Making more dolls

Another really rough week of not wanting to write a darn thing. To be completely honest, I didn't even want to write this week's update and I seriously debated just throwing up that "Temporary Post" yet again.

I'm really not sure at all what's wrong with me. My brain is just totally fried. I'm pretty much set for the next chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be, and yet I have NO DESIRE to start writing. I have no clue why.

I even read a fairly good HelgaxBrainyxArnold love-triangle story this morning. It really made me THINK about my story, but still no desire to actually WRITE anything. Oh well, read the story anyway!

It needs some polishing here and there, but it's still a nice, quick read:
Life With Brian

I also completely missed the first bi-weekly writing challenge of "Someone confronting a moral dilemma" that was "due" on the 15th. I had a possible story picked out from my list of Plot Bunnies, but I just never had the urge to type anything up. I honestly don't know if I'm going to attempt the prompt for the next two weeks either:
"Your least-favorite character lets slip the secret of your favorite character"
I honestly don't even know who I'd pick as my least-favorite character....

DarkAngel1326 and ChibiSunnie have been amazing this past week. Nearly every day one of these two ladies would send me a Facebook message with something along the lines of "I heard this song and it made me think of your story" or "I saw this show/movie scene and it made me think of your story" or even "I found this article online and I thought it could help you with the latest chapter".

So, thank you ladies for both your continued effort to jumpstart my muse as well as showing me how much my story affected you on the day-to-day basis. Love you both so much!

I did start doing more on the X-Men forum though... so I guess I did do SOME writing this week. It was mostly boring stuff like having the girls chill at the pool or in the living room, but it's something. I also seem to focus mostly on Willow. Poor Lia hasn't had much game-play as of late, but Hubby hasn't really been inspired to RP either so Cajun just sort of stands around more often than not. Lia doesn't really do much more than interact with him, so that sidelines her too most of the time. Plus, Lia is more reserved and a bit of a goody-two-shoes.

Willow is much more fun to play. She's wild and flirty. She loves teasing and pulling pranks and I'm having a world of fun of having her flirt with EVERYONE. Yes, that means the two new male players as well as the one new female member and the new female NPC. She doesn't care where she gets the love, she just enjoys making EVERYONE blush!

I could have even more fun with my newest character, but Hubby still isn't sure if he'd allow me to bring her in - at least, not anytime soon. I'm still waiting for Devon's player to finish up his recap of what Devon had been doing over the past two years, so my newest character won't see the light of day for a WHILE it seems - and that's still assuming she'll EVER be used in this game.

As with last week, this week was mostly spent creating avatars of all the characters. Sadly, my computer had a major issue last Sunday and everything I had done previously was somehow lost. So I got to start from scratch and it kept me nearly all week to get back to where I was LAST week, so I sadly don't have too many new characters for you guys to meet - as if you care anyway.
Again, it isn't definite yet because I have a few more things I want to tweak and I don't have approval from his player, but first up is the newest member/character: Tyler Cassidy.

Yes, that IS a picture of himself on his shirt...

The interesting thing with Tyler is his parentage. I explained this back when the board was first created, but as a reminder the way we set up our characters is mostly random.

The game is played exclusively with characters that are the "next generation" of X-Men - as in, the children of former X-Men or Brotherhood members. When a member joins the boards he or she gets a list of approved mutants that are available for parentage. The player chooses ONE, this way the character isn't COMPLETELY random. The other parent is then decided through dice rolls. The options are as follows:

• The other parent is also selected off of the list - obviously being the opposite sex of the mutant the player picks
• The other parent is a random un-named mutant - there are a lot of mutants out there and not all of them join "the fight"
• The other parent is a human
• SINISTER SHENANIGANS! Mr. Sinister did what he does best - steal DNA from famous mutants and conjure up an artificial being. In this case, since the character is just genetically spliced together the parents don't need to be of opposite sex. The last time I talked about this option I stated that Hubby's character Chayse "Cajun" LeBeau almost ended up as a Sinister splicing of Gambit and Bishop.

There are also rare occasions - if Hubby feels the player is capable enough - where a player can select a mutant that isn't on the "approved" list.

The random-creation continues with Hubby rolling to figure out what the character's starter powers are and the like, but I want to get back to Tyler.

The player picked Siryn for his mother. Then Hubby rolled that Multiple Man was Tyler's father! This is a huge OMG moment for two reasons.

