Welcome to 2019

Image by chibird.
See the original on tumblr

While I've always liked to give artists credit for their work, and try to link back to them whenever possible, I've also become more and more sensitive to reposting etiquette and desires of the artist. So, please rest assured that I checked chibird's FAQs to see if a repost is allowed. I am carefully following all of the requested credits.

I'm just glad I can repost, because this image is just too cute and perfect for me to not share. So Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2019!

Whoops! Sorry, guys. Last week turned out a bit more frantic than I originally planned, so I ended up not posting anything at all. A shame, really, since I did have things to talk about. At least I still hit 52 blog posts. We'll just ignore that there was apparently 53 Tuesdays in 2018...

Anyway, instead of this being my normal "Here are my New Year's Resolutions" post or my "Year in Review" post, I'm actually going to talk a bit about my writing. Worse comes to worst, I'll do my Resolutions post next week. Gives me a week to break in the New Year to see how reasonable the resolutions are going to be.

I'm stalling though, so let's just get to it!

In my last post I talked about Jowy's Pixie gifting me and three other friends of hers a Christmas story. Well, first of all, a quick side note. Pixie recently changed her FFN name to Taurus Pixie, probably to match her other online handles on AO3 and Tumblr. So from now on she'll be Taurus Pixie here too, also please note that you're now looking for Taurus Pixie on FFN.

Now back on topic.

Pixie faithfully posted a new chapter EVERY DAY for TWELVE DAYS STRAIGHT in order to have it all done by Christmas Eve. If you want some warm fuzzies to carry the Christmas spirit along for a few more days, please go check out her COMPLETED story:

Twelve Days of Chatmas

The story really was incredibly adorable, and I'm still amazed that she could write so well with such a quick turn around. I'm still struggling to get something up once a week! So, if you enjoy Pixie's work as well, please be sure to give her some love by way of likes, kudos, and/or reviews. It means the world to us writers to have people show us how much they enjoyed our work, and she deserves a lot more love. For sure.

Also, she didn't just go with Chat Noir trying to gift everything from The Twelve Days of Christmas to Ladybug. She still thematically included each "gift" into each day/chapter of her story, but the way she did so was inspired and refreshing. Seriously, I can't get enough of this story and I can't say enough about it. The fact that I was one of the gift recipients of this darling tale is just super thick frosting to an already 7-layer cake of awesomeness.

Now, of course her story gave me all the feels. First of all, the story is just GOOD. Secondly, the fact that I got a new chapter to look forward to each day really helped me with the stress of prepping for Christmas. Especially since I was NOT in the mood this year. Third was the idea that, while she discovered “Peeping Tomcat” in May, Pixie and I didn't really go from me thanking her for her reviews to actual online friends until July or so. Which means I was only really friends with her for a few months, and yet she thought about including me with a Christmas gift she was writing for her friends. I could just cry knowing we bonded that quickly.

I really need to redo this
emoji. Does anyone even
recognize this meme anymore?

I wanted to let her know that our newfound friendship meant just as much to me. I wanted her to also have glorious feels like she was making me have. Plus, I needed something Christmas-y as a bit of a palate cleanser to help refresh my work on "One and the Same" and get me in the Christmas spirit.

So I asked her what her favorite corner of the Love Square is, and what kind of stuff would she like to read. After some personal debate, she landed on MariChat, and "fluffy hanging out on the balcony" as well as "there's not enough Nurse Chat Noir" fics.

Well, I DID come up with something for all of those suggestions, but it didn't seem "Christmas-y enough" so I shoved it all to the back-burner and started again. Doing so pushed me back a bit, and my story - as per usual - ended up being more involved than I initially gave it credit for. What should have been a 4000-word one-shot turned into at least 4 plotted chapters. I was going to try to have the whole story written and revised - to make sure I didn't need to tweak anything chapter by chapter to fill plot holes - but it was taking too long.

