want to write "putz around online" large enough to cover an hour or two in my planner. We'll see if that means week 2 of Camp will have a higher turnout, of both words and an actual chapter done.

I had to do a lot of redacting to hide names and
activities of a personal nature, but you get the idea.

It's not just my poor time management that has bogged down this last chapter. There is a LOT to unpack and tie up with a bow before I conclude my story. I want to make sure I do it right. Having never finished a major project like this before, I'm having a bit of a rough go with the "conclude things" concept.

The chapter so far has spilled onto a 10th page, and is at 4616 words. I'm probably only a third, maybe two-fifths, of the way through the ending I want to tell.

I'm probably going to have to chop this chapter up in two; increase PT one more time and make it a 16-chapter story.

HOW DID IT GET SO MASSIVE!?

I did manage to check off a couple of things that I wanted to accomplish. I concluded the "soup story line" and put in the aftermath of the video Ladybug had Alya post on the Ladyblog. I also wanted to show a contrast of Opening Story Adrien with his father versus Story Ending Adrien with Gabriel. Considering the relationship those two had at the beginning of the story was the main catalyst to the whole thing, I felt I needed to show that the dynamic has changed, even slightly.

I'm still tweaking that bit, but I think I'm close to getting it to where I want.

I'll then breeze through the next day's events, since they aren't crucial to the story, and get the gang to the Chat Noir Appreciation Day festivities. There the akuma will attack, and I think that's where I'll have to end it.

I'll come back for one last chapter, for reals this time, in order to show the akuma attack, the discussion Chat Noir and Ladybug desperately need to tell, Adrien's official decision to woo Marinette as Chat Noir before confessing anything - leading up to the events in "One and the Same" - and finally have Adrien pick up Marinette's portfolio to show his father in order to wrap up that subplot. I'll find a cutesy way of ending the story there with Adrien telling Plagg something to the effect that he no longer needs to spy on Marinette in her room. Something to reassure the readers that it was a week long slip-up, but he's never doing it again.

I may be done by Camp's end....

Hacker Boy Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

I'm good at this.

Probably doesn't help that I go off on writing side-tangents though. Along with writing that akuma side story, I also wrote up a Miraculous Ladybug essay I had been meaning to do for months now.

Before I even rejoined Tumblr I was finding different Miraculous Ladybug themed posts on it. One of the main reasons I decided to do the Tumblr thing again was because of how frequently I was on it anyway.

Well, after the episode "Glaciator" came out in January, I saw everyone going "poor Chat Noir"/"Poor Cat"/"Poor Adrien" and I was like, "yeah. Pretty much." Then I spent a great deal of time trying to find a post to see if anyone else noticed what I did about "Glaciator." In an earlier episode "Riposte" Marinette was crushed to find out that Adrien only thought of her as a "good friend," whereas in "Glaciator" Adrien was ecstatic that Ladybug thought of him as a friend.

This, plus all the time I've been in Adrien's head for PT, made me really think about the differences between how Adrien loves Ladybug vs how Marinette loves Adrien.

I saw a few posts on Tumblr asking why everyone seems to be sympathetic to Adrien when his feelings get hurt, but rarely does anyone show Marinette any pity. This made me think even more about the differences in how the two leads love each other.

Then, on Sunday, when I had over four hours to myself and was enjoying them on the front porch, when I should have been working on PT's last chapter, I found this image on Tumblr and went on a tangent instead.

As I went down this image and read each intersection, I realized "D'awww, I was right. Adrien IS truly in love with Ladybug." I also realized that I was right about Marinette as well... she's not in love, she's a young teenager obsessed with Adrien and mistaking it for love. No shame in that; I did the same thing with my elementary school and middle school crushes, and none of them were even famous. It's hard to know the difference between obsession and true love until you've experienced the later, or had the former pointed out to you.

Still, it solidified everything I had been thinking of since "Glaciator," and I was determined to write the essay I had been sitting on for six months.

You can find it, along with the above image, on Tumblr here. Since the essay is attached to an already existing Tumblr post, I have no clue if anyone will pay any attention to it.

I do know that it got two likes though. That's a start.

Anyway, writing the essay without first outlining it, doing everything on the fly, which also meant quick research to make sure I was quoting correctly, took me about an hour or two to write. I then caught up on Tumblr again, and stumbled onto a post comparing Felix Chat Noir to Yuri Plisetsky from "Yuri!!! on Ice." For those who don't know, in the original concept of "Miraculous Ladybug" the series was supposed to be an anime, and Chat Noir's civilian form was called Felix. He was the typical anime rich kid who is rude and snobby, but secretly and desperately wants friends. He was considered too cliche and eventually reworked into Adrien.

