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| Yup, I'm trying again. |
Wow... I just... I completely missed last week! Sorry, folks! Is that the first time this year? I think it was the first time this year... It's just... that week really got away from me. It's been... hectic....
I... don't think I organized my time well.
First and foremost, I was able to get my finances all sorted out so I had enough to pay my portion of the collision repair bill. So check out how pretty my car is again!
THAT would have been fun: leave collision center; wreck car all over again 2min out.
Anyway, that was Friday, 6/21. Wednesday, 6/19 - the day after my last blog post - I couldn't do anything writing or reading wise at work as I ran around changing sales tags all day; then Zumba and after-Zumba walk. Then I showered, ate, and spent SOME time with Hubby, so not much writing to be had even after work. Thursday was work again, and then Omnibladestrike's weekly visit. I can't recall at this time what I did at work, but if I had downtime, I was probably playing catch-up on my reading.
Friday, along with "pick up my car finally!" was also catch-up day for reading, for cleaning, for laundry, and for writing. I knew I wasn't going to really have time to do much outside of socializing while visiting Mom this past weekend, so I needed as much writing done as possible before I headed down on the 28th. That meant less than a week to work on "Meet Lia," my monthly fiction writing, and my blog since the 21st was also my last day off before my trip.
It was a LOT to do... and I do NOT know how to manage my time. I was able to get about half-done with everything before I panicked about how little time I had left and switched to a different project. Leaving them all incomplete instead of having at least ONE completed task and leave one or two not started...
Not a real confidence booster before heading into July's Camp NaNoWriMo. A trend that followed me into the new month as I only managed about 100 words last night.
What's worse is that, much like in May, I had no clue what to even write for my monthly completed piece of fiction. I had been so focused on the "Meet Willow" and "Meet Lia" posts that I wasn't thinking of any new content. I debated for the briefest of moments to write something with them, but I just couldn't think of what.
Then I spent Monday evening/Tuesday morning chatting with ChibiSunnie. We talked about a whole slew of things, but one of the topics that stuck with me was a bit about Fruits Basket. Specifically, she was telling me about the latest manga for the series called Fruits Basket Another. It's basically Boruto or X-Future. Namely, it continues the story by following the children of the original cast of characters. It's extremely short compared to the original manga series - only about 12 chapters/3 volumes long - and just concluded after 4yrs.
Anyway, the point is, much like the original Fruits Basket, apparently the parents don't make much of an appearance as the story focuses more on the high schoolers. Kind of sad, really, since it would be great to see 30-something, 40-something, and 50-something versions of the original cast. The real reason we were talking about this series though, aside from it simply being more Fruits Basket, is that the children of the three main characters of the show are also the main characters of this new manga series. Between the main cast briefly appearing here and there in the series centering around their children, and the flash-forward/epilogue of the original Fruits Basket, you get a glimpse into Tohru's love life and how happy a life she maintains for the rest of her days.
For those who want to get into the series, or have just started it, I don't want to give away who Tohru ends up with, but Chibi and I talked about a distinct and slightly odd way he shows her affection, and I hoped it continued into their adulthood. I threw out a bunch of headcanon scenes of when, how, and why he'd show her affection that way, and Chibi ate it up. Which, of course, encouraged me to keep thinking about them.
THIS WAS IT! This was the story I was going to tell for June! Now, the title alone for the story is probably a Tohru Endgame spoiler, so if you DO want to go into Fruits Basket spoiler-free, please skip on ahead a bit...
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Everyone who wanted to avoid spoilers has passed by? You guys either know the endgame or don't care? Alright, so I was specifically wondering about that little head bonk Kyo does to Tohru.
I came up with scenarios of him still doing that to refocus her throughout their life together, and I just HAD to write them out; they were too cute not to!
Thus "Love Taps" came into being, and was published on Wednesday, June 26th.
"Love Taps"
Yeah! I posted the full story on Tumblr too! The story follows Kyo and Tohru - Kyohru - until they are 73, so it does also include spoilers for Fruits Basket Another; whatever I could grab from the wikis, spoiling myself be damned! So keep that in mind if you want to give my one-shot a read but haven't had a chance to read the newest manga and/or the "Three Musketeers Arc" companion stories. Now, TMA centers around Shigure, Hatori, and Ayame, but, from what I gathered via the wiki, there are some flash forwards in this arc that also spoils bits of Fruits Basket Another. So... fair warning... because I included as much as possible in "Love Taps" to make it canon compatible.SUMMARY: Kyo’s little head bonks carry more meaning and more love than anyone could ever truly know. Anyone besides maybe Tohru, who reflects on an entire lifetime of receiving the loving raps on the noggin.
