#i think the last time I did nanowrimo it was for a rewrite

[runawaymun]

finally settled down and so it's time to embark on day one of Nanowrimo

[richincolor]

Interview with Christina Li

Today we welcome Christina Li to Rich in Color. Christina is the author of the recently released book True Love and Other Impossible Odds. [Our review can be found here.]

Publisher summary: College freshman Grace Tang never meant to rewrite the rules of love. She came to college to move on from a grief-stricken senior year and to start anew. But when her roommate encounters dating woes and Grace takes an intriguing mathematics class, she develops an algorithm for a class project, the Match-Up, to find people’s perfect matches on campus. The algorithm takes campus by storm and matches up half of the students in the process. Grace is paired up with a seemingly perfect guy, too. But just as she thinks she has everything figured out, she finds herself being challenged by the past that comes to meet her, by her own increasing doubt and self-questioning, and by Julia, the enigmatic girl on her ski team and the algorithm’s biggest skeptic. Grace must determine who she truly is, reconcile her past, and figure out what love and happiness truly means.

Crystal: Thank you so much for chatting with us about your newest book! 

Christina: Thank you so much for having me!

Crystal: Can you tell us a little bit about Grace? What do you admire most about her?

Christina: Grace is a first-year college student at a liberal arts college, Leighton College, who is majoring in math. Upon taking an intriguing mathematics class and trying to solve for her roommate’s dating woes, she invents a campus-wide algorithm that puts students with their perfect romantic match. I admire how logical and clear-headed she is – she is someone who Is governed by these set rules and rationales in her life, and that is something I very much wish I had more of.

Crystal: What was the most fun part of writing her story?

Christina: I was in my last year of college when I first drafted this book, so I think the most fun part was reliving my own college memories as inspiration! College was such a fun and precious time of my life, and it was great to recall certain traditions, or college-esque experiences as I was writing the story.

Crystal: Your previous books were for middle grade readers. Were there any different challenges when writing for a young adult audience instead?

Christina: I think there are unique attributes to each age group! With YA I definitely had to learn to shift my voice a little bit from Middle Grade – I have found that my MG books are more observational, while my YA is more reflection. There is a learning curve for sure, but Grace’s voice came to me first and foremost, so I relied on that as a compass throughout this genre shift.

Crystal: The cover of the book is gorgeous. How did you feel when you got your first look at it?

Christina: The cover of my book is created by my incredibly, inimitably talented and visionary cover artist, Christina Chung. I have been such a fan of her work for such a long time. I remember getting the sketches and – it was jaw dropping. It was such a surreal moment of my life, how many details in the book were brought to life in such a gorgeous way.

Crystal: How has your writing changed since your first NaNoWriMo experience way back in sixth grade?

Christina: I think I am much more intentional about the stories I write and the way I write my stories. When I was first doing NaNoWriMo I was just writing stories for the sake of saying I wrote a book or could finish one. Now I know I am capable of finishing a book, so I am focusing on things like: what am I trying to say? How am I structuring this story? What motifs am I carrying throughout? These days, my books feel less like freewriting exercises and more like dissertations. But in many ways, I still get that wild silly joy of cracking open a new story. There is this very freeing delight that I associate with my NaNoWriMo past experiences, and I always try to recall parts of that when I start a new story these days.

Crystal: Are there specific books or authors that helped shape you as a reader and writer?

Christina: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin gave me the experience of seeing an Asian heroine in a story for the very first time. Reading Legend by Marie Lu changed my life as a 13-year-old and made me want to become a children’s and YA author. Gail Carson Levine wrote the types of books I wanted to write. There have been so many other authors that have shaped me: Jesmyn Ward, Yaa Gyasi, Ocean Vuong, that have made me believe in magic with their words.

Crystal: What would be a dream place for you to write?

Christina: I think I’ve always loved the idea of going on a writing retreat. I’ve never been to one! So, ideally, somewhere by the sea, in a little room, where all I get to focus on is my books.

Crystal: Finally, are there any other young adult books you are excited about right now or that you would recommend?

Christina: Absolutely! Books that I have absolutely adored this past year are Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington (I’m so excited for her upcoming book, The Blonde Dies First)!, This is Me Trying by Racquel Marie (very excited for her upcoming book If We Survive This), Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong, Stay With My Heart by Tashie Bhuiyan, and Off With Their Heads by Zoe Hana Mikuta.

Crystal: Thanks again for your time and we wish you the best as your newest books makes it's way to readers!

CHRISTINA LI is the award-winning author of children’s books Clues to the Universe, which was a Washington Post summer book club pick, and Ruby Lost and Found, which was an NPR and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year and recognized for the Asian Pacific American Librarians’ Award for Best Children’s Literature. She is also the author of the YA title True Love and Other Impossible Odds (from HarperCollins / Quill Tree Books), as well as an adult literary debut, The Manor of Dreams (from Simon and Schuster / Avid Reader Press). She graduated from Stanford University with degrees in Economics and Public Policy. She loves to daydream about characters and drink too much jasmine green tea. She grew up in the Midwest and California but now calls New York home.

[theragamuffininitiative]

Hi! I’ve seen your tags but I don’t think I’ve seen a post about it, so may I ask what your cowboy story is about?

Hellooo!

I need to go fix a lot of my tags bc I couldn't remember what I have posted about it, but mostly I did a few posts during Yeehawgust and that was it. XD

Ok so.

Several years ago I was binging episodes of Bonanza (I was also depressed ok), and stumbled across one called "The Avenger" which introduced this soft-spoken, genteel drifter who shows up just in time to stop some of the main characters from being executed for a crime they didn't commit. When they finally ask him why he cared enough to endanger himself with the real criminals, he explains his father was wrongfully killed and he's seeking the men who did it - yet the episode shows him going out of his way to avoid killing, even when up against some of the men he is after and him being a deadly-excellent crack shot.

We aren't given the man's proper name in the story, but he's from a town called Lasater, Kansas, and so Lasater is what the townfolk call him.

The episode was intended to spin off its own series, about Lasater, and another show, Outlaws, featured an episode starring the same actor with loosely the same story. This man was given a name, but it was imho a silly name so I stuck with Lasater. (I think he was loosely inspired by the Zane Grey character Lasater, which is probably why they gave him another name later.) In any case, the spinoff never happened, and Lasater's story remained unfinished.

But I loved him. I have rewatched that episode multiple times since. The character is just so....??

He befriends and protects a young boy in town. (He has a real soft spot for kids in particular, and in the Outlaws episode he allows an older boy to become his partner after similarly protecting and befriending him.)

He spoils his horse.

He's a loner by mission but you can tell he really likes people and enjoys having company.

He wears his hat adorably back on his head like a little kid.

He's really concerned with cleanliness, it's noted in both episodes lol.

He's kind and refuses to be provoked by hotheaded men.

He is moved to empathy for but not swayed by the damsel in distress.

He has a sense of humor drier than the desert.

He's dangerous in a calm sort of way.

He defeats the bad guys by compassionately but firmly convincing a scared woman to tell the truth (and then of course there is a shootout but he actually has very little to do with it).

I loved the character and the hints of his story (his lawman father hanged by outlaws, his town burned, his mission to bring the villains to justice - that justice being a jail and a court trial) so entirely, that when I found out the episode had entered the public domain, I dug in to write the rest of his story.

In my continuation, Lasater and his new young friend Sonny are on the trail of the remaining outlaws (it would have made a good mini series, but not a long-standing one probably, so I can tie up all the loose ends in a novel lol), and the trail leads them to a small town that wants nothing to do with trouble, but where they must make their final stand against the murderous gang. I get to turn a few more tropes on their head (like what roles Lasater and Sonny play in the climax, and a love interest who is not a love interest) and... Yeah. Couple of cowboys came and stole my heart.

Ended up writing it for last year's NaNoWriMo project and I'm trying to get up the time and energy to begin rewrites.

For now, the story is still called Lasater, Kansas. It may get a proper name someday. 😂

Thanks for asking!

Please enjoy some low quality gifs I made of Lasater's tv appearances:

[astudyinimagination]

Okay, okay, so what I'm hoping in the future is to return to my Star Wars AUs, and these are all going to take a lot of planning, but I'd like to continue them and actually finish them. Because, looking back at them, there's some good stuff in there! I want these finished just for me! :D

But if you guys want them, too, here's what I hope to get back to:

Legacy of Thrawn: AU to the Hand of Thrawn duology, wherein Thrawn's clone wakes up before Luke and Mara can kill him, and convinces them to let him help them restore order to the galaxy. This one is VERY old — I dropped it in 2010 and never finished it. It's so old that I am a significantly different person with significantly better writing skills, and I have a desperate need not just to finish the thing but rewrite it. I just... I know so much more than I did when I was twenty. xD

The Gentleness That Comes not from the Absence of Violence: My "Padmé Lives" AU. Padmé survives childbirth and takes her twins, Obi-Wan, and several of her handmaidens with her into hiding. This was my last NaNoWriMo project, and I think it's one of the best things I've ever written. The story isn't just about how Padmé's survival changes events, but how she copes with everything that's happened to her. She and Obi-Wan and the handmaidens... and eventually Ahsoka. (It was also written before the Padmé novels, so it's not rooted in the novels E.K. Johnston wrote, with all due respect to her.)

