What DID I Do This Past Month?

Well then. Seems Tuesday threw a LOT more at me than I was anticipating, and this blog post got kinda left on the wayside. I had most of it done, though, so I figured I'd just post late this week instead of skipping again. Because, well, come on. A blog post two weeks in a row!? It's amazing how much better I feel being able to do this. I truly missed being able to write ANYTHING, even if what I AM writing is basically just weekly journal entries. It's still a start, right? 

Speaking of, NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday. Part of me wants to participate, but another part doesn't want to add any more stress to a year that has already been a lot for me with regards to my writing confidence. So I haven't officially signed up for it. We'll see what I decide by Saturday.

There are three options I'm batting around should I decide to do NaNo. Four if you add in the option to just bounce between them all and focus on both word count and writing ANYTHING instead of the traditional version of "50,000 words for ONE story".

Option 1: Try to work on One and the Same yet again. This story has been in the making for 2 years, and I've had so many people finish Peeping Tomcat only to ask me where to find OatS. I always feel a touch embarrassed when I have to respond with "Uh... I'm... still working on that one...." Just call me the George R. R. Martin of fanfiction at this point. I may get the next story out.... eventually.... in the meantime, let me assure you - while I have a bunch of other projects released in the meantime - that I'm totally working on that sequel I mentioned years ago.... I did vow at the beginning of the year that I'd get at least the first chapter of OatS published before the conclusion of 2020, but considering I've barely even LOOKED at this story all year, I don't know if I should still hold myself to that. After a 2+ year wait, I REALLY don't want to rush out something subpar. Nor do I want to publish the first chapter just to say I did so, and then have people waiting for who knows how long until I can get the rest of the story written and polished.

Option 2: I'll touch more on this later, but I was heavily inspired by the Miraculous Ladybug special that came out at the end of September. Well, to be more accurate, I was heavily inspired by the confusion and salt the fandom threw around after watching the special. I don't know if I just know how to get into the heads of the writers better than a lot of fans, but I understood where they were going with just about all of scenes, whereas a great many of the fandom seemed blindsided. Or they felt what happened was a bit contrived. Or a character seemed to be written poorly. Et cetera.

So my thought was to help the fandom see what I did with regards to why the writers made the decisions they did. In a manner similar to my story Prescription for Love, I want to write the scenes that were skipped because they weren't necessarily crucial for plot progression. I want to write scenes we were shown, but in a different character's perspective than the one we saw on screen. I want to further flesh out the events of the special. In part, because these side scenarios are bouncing around in my head anyway, but also to maybe help the fandom see what I did and appreciate the special more.

While I feel guilty taking on another big project instead of working on OatS (again), I also kind of want to get this story done sooner rather than later since it's specifically focused on canon, and I'm already a month out from the special's premiere. 

Option 3: I had offered to help my mom out with something, and I have totally fallen off the horse on that. We talked about it, and we now have a new deadline of February to get it all sorted out, but I do hate holding up other people's projects like this. I've been in group projects where the rest of us are in limbo as we wait for someone to get their part of the project done. It sucks being those who are just on standby. So I may use November as a means to kick myself into gear for this project.

So, there we are. My three options for NaNo - should I decide to participate this week - as well as that fourth option of just bouncing between these projects wherever my inspiration takes me just to keep me moving forward.

Now, let's circle back to that ML special.

I absolutely adored it. The voice acting was a bit off - as in the VAs lost the tone they had established for these characters' voices, but the acting itself was spectacular - so that threw me, but after watching the special about a dozen times (thank you, DisneyNOW), I'm getting more and more used to it. I just hope the choice - either by the director or by Cristina Vee herself - to have Marinette deepen and mature her voice whenever she's Ladybug doesn't transition into the show. If they had made that choice at the start of the series it would be one thing, but after 3 seasons it seems weird for her to start that NOW when her voice hasn't been remotely close to a giveaway up until this point. 

Maybe you could explain it away as "after the event of 'Chat Blanc' she's making sure Chat Noir doesn't figure out who she is" but she didn't deepen her voice in the episodes following, so it doesn't really work. You could also possibly argue that "she's now the Guardian and feels she needs to work harder to hide her identity" but if no one figured out her identity before why would she feel like it's in danger of being discovered now? Maaaaaybe because Chloe knows that most of the Miraculous holders are her classmates, and the guy that's now pseudo-dating Marinette??? I dunno, the girl that's pseudo-dating Adrien was also a holder, so maybe Chloe won't put two-and-two together? 

Either way, I'm not a fan of the decision. I wouldn't mind if Bryce Papenbrook had decided to do something like that for Chat Noir because he already changes up his voice slightly between the two personas. It just feels weird to have Marinette randomly do it out of nowhere. Especially with how drastically different Cristina Vee goes with it. I think the issue I have the most with it is that she uses the same deeper and more mature voice she used for Nightmare Ladybug in the episode "Sandboy," and to have "evil" Ladybug's voice now be the real LB's vocal choice is just wrong to me.

Other than that, though, I LOVED this special. You can read my semi-live-blogging of the special here. Fair warning, there's spoilers as I react to the special.

As predicted though, as well as mentioned above, this ever-growingly-toxic fandom was all set to tear this special apart for every little thing. The largest victims being Adrien and Alya. This is where the idea for Option 2 above came from.

I mostly wanted to rewrite the Car Scene from Adrien's perspective, and possibly Alya's perspective as well. We see it via limited POV through Marinette's perspective, so I don't think there needs to be more there, but trying to understand Adrien and especially Alya during that scene seems to be both crucial and something that goes over a lot of fans' heads. In fact, the way Alya acted throughout the whole special I feel needs to be explained. 

So many complained about how she's once again not being a good friend to Marinette - similar complaint as in the episode "Chameleon" - and since I had friends like Alya growing up, I feel like I understand her and her motivations. Are they healthy, intelligent, or helpful choices? No. Are they decisions a lot of teens her age would make because they don't have the maturity or perspective to understand why these decisions are bad? Hells yeah! Should writers abandon realism in telling a story in favor of "teaching" children better life choices? Maybe, but that's entirely up to the writers and what kind of story they're trying to tell. Is the story automatically bad because a writer decides to go with "realism because it adds better drama" instead of "teaching children so they are better prepared for the future"? No.

I could do a whole essay on this subject, but I won't get into it now.

