Showing posts with label Daily Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Challenge. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

A Story A Day...

Sorry, guys, I had a bit of a list of errands I had to run before noon today, so I didn't get started on actually writing this post until 11:45ish.

I was going to pre-write my post, but, as usual, that plan fell through; mostly because of how crazy this week has been. Now, obviously, there was the writing frenzy. However, even with that and work - of which I had no days off between last Tuesday and now - a lot of the chaos was actually centered around socializing.

Darn me and my extroverted nature!
Generated by Bitmoji
cropped by me
Mostly, I was visited by Wolfhearted just about daily. He stopped by to go for walks with me, to watch Miraculous Ladybug with me, to get Hubby and me to watch Carnival Row while we still have Amazon Prime, and to work on a D&D character.

See, one of Hubby's friends had his birthday this weekend...
...so he was off with his family instead of swinging by for Anime Saturday. Wolfhearted wanted to pop in to watch ML since a new episode dropped on the 12th. So, we asked Omnibladestrike how he'd feel about switching up Anime Day for a D&D one-off session since Wolf would be hanging out with us anyway, and that way our other friend wouldn't fall behind. Omni was happy to give it a go.

Basically, for a one-off, you quickly make characters - Omni and I based ours off of something randomly generated on Who The F*** Is My #DND Character? - and the DM runs a session that is supposed to conclude that day. Either the quest is simple enough to be done in one gaming session, and there really isn't a lead-in to further adventuring, or the aim of the game is to survive as long as you can while the DM progressively tries to kill your character off.

Then there are times where one-offs are used to test the waters, but can lead to further sessions. I personally think that's what happened with Oxventure. It was a three-part story where it was open-ended ENOUGH that they could continue with the characters they created, but there also wasn't much of a lead-in to continued adventures. If they didn't have fun, and/or if the session didn't prove popular enough with their audience, I'm sure the Oxventure series wouldn't have continued on. Which is why I'm so glad it did continue.

Hubby's quest, on the other hand, is in a sort of limbo-state right now. Technically it's not a "one-off" anymore since we didn't actually complete his quest. Between dinner and setting up our characters, or even getting off the beach our characters washed up on, we didn't get to the actual dungeon portion of his quest until 11pm-ish? We called it a night around 1am, but we only cleared out a small portion of the dungeon. So, we CAN pick up where we left off if we wanted to. Also, if we either all die in this dungeon, or we successfully complete the quest, but never continue with those same characters, it is still sorta a one-off.

Wolf seems to really like his character and our party as a whole - despite his character getting exasperated with the shenanigans of the rest of the party - and I'm having fun with my character, so we may indeed turn this "one-off" into a full-on campaign. We may even do it Oxventure style; no real overall goal aside from generic adventuring, and do sessions sporadically whenever we all have time to do so. However, with only three of us and Hubby to worry about, it shouldn't be TOO hard to try to come up with session dates. It definitely gets more complicated to schedule everyone when the party increases in size.

Also, Hubby randomly generated his quest and the dungeon via the site donjon. If he keeps doing stuff like that, then he doesn't even need to really spend too much time to come up with a campaign-long story. Each quest is self-contained, and we can stop whenever. Again; like Oxventure. A much more casual campaign will be fun to explore. The casual atmosphere also means we can feel out our characters, which is awesome. Especially since I don't really have a backstory for my character, aside from the story elements you can choose from during character creation. It's fun to see him evolve just over the course of the night.

I haven't had time to attempt my own design of my character, but here's the basics.

Kriv Myastan is a 16year old Bronze Dragonborn bard. For Dragonborn, adulthood is 15, so he IS an adult, but he's still fairly new to adulthood. He's the equivalent of an early 20-something in real-world standards. He's a sucker for a pretty face, but doesn't seem to find Elves attractive. Every time he meets someone new I've rolled percentile dice, with 50% being "average looks" and deeming him not consider someone as having a "pretty face" unless I roll 80% or higher. He has met two Elves and one Drow thus far on his journeys, and has yet to surpass 60% on my rolls. One of the Elves and the Drow were closer to the 40s....

Anyway, Kriv also craves being the center of attention, and is ridiculously flamboyant and eccentric to try to both grab and hold that attention. He has hardy laughs, talks boastfully, literally stands in the center of a crowd whenever he can; no matter how large or small it is, plays either his lyre or his pan flute to fill silence, and goes out of his way to introduce himself to all he meets. This can be very inappropriate times, as he has already tried to shake hands and introduce himself to ship crewmates who were trying to row us to safety during a terrible storm that sunk our vessel, and he has also attempted to introduce himself to a semi-hostile Elven village despite the fact that they only understood Elven, and he only speaks Common and Draconic.

He also thinks himself a "Triple Threat": actor, dancer, and singer. However, his singing is mediocre at best, and while his instrumental skills aren't half-bad, they aren't anything to really fame himself off of. As for dancing? He mistakes enthusiasm for skill. He IS entertaining to watch, mostly because he's a lot more graceful than one would expect from such a large creature - he's 6'9" (~206cm) and 327lbs (~148kg) - however, much like his instrumental skills, his overall ability isn't objectively impressive. He IS a great actor though, and can be quite convincingly deceptive if need be. He's a bit Method, but in the end, he "loses himself" to the roles he plays, even if it's a simple as pretending he doesn't know a bit of information that would get him in trouble.