Anyway, it wasn't just his personality and character arc that was too cliche. Like I mentioned, I found a Tumblr post comparing Felix to Yuri, and yes, they do have a passing resemblance. I'm sure if I ever got around to watching the anime I'd notice personality similarities as well that would make them more similar.

On the other hand, about a month ago, while Omnibladestrike was over showing us the anime "Medaka Box" I noticed another anime character had an even more striking resemblance to Felix in his Chat Noir persona. One of the main supporting characters: Kouki Akune.

I mean, look at this craziness!

Naturally, because I don't trust my memory anymore, I'm afraid I can't re-find things on Tumblr, and I hate the "schedule for later" and queue mechanics of Tumblr, I had to use the Felix/Yuri comparison post as a springboard for my own comparison post. And I had to do it RIGHT THEN.

Thing is, I didn't have any pictures of either character. So I spent time scoring the internet for anything that might be a good comparison shot. I then went nearly frame by frame through the Ladybug PV to find the above shots of Felix Chat Noir. I then spent more time editing the photos to be side-by-sides. By the time I was done and posted my response it was nearly another hour later.

My entire uninterrupted evening alone. Gone. Used up for tedious and unneeded things instead of working on my story. I even told Omni that I was going to be focused on my chapter, so we'll have to raincheck our weekly anime binge.

Part of me feels like a loser. Another part of me is glad the two things I've been really pondering about for weeks/months now are both out of my head. I can move on.

Side note, the original poster of the Felix vs Yuri comment came back to say "Wow, they really do look alike!! :O" So I may have converted at least one person.

Which is all grand and whatnot, but I need to focus.

*cracks knuckles*

Time to get at least this first half of a two-part conclusion done already! No more delays! No more distractions! No more procrastination!

Feeling the Love

Being a new member of Tumblr means I pretty much can't scroll down my dash without getting a reminder that June is Pride Month!

So, if this applies to you, then you be proud of who you are! If you broke firmly out of the closet, be loud and don't back down. There is nothing wrong with you.

If you are still closeted, maybe use this month to find the support you need to bust out and show the world who you really are. You don't need the stress of hiding and always wondering if someone else will out you. Come out on your terms.

Finally, if you're closeted, and prefer to stay that way, know that you're not weak, nor are you fighting against progress for equal rights. If anything, not being "out, proud, and loud" is MORE equal than anyone else. If I don't have to go around posting everywhere and telling everyone "I'm a cis-female who likes males" then why do you have to go around quantifying yourself? So, just chill in that closet if it makes you feel better. You can still be proud in there.

Also...

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

I was in a bit of a funk over the weekend, which meant I pretty much read the entire time, instead of writing. Thankfully, a couple of days of moping, reading, snuggling the hubby, and sleeping - coupled with some really awesome reviews on "Peeping Tomcat" - helped perk me up. Although, it did leave me a bit behind on my editing.

Not that it really matters. First of all, I have the chapter at about 90% where I want it to be anyway. Secondly, apparently I'm a lazy bum that waits until the last second regardless.

Yeah, the latest chapter of PT was very much like the akuma attack in the previous one: working on the prep-work all week, but didn't start actually WRITING until Thursday. I even purposely neglected writing Wednesday by spending the whole evening playing Mario Odyssey with Hubby. We hadn't played a video game in a while; we needed a date night.

Waiting until Thursday - partially because I lost track of what day of the week I was on - meant another chapter where I wrote until I fell asleep at my laptop, woke up to go to bed, and then got up at like 6am Friday morning to get the finishing touches done. At least this week I had Friday off, so I could crash again once the story was up.

The major snafu this time was that Hubby needed a ride into work, and I needed to get some maintenance done on my car. My mechanic is basically in the same shopping plaza as Hubby's work, so I figured I'd drop him off, then the car.

Thing is, Hubby needed to be at work by 8am, and I really needed that extra half-hour until my normal 8:30am updating time in order to finish last-minute edits. I figured I could take my laptop with me, drop Hubby off, go into the store to use their wifi to finish updates and publish, and then drop the car off.

Which would have worked perfectly, and mostly did, if it weren't for the fact that the wifi randomly had Archive Of Our Own blocked. I could get onto FanFiction and DeviantArt easily enough to update the story there, but AO3 was just straight up blocked for some strange reason.

So I updated on FFN and DA before dropping off the car. I'd have to update on AO3 once I got home.

Thing is, the mechanic has a bit of a pathetic waiting area, no free wifi to connect to, and tends to get overwhelmed with the number of cars he has to get through, so he never knows how long anything is going to take.

In truth? He never touched my car on Friday. I had to grab it to do Friday evening runs - including going to a D&D session - and then drop it back off so he would have it first thing Saturday morning. Thankfully, Hubby was off Saturday, and I can walk to work.