So, yeah, I want to rewrite the Car Scene from these other character perspectives, along with what happened with Marinette and Adrien post-sewer scene, the Floating Scene, the flight from Paris to New York City, Alya's and/or Nino's POV during the museum attack, Alya and Marinette interacting post-attack on NYC, Adrien prepping for the trip to NYC, why Luka had to race a bus to drop Marinette off, possibly Adrien's trip back to Paris, and maybe a LadyNoir scene post-special when the two meet up again in Paris. There might be more there, but I'll have to go through the special again (woe is me) to decide if there's more scenes I want in this project.

I do already have some starter essays I wrote over on Tumblr to give me jumping off points for the narrative as a whole.

• Plagg being visible when the Cat Ring isn't in disguise mode
• Defending the Car Scene and Alya

Again, these are heavily spoilerific essays, just FYI.

I guess that does mean that I HAVE written this past month. Specifically the final week of September, but still. Yay.

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I wasn't the only one that was inspired by the special, which I completely expected to happen. I still haven't finished that project from over a month ago where I was trying to compile my list of fanfic recommendations. Instead I started reading all of the NY special inspired stories. Now I have even more stories to add to my rec list....

Whoops.

Worth it.

I've also been reading something out-of-fandom. Honestly, I've been trying to avoid doing precisely that because it's hard enough for me to get back into writing if I stay within the fandom and allow it to help inspire me. I didn't want to try to switch gears to a new fandom and hope it doesn't throw me off track of what limited progress I've made this year.

However, Taurus Pixie recently started up a new story for the Hellsing fandom. I'm not really feeling Halloween-y this year - which SUCKS because it's a Saturday, it's a full moon, it's a blue moon, etc etc etc, and yet... meh? - so I was hoping a story based on a vampire-centric fandom might help with that. Really get me in the spoopy mood. Plus, Pixie got a lot of rude and entitled reviews on her latest ML chapter, which caused her to decide to pull away from writing anything for this increasingly toxic fandom. I knew she needed some love after that ordeal, so I wanted to get in on the ground floor of her newest story.

Honestly, I'm surprised it kept her this long to write something for Hellsing. This anime/manga's aesthetic is right up her alley. The story follows Seras as she tries to figure out the nuance and political environment of the vampire world without the aid of Alucard. I'm only 2 chapters in - a 3rd was posted on the 22nd, but I haven't had a moment to read it yet - and I'm already loving the world build. I don't think she's ever played any form of White Wolf's World of Darkness, or, specifically, the Vampire: The Masquerade game. And yet, that environment is more-or-less what she's building. It's great  how multiple people just SENSE that idea of animalistic hierarchy and tension of turf wars happening within vampire culture. That structure of vampiric society seems as part of the myth as fangs, sunlight aversion, and hatred of garlic.

Anyway, if you want something dark, gritty, violent, and Halloween-y to read this week, why not give Pixie's story a go? Fair warning, being in the Hellsing fandom more-or-less means she has free rein with her writing so she has virtually every trigger warning slapped onto this thing. Like I said, this is violent and grotesque and dark and gritty as she focuses on Seras dealing with her own monstrous nature and surviving against other creatures that have all but fully submitted to their monstrous and feral nature. Also, it takes place post Hellsing Ultimate/the manga, so... spoilers as well.

Go and Conquer

Cast out by her master, Seras must try and make a new life for herself, despite knowing so little about the vampire way of life. But when a small coven takes her in, Seras finally begins to fully relise her true potential, falling more and more into the insanity of the vampire world. Meanwhile, Hellsing sends in Alucard to deal with this new and emerging threat...

Speaking of submitting to one's monstrous and feral nature, I've been playing Among Us, as I mentioned last week. This past Friday we actually managed to wrestle together enough people for there to be two impostors for a few games! That was exciting. Also, for whatever reason, this time *I* was the impostor seemingly more times than not. Man, I know most people prefer being the impostor and having the fun of sabotaging and killing without having to worry about working out who is the impostor. However, I am NOT one of those players. I HATE being the impostor. Yeah, it's fun, but it's also sooooo stressful. Trying to think of lies or alibis to keep the heat off of you? Trying to keep your tells in check so you don't give yourself away? I know I can't play with voice chat on because I giggle uncontrollably when I can't think of a way of talking myself out of suspicion. Trying to keep track of EVERYONE so you can get in a clean kill? Incidentally, I almost NEVER got a clean kill. Someone either spotted me or walked in RIGHT after the kill, and I couldn't think of a lie fast enough to self-report. 

The only really clean kill I had was when I sat in the vent in Electrical on the Skeld map, because I knew SOMEONE had to have a task in there at some point. The second I saw someone alone I jumped out of the vent, killed, then hopped back in before anyone could be the wiser. I then travelled via vent for a bit so no one could pin me near the room.

Also, Hubby and I are those annoying players who like to pod-up so it's harder for the impostor to pick us off without the other(s) seeing it happen. More often than not we can't convince other players to join us in podding so we just partner up, but, if Ronoxym's Twitch stream from that night was any indication, it annoys the HECK out of the other players that they can't kill one of us without the other seeing because we're ALWAYS together. This playstyle is very helpful as a crewmate, but it's also suuuuuper difficult as an impostor. 

If Hubby and I are ALWAYS together, but one of us is the impostor, it's sooooo hard to get a clean kill without the other seeing it. Which means splitting off from each other, but if we're ALWAYS attached at the hip then the fact that one of us wanders from the other can be a bit suspicious. Alternatively, it means that our spouse is the first to go so we're free to roam around solo. Which also means we go from "partnering keeps us safe" to "partnering potentially makes us the first victim" as well as people getting suspicious that one of us is running around without the other.

We're actually surprised THAT wasn't the main give-away: "Hey, found Zalic's body. Lyco didn't report, but she's still alive. Lyco seems sus." Or, alternatively, "Zalic's alive and didn't report a dead Lyco? Seems sus."

Nope. No one managed to put those pieces together. They would grumble about us being attached at the hip, but never had any red flags go up when we WEREN'T together.

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Although, now that I've pointed it out, looks like Hubby and I need to come up with a new strategy or we just gave ourselves away as impostors....

Anyway, for me at least, it's just so much easier when there's two impostors. Then I can focus on doing sabotages and hope O2 running out or the reactor melting down kills everyone for me, or at least thins people out enough for the other impostor to get in the kills.