The Hermit and the Orphan: The "Obi-Wan adopts Mara" AU. Nine-year-old Mara Jade discovers that her beloved Emperor murdered her parents, and runs away... and right into Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. They proceed to adopt each other, and Mara becomes best friends with Biggs Darklighter and Luke Skywalker.

Where Light Can Be: The "Mara joins the Rebellion" AU. Same starting point, different age — Mara makes her life-changing discovery a year after the destruction of the first Death Star, and defects to the Rebellion. She ends up joining Rogue Squadron, and joins Luke on his quest to learn more about the Jedi, hoping to learn how to use her abilities in ways that don't remind her of Palpatine. Of course, she and Luke fall in love, which will have a significant impact on the aftermath of Bespin...

Star-Crossed: The hardest of all of these. Sherlock Holmes in the Star Wars universe fusion. What do an orphan-turned-Jedi, a Chiss healer, a Queen, and a Senator-turned-Chancellor have in common? Oh, that they're a private consulting detective, a former army doctor, the doctor's wife, and a mathematics professor in another universe...

Unnamed Leia time-travel AU: Double Agent Vader AU, never started. Sometime before the Battle of Hoth, Leia falls back in time to the Clone Wars, to meet General Kenobi and his former apprentice who seems eerily familiar. When she finally meets Padmé Amidala, the mysteries of her biological family and her mentor Ekkreth finally start to fall into place. Permission to write the AU given by Fialleril years ago, and I had forgotten that until recently! And now that I have some pieces of the story in my head, I am not letting this one go again!

So that's... it, I'm pretty sure. That's the stuff that I've started, mostly within the past decade, that I really want to continue. And I'm hoping to have time this coming winter to do it. (I have... other commitments plus family stuff that is definitely going to keep me from fic writing until then.)

But in the meantime, if you want to come chat with me about stuff, ask me questions... I would be so happy to talk about all the ideas I've got that are hopefully going to all make it onto AO3 someday!

[a-force-dyad-in-space]

A Fanfic Update

Hey guys, I thought I should give you an update about what's going on Ongoing-WIPs-wise just in case you've had some worries.

The short of it is that the writing juices haven't flowed well for a while now and I'm trying to get them back but it is a struggle. I've worked a bit on this fic or other but haven't made significant progress in a few months. I absolutely hope that will change soon but I unfortunately can't force it. It doesn't help that I'm going through some stuff IRL right now that I have to take care of (I am unfortunately an adult who has to do adulting and pay bills and shit 🥲). I try not to be too stressed out about it, but the more time passes the more the anxiety sets in. Wish me luck. 💪🏻

Anyway, here's a fic-by-fic overview, split up by fandom.

THE UNTAMED

The Angsty SongXue Fic — I'll be honest, I've written a little bit since I last updated you guys but I still haven't finished the buffer chapter (at this point I'm thinking about posting chapter 51 even though 52 isn't done yet), so nothing really new here. I really want to get back into a writing flow but so far it hasn't really worked. I am still working on it, though, so don't worry, I'm not going to drop it.

The It Follows AU — I'm ashamed to say I didn't even realize I posted that fic almost two years ago and I still haven't written the second half. I'm so sorry it's taking so long! I definitely still want to finish it! I might rewatch the It Follows movie before I do that, though.

The Observer Series — Oh yeah, remember that smutfic series I started a few years ago of which I've only posted part 1 so far? Yeah, I still need to work on that. I did write chapter 1 of part 2 a while ago, so it's not like it's forgotten, I just need to get my ass up and write the rest of part 2 before I can post it. 🙈

The Color Rush AU — Okay, technically I haven't posted that one yet but I did share a snippet along with a gifset a few years ago, so you guys know it exists. I haven't worked on it in a long time, though, and I don't know yet when I will find the spoons to continue writing it but I'm still intrigued by the premise and want to give it a go. Thank you for your patience!

The Somewhat Sweet, Somewhat Angsty XuanXian Fic — Again, haven't posted that one yet but I've been posting about it, so you guys know it exists. Nothing new on this front. I did want to rewrite the whole thing because I wasn't really happy with the way I wrote it thus far, so I'll probably go back to it at some point and do that, I just don't know when yet.

WORD OF HONOR

The Xie'er Deserves the World Fic — Listen, guys, I love this fic so much, I just haven't worked on it in a while. I'll probably re-read what I've written so far and go on from there, I've just been struggling with the latest chapter ever since I started writing it years ago. It's not dropped, though, I will get back to it! Pinky swear!

SAILOR MOON

I've mentioned here and there that I'm working on part 1 of an epic that is based on a doujinshi I started when I was 13 or 14. Unlike my other WIPs, this one really is 100% self-indulgent to the point where I don't even care whether people will read/like it once I post it when it's completely done. I'll just put it out there to make my teenage self happy because this story has been simmering in my head for over 20 years, and so that my IRL friends can read it if they want to. So, this one will be a long way out, but it exists. I'm only really mentioning it because I've mentioned it a couple of times before and because it's the fic that's been on my mind the most lately.

STAR WARS

You didn't think I forgot about TROBS, did you????? I did work on several beginnings of a draft during NaNoWriMo last year and I'm getting more and more of a clear picture of how I want it to go. For those unfamiliar, TROBS (or The Rise of Ben Skywalker, though I already changed the name of the fic again) is my attempt at an Episode IX fix-it fic that essentially replaces TROS. This one has been simmering in my head since early 2020 and I really want to get it out of there and onto the page for catharsis. I've even held off on reading any other TROS fix-its because of it, even though I've heard there are some really amazing ones out there (and I can't wait to read them once I've gotten my own out of my damn head). I really need to finally finish that beast. Wish me luck. 🥲

UNPOSTED WIPs

I still have so many notes for other fics (mostly for The Untamed) that I want to write at some point. Will I be able to get them all on the page? I honestly don't know, but I'll see where they take.

Anyway, that's all!

[violets-in-her-arms-writes]

👋 happy nano! for the ask game: 1, 6, and 7

Coucou !! Thank you for the ask 🥰

How many times have you participated in nanowrimo? I'm in my seventh year ^^ I haven't won every year tho but I'm hoping for my fifth win this year, we'll see how it goes

6. What are you most nervous about? That I'm gonna end up with a big chunk of words I won't be able to use because I got carried away (the way I did for my NaNo project last year the Fledgling ... I had like 25k written in the wrong POV but osef 😂). I say I'm nervous about it but it's really part of the game and worst case scenario I'll just rewrite to to fit my ✨vision✨ better

7. What are you most excited about? this year I'm a nano rebel because this is a re-writing of the story I've be writing with my best friend since 2011. I'm rewriting my part and I can't wait to improve it and implement things I've been thinking about for years. Lorelei is my favourite character EVER and I love her. I'm so happy to be writing her again 🥰🥰🥰

You can find the ask game here if you're interested 😊

[monty-glasses-roxy]

What is the tubehell challenge

The Tubehell Challenge is a challenge I made up for myself where I take the shoddy work of Andrea Wagginer (not sure how to spell her last name I normally just call her Andrea TubesForBrains or something instead for my own amusement) and rewrite it with the same limitations she had. Well not exactly the same cause I don't know what her exact limits are but ya know what I mean

Basically, I write what I believe was the intended story she was going for, with whatever modifications I deem necessary, all while using the exact same amount of words that she used. I have the exact same amount of time to tell the same story she did with the goal of doing the storyline more justice.

My Tubehell Challenge is specifically for two of her stories, The Storyteller (in the Bobbiedots Conclusion book I believe) and The Mimic (in the Nexie book I think?). They had what felt like a good storyline beneath the guff that was just so disappointingly done that it gave me the idea to do this in the first place. I came up with this as a joke, but now I'm committed because it feels really doable to me and easy way to pick up writing again, so this is what my Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month which is the 'write 50k words in the month of November' challenge) project is going to be this year.