The other issue was in regards to where the mechanic is in relation to my house. While Omnibladestrike agreed to follow us to the mechanic from our D&D session, so he could then bring us home after we dropped the car off, I didn't have anyone during the day who could follow me around.

So, after dropping the car off in the morning, I walked the mile home. Meaning it was a little after 9am before I had internet access again and could post the latest chapter of PT on AO3. And then I had to walk a mile back Friday evening to pick up my car for my evening errand runs.

I then had to walk back to the mechanic one last time on Saturday, while firmly in my funk, in order to pick the car up after work. FUN!

At least I got some exercise in, right? Gave me time to ponder the rest of the story and what I need to do to finish it up before getting to work on the sequel. Something I'll talk about more in a minute, but first, how about I share the latest chapter of "Peeping Tomcat" with you guys?

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

My original draft of the story had the latest chapter as the closing portion of the akuma attack chapter. However, Terravenger was running a bit long, and where I stopped just seemed fitting.

I was wondering if I should then inflate this 10th chapter to the normal 3000-word minimum the rest of my story has had thus far, but it didn't feel right. I didn't want to add fluff just for the sake of word counts. I mean, I re-hit my NaNo goal as it is. This chapter didn't even have 2000 words, and I am now up to 50,696 words overall. With five more chapters to go until I'm done. At LEAST five more; I might have to expand again depending on how the edits go.

So, to not add words just for the sake of adding words, I left this "baby" chapter. I had hoped those who had waited a week for an update and were used to a good 20-minute read would be alright with the short update and another week-long wait.

Based on the 24-hr stats, I did pretty decently with the "baby" chapter.

FFN: 617 views, 1 follower, and 3 reviews
AO3: 203 views, 7 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 1 new review
DA: 18 views

Total Results: 838 views, 7 faves, 3 followers, and 4 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 1 like....

Reviews:
  1. "Non-existent crush my left foot."
  2. "Aw he gave her a hug... but poor Adrian! Also if he only knew how much Marinette actually watched him..." (another Cassy1994 comment)
  3. "I love this fic so much right now! I tore thru all 10 chapters in about a day. ❤️❤️❤️ Can’t wait to see what happens next!"
  4. See below for Jowy's review

Before getting to Jowy's review, I'd like to note that the one above with the hearts in it was on AO3, where I posted late, and that comment was posted at about 4:30 that same day. So "in about a day" was actually a span of 7-some hours, give or take, depending on when they found my story and/or if "about" a day meant they found it before the 1st and only just finished it at 4:30 on Friday.

Anyway, Jowy's review was as lovely as ever:

Jowy's Pixie: Awwww, poor Adrien. I just wanted to leap into the story and give him a huge hug. His mind is playing tricks on him, it wasn't his fault that he didn't make it to the akuma as things started heating up, but I can imagine as a superhero, he would feel responsible for not 'being there on time' and all that jazz. It must be extremely difficult for him. I can understand why he might feel inadequate compared to Ladybug and feel like he isn't needed and just gets in way, but it's still completely untrue. I just hope that he realises his worth soon.
          It was a really touching moment when Ladybug dashed over to comfort him. They were so in character for that entire scene and it was amazing to read. Also, it was quite funny to read Chat Noir noticing the similarities between Ladybug and Marinette, especially with the freckles. I was screaming at him, "come on, Chat, you're smart, work it out!" I just hope Ladybug can help snap Chat Noir out of this feeling of inadequacy if he can't snap out of it by himself.
          This chapter was awesome to read and I enjoyed every word. I can't believe there's only five chapters left now; that makes me sad. But still, I look forward to seeing how this story is going to end. I'm so excited for your next update! Keep up the great work!

Jowy's really knows how to motivate a gal. The encouragement didn't end there. On Sunday I received two more reviews, but let's see how the week looks thus far.

FFN: 1068 views, 2 faves, 6 followers, and 5 reviews
AO3: 279 views, 11 kudos, 3 bookmarks, and 2 reviews
DA: 21 views and one new fave

Total Results: 1368 views, 14 faves, 9 followers, and 7 reviews

Tumblr Notes: Still only that 1 like...

FFN reviews:
  1. "uffff I feel so anguished while reading this, great fic, really good"
  2. "Ohhhh so much pain!"

  - See below for the longer AO3 review

I have to say that the AO3 review was another one of those gushy comments that makes my heart swell up!

