Oh, Hey! I'm Late Again....

Ah, yet another super-busy Tuesday (what do you mean, "It's Saturday"?!?!?!) Why did I schedule my update days for Tuesdays again? I tried so hard to get this published on time this week, too! I really did! I found a reserve of energy on Monday, and got started on this post. I knew my Tuesday was going to be packed, and I tried so dang hard to take that edge of panic off by writing ahead of time.

See? I can do something without procrastinating.... sometimes.... rarely....

Still didn't help me get the update done for Tuesday though.... Or Wednesday... or Thursday... or Friday.......

Honestly, this week (and a half, now) just zipped right by me. I had Tuesday, April 27th off, and I had this past Tuesday - May 4th - off, but all those days in between I was working, and I worked again Wednesday and Thursday. Yesterday was "catch-up day", but I'll get to that. The long-and-short is that the week kind of went by in a blur. I do recall finally sneaking away to play some more Switch a couple of times. I'm now caught up until April 26th on Animal Crossing. Ooooooo. I also finished a lovely and bittersweet game called When the Past was Around. This post is basically a novella already, however, so I'll have to save talking about that game for my next update.

I also managed some long-overdue and much needed socializing last week. Last Thursday - as in April 29th - Rozsavaria swung by to play some Magic: the Gathering with Hubby. The three of us chatted and joked around for a bit, and then we each showed off the updates we've done to our ACNH islands. Roz and Hubby also chatted about the game Hades, and how far each of them got respectively. Roz also talked about wanting to get into another RPG campaign, which I'll also touch back upon at the end of this post.

Last Friday, I had a nice, long video chat with two friends from college. Well, I say video chat, but my laptop seems to hate the video portion of that phrase. A few times over the past couple of months, whenever I was on a Zoom call, my connection either froze or kicked me out of the meeting completely if my laptop camera was on. If I turned my camera off, however, the streams would run smooth.

Knowing my computer's issues with Zoom, my college friends and I attempted using the video chat feature over on Facebook instead. Maybe my computer would do better with that video chatting. The answer is a resounding 'Nope'. Still froze me while I had the camera on. Same deal Tuesday morning when I attempted to use Skype to chat with Taurus Pixie. I think my laptop is just too old and has too much on it. You'd think this past year would have been THE year for me to get my laptop straightened out in order to handle video chats, but that's another 'nope.'

Also, I say "long chat with two friends", but in truth, it was very much me and one of my college friends chatting away for 2+ hrs. The other friend - who is very introverted - contently sat and listened to us; chiming in on occasion, but mostly reacting to our stories. Still, since the introverted friend lives nearly on the other side of the country, and I haven't had the time to go to any college reunions since graduating, the two of us have neither seen nor verbally spoken since college. We've kept in touch via Facebook, obviously, but it was nice to hear her. I hope she can say it was nice to see me, even if it was for about 2 minutes total before I had to turn off the camera.

To keep the socializing train chugging along, Goob is fully vaccinated, so he and Hubby are unofficially starting up Anime Saturdays again. He's been coming over to catch up on the latest English dubs of One Piece, My Hero Academia, and Dr. Stone. The two of them also chat about M:TG, and that's typically when I decide it's time to go make dinner.

Sunday was my "look at me, I can play video games!" day post-work. Then Hubby had a work friend over Monday night while I squirreled away to start writing this up. To finish off my whirlwind tour of socializing, Tuesday morning, as I briefly mentioned above, saw me back on video chat to connect with Taurus Pixie. Well.... she video chatted; I had my camera off... again. We actually chatted for nearly three hours!!!! Meanwhile, my sister-in-law was in my living room using my apartment for her home-base to work at while she was in town, instead of having to drive a good forty minutes to make it back to her place. After picking Hubby up from work, and my sister-in-law headed out to pick the kiddos up from school, I figured I'd get back to writing and then publishing this update. Except I then promptly passed out for an hour, and when I woke up I got a call from Wolfhearted.