Dragonborn come in a variety of looks, but most are too far removed from their Dragon ancestors to still have tails or wings. The heads are still mostly the same look, and they usually have scales and claws. Some Dragonborn have more flattened feet, like their Human counterparts, but others are a low enough generation still to have the more Draconic looking clawed feet. I have yet to decide where Kriv lands along that spectrum. But, for some starter visuals, this is a Bronze Dragon as seen in the D&D 5th edition handbooks.
So Kriv will have a similar finned and horned head, with those bronze scales and green finned "mohawk." For a better idea of what a Dragonborn version of a Bronze Dragon, this is Jasttor Bloodmaw, an OC created by the artist Zorayda and shared on Tumblr.
I probably shouldn't be reposting without permission,
so I added a watermark along with that link above to their account.
I hope this counters my faux pas.
I also love the jolly look used in this commissioned piece drawn by David Rodrigues. The energy coming from this Dragonborn - while the wrong species - is very much Kriv. So these are my two main base reference pics for my own artwork... should I ever find time to work on it.
Again, I'm hoping adding that watermark in
the center of the pic helps counter any bad Karma
I built up for reposting without permission....
It will be interesting to see how Kriv turns out when I get to drawing him....

Generated by Bitmoji
Kriv and the campaign, and the lack of sleep which I am still trying to catch up on all took place Saturday, a bit Sunday, and a touch more yesterday after I was done with work and Zumba.

The rest of the week, though? Minus watching ML with Wolf on Sunday in between football games, and going for hour-long evening walks with Wolf twice this week, the rest of my free time was spent on writing.

All. The. Writing.
Biscuit Facebook sticker
by Ghostbot
Oh, yeah, and also reading. There was a lot of reading this week too.
Generated by Bitmoji
For each day of the KyoruWeek2019 challenge, I woke up, re-checked the day's prompt - something I had from the get-go - and ponder. And ponder. And ponder some more.
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc
A lot of the time, I would read through the tag to see what others had come up with. I hoped it would spark inspiration in me as well. More often than not, though, everyone else was just as pressed for time as I was, and so no one really posted - at least, it wasn't shared to the "official blog" - until late afternoon and throughout the evening. Still, the few bits I did find did help. Also, once I was done for my post for the day, I would go through and read through the others. I found some good authors that way, and it seems others have found me as well, but I'll get back to that.

Another bit of extensive reading for this week was my stack of Fruits Basket mangas: 23 volumes in all. I obviously remember what happened in the first half - third? - of the series, because I just re-watched it via the anime reboot. However, the back half - 2/3s? - of the story is only vague memory. I read the full series back in like... 2009? Maybe? I then got the one manga I was missing - volume 21 - from a friend a few years back. Once I got that, I re-red volume 20, and felt I was fairly caught up enough to charge my way through to the end of the series. Which means I haven't experienced volumes... we'll say 8; the chapters have been shifted around a touch, through 19 in about a decade. I remembered, but, not ENOUGH.

So, while I still haven't read through the whole series again, and I have not read it straight from chapter 1 through chapter 136 again, I HAVE re-read quite a bit of it. Every time I got to a new prompt, basically, I went to work to track down which chapters I needed to re-read in order to research what has already been canonically established, and hope for inspiration for that day's prompts.

The real chaos of the thing is that I didn't have the time to write, edit, post, and publish before midnight most days. In fact, most of my stories were published around 1am. No wonder I'm exhausted!
Generated by Bitmoji
And to think, I get to do this for a solid MONTH in 16 days....
Hacker Girl
Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc
Oh well. The important part is that I DID manage to get a story written for each of the prompt days. You can find them as a full collection on FFN and AO3.

"Hearts Together"

Otherwise, you can find each individual chapter as listed below.

First up was the Sunday, October 6th prompt. Day 1: Stay. I know I shared it already last week, but I figured it would easy on everyone if I just repost the whole week.

"Small Talk"

I'll talk more about the over-all stats below, but since I could actually see the individual likes and favorites for the DA and Tumblr posts, I want to say that I feared I was starting off on rocky footing. Maybe it's because I'm not an established author within the fandom. Or, maybe people don't like mildly-angsty Tohru. It could also have been because not terribly too much happened in this story. It could very well be considered my weakest entry.

Even today, over a week after I posted the one-shot, I only had 4 likes and 4 reblogs over on Tumblr. Although, to be completely fair, I was stupid and published my first story for Kyoru week as part of a reblog of the day's prompt. So I don't know if any of the 9 likes on the post after I reblogged were for my story, or for the original prompt promo. However, I DO know that - aside from the event tumblr blog - I had 2 people reblog my story, so there's that.

Over on DeviantArt, my story also had a slow start; only having a couple of views, and no favorites or comments. Today, there are still no comments/reviews, but there IS a fave, as well as 23 views. That's about average for the stories presented with this collection of work.

Then, on Monday, I again couldn't get the story done "on time" as it were. Still, while circling around a bunch of other possibilities, I decided to go with my initial gut feeling from when I woke up. The prompt was Day 2 - Firsts.

"Experience It All"
DA: 24 views, a different like than for "Small Talk", but still no comments
Tumblr Notes: 38 likes, 9 reblogs, and 1 comment. 
"Experience It All" actually has 70 notes listed on Tumblr, but... well.... I could only count those listed above, which only makes 48 notes. Add in my response to the comment, and the reblog to the event page, and I'm still only up to 50 notes. I... somehow... lost 20 notes without Tumblr registering it????

