I Dive Too Deep Sometimes

I got a late start to writing today. I got distracted by the John Legend rework of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" playing on the holiday XM station I had on. This... this version really kind of enrages me for just being so stupid???? And... I went down a rabbit hole as that rage had me look up past lyrics - I had a few versions in mind, but there's over FIFTY VERSIONS TO PICK FROM - and look up who wrote the song and why - it was a husband and wife team as a way to sing off guests at the end of parties, and then sold to MGM for a movie - and other such factoids to defend the original version of the song.

It kept me about an hour, I'm not done with my drafting of anything yet, I needed to get started on this week's blog post, and I should probably simmer down before writing a rage post about Christmas music salt. So instead, here is an old article I found while doing my research that more-or-less says what I wish to about the original lyrics of the song: Listening While Feminist: In Defense of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

I'll now just quietly fume - while listening to less "problematic" Christmas songs - and focus on my writing...

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Last week I knew that my focus needed to be my Friday the 13th story about either Chat Noir and/or Plagg for my personal movement to have a sort of Black Cat Appreciation day every Friday 13th. I still needed to get my act together for my Secret Santa exchange as well, so my focus was a bit split.

I do not do well with a split focus... I end up only doing a little on each project, and spending most of my time worrying about which should have priority and how far behind I am. If I'm focused, or if it's obvious which project has priority, however, I can usually get things done a bit easier. This is probably why I'm such a procrastinator. As I get closer and closer to crunch time the item(s) that should get priority surfaces and I know where to focus.

So that of course means I didn't even start my Friday 13th story until - you guessed it - Friday. I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday trying to narrow down if I wanted to do a Chat Noir appreciation story, or a Plagg one again. I thought I wanted to focus on Chat Noir this time, but for an "appreciation" story, I wanted Chat Noir to shine. He had to be the one to lift Ladybug up, or figure out the akuma, or defeat the akuma almost by himself - he'd still need Ladybug to purify it - or otherwise be the "hero" of his story instead of sharing the spotlight with Ladybug. I just couldn't think of anything that I didn't want to include in "One and the Same" so the days of brainstorming resulted in only one thing: deciding to focus Plagg again.

Thursday I was also a bit distracted as we again played D&D. This wasn't supposed to be a weekly thing, but we somehow stumbled into it becoming one???? One of the players isn't available this week, so no D&D this week. With next Thursday being the day after Christmas, and the following being the week that Mom and Sis are coming to visit, we might not host another game for nearly a month, so I guess it was fine that we played last Thursday. We were able to work in Quarthix's character. It was glorious.

Seems Kriv - my dragonborn bard - is a bit of a Fan Favorite among the players. I'm not sure how Quarthix's character Solf, or Omnibladestrike's character Faelyth feels about Kriv, but at least the players seem to get a kick out of him.

I know that Wolfhearted's character Cutter finds Kriv an exhausting idiot... which is kind of perfect since I inadvertently modeled him off of this moron.

Natsuhiko Taki from Eyeshield 21

Faelyth probably has mini panic attacks whenever she's in public with the big moron. She's a surface Drow. Drow are black skinned elves, and the ones raised in the Underdark - deep, deep, DEEP underground; further than even Dwarves - typically are evil in nature. Because of this, Drow - even surface Drow who tend to be more neutral or good in nature - are typically hated upon. There is also a heated feud between Elves and Drow; depending on the campaign, the two practically kill each other on sight, no questions asked.

Kriv does not understand this. He's dragonborn, so he too grew up with hate thrown at him, and therefore SHOULD get where Faelyth is coming from. HOWEVER, his mother told him his entire childhood "you have done nothing wrong to earn that hate; prove to them how good your heart is" so he's trying to do the same with Fae. He's CONSTANTLY trying to throw her in the limelight - already problematic since she has social anxiety to begin with - and singing her praises to change people's minds about Drow.

He has a good heart, but he's a moron. Especially when he's singing the praises of a Drow in the middle of an Elven-run pub....


