Showing posts with label Picrew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Picrew. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Holy Smokes! Let's Recap July!

Whew! That... was a LOOOOONG week, huh?

What? What do you mean, "It's August"!? *checks calendar*

HOLY SMOKES, I COMPLETELY MISSED UPDATING IN JULY!!!! Well, in that case...

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July just kind of blipped by for me. Sorry about that, folks. Let's see, the last time we chatted I was visiting my mom and sister. The trip was far too short, but it was very nice. After being together for 18 years, I FINALLY managed to take my husband to the Rita's Italian Ice stand RIGHT ON MAIN STREET OF MY HOMETOWN. I must have told him nearly every summer that we need to take him, and yet we always forgot. WELL NO MORE!

If you're from an area where you have no clue what I'm talking about, Rita's is a big Italian ice (or... I guess... "water ice" if you're from Philly...) restaurant chain in Pennsylvania. It's so big that they sell their brand of Italian ice in most PA grocery stores - at least, eastern PA grocery stores - and I grew up just assuming they were a national chain. Then I left PA and quickly discovered that Rita's apparently isn't so well-known outside my home state.

They specialize in Italian ice (obviously) and frozen custards. I personally love their gelati (specifically with their mango ice), which is a parfait-like layering of custard and ice.

Oh man. I made myself hungry. I should move on before I start drooling.

After the visit with the family, we finally managed our first real big hang with our local Beardy Man Wolfhearted. Now that we're all fully vaccinated we couldn't wait to hang for a significant amount of time for the first time in over a year. We brought up a small box of residentially-safe fireworks to set off on his lakeside dock and had a mini barbeque. We proceeded to kidnap him for the night and spent some of Independence Day itself with him at our place before Hubby had to go to work and I brought Wolfhearted home. It was nice to go from "I've barely seen you in 15 months!" to "We've hung out for nearly 24hrs straight!"

Independence Day was my only day off that week as my manager took some vacation time to visit her daughter, son-in-law, and her newborn grandson. It had been barely two weeks since she first visited to meet the grandson, and she was already whining that it's been "too long." Guess it's a good thing that her daughter is now about a 2hr drive away from her, as opposed to still being about 10hrs away! I'm fully expecting my mom to be the same way if/when Hubby and I have our first.

So, I hosted the first game of Scum and Villainy the day after a 24hr hang-out with Wolfhearted, and then the following day continued an 8-day work stint as my manager took her vacation. I had completely forgotten about this vacation (and my subsequent work schedule) when I last posted, otherwise I would have warned you fine folks that I would be too busy to have worked on my post. Sorry about that.

My first day off since Independence Day happened to be the anniversary of Rozsavaria's sister's death, so Hubby and I spent most of the day hanging with her. We spent far too long playing the Pokémon board game Master Trainer that came out in 1999. It was a blast though. And check out all the pokémon friends I was able to collect!

Call me James, because most of those pokémon just joined my team of their own volition (also, because a lot of the pokémon I had throughout the game were James' at one point in the series). See, in the game there are these cards you could draw that allow you an advantage. Things like healing potions or extra battle points for when you're dueling with someone. There's also cards that tell you to just straight up pick up a pokémon that's unclaimed on the board. I got that one a LOT. I also, surprisingly enough, considering how much dice don't seem to like me, never lost a single match the whole game. I could have easily ended it about 15min into playing. Instead, I decided I wanted to collect ALL THE POKEMON! (That is the goal, is it not?) In the end - and about THREE HOURS LATER - Hubby beat the Elite Four and won the game. Still, in my heart I was the true winner since I had the most pokémon.

Before hanging with Roz, however, Hubby and I did something we've wanted to do for MOOOOONTHS. We were fully vaccinated. My mother had a chance to see my mid-back-length hair. Hubby and I had a day off together. We practically SPRINTED to the local hair salon and chopped all of our "quarantine hair" off! Both of us lost at least a foot of hair, but I think it was closer to 15 inches (38cm) for both of us!

Behold: the New Me!

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I'll be frank, my hair should look about 3x as full and fluffy as that Bitmoji (I have SO. MUCH. HAIR!), but that IS the closest to my hair style I was able to find. So... Hello! I'm going to go back to my LycoRogue persona now....

My second day off that week was spent playing catch-up on cleaning and errands. Also, some recovery from the hang-out with Roz the night before. Then it was right back into the grind for another 7 straight days. I had shifted my days off to bookend my birthday for my mom's trip up to see me, which meant I yet again didn't have my normal Tuesday off.

The last day I had before hitting 37 was spent with last-minute cleaning. All. Day.

On my birthday itself, Hubby made me breakfast, and we cuddled a bit and just relaxed. Then Mom arrived and we hung out for a bit. I opened presents and Hubby took us out to eat. There's still a lot of local restaurants we haven't hit up, so we started to remedy that on my birthday. It was a nice little restaurant/gift shop. We had fun going through the gift shop section while waiting for our food, then we brought it home to eat. We hung out a bit more, and then Hubby headed out for an event he had been excited about for months (and then felt guilty that it landed on my birthday, but I told him to go). Mom then gave me her true birthday gift: helping me destress by helping me organize yet again.