ONE: For those who don't know/remember, my character Lia is the daughter of Amara "Magma" Aquilla.... and..... Multiple Man..... And, on top of that, he was set up as this loving husband and father, and yet Tyler was supposedly born a year after Lia..... Hmmmmm, me thinks foul things are afoot.
TWO: Although our game doesn't use the main comic book timeline - therefore rendering what I'm about to say completely moot - it seems that Multiple Man and Siryn DID hook up in-canon. And Siryn DID have his son... only to find out that it was actually the son of one of his duplicates and when Multiple Man first held his baby boy his body accidentally absorbed it thinking it was a Dupe ready to re-merge with him.

So, needless to say that the creation of Tyler has proven a bit..... interesting. First, Hubby had to figure out a backstory to explain away the shared parentage between Tyler and Lia while maintaining Multiple Man's "loving husband and father" persona. It's a good story that I'll get to in a moment. Secondly, I had to figure out if Lia had a half-brother or a "cousin" as well as how she'd react to knowing of Tyler's existence after 17yrs in the dark. She hasn't met him yet, so I still have a little bit of time to figure it out.... Finally, Hubby had to try to figure out if Tyler was in as much danger of being absorbed by Multiple Man as his canon equivalent.

Personally, I think Hubby's solution was brilliant! I won't give away all the details in case some of my readers are also players, but I will give the highlights. Namely, that Jamie "Multiple Man" Madrox isn't TECHNICALLY Tyler's father. In comic book canon there have been occasions in which one of Jamie's doubles forms a completely different personality than Jamie Prime and creates his own life. These "rogue Dupes" refuse to be reabsorbed by Jamie and live their own life away from him. Eventually he loses track of them. Tyler's father is actually one of these "rogue Dupes" - therefore giving him the proper parentage without messing with the backstory I already created for Lia. Also, Tyler's father feared one day encountering Jamie and be forced to re-merge with Prime, and so he took precautions preventing such an occurrence; a side-effect being that Tyler is equally safe of never being absorbed by Jamie - either accidentally or forcefully. We're still trying to figure out the half-brother versus cousin thing.... but we're leaning more towards cousin I think.....

Anyway, enough of that! I doubt you guys really care since this all means I wasn't working on any writing. So, to make it up to you I will finish up by talking about story writing again.

Namely, about the Valentine's Day contest the Hey Arnold group held last month. As predicted - assumingly because I didn't have a fluffy, gushing romance story - I didn't even place. I honestly don't know how well or how poorly I did since I don't have the score sheets yet; I'll keep you posted.

But guess who got second place in the writing category again!?

Did you say ChibiSunnie? Well, you should have! So let's all congratulate Chibi for another fantastic job well done!

The winner of the fanart portion is UrielManX7

I'm not entirely sure, but I THIIIIIINK this is the runner up's picture submission

And now a reminder of Chibi's entry


But anyway, you wanted to know about STORIES, right? Well, the winner of the contest was PinkRose34 with her entry The Photo Album.

Personally, I was a little put-off by the story at first because it felt SOOOO much like my very first fanfic The Moral of Gertie. It was a story about Arnold and Grandpa Phil sitting around a photo album and talking about Phil's childhood bully Gertie and the parallels between her and Arnold's personal bully Helga. It was set shortly after the events of the Hey Arnold movie - as was mine - and it even described the aftermath of all the explosions that occurred at the climax of the movie. As far as I knew, prior to PinkRose34 writing her story, mine was just about the only one that did that.

Now, by NO WAY am I claiming that she stole my story. The similarities more-or-less end at the above list. Plus, the coincidental similarities in PR34's story parallels those of DA's Valentine's story she posted last month. The one that was scary similar to my V'day story I Caught You a Star. Great minds just think alike, I guess. Regardless, although I hold firm to my belief that Chibi deserved the win, PR34's story WAS adorable. It was a fun take on Grandpa Phil's past and how Gertie went from bully to friend to lover. Give it a read.

Done with "The Photo Album" yet? Great! Now you can go and read Chibi's runner-up story My Oh So Special Someone.

Might as well finish off the trifecta by including my entry one more time:
The Adventures of Brainy

Until next week - when I'll hopefully have SOMETHING more productive to showcase....

Happy Early Valentine's Day!

What's this? A special Wednesday post?

Yeeeeaaaaaaah..... u_u I was still really tired from the long nights this Friday and Saturday and so I forgot to mention some key things Sunday. I originally thought about just updating/editing this week's post, but then I feared those of you that read my post when I updated on Sunday wouldn't know that I edited it, and therefore would miss what I wanted to say. Also, the more I worked on this "quick" update I realized it was a fully realized blog post in and of itself.