Either way, with 50 notes that I can actually track, this entry was the most popular on Tumblr. At least, so far, I still have the others who haven't hit the week-long mark yet.

Day 3 had the prompt "Selfish." I was originally going to have a Kyoru Parents story where Kyo, selfishly wanting time with his wife, gets a babysitter for their young son, that way the new parents could go for a well-deserved date.

However, when I sat to write the story, and was flipping through songs to get me into the mood, I stumbled upon the AJR song "Turning Out". I loved the melody of the song. It was the perfect pacing for what I wanted. However, the lyrics made me pull a bit of an audible, and I got kinda angsty with the prompt. What's worse, is that I did a dual-POV story, so even poor Tohru got a bit emo....

"A Greedy Night Under The Stars"
DA: 20 views, and a like by a third different person; still no comments
Tumblr Notes: 10 notes; 7 likes 2 reblogs
It did mediocre in the grand scheme of things. I don't think too many people liked the angst. They come to these shipping weeks for fluffiness, and I went "Screw that!" and instead had a bunch of self-hate.
Generated by Bitmoji

I went back to fluffy for the Day 4 prompt: Desire. I felt like a lot of people would use that prompt to showcase sexual tension and desire in some shape or form, but I wanted to show that couples could have desires for something innocent as well. So, I went for hugs instead.

"GLOMP"
DA: 21 views, but no comments or faves this time
Tumblr Notes: 31 notes; 26 likes and 4 reblogs
In truth, I basically wrote a story about me and Hubby, and then switched out our names for Tohru's and Kyo's. ChibiSunnie was able to pick up on it pretty much right away, but seemed cool with the overall story regardless. I hope my self-insert/self-indulgence was still Kyoru enough for my readers.

Either way, it was the first Kyoru story I managed to not only get done and published before midnight, but I also had it posted and promoted by FIVE O'CLOCK! Go me!

Day 5's prompt required the most research. The prompt was "Paper Flower." It's a fairly easy school craft that is apparently popular in Japan. For Fruits Basket, the craft was used as decoration for the graduation ceremony for one of the years the characters were in school. There's a lot of relationship significance of these paper flowers for two OTHER ships in the series, and that significance is more-or-less spelled out in the manga itself.

Kyo and Tohru, however? Well, this happens in those mangas I haven't read in over a decade, so I had to really dig in to try to figure this out. Kyo gives Tohru one of these paper flowers to help cheer her up, but that's really it in the manga. Then we see it again next to her picture of her mom. Then, on the last page of the series, the final panel is of Tohru's family memorial shrine, and the flower is no longer there. It was tricky to try to piece together why the flower would be important to Tohru, but I think I came up with a decent headcanon.

"A Crumpled Memento"
DA: 15 views, a like from a 4th new person, but still no comments
Tumblr Notes: 36 notes; 27 likes and 8 reblogs
Others focused more on the fact that the craft is fairly popular with school kids in Japan, and had Kyo and Tohru's kids making paper flowers, or had Kyo teaching his kids how to make one, or had Kyo make one for Tohru while their kids made Mother's Day cards for her. I was the only one I saw who focused on the flower shown in the manga. THAT might be why I had such trouble. Still, I think I did alright. It does have the 3rd-most Tumblr notes out of the 7-story collection. It was also was the second story I managed to post the day of the prompt. Score!

The Day 6 prompt of "Birthday Wish" had me hung up pretty much ALL FRIGGEN DAY! I actually paused in order to work a bit more on my story for Ronoxym, hoping switching gears would help me out. I also tried to see what other participants did for the prompt. We must have all been stuck, because I didn't really see anything until 9pm-ish. It just kept me FOREVER to figure out what I wanted to write.

And then I came up with a stupid cliche title... Oh well, I did post it before going to bed, but it was just about 1:30am.

"The Greatest Gift"
DA: 26 views, but no faves or comments
Tumblr Notes: 19 notes; 16 likes and 2 reblogs
To finish off Kyoru Week, we had the Day 7 prompt of "Forever." Now, regardless if it was something everyone was going to think of, I just couldn't NOT write about their wedding day. I mean. Come on.

Tapping into my own relationship again, I gave Kyo and Tohru a Western-style wedding, and swiped some of my own wedding vows for them to recite. They just seemed fitting. I was either right, or most people just cared about it being a story about them exchanging vows, because it was the second most-popular story I posted for this event on Tumblr. Then again, it's only 2 days old, so it may prove to be the MOST popular of my Kyoru stories. Give it time.

"Meet, Remember, and Love Again"
DA: Only 9 views, but it's also only been up for 2 days
Tumblr Notes: 46 notes; 33 likes, 8 reblogs, and 2 comments
The only thing that really bums me out was that I actually had the story mostly done and ready to publish by 5pm, but this was the day of our D&D one-off, so I didn't have the free time to actually publish it until 2am.
Generated by Bitmoji
Well, now that you have the individual stories, and the individual stats for DA and Tumblr, what about the story as a whole?
FFN: 466 views, 5 faves, 5 followers, and 8 reviews
AO3: 418 hits, 31 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 17 comments
DA: 138 views, 4 faves, but no comments

Total Results: 1022 views, 40 faves, 7 followers, and 25 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 201 notes; 151 likes, 37 reblogs, and 3 comments
Those stats are NOT shabby for something that is up for - depending on which chapter you count - between 2 and 8 days. This blog is hella late and super long as is, so I won't go through the reviews this time, but go ahead and check them out. So much love!

