Catch-up Week

Once again, I am on my front porch, enjoying the sunshine before noon, and I'm chilled. I have a sweatshirt on, and I'm thinking of running inside to get a lap blanket. Possibly also some dry shoes, since I'm wearing the breathable workout kind, and didn't think about that before stepping in dew-covered grass.

Point is, I'm yet again cold in the morning, just as I was last week. Oh! And speaking of last week, apparently I complained a bit too loudly about the sudden cold snap, because it was like 95-degrees (35 C) out post-1pm. And Wednesday was a "just step outside and you'll instantly sweat" kind of day. And then back to cold and "should we turn on the heat?" on Thursday. Us humans really need to stop screwing up Mother Nature. Her random chills and hot flashes are killing me.

BACK ON TOPIC!

I.... didn't really write anything this week. I didn't even really think about writing this week. It was 100% take a break from writing and catch up on other things week. It was also "holy hand grenades! Socializing!" week.

I literally had someone over post-work until roughly 10pm every night; Monday through Saturday. It's hard to write anything when you're hosting. Also, my netbook is definitely on its last legs, making writing anything while at work a bit tricky as well. I'll get to that.

To start, here was my social breakdown:

• Monday: had two friends over so we could all watch Steven Universe: the Movie on Cartoon Network together. Hubby put out a lovely spread that filled our entire card table. We had left over brie and fruit for days. I still haven't gone back to the brie yet as I'm making my way through the fruit.
• Tuesday: I didn't have writing group, but I did have draft for my fantasy (American) football league. I also had an exhausting and frustrating time of getting my pizzas from Pizza Hut for the draft. Ended up having to auto-draft my first 3 picks, because THAT'S what you want to do... I don't know what was up with that night crew, but... they were bad.
• Wednesday: I ended up kidnapping Rozsavaria. She was supposed to come over to watch a simple 20min cartoon with me. Then we watched Nintendo Direct, and she borrowed Hubby's Fire Emblem amiibos for her copy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and we just watched YouTube videos for hours on end.
• Thursday: The weekly meet-up with Omnibladestrike. It was also the season opener for football, so after "pre-gaming" with some episodes of the anime Eyeshield 21, we switched over for actual football. Omni isn't much of a fan, so he and I casually chatted with the game on in the background, but he ended up heading home before the game ended. We may have to see if switching to Saturday hang-outs work better during the football season....
• Friday: I had Wolfhearted over to catch up on Miraculous Ladybug episodes, and... well... that took way longer than I intended.... I'll explain in a touch.
• Saturday: Hubby's one friend who had moved out of the area was back for the weekend. The friend was still over by the time I got home from work, so we played a game of Mario Party on the Switch, then got dinner, and watched various YouTube videos. Mostly Outside Xtra stuff. Also, while the rest of the world is watching Critical Role - we really need to get into that... - Hubby and I have decided we need to catch up on all the Oxventures. The storyline(s) might not be as emotional, but the OX gang certainly feels like our playgroup.
• Sunday: FINALLY! A day of just me and hubby. It's great to be social, but when it's a sort of all-or-nothing situation like we always seem to be in, it gets exhausting to not have time to do anything around the house, or even just chat with my spouse; one-on-one. It was the first Football Sunday though, so we mostly caught up on online stuff, watched the games, and vaguely chatted about random things that happened at work this past week. It was a total veg day, and I managed to get some more of my Ocarina of Time playthrough in. I now have the first two Spiritual Stones.... oooooooooooo.

So. Yeah. I don't wake up early enough to get anything terribly productive done before work. Then I went to work. Then at 6, when I came home, I entertained until roughly 10pm - sometimes later, sometimes a touch earlier - each night. I didn't have much true down time.

It was fun. Don't get me wrong on that. I loved each night hanging out with people. However, if my friends would be so kind as to maybe... spread out... your hang outs with us? So that maybe we don't go a full month without seeing each other, and then EVERYONE WANTS TO HANG THE SAME WEEK?

Speaking of.... I still haven't organized a good time to hang out with Cyhyr and Ronoxym. I need to get on that. I miss those two.

As for why things went a bit long when Wolfhearted came over? Well....

When we watch ML we pause in order to take time to react without said reactions making us miss the next bit of action or dialog or whathaveyou. There was some pausing while we watched "Reflekdoll" so that 20-some minute episode did take closer to the full 30minutes it would have been if it aired on TV. But then. THEN we watched "Desperada" and... well...

Let me get this out of the way first. I loved the episode. It was a good episode. It was a bit facepalm-y, mostly with Marinette, but it was a good episode with a wonderful villain and soooooooooo much to unpack. Plus... it had Luka. I love me Luka episodes. But it wasn't JUST a Luka episode. It was a sorta... Ladrien? Episode? Kinda? Anyway, I wanted to throw out the disclaimer that I DID enjoy the episode. That I appreciate the episode. That if you also enjoyed this episode, then yay.