While Hubby was at his event, Mom and I hit up Walmart to get some supplies, and then we got to work. We have a closed-in back porch that we share with our landlady, and has the inside stairs to the upstairs apartments. We get a little corner of the porch to do with as we wish. If we really wanted, we could set up chairs back there and just hang. However, since it's not as private as our front porch, it's mostly used for storage. However, how we were storing things wasn't working for me, so Mom helped me start from scratch. The next day our pursuit continued as we moved to the garage to reorganize that as well. I'm shocked with how much we threw out and how much room we have now!

It was a LOT of hard work, and I was almost glad to go back to work the next day so I could relax, but it truly did help me start of my new year of life on the right foot. Took a lot of weight off and almost instantly improved my mental health a LOOOT. I'm not fully back to how I was a few years ago, but I'm definitely in a much better spot.

Unfortunately, the Sunday after my birthday I didn't get MUCH rest outside of work, as I had intended. I also couldn't "relax" much at work since I had to actually do my job the whole time! I know, right!?

But why couldn't I rest even OUTSIDE of work? Well, on the 25th Dragnime and his fiancé headed off on a 2-week roadtrip. Some time to bond, get out of their apartment, and take her back to her home state for the first time in nearly a year. They proceeded to pack her up so she could officially move in with him (instead of just staying put because of the pandemic worsening in her home state), and the two made it back home safe and sound about midnight on August 7th.

What does this have to do with me and my frantic July? Well. At the end of May they adopted this adorable little fuzzball.

he baybe

I was asked to feed and socialize this adorable hellion while Dragnime and his fiancé were out of town. It was a bit tricky at first to try to sort out how to feed a cat that was in a different home before going to work, and then finding time to feed said cat again post-work. Especially since we also spent at least an hour with him per feeding so he wouldn't get lonely. In the end, we ended up spending up to FIVE HOURS over at Dragnime's place just hanging out with his kitten post-dinner (we'd bring our own dinner over to his place to eat there).

But how can you say goodbye to this face!?

He got a touch bigger....

Excuse the blurriness of the photo, this fur-covered ball of energy wouldn't sit still long enough for pictures.

So, completely unexpectedly, the majority of my non-sleeping, not-working hours were spent at my friend's apartment, playing with his kitten. I would steal away some time to do a little bit on my laptop, but this little stinker wouldn't allow you to just sit still while he was around. He was constantly in the mood to play, and I was more than happy to oblige.

Clearly Hubby and I need a pet, but we also need a home that allows pets first....




My next day off - July 27th - Hubby and I did our normal errands during my usual work hours since the kitten would expect to be alone during those hours anyway. However, I DID make the mistake of trying to sort out our laundry while feeding the kitten breakfast. I forgot how much cats will not leave laundry alone.... Nothing was damaged, but it certainly took WAY longer than expected as Hubby kept pulling the cat back out of our laundry basket. The focus on the kitten did mean I didn't even THINK about my blog post that week, however.

Fast forward to Saturday and Sunday, where I had a random weekend off. Same deal as Tuesday: when I would normally be at work, I was away from kitten-sitting to do my own errands. One such errand was hanging out with Hubby and Roz on Saturday. We had been talking for MONTHS now about getting Hubby a focus stone to wear and help him realign his energies/aura. We finally managed the trip to do precisely that. The one he picked out is amazing! It's like he has the night sky trapped inside his stone! So pretty!

No filter. The image on the right just has a flash on it.

It's a blue goldstone. It's supposed to be a pendulum, but it just kept calling out to Hubby, and he's a large enough guy that the pendulum cut actually doesn't look too big on him as a necklace. We then hit up a craft store to get cording for his necklace. Hubby picked out the colors, I did the braiding, and Roz put it together as a necklace for him. She even put a lobster clasp on the stone's chain itself so he can then reattach it to the original pendulum chain if he ever wished to use it for the original purpose again. Also, if he ever wanted to switch out the necklace he wore it with, he can do so easily. I really love the idea of that clasp there for him. And he has seemed a bit happier ever since buying that stone for him. Even if it's not blessed yet to be that focus stone he needs, at least how pretty the stone is brings him joy.

So... uh... yeah! That was my July in a nutshell. The Tuesdays I'd normally publish were instead taken up by: work, errands and spending time with a grieving friend, work, and kitten-sitting/errand catch-up.

I didn't really do much of anything creative throughout July anyway. I was so stressed between work and cleaning for my mother's visit that I didn't really think of my blog. I didn't write anything. I didn't even host more than that first session of Scum and Villainy.

I loved the idea of recording our session and then transcribing the tape so we'd always have the actual events of the evening on record. A way to go back and refresh before a session, or a way to look back in future years to relive the game.

Problem is, the only time I had to transcribe anything - as you saw above - would have been at work. And work decided it didn't want to cooperate. Either insanity ensued, and there was no downtime at work to do anything. Or there was too little downtime for me to get anything accomplished. Then there was the third option: I felt awkward doing so.

Right around the start of July, our work radio called it quits. Technically, the receiver itself was fine, but it was too old and the internet radio provider the store owners use no longer supported that receiver. Cellphone carriers pull the same BS to force people to upgrade to a new phone even if the one they've had for 5+ years is still perfectly fine. How are these companies going to make money off of us if we hold on to old technology as long as it still works, and the darn things don't break like they're "supposed" to?!

