Writing Dystopias is My Dystopia

Well, I did it... sorta...

I got one out of two of my "secret projects" done last week! I actually got it done "on time" no less! Whoo!

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I had neglected to include two very important shout-outs last week - ChibiSunnie and Ronoxym - and that was mildly strategic in order to try to avoid my "secret projects" getting sniffed out. But sniffed out they still were. It was actually a touch obvious if you were in the know as to what was up this past week.

So, a bit delayed since their birthdays were last Wednesday, but...

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As Chibi guessed - hoped? - my "secret projects" were writing a short story for each of them as birthday gifts. Of course, I didn't think to start working on them until something like Sunday evening, because I'm brilliant like that.

After doing my normal Tuesday Errands Runaround, I figured "I don't have writing group tonight, so I'll write instead!" Which was perfect, except I did NOT anticipate that finishing up Chibi's story would take me pretty much right up until midnight. At that point, I figured "meh, why wait for a decent hour when she's a night owl anyway?" So I finished my edits, formatted for the various different sites I post to, and published her story after midnight so it was appropriately on her birthday.

A quick promotion on my FB page, along with a "Happy Birthday!" to accompany it, and I was all set on her gift.

It focuses on her favorite Fruits Basket character Momiji. It is set post-manga, so it does have spoilers for the series, please be warned of that. Which is why I'm wondering if I should read it at group tonight or figure out something else. The rest of the group wouldn't care, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything for Omnibladestrike since he hasn't read the manga and is watching the anime reboot with me.

Either way, if you would like to check out my story, you can find it in the usual places. The title is mildly spoilery???? and the reviews I'm sharing do talk a touch about spoilery elements... so I'll just go ahead and throw this here real quick.

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"Is She Your Mama Too?"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

The story is a little over 5000 words, so it's actually one of my... erm... "shorter" pieces of work? Also, there could be some elements that don't quite make sense without knowing the full story, but considering the nature of this one-shot, even non-fans of the show should be able to follow what's going on.

All-in-all, I guess there isn't really much love for a Momiji-centric story in the greater Fruits Basket fandom, because the story hasn't had much traffic or love. However, the love I did receive was as wonderful as usual.

Nearly a week later, here are my stats:

FFN: 52 views, no faves, no followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 58 views, 5 kudos, no bookmarks, and 2 comments
DA: 22 views, but no faves or comments

Total Results: 132 views, 5 faves, no followers, and 6 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 9 notes; 8 likes and 1 reblog

Reviews:
  1. Oh, Momiji. I adore you! So sweet and kind! I love that he is getting to reconnect with his family... especially with Momo.
  2. Awwww! I wish there were more stories where Momiji is reunited with his mother and sister... This story broke my heart in all the good ways and I hope you make more! Maybe a few Sunday brunch stories where they bond? Thank you!
  3. What a great story. That bunny deserves his family and glad he's getting it back
  4. Please show Momiji moving home again
  5. Smart little Momo! I love this! Momiji gets the happy ending he deserves.

Two of those reviews are of course the glorious ChubbyUnicornMama and MalcomReynolds. The three others were by three unregistered FFN readers: one that went by Momiji, one listed as Guest, and the final was Anon. I have no clue if those are all different people, but it's cool that 3 non-FFN members both read and enjoyed my story enough to leave a comment.

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Finally - but really, firstly, since she was the first comment - there's the glorious squeeing of Chibi about her gift.