The name of the challenge comes from how these stories of hers feel like a form of hell for me (yes I'm dramatic so sue me) and that she keeps going on about the fucking climbing tubes from Cleithrophobia. Which btw, I read the Wiki summary for that and it's the most stupid fucking death trap ever Ballora sends all those that cross her to the fucking Tubes now this is the joke I won't drop ever again lmao Andrea just really loves her fucking Tubes okay? She keeps killing people on them

But yeah I've maybe gone insane over how tormentingly bad these are. Just a bit.

Hope this answers your question! If not, askbox always open and whatnot I gotchu

[angst-in-space]

november '23 writing progress

words written: 25k

most words written in a day: 2k

least words written in a day: 0

current yearly total: 167.8k

projects worked on:

ya sci-fi book revisions

planning/zero drafting adult sci-fi wip

misc. other projects

works published in november:

none

november goals:

write as much as i can for nanowrimo (at least try to get to 50k?)

actually enjoy writing again? :’)

FINISH MY YA SCI-FI BOOK REWRITES I STFG

work on outlining/zero drafting adult sci-fi wip

finish writing edit letter for friend

work on fics??

update one of my multichap fics??

december goals:

write ~1k a day (except on holidays)

write like 100ish words of other projects a day (fics, planning projects, etc.)

write about 33k total (to meet my yearly wc goal of 200k)

finish.....ya sci-fi book rewrites... please....

finish editing ch 10 of sylvix dreamscape (idk if i'll be able to post it by end of the month/year but... maybe lol)

finish edit letter for friend

notes:

WTF IT'S DECEMBER ALREADY??? this year has flown by.... seriously what the hell.

okay well anyway. so... nanowrimo was a bit of a bust for me. i hadn't really expected to reach 50k, but i had hoped to get a biiiit more done. unfortunately the second half of the month was...not fun for me, so my motivation really tanked.

however! my more important goal this month was to just enjoy writing again since i'd been feeling quite burned out—and i would say i did succeed at that. i started planning a new wip which i'm really excited about, plus i got to rewrite one of my fave arcs of my ya sci-fi book which i had a lot of fun with!! so in that way, i would say i had a successful month and i am feeling a lot more motivated now. :)

that said...i do still have a good chunk of my book left to rewrite. i was really hoping to finish by the end of the year and now of course i only half one more month to do that. *gulps* but, by my calculations, i think i have about 30k left to rewrite aka about 1k per day which is not toooo bad—and if i succeed at that, i should also be able to reach my yearly word count goal. so i am gonna try!!

as has been the case for a long time, i've neglected fic a lot lately and i miss it. :( i did at least wanna go back to revising the last chapter of sylvix dreamscape fic and maybe pass that along to betas by end of december. aaand maybe work on writing/editing some of my other fics if i have time??? but my book is my big priority right now... i'm hoping once i finish this draft, i'll have more time to return to fic again.

so yeah, last month of 2023 I'M GONNA MAKE IT COUNT!!!!

[its-stupidhours]

it's... done. it's done. the fic itself is very much NOT done shjkdhsdf but NaNoWriMo... 😳

all things considered, I think I did pretty well!! definetly not 100k, but 85k is still a certifiable fuck ton. 35,000 words in a month. that is almost certainly more than I have ever written in a month ever. it's basically the word count I was at back in october. I got a little stuck in the last few weeks and got to a point where I passed the things i had planned out really well and i suddenly wasn't sure where to start with these all-new chapters, but I managed to push through :D

over half of the fic is done, by the way!!! chapters 1-6 are totally finished excluding this one scene in chapter 6 i have to rewrite to have it make more sense with later plot points. but still!!! holy fuck!!! i got a good bit done in chapter 7 and a little in chapter 8 (chapter 9 slid in with a few scenes, too - and we don't talk about chapter 10. i have no fucking clue what i'm doing with chapter 10. don't @ me)

so now on to... literally anything else, I guess. I thought I would be sick of this fic by now, and I guess I sort of am, but I'm more just drained of ideas. I would write more if I knew what, exactly, to write. I do hope to keep up my writing momentum in the coming weeks, though! writing this much every day definitely helped my brain in a lot of ways that I wasn't quite expecting. It was nice.

all of that's to say: i'll be writing other fics soon, I promise. the Tanner Ant tag will once again see the light of a new upload... at some point. not sure when. i don't know if I know how to write anything else now, haha

see y'all next time! and thanks for sticking around for all this :D

[starspray]

3, 30, and 45 for the writer ask, please!

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

I don't know about tropes because I don't typically think of my stories that way when I write them. But Tolkien feels very twilight to me, even when things take place in broad daylight, so I usually end up writing at least one scene at sunset, or underneath the stars. Gil-Estel shows up a lot--and with that, I very rarely write anything without the theme of estel cropping up.

Also laughter? I feel like I write a lot of characters laughing. I'm very fond of the tra la la lally Elves of The Hobbit, and Elves laughing and singing even in the midst of dark times is very important to me. And I write hobbits a fair amount and that's also always fairly light-hearted.

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

Oh yes. My fic God, I Pity the Violins is a crossover with The Old Guard, and I've never written a fic so soon after watching/reading the source material. Also this last summer's TRSB fic What Your Life Is takes place in a time and place in Middle-earth that I'd never written before and which has next to nothing written about it in canon, even by Tolkien's next to nothing standards--and is extremely OC-heavy (that's not really out of my comfort zone, exactly, I love a good OC, but I don't usually have almost 20 running around the same fic). I had a lot of fun writing both, though, and after the initial terror of posting them I'm quite proud of both!

I don't know that either have particularly affected my approach to fic-writing, except to give myself a pretty decent confidence boost. Violins is the longest fic I've written to date, as well, and it's nice to know that I'm able to write something over 50k and not have it be hot garbage (I've done 50k for NaNoWriMo multiple times--but a draft written in a month at high speed is always hot garbage, and the one NaNo that was a fanfic that I then edited and posted ended up being much shorter.)

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

Everything! No seriously, I started writing when I was 13, which is...almost 2 decades ago...what is time oh my god. Anyway, it would be very weird if there wasn't an aspect of writing that I'd improved on since then. But aside from the general mechanics of it...I'll say worldbuilding. I started writing original fiction at the same time I started writing fanfiction--in fact I dropped fanfic pretty quickly at first once I realized I could just, y'know, make things up wholesale without the constraints of existing stories--and especially since joining the Tolkien fandom I've learned a lot, particularly from Tolkien but also from reading other authors and just by writing (and rewriting) my own stuff and seeing what works and what doesn't.

[coldflasher]

for the wip ask game. 7 and 11 and 17 x

7. do you outline before writing? if so, what’s your outlining process like?

i have honestly got out of the habit of outlining which is very bad, this is why i keep struggling and getting stuck because i am someone who NEEDS an outline, but instead i've been just coming up with random scenes on the fly which works fine until i run out and then i end up sitting there like the fish in bags from finding nemo like 'now what, genius'

but my outlining process is basically just 'sit down and brainstorm, stare at various different beat sheets and story methods and try not to go insane'

also i have to outline by hand, that is very important. don't know why but it all has to be hand written.

11. are there some wips that you just don’t think you’ll ever finish? 

much as i hate to admit it, and prefer to live in denial land where i'm convinced that every wip will one day get the ending it deserves, there are plenty of them that will more than likely never see the light of day 😭 the most notable one that comes to mind is that at one point i was planning to do another sequel to aftermath, that giant 500k s1 rewrite i did where barry and len were dating from before barry even became the flash. i have maybe 20-30k of a direct sequel to that that's basically a mashup of s5 and s6, where barry vanishes in crisis and then in a moment of desperation and poor decision making, len sends their adopted son back to try and prevent crisis from ever happening, only for them to discover that him travelling back is what causes crisis in the first place.

i genuinely LOVE that fic and what i wrote for it, but i feel like i've kind of moved on from those versions of the characters and grown so much as a writer and there are just so many things i don't like about the original fic that spawned it that i just. don't see myself ever finishing it, unfortunately. i feel like aftermath is a very stark contrast in my writing journey bc it was basically the last thing i wrote before doing my writing degree so there's such a huge difference in how i wrote and the whole vibe of it. i'll always be fond of aftermath but also im moderately embarrassed by it as well, so yeah. but maybe i will post snippets one day or something, because i genuinely LOVED the dynamic i wrote between michael and len, it was so fucking fun.

also i once wrote a fic where coldflash get whammied by a meta and, under the effects of what is essentially a metahuman love spell, decide to literally run off to vegas and get married and team flash have to hunt them down and try to stop it. this one feels like a crime because i have like 90% of it written so i would just have to finish and then edit it BUT i wrote it so long ago (we're talking like 2017) that to get it to a state i'd be happy with, i'd probably have to rewrite it in its entirety, so. never say never though cos now i'm thinking about it...