He was having car problems and needed a ride home. No problem. He walked to our place, we chatted briefly because we haven't really seen him since Hubby's birthday. Then I took him home. Thing is, it's been a year or so since I've last visited him, so he took me on a tour of the home improvements he's done and the furniture rearranging he's accomplished during lockdown. Then he described the improvements and renovations he's planning on doing. From there, we just kind of chatted for an hour.

By the time I got home, I had to focus on dinner and getting laundry taken care of. Tuesday was definitely a lovely day for socializing, but not very conducive for blog post writing/editing.

Regardless, my little extroverted heart was so happy outside of work this week. It just didn't really leave much time for other recreational things.

Case and point, it was the final week of Adrienette April, and I couldn't get to Remember That Time When... to read the daily chapter updates as they were published. I had a lot going on at work still - because work during the month of April SUCKED - so it kept me until last Friday - April 30th - before I could steal away a few hours to finally get caught up. Such a great story. It's definitely one of my favorites, and will be in my Top 10 if and when I ever officially put one together. So....

"I Am Once Again Asking" Bernie Sanders meme
Edited by LycoRogue

To make life easier for you guys, I'll oh-so-subtly leave you the link to this lovely story.

Remember That Time When...

by mostlovedgirl

Summary: Twenty-two-year-old Marinette Agreste was looking forward to the anniversary trip she would be taking with her husband Adrien that weekend. Those plans are derailed when she wakes up in her old bedroom... and she’s seventeen again.

Rating: Teen for mildly suggestive scenes

Word Count: 26,542

Story Status: Completed; 31 chapters

That wasn't too subtle a promotion, was it?

Seriously, if you want a story to give you all the giggles and warm fuzzies, give that story a read. You don't even really need to know the show to enjoy the story. Just... go! Go read it!

And once you have, go and read the story I wrote based off of chapter 12 (again, subtle, right?).

Oh! Speaking of people reading my one-shot, I'm so excited to see how many have enjoyed Could Your Paradise Also Be Your Hell? Unfortunately, just like that first week, I forgot to check in on the story publications to get my week-long stats. So, instead, here are the stats as of 3:30pm, Monday, when I remembered to note them.

FFN: 481 views, 13 favorites, 11 followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 1791 hits, 139 kudos, 16 bookmarks, and 8 comments
DA: 490 views, but no faves or comments

Total Results: 2762 views, 152 faves/kudos, 27 followers, and 12 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 11 notes; 9 likes and 2 reblogs.

Reviews:
  1. thanks for the recommendation! I'm really enjoying Remember That Time When so far and this was an amazing piece! - lubelle321
  2. Please continue this ! - Rena serein
  3. This is so cute and accurate. - ToriReader

That translates to 146 new views over on FFN, 4 new faves and follows, and two new reviews since the 27th. Over on AO3, I have a whopping 785 new hits! I also received 39 new kudos, 5 new bookmarks, and a new review! Even over on DA, I had 82 more views than I did the previous week. I also received 4 new likes over on Tumblr.

The Tumblr likes and most of the AO3 views I'm crediting to MLG for helping promote my story by linking it at the end of hers, as well as her reblogging my story on Tumblr. Also, the AO3-Ladynoir Feed Tumblr page's promotion of the story had its own reblog and 10 likes. Sweet! At least 10 of those AO3 hits are probably because of that post.

Granted, all of those stats are still small peanuts in the grand scheme of things with regards to fanfiction popularity. Comparatively, here are my AO3 stats as of today vs those of RTTW:

• Could Your Paradise Also Be Your Hell?
• 1966 hits (neat, 175 more since Monday!)
• 154 kudos
• 17 bookmarks
• 19 comments (at least half of which are me responding to reviews, and a couple are a few back-and-forths)
• Remember That Time When...
• 23,889 hits
• 1146 kudos
• 174 bookmarks
• 1777 comments (MLG does also respond to every review, and I have left a few reply comments on nearly every chapter, but that's still a hella-impressive amount of comments!)

