Showing posts with label chubbyunicornmama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chubbyunicornmama. 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!
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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....

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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.
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Oh, yeah, and also reading. There was a lot of reading this week too.
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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.
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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!
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And to think, I get to do this for a solid MONTH in 16 days....
Hacker Girl
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!
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Keep an eye out for a possible ORIGINAL STORY from me next week. Take care, guys.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

We'll Just Ignore That Week

Yup, I'm trying again.

Wow... I just... I completely missed last week! Sorry, folks! Is that the first time this year? I think it was the first time this year... It's just... that week really got away from me. It's been... hectic....
Two weeks ago, I still had HUNDREDS of pages to read in "Bitterblue" by Kristin Cashore before it has to go back to the library today. I had to work on the research portion of my "Meet Lia" mini-series for my on-going "Meet My OCs" project. I had to figure out my finances so I could pay for my portion of the car repairs. I had to organize my house, go to Zumba, prep for my trip down to visit my mother, and write a new and completed work of fiction for the month.

I... don't think I organized my time well.

First and foremost, I was able to get my finances all sorted out so I had enough to pay my portion of the collision repair bill. So check out how pretty my car is again!
It feels fantastic to drive my own car again after almost exactly a month! I did have a bit of a hiccup right out of the gate though, since my car has power steering to the point where I can use the heel of one hand to turn the steering wheel, whereas the Miata we had been borrowing did NOT have power steering. I had to muscle that thing around curves all the time, especially at slower speeds. When Hubby's friend told us "it could take a turn at 30mph no problem" I didn't realize he meant "it kinda NEEDS to go that fast in order for you to move the wheel at all."
Anyway, when I got my car back I forgot to take into consideration that I didn't need to do arm exercises before making a turn, and so I nearly over-turned and ran into a ditch pulling out of the collision center's parking lot! I did it a second time closer to my homee when I nearly steered right into the curb. Thankfully, I got the rhythm of my car after those two hiccups, and I was able to correct fast enough to stay in my lane of the road both times.

THAT would have been fun: leave collision center; wreck car all over again 2min out.

Anyway, that was Friday, 6/21. Wednesday, 6/19 - the day after my last blog post - I couldn't do anything writing or reading wise at work as I ran around changing sales tags all day; then Zumba and after-Zumba walk. Then I showered, ate, and spent SOME time with Hubby, so not much writing to be had even after work. Thursday was work again, and then Omnibladestrike's weekly visit. I can't recall at this time what I did at work, but if I had downtime, I was probably playing catch-up on my reading.

Friday, along with "pick up my car finally!" was also catch-up day for reading, for cleaning, for laundry, and for writing. I knew I wasn't going to really have time to do much outside of socializing while visiting Mom this past weekend, so I needed as much writing done as possible before I headed down on the 28th. That meant less than a week to work on "Meet Lia," my monthly fiction writing, and my blog since the 21st was also my last day off before my trip.

It was a LOT to do... and I do NOT know how to manage my time. I was able to get about half-done with everything before I panicked about how little time I had left and switched to a different project. Leaving them all incomplete instead of having at least ONE completed task and leave one or two not started...

Not a real confidence booster before heading into July's Camp NaNoWriMo. A trend that followed me into the new month as I only managed about 100 words last night.

What's worse is that, much like in May, I had no clue what to even write for my monthly completed piece of fiction. I had been so focused on the "Meet Willow" and "Meet Lia" posts that I wasn't thinking of any new content. I debated for the briefest of moments to write something with them, but I just couldn't think of what.

Then I spent Monday evening/Tuesday morning chatting with ChibiSunnie. We talked about a whole slew of things, but one of the topics that stuck with me was a bit about Fruits Basket. Specifically, she was telling me about the latest manga for the series called Fruits Basket Another. It's basically Boruto or X-Future. Namely, it continues the story by following the children of the original cast of characters. It's extremely short compared to the original manga series - only about 12 chapters/3 volumes long - and just concluded after 4yrs.