FlamboyantTurtledove: Okay wow...just wow...
          I AM COMPLETELY WITHOUT A DOUBT IN LOVE WITH THIS FIC AAAHHHHH
          No but seriously I can't stress how much I love it so far! Everything is just as it is on the show!! I love getting to listen in on Adrien’s inner thoughts. It’s rare that we get to see things from his perspective but you captured his personality perfectly! Alya once again playing match maker with Nino supporting her and her antics was executed flawlessly and omg Marinette’s rambling ugh I love her rambling in this so much it’s like I’m watching the actual show! Lastly I loved the Akuma scene it was so well done! their banter was absolutely spot on (no pun intended). I can’t wait to see where this goes! Have a great day!

They commented on the 6th chapter, so I'm not sure if they finished reading all 10, but still... EEEEEEEEEEE

Maki Natsuo from Love Lab
by Ruri Miyahara

Because I'm not already fired up enough to FINALLY get to the chapter that started it all. Yup! That's right. That "writing practice" I did during last year's Writers' Huddle summer writing challenge? The one that became the teaser chapter that I put up last fall? Yeah. FINALLY getting to posting that chapter this Friday!

I have some tweaking to do still now that I've thrown way more existential crisis and inner turmoil at Adrien. Namely, I realized that I solved the "do I chose Marinette or stick with Ladybug" crisis in my current draft, but I didn't touch:
 - Adrien's sense of inadequacy as Chat Noir
 - Adrien hiding from Marinette that he's been spying on her
 - Adrien's offer to show Marinette's portfolio to his father

Soooo I should probably work on tying those lose ends up too.... Not all in the next chapter, obviously, but I need to set it up for the following chapters. It will be tricky to work them in somehow, but all of my chapters from here on out are struggling to hit my average 3000 word count anyway, so I have room to grow.

Then again, I've been getting probably the most love on this "baby" chapter, so maybe I DO write too-long chapters.

Do readers like quick 2000-words-or-fewer chapters that they can breeze through? Do they prefer nice, larger 4000-word chapters after waiting a week, so it feels "worth" the wait? Does the word count not matter and everyone is just in love with the low-point anguish?

It really doesn't matter what the answers are, because I'm going to write how the story needs me to write, but it would be interesting to know.

Also, fun side note, my average weekly review count is about four or five, with two of them being my repeat readers cassy1994 and Jowy's Pixie. The only time I surpassed five reviews for the week was when I had nine that first week. I'm already up to seven reviews for the week. We'll see how much more love I get between now and the next chapter going up on Friday.

OH! Speaking of love. The fanfic that Omni's been working on to help him rework his writing muscles is up. We finished the edits on Sunday, so if you see any typos you can blame me as his beta-reader....

It's within the Touhou Project fandom, but I was intrigued even without knowing much about the games. Go give the man some love.

Birth of an Avatar

Now, I don't know if he's going to read that at group tonight, but I know for certain that I have no clue what I'm going to read. My chapters are super long, and so I take up so much time if I read off my chapters. Besides, the chapters I'd read to keep the group up-to-date have all been published already, so their comments would be a bit moot. I have already read the upcoming chapter to them before posting it back in September, so even though I've edited it, have I done so enough to bother re-reading? Especially since it was apparently so impactful the first time that one of the members gets confused that everything else I've read since then have been precursors to that chapter. She just keeps focusing on what I read in September.

So... win?

Also, no one seems all that invested in hearing fanfiction if they aren't in the fandom. As evidenced by one of our newest members reading off his Star Trek fanfiction. He got pretty much the same reaction as me: "um... yup.... that was good..."

I tried branching out a bit by reading off "Stranger in a White Dress" last time, but everyone picked up pretty quickly that it was a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic even though a) I didn't tell them it was, and b) neither Ladybug nor Cat Noir showed up anywhere in the story. In fact, the story takes place years before either are born.

So, do I just say "screw it" and read off the two other shorts I wrote for Tumblr? Or maybe the one writing practice I did during a writing date with Omni about a month ago?

Oh, and speaking of my other Tumblr exclusive shorts, pretty much since I've published it, "Kisses" has been my number one liked/commented on/reblogged post.

That is, until a couple of days ago.

Disney Channel created an original movie a few months back called "Z-O-M-B-I-E-S." It's a cute movie where, through technology I won't get into here, zombies are capable of living like normal humans, and so they are doing a trial integration run: the neighborhood zombie teens going to the human high school. Zed the zombie football player and Addison the human cheerleader have a sort of star-crossed love while zombies struggle to become accepted. Mixed within all this chaos is the football coach, who is probably my favorite character in the whole movie.

The lines this guy has are all gold, and the actor's delivery is beautiful. The whole thing just reeks with Millennial Life Struggles, and it is beautiful. Here's just a taste in probably the best scene this man has:

I loved this guy's lines so much I pretty much transcribed all of them into a Tumblr post. It has taken on a life of its own since then. The DCOM fanbase is rabid and spreads anything within the fandom just about as quickly as a zombie outbreak. So not only are people liking and sharing my post off my Tumblr, but they are reblogging off of someone else's reblog of someone else's reblog of my post. It's up to 48 notes - a combination of likes, reblogs, and comments - since I posted on May 26th. Comparatively, I posted "Kisses" on May 17th, and it also has 48 notes.

