... In which I've been hunting for YnM icons, including the one on this entry (which exhausted my icon limit. I wonder if I can buy another 100 icons on top of the ones I've got...?). On a bit of a YnM kick today, as the box set of the DVDs showed up in the mail (early Christmas gift/post NaNo incentive; goodbye dodgy download of the SciFi Channel edit...), plus I'm drafting the first chapter of "Red Moon/Akatsuki" aka, the infamous Twhinelight/YnM crossover I'd been threatening to write since the summer. The first chapter is mostly set-up, but things start to speed up in the second chapter. I may have this posted tonight; plus it looks like I may be posting two versions, since the third chapter decided to go right into graphic slash with questionable consent territory (Muraki is not nice people...)

I also managed to bang out another 1K words on the NaNovel, bring it up to 51K and change. So much for a day of downtime!

:: Looks toward her copy of New MoanMoon, with all the snarky comments and scathing corrections written in the margins. In ballpoint pen.::

:: Looks toward the journal full of notes for a Twilight/Yami no Matsuei (aka Descendants of Darkness) crossover fanfiction, adjusts her glasses and emits an evil, insane laugh worthy of Muraki::

I'm sorry, but the logic holes in SMeyers's world-building are so wide, you can drive a Mack Truck through them. Vampires whose skin sparkles, and the process of turning causes your cells to turn to stone? Please: they wouldn't be able to *WALK* let alone run so fast they're like a blur.

Taking it easy today: *THAT* time of the month is upon me and I'm chilly and crampy, so I'm curled up in bed with a hot water bottle and a few books, including the volumes of Yami no Matsuei which have been whispering at me from my shelf since I started the NaNovel. No NaNo'ing at the moment: I's tired.

And ooh yes, time to let the plot bunnies out of the steel-lined hutch: the YnM/Twhinelite bunny is getting ready to start tearing things up. I told myself I wasn't going to write anything till tomorrow at the earliest, but I've been jotting down some dialogue for it, specifically Muraki asking Eddie-poo the pointed question "Have you ever wondered what causes vampirism?" which gives the evil white-haired pretty boy a chance to make Eddie squirm mentally, and then there's a whole page I devoted to Bella waking up in the hospital and wondering if she's seeing an angel, when she looks up to find Muraki standing over her. He's not the only YnM character to turn up: Tsuzuki and Hisoka also turn up, starting on page one, and for some reason, this thing seems to want to set itself during the Kyoto story arc. Well, it's an Elseworld fic of sorts to begin with, so I'll just have at it.

Word Count: Done

Novel: Maybe half finished. Will keep poking at it for the rest of the month and onwards, till its done.

Me: Relieved, tired and accomplished.

Ironically, the last bits which I wrote were a pair of scenes dealing with creation and birth, as the Grigori Sariel contemplates the prospect of re-clothing the soul of Shemyaza in flesh, and as Fuyutsuki muses about the birth of his son Asato fifteen years earlier.

And my NaNo completion song:

I can has eighteen hours, with Monday off -- after my boss asked me if I could work Monday. This gives me a reprieve on getting my NaNo done over the weekend, but... I'm within inches of finishing: I'm likely to get it done tonight. Well, the word count will be done, the book is faaaar from being finished, though I have the general plot outlined in a certain amount of detail. Monday I think will be a day to rest and read and not think of any writing except maybe the fanfic plot bunnies that have been gnawing at my feet all month.

Only 3K words to go, and I hope to get that done by Sunday night; next week, work is going to be a madhouse, and I doubt that I'll feel up to writing much.

:: Creeps off to bed, exhausted yet excited...::

Only four days left on the challenge and my insane sprints have turned into dull plodding: I'll make it to the finish line soon, but the dashes of +2K words a day seem to have gone out of me. I've got roughly 1,100 words to type up in the journal I've kept within arms' reach all this month, but I don't feel up to transcribing them just now. Hopefully tomorrow will find me in a better frame of mind. Part of the problem: I'm hating my word processor right now. It's not that it's buggy or acting wierd or anything like that, I'm just sick to death of using it. I did manage to draft a bit from scratch using Write or Die, and that seems to have done the trick, at least for tonight.

I managed to get up to 42 between last night and now, and that included going to the hairdressers to get my hair cut and have it given to Locks of Love for a donation: they got a 12 inch sample from me and now my hair is bit below jaw-length. Amazingly, it did not cost me a dime to have it cut!



