A Grand Return

 Oh, dear Lord! It's been nearly a month since I was last able to write a blog post. Let's see if I even remember how. 

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

First and foremost, I have missed this blog and I have missed you, dear readers, so much. I nearly cried when I realized I FINALLY had a Tuesday off and could work on this again. It's just been a rough month with this continued kooky work schedule, throwing my whole work/life balance all sorts of out-of-whack. Writing truly is in my blood, and while I've always known I'm just not myself if I'm not writing, I don't think I've fully realized how much this blog and my weekly updates - even if I'm seemingly talking about nothing - have truly meant to me as well. And hoo-boy do I have a lot to catch up on!

While this is the most recent of things, I figured talking about getting unexpected Feels about something seemingly done for fun - such as writing these blog posts - is a good transition to also chat about how I've spent my last couple of days.

Namely, what I've downloaded over the weekend:

I downloaded the original Newgrounds Game Jam 2015 version
as well as the full Wrong Dimension version

So, I was vaguely aware of a simple, free, 15-min or so game titled There Is No Game in which the premise is that the game's programming is actively trying to convince you that what you're running isn't actually a game, and tries to prevent you from doing any sort of playing in said non-game. It was a cool concept, and I MIIIIIIIGHT have tried it out on Newgrounds at some point??? But it's been ages since I've gone onto that site, so I couldn't really remember.

Then I saw MatPat play the first chapter of the full game There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension on GTLive last week, and I was intrigued.

Yes, I know there are people out there that take issue with MatPat, and I do see some shades of arrogance in his presentation across all four of his channels - Game Theory, Film Theory, GTLive, and now Food Theory - but the overall content is still entertaining, so... meh. Point is, I saw him playing this game, thought it looked fun, I had some spare cash, and the game cost less than $20, so I treated myself this weekend.

I also treated myself to this, but I'll get to that in a bit.

I have become one of the herd, and I am not ashamed.

So, back to TING:WD and how that relates back to my earlier statement about caring for things unexpectedly.

The premise of this extended game by Draw Me A Pixel is exactly like the Jam Session one: you start up the program and said program, via voice over, tries to convince you that there is in fact no game and you should probably close the program down. Through a series of various mouse click interactions - that is literally the only game mechanic: interact via your mouse - you work your way through puzzles. The game is super meta and has a lot of great tongue-in-cheek, satirical commentary on the gaming industry. The companionship you get from the program - simply called Game - is fantastic as "he" berates and teases you, but also begs you for help as the "non-game" continues. There are six chapters and an epilogue to work your way through, and as you progress an actual story begins to unfold. By the end of the second chapter I was intrigued, by the end of the third chapter I was emotionally invested, by the end of the fourth chapter I could not stop until I got to the conclusion.

THIS DANG (NON-)GAME HAD ME TEARING UP AND LEGIT GASPING AT VARIOUS STORY TWISTS! Like, I won't tell you really anything about the game because I don't want to ruin it for you, but I highly suggest finding a way of getting your hands on a copy yourself. The puzzles aren't that difficult if you're not one for puzzlers. Some do require some unconventional thinking, and I have had to use the Hints section quite a bit towards the end (only to discover I was doing the right thing I just wasn't getting the timing quite right; as is almost always the case with me and puzzle games), but there ARE hints throughout the game should you get stuck, and there doesn't seem to be any punishment for using them, such as losing points or having to use in-game currency to unlock the hints or having Game mock you for using them, etc. I also didn't see any Steam achievements for not using a single hint, so there really isn't anything besides your own stubborn pride keeping you from using those helpful hints throughout the game (er... non-game). Game himself also gives you plenty of verbal clues to try to nudge you in the right direction, so you may not even need those hint boxes.

All-in-all, not only was the game (er... non-game) mechanics unique and so much fun, but Pascal Cammisotto, the creator of the original TING for Jam as well as the writer/director/voice for Game in the full version, did such a fantastic job at the actual writing and content creation for this (non-)game. Such a touching story, and great lore, and fantastic commentary on the gaming industry, along with fantastic voice acting. With but a voice, Game became a fully fleshed-out character that I grew so attached to, and I've happily opened the game back up simply to be re-greeted (a bit hostilely) by his voice, play a few puzzles to try to unlock a few more achievements, and then I'll smile as I quit and he shouts "Don't forget to uninstall me!" as the game closes. My entire playthrough was a little over 5hrs - mostly because of those dang timing issues I had; the game probably is only about 4 or so hrs long for other people - but Game has become a beloved character for me.

So little can say so much, and, as a long-winded writer myself, I am forever in awe of those who can weave such a touching tale within barely any time with their audience.

I am over here hoping to learn that TING:WD has done so well since its launch on August 6th that Draw Me A Pixel can continue their great work, and Cammisotto, et. al., can continue the tale they've started with this game.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep playing this fun (non-)game as I study Cammisotto's storytelling prowess, as well as chuckle at the characters constantly confusing Game's French accent with a Russian one.

Aaaaaaand, speaking of the French, I have exciting news, but I'll circle back to that. Next up: Among Us.

A big trend for me this year, thanks to the pandemic shutdown back in March, is to finally join in on the pastime of watching Let's Plays and gaming streams. In the past I would shrug this form of entertainment off. It's fine if others enjoyed it, but I was always kind of "meh" to it. If I was going to take the time to watch someone else play a game I was interested in, why didn't I just use that time to play the game myself? Or, I didn't want to watch streams or Let's Plays because I had every intention of playing that game and didn't want spoilers. Or I could just watch Hubby play the game, so why watch strangers do it? Especially since a lot of the earlier streamers/Let's Play-ers... I found weren't all that entertaining with it.

I mean, I've seen some pretty bad streamers, you guys. Ones that only vaguely respond to the live chat, so if you aren't actively reading the chat or you were watching the VOD, you were confused as to what the player was responding to. Ones that didn't lower the game audio enough and so the game audio fought with the player's commentary. Ones where the player virtually had no commentary, and so you were literally just watching the gameplay as if you were the one playing, but with no control over how the game progressed. Ones where the players barely had the game audio up at all - which is fine if they were going to do a running commentary and didn't want to fight the game audio - but then proceeded to either NOT talk, leaving a lot of dead air to wade through, or when they would react to the game audio that the audience can't hear. So on and so forth.

I just... I couldn't get into this new entertainment trend.

However, my go-to YouTube channels I love to gush about - Outside Xbox, OutsideXtra, and, to a lesser and newer extent, Dicebreaker - are actually super good at gaming streams. They are entertainers first and foremost and make their streams this whole experience. They make sure to read off the chat comments (usually paid-for super chats, but whatever) before responding to them. Their running commentary is akin to sports announcers. They have the gaming audio only slightly softer than their own if the game audio is significant to the gameplay, such as music cues or monster screams in jump-scare horror games. I could gush further, but this blog post isn't supposed to be a promotion for them per se, so I'll just conclude by saying that their videos are so well done they could be podcasts and people would still more-or-less understand what is going on within the video game. They're just super good.

So I've jumped onto the "watch video game streams" bandwagon, and this has proven equally an excellent and terrible idea. Mostly because I'll watch these guys play a game and, much like what I did with MatPat and TING:WD, I'll be intrigued enough that I'll buy the game to play it myself. Yay, free advertisement for said games!