So, anyway, we were without music at work while we were waiting for a new receiver to even be in stock! Yup! The provider had apparently sent out a warning in November that all of their older receivers would lose service by the end of June 2021, and yet the owners never alerted us (maybe didn't even read the notice), nor did they order a new receiver before ours became obsolete. Clearly they weren't the only ones, so the company was temporarily sold out. We FINALLY got our receiver yesterday, and it's awesome to have background music again! But that was a solid month of stone silence at work.

Personally, it didn't matter to me. I'm fine with silence as long as there's SOME ambient noise, such as the AC blowing or the printer or elevator resetting themselves. The sound of quiet typing on a keyboard also works. There's always something to keep my mind juuuuuuust occupied enough to not be bothered by silence. I also frequently play music in my head anyway.

My coworkers, on the other hand.... They couldn't really handle the quiet, and so if I just sat at my desk for hours on end typing away without interacting with them at all during our slow periods just felt.... awkward. So I usually filled the downtime chatting with them instead. It was nice, and I really enjoy chatting with my newest coworker; get to know her. However, it also means even less time to work on transcribing the SaV session, let alone prepare for the next one.

There was also the insidious 4th reason why transcriptions of the game didn't happen like I wanted. There were days where I worked with my manager, and she was with a customer while I had nothing else to do. I had downtime. I was alone in the office, so I didn't have to feel awkward about not talking with anyone. I just.... didn't have the mental energy. So instead I'd do some relatively mindless tasks.

One such task was finally starting up a Spotify account. I figured I could create a 10hr or so playlist of work-appropriate music that we could listen to while waiting for our new radio to come in. I spent DAYS putting this thing together, trying to find music I'd like, my coworkers would like, and the owners wouldn't mind playing in their store. In the end, I only managed about 9hrs of music before calling it good enough and waving the white flag. Only to then realize that none of the work computers were powerful enough to consistently play music off them all day, and if I played the music off my netbook loud enough that my coworkers could hear it in the office, it would practically blow out my eardrums. I had no way of broadcasting the playlist.... whoops.

While I was on Spotify anyway, I started transferring my music playlists from YouTube over to an actual site intended for music play. So that took up a lot of other mindless-task time. One such playlist, though, was the one I put together for Jolene back when I was still playing as her and then writing about her during NaNoWriMo.

Lately Taurus Pixie has been posting her story playlists to her blog. Lists of songs she listens to that help inspire her for that particular story. As I started to transfer over my Jolene playlist - and as I found more songs I wanted to add to it while listening to the radio in my car - I remembered Pixie's playlists. I was struck with a drive to refine Jolene's playlist. It was no longer just a collection of songs that inspire me while writing about her, it was now an organized story in playlist form. Kept me a few days, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

There's still some blank spots where I haven't found the perfect song yet, and there's about 5 Dua Lipa songs tagged on to the end of the playlist that I would like to use, but I'm not sure what part of Jolene's story they would relate to. Other than those two hiccups, I think this is pretty set.

You can find the Spotify playlist here: Jolene

To understand why I picked the songs I did, and how it relates to Jolene's overall story, I explained that in this Google Doc. It's a bulleted list of the 50+ songs I used and a short description of what part of Jolene's overall story that song covers. Jolene's Story in Playlist Form

Focusing on Jolene's playlist also sent me down a different rabbit hole: artist tracking. Up until a few years ago, I would regularly find images I liked on Google Images or Pinterest and save them to my computer without a care of noting who the artist was. It would be for my own private purposes, so it didn't seem to matter.

Then, a couple of years ago, I wanted to post images of Jolene to Tumblr, only to realize how scummy it was that I couldn't credit the artist of the original image I had doctored. It kept me until earlier this year - just this summer, actually - to track down who originally drew the woman I doctored for my main image of Jolene. Now that I was working on Jolene's story again - via building a playlist - I realized I needed to do the same thing with the images I chose for Jolene's paramours. I had all of these images saved, but no clue who the original artists were.

You know how I mentioned before that I would sometimes hop on my laptop while watching the kitten? Well, this was largely what I was doing. I still don't have all of the images tracked, but I did find a lot of the original artists.

ArtStation is a beautiful place.

I now make sure that if I like an image, even if I THINK I'm only going to keep it for my own enjoyment, I don't download the image unless I know the artist, and I credit said artist - and where the image was uploaded - in my titling of the image. That way I have all of the proper info to then slap on a watermark of the artist's name and a link back to their original art posting, should I ever repost somewhere. I know reposting at all isn't cool, even when crediting the artist like this. However, when I want to share something to this blog, for instance, I'd hate to not be able to properly explain myself simply because the artist might not even acknowledge my request to repost with credits. So, this is my backup plan. This also allows me the happy medium option of not actually reposting the image, but instead dropping a hotlink to the image on the artist's page.

For instance, here's the link to the image I had saved for Jolene's stalker Orick Kodgin.

I have to say, it is SOOOO annoying that it feels like at least 80% of all image searches land on uncredited reposts to Pinterest (most sites now have a "share to Pinterest" option so the artist is still credited!!!!), another 5% are Wattpad, and another 5% to 10% (depending on the image) direct you to AminoApps. Lord bless the artists who post to ArtStation, because I know if I find a link to that site I'll get proper artist crediting; that the artist themselves posted it there. Tumblr is usually good at either bringing me to the artist themselves or dropping a link to them. DeviantArt would also be good, but so few artists actually use it anymore. Twitter is hit-or-miss as to whether or not the poster is the actual artist, and so I usually have to do further research to confirm. Let me tell you how much fun THAT is when the posts aren't in English..... I hate being monolingual.