17. what do you do to motivate yourself to write? 

i honestly have been struggling with this forever BUT im doing camp nanowrimo right now and it's actually been so motivating. i'm fighting for my life here bc i lost the last three nano events i did, capping out at like 35k each, after a previously unbroken streak of almost a decade, but this time i was like COME HELL OR HIGH WATER I REFUSE TO FAIL THIS TIME. i'm like 3k behind, but it's fine, probably... rocks back and forth in a dark room

thank youu!

[clevercatchphrase]

2022 Year In Review~

Hey Hi Hello! It’s that time of year again! It’s time to sit down and look back on the year, dig up my list of resolutions and see what I accomplished, and what I didn’t. The first half of 2022 seemed to drag on painfully slowly, but these last six months felt like they flew by. Maybe it’s because I’m anxious and distracted all the time now, idk. Anyway, I don’t have a lot of preamble for this year compared to last, so let’s just jump on into reviewing my goals for the year and go over them one by one!

This year I had 10 goals. They were as follows;

Read 12 New Books on anything (1 book a month)

Finish and rewrite my 2021 NaNoWriMo project

Finish chapters 4 thorugh 8 of/and edit Clemency (2020‘s NaNoWriMo project)

Finish scripting the Waterfall Arc of Ghost Switch (and then maybe the Hotland Arc, but not the whole thing. I just know I can’t get that far yet)

Build a Comic Buffer for Ghost Switch

Reach 208 Pages of Ghost Switch by June 18th

Finish 1 Song Comic

Finish 4 one shots

Find a sulfate-free bodywash and hand soap.

Write that one crack fic.

Just reading over this list again, I know I didn’t even successfully complete half of these. Hell, I think it would be a stretch for me to say I completed 4. Anyway, going into these goals one at a time, let me start with-

1)Read 12 new books

I did this! In fact, I almost read DOUBLE that amount! (I was 1 book shy of 24!) though I will admit I’m fudging one of the books on this list, because I know I’ve read it before, but it had been several years since my last read of it, so I was rereading it again. The books I read this year, in roughly this order where;

Hate That Cat

Foxes of Firstdark

Wind in the Willows

David and the Pheonix

The Power of Habit

The Flames of Hope

The Black Gryphon

The White Gryphon

The Silver Gryphon

The gryphon Generation

The Green Dragon Codex

Guardian of the Gryphons

Gryphon Generation 2: A New Era

Owlsight

Owlflight

Owlknight

Gryphon Generation 3: Colony

Griffin ranger: Crossline Plains

Griffin Ranger 2: Monster Lands

The Rise of the Dragon Star

The Starward Light, and lastly

The Gold Dragon Codex

The Gryphon Chronicles; The Lost Heir

 Now let me review each of the books I read in overly simplified, very short recaps that barely explain how I feel towards them in any sort of coherent manner~

 1)      Hate that Cat

I remember LOVING Love That Dog when I first read it in middle school. It had a bit of a slow start, but then when everything gets connected at the end, and you realize this is a story about a kid processing his grief over his dead pet that spans MONTHS, it suddenly hits you all at once. I remember seeing this sequel in Barnes and Noble for years, but never bothering to pick it up. Then, one day out of curiosity, I searched it on youtube and found a teacher doing a read along to Hate That Cat for her class (it was a pandemic video). I listened along, and it was alright~ Not as touching as Love That Dog, but you do learn that the boy’s Mother is deaf, which I thought was neat (though him wondering what it was like to live in a world of silence felt out of place. Why wouldn’t he just ask his mom? Had the thought never occurred to him before? It was kinda weird).

2)      Foxes of First Dark

I need to confess- I own this book and have read it years ago, but it’s been close to, if not over a decade since I last read it, so I read it again this year. I was surprised by how much I remembered, honestly, but it was a decent read I think you should check out if you like foxes and/or xenofiction.

3)      Wind in the Willows

I have another confession to make. For my entire life I thought the children’s series “Frog and Toad” were a part of The Wind in the Willows. It was not until I listened to this audio book that I realized they were different properties. I kept waiting for frog to show up and he never did. I was so confused and then so embarrassed when I realized my life was a lie. ANYWAY, did you know there is this PHENOMINAL youtube channel/organization called Librivox that read and record audio books for free? There is one catch- every book they do is in the public domain, meaning all their work is pretty much volunteer based. They’ve got an IMPRESSIVE catalogue, though, and if you do some digging, you’ll probably find something you like! I “read” Wind in the Willows this way, and it was a nice way to chew up time on my daily commute to work and back. The voice for this audiobook was so good and soothing, even though I found this book utterly boring and even offensive and spots. Yeah, sorry classic lit fans, I didn’t like this one. I kept waiting for it to get interesting and it never did. The only part I liked was when mole and rat looked for the lost otter child and met pan. That was cool, but everything else annoyed me to no end.

4)      David and the Phoenix

Another book I read through librivox! David and the phoenix is a cute little children’s tale that isn’t too challenging or deep. It’s an okay, middle of the road story for kids. But the audiobook?? Fucking trash. I don’t know what standards the librivox people have if any, but the reader for this book was so monotone and stumbled over his words constantly, making this a chore to listen too. Also, I’m pretty sure this dude had a kid in the room at some points, because they would NOT STOP COUGHING IN THE BACKGROUND. It frustrated and even grossed me out at points. Come on, show a little more professionalism, please!

5)      The Power of Habit

I remember a time back in 2016 or 2017 it seems, when EVERY youtuber on the planet had an audible sponsor, and EVERY book they suggested was the power of habit. I stumbled across an illegal audiobook of this book on youtube as well, with a text-to-speech narrator, and my god.. this book is so bad???? I was kinda into it for the first third, learning about habit loops and how to form them and how to break them, but then the book’s ideals and tone shifts about 33% in, and started focusing on how habits can be used to manipulate and persuade consumers into buying products, or get them hooked on certain music, and…. It’s fucking horrifying?? The book portrays this as something positive, but as someone who is very nervous about spending money it sounded so diabolical. Each chapter the book just got worse and worse, skewing research and data to fit its narrative that the entire universe is controlled by habits. Example; they spend quite a bit of time talking about Michael Phelps, the swimming Olympian, and his daily habits. The book so desperately wants you to assume that the only reason he’s a gold metal champion is because of his habits, and it has nothing to do with his freakish anatomy which gives him a physical advantage. They mention it in one sentence, then never bring it up. It’s like… it’s like they want you to think none of the other Olympic swimmers ever win because they don’t have habits as good as his, instead of their physical limitations of their body. At one point, I thought to myself “jesus, this book is going to say the only reason the allies won WW2 is because we had better military habits, and not the fact that we dropped a fucking nuke on japan”.

And then it happened. Near the very end, this book had the audacity to bring up the civil rights movement and imply that the ONLY reason blacks protested was because of social pressure and habits, and not the fact that we were sick of being treated as subhuman. The book even ADMITS that habits were not the reason the civil rights act passed, but tries to brush this under the rug. I was so fucking angry, I went to the amazon reviews to read the 1 stars, and found a quote that perfectly encapsulates this whole book; “When you have a hammer as your only solution, every problem becomes a nail”. This is exactly what this book is, desperately trying to twist any moral failing of yours into the fault of your bad habits. Once I learned the habit loop strategies, I used it to improve some of my own, like drinking more water, and fixing my sleep schedule, but you don’t need to buy or read this book to be able to do that. If you think you need to improve your own habits, avoid this book and just research “the habit loop” on google. It will save you time, money and anger.

6)      The Flames of Hope

This is the last book in the third arc of the Wings of Fire series. I am not sure yet if it is the last book over all for this series, or if Tui T Sutherland plans to write more. I actually read this book day of release. I had errands to run that april morning, and last on my list was to stop by a target. I did so, found the book, then went to their garden and lawn furniture section, then, for the next 4 hours I proceeded to read the book cover to cover in the store. No one came up to me or stopped me or talked to me in that entire time. It was kind of surreal. I also remember being super tired that day, not having slept well the night before, so I could have just been out of it.

I didn’t like this book. I felt that there were too many characters, and none were given enough screen time. I didn’t like how the main characters were “invisiable” for half the book, but that never really pushed the plot forward. I absolutely HATED the mindscape sections and how little sense it made. I had such a hard time visualizing the space and how the POV characters were able to “see” or move about the area. It dragged on for so long with nothing exciting happening, and the ending felt so rushed. I don’t know if I dislike Flames or Gift more, but these last two books in this series were just so disappointing, it really dragged down the whole third arc for me.