Huge shout out to ChibiSunnie, ChubbyUnicornMama, and MalcomReynolds for leaving me reviews for every short story I posted for Kyoru Week. Yup, out of those 25 reviews, 21 of them are from those three. You guys rock so hard!
Generated by Bitmoji
If you are a reader who only reviewed one chapter, or didn't leave a comment at all, know that I love you immensely as well. It's just, knowing I have such faithful repeat readers warms my heart too much to NOT thank them for their loyalty to my writing. Especially since ChubbyUnicornMama and Malcom started following me with my ML stories. I just happened to luck into other fandoms they like, I guess.

Now, there WAS a bonus prompt given at the end of Kyoru Week: Beach. I had every intention to surprise everyone with that bonus Day 8 story on Sunday, but time got away from me, and I couldn't write anything. I DID do a bunch more research though.

Summer Vacation is a main catalystic arc in the Fruits Basket series, and about TWO WHOLE VOLUMES of that arc is focused on the cast of characters spending most of their vacation at the Sohma family beach house. So, I took most of my work downtime reading back through those mangas to refresh my mind as to what all DID happen at the beach.

Since I missed my opportunity on Sunday, and since no one was expecting an 8th story anyway, I decided to try again yesterday. I got about 4000 words into the story before realizing it didn't really focus much on Kyo or Tohru. I had a lovely Zodiac Reunion story, but it just didn't work for Kyoru Week. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, and I may wave the white flag since it is sort of "extra credit" at this point. It would be fun to do though. Especially with so many new followers thanks to all the Kyoru content. Sadly, I don't have the exact stat right now because that part of my Tumblr account is glitching, but I know I have at lease a half-dozen new people.

As always, that probably doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but if you look over those Kyoru stats again, clearly it's giving me more of an audience than I was able to manage myself. To ride that wave with another story would be awesome! However, it looks like I'll have to see if I ever come up with a Kyoru beach story, and hope I still have the audience there once I do.

Besides, I'm running out of days before the month after Ron's 30 is up. It's a race to Friday to see if I can get this story finished off. I do have 5000 words put into it, but I'm not entirely sure how to end it. And where I am right now feels like World Build Exposition Time, so I have to polish that. Maybe I'll give that Dresden Files short a re-read to figure out how professionals build up worlds without info-dumping.

Okay... it's now 5pm and I've spent pretty much this entire afternoon - minus about an hour when I passed out at my laptop - writing this blog. So I should probably wrap it up. For one: I'm now behind on the rest of the stuff I need to do with my day off. For two: I'm sure you guys didn't anticipate spending the past hour reading my blog!
Generated by Bitmoji
Keep an eye out for a possible ORIGINAL STORY from me next week. Take care, guys.

Posted by at 5:06 PM Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2 comments

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

I'm Late, I'm Late, For A Bunch Of Dates!

Okay. I'm actually a touch exhausted, and it isn't just because I'm currently running on about 3hrs of sleep.
Generated by Bitmoji
I mean, yes, there's the lack of sleep as well, but that's what caffeine is for. See, the grocery store Hubby works at is already understaffed, but then, last week, one of the supervisors for the front end cashiers quit. Yesterday, another supervisor decided to transfer to a different store, and a third quit "effective immediately"! That means Hubby is now just one of like 3 or 4 supervisors available! So he stayed late yesterday. Then the overnight cashier - since it's a 24hr store - called out, and with all the available cashiers already scrambling to cover the supervisor shifts, there really wasn't anyone left. So - picking up 7hrs of overtime - Hubby went back to work to do the overnight. That means he was at work for 19hrs, minus the 4hr break he had between the long shift and the overnight.

Yeah, so, as exhausted as *I* am, he's 10x more-so.

How does any of this translate to ME working off of 3hrs of sleep? Well, readers that have been around since I started this blog might remember how much I HATE when Hubby does the overnights. Once upon a time, he'd go in for the Saturday-to-Sunday overnights every week in order to switch out the tags for that week's sales. I just couldn't fall asleep without him home, and so I'd have insomnia those nights. Sometimes I'd power through the night and Hubby and I would crash when I got him home after his shift. Sometimes exhaustion would overtake me and I'd actually pass out about 3am or 4am. Well, last night was one of those nights. Could NOT fall asleep until 3:30ish, and I needed to be up at about 6:45 so I had time to quickly get ready before picking Hubby up at 7.

Caffeine is my friend today.
Generated by Bitmoji
However, as I mentioned at the top, my true exhaustion is NOT from the lack of sleep. Instead, it's due to the writing frenzy I HAVE been able to get myself into.

Sorta.

So, you guys already know that my anniversary threw me off last week, and so it actually kept me 3 days to write my blog, and a fourth to edit and FINALLY publish it. Yeah... that seems to be the trend for my writing this month.

After publishing my blog post, I spent the rest of Friday cleaning my apartment and researching for my story for Ronoxym. I found a lot of really neat info, but it also meant I got lost on Wikipedia for hours on end. I also talked quite a bit with Wolfhearted throughout the day. Sometimes it was about Ron's story, sometimes it was about Miraculous Ladybug, and sometimes it was about stupid stuff because why not? I also wrote up my basic concept for my story and sent it to Wolf to read over. It really helped me sort of solidify my idea to write it out like that. It also spotlighted the bits I still needed to figure out.