So, on Christmas Eve, just a few hours before Pixie posted her last chapter of TDoC, I posted my first chapter of my story gift to her.

On FanFiction        On ArchiveOfOurOwn        On DeviantArt

Woven Heartstrings

Summary: Chat Noir needs a Christmas gift for Ladybug. Marinette is a very crafty and creative person, so Chat Noir asks her for some help in making a gift for his lady. While hesitant in aiding Chat Noir’s attempts to woo her superhero self, Marinette reluctantly agrees. Although, after a week of working side-by-side with Marinette, Chat Noir’s not so sure he wants to gift the scarf he’s making to Ladybug after all.

Status: Chapter 1 of 4 (? I think it will be 4 when all is said and done…)

Ships: MariChat with hints of LadyNoir and Adrienette

Rating: K / General Audiences

Universe: This story DOES NOT take place in the “It’s You” universe along with “Peeping Tomcat.”

Spoilers: This story is Season 2 compliant, and therefore has mentions of minor spoilers from Season 2 of Miraculous Ladybug

By the way, coming up with cover art for my fanfics is HARD, man! I wanted something quick and simple since I didn't have much free time the past two weeks. And yet, creating that striped scarf, and coming up with a way to symbolize Chat Noir and Marinette still kept me TWO HOURS to do! If I were more artistically inclined I probably could have whipped this out a lot faster. However, considering, I think I did alright for only being able to doctor pictures, and therefore needing to find the base pictures online first. That took up 45 minutes easily: finding a base scarf I liked, a high-quality Chat Noir symbol, and a high-quality Marinette Signature logo. I do wish I knew who re-created the Marinette logo from her purse and accessories. It was so wonderfully done.

Coming up with a title was equally difficult. I tried and tried and tried to come up with something. Something that, in an instant, told people it was a fluffy story. Something that would let people know crafting was involved. Something that told people that things were going to become unexpectedly complicated and/or there would be significant bonding between characters. I also wanted something to let people know it's a Christmas themed story, but I couldn't tie it all together.

I kept landing on Christmas Pine, but the main theme of this story isn't actually about pining for someone. I mean, I guess it could be an underlining theme, but the pun hints at more angst than there should be in the final result of my tale. There's no reference to Christmas trees, as far as I know, to a significant degree in my story either. So either way, the title wasn't going to work. Shame, though, because it's a decent title, and I figured it out fairly quickly. Instead, I had to suffer three full days of trying to figure out what to name this silly story.

Christmas Eve I woke up to an alert on my phone. Every day at about 8am, my Dictionary.com app alerts me to the Word of the Day. The word that day was Heartstrings.

BINGO! Chat Noir is crocheting in my story, and the whole point of his making a scarf is to show how much he cares. He wants the gift for Ladybug to be a reminder of how much she's loved. The word Heartstrings seemed perfect.

....

Until I went to do my usual title check. Now, it's perfectly fine to title your story the same thing someone else titled theirs. It happens all the time with professional books, movies, and songs. It happens frequently for fanfiction as well. However, I try my hardest to have as unique a title as possible. I find it's easier for people to find my story that way. It helps me stand out. Plus, I don't like accidentally riding the coattails of another story. For example, someone heard "Heartstrings" is a fantastic Miraculous Ladybug story, but they don't know who wrote the story, and therefore accidentally reads mine instead of the one they were looking for. I mean, it's a great way to capture readers I wouldn't have otherwise received, but it just feels shady to me.

And lo and behold, there is indeed already a very popular ML fanfic called "Heartstrings." It's by taylortot, was completed May 2016, is over 60,000 words long, and is clearly popular. As of this writing, it has had 385,742 hits! There are 1703 comments, 2675 bookmarks, and 15,147 kudos. I have it bookmarked to read later since this story is clearly a winner and very popular in the fandom. I'll let you know my thoughts when I get around to reading it.

