#also fun fact i’ve had this in my drafts since april

[nebulanewts]

…Yeah this is gonna keep going for a while dndjdj ANYWAYS,this is the first of the Nijigaku stuff :] also can we talk about the outfits in the first one??? Like they’re super cute don’t get me wrong,but it’s like…what’s the theme here??? The best I can come up with is vaguely Y2K kpop airport fashion (is that as much of a thing in jpop idol fandoms?? I have no idea but that’s what it makes me think of for some reason)

[milkplusvn]

Soundless AAA & Patreon Survey Results

Tip: You can get posts like this sent directly to your e-mail by subscribing to the Substack!

This’ll be a long one today, so buckle in.

Reimagining CGs Is Fun

First thing’s first: Soundless progress!

I’ve been gradually chipping away at the CGs. I’ve roughly sketched all the ones that appear in the opening. The one I’ve made the most progress on is the one where Auma checks on Mercy after school, and I’m finding it fun to reimagine the CGs and try and upgrade the new CG wherever possible while still maintaining the original intent.

This CG in particular was one of the first ones I ever made for Soundless. According to the properties of one of the variations, it was originally completed in April 2017. The afternoon glow illuminating a heroine in an empty classroom feels so cool, doesn’t it? Even though the technical quality of the original is low, I think it has some of the nicest vibes.

For the new one, I took into account the fact that Mercy is sitting so close to the window and opted to change the angle of the background. This required a little bit of extra thinking on my part; I even made a sketch to guesstimate where Auma might be in relation to where Mercy is looking up from her desk.

Though, in the end, you’ll notice that the angle isn’t the same when you compare it to the sketch. I did it on purpose to make Mercy feel smaller and also have the window be off-center and not engulfing the space behind Auma. I just thought it looked more visually interesting like this.

This week is all CGs. My main goal is to complete all the opening CGs and have a brand new version of the opening ready for everyone by next Sunday at best and next week at the very least.

Art Patch Progress Summary

Sprites

Main Sprites: All complete

Special sprites: Finished

CGs

1/31 completed (4 in progress)

1/5 opening CGs completed (4 in progress, 1 in coloring stage (the one in the post!))

Implementation

All main sprites implemented.

Toggle option implemented

Initial selection screen roughly implemented

You can play Soundless for free with the original art on Itch.io now!

And now…for the survey results

About 15 people total took the survey! That doesn’t seem like a lot, and it’s not surprising since we’re not exactly the biggest studio ever, but just knowing how many people were interested enough to take it was very helpful in the decision-making process.

Let’s break down the infographic by section.

Patron Interaction Perks

Voting power was more popular than Patron Q&A, but both had a fairly high “yes” ratio. I’m not surprised Patron Q&A has a few more “no”s, because hey—what constitutes questions only Patrons can ask, anyways? Our Tumblr even has an ask box. However, it was a feature we’ve seen in other Patreons, and we wanted to see how much interest there was. The fact that 66% of respondents wanted to see it regardless of the lack of details says something: people have questions they’d like to ask if given the chance!

Behind-the-Scenes Perks

First of all, I think it’s just incredible that there was not a single no on the pre-production assets perk. All of the questions save the optional comment section and the merch choice were required, so nobody could’ve skipped it. We’re going to have to see to making a standardized look for concept art so it looks pretty when we share it!

Interestingly enough, early access to devlogs was unpopular at first, but when the survey ended it got many more “yes” votes. It’s definitely going into the perk pile. As for the Patron-only streams, we’re definitely factoring in the high amount of “no”s. I do wonder if people are worried about missing them—Patron-only streams also includes Patron-only VODs!

Other Perks

This one. This one is the one that told me everything on what to do.

Whether NSFW or SFW, monthly images and short stories had a lot of support. We’ll get more into that one when we get to the tier drafts.

The credit name styling depending on tier perk, by the way, got enough “yes” votes that we’re still considering it, but it’s definitely not going to be a selling point here.

Physical Merchandise

The people. Want. Stickers. And mini prints, but not as much as the stickers!

We originally weren’t going to include such a perk, but we looked into Patreon Merch and ultimately decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, we don’t think we’ll focus hard on this as a selling point either due to the…strange way Patreon Merch works (you’ll see), but we’ve actually already prepared some things to be created for the initial round of merchandise.

Tier Affordability

Canva’s graph didn’t come with a key, so here’s how you read the bar colors:

Green means Very Affordable

Yellow means Somewhat Affordable

Red means Somewhat Unaffordable

Black means Unaffordable

We’ll admit we screwed up a bit writing the questions for this section—adding in a “very” adjective was a little unnecessary and probably influenced some answers. We also probably should have included a question on just what someone’s most affordable tier was to go along with the “can you commit for three months?” question.

Even so, this told us a lot about the financial standing of people who may very well be our initial Patrons. It tracks—the global economy isn’t doing too well—and since we suspected not everyone would be able to afford the super crazy awesome tiers because of this, we wanted to make extra sure so we’re not putting perks people want to see in tiers they can’t even pledge to.

So, What’ll You Do?

Using this data, we have drafted up the tiers and adjusted some of the pricing. We increased the initial tier to $2 (so we’re not getting literal pennies after fees) and reduced the highest tier to $20 (still pretty high, but the extra $5 is a lot for some people). Here are those tier drafts:

Tier 1 ($2)

Exclusive supporter Discord channel access, forever.

Pre-production tidbits and in-depth process posts and speedpaints

2 bi-monthly short stories with accompanying artwork: one spicy, one sweet

Early look at devlog posts

Your name in game credits

Unique-to-tier Discord role and color

Tier 2 ($5)

All prior benefits

Vote for the bi-monthly special art and stories

Patron-only livestreams & VODs

Patron-only Q&A sessions (likely on unreleased/unannounced games—still workshopping this!)

Tier 3 ($10)

All prior benefits

Monthly sticker club (starts 2 months after initial pledge)

Vote on the next sticker

Vote on aspects of a game

Tier 4 ($20)

All prior benefits

Monthly mini print club (starts 2 months after initial pledge)

Vote on the next mini print

Larger section in game credits

These tier drafts are naturally subject to change for the final version. We’re also open to any comments and suggestions at this stage to further refine the tiers.

Why bi-monthly stories and art, not monthly like the survey originally asked?

I considered things for a moment and came to a conclusion: I need to protect my wrist and Cherimoya isn’t always available due to work, so at the start, we’ll be delivering these special side stories & accompanying art on a bi-monthly basis. If we get enough support, we’ll likely upgrade it to monthly since we’ll be able to outsource help at that point.

Sweet AND spicy?!

Yes, we’ll be doing one SFW one and one NSFW one! This may come as a surprise to those who’ve only found us recently, but we’ve actually been planning for spicy content in our games happening eventually for a very long time. POLYCHROMANIA was originally billed with this promise and continues to have it. Of course, due to various terms of service including Substack’s, we can’t share such development freely and it’ll all be locked behind Patreon for the most part. (Cohost is also friendly to adult content, so we’ll post things from time to time on there.)

You are absolutely free to just ignore the NSFW posts if you’re not interested.

What sorts of game content will we be able to vote on?

Patrons can influence things such as little bits of bonus content. We actually already have an idea for something Patrons can vote on for 7388 when we get to that point.

Exclusive supporter access to a Discord channel forever?

We’d like to continue our tradition of allowing those who have supported us once in the special development channel, where we post some unreleased stuff and unrefined development thoughts and progress, forever. While the launch of the Patreon means that there will still be development content that’ll be locked to those actively supporting us monthly (for instance preproduction assets, things for unannounced games, and Patron-only streams), this channel will still be around posting ~secret~ things. (But not too secret.)

I’m in the special channel now. Will we still get our names in the credits without being a Patron, too?

At this time, yes. However, this may be subject to change for logistics reasons depending on how much the Patreon grows. We apologize in advance if this does happen.

Why do we have to wait to get the merch? How is it monthly?

The merchandise will be fulfilled by Patreon’s Merch service. The way said service works is that all Patrons in merch tiers will get their physical rewards after three months’ worth of pledging. We plan on asking Patreon for the specifics on when exactly that happens (on the third month, or after the third month?—our current assumption is on) before launch.

Every month, we’ll add a new sticker & print, then phase out the previous month’s. When you start getting your merchandise, you’ll start with the merchandise from the month you initially pledged in, and then every month you continue pledging you’ll get a new sticker (and print, if you’re in the applicable tier).

This is how we’ve come to understand Patreon’s articles regarding how their Merch service functions. You can read about the Patron side of things in their own words here (link to Patreon Merch help article). We would like to make sure that we’re getting this right, so once again we will be contacting Patreon Support prior to launch to ensure we’ll actually be able to do this with the tools we’re given.

Launch Date

At this time, we plan on launching our Patreon at the beginning of July. The exact date will be announced when we’ve completed preparations.

Once again, thank you all for helping us figure this out. To be level with you all, we needed to start earning more money to keep milk+ visual going and ensure the safety of team members. You’ll remember a few months back, for instance, that our editor Faust was in danger of eviction—we don’t want that to happen to anyone in the milk+ visual family ever again.

We’ll use the money first and foremost to support the three of us financially. Cherimoya and Faust are very kind to volunteer because they’re close to me, but I’d rather pay them both for their time and help, as well as make sure I’ll be okay, too. The future and title release speed of milk+ visual is entirely financially dependent at this point. To focus on making our own visual novels entirely without having to worry about money would be a dream.

As mentioned before, you’re free to leave comments and suggestions about the tiers either on the Substack comments, or in our askbox, or pretty much anywhere else you saw this article posted. See you next week!

[whimsyswastry]

Total # of completed works?

 Honestly? Zero.

Total word count?

83.787! Last year I was so excited to have written 17k and this year O_O over 80k!!!

Fandoms written in?

Mass Effect (fShenko), Andromeda (mReyder), Greedfall (fDeSardet/Kurt), and a VERY small amount of Dragon Age (Cullevelyan)

Looking back, did you write more, less, or about how much you thought you would?

Way more. In the beginning of the year, it was like...April and I hadn’t even written 2k words yet. The fact that I wrote more this year than 4x what I wrote in 2021 is shocking and fills me with great joy and motivation to keep going.

Favorite story (of your own) this year?

Operation Leviathan. It was a plot bunny that struck me when I was watching Underwater in 2020, but I just didn’t have the oomph to do anything about it. But somehow, the flood gates opened about three days into NaNo and I wrote about 95% of it in a month. I have a couple thousand words left to wrap it up and some editing! I’m so excited to share it with the community.

Any writing risks this year?

I didn’t really write anything that risky. I tried a different tense, which wasn’t really my cup of tea. Well, that’s not true. I really enjoyed writing in present tense, but when I got into a flow state, it would automatically revert back to past tense. Which made editing a nightmare.

I should really keep trying though. I love present tense, especially for thrillers.

Any fanfic or original fic goals for the new year?

My goal almost every single year is to do make some sort of headway with Unharrowed. It’s a prequel to Inquisition that has been cooking since the first time I played it. But I can’t seem to ever make any progress. I’ve recently started revamping the lead character completely to give her a stronger (both in terms of literature and literally) personality. I’m hopeful that this will solve a lot of the issues I’ve been having with the story.

Most popular story of the year?

Masquerade & Mysteries, by almost 2x as many as my other stories. It’s my greedfall prequel, that tackles the class divide between Kurt and Lucette. It’ll be 7 chapters all said and done. Five and half of them are already completed...I’m just slow (and not very confident) at writing the smut.

Most under-appreciated story (of your own) by the fandom?

In the Flicker -- I understand why it didn’t gain much traction. AO3 is often very ship-centric and I wasn’t sure how to tag this. It was by-and-large a character study as I played with writing in first person. The story starts with a Ryder/Gil pairing, but the end game ends up being Ryder/Reyes. (Don’t worry, it’s not at all anti-Gil, it’s just how the story unfolded). However, I’ve only posted the first chapter, so I didn’t want to tag it as /Gil but I also didn’t want to tag it as /Reyes since neither is technically true.

Hopefully once the story is completed and posted, I’ll be able to tag it more appropriately and it will find it’s audience.

Most fun story to write?

Operation Leviathan! It had been so long since I felt a flow-state while drafting. It was freeing to just word vomit on a page and feel decent enough about what I’d written to keep it to edit down the road instead of trashing it immediately.

Most unintentionally telling story?

Probably Unharrowed. One  aspect of the story is coming to terms with a body (or in this case, a magic) that doesn’t cooperate with you and how distressing that can be. I didn’t intentionally mean to parallel my experience, but it just kinda...happened. At least in my notes it did lol I still haven’t drafted it.

Biggest disappointment?

The Hot Zone. So far it’s been well received, which is awesome. But I was 14k words into the story and suddenly it was like hitting a cement wall. I just...couldn’t write it anymore. No matter how hard I tried. I’m giving myself a break and will come back to it as soon as I can because I am so excited for this story.

Biggest surprise?

My word count. Writing in 2020 and 2021 was like pulling teeth. It was torture just squeezing out a couple thousand words over the course of the entire year. But this year, the flood gates just opened. It was like a huge weight had lifted off of me and I realized how much pressure I’d been putting on myself to engage in a hobby that’s supposed to be fun. I’m glad I’ve finally found my way back to enjoying the process.

Favorite part of fandom this year?

The entire Dragon Age fandom coming back to life after Absolution was released. My dash had been a trickle of DA content until December, and then suddenly it was all DA all the time. It was great to find new artists to follow and share as well!

Tagging || A large portion of my writing moots have already completed this or something very similar. So if you’re still reading it at this point, consider yourself tagged! And please tag me, I’d love to read about how your year went! 💛

[wizardessheart-sideb]

I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for literal months and I’m cleaning stuff out so I’m finally gonna post this as well as some other stuff that I’ve nixed but already had work done on. I did a bunch of sprite updates several months ago, so here’s (some of) the sprite edits I did.

Isabelle: Goodbye headband! Tbh I only put it in her first sprites bc I having trouble with her hair lining up right. But I’ve fixed it. And now I’ve given her some makeup since she loves makeup. I added a sleeve to her casual dress. Just for pizzazz. Sources: LLSIF and FEF

Opal: Meet Opal, Ruby’s older half-sister! She’s a lesbian and a thorn in Klaus’ side. Not because she’s gay but just because she loves annoying the hell out of him. Sources: LLSIF and WH

Ruby: I did her casual clothes and nightgown sprites! Fun fact, Ruby’s casual shirt was supposed to be the whole ace flag, but I couldn’t get the shading right so I just regulated the flag to that heart. Sources: LLSIF and WH

Kristina: Say hello to Kristina Bennett! Unfortunately, she won’t be attending the Academy so we won’t see too much of her. But she’ll show up every so often, like when she comes to visit her twin brother, Zacharias, or when the MC goes to Hidamari Market.  Sources: LLSIF and WH

Fandamilia: I gave her a nightgown sprite. I also did one of her with her natural hair color, but I’m not including that one bc pic limit and also I’m not sure happy with how that one came out. Sources: LLSIF and WH

Hisoka: I made this sprite for an April Fool’s Day event I was going to hold last year but never ended up doing. It was essentially going to be part original part Side B of the music festival event. Everything was going to be hella short and in the format of side stories from LLSIF. This obvs never happened but I did do Hisoka’s sprite edits and his story is floating around somewhere on my computer.  Sources: WH, LLSIF, Puchiguru Love Live, Tokyo Otaku Mode laksjdfhd

Rembrandt: Another sprite edit I did for the idol-y April Fool’s Day event. He was gonna be there as a supportive audience member. His story’s also done and somewhere on my computer. I don’t even know where that doc went tbh. Source: WH

[october31st1981]

Scenes from the Past Six Years

There are a number of fics in the drafts of this blog that I started a few years ago, and no longer feel the inclination to finish. But there are still some pretty fun bits and bobs, so I’m going to throw them all up in one post if anyone is interested in some disjointed excerpts. 

