A Story A Day...

Sorry, guys, I had a bit of a list of errands I had to run before noon today, so I didn't get started on actually writing this post until 11:45ish.

I was going to pre-write my post, but, as usual, that plan fell through; mostly because of how crazy this week has been. Now, obviously, there was the writing frenzy. However, even with that and work - of which I had no days off between last Tuesday and now - a lot of the chaos was actually centered around socializing.

Darn me and my extroverted nature!

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Mostly, I was visited by Wolfhearted just about daily. He stopped by to go for walks with me, to watch Miraculous Ladybug with me, to get Hubby and me to watch Carnival Row while we still have Amazon Prime, and to work on a D&D character.

See, one of Hubby's friends had his birthday this weekend...

...so he was off with his family instead of swinging by for Anime Saturday. Wolfhearted wanted to pop in to watch ML since a new episode dropped on the 12th. So, we asked Omnibladestrike how he'd feel about switching up Anime Day for a D&D one-off session since Wolf would be hanging out with us anyway, and that way our other friend wouldn't fall behind. Omni was happy to give it a go.

Basically, for a one-off, you quickly make characters - Omni and I based ours off of something randomly generated on Who The F*** Is My #DND Character? - and the DM runs a session that is supposed to conclude that day. Either the quest is simple enough to be done in one gaming session, and there really isn't a lead-in to further adventuring, or the aim of the game is to survive as long as you can while the DM progressively tries to kill your character off.

Then there are times where one-offs are used to test the waters, but can lead to further sessions. I personally think that's what happened with Oxventure. It was a three-part story where it was open-ended ENOUGH that they could continue with the characters they created, but there also wasn't much of a lead-in to continued adventures. If they didn't have fun, and/or if the session didn't prove popular enough with their audience, I'm sure the Oxventure series wouldn't have continued on. Which is why I'm so glad it did continue.

Hubby's quest, on the other hand, is in a sort of limbo-state right now. Technically it's not a "one-off" anymore since we didn't actually complete his quest. Between dinner and setting up our characters, or even getting off the beach our characters washed up on, we didn't get to the actual dungeon portion of his quest until 11pm-ish? We called it a night around 1am, but we only cleared out a small portion of the dungeon. So, we CAN pick up where we left off if we wanted to. Also, if we either all die in this dungeon, or we successfully complete the quest, but never continue with those same characters, it is still sorta a one-off.

Wolf seems to really like his character and our party as a whole - despite his character getting exasperated with the shenanigans of the rest of the party - and I'm having fun with my character, so we may indeed turn this "one-off" into a full-on campaign. We may even do it Oxventure style; no real overall goal aside from generic adventuring, and do sessions sporadically whenever we all have time to do so. However, with only three of us and Hubby to worry about, it shouldn't be TOO hard to try to come up with session dates. It definitely gets more complicated to schedule everyone when the party increases in size.

Also, Hubby randomly generated his quest and the dungeon via the site donjon. If he keeps doing stuff like that, then he doesn't even need to really spend too much time to come up with a campaign-long story. Each quest is self-contained, and we can stop whenever. Again; like Oxventure. A much more casual campaign will be fun to explore. The casual atmosphere also means we can feel out our characters, which is awesome. Especially since I don't really have a backstory for my character, aside from the story elements you can choose from during character creation. It's fun to see him evolve just over the course of the night.

I haven't had time to attempt my own design of my character, but here's the basics.

Kriv Myastan is a 16year old Bronze Dragonborn bard. For Dragonborn, adulthood is 15, so he IS an adult, but he's still fairly new to adulthood. He's the equivalent of an early 20-something in real-world standards. He's a sucker for a pretty face, but doesn't seem to find Elves attractive. Every time he meets someone new I've rolled percentile dice, with 50% being "average looks" and deeming him not consider someone as having a "pretty face" unless I roll 80% or higher. He has met two Elves and one Drow thus far on his journeys, and has yet to surpass 60% on my rolls. One of the Elves and the Drow were closer to the 40s....

Anyway, Kriv also craves being the center of attention, and is ridiculously flamboyant and eccentric to try to both grab and hold that attention. He has hardy laughs, talks boastfully, literally stands in the center of a crowd whenever he can; no matter how large or small it is, plays either his lyre or his pan flute to fill silence, and goes out of his way to introduce himself to all he meets. This can be very inappropriate times, as he has already tried to shake hands and introduce himself to ship crewmates who were trying to row us to safety during a terrible storm that sunk our vessel, and he has also attempted to introduce himself to a semi-hostile Elven village despite the fact that they only understood Elven, and he only speaks Common and Draconic.