Chibi: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D AAHHHHHHH you're so sweet to write me a story for my birthday, especially one that gives Momiji his happy ending!!!!!! 💕 💕 💕 💕 💕 💕 💕 HE DESERVES HAPPINESS AND I'M SO GLAD YOU WROTE IT FOR HIM!!! :D :D :D There is a puddle of tears on my desk now because it was so sweet and touching and made me so happy that I cried at multiple moments in this! Even if this is different than how I personally imagined them reuniting/finding out that Momiji in their family, I absolutely LOVE the way you wrote that and can 100% see it being the way it happened!! :D Momo's reaction to finding out he really is her brother did fully match my headcanon, though, so eee that was so great to see!! :D Also I love that you found a way to include Hatori (my 2nd fav of the zodiac and 3rd fav character from the series) and put in a nod to how he was like a father-figure to Momiji. 💕 Haha I love your reasoning for Momiji's dad's name because when I saw it my immediate thought was "Ah like Tuxedo Mask!" and then followed by "How great, she made sure to give them all M names! :D " XD So your actual reasons were my thoughts when I read that. XD And yes, I think you did a wonderful job capturing everyone! ^_^ Eeeeeeee happy Momiji with his family and I love the open-ending indicating wonderful moments spent together as they get closer! ^_^ 💕 AHHHHH THANK YOU AGAIN THIS TOTALLY MADE MY DAY!!!! :D 💕 :D 💕 :D 💕 *sends you all the Fruits Basket hug stickers*

I am more than happy to write you something, Chibi! You deserve happy stories and happy endings as much as your boy Momiji!

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I'm glad I did well by Momiji, and that she enjoyed the story. That's really what matters.
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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

The long and short was that I was glad I managed to get Chibi's story done in time for her birthday. Ron's on the other hand????

I love the guy. He's my brother. He's my Wonder Twin.

Did you know that the Wonder Twins have (had?) a new comic book run?

However, post-baby, and especially post-starting-overnight-shifts, his schedule and mine are sort of off-set from each other. He's generally only online first thing in the morning when I'm getting ready for work and can't really pause to talk, and he's either asleep or at work when I'm available. And, in truth, I could try to call him more often than I have in the past - all but neglecting phone conversations and text messages for months now - but it's rare that he picks up, and rarer still to get a call back. So I sort of.... gave up?

Sadly, it's just a time in his life where we can't really connect frequently - which suuuuuuuper sucks, btw - and so I've sort of.... lost track as to what he likes.

I know it's things like Supernatural and Dr. Who and playing video games like League of Legends or Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy or Octopath Traveler. He enjoys reading stories like Ready Player One or Lord of the Rings or The Hunger Games or A Song of Ice and Fire. He also enjoys playing role-play games such as D&D, and LARPs such as White Wolf's various World of Darkness games involving werewolves, vampires, changelings, and/or mages. He also, at least used to, play a more "standard" High Fantasy style LARP within the Realms setting.

"That sounds like you still do know a lot about him and what he likes," you might be saying.

HOWEVER.....

I don't really follow any of those fandoms - with the exception of watching the Game of Thrones TV series and loving Ready Player One - so I don't know them well enough to really create fanfiction for them, at least, not fast enough to have a story ready for him by his birthday. I could have tried to study any of those to see if something jumped out at me, but I felt like it would take too long and I'd miss his birthday....

*ahem*

I MAYBE could have written something based on Fire Emblem: Three Houses since I watched Hubby play it, but I wasn't sure how far Ron had gotten through the game, I don't know his character ships, and I don't know if he was given different canonical information through his playthrough than Hubby got, since the two of them started with different houses.

Also, I'm not one of those super salty fans about the conclusion of Game of Thrones so I didn't really have any story ideas coming from that. Plus, I don't really know which characters are his favorite or what storylines he'd like told....

Waving the white flag, I contacted Cyhyr Monday night to see if she had any suggestions for me. She did, and got back to me super early Tuesday morning, so I had most of Tuesday and Wednesday to write. As long as the story was done before midnight on the 18th, I'd be "on time" with the gift.

Exceeeeeeept, her suggestion was

Cyhyr: [He] is really into hunger games-style YA dystopia, and would likely appreciate any original attempt in that direction. 😉

Okay. Cool. I've consumed a fair amount of dystopian stories myself. I enjoy The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner and Ready Player One and Divergent and even The Lorax. I've also read Nineteen-eighty-four, and mildly enjoyed it. I also was mildly enjoying Atlas Shrugged before I lost track of the plot. I do need to go back and read it again with a notebook on hand to keep track of everything.... In high school Brave New World was one of the few assigned books I actually happily read through, instead of trying to track down the SparkNotes on it. I enjoy movies like The Minority Report or The Island and video games like Beyond Good and Evil and Mirror's Edge.