Well, anyway, I want to start off this mid-week update by letting my beloved readers know that I'm already in the process of outlining the next chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be. I've had the concept in my head for about two months now, so I'm excited to get to work. The only thing is that I was incredibly excited about my last chapter too when I started out, and we all saw how that turned out.

The way I set up the format of my story, the best way for me to get a chapter out is if the song easily and clearly formed a linear story in my head. The first chapter was birthed from me completely picturing a Hey Arnold music video to the song "Life After You" by Daughtry. Since I could never create the video that was in my head, I went for the next best thing; a story inspired by it.

The chapters that have all come easily to me were all the same way. I heard the song and I envisioned a complete music video. All I had to do then was describe what I saw in my mind.

Then there was the latest chapter. All I had was a visualization of the first stanza and the knowledge that the whole song would fit with what was happening in my story. That was probably why it was such rough going writing the chapter; I just couldn't properly picture it.

However, I do have a very clear mental picture of the chapter I'm currently working on. In fact, not only have I had a clear picture of my current chapter in my head more-or-less since I heard the parent song it's based off of, but I've also wished someone would do a cover of the song as a duet. Yes, ever since I heard this song and knew it would be a chapter in my story I've heard it as a duet between Arnold and Helga.

What song is it? Yeah, right! Like I'm leaking that! But it would make a beautifully painful duet in my opinion  When I finish the chapter and post it you can decide for yourself if I was right.

So there's the story progress update that I wanted to let you know. But there are two major updates with regards to building up my readership, professionalism, and over-all platform.

Although it doesn't seem to be there any longer for whatever reason, Chibi informed me that exactly a week ago a member of the Hey Arnold! Save The Jungle Movie group posted about my story What Is Truly Meant To Be! She asked the group what fanfics they are all reading, and then she stated that she was reading "What is Truly Meant to Be by LycoRogue and I highly recommend it"!!! *Squeal* I was so excited!

Chibi and DarkAngel1326 have both been bugging me about how I need to promote myself more in the Hey Arnold fandom groups. Everybody else posts their fanfics and chapter updates and that's why their readerships are so much higher than mine. I shouldn't feel ashamed about promoting myself.

Yet, I do. It took a lot for me to even promote this blog on my two Facebook accounts, my DeviantArt account, and on Twitter. Every now and again when I comment on a blog or on the Writer's Huddle forum I'll include a promo for this blog - mostly when it auto-links to the blog when a comment is made. However, as a whole I don't really promote the blog, or my writing. It's only been through continued encouragement from Chibi, DA, and my uncle that I started posting links to my writing on my main FB account. It's not that I'm ashamed of my work - I'm not; I'm very proud of it. It's more that it seems needy and shameless to self-promote.

I would go to the HA groups and see other people constantly going "I'm reading such-and-such fanfic and it's fantastic! You should all read it" or go to DeviantArt and see a new fanart group set up specifically for a fanfic and I wanted to have my stuff be good enough that I didn't need to promote it. My readers would do it for me.

NOT THAT I'M TRYING TO MAKE YOU FEEL FORCED IN TO PASSING ON MY WORK! IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING IF YOU FEEL OBLIGATED TO DO SO!

Anyway, for someone I'm not friends with to actually and sincerely enjoy my work enough to pass it on and promote me..... It was such an ego boost. THIS was the main reason I was upset about not winning the Halloween contest. It wasn't so much because other people were able to write better than me or because I didn't get the prize. It was because my work wasn't being promoted by an impartial outside source.

Granted, as I started this whole thing off saying, the post isn't there any longer so there aren't any further promotions off of it. Plus, I don't know how many people actually started reading my story because of the link - I didn't see a huge spike in readership. However, the point is that at least one impartial person promoted me. Who knows how many more there are throughout the internet that I don't know about. To me, that's huge!

So, if you are one of my faithful readers passing my name and my works on, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.


AGAIN, NOT TRYING TO MAKE THE REST OF YOU FEEL OBLIGATED!

Anyway, now on to the other big milestone in my writing "career" - as it were.
This past Sunday - the tenth - I received my first review about my actual writing style; not the content of the story!

Yes, in the past I've had generic writing style reviews such as "this feels like I'm watching an episode instead of reading a fanfic" or "I could really feel the character's pain" or "Everyone is totally in character! It's fantastic!" as well as the even more generic, but still heartwarmingly awesome "You're such a great writer! Please write more!"

However, Sunday I received the following review for the first chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be:

dyingXdasies: "I adore your word choice. The way you place words in your sentences heightens the intensity of the moment. All in all a greatly written chapter."

That is the coolest review! Someone commented on my SENTENCE STRUCTURE!

WHAAAAAA!?