One-shot
WORD COUNT: 2952
RATING: General Audiences
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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!
The key thing to really take away from this fiction piece, whether or not you read it, is how much Chibi helped inspire me. We always pop out so many plot bunnies when we talk, and it was fun and refreshing to actually take one of those bunnies to maturity. She also greatly encouraged me by commenting about how perfect the headcanons were and how much she wished the manga creator Natsuki Takaya would actually draw them out to make them canon.Well, Chibi, they'll be canon to us!
As I was publishing them, I thought it was fitting to have this story be dedicated to her. I haven't gifted Chibi a story in years, and she was beyond due for another one.
It was also nice to switch up fandoms for a few minutes. I flew through this story after work on Tuesday, June 25th. More on this later. For the quick recap, I gave Hubby a heads up, and squirreled myself away on the front porch to soak in my daily sunshine while I wrote. I then finished it up in the house, because my laptop was dying, and sent the first draft to Chibi late that night. I warned her that my eyes were glazing over towards the end, so please ignore the roughness of it. She seemed to enjoy seeing the headcanons written out.
The next day she saw that the edited version was published as a dedication to her, which was apparently a bit of a surprise. She completely gushed on my Facebook promotion for it, gushed on her reblog of my posting to Tumblr, and gushed in her review on AO3. She's just adorable! I mean, look at these!
So... I guess I did good?ON FACEBOOK:
Aaaahhhhhh you're so sweet to dedicate this story to me and I LOVE IT SO MUCH IT'S SO ADORABLE AND SWEET EEEEEEEEEE THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D I left a proper review up on A03, but eeeeeee thank you this made me so happy to read and I love that you got inspired from our convo!! ^_^ <3 Aaahhhhhh my heart is all full of the fluff from this! :D <3
~~~ Followed by 3 different love-themed FB stickers ~~~
ON TUMBLR:
I already squeed on facebook and A03 but EEEEEEEEEE I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH IT’S SO SWEET AND FLUFFY AND MAKES ME SO HAPPY!!!! :D :D :D :D Thank you so much for dedicating it to me! ^_^ *sends you all the hugs* :D
~~~ Followed by 7 different Fruits Basket anime hug screen caps ~~~
AND THE AO3 REVIEW ITSELF:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THIS WAS SO SWEET AND FLUFFY AND ADORABLE AND I LOVE IT SO SO SO SO SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!! :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D <3 :D Aaahhhhhh and you dedicated it to me, that's so incredibly nice of you, THANK YOU!!! ^_^ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 This is exactly how I imagined those scenes when we were talking about all of this last week and I'm so happy that convo inspired plot bunnies that you loved enough to bring to life in this story!! :D Your writing is lovely as always and I can absolutely picture this whole story as a canon future for them!! :D Aahhhh and it was so fluffy and sweet it made me tear up a bit at how cute and happy and wonderful their life is together! ^_^ <3 Thank you for writing this story, it absolutely brightened my whole week!!! ^_^ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Chibi wasn't the only person to give me some love for this story though. Now, I derped up and didn't jot down the 24hr stats like I normally would, but here's where I am as of this writing:
One of the reblogs off Tumblr was a Fruits Basket fanblog by fruits-basket2019, and their tags included "#this was so cuteeee" So.. yay!FFN: 94 views, 5 faves, and 2 reviews
AO3: 167 hits, 14 kudos, 1 bookmark, and Chibi's comment
DA: 10 views and 1 fave
Total Results: 271 views, 20 faves, 1 bookmark, and 3 reviews
Tumblr Notes: 12 notes; 9 likes and 3 reblogs
FFN reviews:
1. *squee* I get to follow you to a new fandom! HOORAY! I really hope [spoiler; content removed] keep going, too!
2. This was so sweet, showing all the different meanings behind [spoiler; content removed] over the span of various special moments throughout their life, it was just perfect. Admittedly, I didn't remember [spoiler; content removed] in the manga (though truth be told it's been a long time since I've read it), so when he first did it in the new anime series my heart all but exploded in joy. I'm still such a fangirl for this series and for [spoiler; content removed] in particular haha. Anyway, lovely writing, absolutely adorable and heartwarming. Great work!
fanfictionrecommendations-com found me again and once more liked one of my stories. It will be interesting to see if any of them ever show up on their site.... Perhaps I should check in on that to see if any of my fandoms were showcased in the past few months.