So figure out I tried. Saturday I went back to researching. The biggest thing I noticed is that most of my supernatural references I was using were European/UK based, and yet I randomly threw a Japanese myth in as well. I had to decide if I was going to go all-or-nothing. I either had to pull in myths from the rest of Asia, India, Africa, and Central/South America, or I had to keep the references strictly European - and by extension North American/Australian due to colonization.

I once more got lost on Wikipedia, and once more found a LOT of really interesting stuff. However, I couldn't find anything from non-European cultures that really worked with the concept I had come up with, so I caved and dropped the Japanese reference. I could always mention that this was just the "European/American branch" and that there were other branches covering the other regions/cultures of the world.

Content that I had researched enough - at least, to start - I FINALLY wrote my first word of Ron's story. The set-up kept a bit longer than I originally anticipated, but it almost always does that to me. I was at 4pgs and nearly 2200 words when I had to stop for the day. I still need to go back to re-read and edit what I have, and then finish the actual story. However, I do not have it done yet, and I doubt I'll have it done in time for Writer's Group to critique it in time to help me edit. I mean, I could give them the opening and see what they think of that....

Again, I'm hoping to have the story done by the 18th, so I only have 10 more days to lock this down. I can do it!
Biscuit Facebook sticker
by Ghostbot
The real challenge is the timing of Kyoru Week.

As I mentioned on Friday, Sunday was the start of this Fruits Basket fan event. We were given seven single-word prompts: one per day of Kyoru Week. We are then challenged to use the Word of the Day to create fanfiction or fanart focused on the relationship - usually romance - between Kyo and Tohru.

I was going to do more writing at work, but got distracted by another creative project. For Halloween, the local businesses are participating in a scarecrow design contest. My manager and co-worker signed the store up on one of my days off, and the two of them decided on Jack Skellington and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
We had more than enough discontinued fabric in our store. We could have probably made a fairly close replica of Sally's dress.

I mean, we could have, but my co-worker - who pitched the idea of Jack and Sally - never actually saw the movie, and so she just knew Sally had a patchwork dress and ran with it. Okay. Close enough. I joked that we had Zack and Suzy instead of Jack and Sally; ya know, to avoid copyright infringement.

Anyway, the scarecrows needed to be up by yesterday, but Sally's dress still needed to be finished. I decided that was priority, so I finished sewing on the patches my co-worker started, and I added on Sally's capped sleeves.
Same basic feel as Sally, right?
I don't know if my co-worker considered her done, or if she added a few more patches before putting the couple in front of our store. I'll have to check them out when I'm back at work tomorrow.

Anyway, that project took up most of the 5hr work day I had on Sunday. Then, when I got home, I had a quick meal with Hubby before he had to go back to work; yes, he also did a last-minute split-shift on Sunday to help cover with all of the coverage loss at work.

I finally had a moment to sit and write at about 6:30 on Sunday. I had every intention to continue working on Ron's story then, that way it could be set for tonight's writing group. However, as I wound down from my day, and flipped through Tumblr quickly, I was reminded that Sunday was Day 1 of Kyoru week!

Shoot!

I wanted to participate, I had yesterday and today to still work on Ron's story before group, and Ron's story is already "late" at this point, so what would a couple more days hurt? Shelving my original story, I began thinking about what to do with the Day One prompt: Stay.

I started by reading through the other stories submitted. See if any of them spark anything. I then thought of two songs I know with "Stay" as their title.

First was the song I've been obsessing over lately. In fact, I've had it on repeat the whole time I've been writing this blog.

"Stay" by The Score.

It has such a nice beat to it to get you pumped. That bass, man. Plus, I love the lyrics. In case you can't really read that lyric video, here they are again:
I've been lying to myself, at night
Thinking everything is alright
Yeah, I get lost in this state of mind
Losing my words got me, got me, got me tongue tied
Doubt myself and I don't know why
I wish I wasn't this person sometimes (times, times)
I make mistakes but I think it's just fine (fine, fine)
It's just fine
And I tell myself

Stay, who you are
Don't be afraid
When it all comes crashing
Stay, who you are
Don't be afraid, stay

I'm so tired trying to walk the line
Just to measure up, I'm done trying
Yeah, I get lost in this state of mind
Losin' my way every, every, every time, I
Doubt myself and I don't know why
I wish that I could be perfect sometimes (times, times)
I make mistakes but I think that it's just fine (fine, fine)
It's just fine

When it all comes crashing, stay
Who you are don't be afraid
When it all comes crashing, stay
Who you are don't ever change
Stay

Stay
Stay

Stay, who you are don't be afraid
When it all comes crashing, stay
Who you are don't ever change
Stay

Stay
Stay
The lyrics are just awesome for Fruits Basket stories. The desire to be someone else? The want to be perfect? The constant reminder to just stay who you are? Those lyrics just scream out Kyo and/or Yuki. In fact, if I could get video and an editing suite, I would be so tempted to make this into a Furuba music video.

However, the lyrics do lean more towards Kyo by himself, and/or Yuki by himself. Aside from maaaaaaaybe questioning if she's a bit too ditzy, Tohru never really challenges the idea of changing who she is. And, yes, she does remind each boy that he's amazing as he is, she never officially tells them to not change. Besides, the lyrics to the song imply that it's an inner voice reminding the singer to not change.

It's a great song for a Kyo and/or Yuki themed story, but not really one for a Kyo and Tohru themed story. Especially one focused on their relationship. So, over to the second song I thought of the moment I saw the prompt word.