Anyway, the point is, much like the original Fruits Basket, apparently the parents don't make much of an appearance as the story focuses more on the high schoolers. Kind of sad, really, since it would be great to see 30-something, 40-something, and 50-something versions of the original cast. The real reason we were talking about this series though, aside from it simply being more Fruits Basket, is that the children of the three main characters of the show are also the main characters of this new manga series. Between the main cast briefly appearing here and there in the series centering around their children, and the flash-forward/epilogue of the original Fruits Basket, you get a glimpse into Tohru's love life and how happy a life she maintains for the rest of her days.

For those who want to get into the series, or have just started it, I don't want to give away who Tohru ends up with, but Chibi and I talked about a distinct and slightly odd way he shows her affection, and I hoped it continued into their adulthood. I threw out a bunch of headcanon scenes of when, how, and why he'd show her affection that way, and Chibi ate it up. Which, of course, encouraged me to keep thinking about them.

THIS WAS IT! This was the story I was going to tell for June! Now, the title alone for the story is probably a Tohru Endgame spoiler, so if you DO want to go into Fruits Basket spoiler-free, please skip on ahead a bit...
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Everyone who wanted to avoid spoilers has passed by? You guys either know the endgame or don't care? Alright, so I was specifically wondering about that little head bonk Kyo does to Tohru.


I came up with scenarios of him still doing that to refocus her throughout their life together, and I just HAD to write them out; they were too cute not to!

Thus "Love Taps" came into being, and was published on Wednesday, June 26th.

"Love Taps"
SUMMARY: Kyo’s little head bonks carry more meaning and more love than anyone could ever truly know. Anyone besides maybe Tohru, who reflects on an entire lifetime of receiving the loving raps on the noggin.

One-shot

WORD COUNT: 2952
RATING: General Audiences
Yeah! I posted the full story on Tumblr too! The story follows Kyo and Tohru - Kyohru - until they are 73, so it does also include spoilers for Fruits Basket Another; whatever I could grab from the wikis, spoiling myself be damned! So keep that in mind if you want to give my one-shot a read but haven't had a chance to read the newest manga and/or the "Three Musketeers Arc" companion stories. Now, TMA centers around Shigure, Hatori, and Ayame, but, from what I gathered via the wiki, there are some flash forwards in this arc that also spoils bits of Fruits Basket Another. So... fair warning... because I included as much as possible in "Love Taps" to make it canon compatible.
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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

The key thing to really take away from this fiction piece, whether or not you read it, is how much Chibi helped inspire me. We always pop out so many plot bunnies when we talk, and it was fun and refreshing to actually take one of those bunnies to maturity. She also greatly encouraged me by commenting about how perfect the headcanons were and how much she wished the manga creator Natsuki Takaya would actually draw them out to make them canon.

Well, Chibi, they'll be canon to us!

As I was publishing them, I thought it was fitting to have this story be dedicated to her. I haven't gifted Chibi a story in years, and she was beyond due for another one.

It was also nice to switch up fandoms for a few minutes. I flew through this story after work on Tuesday, June 25th. More on this later. For the quick recap, I gave Hubby a heads up, and squirreled myself away on the front porch to soak in my daily sunshine while I wrote. I then finished it up in the house, because my laptop was dying, and sent the first draft to Chibi late that night. I warned her that my eyes were glazing over towards the end, so please ignore the roughness of it. She seemed to enjoy seeing the headcanons written out.

The next day she saw that the edited version was published as a dedication to her, which was apparently a bit of a surprise. She completely gushed on my Facebook promotion for it, gushed on her reblog of my posting to Tumblr, and gushed in her review on AO3. She's just adorable! I mean, look at these!
ON FACEBOOK:
Aaaahhhhhh you're so sweet to dedicate this story to me and I LOVE IT SO MUCH IT'S SO ADORABLE AND SWEET EEEEEEEEEE THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D I left a proper review up on A03, but eeeeeee thank you this made me so happy to read and I love that you got inspired from our convo!! ^_^ <3 Aaahhhhhh my heart is all full of the fluff from this! :D <3
~~~ Followed by 3 different love-themed FB stickers ~~~

ON TUMBLR:
I already squeed on facebook and A03 but EEEEEEEEEE I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH IT’S SO SWEET AND FLUFFY AND MAKES ME SO HAPPY!!!! :D :D :D :D Thank you so much for dedicating it to me! ^_^ *sends you all the hugs* :D
~~~ Followed by 7 different Fruits Basket anime hug screen caps ~~~