--

Dueling - Jan 27, 2014

James has his hands on her shoulders, and she is calculating how best to catapult him off of her body when his lips descend to kiss her thoroughly.

“James,” she protests, as they pause for a breath, “we’re supposed to be fighting.”

“Sorry,” he murmurs, but the grin on his face contradicts his apology.

Later, when they are about to leave, Lily says, “I think we should compartmentalize our situations.” She does not meet his eyes, choosing instead to rub nonexistent grease off of her wand by running it against her jeans.

“How so?”

“Well… as much as I like snogging you, I think that we should have… snogging times, and dueling times. So we can be efficient with, er, both,” It sounds oddly formal and for reasons Lily is unsure about, a flush has risen in her cheeks. She still refuses to look him in the face.

James tilts her chin up, a gleeful look on his face. “Lily Evans, are you asking me out?”

She splutters out an indignant protest but James just grins all the wider. “You are asking me out,” he says, leaning closer to get her to look at him directly. Her cheeks are hot as his hands move to either side of her face. “Yes.”

--

And There Was Only One Bed - Feb 2, 2014 

“One of you can come up and sleep with me.” As all four boys seem to prepare themselves for a smarmy comment, she adds, “Don’t start, gits. You know what I mean.”

“If someone’s joining you, Wormtail’s out,” Sirius says, his eyes flicking to the boy in question, “he’s a kicker.” From his tone, it seems that Sirius has experienced this very quality one too many times.

Peter huffs indignantly. “Padfoot’s a prat, I kicked him out of a hammock one time—” He cuts himself off as he sees the black-haired boy fingering his wand. “Fine, I’m out.”

“I’m out, too,” Remus says with a sigh. “I roll about too much, I’m afraid. I’d be falling out of the bed anyway."

James does not say anything, but instead he and Sirius seem to communicate something with a glance between them. James gives Sirius a warning look, but Sirius simply grins and pats the wooden arms of the chair, saying, "I’m comfortable where I am,”

“C'mere, then,” Lily says to James, gesturing to the spot next to her. Shooting a loaded glance at his best mate, he sits down.

--

Pecker Parody - April 22, 2014

James Potter had a problem. This particular dilemma was approximately five feet tall, freckled, and had a habit of popping up at inopportune times.

This problem was his diddly-doo. His magical wanking stick, if you will. You see, while having a dingler the size of a broomstick was all well and good when he was a boy, due to the fact he could ride it around like a pogo stick, at the age of eighteen, it was a bit more troublesome.

The truth of the matter was that he wanted to put his party popper inside Lily’s cash register, but he didn’t know how to tell her.

--

Birth - March 15, 2015

“I can’t believe you just did that,” he says in awe. “Did you know you could do that?”

Brushing some of her hair out of her sweaty face, Lily laughs. “I’d had some time to get used to the idea, yeah.”

James looks back at the bundle in his arms, and then again at his wife. “You just pushed an entire person out of you. Our person. He’s not tiny, either. I mean, he is tiny, but only because he’s a baby. Otherwise, he’s quite a large thing to be exiting any orifice.”

“If we ever do this again, you can do that part,” she says leaning back against the pillows.

--

Grease AU - June 25, 2015 

(Also posted here.)

“This is… ridiculous,” she murmurs against his lips.

James laughs. “It’s a little late to denounce snogging on the beach, Evans, since we’ve been doing it for the past few weeks.” As he speaks, he drops his mouth to her neck, smiling as her eyes flutter.

Lily pulls his face up by the chin to meet his gaze. “I meant this whole thing.” She gestures around them. “After what happened after the Defence O.W.L. at the end of last term, how can you find any of this normal? Everything was such a mess after. Hell, if we hadn’t both come to the same place this holiday, I’d still be stewing in it by September.”

“But we did,” says James, brushing his nose against hers. “We talked and we yelled and we talked more and then you threw yourself at me.”

He dodges her swat at him much too easily to satisfy her, but at her raised brow he makes an amendment. “Alright, so I may have done some of the throwing. I’m a Chaser. I need to hone my reflexes.”

“My point is, it doesn’t feel like you’re Potter on this beach,” Lily says, ruffling his hair pointedly. She smiles. “You’re just James.”

“Just James,” he repeats, adjusting so he lies beside her instead of half atop her. “You make it sound like I’m two different people.”

It is Lily’s turn to laugh. “Aren’t you? I can’t imagine this version of you hoisting someone up by their ankles.”

“Of course not,” says James immediately. “I’m wearing trunks. Where would I keep my wand?”

Lily is already giggling by the time James begins suggesting locations on his body that he might be hiding his wand, and by the end of his lewd list, she is nearly having a fit on the sand. When she catches her breath, she looks at him. “I know I don’t get to keep Just James forever,” she says, leaning on his arm. “But at least try to preserve the illusion for me when we get back to school by avoiding me.”

James is quiet for a moment, but when he speaks his voice is soft. “You’re being silly, Lily,” he tells her, pulling her closer. “This is who I am. Caring about your feelings, about anyone’s feelings, isn’t exclusive to this beach.”

She kisses him, slowly and deeply. “Try to remember saying that.”

James grins. “If I’m going to be reliving a memory from this holiday, I reckon I have to choose the night under the pier—”

Lily laughs, cutting him off with her lips. “Be quiet, James.”

--

Masquerade - Dec 16, 2015

“So you’re Muggle-born, then?” he says thoughtfully. She stiffens, and he hasten to add, “It doesn’t matter to me. I’m just trying to figure how that narrows down the options for who you are.”

She smiles, but then looks a little put-out. “That’s hardly fair, I don’t know anything about you.”

“Pureblood,” he tells her, kissing her neck.

“A pureblood that doesn’t care that I’m Muggle-born? That does narrow down the options.” Her fingers tug at his robe. “N.E.W.T. classes?”

He shakes his head, kissing her lips quickly. “Too easy. Do you play Quidditch?”

“No. Do you?”

After a moment of hesitation, he says, “Yes,” so she is quick to follow with a suspicious, “On a team or for leisure?”

He laughs. “Both.”

--

Problematic.jpg - March 29, 2016

“James Potter,” Lily says to Mary suddenly, “is my problematic fave.”

“Receipts, please,” says Mary, not looking up from her copy of Witch Weekly.

“Plus, he’s like, a pureblood. So he’s got the whole legacy of all that fucked-up culture.”

“But like, a lowkey pureblood. He’s 12% Muggle-born.”

--

Junks the Trash King: The Sequel - April 18, 2016

“I’ve met the Rubbish Man,” announces Lily upon entering her flat.

“Good, tell him we need a new recycling bin,” says Mary absently. “There’s a family of raccoon living in ours.”

“Not him, Junks.”

The name catches Mary’s attention. “The soulmate?” she asks, straightening up. “How was he?”

Lily drags herself over to their kitchen table and collapses into a seat. “Not named Junks, for one.” Lily holds up her palm for Mary to inspect. “Apparently this is supposed to say ‘James.’”

“Shame. I’d rather hoped to one day receive a wedding invitation inviting me to the marriage of Lily and Junks. Though I’d have to bin it for the wordplay, you understand.” Lily turns her hand so she can flip Mary the bird, but from the look in her eyes, her friend has already spotted something new. “Got his number already, did you?”

--

Baby Brain - June 15, 2016

“I think I'm pregnant,” says Lily, so quietly that James almost doesn't hear it.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” she repeats, turning over in bed to face him. “I tell you I might be up the spout and all I get is, ‘Oh?’”

James grins at her in the dark. “Would you have preferred ‘Blimey?’” He expects the pillow that's aimed at his face.

“James.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Would you be okay with it? If I am?” It's hard to see her eyes clearly with such little light, but James can hear in her tone that she's nervous.

“I... Yeah, I would,” says James, seeking out her hand. “You know I want kids with you. I mean, I might not have seen this starting so soon, but I think we're pretty great at improvising. Remember our wedding reception?”

Lily laughs. “Somehow I don't think using Dumbledore's hat to catch projectile vomit is the same thing as raising a child.”

“I think you'll find they're remarkably similar.”

She laughs again. “I'm trying to work myself into a worry, James, and you're making it very difficult.”

He leans over to kiss her on the cheek. “Sorry, dear. Feel free to treat our child as a sign of impending doom.”

Lily leans her head onto his shoulder. “We're nineteen, James.”

“Old enough to be married,” he replies, poking her with his ring finger.

“We don't know anything about children.”

James smiles. “Children don’t know anything either, so we’ll be on a level playing field.”

--

(ʘ‿ʘ)ノ✿ Hold My Flower - August 17, 2016

“Lily, no.”

She scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘Lily, no?’ I didn’t say anything.”

“Lily,” he says cheerfully, throwing an arm around her shoulder, “We have been married for forty-five years now—”

“Dating for eight months,” she corrects, holding back a smile.

James waves a hand dismissively. “So, in that time, I am confident that I’ve grown to recognize what your faces mean. And that face said, ‘I’m going to put frogspawn in his tea.’”

“I don’t carry around frogspawn, James.”

He looks at her dubiously. “But you’d find some, wouldn’t you?”

--

Countdown - October 31, 2016

“Padfoot gets back from his assignment tomorrow,” Lily tells him, eyes on their calendar.

James pauses in trying to convince his son of the merits of pureed beets. His eyes drift towards the day on the calendar circled in red. Lately, they’ve taken to marking their calendar with the events of their day, if only to make the days seem more distinct. August 27th: ‘At 3 o’clock, Harry said his first full sentence.’ September 12th: ‘At 6 in the morning, the cat brought James a present and left it in his mouth.’ Tomorrow, October 31st, is a rare date that marks the future.

“Good,” he says. “I was hoping he’d be back before his birthday.”

A small, hopeful smile blooms on her lips. “Perhaps we can finally give him a nice celebration. I know Moony is still underground, but Wormy said he’d stay close by. I could bake him a cake.”

“Cake!” says Harry, and James laughs. He takes advantage of his boy’s opened-mouth enthusiasm to give him a spoonful of beets. The look he receives is nothing short of betrayed.

Victorious and still chuckling, James turns back to his wife. “We can ask him to come by as soon as he’s home.”

--

Baby I’m Trying: The Sequel Pt. 1 - Jan 4, 2017

He wishes his mum were still around, but since she’s not, in his desperation, James consults his neighbour, Batty Bagshot. Though she’s had no children of her own, she’s looked after many of her nieces and nephews over the years, and James has never been more thankful to hear her drone on.

After his conversation with Bathilda, he comes home, arms laden with all the supplies she recommended he find. Sirius’s eyes are wide as James brings the load inside the flat. “Reckon you got enough?”

James slumps over to the floor and leans his head on the pram. “This stuff is only for the first six months,” he says, staring into space. “Do you know how many times a day a baby needs formula? D’you think McGonagall will let me take the baby to class?”

Sirius considers it. “McGonagall does let her cat into the lectures. Although,” he says, wrinkling his nose and holding the baby out to James, “she knows how to use a litter box.”

James wonders if it’s pathetic to google ‘How to change a nappy.’

--

Baby I’m Trying: The Sequel Pt. 2 - Jan 4, 2017

In three days, James has a paper documenting that the baby is one hundred percent, undeniably his. He hadn’t doubted that he was, but it’s something different to see it on paper. It makes the whole thing more real for him. He sets about telling the rest of his friends, and while they are as surprised as he is, they take it in stride and help him sort it out, as they’ve always done.

“What are you going to name him?” asks Remus.

“Wilberforce,” suggests Sirius, grinning.  

James cracks a smile at that. “Maybe something unisex. Elvendork?”

“You’ll have no trouble calling out for him if you ever lose him,” says Peter fairly.

James laughs. The baby fusses a bit in his arms and he runs a hand over the dark mass of hair that is already on this boy’s head. “Could go with a family name,” James says thoughtfully.

“I’m going to take a moment to remind you that your father’s name was Fleamont,” says Remus.

He shakes his head. “My grandfather,” James says.

None of the boys know much about his grandfather, since he died while James was still in primary school, but Sirius lived with his parents for a time, and he knows James better than anyone else. So it is Sirius who asks, “Henry?”

“Harry,” corrects James. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the baby stops squirming. “His name was Henry, but they called him Harry.”

“Harry Potter,” says Peter. “I like it.”

His son has a name. “Harry Potter,” James repeats quietly.

--

Ring Out - June 15, 2017

“Frank and Alice are engaged,” Sirius tells him as he slides a drink to James across the table. 

James lifts the pint into the air. “Congratulations to them,” he says, and he means it. He knows many couples rushing to the altar these days, but Alice and Frank seem the best-suited for marriage of all of them. He takes a large swig of his firewhiskey.

Sirius raises an eyebrow. It takes no more than this movement for James to know what he will say next. Still, Sirius asks, “When are you going to ask her?” 

“What, you reckon because everyone else we know is getting married, I ought to as well?” James asks, mirroring his friend's expression.

Sirius snorts. “No, I reckon that you're horrendously in love with Evans and want to ask her to be your wife.”

James takes another drink. “We're in the middle of a war, Padfoot.”

“Seems to be reason enough for everyone else,” Sirius counters, shrugging.

“Exactly," says James firmly. “I don't want Lily to marry me because she's afraid we're doing to die.”

Sirius pauses, reaching for his own firewhiskey. After a moment, he lowers his glass and shrugs once more. “We might.”

“We might not.” James retorts. He runs a hand through his hair. “I'd rather wait for her to be certain.”

“You're living together," Sirius says, and when James opens his mouth he shakes his head. “You say you live with me but you spend more time at Lily's than you do at ours.”

James chuckles. “So your concern is that we’re living in sin? Talk about glass houses, mate.”