He also thinks himself a "Triple Threat": actor, dancer, and singer. However, his singing is mediocre at best, and while his instrumental skills aren't half-bad, they aren't anything to really fame himself off of. As for dancing? He mistakes enthusiasm for skill. He IS entertaining to watch, mostly because he's a lot more graceful than one would expect from such a large creature - he's 6'9" (~206cm) and 327lbs (~148kg) - however, much like his instrumental skills, his overall ability isn't objectively impressive. He IS a great actor though, and can be quite convincingly deceptive if need be. He's a bit Method, but in the end, he "loses himself" to the roles he plays, even if it's a simple as pretending he doesn't know a bit of information that would get him in trouble.

Dragonborn come in a variety of looks, but most are too far removed from their Dragon ancestors to still have tails or wings. The heads are still mostly the same look, and they usually have scales and claws. Some Dragonborn have more flattened feet, like their Human counterparts, but others are a low enough generation still to have the more Draconic looking clawed feet. I have yet to decide where Kriv lands along that spectrum. But, for some starter visuals, this is a Bronze Dragon as seen in the D&D 5th edition handbooks.

So Kriv will have a similar finned and horned head, with those bronze scales and green finned "mohawk." For a better idea of what a Dragonborn version of a Bronze Dragon, this is Jasttor Bloodmaw, an OC created by the artist Zorayda and shared on Tumblr.

I probably shouldn't be reposting without permission,
so I added a watermark along with that link above to their account.
I hope this counters my faux pas.

I also love the jolly look used in this commissioned piece drawn by David Rodrigues. The energy coming from this Dragonborn - while the wrong species - is very much Kriv. So these are my two main base reference pics for my own artwork... should I ever find time to work on it.

Again, I'm hoping adding that watermark in
the center of the pic helps counter any bad Karma
I built up for reposting without permission....

It will be interesting to see how Kriv turns out when I get to drawing him....

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Kriv and the campaign, and the lack of sleep which I am still trying to catch up on all took place Saturday, a bit Sunday, and a touch more yesterday after I was done with work and Zumba.

The rest of the week, though? Minus watching ML with Wolf on Sunday in between football games, and going for hour-long evening walks with Wolf twice this week, the rest of my free time was spent on writing.

All. The. Writing.

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Oh, yeah, and also reading. There was a lot of reading this week too.

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For each day of the KyoruWeek2019 challenge, I woke up, re-checked the day's prompt - something I had from the get-go - and ponder. And ponder. And ponder some more.

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A lot of the time, I would read through the tag to see what others had come up with. I hoped it would spark inspiration in me as well. More often than not, though, everyone else was just as pressed for time as I was, and so no one really posted - at least, it wasn't shared to the "official blog" - until late afternoon and throughout the evening. Still, the few bits I did find did help. Also, once I was done for my post for the day, I would go through and read through the others. I found some good authors that way, and it seems others have found me as well, but I'll get back to that.

Another bit of extensive reading for this week was my stack of Fruits Basket mangas: 23 volumes in all. I obviously remember what happened in the first half - third? - of the series, because I just re-watched it via the anime reboot. However, the back half - 2/3s? - of the story is only vague memory. I read the full series back in like... 2009? Maybe? I then got the one manga I was missing - volume 21 - from a friend a few years back. Once I got that, I re-red volume 20, and felt I was fairly caught up enough to charge my way through to the end of the series. Which means I haven't experienced volumes... we'll say 8; the chapters have been shifted around a touch, through 19 in about a decade. I remembered, but, not ENOUGH.

So, while I still haven't read through the whole series again, and I have not read it straight from chapter 1 through chapter 136 again, I HAVE re-read quite a bit of it. Every time I got to a new prompt, basically, I went to work to track down which chapters I needed to re-read in order to research what has already been canonically established, and hope for inspiration for that day's prompts.

The real chaos of the thing is that I didn't have the time to write, edit, post, and publish before midnight most days. In fact, most of my stories were published around 1am. No wonder I'm exhausted!

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And to think, I get to do this for a solid MONTH in 16 days....

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Oh well. The important part is that I DID manage to get a story written for each of the prompt days. You can find them as a full collection on FFN and AO3.

"Hearts Together"

On FanFiction or over on On ArchiveOfOurOwn

Otherwise, you can find each individual chapter as listed below.

First up was the Sunday, October 6th prompt. Day 1: Stay. I know I shared it already last week, but I figured it would easy on everyone if I just repost the whole week.

"Small Talk"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

I'll talk more about the over-all stats below, but since I could actually see the individual likes and favorites for the DA and Tumblr posts, I want to say that I feared I was starting off on rocky footing. Maybe it's because I'm not an established author within the fandom. Or, maybe people don't like mildly-angsty Tohru. It could also have been because not terribly too much happened in this story. It could very well be considered my weakest entry.