So.... yeah, like I said, small peanuts, but still exciting! Out of 42 works overall on AO3, CYPABYH is my 5th-most viewed story, behind - in order - Peeping Tomcat (published spring 2018; 11,774 hits), Woven Heartstrings (published Christmas 2018; 5273 hits), Prescription for Love (published January 2019; 2891 hits), and I was Thinking of You (published April 2019; 2259 hits). Could Your Paradise also JUST surpassed Prescription for Love for the spot as my story with the 4th-most kudos. As in, it was my 5th-most kudos'd story as of Thursday with 149 kudos! Prescription for Love has 151 kudos. Now the only stories I have that were given more kudos are Woven Heartstrings (441 kudos), Peeping Tomcat (385 kudos), and I was Thinking of You (264 kudos). Granted, my most-kudos'd story still has only about a THIRD as many as MLG's one story! I mean, wow! Either way, Could Your Paradise is also in my top-10 most bookmarked stories, and that list includes stories outside the Miraculous Ladybug fandom. If I just look at ML, it's 7th out of 24 stories!

Considering CYPABYH is just barely 2 weeks old, and it's that close to stories that have been available for over TWO YEARS!? I mean.... that's exciting, right!? Just seeing that view count climb over on AO3 is amazing. Getting that daily email from AO3 with a list of more kudos really brightens my day. Seeing new REVIEWS is the best! I'm just so happy and excited about all of this.

If you've already read my stupid little story, thank you!

Hacker Girl Facebook stickers
by Birdman, Inc

Now would be a great time to sort of capitalize on my sudden writing popularity, but, instead of churning out more stories, or even working on ones I already have waiting in the wings, I just, kinda... stopped.

I'm good at this.

Generated by Bitmoji

Well, to be fair, I didn't FULLY stop, per se. Yes, I haven't published anything new, nor have I been active within the fandom over on Tumblr. In fact, I've kind of been avoiding Tumblr for a while now. Each season of ML is supposed to get progressively more serialized, meaning that watch order is important for continuity. So, of course, each season also gets progressively worse at actually airing the episodes in the intended release order. Which means each season I have to pull further and further from the fandom to avoid spoilers as others - hungry for content; I completely understand - say "screw continuity; I'll sort it out when the full season is done" and just watch as episodes air.

As of this writing, the order of episodes released for season 4 have been:

1. The 6th intended episode of a 26 episode season
2. The season premiere
3. The intended 2nd episode (which is a retelling of the season premiere from the perspective of another character)
4. The intended 3rd episode

Not so bad there. I could skip over that first episode aired, watch the next three, and join in on the fandom conversation while still trying to dodge trailers spoiling future episodes or people talking about that first episode aired. I already discussed last week the struggles of managing this, but it WAS manageable.

Then, this past week, the friggen ELEVENTH episode of the season - based on production codes - aired. So, looks like I'll be avoiding Tumblr for QUITE some time now, and only checking in on notifications on Twitter AND NEVER EVER EVER LOOK AT MY FEED!

Point being, I can't even really add content to Tumblr to try to cash in - as it were - on the surge of popularity I'm experiencing. Unless I write new stories, that is. Which... again... haven't done that. Not anywhere that I could promote, anyway.

This is my horribly cryptic way of saying that I've apparently started a new hobby of writing fanfiction scenes in the comments sections of stories.... and finding them too short or too disconnected without the context of the main story to bother publishing anywhere.

MLG already "yelled" at me for writing that scene of Sabine discovering that the teenage Adrien and Marinette were clearly body swapped with their older selves, and promptly leaving said scene in the comments of her story RTTW. Also, Could Your Paradise started off as a scene I also wrote in MLG's comments section. Most recently, though, commenter Mara007 left the following review on Ladybug's Simp Squad:

And then, when cold weather came back, Adrien would be wearing it and proudly telling everyone that his good (girl)friend made it for him 😎 as every good (boy)friend would. 😂

Loved it. It was so cute to read 🥰

I couldn't just leave this alone, apparently. So I wrote a small scene of Marinette, freshly married to Adrien, finding her husband sobbing in the corner of their bedroom because the sweatshirt no longer fit. So, after some back-and-forth, Marinette promised to convert the sweatshirt into a pillow so Adrien had an excuse to keep it, and she'll make him a replacement sweatshirt.

WHY CAN'T I THINK OF FULL STORIES ANYMORE!? I enjoy that I keep getting these scene flashes that I'm compelled to get out of my head, but.... IN THE COMMENTS SECTIONS ONLY!? REALLY BRAIN!?