 7, 8, &9) The Black, White, and Silver Gryphon (The mage wars trilogy)

I’m still on my gryphon-kick from last year, trying to read more books featuring them. This series by mercedes lackey was pretty okay~ I think I honestly liked the second book best, then the first, then the third. I liked the gryphon POVs, but was kind of disappointed that a lot of the first and second book to place in stationary locations, like a war camp or a castle. I wish I could have seen the gryphons in action more, exploring the world, if that makes sense. I really didn’t like the third book at all. I was excited to read about two friends going to an out post and surviving for six months, but then it just turned into a road-trip like story where they have to avoid one type of enemy, and it really let me down. It’s weird because you’d think I’d like this book the most, since the characters are traveling through an untamed forest, but when the one with wings is grounded, it gets very boring very quickly.

10, 11, &12) Owlflight, Owlsight, Owlknight

Another series by Mercedes lackey. I accidentally read this series out of order, unbeknownst to me. I read the second book first, then the first, then the third. I didn’t really like any of them. The first book I would describe as a child’s wish fulfillment. Darian spends the first half moping and complaining, and then gets everything he could ever want in the second half. The second book I would describe as “Things Going Well,” because there was literally no conflict that Keesha or Darian can’t immediately wave away until the very end and that gets resolved super quick as well. The third book was the best, but still not as engaging as any of the gryphon books were.  I don’t like any of these characters nor care about any of their problems. The owls in these books, for which the series is named after, aren’t even major characters or play a major role in any of them! False advertising!

13, 14, &15) The gryphon Generation, New Era, and Colony

These books were bad, but not as bad as “Eyrie” which I read last year. (I tried reading the second book, “Ashen weld”, and could not finish. Probably the only time I couldn’t finish a book out of spite because it was so boring). The characters have a bit more zest to them, but the plot and world building are weak and nonsensical. I swear the gryphons are just a substitute for people of color in this novel, and the conflicts are cartoonishly blown out of proportion. Thyra, your main character, is one of the oldest gryphons in existence, at the grand age of 19 years. So human society as a whole has only known about gryphons for less than 2 decades. How on earth does the sport of gryph ball become a world wide phenomenon in under 20 years.  How on earth is thyra, one of the first of her kind, allowed to roam the world free of constant observation or escorting from the scientists who made her? How did she integrate so quickly and easily into human society to be left to her own devices? The very fundamentals of this world do not make sense, which makes the rest of the book difficult to read. I read the two sequels as well, “new era” and “colony”, but it never gets better. There is a fourth book out now, but I doubt I will read it. The message at the end of the third book seemed to say that “eradicating the human race is okay, actually,” and Idk how to feel about that, honestly.

16 & 17) The green dragon codex and the gold dragon codex

After reading so many mediocre/bad gryphon books, I decided to retreat back to something I knew I would like more. 2 years ago I went on a book buying spree and bought a lot of dragon books of off amazon. One series was one I started as a child and never finished, called the dragon codex series, or something. It’s based off of D&D, and their classes and what not. While I enjoyed the first book as a kid, finally reading all the others made me realize that this series is never truly about the dragons, but rather the human characters which I found to be a huge disappointment.  I also noticed a trend where the dragons will always shapeshift into a human, which was a damper for me. I didn’t like the green dragon codex. It wasn’t even about the green dragon, and in the end, the green dragon (which are inherently evil) becomes a metallic dragon (which are inherently good) because someone believed he could be good. Why can’t he be good and green? Why can chromatic dragons ONLY be evil, and if you are good, you MUST be a metallic dragon instead? I would have been over the moon if a green dragon could be raised to be good, but forcing this dichotomy sends the message that “evil can never change, and if you become good, that means there was good in you all along.” How does the saying go… is it not more valiant to triumph over your evil nature and rise from the bottom, than to have always been good in the first place? I can’t think straight right now, but I hope my thought still manages to come across..

The gold dragon codex was a bit better, but still very shallow. I honestly have nothing to say, as there isn’t much there in these books to talk about. None of them are deep or thought provoking, but I can see how kids and enjoy them, and I’m glad I finally read the entire series. I did a bit of research and learned there were supposed to be a couple more books released, but never got made due to contracts and publishers expiring and what not, but the author decided to write her own series with no restraints, so maybe I can find these books and get something new out of them now that they don’t have to work within the limits of the publishers. We’ll see what happens~

 18) Guardian of the Gryphons

This book was bad. All the ideas are surface level at best and never explored in any meaningful way. The way the death of the parents is relayed was hilarious. Don’t read it. Don’t even bother.

19&20) Griffin Ranger: Crossline Plains and Griffin Ranger: Monsterlands

*Gordon Ramsay Voice* “Finally, some good fucking fiction.” These two books were INCREDIBLE. I read the first one online and was immediately hooked, I could barely put it down. It’s been years since a book has done that to me. The descriptions, the imagery, and the world building were top notch. This writer clearly knew what they were doing. As soon as I finished, I went out and bought the first two books. The best way I can describe the first book would be “western noir thriller”, while the second one is a dark suspenseful, borderline horror story. I know there is a third book out already, but much like these two, it seems to be the first half of a duology, and the 2nd (4th?) book isn’t out yet, so I don’t want to read it yet and be left on a cliffhanger. This book is about a parallel earth without humans, where anthropromorphic animals rule, including Lions, Wolves, Dogs, Ringtailed Cats, Parrots, and Griffins. It’s great furry literature and xenofiction. The second book takes place in our world, and it is one of the darkest, most suspenseful things I’ve ever read, and it really forced me to love characters I initially hated in the first book. I hope the author finishes book 4 soon. I don’t want to give anything away. Please go read it if you like griffins or xenofiction, you won’t be disappointed!

21) Rise of the Dragon Star

This book is the first in a new series by author Jess E. Owen, who wrote the summerking chronicles, and partially the reason I got interested in literature about gryphons. It was nice to return to this world of wolves, dragons, gryfons and lions, but I have to be honest, so far it’s not as good as Summerking was. I couldn’t help but feel like I saw more typos and grammar errors than the first series, which is a shame because the editing in the first series was virtually flawless from what I remember. I’ll continue reading whenever the second book comes out, but I’m not dying for it to be released like I am for griffin ranger. Again, an average fantasy romp for kids and mythology fans, but so far nothing deeper than that.

  22) The Starward Light

This book is also by Jess E Owen and is a collection of short stories set in her world. I enjoyed this book! It was a great collection of character studies for some of those with more minor roles, which always helps to flesh out the world~ I can’t say anything much more than that. There is no grand plot, or overarching story, but if you liked the Summerking Chronicles, you’ll enjoy this one as well~

  23) The Gryphon Chronicles; The Lost Heir

OH! I almost forgot this one! I actually read this book waaaay back at the beginning of the year. Probably the first or second on my gryphon kick. It’s alright. Not that deep or challenging. In all honesty I was kind of bored for the first 2/3rds. Perfectly serviceable children’s literature, but not really about gryphons. There IS one in the story, but he doesn’t become important until the very end. It’s more focused on an orphan human boy, and we’ve been there, done that in so many other stories, I was kind of checked out.

 Aaaand that wraps it up for the books I’ve read! That is one resolution down, nine more to talk about! Next on my list was;

2) Finish and rewrite my 2021 Nanowrimo project.

I didn’t exactly do this. The first draft was a jumbled mess, and didn’t make sense and all the scenes and chapters didn’t connect and the whole thing was riddled with plot holes. This year I made a much more detailed outline, and even took this up again as my nanowrimo project for 2022 and rewrote its second draft. It’s much more coherent now, but still I didn’t I finish it. Hopefully for 2023?

3) Finish chapters 4 through 8 of Clemency, edit and post them.

Didn’t do this one at all. Clemency might just end up being a story where I only post one chapter a year, which may offer a unique reading experience if you follow along as it’s being updated, but I can also understand why it would be infuriating or frustrating or annoying or not fun to read that way. I do want to finish Clemency one day, but it’s also not a story I want to rush, you know? So far, I think it’s one of the most introspective stories I’ve written, and I want to do my best to write it right. So, if you are waiting for Clemency to update, sorry it’s taking so long, but thank you for your patience~

4) Build a comic buffer.

I… can’t remember if I did this. At the time of writing, I am preparing to do this, as I am about to host a patreon-only stream to celebrate the end of the year, but I can’t recall a time I had more than three pages ready in reserve. I think if I ever did have a buffer, it never lasted long. I hope to change that next year, and I’m doing my best by trying to get at least 8 pages made in advance~

5) Reach 208 pages by Ghost Switch’s 4th birthday

I did this! Right in the middle of a memory! Proud of myself for maintaining an average of 1 page a week over these last 4 years. Now I gotta get to 312 before Ghost Switch’s 6th birthday in 2024~

6) Finish Scripting the Waterfall Arc of Ghost Switch

I.. didn’t do this. I made significant progress for sure, but… I’ve been putting it off for months, now. And the sad thing is, I’m almost done, too! I just need to script out Frisk and Undyne’s final confrontation, and the Waterfall Arc is done! Will I get that far in the comic in 2023? Part of me says I won’t, that we’ll only reach the middle of Waterfall by the end of 2023, giving me another year to put it off, but I’m gonna have to do this sooner or later, and I would rather get those smaller details ironed out now so I can make corrections early while I still have the flexibility, you know?