[elizabethvaughns]

so i've been mulling over this for quite a bit now, so i might as well articulate my thoughts and get them out onto this blog. so i was just thinking: subjectively or objectively, which one is better? the if/then dc preview or the broadway production? long post (1750+ words), so i'm putting a read more break <3

now, objectively at the very least, i know i have to say it's the broadway production. why wouldn't it be? it's a lot more polished, it's...the final draft, of sorts, of the production. we all know the final draft is usually better than the rough draft. but here's the thing. when it comes to an artwork that has several different versions, one tends to gravitate toward the version they saw first and have a certain bias against all the other versions. if you saw the bway version first or the dc version first, you probably like that one more. now i'm not saying this bias is conscious by any means. absolutely not. however, when one falls in love with some media, in my case at least, they take it in over and over and over again. and then they get so used to that one thing that all other versions seem weird. i can pinpoint two non-if/then instances in my life where such a thing happened.

in the summer of 2018, i watched the RENT movie on netflix. now i was fully intending to listen to the obc soundtrack before watching the movie, but i never really got to it. anyways, that movie was like love at first...watch to me. oh man, i loved it so, so much. so i downloaded the soundtrack on my phone and, you guessed it, listened to it over and over and over and over again. one fine day, (about a few weeks after, actually) i realized i never actually had listened to the obc soundtrack. so i did. and it sounded...odd to say the very least. i mean, some of the voices were different, sometimes the lines were changed, all in all, a confusing experience. to say the least, if you asked me back then which version i preferred, i would've readily said the movie version. but now, three years in retrospect, i'm not so sure. the obc version is a lot more...complete, i like the vocals more, and i'm now salty that "christmas bells" as a song was cut. evidently, i like the obc version more(but i still love the movie version hell it's still one of my comfort movies).

in the fall of 2019, i listened to falsettos. i actually listened to both the obc and the 2016 revival cast recordings. i guess that lessened the bias a bit because i was exposed to both versions at about the same time. on the fateful date of 2 october 2019, i watched the falsettos revival proshot. that's when i truly fell in love with this musical. but, even so, my initial exposure was to both recordings so even though i had a slight bias toward the 2016 version, i still loved both of them.

now, back to if/then. i actually find it difficult to pinpoint where exactly my exposure to if/then started. was it the very first time i heard about it in 2018 when i read a very meta RENT fanfic on ff.net where elizabeth made an appearance and i thought "what the fuck"(pun very much intended)"is if/then" (psst if you find the fic could you please drop the link in the replies meta fic isn't really my shit but i want to reread it for nostalgia's sake)? or was it the very first time i listened to the obc recording in 2020? or was it the boot of a broadway production that i first saw on 13 march 2021? whichever one i pick, they all lead to the same conclusion: i naturally gravitated(and sometimes still do) toward the broadway production because it was the first version of if/then that i was exposed to.

now sometime in early april 2021 over my spring break, i watched a recording of the dc production. i knew beforehand that this production is a preview, after which some changes had been made, resulting in the broadway show. since those changes were obviously made to better the production, it would be a logical conclusion that the very presence of those changes entailed a...worse production (not considering the fact that the interpretation and the very liking of art is entirely subjective). one could say i entered the watching experience with an unconscious bias, of sorts.

from the very first note, i was caught off-guard. i didn't know they changed this much. when i watched the bway production, i was just enjoying it for all it was worth. but when i was watching the dc preview, i was comparing it constantly to its broadway counterpart. oh, david's shirt colour is different here. oh, anne's wearing a pantsuit instead of a dress(cute). oh, time for hey kid! oh wait no they put "the moment explodes" right here. also, i was just humming along to the songs, just mouthing along the lyrics(because i have them all memorized), and every now and then and getting thrown way off-track when the tune remained the same but the lyrics changed. most notably, in "walking by a wedding" and "you learn to live without". all in all, i had what one could consider negative opinions about the dc production because of that bias.

but then i watched it second time. a third time. a fourth, fifth, sixth time. and over that time, i fell more and more in love with that production. as i've said before, the interpretation of art is wholly subjective–what one may consider a shortcoming of a particular piece, another may consider a strength. let me take the placement of "the moment explodes", for example. in the dc production, it's before "some other me". therefore, the line "every friend i ever knew or thought i did" doesn't hit as hard because we don't know her situation with lucas yet. even so, "some other me" hits twice as hard because lucas is an even bigger asshole now. in comparison, however, "the moment explodes" is after "some other me" in bway as you all know. so the aforementioned line holds a much greater significance when compared to its dc counterpart. however, one could also consider that line (in the dc production) as a sort of foreshadowing for the reveal in "some other me" of the new normal of beth and lucas's friendship (or the lack thereof).

obviously, some changes were most definitely welcome, "this day" to be more specific. of course, there was that little reprising of "what if?" near the end of "this day" in the dc production which i really loved, but all in all, the mood of "this day" was much more fun and enthusiastic in bway as opposed to dc, which in my opinion is an excellent way to start an act. in contrast, some changes were...not as welcome. i don't know about you, but personally, i really enjoyed two cut scenes from "the story of jane"("no more wasted time" dc version). first, the scene where kate brings her kindergarteners to beth. it was fun to see higgs squirm. second, the scene where elena and beth's interaction parallels beth and stephen's in "map of new york". narrative-wise, i think that it is an incredibly important scene as we get to see two sort of boss-employee relationships mirrored to each other, only beth does it well as a boss (if that makes any sense). we see beth as passionate but still sort of hesitant in mony but she grows to be more self-assured by nmwt, and i think the aforementioned scene only cements that notion as beth takes on the role of mentor for elena. also, "the story of jane" was a really fun song and, as much as i love "no more wasted time", i wish it still contained elements of "story of jane". and while i did enjoy the reshuffling of "the moment explodes" such that it became clear when beth and lucas made up in the bway production, they were ultimately still...not talking during "you learn to live without. as a result, we miss that one scene from the dc production where lucas and kate attend beth's awards ceremony and shoo stephen. and need i talk about the lucas/david duet verse("you get that we're connected, / i feel like you get me") in "ain't no man manhattan"? honestly, i feel like dc anmm was, all in all, better than bway anmm–especially that one verse where lucas sings to this other dude about how everyone is connected(no, not the one to stephen, the one after that. the one that ends with "[something something] / who you helped get elected").

also the situations with stephen and with kate/anne in both timelines were relatively clearer in the dc production. even so, the actual distinguishing of the timelines was better in the bway production.

in conclusion, the relative merit of each production(broadway vs. dc) is really up to the interpretation of each viewer. scenes that may seem weak to one may be considered narratively important to another. both productions have their own merits and flaws.

to me, both productions are equally good. my previous assertion/assumption that the final draft is always better than the first is not necessarily true. some things that you think were actually pretty good get lost in the editing process. some other things that should've been cut (ahem ahem, kate's referrals to lucas with "she", ahem ahem, liz's "i don't believe in independents like i don't believe in bisexuals. pick a side" line) get left in there. art is subjective. the editing process is subjective. in the end, though, the only thing that matters is that you enjoy what you're watching and find personal fulfillment in it. and i do! for both of these productions. for both of the productions, i'm smiling all the way up to "here i go". i'm slightly saddened during "you don't need to love me". i'm empowered by "the story of jane"/"no more wasted time". i'm grinning in liz-verse all the way up to "i hate you". i feel like sobbing during "some other me". my throat clogs up when "i hate you" starts. i'm actually sobbing by the time "you learn to live without" ends.

...you get the gist of it. all in all, both of these productions are phenomenal and i'm grateful for their existence and to have been able to watch them in the year of our lord 2021.

i love this show so much i swear.

i talk a bit more comparing broadway and dc here.

my other ramblings essays:

if/then appreciation

"what if?" vs. "what if?(reprise)"

character analysis of lucas

[theastrophilearchitect]

A new project.

Because the first one wasn’t working. Writing journey #3.

Tue 30/03/2021 - ‘Bay Tree’ Word Count: 42,150 07.27 Hello! So I established in my last writing update that I was taking a break from my WIP ‘Bay Tree’, to return May 10th, and even though I’m not writing today, I just wanted to say that taking a break feels amazing. I’m focusing on reading (granted, I’ve been reading House of Earth and Blood for like two weeks) and it’s really helping ideas for edits develop. 

In my draft, I got to chapter 13 (I think) of twenty-something (because I didn’t fully outline the climax, so I’m unclear as to how many chapters there will ultimately be) but I just don’t think I can get all the way through a draft without first doing some developmental edits. So, for the next few weeks, I’m going to note the changes I think I could make, then figure out which ones I won’t implement, then how I will implement the others on May 10th.

In the meantime, this Thursday, I’m going to start working on a new WIP, which I have quite a clear idea for, but obviously need to develop the plot. So that’s it for today, and I’ll update again for my new project on Thursday April 1st.

Thu 01/04/2021 09.54 It is Thursday! I’m free for a couple weeks! Which means it’s time to start working on a new project. My goal for the day is just to compile some of the various ideas I have into something vaguely cohesive, then I’ll develop it tomorrow, and hopefully make a skeletal outline on Saturday, scene block on Sunday... I’m going to shut up before I set myself a thousand insane deadlines, but I’d like to have started a draft by the end of my free time. So, let’s go.

Wow. Blank documents really are intimidating, aren’t they?

13.04 I already had my core concept, but now I have almost a justification for it--why it happens, and I think I want to build up my world first, then characters, because knowing the world and its various peoples will allow me to figure out how exactly they fit in and develop their motivations, then finally do the plot. I’ll only work out the three characters I’m currently certain will be integral for the plot, because I don’t want to waste time on developing characters who are ultimately unnecessary, like I did in the earliest days of Bay Tree. 

Basically, with a world, I can work out motivations; with motivations, I can work out characters, and with characters, I can create a character-driven plot. I want to focus on creating both lovable characters and a memorable plot--I know all my favourite books have memorable characters, but the ones I enjoy the absolute most are the ones where it doesn’t feel like the plot only exists to drive the characters into relationships (I’m looking at you, Cassandra Clare. Seriously, I love Shadowhunters books, but the technically ‘main’ plots always feel second to the subplots).

Fri 02/04/2021 08.16 Honestly, didn’t get too much done yesterday. Mostly because I ended up down a rabbit hole of researching (though I do think what I learned will help me to form my world), and I was busier than I expected to be. Regardless, I think I want to make this a series. I have a feeling Bay Tree is also going to become at least two books when I revisit it, but I’m going to go into this one with that intention.

Obviously I don’t know how long it will be right now, but I think I’m going to aim for three books, then let it shape itself.

12.25 I just spent an hour writing out a history of the world and how it got to where it is. This is really fun, but really intense.

16.36 So, I have a rough plot in mind. I have an ending, a catalyst, a backstory for the world, and a few characters. And a lot of things that need names. I waited a really long time to name my characters in Bay Tree, thinking they’d be easier to name when I had then conceptualised, which makes sense, but I’d given them numbers with which to refer to them until that point, so it was a long time before my protagonist became her actual name instead of just ‘3′, despite the fact she technically became 2 because I had to cut 1.

Anyway, going to pick names, then let nominative determinism do its thing.

Jesus, I have no good male names. I keep a list of names, first and last, I like for use, but I have so many more female ones than I do male.

In Bay Tree, I used MBTIs as a starting point for personalities, which I’m planning to do here, especially since I know the types so much better now, but I want names first.

Maybe I just ought to choose this specific character’s surname first. Maybe he goes by his surname, or some variation thereupon (like how Daniel Arlington from Ninth House goes by Darlington).

Maybe he doesn’t need a name. Maybe we literally just call him Hero Guy.

God, screw this. He’s Hero Guy until either it comes to me, or I have no choice but to name him.

Sat 03/04/2021 11.15 I feel like crap today. I’ve been doing nothing for three hours, and I, quite frankly, need to get something done. So I’m going to write.

12.41 Wow, initial development really is the hardest bit of the process, huh?

Sun 04/04/2021 08.04 I’d really like to do more worldbuilding first, and character development, but it’s difficult when I don’t know the different parts’ roles. So, today, I’m going to attempt to outline the primary plot points of the three books. Attempt being the operative word here.

13.41 Honestly, yeah, I’m struggling with the plot. I think I managed to get Bay Tree’s plot so fast when I sat down to actually write it because it had been on my brain for a couple weeks, whereas I literally started this project three days ago.

Maybe that’s how I’ll handle this--when I hit a wall with one project, I work on the other to give myself some distance. Working on Bay Tree requires less thought anyway, because that plot’s already mostly figured out. Yeah. I think I’m going to revisit Bay Tree, but for reference’s sake, I’m going to dub the new project... eh... the first thing that came to mind was ‘Feather President’ which is more related to the actual content than ‘Bay Tree’, but it sounds so much crazier. I want to dub it something that actually could be a title, even if it definitely won’t be the final title, because I don’t want people to look at my blog, see ‘Feather President’ in the pinned post and immediately assume I’m insane.

Could always just use an acronym. Let’s go with FSB; those are one of the character’s (also the only character who so far has a name) initials, which may ultimately change, but it works for now. Bay Tree and FSB.

I’m going to end this particular writing stint here and come back in a couple hours, at which point I’m going to switch back to Bay Tree.

I should really stop planning so far ahead when my plans will inevitably change.

15.40 So here’s the plan I currently have that I definitely won’t stick to: at the start of each week, I’ll determine which project I work on (operating Monday-Sunday; if you think the week starts any day but Monday, you’re wrong, and I’m not sorry), and only work on that project throughout the week. So I’ll work on Bay Tree this week, and FSB next week.

I’m going to let myself work on a project for more than one week at a time, but I think I’m going to say I can only work on one for three consecutive weeks before I have to switch to the other. This seems like a good way to stay excited. Yes.

This second? Not completely sure. Might just go read and deal with it tomorrow.

Mon 05/04/2021 - ‘Bay Tree’ 11.37 Actually really glad I just sat down and read--I read about 200 pages yesterday in total, which meant I could easily finish the last 100 pages this morning. So I finished Starsight (the recent reads post will probably be up by the time this one is)--was anyone aware the A Court of Silver Flames paperback is £24 on Amazon? Anyone?

Anyway, we’re returning to Bay Tree today, after nearly two weeks (I know that’s not even long), and I’m going to attempt to implement my edits, by which I mean I’m going to put scene changes at the bottom in brackets, then technically implement them when I redraft.

Tue 06/04/2021 - ‘Bay Tree’ 09.11 I didn’t exactly accomplish much yesterday. I spent a good few hours just watching YouTube, because I didn’t have any motivation to do work, which screwed up my schedule, and I did no writing aside from transferring my list of edits from my phone to my document. I started reading Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater, but didn’t get very far in--I’m obsessed with Stiefvater’s writing style; it’s the perfect mix between typical prose and fairytale-style storytelling. Anyway.

I’m going to switch to a new Scrivener project for the sake of cleaning it up--Bay Tree is a hot mess right now--and hopefully begin to implement my edits--maybe not today, but certainly this week.

Thu 08/04/2021 - ‘Bay Tree’ 16.53 So I haven’t yet had a day where I’ve done nothing (since my break finished), but the last couple days I’ve just been doing tiny amounts of what I’m calling ‘reference pruning’, where I’m just editing and clarifying character, worldbuilding and location documents. I’ve ‘pruned’ five character references, and I hate it. It needs to be done, but it doesn’t need to be done now. I’ve decided I’m just going to completely clear out the new Scrivener project I started for Bay Tree, and add stuff to it as it becomes necessary. I’m going to make notes of overarching edits (stuff I can’t just note at the bottom of a scene), and just get started with draft 1.7, adding and editing references as it becomes necessary. I’m also going to say I just need to spend an hour writing a day, rather than a word minimum.