AND THE AO3 REVIEW ITSELF:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THIS WAS SO SWEET AND FLUFFY AND ADORABLE AND I LOVE IT SO SO SO SO SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!! :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D Aaahhhhhh and you dedicated it to me, that's so incredibly nice of you, THANK YOU!!! ^_^ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 This is exactly how I imagined those scenes when we were talking about all of this last week and I'm so happy that convo inspired plot bunnies that you loved enough to bring to life in this story!! :D Your writing is lovely as always and I can absolutely picture this whole story as a canon future for them!! :D Aahhhh and it was so fluffy and sweet it made me tear up a bit at how cute and happy and wonderful their life is together! ^_^ <3 Thank you for writing this story, it absolutely brightened my whole week!!! ^_^ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
So... I guess I did good?


Chibi wasn't the only person to give me some love for this story though. Now, I derped up and didn't jot down the 24hr stats like I normally would, but here's where I am as of this writing:
FFN: 94 views, 5 faves, and 2 reviews
AO3: 167 hits, 14 kudos, 1 bookmark, and Chibi's comment
DA: 10 views and 1 fave

Total Results: 271 views, 20 faves, 1 bookmark, and 3 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 12 notes; 9 likes and 3 reblogs

FFN reviews:
  1. *squee* I get to follow you to a new fandom! HOORAY! I really hope [spoiler; content removed] keep going, too!
  2. This was so sweet, showing all the different meanings behind [spoiler; content removed] over the span of various special moments throughout their life, it was just perfect. Admittedly, I didn't remember [spoiler; content removed] in the manga (though truth be told it's been a long time since I've read it), so when he first did it in the new anime series my heart all but exploded in joy. I'm still such a fangirl for this series and for [spoiler; content removed] in particular haha. Anyway, lovely writing, absolutely adorable and heartwarming. Great work!
One of the reblogs off Tumblr was a Fruits Basket fanblog by fruits-basket2019, and their tags included "#this was so cuteeee" So.. yay!

fanfictionrecommendations-com found me again and once more liked one of my stories. It will be interesting to see if any of them ever show up on their site.... Perhaps I should check in on that to see if any of my fandoms were showcased in the past few months.

Anyway, I know the above stats are fairly small compared to the week-long stats I get on my ML stories, especially when one considers how popular Fruits Basket is right now. However, I AM talking post-endgame for Furuba, and I do warn that it contains spoilers for FBA, so perhaps a lot of fans are steering away to avoid spoilers? Perhaps there are those who aren't fans of the canon endgame pairing that are also avoiding the story? Or perhaps Furuba fanfiction isn't as popular as ML fanfics? Also, new Furuba episodes come out on Fridays, so maybe no one is looking for fanfiction on Wednesdays or Thursdays?

Regardless of the reasoning, the actual ratio of kudos/likes/reviews to views seems to be smaller than with ML, which means when someone reads this story they have a higher percentage of reacting to it - by way of likes/kudos/bookmarks/follows/reviews/etc - than my ML readers. I also remember having roughly 20 views on FFN within the first 24hrs, and around 80 hits on AO3. I think I also had something like 5 likes and the 3 reblogs on Tumblr within those first 24hrs. The fave on DA was within the first couple of hours after publishing. That's exciting, right?

Heck, that first review I shared a few paragraphs up? The one about following me into a new fandom? That's from faithful reader ChubbyUnicornMama. They've been following me since I published "Woven Heartstrings" for Taurus Pixie. My heart swelled a touch to see that they did indeed read something non-Miraculous related. Apparently they have that much faith in my writing that they would read it, even if it's outside of their current fandom. Now, they DO know the story behind Fruits Basket, so they didn't go in cold or anything, but still, it was sweet that they had that faith. I then got a bit of a chuckle when I realized the review went up barely 30minutes after I published the story! Unicorn must have instantly gone to read after getting the alert!
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I feel so loved right now! I can't even express it properly. So, thank you, ChubbyUnicornMama for the love, and thank you, ChibiSunnie, for all the gushing. EEEEEE.
For everyone else who read, liked, left kudos, reblogged, faved, and/or bookmarked my story? Thank you as well for taking time with my little experimental journey into the Fruits Basket world for a minute.