Like. I get it. Dystopian stories are popular for a reason. I enjoy them too. Buuuuuut.... that doesn't mean I can write one.

I had no clue how to write an original dystopian story, and I had no plot bunnies from any of the dystopian stories I've consumed, just waiting to be brought to the light. I spent most of Tuesday just wondering what to do with that suggestion.

Then, on Wednesday, as an attempt to figure SOMETHING out, I decided to use an old online RPG that never really got off the ground.

Hubby's one friend, way back when nearly every Millennial had a GaiaOnline account, wanted to start up a play-by-post game in the Gaia forums. We created our characters, and used a companion link to the site in order to build an avatar of our character for the game. Meanwhile, the friend created this awesome backstory.

A planetary colony was deserted by Earth when the efforts to terraform their patch of the planet - maybe Mars, maybe some fictitious planet - resulted in disaster. The red sand of the desert surrounding the colony overtook any greenery they managed to grow, and then a disease swept through the humans, causing all of them to die in early adulthood. I can't recall if it was age 20, 25, 30, or 35, but somewhere in there. I want to say closer to age 20 though, because the whole concept was a sort of Lord of the Flies sort of child-run society. And it wasn't just a matter of dying mysteriously of disease in young adulthood, it was rapid aging post-puberty or something, so a 25 year-old had the body and mind of a 70 year-old.

Anyway, my character was Artemis, but, since she hated the idea of women being culturally strong-armed into getting pregnant sort of ASAP in order to keep the population going before the rapid aging kicked in, she went by Art or Artie and passed for male for as long as she could manage. Since she's still ten and hasn't hit puberty yet, it's a lot easier for her to pass as male. It IS tricky to bathe and use the bathroom since the privacy is fairly minimal in this colony, but she manages to find work-arounds so that no one sees below her waist when disrobed.

I really liked this character, and tried to rework her for another friend's RPG a few years back. That RPG also never got past the character building stage, however. I think Artie is cursed....

As a means to gift Ron an original - kinda sorta since I didn't do the world-build, so it's also fanfic? - dystopian story, I attempted to revive Artie once more. I spent most of Wednesday writing out Artie's story. I actually kind of enjoy what I did with it, and the details I came up with to better flesh out the vague desert, industrial-revolution stylized colony, and the child-run world/society Hubby's friend first came up with. I might actually have something to put in the "original content" bin besides Gyateara stories and Glitches.

However, about 5pgs into the story, I realized I have no plot. Art talked about the alien planet, how humans got there, and why everything is so desolate. She talks about how a 19yo is one of the oldest members of the society, and already a mother of three. I haven't gotten to the Big Reveals of the disease that kills off the adults, or that Art is actually female. And yes, she does think of herself as cisfem, she just hides it to avoid being turned into a premature baby-maker, especially since she doesn't see herself as ever wanting to become a mom.

My point is, it's perfectly fine to use five pages to world-build and establish the Status Quo.... for a novel. On the other hand, it's probably not a good sign for my "short story" to be five pages in, and my protag has only woken up, made her bed, and headed off to collect some eggs for breakfast.

In the end, I simply filed Artie's story away for "maybe a novel someday." Although I'm terrible with speculative fiction, so who knows if I'll ever circle back to it. I mean, it's "bad" enough that I'm attempting to write a futuristic pseudo-cyberpunk story for Glitches. I just don't know enough about science and natural human progress/societal evolution to properly write speculative fiction; not without extensive research, at least....

Yay... I'm so good at that....

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With my main attempt at coming up with an original dystopian YA-style story flopping, I tried figuring out another. One that could fit better into a short-format. So I hopped onto Google and searched for "dystopian writing prompts" and scanned, and scanned, and scanned. I must have gone through over 200 prompt ideas. I was starting to see multiple websites pitching the same prompt idea. I don't know who originated most of them, but a LOT of websites would post verbatim without citing each other, so... weeding through those prompt ideas was fun.