Okay. Edits established. Things to bear in mind established. I need to go through the character profile for the POV character in chapter one, then we can get started. Or rather, I’ll get started tomorrow, because I need to go cook soon, and even if I do have time after dinner, I’m not going to, because I’m going to read then. Okay. Character.

I’m getting excited again!

Oh, and the setting. I need to do the setting document.

I’d like to draw attention tot he fact one of my character documents describes her as having ‘black upturned gold eyes.’ 

Clearly I couldn’t pick a colour, but now I’m inspired to give her heterochromia.

Character done, and setting undone, but I need to go cook now, so I’ll pick this back up tomorrow, when I may also do some actual work.

I just hope these posts give someone security in that writing is a messy process, and you don’t have to be perfect all the time to be a) competent, and b) a writer. I’m a competent writer, and I’ve only ever written about 60% of a draft. But I’m still going, still trying, and that’s the point.

Fri 09/04/2021 - ‘Bay Tree’: 484 words 09.15 Okay. So we’re redrafting, and this is like my fourth draft of the first chapter, so let’s just go.

Sun 11/04/2021 - ‘Bay Tree’: 576 words 09.01 Yeah, I missed yesterday. Ironically, having time off seems to be making productivity more difficult, despite the fact I actually have time for it. 

09.19 I feel like this project is making me stagnate. I think what I have is almost subconsciously tying me down, preventing me from improving, but I don’t want to just restart, because I want my bases, and it’s so ingrained in my head, I can’t physically start from scratch. Crap.

I think it needs to sit for longer. Crap.

It’s alright. I mean, it sucks, but it’s alright. It’s not like there’s any ideal age to become an author anyway, and I’m a long way off the average. I have time, and if it takes shelving projects now to complete better ones later, so be it. Maybe I’ll return to Bay Tree in a few weeks, or a few months, or a few years, or never, but I’ve learnt a lot from it.

So we move on.

Mon 12/04/2021 - FSB 08.05 This post is such a mess. I’m a mess at the moment. Today, we’re just continuing to work on FSB’s plot, and I think I’m already going to change the name of the character whose initials are FSB, so its nickname will probably change, too.

I had a trilogy in mind, but looking at it now, I think a duology will be best to convey the arc I have in mind.

21.51 I’ve actually accomplished quite a lot today--I’ve mostly been doing character profiles, but that helps me form tidbits to add to the story, which I can eventually string together. We’re progressing.

Tue 13/04/2021 - FSB 08.37 Hello! I think I can safely come to the conclusion I prefer development to actual drafting. Anyway, today I’m going to focus on completing the character profile for my other protagonist and do a little more work on another important figure. Then, I hope to be able to figure out the drive of the main plot in book one.

On another note, I am debating whether to plan out two books or three. Mulling it over, I think three books would give a more fulfilling arc, but it depends if I can work out enough content for the main plot. We’ll see.

Yeah, it’s going to be three. Two just can’t carry the impact I want.

20.00 I made pretty good progress today, but I just wanted to make the point I’m a lot more confident this project will hold my interest for longer than Bay Tree. This was something ruminating in the back of my mind for weeks, that I was desperate to write, where Bay Tree was very much a ‘sit down, make something up’ process at the beginning. Anyway, I think I’m done writing for the day, and I’ll get back to this tomorrow. (Because unlike most writers, I have a functional sleep schedule)

Wed 14/04/2021 09.19 Honestly, my head is empty right now, so I really need to open my project before determining what I want to do today.

Okay, so we’re basically just going to continue filling in holes.

14.50 Working out the plot, I’m pretty confident I’ve got the A plot covered, which the B plot will fit into, but I need more subplots.

Thu 15/04/2021 10.12 I want to work this one out mostly on the fly. I have nearly the whole of book one plotted out, but I want to work out the fine details as I write it; as I go, I’ll add more detail to my outlines of two and three. But for now, book one.

15.28 I’ve got basically the whole of book one covered; there’s just a gaping hole in act one, that I’m not sure I can fill. I mean, I can fill it, and I will, but I don’t feel like it’ll be that intentional of a thing. I think it’ll be more of an accidental idea that happens to flourish, but I’m going to keep working nonetheless.

Fri 16/04/2021 14.08 Good afternoon! I would’ve started writing earlier, but I wanted to catch up on the reading I didn’t do yesterday to make sure I finish A Court of Silver Flames within a week, so I can return the ebook and get a refund, because, despite being £6 cheaper than the paperback, it still cost me £8, and I want my money back. (Seriously, the paperback is fourteen pounds on amazon. Which is nearly twenty dollars. Which is pretty standard for a hardback, but it’s the paperback.) I’m about ten pages off meeting my minimum for the day (though I need to surpass that if I do want to finish it within a week), but it’s writing time.

14.37 I’m still establishing how, exactly, it applies, but I think I’ve solved it!

Definitely happy that as I’m planning, all I want is to make the characters happy, because I already love them so much. But they don’t get to be.

I have a section on a Pinterest board that’s just called ‘Simping’, and is just pictures of couples doing cute as shit things, and I literally just want my characters to dance together. Always. In Bay Tree, in FSB. Just dancing.

15.04 I have book one covered. It still needs development, scene development, but I can now move on to outlining book two, during which I’ll continue to develop one, integrate themes and such. 

Honestly, the plot falling into place is absolutely the most exciting part of writing. I get an adrenaline rush (yes, while sitting in a chair, typing), I start to love the characters, the world, the story... ahhhh.

I’m actually really satisfied with how the plot seems to be going.

16.44 The word ambiguous has too many Us in it. Three vowels in a row??? And the vowel sequence is a palindrome?? Don’t want it. 

I’m just sat here discovering new music. And it’s all so good and so dramatic and so perfect.

Okay, why do I have to come up with ideas so easily when I don’t need them? Then when I do I have nothing?

17.51 And just to clarify now, this post will actually end with Sunday the 18th, because after that I’m going to take three weeks completely off writing (aside from noting ideas), because I have a lot going on, then I’ll return on May 10th.

Note to self: develop a character who isn’t one of your two protagonists.

Sat 17/04/2021 10.23 I’m thinking I ought to do a more in-depth outline of book one before doing the basis of book two. Help me set up subplots and so on. Yanno, because other characters need some kind of agency, and I currently basically have two characters.

Sun 18/04/2021  08.52 I managed to plot out Bay Tree so fast because I’d already done so much development--plot was the only thing I was still missing. Anyway, I’m having a minor crisis. I think I’m a plotter, but I’m not entirely certain. It clearly didn’t work for Bay Tree. I think I may just start a draft of FSB now, and hope that lets me work out the other two books as I go.

In one of my excessive plans I will probably fail to stick to: I think I’d like to write a draft of the whole trilogy, all the way through, before even editing book one. I’ll obviously make notes of edits as I go, write as if I’ve already made them, eg. if, while writing book two, I have an idea for a book one edit, I’ll write book two as if I’ve already implemented it, which means I’ll have a little less editing to do of book two.

I have this all planned out in my head, but I’m probably being overambitious. We’re staying optimistic, though. I don’t believe in manifesting, but we’re manifesting.

14.23 I want to say I tried. I got a few details for the first couple chapters, but when I opened a doc to actually write it... nope. I need an outline to have a starting point. I just need detail.

Scene blocking sucks. But then I can’t write without it, so what can you do?

And I guess that wraps up this update. Writing this section, I’m about halfway through the writing break, and I have so many more ideas for this project. I was excited for Bay Tree because it was the first time I really made progress, but I’m excited for this one because I genuinely love this story. This post is going up May 14th, at which point I’ll be back to writing, and the next update should come mid to early June. 

And that’s a wrap.

[pipermca]

Writing Update - March 2021

So, March was a little bit of a banner month this year because I officially finished the longest fic I’ve ever written, Mind, Body, and Soul.

What didn’t happen, though, was me making my target wordcount. I’ve had a standing goal of 10,000 words per month for quite a while. In March I wrote 7,058 words, well short of my goal.

What happened? Well, there were a few things. First, I was just tired. Not necessarily of writing! Heck no. Ever time I go for my lunchtime walk I come back and spend about ten minutes pouring notes into Trello on a fic I was think-writing in my head as I walked, before I have to get back to work. But in the evening, my mojo to write is just gone. I’m tired.

And... I re-activated my WoW account. I cancelled it back in Legion and completely missed Battle for Azeroth, but I’m intrigued by the current storyline and I’m interested to see where it goes. Which means running the raids to get the whole story. Which means gearing up enough to be able to run the raids. Which means levelling up to get the gear I need. And if I’m doing that I might as well level my alts, too, and...

(*sigh*) Once things fall into a grind I can definitely see myself cancelling my subscription again. But for now, especially since I’m so tired in the evenings, it’s nice to just sit back and kill virtual dragons. 

I was also a little worried that the Word Machine was broken, but the fact that my muse still wants to write makes me feel that it’s just fine. I simply need to find the energy to write. I’ll get there, I have faith. And besides... 7000 words? Not too shabby!

I’m going to lower my word count goal for April to 5000 to see how that goes. (If you’re not reaching your goals on a consistent basis, try re-evaluating the goals!) And no, I am not doing Camp Nanowrimo this month.

Anyway. I did publish things, all of them in the same universe as Mind, Body and Soul! Here we go.

Posting

Mind, Body, and Soul. My magnum opus. The Big Fic. It’s done. It clocked in at just under 300,000 words. One of these days I’ll give it another read from start to finish. I’ve heard it’s pretty good. 😅

Knell. One of a handful of “other POV” stories I had in mind when I was writing MBS: what Barricade experienced when Praxus fell. 

War’s End. Since MBS was told solely from Bluestreak’s POV, I didn’t get a lot into Prowl’s head. This fic is just a very brief glimpse into the friendship he had with Ironhide. 

They Grow Up So Fast. Ah! This is an “extra” fic that I wanted to tell ever since I realized how the fic was going to end. It was a lot of fun to write, and I tried to have Eos walk that tween line between annoying and cute. 😁

WIPS

These are vaguely ordered in priority of how much my muse wants me to work on them. Whether they get finished in that order is anyone’s guess.

The King and the Bounty Hunter. 900 words. This is, of course, the next story in the Alt Modes and Alchemy series. It’ll be sort of like After Tempest, so I might handle it the same way: posting the individual chapters to Tumblr (and/or Pillowfort, if it ever comes back up) as drafts, then moving them to AO3 once they’re fully edited. Right now it looks like it’ll be about (?) the same length as After Tempest, too; maybe a bit longer.

Life Goes On (Working title.) 2300 words. This is the last planned fic in the Praxian Trine series. Other working titles are Family Meeting or Empty Nest.

Next Fantasy AU story. 1100 words. Working title is vauge so I’ll be mum on it for now. Right now it’s just disjointed scenes.

Must Like Cats. 4700 words. Sparkr series fic. I’d really like to finish this one.

One More Night. 3400 words. TFP AU fic. I’d really really like to finish this one.

May to September (working title). 1000 words. Humanformers fic. 

Next next Fantasy AU story. 0 words, but lots of notes! The working title is HUGE and very funny (IMO) and I’d love to at least get some words down for this. 

[incorrecthousamoquotes]

IncorrectHousamoQuotes in 2020

read me first please

so the blog anniversary was like... April 16. circumstances in 2020 made it so I feel like I owe an explanation for what I’m doing, and at one time I wondered if it’s necessary for a dumb meme blog but I know people care about this dumb meme blog. so this will be mainly 3 parts:

how narwhal had been feeling about the game in 2020

the future of incorrecthousamoquotes

closing remarks about the Tumblr community

how narwhal had been feeling about this game earlier this 2020 (spoiler alert: bad)

ok before I continue I want to say that I’ve been doing fine for myself in real life. I do acknowledge that I have the privilege of remaining financially stable this year and I am happy that I was able to keep my job I was just hired for in the beginning of the year. that being said please let me be internet melodramatic.

if you’ve known me personally and talk to me frequently in Discord servers then you may already know how I’m feeling in 2020. there’s a lot of people that don’t, though.

as part of me being internet melodramatic I do express the anger I felt toward the game and the fandom (outside of Tumblr) but I do not feel or say that the game, the fandom or anyone in particular did anything wrong. my purpose is not to criticize anything or anyone but just saying my feelings.

other than that, some of these feelings may be exaggerated and I do not guarantee my explanations of my feelings will make sense or be sufficient explanations for myself (then again since when did feelings make any sense)

basically me in 2020 was a result of major burnout in this game and the fandom.

my burnout technically began back in Christmas 2019 aka Mistake Christmas (I have feelings about this event but I choose not to elaborate right now) but I think the first thing that got me feeling burnout was late January with Main CH10 and translated CH9. until this point I liked to make self-deprecating jokes about how I haven’t read story yet but this was when I first began feeling I didn’t have a place in the fandom. like... who knew self-deprecating jokes could have a negative effect on my psyche if I think about them enough. how I can explain it is... in the past I wasn’t particularly crazy about new content in particular but I felt like I can vibe with people who were and I did have an interest towards new content. but CH10 was the first time I actively disliked new content and I took it really personally the fact I didn’t try to catch up with main story, so I started to mentally separate myself from the fandom even though I had no reason to. mostly because I held myself to more expectations than anyone would ever put on me.

so after Mistake Christmas & CH10 I ended up losing a lot of enthusiasm especially towards new content. I ended ignoring Val Timeslip completely but I did really like the Great Gendarme rerun. but my burnout hit an all-time low in April during New Semester 2020 which I will refer to as Worst Semester. now at this point I wasn’t looking forward to anything new at this point and the worst part about Worst Semester is that it was basically CH10 Part 2: about half of each banner was characters directly from CH10.

and this was when I started feeling angry at the fandom like an old entitled fan who hates change and can’t stand when people are having fun; basically it was a mix of envy and self-hatred that I couldn’t find anything to be excited about at that time. how could anyone like any of these characters, is what I felt.

that was even without considering the thing that tanked my mood for my blog in particular: summosnap. like even without considering the self-deprecating jokes about being cancelled it forced me to look back about how I’ve been running this blog and how I haven’t made a single new quote in 2020. long story short I kept comparing myself to the high expectations I put on myself and it ruined my motivation to work on what I’ve planned for the anniversary. so the blog anniversary passed completely burned out.

now I have been feeling better because the next few months weren’t particularly new content: May was just rerun month, and June was technically new but was basically from an old game that I liked a lot, so nostalgia has helped me feel better. now it’s July and we have completely new content and I’m feeling anxious over whether I’m willing to accept new content or not. right now in early July I’m actually focusing on other games right now (and reading main story on the side) so I’ll gradually start making more stuff for the fandom.

the future of incorrecthousamoquotes: the Tumblr

if you followed this blog in the past year, then you would know I didn’t have a regular schedule of making quotes in 2019, even though I did in 2018. in 2019 I did make quotes but it was released in batches every other month or so.

even in 2018 I’ve always made other Housamo content, so I’ve always given the impression that this blog is for whatever I feel like making (at least I hope I’ve given that impression) so when I remake my info pages, I will be taking the focus off of incorrect quotes. I can still make them when I get the motivation (and to clear my drafts of submissions I’m sorry) but my info pages won’t mainly talk about incorrect quotes as much as me just making whatever I want for Housamo.