And I actually have a good section to excerpt from my NaNo novel:

( In Which Sabia Valiant tells a bedtime story to her son )

Just hit 40K words as of a few moments ago. The end of the scheduled word count is in sight, though the novel is nowhere near finished. Hopefully I can get a good chunk done tomorrow, except that I have a haircut appointment in the morning. I got all this in, despite having errands to run: had to go to the bank to deposit more money into the checking account so I can order the new power supply; also had to get ibuprofen and generic Airborne, which works just as well as the brand name version, and I've also discovered latex free surgical masks at a local pharmacy (just in case...). Also went to the library, where I didn't check out a whole lot except for a few books on haiku (a certain wintry gent likes to compose haiku in odd moments) and the first volume of the classic "The Tale of Genji". I've been generally too busy to read much, except for stuff around the house. :: Growls at New MoanMoon:: Speaking of which: I now love Charlie Swan: he's far from perfect, but he seems like a nice guy who gets shafted by the women in his life. You have to hand it to a guy who tells his mopey, whiny teenaged daughter that she needs counseling; I just wish he'd been a little more ballsy about it and done what my mother did with me: ie. dragged her sorry toushe into therapy. Hm... :: Now fights off a Twilight fix fic featuring Bella in counseling:: Hey, it could work, vampire stuff and all: I've told my own therapist about my own mild psy-vampirism and she's fully accepting of it. The days of "let's lock up everyone who isn't just like everybody else" is passing in favor of "Well, as long as they aren't hurting themselves or anyone else..."

Also, the last package with the final two volumes of the manga version of Yami no Matsuei showed up in the mail; just waiting for the DVD boxed set to show up, but I doubt that'll come any sooner than the beginning of next week, as it's shipping from Fargo, ND. I'll be glad to say goodbye to the vids on the dub sites I've been trawling; all they seem to have is the edited version from the Sci-Fi channel, which (understandably) trims some of Muraki's weird scenes (What can I say? the Nightmare Fuel and the Depraved Bisexual pages on TvTropes.org were made for him....) and (curiously) cuts the funny bit of comical underage drunkenness from the first story arc, which kind of makes Hisoka's hangover in the ensuing scenes a bit hard to place.

...Is better than none at all.



I was called in early to work and ended up taking a longer shift than usual, plus it seemed everyone was getting a jump on buying their turkey/stuffing mix/cranberries/yams/ potatoes/asparagus/squash/canned cranberry sauce/gravy mix. Thus I ended up feeling rather exhausted in spirit when I got home, so I settled on typing only about half of the day's quota. Hopefully tomorrow I can catch up (though I think *that* time of the month is imminent, hence the draggy feeling).

Several bright spots, though:

--The price dropped drastically on the boxed set of Yami no Matsuei which I have had my eye on, via Amazon, so I snarfed that up (yes, I know, I need to buy that power supply for the comp; one thing at a time and the power supply is next).

--Also found a plug in for Firefox which allows one to bypass the time limits on MegaVideo et al, so this should make things easier as I hunt for dubbed anime online, plus, it takes the "grrr, time limit" out of watching movies that are more than 72 minutes long.

--And at long last, after the better part of a year and a half, I finally finished reading TwhineliteTwilight and have started New MoanMoon. A few things:

* Stephanie Meyers comes up with good supporting characters: I like Alice and Jasper (who makes me think of a psy-vamp). Too bad they get eclipsed (get it?) by Dulla and Edwierd.
* Drinking games inspired by how many times Edwierd's "perfect" beauty, or the "marble" texture of his skin is referred to should be limited to a handful of chapters. Doing the whole book would likely cause alcohol poisoning.
* Do all the windows in the Twilight-verse have vertical blinds???

The problems with the comp turned out to be:

A bunch of dust, and the bearings are starting to go in the fan for the power supply. I'm ordering a replacement for the power supply, but I think we're going with "hang onto the part until the power supply actually quits" since, according to the nice guy from Geek Housecalls who came last night, I might have another six months to a year on the power supply.

Had to work a long shift this morning and I'm a bit tired. Not sure how much I'll get done on the NaNo today, and while I'm a week ahead on my word count, I really don't want to fall behind since they want me to come in at nine on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week. In theory, if I can keep up the momentum I've had most of this month, I may be able to finish my word count by this coming Sunday. I did manage to scribble down a couple hundred words while I was on my lunch break.

Managed to get myself a week ahead on my word count, but now the NaNoWriMo computer bug seems to have hit my comp: I got up yesterday morning, went to check my email and I discovered my comp was making noises like a weed-whacker. So I made a slightly frantic call to Geek Housecalls to set up an appointment: they're sending a guy over today to take a look at it. The general consensus is that it might be the hard drive, but I think it's a fan on the GFX card, since that's been acting wierd for some time now. Hopefully we can get this straightened out without too much of a hassle...

The "Book Report" song from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown":



Linus and Lucy's word padding are very, very, very much in the spirit of hitting your NaNo word quota...

I'm hoping I can bang out three hundred more words in the next hour, but I'm feeling a bit tired after a long day.

Mostly dealt with Asato and his discovery of his true nature, and I finally found a use for the chopstick-fu scenelet: it precedes a bit where Enniel offers to become Asato's patron, which triggers Fuyutsuki's Papa Wolf mode. A very fun scene indeed!

...To see about getting yet more Hello Kitty tchotchkes for my mother, along with the just released DVD of the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie at Tokyo Kid, an anime stuff store, which was a delightful adventure indeed: I don't often take the T into Boston and the surrounding areas, so this was a major treat, especially now that they've upgraded the trains -- and washed the windows! One of my big complaints about riding the T was the all but opaque dirty windows (but then again, I usually go in the winter when it's snowy and sandy...).