I guess I have to up my game and come out with a new exclusive short to dethrown my ZOMBIES post. I'll add it to the list of Writing To-Dos.

Speaking of... I signed up for July's Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm going to use it to really lock down the sequel to "Peeping Tomcat" so it could be ready for release by end of August/beginning of September.

In truth, I really wanted to have a seamless flow from PT to OatS. Posting the conclusion of "Peeping Tomcat" on July 6th, and then the first chapter of "One and the Same" on July 13th. Huh, another Friday the 13th....

Anyway...

I haven't even started writing the sequel though. Getting PT ready to publish has taken more time and effort than I originally thought. Besides, having six months anticipation since I posted the teaser for PT seemed to have really gotten hype up, so maybe having to wait a couple of months for the sequel will do the story good. Build up anticipation.

Point being, I'm going to try to use Camp NaNo to really get myself teed up for that sequel. July is probably more chaotic than November though. Between Independence Day, summer get-togethers, my birthday, and my nephew's birthday, I'm going to be on socializing overload in July. Especially since a cousin who lives on the other side of the country, and I've literally only seen about 3x my whole life, is coming out to visit his East Coast family. So my week vacation will pretty much consist of me driving to Pennsylvania, spending time with the cuz and his fam, celebrating my birthday with my mom and sister, whom I haven't seen in person since January, visiting my PA bestie and my godson, both of whom I haven't seen in close to a year, driving home, visiting our nephew for his birthday, and doing any socializing my friends here at home want to do for my birthday. Not to mention that two of my friends have their wedding anniversary at the end of the month, and another two of my friends have their daughter's birthday, although I don't know how involved in those celebrations I'll be....

There will be chaos, but I'm going to try to use Camp as a reason to hide in the corner and write at least for an hour or two each day.

Ending lines of the editing project Bright Wolf.
A lot of production students have to go through
editing this trash. XD

Well, speaking of writing chaos, I need to get to work on finishing up this week's chapter, as well as figure out what to read at group tonight. We were also asked to bring in our favorite writing quote, and I think I'm going with this one:

Queen of Angst Returns

Happy belated Memorial Day if you are American.... which seems weird to say... "Happy" Memorial Day, when the point is to reflect upon and remember military members who have died in service....

Um... well.... either way....

The week has been a bit chaotic thanks to Memorial Day. Sadly, it has sort of become synonymous with "Great Sales and/or Barbecue Weekend." So we were SLAMMED at work. Leaving me with roughly... 45min all week to write.

Although, who else has time to write during their normal 9-to-5? So I guess I shouldn't be grumbling. Still, it left me with a lot fewer hours to work with than I was hoping for, and I wasn't exactly using them well.

I know I already mentioned this last week, but I wanted to introduce the next akuma in chapter 8 of "Peeping Tomcat." So I spent a lot of last week working on him. I mean, A LOT of time....

As I also mentioned, I was then trying to use what I came up with to write a "behind the scenes" short, much like what I did for Mimicker to help me sort things out. Problem being that I was spending too much time writing that, and not enough writing the next chapter of "Peeping Tomcat."

Normally, slacking off isn't that bad. I mean, it's still bad. It still takes me a lot of time to edit each chapter, but that's all I'm doing: editing. I had to actually WRITE this chapter this time, as well as have time to edit it so it's at the same level as the other chapters. It wouldn't be fair to my readers if they got a sub-par chapter because I slacked off.

I had also unofficially started posting shorts on my Tumblr every three days, and Wednesday would be the next day to post something. Things were getting crazy.

So I ended up giving up the shorts. Yes, it was great seeing the love of my stories getting likes and reblogs on Tumblr, but I had a priority: my main story. What was the point of getting likes, reblogs, traffic, any of that stuff, if I had no story to promote? I had to focus on that.

I spent a lot of Wednesday getting the nuts and bolts of the story sorted out, and then Thursday trying to finish it. I didn't do too well, because I was also exhausted from work, and we kept having impromptu guests. I love guests. I love people. I'm an extrovert. But even I got to a point where I want to say "Gaaah! Get out of my house! I need to write!"

In fact, I think I DID say that at one point. Thankfully, Hubby simply went on a Pokemon Go walk, so it all worked out. There are multiple ways to support the artist in your life, peeps.

Anyway, on Thursday I stayed up until about 1am before my eyes fogged over. That was my white flag. I had to go to sleep, and since I couldn't really see my computer screen anyway, it seemed as good a time as any.