I would like to make more personal posts like I did in 2018. For some reason I held off on the personal posts in 2019, but I think that contributed to my growing mental self-isolation and my eventual burnout. on a related note I’ve been ignoring my askbox and I’m sorry for that. one of the major reasons is that some of the asks I’ve been sent I have no answer to, but in the future if I have no answer to them I might just publish them anyway hopefully to start a discussion and have other people respond if they like.

I’m also going to be more open to just reblogging things because that’s something I’ve always been hesitant to do on this blog for some reason.

what hasn’t changed over the years is that I’ve always covered game news and game info and have taken time writing guides for this game. this will not change and I’ll continue to cover news in the future.

I still have unfinished projects in general and I hope to get them done this year.

the Twitter

as for my Twitter, I have mentioned before that I opened it again this April and will be using it just for uploading the video memes I make. growing the Twitter is not a priority for me, so I have no plans to change that right now.

--which is what I said before I clowned myself trying to make tweets that never took off so I’ve deleted them, sorry for trying to be an attention hoe

starting this month I’ve also permanently changed the name of the Twitter to summemepedia, which better fits the content I make.

closing remarks: I am so grateful for the Housamo Tumblr community

despite how I felt about this game in 2020 I’ve honestly never felt happier for the Housamo Tumblr community posting and writing about what they love. Tumblr as a blogging platform that encourages creativity is a website I will defend with my life and even though Japan mostly uses Twitter so it’s natural Housamo will revolve there, I will still be happy for anyone that still decides to use Tumblr.

I’ve made a list of blogs here that I’ve been saving for anniversary before I had my burnout so you can check out the list and suggest additions to it if you’d like.

[the-last-airbadger]

My 2020

Hey y’all. So 2020 happened. That was a thing. Apparently. I know for a lot of people this year was uhm… pretty shit… but it was still a year that happened so it’s time for my annual reflection post (probably the only time I still post about myself on tumblr lol) and maybe we might even find some good things that happened this year!

 The Beginning of 2020 vs Now

So, a lot has changed since the start of the year. A pandemic happened, for one. I can’t believe that a year ago I could still go to class every day and see my friends and now I’m pretty much stuck at home every day. The year started out pretty normal and then march happened and well, you all know what happened next. The worst part about the pandemic for me personally was probably the fact that I barely see my friends anymore and I can’t go to class every day. Some people may not think that not going to class is that bad, but I really enjoyed university more than I ever enjoyed school and I was really happy going there every day, and I was already sad I’d only have 4 to 5 years to spend there, so when that period got even shorter it made me kinda sad.

On the other hand, I do think that mentally I’m in a much better place than I was last year around this time. Being home this much really gave me time to reflect and work on my issues, and because my sister was stuck in our house for a couple of weeks I got to talk to her a lot which really helped me feel better. I think in general my entire family (my brother, sister and mom) have become a lot more open with each other which I think is great! I guess quarantine can have some benefits.

 The Best Things about 2020

Okay, here’s is where we’re going to get even more positive and go over all the good things that happened (to me) this year! To be honest, most of the year was a bit of a blur so I probably will forget quite a bit, but I’m going to give this a try anyway. At the start of the year (when things were still normal) I was super excited to get into the next semester, as the one before had,,, kinda sucked, and those 6 weeks of class I had at the start of the year were really great. I remember me and my friends having a competition of who could get mentioned the most in our teacher’s powerpoint presentation so those classes were always interesting. I also finally got to dye my hair for the first time with the help of my friends. I’ve been wanting to do that for so long, and I’m so happy I finally got to do it! I even know how to do it myself now, and my hair hasn’t been brown since the start of march! Then, at the start of march, my dad and stepmother moved away and I permanently moved in with my mom. Before, I used to live with both my mom and my dad and I got really really sick of switching houses every week, so to finally live in one house and have all my stuff in one place was a bit of a relief to me, and I’m still really happy with it. After that, things become a bit blurry. I remember that at the start of quarantine in … April? I watched Sex Education or the first time, which is now not only one of my favourite shows ever, but also taught me a lot and helped me with some of the issues I was dealing with. We’ll skip over the subsequent sexuality crisis I had (I think I might actually be straight??), and skip straight to the summer, when I started watching I-Land. I watched every episode as it aired live, and because of this show my Fridays really became the highlight of the week. I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in a survival show XD. The rest of the year was mostly just me spending time with myself. It got a bit lonely sometimes, but I also don’t think I’ve ever written as much as I have this year, and my drawing has significantly improved (if I may say so myself)! Especially towards the end of the year, when I started making a planning every day to prevent myself from wasting away all my time on youtube, I got super productive, and I wrote a lot, and made a lot of art, and I really felt good. I even started (gasp) working out. Yeah I know. Shocking right.

There was also a lot of good music that was released this year, and, to close this section on a great note, through one of my classes I finally found a group of friends to play D&D with! We haven’t actually played yet, but we will, and I’m so excited to play the game and get to know these people more! They all seem really kind!

 My Resolutions for 2020?

Now, here’s the part where we check whether I actually reached all the goals I set myself for 2020. As usual, I have no idea what my resolutions were, so I honestly have no idea how I did. Let’s see, shall we?

Express my feelings more (as in I get really awkward in any sappy or mushy situation but I would like to be able to tell people I appreciate them without cringing) – UHM way to attack me on the very first resolution jeez. I did get more open with my family but I still can’t tell people I care about them without cringing so this is a fail lol

Again, learn to depend less on other people’s opinion and trust my own – I’ve been working on it, I think I’ve gotten a bit better? So win?

Get my sleeping schedule back on track – did that! It’s a bit whacky again now because of the holidays, but October and November were a big success regarding this resolution

WRITE MORE. This time I’ll make some concrete goals: Either I’ll get my story’s first draft done, or I’ll write 100 pages on a single project – okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t think I did any of these particular things, however this time I am 100% sure I wrote a lot more than the past years. I cannot count all the files and pages and notes I have now, but I wrote a lot, so I’m counting this as a win

I want to try NaNoWriMo (not necessarily in November, but at some point) – yeah, didn’t do that oops

I want to read a lot again but maybe not as much as this year because I want to focus on writing too. 40 books? – 49 books babey

Read all my current unread books (Aru Shah 2, Skullduggery Pleasant 9, Gemina, The Mistborn Trilogy and Call Down The Hawk) and finish my reread of Heroes of Olympus and the Raven Cycle) – Did all of these except Skullduggery Pleasant 9 (the start was so boring I decided not to read it all) and The Mistborn Trilogy (I am about halfway through the first book I think?) so I’m counting this as half a win

Finally read a book by V.E. Schwab (I’ve been wanting to try one of her books for ages) – Did that! Read a whole trilogy. It was good but not as great as I expected them to be. I think my expectations were too high though

Finish Playing Twilight Princess (I promised my brother) – Did that! I’m really proud of myself and so is my brother

Go. Swimming. Seriously. It’s scandalous that I still haven’t done that after waiting so long to be able to – IT’S BEEN 5 YEARS SINCE I LAST WENT SWIMMING WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. I did buy new swimshorts but I still haven’t actually used them… shame on me

Try to worry less about school and not overwork myself – kinda?

Maybe try another drawing challenge somewhere this summer? I haven’t done any of those in a while and I feel like my art needs more attention – okay, so I didn’t do that, but I did at the start of the year make the resolution to make portrait/photoshoot-like drawings for my 8 main oc’s, and I did actually manage to finish that, and they are some of the best drawings I’ve ever made, so though I haven’t actually done a challenge specifically, I did do something

I want to try a 24 hour readathon – Yeah, didn’t do that oops

I kinda want to learn a piano piece as well, but I already have so many hobbies I want to focus on so I don’t know if I’ll have the time ☹ – yeah my dad sold our piano so… fail XD

 Expectations for 2021

Now, after last year I think it’s safe to say we can never really know what to expect. But! I’m going to guess anyway because it’ll be really fun to see next year whether I got anything right.

The first thing that I think will probably happen this year (if I don’t majorly mess anything up) is I’ll be writing my thesis next semester, and then in the summer I’ll get my bachelor’s degree. Honestly I can’t believe how fricking fast those 3 years went, but I guess I’ll just have to roll with it lol. Corona vaccinations will also probably start happening next year, and hopefully this will mean that going outside and seeing my friends will be possible again next year – at least a lot more than it was this year. I hope 2021 will be the year of hanging out with friends and getting to live a little again. Maybe even get to go to class. That would be great.

On to more minor – but no less exciting – things, 2021 will probably bring us a new season of Sex Education! I’m sooo excited for that holy shit. And, in a similar vein, I have high hopes for kpop releases now that SHINee is finally back, and it looks like Haseul is also returning to LOONA! 2021 will also be the year in which ENHYPEN makes their first comeback, and some of the other I-LAND contestants will also make their debut, and there might even be a new season of I-LAND as well in the summer? So there’s a lot of things to look forward to. Oh, and I almost forgot, Dan Howell’s book will be released in May, and there will be a new Grishaverse book, and the Shadow and Bone show will start airing, which I am really curious about. Again, lots of things to look forward to!

 2021 Resolutions

I’m not feeling as ambitious as I was last year, but there are a couple of things I want to try and do, so let’s jump into the resolutions!

I just came up with this today, but I think I want to try and build a bit of a skincare routine? The skin on my nose is kinda flakey, and I think it couldn’t hurt to try and take better care of my skin

Keep up with my daily workouts. I want to work out every day, except when I’m at my dad’s or when it’s a special day, like Christmas or something.

Be able to do either 50 push-ups on my knees, 25 normal push-ups, or both

GO SWIMMING

Keep up with planning daily! It’s a really good way to balance all of my 3195 hobbies and it helps me to not get stressed about school

Write (almost) every day. I need to make it a habit

Draw at least once a week, every other day if possible

Go outside at least once a week. That doesn’t seem very hard but with corona I did not realise how little I go outside if I am not forced to. Sometimes I spend 3 weeks without going out and I don’t even notice it. That can’t be good for me lol

Try to make healthier food choices. Maybe follow the lunch meal plan of the guy whose workout videos I follow.

Get my bachelor’s degree

Grow a beard. I’m getting closer… I know I’m getting closer…

Meet with my frIENDS and give them the alBUMS I have for them

Be more careful with my money, maybe even save a bit of money

Spend less time on social media

Read more educational books

I think that’s it! I can’t think of anything else right now so these will have to do. I wish that 2021 will treat all of you much better than whatever mess 2020 was! Happy 2021!

Last year’s post: (x)

@the-official-pentacorn @asiandutchgirl

[erinhime83]

Since it’s been a day and my muse has shifted back into being interested in this story again (seriously, yesterday it did not want anything to do with WfS, which was annoying, because all I could think about Friday was potential details about the third, fourth, and fifth books. Nothing concrete – I have a plot for the third, and possibly for the fourth, but the fifth is just minor stuff right now), I figure it’s about time I do some sort of reflection on this damn thing. It’s not going to be very long (I think), because I’ve forgotten most of what I wanted to say about this because of course I have.

I had realized that I needed to do with story back when I was redoing ISoF, since this is the only story I’ve ever not won a NaNo with. Even though I didn’t finish the first version of ISoF, I still managed to get my 50,000 words in.  Here, I got something like 17,000 or 26,000, not sure. I had attempted to work on it right after I found out I was pregnant, and I got all depressed because I thought I couldn’t be creative anymore.  But in all honesty, this was actually a good thing, because the story I had was all shades of not going to work very well.  Which is sort of why I struggled with it to begin with.

I’m not sure why I didn’t think to try it sooner, other than my muse was on different stories before this. So when it somehow shifted to WfS to the point where I decided to tweek the first book a little, I instantly knew I had to attempt July camp with it.  And seriously, attempt.  Like, I got it in my head earlier that I should try to go back to how I used to be with writing, popping out book after book, and I wanted to see if I could do it in a NaNo month, since the schedule I had used for November with the girls was still in place.  And it worked!  It really worked!

RIiighht up until Covid decided to shut everything down and I absolutely panicked to the point where I couldn’t write anymore.  It didn’t help that I was plantsing the book, using the basic outline I had but also making it up as I went along.  I, like, lost steam right at the end there, so yeah.  I might have been able to continue with it if I had an idea of what I was doing.

And the same could be said about my April Camp attempt.  Sure, I had my tooth issue that made it impossible to write and then, since I had lost a couple of days, I just couldn’t continue.  Because I had no idea where I wanted to go with it (I have since figured it out potentially, and considering I do really want to get into the new Cosmic Dreamers, I may finish that one soonish). So even though I could have finished it later, I haven’t yet.

I did go into this one nervous as hell that something would happen and I wouldn’t be able to finish again.  Except this time, I did have a full outline, I wasn’t plantsing it, so I might have been able to finish it regardless.  But no. This time it went to @callistochan87.  So…I guess we gotta keep an eye on @anijeltaventry in November. Or if I want to write again.  (I feel bad being grateful that it was her and not me this time, and I feel like I might be able to since it was a crazy easy fix, she wasn’t in immense pain, and it sounds like her vision might not be completely damaged?  I hope).

In any case, its sort of funny how tweeking just a couple of thing from my original idea completely changed what I had planned, but also changed my view on this one.  Like I said, the original idea I had was garbage, and I never fully finished the outline because I couldn’t make it work very well.  I was bound and determined to bring the other Volturnians from the crossover story into this one, and once I determined it was simply not possible, everything fell into place.  I mean, just like the whole thing with Techna.  I want Techna to be a thing, but she doesn’t do much.  She’s really not useful in the story.  So when I did away from her, again, everything just fell into place.  More so than taking out the Volturnians.

And taking out the Volturnians was made possibly simply by creating Alan.  See, one of the reasons why my muse was on WfS in the first place was because I wanted to watch a couple DC films.  Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen are my favorite, since they focus on the Lois/Superman relationship, and obviously I am all about that.  And one of my favorite aspects of the new animate universes is that they always have Hal Jordan and Barry Allen be, like, BFFs IRL before the Justice League is formed.  So I was like, I should do that.  I should create a speedster character, and then have him be BFFs with Specter.

Except originally, Specter was an alien.  That’s actually why he looks so opposite of Greg, with the pale skin, pale hair, and pale eyes.  His species was supposed to be the anti-Volturnians.  Also, the idea behind Spectrum was that they were all blind, and were able to ‘see’ thanks to the bracelets, but they could only ‘see’ basic colors.  So if something was kinda red, they’d see it as straight red, that’s sort of thing.  Oh, and Specter was supposed to be the villain. 

Yep, what was supposed to happen was that he himself was going to arrest Greg for being a Volturnian on Earth.  And then Lane would convince Roselyn to take her to Volturnas to get him back.  And Miles was supposed to end up with Roselyn’s half-brother.  Yep. 