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That's what I spent the time watching the kitten doing, mostly: tracking down the artists of the images I already have saved to my computer. That, and putting Jolene's playlist together. The week leading up to my birthday was Playlist Week, as well as going back onto Picrew.me. I tried out a few new makers, and I went back to makers I had already used in order to start making Chayse and Ripley whenever possible, since I didn't think of building them originally.

I also spent two or three days gathering up all of the Picrew images I had built over the past few months, and putting them together in a single FB album, instead of just various threads on my page. That way it would be easier to find them and go back through them. Problem there is that I didn't have ALL of the images on one laptop. Some were on my netbook I take to work, and others were on my main laptop at home. As I put the album together I figured I'd use the other laptop at some point to put in the images I was missing. It wasn't until I finished putting an album of over 100 images together did I find out that Facebook no longer allows you to move images around inside an album after it's been published! I used to be able to do that! You can still rearrange the new images when you batch-upload them, but once they're officially published to the album, that's it. No rearranging. So I couldn't just insert the images I missed because they were on the other laptop.

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I didn't have the mental energy to keep going at that point. So now I'm slowly going back through the makers I previously used, make sure I have built every character I'd want to try building with that maker so I can upload all of them together, and then I'll eventually redo that Picrew album. I might also build the album on Flickr, or some sort of public album like that, so I can then share all of the images with you wonderful peeps.

HAHA. This is when I create a Pinterest just to post the Picrew images; credits fully included??? Lord, I hate that site, but that might actually be the best option. I'm open to suggestions of alternate sites in the comments here.

So, yeah, all of that was what I was doing instead of transcribing the recording I made of the first game. To be fair, I DID transcribe the RIP Racing portion we finished the session with (that was the side of the tape still in the recorder). It kept me the better part of a week (see earlier about not having much downtime at work), and that alone was so exhausting. Especially since I had screwed up where the players and NPCs were on the race track a couple of times, so what I canonically said in-game vs what should have happened if I had counted properly was a fun thing to try to juggle in my transcription notes.

Transcribing the SaV gameplay, however, should go smoother since it's a lot of broad description I can then sum up, and a bunch of out-of-character (OOC) discussion among the players as we all tried to get a feel for the game. Unfortunately, with how exhausting the RIP portion was, by the time I was ready to work on transcribing the SaV portion I was mentally burnt out and decided to focus on Picrew and Spotify instead.

I was also MAJORLY stressing. I had the one tape. I didn't want to buy more tapes or a digital recorder in case I was getting either of those for my birthday within the fortnight. I didn't finish transcribing, so my goal to keep recordings/transcriptions of the game was quickly vanishing in front of my eyes (either I would have to record over the 1st session or I wouldn't be able to record the 2nd). I was so focused on transcribing the old session that I didn't even THINK of coming up with game plot-points for the next session.

Thanks to an in-game, post-job entanglement (I'll explain those more in a future blog post when I actually talk about the SaV story thus far), I knew that the crew had a mandatory job from the Borniko Syndicate, but I had no clue what that job would be. I also knew the next job they had lined up was an escort mission for their informant Maggie's friend Ishi. Ishi needed off the night side of the tidal-locked planet of Sonhandra, then smuggled to the neighboring star system of Rin, and escorted into the astral cloud there in order to find haven with the Maelstrom Pirates within The Cove. I had all of that sorted out before session 1, but the crew ran out of time to get to that job before it got too late. We had dog-eared it to start the next session with, but I didn't think of anything new.

What would be their complications with getting to Ishi? What could I provide the players to help them overcome it? What complications would there be with getting Ishi off-planet? What about smuggling him out of the star system? What does crossing star systems even entail? The game says systems are linked via Jump Gates, but what does that mean? How do they work? Are there traffic check-points where authorities might check out ships trying to travel between systems? Would there be such a check-point specifically because they triggered something that would put the authorities on high alert? What kind of complications would there be for the crew as they try to navigate the astral cloud? The book says it's nigh impossible to navigate the cloud without specific equipment, which is why the pirates are able to seek sanctuary there; they were able to build the equipment needed. Could I hint at a way for the crew to get the equipment? Or a way for Hubby's character Quinton to build it himself? Or a way for the crew to pass Ishi off to the pirates outside of the cloud? I also put a bounty on Ishi's head. How hard should I come at the crew with bounty hunters? Is there a way they would know the crew has Ishi? What about tempting the crew to just turn him in for the bounty? How would Maggie react if the crew betrayed her friend like that? How would the pirates react to the crew handing Ishi to them for protection?

As you can see, there's a LOT that I wanted to figure out before we got to the next session (let alone, ya know, the mandatory Borniko job). On top of ALL of that, I also needed to come up with a hook for the next RIP race: how did things evolve within the League after the crew's first race? What objective would they be tasked with this time? Would they have an objective other than winning? Quarthix's didn't quite understand how valuable Volts would be in the game, and how many you would need to repair your RIP Machine post-race, so he wasn't able to FULLY fix his vehicle before we closed out the session. Do I find a way of providing him more Volts so it's easier for him to repair his Machine, and therefore encourage his gameplay of smashing as many things as possible?