Even today, over a week after I posted the one-shot, I only had 4 likes and 4 reblogs over on Tumblr. Although, to be completely fair, I was stupid and published my first story for Kyoru week as part of a reblog of the day's prompt. So I don't know if any of the 9 likes on the post after I reblogged were for my story, or for the original prompt promo. However, I DO know that - aside from the event tumblr blog - I had 2 people reblog my story, so there's that.

Over on DeviantArt, my story also had a slow start; only having a couple of views, and no favorites or comments. Today, there are still no comments/reviews, but there IS a fave, as well as 23 views. That's about average for the stories presented with this collection of work.

Then, on Monday, I again couldn't get the story done "on time" as it were. Still, while circling around a bunch of other possibilities, I decided to go with my initial gut feeling from when I woke up. The prompt was Day 2 - Firsts.

"Experience It All"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

DA: 24 views, a different like than for "Small Talk", but still no comments
Tumblr Notes: 38 likes, 9 reblogs, and 1 comment. 

"Experience It All" actually has 70 notes listed on Tumblr, but... well.... I could only count those listed above, which only makes 48 notes. Add in my response to the comment, and the reblog to the event page, and I'm still only up to 50 notes. I... somehow... lost 20 notes without Tumblr registering it????

Either way, with 50 notes that I can actually track, this entry was the most popular on Tumblr. At least, so far, I still have the others who haven't hit the week-long mark yet.

Day 3 had the prompt "Selfish." I was originally going to have a Kyoru Parents story where Kyo, selfishly wanting time with his wife, gets a babysitter for their young son, that way the new parents could go for a well-deserved date.

However, when I sat to write the story, and was flipping through songs to get me into the mood, I stumbled upon the AJR song "Turning Out". I loved the melody of the song. It was the perfect pacing for what I wanted. However, the lyrics made me pull a bit of an audible, and I got kinda angsty with the prompt. What's worse, is that I did a dual-POV story, so even poor Tohru got a bit emo....

"A Greedy Night Under The Stars"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

DA: 20 views, and a like by a third different person; still no comments
Tumblr Notes: 10 notes; 7 likes 2 reblogs

It did mediocre in the grand scheme of things. I don't think too many people liked the angst. They come to these shipping weeks for fluffiness, and I went "Screw that!" and instead had a bunch of self-hate.

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I went back to fluffy for the Day 4 prompt: Desire. I felt like a lot of people would use that prompt to showcase sexual tension and desire in some shape or form, but I wanted to show that couples could have desires for something innocent as well. So, I went for hugs instead.

"GLOMP"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

DA: 21 views, but no comments or faves this time
Tumblr Notes: 31 notes; 26 likes and 4 reblogs

In truth, I basically wrote a story about me and Hubby, and then switched out our names for Tohru's and Kyo's. ChibiSunnie was able to pick up on it pretty much right away, but seemed cool with the overall story regardless. I hope my self-insert/self-indulgence was still Kyoru enough for my readers.

Either way, it was the first Kyoru story I managed to not only get done and published before midnight, but I also had it posted and promoted by FIVE O'CLOCK! Go me!

Day 5's prompt required the most research. The prompt was "Paper Flower." It's a fairly easy school craft that is apparently popular in Japan. For Fruits Basket, the craft was used as decoration for the graduation ceremony for one of the years the characters were in school. There's a lot of relationship significance of these paper flowers for two OTHER ships in the series, and that significance is more-or-less spelled out in the manga itself.

Kyo and Tohru, however? Well, this happens in those mangas I haven't read in over a decade, so I had to really dig in to try to figure this out. Kyo gives Tohru one of these paper flowers to help cheer her up, but that's really it in the manga. Then we see it again next to her picture of her mom. Then, on the last page of the series, the final panel is of Tohru's family memorial shrine, and the flower is no longer there. It was tricky to try to piece together why the flower would be important to Tohru, but I think I came up with a decent headcanon.

"A Crumpled Memento"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

DA: 15 views, a like from a 4th new person, but still no comments
Tumblr Notes: 36 notes; 27 likes and 8 reblogs

Others focused more on the fact that the craft is fairly popular with school kids in Japan, and had Kyo and Tohru's kids making paper flowers, or had Kyo teaching his kids how to make one, or had Kyo make one for Tohru while their kids made Mother's Day cards for her. I was the only one I saw who focused on the flower shown in the manga. THAT might be why I had such trouble. Still, I think I did alright. It does have the 3rd-most Tumblr notes out of the 7-story collection. It was also was the second story I managed to post the day of the prompt. Score!