Anyway, getting back on track! I told you about TWO weeks ago, but what about LAST week? Why did I miss my update? How did my Furuba story affect that?

Well, as I mentioned towards the top, Friday, 6/21, was the only day off I had that week so I could take this past weekend to visit my mom and sister. That meant I didn't have the 4+ hours first thing Tuesday morning that I normally take to write up these posts and edit them. I was at work, and I just couldn't work on my post like I wanted.

I MEANT to work on my blog post Monday night so it was all queued up for Tuesday at noon, but I was tired from running around trying to get things sorted the previous day. I also had my last Zumba class before the instructor went on a week-long vacation, which meant I really couldn't afford to skip it. I'm glad I didn't for more than exercise/health reasons. It was a nice stress reliever, even if the stress piled back on after taking a nearly 2hr break from everything, but more importantly, my niece joined me and my sister-in-law. School got out early as the school year came to a close, and so my niece spent most of the day with her mom. My sister-in-law didn't have enough time to do a sort of hand-off to her husband before Zumba, so Niece came with! She sat in the corner and watched us, but it was still fun to have her there and then walk with them after class was done.

Point is, between work - where I was actually kept fairly hoppin' - Zumba, post-Zumba walk, showering, dinner, picking Hubby up from work, and spending time with him... I ran out of time to write up my blog post so it was set to go last Tuesday. I mean, late in the day I had the chance to work on my blog post, but instead I watched the latest Fruits Basket - since I ran out of time to do so over the weekend - and then chatted with ChibiSunnie about it. When it was after 1am, I realized that I NEEDED to go to bed. No blog pre-write time.
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I then figured I could use my downtime at work to write up the post so I could just publish it late when I got home. Noooope. Yet again I was actually kept fairly occupied at work, and I still needed to make sure I didn't fall behind on my reading, so my downtime was spent working on that. On top of that, the discussions Chibi and I had the night before kept poking at me. I knew that I wanted to write them up for my monthly fiction project.

The day spun out of control fairly quickly for me as my head swam between the reading to get "Bitterblue" done before it was due back at the library, working on my "Meet Lia" posts for my Sunday deadline, writing up my Furuba fanfic before heading down to my mom's on the 28th, and playing catch-up to write my blog post... I also had a writing date set up with Omni, which largely means either talking about both of our projects - something I didn't need on my end - or focusing solely on his story to help him out. Whether or not we focused on Omni, it meant I wasn't writing anything myself. I also needed to fold laundry and start packing for our trip, and cleaning the house... I couldn't mentally map out how to find the time for everything!

Frazzled, I asked Omni for a raincheck, and we agreed to spend an hour or two of our Thursday meet-up instead to chat about his story. Having some time freed up, I then messaged Hubby to tell him he shouldn't expect to see me much that day as I HAD to get writing done. Once I got home, I quickly changed out of my work clothes, then squirreled myself away on the front porch.

I should have instantly started on my blog post. However, I knew I wanted to have SOMETHING to talk about in my post, completely forgetting that I originally wanted to use an uneventful writing week to finally talk about my thoughts on "Graceling."  So, I prioritized writing my fiction over getting my blog post done before Tuesday's end. That way I could share my story with you fine folks in that week's blog post.

As I mentioned above, writing the story kept nearly all night to do, mostly because of the research I had to do to figure out Tohru's adult life. Eyes glazing over, I shared the story with Chibi, then passed out knowing I didn't even have the post written up to publish first thing Wednesday morning.

Wednesday was spent editing the story, more reading, and trying to mentally block out my co-worker's incessant whining about how bored she was since we barely had any customers. I managed to get the story published between 2pm and 3pm, and I then focused on "Meet Lia" instead of my blog post... because I can't prioritize properly....

Honestly? I can't recall what I did Wednesday evening instead of working on my blog post. Especially since I didn't have Zumba. I think I tried to get a head start on my reading? Did I get suckered into my husband's new JRPG? I can't recall, and I was too frantic to remember to do my time audits.