7) Finish 1 song comic

I did this! I made Dead Hearts for Undertale’s Seventh birthday this year! I can’t remember if this is the song comic I originally had planned for this year, or if it was just the one I ended up getting the most motivated to do, but I’m glad I’ve made another~ I think this is the third year in a row I’ve made a song comic? Last year’s was wandersong, and the year before that was undertale’s 5th birthday with New Soul. It would be nice to consistently put out a song comic for some video game every year, but I don’t know if I can feasibly manage that..

8)  Finish 4 one shots.

I didn’t do this. I think I only wrote one one-shot year, and I feel bad about that. I have the ideas, I have the prompts, I just don’t have the inspiration or time. Hopefully next year will be different.

9) Find a sulfate-free body wash and handsoap.

Lol, I did this literally the day after I posted my “2021 Year review” post. I remember this day, too. It was early January, I went to the supermarket early in the day, fully prepared to spend hours reading the backs of every shampoo, conditioner, and handsoap bottle to find one suitable for me. I quickly learned that the grocery store organized all the “premium” washes in one section which greatly helped reduce my research time. I found this great brand called “renpure” which fits my price tag, and it’s been life changing. Warning, TMI incoming; I used to have bad dandruff and an itchy scalp. To help alleviate irritation, I would use dandruff shampoo from Head and Shoulders. It would help for a day or two… but the itching would always return. I later learned that my scalp was itching because it was dry, and it was drying out because of my dandruff shampoo had sulfates in it. The shampoo I was using to help relieve my pain was also actively causing it. I noticed an immediate difference after switching, and my scalp hasn’t itched in months! My dandruff is also significantly down, though not gone completely (im not sure if that’s even possible since our bodies are constantly shedding skin all over, but hey, it doesn’t look like it’s snowing when I comb my hair now)

Okay, down to the last resolution;

10) Write that one crack fic.

I didn’t do this. I thought about it a couple of times, but this is so low priority, I never really expected to do it this year. What is the crack fic you may ask? I want that to stay a surprise, but for a hint, it involves a crack ship between 3 cartoon characters, 2 from cartoon network and one from Disney channel. I wonder if you can figure it out just from that. I will be impressed if you do.

 OKAY, NOW ON TO RESOLUTIONS FOR 2023!

I don’t really have a lot for this year. I think I’m becoming more realistic over the years, and more aware of my time and energy, so when I sat down to create a list, I honestly didn’t have that many. Maybe I’ll divide them into 2 groups, a “serious” list, for resolutions I will actively try to do, and a “casual” list for goals I will try if I have the time or energy. Does that make sense? Okay, let’s see what I want to achieve in 2023…

FOR SERIOUS GOALS, I WOULD LIKE TO;

Read 12 new books (1 Book a month)

Finish the Snowdin Arc before Ghost Switch’s 5th Birthday (June 18th)

Rewrite and finish the third draft of my 2021 (and now 2022) Nanowrimo project

Write 4 Oneshots (preferably Grow, Bake, Beach and Home, for BSaPT)

Finish Scripting the Waterfall Arc of Ghost Switch

One secret goal that, if I achieve, will render all other resolutions moot and meaningless

FOR CASUAL GOALS, I WOULD LIKE TO;

Finish writing Clemency, though maybe not edit/post it all

Write that crack fic

Build a comic buffer that will last me 2 months (8 pages)

 So… yeah, not that many goals this year. Hopefully this means I can achieve more of them and have a higher ratio of success to failure, but we’ll just have to see how that goes!

You know… looking back on my past “year in review” posts, it came to my attention that I… didn’t really review the year. Sure, I talked about my goals, but not too much on what I did those years. I’d like to change that, by also talking about some experiences I had, or events I found notable. I want… to remember more, but I can’t do that if I don’t record it, and pretty soon all my thoughts and memories blend together over the years, and I can’t remember what happened when. I’m already trying to recall who I was or things I did at the beginning of 2022 and find it near impossible, which bothers me. What did I DO in 2022? Did… did I do anything outside of work or sleep or draw comic pages? I know I did, but the fact I can’t recall with specificity which troubles me, and I’d like to prevent that going further. So think of this as… a diary of sorts. I will try to keep better notes to myself what I do over the months, probably in drafts or memos in my own note-taking discord so this section for 2023’s year review will be more fleshed out.

Okay, so, this year in February I went to an Ikea for the first time in my life. It was surreal. Now, I’m the kind of person who will drag my friends to the Container Store or Hobby Lobby for fun, and just look around for shits and giggles. Ikea also invoked a similar feeling like that to me. I liked the displays, and how even in America, all the display books are in their native Swedish. I opened up a few and tried to see if I could read it (since I’ve had a perfect duolingo streak for Danish these past 8 years), but sadly I could not. I can read the small bridge words, like “to” “so” “he” “she” “are” and “the”, but nothing much bigger. You’ll be proud to know I am now teaching myself Swedish on duolingo, though I’m only on unit 8 out of 43, which is still the really early stuff. Hm. I might try to teach myself Norwegian and Finnish next. I do like learning Danish and Swedish because the grammar is so similar to English, which makes it quick to pick up. Oh, forgot to mention, I don’t like the ikea displays with fake windows that have lights in them. It really fucked with my sense of orientation in the building, because sometimes I’d think I’d be right near a wall that was an ACTUAL window to the outside, when in reality I’m smack dab in the middle of the display room >:( Also I tried the meatballs. Eh, they were all right. Not crazy about them, though.

I didn’t really play a lot of games this year, which made me sad, seeing as I had bought so many last year and didn’t even start them all. One game I did buy this year, and proved to be a very interesting gaming experience was a game called “The Longing”, and it’s a game all about waiting. I found it pretty charming! I beat it in roughly a month. If you’re interested, I suggest looking up some video reviews before you buy, because it really is a game with a different play style that not all will enjoy. I hope to play more games this year, seeing as there are still so many I haven’t beaten or started (snakebird, typoman, carto, and linelight to name a few I’ve been meaning to get back to.) I think once spring break came around, I just got swamped with work and just kinda forgot about them.

OR, maybe it’s because I downloaded a mobile game on my phone for the first time in my life and got obsessed with that instead. The game is called “dragons world” and it’s pretty cute. It’s a resource management, Number Goes Up, kind of game, though the developers don’t update it any more, and haven’t for years, so it can be super laggy and bug out at times. Still, I like the character models and art MUCH more than Dragon City, which is why I downloaded that one instead. It’s a fun little time sink if nothing else.

Speaking of dragon games, I came to the decision to stop playing Flight Rising. It’s… an odd feeling for me, because I had played daily since I signed up in 2014, but as of late, the gameplay just felt… stale. I remember times in 2016 when I would get my laptop in bed, put podcasts on in the background, and just grind in the coliseum for hours. I don’t regret all that time spent back in those days, but the thought of trying to do that now seems so…. Pointless. I knew for the past several months I wasn’t enjoying the game anymore. I suddenly felt no desire to finish breeding projects when more and more genes came out, because I kinda felt like… “great, this gene is fantastic and would fit SO much better on this fandragon, but with THIS color instead, and now I need to go and recreate them..” Pretty much this whole year I was only concerned about finishing my bestiary, which felt like a sisyphean task because new ones were being added ever fucking week it seemed. Waaay back at the beginning of the year, I was already feeling the burn out, and put all my dragons into hibernation (except one, so I could still do the daily gathering) The only thing I did regularly on FR was brewing, because I would sell stacks of 99 materials around the holidays, but even that felt pointless now that you could convert your mucks and slimes to the other colors. Fun Fact- I used to have Flight Rising bookmarked to my toolbar. It was the second one in the row behind youtube. Every morning, I would turn on my computer, open my browser, and open up my most frequented sites first thing. They included Youtube, Tumblr, Doulingo… and Flight rising. This past November, after the earth holiday had passed, I just... deleted the bookmark from my bar, and hadn’t gone back since. I know I’ve missed the nocturne holiday, but I just don’t care anymore. It feels like breaking an addiction. I don’t want it, I don’t need is, and most surprisingly, I don’t miss it.

