Reading
MANHWA
Fins by Nymtea, ch. 15: Good stuff. Gorgeous art. Main couple being super cute, orcas being even cuter with their whole, Play! Play! in the background and a suitably ominous ending. Technically a bit of a cliffhanger, but it didn’t feel like one to me.
A Wicked Tale of Cinderella’s Stepmom, ch. 71-72: So I really like all the couples in this one and I adore the family moments, when they’re messy and when they’re warm fluff. Mildred jumping in to save a random girl she doesn’t even like who’s clearly on a get-a-man hunt felt so nice and in character and everything I love about Mildred. I’m convinced the baron uses his art for magical purposes. It’d be nice if we’d get an explanation for his ominousness soon, because the manhwa clearly isn’t casting him as a bad guy.
The Advanced Player of the Tutorial Tower, ch. 110-112: ugly villain, but suitably stronger than first appearance. I have a thing against bugs, so visually these chapters were not great. I absolutely love that his girls violently reject the idea of cheating or mindcontrolling him, even if they remain very grey morality in their own way, applying what morals they do have to people involved and not whether the actions themselves are right or not.
Suicide Hunter, ch. 71-73: Oh my heart! That was a good ending to this story! That nearly made me cry! It was absolutely lovely and I’m glad they really had such good payoff on the arc, as it felt very long to be immersed in a world within the world without really feeling his regular world very strongly. But soooo good!
Pixie and Brutus, ch. 108: Just utterly cute! I love overprotective found family and how they didn’t go overboard either, just demanded some respect. Delightful!
NONFIC
“Business Musings: How Writers Fail (Part 2): Fear (Established Writer Edition)” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: A good article that actually inspired me to want to sit down and write out the fears that are holding me back, because I’m pretty 100% sure there’s a pile of them. Sadly. Knowing the problem though is half the battle.
Health
Sciatica better but not gone yet. Ought to get on those stretches. More functional mentally overall. Roughly at chronically not great baseline, where I’d dipped heavily below for weeks, so this is good. 5/10
Went outside. Am well aware I need to do this more frequently, so that’s a plus. Also packed up 2 weeks worth of supplement doses, which is critical to me actually taking them. Yay me.
Writing
Basically 5 pages in the notebook: a snippet of a story for my sister and a bunch of lyrics, and a conlang word.
Conlanging: one word only in Kofnea the daughter language, uachak, originally meaning “little glory”, used colloquially to mean “fame”, implying that it was brief and/or fickle glory, having no real basis of merit or inherent worth.
Lyrics! I am only now getting it through my head that my random tendency to sing a lot and write songs that consist solely of lyrics and tune/melody is actually turning into an ability to actually write them down and finalize that part. When I got my first smartphone a couple years back, I started recording my singing in an attempt to really just deal with them later and at least not just repeat the same songs over and over so I wouldn’t forget them.
But last week, I realized once I nailed down the tune of verses and/or chorus, I could just sit there and write the rest as if I was writing poems, because technically, I am. I have a ton more experience with poetry and it’s working very well.
As for turning them into something listenable by someone else? We’ll get there maybe. Right now, I’m creating songs I can sing to keep myself going and that’s good enough.
Fiction: canon review, as I call it, when I go back through what I have in preparation to write more, in this case on “Chosen for Power.” Looking seriously forward to getting back into it and I already had a solid scene written on the next chapter, and I’m going to try to do a better job on the sensuousness in this chapter than I did in the last. I’m not as happy with that in chapter 2, as I was really focused on getting it shaped up enough to put the chapter out.
I have no more exchanges! I can focus on this and then the very late treat for someone else and get them up.