Something I'm correcting this week. I already have yesterday filled in, and I'm up to the minute on today's audit thus far. I also remembered to mark the monthly calendar with what writing I was working on. I'm striving to do better with this custom-made planner I printed.

Anyway, the point is I STILL didn't have the blog done Wednesday evening. So that was my goal while at work on Thursday. I didn't get very far. I was busy early in the morning, and then I did more reading and caught up on my mobile games over lunch... and a touch beyond. I didn't get started on my blog post until around 1pm, so close to 24hrs after my Furuba story published. I worked on the stats, dropping them into a blog draft as I went. However, figuring out how to format Chibi's squees so I could keep those emoticons in a blockquote... it was more exhausting and took up more time than I gave it credit when I went in to the task.

Before I knew it, the work day passed me by, I didn't have all the stats properly logged, especially when they were still updating, and I hadn't written much of anything for the blog outside of the stats and reviews. When I got home, Omni was already here, and Hubby was showing off his new JRPG video game. As agreed, Hubby continued playing his game while Omni and I chatted about his story for about an hour or two. Then Hubby made us all soft-shell tacos, and we switched gears.

I STILL needed to finish folding laundry and pack for the trip, so I begged Omni to bring his copy of the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" movie. He had wanted us to watch it with him for nearly a year now, and I couldn't watch our normal subtitled anime. I needed to focus on something other than the TV, and having a show with English audio meant I could still follow the plot without gluing my eyes to the TV the whole time.

We watched the movie. I folded laundry and packed. We chatted a bit more. I had Omni watch the next Fruits Basket episode in my re-watch because I didn't need to see the TV to know what was going on anymore. I think Omni and I are now up to episode 5? I feel like the Culture Festival is the next episode for us to watch this week, so... whichever episode that is.

Anyway, with the socializing, folding, and packing, I had no time to go back to finish my blog. "Okay," I told myself "Wake up super early Friday morning to work on it then!" Nope. I mean, I still woke up early for me - about 6:30am - but I spent that time showering, shaving, finishing the packing, getting breakfast ready, and whatever else I needed to get sorted before the trip. I ran out of time to work on the blog post or the "Meet Lia" posts before Hubby and I had to leave. But, hey, we actually left for my mom's on time. That's kind of a first. My sister even joked that it might snow!

Instead, we just got caught in highway construction traffic, and got lost when I tried to self-detour... so we got to my mom's an hour later than intended. You win some you lose some?

Throughout the weekend, I DID have some downtime at my mom's here and there, but I was so drained at that time I didn't have the energy to write anything. I barely had the energy to even unpack my laptop. I think I used it for a grand total of about 20min the whole weekend. At that point I figured it was too late to worry about the "Meet Lia" posts, and it wasn't worth trying to get last week's blog post up. I waved the white flag and submitted to missing my first week of the year.

I'll have to write up a post focused solely on my thoughts about "Graceling" and "Bitterblue", and then double-post one of these weeks to make it up.

When I got back home Sunday evening I meant to take the time to work on publishing the "Meet Lia" posts, and I even hid in the bedroom to do just that. Except I passed out a few minutes in....
Hacker Boy Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.
So, with only the overview/background post figured out, I FINALLY published the first "Meet Lia" post last night. I already got a like from both Skarabrae-stone and ChibiSunnie, as well as Chibi confessing that Lia is her favorite of my OCs. Honestly? Since Lia is basically just me with most of my friends - whereas Willow is me with Hubby, Trish is Angry Lyco, Jolene is AU Lyco, and Amara is just Emo Girl - I get why she might take a shine to her.


But this post is beyond epic as I tried to catch up on TWO crazy weeks!
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I STILL need to read 126 pages before writing group at 6pm tonight so I can return "Bitterblue" and I need to work on my Camp NaNo project - which I ran out of time to fully talk about, but I AM working on "One and the Same" again; hopefully third time's the charm. I have to work on more "Meet Lia" posts, and the blog post to make up for missing last week. I'm off to a great start with this epic post publishing two hours late.... Seems I'm not getting a break until August.
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