In the meantime, feel free to check it out yourself:

Heartstrings by taylortot

Summary: One of Marinette’s rare unlucky days turns into something treacherous. Thanks to a certain cat, the real danger passes, but there are other things to be more afraid of. Her heart, for example, might be one of them.

Rating: Teen

Warnings: The story is listed as "No Archive Warnings Apply" but additional tags has "read at your own risk holy shit"

Point is, this was exactly what I feared. What if someone looked for taylortot's story after being told "You HAVE to read Heartstrings" and ended up on my story? Worse yet, what if someone MEANT to suggest MY story, but forgot to mention "LycoRogue's story Heartstrings" and I ended up LOSING readers to taylortot?

Anyway, after my "perfect" title was a bust, I spent another 2 or 3 hours Christmas Eve morning going "WHAT AM I GOING TO CALL THIS DARN THING!? I NEED TO GET AT LEAST THE FIRST CHAPTER UP FOR PIXIE!"

Finally - thank god for shower thoughts - I realized that Woven Heartstrings would be perfect. I just needed to confirm one thing: is crochet considered a type of weaving? The Google answer is yes, checking on FFN and AO3 resulted in no other story with that title - Miraculous Ladybug or otherwise, and thus I could move on.

Have I ever mentioned before how much I hate naming things?


Anyway, chapter 1 of "Woven Heartstrings" went up, and it had a decent reception, given that everyone was probably spending time with their family this past week.

Most importantly, Pixie seems to like it.

Taurus Pixie: I'm dead. You've killed me. I've died from cuteness!!!!! I can't believe you've done this for me! I'm speechless! Speechless and dead! Just...AAHHHHHHHH! One of my favourite writers and most amazing friends of all time has written a fanfiction for me in her usual awesome quality that makes me just want to scream for eternity over how true to the show it is and how sweet it is! Eeeeeeek! I really don't know what to say! This is already so amazing! The images of Chat trying to crochet are just so adorable! It was great to see him and Marinette spending time together. How ironic that Marinette is helping Chat Noir make a gift for HERSELF! I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of that. But awww, bless Chat Noir so much! He really wants to do something special for her! Awww he's such a cute kitty, too pure for this world. I'm super excited to see where this goes! I can already imagine that you're going to cause my teeth to melt out of my head. You have such a wonderful talent for creating the most adorable moments between the characters!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

So I consider that a win.

I had every intention of finishing the rest of the story on Christmas Eve so I could at least post a polished Chapter 2 on Christmas. That didn't happen.

I had every intention of writing up a blog post on Christmas Eve, talking about all of this "Woven Heartstrings" stuff, that way it was all set for Christmas Day. That also didn't happen.

I had every intention of doing either of those things Christmas morning after Hubby and I exchanged gifts, since we didn't need to be at the in-laws' until 2pm. Bet you could guess that also didn't happen.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, I just wasn't feeling the Holiday Season this year. I've actually felt the "holy crap, I'm burnt out and overwhelmed and just want to hide in this corner of the couch" season this year. So the apartment fell to disaster, and my "Holy crud! We need to clean for Christmas" panic couldn't even get it all done in time. Hubby and I stayed up until about 3am on December 23rd trying to clean the house. After dropping him off at work at about 7am on Christmas Eve, I worked on titling my story, editing that first chapter, and creating the cover. After "wasting" a collective 5hrs on that project I went "Well, there went MY day" and stayed up until 1am or so trying to clean some more. I ended up collapsing with just Hubby's presents "wrapped" - read: thrown in gift bags with tissue paper, because it's quick - and the Christmas tree up without any ornaments on it.

Hubby stayed up until 4 or 5am to finish the basic cleaning for Christmas, wrapping everyone else's gifts, and fluffing/decorating the tree for me. When he finally came to bed and accidentally woke me up, he figured he'd show me his impromptu Christmas gift to me. And yes, I did weep that he stayed up late to decorate the stupid tree so it would feel more like Christmas for me.