But giving Jordan a human BFF made me decide to make him human as well, and I think it works out so much better!  I mean, I didn’t know anything about Spectrum until I was literally writing about it, but now I had this world-building thing that I can expand on for the next book, so yay!  I was actually going to make it so he was blinded by the accident, but I sort of liked the idea of him being born blind, so the suddenly seeing thing would be more of a shock.  Plus, if he had been blinded, then really, he could just always use his powers and never tell anyone he was blind.  So...yeah.

(Also, I still love their names.  Like, literally, I named Jordan what I did because Green Lantern’s last name could be a first name.  Which is why it’s Jordan Halstrom.  So I had to do the same with Alan.  Alan Barnett instead of Barry Allen.  Also, the name Speedy comes from Green Arrow’s sidekick, which I always thought was a better name for Kid Flash then, you know, Kid Flash.)

Looking at what I had originally planned and how much I ended up like Livianus, I realize that I could have had Miles end up with him instead of Jordan.  I mean, I’m sort of mad at myself for deciding to make the rainbow superhero gay, but I randomly picked him instead of Alan. Which I think makes more sense. Alan is fricking nineteen.  Miles might be only twenty-three, but I think the press would have an absolute field day with that. At least with Jordan, there’s only a three year age gap there. >.<

Let’s see, I’m not sure if there’s really anything else to mention.  I mean, I sort of had fun at the beginning of the book, because it really looks like it’s going in a completely different direction than it took. But the thing is, when I was first planning WfS, I had two storylines I could have one with.  The first one is the one I wrote, where Greg is a superhero and blah blah blah.  The second storyline involved Greg being taken back to Volturnas when he was a teenager, and returning when they invade, and reuniting with Lane then.  And then he and Lane attempting to stop the invasion and stuff.

And I guess after doing WfS, I realized I could still use some of the ideas of the second storyline. Like where Greg is taken back to Volturnas and Lane sneaks on the ship to go back with him, and her becoming one of his concubines.  Sort of. So that’s where the whole plot of WCBH came into play.  But as a result of the first act, I know what I want to do with the third yet-to-be-named book. 

And also a Specter and Speedy prequel, and I’m like, damn, am I going to have time for all these books? Yeesh.  Like, the prequel will be weird because Lane and Greg wouldn’t be in it, Miles will be mentioned, and, oh yeah, it’ll be told from a guy perspective. >.<  But I still want to do it someday!  *cries*

I did like how there was only one day where I had to play catch up, which is actually unusual for me.  I always look at my days off when I’m not feeling writing a chapter and go ‘well, it’s easy to write a twofer or a chapter and a half those days!’, like I give myself an easy out.  BUT thanks to convincing @callistochan87 to review the chapter after she read it, it motivated me to not only put a chapter out, but having it done before she got on so she could have a chance to read it.  Which I severely miss.  I was seriously sad on Friday night knowing that was the last time she was going to do it. Unless she, like, decides not to write in November.  Then I could look forward to that then.  But I doubt it.  ;_;

I think the worst thing that came out of all this was, despite not thinking about it ALL DAY YESTERDAY, my muse decided last night to give me breakthrough with my idea of rewriting WfS where Greg didn’t ghost everyone when he decided to become Ultro.  Like, I love the idea, and I was struggling to make certain parts make sense, but now I really want to do it.  And the even worst bit is the back that my breakthrough makes it really stupidly easy just to go back, rewrite the first couple of chapters, and then just edit the rest of it.  So, like, now I really, really want to do it!  And I might! Because it means I don’t have to rewrite the series and be really annoyed that I can’t have Miles and Jordan together already.  :D

So yeah, that’s where I’m at at the moment.  Fun times with the muse.  Bleh.

Still, I know I’ll look back on this book and be happy with it (except for the fact that I’d have to go back and tweek some things thanks to the rewrite of WfS).  There were some things I struggled with, some ideas that I thought were stupid but had to use to move the plot forward.  But that’s the best thing about first drafts!  I can rework it all later to make more sense.  I’m so happy that I’ve gotten this one under wraps! It only took over three years to do. XD

Thank you so much, @callistochan87, not for taking one for the team, but rather motivating me to write this and keep going with it.  I know you think you didn’t do much, but just the fact that you were reading it helped so, so much, and that’s pretty true for all my stories!  So I’ll always thank you for that.  :D

I probably missed some things I wanted to say.  I always do, it seems.  ^^;

[mtg-thrill-of-possibility]

A Reflection on Magic, the Pandemic, and the Dark Side of Arena

Hello to all the readers who may stumble upon this in the search for new Magic content. I wrote this mostly to fill a void in my life that has opened up over the last year and more of a mental health thing than some form of Magic related advice but since it is about that, I thought they’d go hand in hand. I love Magic. Or at least I have loved Magic? It’s hard to tell. Like nearly everyone on this planet, I’ve been shut off from in-person Magic and it had/has me left down. I normally volunteer at my LGS and help them organize their tournaments and judge the events and generally whatever else they ask me to do because I really love Magic. I love playing with my locals who don’t spend hundreds of dollars and craft GP/MF level decks. I love watching a group of people playing draft chaff and off beat home brews and where adults and teenagers can compete with one another on that level. I enjoy sitting off to the corner on the store’s EDH night and listening to games and drawing tokens for games in my own corner while I wait for my own games or sometimes my ow turns. I also love traveling with my wife to cities and go compete in GP/MFs where we usually both scrub out of the main event by round 3 or 4 and then hit the vendors and side events as well as explore the cities for new restaurants. I miss Welcome Days where adults bring in kids and I show them the ropes. I love meeting adults who poke their noses in and ask me “Magic is still a thing? I played that in high school” and show them the changes. I can still remember the Theros Beyond Death prerelease last year and thought how much fun it was to not work the event for once and just play. And looking back, boy am I glad I entered the THB prerelease.

February was the start of the downturn. Our EDH night was slightly less full but I just figured it was due to the weather since the winter usually has a downturn in the attendance for every event. But then the rotating cast of 10-15 FNM players was 6; Pioneer on Saturday had 3. The next week, the EDH crowd was down to from the usual 6-8 pods to 2. FNM and Pioneer failed to fire. The news that COVID-19 was starting to creep into the Midwest prompted me to ask the store what precautions we wanted to take and when we were going to stop in general.

I work in chemical research and I have a background in pharmaceuticals and once (or twice) studied the MCATs and considered going to med school. I was definitely concerned but in February it hadn’t reached my state (yet) and I wanted the store to be ready for the imminent shutdown and continued downtick in participation (my LGS and I had been strategizing how to move up in events and the store ranking on the WPN). But it’s a red state. Science denial must be a recessive trait that the Midwest incorporated into its identity for a long time and I was told that I had some freedom but to not go crazy. I thought I’m a volunteer. I’m not spending what little money I have on stuff for you guys. So, I did the best thing I could think of for free, I started a Discord server. I was really excited at the prospect. I had just bought a webcam in case my workplace started working from home and thought how cool it would be to be able to organize events in Arena and talk through Discord when the store wasn’t available. I asked if we could hang up a flyer and tell all the Magic customers that they continue with tournaments and Magic if they joined the Discord I set up in the store’s name.

My LGS asked how much this was going to cost them and I said exactly as much as it costs them now if not a little less since we don’t need the store’s utilities or a cashier behind the counter in the after hours to work the tournament. They were happy and I got the greenlight. Things worked okay at first. Those with Arena accounts showed for a few weeks. Others I knew were interested were convinced that we were overly sensitive to the virus and FNMs continued to limp along with 4-6 people until everything ground down to a halt.

Come mid-March, COVID had finally reached the state and the city. Cases were light, a few hundred people tested each day, single digit cases detected but I again was worried. My workplace had already begun educating everyone on how to wash their hands properly and disinfect every surface and everyone was issued a bleach spray bottle with their name and a serial number on it. While the mayor and governor hadn’t ordered a shutdown yet, I advised strongly that the store go ahead and if they wanted to continue that I wouldn’t be there to assist until the curve was sufficiently flattened.

I’m not sure why but they trusted me and listened. I was glad and I pushed again for people to join the Discord server. Players were reluctant but I assured them that this may be the future for some time and if they get on now, they can still get the Ravnica intro quests and start building up their Arena collections. I got more on my side, we had 8-10 and got them all to try and hook anyone else they knew to join us. However, by the end of March, my workplace had moved to 100% virtual and with my extra time, I had begun to unwittingly shift the power dynamic in the store by accident. You see, I really love Magic. I was now working from home for a job that required me to have direct physical access to hundreds of thousands of dollars or sensitive equipment that need recertification when they get moved 12 inches down a work bench and dangerous chemicals I don’t want near me unless I know there’s an inspected chemical shower nearby. When the campus shut down, I got very bored. I did what research I could from my home portal, attended virtual conferences and webinars every day, but I had tons of down time. That meant watching my wife play Animal Crossing, playing with my dogs, marathon sessions of Civilization but most crucially, I also began grinding Arena.

My local meta had been defined by the understanding that none of us were really Arena players. I had played when the Kaladesh and Amonkhet closed betas were happening, but I was turned off by the fact that all my playing of those formats amounted to nothing when it launched with Ixalan and I would start from square one. Everyone in the group typically shied away from tier 1 tournament decks because to all of us, it was more fun to goof around with RG auras and Tilonalli’s Summoner decks than it was to grind Esper Hero or the new Uro decks. And the limitation that everyone didn’t have all the shocklands meant we were all playing on roughly the same card pools with some variation due to our play styles. So when I suggested we all start playing Arena to replace the tournaments, it worked because it meant we all played the same dumb decks we’d play in person with a few exceptions of having less than perfect mana bases.

But I would find myself grinding Arena everyday where my friends and locals were not. Even though I jumped into Arena at mid-March, I finished the Theros Beyond Death mastery at level 78 when Ikoria began to creep around the corner. I had just begun to get back into Magic when Fate Reforged hit and didn’t realize how much I love wedge color alignments over shards but boy did I love Abzan in Khans standard and now I was in love with Abzan again in Ikoria standard. Grinding the way I did meant I drafted most afternoons for the first month of Ikoria (and forced Temur every time) and started climbing the ranked ladder in the evenings. Ikoria would also mark the first time I spent money on Arena. I’m notoriously spend-thrift in video games and anything you can free-to-play I do religiously because you shouldn’t make a game grindable over the course of years if you give me that option. But drafting took gems and I really love drafting but most people at my LGS are too concerned about rares than learning to do it properly and a lot of younger players feel lost when I draft a zero rare deck and go 4-0 and collect my prizes. By the end of April, I would reach Platinum in constructed and Gold in limited. But now my LGS was far less inclined to play with me. I didn’t brag about any of my rankings but the skill disparity had begun to creep in as well as the difference in our collections. Having played so much Arena, I could see the tells the software gives away that paper Magic doesn’t. I learned to read when the game would hang up on the beginning of combat and end steps because they’re holding potential responses. I began to do the full control shortcut to bluff counter spells and removal. In paper Magic, if my opponent would sequence things wrong or tap their mana wrong, we’d make jokes and rewind it because it’s one of those human errors that we all make and redo it the right way.

But Arena was different; some learned the hard way to not trust the auto-tapper, some didn’t realize that the way they normally stack triggers in paper is backwards and too late to fix after a spell or ability resolved. And I couldn’t help them. And I let them make their mistakes because I can’t change Arena. If they use the auto-tapper and they realize that Arena doesn’t tap the Castle Vantress even though they couldn’t activate it anyway and they lose a dual source, I couldn’t help them. If they have the lethal Explosion in hand but forgot to hit Control in their second main so they can stack the Wilderness Reclamation triggers in their end step, I don’t concede out of pity.

In May, I try and keep the Magic going by suggesting that we shift the format to a draft limited but they’re unconvinced of the website that allows you to simulate an 8-person draft and then import the drafted card lists to Arena. Why? Because they don’t have the cards already and I’ve changed the dynamic. They know I’m much more skilled at Arena and Ikoria drafting. The news has also been reporting that the curve was flattening, and our state was lifting restrictions on gatherings. They want to play EDH and paper Magic, not this digital intangible game. I reluctantly agree but keep grinding on Arena anyway. My friends didn’t want to play Magic on Arena and I couldn’t understand why. I was getting burned out on drafting at this point and the drafts were harder to fire off a month and a half later, work was returning on a limited schedule where I was onsite 75% and virtual 25%, it really did seem like things were returning to normal.

In June I finish the Ikoria mastery and at this point my wife had begun to show more interest in playing on Arena and trying to get her account a little more stocked since our normal paper system is I aggregate everything we typically need and I make her desired deck and hand it off to her to wreck people on FNM but since I didn’t have to judge, I got to play and we couldn’t both play from my account at the same time. I casually start hers and I get the wild hair that maybe I should make a loaner account in the store’s name and if anyone says they don’t have the cards, they can borrow the store’s account for the tournament. I make the account but put the pipe dream on hold when Wizards announces that in-store play can resume with the Core 2021 prerelease. I could read between the lines and see that the curve was trending the wrong way and thought it was a bad idea but at my insistence, everyone would have to wear a mask at all times and hand sanitizer was available every 15 feet and the store had lots of space for players to spread out. The turnout was low which helped as well, and I had everyone who showed up at least aware that I was trying to keep the Discord going and that in case there’s another shutdown that there was another avenue for them.

Well, I got my wish because within a week of the launch of Core 2021, my state had regressed, and cases were exploding and gathering restrictions were sent back in place. Shortly after that, Wizards suspended in-store play again and with that I created the store’s Arena account. At the time, things were pretty good. The locals weren’t playing as much and my server was still fairly empty but most of the Magic Twitch community I interacted with had strongly adjusted to the new paradigm. EDH streaming was commonplace, I had my new Arena account to focus on building up as well as my own. Pro level events and Opens were being held on Arena and the expansion of Amonkhet Remastered gave me hope that Magic was on the mend. But I also think it was with Core 2021 that things started to slide into the negative for me. Grinding the second account was frustrating me a lot. The lack of human interaction was tilting me out for no reason. Some days the server would have me wait a whole minute (the horror?!) for a game and then my opponent would be the world’s slowest red player where everything seemed delayed. There would strings of games I would play where I couldn’t get a third land drop after a mull to 4 and other times where I’d flood out and would have won if it weren’t for generic whiny reason why everyone says they lose.

Maybe it was when I began to see that Arena is not Magic the Gathering as much as it is a video game that it began to really sour on me. For those of you who don’t play a lot of Arena and instead interact with humans over webcams is that Arena is designed for you to not play off beat home brews except in direct challenges with your friends. The game is meant for you to play the best combination of 75 cards and for you to help it machine learn through millions of matches what is and what is not the correct play pattern based on the available information you have. It wants you to play the very best decks in a format against the other best decks. I started to see this in Ikora standard when decks would scoop if you were on the play and went turn 2 Agonizing Remorse. Decks were and still are so linear that they can’t handle that kind of disruption or it’s a matter of the players know it’s faster to accumulate wins by scooping than grinding out a long game.