Pandadog & Friends
Facebook sticker
by Funnyeve.com

I really need to figure out how to organize an anthology of these little scenes, I think. I could also add in the "Tumblr Exclusive" scenes I've written, such as Kisses and Fused Akuma.

So, anyway, what HAVE I been doing this past week, if it wasn't writing? At least.... writing outside of story comments sections on AO3.

Well, as I've mentioned, work's been a touch hectic, and post-work has been socializing-heavy. However, I never mentioned anything about socializing for this past Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, right? Well, true. I spent those days mostly vegging out after properly frying my brain the past week. I was just exhausted. Took some more actual naps. Yesterday, as I mentioned, was "catch-up day" where Hubby and I did errands we couldn't get to on Tuesday, as well as some more cleaning in the apartment before I ONCE AGAIN hid to try to finish writing this post (see how well that went) while Hubby again hosted another M:TG gaming night with a work friend, her live-in boyfriend, and Goob.

Oh yeah, and I also spent most of my vegging-out time this past week working on a new addiction.

Around October or November, I believe, I was tagged a couple of times over on Tumblr to join a thread of "face reveals" via the Japanese image creator site Picrew.me. It's not as great as the old ChaZie virtual dress-up dolls I was obsessed with back in 2012, but for someone who can't really draw (at least, without spending 4 days working on it nearly non-stop), it's a great way to come up with some headshots of my OCs, as well as myself.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure WHY I thought about those picrew images of myself, but I wanted to check out the site for more design options, and just screw around for the final 20 minutes of my shift the other day. Next thing I know, I'm spending nearly all week posting new picrew images on Facebook of my most fleshed-out OCs: Amara Yori, Jolene Crisslebalm, Lia Madrox, Willow Driver, Trish Morrison, and, for good measure, Shawn Driver whenever I could find a good set for making male characters.

I've made more since, but here are the highlight reels of the picrew images I've made as of Monday:

Left image generated by That Child is Looking at Me
Right image generated by BAYDEWS' Avatar Maker

Poor Amara. It's hard to find a maker that has darker skin available without it being almost cartoonishly so? My heart goes out to all non-whites who wish to use these programs... only to never find your proper skin tone. On top of that issue - which will come up for Lia as well - getting the proper eye color and hair color for Amara, as well as the proper D&D-esque Adventurers' Garb(TM) and half-elf ears.... well, it was all a bit tricky. Even in the above images, Amara is showing off too much skin in the left image, and isn't hiding the point of her ears in the second. All-in-all, however, these two are probably the best versions I could make for my traumatized, abused, and therefore anti-social half-elf.

For Jolene, I had oopsied a touch. When I was first making these images I had forgotten what her eye color canonically was when I was roleplaying with her. Green eyes looked good with her purple hair, though, so I ran with it. Only to then look it up and see her eyes are supposed to be a deep indigo. She did get corrupted by the Prime Evil Deceit early on in the campaign, and when that happened, her eyes did become snake-like. So, I just handwaved that all the green-eyed Jolenes were when she was corrupted, and remade those images with purple eyes instead.

Picrews used: That Child is Looking at Me (peeking around the tree), 
Taybee (green backgrounds), Play Shop (flowers and hearts), 
Kamekaka (gradient background), and BAYDEWS' Avatar Maker (heart background)

I couldn't decide on which shade of purple to use for Jolene's hair when I got to the Taybee designer. I think I like the dark violet the best??? The top three designs - That Child is Looking at Me, Taybee, and Play Shop - are my favorites. I'm not disappointed in the bottom two though.

I have since added 4 more design sets, and now I REALLY don't know which version of Jolene is my favorite (maybe still the Play Shop one?)

Images generated by (L to R):
Harinezu Version Men's Maker
Take-type Female Character Maker
그냥 쏘세디야
Taeko Style Girl

Purposefully creating green-eyed Jolenes with her corruption in mind this go really made making these versions of her so much fun. She tends to get a bit crankier and less likely to deal with someone's BS in most of them, but when I got to the one without an English name translation, I just felt like making her a bit remorseful of her situation.