We did recently got introduced to the Hide-and-Seek mod that people have been playing, and I'm all for playing in that mode! It's bound to be so much less stress to be the impostor when you don't have to worry about hiding it. It does seem a LOT more stressful to be the crewmates though....

Still excited to try it out!

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On a much sweeter side of things, Hubby swiped my Switch on me Saturday. For the majority of the month, he's had his character in Animal Crossing: New Horizons running around as Chat Noir whereas I've had either an all-pink outfit (for breast cancer awareness month) or a new Halloween costume on.

Well, since he had been running around as Chat Noir anyway, he decided to surprise me when I got home to play that day.

My glorious dork of a husband decided to go full-throttle, found a BUNCH of Adrien Agreste inspired shirts in the custom design kiosk, and even had my character send him the orange sneakers to finish the outfit. Wish the green eye color available was more emerald shading than jade, but it works.

Naturally, I had to make sure I matched.

I was able to find quite a lot of Marinette Dupain-Cheng inspired shirts via the custom design kiosk as well. As a whole, however, his outfit is way better than mine. I couldn't find pink slip-on shoes, so I went with low heels. I also don't have a pink round purse with a black strap. Some of the shirt designs had one drawn on the design, but I liked having the actual bag better. Finally, the blue hair is a bit too light of a shade, but it was either this or actual black, so I'm going with this. I'd also prefer if the pigtails were at the base of the head, much like the dual-braids, but I guess these work too.

We've been having fun roleplaying as these two adorable dorks.

I found "Adrien" playing on the piano while visiting Hubby's island.

The truest of roleplaying: Lovesick Marinette and totally clueless Adrien.

To finish up the Miraculous Ladybug deep dive to try to get re-inspired to write for this fandom, I had decided to make a new mask for this week. I doubt I'll dress up for Halloween much more than just an all-black outfit, but I do also have this mask now...

I tried a new mask design that accordions out vertically instead of the standard horizontal. Doing so is supposed to bevel the mask out away from your lips while still staying snug against the jawline and nose. This way your lips never touch the mask. It seems to work really well, however I DID cut the ear straps a touch too small, so, unless the elastic stretches out, I can only wear the mask in short trips, like to the grocery store or laundry. It's just too much tug on the ears otherwise.

I debated making a second one with longer ear loops, but without a sewing machine stitching this mask together took two days as is. Maybe some day in the future I'll try again, but for right now I'm content with this one mask.

How about everyone else? Have you been reading anything good? Any stories getting you in the mood for Halloween? Alternatively, if you want to hear out-of-copyright ghost stories from around the gothic/Victorian era, here is the playlist of ones Luke Westaway from OutsideXtra has been reading on his private channel this year. Do you have a Halloween costume this year? What are you dressing up as? Have you been playing Among Us as well? Do you prefer to be the impostor or a crewmate? Any pro strats to share? Are you going to participate in NaNoWriMo? Do you have a preference as to which option I should do, should I decide to join in?

I keep forgetting to share this, but I did set up a new Dream in ACNH this past week. I'll have to redo it now that I'm Marinette and my island is getting a bit more spoopy, but if you have the game and want a poke around my island, feel free to pop on by.

Dream Address, in case you can't quite read the image,
is DA-6983-1496-3456.
Enjoy your stay.

I know this is a strange year with strange circumstances, but I do hope everyone can enjoy their Halloween while still staying safe and healthy.

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Also also also also!!!!

If you are a United States citizen over the age of 18, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE remember your civic duty! You have LESS THAN A WEEK NOW!

NEXT TUESDAY is election day. An overwhelming amount of citizens seem to have already voted via mail-in ballots, drop-off ballot boxes, early voting, etc. Keep it up! Keep yourself safe whenever possible. Remember that you can always hand deliver to your elections office if you don't want to chance going to the poles, but also don't trust either mailing or ballot boxes. If you don't know where that is, this site can help you find your local elections office. Please make a plan if you haven't already voted. Make your voice heard. Don't let anyone convince you that your vote isn't going to matter or count. Don't allow yourself to think that you shouldn't bother because you know your area is going to vote for the opposing party anyway. Don't think that it doesn't matter because your area typically votes the same way as you regardless. 

GET. OUT. THERE. AND. VOTE.

Safely.

Chaotic Thanksgiving Vacation

Free FB Cover art by CoverMyTimeline.com

Well, I guess, happy super belated Thanksgiving by now. Whoops.

Last week... did not go according to plan.

I had taken the weekend off to visit family for Thanksgiving. It's an annual tradition and I make sure I maintain it. Because of the weekend off, however, I ended up working last Tuesday. I knew this. I had meant to work on my blog post that Monday so I was prepared for my weekly noon update. I was not feeling well though, so I ended up just zoning out Monday night; not remembering my blog until I was ready to go to bed at like 11pm.

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So I didn't have my post set like it should have been. Big surprise there, right? Okay. Not that big of a deal. I would just write it while at work and post it late that day. At least, that was the back-up plan. I forgot that we had our weekly deliveries on Tuesdays, considering I'm almost never there for them. So I spent the morning running around with that and taking care of customers, and Hubby still got off of work at noon, as he does nearly every Tuesday. The morning ended up zipping by. Okay, no problem. I still had the afternoon to write and post, right?

Wellllllllllll....

Black Friday was obviously this past weekend. For any outside the US who might not know what this means, it's the "first day" of the Christmas shopping frenzy. I say "first day" in quotes, because lots of people start their shopping early, and a lot of stores are starting up their "Black Friday" specials earlier and earlier in the month each year. Point is, the term "Black Friday" is a reference to so may people buying that stores' ledgers are always "in the black." It's become a bit of a crazed tradition as people scramble to get most of their Christmas shopping - if not their "big ticket items" - purchased the Friday after Thanksgiving... or... ON Thanksgiving as most stores have started up.

I'm sidetracking myself. Point is that, with our store closed on Thanksgiving itself, I had to make sure the sales tags were scanned, printed, and prepped to be put up late Wednesday so they were good to go when my co-workers opened Friday morning. In order to have enough time to do so, I- I couldn't write Tuesday afternoon because I was busy scanning the store. Whoops again.