If you need evidence of whether or not this is true, you should play Arena now and see how often people scoop against the double Ruin Crab opener with a Fabled Passage back-to-back. Or if an opponent against your Lurrus Auras deck will time out when they know they can’t win. In paper Magic, when you drive 4 hours to a major venue, pay your entry fee, you never see your opponent rage scoop unless it’s Legacy and you know what your opponent’s on and you mull to zero so you can see what’s in their deck. You call a judge to your table if they start stalling. Nothing is more annoying that an opponent spamming “Good Game” at you through a match when it’s obvious that you’re not killing them that turn but they’re empty handed and have nothing relevant on board.

I’ll admit myself that what my wife calls “Wizard Chores” for the Daily quests, if I’m 1 red spell short of finishing a quest, I’ll log in for one more game and Boulder Dash my opponent’s creature or cast Shock to face and immediately scoop. Who is that helping? I’d spend the week at work in my down times thinking about what dumb cards I hadn’t played with from a set, start making a list, furiously find the cards on a Friday afternoon and grab dinner with the wife and then race to my LGS for FNM.  Magic used to be something I only got to do twice a week with people in a shared setting and we’d unroll our playmats, shuffle up our jank, and laugh and generally have a good time for three to four hours. With Magic at my fingertips, Arena is a distillation of efficiency at spell slinging combined with the minor rewards system we’ve come to recognize the free-to-play traps to “encourage” us to play different things. If I want to play 100 matches in a day, all I need to do is sit at my computer long enough. If I want to play my old jank on Arena, I can’t even count on the Casual play channel to help since it’s always filled with people with 55 of the 60 cards that make the best deck learning how to play before they commit the wild cards for the deck.

Zendikar Rising has been a pretty dark point for everyone on Arena I believe. It seems like a lifetime ago that Omnath was printed and that I had immediately cashed in four mythic rare wildcards for the deck I would get to play with on Arena for 2 weeks before Wizards realized their mistake. Honestly before I had started writing this in the week before Kaldheim will hit Arena, I forgot that Omnath was part of the most recent set as all I can remember Zendikar Rising giving us is the extremely irritating Ruin Crab and Soaring Thought Thief. The few locals I had left on my Discaord server when ZNR released had lost interest in Arena since they enjoyed the Ravnica standard that was rotating out and Pioneer was not yet available for Arena. I’ve encouraged nearly everyone I know from my LGS to buy webcams since October given that the current state of the COVID world is not likely to go away and the new culture and channels that have opened up in the world to fill the void of EDH has some level of benefit even when in-person play resumes. Not many people play and I’ll search for an occasional game on the official Discord when the craving strikes. Some of my friends have been taking advantage of the webcam world and started playing older formats with me over webcam such as Pioneer and Modern to rekindle their love for Magic and the hope that we can start playing tournaments over webcam. Finishing up the ZNR mastery passes on my two accounts and my wife’s account has been giving me a much-needed break from Arena and honestly, it’s probably done the most to lift my spirits.

I’ve been taking a lot more time to reflect on why I love Magic and I plan on doing in the future. The first thing I know I’m going to do and stick to is not get a Mastery Pass for mt LGS store’s account. They don’t pay for all the work I put into the one already grinding multiple accounts is not good for my mental well-being. The second thing I know I am going to do is relearn how to have fun in Magic again. Not really hinted at in this article so far is the fact I love the art in Magic and I’m often inspired by my own crazy mind to illustrate my own works or reimagine my favorite cards with my own art. Since the release of Rise of Skywalker, I had been working on a personal project of creating a second expansion to the largely underground Star Wars the Gathering card game and ended up making 200 unique, draftable cards. I wouldn’t call myself an artist because I’m still learning and I don’t necessarily aspire to an artist but I would love to improve my skills and one day make a piece that’s so good someone wants on a card. Over the last two years, I’ve been deeply jealous of how amazing and hard working the Magic cosplayers are and that I should put my art to good use and make my own cosplays. And then there’s the playing of Magic. I miss the Gathering part of Magic. So this brings us to the bedrock of this piece. I hope to continue this blog steadily as time moves forward. I’m rarely ever satisfied or have my attention on any one project for too long but 2021 is a new year. And I hope that the title is a hint to the future. Whatever it is; whether it’s deck construction, art alters, or Magic cosplay, story, general discussion, that’s what I’m here for. It’s the Thrill of what I might work on next and I promise because I’m terrible right now at doing so, I’ll be sure to take pictures and try and stream when I can to keep myself honest about the whole deal. I hope you’ll all join me or at least join the Discord to yell at me.

[prettylittlelyres]

My Year in Writing (2020)

Hello and Happy New Year! I thought it might be nice to share with you all an overview of what I've written in 2020.

First of all, let me say that I haven't written nearly as much as I wanted to, but that's OK, and it's OK if the amount you've written feels or looks pretty similar. The point is, it looks some way (I daresay pretty) because you've taken up the pen and put some words on a page.

I don't want to gloss over how bad aspects of my 2020 Writing Year have disappointed me, because that would be as silly as casting a damper on the whole thing by focusing only on the trickier bits. What I'm aiming for here is a balanced review - even if it's a rather informal one - of my achievements, and my feelings about my writing this year. In the interest of balance, let's start with something GOOD!

Right at the beginning of the year - around January - I started redrafting a rather fabulously dark fantasy romance, of which you've probably seen a little bit on this blog: Songs from the Crypt Forest, which I dropped after 9,800 words, because I wanted - and needed to work on my first dedicated book, and on my Year Abroad Research Project.

I managed to write about 17,000 words of the dedicated book in its original form before I realised that it wasn't quite working, and that I ought to try a different tack. The story I was telling there is a story I still want to tell, but I just wasn't ready to write it at the time. I'm hoping to pick it up properly in 2021.

I realised I needed to try getting back into the world I wrote in 'Violins and Violets', by writing something set around the same time and involving some of the same characters. In March, I started writing 'Book J', for which I didn’t have a proper title until I was nearly done with its first draft! I gave it the working title 'Book J', because I was writing it for my friend Jenny. By the time summer came round I had 52,000 words, and a first draft that was as complete as I think it ever will be.

Lockdown hit my life quite hard in Spring 2020, and I lost my language assistant job in France when all schools closed, and I had to come back to the UK to live out the academic year with my parents. Nevertheless I had to carry on working with my Year Abroad Research Project, Which I was able to hand in by 18th May, having squeezed all my findings into a dissertation of 6,000 words.

Now that my YARP was out of my way, and I had no more work to do for university, I started redrafting Jenny's book, now called 'Vogeltje', and cut it down to 44,000 words, which I polished until August... when I had copies printed for Jenny, so that she could read a book written especially for her. I would have given it to her in person in France, but lockdown happened, and I ended up posting her copies from one part of South England to another. A rather typical outcome for a meetup planned in 2019 for 2020, I suspect!

During lockdown, I also trained as a proof-reader and copyeditor, and did some volunteer work for a company that needed translators. Online training courses have been a godsend, and I've particularly enjoyed a novel writing course and a travel writing course that I've been following. The novel writing course has pushed me to flesh out plans for a number of books, including more detailed and cohesive outlines for 'Songs from the Crypt Forest' and 'The Night Has Teeth' (two books I want to write in a similar universe), along with my on-again-off-again WIP 'The Manylove Quarter' - and the plans for these three alone come to 7,850+ words!

I moved back to Southampton in July, and took August to start drafting 'The Manylove Quarter ', but that ended up petering out with about 19,200 words of prose on the page. Still, I spent a lot of time querying, and got plenty of reading done, so - especially considering the heatwaves in my area and a pretty enormous academic crisis in my record (fixed in November, after writing a LOT of letters and reports!!! So, this is where I send a million hugs to my lecturers and tutors for all the help they've given me, thank you, thank you, thank you all SO MUCH!!!) - I still felt fairly well-accomplished at the end of the month. I also did quite a bit of painting.

In August and September, I started typing up the journal I've been keeping since the beginning of April, once I'd settled back into life in the UK, to keep track of my feelings about the pandemic and my reactions to what I've seen or heard in the news. I write an average of 6,000 words per month, so I'm coming up to 50,000 words on the whole thing (but have yet to type up November or December). One day, I'll use it to write some extremely illustrious memoirs about how much fun, I had stamping up and down the stairs in my parents' house in order to get my steps in! (I really did get quite fit, though, and I want to get back to it in the New Year!)

At the start of September, I published a 2,500-word travel log my university's "study abroad" blog, all about how much I came to love the French city of La Rochelle, where I spent my 3rd year working. I think I will polish it at least a little before I post it here, but I would love to post a redrafted version on this blog!

My final year of university (BA Modern Languages, French and German) started in October, so all my reading and writing that month - or so it felt - was linked to my course. However. I've lost count of how many pieces I've translated between English, French and German, just to prepare for each class. I love my course, but it doesn't leave much energy for anything else!

Welcome to November, when all my graded assignments were due at once, and the associated stress started taking its toll. Luckily, my tutors were there to help me get extensions for work I couldn't hand in on time because my brain had turned into mashed potato. By the middle of December, I ended up with a 300-word translation and 300-word scripted scene for French, a 1,000-word commentary on a translation into English, a 2,500-word essay for French History, and a 2,000-word short story for German, which I've translated into English, and will post here any day.

This has really been a big year for letter-writing, especially since I came back from France. My cousin and I love writing longhand letters to each other, as I love writing them to my grandmothers, and, as such, I've written about one hundred letters this year! My cousin and I have kept every letter we've ever sent each other, and these collections have approximately doubled in size since the start of 2020.

I keep trying to redraft the first chapters of 'The Manylove Quarter', but never seem to get very far. With about 3 redrafts started since Autumn, I'd say l have about 1,000 words typed up. I can probably say the same of the story I'm trying to write as a kind of Standalone, kind of Sequel to 'This Still Happens' and 'Curls of Smoke', except that I'd put those around the 2,000-word mark.

If my Mathematic capabilities still stand up, I estimate I've written about 210,000 words in total this year (not including text messages, letters, emails and entries in my regular diary (which I keep separately to my pandemic journal)), which. honestly, makes me feel a little like I've failed myself.

That's why l'm making this post, actually, to address that feeling - because | know it's not rational, so I'm not going to call it "that fact" - and to tot all my work up in one place, so that I can see my achievements as one big hulk. Looking at my 2020 in terms of projects l've actually finished, it's disappointing! But to look at 2020 as a final wordcount makes me feel an awful lot better. My sister just pointed out that "210,000 words" is "nearly a quarter of a million words", and, put in that way, it's much easier to feel like I've accomplished something of which I can - and Should - feel proud. I've written a lot this year!

Now l'm asking all of you who feel like you've "not done enough work in 2020" to reassess the way you're looking at it all, and to see that:

Productivity shouldn't define how much you feel you're worth, no matter how productive you've been. Please don't fall into the capitalist trap of thinking you're only "doing the right thing" if you're working! You're worth a huge amount and you deserve to be proud of yourself!

You've achieved a lot more than you first thought, whether in the projects you've finished, the number of words you're written, the ideas you've had, the research and planning you've done, the time you've put in, the skills you've honed... OR THE FUN YOU'VE HAD! It all counts, and it's all important, and you can be proud of all of it, just like you can be proud of yourself.

If you don't feel like you've done enough, find a new angle from which to look at what you have done. I'm willing to bet someone out there can see how brilliantly you're doing already. Try to see yourself through that someone's eyes!

[never-not-ever]

Can you share your story with us? You can do it ❤️

Thank you! It wasn’t that bad… The 8th graders this morning were paying attention which was nice but no one asked questions in the end so it was like a little awkward lol. But after that at the high school I was a part of 5 periods where the kids would shuffle in and me and my co peer mentors would sit at the front like a panel. Since there was a bunch of us we didn’t all have to present each time but I ended up doing mine twice!

Also just to preface this, my story is not the full story. The first draft I sent to the coordinator was like 10x long and over time we shortened it and tried to not make it as descriptive/triggering… but here ya go!

“Freshmen year of high school, I was sitting in class joking with my best friend about how it was going to be my last day in school. I had an annual physical with my doctor later that afternoon. This was my first doctors appointment since I started self harming. Back then I thought that the second she saw my arm I was going to get taken away by two men in white coats. I didn’t go to a psych ward that day. Instead, she asked me if I was okay and I replied “I’m fine, it was a stupid thing I did, I promise I won’t do it again”. She handed me a little white card with the name and phone number of a therapist. I often wonder what would have happened if I actually called that therapist and got help back in high school. Would the self harm have stopped? Would the suicide attempts have been prevented? Would I have graduated from college by now? Who would I be if I got help back then?

I think I had a pretty normal childhood. I didn’t have a mom and a dad but I had my Nana and my Aunt. My Nana got custody of me when I was 2 and she and my Aunt raised me my whole life. My Aunt was like my mother and everywhere we went people thought I was her daughter. I have no memory of my father. He was an alcoholic and left before my mother lost custody of me. My mother has her own problems with mental health as well as a drug addiction. We tried to have a relationship but as I grew up I saw who she really was. By the time I turned 15 I wanted nothing to do with her and I haven’t spoken to her since.

Growing up I was really close with my Aunt, she was like a mother to me, a real one. My Aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was in middle school and she was constantly in relapse and remission. For months it would disappear and then all of a sudden it would come back again. I went to a small middle school with probably about 15 kids in my class. I was the biggest person in my school. At the 8th grade dance all the other girls wore cute dresses and I wore pants and a nice shirt. That wasn’t my style but I was just way too self conscious to ever wear a dress. In high school I was once again the biggest person. I had a couple close friends but I hated being around people, always fearing that they were judging me for my size. I had a friend online who introduced me to self harm. He was always bullied so he starting hurting himself as a way to cope. You see I was never bullied. I was always overweight but no one ever called me names or made fun of me, at least to my face. I was the bully. To myself. I hated the way I looked, the things I said, the way I interacted with other people. I hated everything about myself. I always scolded myself for saying or doing the wrong thing. I started self harming in my freshmen year. Back then I didn’t see a future for myself. I was so depressed that I wasn’t thinking about the consequences I’d later face because of my self harm. My depression, along with my extreme self hatred, turned my self harm into a way to punish myself.

After high school my depression and self harm got worse and I started feeling suicidal. My Aunts cancer was back and had traveled throughout her body. She passed away in April of 2012. She died at home and I watched her take her last breath. Right after she passed I ran up to my room and tore apart the suicide notes and threw away all my self harm supplies all while telling myself “I have to be there for my Nana, I can’t leave her too”. My Aunt’s death made me feel selfish for feeling depressed and suicidal. It made me think of all the people who have it worse and here I was so depressed and wanting to end my life? It didn’t make sense. But I wasn’t choosing to feel this way and I had every right to feel the way I did. It took me a while to realize that but I know now after feeling such joy and happiness I wouldn’t chose sadness and depression, no one would. For a while after my Aunt passed away I thought maybe she was watching over me and so every time I had that urge to hurt myself it was easily pushed away. The day my Aunt died it was like I put this shield up and I automatically started comforting everyone around me so I wasn’t actually grasping the fact that she was gone. Later on that fall I tried to go back to school but my depression got worse and the reality of my Aunt’s death finally came to the surface and so I ended up dropping out. The self harm started up again and it was now a full blown addiction. 