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It was Luke's adorable streams on OutsideXtra that solidified for me that, yes, I should get Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It was Mike's chill stream on Outside Xbox that got me to buy House Flipper on Steam. And Jane's chaotic streams on Outside Xbox that convinced me that Two Point Hospital was worth buying on BOTH Steam and Switch, so that I can play whenever, even if they aren't linked accounts.

Well, the Oxboxtra crew struck again. They finally jumped on the Among Us trend this month. They, along with members of Dicebreaker and Eurogamer, have been having 9-person games. They stream for about 2hrs and one member from each channel is in charge of streaming for said channel, which means after watching for 2hrs you can rewatch from the other 3 channels' perspectives. It's particularly fun when you already know that the streamer from x-channel was the impostor for y-runs or was a victim in z-runs, and you can either watch their killing spree or laugh at their ghost-chat conversations and get their thoughts on the matter - things you wouldn't be able to get otherwise because of them staying muted.

Watching these streams have been great fun as we try to figure out who the impostor is ourselves, using only the same limited information as the first streamer we ride along with; usually Luke from OutsideXtra. It's also fantastic to have moments like this, when not only do YOU, the viewer sometimes see things the players don't, but you can also afford to watch the reactions of the other players when THEY see things the others don't. 

Hubby has always been a big fan of these impostor-among-us/social deduction type games, such as Werewolf, Hail Hydra, or Secret Hitler. So seeing a video game version with the added component of being able to sabotage or complete tasks to win really piqued his interest. Add in watching how much fun everyone is having as well as his own mental calculations as to how he'd win as either the Impostor or Crewmate, and he was HOOKED.

I picked him up from work this past Saturday and was instantly greeted with "Check out what's free to download on the phone, and is only $2 to get rid of ads!" Goob's birthday was this past week, so we had him pop in for a birthday gift, and Dragnime swung by for his normal anime night get-together. So Hubby, seeing that we now had four people - the minimum to play Among Us - decreed that the rest of us needed to download it as well. We were all intrigued by the game anyway and so we were easy to manipulate into complying.

Sadly, a 4-player game does not last long; naturally. The plus side was that we were able to get a few rounds in before Goob had to head out and I got disconnected from the server. We had fun though, and got a taste for the gameplay. I do have to say that I wasn't much of a fan of playing on my phone. My thumbs are too thick and I either have to deal with clunky controlling of my character or my fingers getting in the way of my view of potential Impostors.

In other words: I got killed a lot.

The game was, like, $5 on Steam, and I already had enough fun to not mind spending the extra money on the game; maybe get a bit more over to the developers. They deserved it. I would be able to see easier on the larger screen, and I had better control using the A,S,W,D keys and/or mouse. We just needed more people to play. We tried Sunday to no avail, but we were able to get a couple more games in last night.

I know Hubby will be itching to get a few rounds in just about every night, and it could be a fun way to unwind after frustrating days at work. I could just focus on simple tasks that need to be done, as well as yelling for others to get theirs done without being considered a jerk for doing so. I could go on a lovely killing spree to relieve stress. I could shout and accuse and try to flush out liars, assuming I'm still alive to do so. 

I mean, seriously. Hubby was the Impostor, like, 7 out of 9 games we played last night and I was almost always the first to be killed! Naturally he was therefore the one I killed when it was my turn to be the Impostor.

We truly love each other.

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Anyway, that's probably how I'm going to be spending at least an hour or two any night we can get enough people to join. I know that also means I'm playing another game instead of writing, but it's a fun outlet for when my mind isn't to the point of coming up with plot myself. It's also exercising my deductive reasoning and improv - especially when I'm the Impostor and trying to bluff my way through the voting - so it might be a good mental workout to help with all the stress. Maybe that's what I need to clear the cobwebs and get me officially back on the right track.

Another thing that's been a big help, though, especially with the whole Impostor Syndrome issue I talked about last time, is the amount of support and love I've been getting lately by way of my writings.

I've had a bunch of you making sure to tell me, either in the comments here or via Facebook messenger or in person, that I am far from an impostor.... er.... with regards to Impostor Syndrome. I'm still sometimes an Impostor when playing Among Us.

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Anyway, thank you, all, for the love and support. I know I'll still have to battle that constant doubt, especially since my skill with fanfiction writing is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, others find my work so good because of how well I can get in the mind of the canon writers and create something new that feels so much like canon. I can parrot fantastically, and this is a skill I'd love to figure out how to turn into a career, if I'm honest. On the other hand, however, being so good at parroting does leave me wondering if I'm only good if I piggy-back off of others; that I can't think of anything original and any of my success is because I'm "tricking" people by being such a good mimic.

This duality will always exist, I fear, but it IS such a comfort to have so many of you in my corner cheering me on.

Speaking of, I'm not entirely sure why, but I've had one HECK of an uptick in readership, faves, kudos, follows, and comments on the story I wrote for Taurus Pixie as a Christmas gift in 2018: Woven Heartstrings.

I'm seeing the name of this fic pop up in my email notifications nearly daily. It's amazing, but I'm also so confused by it. An older story, Christmas themed, and not one promoted on any of my Tumblr posts I've been seeing get more attention lately. The only explanation I was able to figure out might be this one from one of the commenters this week:

 JuliaFC: My French friend reviewed a little while back, she really loved your story, she's (and I'm) a true Marichat and Adrien fan so your story really touched some cords.

I'm not entirely sure who this friend was, but they are so sweet to have reviewed my story and recommended it. If you are randomly that person, I want to thank you so very very much.

I'm just dumbfounded that non-native English readers are not only finding my works, but are also reading them. I have such a trash mind for learning other languages, so to be fluent enough (or able to interpret Google Translate well enough) to read a 32,000+ word story is so amazing to me.

Speaking of French readers - and relying on Google Translate - one of those new reviews I've received just blew my mind!

 EtoileLeadSama: Salut. Je viens de passer l'après-midi à lire ton histoire. Elle est absolument magnifique. Un vrai petit bijou. Elle réchauffe le coeur comme l'un des fameux chocolats chauds de Marinette. Merci beaucoup pour ce petit moment de bonheur tout doux. J'aime beaucoup la complicité de Chat Noir et Marinette. Tes idées de cadeaux sont absolument géniales. J'ai vraiment beaucoup aimé chaque chapitre. Félicitations. Je vais enregistrer cette sublime histoire dans mes favoris pour pouvoir la relire à loisir. Bon courage pour la suite. Bisous miraculeux

If Google Translate is to be believed, that comment should translate to:

Hi. I just spent the afternoon reading your story. [This] is absolutely gorgeous. A real gem. It warms the heart like one of Marinette's famous hot chocolates. Thank you very much for this sweet moment of happiness. I really like the bond between Chat Noir and Marinette. Your gift ideas are absolutely brilliant. I really liked each chapter. Congratulations. I will save this sublime story in my favorites so that I can read it again at my leisure. Good luck for the future. Miraculous kisses

I- I just.... I got a non-English review! I've- I've never received a non-English review before! I- I still cannot form the words to express how much this milestone means to me. The fact that someone clearly isn't very comfortable writing in English but still felt compelled to leave me something; still enjoyed my story to read it, even when it isn't in their native tongue. 