You should have SEEN the panic and FELT the weight of the air around the table as I had Kriv carelessly point out that Fae is a Drow, AND THEN POINT HER OUT AS SHE WAS HIDING IN A CORNER. The whole playgroup is like

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

And poor Faelyth is like

Grey from Black Clover

But Kriv was like

Biscuit Facebook sticker
by Ghostbot

Because shortly after Kriv, Faelyth, Cutter, and a few NPCs survived a shipwreck, the party ran into an isolated village of wood elves. As the only one who spoke Elven, Faelyth was the party's interpreter. Kriv couldn't understand the conversation, but he felt that those Elves didn't have an issue with Faelyth, so why should the Elves in the pub be a threat? Thankfully, Hubby doesn't run "kill on sight" campaigns without first warning the players, so Faelyth wasn't in terrible danger. Kriv, shrugging off his partymates' concerns - and oblivious to Fae's scared fidgeting - continued his story, and by the end of it most of the Elves in the bar at the very least weren't on edge to have Faelyth there. They still didn't particularly LIKE her, but at least she could come and go un-harassed as long as she kept to herself and didn't "cause trouble."

So... win for Kriv???

Also, while not quite on par with Olaf's retelling of Frozen within Frozen 2, I had Kriv do a fairly similar recount of the campaign up until that night. It was a way to beguile the pub patrons and build up renown, while also giving Quarthix a sort of recap of what he and his character missed. The entire time I did the performance Quarthix was in hysterics. He also told Hubby later that he absolutely loved how I'm playing Kriv. So... win for me? And, as I've mentioned in the past, while Kriv gets on Cutter's last nerve, Wolfhearted loves him too.

I think I have a winner here.


Anyway... yeah, that was more-or-less Thursday night. Thankfully, I had Friday off, so I wasn't stressing too much. I could easily write up a short story for the 13th ON the 13th, and post it by the afternoon.

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Riiiiiiiight. When has that EVER actually happened for me!?!?!

My "short story" for Friday ended up being over 4700 words and kept me ALL FRIGGEN DAY to write!

First, it kept me a few hours to figure out what to even do with Plagg for this story. I already did a Day in the Life of story, and I couldn't think of an akuma or something along those lines where Plagg is the Hero. I thought maybe a story where Plagg is cheering up Adrien, to show appreciation for how he takes care of our Sunshine Boi. I couldn't really lock it down though. I started watching a bunch of Plagg scenes in various episodes of Miraculous Ladybug while trying to figure it out. I also focused on the season 2 episode "Sandboy" since that's one of the few episodes that showcases a lot of Plagg.

Specifically, I think that episode shows a lot of Plagg's character. Pair that with how he is in the season 3 episode "Oblivio", and a bunch of headcanon for Plagg started to form. I also saw this Tumblr post by miraculouspecial about Plagg's character growth throughout the series thus far. I think that's what finally hooked me.

For a while now - probably since "Sandboy" first aired or there abouts, so over a year - I headcanoned that Plagg had been in a similar situation as Nooroo: being used for evil and having to battle against Ladybug and Tikki. He seemed to really empathize with Nooroo's predicament of being weaponized by Hawk Moth, and fans always point out how easy it would have been for Adrien to have been a villainous Chat Noir. THERE'S EVEN A SUB-GENRE OF FANFICTION CALLED "ENEMY AU" WHERE IT SPECULATES WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF ADRIEN WAS ON HIS FATHER'S SIDE.

Like... it's totally possible that Plagg was once weaponized as well, right?

I was going to focus on that. I was going to tell my story of how Plagg was used for evil purposes in the past, and that scarred him, which is why he seemed to hate powering up Chat Noir at first, but now doesn't seem to mind it at all. It would explain why he doesn't seem to care or wish to express human emotions, whereas Tikki freely embraces them. It also would explain why he seemed irritated at first with Adrien's constant pining for Ladybug, but now seems to enjoy the Love Square chaos as well as ships Adrien with Marinette/Ladybug.