Getting back up around 6am, I rushed through the last few hours of writing, editing, and posting my latest chapter. All while also taking Hubby into work before having to get ready for work myself.

I was exhausted, but I had done it. I wasn't even late! My 8:30am chapter update schedule stayed in tact. Although, my promoting of it didn't. I just ran out of time to do my normal promotional circuit - my personal FB page, the fanfic FB group, Twitter, and now Tumblr - and still get to work on time. So I had to wait until my lunch break at 1:15pm to promote my story.

Speaking of, have you had a chance to read the latest chapter yet? If not, don't forget that there are three convenient sites you can read it on.

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

Despite the struggles, I think I did fairly alright for myself.

FFN: 672 views, 1 faves, 2 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 196 views and 5 kudos
DA: 10 views

Total Results: 878 views, 6 faves, 2 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 2 likes for my promotional post

The comments:
  1. Man this was an epic fight scene in my head! :o I can see Chat just leaping onto Marinette's balcony later on that day since he is so distraught and to check on her, while she tries to find out what's wrong with him.
So glad you updated btw ~

  2. So much angst!

I'm actually pretty impressed that I received the amount of views I did within the first 24hrs. Mainly because of that delay in promoting. That may have skewed the stats a bit, and I'll probably wonder for a while still what my stats would have looked like if I got to promoting on time. Oh well...

Those comments made the struggle worth it. I mean... "epic fight"? Me? I wrote a fight scene that someone thought was "epic"? Also, that "so glad you updated" made me smile.

I'm glad too, reader.

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

That second comment also made me laugh. I mean, I AM the Queen of Angst. Haha. I'm hoping the angst was at least appreciated. I'm assuming so based on the simple-sentence review. Even if it wasn't, I'm going to pretend.


So, someone in the fanfiction FB group asked if she should expect more or fewer views this weekend. On the one hand, most Americans had a three-day weekend, which meant more free-time to do things like read fanfiction. On the other hand, Americans could be slammed at work - like I was - or be otherwise busy with things such as family trips and/or barbecues to fill that three-day weekend.

Another member responded that most people have other things they do on the weekend to take advantage of having days off, and so views are always slow over those few days. Said member also stated that was why he never posted over a weekend. Most views come in on weekdays.

I always saw the opposite. Maybe it's because my story gets buried by other new stories and updates by Monday, but my view count seems to drop to a crawl after the weekend. The stats thus far for the week, post the initial 24hrs, seems to follow that trend:

FFN: 1096 views, 4 faves, 8 followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 295 views and 13 kudos
DA: 12 views and 1 fave

Total Results: 1403 views, 18 faves, 8 followers, and 4 reviews

Tumblr Notes: I got a third like....

One of the two new comments (see below for Jowy's):
  1. The poor kitty needs to talk to his lady"s" quick before he gets injured.
     (Another lovely comment from cassy1994)

In other words, here are the stats from 8:30am Saturday until now:

FFN: 424 views, 3 faves, 6 followers, and 2 new reviews
AO3: 99 views and 8 kudos
DA: 2 views and the new fave

Total Results: 525 views, 12 faves, 6 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 1 new like

According to my email notifications from FFN, 106 of those views, 2 of those follows, 1 of those faves, and cassy's review, were all from yesterday and earlier today. The rest were from the weekend. While I can't track the views on AO3 the same way I can on FFN, I can at least say that half of those new kudos came from either yesterday or this morning. I have no way of tracking DA without physically doing so myself.

So.... like I said.... my stories peter off once the weekend ends. I don't know if it's because new stories flood the sites on Monday, and mine gets buried, or if different fandoms have different reading trends, or if that one fanfic group member just has no clue what he's talking about. But I think I have enough proof to keep up my Friday updates, even once I'm done with "Peeping Tomcat."

Anway, going back to touch upon Jowy's Pixie's review. I'm beginning to love seeing the names cassy1994 and Jowy's Pixie in my email notifications.

Jowy's Pixie: Wow, up until 8:30 in the morning? I hope you're okay! Please get some sleep and don't worry about us! o_O
         Also, CALLED IT! I knew he'd probably end up being akumatized! I totally get what you mean about trying to think of akumas though. It's such hard work and I have no idea how Astruc and his team manage to do it either. I'm always tearing my hair out trying to think of something. But you nailed it pretty well, the motivations were very believable and understandable with a decent build up.
         Poor Chat Noir throughout that entire battle, so distracted by thoughts of Marinette. Oh dear oh dear, the poor boy really is whipped and he has no idea. I just want to leap into this story and give him a good shake, he's so clueless. I felt so sorry for him at the end of the chapter, thinking he was nothing more but a sidekick and didn't deserve to be by Ladybug's side. I have a feeling he might turn to Marinette for comfort over that. I just hope that Ladybug/Marinette can reassure him that that's not the case at all.
         Once again, this chapter was a very enjoyable read. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter to see what happens. As always, this was very well written and I really love the detail that you go into, describing the world around them and the thoughts and emotions that Chat/Adrien is experiencing. Keep up the fantastic work!