Stuff like this has really been lifting my spirits, so thank you, sweet, glorious, dear readers. Thank you for indulging me and putting up with my breakdowns and showing me such kindness.

I am so blessed!

I want to go on more about the Miraculous Ladybug special and new projects that Pixie is up to and how I've had a weird uptick on my Tumblr as well, but it's already nearly 6pm and this post is so long. So I'll resist, and hopefully I can get more into what I've been doing the past month in next week's post.

Much love to you all!

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(P.S. - if you're American, here's your belated reminder to double check if you still have time to mail in ballots, check for OFFICIAL drop-off boxes, find out if there's still early-voting options in your area, and make a plan if you decide to or have to vote in person.)

Creating a Rec List

 Oh, hey, guys. How's everyone doing?

Weird, right? Having a blog post up. It's... it's been a couple weeks, huh? I'm back to having a Tuesday off, hence me working on this blog again. Hooray!

Aaaand then I'm working next Tuesday so I can have the following weekend off for my wedding anniversary so.... See you guys again in October???

My coworker says her daughter's wedding was gorgeous and went wonderfully, so yay. Also, congrats to both newly wedded daughters to both of my coworkers. My other coworker's been grumbly about not getting to eat solid foods while recovering from her oral surgery, but she had a check-in yesterday, so hopefully everything healed properly and she's back to normal.

Which means, after next week, where, as I mentioned, I'm taking a few days off so Hubby and I can just have a day to snuggle for our anniversary, I should FINALLY be back to a normal schedule of having Tuesdays and a random second day off per week.

At least, until late November/early December where I may or may not be taking time off to at least see my mom and sister for Thanksgiving. If nothing else, I'll be taking time off for Hubby's birthday.

Plus, both the coworker whose daughter just got married this weekend and myself still have over 100hrs of PTO to chew through, so who knows if there will be more sprinklings of "just taking it for mental health reasons" days. We both feel guilty about ever taking the time off though, because that means the other two workers don't get days off that week. So, who knows?

I feel like I'll be sprinkling more random vacation time in next year though....

OH! And also I want to sneak in a quick congratulations to Dragnime who just got engaged this past week! So happy for you two.

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I think that's all the extra housecleaning I had to do this week. So let's get into some writing updates for this supposedly writing-centric blog, huh?

First and foremost: there is none.

I've been super tempted lately. I've had scenes and mini-plots bouncing in my head. I just haven't had the time or energy to get them OUT of my head.

But I was tempted.

Ronoxym and ChibiSunnie had their birthdays this weekend - Happy Belated to both of you - and I figured "now's the time to break out of my funk! Write stories for them so you can still gift them something without physically delivering or mailing it."

Buuut then I remembered that my story gift for Ron kept me a MONTH to figure out last year, and I had no clue what to do for this one. Try to continue the story? Start from scratch with a completely different concept? Try to find something fanfic wise that he'd appreciate? I was at a loss.

Chibi, however, I had just talked about some fun headcanons with regards to Fruits Basket. Mostly, it was images I hoped the creator Natsuki Takaya would eventually do, or fanart people would make. Things like

Kyo proudly introducing Kazuma (Shishou) to Hajime, or Kazuma getting introductary cooking lessons alongside a 5yo Hajime. Or Machi and Kakeru fighting or Yuki's attention, creating a weird sort of poly relationship. Or just Yuki living as a normal teen/young adult as he and Machi go on double dates with Kakeru and Komaki, and perhaps Machi and Komaki are "forced" to interact as yet again Kakeru vies for most of Yuki's time.

 

Anyway, as I mentioned, these were just scenes. I could do something quick though, right? Even a little drabble would be a surprise to Chibi, and I know she'd cherish it because I gifted something specifically for her, but also because it would be the first bit of narrative writing I've done since the pandemic hit. Considering how much support and encouragement she's given me over the years, but specifically through this one, and considering how much time and effort she puts into ALWAYS making me a Christmas and birthday card each year, I thought it would be a fitting honor to FINALLY get out of my writing funk by creating a story for her birthday.

Alas. It was not meant to be. The week FLEW by (but also dragged on?) and before I knew it, her birthday had arrived and I had nothing to show for it. I debated writing something anyway and still posting it during the weekend of her birthday, but I still ran dry. All of those scenes I stated in that spoiler box above? Like I said, they would be great artwork; freezeframes of these sweet moments. Pictures that didn't need words or even actions to fully capture the essence of the scene.

That, and, while I enjoy the stories, and mangas in general are a fairly quick re-read, I still haven't really read either Fruits Basket or Fruits Basket Another more than once - aside from a couple of Furuba books - so I don't feel confident that I know the characters of Komaki or Hajime well enough to properly keep in-character and get the scenes right. Not without research - i.e. rereads - and not only did I not have the time for it, but also my mangas are kind of buried in the back of a cluttered room right now. So I REALLY don't have the free time to get any of those stories done in a reasonable amount of time.

However, as I mentioned, it DID keep me a month to gift Ron his story for his 30th, so there MIIIIIGHT be hope for me to still become inspired and get something written for Chibi. Plus, there's always the original fandom that brought us together. I just haven't touched anything "Hey, Arnold!" related in so long. I KNOW I'm rusty in their characterizations....

Instead of getting ahead of the game and doing the research I needed to write gifts for my friends, I spent the week on a completely different project that I've been meaning to do for over a month now.

WAAAAAAAAAY back during the week of August 17, the Miraculous Ladybug fandom decided to host a Positivity Week: a week for the fandom to shut down all of the salt and hate and venom flowing through the fandom, and get back to the uplifting positivity it originally had. During this week, people posted what they liked and appreciated about the show. They shared posts explaining the good qualities different characters had. They supported the creators. They supported fandom creators as well by sharing fics, artwork, gif-sets, videos, etc. Most importantly, there were fanfic and fic writer recommendation lists.

I was actually on one of those lists!

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One of the big reasons I kept falling into my writing funks after joining Tumblr was because I'd CONSTANTLY see fic recommendation lists, and I was NEVER on any of them. And it wasn't like I was simply seeing the same stories over and over again. Sure, there's some stories that just about the whole fandom seems to know about and would suggest, but more often than not the lists were all different. A large variety of stories were getting love and recognition.

But I would never be included.

Until August 22.

ML Positivity Week, Favourite Fanfics Day posted by chicoriii

I was... I was dumbfounded. This time period was probably one of my deepest bouts with imposter syndrome and there it was: my name on a rec list. Not only that, on a FAVORITE STORY list! Right above one of the fandom's favorite stories: Under Lock and Key.

I feel so guilty that I haven't acknowledged this honor anywhere yet. And for the dumbest reason too, although, I also feel the most justified with this reason???

So, along with the writing funk, I have been staying off Tumblr because I just don't have the free time or mental energy to go through my active dash. Also, as already stated, Tumblr does, on occasion, hurt my mental health because it is one of my main sources of imposter syndrome. That's mostly due to the aforementioned lack of ever appearing in anyone's recommendations or lack of likes/reblogs on my story shares. Also, because my dash would be flooded with new stories, and I would feel worse about not writing anything myself.