Anyway, I know the above stats are fairly small compared to the week-long stats I get on my ML stories, especially when one considers how popular Fruits Basket is right now. However, I AM talking post-endgame for Furuba, and I do warn that it contains spoilers for FBA, so perhaps a lot of fans are steering away to avoid spoilers? Perhaps there are those who aren't fans of the canon endgame pairing that are also avoiding the story? Or perhaps Furuba fanfiction isn't as popular as ML fanfics? Also, new Furuba episodes come out on Fridays, so maybe no one is looking for fanfiction on Wednesdays or Thursdays?
Regardless of the reasoning, the actual ratio of kudos/likes/reviews to views seems to be smaller than with ML, which means when someone reads this story they have a higher percentage of reacting to it - by way of likes/kudos/bookmarks/follows/reviews/etc - than my ML readers. I also remember having roughly 20 views on FFN within the first 24hrs, and around 80 hits on AO3. I think I also had something like 5 likes and the 3 reblogs on Tumblr within those first 24hrs. The fave on DA was within the first couple of hours after publishing. That's exciting, right?
Heck, that first review I shared a few paragraphs up? The one about following me into a new fandom? That's from faithful reader ChubbyUnicornMama. They've been following me since I published "Woven Heartstrings" for Taurus Pixie. My heart swelled a touch to see that they did indeed read something non-Miraculous related. Apparently they have that much faith in my writing that they would read it, even if it's outside of their current fandom. Now, they DO know the story behind Fruits Basket, so they didn't go in cold or anything, but still, it was sweet that they had that faith. I then got a bit of a chuckle when I realized the review went up barely 30minutes after I published the story! Unicorn must have instantly gone to read after getting the alert!
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Anyway, getting back on track! I told you about TWO weeks ago, but what about LAST week? Why did I miss my update? How did my Furuba story affect that?
Well, as I mentioned towards the top, Friday, 6/21, was the only day off I had that week so I could take this past weekend to visit my mom and sister. That meant I didn't have the 4+ hours first thing Tuesday morning that I normally take to write up these posts and edit them. I was at work, and I just couldn't work on my post like I wanted.
I MEANT to work on my blog post Monday night so it was all queued up for Tuesday at noon, but I was tired from running around trying to get things sorted the previous day. I also had my last Zumba class before the instructor went on a week-long vacation, which meant I really couldn't afford to skip it. I'm glad I didn't for more than exercise/health reasons. It was a nice stress reliever, even if the stress piled back on after taking a nearly 2hr break from everything, but more importantly, my niece joined me and my sister-in-law. School got out early as the school year came to a close, and so my niece spent most of the day with her mom. My sister-in-law didn't have enough time to do a sort of hand-off to her husband before Zumba, so Niece came with! She sat in the corner and watched us, but it was still fun to have her there and then walk with them after class was done.
Point is, between work - where I was actually kept fairly hoppin' - Zumba, post-Zumba walk, showering, dinner, picking Hubby up from work, and spending time with him... I ran out of time to write up my blog post so it was set to go last Tuesday. I mean, late in the day I had the chance to work on my blog post, but instead I watched the latest Fruits Basket - since I ran out of time to do so over the weekend - and then chatted with ChibiSunnie about it. When it was after 1am, I realized that I NEEDED to go to bed. No blog pre-write time.
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The day spun out of control fairly quickly for me as my head swam between the reading to get "Bitterblue" done before it was due back at the library, working on my "Meet Lia" posts for my Sunday deadline, writing up my Furuba fanfic before heading down to my mom's on the 28th, and playing catch-up to write my blog post... I also had a writing date set up with Omni, which largely means either talking about both of our projects - something I didn't need on my end - or focusing solely on his story to help him out. Whether or not we focused on Omni, it meant I wasn't writing anything myself. I also needed to fold laundry and start packing for our trip, and cleaning the house... I couldn't mentally map out how to find the time for everything!
Frazzled, I asked Omni for a raincheck, and we agreed to spend an hour or two of our Thursday meet-up instead to chat about his story. Having some time freed up, I then messaged Hubby to tell him he shouldn't expect to see me much that day as I HAD to get writing done. Once I got home, I quickly changed out of my work clothes, then squirreled myself away on the front porch.