Lia, as I mentioned, was hard to do. Mostly because I couldn't quite get the proper skin tone, hair color, and/or eye color shading for her; either her original Brazilian or reworked Hawaiian skin tones. I worked with what I had, however, and most of these came out fairly decently.

Generated by:
Upper Left: That Child is Looking at Me
Upper Right: Taybee
Lower Left: Smile Girl Maker
Lower Right: BAYDEWS' Avatar Maker

I think TCILAM and Smile Girl Maker had the best versions of Lia. I just wish I could have made her hair darker and with the orange undercut dye in the SGM one. I also wish the orange hair in the Taybee one looked more like actual hair and less like random ribbons????

While the hair color was far too light (it should be a dark, chocolate brown instead of the honey-brown shown here), and the orange undercut dye didn't show up (although it did in her bangs, so... ???), I was able to also make up this version of Lia via the Take-type Female Character Maker:

Willow was truly fun to make, especially when I could also showcase her favorite illusion of cat ears. Getting her asymmetrical bob and blue highlights in her hair were a bit tricky, however, so I just had to kind of go with "same energy" for a couple of the hair styles.

Generated by: That Child is Looking at Me (peeking around the corner),
Smile Girl Maker (circle background), Kamekaka (blue square background with heart)
and Play Shop (paint drip background with photo filters)

I think the Smile Girl Maker one is almost spot-on for Willow's hair style, but I do like how I was able to put the blue streaks in her hair for the TCILAM version. I adore the art styling of the one from Play Shop. Honestly, the only one I'm kind of "meh" on is the Kamekaka one, but it's still better than some other versions I had worked on.

I also really enjoyed the ones I did throughout the week. 

Generated by:
Upper Left: Taeko Style Girl
Lower Left: Harinezu Version Men's Maker
Right Side: Take-type Female Character Maker

Apparently I enjoy making Willow wink.... She's just so much fun to create, if I'm honest. No wonder she's the first OC I've ever had commissioned. Which version of Willow is your favorite?

I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that some of these image makers were fairly decent for creating male characters as well (and, ironically, the Harinezu Version Men's Maker is really good at making female characters....). So I got to experiment a little with Willow's older brother Shawn. I could never really get his clothing color scheme or style down, but I think I've caught his essence in these images.

Generated by (L to R): That Child is Looking at Me, Taybee, and BAYDEWS' Avatar Maker

Lord, he looks so baybee in these! Poor Shawn! The new ones I did this past week don't really do much better at making him look like a college student. Whoops.

Generated by (L to R): Take-type Female Character Maker,
Harinezu Version Men's Maker, and Fantasy Character Maker

I mean, the super-brooding one on the right is alright, I guess. Closest to his intended age of 20, I suppose. Likewise, I just found a male OC maker called uomo. It doesn't quite work for Shawn's intended look, but the artwork is still just too pretty to not try it out anyway.

He looks like a boyband member. 🤣
(I doctored his eyes to get closer to his actual coloring,
might still be too piercingly blue
instead of a more neonesque aquamarine...)

I even tried making Hubby's OC Chayse with uomo. The program works a touch better for this character, but he just looks so brooding when Chayse is actually this upbeat guy. Maybe I should go back through some of the other makers I used for the girls to see if I can make Chayse in any of them.

I doctored the image to give Chayse his proper eye color.

Rounding out the OCs (I didn't think of my Numenara character Jynna or my Blades in the Dark character Mara until I was already about 6 sets in), I have my Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants OC: Trish.

Generated by:
Top (L to R): That Child is Looking at Me, Kamekaka, and Play Shop
Bottom (L to R): Taybee, Smile Girl Maker, and BAYDEWS' Avatar Maker

I love how I could give her the same kind of "why am I here" energy in just about all of the above images. The one in the upper right by Play Shop is probably the closest to her manic personality, but she's also "too pretty" in it and "too girly." So, I kind of headcanon that it's a "beauty shot" she took to try to hand over to Pyro (or Iggy in my Glitches rework). I also think TCILAM and Smile Girl Maker are right there with Play Shop as my top 3 versions of Trish in this set.