I guess in my sleepy daze Friday morning I didn't express myself properly. I did reassure Jowy's that I didn't pull an all-nighter. While it wasn't top-notch self-care, since it was barely 5hrs of sleep, I do make sure to not push myself too much. Besides, once in a blue moon should be fine, right?

I did appreciate the sentiment of "don't worry about us! o_O" though. With all the rabid fans out there always whining "when are you going to update?" it is nice to know that there are still decent fans out there as well, who know you need to focus on you first and this hobby second.

And of COURSE I do keep this hobby second.... totally.... absolutely....

Koko Facebook sticker
by Hanasake Pictures Inc

Which is why I also went back and finished that side-story about Michel's transformation into Terravenger.

"I am Terravenger"

On FanFiction         On Archive Of Our Own           On DeviantArt

I wanted to have this up on Friday as well as a sort of "bonus chapter" but I couldn't get far enough into it to have it ready to publish. I tried again Saturday, and got a good chunk done, but I also didn't have much spare time. Sunday I had to drop Hubby off at work super early in the morning, so I had about four hours to myself.

So THAT was when I got the story nearly done. I was about three paragraphs away from finishing when I realized that I had to be at work in about 20min, and I still hadn't gotten dressed or fixed my hair!

Yup. TOOOOOOTALLY a hobby that doesn't take priority in my life. I have my priorities straight....

When I got home from work I was so hangry and exhausted I just gobbled down dinner and passed out while Hubby and Omnibladestrike went on a Pokemon Go raid. When the guys got back we hung out, and Omni talked about how he expanded a bit on his fanfic. That was the extent of our "writing date" though since I was still dazed.

It wasn't until after he left at about 10pm that I went back to write the closing paragraphs of "I am Terravenger" and edited it.

It went live right around midnight, and then I crashed after promoting it.

Not even 24hrs later, I already got a comment on both my FFN and AO3 postings. They both made me chuckle. Warning, they both contain a spoiler.

On FFN: "Of course that's what happened. Dammit, Roger."

On AO3: "I'd been wondering just what had caused Michel to akumatise (even though it was obvious he would). Wasn't expecting it to be Roger's hair-trigger fine-writing fingers, though. I guess he HAS been building up a tally in Season 2, though..."

Know what I love the most about that AO3 review? The fact that the person had "been wondering" about Michel's akumatizing. That means Draxynnic is a reader of "Peeping Tomcat." Yay. Also, they posted at 12:38am on Monday morning... which means they pretty much saw, read, and commented on the story right after I posted it. Double cool.

Hacker Boy Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

Anyway, add "I am Terravenger" to the three shorts I posted up on Tumblr, and I think I hit my goal of writing outside my main WIPs each month.

OH! And I did write a fifteen-minute practice piece during one of my "writing dates" with Omni a couple of weeks back. I never did go back to edit and publish that. I'll have to see if I can find time...

Speaking of, I ran out of time last week, so I didn't get to let you guys know this. While out watching the second Deadpool movie, Hubby found Pop Vinyls of me and Ronoxym. So naturally I had to buy them.

Looks just like us. 😉

Another thing I didn't have a chance to talk about - which semi relates to Ron since we went to watch "Ready Player One" together with our spouses - is how I'm doing with my reading challenge.

Let's see, shall we?

Sadly, I have to update this list. I'm so used to Riordan writing a five-part series I didn't even notice that he wasn't going to continue with Magnus Chase. Makes sense, it ended nicely. I guess I just wasn't ready to let go, considering I was liking that series more than the Apollo one. It's probably my love of snarky first-person protagonists....

Anyway, seems Magnus Chase was only a three-part series, much like the Kane Chronicles. However, no longer needing to tag-team stories but having mastered the art of releasing a "spring" and "fall" book, I'll have the fourth story in the Apollo series in... October, probably, based on past release patterns.

As far as how I've been doing with the books I actually have on this list? Well, I'm almost half-way through "The Burning Maze." I FEEL like I'm behind since "Ready Player One" took about six weeks or so to re-read, but thankfully I was already ahead. As long as I finish "The Burning Maze" before the end of June I'm still good.

Speaking of taking over a month to re-read "Ready Player One," the reason was because I was going at it with a very critical eye. I started off just seeing what was different between the movie and novel, but it devolved into something more as I really paid attention to the actual structure of the story.