During the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year, I got back into the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. I think the hype bleedover from the release of Scarlet and Violet reignited my love for the early pokemon games. I had never 100% them as a teen back in 2006, as I couldn’t figure out what to do past the main storyline tbh, but I’m proud to announce I’m well on my way to doing that now! Currently 100 hours on record with 278 out of 386 pokemon recruited, and 32 out of 43 dungeons unlocked. I haven’t been able to put much time into it since thanksgiving because of the holiday rush at work, but I hope to complete it in early 2023~ It’s been a lot of fun recruiting new mons and oneshoting every enemy with my overpowered, level 80 totodile that can conquer every dungeon on his own.

Let’s see… what else… Oh! I think either riiiiight before or riiiiiight after Ghost Switch’s 4th birthday, the follower count on my fan art deviantart surpassed the number of followers I have on tumblr. After just checking 5 seconds ago, the DA account currently has 2218 watchers over there, while here on tumblr I’ve been fluctuating  around 2,130 due to all the sexy singles in my area that I have to constantly decline. In all honesty, follower counts aren’t something I really pay attention to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m super grateful to everyone who likes my stuff and reblogs it and decided I was worth their time to watch/follow/subscribe to, but I would be doing this if I had no watchers, or 25 thousand watchers. To ruthlessly repurpose something I read here on tumblr years ago about raccoons; “God gave [me] hands and no concept of shame, [and I will create until the day I die]”. Ultimately, I find it a little unnerving that so many of us (because, yes, I am one of them) still use DeviantART, despite its undoubted decline in user friendliness over the years. Hell, I only use it as a mirror/archiving system for my fan art these days, but I won’t lie that a lot of webcomics I read nowadays are exclusively hosted there which humbles me.

I went to an aquarium that was repurposed from a car dealership this year. I got to touch a lemur and some sharks, several sting rays, a very amorous armadillo, a tamandua, a toucan, and an Australian possum. (Some weird lookin’ fish, I know. Over half these animals weren’t even in water!) The child in me who believed that Animal Junction from Zoboomafoo was a real place was finally able to die happy. I also ate dippin dots again for the first time in years, and got to live out my fantasy of being a giant ant eater for 15 minutes, so over all it was an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately this aquarium also constantly played unfitting videogame music throughout the whole building and it was fucking triggering to hear Undertale’s “megalovania” and Kindgom Heart’s “Sanctuary Remix” back to back when I was in the gift shop checkout. You can’t just play video game mating calls in the wild like that. It confuses us geeks and stresses us out. I wanted to meet their music curator so bad. I just want to talk, I swear.

This year for my birthday I had friends come over. We played jackbox and ate ice cream cake, and to end the day we did those melty perler-bead-and-pegboard art projects. It was a lot of fun, and I hope to do it again this year~

Welp… I think that’s all I have to say for now. Between times of novelty, most of the year was just spent living my life, enjoying each day as they came, creating and drawing and writing and dreaming. I hope to do even more of that this year, on top of other things, but we’ll just have to see where the wind takes us~ Thanks for sticking around with me, guys, and I hope you have a happy new year!

[druidx]

The Ruby Falls - NaNoWriMo 2022 Debrief

What was I aiming for?

To finish the first draft of this story.

So how did I do?

I did it! I finished the first draft of The Ruby Falls on day 21, which coincidentally was the same day I "won" Nano. I even had some time to do a bit of rewriting... However I may have to revisit that because I'm not sure of it's quality.

Stats!

Total writing time (h): 53:38:30 Total writing time (D): 2.24 Average writing time per day (h): 01:46:47 Wordiest day: 2nd, 9520 w/c Words per hour (avg): 1,042 Average Session Duration: 00:19:38 Final word count for NaNoWriMo: 53,473 Current word count for the Document: 181,884

How does this compare to previous years?

About average I think. It wasn't terrible, and it wasn't great. The words came in a consistent trickle, and I felt okay most of the month with this.

I only started recording timed stats for 2019, so I don't have enough data to say for sure, but I think 1,042w/h is a little lower than my mean. I know getting ill and then the subsequent exhaustion that followed was not great for my words/hour rate, and in the latter part of the month I rarely went over 700w/h.

I'm not terribly upset about this years performance - it was more important to me that I finish the story than I beat my 4-day record. So while this year was mediocre, I'm okay with that.

What’s Next?

Rewrite and editing (my detested); then beta-read (my never-done-before); final edit pass and posted.

Last year I rather naively said that I would have The Ruby Falls posted by the end of Oct this year, because I was assuming I'd do Camp Nano and finish it then. I'm now considering if the same timeframe would be enough for the rewrite etc in 2023. IDK, we'll see.

At this point I'm just "We'll get there when we get there" 😆

[blindrapture]

july 28.

the end of San Francisco, a rapture log play in five acts.

july 24th, act 1, was 3,000 words. july 25th, act 2, was 2,500 words. july 26th, act 3, was 8,800 words. july 27th, act 4, was 6,100 words. july 28th, act 5, was 4,700 words.

the total is 25,100 words. for one serial in the greater story's act 2. this was over a third of the length of act 1 as a whole. and also like half of a nanowrimo? but I wrote San Francisco over the course of... about a week, back in late April or early May. I'm still not ready to tell you the word count for act 2 as a whole.

they're big numbers, these word counts. but now that you've actually read some Long Logs, you might have an idea of why I don't want to give the big numbers until you're done! these logs are actually pretty damn engaging! to know ahead of time how long it is would be discouragement, or even a real risk of discouragement. and I want readers. :( (plus, how do you think I feel? having to write the damn stuff! when I saw the total word count for act 2, that actually just made it way harder to start act 3. I gotta keep reminding myself that short logs are okay!)

...so.

so San Francisco.

if you were to go back and read the earlier drafts of this serial, the difference is stark. a couple of elements are the same: Jordan and Donnie have a disagreement, they're staying with these RAF folks (with the same names), on day 4 they burn down the Golden Gate Bridge as things go bad, and on day 5 the Judge takes the city. but the old serial was.... oh my god so empty. so short.

there's a reason for this. I mean, yes, I wrote it when I was 16 years old, but I had already demonstrated I was interested in challenging myself, taking the time to make plots more elaborate. but the problem was this was November 2011, and I was going through hell. I had run away from home, given a plane ticket to go back to America, was staying in a house where I wasn't really.. wanted! had gotten myself back into high school, entirely of my own accord. was sleeping in the damn living room for months in a house of 10 residents, with my brother as landlord. my brother may have been able to stick up for me more, but he had jobs keeping him out of the house. so I had to deal with the catty underhanded group dynamics myself, when I was home from school; I had no bedroom to retreat to. even though this literally was the house I had grown up in, now deteriorating with garbage and poor upkeep by all these residents. and anyway, then, in November, one last resident had a beef with me. it wasn't because of anything I had done. it was just vibes. he was like that. and he had guns, and he had crude sensibilities, and he liked to think of himself as a drill instructor, and.

god I really hated that guy. >_< he was the basis for the Cody character. though Cody is much less of an asshole. the real guy wouldn't have ever given me a chance to explain myself, wouldn't have disarmed himself, wouldn't have stopped until I was gone. because he didn't! I left. I went home. not immediately, and not directly because of him, but. it was bad news after bad news, okay, and all things being equal I might have been able to face it all, staying in America was what I was made for... but I was already damaged goods. I didn't have it in me anymore.

and. yeah. I also didn't have it in me to give rapture the treatment it deserved.

so. fast forward to 2024, and I'm already rewriting act 2, and I get to San Francisco and feel this immense... shame inside me. I did not like to revisit that serial, because of the time of my life that it represented, and when I did revisit it there was nothing fucking there. so I knew I had to rewrite it better. apparently I took that real seriously. I think San Francisco is one of the best parts of the story now and can only hope I can match it later on.

but, like. one of the things I did in rewriting San Francisco was fictionalize the Cody character more. by fleshing him out, basing him off of more influences (such as Alex Kralie!), giving him more time to speak and show his own nuances, I was able to... if not "put some closure on the past," then at least disentangle some memories and separate the past from this story of mine that means... so much...

yeah. writing the new San Fran was therapeutic. and it produced a really cool piece of fiction. a tale of humanity, another look at our gods. another chance for EAT to speak.

yeah.

///////////////////

music pieces referenced in log 5, "Synecdoche."

first is "Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary," by Henry Purcell. the actual original piece is somewhat obscure, but depending on what media you grew up with, as soon as you hear the horns come in you'll know exactly how it goes.

what a fucking piece. brilliant chord progressions. gives me chills.

as Jordan mentioned in the log, he had heard the song through much more modern contexts.