This is why, for months on end, I would only log onto Tumblr long enough to check my notifications, see if I had any messages or asks, and then hop back off without ever really looking at my dash. When chicoriii mentioned me in her rec list, I was still at that point of avoiding Tumblr to make sure it didn't spiral me further. So it was especially surprising and emotional for me to see that I had actually made someone's recommended fic list!

But to get to my reason about not instantly acknowledging how honored and humbled I felt. See, since I was avoiding Tumblr, I only knew of Positivity Week within the fandom in vague passing - usually something stated in the top post of my dash when I first log in - and so I hadn't participated in it. I felt guilty jumping in on the last day of it simply to gush at how honored I felt to have been included.

I mean, that was the point of the fan event, right? To lift up the creators and fellow fandom members while also bringing back a positive view of the show itself? So, to gush about how happy it made me to have been on her list would have been a pretty perfect way of closing out the week. At the time, though? Nope. I NEEDED to add to Positive Week if I were to acknowledge the honor of being on chicoriii's list.

So I decided I would thank chi while also lifting up other works of fiction. Then I quickly realized how many stories I loved, and that either the list would be a bit massive or I'd leave out some gemstones. That was when I decided my new project: write up a Tumblr post of my ML fanfic recs, and then link to it when I acknowledge chi's list.

This was a mistake.

Sure, there were the big ones that I could think of right away - usually involving EdenDaphne in some shape or form - but that list was largely stories I know are already fairly big in the fandom because they have some of the highest hit/kudos/comment counts. Not that any of that means I SHOULDN'T recommend them, because I 100% am going to still. No, instead, and especially because of how I was feeling, I wanted to make sure to also promote stories I feel aren't getting nearly enough love. To make sure I didn't miss any, I started going through my bookmarked and favorited stories on AO3 and FFN. 

I... forgot how much ML fanfiction I've actually read over the years. I did not read nearly as much HA fanfiction....

I have 42 bookmarked ML fics on AO3 alone, and I was trash at actually writing anything in my bookmark notes, so I knew I enjoyed the stories enough to want to save them, but I couldn't really remember what each of them were about per se, or why I enjoyed them specifically.

Sooooo that's what I wanted to do next: re-read, or at least skim, these saved fics to remind myself why I enjoyed them so I could better recommend them to others. Buuuut, I also had work pretty much non-stop for over a month, so I just didn't have the energy.

This week I finally did. All of my main work at my job was taken care of, and all I really had left was optional busy work. On a particularly slow day I decided it was time to finally start up this project. I figured I could get it done in the one shift.

I was wrong.

It's been over a week now, and I STILL have stories to read back through. I've been updating my bookmarks as I go so that next time I know exactly why I loved that particular story and what I felt was unique about it. I've also started writing recaps of what happened in the last chapter of on-going works, because I always seem to forget by the time they're updated. Sure, it means re-reading the previous chapter first to remind myself what happened, and I'm sure the authors appreciate the extra reads, but it also means I have to calculate reading TWO chapters whenever ONE updates, which usually results in a delay before finding time to read. This way, hopefully I can read the updates a lot sooner.

Sorry, getting off topic. Point is, I've been re-reading a LOT of fics lately, and it's giving me lots of feels. It's been really uplifting and reminding me a lot about why I love this show and the friendly bits of this fandom community. Also, while I'm still not quite ready to write anything myself yet, it HAS been helping grease those mental gears so I'm good to go once I'm back to a more normal work and social schedule.

Also also... I know how I'm going to be spending my next day off on Friday:

Official promo poster

Frozen starts at 6:10
Miraculous Ladybug starts at 8:00

The creator of Miraculous Ladybug Thomas Astruc had stated in past interviews that he initially had a whole expanded world planned with more miraculous bearers and other superheroes. He teased that back in season 1 when Alya gushed about her favorite comic book hero Majestia that Majestia was a real American superhero. Then, there was a comic book run where Ladybug and Chat Noir went to the United States and met Majestia.

This New York special seems to have been inspired by that comic run. Or that both this special and the comic books were both inspired off of Astruc's original world builds for the Miraculous universe.

Either way, I'm excited.

Also also also, to lead up to this hour-long special, Disney Channel will be having a season 3 marathon. True, I can watch them all I want on Netflix, and the airing order on the channel isn't any better than the scrambled mess Netflix has, but still....

I'm hoping re-watching this past season after such a long hiatus, as well as getting some new content to tide the fandom over until the next season arrives in 2021, will help respark my desire to write.

Because I miss it, you guys. I HURT not being able to write for so long! Especially this year when March feels like a decade ago.

Tanuki
Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

Here's to hoping I can get back into the swing of things finally. Here's to Chibi and Ron and their birthdays. Here's to my coworkers' daughters and their new marriages. Here's to chi and her ability to make me cry simply by enjoying my work and wanting to share it with others. Finally, here's to you, dear reader, for staying by me when I've had virtually nothing to say this whole year.

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(minor edits by me)

Catch everyone in October!

August was Trash, Okay?

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OMG, guys, August was suuuch trash!

Sorry I've been so absent lately. Sorry still that my writing has YET to return to the land of the living. This past month? Well... it IS 2020, isn't it? I'm now feeling a bit guilty about using images like this at the conclusion of last year:

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When you feel bad about how you "treated" 2019, and kinda wish to go back to THAT year? You KNOW the current year is beyond trash.

I'm just so exhausted. I've been exhausted for a while now, and August did NOT help that in the slightest.

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Also, side note, the new formatting for Blogger? 

It's supposed to be more streamline, but a lot of the things I personally do with this blog now takes extra steps. I also do a lot of HTML edits and tweaks, and reading the code is now a LOT harder for me since it all runs together. Here, see?

If you are a programmer, that might look helpful. It's color coordinated, and you're probably used to it all running into itself. Me? I am NOT a programmer. The old HTML view used to have everything set up in paragraphs that I could easily read and understand. To demonstrate, I took the above code and edited it best I could to look like how it used to.

Yeah, it was all one color, but so is just about any text I'd read. The important thing was the paragraph breaks so I could easily skim through and find what I wanted to edit. Now? Well, thank God someone created the CTRL+F search function, because I'm probably going to use it a LOT now. I mean, it's cool and all that code is red when it's incomplete, and then turns green once you've completed the line. That helps me make sure I didn't forget to close a function or something. But I tried to put a little tweak on one of the above images, then continued writing while in HTML mode - something I used to do a LOT originally, just to make sure the spacing is how I want it - and when I want to switch back to composition mode I got a pop-up saying some of my code may be invalid and may not stay if I switch out of HTML. I spent a solid 5 minutes or so tweaking what I did and reading through the above code to see how to mimic it in what I had done, and I still had no clue what I did that would have been considered "invalid." So, in the end, I ended up deleting all the coding I had done, hit "okay" to the "may be invalid" pop-up, and just continued on in composition mode. 

I hope this blog looks the same as it always has, but I may have to consider completely revamping it so I use less coding. Because right now? Well, not to be overly dramatic or anything, but check the shirt.