I wanted to tease another headcanon of mine to start it off; a sort of base-line of what Plagg's life was like with a semi-neutral owner. That headcanon is that Plagg is the "Lesser Genie of the Ring" in the story of Aladdin presented in later versions of 1001 Arabian Nights. For those who don't know the non-Disney version of the story, a mage posing as Aladdin's uncle convinced the youth to enter a booby-trapped cave in order to fetch the magical lamp; Aladdin not knowing the significance of the lamp. As a way to convince Aladdin to enter the cave, the mage gives Aladdin a magical ring for protection. When Aladdin gets trapped inside the cave, he rubs his hands together in desperation, unintentionally rubbing the ring and releasing a Lesser Genie. This genie gets Aladdin out of the cave, and he's able to return home with the lamp; the mage at this point returns home to North Africa thinking the lamp is forever lost to him. When Aladdin's mother goes to clean the lamp he brings home, she accidentally releases the Greater Genie who can make all of their wishes come true. Since the Lesser Genie of the Ring cannot surpass the power of the Greater Genie, Aladdin all but forgets/abandon that genie; focusing on the lamp. When the lamp is stolen from him, and the Greater Genie is forced to teleport Aladin's palace and wife to North Africa, THAT is when Aladdin calls upon the Lesser Genie again as a means to retrieve the Greater Genie and return everything back to Aladdin's home country - presumably China since Aladdin is mentioned as a Chinese youth, even though the rest of the story has a much more "Arab feel" to it.

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Point is, with Plagg being a magical creature that inhabits a ring, his dismissive tone about once meeting the "genie of the lamp", the fact that the Genie of the Ring is considered "lesser" - aka possibly can't grant wishes??? - and we only know that the Genie of the Ring is used to get Aladdin out of the cave, as well as "defeat the mage" who stole the Genie of the Lamp from Aladdin.... those could be Cataclysm perhaps????? I dunno. It's a fun headcanon, and I wanted to include it.

Buuuuut, I also couldn't trust my own memory of the tale since I haven't attempted to read it since the Arabian Nights miniseries came out in 2000. Side note: I remember really liking that miniseries, and I might have to track down a DVD copy of it, if they exist.... Anyway, I couldn't trust that my years of adoring the Disney version - both the movies and the TV series - and my vague memory of the miniseries - which also has its own creative interpretations - didn't taint my memory of the actual story. I have it somewhere, but it's buried under tons of other books, so I didn't have the time to find it. Instead I spent far too much time trying to track down everything I could on the original telling via the internet.

All to make sure my headcanon of Plagg being the Lesser Genie would hold water... for about two paragraphs....

Yup. Sounds like me.


Also, Master Fu became the sole Guardian of the Miraculous roughly mid-1800s, so I struggled with the realization that the tale of Aladdin didn't get added to Arabian Nights until the early 1800s, when a Frenchman - appropriate - translated the tales, and included one a friend of his told him he heard in Asia.

It seemed weird to have Aladdin be Plagg's last owner before meeting Adrien. Especially since the stories all FEEL older than the 1800s.... So... it could be a much MUCH older story that had been told for centuries, turned into legend, and THEN was added to Arabian Nights, right?

That's the conclusion I went with, anyway....

Anyway, after concluding my Aladdin research, I was going to just jump right into Plagg being weaponized. Aladdin cared little for Plagg - the kwami and Miraculous were simply tools - but he was a standard wielder for Plagg, and not cruel. Then Plagg was picked up by a cruel owner, and then Master Fu fled the monastery under attack, and then Plagg was gifted to Adrien. That would be my story. Easy peasy.

Buuuuuuut, in the season 2 episode "Style Queen" Plagg and Fu debate how dangerous Plagg is on his own, and Master Fu mentions the Tower of Pisa. I wanted to include that in the story, and it wasn't something maliciously done either. Plagg states, kind of defensively, "I didn't see it!"

I was going to have him run away from his "evil" owner, who possibly found Plagg's ring after Aladdin's passing. However, the tower started tilting in the late 1100s, and that's just sooooo much time between when Plagg was used for evil and when Fu fled the monastery in the late 1800s. I mean, I'm sure 700 years isn't THAT long for a being 1000s of years old, but still... So I gave Plagg a hand-waved Italian owner that he tries to run away from after feeling abandoned a second time - this time because a more "useful" Miraculous is given to his owner as opposed to a "greater genie" discovered - and that's when he bumps the Tower.

I still needed the Big Baddie, and debated Genghis Khan after discovering that he CREATED THE PERMANENT DESERT in Afghanistan after destroying their irrigation system. Sounds like Cataclysm to me. Plus, during his invasion of China, and moving western through Afghanistan, he could TOTALLY hit up Tibet and steal the Cat Miraculous. Right?