Needless to say, after that first chapter, I just didn't have free-time to write. Also needless to say, we ended up sleeping in a little bit on Christmas itself. After returning home from the in-laws' we watched a Christmas movie to "stay in the mood" before I went back to frantic cleaning for my family's visit this weekend.

That took the rest of my week. If I wasn't at work or at zumba I was organizing/cleaning/scrubbing down my home so it looked like we were proper adults by the time my family came to visit. This also meant that writing anything took a back seat. Hence me not getting a blog post up last week. It sort of bugged me though, because I SHOULD have had time at work at least to finish editing the second chapter of "Woven Heartstrings" so I could get that up. I even stated in multiple places online that it should have been up. Buuuuut, things at work actually needed my attention, and so I didn't have the free time there either.

Darn work making me work.

Ya-Ya Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Friday, just as Hubby and I finished as much cleaning as we were going to manage, my mom and sister arrived for the weekend. Then, on Sunday, Shadow popped in so we could catch up on Miraculous Ladybug episodes - he needed to see the Season 2 finale still, as well as the Season 3 premiere - and that surprisingly took us about four hours to do. Granted, we chatted, and interrupted the episodes with our commentary and freak-outs, and I introduced him to "The Seven Deadly Sins" anime, and we did a food run..... Still....

Just as we were finishing our mini-marathon, Hubby came home from work, and two more friends popped in for gift-exchanges and games. About 9:30/10pm yet another friend popped in for more game night. Eventually I just went "It's midnight. I need sleep" and crashed while Hubby continued to play host. Soooooo, no real writing then either.

Although, as Shadow and I did our freak-outs and commentary on episodes, he laughed at me and told me I should do reviews on YouTube because I get.... shall we say fired up?

I don't know if I'll ever find the time needed to do videos, but I did take that energy and created two posts on Tumblr as my commentary on the latest episode.

Surprisingly enough, they both actually really blew up.... well, for me.... They're still at less than 1000 notes, so it's small peanuts, but I'm in the 100s with each post, which is big for me. I guess I'm starting to get noticed in the fandom, which is kinda cool.

The first one is just a cheeky little paragraph observation that has over 200 notes, including 16 reblogs. The other one is roughly essay-length with pictorial evidence of my headcanon. It has nearly 200 notes, including 27 reblogs.

It just amuses me to log onto Tumblr and have my dash look like this:

Granted, most of the likes and reblogs from this list are reblogs I had on my wall,
but there's still the two original posts I talked about above featured in this list.

For those wondering, the original posts are called "Adrien's View of Glaciator's Balcony Scene" and "Marinette Getting Salty..."

If this is what my dash looks like with barely any likes/reblogs of my stuff, comparatively, I can only imagine what it's like to be a popular artist/writer/celeb/whatever on Tumblr and have your post liked thousands of times....

Regardless, I'm now up to 76 followers. Again, nothing major in the grand scheme of things, but that includes 7 new followers since Sunday. Which is pretty neat if you take into consideration that I have 76 followers after being on Tumblr for about 9 months....

So I'm just enjoying the fact that I'm semi-noticed in the fandom. I need to keep up with commentary, theories, and headcanons I guess. I mean, I'd prefer to be the type of person who can get her act together enough to post a SHORT drabble of a one-shot at least once a week and become noticed THAT way, but I'll take what I can get. No such thing as bad publicity, right?

Well, I had to work today, so I spent last night - before celebrating with the Hubby and watching the ball drop - writing the first draft of this post. Which yet again means no work on "Woven Heartstrings." It also means I did not finish the first draft of "One and the Same" before the close of 2018 like I wanted.

Oh well. Screw 2018. It was trash for so many of us. Writing wise, while not as good as I would have liked, it WAS a good year.... for 8 months of it. But let's see if 2019 is better. Let's see if I can take what I learned from this past year and improve myself for this new year.

I will try to work hard to get chapter 2 of "Woven Heartstrings" FINALLY done for next week, as well as have my New Year Resolutions figured out to share.

Until then, Happy New Year!