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I mean, when I previewed this post thus far, I noticed there was a MASSIVE gap between one of the above images and the text following it. It looked like I had hit the Enter button about 3x to create line breaks. Just a few weeks ago, with the old formatting, I could easily go into the code, see the extra <br /> or <p></p> code and know I can delete those to get rid of the surplus spacing.

With this new coding layout? And, frankly, I feel like the HTML somehow got more complicated??? Well, I spent another 10 minutes or so trying to read the code to see where the extra space came from, because it wasn't there in compose view for me to just delete. I finally saw that a line of code was out of place from when I initially tried going into HTML view to edit one of the image codes. Again, something I used to do weekly, so I thought I generally knew what I was doing by now.

Well, after shifting where the code was SUPPOSED to be, I hit Preview, and.... now the entire blog after that picture was center aligned instead of left aligned.

Yona from Yona of the Dawn
Created by Mizuho Kusanagi

Another 10 minute battle or so as I copied and pasted the code ABOVE the image - where it was still properly left-aligned after an image - and edited it to include the proper image (the one I had messed with originally) and the proper text (that had somehow become center-aligned). It SHOULD have worked. I literally used the EXACT SAME CODE of a portion of the blog that was formatting properly.

It... didn't.

After, as I said, 10 minutes of adjusting this, tweaking that, hitting the Undo button about a dozen times, and reading the code with painstaking focus to try to understand it enough to mimic it... and it STILL not working, I gave up. I just went back into compose mode, selected all, and hit the Left-align button.

And I STILL had to select 2 different paragraphs separately and left-align them independently, since apparently they weren't included in the Select All??????

Hacker Girl
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by
Birdman, Inc.

Yeah, I hate this new format...

BUT BACK TO AUGUST!

Throughout August, my one co-worker's daughter got married, my other co-worker had a bridal shower for HER daughter, the 1st co-worker had a family event, and then the 2nd co-worker's brother got married, so every weekend one of them requested a 3-day or 4-day weekend. Also, the first co-worker had needed oral surgery for about a month, so she finally managed to get that taken care of and needed a week off to recover. We all have all of this vacation time, and boy were those two using it.

And yet, one of them was particularly snarky about me taking a week off in July for my birthday, but whatever....

Anyway, because of all of that, I had to work two Tuesdays in August, the most recent time being last week. Hence me missing two blog post updates last month.

Also, on top of all of THAT, one of our branch stores had a whole new staff hired, which isn't as extreme as it sounds since it only has 3 employees anyway, but still. So I was asked to travel about 40min to the other store in order to train the new employees, as was another employee from one of the other branch stores, that way the other could cover while one of us had a day off.

I trained the new sales associate two days the one week, and then the following week the sales assistant came on and I went out to train her.

And then, apparently the one owner felt the assistant needed more training, so she was sent to my home-store for me to train her while helping cover the store I normally work in - ya know, because the tag-team of my co-workers requesting off.

Now, when I was hired, all employees had two solid weeks of training in their home-store, and then another month of shadowing the sales associates as a way to learn how to sell (back then every employee was in sales). About two years later, there was a shift to include hourly employees as sales assistants. Fast forward another 7 months or so, and that's when I started to get tapped for training the newbies and driving to the other stores for a day or so. For the most part, the "2 weeks of training" were shrunk to just one week - since the 2nd was typically training on how to sell merchandise, something most of the new employees weren't doing - and then that week of training was usually split between me and someone who worked in that employee's store. I'd start with the real meat-and-potatoes of how to run the main program we use for sales and a broad overview of what product we carry, and then the other employee would finish the training with getting into the minutia of the day-to-day and rare issues that might come up.

For the past year-and-a-half or so, this training system seemed to work. Heck, even with that sales associate I had trained early August had that sort of training regimen set up.

For the new sales assistant though? We're not sure why, but the one owner for whatever reason believes this woman needs 3 solid weeks of training with me.

Thankfully, last week and this week were in my home-store, so I didn't have to travel, but my days are completely consumed with trying to think of ANYTHING that I could still teach this woman so we're not just staring blankly at each other for 8 hours straight. Or, alternatively, so she's not like my co-workers: just sitting bored at a desk, wondering what to do, while I have a HUGE list of things *I* need to do still. Things like creating and hanging tags on the new product that comes in explaining the options available for it. Things like keeping up with the company's social media accounts. Things like keeping on top of the new company website so I can send glitches or other such errors to the web master ASAP. Things like updating some of my data spreadsheets so it's easier for us to look up things.

Granted, a lot of this stuff either of my co-workers could also learn to do - such as the spreadsheets or the information tags - but neither puts in effort to learn how to do it. So now it's backlogged by about a month.

And I STILL have to figure out what to do with this woman I'm supposed to be training despite us going through everything she needed to learn in the first 3 or 4 days.

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So.... yeah, work has been EXHAUSTING, and so all I want to do when I come home is zone out. For the most part, I've done that, with the exception of the couple of times I've GM'd our sessions of Blades in the Dark by John Harper. Those have been quite stressful in and of themselves. 

The sessions themselves seem well enough. The group appears to be enjoying themselves, and that's all that matters. Plus, with the scores I keep coming up with so the group has options, I'm slowly building a story of the world going on around the group. I am enjoying the brainstorming sessions Hubby and I have to try to come up with those world-build side-stories we could play off of. While the crew is doing this, off in the background these two warring factions are doing that. The way this score concludes affects this bit of the city. That sort of thing.

The first score the group chose my last GMing session was a continuation of one of the scores they did the 1st time I GM'd. In that first session a professor and his rival were both researching this one particular piece of technology in a race to see which of them could finally solve the problem the scientific world was having in improving the effectiveness of the tech. The professor knew his rival was further along than him, so he wanted the crew to steal her notes so he could have the advantage instead, and he wanted it to look like a random burglary.

Well, the crew did ransack her office and steal a bunch of random items that seemed valuable, along with her notes, as an effort o stage it as a burglary instead of a pointed attack. Problem is, they literally only hit the rival's office. So, I had a new score in which she knew that her rival had plotted the theft and wanted either proof to take to the Bluecoats or wanted the professor to be framed. Either way, she wanted him in jail.

The guys LOVED the continuation of this random side-plot of these two tech rivals, and got a kick out of the fact that she only knew her rival was involved with the theft, not that the crew was the one who actually did the burgling. So they agreed to set the professor up for masterminding the theft of her notes.

It's moments like that - where they gleefully passed around the index card the score was written down upon, and each of them going "OH!" after reading it - that makes me happy I've agreed to tag-team GMing with Hubby.

But then I go to write down what happened.

As I've commented throughout this post, it has been a busy and stressful month. I barely have the free time to write anything down, and when I do, it's a week or two after the session. So far, between 4 game sessions, we have played through 8 or 9 different scores. Hubby had that opening score in the first session. Then we went through three in my first session as the GM. Then we went through 2 or 3 more scores when Hubby took over again, and we went through another 2 when I last GM'd.