Personally I think that's quite an accomplishment. So thank you, DxD!

Speaking of reviews, I've also had quite the positive feedback on The Adventures of Brainy already! I posted on Sunday and already have four reviews! Heck, my first reviewer couldn't wait until she was done reading before she reviewed!

"I haven't even finished half of this but had to comment funniest thing ever."

Pretty much all the reviews are the same. Granted, this was supposed to be a Valentine's Day story, but I went so far from fluffy this year! I'm glad it turned out so hilarious. I'm always so concerned when it comes to writing humor. I feel like I suck at it, but everyone seems to enjoy my jokes....  GO ME!

I had 39 views the first day that I posted and I'm up to 55 total. Not fantastic numbers, but considering the number of views versus number of reviews, and then comparing to the same ratios for my other stories, I think this story has the greatest reception.

In contrast, I've had 46 views but no comments over on DeviantArt. So there goes my theory that more people now read their fanfiction over there...

Regardless of where you find my stuff, if you fave it, if you review, if you've read more than one - or more than once, or if you promote my work; if you read my stories at all I want to thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day

Two Stories? Amazing!

My ninetieth post already!? And boy is it a good one for you guys.

Once again I didn't intend on my "post will be delayed" update to be my ONLY weekly update. Life got MAD CRAZY.

Hubby and I found a new apartment and spent a week transporting everything via packing multiple cars. Our house is in chaos complete with mini-mazes made out of egg boxes we got from the grocery store. We also couldn't get internet in the new apartment until this past Tuesday. Throw in work, the winter storm that came through this weekend, and my sister-in-law's baby shower. My netbook is also pretty much shot, and so I'm only using my desktop once again - meaning no progress during my work breaks any more.

The few moments I was able to find to write I used for my stories. Which means you guys had two in about a week!

First up - as mentioned in my delay post - was my latest chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be. Another super big thank you to ChibiSunnie for helping me FINALLY get that chapter done! You're a godsend m'darling! Now to keep up the momentum to get the next chapter out before the end of the month! Whoo-boy, the next 18 days are gonna fly by quick, aren't they?

So, after I was finished with the latest chapter and the packing, and moving was more-or-less complete, it was time for me to get cracking on the Valentine's Day contest entry. I tried on multiple occasions this past week to work on both the delayed blog entry and my contest entry. Things didn't go according to plan.

But Friday I was determined. I had one day to work, but I promised myself I would write something for the contest. I started first thing in the morning, but I got stuck in multiple places. So I unpacked the bedroom while I thought. I washed dishes while I thought. I organized the bathroom while I thought. I watched videos to try to inspire me. And thus I wrote off and on for about 17 hrs.

Throughout the day I would send Chibi my story scene by scene to get her opinion. Although the darling woman was still struggling to finish up her own writing entry, she took multiple writing breaks to read my story and give me feedback. Meanwhile, I only gave her feedback on one part at the end of her story. I feel bad about the one-sided-ness of that day.

SORRY, CHIBI! SOOOOO SORRY! I HOPE YOUR STORY TURNED OUT WONDERFUL REGARDLESS!

Actually, I could let you guys know soon enough. She sent me the final draft. I just haven't had time to read anything - with still unpacking and whatnot. Speaking of which, I also have two things to beta-read for DarkAngel1326. First up was a revision to her soldier story, and second is a drabble about her Of Blood and Honor character 33.

I swear, ladies, I will get to your stories this week!

But getting back to my stories.
I've determined that not only do I suck at creating titles - I mean, my Valentine's day story is called The Adventures of Brainy - but I also suck at fight scenes. I had to break out the HeroScape to play out the fight scene for my Script Frenzy screenplay last April. I then struggled again for the fight scene I had in my Valentine's Day story. I'm just not very good. I just can't picture the fight choreography, and so it's hard for me to describe it. Things to focus on improving I guess.

I'm also a bit nervous about how the judges will "grade" my entry this time. I got originality points off last time simply because I purposely wrote the story as if it were an episode - as well as writing a ghost story even though it was specifically listed as a viable option in the rules. I'm still a little irked at both deductions. However, due to me purposely writing my story as a cheesy melodrama, which is where most cliches come from, I'm afraid of again losing originality points. I'm also fearful of losing points for not keeping the characters....in....character. Since the whole story is a dream sequence, much like the Married episode of Hey Arnold, the characters are supposed to act a little different than normal. In the case of Arnold it's REALLY different than normal.

Then again, part of me really doesn't care if my grade is lower than last time. It's a simple story clocking in at about 5,000 words - one of my shorter tales - and I'm proud of it. I guess that's all that matters, right?