Three problems:

1. The whole turning Afghanistan into a desert country thing happened relatively soon after the Tower of Pisa started to lean. I think it was less than 50 years? I wanted Plagg to be "punished" for trying to run away from his owner and ruining the Tower, but less than 50 years before being stolen just seemed too quick for me???
2. If Genghis Khan had ransacked the monastery for Plagg's Cat Miraculous, there isn't really any way that it was left standing, right? It would have to be rebuilt. What happened to the other Miraculouses during the raid? Why did Genghis Khan only use the Cat Miraculous? It just didn't track.
3. It would be friggen Genghis Khan! Through interviews and posts to his Instagram and Twitter, the show's creator Thomas Astruc has released his list of past Miraculous holders, and I believe a few others were added in via the short-lived comic book runs. There have been historical/mythical figures such as Joan of Arc, Hippolyta, and the Pied Piper of Hamelin named as previous Miraculous holders. You'd think that Genghis Khan would be a "known" Cat Miraculous holder in that case.
• We'll forget that he wouldn't be named if Astruc didn't think of it, and that doesn't mean he couldn't have been one....

Buuuut, while double checking the list of "known" past holders via the Miraculous Ladybug wiki, I noticed a bit of a numerical discrepancy between Cat holders and Ladybug ones. The list the wiki has includes 11 previous Ladybug holders, whereas there was only 2 mentioned for Chat Noir. Now, one of the Ladybug holders is an Aztec warrior named and sketched out by Astruc: Micazoyolin. When a fanartist-turned-staffer - Feri González - redid Micazoyolin's design, she included a female Chat Noir: Mistontli. Which would have brought the number of previous "known" Chat Noirs to three. However, I can no longer find the originals that González - ferisae - did up, so perhaps Astruc didn't want Mistontli to be canon, and so González had to delete her designs??? And the previous Chat Noirs is back to only 2???

Anyway, those two happen to be the Chat Noir depicted in the Miraculous Spellbook, and an unknown European knight whose painting is hung in the Louve, as shown in the season 3 episode "Feast." I guess Astruc didn't really think much about who could have been Chat Noir in the past???

Getting back to the point, the "Ancient European Cat Miraculous Holder" - as he's called on the wiki - is listed as existing anywhere between 1200 and 600 years ago! What a range! I guess none of the contributing fans really know historical armor well enough to know. Not that I'm picking on them; I'm completely clueless as to when this armor would be appropriate, let alone which country it would be appropriate for.

Screen grab from ML S3 episode "Feast"

Well, Joan of Arc - or, rather Jeanne d'Arc - existed about 600 years ago as well. So I pretended that armor was appropriate for the French army near the end of the Hundred Years' War, and ran with that for the villainous Chat Noir. I looked up compatriots of Jeanne d'Arc, decided against the two main named companions of hers, which would be likely candidates for Ladybug's Chat Noir: Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy.

I had the same hold-up with those two as I had with Genghis Khan, but I also figured that the story of Joan of Arc kind of overshadows those two, so perhaps it isn't AS bad??? I was also trying to see if either of them died during the war, because my initial plan was that one of their squires killed them for the Cat Miraculous, which is why Plagg stressed to Adrien to not let anyone know about him, not even his father Gabriel. He was afraid of someone else wanting the power and killing Adrien over it. We'll ignore that basically Hawk Moth has EXACTLY that train of thought....

I then jumped over to the Black Death since Plagg's name derives from the word "Plague" but that felt too on the nose. Plus, that wasn't how Plagg's Cataclysm works. He couldn't transfer his powers to rats to then spread a plague.

By about 2:30 or so - roughly when I wanted to post the story - I was still researching who I wanted Plagg's evil owner to be. I then picked Hubby up from work, we caught up on our day, we had a late lunch, and then I just got smacked with exhaustion; passing out at my laptop every time I tried to type the next couple of words. I ended up taking a nap, waking up around 5pm or so. At that point I was already running fairly late, and just went "screw it" and had Jean de Metz my villain. Sorry if there's any de Metz stans out there or whatever. I also gave him a similar motivation for misusing Plagg as Gabriel has for Nooroo. I didn't aim to do that, but it just kind of happened as I wrote it and I just let the story tell me where to go.