When nothing really sparking any inspiration, I tried hitting up good old Tumblr. I usually see some sort of even mock dystopia writing prompt there. For instance, a few weeks ago I saw one joking about a Divergent-style society where everyone takes The Test at a certain age - like 14 or so - and the result of The Test determines what sect the person belonged in. What was the suggested Test? Eating cilantro in front of the whole city, and letting everyone know your thoughts.

I don't think I'd be able to come up with a short story based on that, but stuff like that ends up on my Tumblr dash all the time. Along with those Tumblr stories where someone writes up a story outline Fairytale style, where the main plot beats are explained, and a wayward line of dialog or two sneaks in, but it's also read/told in less than 10 minutes. If I could find one of THOSE, perhaps I could expand upon it.

I spent about six or so hours - off and on - sifting through Google hits and Tumblr posts. I even tried searching for dystopian short stories I could read online in order to get a better feel of the overall structure.

In the end, I came up empty. I've been thinking about this dystopian short story "challenge" - as it has become - all week. Still got nothing. So, I think I need to wave the white flag and ask Cy for more help on the subject.

Normally, I'd say "well, there goes that idea. At least I wished him a happy birthday, that counts, right?" and move on. HOWEVER, this happened to have been Ron's 30th birthday, so I wanted to put in the effort to make him something special to celebrate, and to let him know how much he still means to me even though we don't really chat much.

I just.... I would feel like a one-trick-pony if I wrote him yet ANOTHER Devon-centric story, but I just might have to cave. We'll see. I'm kind of determined now to write him SOMETHING, even if it ends up becoming a weird super-late-birthday/early-Christmas gift by the time I'm done.....

So, yeah. That's been my struggle this week. A great high of "I got Chibi's story done and posted right after the day switched to her birthday, and she loved it! yay!" to the low of "well... shucks... what the heck am I going to do to celebrate Ron hitting his 30s?"


Also, as a side tangent, I spent most of last night sifting through Amazon for potential steampunk costume items for Halloween this year. Hubby found some nice things after going years of not finding anything large enough for him in brick-and-mortar stores. He had a few things also picked out for me a few weeks back, but none of them would have fit, so we hit up a Spirit Halloween store on Saturday.... and... still nothing fit me... so back to Amazon last night.

Aaaaaand.... holy smokes do I need to get back in shape... or at least.... A shape? Because most of the skirts cap out at 35" (~89cm) around, and I'm roughly 44" (~112cm) .... Also, to fit my 44" waist and 50" (~127cm) hips, I'd need something like 7XL corsets.... which fit a 52" (~132cm) bust size... and I'm only 44"....

Nothing like being too large to fit into 6XL costumes to make you feel good about yourself.

I was able to find an assortment of options - after scouring Amazon for about... how long is an American football game? Four hours or so? - and I'll have to see if I can narrow them down into a nice costume without breaking the bank. But still... not cool. I know I'm overweight, but there needs to be some nice costumes for us plus-sized people too, ya know! The fact that this is Hubby's first Halloween costume pretty much since I've known him? And I've been having major costume-finding struggles after gaining weight?

FATTIES LIKE HALLOWEEN TOO, YA KNOW!!!!!

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*ahem*

Anyway, I should probably get to figuring out that story for Ron. As well as figure out what I want to read at group tonight. And I still have to do my usual Tuesday Errands Runaround... so I should probably get started on all of that.

Until next week!

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Chatting With My Zan

Heeeeeeey, guess what?

It's raining again....

Haruhi Suzumiya from
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
created by Nagaru Tanigawa 

I think we had a grand total of four hours of sunshine this whole week. I was outside washing down my porch furniture during some of it... and then promptly got pummeled by rain out of nowhere. It was sunny. There was a distant thunderclap. Rain came splashing at me. The worst part is that I have a covered porch, and I was pressed up against the outer wall of my apartment. Under normal circumstances, I could enjoy the energy being outside in a sun-shower gives me, but the winds were so bad I was STILL getting drenched. Worst yet was that I had my laptop outside with me so I could watch YouTube videos while I was cleaning, so I had to quickly scoop that up and sprint inside before it got too wet.

Yaaaay.... Raaaaain....