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

Only one game session in, and being the Game Master quickly went from exciting to overwhelming. Especially since I'm still trash at improv, so coming up with these complications and answers on the fly just wasn't going to work for me.

Oh, yeah, and our place was horribly neglected because of how much I had been working, AND my mother was visiting for my birthday, so I was stressed about that and scrambling to at least clean it enough for the poor woman to have somewhere to sleep when she stayed the night!

Hubby quickly pulled the plug and let the other two players know that we'd be cancelling our second July game; we'd try again in August. That was a huge load off. Plus, that means me missing my July blog posts didn't put you fine folks too far behind on the overall story going on with the game. I'll definitely have to dedicate a post to what's been going on.

All set to host game again the first Monday of August, I forgot I was watching this little attention-seeker still.

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Edited by LycoRogue

(Okay, he's not nearly this big yet, but he IS very long, so close enough!)

Dragnime and his fiancé thankfully allowed me and Hubby to host game night at their place so we could still kitten-sit without cancelling again. It was a fun experience, although the energy-ball-on-legs wasn't the biggest fan of there being four people in the apartment and NO ONE paying attention to HIM. So he frequently invaded the table to make sure he wasn't forgotten. Certainly made for an interesting night. Also, it meant getting through the Ishi escort mission took a bit longer than intended. The crew technically hasn't finished it, although they did close out another story arc, and they did get their mandatory job from the Borniko (I figured out what the job is! Yay!). So I'm actually pretty set for the next session on Monday since we didn't go through everything I had planned!

So, uh, thank you, kitten!

I ended up not getting a digital recorder or more micro-cassette tapes for my birthday, but Roz DID get me an Amazon gift card, so it's LIKE she bought those for me! Yes, I did end up buying both. That way, if the digital recorder glitches, I still have the analog version as back-up. That is, unless we're over 3hrs into the session before I realize I've forgotten to flip the tape when the one side ran out. Whoops....

I also tested it out, and the digital recorder is good enough to clearly pick up the audio from me playing back the tape recorder. So now the first game session has a digital copy, along with the 2nd session! I can just store these digital copies instead of worrying about transcriptions, and I can transcribe later if I wish! Another huge load off! I also have a dozen micro-cassettes now, so I can also have a bunch of analog back-ups to start us off.

So much good stuff the past two weeks!

All of that helping me keep the SaV game manageable. Plus a more organized storage at my home. And a slightly happier and healthier husband thanks to the new focus stone necklace. Also, my mom getting me one of those fitness watches, so I can start keeping better track of my own health. Add in that we have a functioning radio at work again, and we found an awesome station yesterday; probably the best option we've found since I started working there. It's upbeat music spanning 80s all the way up to today, but still "work appropriate." No more sleepy, depressing 70s and 80s "easy listening" music!

On top of all that, my hair had a month to grow out. I always love a freshly chopped off hair style the first week or so, but then it gets a bit unrulily as it grows out because it no longer has the weight of being long, and it just poofs out ridiculously. My favorite time is about a month after getting my hair cut because it's still short, but it's just weighed down enough to be manageable again.

I do have to admit, though, that my sister-in-law did just gift me curl-defining hair products to help with the freshly-cut poofiness. I have wavy/curly hair, but my loose curls are only well-defined when wet. Once my hair dries out it just becomes a rat's nest of poof and frizz, which is why I tend to just blow-dry my hair straight or go at it with a flat iron. That's also why I like my hair a bit longer so the natural weight of it pulls it straight. 

Well, between the new hair products, and my hair now being long enough that it's easier to pull it back into a ponytail again, I have somehow been blessed to avoid bad hair days just about every day since the cut. Yeah! This whole time! Even with the high humidity and near-constant rain.

The Delta variant of COVID is quite scary, and Hubby and I are back to wearing masks nearly every time we step foot outside, despite us both being fully vaccinated. Ignoring that terror in our lives, however, it seems like being 37 more-or-less suits me. Here's hoping this keep going.

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What I REALLY need, though, is for my Muse to return to me by means of my writing. While I've been creative a lot the past month, between the Picrew images, sorting out Jolene's story a bit more, and coming up with Scum and Villainy plots, I still haven't written anything in a little over 3 months.

What really REALLY sucks about that is the same thing that sucked back in November after THAT writing dry spell: this Friday is the 13th.

Yup. First Friday the 13th since November. First unofficial Plagg Appreciation Day since November. I have yet to miss a Friday the 13th since I started up this little tradition for myself. However, yet again my self-imposed deadline is crashing in on me, and I have no clue what I want to write.

If anyone has any prompt ideas for a Plagg-centric or otherwise Plagg Appreciation story, please PLEASE leave them in the comments section. Even if you read this post after August 13, 2021, please feel free to leave those ideas. Lord knows I'll always need them for future Plagg Appreciation Days.

Whew-boy, I still have so much left on my checklist of what I wanted to talk about after my unintentional hiatus, but this post is LOOOOOOOOOONG already, and it's already after 2:00pm! So I think I'll just have to continue all of this next week.

So... here's to hoping I can chip away at the upcoming post throughout the week so I can actually publish something next Tuesday. My manager is taking more of her massive amount of accumulated vacation time next week. Which means I'm working straight through from August 15th to August 23rd. Whoooo! Why do I seem to start off these long bouts of covering vacation time with SaV games?