The Day 6 prompt of "Birthday Wish" had me hung up pretty much ALL FRIGGEN DAY! I actually paused in order to work a bit more on my story for Ronoxym, hoping switching gears would help me out. I also tried to see what other participants did for the prompt. We must have all been stuck, because I didn't really see anything until 9pm-ish. It just kept me FOREVER to figure out what I wanted to write.

And then I came up with a stupid cliche title... Oh well, I did post it before going to bed, but it was just about 1:30am.

"The Greatest Gift"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

DA: 26 views, but no faves or comments
Tumblr Notes: 19 notes; 16 likes and 2 reblogs

To finish off Kyoru Week, we had the Day 7 prompt of "Forever." Now, regardless if it was something everyone was going to think of, I just couldn't NOT write about their wedding day. I mean. Come on.

Tapping into my own relationship again, I gave Kyo and Tohru a Western-style wedding, and swiped some of my own wedding vows for them to recite. They just seemed fitting. I was either right, or most people just cared about it being a story about them exchanging vows, because it was the second most-popular story I posted for this event on Tumblr. Then again, it's only 2 days old, so it may prove to be the MOST popular of my Kyoru stories. Give it time.

"Meet, Remember, and Love Again"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

DA: Only 9 views, but it's also only been up for 2 days
Tumblr Notes: 46 notes; 33 likes, 8 reblogs, and 2 comments

The only thing that really bums me out was that I actually had the story mostly done and ready to publish by 5pm, but this was the day of our D&D one-off, so I didn't have the free time to actually publish it until 2am.

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Well, now that you have the individual stories, and the individual stats for DA and Tumblr, what about the story as a whole?

FFN: 466 views, 5 faves, 5 followers, and 8 reviews
AO3: 418 hits, 31 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 17 comments
DA: 138 views, 4 faves, but no comments

Total Results: 1022 views, 40 faves, 7 followers, and 25 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 201 notes; 151 likes, 37 reblogs, and 3 comments

Those stats are NOT shabby for something that is up for - depending on which chapter you count - between 2 and 8 days. This blog is hella late and super long as is, so I won't go through the reviews this time, but go ahead and check them out. So much love!

Huge shout out to ChibiSunnie, ChubbyUnicornMama, and MalcomReynolds for leaving me reviews for every short story I posted for Kyoru Week. Yup, out of those 25 reviews, 21 of them are from those three. You guys rock so hard!

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If you are a reader who only reviewed one chapter, or didn't leave a comment at all, know that I love you immensely as well. It's just, knowing I have such faithful repeat readers warms my heart too much to NOT thank them for their loyalty to my writing. Especially since ChubbyUnicornMama and Malcom started following me with my ML stories. I just happened to luck into other fandoms they like, I guess.

Now, there WAS a bonus prompt given at the end of Kyoru Week: Beach. I had every intention to surprise everyone with that bonus Day 8 story on Sunday, but time got away from me, and I couldn't write anything. I DID do a bunch more research though.

Summer Vacation is a main catalystic arc in the Fruits Basket series, and about TWO WHOLE VOLUMES of that arc is focused on the cast of characters spending most of their vacation at the Sohma family beach house. So, I took most of my work downtime reading back through those mangas to refresh my mind as to what all DID happen at the beach.

Since I missed my opportunity on Sunday, and since no one was expecting an 8th story anyway, I decided to try again yesterday. I got about 4000 words into the story before realizing it didn't really focus much on Kyo or Tohru. I had a lovely Zodiac Reunion story, but it just didn't work for Kyoru Week. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, and I may wave the white flag since it is sort of "extra credit" at this point. It would be fun to do though. Especially with so many new followers thanks to all the Kyoru content. Sadly, I don't have the exact stat right now because that part of my Tumblr account is glitching, but I know I have at lease a half-dozen new people.

As always, that probably doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but if you look over those Kyoru stats again, clearly it's giving me more of an audience than I was able to manage myself. To ride that wave with another story would be awesome! However, it looks like I'll have to see if I ever come up with a Kyoru beach story, and hope I still have the audience there once I do.

Besides, I'm running out of days before the month after Ron's 30 is up. It's a race to Friday to see if I can get this story finished off. I do have 5000 words put into it, but I'm not entirely sure how to end it. And where I am right now feels like World Build Exposition Time, so I have to polish that. Maybe I'll give that Dresden Files short a re-read to figure out how professionals build up worlds without info-dumping.

Okay... it's now 5pm and I've spent pretty much this entire afternoon - minus about an hour when I passed out at my laptop - writing this blog. So I should probably wrap it up. For one: I'm now behind on the rest of the stuff I need to do with my day off. For two: I'm sure you guys didn't anticipate spending the past hour reading my blog!

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Keep an eye out for a possible ORIGINAL STORY from me next week. Take care, guys.