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After work then? Nope. It was November, which meant a writing group meeting every Tuesday from 6pm until 8pm. So, right after work I raced to get to my meeting. Didn't even had time to stop for dinner, so Hubby intelligently sent me to work with a frozen meal to heat up and eat while we were doing our first writing sprint. I COULD have used our sprints to work on my blog post, but that wasn't the point. The point was to work on One and the Same, which had been such a fail all month.

Well, there was only four of us at group last week, and one member actually cut out shortly after I got there. Her son sprung it on her that he was actually going to be spending the week out of town to celebrate Thanksgiving with his friends instead, so she wanted to get home to spend some holiday time with him first. Out of the remaining three of us, no one had anything we felt was ready to read to the group, and we didn't have much to discuss about our writing.

I had attempted that the previous week. I waved the white flag and told everyone what was bothering me about OatS; why it's kept me about two years to write as opposed to the one year for Peeping Tomcat. Namely that I had Important Scene A and Important Scene C, but it would be too jarring if they were back-to-back, and I couldn't figure out what Scene B should be to bridge between the two. I gave an example of one of those gaps I needed to bridge over and... well... they tried, but it was less than helpful.

They tried giving me the age-old advice to breaking through writer's block: 1) try killing off a character and see how the others react, and 2) try switching POV. Admittedly, I did attempt the POV switch when working on PT, resulting in the companion story A Plan Forms. I'll get back to this bit advice in a minute. First up, I had to try to explain to the group - in almost painstakingly simple terms - why "just kill off a character" doesn't work for fanfiction unless you're purposely working with an AU, and even so, you have to be careful as to who you kill off and why. It's a tricky thing to do without having your readers kind of rebel against you.

Plus. Ya know. OatS is supposed to be a mostly light-hearted love story? I feel like it would take quite the dramatic turn if I'm suddenly killing off characters. Especially since doing so still wouldn't necessarily help me bridge between the scenes. It would be too large of a tonal shift. And yet, I couldn't just be like "nope. Thanks, but that wouldn't work," because they kept pressing me as to why. "Because it's too much of a tonal shift" didn't seem to be a "valid" answer for them????

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As for the "change POV" thing, part of the problem was I wasn't sure whose POV I needed/wanted to be in, so I was already writing scenes in both Adrien's and Marinette's perspective, and that seemed to be confusing me even further. Their solution? Hand the bridging chapters over to one of the kwamis or another side character.

Huh!?

I stressed to them that my pattern would then be something to the effect of:

• Marinette chapter
• Adrien chapter
• Marinette
• Adrien
• Random character, potentially a kwami?
• Marinette
• Adrien
• Marinette
• Random character again; either the same as before or a random fourth POV
• Adrien
• Marinette
• Adrien
• Marinette
• Adrien
• Random character again; either repeating previous non-Adrienette POV or yet ANOTHER new perspective
• Marinette
• Adrien
• Marinette
• Adrien
• Marinette
• Tag-team between Marinette and Adrien during the climax of the story

And the group was like "Yeah. Why not?"

Why not? They were really cool with having a random third, or fourth, or fifth POV popped in? Seriously?

I wasn't even entirely sure where to begin with explaining why that wouldn't work; why that would potentially be jarring for the readers. But, maybe I'm the one that's in the wrong? Maybe I'm too rigid in my views of how POV should be presented in books?

Or, the more likely take, they figured "it's fanfiction; not something professionally written, so what's the harm?"

Thoughts? If I'm the one who's over-thinking this and if I'm the one who's too rigid in storytelling structure, please let me know in the comments section. If the group was right, I need to hear that.

Anyway, my overall point was that, two weeks ago, when I tried to ask for help on my story, and I couldn't utilize the main tricks other writers - who were working on original stories and had much more free rein - would be able to use, I just... I dunno. I guess I felt frustrated and isolated? Like, after doing this with them for, I think about three years now - maybe four? - they still aren't getting the core differences between fanfiction and original writing. It's almost like going to them for help on a script versus prose. There are things fundamentally different in how one writes one style of fiction over another, and yet I still get advice as if I were writing original content. In fact, I'm also kind of herded towards writing original content, as if my talents are wasted on fanfiction.

It may be true, but still, that's... not what I'm doing right now? So... that's not helping me?

Long and short, while I was still struggling last Tuesday, I didn't feel like my further talking with the remaining members - who happened to also be the ones who understood fanfiction the least out of the group - wouldn't do me much good. So I remained silent, and so did the other two ladies.

We decided to not do the sprints, and instead just utilize the 90 or so minutes the library was still open in order to just have a mini writing retreat.

Maybe THAT was what I needed. I didn't write as fast as I normally do, but I did manage to knock out 1368 words! Granted, about 60 of them is a sort of "note to self: I need these bits figured out and written into the chapter" sidebar, but still, that's over 1300 new words of prose. I'll take that. Better than what I had been doing lately.

I was now up to 3946 words on this attempt for the project. This officially keeps my disastrously pathetic attempt to write about my vampire character back in 2014 as my worst NaNo attempt! Whoo???

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After writing group, I COULD have finally settled in to work on my blog post for Wednesday morning, but at that point I hadn't seen my husband for 12hrs, minus the brief time I spent with him when I picked him up from work before I had to scurry back to mine. I waved the white flag and spent the evening catching up with him and trying to get some chores done.

Wednesday I did try to put in an effort to get this blog post done while I was at work. We couldn't really put up the Black Friday tags until closer to 3pm so that people weren't trying to take advantage of the sales early. However, other work projects came down the pipeline, and since I had taken this week off for a much-needed Staycation, I wanted to make sure those projects were set before I headed out.

I did manage to edit and drop in all the images you have seen - and will see - in this post. Those usually take up the most amount of time anyway. Especially when trying to track down original artists of images I find on Google so I can properly credit them. That takes a lot of time if they've been reposted and re-uploaded over and over and over again online. I also focused on the other semi-time-consuming bit: figuring out that word count for NaNo. I had figured out what I had written last Tuesday, added it to my grand total for the month, and then made sure to dump it here as a reference point to work into my post.

In fact, I did a lot of vague skeleton work for this post on Wednesday: dropping phrases or simple sentences about what I wanted to talk about and in what order. I then spent today working my way up to those bits in order to flesh out the actual post. So... valiant effort on Wednesday? But not nearly enough.