My one coworker says her yard might as well be a swamp or a moat at this point, and, frankly, I believe her. It's getting quite pathetic out there...

It's getting quite pathetic in here as well...

Yet another week where I didn't really do much of anything. Not a single word was added to "One and the Same," nor have I worked on yet ANOTHER side project.

Well... almost....

Friday I was quite surprised to see someone's name in my Facebook messenger list. Someone who either hasn't been on FB in a while, or at least hasn't been on the same time I have been in MONTHS.

This guy:

The Wonder Twins, as designed by Hanna-Barbera

Yup, I was able to chat with my Wonder Twin Ronoxym, and he reminded me that, just like Jayna, I truly do need my Zan in my life. It's great to just sit and chat with him. We were actually on messenger together for HOURS on Friday, which was FANTASTIC after months of radio silence.

Stupid adulting...


It was just great to be goofy with him, and to vent to him, let him vent to me, catch up on what's going on in each of our lives, and just go on and on and on about both "Game of Thrones" and "Avengers: Endgame."

Among all of that chatting, three things happened.

One: We jointly came up with a really cool fanfic concept for the MCU, which nagged at me the rest of the day, so I ended up writing up the rough concept outline on Tumblr. It has a major Endgame spoiler built into the concept, so be warned if you wish to check it out.

For those who want to know, but don't feel like reading the whole thing:

The long and short of the story is that Senior Citizen Steve Rogers, going by an alias now, befriends Young Phil Coulson in the 70s or 80s. Steve has aged and changed enough that Phil doesn't know he's talking to THE Captain America, and so this is a way for Steve to fix at least one regret in life: never giving Coulson a chance to befriend his hero. The two become close, with Steve and Peggy becoming surrogate grandparents to Phil, and it is actually Steve himself who inadvertently made Phil such a Cap fanboy. On top of that, it was Peggy who encouraged Phil to join SHIELD in the first place. Steve knew it would lead to Coulson's death, but he couldn't chance preventing Coulson from joining, and potentially never giving the Avengers a reason to unite to defend NYC in the first place. There's a lot more within the skeleton outline I came up with, but that was the meat and potatoes of it....

Anyway, I will most likely not take the time to actually write the thing more than I just did, so if anyone out there is inspired, you're welcome to the concept, just please send me a link once you're done, and a credit for the plot bunny would be nice. Not sure who would see it though, since the Tumblr post hasn't really had much love. The only one who seemed to have seen it was my buddy Skarabrae-stone, but still, the idea is out of my head, and the Plot Bunny has joined its brethren on my Plunny farm. That's enough for now.

Which brings me to the second thing that happened.

Two: I once again lamented my unintentional abduction of his Willow/Devon short story - meant to be only about 5 pages long, at most - which resulted in it being about TWENTY-EIGHT pages long, and sitting in WIP-limbo for almost exactly 4 years.... I admitted I went a bit overboard with the concept. I then expressed my hope that the editing skills and overall story crafting skills I honed slightly since I started work on “Peeping Tomcat” would be enough for me to re-focus "Please, Let Me Explain". This whole editing project is next up on my list once OatS is done.

As I discussed my need to go back and edit PLME so we could get back to writing and finishing it, I also acknowledged that I desperately needed to whittle PLME back down from the monstrosity I created.

To which Ron replied with: "No you don't. It'll be long as hell, and beautiful as all get out."

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Ron, you are a beautiful human being!

Those two, simple sentences killed a nagging paranoia that had been in my head for the past 4 years: I took over Ron's story, bloated it way past his initial concept, and now it's so overwhelming he can't/won't work on it, which means I'm responsible for killing his muse/inspiration for this story, and he probably never wants to collab with me ever again because I just bulldoze over my fellow-creator.
Now, not to say any of that is NOT true, to some degree, but the fact that he seems to genuinely enjoy the way the story has gone is a MAJOR weight off my heart. He hasn't continued working on the story because he genuinely has been too busy to think about it, not because he's mad at me or because I killed his muse or what-have-you.

This revelation led me to my third thing.

Three: My overall desire to work on writing projects again jumpstarted.