Let's start with the movie adaptation, though, because ho-lee-smokes was a lot changed for the movie.

I mean, I knew it would be changed slightly, but with Ernest Cline writing both the novel and the screenplay, I was hoping for a much more faithful adaptation. Even when I was watching the movie I thought "wow... this... is different." Ron and I even had a playful but heated debate about it.

I have to say though, much like with "Coraline," I think I prefer the movie version. True, there are things that were better in the book... um.... mostly the character development of all the side characters. Pretty much none of that made it to the movie, and that sucks majorly.

On the flipside, the movie gave Art3mis more involvement and badassery? She basically took the reins for some of Wade's storyline; spreading it out and sharing the wealth a bit. Same with Wade's computer/programming genius shifting to Aech in order to fill out that character a bit more. Even out the value and necessity of the members of the High Five instead of skewing everything towards Wade.

Which brings me to why I think I preferred the movie, while I still love the novel.

On the first read, there were glaring flaws, mostly dealing with time continuity. Anyone who read my blog two years ago might remember me raging about it. I also talked about some plot and character missed opportunities I wished Cline had taken. All-in-all, though, I thought the novel deserved an 8.5 out of 10.

Upon the second read, however, especially with the notes I was taking....

God, I'm such a nerd....

...well... I think I'm giving RPO a 7.5 out of 10 now. It just became so obvious that this was his first novel. The story is still exciting. I still love it. The 80s nerd culture is fantastic. I still laughed. It was still a page-turner. I will probably re-read this book a few more times. So don't get me wrong on any of that. I still highly recommend it, and it's still a great romp.

All that said, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in the novel's storytelling techniques, especially now that I saw more of the potential showcased in the movie. It was like Cline went through the screenplay of his novel and realized "shoot! I need to rework this." In other words? The novel was a great first draft, but there needed to be a lot of reworking to get a truly excellent story, and all that improving ended up changing a LOT of the plot.

Yes, there is a heart-wrenching bit that was ignored by the movie, and some social commentary as well. The book will always be better than the movie because of that. Same with side-character development, as I already said. The thing the movie does better though, is that WADE gets development. HE has real trials.

Wade in the book? Well, he basically has the classic case of character plot armor. He's the one telling the story, so you KNOW nothing happens to him, but other stories - such as the Percy Jackson or Magnus Chase stories - have the same first-person flaw, and yet you still worry about their safety. You still wonder HOW they will get out of the problem.

Wade, though? Any sort of danger he's in is written in a sentence or two before moving on:

As my ship blasted its way skyward, I began to take heavy fire from several directions. But I was lucky. My ship was fast, and my shields were top-of-the-line, so they managed to hold up long enough for me to reach orbit. But they failed a few seconds later, and the Vonnegut's hull suffered an alarming amount of damage in the handful of seconds it took me to make the jump to light speed.

It was a close call. The bastards almost got me.
-pg 232

Did they, Wade? Did they?

I bet you didn't feel worried at all for him, did you? You didn't have the TIME to. He got away too quickly, and any danger he was in was summed up in a sentence or two. Plus, you'd be surprised how many times the phrase "I was lucky" or some variation of it is used throughout this story. This kid should have been playing the lottery while searching for Halliday's Easter Egg. He may not have needed to be a gunter after all, with the luck he has. Plus, did Wade really DO anything to get out of danger, or prevent himself from being injured? I mean, aside from throwing a lot of money into precautionary items?

The book was basically "look how awesome this kid is, but he's going to be totes low-key about it. #humblebrag" with a plot of "oh look! A puzzle to figure out!" There's a little bit of a race element as well, but the villain gets the lead with fourteen chapters left to go, and the "end game" takes up the entire third act - about 11 chapters - and roughly a week within the confines of the story.

AGAIN, "READY PLAYER ONE" IS A HIGHLY ENJOYABLE BOOK. PLEASE DO NOT LET ME CONVINCE YOU OTHERWISE. GO READ IT. TRUST ME.

But it is still obvious it is the freshman work of an author. Same goes for my re-reading of the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. It's a good read, but once you take a more critical eye to it, the flaws are pretty obvious.

To be fair, though. They are still published, professional authors. Whereas I am not. Also, Paolini wrote Eragon while he was still in high school soooooooo.....

And my characters kind of have "plot armor" as well. I just can't seem to ever injure them. The best I have is the angst.... which is probably why I am the queen.

My characters won't so much as break a nail, but they'll get so twisted up in a social/romantic web that - hopefully - the reader is still concerned and wonders how the protagonist is going to get out of the mess.

Speaking of, I think it's time for me to put Adrien through a deeper level of existential crisis. Catch you all next week.