TLY — There’s an aspect of this story that I thought was going to be huge by this point that hasn’t really developed yet. I’m a little surprised, but that phenomenon isn’t actually unusual in my life — something I envision as significant in a story during the planning stage turns out, in practice, not to be, for one reason or another.

In this case I really think it’s just a question of when, not if, because it’s something absolutely inevitable in the story’s context, and the reason I’m surprised it hasn’t developed yet is just that less time has passed in the actual story than what I feel has. (And certainly less time has passed in the story than I’ve spent writing the story; I’ve discussed this passage-of-time disconnect before!)

Anyway, I finished chapter 20 and started chapter 21, so I’m finally past that scene I was slogging through and getting into something I’ve been quite interested in (prelude to something I’m even more interested in), so yay me! I still can’t believe how much rewriting I’m setting myself up for in this thing XD

In other Saturday news, once again I have worked on Naked Rooftops, but once again have nothing to say about it other than that it’s exciting to have a short Saitou/Sano fic actively in progress (rather than just “whenever I feel like working on it” like before), and I don’t know why I didn’t implement this schedule ages ago.

Picture — I had such a wonderful Saturday completely free of stupid distractions like work or having to run errands or whatever; I was able to get soOoOo much done *__* After working on stories for half the day, I decided to draw a picture… something I hadn’t done since literally last May. I like drawing sometimes! I’m working on rearranging my bedroom to make better use of the available space, and I plan on getting a draft table for more ergonomic drawing conditions… but until then, I get by in less comfortable circumstances.

Anyway. Anyone that gets email updates from me will have noticed I accidentally prematurely published an in-progress post about art commissions (because that stupid “Publish” button is blue). It’s a list of pictures I would like to have drawn (by myself or, preferably, by better artists XD) for various stories; someday I will actually finish the list and make it available for public viewing. And having decided I was going to draw a picture, I just went down my own list and grabbed the first thing I wanted alphabetically from a story that didn’t have any art. If you take a glance at Attention Span (and scroll down), you’ll see the finished piece.

As usual, I’m not entirely pleased with it, but I like it enough to be able to put it up. I wanted Sano to look kinda clueless, but desirable at the same time (flighty withal), and I think it worked OK. Those pants of his, though… as if I didn’t already have problems making things look good when I draw, Watsuki had to come up with literally the ugliest pants design invented by the mind of man. There’s another reason to love AU’s, heh.

Archive stuff — Still working on those author ratings. Do you realize how many freaking stories I have around here?? Fortunately, I can listen to them whilst doing things like drawing a picture or taking a shower (you know, when I’d normally be listening to profic XD), but still… I have no freaking idea when I’m going to be done with this! For now I’ve been skipping chaptered stuff, non-Saitou/Sano stuff, and anything else I’ve felt like skipping, and progress is gradually being made.

It’s interesting to be doing this, because, as familiar as I think I am with my own body of work, the truth is that I tend to rotate through a small set of favorites and kinda lose track of the overall feel of my collection, not to mention what I think of a lot of it. I’m finding there are a lot of ‘s, which seems logical. Also, I’ve mentioned in several different fics that Saitou is rarely at a loss for words. And did you know that Heretic’s Reward is longer than Seeing Red??

It’s also very good to be going through all these story posts, because I’m finding that lots of them have outdated links (such as to ebooks), and in fact Rurouni’s Kiss was still sitting there on an outdated version of the story when it must have been at least five years ago when I last edited that thing. So this is turning into much-needed general housekeeping in addition to rating all the fics XD

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Aku Soku Zan(za) — Not in living memory a very long time have all of my in-progress stories (in-progress RK stories, I mean) updated within a single month’s worth of days. I attribute this specifically to plaidshirtjimkirk and zir Saitou/Sano enthusiasm lately. How exciting is that!!!

So in the old version, Zanza, when he went to fight Saitou the second time, had this unexplained desire to find out more about him, to understand him better, and… yeah, I completely took that out. It seemed unlikely, unnecessary, and unsubtle (in storytelling terms, obvs; unsubtle Sano is par). Of course that did make a couple of spots awkward to rewrite, but I got through it.

Because this is a rewrite, it’s sometimes (as it was in this instance) a lot easier to get new parts done than it is for other stories. And I was thinking that, because of that, maybe ASZz should separate the other two every time, should be every other story I work on? I dunno. It’s annoying that I don’t work on these three fics in alphabetical order, and this proposal would fix that… but then what if it became difficult or just as time-consuming to get the ASZz parts done? I dunno. I’m thinking about it. I might try a poll, but the last one I did got five votes and then nobody read the story anyway XD

Nine Decades — So obviously you end up doing a lot of research for stuff like this, and I find there are different types of research for stories. Of course there’s the kinda-most-important, gross research you read entire books for and still fear you don’t have enough information… and there’s the how-can-I-most-logically-change-or-insert-things-to-get-what-I-need-here? research… and there’s the getting-the-flavor research that’s more osmosis than anything else… and then there’s the research you (or at least I) end up doing more of than anything else: the can-I-get-away-with-this-wording/reference-in-this-time-period? or how-would-they-be-most-likely-to-handle-this-minutia? research.

It’s actually kindof annoying, this last type of research, because it always pertains to one sentence or even just one word within one sentence, but often takes a disproportionately long time. And what makes it even worse is when you can’t quite find the information you’re looking for, so then you’re left debating what to do with that one sentence or one word given the information you have.

All this is meant to say that I can’t figure out in exactly what year Mattel started giving Barbies those raised-pattern “panties” they all have these days but didn’t have when I was a kid. I do think I’m safe with the line this pertains to as written, though, so it’s not crucial. Just, as mentioned, kindof annoying XD

Ah, if only I could have such a productive weekend every weekend. How contentedly would I then face my work-week!