Post-work I was going to work on my post, but I got sidetracked again. I can't recall what sidetracked me though, and I've been trash with my time audits the past month or so. THIS IS WHY I NEED TO REMEMBER TO DO THEM! I'm better at work when I can just have the calendar out on my desk and in my face. I don't really have a place at home where it's readily in my face for whenever I switch up my tasks, and so I forget to go back to it. This is something I need to work on this month so I have a better routine next year.

Anyway. Point is. Clearly my blog post wasn't written Wednesday either.

THURSDAY! Thursday was Thanksgiving, and the unofficial start of my vacation since the store was closed and I had taken Friday off. Hubby had volunteered to work Thanksgiving in order to have the weekend off as well. His store closed at 3pm, so it was too late for us to really join his family for their Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, for those outside the US, on Big Meal holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter, "dinner" is at like 1pm and lasts for hours before having dessert at like 5pm and then grumbling about being "stuffed" the rest of the evening. Also, since we'd be gone all weekend, and would most likely bring home leftovers from the Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, we didn't want to put in the effort to make our own Thanksgiving feast. This meant I didn't have to spend the morning and early afternoon slaving away in the kitchen.

This also meant I had until about 2:30pm to just sit and write, if I wanted to. I could finally write my blog post. I could try to squeak in some last-minute word-count for NaNo. I had time.

Instead? Well... First of all, I started the day off with some chores. Okay. I was adulting. That's fine. Good use of my time. Buuuuuut then I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It's tradition, but also a bit distracting for me to write at the same time.

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Another distraction was another tradition I had slacked on the entire month. Long-time readers of this blog probably knows what I'm talking about. It's a tradition my mom started when I was a kid, and one I actually forgot about this year until I watched Bob's Burgers on Sunday, November 24th.

In that episode, the eldest Belcher kid Tina had a b-storyline where she tried to include a new Thanksgiving Day tradition that she read about in her Thundergirls - their version of the Girl Scouts of America - handbook.

She called it a Gratitude Tree.

From Bob's Burgers season 10 episode 8 "Now We're Not Cooking With Gas"

You can check out the full clip about Tina's attempt to initiate this new family tradition here:

This hit close to home to me because this is EXACTLY that tradition Mom came up with when I was a kid. Instead of a self-standing cardboard tree, Mom had covered the attic door with a cardboard tree poster. Also, while Tina was giving out eight leaves to each family member, in order to fill out and post all on Thanksgiving, Mom gave each family member THIRTY leaves, and we were to write something new each day of November, and post them as we worked our way to Thanksgiving.

Full disclosure: when I was a kid I LOVED when Thanksgiving was early, because it meant fewer leaves to fill out, since we never seemed to remember to continue the leaves past Thanksgiving.

Anyway, the only other difference is that my mom titled her tree the "Giving Thanks" tree instead of the simplified "Gratitude Tree" that Bob's Burgers used. Regardless; same basic concept, and I LOVE that one of the writers clearly had this tradition as well.

The double-edged sword was that this episode reminded me that I hadn't done my Giving Thanks Tree this year; which had turned into a simple list of 30 things I am grateful for after I went to college and no longer had a physical cardboard tree to attack leaves to. On the one hand, I was happy that I was reminded of this tradition, since I don't recall missing a year since Mom started it with us, but on the other hand, I was stressed that I now had to rush to try to get all of my bits of gratitude done on time.

So, guess what I did during the Macy's parade instead of working on this post or OatS.

Over 2600-words later, I had my list. I went into great length as to why I was grateful for each bit, but again, that's over 2600 words long. So instead, here's just the things I'm grateful for; no explanation included, and probably not even needed. This is how they would appear on my leaves if I still had physical paper ones to fill out.

1. My mom
2. My hubby
3. A stable roof over my head/having a home
4. I don't have to worry where my next meal is coming from
5. My job
6. My ability to practice my passion for writing so frequently
7. My readers
8. ChibiSunnie
9. Taurus Pixie
10. I live in a relatively safe town
11. I have filled my life with respectful males that have made me feel safe around them
12. Tumblr
13. My minimal-drama orbit on Tumblr; the people I follow are awesome
14. Miraculous Ladybug
15. I don't have to hide who I am; personality wise
16. My sister is finally realizing her own self-worth and demanding that higher standard in potential S/Os
17. My writing group; despite what I said above about my struggles with them, I still love them and they have helped me quite a bit in their own way.
18. My weekly Anime Day to help me connect more with my friends
19. My friendship with Cyhyr seemingly strengthening
20. My new friendship with Pixie's boyfriend Jowy Avilon
21. My new car
22. My year-long struggle with my car insurance issues are potentially coming to a close
23. Frozen 2 and Disney movies in general
24. The tradition of my mom's extended family coming together every post-Thanksgiving Saturday for our own Thanksgiving gathering
25. Zumba
26. This tradition of coming up with 30 things I'm grateful for each November/Thanksgiving.
27. OutsideXbox, Outside Xtra, and the Oxventure campaign videos
28. Official YouTube uploads from late night talk shows such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
29. People see me as a safe person to talk to and be around; that I'm a good ally
30. That I could come up with 30 things to be grateful for, and can easily keep going if I wanted to

So, there's my list. Do you have one? I'd love a taste of it if you'd like to share. It's a great tradition, but boy did it eat up my morning as I took time to take stock of my blessings and figure out the ones I wanted to include this year.

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By the time I was done with that list I had to get ready for the day, head to Hubby's work to pick him up, and then spent the rest of the holiday with him.

Friday was spent getting ready, packing, and driving down to my mom's for the weekend. Then I was socializing with them, even though I knew I still needed to work on this post, and I did pack up my laptop. Oh well. Family is priority.

Saturday I probably could have cracked open the laptop in the morning to work on my blog post since we didn't need to head out for the Thanksgiving gathering until nearly 2pm. However, I've been so drained lately, so Hubby and I actually slept until like... 10am I think?! There goes the morning writing, but the sleep was well needed so, oh well.

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We spent the afternoon and evening with my extended family, and I wasn't going to be so rude as to bring my laptop with me to work on my writing while hanging out with people I only see about once a year. By the time we got back to my mom's it was about 10pm and I was ready to just crash.