HOWEVER!

HOW- EVER!

It was a RAGE INDUCING episode. For me, at least. I just.... I couldn't with Marinette in this episode. The way she completely and utterly forgot about Luka the second Adrien was in sight? Like? WHAT!? The way Ladybug actually allowed emotion to overpower strategy? NO! No, bad Marinette!

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Also... I was never really much of an Adrien and Luka shipper before. Sure, in Luka's introduction episode they MAAAAAAY have looked at each other for a second or two longer than most felt was comfortable and appropriate for a platonic relationship, but I thought the fandom was grasping at straws. I was fine with it. If you are a Lukadrien shipper, you do you. You're not hurting anyone, and if you like that ship, you carry on.

HOWEVER. Holy smokes! Either there IS something there, or the writers are just leaning hard into the ship as fan service, or the animators don't know what they're doing. BECAUSE HOLY BI-ENERGY, BATMAN! It was making me wonder if Luka truly did love Marinette, and Adrien love Ladybug. Because... man. I still don't ship it; I still think canonically it's not supposed to be there. However, after that episode, I can see what the shippers see, and frankly, neither boy needs to deal with Marinette's unnecessary drama. I'm nearly on board the Lukadrien ship.

Luka, honey, precious son of mine, you are beautiful and wondrous and you deserve so much better than Marinette's chaos.

Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
by Nagaru Tanigawa

Also... speaking of "do the animators truly know what they're doing"... does.... does Luka know Marinette is Ladybug? Because there are parts of that episode where it had me wondering if maybe he does. And... I'm losing my mind over it!

Like I said. There is a LOT to unpack after watching the "Desperada" episode. Even potential hints at Jagged Stone being the secret father of Luka and/or Juleka. Like. There is a LOT of romantic energy just bouncing all over this episode, and my fanfic-writing shipper-heart has no clue which direction to go in. I'm STILL trying to come to terms with what the heck it is I watched.

Most of the fandom seems focused on the 25,913 times thing. I won't say more than that because of spoilers, but, that's the main story people seem fixed on. I get it. I kinda want in as well. At the same time though, there's the whole Annika and Jagged Stone were former band mates - and perhaps more than? - route that I could follow. Or the "does Luka know?" route. Or the Lukadrien ship route. Or the "Luka deserves better than what Marinette is doing" route. Or I could write fluffy Lukanette fanfic to heal the hurt that episode caused. I mean, that seems to be the second-most focused on story idea post-Desperada.

Other fanfic story ideas I could run with includes the "Plagg feels abandoned" route. Again, I won't go into details for spoiler reasons. There's also the curiosity and point of view of Kagami. There's Desperada's perspective. There's the psychological damage that episode most likely caused. There's the potential after-math/PTSD from the episode. There's.... there's a lot. And I can't seem to zero in on one concept that I feel strongly enough to write about before I see another potential thought via tumblr posts. I just... I feel like this episode NEEDS something written about it, but I can't pin down what. That might be part of the reason I didn't write this weekend.

I DID kinda-sorta write this week still. Just... nothing fictional.

As I mentioned at the top of this post, my netbook is on its last legs. I've had the thing for probably about 10years now. Not bad for a dinky thing I got for $200 as a post-Christmas clean-out special at Best Buy. Sure, it did die on me a few years back, and I went roughly a year without it before my father-in-law was able to revive it, but that's still quite a long time to have any sort of computer. Let alone such a cheap one.

Say what you will about HP, but that HP Mini was well worth its price.... aside from the irony that a NETbook seemed to always have problems working on the interNET. Oh, irony....

For the main purpose I need the netbook, though - namely, to have something small I can easily slide in my purse, and have in order to work on my writing - it was splendid. It will be a sad day when I officially retire the poor thing. But retired it must soon be. The battery died a few years back - as one would expect with the amount of times I use the thing and how many years I've had it - and I had to buy a replacement. Then the charging cable wasn't working anymore and I had to replace THAT. Now, the actual charging port isn't working properly. I have to get the cable juuuuuuuuuuuust so in order for the netbook to recognize that it's plugged in. I feel like those old shows and cartoons where a character has to mess with the "rabbit ears" antenna for the TV, and ends up in a weird position they then have to hold for hours so the rest of the household can watch a football game or something. I mean, check this out.

I nearly taped the cable in place, because if any of it shifted even the slightest bit, the netbook no longer registered being plug in. Also, yes, part of the "magic" positioning IS having the netbook ajar like that.

I can't wait until I have the money to replace this thing, as sad as that day of replacement will be. The HP 11" Stream seems to be the descendant of my HP Mini. Anyone have any insight on this computer? Is the Stream good?  Or, at least decent for less than $200? I was also looking at Chrome books, but it looks like you can't put any actual programs on the thing, and so it's kind of useless offline. Does anyone know if the Stream is the same way? It looks like it runs normal Windows OS, so it should be functional offline, right?