I should have instantly started on my blog post. However, I knew I wanted to have SOMETHING to talk about in my post, completely forgetting that I originally wanted to use an uneventful writing week to finally talk about my thoughts on "Graceling." So, I prioritized writing my fiction over getting my blog post done before Tuesday's end. That way I could share my story with you fine folks in that week's blog post.
As I mentioned above, writing the story kept nearly all night to do, mostly because of the research I had to do to figure out Tohru's adult life. Eyes glazing over, I shared the story with Chibi, then passed out knowing I didn't even have the post written up to publish first thing Wednesday morning.
Wednesday was spent editing the story, more reading, and trying to mentally block out my co-worker's incessant whining about how bored she was since we barely had any customers. I managed to get the story published between 2pm and 3pm, and I then focused on "Meet Lia" instead of my blog post... because I can't prioritize properly....
Honestly? I can't recall what I did Wednesday evening instead of working on my blog post. Especially since I didn't have Zumba. I think I tried to get a head start on my reading? Did I get suckered into my husband's new JRPG? I can't recall, and I was too frantic to remember to do my time audits.
Something I'm correcting this week. I already have yesterday filled in, and I'm up to the minute on today's audit thus far. I also remembered to mark the monthly calendar with what writing I was working on. I'm striving to do better with this custom-made planner I printed.
Anyway, the point is I STILL didn't have the blog done Wednesday evening. So that was my goal while at work on Thursday. I didn't get very far. I was busy early in the morning, and then I did more reading and caught up on my mobile games over lunch... and a touch beyond. I didn't get started on my blog post until around 1pm, so close to 24hrs after my Furuba story published. I worked on the stats, dropping them into a blog draft as I went. However, figuring out how to format Chibi's squees so I could keep those emoticons in a blockquote... it was more exhausting and took up more time than I gave it credit when I went in to the task.
Before I knew it, the work day passed me by, I didn't have all the stats properly logged, especially when they were still updating, and I hadn't written much of anything for the blog outside of the stats and reviews. When I got home, Omni was already here, and Hubby was showing off his new JRPG video game. As agreed, Hubby continued playing his game while Omni and I chatted about his story for about an hour or two. Then Hubby made us all soft-shell tacos, and we switched gears.
I STILL needed to finish folding laundry and pack for the trip, so I begged Omni to bring his copy of the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" movie. He had wanted us to watch it with him for nearly a year now, and I couldn't watch our normal subtitled anime. I needed to focus on something other than the TV, and having a show with English audio meant I could still follow the plot without gluing my eyes to the TV the whole time.
We watched the movie. I folded laundry and packed. We chatted a bit more. I had Omni watch the next Fruits Basket episode in my re-watch because I didn't need to see the TV to know what was going on anymore. I think Omni and I are now up to episode 5? I feel like the Culture Festival is the next episode for us to watch this week, so... whichever episode that is.
Anyway, with the socializing, folding, and packing, I had no time to go back to finish my blog. "Okay," I told myself "Wake up super early Friday morning to work on it then!" Nope. I mean, I still woke up early for me - about 6:30am - but I spent that time showering, shaving, finishing the packing, getting breakfast ready, and whatever else I needed to get sorted before the trip. I ran out of time to work on the blog post or the "Meet Lia" posts before Hubby and I had to leave. But, hey, we actually left for my mom's on time. That's kind of a first. My sister even joked that it might snow!
Instead, we just got caught in highway construction traffic, and got lost when I tried to self-detour... so we got to my mom's an hour later than intended. You win some you lose some?
Throughout the weekend, I DID have some downtime at my mom's here and there, but I was so drained at that time I didn't have the energy to write anything. I barely had the energy to even unpack my laptop. I think I used it for a grand total of about 20min the whole weekend. At that point I figured it was too late to worry about the "Meet Lia" posts, and it wasn't worth trying to get last week's blog post up. I waved the white flag and submitted to missing my first week of the year.
I'll have to write up a post focused solely on my thoughts about "Graceling" and "Bitterblue", and then double-post one of these weeks to make it up.
When I got back home Sunday evening I meant to take the time to work on publishing the "Meet Lia" posts, and I even hid in the bedroom to do just that. Except I passed out a few minutes in....
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But this post is beyond epic as I tried to catch up on TWO crazy weeks!
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