Sunday I slept in a touch again, but woke up early enough to go with my mom and sister to church with them, as a sort of gift to my mom who always wants me to join them. We then had tickets to watch Frozen 2 right after church, so I wasn't going to get onto the road until about 4pm, nor would I have time to write before heading out. The Nor'easter started coming through the area by the time I got back from church, so despite my mom's concerns, I figured "I'm not going to get ahead of this storm anyway; might as well give the plow/salt trucks time to get the roads cleaned" and went to the movie after all.

Post movie - which I enjoyed, by the way - we again wondered if we should head out or stay another night. We wanted to be home for Hubby's birthday yesterday, needed to hit up the DMV yesterday, and weren't sure if the storm would ease up prior to this morning anyway. So I shrugged, again put my faith in the plow and salting trucks, and braved the storm.

Dumb idea.

The roads were terrible. The standard speed limits of 65mph (~105kph) were dropped to 45mph (~72kph), and even then, a lot of the second half of the trip I had to drive little more than 30mph (~48kph)! That changed a 4hr trip into a little more than a 7hr one, made even LONGER when I... well... I slid off the road a little more than an hour away from home!

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I'm fine. Hubby's fine. The car is fine. The left overs and luggage packed in the trunk were fine. It was just frustrating. I was doing soooooo good with the weather, but I had to shift to the barely-used left lane to give space for a car coming off the on-ramp to the highway. Clearly no one is using this lane because who the heck is trying to pass cars in that weather!? So it wasn't plowed. It wasn't salted. It was bad, but the cars are now keeping pace with me, so I couldn't get back over to the better-traveled right lane for the better part of a mile. The highway turned slightly, and it was enough for me to lose traction, and off we went. The hill wasn't that bad where we were; but the snow and ice pile-up was too much for me to go anywhere. Fast forward about thirty/forty minutes - and a call to the state troopers for help - and the tow truck got me back up on the road and on my way.

There's $130-some well spent.

Needed to give Hubby one last adventure before his birthday, I guess.

The treads in my tires were fairly clogged with snow and ice at that point though, hence having to go about 30mph on the highway to avoid slipping again. We got home at about 11:30pm. I emptied the car while Hubby tried to quickly shovel the foot of snow out of my way to the garage. I then got stuck trying to make a K-turn in the road since our apartment is past the driveway to the complex's parking lot. Hubby dug me out, and I got stuck again making a turn into the garage, and again Hubby had to dig me out.

By the time we both made it inside it was nearly midnight. It was an exhausting day.

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Listen to your parents when they tell you not to drive in poor weather, folks.

Yesterday was Hubby's birthday, plus, I figured it would be silly to work on last week's blog post the day before this week's was set to go up, so I waved the white flag. I'm now down two weeks worth of posts this year. Whoops.

The weather was still crappy, and we got snowed in, along with all of Hubby's friends, so sadly we didn't manage to get to the DMV after all, nor did Hubby get to really celebrate his birthday with anyone. I'm hoping to make up for that some time this week while we're on vacation.

I should have at least worked on this week's post last night so I could have this morning to sleep in and snuggle Hubby. Instead I still slept in and snuggled, but that's why this post is still late.

So, yeah. November kind of sucked. I was behind on nearly everything all that month. I had the second-worst NaNo despite it being My Jam when it came to the year's theme. Mental health wise, the month also sucked. I'm so glad that month is over.

Although... with that storm on Sunday, December didn't start off much better. I hope I can turn the month, and the remainder of the year, around.

OatS isn't done, which is what I was aiming for this past November, but I have to change gears because I signed up for the Miraculous Ladybug Secret Santa exchange within the fandom. I have the person I'm to gift something to, and I have until Christmas to write the a story using the preferences they listed. So that's my new focus for the month. We'll see how this goes, and if I'll have any left-over time to also write gifts for my friends. I'll keep you posted, of course.

It's the Holiday Season now, so we'll see how chaotic life will be this month. Wish me luck.

Also, it was kind of a sucky day for him, but I'd like to send my Hubby a Happy Birthday anyway.

Take care, everyone, and if you're dealing with poor weather as well, please stay safe. Catch you next week.

A Flicker of Progress

Hey, folks! Check out what it was doing outside while I wrote up this post. Granted, it stopped now, and already starting to melt, but still.

Bleck. Winter. I hate being cold. At least the snow is pretty when you're not the one who has to drive in it or shovel it. It's also pretty when you're tucked inside under a blanket and drinking coffee.

Speaking of, I splurged on myself.

As a lot of you might know, Steampunk is kind of my aesthetic. I don't know what it is specifically about it, but it's my jam! You might also know that this year's NaNo has a Steampunk motif. So, despite this year's NaNo going kind of abysmally, I had to snatch up as much promotional stuff as I could.

On Thursday, I got an email stating all of my Christmas gifts to myself had arrived, and I was itching to get home. The first thing I wanted to snag - even though I don't have the wall space to hang any of the other ones my mom bought me as Christmas gifts a couple of years ago - was this gorgeous thing!

Sorry for the poor picture quality, there were still
creases in it from being rolled up

While I was searching for the 2019 NaNo promotional poster to buy, I also found this beautiful mug. Now, I already have too many mugs, but I don't have any NaNo mugs - I have a NaNo travel mug, but that doesn't count - AND it's blue and gold - my favorite color combo - AND it's Steampunk. Get into my cart. NOW!

 

And yes, this IS the mug I'm currently drinking coffee out of, which is how I got onto this train of thought to begin with.

But, of course the most important part of NaNoWriMo merch is the T-shirt to proudly wear around. I should have purchased it in October so I had it to wear all month, but having it for the back-half is good too. Plus, I now have a lovely Steampunk-y shirt to wear in later years.

Yes, I doctored a pic of myself
using my Bitmoji avatar for my face.
What of it?

I ended up accidentally buying the shirt at least one size too large, so it just kind of hangs off of me, but it also reaches past my butt, which I am always a fan of. Also, here's a better view of the logo. I had to shrink the above image so much to fit the Bitmoji file that I don't know how clear the shirt looks anymore.

Designed by the lovey people at
NaNoWriMo.Org

Today is my first official full day of wearing this shirt after giddily bouncing around in it Thursday night for a little bit. I wanted to make sure I had it for my writing sprints at Group tonight. Although, I'll then either have to hand-wash it, or save laundry for after 8pm so I can wash it and have it ready for NEXT week's final NaNo writing sprints as well.