Anyway, as you could imagine, it's kind of hard to actually work on my netbook when I have to charge it. So my ability to write while at my job has been limited. First World Problems, right?

Instead, I've killed time when work is slow by going through old emails via my phone. Mostly notifications of reviews on FFN or AO3. I truly do try to respond to all reviews/comments on my stories, but I had a backlog since July. I spent this week going through them, and I believe I responded to everyone. If I somehow missed your review/comment on any of my stories, please know that I did read it when you posted, and it made me smile. Thank you for reading.

Generated by Bitmoji

Feeling motivated after catching up on those reviews, I figured it was time to catch up on blogs I've neglected to read for MONTHS. One of which is Aliventures by Ali Luke. She was always so helpful with my writing before, but I just didn't have the energy to... learn... anything??? I guess? I still have to backtrack through the blog, but I DID read this week's update: What to Do When Your Writing Isn’t Working Out How You Hoped

As per usual, Ali manages to write a blog post that perfectly fits my writing crisis for the week. Thank you, Ali!

There are other blogs I've been ignoring, such as Rick Riordan's writer's update blog. However, the one I really wanted to focus on was catching up with Taurus Pixie via the Pixie's Chronicles and episode reviews she posts to her blog.

I was a machine the other day. I just tore through a month or so of updates, and my responses - especially to her episode reviews - tended to be so long that I needed two or even three comments to post everything I wrote. Now, the comments section for Blogger only allows about 4000 characters - not words; characters - per comment. So in the big scheme of things, none of my responses were THAT long... but... they were still LOOOOOONG within blog comment standards.

I managed to catch up on the August posts, and I think half... maybe most of?... her July posts. Only about 12 more to go through. And the Pixie's Chronicle and episode review she posted this weekend.

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

It's good. I got this. Pixie doesn't seem to mind that I sort of ghosted, so there's no rush or obligation to go through everything. Still, I want to. I enjoy knowing what's going on in her life. Also, her reviews of the ML episodes are a fun read. I just need to set aside more time to read things.

I also need to set aside time to write again. If I don't read my Bitterblue smut, I only have one thing left for me to read at group tonight: my Kyo and Tohru story. I mean, technically I could also read Painfully Close, but that story requires them knowing the episode "Puppeteer 2" and so I'd have to explain that. And the fanfics I read at group which are the most grounded in episode and canon specifics seem to get the least feedback. I think they're not sure WHAT to critique, especially since they don't know the episode(s) well enough to know what is the show's and what is mine.

So I don't think I'll ever read Painfully Close at group, and I don't know if I can PG Sparks for a Moment enough to read at group. Maybe? I mean the actual smut is only about 3 paragraphs out of the whole 3400-word story....

Point is, I'm running out of material to read at group, so I need to crack my whip. I need to see if I can finally get One and the Same situated. Which means more reading since I neglected my studies of 4-Act story structure vs 3-Act story structure. Maybe having a different breakdown of events will help. I think the big problem for me is that my 2nd act seems to be largely "MariChat bonding fluffiness" without any sort of drama. At least when I did a similar thing in Woven Heartstrings, the MariChat relationship didn't remain the core of the story. The idea of the Love Square having a good Christmas, Marinette not being awkward around Adrien, Chat Noir trying to find the balance of being able to gift something to Ladybug without potentially burdening her with his love, and Adrien's relationship with his father all were subplots that... wove together... to become the full story.

There was still drama there: what are the feelings Marinette is now feeling for Chat Noir? How will Adrien's Christmas be like with his father? What will everyone gift each other? How will Ladybug react to the scarf Chat Noir is crocheting her, and will she ever be able to wear it? Will there be an accidental reveal as Marinette wears the scarf Chat Noir made her? How will Adrien react to Marinette's gift? Will he have one for her? What is Marinette doing, talking with Chloe? There's not MUCH drama there. It's not a will-they-won't-they, or will-they-save-the-world, or will-Adrien-figure-out-his-father-is-the-supervillain level drama. Still, even with the much lower stakes, there still IS drama. There are still questions left for the readers; calling for them to come back for the next chapter.

For my current work-out of OatS, that isn't there. I need to figure that out. I need that act 2 drama so people aren't just getting fluffy chapters. Not that fanfic readers MIND getting those....

However, at least for my major projects, I'm trying to truly use fanfiction as training. I'm TRYING to write something as professionally as I can. I'm already going a bit non-traditional with my back-and-forth 1st person POV final chapter(s). I want to have the rest of the story structure be more traditional.

Here's hoping my Muse finally wakes up from her sunbathed summertime stupor and actually helps me figure this out. If anyone sees an ivy-covered minor-goddess around, direct her back to me, please?

Until next Tuesday.