There were a few more hurdles to still jump over, but I got the main one out of the way. I got the story written by the time Hubby had dinner made up at about 9pm, and then post-dinner I got in my edits. Finally it was time to fight with formatting for my main four sites, because of course none of them format the same way, so that's always a chore. Especially when I've gotten into the habit of putting in the HTML while writing - so, for instance, I'll put <i> and </i> around things that need to be italicized - so it's good to go over on DeviantArt. Especially since I never did learn how to upload a Word document like you could on FFN. After getting DA sorted, I go back through and edit out the HTML, since the brackets delete themselves when I upload the file as-is to FFN. I happened to have forgotten that step in my hurry on the 13th, so anything italicized looked like this: iAdrien/i.

Of course I didn't notice that until I went to transfer my edits - Author's Notes included - over to AO3. So I had to copy/paste the Author's Notes to the start and end of my main Word file, edit out the HTML, delete the FFN file, and re-upload. THEN I brought over the proper edit of the file from FFN to AO3. If I just copy/paste from my Word file to AO3 there are extra line breaks between paragraphs, and it's a pain to delete them in a long story. Anyway, now that DA, FFN, and AO3 are formatted properly, edited, and published, I had to then publish to Tumblr, but I had to manually go back through and italicize everything since the italics don't transfer over in a copy/paste from FFN or AO3 to Tumblr, even though it DOES transfer from FFN to AO3.


In the end, I think I've missed at least one of the times I originally italicized... this whole formatting and posting my stories bit is tedious and exhausting....

I was also nervous that I hit a word cap on Tumblr. I thought there wasn't one if you typed the post up on a computer, as opposed to mobile, but at least once in the past my post wouldn't publish because it exceeded word cap. Tumblr never told me what the cap was though, so now I'm just always nervous I'll exceed it. Then I'll have to figure out where would be a good point to cut and add in a "finish reading" link to my other 3 uploads. The real annoying part is in the past I've done that with a story, only to STILL somehow be over word-cap and had to cut MORE and...

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

Anyway, the point is that I DID manage to get the story up before the 13th was done. It was published about 11:15pm, and I didn't finish promoting it on places like Tumblr, Twitter, and FB until about 11:45pm, BUUUUUT that is still Friday the 13th my time! Still counts! Plus, there were people on like the west coast that still had like 3 whole hours before their Friday was done.

And if YOU would like to read this story after I rambled about writing the darn thing for forever, you can find it in my normal spots.

"Forever in Darkness"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

I'm trying to be better at remembering trigger warnings so I have already included these with the story, but I'll also state them here: the story includes emotional abuse and torture, execution mention, child death mention, and war mention.

I forgot to jot down my 24hr stats again, but I did note that my first fave and review of the story was something like a half hour after I posted! So that's cool!

It's been live for less than four days, but here are my stats right now.

FFN: 201 views, 17 faves, 6 followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 245 hits, 41 kudos, 6 bookmarks, and 5 comments
DA: 37 views, but no faves or comments

Total Results: 483 views, 58 faves, 12 followers, and 9 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 13 notes; 10 likes and 3 reblogs

FFN reviews:
  1. I love this fic. The point of view of Plagg 1nd his story is really good-found ans interesting [sic]
  2. I really liked this. It might be headcanon, but it all hangs together really well.
  3. Oh... this is so dark and twisty and makes me just want to hug Plagg! Poor baby. That's it. I'm adopting them both!
  4. This is beautiful, Plagg deserves more appreciation.

AO3 reviews:
  1. aaaa im crying this is so heartfelt and amazingly written, plagg deserves SO much more appreciation and love in this fandom!!! <333 beautiful piece, thank you so much for sharing!! ToT <33
  2. I read this on Tumblr a moment ago!! It's so good and so painful but so hopeful I'm rambling I can't even 😭 Such an amazing fic and tribute to our favourite stinky cat 💕💕💕
  3. Oh, poor Plagg! I'm sorry he has been so badly treated!!! I love that you're starting Plagg Appreciation day! I'm in for next Friday the 13th! looks like 3/13/2020 will be a Friday!!! (and one next November!) But you've gotta remind me....
  4. Great story! It was interesting to follow Plagg’s development through the centuries and see why he grows attached to Adrien.
  5. really loved that!