We'll see how lazy I end up being....

I was doubly excited to find out my NaNo care package to myself showed up on Thursday of all days. I had forgotten how quickly my order was supposed to arrive, and I coincidentally wrote OVER 2000 WORDS on Thursday! I mean, yeah, I do that without even trying most days, and I've written probably about 10,000 words if you count all of the work I've been putting into the outlines for One and the Same, but after 15 days of not really writing ANY new prose for this story, I'm pumped to have added 2000 words! Whoot!

I EARNED my splurge! It was like Past Me knew I would accomplish something Thursday, and perfectly timed my reward for it.

Alright, Past Me!

Hacker Boy and Hacker Girl
Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

It's a shame I haven't really written more than maybe another 200 words since Thursday.... But we'll ignore that. YAY! Writing ON Thursday! Whoot!

As I mentioned, I am still grinding away at that dang OatS outline. I'm not quite done breaking down exactly what plotline(s) each scene is supposed to land on, what plot points each scene resolves, and how each scene advances said plotline(s), but I'm getting there. The real sticky wicket is the transitional scene(s) between two of my tent pole scenes. I know what plot beats I want to hit. I know I need to somehow hit both Marinette's and Adrien's POVs before the next Big Scene. Mainly because Marinette had the one "tent pole scene" and Chat Noir has the other, and I want to keep the story tag-teaming their POVs: Marinette for odd chapters; Adrien for even chapters. I feel like it would be a bit jarring if the first seven or so chapters keep bouncing back and forth in that pattern, only for the eighth chapter to be a second Marinette chapter in a row, or if the eighth chapter is an Adrien one, only for the ninth chapter to also be Adrien's before bouncing back to Marinette.

I mean, it's going to be jarring enough with those final chapters tag-teaming both POVs within the chapter itself. I don't know if I want to press my luck by breaking pattern earlier as well.

So I have this block in the middle where I know the plot beats I want to hit, and I know I need to somehow separate it into at least two chapters so I can get back into pattern by my next established scene. I had worked, and reworked, and re-reworked, and so on, about a half-dozen times to try to figure out my best plan of attack.

I'm still not sure I quite have it, mostly because the Adrien part seems a bit overly loaded with scene transitions as he kind of advances the story's timeline a full weekend. In contrast, Marinette's chapter is kind of a precursor scene that in-universe would be about two hours of the overall story, before handing the reins back to Chat Noir to continue the story roughly fifteen minutes after the point Marinette stopped.

Like, the chapters are fairly balanced - count wise - and I'm trying to keep the word-count fairly even as well without putting TOO much thought in that vs good storytelling. However, I feel like Marinette's parts are all real-time moments, whereas Adrien's parts tend to recap days worth of story to help push the timeline along.

NuaNia Facebook sticker
by PRANEAT

Why??? Why does this story have to be so difficult!?

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The 2000-words came from all of my reworking of that "what do I do here!?" part of my outline. I just got inspired for this scene of Adrien going to Marinette's house to ask her over. I don't know if this scene will stay or be added to my "Deleted Scenes" project, but at least I wrote something. So.... yay?

I had to stop to either help customers or to close up shop, I can't recall, and I didn't get a chance to get back into the story that night, and so I ended up losing the momentum as well as the direction I was trying to go. So that kind of killed that progress. Hoping to get into The Mood again, I went back to the outline to try to solidify that middle bit some more now that I have that scene.

I'm STILL unsure if I know what I'm doing there. So I paused and went in yet ANOTHER outline direction.

At the beginning of the month, I stumbled upon an old post on the official NaNoWriMo blog. It talked about [Outlining] Your Story Like a Subway Map. Basically, it is figuring out the plot points for the main storyline, as well as the ones for your subplots. Write them each out individually as if they are the only story. Then, see which scenes overlap. Link those overlaps together to see how each plot interacts with each other.

So, yesterday, that's more-or-less what I did. I wrote up the plot points I wanted for each plotline, which helped me solidify how many plotlines I actually had.

In the end, I have a little over 4pgs of bulleted storylines, and when I went back over it I realized I did miss some key points in my bullets, so they should total closer to 4.5 pages after adding those in. I then wanted to come up with a literal subway line-like outline for me to print out and keep at my desk to look back on as I finished off my detailed outline of "what does it resolve/how does it advance"for OatS.

I might not have the actual first draft complete by November 30th, as I had wanted, but by gum I will have the outline FINALLY figured out so I can march my way through the actual writing of this dang thing!!!!

Now, there are a LOT of plot points for me to have to write up on a piece of paper for this physical "map," and I don't have any long sheets of paper anyway to do it on. So I figured it would be easier for me to do this project digitally so I could shift things as I need, and then once it's solid I can print it off.

Microsoft Paint wasn't going to cut it. Neither was Pixlr.com/editor, which is usually my go-to and where I've designed my ML fanfic covers. This project seemed a bit... much... and, even with ad blockers, the right-most quarter of the screen is sectioned off for ads, leaving not much room to work within. On top of that, my internet has been a bit spotty lately, so doing something offline was probably for the best. True, it makes it hard to continue working on this project while I have downtime at work, but it is what it is.

So I downloaded GIMP. It's free, it works close enough to Photoshop, and I see a lot of amateur artists I follow either have used it, or still do. I'm not a graphic designer or artist, so it seems to be best for my needs. Kept me a bit to get used to the interface since it is different enough from Photoshop to be a bit disorienting to me, and I had to google quite a bit, but I have a usable knowledge of it. I used GIMP this morning to doctor that photo of me in my shirt. Not my best work, but good enough until I learn the program better.

Anyway, I have all of my points written up on a file, and the next time I'm free - possibly while watching The Masked Singer tomorrow night - I'll work on drawing the literal plot lines so they look kind of like this example from the Subway Lines article.

Of course it uses The Hunger Games for the example.
That seems to be everyone's favorite example choice lately.
Also MDQ stands for Main Dramatic Question (Main Plot)
LDQ stands for Lesser Dramatic Question (subplot)

In the meantime, I still have my 4pg print out of those same plot points, and I'll see how much of that detailed outline can be figured out based off that. Maybe I'll be re-inspired to write a scene. As it stands, I already have one brewing in my head, I just need to iron out how it goes down. My main concern is making sure Marinette doesn't get too comfortable with Adrien too soon.