The fact that I can't remember how many we went through when Hubby last GM'd is part of the problem. I wanted to write the sessions down SPECIFICALLY because, especially with all the chaos and stress of 2020, my memory is trash. And yet, I only managed to write down the first 2 scores I GM'd before I ran out of time. So I'm now staring at so many backlogged game missions and struggling to remember what even happened. At the same time, as I write out what happened during the scores I ran vs reflecting on the ones I have to write down that Hubby ran, I began getting super depressed. I felt like I wasn't giving anyone any significant challenges. Which of course made me wonder about my overall writing and storytelling skills.

Was this why I have so many stories focused on inner conflict instead of outer conflict? Is this why I seem to write exclusively Man vs Self stories? Am I just incapable of coming up with external conflicts for characters?

Total. Writing. Existential. Crisis.

So even when I did have time to write down the sessions, I still didn't. I couldn't. I shut down. I just got depressed whenever I thought about my sessions. I felt like I was making things too easy for the players; that the complications I came up with the group just kind of shrugged off. 

To try to help, Hubby decided last week's Blades game session would actually be the group watching Let's Plays. That way Hubby and, especially, I could see how other GMs come up with scores and consequences/complications, and the guys could see how other groups played. We hoped it would help everyone get a better feel on how this game played different than D&D and break us from that D&D mindset.

Namely the idea of critical-failures, excessive pre-planning, the fear of complications causing us to fail the mission entirely, and the #1 D&D rule of "never split the party". The mechanics of Blades in the Dark is done so specifically to address and negate all of those issues of D&D.

In the end, Quarthix concluded that the session we watched on YouTube played fairly similarly to how we already play. Hubby more-or-less agreed. I had also noticed that the "consequences and complications" the GM came up with were things like "the floor creaked, but none of the 'sleeping' bodies beside you move". So maybe the complications and consequences I came up with weren't so mild after all. That did help my overall outlook.

Also, because we watched Let's Plays last week, and talked more about our character backstories, Hubby is still on-deck for GMing the session. That also helped because I didn't need the added stress of trying to come up with scores for the guys to do this session. Hubby's in charge again tonight, and it will be nice to just be able to play.

Especially since work wasn't my only bit of chaos. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, today is the start of both a new month and new season. At the end of each month, the game cycles out an assortment of bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures. It also brings in new bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures. So I already knew there was a list of creatures leaving at the end of August. However, these were also summer-only creatures, so I wouldn't see them again until next June or July. Normally not that big of a deal except for three things:

1. I was still missing a total of 10 or 11 bugs/fish that I would have been able to capture by this time in the game. Two of them weren't active over the summer, but one came back today and the other would be back in, like, December or January, so it wouldn't be AS long of a wait.
2. I'm a completionist player, which means I try to go through 100% of the game. This is why one of my daily "chores" in-game is to go to both shops, and check the Nook Stop, and buy up everything that was "new," even if I don't like it. There's a "catalog" in-game and every time your character has possession of an item - via purchasing it, picking it up, or being gifted it - it is added to your catalog. So, I buy anything not already in my catalog, so I have a record of it, and then sell anything I don't wish to keep.
   This also means that I want to fully complete my Critterpedia: the listing of all the bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures you could catch in the game. I don't want to have to wait until JUNE OR JULY in order to complete this thing!
3. There is a set of 6 main breakable tools that you frequently use in-game: net, slingshot, shovel, watering can, fishing pole, and axe. You can get the ultimate upgrade of a Golden tool once you achieve certain milestones. You learn the watering can when you have improved your island to the highest rating: 5-stars. You learn how to make a golden axe after breaking your regular axe a certain number of times. You get the golden slingshot recipe after popping x-number of balloons with your slingshot.
   For the golden shovel, you have to assist a side character that literally washes up on your island at least once every two weeks. You have to help him 30 times, so it will take a long time to get the shovel, but it still shouldn't be a "have to wait until next July" sort of situation to complete that task.
   The net and the fishing poles? You learn how to make the golden versions of those tools by completing the bug and fish critterpedias respectively. So, not only would catching these bugs and fish help me 100% my critterpedia, but also allows me to unlock the final 2 tools of the game. On top of THAT you also get Nook Miles - in-game points you receive for completing specific tasks - and stamps for both completing the tasks and building the resulting golden tools.

So... yeah, my Completionist Butt didn't want to have to wait until these bugs and fish returned to the game next July, and I didn't want to start "time traveling" in order to get them sooner than intended. Which all means I HAD to make sure I caught all of those bugs and fish before the end of August. Of COURSE I didn't realize how many bugs/fish I was missing until last week, so when I dropped Hubby off at work at 6am I would then spend an hour or so trying to hunt down any of these missing bugs or fish before getting ready for work myself. Then my Friday off was largely spent trying to hunt down the missing bugs and fish. Again Saturday morning - a rare Saturday off for me - I did little more than try to grind out the bugs and fish I needed, but I also had to deal with the surplus of flowers that had popped up and were going to overrun my island. 

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by Yanare Ku

Sunday morning before work and then more Sunday evening were spent once more searching for the remaining elusive creatures. Sunday post-work was also spent playing a couple hours of Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Switch, a game I FINALLY started up Saturday afternoon while waiting for the next time bracket where the bugs/fish I needed would spawn. Two hours of playing a game within my favorite franchise. A game I had already played the Game Boy Color re-release version of. Two hours, and I somehow managed to die NINE TIMES! This is NOT a hard game. I went through two dungeons on Saturday, and died ONCE. Granted, I left most fights with only half a heart - your character's health meter - but I still managed to survive MOST of the game session. Sunday, though? Nope. I ended up saving in a new slot in case I wanted to go back to my original file and redo everything. Which I did do yesterday and did MUCH better: no deaths. My reflexes were certainly a lot better and I was a lot more focused last night.

Anyway, I was back to searching last night, having but two beetles left to find.

All-in-all, I think I personally clocked about 15 or 16 hours of doing little else in the game other than running around searching for these dang fish and bugs! It was certainly more a chore than fun, and it was EXHAUSTING and FRUSTRATING. But, at the same time, I didn't want to give up, because then I'd have to wait a year to officially complete the game. I mean, it may take me that long anyway, and I may be actively playing the game still anyway, but I didn't want to force it either simply because I didn't catch those creatures before they left for a year.

In the end, it was Hubby, playing my game for me for another TWO HOURS while I was working on this blog post - I'll explain in a moment - for my game to FINALLY get every creature I could by the end of August.

That being said, while I do have an insane amount of hours poured into this game since the end of March - over 800 hours, for sure - my official gamer profile says I have something closer to 860hrs clocked for ACNH. That's largely due to the amount of times the game goes idle while I do things like stop to eat, forget to log off before doing laundry or going to work, or, what happened this weekend, I fall asleep while playing so it just sits there - idle - for the 6 to 8 hrs I'm sleeping.

This ended up being beneficial, however, because there's this trick with the game. You can leave your main island and go on what's known as "Nook Mile Tours" or "Mystery Island Tours". These are tiny islands you can go to harvest things, and sometimes meet new villagers you can invite back to your home island. When you're on one of these islands, time moves normally, just as it would anywhere else in the game. HOWEVER, certain creatures have time restrictions for their spawning. For instance, the beetles I still needed as of yesterday only show up in the game between the hours of 5pm and 8am. So, if I were playing the game at 4pm, the beetle would never show up, but the moment it hit 5pm they would start to spawn, only to vanish again at 8am. On those island tours, you're locked into the time-block you reached the island within. So, to again use that beetle example, if I hit up a Mystery Island at 8:45pm, I'd be within that 5pm-8am time block. Any bugs/fish that didn't spawn at 8:45pm, but might spawn at 9pm wouldn't be spawning at all on that island, even if I stay on it until 10pm. While the clock still advances, and the lighting changes from night to day and vice versa, when it comes to critter spawn restrictions, you are locked into the time it was when you first landed on that island.