"Stay" by Mad At Gravity. This one was a college staple of mine, and I'm pretty sure Hubby was the one who introduced me to this band. With this song, specifically. Now, the version I know, and the one I can find on YouTube, is the "rare acoustic demo" but I can't seem to find an official studio-release of this song. If you've heard the non-acoustic version, please feel free to leave me the link in the comments section. I'm itching to hear it.

Either way, the acoustic version is probably more sorrowful sounding anyway, so it works.
This song is more about mistimed love, and it actually fits really well for Kyo and Tohru. Not out of any sort of maliciousness, and not because one falls out of love with the other, just because they can't seem to get on the same page. Both believe they aren't worthy of the other's love.

Here's the lyrics.
I can feel you pull away
And it's just as I lean in
And the timing leaves me wide open
With a miss I am betrayed
Slices right through my thick skin
Yet I seek another high

I'm asking you to stay in my arms
Away you're breaking me apart
Stay in my arms
Away you're breaking me apart

And I'm out here on a limb
But I'm holding out my hand
Hoping you can make the climb with me
And I'm carving in the bark
And dropping down to where you stand
Trying silence on for size

I'm asking you to stay in my arms
Away you're breaking me apart
Stay in my arms
Away you're breaking me apart

And I miss you in my fingers
And valleys in between
It's odd how feelings linger
For something yet unseen
There's ages between
My heart and my mouth
My veins throb with that
Which I cant spit out
Now I don't need much
Just presence in mind
And the assurance
Your ache matches mine

So stay
Please don't pull away from me

Stay in my arms
Away you're breaking me apart
Stay in my arms
Away you're breaking me apart
So angsty. Now, the lyrics, especially with how angst-ridden it is, screams a Kyo-to-Tohru story. Lyrics like "Slices right through my thick skin / Yet I seek another high" and "And I'm out here on a limb / But I'm holding out my hand / Hoping you can make the climb with me" and "Trying silence on for size" and "There's ages between / My heart and my mouth" all FEEL like they were written specifically for Kyo.

However!

First of all, I already wrote an "Angsty Kyo to Tohru" story: Unsent Letter
Secondly, all of those lyrics can also apply to Tohru, even if it doesn't feel quite as obvious.

Tohru, arguably, has thick skin as well. How else would you explain her befriending people who were straight up cruel to her when they first met: Uotani, Hiro, Akito, Rin, and even Kyo to some extent. The fact that she's out on a limb and hope that he'd make the climb with her may seem odd since he's the cat and therefore climbs up things all the time. However, for her to INITIATE the climb? He generally snubs things she initiates - at least, at first - because he likes to keep his Tough Guy persona, and fears following behind Tohru would diminish that. Tohru is also a very talkative person, sometimes to the point of rambling. However, she also knows when to sit and listen, and she figures out fairly early that Kyo needs a listener so he feels included. So, you could say she's "trying silence on for size" to see how it fits for their relationship. Much like Kyo, Tohru also can't quite figure out how to express her feelings. Mostly because she fears that she's reading too far into their relationship; seeing romantic advances where there might not be any. That, and she's a bit of a ditz who doesn't notice his non-verbal cues.

Much like Kyo, she is wondering if he hurts as much as her that they aren't together. She also longs for him to stay in her arms - turning into a cat or no - or at least hold hands - "And I miss you in my fingers / And valleys in between." Being apart hurts her, and this is showcased A LOT in the series.

The cincher for me is that it's usually Kyo that pulls away. He's the one who puts up the emotional barrier. It's mostly because he fears his future isolation - and feels guilty about Kyoko - but still, it's HIM that pulls away.

It may be a male singing the song, but this is completely TOHRU'S song to Kyo.

Feeling confident in that decision, I started writing the story from Tohru's perspective. It was going to be an angsty story about her wanting Kyo to admit his feelings, or at least let her know if he didn't feel anything romantic for her. It would be her pain as she tried to coax Kyo to stay with her; be with her; let her hold him, even if it's just his hand. He was going to be his aloof self; struggling to keep his feelings for Tohru hidden. It was going to hurt. It was going to be angst-ridden. It was going to be beautiful.

It was also going to be way too long.

I didn't actually start writing anything until 8pm, and I knew I was going to pause for an hour while watching one of my TV shows. That left me with three hours to write, edit, and publish. There was another hour lost to texting with friends and picking Hubby up from his second shift of the day. Now I was down to two hours! After my first one, I realized the story I was going for was going to take too much time to tell. I had to simplify.

So, when I got back to writing at about 11pm, I edited, cut down, and reworked. It's not nearly as knife-turning as I originally aimed, but it is still a decent show of how oblivious these two are. Plus, I got to write a pseudo-tsundere Kyo. That's always fun.

In the end, however, I didn't finish writing until 12:15am, and I didn't have the story formatted and posted to Tumblr until 12:45-ish. So... I was technically late, but it was before I went to bed, and it was still October 6th on the West Coast. So..... still counts?
Generated by Bitmoji
I ended up publishing the story on my other three sites Monday morning, and that's when I realized.... titles are a thing.

I'm letting you know right now, my titles are even more trash than normal this week. I just... I can't think of anything properly poetic, but I wanted more than "Kyoru Week" and the daily prompt word. So... please forgive me my titles, and if you have suggestions for alternative, you are more than welcome to leave them in the comments section.

As of right now, the name of the entire Kyoru Week collection is Hearts Together. Yeah...