Anyway, if working through my post day ends up too much, I'll try to at least play catch-up again on the 24th. Either way, I'll catch you beautiful people later! Take care, all, and stay safe!

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Tuesday, June 8, 2021

What is Prep Work Anyway?

Holy smokes, this week breezed by! What did I even do this week? *checks notes*

Oh! Nothing! Cool. Cool.

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So, Wednesday was the start of a pretty social week, which means all roleplay prep-work and writing kind of took a back seat. That's always a good idea when one wants to start up a campaign in a couple of weeks, right?

Well, to be fair, I was still kinda-sorta working on the prep-work. See, Rozsavaria is going to be one of the players for Scum and Villainy, and on Wednesday, she unofficially created her character. In other words, she came over to flip through the rulebook to figure out how she wants to build her character. We won't do actual character building until the 21st (in theory; the date isn't officially locked in yet), but she likes to prep as well so she doesn't take hours to character build the day-of. It also gives her time to play with her build and tweak things before actually starting play.

Along with reading through the book on Wednesday, Roz also borrowed it to photocopy some pages, which meant I didn't have it for my day off on Thursday. That's fine, Hubby didn't have work either, so we had a long-needed re-coup day anyway. Then, Friday, I was still training the newbie, so no RP work going on while on the job. I probably could have worked on it a bit more Friday night since Roz had returned the book, but chaos was about to go down on nopixel.

One of nopixel's players is a streamer known as Burn. He had become good acquaintances with Sykkuno's character Yuno Sykk, and saw how popular the character was. As a gag, Burn created a second character modeled off of Yuno, and named him NoYu Sukk. He then spent the better part of last week running around the nopixel server with this Yuno parody, purposefully trying to ruin Yuno's reputation. He and Sykkuno played up this "evil twin" gag for four or five days. Canonically, no one is quite sure what NoYu was, because Yuno kept switching up what to call him, between "evil twin" or "evil clone" or "identical cousin."

Sykkuno put no effort into creating his character, resulting in him constantly referring to himself as ugly. Because of this, he typically wears a motorcycle helmet, making it harder to differentiate between Yuno and NoYu when both are masked.

Anyway, after a few days, Burn was getting tired of the joke and wanted to get back onto his main character, so he let Sykkuno know he wanted to kill off his character. I believe in-character NoYu told Yuno that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and soon. Well, Sykkuno's birthday was June 4th, which happened to be a Friday, so Yuno came up with a plan to hold a major birthday party for himself, which would also serve as NoYu's grand finale. His plan was to host the party in the lobby of The Vault; the most secure bank in-game. He'd convince the party goers to all dress like him, that way NoYu could blend into the crowd. Then, since Yuno is a master bank hacker, and NoYu is the Bizzaro version of him, they'd have NoYu fail a hack attempt. The hack attempt - regardless if it succeeds - will signal the cops. NoYu would then start shooting at the cops, forcing them to breach into the bank, where they won't be able to tell which "Yuno" is shooting, and be forced to start up a major fire-fight within the bank.

The first part of the plan went off without a hitch. In fact, it may have gone better than any would have expected. Yuno had Twatted (the in-game version of Twitter) out the time and location for his birthday party, as well as instructions on how to dress up like him. These Twats started about 24hrs before the party, and there was also a lot of word-of-mouth. It seemed like at least half the server knew about the party by the time it went down. As evidenced by what seemed to be at least 60 characters showing up as Yuno to wish him a happy birthday.

Just a small portion of the many Yunos invading the Vault for the birthday party.

Instead of having NoYu fail a hack, they had switched gears a bit. The first thing you need to do to break into the Vault is to set off thermite to blow open the barred door to the main offices of the bank. Yuno set off a thermite claiming it's his birthday candles. This was also his "special invitation for the cops" that he had told his cop friends to keep an eye out for. Unfortunately, despite the 24hr planning, and Yuno calling up his friends and telling them he'd really like their roommates/cousins/twins/etc (aka in-character telling the players to switch to their cop characters instead of showing up to the party as their main criminal characters), only one cop responded to the Vault hack. He was promptly set on fire by NoYu and then kidnapped and trampled by the other guests before the cop managed to get some backup trickling in and could be brought to the hospital. The big bummer there, though, was that this was one of the players that specifically switched to his cop character for Sykkuno, but didn't get to really enjoy it because he was ambushed so early. His character was revived soon enough, but, for immersion reasons, he couldn't respond to the same crime he was already taken out of. He ended up being one of the few cops responding to other crime going on, more-or-less missing the whole ordeal. Poor guy.

Anyway, it kept a little while, but eventually there were about seven or eight cop cars out front and the "true party" could begin. NoYu started shooting up the guests to force the cops to breach for the shooter(s). Everyone scattered. There was chaos. But not as many cop casualties as Yuno was going for, and NoYu slipped away unscathed. Eventually, NoYu managed to get himself caught and brought to the police station, where he tried to blow himself up to no avail. Some time later, the cops were able to bring Yuno in to identify NoYu. He did, stating that NoYu was his evil clone that had slipped into his totally innocent birthday party and started shooting everyone. Yuno had also blown himself up at a gas station a little time before that, coincidentally right about the time NoYu - through a game glitch - managed to pull out his phone while in lock-up, so Yuno claimed NoYu called a hit on him, and NoYu admitted to it.