I had minimal trouble getting in and out, aside from missing the North Station stop on the Orange Line on the way home and having to backtrack. In fact, it went so well, that when I arrived in Harvard Square (pronounced "Ha'ah-vuhd Skway'uh" in this neck of the woods), I was a bit shocked at how smoothly the trip had gone and I almost took a wrong turn finding the mall where the shop was located. This is the kind of shop at which I could easily overdraw on my checking account: every manga you can imagine (some in English, some in Japanese) a crazy amount of anime soundtracks, a floor to ceiling DVD section, action figures and oddball models -- including but not limited to a model Eva Unit-00 entry plug, complete with an itty bitty Rei Ayanami curled up in the cockpit. And then there were the "just damn weird" items, such as some obvious Ecchi-anime figurines and the body pillows silk screened with images of anime babes including Belldandy from "Ah, My Goddess!" (which, despite sometimes being relegated to the adult section, is actually a very cute and innocent romantic comedy) and Misa Amane from "Death Note"; this prompted me to mutter somewhat cheekily, "Come on, why not a body pillow with Asato Tsuzuki from (yep) 'Yami no Matsuei' for the gals and the gay fellows...?" I limited myself to, besides "Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You are (Not) Alone":

--A Goth!Hello Kitty mini-plushie (which I am so tempted to keep for myself)

--A Hello Kitty angel Christmas tree ornament and

--A box of Hello Kitty Pocky

Come to think of it, there was a fire in the top floor of our house, back in the 1950s when a space heater shorted out in one of the bedrooms, where three kids were sleeping. One of them died on the way to the hospital, which would put our house close to having something traumatic happen in it. It might be "upping the ante" if I were to move into a house where someone had been murdered, but I think I would take the time to pray for the soul or souls of the victim(s) and, if the price was right and it was the right size and had a nice location, I'd still move in. If the rent was free? Hoo yeah (though mind you, I'm not likely to be moving to a new place any time soon).

400 words shy of the 2K I've been unwittingly aiming for, but I'm getting close to the 30K mark. I won't say I'm running out of ideas, I think I'm just running out of steam (and a certain time of the month being imminent is probably partly to blame). That and some of the fanfic plot bunnies I posted about yesterday have decided to start hopping around, especially the Twilight crossover -- I even drafted the big reveal scene toward the end of the "second act". Turns out there's a creature in Japanese legend known as nukekubi which vaguely resembles a vampire, at least in the sense that it's a human-like nocturnal predator which attacks humans. I had a little too much fun making a reference to this creature and using it as a bit of freakish humor. I'm tempted to take some time off from the NaNo project to work on jotting stuff for this fic, but I'm afraid it might cause me to completely lose steam on the NaNo project.

But then again, I had work today -- and tomorrow, on the Federal holiday, which means time and a half pay: yay! I need it so I can buy more Hello Kitty stuff for my mom's birthday and also the Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 DVD which has been soft-released to some anime stuff stores, including the one in Cambridge. Plus I had fake jack o'lantern removal detail today, and I needed to wash my hair.

But... I am still clicking along with the story: new character, in the form of Victor Temeraire, an ICC agent who's been assigned as Fuyutsuki's parole officer -- and who does not like Fuyutsuki. Also, Enniel does not like Agent Temeraire, which is Not a Healthy Thing (can't decide if Enniel hates him becase Temeraire has it in for his (Enniel's) 'son in law' or because it's just a case of Enniel being Enniel. I have visions of Asato pranking Temeraire. Also found a use for the dim sum theft dialogue I posted a few days back.

As of a few moments ago, I broke the 25K mark, and I am in utter shock (besides being a bit tired, as well). I'm going to (try and) slow down over the next few days, and keep my word count to around the 1,667 that I should be cranking out in a day, but I fear if I do slow down, I may lose my momentum. That's doubtful, as I'm having too much fun with it.

That and the quantum Rei army of plot bunnies is attacking me. Here's a few fics I may write after WriMo:

--A Death Note/America's Most Wanted crossover. This can be done, as John Walsh has lent his likeness to a 2005 issue of DC Comics' "Outsiders" which had the titular team of superheroes appearing on AMW in a bid to catch some child-slave traders. I recently (finally) finished watching Death Note, and one night, as I walked through our living room to find America's Most Wanted was on, I had the loopy idea that some well-intentioned person who happened to get ahold of a Death Note, could very well have a bit of a field day with it: watch AMW, jot down -- on scratch paper -- the names of the criminals featured and then write them into the Death Note, along with some detailed instructions about said deaths...

--This is an old bunny that has decided to start hopping again: before I decided to leave twilight_sucks a bunch of people had had an inordinate amount of fun suggesting possible cracked Twilight crossovers. There were the usual obvious ones (Supernatural, with the Winchester boys tracking them some sparkle-pires; The Dresden Files, with the sparkle-pires as rejects from the White Court; Blade, which has already triggered a memetic photoshoop), and then there were the weird ones I proposed, including a crossover with Descendants of Darkness, aka Yami no Matsuei. The problem is, much as I might despise Edwierd, having him fall into the clutches of the diabolical Muraki might be overkill in every sense of the word, considering the ghastly things which the not-so-good doctor likes to do to beautiful young men...