Almost a year after my Aunts death I saw my first therapist and later that summer my first psychiatrist. I spent a year in therapy while working part time. I tried once again to go back to school but for the third time I dropped out. I was severely depressed, self harming and binge drinking alone in my room. I was soon admitted to a psych ward at McLean Hospital. I was there for a week and on the day I discharged I went home and attempted to end my life. The memories of that day will haunt me forever. Back then I didn’t think about how my death would effect the ones around me. When I hear suicide survivors talk about their lost loved ones it hurts to think I could have put my friends and family through that.  

For years after that I started this cycle where I would feel fine, happy even, for months at a time. But then out of nowhere I’d slowly start to feel depressed again and the self harm would start up. Depression looks different for everyone but for me it’s not wanting to get out of bed. It’s pushing away friends and family, always feeling like a burden. It’s staying up until 4 am and not waking up until the late afternoon. It’s binge eating and gaining weight and climbing up past 300lbs. It’s hating everything about yourself and the person you’ve become.

I’ve had to go back to the hospital a couple times since my suicide attempt. There were no scary men in white coats like I had thought. Going to the hospital is needed if you’re in danger of hurting yourself. It’s a place to go if you can’t keep yourself safe. A couple years ago I was feeling suicidal and I vaguely talked about it on Tumblr and thankfully someone called the police. Back then I was so angry at that person but looking back they probably saved my life. During one of my hospitalizations I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder which was something I had never heard of before. BPD is a mental illness that consists of intense mood swings, self harm, suicidal thinking, bad body image and impulsive behaviors. 

Finally I reached a point where I wasn’t constantly thinking about ending my life. I started Dialectical Behavior Therapy, the most successful therapy for helping people like me. This type of therapy can be done outside of the hospital so it allowed me to go back to work and school. It teaches you skills to help manage your emotions, maintain healthy relationships and handle stressful situations. I’ve done many different types of DBT therapy, residential, partial programs, groups and individual therapy. But I’ve finally gotten to a place in my recovery where all I need now is just therapy. It’s become a weekly place to check in and talk about any red flags before they become another spiral.

McLean hospital and DBT have literally saved my life. I mean, I saved my life but DBT taught me the skills to not destroy my relationships and myself. Today I’m in a healthy, stable relationship with my girlfriend and we’ve been together for 3 years. We just moved in together last summer and adopted two little black kittens. Last fall I passed my first classes since 2015 and I know now that I want to work in the mental health field some day. I’ve lost a lot of weight and I’m starting to feel more comfortable in this new body scars and all. I work full time as a florist manager and I’m now part of this amazing peer mentor organization. I might not be here today if someone didn’t call the police back then. I wasn’t able to reach out for help so I’m grateful that someone else was able to do it for me. It sounds cliche but it does get better and if you had told me that back then, I would have laughed in your face. After 12 years I still have urges to hurt myself and sometimes I hear a song that reminds me of the day I tried to end my life and all I want to do is sleep to escape those feelings. But it passes. The urges and the sadness and the hopelessness. It all passes. I think of my cats and how amazing it is to feel the sun on my arms. I think of things that help me chose recovery instead of resorting back to old behaviors and that’s how I know things are different now. Thank you.”

[halberdierminister]

July Monthly Goals Check-In

1. Write 250 Words Each Day Well, I started out very faithful to this. But sometime around the middle of the month, I got pretty choppy. I honestly don't know exactly how many days I skipped. I'm gonna try to write a fair amount today when I can and hope that it is enough to make up for it. Which is fine. It has been an otherwise very productive month in many other ways, so I cannot be too upset about it. I may start running a wordpress blog with a friend of mine, and if I do that may keep me more on track with these.. We shall see. We shall see.

2. Read 55 Books This Year I finished reading 55 books in May! Last month I read 10 more books. THIS month, however… I read 31 books. That brings me to a total of 97 books read for the year!!! A lot of them have been VERY short books. Lots of poetry collections, manga volumes, graphic novels, etc etc etc. But not exclusively!! I was hoping to get to 100 books by the time I wrote this but the last couple days, I have not been able to make the magic happen. But that's fine! That's TOTALLY FINE. This will be a very significant get, but I have months to get over that hump. By the time you hear from me on this goals check-in next month, I will undoubtedly be decently well over 100 books, and I can talk about why that personally feels so good then!

3. Get A Full Time Job I did not get a full time job this month. BUT. I applied to 38 full time jobs. Got a bunch of rejections. HOWEVER, I have scheduled EXACTLY ONE JOB INTERVIEW so far so that is good news! And that would be a VERY good job if I were to get it! Some of these jobs are actually pretty exciting things and I feel confident for the first time in a while that I might actually find a good job IN MY CAREER PLAN!!!! Also I almost lost my part time job but the library director was able to convince the village to let me stay on as a substitute, and it has paid off surprisingly well. I've been working two to three shifts a week on that, which is more than any of us expected. So I guess what I'm saying is I am making good progress again and I hope I can have something positive to report by the time I'm thirty. Eugh.

4. Move Out Speaking of being almost thirty. I really do not want to be here. If I get the job I interview for, I would be able to move in with my friends in Milwaukee just about as soon as possible. So that is good news. Every day it gets more tempting to just say "screw it" and live down there. But that won't help me find a job. And the job really is the important thing.

5. Drink Less Soda I mean yeah. Occasionally, I drink-a the soda. But not too much. I am good at drinking less soda than I did last year or the years before that. That's because I would have several sodas each day, to the point where it worried some of the people I know.

6. Get Something Published Just found out that I'm getting something else published today! So that is one new poem published this month! I also had my fic in the Lalonde Zine come out, but it turns out that the Lalonde Zine was more of a shared Google Drive folder than an actual zine. Maybe I should offer to compile the zine into one document? I should do that. That would be a good thing to do and it would give me a lot of experience with doing that, something I haven't really done in a while. So the practice would do me good! And then I would feel better saying that I got published there too. But yes so besides the Lalonde fic, I have had two poems published in zines, one poem published in an online literary journal, and one fic published in an online fanzine this year! If you include the articles I wrote for school newspapers, I have gotten at least one thing published every year for the past fifteen years. If you don't count the articles (or the Lalonde fic yet), I have had 30 pieces of fiction and poetry published since 2005! That's pretty neat! I want even more though!!!!!! I found a publisher's website that accepts unsolicited manuscripts. I'm going to try to put together an honest to god actual collection of my poetry, one bigger than either of the two digital chapbooks I have made. I have a friend who is a professional editor -- not of poetry, mind you, but I might be able to convince her to give it a shot -- and I would honestly hire her at full price to take a look at it. I actually will need to seek a lot of feedback from a lot of people, so if you want to read a document full of a bunch of my poetry, lemme know and I will show you what I've got when I've got something.

7. Finish Writing A Legitimate Businessman Finished in April! No new news. But just because I completed this goal doesn't mean that is the end of it! I do still have the sequel to work on, even though I haven't done any of that this month. And one of these days I am going to get around to sitting down with the printed copy and a pen and editing the shit out of it so that I can write draft #2! I think I'll probably throw draft #2 up on wattpad (why not?? I've been curious about that website and know absolutely nothing about it) and maybe I'll make a nice looking e-book out of it that I can distribute on noisetrade or itchio or something! I wonder if I could get it printed on demand or something. Obviously not for profit. But like, maybe I have friends I want to send a nice printed copy to.

8. Write More The Revelation of Takaya According to Jin Finished in Februrary! No new news. A friend of mine has offered to bind a copy of it when he has access to the materials, and I think that'd be dope as hell. I ought to work on compiling it into a nice document. I don't know if that's what he would need. He would probably want to do that work himself. Sometimes I think about the concept of making an illustration for it? I don't know. I can't draw. But I might not need to draw for the thing I have in mind. Really I should be consulting with him on that. Ah well. Either way, I hope that ends up happening. That would be so friggin cool.

MINOR GOALS

9. Finish Playthroughs Of 1. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild: Finished in January! 2. Persona 1 Main Quest Good Ending: I didn't do anything on this whooooops. Getting into the second half of the year without once having touched it. I ought to get back to this. 3. Pokemon Sword: Finished in March! 4. Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Finished in February and March! 5. Persona Q2: I have finished the fourth dungeon and gotten to The Twist!!! It's weak. This really is the kids' version of a Persona game. Minus like… the fact that it's still rated M for partial nudity. There was exactly one moment of horror and even that was like… just a bit scarier than The Nightmare Before Christmas. But I did some of the side quests and those are actually decently fun. So I have the final dungeon left. I just wanna sort of power through this. I'll worry about completion when I do new game plus, whenever that might be.

10. Record More Ukulele Videos I did not do this. I want a new microphone. These are not inherently related things, as I do have a microphone already. I have everything I need to do this. I just haven't done this. And I would like a new microphone. Also, an amp for the uke would be nice. I should text my old coworker, see if he still has one to sell.

11. Record Let's Plays Neither did I do this. How could I? My parents think video gaming is the Devil's Lettuce. And they are always home. They would notice if they heard me talking to my computer. And that is assuming that I had something I could play on my computer that anyone would want to watch. I need a better computer. A gaming computer. An editing computer. I'm lucky that these are the same thing.

12. Duolingo? I was SUPER gung ho in the end of June and the beginning of July, but before too long I petered out. I've used a couple streak freezes and have really been doing mostly the bare minimum to not drop out of the emerald league. But I've got a streak of about 208 days, and that is nothing to sneeze at! Do I feel like I'm learning? I dunno. But I am at least interacting with Spanish just about every day so that… that's got to be helpful, right? right?

This was over one thousand five hundred words. Wait! Sixteen hundred exactly.

[momiwanabeanautistwhenigrowup]

So here I am. Doing the one thing I have steadily avoided for the last 4 years…somewhat.

I shouldn’t start off this way but fuck I hate writing. And there goes the first impression, etched forever in your subconscious.

She’s not going to be happy about this. Meh.

So I’m a 30 y/o stuck in this hellhole and this is my story? I guess. I mean it’s really ours.

I basically made this account to vent ..uh then I realised I’d have to go all the way back for it to make sense…and I guess my life has always been this series/rpg game so it might take shape in that style. I’m mostly explaining this to myself.

Jump to 2016. I started this biography venture bc in my short 25 years I’d amassed a set of experiences that were not so average middle class life experiences, and not in the good way. Now if you take my story and place it on the backdrop of each life on this earth then, in my opinion, my life is pretty ordinary too. Hence the (reason I tell myself there was a) delay with finishing this biography. Anyway so I sat down to write this thing a total of two times(fucking literary genius) in 2016, sometime in April if I recall correctly. It was horrible but necessary, and then I guess I found magic? And decided to halt production since well…I was busy coming into awareness. I still have the draft on this pc... I stopped when I was 10 years old.

Jump to 2020 and I’m in front of this computer with Tumblr as my backdrop in order for me to feel like I have and audience and therefore someone to talk to (I decided to type this shit out on word before copy pasting to tumblr bc apparently I don’t like living on the edge??)

I’m high as fuck (I would like to say.. but na, I’m just regular high off some freshly home-grown microwaved weed.) anyway this is probably going to be my last indulgent ingestion of the stuff. Hopefully.

Don’t get me wrong, weed isn”t to blame and I have people I can talk to, but the problem is

Everyone

Has

Their

Own

Shit.

None I know has the space. I’m the most equipped to deal with myself. To me, that is deeply unsettling right now. Like… most people don’t even know where to begin and..well..I’ve been here before so I know what to do and honestly it’s fucking shit haha.

And as shitty as I feel, it doesn’t change the fact. I gotta figure this out on my own.

I’m a 30 y/o natural med student in my second year of my 5 year degree. I live at my parent’s house in a relatively good neighbourhood, I have the most comfortable bed, a loving cat, a good-looking bedroom and many middle class luxuries…like an en suite. I have a very comfortable house to live in and there is always food whenever I feel like eating or even just to cook for fun(my talents lie in the kitchen, potions, medicines and treats are my favourite pastimes, I love to nourish people. Don’t let it fool you though.) it’s c o v i d year rn and I don’t pay for shit.. factually, I’m pretty privileged to have all that I do physically.

My parents have always been around in physicality, even when they weren’t there, especially when they weren’t there… which was and still is a lot.  And in rolls one of the overarching themes emerges. Welcome welcome.

I got that far and took a Facebook break, bitch she runnin

So yeah I was born in this bitch back in 1990, two guys got here before me, one 11 years prior, the other 3 years after the first. Then I showed up after our parents reconciled after a 6-month separation. But like…that doesn’t happen in my life till 2019.

I’m currently contemplating piercing my lip or nose but I threw out all of my old jewellery. Geezus, it’s her and she is 22. (side note to myself,  please ignore)

Anyway so yeah I get borned unto these guys; a drummer butalso telephone technician and an accountant, both were raised as worker bees but are actually uh..nope. spoiler one is a caster the other is a timekeeper. Both mages, but they don’t know.

I was this scared to shit little creature of a child. I slept between them once It was safe to do so (I know almost nothing about kids but I’m assuming it’s a safety hazard to sleep next to new-borns? let alone to let them sleep between two people whom are also asleep. Also, I recall sleeping in this white, wooden cot thing which used to chill next to their bed. It opened up like some gates did in those medieval(<-never understood this word tbh) castles, the ones that go vertically up and down. (Yes, I remember. I remember realising I was back on this plane when I was 2 months old, it’s my earliest memory-trust me this becomes highly unimpressive once I turn 23 so hold on before you think I’m lookin for clout on this one). Like I get that that is cute and all, legit I was cradled in safety but like, that cradle started to close in very soon. Too much of a good thing changes poles kids. Leave Jesus alone he wants to have some him time.

So yeah a lot happens that was quite significant during these first 4 years but I don’t remember much but a few glimpses. Bouncing on my dad’s chest, the lounge on a sunny Sunday, mom in a beige coat, long pretty hair, a family vacation where I wore this 2 piece I loved and there was a blue waterslide tube, a fight about racism (early 90s, go figure..but like also 2020 fr) a roller-skating rink, a “haunted” forest walk, Easter…. man that vacation was fun. Most of the things I remember were from age 4 onwards. But I do have snippets of before.. playing dress up with my cousins, hiding in cupboards, hiding behind makeshift tents, maaaaany makeshift tents, talks about camping outside by the pool (oh we had quite a nice sized house with a huge yard and quite a big pool too, I learned to swim when I was two, I spent a lot of time in and around water as a kidling) I spent and remember most of my time with my cousins and being angry at our aunts. I did ballet from the age of 4 as well, I remember my mom asking me if I wanted to do ballet and I said yes, we were in this blue ballet room where one of my cousins was busy with her class. She got here 7 or 8 years ahead of me too.

Idk my childhood was pretty colourful, even today, I remember it being filled with lots of adventure. At least until I started going to crèche, but only for mornings until the other kids got here and it took my mind off of the fact that my mom wasn’t there. I hated it when my mom left me anywhere, I still remember what that felt like and it’s still nauseating despite the fact that I’m about 26 years older now.

also i’m finally posting this now and the high has already worn off. 24 hours to go.

fuck.