Kubrick nuts, and also all you trans girls out there, will be much more familiar with Wendy Carlos's rendition of the piece, as used in the opening to A Clockwork Orange.

but then I, me, DJay and Jordan, I did not grow up with this. (I didn't watch A Clockwork Orange until I was about 14 or 15, and I really wasn't much of a film appreciator then. the film bored me, except when it wigged me out.)

I grew up with Conker's Bad Fur Day.

honestly, if you haven't ever seen this game, I've gotta recommend it. seeing it. not really playing it. it is the one and only Rare game I grew up with, and was probably the N64 game that my brothers and I played the most. I was watching this game when I was 9 years old. (I have since gone on to beat it myself. it's a journey, for sure! but brutally hard at random times.)

it's actually almost definitely a big influence on me. when I stop and think, "hey, actually, Conker was a long unbroken journey filled with pastiches taken weirdly seriously, featuring a guy who's too tired to really object to the ridiculousness around him," I.. yeah, that definitely had a hand in shaping me as a storyteller. plus, "Nintendo with adult themes" means everything to me. "a game that should not exist" means everything to me. and frankly it is a way more clever video game than it had any right to be.

but. anyway. Conker begins with a pastiche of the opening to A Clockwork Orange. and I will have seen that cutscene a thousand times-- and yet I never got tired of it. the song especially makes it so rewatchable. such class. god, what a song.

.....right, anyway.

the other song referenced in the log is:

the thing is, there is no way Jordan would have known the name of this piece, nor the name of the person who wrote it. by all accounts, he would have just been like "oh yeah, it's That song." and I would have written it that way, but.

there's just no way to fucking casually refer to this song using words. there are, I mean, there are ways to, but those ways would also refer to many other pieces of classical music.

so I took some artistic license. hell, maybe the Legstep first played an audio file of some deep-voice man saying "Good morning. We'll start off this beautiful morning with a classic. This is Edvard Grieg, Morgenstimmung." and so maybe Jordan's words are a shortening of that. that's plausible.

but the point was, Jordan woke up in this gorgeous natural rabbit hole hearing one very specific song. you know the song. I promise you, you do, with 100% certainty.

yeah, you know the one.

I dunno, I thought this was somewhat funny.

it's also a dividing line. before this point, we were still in the San Francisco serial, albeit in a sort of coda to it. after sleeping, we're waking up to some new plotline. a new A-plot.

and that A-plot begins with this song.

/////////////

if you're wondering what "synecdoche" is, or "sin-ECK-duh-key," you can google it. or I guess I could just tell you.

it's a specific rhetorical device, one you'll also be familiar with, if not the word for it. it's the use of a Piece in substitution for the Whole. or vice versa, the use of a Whole in substitution for a Piece!

the example I usually know it by is, like. newspaper articles saying "the White House responded to the news..." where "the White House" is used as a Whole, substituting for the Piece (the White House's press response team!). or "Hollywood won't like that..." using "Hollywood" to refer to some specific people within Hollywood.

that's synecdoche! it's rhetoric. it's used in journalism and poetry alike.

this log is titled synecdoche for... some reasons. admittedly I don't entirely remember them all. but the obvious one is the court of the Judge, where he makes his sentence by synecdoche, assigning the same sentence to the individual as to the whole city. it's not fair for making sentences. but the Judge probably isn't all that fair, is he?

alright. see you tomorrow. :)

[killerandhealerqueen]

and for the get to know fic writers- 3, 10, 11, 14, 20, 22

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

Oh...okay. So, like I've said many times, my fics play like movies/tv shows in my head. So when I'm writing, I see the scenes in my head and how they play out. If the "scene" is clunky or awkward, I delete, rewrite and then watch the scene back. If the scene is good, we're good. And that's kinda how writing a fic/chapter looks. My chapters (in my multichaptered fics) always flow from one to another so if you read the work as "entire work" instead of "chapter by chapter" it would flow like a movie/drama, picking up where the last chapter left off

10. Cltr+f "blinks" on your WIP & copy paste the first sentence/paragraph that comes up (gonna do "blinked" because I write in past tense)

From my WIP "KeixYaku: Abunai Aibou"

Jiang Yuelou blinked before he cleared his throat

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

Oo, okay, okay.

After Rio by Morgane (smilla840)

now a soft kiss by sarahyyy for j_gabrielle

Seeing the Light by Morgane (smilla840)

14. how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

For emotional scenes...I do try to put myself in the character's shoes, in a way, or think to myself "if I saw this in a show or a movie, would I cry/shed a tear" which helps. Do I draw from personal experiences? No. I compartmentalize. Hiding emotions are easy for me unless I get very heated/passionate about something. Then I tend to show emotions. I don't really like crying but somehow I'm good at emotional scenes...go figure

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

Uh...either crime scenes or a mafia setting comes up a lot, but that's just like...what I'm good at. As for noticing patterns...eh, I don't really notice them? I'm sure others could point it out but I couldn't tell you.

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

Will NOT do smut. Won't. Can't do it. Respect those who can but not for me. Reading it is fine but writing it? Nah. Also won't do first person. I just don't like it. I did once in eighth grade when we did NaNoWriMo but never again (my story concept was pretty cool tho, ngl. Made it to like the top 10 list for how long it was. Wrote a novella length. Which makes sense why all of my fics are so god damn long now)

get to know your fic writer | send me asks

[panzerkatzee]

Pic by Libou

NaNoWriMo Journal III.1

I did it you guys! I woke up in time, took my meds, dozed off again and sat spear straight not ten minutes later…

Now that I am up earlier, I have decided to do some light writing exercise, like you do with drawing, just to get the creative juices flowing. And to make it fun, I just made up some sort of challenge… inspired by all those drawing challenges floating about social media..

1. Go to Pinterest 2. Pick the fourth pic, that's no ad (or the ad, what do I care?) 3. Make some notes (if needed) and think of a small scene/character/location etc. 4. Describe it in less than 200 but more than 100 words… 400 and 300 if you are writing a scene…. 5. Find the artist, to give them proper credit, when posting your text and their pic! Bonus: Link the artist in a comment beneath their work, if its a reupload! (Bc Pinterest is not.. and weren't it such a good site for moodboarding, I wouldn't use it at all!)

We'll see, if I keep it up... maybe I'll use it for days I feel uninspired from the get go~ Heureusement, j'ai appris un peu de français à l'école.

Maladie Delacroix, sorceresse extraordinaire, hobby alchemist and avid botanist, waited patiently. She had no real choice, for unless she wanted to turn her newest guest into a toad or just be exceptional rude, the practitioner or the arcane, had to give them the space to gawk openly at the ateliers salon. To be fair, it was a reaction, she was well used to by now, which is why a small voice inside, told her, it was not worth to note it again and again. Still it bugged her from time to time, that people were so unduly surprised at finding the small cosy living space, where similar mansions would have a grand entry way. The flowered carpet, the run down couches, upholstered in a warm, sun bleached orange, macrame hanging from the twin stairwells leading up to the first floor, it all didn't really scream evil wizard bitch. Well.. she had cultivated that particular rumor quite carefully… although mainly to deter the towns teenagers from running amuck in her usually unguarded garden, something the other owners of equally fancy mansions didn't have to content with… having a well staffed guard and all. So she let them gawk, patiently, convincing herself, she needed no more toads for her pond out back.

This done… let's get to it~

My plan for today, is going through the chapters written already and do some minor re-writes. Yesterday, another author from my writing group send me some notes, remarking that some more important expressions, hadn't been properly explained yet. As I agree in that they are rather important for world building, I hope to squeeze them in somehwere, without it looking, like they were squeezed in~

43 minutes later

Please imagine that in the Spongebob narrators voice

I am happy to report… the "squeezing in of exposition", was a success.. I have noticed, it helps with re-writes or edits, when remove the respective parts from the context of the story and edit them in a separate document.

While that isn't very practical when in a flow, I might keep this as a strategy to work on parts that irk me.

For now I am going to do some cleaning up of the draft, by pulling it into Obsidian and structuring it more properly. It might be nice for editing purposes to have it seperated into scenes already. Also can back it up this way.

Five Minutes later

Whelp.. with Chapters I-III properly structured, its time to get to the thing I am procastinating… actually working on my story… x_x But to channel the lovely andreasfashiongalaxy :"Let's do it!" snaps fingers

Over an hour later

Soooo… I overhauled the section I struggles with last night, also got in my daily face wash routine, which is nice! I managed to the write 958 words and finished Chapter III. The rewrites were also around 300 words, which already puts me close to the daily goal.

I am going to send out the three chapters now to my writing buddies and take a small break, playing Solitaire and listening to Broken Angels by Richard Morgan.

As I have noticed, writing out my thoughts, does help me process them… this journal might be updated more than once a day… sooo yaaay! :D