As for the rest of the week, well... much like how I did more research to discover Jolene's actual eye color, I did the same and rediscovered that I originally had Trish with shoulder-length hair. All one layer like a curtain of hair she swoops away from her left eye.

My original imagining of
Trish, Willow, and Lia,
using ChaZie dress-up dolls assets
I layered in Photoshop.

(Yeah, originally Lia didn't have any bangs.... whoops again. I guess everyone evolved in my head over the years....)

Taking that into account, my next grouping of Trish images included her original shoulder-length hair along with the long and wild hair I now picture her with.

Generated by:
Harinezu Version Men's Maker (plain gray background),
그냥 쏘세디야 (fiery sky with white circle),
Take-type Female Character Maker (black border),
and Taeko Style Girl (bottom center; gray background with white polka dots)

Honestly, since none of these picrew image makers seem to have that wild, untamed, manic-styled long hair, I kind of like Trish back in her shoulder-length (and mostly straight) style. The long hair is all just too "pretty" and feminine for her. I also image-flipped the Harinezu images so the hair is properly draped over her right eye. 

Anyway, I've clearly been having way too much fun making these. The fact that Ronoxym stated on one of my image threads over on Facebook, "I'm rather enjoying all your pics of your characters," definitely isn't helping me break this addiction, that's for sure.

I definitely could keep going about these picrew images - I made some of myself as well, both my LycoRogue persona and me IRL - but this massively delayed post is already of epic proportions, so I think I'll stop the image sharing here. Perhaps I'll show off the picrew images of myself next update.

Before I head out, though, I want to circle WAAAAAAAY back to what I said towards the top of this post. Specifically, the fact that Rozsavaria is looking for a roleplay campaign to join. Like I said, this post is already sooooo long, so I'll get into it more next update, but the long-and-short is that Hubby and I are definitely plotting a new campaign to try out two new RPGs we've purchased recently.

So, the game mechanics of the RPG Blades in the Dark - called Forged in the Dark - were also used in a sort of Space-Pirate/Space-Cowboy/Space-Opera genre game. This Star Wars/Space Dandy/Cowboy Bebop/Firefly/Guardians of the Galaxy style RPG is called Scum and Villainy. I'll probably get into the core of the game next update. As of right now, though? Knowing it plays like Blades in the Dark and has that Space-Pirate/Space-Cowboy/Space-Opera feel should be a good start. Point is, Hubby bought the core rule book for S&V when we got Blades, and we've been itching to play it all lockdown.

In the same vein, about a month or two ago, one of the Youtubers Hubby and I follow - Luke Westaway from Outside Xtra - released his first ever game! He created his own pen-and-paper roleplay. It's called Gravity RIP. The concept is basically the F-Zero video games with roleplay elements. Again, I'll get into it more the next update, but that's the broad overview. 

Anyway, Hubby and I are itching to play that game as well. Two birds with one stone; Hubby thinks we could combine Gravity RIP and Scum and Villainy. Basically, Hubby wants to use the S&V game mechanics to have the players create a racing crew and do scores to help fund the crew while also surviving under the thumb of the Galactic Hegemonic Alliance. Then, we'd switch over to Gravity for the soft-roleplay bits and for the racing. The world build of S&V is a bit too vague, so the build of Gravity helps fill it in. The money mechanics of S&V is also a bit confusing, so we'd be using Gravity's money system instead. On the flipside, S&V helps with Gravity's soft roleplay options, which are a bit too open-ended, by giving the players a bit more direction and goals to aim for.

We'd have to figure out how to merge the stress and injury mechanics of S&V with the Chaos/Theory mechanics of Gravity, but otherwise, Hubby has faith that they work well together. 

I'm excited about this. I'm even chomping at the bit to GM this RP! I'm all excited to come up with a whole league of NPC racers. Now to find the time to read through the rulebooks.....

Okay, I've already have a long list of things to talk about next update, but I still need to finish THIS ONE! I've been chipping away at it all week (literally every day from Monday through to today). I might need to get started on Tuesday's update after I hit publish on this one!

I should probably hop to it then, huh? Until next time!

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