The cops pretended to be disgusted by the whole thing, and one of the cops started a fist-fight with NoYu. She was getting her butt handed to her, which gave her an excuse to defend herself with a knife, taking NoYu down via stab wounds. He could still be revived with an EMT or hospital care, and Burn was trying SOOOO HAAAAARD to get the character killed, so he had NoYu try to instigate the cops further. Instead, through another glitch, one of Yuno's friends that was also there for the identification - Hunter "Wingman" Skye - broke into the line-up room and shot the downed NoYu in the head before sprinting away from the cops. Burn was like "that was a bullet through the head! There's no coming back from that, right? Wingman, you are the best!" (Technically, if he didn't want to kill off the character they COULD find an in-game reason for him to have survived the headshot, but this was Burn's out.)

Wingman ended up getting caught and given jail time for the murder of a suspect in custody, but it just meant he had to RP in the prison for about 40minutes or something. In the meantime, NoYu's body was processed, declared dead (because the player let the other players know he wanted the character dead), and Yuno was called in as next-of-kin to identify the body. There was this touching moment where Burn typed up notes to "fall out of NoYu's pockets" as Yuno interacted with the body. They were both sweet and insulting in the best of ways. Burn then typed up that Yuno found an MP3 player with his name on it, so Yuno claimed he pressed play, and Burn voiced a "recording" NoYu had left Yuno. Go check out this awesome roleplay. 

(Warning: Contains foul language)

The female that is with Yuno is called 4T, just, FYI.

So... yeah. That was my Friday night. Snuggled up next to the hubby and watching about four or five hours of chaos unfold. Like I said, the nopixel server is way more entertaining and engrossing than any show out there right now, especially since you have so many streamers to cut to for their perspective of what's going on. Also, if there's a storytelling lull with the streamer you're following, just switch to another to keep the action going.

Saturday was a slow work day. I was with my manager, so no training needed. The new sale tags weren't ready yet for me to start, so that's one fewer things on my plate. I had the SaV book. Do you think I spent the downtime doing more prep-work for the campaign?

Nope!

I just couldn't focus on reading or writing that day, so instead I was back on picrew.me. Who's ready to see more OC pics?

Created using Character Maker

Honestly, I'm not a fan of Willow's hair at all, but it was as close as I could get to something she'd actually wear as a hairstyle. Plus, I was able to get the blue streaks in, however awkwardly. So.... meh? I also didn't notice at the time that I gave all three X-Future girls the same bang set. The hair options and clothing options were a bit limited, but, for the most part, it worked. Shawn looks sooooo young though. Oh well.

After work, Roz and I went for a walk, then it was anime night with Goob and Hubby. Wolfhearted also made an appearance, glad that Hubby and I are now officially fully vaccinated (past the 2-week mark after our final shot). We gave each other hugs. It was great.



During our micro-party, we watched the anime SK8 the Infinity on FUNimation. It's a short - 12 episodes - anime about racers in an underground extreme skateboard league. The animation is GORGEOUS and the story is fun. I've been gushing about it almost daily to ChibiSunnie, who only encourages this endless fangirling by sending me stuff she's seen on her Tumblr and Twitter feeds. A lot of the people in the same Sports Anime fandoms she's in have migrated to SK8, so she's been seeing fanart and other such content for a couple of months now. And she's passing most of it over to me.

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Anyway, if you're on my Facebook or Tumblr pages, you already know this story. For everyone else, though. As Hubby, Goob, and I are watching SK8, we're introduced to the character Tadashi Kikuchi. The more we heard this character talk, especially since it was the day after Yuno's birthday party, the more Hubby and I commented that the guy sounds so much like NoYu. The voice just sounded so familiar, and it bugged me that I couldn't pinpoint it. So I looked up the credits, and someone named Brandon Johnson is Tadashi's voice actor. The actor only has the one credit though; this is his first major voice acting role. So how do we recognize it? Hubby just kept pointing out that the character sounds like NoYu, the VA only had this one credited role, and there wasn't a headshot, which is typically another sign that they're relatively new to the business. So I asked Hubby if he happened to know Burn's real name.

He didn't, but did point out that Burn's main nopixel character is Sasuke Johnson, so.... did Burn give his character his actual last name???? I tried looking up Burn's real name, much like how Hubby and I were able to find Sykkuno's, Valkyrae's, and Disguised Toast's. For a lot of streamers, even when they use a streaming/gaming handle, they still have their real names as public knowledge. I didn't find a wikipedia page revealing his name, like I could for the three I just listed. So I went to Burn's Twitter to see if he had his real name posted there somewhere. The answer to that is a big old 'nope', but he does have himself listed as a streamer AND voice actor! So I scrolled down a bit, and right at the top of his page was this pinned Tweet:

You can find the actual Tweet here

My mind was mildly blown by how tiny the world was for a moment there. We started watching SK8 because Goob really enjoyed it and thought we would too. He knows nothing about nopixel aside from what Hubby's been gushing about lately, and even then, Hubby didn't start following Burn until this past week's NoYu shenanigans. We don't follow Burn's socials, so we clearly had no clue he was somehow connected to this anime. We didn't watch SK8 because we knew it was Burn's first major role. Nor did we start watching nopixel or Burn because we enjoyed his performance. It was pure coincidence that we stumbled upon this connection, and I just find that so cool. Especially because, with him being a streamer first and foremost, his audience can spend WAY more time with him, so to speak, than most voice actor fans could. He seems so much more "everyman" than most VAs that you only can interact with via convention panels, meet-and-greets, and watching/reading interviews.