So, as I said, this proved beneficial. I had passed out playing ACNH while on Nook Mile Islands both Sunday evening and Monday evening. Which means, as far as the game's creature-spawns were concerned, it was still 10pm. Hubby had yesterday and today off, so I ran around in-game for an hour before getting ready for work yesterday morning, found one of the 4 critters I still needed, then passed the game over to Hubby. He played for another hour or so before letting me know he caught the last fish I needed. Then, as previously mentioned, I passed out again last night with just TWO MORE creatures to go, and Hubby spent a couple hours this morning finding them for me.

"Crisis" averted.

But holy heck was that stressful and NOT. FUN. the past week. Especially since that meant that - except for the few hours I played LoZ this weekend - I was pretty much exclusively playing this game whenever I had downtime. And it wasn't even stress relieving like it was meant to be!

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Sooooooo, yeah. That super sucked. I'm going to try to be a bit more diligent on which critters are leaving each month, and try not to save them for the last week or so of it. Thankfully, the largest collection of critters leaving the game comes at the end of the summer - so August in the northern hemisphere and February in the southern hemisphere - which means I shouldn't be as overwhelmed again while playing this game. A word of caution for any of my readers who also play this game and are in the southern hemisphere, or at least has their game set up for the southern hemisphere: DO NOT SLEEP ON THE SUMMER BUGS/FISH. TRY TO GET THEM ALL ASAP SINCE THEY ARE ONLY AVAILABLE FOR 2 MONTHS TOTAL THROUGHOUT THE FULL YEAR!

My one co-worker's daughter is getting married on September 19th, and so she took that whole week off to prepare and then recover from the wedding. That will be a LOOOOOOOOOONG week and I'll most likely miss my September 15th update due to that, but I'll try to be more on-the-ball this week.

So long to that crappy summer and doubly crappy August. Here's to September being better over-all. And here's to games RELIEVING stress instead of adding to it. (Yes, I'm also looking at you, Link's Awakening, and your stupid 9 deaths...)

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Edited by LycoRogue

And, finally, here's to 2020 being kinder to us, pretty please!

Hope to catch you next week!

August is Getting Crazy

 Whoo-boy! Sorry about missing last week, everyone. It's been... well, it's been an August already.

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by Yanare Ku

At the start of the month, my one co-worker took off for her daughter's intimate wedding: Bride, Groom, Parents, Siblings. The following week, my other co-worker took off to both set up and throw a bridal shower for HER daughter, whose wedding is in September. This past weekend the first co-worker took off again for a family event - someone's 60th birthday party or something like that - and she'll be taking most of next week off to recover from mouth surgery. There's only 3 of us that cover the store, so whenever one of the other two needs off; that means I'm working.

Also, either late June or early July, the manager of one of our branch stores took ill. It wasn't COVID-19, thankfully, but it was still serious and kept him in the hospital for a while. He then had to quarantine on the chance that he contracted COVID while in the hospital. That whole time, the company has been scrambling to find extra bodies in the other stores - we are all running on kind of skeleton crews right now - to help cover that branch store. Finally, the company hired two new employees specifically for the store missing their manager. He's supposedly back to work this week, ironically since that's more-or-less when the new hires are starting as well, but he's still very much recovering, so he's probably going to focus mostly on the managerial portion of the job and leave sales to the newbies. Plus, this way he doesn't have to try to run around covering a store by himself: management stuff, sole sales person, answering phone calls, paperwork, answering emails, etc.

That's where my craziness continues, as well as why I missed last week's post. Both me and one woman from another branch store tend to get tapped for training, so we tag-teamed training Newbie #1 last week - which included me working in that store last Tuesday instead of having the day off and working on this blog - and we'll be training Newbie #2 this week.

I did still manage to get my standard 2 days off per week last week, but on "off" days for me, so it was a bunch of playing catch-up on what I normally would do on my days off, and "write a blog post" kind of slipped through the cracks.

Regardless, add in the complications of trying to keep customers satisfied when the production chain is seriously backed up and we honestly have little to no clue when more product is coming in? Well.... It's been a month, as I said.

Hacker Girl
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by Birdman, Inc.

All of that "OMG, I may FINALLY be ready to write something!" energy largely POOFed away, but I still managed to wrestle some of it to the ground by way of pen-and-paper roleplaying.

When last we met, I was preparing for my first go as GM for a game of Blades in the Dark by John Harper. The first session we had, where Hubby was the GM, we were suggested by the rulebook to go with the First Situation written in the book itself, as a means to ease into the campaign. Problem is, the situation went sideways FAST because we didn't pick it. So, instead of telling the players "this is what the crew is going to do this week" and forcing them into a situation again, I came up with an assortment of options the group could pick from. Ended up being a great idea because, while it kept the full gaming session to complete that initial situation Hubby GMed, the group FLEW through three different scores when I GMed. I'm not sure if that's because I went easy on them, or because the players know what they're doing a bit better this go, or if it was because Hubby could play this time and that helped streamline things better than when I played, or if it was some sort of combination of those options. Either way, it proved helpful to have a list of options the group could choose from, so Hubby did the same thing last Tuesday when he was back to GMing, and then I'm doing it again when I GM tonight.

When I made my debut, I gave them the score that Hubby had teased at the conclusion of that first session. I also came up with a way for them to gather more permanent resources for the crew - called Staking a Claim, a way for them to take care of their Wanted level so consequences aren't as severe if one of the crew got arrested, a generic "this is what's going on in the city" in case they wanted to come up with their own Score based on that information, and a list of six generic scores listed in the rulebook.

The group went with the score Hubby teased, and went through it fairly quickly. They then chose a random generic score from my list of 6, handled that pretty swiftly as well, and managed to do a second generic score from my list. All the downtime the group was able to play through that session did help both them and the crew itself level up, so it was a good thing overall. Plus the multiple scores gave them a bit of a variety of ways to play that night. So, in the end, I think it worked out well. Hubby keeps telling me that everyone seemed to have fun. Although, Dragnime did kind of abruptly rush out after the third score concluded. He was commenting on how late it was and how he had work the next day, so I may be reading too much into it, but I wasn't sure he was satisfied with how the game played out that night.

Pandadog and Friends
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by Funnyeve.com

Anyway, that night the crew managed to find a buyer for a stolen map book, steal research notes from a professor/engineer and sell them to her rival, and break into a university campus in the wealthiest part of the entire city in order to steal a painting for a client and replacing it with a forgery so no one would be the wiser. There were still bits where chaos ensued, but for the most part, I think the game played out so everyone felt like accomplished scoundrels. Either that or, as I mentioned, I softballed the whole session....