The story for Day 1: Stay, is called
"Small Talk"

I'm going to wait until next week to note my over-all stats. I probably won't be able to figure out which chapters are more popular than others that way, but I'm already so far behind on everything I don't really have stats for Day One vs Day Two anyway.

Speaking of Day Two....

After my fail with Day One, I tried reallllllllly hard to get my act together for Day Two. I went to bed knowing the prompt was going to be "Firsts." I tried to fall asleep picturing what that could mean.

I woke up with a list of potential "firsts" for a couple. Admittedly, my mind DID briefly stop at "write smut; their first time intimately together." I... quickly breezed past that. It was in the back pocket for a sort of "last resort" but I wanted to stay fairly PG/PG-13 with this story. I then thought about the excitement - and perhaps challenge - of buying furniture for the first time. Which lead me to "their first apartment together." It wouldn't be the first time they lived together, but it would be the first time they did so without any sort of "buffer roommates" as it were.

I continued to think about the story as I did errands and cleaned the apartment some more. I also got a bit sidetracked with errands that sort of sprang up on me; unexpected responsibilities I needed to handle. Mostly because of Hubby having a longer-than-expected shift, and then going back for the overnight. Which meant I had to shift things like laundry around so he had something clean to wear when he went back to work. One of Hubby's friends also asked us to the movies with him, which meant I had to rearrange things I was going to do today so that we had time to hit up the movies. More things to do last night, such as grocery shopping. On top of all of that, I also got distracted when Ron's still awaiting story crept in for me to ponder a bit.

Somehow, throughout the day, I got worried that "first apartment" wouldn't be an entertaining story, so I tried to figure out other non-sexual firsts. However, most of those were already talked about in depth within the manga: the first time they met, the first time they lived together, the first time they really hung out as friends, the first time they held hands, the first time they told each other they loved each other, the first time they kissed, the first time they hugged, the first time they hugged without Kyo transforming, the first trip they took together, etc.

A lot of other participants seemed to focus on Kyo's and Tohru's first child: Hajime. It was sweet, but it was what most people were getting as they read through the event tag. Plus, the stories were more focused on Hajime and how the couple was as parents. It wasn't really focused on Kyo's and Tohru's relationship with each other. There were also a small handful of people who focused on Kyoru's first fight. However, arguably they already had those in the manga as well.

I tried to brainstorm with Hubby as I brought him home for those four hours, but I also had to do the laundry, as I mentioned, so I was doing a LOT of running around. I was also stuck in a Bad Luck cloud. Little things all day: dropping a dish I JUST WASHED on the yet-to-be-washed floor; the shower curtain rod falling on me, twice; my bathrobe billowing out further from my hips than I thought, and therefore knocking over a collection of plastic bottles I needed to bring to the recycling center; my milk hitting my cup of coffee at JUUUUUST the right angle that it splashed my coffee up at me; a sealed bag not properly tearing open when I tried to get to my daily supplemental pills; the chain to the ceiling fan/light snapping so I had to climb up a ladder to reattach it; etc.

It was an exhausting day. By the time I actually had a moment to sit down and WRITE my story, it was about 11pm!
Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.
At least I had decided that I was going to stick with my original "first apartment" idea. I was able to churn the story out in about 100minutes, and had it formatted and posted to Tumblr just before 1am. Less than an hour late. Not too bad, right?

I was actually impressed that I was able to write it so quickly, and when I proofread before publishing to my other sites this morning I didn't find too many errors. So... yay.
Generated by Bitmoji
It did seem to blow up quite a bit already as well, so that's cool. I mean, Kyo and Tohru are actually a sweet couple in this story, so it makes sense that more people would like this over my first one.

The title's still trash though.
"Experience It All"

Now to figure out today's prompt: Selfish.

Also... ya know... Ron's birthday story....

But first, I need to get going! The movie is going to start in about 90minutes, and 40 of that will be used up with driving to the theater!

OH! But before I jet, I'm not the only one who connected with her muse this week.

Taurus Pixie was able to finally figure out her story Immortal Bond and was able to upload the restarted version as Immortal Bonds. How cheeky, including the 's' to get around the "no duplicate titles" thing. This way, if you liked the way the original was written, you can still read that incomplete version. Pixie can also keep all of her lovely reviews, and compare the stats of her new version to those of her original. All while essentially keeping her original title, which she loved and was perfect for her story. YAY!

Right now Immortal Bonds only has a short prologue up, but it's a jumping point. It's an achievement proving that the year-long wait was worth it for both her and her readers. If you like dark, occult-themed AUs, where the main character accidentally summons a not-necessarily-malicious demon, by all means go check out Immortal Bonds! 

 As for me? I REALLY need to jet now. Bye!
Generated by Bitmoji
Posted by at 12:04 PM Labels: , , , , , , , ,
4 comments

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Passing The Buck Might Be A Great Plan

Blech. I can't stand being sick. I've had a nasty head cold all week long and I haven't even had a chance to nurse it properly because I've also worked a full 35hr work week. True, a measly 35hrs doesn't seem like much to those who have full-time jobs, multiple jobs, live outside the United States where a day's shift is about 16hrs long, or if you're a parent and therefore are ALWAYS on the job.

However, it's a long, tiring week for me when I just want to curl up in bed and sleep the week away.

Virtually no cleaning was done this week. I attempted three different times, and each resulted in one or two loads of dishes being done and the laundry washed, but nothing else. Pretty much the entire week consisted of me going to work first thing in the morning, coming home early afternoon, and then staying in bed the rest of the day.