I opened up PLME again on Saturday, and just sorta skimmed through it. It wasn't as painful a read as I thought it would be, so yay us. Our writing wasn't cringingly bad 4yrs ago! Whoo! It DOES need polishing though, and I more-or-less know how to do that, so it is evident that I DID improve on my skills over the past handful of years, so that's also encouraging. Yay yet again!

I didn't actually start on editing anything, or take notes - aside from mental ones - on where to tighten or adjust, but that initial "let's take a look at this thing for the first time in years" happened, and that's kind of a big step.

Hacker Boy Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

I actually had a DRIVE to do something this week. It didn't really amount to much, but it did start up the gears again. I was motivated to read through PLME so I could get re-acquainted with the story. I wanted to bring up the Devon and Trish fight scene as well so I could finish that rework too. As well as maybe FINALLY come up with a title for the dang project!

I wanted to work on "Glitches" a bit more too, and even thought through some more world-build as I flipped through writing advice and resources on Tumblr.

OH! That reminds me! Random side note: I have a writing-focused blog on Tumblr now. The blog you are currently reading will always be where I talk about how my week went in the world of writing, as well as my over-all writing process and writing progress. It will be where I talk about my struggles of a writer, the joys of the faves and reviews, and promote my latest writing projects. The Rogue's Scribe will always be my main "writing blog." However, I have nearly 1650 Tumblr posts just chilling in my drafts folder to eventually sift through and reblog. At least half of those posts are writing related, but always felt weird to put on my main blog for whatever reason, even though it's a hodge-podge mess anyway. Probably because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to re-find the writing related posts when I need them again.

Anyway, for MONTHS now I wanted to do up a writing-centric Tumblr, and the thing that kept stalling this goal was... you know it... say it with me now...

I couldn't come up with a title for the blog. Which also meant I couldn't think of a handle for it. But I'll get back to this in a moment. For now, let's stay focused on the inspiration sprung from my convo with Ron.

So, still dealing with Happening Number Three: drive to edit. I wanted to work on PLME again. I wanted to rework the fight scene between Devon and Trish. Both stories wanted me to work on Glitches as a whole again. Part of me even wanted to work on world-building Gyateara a bit more. I just had this desire to Create on Saturday.

Sadly, it ended up not really amounting to anything, as I already mentioned, but it was the first time I had the DRIVE to even attempt anything writing-related pretty much all month - this blog not withstanding.

Sunday, that drive was still there, thankfully. So I cracked open my netbook at work for the first time this month, with every intention of writing another scene for OatS. I got a bit side-tracked though. Mainly because I wasn't sure whose chapter the scene should be yet again. I'm STILL having issues with figuring out the final chapter, and writing it in third person to test the waters isn't helping, so I wasn't sure if I should bother with the same tactic with this new scene I've been brainstorming for a little while now.

So I did the only other logical thing: I worked on yet ANOTHER outline for the story. This time I'm breaking down the overall plot into potential chapters, and then designating them to a narrator: Marinette or Adrien. I'm trying really hard to bounce back and forth between them: odd-numbered chapters are narrated by Marinette, and even chapters are Adrien's. With this concept I should be able to see whose turn it's supposed to be when I get to the scene I'm thinking of, as well as see if I need to actually shift things around a little so the chapter can actually be narrated by the other character. It helps me also see their respective character arcs this way.

I didn't get terribly TOO far with the outline before my computer died on me, and I was busy all day yesterday, so I couldn't get back into the outline, but it was still progress.

Teeny, tiny, barely anything, progress, but it's still more than I've done all month, and a step in the right direction. I got my foot through the proverbial door, and that initial push to write shouldn't be so hard anymore.

Plus, between the massive highs and lows of the latest Game of Thrones season, and the literally debatable plot-holes in "Avengers: Endgame," I've been talking about writing in general with a LOT of people lately: Ska, Ron, and Hubby, to name just a few. Talking about what we loved and what we hated with each episode or movie really brings up the questions of "what makes a good story? What is good storytelling? Are character arcs we're watching fulfilling, and why or why not? Is it a great subversion of writing in general if those character arcs don't feel complete? Was plot sacrificed for character growth? Was it the other way around?" There are TONS of storytelling and writing questions these stories present, and the (mostly civil) discord it's causing is FANTASTIC.