So, thank you to all of my reviewers: Majaix15, leafgreenflower, CaptainMalcolmReynolds, PaulaAbsol, Wythi, Maribug, MalcomReynolds, pkk, and mmmmmmmph!

And to the other 480-some people who have read my story: you guys are also just so glorious! Thank you! I love you guys!

What's really fun for me is that, while this story is again kind of off-radar since it doesn't include any romance and barely even includes Adrien - let alone Marinette - it's still about par with my last Plagg Appreciation story. In fact, it may even be a touch more appreciated? I posted Breaking Monotony for the September Friday 13th. Here it is, over 3 months later, and here are the current stats for that story.

FFN: 316 views, 16 faves, 8 followers, and 3 reviews
AO3: 412 hits, 49 kudos, 7 bookmarks, and 3 comments
DA: 34 views, but no faves or comments

Total Results: 762 views, 65 faves, 15 followers, and 6 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 11 notes; 10 likes and 1 reblog

I mean, those stats are super close, aren't they?

Oh, and side note about the one reblog of Breaking Monotony.

So, last week I was lamenting how I saw a Tumblr blog that tries to reblog as many ML fanfic writers as possible in order to get our writing out into the fandom a bit easier. For a refresher, that blog is discoveringmiraculouswriters. Well, when I promote my weekly blog posts on Tumblr, I include a sort of summary of what is in that week's post. Since I talked a little bit about that blog and my desire to work past my mental hold-ups and try to send my stuff to them, I went ahead and tagged the blog, or rather at-ed them so others had the link, in case they too wanted to try to promote with them. I didn't even CONSIDER that it would catch their attention, and not too long after my promotion last week, discoveringmiraculouswriters reblogged Breaking Monotony, Stranger in a White Dress, I Don't Care (the "Alone in a Party" chapter), and Acting Weird.

They haven't hit the majority of my stories - Build Your Own Luck, Painfully Close, all the chapters of Peeping Tomcat, my PT companion stories, the Lukanette story I Was Thinking of You, my first Lukanette story Kisses, my angsty drabble Fused Akuma, the chapters of Prescription for Love, or the chapters of last year's holiday story Woven Heartstrings - but that IS a lot to backtrack through, so I get it. I also forgot to include them as a tag at the end of Forever in Darkness when I posted to Tumblr, so they probably didn't see that one either. It's my fault for still not sending my stuff to them, but it WAS cool to see them almost instantly snatch up four of my stories. Especially since they were a Plagg-centric one, two Gabriel and Emilie Agreste romance stories, and an "Adrien realizes he likes Marinette too late" story. A weird cross-section of my work, but it was still fun to see them reblogged with tags such as #I_Need_To_Read_This and #aaaaaaah.

Sooooo, yeah. I managed to just barely squeak in my Plagg Appreciation Day story, I got promoted by a ML fanwriters promotional blog, and my current Plagg-centric story almost has the same stats as one I published 3 months ago! Neat.

BUUUUUUT what about that ML Secret Santa story?

Wellllllllll.....

Hacker Girl
Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Sometime around Thanksgiving I saw a Tumblr post commenting about the logical fallacies behind Christmas movies where Santa is a character - he does indeed exist in those movie universes - and yet children STILL have to prove that to the adults, who have long stopped believing in Santa. I wish I could refind this post to link it, because it brought up good points.

Anyway, for whatever reason, as I was going to bed sometime this week - I don't even remember when - I thought about that, and I thought about Chat Noir's excitement over Santa in the season 3 episode "Chris Master" vs Ladybug's almost disbelief of the man. That's when I thought of the two superheroes taking a break to just bond and debate over whether or not Santa is real.

I spent the weekend typing up the story. It's about 5000 words long or so, I think. I still need a lead-in to the story, which currently starts with Ladybug asking "Do you still believe in Santa?" Not too shabby of a cold-open if I can't think of a better option, but still, I'm trying.

The trick, though, is I don't know if I like it enough to gift it to someone. Either way, I'll be posting it before Christmas, because it's Christmas themed, it's written, and I need to make up for my drop of production throughout the second half of October and all of November.