So, yeah, bravo to Burn! That's quite an exciting step into his career as a voice actor, and I did really enjoy his performance. Also, the character Sasuke - which he plays as if it were Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto - makes more sense now considering it showcases how much he enjoys anime, as well as a possible way for him to build up his voice acting highlight reel.

Sunday was another training day.... kinda-sorta. I was working with the newbie again, it was a painfully slow day, and I'm sure there's loads of things to still train her. However, we both were a bit mentally burnt out for various reasons, and the sale tags still weren't ready, so I couldn't really teach her how to do the new tags yet. We chatted for a little while, and I went over some small things; answered her questions. But for the most part, we just each did our own things. I couldn't focus, though, so still no work on the SaV campaign. I thought I could maybe re-focus better at home, but that didn't work out either.

Roz and I took another walk; something we're trying to make a routine out of now that the weather is nice(r) and it's safe to hang out again. I think we overdid it in the heat, though, because once we said our goodbyes - and Roz again borrowed the SaV book to photocopy pages - I was dead. I ended up nursing stomach issues while catching up with Animal Crossing: New Horizons instead of attempting any sort of writing. I didn't have the book again anyway.

Yesterday I finally had some focus. It was a bit fleeting, but it was there. I was also at work with my manager again, with little for me to do since the tags STILL weren't ready to put up. So I figured I'd keep going with campaign prep. Roz had the SaV book, so I couldn't finish reading that or work on my cheat sheet for the factions. I DID have access to the PDF of the Gravity RIP rulebook though, so I started reading through that again.

Each RIP race includes 20 racers. If all four or five (one's still on the fence) SaV players decide to participate in the RIP races, that leaves 15 or 16 slots to fill with non-player characters (NPCs). Normally, they're just nameless NPCs aside from the "rivals": NPCs significant to the overall story of the game. Rivals could be literal rivals for the player characters (PCs), they could be allies, or they could be targets the PCs are focused on for that particular race's objective. I want to make my life easier during play itself though, so I'm making it harder in the prep-work by actually coming up with racers. I'll then reveal them as needed, but at least they're already made up and I won't have to pause the game so I could scramble to come up with something. I can also easily switch out my pre-made characters with whichever characters the PCs meet during the main SaV roleplay. I already have some of the notable faction NPCs set up as racers or main gamblers on the RIP races. I could build off of that.

The thing that's super holding me up, however, is.... naming. Of COURSE it's naming.

I don't Sci-fi enough to really know where to go with these names to make them seem futuristic and/or alien. I have enough of an ear for it to know if a name I come up with sounds like it would fit, but it's such a long road to get there. On top of that, each racer has their own custom rig - their Machine - that they race in, so I get to design those as well. Thankfully, they don't need a lot of description, just a broad stroke describing if the Machine is more bulk and weight, or lighter and more aerodynamic. Then, of course, some distinguishing feature to signal that this Machine is this specific racer's rig. Although, if we do our character creation session on the 21st, like I'm planning, I'll be visiting my mom and sister for the first time in, like, 16 months the Monday after (which is the main reason I don't want to start actually playing until July). If we start officially playing on Monday, July 5th, that still gives me almost two full weeks to look at how the players built their RIP Machines and design the NPC ones accordingly.

I've also been trying to get myself in the right mindset with a playlist. While searching for "space opera" songs to get me - and my players - into the right mood to play SaV, I stumbled upon this amazing video. I've been kind of obsessing over it for nearly 2 weeks now, I just neglected to share it last week since my post was already kinda long. This is also a long post, but... meh.

The song is amazing, and really talks about hope in such a cool way. I live for the 80s music aesthetic. Likewise, I adore the classic anime art styling. The actual STORY of the video is compelling. The main character - dubbed Strive by the production team - is adorable and engaging to watch. Plus, seeing the interpretation of the costumes the band TWRP (pronounced 'twerp') wears on-stage is fantastic.

Along with loving the video for all of the above, I also like watching it to get ideas for character and space ship designs. Fun factoid, Strive was designed off of a bird - hence the fluffy, feather-like hair, pointed face, and wing-like ears - and his spaceship reflects that bird aesthetic.

I also started re-watching the Netflix/Dreamworks revival of Voltron. I had gotten as far as season 3 (out of 8) a few years back, but it's been so long, I figured I'd start over to refresh my memory. Ended up a good plan, because I can also study the character and ship designs in that show to help me with preparing for SaV/Gravity RIP.

There's still so much I have to sort out. I'm a bit overwhelmed, but also so excited to do this. I'm even figuring out how to bring Maggie the Info Broker into SaV. I mean, one of the "factions" already set up in the SaV book is "the galaxy's most renowned info broker and hacker" so, much like if I ever got the chance to bring her into nopixel, Maggie is just AN info broker, not THE info broker, but still. Could be fun to try to flesh her out and at least get a chance to play her. Plus, the likelihood the PCs will INSTANTLY get in touch with THE info broker is pretty slim, so having a more humble option to work with at first should be good.

I just need to get my head to focus again so I can finish reading and prepping. Two weeks to go. Let's do this!

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Saturday, May 8, 2021

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...


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.
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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
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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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