Normally I don't mind weeks like this. Since I'm hiding away in my bedroom anyway, I would spend the time writing on my netbook. If I fell asleep, oh well, at least I did more work than I normally would. Otherwise, I just spent the last 8hrs writing!

Sadly, I still haven't found the money to purchase the last few things my father-in-law needs to finish fixing my netbook. So it's still out of commission. I have taken up stealing Hubby's laptop while he's at work, but the rest of the time he's usually on it.

Still, I do have those few precious hours where Hubby's working and I can thief his laptop. It's been a slow writing progress, but it IS progress. I've even added a new step in my writing process. If you're one of my personal Facebook friends you'd already know this, but I now request that everyone "poke me back in to my writing corner" if they catch me messing around online while Hubby's at work - and I therefore have his laptop to write on.

It might be cheating a little bit, but I discovered that I really have no drive to write lately, except for when I make myself accountable. And I also discovered that the best way to make myself feel accountable for writing is to pass the buck - so to speak - to my friends online. I now make THEM accountable for keeping me in check; kind of like a parent making sure I get my homework done.

I tried holding myself accountable simply by having a new chapter up every week, but my ability to write is so limited that I never seem to hit my deadlines. As the weeks slip by with no update my sense of accountability wanes. That's when I realized that maybe it's not the need to hit deadlines that kept me writing, but the knowledge that people KNEW I was writing and expecting me to do just that.

The daily challenges back in July 2012; maybe it wasn't the deadline of getting a new story done by midnight. Maybe it was actually the fact that people knew I was participating in the challenge and were expecting a new story to be posted daily. They knew for a fact that I was attempting to write every day, and they were anticipating that notification to let them know that I was done and the work was up. Same for the weekly challenges over on Writers’ Huddle back in August. People knew I was participating and were awaiting my weekly updates. Granted, the opportunity to win a prize didn't hurt.

The thing though, is that people didn't know the specifics of when I was writing for the Writers' Huddle challenge, so how was this not a case of the deadline alone being motivation to write? Well, because it had a forum connected to the challenge. I could see others posting their progress and I could comment about my own. They were expecting an update from me by that Sunday. If I missed my deadline - if I didn't write that week - they would certainly notice and have a place to discuss that.

Not to say that they would; we had a few people who - due to circumstances beyond their control - missed out on a few challenges. We didn't mock those people or talk down to them or question their devotion to writing. We were understanding and welcoming. We usually eased the person's sense of guilt over missing the challenge.

Regardless, the fact that there were people who were holding me accountable for this challenge forced me to stay on point.

I tried to tell myself that the same was true about my Hey Arnold! and X-Future stories. If I told people that I'd post weekly or monthly that they'd notice that I fell short, and they might not be as kind about it as my Writers' Huddle buddies. Yet, even with a few of you as known readers, the vast majority of my audience are nameless and faceless to me. I really have little knowledge that my stuff is being read aside from the slow tick on the "visitors" counter and the very rare comment.

So, even though I KNOW that you want new chapters and that you're waiting patiently for them; even though I know that you notice the days, weeks, and months fly by without an update; even though that SHOULD be enough to hold me accountable, it just doesn't for some reason.

Distancing, maybe?

But knowing that there are people who can ride me about not writing? That's motivation for me. So, I guess thank God for professional editors and publishers who could harass me in to keeping my deadlines if/when I become a professional author. Until then, I'll try to keep up with this "Hold my Facebook friends accountable" approach.

Eh, it seems to be working so far. I've had a few sticklers. I had an aunt who responded to a comment I made on my sister's wall; telling me to "get back to work" even though the comment was an hour or so before I posted that I was attempting to write. I also have The Bard sending me pokes and "get back to work" messages if he sees me activate in his IM contacts; problem there is that I actually wasn't online whenever he sent me those messages. The mouse must have been bumped or something, making him THINK I was messing around on Facebook.

Oh well, at least I know I can trust my friends and family to keep me in check.
Seems to be working well, too. I almost exclusively wrote while Hubby was at work this week. Because of this drive and the passed-on-accountability I'm doing fairly well with NaNo this year. Granted, that's partially because I'm not strictly counting the words going in to a 50,000 word novel. For this year's NaNo I'm just aiming for 50,000 words of creative writing.

This means I'm counting everything I type for this blog, for the X-Future story, as well as my X-Future roleplaying. I did miss a few days last week, however, and so I'm still about 7000 words behind where I should be. It's still better than last year when I was about 12000 words behind at this point.

I can't wait to see how much more efficient I can be once I do get my netbook back! Whoot!
As for you guys checking out my progress? Well, I don't have the chapter quite done yet, so I'll have to post the link to it next week. You can still keep an eye out, if I post during the week I'll try to remember to tweet about it, and/or post it on facebook.

In the meantime, here's the Snippet I promised you about Trish's run through the latest Brotherhood obstacle course. Devon decided to poke his head around and try it out himself, and so now I don't know if it will become significant enough to keep in his companion story that I'll eventually write. If so, this portion will be sort of footnoted since the story will be through Devon's perspective. Anyway, Devon wanted to really provoke Trish before his run, and so I tagged that at the end of her run; originally the story ended with her collapsing after finishing the course.

So, let me know what you think of the snippet and/or my new accountability tactic. That comment section under each post looks so empty and lonely.
Posted by at 1:11 PM Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)