Trying to see if I could be inspired at a more "giftable" story, I've been reading more and more holiday themed fanfics this past week. I have read probably more fanfiction so far this month than I have all year! Also, yesterday was the first day to post your gifts, so I've been kind of stalking the MLSecretSanta blog, and trying to consume as much content as possible. I've already had about 3 plot bunnies show up, but none of them are holiday themed. Now, you don't HAVE to write/draw something holiday themed, and I've already read through quite a few stories that certainly were NOT holiday themed. However, my personal restriction on this gift is that I want it to be "Christmas-y" in some way. So none of those plunnies are going to work.

I did take some solace in two things: 1) the person I'm gifting to hasn't posted anything yet, and 2) I haven't received my gift yet. So I don't COMPLETELY feel like a slacker. We do have until the 31st, after all.

I do want to shout out a few stories I did read though.

First up is

Water Under the Bridge by Wow_girl1244

Summary: Marinette can't pretend she doesn't want Chat Noir. Not anymore.
Word Count: 1700
Status: Completed one-shot

My Thoughts: This is the story that sprung up a lot of plot bunnies for me. Watching Marinette struggle with her feelings was bittersweet, and the writing was lovely.

Second is

I'll Be Your (Wing)Man by Boogum

Summary: When Chat Noir finds Marinette sighing over her failed love life, he decides to help her get the boy of her dreams. Nothing can go wrong here. Absolutely nothing.
Word Count: 3690
Status: Ongoing; 2 of 4 chapters are published

My Thoughts: It is just adorable watching those two morons dance around each other; missing completely. In particular, it was fun to watch Chat Noir/Adrien try to piece together who Marinette's crush could possibly be. I have yet to have time to read the second chapter - it must have gone up while I was working on this never-ending blog - but I greatly enjoyed the first chapter, and can't wait to have the time to continue it.

The third one is actually the gift for Boogum.

Two Hundred and Fifty-Four by Taliax

Summary: Marinette had replayed the video enough times. She'd know Adrien's voice saying those three words anywhere. (Set the same day as the episode Felix.)
Word Count: 5007
Status: Completed one-shot

My Thoughts: I'm a sucker for reveal fics, and the way Taliax did it was fantastic. Also, the intimate moments of just whispering to each other and gentle touches made MY heart race. I just squee-rambled in my review. It's so fluffy and fantastic.

Next up is a story that was actually written by a long-time reader of mine. So let's give it up for LivreVer!

Secret (Hero) Santa by LivreVer

Summary: **NOTE: AUTHOR DID NOT INCLUDE A SUMMARY ON TUMBLR; THIS IS MY SUMMARY FOR IT**
The quartet of Marinette, Alya, Nino, and Adrien meet up for a Secret Santa gift exchange, but things get a bit sticky when an akuma shows up.
Word Count: 2376
Status: Completed one-shot

My Thoughts: This is just silly and fun fluff. It was awesome to see what gifts LivreVer came up with for each of the characters, as well as how said characters came up with those gifts. It was also nice to see the friends just hang out and bond. Once the akuma attacks, though, I had to let out a few giggles at the ridiculousness of it, but it was supposed to be kinda silly, so it works!

Last, but not least, was the gift for LivreVer that was actually made by one of her best friends in the fandom! What are the odds?

Dissonance by LyraMaeArcher

Summary: When Adrien dies, Luka is there to pick up the pieces. A Not Fluffy At All Angsty Secret Santa gift for my friend CaptainMalcolmReyolds.
Word Count: 1864
Status: Completed one-shot

My Thoughts: As noted in the summary, this is far from fluffy. Adrien is killed off, it is permanent, and Marinette has to deal with it. Thankfully, she has Luka as support. It is a bittersweet story that was beautifully painful to read. It hurt. I don't know if I'll want to re-read it. But it was poignant, and visceral, and it was indeed a good read. I just don't know if my heart could handle a re-read is all.

Now, I have read much MUCH more content then those four, but they're the ones that really stuck with me. Also, further proving my point about the gifts not needing to be Christmas-y, only LivreVer's story is set around the holidays.

Okay! It is now past 5pm because life sucks for me and I had to pause for a few hours after that late start in order to do ANYTHING with my day off, so I should stop doing whatever the writing equivalent to talking your ear off is, and get back to work.

I still have gifts to purchase, an apartment to clean, a Christmas tree to put up (don't judge), and a Secret Santa gift exchange to finish up.

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Busy, busy, busy! Until next week!