Regardless, Hubby unintentionally slammed us back down to Earth last week in our first score of the session. We picked a score where we helped a rug maker whose rugs were smothering people in their sleep; a not-so-subtle nod to the D&D monster Rug of Smothering Hubby kept throwing at us in that campaign. We didn't have to worry about dealing with Murder Rugs for this score. The local police - the Bluecoats - had already shut down the man's business and confiscated his rug-making equipment. Namely, a loom. The rug maker didn't know of any other means of making money, plus he hated the Lampblacks for reasons we didn't bother asking for, so he wanted us to steal back his equipment from Bluecoat evidence lock-up, as well as frame the Lampblacks for the theft. We were already on rocky footing with the Lampblacks, but Quarthix loved the idea of screwing with the rival crew further, so we agreed to take the job.

We managed to get into the precinct well enough. My character Mara used to be a Bluecoat, so she was able to use her old uniform to sneak everyone into evidence lock-up, but we just couldn't get the evidence OUT of lock-up. I forget what roll we screwed up on, but an alarm was thrown, my companions - Dragnime's character Syra and Quarthix's character Kristov - attempted to take out the guard at evidence lock-up. It didn't go well. Mara tried her hand at knocking the guy out with Kristov's dart gun, and... well... I messed up my roll, so instead of just knocking the guy out with the dart, apparently Mara got the guy in the eye with said dart and accidentally killed him. I wrote it off as appropriate for her character because she's used to aiming with a handgun, not a blowgun. We cheesed it the heck out of there without any evidence and wrote the score up as a loss.

Hubby and I may have that failed mission come back and bite the crew on the butt in the future. We're still figuring out how.

We did our downtime roleplay and upgrades and the like, but then our crew was sucked into a turf war. A crew called the Billhooks are allies of the Lampblacks. The Lampblacks were still figuring out if they should come after our teeny crew for killing their leader - which also gave the new leader an opportunity to rule, so they aren't TOO upset??? - but they ARE still in a heated turf war already with the crew the Red Sashes, and they couldn't really divide their attention like that. So, allies that they are, the Billhooks, who already didn't like our up-start crew, decided to declare war on the Lampblacks' behalf. We were NOT in a position to go to war with anyone at the time, so we instantly called for a peace treaty.

The Billhooks have an interesting power dynamic. They are still technically run by this one guy who is currently serving life in prison, but is managing to pull enough strings to still be considered in charge. Meanwhile, his son wouldn't mind terribly if his father suddenly died in prison - the man is quite old anyway - so he could finally take over the crew. On the flipside, the leader's sister wants to find a way to break him out of prison, and/or kill off her disloyal nephew and take over the gang in her brother's absence. It's a weird power struggle as all three family members both vie for power and relent it to the other two in order to bide their time.

Well, somehow, someway, via narrative convenience, I guess, our crew The Void Serpents managed to set up a peace treaty with ONLY the sister/aunt. She confirmed she had her brother's ear, and agreed to call off the war if we did something for her: kill her nephew. She'd sort out the details so the true Billhooks leader won't come after us for revenge of his son's death. As before, I had Mara try to play both sides, wondering if we should bring the assassination plot to the nephew's attention to try to win his favor instead and have HIM end the war with us as gratitude for bringing him evidence of his aunt's scheme. The group decided that it was a definite end to the war if we killed the nephew, but only a SUSPECTED end if we warn him, and we couldn't handle going to war with the female leader of the Billhooks if Mara's plan went sideways.

So we set up a neat little trap for the nephew, and it was a MOSTLY clean assassination. I can't recall what went wrong, but Kristov ended up running away from the nephew's guards and throwing a grenade back at them, completely forgetting we were in a drug den. There were a LOT of bodies the ever intimidating Spirit Wardens would need to clean up, and we were now on THEIR list of people that might need to be "dealt with" for making their jobs so much harder with the trail of bodies we leave behind.

Honestly, with this week being the blur that it's been, I can't recall if we called it a night there or if we tried one more score. I feel like we left it there....

Now, I had started up a notebook, as I believe I mentioned last time, where I'm trying to keep track of all the major story elements of the campaign. It would be a good reference guide as well as a nice keepsake of this first attempt at Blades in the Dark. I didn't have any time to write in the notebook the week I GMed, and I tried to fill some of it out this weekend to play catch-up, but the details are already getting hazy. I'll have to chat it over with Hubby so he can help refresh my memory. There's just SO much to try to jot down.

I have to admit, one of my favorite things for this side project is jotting down the NPCs we name throughout the game. Keeping track of them so they could potentially come back seems like such fun. Plus, while we're watching the Oxventure campaign, it's always great fun for all involved to have an NPC cameo or otherwise return for an adventure. I'm excited to do the same with the NPCs Hubby and I introduce in our game.

I already have a score written up for tonight's game which will tie back into one of the missions the crew took the last time I GM'd. I have another in mind, but I'm trying to sort out the specifics of it right now, and I kind of want to run it past Hubby as well. Sure, he'd be running his character, and so it gives him a semi-unfair advantage knowing what I have planned, but at the same time, it affects our Crew in a way I want him to sign off on since he's a co-GM.

I'm hoping to get into some legit writing soon, but in the meantime, I'm taking baby-steps by "writing" these Blades missions and further fleshing out Mara's backstory and character. Not to mention trying to figure out side-stories with the rest of the world-build of the game.

It's a start. Right?

Shifting gears to reading, I still have a backlog of fanfic updates I need to take the time to sit down and enjoy. In the meantime, however, I read Chewy's original story. There were definitely notes. Anyone I've ever beta-read for can attest to that. You ask me to do a job to help better your story, and by gum, I'm going to do the best I can to accomplish that job. He seemed appreciative of the notes and we chatted a bit about it. He has a neat concept, and I can't wait to see what his more polished story looks like.

As of right now the story is more-or-less thus:

A boy of 12 is living in a dystopian America of the near-future. He has an alcoholic, and probably abusive, father who vanishes frequently while on benders, but comes back with a feast of food for the otherwise starving family. The mom seems emotionally and mentally broken; not really caring for her child and only doing the bare minimum to keep them alive. The boy also appears understimulated by his schoolwork, which results in his struggling to stay invested in his lessons. Because of this, his teachers have more-or-less written him off as a lost case. It's a depressing downward spiral for our protagonist.

But there's hope by way of a mysterious voice projecting through the child's otherwise useless one-way radio. All of the radio stations shut down roughly a year before the story begins, but the boy still hears a lone voice calling out for any contact. Without thinking, the boy talks back to the voice, knowing full well his radio is simply for reception, not projection; there's no way the voice can hear him too.

And yet, it does. The two start up a conversation, and things get weird and promising for the boy. Even when he has to spend his days in the depressing life he's always known, he at least has the nights, and the voice through the radio.

If/when Chewy publishes the short story - either professionally or for free consumption somewhere - I'll be sure to let you fine folks know.

My mom is also attempting her own writing project, so I'll be working with her on that. I'm gonna wait until we're further along before I give more details there, but at least I'm kind of writing-adjacent lately, right?

What about you fine folks? Anyone out there writing? Anything good that you've read recently? What about other creative outlets, or games you've been playing? I'd love to know.

Until next week, everyone!

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