The last two episodes of the Miraculous Ladybug 3rd season aired this past week as well - and holy crow, the feels! - so maybe obsessively watching those will help me with inspiration as well. The one, "Chat Blanc," has a LOT of fodder in it. I just need to sort out how to USE said fodder.

I also need the finale to be translated into English...

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(Also, I know it's coming,
but Dec 1st is so far away still...)

Anyway, backtracking to WHY I couldn't get back into my writing Thursday night while I was on such a roll. It was another "meh" football game that night - for us at least - so we had Omnibladestrike and Wolfhearted over for yet another D&D session! Whoot! We're still not quite out of that randomly-generated dungeon Hubby created for our "one shot" D&D night about a month ago, but we should be close.

I do appreciate that in-character, Wolfhearted's human fighter Cutter seems 1000% done with my dragonborn bard Kriv. It's getting borderline if Cutter will just kill off Kriv himself and be done with him. Wolf, on the other hand, seems to absolutely ADORE Kriv. So. Yay!

I also realized, the more I play Kriv, and the more I lean into whatever it is that will annoy Cutter most, the more Kriv is turning into a character from an anime Hubby and I watch with Omni.

It's an older anime called Eyeshield 21, and is a high school football anime by the same writer as the now largely popular anime Dr. Stone. Well, technically the same man wrote the MANGAS each anime is based off of, but you get the idea. Anyway the character is the tight end Natsuhiko Taki.

I couldn't tell if this is official artwork
but it's what's used on the Eyeshield 21 wiki...

This absolute moronic dork is somehow my favorite character in his extra-ness and dorkiness and just overall blind optimism.

He thinks he's God's Gift to Football despite his skills saying quite the contrary more often than not. He ran away to the United States in order to get onto a football team - without letting his mother know what he was doing; worrying her needlessly - and after 2yrs, he STILL couldn't get on to a team. His sister tracked him down and brought him home, and the Devil Bats took him on as a teammate.

He is an idiot, unfocused, and cares too much about becoming a famous football star to actually be useful. HOWEVER, if/when the team CAN get him to focus, he's a powerhouse nearly worthy of the pedestal he puts himself on.

He also has two goofy quirks that are annoying as all get-out to the other characters, but they make me giggle each time. First is his signature stance to showcase his flexibility. You saw it in that first image, but he's CONSTANTLY holding up his right leg and spinning on his left. Like 90% of the time we see Taki he's spinning on his left while holding up his right.

He even does it in the opening credits because it's THAT MUCH his signature move/pose.

The other main characteristic he has is referring to his sister in English by calling her "My Sister," which is kind of adorable to hear said with a Japanese accent, as well as his signature exclamation.

He does that to punctuate sentences, or to call attention to himself, or to laugh at a joke he finds droll. It is nasally, and kind of sing-song-y, and hella-annoying to hear all the time. But for some reason I LOVE it, and I chuckle each time he does it.

It's kind of like the character Sekke Bronzazza from Black Clover. 

Sekke says "Bah-ha" in nearly every sentence. He usually does so to punctuate the sentence, but he'll also use it in multiple-syllable words starting with the "bah" sound on occasion. He does it so frequently that just about all of the other characters have forgotten his actual name - despite his constant reminding them - and just refer to him as "Bah-ha!"

Anyway, my original point was I love Taki, okay? He's my guilty-pleasure fave in Eyeshield 21. Plus, he actually does look cute when he's serious and has his hair pulled back...

Not that it's a requirement for a character to be my favorite. Honestly, there are so many adorable beans in the cast of Eyeshield 21, I love them all. And their quarterback is terrifying, but in the most fun way possible that I love him too. I'm just really enjoying this goofy anime, okay?!

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My ORIGINAL point was that Kriv is slowly evolving into a D&D party member equivalent to Taki, and I kinda love it????

As I'm writing this, Quarthix is over to draw up a character to add to our campaign once we get out of the dungeon. According to Hubby, Q is fully aware of the existing party dynamic and personalities, and he's game to add his own flavor of crazy to this bunch, so that could prove fun.

Also also also! I still absolutely love one of the 2 party-NPCs - characters that are unofficially part of the party that the DM runs. The campaign started on a ship that was attacked by pirates, and the party all fled together in the same lifeboat. One of the crew members was rowing the lifeboat for us, and was kind of roped into joining us as we became shipwrecked on an undeveloped part of an island. He uses what's known as wild magic, which means every time he taps into this magic to cast a spell, there is a percentage that the magic will go crazy and do its own thing. Usually the "do its own thing" bit is in ADDITION to whatever the spellcaster wanted to do, but not always. Anyway, the NPC accidentally de-aged himself to the ripe old age of 12 with one of his spells, and Kriv ADORES the "kid." Kriv is going full-on "Older Bro" mode despite the fact the spellcaster started nearly twice Kriv's age - the guy was originally late 20s/early 30s, and Kriv is 16. Granted, for a dragonborn, that's the mental age equivalent of a human 20 year old, but still.

The spellcaster, a half-orc named Hakeem, seems to eat up the attention and praise Kriv is giving him, so I'm running with it for as long as Hubby is.

Okay, I'm getting stupid-long again with this, and I'm WAY past my noon update. So a couple of promotions to close out this post.

First up is Omni. He's having similar struggles with his story as I am with OatS, so he put his main story on hold and decided to work on another story within his overall series. He already has the first two chapters up, so if you like fantasy stories, and want a taste of something original, why not give his story a try?

Dancing Fate

Summary: A shadow has spread across the land of Akierna. Kingdom after kingdom has fallen, even the grandest of armies have crumbled. A collection of survivors now seek a home on a new continent. After a massive storm sunk their ship, Raina the queen of the Dragonesium kingdom now leads her people into a hopeful future.

Current Word Count: 2,023

Looking to stick with some fanfiction? Well, Taurus Pixie has updated a bunch of her stories this past week, and so you KNOW I have to point people towards the latest chapter of Chat Vert. So. Much. Lukanette. Goodness. *Squee!* She just does such an awesome job at writing Luka.

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AAAAAH, my precious son!

So, while you're waiting for me to get my act together and publish something new, why not give these two writers some of your love? They both totally deserve it. Trust me.

Alright, off to pretend I'm being productive!

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