Love the episodes, hate them, thought Endgame was the perfect close, or believe the Russo Brothers need to re-learn how to write a solid script; regardless of where you are on the spectrum of feelings with regards to these bits of media, the overall discussion that comes out is awesome. And, frankly, Endgame left a LOT open - on purpose or no - for fantheories and fanfics to develop. Which means awesome content for me to devour.

If nothing else, these fandoms are erupting with their own creatives: fanart, fancomics, fanfiction, and/or fantheories. And these creatives are being used to either correct perceived wrongs in the canon presented in these conclusions to epic tales, or they are expanding upon concepts presented, or they're theorizing on how the canon could make sense.

People are being overly critical with the stories they're consuming, which is a bit terrifying as a writer, but at the same time it is invigorating to see so much discussion about storytelling surrounding me. It helps me see the pitfalls other storytellers are tripping into, so it's easier for me to avoid them in my own works.

Also, I'm in those discussions as well. I'm also being analytical and going into stories with a critical eye. I have my own criticisms for Endgame and Game of Thrones, as well as a few of the anime series that Hubby and I are watching, and even some of the fanfiction I've read this past week.

I won't go into details here as to what pulled me out of the fanfics, because I don't wish to shine a bad light on otherwise beautiful stories. It did help me understand what pulls me out of stories, though, and so I hope it will therefore help me avoid the same pitfalls in my own writing.

Which, I guess, brings me back to that writing tumblr... or... wriblr I believe they're called? Or something like that???

Along with studying the writing trip-ups of other stories, I've also been going through the writing advice I've had saved in my Tumblr drafts section. Mostly so I could finally empty out the drafts by reblogging them to my writing-centric Tumblr.

As I mentioned above, I've wanted to do this for MONTHS - at least since November - but stalled out by not coming up with a good title and/or handle for the new blog. I couldn't use LycoRogue, since that was attached to my main blog: Inside the Tree Trunk

You know, I don't recall if I ever explained the name of the blog. Basically, it's a nod to a D&D campaign Hubby briefly ran. My character Pamela Sheppard - going by the stage name Arianna Snow - had unintentionally charmed a nymph, who instantly became smitten with Arianna. The nymph was also a high priestess for her goddess, and since Arianna wasn't really of a faith at the time, she just sort of shrugged and told the nymph "Yeah, I'll follow your goddess, I guess." The weird pseudo-courtship the two had led the goddess to favor Arianna, and gift her with a magical tree. It grew next to the sacred pool the nymph watched over, and if Arianna knocked on the tree trunk it would open up into an endless trove for anything Arianna wished to hide within it.

So, since my main Tumblr blog is also an endless trove for anything I find value in and wish to save, I figured "Meh, this is my own magical tree trunk." Thus the name...

AAAAAAANYWAY, as I was saying, I couldn't use LycoRogue as my handle. I knew I wanted to somehow include my latest writing mantra - just get the shit on paper; dare to be bad - within the writing blog. I tried naming the blog itself Get The Shit On Paper or Dare to be Bad, but I couldn't use either phrase as my handle; they were already used. Not thinking of alternative names that I enjoyed, I gave up for months.

However, I guess also thanks to my convo with Ron, I finally went "Ya know what? Let's try one last attempt at that handle." This time I changed tenses slightly: Getting Shit On Paper. It's a bit crude, but I also kind of loved it, so that became my handle for my writing blog on Tumblr.

The blog name itself needs some work, but it gets the point across for right now: The Writer's Random Resource Guide, managed by @gettingshitonpaper.

There isn't much up quite yet. I need to find the time to go through all of those drafts - of which, again, there are over 1600! - and start setting up a queue of them. Still, there's SOMETHING up on it right now, so feel free to hit it up if you're on Tumblr and would like a generic resource blog.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to ride this wave while it's active, and work on some of my writing.

Catch ya next week!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

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.